Please hold while we load your cart...
It was a faint light on the horizon. After weeks, nay, months of darkness, there was hope. A serious Magic tournament - not since Worlds had anything really mattered. A prerelease here, a Friday Night Magic there. But finally, it was once again Pro Tour Qualifier season. This time, it was a brave new world in more ways than one: I didn't even know what cards I was going to get to play with.
I preface this with the understanding that reading about some random guy's card-pool and morbid selections, and seeing how he lucksacked and topdecked his way through seven rounds of Sealed might not raise your blood the same way reading about a viciously tuned Standard or Extended deck (or tournament) might. I usually don't like reading Limited reports myself, but I try to catch at least a few, and I think right now they are important for a few reasons:
1. The cardpool is relatively new. People are still learning tricks, and there are gems everywhere.
2. It's been so long since anything mattered in semi- and professional magic that the sites are drying up waiting for Honolulu.
With that being said:
PTQ Prague: Wheatridge, Colorado. March 4th, 2006.
Seven rounds of Swiss, hand out prizes, and cut to a Top 8 for a Draft and a blue envelope.
A majority of the group I regularly play with had been looking forwards to this weekend for some time, for many of the same reasons I was. It's the first chance to play with Guildpact cards in a real tournament (barring the release event the night before) and a lot of us wanted something different than the relatively stagnant meta that Standard has been for the last month (in anticipation of the legalization of the set). We were expecting a sizable turnout, and were not disappointed. Just over a hundred and ten people were packed into the play room of Valhalla's games. Playing there once or twice a week doesn't prepare you for the chaos that is a decent Pro Tour Qualifier turnout. Registration was handled with its usual aplomb, and we were seated and handed product to register.
ASIDE: I have grown to love the Pro-Player Cards, and I really look forward to the new series of them. However (and this is unfortunate that it needs to be said) there needs to be an official policy about the cards concerning a Sealed card pool. I have been at events where the head judge makes the call both ways – that they need to be passed as part of the product, or that they can be kept by the people that open them. I believe that they are part of the product, just like any other card in the box, and that as the collectability of certain cards increases, so does the necessity of having a floor rule to cover the issue. This would also allow Wizards to do other promotions related to the packs without incident. I would like to believe that the majority of us are responsible adults, or are responsible young adults; however, I also know that we are all human, and there have been un-necessary issues stemming from this at every Limited event I have attended in the last six months.
ASIDE #2: Enough bad, more good! Billy Massingdale is a local player who was seriously injured in an automobile accident a few months ago, and a raffle for some really nice cards (Judge Promo Sol Ring, Balance, and Intuition among others, anyone?) as well as a Gunslinging event were held throughout the day. Thanks to the generosity of everyone involved, almost $600 was raised to help him out.
Enough chat - card pool time!
I opened the following... No one cares what I opened. I was passed the following.
I also received one Jeroen Remie Pro Player Card. Woohoo!
What does the pool tell you? In my opinion, there are three or four really strong signals, but Limited is special in that almost everyone interprets a pool differently.
Instead of a card-by-card list, lets start by breaking down the highlights:
The strongest (and likely easiest) decision is that you will be playing either Red or White. You're likely to be strong in one, with a splash of the other to play Razia. Razia is a beatstick who will win you games by herself, and in the relatively slow Limited environment, you can reasonably expect to at least see her most games. An Arc, a Fangtail, and a Rally, not to mention a pair of goblins an armorer, and a guildhouse make this decision easier.
Black is reasonable, but other than the Blind Hunter, lacks strong synergy with anything else. The strongest decks will likely be the ones that play across 2 guilds, not the ones splashing a third off-guild color.
Green is present, and Moldervine Cloak is there in all its nasty glory. The fact remains that a Cloak on a 1/1 evasion dork will win you games. Farseek is always nice, and there is some generic midrange beef including the Bramble Elemental (who will almost always makes tokens) and the Guardian of Vitu-Ghazi.
