Thursday night I ate some Thai food, and had a delicious Thai iced tea courtesy of and with my good friend and Limited Master Hugh Kramer. The Thai iced tea was fantastic. Earlier in the day I asked him to give me a night of M14 Limited lessons and he did. We opened six pools. Five of the decks we built were very clearly blue/green (blue for spells like Opportunity, Divination, Essence Scatter, etc., and green for creatures of the beastly variety). One deck was blue/black (for the same reasons plus removal). I had a blast, opened a foil Mutavault, and would do it again.
The next day I made it over to Twenty Sided for the early draft where I built some kind of good-ish deck, blue/red I think. I played Jason Chan round one.
I beat him game one, he beat me game two, and he beat himself game three. Hugh was mystified at the number of misplays Jason made during our match. “He never plays like this,” he said. “He must be afraid of you.” Maybe, I am pretty mean and mostly intimidating.
Round two I played … shit, the results from Friday aren’t on my Planeswalker Points page yet … guess I’m making up names until they get uploaded.
Round two I won one, lost one, and then flooded my way into the hands of James Bathurst.
James and I agreed to split our two packs (we each got one). I stomped him mostly due to his mana screw. My deck did what it was supposed to do. James, as always, was a total pleasure to MTG with.
Kadar, Fettoblaster, Hugh, and Andy Longo piled into my Zipcar’d Honda Hybrid outside of Kellog’s Diner in Williamsburg and we laughed our way to some point an hour away in New Jersey.
We found street parking and I took a photo of the street signs so we didn’t fuck ourselves over by forgetting Merfeld’s location (that was the name of our Zipcar).
The PTQ was in this old Elk’s Lodge.
The urninal was cool.
The tournament room had enormous windows.
Eventually we get to deck registration and deck building. The kid next to me, winner of the last PTQ of the previous season (he won with Bant Hexproof), ended up with the pool I registered, it was mediocre. I saw him at the high number tables later in the tournament (which means he wasn’t doing well). I think I got his.
My blue was horrible and my heart sank.
Look at how bad it is. A Condor, Archeomancer, two Merfolk Spy, and who cares? A Claustorphobia. Great.
I ended up building this white/green monster with lots of filler and all my bombs.
M14 Sealed Deck
| Creatures (16) 1 Soulmender 2 Master of Diversion 1 Pillarfield Ox 1 Predatory Sliver 1 Sentinel Sliver 1 Scavenging Ooze 1 Auramancer 1 Banisher Priest 1 Sporemound 1 Vastwood Hydra 1 Briarpack Alpha 1 Serra Angel 1 Advocate of the Beast 1 Rumbling Baloth 1 Archangel of Thune Spells (7) 1 Naturalize 1 Primeval Bounty 1 Show of Valor 1 Fireshrieker 1 Hive Stirrings 1 Hunt the Weak 1 Divine Favor | Lands (17) 9 Plains 8 Forest Sideboard (12) 1 Solemn Offering 1 Plummet 1 Naturalize 1 Verdant Haven 1 Siege Mastodon 1 Congregate 1 Brave the Elements 1 Windstorm 1 Bramblecrush 1 Trollhide 1 Pay No Heed 1 Auramancer |
I shouldn’t have played Soulmender and maybe Divine Favor should’ve been a maindeck Plummet and Pay No Heed. Longo, Hugh, and Matt Ferrando all yelled at me after round one as they looked at my deck and saw cards they didn’t like. Every game two I took out Soulmender and Divine Favor for Plummet and some other relevant card from my board.
Before round one I walked around taking pictures of the Elk’s Lodge we were in. They had a room marked “Ladies Room” and it wasn’t a bathroom. It’s where the does (female Elks) hangout while the Elks were doing whatever it is that Elks do. I took this photo and texted it to Jen because she likes old timey shit.
My round one opponent didn’t want his photo taken. I haven’t had one of these guys in a long time. Free country, or whatever, so he is visually represented in this article by a dinosaur because I’ve been really into dinosaurs lately.
Burt the Dinosaur was victim of an Archangel of Thune game one and forty saprolings with multiple +1/+1 counters on them. Game two he stomped me. Game three I mulled and stalled on land. (Editor’s note: his name is Harry.)
Andrew plays across the river or harbor or whatever at Get There Games. GTG is way too fucking far away for me to every attend a non-PTQ tournament at but I’ve heard nice things and all the dudes, most of the dudes, from GTG have been super nice to me. Andrew and I haven’t been paired together before. Our first meeting was tarnished by his mulligan to four and then mana screw game two. Short and sweet. It was to be my only win for for a bit.
