ModernStandard

The Last Worlds (Part Two)

Welcome back!  When we left off last week I was 4-2, and Team Canada had won both of our team rounds.  Coming back for day 2, I was hoping to go at least 4-2 in draft, with 5-1 not an unrealistic goal.  I had practiced the format a ton and felt very comfortable.

My first pod had only two people I recognized, Makihito Mihara, and fellow Canadian Marcel Zafra .  I paid careful attention to the flip cards opened. Not only do they offer tons of free information, but in a professional level event where everything is timed and people cannot review their picks, many of the less-seasoned players are too busy trying to figure out what they are doing to actually look up and see what is going on.  The head judge made it very clear how and when it was appropriate to look around, which was nice. I think despite the headaches they must have had coming in to the event with the flip cards, everything went smoothly.  The only real cards to watch out for were a [card] Ludevic’s Test Subject [/card] and a [card] Bloodline Keeper [/card], opened by the same guy in packs 2 and 3, he took them both.

I ended up with a solid but not spectacular BGw morbid deck.  The curve was a bit high for my liking, and I really wish I had seen a [card]Prey Upon [/card] or [card]Dead Weight[/card]. The one mana kill spells are very important in a deck featuring morbid cards.  Here’s what I registered:

[deck title=Draft #1]

[Creatures]
1 Typhoid Rats
1 Walking Corpse
1 Gatstaf Shepherd
1 Ambush Viper
1 Villagers of Estwald
1 Markov Patrician
1 Orchard Spirit
1 Festerhide Boar
1 Galvanic Juggernaut
1 Woodland Sleuth
1 Brain Weevil
1 Slayer of the Wicked
1 Grizzled Outcasts
2 Morkrut Banshee
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
1 Blazing Torch
1 Ranger’s Guile
1 Traveler’s Amulet
2 Victim of Night
1 Corpse Lunge
1 Tribute to Hunger
1 Unburial Rites
[/Spells]
[Lands]
9 Swamp
7 Forest
1 Plains
[/Lands]
[Sideboard]
1 Grizzled Outcasts
2 Ghoulraiser
1 Rotting Fensnake
1 Spidery Grasp
1 Naturalize
1 Manor Skeleton
1 Demonmail Hauberk
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

I wish I could have traded the [card]Brain Weevil[/card] and [card]Corpse Lunge[/card] for a good 2 drop and a Dead Weight/Prey Upon, but it would have to do.  Turn 4 Brain Weevil isn’t the worst when your deck has 2 Morkut Banshees and I had enough removal to have a chance in any game.  I could have played the Rotting Fensnake over the Weevil, since they both basically enable morbid on turn 5 and I’m still not sure which is right.

Another tough decision was Ranger’s Guile vs. Spidery Grasp.  In general I like Guile more, but in this deck I was very weak to fliers.  I almost played the Grasp, but my curve was just looking too high and I did not want to pass the turn with 3 mana open hoping my opponent would choose to let me use my removal when my hand is full of 4 and 5 drops.

The first interesting thing to happen to me was in round 7. My opponent attacked with a flipped [card] Ironfang[/card] and [card]Villagers of Estwald[/card] into my [card]Grizzled Outcasts[/card] and then played [card]Moonmist[/card].  That didn’t work out so well for him. I beat him easily after boarding in a second Outcasts.

Round 8 I lost to the typical good GW deck.  I won a tight game 1 where I made some suspicious attacks that represented the blazing torch I was holding to kill him, but I guess he just thought I was bad and never figured out what was going on.  Games 2 and 3 I lost to turn 2 guy, turn 3 flier, turn 4 [card]Travel Preparations[/card]. I can’t complain about that because it’s exactly what his deck is designed to do.

Round 9 I played against Mr. Bloodline/Test Subject, but since he was RU going in to pack three, his shoddy grixis manabase caught up to him.

For the second draft I had Ben Stark and Rich Hoaen in my pod.  This deck was a bit stranger than usual, and had the potential to go 3-0 just as easily as 0-3, which worried me a little.  I started out with a Dead Weight, then  Murder of Crows, but other than a 4th pick Forbidden Alchemy, blue was completely dry.  I was GB by the end of pack 2 after opening a Liliana (must be nice, I know, I know).  When passed an evil twin in pack 3, the blue became a splash.

