Part 1 of this report ended with us just having made Day 2 in twenty-first place. We were happy about this since trying to make Day 2 had made us way more nervous than we would have thought. Our decks for the Team Constructed portion were all set, and we were missing just a few sideboard cards that we had to pick up from the dealers. That is, if we even made it that far.

This doesn’t mean that all pools are equal in any way, as the previous time I played Team Sealed, we opened a pool with just a couple of removal spells and six unplayable rares. The hits included such cards as Gilded Lotus, Door to Nothingness, Boundless Realms, Battle of Wits, Dragonskull Summit, Glacial Fortress, and some other stuff I can’t remember. Not exactly the bombs you would want to open. During that Sealed, we had difficulties building, and we used most of the sixty minutes to decide on what ultimately became a R/G ramp deck, a U/B control deck, and a W/B exalted deck. One of the sweeter decks you can build in Team Sealed but not really in normal Sealed is the dedicated mill deck, as demonstrated by the US team. I think you need at least three Mind Sculpts to make this deck work in addition to some decent control cards and Archaeomancers.

Open ’Em Up

We sat down on Saturday morning to open our boosters and were feeling a bit nervous, hoping to open an insane pool since we needed such a good record to advance. It was a bit of a funny feeling sitting at what was basically a Pro-Tour-level event opening a Sealed pool, as it’s not something I’ve done before.

The pool we opened seemed bad at first, with many unplayable rares. The only good rares were Cathedral of War, Stormtide Leviathan, and Yeva, Nature's Herald. However, the uncommons and commons were much better than in the previous Team Sealed that I had played, so there was some hope for us. We ended up with a B/G dinosaurs deck, a U/R flyers deck, and a W/B deck featuring a lot of exalted creatures and some synergies with token producers and Bloodthrone Vampire. I ended up playing the U/R deck, which looked like this.

"Blue and Red M13 Flyers"

• Creatures (11)
• 1 Archaeomancer
• 1 Faerie Invaders
• 1 Fire Elemental
• 1 Fog Bank
• 1 Furnace Whelp
• 1 Kraken Hatchling
• 1 Stormtide Leviathan
• 1 Watercourser
• 1 Welkin Tern
• 2 Wind Drake

• Spells (12)
• 2 Essence Scatter
• 2 Searing Spear
• 1 Switcheroo
• 1 Turn to Slag
• 2 Divination
• 2 Talrand's Invocation
• 1 Encrust
• 1 Ring of Evos Isle

• Lands (17)
• 7 Mountain
• 9 Island
• 1 Evolving Wilds

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The general plan was to win with flyers while keeping the ground locked down with Kraken Hatchling, Fog Bank, and the various removal spells. The deck was a bit awkward, with some cards being very good while others felt like filler. Among some of the nice commons we opened were six Volcanic Strengths and four Craterizes, so the red playables were not very deep.

One awkward point was when Ajani was on 8 counters in one of the games and I was attacking it with a 2/2 creature. My opponent played Safe Passage, and I just slumped in my chair, as I thought this meant Ajani was going ultimate next turn. Luckily for me, I actually thought it through and reread the Safe Passage. What it actually did was nothing, as it only prevents damage done to you, so my opponent basically just paid 3 mana and discarded a card. Game 3 was the decider of the whole match, so it brought an extra element of pressure. Even though I feel that I play just fine under pressure and when people are watching, the fact that the rest of my team and the opposing team were all concentrating on my game still made me a bit nervous.

In the second round, we played against Slovenia, and my opponent had a beefy B/G deck. This should be a very good matchup for me, especially since I didn’t see very many Spiders on the other side of the board. Spells such as Essence Scatter become a lot better when your opponent is spending 5 or 6 mana on his creatures and not casting bears.

Winning the second match eventually meant that we were locked, as the other matches had gone favorably for us. We played against the Norwegian team during the next round, and they asked for our concession, but we couldn’t quite give it, as the points were still very important. The games ended up being a bit unexciting, and I dispatched my slightly mana-screwed opponent quickly. We ended up winning the match, sweeping the pod.

