Grand Prix Calgary Diary: Day 1.
(My apologies for the delay in posting: As it turns out, once you get into the Grand Prix days themselves, things get a little busier. And then you go home, and you get distracted catching up with everything that's happened since.)
Day 1 is in the books, and I learned some valuable lessons. Above all is, of course, take care of yourself. I made some mistakes in the 24 hours that entailed Saturday in that regard. I stayed awake until 2:30 AM writing my previous entry and sending a message to a friend who couldn't make the GP. Having already been behind on sleep going in, this was a very bad idea (but I don't regret it *that* much). Additionally, I failed to eat anything during the rounds where I finished early, focusing too much on running around to find out how my friends were doing -- by the time I did finally try and get something, the nearest A&W had closed at an unconscionably early 5 PM!
Anyhow, this combination of poor nutrition and sleep deprivation didn't really hit me during the GP itself, as day 1 was only 8 rounds and the excitement of playing Magic got me through it pretty easily. But in the ensuing celebrations of our success stories (which I'll get to soon), I became progressively less comfortable. Part of this was poor table management on my part. All my closer friends were on the opposite end of a long table, and while I don't mind the company of the other Saskatoon Magic players in general it was a little frustrating to be at a distance from the part of the conversation I was most interested in.
The other part, of course, was that I was just in plain old rough shape by the end of it, suffering from poor digestion after a diet that had gone as follows: Meatball sandwich at Boston Pizza for dinner, nothing for breakfast, nothing for lunch, big (and too delicious not to finish) plate of fish and chips for dinner. Most of the Saskatoon contingent had gone to an Irish pub (the James Joyce, I believe), where I also tried a sampler of Irish beers.
For the record, my opinion as someone who very infrequently drinks beer: I liked the Harp lager fine enough to complete, the Kilkenny was drinkable but so uncompelling in flavour that I didn't bother finishing it, the Smithwick's was far too bitter for my liking, and Guinness just tastes weird and causes me to make particularly unusual faces. I could only manage 11 ounces of the 24 served to me, but at least I learned something: I don't like dark beers. (Also, remember not to drink on an empty stomach. It didn't come to anything awful like throwing up or a hangover, but I knew I might not be handling my beer so well when I started genuinely enjoying the 2000s-era U2 the pub played.)
Anyway, so between the poor digestion and the uncomfortable position at dinner, my initial state of 'behind on sleep but still content' had given way to 'exhausted and feeling kind of miserable' by the end of the day. I was eager to put an end to this, although the general difficulty of organizing people between the multiple directions they want to go after a GP Day 1 (parties, playing more Magic with friends, and just back to the hotel) led to further delays. By the time I did get back, there was little to do but hit the sack.
But let's backtrack for a moment, because the Grand Prix isn't just about going out to celebrate success, finding out what alcohols you don't like and being generally punished for poor decisions (although the latter does frequently come up!). It's about sleeving up some cards, making a decklist, checking it twice, checking it a third time, maybe a fourth just in case, and then playing the best Magic you can against all the talent the Grand Prix can offer.
On my part, I was not playing the best Magic I possibly could. After all, I was out of practice and had wasted much of my testing opportunity trying to learn how to play Bant Hexproof, a deck I had ruled out as effective but maddeningly inconsistent. I had built the UWR Flash deck the day before my bus trip, with just a few games of testing against typical Jund lists under my belt. By all indications, I would be happy just to not embarrass myself too severely at this event.
Round 1. I was paired against Earl Oleden, a quite friendly Alberta player coming off a Provincial Championship Top 8 the previous year. This day, he was playing Naya Midrange, a matchup I ultimately found comfortable if still challenging at times. In game 1, he rendered my instant-speed effects rather less than viable with multiple copies of Voice of Resurgence, but I was able to cast things on my own main phases and landed just enough threats on my side of the table to race him to victory.
Game 2 saw my sideboarding decisions prove crucial -- he got a Domri Rade to 7 loyalty counters, but Renounce the Guilds forced him to sacrifice it the turn before it would have created an emblem that tilts the match decidedly in his favour. I dispatched most of his threats while maintaining a strong life total, and soon a large Sphinx's Revelation reloaded my hand and put myself so far out of danger that I could easily afford to take 6 damage in order to remove a Ruric Thar, the Unbowed that threatened to get in the way of finishing him off.
