When last we spoke, I was marveling at the Old School gaming skills of one Mr. Randy Buehler, who had cunningly convinced seven new friends to play Draft with him Unsanctioned, thus getting him off the ‘no employees or spouses of employees’ hook that has to date curtailed his return to the Pro Tour. I confess to being tremendously excited ahead of GP: Seattle-Tacoma, since I was in the air across the Atlantic when GP: Barcelona had taken place the week before, the first European stop on the circuit I had missed for three years.
There’s no doubt that the global Grand Prix is on a roll lately. In October last year, more than 1,800 players turned up in Paris for a Sealed event. Grand Prix: Vienna had the best part of 1,500 players for Extended in 2007, and that was a format unhealthily dominated by Dredge at the time. To find that we now have a similar number for Standard in Spain was frankly spectacular, and was mirrored by records being set left, right, and centre around the world. I was lucky enough to cover Jelger Wiegersma’s triumph in Grand Prix: Indianapolis last year, and now here I was, on the brink of another humungous celebration of MTG.
Due to the nature of the hiring rules in Europe, Friday of Grand Prix weekend is exclusively a travel day, getting to the venue, registering for the Saturday, and then going away again. I had forgotten what a wild time Friday evening is at a North American GP. To be perfectly honest, as each announcement of yet another Grinder getting under way, yet another Draft, yet another 100 people registering for the next day, my overwhelming thought was, ‘Ker-Ching!!!’ That, my friends, is the universal sound effect of the cash register. In Europe, Wizards runs the event themselves, and as far as I’m aware, they do so at a loss. In North America, there’s a more entrepreneurial model at work, and that means enterprising Tournament Organizers stepping up to the plate and delivering, and reaping the rewards.
The Grinders were particularly interesting, since to me they are almost always well-named. Frankly, they seem to be little more than crap shoots, with 32 players scrabbling for Byes in the GP. What’s intriguing to me is how many players are willing to put themselves through these minimal-expectation events. Maybe someday I’ll actually dig through some of the stats and work out just how crucial Byes are to GP success, but judging by the almost never-ending queue for Grinders on the Friday night, hundreds of people believed them well worth not only battling for, but well worth paying to battle for. Interesting.
And so to Saturday, and the first day of the GP. I’m a huge fan of most formats in the game, although I profess to very little knowledge of Vintage. If it’s a Limited GP, you get the fun of looking over the various pools, seeing what colors are most popular, the overall Tempo of the Format, how ‘bomb-heavy’ it is, and so on. Then you get to see the crazy interactions in the super-powered decks that inevitably turn up when you put 1,500 Sealed Pools into a single room. The cream in that room is cream indeed once it’s risen to the top.
For Constructed, I think what I love most is the ever-developing Metagame. Most of us writers here have, in the back of our minds, an article we’d love to write, an article that would stand the testament of time and be the one piece of analysis that we’d point people to years hence and say, ‘Well, if you want a flavor of my writing, click here.’ It’s also true that if we’re honest, whatever that article is, we’re not altogether sure that we’re good enough to write it. That’s part of the challenge. Maybe it’s trying to say something profound. Maybe it’s a really difficult piece of ground-breaking Magic theory. Maybe we’re trying to be funny.
The article that I want to write one day is about a single card. I think if there’s one single thing that makes Magic so spectacular, it’s that a given single card can mean so many things to so many people. There are dozens of shades of opinion about how good a card is, how it’s supposed to be best used, what turn you should play it, whether it’s valuable as a Sideboard option, and if so, against what decks. As every new expansion comes out, the value of that one card shifts in every format, sometimes subtly, sometimes hugely. Maybe its creature type suddenly makes it part of a tribal deck that’s only just becoming viable. Maybe a sudden swing towards slow control decks makes it almost totally vanish from play, until a sudden window of opportunity presents itself, and suddenly the card is part of a winning GP list.
Regrettably, I’m almost certain that I won’t be able to do this article justice, because I won’t know even a tiny portion of the whole story that I’d want to tell, but the article would be called, ‘The Complete History of Ancestral Vision.’ That’s the card that I’ve watched with most interest as the worlds of Constructed have variously embraced it and turned their back on it. Backtracking through countless tournament reports and anecdotal reminiscences would be a real labor of love, and one day I might get to it.
