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The Chronicle of Canadian Beach House for PT Honolulu


This past week, I had the privilege to live with a group of over 15 other magic players in a beach house on the gorgeous island of Oahu, Hawaii. Even writing this article on my flight home, I already miss the house, the people I stayed with, and the island. This truly has been a once in a lifetime trip. This article presents a chronicle of our experiences at the beach house, on the island, and at the Pro Tour. I really hope I can do this trip justice with this article, as it is by far the best trip I have ever been on, and the memories will surely last me a lifetime.

My trip began on Friday, a week before the Pro Tour. I decided to head to Hawaii a few days before the beach house in order to do some of the more “touristy” things before moving into the beach house. My travel companions for this part of the trip Andrew Norworaj, Ben Moir and Alexander Hayne were excited to see the island, and we made plans to go hike up a volcano, visit the North Shore and learn to surf. Our only problem was the weather was way too nice, and instead of doing all the activities and “touristy” trips we had planned, we ended up spending our days lounging on the beach and by the pool frequently taking advantage of a Hawaiian delicacy called “shaved ice”. Shaved ice is basically an oversized snow cone, and is extremely refreshing after a day in the sun and sand.

It is very hard to have magic players together without playing cards. Our beach sessions winded down with a couple cube drafts. In our first cube draft of the trip, one of the new additions to the cube, [card]Huntmaster of the Fells[/card], was drafted by Hayne. The card was far more impressive than anyone expected it would be. It was very powerful when flipped to either side, and was quite easy to flip back and forth. It generated tremendous card advantage with very little work; it seemed to naturally flip back and forth over the course of games, giving you a little bit more value every time. This draft left us all thinking how this card would impact our testing over the next week and how it could be abused in standard.

Sunday

We were joined a day later by Adam Yurchick (a late, but very welcome addition to our beach house) and Marc Anderson. While waiting for them to arrive from the airport we managed to run a few team drafts in the hotel lobby with a couple Americans, who teach us that it is a bad idea to first pick [card]Curse of Misfortunes[/card], something we had already assumed, but was not as obvious to our teammate who did so, attempted to draft around it, and promptly 0-3d the draft.

Monday

When I travel, I have a tendency to wake up very early in the morning and go for walks around the city I am visiting. Often my travel companions decide to keep me company in the early hours of the morning, and this trip was no exception. Ben Moir joined me for a 5am walk around Waikiki beach and a 6am poolside Nix-Tix RGD draft, with our time between rounds spent in the hot tub. What a way to spend a morning.

On Monday, it was finally time to meet up with the rest of the members of the beach house and move in. We managed to rent a large house right on the water thanks to Andrew’s hard work. Our trip to the nearby grocery store got very interesting when we noticed a little shaved ice store in the mall called “House of Pure Aloha”. We walked in and were greeted by an elderly gentleman who introduced himself to us as Uncle Clay, and asked for our names. He gave us a half hour lesson in Hawaiian while I was trying to pay for my shaved ice, and then proceeded to feed us our first spoonful to make sure it was to our satisfaction. He noticed my Manadeprived shirt and told me that it was unfortunate that I lacked ‘mana’, the Hawaiian word for spiritual energy. We visited Uncle Clay pretty much every day for a lesson in Hawaiian, his wishes of good mana, and one of his amazing homemade shaved ices. He remembered us by name and always greeted us with a huge smile. Should you ever find yourself in Honolulu, make sure to visit this legendary parlor of traditional Hawaiian delicacy, but be sure to budget at least a half hour for his epic tales.

Once the majority of the group had arrived and we had stocked our fridge full of BBQ meats, it was time to get down to business. We went around the room and asked people what they would play if the Pro Tour was tomorrow. By determining each player’s preference, it was our hope that we could find players to “champion” a deck in the metagame. By ensuring we had players who were comfortable with a variety of archetypes, we hoped to be able to slowly perfect the lists we had for each. Luckily, almost every player wanted to play something different, giving us a varied gauntlet with players comfortable piloting each archetype.

