This is a recent email that I received from Paul Jordan aka PJ, that I thought would be useful to all of you Top8Magic fans. The images did not come out in the post, but the original file is here: Draftcap Instructions.

Enjoy

Matt

Draftcap Instructions (Courtesy of Paul Jordan)

Creating your own “Drafting With” series is pretty straight-forward. All you need is Magic Online and your own webpage. If you don’t have a webpage, you can easily create one at Google, which is what I’ve done.

Creating your webpage

To start a webpage at Google, first make sure you are signed in. Then just go to More > Sites

Then click on Create New Site. Go through the steps, choosing your site name and URL and you’re done.

Recording drafts on MTGO

Go to Menu > Settings > Gameplay and make sure the box for “Enable Draft Recorder” is checked.

MTGO will record all packs and picks and put them into Documents > Games > Magic The Gathering Online > Drafts as text files.

Converting those text files

Go to http://www.zizibaloob.com/convert_images.html and paste the contents of the text file into the Image Converter box and hit Convert Draft. Now there will be 3 boxes on the screen:

Image Converter (where you pasted your text file contents)

Output (what you copy for future use)

Preview (what it will look like on your webpage)

Copy the contents of the 2^nd box (output) onto your clipboard for the next step.

Adding a draft to your webpage

Back at your page in Google, click on Create Page. Enter in a page name and URL. If you’re going to be doing multiple drafts, you probably want a standard naming convention (draft_## or something like that) but it isn’t necessary. Once you have your name and URL, click Create Page. You’ll have a screen something like this:

Click on the HTML button on the top bar and paste the output from the draft converter and hit update. Now your screen should look like this:

You can now add comments, your decklist, or anything else. When you’re done, click Save on the top right of your screen. That’s it, you’re done.

Note – if you want to keep your decklist, you need to save it separately in MTGO during deck construction. To do this, when building your deck click “Save As” and save it as a text file. Then you can just copy/paste it into your commentary.

Anyone who has been participating in the Twitter/Google Wave enabled Standard discussions leading up to States this year is probably familiar with Thomas Dodd aka Amistod. Below is his tournament report from states. Enjoy!

Hey guys, it is Thomas, coming to you from just outside Atlanta. We had a great 2009’s turnout down here and I would like to share the deck I played. But first, a short PSA on Blightning.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mail Bag Part 3

BDM answers your questions and discusses his recent trips to Seattle and Columbus with Matt Wang.

Please let us know what you think and if we should do more.

Best,

Matt

Mail Bag Part 2

BDM answers your questions and discusses his recent trips to Seattle and Columbus with Matt Wang.

Please let us know what you think and if we should do more.

Best,

Matt

Mail Bag Part 1

BDM answers your questions and discusses his recent trips to Seattle and Columbus with Matt Wang.

Please let us know what you think and if we should do more.

Best,

Matt

Going into Regionals, I was pretty sure that my deck choice (obviously Jund Ramp) was solid. After hours of play and discussion with Mikey J, I was convinced that Jund was the deck to play for the tournament.

I woke up Saturday morning to what looked like rain outside. I hit the streets around 7:30, caught the bus across town, and took the 1 train down to Penn Station to meet up with a bunch of other NY magic players that were also planning on taking the 8:14 train to Edison. I found a seat in the middle of the train and popped on the headphones (LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver) for the hour long ride.

The venue is about a mile walk from the train station in Edison. I joined up with “Siege-Gang Ferrando,” Devon, GCB, Alex B and Regionals first-timer Seong An. Seong easily identified us as Magic players and joined us for the hike through commercial New Jersey.

We arrived at the venue (basement of a church) in the middle of a funeral procession and quietly worked our way to the side entrance. I am 6 cards short going in, still missing 1 Karrthus, 1 Cloudthresher and 4 Rampant Growth. I find fivewithflores and he informs me that the dealers are sold out of Karrthus. Luis “Not Vargas” Neiman hooks me up with the Rampant Growths. Lucky for me, Seong had a Karrthus and Cloudthresher that I could mise. I register and write down my decklist and pretty soon the round starts.

