I’ve been promising the guys at StarCityGames.com an article for ages.
“Yeah, I’ll do an article on the Grave-Troll deck from Pro Tour LA….” That didn’t happen. Neither did the one for Worlds. Then Craig Stevenson took over, a fellow Brit. “Sure, I’ll do you an article. Maybe something on the prerelease (getting desperate now).” Nope. I supposed I could write something Dingler-esque about the Prague Pro Tour Qualifier season, but I don’t think people really want to hear about my 1-2 drop. Then came Honolulu and Ted Knutson comment… “You really have to write about this one.”.
Even then it was touch and go, and that’s partly why this is so late. You see, I’m currently back at university studying for a PhD. The day I was scheduled to set off for Honolulu also happened to be the deadline for a paper I was co-writing with my supervisor. This involved me having to skip the PTQs for the weekend (you know I’d have taken your slot, Dingler…) and then had me working until 6am on Monday morning, which was pretty much the last moment before I had to catch my flight.
The good, or possibly bad, news was that they extended the deadline, which meant I still had a ton of work waiting for me when I got back. On top of that, the evil tosser who’d failed to deliver my Guildpact dual lands was trying to worm out of it by getting my eBay account axed by claiming I’d never paid for them in the first place. It was never going anywhere, as I still had record of payments, but I had to waste a couple of evenings sending off all the relevant emails. Throw in a badly timed weekend trip home, and then all of a sudden it’s time to catch my flight to Grand Prix Manila. This also happened to be three days before the extended university deadline. I suspect I may be used as target practice for the robot killing machines they’ve got stashed in the basement of Manchester University when I get back.
Now I actually have free time. I can finally now give my account of Pro Tour Honolulu and “that” topdeck. This is it, folks. This is the story of the $16,000 Lightning Helix…
As you may have gathered from my preamble, my rather hectic schedule of late meant that I never really had much of a chance to playtest for Honolulu. As our last minute co-operation for Los Angeles had been so successful, Stewart Shinkins had taken steps to bring together a pan-European team that included the top Belgians such as Geoffrey Siron and Bernado Da Costa Cabral, and various scattered elements such as Raphael Levy. I didn’t want to completely divorce myself from the local player base, though, and so the plan was to playtest with the players in my local area and feed information back and forth with the Europeans.
That was the plan… Despite the best efforts of English player Mark Glenister to set up a forum, the result was a deathly silence. I must add that I was equally as guilty in this, as university had kept me from doing as much testing as I would have liked.
On the European front things were much better, as Da Costa Cabral had assembled an early gauntlet including a Zoo deck with Bathe in Light and a Tron deck with Mimeofacture. At the time we thought Mimeofacture was going to be the nuts and were trying to gear our decks, especially Tron, to play singleton legends as defense against it. We also had a prototype version of the Orzhov control deck.
I emailed the gauntlet to local player Neil Rigby, and, together with other players in the Manchester area, we organized a testing session. The key thing I remember from this is I never tried altering the decks. This is a bad habit of mine. I’ll see a decklist and immediately replace “substandard” cards for better ones. In this case, I was going to kick out Bathe in Light. I’m glad I didn’t, as it proved to be deceptively good as a breaker against other creature decks. It played a lot better than it looked. The Zoo deck was still way off, though. Rather oddly, I was overly excited about Moldervine Cloak on Boros Swiftblade at the time. He attacks for eight on turn 3, guys. Eight!
We were supposed to have more of these testing sessions, but then university work went nova and testing time vanished. I did try to make Enduring Ideal work, as it’s a pet favorite of mine, but the presence of Mortify pretty much obviated that strategy. In the end, I headed off to Honolulu with half a mind to either play Tron – which I didn’t like because I hate playing anything with counterspells – or the Ghazi-Glare deck from Worlds – as it still seemed to perform quite well in my, admittedly, limited testing.
I think at the time I’d resigned myself to scrubbing out and had decided I might as well enjoy my time in Hawaii as a holiday. Hawaii is actually a little odd. Technically it’s part of the US, but the largest demographic (by the merest sliver, and still only a fifth of the population) is Japanese. To me, Honolulu seemed to be a strange hybrid of the two cultures.
