An in-depth Pro Tour: Paris report, part 2

Originally posted February 17, 2011

Friday

Draft 2

97     Ouyang, Dixon [CHN]     15     58.48%
98     Egan, Isaac [AUS]     15     57.58%
99     Bastos, Frederico [PRT]     15     57.58%
100     Matiacic, Andrea [ITA]     15     57.44%
101     Majlaton, Alex [USA]     15     56.39%
102     Stoll, Kyle [USA]     15     56.39%
103     Holtzman, Paul [AUS]     15     56.39%
104     Wolf, Christopher [AUT]     15     56.39%

 

Fume Spitter
Copper Myr
Ichorclaw Myr
Plague Myr
Wall of Tanglecord
Plague Stinger
2 Blight Mamba
Rust Tick
Rot Wolf
Tel-Jilad Fallen
2 Corpse Cur
Core Prowler 

Tainted Strike
Tel-Jilad Defiance
Viridian Claw
Morbid Plunder
Pistus Strike
Instill Infection
Carrion Call
Trigon of Infestation
Strandwalker 

I really hated this deck. My first pick overall was a Strandwalker, which I think is a pretty nice card, but I just couldn’t seem to fill in my curve properly and never saw much removal throughout the draft.

Round 9 - Dixon Ouyang  

In game 1 he played Forests, Plains and an Island, so I was hoping that his deck was a messy disaster. I got an acceptably fast start with a 2 and a 3 drop, but his turn 4 play was Glimmerpoint Stag and his turn 5 play was Venser the Sojourner. I spent the next 15 turns in agony since I wasn’t able to kill his planeswalker, but he wasn’t killing me. Eventually he figured out that he could use Venser’s second ability and I died.

I had no real way of stopping Venser, so I boarded in six Islands, two proliferate counterspells, and a Sky-Eel School, and my plan was to draw first and play a slower game.

The plan worked in game 2, since it was easy for me to create a ground stall and make sure it didn't go anywhere with the counters. He never drew an Island, so I never had to worry about Venser. I eventually won with the Sky-Eel School, but I can't remember if it dealt 20 damage or if I used Tainted Strike on it.

Game 3 was uneventful because he never drew more than 2 lands even though he made me go first. It’s unreal how many games are decided like this, and it makes me feel like a significant portion of high level play should be dedicated to making sure this doesn’t happen, so you can actually play Magic.

6-3

 

Round 10 - Kyle Stoll

Kyle’s deck was awesome. It was a basically a U/G control deck centered around Trinket and Treasure Mage, which he had 1 and 2 copies of, respectively. Trinket Mage was in for two Horizon Spellbombs, and Treasure Mage was in for Mindslaver and the 7 mana vanilla 5/7 guy (which is better than he looks). He also had Stoic Rebuttal, Volition Reins, the blue Zenith, Consecrated Sphinx, and Culling Dais (with Oculus and lots of other ways to get extra value). I was really impressed with the way everything in his deck worked together.

In game 1, the early Mages from him were enough to slow my loser poison guys down until he could build up his mana and set up. My Tel-Jilad Fallen was good enough to stop his 5/7, but not good enough to break through because of all his colored creatures. The only card he had to threaten me was the Sphinx, which I was able to kill with Pistus Strike, so the game boiled down to a board stall. I thought I was going to win since all we were doing was playing lands and he had way less cards than me because of Oculus and the green spellbombs, but he eventually drew the blue Zenith and played it for 12 to deck me.

There was no way I was beating his deck without the counters, so I boarded that package in again. I was starting to wonder if I should have just started it. I also boarded in an extra Pistus Strike, since that sphinx is a problem, and I’d rather not have to counter it since I would need to hold them for Mindslaver and the blue Zenith.

I started game 2 a little faster, but it was still really difficult to break through the nonartifact creatures without any real removal. I got Tel-Jilad Fallen going again to stall the board, but still never had a good attack. Once the game gets to that state, he almost certainly takes over every time because of all the card advantage he gets, and that’s exactly what happened. I had a counter for the deal-sealing Mindslaver, but he had Stoic Rebuttal and I died after my board and hand got ruined.

