The Wolfpack at GP DC
March 16, 2016
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7 min to read
On Hipsters this week, you should be able to read two other Team Sealed reports from GP DC, one from Rich and one from Carrie. Rich’s is about teaming with his brother and young nephew. Rich wanted to spend some time with his family and even though he knew they wouldn’t spike the tournament, the experience of hanging out and playing Magic was enough to justify the tournament entrance. The report from Carrie will be about how her team opened a great pool and played some excellent Magic to finish 49th out of more than 1000 teams. My report sits somewhere in the middle of these two reports; the story of some GP traveling goons with spikey leanings but a sense of humor about scrubbing out. This is the story of a team that high fived each other in the last round when their opponents didn’t show up, meaning they were a few planeswalker points closer to that next GP bye. This is a 5-4 tournament report.
Nik, Tim, Erica, and I flew into DC on Thursday night. After a $65 cab right from Dulles to Arlington, VA I met up with the rest of the crew who had the good sense to fly into Reagan instead. We went out to a bar named the Rhodeside Grill and sat outside, enjoying the beautiful weather and approximately way too many Natty Bohs.
Friday was spent at the convention center playing Two Headed Giant. Tim and I, AKA Team Always Blue, put together a winning record with a RW Allies deck and a Gx Ramp deck with [casthaven]World Breaker[/casthaven], [casthaven]Thought-Knot Seer[/casthaven], [casthaven]Baloth Null[/casthaven], and [casthaven]Pulse of Murasa[/casthaven]. In the last round we Thought-Knotted our opponents three times, and they were not amused. Afterward we went out to Busboys and Poets, apparently just missing Rich and crew by a couple of minutes. One of these days we will get a real Hipsters get-together to happen.
Nik, getting ready to build
Me and Erica
Saturday, we got to the convention center right on time and sat down with our lackluster pre-registered pool. I want to thank StarCity for taking the time to preregister pools so we didn’t have to and to curse the Magic gods for bestowing a pile of trash onto us. I would say that we made the best of it but I certainly misbuilt my deck and ended up siding in and out the same couple cards every round. Here are our decks:
Erica's BW Allies
Almost every game I sided out:
2 [casthaven]Containment Membrane[/casthaven]
1 [casthaven]Sheer Drop[/casthaven]
1 [casthaven]Brute Strength[/casthaven]
1 [casthaven]Unknown Shores[/casthaven]
and sided in:
1 [casthaven]Akoum Flameseeker[/casthaven]
1 [casthaven]Chasm Guide[/casthaven]
1 [casthaven]Umara Entangler[/casthaven]
1 [casthaven]Sweep Away[/casthaven]
1 [casthaven]Mountain[/casthaven]
The biggest problem with my deck is that I wasn’t aggressive enough to close out the game before my opponents started playing better spells and I wasn’t controlling enough to play the long game. My opponents would stabilize the board and I would have a bunch of useless [casthaven]Containment Membrane[/casthaven]s in my hand, unsure of why I was playing such a garbage spell. The better plan, given my pool, was to just be a bit more aggressive and commit to the tempo-based three-[casthaven]Sweep Away[/casthaven] deck. I won a total of three matches, four if you include the last round bye, throughout the day.
The MVP in my deck was [casthaven]Coralhelm Guide[/casthaven] as it was one of the only ways for me to sneak through the last few points of damage as my opponent started playing real cards. The worst card in my deck was [casthaven]Unknown Shores[/casthaven]. There were several games that I would have won, or at least not have mulliganed, if this card was a basic Mountain. I figured that it would further support my light white splash while also giving me a colorless source to bounce [casthaven]Dimensional Infiltrator[/casthaven] if necessary. In practice it was just a bad land.
Everyone on my team punted a few times and made plans to owe each other push-ups for the screw-ups which is the only way to truly make amends for misplays. It’s also the only time I come close to working out.
Despite not making day two, we were happy to have a positive record and went out for ramen at Daikaya. This was probably the best vegetarian ramen I’ve ever eaten and was worth waiting more than an hour to be seated.
The next day Erica and I played more 2HG where I built perhaps the most “Shawn Massak” deck of all time with three [casthaven]Seer’s Lantern[/casthaven]s, two [casthaven]Roiling Waters[/casthaven], two [casthaven]Mindmelter[/casthaven]s, and a [casthaven]Prophet of Distortion[/casthaven]. We went 1-2-1, though I stand behind my durdle-deck.
While GP DC was certainly not my best showing at a GP, the event itself was fantastic. StarCity did an excellent job running the main event, firing side events, and giving players plenty of space to play and to roam around. Team GPs are ridiculously fun and I wish there were more of them coming up, I would definitely be willing to travel to anywhere in the US to attend another. Thanks to my excellent teammates for carrying me through the day—Erica-Always-Allies and Saddlebrick LaNik—and a shout out to our magical Gordon Bombay, Tim “the Enchanter” Fay.
In other news, I’m going to be doing a late stream this Wednesday at 9PM on Twitch.tv/hipsterstv. I will certainly be drafting and will try to get some Standard in as well. Only a few more weeks until Modern is playable.
In terms of Magic, Shawn Massak is a Modern enthusiast, with a penchant for tier two decks, counterspells, and pre Eighth Edition frames. In terms of life, Shawn lives in Brighton, MA where he works as an employment coordinator for people with disabilities, plays guitar in an indie-pop band, and spends his free time reading comics, complaining about pro-wrestling, and wishing his apartment allowed dogs as pets.
