Magic the Gathering

Tournament Reports

2nd place at Grand Prix Denver, part 1

Hey Every­one! In case you didn’t know this already, I’m sort of a big deal. Well, per­haps I’m more of the next best thing to a big deal hehe. I don’t want this arti­cle to be about me and how cool I think I am, but more as a tool for those of you who have PTQs or tour­na­ments left with the cur­rent Lor­wyn/Shad­ow­moor Block Con­structed action.

This expe­ri­ence pro­vided me with a tremen­dous boost in my play­ing abil­i­ties, as well as con­fir­ma­tion of what I had been say­ing all along “Faeries is THE best deck in the for­mat.” Hold­ing off on run­ning Faeries has cost me quite a lot. I was ignor­ing what I preached was the truth. My rat­ing going into Grand Prix Den­ver was 1747, the low­est it had been in sev­eral years. This also meant I was to start the 9 rounds of Swiss with ZERO byes. And on top of that, I didn’t have all of the cards I wanted. I knew I wanted to play faeries I just didn’t know what ver­sion. From the results of GP Kobe, I saw some­thing that had inter­ested me, obvi­ously the win­ning deck.

I thought the deck was fan­tas­tic! How­ever, I know myself and I know that many of the cards in the deck just don’t work for me:

1. Vivid Creek — I don’t know why a per­son would play a Vivid land in a deck that is only 2 col­ors. On top of that, I feel like I draw too many lands in 23–24 land decks and with Pep­persmoke and Cryp­tic Com­mand, I feel like 24 lands would be the peak of my land capacity.
2. Pester­mite — As much as I like this card, I feel it’s very infe­rior to cards that actu­ally do more than block bit­terblos­som tokens.
3. Sower of Temp­ta­tion NEVER works for me. It always dies and I am left with a total feel­ing of betrayal. With­out a Scion the Sower is an easy tar­get for removal. If you are for­tu­nate enough to have Sower and they do NOT have removal or you DO have Scion it’s MONEY. How­ever, I like to gam­ble in casi­nos and NOT in MTG. At least most of the time ;)
4. Oona, Queen of the Fae I do enjoy open­ing an Oona in a draft, but at 6 mana she’s a pretty big mouth to feed. What also gets me is that she does NOTHING against the big­ger Cloudthresher. Yes she can become a mill­stone and deck your oppo­nent of use­ful weapons but ulti­mately she does NOTHING vs. 2 of the crea­tures that do the most harm vs. Faeries, Thresher and Colossus.
5. What’s with the 3 ofs?!?! Cryp­tic Com­mand is awe­some! Thought­seize is awe­some! The ONLY thing worse than run­ning 3 of them, is run­ning 2 or then again run­ning 1. There is a rea­son why restrict­ing a card was ter­ri­ble when you wanted to play 4 of some­thing, and you only played the 1 card because that was the ONLY option. Of course you do what you can and hope that 3 or 2 of a card bal­ances things bet­ter, but I think those 2 cards are must be at 4.

So, here’s my lit­tle diddy:

If you hadn’t heard, Still­moon Cav­a­lier was the hottest card in the game on Fri­day and early Sat­ur­day of the Grand Prix. I had the chance to buy the last 4 avail­able at our sponsor’s site Coolstuffinc.com for $4.99 and I thought that was a bit too much for what I felt was a mediocre card. Addi­tion­ally, it would have been a 30 minute drive for me to go pick them up and that was just too much. So, I waited to get to Den­ver. Where I found that ALL of the deal­ers had sold out on Fri­day at $15 a pop! Then, Sat­ur­day morn­ing found no suc­cess for me as every­one and their mother was buy­ing this guy.

