PV’s Playhouse – Brazilian Nationals *1st*

Hello!

Before I start, I’d like to say I greatly appreciate the replies on the forum for my last article, even if I couldn’t answer them at the time because I was traveling to São Paulo to play Nationals (and posting there now would be kind of a moot point because I doubt anyone is going to read it). I will write a part two, though not today — this is not something I want to rush, as I think it’s better to wait until I get home from Boston and Brighton. Today, we get back to business. That said, this is my 2009 Nationals Report.

It all started with, as always, me not knowing what to play. I really did not want to play Faeries this time — I thought Great Sable Stag was too much of a problem, and it made matches that I theoretically won easily a lot harder, like Five-Color Control. I ditched Faeries and started looking for something else.

Of all the decks that existed, I didn’t see myself playing anything other than Five-Color Control. Elfball is a deck I dislike very much, and it would be targeted; Mono Red has a bad matchup against 80% of the field as I see it, Kithkin has a bad matchup against every single deck that is not Mono Red — it’s probably the worst deck in the format, since at least Mono Red can steal some wins — and all the rogue decks, like Time Sieve, flat out lost to Faeries. I don’t like a deck that flat out loses, especially at Nationals.

I had a problem with Five-Color Control, however – one I’ve had since Kyoto, where I considered playing it — the Mana. The amount of games you lose to Mana problems is just absurd. They range from never finding a fourth land, to running out of counters on your non-Blue Vivid, to hands with all Filters, to situations where you can’t cast Cruel Ultimatum or Esper Charm because of the lands you have. I know all decks have risks, but it’s so frustrating to lose like that with five colors, because, well, there is nothing you can do about it — except for maybe adding a land.

There are tournaments in which you can gamble, in which you think you have to do that. Brazilian Nationals is not one of those tournaments. With a deck like Five-Color Control, if I lose to those mana problems, I’m going to lose no matter what my opponent does — there is no way for me to go around it. That is not something I want to happen in a tournament where I think I’m better than the majority of the competition, I want decks that I can go around my losing situations instead. So, for the time, I was stuck on Five-Color Control as my option in case I couldn’t find anything else, but I decided to keep looking.

The Five-Color Control list we had was quite similar to Shuhei’s, except we had Baneslayer over Broodmate, which I think is a huge upgrade. I know it dies and all, but it’s so powerful and game-winning when it doesn’t that I think it’s worth it. Many decks will just lose to turn 5 Baneslayer. We were also considering a different removal package — I’m not sure I like the Doom Blade much there. We thought Stag was a real problem – I’m not sure why everyone was not maindecking that guy in their Green aggro decks, but it’s really good against Shuhei’s list — so we thought about Lightning Bolt, but that doesn’t get rid of the Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender in Elves. The only removal I can think of that gets both Forge-Tender and Stag is Path to Exile, so we had a couple of those even though I really hate the card in a control deck.

One of the decks we tried was Jund Aggro. We had two lists, the one with the Nameless/Vanquisher package, and one without those, more burn oriented, with Javelins as well as Bolt and Fallout — both ran 4 maindeck Stags. The Jund deck had some mana problems too — nothing like the Five-Color Control, but some that included too many lands coming into play tapped — but its biggest problem was drawing the right type of card at the right time. The deck simply ran too many removal spells, in my opinion — the version with the better mana was even worse at that, because of the Nameless Inversion. Its Bloodbraid Elf is probably the worst, since it just flips cards you can’t cast left and right. Still, it sounded very appealing because its sideboard was awesome — you had access to Anathemancer and Infest, which are probably the best two sideboard cards in the format, and the Top 8 was best of five.

People have different ambitions when they play tournaments, but for me Nationals was all about the team. Top 8 wouldn’t make me unhappy, since it’s 4 pro points after all, but my goal was the National team. I wanted to represent my country again. For that, I needed to win the best of five, and for that I needed a good sideboard. Top 4 matters even more in Brazilian Nationals, since, well, 5-8th get absolutely nothing. Not even a booster pack. Just… nothing.

We started testing Jund, and my testing group liked it. I told my friend to play it against me with Faeries, so I’d get the Faerie’s decks perspective. I just wanted to be sure, but the deck would surely beat Faeries, since we maindecked four Stags and four Fallouts — except not.

The first game started with me being double Stagged and Fallouted. I almost stopped playing after that — it was clear I had no chance. But then I started winning. I kept losing games to Stag plus Fallout or to double Stag, but it was really hard to lose a game in which he didn’t have Stag — I don’t know who made up that Faeries lost to Jund before M10 – and sometimes I could just race it if there hadn’t been any Fallouts involved. We ended up tying the games.

I played against other versions of Jund, and it became clear that the only thing that mattered in the matchup from their side was those 8 cards — they didn’t really win with anything else. It did not make much of a difference in the win percentages if they were playing Sygg, Vanquisher, Grizzly Bears — it was all almost irrelevant in the face of Stag and Fallout. I played a lot more games, against different people and builds, and the end result was I lost 24-26.

