Title: What I learned from Nationals!
Tags: Magic, Nationals
Blog Entry: What I learned from Nationals... Here, I sit; in front of my living room television, watching Rounders, reflecting on my unsuccesful weekend at Nationals. Well, I suppose the weekend was a success, and a failure. It was a failure, because I came up short making any sort of impression in the main event. It was a success, because it was the experience of a lifetime and I learned a lot. I played a deck that was a lot of fun (mostly because of its shock value), that intensely hated anything called "creature." The list was the following: 2x Chandra Nalar 2x Liliana Vess 1x Oona, Queen of the Fae 4x Terror 3x Slaughter Pact 3x Firespout 3x Damnation 4x Rune Snag 3x Cryptic Command 2x Pact of Negation 1x Pithing Needle 1x Extirpate 1x Teferi's Moat 1x Primal Command 4x Harmonize 1x Boom//Bust 4x Vivid Creek 3x Vivid Marsh 2x Vivid Crag 2x Vivid Grove 1x Grove of the Burnwillows 1x Shivan Reef 1x Firelit Thicket 1X Yavimaya Coast 4x Reflecting Pool 2x Dreadship Reef 3x Underground River 2x Sunken Ruins Sideboard: 2x Extirpate 3x Krosan Grip 2x Eyes of the Wisent 4x Kitchen Finks 4x Thoughtseize All the deck needs to do is survive the early game, which it does quite well with Firespout, Damnation, Terror, Slaughter Pact, and Rune Snag, to get to the late game where you can control the board with Chandra and Oona, and Liliana helps tutor for anything you want, as well as disrupt your opponent's hand, and quite often bring your opponent's creatures back in to play under your control. The deck has at least a 60/40 matchup with anything relying on creatures. Merfolk, R/G, and Mono Red hardly stand a chance against the deck as long as you keep at least a decent 6 card hand. B/G can be tricky because of their main deck thoughtseizes, and 7 or 8 man lands. Reveilark doesn't stand a chance either with main deck Extirpate, and plenty of counterspells to keep them off the board. Only one problem...Faeries absolutely crushes this deck. And there is the problem. I completely assessed the field wrong. I figured that with mono red gaining overnight celebrity status, and B/G elves doing very well all over the world, faeries players would fear the fast decks and dread the mirror matches. Boy, was I wrong. Faeries was the most played deck as usual. There were indeed more than twice as many players sleeving the fae, as there were any other deck. OUCH FOR ME!!! 1st Lesson: If you are going to play the big events, play a deck that beats the best deck (faeries), and has a fair chance against everything else. Don't go in there hoping to dodge faeries, because it absolutely won't happen. Main deck explanations: With Liliana, you can go grab anything you want. Mass removal, Counterspells, Oona, and it allows you to play single copies of cards that normally belong in the sideboard. These would be: Pithing Needle: This card completely shuts down Figure of Destiny, Sygg, River Guide, Seismic Assault, Mutavault, Treetop Village, Garruk Wild Speaker, etc. Extirpate: No need to worry about Lark, or Demigod of Revenge anymore with this card, and if you can extirpate a bitterblossom against faeries, your chances of winning are much greater. Teferi's Moat: Allows you to sit back and collect enough lands and counters to lay down Oona, Queen of the Fae and protect it, and obviously, telling your B/G or mono red opponent that they can't attack any more is pretty gas. Boom//Bust: Very good when you have control of the board with Oona or Chandra, but don't have the counters to protect it. Also good when you have the counters in hand, but your opponent is senselessly bashing you with man lands. Primal Command: So good against Mono Red and tutors for Queen Oona. Pact of Negation: A last minute decision which ended up being really good as it allows you to play a turn 5 planeswalker or turn 6 Oona and have a zero casting cost counter to protect either. I went 1-2 with the deck in the first standard portion of Nationals, beating a B/G elves, and then losing to two faeries decks in a row, one of which successfully casted 3 Ancestral Visions and 4 Thoughtseizes in one game...OUCH OUCH OUCH!!! I then went on to have a terrible 2-5 performance in the draft portion of the event. I have to admit that I never draft, and I certainly didn't have the money for it to practice as often as I should have. Lesson learned. Practice limited if you plan on playing at nationals. A LOT!!! Don't assume you know what cards are good, and which ones are bad, and just hope to luckily get a good deck. It isn't a coincidence that the top pros consistently do well at limited. They take bad cards and make them work when they have to. Take Melissa DeTora for