I’ve played in eleven Pro Tours. That’s not really that many, but it’s been a solid four years.
Pro Tour Barcelona marks my last event officially on the train. I failed to top sixteen to make Gold, leaving me with just rollover Level Four benefits to
round out the calendar year. Most of the reason for this was missing so many Grand Prix weekends due to school, but even then I would have had to spike one
fairly hard to make up the missing eleven points I would have needed.
All that said, eleven Pro Tours is a lot. While I’ve done fairly poorly at them and mostly been bouyed by my Grand Prix finishes, I’ve definitely learned a
lot about how to do better at them in the future. Here are the tidbits I’ve found most noteworthy over the years, both so I remember them for my one-time
shot at Seattle and so that others can make use of them.
Pro Tour: Kyoto (2009)
Limited: Don’t be afraid to try gimmick decks. They might not be quite as gimmicky as you expected.
All of these cards regularly made the cut in my draft decks for this format.
Let’s frame things. The format for this event was Shards of Alara and Conflux draft. Given the multicolored theme of the block, most people were heavily
focused on playing high powered cards and fixing their three color mana bases. Most decks were leaning heavily on investing two or three mana early into
their Grixis Panorama, Traumatic Visions, or Obelisk of Grixis to cast their spells.
One of the guys I was working with for this Pro Tour brought up having drafted this odd deck online to moderate success. Instead of being heavy three
colors, you were base two colors with a light splash for removal or overpowered creatures from the third. You would cast a Goblin Deathraiders while your
opponent was stumbling around with their mana, suit it up with Lightning Talons and crush them with a 6/1 first strike trampler before they could react. If
your mediocre beats failed to finish the job, there was a reasonable amount of reach in the format between things like Vithian Stinger to chip away at
their life and Quenchable Fire as a straight-up nug.
On the surface, your cards looked absolutely terrible. Everyone else had decks with half their cards being undercosted gold spells. Your deck had a lot of
Dwarven Ponies and Infectious Horrors. But it worked. You also had a few high power spells, and usually they would be put too far behind to recover before
your 13th pick pinged them out.
The important part was that your cards were so interchangeable. A lot of gimmick decks lean heavily on a specific card to work, often an uncommon. There
really weren’t conditional cards for this deck. Red just had to be open and all the other cards were a bunch of commons no one else wanted.
Gimmick decks aren’t gimmicks if they are supportable almost every draft. That’s just an archetype.
Pro Tour: Honolulu (2009)
Constructed: Stay with people you are testing with.
Long story short: I had a deck for this event that was built by people I wasn’t staying with and was not open to be shared. When I showed up, I spent a
week testing random decks against random decks without putting in any work on what I was actually playing. Instead of playing with the cards I was going to
be using, I was playing Veldalken Outlander against Jund Hackblades.
It sucked. Come time for the event, I had no idea what I was doing on sideboarding, game play, or deck list decisions. A week of testing is a lot
of time; don’t underestimate how much you can lose from not playing that long. This is especially true on-site, as information starts mixing between groups
and deck and format development rapidly accelerates.
Staying with people you can’t test with is just incinerating valuable time. Don’t do it unless there is no other choice.
Constructed: Test against sideboard cards if they are high-impact.
The deck I ended up playing was Cruel Ultimatum control. You were amazing game one against the field as you had better Bloodbraid Elves than everyone else
and the best end game of any deck.
The issue I ran into was that over half the decks could board in Thought Hemorrhage, name Cruel Ultimatum, and suddenly you had no big trump. The game
would go on past the point you assumed you would just end it, they would stick a normally bad threat that was slightly better than your answers, and you
would die.
Had I tested sideboard games with the deck, I would have likely played more alternate win conditions to combat this. I had an Obelisk of Alara and a Nicol
Bolas, Planeswalker, but why not board in a Sphinx of the Steel Wind too? If you were going to go up against Hemorrhage, you could diversify your threats
more and still have trumps even if they resolved their sideboard card.
When your opponents can board a high impact sideboard card against you, test and develop a plan for it. Sometimes the right plan is just ignore it (i.e.
Modern Affinity against Ancient Grudge), but be absolutely sure that is actually what you want to do before you commit to it.
Pro Tour: Austin (2009)
Constructed: Audibles are as good as the deck you are switching to is simple.
The night before the event, I decided that I wanted to play Dredge instead of Zoo. The deck had an extremely high power level, and this was Extended. Why
do something fair when you could instead just crush people?
Turns out, Dredge is harder than most people think. The actual mechanics of the deck are extremely awkward. Beyond that, this Dredge deck had a lot of
weird enablers like Drowned Rusalka that required even more decisions. I ended up going 2-3 with the deck, losing to actual Standard Faeries played by
future GP Champion Jason Ford when he was just an even younger child at his first Pro Tour.