I met up with Magic Super­stars Antonino De Rosa, Billy Postleth­wait and David Irvine to write up my deck­list and grab some always valu­able advice. With 5 min­utes before start time, Antonino told me that some guy just pulled out some Cav­a­liers for $20 each! I ran up and bought the last 4 that he had. So this tour­ney already had me in for $110. :(

Round 1 Kithkin

Game 1 — We started out rac­ing! I drop a Turn 2 Bit­terblos­som and Turn 3 Thought­seize reveals main deck Pollen Lul­laby! Which is what I take and then take the game on two con­sec­u­tive Scions for the win (I end at 3 life.) He made a mis­take by not trans­form­ing his Fig­ure of Des­tiny dur­ing his main phase and I’m able to respond with a Pep­persmoke dur­ing my turn in response, this play added to his demise.

Game 2 — He comes at me very fast with T1, T2, T3 drops. I drop T3 and T4 Cav­a­lier and it totally puts a halt to his offense. I real­ize that these guys might be pretty good for me. ;)

1–0 Matches :: 2–0 Games

Round 2 Kithkin/White Hybrid Red/Green

Game 1 — He played mul­ti­ple Kitchen Finks but I’m able to kill them with Name­less Inver­sion + Pep­persmoke combo. With 2 Finks in his yard and me dwin­dling in life (3) I play Pup­peteer Clique and grab 4 life to win at 3.

Game 2 — I mul­li­gan to 5, BUT I lay a turn 3 and turn 5 Cav­a­lier which holds his entire army at bay. He hardly touched me and the Cav­a­liers brought home the vic­tory with me at 10.

2–0 Matches :: 4–0 Games

Now, I believe that the first two rounds of a Grand Prix SHOULD be won rel­a­tively eas­ily. Mainly, because the “bet­ter” play­ers have 3 round byes. Your matchups get increas­ingly more dif­fi­cult through the tournament.

Round 3 Faeries

Game 1 — He plays a turn 1 Thought­seize on me tak­ing my Bit­terblos­som, then fol­lows it up with a turn 2 Bit­terblos­som of his own. My Mutavault does some dam­age, as I clear the path with Pep­persmokes. This allowed me to regain some momen­tum as he is only draw­ing lands. I turn the game around by Thought­seiz­ing him. He dies to his own Bitterblossom.

Game 2 — He Thought­seized me again on Turn 1 tak­ing my Bit­terblos­som. How­ever, I rip a turn 3 Bit­terblos­som despite his attempts to keep me from my des­tiny. I take his Scion with a Thought­seize and that’s all that really takes place as he begins to flood for lands.

3–0 Matches :: 6–0 Games

Round 4 Doran

This matchup is a hard one for me. Not only because Doran and Colos­sus are so good, but I don’t draw the color of lands I need. He mul­li­gan game one and I mul­li­gan game 2.

3–1 Matches :: 6–2 Games

Round 5 Faeries

Game 1 — I Thought­seize Turn 1 and view Cryp­tic Com­mand, Name­less Inver­sion x 2, Mutavault, Swamp, Sunken Ruin. I take his Cryp­tic Com­mand and play BB next turn. He keeps draw­ing removal killing my lit­tle Faeries and I keep tak­ing dam­age. Around Turn 8 I Thought­seize again, I view Sower, Sower and Spell­stut­ter Sprite. He takes one of my tokens with Sower #1 and I run in with 3 tokens killing the Sower with a EOT Pep­persmoke. I kill Sower #2 with my next EOT’s Pep­persmoke. Spell­stut­ter meets with a Pep­persmoke when he tries to counter my Scion and he’s got 2 mutavaults in play. Note 3x Peppersmokes.

Game 2 — Once again, I turn 1 Thought­seize, tak­ing his Scion from the grip of Mist­bind Clique x 2, Name­less Inver­sion, Pep­persmoke and ran­dom lands. Bit­terblos­som turn 2 seals the deal. 13 life.

4–1 Matches :: 8–2 Games

Round 6 Faeries splashed White for Wispmare

Game 1 — Actu­ally came down to us both being at 1 and both of us hav­ing Bit­terblos­soms. On my turn I Pep­persmoke both of his block­ers and swing with 2 tokens for the win. 1 life.

