I’m back, thanks for waiting. here’s my 2nd draft deck:

cloud elemental

foresee

cancel

sleep

clone

maritime guard

scroll thief

aether adept

air servant

water servant

2 goblin piker

2 lava axe

fire servant

earth servant

prodigal pyromancer

act of treason

lightning bolt

fling

fireball

arc runner

juggernaut

9 islands

8 mountains

board hits: demolish, 2 goblin tunnelers, goblin balloon brigade, the second fling, vulshock berserker, volcanic strength, negate, and harbor servant.

I go into round 7 still quite nervous about getting knocked out. My pod included a lot of orange shirts, which at the time I thought signified all the best players in montreal, but then later in the weekend I was told the owner of face a face was just giving them away, so maybe it was less of a credential than I thought.

Round 7: Robert Anderson

I don’t think I mentioned that pairings are random in this format, but here I was in the draft facing the guy that cut me out of blue. He also had white, and all of his men flew. Occaisionally he would play a palace guard as a kind of tribute to bad cards, only to suit it up with armored ascension (of whch he had two). Game1 I managed to sort of stabilise the air, and then he used his safe passage as a kind of bad sleep, making a costly attack in order to get damage through, then countering my lethal swingback on my turn, and having enough guys left to get there on his second swing.

things don’t look good.

Game2 I manage to deal with an early dude, pressure a bit with terrible creatures, and then go fire servant–>lava axe.

Game3 he mulls to five but makes all four first land drops and is attacking with an armored guy on turn4. after flinging my arc runner at it, he makes a second griffin huge with the powerful aura. I deliberate for a while between my answers and then decide on fireball. He has a third flier that I have to answer, this time only a 2/3. I go to two before being able to attack for lethal with my islandwalking fatty. Quite the match.

We take it fairly easy that night, hitting up a pub for a few beers but not staying up too late. 3/4 of the bc players were still in contention (myself, business frodes, and stewart blaschek) and brandon fettback had decided he would play out the swiss and try for the top16 pro point.

No decklist game losses to get at the second player meeting, so the only reason I had to tilt out was my back being at the wall for so long. No problem, right?

Round8: Andrew Boa

hmm…

I have no memory of this match. sorry kids. I mean I can remember winning because I know I didn’t get knocked out this round. as for what actually happened, perhaps it will remain a mystery for all time. Andrew if you’re reading this, please click the link on the bottom to tell us your side of this riveting tale.

Round 9: Patrick Selk

Ok so did I mention earlier that this draft was a little weird, and that I saw some signals to go green? Did I mention there was a ninth pick acidic slime? how about 8th pick awakener druid? anyways here I finally was facing off against my pod’s green deck. Game1 I get rolled real bad, mulling to five and then not playing any spells.

Game2 there’s a very tough mull to six, where I keep 2 mountains, aether adept, scroll thief, volcanic strength, and _i think_ cancel (it was definitely another blue card and it definitely wasn’t a creature I could cast if I only drew one island). So to reiterate, this is a very tough mull to six. I feel like herder gets on my back here and we go back and forth about what the odds are on my 5 being great and the argument ends with both of us agreeing that neither of us have enough knowledge of statistics to really prove my point. I guess I keep there because my gut feeling tells me an average 5 is just the same hand with one less spell. The other possible argument is that scroll thief volcanic strength vs red/green is nuts, but that isn’t the argument I would use here to defend this keep.

So i drew the island on time and volcanic thief’d him right out of game 2.

Game3 its his turn to mull to five and not cast spells. I get through the limited portion of Canadian nats without a loss.

Forboding strikes me as I remember my record in constructed over the weekend :/j

Round 10: Yevgeni Altgauzen, Superfriends

Finally a wall of omens deck for me to beat up. I can’t remember if it’s game1 or 2 that I lose, but I do remember that a make this really weird, fairly irrelevant punt against ajani vengeant. I’m being super killed by aj and elspeth, and I have a conscription stuck in my hand and half of my lands in play. I draw a hierarch, and then tank a bit, deciding that with ajani at only seven, I’d like to allow yev the opportunity to helix the mana dude, delaying one sided armageddon by a turn or so. He isn’t even likely to make this play, so my attack with an 11/11 isn’t even really slowed down, and his attackers all fly, so blocking isn’t relevant. Catch my punt?