Audibles aren’t terrible, but you need to know you can pilot the deck you switch to. If it’s something like Mono-Red Burn, this likely isn’t an issue. If
you are swapping to the newest Seven Color Control Combo brew, odds are it won’t work out so well.
World Championship in Rome (2009)
General: You are never out until you are mathematically eliminated.
Admittedly, I had low goals for this event. I just needed a top 200 to level up.
So, when I found myself sitting at 2-4 despite playing what I thought was a very solid Jund list in Standard, I was extremely frustrated. I was already
trying to figure out how many late round scoops I would need to mise to level up or I how I would scrape together the extra six points to hit the old
cross-season Level Four.
Entering the draft portion, first pick I was presented with one of the worst packs I had ever seen. I actually took Verdant Catacombs because it was the
best card and not because it was a free dinner. My second pick wasn’t anything stellar either, and I took a Scalding Tarn fourth out of an equally
miserable pack as my first one.
Six rounds and six wins later I was still technically in top eight contention and could easily get the extra Pro Point I wasn’t counting on twelve hours
earlier.
We witnessed what is almost the most extreme possible case of this last weekend, with the eventual Pro Tour champion starting the event 1-3. The next time
you start 0-1 at an event and start feeling bad about your chances, remember that you can still just win.
Pro Tour: San Diego (2010)
Constructed: Instead of binning decks in testing, try to fix what is wrong before moving on.
I didn’t play Jund at this event.
I’m not sure how strongly the numbers support how bad of a decision this was, but to use some statistics from Worlds, just one set prior, Jund represented
over half of the decks that had winning records and only a third or so of the metagame. It was the most played deck by miles and was outperforming
expectations by a ton. After this event, Jund also took well over half the Grand Prix top eight slots before Rise of the Eldrazi was released.
The reason I didn’t play it? Bad mana in testing. Lots of games, I would miss a fourth land with five drops in hand and die. Vampires, the deck I chose to
play, had perfect mana as a mono-black deck.
Things I never did before the event:
Play some with Borderland Ranger, a perfectly legal card in the format.
Play any games with Rampant Growth to work out the five drop issue.
Cut down on the high end of the deck so that missed land drops weren’t as fatal.
The most crucial: Just add more lands.
People remember Worldwake for Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic, but at the time the man lands were actually the most important addition. They
let Jund, the best midrange deck of all time, play more lands and spell at the same time. It’s hard to be flooded when your extra lands magically turn into
creatures after fixing your mana.
When something doesn’t work the first time, unless the base concept is completely flawed, think if there is a way to fix it before just shelving it.
Pro Tour: San Juan (2010)
Constructed: Too many cooks do in fact spoil the broth.
Fourteen people in a house, testing together for a week in a fairly established format. One person makes day two of the event. Something went wrong there.
Well, the issue was mostly the fourteen people part. Things were never organized, everyone ended up splitting very far on what they wanted to play, and all
but three of us ended up on complete train wreck decks.
If you want to talk to a bunch of people about ideas, that’s great. It’s easy for a set group to get into ruts of thinking and miss ideas. But don’t
actually try to go about play testing with a massive group. The logistics alone will ruin you.
The one good thing a massive group allowed for: mock tournaments. This helped a lot with sideboard construction, something that is often sorely neglected
in heads-up testing. Similar to sharing brainstorms at various points, inter-group play for mock events seems like a good way to push testing forward. Just
don’t have everyone jamming seven different matchups for no reason.
Constructed: Playtesting needs a purpose.
An extension of the previous situation: when you are playtesting, don’t just play matchups because they exist. Try to learn something from them.
Percentages aren’t really enough information to be worthwhile after the very start of testing. Try to figure out what matters in the matchup if it is one
you will play often, what cards might make things better, what is underperforming in both decks, or anything else relevant.
Pro Tour Amsterdam (2010)
General: Don’t forget to have fun.
I probably have more stories from this event than any other Pro Tour I’ve been to, but let’s just start with the good example of why.
Saturday night of Pro Tour: Amsterdam, there was a player’s party different from any other Wizards has ever run. The one change?
You could purchase alcohol.
I opted to draft instead of doing the drinking and dancing side of things, which I do not regret one bit in retrospect. The full story is a little too long
of an aside for here, but one of the worst decks I’ve ever seen won a match by killing its opponent from 20 in one turn while at 1 life and facing down a
tapper.
Afterward, as I was leaving, various groups of people were trying to head down to the city and see what was up there. I was going to go home and go to
sleep, but the words of an equally sober Alexander West inspired me: “I’m just going to follow
happens.” The results were astounding.
I’m not advising anyone to go off and do anything actively stupid, but don’t forget to live a little at these events. Seriously, when’s the next time you
get to follow thirty semi-sober people into the heart of a foreign city going to be?
Pro Tour Nagoya (2011)
Constructed: Don’t have the fear of playing the best deck.
For every Pro Tour: Yokohama White Weenie, there is at least one Pro Tour: Nagoya Tempered Steel. It’s the best deck, everyone knows it, and it puts up
extremely solid if not the best numbers.
