“This Storm inside of me,
Memories ignite inside my head,
All these years I’ve waited,
And the plays I’ve made,
They just build this storm
Inside of me, whoa” – Tha Gatherin
The dream is dead. Or so I thought, after going a very disappointing 4-4 at Pro Tour Philadelphia. I had finally qualified for the Pro Tour and had simply expected to do well there. Everyone who had previous Pro Tour experience and who had seen me play expressed how high their hopes and expectations were of me. I had felt an immense amount of pressure to perform at the PT, and that, combined with the Psamms mantra of “Play bad, Run bad,” had left me missing the cut for day 2. Something that I had learned though, was that Pro Players, or more accurately, players who played on the Pro Tour, were nothing to be afraid of. I definitely felt I could hang with the big boys. While I was impressed watching the big names like Yuuya Watanabe and Jon Finkel play, the majority of players at the Pro Tour were playing rather poorly in my opinion. If you asked me before the tournament if I thought that my playtest group was on average better than players at the Pro Tour, I would have said no, but ask me now and the answer has changed.
So, returning home after a fun, but ultimately disappointing trip to the States, I had some time to reflect. Did I really want to continue pressing the dream of becoming a professional Magic player, or did I want to take something off the back-burner and finish up the 2 courses I needed to get my degree. I decided to hold off the decision until after Grand Prix Montreal and the Face to Face Invitational Tournament. The next 2 weeks I did not touch a Magic card. I spent the weekend after returning from the U.S. playing a chess tournament after not handling a chess piece for 2 years (other than a brief blitz match I had with KYT in Toronto…I believe the video is on YouTube for those interested).
I felt like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. I was SO rusty! Somehow, my mind had gotten lazy from playing lots of Magic. I knew most of the situations already in the current formats, so I could ‘get away with’ just using my gut and memory rather than using my not-insubstantial calculation skills. I lost my first few matches, with each one feeling closer than the last, and then won my last matches. Where before the tournament, my mind had felt sluggish and lazy, now it was whirling at a thousand miles a minute, seeing the many decisions trees available to me and calculating them all at blistering speed.
The Thursday before the Grand Prix, there was a Mana Deprived Guest List, started by our own Franky Richards, which was a Facebook event planned to get people coming into town together to have some fun. After some of us, including Gavin Verhey, met up at Face a Face, we went to La Banquise, a poutine place that I had never been to before, despite living in Montreal all my life. Franky recommended the poutine (fries + gravy + cheese curds, a Quebec specialty. Delicious and dirty all at once) with ground beef and fried onions. Good call, Frank! Gavin regaled us with stories of JSS times while staring suspiciously at his Italian poutine. (Editor’s note: La Banquise is best eaten from 3am on).
Being Magic players and degenerates, the next stop was at a nearby bar, where we ordered some ridiculously cheap pitchers and 8 of us drafted with Franky’s cube and the other 8 did a boring, but more serious M12 draft. After clearly wiping the floor in cube 3-0 (for the record, I’m something like 10000-10 lifetime in cube draft matches. Doesn’t matter what cube, I will destroy you.), we all went back to our respective hotels and homes.
Friday morning, I decided to go to the event site early to check up on people, and maybe try to get a 3rd bye in a GPT. I quickly noticed Kar Yung Titan wearing his traditional grin and a Press badge. Turns out he is just there for his lunch break, so I acquire the badge, and go around taking pictures of all the ‘ringers’ and various absurd sealed pools. Pretty much every sealed pool I saw was nuts, and basically everyone had bombs. The power level seemed quite high, which was something I noted since I had only done one sealed deck with the set before.