That’s right, dear reader, aj blows up at seven, not eight. I did the math while scooping and I was still dead as long as he played right.

Anyways I win one of those other first two games and then take game3 with a land light draw from my opp and a decent draw from my deck.

Round 11: Sammy Tharmaratnam, Jund

I see a mountain during shuffling, cementing my worst play error of the weekend (other than the decklist, and possibly even behind not telling a judge that I saw that mountain). Anyways here’s what I keep on the draw against a deck with mountains in it:

forest, tech edge, verdant catacombs, cobra, 3 sovereigns.

dirty, eh?

yeah I got super hypnotized by that cobra for some reason. Like this is already a mull to five and doesn’t even have a great plan. Early in the season Tyler Woolley told me his rule of thumb for mulligans with this deck was “keep hands with castable mana accelerants” and I’ve adopted that more or less, but this hand was definitely a ship.

So my snake gets fried and then I get junded on pretty hard. Game2 looks like it’s going to run my way for a bit, with 2 baloths coming down on my side, but Sam was able to kill my angel and I think also a sovereigns, so eventually the baloths just traded with a pile of goblin tokens and I had to sign away my top8 berth.

sigh.

oh well, I still had fun, and I could muster a respectable rank if I won my last round.

Round12: Foxtrot Rhodes, Mythic Conscription

Brandon Chreptyk and I had agreed on at least 70 of the same cards, so this was almost a perfect mirror. For a while there he was playing rafiq, but I talked him out of that. I think our main deck might have been idenitical, but I’m certain he ran with the second linvala in lieu of bosley.

I god draw him twice. This’ll probably sound super greasey, but I had it coming. My deck didn’t “do it’s thing” all weekend, and I found over the course of the various tournaments I played that about every 4th game offered you a prompt sovereigns with some kind of backup. Frodo was pretty steamed, but the match was way more comfortable than it would have been a round or two earlier, with the prospect of taking a room mate out of contention instead of just battling for rating and a pro point.

I watched the first and most important round of the top8, with the only disappiontment being frodo’s pal noah long losing to kyle duncan’s jund. Noah was piloting u/r/g destructive force, so I think that match must be at least ok, but he had kind of a heartbreaking game 1, keeping a 2land hand with three castable spells, a halimar depths and a snapland, and having to look 14 cards deep before hitting his third land. I think he could have won his game3 if he played it differently, but he got a little too addicted to mana leak and ended up getting jund all over his nice, new shoes.

The team ends up being Jassar Elarar, Vincent Thibeault, and Pascal Maynard. you may read about it here: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/canat10/welcome

here’s my standard deck:
5 forest

2 island

2 plains

4 celestial colonnade

1 sunpetal grove

1 tectonic edge

1 very expensive arid mesa

2 sejiri steppe

4 misty rainforest

3 verdant catacomb

4 noble hierarch

4 birds of paradise

4 lotus cobra

3 mana leak

2 dauntless escort

4 knight of the reliquary

1 elspeth, knight errant

3 jace, the mind sculptor

4 baneslayer angel

4 sovereigns of lost alara

2 eldrazi conscription.

 

I think the easiest thing for me to do better at the next nats would be to play more standard in the weeks leading up to the tournament. In order to get that done I’m going to start a playtesting team that will meet thursday nights at yj. If you’re reading this you’re invited, but it will require some commitment. basically anyone trying to grind on the ptq should be comfortable with the kind of work I’m talking about. Talk to me or pm me on vicmagic to learn more. This is my first time organizing a magic team, so I’ll be learning as I go (expect the odd broken egg).

Nelson Salahub

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