As I write this, I’m in a plane on my way to San Juan, the second stop in my month long trip around the globe to play Magic. My first stop was this past weekend in Washington DC (or, more accurately, Chantilly, Virginia) for the Grand Prix, where I hoped to kick off my world tour with a bang. While I didn’t end up with quite the result I’d hoped for, I had a fine time and learned a great deal that I can apply to future events.
I arrived in DC early Thursday afternoon. I’d specifically gotten an early flight, at 6:30 on Thursday morning, because a good friend of mine from high school lives in the area and I’d planned to spend time with her when I wasn’t playing in the event. Unfortunately, when I sent her my itinerary a few weeks before the event, it turned out that weekend was one in which she was out of town for work, so I ended up waking up to catch a flight at the crack of dawn for nothing.
Thankfully, Patrick Chapin was also in town early, and I got in touch with him once I checked in to my hotel. He told me that GerryT and Gabe Walls were also in the area, and they were coming to pick him up to go to a local game store to draft. He said I could tag along if I could get to his hotel quickly, since they were supposed to be there any minute. I called a cab and made it over there to find Patrick sitting and waiting out front. I still didn’t know what I was going to play in the GP and asked Patrick if he wanted to play some games while we waited. He agreed with such enthusiasm and a glint in his eye that I knew he had something spicy brewed up.
I put together a fairly stock U/W Control deck, and in our first few games I wasn’t terribly impressed with Patrick’s deck. He stumbled on mana, played some Wall of Omens, cast some Scute Mobs, and generally didn’t do anything that felt threatening. After a few more games, however, his draws smoothed out a bit and I started to like what I was seeing. I kept finding myself facing down an early Jace powered out by mana creatures, and when I’d hold up Negate to counter it on turn 4, I’d see a Vengevine or Ranger of Eos come down across the table instead. Despite having so many powerful tools at my disposal, I always seemed to be on the back foot, forced into awkward positions because of the many different angles from which Patrick’s deck could threaten me. The deck was full of powerful cards and powerful interactions that seemed well positioned against the field I was expecting in the tournament. Without actually playing a game with the deck myself, I was sold.
You may be wondering how we had a chance to play so many games if our ride was supposed to be picking us up any minute. It turned out that Gerry, Gabe, and their chauffeur Calosso had gotten stuck in a traffic jam as the result of a major accident, and that somehow — despite traffic crawling at speeds in the single digit miles-per-hour — Calosso had managed to miss the exit where he needed to get off, so they had to get off at the next exit and pass by the accident yet again from the other side of the freeway. Five hours after they told us they’d be there to pick us up, they finally arrived, and we made our way to the local store. That left us with only enough time to do a single draft and grab dinner before making it back to the hotel to catch some sleep.
Chapin and I spent much of the next day testing Block, despite the Standard Grand Prix the following day. I love how Wizards schedules Grand Prix tournaments the weekend before Pro Tours now so players can make one big trip of it, but it certainly leads to conflicts when it comes to prioritizing playtest time. I literally did not play a single game with my Grand Prix deck until after I’d already handed in my decklist. The stakes at the Pro Tour are so much higher that it doesn’t make sense to do anything else. I’d seen enough of the deck in action to have a decent sense of it, though, and I was excited to be playing something that my opponents certainly wouldn’t have experience playtesting against!
The next morning at the site it turned out Pat had himself some additional converts. Sam Black, Gaudenis Vidugiris, Matt Sperling, Alexander West, and Tom Martell had all switched to “Next Level Bant” as well. We had a pow-wow to discuss last minute changes to the deck, by the end of which the sideboard section of my deck registration sheet was covered in scribbles. Here’s what I ultimately turned in:
Creatures (23)
- 2 Birds of Paradise
- 3 Ranger of Eos
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 1 Kor Skyfisher
- 2 Scute Mob
- 3 Sea Gate Oracle
- 4 Vengevine
- 4 Wall of Omens
Planeswalkers (7)
Lands (24)
Spells (6)
Some of the sideboard choices may look strange, especially the one-ofs, but they were all picked for very good reasons. A lot of players will dismiss one-ofs as inconsistent or eccentric, but in many cases they make a lot of sense. You may want different cards to fill particular roles because they come in against different decks. For instance, Pithing Needle, Linvala, and Qasali Pridemage in this sideboard. All three of these cards can serve as tools to combat the Cunning Sparkmage/Basilisk Collar combination, and you’d bring all three of them in against Naya.
