Unfortunately my Grand Prix experience started off like so many of my recent Magic tournaments have; I woke up feeling sick and exhausted. I'd been running a fever through most of the night and I was pretty sure I'd feel a lot better once I took a hot shower and washed the "sick" off of me. After all, there was no way I was going to miss a Grand Prix in my own city over a high temperature and bad lungs. Unfortunately I was not prepared to find out that the hot water heater in my building had gone out sometime the day before. This meant a freezing COLD shower that ultimately made me feel worse than before I took it. At one point while shivering next to the space heater in my room I informed my boyfriend that I was "not going without a hot shower" and "quitting Magic forever" because "I never get to play". Thankfully he's a more reasonable person than I am and he managed to talk me down from the ledge with promises of warm coffee and a cab ride to the Go Station.
Our "posse" arrived about a half hour later with a cab and somehow I was actually ready on time despite the shower fiasco. For those of you who've never been to a big Magic event I strongly advise that you bring a friend or two along for the ride; there's a lot going on at a GP and the experience can be at times overwhelming. Having some friends around to share the excitement, stress and memories with can go a long way towards coping with the sheer magnitude of the event. Plus it's always nice to have someone to root for and someone rooting for you while your competing with some of the best Magic players in the world. In my case I would spent most of Saturday hanging out with Hairy T regulars Kelly Ackerman, Beau Wheelan, Stephen Kerr and of course the owner of the Hairy T; Leon Emmett. I also spent a bunch of time cheering on friends of mine from the Hairy T North's FNM crew; David Sutherland, Jacob Lietch, Evan Biel, Shai Cramer-Hussey, Duncan MacCallum, Alex MacCallum and of course esteemed podcast star and writer for 60cards.com; Scott MacCallum. Throw in the literal hundreds of customers and competitors I knew from drafts at our store and it's safe to say I found myself constantly surrounded with familiar and friendly faces. I feel this went a long way towards helping me settle down and focus on doing well in the main tournament and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all my friends at the GP for being so supportive.
Before we get to the actual "tournament report" part of this blog post I'd like to take the opportunity to openly admit that I had a pretty good time "star-gazing" at the Toronto Grand Prix. I realize it may not be considered "cool" or "fashionable" to geek out over famous Magic players but I honestly rather enjoyed being surrounded by some of the best players in the world. In particular it was pretty awesome to meet so many of the amazing writers for Channel Fireball and I have no real problem admitting that the twin highlights of my day were telling David Ochoa and Conley Woods that I really enjoyed their articles and I appreciated that Channel Fireball made them available for free. If that makes me a "fangirl", so be it I guess. Other "famous" people I saw wandering around the room included Gabriel Nassif, Luis Scott-Vargas (who I may have inadvertently annoyed), Brad Nelson (who I accidentally bumped into while trying to slide by the pairings wall) and Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa (who's my favorite writer but I chickened out on talking to him about 4 times).
Once the tournament finally started I could barely contain my excitement and I found myself wishing more than once that I would be passed a good sealed pool. For those of you who've never been to a large sealed event I should mention that you don't actually get to open your own pool. To discourage cheating players are given 6 packs to open and are required to write down their *exact* contents. Those packs are then passed to another player in the tournament and become his or her sealed pool. That player registers the deck he builds on the same sheet you wrote down the contents of all 6 packs you opened. This allows the judges to check for added/missing/changed cards randomly at any point in the tournament. If your current pool doesn't match the cards you were given or the deck you registered it becomes fairly obvious that you are cheating. While this may seem like a bit of a hassle it's probably the fairest and most efficient way to ensure that people don't add or remove cards from their sealed pools. I played in an Invasion block sealed tournament at the 2002 World Championships in Toronto where this was not done and scrubbed out at 0-2 after facing off against 5 different Legendary dragons that my opponents clearly "opened fair and square". Needless to say I am now firmly "for" sealed pool registration and passing. It also doesn't hurt that the sealed pool I opened for someone else was horrible; the good cards were spread across 4 colors, low on infect, low on artifacts. I sincerely apologize to the person who ended up with that pool simply because there was nothing I could do to save them; the cards out of the packs were just that bad.