Don’t assume people will figure out how to beat the best deck all the time. Lots of people will overestimate their matchup based on outdated lists or poor
play. Remember, you can put just as much work into tuning the best deck as you can almost any other list.
Limited: If you feel lost in a draft format, stick to what you know.
I was absolutely terrible at full Scars Block Limited. I had no understanding of how to read signals and evaluate cards post-Phyrexian mana.
So, when I found myself having to draft twice at the Pro Tour, you know what I did?
I forced Dinosaurs.
I guess “forced” is the wrong term, but I definitely valued green and black cards higher than they “should” have been worth because I knew the archetype. I
had no idea how to play with new cards, but if they looked like the old ones I could easily get by.
This same strategy is also how I got on the Pro Tour. I had no idea how to draft Esper in Shards of Alara, but I could definitely draft Bant, so with one
blue and one white card I third picked a worse Bant card over a better Esper card.
I can keep listing examples, but the point remains the same. When things are actually on the line, try to draft what you know how to draft so you aren’t
surprised by non-obvious card power levels.
Pro Tour: Philadelphia (2011)
Limited: When things start looking bad, just make sure you still have some plan.
In the first draft I ended up in green-black, but it was a total disaster at first glance. I had two Llanowar Elves but only one two-drop and few
three-drops that could fight. Magic 2012 draft was hyper-aggressive, and my deck had multiple six- and seven-drops when you usually wanted one or zero.
In the draft, I had nabbed a couple of late Smallpoxes and just decided to go for that plan. I drew first every game and easily 3-0’ed my pod.
A Limited deck with a plan is much better than a pile of cards. When things start looking bad mid-draft and you can’t just bail ship, don’t be afraid to
push into a gimmick or two and see how it pans out. In the worst-case scenario, your gimmick is actually terrible and you have some dead cards instead of
mediocre ones; in the best case, it gives you a real way to win games.
Pro Tour: Honolulu (2012)
General: Have good tournament operations. Get some sleep.
I flew into Hawaii the night before the event, something I hadn’t done for a “foreign” Pro Tour since Rome. Yes, Hawaii is foreign for these purposes. The
time zone difference is approximately as large as Europe.
As soon as I landed, I got hooked into a draft. The maximum of five hours of sleep plus the five hour time zone difference meant I died midway through the
day. I started off 3-1 playing some solid Magic and slid to 3-4 and dead for day two as I got more and more tired. My draft was a train wreck at best,
featuring an all-star manabase of Loyal Cathar, heavy blue, and Army of the Damned and my gameplay wasn’t much better. Had I not been falling asleep I feel
like I would have easily made day two, but even with that not being assured I know it turned whatever shot I had of making it into basically nil.
People always emphasize sleep, but time adjustment is just as huge a swing as actual hours of sleep. Exhaustion can easily end a day at an event, so don’t
let it happen if you can prevent it.
When in doubt over whether you can naturally adjust, the best plan I’ve found is just to stay up the entire flight and force yourself to be awake for two
days on only tiny naps at most. Only let yourself fall asleep after 9 P.M. local time. You should wake up at reasonable hours for events given this setup,
but your mileage may vary.
Pro Tour Barcelona (2012)
So what did I learn this past weekend?
That most of the above things are correct.
I successfully ran the no sleep clock shift.
I created a draft strategy that worked almost regardless of color and stuck to it. The abridged version was to take creatures over spells whenever
possible, as aside from the very small amounts of removal, the spells are all fairly interchangeable tricks.
I played with a tuned version of the best deck and was very impressed. We had almost binned it early on but revisited it once I tested a couple games
against someone with a fresh view of the format and more Silverblade Paladins. I ended up deciding on the deck the night before the event, but I had tested
a ton with it and it was just White Weenie, nothing special.
Everyone I was staying with ended up in a single perfectly sized testing group together. Tech was not withheld and testing occurred for reasons.
The one mistake I made was buying into the “black is the worst color” hype. Sure, the black decks are all fairly gimmicky, but you can draft black in any
draft. The cards just exist because it’s a color, not a narrow archetype. I probably should have first picked Death Wind over Lightning Mauler draft two,
but I’m still unsure which is the better card.
Despite not moneying the event, I felt I was better prepared for this event than any Pro Tour I’ve ever played in. A lot of what happened in my second
draft feels like natural variance at this point in time, which possibly makes up for some of the positive variance I had in Constructed. Zero Bonfires
Miracled? I’ll take it.
Where does this leave me for Pro Tour Seattle in the fall? Honestly, I have no idea. Modern is definitely something I have a head start on. I know I’m
currently not as good as I could be at fresher Constructed formats, and this is probably a solid chance for me to do what I do well: find a deck, grind out
the absolute best version of it, and play it better than everyone else.
Until then, I’ll see you at Grand Prix weekends and StarCityGames.com Opens.