GP Montreal - sealed

I just got home from Grand Prix Montreal. I went 11-4, which was good for 34th place, $300 and one pro point that I won't be able to use. I'm disappointed that the only result I got out of the weekend (other than a great time) was a few extra dollars, but I'm thrilled that I was able to perform reasonably well in limited.

I rode to Montreal from the DC area with Ben Friedman, with a stop near Philadelphia to pick up Harry Corvese. Along the way, we had plenty of good chats about the limited formats, both sealed and draft. I tried to absorb as much as I could from Harry, especially since he won the SCG Team Sealed Classic in Richmond along with Ben and Max Brown.





Basically he said that for sealed, the three deepest colors are white, green, and black, and that the sealed deck building process should start by looking at these three colors as a base. Blue and red are often too shallow to do anything but be support colors. This is a popular and effective approach to building team sealed decks (which I read about from reading various team sealed reports and strategies from Huey, Reid, and Owen), but the method also applies to individual sealed.

In addition to various color strengths, Harry said that archetypes are also very important. For example, W/R is a very strong and well known archetype, capable of having both powerful and synergistic decks. On the other hand, decks like G/W might be lacking in one of those departments. This format is mostly tempo-oriented, so you want a deck that is capable of either having a fast start or dealing with a fast start. Of course, both of those is obviously preferable, but the main idea is to have a solid, well-defined game plan. Harry said that his favorite archetypes are U/G and W/R decks. He also said that he really prefers not to splash a third color and generally sticks to two color decks. I agree for the most part - this format is tempo-oriented enough that I don't really want to be spending time assembling my colors, or worse, stuck with an uncastable card when I need to use all my cards to stay alive and jockey for position.

With that in mind, I got to the GP, and opened this pool:

If you want to try and build this pool yourself, you can download this pool as a Magic Online .dek file here.

Ugh. I was really disappointed with this pool. The three supposed deepest colors are super shallow. There aren't enough key commons to make any kind of synergistic archetype. There are no slam dunk bomb rares (a couple reasonably strong ones, maybe). What can you do with this?

The first thing I did was build U/G. I identified green as having the strongest cards, with 3 pretty good rares (but not a whole lot else), and blue simply just had the most playables. The U/G deck was fine but it didn't have anything to do before turn 3 (unless you count Nylea's Presence). I had a feeling it was the strongest overall thing I could be doing with my pool, but I felt like I owed it to myself to try every reasonable combination.

The next deck I tried was R/G. Red had a nice removal spell in Fall of the Hammer and it also was a little more capable of getting started early, but I didn't feel like it was powerful enough to dominate the ground (which it would exclusively be fighting on). I liked having access to a 4th good rare in Hammer of Purphoros, but that was the only other card besides Fall that I really felt drawn to.

I tried U/R since those two colors had the most cards, but that deck was a mess. The cards weren't nearly strong or synergistic enough, and the only advantage I got from playing them together was a single Crackling Triton.

I tried as hard as I could to make black work, since I liked my black cards the most, but there just weren't enough of them. I tried R/B, with Kragma Warcaller, but it was a pretty pukey aggro deck that wasn't particularly fast or strong. I tried G/B, but there weren't nearly enough cards. I actually didn't look at U/B, but I have a feeling that it wouldn't have been able to win the game very well.

Even though I just said I don't like splashing, the next things I tried were 3 color decks. Between the two Nylea's Presences and the two fixer artifacts, this pool is actually reasonably well equipped to splash a color. The problem was that none of the cards in any of the colors were both splashable and splash-worthy. Splashing black was unfeasible, splashing red for a single Fall of the Hammer wasn't worth it, and splashing blue didn't yield anything too impressive (just a Griptide and a Sudden Storm, but nothing aggressive enough to take advantage of them). I also looked at a solid 3 color Jund deck, which I sort of liked (especially the synergy between Lightning Volley and the deathtouch creatures), but I just couldn't justify that ugly mana.

I ended up going back to U/G and registering this deck:

I was pretty underwhelmed with this deck, but I wasn't unhappy with it, either. If I could just survive the early game and get to the mid game, I felt like I'd have a reasonable chance to win.

I chose Artisan's Sorrow as my artifact/enchantment removal of choice over Annul and Fade to Antiquity because I felt like I could use the scry, as well as the added occasional instant-speed blowout. I didn't feel like I'd have much use for Karametra's Favor, I didn't have enough gimmicky things to do with Floodtide Serpent, I didn't have enough green mana symbols for Aspect of Hydra, and I think that Sphinx's Disciple is just plain bad. I set aside the Setessan Starbreakers and the Coastline Chimera to board in (as well as the Annul and the Fade).

The last card in my deck was the Gorgon's Head. I didn't have anything that was incredibly synergistic with it (besides Scourge of Skola Vale), but I felt like it would beef up my Wavecrash Triton defenses a little bit, so that I could actually scare my opponents off attacking me instead of just charging in with an army of 3/3s to get in 3 damage through a harmless blocker.

I'll spare you from a complete round-by-round recap (mostly because I can't remember every single detail) but I'll try to give at least a brief summary of how each round went.

