Modern Nerddom’s Quick and Dirty Guide to Avacyn Restored Game Day

Hey everyone, and welcome to this special Friday edition of Modern Nerddom. This weekend is Avacyn Restored Game Day, and around Reddit, I’ve been noticing plenty of threads and questions regarding this tournament. Since our community is growing pretty rapidly (Over 1000 new people since the last Game Day, if I don’t miss my mark), I figured that a quick primer wouldn’t go amiss.

Building Standard UWr Miracles!

Tuesday, I threw out a pretty simple question regarding this post. Since I didn’t have any tournaments to report on, I figured that my best bet would be to build a deck from scratch and show you all my process. I enlisted suggestions from the community, and you guys came through for me. I had plenty of suggestions to go through to find the one I wanted to work on.

I started the culling process with 9 potential decks and decided to whittle them down with great sweeping cuts in order to give me one deck that would get constructed. It occurs to me that I’ve invented something about as original as a reality TV show by doing this, but hey – it’s not like any of us watch those, right?

Right?

The first category I eliminated was decks that are already showing promise in Standard. These are all decks that I’ve seen plenty of lists for and know back and forth. They’d be interesting entries for later blogs, but when all the work has been done already, it doesn’t seem profitable to try and recreate an untuned list when tuned versions exist already. Based on that, I cut RW Humans, Grixis Kamikaze,  UG Self-Mill (Heebs actually has this deck) and UR Delver (Marshall is running this and reports that it’s a blast).

From there I turned to decks that appeared to be inferior versions of other decks. Mono-Green Infect was interesting, but I don’t think you gain anything at all from being mono-green. You’d be significantly better served by adding Blue for Artful Dodge, at the very least. Wild Defiance is an awesome card though. I also cut UB Zombie Mill for being both a subpar Zombies deck, and a subpar Milling deck. If you want to do one or the other – great! But I don’t think the mixture of the two is going to be viable.

That left us with three finalists on the Island – Ramp Land Destruction, WRb Tokens, and Miracles. While Ramp Land Destruction was clearly the most interesting of the three, I also think that it’s least likely to be viable. The Developers have made a conscious push away from Land Destruction in recent years, which does a lot to damage it as an archetype. I think that the best angle to take for this one is a Beast Within/Bramblecrush/Acidic Slime strategy using Deadeye Navigator to lock them out of the game in conjunction with Mist Raven/Aether Adept and Acidic Slime.

WRb Tokens was a close contender, but I felt it was very similar to the things I’ve done already in all my tokens write-ups. Adding Hellrider and Rally the Peasants are more or less the only changes I’d make, plus stretching the mana base significantly. I can’t see this being much better than just straight BW.

So, Miracles in Standard! If you follow the professional scene at all, you’ll know that the most recent Pro Tour was just played in Barcelona.

Brian Kibler ‏@bmkibler

Not a bad view from the hotel room #PTAVR http://twitpic.com/9jfj97

Man, I really need to win a PTQ.

If you followed the coverage, you’ll also know that it was won by none other than Alexander Hayne, who piloted a block deck that he amusingly called Hallelujah! The deck is a UW Control shell that uses the advantage of extremely powerful draw steps to cause miracles to be less luck and more a simple matter of time. With that said, his version was designed for the block format, and porting it over to Standard will make things a little more powerful, at least in the abstract.

I’m going to start out on a limb here and say that we should change the colors he chose. Hayne played UW straight, but the manabases in block are much more restrictive than what Standard has available.

To that end, I’d like to splash Red for Desolate Lighthouse and Bonfire of the Damned. Both of these cards are extremely powerful effects that synergize very well with the game plan. That, however, is something for later on. For now, I think that we should start with the deck’s primary colors.

White

White has everything a miracle deck needs on a raw-power scale. We get to run Terminus, arguably the most powerful of our miracles, and Entreat the Angels, which will be one of our primary kill conditions. Any spell that makes multiple evasive flyers seems exceptionally good in my books. Because the format is so aggro heavy, I wouldn’t be against running Day of Judgment in some numbers. Any deck running white should have some number of Oblivion Rings as well, simply as a catch all solution to problems.

Some other cards that I think merit consideration are Timely Reinforcements and Gideon. Again, it may seem like overkill against aggressive decks here, but they really are the vast majority of the format, and we should be able to sideboard against control.

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An aside here about deck construction: At most competitive events, there will be a lot of decks, and a lot of rounds. You can usually afford to lose one, sometimes even two, and make it to the top tables. This is because it is impossible to have a winning matchup against every deck in the room. It just doesn’t happen. When it does, something has gone horribly wrong and needs to be banned. If your deck beats everyone, it’s overpowered, and if there isn’t enough diversity in the opposing decks, that’s equally bad. One way or another, someone will beat you. The real question is how to minimize how often that happens.

Back during Caw’s height, right after Splinter Twin hit the scene in a big way, Valakut players were stuck with a problem. They couldn’t beat Splinter Twin. It wasn’t that they were losing more than they were winning – they just couldn’t put a dent in it. They had no defense against a 4-toughness creature that could – allowing only instant speed responses – make infinite copies of itself and kill you while backed up by counterspells. At first, many tried adding tons of Flame Slash and other removal for the deadly combo, just to try and make the matchup into something you could fight.

The breakthrough came later. If Splinter Twin had an 80% game win percent against you, you weren’t going to turn it around without a complete transformational sideboard for them. It wasn’t worth your whole sideboard just to make the matchup 50-50. They ignored the matchup and hoped not to hit it, instead improving their %’s against the rest of the field.

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Blue

While the miracles available in white are potent, Blue is where the dynamics of the deck start to come into their fullest. We have Think Twice and Thought Scour to draw cards on their turn. Temporal Mastery serves as a ghetto-Explore, which is just fine. We’re buying time and draw steps, which is all this deck wants to do.

Ponder serves to fix our draws and ensure that we get lands and spells when we’d like them, Devastation Tide is nearly as good as Terminus, and locks the board down in combination with Tamiyo and Gideon.

Red

While red has a number of spells that I’d consider in a deck like this, I’m going to have to say that I don’t think they’re better than the ones we already have. Pillar of Flame is a good answer to a number of relevant threats, but it’s fairly low impact compared to the rest of the deck. Slagstorm is more of a color commitment than I’d be willing to make. Bonfire of the Damned, however, serves as a late game fireball and board wipe all in one. We could do much worse.

