Title: Documenting my improvement
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Blog Entry: Hey, Very few of you probably know me. I´m Benjamin, nice to meet you. I stopped playing right after I top 8:ed a Grand Prix here in my hometown of Gothenburg (Mirrodin sealed), a top 8 which qualified me for the Pro Tour, oddly enough. I always loved magic, but personal finances didn´t allow me to do any drafting, any card buying or any travelling at the time - for those of you fortunate enough to afford these things, you might want to stop for a second to consider how lucky are. I was in a really bad spot at the time for sure, which is annoying now since I know qualifying is definitely not easy. I started focusing on poker instead, and that´s what I´ve been doing since. I have since discovered that I am gifted enough at it to make quite a decent living out of it, which in turn enabled me to actually do enough drafts and stuff to actually be excited by the game of Magic again. And boy am I excited. I love this game and I love the current formats. So anyway, I decided to qualify for the Pro Tour again. No, not TRY to qualify. I decided to qualify. A blog documenting your way there certainly won´t do me any harm, even if it´s not guaranteed to do anything to help me get there either. I hope to do a fair amount of drafting, with screenshots and walkthroughs to go with it, coupled with my thoughts on the constructed formats I am focusing on at the moment. Gonna start another draft up in like 45 minutes or so - we will see how it goes. This is the deck I have been absolutely raping the constructed queues with the last few days (got like a 65% 3-0 score with it - obviously rungood but whatever, it´s a great deck): 9 Island 4 Swamp 4 Secluded Glen 4 Sunken Ruins 4 Thoughtseize 4 Bitterblossom 4 Nameless Inversion 4 Spellstutter Sprite 4 Scion of Oona 2 Vendilion Clique 4 Mistbind Clique 3 Sower of Temptation 4 Cryptic Command 2 Broken Ambitions 2 Consign to Dream 2 Faerie Trickery 2 Mind shatter 4 Murderous Redcap 2 Puppeteer Clique 3 Shriekmaw Not very exciting, I know, but in my opinion there is just nothing else close to faeries´ power level. I usually never play the perceived "deck to beat" because mirror matches are always so random but all of the other decks are just sooo bad. Anyone telling you that 5c controls faeries matchup is favorable is lying to your face. He´d be lying if he even said it was "fine". Elementals are the same. Kithkin has a bit more game, but it´s still a slight dog to faeries. Sure, you could play some monored burn deck or whatever just to try to beat faeries, but then you will snap-lose to anything else and you are probably not hugely favored vs faeries anyway, so no one does that. As for the few interesting card choices: 2 Broken Ambitions - yeah I just don´t like it very much. I don´t wanna drop it entirely because I need some hard counters, but it´s definitely the worst card in the deck and since I am playing 4 maindeck Thoughtseize, the need for this card is definitely diminished. Have played the deck with this configuration for a while and have never felt "god I played more Ambitions". 4 Thoughtseize - the pre-sideboard vs the mirror. Having these game #1 actually gives you a huger edge than you would imagine, since so many of the games are won or lost on the second turn bitterblossom. They´re also fantastic against 5c and actually pretty sweet against all the other decks too - nabbing Spectral Procession or Cloudthresher can be huge at times. I love having these in the maindeck and I definitely think its the way to gain an edge when playing against a room full of reflecting pools and bitterblossoms. The other thing I considered were playing some vivid lands and boarding in Wispmare which I don´t think is bad, but then you can´t really rely on a turn one Thoughtseize anymore. 2 Vendilion Clique - these seem like the standard nowadays. They´re pretty good. Nothing exciting but you kinda want the extra creature. 3 Sower of Temptation - Not having these main is insane. Some might say three of them is pushing it but I really don´t think so. They´re completely amazing, especially coupled with the maindeck Thoughtseizes as you can remove their Inversion or whatever and have complete freedom with your Sower later. The board, as always, is a work in progresss. Consigns have seemed great so far versus G/W and elementals - this may or may not prove too narrow to waste slots on but I´ve liked them a lot so far. I´ve won a lot of games chucking Horde of Notions back to the top, or bounced my own Sower in response to a hard cast Cloudthresher. Faerie Trickery is just an extra counterspell... They´re useful but I think these will be replaced with something you can board in against both faeries and 5c. Mind shatter has also been underwhelming but it can wingames and I´m having a hard time figuring out what I want to replace it with. Murderous Redcap is my experimental replacement for Incremental Blight. I am not playing Incremental Blight ever. It´s just too situational and slow. I think Redcap is pretty underestimated in the format right now. It can often kill one of your opponents dude and then force them to hold their Mutavault back on defense (even 3/3s can´t attack into it and live to tell the tale). If I think of some other super good anti-Kithkin tech, these might get the axe but I definitely think they´re better than Blight atleast. Playing four right now just because I want to try them out. Puppeteer Clique is a huge blowout versus 5c. I haven´t lost a game where I have cast this with a Thresher in opponents graveyard. The sideboard is actually just the slightest bit awkward right now. A lot of the time you end up sideboarding out 3 of Scion of Oona for example just because you don´t have anything more to bring in. I like more straightforward sideboard, were you have, say, 9 cards you know you want to bring in for 9 cards you know you want to bring out. --- Just did the draft I was supposed to screenshot/record. I didn´t cause it´s just such a mess. Wrote down the first and second pack picks and then kinda forgot about it. Was a really really weird draft though. Here are the first picks: 1st pack: Glen-Endra Liege, Torrent of Souls, Firespout, Gloomlance, Shield of the Oversoul Easy pick of best card in the set. Firespout. 2nd pack: Safehold Elite, Barkshell Blessing, Sickeripper, Roughshell Mentor Yes, those were in fact the only playable cards in the pack :/ I took the elite which I still think is correct. 3rd pack: Silkbind Faerie, Consign to Dream, Scuttlemutt, Biting Tether This is were it gets weird... There is only absolute garbage in my main colors, so I ponder... Can I even take the ´Mutt here? NO green or red playables in the THIRD PACK - that means I could be in big trouble in the coming packs if i don´t switch it up soon. Third pick Silkbind is a super strong sign of U/W being available, and that would be just great to splash firespout in (your dudes die, mine don´t). However, there´s a frigging BOMB left in the uncommon slot. Maybe the people feeding me are just retarded? I´m not sure what the right pick is here... I think Biting Tethers is a super ridiculous, versatile bomb, and splashable to boot. By taking Tethers here, I figured I actually made a LESS comitting pick than if i took the faerie, which is a card I would not have splashed for if I went R/G - tethers might be though. I just couldn´t justify taking Scutts here so I finally took the tethers, feeling weird about the whole thing. 4th pack: Tower Above, Somnomancer, Aethertow Another dilemma... With these signals, I think it´s fair to assume white is open and red isn´t (which is the case a LOT on mtgo, people overdraft red and green so much), maybe going for W/U/r or G/W/r. While I can play Somnomancer and Aethertow in both those decks, Tower Above is a really powerful card. I almost timed out deciding before taking Tower. It´s debatable since you really need the grizzlies, I don´t know if green is open or not and I kinda have no green spells yet - but this card going fourth should be considered a pretty strong signal aswell. 5th pick: Shield of the Oversoul, Cultbrand Cinder, Farhaven Elf, Inquisitors Snare Another sign that G/W is open. Might as well take the Shield when it is offered 5th. The rest of the pack gave me an Inquisitors Snare and nothing more except the 10th pack which had this dilemma: Barrenton Cragtreads, Aethertow, Devoted Druid which made me ask myself the question: How good is Druid in G/W? "Not very, I´d imagine" was the responsde so I took an Aethertow.
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