It’s Murphy’s Law really. If you decide to keep notes at a tournament, they’ll end up reading something along the lines of “he busted out t3 tooth again” and “omg why did I play this awful deck??” The minute you decide to just go in there with nothing fancy, no pretty glass beads, no stylish team shirts, no funky tiny-plastic mascots, you finally crack that ever-elusive Top-8 threshold. Now for anyone else, this could pose quite the problem in regards to completing a Tournament Report. However, I think we all know by now that I’ll perfectly capable of making it up as I go along, or at least sticking remotely to something resembling the truth amongst the endless rambling I’m so obviously prone to. I mean let’s face it, if this is only part one, this whole story has to be full of something, right? Actually, I think I may have accidentally dropped myself in the aforementioned “it” just now…
(*cough*)
Where do I start though? This certainly isn’t my first Nationals tale, in fact if I’m not mistaken, I think the other one I did may well have been my first ever article for StarCityGames.com. That or they’ve lost everything else I’ve written prior to that date. Anyway, I didn’t do particularly well the last time, and I even got an email from Aaron Forsythe (back when he was just a playa) about how I didn’t mention which country the tournament was for. He got a wee bit confused and was about to call me out for making the whole thing up, when he spotted a few names in my recounting he recognized as New Zealanders. I defended my decision to hold back my location, fearing that people would dismiss me outright or fail to take me seriously if they knew I was from some hick, backwater island nation in the South Pacific.
Wait for it.
No seriously, that was your cue to LOL.
I didn’t think people would take me seriously!
Yeah. I think it’s been quite some time since anyone considered taking me seriously. Plenty of other semi-reputable people on this site have tried to out me as a filthy foreigner in the past, too. Mind you, I think they only call me an Australian in some half-hearted attempt at winding me up, but either way, it’s pretty silly to continue pretending I’m from anywhere other than New Zealand. However, I digress!
What… A… Surprise.
Anyway, I didn’t bother doing reports in previous years, simply because they weren’t that interesting. I once finished eleventh, but that doesn’t get you to Worlds, so nothing came out of that, either. I would love to do some kind of mega-build up type thing to how I did this year, but the mere fact that I’m writing about it, and the fact that Ted has most likely spoiled the ending in the title itself, should tell you that I’M GON’ JAPAN.
But how? I guess that’s worth telling, and I assume starting from the start is probably a good idea. In fact, let’s start before the start with what has come before now. In previous years, I have somehow gravitated towards the Islands, and I have to say, they haven’t served me especially well. Despite that, I’ve been lured by their siren’s call time and time again, and time and time again I’ve finished somewhere in the middle of the field. The one year I finished eleventh I embraced the awesome power of the (Unglued) Swamp, but every other year has involved Islands and guaranteed mediocrity.
This year I vowed to play a good deck, whatever that may happen to be. Just as long as it didn’t involve Islands, obviously. Thankfully, at that point, Mono Blue Control was only being played by people too reluctant to sell their Vedalken Shackles, and the French. The good decks were clearly Mox and Nail from the Nationals results, and Aggro Red from the Magic Online results. Obviously the American Nationals results would now like me to step outside for a quick word, but I don’t really care anymore, because our Nationals started a whole three or four hours after theirs, and I’M GON’ JAPAN.
Now, anyone who has known me for a while knows I like Red. At my first Regionals, I finished at the top of the swiss with an Aggro Red deck. I was basically the first player locally to totally like, flip out and kill someone with the turn 1 Jackal Pup (“omg what an awful creature, you must suck so bad …Underground River, go”) followed by Wasteland (“wtf that’s nowhere near as good as Strip Mine why do you bother? …I’ll take two, my turn?”) and a Mogg Fanatic or a second Pup (“omg more crap creatures! …I scoop to your obvious lucky draw.”). My favorite multi-player deck (what’s wrong with a little casual now and again?) is basically Mono-Red, too. What? You want a list? Well okay, but that just means I’ll be straying from the point of this article yet again. Mind you, it would be funny if someone was just scrolling through this article for lists and they came across some weird casual monstrosity, wouldn’t it? Yes it would.
This just in. I now tell you what is funny, and what is not. News at eleven.