On the other hand, once I started actually putting the deck together, I realized that the amount of slots we have for cards is already extremely tight. I found myself cutting core cards to attempt to fit in the Bonfires. It may be correct to do this, but without extensive tests, I wouldn’t be comfortable with it. I cut the Bonfires from the maindeck, leaving us with only a very light splash for Desolate Lighthouse, and a single Bonfire in the sideboard, just in case.

Here’s the deck list that I came up with.

Some of the highlights of the deck include Gideon and Tamiyo, who effectively act as a tag-team. If both of these are on the field at once, it’s very difficult to lose. Tamiyo can tap something down for Gideon to kill. Gideon can taunt their team, allowing Tamiyo to draw you a ton of cards unopposed. Gideon can protect Tamiyo as she builds to her ultimate while protecting Gideon with her own tapdown.

Gideon’s ultimate is perfectly serviceable as a win condition, and Tamiyo’s can also serve as a rapid fire Angel factory with Entreat the Angels, or an alternate win condition with Thought Scour milling their deck dry (when you’re not pointing it at yourself for a virtual Ancestral Recall.)

And while they’re doing this, a single miracle of any sort sets your opponent so far behind that coming back would take something even more miraculous. I can’t explain enough how much these two walkers were made for each other. They dovetail perfectly. I’m considering building a deck designed to emphasize these two even more than they already are.

With 13 main deck aggro hosers, the matchup should be great against any deck that turns guys sideways. Since this is the vast majority of the current metagame, this makes this a very well positioned deck.

On the other hand, I think that we’re very very weak against Control and Ramp. While Control is probably a matchup we don’t need a spectacular amount of hate for, given its relative absence from the metagame, Ramp is pretty much inexcusable. The plethora of bounce and board wipe spells should help there, and we can always shut them out with planeswalkers, but I’m putting some Dissipates in the board to help slow them down. We may not be able to counter Primeval Titans anymore, but we can certainly stop Green Sun’s Zenith and enough Ramp Spells that we’ll get to deploy Tamiyo and Gideon to victory.

I’d wanted to do some testing on Magic Workstation (my online testing service of choice), but unfortunately, my evening last night was booked solid with other things, so I’ll have to leave you with this deck untested. It’s likely far from ideal, and could use some definite tuning, but the principles are there.

During the quarterfinals of the Pro Tour, John Finkel commented that you could probably write a computer program to determine how many times this deck just wins the game. During the last IQ I was at, a Zombies player snap-kept a triple Gravecrawler hand, only to fall victim to the turn 2 Terminus flip. One of the shining words of advice for any format is to do the most unfair thing that you can, and every miracle in this deck does exactly that – gaining massive value for little cost.

Top deck your way to victory, my friends!

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This weekend, I’ll be attending the Redcap’s Corner PTQ in the Philadelphia Convention Center. It starts on Saturday at 10am, and promises to be good fun. The format is Standard. If you’re planning on being there, let me know, and we can chat about our decks. Who knows, maybe you and your deck could be featured here next week! I also hope to attend a Game Day on Sunday, but we'll see how that goes.

This Tuesday will be the first entry in a series aimed mostly at beginning deck builders. We’ll go into some of the fundamentals of building a deck, and talk about some common issues with freshman attempts at putting together a pile of sixty and winning with it.

Thanks for reading, and as always, I’ll be watching the comments for any questions from you guys. Keep reading, and I’ll keep watching.

Scheduling Your Grind

Today we’re going to take a bit of a break from Tournament Reports and Deck Lists and narrow in on something that isn’t often talked about in the Magic Community – finding and scheduling these high-level events. Everything I write in this article is from my own point of view, so if you live in a foreign country, things may be subtly different for you. For certain, the required number of planeswalker points is likely to change, so be wary that your mileage may vary.

When we talk about Grinding, we’re usually referring to going to as many tournaments as possible in a given period, trying to ‘grind out’ rewards related to those tournaments. The first step towards this is determining what’s out there. Here’s a quick overview. The Magic tournament scene is broadly split into three circuits right now, as well as independent events. The first and most well-known of these is the Pro Tour Series.

The Pro Tour Series

The Pro Tour is the crowning event of Magic. Held three times per year in varying locations, they offer the largest payout for a Wizards-run tournament. They are held over multiple days in multiple formats, and often feature names that you’ll hear when running around your local card shop. They’ve also got a pretty significant prize payout - $40,000 for first place, and then staggering downwards to the top 75, who each get $1000.

However, the Pro Tour isn’t something you can just walk into. You need to qualify for it. To that end, there’s three major ways to achieve this. You can Top 25 a Pro Tour, Top 4 a Grand Prix, or win a Pro Tour Qualifier (PTQ). All of those are monumental accomplishments, and represent the goal for a number of aspiring grinders.

A step down from the Pro Tour is a Grand Prix (GP). Held most weekends in varied locations on the globe, they feature an 8x planeswalker point multiplier and two days of play – if you make the cut. In addition, they’re the most prominent tournament that offers byes to players for good play. You can earn between 1 and 3 byes for any given GP. The simplest way to get 3 is to win a Grand Prix Trial (Held in local stores) for the appropriate Grand Prix, though you can also qualify for them through Planeswalker Points. Grand Prix’s are the largest public events in Magic, and can break 1500 attendees regularly.

In addition, there’s the World Cup, which has only been added this year. This is an invite only tournament and has the dubious distinction of being the only tournament that you need to qualify to qualify for. You need to achieve the same number of planeswalker points as you would for a single bye at a GP to Qualify for the World Cup Qualifier – which are held three times per country. Alternatively, you could win player of the year, but the Qualifier seems a bit more likely.

That’s a rough sketch of the Pro Tour Series, but it’s hardly the only show in town.

The Star City Games Open Series

Star City Games is arguably the most well known magic sales hub on the internet. They also happen to run the largest independent tournament series on the market. The Star City Games Open series is basically a fully fledged competitor to the Pro Tour, and has comparable prizes.

The crown jewel in the Open Series is the Invitational. Held four times a year, it pays $75,000 out to the top 64 players, including $15,000 for first prize. However, like the Pro Tour, the Invitational doesn’t allow just anyone to walk in – you need to qualify first. There are broadly four methods of qualification. The first is to place highly at the previous Invitational. You can also win a SCG Invitational Qualifier (which come in three flavors – Normal, Super, and Elite, with increasing prize for each), or accumulate enough Open Points (Star City’s reward program, earned from placing well at their events), and finally, you can perform exceptionally well at an Open.