I was sharing a room with Pro Tour first-timer Noel Bresland, and we got there a day before everyone else. That was cool, as it meant I got to do a bit of sightseeing, including a walk up Diamond Head, the extinct volcano at the east end of Oahu.
I did plan to do more sightseeing, but then general laziness and the arrival of more UK Magic players meant I got sucked into playtesting at the hotel. Around this time I was starting to accept that Tron couldn’t beat the aggro decks. Might be strange to mention, but at this point I don’t think I had any intention of playing Zoo. I had a version built up as a test deck, but it was too focused on creatures and didn’t really beat control. To be honest, it was about two days before the Pro Tour and I didn’t have a clue what I was playing.
My report – combined with Tiago’s – is probably a real let-down to those of you out there who think Pros are testing machines, and are people who decide on a deck weeks in advance and tune it remorselessly. Sometimes that happens, but mostly I think it’s important to be flexible. The other guys in my testing group, who actually have a fair bit of Pro Tour experience, had advised Noel Bresland (as it was his first PT) to pick a deck well in advance and make sure he knew it backwards. In Noel’s case it was probably going to be Zoo. I don’t think this is bad advice, but I think one of the important things about Magic is that there are no hard and fast rules. Playing something you know inside and out is good, but it won’t help if that deck then turns out to be sub-par.
In Magic, information is everything. It is virtually impossible to go it alone at a constructed Pro Tour. If you look back at my early PT record it makes for particularly gruesome reading. I’d put in hours and hours before those tournaments and it was always a huge waste of time, as all I used to end up with was a substandard deck that only beat the substandard versions of the other decks I expected to see. Recently, I’ve been fortunate to make contacts amongst the Pro community. At Honolulu, talking to Shinkins, the Belgians, and the Dutch gave me a good idea of what the field was going to be. But the real clincher was bumping into Billy Moreno.
Billy Moreno is really sound, and a much better player than people give him credit for. He was sleeping on Shinkins’s floor, along with another American player who needed a hotel room. The other guy – can’t remember your name, sorry – was golden in Shinkins’s eyes, as he’d supplied the last bit of tech Stewart was looking for in his Black/White aggro deck — Mortivore.
Billy, along with Stuart Wright (I have to mention Stu Wright. He’s the best deck builder in UK Magic at the moment, and he never gets the attention he deserves. Jon Becker gave him an interview at Honolulu, but only because he thought he was Stu Shinkins), were looking at Zoo builds. I wasn’t massively interested. Zoo? Meh. Inconsistent, gets rolled over by control, blah blah. I dug out the Orzhov-Kite control deck that was in my box of test decks, to kick it around a bit. The deck had performed well against Zoo decks in testing. My general opinion was that this Pro Tout would be all about the control decks. “Infinite life gain”, as Siron had put it, meant that the aggro decks were going to get thrashed.
One 2-6 hammering later, and I came to some conclusions.
The aggro decks were actually a lot better than I’d thought. I’d been heading in this direction since I’d arrived and noticed how much our Tron deck was struggling (the fact that Quentin had abandoned it was a definite sign it couldn’t compete, as he’d been its strongest advocate) against beatdown. This finally tipped me over the edge. This PT was going to be about the beatdown.
The other thought was that Faith’s Fetters and Wrath of God were not enough to beat Zoo.
I should probably repeat this, just to make sure people get the message:
Faith’s Fetters and Wrath of God are not enough to beat Zoo.
Billy’s deck had a lot more burn than my version (see above for the mistake of thinking you beat a matchup when in fact you only beat a substandard version of the matchup). In fact, he had a lot more burn. Our Zoo deck had relied on a horde of efficient monsters and pumpers. Billy’s version played like a Sligh deck, or Red Deck Wins. You go in with some early beats, and then pick them off with burn. By the time the control deck cast Wrath of God, it was usually too late.
