A Tale of Two Tournaments
Due to my union involvement I travel a fair bit for committee meetings, conferences and the like. Mostly my travels take me to Ottawa and, as such, I am a semi-regular at the Comic Book Shoppe on Bank Street. Every now and then though my travels take me to other places, and this past week was one of those. Our triennial Equal Opportunities conference was taking place in Montreal, home of poutine, Pro Tour Champion Alex Hayne, Captain Canada KYT and my podcasting partner Will Blondon, among others. It would be my third time in the city but on the previous two occasions I hadn’t managed to play any sanctioned Magic. This time I was determined to change that.
The amount of travelling I do has taught me several things. One of those is that early-morning flights often have more room, meaning you have a higher chance of the coveted “seat next to me is empty” situation. Related to that, never drink coffee if your flight is before 7am, because it might prevent you from sleeping through the flight. As I had not slept at all the night before my flight (Diablo…) and was planning on playing Standard later that night, this would be key.
My flight landed early, but once I got myself settled in Will and I headed to Schwartz’s for lunch. There really is only one place in Montreal to get a smoked meat sandwich and that is the place. We then headed to Face to Face Games for some trading and testing before heading out to the event. Will had thrown together a Miracle Infect deck that was just destroying everything I tried to do. Can YOUR Standard deck answer turn one [card]Glistener Elf[/card]-turn two miracle a [card]Blessings of Nature[/card]? Mine couldn’t. I think I beat it once out of six games. He had thrown it together that morning and had no sideboard, while I was playing [card]Genesis Wave[/card]. Yeah, there’s a nice little ego bruise for you.
While at Face to Face I managed to get some trades done, getting rid of superfluous Standard cards for some shock duals and fetches. If I want to get in to Modern properly, this is the kind of thing I need to do more often. I got a very good deal on the stuff I traded in so I was happy at the end of the day. With my deck choice locked in my head and my hunger starting to grow, we ventured across the city to the evening’s Standard event.
Weapon of Choice
I had every intention of playing [card]Genesis Wave[/card]…right up until Will put on his hobnail boots and stomped it into the mud. I had Kamikaze and UW Blink with me, and going into an unknown meta I really wasn’t comfortable playing a control deck. As usual Will was pushing for me to play Weeping Angels (which is totally the name for the Blink deck now, since @cavemankellen would never forgive me otherwise), so he was no help. I asked him what decks to expect and his answer was typically unhelpful:
“Durdles.”
Sigh. I resigned myself to playing Weeping Angels, but knew that I wanted another Entreat the Angels in the main deck somewhere. That meant making a cut, and the single Tamiyo seemed like the likely candidate. To the board it went. I added a [card]Negate[/card] to the board as well, replacing the subpar [card]Inquisitor Exarch[/card]s (don’t ask, OK? Just don’t). I also threw in [card]Grafdigger’s Cage[/card] over [card]Nihil Spellbomb[/card] since I had no way to cantrip the latter, and replaced the [card]Volition Reins[/card] with a fourth [card]Terminus[/card]. The full list is here.
Side note: I have now changed the [card]Genesis Wave[/card]s into [card]Primal Surge[/card]s, and the deck works WAY better like that. Often a Surge will give me enough mana to cast anything that might be left in my hand, or to pump [card]Inferno Titan[/card] or [card]Kessig Wolf Run[/card].
How Did I Do?
We were early for the tournament. Like an hour early. The store charges $5 for the event and you get a booster pack with your entry, plus there are prizes for top 16. That’s a pretty sweet deal. My pack contained my SECOND foil [card]Devastation Tide[/card] and some garbage rare. I know the new foiling process is not popular with most people but I have to say, [card]Devastation Tide[/card] looks pretty darn sick with this darker matte foil. There was a flurry of trade activity going on in the room, with many people looking for Elesh Norn, [card]Zealous Conscripts[/card] and [card]Wolfir Silverheart[/card]. This bodes well for my deck…except the Conscripts part. I really need a [card]Faith’s Shield[/card] or two in the board against that card, it scares the living daylights out of me.
