By Joseph Jackson

Day 2

Stated objective for today: 3-3, preferably losing to a Pro Tour veteran that can form the basis of a decent war story, my first pro point, and a hundred odd quid for my troubles. Unfortunately most of my comrades had fallen in the bloodshed on day one. But Ben had managed to make it through to the second day of competition too, so I wasn’t alone as I crept out of the house first thing in the morning.

Draft Pod 1

My first pick immediately causes me heartache, as I open Overrun and Master of the Wild Hunt. I can take a weaker card and avoid green, or take a bomb and hope that two boosters worth will see me home. I opt for the latter and take the Master, then get passed a third pick Sleep with a common missing that I anticipate will cement me in U-G. My signal-reading is flawed and I see no more blue, but who cares! I get a third-pack Overrun, a Guardian Seraph, a sixth pick Harm’s Way, lots of early creatures, my beloved Excommunicates... I am out to challenge preconceived notions regarding the efficacy of G-W.

Round 10: Oliver Polak-Rottmann (R-G)

I don’t recognise the name, but browsing the Worlds invitational list post-tournament I notice that Oliver, from Vienna, is a level 4 pro. This partially explains his irked countenance after I repeatedly bomb out his mana-flooded draws with my unstoppable deck. The only card I remember him playing was Berserkers of Blood Ridge, which is accompanied in the recesses of my mind by the perverted thrill of Excommunicating a stuttering opponent’s defences.

8-2

Round 11: Bill Johnson (W-B?)

A pleasure to sit down opposite one of our Midlands boys at such a late stage in the tournament – Bill is a fun and laid-back opponent. Also an opportunity to avenge a 6th round defeat in a Birmingham PTQ that denied me my virginal top 8 position – I still remember my accursed error, sacrificing Pestermite to chump blocking instead of an irrelevant Skeletal Changeling that changed the course of the game.

In keeping with the tendency of previous rounds (and life in general), my game wins are hard to recall, whereas losses come easily back to mind. Baneslayer Angel featured, which in one swing shifted enough momentum to turn the game from victory to defeat. This is offset by, I believe, a game dominated by Master of the Wild Hunt, and an aggressive draw coupled with a land-light game from Bill.

He maintains his chirpy outlook even after the loss, which is very refreshing. Who says nice guys finish last? He’s on 8-3!

9-2

Round 12: Paul Gower (R-G)

Another friendly English player, I believe from Cambridge, in the final of the draft pod. I put him on the Overrun I passed earlier in the draft, but post-match he tells me he doesn’t have it.

Master obliterates him in game one – without an instant answer he quickly prompts utter desperation in any opponent. Game two and I’m cantering to victory against his equipment and empty board with my combined 3 power of Griffin Sentinel and Veteran Armorsmith (or something). He sticks a Craw Wurm, which I Excommunicate, but when it comes down again and dons Whispersilk Cloak, I can’t finish him fast enough before his quick clock ends me.

Game three and he keeps a land-heavy six. I make early drops, Excommunicate him to the stone age, Overrun with two men on my side of the board to force him to chump or die, and kill him on the next turn. 3-0 in the pod, and my twelve-gauge deck has not let me down.

10-2

Draft Pod 2

I sit down at the heady heights of table 3, and to my left is sitting a familiar (from t’Internet at least) hook nose-face and shaggy, curly black hair. I’m in the big fish bowl now!

My draft is undistinguished by pack three, aside from a third pick Time Warp. But I crack a Serra Angel and pick up a few fliers and Excommunicates to tighten the curve and competitiveness. I am dependent on Negate and Unsummon to make up cards 22 and 23.

Round 13: Ashraf Abou Omar (G-W-b)

At this point I am contemplating the prospect of a Pro Tour invitation. With a win, I might have a chance to draw into the top 16 even if I lose round 14.

Ashraf is a German player, consummately well-mannered and a pleasure to play against. Ours is a frustrating match for him, however. His angel-inspired deck puts my slightly under-powered construction in the shade game 1, dropping Seraph and Serra into play to outclass my weak drakes and bypass my cumbersome Siege Mastodons. Some good removal and solid green men are also present and correct.

Game two is a strange one – he has early aggression that keeps whittling my life total down into the mid-game, but after I tempt him into trading Wind Drake for Deadly Recluse, I play Serra Angel and Siege Mastodon to slow him down and start my own attacks. Weakness on Serra abates the slaughter, but I have Griffin Sentinel in combination to take nice-sized bites out of him. The game seems to last forever, during which he draws none of the power I’ve seen in game one. I win almost incidentally, as I make more and more men to break through the stall, and Time Warp for the final points of damage.

