Just a quick note to thank Mark Diehr/Basilisk of diehrstraits.com for helping me set up the MTG card tags! The dude is awesome.
I’ll go back through my older posts to add card tags when I can, and of course, I still have more stuff to write about from GP Manila, on a positive note, too. I don’t want to go finishing that one on a down note now, do I?
After Intramuros, it was time to head to the venue check out the Grinders and do some set up work. Half way through the week, there had been some discussion on twitter about how twitter coverage at Pro Tours has much more of an impact than people first imagined. While technically, you can access the live coverage on your phone if you’re prepared to pay what is most likely exorbitant international data rates, accessing twitter is much, much easier, and it’s inherent bite-sized chunks of information makes it very easy to digest quickly and efficiently. The official live coverage is also relatively slow to go up, as it sometimes has to go through an editor and always has to be formatted for publication on the website, and so on. Twitter is about as instantaneous as it gets.
The discussion was around the way Mananation had tweeted about what Brian Kibler was playing at Pro Tour San Juan, and whether they had been giving too much information away. I chimed in saying I would see if I could chat with some of the more twitter-savvy pros this weekend to get their take on the situation, which delighted the discussion participants to no end. My next thought was “ah crap, now I’m going to have to transcribe an interview, I’m terrible at that!” followed quickly by “wait, what if I somehow video’d the interview?” This was an idea I had been toying with for a while, but had been unsure of how to get started. Now with a reason to get off my ass and get on it, I fired off quick messages to Bill Stark and Evan Erwin to ask what I should use. Erwin came back saying he uses relatively high end equipment and software, which isn’t overly surprising, considering how smooth his production of the Magic Show is. Thankfully, I’d seen Stark do some reasonably basic video coverage, and he said someone had given him a Flip HD as a present one time, which was affordable, but not exactly high quality. Australian level 4 judge Mark Brown recommended the Flip as a reasonable option as well.
I figured high quality can come later, and that a Flip might be something I could actually pick up duty free on my way to the event, which is precisely what I did. Once we’d made it to the venue, I dragged it out and fired it up. As soon as we opened the doors, a queue formed almost all the way around the hall to sign up for the main event. Announcements were made that the signups for the GP Trials were actually over the other side of the room, but nobody moved. You see, in 2008, the turnout was higher than anticipated, and there was even talk of having to turn people away. While I don’t think that actually came to pass, a lot of people did miss out on their promo card and event t-shirt. It looked like the locals were uninterested in missing out a second time. I whipped out my Flip and tried to film the enormous queue, and quickly discovered a few limitations. My hand wasn’t nearly as steady as I would like, which I guess wasn’t that unexpected, and that filming while walking was practically impossible, because my footfalls would shake the camera. I tried to shuffle my feet a little, but it looked daft. You know what would look less draft? A skateboard. I’ve been trying to convince my girlfriend I should be allowed a skateboard again, but I’ll save that story for another time. I could force one of the judges to push me around the room on a skateboard. It would be like one of those dolly things they have on professional movie sets, and everything, how sweet would that be?
Aaaanyway, we ended up running six trials, which wasn’t too many lists for me to type up, so I did that while chatting with the Dale Aitken, the APAC Event Marketing Manager, who happened to be on his way to Seattle and was dropping by to see the event get under way. I mean, when you have to sign off on the expense accounts for one of these things, it probably does pay (now and again) to make sure we’re actually running the event and not drafting down at the local pub while I fabricate the coverage, or anything like that. I’d like to go on the record as saying at least 60% (if not more) of the coverage I write that goes up on dailymtg.com is not made up!
As day one got underway, I tried to track down Brian Kibler and Sam Black to film the interview. There are usually no feature matches of note during the first three rounds of any Grand Prix as the pros wait for their byes to expire, so I usually use this time to wander around and ask them the quick questions I end up spacing out through the day. That’s right, I don’t go around asking questions in any round I haven’t done a feature match, I’m usually too busy typing up the round before this one. All of the quick questions are gotten out of the way early. I know – I’m such a cheater when it comes to coverage. I found Sam, but it turned out Brian was getting yet another massage. Apparently he’d planned on getting one every day he could, because they were costing him around $10US. When I finally tracked him down, I could no longer find Sam, who I’d last seen wandering out in search of vegetarian food. Judging by the size of Sam, I’d say he’s been unable to find any vegetarian food for a few months now, and is subsisting entirely on air. Luckily, the air in the Philippines is so thick you can eat it, so that was at least keeping him alive.