Soon, other people started arriving, and I engaged in some conversation and EDH (sorry Wizards, I refuse to call it Commander) battles with Brian Ziemba. I notice Franky Richards and Charles Trottier playing mental magic, and ask what ban-list they are using. “Everything is legal” is the reply, and I watch each of them play 5 turns where every turn they each could have killed the other, but instead [card]Pacifism[/card] gets cast over [card]Balance[/card] and [card]Char[/card] gets cast over [card]Wheel of Fortune[/card]. I ask to join in the next game, where we play 3-player. At this point, a sizeable crowd has gathered, which continues to grow. After Charles taps out turn 2 and Franky passes to me with 3 open mana, I go for it. I [card]Abeyance[/card] Franky and then proceed to turn 3 Storm Combo both of them, with [card]Wheel of Fortune[/card], [card]Yawgmoth’s Will[/card], [card]Dark Ritual[/card], [card]Vampiric Tutor[/card], [card]Imperial Seal[/card], [card]Ancestral Recall[/card], [card]Fastbond[/card], [card]Black Lotus[/card], and eventually [card]Pyromancer’s Swath[/card] and [card]Grapeshot[/card] provide the kill. Most people were impressed, but really I just wanted to make the point that Mental Magic with no ban-lists is pretty stupid. If you are going to make it Vintage, you have to at least ban [card]Fastbond[/card].
Corm then approaches me and asked if I would like to money draft. I snap called before even knowing who we were against. I would money draft with Corm against anyone. So after crushing Meg and Gina without me dropping a match (cue foreshadowing?), we went and had Schwartz’s smoked meat. If you head to Montreal, go to Schwartz’s. It is simply the best ever, not close.
By the time we got back to the site, KYT had arrived and Franky had left with him and the other groupies, abandoning me despite my clear instructions of “I will be back in 20 minutes, please don’t leave without me.” Sigh. Anyways, this being a GP, Andrew Noworaj had arrived from Ottawa with his Cube in tow. This being 11:30 at night, I definitely knew better than to start cubing with, as did he. But being the degenerates that we were, a cube draft began, where I again went 3-0, and Andrew, also on my team, also 3-0ed. Looking back afterwards, it seems like being 3-0 in that cube draft at 1 AM, or whatever outrageous time it was, was an indicator of GP success.
I got a lift home from Babadascoopy, and quickly fell asleep, with dreams of [card]Grave Titan[/card]s, [card]Inferno Titan[/card]s, and [card]Fireball[/card]s dancing through my head. I was planning on slowing how much Magic I play, so I felt no pressure. I was just going to go play the GP, and have a blast doing it with all my friends there.
Saturday:
My alarm goes off at 7:30. I hit the snooze and roll over in my comfortable bed for a minute before I reach a full state of consciousness. After a quick shower, I am all refreshed and ready to rumble. At the event site, I see many people who weren’t there the previous night and catch up while the event finally gets underway. Player seatings for deck swap are posted, and I go sit with all the other HAs. Jacob Harris and I play Ascension on his phone while we wait for the announcements to finish. The lucky bastard gets a turn 1 Arbiter! Who does that! I try to keep up with his fast banishing, and then it’s time to open and register our pools. “We will continue this game later, when we have more time,” I say. Little do I know that I won’t be able to finish that game.
I open a pretty sweet pool, with 2 [card]Aegis Angel[/card] and Day of Judgment, along with 3 [card]Gravedigger[/card]s and a [card]Royal Assassin[/card]. When the decks are swapped 3 times to the left, the guy sitting 3 spots to the right of me, Eugene Ho (aka the most annoying man in Magic), says “Oh MAN ALEX HAYNE!!! That pool is TERRIBLE!”
My heart sinks but for a moment. I remind myself that I’m just going to build my pool the best I can, and play the best Magic I can, and enjoy myself. That is what is important anyways. Nobody plays this game for the money.
