IT was almost 2 years ago that my planeswalker’s spark was ignited. Before summer 2007 I liked to consider myself one of the more competent players on the English PTQ circuit, but I didn’t really have the finishes to back it up. Sure, I’d split the finals of a PTQ back when they still gave you £150 and a pat on the shoulder for qualifying yourself for a Japanese PT, but other than that I’d never really done anything amazing. Then in June of that year something happened that led me to all of a sudden find myself actually winning tournaments. Whether it was getting a taste of the international circuit in my first Foreign GP: Stockholm, Sibling rivalry with Marco winning his first PTQ and top 8ing nationals, or just me coming of age, something seemed to happen to me. I won 4 PTQs in 7 attempts, 3 of them consecutive, and finally top 8’d nationals after a pair of rather disappointing 9^th place finishes (one of them was actually 11^th I think, but the getting paired down and losing in the last round made it feel no different).

But there was still something I couldn’t do: make any form of promising progress on the international scene. My first 3 Pro Tours showed a gradual decline in performance (6-4, 3-3, 3-5), and it wasn’t until Madrid in the Summer of 2008 that I actually made day 2 of a GP. Still, a top 64 finish and then a top 32 finish in Copenhagen later that year weren’t anything to be too proud of considering the amount of tournaments I was actually playing in – for every GP I did reasonably well in there was another in which I crashed and burned horribly, signing up for Asian drafts before the start of round 4.

After missing out on my only attempt at qualifying for Pro Tour Berlin I decided that I would turn things up a notch in trying to qualify for Kyoto, going as far as making a £70, 8-hour, 3-change train trip through Friday night to Bradford and then manage an impressive 1-2, my second loss being to a turn 3 Woolly Thoctar and turn 4 Ajani in consecutive games (remember this is Sealed). Then I won the PTQ that was about 10 minutes from my house. Wasted efforts much? Still, I wasn’t complaining – Japan has always been a country I’ve wanted to visit and the fact that I’m taking an open unit in Japanese as part of my first year at uni made this all the more sweet. On top of that, winning a PTQ in which your top 8 draft deck includes 2 Steelclad Serpent, 2 Filigree Sages, 2 Spell Snips and a Coma Veil can really do wonders for boosting your self confidence.

Fast-forward a few months and we’re on the eve of takeoff. As with any Pro Tour Marco and I didn’t know what we were playing, and so the first thing to do before leaving was to post on various forums, message boards and mobile phones a list of 8 of every good card in standard pls k thx bai. And, being the celebrities that we are, many were more than happy to comply. I should probably thank all the Bristol folk (Chris, Lee, Steve), Nickx of xtremetrades.co.uk and the one and only Dr C. Hunk for hooking us up with pretty much everything we needed, and forgiving marco for all the cards he subsequently lost. Oh, I didn’t mention that? Hope they’re not reading.

Heading out a week early from GB were team New Wave members Marco OJ, Guy Southcott (Mr Scotland runner up 2006) and myself, and lone team Goober Storm representative Richard Bland. The flight there was relatively eventless, and I’m not going to mention anything about our 5 days of sightseeing in Japan as I fear that once I get started this article may start to transform into some kind of novel, so that’s that. By Tuesday the 4 of us were all still clueless as to what we wanted to play, and the odd email from Too Hot To Handle Jonno Randle giving us decks we “HAD” to try weren’t particularly helping us with narrowing down our choices. On top of that we discovered that the finals had taken place in Japan not long before the Pro Tour, and the cool new UR Swans of Bryn Argol deck, somewhat reminiscent of the one I used in GP Copenhagen , was yet another option we had to consider.

It wasn’t until the day before the actual PT, when we decided we’d go to a coffee shop to test seeing as the common room at the hostel was getting a bit crowded and testing was awkward, that I decided to play black white tokens. So what made me choose the deck? Well – It’s simple. I played 5 games against Richard Bland, him playing Kithkin, and they were all complete misery for me. Aside from the obvious mental angst cause by playing against Richard, I lost 5 straight games to mana screw, screw, flood, screw, flood. If you screw a lot, you add some land. If you flood a lot, you take some out. If you do a lot of both, you’re just plain straight-up no way around it unlucky. Therefore, by Deal Or No Deal logic of “I had the 250k yesterday, there’s no way I can have it today”, I figured that with such horrendous luck the day before the Pro Tour the only possible thing that could happen to me on the big day was a stream of amazing draws. Right?