By now I was coming to the conclusion that Zoo might be the best deck. Still, I was reluctant to play it, as I suspected there would be a lot of random people who’d also come to the same conclusion… except they’d probably been practicing the deck — and more importantly, the mirror – for the last month or so. I tried half-heartedly to think of other options, with the Black/White aggro deck chief amongst them, before bowing to the inevitable.
There was some last minute tuning to be done. There are various aspects of Zoo that are fixed. You want the twelve one-drops, the Watchwolves are a must, and the deck is never playing less than the full burn package of Char and Helix. Given the life-gain around in the environment, at least three – possibly four – Flames of the Blood Hand are also necessary. After that, there is a lot of scope for variation. Kami of Ancient Law, Dryad Sophisticate, Tin Street Hooligan, and Burning-Tree Shaman are all viable creatures.
Some of the suggestions surprised me. I’d thought that Moldervine Cloak and Umezawa’s Jitte were a given, but then the explanations on how they left you open to bad tempo swings swayed me. The one creature I really didn’t want to lose was the Burning-Tree Shaman. At three mana he is fairly clunky, but then he is an absolute house for the cost. One of the great strengths of Zoo is that Pyroclasm rarely makes a dent. Go too small and all of a sudden you make Pyroclasm good again. As Black/White aggro was looking popular, Shock made it into the main deck. I nearly chopped the Bathe, but left two maindeck as they were a good multi-purpose spell.
With the maindeck almost fixed, it was time for the sideboard.
Your sideboard is important. In any tournament you will play more games after boarding. So therefore, in testing, you should devote a lot of time to playing the deck after sideboarding.
Umm, yeah.
I feel really sorry for those of you out there who believe that hard graft and following rules like this are the only way to reach the top 8 of a Pro Tour. I feel bad for totally trashing your preconceptions. Don’t worry, you can curse me and call me lucksack in the forums to your heart’s content.
Magic is a strange game, and sometimes it doesn’t work out like that. I know… I’ve spent months preparing for tournaments, only to crash and burn after getting the worst possible matchups on the day. Ideally yes, you should build your deck well in advance, and yes, you should test things like sideboards thoroughly. There isn’t always time to do this, especially for Pro Tours where the format is often brand new and the metagame uncertain. It’s not like a PTQ season, where the metagame is largely known and only evolving slowly, where perseverance and a lot of hours should mostly bring rewards. In the absence of time to test you have to make do with theory and good guesswork.
So I built my sideboard on the morning of the tournament.
Actually, I’m winding you up. I used to do it to Ben Ronaldson, and now I do it to Stuart Wright. Nothing ticks off a serious-minded player more than telling them how many mistakes you made and still managed to win, especially when they’re currently doing worse than you with the same deck.
I had a good idea of what the sideboard should be, and I discussed it with Stuart Wright and some of the UK players the night before (at this point there had been a lot of defections to Zoo). The maindeck was geared to beat control, with an extra Flames in the board to come. I also had an extra Kami of Ancient Law in the board, and Tin Street Hooligans to come in depending on whether I needed to kill enchantments or Signets. Against other beatdown decks it was time to dig in for the Jitte wars. Shinkins had also come up with the particularly evil tech of Guerilla Tactics against the rat decks. This was good, as often their discard picked off the Flames before it could be cast. You could swap them out with Guerilla Tactics and get the same effect, with the added advantage of being able to pick off Hand of Cruelty if required. The last cards were a trio of Paladin en-Vec against other Red decks.
When I went to bed, I had a sudden thought. Other Red decks probably meant Zoo. Okay, so Paladin en-Vec is good against Zoo, but the big problem… why am I bringing in a creature for the Zoo mirror that can’t even beat up a Watchwolf in a fight? I remember somebody – I think it might have been Da Costa Cabral – mentioning Hunted Wumpus a few days before, as a sideboard option. That made perfect sense. This version of Zoo played like Red Deck Wins, and in the Red Deck mirror everybody always went for the big guys. I checked some of the forums after the tournament, and was genuinely surprised by the amount of people who didn’t understand the Wumpus. It doesn’t come in against control. They aren’t ever going to make a Dragon or some other busted legend off it, because it won’t be in your deck for that matchup. You’re going to bring the Wumpus in against other Zoo decks. At the point you cast it they’ve probably already cast their guys, or they’re only going to make something much smaller. Okay, so they might make Rumbling Slum. Whatever, he’s still 5/5 and Wumpus is 6/6. In the big guy fight, Wumpus pretty much beats everything. I spread this amongst the other UK players, and I suppose we were part of the famous morning run on the Wumpus.