Well, after opening the pool I have received, I am suddenly optimistic. While not a bomby pool, it was far from terrible, and I definitely felt that it was something I could work with. Having seen nuts pools, mine simply seemed solid. It lacked good creatures, and I definitely considered the 3 [card]Jace’s Erasure[/card], 3 [card]Merfolk Mesmerist[/card] for a couple of moments, but figured out fairly quickly that the deck was going to be base Blue Black. With 2 [card]Merfolk Looter[/card] and 2 [card]Manalith[/card], enabling a splash was easy. However, besides a [card]Celestial Purge[/card], a [card]Grim Lavamancer[/card], and a [card]Stingerfling Spider[/card], there wasn’t much worth splashing at all. I would have played a [card]Vastwood Gorger[/card] without a second thought, but I had no such beef available to me. I decided to splash the [card]Grim Lavamancer[/card], since with all my looting and making trades, either with creatures or with spells, he would always have plenty of food in the graveyard to fuel him. I considered a double splash for a very long time, looking at the [card]Stingerfling Spider[/card], but ultimately decided to play just the 3 colours, with [card]Bloodrage Vampire[/card] and my 2nd [card]Unsummon[/card] being the last 2 cards to make the cut. Here is what I registered:
[deck title=Alexander Hayne – Aikido]
[Lands]
1 Mountain
8 Island
8 Swamp
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Pentavus
1 Sengir Vampire
1 Child of Night
2 Merfolk Looter
1 Gravedigger
1 Azure Mage
1 Vampire Outcast
1 Skywinder Drake
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Bloodrage Vampire
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
1 Mind Control
1 Wring Flesh
1 Sorin’s Thirst
1 Cancel
1 Mana Leak
1 Divination
1 Doom Blade
2 Manalith
2 Unsummon
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
1 Plains
1 Forest
1 Celestial Purge
1 Stingerfling Spider
1 Negate
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
Altogether, I was happy with my deck. However, when I had submitted it and went to check out everyone else’s deck, they were all better than mine! They had more bombs, more removal, more guys (for instance, my bloodthirsty guys are all pretty terrible, because I have no enablers). My deck’s only advantage was the 2 [card]Merfolk Looter[/card] and 2 [card]Manalith[/card]. After talking to Eric Gaudreault, I decided to plan to board in 1 [card]Forest[/card] +1 [card]Stingerfling Spider[/card] instead of a Swamp and an [card]Unsummon[/card], because we both felt that my deck lacked enough power, and I felt that I wanted a creature that could block 2/1s without dying, so that I wouldn’t have to trade something for every random creature they played. Against Red/Black decks without flyers, I would bring in 1 [card]Plains[/card] and 1 [card]Celestial Purge[/card] instead. If they had a number of flyers in their Red/Black deck, i would bring in the Purge and the Spider package, and take out the Lavamancer (since against R/B he is pretty fragile anyways).
My late game and my consistency seemed good because of the looters and [card]Azure Mage[/card]’s ability to draw me out of trouble. For that reason, I wasn’t concerned about the fact that 19 of my cards were mana sources. I felt getting flooded was a surmountable obstacle, whereas getting mana screwed was not.
I watched various people either goldfishing their decks, or playing against their friends while Round 1 was going on. About 10 different people came up to me and asked me to help them fix their decks, and I was more than happy to oblige. Most of them had built their decks to what I think was 5-6 cards within perfect, but there was one exception.
Babadascoopy, also known as Robert Pambianchi to his mother and the Canadian government, showed me his 3 colour monstrosity. Not 2 colour with a splash, 3 full colours. He had lots of good flyers in white, [card]Merfolk Looter[/card]s, [card]Aether Adept[/card]s, and [card]Jace, Memory Adept[/card] in blue, [card]Fireball[/card], [card]Incinerate[/card], and [card]Slaughter Cry[/card] in red…wait, WHAT? Not only was he splashing for [card]Slaughter Cry[/card], but he only had 3 plains and a [card]Manalith[/card] for 7! white cards. Please don’t try this at home. He then shows me his sideboard, and says “I probably should have played green, I just didn’t feel like it.”
Well, despite there being a [card]Manalith[/card] in his sideboard which should definitely have been in his deck to help play [card]Chandra’s Outrage[/card], [card]Griffin Sentinel[/card], and [card]Jace, Memory Adept[/card], his green was ABSURD. I quickly built him a Green/Blue deck splashing fireball that had 27 cards that I could see myself first-picking out of a pack, and managed to whittle it down to 24 with [card]Llanowar Elves[/card] and [card]Birds of Paradise[/card]. I told him to sideboard into that every time.