That might not seem like a good record, but I had to realize that was the worst possible scenario — an aggro deck that maindecked the 8 best cards against me. If I was tying with that deck, where my sideboard would help, then what was I going to lose to?

While I was pondering my options, I got a message from Frank Karsten on Facebook, telling me he wanted to play Faeries. I replied and he said he wasn’t very afraid of the Stag, that he had tested and it was very beatable. I also had another friend tell me he liked Faeries, and that I could run the 26 lands I wanted if I had two Gargoyle Castles, which also doubled as an answer to the Stag.

I decided to give my faithful deck another try. I played a lot of games against Elves, whose popularity I drastically overestimated, and it was even/favorable for Faeries game 1. Then I tried game 2 and it was surprisingly much much better — even with Stags, Guttural Response, and Oversouls.

It became apparent from that testing that Stag, per se, was not a threat — he was only very good against you in a Red deck. Now, don’t get me wrong, Stag is very good against you even in Elves, but you have a lot of ways around that. You can double Mutavault, Scion of Oona + Vault, Sower something, Gargoyle Castle it… and once you deal with it, it’s almost like it never happened. If you go to six life dealing with it, then once you do it’s not going to matter much, because Elves is often unable to deal the last points of damage.

Your sideboard, on the other hand, completely destroys them. There are two ways Elves beats Faeries. The first is they play a lot of early mana Elves and Primal Command on turn 3, and if you don’t have an answer, that’s probably enough to beat you by itself on the play. The second is just swarming the board with Elves and attacking. Your sideboard combats both of those fronts, as well as the Stag. Deathmark and Thoughtseize make it so that an early Command is less probable, and Infest ruins the swarming the board plan, so you definitely have the edge here.

Five-Color Control is still the easy match it was preboard, but it gets a lot harder after board because of Stag. You just have to be more proactive, though — play cards like Vendilion Clique instead of Jace Beleren, for instance. I played games post board and it wasn’t very hard, even with Stag, which they couldn’t really cast turn 3 all the time. It was also a very common play for me to just play Mistbind Clique mainphase. It’s like your own Stag in this match, really. If you imagine the scenario where you are on the play (which will happen at least once if you win game 1), they might go turn 3 Stag – and then you go turn 3 Scion/Vendilion/Stutter and turn 4 mainphase Mistbind, and they can’t do much about it. Their best bet is to draw their one Doom Blade, if they do play it, or mainphase a Plumeveil, which you can then try to answer with another Scion, Doom Blade, Agony Warp, Warren Weirding, or anything, because they are tapped out. Some people say this match is really bad, but I don’t see how. The way I see it, you are certainly more favored pre board than they are post board.

Kithkin is the easy matchup it’s always been, but now with Infest, which I didn’t run before, and the full four Sowers. I know this is a topic of controversy, but I still think (more like “am sure”) this is a good match for Faeries.

Mono Red is Mono Red — it’s not a good match, but you can certainly win if you play tight.

After that I kept corresponding with Karsten (who lost in the Top 8 of his Nationals to the mirror, congrats!) and also talked a bit with LSV, who didn’t really know what to play at the time. He was trying Time Warp in Faeries, which I hadn’t considered, but after playing a while with it I decided not to run it, since I was tired of Urza’s Baubling it on turn 5.

After some more games, I decided I’d play Faeries again — the whole “I really know how to play this deck, it’s hard to play against, etc” that everyone already knows. This was the list I played:

I decided to go back to 4 Stutters over Ambitions because it’s better against most decks in the format right now (specially Elves), and I think racing is more important because of Stag, and another creature helps. I also have two Vendilions now, so that is more Faeries to work with.

I didn’t have Peppersmoke because there was simply no room. I wanted powerful cards, like Thoughtseize, Vendilion, and Sower, and though Peppersmoke is not bad, it’s not a powerful card. It’s very good versus Elves, though, because killing their turn 1 Llanowar is a tremendous help.

I originally had 3 Swamps 5 Islands, but once I removed the Peppersmokes I decided I didn’t need as many Black sources on turn 1 — after turn 2, 14 sources should be more than enough. Thoughtseizing people on turn 2 is only problematic if you’re on the draw in the mirror, but 7 sources is hardly much better than 6 anyway — I felt it was more important to be able to Cryptic people consistently.
I played four Agony Warps instead of Doom Blades because I expected a lot more aggro decks, like Red and Jund, and Agony Warp is way better against those. I like Doom Blade more versus Five-Color Control and Faeries (Plumeveil and Mistbind), but Karsten kept arguing for Agony Warp, and I decided it was more important to have help in my bad matches than in my good matches. It ended up not being a very good decision, since our Nationals had way more Five-Color Control than anything else I think, at least at the top tables, but it never really mattered. After this U.S. Nationals top 8, I’d probably play 2-2.

