Hello! I’m Oliver Tiu, a player new to the Pro Tour scene who qualified for the 2016 World Championships by being the first-ever Constructed Master. Going into my first Pro Tour (PT Battle for Zendikar) I had modest aspirations for the year. My sole goal, which seemed like a stretch at the time, was merely to achieve Gold player status. I reached the necessary threshold in Pro Tour Shadows over Innistrad, and then I figured I would start traveling to Grand Prixs and make a run at Platinum status. I felt like I was favored to reach it, but if I simply ended up as a Gold player during my rookie year I wouldn’t be terribly upset. Fortunately, the victories kept on coming, and I found myself with Platinum status before the upcoming Pro Tour! As a result, I had a single lofty objective for Pro Tour Eldritch Moon; to do well enough to qualify for Worlds either from Pro Points at-large or through being the Constructed Master. Thanks to a great team and fortunate matchups, I got there and found myself qualified for the most prestigious Magic tournament during my rookie year. Simply put, I was stoked for Worlds and what professional Magic had in store for me in the future.

Right after the Pro Tour, I approached Ondrej Strasky and asked him to test with me for the tournament, since he has had previous Worlds experience along with being an excellent player.

Going into Worlds, I knew the biggest edge to be gained was in Modern. It will be perceived as the least important format by most of the competitors, since it was the format with the least number of rounds. Therefore, I assumed many players will go with ‘safe’ decks such as Jund or Abzan. Normally, I like playing Affinity in Modern tournaments, because I believe it is the most powerful deck in Modern. However, many of the worlds players knew that myself and a few others (such as Mike Sigrist) had a preference for Affinity, so they would have the necessary number of sideboard cards to be favored against it. So, I ruled out that option and thought Dredge might be a good choice for the expected metagame. I tried it out, and was unimpressed. The final nail in the coffin was it doing superbly well in an SCG open, putting it on everyone’s radar. I tried thinking of other ways to fight Abzan from an unexpected angle, when I remembered that my friend Thien Nguyen had done very well with a unique RG [card]Scapeshift[/card] deck. I had him ship me the list, and I immediately started 5-0ing league after league on Magic Online, crushing many GBx decks in the process.

The one glaring issue with the deck was its weakness to Modern’s quickest decks, such as Infect and Suicide Zoo. After much deliberation, myself and Ondrej decided that people will avoid these decks due to their unfavorable matchups vs the GBx decks. It was pretty clear that the numerous positive aspects of the deck greatly outweighed the negative ones, so we locked in on the deck fairly quickly. Then, one week prior to Worlds in Grand Prix Indianapolis, disaster struck. A couple of relatively similar Valakut-based decks top 8ed the tournament, which could lead to players being prepared with very effective sideboard cards, such as [card]Leyline of Sanctity[/card] or [card]Blood Moon[/card]. Thankfully, the lists that did top 8 featured a [card]Through the Breach[/card] focused plan, rather than a Scapeshift-based one. This means that they perform worse against Abzan, due to [card]Through the Breach[/card] being inherently poor against both [card]Thoughtseize[/card] and [card]Path to Exile[/card]. Ondrej and I were both hoping people will test these lists, and quickly dismiss them for their consistency problems. Quite luckily, this ended up being exactly the case and a vast majority of players completely ignored Valakut hate in their sideboards.

Titan Shift – Oliver Tiu

[deck]
[Lands]
4 Cinder Glade
3 Forest
7 Mountain
2 Stomping Ground
4 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
3 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
[/Lands]
[Spells]
2 Anger of the Gods
4 Explore
2 Farseek
3 Khalni Heart Expedition
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Scapeshift
4 Search for Tomorrow
2 Summoner’s Pact
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
4 Primeval Titan
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
1 Anger of the Gods
3 Obstinate Baloth
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Ancient Grudge
2 Chalice of the Void
3 Engineered Explosives
2 Nature’s Claim
2 Sudden Shock
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

We then transitioned to testing for what is likely the most difficult Standard format in recent memory, both to play and build decks in. Early on, Ondrej told me he was likely locked into Bant Company, since it was quite clearly the best deck in the format. I was more reluctant to join the enemy, since I didn’t feel like the deck was unbeatable and I despised playing Bant mirrors. I tested a variety of non-Bant decks, such as GB, Jund Emerge, and Temur Emerge. I found GB to be borderline unplayable, since I felt like it didn’t have a single favorable matchup and a handful of unwinnable ones. Jund Emerge felt like it was trying to do too many things at once, and the deck lacked the crucial synergy between its control/midrange elements and its emerge package. Temur Emerge was compelling, but didn’t feel powerful enough to justify playing it over the Bant menace. To say I was discouraged at this point would be an understatement.

The Star City Games Invitational that took place a couple of weeks before the Pro Tour was the light at the end of the tunnel. Michael Majors top 8ed on the back of a ‘turbo Emrakul’ deck that looked like an improved Temur Emerge deck. I wasted no time and started testing it nonstop to see if it was the savior it appeared to be. After playing countless games against Ondrej and my friend Avi on Bant, I became convinced that it was a favorable matchup for Turbo Emrakul. It was also beating the other decks I expected to see in the field, such as GB, Temur, Crush, and Jund so I locked it in. Ondrej was skeptical, but eventually came to the right decision of submitting the exact 150 that I decided on.

