While in the middle of this North American trip – traveling to Grand Prix: Montreal and Pro Tour: San Diego, a two-week journey – I had planned to write about Montreal last week and San Diego this one. Unfortunately, things didn’t go so well in sunny San Diego playing the Two-Headed Giant Pro Tour, but to be honest that was kind of predictable. I am surely the least successful Two-Headed Giant player on the Pro Tour, and if someone has a lower rating than I do, that person must be playing 2HG every single week at their local card store and failing to win a single game. Take a look at my past 2HG event records…
Grand Prix: Amsterdam – 0-3 drop
Grand Prix: Massachusetts – 1-4
That’s a 1-7 score, which made my 2HG rating 1530 coming to San Diego. As low as that may be, it was still not enough to be the lowest 2HG player in Portugal. One would think that things could only improve from there, but…
Pro Tour: San Diego – 1-4
iPod side event – 0-1 drop
How to explain this? In practice drafts against many different teams, composed of some of the best players in the world, my winning percentage is over 60%. In sanctioned events, I can’t win a game where my opponents aren’t mana screw. I tracked down some possible reasons.
1- There’s no possible escape from this fact: I can’t possible be good at Two-Headed Giant. The numbers are too strong to be ignored.
2- Variance is too big. Even in a Pro Tour, or in Magic in general, variance is too big. This can explain some — with emphasis on the word “some” – results that don’t match with the real facts. In 2HG, playing a “best of one game” format, variance is even worse.
3- In practice drafts, I had the chance to draft with players like Bernardo da Costa Cabral, Masashi Oiso, John Pelcak, Shuhei Nakamura, Shingo Kurihara, Rogier Maaten, and many others, all of them great Magic minds.
4- I decided to use my Level 6 status and team with a Level 0 friend who I knew had a strong desire to be back on the Pro Tour. He was a gravy trainer (Level 3) back in 2001 and 2002, but ever since he fell off he’s never managed to win a PTQ again, or do reasonably well on the Grand Prix circuit, despite remaining active. I made the mistake of assuming that I could pull him up, but instead it was him who dragged me down.
5- This resulted in me playing both the Pro Tour and Grand Prix: Amsterdam with my friend, which resulted in one of the most dysfunctional teams I’ve ever played in. We had teamed together twice in the past, for Team Limited Trios, where talking wasn’t allowed, so each of us was playing their own match doing whatever we wanted to. In 2HG, we were playing the same match and we have very different play-styles. My team-mate also happens to be a very stubborn person who always thinks he’s right, and he won’t ever admit an error. This led to some very heated discussions.
That caused the Pro Tour itself to be a not so pleasant experience. Our first draft pod was quite strong, especially when you consider that the first pods are assigned randomly out of every team present. Besides my team, it featured two Japanese teams – Shouta Yasooka and Koutaru Ootsuka, plus Tsuyoshi Ikeda’s team – and a British squad with a Finn girl who lived in England. We started Time Spiral by drafting the two best cards out of each pack, and then looked at where the draft led us from there, trying to find synergies or color requirements that would push us in a specific direction, like Gold cards or off-color activation costs. After the two Time Spiral packs, or at the beginning of Planar Chaos, usually one of the colors is ditched. This time it was White, which is considered by some players to be the weakest color in 2HG draft. We didn’t see any relevant White in quality or quantity, except for an Angel of Salvation that we opened and passed in the last pack.
We stayed with a regular Red/Green deck which I don’t remember the exact contents but nothing really exciting, and a Blue/Black deck with Sengir Nosferatu, Mystical Teachings and some utility targets like Dismal Failure, removal and bounce.
