geneva day 3 and 4
was pretty exhausted last night and didn't post.
so the night before the pt i was unable to sleep. i slept for about an hour and then azrael's phone rang and woke me up. i hit the worst stretch of insomnia i've ever experienced. i literally could not get to sleep the entire night. around 5am i gave up. it wasnt just me. everybody was jet lagged into total inability to sleep. hron, severa, stern, sam and az all were tossing and turning until the decided to take walks or whatever. if we had just realized that all six of us couldn't sleep at all. we could have done like 3 or 4 more drafts before the pt!
started getting tired as the tourney started. i ended up sitting directly to the right of azrael. thats right, out of 387 players, i get seated next to the guy im sharing my hotel room with. we had converted azrael to our general draft strategy of forcing black, white, or blue after he lost every single match he played with us in testing. this worked out pretty poorly for me. the first pack of time spiral i was passing to him and it was very weak. i got no signals from the guy to my right and i think i ended up with about 6 playables. it was a total nightmare. i settled on definitely forcing black since i had a tendrils, a soot, and a few mediocre creatures and still deciding on white or blue for pack two.
azrael decided to force black off a third pick plague sliver i had to pass him. this absolutely wrecked me. i opened a stronghold overseer in pack 2. this is the only bomb i saw in the entire draft. i saw almost no black cards for the entire rest of the pack and only a smattering of white and blue. i didnt get much for the deck out of this pack either. i more or less figured out that the ruud warmenhoven (a fairly consistent pro) to my right was most likely playing blue. there was a common missing from the first pack and considering i saw some red go by, i figured he first picked fathom seer or looter(both blue cards). so i decided to just go for a white/black in the last pack. this got me a small amount of playables, but i felt like i was getting second best white cards, so i guess that ruud to my right was actually white/blue.
the thickness of white in planar chaos actually got me a few more playables bringing the total of cards i would normally play in a draft deck to about 15. this left about 8 cards that normally never make the cut in a draft deck. the result was a deck that i was embarassed even to show to anybody.
my first round opponent gets turn two magus of the library both games on the draw. the first game he just smashes me. the second game i stage the comeback of comebacks due to haunting hymn and almost get him down to zero with a mana skimmer before he peels terramorphic expanse on the last turn it can possibly help him for the firemaw kavu he was splashing. it was pretty frustrating getting bashed. i was pretty pleased with my play in both games though. i didnt let my bad deck get me down and made every play i could to try to eek out a win.
round two i got mana flooded game one. game two i smash him with my overseer. game three he plays a little sloppy and gives me some time to sneak back in. i was pretty mana flooded this game too. im about stabalized when he plays a dragon. this beats me down pretty quick. next card in my deck was my splashed rough/tumble which would have actually killed it. he shows me his hand which contained a second copy of the same dragon legend.
round three i am paired against azrael. his deck turned out as awful as mine because he decided to force black behind me. black is already thin enough in the last pack and there was no way he was going to get much help behind me when my only hope was to grab the black cards for my deck. luckily he opened an enslave. his deck was nearly as bad as mine. i get mana screwed game one. then i mana screw him game two. game three i screw up pretty badly. he has one card left in his hand and practically shows me his lightning axe when he looks at his hand a long time while thinking whether to play land number six. i remembered sending him the axe in the draft. i know its in his deck. i send my negator totem anyway, figuring its the only card he could possibly have that would wreck me there. of course he has it and im awful and he makes me sack most of my permanents. im still ok, but he goes on to topdeck halberdier for his fallen ideal followed by topdecked empty the warrens for the kill. yeah. our decks were nice ones.
im really disappointed to 0-3 my second limited pt in a row. both times i've felt like i've had a big edge going in. the rest of the group all did pretty well except for poor dstern who got a sick b/w deck and lost three matches in to the mana floods and mana screws. he also screwed up one of his matches ironically also in a negator totem incident.
dstern dropped out to sulk. i decided the only way to make myself feel better was to smash face. because, dammit it is the pro tour! i might as well try to make my scrub out look a little more respectable. i draft a pretty strong uw beatdown deck passing lots of fine red cards to my left. i get paired against him first round and beat him pretty easily. the next two opponents i played were pretty bad. like worse than most of the people i play against in FNM at misty. they both missed on the board tricks against me. i beat them both pretty easily.
