The Event
A quick recap of the event.
Craig Wescoe and I were talking about this Grand Prix a couple months ago. He wanted to team with me again, and while I wanted to team with Matt and Alex
again, I wasn’t sure they were flying out to it as they hadn’t for Grand Prix Portland. When Chris Fennell expressed interest in being our third, I asked
Alex and Matt what their plans were.
Long story short, they were going. I was replaced with DJ Kastner and an only half joking “Yay, now I can be the one who is carried!” from Matt, and Chris,
Craig, and I locked in as a team.
Our first Sealed pool split out the white cards pretty easily. There were enough white aggressive cards for a near Mono-White deck for Craig that used a
bunch of cards we didn’t actually want elsewhere, most notably a Butcher of the Horde with appropriate fixing for Mardu. Meanwhile, Fennell and I sat
figuring out how to split blue and green into two decks. There was a clear morph/manifest theme with a Trail of Mystery and a Temur War Shaman, and we
separated that into Sultai, while Temur played to a more aggressive G/R ferocious base. We played some games shifting around removal, giving Craig the
lower cost Bathe in Dragonfire as a tempo play, while the Temur deck took the more red-intensive Arrow Storm. We also shifted morphs, giving the
controlling Sultai deck multiple Woolly Loxodons to win lategames while giving Temur the more interchangeable Glacial Stalker. With time winding down, it
was decided I would play Temur basically because I started registering it on my sheet.
Note: The shotgunning decks thing is partly a joke. I played the slightly more aggressive deck, while Chris played the more controlling deck both times. It
felt right, but I’m not 100% sure it was in retrospect.
The most notable match on day one: Previously, Craig and I had teamed with Alex Hayne at Grand Prix Portland. We finished 11-3 for three Pro Points and
were fairly happy with the team as it existed. Craig and I paired with Chris after some discussion late last year, and Hayne moved to Tom Martell and
Shahar’s team for this event with them having an open slot from Paulo doing coverage. Prior to the event, we were all talking trash about how we had
upgraded teams, and it was put to the test. I beat Tom, mostly because I drew more additional cards game 2 than he did spells in the match, and Craig lost.
Fittingly, everything came down to Fennell heads up against Hayne in a battle to prove whether Craig and I had improved the team or not.
We won. Scoreboard.
We ended up going 7-2 on the day. I personally went 5-3, with an unfinished match. I beat every opponent who wasn’t playing Temur but struggled in mirrors.
Some of that was dying to Shamanic Revelation (despite having my own), some of that was my deck being poorly-positioned against Wild Slash. Fortunately,
Fennell’s Sultai deck carried a lot of weight with the proper mix of rares, removal, and synergy and went 7-1, only losing during our first match loss to a
Temur deck with lots of resilient threats. Chris’s finish included multiple games won with one card left in library, a side effect of Sidisi, Brood Tyrant
and tons of manifest.
On day two, our pool was a little trickier. There was a ton of fixing, a decent number of rares, but not a ton of obvious direction with the green cards.
We ended up figuring out red was best with white due to curve and split the Abzan rares off to their own deck while leaving a bunch of heavy hitters in a
four-color no-white deck that was seventeen creatures, five removal spells, and Wooded Foothills and Polluted Delta. I was given the Siege Rhino deck to
easy mode people with, and Chris took the four-color deck.
Wescoe carried this time, easily winning all his matches, while Chris and I each went 3-2. I lost one to Wingmate Roc and Master of Pearls, and one to a
Sultai deck that was way better-positioned for the grindy G/B mirrors.
As for the top 4, I ended up in G/R between two Jeskai drafters. I maybe could have moved into G/B aggro pack two but decided abandoning the red cards
wasn’t worth it. I hated a Duneblast pack three, but I lost to Crux of Fate both games. Craig took his match, and in the deciding game, Chris stumbled on
mana while Dave Williams hit his white source to Mantis Rider us out of the event.
It’s obviously easy to say this after such a good finish, but honestly everything went great. We worked very well together as a team and were rewarded for
it.
Karma
At Grand Prix Philadelphia last year (Born of the Gods/Theros Sealed), I found myself opening and verifying a pretty miserable Sealed pool. As I had a
Sleep-In Special, this meant it was also the pool I would have to play with.