In Round 2, I faced against a player whose name was familiar to me though his face was not; Troy Hollister had been a mainstay of Saskatchewan provincial standings, but he played mostly in Regina and our paths only crossed when there was something worth driving for. He played a Gruul (red/green) aggressive deck with Burning Earth in his sideboard. This four-mana enchantment makes players take 1 damage every timothy tap a nonbasic land for mana, punishing me for my deck's almost total lack of basics.
Burning Earth, as it turned out, would be a problem for me over the course of the tournament, and this round was no exception. In game 1, I dealt with all his creatures and stabilized on 3 life, then drew enough aggressive cards to beat him before he could find something to finish me off, but in games 2 and 3 I simply could not handle his aggression backed up by the nastiness that was Burning Earth. In game 3, I had stabilized through his early aggression and made it to the topdeck phase of the game with a pretty large life total, but as soon as Burning Earth came down it became clear that I would need to dig for a sideboard answer or draw really threat-heavy from then onward to make up for the edge the card gave him. I even cast a Sphinx's Revelation for six, taking 9 damage from my land in the process, but I couldn't find the Oblivion Ring I needed to limit the pain, and he was able to cast a second Burning Earth to lock me out completely.
(NOT-PARTICULARLY-PRO TIP: With a Burning Earth in play, normally you have to take damage from the triggers before your spell resolves, since most of the time you tap the lands for mana during the process of casting the spell. However, when casting an instant or a spell with flash, you can actually tap your lands for mana, have your opponent place their Burning Earth triggers on the stack, and respond to these triggers with the instant-speed spell, which will resolve first. This is particularly relevant when you're at a low life total and either gaining life or killing your opponent is a result of the spell.)
Round 3! Elijah Harper, playing what appeared to be Aristocrats Act Two, a deck that I like a lot for its ability to present a broad swath of threats and provide a lot of opportunities for synergistic interactions in the course of the game. This deck tends to feature Doomed Traveler and Lingering Souls as means to generate a lot of creatures efficiently, Cartel Aristocrat and Falkenrath Aristocrat as creatures that feast upon this overabundance for positive effects, and Blood Artist to drain your opponent's life total efficiently. I won game 1 with a little good fortune, and game 2 with a lot of good fortune as I knew what to bring in against the deck. I drew Izzet Staticaster and Thundermaw Hellkite in multiples, giving myself a number of nasty ways to deal with 1/1 flying tokens en masse as well as unprotected Falkenrath Aristocrats. I believe I also brought in Renounce the Guilds to deal with Aristocrats in general, but did not see the card.
Round 4, I headed back to the VIP area to play against Jordan MacIntosh's Wolf Run Naya deck. The experience was much like round 1, but closer due to the presence of maindeck Thundermaw Hellkites throughout the match. Another great matchup for Renounce the Guilds to come in, as it even hit a flipped Garruk, the Veil-Cursed whose color indicator is unintuitively both black and green. It went to game 3, where Jordan recovered from his mulligan and subsequent mana screw just enough to blunt my initial assaults and subsequently threatened a quick end to my life total with the likes of Loxodon Smiter and Thundermaw Hellkite. However, I found the line to win the game and the match, casting Azorius Charm to put his Hellkite back on top of his deck before using Encroaching Wastes to destroy his fifth land on my turn and thus preventing the Hellkite from making a repeat appearance.
Some people don't like the Encroaching Wastes in the manabase and want to play Mutavault or Ghost Quarter instead. I appreciate this line of thought, but right now between Kessig Wolf Run, Gavony Township, Cavern of Souls, Mutavault and even Moorland Haunt in the mirror match, there are a lot of nonbasic lands that you want to have a convenient answer for in the long game. Ghost Quarter can deal with these but tends to put you behind on mana in the process in a way that I dislike, as few opponents are genuinely neglecting basic lands enough to make it into a pure land-destruction card.
I was 3-1 at this point. This was on pace for an unlikely degree of success, as with attendance less than most Grand Prix tournaments, 6-2 had been announced as sufficient to make day 2! And I wasn't alone on the 'halfway there' side of things, with many of the other 16 Saskatoon players who knew each other having gotten off to good starts in the early rounds, to say nothing of the two who had begun the day with 3 byes from winning our local Grand Prix Trial tournaments.