[deck title=Draft #2]
[Creatures]
1 Typhoid Rats
1 Darkthicket Wolf
1 Hamlet Captain
1 Ambush Viper
1 Boneyard Wurm
1 Markov Patrician
2 Splinterfright
1 Grave Bramble
1 Lumberknot
1 Evil Twin
1 Manor Gargoyle
1 Hollowhenge Scavenger
1 Grizzled Outcasts
1 Geistcatcher’s Rig
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
1 Dead Weight
1 Prey Upon
1 Caravan Vigil
1 Mulch
1 Victim of Night
1 Forbidden Alchemy
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Spider Spawning
[/Spells]
[Lands]
8 Forest
7 Swamp
1 Island
1 Shimmering Grotto
[/Lands]
[Sideboard]
1 Altar’s Reap
1 Cobbled Wings
1 Ranger’s Guile
2 Corpse Lunge
1 Runechanter’s Pike
1 Demonmail Hauberk
1 Kindercatch
1 Ghoulcaller’s Chant
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

This deck was extremely hard to build.  It needed lots of creatures to fuel the Boneyard Wurm, the Splinterfrights and the Spider Spawning, but a lot of the creatures were not up to par.  On top of that, adding something like corpse lunge is pretty bad with the need for a full yard, and a lot of the creatures are very small.

I do think I misbuilt.  You might expect me to now say that I shouldn’t have played the Grave Bramble, or Hamlet Captain, but as sad as it is I needed those guys even if they were just chump blockers.The Kindercatch belongs in the deck over the Boneyard Wurm.  Splinterfright is fine with 1 creature in the graveyard, but Boneyard Wurn isn’t and is a pretty dead card in this deck until about turn 7.

My fears were not allayed when I lost round 1 of the draft.  I crushed the guy game 1 by following up a Mulch and a Forbidden Alchemy with some huge monsters. Games 2 and 3, my deck just did nothing. One game I held a Boneyard Wurm with no creatures in the graveyard and in the other, I died to a quick [card]Reckless Waif[/card] draw.  To make matters worse my opponent’s deck was far from strong, and both Hoaen and Stark had beaten really good decks.

Round two was both extremely intense and a little controversial.  I was paired against the guy that BenS had beaten, a rather quiet fellow from Korea whose English was passable but not great.  He was sporting a nutty GW human deck featuring an amazing curve, a [card]Champion of the Parish[/card], a [card]Manor Gargoyle[/card] and a [card]Mikaeus, The Lunarch[/card].

Game 1 I found myself taking a bunch of early damage on the ground but stabilized with a Grave Bramble.  He then went to the air with Manor Gargoyle but I matched it with my own.  I then dropped Splinterfright and copied it with Evil Twin, needing a way to win through his 32 life (he had used double [card]Moment of Heroism[/card] and a [card]Hollowhenge Scavenger[/card]).  The idea of milling 4 a turn was pretty scary with about 20 cards left in my deck, but I had no other way to win.  I was holding a Victim of Night since the beginning of the game, saving it for Mikaeus, but I was also prepared to use it to punish a bad team block.  Sure enough he cast bonds on my evil twin. I milled 4, attacked with my 8/8 Splinterfright and he blocked with exactly 8 power of creatures.  Sweet!  Evil Twin killed itself, making the Splinterfright a 9/9 and passed the turn, Victim still in hand.  Next turn I flashed back my Spider Spawning for 11 tokens, adding to the 6 I already had on board and killed him 2 turns later with a huge Splinterfright and a bunch of spiders.

Game 2 I dropped an early Liliana, and we got to a point where he had a [card]Villagers of Estwald[/card] to my Splinterfright and Evil Twin copying Splinterfright.  He asked how big Splintefright was and I replied 4/4, so he played Moment of Heroism, preyed upon my Evil Twin, then attacked my Liliana with 2 counters.  I blocked and looked up.  He nodded and said “damage”, pointing to his creature and my creature.  As he grabbed his creature I pointed out that my creature was now a 5/5 due to the recently deceased Evil Twin. He made a noise, tapped a green and cast Rangers Guile targeting Villagers.  I no sir’d him!  You can’t get away with that at a pro tour and we called over a judge.

