BDM and Flores are finally reunited in an intimate one on one podcasting session. In Part 2 they discuss an interesting strategy that emerged from PT Honolulu, Alara Block constructed, and Type 2.
Kazuya Mitamura may have won PT Honolulu but for the Constructed portion the winner was Jim Davis who went 9-1 with his cascade-based Jund deck. The Long Island, NY native wrote a tournament report for a local website about his unique approach to the format, which saw him choose to be on the draw in all the matches he won. In fact, the only Constructed match he lost was the last one when he veered from the script and chose to play first in the last game.
From his report:
The shocking revelation is that I chose to draw rather than play first. In fact, every single game in the constructed portion (save for game 3 round 16, which I will get to later) I was on the draw. This worked out very well because despite losing most of my die rolls in 10 rounds I was always exactly where I wanted to be as my opponents all chose to play.
Now, why draw? When I was first testing the deck Blightning was in the board, and it was simply devastating in the mirror. The deck has no card draw style card advantage, and needs its lands to get going, which means Blightning either stunted mana development brutally or spiked two big spells. This is huge because the way the deck is designed all of your spells have the card advantage built in, meaning most are in essence two spells in one. So if you discard two spells to Blightning you have discarded almost 4 spells of value.
With one or two more wins in Limited — a format that he has traditionally done well in — Jim could have easilly have made the Top 8 of this event and his decision to draw first would have been one of the most talked about in recent Magic history. Due to the split format his performance — and the decision that may have led to that performance — was buried in 33rd place in the final standings.
