The tournament site is the typical game store – a nondescript façade nestled among other nondescript mom-and-pop establishments, distinguished only by the smokers that decorate the grounds in front. I choke down a few breaths of oxygen-deprived air to have a quick conversation with one of the local inhabitants and make my way inside. I scoot through the living-room front – complete with video games and children’s toys strewn across the shoe-worn carpet – and squeeze past the pegboard merchandise into the luxury of the open backroom where groups of people are huddled in their own conversations.
Some of the younger guys are boosting their egos with some trash talk; others are trying to blend in with players immersed in their poker ritual. A few people are standing just outside the opened garage door, taking in some sun with a bit of their smoke. Two teenage boys are flitting amongst a couple of solitary figures, fighting to trade for the last highly-prized Oblivion Stone needed to complete their States deck.
Each time I step into this scene, I feel that frigid jolt one gets when dipping a toe in ice-cold water before diving in. This doesn’t seem to be my element – what am I doing here?
There comes a yell from a few tables over.”Laura! What took you so long? We thought you’d be late!” Oh, yeah. I have friends here.
I stare stupidly for a few seconds around the clutter of bodies until I pinpoint the source: Bob greets me with a smile and, in typical schoolgirl fashion, I jump into excited conversation about my late-night, last-minute revelation.”I was wrong! Turn to Dust is amazing! Maindeck Turn to Dust!” I exclaim, probably loud enough for the some of the closer conversations to pause and smirk at either my excitement or my statement. Either way, it was enough to bring over another player, Scott, to introduce himself and express his relief that my website picture no longer resembles Stephen Hawking. The conversation turns to rebuilding my sealed deck pools, interspersed with my continual insistence on making sure everyone maindeck Turn to Dust. I goad Bob to send me his own Sealed deck builds, but wheedling is not my strength. The conversation turns to house painting.
Squeaking chairs, intakes of breath and grunts signal that seatings have been posted as large players and large backpacks try to fit between inch-wide rows to get to their designated spots. The routine begins and I register a mediocre pool with unimpressive creatures that don’t reach beyond 3/3. There is no playable equipment. A few solid white and green removal spells trumpet their value, but it ends there. Registered decks are handed in, and the lucky recipients of self-registered pools are called. Somewhere, halfway through the litany, I recognize my name. There isn’t even a whisper of an echo of the holler given out by the player before me. The rest of the decks are handed out and the building begins.
Staring at a card pool with only Vorrac Battlehorns, Dead-Iron Sledge, and 3/3s in the form of a pair of Goblin War Wagons and Titanium Golems, I decide to experiment and see if the extra mana is worth the first strike option. I exhaust the next ten minutes shuffling and performing practice draws on the deck before scratching in the final contents on my registration sheet. I smile as I put a”1″ under the played column for Turn to Dust.
The first round I sit down against Les, recent friend-ee and soon-to-be roommate for Grand Prix: Kansas. The only regret is that he plays very methodically and a little bit slower than my tolerance threshold. I, personally, prefer to play most of my friends. You know you’re going to have a good time harassing each other. Game one plays itself out – drop an artifact, destroy an artifact. Drop an artifact, destroy an artifact. A Viridian Shaman comes into play on Les’s side and I pause; the picture looks familiar. The temptation to halt the game and whip out my sideboard gets channeled into a hastily scribbled question on my paper. As the game ends quickly against an undestroyed Synod Sanctum, I shuffle through my board to see the same sickly-green countenance in my cards. It is not Viridian Joiner.
The Viridian Shaman comes in along with the War Wagons to replace the sluggish Titanium Golems. I scrape out the win with a turn to spare, and Les and I join some friends who have finished for some chatter before the next round pairings are up.
We hungrily paw through each other’s cards pools, looking for goodies and a hope to get one of us a chance at the coveted three byes. I strip out an off-color Silver Myr from Bob’s deck and question his choice.”Pure mana acceleration,” he replies,”I like to play with eighteen mana sources in my deck, usually three Myrs and Talismen and fifteen land.”
“But off-color?” I question, as it slowly dawns on me that I hadn’t been properly accounting for the Myr as mana sources as opposed to creatures.
“Absolutely.” He shows me the Dead-Iron Sledge in my build and poses a similar question on choice.
“Meh,” I shrug.”I just put it in there to see if it would be any good. If I had any regenerators, I bet it would be useful. What I wouldn’t give for a Neurok Hoversail in this deck.” I ramble on for a few minutes more about my assessment of Titanium Golem vs. Goblin War Wagon while skimming through another friend’s deck. Curt’s deck looks like it had been grabbed out of the garbage after a particularly bad draft. Even so, suggestions were offered up for him to try in round 2.
The shuffling for the next round probably takes longer than the amount of time spent playing as I mulligan down to four in the second game. Randy, my opponent, offhandedly mentions that since he has had plenty of opportunity, that he can see the bottom card in my library when I shuffle. Shuffling is a pimple on the pockmarked face of competitive Magic that I’d like to pop. Still, I ingest his suggestion and try to adjust the orientation of hands that are turning raw from the constant scraping of plastic against skin.
I shoot Randy an accusatory look when he plops down Living Hive and Trolls of Tel-Jilad to seal the match. I had conversed with him earlier, and he had been previously shrugging off the quality of his deck.”I thought you said your deck wasn’t very good,” I pout.
“If I can get to the long game I am okay, but my spells are too expensive,” he explains while flipping over the bottom card: Platinum Angel. Still slightly unbelieving, I pack up and snatch the last of the brats offered by the store, enjoying some of the warming sun on a wind-cooled day.
When I have finished scarfing down the last of lunch, I grab Curt to play his mono-black build against my Goblins deck, freshly ornamented with shiny new Lightning Coils. The goblins come out scrabbling and jabbering, taking large chunks out of Curt’s life total with each attack. Curt responds with Coercion, and I lapse into interrogation mode.”Coercion? Why Coercion?”
“I get wrecked by Karma,” he explains,”I’ve got to be able to take it out of their hand.” I rattle of a list of better, more efficient discard spells for him to try instead. We continue to play several games, the goblins warding off infestations and oblivion to take Curt down several more times. My precious Lightning Coils never charge due to Oblivion Stone. My spite for the Stone starts to amass.
While Curt and I are playing, a passerby points to the Firebolt sitting on my side of the table.”That’s a Pyrite Spellbomb,” I offer nonchalantly. The responding chuckle is greeted with similar laughs from my friends, who elucidate on”Laura’s Amazing Habits of Turning Whatever Card Into Whatever She Wants at the Time.””Hey,” I respond in defense,”I want to see which cards work best.”
Our lunch and practice sessions end with a new sheet of paper gracing one of the door posts. There is still a bitter iron taste in my mouth from Oblivion Stone. I am paired against Sean, another friend-ee who morphs his dour expression into smiling charm when he knows your intentions don’t begin with throwing punches. Turn to Dust makes a surprise guest appearance and takes out the deadly Loxodon BrokenHammer and I have a chance to take down the unsuspecting attacker. I could sense the raised heads from my audible glee, but I refuse to put a damper on my own enjoyment. After receiving an utter trampling from Sean, we pause to watch the next match finish up before squeezing ten inches of body through a few inches of space. It is my new acquaintance Scott paired up against Caroline, another familiar face. Scott is practicing his deadpan witticism on Caroline while she is focusing on the match. Unfortunately for him, Caroline is immune to his banter, being a close friend of the biggest chatterbox in Denver.
After their match is over, I see Mindslaver sitting off to the side and ask Caroline if she is playing it main. She responds in the negative, noting that she’s unsure of its ability.”This card wins games,” I confide.”My friend had it in the prerelease. He won every game the turn after he cast it. I think he told me it came out on five separate occasions.” Whether or not Caroline took a second look at the card, I don’t know. At 1-2 with two rounds to spare, I checked off the drop box with a flourish (I do it so little), and scurried to catch a new sealed event that was starting up. I was eager to play around with treating the Myrs as mana sources.
My wish was granted in a new Sealed pool that presented me three on-color Myrs and one on-color Talisman. I danced with the mana and the Myrs, swapping partners, stepping down to fourteen and up to sixteen land. When the sweat of the battles had dried after three long rounds, I settled on my favorite numbers: Sixteen land and two Myrs.
