After failing to solve my passport issues, I decided to go to Bangkok and Niigata regardless. Would I been deported? Could anyone win the lottery twice in a row? What did I have for dinner on last Friday? All those existential questions find an answer… now!
First, go watch this music video. Could any song ever apply better to an event?
Yes, I did make it to Thailand. That was the first good news. Let’s first go back to Friday, 1:30pm, the time when I landed in Bangkok.
After a 20-hour trip, I was finally standing there, in front of the Immigration desk, passport in hand, about to live the scene I had been playing inside my head over and over for a week. Here was my perfect three-part plan that guaranteed I’d step on Thai soil.
A) Choose the line going to the nicest-looking immigration person.
B) Put some relaxing music on.
C) Pray.
Let’s now put it in action.
A) There are seven lines. Two girls. One looks nasty. Easy pick.
B) The Libertines have been running on my iPod for about an hour, and I feel almost no stress at all. Fair enough, the Libertines it will be. The line advances quite fast as the girl stamps a passport every 30 seconds, and eventually my turn comes. Headset off, it’s time for prayer.
C) She looks at my passport, then at me. Then at my passport, then at me again. Yes, I have a short beard on my passport, but you’ll understand I wanted to make a good impression today. Then she scans it, and types something in her computer. It may have lasted for a mere two minutes, but I felt like it was ten. Anyway it was much longer than with the other travelers. Finally, she showed me my passport and pointed the expiration date:
“Visa expire,” she said, in what seemed to be very broken English.
(Poker Face to the Max!)
“I am only staying for five days,” I said. “I already have my return ticket.”
There’s a pause.
“Hmm… okay.”
She stamped my passport, and handed it back to me.
…
…
I realize now that my plan was not perfect. There was a hidden Step D I had to handle:
D) Do not show exterior signs of excessive happiness.
I was so happy… this was actually the hardest part!
Do not jump and yell for joy.
Do not jump and yell for joy.
Do not jump and yell for joy.
Do not jump and yell for joy.
Do not jump and yell for joy.
Do not jump and yell for joy.
Do not jump and yell for joy.
Do not jump and yell for joy.
Do not jump and yell for joy.
Do not jump and yell for joy.
When I eventually got my bag back and met my friend Florent Jeudon at Arrivals, I could eventually give him my best high five and start jumping around. I was in Thailand, and I would not be experiencing the deportation process yet!
SAAAAAAAAAAAAFE!
After a stop at an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant (for $10, the second-highest expense of the week after the Grand Prix registration) and a good night’s sleep, the tournament could eventually begin.
I’d need to make 3-2 for Day 2, a score that sounded reasonable before I opened my packs. But, as far as M10 is concerned, anything can happen, as I found out two weeks earlier in Brighton.
Here’s the card pool I opened:
ARTIFACT
Rod of Ruin
WHITE
2 Elite Vanguard
2 Blinding Mage
White Knight
Veteran Swordsmith
2 Palace Guard
Razorfoot Griffin
Guardian Seraph
Serra Angel
Lifelink
Holy Strength
Celestial Purge
2 Divine Verdict
Angel’s Mercy
Very strong. The other colors will have to be very good to make me skip White. The curve is good, it has many playables, some removal, and two “creature: angel” cards, which is often a good idea in Limited.
BLUE
2 Zephyr Sprite
2 Merfolk Looter
2 Wind Drake
Wall of Frost
Clone
Snapping Drake
Ponder
Unsummon
Telepathy
2 Tome Scour
Negate
Divination
2 Sleep
Disorient
Levitation
A little short in playables but many flyers, and more importantly double Merfolk Looter, which can make any deck good. The pair of Sleep seems broken in the right deck.
BLACK
Child of Night
Drudge Skeletons
Looming Shade
3 Kelinore Bats
Wall of Bone
Howling Banshee
Gravedigger
Nightmare
Disentomb
Doom Blade
2 Mind Rot
Mind Shatter
Consume Spirit
About infinite playables, two pretty good rares, and the discard spells. Unfortunately, as with most Black card pools, this one has quite a crappy curve, so it’d better find it a color which features many two- and four-drops.
RED
Jackal Familiar
Sparkmage Apprentice
Ball Lightning
Stone Giant
Canyon Minotaur
Berserkers of Blood Ridge
2 Kindled Fury
Pyroclasm
Ignite Disorder
Seismic Strike
3 Trumpet Blast
Yawning Fissure
Neeeeeeeeeeext.