From Wikipedia:

The law of averages is a lay term used to express a belief that outcomes of a random event shall "even out" within a small sample.

As invoked in everyday life, the "law" usually reflects bad statistics or wishful thinking rather than any mathematical principle. While there is a real theorem that a random variable will reflect its underlying probability over a very large sample, the law of averages typically assumes that unnatural short-term "balance" must occur.

Bad statistics my bee-hind. It’s never failed me.

Oh, and I misewell post the decklist:

So now that I had chosen what deck I wanted to play all that was left to do was to head off to the venue. Wizards figured that there wasn’t much point in spending money on a venue close to anything, and so we took the 3 subway stops and 20 minute walk from the central station and eventually arrived at Pulse Plaza. Arriving at Magic tournaments is great as once you’re there you can be 100% sure 100% of the time that you’re in the exact right place. That is unless there happens to be a World of Warcraft tcg tournament happening at the same time in the same city...

Once at the venue we played out a couple of games of standard, found out who the “other” British players were (that is, those who weren’t staying in our hostel (Jon Randle had also now arrived in Japan on a last minute decision to hit up the big scene on the other side of the world), and registered for the tournament itself. Registration was, as with most things Wizards have introduced over the last year, rather disappointing. Aside from the scrapping of the “pro lounge” at the end of 2007, Wizards have now decided that they won’t run the player party the night before, and that getting tshirts printed for a pro tour is way more effort than is necessary. However, we did get given two (TWO!!) draft sets, which must have cost Wizards upwards of, what, 50 cents? After doing an 8-man draft with 4 brits and 4 non-brits (2 Hong Kong and 2 Singapore I believe), which Guy Southcott and I ended up splitting, we had dinner, headed home, did some last minute testing, sleeved up and went to sleep.

And so rolled around the big morning. We decided that calling a taxi would be more suitable than spending half an hour on various metros as arriving late for day one of a pro tour in Japan would not make for a bunch of happy pandas. Having arrived, the taxi driver asked where it was that we wanted to go.

“Pulse Plaza”

“.......”

“Pulse Plaza”

“..............?”

“PULSE PLAZA”

“Ah..... Parusu Puraza?”

“YES!”

And so there we were, ready to go.

Round 1: Vs Josh Ravitz

I’d heard the name before and so I knew I wasn’t paired up against the Moldovan PTQ winner round one, but I couldn’t have said at the time why I’d heard the name. Turns out he’s top 8’d some stuff. Josh was playing faeries, which is theoretically a coinflip matchup for my deck, so I was neither particularly happy nor upset at this pairing. Game 1 he mulliganed and I led off on the play with a turn 2 sculler into a procession into some pump effect and a whole lot more guys. I won that game. Game 2 and he led off on the play with the almighty Bitterblossom, but I was ready to reply with the super-duper wispmare. The game stalled out and I managed to stick a Cloudgoat, but an Infest and Peppersmoke later and I was reaching once more for the sideboard. Game 3 was where things got a little frustrating for me. Suffice it to say, Josh’s draw was the absolute nuts. He drew 3 Cryptics and 3 Mistbind Cliques, which would normally spell game over for me, and in fact, for pretty much any deck. However he didn’t realise that a mistbind trigger only triggers if the Mistbind is still in play. Therefore after seeing that my hand contained a Cloudgoat Ranger and a Path to Exile, and my board consisted of 6 lands, Josh decided to tap out in my upkeep and try to mana short me. I think I’ll Path that and make myself a Cloudgoat thank you very much. As Josh didn’t realise that I wouldn’t get tapped out we called the judge, who after spending 3 or so minutes actually reading the Mistbind Clique, was also not entirely sure about the issue, but luckily the head judge was watching and told us that Josh could keep his other faeries as championing would achieve nothing. Oh, and these 2 Windbrisk Heights are quite good too.Your Turn. It ended up being irrelevant though, as he then proceeded to draw another 2 Mistbinds in Consecutive turns and the Command and Spellstutter Sprite he had in hand were enough to stop me ever stabilising after that.

