by Jonathan Smithers

The Champ is here!  Newest member of Team Mana Deprived walks us through the journey of taking down GP Toronto.  You will not be finding a boring round-by-round report here.  Nothing but emotion and the will to prove that he deserved to take down the whole thing.

Aint no one gonna break my stride
Aint no one gonna pull me down
Oh no, I got to keep on moving…

The Prelude: Over 9,000 Failures

Let’s start in Kingston, Ontario. Action-Packed Comics, 10:00 A.M.

The first GPT of the season, of many I planned to attend. Of course, I’m already shooting myself in the foot by thinking this… I should have believed it would of course be the only one, since I knew I’d be winning the byes. More on this later.

After overpaying for entry ($40) we were duly informed there would be no top-8 draft. That’s cute, who enjoys drafting anyway? After I open my sealed pool I know I’m doomed already, knowing that even if I could scrape together a Top-8 with this pile, there’s no way I’d win the 3 single-elim rounds.

So, me and my Ajani-powered G/W crap deck scraped up a 9th place finish, losing in round 3 (which afterwards I could have drawn in) to fellow Ottawan (?) Jeff Szelzki, or more affectionately Cartman, who went on to win the GPT with a mediocre U/W.

4 more GPTs followed, and in each successive try, my sealed pools got steadily more bombastic. My last attempt gifted me with an Inferno Titan, 4(!) Doom Blades and 3 Gravediggers along with other great support cards, but I somehow managed to lose a round with it. Nantuko Shade on turn 2 is some good.

Anyway, I Top8’ed all four of those tournaments, selling my pack winnings to roll over events, and failed in all the drafts. The first attempt was foiled in the finals by none other than the mighty Phil Samms, who had just joined the Ottawa community to become the ruiner of dreams. We played some good games in the finals, but ultimately his hypnotic powers put me to Sleep, while his large green men exacted their Gaea’s Revenge on me. I know that makes no sense, but I’m not making any excuses for my nerd puns.

The other three GPTs, I flooded out in the top 4. Each and every time. <3 Magic.

Then one fine day, because I’m a masochist, I woke up at the ungodly hour of 10:00 AM on a Sunday to sign myself up for one of the most horrible EV events you could possibly want to enter… a MODO PTQ. (Disclaimer: I ate a steak and potato dinner, wearing nothing but pajama pants, WHILE being undefeated in round 8. Just try and top that, I dare you.) So I Top-8 drafted a sick U/B control deck featuring no less than 3 Mind Controls, and then, guess what? Promptly flooded out in the Top-4 to a marginal U/R with Maritime Guards (yes, plural) and Chandra’s Spitfire. SICK LIFE BRO.

2 weeks later and another PTQ rolls around, this time a paper one, in Montreal. My beloved Ottawa Senators are also playing in town against the Habs (Hacks) that night, so I feel lucky enough to pull off the double-victory, especially once I open my sealed pool featuring Molten-Tail Masticore and Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon (White-Black… foreshadowing much?). I Top-8 draft infect, splashing 2 Shatters, but lose in the top-4 to MEG. Mana floods, and mulligans… the run-goods continue. Sens also lose in overtime. Bar-B-Barn followed (including pie), and many sorrows were drowned. (Note: Scott Darby is the real winner this evening, soloing a pitcher of beer along with a dinner that also included a rack of ribs and a quarter-chicken with fries.)

GP: Toronto – The Homecoming Dance

Do you remember your high school homecoming dances? I went to high-school in the States, where school sports is a certified religion. If you weren’t on the Varsity football team, you pretty much had to barn them for the week prior to the homecoming game, and bow down to them at the dance as they were all announced coming into the dance floor (school gym) so the party could officially get started. Now, my high school’s football team was the laughingstock of the county, and I happened to be part of the super-elite track team that were state champ contenders. It was embarrassing for me to be praising a bunch of nobodies, when I was the REAL DEAL YO. Not to brag or anything.

This is how I felt coming in to GP:Toronto.

Now that I’m writing on the internet, I’m allowed to be a more arrogant, pompous bastard than I actually am, so I’m gonna say that I felt I completely deserved to have won at least one of the PTQs in the previous 2 weeks, or at the very least deserved 3 byes for this tournament. This sense of entitlement made me feel deflated and inadequate, even though I knew I was good enough to compete at this game’s higher levels. The last-chance GPT I played in on Friday night was an affirmation of my inadequacy as I lost in the first round to a savage topdeck by my opponent when he was dead on board, despite the fact he kept his 7 and I mulled to 4 on the play.