Round 1, Mike with 5c Control

Game 1 we both mulligan to 6. I win the die roll and make Civic Wayfinder, then Kitchen Finks, and they take him from 20 to 0 after being joined by a Treetop Village a few turns later. Mike misses a few land drops and I’m not sure he even played a spell at all.

I figured him for 5c control because of all his vivid lands and side in the Anathemancer/Karrthus/Primal Command package.

Game 2 I mulligan and we trade hits back and forth with with early finks. Eventually Mike turtles up behind a Wall of Reverence and a Plumeveil. He counters my relevant threats while gaining life each turn. Eventually he finds a Broodmate Dragon and finishes me off.

Game 3 we both keep 7 and I have a strong hand which includes none other than my borrowed Karrthus. I begin chipping away early with a Anathemancer, bolting him for 4 and getting him down to 12 before he gets a Wall of Reverence going. On my turn 6 I have a Broodmate and Primal Command, but opt for the Command to try to fish up another Anathemancer. He counters it, untaps, and slams down a Broodmate on his 6th turn. I pray for 7th land but draw Rampant Growth instead and have to settle for playing my own Broodmate. Mike plays Cruel Ultimatum, and I show him the Karrthus I am forced to discard in my hand. At this point MJF has found his way to my table, sees the board, and declares me the winner. Of course I rip a Makeshift Mannequin to bring back Karrthus, steal his dragons, and attack him for 23. He blocks the 7/7 with his wall and stays alive at 6 life. Mike untaps and Wraths the board but two turns later I find my 7th land and Unearth Anathemancer for 9.

1-0
2-1

Round 2, Justin with Red Deck

I win the die roll again and get to go first. Justin has a slow hand with no action until a turn 3 Ram Gang. I take hits and accelerate, then play three consecutive Broodmate Dragons.

Game 2 Justin keeps a hand that I can only assume has multiple Demigods. His turn 3 play is a Everlasting Torment, which prevents me from gaining life off a Kitchen Finks… but doesn’t prevent the Finks from beating him down. Justin never finds his 5th land, and I follow up my Finks with a Dragon and finish it.

2-0
4-1

Round 3, Noah with GW Tokens

Game 1 our hero is again on the play but mulligans a hand 3 Forest, 3 Cloudthresher, and Gift of the Gargantuan. I mulligan into three consecutive no-land hands and obviously get rolled when I keep on 3. I am pretty confident in that mulligan, as Gift is not an ideal turn 3 play, and that hand had no hope against an aggressive deck.

Game 2 I keep a 7 card “speculative” hand with a Fallout, Mannequin, Civic, and Gift. The Fallout is dead as his draw consisted of Dauntless Escort and Liege. My first Gift shows me 4 lands, while my second Gift shows me 4 creatures, none of which are the Shriekmaw I would need to turn the game around. I finally draw a Shriekmaw when I am on 1 and Noah has three or four men on board. In retrospect that may have been a borderline keep, but I had the right lands to Fallout if he had had a bear-into-procession draw I was hoping to see.

2-1
4-3

Round 4, David with Bant

Game 1 is the only game I won against David, and it was the game I deserved to lose. I made multiple mistakes in this game, the worst of which was not using Banefire on his Bant Bird and playing Shriekmaw on his Rhox War Monk instead of Rafiq. By not killing Rafiq I ended up having to chump block most of the game while working him down to 7 with the Shriekmaw. The turn that I would have to chump with the Maw I drew a lethal Banefire to steal the win.

Game 2 I drew all my Banefires and none of my Shriekmaws. I kept trading 1 for 1 with his guys, hoping to draw some action for the Mannequins in my hand. I run out of answers and never get a threat, and finally succumb to an exalted BoP.

Game 3 was really close, and I am sure I made a mistake somewhere because I felt like I should have won it. Instead, my final life total shows David ending the game with 70+ life. David got out a Behemoth Sledge and kept threatening to crush me with giant, doublestriking lifelinkers. I cleared the board multiple times with Shriekmaws and Caldera Helion, but David always had another Rafiq or Rhox War Monk to pick up the Sledge. We go to turns and David continues to play threats while I stop drawing answers.