It wasn’t until round three was well under way I got them sat down next to each other and the flip pointed in their direction. I was getting worried I’d not actually manage to get the interview filmed, or that maybe it wouldn’t turn out. I figured if it took too long to upload, it wouldn’t have to appear in the coverage, but it would at least be done. I tried to steady it on my knee as I got them started with the topic at hand. Thankfully, they were both willing to chat at length and the interview clocked in at just over seven minutes. At one point, I was worried the Flip wasn’t picking up Sam’s voice over the background noise, because I couldn’t really hear what he was saying myself and I was across the table from him, but it turned out the Flip hasn’t been to nearly as many Heavy Metal concerts as I have, and certainly didn’t play in a band when it was younger, and it picked him up fine. The other problem I noticed was that I had difficulty stopping myself from nodding in agreement with what they were saying, which felt like it was shaking the camera.
However, it turned out fine. I would go as far as to say great! Uploading the file to youtube took ages, and it tried to spit the dummy about me not having processed the file somehow, but it seems like you don’t *have* to do it, it’s just something they like you to do, or something, so that’s okay. All things considered, if I had to review the Flip Mino HD, I’d say it’s an excellent, low-cost video camera. The picture and sound quality were acceptable, and with the addition of a tripod, I could probably produce some reasonably not-quite-professional videos with it, and I’m sure whoever stole it from me later that afternoon would say the same.
The Tournament Organiser David Ong had warned me earlier in the day about leaving things on the stage unattended. Usually the stage has a row of tables along the front, with the scorekeeper and Head Judge sitting alongside me. This time, I had a single table off to left, while the Head Judge had one on the right. The scorekeeper was set up on the floor to the right of the stage while the feature match area was on my side. After David’s warning, instead of leaving my various coverage-related items on the table by my laptop, I put them in my open backpack on the floor behind my table. The last I saw the Flip, I’d put it in my backpack. Now I don’t mean buried it amongst the other camera stuff in that part of the bag, the external flash, the battery charger, the cable, I just sort of put it on top of that in the small fabric carry case it comes with. I didn’t notice it missing at any point because I’m not really used to counting it amongst my coverage gear, and it’s small enough that it could easily have fallen down inside the bag and be floating about the bottom. On the Monday, while repacking my bag to leave Manila, I didn’t click that it wasn’t in there until after I had already checked my luggage in at the airport. Once I was through immigration, I developed a nagging feeling that I hadn’t seen it since Saturday. Sure enough, when I got home, it was nowhere to be found.
What annoys me the most is not that I have to buy another one to replace it. I won’t miss the money a year from now, not really. It’s that the only people who were in that hall were Magic players, so the odds are very high that whoever stole my brand new Flip camera, was a fellow Magic player who was here for the Grand Prix. I was there working my butt off trying to promote the event and Magic in the area, with a camera that I purchased with my own money specifically for the event, and some selfish prick decided they would take it for themselves. How do they justify that? The very worst part about this is that next time I’m in Manila, I’m going to be that much more careful with my belongings. I mean, I’m not so naive as to think that people don’t steal things elsewhere in the World, but I’m not going to be able to help remembering that last time I was in Manila, someone in the tournament I was writing about, stole from me,
And I don’t know who it was. It could have been anyone. Every person I see near the stage or wherever I’m set up from now on, a small voice in the back of my head is going to ask “is that another person about to rip you off?” I’m now subconsciously thinking ill of my fellow Magic players – my friends from all over the Globe – I’m thinking that they could be someone who wants to rip me off. Because some cock-knuckle took it upon themselves to take something that didn’t belong to them. The only thing I really feel about this now is sad, but let’s not let this one person spoil my trip and these rambling stories. Next up, the rest of the event!
