Levelling Up - My Fitchburg Diary

At first I wasn’t supposed to write about Grand Prix: MA. We had an average card pool, and both my team-mate Shuhei Nakamura and myself had a lot of in-game problems, from mulligans to mana screw… yet I don’t want to sound like a whiner. In fact, I believe Pro Players should not be allowed to whine. After all, we are a lucky few who can live la vida loca of the Pro Tour, play all the events we want, and get paid for success. So many players would love to be Level 3 pros. It’s an insult to see Pro Players complaining about the non-existent third land or the opposing topdeck. I mean, if you are a Pro Player you will have a chance to redeem yourself at the next Pro Tour or Grand Prix.

So I presented myself with a challenge: list my card pool, explain the choices we made during deckbuilding, and give a short description of each round… without sounding like a whiner. Happily, there were many fun stories from this trip, and many moments when nothing happened. It might sound strange, but there were so many dead moments during this trip that it’s almost fun remembering them.

I bought a flight for Boston Logan Airport that arrived on Thursday afternoon. At the time, there weren’t any shuttles announcements on MagictheGathering.com, so I thought that arriving on Thursday would leave me enough time to get into Fitchburg one way or another. I had already spoken with some Dutch players, and they intended to arrive on Thursday too. Eventually, Wizards announced there were going to be shuttles from Boston airport to the tournament site on Friday, so every sane person obviously scheduled their flights for Friday. Except for all the Europeans, who were arriving on Wednesday… I still don’t know why.

Fortunately, one day before my flight, Rasmus Sibast (who knew of my travel plans) hooked me up with Paul Cheon and Sam Stein, who were also arriving to Boston on Thursday afternoon. I made some very quick arrangements online with Paul Cheon, because he was playing MTGO (so predictable) and I was watching an important soccer game involving the Portuguese national team.

The flights from Lisbon to Amsterdam, and from Amsterdam to Boston, marked the beginning of a very long weekend. Travelling alone has become a lot more common now. I have two undeniable proofs that I’ve been travelling a little too much lately. The first is that wherever I fly, I’ve always read all of the plane magazines in the seat in front of me and watched all of the movies screening during the flights. The second? Gone are the days where I had sixty or seventy copies of each common on my Magic Online account. A couple of days ago, I was checking my collection and I was missing many commons and uncommons from the Time Spiral set. I had to ask my friends to stock me with commons and uncommons to get to four copies of each. I have a feeling I’d be using them in the proceeding days.

At Boston airport I joined with Paul Cheon and Sam Stein, and we decided to take public transportation all the way to Fitchburg. We took a twenty-minute bus from the airport to somewhere in Boston. Then a twenty-minute subway ride to the train station. We waited forty minutes for the train, and an hour and a half later we were in Fitchburg, MA. But we still had to take a fifteen-minute taxi ride, because despite Fitchburg being in the middle of nowhere and being a small place, the Grand Prix site was still out of reach. The latest American Grand Prix locations have been pretty bad, and not fitting for the actual names of the events. Grand Prix: New Jersey was in Tom’s River, Grand Prix: Dallas was in Grapevine Mills. Okay, so Grand Prix: Fitchburg was indeed in Massachusetts, but that’s because MA is a state. These locations are very bad for players, and even worse for foreign players who need to rent a car.

Finally, on my arrival at the hotel that was hosting the Grand Prix, I met up with the rest of the European crew. They were either playing Magic Online at the lobby or dining in the worst “restaurant” in America: the restaurant of this hotel. I was rooming with Shuhei and the Japanese, but since they were only arriving the following day, I asked the Dutchies if they had a bed for me just for Thursday.

Let me tell you about Roel van Heeswijk and Frank Karsten. They intended to room together, just the two of them. The room price was $79 a night, and splitting it for two would be something like 25 or 30 euros each, which is a very acceptable price. This way they could be well rested for the Grand Prix, as they had a bed for each of them and they could wake up later because there were only two people to take a shower. Plus, it was less likely that there would be someone snoring in the middle of the night.

