GP Calgary mini report

I went to Calgary for the GP in search of pro points and more or less accomplished my goal - I got 2 of them, as well as $400 for 24th place. I finished 11-4.




I played Izzet Phoenix. Here was my list:

4 Thing in the Ice
4 Arclight Phoenix
2 Crackling Drake
1 Snapcaster Mage

2 Pyromancer Ascension

4 Opt
4 Thought Scour
4 Serum Visions
4 Faithless Looting
4 Manamorphose

4 Lightning Bolt
2 Lightning Axe
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Set Adrift

4 Scalding Tarn
4 Spirebluff Canal
3 Steam Vents
1 Flooded Strand
1 Misty Rainforest
3 Island
2 Mountain

Sideboard:

2 Blood Moon
2 Abrade
2 Ceremonious Rejection
2 Dispel
2 Beacon Bolt
1 Spell Snare
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
1 Shatterstorm


The best Phoenix list is rapidly converging, at least until people figure out how to properly exploit it. Of the 10 flexible slots (i.e. anything that isn't 4x or a land), I chose the ones I did for roughly these reasons:

Crackling Drake - I still love this card as a backup. People still think Leyline and RIP is an effective plan, and as long as you have this card, you can punish them for that. That said, I do board it out a fair amount so maybe it's time to rethink it.

Snapcaster Mage - Generic useful catch all. Not ready to cut it entirely yet. It is a bit clunky though.

Pyromancer Ascension - The hype on this card is catching on. After Tampa, I played a bunch of games vs. Jarvis in the airport and lost every single one, no matter how good my draw was, because he was always able to find Ascension and blast off. I believe you need this card in some amount going forward.

Surgical Extraction - I cut it back down to 2 because drawing too many sucks even in matchups where it's good, and I also think Dredge is just plain a fine matchup.

Lightning Axe - I'd prefer at least one Flame Slash, but I was betting on GDS being big. Plus, it's better with Ascension. One game in Calgary, I cast Lightning Axe discarding the other Lightning Axe, and it in fact triggers Ascension.

Set Adrift - Another useful catch all that I'm not ready to part with yet. It stops a flipped Thing (which is really hard to do otherwise), costs a million to get around Chalice, and is very easy to cast for one mana.


Sideboard and cutting room floor:

0 Dragon's Claw, 0 Life Goes On, 0 anything dedicated to burn really

I think Dragon's Claw is awful. I prefer LGO, but would rather not splash a third color, and also didn't think burn would be popular enough to use precious sideboard space.

2 Abrade, 0 Ancient Grudge

Easy swap without green mana. Abrade is super nice actually, since it comes in against humans (and can kill Vial, which I often wish I could do!) and random other decks. I also bring it in against burn, which helps since I don't have any life gain cards any more.

2 Beacon Bolt

This is because I thought the mirror and GDS would be big. There's a cost to playing a 3 mana card though, and it's that you get rushed down more often by decks like Humans. Casting this card with Thalia in play suuuucks. If I knew for sure I'd play 4-5 matches of mirror and/or GDS I'd maybe include 2, but I wish I only played one in retrospect.

2 Ceremonious Rejection

I thought Tron would be huge, so I upped this to 2. It's fine vs. Whir Prison also, but I don't know how I feel about it against decks like Affinity. I'd play 2 again I think - I really want the help vs. Tron.

2 Dispel, 1 Spell Snare, 0 Spell Pierce

I was planning on playing 2 Dispel and 1 Pierce, instead of 1/2, because I hate Pierce. It goes dead really quickly and I find myself playing a lot of controlling games where I can't capitalize on its tempo nature. When Ben Friedman arrived to our airbnb in Calgary, he was super hype about Spell Snare and was planning on playing 2. He convinced me to play one over Pierce, which wasn't a hard sell since I already disliked Pierce. I liked Spell Snare a lot, but playing with 0 Pierce definitely hurts your UW Control matchup (among others I'm sure, but UW is the most relevant imo). Shout out to Aaron Robinson for getting copies for Ben and I, it was the only card I didn't bring.

1 Anger, 0 Ravenous Trap, 0 Surgical

I went really low on graveyard hate because I didn't expect much Dredge. People are still overboarding graveyard hate because they think it's good against Phoenix, and Dredge just isn't consistent enough for my tastes anyway, so I sold my stock in graveyard hate for the most part and played a flexible card like Anger so I could double dip vs. decks like Humans.

