Life on the Road - MAGIC F2F

Over the last 6 months, I have only spent about two days out of five in my own bed. The road is a harsh and cruel mistress, and constant travel begins to tire even the staunchest warriors of the road. I had just come back from Pro Tour Dark Ascension, in bright, sunny, and warm Honolulu, and in my mind I was still there, basking on the sand by the waves. Why would I possibly accept an invitation to go to the Toronto PTQ for Barcelona, especially since I was already qualified? Why could I not give myself a break from the travel and card-slinging? I didn’t know, but I somehow felt the desire to, once again, be on the road. Perhaps it would answer some of my questions.

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I am picked up by Franky and hop into the car with Kar at Vendome metro station. We head out to the west island, along the way to Toronto, to pick up our 4th member, Toby Rosman. He’s at the specified location, but tells us that he has forgotten many of his cards at the local store, so we head out there. Franky is clearly steamed, but doesn’t say anything.

Toby finally arrives with his cards, and we are off! Franky mentions that he is very excited to meet the great Scotty Mac for the first time, and says that he in fact had a bit of a boner at the thought. KYT did his world-famous chuckle. I show Toby my second puzzle from my “Un-Dying for more puzzles” article (check it out here), and he tried really hard to figure it out. He complained that he had trouble visualizing it, which is a problem I often notice from Magic players without a chess background. If any of you have seen the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer, then you will have seen the ‘famous’ scene where the chess teacher scoops up all the pieces and throws them out and forces Josh to visualize the whole board, since the pieces are all gone.

KYT and Franky soon get involved in the puzzle, and I ask if they want the solution. I am met with an outcry of “NO!” from both KYT and Toby. Franky remains silent. I have the feeling that he prefers the solution to the puzzle itself. Franky says he would have solved the puzzle by just scooping or “I would have had to play better, to not get into that situation.” I reply that you only got into that situation by super tight play.
While the boys brainstorm out loud, I look out into the winter wonderland off the highway. It is so snowy here. The guys are still intent on the puzzle, and I finally give them a hint that allows them to figure it out.

Now without any more puzzles to solve, we begin to converse. The topic changes somehow into American Politics, and Rick Santorum gets mentioned. Or, more specifically, his last name. Go ahead, Google “Santorum”.
Franky: “Scotty Mac, let me lick the Santorum from your ass!”
Yeah, this is real life. Franky really wanted to meet Scotty, and who wouldn’t?

Franky starts pumping out the tunes, and the Jace, The Mind Sculptor remix by Tha Gatherin’ came on. We are totally all rocking out to it, and Toby says “You are sOOOOOO white”.

We check the time, and it turns out they had basically spent near 3 hours figuring out my puzzles. Time really flies sometimes. It was now time to get to business. We start to actually talk about the decks we were planning on playing. Franky was on Gerry T’s latest, a sweet (but inconsistent-looking) UR Tron list with [card]Through the Breach[/card] for his 5 Eldrazis. KYT had finally been convinced to play what has become his stereotype: Caw Blade. I have basically never seen KYT play a non-UW deck successfully in any format. UW tapout, UW Wafo Tapa, Caw Go, Caw Blade, UW Faeries, UW Stoneblade, and UW Delver. Finally, it would be time for us to see him attacking with two [card]Squadron Hawk[/card]s for about a billion turns.

Toby was planning to play UR Storm, with [card]Gifts Ungiven[/card] and no [card]Pyromancer Ascension[/card]. If you know anything about me, you know that is a decision that I had to grill him a lot about. In all seriousness though, I don’t actually like [card]Pyromancer Ascension[/card] much in a Storm combo deck. I prefer it with a Combo-Control shell, where you can play a bunch of cards that are all good by themselves, and just happen to dig you into more cards and feed the Pyromancer. It’s the same attitude I take to all my decks, from [card]Heartless Summoning[/card] decks to [card]Birthing Pod[/card] decks. I hate decks that have just one card that makes them run, and are basically draft decks when you don’t draw that one card. That’s why when I built the pod deck for PT Honolulu, it worked perfectly fine as a Naya aggro deck, with many hard to answer threats, but then went into overdrive when you drew a Pod.