did a money draft after that with dstern and zac hill against billy moreno, taylor putnam and some mike guy i cant remember the name of from cmu. i get a sick b/u deck. i get screwed in two of my matches and smash the other one. pretty disappointing. stern drafts a mostly mono green pile and manages to somehow get two wins. zac hill has a pretty unexciting black/white deck. he narrowly pulls out one match against taylor. gets smashed by moreno. then loses the first game against mike. so its all down to zac but he double mullgans. and he starts going off about how unlucky he is and how he never wins. i just start going off on him. well, sarcastic going off on him in the way only i can where people actually seem to think im serious when im really just being hilarious to myself. i tell him that mulliganing to five is no excuse. that he has to win this game or he's letting his whole team down. we need this win. now is not the time for baby whining and stories of karmic deficiencies. PUT ON THE MAN PANTS! "i dont have man pants!" GET SOME MAN PANTS MAN!! he draws his five cards. no lands. MULL TO FOUR! his four cards are two lands a 3cc creature and a 5cc creature. they go all the way. mike gets horribly mana flooded and plays like 2 spells. then mike doesnt draw a forest game two and a winner is we! and now im zac hill's hero. and he has man pants.
after that sam, dstern and i go get food with everybody from the money draft. we find a really expensive chinese place downtown. i hate chinese food and definitely am not going to pay $18 for mediocre european chinese food. i wander downtown and find a shishkebab place called istanbul-2. they have $5 falafel sandwiches. this is like $10 cheaper than any meal i've found in the city. mcdonalds costs like fifteen bucks. i get two of them and can't even finish them both. they were amazing.
we barely make the last bus that goes to our hotel. and i collapse after being awake for like 36 hours.
today was awesome. stern and i scrubbed out of the 2hg limited qualifier. apparently i chucked the game in round 4. i think we still would have lost. our decks weren't that good anyway. we also played gerrard fabiano's team round one. they went on to make the t8.
of course the big news is hron making t8 of the pro tour. we're all living vicariously through him. he's been drafting entirely different from everybody else at the pt using the madison strategies we figured out the entire way. his drafting seems to be just boggling the coverage crew. if you watch the youtube bits that bdm and beuhler are doing they even go on about him passing teferi for tendrils of corruption first pick/first pack. "omg its the worst color!!" its good stuff. (its in the webcast right after the day one wrap up) he also too mindless automaton over sulfrous blast first pick in another pod. i don't think they watched that one. it appears that nobody respects the black madness strategy. this blows my mind because its one of the strongest mechanics in this limited format. the best madness decks in the madison drafts were basically unbeatable.
hron is playing some amazing matches. its very entertaining watching him outplay some of the big names in magic. one of the few great and competitive matches he played was against kenji tsumura. he narrowly lost to him. kenji is for real and is definitely the best player in the game right now. a rematch should be pretty exciting. bdm and buehler talk about that match in one of the webcasts too, but i can't remember which one. unfortunately they didnt cover the match in print.
sorry this is so long. don't feel like figuring out how to lj cut it.
so the night before the pt i was unable to sleep. i slept for about an hour and then azrael's phone rang and woke me up. i hit the worst stretch of insomnia i've ever experienced. i literally could not get to sleep the entire night. around 5am i gave up. it wasnt just me. everybody was jet lagged into total inability to sleep. hron, severa, stern, sam and az all were tossing and turning until the decided to take walks or whatever. if we had just realized that all six of us couldn't sleep at all. we could have done like 3 or 4 more drafts before the pt!
started getting tired as the tourney started. i ended up sitting directly to the right of azrael. thats right, out of 387 players, i get seated next to the guy im sharing my hotel room with. we had converted azrael to our general draft strategy of forcing black, white, or blue after he lost every single match he played with us in testing. this worked out pretty poorly for me. the first pack of time spiral i was passing to him and it was very weak. i got no signals from the guy to my right and i think i ended up with about 6 playables. it was a total nightmare. i settled on definitely forcing black since i had a tendrils, a soot, and a few mediocre creatures and still deciding on white or blue for pack two.
azrael decided to force black off a third pick plague sliver i had to pass him. this absolutely wrecked me. i opened a stronghold overseer in pack 2. this is the only bomb i saw in the entire draft. i saw almost no black cards for the entire rest of the pack and only a smattering of white and blue. i didnt get much for the deck out of this pack either. i more or less figured out that the ruud warmenhoven (a fairly consistent pro) to my right was most likely playing blue. there was a common missing from the first pack and considering i saw some red go by, i figured he first picked fathom seer or looter(both blue cards). so i decided to just go for a white/black in the last pack. this got me a small amount of playables, but i felt like i was getting second best white cards, so i guess that ruud to my right was actually white/blue.
the thickness of white in planar chaos actually got me a few more playables bringing the total of cards i would normally play in a draft deck to about 15. this left about 8 cards that normally never make the cut in a draft deck. the result was a deck that i was embarassed even to show to anybody.
my first round opponent gets turn two magus of the library both games on the draw. the first game he just smashes me. the second game i stage the comeback of comebacks due to haunting hymn and almost get him down to zero with a mana skimmer before he peels terramorphic expanse on the last turn it can possibly help him for the firemaw kavu he was splashing. it was pretty frustrating getting bashed. i was pretty pleased with my play in both games though. i didnt let my bad deck get me down and made every play i could to try to eek out a win.