Quick Lesson:
When you are splashing a colour in limited, generally you want to have 1 more source than you have cards of that colour. Also, don’t splash double coloured cards. For instance, a deck with [card]Fireball[/card] and [card]Incinerate[/card] wants to have 3 red sources. That could be 3 [card]Mountain[/card]s, 1 [card]Mountain[/card] and 2 [card]Rampant Growth[/card]s, 3 [card]Manalith[/card]s, or some combination that has 3 different cards that can produce that colour. For my deck, I had [card]Grim Lavamancer[/card] in red, and 2 [card]Manalith[/card], and Stingerfling Spider(after board) in green, and 2 [card]Manalith[/card] as sources. Why was I playing a [card]Mountain[/card] and a Forest? Because since both cards are spashes, they are effectively 2 splash cards off of only 2 sources if all I have is the [card]Manalith[/card]s, which is 1 too few. Since 1 [card]Mountain[/card] can’t cast Stingerfling, and 1 [card]Forest[/card] can’t cast Grim, I went with 1 of each.
While watching people play their decks, the only deck I saw that was worse than mine was KYT’s. His deck looked terrible. He had some removal, and basically a bunch of RG dorks. I really hate playing RG in limited, because even if you have the best deck ever, with lots of removal and bombs, you have no way to mitigate mana flood or screw, and sometimes there are cards like [card]Mind Control[/card] that you just can’t profitably deal with. I took a look at his deck and sideboard, and saw that he was really only playing red for [card]Chandra’s Phoenix[/card] and [card]Fireball[/card], and [card]Goblin Piker[/card]s. His blue, containing [card]Merfolk Looter[/card] along with other cards, seemed vastly superior, and so I helped him make a UG deck that splashed for [card]Fireball[/card]. After fellow Team Westmount-er Robert Anderson, Corm and I went to Tim Hortons for some food, we hung around eating while waiting for Round 2 to end. Most of my friends with only 1 bye had won their round, which was encouraging. After all this watching other people play, and help them fix their decks, I was ready to play! And then Round 3 finally started. Instead of giving you a play by play account, I’ll try to just mention the interesting bits.
Round 3 vs Mason Gordon
Mason was wearing a McGill Law Sweater. Because of this, and some idle chit-chat, I could deduce a few things.
1) He lives around here
2) Since he lives around here, and I have not yet seen him before, he does not play many large tournaments
3) He is good at lying (kidding, kidding…)
While this is not much information, the point is: try to not give away any information if you can avoid it. If you are playing Mono Red at a tournament, please don’t play Chandra Sleeves. You may laugh, but that has happened before. Just consider the information you give your opponent, be it from your clothing, your sleeves, or by telling them where you live and/or how many byes you have. I personally play fairly different against a player I know to be good as I do to someone whose skill is unknown. If you have 3 byes on rating or Pro Level, it seems unlikely that you are going to be bad.
We shuffle up, wish each other luck, and begin.
Game 1 is really funny. He lands an un-bloodthirsted Bloodlord of Vastgoth, and I [card]Mind Control[/card] it. He plays a [card]Crown of Empires[/card], and when I go to combat on my turn, he taps the Bloodlord, but [card]Merfolk Looter[/card] gets in for a point, enabling a 7/5 [card]Bloodrage Vampire[/card]. Sammy T and Noah Long come by and watch my match at this point, when I [card]Doom Blade[/card] his [card]Volcanic Dragon[/card] the next turn and land a 7/7 Vampire Outcast. I hear them say “What a blowout”
I lose game 2 to a blistering start, but game 3 [card]Stingerfling Spider[/card] proves his worth by taking down a Bloodlord, then getting copied by Phatasmal Image to take down his [card]Volcanic Dragon[/card]. I love me some value!
