Okay, this is your warning right now that this is gonna be quite the epic of a report on my trip to GP Phoenix. No jokes, if you wanna turn back, you better do that right now. Cuz’ once you be reading this mother, you ain’t gonna stop. This sucka is long because I wanted to have something to remember the good times and funny times that I’ve had in tournaments. Surely, I haven’t written a report for the PTQ that I went 0-2 drop! So, I gave you a chance to back out, here we go!
God, who really does take the warning and skips my report? Anyhow, for the people that can empathize with long old reports (Gary Wise or no?) I began a few weeks prior to GP Phoenix trying to decide on a deck. My options were basically U/G Oath which I had been my only extended deck or Tradewind-Survival. I thought it would be kinda nice to point out that Mike Jeffers (ScrubMike) pointed out that this deck was gonna be a mise even before PTNY Masters showed us the powers of it. So I played with his version for awhile, and later opted to just ditch his tight tommy TS deck for Baby Huey’s which I promptly ripped off the internet. So now, that I had selected my weapon, I needed to test this baby. So the massive testing began. That’s right. Me and Derek (jokulhaups) played TS vs. Demonic Sligh over 948357349 matches. No jokes, we were too lazy to build other decks and see matchups. Basically, this just provided us a chance to see how our decks ran. No real playtesting I suppose. You can bet your bottom dollar that this was hella good testing for him since he’d prolly run into a few TS decks at GP Phoenix, but seriously, how many Demonic Sligh decks would I face? No, that’s not foreshadowing. So we did our massive playtesting. I was still unsure if I wanted to play TS since it was touted as the deck to beat at GP Phoenix along with Trix, so I feared the metagame and the hate. Usually, I dread any mirror matches because I’m prolly the worst mirror match player in all history of magical cards. I must be 1-7 in mirror matches of all formats and all decks. But I said, screw it. If I face the mirror, I lose, otherwise I just roll them since after all, this is the one of the top decks of Extended. I kept wanting to play U/G Oath since it penetrates Survival decks in Uranus. But I selected TS and decided to stick with it. I went on IRC to look for technologies from some peeps and most were suggesting adding Red for Granger Guildmage to blow away opposing birds and Pyroblasts for the Tradewind Riders. It sounded all great in theory and all, but I just decided to go with the old outdated TS list from Baby Huey at PTNY Master. All I changed was taking out the Ophidian and putting the Gilded Drake into the maindeck. What did I put as the fifteenth sideboard card? Of course, the Ophidian. He sat there all weekend long. Now before I get thrashed on for being such a lamer for copying decks and stuff, I was trying out the randomness of adding red to the deck and other such things like maindeck Devout Witness and hell, even black for Bone Shredder. In the end, I didn’t like my mana base as it already was and didn’t want to be even more vulnerable.
We hop onto our airplane and take a quick trip to Phoenix and land safely looking for Chad (CMCevoy) who said he would meet us at our gate. Of course, his flight got delayed so we had to go to his terminal and pick him up! Whatta gimp! Just kidding, Chaddy MacDaddy, you are the best times ever! We get to our hotel and head on over to the site to play in the trial. We hop in the shuttle and we’re off! It’s funny how people try to show off how much of a beating they are. These dudes were all behind us talking about their 2000 ratings and stuff. It’s like good for you, but do you think I will really be like, "You are my hero". Not a chance.
I borrow 4 Birds and 1 Tradewind from Anthony (Cantu) and shuffle up getting to mise a trial. I ended up going 1-1-1 dropping in the trial because I really got sick of playing my deck. It’s great and all, but randomly, I didn’t wanna play it anymore. That and the fact that I had to win 5 straight to have a slight chance at the byes. I won my first round match against some chick who was playing Trix. Usually a bad matchup, if it’s in the right hands. She didn’t play the deck incorrectly and I planned my counters and threats properly and swept her. Being the nice guy that I am, I told her it’s usually wise to play Necropotence first before you play Illusions of Grandeur to truly abuse the deck. And another thing I pointed out to her was that if you use Peat Bog to cast Illusions, make sure you can have 5 mana at the least the following turn. Frowns. I then faced Cantu who was running Fish, usually, a decent matchup but tough if he gets Lord of Atlantis and I can’t get Spike Weaver. So first game, I get mana flooded. Who gets mana flooded with TS? Second game I get the amazing third turn Masticore with plenty of mana and Force of Will backup. Third game, he is able to counter my few actual threat cards and plays a Morphling who finishes me off in short order. Third match was a TS mirror and in game three we just get timed out with 1 Morphling on each side just staring it down. Being disgusted by that last match, I decide to just drop and draft. The funniest thing I saw in this trial was someone playing a R/W/G Obliterate deck who was able to cast that sucker against a U/G oath deck who was holding 7 blue counterspell cards in hand. It’s okay Sperling, you still won the match. It didn’t change the game since time was running out, but it was just hilarious!
