For those of you that don’t know me (should be most of you) I’m Asher Hecht, and according to the GP LA coverage I am a self-proclaimed Ringer of the North East. I have been playing magic competitively for around three years in New York City and haven’t had much success except for PTQ Top 8’s, of which I have around 8. For the past year especially I have dedicated a lot of time to competitive magic and ptqing and have averaged around one PTQ Top 8 per season. However, time and time again I have failed to break through. To date I have lost playing for slots four times in heartbreaking game 3s, the most recent being a faeries mirror in a Berlin PTQ that was undoubtedly the best game of magic I have ever played. After that block season I was very disappointed that I didn’t qualify after Top8ing 2 of 5 PTQs and losing playing for T8 in the other 3. I went into the Kyoto season largely unmotivated due to the fact that it was Limited (I largely prefer Constructed) and that I had to dedicate a lot of time into applying to colleges.

I knew I wanted to go to LA for a while, but delayed in actually committing until around three weeks before. I always have liked Extended and wanted an excuse to escape the cold of the North East. I was luckily able to snag a ticket for real cheap and was  really excited at the prospect of my first far-away GP (I have played in 3 or 4 before always with disastrous results). However, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to play and little to no knowledge of the format. The North East players were at a disadvantage for GP LA because there were no local PTQs before the GP. This meant that no one in my area really had a clue about the format. Luckily, members of Team Unknown Stars and other helpful West-Coast MTGers told me about the format and what was viable and what was not. It seemed pretty clear to me that the format was going to be defined by Faeries and its variations and Death Cloud. Those two decks just have the strongest strategies and are very effective. I was pretty sure I wanted to play DC for a while, but turned against it when I realized that even though it did a bunch of cool things (especially Raven’s Crime) it was at its core just a mopey Rock deck. For a while I thought I was going to play UB Tron because I felt comfortable with it and have always loved Tron decks.

Luckily, it didn’t take much for me to switch when I saw the UR TEPS deck and goldfished a few hands with it. The deck felt really good in a fairly balanced format because it could force its combo through better than Elves but was still very fast (I would set the average win turn at 4.5 or a bit lower). The sideboard Gigadrowses seemed like a great strategy against Faeries because they have to Stifle it or just resign themselves to losing on the next turn. The only thing I was really worried about was getting Raven’s Crimed out of games. Going into the GP I didn’t really have a plan versus the GB decks but at the last minute I found Relic of the Progenitus, which completely shuts down any Loam engines and makes the matchup very good as long as you don’t get Persecuted.

So here is the list I used to make top 8 of GP LA

SwathStorm
Asher Hecht
2009 Grand Prix Los Angeles - Top 8

1  Bloodstained Mire
3  Cascade Bluffs
3  Dreadship Reef
2  Flooded Strand
2  Island
1  Mountain
1  Polluted Delta
4  Steam Vents
1  Wooded Foothills

4  Desperate Ritual
1  Gigadrowse
3  Grapeshot
4  Lotus Bloom
4  Manamorphose
4  Mind’s Desire
4  Peer Through Depths
4  Ponder
2  Pyromancer’s Swath
4  Remand
4  Rite of Flame
4  Seething Song

Sideboard:
2  Brain Freeze
2  Chain of Vapor
2  Echoing Truth
3  Gigadrowse
1  Pact of Negation
3  Relic of Progenitus

The list was excellent for me all weekend long and if I were going to play the tournament again my only change would be to fit in a third Trickbind because I only lost to the mirror and Trickbind is the best card in the mirror. I am not going to go into card-by-card analysis because everything is pretty self-explanatory. Most of my sideboarding revolved around taking out some number of Desperate Rituals and Remands, depending on whether I was on the play or draw, and bringing in the cards that are obviously good.

