An in-depth Pro Tour: Paris report, part 1
If you don't play Magic, I advise you to skip this note.
I’m writing this report for lots of reasons, but there are two big ones.
First, I think Jeff Cunningham was right about tournament reports. A good tournament report really captures the flavor of the event. I doubt this will be a great report, but I still feel as if you can get a really strong sense of what the event was like if you read as many reports as you can, good or bad. This is me trying to do my part to contribute to that movement.
Second, a lot of good memories I have from various events like PTs and GPs get lost to time simply because I don’t write them down. This is the main reason why I try to record interesting memories from my childhood; sharing them with my Facebook friends is secondary to having a more reliable place for them than my memory. This report is more for me than it is for any kind of audience.
There are plenty of other good reasons, but they’re far less interesting than the report will be (which might not even be that interesting in the first place).
Anyway, without further ado:
An in-depth PT Paris tournament report *62nd*
I was stressing about this tournament because it was going to be my 11th pro tour, and I’ve never really put up a great finish. In fact, I’ve only made Day 2 once, at PT Berlin in 2008. I’ve done what I feel is my fair share of traveling due to Magic, so these trips are becoming less about “seeing the world” and more about “playing the game” for me. Don’t get me wrong, I was very excited about the trip (especially since I had never been to Paris before), but I was way more interested in finally putting up a good result than enjoying the vacation and free flight.
Of course, with the amount of preparation I had been doing, it should have been the opposite. My practice for this event included playing three heads-up pre-Besieged Standard queues on modo, playing 1.5 games vs. some random on Magic Workstation (my client screwed up during the second one and I completely lost interest after that), going 4-0 in the Mirrodin Besieged prerelease, and playing lots of Dominion, both live and on the Isotropic servers.
I actually think playing Dominion is good practice for Magic, even though they’re different games. The key is not to just donk around and grind games, but to start analyzing what you’re doing and why it is or isn’t working and make subtle changes. A winning Dominion game relies on both sharp card/board evaluation and constant equity maximization, so you need to always be mindful of what the strongest strategies are on any given board, and continuously make optimal or near-optimal decisions. This makes me feel like wanting to improve at Dominion ports very easily to wanting to improve your Magic fundamentals.
Still, Dominion wasn’t helping me flesh out the Standard metagame. I knew that Valakut was a good deck and probably the default deck, that Jace decks came primarily in U/W and U/B flavors, and that all the known viable attack decks had some kind of red in them (B/R vampires, R/W boros, the Kuldotha red strategy). Without any format knowledge I’d prefer to attack, but I mostly just wanted a powerful deck to make up for any format deficiencies.
The three other Maryland players that were qualified, Tommy Ashton, John Moore and Jarvis Yu, all had different opinions. Tommy liked Caw-Go, John didn’t know for sure but he wanted to play blue and was leaning towards U/B, and Jarvis liked Valakut. Stephen King, who wasn’t qualified but was helping everyone test a little bit, said that he was crushing everybody with Caw-Go and that he felt like that was the best deck.
When it comes to card/deck/mechanic evaluation for Magic or any other game, there’s no better person to trust than Stephen King, because his opinions are all based on winning. That’s what’s the most fun for him. Most of us WANT to say the same thing about ourselves, but there’s probably some irrational affection for some deck or playstyle that’s holding us back. I’m a perfect example of this; I had most of my early tournament success with Affinity back in the Disciple-Skullclamp days, so for the next four years my evaluation of the deck was heavily skewed towards that being one of the best decks in any format it was in, no matter how bad it got or what cards it was missing (and it slowly but surely got worse and worse until it became unplayable, long before I thought it was). Stephen doesn’t have any feelings like that holding him back. If he has an opinion about a card or a deck other than “it sucks,” you can be sure that it is at least reasonably good, if not excellent. This is the main reason why I wanted to play Caw-Go.
This was Jarvis’s first Pro Tour. He plays a lot more Magic than me and would almost certainly be testing like crazy, so I wanted to trust his opinion. He ended up choosing Valakut because he felt like the right list (with the new cards and everything) would be very powerful and forgiving, and that he felt like Caw-Go was mostly a do-nothing deck. It’s hard to choose between two differing opinions, especially when one is backed up by testing and the other is backed up by a really strong intuition.
In the end, I decided to get on the plane with the intent of playing Caw-Go because I trusted Stephen’s evaluation, and because to me Valakut felt like such an obvious deck that if you aren’t able to beat it, you shouldn’t be playing whatever you’re playing in the PT. Based on that feeling, if I played Valakut, I can expect to beat players I’d probably be able to beat with any deck, and lose to anyone who even bothered to try preparing. I didn’t like the sound of that very much.
Additionally, I exercised my Magic player superhero ability of finding a forgotten card from Alpha that’s relevant to a matchup today and figured out that Clone was a good way for blue decks to deal with Thrun. I wanted to be clever and use that idea, which meant that I’d probably have to play blue. My previous discoveries were Hurricane in the sideboard of G/W beatdown for Solar Flare at 2007 US Nationals (since they didn’t have any hard counters, it was just an unstoppable fireball), and Royal Assassin in the sideboard of Jund for Mythic at GP: DC 2010 (since their strategy was to attack you with one creature at a time that had to tap to do it). It’s a shame that only one of these ideas was any good, and it wasn’t even all THAT good.
