Top 4 at SCG Invitational Qualifier with Junk Tokens

Thus far, in my quest for Magic related fame and glory, I’ve gone to quite a few tournaments. Most have been in comic shops, or community rooms. I’ve played in convention centers and even a Wendy’s. (Delaware States '11 had overflowed its store’s fire limit, and so the top tables were played in a nearby Wendy’s with a separate judge, who was luckily nearby.) As I walked into the real estate brokerage, however, I had to admit, this was a first.

And not an unpleasant one either! Cyborg One, from Doylestown PA, puts on a great show. Knowing that they had a major Warhammer Event at the shop, they made sure that everyone was rerouted to an office park, where the father of a shop’s regular allowed them use of the space. Aside from being able to stretch out and have sufficient room to play, they also provided some exceedingly comfortable chairs and a well-heated and lit space.

I paid the entry fee and meandered around for a while. It was my first Invitational Qualifier – and the next invitational was only a two hour drive away – in Baltimore.  I didn’t feel confident in my ability to win, but I had promised myself something the night prior when testing – I would manage to get Top 8.

The room filled up.  I spent some time trading for Modern cards, still trying to build Maverick before the PTQ season is over. While I’m unsure if it’ll be done in time, it is a deck that I’m interested in having built for later seasons. I get to have a nice conversation with a guy who’s also playing Tokens, while I look at his binder – but we’ll come back to him later. With a few minutes left before the round, I wrote out my deck list.

Here’s what I played:

Round 1: Andrew– Mono Green Aggro

First round was called and I went to sit down. My opponent was a pink-cheeked blonde haired kid who looked fairly confident. I made a little small talk with him and asked if he’d done any bigger tournaments like this before. He admitted that he hadn’t, and I tried to put him at ease by telling him it was my first IQ as well. I wished him luck and we started.

I start off pretty quickly by landing a bunch of Human tokens, powered up by intangible virtue. That ground to a halt when Thrun hit the field, and we moved into a stall as he played a pair of Dungrove Elders. He couldn’t tap out, but I couldn’t swing in without dying. I make a misplay involving Thrun. He taps out to equip a Sword of War and Peace, and I use Beast Within before combat, not taking the Troll out with a double-block from my tokens.  It ended up not mattering though, as I land both of my Hero of Bladehold and swing for exact after some complicated math.

Game two was another mathematical nightmare, involving a series of chump blocks to keep an 8/8 Sworded Dungrove Elder at bay while I attacked in the air. Clutch play of the game was using a Beast Within on my own land to make a blocker on the final turn, before I swung for 8 damage in the skies.

1-0 (2-0 on games)

Round 2: Kevin– R/B Aggro

My second round opponent struck me as a pretty awesome guy, chatting freely and generally seeming happy to be in the 1-0 bracket. We talk about Standard for a bit before beginning. He’s on RB Aggro.  Blade Splicer on turn 2 stops his Stromkirk Noble, and I start to make a few creatures in the air when he taps out for Olivia.

I look down at my hand, and the closest thing I have to an answer is a Gavony Township. I hold my breath and start doing math on his increasingly dangerous Shrine against my unhappily small army of tokens. Luckily, Olivia needs two mana per ping, and Gavony Township increases my whole team by one per turn. I eventually (with the help of an intangible virtue) outpace her and swing in for lethal, forcing Olivia to chump to keep him alive.

The second game, I’ll admit, was sloppy on my part. I kept a one land hand against a red deck, relying on my pair of mana dorks to bail me out. Unfortunately, they’re both bolted, and I stumble on lands. Luckily, I draw what I need in the right order while he durdles around without much pressure and close out a game that was way too close for comfort. I really need to stop being cocky about my mulliganing. It’s the weakest part of my play by far.

2-0 (4-0 on games)

Round 3:  Tim - U/B Zombies

Tim seems like a giant teddy bear. He’s the most friendly guy in the world, despite his huge and muscular stature. I find out that he’s actually moved to Philly very recently, and was looking for a store. I recommended Redcap’s Corner, and he seemed to like what I had to say. Maybe I’ll see him there in future weeks.

The first game was much closer than it seemed, despite ending on turn 5. He beats me down to 10 while I hit him for a few points in the air. I land a Hero of Bladehold just before he drops an Obliterator of his own. Luckily, Sorin bails me out, providing the anthem that I need to swing for exactly lethal, despite the Obliterator.

Second game, I land an accelerated Blade Splicer into Sorin. A couple of blocks later, Sorin goes ultimate, stealing a Geralf’s messenger, a captain, and a Phantasmal Image. He scooped immediately after that.

3-0 (6-0 on games)

Round 4 & 5: Draw into Top 8.