Rounds 1 and 2

I had two byes on rating and went used this time to go to Subway. I can safely say that after this weekend I will not be eating Subway for at least a month. I had Subway 4 times over the span of 40 hours and while I do love my Southwest chipotle steak and cheese sandwich, 4 times was entirely too much in such a short span. Aside on Subway: I go to Subway on average 2.5 times per week and thus I consider myself an expert on the subject. There is no sandwich that even compares to the southwest steak and cheese. It used to be bad because Subway was using a different type of steak meat and so I think it has a bad rap. Ever since they switched the meat I have been eating this sandwich exclusively and it is just the best. Other acceptable sandwiches are: Chicken parm, sweat onion chicken teriyaki, and BMT. Every other signature sandwich is terrible and should not be ordered. End Aside.

Round 3- Brett Blackman with Zoo

I was scheduled to fly into LA with Brett but he upgraded to an earlier flight while I could not because I was flying on miles. Brett is a good friend of mine and I told him that if there was any justice he would lose because he ditched me and made me ride out the 6 hour plus flight solo. I knew Brett’s md and most of his sb before we played so I was really confident. I knew that he had 0 Sculler but feared sb Teegs that he ended up taking out at the last second and didn’t have.

I won the die roll and comfortably won on turn 4 with a solid draw. A lot of these games are going to be pretty uninteresting because often game 1’s are just goldfishing for both decks with minimal interaction.

Game 2 he had a really strong draw with turn 3 Molten Rain and turn 4 double Tribal Flame to kill me dead.

Game 3 I kept a hand with 2 bounce spells a Lotus and a Mind’s Desire. I was able to buy time with the bounce spells but kept drawing lands and another Desire. Eventually I was forced to desire for only 3, but I had 3 lands untapped and another desire in hand. I hit a ritual effect and it was academic from there. Brett was a bit salty that I won on a storm of 3 but I think my odds were pretty strong as any mana producer (except Manamorphose), a Desire, or some combination of Grapeshot/Pyromancer’s Swath would win for me.

Round 4- Eduardo Bustos with Faeries

This was my only Faeries match of the weekend, but I wish I had played more. The matchup sways a lot depending on the card choices of the Fae player. If they have Vendilion Clique and Stifle the matchup can be hard, but I still think g2 should be pretty easy. Gigadrowse is the key in these matchups as you can just Gigadrowse them out off of a storage land and then kill them. This match was pretty anticlimactic as he drew 3 lands in game 1 and couldn’t kill me before I peered into a Gigadrowse. Game 2 he mulliganed and kept a 1 lander that I guess had Stifle, Spell Snare, and some other goodies. It took him too long to find lands and I won on turn 5 after Gigadrowsing his lands.

Round 5- Joey Hoang on Dredge

I have never played against Dredge in this format and I have trouble believing it’s a real deck. It seemed slow, clunky, and really inconsistent. He mulliganed to 4 game 1 and still almost killed me because he hit all 4 Narcomoebas in two dredges, but I had a clutch Remand. Game 2 he played a Chalice of the Void for 2 that colded my entire hand. However, I had a Relic of the Progenitus in play so he literally did nothing until I had tons of mana and just won by playing spells that got countered and then storming him out. Notably, during this game he played a Chalice for 1 with his Chalice on 2 in play. This did not work but if he played it for 0 it would have given him more time because I had a Lotus coming in.

Round 6- Iain Bartolomei with Affinity

Iaian and I have some mutual friends in common so I was able to put him on Affinity before the match so I kept a hand that was awesome against him with 2 Remands and a Peer. The Remands kept his Plating off the board even though I lost the roll and I went off on turn 5. Against Affinity you have to bring in the 4 bounce spells in case of Ethersworn Canonist. He didn’t have the Canonist but they are still great at buying time by bouncing big creatures or Platings. This game he made a subtle mistake that tipped me off that he had a Stifle in hand. He had a Platinged creature in play and played an Arcbound Worker and Springleaf Drum tapping Great Furnace and Blinkmoth Nexus. When he attacked he did not animate the Nexus by tapping a Seat of the Synod. This made me 100% certain that he had Stifle so I Peered at eot and found a Remand where I might have picked a Manamorphose instead. I stormed him out the next turn and he died with the Stifle in hand knowing I had the Remand.