Temur Emerge – Oliver Tiu

[deck]
[Lands]
9 Forest
4 Island
1 Mountain
2 Shivan Reef
2 Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
4 Yavimaya Coast
[/Lands]
[Spells]
2 Gather the Pack
4 Grapple with the Past
4 Kozilek’s Return
3 Nissa’s Pilgrimage
3 Traverse the Ulvenwald
4 Vessel of Nascency
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
3 Elder Deep-Fiend
3 Emrakul, the Promised End
2 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
2 Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy
1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
2 Pilgrim’s Eye
3 Primal Druid
2 Wretched Gryff
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
1 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
1 Kiora, Master of the Depths
2 Gnarlwood Dryad
1 Lashweed Lurker
2 Tireless Tracker
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
1 Coax from the Blind Eternities
3 Dispel
1 Explosive Vegetation
2 Invasive Surgery
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

When the tournament finally came, I found myself to be in what has to be one of the most stacked draft pods ever in competitive Magic, even for the Worlds field. It consisted of myself, LSV, Reid, Sam, Marcio, Joel, Shota, and Lukas. I consider myself a weak Limited player, especially compared to players of this caliber, so I would be ecstatic to emerge from this pod with a 2-1 record. I read the signals well, and ended up with a solid GW deck splashing Altered Ego. I normally don’t like GW in this format, but my deck featured some great removal such as 2 Faith Unbroken and 2 Clear Shot. After beating Reid Duke equipped with a very good RU deck, I was feeling optimistic about my chances. The possibility of winning this insane pod actually crossed my mind once or twice. These dreams were abruptly crushed by the Draft Master Marcio, who used his inferior deck but superior play to quickly dispatch me in two games. Things started to look bleak when I was destroyed by Shota in the next round. Thankfully, I’ve had plenty of experience of coming back from rocky starts this year, most of which came from Pro Tours where I did poorly in the first draft.

I rebounded thanks to a lot of luck in Constructed, beating LSV and Yuuya. I then fell to what ended up being my kryptonite throughout the tournament, Shota Yasooka. I proceeded to play a match I’ll never forget against Steve Rubin. We split the first two games, which both ended up being uneventful. Then during game three I found myself on the draw, with a five card hand that included a grand total of zero lands. However if I could draw 2 lands in a row, then the draw had a fighting chance. I figured the risk was worth it, and kept the hand hoping I could get lucky and end the day with a positive record. I was then blessed with back to back lands, which made my draw actually playable. Steve played the game very aggressively with multiple [card]Den Protector[/card]s in [card]Goblin Piker[/card] mode, which is a reasonable strategy against an opponent who mulliganed to five. I eventually was able to stabilize at 5 life and the game went on for an extended time. Since we both had been playing for such a long time against the best in the world, tournament fatigue began to affect both of us. After some misplays from my side, we found ourselves in turns. As turn approached, I could no longer win the game, so the main priority was to have the result be a draw. I developed a plan for this, but made an obscenely embarrassing error in executing the plan and found myself in a position to just die instead of having the draw. But the unthinkable happened. Steve must’ve been in the mindset that the match was going be a draw, so with lethal on board he extended his hand and said “yep, it’s a draw.” I was simply speechless. Somehow I didn’t get punished for my egregious error, and was in a much better position going into day 2 than I would’ve been otherwise. I viewed this miracle as a sign that lady luck was on my side this weekend.

Going into day two, I was really hoping to be able to 3-0, since I was very confident in being able to 3-1 with our sick Modern tech. This appeared to be a real possibility after I drafted another good WG deck, including many rares such as Descend upon the Sinful and Bygone Bishop. I started 2-0, beating Brad Nelson who also had a very good deck thanks to some poor draws on his end. I then found myself up against Shota, who was 2-0 against me at this point. I was determined to get my revenge, and I was liking my chances after seeing his decklist. He was on RU, which is one of the best archetypes in this draft format, but his iteration of it appeared to be on the lower end in terms of power level. But, he is still one of the best Magic players ever, so anything could happen. I then was very convincingly outplayed for the second time this tournament, and then left the venue in a daze reflecting on how I let that match get away from me.

I was still live for top 4, but needed to go undefeated in Modern. Thanks to fortunate pairings and the deck living up to expectations, exactly this happened. I played some very close games, but everything had broke my way. When it dawned on me that I had just top 4ed worlds, I was speechless yet again. I had done the unthinkable my rookie year. It was the most amazing Magic accomplishment I’ve ever done, but I was still determined on being the champion.

Unfortunately, this did not happen thanks to some loose play on my end and good play from Marcio’s side. In hindsight, I wish I had just decided to play Bant, since Temur had some consistency issues due to its reliance on self mill cards and possibility to be flooded with expensive Eldrazi. But I was still very satisfied with my performance and exceeded my wildest expectations going into the tournament. Now, I’m more driven than ever to qualify for Worlds again and try to improve on this result.