The truth is, ‘The Complete History of….’ could be made for hundreds and indeed thousands of cards that have waxed and waned in popularity and power level, and it’s in the combination of cards into decks that we have the Metagame, and that really, really lights my fire. Inspiration is something that very few people can explain properly, since it apparently occurs instantly. In my view, as someone who teaches jazz piano, even these most instant of split-second decisions can actually be broken down into a huge list of determining factors that have led you to the choices you make, notionally ‘on the fly.’ I went on holiday a few years back, and got to visit the room, and indeed the actual piano, where Beethoven composed many of his most famous works. It was a spectacularly normal room. There was no sense that some of the greatest cultural achievements in history had occurred there, and in the same way I suppose there are a ton of us out there wondering just how the lightning strikes the players who turn up at a Premier Event with an absolutely ingenious solution to the current Metagame.
To my mind, Metagaming may be a science, but it is also an art, and it also requires a degree of both stubbornness and courage. When I think of decks like the one Joel Calafell used to win Grand Prix: Barcelona, featuring 41 land, or Zvi Mowshowitz 8 land Stompy deck, or Turbo Fog, I want to giggle. It seems to me that turning up with these decks is a bit like being old, fat, and ugly and going to a fancy dress competition naked. If you’re the only naked guy in the room, you’re almost certainly going to win, because no costume in the world is going to beat you. But if 400 people have had the same idea, you’re just an old, ugly, fat guy. Who’s naked. And hasn’t got a prayer against the 19 year old twin supermodels.
This is where the stubbornness and courage comes in, especially if you’re not a major name in world Magic. You need the stubbornness because the temptation to listen to everyone else who is telling you that your test results must be off and that the time for a 41 land or 8 land or, heaven help us, lifegain deck is not now, not tomorrow, not ever. No, Black/White Tokens is the correct call, Faeries is the correct call, Cruel Ultimatum Control is the correct call. Then comes the courage bit, because almost every Magic player I’ve met doesn’t like to lose, and many feel humiliated when they do. When they lose playing a deck that their friends have laughed at, or which, more pertinently, have virtually no chance of success if their prediction of the Metagame is off even slightly, then my naked analogy isn’t too far off, because that’s how people feel. They feel exposed, vulnerable, ridiculed, defenseless… and there’s few more merciless groups than Magic players when it comes to taking a friend down a peg or two. The truly rogue deckbuilders, who dig out the wacky pile of hideousness that can’t realistically be described as a contender, are one of the most stirring sights in Magic, because anyone who lays themselves on the line like that deserves success from time to time. As my Mexican friends probably wouldn’t say, ‘El gringo. He have los cojones del steelios.’ Quite.
The field for the GP was pretty stacked with Pro names, because Pro Tour: Honolulu was less than a week away, and that meant that it was a natural stopping-off point for many Europeans, plus the usual suspects amongst the Japanese. A brief summary of the extra power this GP was packing brings us:
Gabriel Nassif (France)
Raphael Levy (France)
Guillaume Wafo-Tapa (France)
Antoine Ruel (France)
Olivier Ruel (France)
Jelger Wiegersma (Netherlands)
Bram Snepvangers (Netherlands)
Robert van Medevoort (Netherlands)
Martin Juza (Czech Republic)
Arnost Zidek (Czech Republic)
Matej Zatlkaj (Slovak Republic)
Manuel Bucher (Switzerland)
Kenny Oberg (Sweden)
Jan Ruess (Germany)
Raul Porojan (Germany)
Lino Burgold (Germany)
Nicolay Potovin (Russia)
Joel Calafell (Spain)
Antti Malin (Finland)
Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa (Brazil)
Willy Edel (Brazil)
Luiz Guilherme de Michielli (Brazil)
Yuuya Watanabe (Japan)
Shuhei Nakamura (Japan)
Tomaharu Saito (Japan)
And there were dozens more with chances. That said, the foreign contingent was comprehensively dwarfed by the home team, many of whom BDM describes as ‘grizzled PTQ veterans,’ and given that Americans will happily take their chances in a PTQ of several hundred players, that tag is well-earned.