I still didn’t really have “a deck” though, just an idea of what I wanted to MAYBE play if nothing better came up. On top of that, I didn’t have very many cards, so if I managed to settle on a list of 75, I’d still need to find a physical 53 or so, which would be challenging if they happened to include Jaces. I packed what few relevant Magic cards I own and braced myself for the possible event of buying a lot of cards.
Monday night
My flight was on Monday night at 9:55 PM, with Tommy. John Moore was supposed to be on it, but he decided to fly out a day later so he could be a school nerd and go to his Tuesday classes. My awesome dad agreed to give Tommy and I a ride to Dulles so neither of us would have to stress about time, which was helpful since I wouldn’t be getting home from work until around 6:30 and Tommy had class until 8.
We got to the gate just in time and found that Kenny Mayer and Calosso were on our flight as well. Pretty convenient since Kenny was staying in our room. I found that Kenny was playing Valakut and that Calosso was playing U/B, although neither of them seemed very sure about the format or their choices.
The flight was pretty insane since it was a red-eye and I had an entire row of seats to myself. I got to lay down across the row and was asleep for most of it. The only bad part about the flight was the realization that there’s no way the flight home would be anywhere as good.
Tuesday
We got into Charles de Gaulle at around 12PM Paris time and helped Calosso figured out what train he needed to get on after watching him get destroyed by the currency exchange place. Kenny, Tommy and I got a cab directly to our hotel, which ended up being not all that expensive after a 3-way chop. Tommy got a room at the Espace Champerret, which was the hotel recommended by Wizards. The distance to the site was acceptable but the hotel itself and our room were both pretty tiny, which seemed to be a theme for most of the rooms and buildings in Paris. It ended being OK, except the guy at the front desk (who was pretty much always there) hated us, which was another theme for most of the people in Paris. I could understand if we were being loud and boorish Americans, but we were putting forth an honest effort to be polite.
The first thing we did after dropping our stuff off was scope out the immediate area. Tommy had a bunch of places recommended to him, so my plan for the entire weekend was to just follow him around and see/eat whatever he wanted to see/eat, since I spent more time worrying about my performance in the PT than figuring out what I wanted to see in Paris. It’s kinda funny that I ended up coming to the event wanting to play what he wanted to play also. If Tommy didn’t go on this trip, I’d have probably fallen into a ditch and died after I stepped out of the airport.
We walked around and found a few nice bakeries and a store called Marche Franprix, which immediately led to a ton of obvious jokes that were funny anyway. After walking past it we figured out that it was a grocery store, so we went in to get some stuff for the week, since one of the biggest problems I run into at big Magic tournaments (and especially non-domestic ones) is finding places to eat that don’t close at like 6PM. I wanted to get cereal because they had this awesome Nesquik cereal that I’d never seen in the US before, but the Franprix didn’t have any plastic bowls or spoons (although they had plenty of plastic plates, forks and knives, so that made sense). I ended up getting Nesquik cereal bars (which were way better), a 1.5L bottle of Coke Zero (which lasted me the entire week), and I split a 6-pack of 1L water bottles (which, for some reason, cost 1.3 euros, making it hard to pass up) with Kenny.
Tommy’s idea was to go sightseeing all day Tuesday and Wednesday morning, register for the PT and lock up deck decisions on Wednesday night, play in the PT on Thursday and hopefully Friday, use Saturday for whatever and then fly home Sunday morning. What actually happened was, after we got back from the market, Tommy and I decided to take a 30 minute nap and then wake up to figure out our next move. Kenny wanted to relax and watch TV so he agreed to make sure we didn’t sleep for longer than 30 minutes. I don’t know exactly how long Tommy slept for, but the next thing I knew it was like 7PM and Kenny was waking me up to see if I wanted to go eat with Gerard Fabiano, Ken Adams and Dan Jordan, so that kind of ruined any legit sightseeing plans we may have had for Tuesday.
I followed them downstairs to the sitting room in the lobby and found Tommy computing and Gerard, Ken and Dan hanging out and putting some decks together. Gerard immediately started spitting some freestyle rap lines at me, because the last thing I talked to him about was how insane it was that someone else in the world besides me liked battle rap. We agreed to watch some battles on Youtube when John Moore got in, and then he tried to sell me on this G/W/B junk deck he brewed up.
I’ve never been a huge fan of junk strategies because of all the time I spent playing Affinity; I always liked to either win big or lose big, and whenever I played vs. a rock/junk type deck with Affinity, it was almost always a slow grind that I ended up losing because I ran out of steam faster than they could, which was doubly miserable. Nevertheless, I was willing to hear him out, since he had plenty of new cards in it, and they all seemed powerful enough to warrant a new archetype. Plus, I did like the idea of having a deck that potentially had mostly coin flip matchups. I hadn’t tested very much at all, so it was more appealing to try and win 10 flips in a row rather than lose a bunch of matches because I played a weak, easy deck or punt away a bunch of matches with a hard, powerful deck.