I am pretty sure that I sideboarded wrong for this match. I left in Volcanic Fallout, which is dead against the cards that matter. I boarded like I would against GW, bringing out Dragons and some gifts for Helions, Maw, and Terror; not realizing that Dragon is my best threat here since he has no way he can block a flying creature other than Birds. Instead I should have taken out Fallouts and a Gifts for the Primals, which could have been used to remove his equipment or search up removal.

2-2
5-5

Thoroughly dissapointed, and tilting pretty badly after losing a matchup that I think is pretty favorable, I vent to Mike and he convinces me to stay in to try and get some packs and practice with the deck.

Round 5, Adam with Naya 5-power

Game 1 I lose my first die roll of the day and Adam comes out slow with a turn 3 5/4. I play a Civic, take a hit from the Beast, and follow up next turn with a Finks. I take another hit and Adam plays Spellbreaker Behemoth. Luckily I have a Shriekmaw + Mannequin, which is followed up by a dragon. I swing him down to 5 and finish him with Banefire.

Game 2 plays out pretty much the same way, except now I have more Shriekmaws and a couple Primal Commands to go get them. I don’t remember the specifics of this game other than that I slowed him down early by evoking a Shriekmaw on his Bloomtender. I ended the game at 22 so it must have been pretty one-sided.

3-2
7-5

Round 6, Eric with BW tokens.

I win my 5th die roll of the day and keep a hand that is gas against anything but BW tokens: Civic Wayfinder, Shriekmaw, Fallout, Mannequin, 3 Lands. However, Eric has the triple Sculler + Glorious Anthem draw. My plays this game were Civic Wayfinder and Makeshift Mannequin targeting Civic Wayfinder.

Game 2 is much closer. I burn 2 Banefire early to kill an Elspeth and Ajani, and have a Fallout to keep him off his triple Winbrisk Heights. Eric has a Bitterblossom and we are each getting in damage when we can. I make a big mistake towards the end of the game: I have a Civic and two 4/4 fliers on the board, while Eric has a medium sized token army. I play a Helion here to wipe his board, and foolishly choose to Devour my 2/2. I had a Mannequin in hand, which could have been used 2 turns later to wrath him again. Instead I make an irrelevant 4/4 and lose the game a few turns later when Eric is able to pop all his Heights (Cloudgoat, Ajani, and something else) and slowly supersizes his team. I lose this game with Eric on 4.

3-3
7-7

Seong watches me take a third loss and tells me he is dropping and heading back. I decide to drop here so I can return his cards, and we end up traveling back to the city together.

Despite practicing with the deck, I made too many mistakes and put myself out of contention. I still think the deck is great and I am planning on playing it in any upcoming PTQs. Mike finished 6-2, you can see his tournament report on his blog, and it looks like a couple players made top 8 with the deck as well. I encourage anyone who is undecided on a PTQ deck to consider Jund ramp as it is favored against a lot of decks in the field, and seems to be 50/50 against its worst matchups.

How did your Regionals go? What did you end up playing? I know (from Twitter) that a couple people did pretty well. Let us know how your tournament went in the comments.

~WillPoP

On Tuesday I was testing for Standard with Matt “Ferran Dynamo” Ferrando.  We had all these tokens on the table and the combat phases felt like sealed deck, and I was just hating it.

So I called Jake Van Lunen, who often has some crazy idea up his sleeve.  It turns out the crazy idea was already out there (Ferran Dynamo had heard about it that morning, but was keeping it from me!): play a bunch of Fogs and Howling Mines, and just pretend the combat phase doesn’t exist.  I was in love.

I couldn’t find the list online, so I proxied up my own version.  I played a few games with Ferran Dynamo and it worked exactly like I thought it would.  When I saw the original list later that week I was unimpressed, and refined my own version.  Here’s the maindeck I ran on Saturday:

4 Holy Day
4 Pollen Lullaby
4 Angelsong
4 Cryptic Command
3 Negate
3 Runed Halo
4 Howling Mine
4 Jace Beleren
4 Font of Mythos
4 Mind Stone
4 Mystic Gate
4 Adarkar Wastes
4 Arcane Sanctum
3 Reflecting Pool
3 Plains
4 Island

I did too little testing, and upon arriving at the site I heard everyone asking for Font of Mythos and Holy Day from the dealers, so my sideboard was a complete mess.  I hadn’t the foggiest idea what my plan was against anyone, I just knew I needed some Forge-Tenders and Celestial Purges.  I had singleton Platinum Angel, singleton Wrath of God, and even singleton Hoofprints of the Stag.  I only squeezed in 2 Forge-Tenders.  2 Pithing Needle was a good addition, but mostly it was ugly.