Star City Opens are to the Invitational what Grand Prixs are for the Pro Tour. They’re open events – no qualification needed – with hundreds of players. There’s one most weekends in some city in the USA. They generally feature two types of events – a Standard Open on Saturday and a Legacy Open on Sunday. Achieving top 8 in either of these will get you an invite to the Invitational of your choice that year.

The TCGPlayer Max Series

While I haven’t participated in any of their events as of the writing of this piece, but from the looks of it, it’s got a healthy following as well. The crown event is a $50,000 championship – paying $12,000 to the top finisher. To get there, you need to earn TCGPlayer points, which are available from tons of events held all around the country. Some stores even run weekly events.

While it appears to be the smallest of the big circuits, it could be true that there’s less interest in them, making the tournaments softer by comparison. Again, I haven’t attended any of their events, so your mileage may vary.

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Now for the real question: Why is this important? Why do we care about all these different tournaments that are being run all around the world? Well, we want to go to some of them! We’ve got a couple of free weekends for the next few months and we want to play some high level magic and maybe see some prizes. If that all sounds fun, then there’s something you should know off the bat.

This stuff gets complicated quick.

I’m not an organized person by nature. In fact, I’m very unorganized. I need to-do lists to keep track of my day-to-day tasks. I keep a notebook on me like it’s a crutch. For me, doing this kind of thing requires preparation. The rest of this article is going to more or less go through my methodology for deciding what I’m doing with my weekends for the next two months. (And it should also give you a reasonable idea about the tournament reports that you can expect to see here on a weekly basis!)

First thing I’m going to do is block off the days that I can’t do anything. Understandably, there’s a fair amount of events going on between now and July that I can’t miss for one reason or another.

June 3 – Brother’s Graduation

June 22-24 – Meeting Girlfriend’s Family

July 6-8 – M13 Prerelease (Weekend at Marshalls)

July 12-14 – Connecticon

Seems easy enough. We just won’t look for events on those days. Next up is to hit the ‘big fish’. These are huge events, and I can’t see anything else interfering with me going to them. Because I played like a madman during the previous planeswalker point season, I have enough points for a single bye to all GP’s, and I have a qualification for the World Cup Qualifier. I generally use www.mtgmom.com to track the dates of important events, so I’ve got that in the background while I do this. It tracks the location of all Pro Tours, GP’s, Star City and TCGPlayer events, which makes it pretty invaluable.  According to that site, the only World Cup Qualifier that I can reasonably go to is in Maryland, and held on the 16^th of June. That’s an open weekend for me, so we’ll slot that into our schedule. I probably won’t win, but it’ll be a fun time, and it’s only a couple of hours drive.

Always check the details of a big event like this, because there might be more interesting things going on. For example, the World Cup Qualifier is a two day event if you make Top 8, so I’ll have to plan to either have a hotel room, or drive there and back if I turn out to make Top 8. Checking the event’s website, it looks like there’s going to be a PTQ on Sunday – so even if I don’t make the Top 8, I’ll likely still want to be there. I’ll plan on getting a hotel room for the night – they have a deal with the event so that it’s less than 100 dollars with a complimentary breakfast thrown in, which is probably cheaper than driving there and back twice, including tolls – and it’s certainly easier on my mind if I don’t need to wake up at 6am to be there by registration.

The other major event on my calendar for this period is GP Atlanta. Pop has agreed to go with me, so we’ll be spell slinging for the weekend in Legacy fashion. I’ve still not 100% settled on a deck, but preliminary results seem to be pointing at a Burn deck. I don’t know legacy too well, so a strong linear deck might just be the best option. This is taking place on June 30-31, but we’ll need to fly out on the 29^th to be there in the morning. Note to self, book hotel, book your plane flight.

The schedule now looks like this:

May 25-27 – n/a

June 1 -3 – Brother’s Graduation

June 8-10 – n/a

June 15-17 – Magic World Cup Qualifier

June 22-24 – Meeting Girlfriend’s Family

June 29-July 1 – GP Atlanta

July 6-8 – Weekend at Marshalls

July 12-14 – Connecticon

We have three weekends free during this period, and with all the travel that I’m going to be doing, I don’t think I’m going to want to do a ton of long-distance travel during those. I check the weekends on MTGMom to find out if anything is really local. The 26^th of May is a PTQ in my hometown, run by my home shop. It’s literally within walking distance of my apartment, so we can add that to the list. June 8-10 has nothing worth noting.  I’d like to have something on June 8-10 so that I’m at least warmed up for the Qualifier the following weekend. MTGMom doesn’t count GPT’s as major events, and so doesn’t list them. You need to use locator.wizards.com for that – search for Grand Prix Trials.

A quick search for premier events on that weekend in my area reveals that two stores are having a double GPT Saturday. I very much prefer Ron’s Comic World for that even though Top Deck Games is closer, though the two affiliated GP’s for either aren’t exactly within travel distance. I’ve got options here, but I’ll leave it up to me on those dates to decide if it’s worth going to. Sometimes you should leave flex in your schedule to account for being tired, sick, or just not feeling like playing Magic. Burnout is a real thing, and you need to take your mental fatigue into account whenever you have major events coming up.

On a lark, I do a quick check for the weekends that I’m not available, and I find something interesting. My brother’s graduation is on Sunday, in New York, and I’ll be traveling up through NJ on the Saturday before. As a result, I’ll be passing by a major event being held in Edison NJ – a $5,000 TCGPlayer Tournament. It starts early in the morning, so if I go and play in it, I can leave as soon as I’m reasonably out of the prize running (or if I win) and head home for dinner. It’s not something I’m married to, idea wise, but it’s certainly a possible thing I could do if I’m in the mood to that weekend.

Also, the weekend of Connecticon isn’t going to be a bust, Magic-wise, because there’s a number of events being held there by Star City Games – including an Elite Qualifier. I’ll most likely play in something, but I wouldn’t want to miss too much of the convention itself, so I’ll make that call once I see the program for the convention.

May 25-27 – Redcap’s Corner PTQ

June 1 -3 – Brother’s Graduation

June 8-10 – (Double GPT Weekend at Ron’s)

June 15-17 – Magic World Cup Qualifier

June 22-24 – Meeting Girlfriend’s Family

June 29-July 1 – GP Atlanta

July 6-8 – Weekend at Marshalls

July 12-14 – Connecticon

Seems like a busy couple of months, but it should also be extremely exciting. Just based on that list, I’ll be traveling to a state I’ve never been to, flying on my own for the first time, playing in two of the biggest tournaments of my life, and all of that wrapped up in a couple of very significant life events. I’m going to be exhausted and running off adrenaline for half of the time, but I couldn’t be more thrilled for the whole thing.

