GP Toronto: the deck

GP Toronto was a spectacular failure for me. I failed to make day 2. I didn't hate my deck, but I didn't love it.

Here was my sealed pool:

The first thing I did was separate out all the unplayables, not-that-playables, and sideboard cards. I ended up with this:

Right away you can tell that white is the deepest color. Black, red, and blue are all pretty shallow. I liked my blue cards a lot, but none of them are worth splashing, and even when paired with white, the deepest color, there weren't enough cards for a deck. There are hardly any cards that make sense to splash (nothing easy like Lightning Strike), and splashing is challenging anyway with just a single Traveler's Amulet for fixing.

Putting all of that together, the best deck is probably a two color deck, so I immediately started looking at green/white. After my first pass, I ended up with this:

I like all the spells, and I like the high cost creatures, but I hate the low casting cost ones. I need five cuts to make this a deck. Before I did that, I tried pairing white with the other colors to make sure that I wasn't missing a secretly awesome deck. I wasn't, so I started thinking about cuts for G/W.

The first 3 cuts were the artifact creatures. I don't have that many good ways to enhance Bronze Sable, and this isn't exactly a swarm deck, so they got cut. As for Anvilwrought Raptor, he's generally pretty mediocre, and I have a lot of competition in the 4 drop slot anyway.

After those 3, it got pretty hard. I was dead set on playing 17 lands, so it had to be two cuts. I liked all my spells quite a bit, so I didn't want to cut any of them. The only questionable one was Ray of Dissolution, and I felt like that card would be awesome in sealed, since it plays so many roles (early Ordeal stopper, bestow creature killer, sneaky out to Whip and Bow).

The first cut I decided on was Soldier of the Pantheon. It reduced the chance of my T1 guy + T2 ordeal nutdraw, but otherwise the Soldier is generally not very powerful, so I didn't mind cutting it. The second cut was even harder. I felt like the worst card in my deck at this point was Lagonna-Band Elder, but he triggers a decent amount of the time in this deck, and any <= 3 drops are extra valuable in this deck.

I ended up cutting Nylea's Disciple. There was too much competition at the 4 drop slot, and although I can end up with some nice devotion boards. I felt like the life might matter less often than it usually does in draft. I was happy with having it as a sideboard card, along with Soldier for rush decks and Shredding Winds for flying decks.

The last tough decision was how to split my lands. Most of my cards are white, and I can imagine wanting to play two white tricks in one turn, but on the other hand I have a triple green spell that I'd like to be able to cast, occasionally on turn 5. I definitely have 8 each of Plains and Forest, but should the 17th land be another Plains, or another Forest? I went with Plains, due to the volume of white cards, as well as the fact that only one card out of my deck is triple green. I just plain don't need that much green mana on average (especially with Nylea's Disciple in the board).

Here is the final product:

Relevant sideboard cards are on the bottom right. I never boarded any artifacts or Defend the Hearth, but I made frequent use of the other 3.

I had 3 byes.

R4 was a G/W mirror. Neither of us played any power cards, and I just drew more gas than he did in both games. After the match he showed me his Elspeth, which would have almost certainly ruined me if he ever decided he wanted to draw it.

4-0

R5 my opponent was playing U/B. I flooded out pretty bad in game 1 after keeping a nice hand and died to Horizon Scholar. After bringing in Shredding Winds, I died game 2 to Agent of Fates that was triggered multiple times. My deck doesn't really have an elegant answer to that card. Prior to this match I thought Fabled Hero was the best (non-mythic) rare in the set, but after this match I'm convinced that Agent of Fates is (with Fabled Hero still in 2nd).

4-1

R6 my opponent had a R/W aggressive deck, with 2 drops on turns 2 and 3. I had a super nice curve though, capping it off with a turn 5 Arbor Colossus, and my team was just bigger than his. I boarded in Soldier and Nylea's Disciple for game 2, only to find that my opponent had switched to a B/U/G deck. I guess his pool was able to support two decks. His BUG cards were pretty nice, including two Nimbus Naiads, but they were still not big enough to match up well with my beefcakes.

5-1

R7 was a strange match.

First of all, it was a rematch from GP Toronto 2012, where I played against the same opponent in R10. Second, we got deck checked, which happened in our match last year as well.

As for the games, I was on the play, and my opponent cast Hopeful Eidolon on turn 1. That can only mean one thing: an ordeal. Luckily, I had Traveling Philosopher on 2 and he was unable to pull the trigger. We each played a card a turn until turn 5, when he finally pulled the trigger on the two ordeals he was holding. I was ahead in the race though, and a Time to Feed locked it up.

His deck was G/W with a mountain that he got with Traveler's Amulet, so he was splashing, but I wasn't sure which card he was doing it for.

I died very quickly in game 2 to a turn 2 Voyaging Satyr with a turn 3 white ordeal, followed by a turn 4 Xenagos. (So that's what his splash was for.) There wasn't much I could do being on the draw, since I couldn't play a guy to stop the satyr fast enough.

Game 3 was a massacre. He had an early drop with an ordeal, followed by Xenagos. I had Time to Feed to stop the ordeal guy before it got out of hand, but the turn after that my opponent calmly ticked up Xenagos and made two mana to cast Elspeth. I was short on mana, but I don't think I'd have been able to stop Elspeth even if I had every land in my deck in play. Elspeth is one of the toughest cards I've ever played against in limited. To beat it, you need a counter, a very narrow removal card (Glare of Heresy or Hero's Downfall), or some perverse combination of creatures that can attack past three tokens.

5-2

R8 my opponent led out with Plains and Swamps, and then cast an Ashiok using an Opaline Unicorn. He only got one activation out of it before I was lucky enough to kill it with an Ordeal and a Battlewise Valor for my 3 drop. After that, I was able to curve out nicely, while my opponent struggled to play a single blue card every turn off a single Opaline Unicorn. Turns out, he was playing U/W and splashing black for the Ashiok. In game 2, he mulliganed into a hand with just Islands, and quickly ran out of cards to cast before dying without ever drawing a Plains. Kind of a tough beat.

6-2

As for round 9, I'll talk about it in a separate blog post. Needless to say, I lost.