For some reason, the city of Atlanta has always been kind to me. I’ve made Top 8 at an Open event, finished 12th at a team Pro Tour, and second at a Grand Prix. While me hitting up a random StarCityGames.com Open event might seem strange, it had more to do with me having a lot of friends in Atlanta rather than some superstition. Still, this weekend has me thinking there might be something to it…
I knew going in that I wanted to be Opening some Vaults in Standard, and similarly Reanimating fatties in Legacy. I had been writing about Open the Vaults and everyone had been criticizing it, and this was the first chance to put my money where my mouth was.
My testing started with my older lists, but those quickly became more combo-esque. The first realization I had was that Time Sieve is probably better than Sanguine Bond. Shortly after, I decided that Howling Mine was probably better than Courier’s Capsule. It would take away my ability to attrition them out, but I didn’t think that mattered.
If I’m playing Howling Mine, why not play Time Warp? That card is sweet, and I’ve wanted to find a place for it anyway. Sometimes you die before you get to cast Open the Vaults, and Time Warp could give you that extra land drop. There is some conflict in the five-drop slot with Sphinx of Lost Truths, but that should probably be fine.
It was pretty clear that my list was becoming more of a combo deck, so I decided to treat it as such. I added a second Time Sieve and played around with various things like Kaleidostone and Prophetic Prism. Those cards sucked, but See Beyond was pretty good in their place.
At no point did I consider playing anything other than Reanimator. It felt like I could probably build a better deck, but why bother? Legacy as a whole is unprepared for the deck right now, and if there were ever a good time to play it, it would be now.
I hit up the Monster Den in Minneapolis to get some cards from Martin Lohman,, and was ready to depart for Atlanta. Waiting for me at the airport was none other than PT top-8er, all around good guy and master Joseph Crosby. Joe, along with certain friends of mine like Charles Gindy, the Hollands, and Calosso Fuentes (who didn’t even show up, jerk) were the main reason to go, and the cheap ticket cemented the decision. Having two sweet decks to play made it even better.
Joe, being a gracious host, offered to hit up a local grocery store so we could stock his freezer with Tombstones. We walked in, grabbed a cart, and headed toward the frozen section. On our way, we both paused, turned, and walked over to a cooler and reached for the same item: Simply Lemonade with Raspberry. The man has good taste.
From there, we headed back to his place to nap, with plans to head to Super Games and draft or test later. Naturally we ended up drafting, but we did get some games in with Jund versus OTV first. Crosby hadn’t been playing very much lately, but he knew basically what to expect. Playing some games with Jund let him see exactly why there was all the hype.
Quickly after that, a draft materialized featuring the Baby Faced Assassin Zach Parker, freshly back from Thailand. I had heard rumors of Ken Krouner return as well, but he never showed. Boo.
I’ve heard nothing but good things about this Limited format, and I must agree. Other than a few weird things (how is Time of Heroes uncommon? That seems like a rare to me), the set is designed well, and it seems like everything they were going for worked out. Rise is cool, not incredibly overpowered, and has a lot of interesting cards for various Constructed formats. Also, the draft format is skill intensive.
The next day was spent attempting to break Eldrazi Green. Joe, Owen Laufersweiler, Tony Chu, and I ended up heading to an Ihop after the store closed, but they were closed for cleaning. We settled for Steak n Shake, losing Tony somewhere along the way. I was busy brewing Reanimator while Owen and Joe build the Green deck and jammed games against Jund.
I disappeared for a while, and when I came back Joe and Owen were in a deep game 1 with a newly revamped Eldrazi list, now with fewer Eldrazi, and certainly fewer Eye of Ugins. Man, does that card suck. It sucked especially more when I found it the Eldrazi goes into your hand, not into play. Anyway, Crosby seemed to be outlasting Jund with Vengevines and Momentous Fall, and a top decked Thornling sealed it.
At that point, Owen offered to let me tag in to the Jund side, and I blew Joe out in the next seven games, while he won the last one. Joe commented that if he had only seen the first and last game of the set, he would have declared his brew a success, but he couldn’t ignore the beatings he was receiving in the middle.
Wednesday was the day of the local Legacy tournament, and I decided to partake. We had to suffer through a rough beat when we awoke to find that the internet didn’t work. Joe was on the phone in his living room while I left for a while. When I came back, he was still in the living room, but now was lying face down on the carpet, still on the phone. Apparently it wasn’t going well.
After that whole ordeal, which Charter obviously didn’t seem to care about, we had to make it out of Joe’s parking lot alive. We started backing up, but there was a car next to us with a Mom and her daughter, and her daughter decided that when we started backing up would be a good time for her to open her door as quickly as possible, slamming it into Joe’s car.
We stopped and got out. Joe investigated the scratch/dent combo, and the woman was digging for her insurance info, but Joe, being the master that he is, had other ideas.
Joe: Do you have wifi in your apartment?
Woman: … Huh? Why?
Joe: Give me your internet password and we’ll call it even.
I was short some Entombs, but David Mayer (who ended up winning the Legacy Open) loaned me the cards I was missing. There was some awkwardness with my opponent finding a card from my deck in my jacket during round 1, but I managed to make Top 8, losing to Mono White Stax with Kor Haven and 4c Counterbalance.
I was playing a list with Hapless Researchers and Pernicious Deeds in the sideboard, which I will talk about more in part 2, but suffice it to say, they weren’t pulling their weight.
On Thursday, we tried to meet at Super Games again, but they closed, so a group of us including Tony, Owen, and Andrew Polk all headed across the street to a sick computer gaming area. They let us set up for free and get our testing on. Joe was getting frustrated with the testing since none of his brews were working out, and he seemed to be losing both sides of the Jund versus OTV matchup, so I proposed we take a little time off and do a 2v2.
The card pool seemed reasonably high, and after Joe and I laid out our decks, he said, “So it was you that wasn’t taking cards out of those packs.” Awkward, to say the least. Still, Joe continued his run bad streak and 0-2ed while I managed to 2-0. We called the draft a tie rather than play a tiebreaker.
I stepped outside with Tony, Owen, and another individual (whose name I want to say was Nick, but I can’t remember) who was wearing a poker shirt. One of the CPU gamers came outside and asked Nick if he played poker at all. Nick said it was more of a casual thing, but I saw an opportunity. Tim Bulger and I recently started our own rake back site, so I asked him if he played online at all.
Random Durdle: What?! No, of course I don’t play online!
Me: Hmm… Why’s that?
RD: The players are SO BAD.
Me: That seems like a good thing.
RD: You don’t get it, they are terrible. I lost $65,000 to a guy who called me with 83 offsuit!
Me: Well, as long as you playing within your means, that type of loss shouldn’t affect you, and eventually, those types of swings with even out.
RD: Playing within my means? I’ll play you heads up right now for $20,000.
Me: Perhaps you don’t understand what “playing within your means” means.
RD: I bet you don’t even have $60,000.
Me: (looking down at my torn jeans and old shoes) Good read.
RD: They are SO BAD, you can’t beat them.
Me: …
At this point, Durdly McGee starts chatting up Nick again, Tony is on his iPhone, and Owen is standing in front of the door with a “this is awkward” look on his face. He quickly escapes. I turn my back on The King of all Durdles to look at Tony; we make eye contact and both start laughing, albeit silently. Durdly immediately calls me out.
RD: Oh, now you’re laughing at me!
Me: (impressed that he even noticed as he seemed pretty absorbed in telling Nick about all the traveling he’s done, how he’s cashed the last four WSOPs, and how Daniel Negreanu is the “only” pro he‘s friends with) Yes, I’m laughing at you.
RD: I bet you’re one of the online players I’m talking about.
Me: Actually, I was just about to tell you my rake back site.
RD: Oh, which one?
Me: Rake Ship. It’s new.
RD: Oh yeah that’s a good one. Cool.
Me: I doubt you’ve seen it, we put it up yesterday.
RD: I think I like Full Tilt Poker more, but yours is a good site to play at too.
I wanted to scream “You can’t play poker at our site, it’s only there to give you rake back!” I bit my tongue. It was clear he had no idea what was going on. I had no idea how to explain this to Crosby, but I assumed that Owen already had. Every couple seconds I was looking inside hoping that Joe would come out, as he certainly would have had a good time with our new friend.
Friday was the big day. You know the one. The one you wait for every week. 100 man FNM with no entry, and the only prize being foil Bloodbraid Elves. Hell yeah, it’s Friday! Brian Eason was a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen all week, as for some reason his parents don’t let him go out at night, but let him play MTGO 24/7 instead. For some reason, the image of him hiding MTGO in his math book when his parents came to check up on him made me giggle.
Brian E showed up with about five minutes to spare with all the sexy Glassdust Hulks I needed, and we were ready to battle. I played against a kind gentleman round 1 who first spoke nostalgically of an infinite turn deck he had played some time ago (at least while he was destroying me). Then, during game 2, as I was crushing him, he started talking about how decks like mine took all the fun and skill out of the game.
He asked me if I was having fun a couple times, to which I always responded “Yes.”