Enter Julien Nuijten. Julien wasn’t planning to attend Grand Prix: MA, but decided to arrive last minute after making some plans to vacation in the U.S. after the GP. Julien asked Frank and Roel if he could room with them, and they accepted, as it wouldn’t make sense to have all the three Dutchies attending without rooming together… especially when there was a room shared by only two people. Frank and Roel didn’t mind a third body: they just didn’t want the room to be too crowded.

Since I was arriving one day before Shuhei, they allowed me to stay with them just for the night of Thursday; after all, it wasn’t a Grand Prix night yet. But it turned out I wasn’t the only guest that night, as Quentin Martin took the same flight as the Dutchies. His roommates, Ruud Warmenhoven and Mark Herberholz, were arriving the following day. So Quentin also stayed in the room that night, and what was planned to be a well-rested stay for two players now saw five in the room, but both Quentin and I would be moving to our rooms the following day.

Friday

There was nothing to do in Fitchburg, but thankfully there were at least half a dozen laptops belonging to Magic players in the hotel lobby, and many tables. The hotel had wireless, so we spent the morning and the afternoon in front of the screens, some playing poker, some watching movies, and some playing Block games on Magic Online with their opponents sitting a few feet away. I was playing against Julien, and Jelger was watching. It was a very close games 3, and I drew some outs for the win. Jelger, who was sitting next to Julien, told him “he drew a land, you won”. Yes, we were that close. The reason is that no one had brought paper cards or sleeved decks with them, but everyone had his laptop and Magic Online installed. As you can imagine, at this point our block decks were still very untuned (as they still are), so we weren’t concerned about playing in the lobby in front of everyone passing by.

In the evening, registration for the Grand Prix finally opened. We did a Two-Headed Giant draft at the site, with three European teams plus the Cak and myself. If you read my article from last week, you know about my Sliver strategy, but as far as I can remember, this was one of two drafts where I didn’t forced Slivers. That night Shuhei and the Japanese arrived, bringing some sad news.

The hotel hosting the Grand Prix was called Best Western Royal Plaza and Trade Center, in Fitchburg MA. The hotel in which Shuhei booked two rooms was called Best Western Royal Plaza and Trade Center… in Marlborough MA. Obviously, the hotel in Fitchburg was full and they had no way to get a room there. The only obvious solution would be to split and try to find rooms that still had beds available. Knowing of this unfortunate incident, Roel and Frank (and Julien) offered me a place to stay in their room, since they still had a bed available.

Poor Quentin Martin! Both Ruud Warmenhoven and Mark Herberholz missed their flights, so he was also left with no room for the rest of the stay. Ruud would still make it to the Grand Prix, and ended up rooming with the Cak, but Quentin had to find somewhere to sleep. Quentin had to explain to the Dutchies that it was an accident, as he did have a place to stay originally, and he didn’t simply come to America trying to crash someone else’s room. And that’s how Roel and Frank’s plan of having only two people in the room went down… the five of us stayed together for the rest of the Grand Prix.

To make things even funnier, on Friday night – when Frank, Roel, and I went upstairs to sleep – we found ten or so people in our room. Julien went with the Americans to the cinema that evening, and on their way back they passed by a liquor store and filled the whole trunk of the car with booze. Julien said, at least five times, “I don’t get it… why is everyone coming here? My room is always the party room!”

Then Rich Hoaen stated they weren’t there because of Julien… they were there because Julien happened to be in the same room as the drinks.

Even though the room was crowded like a party, it didn’t bother me that much because it was full of friends and familiar faces. I actually enjoyed them bringing all the drinks to my room, as this way I was guaranteed to have some. Isn’t it cool, when your friends bring the drinks to you don’t have to move? But on the inside I nearly died laughing, imagining how this was not what Frank and Roel had planned for their well-rested night.

Saturday

I woke up surrounded by dozens and dozens of empty beer bottles, and someone warned me we had to get rid of them as alcohol was prohibited in the rooms. They had to bring the drinks to the room inside travel bags. They were too many bottles for just the five of us to make disappear, so someone had the brilliant idea of putting the remaining bottles in the chest drawer and getting rid of them gradually. Julien suggested we only use the second and third drawer, as usually people in hotel rooms tend to open the top one. Is this actually true?