GREEN
Llanowar Elves
Mold Adder
Elvish Visionary
Runeclaw Bear
Elvish Archdruid
Centaur Courser
Giant Spider
Bramble Creeper
Stampeding Rhino
Giant Growth
2 Fog
Regenerate
Bountiful Harvest
Overrun
It has Overrun, and many playables, but Green still seems pretty weak. It is playable and it would not be a shame to be running it with a bad card pool, but mine is good enough not to build a “draw Overrun or die” deck.
DECKBUILDING
Only three options are possible here. Blue/White, Blue/Black, and Black/White.
I immediately forget about that last possibility. It has no synergy, as White is aggro and Black is control in this deck. Then, of course, the White deck would love being able to use Banshee and Doom Blade, but that Black (as with most Black decks in the format) has to be dominant to be efficient (Nightmare, Consume Sprit, Looming Shade). Therefore, I decide pretty quickly on one of the other two archetypes. Here are the decklists I would run playing each of them:
UW Build
9 Plains
8 Island
Zephyr Sprite
2 Merfolk Looter
2 Elite Vanguard
2 Blinding Mage
White Knight
Veteran Swordsmith
2 Wind Drake
Clone
Snapping Drake
Razorfoot Griffin
Guardian Seraph
Serra Angel
Ponder
Negate
Divination
2 Sleep
2 Divine Verdict
UB Build
11 Swamp
7 Island
2 Merfolk Looter
Child of Night
Drudge Skeletons
Looming Shade
Wall of Bone
2 Kelinore Bat
2 Wind Drake
Snapping Drake
Clone
Gravedigger
Howling Banshee
Nightmare
Ponder
Doom Blade
2 Mind Rot
Divination
Rod of Ruin
Consume Spirit
Mind Shatter
As I can’t make up my mind, I take a pen and paper and decide to grade both decks on a variety of categories:
BOMBS
UW has both Angels and its pair of Sleep, which are close to bombs as long as you don’t meet mass removal on the way.
UB has Nightmare and Mind Shatter which, if not exactly a bomb, have a strong impact as one defined moment of the game. It’s decent but a little light.
UW — 7
UB – 5
SYNERGY
UW flies and attacks, and that’s pretty much all it does. That’s pretty simple but yet efficient, as Looters should help me dig to my Sleeps to draw them in most games.
UB makes better use of Looter, as it helps recycling the sometime-useless cards (discard spells, unneeded three-drops) and digging to lands you need more than in the UW version. However, the cards don’t go so well together in general.
UW — 9
UB – 5
CURVE/STABILITY
UW’s curve is fantastic, and the deck shouldn’t have any mana problems. However, many uncommons almost instantly kill me (Rod of Ruin, Pyroclasm, Prodigal Pyromancer, Ignite Disorder), and I will be in much trouble if I can’t avoid them.
The UB deck is better when the game goes long, but its curve is a disaster. When will you find the time to play Mind Rot or Divination when you have so many three-drops. Also, at some point, when your opponent starts casting big guys, you’re still playing Bats and Drakes. Luckily, the discard spells will compensate for that and catch the biggest fishes from turn 5.
UW — 8
UB – 6
ABILITY TO HANDLE BOMBS
UB’s strong point. UW can deal with guys, but not with their activated abilities, nor with the spells such as Overrun or Fireball. UB compensates its relative lack of removal by its numerous discard spells.
UW — 6
UB – 7
OVERALL:
UW — 30
UB — 23
Seeing those numbers make me understand the choice was actually not that complex. Also, people tend to draw first in this format, which is a blessing for the UW deck. And indeed, not a single one of my opponents chose to play. Still, I decided to sleeve both decks to prepare during the byes. Three important things came from this testing:
A) My UW deck is actually very very good. Even Zephyr Sprite happens to be very efficient, and I feel like I built it right.
B) UB is okay, but worse than UW. In the matchups against which Black is the most efficient, such as decks running expensive spells and therefore vulnerable to discard spells, UW shines just as much as it goes too fast for them. Therefore, I’ll only board the Black in when facing Pyromancer/Pyroclasm type decks.
C) My deck is pretty strong. I playtest almost exclusively with pros during the byes, and I just don’t lose much.
When pairings are posted for round 4, I actually feel very confident.
ROUND 4: Jakguy Sbcharoen
Jak is apparently the reigning National champion, and I learn quite quickly that he didn’t get his title for no reason. I was naively glad to be playing a Thai in the first match, but Jak plays good. Actually it’s even worse; Jak has quite a great deck.
