Let me get the big question out of the way first:
I still enjoy playing in big tournaments as much as I always have — but I will keep playing only one or maaaybe two events per season, and most certainly not more than that. I have a normal job that also requires me to work on weekends, and I just can’t get the time off. I would have played in the German Nationals, followed by Grand Prix: Gothenburg and then Pro Tour: Amsterdam if I could — but I had to settle for one, and naturally, that was Amsterdam.
Testing
I had access to a Magic Online account with mostly all Extended cards, so I was set on doing most of my testing online. After talking to a couple of people, I ended up running into Gabriel Nassif and Johan Sadeghpour, which was a big step up from just playing in the one-on-one queues. Most of the time, my job was to play the gauntlet decks (Mono-Red, Faeries, Scapeshift, and so on) against whatever Gab would come up with. Sticking to his roots, he of course threw various versions of three- or four-color control decks at whatever I had, but that didn’t seem all that successful.
The problem was that the format had a ton of viable decks, but nothing was really outstanding. There was a good red deck, Jund, Doran, Scapeshift, and several decent combo decks in the form of Pyromancer Ascension, Pestermite/Splinter Twin, Ad Nauseam — and while you could easily build blue-based control decks to beat whatever portion of the field you wanted to beat, it didn’t seem possible to build a deck that could handle everything. The various decks just attacked you from too many different angles.
Getting frustrated with that situation, Gab came up with the White Weenie that we ended up running. At first I was questioning his sanity: I mean, in the end, all you do is cast white dorks — and other than Steppe Lynx, none of them is particularly impressive. Most of those cards are legal in Standard, and it’s simply not good enough there; why would it be good enough in a format with a lot more powerful cards?
But after a few hours of playing against, it the deck looked like a very solid choice. It had cards that were extremely annoying for some decks out there —namely Ethersworn Canonist, Brave the Elements, and Spectral Procession — but it always did the same thing: play a bunch of dorks, possibly some spirit tokens, then level them up and attack.
On top of that, most other decks would frequently lose to themselves, drawing a useless mixes of cards or just conceding to their own mana base. WW doesn’t have any of that. You have twenty-three white mana sources that come into play untapped — and with fourteen one-drop creatures, you won’t often have to mulligan bad draws outside of all lands/no lands. There’s not much room for awkward draws.
On top of that, no one was casting Wrath of God effects in this format, which is easily the biggest problem for White Weenie. Mystical Teachings-based control decks usually have one copy of Consume the Meek, and then two or three Damnations after sideboarding. Faeries also boarded in two or three copies of Damnation, but that’s not all that scary.
Also, I didn’t expect that many control decks. Sure, everyone knew what Guillaume would end up playing control, and there were some other suspects who just loaded up on countermagic in any format where it was viable… But my guess was on average, we could expect to see a grand total of zero blue-based control decks in the first five rounds.
The other deck I spent the most time on was U/R Pyromancer Ascension that boarded into Pestermite/Splinter Twin. I was quite happy with the Ascension deck and planned on playing it — until two or three days before the Pro Tour, when I ran it in a lot of one-on-one queues on Magic Online. At that point in our testing, Ad Nauseam combo decks pretty much disappeared — most likely because two of our good decks, WW and Doran, just ran over it.
But suddenly Ad Nauseam was around in reasonable numbers… And that’s one deck you
really
don’t want to play against with U/R Ascension deck. Your combo is just a lot worse; it’s slower, and you don’t have enough countermagic to stop their combo when it’s backed up with Pact of Negations.
I also heard from some other people that they liked Ad Nauseam, and suddenly Ascension looked bad. I thought about Doran for a brief while, but I didn’t like our list enough. So white dorks it was!
The biggest fear now was that if I 0-5ed with a White Weenie deck, I would hear about my awesome deck choice for a few weeks from Marco, Dirk, and surely a few other guys. I’d spent all that time testing, only to run stupid white guys…
The Pro Tour
Getting to Amsterdam was a disaster. We decided to go by car, as Amsterdam is not all that far from Hamburg — and naturally, we ended up with a completely closed highway as some truck carrying chemicals fell over in a crash. So we sat for a lovely three hours inside the car, without being able to open windows or use air conditioning. Road trips are overvalued; next time, it’s plane or train again.
