So, I've never blogged before and I must admit it has probably been close to 5 years since I've written in any sort of journal or anything along those lines. On top of that I haven't done any non work related substantial writing in probably that same amount of time. That being said, if you are reading this, thanks and I'm sorry. I'm sorry if this ends up being not worth your time.
This entry, remember, the first entry (just making sure you're paying attention) I plan to keep it simple and recount the mundane story of my PTQ. Hopefully in future posts I'll be able to expand into something a little more interesting than this but I just needed to get the ball rolling somehow after so long without writing at all.
5:15 am Saturday Morning:.... BEEP BEEP BEEP (or some iPhone alarm approximation of that). Ugh, time to get up. I immediately regret agreeing to meeting Josh Jacobson in NYC at 7 am so we can drive up to the Poughkeepsie PTQ. Compound that with the fact that when I check my phone and there in blaring white letters is a text from Miles saying "I'm not going". Well fuck you Mr. Miles Rodriguez you're bad and you should feel bad about yourself. At this point I seriously consider texting Jacobson saying I rethought my decision and would instead chose to spend time with the love of my life (TLOMY) Carly and skip the PTQ. Then I remember that Carly had lots of school work to do anyway and as I wake up a bit more also remember how much I love Return to Ravnica limited. Sigh, get up, get dressed and head out the door.
Aside: I've been without my wallet, which contained, you know, everything that allows me to live the life of a sophisticated gentleman of the 21st century for 10 days now at this point. I left it in Tony B's car after our wild dash out of Philadelphia preceding that bitch Sandy (TBS). /Aside
6:30 am Saturday: Arrive in Manhattan, hey I'm even early but goddamn do I gotta poop. Ok, no biggie this is Manhattan, greatest city in the world, city that never sleeps, I can find a place to poop.
6:40 am Saturday: Well, NYC may not sleep but apparently Starbucks employees do. I've passed by 3 Starbucks looking for one that was open and had a bathroom for me to poop on (in) and though each one said open at 6:30 they were all dark inside. I proceed to shake my fist at the sky in anger (literally)
Fist shaken at sky count - 1
6:50 am Saturday: Text Jacobson saying that I am in NYC but I am looking for a place to poop. I remember that there is a Starbucks that I have pooped at on 6th Avenue a block from the meeting point and start scooting my way in that direction.
Scoot: (v) 1. To walk briskly with your butt cheeks clenched so as to not poop in your pants
7:00 am Saturday: weigh me, please.
7:15 am Saturday: Meet up with Jacobson and all around great guy Luis Neiman (AAGGLN) and learn that we've picked up another pal Sean McKeown. We share some gripes about your favorite Mexicant and mine (Miles in case you don't know) and are on our way.
The next 2 hours are the normal PTQ car ride full of funny stories, ragging on each other and recounting our lives since the last PTQ car ride. Seriously, even if I didn't want to play MTG anymore, the fun times I've had while travelling to PTQ's and other tournaments with friends are some of the greatest memories of my life. Anyhow, nothing exemplary happened during this trip though we did get stuck in traffic for about 20 minutes and sent Sean walking ahead to see what the deal was but it was nothing and we were on our way. So lets fast forward to the PTQ. shall we?
10:00 am Saturday: well, PTQ was supposed to start at 10 am but they never do so we settle in for an edh game while we wait. The game consisted of AAGGLN playing his Progenitus good stuff durdle deck, Jacobson playing my Trostani populate deck, Sean playing his Ob Nixolus mono black control deck and me playing my Lyzolda the Blood Witch grindy deck. This was one of the more interesting EDH games I have played in a while. The highlight for me was when AAGGLN had 4 planeswalkers in play and 7 cards in hand. At that point he passed the turn and I slammed down
Vicious Shadows and attempted to convince Sean to play some wrath effect. He did. Now someone who plays EDH for different reasons than I do might have used this opportunity to say kill AAGGLN or someone else at the table. Instead I settled for killing all 4 of his Planeswalkers and nugging everyone else for between 5 and 7. Thanks Vicious Shadow.
The game kinda ends when they announce seating is up for the deck building portion of the PTQ. We all sort of agree who would win the game had it gone on (me) and have hearty laughs about the vicious shadows.
11:00 am Saturday: Small talk having ended they finally pass out product. Oddly enough they just passed boxes of packs around and expected people to kind of use the honor system and not steal them instead of passing out 6 packs to everyone. Seemed like it went well enough. Maybe I am just cynical about the world we live in who knows.
11:15 am Saturday: Finish registering a decent pool that is way to spread out with way to little mana fixing for my liking. Glad to not play it I wait for the deck swap instructions.
11:20 am Saturday: First pass is done (to the left to the left). I take a brief glance at the registration sheet and make note of the pack rat.
Aside 2: Pack rat is not fun. It is not fun for the person playing it (more on this later) and it is not fun for the person playing against it. I am not sure why they decided to print this card as it is but I can only say it was a mistake, for now /Aside
11:25 am Saturday: Second Pass is done (to the left to the left, all the pack rats in a pile to the left) and we are told that these are the pools we will be playing. I briefly again scan the deck reg list looking for stand out cards and notice the ubiquitous Pack Rat and a Trostani, Selesnya's Voice. Lets get to building.
