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PTQ Chicago 1st
by David Gleicher | posted at 2010-06-24 01:56:00
tagged: MTG, Magic, Magic the Gathering, David Gleicher
I guess I’ll start by introducing myself. My name is David Gleicher. I’ve been chasing the PT dream for a while now. I’d amassed seven PTQ Top 8's before I finally won one recently. It’s pretty interesting how different making Top 8 can feel when it’s your eighth time versus your first time. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The week before this PTQ, I played in Nats Q’s with Jund. I played almost the same list Gerry Thompson used to make Top 4 in a PTQ, but randomly decided to make it worse by cutting a land for a Trace of Abundance and adding a 61st card. You wouldn’t think that would make a huge difference, but all day I was plagued with mana difficulties and ended up a disappointing 5-3. Along the way I lost a match to a Vengevine-planeswalker based Naya deck designed by local nomad Mike Pozsgay, a deck I was sure would continue to be popular in the area the following week. Although I wasn’t about to call Jund a bad deck, I felt like playing it no longer gave me the edge it used to, and I was worried about getting blown out by people discarding Vengevines to Blightning. On the other hand, I didn’t really know what I did want to play, or what was good, or really anything about this new format where playing Jund wasn’t automatically the best.
Admitting I had no idea what I was doing turned out to be just the ticket. I logged on to IRC and asked some friends of mine who play on Magic League what they thought the best deck in Standard was. Three people immediately responded with Mythic. I had previously been resistant towards playing that deck because it just didn’t seem like my style of deck. But with everybody I asked insisting it was the best, I decided to give it a shot. Plus, I couldn’t help but notice that every PTQ where it made T8, it seemed to be the deck that won.
I got a list and SB guide for the Rafiq/Finest Hour from Mani Davoudi, who won British Columbia’s Nats Q’s, and a Conscription list and board designed by Chris Mascioli and Eduardo Borges. I then went to FNM to see if I could actually build this absurdly expensive deck. Fortunately, my friend Matt Jensen was able to supply the majority of the deck for me as he couldn’t attend the PTQ the next day anyway. I played a bunch of games with the Rafiq/Finest Hour version and liked it o.k., but noted that a lot of times I was casting Rafiq/Finest Hour, I had six mana available to cast Sovereigns of Lost Alara which has a much larger impact on the board. The damage you attack for is usually comparable, but it leaves both a Conscripted creature and the Sovereigns itself on the board, meaning the opponent has to deal with two problem permanents instead of one. It’s also better in the mirror because the trample means that chump blocking is not an option. I decided that if I could get the Sovereigns and Conscriptions necessary, I would switch to that version the next day.
After a solid 5 and 3/4ths hours of sleep, I am up and ready for the PTQ. Of course, I had to wait 15 extra minutes because our car was picking up Kevin Gouletas, and Kevin Gouletas takes his time. We manage to get to the site in time anyway and I get the remainder of the deck from Mark Ruby, Aron Bloch, and Lee Cote (thanks guys).
The site is the Odeum, in Villa Park, IL. I can pretty safely say it is the worst place in the universe. The week before, Nats Q’s was held there…along with a dog show. I was lucky enough to have a cold and not be able to smell, but I was told it wasn’t pleasant. They also don’t allow you to bring in outside food or drink and have a (probably miserable) security guard there to enforce this rule. There is nothing of value within walking distance of the site, so everyone is stuck paying $3.50 for Gatorades. To be honest, the prices aren’t that outrageous, but what is outrageous is that all the drinking fountains on the site produce the most pathetic, weakest stream of water you can imagine (and I know a thing or two about weak streams). This means that if you are drinking out of them, you are certainly slurping water that has touched metal that someone else’s mouth has touched. And all the fountains at the site are like this. Coincidence? I have my doubts.
Before I get to the matches, here’s the decklist and sideboard I used.
5 Forest
1 Plains
2 Island
Sideboard:
1 Deprive
4 Negate
This deck and board are slightly different from the one I was originally given. The second Sejiri Steppe was a sixth Forest and I changed a Qasali Pridemage to a Bant Charm and a Rhox War Monk into a second Vines of Vastwood. I never played red on the day so the Vines was a good call, but I’d probably switch the Pridemage back in, it is a bit more useful than I originally thought. According to Eduardo, there should be six Forests in the deck and the card to cut is a Sunpetal Grove if you want a second Sejiri Steppe. I definitely recommend having two for the same reason the deck plays 2 Eldrazi Conscriptions. It makes drawing one so much less bad, since you still have one left to fetch out.
I found having a SB guide incredibly helpful, and I am going to make sure I have something like it for every other event I play in. In retrospect, it seems completely ludicrous to test for events and not plan your sideboard out in advance, since most of your games will be post-board. I am one of those people who knew this theoretically but still focused most of my energy only on the maindeck, but this tournament really showed me the power of planning the whole 75 for each matchup in advance. Even if you plan it out in your head, writing it down can save you the mental energy of remembering during the match, which you can then hopefully use to focus on playing the games.
Alright, let’s get to the games.
R1: B/W.
I recognize this guy from many other events but can’t remember his name right now. I think he usually plays rogue decks and this was no exception.
Game 1: I get two Birds swept away by Zealous Persecution. Despite that, I build up with Cobra and I think a Knight of the Reliquary. Jace pulls me ahead on cards and hides away a Sovereigns on top of my library. I play it and swing in and the game ends.
I am unsure how to board for this matchup. I figure he is more of a control deck and probably has Day of Judgments and lots of removal so I bring in some Negates and a Vines, cutting the Baneslayers.
Game 2: He wrecks my hand with triple Tidehollow Sculler. Since I didn’t board in any removal, I am pretty much dead unless I draw some serious gas. I draw some but not enough and he kills me with those and a Linvala.
I board in Bant Charms and the Pridemage for some of the Negates and board out a Conscription and a Sovereigns.
Game 3: The Bant Charms and Pridemage show up and stop him from slowing me down much with Scullers. Again I get Jace out and again it hides a Sovereigns on top of my library, evading a Tidehollow Sculler for the win.
1-0
R2: Mythic.
I recognize the name Bob Albright as having made T8 of Nats Q’s in Wisconsin the week before with Mythic, so I put him on that before we start. Sure enough, that’s what he’s playing.
Game 1: This was one of the matches where I just drew the nuts and I felt like my opponents didn’t have much of a chance. I believe he mulligans twice and I get an early Jace and he gets stuck on land drops. I go to fateseal him and he quickly puts his hand over his library and says he is scooping in response.
Game 2: I curve out with Hierarch into Knight and on his turn Bob attacked his Lotus Cobra into my 3/3 Knight while tapped out. I looked for some kind of trick but couldn’t think of anything and he admitted immediately afterwards that he just forgot I had a fetch in the graveyard. Cobra into Sovereigns follows shortly afterwards and takes the game when he can’t deal with it.
2-0
R3: Mythic.
I remember almost nothing of this match except that I won in two games with very excellent draws.
3-0
R4: Mike Powers with creature-Naya.
I remember Mike from the 2008 Champs Finals, were he lost to my friend Peter.
Game 1: He comes out of the gate very quickly and I think I am about to get mowed down. I have Hierarch into Elspeth and he makes a crucial mistake by killing the Soldier token instead of my tapped Hierarch with Cunning Sparkmage so he can get in enough to both kill Elspeth and deal me damage. It’s a mistake because I use the Hierarch next turn to cast Baneslayer, which holds off his whole team for two turns. This ends up buying me just enough time to hit six lands and cast Sovereigns, which swings the life totals by 32. He still has almost enough to kill me on the counterattack, but not quite. He Rangered at one point and commented that another Scute Mob in the deck would have been great, and it definitely would have been enough to kill me if he had a second.
Games 2 and 3(?): I can’t remember them or if there were 1 or 2 more games in this match, but I won the match.
4-0
R5: Jund
G1: Jund is a pretty big underdog in game 1 and it proves true especially after he double mulligans. My hand is heavy on planeswalkers and even though Jace isn’t at its best against Jund, it can still be pretty good, as it was here.
G2: I believe I mulliganed and he had the infinite removal hand. I had an interesting choice towards the end of the game where I can run out Baneslayer or cast Ranger and one of the guys I get. He has, I believe, a Putrid Leech and a Bloodbraid Elf and a creature-land to activate and I’m at a life total where I only play one creature and he kills it, I will die but if I play two, and he only kills one, I can chump block to stay alive. I decide that waiting another turn is just going to make it more likely for him to draw removal, and if he attacks, I’ll just lose both the guys I played or go into Lightning Bolt range if I don’t block with both, so I cast the Angel. He has the Pulse and we’re on to game 3.
G3: It’s my turn to mulligan in this game. I mulligan a six card hand that in retrospect I probably should have kept: 2 Hierarch, Cobra, Birds, Forest, Ranger. My five carder has no green mana but it has a Cobra and a Knight. I never draw the green though and get destroyed.
4-1
R6: UW(R?) control
I never saw Ajani or a Mountain but I did see a lot of fetch-lands, which makes me think it was UWR.
G1: He plays some early Walls, which don’t do much against this deck, and I get down a Jace on turn three, Brainstorming and setting up for a Sovereigns the next turn. He can’t find a DOJ and the game is over by turn 5 or 6.
G2: This was exactly like game one except that he found the DOJ, but I had Negates in my hand.
5-1
R7: Bob Havlovic with Esper Haterator
I remember Bob beating Mike Pozsgay in an epically long Zendikar Limited finals at Navy Pier.
Game 1: His incredible draw full of Flashfreezes and Deathmarks is completely wasted in this game, since I mulliganed to five and didn’t find a green mana until turn six.
I boarded similarly to how I would board against UW(R)
Game 2: This game had a lot of back and forth, with me landing an early Jace and getting a few activations before he legend ruled it. This put me ahead enough to flood the board and he was stuck on lands for a turn or two. Eventually I win by using Elspeth to pump a Lotus Cobra and then using Knight to get my second Steppe out and give it pro white after he activates Colonnade to block.
Game 3: I get a Jace and Brainstorm, he O-Rings it. I then get an Elspeth and make a token, and he O-Rings that. I drop Cobra and Birds the next turn and move the token off to the side. After that, we both completely forget about it, until the end of the game when he plays a Gideon and forces everything to attack it, at which point the spectators are finally allowed to point out the token that must attack. This was a bit embarrassing. If I’d used my Dennis Rodman basketball card instead of Alonzo Mourning, I’m pretty sure I would have remembered.
Anyway, this game was pretty back and forth as well, especially since he had a removal-light draw and was again stuck on lands for a turn. I had a bunch of creature-lands and mana dorks but no fatties for most of this game, but what I did have was a second Jace that stuck around a long time. I Negated his Jace at one point, which KG questioned later. At that point, I could have saved it for a DOJ or Martial Coup and let both Jaces die, but since I didn’t have many actual creatures that dealt damage (just lands), I figured Jace was a more important card to have around. The only card that would really hurt me was Martial Coup, but I had more Brainstorms to find another Negate, which I did. It is a tricky question though. I manage to win on turn five of extra turns with a double exalted Colonnade for exactly lethal.
6-1
R8: Mike Lampert with planeswalker Naya, Intentional Draw.
Peter Smutko also makes the top 8 and KG squeaks into 16th, both with jund.
6-1-1
I felt pretty good going into this Top 8. I was enjoying playing the deck the whole day. I didn’t think I would like it, but it is actually just my style of deck because you are all about setting up for a lethal attack with a huge creature, which I vastly prefer to beating down with swarms or trying to completely take control of the game. However it’s not totally mindless because of the options Jace and Knight of the Reliquary give you. The deck also mulligans extremely well. I was looking forward to playing more Magic, regardless of the outcome. When they distributed the Top 8 pins, I noticed that I didn’t care one bit, whereas in the first T8 I made, it was incredibly validating just to get that pin. This time though, I felt there was no reason to be particularly happy with any outcome besides winning the whole thing.
Quarterfinals: Jund
Joe Bernal and Mike Lampert were playing next to us and talked loudly about all manner of bizarre topics, including which ethnic groups are allowed to be racist and whether this sexual romance was over (turns out it was).
Game 1: He is on the play and mulligans, while I mulligan twice. It looks bad for me, but he has a slow start and is stuck on three lands to boot. I draw a mana guy which is killed but a Knight sticks around. Once that happens, I get Jace online and Knight acts like a Mother of Runes on steroids, holding off any attacks while Jace keeps him from drawing his fourth land. On the second fateseal, I decide to leave him a Savage Lands, because my Knight is active and it will keep him from doing anything outrageous for one more turn, which is all I need for my second Knight to become active. If I put it on the bottom, there’s a chance he could draw an untapped land and start spewing Bloodbraids, which could be a problem if I don’t have time to deal with them. Eventually I Brainstorm into a Sovereigns and it's over.
Game 2: I start with some mana guys which he kills. I go for a Knight on turn three and he hits four lands; if he plays Consuming Vapors I am reasonably sure I will lose, since it basically Time Walks me since I don’t have a mana guy to throw in front of the sacrifice and protect my second Knight with. Instead he doesn’t do anything that kills the Knight and I untap with it active. I end up casting two more Knights, and foolishly attack with one while only having one active and untapped and third inactive one I just played. He Deathmarks my active knight and I am put in an awkward position: If I search out Steppe, he can pulse a different Knight and they would all die. If I left my second active Knight back, I could let the Deathmark resolve and still protect against a Pulse. I am pretty sure he doesn’t have Pulse because he would have used it earlier, but he could still cascade into it. Since I am open to Pulse blowouts anyway, I go ahead and fetch the Steppe, and he doesn’t have a Bloodbraid Elf to try and kill them all. Baneslayer wins the game shortly after.
Semifinals: Naya planeswalkers
I talked with a bunch of people before the Top 8 about possible sideboarding strategies. Since this deck has more planeswalkers than normal Naya and has the potential to board into O-Rings, Paths, and Day of Judgments, I concluded that Negate would be a good card to board in, I also tossed in a Bant Charm and a Pridemage for O-Ring, but it probably should have just been two Bant Charms.
Game 1: The occasional unbeatable draw that the deck has showed up this game. Classic turn one mana dork, turn two Cobra, fetch-land, Knight, turn three fetch-land Sovereigns with Knight backup (I think, it may have been a turn slower than that but it was still really fast), and though I had to spend a decent amount of time counting since I was pretty tired by this point, the game itself was over on my fifth turn.
Game 2: This was more of a game. He had a very quick start and mine was a bit slower. I did manage to get an active Knight without him getting one though, which proved very important. He bashes me down to 4 with assorted beaters like Qasali Pridemage and Bloodbraid Elf, activating a Raging Ravine along the way. I am a bit choked on mana, with a Bant Charm and Negate sitting in my hand but only four mana to use them. The Knight can provide an extra in a pinch, but then I open myself up to other removal. At this point, I think my opponent made a mistake by attacking with creatures that weren’t one of his two Birds of Paradise. He had enough exalted triggers to make the Birds a 3-power attacker, and I only had one Birds of my own for defense. Granted, I had Dauntless Escort to buy a turn and then Knight for Steppe to buy another (and a Bant Charm as I mentioned) but all of those are resources I would have preferred to use elsewhere besides killing his Birds or saving my own Birds.
Instead he devotes his resources to attacking with ground guys. This forces me to tap my Knight for Steppe, but he doesn’t have the removal spell to punish me for it. I begin to draw more mana sources, and eventually I cast Sovereigns, wait a turn since I don’t have any extra mana, then Bant Charm his Qasali Pridemage before attacking. He drops a Baneslayer but the next attack features a 23-power trampling Noble Hierarch, and 5 life from Baneslayer isn’t enough to stop that.
KG gives me a small heart attack by announcing, as a joke of course, that Eldrazi Conscription is legendary. I was pretty sure it wasn’t, since I felt like I’d heard about other people double Conscriptioning their creatures, but not sure enough to not be totally freaked out for a second or two, before I read the actual card. Thanks for taking a week off my life KG!
Finals: Mythic
Game 1: We both mulligan and start off pretty hilariously:
Me: Forest, Hierarch, go.
Him: Forest, Birds, go.
Me: Land, Dauntless Escort, go.
Him: Land, Dauntless Escort, go.
We bash each other back and forth for awhile, but I manage to get Cobra and then Jace, which bounces his freshly played Baneslayer Angel and gives me a huge tempo boost. I’ll still be in some trouble if he has Sovereigns, but he doesn’t. He draws and quickly attacks, announcing how I should block and how I can kill him on the return swing, but I am too out of it to understand what he’s saying, plus following your opponent's advice can be a bad idea in general. I go into the tank, thinking about the best way to protect Jace, and whether I should block with Cobra and sac Escort or let the Cobra die.
Normally this would be a no-brainer to keep Cobra, but he is actually at a pretty low life total at this point so it seemed possible that the extra power would be more relevant. I am pretty sure I would still have blocked and sacced the Escort, but before I am sure how to block my opponent mutters, “I guess since I didn’t say anything, it’s assumed I’m attacking him and not Jace.” The table judge confirms this. Well then. I take 4 damage and my Jace lives without me having to lose a creature. If he hadn’t said anything, I’m pretty sure his mistake would have translated into me making a mistake by blocking, since I just assumed that since he should be attacking Jace, he must have said that he was. Anyway, on my turn I rip Sovereigns right off the top to end the game.
Game 2: I keep a good hand with fast mana but no crazy threats, and he double mulligans on the play. My friends all start murmuring and patting me on the back after his second mulligan, and I have to force myself to maintain focus so that I actually get the win before I celebrate winning. It’s always possible to blow a lead and I know because I have done it many times and it’s usually due to getting ahead of myself and focusing on the intended result rather than the game at hand. My deck makes it pretty difficult for me to lose though, serving up a Knight off my first draw step and a Jace off my second. A Baneslayer and a Sovereigns follow, and I attack for what I think is lethal…but no, he blocks my Conscriptioned Baneslayer with Linvala and goes to 1. Fortunately for me, there is nothing in his deck that can bring him back and he sacs a fetch-land to deal the final point to himself.
I felt incredibly happy and somewhat dazed as I realized that I had qualified for the Pro Tour. But I managed to pay one colorless and give the judges my information so everyone could go home.
It feels pretty good, especially because a lot of people were happy to see me finally do it. I am interested in testing with anyone else in the area who is qualified (or who isn’t but for some reason wants to test Extended) and trying to make my first PT performance a good one.
Afterwards, we naturally crammed the six people remaining into Aron Bloch’s car and went to get pie.
As for the deck, I definitely recommend it. As the recent GP results show, the real decks in this format are Jund, UWx, and Mythic, with RDW and Naya both a notch below those decks. But Mythic has the advantage of being the best aggro deck AND the best combo deck. Six mana to essentially win the game if they don’t have instant speed removal is a pretty tough deal to turn down, no matter how good Vengevine is. Yes, people can beat the deck if they overload on removal, but they have to really try, and people tend to underestimate how much hate they need against this kind of deck.
On the other hand, if you can’t afford to plop down 800 bucks on a Standard deck or borrow infinite cards, then Jund and UW are also totally reasonable.
Many thanks to all my friends and the judging staff, and good luck to everyone in the PTQs.
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David Gleicher is an Illinois-based semipro. A Magic player for ten years and counting, he has competed at the Grand Prix and Pro Tour levels.