I draft a tight little draft deck with 3 Wash Out. I lose in the finals of it to Dave Something or other with so much removal he decked his opponent before by just killing all his creatures. One amazing highlight from this draft was beating a Two-Dromar.dec who built up to about 11 mana while I was stuck on 4 forever.
Later that night, I one-on-one draft against Derek and he crushes me in the last game when I can’t find an answer to Llanowar Knight with Armadillo Cloak. My Plague Spores and Tribal Flames does shat to that little bugger. It was about 3:00 a.m. and we all head back to the hotel room to grab a little shut eye before the main event.
We wake up early and head on over to the site again. However, this shuttle trip was a bit more pleasant than the last one. There was Lauren Passmore and one of her chick friends. I only knew it was her because she mentioned David Price. We’re all laughing and busting a gut about Urza’s Rage kicker in Sligh decks and the like. Finally we get there and I make sure I have my deck and have the configuration that I like it at. And I’m set for the first round.
It’s amazing how teched out Wizards of the Coast is when it comes to the bye system and flag rating. I was still flagged for the 1700 under flag rating and I wasn’t really complaining because I was missing about 16 points for a round-one bye so I might as well get that extra incentive to make top sixteen of the 1700 under flag rating. I guess they should really try to fix the system or something. Eh, this was my first Grand Prix so I don’t have too much disgust with the bye system as other people do. Due to the low turnout of 205 people, I figured that a 5-2 should pretty much make second day and set my goal as that. But the most important thing is that you should always take one round at a time. So join me as we do that.
Round One: (Tudor Sburlan w/Stasis)
Game One: We start off fairly slow and I fear that he is running Forbidian. Forbidian, I think would not be one of my better matchups because they have so many counterspells, and would naturally counter my Survival of the Fittest and few select creatures. I saw the Gush indicating it was Stasis little later in the game and felt like he didn’t run as many counters as Forbidian and the like. After baiting out a few counters, I had 1 Tradewind Rider that needed one more creature to be active and own him. He proceeded to drop Morphling with 3 mana available. I had my options of Counterspell, Force of Will, etc, I got my little mind whirling and decided to use Mana Leak to make him tap out for his Morphling which he agreed to. I then played my Gilded Drake backed by Counterspell and Force of Will and promptly took his Morphling. He proceeded to play his second Morphling, but soon, my Tradewind Rider became amazing with my Quirion Ranger and Morphling causing him to enter scoop phase. I learned later on from a friend that Gilded Drake doesn’t even target! I’m not 100% positive on that and never had the chance to find out, but if it doesn’t target, Gilded Drake is better than I thought. I’ll take your Blastoderm! I’ll take your Morphling! Hell, I’ll even take your Elvish Lookout!
Game Two: For sideboarding, I didn’t touch my Gilded Drake because he was such a pimp for me. Also, I didn’t bother bringing in the Emerald Charms since it looked like he was taking out his Stasis, seeing that Quirion Ranger simply negated that card. I expected Masticore from the sideboard and brought another sex monkey in, but never saw the Masticore. Poor Guy was stuck on two Islands for many turns and I was able to make him Counterspell, Daze, Force of Will basically good stuff because he was desperate. Needless to say, Survival of the Fittest was the card I was backing up and got it into play and proceeded to drop threat after threat thanks to my little Squee homey G. He’s a pretty good player from the past games that I had played with him, but I wonder if he knew how to play Stasis pristinely considering that he was looking for 20 Islands about 20 min. before registration closed and he was discarding Gush in the second game.