Thankfully *my* sealed pool turned out to be much better than the one I'd opened for someone else. When I first started pouring over the cards all I was really hoping to find were some creature removal effects, a few flyers and some "Hill Giants". Let's take a quick look at my entire pool and discuss the challenges it presented. Afterward we'll take a look at the deck I ultimately registered, the mistakes I think I made and finally what I could have done to make the deck stronger:
White Cards - (10):
1x Dispense Justice
1x Ghalma's Warden
1x Glint Hawk
1x Kemba's Skyguard
1x Loxodon Wayfarer
1x Razor Hippogriff
1x Revoke Existence
2x Salvage Scout
1x Inexorable Tide
2x Lumengrid Drake
1x Plated Seastrider
1x Quicksilver Gargantuan
2x Stoic Rebuttal
1x Thrumingbird
1x Vedalken Certarch
2x Blistergrub
1x Flesh Allergy
1x Fume Spitter
1x Grasp of Darkness
1x Hand of the Praetors
1x Ichor Rats
1x Necrogen Scudder
1x Relic Putrescence
1x Blade-Tribe Berserkers
1x Ferrovore
1x Kuldotha Phoenix
1x Kuldotha Rebirth
1x Melt Terrain
1x Oxidda Daredevil
1x Shatter
1x Turn to Slag
2x Vulshok Heartstoker
1x Acid Web Spider
1x Alpha Tyrranax
1x Carapace Forger
1x Copperhorn Scout
1x Molder Beast
1x Slice in Twain
1x Tel-Jilad Defiance
1x Untamed Might
1x Wing Puncture
Artifacts - (34):
1x Clone Shell
1x Contagion Clasp
2x Copper Myr
1x Culling Dais
1x Corpse Cur
1x Darksteel Juggernaught
1x Echo Circlet
1x Flight Spellbomb
1x Glint Hawk Idol
1x Golden Urn
1x Golem's Heart
1x Grafted Exoskeleton
1x Heavy Arbalest
1x Ichorclaw Myr
1x Infiltration Lens
1x Iron Myr
1x Leaden Myr
1x Memnite
1x Necropede
1x Neurok Replica
1x Nihil Spellbomb
1x Perilous Myr
1x Saberclaw Golem
1x Silver Myr
1x Snapsail Glider
1x Soliton
1x Trigon of Corruption
1x Vector Asp
1x Venser's Journal
3x Wall of Tanglecord
Lands - (3):
1x Forest (Foil)
1x Glimmerpost
1x Razorverge Thicket.
Despite it's obvious strengths this was actually a very complicated pool to build from; fraught with several traps and pitfalls. The first and most obvious of which is the amazing 1/2 of an Infect deck hiding amongst the black and green cards. Hand of the Praetors is absolutely a bomb for the infect archetype (although somewhat fragile) and cards like Ichorclaw Myr, Contagion Clasp, Grasp of Darkness, Untamed Might, Corpse Cur, Ichor Rats, Necropede, Slice in Twain, Infiltration Lens and Heavy Arbalest all rate very highly in any type of Limited Infect build. Unfortunately despite all of these powerful cards there simply weren't enough cards that actually said the word "Infect" on them. 6 creatures and a Grafted Exoskeleton does not an Infect deck make, no matter how broken your support cards may be. The other and perhaps slightly less obvious trap in this pool is the very slow but powerful blue Metalcraft deck lurking in the reeds. The clear centerpiece of this build would be the Quicksilver Gargantuan; a card that looks considerably more powerful when you realize your deck has 5 mana Myr (even if only one of them is blue). Throw in powerful Metalcraft cards like 2x Lumengrid Drake, a Vedalkan Certarch, 2x Stoic Rebuttals, a couple of Indestructible Artifact Creatures and even the Soliton/Heavy Arbalest combo and you have the makings of a very powerful deck. As previously mentioned however it would also be incredibly slow/difficult to play and while SoM Sealed isn't as fast as SoM draft I would hardly describe it as a "slow" format. Additionally while this deck would be chock full of bombs it would likely force you to choose between white or red as a support color; a decision I believe would ultimately fall in favor of white simple because it provides 3 extra removal cards and 3 flyers. This would mean leaving Kuldotha Phoenix, Shatter and Turn to Slag in the sideboard which frankly doesn't seem very appealing. I suppose technically you could simply play the best cards from each color but with double mana symbols in key cards spread across all 3 colors I really don't think it would be consistent enough for a Grand Prix level event. After all, 1x Sliver Myr and 1x Iron Myr are only going to take you so far and the best card in the entire pool (Kuldotha Phoenix) actually has a TRIPLE red casting cost unless you can somehow discard it.