round two i got mana flooded game one. game two i smash him with my overseer. game three he plays a little sloppy and gives me some time to sneak back in. i was pretty mana flooded this game too. im about stabalized when he plays a dragon. this beats me down pretty quick. next card in my deck was my splashed rough/tumble which would have actually killed it. he shows me his hand which contained a second copy of the same dragon legend.
round three i am paired against azrael. his deck turned out as awful as mine because he decided to force black behind me. black is already thin enough in the last pack and there was no way he was going to get much help behind me when my only hope was to grab the black cards for my deck. luckily he opened an enslave. his deck was nearly as bad as mine. i get mana screwed game one. then i mana screw him game two. game three i screw up pretty badly. he has one card left in his hand and practically shows me his lightning axe when he looks at his hand a long time while thinking whether to play land number six. i remembered sending him the axe in the draft. i know its in his deck. i send my negator totem anyway, figuring its the only card he could possibly have that would wreck me there. of course he has it and im awful and he makes me sack most of my permanents. im still ok, but he goes on to topdeck halberdier for his fallen ideal followed by topdecked empty the warrens for the kill. yeah. our decks were nice ones.
im really disappointed to 0-3 my second limited pt in a row. both times i've felt like i've had a big edge going in. the rest of the group all did pretty well except for poor dstern who got a sick b/w deck and lost three matches in to the mana floods and mana screws. he also screwed up one of his matches ironically also in a negator totem incident.
dstern dropped out to sulk. i decided the only way to make myself feel better was to smash face. because, dammit it is the pro tour! i might as well try to make my scrub out look a little more respectable. i draft a pretty strong uw beatdown deck passing lots of fine red cards to my left. i get paired against him first round and beat him pretty easily. the next two opponents i played were pretty bad. like worse than most of the people i play against in FNM at misty. they both missed on the board tricks against me. i beat them both pretty easily.
did a money draft after that with dstern and zac hill against billy moreno, taylor putnam and some mike guy i cant remember the name of from cmu. i get a sick b/u deck. i get screwed in two of my matches and smash the other one. pretty disappointing. stern drafts a mostly mono green pile and manages to somehow get two wins. zac hill has a pretty unexciting black/white deck. he narrowly pulls out one match against taylor. gets smashed by moreno. then loses the first game against mike. so its all down to zac but he double mullgans. and he starts going off about how unlucky he is and how he never wins. i just start going off on him. well, sarcastic going off on him in the way only i can where people actually seem to think im serious when im really just being hilarious to myself. i tell him that mulliganing to five is no excuse. that he has to win this game or he's letting his whole team down. we need this win. now is not the time for baby whining and stories of karmic deficiencies. PUT ON THE MAN PANTS! "i dont have man pants!" GET SOME MAN PANTS MAN!! he draws his five cards. no lands. MULL TO FOUR! his four cards are two lands a 3cc creature and a 5cc creature. they go all the way. mike gets horribly mana flooded and plays like 2 spells. then mike doesnt draw a forest game two and a winner is we! and now im zac hill's hero. and he has man pants.
after that sam, dstern and i go get food with everybody from the money draft. we find a really expensive chinese place downtown. i hate chinese food and definitely am not going to pay $18 for mediocre european chinese food. i wander downtown and find a shishkebab place called istanbul-2. they have $5 falafel sandwiches. this is like $10 cheaper than any meal i've found in the city. mcdonalds costs like fifteen bucks. i get two of them and can't even finish them both. they were amazing.
we barely make the last bus that goes to our hotel. and i collapse after being awake for like 36 hours.
today was awesome. stern and i scrubbed out of the 2hg limited qualifier. apparently i chucked the game in round 4. i think we still would have lost. our decks weren't that good anyway. we also played gerrard fabiano's team round one. they went on to make the t8.
of course the big news is hron making t8 of the pro tour. we're all living vicariously through him. he's been drafting entirely different from everybody else at the pt using the madison strategies we figured out the entire way. his drafting seems to be just boggling the coverage crew. if you watch the youtube bits that bdm and beuhler are doing they even go on about him passing teferi for tendrils of corruption first pick/first pack. "omg its the worst color!!" its good stuff. (its in the webcast right after the day one wrap up) he also too mindless automaton over sulfrous blast first pick in another pod. i don't think they watched that one. it appears that nobody respects the black madness strategy. this blows my mind because its one of the strongest mechanics in this limited format. the best madness decks in the madison drafts were basically unbeatable.
hron is playing some amazing matches. its very entertaining watching him outplay some of the big names in magic. one of the few great and competitive matches he played was against kenji tsumura. he narrowly lost to him. kenji is for real and is definitely the best player in the game right now. a rematch should be pretty exciting. bdm and buehler talk about that match in one of the webcasts too, but i can't remember which one. unfortunately they didnt cover the match in print.
sorry this is so long. don't feel like figuring out how to lj cut it.