1-0 (2-0)
Round Two: (Tyler Morgan w/ Pandeburst)
Game One: An Attunement on turn three shows me what he is playing. And I slowly set up my mana base having counter magic to handle his Replenish if he decides to go off. Basically he attempts to go for the win with a Replenish with one Force of Will back up and I am able to Counterspell and Mana Leak. That leave him in topdeck mode. I drop my Tradewind Rider on my turn convinced that if he doesn’t topdeck a land, he will be locked at 3 lands and unable to win. Yay, he gets Replenish and wins. I hate how any deck based off of Replenish can just sometimes win. The board could totally be in my favor, but you know what, if they can peel that Replenish off the top ropes. Christ. It’s game. Nothing I can do, but sideboard and shuffle up.
Game Two: I bring in my Back to Basics. Everyone knew that Back to Basics are quite the house against many decks, but don’t run the full 4 copies. I was gonna be one of those people, since the multiple copies of Back to Basics really don’t’ do anything. I didn’t get to work with my sideboard as much as I wanted and left in all four. This game, I brought them all in since I didn’t see a single basic land in his deck. More importantly, I thought about how I could win this horrible matchup. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to match his game-ending spell especially since he could set it up all he wanted. He could wait to get Replenish, and triple the blue card protection. Balls out. That’s right, it’s the only way to play this game! Second game I started off with decent creatures with a Tradewind in my hand. I only had a Mana Leak and used it on his Intuition, usually, that is a really funky play, but I figured use the countermagic for disruption rather than defense. So that’s what I did. I countered cards like Intuition and even an Attunement! Being the Chex player that he is, he probably figured they weren’t worth protecting with his countermagic. And could never really get established. I ended up getting Back to Basics into play with a Tradewind Rider lock. But he just needed to play a fourth land and play Replenish. There were about 5 turns when he could just simply cast Replenish and win the game since I ran out of Counterspells. I knew it was over if he cast Replenish. However, I was very diligent about leaving five mana open bluffing a Force of Will in my hand. In then end, he never played Replenish. He either just didn’t have the card, or he was afraid to play it thinking that if he tapped out and Replenish didn’t resolve he would lose. I guess that makes sense, but the five extra turns let me draw into my Force of Wills and Counterspells. I got Quirion Ranger and locked and beatdown with a Ranger and Rider for 20.
Third Game: I stuck to my guns and game plan and was able to establish the same lock as aforementioned, the only thing different about this game was that I was able to beatdown with Deranged Hermit instead of having to serve for 2 each turn. He mulliganed once and that helped. Chex seems like a very broken deck when you can get the pieces altogether, but it makes sense that you don’t get the god draws each time. I figured that out the last game and countered the cards that helped him set up. That means, he could never get fully set up until the mid-game. And hopefully mid-game, I am already applying Rider locks or Quirion Ranger beatdown!
2-0 (4-1)
Round Three: (Jeremy Brower w/ TS)
Game One: Mirror match. Am I going to get owned or what? He drops a Granger Guildmage first turn and I ponder if I should follow with my Birds of Paradise. The correct answer is yes. Even though it seems like horrible card disadvantage, I really didn’t have anything to do on my turn other than play a second turn Survival of the Fittest. He then used Land Grant to get Savannah and Monk Realist busted my Survival without giving me a chance to use it. Eh, bad player RaiNiNG. I should have seen that if he kills my Survival, it would be wasted and my hand would suck. Also, I should have seen that playing a Birds of Paradise would have helped my game out some since I would be able to Survival at least once if I wanted to. Of course, if it gets shot down at least he takes one damage! It’s like a Drain Life for 1. I don’t take one hit from the Granger beatdown, and he loses one life from pinging the bird. I try to cast a Morphling with Force of Will for the win, but he has the Counterspells and wins.