Wish me luck, and check back on Thursday, where I’ll be building a Standard deck from scratch – including sideboard and a few test matches against the top decks in the format. What deck, you might ask? Well, that’s up to you guys! Let me know in the comments section, either here or on Reddit, what kind of deck you’d like to see my construct. I’ll take the suggestion that I like the best, and we’ll see it come to life on Thursday.

Also, a question for the community. I generally have been using Thursdays to write articles on Tournament Reports and Deck Techs, but I've gotten a few comments from people saying that those have gone over their head a bit because they're not as experienced with deckbuilding. How would you guys feel about Tuesdays becoming an introductory deckbuilding series? Again, let me know in the comments - both here and on Reddit.

Top 8 at SCG: IQ with BW Tokens!

I’ll be honest. I didn’t want to get out of bed the next morning.

I'd just won a GPT for Atlanta, had a nice dinner with the girlfriend, and settled in for the night. As is becoming a perennial issue with me, I hated my sideboard from the day before. Despite my win, I was unhappy with my performance against RG aggro the day before. I felt like half of the slots in my sideboard weren’t going to do anything against any decks.

Worst, the tournament was about an hour away by car, and Facebook told me that it started at 1030. That meant that I’d want to be there by 10, which meant leaving before 9, getting up at 830. This was getting to be a production and I hadn’t even gone to bed the night before yet.

I turned off my alarm.

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It’s 8am and I’m wide awake. The room is warm – which happens when you both have a couple extra beers the night before and then pass out on top of each other. She’s up too, and she looks at the clock.

“Well, looks like you’re going to the tournament after all.”

Looks like.

I drive up to the shop, just before 10. I figure I’ve got half an hour to root through my commons and uncommons to find some better sideboard cards, plus rearrange the maindeck for a more general meta. The tournament is a Star City Games invitational.

And no one is there.

I pull out my smartphone, check the event on facebook. 1030am-8pm. Seems about right. I wait for five minutes and the store owner shows up.

“Hey,”

“Hey, isn’t there an event today?”

“Yea. Starts at noon.”

I check the phone again.

“It says 10:30.”

“That’s when we open. First pairings are noon.”

The girlfriend finds this amusing.

“Looks like you’ve got time for breakfast and sideboard.”

Looks like.

 I fiddle with the deck for a while, eating a pack of Pop-Tarts: strawberry, with frosting. Anyone who likes another flavor better is just wrong. I pull the Revoke Existences out of the deck. Sure, they’re versatile, but I’m not really using all the spots anyway, and I’d rather use twice as many spots on instant speed removal, if it comes down to that. I add in a couple of Divine Offerings and Ray of Revelation.

You’re still not running any green sources.

Oh right. Wouldn’t want to be an idiot and run a spell I couldn’t actually use. I pull out my phone again, searching for any white card in standard that references enchantments at instant speed. The list is not overwhelming, but I don’t want to mess with my mana base with only an hour or two before a tournament. That’s not the kind of audible that actually ever helps. I look over the cards on the list, not finding anything worth playing, and then I spot one.

“I’ll be right back.”
I rummage through commons, find some, and slot the cards into the deck and shake my head.
"Take a look at this," I tell the store owner.
"That card looks pretty bad."
"Yea, but I think it's right."

I register the following.

Some explanations:

First, I disliked the Angel of Jubilation yesterday. He’d done good work, but he’d never done something that Hero of Bladehold couldn’t have served, and there were definitely times where Hero would have done the job better. I dropped them out of the main deck, only to add them in as I looked around the room and saw a ton of Naya variants. Maybe being able to turn off Pod incidentally would be pretty good. I added one back in.

My earlier search for enchantment removal only turned up one servicible candidate in standard. Urgent Exorcism. This card has got to be terrible, but it serves its purpose. Instant speed enchantment destruction wins the Tokens mirror in ways that sorceries never can. Plus, it lets me have an instant speed answer to Drogskull Captain, which could be relevant if anyone actually played that card anymore. Spirits seems like such a good deck. Why don’t more people run it? Probably corrosive gale. Good thing no one runs that either. Both of those cards hurt me a ton.

The rest of the cards in the sideboard are justified with a  mix of “I guess that could be useful in this corner case” and “This is never going to actually help, but it looks reasonable.” I need sideboarding lessons. I’m god-awful at it. Good thing my game 1 strategy is solid.

Pairings go up, and we’re off to the races. 28 people in the room means 5 rounds, then top 8.

Round 1 vs Ben (Esper Control)

Always watch them shuffle. At a competitive event, you can learn a lot about a person by how they conduct themselves. Ben knew his deck, how it fit in his hands. He was comfortable playing. His mat was this custom-looking two-entwined-dragons thing.  On the other hand, he let me know his deck – flashing me the bottom of his stack of cards while he shuffled. Seachrome Coast, Liliana of the Veil. I couldn’t have gotten a better read on him if I’d seen his deck list. Kids, some advice, don't shuffle with the bottom of your deck pointing at your opponent. He will begin to keep hands that murder you.

We joked around about the die roll for a few minutes before the clock started and we drew our starting seven. I beat on him for a bit with a Doomed Traveler, but we can both tell that my offensive pressure if having trouble punching through his Lingering Souls stall tactics. He hits 5 mana his health on 10, then 6 with his health on 8. Then plays a Ratchet Bomb.

Boom.

I flashback my Lingering Souls and start to rebuild, but he's tapping his mana again. Sun Titan into Phantasmal Image into Ratchet Bomb.

Boom. Ouch.

I scoop shortly after that, and we’re off to the sideboards. I find one card there that seems helpful, and even that appears marginal. If he’s running O-rings, Shrine is probably not as good as I’d hope. Oh well.

Game two, he mulligans, and then keeps the second hand after agonizing over it a bit.

“Island, Thought Scour me, Go.”

He mills two lands.

“Plains, Champion, Go.”

“Thought Scour me.” He mills a third land and a Sun Titan. “Go.”

My eyebrows perk up.

“No second land?”

He shakes his head. “Nope. Seems pretty dumb now.”

Nevertheless, he makes it a fight with a pair of Ratchet Bombs. I’m trying to kill him before he gets back into the game, but he nevertheless gets to 5 mana staring down lethal on my next turn. He taps the deck. “Just a land…” he whispers. I know what’s coming. Ratchet Bomb in the yard, Sun Titan in hand, and me with half a dozen tokens on the field. He lands the Sun Titan and he stabilizes at 5 life.