I also checked in on Billy Moreno and saw he’d been very clever with his sideboard. I think his Glare plan was truly inspired, but it was too big of a change for me to make at such a short notice (ten minutes before the player’s meeting — even flexibility has limits). He did supply me with another card I hadn’t considered. I was a bit concerned, as my general board against general control consisted of a single Flames of the Blood Hand. The argument for Giant Solifuge was really good against Black/White decks. You make it after they Wrath your first swarm. If they don’t have a second Wrath, the Solifuge will probably end them right there. I pinched a couple off fellow Englishman Lian Pizzey, picked up a couple more off a trade stand for my apprentice Noel, and was ready to kick ass.
This was the final listing:
Creatures (22)
- 4 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
- 4 Savannah Lions
- 4 Kird Ape
- 3 Kami of Ancient Law
- 4 Watchwolf
- 3 Burning-Tree Shaman
Lands (22)
Spells (16)
Some brief notes on the Castle. Yeah, it shouldn’t be there. It was originally an extra Plains as defense against Blood Moon, but then I thought I’d add it as a quasi-Bathe in Light to save Isamaru from Pyroclasm. Number of times I actually used it: once, in the quarterfinal, where it really didn’t matter. Plains is better, or two Brushland over the basic Plains if you care more about consistency than Blood Moon.
And so, several thousand words later (none of which mention either beer or hookers, which is alarmingly well restrained for me. Probably because I actually did well for a change), we finally get to the tournament itself.
Round 1: Tobias Henke — BWG control
I’d heard that the Germans had all come packing Heartbeat combo decks, and assumed Henke would be the same. Instead, I think he had some form of Black/Green/White control deck. I say “think” because his deck didn’t seem to do a lot in both games other than cast Sensei’s Diving Top, fetch some lands from his deck, and take out the odd creature with Putrefy or Mortify.
Game 1 I had my obligatory first screw-up of the day (I’m very bad in the mornings) by forgetting to Bathe a Burning-Tree Shaman to counter some removal. I’d just drawn the Bathe but had already stubbornly locked myself into the “Char you at end of turn” plan. The mistake didn’t matter, as the deck coughed up more than enough burn to finish off Henke. These are the kind of mistakes I like using to wind up Stuart Wright, but in most cases they don’t actually affect the outcome of the match.
I sideboarded in the Flames and two Solifuge, and took out the Burning-Tree Shaman.
Game 2 and my creature rush was stalled by an early Last Gasp and a lack of reinforcements. Faith’s Fetters on another critter put Henke up to twenty-two, and he might have thought he was in good shape. Unfortunately his deck didn’t agree, as it failed to cough up a threat despite a Top and multiple shuffle effects. If you don’t put the Red deck on a clock it will just sit back and eventually find enough burn, and that’s pretty much what happened.
1-0 (2-0)
Round 2: Gabriel Willmon — Gruul Beats
Willmon is a thoroughly nice guy from Colorado (I think — apologies if my memory screwed up). Our match turned into a mini-epic. Before going into the tournament, I suspected the straight Green/Red matchup might be tricky. Game 1 was exactly what I was dreading, as he opened with Kird Ape and gave it a Jitte. That was pretty much game right there, although I tried to put up a valiant fight before Moldervine Cloak and Skarrg smashed me to bits.
My last minute changes to the sideboard turned out to be absolutely key in games 2 and 3, as Hunted Wumpus was easily MVP. I brought in three of them, plus the Jittes to make it a fair fight, and some Tin Street Hooligan to cheat in said fair fight.