Game Two: Same start as the first game with that darned Granger Guildmage. I have a relatively weak hand that looks like a Blue-Green Counter-Morphling deck or something. He continues to apply the slow beats and actually gets me down to five life or so. The Granger is going to finish me off. My horrible desperado game plan is to play Gilded Drake to take his Granger Guildmage and then play Tradewind Rider. He lets the Granger get stolen, but obviously counters my Tradewind Rider. The stolen Gilded Drake crushes my cranium, but I am able to stop the bleeding by Emerald Charm the Gilded Drake to block with the newly acquired Granger Guildmage. Hell, he even countered my second Emerald Charm so he could soar in for the win. There goes my quasi-three round bye feeling had I went 3-0.
2-1 (4-3)
Round Four: (Steve Beacham w/ NecroKnights?!)
Game One: I see the Badlands and guess that its Trix. Oh my, Suq’ata Lancer. I’m about to laugh out loud cuz I just found out where my third-round bye went. It’s actually in the fourth round! He starts laying down his creatures and various removal spells like Contagion and the like. I get my SotF card into play and get him Tradewind Locked with my Spike Weaver. He concedes before I start bouncing his old school beats. Seriously, who plays with Suq’ata Lancer! Granted, I wasn’t bouncing his Lancer since it has haste!
And flanking, oh my! I wish I had my Knights of the Mist in my sideboard! Break your Lancer! DIE~!
Game Two: Okay, enough foolishness. He gets out a coupla 2/2’s that are breaking my skull in but I am able to stabilize with Masticore shooting down his homies while I have Survival in play, but I already used my Bottle Gnomes and Spike Feeder to gain life since I was in very tight situations. Otherwise, I would have tried to make Feeder get me infinite life and let him serve with his Suq’Ata BEATSTICK every turn, because it’s that good. He gets me to one life but I am able to stabilize with a Masticore that blows the crud outta anything he attempts to play. Hm, I think I already said that. Unfortunately for me, he draws and plays a Firestorm for one before I can finish him off. So he takes that one from me. Oh yeah, a Dystopia did tear apart my men in the early game.
Game Three: He gets his usual early start with a Dauthi Slayer and Suq’Ata Lancer. He is able to take me to moderately low life, but I am able to get an active Tradewind Rider and along with my Gilded Drake, I steal his team of men. He attempts to Firestorm my men, but I just counter it and continue to steal his team until he concedes. I love my Gilded Drake. It’s like a good-looking prostitute and I’m the pimp because she just keeps bringing in the men. That was quite scary because I actually almost lost that match to some dude that was playing a deck straight outta the 80’s.
3-1 (6-4)
Round Five: (Alan McCandless w/ Three-Deuce w/o white)
Game One and Game Two: Ouch. I really wish I remembered how he beat the snot outta me, but I was so not in the gaming mood. I just kinda went through the motions of putting up some sort of battle even though I really don’t think I did. He crunches me in both games. He did topdeck a nice Blastoderm after attempting to cast one. That I remember. Anyways, I wasn’t paying attention to this game and played it horribly, I’m sure. Talk about tanking a match! So I have to win out! Give me good matchups and I can do it!
3-2 (6-6)
Round Six: (Kory Dunham w/ Pandeburst)
Game One: Okay, so I get matched up with a deck that will crush mine. Go me! I try to counter the early pieces of getting his game-winning combination together and succeed to a certain degree, but he just gets it together and is able to Replenish for the win, while I sit there attacking with my amazing Quirion Ranger.
Game Two: I’m a little low on countermagic but get a Back to Basics into play and start serving it up with the same old Quirion Ranger. She pretty much goes the distance while a Tradewind Rider helps along the way. He never is able to get the cards into his graveyard and even attempted a desperate "Saproling Burst-Attunement" Replenish, but I counter that as well. 20 to the dome with Quirion Ranger!