Earlier in the week, I posted a note on facebook (tagging anyone I knew in the Philippines) about my wanting to do a touch of sightseeing before the main event. Naturally, there were a few people who wanted to know why I didn’t want to do it after the event, so they wouldn’t have to miss the GP Trials. The Filipino people are nothing if not extraordinarily helpful and accommodating hosts, so finally it was agreed on that I would be up early to sightsee, so the players could then get on with their grinding.
Ceasar Asahan and Raffy Sarto (Top 8 GP Kuala Lumpur earlier this year) were waiting for me in the hotel lobby at 8am, which wasn’t dreadfully early for me – Australian time being 10am. We bundled into a taxi and headed for Rizal Park. I made promises to pay for the cab fare, but once they spied my wad of 500 Peso notes, they laughed and said there was no way I could pay with that.
You see, I hadn’t really paid much attention to what the exchange rate was. Why bother, right? I knew I needed some Philippine Pesos, so I just forked over $200 at Sydney airport and took what they gave me, which was around $6500pp. The arrival documentation, like most countries, asked you to declare if you’re bringing in the equivalent of $10,000.00 US Dollars, which I clearly wasn’t, but it also had a tick box for if you were bringing in $10,000.00 Philippine Pesos, which I was closing in on doing so. I guess that should have been my first warning.
While the trip to Rizal Park wasn’t exactly far, it came in at under 100 Pesos, which was roughly $3 Australian. As soon as we alighted from the taxi, people were trying to sell us bottles of water, which Ceasar and Raffy automatically waved away. I asked if it was the kind of water you should avoid buying, but they replied it was fine, just I should probably not bother because they would have been charging around 10 Pesos, and probably wouldn’t have change for one of my 500s.
Rizal Park was much more colourful than I expected, with stalls selling odds and ends here and there, and various memorials and displays to Jose Rizal. I had no idea who he was, so the guys entertained me with the tale of a man in the late 19th Century, who desired equality in a time of oppression and was executed for his writings, which allegedly incited rebellion. Other than the usual statues up on high, there was a larger than life diorama of a row of Spanish soldiers shooting Jose Rizal in the back at the very spot he was executed. The 8 foot tall figure of Rizal taking Spanish gunfire between the shoulder blades was facing a semi-circle of stone blocks arranged as if an amphitheatre to his execution. I assume there wasn’t an audience for this, or Rizal probably wouldn’t have been the only one shot that day.
Monument to Jose Rizal
It was at this point where I discovered that the new lens I had bought for lower lightning situations and was trying out, forces me to stand quite far back from the subject to try and fit it in. I should have brought my old lens with me as well, but foresight had eluded me that morning, so once again, I was not happy with how my pictures turned out.
Inside the Walls of Intramuros (that's a pun, because Intramuros is "Inside the Walls" in Spanish. Ha ha)
From there we headed on foot into Intramuros. Ceasar asked if I had seen any pictures of the area, which made me realise I had not. The representation I carried around in my head of the oldest part of Manila was entirely from the writings of Neal Stephenson. The walls certainly did not disappoint, being as old and magnificent as described. The old moat that surrounds the district had been an abandoned belt of green turf when Stephenson had written about it, but was now a golf course. Ceasar seemed a little embarrassed about how corny this seemed, but I thought it was a reasonable and practical use of the space. It looked tidier than a random stretch of grass, and could generate revenue for the area.
Raffy and Ceasar looking out over the golf course/moat
The streets and buildings had apparently been decimated during World War II, so I didn’t really know what to expect. Stephenson described barren stretches of scrub and rubbish, but either I missed that, or they’ve built over it in the last ten years. We made our way through Intramuros to Fort Santiago, where I tried to make up for not paying the cab fare by paying the entry fee for the guys. I’m pretty sure I still owe them lunch as well, but it seems like that will have to wait until after the event, at this rate. Inside, I successfully emulated one of the main characters of Cryptonomicon by repeatedly turning down horse-drawn taxis. The gardens were tropical and picturesque, and the overhanging palm fronds afforded me the shade I required to not pass out from heat-related exhaustion and thirst.