3-0
Round 4: vs Daniel O’Mahoney Schwartz
We talk, and it turns out he has 3 Byes on rating. He plans to drop if he wins this match to qualify for Worlds, where his brother is being inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Game 1, I win by the skin of my teeth, as he Act of Treason’s my [card]Pentavus[/card], and makes 3 tokens. Luckily, I have a [card]Gravedigger[/card] for the rebuy, but he has lots of creatures waiting in the wings, and my Pentavites trade until I am at 3 with him having a [card]Goblin Arsonist[/card], a [card]Scepter of Empires[/card], a tapped [card]Volcanic Dragon[/card], an [card]Arbalest Elite[/card], and 5 life, to my [card]Merfolk Looter[/card], Pentavite, and Swamp in hand. I draw Phatasmal Image for my turn, use the looter and draw [card]Mind Control[/card]. I steal his Arbalest, copy his dragon, and swing in for exactsies the turn before I was going to die.
Game 2 I have a [card]Azure Mage[/card] + lots of lands going, and he’s never really in it.
He almost thanks me for beating him, because now he’s ‘locked into playing the whole tournament’. I wasn’t sure to be insulted or not, but I wished him luck in his quest for Worlds.
4-0
Round 5: vs Christian Keller
The only really interesting this this round is that my [card]Pentavus[/card] ends up trading for 6 of his cards: Fling, [card]Duskhunter Bat[/card], [card]Wring Flesh[/card], [card]Gorehorn Minotaurs[/card], [card]Crimson Mage[/card], and Stormblood Beserker. That is a lot of value. He had 3 turns to rip [card]Lava Axe[/card] in Game 3 to finish me, but he didn’t.
5-0
Round 6: vs Philippe Asselin
Game 1, we both keep 7 cards. He plays [card]Mountain[/card], go. I play [card]Island[/card], go. He plays Swamp, go. I play Swamp and [card]Merfolk Looter[/card]. He draws, and passes. I loot, play another Looter, and pass. He draws and discards [card]Gideon’s Avenger[/card]. Hmm, interesting deck/keep. The next turn, he draws a [card]Plains[/card], and plays a [card]Manalith[/card]. Then the next turn he casts [card]Divination[/card]. I guess we are playing the mirror match! The game goes long, including him playing 2 [card]Oblivion Ring[/card]s and a [card]Fireball[/card] to kill my looters and [card]Sengir Vampire[/card] and [card]Vampire Outcasts[/card]. He plays [card]Rune-Scarred Demon[/card], tutors, and passes. I play [card]Phantasmal Image[/card] and copy Rune-Scarred, and tutor up Cancel, since I have [card]Gravedigger[/card] in hand to get back my Image if necessary. He attacks, I trade, then he plays [card]Sun Titan[/card], which I cancel. [card]Grim Lavamancer[/card] does almost the full 20 by himself, aided by the early [card]Merfolk Looter[/card]s.
Game 2, I almost manage to stabalize until [card]Sun Titan[/card] + [card]Oblivion Ring[/card] gets me.
Game 3, He plays an early [card]Sengir Vampire[/card], which I [card]Celestial Purge[/card] (yay sideboard), after copying it with [card]Phantasmal Image[/card] of course. 5 turns later, just as time is about to be called, Image gets there. He shows me his hand of no flyers or removal, but 2 [card]Gravedigger[/card]s to recur Sengir had it not been exiled. Wow, what a match!
6-0
Round 7: vs Mathieu Tremblay
I am playing against my friend, and Face to Face team member Mathieu Tremblay. On one hand, we are both happy to be undefeated, on the other we are kind of bummed to be playing against each other. I mention that after this match, at least one of us will be locked for Day 2. He replies that if we draw, we could both miss on Day 2. And we begin.
Game 1 is a long, drawn out affair, with him starting with 2 early [card]Blood Seeker[/card]s, and I am desperately trying to find removal for them. Eventually I get a much-needed [card]Sorin’s Thirst[/card] to kill one of them, and manage to get to a situation where I have 6 cards left in my deck(3 of them land) and 2 Looters in play. If i draw a non-land, I win, but if I draw 3 running lands (from looters), I lose. I draw [card]Doom Blade[/card] without even needing to loot, and we are off to Game 2.
Game 2 is again a very long attrition war. I [card]Mind Control[/card] a [card]Drifting Shade[/card], but Mathieu uses [card]Oblivion Ring[/card] on my [card]Stingerfling Spider[/card]. The [card]Sun Titan[/card] that he has been sand-bagging to wait to have [card]Mana Leak[/card] mana gets me, and we are off to a decider with 2 minutes left on the clock.
