In the end, an 8-2 does indeed make it… But alas, it won’t be me this time. I end up in 11th on tie-breaks, which is still pretty damn good for my first tourney in a year and a half, particularly given the size of the crowd that showed up. Still, if you’re looking for a fantastic tourney report and a good idea of how Wake works, look here!
It has to be read to be believed. But there is a major revelation for Chris Romeo fans.
At this point, I am sitting at 3-1-1 and feeling pretty good about myself… But of course, we all know that I did not X-0 the rest of the tournament. Locusts would have swarmed the earth, fire would have rained out of the sky, and other bad times would be going on.
My goal that day was a winning record. I knew that I hadn’t playtested enough and would get caught by tricks and sideboards I had not anticipated. I also figured to lose one or two matches to manascrew, since I was running a two-color deck with non-aligned colors and no Birds of Paradise. That about summed up the day: Winning record, lost two matches to my errors, one to mana screw. But along the way, I learned some lessons about Rob Dougherty’s Elvish Succession, some changes in the metagame that have weakened it, and some tricks on playing it properly.
It takes a”special” player to be at 4-0 with a solidly-tested and built rogue deck, and then throw away the next two matches while being up a game in each. Working your ass off for two months, only to be done in by your own poor decision-making skills, is not a pleasant thing to have happen – but it happened to me. This is my story…
Don’t ever let it be said that you can’t go rogue and place highly in a major tournament. If you work hard, test diligently, and learn your deck’s strengths and weaknesses inside and out, you can succeed. It’s definitely easier to play a potent netdeck whose power is already well-documented, but I must say that nothing, I repeat, nothing matches the satisfaction from winning with something original that you’ve incubated for months.
I have slowly come to the realization that I will, in all likeliness, never become the next big thing on the Pro Tour. Yes, there are a few”old timers” on the Pro Tour, such as the inimitable Mike Pustilnik, but I have never been able to reach that”critical mass” point where I had the momentum to carry my skills, such as they are, into lucrative employment as a professional Magic player. For me and all the other Bennie Smiths out there, the two tournaments we really look forward to are States and Regionals. A win at States or a Top 8 at Regionals would be the pinnacle of my competitive Magic career, Pro Tour or no Pro Tour.
For this series, I’m going to try something a little different: I’m going to leave the deck strategy in the next article and instead get right to the report. Once I’ve gone through all the rounds, then I’ll post a strategy article specifically for Mirari’s Wake – a suddenly very important deck. My feeling is that for a deck that’s as complicated as this one, if we get the experience under your belt now (at least vicariously), the strategy article for the deck will make that much more sense and we’ll be able to get down to the nitty gritty a lot faster.
I had to play against the only competent person left in contention at the Ohio Regionals. The winner would be first after the Swiss and thus first overall, as the top 8 doesn’t get played out anymore; the loser would get essentially nothing….
One more round and I would have qualified for Nationals for the third consecutive year. One more round and I would have been first place in the last two Regionals I’d played in. One more round and I wouldn’t have to leave the tournament site a loser. One more round and I would still have believed that I was good.
I went undefeated. 8-0-2, all the way to Nationals. If there had been a top 8 faceoff, Elves would probably have taken the championship, considering there were four Blue/Green decks in it. The Elves reign supreme – somehow. All I can say is that many Angels suffered and many Birds got big. In the end, even Silvos had a thing or two to say. Regardless, I have single-handedly increased the value of Seeker of Skybreak in the past week.
I talked to Carl a bit after I had made my decision on the winners in order to find out what modifications he made to the deck over the last few weeks. He told me he hadn’t changed the maindeck (there was too much synergy in the build he originally submitted), but he did provide a sideboard that represents a virtual transformational sideboard against other control decks like Tog, MBC and Slide.
I was all prepared to do a big blowout article like I usually do, bringing your ass fully up on all the latest tech… Until I read Scott Johns’ article yesterday and realized he covered everything. So now that you’ve been brought fully up-to-date on what the metagame looks like, I’m going to take a look at how to attack each of the decks Scott covered. If you wanted to go about disrupting their game plan, how exactly would you do it?
I have a confession to make: I am Adam Prosak and I have an addiction to Wild Mongrel. I also have an unholy love for Quiet Speculation, which was so good to me that it placed me 5th at Grand Prix: Cleveland and won me the Kentucky Open (sorta), so you know I’ve been playing U/G since it began. And though I’m qualified for Nationals on ranking, here’s a complete listing of the U/G build I would play if I were to go to Regionals, the sideboarding strategyes, and what to watch for in each matchup.
“Hunting Sound” is the pet name for the Hunting Grounds deck I played six months ago, re-applied to the updated U/G/w aggro mold. The deck was extremely aggressive, with almost no board control elements whatsoever. This made the deck somehow comforting to play. You either beat your opponent upside the face , or the deck just didn’t deliver and you’d shrug your shoulders to show your disdain for those overpriced fetchlands that don’t even fix mana 75% of the time.”Flooded Strand,” you’d remark,”Who needs ’em?”
For those competing this weekend at U.S. Regionals, at this point you’re either putting on those last polishing touches, reviewing potential opponents’ deck lists, trying to decide which deck of your favorites to go with, or cramming for a deck at the last minute. No matter which applies to you, the time for abstract theory is over and the time for decklists decklists decklists is in full swing! In this article, I’ll be covering as many archetypes as I’m capable of, with a focus on the key choices available while keeping an eye toward the metagame as a whole. No deck exists in a vacuum – and after this article is done, hopefully you’ll know where yours stands.
