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I’m going to be honest. As I sit down to write this article, I have very little idea where I’m going with it. It’s much harder to write about a Limited tournament than a Constructed tournament with confidence that I’m substantially helping my readers. The fact of the matter is that I need to focus completely on Limited at the moment. As a side note, my recommendation to people I know for Constructed tournaments has been that your deck should probably contain Red and Black cards, particularly Anathemancer, although maybe Five-Color Control without Anathemancer is better. Either way, I’m glad I don’t have to follow my own advice and play in a Standard tournament, because I really don’t like any of those decks.

Anyway, Boston:

I rode out to Boston in the Mishamobile, the Van driven by Misha Gurevich, a friend from Madison whose house I’m about to move into and whose hat you may be friends with on facebook. Misha also took me to Nationals the week before. Also present for the trip were Jared Pierce and Brad Nelson. You may have read something about our trip there if you checked the coverage of the GP. Our already 18+ hour drive was substantially extended by Misha and Brad having left Jared at a gas station while his phone was still in the car. I leave myself out of this because I was asleep until an hour and a half later when my phone rang and Jared told me to have Misha turn around. The result of all of this is that I got in too late to register or get a draft in on Friday night, so I continued to feel a bit unprepared, as I’d still gotten less than ten M10 drafts in lifetime.

Before I continue to the tournament, I should give props to the organizers. The site was excellent, particularly with the group rate at the nearby hotels (Boston is extremely expensive otherwise), and the site is next to an enormous number of excellent food options. It included one of the best food courts I’ve ever been to, and it didn’t even require setting foot outside.

M10 Sealed is interesting, and after building my pool and looking at some others, I think it’s actually a pretty good format, despite how swingy the bombs are. The reason I say it’s interesting is that builds are hard. My pool had Baneslayer Angel and Earthquake, two of the best possible rares, so I knew I wanted access to White and Red. None of my other Red cards were exciting, but I had enough playables that I could just be those two colors. I somehow managed to avoid every busted uncommon (Gorgon Flail was probably my best), but I didn’t like the curve on my Red/White deck, which had almost no 3s and a lot of 4s. To make matters a little more difficult, I had a Gargoyle Castle, which, while excellent (totally busted), discourages splashing somewhat.

I liked my Blue cards, and I had more than enough Blue and White cards to build a deck. I had 2 Cancels, 2 Negates, and a Remove Soul, and I think counters are pretty good in this format. Along with those I had 2 Illusionary Servants, a Wall of Frost, and a Phantom Warrior, which meant I would need a lot of Islands if I wanted to play Blue, and that would be a problem if I’m trying to splash Earthquake while playing Baneslayer Angel and Gargoyle Castle.

Green was a little less powerful than Blue, but had a similar curve and all of the spells only needed a single Green. Also it had a Borderland Ranger to make things easier. Unfortunately it was just a bunch of average dudes and a Giant Growth, so it didn’t feel like it was adding much. It was just filling out my deck.

There was no reason to play Black. I had one Doom Blade, but Earthquake was just a better splash.

I registered the W/G deck splashing Earthquake and Pyroclasm. I talked to a bunch of people about it and suggestions were scattered. Patrick Chapin made a reasonably convincing argument my red cards were at least as good as my Green cards and would make my mana better (and let me play Dragon Whelp, which I forgot about until just now), but I really hated the curve. Shuhei said he liked the Green, but he never really looked at it that closely.

One of the biggest advantages of having 3 byes in Limited is the time to talk to people and work out your deck. I went to lunch with Gaudenis and Patrick Chapin, and then came back to the site and played some games with Zvi. After all that, I still had time to play some Catch Phrase and win a 3 on 3 despite teaming with Paulo and Brad Nelson, who have both claimed that English is like a second language for them (it actually is for Paulo, but regardless, neither of them knew words like puree), thanks to 3 consecutive steals. Anyway, back to Sealed:

I sided in the Red when I felt like my Sparkmage Apprentice would be really good. I sided into an aggressive Blue/White deck with no splash when Illusionary Servant looked like it would be good and my opponent prematurely put me on the play for game 3. I did the same thing against an R/G Magma Phoenix/Overrun deck where I wanted the counters and speed, but it didn’t really help there since I just got flooded and died to Magma Phoenix again. That was my second loss. My first was to Cudgel Troll and Sleep in my first round of play.