Round 1 I got the mirror.  My opponent drew too many cards off his own mines and whatnot one turn, so he got a gameloss– but the judge told us to finish that game as if it was game 2 after he put the extra card back.  That’s a new one!  I won game 3 on the back of drawing both my Forge-Tenders and dealing 18 with them.  Seriously.  Hoofprints finished the job.

Round 2 I beat a 5-color deck that seemed to have no plan against me at all.  He killed all my Jace’s, but he was drawing first off Howling Mines, so…

Round 3 I cast my first fog effects of the day, and lost to Elementals.  My lack of preperation was on full display as I forgot that Runed Halo didn’t protect Jace from attackers, and I learned that Elementals runs a maindeck Wispmare when it destroyed said Runed Halo at an inopportune time.  I had another Runed Halo out naming “Banefire”, which of course isn’t in that deck.

Things turned around Round 4 as no opponent ever appeared.  I watched a R/B burn mirror match and thought to myself, “I hope I don’t play against one of them next round.”

I didn’t, I rattled off some wins (finally getting to play against B/W tokens once, which is basically a bye), and was 6-1 needing one more win to top 8.  I was paired against Alec Nevins, a good man whom I would normally root for.  He was with B/W tokens.  Next to us was another Fog v. B/W tokens, and if Fog won Alec and I could draw in.

During these matches, Osyp wandered over to watch.  Someone must have been complaining about how stupid the Fog deck is because Osyp began to extrapolate on the beauties of the deck.  It went something like this:

“I love that deck!  If you’re a decent player, you can’t lose with it.  I want to play it so much! It does my 2 favorite things in Magic, draw lots of cards and piss off your opponent!”

In the neighboring match, there was confusion about the timing of a Cryptic Command, and a pretty horrible ruling by the judge on the matter put the Fog player down a game (he would lose game 2 and force Alec & I to play it out).  Osyp proceeded to chew out the judge, finishing ‘er off with: “If you had made that ruling against me, I would have gotten banned: on Monday morning on magicthegathering.com it would say, ‘Osyp Lebedowicz kills local judge.’”

In the midst of this performance, I had lost game 2 to a barrage of discard and a well-timed Austere Command, and was in game 3.  Somehow, I hit a huge glut of not-fogs, and was bailed out by Alec forgeting to attack one turn (most of his guys were tapped from Pollen Lullaby clash, but he had enough power to kill me with the Marsh Flitter with tokens he had cast).  Then, on the last turn I needed to fog, all I had was Cryptic Command.  Naturally, I hit him with it and bounced his Mutavault, offering him the game on a plate if he would activate his ‘Vault, sac to Marsh Flitter, and fizzle my Command.  He must have been distracted by Osyp’s antics, too, because he missed it.

On to the top 8, which (I’m told) was predominantly B/W tokens decks.  Of course I got paired against the guy running Qasali Pridemage, Maelstrom Pulse, Tidehollow Sculler and Bloodbraid Elf, with Thoughtsieze in the ‘board.  I pulled out game 1, just barely.  Games 2 and 3 I had land-heavy hands, no Halo to protect me from Thoughtseizes or Scullers, no Pithing Needle to stop Pridemages, and couldn’t get a howling mine effect to stick through his removal.  I ended both games with more than half the land in my deck in play, without every going halfway through my deck.

I was about 10 Total Rating points from q’ing that way, so if I can put in a decent showing in Seattle and the LCQ’s at Honolulu, maybe I’ll be at Nationals yet…

The Fog deck is great.  It changes the rules and makes life very difficult for anyone who is unprepared.  However, I don’t think anyone is going to be unprepared anymore.  Aside from me…

-gcb

A little deeper look at that email Matt posted..

Around last Thursday, I exchanged a series of text messages with Asher Hecht, telling him, in the same way that you tell someone you’re going to show up for dinner, that I was going to win this PTQ.  I was confident in my deck, confident in my ability with it, and very focused.  I had worked on my toughest matchup during the week and figured out how to maximize my chance to win it, and it was the only relevant matchup that I was concerned about (Elves).

