I finally have a chance to write about the Boston PTQ from two weeks ago. Here is what I ended up building:
This was a very difficult pool, made a lot tougher by the fact that there is basically no fixing. The big issue is that there are 4 excellent blue cards that I want to play, but blue was not playable really as a main color. I also love an Arbor Collosus, and double Wingsteed/Hundred Handed One, but the deck didn't look great when I laid it out. It certainly was an option, and could have performed better than what I went with, but this was a 9 round PTQ and I felt I needed to take a gamble with this pool. And gamble I did!
To be honest I may have been strongly influenced by a double Kragma Warcaller deck I drafted the night before and easily won with. So getting double Warcaller along with 7 other minotaurs felt like a sign from God to play them. The rest of the deck is mainly filler, but the harpies and emissaries are pretty strong. I definitely overvalued Spearpoint Oread. The card just is too low impact, and should not push you into playing red.
I ended up going 2-3 with this deck, beating a few white based decks and getting demolished by an Eslpeth and then 2 solid green decks. The minotaur deck just can't beat a green deck really. The green creatures are too big, and Time to Feed is too effective vs the war caller to ever really race. This is a huge problem because I believe the default deck in the format is either GB or UG. Players tend to only play other colors when they open crazy bombs or have a super aggressive white or red based deck. In a nine round tournament, my minotaur deck was never realistically going to get there.
Here is what I would play given another chance with this pool:
The mana is awful,
but again we are gambling here to try and top 8 with a weakish pool. I don't think this deck is at all favored to make a Top 8, but I think it definitely has a better chance than what I ran.
The final two PTQs are tomorrow and the next day. I have been using my Black Friday to jam as much sealed deck and drafts as possible online, and I have had some great results. I even beat Owen Turtenwald in the finals of one of the events!
I expect both tournaments to be 8, or probably 9 rounds, so I am hoping to get a strong pool in at least one of the events so that I have a good chance. If not, I will certainly try to make the best of it and see how far I can go. I feel pretty confident that I can now better identify the best build and play it well enough. Time to make it happen!
Thanks for reading,
Ben
@bchap55
We are in the thick of the PTQ season, and I have made it to three events so far. I bombed out at my first attempt in Burlington Vermont with a very loose RW deck that just wasn't good enough. After really tinkering with the pool afterwards, there was a UR build that would have been better, but still fairly underpowered.
Moving on to Augusta, Maine a few weeks ago I built this deck which I was very happy with:
This is what I call a BC special, as I tend to draft UG decks in cube. This deck has some of my favorite cards in the format including 2 Voyage's End, Grip Tide, Sea God's Revenge, 2 Leaf Crown Dryad, and Nimbus Naiad. Getting the Two horizon Chimeras and emissaries also really tied the room together. The rares, while mediocre, are fine, and contributed to wins throughout the day. I would definitely take this deck to battle again given the opportunity.
However, it was not to be. I won round one vs Nicholas Cuenca who I know played in the last PT to a pretty good day 2 finish. Lost round 2 in a very close match with a player who eventually top 8'ed this event. I then lost round 3 to Pascal Maynard who I understand to be a very good player in a match that wasn't too close. Although disappointed to not make top 8, I then won the next 4 rounds to be 5-2 heading into the final round, playing for top 16. I ended up losing the final round in a very close match to a RB aggressive deck.
I feel like there may have been a way to win round 2 given different/better plays, but other than that I feel I played pretty well in that event, and loved my deck for the most part.
My next event was this past Sunday in Providence RI. The venue was a little sketchy, I was a little worried the floor would collapse, but I loved that they offered a sleep-in special. This allowed players to arrive at 10:45 and build an pre-registered deck. Certainly a first for PTQs that I have attended, and I definitely enjoyed being able to sleep a little longer and not have to worry about registering a pool.
Here is what I ended up playing:
I was very discouraged as I began looking through this pool to note that the blue was very mediocre, and that I had a ton of red cards, most of which were not very exciting. The best pools I have opened involved shallow red and heavy in the blue, black, or green cards. Luckily, I made it to the gold cards and noted Fleecemane Lion, and to a lesser extent, Chronicler of Heroes. I immediately moved to see if I could make a viable GW deck. In my experience, Fleecemane Lion has been VERY powerful when it sees play. I have lost more than a few games to Turn 2 Fleecemane, and a subsequent monstrous making it an unkillable monster. Given my weak blue and shallow black, my first instinct was definitely to play GW. The deck is certainly reasonable, but nothing too exciting. With limited/mediocre ways to interact with the opponent, the deck needed ways to punch through and end a game. This led me to splash Nimbus Naiad, which I think worked out pretty well. The other potential splash was black, which I put to the right in the sideboard. The main allure of this is the Sentry of the Underworld's which are pretty powerful. In the end I felt like this would be a much heavier commitment and make the deck a little too inconsistent to pursue.