The number of different builds and the fact that I wanted to play different decks for different matchups is what makes me think this is a good format, and there is a high likelihood of difficult power versus consistency versus curve type tradeoffs in many sealed pools. This is made more interesting by the fact that almost all the bombs in the format (Earthquake and Fireball are exceptions) cost at least 2 colored mana.

I made Day 2 at 7-2, which I was happy about given how much people were worried about M10, particularly after losing my first round and stating on the trip that I would be totally satisfied with a top 64 (especially given a 1500 player field). I definitely couldn’t feel too bad about my record if Saito had the same record with 2 Garruks, 2 Serra Angels, and 2 Pacifisms.

After the tournament I went out to eat and the Cheesecake Factory, where I made the mistake of letting the waiter choose between Nachos and Sweet Corn Tamale Cakes, since he brought the Nachos. They were pretty disappointing, particularly given that I know the tamales to be excellent. While there I watched some more English as a second language Catch Phrase, this time with Gaudenis teaming with his Lithuanian girlfriend against my hotel mate Ben Rasmussen and his girlfriend. I went straight to bed after dinner (after talking to my girlfriend since she actually answered her phone when I called before bed, which is rare), as I’m still trying to be dedicated to my new rules about eating and sleeping during events.

Another aside before continuing to Day 2: At most events people approach me to ask me to sign a playmat or tell me they like my articles. Recent compliments have gotten more extreme or specific, and I just wanted to mention that it means a lot to me when people tell me they like my work, and I’m thankful to everyone who’s taken the time to do so. I felt like I’ve been on top of Standard lately. I think my predictions about the metagame have been very accurate, and I’m pretty confident in most of the strategy I’ve written, particularly with Faeries (I think I’m personally proudest of my summaries of the role change in Faeries throughout a match, and Jace’s role in that deck). Despite that, it’s very hard to know how informative or readable my own articles are as the author, so it’s great to hear from readers. I’d be similarly appreciative of sincere constructive criticism, but I think that’s harder to give a stranger, so it hasn’t come up.

I’m not nearly as friendly a person as someone like Patrick Chapin. I say this because sometimes someone will come up to both of us when we’re talking and as us to sign his playmat. When this happens, Patrick will usually get involved in a conversation with this person, asking what deck he’s playing and how his weekend is going. I’m much less likely to try to strike up a conversation, but, well, I guess what I’m really getting at is that you shouldn’t take it personally.

So, Day 2. I wasn’t too confident in my drafting of M10. I didn’t really have a plan, and I didn’t have a great record overall. Fortunately, the only person in my pod who I knew anything about was Chris Fennell. I got a little worried when I opened my first pack and the pick was between Giant Growth, Glorious Charge, Ignite Disorder, and Diabolic Tutor. I don’t remember the other cards in the pack, but I’m sure they were just a bunch of average creatures. The rare was Howling Mine, I think there was a gain life artifact in the other uncommon slot. So I started my draft with a first pick Glorious Charge, and I was pretty confident I had the worse one-card deck at the table. I ended up drafting an aggressive g/w deck with 3 Runeclaw Bears and a handful of tricks. My best cards were Great Sable Stag, White Knight, and Armored Ascension. My curve was excellent, and the deck goldfished extremely well, so I felt alright about it despite my lack of power.

Round 1 I played against Chris Fennell, and both games I had aggressive starts. Then he played a Baneslayer Angel… and I had the Pacifism, and I killed him.