I was one of the Delver “champions”. I had my 75 ready, and was very comfortable with my list, testing it against whatever people chose to build. Paul MacKinnon was playing a G/W Humans list, with [card]Loyal Cathar[/card], which he and Jared McGuire had come up with and was quite impressive in testing. Julien Perrault was testing a Jund-Pod list, originally featuring a Huntmaster as a pod target, but as testing continued that number kept growing. The mana in the black build was a little bit awkward, forcing you to run [card]Evolving Wilds[/card], so some of us decided to try to find a home for Huntmaster where the mana was a little less awkward. I am generally not a fan of pod decks, as I don’t like the fact that they are just a collection of solid draft cards if you don’t draw and resolve your Pod. In an attempt to solve this problem, we began brewing an R/G aggro deck which did not rely on pod, but pod provided card advantage through the inherit value of the creatures in the deck. While the deck was fine, we found that the 3 drop slot, occupied by [card]Daybreak Ranger[/card], was not aggressive enough. The only acceptable card was [card]Blade Splicer[/card], which forced us to splash a third colour. The token generating ability of the deck also made [card]Gavony Township[/card] very valuable, and our manabase became a little bit too awkward. Our final list for the pod deck was about 6 cards off of Blohon’s list from the top 8.

We had players who wanted to play everything from U/B, Ramp, Grixis and Pod to much newer decks like Mono Green, Heartless Lich and U/B Self-Mill. As not everyone had arrived yet, we spent our first evening drafting, building a gauntlet, discussing lists and playing whatever decks we brought with us.

Tuesday

Surprisingly, when I brought up the idea of waking up very early to get in a Nix-Tix RGD draft, there were far more people interested than I had expected. We had four laptops in drafts, making the finals/winning almost all of them, despite one forgetting to submit a deck, and losing my internet connection for half a pack of picks. We also decided that we should run a mini-tournament in the house. Everyone chose the deck that they were going to “champion”, or a deck that we needed to test against and signed up for a 15 man tournament that cut to top 4. The top 4 ended up being Alexander Hayne with Naya Pod, Marc Anderson with Grixis, Paul with G/W Humans and Rob Anderson with G/W Tempered Steel, with Paul taking first in the end. In between RGD and standard we managed to run two drafts, with 8 players playing and the rest watching and commenting on their picks during the draft and testing Standard on the side. These drafts and the discussions that followed helped us understand the format, it was much more important to be aggressive than in triple INN, and it also taught us how much more powerful drafting red was in the new format.

When the suggestion of waking up for an early Nix-Tix RGD draft the next day comes up, fellow MODO grinder Francis Cormier pointed out that time zone and downtime would stop us from doing so. So what were we to do? The answer of course was to draft before the downtime, so we started our drafts at 1am instead of 5. Magic players can’t seem to get enough Magic, after a full day of Standard testing and two drafts; we couldn’t wait to play more.

Wednesday

The Naya pod deck we brewed up was testing so well that we decided to order all the cards for the whole house just in case. Yurchick suggests we overnight them from a California store, so we rush an order of 30 [card]Huntmaster of the Fells[/card] to the beach house. I just couldn’t beat Huntmaster with Delver. The deck produced far too many must-answer threats for delver to deal with. As we continued testing we noticed the mana issues, and the constant mulligan problems. I liked our list a lot, but because of my experience with Delver I was unwilling to switch decks without significant evidence that it was better. Testing was a lot of fun, and we absorbed a lot of information quickly. We had one board state which took about a dozen of us 10 minutes to solve and was a lot of fun to work through. Watch this site for Hayne’s article to see more about the puzzle.

Here we are hard at work!