I'd just like to take a moment between rounds to mention that the VIP perks for a Grand Prix are surprisingly more worthwhile than I'd thought. Being assured a playmat is nice, and fixed seating itself is convenient, but the real benefit is not that the seating is fixed so much as that the seating they assign you in the VIP section is like night and day in terms of having room to play. Outside of VIP, it felt like it would be a challenge to fit all the cards, deckboxes and life total pad in play at times -- inside VIP, there was never a question of space other than 'how do I even fill this much?'
I stayed in the VIP area for a match with Richard Greenland playing Junk Midrange. Junk may sound like it's bad, but it's really just a common name in Magic circles for the color combination of black, green and white. This deck didn't tend to do a lot in the early turns but accelerating its mana, but it made up for it by dropping a Cavern of Souls and then starting to run out large-scale uncounterable threats like Restoration Angel, Thragtusk, Blood Baron of Vizkopa and the most problematic of the options available: Sigarda, Host of Herons, a 5/5 flying Angel that I couldn't target and couldn't even force my opponent to sacrifice!
Despite all these problem creatures, I was still able to win game 1. However, mulligans to 4 and 5 in the next couple of games would be my undoing, though a clever Restoration Angel blink of Thundermaw Hellkite during the beginning of combat step managed to tap down Sigarda and briefly allowed me to entertain the possibility of winning the second game. Of course, an opposing Restoration Angel blinking Thragtusk put an end to such foolish hopes swiftly. I was now in 'back against the wall' territory, needing to win 3 straight to make it to Day 2 of the main event.
Round 6 against Travis Coles, I stared at my first hand. Two Pillars of Flame, one of my best tools against aggro. A number of two-mana cards that could help me buy time. A single land, but one that could come down early and provide the red mana I most immediately needed. I had two turns to draw a land without affecting my mana development -- in the dark, it seemed worth keeping, particularly given the impact that mulligans had just wrought upon my previous match (not a valid reason, but still possibly a psychological consideration). I kept it, and though I didn't draw the second land for several turns, I'm not confident that it was a bad decision. If I were to keep another one-lander in future with this deck, it would probably look very similar to this one, because it was about as good as I could hope for from such a hand.
Of course, as noted, I didn't draw that second land. Even though the Pillars turned out to be cards I really wanted in this mono-black control matchup to deal with Geralf's Messenger and help to burn out Lilianas, they were certainly no match for the massive Desecration Demon with which my opponent brought me to a swift and merciful end. I was at least glad that I'd lost game 1 quickly, as those which followed were the sort of grindy wars of attrition and gradual advantages that only a particularly competition-focused segment of Magic players can truly enjoy. I consider myself to be part of this segment, but after finishing the round with barely minutes to go I found myself contemplating how much more time I would have after my matches were I to have just chosen a 'win fast or lose fast' deck like Hexproof or Burning Earth-backed aggro.
Adding to the disappointment of not having time to get food, although I had fought valiantly, I had lost game 3. The dream was dead: I didn't know how I was going to spend Day 2, but it wasn't going to be competing for a Grand Prix title. I congratulated Travis on getting close with a deck that seemed under-appreciated, as he had been a very likeable opponent. In fact, just about everyone I played against this weekend was at least pleasant.
Before round 7, as had become habit, I checked in with my friends who were also between matches. Quite a few were still in contention, led by Stephane Gerard at 6-0. Stephane, a close friend of mine as described in the Day -5 entry, is a recent PTQ winner with three byes in this event as a result. Known in equal turns locally for his play skill and his gregarious personality, Stephane is a firm believer in brewing up new and innovative decks, and as it frequently turns out, even when he chooses the traditional strategy in a format he'll often take an unconventional road to get there.
For instance, he once made it to top 8 of National Qualifiers playing a blue-white control deck at the height of CawBlade season -- but his was built around Venser, the Sojourner. When black-red Zombies was in fashion during the early weeks of Standard after Return to Ravnica's release, Stephane won the Provincial Championship with black-red Zombies -- and maindeck copies of Fling!
Stephane had seemed to be struggling to find a path to success in this GP throughout our testing, as for all the effort he'd made to figure out how to win the difficult Hexproof matchup with a burn deck, he determined that beating Jund with the same was just unpleasantly dependent on guessing to what degree the opponent's gameplan depended on their Arbor Elf's survival. When I had left Saskatoon, my last interactions with Stephane had been testing Jund against an Esper control deck that I viewed as his 'default strategy' -- but by the time he had arrived in Calgary, he was now on Jund himself.