In game 2 he came out very fast, and I was knocked back on the ropes. Then I found two copies of Wumpus. Willmon took down the first, but the second stuck. I was on a very precarious four life, but finally managed to turn the game around to equip Jitte and counter-attack.
Game 3, and another battering from his big monsters. He managed to get a Rumbling Slum off my Wumpus, but it’s a 5/5 and Wumpus is bigger. I can’t remember the exact details, other than the game was so tight I was worried about my head flying off from the blood pressure. I think Lightning Helix enabled me to race, and I was able to Bathe Wumpus through for the win with the help of a Shock.
The Wumpus turned out to be absolutely crucial. Because it’s a 6/6 I was able to counter-attack. Despite the Paladin having pro-Red, at 2/2 it simply wouldn’t have been big enough to enable me to take the game before Willmon overwhelmed me with giant men or burn.
2-0 (2-1)
Round 3: Luca Chiera — Zoo
Chiera’s one of the pro Italian players and has been around for a long time. He was also running Zoo, but with Volcanic Hammers. We had a fairly lousy judge ruling in the first game. I stopped Char on a Kird Ape with Bathe in Light. My knowledge of the finer points of the rules (or even some of the obvious points) is not as good as it should be, and I called a judge over to check to see if Chiera would still have to take the two damage from Char. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t, but I’ve been screwed over in the past because I didn’t check. The judge ruled he would take two damage. Yep, this is wrong – plenty of folks informed me afterwards. Thankfully it turned out to have no effect on the game, as the Char with which I administered the coup de grace was enough to take Chiera to minus-two. Drawing double Helix was incredibly strong, and Chiera must have spotted the signs of his imminent crisping when I ignored his attacking Lion and Isamaru to send a Helix directly to his head.
Game 2, and Chiera chose to draw. This actually makes a lot of sense. Zoo decks play a lot like the old Red Deck Wins, and in that matchup what tends to happen is that the efficient burn and creatures trade off. The extra card is worth more than the tempo advantage in going first. Because I used to play Red Deck Wins a lot, I also knew the other key point: “Bring in the biggest guys.” There isn’t much around bigger than the Wumpus and I knew I was in solid shape when Chiera had to blow two Volcanic Hammers to get rid of it. I was also fortunate enough to draw two Lightning Helix to his one.
3-0 (2-0)
Round 4: Javier Dominguez — Orzhov Control
Javier is one of the Spanish names to watch. He was also on the same euroalliance forum as me. He’d arrived in Honolulu a little later than the rest of us, and was stuck with the Orzhov control deck. People think that Faith’s Fetters and Wrath of God is enough to send Zoo scurrying back to the cages. As I’ve mentioned already, it isn’t.
Actually, the match was closer than that. In game 1 I got the quick beats in, but then the deck started to draw land rather than the burn spells needed to finish the job. Dominguez came back at me with Kokusho and then Angel of Despair. The dice roll won this one. My Lightning Helix to put Dominguez to zero arrived the turn before his attack for ten (followed by Wrath to drain me for the rest off Kokusho).
The other games weren’t quite so close. Game two I drew a lot of land and got my face kicked in by an Angel of Despair. Game three I got the heavy burn draw, including a Flames of the Blood Hand for Dominguez’s last-ditch Fetters on my land, and fried yet another European to a crisp.
4-0 (2-0)
4-0 is a nice place to be. Another win and you’re guaranteed a place in Day 2. With a Pro Tour record that features as many Day 1 blowouts as mine, that’s always a cause for celebration.
Round 5: Nathan Zamora — UR Magnivore
Ouch, this was a beating. I mulliganed for the first time and got saddled with a one-lander. That got Stone Rained, and my little guys were swept by Pyroclasm. I finally got my teeth kicked in with a Magnivore. Game 2 was possibly worst, as Zamora drew three Threads of Disloyalty (three!) and beat me to death with my own Zoo. Keepers…! Keepers….! Argghhh. Where’s a damn whip when you need one…?