Game 3 is on turn 2 when time is called. I basically realize that I have no chance at winning with only 2 turns, so just keep my creatures defensively, and the intense match ends in a draw.
6-0-1
Round 8: vs Nicholas R. Herstead:
He is playing a fairly aggressive RW strategy, and Game 1 I get a [card]Vampire Outcasts[/card] that he can’t deal with, Game 2 he swarms me to death, and Game 3 [card]Stingerfling Spider[/card] + [card]Azure Mage[/card] help me out attrition him. Not too interesting.
7-0-1
Round 9: vs Kenny Fung
Kenny is a Montreal player who I have seen at and played against in local PTQs. A member of Team Chex (and therefore a certified KYT barn), he has a monster of a UW deck. I noticed on the pairing sheet that he is actually 7-1, so I am paired down.
Game 1, he has an aggressive start, and follows up with [card]Serra Angel[/card]. I trade with his creatures and play a [card]Sengir Vampire[/card]. He [card]Mind Control[/card]s my [card]Sengir Vampire[/card], but I [card]Unsummon[/card] it, and it ends up trading for his Serra. He [card]Ponder[/card]s, and finds a [card]Gideon Jura[/card], which delivers the killing blow. Ouch.
Game 2, he again has an aggressive start, and I spend the early turns recovering. He keeps playing spells into my open mana while I have counter-magic in hand, but I am on the plan of “Don’t counter anything unless it’s called Gideon Jura”. I manage to answer his other threats, and [card]Pentavus[/card] kills him.
Game 3, he once again has an aggressive start, this time with [card]Elite Vanguard[/card] into [card]Azure Mage[/card] into [card]Benalish Veteran[/card]. I trade [card]Merfolk Looter[/card] for the Mage, trade [card]Bloodrage Vampire[/card]s for the Veteran, and take some hits from the Vanguard until I trade for an un-bloodthirsty [card]Vampire Outcasts[/card]. He seems to have run out of gas, but draws [card]Serra Angel[/card]. My run-goods continue, and my deck serves up [card]Doom Blade[/card], so that I don’t have to trade with my Sengir waiting in the wings. His [card]Mind Control[/card] is Mana Leaked, an [card]Aether Adept[/card] on his 3/2 flyer that I Mind Controlled is Cancelled, and when he plays Gideon, I have my sideboarded [card]Negate[/card] waiting. If he had not let me trade my [card]Merfolk Looter[/card] for his [card]Azure Mage[/card], I would most definitely have lost, but instead I end the day at:
8-0-1 (!)
Many friends come and congratulate me, and my phone keeps buzzing from all the messages I get on Facebook. Thank you all for the kind words. Marcel Angelo Zafra even wrote on my Wall, “TWINNING!!!! im 100% you are top8ing this GP”. Marcel is pretty good at predictions, I hear.
The ManaDeprived group goes out for dinner, and since back at Nationals, I had agreed with Jake Meszaros that whoever did worse at GP Montreal would buy the other dinner, and Jake has gone 2-2 drop or something, I had a delicious dinner for free! (VALUE!). I had a similar agreement with Andrew Noworaj, but for lunch. Andrew was sitting pretty at 9-0, 2 points ahead of my 8-0-1. While chatting and eating with the rest of the crew, I learned that KYT had also made day 2, at 7-2. Just goes to show that almost any deck can 4-2 if you build and play correctly. Mathieu Tremblay had also won his last 2 rounds, so he and I were both 8-0-1, in 5th and 6th place respectively in the standings. The cut for Day 2 had been 128 players, which was also a clean cut of 7-2 or better, the first time such a thing has happened to the best of my knowledge.
So after eating like a King on Jake’s dime, Franky drove me home (what a good friend), while playing “Tha Gatherin” in his car. “The Storm” resonated with me, and after getting home and setting my alarm, I quickly passed out.
To Be Continued…
Alexander Hayne is the 2012 Pro Tour Barcelona champion. He also finished 2nd at GP Montreal in 2011.