He draws the card, flips the Seachrome Coast, tapped, and sighs. Game Three.

He’s not in this one. I kill him on turn 5 despite a Lingering Souls as defense. The Champion beats keep coming, and he’s sided out his spot removal. One of the best parts about BW Tokens is the diversity of threats. With Champions and Heros, they need to have spot removal, or you can just run them over. However, that same spot removal is lackluster at best against the 2-for-1 token generation that the rest of the deck is built on. It’s a problem, and I’m not sure what the solution is. Luckily, I’m playing the problem, so I don’t have to deal with it.

1-0   (2-1 in games)

Round 2 – Kevin Stenborg with UW Delver

I went against Kevin last time I was at an Invitational. He was playing RB Vampires and I beat him 2-0, but the games were closer than I’d like, primarily because of Shrine. I’d talked to him earlier, and I knew he was on Delver. I also knew he was dreading the Tokens matchup.

As soon as I walk over to the table, he sees me and hangs his head. Sorry man.

“Let’s try some shenanigans,” he says while he cuts my deck, eight different ways, then takes the top seven cards and puts them on the bottom. “Got any shuffle effects?”

“Nope,” I respond – forgetting about my evolving wilds. “We’ll have to check what they were at the end of the game.

The end of the game is pretty soon after that. My scorepad reads “20-18-11-4-Win”. I don’t know what the sequence of play was, but I never took a point of damage. No idea what it could have been except a not-close game.

The bottom 7 was 2 Champions, 2 Gathers, a Hero, a Lingering Souls, and a Midnight Haunting. No lands. Guess those shenanigans hurt a bit. I sideboard in some Timely Reinforcements, taking out Doomed Travelers.

He does better the second game, but after I Oblivion Ring the first Delver, he’s got second Delver that refuses to flip for 6 turns. I end the game on 9 life, having never played a flyer. Sometimes, that’s the breaks.

2-0   (4-1 in games)

Round 3 – Mario with RB Zombies

When he plays the Diregraf Goul on turn 1, I’m estatic.

“What?” he asks.

“I actually have sideboard cards against you! That never happens!”

He looks a little confused, but we play on.

The first game doesn’t go his way. I start faster than him and he’s on the defensive right away. As a tip, if you’re playing a RB aggressive tribal deck, being on the defensive is NOT a good thing. You should avoid that if possible in the future.

As a second tip, if you’re against a Tokens player, and he has a board presence and a Vault of the Archangel running, you’re probably not coming back. I gained 8 life, then 7 life, ending at 25 when I finish off the first game.

I pull out my Oblivion Rings and bring in the Celestial Purges. I need to maintain some board presence, so I don’t want to side out threats for additional removal, but upgrading the removal I have seems just fine.

This game really slams home how unfair the lifelink on Vault is. I cast 3 spells the whole game – Champion of the Parish, Intangible Virtue, and Lingering Souls (once, not flashback.) He on the other hand, amassed a slew of zombies and a Phyrexian Obliterator. With vigilance, evasion, and lifelink, what should have been a blowout turned into a gentle race that ended with me comfortably two turns from death.

3-0   (6-1 in games)

Round 4 & 5

Because of the relatively high number of draws, followed by a relatively high number of pair-downs losing in previous rounds, the top 4 undefeated people were safe to double draw into the Top 8. I took my time to go and get some Subway and creep on a friend of mine who was playing a GWr Ramp Deck focused around Sigarda and other cool nonsense like that. He ended up at a disappointing 3-2 for the day, but missed the top 8.

3-0-2 (6-1 in games)

Round 6 – Kamikaze

 I’d read about this deck online. It uses Blood Artist and zombies to set up a Killing Wave for a pseudo-combo finish. It’s apparently been making some waves, but I’d never actually played against it in practice. Just judging from what I saw in these games, I think it’s the real deal, but I’d have to play against it more. I suspect it might be a deck with a favorable matchup against us, but we can probably board to kill it effectively.

He starts game one with a Gravecrawler, and I’m already generally pleased because I’ve got a ton of tokens to clog the board up with. Late game favors us immensely in the Zombie matchup, but all that fades when he casts Blood Artist on turn 2.

“What’s that do?” I ask, motioning at the card.

“Whenever a creature dies, I gain one, you lose one.”

“Seems decent,” I respond.

And the game goes on. A few turns later, he’s attacking with a Geralf’s Messenger, which I block and kill with a token.

“I’ll gain two, you lose two, then you lose two more from Geralf’s coming back?”

I look down at the table, then at the Blood Artist. “Each creature? Not just yours?”

“Yep.”

“That card seems nuts.”

“He’s pretty good.” He admits.

I draw for my turn, it’s a Swamp. I’ve got 8 power and toughness in the air, and he’s on 13. If I attack, he’ll be dead in two turns. I have four lands in play. I have a Vault of the Archangel and the Swamp in hand. Then, then unthinkable happens.

“Land for turn,” I declare, dropping the Swamp.

Yep, you read that right.

I stare at the Swamp, willing for it to be the Vault of the Archangel that would let me gain 8 life and be well out of reach of any kind of nonsense. Sadly, my psychic powers haven’t progressed to that level quite yet, and it remains a basic land. I attack for 8 and pass my turn.

He checks his life pad. “You’re at 9?”

“Yep.”

“Blood Artist, Killing Wave on 0?”

“Okay…”

“I’ll sacrifice everything. You take 10. I’ll gain 10?”

“…..huh. So I’m dead?”

“Looks like.”

Looks like.

I couldn’t tell you why I did it. I’d planned the Vault. I’d even not played it early, to goad him into trying to race when I secretly had 8 life more than he thought I did. The game was over – I just needed to actually remember how to play my own cards.

I win the second game with a quick start off a Champion, despite another misplay involving not blocking with a mortarpod, then sacrificing it directly after combat. Taking 4 damage for no reason is the best way to lose games, but thankfully, he draws dead and I beat him.

Game three, I look at my hand. Two Honor of the Pure, a Champion of the Parish, a Hero of Bladehold, a Plains, and two Lingering Souls. Plenty of gas, and a Champion to boot! Oh, it’s a one lander? I’m on the draw. Everything will be fine.

“Land, Diregraf, go.”

I draw. Another Hero. No problem.

“Land, Champion, go.”

“Land, Gravecrawler, Tragic Slip, beat for two?”

