Grand Prix DC's tournament proved quite major with it being a scramble for players to get their much needed pro points for the season as well as many Americans trying to find a way to qualify for Nationals through rating in one last try.

We start off the festivities with Grand Prix: Washington DC with the recently changed standard format. A month ago the standard format was all about Jund and only Jund. Everybody tried as hard as they could to beat it, but with no success. Recently the format switched to a much more control based format with the new Plainswalker deck becoming the deck to beat and from there we are back at square one. All new decks are liable to show up at this tournament and even some new variations of some old decks.

In my testing for the format I started off wanting to play a blue/white control deck which had around a 50/50 with Jund but a really good match up against Planeswalkers. After a week of testing with that deck I was shown the deck list for “Geo-Jund.” After a week of testing the deck I decided to play it in the Florida National Qualifiers and went 6-1-1 and locked in one of the 8 invitation slots. The deck list that I played was as followed:

Geo-Jund

[cardlist]4 Putrid Leech

4 Plated Geopede

4 Sprouting Thrinax

2 Borderland Ranger

4 Bloodbraid Elf

4 Seige-Gang Commander

2 Lightning Bolt

4 Maelstrom Pulse

4 Blightning

2 Sarkhan the Mad

4 Raging Ravine

4 Savage Lands

4 Verdant Catacombs

2 Terramorphic Expanse

2 Evolving Wilds

1 Scalding Tarn

3 Forrest

3 Swamp

3 Mountain

Sideboard

4 Duress

4 Doom Blade

2 Lightning Bolt

4 Sedraxis Specter

1 Island[/cardlist]

The deck is nearly identical to the posted list on MTGO but with the addition of Sarkhan the Mad and also a modified sideboard. With my success in the Nationals Qualifier, I didn't see much that I needed to change, but right before decklists were corrected, my friend told me that a huge part of the field was going to be Naya and Bant and that a great card to add to the sideboard was Jund Charm. So I ended up taking out 1 Duress and 1 Doom Blade for 2 Jund Charm and I was ready to battle.

With 1930 people showing up to the tournament in our nations capital for the Grand Prix the first 2 rounds took much longer than expected and I had about a 4 hour break before my round 3 started. I did a short interview with Trick and was off to battle. Here are some brief overviews of how some of the important/good matches went for me and some notes that I took on them.

Round 3 - Chris Sweetapple with U/W Borderpost Control

Game 1

He played an early Elspeth which gummed up the ground for a few turns, but with him not drawing a Day of Judgment the entire game the Jund deck easily got total board advantage and once Elspeth was dealt with I quickly got his life down to 0 within an attack or 2

1-0

Game 2

My sideboard plan against this deck is to bring in as much hand removal as possible to take away all of their resources and then kill them with a single Siege-Gang Commander. This plan worked perfectly with the help of a Duress, multiple Blightning and an early Sedraxis Specter. He did end up top decking into 2 Baneslayer Angel, but I was holding a few extra Doom blade for those and the game ended and an overwhelming manner.

Result : 2-0

Round 6 (record was 5-0) - Tomoharu Saito - Super Friends

Game 1

This was a perfect example of how this match should go, Saito played a half a dozen planeswalkers and my Jund deck dealt with them one at a time until he had run out of gas and a Siege-Gang Commander took control of the game and killed him.

1-0

Game 2

This was a prime example of another way this match can go. He had an early Spreading Seas on my only red source, played a Jace, got card advantage, resolved a Baneslayer Angel and I was dead 2 turns after due to the insurmountable card advantage and also to the fact that I couldn't cast a spell.

1-1

Game 3

This game was an example of a less than professional player (me) getting star struck and making bad decisions because they let their head overthink things. I had looked at my opening 7 cards which included 2 Verdant Catacomb, 1 Swamp, 2 Maelstrom Pulse, 1 Doom blade and 1 Siege-Gang Commander and I instantly kept because I could cast nearly all of my spells. Seconds after I kept I realized what I had done and realized that I not only didn't have any red sources in my hand, I also didn't really have a way to win the game. After this disastrous decision, the game played out as was to be expected. I didn't get to play a red source all game and he overran me with both card advantage as well as board position.

Result 1-2

With a loss in round 7 of the day also, I had my back up against the wall and needed to win both round 8 and 9 if I wanted to continue to day 2 of the tournament.

After an easy win in round 8 where my Jund opponent got land screwed in games 1 and 3, it was onto the deciding round 9 match. I played a friend of a friend from Philly named John Kolos. But when it comes down to elimination time, there are no friendships. We both had a lot riding on this match. I would not expect it to be anything other than the most exciting match of the weekend for myself, with one of the best possible plays that I could have of hoped for.

Here are some of the highlights.

Round 9 - John Kolos - Bant Conscription

Game 1

There wasn't much happening in it, I was land screwed after a mulligan to 6 and he played a perfect turn 4 Sovereign to which I promptly conceded. I just had no answers in my deck for that card.

0-1

Game 2

As much as game 1 was a total blowout, game 2 was one of the closest games I had played all day. Both of us were on the aggressive play and the life totals were very close, I ended up getting a very lucky top deck of a Sarkhan the Mad and got the last few points of damage through with a dragon.

1-1

With a berth in day 2 riding on a single game the tension was high and both of us were trying to hold back an immense amount of anxiety.

