Looking at the Open Series schedule, one of the standouts was Boston, Massachusetts. I love going to New England and have been visiting it since I was
a kid due to a bunch of my family members living out there. Things were looking great until about two weeks ago, when I realized that the tournament
wouldn’t be in Boston at all.
The tournament this weekend was in fact in Boxborough. This location made it awkward to travel, as it was about 45 minutes from the airport. While it
was well-placed for those driving to the event by being more convenient and still close to Boston, this left me with the option of either flying into
Boston and spending around $75 on a taxi or finding an alternative. I decided that this week I would choose the alternative and fly into New York to
meet up with Alex Bertoncini and drive with him and his friends over to the event on Friday. With my flights booked and my plans made, it was time to
spend Tuesday night drafting at the local store before my early flight on Wednesday.
My Tuesday night draft ended up being quite a blowout, as I opened a Sword of Feast and Famine and all of the pieces fell together from there in my U/R
flying/removal deck. I like this strategy because fliers are underrated in this format and the red added to the blue gives you enough reach to deal
with bombs and stall the game. That lets your slightly overcosted fliers have time to do their jobs. A quick and easy 3-0 with that deck had me going
home early to pack and get some sleep before my flight in the morning. I was excited to spend a few days with Alex and needed the practice—my options
for the weekend were still wide open.
The lesson and story of the week comes from a dumb mistake that I made by not preparing properly for my travel on Wednesday. I knew that my flight was
getting to New York LaGuardia, and from there I had to get to upstate New York using public transportation. In Florida we have no public
transportation, and I usually just drive everywhere, so this whole concept was way beyond my reach. All I knew was that I had to catch a bus to a train
station and then a train station to a stop near Alex’s house. Much to my dismay, I didn’t know which bus I was supposed to take to get to Grand Central
Station in NYC. I asked a guy that was standing at the bus stop with me, and he told me to get on the same bus with him and that it would take me where
I wanted to go. After about 30 minutes on the bus and asking Alex where I was, I found out that I had ended up in Harlem of all places, known for
its…shadiness.
I was told to get off the bus and walk six blocks to a train station that would take me to the right place. I had heard rumors about Harlem and I was
not excited about the prospect. My day had somehow started in Disney, taken a break in the nation’s capital for a layover in Washington D.C., and ended
up in Harlem. After getting to the train station and finding the train I needed, I boarded the train and crossed my fingers. About an hour later I was
safe at Alex’s house.
For those of you who know the Star City kid himself, you know that Alex Bertoncini love of the game is matched by no other. He doesn’t just play
Standard and Legacy; he is a cubing master and currently has three different cubes. They include a power cube, a combo cube, and a cute, yet fun,
tribal cube. While these are fairly well-known, what a lot of people don’t know about is his extensive Type 4 stack.
Type 4 is a format in which you pick some of the most powerful cards in Magic and take mana costs out of the equation. The format is played like so:
your starting hand is four cards, the person on the play draws one card also, and you can only play one spell on each turn. The trick is that you have
infinite mana and several cards that would be mediocre to average in regular Magic are busted in this format. Alex has worked hard on this stack of
cards and made sure to take out anything with X in its casting cost, and also to make sure that none of the cards were too broken. There are no tutors
in the deck, as the stack is about 600 cards and searching through a singleton stack for a specific card that you want would be too much work and make
the game not fun.
After hours of playing Type 4 and a few heads-up cube drafts, we decided that it was time to get some work in for the weekend and test. I had given up
my Vengevines and decided that the card and deck was out of place in the current metagame. I had planned to try my luck with Valakut, as it is the only
other deck in the format that I thought would give me a reasonable chance to do well. I had decided on a list that was fairly traditional. Valakut is a
much more all-or-nothing deck, as it has no interactive spells and basically tries to play Primeval Titan or bust. Here is the list that I played:
Creatures (15)
Lands (28)
Spells (17)
Sideboard
I believed this deck to be super-powerful, and the Summoning Traps would allow me to deal with the only problem in my Caw-Blade matchup—their counters.
Finding good spots to cast Summoning Trap became my advantage in the matchup, and I felt confident going into the weekend.
We spent Wednesday night, all day Thursday, and some of Friday morning testing and battling casual Magic before leaving left late on Friday night from
New York. We headed to Boston with Drew Levin and had Alyssa Spizzirro driving us. After a fairly uneventful trip spent talking less about Magic and
more about life, we got to Boston and had a fun night before the weekend.
As Saturday morning rolled around, I began feeling the effects of the climate change in New England—a cold was coming and it was coming fast. I battled
through the symptoms and started out 4-0 before the wheels fell off and the sickness started kicking in. As the day progressed, my body and mind both
gave out, and the latter is your biggest asset in Magic. Without a sharp mind, your play plummets and your mistakes become far more frequent. Over the
next four rounds I picked up three losses, knocking me out of contention. I decided to reevaluate my health and figure out what I wanted to do.
As the night wore on, I wasn’t getting any better and I decided it was smart to get a hotel room by myself for the remainder of the weekend and just
get better. That meant I would have to skip the festivities on Sunday, which was quite disappointing, but I felt that my health was more important than
gaming at this point.
While I stuck around in a hazy and disgruntled state on Saturday night, I realized one thing—there were seven copies of freaking Caw-Blade in Top 8! As
much as I disliked seeing a new Faeries/Jund deck in the format, nothing makes me happier than it finally being a control deck that suited is my style
of play. While I have stayed away from Caw-Blade over the past few months, I think it’s clear that if I didn’t play it this weekend in North Carolina,
then I would be a fool.
And so begins my quest to find a playset of Jace, the Mind Sculptors to borrow for the weekend, as I have the rest of the deck somewhere in my
collection. The version that I’ll play is unknown, but the testing will begin on Tuesday. I hate to join the gang of bad people playing the best deck
in the format, but it’s a long grind and I believe that I have to take this opportunity to play the best deck. I would like to give a shout-out to
Edgar Flores for his changes to the deck this weekend, as I loved his metagame decision to put the Gideon Juras in the board. I might be playing his
list with the slight change of switching two maindeck Oust for two Day of Judgment. This is Edgar’s list:
Creatures (8)
Planeswalkers (6)
Lands (25)
Spells (21)
Sideboard
North Carolina is right around the bend, and the week to come will be a week of recovery and figuring out the format. Standard will change soon, and I
am fairly certain I can brew up something sweet. What that will be and where that idea will come from is yet to be determined. Right now, I’m just
excited to get back on the grind in Charlotte and play a full weekend of Magic before the new set comes out.
With a few days to recover before my drive to North Carolina, I hope to see all of you out in Charlotte next weekend.
Â
Signing off “The Road” in the Boston Airport,
–Harrison GreenbergÂ