I have a confession to make. I recently went to my third StarCityGames.com Open, in Nashville. Despite the change of character, it felt mostly the same as the other events I’ve attended.
The good news is that this is a good thing! The StarCityGames.com Open Series is awesome, and I wouldn’t change a thing about them. They’re well run, and basically everything that’s good about Magic. They just need to have more of them closer to Phoenix!
If you’re even remotely thinking about attending one of them, stop thinking about it, and make your plans right now! I promise you that you’ll enjoy the experience, much like I have.
From a personal standpoint, I don’t fly to Magic events much anymore. In fact, the last event to which I flew (on my own dime) was Worlds ’07 in New York, an event that was a detour from flying home to see my family for Christmas. Despite my personal aversion to flying to Magic events, I decided to go to Nashville to visit some good friends of mine. I stayed with Hope and Dave Spears, who have the most wonderful family. Nashville was also an opportunity to see former hetero life-mates Justin Calhoun and Anthony Avitollo, one I could not resist.
If you’re planning to attend an Open event, do what you can to play both days. I know that Legacy isn’t the bread and butter of most players; however, at each tournament, I meet a good number of people that end up borrowing a deck and playing their first Legacy tournament. Almost without exception, these people relate how much fun playing Legacy was for them, and how they want to get into the format. Dave Spears was one of those people for this tournament, and now he’s in the market for Mox Opals to complete his Affinity deck.
The other strong recommendation I have for attending an Open Series event is to branch out and meet new people. I met a ton of new people during my trip to Nashville, and they fully enriched the experience. I met friends of Anthony, Dave, and Justin, and would hang out with them most of the weekend. I even kept up with some of my opponents (all of whom were very nice). These people that I’d never met before directly contributed to my overwhelmingly positive experience in Nashville.
As for the tournaments themselves, my deck choices were fairly easy. With Legacy, I’m going to play Counterbalance in every tournament I want to do well at until it’s no longer a good option. Legacy is a format where tight play is rewarded, and playing a deck where you know all of the interactions is extremely important. I love the Counterbalance deck, and it loves me back. If you’re getting into Legacy, acquire one deck, and master it. If you’re a Legacy regular, focus on one deck, and master it.
Standard was a little bit more difficult. The previous week, I managed to Top 4 the Arizona 2010s with a U/W deck that I absolutely hated. While it’s strange to say that you hated a deck with which you did well in a tournament, it was absolutely true of this U/W deck. It felt like I alternated between people with worse draws/decks/plays and U/W mirrors the entire tournament. The two non-mirror matches I played against opponents who played well and had real decks, I got smashed. I was looking for a new deck, but I certainly needed a blue deck. Fortunately, Pat Chapin saved me with a teaser in his article in the middle of the week – His Friday article would be about Pyromancer Ascension!
I love Pyromancer Ascension! I played it quite a bit during the waning days of the previous Standard format, and I’d know the basic operations of the deck. I decided to build up a list of my own, then use Chapin’s article on Friday to “playtest.” While this method was obviously not the best preparation for a tournament, I wasn’t willing/able to put in a ton of my own work. It ended up costing me quite a bit during the tournament. I ended up playing this:
Spells (35)
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- 4 Mana Leak
- 4 Foresee
- 4 Burst Lightning
- 3 Into the Roil
- 4 Pyromancer Ascension
- 2 Spell Pierce
- 4 See Beyond
- 4 Preordain
- 2 Call to Mind
Sideboard
After playing nine rounds, I can safely say that this list is pretty close to where you want to be. Granted, there isn’t much room for maneuvering, as most of the cards are just way better than the alternatives. If you want to play this deck, the biggest change that I’d make is replacing Pyroclasm with Flame Slash. With Pyroclasm, you’re rarely able to kill multiple creatures against a reasonable player. However, there are a significant number of four toughness creatures that are killable, most notably Overgrown Battlement and Molten-Tail Masticore. As for the creatures in the sideboard, I’m fairly certain that you want some of them, but I’m not sure which, or how many. It might be a matter of personal preference. Personally, I want some Calcite Snappers, both as a blocker against red decks (and Koth killer) and as an additional form of pressure against U/x control decks. I’d be wary to sideboard in the creatures too often. I know that during the Nashville Open, I sided in the creatures far too often when the Ascension plan was more than adequate. While I won’t bore you with a match-by-match report, there were more than a few interesting situations that came up during the day.
1) Nearly every opponent had a thick southern accent. Travel companion Mike Jacoby and I were fascinated with this all weekend. We loved it. My dad lives in Tennessee (although nowhere close to Nashville), and the Southern accent never gets old.
2) In Round 4, I played against a gentleman with a poison deck. The first game went as follows:
His T1: Forest, Birds of Paradise
His T2: Swamp, two-mana infect creature.
My T2: Mountain, go
His T3: Forest, attack with infect creature, Vampire’s Bite, Groundswell. I respond to the Groundswell with Burst Lighting, to which he responds by attempting to kill me with Vines of Vastwood. I Spell Pierce it, and win easily from there.
In the second game, he’s being careless with his hand. Perhaps it’s only nerves, but I see him pick up a card from his lap. I don’t know whether or not he just Mike Longed me, or simply dropped a card. I decide to call a judge and pay close attention to his reaction. The guy looks legitimately confused (as opposed to defensive, which would indicate cheating). The judge helps us count cards in play (it’s early in the game), and it checks out. I would’ve certainly pursued it had my opponent gotten defensive, but I felt that this was a good way to go about solving the problem without blatantly accusing someone of cheating, especially as I honestly didn’t know if he was cheating at all.