6-4

 

Round 11 - Christopher Wolf

One of the first things he asked me was if it was my first PT. I like this question because it basically amounts to “I’ve never heard of you.” If you’re interested, or just want to glean information about how good your opponent might be, a softer question is “how many PTs have you played in?” since it gives you the same information without potentially implicitly insulting your opponent. My instinct made me answer “no, it’s my 11th” to try and salvage some kind of cool veteran image, but I wish I would have said “yes” instead, since it may have got him to underestimate me. It reminds me of GP Montreal in 2007 where I decided to try responding to anyone who asked me how many byes I had with “none, this is my first tournament.” I don’t think it accomplished anything, but I convinced at least one person of it, which was pretty fun.

Christopher also had a B/G deck, but it wasn’t poison, just big monsters. My pitiful guys were no match for Alpha Tyranax and 2 Spread the Sickness in game 1, so I went back to the blue plan for the 3rd time in a row. I definitely wished I had started it by now.

In game 2, I was able to make it a closer affair by being able to stop things like Skinrender with the counters, but I got too low too quickly via a Molder Beast and him spreading my artifact guys, and spent the rest of the game on the defensive. I could have won if I ever drew a swamp for Tainted Strike, since he had six poison counters and I had a Sky-Eel School, but I only had 4 in my deck after board and I didn’t see one before he had enough guys to shove, even though I had like 6 or 7 draw steps to find one. I guess I boarded out one too many.

6-5

 

I was really disappointed with my draft performance. I think my technical play is at least reasonable, but I just can’t draft good decks. There’s something huge missing from my draft game, and it’s too abstract for me to know what it is without practicing a lot more to find out.

I had never been so happy to begin the constructed portion of an event because of how good I felt my deck was by now. At this point I thought I could 5-0 and maybe make top 50, or 4-1 and cash, since my tiebreakers were pretty good.

 

Round 12 - Job Meertens - G/W Vengevine

I got scared when my opponent played out elves and Leatherback Baloths, because I didn’t even know this was a deck, much less know how to play the matchup. I had nothing to worry about though, because the green sword made this match pretty easy. He had Squadron Hawks in his deck so it was occasionally tough to break through, but always having a guy with pro green on defense gave me lots of breathing room.

I lost game 2 because he got a really fast start with a turn 2 Leatherback Baloth and a turn 3 Obstinate Baloth. I drew both of the Condemns I boarded in but decided not to use them before I played Day of Judgment, because I wanted more value out of them than a slightly better Healing Salve. This decision meant I had to try and stabilize from 1 life, which was too hard when his follow up to wrath was two Fauna Shamans.

Game 3 took a really long time, and it was a pretty intense back-and-forth affair. I remember both of us trying to play really fast until time was called, which happened to be during my main phase when I had tons of decisions to make. I was so happy that I got to slow down again and think about them more carefully, and the power of my board (which was full of all the permanents in my deck basically) let me win on my second extra turn.

7-5

 

Round 13 - Masayasu Tanahashi - U/B Control

This entire match was pretty uneventful. The only threat he ever played in either game was a single Grave Titan, which I had an answer for (I can’t remember if I countered it or wrathed it though, it was game 1 so it could have been either one). Having the Spreading Seas in my main deck gave me a lot of control over his tar pits, and I pretty much just played out hawks in both games and nibbled at him until he died. It felt very similar to my match vs. Logan Mize; I felt like I was behind the entire time in both games until I ended up winning. Maybe it’s less of a matchup thing and a personal control mirror phobia type thing, since I don’t play control decks that often.

8-5

 

After I got home, I saw that Jarvis beat this guy in the finals of one of the Sunday PTQs. I’m not sure which of my feelings is stronger - how happy I am for Jarvis that he won another PTQ, or how bad I feel for this guy for coming all the way from Japan just to lose to me in the PT and lose to Jarvis in the finals of the PTQ.

 

Round 14 - Gabriel Nassif - Caw-Go

I only played vs. Gabriel one other time, in a fake feature match at PT Berlin. I remember not playing all that well and peeling a Tribal Flames to beat him anyway, so I was hoping to keep my good fortune going. I was pretty sure that he was playing the same deck but with a better list, and it would be pretty unlikely to outplay him in a control mirror, so I pretty much needed every bit of good fortune I could get.