Oh no. I draw. Midnight Haunting.

“Pass.”

“Really?”

I look down at my hand and sigh. “Yep.”

“Sometimes your deck doesn’t get there man.”

“Looks like.”

He was wrong. Not about what he said – sometimes your deck just doesn’t get there. That’s true. But I’m willing to say that it’s happening a lot less than you think it does. You’re failing your deck far more than it fails you, and this was an iconic example of it. I’m not the world’s best player. I don’t think I overreach in saying that I’m good, and that I’ll find most of the lines of play that I should be taking, but every so often, I’ll have a match like this. No matter what I do, it seems like I make the wrong play, or the play that runs right into something I knew was there, or don’t take the obvious line like “Block with Mortarpod, Sacrifice before damage to kill your Blood Artist,” or “Don’t keep the terrible one-land hand.”

Unsurprisingly, he crushed me in the rest of that game with a very mediocre draw. I never got him below 20, and never hit my third land. I screwed that match up horribly, and I knew it. What I didn’t know was why.

I still managed to Top 8 the tournament, which was nice. I earned my second Top 8 pin from IQ’s, and I’ll certainly be participating in them again – I’d love to earn an invite to the Invitational one way or another. Still, I can’t help but think that I was *right there*. I win that round, and I’ve got one more against a miracle-y control deck that I think I could beat if I just didn’t overextend too hard. Top 2 drew, and that was that.

And you misplayed and missed it.

Take that, brain. Play better next time. Maybe you’ll learn something here.

As for you, reader, maybe you’ll learn something here too. When you’re in a game, if you remember this, slow down. Think. Look at the cards in your hand and actually use your brain. Look for the line you missed. Don’t just drop your lands like they’re not the important things in your deck. Don’t nod and say “Yep,” when your opponent does something, unless you’re sure you don’t actually want to block with that Mortarpod.

-----

I’ve gotten some questions about a few cards over the last week or so, and I’d like to touch on them.

The Fours

Hero of Bladehold, Angel of Jubilation, and Sorin, Lord of Innistrad made up a trio of cards that are all extremely awkward in Tokens for one reason or another.

Sorin is slow, giving us either a 1/1 useless creature on turn 4, or half an anthem that I’d usually pay half as much for (and get twice the value, if not more.) He can grind out a ton of value against  UB Control – if you can slip him past counterspells – but otherwise, he seems nearly useless to me. I would not play him.

Angel of Jubilation has a lot of promise, and I say that because I think she’ll be great once we get our next rotation and lose Hero of Bladehold. She pumps our team, and she turns off a couple of critical spells (all of which are from the Mirrodin block, ironically, but hey, who knows what’s coming.) Plus, she’s a reasonable threat all on her own that gets bonuses from half our anthems. Seems great, and she is, when you’re winning. When you’re ahead, casting an Angel closes out the game – often giving them one less draw than they’d otherwise have. Plus, she’s very reasonable against removal, often having an immediate effect on the board even if they have sorcery speed removal (and a lot of the instant speed stuff won’t hit her.) There’s only one reason she’s not a 3-4 of in my deck.

Hero of Bladehold is insane. She’s a 3/4, which invalidates just about all the nonblack removal in the game. She gets benefits from both your anthems – her tokens take Intangible Virtue buffs – and she’s easier on the mana than Angel is (with one less white mana.) While she doesn’t have evasion, you generally don’t need it when you’re the most dangerous thing you can do with 4 mana since Jace the Mind Sculptor. Hero of Bladehold is the real deal, and you should all be playing her in your tokens deck – three of, if not four, depending on how many 4’s you want to play.

Blood Artist + Killing Wave

After seeing Kamikaze in action, I’ve got to say that I’m impressed. Blood Artist makes every combat into a miserable experience full of loathing. Zombies can just trade away creatures like they’re nothing, and laugh hysterically as you try to come back. The combo-finish with Killing Wave is just icing on the cake.

If only I had a deck that played tons of relatively disposable creatures that also happened to run black mana for Blood Artist and Killing Wave…

Wait.

Wait, I know this one.

This merits testing. Luckily, I have some people who play magic on tap, and I’ll be prodding them for test games in the near future.

Entreat the Angels

My conclusion on this card is simple. How much are you going to get out of it? Well, I took a look at my games this weekend and counted out how many of them went beyond 7 turns. The answer was virtually none of them. I say virtually because there was a game against control that went past that, but it was during a Ratchet Bomb lock, and so that doesn’t really count. Since my version of the deck doesn’t go late, nearly as a rule, we’ve got to look at this spell for its miracle cost alone, which seems much better. Unfortunately, though, I don’t think it has what we need. I think it misses the cut for the same reasons that Elspeth isn’t in the mainboard. This is a powerful linear strategy. Entreat plays well with the strategy, but isn’t ultimately aggressive enough for use here. Maybe if the deck slows down dramatically for some reason in the future, but as for now, don’t bother.

A Splash of Nature

Something I’ve been thinking about recently has been splashing green. I think that I could do it with little cost, and it would let me run Ray of Revelation in the sideboard, or naturalize. Both of these seem like much better options for the current metagame than Revoke Existence or Urgent Exorcism, but I’ll have to play with it to see. I suspect it won’t be possible to do this and Blood Artist/Killing Wave, and it may be true that neither is actually good enough to improve the main deck.

Thanks for reading everyone. Next Thursday, we’ll take a look at a new brew from AVR – something non-token-y for a change! If you’ve got any suggestions, please throw them in the comments, and I’ll be sure to see what I can do.

First Place at GPT Atlanta with BW Tokens!

It started out as one of those days.

You know the type. It’s that day when you sit there in your car, half an hour early for the event, scrambling to find a couple of sideboard cards because watching reruns of How I Met Your Mother seemed so much more important last night. The clock is ticking, you don’t have any money on you, your gas tank is dry, and you haven’t eaten breakfast.

I find the two Revoke Existence that I wanted, finally, after flipping through about a thousand assorted commons and uncommons. That’s another thing I should do when I’ve got more than twenty minutes to spare. Apparently, having a life makes doing other important things – like Magic - inconvenient.

I get into the shop, which is already filling up. I spot a few of the regulars that I know, and start chatting. Alex is on Tokens today, which is unusual. Alex is one of the better players in the store. He won a thousand dollar tournament about a month and a half ago – plus winning States earlier in the year. He’s probably the biggest worry in the room. I wonder if he feels the same way about me – I don’t have any big wins like that to my name. Lance – who I’m 2-0 against in recent play - is on Esper Control It’s a worse matchup than his previous Delver, but nothing that I wouldn’t be reasonable against. I also spot Bernard, who made Top 8 in the GPT that I took 2^nd place in. A bunch of other reasonable players round out the field of 14. Certainly not a big tournament, but not a soft one either.