But that’s not the only place you want them. Pithing Needle also serves double duty against Planeswalkers, Linvala against Mythic to shut down their mana creatures and Knights and against Jund to control Siege-Gang Commander, and Qasali Pridemage is great against U/W as an early threat that can kill a Chalice or Oblivion Ring, as well as insurance against Mythic’s Eldrazi Conscriptions and the chance they bring in Mind Control. Playing multiples of any of these cards rather than one of each will more consistently give you a particular effect you want against a particular matchup, but the combination of the three of them gives you tremendous versatility while still addressing the same central problem. At the same time, playing a variety of cards makes it harder for your opponent to correctly play around what you might have and prevents you from ending up with dead cards due to redundancy.
Plus beating someone with a miser’s one-of is totally sweet!
When the player meeting finally started, it was announced that there were over 1900 players, shattering the previous record held by Grand Prix: Boston last year. As a result, the tournament was split into two separate flights, a first for any North American Event. Thankfully, they chose Green and Blue for the flights, so my colorblind self could still tell them apart. The judging staff announced that there would be nine rounds, followed by a cut, followed by an additional eight rounds. The GP was shaping up to be longer than any non-World Championships tournament I’d ever played in!
Round 1-3 — Chicken Sandwich and Twelve Piece Chicken Nuggets
During my byes, I soundly defeated Chick-fil-a, taking down both a Chicken Sandwich and a twelve piece nuggets for breakfast. Unfortunately, registration and the player meeting had gone so long that it was already after 11 am, so we couldn’t get actual breakfast, and the Chicken Minis are the absolute nuts. I could already tell at this point that Chick-fil-a was planning its revenge, probably something like refusing to serve me food on Sunday for some godforsaken reason.
Round 4 — Grixis
As I wrote in my article last week, I was scared away from playing Grixis at the Grand Prix because of the sudden surge in the popularity of Vengevine. In the round, my opponent was playing Grixis, and I was playing Vengevines. In the first game, my opponent got out an early Sedraxis Specter, but I had Jace, which I repeatedly used to fateseal him to keep him off of mana and protect it from his Specter hits. Elspeth and Vengevine came out to mop things up. The second game was similar, except instead of Jace it was Vengevine backed up by two Noble Hierarchs who did the mopping up, and he started as early as turn 3.
Matches 4-0
Round 5 — Gerard Fabiano with Esper
This was a feature match covered by the fine folks at ggslive.com. For those of you who have been living under a rock, the ggslive team, consisting of Rashad Miller, Ray Punzalen, and Ben Shwartz, along with various guest stars, broadcasts live streaming coverage of most major North American events. They do a great job, and I always try to catch some of their coverage for events I’m unable to attend or tag in to do commentary for them at events after I’m knocked out. Getting a chance to watch matches go down live and talk about them in the chat room with players from all over is very cool, and helps make the Magic community feel that much tighter.
But like any internet community, the ggslive chat is fraught with the perils of anonymity and the bandwagon effect. After my first game with Gerard, in which I won with a pair of Vengevines after he made me discard them with Mind Shatter, someone in the chat room thought they saw me take one of his Wall of Omens. Gerard and I were both using the same color of sleeves, so it was an easy mistake to make, but when we counted out our decks before game two, we each had sixty cards. Despite that, the meme picked up steam all weekend, to the point that people were posting lolcat style “5 Walls” pictures on my Facebook page. Oh, the internet, the solution to — and cause of – all of the world’s problems.
