Magic Nationals 2011 - Day 1

I wasn't 100% on how long it would take for the bus to get to the tournament site, and I wasn't 100% that I had enough cards between Duncan and I for my deck, and I needed to register still, so I built in a ton of extra time into my morning schedule. I set my alarm for 5:30 with the tournament to start at 9. I went to sleep pretty much as soon as I got home from work on Friday so I'd be well rested. 9 and a half hours of sleep apparently wasn't enough as I slept right through the alarm for another hour and a half. 11 hours of sleep definitely put me into the well rested camp, but it did make me worried I wouldn't make it to the site on time.

I ended up calling a cab. I didn't have a number for a cab so I searched on the internet and was told to dial 416-TAXICAB and they'd find a cab for me. Great, I called up and they said they'd send a cab over. I went to wait by the street when two cabs from different companies pulled up beside me. Both men clearly didn't have a great grasp of the English language. They were both yelling at me that they were the ones I called. Neither seemed to know where I was going, though one guy did guess the airport. I don't know if the phone number told me what cab company was coming or not, or if they'd even sent just one cab. It was too early to figure it out so I went with the guy who guessed airport. The taxi fare ended up costing about what my deck did, which is sad. I hope that extra hour of sleep was worth it, body.

I get to the site with an hour to spare and run into Duncan in the lobby. Apparently he's staying in the hotel despite living in Toronto. In retrospect taking the bus out and staying in the hotel is probably cheaper than taking the cab multiple times and it certainly allows for more sleep so I may want to consider doing so in the future. At any rate, he'll have my cards down in the site in half an hour. I head over that way to register.

When I get to the registration desk I'm greeted by the distinctive hairstyle of Sleep Yoda to my Sleep Skywalker - Josh Bennett. I sneak up and say boo, he is surprised that I don't have a moustache. Clearly Josh needs to come to Toronto more often since I haven't had a moustache in 9 months. We chat a bit, he asks if I'm feeling confident. I tell him I tentatively cancelled my D&D session on Sunday and actually did some drafts beforehand which about as confident as I can get.

Duncan brings in the cards and everything is there. I sleeve up, write a decklist, and have time to burn so I read some Clash of Kings.

I complained about the setup yesterday so I'm going to gloss over that today. Today is for making fun of my Magic playing!

Round 1 I get deck-checked right off the hop. The match to my right is Valakut vs Valakut. To my left is Valakut vs Cawblade. My deck can't beat Valakut. On the one hand it's good that 3 of the Valakut decks in the field are playing not-me right now. On the other hand maybe Valakut is going to be popular at Nationals and I'm boned. I passed the deck check (yay!) as does my opponent (boo!) and we're off. It turns out my opponent is also playing Valakut. (For those who don't know, Valakut is essentially a combo deck. The namesake card turns mountains into lightning bolts if you have enough of them, and you power both the Valakuts and the mountains out with Primeval Titan. The deck plays a lot of land searchers too like rampant growth. Elves can't win because they side in cheap sweepers and are just a more consistent fast clock.)

I win game 1 since I don't think he was maindecking sweepers and I had a decent draw. Game 2 he ramps up to 7 mana but doesn't cast anything. Clearly he kept a hand with no gas for some reason (probably he had some removal to slow me down) but I had some vengevines and Ezuris and have him on the ropes. Another turn and he's dead. He says something about needing a great topdeck, draws a card, and plays avatar of zendikar which is pretty much a 5/5 dude and 6 3/4 dudes in one card. Suddenly he's not nearly so dead. Two swings later I am, though. I misblock on the first one to guarantee I die to the second one but I don't think I had any possible outs one way or the other and was certainly dead in 3 swings no matter what.

Game 3 is also kinda close but he has a primeval titan on turn 5 which puts the game away. I didn't draw a torpor orb in either games 2 or 3. Also, I mulliganed every game, and twice in game 3.