Tommy had some restaurant nearby that was recommended to him, so the plan for everyone was to follow him there for dinner. We walked around for maybe 25 minutes trying to find it before deciding that it might not even exist any more, and gave up to eat at a pizza place. I could not have been happier with this outcome, since I’m the type of person who tends to find something he likes and jam out on it rather than constantly try new things, and I seriously just can’t ever get enough pizza.
After dinner we all went back and went to the basement/breakfast area of our hotel to play some games. I borrowed Tommy’s Caw-Go deck to battle Gerard’s GWB deck for a couple games so I could evaluate it (well, evaluate both decks really). His deck had Lotus Cobra, Stoneforge Mystic, Go for the Throat, discard spells and Hero of Bladehold, so it really was a very junk-like deck. It reminded me of old Extended with Phantom Centaur-based junk decks. I think I ended up going 2-1 before deciding that Caw-Go was really good and that the GWB deck didn’t really do enough for me. After Gerard said that he was going to try switching back to BUG, I told him that I thought the green cards didn’t really do anything, and maybe he should try UWB. It would still have Stoneforge Mystic, Hero of Bladehold and discard spells/Go for the Throat, but the blue would give him Jace, Preordain and any counters he wanted. We put it together really quickly and it seemed better than the other two 3 color decks he had, but I played 3 games vs. Tommy playing Valakut and didn’t win any of them, so it had to be scrapped because it failed the Valakut baseline test (or at least, it probably would have if we had a realistic sample size). Gerard didn’t really like Caw-Go, and I didn’t have any other ideas as far as what I wanted to play, so we were back to square one. Ken Adams had this U/W attack deck that was kinda like Caw but had less control cards and more creatures, so maybe that was closer to the deck that Gerard wanted to play, since it felt like he wanted to attack more than anything else.
After we got done battling and getting inconclusive results, it was around 1AM and we decided to go see if the French McDonald’s was open. Luckily it was, so we all got something small and sat around playing Pass the Trash instead of discussing strats before going home and going to bed.
When we got back to the room, instead of going to bed I borrowed Tommy’s computer to try and get online to keep my Facebook birthday streak going.
**quick aside on Facebook birthdays**
My #1 favorite thing about Facebook is getting tons of wall posts on my birthday. However, when it comes to writing them myself, it’s hard to decide who gets one and who doesn’t. I often think things like, “man I haven’t talked to this person in a while / don’t really know them that well, should I wish them happy birthday?” It’s especially difficult when two people have the same birthday and one of them is a really great friend of mine and the other is only a passing acquaintance. I obviously can’t wish only one of them happy birthday, because that’s messed up. It’s because of this that I spent most of 2010 choosing not to write on peoples’ walls for their birthday, because I’d have rather given out 0 happy birthdays than offend someone by writing on someone else’s wall but not theirs.
This year, I decided to change the game up. I figured if everyone used a strategy like mine, my own birthday would be less awesome, because I would have way less wall posts. I also decided that if I’ve accepted you as a friend on Facebook, I like you in some capacity. You are a friend of mine, or a member of my family, or at least someone that I’ve talked to and can appreciate the company of. I don’t think I have any “randoms” as Facebook friends. Therefore, there isn’t any reason that you, as a friend of mine on Facebook, don’t deserve a birthday wish from me.
So in 2011, I will try as hard as I can to give everyone on my friends list a happy birthday wall post. I’ve decided not to customize them because of the sheer volume of the posts, as well as the energy level required to make sure that everyone gets one, but I guarantee you that I mean it from the bottom of my heart. If I happen to miss your birthday, I assure you it’s not intentional, but so far I haven’t missed one yet.
**end aside**
I took Tommy’s computer downstairs to the lobby to try and get wi-fi reception, since we didn’t have any in the room, but I couldn’t get it to work. Gerard, Ken and Dan were all staying on the first floor in a room right across from the front desk, so I tried knocking on the door to see if they had gone to sleep yet, only to find that it wasn’t even closed. Ken and Dan were in bed already but Gerard was on the floor modoing, so he came out to the sitting room so we could hang out and talk about strats while I tried to get Tommy’s computer online to keep my streak alive.
I still couldn’t get it online even though Gerard told me what network he was on, so I figured out that the wi-fi password Tommy got from the front desk had expired. The front desk guy was sleeping on the couch in the lobby and I didn’t want to wake him up and make him hate me even more, so I just sat in the sitting room with Gerard talking about strats. We both liked the idea of attacking but were pretty lukewarm about what we thought the best available attack deck was, Boros. Someone sent him a Tezzeret list that looked pretty awesome, but I was also hesitant about playing a brand new, untested control deck that I was almost completely unfamiliar with, so I said we would test it tomorrow (which we never got around to). Right around this time, I got really lucky and the front desk guy was woken up by someone delivering all the fresh croissants for the breakfast room, so I seized the opportunity to ask for a new wi-fi password before he went back to sleep. There was some tension for a while, but I was able to write the happy birthday post I needed to write with a few hours to spare (thanks to the time difference between Paris time and Eastern Standard), so I was able to cross that worry off the list and refocus on my deck decision. Right before I went upstairs, I sent my sister this message on Facebook:
Alex Majlaton February 8 at 8:33pm
hey I'm in Paris at the hotel. everything here is small and the stores close too early. I didn't get a phone card or anything yet so pass the message on to mom & dad that I'm here and I'm OK. I'll try to call when I get a chance but I need to worry about finding a deck to play first.