In any case, after a long game 1 and a poor draw on my part in game 2, I managed to pull out my match against Gerard with just a few minutes left in the round.
Matches 5-0
Round 6 — Mythic
This match was somewhat interesting. In game 1, my opponent double mulliganed on the draw and led with a Bird of Paradise off a basic Forest. My hand was very vulnerable to Cunning Sparkmage, with two more mana creatures, so I decided to Bant Charm his Birds right away rather than risk the chance he was Naya and could just wipe me out, reasoning that if he was Mythic he’d need a lot of mana to get going anyway and removing his Bird couldn’t be that wrong. In retrospect, I should have considered the fact that Naya decks generally play no more than one or two Birds, and that it was much more like that he was playing Mythic, where spot removal is at an absolute premium. He recovered from his mana stall before I could put much pressure on him, and played out two Knights of the Reliquary, only one of which I had an answer to thanks to my Bant Charm on his bird. This let him get out a Sovereigns, which he used to crash in with Lotus Cobra and put me low on life. I played out some blockers to soak damage — I had two Scute Mobs at this point, only one of which had gotten a chance to grow, along with two Rangers and a Wall of Omens.
At the end of my turn my opponent said “I’m just going to attack and go get the other Conscription.” I said “Show me,” and he looked at his hand and realized he was holding it. He contemplated his play for a while and then attacked with his big Cobra and his Sovereigns. I quickly blocked the Sovereigns with my 5/5 Mob and his Cobra with the rest of my team. When he used his untapped Knight to search for Sejiri Steppe to save his Cobra, he stopped for a second and looked at the board.
“Wait, am I dead?”
“Yep.”
While we shuffled up for the second game, my opponent realized he could have used his Knight to get enough mana to play the second Conscription from hand to kill me. When he asked if there was anything else he could have done differently, I pointed out he could have just held back his Sovereigns and I wouldn’t have been able to attack him for the win, as well, since all he did was give me a profitable block with my Scute Mob.
Games 2 and 3 aren’t nearly as interesting. In game 2 he gets the absolute nut draw and kills me with Conscription pretty much instantly, and in game 3 I have answers to everything he plays and kill him without taking a single point of damage.
Matches 6-0
Round 7 — Mythic
When I was in grade school, I took karate. In order to progress up in belts in the dojo where I studied, students had to bring in their report cards to the sensei. No student with failing grades would ever be promoted to the next belt. My sensei — along with just about everyone else in my life at that point — told me I should be a doctor, because all of my grades were great, except for handwriting, in which I consistently scored no higher than a C.
I bring this story up because my notes from this round are essentially illegible, even to me. I see a big circled “2 Steppe!” which is clearly telling me to remember that my opponent has two pro-color lands, but after that there’s something that says “+4 sesfsefsdf,” followed by “jawa bang” and “dew times.” At least as far as I can tell. I do know that I won game 3 of this match by attacking my opponent’s Jace with a double-exalted Sea Gate Oracle, which was immensely satisfying, but other than that I can only tell you that I won two games to one.
Matches 7-0
Round 8 — Joshua Wagener with Jund
Ahhh, The Champ. This round was something of a grudge match for me, as Josh Wagener beat me in the quarterfinals of U.S. Nationals in 2002 on his way to becoming The Champ. I was actually seated for this round without an opponent for over ten minutes, as some kind of delay kept the round from starting. The assembled spectators commented on how lucky I was, but I told them there was no way I was counting The Champ out just yet, since I remembered how he’d plucked a Compost from the top immediately after I’d Cabal Therapy’d him for Compost way back when. Sure enough, Josh appeared running toward the table and time was called literally thirty seconds after he got into his seat.