The site was reasonably nice; some sort of ventilation or open doors would have helped. But at least there was a big car park close by, and eight euro for a whole day is a bargain in Amsterdam.
Much less of a bargain? Getting the missing cards on Friday morning. Apparently a few Americans and some Frenchies were playing white, as well and robbed the local traders… Or that is, the one trader who carried the one common Dennis and me missed for our decks: Lapse of Certainty. Time to rip open some Conflux packs!
Two Font of Mythos, two Master Transmuters, two Bloodhall Oozes, two Martial coups, two Meglonoths, two Thornlings, three Soul’s Majesties, and about seventy euros later, we finally had four of those frickin’ commons.
Seatings for the first round were posted shortly thereafter, and it was actually the pairings right away. I’m used to having alphabetical seating — first to collect decklists, and then to check who’s missing. Apparently that caught a few others off guard as well, since lots of people were either sleeving their decks or finalizing their decklist in front of their first-round opponent. Mine did the same, showing me pretty much the whole sideboard of his Ascension deck, and I already knew I wouldn’t have to fight against a secondary combo after boarding.
To round things out, he had to go to a dealer and buy two Vendilion Cliques after the round had started. I am still wondering if he upped the number of those, because he figured I would be playing some blue deck.
This is what I ended up playing:
Creatures (24)
- 2 Burrenton Forge-Tender
- 4 Figure of Destiny
- 4 Ethersworn Canonist
- 4 Knight of the White Orchid
- 2 Ranger of Eos
- 4 Steppe Lynx
- 4 Student of Warfare
Lands (13)
Spells (23)
Overall, I was quite happy with the list. I don’t like Mana Tithe, which some of the others played, but can’t say I ever tested with (or against) it myself. The one maindecked Path to Exile looks a bit random, but it makes sense: in some matchups you never want to draw two, but one you can usually make up for,
and
it frees up one slot in the sideboard. The alternative would be one more one-drop (Elite Vanguard), or one four-mana planeswalker (Elspeth, Knight-Errant or an Ajani Goldmane). I didn’t like either option, so I just went with the one maindecked removal spell.
The biggest difference between Paul’s sideboard and mine is that he has Relic of Progenitus and I don’t. I just didn’t think there would be many situations where I’d want to bring them in. Against Ascension, I’d much rather kill the enchantment itself, and often they board in a different combo anyway. Dredge and Living End are horrible decks, so I didn’t expect to see much of those.
The one Mark of Asylum looks somewhat random as well, but it’s just the fifth Honor of the Pure. Against some red decks you really want at least one of those (and preferably two total in play to shut down Punishing Fire). I’d play a fifth Honor of the Pure if I could, but there are also times when Mark is just straight-up better anyway.
Round 1: Magallon, David [ESP], Ascension
I won the roll, he didn’t have the Lightning Bolt for my first-turn creature, and he didn’t have Pyromancer Ascension on the second turn. All of that meant he was too slow and couldn’t deal with my team.
He boarded in a few creatures for the second game, but got a bad draw. A leveled-up Student of Warfare finished things quickly.
2-0, overall 1-0
Round 2: Gosselin, Chris [USA], Doran
Chris lived in Germany for a while, and we were jumping back and forth between English and German a bit until we settled on German.
He was running Doran, but a not very aggressive version, with mana creatures, Bitterblossoms, and Stoneforge Mystic for Behemoth Sledge.
Aside from the fact that I won it, I don’t remember much about the first game. The second game was a bit more complicated; I had a fully-leveled Figure of Destiny and a Student of Warfare, but he had two Bitterblossoms to block with and a Sledge to get some life back. Eventually a Ranger of Eos showed up, and I had too many creatures for him to deal with.