Wednesday
Kenny, Tommy and I woke up early on Wednesday and the agenda was to go to this sweets shop recommended to Tommy called Laduree. It was pretty far away so we had to use the metro, but we managed to figure it out without much trouble. Fortunately for us there was a stop right next door to our hotel, which made any kind of venture into the city pretty easy.
There was a metro stop called Opera, and as soon as the train stopped at it, a guy with a violin got on. Tommy and I found this infinitely amusing.
We managed to find the sweets shop and Tommy bought a bunch of macarons and this really insane looking pastry. He chose it by asking one of the cute French girls who worked there which one was her favorite, and she got this smile on her face like nobody ever asked her anything like that before. The manager, who was this really effeminate guy in a suit, must be deceptively strict and beat them in the back room if they ever show any signs of independent thought. Makes sense, since he wouldn’t let Tommy take any pictures inside of the store. Hopefully Tommy didn’t earn that girl another beating or anything.
It took long enough for us to figure out the metro and get to the shop that we had to get right back on and go to the room to make sure John Moore could get in, since he was coming around the early afternoon. We got back to the room and while we were waiting for John Moore, Jarvis showed up with Reid Duke, AKA modo superstar reiderrabbit, who I had never met before. Reid is a pretty cool guy; he’s the type of guy that surprises you when you realize Magic is one of his main hobbies. Apparently Jarvis, who was rooming in a different hotel with Stuart Wright, couldn’t get into the room because that hotel screwed up Stuart’s reservation, so he was hanging out with us in the meantime. We decided that we had enough time before John got in to go get some more stuff from the Franprix, which led to a few more obvious jokes.
“You guys wanna play in the Franprix?” said Tommy.
I asked Kenny, “Are you gonna top 8 the Franprix this time Kenny?”
Kenny said “Hell yeah, I’m gonna win that shit, y’all might as well not even enter.”
Tommy and I couldn’t stop laughing. Whenever Kenny breaks his air force discipline to make a comment like that, it’s always absolutely insane. There were at least 3 solid Kenny gems throughout the weekend, but unfortunately this is the only one I can remember.
Tommy and Kenny both got a ton of water, since that 6 pack for 1.3 Euros is such a nasty deal. I ended up getting a box of that Nesquik cereal despite the fact that I didn’t have a bowl or spoon to eat it with, because I couldn’t pass it up once I saw that there was a toy in the box. I also got 2 more boxes of Nesquik bars, a liter of milk and some more of that super cheap water.
After we got back, it wasn’t long until John Moore got in, and we all hung out in the room for a little bit while Tommy went to go look up where we were going to eat. John was talking to Jarvis about what he was going to do until he had a hotel room to drop his stuff off. I was writing out the Caw-Go decklist Tommy was planning on playing to see if I could think of any adjustments to it, so I was only half-paying attention, but I managed to overhear Jarvis say the following sentence in reference to Stuart Wright and the hotel room issue:
“I’ll probably see him later tonight and go back to his place.”
I immediately erupted in laughter because of how hilarious that sounds out of context, especially when Jarvis is saying it. John thought it was awesome too, but I’m sure Jarvis felt like a big dummy.
Tommy came back up and said he wanted to eat at this restaurant called Paul, so that’s where we went. It was also on the metro, a few stops away from where the sweets shop was, but we were experts by now so it was no big deal getting there. They had really good quiches and hot chocolate that was really good but too thick to finish. Overall it was a good recommendation. After we ate, we walked around the area and found this really awesome looking garden, but we got there around 10 minutes after it closed, so they wouldn’t let us in. It was about time for PT registration anyway, so we got back on the metro and headed to the site.
Once we got there, we caught word that the Channel Fireball guys were playing Caw Go with Stoneforge Mystics and one Sword of Feast and Famine main deck. When we heard this, it made sense on so many levels, since that plan gives you a really easy way to deal with Thrun and beat the mirror. Tommy was saying that he had a hard time beating Valakut players who sat around and did nothing until they got enough lands to kill you with just ramp spells, so this plan was also an elegant solution to that since it gave you a way to be proactive and force them to do something besides sit around. This cemented my decision to play Caw-Go, and Tommy and I agreed to find some room in the main deck he had for a few Mystics and a Sword. Now that I knew what I was playing, it was time to try and find the cards.