I got my revenge, however, as I led with Birds of Paradise. Josh commented how he’d beaten all of the Mythic decks he’d played so far, then raised an eyebrow when I followed up with Sea Gate Oracle. The jig was up when he cast Blightning on turn 3 and I discarded two Vengevines, then cast two creatures on my fourth turn and attacked him for nine. After some brief consideration, Josh packed up his cards for the next game. Game 2 was a much longer affair. Josh had an aggressive start, but I was able to contain him with Wall of Omens, Ranger, and Vengevines, eventually setting up shop with Jace and Gideon to take him down.
Matches 8-0
Round 9 — Brett Blackman with Mythic
It’s not bad to have an 8-1 record in a Grand Prix, but it’s much, much better to be 9-0. I’d played Brett a number of times before — he’d beaten me in my first PTQ back when I brewed up a five-color Doran deck at Pro Tour: Hollywood, as well as knocking me out of day two in Grand Prix: Denver, but I mostly wanted revenge for beating me out for the position of Seeker on Griffindor’s Quidditch team. But alas, it was not to be.
This match was covered over on the mothership here. I managed to squeak out the first game despite a 14 point attack from a Cobra-turned-Eldrazi, but I just couldn’t keep up with his explosive draws in games 2 and 3. There was a point in game three where I feel like I made a mistake, however. Brett’s board was just a Cobra, two Birds, and three lands, and I played Jace and used it to brainstorm, since I was stuck on mana and had no immediate answers to a Sovereigns attack the following turn. What I should have done is used the Jace to bounce his Cobra, since that puts Brett in a position where he can’t afford to both play Sovereigns and have a creature to attack with the same turn. That would let me untap with Jace and give me the option to Brainstorm then or possibly use it to bounce something he played that turn. I was exhausted from the long day of playing and didn’t think through the implications of my line of play, and had just thought that Brett could have played Sovereigns the turn before so he must not have it, when it was much more reasonable to think that he was playing around my open mana. Live and learn.
Matches 8-1
With Day 1 coming to an end after ten o’clock, I considered just going back to my hotel and going to sleep right away, but decided to go out to dinner with some friends from the area. I kept replaying the games I’d lost during the day in my head, trying to figure out both where I’d gone wrong and what cards might have helped me. I was already excited for the GP’s coming up in Sendai and Manila. After Kuala Lumpur earlier this year, I had all kinds of ideas how to improve the U/W deck I had played, but was very disappointed that I wouldn’t have a chance to put those ideas into action at another major tournament. By halfway through this GP I was already making changes to the deck in my head, preparing for tournaments to come. Never stop brewing!
I woke up the next morning bright and early, and decided to help get my blood flowing by walking to the event site rather than waiting for the shuttle. I arrived at the site just as some Florida players were leaving for breakfast and decided to go with them. This was when Chick-fil-a got its revenge.
See, I went to college in Atlanta. During that time was my introduction to the wonder that is Chick-fil-a. Also during that time was my introduction to the phenomenon of Chick-fil-a withdrawal that occurs every Sunday. After a late night spent drinking and carousing on a Saturday, there is nothing a hungover body craves more on Sunday than a Chick-fil-a chicken biscuit, and yet Chick-fil-a will not provide one. It is a cruel joke, like the Tetris God who calls out “Line! Line! Line!” only after you had to use a L-block to plug the whole you had waiting because you had nowhere else to put it. Why do they torture us so? I had to settle for a Burger King breakfast sandwich and hash browns, which was pretty awful, but even worse was the knowledge that I wouldn’t be able to have Chick-fil-a ALL DAY LONG.
Round 10 — Grixis
See round 4.