Thursday

A duck walked into the back door of our house, into our kitchen, pooped on our floor, and walked out the other door. It felt like a metaphor for our testing. We were so sold on the Naya deck until we re-tested the Delver matchup after making changes to improve the humans matchup. The deck had become far too warped. The realization that the PT was the next day sunk in and people began to scramble a little. Our Naya pod list’s mana was too awkward for me to feel comfortable running. We begin testing G/R ramp with 4 Huntmasters, but couldn’t get it to consistently beat Delver, which was my baseline for testing. The Andersons quickly abandon their plan to play Grixis after realizing the difficulty the deck has in dealing with cards like [card]Strangleroot Geist[/card]. I begin to have my own doubts about Delver after discovering the power of Huntmaster. I ask the people in the house if we really want to be the ones NOT playing this PT’s Bloodbraid Elf. Pham and Novoraj decide that they won’t pass up the opportunity and stay up late brewing a non-pod Naya aggro list, which Pham ended up 9-1 with.

Friday

Here is a list of what everyone in the house/visitors played:
Francis Cormier: GW Humans
Daniel Pham: Naya Aggro
Andrew Noworaj: Naya Aggro
Ben Moir: GW Humans
Alexander Hayne: Delver
Dominic Morel: GW Humans
Julien Perrault: GW Humans
Marc Anderson: GW Humans
Brian Su: RUG Ramp
Mani Davoudi: GW Humans
Adam Yurchick: Delver
Paul MacKinnon: GW Humans
Rob Anderson: Delver
Marcel Angelo Zafra: Delver

Joey Smith: A set of dice (to fulfill his dream of outballin’ the pros)

Pham, Hayne, Morel, Yurchick and Mackinnon make Day 2 and Joey ends up +$60 on GerryT at dice.

If you are reading this to read about my performance at the Pro Tour, you may be a little disappointed. After my solid 4-1 record in standard, I managed to 0-3 my draft pod to miss Day 2. My only loss in standard was due to a complicated board state involving a [card]Phantasmal Image[/card] copying a [card]Strangleroot Geist[/card] and two opposing Geists; I timed out on a decision on key turn and ended up making the wrong play. Round 1 I played against Solar Flare, round 2 was G/R Aggro, round 3 Humans, round 4 Naya Ramp, and round 5 was Humans again. I wouldn’t change a single card in my 75 after the event; I had tested Delver for months before the PT, and am very confident in my list. This was my 75:
[deck title=Caplan Delver]
[Land]
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Seachrome Coast
9 Island
1 Plains
3 Moorland Haunt
[/Land]
[Creatures]
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Invisible Stalker
4 Snapcaster Mage
3 Geist of Saint Traft
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Vapor Snag
4 Sword of War and Peace
1 Midnight Haunting
4 Ponder
4 Mana Leak
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Gut Shot
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
2 Sword of Feast and Famine
2 Timely Reinforcements
2 Dismember
1 Negate
1 Gut Shot
2 Dissipate
1 Celestial Purge
2 Phantasmal Image
2 Revoke Existence
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

I would still run the exact same 75.

My draft deck featured doubles of [card]Burning Oil[/card], [card]Into the Maw of Hell[/card], an [card]Instigator Gang[/card], [card]Fiend of the Shadows[/card], [card]Angel of Flight Alabaster[/card], [card]Curse of Death’s Hold[/card] and a bunch of other powerful removal. I mulligan to oblivion in all three matches and have my fair share of mana problems, but looking back, I think I made some mistakes in the draft. I convinced myself I needed to be Black/Red at the PT despite White being much more open than Black in my pod. There were also a few times I kept my six cards due to frustration, when I should have mulliganed further.

Saturday

The pro tour not having any side events meant that those who missed Day 2 could explore the island. We decided to go for a trip to the North Shore of the island to a beach/park called Waimei. The beach is supposed to be a surfer’s Mecca, and the 7+ foot waves crashing against the beach really reinforced that. After an hour in the water jumping into/over/under the waves and getting wiped out many, many times, the lifeguards kicked everyone who was not surfing out of the ocean saying that it was unsafe for recreational swimming. Luckily for us, right beside the beach was a park which featured a gorgeous freshwater waterfall and pool. In fact, it is a popular filming location, probably most recognizable as the waterfall from the TV series Lost. The water was amazing, a little cold at first, but very refreshing. The tiny pool dropped off from very shallow to 35 feet deep in no time. The waterfall itself was very warm, and we were very happy to swim in some fresh water.