I came prepared to take a hit and buy everything I needed, since I think it’s too much of a hassle borrowing a million different cards from a million different people, and I don’t know a whole lot of people who have cards anyway. Fortunately for me, I ran into Bill Senneway, affectionately referred to as BJBill, and he happened to have every single card I was missing. I graciously offered anything he wanted in return and he said he’d think about what he wanted. With that out of the way, all I wanted to do was go back to the room, adjust my decklist, and get whatever pieces of my deck I had ready.
John and I decided to eat again at the pizza place right next door to our hotel, which was hilariously called “Hot Pants.” We basically agreed that it was good to eat at every opportunity on international Magic trips, because you can never be certain when your next opportunity will be since places tend to close earlier. In spite of what sounds like a lot of eating, John says he still manages to lose like 3 pounds on every trip.
After the pizza (which was pretty good), we went back to the room. I wanted to play a couple games and firm up my sideboard, but I was too exhausted to do anything besides set aside the cards I had for my main deck, so I did that and went to bed. I was pretty happy doing that because it meant that I got an actual good night’s sleep before a big tournament, which isn’t something that happens all that often.
Friday
I woke up around two hours before we actually had to be at the site, so I stayed in bed in a groggy haze trying to construct my sideboard in my head, since I still didn’t have one. I would start by thinking things like “OK, it needs to have one Clone, I have to play that card because it’s too techy, fourteen to go” and “I definitely need the 3rd Stoneforge Mystic and a U/G sword, so that’s two down, 13 to go.” I never got past the first two cards because I was still too tired to focus on it, and I didn’t even know what matchups were problematic and what kind of deck I wanted to be in them. This genuinely upset me, because I believe sideboarding is one of the most important aspects of Constructed, if not the most important. I’d rather have a suboptimal main deck with a powerful, focused sideboard plan than a really tight main deck and a phoned-in sideboard, which is something I tended to do for the past five years. It’s hard to have a well-crafted plan because it requires a lot of practice with your deck and against the expected decks, and that task is often neglected because it’s one of the few aspects of Magic that feels more like work.
Eventually everyone else woke up and started showering, so I finally got out of bed and discussed the board with Tommy. He showed me the pre-Mystic board he was planning on playing, we made room for the changes, and I wrote out my board plans for each matchup.
Here’s the deck I ended up registering:
Main Deck
60 cards
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Island
1 Marsh Flats
4 Plains
1 Scalding Tarn
4 Seachrome Coast
4 Tectonic Edge
26 lands
1 Emeria Angel
4 Squadron Hawk
2 Stoneforge Mystic
7 creatures
3 Day of Judgment
1 Deprive
3 Gideon Jura
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Mana Leak
4 Preordain
4 Spell Pierce
3 Spreading Seas
2 Stoic Rebuttal
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
27 other spells
Sideboard
3 Celestial Purge
2 Condemn
1 Day of Judgment
1 Emeria Angel
2 Flashfreeze
3 Ratchet Bomb
1 Spreading Seas
1 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Sword of Body and Mind
15 sideboard cards
Tommy’s deck ended up being only two or three cards different. I don’t think he liked Emeria Angel anywhere, but I liked it because the SQUAWK SQUAD needed a captain.
We got to the site and I found BJBill to get the rest of my deck. He said he wanted a 5% split in exchange, which I was more than happy to do, especially considering that I was borrowing 3 Jaces from him. After I got everything sleeved, my next priority was to find someone to negative split with.
I pretty much never do any kind of regular mutual prize split (the one with BJB wasn’t mutual and it was in exchange for borrowing cards, so it doesn’t count), but I love doing negative splits. They’re way more fun. It feels more like gambling than giving your hard-won money away. If you’re unfamiliar with the negative split, if you agree to an X% negative split with someone, you agree to pay that person X% of whatever THEY win, and vice versa. It’s friendly competition rather than equity sharing. I’m down $12.50 lifetime in negative splits, all of it to Stephen King, because he won $1200 in PT San Diego 2010 and got a $50 bounty for beating Rob Dougherty in GP New Jersey 2006. We had a 1% negative split in both events.
I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to negative split, even for 1% (which seems to be my standard amount), because I guess everyone I asked was a mark ass new jack scared money amateur. I ended up battling half of a practice game vs. Reid’s U/B control deck before the pairings went up.
Round 1 - Piotr Longa - Valakut
Piotr didn’t seem too friendly or excited to be playing in the PT. After giving our decklists away and shuffling, we presented our decks and I uncharacteristically said “good luck,” to which he responded with “thanks.”
**quick aside on “good luck” at the start of matches**
I don’t usually offer “good luck” at the beginning of the match unprovoked, and I’m not exactly sure why I offered it here. If I had to guess, I’d say it was because of a match I played in Worlds 2007 vs. Stan van der Velden. I thought it was a pretty uneventful match (one that I happened to win), but I found a tournament report he wrote about the event (via googling my own name, obviously) in which he completely lied about the words that were exchanged during the match, called me fat, and generally tried to make me sound like scum, so I guess he had a different take on it. The last thing I ever want to do is be a dick and leave a negative impression on anyone, so I think offering “good luck” to this guy was my subconscious trying to tell me to make sure he doesn’t think I’m an asshole so I don’t ever find another scathing report about me.