Matches 9-1
Round 11 — Carlos Romao with UWR Planeswalkers
This match was once again covered on the mothership here. The last time I’d played Carlos was in 2002, when we were playing for Top 8 of the World Championships. That time I made a terrible blunder and lost, failing to Mirari my Haunting Echoes when he had Bearscape in play. He went on to win the tournament and I failed to make the Top 8. That match inspired me to write what is still one of my favorite articles I’ve written about Magic – “Playing in Good Faith.” I’d link it, but I don’t have internet, so look it up! I managed to get revenge against Carlos here, though as I said after the match, it’s hardly even, since he went on the win the World Championships and all I did was win round eleven of a Grand Prix.
Matches 10-1
Round 12 — Kiln Fiend Jund
Yes, you read that right. I was a little taken aback when my opponent played a Kiln Fiend, but it seems pretty similar to the role Geopede plays in those Jund decks — an extra cheap creature that can put on pressure early and bust through Wall of Omens. My notes for this match are, once again, fairly illegible — there’s a big circle around “Hemorrhage/Bit Blast,” as well as “Kiln Fiend!” and “Gideon/Mob/VV/Jace,” which leads me to believe that I was reminding myself to play around both Thought Hemorrhage and Bituminous Blast since I’d seen them in cascades, and that I won game 1 by locking up the board with Gideon and forcing his creatures to suicide into mine while I dug with Jace. Game 2 I got smooshed by a fast Kiln Fiend draw, and in game 3 I sent a Vengevine into a Sprouting Thrinax. After my opponent put Saprolings into play, he pointed at my Vengevine, and I picked up my Noble Hierarch on the table and showed it to him. He sighed when he followed up with Thought Hemorrhage on Vengevine. While the rest of my Vengevines were gone from my deck, the one in play was enough to take it down.
Matches 11-1
Round 13 — Brad Nelson with U/W Control
I’d played some games with Brad during our byes, which were some of the first games I’d played with my deck and the first games he’d played against it, so while they were educational for both of us, I think he gained more out of them because he knew what he was up against. I mentioned while we were shuffling that we should try to play quickly, because games between our two decks could certainly go long, and Brad agreed. This led to a series of games in which neither of us probably made the optimal play after around turn 4 simply because there was too much to think about, but we didn’t want to go to time. I was too focused on finishing the match to take notes, but I remember in the first game I was too cautious in playing around Martial Coup and Oblivion Ring’d a Baneslayer rather than Path it, which left me short a Ring for his Elspeth that kept him in the game. I also got locked out of White for a long time by Brad’s triple Spreading Seas draw. Eventually Brad took over with Mind Spring and Baneslayers, and I couldn’t keep up and conceded. I won a quick second game, and we started the third game with something like eight minutes on the clock. Brad stumbled a bit on mana, and Vengevines did what Vengevines do, and I won with less than two minutes remaining.
Matches 12-1
Round 14 — Owen Turtenwald with Jund
In a normal sized Grand Prix, Owen and I would have been able to start drawing into the Top 8 right here, but we weren’t playing in the real world. We were playing in 1900 player Grand Prix fantasyland, and we had to play. This match was covered here, but the coverage is hardly worth reading. In game 1 I doubled mulliganed on the play and Owen had Maelstrom Pulse for my triple Noble Hierarch draw. In game 2 I never really got anything powerful going and got run over in typical Jund fashion.
Matches 12-2
Round 15 — Bradley Carpenter with Vengevine/Hell’s Thunder Jund
Winning this round would put me at needing one of the next two, since I had the best tiebreakers in the tournament. Vengevines got me there in the first game, but in the second game Brad had an explosive double Lotus Cobra draw with perfect cascades from Bloodbraid Elves and we were on to game 3. I kept a somewhat questionable hand, with the one Kor Firewalker I’d sideboarded in, Vengevine, Linvala and four land, only one of which could produce White. I was able to establish a reasonable position with the Vengevine and a Ranger I drew that found two Scute Mobs, as Brad’s draw wasn’t terribly explosive, but couldn’t seem to draw a second White source. I finally draw a White tap land the turn Brad played a Siege-Gang Commander with me on eight life. On his turn, Brad left up his mana for the Siege Gang, and I played my Linvala. He shot me with his tokens in response and then untapped and played Sarkhan the Mad, creating a Dragon token. I attacked my team into Sarhkan, killing him, but Brad untapped and showed me a second Sarkhan for lethal.