I had assumed he was just defaulting to the solid build that Andrew Boa and Jessie Aschenbrenner had built, but the conversations the morning of Day 1 in our group's hotel room had been clear that whatever Jund I had thought this was, this was not that. Farseek, a card that most players (myself included) viewed and that most still view as essential to the deck's gameplan (albeit a poor late-game card), had been cast aside in favour of 4 maindeck copies of Lifebane Zombie, a cheaper threat than Jund was previously accustomed to playing. Stephane also played Vraska the Unseen and even Bloodgift Demon as potent threats which could accrue additional advantage in the course of gameplay.
So anyway, Stephane was doing well. I, on the other hand, was finally getting to play against Jund Midrange in round 7, played by John Duquette. I had felt that in my little amount of testing, I had at least figured out the dynamic of the Jund-UWR matchup: Jund tries to cast a series of increasingly serious threats, while UWR attempts to fend these threats off with counterspells and removal without tapping out on its own turn. Often this pattern culminates in a big-mana Rakdos's Return by the Jund player which if resolved would deal the UWR player damage while emptying their hand, rendering them unable to handle further threats effectively.
Game 1, I dealt with the threats sufficiently well that by the time the Jund player was able to cast a Rakdos's Return, I had already pushed through a significant amount of damage with my flash creatures such that while the Return was going to resolve and take away any substantial amount of cards my Sphinx's Revelation could have drawn in response, I was able to cast a Warleader's Helix in response to drop my opponent to a low enough life total that these creatures could finish him off in short order. Game 2, he resolved an early Liliana of the Veil, but I chose what to discard carefully and recognized that I would likely only need four land for most of the early game, eventually managing to deal with it through Warleader's Helix and a well-timed Restoration Angel before taking over from there.
I was 4-3 now, meeting my hopes of finally at least locking up a 50% win rate at the Grand Prix itself. Stephane had won a Jund matchup to go to 7-0; six other local players were now 5-2 with a chance to make day 2 if they won their next rounds. Before round 8, I got to hear an amusing story about one of Jessie's recent games, wherein a Game Rule Violation had been committed (an opposing Stromkirk Noble had been blocked by his Huntmaster of the Fells, which as a Human should not have done so) and it wasn't caught until Jessie's turn.
The judges were involved, as they should be, and it was decided that they would rewind the game state to the time of the error -- but Jessie had drawn his card for the turn, so as often happens in these situations, he had to return a card from his hand at random to the top of his library.
Unfortunately for his opponent, Jessie had two copies of Bonfire of the Damned in hand, and one of them was chosen at random to be put back. This resulted in a scenario that I think can best be described as an unnatural miracle, and was jarring enough that I heard players in side events the next day discussing how ridiculously lucky Jessie had been.
Round 8, I was paired against what had to logically be one of my worse matchups: The UWR Flash mirror match. Marcel Dizon was an apt pilot, and I simply did not have any practice in determining which spells were truly important, when it was safe to cast them, and how to keep my opponent from making use of them. Thus, even though Marcel mulliganed in game 1, I still ultimately succumbed in both games to his superior handling of the deck.
I ended the day on 4-4, earning the 50% win percentage I had hoped for but not expected, and anxiously walked around the room seeking further results. TJ, John and Jessie didn't make it, but Kyle Gellert (another local game store worker), Kerry Hjertaas (one of the most experienced local players, with a past Pro Tour appearance to his credit) and Dave Wong (who had gotten to 5-0 before successfully pulling out of a tailspin in the last round) were all 6-2 coming into the second day of competition. Stephane was 8-0, giving him a great chance at making the top 8 the next day.
And hence, there was a celebratory dinner, whose extent of discomfort was already thus described above.
Ultimately, it was a pretty successful day at the GP; even though I had not slept enough and had not kept myself well-fed, I still played pretty reasonably for my lack of practice and managed to get through the day without a slow play warning or a round going to time. I had been most concerned going in that my decision to play UWR Flash would lead to such problems, and successfully avoiding them vindicates my choice to go with the deck I most enjoy playing rather than one which promises a quicker but less interesting experience.