At this point he politely, and fairly, asks me to speed up, since we’re looking at 14 minutes left and it’s a round too early for a desirable draw.

Have I mentioned the exceptional power of Excommunicate yet? Not just as a card to obtain a little tempo, remove a tricky blocker, keep Baneslayer from attacking for just one turn. But as a complete spirit-crusher, a dismal, heart-rending visitation of misery, the realisation that your next hotly anticipated draw step is going to metamorphose into an ugly déjà vu of your previous turn.

Ashraf has no plains, finally punishing his perhaps greedy three-colour deck. I curve out with something at two power, two mana, Griffin Sentinel, then Mastodon. He tops a Deadly Recluse to limit my aggressive urges while looking for his precious plains. Two turns later he has drawn and cast the same Recluse twice more, while Mastodon and friends rumble in to level his top 8 chances.

11-2


Round 14: Tommaso Campanini (R-G)

Having played sudden death from round 6 onwards, this could be the match that puts me into the top 8 of my first Grand Prix.

I am sure even the best players, none of whom are likely to be reading this modest offering, have made the kind of horrifying errors that are seared, branded, carved with a meathook, onto their psyche for the rest of their Magic-playing days. I can recall many of my own lamentable ‘punts’ from winning positions, or classic misplays that have ended games before they even started. And in this most critical of matches, it is my opponent who is destined to make that crucial, appalling error.

I have assembled a motley crew of aggressors – Veteran Armorsmith, Wind Drake and Silvercoat Lion. Tommaso has thwarted my ground forces with a Centaur Courser. I absorbed his turn 4 with Excommunicate and put the hurt on. He taps out and casts Fireball, knocking on my Wind Drake and Lion to put the game back in the balance. Only... it’s turn 5, he only has 5 land in play, and that spells ‘s-e-r-i-o-u-s m-i-s-c-a-l-c-u-l-a-t-i-o-n’. I try to be easy-going at the table, but at this point the stakes are high, the rules are tight and the mistake is absolute and inescapable; Tommaso makes a play to retarget only the drake, but the judge rules in my favour. Lion and drake suffer 1.5 points of damage each, rounding down, and stay in play, then game two swiftly begins.

Here I make a play mistake of my own; although not prompting acute embarrassment, the result is possibly the same. His Capricious Efreet is going to town on me and I have the chance to trade in combat, but I hold back in an attempt to muster a weak counterattack. He wins all three dice rolls, but that’s only one over the odds so I don’t have much to moan about. My aggressive plan falters and I lose to Rod of Ruin in the late game.

In game three we exchange some early beatings. I can’t find my second white for Serra Angel and I’m holding Time Warp, wanting to make the Angel then Warp on the next turn for instant victory in combination with some Drake action. Unfortunately I’m forced to Warp in order to find a plains, which I duly do. Serra enters the battlefield, he doesn’t have an answer, she kills him.

12-2

I’ve ‘won’ nine straight matches, from 3-2 to 12-2. As the standings are posted, I realise I am locked in to the top 8.

Round 15: Mark Dictus

Mark is an older player and former Belgian national champion who took the time and effort to reassure me and have a laugh in the lead-up to the second draft pod, while I was busy suppressing the terror which afflicted me at the prospect of showing Gabriel Nassif exactly how poorly one man can signal in a draft.

Handshakes all round as tables 2, 3 and 4 ID into the glory rounds. To my left, a grimacing Olivier Ruel shuffles up for his match with Kevin Grove...

12-2-1

Just before I go on to briefly detail the top 8 draft, this is the best point of the tournament. Many friends, old and new, pass on their congratulations – there are high fives and backslaps, smiles and cheers. I feel total bewilderment as I am shepherded for photographs, have to wrack my brains to put something worthwhile on my interview sheet (and fail abjectly). The idea of making the cut at a major tournament was absurd even seven hours before, but now a very real euphoria sets in knowing I’ve done it! Finally, and whisper it... I even experience a small twinge of national pride at being the last standing British player in our home Grand Prix.

Top 8 Draft

Coulda, shoulda, woulda, hadda draft strategy. Instead in my fifth ever M10 draft I lurched into a deck of solid creatures and little else. In my mind I figured I’d pose the questions: good men for reasonable cost, possibly with some tempo and combat tricks. The critical choice was first pick first pack – taking Prodigal Pyromancer over White Knight, when white-based decks had been doing it for me all weekend and everyone in the know was acting as the harbinger of the death of red. There was no red in the first booster, but I wasn’t doing a good job of noticing that as I put green card after green card in my pile. Later on I picked up double Safe Passage and Excommunicate, but Mark to my left was already in white and I was destined to see nothing to augment those strong cards in the second pack. Instead I got Magma Phoenix and Goblin Artillery, a couple of Sparkmages, and more green cards. Pack three – more green, more green, more green.