Round 2 I'm paired up against a straight UR splinter twin deck. He kills me on turn 4 in game 1. I mulligan a mediocre but playable hand in game 2 trying to get a torpor orb. I keep a 6 card hand without one that at least has a mana elf, which he countered with mental misstep (2 life, 0 mana: counter a 1 drop). I end up topdecking 3 torpor orbs in 4 turns. I also get out 2 archdruids and an elf and he pyroclasms for no game effect (they're all 3/3). He scoops when the 3rd orb hits play. Game 3 my 7 card hand has 3 torpor orbs and 0 forests. I'm forced to mulligan, and then again, and don't get a torpor orb. I do actually put out some decent pressure with a fauna shaman and some vengevines and he's dead in a turn. So he busts out an exarch to stunt some of the damage and says he needs to topdeck a twin here to win. He topdecks a twin. He also has a counter for my nature's claim and I am dead. Twin is actually a decent matchup I think, but not when you mulligan 4 times and never draw an orb.

So I'm 0-2, with 8 mulligans thus far. I consider just dropping and leaving but I do like to draft and going 0-2 pretty much guarantees my rating will fail to qualify me in the future. I keep going.


Round 3 I play a guy from New Brunswick who comments, after I roll a 19 to go first, that while he wasn't sure before he is sure now. I must be Ben Page's brother. Once upon a time Jamie was my brother. My opponent is Jeremie Vienneau and is playing UB control. Game 1 he doesn't have a sweeper and I blow him up good. Game 2 he casts Black Sun's Zenith 5 times and gains a lot of life with Wurmcoil Engine. (BBX - Put X -1/-1 counters on all creatures and then shuffle the spell back into your deck.) This includes him using it on turn 3 to kill 3 of my elves. I had chosen to not pump up my joraga treespeaker since I was worried about dismember setting me back a turn. Sigh. Game 3 he doesn't have an early zenith and I kill him on turn 5.

I'm now 1-2. I run into my first round opponent in the bathroom and he says he's also 1-2 now. As if my tiebreakers weren't bad enough! And then my draft pod contains only 7 people, and includes the people at 0-2-1. As foreshadowing I will get paired down in both rounds 4 and 5 to these people. So my tiebreakers will be really, really bad. I pretty much had to run the table from 0-2 to make top 8.

Anyway, draft 1. My opening pack had no bombs and had 3 potential picks in my mind. Sacred Wolf, Griffin Sentinel, or Chandra's Outrage. I went with the removal. I get passed a pack with a Serra Angel and another Chandra's Outrage. Ordinarily I probably would have taken the Serra but I was operating on plan mono colour if I could. Outrage is really, really good since it kills almost any blocker and gets some damage in to the dome as well. And it kills Serra. Red then dries up in a real hurry. I manage to table a fiery hellhound (I think most people will really underrate him. I think he's awesome!) and my on colour picks after pack 1 are:

2 chandra's outrage
2 goblin arsonist
1 fling
1 fiery hellhound

Yeah, only 6 red cards. Not good enough. I also have griffin sentinel (which tabled from my first pack!), swftfoot boots, and a bunch of questionably playable cards. (zombie infestation, rites of flourishing, negate, hideous visage, buried ruin, celestial purge)

In pack 2 I open a fireball. Huzzah! I'd noticed in pack 1 that both white and green seemed to be open but that blue and black were pretty non-existent. As was red, really, but I'm stubborn. The red cards I got from pack 2 were:

1 reverbate
1 fireball
1 bonebreaker giant (which I long-ranged to 13th pick somehow)
1 lava axe
1 slaughter cry
1 act of treason
1 goblin arsonist

I also had manic vandal and combust for my sideboard. The other cards were rusted sentinel, gladecover scout, wall of torches, taste of blood, and guardian's pledge.

I still have my eye on being mono red. I have a couple ok artifacts (boots and sentinel) that I can play and I'm not against running wall of torches either. I open my 3rd pack and scan for the best red card. It turns out to not exist. My 3rd pack actually has no red cards at all. It doesn't really have what I'd call playable cards even. I'm left deciding what to hate draft from the two decent cards in the pack: mana leak or arachnus web. I take the web.

