I might start this off with a"Yo, homies!"
....But I won't.
So hello, everyone. I'm the random Finn you could see at the top of the standings of Worlds 2003 most of the time. Yes, the same one that beat Carlos Romao in the last round even though he didn't have to, and is now hated among most of the South American Magic community for the rest of his life.
I'm that guy.
Okay, so maybe one or two of you might have heard of me before. If you were following the action a couple of years ago, you could very well even be one of those two. See I actually used to play a lot of Pro Tours, but I was forced to take a break for one year because of my mandatory military service in Finland. Worlds was going to be my big comeback to the Tour - and as it turned out, that plan worked pretty well.
I was a member of our National team, and as our captain Tomi Walamies happened to belong to a very large but low profile group of young Swedish players - who jokingly call themselves team Punisher - he wanted me to join this merry group and playtest like mad. So that's what we did. Day and night, all morning and afternoon we played. For months. There was no such thing as a"break" with this group. They hardly even ate at all, as playing Magic with paper or digital cards seemed to be the only life they knew exist.
Well, actually this is not the whole truth. There was one exception in the group. A single member that stood out from the rest with his bizarre habits. This guy didn't play any Magic at all! He was still pretty similar to the others with his ways, but instead of Magic, he only plays Warcraft.
Sooooo.....Naturally, this member - also known by the name"Jens" - had the second highest finish of our team, just a few steps behind yours truly.
All this work and no play with sometimes disappointing results can really drive one mad. Fortunately that didn't happen to me, but several members of our great group were lost during online sessions, having died a horrible death to dehydration or similar side-effects due to the huge amount of pressure our members were working on. In the end, all that was left from the original fifty members was a handful of Swedes and Finns:
- Arho Toikka (third at Finnish Nats, smart as hell)
- Tomi Walamies (your brotha)
- Tuomo Nieminen (yeah, that's me)
- Jussi Salovaara (this guy's a playah, all right?)
- Mattias Jorstedt (you know, the guy who is almost as good as Kai)
- Johan Sadeghpour (prolly the best Limited player in the world)
- Anton Johnson (he's reeaaally good, but didn't do that well 'cause he thought 'Tog is still broken)
- Jens Thoren (the best player in the World - in Warcraft. Top 10 in Magic)
A few days to go, and it was clear that we had broken T2 wide open. Through extensive testing, we had gathered enough data to figure out the absolute best decks for the format. We named the decks ourselves, but I'm pretty sure you know them by now - they were U/G Madness, Goblins, and Wake. With this much tech on our hands, we were pretty paranoid of any potential scouters. We had heard that the Germans have a habit of hiring themselves as window cleaners at the players hotel in an attempt to steal the best decks, so we always kept our curtains closed and didn't even let our rooms be cleaned during the whole week. Afterwards, it was a shock to find that most of the other players had found the same decks and even named them similarly! My theory is that the Germans used the good old"room service" tactic this time around, but of course, I can't prove this.
All our three decks seemed so superior that we had trouble deciding which one would be the best choice. In the end we decided that it doesn't really matter and everyone just rolled a die to pick up a deck. I got the Wake deck. I was happy because this was my personal favorite anyway - now, if I had only known that so many had stolen this particular deck from us and made it better against our original build, I definitely would have made some changes of my own, but this was what I was stuck with for then. The version is still very solid, the only change I would make would be to add another Decree to the main deck. This would make the mirror easier, although weakening some other matchups like Slide and U/G.
Day 1
And so it finally started. Let me tell you, going 6-0 in a tournament full of the best players around the world isn't easy. I had to fight through hateful matchups all day, but with so much experience and a superior deck, I was able to pull off every single match of the standard portion and go to sleep with a perfect record. The rounds were as follows:
Round 1: Reanimator
A really tough matchup. You somehow have to manage to beat their four (!) maindeck discard spells and their two-card combo with a deck consisting of only mana, counters, card drawing and the autowin of Cunning Wish for Krosan Reclamation. Life sure ain't easy, but sometimes one just gets lucky.
Round 2: Wake
This just saddens me. Our tech had spread all the way to the Brazilians! Fortunately, it shows that he only had a day or two to practice with the deck while I've been playing it for months and months, 24/7. Star Compass was a real player here, as combined with Krosan Verge, it got the Mana Leak-proof Wake into play in a world record time.