3) In round 6, I play against a guy with a Mono-Green Eldrazi deck. I side into the creatures, which is a mistake. However, it works well enough that I do it again in round 8, with Top 8 on the line.
4) In Round 9, the final round, I’m disappointed to be at 6-2 after starting 6-0. I forget to de-sideboard, and thankfully draw a hand with sideboard cards in it. I call a judge over, and I’m forced to take a mulligan to six. I think this is a fantastic rule. It’s pretty easy to determine that there’s little incentive to cheat here, as players generally call this on themselves. I know that at some point in the past, failure to de-sideboard was a game loss no matter the circumstances. After my mull to six, I win the game in quite an interesting fashion. Two Pyromancer Ascensions, all four Burst Lightnings, and a Lightning Bolt. No blue spells! I’m able to grind out the third game through a metric ton of removal for my Ascensions. Into the Roil did a lot of work on saving my Ascensions, and I was able to put counters on my Ascensions at will with Call to Mind for Call to Mind. After dropping two matches in a row to miss Top 8, I ended at 7-2, good for 14th place and $100.
But the real Magic reason I came to Nashville was to play Legacy! I battled with the following list:
Creatures (4)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (22)
Spells (31)
- 4 Sensei's Divining Top
- 4 Brainstorm
- 3 Counterspell
- 4 Force of Will
- 4 Swords to Plowshares
- 1 Vedalken Shackles
- 2 Predict
- 1 Pithing Needle
- 2 Spell Snare
- 4 Counterbalance
- 2 Ponder
Sideboard
The maindeck is basically the same as the one I used in Denver, simply replacing two Underground Seas with two Islands. The sideboard is difficult, and I keep tweaking it. I was mostly happy with this board, although Ratchet Bomb was fairly terrible.
1) I nearly lose round 1 to a Charbelcher deck. I Force of Will a Land Grant when I shouldn’t have, given that he can Empty the Warrens for ten with nearly any mana source next turn. He drew one on turn 2, and I drop the first game. In the second game, he casts Empty for eight early, and as I play Trinket Mage, my opponent laments his fate, assuming I’ll go get Explosives. However, I took it out (because it sucked) and need to dig to a Ratchet Bomb in short order. On my next turn, I find one in the last of the seven cards I see that turn. I escape that game, and game 3 is fairly easy as a Charbelcher matchup should be.
2) I take a relatively early loss to an Eva Green deck (mono-black disruption splash Tarmogoyf). While his draws are excellent, I feel that if I take a different line of play, I can stay in the game. I’m on the play, and he leads with a Dark Ritual into Hymn to Tourach, to which I respond with a Brainstorm. I hide a Jace (which wins the game if resolved, more or less), in addition to a Counterbalance. If I hide a Brainstorm instead of Jace, I have more leverage to try to develop my mana base. As it turns out, he strips my hand by playing Thoughtseize on turn 1 with his remaining mana, then a second Hymn to Tourach on turn 2, followed by Wasteland on my only white source and a Dark Confidant.
3) I have to play my travel companion Michael Jacoby in round 5 in an elimination match. His Affinity deck doesn’t deliver the goods, and I have to knock a friend out. The match next to us is fairly absurd, as Alix Hatfield plays four Vengevines on turn 2 of game 1, and turn 3 of game 3. I’d never really seen the LED version of Survival in action, and I was very impressed. As fate would have it, I was paired against Alix the very next round, where he spent the majority of the match playing Enlightened Tutor for Chrome Mox.
4) If you saw the GGsLive coverage of my round 7 match, I made a play that I was very proud of. I kept a six-card hand with three Swords to Plowshares, hoping that my opponent is some sort of an aggressive deck. His turn 1 Sensei’s Divining Top says that he isn’t, but he plays nice and plays a Dark Confidant and a Phyrexian Dreadnaught for me to remove early. The cool play comes later in the game, when we both have a Top in play, and he plays Engineered Explosives for one, to try and rid the Pithing Needle that is locking down his Mishra’s Factory. When he blows it, he passes priority to me, and I simply let it resolve without using the Top in any way. He’s down on cards, and the last two cards in my hand are the third Swords for his Mishra’s Factory and a replacement Top. Being the only one with a Top in play in a long game is a huge advantage, as one might imagine.
5) In the last round, I’m in 6th place, but a draw has a good chance of dropping me to 9th place if matches go a certain way, and my tiebreakers don’t improve over any of the winners. I decide to take fate into my own hands and play it out, and I beat a Goblins player in two close games. Game 1 is an example of why I love Vedalken Shackles; he couldn’t really beat it, no matter how much he tried. There was an interesting cat and mouse game for a while with his Stingscourger (revealed off of Ringleader, in his hand) and my Shackles, as allowing him to kill my Shackles creature would likely result in a near lethal alpha strike. I untapped Shackles each turn and stole a guy during his combat step to play around the Stingscourger until I could counter it. The final round was the only round that took a long amount of time – we would’ve likely drawn had he won the second game.
The Top 8 was a good battle between two players who played their own decks. I applaud Ben Wienburg for switching back to his bread and butter, Tempo Threshold. He put a ton of pressure on me the entire match. I feel that if I played perfect Magic, I would’ve won all three games, but perfect Magic is hard to come by. I had to make most of the tough decisions, and I was wrong on enough of them to lose in three close games. Check out the coverage on GGsLive if you get the chance. It was great to do well in another SCG Open Series event, but one of these days I’m going to win matches in the Top 8. I want one of those trophies!
If you haven’t already guessed, I had a blast in Nashville. If you’re attending a SCG Open Series in Baltimore or anywhere else, I strongly recommend both of the decks I played.