Round 7-Forrest Pitts with RGW beats

I assume he wasn’t full Zoo because he had a decent amount of basics. I think his deck was more similar to the one LSV wrote about and Adam Prosak has been playing on MODO. Game 1 I lost the die roll but his draw was pretty unimpressive so I had plenty of time to set up a combo on turn 4 or 5. Game 2 I had a dream draw with 4 Rituals and Swath, and drew Grapeshot on my first draw step. Unfortunately that is only 18 and he fetched a tapped land and then layed a basic to play a Teeg. The Teeg was just a bear because I was planning on just Grapeshotting him. The next turn he played Blood Moon which did literally nothing. The next turn I drew a Manamorphose or some ritual and 21’d him. After the game he showed me a Canonist he was “holding back in case of a firespout.” That play seemed very suspect to me, but I think he was overvaluing the disruption he had (Blood Moon and Teeg) and generally didn’t respect my deck. I feel like I got a lot of free wins on the weekend because people did not know how powerful UR Storm can be and played a bit too passively against me.

Round 8- Michael Jacob with GB

This was a feature match and the coverage is pretty good. I went for a storm of 5 in game 1 because I did not want to give him time to draw Raven’s Crime, which is almost impossible for me to beat game 1. I had mana floating and gas in hand (I believe Grapeshot) after the Mind’s Desire for 5 so I was confident in it, but I just flipped another Desire so it didn’t matter. Game 2 he stalls on lands and I have Relic of Progenitus that stops his Raven’s Crime. He has no pressure so I win easily at my leisure. Both of these games were pretty lopsided and I think his draws were pretty bad. I don’t think Death Cloud is a particularly good matchup, especially game 1, because of their heavy disruption draws.

Round 9- Justin Stanley with UR Storm

The mirror match is a nightmare that almost entirely revolves around the die roll. He won it, but dropped game 1 because I had a Gigadrowse that tapped his Lotus and 2 lands on his 4th upkeep. I combod him on my turn 4. Game 2 was pretty disappointing because again I had a disruptive draw and was able to combo him out, but I lost to a midcombo Brainfreeze which I feel should rarely happen. I had to miss a Grapeshot on my Desire for 8 to lose, and so when I started my second Desire he was able to Brainfreeze my deck out in response to a Manamorphose or Remand. Game 3 I kept a hand that would win if I drew Desire or Swath off of my Ponder or any time early. This did not happen and on turn 4 he went on it. He had me dead to rights but something interesting happened. He was resolving Ponder off a Desire and looked at the top 3 cards, placed them down and then looked at his hand. He then went into the tank and drew a card. However, he drew from the top of his deck and had not put the Ponder pile back on top. We called a judge and the judge’s first question was if my opponent had any previous warning. Justin admitted that he had a warning for looking at extra cards on the day. At this point both he and I were pretty sure he was going to be awarded a game loss. The judge we called over (I believe a level 1) made some circuitous ruling that made no sense to me but ended up being just a warning so I appealed to the head judge. The head judge’s ruling was that my opponent would receive a warning for misresolution of the Ponder and that he had distinctly not looked at extra cards. The following conversation followed:

Me: I am just trying to understand the ruling, so he didn’t look at extra cards?

Head Judge: Correct.

Me: So even though Ponder says look at 3 and he drew a card he should not have that’s not looking at extra cards?

HJ: Right.

Me: So he drew a card he shouldn’t have right?

HJ: Yes, he drew an extra card.

Me: And he already has a warning for looking at extra cards but is not getting a game loss?

HJ: Yes, because his infraction is not looking at extra cards.

ME: Even though he looked at an extra card and has a previous warning.

At this point the judge got annoyed with me. I realize that I was fishing for a penalty but I was completely baffled that this was not a game loss. I mean he drew an “extra” card with a similar previous warning. This seems like a clear game loss to me and most people who I talked to. Ultimately, he just put the card he drew back shuffled his library and promptly killed me. People might say that what I did was dishonorable or rude but I traveled across the country to play in this GP and I am going to do whatever I can to win, especially in a situation where I believed (and still do believe) that I was in the right.