11:35 am Saturday: My pool is the nuts. I decide to play GWb splashing for Pack Rat and 2 Launch Parties. I had quite a few more good black and or Golgari cards but decided to keep my deck more consistent and let my amazing cards do most of the work. The highlights of my deck are:
Trostani
Pack Rat
Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage
Martial Law
Wild Beast Master
2 Launch Parties
Avenging Arrow
I decided to play some defensive creatures like Armory guards and Concordia Pegasus to round out my deck. I felt like if the game went long and my deck cooperated I would win on the back of card strength. Well on to the tourny.
11:55 am Saturday: R1 starts and I'm paired against a familiar face in Alec Nezin. Alec is a nice guy and we've battled more than once in the past since we've both been grinding the PTQ scene in the North East for a while now. G1 I had my first pack rat experience. I drop it t2 Make a few copies and the game is over. Yeah, fun card that pack rat.... G2 Alec sides into a different deck. I assume it is because he has more answers to pack rat in that combination of cards. I draw the other half of my deck and end up with Guildmage, Trostani in play. I make about a billion centaurs gain about a billion life and win via overwhelming Alec.
12:55 pmSaturday: R2 is very similar to R1. G1 I draw and play pack rat and he does what he is want to do and wins the game on about T5. G2 was a long interesting game. We're both nickle and dimeing each other for a few life and making a few trades in combat when he drops martial law and starts locking down my reach blocker. He begins pecking me with his 2/3 flyer when I draw the little apparition that could and blow up his martial law. Back at a stalemate we both bluff a bit and try and eek out advantage until he casts Angel of Serenity. At this point he has a tough call to make. He can exile my 2 blockers and a guy from his yard (one of my blockers was the detain 2 guy) and try to start getting in for damage or he can exile 3 guys from his yard and one of my blockers (the reach spider) and kill me a bit more slowly. I've had between 1 and 2 cards in my hand this whole time and he has had flyers so he must not of put me on the card I had so he chooses to try and kill me quicker by exiling both my creatures. Luckily I've been sandbagging the Aerial Predation I boarded in so I can kill his AoS and get back my 2 guys. This pretty much puts us back at a stalemate until I draw Vhitu Ghazi Planeswalker. I run that thing out and pass the turn totally ready to make a centaur and start populating my way to victory. That is until he untaps and plays on his turn, Vhitu Ghazi Planeswalker. Ok, no biggie I have more green mana than he does, this may take a while but I will win in the long run. Well the long run turned out not to be so long as in successive turns I draw Trostani and then Wild Beastmaster and run him over. A little anticlimactic ending but a great game nonetheless.
1:55 pm Saturday: Editors note: I'm just assuming each round started 1 hour after the next so these times are approximations. R3 I get my first loss. G1 I get an aggro guildmage draw and run him over seeing only Blue and white mediocre spells. G2 Turns out he was missing his red splash. In this game I see explosive impact and Mecurial Chemister. Also Sean says I misplayed this game. At one point in the game he had
Skymark Roc,
Sphinx of Chimes and
Mercurial Chemister in play to my Guildmage and pack rat. I drew the pack rat pretty late and played it thinking this is how i win this seemingly un-winnable game. In my hand at the time is a blank and
Aerial Predation. My next draw step yields
Launch Party. The line of play I chose involved me using my 2 removal spells on Chemister and Sphinx of Chimes. I ended up losing to the Skymark Roc because I was never able to get enough assets to make pack rat's big enough not to be bounced before I died. What I probably should have done is not play the pack rat at all. Still kill the same 2 creatures and try to ride my guildmage to victory. Also I decided later on that assuming the pack rat line of play was good, I should have stopped playing lands earlier than I did.
Game 3 I mull to 5 and though I sort of stabilized I missed a scavenge on a reach guy that would have given me a few more turns to dig for answers to his Sphinx of Chimes. When I realized it I was a bit Dejected and chose to shake my fist at the sky.
Fist shaken at sky count - 2
So, I feel like this round got away from me slightly. I'm not sure I would have won either of those games but feeling like there were spots where I made poor decisions lingers in the back of my mind.
2:55 pm Saturday: R4. This was the round where I cemented my opinion of pack rat. Here is a brief Recap.
G1
1. Win Die Roll
2. Keep hand
3. Play pack rat t2
4. Win in 5 minutes
Between games we small talk a bit about how dumb pack rat is while we shuffle I express how the card isn't even fun when you have it.
G2.
1. Mull
2. Double Mull
3. Play pack rat t2
4 Win in 6 minuntes
This Game, when I played the rat, my opponent's whole body language expressed how this card effects RTR limited. He was sitting up good posture etc and when I played it he slumped in his chair and let out an exasperated sigh.
Not wanting to be a douche, I quietly signed the slip and wished my opponent GL in the rest of the day.
