GP San Jose: *TOP 32* or Murphy's Law

Sometimes you run good, and sometimes you don’t. After a taxi ride to the address of the hotel listed on the WOTC website, I spent another hour trying to search for where the hotel actually was. Turns out there are a ton of Technology Drive’s in San Jose. Who would have guessed?

Finally, around 2:30 AM Saturday morning (or Friday night), I get in to the hotel and meet up with Pascal and Marc, who have been waiting patiently for me. After a brief description of my amazing travel exploits and their absurd costs, we all went to sleep.

I was very excited to play in a Team GP. I had played the local CMT Team Trios, the World Magic Cup Sealed portion, and of course many unsanctioned team drafts, but nothing prepared me for this. 571 teams showed up to play, ranging from friends who had reunited to play an event of a game they used to play together, to ‘Super-teams’ of 3 established pros. I felt very good about my team, and felt while definitely not the best in the room, we were at least close.

Sealed deck building is already fairly difficult. Having all the multicoloured cards compounds that difficulty, so that you need to decide which colours you are going to play, how greedy are you going to get with that splash, and whether or not you have the right 23rd card. Team Sealed is a whole different animal. At least in regular sealed, you can identify the colours that are not worth playing and discard them. In Team Sealed, generally all 5 colours are playable, because of the increased quantity of cards (12 packs instead of 6). You have to decide which colour pairs or groups will give not each individual, but the team the best chance of victory. Often this means creating 2 incredible decks and 1 subpar deck, since it doesn’t matter if one teammate loses, as long as the other 2 win the team wins.

We quickly analyzed the pool, and noticed that there was definitely a very fast and strong Rakdos aggro deck there. It seemed insane, and considering that the Izzet cards were severely lacking, we decided it would be a good place to start to play our awesome red cards. Black was definitely the deepest colour, and so we made a Golgari deck playing various bombs (like Pack Rat!), and the mana was so good we even could splash [card]Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage[/card] and [card]Grove of the Guardian[/card] off of our green-manafixing walls, and [card]Selesnya Guildgate[/card]s.

The 3rd deck was the hardest. The BGW deck and the RB deck were both extremely strong, and left us with a bunch of white and blue cards that were not that powerful. While we looked at some Azorius control builds splashing Izzet cards like the guildmage, ultimately we decided it wasn’t worth it, and built a tempo build based around 3 [card]Stealer of Secrets[/card] and Detain that could steal games.

Next was the question of who was going to play which deck. Sitting in Seat B, the middle seat, I expected to generally play the best player on each team, since they would usually put them in the middle to be able to advise both flanks. We expected, too, that they would be given the best deck, so that Seat B could finish quickly and be able to help their compatriots.

So obviously, it follows that we decided I should have the worst deck (Azorius). Why? Because Detain is good at slowing down games, and is also good against good cards. Also, with the better decks on the flanks, we expected that we would be able to win those matches, and were expecting to lose in the middle anyways. In hindsight, I think we did quite well with deck building. My only regret was not building Marc’s deck (the Golgari splash Selesnya) to be more aggressive. We felt that he had so much power and such a strong late-game that getting there should be the focus, but I feel that many of the cards in the pool would have played better to being aggressive, and just having a strong late game as a fall-back plan.

After a couple of byes, during which Marc, Pascal and I played a couple games and also grabbed some food, we were paired round 3 against a very strong team: Paul Rietzl, David Williams, and Matt Sperling. Pascal managed to win in 3 games(something that would become a trend) with his insane deck, I managed to pull out a game 1 vs William’s defensive Golgari deck with my [card]Rogue’s Passage[/card] (with [card]Stealer of Secrets[/card], it’s pretty sweet), and Marc managed to win the match in 3, despite missing an on board kill at some point(the only clear mistake I saw him make all weekend). Turns out Pack Rat is good against Selesnya. I won game 2 to William’s mana screw, and the match slip was soon signed, and we were feeling great at beating one of the top teams in the room. Sperling was quite sick, and the team discussed dropping, but Paul said “Nah, I’m still emotionally invested in this tournament, let’s keep playing a couple more rounds”.