Round 3: Reanimator
This guy had tech in Withered Wretch, and it was a real pain because it, well... attacked for two. Attacking for two is really nothing to sneeze at, and the match was a close one. The turning point of game 3 was when I blocked the attack-for-two-machine with fifty-nine soldier tokens, and smacked him back for a hundred and seventy-seven damage.
Round 4: G/W control
A deck pretty similar to Wake - but instead of card drawing, he has Krosan Tusker, and instead of Compulsion, he has Eternal Dragon. Fine replacements, I'd say, and superior in this particular matchup as they can also attack - for more than two, I might add. Moment's Peace is a boring card, however, and I eventually beat him with thirty-five 2/2 creature tokens with only one card left in my library and a Cunning Wish in my hand. Boy, that was a close one. The second game is about fifteen minutes faster as I kill him on my seventh turn with fifteen 3/3 soldiers. How lucky.
Round 5: Slide
As the tournament progresses, the matchups just get harder. Astral Slide is in itself a pain for my deck, since it can take out token creatures left and right. I manage to lose a game even though I mulligan to five and fail to draw answers to his Silver Knight, Exalted Angel, and two Lightning Rifts. In the third game, he resolves Obliterate - a huge problem for any control deck - and at the end of his turn I'm only left with a Mirari's Wake, Compulsion, and five 5/5 Beast tokens against his empty board. The situation slightly favors him as he has more lands left in his library, but I manage to win the game anyway with a topdecked... Card.
Round 6: Slide
See? I told you it gets rough. This was a Feature Match, actually, so if you actually care about what happened, go knock yourself out. I'll just settle for the phrase"I crushed him like the bug he is."
So that about covers the day one. Our National team is also in the lead with a 16-2 performance, so it's all looking up. Tomi Walamies tells me he was really happy with his deck choice and while I remind him that he actually rolled a die and didn't really choose; he just mumbles something of a mathematical method being the only real way of making intellectual decisions, so I just nod. A couple of high fives, beers and some nice Thai food later, we're off to bed.
Day 2
Ah, the draft. I hadn't actually practiced this format at all, but Johan told me everything he knew so I figured I knew everything. I'm usually broken in Rochester anyway, so I figured this would be easy pickings.
In the first pod I'm sitting in seat eight with a fellow Finn, Tuomas Kotiranta, in seat seven. Jeroen Remie in seat one starts with white but switches to U/G as Tuomas fights him for white. So I'm pretty sandwiched here. WU in my right, U/G in my left - what to do, what to do. Then I hear Johan's voice inside my head, saying,"Use the underdrafted colors." I quickly move into black and red, which turns out to be a good plan as I even get passed a Sparksmith and then open a Tephraderm. My deck ends up really good and I sweep the table easily to take a lead in the tournament with a 9-0 record.
Now when you're 9-0, the people are pretty much getting bored at cheering at you and basically just start waiting for your first loss. I believe everyone was getting really really bored with the phrase"Look, mom - I won again." This was also true with my opponents - some of them even started accusing me of cheating. Suddenly my shuffling method was unacceptable, and I was definitely stalling when I had to think for five seconds which morph to cast on turn three. Also, when you're 9-0, you just don't care about all this bull. It's like being in a different dimension; you look at the people who lose matches and think to yourself:"How does that feel like again?" Generally, you just feel really good, try to get back to the earth, and keep it up.
The second draft was much trickier. Again, me and Tuomas are sitting next to each other, and this time I'm in seat one with him on seat two and I have a very interesting first pack. It has Catapult Squad, Cruel Revival, Silent Specter, Daru Lancer, Lavamancer's Skill, Prowling Pangolin, and other goodies. I fail to decide if Revival or Specter is better and just take the Squad to avoid embarrassment. With so much black in the pack this would usually give me a great position for white, but then some random German kid called Daniel takes Daru Lancer third over the Skill and I'm worried. The guys to my right also make some really weird decisions, so for a while it seems like I'm really screwed. It all ends well, though, as Daniel is forced to move out from white and I get the hookup in Legions. The other white drafters at the table also seem to think that bad cards are somehow better than the good ones so my deck ends up decent. The card pool was also somewhat poor. Tuomas got pretty screwed by the lack of any good cards in his colors and his highlights end up only being Visara, Specter, Siege-Gang Commander, Cruel Revival, Twisted Abomination and about seven other removal spells. He couldn't really fight the decks that actually had quality cards in them, and ended up with a 1-2 record.