1 EE

This card is super useful. I got a lot of mileage out of it in a lot of matchups. I think the biggest target in mind is GDS, but it's good in so many other spots. I'm not sure if I like it in the mirror (I played two mirrors and didn't bring it in), but it is one of the few cards you can play to deal with flipped thing or ascension.

1 Chandra, 0 Jace, 0 Keranos

Honestly I wanted two whammy cards, and I wanted one to be Jace, but it was the 16th card and my last cut. I generally think it's worth playing 2 planeswalkers. I don't really like Keranos.

1 Shatterstorm

I hate burning a slot on this card, but including it jumps your Whir matchup so high that it's worth it. Plus, not like it's useless otherwise, I'm happy to have it vs. affinity and lantern and etc.


The Rounds

R3 - UW Control - LL

I changed my deck in a lot of small ways that all made it worse against UW and got destroyed in two games. My opponent eventually made top 8.

R4 - Humans - WLL

My opponent recognized me from the Cleveland coverage, which was cool. Very pleasant and friendly fellow.

R5 - Sultai Reclamation - LWW
R6 - Izzet Phoenix Remix - WW

I say remix because it was a strange build I haven't seen before, with Jace VP and Fiery Temper. I didn't get to see it run at max capacity so I have no idea how good it could be.

R7 - Esper Mill - WW

I would not have won this match without Pyromancer Ascension. Having half my library in the graveyard made triggering it very easy.

R8 - Bant Spirits - LWW
R9 - Burn - WW
R10 - Izzet Phoenix - WW
R11 - Whir Prison - LWW

My opponent for this round was my good friend and #mtghof rival Jon Stern, who was also staying in the airbnb with Friedman and I, organized by a very friendly and hospitable group of players from Edmonton.

Jon was 8-1 after day 1, and I was 7-2. When we got home from dinner afterwards, Jon suggested that we play boarded games of the matchup, since he wanted to practice. I could certainly use the practice myself, so I agreed.

We played four games and I went 1-3, but I learned a ton of things. Originally I was boarding out Surgical Extraction and Set Adrift, for no other reason than I just had a whopping ten cards to bring in and had no clue what else to cut (well, that and I asked Jon if he thought surgical would be good against him and he said not really, so I trusted him and boarded it out).

I also learned about how the games tend to go and just generally what to do. You have a really high chance of winning the game if you draw your Shatterstorm (and it doesn't get removed with a card like Unmoored Ego, which Jon had), since you can just set up lethal and then cast it and immediately win (assuming they aren't sitting on 6 mana and a single Whir in hand or some other wacky corner case). Given that, you never, ever want to thought scour yourself, since if you accidentally mill it, your win percentage drops drastically. So given THAT, that you'll be filling your opponent's graveyard with cards potentially, having Surgical back in makes sense.

I lost the first game, as expected, and then I used all the info I got from those practice games to change my sideboard strategy and beat Jon. Set Adrift was necessary because it got around Chalice, and even if they have multiple bridges in play, you can still snipe something useful like the Chalice itself (which I did in game 2, and then shuffled it away with my newly unlocked Surgical), or Sorcerer's Spyglass (which I did in game 3, allowing me to use Chandra again and eventually kill Jon). Also if you destroy Chalice with Abrade and then surgical it (which I ALSO did against Jon), your cantrips are unlocked forever, and that makes your likelihood of finding Shatterstorm a lot higher.

I felt horrible about it.

Jon and I have collaborated and shared ideas a lot on things like how to approach tournament preparation, or how to improve your processes, both individually and in groups. The one thing we disagree on (quite strongly in fact) is the importance of information secrecy. I generally feel like we're beyond the age of "leaks". The good decks are found pretty quickly. Everyone is writing articles, streaming, and otherwise turning their hand face up. And even if they did find out what you're up to (and it was actually optimal), there's almost no chance that they can capitalize on it effectively in time. I believe the benefits you get from not having to perform the labor of restricting yourself (making secret modo accounts, not being able to talk to your friends and gather information that way, etc.) far outweigh the benefits of total secrecy.

Jon is pretty much the opposite. If he's working with people to prepare for a tournament, he generally prefers that there be well-defined rules about what is and isn't OK to share, and what information he can expect to get and have to give. He doesn't see the cost of having to keep things secret to be particularly laborious. And if he isn't working with anyone for a tournament, he'll usually keep all of his preparation to himself.