After we’d walked around the Fort and checked out the old prison cells that are cut into the stone below the tide-line (yes, apparently long term prisoner retention was not an issue in those days) I realised I might be risking serious sunburn if I stayed outside any longer, so we checked out the Jose Rizal displays inside the Fort before calling it a day.
I’m back in Manila again, and this time I’m going to get to see the parts I wanted to see the first time I was here. In 2008 I had planned on visiting Intramuros, until I discovered I was actually on the far side of the city, and the traffic in Manila is, well, it’s something else. I mean, I don’t think I’ve seen any traffic lights here, so that should give you some idea of what it’s like. When I checked in last night, I was told by the Tournament Organiser that the venue was pretty close by, but I couldn’t walk there. This morning at breakfast (on the top floor, because apparently I had a room on the swanky folks floor) I spied the Mall of Asia out the window through the thick smog. Oh man, the smog. The sky looks like concrete. Anyway, I almost took the not being able to walk there as a challenge, until I saw the major intersection in the way. I’m pretty sure trying to cross that in anything less than an armoured truck (or at least a vehicle piloted by a local) would be suicide.
Intramuros is the oldest part of Manila, and features prominently in my favouritest of books – “Cryptonomicon” by Neal Stephenson. I find Stephenson’s writing to be evocatively detailed, and it seems that he strives to be accurate as much as he can with things (my Dad told me the telecommunications stuff in Cryptonomicon is pretty spot on) so for quite some time, I’ve wanted to see this part of Manila myself. One of the local players has offered to guide me around the area, which is terribly nice of him! I’m kind of curious to see how any photos I might take turn out with the ridiculously high humidity here, but hopefully it I’ll have something I can post in the coverage tomorrow to keep Ted Knutson happy.
My only real life memory of Billy Moreno is standing alongside Brian David-Marshall watching him play at Pro Tour Honolulu 2006. Moreno kept a one land hand on the play with his Zoo deck, leading with an impressive 1/1 Kird Ape. BDM and I both chuckled during his first draw step as he drew the Temple Garden he needed to actually stay in the game (any later and I think he would have been struggling). He turned to us with a grin and said something like “see? I’m totally pro!” and then attacked with the Ape. His opponent picked up his pen and said “take one.” Moreno hung his head in shame, and played his land post combat. Not so much known for his clean play, Moreno arrived on the Magic scene with a finals appearance at Pro Tour Los Angeles 2005, showcasing his homebrew Psychatog/Madness deck, making a name for himself as a Mad Genius deck designer.
After a bit of a hiatus, apparently Moreno is back and has The Fire, which is fine by me! I think the game needs more Conley Woods-like designers to keep things fresh and interesting. Earlier this week, Moreno posted the first draft of his post-Rise Junk deck on tcgplayer.com (Brainburst still breathes? who knew!) and this evening, he posted a revision on his blog. This is his most recent list:
4 Noble Hierarch
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Kitesail Apprentice
4 Putrid Leech
3 Bloodghast
2 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Vengevine
3 Ranger of Eos
2 Scute Mob
1 Adventuring Gear
1 Basilisk Collar
1 Behemoth Sledge
4 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Ancient Ziggurat
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Marsh Flats
4 Swamp
2 Plains
5 Forest
2 Sunpetal Grove
1 Sejiri Steppe
The inevitability of Vengevine and Bloodghast in the same deck looks like a recipe for beatings. However, the first thing I that caught my eye was the absence of certain cards. Whether this was an oversight on Moreno’s part, or he just didn’t think they were worth mentioning, I don’t know. Most importantly, the “kiddy combo” people were going crazy over when Vengevine was first spoiled.
This card is playable on its own, so it’s certainly not dead if you don’t draw Vengevine, but it’s the way it fuels the 4/3 that really makes me think it deserves a place in this deck. Summoning the Skyfisher and bouncing itself twice in a turn gives you everlasting Vengevines. Outside of that, you can use it to bounce and replay a land to reanimate Bloodghast, reuse Ranger of Eos or Stoneforge Mystic or even the Sejiri Steppe. Hell, if you wanted to replace one of the Maelstrom Pulses with an Oblivion Ring, you could even Live the Dream of O-Ring’ing a Planeswalker, then returning the O-Ring with Skyfisher to take out the replacement copy via the Legend Rule. I’m pretty sure Skyfisher should be a four-of in this deck, on the strength of its interaction with Vengevinealone.