As someone who loves to entertain and be entertained, it was a great pleasure for me to spend some time with Brian Kibler. Osyp Lebedowicz is one of the game’s great showmen, and I have a sneaking suspicion that if every game he ever played was televised, he’d be unbeatable. Likewise Pierre Canali, who is just one of the most life-affirming people you could meet. In a different way, ditto Dave Williams, whose easy drawl and laidback attitude underpins a tremendously charismatic guy. I’m always a little wary when starting a conversation with a Name Player for the first time, since they are often people who I’ve heard so much about their exploits, and it’s an honor to spend time with them. I could probably have listened to Kibler for hours, and he’s the kind of guy who could have talked for hours. When I was working in The Casablanca Steps, the 1920’s musical comedy act I spent eight years involved with, I would always do the publicity radio and TV interviews. Often, the reporter wouldn’t really know what to ask me about — four guys singing, dancing, juggling, and playing the piano at the same time… these aren’t your normal interview subjects — and I’d basically just say to them, ‘Look, ask me one question, you tell me how long you want this thing to be, and that’s how long I’ll talk for.’ I suspect Kibler is a kindred spirit in this regard, and for certain he’s just monstrously passionate about the game. Little did I know how much more I’d be saying about him as the trip continued.
About half an hour ago, I began to dimly glimpse the shape of the next paragraph. As I sat in my living room, grinning away, I realized I would shortly be putting pen to paper, or its digital equivalent, and crafting a paragraph for the ages that featured the words ‘Matej Zatlkaj,’ ‘Viagra,’ and ‘naked Joel Calafell.’ Here comes that paragraph….
In Pro Tour: Berlin last year, Matej Zatlkaj was part of a testing group that found the potential of the elf Combo deck. Now we get to use the fancy dress analogy once more. Coming to the conclusion that they wouldn’t be the only group turning up ‘naked’ to the event, they arranged some insurance in the form of some Sideboard options designed for the mirror. In other words, aware that other people would in fact also run the Emperor’s New Clothes strategy, they handily packed some Viagra, allowing them to, ahem, stand out from the crowd. In Seattle, that wasn’t the case for a naked Joel Calafell, who had won the competition the previous week, but found himself unable to go the distance a second time in eight days. Tomaharu Saito had described the deck used by Calafell to win Barcelona as ‘a joke,’ and it was ironically the former Player of the Year who took Calafell out of the running in the penultimate round of the Swiss.
In part because the Grand Prix was right on the doorstep of Wizards’ Seattle HQ, it was inevitable that some famous faces would be dropping by. Sunday saw a fantastic Public Event, where 16 lucky players chosen at random got to pair up with a member of WoTC staff for a Two-Headed Giant event. Pre-tournament favorite was Mike Turian, a deserved Hall of Famer, and Pro Tour champion with Scott Johns and Gary Wise as Potato Nation. We did a feature in the main Event Coverage about Turian and his teammate Kirby Storbeck, but as so often happens amongst the hurly-burly of 18 rounds across two days, we weren’t able to complete the story. As we were packing up after the Top 8, Kirby came across and showed us a piece of paper. It went something like this:
2HG Tourney Report by Me
Drew Turian.
5-0.
K thx bye.
Now that’s why I love Magic right there. Congratulations to whoever dreamed this one up, and a similar congrats go to the fertile mind that came up with the Moustachevitational, a tournament that had grabbed hold of the imagination of many local players, such that dozens had turned up for the event, as required as a part of their entry to the tournament, with some spectacular facial miscalculations that would have had The Village People running for cover. From twirling handlebars that had clearly been lovingly crafted for months, to little wispy numbers, pencil-drawn, glued-on, even young men with barely a shadow on their upper lip gathered to try and take down the ludicrously over-the-top trophy. The only problem with this event was that there was no way to report it until it was actually underway. All weekend, I kept wanting to interview people with catastrophic fuzz disasters, but couldn’t. Why? Imagine the conversation:
RH: ‘I’m with Ted, and Ted, can I first say congratulations on making such an incredible effort for the Moustachevitational later today.’
Ted: ‘The what?’
RH: ‘Ah.’
Awkward.
As we headed for the Top 8, five Americans faced three interlopers for the title and the 10 Pro Points. Playing Faeries, Ben Lundquist opened up the elimination matches against Team World Champion, and U.S. National Champion too, Michael Jacob. Jacob was piloting the 5-Color Blood deck put together by one P Chapin. There were certainly question marks as to whether this was the whole five-color thing taken to breaking point, with the signature Cryptic Command still tediously requiring triple Blue to justify its fantastic utility. Nonetheless, a Top 8 showing is far from shabby, with Lundquist winning the odd game in three to advance to the semi-finals.