I told Toby that he should play whatever he feels most comfortable with. I am a firm believer that Player > Deck. I love using the line “yeah that’s a good matchup…for me. For you, not as much.” I enjoy being an arrogant bastard (don’t any of you take that away from me). I think a list that is slightly suboptimal is still better than a perfect list if you know and feel like you can play it perfectly. Knowing your deck like a close friend is a huge advantage.

Being the hypocrite that I am, I was planning on playing Melira Pod, a deck that I had never even touched before, besides a couple of times gold-fishing it. Based on a recommendation from Justin Richardson, I played a couple of [card]Gavony Township[/card]s. Besides being good when you get mana-heavy draws with Birds and [card]Noble Hierarch[/card]s, it also resets the persist from [card]Murderous Redcap[/card] and [card]Kitchen Finks[/card], since when state-based effects are checked, the +1/+1 counter and the -1/-1 counter “cancel each other out”, so to speak. (Author’s Note: Having now played with it, I would never play the deck without it.)

We finally get to Toronto, and head to the store where Scotty Mac and Luke Wilkinson (who would be hosting me and Toby) congregate. We are warmly greeted by the owner, and we get in some games of Modern before Luke arrives. I keep losing to Franky playing early [card]Through the Breach[/card] with Emrakul annihilating my chances of victory. Luke arrives, and we go to get some burgers before heading to his house. The sleeping arrangements aren’t perfect, but I manage to ninja my way into a bed, despite having to use my winter jacket as a pillow.
The morning, as usual, comes much too soon, and I rub the sleep from my eyes. I am ready to go crush it, or at least have some fun playing Modern. Luke informs us that he’s not going to play, so he quickly scribbles down some instructions for Jon Johnson, our American grinder friend who has also slept at Luke’s, to head to the event site.

“RIGHT
LEFT
RIGHT
LEFT
LEFT
RIGHT”

The directions would have been perfect, if only there had been street names attached to each direction. Luckily, we have a GPS on board, but I checked every time we took a turn that Luke’s directions still held true.

We get to the site nice and early, and I am ready to battle. I see lots of other ringers, like Andrew Norowaj, Ben Moir, Kyle Duncan, and Noah Long. Notably absent is Dan “Dmac” MacDonald, whose house we would usually stay at. Funny enough, he is in Montreal for the weekend with some other friends. Nick Leblanc arrives with a car of passengers from Montreal: Justin “Jrich” Richardson, Davies “Sprout” Clarke, and Robert “babadascoopy” Pambianchi. KYT, Frank, and Scotty have yet arrived and the tournament is just about to start.

They manage to get there just as registration closes (whew!).

Here’s the list I register:

[deck title=Melira Pod]
[Creatures]
4 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
4 Birthing Pod
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Murderous Redcap
3 Viscera Seer
1 Bloodthrone Vampire
1 Ethersworn Cannonist
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Harmonic Sliver
2 Reveillark
1 Orzhov Pontiff
1 Spellskite
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Chord of Calling
[/Spells]
[Land]
2 Gavony Township
2 Overgrown Tomb
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Temple Garden
1 Godless Shrine
3 Razorverge Thicket
2 Forest
1 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Stomping Ground
1 Woodland Cemetery
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
1 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Choke
3 Ancient Grudge
1 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Obstinate Baloth
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Shriekmaw
2 Nihil Spellbomb
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Round 1 of the tournament, KYT and Franky are paired against each other. Awkward. I play against a Storm opponent in a match that lasts 6 turns. Game 1 I play Birds, Pod, and Pod Birds into an [card]Ethersworn Canonist[/card]. Nice. Deck. Game 2 he makes 10 goblins turn 2 and I gain infinite life turn 3. Needless to say, I feel pretty good about my deck choice as I walk around the room, scouting everyone else, since I had been done in about 5 minutes, most of which was shuffling. I am surprised by how much Melira there is. It seemed to me that the deck wouldn’t be popular for some reason, yet a lot of top players seem to be running it. Affinity and Caw Blade are also quite popular, and there are a smattering of interesting decks, some of which just seem terrible, but some appear to have merit.

I catch up with a bunch of friends. There is something to be said about all the people you meet playing this game we all love. We all go to tournaments, with the 1st place prize in our minds, all imagining holding the trophy or getting the ‘blue envelope’, but perhaps the true prize is the community. Perhaps some of the brightest young minds of our generation are all joined by Magic. I certainly made many friends in my time as a Chess grinder, but the personalities and minds were not quite as vibrant or exciting.