It turns out that his list, and all the Channel Fireball lists, didn’t have any Spreading Seas, so I managed to get an edge in game 1 by being able to control his Colonnades better than he could control mine. I ended up beating his Jace + Gideon draw with just a Gideon, because he never saw a single Squadron Hawk. It’s pretty unreal how much impact that card’s presence (and also the lack of its presence) has on a game.

I got pretty lucky to win that game, not just because he never drew Hawks, but also because I hit tons of key land drops. It’s pretty intimidating playing vs. Gabriel because he keeps track of information so much better than most people I’ve played against. I’m sure that he was able to figure out what my hand was like at every point in the game just by monitoring what lands I played and when, whereas the whole time I would sit and look at his 5 card hand and think “DHURRRR WHAT COULD HE HAVE???”

In game 2 I kept a pretty sketchy hand just because it had two lands and a Preordain, and I ended up getting punished for it. I couldn’t find enough lands to keep up, and he just slowly gained an insurmountable advantage. I conceded pretty early to ensure that we would have enough time to play a third game, since there were only around 15 minutes left on the clock.

In game 3 I got the most thorough beating I would get with this deck in the event. I mulliganed into a draw where the only line I could reasonably take was to play out permanents and hope he couldn’t answer them, and his draw was such that he answered my threat each time and then played his own copy the turn after.

8-6

I was upset to have lost, but I didn’t feel too bad because I don’t think there was anything I could have done in that 3rd game. I really should have mulliganed in that second game.

I thought about this match some and wondered about my decision to concede the second game early. If I played it out and made him kill me, there was a chance that we could have went to time and drawn, which would have been preferable to a loss. I ended up deciding that I liked my decision, since playing for a draw that early in the match is a scared money mindset. He’s certainly a better player than me, especially in control mirrors, but he isn’t unbeatable, and if I expect to lose then I won’t be in the game mentally and it’ll be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

While waiting for the next round’s pairings, I was sitting around with Tommy and Shaheen, and we were talking about how awesome the “Forget You” radio version of Cee-Lo’s most recent single was, and how convenient it was to use those edits for your own everyday language. It lets you say things like “What the forget?” “This is bull shh!” “Forget you, you forgetting piece of shh!” We were debating whether or not it was correct to use “forgetted” or “forgotten,” since one is a more clear direct replacement, and the other is grammatically correct but doesn’t have as much zing. My official position was that it’s always better to be grammatically correct, since the context will usually make itself clear.

It was around this time that I spotted a DCI judge that I instantly fell in love with. She was this beautiful Italian woman who looked like she was in my ideal age range for women, mid 30’s. I pointed her out and, given our previous topic of conversation, felt it was appropriate (as well as radio friendly) to say,

“I would forget the shh out of her.”

Whenever I see someone like that - not a forgettable woman, but rather someone who just looks really out of place - I always wonder how they got to where they are. What was that gorgeous Italian judge like when she was younger, and what chain of events led her to be a judge in a high profile Magic: the Gathering tournament?

I started to wonder out loud.

“What do you think she was doing when she was 21?”

Shaheen was quick to respond.

“Probably being forgotten every day.”

 

Round 15 - Nathaniel James - U/W control

Nathaniel was really friendly and pleasant to play against, plus he had these awesome Street Fighter sleeves with Chun Li on them. I almost felt bad about wrecking him in 2 games.

He was playing a more traditional U/W control deck with outmoded cards like Wall of Omens and Baneslayer Angel, as well as the new white Zenith. Spell Pierce was really good in game 1, since the only way he could threaten me was via instant speed Zenith cats and it’s pretty mana intensive for him to commit to that whereas it’s only one mana for me to stop it. Neither of our decks changed that much for game 2 and it was easy for me to stick a Mystic and get a mana & card advantage via the B/G sword. It took a while for me to win because he drew Venser and Tumble Magnet (which is great against the swords) in the late game, but I got both of my swords going and won before it became an issue.

9-6

 

Shaheen was also 9-6 after this round, so I was getting nervous about potentially losing this round, not cashing, and having to pay him a $5 rub-in fee if he won. One of the major downsides of negative splits is that they could potentially cause you to root against your friends, but I didn’t exactly feel that way in this spot. If the disaster scenario happened, I’d have been much more disappointed about me losing and costing myself $500 than Shaheen winning and costing me $5.