The sideboard has three Puppeteer Cliques, because they are good against Five-Color Control and Mono Red, and I had heard there was going to be a lot of Mono-Red with Ball Lightning. Since there was a lot of Mono-Red, the Mono-Red players decided to play Demigods to beat the mirror, and Puppeteer Clique is insane against that.

Warren Weirding was my last minute addition, because I had slots against Five-Color Control and against Red, and this was a card I could board against both. It’s not the best against Red, but it does deal with an early Figure, Sygg, Demigod or the Gouger that people played in the sideboard. It’s also good against Jund — even if you kill their Putrid Leech with it, it’s already fine — just be careful because Boggart Ram-Gang is a Goblin. It’s not any good against Elves, though, as they always have something bad to sacrifice.

Anyway, onto the tournament…

Round 1: Faeries

Faeries mirror is the same match it’s ever been, so I’m not going to go and repeat myself. Game 1 I killed him with 2 Gargoyle Castles and a Command to tap everything once he found Blossom, and game 2 he mulliganed and stalled on Lands.

I sided -1 Vendilion Clique -1 Agony Warp -2 Mistbind Clique +2 Thoughtseize +2 Sower of Temptation

2-0, 1-0

Round 2: Five-Color Control

First game I’m on the play and I open Secluded Glen, Castle, Island, Thoughtseize, Bitterblossom, Command and Mistbind. Then he mulligans to four – what a waste.

Game two was interesting. My hand is again pretty good, with Thoughtseize, Secluded Glen and Blossom (see, I told you I didn’t need more Black sources!), and I see Island, some Vivids and nothing much relevant. Then I pass and on his turn he plays the Island and passes. Now, this is a play I’ve done myself more than once – to play the untapped Land when my opponent knows I have one that comes into play tapped – so I had to consider whether I thought he had drawn the Broken Ambitions or not.

In the end, I decided I was not going to give him that much credit. He didn’t have any other untapped Lands in hand, so my Bitterblossom would resolve next turn anyway, or the next – he would stop drawing untapped Lands at some point and I’d be able to pay for it. The problem with my play was that I stopped drawing Lands before he did – so in the end I had to run my Blossom there anyway, and all my play did was give him enough time to draw an answer if he was bluffing one before. He had an Esper Charm, and in the end he played a Broodmate Dragon when I was still stuck on three Lands and I lost.

I’m still not sure what I should have done – I mean, clearly in that situation it’d have been much better to just run the Blossom there, because he didn’t have the Ambitions, but was that the right thing to do? Playing the Island there is pretty dangerous for him – what if he draws a spell he wants to cast, such as Ajani, Cryptic, or whatever? He’s going to have to wait one more turn, because all his remaining Lands are Vivids. If I call his bluff and play the Blossom, that play will cost him a lot. However, it did work for him this time, so kudos. In the end, I think I should probably have just played the Bitterblossom on turn 2 – if he has the Broken, then so be it, the game goes on.

Game 3 I again had Bitterblossom turn two. I Thoughtseized his Fallout, and he Pyroclasmed at some point. He then followed with Broodmate Dragon, which I Commanded, and on my turn I had a Puppeteer to get a Dragon of my own and he couldn’t handle that.

I sided -2 Sower of Temptation -2 Agony Warp -2 Spellstutter Sprite -2 Scion of Oona +2 Thoughtseize +1 Vendilion Clique +2 Warren’s Weirding +3 Puppeteer Clique

2-1, 2-0

Round 3: Five-Color Control

He is on the play game one, and when I play a Spellstutter on his turn three he pauses for a while and lets it resolve. I attack, and he flashes in Plumeveil, which I Broken Ambitions. If he had played his Plumeveil at the end of his own turn, when I was tapped out, that’d have been much better for him – far too many people have this aversion to sorcery speeding instants, because it’s so intuitively wrong – you are often paying a higher price just to be able to play it instant speed, and it feels like you are downgrading your card or not using it to its full potential if you just play it on your turn, but it’s often the correct play to do so.

I attack a bit, countering an end of the turn Esper Charm with Spellstutter + Mutavault, and another with Cryptic Command. He Pyroclasms both my Stutters away, and then I play Bitterblossom + mainphase Mistbind while he is tapped out. He has no way to deal with the Mistbind and that kills him.

Game 2 I Thoughtseize his Stag, and he is stuck on three Lands. I play a Blossom, and this time he mainphases a Plumeveil, but I have the Weirding for it. In the end, the Blossom just wins.

2-0, 3-0

I was certainly lucky there, both with my pairings and my draws. It was the first time I ever started 3-0 in a National Championship, so I was pretty happy.

The draft started with some delay, as is due in any respectable Brazilian tournament, and I opened my first pack that contained Agony Warp and Caldera Hellion. I picked the Helion, and next I got the choice between Branching Bolt and Jund Charm – I picked the Bolt, as it’s not only more flexible but the better card overall right now in my opinion, with Esper being the best deck and all that. Also, no one really plays around Bolt anymore those days, since we only have one Shards pack.