Three in a Row

Team Constructed was up next, and we were again seeded as third in our pod, meaning we had to win at least two matches and preferably three. We had already decided on Delver in Standard, R/U/G Delver in Modern, and R/W/U miracles in Block Constructed. I included the lists in Part 1 of this report, but here they are again for reference.

"Delver"

• Creatures (14)
• 4 Delver of Secrets
• 4 Snapcaster Mage
• 4 Tarmogoyf
• 2 Vendilion Clique

• Spells (25)
• 1 Electrolyze
• 1 Spell Pierce
• 2 Burst Lightning
• 2 Cryptic Command
• 2 Deprive
• 2 Spell Snare
• 3 Mana Leak
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 2 Gitaxian Probe
• 4 Serum Visions
• 2 Vedalken Shackles

• Lands (21)
• 1 Forest
• 1 Mountain
• 6 Island
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 2 Breeding Pool
• 2 Steam Vents
• 4 Misty Rainforest
• 4 Scalding Tarn

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Ancient Grudge
• 3 Blood Moon
• 1 Combust
• 3 Huntmaster of the Fells
• 1 Negate
• 2 Phantasmal Image
• 1 Relic of Progenitus
• 1 Spell Pierce
• 1 Threads of Disloyalty

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R/U/G Delver seemed to be quite a good deck even though it was not doing anything absurdly powerful, and I had a very strong record with it online. One of the tougher matchups is the R/G Tron deck that is popular online but not very well represented in live tournaments. The Blood Moons in the sideboard are usually enough to buy you the turn or two you need to win, but they are in no way a lock since your opponent can just play and use Oblivion Stone to get rid of any number of Blood Moons. Huntmaster of the Fells feels much better in Modern than in Standard, as the creature decks in Modern don’t try to go big, they just try to barely get there. The R/U/G Delver and R/W/U Delver matchups usually come down to just killing every creature in play, and Huntmaster is really good here since he gives you two bodies an opponent has to kill. He is also awesome against Affinity, Jund, and most of the other fair decks. The rest of the sideboard tried to address some of the other problems, such as Phantasmal Image for Geist of Saint Traft and a couple of counters for the combo decks.

"R/W/U Miracles"

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 2 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage

• Spells (31)
• 1 Dissipate
• 4 Feeling of Dread
• 4 Think Twice
• 4 Thought Scour
• 1 Bonfire of the Damned
• 2 Rolling Temblor
• 4 Entreat the Angels
• 4 Temporal Mastery
• 4 Terminus
• 3 Vessel of Endless Rest

• Lands (27)
• 1 Mountain
• 5 Plains
• 7 Island
• 2 Desolate Lighthouse
• 4 Clifftop Retreat
• 4 Evolving Wilds
• 4 Sulfur Falls

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Dissipate
• 3 Pillar of Flame
• 2 Geist of Saint Traft
• 2 Lone Revenant
• 1 Curse of Echoes
• 1 Devil's Play
• 1 Purify the Grave
• 1 Witchbane Orb
• 1 Zealous Conscripts

Buy This Deck

The miracle deck was our way to avoid the Bonfire of the Damned wars going on between creature decks. It turned out that you can sometimes have problems winning against decks with Bonfire if an opponent makes it to 9 mana, as your Angels might not stick around. Opponents usually have one Bonfire in hand that he has drawn early on in the game that he has not been able to cast, but in most situations, Bonfire is just a strictly worse Devil's Play. I decided on the original list quite early, but we made some alterations even just a few minutes before the tournament started, such as adding the one Dissipate main and the Curse of Echoes to the sideboard. I’ve played against Curse of Echoes online a few times, and winning through that without Witchbane Orb is nearly impossible, so I wanted one in the sideboard for the mirror and against Grixis control. Some of the sideboard slots such as the Zealous Conscripts and the Devil's Play are a bit random, but the good sideboard cards just ran out, and I wanted a little bit of flexibility.

