No?
Well, I would.
This is the story of such a trip and the semi-legitimate excuse for the excursion: a Yokohama PTQ in Portland, Oregon, on the last weekend of the season.
After a somewhat disappointing season here in California, 3 diehard pirate ninjas (Gus, Nick and I, Tim) made the executive decision to drive 12 hours up the I-5 on a Friday night. Ariel Klevecz, whose crowning Magic achievement is beating Kenji at GP Phoenix, had to go to his Ultimate Frisbee practice. Stephen Chen, our idol and best limited player, had to write a term paper. Thus both were unable to attend. Their loss.
Sportin' the $80 price tag on MODO
After a brief stop in Weed, California, Gus started describing some Japanese Tech that our token Japanese Magic player Kenta Shima had been telling him about before we left. It was an Agro Flow deck with Slivers of the Sedge and Darkheart variety. Apparently the Japanese tournament report writer also said that he would put all the flows in the sideboard were he to continue playing the deck. This technology intrigued me… I figured what the hell. We'd all be exhausted anyway; I'd probably be better off with an agro-ish deck than have to deal with long games and Genesis/Eternal Witness tricks. There's also the fact that Brandon Nixon (winner of the Nashville PTQ) talked me into playing Agro Flow Rock via MODO (I refuse to call the deck "Rock & Flow." That name is by far worse than anything Flores has called any of his decks this season). I went 5-2 in Costa Mesa (Los Angeles-ish) and 2-4 in Mountain View (known to Wizards as "Bay Area"), due in part to exhaustion (a long night that involved getting Chalice of the Void at FNM for Nick and sleeping at a creepy apartment in Fremont with people who would scare me Jitte-less if I saw them in public). But I digress.
We arrived at Nick's Aunt's chicken and goat farm at about 3:30 am. This was after getting pulled over by a local sheriff for driving 35 in a 45 zone ("Driving slow - it's not illegal, but it's suspicious"), having a burned out license plate light, and turning into the right lane from a left turn with 2 lanes. After learning that we'd just driven 700-some miles and that our papers were in order, he admitted that he just wanted to make sure we weren't drinking (which we, uh, weren't) and let us go on our merry way.
We awoke around 7:30, showered (so underrated in the gaming world), grabbed a quick bite (farm fresh eggs, mmm), and we were out the door.
Due to oversight I had to trade Gus' 2 Orim's Chant and Cunning Wish for Bob and 2 Jitte.
…And Sedge Sliver. Still an awful trade, but I needed cards…
I saved myself $2 by having a foil Sliver in my binder that I had forgotten about (because I had obtained it at a drunken draft).
The anticipation mounts:
Steve Stompy MkIII, or Frow Lock SriverMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | ||
---|---|---|
Creatures 4 Birds of Paradise 4 Dark Confidant 4 Darkheart Sliver 1 Phantom Centaur 4 Sedge Sliver 4 Troll Ascetic Other Stuff 4 Cabal Therapy 4 Duress 2 Putrefy 2 Smother 2 Chrome Mox 2 Sword of Fire and Ice 3 Umezawa's Jitte | Land 1 Blood Crypt 3 Bloodstained Mire 1 Overgrown Tomb 4 Snow-Covered Forest 2 Snow-Covered Mountain 4 Snow-Covered Swamp 1 Stomping Ground 4 Wooded Foothills | Sideboard 1 Phantom Centaur 4 Ancient Grudge 2 Smother 4 Destructive Flow 4 Leyline of the Void |
Sriver says, "RAWR"
The removal suite was originally 4 Putrefy from the Japanese but I felt that this was clunky (although the popularity of scepter in that metagame can never be denied). Smother seemed good against Tog and the Agro decks that we were expecting. The rest is pretty standard fare (no Elves of Deep Sh*t as Stephen Chen calls them, because they are garbage). In honor of Stephen Chen I played all snow lands, since he is the undisputed king of triple-Coldsnap draft. His specialty is 4-for-1-ing people with Stalking Yeti.
Stevum's presence was sorely missed. It was the least I could do.
Enough Steve worship. Let’s recap the PTQ.
There were 130 players (which is more than there were in LA, and significantly more than the 49 that there supposedly were), so there were 8 swiss rounds. Doubleplus fun times.