I myself am once again pretty unlucky with the pairings, as my U/W deck has to face down two W/B decks with lots of targets for my two Willbenders. I somehow manage to beat those, but Jeroen Remie gets a revenge against me from the last draft by handing me my first loss with his U/R double-Skill deck. The Skills were a real problem for me as they kill most of my creatures - and I only had two Willbenders, Daru Sanctifier, Wipe Clean, and Crown of Awe in my maindeck to handle them.
Needless to say, I was pretty devastated to actually lose a match, since now I would have to win a total of two matches during the last day to advance into the top 8. Fortunately, our mad testings also involved the Extended format - something that most people wouldn't even think of - so I thought my chances were actually still pretty good. For Extended, we only found one secret broken deck, but it was so good that we were all happy to run it. Ordering room service that evening was a mistake though, as when we took out our Goblin decks Friday morning, our tech had spread all over the place! The Germans sure know how to do their scouting - or perhaps it was the guy with a raincoat and binoculars across the bar, where we had a few beers and played a few games the evening before.
So I'm 11-1 if someone's keeping track.
Day 3
This is what I ran:
4 Goblin Lackey
3 Goblin Sledder
1 Mogg Raider (2 and 2 would be optimal)
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Jackal Pup
4 Mogg Flunky
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Gempalm Incinerator
4 Seal of Fire
16 Mountain
4 Wasteland
Sideboard
4 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Cursed Scroll
2 Fledgling Dragon
2 Rishadan Port
2 Mogg Salvage
2 Pulverize
It was supposed to have Tangle Wires main... Or even in the 'board. But I chose to give my opponents a chance and not run them at all. We also did most of the testing with Skirk Prospector instead of Sledder, but as they were good, I decided to replace them with Sledders in the last moment.
I think this kind of last-minute tweaking really separates the great deckbuilders from the mediocre ones. Some Americans and Germans were actually seen to run decks they had made years ago - now where's the testing and tuning for a new environment? The reason this deck ended up being the nice little package it is was that I was able to tune it to the last minute and make improvements, even when they hurt the deck itself. That kind of dedication is rarely seen in the pro level, which is why this baby should be considered as a pretty unique individual.
As you may have guessed, this deck doesn't really have any bad matchups. We actually found one in testing; it was a deck based around a new Scourge card Mind's Desire and it had four maindeck Chills and Propagandas. We figured people would probably not run that monstrosity, as It had a 10% win percentage against the rest of the expected field. Then there were a couple of almost 50-50 matchups, which would go down to the coin flip.
Round 13: Jeroen Remie, Rock
He wins the coin flip. How unfair! I also stall at one land for ten turns in both games one and three, and my goblin deck has a full grip and I can't cast a single spell. Well, I guess that happens. He also sideboards in some goblins against me, which seems pretty stupid considering I run Incinerators, but in the end even all his mistakes and incorrect sideboarding doesn't help me and a Llanowar Elves beat me down. Oh it was a feature match by the way, but who cares?
11-2
Round 14: Gabriel Nassif, Zombies
Poor Gabriel thought that the last day was also standard and was pretty shocked as I played a first-turn Lackey. He also decided to try his anti-control sideboard plan against me (4 Rancid Earth, 4 Braids) but somehow that failed to work and I beat him easily.
12-2
Round 15: Daniel Zink, Reanimator
I win the all-important flip and I was almost certain I had the first game even though I mulliganed to four. He manages to pull it off in the end after some really tricky Goblin Sledder symbiotic tokens combat action. It felt like Limited. In the third game, he Exhumes out a second-turn Verdant Force and follows up with a second-turn Engineered Plague, naming Goblins. He was pretty lucky to guess the right tribe with the Plague, as my board was a Jackal Pup and some Goblin - but my hand was all Goblins, of course. Sometimes the bad players just get lucky and there's nothing you can do about it. I know someone else could have been really pissed about this loss, but I take it like a gentleman I am, wishing him good luck and sending a"GG" message to his cell phone.
12-3
Round 16: Peer Kroger, WW
This is the one deck that can do absolutely nothing about Siege-Gang Commander. If your deck can't handle a single goblin, well... I mean this guy didn't even have Pariah or Worship or anything. He just flat-out scoops to a single Siege-Gang. Now I can see only two solutions here: Ban Siege-Gang Commander, or don't play WW. I'd go for the ban, since Savannah Lion is a cool card.