4 Mishra’s Factory
1 Shivan Gorge
1 Dustbowl
14 Mountain
4 Granite Gargoyle
4 Squee, Golbin Nabob
4 Mindless Automaton
4 Shard Phoenix
4 Firestorm
4 Fiery Temper
4 Violent Eruption
4 Jalum Tome
4 Heart of Ramos/Worn Powerstone (depending on mood)
4 “Salt to Taste one of” cards which could and have included the following:
Scroll Rack
Shunt
Fledgling Dragon
Rorix Bladewing
Final Fortune
Tahngarth, Talruum Hero
Avatar of Fury
Jeska, Warrior Adept
Fork, and if I happen to have The Fear that week:
Shattering Pulse
Masticore
Phyrexian Furnace
Tormod’s Crypt
Nevinyrral’s Disk
Soldevi Digger ;_;
Zuran Orb ;_;
Ivory Tower ;_;
Which as all card-carrying Red Players know, is generally stuff that gets you frowned at by other card-carrying Red Players.
So with the knowledge of my personal color preference, which did you think I chose out of Mox and Nail and Aggro Red? I chose Mox and Nail of course, because letting your personal and casual preferences make the decisions for you, such as “I only play Green/White” or “I like to draft Black” or even “I hate Affinity so I don’t play it” is a sure fire recipe for disaster. I played with Mox and Nail for about a couple of months, making gradual changes as I went. About two weeks out, I was mostly settled on the following maindeck, which I believed to be optimized for both Aggro Red and the mirror:
12 Urzatron
6 Forest
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
4 Chrome Mox
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Vine Trellis
4 Sylvan Scrying
3 Eternal Witness
1 Viridian Shaman
4 Reap and Sow
4 Plow Under
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Duplicant
4 Tooth and Nail
1 Sundering Titan
1 Darksteel Colossus
It was pretty risky, leaving out the Oblivion Stones, but I was finding that if you deviated from the game plan to play and pop a Stone, you weren’t winning on turn four, or even turn five for that matter. So instead, I tried to maximize the deck’s potential to play a turn three tooth, which worked a hell of a lot better than I hoped. About one week out, I floated back to a build with only three Moxes and the Oblivion Stones in the maindeck, and it seemed to run even better. There was something to be said about being able to stave off death for three turns and then Topping into a win. Nothing like coming around to a NetDeck the hard way, eh? At least then you understand how and why the deck works instead of just plain copying it and diving in headfirst.
No seriously. What rocks just beneath the surface?
Oh those rocks.
Is that my blood?
(*ahem like cough*)
Unfortunately, the sideboard was still waaay up in the air, which is basically pretty unacceptable. It didn’t matter what I played, I wasn’t winning games two or three versus Aggro Red. Obviously there were four slots in the sideboard taken up by Creeping Mold to bring in versus other decks with Tron pieces, but anything after that was fair play. This didn’t mean bringing in eleven cards versus Aggro Red however, because there’s nothing like decimating your maindeck game plan for throwing away the match. The remaining slots could be devoted to people who wanted to attack the Tooth and Nail plan via say, Cranial Extraction, and people who want to attack the possibility of ever having nine mana by throwing down a Sowing Salt or two.
I was fine for anyone playing Cranial Extraction. Including but not limited to boarding in a couple of Pentavus for that hawt, hawt Pentavite lovin’, which was surprisingly saucy versus both Rats and Mono Green Aggro. Against Aggro Red, I tried Sun Droplets, The Man Plan, Circle of Protection: Red and Umezawa’s Jitte on Men and none of them gave the needed auto-win I was looking for. The closest match was four COP Red and a bunch of Viridian Shamans, but even then I found myself dying in countless picturesque ways at the hands of my Magic Online clansmen.
Oh yes. My clan. Cymbrogi For The Win.
I have no trouble admitting that I love every man in my clan right now. I won’t name names, because I’ll invariably leave someone out and tears will fall. Suffice to say, the Men of Cymbrogi (look for our calendar out this Fall) are one sturdy bunch of Manlings who’s sacks over floweth.
The second the bell tolled for Affinity all those many months ago, NicotineJones started throwing down with the Mountains. Pretty quickly Shaver, JoINrbs and aWinnarisYou were in there too. Before I knew it, the whole clan was Shrapping For The Win, so I was never short of playtest partners who were sadly very conversant in the way of “how to beat up on a Tooth and Nail player-fu”. Every match ended with helpful comments such as “play Red” and “why are you still playing Tooth?” There was even a bit of “seriously, play Red” and “what are you, retarded? Play Red.”
I stood firmly by my decision to play Tooth however, and set out to do some IRL testing. By the way, I love saying IRL. Why say “in real life” when you can say IRL? Not all acronyms work as well as IRL, IRL. Saying WTF? IRL isn’t nearly as satisfying as saying “What the <insert obvious word here>?” IRL. Sure, we all love typing WTF? and BTW works well too, but neither work IRL as well as IRL works IRL. Actually, LOL isn’t too bad IRL, but people might actually LOL IRL if you say LOL, IRL. Anyway, the IRL testing was going well until Di(this here so he can’t ctrl-f his name. Seriously, we all know you do it)gby started sideboarding the Red deck, then once again I was getting pulled apart in fanciful and messy ways.
Speaking of Dig(ctrl-f hax)by, I guess I’d better take a moment to introduce my IRL teammates, for their names will appear quite frequently within the next few thousand words. We’ll start with D(lol, pwn joo)igby. Him I’ve known the longest by way of a chance meeting many years ago, when I managed to get an after school job baby-sitting him and his sister. One time State champ 2003 and one-time Nationals Top 8 2001. To say he’s good is a bit of an understatement, but then so is saying “he looks a bit like a hippy”, so whatayagonnado? Unfortunately, our resident Filthy Hippy had been spending too much time on World of Warcraft in the lead up to Nationals, but I guess that can be forgiven because apparently he’s pretty good at that too.
Joining Dig(hax)by in his WoWing were Martin, Dave, James and Francis. Martin has traveled with me to take on the Australians twice at both GP: Sydney in 2003, and GP: Brisbane in 2004. He is also our current State champ, and seems to know far too much about obscure anime. Seriously, apparently there’s even one called “Prince of Tennis”. Dave is awesome, and not just because he gets us discount at Kentucky Fried Chicken. He cleared out his living room in the two days leading up to nationals to create the Ultimate Playtesting Space where there was “no WoW allowed”. James and Francis are both reasonably recent and welcome additions to our group. James because you just can’t keep him out of a PTQ Top 8, and Francis because he has the best dress-sense this side of Italy, and probably the other side too.
The non-WoW side of the group is represented by myself, because my computer has palpitations at the mere thought of any game produced after 1997. Giles, Top 8 nationals 2003, because he’s too busy studying to be an astronaut or something. And Hugh who is Martin’s little brother, who is too busy out learning the ever-abundant wonders of being a Student in the presence of Alcoholic beverages.
Anyway, back to the IRL playtesting. As Di(ah screw it, I give up. He can ctrl-f his name all he likes for all I care)gby methodically tore apart yet another one of my non-basic lands, I decided that my clanmates may have had a point about playing Red. I mean, I like Red. Why shouldn’t I play Red? I’ve had some good experiences with Red, perhaps I should just suck it up and turn 1 Slith some people upside the head? Yeah, that’s what I should do, I should play Red. The following evening I took my Red deck into our local store and promptly lost nine out of ten sideboarded games versus Joe and his Mox and Nail deck. This was clearly a sign for me to just give up and play the Islands, which in retrospect, may not have been such an awful idea.
However, this losing streak wasn’t just confined to my standard testing. Despite having 20-30 CBS drafts from the Magic Online Saviors Beta Test under my belt, and around 5-10 live server draft wins (or at least second places), I was now losing every draft I could possibly get my hands on. Someone pointed out that I was just getting the bad luck out of my system before the two drafts that actually matter. Yeah right, since when has that one ever worked? I mean apart from this time, obviously.
(*another cough*)
Anyway, let’s have a gander at the decklist I finally decided on, with a great deal of help from my clan, obviously. And by “help” I mean they gave me the list and I made a few minor tweaks here and there. Have I mentioned my clan enough yet? Big ups to Cymbrogi. Cymbrogi for President. Pledge your first born’s ever-living soul to Cymbrogi for great justice. By the way, which as I mentioned above, I will type in full because that’s what I would say IRL, I think we should call this deck “blisterguy red”. If Flores can have a Red deck, then so can I. I’m sure the guys in the clan won’t mind that I’m stealing their hard-earned tech and testing out from under them and slapping my name on it!
LOL! Just kidding guys!
But seriously, call it “blisterguy red” or I kill you!
(*more coughing*)
4 Frostling
4 Slith Firewalker
4 Zo-Zu, The Punisher
3 Vulshok Sorcerer
4 Arc-Slogger
4 Magma Jet
3 Shrapnel Blast
2 Shatter
4 Seething Song
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Chrome Mox
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
17 Mountain
Sideboard:
2 Genju of the Spires
2 Shatter
4 Molten Rain
3 Jinxed Choker
1 Vulshok Sorcerer
3 Sowing Salt
In retrospect, the Vulshok Sorcerer in the sideboard should have been a third Genju, but other than that, it’s a pretty tight list. Of course, it’s completely obsolete now that Ninth Edition has rolled on in over the top of Eighth. I mean, the list loses and gains nothing with the rollover (to the best of my knowledge), but it’s all about everyone else having to adapt. Tooth losing Vine Trellis is huge, but really it’s a purely academic exercise to continue with this line of thought, so I shall distract myself right now with some pleasing thoughts about boobies.
Mmmm, boobies!
(*much coughing and spluttering*)
(*a little choking, even*)
The list above has many intricacies that many of you may want to question, so I shall address some of those now. Recently, people have had some success with Aggro Red decks that feature a much lower curve, much less mana and quite a bit more burn. These decks have game, I will admit, but what I was looking for was broken plays. Standard is won by trying to do something busted. Whether that be assembling Tron as soon as possible or Plow Undering someone for three straight turns, the outcome is the same. If you’re not trying to do something busted, someone is going to bust out all over you instead. The only broken play a Small Men Red Deck can do is turn 1 Slith Firewalker or maybe a turn 2 Zo-zu verses a Tron-based deck. Playing Seething Song allows for additional busted draws like turn 2 or 3 Arc-Slogger or Sword, equip smash. The latter being very crucial for winning the mirror while they happen to be tapped out, or something equally unfortunate. Sure, you don’t have the same long game consistency as a Red Deck that replaces the bigger spells with burn and so on, but if I wanted the long game, I would be playing with the Islands.
The other glaringly obvious omission is Hearth Kami. Who doesn’t enjoy attacking for two? I know I love attacking for two. The only thing I love more than attacking for two, is attacking for one, then two, then three, then four and so on, obviously. Hearth Kami doesn’t solve problems. Hearth Kami was never a Mathlete, and will never be a detective or even Doctor Phil. He’s good at getting in and getting the dirty work done, including but not limited to Sinkholing Moxes, and popping active Nexuseses. What Hearth Kami can’t do is nullify a Vedalken Shackles in a hurry, take out a Sword of Fire and Ice before it kills it, at least not without spending the whole game with three mana open, and most importantly, it will never kill a Damping Matrix. The Matrix is fast becoming a huge issue for Red decks everywhere. Mostly because the decks that run it also run Auriok Champion. Without the Matrix, a Nexus would be more than happy to fly over with Sword in hand to tap that Champ at the base of the skull. With Matrix, that same Nexus can’t do a hell of a lot more than Trade with a Suntail Hawk. It was when we heard that the English Nationals was won by a White Weenie deck that two Shatters finally made their way into the maindeck.
Funnily enough, the coverage of the English Nationals on the Magicthegathering.com website still doesn’t show any results after round seven. Perhaps the sources were wrong? Maybe those ever-polite Englishmen are still playing after all this time? “Please my good sirah, you play first.” “I wouldn’t dream of it old bean, after you.”
If you have any other questions about the above build of Aggro Red, please feel free to post your queries in the StarCityGames forum. I will then read your questions and then point at my monitor and laugh. After that, I will print out your questions and take them to my local card shop, where we shall all point and have a good laugh and then perhaps some buttered scones and tea. After that, I’ll try to answer your questions as best I can. However, I warn you now that my answers may read “OMGWTF IM GON’ JAPAN!”