As an aside – although it pains me to do so – I’m going to pay another compliment to US Magic. I’ve been playing a long time, and for much of that time my perception of American Magic players was generally negative. Willmon and Zamora – and the guys I played on Day 2 – were good sports, and they also came up to me in later rounds to check on how I was doing. I think one of the better things about the current Pro Tour overall is that it is a lot friendlier. Yeah, there’s a fair chunk of cash on the line… but the most important thing about Magic, even at this level, is that it’s fun.
4-1 (0-2)
Round 6: Lars Dam — Boros Beats
Lars Dam is a Danish player, and a name I could remember from the past as having done something somewhere, but couldn’t quite remember what. I had a chat with him about Danish Magic beforehand. With the exception of Svend Geertsen, Danish Magic, like its English equivalent, has really struggled to produce big name players.
Game 1 came down to his mulligan, and I think me actually losing the die roll for a change. Dam’s deck is almost dedicated to burn (I found out later he had a monstrous sixteen burn spells, even more than mine), with some Lions and Hounds. This made the match somewhat of a Red deck mirror, and so my two-card advantage in game 1 was priceless. It meant I had a Kird Ape left once we’d traded our hands away.
Game 2 and the wheels went in for a major wobble. I don’t know what it is about manascrewed Danish players. Maybe my overly developed sporting nature takes pity on them and tries to sabotage me in an effort to even the game (unfortunately, it just so happens to be a little too good at applying the handicap, and ends up tilting the game the other way- Damn you traitorous brain!). In Worlds last year I played Rasmus Sibast, and I managed to throw the match in game 3 by Extracting his Gifts Ungiven when I should have named his Extractions, or even Kodama’s Reach (he’d mulliganed to five and failed to draw land number three). From then on he found land number three, and then proceeded to rip out all the Yoseis and Kokushos from my deck with subsequent topdecked Extractions.
Anyway, back to this game. I’d already been cleverly outmaneuvered in boarding. I’d basically boarded like I was playing against another Zoo deck. So that meant in with the Jittes and Hooligans for the Jitte war. However, Dam neatly sidestepped by dropping a Pithing Needle on turn 1 to switch off Jitte. I wasn’t too fussed that the Jittes in my hand were dead, as I’d also drawn a Hooligan. Also, rather obligingly, Dam’s deck had thrown a little hissyfit, with two Mountains and then a blank. At this point I sniffed blood and went dangerously onto autopilot, already drunk on dreams of Day 2 and playing for cash. I made a Hooligan to smash the Needle instead of casting Kami of Ancient Law. Dam hit land three and dropped Blood Moon.
Oh yeah, he’s only playing a two-color deck… Of course he’d be playing those. Still, I wasn’t too concerned. I had plenty of offence and the Jitte, so it was only a minor nuisance. Despite thrashing Dam onto the ropes, he steadfastly refused to go down. His burn started picking off my creatures. Lightning Helix dragged back some life. Faith’s Fetters on the Jitte dragged him a little further from the brink. I was left with a Burning-Tree Shaman but now couldn’t attack as I was facing down Paladin and Isamaru.
I managed to find a Forest and then bring out the magic Wumpus, but — inexplicably – The Fear set in. Instead of attacking with the 6/6 monster, I had this sudden fear of Char plus Paladin block equals dead Wumpus… and I left it at home while I waited for a better opportunity. It was a classic example of over-thinking yourself to death. If he had the Char, it would have been spent on the Shaman to enable him to attack. I was also crippled by the Blood Moon: I didn’t have the luxury of being able to wait for a better moment. In poker, it’s called Fancy Play Syndrome: you think you’re being clever by doing something different and unexpected, when the correct thing to do is make the obvious play. In this case, namely attacking with the 6/6 ginormous monster. But no, I left him home like a little wuss and got my head kicked in with the Genju of the Spires Dam drew two turns later.
At this point, I was wondering if this was the moment when the wheels would fall off. Would this be the game I’d look back on, after slumping to 4-4 and ignoble exit? As well as an extensive record of Day 1 exits, I also have a fair few memories of those times when you think fate is finally giving you a break… only to slice your legs off at the kneecaps within yards of the finish line. You can call me a paranoid member of the foil-hat brigade if you like, but I’ve been slapped enough times to know how capricious fate is.