This guy had been to the bar that was open downstairs and I could smell booze on his breath. Being sober you get this super power that sucks where you can smell any booze anywhere on anything all the time. It’s great. (Editor’s note: his name is Roman.)
He beat me solidly in two games. My deck didn’t really show up.
Between rounds for whatever reason I started absentmindedly drawing on Hugh’s hairy arm with a pen. I couldn’t believe he was letting me do it.
I signed it when I was done. Hugh was shocked that I was actually writing on his arm and not pretending to write on his arm with the pen cap still on. My bad.
Ben here won game one easily. I bashed him game two. Game three he played Ajani and Jace and I lost. I met Ben at the PTQ the previous week—man is that you’re name, dude? I can’t remember and the freaking PWP site is still down. I’m sorry if I fucked it up. Maybe you’re Dan (editor’s note: his name is Ben). Dan feels more like it’d be the correct name. At the beginning of our match Dan suggested that the loser of our match buys the other a beer at the bar downstairs. I told him I’m sober, six years sober, and that it wasn’t fair because if I lost it’d cost me more money than if he lost. It probably makes dudes uncomfortable when I tell them I’m sober, you know, if and when it comes up. I’m pretty proud of it and I think it’s pretty important to be vocal about that kinda shit so I never shy away from mentioning it. Dude Jaced me anyway, you know? Haha. We had a good time despite sober awkwardness.
Another name I forgot, sorry guys (Editor’s note: his name is Ryan). This dude called his girlfriend “Fish” and it made me laugh a lot. That’s hilarious and cute. I told him I’d write it down and put it in the article. Ha! Anyway, I beat him decisively game one and Primeval Bounty’d him (making a 10/10 double striking Scavenging Ooze equipped with Fireshrieker) game two. He wanted to drop and take off but “Fish” wanted to keep playing so he was in it for at least one more round.
My final round opponent wouldn’t let me take his photo. Let’s say he’s a martian and his name is Ed. Ed the Martian (Editor’s note: his name is Henry).
Ed the Martian fell victim to Primeval Bounty two games in a row. Thanks for showing up, Primeval Bounty. Way to not make your way into any games until the final three. Great. Super awesome. Fuck you.
Ed and I shook hands and I caught wind of Longo losing the round, putting him at x-2, and we decided to all drop and head back to NYC.
Final records: Longo 4-2, Kadar 3-2-1, Me 3-3, Fettoblaster 2-4.
We got to Twenty Sided (our usual PTQ pickup spot) in time for an 8PM draft. I was in a six man pod and came up with this bad ass mother fucker:
M14 Draft Deck
| Creatures (14) 1 Elvish Mystic 1 Seacoast Drake 1 Kalonian Tusker 1 Manaweft Sliver 1 Brindle Boar 1 Advocate of the Beast 2 Rumbling Baloth 1 Nephalia Seakite 1 Giant Spider 1 Sporemound 1 Armored Cancrix 1 Jace’s Mindseeker 1 Windreader Sphinx Spells (9) 1 Disperse 1 Essence Scatter 1 Negate 1 Cancel 1 Ranger’s Guile 1 Naturalize 2 Frost Breath 1 Divination | Lands (17) 8 Island 9 Forest |
Longo said I should’ve maindecked Plummet over Naturalize and he didn’t like the second Frost Breath. Frost Breath (especially second Frost Breath) won me some key games.
I won’t get too into it but I split in the finals with Dan Black. Game three of round one I mulled to five against Sean Morse and played turn one forest, turn two forest and Kalonian Tusker, swing for three; turn three forest, Advocate of the Beast, and Sean scooped saying “I can’t beat that.” Game three of round two I mulled to four and kept a no land hand. My seven had one land, six had two forest and all blue cards, and five had no lands. I drew for turn and it wasn’t a land. I drew the next turn and it was an island. Turn three gave me a forest and I played Divination, getting two lands. I played a land and Manaweft Sliver. By turn six I was casting Windreader Sphinx and had the game totally in hand. I couldn’t believe it. MULL TO FOUR WIN!!!
That capped off a great day playing Magic with some great dudes.
Then on Sunday Matt got hit in the head with an elbow during a basketball game and he looked really tough. Turns out he’s a handsome warrior. Who knew?
The next PTQ for me and my buds isn’t until Montasy’s NYC PTQ on September 14th! See you there.
Thanks for reading!
Much love,
Matt
MTGO: The_Obliterator