This card isn’t as obvious as Skyfisher, but the deck does want landfall triggers, and targets for Ranger or Eos. My gut feeling is that the Lynx is better than Putrid Leech here. The mana would probably need to be reworked a little, but if you really wanted to, you could probably forgo black altogether, replacing the Pulses with an O-Ring/Journey to Nowhere/Path to Exile split. The downside to this is cutting Bloodghast. Without a Wild Mongrel variant in the format, you need to be able to spend BB to make use of it (or face Blightning/Cruel Ultimatum every round) meaning Leech is not really a problem on the mana front. There could possibly be an especially aggressive version of this deck that can summon both Lynx and Leech. Vengevine definitely benefits from the lowering of the overall curve of the deck, helping ensure you’ll be able to summon two men in one turn. It’s entirely possible that Moreno’s Kitesail Apprentice is enough, and the Leeches are a better fit.
The potential resilience of this deck suggests that some kind of answer to it may be important in the future. Bojuka Bog is a reasonable late game card that can be fetched by Knight of the Reliquary to neutralize an opponent’s graveyard. Even if mirror matches aren’t commonplace, the hype behind Vengevine in Jund and Naya decks might be of merit, and having the ability to trump Vengevine parity could be useful.
As for the numbers in Moreno’s list, he mentioned on twitter that the second Scute Mob is there because the first one dies too easily. My experience with the card in Boss Naya tells me that you absolutely hate drawing it, and that two is too greedy. I suspect a second (or even a third) Birds of Paradise could help any mana issues more than what Noble Hierarch brings to the table. While exalted is usually pretty ridiculous, I don’t imagine many creatures attacking alone in this deck. I do think you want all four Bloodghasts, but maybe I’m the one being too greedy there. Lastly, the revision of Moreno’s list removed the playset of Stirring Wildwoods, which was possibly a little heavy handed. I think you want at least one – maybe two – to fetch with Knight of the Reliquary.
I don’t have a list of my own for this deck I like yet, but I have been penciling a few up in my spare time, trying to figure out where I can squeeze in those Skyfishers. Once Rise of the Eldrzai hits Modo, I’ll definitely be giving this deck a spin. Does anyone want to sell me some cheap Vengevines? I hear they’re totally overrated (cough).
Time must be flying by much faster these days, or the Magic sets are coming out more frequently. The last time I played sanctioned Magic was at the Worldwake Prerelease, and the time before that – the Zendikar prerelease. I guess I’ve also attended a Grand Prix subsequent to each Prerelease, but I hardly had time to play Magic at either of those. I do at least, get to play Magic: Online (from here on known as Modo) now and again, even if not as often as I’d like. Mind you, if I got to play as often as I’d like – which would be all day every day – I’d probably get sick of it. Plus, you know, a guy has to pay rent somehow, and I’m quite certain Modo day in and day out won’t do that.
Anyway, last time I called my prerelease tournament report “A Good Day” and I don’t want to say it wasn’t a good day this time around, but it wasn’t quite as good as last time, but that was more the fault of the some unnamed, unseen idiot much later that day, and Zach not turning up because he was sick, or something.
The day started out well, because I was staying in a hotel walking distance from the prerelease venue. Heidi’s work were running their Annual Real Estate Forum on the Friday and Saturday, and had put her up in a hotel for a couple of nights so she didn’t have to get up at 5am to drive into the city each day and pay exorbitant amounts for parking. Heidi’s employer didn’t have a problem with me sharing her hotel room on the Friday night, so instead of heading home from work, I walked to Darling Harbour to the hotel, then around Darling Harbour trying to find the hotel, then once I found it, all the way around the Hotel trying to find the entrance. I got there just in time to zip up Heidi’s dress before she went out for dinner with the rest of her colleagues, so I settled in for an evening of Modo, paying the daylight robbery-esque $29.95 for 24 hours internet access.
