Going 5-4.......Make That 4-5 at Grand Prix Houston

Hey guys how’s it going? First off I want to say I’m sorry to my tens of readers out there for not finishing my other two articles I was going to write in preparation for the Grand Prix last weekend, but starting Thursday afternoon and leading into late Friday my internet was cutting in and out and from 7 p.m. Thursday to 1 p.m. Friday was out completely. At that point Friday I was getting ready to drive down to the convention center to pick up my play mat and get into a last minute trial, and when I got back I was tired and wanting to sleep since I would be up early to meet up with people from school. So since the event already passed I decided to just skip the articles since they won’t be of any more help. Enough of my excuses let’s move onto the actual event.

Houston Texas, the birthplace of my love for Magic, and also the worst place for me to play Magic. I have no idea what it is, but whenever I come home and decide to play Magic nothing seems to go my way.  I can play a deck that has either Top 8’d or won an FNM a week or so before in Lubbock, but soon as I try to play the deck a week or so later in Houston nothing comes together for me. That is until this past weekend. While I love taking mono-green to bigger constructed events, I’m a sucker for a good limited event and when I heard GP Houston was changed to block sealed I was elated. And while I might not have made it to day two or gone 5-4 officially, we’ll talk about it later, I was very happy with the deck I managed to put together and go positive in my first Magic event of this size.

We are the Paradox Brothers......oops wrong game

For those of you that don’t know, at sealed format Grand Prixes like Houston the packs you open won’t be the packs you keep. During the player’s meeting the packs that are handed to each player are opened by the player and are recorded on a comprehensive deck sheet that had a location for every card in the used sets where the player marks how many are present in the card pool. Once this process is done the players then shift the card pools around according to the head judge, after which each player will end up with the card pool he or she will use for the actual tournament. When the player receives their actual card pool they will use the deck list from the person that opened the packs to mark which cards and how many of each card is in their main deck. Why am I telling you guys this? Well I wanted to briefly touch on the cards that I opened and had to pass. While I was greatly pleased with that card pool I was passed, I feel as I would have done better with what I passed since that pool better fit my play style. What I opened was the quintessential nuts for a great Naya list. The big cards from the pool I opened contained a Legion’sInitiative, a Truefire Paladin, a Warleader’s Helix, a Sunhome Guildmage, an Unflinching Courage, a Madcap Skills, a Gruul War Chant, a Daring Skyjek, a Wojek Halberdiers, a Rubblebelt Maaka, an Annihilating Fire, two Punish theEnemy, a Firemane Avenger,  and a Wrecking Ogre. There were a couple other really good cards for the deck that I would make for that card pool, but that pool is exactly what I was looking for going into the Grand Prix.

Welcome to the Church of Heavy Metal

Enough of my dream pool, let’s look at what I actually got in my pool and boy what a pool it was. (You can find the pool and deck here.) When I got my card pool I first decided to pull out all the rares and sort everything out by colors. As I started getting my rares I first noticed the foil Pontiff of Blight followed quickly by Renounce the Guilds, AngelicSkirmisher, Aetherling, and oh baby a Sphinx’s Revelation. So those bombs combined with Godless Shrine I was pretty positive I would be playing Esper. Our card pool did have a possibility to offer a good RG deck splashing blue to play RUG, but with our rares and mana fixing I think Esper was a solid choice. Unfortunately our pool didn’t give us good straight forward removals leaving us to rely on sac spells and tricks like Lyev Decree and Arrest. On the bright side however the deck did have good cards for playing control despite lack of removal. Double Kingpin’s Pet is a great way for us to play out our stuff and slowly keep in the game and pinging our opponent. As well Haunter of Nightveil is a great card to have against the Boros and other small creature agro decks. And finally the deck was nicely rounded off with some good control elements like Soulsworn Spirit, Voidwielder, and Zarichi Tiger. Unfortunately despite looking pretty solid, having to use all of the decent playables made the deck’s mana pretty evenly split forcing me to play five of each basic land type in my deck. Besides the mana problems and lack of straight forward removal I was still very satisfied with the deck and how it performed.