The third pack had Necrogenesis, and in the fourth I picked a Jungle Shrine. Fifth pick I then have the choice between Knight of the Skyward Eye and Corpse Connoisseur. I picked the Knight, which is in my opinion a bad pick – I was considering myself as having the same number of cards in Naya and Jund, and so the choice being between the two cards in pure power level terms – and I think the Knight is better now – but Necrogenesis is clearly a much bigger reason to go Jund than Jungle Shrine is to go Naya. God decided I had to be punished for my wrong pick, and I got sent Scourge Devil, Dredscape Zombie and Undead Leotau in a row, and after opening Shambling Remains I was solidly in Jund.

Second booster went bad as planned for everyone who was not Esper, and third booster saved everyone’s decks from unplayability, again as planned. There was one particularly good pack for me, where I got Maelstrom Pulse second and then wheeled Putrid Leech tenth. At one point, I had the choice between a Borderpost and a Gorger Wurm, and I picked the Wurm first, because I was almost sure a Borderpost was going to wheel from my first pack – it had 10 good cards left, and two Borderposts, both of them in my color combinations – and I needed a big guy. I got the same decision one pack later, and then I picked the Borderpost – as well as the second one that wheeled as I thought. My deck ended up like this:

4 Forest
4 Mountain
6 Swamp
1 Jungle Shrine
1 Dregscape Zombie
1 Undead Leotau
1 Caldera Hellion
1 Scourge Devil
1 Pestilent Kathari
1 Singe Mind Ogre
1 Putrid Leech
1 Canyon Minotaur
1 Scarland Thrinax
1 Shambling Remains
1 Deadshot Minotaur
1 Gorger Wurm
1 Vithian Renegades
1 Ember Weaver
1 Jund Sojourners
1 Branching Bolt
1 Necrogenesis
1 Absorb Vis
1 Wretched Banquet
1 Fiery Fall
1 Molten Frame
1 Firewild Borderpost
1 Veinfire Borderpost
1 Sangrite Backlash
1 Maelstrom Pulse

Round 4: Esper

Game 1 I’m stuck on lands – he makes turn 1 Homunculus, turn 2 Darklit Gargoyle, turn 3 attack for 5, and I have to cycle my Molten Frame instead of killing the Gargoyle and saving myself 4 life as I don’t have any other land in hand. I kill the Gargoyle on my turn and he plays a Thopter Foundry, and keeps beating with a flying token with double Exalted. I have my Pulse in hand, but if I kill the token he’ll just make another one, so I try to make him sacrifice some more artifacts (hopefully the Foundry itself) so that I can nail more than one token with the Pulse, but he never does that, and in the end I just lose to it.

As we’re shuffling for game 2, I realize his sleeves are completely different. I’m not sure how I did not see it game 1 – I must’ve been very distracted – but once I realized it, they were clearly two different types – one was white white, and the other was white transparent and you could see the back of the card. I called a judge, who quickly sorted them in two piles, and then went to talk to the head judge.

It turned out there was a pattern in the marked cards my opponent had – all the spells were in one kind of sleeve, and almost all the lands were in the other. The judge talked to my opponent and the conclusion was that he had not shuffled his cards or his sleeves, and just put them on in the order he had them, and then he didn’t realize when one kind of sleeve was over and the next one started and just kept sleeving as if they were the same. He got a game loss for Marked Cards with a Pattern, but no intention to cheat, and we were off to the third game.

The third game was very frustrating for both of us, for me because I again had to cycle my spells in the hopes of finding a third land (and when I do it’s another Red, so I’m stuck with Mountain Mountain Forest and a hand full of Black cards on turn 5), and for him because he is flooded and cannot capitalize on it. I finally draw my land and stabilize at four life, and then he can’t really beat me anymore – it was the typical No Lands x All Lands match – at some point, the guy without lands is going to draw them, and then he’ll have seven cards in hand, whereas the guy with all lands is only going to draw one per turn and won’t really be able to compete.

2-1, 4-0

Round 5: Naya

Round 5 I played against a Naya deck. I lose the first game, and in the second one I apply some quick pressure, but it dies out very fast because I keep drawing lands. I have a Pestilent Kathari and a Scarland Thrinax (which is now the worst card ever), and he is at five life and has a lot of monsters. He attacks me down to two, and I’m facing three 5/4s. He could have killed me in the attack if he had attacked with a Druid of the Anima, but then he would lose to any removal spell that could take down a big guy. At this point, I think there is nothing in my deck that can save me, but then I draw and it’s the Absorbing Vis I didn’t even remember was in my deck. I attack for one and kill him with it.

Game 3 I again come out quickly, and I’m able to Unearth some guys to put him at four, with me holding Absorbing Vis, five lands, and a Fiery Fall. I draw my seventh land before he is able to kill me, and that is it.