What? It was that or read a book/watch tv.
I took the Blue/Green/Red Zendikar Block Constructed deck that FFfreak won the latest MOCS (Magic Online Championship Series or Season or Something) with for a run through a few two-man queues, winning twice before losing to an Archive Trap deck. I then piloted Gerry Thompson’s Monument Jund into a Standard two-man, winning that against a Turbo Fog deck. This build of Jund seemed a little mana heavy, and despite not having Blightning, I took it in two games, partly because Turbo Fog is a bad deck, and their version seemed particularly badly built.
We were up early the next morning for a tasty hotel breakfast at 6:30am before Heidi took off for day two of their forum. I headed back to the room to win another couple of two-mans with FFfreak’s Block deck, then walked five minutes to the prerelease. It’s not every prerelease you get to do that now, is it?
The room was already a little funky smelling by the time I got there. I paid my entry and found Dom so I could try and convince him to play Serious instead of Casual. Between myself, Justin “Juzza” Cheung, Perth’s Brandon Lau (two members of the Australian National Team that finished 2nd at Worlds 2008) and Tyler Walsh, Dom was soon seated on the Serious side of the room with the rest of us.
My pool got off to a fantastic start. As I sorted my cards into colours, four colourless cards stood out first: Skittering Invasion, Dreamstone Hedron, All is Dust and Kozilek, Butcher of Truth. From there, there were plenty of non-blue options available to me. Both black and while had several quality levelers and removal spells, but was a round hole to the square peg of my colourless top end. Red and green a smattering of acceleration, a reasonable curve and a Heat Ray, and was a perfect fit for Kozilek. Even if the black/white deck happened to be better than the red/green one, I don’t think you can bench colourless mythic bombs at the Rise of Eldrazi prerelease and look yourself in the eye the next morning, so I sleeved up the following list:
1 Tajuru Preserver
1 Beastbreaker of Bala Ged
1 Overgrown Battlement
1 Daggerback Basilisk
1 Sporecap Spider
1 Vent Sentinel
1 Kozilek’s Predator
1 Emrakul’s Hatcher
2 Nema Siltlurker
1 Broodwarden
1 Skittering Invasion
1 Pelakka Wurm
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1 Spawning Breath
1 Staggershock
1 Wrap in Flames
1 Explosive Revelation
1 Heat Ray
1 Ancient Stirrings
1 Dreamstone Hedron
1 All is Dust
11 Forest
7 Mountain
Sideboard:
1 Snake Umbra
1 Stomper Cub
1 Brood Birthing
1 Angelheart Vial
1 Leaf Arrow
2 Battle Rampart
Okay, that’s not technically true. By the end of the four rounds, this was what was in my sleeves. Because there were no decklists, we were free to make changes as we went along. Originally, I had the Snake Umbra and Stomper Cub in over the Wrap in Flames and Vent Sentinel, but the Cub ended up being the least defensive creature at a crowded spot in my curve, and while the Snake Umbra usually earned me a card or two, it felt surprisingly underwhelming. The Wrap in Flames was twice as good as it looked. I didn’t start it because I figured there’d be few Non-Spawn targets for it, but it turned out that a) Eldrazi Spawn are fantastic targets, and b) there were plenty of great targets, especially out of the faster decks. Vent Sentinel was simply the right size to hold the ground. The card that really shone was Ancient Stirrings. It was always held back as long as possible, and while I was occasionally forced to use it to find a Mountain, or sometimes whiffed on ‘just’ a land, digging me closer to Kozilek, or at least All is Dust was the knees of a bee.
I never sided in the Leaf Arrow, but possibly should have in the first round. The Angelheart Vial I cast aside early as unplayable, but now that I read it; it probably would have been okay, even if it would be jostling for space with better five-drops. Despite the fact I could have teamed the Battle Ramparts up with Vent Sentinel and Overgrown Battlement, I didn’t like that they were basically only 1/3’s in my deck, because I probably wasn’t going to be hasting up a fatty too often. I had enough playables that I could actually have a black/white deck on standby in my deckbox, so I grabbed some lands for that as well, but didn’t once side it in. I guess if I’d tanked early and often, I would have been more tempted to pull the ol’ switcheroo, but well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Here’s the backup list.