In the bottom half of the draw, Lundquist knew he would face a Faeries mirror in the next round, since that was the matchup facing Ari Lax and Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa in their quarter-final. PVDdR is arguably the most accomplished Faeries player on the planet, and it was no surprise that he returned to Turn 2 Bitterblossom here. Lax meanwhile had narrowly missed out on the Top 8 of Pro Tour: Kyoto earlier in the year, and was a stablemate of Patrick Chapin out of RIW Hobbies, along with Jacob. From 1-0 to the good, Lax went into talkative mode, sending out a stream of fishing enquiries virtually without a halt during the remaining duels. Whilst pumping your opponent for information isn’t exactly against the rules, it’s fair to say that Lax could have given Kibler and yours truly combined a run for our money when it came to the chats. Crikey, he just wouldn’t stop, until Paulo beat him.
In a Top 8 that was appropriately stacked with talent, the ringer in the mix was Charles Gendron Dupont, who had piloted a burn-heavy Red deck to the quarters. Named Boddy Red after the deck designer, this wasn’t too far away from the classic 20-20-20 design that has served Red well down the years. It was enough in the quarters to eliminate one of the five Faeries decks on display, this one in the hands of Grand Prix: Stockholm winner Nicolay Potovin, one of the toughest opponents in Magic. Following his three Byes, Potovin went 9-1 before Intentionally Drawing the last two rounds to secure his berth.
That left Yann Massicard of France, who, like Lax, had very nearly made it to Super Sunday in Kyoto. He had brought a Doran deck to battle, and he faced a massive test in the former of the near-superhuman Luis Scott-Vargas. Despite falling one down in the best of three, Massicard kept his cool, and vanquished the leader in the Player of the Year Race. With no Faeries left in the top half of the bracket, Doran faced Red in the semis, and again Massicard edged it by 2-1. In the other semi, Ben Lundquist managed the victory 2-0 over PVDdR, maintaining the Brazilian’s incredible run of Top 24 performances in Grand Prix, which stretches back an absurd length of time. Neither Kenji Tsumura nor Olivier Ruel have a Pro Tour championship to their name, so players of this caliber can leave empty-handed, but I find it hard to imagine that Paulo won’t raise a trophy aloft sometime in the next year or two.
The Final showed how perverse Magic can be. Massicard opened the first game on just four cards on the play, and the chances of a swift Lundquist victory were vastly increased. Not so, since Massicard drew just about perfectly, and took Game 1 at a seeming canter. Extraordinary. The normal rules of probability were restored in the second, when a five land opening hand for Massicard proved insufficient. The decider was a kicking, beginning with a Turn 2 Doran, the Siege Tower and ending approximately eighteen seconds later as Lundquist this time stumbled on mana. It wasn’t a gratifying end to the tournament, but the combined weight of the thousands of matches that had been played during the weekend made it an unqualified success.
The next couple of days went by in a blur. On the work front, I’m delighted to say that there’s going to be some fun Game Show stuff at Worlds later this year, featuring both my good self and a very special guest host. If you like Magic trivia and fun times, I can pretty much guarantee a decent evening of MTG-related tomfoolery. Away from the office, I was finally able to catch up on the new Star Trek movie, and as someone who has been to the cinema and watched the first seven movies in one day, I was suitably impressed by almost everything, should you care.
That takes me to the last leg of the trip, and the wonders of Honolulu, which were many. So many, in fact, that I’m obliged to hit the pause button once again, and you have to restrain yourselves for another seven days. However, before I go, I want to share with you a couple of delicious bits of writing I found on my travels. Every so often, I read something and just wish I’d thought of that precise phrasing or choice of vocabulary. I found myself in a downtown Seattle Barnes & Noble, laughing out loud at this first one. In a magazine about the forthcoming American Football season, I gravitated towards my team, the Miami Dolphins, who I’ve followed ever since Marino in the early 80’s. In 2007, they managed just one win and fifteen losses. In 2008, they turned that into eleven wins and just five losses, widely considered to be an incredible achievement. The pithy summary went like this:
‘Miami Dolphins: Best move of a hyphen (1-15 to 11-5) in Sports history.’
And finally, this time from the world of America’s National Pastime, baseball, comes this gem from a preview on the Detroit Tigers:
‘Zumaya could be a big contributor if his shoulder holds together, but he hasn’t been the same since his Guitar Hero injury.’
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some Googling to do.
As ever, thanks for reading.
R.