Uncategorized

Out of the Darkness and onto the Pro Tour!

It has been a long time since I wrote an article and I’m going to be blunt about it and get it over with: for nearly a year, I suffered a slow decline into a very deep depression that has only recently seem to have lifted. I’m talking life-threatening, hospitalized three times in a 6 month period, multiple antidepressant-taking Major Depressive Disorder. Part of me is embarrassed to share this with a wider audience but I know it’s important to bring awareness to mental health issues and do my part to fight the stigma involved with it. I identify as queer and my own participation in the LGBTQ community has taught me a lot about how important it is to be out, so my own queer politics make me feel a little queasy about hiding my mental illness.

I didn’t set out expecting to make top 8 of Grand Prix Ottawa. I had already been to 6 Grand Prix this year, with only one Day 2 finish. While GP Atlanta was my first cash finish, I had spent the year watching other friends reach important milestones, like making PTQ top 8s for the first time, and I was feeling like I had hit a plateau and maybe flailing a bit. Of course, depression and Magic don’t always go well together. I know for other people that Magic provides a social and leisure outlet that can be really helpful in battling depression but for me there were times when it just made me feel awful about myself. Part of that may be from a tendency to being too results-orientated and from pushing myself pretty hard to get better at Magic, however there were certainly times that a loss would trigger cycles of negative self-thought. But despite that, Magic remained for the longest time the one thing I remained interested in doing. When it got to the point where I didn’t even want to play Magic anymore, when even the thought of playing made me feel sick and I was just spending my free time basically staring at a wall, waiting for it to be time to go to sleep, that I reached the lowest point of my depression. This triggered my final trips to the hospital and the stay that resulted in what seems to be the correct combination of antidepressants for me.

I started drafting KTK online that day it came out, while I was still in hospital. It was a sign that things were turning around and that I was able to get pleasure out of doing the things I love again. Probably a day hasn’t gone by that I haven’t drafted KTK and up until about a week ago when I started working at a factory, I was drafting it at least 3 times a day, sometimes more. I’ve moved from Guelph back to my hometown of Hamilton and have been getting out to FNM and some tournaments at local stores. I want to keep Magic fun and not get too caught up in grinding online, so playing at these local stores has been a great way to unwind and make some new friends in Hamilton after being away for many years for university.

Anyway, GP Ottawa was first competitive tournament since GP Portland in August and I didn’t have high expectations. I felt confident I would make Day 2 but hoped for no more than making top 64 because I really wanted to get my first Pro Point. At deck build I was a little disappointed to be having to pass a pool with foil Sorin, two fetches and a [card]Crater’s Claws[/card]. It was the first time I’ve ever wondered if it would be better EV to just drop and take the money cards. You can imagine my surprise when the pool I received also had Sorin and a [card]Crater’s Claws[/card]! After a look through the rest of the pool, which was very shallow in green and blue, I decided the pool was just meant to be a Mardu deck. Just the amount of removal in those colours was enough to make a compelling case: 3 [card]Kill Shot[/card], 1 [card]Debilitating Injury[/card], 2 [card]Rite of the Serpent[/card], 1 [card]Arrow Storm[/card], 1 [card]Crater’s Claws[/card]. The deck was probably one of the easiest pools I’ve worked with and I was happy that I didn’t feel the need to dip into a fourth or fifth colour like a lot of my friends had to do. Here’s the finished product:

jessSealedOttawa1

I cut both of the [card]Rite of the Serpent[/card] because it is pretty slow removal compared to the [card]Kill Shot[/card]s and can’t burn your opponent out like [card]Crater’s Claws[/card] and [card]Arrow Storm[/card]. Playing against my friend’s big fatties Temur deck during our two round byes, I figured out that they would have to be sided in against decks looking to go bigger than me. My sealed deck has no fatties and in fact I decided to play one [card]Krumar Bond-Kin[/card] over a second [card]Leaping Master[/card] just to have one creature that could trade with something like a [card]Snowhorn Rider[/card] or a [card]Glacial Stalker[/card]. I won most of my games by just being faster or protecting Sorin long enough to let his ultimate take over the game. [card]Ankle Shanker[/card], for the most part, did a great job of breaking up board states when all I needed was to get a few more points of damage in. There were certainly situations in which he was a dead draw, but for what my deck was doing, he fit in quite well.

