Texas GRand Prix

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jacelightning

15 April 2011

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The past 72 hours have been a whirlwind, but one of the most awesome experiences of my life (I’m writing this on the Monday after Gp Dallas). I have a lot of stories out of this weekend, but the thing that made this weekend was community. I know that the Grand Prix series is a tournament series first and foremost, but there isn’t just competition there is a complete immersion In the community of magic. During the weekend you can hang out with your buddies from your shop, make friends with people from around the world, meet some of the people behind your favorite cards, or even meet your favorite magic pros. You will walk away from weekend with your own stories about sweet victories and bad beats and an experience that you will remember.

GP Dallas was a standard/Type 2 format tournament which made it a good target in my mind since that is one of the formats I play the most of and with the Star City Games Open Series running almost week to week there is a heavily defined metagame which makes testing easier as you know what decks you have to beat and you have a clear target if you are trying to make a rouge deck that exploits the metagame. I booked a flight and hotel and got to work on preparing for the tournament. I won’t go through all my preparation, but I will say I did honestly attempt to make a deck that could beat caw blade, RUG, Boros, and Valakut. The problem is the big bad in Caw Blade is just so good right now that I couldn’t not play it. I had been playing it for about a month and just couldn’t justify playing something other than the best deck because unlike other times the best deck is just that good. My list was just another one tuned to personal preference and I’ve listed it below:

Main Deck 4x Jace, the Mind Sculptor 4x Celestial Colonnade 4x Stoneforge Mystic 4x Glacial Fortress 4x Squadron Hawk 4x Seachrome Coast 4x Preordain 4x Tectonic Edge 4x Spell Pierce 4x Island 3x Gideon Jura 4x Plains 3x Day of Judgment 1x Arid Mesa 2x Mana Leak 1x Scalding Tarn 2x Into the Roil 2x Tumble Magnet 1x Sword of Feast and Famine 1x Mortarpod

Sideboard: 1x Day of Judgment 1x Sun Titan 1x Sword of Body and Mind 2x Baneslayer Angel 2x Divine Offering 2x Kor Firewalker 3x Flashfreeze 3x Oust

I had been told that Texas was very aggro as a local metagame so wanted access to 4 Day of Judgment. The Tumble Magnets and Into the Roils are there to combat sword wielding hawks but they also do a lot of good work against aggro decks. Mortorpod is also great against aggro and opposing hawks before the sword comes down. I like having 4 Spell Pierce and 2 Mana Leak as the split for the Counterspells. Most everything else is the pretty standard U/W Caw Blade deck. Now I played in a couple of grinders and went 2-1 and 2-1 in each of them which doesn’t do much for me as they are single elimination so I didn’t get any byes for the event. After my second grinder I wasn’t feeling too good so I decided just to hop in a draft and get one set of game states flowing through my head to get me focused on playing good and tight for the tournament on Saturday, but after a first round loss knocked me out of the draft I realized that I was done and I headed back to the hotel room to drink some water (my wife’s cure for all that ails you) and take some Advil and head to sleep.

After a good night’s sleep I woke up ready to play and headed out to the site, I walked around the room getting a sense for what was being played as people were filling out their decklists and getting cards from the dealers. From my looks at the room, I was going to see a lot of boros and a lot of Caw Blade so I felt that I had made some good sideboarding decisions and was ready for the tournament. There were 1189 players in the Grand Prix and everyone who was x-2 or better made it to day 2.

I’ll summarize the rounds as I don’t think you want to read a turn for turn description and I’ll emphasize key plays. I was pumped and ready to battle.

Round 1/Boros

First round here we go, I lost the die roll and saw double Goblin Guide followed by a Steppe Lynx while he bolted my Squadron Hawk to keep it from blocking. I also mana flooded so that I got like 4 extra lands from the Guides, but I kept drawing lands on my draw phases as well. Went to game 2 and I sided out all my Spell Pierces, Mana Leaks, one Stoneforge Mystic, one Tumble Magnet, and Into the Roils and I brought in the Baneslayer Angels, Kor Firewalker, Flashfreeze, and Oust. In game 2 I sworded up a hawk and then eventually a Celestial Colonnade and won. In game 3 it was more of the same.

