PT Born of the Gods

PT Born of the Gods

I am a little bit tardy with this report, and I was considering not writing one at all, but in the end I wanted to have a bookend for this blog. Hopefully my memory serves me well as we are five months removed from this trip/event!

I arrived in Valencia on Sunday February 16th, with the tournament starting Friday the 21st. My plan was to try and jam a bunch of Modern and drafts online until the other northeast PTQ winners arrived that Tuesday. I was having excellent success in draft, all of my triple Theros practice seemed to transfer well enough to the new Born, Theros, Theros format. 

I couldn't make heads or tails of my modern practice. I was left in a bad spot having practiced mainly with a GBw deck of Wily Edel's design before the Modern bannings occurred. These bannings left the deck without Deathrite Shaman, obviously one of the better cards in the deck. I decided that with only a few weeks to practice before the PT, and the difficulty acquiring cards, I would just run with the deck I had been practicing, subbing Birds of Paradise for DRS. In practice, this seemed to be okay, I was winning at close to the normal rate. Unfortunately, I did not get enough practice at all against Pod decks as they just don't appear in great numbers online. I was holding my own against affinity, tron, UWR,  and twin, which I figured would be popular choices at the tourney. I was hoping that the burn/zoo decks would be less popular, as my deck could not beat burn, almost ever, and the zoo matchup was dicey. Such is life in Modern, I believe. No deck has great matchups across the board, and I felt my discard effects would at least give me a chance in my weak/less tested matchups.

Once the other guys arrived - Mike Sigrist, Devon O'Donnell, Bob Victory, Sheamus Kelahan, Justin Bransfield, and Brandon Gade, I tried to meet/hang out with them as much as possible. It was a lot of fun eating and playing magic with this group, and luckily Sheamus and Justin spoke enough Spanish that we were able to survive in the wild. Unfortunately, we just didn't have much time to test in the end. Tuesday was more or less lost as the guys recovered from jet lag. We did get to do one paper draft together Wednesday, and countless drafts online between 3-4 computers. This preparation was great I thought as we got to discuss picks and plays frequently. I even took down Siggy in the finals of our paper draft! Good old Uncle Brimaz...

Modern testing was a bit more difficult. Sheamus, Bob, Brandon, Devon, and I were all locked into different decks and were unlikely to change decks. Mike and Justin were unsure what to play, and thus wanted to test a variety of things. They ended up settling on a big zoo list. Unfortunately for me, my list was one of the rogue decks which just did not present much value to the other guys' testing. Everyone wanted to run their decks against the gauntlet of Pod, Twin, and Zoo, which we thought would be fairly well represented. I did get a number of games in against the Big Zoo deck as well as a decent amount against Pod, but I felt I could have used another week to really get some good testing done. Alas, it was a lot of fun, and I am super thankful/appreciative that I was included in the group.

My first draft pod featured Guillaume Wafo-Tapa, Ivan Floch, Andresj Prost, as well as my new friend Sheamus! I opened a Phenax and decided it was literally a sign from the gods to jam one of my favorite archetypes, UB. This did not end up too great for me though. I was passed a number of good red cards in the Born pack, but did not want to jump into that color as it was so weak in Theros. I ended up with a number of solid rares, but not enough bounce/hard removal to deal with the common threats in the format. The card draw spells are especially weak when there are no real removal spells to draw to. In many matchups I would need to hit Curse of the Swine early to stand a chance. In other formats, this pile of cards would do quite well at stalling the board and then winning with Phenax, Whip, Nighthowler, or Tromokratis. However in BTT, the games usually come down to one jacked up heroic creature or a Nessian Asp type card, neither of which my deck handles well.

Round 1 I had to face Ivan Floch, a gold level pro and the best player from Slovakia. We had a fun chat about Zdeno Chara, a fellow Slovak, before he stomped me quickly with a very solid RW heroic deck. I even Cured his Anax and Cyamede, but he was able to use tricks to get through my blockers before overrunning me with creatures. In game two if I had decided to put him on nothing in hand, I could have milled him out over two turns with Phenax, but instead decided to play blockers instead which did not get the job done.

Round 2 I faced Sheamus and his GW deck. We had a very tight match that Phenax and Whip played a large role in winning for me. He was frustrated as he really liked his deck, but he went on to go 8-1-1 in the modern portion with Bogles to cash the event. A great result for his first PT I must say. 

Round 3 I faced another gold level pro in Andresj Prost with his BG deck. He ran me over pretty badly with turn four Nessian Asp both games with Pharika's Mender backup. My deck just didn't have the Baleful Eidolons needed to fight large green monsters. Whip allowed me to stall out a long game 1, but ultimately I couldn't stabilize against the beef.

Disappointed to be 1-2 with what I thought at the time was a solid deck, I had to gear up for the next five rounds of Modern. I needed to end up 4-4 or better to make the next day, which was my hope for the tournament. Here is what I ran in Modern:

Round 4 I faced a burn/one drop heavy Zoo list featuring Experiment One, Boros Charm, and the like. He had excellent draws and I had mediocre draws, and I was at 1-3 in no time. I think if I picked my hand and the top 3-4 cards of my deck I would have still had trouble in game one. His particular Zoo build was just too fast for my deck.