Round 1: William with Cephalid Breakfast
William almost presented a 59-card deck, but got that last card in there. I didn't really feel like asking for a deck check, so we were off. I win the Unglued Rock-Paper-Scissors and kept a hand with a bunch of dudes and no disruption or removal. Darkheart Sliver and Sedge Sliver beat William down to 12, but he had Steelshaper’s Gift for Shuko and Living Wish for Cephalid Illusionist. I misplayed by attacking with both slivers to take Will down to 6, played Troll Ascetic and passed the turn. I really should have left 1 if not both Slivers at home as William ended up having to mill himself to 0 cards (Dragon Breath being the second to last card down), playing Life (of Life/Death) to use his lands to flashback Dread Return and had exactly enough trampling Sutured Ghoul damage to kill me even with Sliver Lifegain.
+2 Smother
+4 Leyline of the Void
+1 Ancient Grudge
-2 Sword of Fire and Ice
-4 Cabal Therapy
-1 Duress
I am not sure how to board for this matchup… I am pretty sure that Leyline comes in, as should Smother and I feel like Jitte early should make it so that he can't win. Cutting discard might not be the right call but I am not sure what else to take out.
OW, MY EARS!
0-1 (0-2)
Not such a good start to a long day…
Over at the other end of the room, I glanced at an Affinity mirror that Gus and Nick have been watching. There were over 50 permanents on the board, including 5 Cranial Platings. I turned around and left before I was forced to see any more.
Rd 2: Kai Davis with U/W post
Kai seemed like a pretty cool guy. He's a business major at U of Oregon, which he stated after noticing that I'm repping UC Santa Cruz with the Fiat Slug shirt (à la John Travolta). After some pedantic banter we began.
Game 1 I was on the play and went turn 1 Duress (taking Remand, with Kai holding multiple Vesuva and a Cloudpost), turn 2 Bob, turn 3 Cabal Therapy, which got Condescended for 2 (which I paid), taking the last nonland card in Kai's hand. He scryed and made a funny face. I paid little attention and swung. He said draw, Vesuva copying Post, go. I attacked and played Sedge Sliver, opting not to play the blind therapy (which my gut told me I should). So he cast Fact or Fiction into the following brokenness:
WHY Wizards, WHY?
Academy Ruins
Thirst for Knowledge
Pristine Angel
Plains
At this point he had 2 Posts and a Vesuva in hand, so it was over in a couple turns (hint: he took the ruins)
+4 Destructive Flow
+4 Ancient Grudge
-2 Sword of Fire and Ice
-2 Smother
-3 Umezawa’s Jitte
-1 Phantom Centaur
I've been trying to get feedback on whether or not to bring in Leyline for this matchup. It doesn't do much other than make Academy Ruins worthless… I guess the Leyline plan is way better against Tenacious Zac Hill creations that aren't Cephalid-related (Gifts). But that deck has other graveyard-related tricks, the coolest of which by far is the Petrified Field. Anyhoo.
Game 2 is retarded. I went turn 1 Duress with the turn 2 Flow ready to go (with Mox), taking his Mox so that he can't play the Remand or Condescend in his hand to stop me.
Better lucky than good. Better both.
At that point it was hard for me to get pressure with Sedge Sliver and Troll Ascetic after Flow got hit by 2 counterspells and I eventually died to Pristine Angel and 3 Decree of Justice Angel tokens.
Fortunately for Kai, I was pretty unemotional about losing and we get to banter some more. Apparently, he knows someone who knows Bryce Yockey, a friend of mine who made Top 8 in LA with Wizards. Word. A sidenote on Bryce: I swear he wins half his matches by talking his opponents to death. Way too much, and way too loud. I wish I could do that.
Anyhoo, if Kai weren't such a cool guy I'd want to call him all kinds of potty names for savagely ripping like that. I guess he just invoked the spirit of Stephen Chen, and I can totally forgive him for that.
0-2 (0-4)
MJFlores: "I mean with a name like 'Kai' of course he was going to win the PTQ!"
Thanks Flores, for that amazingly insightful analysis...
I figured I might as well keep playing, if only for the purpose of helping my opponent's tiebreakers. There's also the fact that we drove 12 hours to get there and I wasn’t quite ready to give up just yet.
Round 3: Jessica with Deadguy Gruul
After the customary "So, you’re a girl, OMG you play with magical cards???" introduction, we commenced. Jess won the roll and mulled. I kept a solid 4 lander. She Firebolted my turn 1 birds but I managed turn 2 Darkheart Sliver and followed that up with a flurry of discard spells. She actually got to play 3 Molten Rain this game in spite of my efforts, but having played Owling Vore this summer, it was clear to me that once she destroyed that many lands she wasn’t allowed to win (land destruction karma). Sedge Sliver came rolling into town after I drew the lands I needed.