The card I wish I main decked, and sided in every time, was the prowler's helm. Normally, I dislike the card because it is a lot of mana investment, and most decks don't have the time for it, but this deck has serious issues actually winning. The card provides a way to do that and I treated it as a very late game card.
I kicked off the tournament by losing a close one to a player I had recently done a few team drafts with/against named Andrew. He played well, and I may have punted the final game, but I would have needed to get lucky on top of making slightly better plays.
I won the next three rounds to be at 3-1 heading into round 5 of 8. I proceeded to lose to a VERY good UB deck with every relevant removal spell in the colors, including Heroes Downfall. That card just feels like cheating it is so efficient in this format. My deck had mediocre draws, but there really wasn't much I could do in the match, his deck was just better.
I played one more round, and lost again to a solid UB deck, this time the games were closer but ultimately I could not beat Sea God's Revenge.
Ultimately, it was a somewhat disappointing tournament, but I don't think the pool was very strong and I would have needed to catch a lot of breaks to top 8 with it in my opinion.
I have 3 more PTQs left on the schedule, and I still feel like if I can catch some breaks I can top 8 at least one of them! I will try to post reports/decks after the events.
I am definitely interested in hearing how anyone would have built these two pools differently, or just thoughts on the decks in general.
Thanks for reading,
Ben
@bchap55
It has been some time since my last post as things have been pretty busy as I get ready for the PTQ season kicking off this weekend in Burlington, Vermont. Since my last post, I played in an M14 PTQ in NYC and played quite a bit of Magic at GP Oklahoma City.
I had a great start in the NYC PTQ, going 4-0 to begin, but floundered from there with three straight losses before dropping. My deck was mediocre, and would have needed a lot of luck to make it to top 8.
Prior to GP OKC, I played as much Theros limited as possible. I played multiple events at the prerelease and played in the SCG Worcester team event where my makeshift team made it to one win from the money after starting out 5-0. Notably we gave Gerrard Fabiano's team, that eventually won the event, their only loss of the tournament. I felt great about that match as I took down Gerrard himself in a very close match to decide it. Ultimately, it was a great day of Theros limited practice in a very competitive environment which is what I was looking for, and which was hard to come by, prior to the GP.
During the week before the GP, I made and battled a box worth of sealed decks with a few friends which was great practice as well. Some things about Theros that I learned from the exercise:
Bestow is very powerful, and the pools with a lot of bestow cards were always very solid, especially pools with multiple Emissaries.
Blue was my favorite color, paired either with black or green. The more Voyage's Ends, Grip Tides, and Sea God's Revenges, the better.
Read the bones also over-performed, it felt like whoever resolved a read the bones won more often than not.
A number of my losses were to unchecked Ordeals. I really hate the Ordeal cards in general as they are so high variance. Either they win the game on the spot, or are an easy two-for-one and are terrible. With heroic, there are ways to activate them sooner, but in general they felt all or nothing. This leads me to value having access to Pharika's cure, voyage's end, and lightning strike all the more.
Besides bestow cards and ordeals, it felt like rares decided lots of games. From crazy bombs like Ashiok to just very good cards like Hundred Handed One, the pools with multiple on color rares performed much better. Shocking, I know!
With this wealth of information, I flew to GP OKC to play in the grinder events. If you are lucky enough to 5-0 one of these, you earned 2 byes as well as a free sleep-in special and a box of Theros. With no byes earned for the event, winning one of these would be huge for me.
My first grinder deck was mediocre and I was glad to lose in the first round so I could jump back into another one. My second deck felt pretty strong but lost to an early Ashiok in both games to lose round 1.
My next grinder, which was the last one I could enter before they stopped running, I was lucky enough to win outright! You can find the deck list from the GP coverage here:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gpokc13/day1#1
Remember what I said before about Emissaries/Bestow being what you want? Having 3 on color was quite nice there. The Aborrent Overlord helped as well as one of the premier bombs in the format. Celestial Archon topped off the bombiness. Heliod himself actually was not amazing, but with double Wingsteed rider, I was able to turn him on a few times essentially making him an Abyss with upside. I never once activated the cleric making ability as I always had something better to do with my mana. Scholar of Athreos was fantastic as well and was critical to winning one of the finals games against an aggressive RW deck.
It felt great to win, and even better knowing I could sleep in and not have to start the GP until 12:30, and with a 2-0 record to boot.