Round 5 I faced the straight burn deck complete with Bump in the Night. As stated before, this was a nigh unwinnable matchup in testing. The only times I felt good about it were when I was boarding 4 Leyline of Sanctity. I decided I couldn't beat everything, and chose not to go that route with my board. I got steam rolled game 1, but we had an interesting game 2. After some discard spells and molten rains, I had a 3/4 goyf on the board with 1 land and an extra goyf in hand against his two burn spell hand. I was at 9 or 10 life at this point, while he was at 12 or so. It was his turn and he had to decide whether to save his burn to try and kill me over a few turns, or kill my goyf. He decided to use both burn spells to kill my goyf, leaving him hellbent and me in a position to draw a land and play a second goyf. I brick. He draws, and casts ZoZu The Punisher!

I just shook my head and could not believe it. I don't think I ever saw that one in testing. Now even if I drew lands, I wouldn't be able to race in all likelihood. I missed another land drop before being able to cast Goyf, but by then he drew enough burn to race me. 

I was very frustrated to be at 1-4, especially annoying that I didn't get to play any real magic as I was steam rolled by my worst matchups. Now I had to win the remaining three rounds to make day two.

My round six opponent was Kentarou Yamamoto who had top 8'd the previous pro tour and was ranked in the top 25 in the world. At the time I didn't realize his exact accomplishments, but I recognized the name and knew it would be a tough match. He was playing Jund and we had an epic match. This match made up for the frustrating tournament I ended up having, as at least I could look back and know that I went toe to toe with one of the best in the world and really put him to the test. I believe we finished the match with under five minutes remaining, and we were not playing slow. I won game one off the back of a timely Maelstrom Pulse on two of his Goyfs which was enough to put me ahead. I ended up losing the next two games, ultimately due to his deck having somewhat of an inherit advantage and my sideboard plan. The key issue was the my Birds were basically dead cards, but I didn't realize this until after. There really was no point to ramping out Liliana or Lingering Souls in this matchup as the games would invariably go very long. Really what they did was cause me to flood. Also, I left in my discard spells, which was another mistake. The games often would develop into top-deck wars, where the discard really just doesn't do anything. I should have boarded out birds, and all but two Inquisitions for Finks, Abrupt Decays, and the extra Path. In any case, the next two games were very close and grindy but eventually Kentarou ended up drawing slightly more spells as I drew Birds and useless discard spells. At 2-5 I was eliminated from day two contention, but proud that I put up a fight and took a real game off Kentarou.

I stayed in and played out the next two rounds, losing to a RUW Twin player in three tight games and finally winning a match of modern against a RG Tron player in the final round. It was a very disappointing tournament for me, but definitely a learning experience. I was very proud that Mike, Devon, Sheamus, Bob and Justin all were able to make day two. Devon, Sheamus, and Justin even managed to cash their first PTs! They definitely represented the Northeast well as a whole with those results. Mike and Devon even managed to qualify for the next PT a few weekends later on the last possible weekend to do so. Mike has also gone on to ridiculous success at the GP level with a Top 9, Top 4, and win which gives him Silver status and qualifies him for the next three PTs, I believe. Bob also recently won a PTQ after top 8ing four prior PTQs in the Modern season. What a beast!

As for myself, since the PT, I scrubbed out of two limited GPs and a PTQ with mediocre sealed decks, though I was in contention in one of the final limited PTQs of the season. I was X-1 going into round 7 of eight. If I won that one I may have been able to draw into the top 8. Unfortunately my opponent had and cast three lightning strikes over the course of a game where if he didn't have the third one, I would have won. His deck was better in general, but it was tough to lose nevertheless.

I will be heading out to the Seattle area to visit relatives August 2nd and then traveling up to Portland to see a few more before playing GP Portland which is a team sealed event. Unfortunately, none of my friends from the Northeast were able to travel that far for the GP, so I will be teaming with some local West Coasters who I have not met yet! It should be fun regardless, as I love Core set limited, and team sealed is great. Beyond that, I plan to play one Modern PTQ at the end of August as well as the nearby limited PTQs this fall. 

I would say that my mind is in a different place now compared to last year, and I am not as hellbent on qualifying, though it would be nice. Philosophically, I feel like the deck is stacked against PTQ winners when it comes to the PT. The big pro teams just have a gigantic edge on everyone else when it comes to constructed. Also, most PTQ winners can't take a few weeks off before the event to get the crucial last minute testing in with the new set. It is a little discouraging, but of course it is great to be able to play in any PT regardless.

How much I practice will likely depend on how much I like the new fall set. To be honest, I really did not enjoy Theros block limited all that much. I had just decided before it even came out that I was going to give 100% to qualifying, and luckily I did. This time around, I hope the set is a little more fun to play as that will help my motivation to grind out drafts and sealed decks. At least now I know for a fact what it takes to qualify, and we will see if I have it in me again to make a real run at it.

If I end up with another solid GP result or a PTQ top 8, I will probably blog about it here, but beyond that I likely won't be posting too much else for a while. If I have some big ideas on M15 limited or Khans limited this fall, I may post some more.

Thanks for following my blog!

Best,

Ben Chapman  
@bchap55