Finishing Day 1 and 8-1 was great but not having that 9-0 was bugging me a bit. Eventually I went to dinner at In-and-Out Burger with Josh Wludyka and Adam Yurchick. The food was okay but the “animal fries” were abysmal and I don’t know why someone would cover good fries with thousand-island dressing and what looked like relish, but I guess that’s how they roll on the West Coast. I got back to the site watched coverage reporter extraordinaire Dane Young destroy someone in a draft with a Cruel Ultimatum returning Vein Drinker and went to sleep with high storm counts and Mind’s Desires dancing in my head. I woke up the next morning and just kept telling myself not to blow it. All I needed was 4-1-1 to Top 8 and probably 4-2 to Top 16 and earn an invite to Honolulu. This was my first GP Day 2 so I was a bit jittery and that didn’t help when I sat down for round 10.

Round 10- Neil Parker with ELVES

Elves is a terrible matchup for UR storm. They are much faster and I have no way of disrupting them game 1. Game 2 I have Brainfreeze, but that shouldn’t do much against a competent player. Luckily game 1 he keeps a hand that hinges on a Heritage Druid to go off and I am able to Grapeshot it on turn 2 and then combo him on turn 4. Game 2 he goes for the combo on turn 3 but I am holding a Brainfreeze that I don’t think he is reading me for so I am confident. He whiffs but has amassed a decent army. He pays for a Pact and bashes me next turn and can’t add much to the board. Turn 4 my Lotus comes in but I cant combo him after Pondering, so I play a Grapeshot for 3 that kills a Heritage Druid and 2 Birchlore Rangers while leaving Brainfreeze mana up. He eventually beats me all the way down to 1 life but I am able to win by setting up Brainfreeze, Remanding it, and casting it again to force him to deck when he draws his card. I felt blessed to escape such a bad matchup.

Round 11- Axel Martinez with Death Cloud

Game 1 I am on the play and have a great hand with Lotus Bloom and 2 Mind’s Desires. He Thoughtseizes me on turn 1 and makes a mistake by taking Peer through Depths over Seething Song even though I only had 2 lands. It is at this point that on turn 3 he tried to play Eternal Witness with only 2 lands and a judge was summoned. The judge ruling takes a little while because Axel’s English is not perfect (he is a member of the Mexican National Team apparently) and there was some miscommunication. His excuse was that he thought his Overgrown Tomb was Golgari Rotfarm. I pointed out that his only other untapped land was a swamp so that wouldn’t work anyway. At that point I figured that either he was trying to cheat me or that he was not very good. On his next turn he played Garruk and Tarmogoyf instead of the Witness and Thoughtseize so I am pretty sure that Axel is just oblivious to how to win. I combo him on my next turn. Game 2 is looking pretty good for me as I have a good draw with Lotus and Desire and he has been doing nothing. However, I only have 1 land so on turn 4 he plays a Death Cloud for 1. On the next turn I draw a land and start to go off. I end up kind of fizzling but Brainfreeze (this is brought in along with the Relic to protect against Extirpate) him for more than half of his library and Remanding it (I did not have enough mana to replay it for the win). I ended the turn by suspending Lotus Bloom with Ponder, land, and the Brainfreeze in hand.  I was fairly sure that he had milled a Raven’s Crime to the Brainfreeze but purposely did not look at this graveyard because I was hoping he would not realize it. He did not and lost when my Lotus Bloom came in and I Pondered into Remand that I used on my Brainfreeze to deck him. I grabbed his graveyard on the last turn and saw the 2 Raven’s Crime and Life from the Loam. Very interesting…

Round 12- Gabe Walls with Slide

This matchup is very very good for UR as Slide’s strategy does not really affect UR. However, all three games my draws were poor and I deserved to lose all 3 of them. Game one he gets his “aggressive” draw with Finks into 2 Hierarchs and I am forced to topdeck a Desire. I do. Must be nice, blessed, etc.