1-0
(2-1)

Round 2/ U/W Venser Control

1-0 and feeling good, I sit down and lose the die roll again (this is a theme for me apparently) I read him on Caw Blade, but after he mana leaked my mystic and didn’t come back with one of his own I knew he was on something else so I had to play carefully. Eventually that game ended with a sworded up Hawk delivering blows and a Tumble Magnet keeping his Wurmcoil Engine tapped down. I boarded out the Mortarpod, two Day of Judgment, one Into the Roil, and one Tumble Magnet, brought in the Sword of Body and Mind, Baneslayer Angels, Sun Titan, and one Divine Offering. This game went a long time and I eventually conceded when he had venser out and kept blinking in and out the Spine of Ish Sah destroying whatever I played. Game 3 went to time and in extra turns I had an overwhelming board position but couldn’t seal the deal and we drew.

1-0-1
(3-2-1)

Round 3/ U/W Caw Blade

1-0-1 wasn’t where I wanted to be, but here I was ready to keep going. I lost the die roll and he played his mystic on turn 2 and once he had it equipped he Tectonic Edged me off of white mana so I couldn’t cast my hawks or mystics to block the assault. I boarded out Mortarpod and brought the Sword of Body and Mind and took out an Into the Roil a Tumble Magnet, and two Day of Judgment and brought in Sun Titan and 2 Baneslayer Angel and 1 Divine Offering. Went to game two and Colonnade was brought the win home for me while being equipped with Sword of Body and Mind. The protection from blue is huge in the mirror as it allows you to attack with out worrying about Colonnade activations in the late game. Went to game 3 and I keep a questionable 2 land hand on the draw (One Colonnade and One Seachrome Coast). I got there on lands, and was building advantage slowly until a Day of Judgment was cast while I had a Baneslayer on the field and I lost the counter war with opened me up to dying to his colonnade while he Tectonic Edged mine out of the game.

1-1-1
(4-4-1)

Round 4/ U/B/W Caw Blade

I was out with another loss and this was the round where the pros are back from all their byes so I was set to win out and make day two. I lost the die roll (I’m serious 4 straight) and he played an Inquisition of Kozilek and grabbed my Stoneforge Mystic out of my opener then proceeded to get sword out and equip to a Creeping Tar Pit and we went to game 2. I boarded out Mortarpod, 2 Day of Judgments, 1 Into the Roil and 1 Tumble Magnet for Sword of Body and Mind, 2 Baneslayer Angel, Sun Titan, and 1 Divine Offering. In game 2 I Tectonic Edged him off of Black mana and ran him over with Baneslayer equipped with sword. In Game 3 it came down to me getting screwed off of Blue mana so I had a Jace in my hand to help me dig and couldn’t get it there.

1-2-1
(5-6-1)

Round 5/ U/B Control

I was dead in the tournament but I wanted to play one more match to keep going. This match was pretty one sided and even though he Doom Bladed my hawks I just keep the pressure up and took the game. After game 1, they announced a spot in a super draft where first prize was 400 dollars so my opponent told me he wanted to go do that and we there and there was only one slot left and I let him have it and I took the match and was done for the tournament.

2-2-1
(6-6-2)
Now I didn’t play in the rest of the tournament, but the story has been well documented that all 8 decks in the top 8 played 4 copies of Jace, the Mind Sculptor and out of a 64 possible copies in the top 16 decks there were 60 copies of Jace, the Mind Sculptor played. The only redeeming quality about my performance was that I was correct in thinking that U/W Caw Blade was the best deck or at least that a version of Caw Blade was the best deck. As far as my performance there were several play mistakes I made, but the worst thing I did after talking with the other people in the draw bracket and looking at my matchups in the draw bracket I should have either conceded in the second round or asked for a concession from my opponent. This seems really weird as a conclusion to come to, but if you take the fact that you have to get 21 points or go X-2 to move on to day 2 and if you take a draw unless you finish X-0-3 the draw will count the same as a loss. The difference that conceding would have made isn’t upon my record, but instead would have allowed me to avoid a gauntlet of caw blade mirror matches. This doesn’t mean that if I had conceded or my opponent had conceded to me that I would have done significantly better in the tournament, but it would have given me a shot to not play the mirror every round which could have led to a better performance. My performance in the main event wasn’t what I wanted it to be, but ultimately the Grand Prix is more than just a tournament. It’s a magic experience and I want to take the next couple of articles covering what else there is to do at a Grand Prix other than plan at the main event.