I realised with some dismay as I deck-constructed that I didn’t have a single removal spell, and my deck’s interactivity was at an all-time low. I could however just make a lot of men, and hope to break stalls with my Whispersilk Cloak, Kalonian Behemoth, Magma Phoenix. At the death I cut a curve creature and included Fog to up my reactive spells to two, from one Giant Growth. I was going to be relying on the consistency of my curve, the overall size of my green bodies, an exceptional anti-flyer spider defence... and Panic Attack.

Quarterfinal: Martin Juza (U-G-r)

At least I was going to crash out to a recognised name, which had been my stated aim at the start of the day. I didn’t realise the calibre of Martin, although I knew he had had some success and hobnobbed with the best – turns out he has a PT top 8 and at the time of going to press, 103 pro points to his name. Also, he’s pretty good looking. He spoke of his happiness at making top 8 after so many attempts in the past. I took petty and vindictive pleasure in gloating over making top 8 on my Grand Prix debut.

Game 1 his early Elvish Visionary does nothing to halt an unstoppable tide of Deadly Recluses which pulverise him to 19, 17, 15, 13. Prized Unicorn gets Mind Controlled, but he critically elects not to block with it as I attack with spiders and Mist Leopard. Giant Growth puts him to 3, and I follow it up with a post-combat Magma Phoenix that now cannot be killed. He draws, and scoops.

Game 2 sees us both Rampant Growth into a turn 3 4-drop. Mine is a spectacular Giant Spider; his is Master of the Wild Hunt. He has basically defeated me on turn 3 – I have no answers aside from Magma Phoenix, and that possibility recedes even further as he makes Gorgon Flail on his next turn. Even though Martin is unsure about the functionality of Master, it doesn’t take him too long to work out he can now M-16 my humble spiders, berserkers and rhinos with his free wolves. I do finally resolve the Magma Phoenix and send him in for some questionable attacks to make the life totals respectable, but ultimately I cannot beat the bomb which has served me so well in my earlier draft.

Game 3 and my opening hand is Deadly Recluse, Deadly Recluse, Deadly Recluse, Whispersilk Cloak, Craw Wurm (Might have been a Prized Unicorn, it was definitely green and relatively expensive), Mountain, Mountain. Mulligan into 1x land, 5x assortment of 2-4 drops. Mulligan into 1x land, 4x assortment of 4-5 drops. Mulligan to 1x land, Prodigal Pyromancer, Stampeding Rhino, Giant Spider. Keep.

Miss land drop 2, but top-deck the lands I need to make drops on turns 4, 5 and 6. However, he has Mind Control for my Giant Spider. When he casts Howl of the Night Pack with four cards odd still in hand, I extend mine. My adventure is over, and not at paragraph 400.

I was disappointed with my drafting much more than my play performance, which was respectable. But I was heartened to see that the other quarterfinals were all blow-outs, with quite a few decks featured that I would have fancied my deck against (including one semi-final deck that ran a positively emaciated 9 creatures). Martin went on to lose the final to Olivier Ruel. Overall, running on fumes and forty winks at the front door, I was greatly pleased with my day two performance. I’d like to think this whole adventure shows that a journeyman with a bit of good form, some good friends and a measure of good fortune can achieve large-scale tournament finishes of which they can be proud for the rest of their Magic-playing days.

I’ve met with a little success, qualified for the Pro Tour for the first time, received my first cash prize; I’ve started thinking – why not a little more? The plane ticket to Austin is already booked. Now that I’ve cracked the big time, I’m Britain’s newest pro, my name is on everyone’s lips, girls want to be with me, guys want to be me. I’m thinking about writing a book - ‘Next Again Level Magic: Open bombs, play your mates, get lucky’.

Accolades:
All the players, Scottish, English, Belgians and elsewhere, who gave hearty support and congratulations.
Jon Hagan and Richard Bland for sticking around for the entire day to take my unconscious form back to Coventry.
Danial Mior, for obvious reasons.
Excommunicate. Who’d have thought ecclesiastical stigmatising would adversely affect such a broad range of species.


Denunciations:
Mousehunt. Just the kind of game I’d be competitive and pioneering in – except I’m missing the zeitgeist under the terms of my self-imposed computer gaming exile.
Esper. I got mugged every time I drafted this mollusc-fast strategy.
Snoring. It took me a week of over-sleeping to recover.
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