Round 1: Fletcher / Kajala
Our first round was against the British player and the Finn girl living in England (you could guess by her strong British accent), and we were crushed quite easily. They had a Red/Green deck coupled with a White/X build. They started strong, the Red/Green deck with Essence Warden and suspended Giant Dustwasp, and the White deck with suspended Knight of Sursi and Knight of the Holy Nimbus. Since we won the die roll and were playing first, we had a board on turn 4 consisting of Thornweald Archers and Infiltrator il-Kor. I attacked with the shadow creature, and the White deck had three mana open. He used two to play Judge Unworthy. I looked at my hand and had Dismal Failure, land, and Whip-Spined Drake. I decided to play the Dismal Failure now, as I had plays for the next two turns and none for this one. He played Mana Tithe on it. On my fifth, turn I played the Drake, and the Red/Green turn saw Coal Stoker plus Hammerhead Giant. From this point we where too far behind, and a Cloudchaser Kestrel on our Utopia Vow added even more insult to injury. They ended the game holding Stormfront Riders, Torchling, and Utopia Vow.
What plays could we have made differently? Maybe let the Infiltrator il-Kor die, but my Dismal Failure would still be foiled my Mana Tithe on their turn. Plus, on our turn 3, they had Essence Warden and Knight of the Holy Nimbus on the table. We used Fatal Attraction on the Essence Warden… perhaps we could’ve saved it.
0 – 1
Round 2: Yasooka / Otsuka
Shouta Yasooka is one of my favourite players to watch, but not from the opposite side of the table. He’s even better than most people give him credit for. In the past months I’ve played him three times at Grand Prix tournaments or Pro Tours. This has led to some spectators joking that perhaps I’m not a Level 6, or perhaps he’s not the reigning Player of the Year… because they didn’t put us up as a Feature Match the first time, or the second, or the third. Still, this isn’t as bad as Round 5 or 6 of PT: Yokohama, where the coverage team didn’t notice the pairing between Shouta and Kenji.
For this match, Shouta had a Blue/Black deck and Otsuka was Red/Green. It was a mirror match, with both teams having ditched White and opting for the same color combinations. This was our closest game at the Pro Tour. We managed to resolve an Augur of Skulls (or Mindstab) on Ootsuka to leave him empty-handed, but Shouta played many madness spells via Dreamscape Artist. Otsuka’s next draw was Magus of the Scroll, which stayed alive for many turns and wrecked our side of the table. With the Magus pinging merrily, we weren’t able to gather an offensive strong enough to deal the final points, and at some point we realized the game was beyond our control. Eventually, a Jodah’s Avenger finished us off.
Highlights of this round included Shouta attacking with Dreamscape Artist on turn 3 into our Thick-Skin Goblin. We decided to take one, but had we blocked things would’ve been different, since he was low on lands and had plenty of madness spells. One interesting decision that caused my team-mate to argue with me was when Shouta had an early Augur of Skulls holding off our attacker, and I had four cards in hand: a land, a Grave Scrabbler, a good flyer, and Ovinize. I had some lands, including Dreadship Reef, and I decided to tap out to play the flyer. My team-mate wanted to use all the storage land counters in order to keep two mana open.
Shouta saw me with three cards in hand and tapped out, and sacrificing Augur of Skulls to make me discard two. I discarded land and the Gravedigger, keeping Ovinize. My team-mate was very upset about this. In my head, I traded a land and a useless card, as I had no madness enablers on the board, for a creature that was holding off our attacks. Had I used the storage land counters, I’m not sure if Shouta would’ve sacrificed Augur of Skulls, as it seemed I was signalling a trick or a madness spell (which I really had), and in this scenario, they would still keep the 1/1 regenerator, while the Gravedigger and the land were useless as I had no discard outlets.
0 – 2
Our second draft had two North American and one Latin American teams. Since we were at 0-2, our draft pod was one of the bottom ones, far away from the speakers. Thus, nobody at our table heard the signal to start the draft. Eventually we decided to grab the packs and start the draft, since every other table was already doing it, but we lost some precious time. Our first pack had four first-pick quality cards: Ancestral Visions, Scryb Ranger, Mindstab, and Grapeshot, spread over four different colors. This situation is where having a pick order list really matters, as because there’s absolutely no other information to work with, you just have to take the two best cards for 2HG. I think the order is Mindstab, Ancestral Visions, Grapeshot, and Scryb Ranger, but I’m not sure. I knew I wanted to draft the Mindstab, but I was unsure about the other card to pick. I said as such to my team-mate, and asked for his opinion, just as they announced it was time to draft the cards and pass the booster. My team-mate pointed at Mindstab and Scryb Ranger, so I drafted those two cards. From his reaction, I immediately understood there was a problem in communication. Apparently, when he pointed to those two cards, he was saying “ship these two” and not “pick these two.” We ended passing Ancestral Visions and Grapeshot, arguably the two best cards in the pack… but it served me well, since the card I wanted the most was Mindstab, a personal favorite in 2HG. Our next two picks were Amrou Scout and a rebel. Passing Grapeshot ended up being a lucky move, as we saw absolutely no Red, and we were set for a Blue/Green featuring Serra Sphinx, Scryb Ranger, Jodah’s Avenger, and Ana Battlemage, plus a White/Black Rebels deck with Amrou Scout, Blightspeaker, Bound in Silence, two Saltfield Recluse, two Big Game Hunter, Knight of Holy Nimbus, and Deepcavern Imp. The only problem in ditching Red was that it’s one of the best colors in Future Sight, but we were quite satisfied with how our decks turned out.
Round 3: Boyes / Reasoner
Our opponents had good decks, Blue/Red and Black/Green, and they were the receivers of our pack containing Ancestral Visions and Grapeshot. However, they had a slow or average draw, which allowed us to gain a overwhelming card advantage in the mid game after resolving a Mindstab (and Ana Battlemage some turns later) plus rebel searching. They killed my first rebel searcher before it became active, but a couple of turns later I had the second with Logic Knot backup. I got to search out all the rebels in my deck in this game.
1 – 2
Round 4: Bonilla / Rodriguez Doy
All the four players in this match mulliganed, and I suspect three of them kept decent hands. My team mate Frederico kept Forest, Island, Dream Stalker, and a couple of cards costing three and four. I figured if he didn’t draw the third land, he could still play the Dream Stalker to buy us some time. That was exactly what happened, but the Dream Stalker was killed with Orcish Cannonade after blocking a creature, and Frederico got stuck on two land for much longer than we expected. They had decent draws, suspending and playing creatures in the early turns, including a Veiling Oddity. We played as desperately as we could, trying to defend ourselves, but it wasn’t enough to avoid an early elimination.
1 – 3
We decided to continue playing for different reasons. I still had a shot at an extra Pro Point if I went 2-0 in the last pod, which was unlikely (both to 2-0 the Pod and to have the tiebreakers good enough for it), but as long as there’s a chance it’s my duty to never give up. My team-mate just wanted to rare draft, which led to an awkward situation. Our first pack had Errant Ephemeron, Durkwood Baloth, and Serra Avenger. While we agreed on the Blue common dragon, we argued a little about the other. I like suspend spells, as they serve the purpose of curving out, coming into play with haste for free allowing you to keep mana for other spells, and raising the storm count. Serra Avenger is also great, but I feel vigilance is not that useful on a 3/3 flyer for 2HG, since it can only block and live against opposing 2/2s. Generally, 2/2s in 2HG need another ability other than entering combat, since they’re easily handled, so I don’t feel I’ll ever be blocking with Serra Avenger. My team-mate made an eloquent speech praising the Serra Avenger, but it felt like rarity was also being an influence in his pick decision. Since I wasn’t entirely sure about Durkwood Baloth versus Serra Avenger, I went with his pick.