I won round 3 (my first round 3 in a GP in quite some time) by setting up a reasonable defense in game 1 and poking a few damage in here and there before closing the deal with Flitterstep Eidolon. Game 2 was more challening since my opponent had an aggressive creature + aura start, but I was lucky enough to stop it with Fade to Antiquity before too much damage was done. With enough breathing room I was able to draw a few strong cards and ride them to victory.

I lost round 4 to a G/W deck that was very aggressive. I lost a very close game 1 where I had a masterful gameplan to steal a win with Sudden Storm, that was thrown off-balance by a single Nylea's Disciple. I just plain got hammered in game 2 by a Loyal Pegasus with two Nyxborn Wolves on it, and I was never able to clear the other creatures off the board.

In round 5, I played vs. a R/W aggro deck. I was able to stabilize game 1 at a healthy 16 life and I was all set to win in two turns with a 7/7 Mistcutter Hydra and Sudden Storm, but I made a huge mistake - I attacked with all 3 of my creatures (Hydra, Courser of Kruphix, Wavecrash Triton) to take my opponent from 16 to 6, only to have my giant Hydra stolen with Portent of Betrayal and then being dealt exactly lethal with a Titan's Strength plus my opponent's two attackers. I didn't need to attack with the Courser to win, so I just plain gave that game away.

I won game 2 by getting Courser online early and staying afloat with cards and life until I could put the game away with evasive guys.

Game 3 was super interesting, and my opponent was nice enough to return the favor I did for him in game 1. The board was set up in such a way that I had to chump a 5/5 Flame Wreathed Phoenix every turn while still managing other creatures, without being able to get much damage in myself (just 3 per turn with a Courser + Flitterstep Eidolon). I attacked him down to 6 on the first of 5 extra turns, with a plan of using my Vortex Elemental to distract any blockers my opponent might have and squeeze exactly 6 through via Courser + my other creatures. My opponent, seeing what was going to happen next turn, sent in everything he had. I blocked in a way that would preserve my ability to make the same alpha play next turn while still staying alive. My opponent then used the Lightning Strike he was holding to finish off one of the blockers that was going to otherwise survive that combat step, which let me continue to just defend and only send Courser in rather than make an embarrassing exactly lethal alpha strike only to get ruined by Lightning Strike (which would have killed one of the other attacking creatures). Although this gave my opponent an extra turn to draw something, I got lucky enough to fade everything and he conceded.

I won a fairly uneventful round 6 vs. a clunky G/B deck that never really got going in either game. I capitalized on the fact that my opponent accidentally flipped over an Asphyxiate while he was shuffling by waiting to deploy my Courser of Kruphix in game 1 until after he used his Asphyxiate on the first creature I played (a Chorus of the Tides). Don't break any rules or be scum, but be sure to use every bit of information you have legally obtained.

I beat Jarvis Yu's cousin Fred from Toronto in round 7. He was super nice and even recognized me as a successful modern player, so I felt bad for not being able to give him better games since he kind of flooded out in both games we played. Still, he went on to finish better than me in this event, so all's well that ends well I suppose.

I played vs. a U/B control type deck in round 8, with multiple Servant of Tymaret and Black Oak of Odunis. I won in two games. I don't remember much about the first game, but he missed a couple land drops in the second game while I had gas for days thanks to resolving both of my Divinations. By the time he was able to draw lands and actually cast spells, I had way too much action for him to be able to deal with.

Round 9 was very interesting too. My opponent had a very aggressive R/B deck. We split the first two games. He was stuck on 3 lands for a while in the second game, but still presented plenty of questions for me to answer. By the time he drew out to 5, the board started to clog up, with my opponent having a Keepsake Gorgon that I couldn't get past. I didn't have a way to break through until I drew Archetype of Imagination, but I couldn't win in one attack. I could win in two, but it would leave me open to a lot of cards. I could win in three, but it's hardly worth exposing my Archetype, my last big chance at victory. I just waited. I waited until the board got to a point where even the Archetype wouldn't help me win since I'd be too busy defending, so I had to cast it now and hope that he doesn't draw a 7th land to kill it with Keepsake Gorgon (or another removal spell for it I guess). I took him to 4 and passed the turn, and he drew and.........

I managed to fade everything once again.

I hated my pool and I didn't like my sealed deck very much, and I still managed to go 8-1. I felt great about my chances on day 2.

I wasn't thrilled about my draft pod though:

9     Kambourakis, Joseph [USA]     24     74.44%
10     Veil, Bryan [AFG]     24     72.64%
11     Alarie, Sébastien [CAN]     24     72.22%
12     Friedman, Ben [USA]     24     71.79%
13     Gagnon, Jacob [USA]     24     71.65%
14     Ogreenc, Greg [USA]     24     71.42%
15     Parker, Brock [USA]     24     71.42%
16     Majlaton, Alex [CAN]     24     70.47%

To win the pod, I'd potentially have to get through Ben and Brock. Not to mention the fact that I had at least heard of Greg Ogreenc (in addition to just meeting him the night before and talking about draft strategies over dinner), and I remember reading about Joseph "Mouth" Kambourakis a lot back in the day, although I have no idea how good either of them actually are.

Next up - the draft portion.