Honolulu Bound: Part 1

Ft. Lauderdale Extended PTQ

January 24^th, 2009

So on New Years, at around midnight or so, my friend Brad sent me a text message that said “Happy New Year!” I responded to the sentiment by saying, “Happy New Year, buddy! We both ‘q’ in ’09!” A week or so later Brad made good on my prediction and actually won the first PTQ of the year in Atlanta with Lightning Angel. I was both shocked and proud, as over the past few years I’ve watched Brad go from a mediocre player, to someone I completely respect in this game. Though now I had to complete the other half of the resolution and make sure Brad wasn’t going to Hawaii alone.

My first foray this year was an eight hour drive to Mobile, Alabama, where I went 5-1 with Faeries only to lose the bubble match to Zoo. It was a disappointing 16^th place to say the least. We drove home and I was intent on making it to every PTQ this season, and I began planning for the next weekend in Ft. Lauderdale. I tested everything from TEPs, to AIR, to Sea Stompy, to some black/white Orzhov concoction that I thought might be good in this format. At that point I really just wanted to play fun cards like Descendant of Kiyomaro, Shining Shoal, and Ghost Council and not have to think as much as would be required by playing Faeries. But alas, that isn’t how we win PTQs, a lesson I’ve slowly learned over time. Read the rest of this entry »

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 Read the rest of this entry »

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.