I used to be the kind of guy who responded to my opponent’s offerings of “good luck” with “thanks.” I mean, it’s a pretty neat response; after all, why would you want to wish your opponent luck in a head-to-head contest? These days, I prefer to remain silent, but if my opponent wishes me good luck, I’ll happily wish it back, because I value my opponent not thinking I’m a dick a lot more than the almost negligible chance that me saying two words will cosmically warp the outcome of the future in my opponent’s favor. The match only lasts for 55 minutes, but your opponent’s impression of you lasts much longer than that.
**end aside**
Despite all my experience playing in pro tours, I still get pretty nervous during high profile matches, and the first round of a PT is pretty high profile to me because it sets the tone of the entire tournament. I still wasn’t very confident in my deck, and I felt a lot of pressure not to put up another 4-4 performance, since I had gone 4-4 in pretty much every other PT I played in.
I won the die roll and drew a hand with enough lands and a Spell Pierce, which was good enough for me. Piotr played a turn 2 Explore and I thought about piercing it but decided to let it through, because I wanted to save it for a more meaningful spell, like a possible green Zenith or something. That turned out to be an awful decision, since a few turns later he had enough lands to play a second Primeval Titan after I could barely wrath away his first one. I ended up dying with the original Spell Pierce plus another one in my hand.
I was really disappointed with the way I played that game and started to get this sensation of “why do I continue to go to great lengths to play this game if I’m not going to practice and give it 110%?” I sucked it up as best I could and sideboarded, after determining that the way to play this matchup is to burn Spell Pierces and stuff to prevent as much of Valakut’s early ramping as possible until I can get one of my engines going. There’s nothing like on-the-fly playtesting.
Fortunately for me, the next two games went in my favor. The best he could muster in game 2 was a turn 4 Avenger of Zendikar via Battlements, which I was able to wrath away to leave him with 4 lands in play. After that I got a B/G sword going on a Colonnade and hit him a couple times with it, while he had only two cards in hand and an Oracle in play revealing his draw steps. Before what would’ve been the 3rd hit with an equipped Colonnade, he finally played Nature’s Claim on the sword, which I found peculiar since I was monitoring his draws via his Oracle and didn’t see him draw it. I didn’t realize until afterward that he was probably waiting to draw a gas card before he used it so he could effectively make me tap out and have a shot at getting a big turn in. I was pretty impressed with that line once I thought about it. I ended up winning anyway after he couldn’t scare up much of a big turn.
Game 3 was pretty uneventful since he was missing land drops, didn’t have a second nature’s claim for my backup U/G sword, and had 3 of his Valakuts milled by it.
1-0
I was pretty happy to have won this match, since winning round 1 of a PT usually puts you in a good state of mind for the rest of the day.
Round 2 - Travis Turning - U/B Tezzeret
Travis said he was from Florida, which I thought was notable because I almost always come across at least one Magic player from Florida that I’ve never met or heard of before at every major event I go to. There is a disproportionate amount of good players from that state, which I guess is verified by the fact that the PT and the GP were both won by someone from Florida. That’s pretty unreal.
I don’t remember too much about this match, but basically I got destroyed in two games. It’s hard to say whether or not I gave this match away because I spent most of the time sweating his awesome deck (since I love artifact decks), but there’s a chance that if I 1) knew what his deck was or how it worked at all, and 2) knew how to play my own deck better (it was basically the 6th or 7th time I played it), I could have made it a closer affair. In both games he just patiently used Chalices to ramp into and resolve a Tezzeret with counter defense and kill me with 5/5s. I did, however, learn about how Tezzeret interacts with Inkmoth Nexus, which is not an interaction that’s incredibly intuitive.
I’m sort of glad I didn’t have more time to test and brew because if I did, I would have probably irrationally chosen a deck like this without caring too much about how good it really was. Not that Travis’s deck was bad or anything; it looked really insane, and he did beat me with it after all, but it’s easy for me to fall into the trap of playing suboptimal decks that look fun and flashy.
1-1
Round 3 - Pierre Picot - B/R Vampires
I didn’t have any experience playing with or against the Vampires deck, but it seems really underpowered. This is another kind of deck that I usually play but am trying to stay away from lately: decks with cards of average-ish power level that all work together in some neat way. Affinity was a deck like that, and it always left me trying really hard to scrape out every last bit of equity and point of damage I could, which was always really stressful. Incidentally, the decks I draft in limited usually end up like this too.
The match itself was pretty uneventful. I overpowered him with Sword in game 1, he got ahead of me with two Duresses, two Pulse Trackers and a Kalastria Highborn in game 2, and he kept a one-lander in game 3 and never connected. It never really felt like I had any interesting decisions to make.
I don’t know how this matchup is supposed to go, but it certainly feels like Caw is way ahead in it.
2-1
Round 4 - Fabio Poerias - B/R Vampires
I thought his name was Paolo, so I thought I was at the wrong table for a second, but then I realized that his name was in all caps on the pairing sheet, and it’s easy to confuse F for P, B for O and I for L when you’re trying to fight a hundred other people to find out who and where you’re playing. I thought this was pretty amusing; but then again, I also think adding up the numbers on license plates is amusing.