More Celestial Purges in the board would have been much better than those Demystifies. We were
way
too scared of Ascension with Pestermites.
2-0, overall 2-0
Round 3: Dictus, Mark [BEL], Balance
I know Mark from waaaay back when I used to live in Cologne and drove over to Belgium for PTQs. He also played a deck I hadn’t heard of: it was built around cascading into Restore Balance, while keeping artifact mana in play. His win condition? Greater Gargadon.
He went down to four cards for the first game, but as he had a turn 3 Balance, that wasn’t all that terrible for him. Fortunately, he had no Gargadon — and even though he Balanced once or twice after that, I just played out some creatures and eventually got there.
Mark had no Gargadon again in the second game, and I used a Lapse of Certainty on a Balance. He resolved another one afterwards… but when we were both down to no cards in hand, my deck gave me better draws.
2-0, overall 3-0
Round 4: Zhang, Zhiyang [CHN], Scapeshift
Zhiyang brought the standard R/G Scapeshift deck. He didn’t find enough creature removal in the first game to stop me before he got to enough lands to kill me.
He drew a lot more creature removal in the second game, but this time he lacked the Scapeshift — which I knew, since his hand was empty on turn 5. I was one turn away from killing him when he started to use Punishing Fire on me. If he’d drawn a Lightning Bolt (or, of course, a Scapeshift), he could have killed me — but a Lapse of Certainty made sure his next draw was a useless Punishing Fire, and that was that. It was a good choice to open all those Conflux packs!
2-0, overall 4-0
Round 5: Kolomeyko, Yuri [UKR], Red
The match was featured here
.
The last time I remember seeing Yuri was in the top 8 of Pro Tour Barcelona, a
loooong
time ago. He was playing red cards, and I lost the first game to what was a bad judgment call on my part.
I was at twelve life and had two Steppe Lynxes that would most likely kill Yuri on my next turn, as I had a second Flagstones of Trokair in my hand. Other than that, my hand was Brave the Elements and Path to Exile.
He attacked me with a 3/3; he had no other creatures, three lands in play, four cards in hand, and a Lightning Bolt in his graveyard. I figured that going down to nine life wouldn’t be a big problem; if he plays another creature, I Path that, and have Brave up when he responds to the Lynx triggers with removal. Then I win.
Unfortunately, three of the four cards Yuri was holding happened to be a second and third copy of Lightning Bolt, along with a Shard Volley. Not good when you are at nine life.
But my trusty Forge-Tenders (along with some Ranger of Eos to fetch Forge-Tenders) meant that I won the match 2-1.
2-1, overall 5-0
Limited
For a normal Draft format, I would want to just spam drafts to get a feel for the different archetypes. But in a Core set, such things hardly exist. There’s not much synergy between the cards, which means you just want to pick the best card in your color while watching your mana curve.
I did a few Swiss drafts on Magic Online to play with (and against) most of the cards and just get a feeling of what colors I liked and disliked. After talking to a few people and going through the commons and uncommons, I came to the shocking conclusion that whoever was responsible for M11 forgot to put in good commons for green and red. Both colors are
way
too shallow.
From there on I talked to a few people — mostly Anton Jonsson, Markus Jöbstl, and Rich Hoaen. All of them said the obvious: draft blue. (Rich also said that his favorite deck is a very aggressive white deck, with as many Infantry Veterans as possible and one or two Inspired Charges.) After doing twenty to thirty more drafts in the 8-4 queue, I was pretty set on only touching green cards when I got passed either an uncommon or rare.
Other than being a crappy color, green is also a trap. The problem is that the commons are so weak compared to blue, white, or black that you won’t notice if someone is green in front of you — since he will always pick cards in his other color early on.
Plus, a lot of people have very different pick orders. Some think Llanowar Elves is the best common; other people like Giant Spider or Cultivate. I even heard from someone that he thinks Giant Growth is the best green common.