13-3
Round 17: Jin Okamoto
The problem with taking an intentional draw with Jin was that he doesn't speak English. Or Finnish. We try to get the issue covered with some hand signals, but we're both pretty unsure what the other is trying to say. Finally, a Japanese judge comes over and tells me that Jin would like to take an intentional draw.
13-3-1
Round 18: Carlos Romao, Desire
So I already have the top 8 spot, but this last round was still like playing in the top 8 of Masters. There's a huge difference in the prize money for 5th-8th - and, of course, for 3rd-4th too. Better yet, if I win and Gabe Walls makes it, I'd be paired against him in the top 8 - and he's playing Slide. Add to this the team competition, and I'd be a total jackass not to play this one out.
It would be like giving away $6500 or more to a stranger. I would like to know if someone would actually do that.
Anyway... At least this was probably the most boring match of my week. I just sat there and watched Carlos fizzle with his deck endless times. I've never seen a Desire player get that unlucky, and I honestly felt really bad for him after the match. Carlos seemed like a good guy and I'm sure he's a great player; it just wasn't his hour this time. I spend a couple of minutes being pretty down for him, but then find out Gabe Walls made the top 8, which makes me a happy man again.
At this point I would like to thank several Polish people for lending us around two hundred goblins. We sure needed those.
Day 4
This was the team competition day. I really won't go into any details here. We just kicked some serious butt. Our team was just simply insane. That's it. Next day.
Oh wait. My honest thanks to the three German guys who shared their thoughts on the team Rochester format. I don't remember your names but the strategy you recommended was actually pretty good. Maybe you guys should form a team.
Day 5
I woke up at 7 a.m. and head to the shower only to find puke in the bathtub. This is exactly how I pictured my first Pro Tour top 8 experience. I decided to shower anyway ignoring the fact that I only got dirtier doing so.
After playing a fashion model for a couple of minutes, I find Gabe Walls still playtesting our matchup. Not to be outdone, I borrow the top 8 decklists from Jin for a sec, since I had already completely forgotten the contents of Gabe's deck. The smart man I am, I even try to free-ride their playtesting by scouting their games - but unfortunately, Gabe tells me to get out, using some unprintable words. I leave, but after a minute he runs after me apologizing, and asks me if I would like to up our split a bit. I had already agreed to one Euro, but as I see that the man has actually done a lot of hard work just to lose horribly, I feel kind of sorry for him and we up the split to two Euros.
And so it's finally time to play. Let me tell ya, Gabe put up a hell of a fight. I knew that Slide used to enter land destruction mode after sideboarding, but Gabe's strategy was even better - mana denial. This strategy seems far superior to the old one, and the match eventually goes to the fifth and deciding game. It was a close one, with Gabe almost having a shot to win with his second Obliterate of the game, but the unlucky man didn't even have that and it was all over.
As we had some time before the semifinals, I figured we might as well go team drafting against some random Americans. We decide to make it interesting by playing for something like $5,000 - since after all, we all have cash to spare. It really shows that these guys had practiced the format, though - they only defensive drafted from each other a couple of times, and knew to always take away the rare if they were unsure. Perhaps their sponsor store needed some more rares, since they took stuff like Celestial Gatekeeper over critical cards. Anyway, our decks still end up being pretty equal, with only the champ Walamies having an edge - the other two matches seemed pretty tight.
After the draft I go get my ass kicked by Jin Okamoto, who had a superior version for the Wake mirror. If not for the headache, the lack of sleep, and the tiredness caused by already playing Magic for four days straight, I might have been able to pull maybe a 3-2 defeat. However, it also seemed more important to just lose quickly and go smack Gabe Walls around for the third time this weekend, which is why I played pretty quickly and the semifinal match only took about three hours.
I know this is getting really boring - but this is the last match, I promise. It seems that when the losing starts, there's no stopping. I wasn't really on top of my game, and Gabe just played me like a violin. I'm sure John Chinnock would have won this match, but for me, it was not to be. A bitter end to a great story, and the USA takes it home once again.
All in all, the week was pretty disappointing in the sense that I hardly got to see Germany at all. It wasn't a complete waste of time because of the $20,000, but that also required working on a Sunday, which I pretty much try to avoid whenever possible. This was also the worst possible moment to do well, because there are no more Masters, and the Pro Tour points from this tournament won't count to the end of year payout next year.
But maybe I'll get over it.
| 