I told my side of the story first and then he told his, but left out the part where he said: “damage,” but admitted to pointing to the two creatures during combat (which would obviously have been to indicate damage even if he had not said so).  I’ll go so far as to admit that he may of said something IN ADDITION to saying “damage,” since he was very quiet, but I was amazed when he claimed not to have said anything, since I am 100% sure he spoke.  Either way, the judge began his interrogation, with me pointing out that he had admittedly pointed to the creatures, and that I would have no reason to tell him my creature is a 5/5 until after his mistake. In the midst of this he decided he was getting into dangerous territory, stopped the judge, and binned his creature with a nod.

A few people commented afterwards that it seemed a bit sketchy from where they were standing, but A) I was way ahead anyways and B) I had no reason to lie, he was the one starting to get himself into DQ range.  Either way, with a Splinterfright, a Liliana on 3, and another creature I played the next turn, he conceded after his draw step failed to yield a [card]Balance[/card].

Round 3 I played against Hoaen, and after agreeing to a 10% split, won both games with Liliana to end the day with a satisfying 4-2 finish.

Not much happened that night as everyone felt exhausted.  To give an idea of how draining this can be, I slept for more hours than I spent awake in the couple days after I got back.  We did need to find a modern deck, just like the other 99% of competitors who really had no idea what to do.  None of our group wanted to play Rock, but it was nice knowing we had a copy in case we couldn’t get all the cards we needed.

The majority of the room wanted to play Zoo, since [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] added enough reach to the deck to turn it into something very powerful, but we only had enough for two copies of the deck and those went to Cappy and Hayne.  Dan decided to run splinter twin since he played it in T2. Noah started putting a better version of Ad Nauseum together with more and more copies of phyrexian unlife being added after each game. I decided to play Affinity.  I did not know the format very well, and Affinity seemed powerful enough that it could steal a lot of games, plus required less thinking, for which I was always thankful.  We got all the cards we needed in the morning (with help from FaceAFace). I was realistically looking to go about 3-3, locking up enough pro points to get me to level 3 and qualify for Honolulu.

We did do some testing that night, where I found out that there are a lot of hands for affinity that look good but don’t really do anything.  You basically need either an [card]Arcbound Ravager[/card], a [card] Cranial Plating[/card], an [card]Atog[/card], or a hand that dumps enough meat to be attacking for 5 or 6 pretty early.  Our gauntlet had been using the top 8 list from Philly, but since I had been piloting it for a while, I felt comfortable enough to make a couple of changes.  I cut one springleaf drum from the main for the fourth [card]Inkmoth[/card], and the [card]Magus of the Moon [/card]and  [card]Mindbreak Trap[/card] from the board for 2 [card]Shattering Spree[/card].

[deck title=Modern Affinity]

[Creatures]
4 Memnite
4 Ornithopter
4 Signal Pest
4 Vault Skirge
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Atog
4 Frogmite
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Mox Opal
4 Galvanic Blast
2 Springleaf Drum
2 Fling
1 Shrapnel Blast
4 Cranial Plating
[/Spells]
[Lands]
4 Inkmoth Nexus
3 Blinkmoth Nexus
4 Mountain
4 Darksteel Citadel
[/Lands]
[Sideboard]
4 Blood Moon
3 Etched Champion
3 Mindbreak Trap
3 Torpor Orb
2 Shattering Spree
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

The day began with the final 2 team rounds.  You can view some of the coverage here courtesy of Zack Levine.  I was still feeling groggy and made extensive use of the second opinion I had available to my left (Noah).  I figured if he’s not winning he may as well help me out right?  I’m actually being hard on him, since he had been drawing poorly in general but redeemed himself in the fourth team round.  After repeating our plan against the Slovaks (I win, Dan wins, Noah loses), Noah pulled out the win we needed against zoo while I lost to GW.  It came down to Dan, playing against his worst matchup, Dredge, somehow managing to draw, keeping us undefeated in the teams portion.

Now it was time for Modern.  After my opponent mulliganed, I shipped back a hand that did not meet the requirements and was greeted with the following: Mountain, 2 Blinkmoth Nexus, 2 Inkmoth Nexus, Signal Pest.  It was kind of sketchy, but it would attack for 2 poison a turn even through a removal spell, and 4 without. Turns out he was Ad Nauseum and didn’t have the [card]Slaughter Pact[/card] in hand for my guys.  The turn before I would have killed him he played [card]Ad Nauseum[/card] raw, and went down to 4 life revealing a bunch of ways to survive including 2 Slaughter Pacts, but it was not nearly enough.