If you get a third-pick Doom Blade, Lightning Bolt, or Pacifism, you can almost always expect the guy to your right isn’t drafting that color. But a fifth-pick Giant Spider or Cultivate just tells you that some of the commons in the other colors in the pack were just better.
U/R or U/B also never worked that well for me. I was looking to draft U/W or W/x (that would be the aggressive, almost mono-white deck), or the B/R sacrifice/Act of Treason deck. If I got passed a green rare or uncommon, I would go with that — but otherwise, I’d try to keep my fingers off that color.
With the 5-0 record and decent tiebreakers, I ended up at table 1,
which was covered here
.
I first-picked a Foresee over an Armored Ascension, as it’s just the better card. After that blue, white, and green came my way, and I just ignored the green.
The packs were very unexciting. While I ended up with two Blinding Mages, I just lacked quality overall, even though Bas (on my right) in was heavy black with some red and blue cards, and Brad (on my left) was into green/red. That left me in a pretty good position for the best color combination, but the packs didn’t really help me out.
The draft itself didn’t give me any difficult decisions. I could have first-picked Scroll Thief over Condemn in the first pick in pack two — but at that point, I didn’t know that I would end up with two Merfolk Sovereigns. In general, I think Condemn is just the better card.
This was my first deck:
Assault Griffin
2 Blinding Mage
Condemn
Excommunicate
Siege Mastodon
Stormfront Pegasus
2 White Knight
Aether Adept
Augury Owl
Cloud Crusader
Foresee
Harbor Serpent
Mana Leak
Maritime Guard
2 Merfolk Sovereign
Preordain
Sleep
Unsummon
Water Servant
In the first round, I faced Guillaume Wafo-Tapa with his U/B deck. His deck was most likely better than mine — not that I had the chance to find out in the two games we played. I died to his mostly black deck in game one, with double White Knight in hand on turn seven or eight; I missed my third land drop for a few turns, and then never got to double white. The second game saw him cast his eight-mana Leviathan before I hit my first white mana. Not very exciting.
My second match, against Marco de Pasquale, was the opposite. His draft apparently was a complete train wreck, and he didn’t really do much in either game.
The ups and downs continued as I played Brian Kibler in the last round, with his “four Infantry Veterans, double Blinding Mage, double Pacifism, Lightning Bolt, and Fireball” deck. To be fair, if you removed all those “powerful” cards and replaced them with Silvercoat Lions, I still wouldn’t able to beat one or two Infantry Veterans on the board ever.
Close games —
not
.
So I ended day 1 on a 6-2 record. That was something I would have been very happy with going into the tournament — but it felt a bit disappointing after starting out 5-0.
Draft 2
Come Saturday morning, it was time for the second draft.
The table wasn’t all that intimidating, but I
was
sitting between Terry Soh on my right and Martin Juza on my left — the two most well-known players.
I opened a pack containing Ancient Hellkite and Howling Banshee. As I said, I’m not a big fan of U/B — so if everything went according to plan, I’d end up B/R in this draft. The main reason to take the Banshee over the more powerful dragon is color preference… But if I’m going to end up in B/R, I’d rather have the dragon in my deck than the banshee. So dragon it was.
Terry passed me a pack containing Garruk Wildspeaker, with an uncommon missing. Now, that’s a pretty clear sign for me to go green — and it also tells me he most likely picked a Mind Control (with Fireball being the other possibility).
I got a ton more green cards, and it seemed like I was the only green drafter at this point. Unfortunately, my second pack had nothing but a Serra Angel — but the green kept coming with a Fauna Shaman, a late Protean Hydra, and a Destructive Force. I really, really like that card, especially in green decks, and it seems a bit undervalued to me.
I picked up two Cultivates in the third pack after a first-pick Mind Control (over nothing) and a second-pick Doom Blade. The green died somewhere in pack three; my best guess is that the guy feeding Terry went into the color, as there was some very, very late stuff going around in pack two. I had the choice of Yavimaya Wurm and Plummet with four cards left, for example.
