For those of you who tuned in for the second half of my Vintage set review, I apologize, but in the meantime I managed to put up a fourth place finish at Grand Prix Indianapolis and wanted to write about my tournament while it was still fresh in my mind.

With that being said, I set out from Michigan with fellow Michiganders Mike Jacob, Ari Lax, and Jon Johnson last Friday afternoon, and after what felt like a non-stop four hour Sol Forge (the new Kibler game) marathon on Jon’s IPad, we were finally in Indianapolis. The sight we saw was very confusing to me. The hall was almost empty, and I was able to register for the event without waiting in a line and broke my six consecutive event streak of not getting a playmat when I registered for the event! (I got one for making Top 8 in Boston but not for signing up.) We were then informed that there was a blizzard that was holding everyone else up that we magically just barely missed. I could tell I was on the verge of a lucky weekend!

After a quick dinner and a lengthy discussion about the math of winning the "Pack Rat lottery" (opening one in Sealed Deck, which if I am remembering correctly was 1 in 10 or 1 in 12), we returned back to our hotel and battled The Danger Room for a while. I’d revamped my stack and cut many of the weaker cards for more powerful cards the previous week and was very interested to see how it would affect game play. Overall, the changes seemed to be enjoyed by all (myself included) with the lone exception being Mistmeadow Witch, which was determined to be where all fun goes to die.

Day 1

The following morning we all woke up, found food and coffee, and hit the event site to build our decks.

Here’s what I registered:

Grixis

Brian Demars

4th Place at Grand Prix on 12-23-2012

Limited

Creatures (13)

Lands (18)

Spells (9)

Needless to say, I was pretty pleased with how my deck turned out. I had three very powerful rare/mythic rares that were all capable of winning games by themselves (Pack Rat, Rakdos’s Return, and Desecration Demon), and the rest of my deck was rounded out with great mana fixing, good removal, and average or better quality cards.

Pack Rat was as good as advertised. Despite having drafted RTR approximately 100 times, I’d only gotten to play with Pack Rat two other times and never in Sealed. My assessment of Pack Rat in Draft was that it was a bomb but wasn’t nearly as unbeatable as many people had hyped. Once I got to play with the card in Sealed, I realized what all the hype was about. My opponent’s decks were obviously less cohesive, synergistic, and fast than normal competitive draft decks, which lessens the possibility of racing or beating down a player who casts a Pack Rat on turn 2.

"Rats! Time to pack it in!"

I had the luxury of casting Pack Rat on the second turn in three games throughout the tournament and easily won all three of those games. It’s also interesting to me that I drew Pack Rat on my third turn twice in the tournament and lost both of the games where I couldn’t play it until turn 3. It was very striking to me the amount of power level the card loses between the second and third turns.

Aside from Pack Rat, which earned me a couple of free wins, the all-star of my deck was Rakdos’s Return. Unlike the Rat, which I only drew a handful of times throughout the tournament, I cast Rakdos’ Return a lot,and it won me a lot of my games. It was often Mind Twist, It was often Fireball, and it was also often Fireball and Mind Twist!

"The casual five for one."

Casting this card to knock all their cards out of their hand and also push some damage in was pretty awesome. In the first two rounds of the event, I commented to a friend that I’d cast Rakdos’s Return three times and that my opponents had discarded a combined fifteen cards! That’s a fifteen for three! ZAP! I also had a few games where Rakdos came back and murdered my opponent by going to the dome for between seven and ten life points.

Desecration Demon also far exceeded my expectations throughout the tournament. Personally, I have always felt like this card is pretty solid whenever I play with it in Draft. I have also heard a lot of people refer to this card as a bomb, which makes me think that a lot of people have also had good experiences with it. However, I know that Mike hates the card and has had nothing but complaints about playing with it, which makes me skeptical of how good it really is. Yet once again the card was very solid for me every time I played it in Indy. It even ended up basically stealing a must-win game for me against David Ochoa in round 9 to stay above the curve at 8-1.

The one round that I lost (and I was pretty disappointed to lose it considering how good I felt my deck was!) came in round 8 against another very good deck that had Armada Wurm, Angel of Serenity, and Collective Blessing. He ended up beating me when I drew and played Pack Rat on the third turn on the draw by coming over the top with Collective Blessing. In our third game, I Rakdos’s Returned away his whole hand after being a little bit mana screwed in the beginning, only to have him draw and play Collective Blessing off the top for the win!

"STAMPEDE!!!"

Having three byes turned out to be fantastic since it gave me time to go out for a nice meal with friends and check out the wares of the dealers in the hall before I had to start playing. They were even more important later because they enabled me to squeak into 8th place on breakers.

After Day 1, I was 8-1, and Ari was the only other person in our room to squeak into Day 2 with a 6-3 record on tiebreakers.

Day 2

I remember thinking as I sat down to draft at the start of Day 2: "I have six rounds to move up two spots in the standings," as I was then in tenth place and would need to move up two to get into Top 8. My first draft went pretty well. Once again I opted to be Grixis; however, the way I got there was a little bit interesting.

Pack 1, pick 1:

"What’s the pick?"

Almost everyone I asked agreed that Grove of the Guardian is the better pick. I pretty much knew that as soon as I snapped up the Thoughtflare. I have a strong preference for drafting blue in this format, especially U/R/W and Grixis decks. While the Grove is a build around me type card and is obviously a very good card in Selesnya, I feel much more comfortable reading the signals at the table with blue cards than with green cards.

