Draft One

At 1-2 the chances of top 8 are already very slim, and draft is not my strong point by any means. I did hopelessly in the Friday night practice draft so I go in intending to make as good a deck as I can, while picking from the back of the pack when there's a card worth taking for my collection. I start with Obstinate Baloth, which seems equally good for both purposes. I pick up a load of green fat including Cudgel Troll, YavimayaWurm, DuskdaleWurm and my third pack, first pick – Primeval Titan. I pair my green with red removal and a few decent red creatures along with a single swamp Doom Blade splash, and crucially I get a Llanowar Elf and a Sylvan Ranger to help me along in the mana department. I play 18 lands, and end up with the following:

"Draft 1"

• Lands (15)
• 6 Mountain
• 9 Forest

• Creatures (0)

• Spells (2)
• 2 Giant Growth

• Sideboard (0)

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I am very happy with how my deck looks – it is light on removal but I have some solid tricks and a lot of bomb creatures. I should have swapped the Thunder Strike for the maindeck Volcanic Strength – it is great against mountains, but kinda mediocre otherwise, and first strike on my trampling fatties is ripe with blowout potential. I head off to find my pairing for round 4 and it's none other than Hugh Glanville, a member of last year's team.

Round 4: Hugh Glanville, WB Tempo

Game 1 I am on the play and open with Llanowar Elves into Brindle Boar, which Hugh targets with Excommunicate. This seems kind of a loose play, and I sac the Boar in response since I don't really want to draw it again. My turn 3 play is Cudgel Troll - which survives to untap. I probably wouldn't run it out there against red without a spare mana, but all of white's removal will kill it anyway and the only black card in this situation where being able to regenerate would help is Doom Blade – Sickness kills it anyway, and Assassinate can't target it yet. Troll is soon joined by Ember Hauler and I get great mileage out of my tricks giving me an unassailable board advantage. We go to game two, and I side out Volcanic Strength for Thunder Strike - having seen multiple Excommunicates the enchantment seems like a bad idea. Hugh mulls to five on the play and from his expression it isn't a promising five. I trade my threats for his early to maximise the card advantage I get from his mulligans, but I start getting mana flooded. He manages to get back into things with Gravedigger getting back Barony Vampire, but finally I hit a spell – DuskdaleWurm. When my next play is Primeval Titan off the top Hugh scoops it up. It's a nice feeling to win my first match against a – relatively – name player, even if my overall record is still just 2-2.

2-2 (games 6-5)

Round 5: Jonathon Ramos, RG Packmaster

Jonathon is a fun guy who drafted a pretty similar deck to mine, but centred aroundGarruk'sPackleader rather than just fatties. He has at least three Sacred Wolves, and a similar number of both Canyon Minotaurs and Gargoyle Sentinels. Game one is a huge board stall, as he gets an unanswered Packleader and draws half his deck, laying down infinite 3/x guys. On my side I have Cudgel Troll and DuskdaleWurm amongst others, leaving us deadlocked. He finds a solution before I do in Whispersilk Cloak, and his cloaked up Packleader starts beating down. I knock him to 7 with my Wurm and have two draw steps to find Volcanic Strength for the win but it doesn't happen, and Cloak goes all the way. I side in my other Strength for Plummet and this game goes to plan, on the play I have turn 3 Obstinate Baloth and turn 4 I put Strength on it. Bang, bang, bang, simple as that. Off to game 3 and though our decks seem evenly matched, mine hates me and Jonathon's loves him. I mulligan down to the terrible Mountain, Mountain, Forest, Forest, Primeval Titan and hope to draw some cheap defence. Jon keeps Mountain, Mountain, Llanowar Elf, GarrukWildspeaker and three bear type creatures on the play, and the lucky SOB draws the forest on his second turn. Turn three Garruk while I am doing nothing turns into 20+ damage by turn 5. At least I have a bad beats story to tell. Green/Red seems to be a very strong colour combination based on our two decks and I make a note to force green if possible in draft 2.

2-3 (7-7 games)

Round 6: Sam, UB Control

I haven't laughed as much as I did playing Sam for ages, he is a crack up. I was glad to see him top 8 Sunday's PTQ as I'd rather play against jokers than serious competitors any day. Unfortunately his deck seems pretty bad, though he does have Stabbing Pain for my T1 Elf in the first game. From there though I play lands and fatties and his Bloodthrone Vampire and Black Knight are simply outclassed. For game 2 I side out the Swamp and Doom Blade, and my notes say "Sam – 15 (Wurm)" which I assume is of the Spined variety, and then "win – Titan, YaviWurm, Duskdale" in barely legible scrawl. I was pretty pleased to pull even ahead of draft 2 and Sam took it all in his stride.