2 Caravan Escort
2 Null Champion
1 Knight of Cliffhaven
2 Lone Missionary
2 Kor Line-Slinger
1 Dawnglare Invoker
1 Gloomhunter
1 Bloodrite Invoker
1 Nikana Cutthroat
1 Kabira Vindicator
1 Bala Ged Scorpion
1 Zof Shade
1 Soulbound Guardians
2 Emerge Unscathed
1 Guard Duty
1 Smite
1 Oust
1 Induce Despair
9 Plains
8 Swamp
Sideboard:
1 Time of Heroes
1 Dread Drone
1 Death Cultist
1 Essence Feed
1 Nighthaze
1 Escaped Null
I briefly considered maindecking the Time of Heroes, but I decided I’d seldom have more than one leveler in play at a time, making it only sometimes better than a Giant Strength, and probably worse enough times, too. I’m not sure how many levelers you need to be running to maindeck it, but my gut feeling was that 7 was too few.
My first opponent was Victor Yee. He was with black, white and green, and got off to a reasonable start leveling a Caravan Escort all the way up to full. I finally blew my All is Dust on it, and almost had him out of gas, when He plucked a Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief off the top with enough land in play to kill me on his next attack. I drew the last land I needed, and breathed a sigh of relief as I dropped it into play to summon Kozilek. I announced his ‘as you cast this’ ability, and looked down at the card to read it out word for word. It was at that moment I realised that Kozilek draws you four cards, and doesn’t Vindicate target Drana.
Awkward.
I continued scanning down the card to see he had flying at all, and couldn’t help but notice he wasn’t even indestructible. It seems that my recollection of what Kozilek actually does was a bit of an amalgamation of all three of the mythic Eldrazi. I felt well proud of myself for not only tapping out to confirm my opponent’s suspicion I was dead on the table, but also giving away valuable Kozilek-based information. Speaking of misplays, as I mentioned earlier, I then didn’t side in the Leaf Arrow, but probably should have. Even though it couldn’t kill Drana, if my backup pool could have Knight of Cliffhaven, Dawnglare Invoker and Gloomhunter, then his deck could have them too.
I took game two when I landed Kozilek while Drana was nowhere in sight. He painfully Vendetta’d the Eldrzai, so I shuffled him into my deck along with my graveyard, presented my deck for shuffling, and when I got it back, promptly drew Kozilek off the top. Neat party trick – don’t ask me to repeat it. Game three was much the same, in that he mulliganed to five and eventually succumbed to a Dreamstone Hedron propelled Kozilek. Once the match was over, my opponent shook his dead and bemoaned his inability to beat Kozilek, and that he also had a Dreamstone Hedron, but felt he couldn’t really justify playing it. I told him I thought his best chances lay in playing the Hedron and using it to dig up his bomb (Drana) and beat me before I could beat him. He shrugged and continued with his original line of argument: that Kozilek was impossible to beat. I guess showing him the 12/12 at the end of game one had him believing that despite being up a game, there was no way he could win the match. I’ll take that.
Round two I played Kenny Phuong Nguyen, who has been shaping up to be a relatively successful player of late, qualifying for and attending Pro Tour San Diego earlier this year. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in contention at the Australian National Champs this year, either. He was also red/green, but his top end was rare, rather than mythic, and capable of summoning additional Eldrzai from the sideboard, if he so wished (and had 20 mana spare). Splinter Twin on the Spawnsire of Ulamog was almost troublesome, but I made it to ten mana just in time swing the game back in my favour with Kozilek. Annihilator 4 is much more effective than Annihilator 2. It was this round I realised Explosive Revelation put the revealed card into your hand, too, which was nice. Man, I sure am good at reading my cards, I should probably work on that.
The wheels fell off in round three, just like they had at the Worldwake Prerelease. I played Hugh Rayner, who also beat me at the M10 Prerelease with infinite Air Elementals and Serra Angels. This time, it was at the hands of many, many Eldrazi Spawn and a pair of Pennon Blades. As far as I could tell, he didn’t really have any Eldrazi proper to top off his curve, but then again, as far as he could tell, I didn’t either. Finding Kozilek in either game would have allowed me to win, and I had plenty of time to do so, but he failed to turn up to work.
