I PTQ’ed in Phili last weekend.  Sitting across from fellow NY PTQ regular Christian Calcano at deck construction, I offered the trade.

I always offer the trade.  Some random deck comes to you, you still don’t know what’s in it… what better way to avoid the temptation of blaming luck than to swap out the deck that fate dealt you?

Chris smiled, as he almost always does, and flipped a coin.  Heads we trade.  Came up tails.  I flip open my tournament pack and on the inside flap is written: “Enjoy ^^”

Here’s what I built.  And no, I’m not making this up:

1 Predator Dragon
1 Broodmate Dragon
1 Vein Drinker
1 Violent Ultimatum
1 Infest
1 Oblivion Ring
2 Bone Splinters
1 Resounding Thunder
1 Blightning
1 Resounding Roar
1 Dragon Fodder
1 Blister Beetle
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Hissing Iguanar
1 Naya Battlemage
1 Jund Battlemage
1 Viscera Dragger
1 Scavenger Drake
1 Carrion Thrash
1 Skeletal Kathari
1 Obelisk of Jund
1 Obelisk of Naya
1 Naya Panorama
2 Jund Panorama
1 Arcane Sanctum
1 Plains
3 Forest
4 Mountain
5 Swamp

Significant unplayed cards: Naturalize, Corpse Connoisseur (not much to get..), Obelisk of Esper, Puppet Conjurer, Relic of Progenitus, Cylian Elf

The only real choice here is: do you splash white?  I figured with a deck this insane, I’d rapidly end up at the top tables, playing against a lot of bomb-riddled decks, and the O-ring and Naya Battlemage’s ability would be put to good use.  Against less dangerous decks, I sided out Plains & Arcane Sanctum for Forest, Swamp, and some combo of Relic, Cylian Elf, and Naturalize.

It all went according to plan for a while… I lost 1 game over the first 4 rounds, benefiting from an unneeded deck-reg game loss in round 2 (count your cards, people!) and only really getting tested by a 13-year-old kid named Case in round 4 who was having sooo much fun.  He had a very smooth Jund deck with less power than mine, and he played really well.  He also asked me a million questions, in complete earnest, about my day, my Magic background, and whatever else came into his head.  Case already knows what Magic is really about.

Anyway, as I’ve implied, the wheels came off in round 5.  I lost 2 games to Corpse Connoisseur in a deck with double Scourge Devil and good removal.  His removal bought him time, and he dealt 15+ in a single turn in both games.  In game 2, I mulliganed once and ended the game with Relic of Progenitus on top of my library.  I think I made a subtle mistake on an attack earlier in the game that might have bought some time.

Round 6 I lost to Sarkhan Vol, which smashed me with my own Skeletal Kathari before saccing it to itself, then stole half of my Broodmate, smashed me with it… and sacced it to a freshly-summoned Skeletal Kathari.  I had the option of casting Oblivion Ring instead of Broodmate, but at 13 or so life, it seemed like the Broodmate could handle the planeswalker with O-ring backing it up.  No such luck.

So, with that monstrosity of a sealed deck, with 4 on-shard Bombs, ample removal, nothing but solid creatures and spells, good sideboard tools, and excellent mana… I was out of the tournament.

I played the last 2 rounds to finish in 13th out of 210.

What do you think of this deck?  How many Shards sealed decks do you think you’d have to open before you found one you’d take over this?

At the end of the day, I was actually in a pretty good mood.  I watched some of the top 8, talked to Jake Van Lunen (who had the same record with a worse deck), and wasn’t nearly as frustrated as I thought I would be.  Frankly, I think I should have won that tournament… I guess I’ll just have to win the next one, instead.

The top 8 draft must have been frustrating– it looked like the packs were just terrible, and everyone was running cyclers and multiple 23rd-cards.  Local Phili Magic hero Conrad Kolos lost in the first round in an inglorious game, missing a color after a mulligan and drawing nothing but 1/1’s to put his Quietus Spike on when his opponent had a Blood Cultist and Conrad’s graveyard held a Magma Spray.  Jake and I had driven down with a fellow named Bob, and he got his first PTQ Top 8 on this day, beating Gerrard Fabiano in the round of 8 with his unearth-tastic pile before falling to Max Tietze of the lucky Blood Cultist.  He kept 4x Mountain, Swamp, Onyx Goblet in game 2.  We didn’t stay for the finals.

So, what’s the take-away?

1. If you are Chris Calcano– Next time I offer the tradesies… forget about the coin, just trade!
2. If you have the most amazing sealed deck ever, but you still miss top 8, don’t feel too bad.  It just means there’s more to a limited PTQ than opening a great pool.  Or that you are at least as bad as I am.
3. Sometimes consistent, synergistic, uncommon 5-drops beat bomb-tastic 6-drops.
4. If a planeswalker hits the table, don’t get cute.  Just kill it.

It looks like my next PTQ will be the Neutral Ground one the same weekend as Worlds.  Maybe I can open some Scourge Devils.