At this point, I realize that I’m probably in pretty good shape in the five round tournament, and look for someone else in the 3-0 bracket. I find the other tokens guy, and he informs me that he’s pretty sure that 3-0 is a lock if we double-draw. We check out the math, and he’s right. There are four of us at 9 points, and two draws locks us in. We all shake hands, and go out for Burger King before the top 8.

While there, one of the other guys laughed and said “This must be what it feels like to be a Pro at a GP. Get three byes, win four matches, draw the next two rounds. Congrats on day two.”  I had to admit, that sounded like a pretty good deal.

When we get back, the top 8 meet and agree to split the prize pool – 9 packs each, or $36 in credit, plus our pins. That left the $250 travel stipend and the Invite for first place. I was pretty happy with having made it this far, especially with the double-draw in, but I didn’t feel like I was through yet. We sat down to play it out.

3-0-2 (6-0 on games)

Top 8: Matt with Burning Vengeance Reanimator

Matt was one of the other 3-0 players who drew in, so I was a little leery going into the match. I don’t have a lot of experience at the top of a tournament bracket.  Luckily, he was playing a relatively strange archetype, which managed to be the talk of the shop, so I knew going in that he was playing some Burning Vengeance deck with Unburial Rites. Not something I’d tested against, that’s for sure.

Unfortunately for Matt, he never gets to build up any pressure. In game one, Sorin sits on the board and made two emblems to go with an intangible virtue as my Gathered Townsfolk went the distance. Game two wasn’t closer, with a turn 3 Hero of Bladehold that he couldn’t answer. I felt bad, since his deck hadn’t really done anything in either game except play a bunch of filtering and not a lot of answers.

Despite the easy Top 8 round, I started having some doubts here. I know it sounds cliché, but I didn’t like my odds against any of the others. There was the other tokens player – with a WB list that probably stomped me in the mirror. He had Vault, which trumps my Gavony Township in a race, and twice as many anthem effects. In addition, there was a RG player, and a Delver player.

4-0-2 (8-0 on games!)

Top 4: Joe with RG Aggro

Unfortunately, I played like crap the entire set here. Not only did I peg him on the wrong deck, but I kept an even more marginal hand. After the turn 1 Copperline Gorge, I figured him for Wolf’s Run, and I never revised that even after having seen a Strangleroot Geist. I hadn’t tested the Wolf’s Run matchup before, and it was something that worried me, despite the fact that I had a strong sideboard plan against them. I kept a marginal hand in game one, involving three anthems, two lands (Plains and Swamp), and a pair of Blade Splicers. No green sources and no playable creatures means the hand is not keepable, but I choked and kept it.  I never saw the third land until he already had a Huntmaster flipped.

Game two went better despite my mulligan to 6, with me keeping up for a while until he played a sword that I didn’t have an answer for. A 2/3 Bird of Paradise beat me by itself, supported by a healthy allotment of wolves and geists on the ground. Had I been able to answer the Sword, I think I could have won this one pretty handily, but alas.

4-1-2 (8-2 on games)

Aftermath

While a Top 4 finish is hardly bad my first time out, I couldn’t help but have a bad taste in my mouth. I felt like I had thrown the game away. This feeling subsided somewhat when I took my credit and managed to pick up a pair of Vengevines, a Fauna Shaman, as well as a Hero of Bladehold (so I can return one of those to Marshall, at least.)

I watched my friend playing Tokens win the finals handily, though the matches were much closer than they should have been. In game two, he had the option to trade his Elsepth for the opposing Batterskull, and decided to gain life instead, losing Elspeth the following turn to a trampling Batterskull. In the end, though, an increasingly large contingent of anthems bore the tokens deck out and scored the victory and the blue envelope.

We helped the store owners close the place down, complementing them on a well run event. They’re hoping to run two qualifiers per set release from now on, and I can safely say that I’ll be attending the majority of those. Once they move into their larger store in the next few months, they promised to look into a Super IQ – which gives out awesome playmats as prizes in addition to the rest.

I can't say enough good things about the Cyborg One crew, except to say that I'll be attending all their future events without question. Stand up guys all around, and a great experience.

The winning tokens player and I got to talking, and he mentioned that he needed to walk nearly three miles to the train station, take a train back to his place, then take another hour and a half worth of busses to his girlfriend’s place. I offered him a ride, since it was more or less on the way, and I didn’t really know how to get back to Philly from where we were. Seemed dumb to have to travel for 3-4 hours just to get 40 minutes away. He accepted.

You always hear that the best part of Magic is the people, but I’d never really believed it till now. Everyone I’d ever hung out with at a tournament had been people that I went to the site with. It took about an hour and a half to get back to Philly, and Vishra rode with me the majority of the way. We discussed the deck, and I got a nice ego boost when he mentioned that he’d read my blog from the link on MTGSalvation.

Shoutout to you Vishra, and best of luck in Baltimore! I’ll be watching for you on stream!

Until next time everyone,
Andrew