Saturday morning started off pretty crappy, if I may say. Having slept on the floor the night prior, I was sore, hungry, cold, wet (raining), and tired. That’s not to say I’m not thankful to my driver and hosts, Jeff St-Pierre and Eric Ladd, because they graciously offered to let me crash in their hotel room free of charge. Still, I was groggy and still bitter about the night before.

And then, I get passed the Jesus.

My eyes brighten, my heart races, and I giggle like a schoolgirl (or more closely like Ben Moir). I’m staring at the sealed pool I prayed for the night before. And yes, I actually did pray, for those who care to know. My pool was simply ridiculous, and I thought to myself… “This is definitely a 9-0 pool, all I have to do is not punt”. Turns out I was right, and with my meager 1 bye, I manage to play pretty tight all through day 1, climaxing (no, not like that) with a round-10 feature match over the one and only Conley Woods to go undefeated, 10-0 on the day with 2 other duders joining me in the winner’s bracket for Day 2.

Back to the floor of the Four Points Sheraton, back to a night of 3-hours sleep (max). ZET’S greasy-spoon diner was a fantastic midnight snack, however. Big ups.

Day 2 starts with a booster draft, and I’m joined by none other than my ol’ pal Cartman (whose only match loss on day 1 to yours truly), who is seated on my left. I take a white card P1P1, shipping Cartman a Corpse Cur as the only real card in the pack, hoping he’ll go infect. My 2nd pack is quite possibly the worst pack I’ve seen in my life, full of Turn Aside, Assault Strobe, Ezuri’s Archers, and the like… with the only playable card being Cystbearer. I decide not to cut Cartman, and gift him the 2/3 while taking the almighty Trigon of Mending (yeah, I know right!). Sadly Cartman’s infect plan gets spoiled by Eric Froehlich, who was to my right, who started cutting infect as of his pick 3. Pack 2, I am greeted with the sight of Geth, Lord of the Vault, so I settle into a pretty aggressive White-Black metalcraft with a top-end of Geth and 2 Bleak Coven Vampires. I 2-1 the pod, having to play Cartman in the 3rd round, and Geth carried me in 3 games through his double Sunblast Angel and Hoard-Smelter Dragon deck. Niceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

I go into the 2nd draft once again sitting next to my man Froehlich, this time on his right, and cut red as of pick 1 going Arc Trail, then Galvanic Blast, then Shatter. Well, after the draft was all said and done those were the only 3 red cards I had to register, since it somehow got hard-cut from both sides for the remainder of the draft. I still had a decent Blue-Red and all I needed to do was win round 1 to double-draw into the Top-8. I got there, then drew with none other than Mr. Froehlich the next round, to ensure we both finished on top of the standings.

Top-8: “Just another lucky guy who wouldn’t survive the drafts”

(Really, BDM?)

My draft starts the way I want it to: with a nice no-brainer rare pick 1 in Nim Deathmantle. My next pack is far more interesting, with Embersmith and Livewire Lash as the two standouts. My first pack had a Turn to Slag as the best remaining card in the pack, so I presumed the guy on my left, Pat Cox, went into red so I wanted to send him a clear signal by gifting him the Smith and sticking to the equipment plan by taking the Lash, hoping for multiple Sunspear Shikaris I could high-pick. I then 3rd-picked yet another Livewire Lash (nice rares bro). I rounded out the pack with some white beaters like Kemba’s Skyguard and Glint Hawks, with no discernable 2nd colour.

Pack 2 I crack Indomitable Archangel to go with my nice aggressive-white-equipment-powered strategy. I’m thinking mono-white could work, so long as I can grab a few Shikaris… but wait. Is that a Skitheryx hmm? Nevermind, we be black now mon. I follow that up with a 3rd pick Shikari and then Flesh Allergy and Painsmith and more fliers and such, so I roll with it. Pack 3 was good to me as well, first- and second-picking Arrest, then third-picking Revoke Existence. It came together quite nicely, and I walked away from that table thinking that I could possibly have a contender in here. /queue Rocky II theme song