The biggest juke in this pool is the Blue. As a rampant control player, I am happy to see a reasonable showing of the islands, if not a spectacular one. Flight of Fancy, Steamcore Weird, Surveilling Sprites, and Repeal round out the top of that section on its own.
I feel the decision comes down to R/W and a third color, either U or G. Let's jump aside for a second to talk about two cards: Steamcore Weird and Ogre Savant. I like these cards - they are cost effective, present reasonable bodies for their effects (reasonable being anything other than a 1/1 or a 1 /2) and most of all, serve to remove early and mid game threats (blockers) without a significant loss of tempo. Having said that, I went W/R/U, which allowed me to play a card that is oh so very tempting - Hunted Lammasu. Beefy!
| PTQ Sealed Deck: Boros and Natasha Featured by Josh Ulmer on 2006-02-19 (Ravnica Limited) | ||
Artifacts 1 Gruul Signet 1 Terrarion Creatures 1 Frenzied Goblin 1 Hunted Lammasu 2 Mourning Thrull 2 Ogre Savant 1 Sabertooth Alley Cat 1 Skyrider Trainee 1 Steamcore Weird 1 Surveilling Sprite 1 Veteran Armorer 1 Viashino Fangtail 1 War-Torch Goblin Enchantments 1 Flight of Fancy 1 Galvanic Arc |
Instants 1 Leap of Flame 1 Rally the Righteous 1 Repeal 1 Smash Legendary Creatures 1 Razia, Boros Archangel 1 Tibor and Lumia Sorceries 1 Train of Thought 1 Vacuumelt Basic Lands 5 Island 6 Mountain 5 Plains Lands 1 Boros Garrison | Stats: Average mana: 1.81 Average creature mana cost: 3.47 Average creature power: 2.40 Average creature toughness: 2.13 Deck Composition: Basic Lands: 38.10% Instants: 9.52% Creatures: 30.95% Legendary Creatures: 4.76% Artifacts: 4.76% Sorceries: 4.76% Lands: 2.38% Enchantments: 4.76% |
 |
 | |
| Download this deck in Apprentice format! |
Download this deck in Magic Online Text format! | |
Notes:
I would change one card in this list after the fact. Take out the Skyrider Trainee. Add (likely) a Belltower Sphinx.
There were three people around me during construction bragging about their signet count. Smash is almost an auto-maindeck. On that subject, five of my ten spells cantrip (or something approximating it.) Cantrip is goooood as long as the effect is even slightly relevant. Cards like Wildsize and Smash are ridiculous when viewed from that perspective.
Brief (I promise!) Summary (a.k.a. reading about play mistakes is boring, and bomb card pools much the same.) I will try to summarize and highlight:
Round 1: My opponent is competent, likely more experienced than me. Elvish Skysweeper is good. It put the fear into my Razia all three games when it hit early. This is the only round the entire day that I felt really bad for not packing significant hard removal, as a bounced Skysweeper is easy to replay. Game 1 to me from tempo, game 2 to him for having a bunch of beats.
Game 3 is the interesting one. He is short on mana, and manages to fall behind a land drop. I forge ahead with Mourning Thrulls the deck's MVP… until he drops the nonbasic landwalking Dryad Sophisticate. Ok, no problem, I still win this race. Bounce it with Vacuumelt. He replays it, and Moldervine Cloaks it the next turn. Ow. Ogre Savant it to his hand. He Dredges the Cloak, and plays the Dryad again before suiting it up. I manage to scrape another turn at five life by hitting with a Thrull. He has a reasonable board now, and I can do nothing about the landwalker. He swings, plays out a blocker, and says go.
I draw into my Rally the Righteous, and stare at the board for about five minutes.
“All right, everybody in.”
He blocks the only non-flyer, and its game over… because I have three different colors of creatures and can't punch through for the final damage, no matter who I target with the Rally.