 

Round 16 - Tomoyuki Honnami - Valakut

I breathed a sigh of relief when he started playing out Valakut cards, since I really liked my position in this matchup. I ended up having a pretty clunky draw in game 1, and I died to a well sculpted Summoning Trap turn from him, which I didn’t really expect in the first game.

I got super nervous because I didn’t want to take a heartbreaking loss in the final round to win nothing, and I was already down a game.

Not to ruin the suspense or anything, but I won both the next two games in a pretty boring fashion. I managed to get a superfast Stoneforge Mystic each time and was able to cleave him to death with the B/G sword while stopping critical spells here and there.

10-6

 

I walked out of the play area and found Shaheen, who said lost his last round to be firmly out of the money. I told him I won, and he said he was happy to at least have won $5. Confused, I told him that our split was a negative split, and he didn’t know what I was talking about. We decided to wipe the entire thing, since each one of us expected to get paid by the other one. On the plus side, I was happy that I didn’t have to feel bad about making him pay the $5 rub-in tax that I was worried about having to pay.

I asked about Tommy, who was 11-4 going into this round, and Shaheen said that he decided to play it out without any kind of prize split and lost.

The standings went up and I squeaked into 62nd on tiebreakers, which was a relief. Although I was bummed out about my draft performance, it felt really good to have finally chosen a good constructed deck and put up a decent result at a pro tour. Tommy ended up getting 33rd and getting a Nagoya qualification, which is what he wanted.

After we saw the standings, we went back to the room for a minute before going out to eat. I took this opportunity to look for my missing Pro Tour shirt, and I soon discovered that it was officially not anywhere in the room. After thinking about where it could possibly be, I remembered that John and I stopped to eat at Hot Pants before coming back to the room on Wednesday, so I went next door to ask about it. Sure enough, the same waiter was there, and he remembered me and had my shirt. It’s pretty insane that my shirt was at a restaurant called Hot Pants.

I regrouped in the lobby with John, Tommy and Kenny, and we went to go eat at this other Italian place that Kenny had eaten at already. It was pretty good, and the guy who ran the place was this fat jokey guy, who managed to joke around with us through the language barrier. After we finished eating, the bill he gave us was just a piece of paper with €1250 written on it. We responded by giving him a 1 euro coin, a 2 euro coin, and a 0.50 euro coin, ordered to look like 1250. It was hard to say for sure whether he and his wife got the joke or not, but it was still the most fun I had eating at a restaurant in France.

Even though I was exhausted, I still wanted to play Magic, so we went back to the site and got a money draft with John and Kenny vs. Forrest Mead, Dave Howard and Brandon Nelson. Tommy agreed to watch my picks so he could tell me what he thought I was doing wrong in draft, which turned out to be quite a bit.

There was only one poison drafter at the table, so I got a steady stream of poison cards and I wasn’t sure whether I should capitalize on it or not, so I ended up with a handful of poison cards and just barely enough blue and red cards to make a clunky but workable deck. It turned out that Forrest, who was to my right, was capitalizing on all the poison cards and had a really good poison deck that had plenty of room to cut red and blue cards from my deck. I played him first and he laid out his sideboard which had a Hoard-Smelter Dragon and like 6 or 7 other blue and red cards I’d have loved for my deck, which was almost kinda tilting. I felt a little better when I realized that some of the poison cards I took when I was waffling about drafting infect were essentially cuts from him, but I don’t think he really needed them anyway.

I ended up beating Forrest 2-1 on the back of the two Volition Reins he passed me, although I’m not sure I’d have won a majority of the games if we played more than 3. The site was closing down and we had to move the draft to our hotel, so after a 20 minute break I played vs. Brandon, who had an aggressive U/W deck. I ended up winning this match 2-0 via an uncharacteristically good play from me. I had a squad of 3 artifact guys and a Golem Artisan, and he was racing me with a Necrogen Censer / Contagion Clasp combo. I kept leaving two blue mana up after every turn, so it must have been pretty obvious that I had Stoic Rebuttal. When it became clear that I was going to win the race, he thought for a long time on his main phase, and then played Disperse on my Golem Artisan. Before insta-countering it, I decided to think about why he would do that. He must have wanted me to counter it, so I decided to let it resolve, since I could afford to wait exactly one more turn after replaying it to win. I replayed it with UU up, and on his next turn he tried to revoke it, which I countered. He didn’t have anything else after that and I won.