As you may or may not know by now, they won the tournament.

As may happen with an outrageous 11 round tournament, the rest of the day became a blur. I remember beating the mana-screwed Costa Rican pro team the next round, then managing to win a tight Azorius mirror, my deck continuing to give me the tools to grind out games, and I remember our losses too, but sleep deprivation leaves me with little recollection of the games themselves. We had a feature match where we defeated Ali Aintrazi’s team. Both Pascal and I had won, but Marc (who had not been having too great a day) really wanted to stay and finish his match. Pascal and I ran off to Subway, leaving Marc in a commanding position with 5 Pack Rats in play. When we returned, seated, we were informed that he had managed to lose from that position. Poor Marc.

We lost the penultimate round, and believed ourselves dead for Day 2 competition. However, on the standings, we had the nuts tiebreakers, and there was definitely an outside shot that we make the cut. This was helped by our 11th round opponents conceding to us because they wanted to leave, and we just hoped for a miracle. *cough cough*

None was forthcoming, as we were in 31st place. However, the Head Judge asked us to come in the next morning (i.e. in 4 hours) in case an odd number of teams didn’t show up. If that was the case, we would be in Day 2.

Of course, many [card]Stab Wound[/card] related jokes were made, many hypothetical alarms were tampered with, but we went to sleep with hope in our hearts.

Right before it was taken away, when at a dreary 8am, all the teams that had battled for 11 rounds unsurprisingly showed up. Yet we continued to ride the hope train, as Scott Larabee told us that if one of the teams didn’t show up for the 2nd draft, we were once again in! We did a team draft of our own to bide the time, and once again, everyone was present for the 2nd draft.

Of course, there was still much to be done, as the Pro Tour was less than a week away, and none of us was settled on a Modern deck, though we were all beginning to feel more comfortable in draft. Also, despite our unfortunate circumstances (I would much rather have been 32nd or 92nd and slept in), I really enjoyed the tournament and the event was well run. I had a lot of fun playing with my teammates, and I felt they played quite well.

What had I learnt in draft? Well, for one, tempo was king. My sealed deck had been an excellent example of this. Many of my games started with me playing a [card]Stealer of Secrets[/card] on turn 3, and then using Detain spells to create enough tempo to close out the game, by stopping them both from blocking and attacking, yet only for a single turn, I could buy enough attack steps and draw enough cards to keep the Detain coming for long enough to close out a game with either a flier or [card]Rogue’s Passage[/card].

Similarly, in draft, cards like [card]Dramatic Rescue[/card] were extremely strong, much better than [card]Unsummon[/card] had generally been in older formats. If your opponent never has time to recast their creature (or if you bounce a token), then you might as well have cast a full-fledged removal spell.

When tempo is of key importance, cheap tricks start becoming more valuable than removal spells. For example, you and your opponent both have a 3/3 creature in play, and it is turn 4 so you have 4 lands. You could spend 3 mana to kill their creature and attack, or you could attack, spend 1 mana to [card]Giant Growth[/card] it, and then play another creature. In the first scenario, you have one creature in play and one card in hand, whereas in the other your card in hand is instead in play. This is a prime example of having gained more Tempo.

I really feel that Magic, as a game, is moving further away from card advantage, and further towards tempo. Though I do feel the 2 concepts are interconnected, you will perhaps agree with me that you will often lose to the opponent who has spent their entire hand to kill you while you have a similar board presence and 4 cards in hand. Yet you are the one who has lost. Cards like [card]Assassin’s Strike[/card] are clear sources of removal and card advantage, things that used to be important, but the fact that they cost 6 makes them much worse than a simple [card]Giant Growth[/card].

Thanks for reading, next time: Pro Tour Return to Ravnica report, or How I joined the Borg

**Murphy’s Law states that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. Basically described the GP weekend fairly well. The Hotel even managed to bill me twice for the room.