As I went through the list, I kept finding more and more errors in my judge registered pool. Cards not registered, cards misregistered, wrong numbers of
cards. Apparently this was a massive issue with the staff registered pools at this event, but my pool was especially plagued with problems. I called a
judge over about the mass of issues and asked for an independent verification to ensure there weren’t more errors I didn’t notice. After all, it was the
event staff that made the mistakes in the first place. It’s not like they can find the person who made the mistake and give them a warning.
I was met with the phrase “I can’t do that, but I can give you a new pool.”
I was blown away, as was everyone else who heard this. Really? That’s the solution I was offered? I can free roll a rebuy after seeing the
whole pool? I double checked that the judge actually understood what he just said and accepted. I was rewarded with an even worse pool (with errors) that
was actually incapable of playing a rare or killing a creature with more than four toughness. It had multiple registration issues. I promptly 0-3ed and had
consolation roast pork sandwiches at Dinic’s.
Yes, multiples because they are that good.
Fast forward to this weekend. Sitting at 7-2 at Grand Prix San Jose, Chris, Craig, and I needed a 5-0 record on Day Two to make top 4. We got our
preregistered pool and got to verifying it was properly stamped. I pulled the top six packs off, handed them to Chris, and got to sorting out Fate
Reforged.
First rare:
Second rare:
Third rare:
Fourth rare:
Fifth rare:
Last rare:
Close.
Chris was a bit behind me, but he remarked, “The worst rare I have is this Avalanche Tusker. The other ones had all been unbeatable so far.” And then he
pulled the fifth rare out and flipped to the last pack.
Wait, Sultai Emissary? In our Khans pack?
Turns out we were handed a preregistered pool containing one too many Fate Reforged packs and one too few Khans packs. Sorry about that fake out, here’s
your real pool. We spent a good five minutes getting Chris off full-blown tilt from having seen the unbeatable decks disappear from our hands.
The pool we received wasn’t nearly as exciting, but apparently it was good enough. As a bonus, we even got more fetchlands this time. Value!
Funny how things work out the way they should have all along sometimes
Power Levels
Comparing my experiences at Grand Prix Nashville and this Grand Prix, I was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting something like Born of the Gods Limited,
where the first set of cards vastly outclassed the second set. I figured it’d be defined by how well your Khans packs aligned, but the lower power level
from the second set seems to be more of the defining factor.
The rares were really good, but every game didn’t feel like it came down to them. That isn’t to say there weren’t a large number of unbeatable rares, but
more that there’s a nice balance between the removal and them. This isn’t Theros, where there are only a couple removal spells that actually kill the
rares. There are typically a ton of options to handle rares, but they aren’t necessarily the best at handling commons. Think Disdainful Stroke, Rite of the
Serpent, Smite the Monstrous, and so on. The cheap removal kills the cheap cards, the expensive removal kills the expensive ones.
The power level in Fate Reforged is also flatter than the power level in Khans. It was very possible for a Sealed deck in straight Khans Limited to be full
of multicolored cards that were just better than the mono-colored ones. Those cards just don’t exist in Fate Reforged, so the power level of decks tends to
be more uniform.
All of this leads to games where every card plays a part. Players use their commons to position favorably against uncommon and rare trumps.
I would have to spend a lot more time looking at the cards and trends with them to figure out some of the details here that make this possible (i.e. sizing
thresholds I previously missed), but I think it’s really interesting to basically see the same powerful first set and the mediocre second set lead to
extremely different behavior in back-to-back blocks.
Dragons of Tarkir
While we are still learning what Fate Reforged has to offer, I want to throw out a bit of speculation about Dragons of Tarkir based on some patterns I’ve
noticed.
Dragons of Tarkir Limited is likely to be the most aggressive format since Zendikar.
What are the giveaways? Dash has been stated to return in the set, and that mechanic is nothing but pure aggression. Bolster is functionally a mix of
Common Bond and Ironshell Beetles, again aggressive. The Sieges all have the Khans mode about developing your board or generating cards, while the Dragons
mode is all about immediate pressure.
Playing Roles
Craig Wescoe has been a pretty insane teammate the two times I played with him.