Here is the pool I opened the next day:
It was a somewhat tough pool to build, but here is what I ended up playing:
The mana base was 8-8-1-Temple. I felt that I needed to splash to add a little more interaction to the deck, with just Rage and Invocation as spells that really interacted beyond Stoneshock Giant going monstrous to just end the game. Adding Reaper also was a very nice side benefit. I had a tough choice between playing borderland minotaurs or Disciple + Staunch Hearted Warrior, but ended up going with the red cards to power fanatic of mogis. I am not sure which is better, but looking back I think playing the green guys + warrior's lesson in some fashion may have been good.
As you can see the deck is very heavy on the curve, so 18 lands was a no brainer, even with the two mana ramp creatures. Given the splash, and my deck's need to hit 8 mana, I felt Burnished Hart was a good play, and it was okay.
The strengths of the deck are Hammer, Polish Crusher, and my five drop monsters. Most games that I won involved just playing large monsters and attacking. Stoneshock Giant allowed for 24 damage in one attack for exactly lethal, which was exciting.
I won my first two rounds, the second of which was very close and tough to someone who eventually made day 2 and cashed. My fifth round was vs. Willy Edel, the 6th ranked player in the world at the time, and was a featured match on the stream coverage. Go to 1 hour 37 minutes to watch the match: http://www.twitch.tv/magic/b/467672168
I certainly misplayed the last turn of game one as the commentators explained, not a big thing, but no reason not to just attack first. Game 2 I kept a 6 land Unicorn hand on the play, which was a terrible decision. I proceeded to flood and lose easily as Willy boarded out his blue for green and I stared at my Shredded Winds that I had boarded in. We had a reasonably close game 3, but I got ruined by deathtouch creatures plus march of the returned. Overlord came to clean things up at the end, but I was probably losing regardless. Willy went on to cash day 2 as well.
Round 6 I lost to a similar GB deck where I stumbled a bit on lands and he just played solid cards. I may have made another questionable keep in this match as well, I think a 2 lander with too many expensive cards. This left me at 4-2, needing to win out to make day 2.
I won the next two rounds fairly easily, leaving me with a win and in for round 9. I was up against a UB deck and got stuck on two lands on the draw with a Unicorn in hand. Had I drawn a third land in the first 5 turns I think I was a strong favorite as I would have been dropping multiple good 4's and then 5's that would have trumped his board.
I crushed him game 2 with a decent draw, and was feeling good going to game three. This was a tough game where I got stuck on three mana for too long, while my opponent chipped away with a 2/1 flier, played read the bones, and eventually beat me with a Monstrous Sea Lock Monster when I had 4 mana. I had opted to play coursers on turns 3 and 4 instead of a Burnished Hart, which proved to be disastrous as if I had ramped my mana instead I may have been able to deploy enough large men to double block his monster and then stabilize from there.
It was a heartbreaking loss to miss day 2, and a very disappointing finish overall. The deck was not spectacular, certainly not in the top 3rd of sealed pools I have opened, but it was good enough to make day 2 if a few things went my way, or if I played better/made better mulligan decisions.
The following day I played in another sealed event in which I had a UB deck with double whip of erebos along with an Overlord! It was an 8 round event where I started out 4-0, and then lost three of the next 4 rounds to get nothing! Very frustrating indeed.
In the end, the trip was a good experience and hopefully my tough losses in both of the big events I played will harden me for my attempts at winning PTQs this season. I certainly learned a lot, and expect to at least be able to Top 8 at some point this season.
My first chance will be this Saturday and I will post the deck and report next week hopefully.
Thanks for reading.
-Ben
Follow me @bchap55
Been getting back on track with my M14 drafting. My last three 3-0's have been GB decks. It is definitely apparent that blue is being over-drafted at this point online. If you are joining an 8-4 queue, I'd recommend taking a black, green, or red card over a comparable blue card early in drafts. If you notice blue is in fact open, jump all over it, but it just hasn't happened often lately for me.
I have been having a lot of success with both BR sacrifice and GB good
stuff. Check out the decks below to get an idea of what you want to be
looking for with GB. Focusing on as much black removal as you can find,
the best green creatures you can find, and a howl of the night pack is a good recipe. Of course getting
some solid finishers like a Sengir or Kalonian hydra helps too. If you
have specific questions about how to draft this kind of deck definitely
post em below or ask me on twitter @bchap55 .
Sorry for the delay between posts, I have still been drafting 2-4 times most days, with a break on the weekend. I had a pretty brutal stretch of 5-6 second round exits where the games were very close and my opponents ended up winning the draft. The last few days I have been redeeming myself a bit with a win, and two losses in the finals which were also very close. I felt like I have been drafting very competitive decks for the most part. I wanted to share my last three decks:
This one finished 3-0, and as you can tell from the sideboard it was a bit of a train wreck. I was mainly UG but eventually green dried up and I got passed a Sengir/Liturgy so I delved into black. I picked up a late mark of the vampire which seemed good with my phantom warriors. It was! The deck was not great, but it had a plan - suit up phantom warrior and try to race. With the help of duress, which nabbed key removal spells, I was able to do this all three rounds.