The deck I ran was Levitt Level Blue– kind alike Faeries but with good creatures like Tarmogoyf and Kitchen Finks instead of junk that says “Wizard” on it somewhere:

Everything went according to plan, as I beat elves round one.  Spencer Assif, it should be noted, had some pretty poor draws.  He also loaned me one of the cards I sideboarded in against him.  Thanks for being a sport, Spencer.

For the next 5 rounds, I played against one Death Cloud player who generously failed to pay for a Pact when he was way ahead in game 2 after I won game 1, and 4 Naya Zoo and Bant aggro decks, which don’t do anything so unfair that it makes me concerned about losing.  Christian Calcano, who I beat in round 6, shook his head after and called the matchup, “unwinnable”.  All those 3-drops that are supposed to get around Spellstutter Sprites and Spell Snares just give me time to cast finks and goyfs, resolve Visions, and start casting Cryptic Commands and powerful artifacts.

I drew twice into the top 8 and faced Desire, which I expected to be exiting the metagame by now, and had made my deck weaker against.  I drew enough Canonists to lock him out in games 2 and 3, despite seeing 0 counters game 3 and just having to pray that he couldn’t find a bounce spell (I had a Jitte protecting my canonist from burn).

In the quarters semis I beat local ptq-master Rob Seder and his interesting Disrupting Shoal, Visions, and Thirst for Knowledge-featuring faeries deck in 3 games.  If you play this deck, against faeries just cast your threats and force them to react.  They won’t catch up unless you have a very bad draw.

The finals was a W/R boat-brewish deck, with Figures, Fanatics, Ajanis, Spectral Processions, Seige-gang commanders, lightning helixes, Fulminator Mages, and such-like.  Hedge-mage came out of the board, of course.

Game 1 I had a decent hand with 4 lands in it.  Matt Ferrando was watching, and later said that he knew I’d be in trouble if I drew 2 more lands in the next 3 cards.  So it went.

Game 2 I had a better draw, and he was a little land-heavy, giving me plenty of time to deal with his threats and kill him with a Kitchen Finks.

Game 3 was much closer.  He stuck a turn-1 Figure, Helixed my turn-2 Goyf, and made his figure 4/4 on his 4th turn, while I sacced some lands. I had drawn none of my explosives or paths, and had only a sower in hand to deal with Figure and a lot of land again, so I dropped Finks on turns 4 and 5 and waited to hit 6 land so I could protect my Sower with a Mana Leak.

He played a Fulminator with one land up and beat me down to 10.  He did not sac fulminator.

On my turn I drew Umezawa’s Jitte, tapped all my non-basics to cast my Sower, stole his Figure, and left 2 basic lands up to facilitate Mana Leak.  I then traded half of a Finks and a tapped land for his Fulminator, not wanting the Fulminator around to fizzle my Jitte trigger.

On his turn, he dropped another land and cast Siege-Gang Commander.  I let it stick, since I had Jitte to deal with it.  Then, at the end of his turn, I don’t think to shrink his Figure, which I should have done.  On my turn I play a land, going up to 6 lands again, give the Jitte to my Sower, and swing with the team.  He takes 9 and trades a goblin for my shrunken Finks.  My hand is now Mana Leak & land.

Knowing his deck has a lot of token generators, and that he has been missing land drops (and thus has more gas in hand than I do), I know I’m going to need to ride my Jitte.  So when he plays Hedge-Mage with 2 mana up, I Mana Leak.  He then helixes my Sower, getting his 4/4 figure back.  I don’t have the spare mana to shrink it back to 2/2.

On my turn, I draw another land.  I equip my remaining Finks and swing, as his Figure is tapped.  I pass, and we both know he doesn’t have the 6th land since he already missed a drop.  He’s also playing Windbrisk Heights, which won’t help.  But the draw yields a Bloodstained Mire, and he swings for 8 in the air with his Figure, dropping me to 2.  He has 2 goblins in play, remember, so even 2 more Jitte counters from an attack won’t buy me another turn.  Draw phase?  Flooded Strand.

