When we left off last week, I had just escaped the Extended portion of Pro Tour: Amsterdam, with a record of 3-2. Although 3-2 was certainly worse than the 5-0 that I'm used to (read: that one time in San Juan), I was happy to have beaten the two Punishing Fire decks that I faced, since I didn't like my match-up against them at all.

After the Constructed portion, I checked in with the rest of my team before the draft started. Gaudenis Vidugiris was doing the best with the deck, at 4-1. Sam Black and Brian Kowal were 3-2, and the rest of the team was 2-3 or worse. Overall, it sounded like our loses were roughly split between bad match-ups/draws and play mistakes.

Anyway, draft pods were posted. From my draft, I recognized Eric Froehlich, Marjin Lybaert, Ben Stark, and Jeremy Neeman. After taking my seat, I see that I'm passing to Marjin Lybaert. Unfortunately, this means nothing to me, except that he's a good player, so he probably likes Blue.

My first pick is between Angelic Arbiter, Assault Griffin, Azure Drake, Quad Sickness, and another good white card that I don't remember. I ended up taking the Drake because at the time I really liked Blue in M11 draft, and I really disliked White. At the moment I like White more than I did then, but I think my pick would still be the same. Next I get passed a Jace's Ingenuity, which I happily take. The missing card from my 2^nd pick was an uncommon, which makes me think that the person to my right probably took a Fireball. From here, I pick up a couple more blue cards and a late Prized Unicorn and Spined Wurm, out of otherwise dead packs.

Pack 2 I take Garruk's Packleader out of a pack without much action. In this pack, I get passed a Doom Blade 3^rd or 4^th, but there is also an Aether Adept in the pack. I take the Adept, and then get passed another Doom Blade in the next pack, along with a Mana Leak. At this point I have no mana fixing, but I feel confident that I can pick some up over the course of this pack and the next, so I take the Doom Blade. Sure enough, Assassinate follows in the next pack and I've got myself a splash.

Pack 3 I opened Fauna Shaman, got passed Foresee, then Birds of Paradise, then Sylvan Ranger 4^th or 5^th pick. I also got a very late Llanowar Elves to round out the deck. Here's what I ended up with:

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

1 Llanowar Elves

1 Birds of Paradise

1 Fauna Shaman

1 Sylvan Ranger

2 Augury Owl

1 Scroll Thief

1 Aether Adept

1 Azure Drake

1 Prized Unicorn

2 Spined Wurm

1 Acidic Slime

1 Air Servant

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

1 Garruk’s Packleader

2 Preordain

1 Mana Leak

1 Doom Blade

1 Assassinate

1 Whispersilk Cloak

1 Foresee

1 Jace's Ingenuity

[/Spells]

[Lands]

8 Island

8 Forest

1 Swamp

[/Lands]

[Noteable Sideboard]

1 Brindle Boar

1 Alluring Siren

1 Phantom Beast

1 Hornet Sting

2 Wall of Vines

[/Noteable Sideboard]

[/cardlist]

Round 6 – Jeremy Neeman, Rb

Game 1

I win the roll and curve out. He stumbles a bit in developing his board, and I use Aether Adept to tempo him out of the game.

Game 2

We both get decent draws, however he has a Gargoyle Sentinel and a removal spell for every creature I play that could potentially get through it. I eventually draw an Air Servant, which he answers with a Hoarding Dragon, which hoards Whispersilk Cloak. I get in with my Air Servant and add a Spined Wurn to my team. On his turn, he Assassinates my Air Servant. We get to this point where, I have some random dorks and a Spine Wurm to his Fiery Hellhound, Gargoyle Sentinel, and Hoarding Dragon. I draw Doom Blade, and use two Augury Owls to prevent his Dragon from putting me in burn range. I don't really draw anything else and I'm forced to pull the trigger on Doom Blade. He gets Whispersilk Cloak and suits up his Hellhound, and I'm unable to find Acidic Slime in my next two draws.

Game 3

I don't remember many details of this game. I think it was a bit of a back and forth battle, and my clearest memory is of playing a threat three turns in a row, and getting each of them blown up by a different piece of removal.

3-3

Round 7 – Ben Stark, Jund

Game 1

I fall behind to a steady stream of creatures backed by Giant Growth and Thunder Strike. I made a block in this game that put me dead to a Thunder Strike if he had it, but otherwise would have given me a chance to draw out of my situation. As I suspected, he had the Thunder Strike, although I don't think that I could possibly have won if I'd played around it.

Game 2

We develop a bit awkwardly, but eventually I have an Air Servant, and Spined Wurm to his Earth Servant, Gravedigger, Prodigal Pyromancer, and Brindle Boar. I'm at a very high life total, and he's at 12. I swing with my Air Servant to put him to 8.