Game 3

It couldn't have of started out worse for me, on the play I had to double mulligan, which is nearly the worst thing that a Jund deck can do. The game started out with a turn 2 Bolt on a Noble Hierarch after he had cast a Knight of the Reliquary (I should have of bolted the Hierarch on my turn 2 so that he couldn't cast his Knight in the first place.) My turn 3 was a Sprouting Thrinax and then his turn 3 game gave him a tapped land and nothing else. I played a 2nd Thrinax on my turn 4 and passed back not being able to attack into his large and active Knight. His turn 4 saw a 2nd copy of Knight of the Reliquary, but no 4th land. My turn 5 was game changing. My play was to attack both of my Thrinax's into his Knights, he played right into my trap and blocked a Thrinax with each Knight. I put 6 Saproling tokens into play and then cast Jund Charm with the ability to remove his graveyard from the game. After he had read the cards in play and the Jund Charm and also asking a brief question to a judge, he eventually removed his graveyard and promptly putting both of his, now 2/2, Knight of the Reliquary's, both with a lethal 3 damage on them, into the graveyard. From there my 6 Saprolings took his life down quickly and ended up killing him thanks to a timely Blightning for lethal. Onto day 2!

Result 2-1

My day two started off playing people from Cool Stuff Games in Orlando in both rounds 10 and 11 in the form of David Sharfman and William "Billy" Postlethwait (current WoW TCG World Champion.) Both of them were playing original Jund and as are most Jund mirrors, both games were severely uneventful and rather unexciting. A win vs. Sharfman and a loss to Billy brought me up to another Jund mirror in round 12 but with a small twist. Here is a summery of that match.

Round 12 (Record 8-3) - Robert Pambianchi with Big Jund

Game 1

This game started out as a normal Jund on Jund mirror with us both playing turn 2 Putrid Leech and Turn 3 Sprouting Thrinax. On his turn 4 though, he switched it up old school and played a Garruk Wildspeaker which hasn't seen play in quite a while in the Jund deck. He untapped 2 lands and passed back to me with my turn 4 Bloodbraid Elf into a Putrid Leech. My all out attack on his Garruk was stopped by trading of the Thrinax's and Leechs and with him using his 2 untapped mana to terminate my Bloodbraid Elf. His Garruk retained his 4 counters and on his turn 5 saw another Jund legend in a Broodmate Dragon. A Maelstrom Pulse on the token game me some extra time in the game but his turn 6 gave him some more dragons in the form of a second Broodmate Dragon and the game was over quickly after that.

0-1

Game 2

A fairly unexciting game with a slow start for him and a double Blightning set him too far back to catch up against my faster version of Jund. He didn't put up much of a fight and the only damage dealt to me was from my own Putrid Leech.

1-1

Game 3

With the bigger but slower deck being on the play, Big Jund had some time to get back in the game but it couldn't beat my perfect Jund draw of turn 2 Leech, turn 3 Blightning, Turn 4 Bloodbraid Elf into Thrinax. He ended up putting some extra pressure on me, but he messing up at the end of the game when I put an all out attack on him and he over thought. He took around 2 minutes off of the clock at 3 life trying to figure out how to win and to also see if he could kill me. I thought about calling over a judge for slow play, but realized by his expression that all of the thinking was going to mess him up more than help him because there was only 1 way to block and still live. He ended up somehow letting 1 Saproling through and for some reason pumping his own Putrid Leech to kill himself. Once he realized once he had done he asked for a mercy take back and when I wouldn't give it to him, he scooped up his cards and just shook his head in disappointment.

2-1

With a loss in round 13 against the mirror and a win in round 14 against Blue/White Control, I was paired against one of the hardest known match ups for Jund in the form of Naya.

Round 15 (record 10-4) - J. T. Henricks - Naya

Game 1

This game ended up being a long drawn out game with both of us having answers to everything our opponent played. The game ended up coming down to a Raging Ravine battle where I was just a slight bit ahead of him the entire game end ended up with a 8/8 Ravine which dealt the final blow.

1-0

Game 2

I kept a slightly weak hand combined with a Goblin Ruinblaster from him to kill my only red source kept me completely out of the game and I ended up losing to a Behemoth Sledge.

1-1

Game 3

This game on the board and on paper looked like it was a very close game, we both put threats out on the board and looked like at any time we could explode and just kill the other person on an attack, but the game was in my favor having extra cards in hand an a bit of a faster start then him. It ended up coming down to a 6/6 Raging Ravine being a virtual Abyss against my opponent and he couldn't come back.

2-1

With 2 rounds to go and a record of 11-4 I had to win both of my rounds to place in the money and after a win in the 16th round against my Blue/White control opponent who played a total of 7 Spreading Seas in the match, I only needed one more round to make some money. I ended up getting paired against Tzu Ching C. Kuo playing with Superfreinds. We did a prize split, but after an uneventful match of Tzu dominating me with a 2-0 win, I ended up finishing with a record of 12-5.

My opponent in the last round ended up getting Top 32 and I ended up with a disappointing 66th place finish just out of the money.

After a grueling weekend of 17 rounds of magic and very little sleep I walked away with $200 extra in my pocket and a lot of Higher Level Magic experience going into my next weekend with the Pro Tour coming up. As far as the format and my specific deck, I got a huge grasp on what to expect in the format and the changes that I would recommend changing of the deck. As my losses were to 3 Jund decks, and 2 Planeswalkers decks, it was quite clear that the deck needed some slight changes in the form of sideboard plans against these 2 decks. I found that the Sedraxis Specter in the sideboard were useful, but I think they may have of taken up too many slots and cards like Terminate or Goblin Ruinblaster may be better fillers for that slot as I feel that they do a huge amount more then the Specters.

Going into the PTQ season of Standard, I would make sure that you can beat both Superfriends and Jund quite frequently and test those matchups as much as possible to know what you are doing.