0-1

Still, I lost the first round of nationals 3 years running, and that never hurt me much.

Round 2: Mateusz Kopec

*queue Kill Bill music*

(private joke, sorry)

Having just lost to a supposed good player drawing out of his potential match-punt I was slightly thrilled to see my opponent lead off with some red lands and some white lands. One of the reasons I chose the deck I chose was that it proverbially ate the boatbrew decks for breakfast, and that’s exactly what it Did. Kopec had some rather bad draws, but I’m still pretty sure that the Ajanis he showed me to be in his hand would have done not a lot to stop multiple Glorious Anthems and flying spirits.

1-1

Round 3: Brett Piazza

Brett was the third opponent in a row whose name I recognised – where was my Moldovan PTQ winner? Brett was also the first opponent to mention my Pokemon sleeves, but only to ask me whether they were legal to use in a Pro Tour. As tempted as I was to give some kind of childish pretending-to-be-a-retard answer I told him that if they weren’t then the sleeves with the Magic symbol that get given out at every Pro Tour probably shouldn’t be either, so he left it at that.

A turn one Goldmeadow Stalwart made it somewhat obvious that Brett was playing Kithkin, and despite my afore-mentioned 0-5 record against the deck I was fairly confident that it was a good matchup for me. So confident in fact that I decided to give Brett a turn to draw a 6^th land and finish me off with a Figure of Destiny Hulk Smash, when I could have simply not pumped my attacking cloudgoat ranger, Had a blocker for flying men in the form of a freshly cast Ranger, and have easy lethal the turn after anyway. He drew a Windbrisk Heights though, so it turned out fine. Game 2 was a rather brisk affair as his draw was somewhat subpar and he quickly succumbed to the sheer power of the tokens deck.

2-1

Round 4: Kou Changsu

Though His name doesn’t seem particularly Japanese I’m fairly certain Kou was Japanese due to the fact that he became very excited at seeing my Pokemon sleeves. We had a chat about which Pokemon was our favourite, but this got a little confusing as the names of the Pokemon are generally different in English and Japanese. I therefore settled on my favourite being Pikachu as that’s one of the few whose name is universal, and we began playing. It turned out he was playing Esperlark as a turn 2 Sculler from me revealed a hand with no lands but a lot of power including 2 Mulldrifters and some heavy-mana stuff. He untapped and drew the land he needed and evoked the sadfish, so I untapped and Scullered once more, seeing he’d drawn a Wrath and another land – must be! I take the Wrath, swing for 2 and pass the turn. He plays the land I saw and passes back, then decided to ambush me with the Makeshift Mannequin he just drew (must be nice), forcing a rather sub-par Path to Exile. It was irrelevant as he’d just drawn another Wrath off the Mannequined Mulldrifter. Sigh.

Game 2 I got the early creatures and disruption going which really punished his land-heavy draw. In the third game I Thoughtseized and saw a hand that told me if I didn’t apply any early pressure there was very little to no chance that I would ever survive the long game, once he started getting Reveillark recursions going (and Stillmoon Cavalier is a bit of a kick in the nuts for my deck), and so decided to go all in on Spectral Processions and just hope he didn’t draw a Wrath. On the turn before I had lethal he had made it fairly clear that he had drawn a Mannequin with a sadfish in the graveyard, and so I went into the tank for a long time. I had just drawn a Tidehollow Sculler but I figured that if I attacked first I would lose some guys (including a Sculler in play), but he would be tapped out post combat and if he drew a Wrath off of the Mulldrifter I would take it out of his hand and give myself exact lethal the turn after provided he made 1 and no more than 1 creature the turn after. He did draw a Wrath, I did Sculler it, and he decided that evoking a Mulldrifter the next turn to dig for Wrath rather than hardcast it and hope to draw a land to Play a Stillmoon (tapping out) and leaving himself dead to Path to Exile was the best course of action. He didn’t find the Wrath, and I won the first match in which I felt I was forced to actually think hard about every play.

3-1

So that was the hard part over. I like to think of myself as more of a limited player than a constructed one, though I do also seem to perform to my max during multi format events. Going into the draft I had my eye on drafting 5-colour as it seems that a lot of people have yet to recognise the sheer power of a well-drafted 5 colour deck, but I was also happy to go with any strategy, though preferably not Jund, depending on what I was passed.

My first pack was rather unspectacular, and I eventually settled on an awkward to play Necrogenesis over some consistent but unimpressive spells like Magma Spray. Not the best start, but when I then pick up my second pack and see a hasty vigilant 5/5 dragon-beast staring up at me I start to feel better. When I then pick up my third pack and see the exact same hasty vigilant 5/5 dragon-beast-cerodon I start to feel a LOT better. Suffice it to say that I was almost undoubtedly the only greedy drafter at the table and ended up with a very solid 5 colour deck with as much mana fix as I could hope for, and the old double-dragon Broodmate I picked up for my troubles in the second pack. Must be.

 As you can see the deck is completely packed with power. The creature-base boasts around 5 dragons, with a pair of Cerodons, Broodmate, Fusion Elemental and the Dragonsoul Knight, and the spells are all either colour fixers or provide a lot of late-game power, whether it’s drawing cards, gaining life, or returning permanents to their owners’ hands. If the deck was missing anything it was the early removal, such as Wretched Banquet, or any form of board sweeper along the lines of Jund Charm. I was fairly confident that unless my opponent made a turn 1 Nacatl and followed it up with a stream of power I was going to 3-0 the draft.

Round 5: Vs Sami Häggkvist

Sami was on my left and I was almost certain that he was in Jund with what I had passed him. Turned out I wasn’t wrong, and game 1 saw me rolling out the power with a double Bull Cerodon and a kiss of The Amesha, while Sammi used up all of his resources on killing all of my men with 2 for 1s (sadly burn spells are not great against 5/5s). In game 2 I managed to never draw a third land while Sami took me from 20 to 0 with a Goblin Razerunners. Game 3 was very much like the first, except funnier for me. I seemed to be drawing a fair amount of land and his fast Jund deck was looking like a loss I wasn’t expecting quite so early in the tournament. Then I drew my card for turn 5 and dropped a Broodmate Dragon on the table (powered up by an obelisk), and then I drew my card for turn 6 and dropped a Bull Cerodon on the table. Nice draws, nice game.

4-1

Before the next round I spoke briefly with Rodrigo Renedo, the guy who passed me the double Bull Cerodon that served me so very well in the first round, to ask what he was taking over the dragons. He told me he hates drafting Naya and loves drafting Jund, and so he decided to take Executioner’s Capsule and Topan Ascetic. Well... the capsule does kill the Cerodon, and if you’re not sure which card to take just take the one that kills the other... right? Seems like fair logic to me. He also told me he just lost to Raph Levy’s awful GW big men deck with triple Lapse of Certainty and Gustrider Exuberant to seal the deal.

Round 6: Vs Lee Shi Tian

Some of us did an 8’man practice draft with Lee the night before and so I kind of knew him in a not really kind of way. He’s also the guy that won GP Birmingham with Kithkin so that also made it feel like I knew him in a not really kind of way. It turned out he had drafted a very aggressive red/black aggro deck with multiple Blightning and plenty of the cheap, efficient creatures you look for in that kind of deck. Cheap creatures however don’t help much when your opponent is making huge ones and drawing a ridiculous number of cards (he made me draw 5 off Covenant after I revealed the nuts the first time), while gaining 7 life and drawing yet more cards on top. In game 2 Lee mulliganed to 5 and managed to only make mountains for the first 4 or 5 turns, and my attempted joke of “well at least you’re turning off my Exotic Orchard” didn’t go down too well either. A turn 3 Obelisk into turn 4 Covenant revealing Kiss of the Amesha, Broodmate Dragon and a land (draw 5) into turn 6 and 7 Bull Cerodon sealed the deal fairly rapidly. He pointed out that if he drew the swamp there was no way I could win, then revealed 2 Blightning sitting in his hand. Not to be a nitpicker, but I’m fairly sure that a turn 4 Covenant of Minds into either Kiss of the Amesha or 5 new cards can beat 2 Blightnings quite comfortably. Maybe I’m wrong?