instance. I played her in round 1 of limited. I took the first game when I got out a Doomgape, and mana burned her for 9 damage with a valleymaker. The next two games, she ravaged me with "guys" as she put it. Just random creatures that all served their purpose. I thought I would be able to chump block for a while until she played a dude that gave all her creatures +1/+0 and trample by simply tapping RG. I was not impressed by her deck at all, but very impressed by her play and the speed at which her deck could kill. Another lesson learned. Draft fast in this format and "curve out" at about 3 or 4 at most if you are certain you have enough removal. I ended up dropping from nationals after going 3-7. Oh poor limited rating, how you must suffer lol. I ended up playing in a side event for an apple TV, and went 5-2 and missing the top 4 prize for an ipod by .3% in tiebreaks. WOW... The next day I made some very good changes in the deck. I made it to have a much better chance against faeries while not compromising on its ability to smash creature decks. The deck now looks like the following: 2x Chandra Nalar 2x Liliana Vess 1x Oona, Queen of the Fae 4x Terror 3x Slaughter Pact 2x Firespout 3x Damnation 4x Rune Snag 3x Cryptic Command 2x Pact of Negation 1x Extirpate 1x Pithing Needle 1x Teferi's Moat 1x Primal Command 3x Careful Consideration 3x Ancestral Visions Sideboard: 1x Extirpate 2x Cloudthresher 1x Firespout 4x Thoughtseize 1x Kitchen Finks 1x Primal Command 1x Pithing Needle 2x Krosan Grip 2x Imp's Mischief This deck fits the format much better. You still have the resources to shut down mono red, merfolk, and B/G evles, and now have instant speed harmonizes by way of careful considerations, and you can now count down to "draw 3 cards" along with your faerie opponent by way of ancestral visions. The sideboard is much better against Faeries now. Eyes of the Wisent didn't really do anything. I can see it being good in an agro deck, but in a control deck like this, it is a very bad choice. Imp's Mischief helps you win the Ancestral war, you have an extra Pithing Needle in the board for B/G Elves, and all their many activations. Primal Command is better than Kitchen Finks, because after all, 7 life is better than 4 and it tutors for Queen Oona. The best mainstream deck in type 2 right now has to be Mono Red, though. Why? Because it beats the other "best" decks. It beats faeries, B/G elves, and merfolk. It has to certainly hurry to beat Reveilark, but if you can beat 3/4 best decks in type 2 then you can certainly pat yourself on the back. Another deck worth looking at is Herberholz and co.'s updated version of Quick N' Toast. The list is as follows: 3 Cloudthresher 3 Kitchen Finks 3 Mulldrifter 1 Murderous Redcap 1 Nucklavee 1 Oona, Queen of the Fae 1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir 4 Wall of Roots 3 Careful Consideration 4 Cryptic Command 1 Damnation 4 Firespout 2 Makeshift Mannequin 4 Rune Snag 1 Slaughter Pact t 1 Adarkar Wastes 2 Dreadship Reef 4 Flooded Grove 3 Grove of the Burnwillows 4 Reflecting Pool 2 Sunken Ruins 4 Vivid Creek 4 Vivid Grove This deck is pretty wicked, and Nucklavee makes things very funny if you get enough land out. "I'll cast cryptic command to counter your spell and bounce Nucklavee back to my hand, and infinitely have cryptics and firespouts." The deck can survive the early game with kitchen finks, murderous redcap, wall of roots, and 5 mass removal spells. This deck looks like a lot of fun, and has enough creatures to deal with agro decks, and cloudthreshers and counterspells to deal with faeries. Herberholz took this deck to a 7-0 record in the swiss rounds at Nationals, which by the way, is really good. I believe Chapin was playing the same deck, and you can usually trust what he plays. Okay, now that is enough about standard for one column. Let us move on to another lesson that I took from my weekend in Chicago. Charles Gindy is a cool guy. Now this guy I like, and I never even spoke to him. I just love the way he carries himself. This guy just won $40,000 at Pro Tour Hollywood, and you wouldn't know it by looking at him, and I mean that in the best way possible. I hate these Magic players who walk around like they are better than everyone, just because they've played on the pro tour a few times. That is not who Gindy is at all. I saw Gindy a couple of times just hanging out by himself watching people play magic while he was wearing a Magic The Gathering 15th birthday party hat on his head. The guy doesn't take himself too seriously, and you have to love that about the guy. Well that is all for this entry. Until next time, have fun and be a good sport.
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