3-3 (9-7 games)

Draft 2

My plan to both force green and raredraft gets off to a good start when I open Fauna Shaman pack one. I snaffle it and take a second pick Shiv's Embrace, one of the only good cards from my Friday night draft deck, but from there I get drawn into white by Wild Griffin and Squadron Hawk. I pick up three Infantry Veterans and plenty of Bears but only one additional Hawk, and my deck is looking wobbly until I get an Acidic Slime and a Serra Angel pack 3. I picked the Serra over Angelic Arbiter, because I was expecting to play only 16 lands with my low curve, but I'm not 100% sure this was correct. Either way I was fairly satisfied with the following, which had a bomb and a way to tutor for it as well as some white sligh style aggro as advocated on Mananation a couple of weeks ago.

"Draft 2"

• Lands (16)
• 9 Plains
• 7 Forest

• Creatures (18)
• 1 Elite Vanguard
• 3 Infantry Veteran
• 2 Squadron Hawk
• 1 Silvercoat Lion
• 1 Runeclaw Bear
• 1 Fauna Shaman
• 1 Stormfront Pegasus
• 1 War Priest of Thune
• 1 Wild Griffin
• 1 Roc Egg
• 1 Brindle Boar
• 1 Sacred Wolf
• 1 Prized Unicorn
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Serra Angel

• Spells (6)
• 1 Giant Growth
• 1 Plummet
• 1 Pacifism
• 1 Cultivate
• 2 Inspired Charge

• Sideboard (18)
• 1 Fog
• 1 Dryad's Favor
• 1 Wall of Vines
• 1 Runeclear Bear
• 1 Naturalize
• 1 Silvercoat Lion
• 1 Solemn Offering
• 1 Pyretic Ritual
• 1 Fiery Hellhound
• 1 Shiv's Embrace
• 1 Lava Axe
• 1 Nether Horror
• 1 Alluring Siren
• 1 Jace's Erasure
• 1 Wall of Frost
• 1 Leyline of Anticipation
• 1 Traumatize
• 1 Temple Bell

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My Round 7 opponent was another familiar name, Dan Unwin, though I can't place exactly where I know the name from.

Round 7: Dan Unwin, BW Removal

I am a bit fuzzy on the plays of this match as I dove straight into IRONMAN SEALED rather than elaborating on my notes. I know Dan used his plentiful 3 mana removal on my 1 mana threats, and I won the race at 5 life. Game 2 is once again a race, Dan's Howling Banshee vs my weenies. I remember misplaying at one point, Fauna Shamaning away a Wild Griffin to get something mediocre because my Serra Angel had already been found and eaten a Doom Blade. Fortunately I get in enough damage that I can Inspired Charge for the win and end the day with a winning record.

4-3 (11-7 games)

The aforementioned Ironman Sealed is a side event, where you get a pack each of ZEN, WWK and ROE and have to make a thirty card deck, and games start at thirty life. Each round is a single game only, so there's no such thing as a sideboard. Besides these unusual twists the real difference is that every card that gets exiled or put in the graveyard gets physically destroyed. Fortunately you don't have to play every card you get – I opened the terrible in the format but pretty valuable Abyssal Persecutor and tucked it away in my binder. One guy cracked a Jace as well, but he didn't play it. In my first game I am playing Bant colour evasion vs Matt Laidley's UW deck, and my favourite play is Cancelling his Hedron Crab – mill is pretty great in this format, in case you hadn't guessed. Though I love the JesperEjsing art on Crab I gleefully watched Matt tear it into four. Our game went on for ever, as my board was held back by his Umara Raptor with Kitesail and some +1/+2 enchantment but equally he couldn't attack. Eventually he realised his card drawing spells would see him deck himself sooner than I would and he tried to go on the attack, but I finally drew a Forest for my Might of the Masses and alpha-striked for the win.

Before round 2 all the winners got an M11 pack to add to their sealed decks, I didn't get anything too spicy in mine but I did beef up the green to replace the blie cards that had been destroyed. Another guy opposite me got a Mitotic Slime which everyone agreed was the most flavourful card for the format – tear it into 2 for the tokens, then tear those into 4 for stage 3. Round 2 I played Paul Holtzman from Perth, who in round 1 had played a Hedron Crab followed by a fetchland, which he merrily tore up to mill his opponent 6. Truly an Ironman! The other sweet card to be destroyed was a foil NovablastWurm which got milled – it is surprisingly hard to tear up foils, we found out the hard way. Against me Paul opened on Jace's Erasure which seems equally nasty, but I topdecked a Back to Nature before it could do me any harm and the powerful enchantment got shredded. After that though it was all Paul, whose UB deck featured Liliana and other such nasties and totally creamed me. After Ironman it was back to the hotel for Jay and Baz to test for their PTQ the following day, I had decided I wasn't up for PTQing no matter how I went in round 8, as one of my Perth ex-pat buddies living in Canberra had offered to take me out for lunch if I scrubbed out.