Second pick I happily snapped up a Voidwielder, followed by an Inaction Injunction and a Nivix Guildmage, which seemed like the start of a pretty sweet blue deck… Before blue completely dried up on both sides of me.

I ended up switching from this position into an aggressive Rakdos deck that splashed Izzet for a couple of high quality cards like Thoughtflare and Nivix Guildmage. At the end of pack 2, I felt my deck was shaping up to be decent (even more so when one considers I had to jump ship and formulate a new plan mid-draft), but when I opened pack 3 and saw the dream card staring back at me, I knew I was on the verge of something special:

"Draft deck need some help? Here’s a BOMB!"

So I got a Mizzium Mortars and used it to win all of my games.

My round 10 opponent, Jeffery DuPont, was playing Izzet Aggro, and we both had Mizzium Mortars! In game 3, he cast the powerful spell to get way ahead, and then I cast the powerful spell to put him back behind. Goes to show that sometimes he who laughs last laughs best!

Grixis Aggro

Brian Demars

4th Place at Grand Prix on 12-23-2012

Limited

Creatures (16)

Lands (18)

Spells (6)

All in all, this deck served me very well. The coolest win that I got with it was one in which my Selesnya opponent and I arrived at a ground stall situation where he had inevitability with his bigger, fatter creatures. However, he was at six life, so I was able to use my Nivix Guildmage to dig all the way to the bottom of my deck to find my one copy of Annihilating Fire. I then used the Guildmage to copy the effect for exactly lethal damage on my absolute last turn to win our third game!

After going 3-0 in my first draft, the second one turned out to be a very uphill battle for me.

This is the pod that I found myself in.

The deck that I drafted turned out to be pretty bizarre, as it featured four copies of the card Tavern Swindler.

"Four copies of the same uncommon in a Draft deck MUST be good, right?"

I ended with a very aggressive Rakdos beatdown deck.

Rakdos Aggro

Brian Demars

4th Place at Grand Prix on 12-23-2012

Limited

Creatures (16)

Lands (14)

Spells (10)

While my previous deck exceeded my expectations, my second deck certainly didn’t live up to my hopes for it. I was hoping to simply curve out and use Traitorous Blood to kill my opponent, but in the two rounds I played, I mulliganed a lot and the hands I was forced to keep didn’t provide me with a very good curve.

First, I lost to Chris Fennel and his Pack Rat. However, we did have a pretty sweet game 2 that I was able to steal from him. He was in a position where it looked like I couldn’t possibly win, but I was able to Traitorous Blood his gigantic Lotleth Troll on back-to-back turns to kill him!

After losing to Chris, I got paired down, and my opponent, Sam Kuprewicz, conceded to me since it appeared that I would be a lock for Top 8 with a draw.

However, I got paired down again in the last round against Josh Utter-Leyton, and again my deck gave me absolutely nothing to work with, so I lost. Josh was unwilling to pity scoop me into Top 8, and it looked like that I was going to once again finish on the outside looking in. In Toronto, I finished in 65th place on tiebreakers to get exactly nothing, and as far as I could tell looking at the round 14 standings, it seemed I was going to finish in 9th or 10th place.

Fortunately for me, this time I didn’t end up falling just short of something good. Basically, the stars aligned, and everybody who I needed to lose in order for me to squeak in lost, so I was the only player at 12-3 to make Top 8 on tiebreakers! (This was only the third GP I’ve played having three byes, and they are pretty sweet!)

Top 8

U/W/R Control

Brian Demars

4th Place at Grand Prix on 12-23-2012

Limited

Creatures (12)

Lands (18)

Spells (10)

Sideboard

I was really happy with how my Top 8 Draft deck turned out. After drafting a Rakdos deck that performed miserably for me, I decided to go back to my bread and butter and draft a U/W/R Control deck. I was especially happy to be playing this archetype knowing that I would be on the draw in two games of every match.

With that in mind, I intentionally drafted a deck that I felt would want to be on the draw, thus eliminating my opponent’s advantage in getting to play first. My deck had a lot of two-drops, including three Doorkeepers and multiple Charms and Guildmages.

My first pick in the draft was a Thoughtflare, and if you look, you’ll see that my deck was actually rounded out with many first pick quality uncommons. Unfortunately, the one thing my deck didn’t feature was any rares (besides Hallowed Fountain), and because of that it really lacked the ability to overpower other people’s decks.

My plan was to use removal and card draw to grind people out and let my utility cards take over and do the work for me.

Against Matthias Hunt, I played three pretty close games where my Guildmages were very important in securing the victory for me. I also had a pretty nice Izzet Staticaster in our third game. He tapped out for a Volatile Rig on a board with his own Skymark Roc, and I flashed down a Staticaster and ended up winning both flips to blow up his whole team!

I won my quarterfinals match but ultimately lost in the semifinals to Ben Stark. I basically knew before the match even started that I was a huge underdog to win this match. His triple Stab Wound deck was a huge obstacle for my four Wall deck, and I only had a few specific cards that could help me not automatically lose to his B/G Guildmage.

The match is covered here, so I won’t bother to write it up.

Since the matchup was so bad, I expected to lose, but I wasn’t opposed to being pleasantly surprised if I could steal the match from him.

I was pleased to have done so well at the event, and since I wasn’t qualified for any Pro Tours before Indianapolis, it was nice to qualify for another one.

Cheers,
Brian DeMars