Hey there! Sorry for not writing much during the last few weeks. At the beginning of May, I was very busy with school, and then it was time to prepare for Pro Tour Dragon’s Maze in San Diego. This week, I’ll be writing about what I learned at the Pro Tour along with some thoughts about the previous Pro Season.

First off, the Pro Tour did not go well for me. Yet again, I did not make Day 2, making it three for three this season. Of us four Finns that who travelling together, only one made it to the second day, but Saturday did not go all that well for him. I feel we were well-prepared for the event and that I didn’t make any huge misplays, so I would say I was running a bit below average.

Limited

My four first picks were Krasis Incubation and three Beetleform Mages, so it was a very solid start. Beetleform Mage is, in my opinion, the best common in Dragon’s Maze—and super-powerful. I was not all that excited being Simic, as it is one of the weaker guilds, but I figured that if I would just get the goods in pack two, I would have around eighteen playables going into Return the Ravnica. I would then just need to pick up some random Runewings and Drudge Beetles. However, Gatecrash was almost a total blank for me, and only six cards from Gatecrash ended up in my deck. This was very strange, as Simic was open in the first pack, so I figured that either someone had switched or then the packs that we opened were very dry. Here is the deck I ended up with.

"Simic"

• Creatures (14)
• 1 Cloudfin Raptor
• 1 Disciple of the Old Ways
• 1 Faerie Impostor
• 1 Murmuring Phantasm
• 1 Nimbus Swimmer
• 1 Rubbleback Rhino
• 1 Stonefare Crocodile
• 1 Towering Indrik
• 1 Zameck Guildmage
• 2 Voidwielder
• 3 Beetleform Mage

• Spells (9)
• 1 Burst of Strength
• 1 Downsize
• 1 Spell Rupture
• 1 Totally Lost
• 1 Inaction Injunction
• 1 Miming Slime
• 2 Phytoburst
• 1 Krasis Incubation

• Lands (17)
• 8 Forest
• 8 Island
• 1 Simic Guildgate

Buy This Deck

If the Gatecrash booster would have been anywhere near normal, this would have been a very good Draft deck, but instead, this was something I was hoping to go 2–1 with, and 1–2 felt realistic. I got some criticism from friends for playing Downsize, but it was awesome all day, as I mainly wanted to race with my Beetleform Mages and various other guys.

Game 3 was the most interactive game of Limited I’ve played in over a year, with hundreds of different decisions taking place. My opponent had a quick start with some flyers while I stumbled a bit, missing some land drops. I had a Beetleform Mage to hold off his attackers, but that meant I needed to keep 2 mana available, thus slowing down my board development. All this time, I had Zameck Guildmage in play, so that mana was very important. I thought I had set up a very intricate line of play that included bouncing and detaining my opponent’s creatures during a three-turn span, but unfortunately, my opponent had Aetherize and was able to attack me for lethal with some unblockable creatures. I am fairly sure I could have won with an alternative line of play, but as I mentioned, it was a highly complex game, and I could probably spend hours analyzing it. Unfortunately, in a competitive setting, you don’t have hours.

Constructed

For Constructed, I sleeved up the following beauty.

"Mono-Red"

• Creatures (36)
• 4 Ash Zealot
• 4 Boros Reckoner
• 4 Burning-Tree Emissary
• 4 Firefist Striker
• 4 Foundry Street Denizen
• 4 Gore-House Chainwalker
• 4 Legion Loyalist
• 4 Rakdos Cackler
• 4 Rubblebelt Maaka

• Spells (5)
• 3 Dynacharge
• 2 Civic Saber

• Lands (19)
• 19 Mountain

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Frostburn Weird
• 3 Skullcrack
• 3 Mizzium Mortars
• 3 Mugging
• 1 Civic Saber
• 1 Act of Treason

Buy This Deck

We felt that it was a solid deck choice that was able to punish opponents who stumbled—as well as some of the slower decks in general. Against anything else, it had a decent shot, and your nut draws would always be better than your opponent’s nut draws. We thought Esper would be the most popular deck and that people would be playing Maze's End decks to beat it, so that game us some more decks to prey on. Regarding the list, I think it was very close to optimal, with Rubblebelt Maaka being totally awesome and not seeing much play on Magic Online before the Pro Tour.

I still think the deck choice was a fine one even though I would have had a more enjoyable time playing the Maze's End Bant deck, as I think it would have had roughly the same estimated win percentage. Mono-red didn’t have all that much play to it, and you were at the mercy of your draws in most games. I had been tuning the Maze's End Bant deck for almost two weeks prior to the start of the Pro Tour, but the evening before the event, I got “the fear.” I was afraid people would be prepared for Maze's End and run dedicated hate cards. I was also afraid of incidental hate from Esper decks in the form of Psychic Strike and Nightveil Specter. As the deck only ran one of each Guildgate, having one milled meant you could no longer win via Maze's End but instead had to win with Aetherling. As it turned out, not many people were playing any sort of hate, so the deck would probably have been a fine choice. The lesson learned here is that you should not always second-guess your choices or be too many steps ahead of the field.

All in all, I don’t think there were any decks we really missed during testing, as nothing we saw at the Pro Tour or in the coverage really managed to surprise us. I talked to some other people after the event, and I was very surprised they had not expected cards such as Saruli Gatekeepers and Agoraphobia. The only deck we would have wanted to actively spend more time testing was a Junk variant that we put together the day before the Pro Tour. It seemed promising, but we never actually had the time to properly test it, so we discarded the idea. However, in our limited testing, it seemed to beat Esper very handily, so it might have been a very good choice for the event.

Seasons Past, Seasons Future

Having more European events in the near future is very nice, as it means I will need to take less time off work and school, and I will not have to spend over twenty hours travelling to an event. I hope the undisclosed location in Europe next February will be a sweet one!

I had my first Grand Prix Top 8 this season, and I was very happy with that—even though I played suboptimally in the Top 8. I hope I will earn some more GP Top 8s this coming season—for example in Gothenburg next week! Our performance at the first World Magic Cup was also very solid, finishing in ninth place, with several teams in the Top 8 of that event actually having fewer points than we did (funny how that works out). Our team is looking very promising this year as well, with Sami Haeggkvist staying around from last year, so I hope we can make it all the way to Sunday this time around.

Signing Off

I hope you enjoyed my ramblings about the Pro Tours and topics related to it. Next week, I will try to write about something more closely related to Magic and feature some more interesting formats than Block Constructed. As always, if you have any thoughts, ideas, suggestions, or comments, be sure to let me know either via Twitter or the comments section below.

Thanks for reading,

Max

@thebloom_ on Twitter

Maxx on Magic Online

You can find my music on: http://soundcloud.com/bloomlive