 I make a change to my maindeck on speculation after I pick up a second Angel of Jubilation. The card looks insanely good in BW Tokens. I finish my deck list and turn it in with my entry fee.

We’re about to start when the door opens up, admitting Justin and Mike.

Someone chimes in. “There’s the Ringers.”

Justin is good. He’s been on a three week winning spree at FNM’s – not dropping a match yet with RG. I’ve heard tell that Sword of War and Peace is a pretty good card on turn 2. He Top-4’d the GPT, though I never had to play against him. RG is a tough matchup for me. Him being at the tournament worries me a bit.

Mike isn’t much better. He plays one deck, and plays it relentlessly well. Once upon a time, it was Valakut, and he racked up win after win with it before it rotated. He switched to Delver and never looked back. He’s been in the Top-8 situation more times than I can remember, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him misplay. He’s also notoriously against splitting prize. It’s all or nothing, in his books. He’s here to win.

As for me, I haven’t eaten in nearly 18 hours because I’m an idiot, and I got around 5 hours of sleep last night, which isn’t enough for me. It’s going to be a long day.

Round 1 – Justin with RG Aggro

The pairings are called, and I’m matched against Lance, but there’s a repair and I breathe a sigh of relief. I’m hoping to get an easy match in the first round so I can go grab some food. Unfortunately, it’s not to be, and I draw the short straw. Round 1: Your Worst Matchup, Piloted by one of the Best Players in the Store.

In game one, our life totals go in opposite directions. His upwards in small chucks, and mine down in significantly larger ones. I never get him below 20. I guess keeping Anthem-Anthem-Hero and lands isn’t the best idea against an aggressive deck. If he’d been a little slower, I could have attacked with the Hero and activated Vault to bump me back up to near-20, but he kills me on his fifth turn.

Game two doesn’t go much better, except I actually case a few spells. After I forget that Wolvir Avenger is a card and lose a token for no reason, I promptly pass a turn without casting a spell, ignoring the active Huntmaster. I deserve to lose this game just as much as I do the first – and I do in short order.

I walk over to the judge afterwards, shaking my head.

“Time on the round?”

“Forty minutes left.”

Well, at least I’ve got plenty of time to eat.

“I’m going to go take a walk,” I inform the judge. I go and get some McDonalds. Maybe I should eat healthier, but at this point, I’m tired, I’m hungry, I have a headache, and I just want some fries.

I dislike losing. I’m sure most people can sympathize with that, but something that I hate way more is not playing my best. Looking back, the first hand was absolutely a mulligan. When your first play can run directly into their Primeval Titan, you probably shouldn’t keep that. The second game was winnable if I’d actually played it smart and not walked into every trick in the RG aggro playbook. I played the match poorly, but I am not a poor player. That game was NOT me. I sat down, watched a match play out while I ate my burgers, took two Excedrin for the headache, and refocused. Four rounds, top 8. I’m still in this.

0-1 (0-2 in games)

Round 2 – Morbid Werewolves

I disliked this guy. He sat down, took one look at me and bitterly spat out “I really hope you’re not on Delver. That card is bullshit.” I shrug. I guess he went against UW in the first round and it went poorly. I’m not of the opinion that Delver is this monolithic institution – it’s beatable like almost anything else if you’re willing to tune your deck to do it.

I’m on the play without any one-drops, and he starts off with a Young Wolf. Werewolves never seemed like a spectacular deck to me, but I know it’s quick and aggressive and can steal wins if you play into a bad Moonmist. I play an anthem and he follows it up with a Vexing Devil.

“I’ll take the four, thanks.”

“Fine by me,” he responds with a smile. “Hunger of the Howlpack?”

The 4/4 young wolf crashes in, taking me to 12 on turn 2.

“That’s a pretty solid line.” I comment as I mark my rapidly dwindling life total.

I pass my next turn, and he taps the Young Wolf like his life depended on it. I flash in a couple spirits via Midnight Haunting and double block. He balks, looks at his hand, and nods. The Wolf dies, and he tries to put it back in play.

“Doesn’t undie.” I note. “It had counters on it.”

“Oh, really?” I think he genuinely didn’t know.

The game ends with me playing a Hero, followed by two Honor of the Pure and an attack.

“That card is bullshit,” he says.

“It is pretty good,” I admit I’m feeling a little dumb about removing one from my main board for an Angel. Angel would have been little better than a 4 mana 3/3 in that situation.

He gets the same opening in the second game, but an O-ring solves that problem. He plays six creatures that all eventually fall to tokens and repeated Vault of the Archangel activations. He makes a bunch of bad attacks into deathtouch effects. Eventually, I play a Hero that closes out the game.

“I can’t find a Moonmist to save my life, and I didn’t draw any creatures!”

“Good games.” I don’t really have anything more to say to that. Like I said, I didn’t really like this guy.

1-1 (2-2 in games)

Round 3 – Bernard on UW Delver

I’m feeling much better with a win under my belt, and food in my gut. The wonders of modern medicine have cured my headache, and the adrenaline is flowing, which is mitigating the worst of the fatigue. Bernard is a solid Delver player, and I’d generally count on him to not make many play mistakes. Thankfully, I’m doing great against Delver recently, so I’m feeling confident as we shuffle.

I’ve got the Champion into Honor draw, which normally seems really good. Putting early pressure onto Delver is a great way to slow them down a bit. They’ll pay mana for their Gitaxian Probes and just generally be less dangerous.

Of course, that’s all assuming that they don’t play and flip a pair of Delvers in the first three turns. Sometimes you just get there regardless of anything else.

Game two is even less one sided, but in the opposite direction. Champion into Gather into Intangible Virtue has him at 10 on turn 3, with blockers available for the Geist of St. Traft that he plays. He tries to balance out with a Timely Reinforcements, but a Lingering Souls off the top puts too much P/T on the field for him to stop – plus, my tokens are just all bigger than his.

Game three is closer than I’d like, and mostly revolves around him beating me with a Runechanter’s Pike on a Geist while I flew over him. Vault of the Archangel is a champion again as I gain 14 life over two turns to stay alive on 5 when I kill him.