Game 2 I mulligan and lose when he has Ancient Grudge to kill my Lotus and Plow Under with some beaters. Game 3 is looking great for me until he Boils. I did not expect Boil and could have fetched Mountain instead of Steam Vents earlier. That would have allowed me to win, but instead I was left with only Dreadship Reef with 2 charge counters. Luckily, Gabe did not Ghost Quarter the Dreadship Reef and use Life from the Loam to Ghost Quarter me out of the game. Instead he cycles into apparently nothing for 2 turns until I draw Steam Vents and kill him with a storm for 7. I got very lucky to win as I topdecked the Desire game 1 and he misplayed for me to win g3. However, it is a really easy matchup so I did not feel too scummy about winning when I maybe didn’t deserve it.

Round 13- LSV with TEPS

Getting paired against LSV playing for T8 is pretty rough. The mirror is pretty luck based though, so I figured I had a decent shot. Game 1 I lost the die roll but his hand was pretty bad after I remanded a Lotus. On his turn 4 he played an untapped Steam Vents to go along with another untapped land and passed. This meant I had to play around Remand on my turn and so I only stormed for 6 instead of 7. I think I hit a desire on the 3rd or 4th spell and LSV picked them up. Game 2 was my worst game of the tournament as I completely and utterly punted. He suspends a Bloom on turn 1 but I have Gigadrowse so my play is to drowse in his turn 4 upkeep then win. The problem is that I play a Steam Vents on turn 2 instead of the Dreadship Reef that I just drew.  I realize my mistake almost immediately but it means that on his turn 4 I can only drowse 1 land. This means that he passes the turn with 2 lands up. I end up losing to a Brainfreeze mid combo because I did not hit a Grapeshot on my desire for 8. I think I had to get kind of unlucky to lose, but I probably deserved to because I could have been 100% to win. Game 3 he goes for it when I am obviously going to win next turn. I have the Trickbind for his desire, but it flips over a ritual and he shows his last 2 cards in hand to be a Brainfreeze and remand with enough mana to Brainfreeze, Remand it, then deck me. He did have a good number of outs on the desire (any ritual, lotus, Brainfreeze, or Desire) so I cant be too salty about it. Also, the match shouldn’t have gone to 3 in the first place so I guess justice was served (for LSV anyways).

Round 14- Paul Rietzl with Affinity

I was very nervous going into this one as I was so afraid of punting such a good run and not top8ing. This was a feature match so there is not much more to add. Game 2 I tried to go off on turn 2 because I knew he had 4 Ethersworn Canonist in his deck and he was presenting a very fast draw. I had Echoing Truth in hand but figured that unless I drew 2 spells in a row I would not have a higher storm count before being able to go off. My Desire was for 7 with 3 mana floating, which is probably a win a bit more than 67% of the time. I missed after flipping over Ponder, Peer, and two Swaths. Peered into Ponder, Pondered twice, and still missed the Grapeshot. Later in the game I tried to Desire for 4 but missed. Game 3 my hand had 2 bounce spells (I used chain on vapor not Echoing Truth like the coverage said) so I won with an Echoing Truth still in the grip.

At this point I was elated to be in T8 and qualified for the PT. I was a bit worried that I would be paired down, but at least T16 was a lock.

Round 15- Brett Piazza with Affinity

I did get paired down but Brett was X-1-2 so he took a gamble and drew with me. He ended up squeaking into the T8 on breakers so it worked out all around.

Going into the t8 I was pretty confident. There was Rock, 2 Affinity, 3 blue decks, and a mirror. Everything but the mirror seemed like a good matchup as the blue decks weren’t all that well situated against TEPS. Unfortunately I was paired with LSV in the quarters. LSV approached me before our match and offered a 50/50 split because he was so confident that the winner of our match would win in a Top 8 with so many good matchups. I obviously accepted even though I felt slightly favored in the mirror because you have to be stone cold crazy not to accept a split like that from LSV. He is too good and running too hot right now.