The only other tough decision I had to make was whether or not to play [card]Rush of Battle[/card] in my deck, especially since I had quite a few warriors to go with it. I decided not to play it because I didn’t think it would be good to go below 15 creatures in this deck and all the non-creature spells just seemed so much more powerful. I don’t really like [card]Rush of Battle[/card] or decks that try to use it and [card]Trumpet Blast[/card] so I imagine if I did mainboard it, it would have ended up being the first cut every time I went to sideboard. [card]Bloodfire Expert[/card] and [card]Leaping Master[/card] tended to be the cards I sided out most and I tended to side the two Rite of Serpents in the most, though I think there was only maybe 2 or 3 matches I even sideboarded for them. I had a number of people ask me about the double red splash and I know when I originally posted the deck, the manabase was left out. I never had problems with mana, it seemed to work out pretty well with essentially 4 dual lands to fix.

My most memorable match from day 1 is certainly playing Xavier Allegrucci in round 8. In the first game he had an overwhelming board state with counters on an [card]Abzan Falconer[/card] and [card]Ainok Bond-Kin[/card], as well as a token and a morph. He swings in for lethal and I just block the 1/1 token with [card]Leaping Master[/card] (having had a brain fart where for some reason I thought it was a morph!). I cast [card]Kill Shot[/card] on the [card]Abzan Falconer[/card] and in response he flips the morph to reveal [card]Woolly Loxodon[/card]. He thinks he has the game wrapped up there until I surprise him with the second [card]Kill Shot[/card], destroying the [card]Woolly Loxodon[/card]. In the space of one turn, the momentum just completely turned in my favour and he couldn’t do much more than sit back and watch me follow up with [card]Sultai Scavenger[/card] and go on to win the game. The second game was much more straightforward and I won without much of a hitch but I was impressed with Xavier and how friendly he was. I was so surprised to learn the next day that he is only 17! I was incredibly happy that he went on to make top 8 as well, especially since he had to 6-0 Day 2 and defeat William Jensen in the process.

I started off Day 2 drafting in pod 2 with Shehar Shenhar and Andrew Cuneo in my pod, which was a little intimidating. P1P1 I take [card]Arrow Storm[/card], being the sucker I am for that card. I get passed a [card]Rattleclaw Mystic[/card] second pick and a [card]Jeering Instigator[/card] third pick followed up by another [card]Arrow Storm[/card] and [card]Burn Away[/card]. I’m getting a signal that Temur is open to me, but then I get late picks [card]Kill Shot[/card] and [card]Highspire Mantis[/card] that makes me wonder if I should be Jeskai. With thoughts of Jeskai in mind, in pack 2 I first pick an [card]Abzan Falconer[/card] and second pick another [card]Highspire Mantis[/card]. The white does not continue to flow and I abandon the idea of going Jeskai, picking up mostly blue and red cards. The third pack I pick up [card]Secret Plans[/card], sealing the idea that I am going to play green since I already have a fair amount of morphs at that point. I look for fixing for the white cards and manage to find a [card]Tranquil Cove[/card], [card]Blossoming Sands[/card] and [card]Flooded Strand[/card]. This was my favourite deck of the three I drafted on Day 2. It had the most evasion, got a lot of card advantage with [card]Secret Plans[/card] and [card]Dig Through Time[/card] and had the best fixing. Here is the deck:

jessDraftOttawa2

My first match was against an aggressive R/W deck. The first game I stabilized at about 6 life by throwing my worst morphs in front of my opponent’s 2 and 3 drops, making generally unfavourable trades to protect my life total. Once I was able to get some creatures with toughness 3 or greater onto the board, it was easy to take control of the game and win with my larger creatures. The second game I lost just to a very fast hand from my opponent. In the third game, I took control pretty early with a pair of [card]Highspire Mantis[/card]. This forced my opponent to cast Sarkhan into an unfavourable board state and minus Sarkhan to kill a [card]Highspire Mantis[/card]. He chumped my remaining [card]Highspire Mantis[/card] with [card]Alabaster Kirin[/card] to save Sarkhan another turn. He got in for 4 with Sarkhan but was unable to protect him from my flier after that. With my larger ground creatures gumming up the ground, I was able to get in with fliers to win the match.