I tried to figure out if there was some way I could have applied more pressure and kept him from having creatures to sac for the Sarhkan while still defending myself so I didn’t die to the Siege-Gang, but couldn’t find a way. It’s possible I should have mulliganed my opening hand, since although the deck has 18 sources of White mana, between tap lands and mana creatures, only four of them are available for use immediately, so I’d have to draw a source within my first two draw steps not to seriously stumble. It is for exactly this reason, by the way, that I think Kor Firewalker is a bad choice for the sideboard in this deck. It’s pretty much a three-drop at best, and often can’t even come down then. I’m definitely removing them in my next version.
Matches 12-3
Round 16 — Mythic
My opponent this round was actually a player I’d gotten a game loss against for tardiness at the Sunday PTQ at GP: Denver two years ago, which made it somewhat amusing when I showed up after the round had officially started because I’d gotten permission from a judge to run to the bathroom. I might as well not have shown up, though, as my deck just didn’t deliver in either game and his did, Mythic Conscription did what it does best and smooshed me quickly, eliminating me from Top 8 contention.
Matches 12-4
Round 17 — Todd Anderson with U/W
As I sat down for the round, Todd asked me if I’d be willing to concede so he could make Top 16 to qualify. I told him that I couldn’t concede when I still had a chance at Top 16 myself, since I needed the PT Points. Todd seemed disappointed, but said he understood. Neither game we played was particularly close. In the first game I got Jace out quickly and took control, and in the second I had both Vengevine and Jace, along with two Oblivion Rings and a Qasali Pridemage to handle his Baneslayer and pair of Oblivion Rings. Vengevine and Jace did what they do to U/W and I won handily.
Matches 13-4
I left the site and went to dinner with some friends at a nearby barbeque place. While we were eating and I was teaching them to play Ascension, I decided to check the final standings on my phone, only to scroll down and find myself in 17th. It’s frustrating enough to lose three out of four matches from 12-1 to miss Top 8, but not even finishing in the Top 16 was a serious dagger. I drowned my sorrows with a few drinks at the BBQ place and the nearby hotel bar before heading back to the site to help out the ggslive guys with commentary for the semis and the finals.
All told, I had a lot of fun at the event, though I wish I could have come through with at least one more win. I’m still bouncing around ideas on how to improve the deck I played, but haven’t had a chance to try any of them out. I feel like the deck needs a bit more early game action and can probably cut some of the cards that fuel Vengevine, since it’s rare that your deck is functioning properly and you can’t hold back some mana creatures or Walls to bring them back. I’d definitely completely rework the sideboard — Mind Control just isn’t what you want against Mythic these days, and I’m not nearly as afraid of Bloodwitch as my compatriots who insisted you need it against Jund. I want to try Oust against Jund, Naya, and Mythic, since it’s a card you can use to break up their early game without accelerating them like Path would, and it also fits very well on your curve in the middle of the game to make plays like Jace, bounce one creature, Oust another to take control of the board. I like the idea of trying some number of Sphinx of Lost Truths, both as a card draw mechanism and as great way to abuse Vengevines by discarding them.
Here’s where I plan to start my next round of testing:
Creatures (24)
- 2 Birds of Paradise
- 2 Ranger of Eos
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 1 Borderland Ranger
- 1 Scute Mob
- 2 Sphinx of Lost Truths
- 4 Sea Gate Oracle
- 4 Vengevine
- 4 Wall of Omens
Planeswalkers (7)
Lands (24)
Spells (5)
I won’t have a chance to play any games with this until after PT: San Juan, but I’m sure I’ll be playing a ton of Standard leading up to GP: Sendai. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Until next time…
bmk