The second deck:
Brindle Boar
2 Cultivate
Duskdale Wurm
Fauna Shaman
Garruk Wildspeaker
Garruk’s Companion
Giant Spider
Hornet Sting
Llanowar Elves
Mitotic Slime
Nature’s Spiral
2 Plummet
Prized Unicorn
Protean Hydra
Runeclaw Bear
2 Spined Wurm
Yavimaya Wurm
Ancient Hellkite
Destructive Force
I was quite happy with this one — although I wished for a few more playables in pack three, so that I didn’t have to play the Boar and the Unicorn. I had a third Plummet in the sideboard, but I think two is about the correct number to maindeck.
This time around, the games were a bit more exciting:
Round 9: Juza, Martin [CZE], Blue/Black
His deck was good as well, with his best card being a Mind Control. I also felt quite good about the Mind Control in my sideboard; I certainly didn’t want to play against two copies.
The Mind Control also put him in a good spot in the first game but when I drew my seventh land, he used his last card in hand to deal with my Ancient Hellkite. Thankfully, my Duskdale Wurm went unanswered, and the following turn’s Destructive Force put the game away.
His fliers got me in the second game, but a bad draw on his part (and another Destructive Force) won me the third game and the match.
2-1, overall 7-2
Round 10: Soh, Terry [MYS], Blue/Red
Uhm, I’ll admit it — I was lying about the matches being interesting. Terry’s first pick was actually a Fireball over Garruk. He picked up another Fireball later on, and then got shipped two Mind Controls in the third pack.
To be fair, the Fireballs weren’t good against me and they hardly mattered. But the Crystal Ball he played on his third turn in both games? They proceeded to scry away any non-Mind Control cards, and as such they were
very
good. I played some cool creatures with golden expansion symbols in both games, and then got beaten up by them.
0-2, overall 7-3
Round 11: Melis, Bas [NLD], Blue/Black
The first game looked pretty bad until another Destructive Force happened. Did I mention I like the card? I recovered a lot better and won.
The second game saw me trying to be smart and block his Cloud Elemental with my Ancient Hellkite when I was at five life saying “Okay, you have one card in hand, and you just played a Swamp. If that card was a Quag Sickness, you certainly would not have played that Swamp pre-combat.” So I blocked.
…And got Diminished. Nice play!
The Dragon Spiralled back into play, naturally — “naturally” meaning, “I had nothing and drew it the following turn” — and finished the job two turns later.
2-0, overall 8-3
Rumors were that the top 8 would require 12-3-1. That meant I was in single elimination mode.
Round 12: Doise, Jan [BEL], Red Deck
No bad judgment calls for me, and no Goblin Guides for Jan. Combined, the two factors made for a fairly comfortable win.
2-0, overall 9-3
Round 13: Postlethwait, William [USA], Doran
The matchup against Doran is a lot about the coin toss… Especially in the first game, since both decks have little to no removal to make up if their opponent gets a speedy draw on the play. That’s pretty much what happened here as well; William was always on the back foot, and a Brave the Elements got him.
I’m not sure if he mulliganed in the second game or kept a mediocre hand, but in any case he missed his third land drop. That wasn’t even all that good for me, as my plan was to play a turn 3 Knight of the White Orchid, Path whatever he played on his turn, and then follow up with a Ranger of Eos. The two Path to Exiles I was holding ended up being blanks, as I certainly did not want to give him his third land. But while my draw would have been smoother if he had land, that still didn’t help him get out of his mana screw.
2-0, overall 10-3
Round 14: Carvalho, Marcio [PRT], Scapeshift
A removal-light hand for him in the first game meant that I raced his Scapeshift easily. My hand in the second game looked pretty amazing, with a Forge-Tender, two Lynxes, and two Flagstones. I played the Forge-Tender first, and then double-Lynxed on my second turn…
…and Marcio’s third-turn play was Maelstorm Pulse. So much for that plan.
After that, my draw kinda fell apart. I found a Ranger to reload, but there was no way I could race a Scapeshift. Luckily, he didn’t find one. His library didn’t help him, while the Ranger and his buddies finished things.