I next played against Shahar Shenhar in my first feature match. I was definitely very nervous about playing Shahar and being featured didn’t help. He had a very impressive Temur deck, with most of his creatures outclassing mine. We had a close first game where if I had drawn a land instead of [card]Dig Through Time[/card], I could have stolen one of his creatures with [card]Jeering Instigator[/card] and pushed through lethal with an alpha strike followed by [card]Arrow Storm[/card]. Instead, I used [card]Dig Through Time[/card] to get [card]Burn Away[/card] and a land so I could cast [card]Burn Away[/card] to kill his [card]Surrak Dragonclaw[/card] and chump his creatures without dying to trample damage the next turn. I should have kept back both my [card]Jeskai Windscout[/card]s so I wouldn’t have to block with [card]Jeering Instigator[/card] but I didn’t realize this until after I had attacked with one of them. Game 2 I just got run over with very large creatures as Shahar used [card]Trap Essence[/card] and [card]Dragonscale Boon[/card] to great advantage and I just had nothing that could match the size of his creatures.

The third match was where the card advantage from [card]Secret Plans[/card] shined. I was playing against a Sultai deck and both games I just drew so many cards and put too many threats on the board for my opponent to deal with. There was an awkward moment where I had to cast [card]Dig Through Time[/card] to find [card]Awaken the Bear[/card] in order to keep my opponent from wiping out my two [card]Jeskai Windscout[/card]s with [card]Death Frenzy[/card]. Since he alpha striked me that turn expecting all my creatures to die, I was able to put him down to 3 on the swing back and put down [card]Mystic of the Hidden Way[/card] to push through the final damage on the following turn.

I drafted a Jeskai Tempo deck in the second draft. I pretty much got fed the deck, getting 2 [card]Winterflame[/card], 3 [card]Force Away[/card], [card]Mantis Rider[/card] 3rd or 4th pick in the last pack, and some cheap prowess creatures. I was a bit worried about being creature-light at 13 creatures and that I had no real finisher as my largest creature was Scion of Glacers and I did not have any [card]Arrow Storm[/card]s. The mana base was really screwy with no fixing and almost equal numbers of Islands, Plains and Mountains. I did have access to [card]Smite the Monstrous[/card] and [card]Icy Blast[/card] in the sideboard, which I brought in every game. I didn’t have [card]Icy Blast[/card] main because I have generally been unimpressed with it but the matches I played tended to have very clogged board states that [card]Icy Blast[/card] helped to clear for me.

Here is the deck:

jessDraftOttawa3

My first match with this deck was against a 5-colour [card]Secret Plans[/card]/[card]Trail of Mystery[/card] deck. The first game my opponent could not find an answer to [card]Mantis Rider[/card] in time. The second game he jut went way over the top of me with multiple [card]Secret Plans[/card], [card]Sagu Mauler[/card] and other fatties. The third game, I quadruple blocked the [card]Sagu Mauler[/card] with [card]Feat of Resistance[/card] back-up to make sure the Mauler would die. I also managed to get his other main fatty, [card]Woolly Loxodon[/card], by making a bad attack into it while it was morphed with my morphed 0/5 and then finishing it off with the Mardu Heartpiercer raid trigger (my opponent had a [card]Secret Plans[/card] out so there was no option to try to trade fairly). We got into a clogged board state and eventually my opponent got out three [card]Secret Plans[/card] with multiple morphs on board. I love [card]Secret Plans[/card] decks but I know you court decking yourself with two out, so three just seemed insane.

My position wasn’t looking good as my creatures did not line up well with his but at some point I decided that I was more likely to win just trying to wait for him to deck himself. So this led to some interesting lines of play such as pumping my [card]Scion of Glaciers[/card] to 4 to get ferocious on [card]Icy Blast[/card] and using [card]Feat of Resistance[/card] so my [card]Leaping Master[/card] could live another turn to block [card]Abomination of Gudul[/card]. I want to say that I won this match because I remembered I had [card]Smite the Monstrous[/card] in my hand when it came down to my opponent’s last turn before decking himself.