We were cut off from White, and for the first time we went to deckbuilding without knowing what exact color combinations would we be playing. We could build a Green/Blue deck, and a Red/Black with plenty of removal and only four or five creatures (in which we could use Skittering Monstrosity, and splash Dralnu, Lich Lord, which would’ve been sick). The problem was that we had no mana fixers for that colors, and the curve was quite bad, with two Ichor Slick, two Dark Withering, Haunting Hymn, two Riddle of Lightning, Arc Blade, and Enslave. Eventually I decided to go Blue/Red and pair Green with Black, because we had mana acceleration for the high cost spells, and it gave us the fixers to make easier splash of Dralnu, which was still good in this deck. The decks turned out like this:
Deck A:
1 Arc Blade
1 Fomori Nomad
2 Riddle of Lightning
1 Flowstone Embrace
1 Coal Stoker
1 Brute Force
1 Ghost Fire
1 Pongify
1 Fathom Seer
1 Dreamscape Artist
1 Viscerid Deepwalker
1 Foresee
1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
2 Whip-Spine Drake
1 Aquamorph Entity
1 Sarcomite Myr
1 Venser’s Diffusion
1 Unblinking Bleb
1 Jodah’s Avenger
1 Errant Ephemeron
1 Pirate Ship
Deck B:
1 Corpulent Corpse
2 Dark Withering
2 Ichor Slick
1 Muck Drubb
1 Haunting Hymn
1 Urborg Syphon-Mage
1 Cradle to Grave
1 Midnight Charm
1 Enslave
1 Search for Tomorrow
1 Mire Boa
1 Greenseeker
1 Sporoloth Ancient
1 Essence Warden
1 Fa’adiyah Seer
1 Thallid Shell-Dweller
1 Deadwood Treefolk
2 Sprout Swarm
1 Thornweald Archers
1 Edge of Autumn
Round 5: Felter / Howa
Despite our decks containing a fair amount of removal, we only drew two kill spells this game. I used Arc Blade on a Blightspeaker with summoning sickness, because we knew we passed at least Rathi Trapper. Before that, on turn 5, we had the choice to use Cradle to Grave on Keldon Halberdiers or Infiltrator il-Kor. At the time, the Keldon Halberdiers was dealing more damage, and we weren’t holding anything that could stop him in combat for now, so we decided to kill him. Later, we died to the 3/1 Shadow that dealt almost all the damage.
1 – 4
Now that I was mathematically away from any gains in this tournament, I wanted to drop and go for dinner at 9pm (rather than at 10:30pm), but we had to wait for our friends, and Frederico felt these decks were quite good so we stayed in. Obviously we had the bye, as the other losing team had dropped, so we’ll never know what could’ve happened in that final match.
The Two-Headed Giant format causes some very mixed feeling for me.
Fun
Undeniably, it was a fun format, and it would’ve been a lot more fun if I’d got some more sanctioned wins. However, I would never consider playing 2HG if they hadn’t made this a Pro Tour format.
Frustration
With two Grand Prix tournaments and one Pro Tour, I scored zero extra Pro Points, which may hurt me later in the season when pursuing the Pro Player Club Levels. I already had humble goals for the 2HG events… I admitted I’d be happy if I could pick up two or three extra points from these three events. Of course, it wasn’t to be.
Doubt
After trying it many times, I feel it’s a very bad team format. It served the purpose of bringing new players to the tournament scene – casual players who had no interest in competition – but I can point to many flaws in the idea of 2HG for competitive play, and I hope they relegate this format for the coming seasons.
Hope
I know I can do better than the numbers I posted, but I don’t really want to have more 2HG Grand Prix tournaments or Pro Tour next season. There is still the Worlds Team Competition later this season, which I now look forward to, if only for a chance to redeem myself. For the past two years, Portugal has entered the Teams Day at Worlds counting on nothing more than its own performance to reach the Team Finals, thanks to putting two players in the Top 8 in back-to-back years, but unspectacular team draft results put my countrymen out of contention twice. Now, after a full summer of Time Spiral Block Constructed, I have my eyes set on the Portuguese National Team, which is a decision that will upset my quarterfinal opponent if I manage to make Top 8 at largest Nationals in the world.
Speaking of the future, my girlfriend is moving next month, to study in a foreign University in Asia for at least a year, which will leave me a lot – and I really mean a lot – more time to play Magic. Since I still have some goals to achieve in Magic, I will put much more effort into playtesting later in the season, as it will be the perfect time for me to level up. To what level? I have no idea. Hopefully I’ll go with the flow. Will I be a threat for the current Player of the Year contenders? Well, of course not. I only have 16 points at the moment, and I have no idea who’s leading. But last year in November I also had no clue about the race leaders, and I ended being one of the final contenders for the title, with it all coming down to the last day of the season.
As for now, I’ll take one thing at a time, and start focusing on Time Spiral Block Constructed, hoping to improve my chances and help my readers qualify. And this is a promise I’ll try to keep in the coming weeks.
Thank you for reading,
Tiago