The next big emotive moment of the day was receiving our card pool. After trying almost all the possible color builds, Shuhei branded the card pool as “bad,” meaning we were probably sitting out of Day 2. I believed the pool was fine – after all, the one I had in Amsterdam was a lot worse – but during the day I found that “fine” isn’t enough in Two-Headed Giant Sealed… you need a lot of power. Keeping that in mind, we were greedy and decided to build the greediest builds we could in order to have some power in the decks. Here’s the card pool.

GP: Massachusetts Cardpool

Tiago Chan

Test deck on 04-15-2007

Time Spiral Limited

Creatures (62)

Lands (1)

1 Dreadship Reef

Spells (39)

Now, Julien Nuijten calls me a lot of things. One of my more recent nicknames is “the ‘ungreediest’ Magic player.” Apparently, I should take greed lessons from Ruud Warmenhoven. I’ll give you an example. My board is Plains, Plains, Mountain, Swamp, and there are some creatures in play on both sides. My opponent plays Mindstab, and I can keep two cards from this hand: Two irrelevant cards (that were going to be discarded for sure), Mountain, Cavalry Master, and Castle Raptors. My play would be to keep Mountain and Castle Raptors. This way I would play Castle Raptors on my turn for sure, and would have access to double Red. I had some double Red spells in my deck, like Blood Knight, Aether Membrane, and Sulfurous Blast. This is being “ungreedy,” and this is how I am – I like efficiency. Greedy (and probably correct) would be to keep Cavalry Master and Castle Raptors. This was in a side draft, so Julien intervened and made me keep the Cavalry Master and the Castle Raptors.

My build would’ve been Red/Black straight, with no need to splash for Kaervek (our power card), and Blue/Green splashing for Stonebrow, Krosan Hero and Empty the Warrens. This meant leaving out Numot, the Devastator. Many theorists think you have to play all your power cards.

What greedy moves did we make?

We played two three-color decks.

We played with all our Gold cards (Strangling Soot counts as gold for this purpose). [I bet you didn’t play the Scion… – Craig, amused.]

We put Empty the Warrens in the same deck as Gaea’s Anthem.

We splashed Sunlance beside Numot, therefore increasing the amount of White mana needed.

We played Fa’adiyah Seer for card advantage, and for the possibility of revealing Strangling Soot or one of the two Psychotic Episodes.

Check it out!

GP: Massachusetts Deck A

Tiago Chan

Test deck on 04-15-2007

Time Spiral Limited

Creatures (12)

Lands (18)

Spells (10)

GP: Massachusetts Deck B

Shuhei Nakamura

Test deck on 04-15-2007

Time Spiral Limited

Creatures (14)

Lands (17)

Spells (9)

I still think these decks are fine, and we definitely have some late game power. Perhaps we lacked some early game blockers. Our early drops aren’t exactly defensive: they’re mostly cards with suspend, or guys like Blazing Blade Askari, Trespasser il-Vec, and Uktabi Drake. With hindsight, I would take out the Drake or the Seer to make room for an Ashcoat Bear.

Round 3: Xiao Wing Ren / Yi Cheng

Outcome: Loss.

Reason: Color screw.

Details: I had five or six Islands out, and had played a Snapback and a Sunlance. My hand was full of Red cards. Shuhei had only Swamps and Mountains in play, and couldn’t cast any Green card. It looked like we were U/W and R/B, while we were R/U splash W and B/G splash R.

Fun fact: They were a Chinese couple living in Canada, and communicated in Chinese. I know enough Chinese to get by, and to have a basic conversation involving name, age, address, numbers; y’know, the usual stuff after one year of classes. However, it wasn’t enough to understand their game plans. I have the same problem as Kenji. He has English classes twice a week, and I have Chinese classes twice a week, but with so many Pro Tour and Grand Prix “commitments” we happen to miss a lot of classes and not learn much.

Score: 2 – 1

Round 4: Erik Williams / Chris Trembley

Outcome: Win

Reason: Mana screw

Details: One of our opponents was stuck on two lands forever… and when he drew the third, we played Volcanic Awakening for four.