I stepped out into the darkening day with an empty wallet and a few scant boosters, full with the sense of accomplishment. I drove home to be greeted by a call from another friend whose work pulled him away from the trappings of Magic fun.”Guess who won the Trial,” he mentioned conspiratorially.”Travis!” Randy’s name does not grace the rest of the top eight that he rattled off. After some talk about Lightning Coils in Goblins, Empyrial Plate in White Weenie and hand discard in Mono-Black control, Josh can’t control the draft itch.”Want to play in an online draft with me?”
“Sure. I am still having trouble with picking in drafts, are you willing to help me out?”
“Definitely.”
There is a broad spectrum of how people treat Magic and the tournaments they play in, from the lone gunman against the world to the squirrel-obsessed player who finds more satisfaction in showing off his hand-crafted, machete-wielding squirrel tokens than in winning. On the whole, though, I believe there are plenty of players out there who would like to improve their game. There are a sufficient number of articles that urge you to find great players to practice with. There are even more quality articles from the pro players that offer insight and assistance on obtaining a higher level of play. Sometimes, though, these sources aren’t always readily available. Maybe you live in a small coastal town where the combined DCI rating of all the players wouldn’t even give you a single bye to the only Grand Prix within a thousand-mile radius of where you live. Maybe you subsist on a food-substitute staple of Ramen and Big K cola, and you’d have to sacrifice a month’s worth of smokes just to afford a booster box.
There is no reason the realms of pro players should not be considered the be-all and end-all source of play improvement, no matter how little or how much improvement you seek or just plain need. The world of Magic is very social and dynamic – no one plays in a vacuum. Every tournament can be a learning session, if we interact with the people around us, keeping our minds, eyes, and ears open to even the most insignificant comment or person. I learned quite a bit on Saturday, my 1-2-drop performance a bump on the road to my understanding of the Mirrodin format. I hope you did as well.
Speaking of interactive Magic, I promised in the forums for each re-build of the sealed decks I presented, I would playtest and offer any insights gleaned. I received two re-builds of the third deck I presented. You can view the original card pool there. Playtesting was performed as follows: Each deck was played ten times against a baseline deck. I played the baseline five times, then played the rebuild five times in order to even out the discrepancy between player skill levels.
The baseline deck chosen was from a card pool I would be ecstatic to open in a tournament. It also contained all the elements that are worth testing against: Good equipment, solid removal, bomb artifacts, bomb non-artifacts and decent evasion. The deck is as follows:
Land
5 Mountain
8 Plains
2 Swamp
Black
2 Irradiate
Red
Electrostatic Bolt
Shatter
Vulshok Battlemaster
White
Arrest
Auriok Bladewarden
2 Leonin Den-Guard
Leonin Skyhunter
Luminous Angel
Skyhunter Cub
Artifacts
Alpha Myr
Bonesplitter
Clockwork Dragon
Fireshrieker
Goblin Dirigible
2x Goblin Replica
Goblin War Wagon
Gold Myr
Leaden Myr
Leonin Scimitar
Nuisance Engine
Pentavus
Rustspore Ram
The first rebuild I was given was from GreenMonk, who decided green must be played, with blue providing the second foundation:
Land
Great Furnace
2 Mountains
Seat of the Synod
6 Islands
7 Forests
Blue
Annul
Looming Hoverguard
Lumengrid Sentinel
2x Neurok Spy
Green
Creeping Mold
Deconstruct
Glissa Sunseeker
Predator’s Strike
Artifacts
Bonesplitter
Clockwork Condor
Crystal Shard
Elf Replica
Goblin Replica
Goblin War Wagon
Leaden Myr
Mask of Memory
Myr Enforcer
Pyrite Spellbomb
Rust Elemental
2x Wizard Replica
The results of his deck (drum roll, please)….