Right passes me a Chandra's Phoenix which is pretty insane in my deck with all the domey burn spells. Pack 3 brings with it a real choice... My deck doesn't have a two drop yet, and there's a red mage. There's also an arachnus spinner. 5/7 reach for 6 is pretty ok on its own. The fact that it can search out a pseudo-removal spell in arachnus web is pretty insane. And I just so happened to have hate-drafted one of those with my first pick. I decided that since red was dry in pack 1, and since green was wide open in pack 1, that my mono deck wasn't going to get there. So I should take my bomb. Cards that made my deck from pack 3 after that were:

2 act of treason
1 chandra's phoenix
1 fiery hellhound
1 runeclaw bear
1 titanic growth
1 greater basilisk
1 arachnus spinner
1 cudgel troll
1 arachnus web

The unplayed cards from this pack were wall of torches, manalith, pride guardian, and stave off.

I decided to actually run the fork in my deck. I had 10 spells to fork with it and some of them would be pretty sweet to fork. (Fireball, lava axe, and fling in particular.) I showed the deck to Josh after I'd built it and he thought it looked pretty bad. In particular he held his nose when looking at my 3 act of treasons but I actually thought they were pretty key to the deck. I was all about beating with cheap dudes (though I didn't have very many with 3 1-drops and only 1 2-drop) and then going to the dome. Act of treason goes to the dome with the best of them!


Round 4 I get paired down. I lose game 1 due to drawing lots of acts of treason but no fling or pressure. I do axe him down to 9 but he has a fair amount of life gain in his deck and recovers. (2/1 lifelink dude and drain life in a UB deck) He's playing 42 cards including 2 mind unbounds! I side out 2 of the act of treasons (he had a crown of empires so I bring in the vandal and he's playing blue so I bring in combust). I blow him out in both games 2 and 3, taking 4 damage total between the two games.

Round 5 I get paired down. I don't remember a lot about the games other than I blow him up with cheap dudes and burn. He says after the match that if he'd realized he'd been paired up he would have just scooped which was nice but misguided of him. There's no sense helping me out at the expense of someone else.

Round 6 I don't get paired down! Game 1 features me with 2 goblin arsonists and a mitt full of spells. I get him down to 12 with arsonist swings and he casts a 2/5 flyer. I'm at 16 at this point, but have since burned away whatever was hitting me. I have fork, titanic growth, lava axe, and slaughter cry in hand. And 4 land in play, 2 of each type. I decide to go for it, and swing. He blocks one and I growth+fork the other, hitting him for 9 with the unblocked guy and 1 with the blocked guy, knocking him to 2. He does something to gain some life (sorin's thirst I think, killing my dude). I draw a land and axe him out. Game 2 features Chandra's Phoenix beating him down for a while. He gets low and he decides to thirst it to gain some life. Instead I fling it at him. This prevents him from gaining 2, does 2 itself, and actually gets me the phoenix back into my hand. My hand is full of gas, I'm still at 20, and I topdeck axe to kill him a turn earlier.

My 'terrible' draft deck went 3-0 in matches, 6-1 in games. I only had 1 2-drop but I drew 'da bears' an awful lot of the time and it was very key. I won one game with Arachnus Spider pulling out a web but I forget which one. Act of Treason pounded through a lot of damage as I'd hoped it would and I was pretty happy with the result.


Off to the second draft. I'd recovered to 4-2 but I didn't think any of my opponents were giving me above minimum breakers. (Turns out they were at 41.66% which was more than 5% behind the next worst 4-2.)