2-1 (4-3 in games)

I’m able to draw the fourth round, because Justin is still undefeated and helps my breakers out a ton. This makes me very happy, because my opponent was Alex, and the tokens mirror is something out of hell. It all comes down to who has more Anthems, and how you leverage that to your advantage. With two main deck Angels, and one vault more than him, I should have the edge in the mirror, but it’s still not something I want to do.

Luckily, a clean draw lets me watch an awesome BW Control brew fight into the top 8 in a spectacular set.

Round 5 Quarterfinals: Esper Delver

Esper Delver is slightly different from the UW version. He’s got a bunch of tokens instead of an invisible stalker package, but he’s much more effective at clogging the board and waiting for a Sword to kill me with.

Game one starts slowly for both of us, with a non-flipped delver beating on me for three turns before I manage to get tokens and anthems running. I O-ring his Sword of War and Peace, and eventually, vigilant fliers take the day.

Game two is scary. He manages to beat me down to 2 before I stabilize in the air. Being that low against someone playing Gut Shot, Vapor Snag, and Snapcaster is always nerve wracking. You want to push for lethal as fast as possible because every draw you give them could kill you. On the other hand, you can’t go all-in because a single flashed in creature, or a vapor snag to remove a blocker, could leave you dead. You run the numbers, and in the end, either he has it or he doesn’t. This time, he didn’t.

3-1-1 (6-3 in games)

Round 6 Semifinals: Justin with RG Aggro Redux

I hope it won’t sound like bragging to say that the top 4 was a stacked set of people. Justin and I paired off, and the other table was Alex and Mike. That is a brutal set of opponents no matter how you cut it – and Mike’s presence means that there would be no splitting of prizes.

I wanted this win more than any in the tournament. He’d beaten me when I wasn’t at my best, and I wanted to prove that I was just as good as he was. I wanted to prove that my deck wasn’t some janky thing he could just walk over.

Game one started slow for both of us, with the first major action being a turn 3 Huntmaster from him, and a Honor of the Pure powered Lingering Souls from him. He flips his huntmaster to kill one token, but I come back with a second honor and the flashback on the souls, shrinking his huntmaster down and giving me a huge flying armada that kills him over three turns of Vault-augmented attacks.

Game two can be summed up with “Double Sword.” There’s not much that I can do against that. If he draws one, I can usually race it, or have the removal for it. The second makes it nearly impossible to handle.

Mike looks over at our match, having beaten Alex in the unfavorable tokens matchup.

“Justin, you gonna lose your streak?”

“Tokens are pretty good man.” He shoots back.

Mike shrugs towards Alex. “Doesn’t seem too bad.”

“We’ll see about that.” I chime in. “It’s a bad matchup for you.”

“Seems fine,” Mike says.

“We’ll see.”

In game three, I overload the ground with one of those nut draws you only read about. Champion into Gather into Champion and Gather into Hero of Bladehold. He tanks for a while before extending the hand.

4-1-1 (8-4 in games)

Round 6: Mike on UW Delver

After beating the much more difficult RG matchup, I honestly felt pretty relieved. I was 4-0 in competitive play against Delver with this list. Tokens are just so absurdly good against it. Every spell they cast seems less powerful than what you’re doing natively, unless they have multiple swords or something else nutty like that. Barring that, they need to either win with a trick – snapcasts and snags on end step to push through damage – or a fast delver and a ton of counter magic.

Game one isn’t close. I crush him with a double Champion draw. He never touches me because his Geist can never attack without dying.

Game two is close, but eventually, an equipped sword goes the distance and I don’t draw enough power to keep my head above water with Vault. Beating with a 2/2 lifelink deathtouch is nice, but not when it costs you 5 mana every turn and you don’t have any other plays.

The third game comes uncomfortably close. While Delver might be a good matchup for Tokens, it’s also an extremely good deck when piloted by a competent player, and Mike certainly qualifies. I end up with six vigilant flyers staring him down, while I’m on 10.

He taps his deck. “So, draw an equipment for the win, or anything else and I die.”

“Pass turn,” I say. He draws, looks at the card, sets it down, and then goes into the tank.

He thinks, and thinks. Long moments.

“Pass turn.” His voice is even. I’m on ten. He has nine power on the board. He’s at one. I don’t think there’s any outs, but my brain is frantic now. I’m checking for everything. I even look to see if he’s got green mana for a fog effect. (Ironically, he does have the green mana off a Hinterland Harbor, for Ray of Revelation flashback, which I personally really like in his deck.)

I untap, upkeep, draw. Survey the board, sandbag a land and go to combat. No effects. Swing. Effects before blocks? Effects before damage?

He flips the Seachrome Coast and extends the hand.

I won.

That’s never happened before.

5-1-1 (10-5 in games)

I’m a pretty nice guy at tournaments. I banter with my opponents, I joke around when we’re rolling to see who goes first. We’re all here to have fun, even if the game is very serious on both sides of the table. It’s nice to be able to smile and laugh. An extension of that is that I’ll almost always offer a split in Top 8 and above. Some people think that’s weak – and that you should always play to win, but frankly, unless the top spot gets something special, I’ve never seen the point to that at FNM level.

I’ve gotten plenty of good finishes, but never first place.

Aftermath

Being a GPT, the prize included just over half a box for me (which turned out to be pretty good) and three byes for GP Atlanta – a fourteen hour drive from me.

I text people, letting them know that I’d won, and the congratulatory texts started rolling in. At the time, I’d figured that the big win here was the Planeswalker Points – 5 wins and a draw was over 50 points towards the byes that I want for GP Philadelphia in the fall. Between this and the GPT Top 4 from Ron’s Comic World, I was nearly halfway to my first bye at the GP I really cared about.

I get a text from Marshall:

“So, going to learn legacy?”

“Fourteen hour drive for legacy? I don’t even have a deck.”

Then a text shows up from George:

“Congrats. We going to Atlanta?”

Gears start turning. I get a text from Pop:

“Sick! So we’re going right?”

The jury is still out on the final verdict, but the more I think about it, the more that a 14 hour drive doesn’t seem THAT bad. I could learn legacy, put a deck together, but if I’m going to do it, it can’t be alone. I’m going to talk to a few of my friends and see how we could work this out, what decks we could field among us. I’m currently qualified for the World Cup Qualifier, which happens to include a GPT for Atlanta on Sunday alongside a PTQ, which should take some of the sharks out of the water.

This could happen, and that’s pretty exciting.

The next day, I went to a StarcityGames Invitiational Qualifier, but that’s a story for Thursday. Check back then to find out how I did!