At this point, I cast Augury Owl and see Brindle Boar, Aether Adept, and Whispersilk Cloak. I have no spells in hand, and he has a few cards, at least one of which is a creature that he returned with Gravedigger. I figure that my best chance of winning is to put Cloak on top, not block, and then attack for 9 unblockable damage next turn.

Obviously, his Brindle Boar makes this impossible, which I realize about half a second after I put Cloak on top and pass the turn. I try to play it cool, as I'm still at a high life total, and the card under Cloak is Aether Adept, which might be able to buy me enough time to win. He enchants his Gravedigger with Volcanic Strength and crashes in, dropping me to "dead to his next attack phase". I draw Cloak, swing with Air Servant and pass, knowing that my only out at this point is him holding guys back. He does not, and he also has the pump spell to end the game that same turn.

3-4

So, I messed up, and now my tournament is essentially over. Yes, it was frustrating, but after making a mistake like that, I knew that I didn't deserve to win that game. Ben Stark reminded me that if I won my next match I could potentially get an extra Pro Point, and I decided to focus on putting the loss behind me and battling hard for the extra point.

Round 8 – Orie Guo, UW

Orie is a friend of the guy I'm rooming with for Amsterdam, and we were introduced on Thursday. We chat a bit about our mutual friend and then get down to business. Before we present, I ask him if the extra Pro Point matters to him. He says it doesn't, but makes no indication that he's interested in conceding. I leave it at that, and we start Game 1.

Game 1

He casts a flurry of Preordains and card draw spells, as well as a Mana Leak. Eventually he plays an Angelic Arbiter, but I have the Doom Blade for it, and I'm able to finish him off with the creatures I was casting, while he was drawing cards.

Game 2

More of the same, except that I have a bit of a clunky draw, and he has a better balance of card draw to creatures. He takes this game fairly easily.

Game 3

Air Servant single handedly wins me this game. I really don't remember much else.

4-4

Everyone is pretty worn out, so I find some people to get dinner with and then everyone goes to bed.

Saturday I wake up early enough to enter the PTQ. I get an atrocious pool that doesn't have enough playables in any two colors to make a real deck, but also doesn't have any fixing. I decide on Red and Black because at least those colors give me a couple of removal spells. I get destroyed in the first round by someone who makes at least two misplays every turn, and then I drop, not particularly interested in trying to win out with my pile.

Saturday night there's the player party, which was pretty fun. I took this opportunity to get wasted. I remember walking around the party looking at the new cards. Then, I remember drinking a lot.

Somehow I got back to my hotel and ended up in a commons/uncommon cube draft, where I opened my first pack and thought about yelling at the owner of the cube for not being able to find an uncommon Hypnotic Specter. According to my friends, I actually did yell at said person about exactly that.

I drafted a sick Uw deck with Fact or Fiction and other crazy blue cards of the non-rare variety, but by the time we were going to build decks, I couldn't see my cards clearly enough to do anything, so I went to sleep instead.

Apparently, while at the party, I dragged Lauren Lee around to people and asked them to "sign my Mulldrifter". I only found out about this a couple days after getting home, when Lauren told me over gtalk that she could still "see the signatures", to which I replied "what?"

Other than drunken debauchery, I played in a 6 round Extended tournament for 2 pieces of power. I easily won the first three rounds, beating Jund, Doran, and Pyromancer Combo, before losing a very close match to Faeries, and then getting knocked out by Doran. The Doran match-up was not nearly as bad as I had thought, and my 5^th round opponent actually needed the 6^th Duress/Thoughtseize, in addition to an Ethersworn Canonist to finish me off.

The flight home was miserable. There was terrible turbulence for the entire 7 hours, and I don't think the "fasten seatbelt sign" was turned off once. Several passengers attempted to brave the aisles, but they were all felled by the horrible shaking airplane. The captain also had no idea how to land, and barely managed not to kill us all, despite his best efforts. All of the overhead luggage things burst open upon landing, and I'm pretty sure he broke one of the wheels as well.

Although I was sort-of planning to attend GP: Portland, I ended up skipping it due to a combination of my fear of flying, having a girlfriend, having a job, and being sick. Whether or not I will attend the SCG 10k in Baltimore this weekend is currently up in the air (I hate being up in the air), but I will definitely be at the Boston 10k, GP: Toronto, and GP: Nashville.

Next week, I'll be taking apart Block Constructed decks and seeing how they look once they're updated with M11 and Scars of Mirrodin cards. The new set looks awesome, and I'm particularly interested in building decks that abuse Venser and Koth. Metalcraft seems like it could be built around as well, but I think it's too early to say for sure.

Until next week,

-Benjamin Hayes