The reason I feel horrible is because I am certain that I got more out of those practice games than Jon did. Neither of us expected to have to apply what we learned to each other. It's really unlikely for our records to have synced up so quickly, and then for us to actually get paired so I could use the things I learned against him directly (although I suppose we might have been likely to get paired at some point on day 2 in general). It happened anyway, and on some level it probably reinforces Jon's belief about giving away information.

In an ideal universe, I'd have already known how to sideboard and approach the matchup, but that wasn't the case, and Jon directly helped me beat him in the tournament. There's another entire blog post in here about minding the gap between theoretical skill ceilings and actual skill capabilities, and how I and many other players are likely not capitalizing on the latter nearly enough, but I'll have to add it to the to-do list.

I still feel strongly about open information, but if I were Jon in that spot, I would have an even harder time seeing it my way.

R12 - Death's Shadow Zoo - LL
R13 - Affinity - LWW
R14 - BG Rock - WW

I made a pretty cool play in this matchup - I cast Surgical Extraction on my opponent's Fatal Push, to see what was going on, then cast Crackling Drake and drew a card. My opponent's board was Tarmogoyf, Tireless Tracker, Scavenging Ooze, and four lands, and his hand was two copies of Kalitas. He was at 17. I passed the turn, and he drew, played a tapped land and made a clue, thought for a while, then tapped out for Kalitas. Then I untapped, played a ton of spells, pitched a Phoenix to looting, and attacked. To get the last few points of damage, I cast another Surgical on my own Faithless Looting to exile all four - it was worth +4 damage, since I only had one looting in the graveyard, and I had 18 total power. Really cool line.

R15 - Frenzy Affinity - WLL

I do not think Frenzy Affinity is good. I played it at SCG Regionals a few weeks ago, and it felt really underpowered compared to what all the other modern decks are doing. Frenzy is nice when it gets going, but it's also unreliable - hitting two lands sucks, hitting another Frenzy sucks, hitting a sideboard card when it's inconvenient sucks, etc.

I was so sure I was going to win this match after I won game 1, but in both g2 and g3 my opponent had Frenzy going, and it was just insurmountable. He had a surprising amount of staying power, and was easily able to take one hit from a flipped Thing and then chump it until he found Dispatch.

I would have locked in 2 pro points at the beginning of the event and especially after round 4, but it still felt kinda bad to lose the last round. I have a tough time getting over the X-3 hump at these stupid things.

Still, points are points. Now I have 27 points and only need 7 more on top of the minimum 3 from London for Gold.

Misc thoughts:

-Canada is awesome and I have an absolute blast every time I go. This was my first time in Alberta, and everyone was super friendly and welcoming. Shout out to my gracious weekend hosts, JL Underwood and Chantelle Campbell, for organizing the airbnb and being super welcoming and providing good times all weekend.

-I had multiple people come up to me and say they saw me from PT coverage, or that they liked the podcast episode I did with Cedric, or that they're big fans of Affinity and have read my articles about it before and just wanted to say hi. This is awesome and made me feel really good, and it was a pleasure talking to everyone that did this.

-I heard this many times from many different Alberta people and didn't really believe it until I finished the GP, but Alberta specifically is absolutely crazy for Modern. The players love it, and the classic Modern stereotype is true - lots of players have one deck that they prefer, and tend to just tweak it over time rather than play metagame decks. After the event, JL asked me how many foil decks I played against, and I was surprised when I remembered that it was at least 3.

-I over-prepared for Tron and GDS and played against neither. Kind of relevant to the point above, but I went into this tournament thinking this format was well, not quite broken, but extremely lopsided in favor of Faithless Looting decks, and prepared accordingly, and fell flat because of the nature of the players in the region. I have to think about this more, since it's not something I hear people talk about very much, but I prepared for what I thought the tournament should be instead of what the tournament was actually likely to be. I tend to do that a lot, and I think it's a huge leak.

-I still have a handful of really obnoxious cerebral ideas about Magic and how to improve and how to manage and process information, but I keep thinking and rethinking them and then get too lazy to ever actually write anything down. Hopefully I can relax and do that at some point in the near future, but until then my blog to-do list is growing.



Props:

Tim Horton's

Slops:

A&W

Cya in London!