I made the biggest punt of my life and played through too quickly, forgetting the [card]Secret Plans[/card] triggers that should have gone on the stack when my opponent flipped an [card]Efreet Weaponmaster[/card] to give the [card]Abomination of Gudul[/card] lethal damage. I completely missed that by flipping the Weaponmaster, my opponent would be forced to draw cards from an empty library and even if he would have had three cards left in his library to draw off his three [card]Secret Plans[/card], I completely forgot I could [card]Smite the Monstrous[/card] the [card]Abomination of Gudul[/card] once it became 6 power. It’s an extremely embarrassing mistake and I’m in debt to the spectator, who coincidentally was my round 9 opponent from day 1, who noticed my opponent’s missed [card]Secret Plans[/card] triggers and reported it to a judge. This matter was brought before one of the head judges and after talking to me, my opponent and the spectator, the head judge ruled that my opponent had deliberately missed his [card]Secret Plans[/card] triggers when he flipped the [card]Efreet Weaponmaster[/card] and my opponent was disqualified from the tournament.

When I learned that I would be given the win for the match and was not eliminated from top 8 contention, well you can imagine the shock and the racing emotions. Here I had gone from making a devastating, humiliating mistake to getting a sort of redemption. I won’t lie, at that moment when I learned I would get the win, I just knew I was going to make top 8, it just seemed like it was meant to be at that point. I don’t remember much from the next match because I was still in a bit of a daze over the outcome of the previous match. I remember just making some really tempo-heavy plays against a slower, big creature deck where I just kept putting my opponent a little farther and farther behind on board state. He’d flip a morph and I would essentially timewalk him by bouncing the morph to his hand and I just seemed to have the right removal at the right time. It was really surreal.

After that match, I got a chance to talk with William Jensen about my tiebreakers. I’m really grateful that he was able to explain the situation well enough to me that I felt pretty good about taking an Intentional Draw in the last round if my opponent agreed to it. I was paired against Seth Manfield in the last round of Swiss and right away he said he was fairly sure if we drew that he would be 7th seed and I would be 8th seed so I agreed to the draw.

For the last draft, in my first pack I opened [card]Flying Crane Technique[/card]. I’ve had a lot experience playing with that card in draft and I know it can win you games you have no business of winning, out of seemingly no where. So I took it and figured I would do my best to force another Jeskai Tempo deck. The deck turned out kind of awkward because while I got the removal package I traditionally favour for Jeskai (2 [card]Arrow Storm[/card], 1 [card]Burn Away[/card], 1 [card]Kill Shot[/card], 1 [card]Winterflame[/card]), I did not get the creatures I would have liked.

I don’t like [card]Summit Prowler[/card] at all and having to play two in my deck felt very wrong. [card]Venerable Lammasu[/card] probably should have been [card]Salt Road Patrol[/card] but I worried about not having much of a top-end beyond [card]Flying Crane Technique[/card]. [card]Abzan Battle Priest[/card] was a pretty bad card against Seth Manfield’s deck as it did not line-up well with his low-cost two-power drops so I ended up siding one out in favour of [card]Salt Road Patrol[/card] after game one of our quarterfinals match.

I made some poor decisions with trying to play around [card]Jeering Instigator[/card]. I knew he had it in game two of our match because he kept looking at it and sort of setting aside 3 mana like he was thinking of flipping it. When he cast [card]Barrage of Boulders[/card], I should have just let my [card]Jeskai Windscout[/card] die rather than cast [card]Feat of Resistance[/card] to save it with the prowess trigger. He was able to take my [card]Salt Road Patrol[/card] and put me down to 3 life, finishing me off the following turn with a flying [card]Leaping Master[/card] and [card]Defiant Strike[/card]. The third game I should have mulliganed my hand when I saw I had two [card]Summit Prowler[/card]s and no red mana. I had a [card]Crippling Chill[/card] and maybe a [card]Kill Shot[/card] (my memory is a bit hazy) and I want to just chalk up my bad keep to being tired from a long day.

Anyway, even though I lost in the quarterfinals, just making it to top 8 is a huge achievement for me. It’s more than I had even dared to hope for and I’m still coming to terms with the fact that in a single day I have achieved some of my biggest Magic goals. And all the support and encouragement I received from friends, some of my opponents, people at the event, people on Twitter, well you can’t imagine how good it feels after months of unrelenting loneliness and hopelessness caused by my depression. You have my upmost gratitude for all your kind words. I was already on a strong upward swing out of my depression when I left to go to Ottawa but now things are looking even better. I have a lot to look forward to and a lot of work to do to get ready for the Pro Tour. I’ve never really been a Modern player so I’m going to need to figure out what to play and take a 2 month crash course in the format!

@bloodymessjess

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments