Report on a Conflux Release Tournament held in the Wilderness of Lincolnshire, 8 February 2009-02-12

Hi.  Let me begin by introducing myself.  My name is Colin Bunting, I’m (mumble) years old and for my sins I’m the Chairman of the Louth Strategy Games Club ( www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=38231603072&ref=ts ).  They must have been nice sins because it’s an enjoyable pastime.  I’ve only been playing Magic since 10^th.Edition so I guess I know all of Standard but only Standard.  My constructed rating is just above 1600 and rising but my limited record is much better at 6-1.  That’s right, 7 matches in total.  Not exactly an experienced player, am I?  Having said that the only sealed deck I’d previously taken part in was a 4-0 tournament win, but that was only against Louth players.  The field for this tournament would be much stronger so I’d be interested to see how well I faired, even if you aren’t.

As we go I’ll be asking questions and annoying you with opinions (who in Magic doesn’t?).  The first question is how many mythic rares had I opened in Magic booster packs prior to release events?  If you said “big fat zero” or similar then well done and have a banana.  More on that issue later.  The first opinion is “you shouldn’t drink too much Coke before you go to bed the night before a tournament”.  I didn’t sleep well.  I’ve only myself to blame on that one.

As far as I’m aware there are 3 clubs in Lincolnshire that play Magic regularly, the other 2 being Gobstyks in Lincoln (www.gobstyks.co.uk) and the Magic wing of the Grimsby Wargames Club in Grimsby (where else?) (http://www.new.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=33740929017).  I’m sure there are more, particularly in Scunthorpe, and there are often events elsewhere in Lincoln.  Adverts aside, every month or so we in Louth run a Standard Constructed (usually) tournament where regulars of all 3 clubs take part.  We usually end up with about 16 participants.  This was our very first release event of any kind, though, so it was an auspicious occasion.

One of my pet hates in Magic tournaments is the bye.  I know other people like getting 3 points for free but if I turn up to an event then I like to play.  The start time for us was 11.30am.  I did a headcount at 11.29am and we had 11 entrants.  Damn!  At 11.29am and 59 seconds in walked young Ewan.  Phew!  Everybody would always have a game.  Neat.  The entrants were –

Colin Bunting (Louth and willing captive audience – if I didn’t open the building up nobody got to play!)

Ewan Hayes (Louth)

Ross Taylor (Louth)

Jamie Johnson (Louth)

Michael Wentworth-Shields (Louth)

Chris Davies (floats, formerly of Lincoln, lately of Louth)

Kenneth Smith (Grimsby)

Mike Schofield (Grimsby)

Thomas Duignan (Lincoln/Grimsby)

Chris Allsopp (Lincoln)

Matt Light (no affiliation, from Sleaford)

Matt Doughty (no affiliation, from Sleaford)

As you can see we have quite a cross-pollination between the clubs.  I’ve been known to make it up to Grimsby but as Gobstyks meets on a Thursday night I can’t go over there because that’s my wife’s kickboxing night.  I could argue but have you ever tried fighting a kick boxer with bits of card, whatever they might represent?

Out Tournament Organiser is one Mark Pinder, who everybody on www.mtgtwincast.co.uk will know as wilecoyoteuk.  And what a boon to the area’s clubs he is.  He has many padowan learners scattered across the county and I think it’s fair to say everybody who has come across him has had their game play benefit from his experience and wisdom.  He was very ably assisted by his able assistant Rochelle, who kept the scorecard up to date and answered our many “how long left?” questions with upmost patience.  Now, the Conflux Release events are supposed to run with Tournament Packs made up of 3 Shards of Alara boosters and 3 Conflux boosters.  The problem was that not enough product had turned up to fulfil the Shards contingent.  The choice presented to us was to go with 1 Shards booster or 2.  At that point somebody suggested 6 Conflux boosters but in describing that format words like “ridiculous” and “silly” passed the T.O.’s lips.  I voted for the 2/4 breakdown because I preferred the look of the mana fixing that way but democracy spoke with a resounding “1/5 please”.  More new cards!  Who could argue against that?  Well, me, if you’ve been paying attention.  Have an apple if you spotted that.

Money’s paid and we move on to the most interesting, exciting, stressful, worrying, hardest part of the whole day for me.  Opening up the boosters.  I often run the gauntlet of “possessing deadly weapon” charges and mickey-taking from the T.O. and take along some scissors.  He once had to remove a carving knife from the hands of a young entrant who was about to butcher an unsuspecting foil packet.  And possibly himself as well.  Once I have a pile of 80+ cards the rest seems easy.  This time around I got my digits working properly and didn’t need the sharp implements I’m sometimes allowed.  To the cards!  You may have noticed there are a slew of stars in Conflux.  Would I pop open Martial Coup?  Child of Alara?  Conflux?  Progenitus?  Banefire?  Wait for it….Nicol Bolas?  Any mythic rare would do, even some strong Domain cards.  Something that would put me into my colours so that I wouldn’t have to choose myself.  Next question, then – how many “stars” or mythic rares did I open up in my 6 packs?  If you said “big fat zero” (and I have to be strict on the wording here) have a raspberry.  Which is apt because that sound may have passed from my lips at the time.  It got worse when I sneaked a peak at Ross’s pool (he asked for a bit of help, poor lad) and he had 2 copies of Conflux piled on top of each other.  I have called my pool “weak” but one man’s Big Mac and Fries is another man’s gourmet dinner at the Ritz and who am I at a total of 3 limited events to pass considered judgement so I’ll stick with “disappointing”.  For what it’s worth here is my pool.  In fact, I think the best part of the pool by far was the Shards booster, which I put forward as evidence that my wanting 2 Shards boosters was the right choice.

Now try as I might I can’t seem to build a deck that does not have green or red in it.  Most often it has both.  My current Standard deck is a Naya aggro thing that does not have the “5-power” matters theme running in it (it has tempo-efficient cards such as Woolly Thoctar throughout).  So I was rather looking forward to being in something like Esper.  I’d settle for Bant, Grixis or even a 5-colour deck.  So, I laid my cards out in the Steve Sadin manner (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/li/8) and had a look at what I had.  Here is what I was thinking, and feel free to call me a pillock if you disagree.  I had Bant mana fixing.  White looked my strongest colour, with a couple of exalted cards, too.  Good, good - perhaps I’m off into Bant.  But hold on.  Blue is my weakest colour (or, at least the most expensive in terms of mana costs).  Oh, okay.  Green looks fine, as does red.  I have some 5-power matters going on.  Black….looks……….weak.  Oh no.  Naya again.  So I sorted through the offending colours, picked the ones I liked best, spotted I’d have to splash blue for the Rhox War Monk and counted my red, green and white mana symbols.  I picked up some forests, mountains and plains and I was set.  Can anybody see what I’d done wrong?  The answer’s coming soon.

(I could have gone down the Domain route and run all 5 colours or splashed for either blue or black but I chickened out!  I’ll admit I undervalued Drag Down and black in general.)

I tinkered with my deck all day long as you are allowed to do in a release event, but here is an example build.

(I kept the “Sideboard” cards to hand for ease of swapping in in-between games, the rest went into my bag for safe keeping.)

Just about everybody in the world would build a different deck from the same pool, and the same people would build different decks on different days, and in retrospect I would have done a couple of things differently.  I went for efficiency again, where I could have stretched the mana a bit more.  Possibly not in terms of colours, but I really should have run Where Ancients Tread, and possibly Paleoloth or Beacon Behemoth.  It is a slow format, after all.  I think because it was a close build to my usual Standard deck that I started to consider cards in a Constructed format way instead of a Limited format way.  Anyway, onto the match ups.

Match 1 – Matt Doughty

This was the first time I’d met Matt.  He certainly is confident where his Magic is concerned, and a nice guy to boot.  He was running an artefact deck with a nice combo between Faerie Mechanist, Minion Reflector and the Unearth mechanic.  Of the 12+ cards he looked through over the 2 games how many artefacts did he get into his hand?  If you said “zilch” or something like it have a turnip.  Very unlucky, that.  It was in game 1 that Rhox War Monk appeared in my hand.  Good.  I look to play him and discover no Islands in my deck.  At all.  If you spotted that earlier, have a melon.  Which is apt because I was feeling like one right then.  2 turns later Obelisk of Bant appears to save my blushes (followed soon after by Seaside Citadel to rub it in) and life linking goodness hit the board.  Anyway, I never felt like I was going to lose this match but it took ages to batter Matt’s life total to zero twice for the win.  One game where “Where Ancients Tread” would have helped.  2-0.

Record – 1-0.

Matt wasn’t very happy.  I understand he’s quite protective of his DCI record.  Later he said he felt his deck was much too slow, and he called my deck “insane”.  We were in the middle of the 4^th. round at that point so I couldn’t get him to elaborate but I had just gone “turn 1 – forest, Wild Nacatl, your turn” so I guess it was something to do with having such a fast deck in such a slow format.

In the other “match of the round” Louth’s own Michael took a game off my pre-tournament favourite Matt “Pro-Tour Hollywood” Light for the second week running.  Yes, he really did qualify for that tournament.  And came last.  Well done, though, Michael.

After considering whether Obelisk of Bant, Seaside Citadel and Mana Cylix were enough to play the Monk (and Sighted-Caste Sorcerer’s shroud) and I went back to the land box to add the 2 Islands.  It would help Might of Alara, and I added Matca Rioters as well.

Match 2 – Chris Allsopp

Another nice guy, Chris is also a trader, from whom I bought my play mat amongst other things.  I’ve played him a couple of times and had a 100% record against him.  Not any more.  (I still have a 100% record against him in constructed to hold on to, though.)  In game 1 I sent my Rhox Meditant into a 4/4 blocker.  Chris said something like “all I would do is block with this guy” so I guess he was expecting me to say “oh yeah” and take back the play.  Instead I shuffled my now unnecessarily dead dude into my graveyard and never recovered the board position.

I can’t shuffle.  Anybody who knows me will already know that because I repeat it a lot.  Ad nauseam, perhaps.  Land in particular seems to clump together like, well, sodden land.  In game 2 I take the play and mulligan a hand containing 1 Island and 6 spells.  I play with 4 lands and 2 spells which would be fine if I don’t draw 4 lands off the top of my library.  I draw 4 lands off the top of my library.  By the time I get to play anything useful Nicol Bolas appears on the wrong side of the board (damn!) and steals my best creature out of the 2 I had out at that time.  I lose 1 turn later.  0-2.

Record – 1-1.

If you take away my dumb play error and the awful hand I think I would still have lost.  Chris made no errors and his deck just looked better than mine.  I don’t know how to classify his deck, but any with Nicol Bolas in it comes under the general heading of at least “good”.

Defeat lead me to scuttle off to my discarded pile to see if there was anything I’d missed.  Blood Tyrant caught my eye.  I still chickened out and decided against splashing for black, though, and kept things as they were.  Apart from Rhox Meditant, which came out because whenever it appeared I did not have a green permanent out and 4 mana for a 2/4 just isn’t worth it.

I had a bit of time so I looked around the table.  When the Lincoln guys first came to Louth they found it funny that so many Oblivion Rings were in play (white is popular in Louth).  I had a similar feeling about Mana Cylix.  Including my own, I think I counted 4 and might have missed some.

In the match of round 2, Chris Davies saw off Tom Duignan 2-0.  Apart from Chris, all the other Louth players would fill 5 out of the bottom 6 slots in round 3.  That is a shame, but when I tell you the average age of the Louth-based participants is about 14 (and with me is about 17 – you do the maths!) then it’s not so surprising, I suppose.

Match 3 – Ken Smith

The third nice guy, this was Ken’s first visit to our venue.  I’d played Ken a few times up in Grimsby and had a 100% record against him.  Not any more.

Ken had his mana sorted out and in each game it didn’t take him long to get all 5 colours available.  My mana flood continued into game 1.  What was interesting in this game was that I was on 10 life and losing 2 a turn whilst Ken was at 15 and losing 3.  Unfortunately, my 2 life was lost before his each 2 turns so my clock would run out first.  I needed to top-deck an answer and didn’t.  He did to finish me off a tad quicker.  Game 2 was also even but went my way.  The odd thing was that Apocalypse Hydra was on the board with 10 counters and finished the game still with 10 counters.  Wish I could have stolen it.  Time ran out in game 3 and after 5 additional turns we both finished on 8 life.  I felt I had the superior board position and would have won 2 turns later, but that isn’t how it works.  Missing “Where Ancients Tread” again?

Record – 1-1-1.

Take a look at this card:

http://magiccards.info/cfx/en/13.html

How do you think you would play it?  Badly, in my case.  More than once.  It should go something like “start of combat”, “declare attackers”, then pump it with red mana and tap it to remove a potential blocker, or pump it with green mana and tap it to kill an annoying weenie.  It’s not hard.  My play prompted mentor and T.O. Mark to say “I want a word with you after.”  It’s a good card, and I fully intend to improve my game to do it justice.

In the top game of round 3, Matt “we’re not worthy!” Light beat Chris Davies 2-1.  Was there any stopping him?  Any of the top 4 could snatch victory in this tournament, though.  I wasn’t in the top 4.  Sigh.

Match 4 – Jamie Johnson

Nice lad, Jamie.  Can you see a pattern forming?  Jamie was in Jund (he looks a bit like a goblin but don’t tell him I said so) but was running all 5 basic lands.  He had the Exploding Borders I wanted for my deck.  As sometimes happens in aggro against aggro matchups we ran into each other’s brick walls and stalled.  Jamie started drawing nothing but lands in game 1 so I snatched it, and it came down to who top-decked best in game 2.  It was me, and I took the match 2-0.

Record – 2-1-1

At the top end of the table Chris Allsopp held Matt Light to a draw.  He is human, after all.  That meant Matt won the day with 10 points, Chris Davies and Tom Duignan finished on 9 each, and I tied with Chris A. on 7.  With the strength of the field if you’d have told me I would finish 5^th with 7 points before the tournament I would have taken that.  However, looking back at the mistakes I made I’m kicking myself.  Then again, 3-1 would only have put me in 4^th and a 2-1 record after round 3 would have given me a potentially stronger opponent in round 4 and I may well have finished 2-2 instead.

Here are the final standings, as kindly donated by Mark.  Can you spot who had the easiest opponents to face?  If you said the author, have a Satsuma.

When I tell you Ewan Hayes won the wooden spoon he really won a wooden spoon.  23p from Wilko’s each tournament is a small price to pay for a good laugh.  I “inscribe” each one with a felt tip, too.  I wonder how many of them still exist?

I said my card pool was disappointing, but it still threw up some cards of real promise.  Here are some of my feelings after playing with my pool.

Path to Exile (http://magiccards.info/cfx/en/15.html).  I think every time I play this it will be with the phrases “would you like some free land?” and “did I say free?”  If I was running an X/white token deck and accelerating into a Martial Coup I might change that to “would I like some free land?”  1 mana creature removal is intense.  I believe this card is becoming a “star” in its own right around the internet.

Nacatl Hunt-Pride (http://magiccards.info/cfx/en/13.html).  Already talked about this one.  Tapping it without attacking first is really dumb, and let’s leave it at that.

Goblin Razerunners (http://magiccards.info/cfx/en/64.html).  Unfortunately this card only appeared twice the whole day and each time I didn’t have enough red mana to take advantage of it to its fullest.  Shame.

Knotvine Mystic (http://magiccards.info/cfx/en/114.html).  Another that rarely appeared.  “You would like to play a Naya Charm, sir?  How about a Woolly Thoctar?  Just pay me 1 mana, it doesn’t even have to be coloured, tap me and off you go!”  I’ll definitely trial it in my constructed deck where only 2 spells in the whole deck cost over 3 mana…

Asha’s Favour (http://magiccards.info/cfx/en/2.html).  I like creature enchantments too much.  Flying, first strike and vigilance are excellent value for 3 mana, though.

Lapse of Certainty (http://magiccards.info/cfx/en/9.html).  I wasn’t sure about this card, and I still have my doubts.  I think that may be just because it hasn’t won me a game yet.  All it did in the tournament was delay the inevitable a couple of times.  In a better player’s hands it will probably be a much better tool.  Needs a milling tool to be devastating.

The final act of the day was opening up my prize of a Conflux booster.  Did I finally pop open a mythic rare?  If you said “no” then you should by now have had your 5 fruit and veg portions for the day so have yourself a Wispa.  I did open up a Master Transmuter which I understand is quite a good card…

Just to show how much enthusiasm there was for the new set in the room, half a dozen of the entrants went in for a draft straight after the main event.  I needed a rest, so I copped out of that one.  The tournament has re-invigorated my flagging enthusiasm for the game, though, and I’m really looking forward to trialling the new set’s cards in my constructed deck.  There is talk of a local draft tournament as well to fill the gap I’ve left there.

Colin.

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