One of the dealer’s tables was selling old draft sets, and as soon as a house member saw RGD sets on sale, we knew what we had to do. Now that we couldn’t play it online, we needed our fix. 4v4 team RGD, even at $20 a set, what choice did we have? When given the option to RGD, a real magic player never says no.

Our team draft took a hilarious turn when during one of my matches, the opposing team got so sick of losing to my [card]Skeletal Vampire[/card] that Andrew decided it was far better for his team if it was no longer in my deck. He grabbed the Vampire, yelled AQUADRAFT!!!!!, ran outside and threw it into the ocean.

The “I missed day 2 but I don’t care club”

Sunday

When I woke up, I knew I had to set up a special draft for the first 6 people who woke up. We had been discussing the logistics of it all week, but hadn’t found time to actually do it. Moving the picnic table a few feet into the ocean during low tide and covering it with a tablecloth gave us the perfect surface to try out our new format. The Canadian beach house presents the Aquadraft:

Aquadraft Rules
– All cards that enter the water cannot be replaced, they are permanently destroyed. This is irrelevant of how the cards entered the ocean.
– Each player is allowed one “vindicate” per match. Vindicate has split second. Of course, vindicating a card involves picking it up and throwing it overboard.
– When a gust of wind comes, you are responsible for ensuring your cards stay in place. This includes Aura’s on opponent’s creatures (as we quickly learned when Hayne let his finger “slip” off his opponent’s [card]Chant of the Skifsang[/card])
– You cannot board in more cards, but you can change the composition of your deck

As you can imagine, this format is amazing. Before my first match, I managed to knock two cards from my library into the ocean. I had my [card]Makeshift Mauler[/card] and [card]Geralf’s Mindcrusher[/card] vindicated in one game to stop my beats, my opponents turn 2 [card]Darkthicket Wolf[/card] followed by a turn 3 pump was promptly slammed into the ocean. My turn 3 [card]Geralf’s Messenger[/card] was in the ocean so quickly that I couldn’t even cast the [card]Altar’s Reap[/card] in my hand on it.

Hayne trades off a Zombie in combat and proudly announces a post-combat [card]Ghoulraiser[/card]. To his surprise he can’t find it anywhere. He looks back and discovers that the most recent gust which he was concentrating on protecting his board from, managed to take it right from his hand into the ocean.

Against Hayne, my board has a couple weak creatures and a [card]Laboratory Maniac[/card]. Hayne confirms that he had used his vindicate earlier in the match. I look over at Cormier, who is on my team. “Should I go for it?” he looks at me confused, clearly not seeing the line of play I see. I stare a tapped-out Hayne straight in the eyes and swiftly swipe my hand across the table, tossing my entire library into the ocean while extending the hand. “Oops, I guess I can’t draw.”

If it isn’t obvious, it was very hard to leave the house and say goodbye to everyone today. I got to meet many new people, learned a ton, and had some of the most fun I will ever have. Everyone who stayed with us at any point during our time there taught me something, and contributed directly to the awesomeness of the trip. This chronicle left out some of our most hilarious moments, including Yurchick’s faceplant into the gravel due to his eagerness not to lose track of us, and Andrew’s very….hesitant….driving that almost got everyone in the following car in multiple accidents, but it’s really hard to fit an entire week’s worth of memories into this article, and the editors might kill me if I make it any longer.

We also filmed a little intro video to the beach house that you can see below. Forgive the sound quality, it was pretty windy.

I will leave you on the same note we left our good friend Uncle Clay. Thanks for your support at home during the PT and your good “mana”!

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