3:15 pm Saturday: Steal some KFC from Jacobson and Joe Kahzdan. Fuck you diet.
3:20 pm Saturday: Get in 3 one on one EDH Games with Joe's little brother where he crushed me every single time.
4:00 pm Saturday. Get paired for R5, shuffle, present, resolve mulligans... REPAIR!
4:15 pm Saturday. Sit down, chit chat with opponent and hear in the background that someone is getting disqualified for bringing his own deck, and not playing what was registered... not only that he was 2-1-1. you know what that means to me? He did not cheat enough pack rats into his deck. This round is where my frustration really came from. My opponent was a nice guy but not the greatest player. G1 I mull 2 no land hands to a mediocre 5 with some lands and a gatecreeper vine for fixing. My opponents first play is the 3/2 regenerator guy and I make some good trades in combat to recoup a little card advantage to get into the late game at about 8 life with both of us at 0 cards (I have 1 but it's my sandbag bluff land). At about this point I start drawing lands, while my opponent starts drawing gas. I draw land... He draws Centaurs accord. Next turn I draw land.. He draws Centaurs accord. Turn after I Draw land he explosive impacts to kill me. Sigh... ok well I can beat this guy g2 and g3.
G2. Again, I mull 2 no land hands to 5 and struggle to get back into the game. At one point he stab wounds my 2/5 vigilance guy and passes the turn. I untap, go to my upkeep announce my upkeep and sit there.... wait.... wait.... wait... "ok guy, you actually need to say something here" I say to him and he looks dumbfounded. I point to his stab wound and he goes "oh, you take 2" I mark my 2 and say to him that in the future please announce it because I will not remind him. I draw drop one of the many lands in my hand (theme incoming) and pass the turn. Sensing that he would forget his own trigger, this turn he decides to attack into the stab wounded guy (he had declined to the previous turn) I block eager to be rid of the wound he passes. I draw yet another land and ship the turn back. He makes some guys and starts pressuring me. I continue to draw land and die an anticlimactic death to random 3 power dudes and my PT Gatecrash dreams are dead for this day.
I drop from the tourney at 3-2 wondering about what could have been considering my pool and my abysmal mulligan and draw step luck.
I realized shortly thereafter that the only GAMES I lost were 3 to double mulligan/flood and one to mulligan/ a possible poor line of play plus flood.
Fist shaken at sky count - 3
5:15 pm Saturday. Being out, I sit down to resume edhing with AAGGLN, Jacobson and Sean. Sean is still alive but plays between rounds. and at one point Jacobson tags out for Roy so he can go get Tylenol for his bad headache and I am thankful that he gets it because my headaches/neck pain are acting up and I take some too.
One of the more memorable edh moments of the day came in a game where the last 2 players were AAGGLN and myself. The board position looked dire for AAGGLN. I had just recently cast
Diabolic Revelation for some absurd number (6) and was looking to set up a kill in about 2 turns. UNTIL, AAGGLN did something very non AAGGLN like. He cast
The Mimeoplasm. Well, this could be worse, right? NOPE. In my yard was your good friend and mine
Mr Kiki Jiki. To top that off, AAGGLN had eternal witness. RUH ROH Shaggy... AAGGLN had in his yard both Pact of Negation and Mana Drain and all of a sudden my tutor for 6 cards no longer looked to be game breaking. 1 Turn, that's how long I had to try and be the victor. 1 Turn where Luis only had 2 mana open and could only return one of his counterspells.
So I untap and tank for a bit. In my hand I have,
Black Myojin,
Mimic Vat,
Kagemaro, and 2 things that in hindsight did not matter. In order to survive/win I need to resolve my Kagemaro. So I lead with the Vat, it resolves. I count my mana and realize I am 1 mana short of then using the Myojin as another bait spell and being able to explode the kagemaro 2x. Explode, put on vat explode again. At this point I realize it's all over except the shouting and scoop em up with my t-rex arms motion.
The last edh game ends with Roy piloting the Lyzolda deck and killing everyone with a combination of Vicious shadows + Myojin of Deaths Reach, Bloodchief Ascension and Kagemaro the first to suffer. Was a good game nothing super crazy happened but very swingy. I die to Roy Stealing Geth from AAGGLN playing Sean's Deck and reanimating alot of my stuff from my Graveyard.
Fist shaken at sky count - 4
7:00 pm: Saturday: Sean gets pressured by Jacobson to leave despite his 5% chance to top 8 at x-2 because Jacobson has to be in the city by 11 and has to go home and shower so we pack up and venture back towards Manhattan. Similar conversation as before except that i interject every time I want to change the subject with "I'm hungry" (which I really was). By the time we get back into the city I've convince Sean that he is Hungry as well and we hit up Schnippers in the NY Times building. Delicious Bacon Cheeseburgers are eaten and I feel a bit better about my day.
So after a long day, with 4 fists shaken at the sky, a delcious cheeseburger and a few mistakes. I head home knowing while things didn't necessarily go my way. As always I had a good time with good friends playing the game I love. Til next time
hugs and hand-pounds
Josh