2-1, 5-0

Round 6

Round 6 was very easy. My opponent kept 2 Forests game 1 and discarded twice before he died, and game 2 I unearthed Scourge Devil and Shambling Remains in the same turn to put him to four, when he had one creature and I had two 4/4s. He played Sigil Blessing on his Valeron Outlander and then Caldera Hellion, not realizing his Caldera Hellion would kill itself – his good play would be to play Hellion, stack the ability and Sigil Blessing the 2/2, leaving both alive as blockers – but that was a moot point because I had Absorbing Vis in hand anyway.

2-0, 6-0

I was very pleased with my result (well, obv). It had been relatively easy – everything just fell in place so much that it looked like some greater power was conspiring for me to win.

During round 6, we get an announcement that says round 7 is going to start at 9 o’clock the next morning, and whoever gets there late is not eligible to play.

I wake up the next day and rush my roommates (who weren’t really playing for anything else at that point, and so didn’t care as much as I did about getting there late). We end up getting there 8:45, and waiting one hour and fifteen minutes standing in front of the store, as the doors only opened at around 10:15 – we couldn’t even sit.

I understand some delays, but, frankly, one hour? For the tournament to START? Everyone was already registered. What could they possibly be doing that could not have been done earlier to prevent that delay? It really felt like they were disrespecting us, even more so because of the lecture they gave the day before about not being late. I really wish these absurd delays in Brazilian tournaments would stop. It’s becoming more and more frustrating every time.

I knew almost everyone in my draft pod this time. My first pack started with Crumbling Necropolis and nothing else, and in the second I picked Agony Warp over Magma Spray. I followed that with Viscera Dragger, then a Skeletonize out of a pack that still had a Bloodpyre Elemental. Then came another Dragger, and then a pack with Vithian Stinger and Soul’s Fire. I took the Stinger, knowing that meant I was probably going to get close to no Red in pack 2 and almost all of it in pack 3. I wheeled a Dregscape Zombie and an Undead Leotau before the pack ended.

Pack 2 was disastrous. At that point, my only Blue card was Agony Warp, and I was looking to make it a splash, so I was willing to pick cards like Goblin Outlander higher than usual. I opened a Voracious Dragon, which I slammed, and then had to pick Rupture Spire, Zombie Outlander, and Faerie Mechanist in a row. After that I managed to grab two Wretched Banquet and a Pestilent Kathari (which I believe is highly underrated), and that was it.

Pack 3 I first picked a Giant Ambush Beetle and second picked a Sangrite Backlash, and then got, in order, Lightning Reaver, Terminate, Slave of Bolas, Terminate, Defiler of Souls. I was right about getting the nuts in pack 3 – that’s seven first-pick quality cards right there. The only interesting pick was the 10th, where I had to choose between Demonic Dread and Soul Manipulation. I really didn’t want to splash Blue, even though the Soul Manipulation would be good with my two Viscera Draggers, and I had double Terminate for the Cascade spell to work, so I figured I could sideboard the Banquets out and bring it in against a deck with a lot of fatties – I picked the Demonic Dread. It was really poor drafting skills on my part, since my picks 11-14 were another three Demonic Dreads – I should have remembered I had passed that many and would have other opportunities to pick them up.

As it turns out, picking Soul Manipulation would only be good as a countermeasure, since my deck turned up pretty insane without it – but it was still a mistake to even consider picking the Demonic Dread there. My deck:

7 Mountain
9 Swamp
1 Crumbling Necropolis
1 Dregscape Zombie
1 Salvage Titan
1 Undead Leotau
2 Viscera Dragger
1 Scourge Devil
1 Vithian Stinger
1 Sewn Eye Drake
1 Giant Ambush Beetle
1 Pestilent Kathari
1 Defiler of Souls
1 Kathari Bomber
1 Lightning Reaver
1 Singe Mind Ogre
1 Voracious Dragon
1 Slave of Bolas
1 Sangrite Backlash
2 Terminate
1 Yoke of the Damned
2 Wretched Banquet
1 Skeletonize

I was very pleased with my deck. It had everything going for it: game-defining bombs, premium removal, solid creatures, and it did that while already overcoming the biggest challenge in the format, namely the mana. The only thing I was not entirely happy with was that there were many cards that cost 5 or 6, but I could work around that with my cheap removal and my two Cyclers. I could have played one of the Dreads over the Yoke of the Damned, but I ended up deciding I didn’t want randomness to interfere with a deck this good. I could also have cut the two Banquets for three Dreads there, but since I had so many late game cards I figured the cheap removal would help me more than effectively more Terminates and Backlashes for three mana.

Round 7: Carlos Romao

This was a feature match against Carlos Romao, the only other 6-0 player at the time. I felt pretty confident. Carlos was seat 1 and I was seat 4, and he kept complaining about how those cards had gotten so me this late without the players in between us picking them. It also helped that Willy looked at both our decks before the round and told Carlos that he shouldn’t even bother to sit down in the feature match area to play.