The next round I played against a Red/Black deck with a bunch of Doom Blades and Dragon Whelps. Fortunately, removal spells aren’t great against random 2/2s, and neither are Red and Black’s creatures. I came out fast enough to force him to block into pump spells with Dragon Whelps. In the second game I stuck an armored Ascension on a White Knight after waiting long enough that I was confident he didn’t have a burn spell.

The last round was against another Red/Black deck, this time with 2 Fireballs, 2 Lightning Bolts, and a Diabolic Tutor. We went to 3 games, and I won the third game because he didn’t Fireball my Great Sable Stag when he had the chance, and I drew Armored Ascension to kill him.

I felt a lot better about everything having 3-0’d my first draft.

My next pod included Zvi and Jamie Park, and only the winner of the pod would Top 8, in all likelihood. My draft started with a Doom Blade that was by far the best card in the pack. From there I didn’t see much more Black, or any cards that clearly put me in another color, and I ended pack one with about 4 playables each in White, Blue, and Black. Pack two I was looking for some direction and opened Chandra. I determined that I couldn’t take it because that would mean at most 4 playables from pack 1 and moving into a shallow color, and I just couldn’t expect to have a deck at the end of the draft, so I took a Gravedigger. I got passed a Cemetery Reaper and another Gravedigger, and spent all of pack 2 taking Black cards. In pack 3 I opened Looming Shade, Pacifism, and Merfolk Looter. I knew I was playing Black and my I knew I would have to play another color, but my White and Blue were just as good (something like Siege Mastodon and Divine Verdict against 2 Divinations, and both colors had some random other cards that may or may not make the deck). I took the Pacifism. I got passed Mind Control and regretted my previous pick, but took the Mind Control and decided I was Blue. Then I got passed Jace.

In deckbuilding, basically everything in my deck cost 3 mana, and by biggest creatures were Clone and Mind Control (everything else was a 2/2), so I decided to splash white for Divine Verdict, Siege Mastodon, and Pacifism, cutting my Looming Shade and 2 Dread Warlocks and giving myself a 7/7/3 manabase (my curve was way too low to justify an 18th land). I had an underpowered control deck, and felt really bad about my chances.

In the first round I won game 1 against a Red/Blue Zephyr Sprite deck, then he sided out Red and sided in Serpent of the Endless Seas and drew a lot of them. In game 2 I drew 13 lands and 6 spells, and he killed me. In game 3 I had Jace going, but I couldn’t kill his two 8/8 serpents fast enough, and I ended up needing to chump block when I fell too far behind on the board.

The next round I won game one, but then lost the next two to Chandra, of which, it turned out, he had two copies. Given how slow my deck was and that I didn’t have counters, I shouldn’t ever realistically be able to beat a deck with two Chandras.

In the last round I got paired up against Jamie Park, who was playing for top 16. I needed a win to Top 64. He was playing a Red/Blue deck with 3 Divinations and a Jace, so it was basically a mirror match. He stalled on lands a bit in the third game after beating me with Jace in game 2, and I won the match to get my 25th pro point this season.

Overall I found M10 to be pretty enjoyable, and I’m not too sad that I have to play with it when I go to Bangkok, Niigata, and Prague (though unfortunately not Brighton) in a few weeks. I certainly hope to get a lot of drafts in first.

My current theory is that it’s really good to be aggressive, as the best way to deal with the wide variety of insane bombs in the format is to kill your opponent before they can take advantage of them. Brad, who spent all of Sunday doing team drafts while I played just 2 in the GP, says that he’s really liking Blue/Black control, and he loves Cancel. I trust him, and counters do look excellent in this format, so I should probably give that a try.

Next on my agenda is moving, followed by Gen Con. If anyone knows of any tournaments for any game that will be held there with a large prize, please let me know. The event catalog is not set up in a manner that is useful for someone who is willing to play any game at any time as long as the prize is good.

Thanks for reading…

Sam Black