Yo man I can get you anything you need

Alright so we’ve finally gotten to the point where I can talk about playing the amazing deck we were given, and how I managed to go 5-4 er……….. 4-5. So round one, after shuffling up this amazing deck and trying nicely distribute everything, I got mana screwed both ways in the two games that made up the round. Game one I got stuck on two land, and game two I flooded out and only managed to play a King Pin’s pet and my Duskmantle Guildmage. Round two (against a Naya list) started off the same way as the previous round did with me stuck on lands with nothing to play, but once game two started the deck performed just how I wanted it to. Game two I took several hits but managed to stabilize the board with my sac spells long enough for me to drop Aetherling and he just took over the game, and game two happened about the same way however I was more stabilized with multiple extort triggers leading into Aetherling sealing the deal. Moving onto round three the games went almost just like the previous round. At first I put my opponent as a Selesnya tokens list seeing only a Dryad Militant, a Seller of Songbirds, a Call of the Conclave, and a Growing Ranks, but these cards weren’t enough to stop me from holding the board until I could land Aetherling and seal the deal. Game two however took a vast turn for the worst, it started out pretty slow but I was slowly taking the game over at least until he played chromatic lantern and went five color on me. He Turn//Burned my two Kingpin’s Pets and then proceeded to land Gruul Ragebeast and then started picking off my smaller creatures. I managed to hit renounce the guilds on his Ragebeast but the damage was done and he took game two. Moving into game three I just flooded out and only landed a Prophetic Prism, a Zarichi Tiger, and a Pontiff of Blight. So at this point I knew that I had no more room for error if I wanted to guarantee getting into day two. Round four was just like the perfect storm for the Esper list I built. Game one I had the board solidly held losing no life continually holding off my opponent, playing Dega agro, with my sac spells while extorting off of Kingpin’s Pet. This led to stalling the game to the point where I could Rev for a whopping six, then I landed Angelic Skirmisher and finished off the game. Game two played out greatly in my favor with my opponent having to mull to six and getting stuck on two lands, a swamp and a Transguild Promenade which I Contaminated. The hand that I had some of my sac spells, so whatever creature he managed to play I just made him sac them. He had to toil himself to attempt to get out of his lack of lands, but failed to find anything and by that point I had just set up Angelic Skirmisher to win me the game once again. Now I have to say that round five was possibly my biggest disappointment, but as an excuse by this point the pain from my wisdom teeth was getting pretty bad and I was several hours away from the point of being able to take more Advil. Game one was pretty evenly matched up, I took a slight beating from my opponent playing a Junk list but by turn six I managed to stabilize and started bringing my life total up with Zarichi Tiger and a Rev for four. Unfortunately thinks started looking grim once my opponent landed a Blood Baron and none of my creatures could block it. I managed to bounce it with my Voidwielder, but by that point the combat math was already in his favor and I didn’t have my Psychic Strike to counter it on the way back down so I decided to just scoop up my cards and shuffle up for game two. Game two started out the same way with me falling behind to his early aggression until I started hitting my three and four drops to stabilize, and once again I stalled the board until he landed his Blood Baron. This time though it was different, I had Far//Away and Renounce the Guilds along with enough mana to cast Renounce along with a fused Far//Away. All I had to do was bounce his Burning-Tree and force him to sac his Baron with Renounce, but I punted that so bad. Thinking of it from a damage stand point I bounced his Assault Griffin and he was able to keep the Baron alive by sacking Burning-Tree and Gatecreeper Vine. After that he quickly won the match knocking me out of a guaranteed chance at making day two. Once I got to my table for round six I finally encountered one of the Pack Rat decks that were going around, and the deck easily took over for game one. However game two was going easily in my favor and I had psychic strike open for when he decided to try and pull the trigger on the rat, but by the time I started taking the game in my favor his Legacy Win-A-Box got called and he dropped giving me the win. So while not x-2 I was x-3 meaning that there was still a slight chance I could make it into day two so I wasn’t going to be discouraged. Round seven I played against a pretty average Jund list, but multiple extort triggers from hitting Pontiff of Blight helped seal the game in my favor alongside jumping my creatures with New Prahv Guildmage. Game two I hit a mana problem like my first round woes and my opponent handily won, but I cleaned shop in game three from Sphinx’s Rev into Aetherling keeping my hopes still alive for day two. In the penultimate round I was pushed against the ropes in game one against a pretty fierce Naya list barely hanging in there with Lyev Decree and Kingpin’s Pet triggers, but it wasn’t enough and he easily took the game. Game two was once again another game with severe mana problems keeping me off of blue for the game making it so I couldn’t cast any of the spells I needed to keep me in the game.  So with that I was now 4-4 with no chance of making day two, but I still had a chance to positive in my first Grand Prix in the town where I have no luck with the game I love.  Alright so my opponent in round nine was playing a pretty aggressive American list, but once again by mid game I managed to stabilize and start turning the game around in my favor. At least until he landed Boros Battleshaper and he started picking off my board until I landed Angelic Skirmisher and took over the game once and for all. Heading into game two he hit a very aggressive curve and I wasn’t able to catch back up despite having a Haunter of Nightveil, who through both games was doing a great job of keeping his smaller creatures at bay. So if all came down to an end all be all of game threes. Despite his quick aggressive curves I ripped kept having him sacrifice the creatures and Haunter was doing his best on taking care of the stragglers, but it wasn’t enough to keep his creatures away once he landed his Battleshaper. I ripped a rev for five to pull myself back into the game and played my Angelic Skirmisher followed up by Aetherling,  so giving my creatures vigilance from Skirmisher and bashing them into his forces while Battleshaper was stuck focusing on Aetherling. And a couple more turns I had secured my victory, but after having talked to my opponent for the match I had found out that he would at GP Vegas this weekend and he needed some more points for a bye. Since I’m not going to another Grand Prix until possibly Albuquerque I have plenty of time to gather another hundred points in the season to earn myself a bye so I went ahead and gave it to my opponent. Some of you out there might think he lied or other things of that nature, to me he seemed pretty sincere on the matter and I was happy to help out another player. This left me 4-5 in the official standing, but 5-4 in actuality.

Please reveal why I didn't do better

As for the rest of my weekend I missed out on making a draft pod with a bunch of guys from school before they headed out, but I watched there draft and chatted while they were drafting. A little while later some other guys from school showed up, one of the being my friend Geoff who will possibly start providing content for the blog alongside me, and we signed up for our own draft and had a great time joking with the other people in our pod. I built a pretty sweet Jund deck with plenty of removal and a foil Wrecking Ogre, but unfortunately I had to knock Geoff out of the draft in round one. So now Geoff has to place better than me in two events to keep the score even, but he made out better than any of my friends by pulling a FOIL Modern Master Tarmogoyf instantly making up for his terrible weekend in play. After the draft most of the guys went back to Lubbock, but the few of us still there we had pack wars with some Modern Master packs. With everything all said and done I managed to put some cash in my pocket from selling cards, pick up a Boros shirt and Pin, and started piecing together my commander deck. It was a hell of a weekend and I would have changed a thing about, well perhaps maybe a few other better playables in my main event deck.

Too bad I'm still ahead of him in better placement in the past couple tournaments. :,(

Well it was a long article this week guys, but I hope you enjoyed it. Stay tuned for a possible guest article from my friend Geoff, and next week’s article will be my overall thoughts on Return to Ravnica block.

Zack.

Magic funnies for the weekend