Years ago, Grand Prix offered PTQs on Sunday for competitors who did not advance to day two of the main event. When those PTQs were discontinued, tournament organizers replaced them with a new type of qualifier: the Super Sunday Series. The winner of each GP’s big Sunday event earned an invite to a special tournament at Wizards of the Coast headquarters in January. These invitationals were small, fun, and fairly lucrative. Two of my friends, Shawn Sloan and Matt Ferrando, have played in them before. Another, past Hipsters writer Hugh Kramer, will play in the final Super Sunday Series Final next month. Your last chance to qualify for that event comes this weekend at Grand Prix Milwaukee.
I took a shot last weekend at Grand Prix Denver. My main event was up and down, ending in down, leaving me free to play sealed on Sunday. Despite traveling to many Grand Prix over the last few years, I have rarely played in the Super Series. The problem is that the tournament is too large and takes too long. Most tournaments are eight or nine rounds, plus top eight. The Swiss ends after the main event Swiss. If you book a flight home on Sunday night, you most likely can’t stick around to finish the Swiss. You obviously can’t win the whole thing, which usually drags on until 11:00pm. Unless you are traveling on Monday, or live in the area, it is not worth the effort of devoting your entire Sunday to a tournament you can’t finish. Because I live fifteen minutes from the GP site, I was able to play it out.
We are approaching the end of the Kaladesh Limited season, but there’s still Grand Prix Milwaukee this weekend. I’ll be competing there, so I was happy to get some high level reps of Kaladesh sealed. The pool I opened was shockingly mediocre, with a solid collection of commons and uncommons in each color but not much power. I would have been bummed about this, except for one card in the ool that I’ve never had the chance to play with: Fumigate. Throw in a Restoration Gearsmith, and I was able to focus my deckbuilding despite the pool’s lack of obvious direction.
The deck I built looks nothing like a normal Kaladesh sealed deck. I certainly haven’t played anything like it this season, but it’s exactly the kind of deck I love to play. It felt underpowered for Kaladesh sealed, but I was interested to find out.
Fum Fum Fumigate
So yeah, the creature suite is pretty mediocre, but Fumigate and some removal can go a long way. The recursion from Restoration Gearsmith and Dukhara Scavenger give me a long game, and the two Live Fast dig to Fumigate, which recovers the lost life. That’s a solid gameplan in sealed, although not as great in Kaladesh because of vehicles.
Filigree Familiar was fantastic. I love this card and think it is very underrated in both Limited and Constructed. It’s not quite as powerful as Solemn Simulacrum, but it is a mana cheaper! I’ve seen it in a few Standard sideboards, but I expect it to keep gaining popularity. You can draw it off Glint-Nest Crane, another underrated Standard card. And it happens to be an amazing creature to play a few turns before you Fumigate the board.
I threw in Inventors’ Fair as an eighteenth land because my curve was so high, even though you usually don’t want so many lands in this format. It should have been a third Mountain most likely, as I didn’t have enough artifacts to ever expect to get value from the land. I did have one nice rare that would have been better to put in the main deck: Authority of the Consuls. It’s great against vehicles (because creatures can’t crew the turn they hit the board) and exactly what you want to play a few turns before Fumigate. I sided it in often, and it was always good. I’m not sure it’s worth main decking all the time, but in a control deck with sweepers, it does a lot of work.
Mind Rot is another card that struggles to find a home in Kaladesh. Whenever I cast Fumigate in game one, though, I would side the discard spell in. If someone knows you have a sweeper, they’ll hold more cards in hand that they could cast. I also like Mind Rot against decks with Cloudblazer, Padeem, and Midnight Oil (which gives you an added life loss bonus). Don’t forget about it when you sideboard.
I ended up going 5-3 and finished in 26th place with strong tiebreakers. It was nice to cash the tournament when I could wait until the end and drive home comfortably. I felt like I could have made the top eight with better luck, but I had a lot of fun matches and enjoyed the challenging sealed format. I can’t wait to give it one last go this weekend in Milwaukee.
I’m interested to see what replaces the Super Sunday Series. It was an awkward tournament, but I think it is important to offer a high leel side event for Grand Prix players who don’t qualify for Sunday action. Maybe they can offer PPTQs, perhaps two or three each capped at 64 players to keep them from going too late. I might enjoy playing in some of those. Farewell, Super Sunday Series. I hope that you are not missed.
Carrie O’Hara is Editor-in-Chief of Hipsters of the Coast.