Hey there! Last week, I wrote about the preparation for Pro Tour Theros and W/U control, the deck I ended up playing. This article will cover the two Drafts along with some interesting stories from the sixteen rounds of play.

First Draft

I won Round 1 against an aggressive black and red deck played by Christopher Norton. His Deathbellow Raiders were not that impressive when staring down Nessian Coursers and Chronicler of Heroes even though he had a fair number of tricks to push them through. In the second Draft, I was paired against Kenny Oeberg. I had hoped we would get to meet each other at 2–0 so that at least one from the team made it to 3–0 the Draft, but that was not to be. I had some very good draws in this match, and my aggressive curve earned me the win.

I was very happy to start out the Draft 2–0 since it’s a long time since I have done well in Pro Tour Drafts—even though I consider myself to be a very good Limited player. Naturally, I feared my next opponent’s deck since mine was in no way incredible—probably closer to a 2–1 deck than to a 3-0 deck. I faced Brock Parker in the finals, and his deck was very good, being the only black drafter at the table. I mulliganed to four in the first game, so that was not really a game, and then in the second game, he had a very slow start and I was able to capitalize. In the third game, I almost got there. He was stuck without a second black mana for a few turns, but I had also skipped some land drops, which meant I couldn’t be as aggressive as I wanted. Once he drew the second Swamp and started dropping Gray Merchant of Asphodels, it was mostly over.

Constructed Day 1

At that point, I was feeling very relieved, as I had guaranteed my place in the second day of play. This would normally not be a huge accomplishment, but during the last year, I failed to make Day 2 at all three Pro Tours, and that was quite a huge blow to my self-confidence. The following round, I was paired against newly-crowned World Magic Cup champion Timothée Simonot, who was playing mono-blue devotion. This should also have been a good matchup for me, but I lost some very close games, each time to Thassa, God of the Sea making creatures unblockable and sneaking through for the last few points of damage. After that, I was paired against Lucas Siow playing G/W, yet another good matchup. I did lose one game to a slight misplay coupled with a large Mistcutter Hydra, but I won the other two games.

After the last round, we headed out for some late dinner and then almost immediately went to bed, as eight of our nine people in the testing group had made it to Day 2. I checked that I would need to go 7–0–1 to make Top 8 and 6–1–1 to make Top 25, which was my main goal, as I was not yet qualified for the Pro Tour in Valencia.

The Second Draft

I played against Narciso Ferreira and his G/W deck in the first round. I won the first game quite handily, and then in the second game, I was trampled by a 5/5 Nessian Courser and an 8/8 Centaur Battlemaster. The funny thing was that even though I was slightly flooded, Insatiable Harpy was able to almost go the whole way; the only thing missing was something to boost its power during an earlier turn. The third game was close, as I got him to a low life total before he started playing huge, green monsters. I drew my second Gods Willing in time and was able to punch through for the last few points of damage.

In the second round of this Draft, I was paired against Wenzel Krautman with a W/U deck. The first game was a very drawn-out affair in which both of us were attacking each other with 5/5 lifelink flyers. He drew a few lands too many, and I managed to scrounge together enough small creatures to eventually turn the race in my favor. The second game was quite uneventful, as he was stuck on only one color of mana and died quite quickly.

It was very disappointing to lose this round, as it meant I was out of Top 8 contention. I was happy that I had gone 2–1 with the Draft deck. However, seeing as none of my opponents had awesome decks either, it wouldn’t actually have been all that unrealistic to go 3–0 with my pile of black and white aggressive creatures. While I was dead for Top 8, I was still very much in it for Top 25, needing to win the four next rounds to be able to take a draw in the last round.

Final Five

Next up was a feature match against Brad Nelson. You can watch the second and third game here. The first game was a very tight affair in which I had to play around two Stormbreath Dragons and a Ghor-Clan Rampager, so it took quite a long time. To make it to this point, there was an interesting situation in which Brad made a misplay that I did not realize until after the game when he mentioned it. He was attacking with two large creatures and used Ghor-Clan Rampager during combat. I had a fair bit of mana but needed to play Sphinx's Revelation for less than the full amount to survive, leaving up one white and one blue mana along with the Syncopate in my hand. I didn’t draw an Azorius Charm, so I was very afraid of just dying. Brad used Scavening Ooze, leaving up 2 mana, so I was able to counter the Flesh // Blood he played with Syncopate for 1. Using the Ooze for 1 less would have meant I could not Syncopate. I finally was able to stabilize and won Game 1 eventually. In Games 2 and 3, I believe I played zero Supreme Verdicts, so things didn’t quite go as planned. Brad’s start in Game 2 was not very explosive, but I flooded and lost. In the decider, Brad was able to play a turn-three Stormbreath Dragon into a turn-four Hammer of Purphoros making a token, and I died quite quickly.

Losing two rounds so close to each other after the good start of the day was not exactly what I wanted, as I was now probably dead for Top 25, but I still wanted to win all the rounds to have a good finish. I try to approach each round as just another match and not think of what it means and doesn’t mean. Naturally, I might be less motivated to win if the match actually doesn’t matter for anything, but during the matches, I just try to play good Magic and win.

For the penultimate round, I faced Sam Pardee playing G/W, and I was able to discuss Melira Pod in Modern with a real Pod master, so that was nice. As with the previous G/W match, this was also quite a good matchup, though I managed to lose one game in which he had a very fast start and I was missing my important cards. The final round was not all that exciting since there really was no point for me to play, as drawing was just all-around better. If I would have lost, I would probably have been in the Top 75, and either a win or a draw put me in the Top 50. I took the draw against Antoine Ruel and ended up in 38th place when the tournament was over.

Afterthoughts

After last year’s terrible performances at the Pro Tour stage, I would normally have been extremely happy with a solid Top 50 finish. This time, however, this was not that great, as I really needed to perform better to secure a slot for Valencia. The Modern Pro Tour is perhaps the least exciting of all the four Pro Tours, but the fact that it is in Europe makes me really want to qualify. I am happy with the preparation we did for the tournament, and the deck I played was excellent. I felt there were no big holes in our testing, and I was prepared for most opponents all weekend long. I haven’t played any matches of Standard after the Pro Tour, so I can’t say with confidence if the W/U deck is good in the current metagame, with tides of the black devotion and W/B midrange. However, I do think that this deck is very solid in general, and with some tweaks, it should be competitive in almost any metagame.

Looking Forward

I have been playing a lot of Modern on Magic Online in preparation for Grand Prix Antwerp this weekend, so I will probably be writing a piece about Modern in the near future. If there are any other topics you would like me to cover, please let me know. If you have any other comments or ideas, please get in contact either via the comments section below or directly via Twitter.

Thanks for reading,

Max

@thebloom_ on Twitter

Maxx on Magic Online

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