Once these two "traps" had been properly sniffed out it became pretty clear that my best bet was to build a red/white "beatdown" deck with as much removal as I could possibly cram into 40 cards. The downside was that I lacked the swarm of cheap flyers and 2-3 pieces of power-boosting equipment your typical r/w "weenie rush" deck would rely so heavily on. The upshot of course was that I had so much creature control I felt absolutely comfortable building my deck around several powerful 4 and 5 drops. While not all of these control effects were universal or even particularly efficient; added together I felt they would make it awful hard to kill me before I'd seen well over half my deck and multiple 5CC threats. Unfortunately while the first 3/4's of the deck sorta built itself I found myself reaching slightly for the last few slots in the build; ultimately settling on this list with less than 3 minutes left in the deck registration process:
R/W Mid-Game Aggro w/ Removal:
1x Glint Hawk
1x Copper Myr
1x Iron Myr
1x Necropede
1x Perilous Myr
1x Silver Myr
1x Wall of Tanglechord
1x Kemba's Skyguard
1x Sunsail Glider
1x Blade-Tribe Berserkers
1x Darksteel Juggernaut
1x Kuldotha Phoenix
1x Razor Hippogriff
1x Saberclaw Golem
1x Soliton
Spells - 9:
1x Contagion Clasp
1x Glint Hawk Idol
1x Revoke Existence
1x Shatter
1x Arrest
1x Dispense Justice
1x Heavy Arbalest
1x Trigon of Corruption
1x Turn to Slag
Land - 16:
8x Mountain
8x Plains
What makes this deck good? - It's not unusual for players to describe the sealed deck format as being "all about bombs and removal" and while it's oversimplifying the situation there's certainly a ring of truth in this idea. Killing your opponent's creatures and swinging back with flyers and fatties is a time honored path to victory in limited Magic. While obviously of varying power and complexity this deck actually has 10 cards that can help control enemy creatures: Necropede, Perilous Myr, Contagion Clasp, Revoke Existence, Shatter, Arrest, Dispence Justice, Heavy Arbalest, Trigon of Corruption and Turn to Slag. That kind of removal goes a long way toward compensating for a somewhat mediocre creature base; and most importantly gives you time to find your key game finishing monsters. With potentially 6 flyers and powerful ground-pounders like Darskteel Juggernaught or Saberclaw Golem it's pretty easy to make short work of a creature-light opponent in the midgame. I should probably also mention that Kuldotha Phoenix is one of the most broken rares in the entire format; it's fairly easy to achieve/maintain Metalcraft status in sealed which makes the Phoenix pretty much impossible to kill permanently.