ROUND 1 FIGHT! I’m paired up against Dave Howard, who I now know is the infamous SmokesMcCloaks of MODO fame, and I play a relatively easy match. Game 1 I win on nothing but 4 plains, but I curve out turn 1 Glint Hawk (Accorder Shield), turns 2, 3, 4 fliers topping at Archangel. Game 2 he bricks on his 3rd land drop, but he has 3(!) Horizon Spellbombs in play to go with his Carapace Forger. I Arrest the pseudo-Goyf and watch him do nothing but burst his ‘bombs for the next few turns, while I play duders and equipments that combine to get there. I think he had a case of the MODO-player curse, in that I could tell what he drew each turn by his facial expressions, that he was drawing another high-casting cost blank. That and nerves, which I also had but did my best to suppress.

ROUND 2 FIGHT! The stone-faced Dustin Feider (they butchered his last name in the coverage), who to my knowledge is also a well-known MODOer but I don’t know his handle. I scoped a bit of his deck after the match and I feared his Lifesmith and Acid-Web Spider. Game 1 I mulled and kept a fairly weak hand on the play and he plopped in a Myr Battlesphere. Games 2 and 3 I had much better draws, very aggressive in the early game, and managed to push enough damage that his late-game deck couldn’t control early enough. Am I really about to play the finals of a Grand Prix?

Oh joyous day, my opponent is the Brad Nelson.

Staring down the man, the legend, the beard Nelson at the finals of the GP was something I should have expected, given my prior knowledge that I was taking down this GP (Haha, I know right! Good one!). I went outside for a smoke with Sal Reda and Mat Schmaltz from Face-A-Face (well, I watched them smoke anyhow), and cooled my head and let my nerves settle. The second-hand smoke did a fine job, I believe, and as I cock-walk back into the convention center, I say something along the lines of “I’m not going to win this for me, I’m winning this for CANADA!” I know right, what a heroic f#*ktard.

Well, you’ve all had a chance by now to visit our friends at ggslive.com and surely know the end result, so I’ll spare you the details. What I can say is that I got the feeling, during and after game 2, that Brad was getting really tense and nervous losing game 2 to a relative nobody who by all accounts made a misplay in game 2 and still won the game (though I’ll still defend my play to this day.. I was trying to push damage as quickly as possible so I suicided my Glint Hawk).

I capitalized on my read, and became as chatty and annoying as I could, trying to get him on edge and whether it worked or not I don’t know. I probably just made a fool of myself for no reason, but regardless it helped me calm down. After Skitheryx steals game 3 and after getting promptly tackled linebacker-style by Mike Brierley off camera, I went to the ggslive booth to make a further mockery of myself and babbled like an idiot.

I DUN CARE THO. IMMA CHAMPION AND I DO WUT I WANT.

Thus ends my 2,500-word autobiography, and I would like it very much if you read the following obligatory props and slops.

PROPS:
–   Marv and the Skyfox crew for an above-average organization of a Grand Prix
–   The DCI judging staff was superb, and with every instance during the tournament that a judge was involved for me, it was handled fairly and quickly
–   Ontario’s own Level 2 judge Kyle Ryc, of the 1st draft calling, for his sexy baritone
–   KYT and ManaDeprived.com, for getting Canada’s elite players all on board and making a push for national success (you’re welcome bro  )
–   Jeux Face-A-Face in Montreal, and The Wizard’s Tower in Ottawa – for being stores that are constantly making efforts to support high-level tournament play
–   Ottawa. For seriously representing in Day-2 with 10+ people

SLOPS:
–   The food, both on-site and at the Wendy’s/Timmy’s nearby, was seriously substandard. Zet’s was the sole redeeming factor in…
–   Mississauga… God almighty, what a terrible venue.
–   The PA system in the convention hall was mmphrnging mehhrllytko quoxthmma.
–   No playmat for me… though how ironic is it that the mat’s picture was Skitheryx, amirite?
–   Ben Moir’s tiebreakers. The poor kid has been trying for years to get there, but he finished 18th on breakers, the last of the X-3’s to finish just outside Paris. Now them’s some bad beats

Thanks for reading, I hope to have an awesome next couple of months and I’m very excited to be contributing to ManaDeprived.

Yours Canadianly,
Jon Smithers

Kar Yung Tom

Kar Yung Tom (KYT) is the Digital Content Manager for Face to Face Games. He oversees the F2FTour.com and Magic F2F websites. He is also the lead host of the First Strike podcast.