First pack, first pick... Inferno Titan. Giddy. Up. I shift into mono-red gear again, though the wheels very quickly come off this time. Here are my red cards after pack 1:

1 inferno titan
1 combust
1 fling
1 reverbate
1 wall of torches

I did not see an actual good red card after my opening pack. I was getting cut, hard, and it was obvious what was going on. But what was I going to do about it? I started taking good cards when I could, but cards in other colours weren't very good either. Here's the rest of my pack 1:

1 crown of empires (good for staying alive to titan)
1 manalith (good with whatever colours I end up playing)
1 wurm's tooth
1 trollhide
1 lifelink
1 guardian's pledge
1 celestial purge
1 auramancer
1 spirit mantle

Now, spirit mantle is actually pretty good and my plan was to probably go RW. My hope was that pack 2 would yield an ungodly amount of red cards since I'd passed pretty much nothing playable the entire pack after the first one and that I'd go white in pack 3.

Pack 2 my choices are between shock and druidic mantle. Shock is pretty good but I figure the mantle will help control the game long enough to get the titan out. I am frankly astonished by how little red comes my way in pack 2. My red cards from this pack are:

1 shock
1 volcanic dragon
1 fiery hellhound
1 goblin fireslinger
1 fling
1 manic vandal

My other cards are:

1 druidic satchel
1 llanowar elf
1 runeclaw bear
1 stampeding rhino
1 vastwood gorger
1 naturalize
1 flight
1 demon's horn

Green had looked pretty open in pack 1 (I didn't take any of it, but I passed a lot of it) and it was coming back in pack 2 as well. White was not, so the couple of good white cards I had in pack 1 didn't look like they were going anywhere. So I went into green when there were no red cards.

Pack 3 was pretty bad for red. My first pick was a crimson mage which is pretty hot but it died out very quickly. The red cards:

1 crimson mage
1 goblin war paint
1 act of treason

Yeah. Sweet. The rest:

2 rampant growth
1 lurking crocodile
1 sacred wolf
1 garruk's companion
1 cudgel troll
1 giant spider
1 greater basilisk
1 fog
1 jace's erasure
1 disentomb


I had some rough choices in the building. I eventually decided to cut out the cute spells this time and didn't play with fork, fling, or act of treason. I did maindeck combust this time. I decided that 70% of the possible two colour decks can get hit by it and since I was playing RG (which can't get hit by it) I'd have pretty good odds of having it be live. It was live all 3 rounds last draft, though I started it on the bench there. My only removal was shock so I figured it was worth the risk. Possibly I should have run the flings to have more removal instead.

I ended up playing 17 land along with an elf, 2 rampant growths, the manalith, and the satchel. My goal was to get the mana in play for titan, or to be able to keep activating satchel and crown.


I want to note that over the course of 2 drafts, while trying to play mono-red, I saw exactly one red bloodthirst creature. And I took inferno titan over it. I didn't open or get passed a single other one. Where are you, Al Gore?

Round 7 game 1 featured a turn 1 elf, turn 2 lurking croc against a blue deck. I followed that up with turn 3 cudgel troll (bounced with unsummon). Turn 4 stampeding rhino. Turn 5 volcanic dragon. Yeah, he was dead. Game 2 my hand was fireslinger, rampant growth, volcanic dragon, 4 land. My opponent played out a bunch of cheap stuff and then on his 5th turn activated jace's archivist. By this point I'd had 5 draw steps, all 5 of which were land. And the fireslinger had gotten killed, so I had nothing in play. And now had to discard my 6 drop before I could play it. This gassed up his hand and combined with the dudes he'd already played he beat me down. Game 3 he didn't do a whole lot (I think he stalled on land) and inferno titan put the final nail in his coffin.


I started 0-2 and considered just going home. I'd recovered to 5-2 and felt like I had a pretty decent deck for the next two rounds of draft. So I went home and resolved to come back the next day. Josh told me to bring games so we could play after everything was done. I had a bit of a headache from the endless drone of a room full of people along with just not feeling too happy about the crowds and the smell so I decided to do something mindless when I got home... I booted up Netflix on my Wii and turned on Dude, Where's My Car? It doesn't get more mindless than that! Hilarious movie.