The way the matches played out, I played against Jund twice and Humans reanimator once. The first match against Jund went quite well, as I won Game 1 with the main-decked Dissipate and locked my opponent out in Game 2. The lock consisted of Witchbane Orb, a Tamiyo, the Moon Sage emblem, and a Dissipate. It’s not very often that I have been able to cast Ancestral Recall multiple times a turn, but it’s quite a good feeling. The only thing you need to do is wait a couple of turns with Tamiyo in play and have a Thought Scour hanging around. After a bit of Thought Scouring, I found the Dissipate that I needed to lock the game out completely. My opponent conceded soon after that, showing me Appetite for Brains, Devil's Play, and Bonfire of the Damned. Thanks, Witchbane Orb!

In Round 2, my opponent had a game loss from a decklist error, and I managed to play an Entreat the Angels for 2 from my hand and follow it up with a Temporal Mastery just before my opponent was able to combo me out with Angel of Glory's Rise, Fiend Hunter, Falkenrath Aristocrats, and Cathedral Sanctifier. I think this matchup is pretty good after sideboarding, as I have access to four Dissipates, and the Purify the Grave is awesome here as well. However, the first game can be rough with the opponent’s possible combo kill putting you on the defensive in a way that other decks don’t.

My teammates lost both of their respective matches while I was in Game 3, so the result of my match didn’t matter. We still played it out, and I lost in a bit of a strange way, having played and milled four Terminus. I might have won the game somehow, since I played quite loose after I knew the result didn’t matter in any way. The Philippines were also playing Jund in Block Constructed, and afterward, I found out it was an absurdly popular choice. I think this was mainly due to people just picking the deck that had been doing well online recently and not really playing any games. I feel that even though the format is limited by the small card pool, there is still room for many decks, and I don’t think Jund is in any way the best deck. The miracle control deck has a good Jund matchup, and I would happily play it in the field again; it felt as though there were not very many bad matchups for me in the room.

Ninth . . . Now What?

The fact that the tiebreakers were so brutal was also a bit disappointing. I know that you have to resolve ties somehow, but it felt that just because Day 1 didn’t go all that well for us, we were fighting an uphill battle all of Saturday, and in the Team Constructed portion, the only difference between seeds two and three was how the fourth man finished on Day 1. Had the tiebreakers been used in a Swiss-style tournament, it would have felt better. When you are competing with a larger number of teams, things even out, but as it was just four teams clawing for the two slots, it never really evened out. I never really understood why the Top 32 teams could not just play three rounds of Team Sealed and three rounds of Team Constructed and then cut to Top 8 in the usual Swiss style. If you have any comments or thoughts regarding this, I’d love to hear them.

The mood was pretty gloomy for the rest of the evening, but luckily, we had lost to a form of bad luck and not to someone from our own team screwing up. That would have made the mood unbearable for the rest of the trip. We headed out for dinner and had planned to visit a few bars, but we ended up just heading to bed since the loss took a toll on everyone.

We then went for another four-man battle against an infinite stream of meats at Fogo, and we ended up being beaten pretty handily. It’s always nice knowing there is a Fogo or TDB at Pro Tour and Grand Prix locations, as we have our fair share of fine dining in Helsinki, but three are not really that many places for good meat. Our plan for adjusting our sleep schedule was to not sleep at all on Sunday night and then sleep on the flight from New York to Helsinki. We managed quite well, only sleeping for a couple of hours after we had been to a couple of local bars and done a four-person Draft after last call.

We left for Helsinki via New York around noon on Monday, and according to our driver, we had not missed out on much in Indy even though we had only seen the convention center, the Circle Center Mall, and a few blocks around the area. After thirteen hours of travel and two slices of very bad pizza at JFK, I was finally home, with about twenty-four hours to recuperate before starting my new job.

My next Magic-related trip will probably be to GP: San Juan and PT: Seattle in October, as I’ll probably have to skip GP: Moscow to make the US trip happen. My gaming is also in a bit of hibernation now, as I’m not too keen on Magic 2013 Draft or Standard on Magic Online. Things will really heat up when Return to Ravnica spoilers start coming in and I get to brew new decks for Modern. If you have any topics you would like to hear more about, be sure to hit me up in the comments section or on Twitter, and I’ll try to make as much as possible happen.

Thanks for reading,

Max

@thebloom_ on Twitter

Maxx on Magic Online

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