What problems does this deck have? - As previously mentioned you really want a couple more flyers when playing red/white aggro decks in this; 5-6 isn't bad but 8-9 is certainly better. Additionally both Snapsail Glinder and Kemba's Skyguard can be trouble to bring online in the early game while Razor Hippogriff and Kuldotha Phoenix are strictly mid-late game plays. This makes it fairly hard to get into your opponent's life total early on and usually means that once you do establish board control you'll usually be playing from far behind in life; albeit with 1-2 solid evasion creatures in play. The easiest way to mitigate this problem would be through power boosting equipment like Darksteel Axe/Barbed Battlegear or a Trigon of Rage. Unfortunately I pretty much "wiffed" on good equipment in this sealed pool; failing to even pull the vastly under-rated Sylvok Lifestaff. I even briefly thought of playing with the 2x Vulshok Heartstokers just to speed the build up but I was terrified of drawing into them with no flyers in play and wasting the +2 bonus. Finally while both red and white produced strong cards in my pool, neither color was particularly deep and I only had 1 on-color mana Myr (Iron Myr). This combined with a general need for artifacts to bolster cards like Dartksteel Juggernaught, Glint Hawk Idol, Dispense Justice, Kuldotha Phoenix, Glint Hawk, Razor Hippogriff and Blade-Tribe Bersekers forced me to fill the last 4 slots of the deck with somewhat mediocre artifacts. While two of these cards are simply unexciting (Wall of Tanglecord, Snapsail Glider), two of them actually tested out as "poor" in the build throughout the day (Soliton, Heavy Arbalest). As an added note I should probably mention that Darksteel Juggernaut isn't nearly as good a card as it seems on the surface. In most of my games it was a 3/3 with Indestructible the entire time which is decent but nothing special. It's also pretty poor against -1/-1 counters, forcing me to sideboard my "bomb rare" out against black twice in 6 rounds.
If you could do it all over again how would you make this deck better? - Without spoiling the match reports from part 2 of this article I can safely say that the Soliton/Heavy Arbalest combo was simply too slow and clunky to be worth including. Pretty much every time I drew the Arbalest it sat in my hand for 4-5 turns until I finally ran out of better cards to play; at which point it'd lost all relevance because the game had progressed beyond 2 toughness creatures. It's clearly stronger in a deck with a significant # of Infect creatures but it was typically the first card I sideboarded out for game 2. Obviously if I shouldn't have bothered running the Heavy Arbalest then the Soliton becomes a "pretty mediocre 3/4 for 5 Artifact Creature" and probably doesn't warrant inclusion either. It's also been pointed out by several friends/team-mates that adding an extra Island to help un-tap the Soliton was probably wiser than relying on just a Silver Myr but I really didn't want to drop anything for another land and I certainly couldn't spare a Plains or a Mountain from the build. Regardless, in place of the Arbalest/Soliton I'd probably run Culling Dias (which was my very last cut) and Darksteel Sentinel in the main deck because they are strictly more powerful cards in a vacuum. I had initially been frightened by the Sentinel's high casting cost and vulnerability to -1-1 tokens but changed my mind when I saw how much slower Infect decks tended to be in sealed.
Once I'd sleeved up my deck and submitted my registration sheet I made a point of not shuffling or goldfishing it a whole bunch of times while I waited for round 1 pairings. At this point I felt the key was to relax with my friends and conserve mental energy for the long day ahead. The tournament organizers had announced that the event would be divided up into two pools who would each play 10 rounds of Swiss; this wasn't going to be a sprint but rather a marathon. When the pairings were finally posted I made my way to the table for my round 1 match-up and reminded myself to play carefully but without expectations; everyone in this room had come to the GP to win a few games there was no reason to believe my desire to perform well would automatically lead to wins.
Well folks that's about all my fingers can take for now. Please join me next time here at The Cardboard Witch for the exciting conclusion to my GP Toronto 2010 report; heck maybe we'll even talk about actual games next time! *wink*
-nina
PS - It has just come to my attention that Eric Linden featured a link to my article about the $30 Red Deck last week and because of the GP and all the chaos I didn't notice. I'd like to thank Eric for noticing us out there in cyberspace and openly admit that I'm mildly geeked about this. That's pretty cool and I'm nerdy enough to appreciate it. :)
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