Round 1 – UW Spirits
I sit down for round one against an older guy who appears to be in a very good mood. Awesome, I love playing against happy people. Then it hits me…I have never actually played Magic in French before. Sure I speak fluent French but there are terms in Magic that I have never had to translate before now. Most people in Montreal are bilingual but I always prefer to speak to people in their first language where possible. “I’ll exile my Stonehorn, pass the turn, in my end step he comes back, target you,” is not a sentence I ever learned in high school. My happy opponent presents his deck and it is immediately clear that he’s playing well over 60 cards. Were I playing aggro this would bode well, since I’d be in a good position to overwhelm any slow start. With a control deck I always feel less prepared to handle jank, even bearing in mind the rule, “If you don’t know why they’re playing a card, counter it.” Besides, I only have four main deck counters.
Have you ever won a match and felt terrible about it? This was one of those matches. Both games I got the Venser-Stonehorn lock going and it was clear he had never seen it before. His deck was playing some very unusual cards ([card]Spectral Rider[/card] for example) and he was visibly frustrated with his inability to do anything. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I couldn’t draw a win condition to save my life. When I did hit Gideon I already had an emblem and the poor guy didn’t know enough to scoop. Game Two was a little better as I miracle up an Entreat for three, but he still looked like he was ready to quit Magic. How do you control players live with yourselves?
Round 2 – Mono U Delver
This is the round you’ll hear about from Will, probably ad nauseam, on Horde of Notions. Game one wasn’t particularly close as I lost to turn one Delver turn two blind flip off [card]Mana Leak[/card]. I couldn’t get an answer past his permission and died when he [card]Mind Control[/card]led my Stonehorn. Having seen the [card]Mind Control[/card]s I sided out my [card]Drogskol Reaver[/card]s for game two, but it wouldn’t matter as I got Gideon down and cast [card]Day of Judgment[/card] for the win. I also got to see [card]Frost Titan[/card] in this game, so I knew he had some beef. He’s also playing [card]Divination[/card] and [card]Dissipate[/card]. I already had the [card]Negate[/card]s brought in but I now found myself missing my [card]Volition Reins[/card] in the board.
We shuffle up for game three and I have an opener of three land, [card]Ponder[/card], Talisman, Venser and Stonehorn. Just about perfect. The lock happens turn five and turn six he drops [card]Frost Titan[/card]. A [card]Negate[/card] counters [card]Mind Control[/card] and I’m firmly in the driver’s seat, only lacking a way to actually win the game. Untap, draw step…ooooh! Entreat! I should point out that KYT has arrived by this time and is chatting with Will who has gone to 2-0. I realize that he has both [card]Dissipate[/card] and [card]Mana Leak[/card], and I am holding two Leaks. He has more than enough to pay for both of them, so the best course of action seemed to be Entreat for four and leave three mana up to pay for his Leak. Even if he [card]Dissipate[/card]s, I have another Entreat plus three [card]Restoration Angel[/card] and three Gideon to win the game with. I Entreat and start to prepare for my inevitable (in my mind) matchup with Will in round thr…wait. WAIT. Why is he tapping five mana?
“[card]Lost in the Mist[/card], targeting Entreat and Venser?”
THAT’S A CARD??? What the HELL? Remember that this is all during my draw step, and I don’t have five mana free to recast Venser and blink Stonehorn. The first attack isn’t lethal if I block with Stonehorn but I basically have a turn to recover. Fortunately he didn’t see the on-board kill and I had one more turn to draw Day or Stonehorn. Top deck…Gideon. Well, that gives me another turn. Gideon takes one for the team with me still shaking me head at Lost in the FREAKING Mist. Alas the next card was a land and I went down in three.
Will berated me for getting too greedy and said I should have waited. Of course I would have been blown out by it at any time, and I had no reason to play around that one card. KYT said he would have made the same play. Alex Hayne said he would have Entreated for one less as it presents the same clock and lets me double Leak if I need to. What would you have done?
Seriously. [card]Lost in the Mist[/card].
Round 3 – Solar Flare
When I saw him play four non-basics and no spells I knew I was in for a long and boring fight. The lock kept me alive for a while but what won me game one was drawing all four [card]Day of Judgment[/card] and playing all four with Gideon on the board to get past his army of [card]Sun Titan[/card]s and ersatz [card]Sun Titan[/card]s. We shuffled up for game two with something like 12 minutes left on the clock. I was pretty sure the matchup was lousy for me and had sided out Stonehorns and Vensers for [card]Grafdigger’s Cage[/card], [card]Negate[/card]s and [card]Batterskull[/card]s. [card]Terminus[/card] replaced [card]Day of Judgment[/card]. I was in no hurry to get game two finished but I’m not the kind of person to play slowly. Game two was a grindy, difficult affair that stretched me tactically. KYT talked about me forgetting to untap three lands on the latest Eh Team, but neglects to mention that they weren’t actually relevant to the game. We saw four [card]Oblivion Ring[/card]s between the two sides and turn five of extra turns ended with me having an Entreat in hand, board state in my favour and my opponent at six life. Will and KYT both pointed out that I missed an on-board kill after he stole my Gideon with [card]Volition Reins[/card]. I never noticed it. Regardless, I had him next turn but he wouldn’t concede. I mean sure, that’s your choice, but I would have scooped. Just saying.
Round 4 – RDW
When one of your two wins is in one game, you are almost guaranteed to get the pair down…which of course I did. I wasn’t entirely sure if game one was going to be anywhere near winnable, but I have double [card]Batterskull[/card] and a Wurmcoil in the board to go with [card]Pristine Talisman[/card] and [card]Drogskol Reaver[/card] in the main. Game one I remember dealing with three Vexing Devils before stabilizing with the lock and finding Reaver to seal the deal.
Game two I feel like I was always favoured, but when he tried to [card]Act of Aggression[/card] my Gideon in my upkeep I knew that it wasn’t going to be a challenge. I activated it anyway as I was holding a [card]Restoration Angel[/card] to shorten the clock but I still had a Shrine ticking up across the board. My second [card]Pristine Talisman[/card] saw to that and two attack phases later I had locked up a 3-1.
What Did I Learn?
Owing to the magic of tiebreakers I ended up in 12th place (there were 41 players…) and got one pack. Fortunately it contained a Tamiyo.
Entreat is a powerful card but every time I play it I see more nuances to it that I hadn’t previously considered.
Sometimes, you get blown out by cards that you just don’t see coming. That may or may not be due to a misplay.
You can only beat the players and decks that are put in front of you. Primal Surge is better than Genesis Wave
Perhaps most important, I learned that Three-Legged Willie is not a total durdle. I learned that hanging with those two is a blast. And I learned that La Banquise has the greatest poutine on God’s green earth. It was while we sat here (with uber KYT-barn EJ Seltzer) that Will came up with the phrase “LansDELL it” and promptly ran it into the ground…with help from KYT of course.
FNM Draft
I won’t go too deeply into this event since I don’t remember the details of my rounds, but I 3-0d with mono-blue Mill. I had double [card]Stern Mentor[/card], double [card]Galvanic Alchemist[/card] and double [card]Dreadwaters[/card]…and triple [card]Mist Raven[/card]. Yup, three of them. I lost one game all night, to noted baller and former Pro Tour competitor Frankie Richard. Mill as a strategy is absolutely viable and very underdrafted right now, so if you can open the cards for it, I highly recommend it.
I kind of felt bad for Frankie. Kind of. After losing game one to my God draw with two [card]Stern Mentor[/card]/[card]Galvanic Alchemist[/card] pairs on the board, Frankie beat me down with infinite angels in game 2 (Bruna, 2 [card]Seraph of Dawn[/card], [card]Goldnight Redeemer[/card]). Game three saw me hanging on by the skin of my teeth until I went for it and cast double [card]Dreadwaters[/card] to mill him for 20…leaving him with one card. [card]Dreadwaters[/card] does that.
What’s On Deck
Before my trip to Montreal I was doing some testing on Cockatrice against Joshua Lemish. Josh is a…passionate deckbuilder who is still in the “no I think my idea is better” phase. Like many people in that phase, he occasionally comes up with the shell of a good idea. I think he’s got one this time:
[deck title=Shrieked]
[Creatures]
3 Birds of Paradise
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Mindshrieker
2 Phyrexian Metamorph
3 Snapcaster Mage
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Revenge of the Hunted
2 Temporal Mastery
4 Ponder
3 Noxious Revival
4 Dismember
4 Blessings of Nature
[/Spells]
[Land]
4 Inkmoth Nexus
4 Hinterland Harbor
6 Forest
7 Island
2 Evolving Wilds
[/Land]
[/deck]
I don’t like the Metamorphs in the deck, they should probably be two more Masteries. Birds are a fine one-drop that can swing if you hit a miracle turn two. The real sleeper here is the [card]Mindshrieker[/card], which can mill a miracle and get fat, then benefit from using Noxious to put it back on top. There’s potential here, and I might give it a run next week at FNM.
Chris is a deck brewer, podcaster and lover of bacon. He’s recently realised he isn’t completely terrible at this game.