Or is it? I continue to look at the board, hopeless. I sigh, tap out, and say “Rally.” He scoops, and says, angrily, “Why'd you slow roll me like that? You could have shown me the Rally and I would have scooped.”
I apologized profusely, and defended myself saying I was just counting, and that I usually don't play aggro. “Whatever,” he said. He signed the slip and I left.
Intentionally deceiving your opponent is wrong. There is a difference between being a rules lawyer, and just letting your opponent walk off, and that difference is really fine when he insults you.
PTQ Basics Lesson #1: Keep your cool, always. And never, never, never scoop your cards unless you've read everything and counted the damage yourself.
Lunchtime!
PTQ Basics Lesson #2: Write down the time the next round starts, wear a watch (lesson 2.b, time your own rounds!). It is usually better if you leave to bring food back to the venue and eat it there, even if you have to do it outside.
Walking between the front door and your seat: thirty seconds to a minute.
Getting stuck in traffic, or missing the time completely: 2-3 weeks to the next PTQ.
Round 2: My opponent wins game 1 on the back of pumped tokens. Selesnya Guildmage is still a house. Game 2 is more exciting. What do you do when your opponent casts Congregation at Dawn for an Angel of Despair, a Vulturous Zombie, and a Shrieking Grotesque? Proceed to win based solely on the fact that he was more scared of the Ogre in play that the one (nonbasic!) White source on the table. Boros Fury-Shield, followed by consecutive Thrulls, followed by an all-in across an open field (he had swung for eleven on the previous turn...) with the game saving Rally the Righteous! I can't say enough about the Thrulls - they were insane all day. No one ever blocks them, and five points of damage is actually a ten-point swing. Mmmmmm.
Game 3, Selesnya Guildmage for the win! The token generators are still sick early, and this guy had all three big ones – Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree; Selesnya Guildmage; and Selesnya Evangel.
PTQ Basics Lesson #3: You can usually tell the skill level of your opponent by the formalities before and during a game. You can give yourself the “edge” by sticking to the following:
Come prepared – this means paper and pen, always, tokens, sleeves, and a generally professional appearance, not to mention at least a functional familiarity with the cards in the environment.
Go through the motions beforehand – don't look at your cards before your opponent decides if he's mulliganing, if it's his prerogative, and roll a die to determine who chooses who plays.
Most of all, play cleanly – don't skip phases, pass priority instead of moving directly to a phase, and think about what your doing before you do it.
Round 3: Game 1 and 2 are mine. His deck is underwhelming in the first game, and while sideboarding, he says “Lets try this.” and proceeds to move fifteen cards between the deck and the sideboard. Razia assisted the beats for the win, the turn after he plays a Borborygmos with a full field.
PTQ Basics Lesson #4: The rules state you can shift around quite a bit of merchandise between your sideboard and your maindeck. Unless you have a compelling reason, don't do it. Focus on a strong maindeck, with answers (if you have any) coming out if that fails. I don't think I have yet to lose a game to somebody who sideboards in more than seven cards in a Sealed event.
Round 4: Random Deck check. My first ever Procedural Major for marked sleeves. Game loss, and serviced in six turns of game 2 by really fast flyers.
PTQ Basics Lesson #5: Buy new sleeves the day of the event. Shuffle both your deck and the sleeves before you sheathe the cards. My markings were due to a sleeve defect, and not shuffling either the sleeves or the deck beforehand makes for a bad situation. The call was fair, I was not cheating (I would have mulliganed game 3 of round 2 if I had known, heh) and it's a lesson that almost everyone (unfortunately) learns once.
Round 5: What's the worst thing to happen after a significant penalty resulting in a game - and subsequent match – loss? Playing one of your friends. If you know more than five people, odds are you will play at least one of them during the course of the day. We are both at 2-2, and a loss effectively ends the day for the loser. He takes game 1, I take game 2.