I had sided a land out on the draw, too.  I should have shrunk the stupid Figure.

Earlier this season, I went 14-3 in games at a PTQ in Philly and finished 9th by 0.1% on tiebreaks.  If you’re going to be at King’s Games in Brooklyn this Saturday, I’ll see you there.  I plan on winning this time.

-gcb

Despite some concern about whether or not we would be welcome at a mono-Japanese hobby store, Zeilend and I went down for the FNM draft last friday. We had been doing a lot of drafts on the tcgplayer utility to try and get familiar with the sets again. I hadn’t drafted since the week of the Conflux release, and Zeilend hadn’t played Magic in about 6 months.

After a short subway ride + walk, we arrived at the store around 5:30pm. We watched a little Legacy action and registered for the draft. We got a full 16 people, so the organizer split us into two pods. Thankfully, he put Zeilend and I together so that she could translate for me. Luckily for both of us, the organizer also elected to use English packs for our pod. There was some grumbling about this and Zeilend told me that it was not a popular decision. Instead of handing out packs as prizes, all the rares would be pooled after the tournament and the players would re-draft them according to place.

Draft begin!

I don’t remember the specifics of the draft, but in the 1st pack I 1st picked a Naya charm, 2nd picked a Magma Spray, and picked up two Druid of the Anima and two Dragon Fodders. Both Fodders tabled back to me, getting them 8th and 10th pick.

2nd pack I 1st pick FOIL Sarkhan Vol, 2nd pick Resounding Roar, 3rd or 4th picked a foil Wild Nacatl, and also got a Rakeclaw Gargantuan, 2 Mosstodon, an Exuberant Firestoker, and a Naya Panorama.

3rd pack I 1st pick Armillary Sphere, passing a Nicol Bolas, which the player to my left windmill slammed. I end up getting a couple Matca Rioters, a Wild Leotau, a Beacon Behemoth, a Viashino Slaughtermaster and a Paleoloth!!!

I end up with around 23 playables, and decide to play my Gustrider Exuberant main deck since I had 5 creatures with power 5, and I imagined recurring it with Paleoloth might be a nice way to break a stalemate. I ended up playing one Swamp that I could mise to pump my Slaughtermaster and Matca Rioters.

Zeilend’s deck looked pretty scary. She had a blue and black Capsule, three Glaze Fiend, 2 Parasite Strix, 2 Sedraxis Alchemist, Resounding Wave, Fate Stitcher, Puppet Conjuror, Oblivion Ring, Sanctum Gargoyle, Grixis Slavedriver, and some Landcyclers. Basically, the BDM dream deck.

Apologies to all opponents for not knowing their names, I could not read them. I got by with gestures and one-word sentences.

Round 1 I get paired against a five-color deck that seemed heavily Jund. The guy had a lot of Unearth, some pingers, and both Sprouting and Scarland Thrinax. I lost game 1 to a pretty quick draw. He got both his Thrinax out, and starting growing the Scarland. We were trading hits back and forth and I thought I was winning the race until he started counting up all his creatures. “Soul’s Fire?” I asked. “Hai.”

I got pretty aggressive draws games 2 and 3. Game 2 I surprised him with lethal off of a Viashano Slaughtermaster that got pumped by Resounding Roar.

Game 3 I hit Wild Nacatl, Druid, and then 5-power creatures until he scooped.

1-0

Round 2 I am against another five-color deck. I kept a really loose hand game 1, six lands and shiny Sarkhan Vol. I runner four straight lands and scoop it.

Game 2 we both mulligan, and I think he must have been missing colors because he barely played anything the whole game, even though he was making land drops. Maybe he just kept a slow hand since he saw no spells from me game 1. I played guys, turned them sideways, and won pretty quick.

Game 3 he mulligans and keeps a 1-lander. He misses his 2nd land drop, but I have mono-forests and am beating with a 1/1 Nacatl (this is humorous to his friends who are observing us). He starts drawing lands, but I make a Druid and start dropping big men. I end the game quick by pumping up a Slaughtermaster with a Resounding Roar again.