This is one thing I have been learning watching some higher level players stream - Owen Turtenwald, Cheon, etc, and they bring up the need for a plan pretty often. Both while drafting and also a plan for a given threat or game in general. This has helped my drafting and playing quite a bit. You should be thinking of compelling reasons to do just about anything from making a draft pick to playing a removal spell or creature. If you can't come up with a good reason/plan, you probably shouldn't make the pick or play. Of course it takes a ton of experience to know what the right pick/play is at any given time, and that is what I am trying to work on going into this season.
Here are a few more decks I drafted that lost 2-1 in the finals. Both of these decks crushed the first two rounds and had very close finals that could have gone either way.
I have decided that I am definitely going to the NYC PTQ on September 14th. I wish I could have made it to GP Oakland, but I couldn't get the time off from work. The PTQ will be the only serious M14 limited event I will be able to attend, so I hope all of my practice allows me to go deep in it. In the end, like I stated at the outset, I just need to sharpen up my game in general, which I believe has been going reasonably well so far. If I have any more interesting drafts, I will make a post to talk about them, but the next post you may see will be my pool from the PTQ.
Thanks for reading,
Ben
@bchap55
Been grinding a bunch of M14 drafts since my last post with average to poor results. Have tried to stray from base blue decks to try out other archetypes, with bad results generally. I have had a few good green decks running Howl of the Nightpack along with spiders and baloths to stall.
Blue is pretty clearly the best color, but I have been beaten by non-Blue decks that just have excellent cards in other colors. If you can assemble a bunch of top 2-3 pick quality cards, any color combo will work given enough of them. For example White is widely regarded as the worst color, and it is certainly has the weakest commons, but if you can put together a number of Serra Angels and Seraph of the Swords along with Pacifisms, you can get there.
You certainly want to jump on blue if it looks remotely available, but if not, you can try to rely on seeing what is open and trying to get the best cards in those colors. Pretty basic strategy, but it seems to be the way to go. Trying to jam slivers or RB sacrifice for example has led to some pretty disastrous results. You probably want to just draft the top pick cards and if after those you can pick up cards for one of the niche archetypes then go for it at that point. Trying to slam bubbling cauldron/act of treason over top pick quality red/black cards just hasn't been a good move early on.
I'll leave you with an interesting sealed pool. At first I was super excited by the deck I had made, but it has some key flaws that led to a 2-2 drop in a premier event. The pool appears to be a little threat light, which turns it is a problem in the format. You need a legit plan to win, and the deck I built was pretty soft to a handful of spot removal. It is VERY hard to just not play red or black though given the bombs in black and the removal in red. Would love to hear how others would build this. Part of me wanted to go deep with the Angelic Accords + Cauldron, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.
Thanks for reading.
-Ben
@bchap55
Draft
So to continue practice this week I have done a few more drafts, with some more success but essentially breaking even. Did 3-0 one with a sold GW deck featuring Serra Angel, Seraph of the Sword,
a solid curve. I also lost in a close finals with this sweet brew:
Yes, I did live the dream of having double Blightcaster out followed by Quag sickness to wipe the opponent's board. I actually ended up frequently siding out a Gladecover scout for naturalize/giant growth/ranger's guile depending on match up. I don't love necessarily running any scouts, but I did take down a sweet one with a fully suited up scout, Dark Favor, Troll hide, and mark of the vampire. That got there.
Premier Sealed Event
I signed up for what I thought was the sealed premier event that started at 5:30. I set an alarm, took a nap, and woke up to find out it started at 5:00! I had 16 minutes left on my clock for round one and a 140 card deck. I lost game one and then took a look at my pool. 3 minutes for deck building! I was pretty upset to see a very strong pool...perhaps the best I've had yet. I am conflicted because I ended up going x-2 and making 12th for 9 packs. On the other hand it could have been a pretty easy top 8...as I lost all of my game ones except in the finals when I had academy raider + mark of the vampire vs a GW deck with essentially no removal.
I started out trying GU which worked okay, but after I picked up my first loss to the mana base, I revisted the pool. I noticed the white cards actually had double pacifism, which I somehow missed at first. They also were a lot easier on the mana and fit the curve a bit better because of that. I had some very close games, but also some big blowouts. Kalonian Hydra is pretty hard to beat. Here is the pool and the GW deck I ran:
I'm signed up for one of the last 64 man draft tournaments tonight...hopefully I don't sleep through that one!
-Ben
@bchap55