My excitement started to fade when my turn 2 Dredscape Zombie was met by a turn 2 Valeron Outlander from him, since there are only four non Black cards in my deck. It turned out he didn’t really have anything else, and what he did make I promptly killed, so he died before the Valeron could kill me all by itself.

Game 2 dragged on for a long time – I had a Skeletonize token and a Pestilent Kathari that he couldn’t really get through, but I also couldn’t attack with anything. I could have used removal earlier to try to force some damage – like killing his 2/4 when I had a 3/3 out that couldn’t attack because of it – but decided to save it for creatures that would be more problematic, since I believed the stalled board favored my deck. I started attacking with the Kathari when the board allowed, and at some point he played the 3/3 that gives +1/+1 to your team and attacked with everything. I Terminated one, made some blocks and double blocks and took 6, falling to a still healthy total – I believe 6. I messed up my blocks, because I simply forgot to account for the toughness boost of one of his guys, and could have double blocked it to kill it, but in the end it didn’t matter because he couldn’t really deal the last points of damage through my wall of guys. I ended up drawing the Defiler of Souls to kill him in one turn, but I was going to get it done with five more Pestilent Kathari attacks.

2-0, 7-0

I was the only undefeated player.

Round 8

I got paired against the same Absorbing Vis guy from round 5. We played 3 games – in the first he was flooded and I slaughtered him. In the second I had a lot of powerful cards in my hand but they all cost too much, and when I finally drew my land to play them I was dead to his board. In the third I had double Banquet for his first two guys, and then my unearth guys and removal spells did the job, while he flooded. Nothing really exciting.

Round 9: Esper

Game 1 I killed everything my opponent played and then killed him with Defiler of Souls, the relevant point being that I saw Ethersworn Canonist.

Game 2 is trickier, because I’m stuck on five Swamps, but he has only a Canonist for pressure. He had set up my draws for the last three turns with the Architect of Will, so he knew I was going to draw Skeletonize and then finally a Mountain. In his turn, he tapped five lands, untapped them and passed. I didn’t buy the Traumatic Visions and ran my Salvage Titan in there anyway (because, even if he does have it, what am I going to do? He has board advantage, I can’t be passive. But I was almost sure he didn’t have it – I trusted him enough as a player to think that he wouldn’t give it out that easily if he did have it), and it turned out he did not have it. He had a Crystallization for it, and kept attacking.

In my next turn I decided to play Vithian Stinger and Pestilent Kathari, but Canonist decided that was too many non Artifact Spells for the same turn and I got a warning instead. Stuck with my Vithian Stinger, I passed.

Next turn I finally played my Kathari, and passed with three open mana. He played something that left him with three open too, and attacked into my Kathari with his Canonist. I decided he was not bluffing the Shieldmage, and took the damage, going to a low life total. Then I untapped, and I now had Skeletonize mana up, so the game dragged on, with me not being able to play Skeletonize because of his supposed Shieldmage, and him not being able to play it because of my Skeletonize. He drew a Blister Beetle, killing my Kathari, and then unearthed his 4/4, and I felt it was better to chump it with my Stinger. My board is Viscera Dragger and a 3/2 Ogre, and he has just the Canonist, and I’m at two. I attack with the Dragger, putting him to 5, and pass. At the end of my turn, he uses his splashed Mountain to Magma Spray my 3/2.

I consider my options – I can Skeletonize my guy, or Skeletonize his. That all bows down to whether I think he has the Shieldmage or not. If I Skeletonize my guy, it’ll give me another turn to draw something (because I have to Skeletonize the Dragger, since if I do it on the Ogre he’ll just play the Shieldmage on my turn still, and it’s going to be one more attacker than I can handle, and then it’s going to be my Skeleton versus his two 2/3s for next turn). I decided that he did have the Shieldmage – if he does not have it, my play is terrible, but I had such conviction that he did have it from the way he played – like waiting a turn to get to 8 mana before playing his 5 mana guy, or attacking into my Kathari earlier on – that I put all my stakes in it. I let the Ogre die, and when he attacked I Skeletonized the Dragger. I blocked his Canonist, and he played a Cloudheath Drake and another guy, tapping out, and passed.

I drew my card – Lightning Reaver. He was at 5. I played it and attacked. He read the card and said something like “I don’t die right?”. I asked “oh, you’re at 5? duh…” and he said “yeah.” Then I asked “but, well, you take three, right.” He confirmed. Then I unearthed my Vithian Stinger and killed him. I then asked him if had the Shieldmage, and he told me he did, and then I told him he could have blocked my guy with his Drake – since it’s an artefact – and he was a bit embarrassed about that. I was pretty happy about how that game played out – it was maybe the one game in the tournament where I thought I had won when almost everyone else would have lost.