The match itself went pretty similar to my other Vampires matchup. I won both of the games without very many interesting decisions because it felt like my cards were so much more powerful than his.
3-1
I was starting to become really confident in my deck.
Round 5 - Logan Mize - U/B control
Man, ANOTHER guy from Florida! The odds of that are pretty slim, but maybe not all that slim. I was hoping he didn’t have the same deck as Travis. I didn’t think he did because he said he was from Orlando while Travis was from Tallahassee, but I got nervous when he started to play blue and black lands.
It turned out he was playing a more normal version of U/B control. I only played one quick game of this matchup with Reid before the event started, but it seemed like the strategy was to just play out a couple hawks and start pecking and try to fight over any big threat they might have. I get the feeling that U/B can improve this matchup some by sandbagging a Duress or Inquisition for the brief moment that the Caw player has the B/G sword in their hand, since I’m always nervous that that’s going to happen if I play a Mystic. I wonder if it’s a reasonable strategy to play one Mystic and get nothing or a brick equipment, and then play a second one to get the black Sword so you can put it into play right away.
Anyway, I did exactly what I formulated while playing vs. Reid: play hawks, start pecking. I slowly but surely won game 1 while making sure that he couldn’t fight back by keeping his tar pits under control.
In game 2 I did the same thing and played a hawk as early as I could, then followed it up with 2 more hawks. I was holding one in case he had the black Zenith, but I’m not sure if he kept it in or even had it anywhere in his deck, so maybe I should have just played all 4 and tried to win as soon as possible. He never had a Zenith, but he had Sorin Markov to try and shoot down my hawks and go up in life. This would’ve been a disaster except as soon as he resolved it, I got to resolve one of my two Emeria Angels. Since Sorin was going to die soon, he binned it to get me to 10 and try to race the SQUAWK SQUAD with tar pits, but the math didn’t work out in his favor and I won.
It felt like I was behind the entire time in both games, but I guess I was never in any serious danger of losing.
4-1
At this point I realized my deck was full blown awesome and wished the PT was just 16 rounds of constructed. I was pretty unprepared for draft since my only experience with Besieged limited was the prerelease, where I played one sealed flight. Hey, at least I 4-0ed it.
Draft 1
65 Golliher, Jason [USA] 12 54.66%
66 Boeken, Noah [NLD] 12 54.66%
67 Przekora, Lukas [USA] 12 53.33%
68 Ishimura, Shintaro [JPN] 12 53.33%
69 Mcatee, Brian [USA] 12 53.33%
70 Zulian, Simone [ITA] 12 53.33%
71 cole, chifley [AUS] 12 52.00%
72 Majlaton, Alex [USA] 12 52.00%
Fume Spitter
Plague Stinger
Flensermite
Contagious Nim
Ichor Rats
2 Cystbearer
Rot Wolf
Sylvok Replica
Tangle Angler
Tel-Jilad Fallen
Blightwidow
2 Tangle Mantis
Wurmcoil Engine
Massacre Wurm
Withstand Death
Infiltration Lens
Unnatural Predation
Tel-Jilad Defiance
Morbid Plunder
Slice in Twain
Untamed Might
I opened the Massacre Wurm and thought it would be awesome to have some sick opens rescue me from not having drafted before the event. I got really excited when I opened Wurmcoil Engine pack 2 and thought maybe my dream would actually come true. The deck I ended up with was unfortunately pretty mediocre. I had another Morbid Plunder in the sideboard that I frequently boarded in, because I didn’t realize how strong that card was.
After I took the Massacre Wurm, I used what I knew about the distribution of the faction cards in Besieged packs to see if the guy to my right took a Phyrexian or a Mirran card. He took a Mirran card, so I figured it would be safe to try and move into infect and just have the Wurm as a wrath/backup plan. I’m positive that it’s good to consider this kind of information, but I’m not sure I applied it correctly.
Round 6 - Noah Boeken
I’ve heard Noah’s name before and knew he was huge at poker, but I never saw what he looked like. He was pretty friendly and talkative, and definitely down to earth. This was a pretty pleasant match, despite the outcome.
He had a B/W poison deck that was a lot faster than mine. In all 3 games, the player who went first had a faster draw and won, and in two of those games it wasn’t me. There wasn’t really much room for any interesting decisions, but my deck was really disappointing. I was kind of upset because I could easily 0-3 this pod and put up yet another disappointing 4-4 at a PT.
4-2
After this match I had some time to wait around for a chance to use one of the computers Wizards provided so I could look at my email and keep my birthday streak going, and BJBill found me waiting around and stopped to hang out while I used the computer
When I logged into Facebook, I saw this message from Noah Swartz:
Noah Swartz February 9 at 4:32am
you in paris yet? wanna test?
I don’t have a smartphone and I didn’t bring a computer or any way to regularly access Facebook, so I missed this message and lamented it out loud. Then BJBill said, “Noah is right over there.”