2-0

Last round and I am paired against the other 2-0 from our pod. He was the player to my left that I had passed the Nicol Bolas to, and like my first two opponents he was also playing five-color. Game 1 he has the option of playing a Wretched Banquet on my Druid or my 1/1 Matca Rioters. Of course he chooses the… Rioters. Druid was the only source of non-green mana I drew all game, and I am pretty sure he would have rolled me if he had just killed the Druid.

Game 2 I side in Molten Frame, thinking I could use it to blow up an Obelisk. Of course I drew it in my opening hand and saw that it would not be nearly as helpful as I thought. I had a pretty good curve, mising my Swamp for my Slaughtermaster, and allowing me to make 4/4 Rioters. Imagine how excited I was when my opponent makes a turn 4 Tower Gargoyle, giving my a target for the Molten Frame. Since he had shown me no artifact Creatures game one, he was pretty shocked to see that I had brought it in. Rather than try to explain that I had misread the card, I said nothing and let him believe I was just that good. He drew some more removal, but I was getting in for damage and made a good trade with Resounding Roar. My opponent top decks a needed land and windmill slammed a Charnelhoard Wurm. He is at 4, and I have two 1/1 goblin tokens in play. Luckily, I top deck Naya Charm and swing with both tokens. He blocks 1, and I charm to regrow my Resounding Roar, pump the unblocked token, and win.

3-0

I won the pod, which meant I was the “Ichi” and would get first pick of the rares. The winner of each pod also got a Kitchen Finks FNM promo, which was pretty nice. I tried to convince everyone that the Path to Exile should be laid out with the other rares, hoping that I could pick it 9th. They didn’t get the joke, and shuffled it in with the other uncommons to be dealt out. I first picked the foil planeswalker, and also got a Sphinx Summoner, Death Baron and Mindlock Orb.

So that was my draft in Japan. I don’t think my deck was really spectacular, but it was definitely well matched against the slow decks that my opponents built.

Next time on Price of Progress: Extended decks, a topic I have been putting off for too long.

~WillPoP

Unfortunately I did not make it out to the PTQ in Pittsburgh last week; neither the length of the drive or missing valentines day appealed to me too much. Had I gone, however, I would have gotten to see a friend of mine from the area do pretty well with a deck that is not really on anyone’s radar right now. Click here to see the top 8 decks from that tournament.

Andrew Wagner ended up getting third in the tournament, losing in the semifinals with this deck:

Main deck
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Burrenton Forge-Tender
3 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
4 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Kataki, War’s Wage
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Wilt-Leaf Liege
4 Spectral Procession
4 Path to Exile
2 Oblivion Ring
3 Umezawa’s Jitte
2 Chrome Mox
4 Mutavault
1 Eiganjo Castle
15 Plains

Sideboard
2 Rule of Law
2 Jötun Grunt
3 Icatian Javelineers
3 Pithing Needle
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
2 Kataki, War’s Wage

I caught up with Andrew over Facebook to ask him about his deck. Andrew said that he picked the deck because he is stubborn and does not like to play well established decks. Despite how well he did (6-0-1 in the swiss), Andrew does not think the deck is a great pick right now because it hasunfavorable matchups against some popular decks. Here is how he evaluated the matchups:

Strengths: Can beat all the aggro and combo decks on the back of maindeck and sideboard hate. This deck is loaded with cards to beat red decks (Burrenton Forge-Tender, Jitte, Kitchen Finks, Path to Exile) and combo (Ethersworn Cannonist, Rule of Law, Jitte and Path against Elves).

Weaknesses: You are playing bad cards like Isamaru, and you can’t really beat any of the control decks in the format. Icatian Javelineers in the board hypothetically helps the Fae matchup. Rock decks are pretty tough as well, and Jotun Grunt is in there to get rid opposing Life From the Loams and shrink Tarmogoyfs. The main deck Liege is a nod to Raven’s Crime.

Andrew lost to Bant Aggro in the top 8, a deck that Mike has been posting about recently on his site. If he played it again, which he wouldn’t, he would get rid of the Chrome Mox and put another Oblivion Ring in the main.

Despite Andrew’s lack of enthusiasm for his deck choice, white weenie looks like it could a great gap deck at some point in the season if Faeries or Bant should become unpopular.

~WillPoP

PS: Knight of the Reliquary + Scapeshift = Nombo or Combo?