So, I was 9-0, locked in for Top 8 – the second place had only 22 points, and I had 27. I now had the luxury to decide my opponents. There would be two criteria for me – people who had decks I did not mind facing, and people who I knew and were friendly enough, and I knew would probably scoop to me in a 3rd/4th playoff because they didn’t care about the pro points. Historically, most people do not even want to play teams, as they’d rather have an extra day to sightsee, since the money from teams is always evenly split between the four and they couldn’t care less about the Pro Points.

My first two opponents met this criteria – two friends playing UBR Faeries and Elves. I scooped both in. The mirror is not a match I like playing, but I think I have a good edge if they are playing Red, since the mana is so much worse, and I knew he would probably scoop in the 3rd/4th playoffs so I wouldn’t mind having him there. I scooped both in.

My last opponent I really didn’t know, and he was playing Elves. Since I didn’t know him, I didn’t know if he cared much about being part of the national team, so I had no idea if he would scoop to me in the playoffs or not, and I was not about to start asking. He was playing Elves, a match I don’t mind facing, but I knew from the top tables that I wasn’t really going to bring up anything worse for me than Elves if I beat him – it would probably be either the Time Sieve combo deck, or a Mannequin deck (I had 3 Puppeteer) or Kithkin. Ultimately, what weighted the most was the fact that if I beat him, I would surely be 1st seed in the swiss, and Carlos would surely be the 3rd, which meant we would only meet in Finals, and he was the one player I didn’t want to play before that because, if I made the team, I’d want him with me. I also wanted to play my deck that day – I didn’t want to go into the Top 8 when my last match had been with another deck, I wanted to make myself more familiar with it again. We played.

Game 1 he destroyed me with the “turn 3 Command on the play” draw. Game 2 I kept a questionable hand of 3 Bitterblossom, Command, 3 lands. I promptly drew my fourth Bitterblossom on my first draw step, but since my second draw was a Spellstutter, I didn’t play a second turn 3, deciding it was more important to counter an Archdruid or something. He played Stag on his turn 3, and then I just never played the Blossom. I drew a Cryptic Command, and after that I don’t think I drew a single spell for the rest of the game, but my lands were Gargoyle Castle and Mutavault, so I was able to race him with Blossom and win with the other three still in my hand.

Game 3 his draw was pretty bad, and he also didn’t play very well. He played Mosswort Bridge turn 1 and when I Thoughtseized him I saw Forest and Llanowar Elves – there is clearly no reason not to play the Elf turn 1 there. I took the Llanowar out, since his hand was Llanowar, Archdruid, and two Ranger of Eos. I didn’t have an answer for his Druid, but I did have for everything else. I had two Scions and a Spellstutter out, and in his last turn he played a Primal Command with one card in hand and four mana left, plus a Llanowar. I played Command for counter + Tap (I had another Command in hand) and he just binned his Primal and tapped all his guys, and after some thought said “I’ll float one from Llanowar Elves.” The judge was watching it, and I ask him if my opponent was allowed to do that. He went to check with the head judge and I was pretty sure the answer was no, but then I thought that, well, it didn’t really make much of a difference, I would probably not lose to his second Command since I had a second of my own, and even if I did it wouldn’t matter much because I was already in, and I was feeling kind of bad for him for not scooping, so I decided to pose as the good guy and let him take it back. He played the second Command, gained 7 and searched for a Cloudthresher, but died the same on the next turn because I had another Command myself.

I boarded -1 Scion of Oona -3 Mistbind Clique -2 Agony Warp -3 Broken Ambitions +2 Deathmark +3 Infest +2 Sower of Temptation +2 Thoughtseize

I understand taking out Agony Warps for Deathmark is not the best improvement in the world, but since I have Deathmarks in the sideboard already, I might as well bring it in, as they are better than any other removal spell you might run maindeck, so there is no reason not to make the swap.

The top 8 was announced and my bracket couldn’t possibly be better – I was going to play against the Time Sieve combo deck, and then the winner of our match would play the winner of the Time Sieve versus Five-Color Control match, which was bound to be Time Sieve. We got to fill the player profiles, and the last question was if I wanted to thank anyone. I consider answering “I’d like to thank the Finnish National Champion for winning with that deck, so people play it and I get paired against them,” but that would make me the most idiotic person ever if I managed to lose the match (and though I knew it couldn’t be hard, I had never actually played it), so I settled for the usual friends and family.

My top 8 match started; he won the die roll and game 1 was a lot closer than I thought it would be. He kept playing Borderposts and Command on my lands to try to resolve two spells in one turn. In the end he had 9 mana to my 6, but his Tezzeret + Command met my Command + Broken Ambitions, and he lost.

I boarded -2 Sower -1 Essence Scatter for +2 Thoughtseize +1 Vendilion Clique. I left the Agony Warps there because they had Canonist sideboard, and I had nothing else to bring in anyway. My plan was to take out two Warps for two Sowers in games where I was on the play, since tapping out on turn four for a random beater on the draw is too dangerous but on the play it might not be.