5-1

At this point I thought I’d go and see just how bad Raph Levy’s deck was while getting some scouting in at the same time, and wandered around until I found him playing Shingou Kurihara. His deck actually was Terrible and I didn’t watch for long before he succumbed to Shingou’s fast Bant-aggro deck with multiple Cormorants and insant-speed pump spells. Matej Zatlkaj had been watching the match and he asked me how I was doing so I told him I was at 5-1 and playing Shingou in the next round, so he told me what he’d seen in the deck from watching the match, the most relevant of which was double Might of Alara and some Excommunicate – good to know.

Round 7: Vs Shingou Kurihara

Shortly after reading my pairing the feature matches were announced and my name was called out, so I made my way over with a few “good luck”s and “congratulations” on the way. I got there before Shingou and sat down, then he arrived and sat down on the next table along – how could he not recognise the famous Matteo Orsini Jones??! Having calmed down from the display of ignorance from Shingou Kurihara I shuffled up, drew my hand, wished him good luck, and started the final match of a long day 1.

For some reason I don’t remember much about the first game, and the fact that I’m writing this report a month after the Pro Tour itself doesn’t help much, but I do remember that knowing he had 2 Giant Growth in his deck helped me a lot with knowing when to kill things without getting completely blown out. The second game was a VERY long and drawn-out affair, where Shingou tried as hard as possible to force through damage regardless of how much card disadvantage it cost him and I tried as hard as possible to stem the bleeding. An example of Shingou’s “I don’t care how many cards he has” attitude came when I cast Covenant of minds leaving up Swamp and Rupture Spire without having played a land for the turn and revealed Grixis Charm, Island and Fusion Elemental. Though the Grixis charm would only kill one of his attackers and the Fusion Elemental would have little effect on his largely flying army, he desperately wanted to get in as many attacks as possible with his Esper Cormorants and so, after much thought, decided to give me 5 cards. The 5 cards however, unsurprisingly, gave me a lot of gas that included a Kiss of the Amesha. After another 10 or so turns of fighting for position atop of the mountain I had finally managed to drain all of his relevant resources (2 Giant Growth and 2 Excommunicate) and settled at a comfortable 3 life. After a Turn or 2 my Dragonsoul Knight and Broodmate Dragon took the victory with only 3 cards left in my deck. This was probably the most fun match I had all weekend, as despite my deck being overall more powerful (if I say so myself), Shingou made sure I spent the entire game against the ropes, desperately trying to stay alive while also trying to finish off my opponent before running out of cards.

6-1

This is by far the best I’ve ever done on day one of a Pro Tour (with 3 previous attempts), and understandably I’m pretty happy. Also sitting at 6-1 from the Motherland was Jonno “too hot to handle” Randle, and at 5-2 were Neil Rigby, who started out with a good 4-0 run in constructed, and everyone’s favourite Scot Guy Southcott. Oh, and that other OJ brother had just snuck in on a 4-2-1 performance, after somehow managing to win 2 rounds with his 5-colour draft deck with neither manafix nor good cards. Sadly no Goober Storm representatives made it through the first round of cuts. Normal people would, at this point, go out, drink a lot, do some things they shouldn’t do, and arrive on Saturday morning looking like some friends just happened to walk past a bin, see them lying there, and drag them feet first into the venue. Obviously not I though – back to the hostel it was for some much needed sleep.

Before going to bed though, I just had to get on MSN and tell everybody about how amazing I was, and that’s exactly what I did. Here are some conversations I had:

With Ben Lei (Coventry player, loveable but not too quick off the bat)

Ben: Did you get me the Japanese boosters?
Me: Not yet, no
Ben: Oh, you’re still in Japan?
Me: ....

With Dan Gardner (Recently underperforming member of Team New Wave)

Me: Guess who’s 6-1
Dan: Awesome, if you top 8 I’m bumming you
Me: Sweet

He still owes me that bum. Oh, and I told Matej (I know him as he knew Dan) and he wanted in too, so now I’m owed a spitroast. If you’re easily offended don’t read the previous section. K?

And that’s it for part 1 of my epic tale. Until next time!

Signing off

The Mattoj

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