In game 2, I got him down to 10 when he decided to play [card]Mystical Teachings[/card] with 3 cards in hand.  He had a ton of mana . I decided to respond by sacrificing all of my artifacts to Fling my Atog at him.  Even in hindsight I think it was the correct play since if he doesn’t have an [card]Angel’s Grace[/card] or a [card]Pact of Negation[/card] I win. If he has the Angel’s Grace and I decide not to Fling, then he wins anyways. He had the Angels Grace and I couldn’t draw a way to deal the 1 damage before he combo’d me.

I boarded out my Blood Moons for the final game. I realized it didn’t do enough with [card]Orzhov Signet[/card] in his list. I exploded out of the gates with turn 1 land, Mox Opal, Memnite, Ornithopter, Cranial Plating, and Frogmite with a Ravager in hand.  Turn two I equip and swing. On turn three I played the ravager precombat, which had the benefit of mitigating his removal as well as activating Springleaf Drum to equip plating to the Ornithopter. He cast [card]Hurkyl’s Recall[/card] as I was attacking. Ouch!  I got to replay all the 0 drops so it wasn’t all bad.  He hung on for a surprisingly long time after that, including having a couple of turns where he had outs to win the game, but he was too far behind to ever stabilize.

I lost the next round to Florian Pils playing storm, despite the MOCS coverage claiming he played zoo all day (I believe he did so in the online portion, but not the individual).  He admitted that he got lucky in the games he won. Game 1 he went off with 2 [card]Manamorphose[/card], a [card]Desperate Ritual[/card], a [card]Grapeshot[/card] and an [card]Empty the Warrens[/card] in hand, and drew in to both remaining Manamorphose and 2 rituals.  I regretted not having the fourth Mindbreak Trap in my board anymore, but I didn’t want to dilute my deck too much anyways since you still need a pretty good clock to beat the storm decks.  I actually think storm might be very well positioned right now since decks are loading up on creature removal to combat Zoo, but I’m not sure how the actual zoo matchup looks. That might be enough to make it a bad choice.

Next few rounds went by very quickly since I began to just start drawing the nuts every game.  I still had to think quite a bit, and I did get lucky, but I was happy to win.  In one of the matches against Melira Pod, I won game 1, lost game 2 on a mull to 5, mulled again to 5 in game 3 with my opponent mulliganing to 4. My 5 cards were: Memnite, Signal Pest, land, Plating, Galvanic Blast and I topdecked a land on my first draw.

In the penultimate round I played against Akira Asahara, which was insane.  There’s something about the language barrier that makes it really spooky to play against the Japanese.  You can just feel them reaching into your mind and figuring out the best way to kill you 8 turns down the road and I could see why everyone fears them.  The final round I debated the intentional draw, since my opponent offered it when we sat down, but I realized that top 16 would probably get me to level 4, plus the win would help the team more if I played it out.  It turned out to be against Big Zoo and I lost game 1 and asked if his offer was still good.  He said no since he liked the matchup and I just won games 2 and 3.  Hooray!

So I ended modern 5-1, good for 12th place and a good chunk of cash.  With that I was extremely pleased and almost ready to celebrate when I found out Cappy got dreamcrushed.  We sat there looking sad for a few minutes until I asked to look at the standings and immediately realized he was fine.  I suppose there was still a 0.01% chance he could miss. He wasn’t going to celebrate until we heard his name. We all went nuts when they announced: “in 7th place… from Canada!” Of course he still had 4 rounds to play before he could go to bed.  Jeez what a life.

There is still a long way for me to go.  I made a few too many mistakes for my liking, especially against the better players, but I feel as though I am improving, especially in constructed.  Both modern and standard are proving to be really great formats right now, but they change so often I can’t really recommend anything when it could be irrelevant in a week.  To anyone who hasn’t seen a pro tour before, you don’t know what you’re missing and it’s too bad that they are making them all private.  I get to play in at least another 3, so hopefully I can build on what I’ve learned and continue to represent the Canadian magic scene!

Thanks,

Marc Anderson

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments