Suddenly Dead:  A "GP Denver" Report

I was initially planning on making this report primarily about GP: Denver, but that wouldn’t do justice to what this past weekend was.  While I’ll still touch briefly on the GP itself, the more interesting (and therefore thorough) discussion will come from a Friday afternoon grinder and the Sunday PTQ (spoiler alert:  I didn’t day 2).

As a bit of a disclaimer, while GP Paris (eclipsed by Pro Tour Paris for most who aren’t David Sharfman, I’m sure) gave us an early insight into the SoM/MBS sealed deck format, I’d had startlingly little practice with the format.  The prerelease events were done with “faction packs” rather than actual MBS product, so it’s not an entirely accurate educational experience for those looking to learn about the format.  Thus, I’d done 0 sealed decks for the format of the GP leading up to it, which made me a bit worried.  Despite my unfamiliarity with the format, I decided to head to Denver anyway.

This was the first GP I’ve attended for which I’ve not done much practicing at all.  Granted, in the past not all of my testing has been good testing, but I’d at least put in what I felt was a reasonable amount of hours for each event.  This time I’m hoping that reading the spoiler, talking to friends to make up for my testing shortcomings, reading what I can, and getting in a grinder just so I get to familiarize myself with the product first-hand will be good enough.

This GP was another first, in that it’s the first I’ve felt it would be strictly irresponsible to not attend in the sense that I’m sitting on two byes and have been running fairly well lately, so I figured I should just keep grinding.  While this didn’t have any noticeable effects on how the weekend went, it made the lead-up to the event feel a bit different, which was interesting if nothing else.

Sleep
Versions:
Magic 2010 Core Set (Foil)
Magic 2011 Core Set (Foil)

I made the mistake of booking a 9am flight for this event (partly due to booking late and looking for whatever “affordable” option might be available), which is an error I’ve not previously made.  While this normally wouldn’t be a horrible thing, it meant planning on airport arrival at 7am, which in turn meant leaving my front door at about 5:40am in time to walk to the train station and catch the train to the airport.  Thus, I had to wake up around 5am to be ready in time.  Still not horrible.  The catch is that I’m a ridiculously heavy sleeper to the point of being at risk of sleeping through multiple alarms… I love me some sleep.  Therefore, in order to be sure I was awake at 5am, I was basically locked out of sleeping outside of brief naps.  Oops.

Despite this, I made it to Denver with very little trouble.  The plane was delayed, but I managed to get a bit of sleep on the plane, and so I was feeling fine when I made it to the event site.  By the time my roommates arrived at about midnight I was pretty beat and just wanted to sleep, but the afternoon wasn’t so bad.

Because I was feeling fine, I decided to get a grinder in for practice.  My sealed deck pool was pretty unspectacular, but I thought it had a chance to break my streak of 0-1 grinder performances.  It was comical that the card that made the deck playable at all was Blackcleave Cliffs, as it allowed my mana to not suck even though I was playing Glissa the Traitor and Hellkite Igniter.
Grinder #9 – Round 1 – Mark Nemeth

I don’t recall too much about the round other than that I had to read a lot of the cards and made a handful of errors with what various cards did.  Games one and two dragged on for quite a long time, Mark and I each winning one (although I punted game 2 by thinking Glissa triggered on doing damage to an opponent and not on a creature dying… RTFC).  What makes this interesting at all is that as we were shuffling for game 3, time expired in the round, which meant “sudden death” time.

For those unfamiliar with how sudden death works, here are the basics:  Players play a “game of Magic” where the first change in life total ends the game and the winner is whoever has the highest life total.  This is quite probably the stupidest way I’ve been asked to play Magic over the years (and I’ve been asked to play a number of dumb variants).  For the current format, it’s made even dumber by the fact that Infect creatures do not cause a change in life total.

Now add to this ridiculous reformulation of Magic the fact that I’d been aware that we were tight on time, and had mentioned “I’d like to draw” as we shuffled, but prior to each of us presenting our decks and prior to time being called in the round (I thought there were about 7 minutes left in the round, because grinders actually give you little to no indication of round end times short of “you’re out of time”).  This is a dumb thing to do, as it didn’t really save much time at all, and I could have easily made this decision after we’d presented our decks while shuffling his deck.  Don’t do this, and you won’t have to go through the shenanigans that follow.

So as we’re shuffling time is called, and I immediately call a judge to see if speaking intent to play/draw after sideboarding is visibly done but before deck presentation is a binding decision.  It’s ruled that it is, so I cannot change my decision (even though at this point Mark and I are digging frantically through our sideboards rebuilding our decks to change life totals as fast as possible… Golden Urn get in there!).  I appeal this ruling because it doesn’t make any sense to me, given that the circumstances surrounding the game have changed entirely.  The ruling on the floor is upheld when I appeal the decision… I get to draw.  While I still don’t believe the ruling given to be the correct one given the circumstances, the real lesson is that I just shouldn’t have opened my mouth.  So of course I was very careful about this for the rest of the weekend.

We finally get finished with rulings (and at this point are by far the last match in our grinder, and have thus become the de facto feature match), and then we go to mulligans.  Mark ends up settling on a 3-card hand while I stay with 4.  Mark leads with a turn 2 Myr to my Blight Mamba.  The creatures trade and Mark deploys Phyrexian Revoker.  I deploy Painsmith.  The creatures trade and Mark summons Wall of Tanglecord.  I make a Flensermite.  Flensermite runs into the Wall of Tanglecord, putting my life total to 21.  I win.  Not only was this game absolutely dumb, between judge calls, getting lands to rebalance my mana, and mulligans it took at least as long as a game 3 would have likely taken.  There has to be some less idiotic way to settle matches.

Round 2 I play against Brandon Reedy and lose in 3 games, although there weren’t any interesting talking points, so I’m not going to describe the round in detail.

The real value in doing the grinder for me was to obtain some cards and get some deckbuilding and play experience with them, which was accomplished.  Thereafter it became my goal to learn as much as I could from the experience, which meant checking around the grinders to see what was successful and what wasn’t and showing my pool around to others whom I felt were likely to have a better handle on the format than I had.  Pretty much everyone ended up with about the same deck as what I built with slight rebalancing of mana and various amounts of greediness in the black splash.  Gavin Verhey was an exception to this, at first settling on the RGb deck and then concluding that the deck just wasn’t good enough and choosing to get scrappy with some RW aggro.  I wish I could say I’d gotten a chance to test the RW aggro deck, but I did not.  It remains that sometimes the pool is terrible and you’ve got to give yourself a chance to scrape together a win from what you’ve got.

This was a note I took with me into the GP main event, where I didn’t think my pool was too terrible.  Here’s the 75 I was working with and the 40 I put together:

Master\'s Call
White:

    * Auriok Sunchaser
    * Banishment Decree
    * Choking Fumes
    * Frantic Salvage
    * Ghalma's Warden
    * Glimmerpoint Stag
    * Glint Hawk
    * Gore Vassal
    * Kemba's Legion
    * Leonin Skyhunter
    * Loxodon Partisan
    * Loxodon Wayfarer
    * 2 Master's Call
    * Seize the Initiative
    * Whitesun's Passage

Blue:

    * Fuel for the Cause
    * Mirran Spy
    * Neurok Commando
    * Neurok Invisimancer
    * Oculus
    * 2 Spire Serpent
    * Steady Progress
    * Steel Sabotage
    * Stoic Rebuttal
    * Turn the Tide
    * Vedalken Certarch

Black:

    * 2 Bleak Coven Vampires
    * Exsanguinate
    * Flensermite
    * Flesh Allergy
    * Flesh-Eater Imp
    * Fume Spitter
    * Horrifying Revelation
    * Necrotic Ooze
    * Painsmith
    * Scourge Servant
    * Septic Rats
    * Tainted Strike
    * Virulent Wound

Red:

    * Blisterstick Shaman
    * Burn the Impure
    * Ferrovore
    * Hellkite Igniter
    * Into the Core
    * Koth's Courier
    * Shatter

Spine of Ish Sah
Green:

    * Blightwidow
    * Engulfing Slagwurm
    * Glissa's Courier
    * Melira's Keepers
    * Molder Beast
    * Pistus Strike
    * Tangle Angler
    * Tangle Mantis
    * Tel-Jilad Fallen
    * Unnatural Predation
    * Viridian Revel
    * Wing Puncture

Aritfact:

    * 2 Accorder's Shield
    * Bladed Sentinel
    * Contagion Engine
    * Darksteel Axe
    * Dross Ripper
    * Echo Circlet
    * Gold Myr
    * Golem's Heart
    * Heavy Arbalest
    * Horizon Spellbomb
    * Iron Myr
    * Myr Sire
    * Shriekhorn
    * Soliton
    * Sphere of the Suns
    * Spine of Ish Sah
    * Strider Harness
    * Sylvok Lifestaff
    * Sylvok Replica
    * Tangle Hulk
    * Wall of Tanglecord

Land:

    * Inkmoth Nexus

The Deck

GP Denver Sealed Deck by Josh Howe
Deck by Josh Howe on Wed, 02/23/2011 - 13:46

    * Artifact
    * Green Green
    * Red Red

This deck forms part of my feature article:

Suddenly Dead: A "GP Denver" Report
Article by Josh Howe on Wed, 02/23/2011 - 13:59
Average:
4.5
Know Howe

I was initially planning on making this report primarily about GP: Denver, but that wouldn't do justice to what this past weekend was. While I'll still touch briefly on the GP itself, the more interesting discussion will come from a Friday afternoon grinder and the Sunday Extended PTQ...
Main Deck

(40 cards)
7	Mountain
9	Forest
1	Inkmoth Nexus
1	Shatter
1	Burn the Impure
1	Blisterstick Shaman
1	Into the Core
1	Hellkite Igniter
1	Tangle Mantis
1	Blightwidow
1	Tangle Angler
1	Molder Beast
1	Melira's Keepers
1	Engulfing Slagwurm
1	Sylvok Lifestaff
1	Darksteel Axe
1	Horizon Spellbomb
1	Gold Myr
1	Iron Myr
1	Wall of Tanglecord
1	Sphere of the Suns
1	Myr Sire
1	Sylvok Replica
1	Tangle Hulk
1	Contagion Engine
1	Spine of Ish Sah
Artifact
Green
Land
Red
0
5
10
15
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Card Type

Rarity

Main Deck:

Sideboard:
Filter

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The deck at first didn’t look too terrible, and in fact seemed to be quite fine.  There were a few questionable choices, but I think the deck’s 37/40 right or better, although there may be a W/X scrappy aggro alternative that would perform better involving the metalcraft and 2x Masters' Call.  After building I went to get some breakfast (which actually turned out to be lunch based on the offerings of where we went) with Matt Nass (congrats on making the train!) and Tom Raney.  Raney was clearly unhappy with his deck, while Matt’s was clearly bonkers.  Must be nice having all those Phyrexian Rebirths and Hoard-Smelter Dragons.  After eating but before my pair of byes had expired I managed to jam some games with Tom Raney with our decks.  Going into the matchup, we figured that my deck should be a heavy favorite against his “if you play anything with more than one toughness I lose” concoction.  We ended up about 50-50 in games, which was the first sign for things not being quite right for me.  I was losing most games where I drew the mulligan equipments in my deck and winning the others, which was interesting.  The next few rounds would highlight exactly how things could go wrong for my deck.
Round 3 – Raul Fernandez

This round was an interesting exception in that I won.  The first game I won by poisoning him out with Inkmoth Nexus aided by Darksteel Axe.  He drew Steel Hellkite but interestingly it’s an answer to neither of those permanents so it was held on defense duty until I found a Shatter.  Game 3 I also won, although I don’t recall how… my notes from the GP are actually the worst notes I’ve taken at a tournament since at least 2008, so I’ve not got a whole lot to go on right now and I’ve been pretty ill, so my memory’s not quite what it normally is (which isn’t spectacular).

3-0

Hellkite Igniter
Versions:
Mirrodin Besieged (Foil)
Round 4 – Brian Kowal

Brian was playing a blue/red deck that I assumed had some counterspells (namely Fuel for the Cause) based on how he was playing, so I spent most of the match playing around the counters, judiciously choosing my spots to resolve the good cards in my deck when given the option.  I won game 1 off of some early pressure while he was spinning his wheels generating some card advantage but being incapable of dealing with a developed board.  The Spine sealed things.  Game 2 was going well until he resolved a Quicksilver Gargantuan that I couldn’t answer (I didn’t draw the Spine).  Game 3 was more of the same story as he played a turn 3 Forestwalking 2/3 whose name I forget right now and followed it with a 7/7 copy in the form of Quicksilver Gargantuan when I was at 12 on turn 7.  I was able to make a Hellkite Igniter to bash him to 15 when I went to 3 with two artifacts in play (Sphere of the Suns and a mana myr).  I had two 2-cost artifacts in hand, so if I’m able to make 1 of them and bash for 15 I’ve got him (a scenario entirely preventable by holding back the 2/3 forestwalker to block the myr), but he’s got the Fuel for the Cause I’d feared and his team takes it down.

3-1

As it turns out, my deck couldn’t deal well with opposing bombs, and getting outbombed in this format is quite a probable situation.
Round 5 – Leonardo Labruna

Leonardo is playing a BGW infect deck.  I don’t think the deck was very good, but it was capable of very good draws when it hit its mana in stride, which it did both games.  In game 1 I was in an awkward situation with my Melira's Keepers against his Plaguemaw Beast.  I was at 0 poison and wasn’t too afraid of it given that I was effectively holding off his team while bashing, but he swung in and offered the trade.  I’m at 23 life at this point, so I wasn’t too terrified of the beast beating, but it was a tell of a very likely Tainted Strike.  If he has the strike, death is still likely multiple turns away, so I choose to not block, as my blocking situation deteriorates rapidly if I lose the Keepers.  He of course has the strike and a follow up Spread the Sickness and I’m dead in pretty short order.  Game 2 is a lot like the first where Leonardo has turn 3 Plains, Forest, Swamp on the play and plays out various infected dudes to beat me down aggressively.

3-2

One of the obvious weaknesses of my deck was against aggressive decks, with only some low-drop removal and a few guys able to really stand up.  This is a large part of why Myr Sire made the deck even as a do-nothing just to soak some damage up and pretend to be half as good as Wall of Tanglecord.  These weren’t enough to hold off the onslaught long enough to get my late-game spells online and I died pretty quickly.
Round 6 – Steve Golenda

Steve was on a BR deck that highlighted the final weakness of my deck as I could see it:  he had infinite removal and very few dudes to my very few relevant dudes and little removal.  When my very few credible threats are dealt with, I have a hard time of winning games.  Despite this, I’m able to bring the match to 3 games and a topdeck situation, but after many turns of flooding out (this happens when over half of your deck is mana sources, so I can’t complain), Steve is able to finally put my day to an end.

3-3

So I was pretty fortunate to have each of the three weaknesses of my deck exploited pretty masterfully across 4 rounds.  I spent the rest of the day checking in with friends.  Tom Raney was alive with his deck into round 9 but lost on the bubble and didn’t make day 2 at x-3, unlike LSV who won his win-and-in only to hit 124th place.  Must be nice, etc.  Matt Nass was alive as expected.  Most shockingly, Lokman Chen was sitting at X-0 with a deck that, when he showed it to us, looked nothing like a 9-0 deck.  Either he played the hell out of that thing (likely) or I’ve got a lot to learn about this format (to be honest, also likely).

Because I wasn’t to be battling in Day 2 of the GP, I spent the evening trying to figure out what to do about faeries for the next day’s PTQ.  Because I was admittedly unfamiliar with the MBS cards, I decided to turn to the Paris PTQ top 8 lists.  Thankfully Jarvis Yu and Masayasu Tanahashi gave me some reasonable opinions on where faeries should be headed, and, while I didn’t agree with either of them entirely, I felt like adopting both Go for the Throat (obvious) and Sword of Feast and Famine (amazing) was the way to go.  After fiddling around with the lists for a while and finding myself still unsatisfied, I decided my best bet was to get into an argument with my roommates over how to build the deck.  Thankfully, they were opinionated and insisted that Spreading Seas was the nut and Ratchet Bomb was terrible (I am unconvinced).  Regardless, after some last minute consulting with Lokman Chen (while Matt Nass of course was spotted sitting in front of an extended Elves deck trying to convince some unsuspecting person to play it), I ended up with the following list:

GP Denver PTQ Faeries by Josh Howe
Deck by Josh Howe on Wed, 02/23/2011 - 14:05

    * Black Black
    * Blue Blue

This deck forms part of my feature article:

Suddenly Dead: A "GP Denver" Report
Article by Josh Howe on Wed, 02/23/2011 - 13:59
Average:
4.5
Know Howe

I was initially planning on making this report primarily about GP: Denver, but that wouldn't do justice to what this past weekend was. While I'll still touch briefly on the GP itself, the more interesting discussion will come from a Friday afternoon grinder and the Sunday Extended PTQ...
Main Deck

(60 cards)
	Sideboard

(15 cards)
4	Darkslick Shores	1	Tectonic Edge
4	Creeping Tar Pit	2	Spreading Seas
4	Secluded Glen	2	Spell Pierce
4	Island	1	Sword of Feast and Famine
2	Swamp	2	Vampire Nighthawk
2	Tectonic Edge	1	Agony Warp
2	Sunken Ruins	1	Thoughtseize
4	Mutavault	1	Peppersmoke
3	Go for the Throat	1	Go for the Throat
2	Disfigure	1	Ratchet Bomb
1	Peppersmoke	1	Consume the Meek
2	Thoughtseize	1	Wurmcoil Engine
2	Inquisition of Kozilek
4	Spellstutter Sprite
4	Bitterblossom
3	Mana Leak
2	Jace Beleren
2	Vendilion Clique
1	Sword of Feast and Famine
4	Mistbind Clique
4	Cryptic Command
Artifact
Black
Blue
Land
0
5
10
15
20
25
Plot

Color

Mana Cost

Card Type

Rarity

Main Deck:

Sideboard:
Filter

Color:

Type:

Rarity:

Mana Cost: to

Integrate Multicolor:

eg. a gold card costing GW would count as a green card and a white card
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Average:
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Sword of Feast and Famine
Versions:
Mirrodin Besieged (Foil)

There are a lot of departures in this list from my previous card choices, and a lot of them are ones I’m not 100% about.  Based on my experiences, there are a few conclusive things I can say.  I liked the 2/2 hand disruption suite in the maindeck, as often against aggressive decks you’re taking a low drop anyway and would rather not pay 2 life to get there… it also lets you leave some disruption in post-board when your life total is a major concern.  I like moving to 3 Mana Leak, as often they’re completely dead late-game and you want to minimize late-game dead draws.  As much as I’ve been harping on how much I dislike Peppersmoke, I was basically strong-armed into playing it, and I figured it couldn’t hurt to give it a try.  Throughout the day there was one situation where I had it in my hand and would have rather had Disfigure, although there were also few situations where I was happy to have it.  I’m still not a fan of the card right now, although it’s fine as a 6th or higher removal slot so that your draws aren’t completely blank against creature-light strategies.

And then of course there’s Sword of Feast and Famine.  This card is the nuts.  It’s unreal in that it turns RG Valakut from 50/50 or slightly unfavorable into favorable single-handedly.  Also, it helps do work to break open the mirror and trumps the Vampire Nighthawk plan.  There are many decks that just fold to this sort of mana and card advantage, and it’s exactly the situation faeries wants to put itself in… casting spells on its turn and then also having its mana open on its opponent’s turn.  The mirror dynamics led to interesting questions in the mirror all day of “what level” a given fae opponent was on.  Did he have Nighthawks?  Sowers?  Swords?  I’m completely convinced that SoFaF belongs in the deck split as I have in this list.

This report is getting a bit long, but I’ll list my matches and highlight some interesting plays and situations.
Round 1 – Erik Peters – Bant Wargate

Win 2-0.  Eric was surprised I left in GftT because he had boarded out Oracle of Mul Dayas and left in Vendilion Cliques (and I killed a Vendilion Clique after he chose to not block an attacking Spellstutter Sprite).  I don’t think you should be boarding out Oracle of Mul Daya… that card’s too good.

1-0
Round 2 – Matthew White – Faeries

Win 2-0.  Game 1 I win through a turn 1 Thoughtseize, turn 2 Bitterblossom after having my Blossom stripped and being left with basically nothing, which was actually really rewarding (it didn’t involve infinite Tar Pit beats).  He was as shocked as I was with that win.  Game 2 Vampire Nighthawk came down to swing life totals in a very lopsided way.

2-0
Round 3 – Ian Robertson – Elves

Draw 1-1-1.  I feel like I should have won this one, but got 3.5-outered in game 2 when I chose to Inquisition on Turn 1 and get greedy on the Peppersmoke with Mutavault for turn 2 against his Arbor Elf on the play.  The only cards that can really punish me here are Archdruid and Joraga Warcaller (kicked once, if that’s an actual play), and unless he’s got 2x in hand I can strip the relevant one.  I take his Archdruid.  He topdecks an Archdruid, and now I’m way behind and eventually lose.  I figure it’s 3.5 outs because I’m counting the Warcaller only as half an out because it’s unlikely his line of play is to run it out on turn 2 with other 1-drops in hand.  Either way, we go to time and I pick up a draw.

2-0-1
Round 4 – Tanner Nelson – Bant Wargate

Win 2-0.  This is a favorable matchup, despite me managing to lose to it in round 10 of GP Atlanta.

3-0-1
Round 5 – Spencer Williams – UG Scapeshift

Win 2-1.  I drop game 1 with a mulligan on the play in the dark that just doesn’t have what it needs to stop Spencer from doing his thing.

4-0-1
Round 6 – Dave Robinder – RG Scapeshift

Win 2-0.  Dave doesn’t have the plan of “board into a ton of creatures that are really hard for you to deal with” as far as I can tell, so that made the post-board matchup a bit easier, although Sword of Feast and Famine came up absolutely insane.

5-0-1
Round 7 – Zachary Mullen – Naya

Loss 0-2.  Game 1 is a ridiculous game that I almost managed to win facing down an unanswered Stoneforge Mystic for Sword of Feast and Famine on the play (equipped and attacking BoP on turn 3).  I have literally 7 turns to draw my first Cryptic Command of the game about 20 turns in and just miss.  Game 2 we each mulligan to 5.  We’re both fairly light on action, and we reach a board state of rough parity where we each have lands and Zachary has a Birds of Paradise.  Zachary topdecks Bloodbraid Elf into Great Sable Stag while I’m waiting on a 6th land to play Wurmcoil Engine.  My hand is Mistbind Clique, Peppersmoke, and Wurmcoil Engine with 5 lands in play, 0 of which are Mutavault.  I’m at 11 and being attacked for 6 with 48 cards left in my deck and basically one turn to draw the land to play Wurmcoil Engine (or some answer to his board state), having already answered one Qasali Pridemage earlier with a Disfigure.  There are 13 lands that will allow me to cast Wurmcoil Engine immediately in my deck, as well as multiple more sequences of two cards that allow me to live to untap a tapped land with any creature, so I decide the right play is to run out Mistbind Clique and Peppersmoke his Birds of Paradise to draw a card.  I brick on lands on the cantrip and on my draw step, but hit a Vendilion Clique, giving me another turn.  Now the question becomes do I Vendilion Clique him or myself (to ship the irrelevant Bitterblossom I’ve drawn away)?  If I do it on my turn and he draws any action, I basically lose, whereas I can see if he draws a relevant card on his turn and live for another draw step.  I decide to Clique him, although in hindsight I believe it’s right to Clique myself here.  It allows me to dig an extra card deep for the following turn assuming I’m not dead, and I’ve got to take the chance.  As it is, I Clique him and see Stoneforge Mystic (and 7 mana available).  So do I take it?  I decide to ship the Mystic, which I figure is good for a Sword of Body and Mind and me being dead if it resolves.  This draws him into Vengevine and I die on the spot instead.

5-1-1
Round 8 – Alex Tamblyn – Faeries

Loss 0-2.  This was a case of my draws just being worse than his across both games.  His sideboard included Sower of Temptation, which I think is a bit awkward, but a lot of people seem to think is a good card right now.  It helps regain Bitterblossom advantage, which is nice, but doesn’t often take anything relevant and is only good in most matchups when you can back it up with a Scion of Oona, which is just awful right now.  Regardless, this put me to 16-2 lifetime in the faeries mirror in paper Magic tournaments (the other loss was in a Lorwyn block PTQ where I received a game 1 loss and it tilted me), so I was due for some run bads at some point, but it was a shame they hit me in a win-and-in situation where I just needed to go 50/50 on my last two rounds to top 8.  Alex made a couple of errors in our match such as running his Mistbind Clique into a Spellstutter Sprite in game 1 after knowing full information on my hand… unless of course it was an elaborate setup for which I just missed the punch line, but otherwise he was a nice guy.  I tried to find out who won the PTQ, but it wasn’t posted anywhere that I could easily find it, so I’m not sure if he took it down or not.  There was a pretty interesting RBW deck in the top8 though, so that will be worth checking out once it posts if nothing else.

5-2-1

Add to these beats that of course it was a WotC PTQ and the prize structure was horrible, so of course I miss all prizes coming in 23rd after this match.  Oh well.  There’s a PTQ near here in Sacramento on Saturday, so I’m planning to attend that and battle with the frail winged menace yet again.  If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, as always, please leave them in the comments section!

Josh Howe

Maniacal42 on MTGO