Game 2 I mulliganed into Mutavault, Castle, Thoughtseize, Blossom, Stutter, Ambitions. I decided to keep – this hand had all the good cards against him, and in my mind, either he would play Howling Mine and I’d find the Land, or he wouldn’t play Howling Mine and then I’d have all the time in the world to find the Land, because that deck doesn’t kill any fast without it. My first Land was a Sunken Ruins, and he killed me with Tezzeret ultimate before I could stick four Lands into play (though I did draw a Secluded Glen two turns before I died, he had Commanded two Lands back to my hand).

It was probably a mistake to keep this hand – the matchup is so good it’s no use risking it. If he plays Howling Mine, which was what I was counting on, then I can recover from a mulligan to 5 too.

Third game I had Thoughtseize plus double Spellstutter, and when one of them countered his Borderpost and he passed without I played a land he didn’t really have a chance.

The fourth game was pretty easy. I had double Blossom on turns 2 and 3, and he played a Font of Mythos on turn 4. I drew my two cards and played Cryptic, bouncing it – he didn’t replay it and just died when I flashed in Mistbind.

I got paired against the expected Time Sieve again, and, well, I won 3-0 in three very quick games. Granted, he had mana problems in all of them, and I had good draws in all of them, plus the matchup is good and I already had a clue of what I was doing from having played against it the round before, so he never stood much of a chance with all those combined.

I had made it!

Being on the National team had been, as I said, my goal for the weekend – I had fulfilled it. I was going to represent my country, and I’d have at least one very good teammate, one of the best players in the country and one of the people I like the most in the entire world – my opponent from the finals, Carlos Romao, with Five-Color Control.

I knew the match against Carlos would not be easy, as he is very good, but his build was somewhat worse against mine, with Negates over Broken Ambitions, which meant Mistbind was very likely landing and he only had one Doom Blade for that. Being best of five favored him, but I was not really worried about it.

I left my semi-finals and went to the play area for the finals, when he greeted me with a hug and said “congratulations, you’re the National champion.” I was a bit puzzled – surely the match was not that easy – and he explained that the pro points didn’t matter to him nearly as much as they did to me, and he was happy to scoop and let me be the champion – and I also knew he wanted me to get to Level 8 because of the hotel room. I didn’t really know what to say about that – I was definitely not expecting it – but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t very pleased. It was not the glorious final I was expecting and people wanted to watch, and I’m sorry I could not provide that, but it’s obviously in my best interest to accept the concession.

I realize this practice is frowned upon, and I generally agree, but it seemed better that he conceded outright instead of just faking a final where he made a lot of mistakes – he doesn’t deserve that – so he just conceded and we didn’t get to play. Some people said I was not a deserving champion for that, but try to look at it from my side – can I really have merit taken away from me because my opponent, who is one of my best friends, decided to scoop out of sheer good will? Would anyone have said “No, don’t scoop”…? Does it make me less of a National champion? If one of the guys I scooped into the Top 8 had won the whole thing, would they not deserve it because I decided to scoop them in? Do I have this much power?

Besides, as far as being a deserving champion goes, well… I did go 13-0 in matches played, I was the first seed in the swiss, and I trust my ability to win that match in the finals, and so did he. I have to say that, if anyone is the deserving Brazilian National Champion, that person is most definitely me. I’ll be very honored to represent my country again, and very happy to carry the flag… and, most importantly of all, I’ll make sure we give Japan a run for its money.

For anyone interested, this is our team:

Paulo Vitor — Faeries
Carlos Romao – Five-Color Control
Aristides Camara – Faeries with Red
Eloi Pattaro – Time Sieve

The top 8 was another Time Sieve, a White Weenie, a Five-Color Control, and an Elves. Overall, a pretty friendly Top 8 for Faeries – the Five-Color Control is the hardest match in there, but, as I’ve said, very winnable. Everything else I consider to be good, especially in a best out of five (and I later found out that Elves did not even have Stag), and I don’t think I’d have much problems navigating my way through this Top 8 regardless of the pairings.

So, this is it. The tournament is over and I’m still not sure I believe it – not because being a National Champion again is unthinkable, as I’ve definitely given it a lot of thought before – but because the tournament went so… smoothly. I got 3 good matchups, had 2 very good draft decks, got the dream pairings twice in the top 8 and top 4, and then a scoop in the finals. And I got very good draws in pretty much all my matches. It could have been so much different. I could have been paired against Mono Red round 1 and everything could have gone downhill, but I just got so… lucky. I guess it does take a lot of luck to win any tournament, and I’m glad I was the person to get this lucky this time, and also glad that I made good use of it.

As for Faeries… it’s still here. It’s annoying that one of its good matches is now not that good anymore, and that it happens to be the most popular deck given the U.S. Nationals results, but, yet again, people keep underestimating it. It has a good match against Kithkin, Elves, and all the random decks. It’s certainly a powerful choice even with Stag around.

I hope to see you in GP: Boston this weekend but, if not, then see you here next week.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading…

PV