Game Three: Goodness, I own him this game horribly. I get a quick and early Tradewind Rider lock forcing him to attempt the Replenish, but I can Counterspell and Force of Will it. He is able to amazing go from 0 cards into hand, use the Attunement on the board, dump four cards to Attunement and attempt to Pyroblast my Counterspell. Basically, he was trying to cheat! Being the observant guy that I am, I didn’t catch this and simply used my Survival of the Fittest to get a Tradewind Rider to dump to my Force of Will. Now that he really had 0 cards in hand, I was able to go ahead, lock him up and take the game. Back to Basics fell in here somewhere thereafter to make sure he had zero chance. I didn’t know about the cheating until Cantu told me afterwards. It was cool, I beat him so cheaters never prosper. May you use Attunement in the future and draw into 3 lands everytime, Kory. And if it was an honest make, learn to play tighter. (same goes for me)
4-2 (8-7)
Round Seven: (Alex Renzin w/ Trix)
Game One: Okay, impossible matchup number two. I don’t’ think I can really win this one here folks. I play the best Mana Leak of my magical games when he casts Duress and I Mana Leak him but he just pays the three and takes my other Force of Will. My excuse was I didn’t see the Mox Diamond. Anyways, he gets the combo to go since I really don’t have anything that can disrupt him other than the Counterspells and Force of Will I have to draw during my draw phase unlike Alex here who can just draw 14 cards on his discard phase and set up a perfect kill all that he wants! Humph!
Game Two: Board in my super combo-hate cards and hope to draw a grip of them. I take out all my good win conditions like Morphling and Deranged Hermit with the plan that I am going to make his Illusions kill him. If he brought in Phyrexian Negators I would be in for a world of hurt, but why would he do that when the combo is usually suffice to kill me anyways? I keep attempting to produce the threats of blowing up enchantments and trying to stop the Illusions from entering play. I try to Emerald Charm it which he just Misdirects to his Necropotence. That helps a lot because he cannot draw any more cards from the card-drawing engine. I have a Back to Basics and Force of Will in my hand. I just need to topdeck a blue card, and I know I have the game. I draw a card. Look at it. Read the name of it. Tradewind Rider. That’s game folks!
Game Three: I drew a nice hand of 2 Emerald Charms while my opponent went to Mulligan City for a six-pack. I think he knows he’s gonna lose this one and doesn’t put up much of a fight. He is able to Duress one of the Emerald Charms. I fight for the Necropotence. He then tries to cast a Illusions of Grandeur and I use 1 Emerald Charm and he lets me bust it and win. Kind of very anti-climactic, but I’m guessing he just didn’t know how to handle my hate! Who thought beating two combos to make day two was possible?
5-2 (10-8) *winning record or what?*
Whatta day, after some good wins and stuff like that I feel good! I am unfortunately the only one of my group of hotel roomates that made day 2, but they are all happy for me. We go and have some dinner at this ghetto Fish and Chips place. Me and Kirk (Kcole) are all happy because we are still flagged at the 1700 under flag rating and we are pretty much guaranteed money so that’s a great feeling. The food was pretty okay and head back to go back home.
That night we go to the overnight drafting place and end up doing a three-on-three draft for the cards. Usually, that’s not very inspiring to me since no cashflow is involved, there was however, an Undermine in it. So why not. Let’s play smart and think some, Daniel-san! I was able to 3-0 the team and get to get my Undermine. It was well worth it. One of my more boneheaded plays of this series was not using the second ability of Stormscape Apprentice to make my opponent lose some life. We were so caught up in the third game with 8 tappity-tappers on the board, I didn’t even see the ability. I caught onto it right before I was about to get overwhelmed by a team of Pincer Spiders. I just made it look like I was toying with him the whole time and dragging it out. Taking home the newly acquired booty, we fall asleep at 5:00 a.m or so. I set the alarm to wake up in time for day 2.
Or not. This is pure RaiNiNG technology. I didn’t wake up in time! That’s right. I slept in for day two. I pulled a Dirk! Who mises $250 sleep? Me, that’s who. With that all shot-down, I try to hurry over to the site, but I know the inevitable truth. I’m dropped. Just because I wanted to draft for an Undermine, I didn’t get my good sleep. Friends call me the "Sleeper" now. Well, that pretty much covers GP Phoenix. I just needed to write it all out so it could end abruptly like that. Hope you enjoyed my report and if there’s anything to be learned from this report, is not to sleep in. Set an alarm. Get a wake-up call. Don’t sleep. Anything to not sleep-in. That’s the worst!
Sincerely
Daniel Chung
RaiNiNG on MiRC