2-0, overall 11-3
Round 15: Woods, Conley [USA], G/W/B good stuff
This match was featured here
.
I didn’t know exactly what Conley’s deck contained, but I couldn’t imagine that it was a bad matchup for me.
The first game went well enough; I got him down to one before he got a few blockers into play. For one or two turns, just drawing a land to power up my Lynx would have forced him into some pretty bad blocks and won me the game. After that, stuff like Brave the Elements, Ranger of Eos, and Spectral Procession would have done the job. Naturally, none of that showed up in four or five draws, and Conley won at one life.
Now the next two games I think the best way to describe what happened is to say, “Conley’s deckbuilding got to him.” You see, I’m sure quite a few of you scroll through the coverage of any Constructed event and try to find a feature match with Conley first. Let’s face it: Jund or Titan-Ramp mirror matches are not exciting to read about. But if you read a feature match involving Conley, you can be 99% certain that cool stuff is going to happen. 16/16 Ajani’s Pridemates! Abyssal Persecutor! Violent Ultimatum and Ob Nixilis! They’re certainly more fun to read about than, “Sprouting Thrinax traded with Bloodbraid Elves.”
Now, playing the cool decks comes at a price — and more often than not, it involves a deck’s mana base. In this case, Conley brought a whole play set of lands that entered the battlefield tapped. That pretty much cost him the second game, as his first spells were a turn 3 and turn 4 Rhox War Monk — but my creatures were bigger and I had more of them, so even the lifelink didn’t help much.
The third game was even worse, as he mulliganed into a hand without green mana and the only spells he cast were a Meddling Mage (nice new picture, Chris!) and a Mana Leak.
It wasn’t a nice way to win — but there was a reason I liked our mono-colored deck with twenty-three lands that entered the battlefield ready to go.
2-1, overall 12-3
Round 16: Ma, Thomas [USA], Jund
Luckily, the pairings worked out. Theoretically, there could be nine people at 37 points —but the ninth, Kenny Oberg, had a solid 10% worse tiebreaker than anyone else. Everyone drawing locked everyone from tables 1 through 4 into the top 8, and probably left Kenny quite sad; he won his last round, and still
knew
he’d end up in 9th.
ID, overall 12-3-1
My tiebreakers were the worst of the bunch and Brad Nelson won the Swiss, so I knew my first round would be against Brad’s Doran deck. Furthermore, I knew he’d be going first in game 1, which is pretty big in the matchup.
I tested a bit in the evening, playing a few game ones and then ten to fifteen sideboarded games to try to figure out what Brad would sideboard. In general, his sideboarding plan against White Weenie was pretty poor. Infest is okay (and a much-needed solution for Procession), but he just lacks spot removal.
Overall, we thought I was a slight favorite to win the match — but not more than 60-40, if even that much. My deck got a lot better after swapping the two Forge-Tenders and four Canonists for three more copies of Path to Exile, a third Ranger of Eos, a Celestial Purge, and a Lapse of Certainty, while his deck only improved slightly. But he still got to go first in game 1, which was pretty big.
There was, naturally, a lot of “Kai doesn’t lose on Sundays” talk going into the match — but people somehow forgot that Brad stepped that game up a bit by deciding to just not lose at all in the past six to eight months. That’s definitely taking the game a step further, if you ask me.
While we’re on the topic of “further,” that’s also what Sebastian Thaler said about the restaurant he took us to for dinner. “Just a little bit further — maybe 500 meters.” We heard that sentence quite a few times before we got there. At least the food was great — and when we walked back, we just took the straight way instead of following Sebastian’s sightseeing detour through the city.
Quarterfinals
The match coverage can be found here
.
Part of the match was also on camera — but overall, the pace of the game was a lot slower than anyone anticipated, and the camera moved around a lot as other matches finished quite a bit faster than ours. We ended up running into a few creature stalemates, and that cost some time, as we tried to figure out what to attack with and when to hold back.