Game 3 is interesting. What is the best answer to a Hunted Lammasu? Lay an Infiltrator's Magemark the token, and swing. Ouch... Luckily, it came down to me getting in there faster, but it was a good game nonetheless.
PTQ Basics Lesson #6: You will play people you know. There are significant prizes on the line. Your friends should be playing their hardest, and you should too. You may not need to lawyer over them as much, but it is still a real game, and there are rewards and consequences either way. By all means, go out afterwards for a beer, but joke about the face-smashing they gave you, or the manascrew they were stuck with. Don't sulk because you both thought you'd be fine with an ID in round 5, and were both wrong.
Round 6: Game 1 is his on the back of a Debtor's Knell alone. I can tell he's relatively inexperienced, but that he opened a decent pool and knows the basics of good consistency. Game 2 he misplays a Graven Dominator and attacks, and I win shortly thereafter. Game 3 is closer, but good luck standing up to the Lammasu (not to mention the pair of Thrulls) when I rip the Razia and play Rally. There was blood everywhere.
PTQ Basics Lesson #7: RTFC. You may think you know what it does, but a significant portion of the second game was won on that Dominator misplay. Read the card, look at the field, and figure out what's going to happen.
Round 7: The end of the day is in sight! I was looking at 4-2, which won't make the Top 8, but should result in prizes somehow. Three games - I take the first on tempo, he takes the second on a misplay. I attack, announce combat damage on the stack, and play Rally the Righteous. All of us make mistakes - that misplay was worth at least two places in the final standings.
Game 3 is a true demonstration of the power of tempo in this format. From the early Vacuumelt with replicate, to the Razia followed by ridiculous nonsense:
I give Razia a Flight of Fancy, draw into a Ogre. Play and swing.
He gets blockers online, swings, I Rally the Razia to block and clear his field.
I swing, he re-establishes with a Siege Wurm, preventing me from going lethal.
I draw a Repeal and hit the Wurm (!) and swing for the win.
PTQ Basics Lesson #8: You've been playing cards for five or six hours. You are tired. This is the hardest part of the day, and it's likely the most important. Finishing ahead of the field, and actually finishing in the money, is determined in the last two rounds. Stay sharp. Avoid snacks with too much sugar (you'll crash) or too much caffeine (your attention span will wane.) This goes for the whole day, but especially towards the end. You get a beer in an hour or two - don't punch out till it's over.
When all is said and done, I manage a paltry sixteenth place. Highest I've finished at a major Limited event so far, and a significant ratings boost. Third on the list for amateur prize (nine packs), and the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from a day well spent indoors with a bunch of sweaty geeks.
Life Basics Bonus Lesson: You will be inside a warm room with people of questionable hygiene. This shouldn't need to be said, but everyone who takes the time to take care of themselves contributes to the overall enjoyment of the day. A shower not only cleans you up, but it can help wake you up, and is proven to sharpen your thinking during the morning. Breakfast and lunch are a great way to help you stay focused. Avoid excessive sugar (you will crash) and too much salt (dehydration is bad for the card playing senses). Magic may not be a sport in a traditional sense, but there is no reason not to take care of yourself while playing it.
At the end of the day you can walk away with a few packs in your pocket (I opened four out of five Nephilim in nine packs – sigh) and the feeling of accomplishment. Or you can walk out full of generosity for helping out someone you don't even know, such as Billy Massingdale. Or, with a little luck, you can walk out with a maniacal cackle and a mint foil Sol Ring raffle prize.
It's Your Choice.
In case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few weeks, welcome to what is quite possibly the hardest Limited format we’ve ever... 
The undefeated decks from Dortmund have come in, and the lessons are clearer than ever: make the wrong choices about your mana base, and you lose. Thus, this... 
Blisterguy takes us through this week's developments on Magic Online, and gives us a comprehensive rundown of the fluctuating online singles 
Welcome to the fourth week anniversary of our weekly dosage of all thing casual. One of the charges I was given with this column by my esteemed editor was to... 