So once again, I went into the last round needing to win to come away with prizes, and as I mentioned last time, it’s not the prizes themselves as much as it is winning them. This time I was paired with Aaron Yue. He didn’t offer the prize split, and neither did I. There had been extensive chat on the subject of prize splitting in GoodGamery chat earlier that week, as everyone berated Julian Booher for consistently lowering his Expected Value on Modo by constantly splitting (the reasoning being he should be at least be winning 60% of the time, or thereabouts). Aaron had a relatively aggressive black/red deck, that threatened a lethal Bloodthrone Vampire early with his abundance of spare Eldrzai Spawn. I defended all the way up to Kozilek to take game one, but he had a Vendetta for it in game two. I shuffled my deck and presented it, but didn’t notice if Aaron had taken a stab at shuffling it himself or not. I drew my next card, and it was Kozilek, winking surreptitiously.
“Did you shuffle my deck?” I asked Aaron, and I suspect it took him half a second to soul read me for the 12/12. “Uhh, no?” he ventured. I put the card back and let him shuffle it.
(I’m not insinuating Aaron was cheating here at all, I suspect he probably hadn’t shuffled my deck, but his reaction certainly hinted that he had figured out that not shuffling it was probably a Bad Thing for him.)
(Not that I’m insinuating he thought I was cheating, either, just running well above par with my neat, new party trick.)
I drew it again two turns later anyway, but he managed to get enough damage around it to take us to game three. I greedily kept six land and All is Dust and was rewarded by Aaron’s mulligan. He made a solitary Pawn of Ulamog and started whittling away at my face. I ripped a few early drops to soak up the removal he had in hand, before eventually digging up Kozilek with Ancient Stirrings, the All is Dust still hangin’ out at the back of my hand. Kozilek again took a Vendetta on the chin, but I recovered with a Broodwarden from Kozilek’s reserves, which encouraged the remnants of the Skittering Invasion that fueled Kozilek, to get up and get nasty. I even managed to draw Kozilek again just before I took the match. If only he’d been as punctual in round three.
All things considered, ‘twas another successful Prerelease where I came away with a winning record without having to play in the Casual flight to get it. I didn’t really have the time to stay for the afternoon flights, as they would have taken us up and over 7pm, and I was expecting Heidi to finish at around 5pm. I challenged Dom to a Solomon draft with my prize packs, and as with all one-on-one draft formats, I failed miserably. Err, I mean, lost intentionally so that Dom wasn’t too bummed out at only going 2-2 in the serious flight we badgered him into entering. Yes, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
I said my goodbyes and went to meet Heidi. We had planned to catch the bus home because as I mentioned earlier, we hadn’t brought the car in due to the ridiculous parking costs we would have incurred over the two days of the Forum. We got to the bus stop 5 minutes after one had been due to come by, and settled in to wait 40 minutes for the next one. An hour passed and we were almost ready to give up and grab a taxi, when our bus finally went past in the opposite direction. Figuring it would be back this way in 20 minutes or so, we stuck to our guns and continued to wait. After another hour, in which my name was mud because this was clearly my fault, we finally gave up and hailed a cab.
When the taxi driver finally got to our turn off on Victoria Road, we found it cordoned off by police. As was the next intersection, and the one after that. The driver turned off the meter while we tried to find a back street we could use to get around the roadblock. He eventually doubled back far enough, but it certainly wasn’t a route a bus could have managed, which explained what had happened to them, at least. It turns out some idiot had first pick, first pack’d a bomb of his own at a garage sale – an unexploded World War II Bomb Shell – and taken it into our local Fire Station and said “hey this thing is okay, right?” The streets were blocked off between 6pm and 9pm while the Bomb Squad came out to check it out. Apparently it was only a Practice Shell, and perfectly harmless, unlike Kozilek, Butcher of Truth.
This post and the comments have been removed at Manaleak TCG Worcester’s request, as stuff has quite the flow-on effect, when you’re not looking.