Thankfully, she must have found another Craig Jones to torture that day, as Dam’s draw in the third game was Shock, Genju, Genju and just about all the land in the world. Against some decks, Genju plus infinite land can be real scary. However, against someone who’s managed to draw triple Shock…
5-1 (2-1)
Yay, Day 2 for me. The third time in a row I’ve managed it for a Constructed Pro Tour. Wow, it’s almost consistency.
Round 7: Helmut Summersberger — IzzeTron
My first feature match… except there wasn’t much worth featuring. Summersberger was running Tron. Despite what other people say Tron doesn’t beat aggro. Oh sure, it has the stupid “full Tron, bust out Meloku/Keiga on turn 3 or 4” draws, but in practice it doesn’t do that frequently enough, and its average draw generally gets slaughtered by any reasonable Zoo draw. What actually happened was Summersberger got the average draw, while I got the good draw. Mimeofacture copying just one Burning-Tree Shaman was a slight speed bump. Game 2 and he didn’t even manage an average draw, as his deck mulliganed to five.
6-1 (2-0)
Round 8: Rhys Gould — IzzeTron
This was pretty much a re-run of the last round. In game 1 I was way too fast out of the gates going first. He mulliganed in game 2, so I rather sportingly kept a one-lander. However, as that one land is Stomping Ground and I also have two Kird Ape in hand you could arguably question my notion of fair play. A White source turned up on turn 3 to allow a Watchwolf to join the fun. Gould’s deck also stuttered, as he couldn’t quite pull together the RRU2 to clean up with Pyroclasm and Electrolyze before it was too late.
7-1 (2-0)
So, a nice 7-1 after Day 1, and a local metagame that looked to be very juicy. The tables around me seemed to be full of Tron and Orzhov control decks. Still, I didn’t want to take anything for granted. Been here before, crashed horribly. Would have had the T-shirt, but that also went over the cliff in flames.
Much was actually made of the “lucky” loss. I kept joking that this time I’d probably be safe, as I was “under the radar”. It is odd to say, but I actually did feel a lot more comfortable with the 7-1 record. When you’re 8-0 and sailing at the top of the standings, everybody at home automatically assumes you’re a lock for top 8. Then you feel like a real chump when you fail to make it. The real truth is that you’re only halfway through a very long tournament. A hell of a lot can happen in eight rounds. Look at the Day 1 standings of Pro Tour LA. Six of the eight people in the top 8 positions after Day 1 failed to go on to convert it into an actual top 8 appearance.
When you’re 7-1 the difference is that instead of “wow, you must be a cert for top 8,” it’s more a case of “doing fine, lets see how Day 2 pans out”. It’s kind of weird, but that’s how it seems to me. There isn’t much difference between 8-0 and 7-1 in a sixteen round tournament. All that needs to happen is for the 8-0 player to lose a couple early, and they’re straight back in the scrum (and this is, in fact, what happened to Osyp).
So what was I actually thinking? Well, it wasn’t of top 8. Dreaming tends to make you feel bad when they get crushed, and having felt like a Roach on the underside of the big black boot of Fate on more occasions than I’d like, I tend to take things in small steps. I look at it as small targets. Secure one target, then move onto the next. Win three rounds, and I finish in the money. Next step – and the one I was really gunning for – win four rounds and I’m probably in the top 32. Top 32 is important, as I really wanted to qualify for Prague. Pressures of university work had meant I’d had to cry off most of the PTQs back home. I had one left, but giving yourself one out for a Sealed Deck format is never a good plan. So yeah, I wanted that top 32. Anything better would just be gravy.
But there was also the Red Deck factor. I was going into Day 2 with a 7-1 record… and I’m armed with a Red Deck.
The spirit of Dan Paskins is strong in this one.
In a few days (if I haven’t been fried to a crisp by the university death robots) I’ll come back with how I did on Days 2 and 3. And, of course, the story of “that” topdeck.