The next round I pick up another victory, this time just narrowly over Steve Tomik, one of the top local players. He was playing a brew that he and Noah Long had come up with, UB Pickles Tron. The deck seemed good, but the mana definitely needed some work.
Round 3 I’m paired against Noah Long, the only other player qualified for Barcelona in the tournament, and lose to myself not being aggressive enough with my spells. Each game has something to teach, but most lessons are too difficult to notice. I could definitely have won that match had I played slightly tighter.

After that, I keep winning, until I lose to a Merfolk player in my win-and-in round. Instead of disappointment, as the many players consoling me on my loss must have thought I was feeling, I instead feel nothing. There was definitely a mistake that I made that cost me the match: there always is. I just wasn’t good enough to see it…yet. Why should I feel bad about a loss when there is a lesson to be learned?

Justin Richardson made top 8, and I hoped for him to take it down. As is my custom, I don’t watch my friends in the top 8. They seem to have a better record of success when I am not watching, perhaps because they are worried about impressing me and not screwing up when I watch, instead of just being entirely focused on the game at hand.

Instead, I drafted with Lucas Siow and his combo cube. Besides only having cards to put together combos, and practically no disruption, Lucas said his cube also came with a rule: Each player begins with an emblem that all their basic lands have ‘[card]City of Brass[/card]’ in addition to their normal mana production. I draft a 5 colour monstrosity that has multiple overlapping combos, and one game I get infinite mana, life, cards, storm, and kill my opponent with [card]Brain Freeze[/card] on the second turn. I love cube.

The Top 8 is still underway, but Justin has lost. Variance sometimes gets you, but if you play enough times, the better player will always come up on top. I’m sure Justin will win one of the other PTQs he plays this season, and if you plan on playing PTQs in an 800 km radius from Montreal, I would watch out for him.

KYT and Franky have already left with Scotty, but Jon Johnson kindly gives me, Toby, and a friend of Luke’s called Dante a ride to Luke’s place. On the way, Toby and I raid the local grocery store, disgusted by the thought of more Pizza and Burgers.

Once at Luke’s, it is time for more Cube. Since it is Dante’s cube, he is a captain of one team, and I the other. Toby is the first chosen, by Dante, and realizes that he has just lost his money already. I go 4-0, carrying my team on my back, but they do manage to pull out 5 of a possible 12 wins, so we win. Luke’s young friend, affectionately known as “Ginger” is coerced by Luke to play Chess with me for money. He was apparently on his High School Chess team. I consider letting him win the first one, but my hustling days are behind me.

We finally get to sleep at 7 am, and are woken soon enough by the arrival of Kar and Frank at the door, anxious to return home.
The ride back is fairly uneventful. I pass out from exhaustion for about an hour near the beginning. I wake up to Toby tickling my nose with a twisted up tissue. He giggles like the little school girl that he is and feigns innocence. Now that I am awake, KYT gets us playing “Describe the Card”. Basically, he gives us a name of a card, and we have to give him its Oracle text, mana cost, and set. It’s a fairly challenging game for Toby, but my encyclopedic mind remembers every card I have ever played with, and I pull ahead of Franky, who is also quite decent. I take over as the ‘asker’, and KYT is shown to also be terrible.

I have been sitting with my shoes off in the back seat for some time now, but I begin to get the unpleasant odour of feet wafting towards my nose. Franky says “Did someone take off their shoes? Holy Sh*t, it smells!” I get a bit embarrassed and begin to apologize, when Toby bursts out laughing and admits that he has taken off his shoes at that precise moment. Whoa. Toby puts his shoes back on, and Franky opens the car windows for about 5 minutes, but the smell is still not gone. Finally, we close the windows, and continue to occupy the time with more games and talk. Again, time passes very quickly, and soon enough we drop Toby off at his house, and then me at mine. I thank Frank for the voyage, and head inside. I once again began to get philosophical. “Perhaps, like life, the journey IS the destination,” I muse. Still, this trip had certainly not solved any mysteries, despite my best efforts.

We will never really know what happened with the Santorum and Scotty Mac’s ass, but to be frank, that’s one mystery I am content in not knowing.