The next step in my preparation was to wrestle my IRL teammates away from World of Warcraft long enough to get them to build decks. I let them know that I would be taking the Thursday and Friday off, and they had better have some cards ready by then. It was at this point a good friend of mine called Andrew from the North Island messaged me and asked if the local airport was near the venue or if there was a bus that would take him near instead. I of course scoffed at this, and informed him that I would in fact be picking him up from the airport and bringing him straight into our massive playtesting session, and therefore making him an honorary South Islander. What he saw once we got him there was me still trying to build everyone’s deck for them.
Fuh-rowns.
There were some good moments in that last minute playtesting though, such as getting to see The Boondock Saints for the first time in almost five years, and going to see Sin City on the Thursday evening. Man, that movie took a long time to get to our shores, but it was certainly worth it. Wasn’t wee Frodo scary? I mean, he totally like… Oh wait, there I go getting distracted again. Anyway, after we finally got everyone’s decks built, we wandered down to the venue to register and then hopefully get some food.
As we all filled out our privacy waivers and forms and so on, we noticed Andrew from the North Island had an additional piece of paper. “Yeah” he said, “one of you guys has to be my guardian because I’m only 17.” After a spot o’ chuckling and giggling all round, I grabbed the paper and promptly signed it on the wrong line, making me the witness to whoever else ended up being the guardian. Bah, who needs instructions anyway? Dave ended up signing as the guardian, which I point out now because it has vague relevance later. Or does it? You’ll not know until well into Part Two or maybe even Part Three, bwahaha!
(*cough, but just a little one this time*)
I then went up to the stage at the front and eyed up the trophies. First place got a foil Serra Avatar encased in clear plastic, and second got a foil Stroke of Genius. Third and fourth both got foil Lightning Bolts. “So like,” I spoke up to head judge Mike Mason and T.O. Dale Aitken, “the trick is to make the semifinals and then lose so you get the cool trophy, right?” They both just laughed at me, but I know I got the last laugh because they both live in Australia. Poor, sad fools.
As we were leaving, we were treated to an entertaining tale of one Stevie G, who managed to win a grinder in an especially cool manner. Listen closely, and I shall tell you how it went down. Stevie G, who was playing Aggro Red, was one game up on Some Other Guy who was playing Green/Red land destruction type stuff. Sure enough, on turn 3 the Some Other Guy slapped down his Iwamori, which is traditionally quite the difficult beasty for Aggro Red to deal with short of a Shrapnel Blast right up one nostril. Luckily, Stevie G had a legend he wanted to put into play. “Zo-zu?” inquired Some Other Guy, “Kumano perhaps?” “No” replied Stevie G, “The Unspeakable.” Which then proceeded to fly (and trample where needed) all over Some Other Guy for the win. After that, someone gave Stevie G a Bosh for his sideboard so that he could have something he might actually cast on the off chance an Iwamori doesn’t show up.
All that remained for us now was to grab some dinner before crashing out for the night. We clambered into cars and headed for Pizza Hut for that great all-you-can-eat dinning in experience. One the way I called their toll-free number to check what time they closed, just to be sure, and was told that they close at 10pm. While it would be shaving it close, we figured that we would be fine. When we got there, James (who was in a different car, obviously) told me about how he had called them up too, and was told that they close at midnight. We went inside to find out which one of us was incorrectly informed, and it turned out we both were. They were already closing and there would be no all-you-can-eat pizza for us!
Bad omen? Obviously not, but we had to settle for Kentucky Fried Chicken, which is clearly comparatively for the lose, but is probably better than nothing at least. I managed to get home at a reasonable hour, but for some reason, 1am rolled around and my clanmates were yelling at me to go to bed. Bah, I thought. With a Sound Sleep and Good, Hearty Breakfast I’ll be fine, and with that I went to bed, because tomorrow was going to be a big day!
Join me in part two, where the following questions are answered!
How do I do on Day 1?
Do we finally get to eat all we can at the Pizza Hut?
Do I get to have my Good, Hearty Breakfast?
Okay, so the answers are quite well, obviously, yes and no, but join me anyway while I ramble even more than usual!
(obv)