Game 2 — His hand was ter­ri­ble Turn 1 I Thought­seize and take his Wisp­mare. On turn 2 I lay my trade­marked Bit­terblos­som. I didn’t know that he trade­marked the ole top deck the wisp mare move and he killed my BB before I could get a counter. So, at this point I go into Mist­bind beat down mode. 13 life.

5–1 Match :: 10–2 Games

Round 7 Faeries

Game 1 — I turn 1 Thought­seize find­ing Pep­persmoke x 2, Mist­bind Clique, Cryp­tic Com­mand. Turn 2 comes my BB and I win at 5.

Note: I found that a lot of play­ers opted NOT to aggres­sively mul­li­gan for either a T1 Thought­seize or a T2 Bit­terblos­som. If I had not had it in my grip major­ity of the time (as indi­cated) I would have mul­li­gan at least to 6.

Game 2 — This wasn’t very spe­cial as I had a very aggres­sive hand with NO Bit­terblos­som. I do see that he is run­ning Bro­ken Ambi­tion, Cryp­tic Com­mand, Pep­persmoke, Mist­bind Clique, so I take the Cryp­tic Com­mand as I feel that is the only card in his grip that can push him back to par­ity. He did lay a Still­moon Cav­a­lier and tried to go aggres­sive on me. How­ever, when he would try to pump to kill me, I would con­sign before dam­age. So, to sum­ma­rize, I took 6 dam­age from the Cav­a­lier instead of the intended 12 because I bounced him 3 times. 6 Life

NOTE: for this matchup, I sided in Con­sign to Dreams when I’m on the draw 2nd or 3rd game. You MUST keep in mind that Still­moon Cav­a­lier is VERY good vs. Faeries. IF I’m on the play for game 2 or 3 I might con­sider play­ing Cavalier.

6–1 Match :: 12–2 Games

Round 8 Kithkin

Game 1 — He mul­li­gans. I come out with T2 BB and play 2 Scions to win this one easily.

Game 2 — It’s a lit­tle bit harder, NOT TRUE. It’s actu­ally eas­ier. T2 BB, T3 Cav­a­lier, T4 Cav­a­lier, 5 Life, Victory.

7–1 Match :: 14–2 Games

At this point, Antonino and com­pany tell me to draw in no mat­ter what, because you don’t want to take a chance of being 65th or higher. I don’t know what my stand­ing is and I don’t want to look. So, I go into round 9 look­ing to draw.

Round 9 Mono Red

Ok so Mono Red is very good Vs Faeries, but pretty much bad vs. the other top decks. I offer the draw. My oppo­nent says, “I heard our record from today car­ries over to tomor­row. So, I’m going to play.” I said you’re guar­an­teed to make it to day 2 if you draw or win, but you’re not if you lose. Any way, he kicked the crap out of me.

In case you’re inter­ested, he plays Stigma Slasher every game and wrecked me.

So, I get upset, think­ing I’m not going to be able to make day 2 I’ve been X-2 in my last 2 Grand Prix and have not been able to make day 2. I come to terms with not mak­ing it in because I had zero byes and I felt that I deserved to NOT make it because of that fact.

Day 1 record was 3–0 vs. Kithkin 4–0 vs. Faeries the 2 “best” decks in the for­mat, and it was mainly because of the Cav­a­liers in the Kithkin matchup.

I’m gonna con­clude this as Part 1 of the series.

1. If you ARE a good player, the “Best” deck will always result in a decent fin­ish. I’ve pro­cras­ti­nated play­ing Faeries since Lor­wyn came out. It has cost me 100s of DCI points and money for that matter.
2. If you iden­tify a card or cards that help your deck win, there should be NO cost too high
3. If you do want to be a “seri­ous” player, then you need to plan. Your rat­ing will not get high enough if you think you can screw lit­tle kids dur­ing FNM. You have to do well at big­ger local events such as PTQs, States or Regional contests.
4. Have faith. Just play as well as you can, your record will reward you for your effort. I ended up 53rd out of 64 to make day 2. In fact, I thought the money was for top 32 or higher. (It was for the top 64.)

– Lee