Quarterfinals- LSV with UR storm

I lose the die roll again and keep a 2 Remand hand. That hand is excellent against a non Lotus Bloom hand, but he has 2 and kills me easily on turn 4. Game 2 I mulligan and keep a hand with Gigadrowse, Manamorphose, Remand, and 2 lands (the coverage is wrong here) and I get very lucky that LSV doesn’t draw a land for pretty much forever. I am able to win off of Brainfreeze/Remand/Brainfreeze. Game 3 was one of the closest matches I have ever played and the coverage does not do it justice. I kept a totally stacked hand that can win on turn 3 with Pact of Negation back up if I draw a Mind’s Desire. I Peer on turn 2 and keep Brain Freeze not seeing Desire. I felt pretty confident that I was going to win the game because I had Pact and the Brain Freeze and potential for some sick play as you will shortly see. LSV eventually decides to go for it and plays Rite of Flame. I allow this to resolve even though I have a Pact because I know I cant win on my turn unless I rip savagely and either have to try to really screw him with my Pact or win on his turn. He then plays another Rite followed by Seething Song. I Pact the Seething Song leaving him with only 1 red and 3 counters on the Dreadship Reef. He has ANOTHER Rite of Flame and then plays Ponder. He gets his storm up to 7 then plays Brainfreeze and Remands the original spell. The copies are going to mill me for 21 and in response to the draw trigger I go into the tank. The storm is now at 9 and LSV has 43 cards in his library and access to 2 blue mana. My hand is 2 Manamorphose, 3 Seething Song, and Brain Freeze with 4 lands in play. LSV has 1 card in hand and access to a U and a R mana. My thought was that his most likely last card was Remand so playing Seething Song would lose. I played Manamorphose putting the storm up to 10. LSV had Brainfreeze and played it in response and there was nothing I could do as I was going to lose when I drew off of Manamorphose.

I have thought about this play a lot and it seems like there was nothing I could have done. If I play the 3 Seething Songs first I can only storm for 13 and he had 43 cards in his library (I needed 15 storm).  This meant that no matter what I had to play the Manamorphoses and there is no way I can win once I put one of those on the stack. This game was INSANELY close as I only lose to Brain Freeze in that situation. I was forced into going for all 5 of my instants no matter what so leading with the Manamorphose was right because I had a chance of drawing into another Brainfreeze which prevents me form dying to Remand. LSV said he drew the Brainfreeze off of the Ponder that turn. Im pretty sure I beat every card that isn’t Brainfreeze and possibly Remand but LSV had the stoneblade and played the game flawlessly per usual.

So my dream of becoming a GP champion ended and I shook LSV’s hand and told him to win the GP. He did just that and I walked out of LA with a cool $2250 and an invite to my first PT (in the insane location of Honolulu!!!).

Overall, the weekend was a success but I do feel a twinge of regret that I didn’t win the whole thing, especially considering how close game 3 of the quarterfinals was. I definitely got lucky at some points during the day and had multiple opponents punt versus me so I guess I am blessed. I think I definitely made the right choice on deck because I only lost to the mirror and felt confident in every matchup.

People have been asking me if I think TEPS is still a good choice, and I think its time has come and gone. It was largely under the radar for LA (just as it was last year for Vancouver) but if people are prepared and have good strategies against TEPS winning gets a lot harder. I don’t think I could beat a Faeries deck with Vendillion Clique, Stifle, and Thoughtseize too often and if Death Cloud decks start maxing out on hand disruption that matchup could also fall significantly. The only thing I am certain of is that the creature answers to this deck are pretty bad because they do not force interaction. Gaddock Teeg and Ethersworn Canonist both are annoying but just lose to a bounce spell. More proactive cards like Clique and Thoughtseize are more effective because they force TEPS to actually change their plan entirely instead of just draw a bounce spell.

Thanks for reading and good luck,

Asher Hecht

Props

-Brandon McDoogle for making the MD I played

-Team Unknown Stars for helping

-Steve Sadin and Gabe Carlton-Barnes for being there

-John Price for being awesome

-Everyone who cheered for me along the way and sent me words of encouragement

-LSV for winning (there’s no one I’d rather have playing for my money, including myself) and continuing his tear

Slops

-UR storm mirror matches (only thing I lost to)

-Brett Blackman for ditching me on the way to LA

-judges for the round 9 ruling which still baffles me