Brad’s start in the first game was pretty bad; by the end of turn 3, his only spell was a Thoughtseize. I missed my third land drop, and that meant my Lynx couldn’t attack, so I dropped a few more creatures.
A few turns into the game, I thought, “The only way he can possibly get anywhere is if he’s got his one Elspeth, Knight-Errant.” Sure enough, on the next turn Elspeth came down and allowed him to attack. I had to use my Brave the Elements to deal with a Maelstrom Pulse on three Knights instead of using it as a Falter — but eventually, a Ranger of Eos gave me enough guys on the board to overwhelm Brad.
The second game was more of the same, and involved multiple Spectral Processions; suddenly, I was up 2-0. I really liked my chances when I won the first game. Losing two games when playing first seemed very unreasonable now.
Unfortunately, that’s not how it worked out.
I kept a mediocre draw in the third game and got rolled by turn 1 Treefolk Harbinger, turn 2 creature, turn 3 Doran.
My deck coughed up another mediocre hand for the fourth game with four lands, Figure of Destiny, Honor of the Pure, and Path to Exile. Not bad enough to mulligan but pretty unexciting. I ended up not drawing another creature in forever, and had a fully leveled Figure soon enough.
He was at eighteen due to some damage from his lands. I untapped, drew Brave the Elements, and attacked him down to nine. At this point, only Kitchen Finks would help him, as my Brave would counter his removal… But he found them.
Now his attack got me down to two life, as I had no other creatures other than my Figure. I couldn’t kill him on my turn, but drew a Spectral Procession off the top.
I still couldn’t attack, as I needed my Figure to stay on defense to use his first-striking on Doran — which would make his Harbinger useless.
Otherwise, his attack would kill me. But the next turn, I could swing for more than enough to kill him with my Figure and my two flying birds,
plus
the Brave in hand.
That left him four outs in his deck: two Infests and two Slaughter Pacts. If he draws a Maelstrom Pulse, I use Brave the Elements against green, can block everything without my tokens taking damage, and win on my turn. Brad found the Slaughter Pact.
Now he attacked with all but Doran, which meant I had to block and kill his Kitchen Finks — which gave him another two life, and enough of my spirit tokens died to make sure that I couldn’t kill him on the return serve. I had one more draw step to find Ranger or another Procession, but blanked and lost.
The fifth game was pretty unexciting again. I mulliganed into a hand without a one-mana creature and just never really did anything while I got stomped by some green monsters.
After being up two games, I would have put quite some money on me getting to the semis. Drawing Lynx or Ranger of Eos in any of the games — two, three, four, or five — probably would have helped me to get there.
Watching Brad’s deck afterwards do absolutely nothing in the finals against Paul was a bit annoying. Brad used up his luck against me, and Paul somehow sucked the good draws out of my deck. That’s my excuse, at least!
Anyway, time to stop whining — since overall, I had a great weekend. It felt great to make another top 8 and show myself that if I actually put some effort into the game, I can still keep up with the guys. I got lucky to 9-0 the Extended portion — but hey, that’s always part of making a top 8 in a big tournament. You won’t get there being unlucky. It’s also quite helpful to have a good deck.
Thanks again to Gabriel for sharing his stuff with me. I very much doubt I would’ve top 8ed without that help.
Now, I’ll need to figure out if I had enough fun to try to get time off work for Worlds. I am certain that I’ll show up for Pro Tour and Grand Prix Paris, but I have grown to dislike travelling… Although it should be a good time to watch Brad Nelson post another top 8 at Worlds (is there anyone who’s really doubting that at this point?) and see him wrap up Player of the Year. The only question that remains is how long he will keep up the “no-shaving-while-winning” policy …
Before I forget it, huge congrats to the new four Hall of Fame members — and especially to Brian, who had a nice weekend and a great 30th birthday. That also means I can tell myself that I wasn’t the only guy older than thirty in that top 8. Makes me sleep a lot better.
See you around!