Game | Play/Draw | Result | Comments |
1 | Draw | Win | Baseline deck has mana troubles |
2 | Play | Loss | Â |
3 | Draw | Loss | Â |
4 | Play | Win | Â |
5 | Play | Loss | Â |
6 | Draw | Win | A key mistake is made |
7 | Play | Loss | Â |
8 | Play | Loss | Â |
9 | Play | Loss | An extremely close game |
10 | Draw | Loss | Â |
Win-Loss Record: 3-7
Many of the matches were very close, but the baseline just managed to squeak out more wins in the end. The Crystal Shard was amazing in combat, saving your creature after putting lethal damage to your opponent’s creature on the stack. With Arrest being the only worrisome enchantment in the format, the Elf Replica stayed an unimpressive, generic 2/2. It is truly sideboard material. The Wizard Replicas were a strong annoyance, holding off your opponent’s larger spells for a few critical turns – though not always enough to make a difference in this particular deck. A much more aggressive deck would be able to take better advantage of these creatures. The Rust Elemental typically came out strong, but became an overwhelming liability when the last few points of damage needed to be done.
Apparently, my goading was enough to get Bob to send me his rebuild of my third deck, where he decided to play the more typical choice of G/B/r:
Land
Great Furnace
2 Vault of Whispers
6 Forest
3 Mountain
5 Swamp
Black
Flayed Nim
2x Irradiate
Moriok Scavenger
Nim Shrieker
Slith Bloodletter
Woebearer
Green
Deconstruct
Glissa Sunseeker
Predator’s Strike
Artifacts
Bonesplitter
Clockwork Condor
Goblin Replica
Goblin War Wagon
Leaden Myr
Mask of Memory
Myr Enforcer
Neurok Hoversail
Pyrite Spellbomb
Vulshok Gauntlets
2x Wizard Replica
The results of his deck (drum roll, please)…
Game | Play/Draw | Result | Comments |
1 | Draw | Loss | Â |
2 | Play | Win | Mana troubles from the baseline |
3 | Draw | Win | Â |
4 | Play | Win | Â |
5 | Draw | Win | Â |
6 | Draw | Win | Mana problems from baseline |
7 | Play | Loss | Â |
8 | Play | Win | Baseline stuck at 2 land |
9 | Draw | Loss | Â |
10 | Play | Loss | Â |
Â
Win-Loss Record: 6-4
A much better build than the previous one, Black shows that it is the powerhouse in the deck with staple regenerators and strong removal. I’ve come to the conclusion that Irradiate is hands-down the best removal in the format, and two in a pool should not be ignored lightly. Wizard Replicas also graced this build – but without the key on-color mana, they were mosquitoes biting the opponent every so often.
And finally, my ever-so-controversial third build from last week’s article:
White
Arrest
Skyhunter Patrol
Luminous Angel
Artifacts
Alpha Myr
Bonesplitter
Clockwork Condor
Crystal Shard
Dragon Blood
Goblin Replica
Goblin War Wagon
Leaden Myr
Mask of Memory
Myr Enforcer
Pyrite Spellbomb
Serum Tank
Soldier Replica
Vulshok Gauntlets
Land
Great Furnace
2x Vault of Whispers
2 Mountain
7 Plains
5 Swamp
And the results:
Game | Play/Draw | Result | Comments |
1 | Play | Win | Â |
2 | Draw | Win | Â |
3 | Play | Loss | Â |
4 | Play | Loss | Â |
5 | Draw | Loss | Kept 6-land hand |
6 | Draw | Loss | Mana flood |
7 | Play | Win | Â |
8 | Draw | Win | Â |
9 | Play | Win | Â |
10 | Draw | Win | Â |
Â
Win-Loss Record: 6-4
The MVP of the deck was Crystal Shard, which allowed the Moriok Scavenger to continue to bring back creatures previously devastated by the opponent. The Crystal Shard also assisted in several combat tricks that kept my creatures alive. The Dragon Blood had its use, as did the Serum Tank, but three artifacts requiring three-mana activation became a little overwhelming. The desire for artifact removal was at the back of my mind through most games.
If I were to build this pool again, I would replace the three white cards with Glissa, Creeping Mold, and Deconstruct. Predator’s Strike acts as substitute combat trick for Soldier Replica, and Neurok Hoversail would need to come in to replace the loss of critical fliers. With a penchant for fat critters over card draw, I’d keep in the Dragon Blood and remove the Serum Tank to put in the Hoversail.
I learned quite a bit from this little bit of interaction, and I hope you did as well. I look forward to some interactive Magic with you this weekend at the Grand Prix.