It isn’t that we expect him to cover a lot of ground. As I joked about last August, he finally demonstrated his range last Pro Season by playing all the
colors between the Pro Tours: Boros, Orzhov, Azorius, and Selesnya. He does exactly his one thing and does it exceptionally well.
On the Pro Tour, this leads to a pretty extreme distribution of huge misses and hits depending on whether attacking with white creatures passes for
moderate interaction, a skill rewarded by the format, but in Team Sealed this means he always gets to do what he wants. For our second Sealed deck, we gave
him the white cards, laid out the curve, saw red’s curve paired well, and gave him all 50 or so cards between the colors and told him to go to town and
make something that would win. He found the right configuration, eschewing traditional incentives like War Flare for a ferocious Boros deck to enable
double Barrage of Boulders, and easily 5-0ed.
This sounds really obvious, but in every group Magic activity, understanding the roles people will play is really important, even if it is something simple
like “will play matches.”
This also ties into a great Chris Andersen quote from a while back: “You can’t have all louds or all quiets on your team.” Roles aren’t just technical,
they are personality. If you have a bunch of people who feel like they are 100% the best at making their own decisions, you are basically playing three
individual matches against their whole team. If you have a bunch of people who won’t speak up and make their opinions known, the same thing happens. I
don’t think “loud” or “quiet” is a truly binary aspect, but it definitely can be.
Knowing When to Be Wrong
“You are a great teammate because you have valuable opinions but are willing to be wrong.” – Chris Fennell to me
What does willing to be wrong really entail?
Part one of this: having opinions. Anyone can be a puppet and accept what they are told. The important part is being able to say “I want to do this because
of X and Y,” giving your teammates more information to make your decisions.
The other part is accepting inputs: have your teammate respond “I want to do this because of Z,” and understand why and spot check them for errors.
Knowing when to be wrong isn’t actually about conceding arguments. It’s simply a matter of analyzing new information as it comes in. Sometimes that
information isn’t going to be relevant. Sometimes there isn’t time to act on that new information or it just isn’t detailed enough.
But at least you thought about it, analyzed the implications, and know what you are getting yourself into.
Switching Plans
I went 7-7 in the Grand Prix with one match remaining unfinished when the round ended. Both of my decks were good, but I struggled at a lot of points to
win games and likely should have had a better performance. This event really highlighted a hole in my game.
If I have a consistent gameplan, I can execute it very well. While my decks were full of good cards and had plans, they weren’t coherent to the level I
needed to succeed. Chris kept finding me winning lines in positions where I would have to be switching from aggro to control in unintuitive ways from turn
to turn without obvious changes in boardstates or cards drawn.
Playing to shift from aggro to control on a turn by turn basis is something I have extensive experience with. I’ve played all sorts of midrange and hybrid
control through the years, and you might even say these are my most successful archetypes. I’m just horrible at it when my cards don’t carry
weight for me.
I’m used to playing the sliding scale games with absurdly powerful cards. Siege Rhino, Bloodbraid Elf, Cryptic Command, Lightning Angel. If I want to hang
back, my cards do work to stabilize the game. When I want to start winning, they end the game fast.
When I’ve performed well at Limited, it is always in formats or archetypes where I have a well-defined strategy or can sculpt a high power deck exactly the
way I want it to. I really do mean always. I went back and looked at every Limited success I’ve had, and every single one falls under the category of
“consistent plan” or “powerful cards.”
I need to get way better at turning the average Sealed pools or mediocre drafts into above average records.
I think the start is playing more practice Sealed, as always. Specifically, I want to do this with the intent of reexamining the board every turn
regardless of what I think the default answer is. I have a really good intuitive understanding of what the right play is with linear or powerful decks and
quickly find the right line there, but when my deck is neither linear nor powerful, my gut instinct is often wrong and makes assumptions that don’t
maximize all of the average cards I could draw.
Overall, I think this is a big leap. I know I’ve had issues with this for a long time, but I’m now figuring out how to approach and answer them.
Fortunately, I don’t have to play Sealed that often. Especially not next weekend at Pro Tour Fate Reforged in Washington DC. I’ve put a lot of work into
the event, but I still feel like there is so much more I could be doing. I have a lot of things to say about the format, but I guess we will have to wait
and see if they line up with what happens next weekend.