I’m not used to thinking on that level and making plays that good, so I was really satisfied with that win. It didn’t matter though because my loser teammates went 0-5, and I lost yet another money draft. If you ever have the opportunity to play vs. me in a money draft, you should take it. In the rare event that I have a record better than 1-2, my teammates probably won’t, so it’s basically a free $20. I think I’m down around $200 lifetime from money drafts, which is insane considering that it happened $20 at a time.

After we paid up and they went back to their hotel, Tommy went to bed and Gerard and John and I used his computer to watch a bunch of rap battles on Youtube. I’m so glad that there are other people that enjoy battle rap, because I’ve been secretly obsessing about it for the past year or so. As soon as the battery on Tommy’s computer died, we all went to bed.

 

Saturday

I wanted to play in the Grand Prix even though our flight home departed at 11AM on Sunday. I would have been willing to change it for a later flight if I went X-1 on day 1, but when I realized during the PT that they were planning on having 2 or 3 thousand people share that one tiny bathroom, I just couldn’t do it. It worked out pretty well since nobody else in our room wanted to play in it, and we didn’t get as much sightseeing done on Tuesday and Wednesday as we wanted, so we could be tourists on Saturday instead.

After waking up late and stopping by the site to check out everyone’s decks, we picked up Jason Ford, who was a strong addition to the group, and went off to see some big stuff in Paris. I had never met Jason before this event, so I didn’t learn until halfway through the sightseeing adventure that he actually won the GP in Atlanta a couple weeks before the PT. It’s amazing how I was so into competitive Magic at one point that I knew who every PT and GP top 8er was and what everyone’s pro club level was, and now I’m so out of the loop that I couldn’t name the last 3 GP winners.

The places we went to included the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, and this really insane ice cream shop that was recommended to Tommy. It felt good to do something on a Magic trip besides play Magic, and I was able to buy all of the souvenirs that my family requested, so Saturday was a pretty awesome day all around. What made it even better was that we ate at Paul again for lunch and Hot Pants again for dinner, which aligned pretty well with my preference of “find something you like and jam out on it.”

After we got back from sightseeing, before going to bed we went to the site (which was getting pretty empty) to hang out for a bit and I got to use one of their computers to take care of the last Facebook birthday I’d have to worry about while I was in Paris. I logged into my account and saw that I finally got a reply from my sister:

 

Liza Zanarotti February 12 at 3:52pm

Bon jour! We miss u! Merde means shit. That is all I remember. Paris is a dirty place...food sux

 

I showed it to Tommy and we both thought it was an awesome reply, especially after a few days of the Paris experience.

 

Sunday

Well, I have to include Sunday for completeness, but nothing really happened aside from waking up and going to the airport. Kenny came with Tommy and John and I even though his flight wasn’t until the evening, because he was pretty sick of Paris and didn’t want to hang out at the site. I probably would have done the same thing if I were him.

There was no way my flight home was going to be as good as the flight into Paris, but it was fine once the woman next to me asked if I wanted to trade my middle seat for her husband’s aisle seat, to which I responded by pretty much jumping out of it before she could finish her sentence. I watched The Social Network on the plane, which I thought was OK but didn’t really go anywhere. Once we got into Dulles, my awesome dad picked us up and gave Tommy and John a ride back to their homes, which was really nice of him.

That’s about it. Sorry for the length.

I never wrote a tournament report before and I always wanted to do one of these, so...

Props

Stephen King for guiding my deck decision in the right direction

Tommy for getting 33rd and qualifying for Nagoya

Jarvis for winning the Sunday PTQ and qualifying for Nagoya

John Moore and Gerard for being battle rap buddies

BJBill for lending me most of my deck

My dad for giving my friends and I a ride to and from the airport

The guy at Hot Pants for having my shirt

Slops

Tommy for walking really far ahead of everyone all the time

Jarvis for saying Caw-Go is a do-nothing deck and then asking to borrow it from me for side events after I went 8-2 with it

Jason Golliher for being overly salty about a genuine mistake

Shaheen for misunderstanding how a negative split works

The event site for having one tiny ass bathroom to support thousands of gross Magic players

The hostess at the Chinese restaurant for straight up laughing in John’s face after he tried to speak French and then serving us awful food

 

Thank you for reading!