In the first game I’m about to win despite Ant Queen, but when Siege-Gang Commander hits the board, I must topdeck Sleep for the win. Draw, nope. Loot, nope. Onto game 2. In that game I’ve a very fast start, and I manage to kill him before he could actually play any of his best cards.
The third one is the closest. For the first time I draw badly, and when he plays Rampant Growth on turn 2 I can already feel the trouble as he now has his three colors (he’s splashing Black for at least Doom Blade, Deathmark, and Gravedigger, from what I’ve seen). But he thinks, he thinks for quite a while and goes for a second Forest. He then plays turn 3 Garruk Wildspeaker. I manage to deal with it in two turns with my flyers, which kill him before he can ever find his Black land.
Match 2-1, Total 4-0
As I just beat a guy who must be in the top 5% of players in the room, who also had a great deck, I am now very confident I’ll make Day 2. How was I to know that I would not win another game in this tournament?
ROUND 5: Rondy Krish
Turn 5 Ant Queen.
No big deal, I have 18 cards to find one of my two Sleeps.
I don’t.
In game 2 he splashes Red for a pair of Pyromancers and Pyroclasm. Ouch.
0-2, 4-1
ROUND 6: Jake Hart
In the first game I take a mulligan, and open with this on the play:
Plains, Elite Vanguard, Blinding Mage, White Knight, Wind Drake, Divine Verdict
After thinking for a minute, I decide to keep as I don’t really expect a much better hand from five cards. Also, as I am on the play I’m putting pressure on him, and one land in the first two turns could be enough. His draw is slow. The most impressive card he plays in game 1 is by far Giant Spider, but I only find my second Plains on turn 4 and my third on turn 9. Thanks to double Blinding Mage, I manage to resist until turn 11, but I still don’t draw an Island. Too bad… if I had drawn two by then, my double Sleep would have won that one. My favorite moment of that game? When he plays Sign in Blood on turn 6 but finds no sixth land, and says “that was not supposed to happen.” I felt very sad for him at that point.
In game 2 I draw about as well as in game 1 (over two-thirds of my lands), but I still come close to winning the game as he doesn’t realize Cemetery Reaper pumps Gravedigger. When he actually plays a second Reaper, I take four from the Digger (“oh right, that guy’s a zombie”), and I die on the following turn. Too bad… his deck seemed to be the weakest I’ve played against so far.
0-2, 4-2
ROUND 7: Worap Kitcharoenpinyo
The masterpiece of my weekend. When you play Magic solidly for a whole year, you play against two or three guys who play so badly than any land/spell combination should be enough to defeat them. Worap was one such player. I felt like I was sacrificing Mindslaver every turn. I was drawing well enough, at least in game one, and I still got destroyed.
In the first game he made some poor attacks and blocks to give me good advantage… but then he played Siege-Gang Commander. As I had no idea how to beat the card, I decided to attack into it and hope for him to imagine plays I had not thought of so I could come back. And, quite amazingly, he did. His “best” play, while Siege-Gang was on the board, was the following: I attack with two guys, he sacrifices a token to kill one and takes two. Blocking? Overrated. When his hand is eventually empty, I push him to sacrifice the Commander, and the game is somehow almost mine. Until he draws Gravedigger and plays four goblins again. He doesn’t attack at all, doesn’t sacrifice any of his Goblins, not even to kill my Merfolk Looter, and gives me a total of 23 cards to find Sleep. Nope, let’s go to game 2.
Once again I have an aggressive start, but this time, I draw mostly lands so I have no back up at all. On turn 5, he thinks, which I assume to be good news. And eventually he plays Siege-Gang. On the next turn he adds Magebane Armor to his board, and I find myself in this situation:
3 Plains, 2 Islands in play. Razorfoot Griffin, Divine Verdict, and lands in hand.
He’s at 16 life, with 4 goblins, Magebane Armor, 5 lands in play, and 4 or 5 spells in hand. Whatever, it’s obvious what to do (he saw Divine Verdict in game 1). He never attacks anyway, but passing is my only way out. Once again, I Mindslaver him. He equips the Siege-Gang Commander (who else?) and attacks into Divine Verdict. A few turns later the game is over, as I couldn’t find more than one other spell, and was too late after that to try a come-back. Frustrating.
0-2, 4-3
Being out of contention for Day 2, I dropped. After ten minutes of madness, sadness, and many other bad feelings that end in “ess,” I calmed down. I had made it though the frontier, collected my appearance fee, and met with my old friend Florent. After all, it was only one day of bad luck… and didn’t I have two days of massive luck two weeks ago?
I enjoyed Bangkok for two more days, then headed to the airport to try and reach Japan. But that’s another story…
Oli