Fun fact: They were my first (and so far only) win in Two-Headed Giant Sealed Grand Prix play, and they were really nice guys who had the misfortune of being mana screwed.

Score: 3 – 1

Round 5: Analynn Bustamante / Debbie Cohen

Outcome: Loss

Reason: Shuhei mulliganed to five and was mana screwed. We were also overpowered when he recovered.

Details: When Shuhei recovered from his mana screw we were very low on life and had to deal with Wurmcalling with buyback, Weatherseed Totem, and Verdeloth with some tokens.

Fun fact: Later in the weekend I side drafted with Debbie Cohen A few times. In one draft she played with a maindeck Chromatic Star over other cards she preferred, just to shut my mouth as I insisted she played the Star.

Score: 3 – 2

Round 6: Benjamin Cox / Doug Azzano

Outcome: Loss

Reason: We were overrun by early attackers

Details: We had a great start, with multiple suspends setting up a huge Empty the Warrens. While the suspends were not in play, they attacked us with many early drops. When we stormed the Empty the Warrens for infinity, they had Subterranean Shambler.

Fun fact: We could’ve suspended a turn 1 Search for Tomorrow, but we were greedy and suspend it on turn 4 to synchronize with Veiling Oddity and Giant Dustwasp.

Score: 3 – 3

Round 7: Tyler Mantey / Kyle Moeller

Outcome: Loss

Reason: Outpowered

Details: Every card they played against us was absolutely devastating. Serrated Arrows. Cancel. Dismal Failure. Vorosh (or Teneb). Draining Whelk. In fact, one of them just played counters and the Dragon.

Fun fact: We decided to play one more round, since we had to wait for our friends, but when you’re out of contention in a Sealed Deck tournament, you should drop. Even if you need the rating points. In Sealed Deck, the assumption that in the two- or three-loss bracket you’re gonna find weak card pools like yours is wrong. Those players have already dropped. The ones that remain are the amazingly strong card pools that had bad luck and picked up some losses. That’s why they’re out of contention and still playing: because they know the decks are amazing, and they’ve just had bad luck.

Score: 3 – 4 (with two byes)

After the event I couldn’t find a team mate willing to play the Two-Headed Giant PTQ with me on Sunday, as everyone had made Day 2 except for Shuhei and I. That’s why I hate to sit out on Grand Prix Day 2s. At a Pro Tour there’s always someone to draft with and against. In the Grand Prix tournaments, everyone is still playing. At least in Europe we have Gunslinging, and the European Grand Prix tournaments are so big that there are at least some players who also missed out. But why am I praising European GPs? I absolutely hate 1000- or 1500-player Grand Prix tourneys!

When I realized I wouldn’t be playing the PTQ the next day, I joined the Brazilians for dinner. They had rented a van and knew of a nice restaurant. It worked for me, as I’d resolved to avoid the hotel restaurant… unless I was merely visiting to mock the patrons.

Sunday

I woke up very late, around 4pm European time, but when I arrived at the site they were still on Round 2. I spent a long time watching people play Magic, as there was nothing to do. Fortunately, Willy Edel had the keys to the van, and I joined him and the legendary “Pumba” for shopping and lunch. That’s the funny thing about the Brazilians… they all have some crazy nickname, and except for the big name players I rarely know their real names. In Brazil, your name is the person who goes to school or work. In Magic you have a nickname, and that’s a completely different person. Sometimes it’s hard when you try to figure which room they’re staying. I usually try asking for Romao or Edel. If it fails, I can’t go ask for “Pitbull,” “Carrot,” “Pumba,” or “Rorix.”

After returning from “vanning,” I drafted thanks to Phu. Phu is a player from Texas I met in Geneva, and we share the same passion to play Magic when we’re away from home at Magic events. We have an RGD draft arranged for PT: Yokohama. Some just still love the format, while others like me still have extra RGD packs, but mostly we simply like to draft. If you want to join us in Yokohama, talk to Phu, as he’s the one in charge.