Sunday

Hitting day 2 of Nationals still just alive was better than I'd expected to manage – I'd done minimal testing and it showed in my constructed results, while I'd done one draft prior to the tournament and I'm far from a limited expert. With around 50 guys still in it I headed off to find my Round 8 opponent, two time Australian champ Tim He.

Round 8: Tim He, UBr control

Tim was one of those serious guys I'm not such a fan of playing against, so we get straight down to business. He gets ticked off by a judge for using the back of the game slip for life totals, though nothing formal. In fact both I and my opponents have avoided the judges' attention all tournament, which is a relief. Game one, Tim kills my first few creatures, including Fauna Shaman, but eventually I stick a Squadron Hawk and some bears and beat him down to 11. At that point he lands his fatties, Rotting Legion and Harbor Serpent, which hold down the ground. From there he draws 6 extra cards with Strongbox (first flip) and Jace's Ingenuity, and uses Diabolic Tutor to get Sword of Vengeance and break the stalemate. He eventually alpha strikes with Serpent, Legion, Phantom Beast and a Barony Vampire carrying the sword. I lose my board to blocks and scoop after my draw step. Game 2 I side in Solemn Offering and Naturalize, Sword is just that good. I start the beatdown early with Vanguard, Hawk and War Priest but he starts bashing me back with Rotting Legion. He has Phantom Beast but doesn't attack as my Infantry Veteran can kill it as soon as it does. Unfortunately he has enough removal to keep up with my additional creatures so that the Inspired Charge I'm holding is never quite lethal, and I die to a tutored Fireball with Tim at 6.

4-4 (11-9 games)

At 4-4 and out of contention I drop and go and get my suitcases as Baz and I are staying another night, but moving hotels. I am pretty satisfied with that record against some of the best players in the country, and more importantly I have had a great time playing cards and met some great players and fun people.

I head out for lunch and get back to the venue mid-afternoon, then upstairs to start working on this very report. Baz and Jay burst in to resleeveBaz' deck at one stage, after his opponent called a judge on him. They are doing great in the PTQ, and both end up 6-2 just out of top 8 contention. Play of the Day goes to Baz, piloting Next Level Mythic – they are deep into game 2 and he is at 6 against his opponent with double Valakut, but he has Sovereigns in play. His opponent Bloodbraids and a Rampant Growth will kill Baz, but he hits a creature instead and Baz rips a second Sovereigns off the top, plays it, and attacks fetching double Conscription to kill his opponent out of nowhere. While they are finishing up the PTQ I decide on the spur of the moment to start tweeting coverage (@rtassicker) of the semis, where Jeremy Neeman beats Edwin Jones while Adam Witton beats Ian Wood.

The two ramp decks face off in the finals and Witton trounces Neeman, 3-0, finally bringing his undefeated run to an end at the last hurdle. While Witton gets the first place trophy both of these guys are champions and Australia will have a strong team to take to Chiba. Commiserations to Perth guys Chris Mofflin, whose promising 5-1 start foundered in the drafts, and Luke Williams who finished just out of the 8. The last thing I see before I head upstairs to crash into bed is Wei Bien still playing cards. He played in our practice draft Friday, In the main event Saturday, in the PTQ Sunday and even after the PTQ he is still battling with Jund, as another guy says his Naya deck can't lose the matchup. This is a guy who really loves the game and I was glad to have the chance to meet him and talk shop.

Final Thoughts

A few final thoughts on both my standard deck and M11 draft before I go. RDW was definitely the wrong choice for this metagame, at least my build with the Earthquakes and full sets of Forked Bolt and Flame Slash. Mythic was much less popular than it has been, and there were far more UW and Titan decks to worry about. If I were to play this deck in the tournament again I would swap some mix of removal, especially Quake, for four maindeckRuinblasters. In draft, Green seems like the strongest colour due to its great creatures at common, while Red is weak as a main colour due to the opposite. The other colours all seem fine as main or splash with UW, RG and mono-black seeming like very strong combinations to move in to. Quag Sickness is completely insane as it is like a cheaper, sorcery Tendrils. If I were monoblack I would take Sickness over Doom Blade. Shiv's Embrace is also super powerful, despite being an aura it is a bit like having Elspeth on your team using her second ability over and over. Rotting Legion is also way better than it looks at first – forget the drawback, it is a 4/5 for 5 which is one of the most efficient big creatures at common.

And with that I am going to say goodbye for a while. It's time for me to take a break from the competitive side of the game, which also means a break from writing. I won't be away from the game entirely but I will be more likely playing casual decks with my buddies on Sunday night than I will testing different Titan lists. I will still be around on twitter and following what everyone else is writing, but other parts of my life are demanding an increasing amount of attention which means I can't afford the time to test, brew and write. Thanks for reading these past six months, you guys made it all worthwhile.