He put some pressure on me game 3, and my hand kind of sucked. I could leave two mana open for an Angelsong (yeah, sick card I know), or cast a See Beyond when my board was six mana and my hand was two Open the Vaults and land. I decided to cast the See Beyond, and died on his turn when he had a Brave the Elements to get past my Wall of Omens.
I dropped, but I think I would have regardless of whether I won or lost.
I had my deck all set and ready to go, while Crosby was having second thoughts about playing. While the brewing process was fun, it was clear by now that Jund and UW were equally menacing, and he would get better value out of just sleeping. I couldn’t really argue, but I could certainly rib him for it.
We had to stay up until about 2am waiting for Cedric to arrive. In addition to being an internet free zone, Crosby’s crib didn’t seem to like my crappy Verizon phone either. I wasn’t getting any reception, and Joe didn’t want the phone to ring a bunch of times, waking his wife. Plus, he would probably have to give Ced directions anyway, so we all stayed up.
I was tired at midnight, but naturally, when Cedric showed up at 2:30, I was down to stay up and chat with one of my favorite people. We didn’t get to bed until a couple hours later, but I couldn’t sleep. Not sure what it was, but nothing helped. It didn’t help that soon my nose was all stuffy and I couldn’t breathe. Thankfully, Cedric was pretty light on the snoring for once, and I managed to pass out for roughly thirty minutes before my alarm went off.
Nice.
Oh well. I was thinking of the Standard Open as a freeroll anyway. I liked my deck and thought it was solid, especially against UW Control, but I had changed so much so fast and hadn’t tested nearly as much as I should have (which was in part due to Rise not being on Magic Online). I was really there to play Legacy, but if I did well in Standard, that would be cool too!
Here is what I played:
The tables didn’t have tablecloths, and there was a bump at the edge, so I borrowed a playmat from Owen. I literally can’t remember the last time I’d used a playmat, but I felt like I needed one here. I can’t say I was a fan of his Lifelink playmat, as it was basically a creepy naked dude staring at me (who looked like Varro from Spartacus) surrounded by rainbows, but I couldn’t be picky in this situation.
I gave a few other people my list, but told them to play at their own discretion. I was confident in my ability with it, but couldn’t exactly say whether or not they’d do well with it. It’s not exactly Jund, ya know?
I could write a little more about the deck, my sideboarding strategies, and the reasons for 2 Beleren, 1 Mind Sculptor, but ya’ll would probably just tell me that OTV sucks anyway.
Round 1 I played against UW Control and destroyed him. It was nice to start off the day with a great matchup, and to see that I was playing reasonably well.
In the second, I played against a kid I didn’t recognize, but I quickly realized he was quite competent. I managed to snag game 1, and thought game 2 was in the bag when he led with Forest, Swamp, go. His third turn brought another Swamp, but he had peeled a Leech. He drew a Dragonskull Summit after that and I started to get his with Bloodbraid Elves. My Wall of Omens died to the Bituminous Blasts that he had cleverly kept in, and he showed me a Deathmark the turn I died. Perhaps Baneslayers needed to come out.
Third game I got rolled. Grr, stupid Jund…
Afterward, Crosby commented on how he thought my opponent was pretty good, and I told him I was thinking the same thing. I was especially impressed at how knowledgeable he was based on our later chats. I’m expecting big things from Mr. Zach Shaffner, who ended up finishing 9th on Day 1.
I won a few more rounds before getting knocked out round 7 by Bant Conscription. He played a turn 5 Sovereigns of Lost Alara and I Time Warped a few times, but since I didn’t have Jace or Howling Mine, I didn’t have enough cards to go off.
In the second game I mulliganed and kept a one-lander with Howling Mine, but missed my second drop for three turns and was too far behind after that.
After the match, he asked me if he should have sided in Negates against me; if you’re not going to side them in against me, why even bother having them?
Despite being out of Top 8 contention, I stuck it out to try and hit Top 16, although it seemed unlikely. When standings went up before the last round, it looked like I’d get 15th if I won, but my breakers dropped and I finished in 18th with my 8-2 record. Tied for dead last.
Before Top 8 started, Megan Holland drove me, Lewis Laskin, and Ben Stark to Chick Fil-A. We took the drive through, and I proposed we game for it since all I had were twenties and making change would be a nightmare I didn’t want to have to go through. Naturally, I got the pleasure of paying.
Congratulations were in order for Ben and Lewis, who dominated the tournament (with a deck that almost looks like it stinks). We hung out for a bit waiting for the tournament to finish, but after that it was time for bed! Or rather, time to lie in bed with my eyes wide open.
Next week: Reanimating the Legacy Open, and the conclusion to my excellent week in Atlanta.
GerryT