Standard

Captain’s Log #9 – Top 8 in Toronto

The third weekend of 2014 saw me play my third PTQ, this time in the great city of Toronto. There was definitely a closer PTQ that I could have attended instead in Catskill, New York, but I could not give up an opportunity to catch up with two of my closest friends in Scott MacCallum and Dave Lee.

For the first time in 2014, I was going to go alone. I was going to be without my dear friend Frankie Richard, but I promised him that I would play all of the rounds in his name. I chose the VIA rail as my method of transportation, and I have to mention that the train’s Wi-Fi is noticeably stronger than it was two years ago.

Two years ago, the Wi-Fi was really bad and I regret trying to play MTGO on it. I remember playing Zoo vs. Ben Stark who was on Valakut in an eight-man. I feel really bad that I took forever to kill him when he was dead on board, because of the poor Wi-Fi connection. I wonder if he thought I was trying really hard to slow-roll him?

Even with the stronger signal, though, they will not let you stream video using their connection, which turned out to be a huge bummer since I had planned to watch some Mono-Black Devotion videos by Brad Nelson and Adam Yurchick.

Nightmare PTQ Part 3?

Some people actually mentioned that they didn’t want to see me at the Toronto PTQ after reading about my escapades in Syracuse and Connecticut. I couldn’t really blame them. Playing games of Magic while standing. Wizards Events Reporter crashing. What kind of bad luck was I going to bring to Toronto?

I put my entire faith in my friend Kelly Ackerman who has been known to organize some of the biggest PTQs in North American history and, thankfully, he did not disappoint. At the end of registration, the tally of registered players was 341, and I can say now that everything PTQ-related ran silky smooth.

The venue was at one of Ryerson University’s gyms, and it’s an excellent choice for a tournament of this size. One issue I didn’t mention concerning the venues in Syracuse and Connecticut was that there weren’t enough aisles to get you from point A to point B. It wasn’t super comfortable, but in Toronto, you had all the space in the world to maneuver.

The only extra thing I would want—and it’s more a good-to-have than a must-have—is to provide pairings on Twitter. If Wizards Event Reporter could just do that for the tournament organizer by simply being given credentials of a Twitter account, then it’d be a dream. As it stands, the Toronto PTQ was still the overall best PTQ experience I have had in 2014.

The Toronto PTQ
The Toronto PTQ

Road to Top 8

I had messed around with Saito’s UW decklist and believe it to be one of the best versions of UW available. Here’s the list:

[deck title=UW by Tomoharu Saito]
[Lands]
5 Island
5 Plains
4 Azorius Guildgate
3 Mutavault
2 Temple of Silence
4 Temple of Deceit
4 Hallowed Fountain
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
1 AEtherling
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Last Breath
4 Detention Sphere
2 Azorius Charm
4 Sphinx’s Revelation
4 Dissolve
4 Jace, Architect of Thought
3 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion
3 Syncopate
4 Supreme Verdict
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
4 Archangel of Thune
3 Gainsay
4 Soldier of the Pantheon
1 Opportunity
3 Dark Betrayal
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Lucas Siow piloted a tweaked version of the deck and started off 4-0 only to lose the next two because of missed land drops.

“Guess that’s what I get for running UW without [card]Divination[/card]s.”

He did later tell me that he would definitely run his list again, citing that he felt the deck gave him a chance to win any game.

Despite having more success online with UW than Mono-Black Devotion, I chose to stick to my plan of playing one deck this month and selected Mono-Black Devotion as my weapon of choice for this PTQ.

I did deviate and opted for Brad Nelson’s list over Jon Stern’s, though it had nothing to do with my thinking one list was superior to the other. I just wanted to see how the different main deck removal suite would perform for me. I do want to mention that Brad’s list is just two cards off of Owen Turtenwald’s tournament-winning list from SCG Indianapolis.

Here’s what I chose to run:

[deck title=Mono Black Devotion by Brad Nelson]
[Lands]
18 Swamp
4 Mutavault
4 Temple of Deceit
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Desecration Demon
4 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
4 Nightveil Specter
4 Pack Rat
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Underworld Connections
3 Devour Flesh
4 Hero’s Downfall
2 Pharika’s Cure
1 Ultimate Price
4 Thoughtseize
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
3 Lifebane Zombie
3 Dark Betrayal
2 Doom Blade
2 Pharika’s Cure
2 Erebos, God of the Dead
3 Duress
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

I finished 8-1 after the Swiss rounds, landing me in third place. To give you an extremely small picture of the metagame, I ended up playing against Rw Devotion three times, Mono-Black Devotion twice, Rw Burn once, UW Control once, GW Aggro once, and finally Mono-Black Devotion splash Blood Baron once.

To be honest, despite losing most of my die rolls, I felt I ran well above average, rarely having to mulligan my hands during the Swiss rounds. I also certainly committed fewer mistakes than I did in Syracuse and Connecticut. And like many of my friends have said, everyone makes mistakes; all you can hope to do is make less important ones than your opponents.

In a post-sideboard game, one Mono-Black Devotion opponent showed me a hand of five lands and a [card]Hero’s Downfall[/card] on turn one after a [card]Thoughtseize[/card] from my side. Another round, my GW opponent destroyed me in game one, but she sideboarded in [card]Unflinching Courage[/card], which gave the edge back to me because my removal spells were now potential two-for-ones, and that’s exactly the reason why I took down the next two games.

I’m learning more and more that experience with a deck and its matchups is simply very important, especially if you do not have a lot of time on your hands to prepare for a tournament. Lack of experience is the reason some of my opponents lost to me, and it’s the reason I lost to my opponent in top eight.

My opponent in the top eight was playing WWb, and I was just confused because it wasn’t the mainstream version that I had seen before. This one ran [card]Judge’s Familiar[/card]s, which somehow was enough to induce me into taking lines that didn’t really make any sense. In retrospect, I wish I had more experience in that matchup.

I also wish I had been more like Jon Stern near the end of the Swiss rounds. In the later rounds of a PTQ, Jon would take the effort of jotting which deck every potential top eight contender was playing. I had no idea what my top eight opponent was playing and, had I known, I would not have taken a mulligan in game one. My tournament came to a quick abrupt end, but I am still content to know what I can work on to improve my game. My results are trending upwards and I am feeling like my old self again.

Derf selling playmats
Derf selling playmats at the event!

Of course Scott, being the awesome Dad that he is to me, attempted to cheer me up by bringing me to a restaurant called Barberian’s Steak House. Once again, he succeeded. The garlic bread was incredible, and the steak was beyond tasty. I ended up crashing at Scott’s for the night, and let me publicly say that he goes out of his way to be a great host. Thanks again, Dad.

Porter Steak!
Porter Steak!

WWb Preparation

If I want to constantly improve myself a player, I cannot just sit and be happy with my top eight performance or my 8-2 record. There is a lot of work that can be done. In order to fill in gaps of my knowledge, I asked Twitter to see if anyone owned a WW deck that I could test with.

More than a few people were ready to answer the call, and I managed to get a couple of matches versus Drew Chandler (@drklutch). I’m thankful I am able to test online because assembling a real-life gauntlet is just too time-consuming, not to mention expensive.

After our series, I realized the matchup is way more simplistic than I thought: you just try to trade one-for-one and let your bigger spells in the mid-to-late game take over. The only tricky guy that is annoying to deal with is [card]Xathrid Necromancer[/card]. [card]Devour Flesh[/card] and [card]Desecration Demon[/card] do not look so good facing down a Necromancer.

The series also allowed me to see that I sideboarded poorly in the top eight. Maybe I was too nervous, but I remember keeping some [card]Thoughtseize[/card]s in, and just like that, I committed the same mistake as one of my opponents in the Swiss. I sideboarded poorly and got punished for it.

[card]Thoughtseize[/card] is bad because the WWb deck has so many redundant threats. Sure, you can take away a [card]Precinct Captain[/card], but they can just cast a [card]Daring Skyjek[/card] the next turn. And because the mana curve of the WWb deck is so low, you lose so much tempo casting [card]Thoughtseize[/card] when you should basically be casting a removal spell turns 2-4.

Reid Duke has written one of the most critically acclaimed articles on [card]Thoughtseize[/card]. I read it, but the lessons clearly hadn’t seeped into my brain yet.

My new plan is as follows:

– 4 [card]Thoughtseize[/card]
– 3 [card]Underworld Connections[/card]
+ 2 [card]Doom Blade[/card]
+ 3 [card]Lifebane’s Zombie[/card]
+ 2 [card]Pharika’s Cure[/card]

Inspired by Persistence

It is always a disappointment to finish so close yet so far. Magic contains a great deal of variance, and all you can really do is give yourself as many opportunities as possible to succeed.

Over the past year, it seems many of my friends are qualifying by sheer persistence, and I can’t help but be inspired by that. Let’s start off with Mario Pavel Rodriguez Renteria, who had been playing GB Mutilate during the entirety of the last Standard season. He lost in one finals against Pascal Maynard only to win his very next PTQ after the crushing defeat.

Glenn McIelwain and Jared Boettcher have also both had recent runner-up finishes, but they continued to grind and were able to use their strong finishes at Grand Prix Washington as invites to Pro Tour Born of the Gods.

Heck, this Standard season, Jared was the runner-up at the Connecticut PTQ I attended over a week ago only to win an invite this past Saturday. His Broncos also beat the Patriots the next day, so someone has been running really hot.

And even more recently, Robert Vaughan, the Eh Team listener I have mentioned in my last two articles, finally broke through with a win after a few near-misses this season.

It’s impressive that these guys didn’t let disappointment discourage them from continuing to fight for their goal of making it to the Pro Tour. Good job guys. You all deserve what you worked for.

Up Next

To complete my journey of playing a PTQ/GP every weekend of January, I fly to Vancouver to play a Standard Grand Prix. My streak of seven consecutive Grand Prix day-twos is on the line, but let’s hope I do more than just day-two.

This will actually mark the first time I am heading to a Grand Prix with zero byes, largely due to my hiatus. However, I fully intend on playing the Grand Prix Trials all day. Hopefully, they will actually fire.

My Captain’s Log Series

Alex Hayne and Andy Robdrup have both told me that they very recently read my entire Captain’s Log series from beginning to end. Andy had a critique though; he mentioned to me in person at the PTQ that every article in my series comes off the same. I think Mathew Schmaltz, the self-proclaimed Commander of Face to Face Games, described it the best:

“Your articles are always like, ‘I didn’t do very well, but everybody loves me.’ ‘I traveled 5 hours to a PTQ in Connecticut, the entire tournament crashed, but the tournament was awesome because we got free stuff! I love everyone!’”

Maybe one day I will win an important tournament. Until then, I will keep littering my near-misses with my inhumanly positive attitude and my genuine love for the game and its community. Special shoutout to 5K Rich 😉 !

Of course, if there’s a particular topic you guys would love to see me tackle, let me know in the comments below!

As always, thanks for reading!

KYT

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