We made some random teams. One side is Phu, Gabe Walls, Billy Moreno, and Shuhei Nakamura. The other side was me and the three players I didn’t know, so I guess they had all the name players. We still put up some fight, but in the end we lost. Phu jokes that someone might think he paid the Pros to draft in the same team as him. Apparently, at Grand Prix: Dallas, the Ruels were looking for a draft and asked Phu if he wanted to join, and the story came out as if Phu challenged some Americans to draft and then paid the Ruels to draft with him. I believed I read that in a Tim Aten report, but I wasn’t present to watch.

After eating, Shuhei and I joined another draft with the Texan crew. I was U/R and opened in Planar Chaos a pack with Akroma, Angel of Fury and Serendib Sorcerer. Because of rules of cutting and passing in 3×3 I took Akroma, but I don’t know if it was the correct pick. My team won that draft. After that, we went to the hotel lobby, and more players joined us. We goofed around and joked for a while, trying to figure what was happening. After a long period in which a lot of silly things happened, I figured there was no more drinking, especially because Kenji was sober.

I was about join another draft, even though I didn’t feel like it… so I didn’t mind sitting out when we realized we had one extra player. It was here that Debbie Cohen asked me to watch her draft and her picks. I probably only disagreed on one, where she wanted to take Undying Rage over Thunder Totem. My argument is that she had a very defensive deck, and she wouldn’t be playing the Undying Rage, plus she already had two Desolation Giants and Totems are good with them (either to accelerate or because they survive). I did point out that I disagreed with picking the Rage, and she changed to the Totem. After all, that was the agreed when I offered to sit out.

Note: I wasn’t trying to hit on her.

Her deck was very defensive, and her final card was a Simian Spirit Guide. Her argument was she wanted one more creature. My argument was that she didn’t need an extra creature, having thirteen and two Totems, especially when the extra creature was a bad one. I believe I insisted so strongly that she play the Chromatic Star to help with the needed RR and WW mana (and also to dig further and find the Desolation Giant) that she made a last-minute swap just so I’d shut up and leave. Maybe she put the Simian Spirit Guide back in after I left, who knows? And who would criticize her for doing that? Sometimes we have to play with the choices with which we feel more comfortable. Imagine if your sub-conscious thinks you have too few creatures and then refuses to trade creatures in combat even if it’s correct to do so.

Anyway, lately it seems the most popular articles are the ones who have references to girls. Don’t get me wrong, my fellow writers; I’m not criticizing you… I’m being guided by you.

Monday

The last shuttle leaving for Boston Airport was at 8:30am, and my flight was at 7:00pm. I didn’t want to take the shuttle so early, but I didn’t want to go alone by taxi to the airport, or brave public transportation alone, so I decided to go with Cak in the early afternoon as his flight was at 5:00pm. Our plan was to meet at the lobby at 12:15pm, get a taxi to the Fitchburg train station to catch the 1:05 train. Any train after this one was not an option for Cak. We called the taxi, but it never came. At least not before 1:00. We searched for alternatives, called some van company, and I noticed the Brazilian Van was still parked outside. They told me they were planning to go see New York on Monday. I tried to ask for their room at the front desk, but it was impossible to figure which room they were thanks to the nicknames.

Then a lucky coincidence happened. Just when we were out of ideas, the elevator door opened, and the Brazilians arrived. They had changed plans, and instead of New York they were going to Boston. How lucky. They gave us a ride to the Airport, so it turned out perfect. That’s why a Grand Prix in Fitchburg wasn’t so bad for me, and it prevents me from complaining any further.

I took a very long flight back home. Actually, two of them. It can be frustrating to travel so much to a Grand Prix – two flights, one bus, one subway, one train, one taxi – only to return home empty-handed. The positive side is enjoying the experience of playing an American Grand Prix and hanging out with other Magic players. Like I said to Raph Levy, I believe the Pro Levels and the increase in points for the Grand Prix season, makes the European community more united, as we now travel to foreign Grand Prix tourneys.

Ever since I returned home, no exciting Magic-related stuff has happened… but we know that’s about to change. The second Pro Tour of the season is coming, and I’m in the middle of my preparation. See you next week, and wish me luck!

Tiago