Sure enough, Noah was standing like 5 feet away, talking to some other people, so I just yelled to him,
“Hey Noah, yes I AM in Paris and yes I WOULD like to test!”
I got a lot of amusement out of this.
Round 7 - Jason Golliher
Jason didn’t seem too happy about losing his last round, but he blamed it mostly on his opponent’s good fortune. Once upon a time I had an attitude similar to this, but I feel like you get better faster if you try to limit your frustration to when you punt games away and use it as a motivator to improve. There’s not much use in getting mad over games you can’t possibly win, and chances are pretty good that you might have been able to win somehow anyway.
He had a U/W deck with some flyers and artifact guys. Massacre Wurm made an appearance in game 1, but he countered with Myr Battlesphere. I had a Slice in Twain in my hand for it, so I sliced it so I could attack with the Wurm. He blocked it with all his Battlesphere tokens and a Darkslick Drake, and I ordered it so that I would take out the Drake and two of the tokens.
It was at this point I realized that Massacre Wurm’s trigger made the opponent lose life whenever any of his creatures go to the graveyard ever, not just when he came into play, and it was mandatory. This meant that we both missed the trigger that was supposed to happen when the Battlesphere got Sliced. I called the judge over to fix it, since we were still in the same turn, and Jason tried to argue that his life total influenced his combat decisions (he would go down to 2 from the missed trigger), but the judge ruled that the trigger had to happen because it was mandatory and we hadn’t gone too far to fix it. It was a completely honest mistake on my part (well, both of our parts really), but it still seemed to upset Jason. I guess I don’t really blame him, I just didn’t want him to think I was trying to scum an advantage.
I won the second game with a pretty fast poison draw.
5-2
While I was signing the slip, I apologized about the rules mishap and tried to explain that I wasn’t trying to scum him, I just didn’t know exactly what the card did. Jason just signed the slip and walked away in silent fury, which made me kind of uncomfortable.
I didn’t consider this until after the match because I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I suppose there’s a chance that he knew the wurm would trigger and just didn’t speak up, because having an extra 2 life is obviously an advantage for him, and if I don’t know what my cards do then he can just get away with it. If that’s the case, that actually is kinda scummy. I don’t think it was the case though, because Jason didn’t seem like a cheater or rules lawyer or anything, he was probably just pretty frustrated about going 0-2 in the pod. Either way, I don’t think he had any reason to be mad at me (at the situation, maybe), so if he was, well then he needs to lighten up.
Once I realized I made day 2, I instantly looked for someone else who was 5-2 to see if they would negative split with me, since I actually had a shot of getting paid on it now. I ended up finding Shaheen Soorani, who was also 5-2, and he agreed to it after I explained to him what it was.
Round 8 - Shintaro Ishimura
He had a B/W deck with a turn 2 Myrsmith in game 1, so all I wanted to do was draw Massacre Wurm and ruin him. Luckily that’s exactly what happened in game 1, and he insta-scooped when I played it to squad him for 12 life.
We got deck checked after game 1, which was irritating because I lost some of my momentum.
I lost game 2 to the same exact draw, a turn 2 Myrsmith with a bunch of other little guys, because I drew the Wurm but didn’t have a third black to play it. I was regretting my 9-8 distribution and asked the judge for another Swamp to board in for game 3.
I mulliganed to 5 and missed a drop in game 3, but I didn’t immediately get ruined because he kept a hand without white mana. I drew lands before he drew a Plains, but the bottom line was that I was still down two cards and I didn’t draw enough business to keep up with his advantage once he drew his white mana.
5-3
I later saw that this guy top 8ed. One more swamp in game 3 and it could have been ME ARGH
I was still happy to have made day 2. I was even happier that Tommy also made day 2 at 6-2, because it meant that someone else in the room had to get up, which made it less likely for me to oversleep.
Tommy and John and I went to go look for a place to eat that was open. We walked several blocks around the area of our hotel and couldn’t find anything that was both open and agreeable to all of us. I was dead tired at this point, so I decided not to exert any influence on the restaurant decision, in the interest of just finding somewhere to eat so I could go back to the room and sleep. We found nothing interesting and settled for the Chinese restaurant next door to our hotel.
We were greeted by the hostess and John tried to ask for a table in French (he said “un table pour trois s’il vous plait” which I think is correct) and the hostess actually just laughed at him. That was the rudest anyone had been to us during the trip. On top of that, the food we got was awful. I was really happy that I had plenty of Nesquik bars left to wash the awful taste of that place (both literally and figuratively) out of my mouth.
Before going to bed, I tried to tidy up my stuff in the room, and noticed that my Pro Tour shirt was missing. I was a little miffed about this and wanted to find it right away. I never wear any of my PT shirts, but I like having them as mementos, and so that my future wife can make a quilt out of them for me like Donnie Gallitz. The room was pretty messy and Tommy suggested that I worry about finding it when we didn’t have the pressure of a tournament to play in, so I took his advice and we went to bed.
At least I was getting plenty of rest for this tournament.
I broke the Facebook character limit for notes, so I had to break this note up into two parts. Hopefully it will make it easier to digest, since it is pretty long.
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