+1 Phantom Centaur
+2 Smother
-1 Dark Confidant
-2 Cabal Therapy
I mulled to 5 and kept a 1 lander (that land being Blood Crypt, holding 3 green cards).
So I lost, right?
I ripped a Snow-Covered Swamp on turn 2 and invoked the spirit of Stephen Chen by drawing Chrome Mox, allowing me to imprint Birds of Paradise to play Birds of Paradise, which let me play out the rest of my spells. Darkheart Sliver ate a removal spell and I immediately drew another one. Sedge Sliver #2 followed off the top and 4/4 regenerating lifegaining slivers fought through a couple Grim Lavamancers and Blistering Firecat. Jess was left holding 2 Chrome Mox at the end of the game, which I gave her some grief for because they weren't spells.
1-2 (2-4)
Round 4: 2 Club Sandwiches from Burgerville with Bacon
My opponent is a no-show, so I got to watch the Scepter mirror on my left for 10 minutes (action packed!) before getting food.
On a sidenote, Burgerville is frickin' good. All we have in Cali is In-n-Out, and in spite of my not being much of a burger person, I must say that I was thoroughly pleased with the experience.
2-2 (2-4)
Well, I did savagely devour the sandwiches. So I guess we can count each of those as game wins.
2-2 (4-4)
My mouth has a good matchup versus sandwiches.
Round 5: Zaiem with B/W Agro
Zaiem was still in it because a person he drove is sitting at table 1 this round. The Scepter player who I sat next to for 10 minutes was across from me and had to draw with Zaiem earlier in the tournament. He gave me the "Hey, your opponent is a scrubtastic scrub" eyeroll, which I figure is probably pretty accurate.
Rockin' the 3-d goggles since 1998
+2 Smother
+1 Phantom Centaur
+2 Ancient Grudge
-1 Dark Confidant
-4 [card]Cabal Therapy
[/card]
Game 3, Zaiem mulliganed to 5 on the play and was almost in it with double Savannah Lions and my Bob almost doing me in. Phantom Centaur showed up and discouraged attacking for a turn. I played Jitte, equipped and swung. At 4 life next turn, I hit land with Bob, play and equip Sword of Fire and Ice and swung in to kill Bob with Sword. So the board was my very angry Phantom Centaur wielding 2 crazy weapons to his nothing. A couple turns later Zaiem had been mashed into a smoldering pulp.
3-2 (6-5)
At this point, Gus (playing Agro Loam) had dropped due to not being able to concentrate (understandably). Nick was still in it at this point, most notably picking up a 1-0-1 win versus the scepter deck with Counterbalance and Lightning Angel by ripping Hierarch on turn 4 of turns in game 2 to stay alive. (Nick was playing Flores' "Down-Up," or whatever the hell it’s called, with white for Hierarch, being able to cast Engineered Explosives for 3, and wish for Kataki and Meddling Mage). Nick eventually had to lose to a deck packing Arc-Slogger and Rorix Bladewing (it's 2003 all over again!), and on the day got to face scepter 3 times. Sad times.
Moving right along.
Round 6: Dan with Affinity
There was an error in pairings so I was relieved when I didn't have to play Guy-who-glares-at-me-condescendingly-when-I-ask-where-he's-from. We got reseated and were underway.
SO GOOD in Affinity's Maindeck
I got a caution for misrepresenting my hand in this game because I put an irrelevant land down on my scoresheet that sat there for a turn and a half before I remembered that it was there. Luckily the judges were cool about it (and it helps that both the cards in my hand when this happened were irrelevant lands). A game loss wouldn’t have been a huge deal as I lost anyways. After the game, Dan goes, "Wow, I can’t believe that was a whole match," and moves for the slip. I politely remind him that we have played but a single game and roll my mind's eye at his audacity. In his defense it might have worked if I were as dumb as I appear on the surface (a dudeface who spends too much time vegetating in Redondo while at home).
+2 Smother
+4 Ancient Grudge
+4 Leyline of the Void
+1 Phantom Centaur
-2 Sword of Fire and Ice
-4 Cabal Therapy
-4 Duress
-1 Dark Confidant
I bring in a lot of cards for this matchup… Fortunately post-board it's pretty damn hard to lose. Smother is good at killing Blinkmoth Nexus, and Leyline hoses modular hardcore (making any removal against Ravager super good). At that point, the only card that's really scary is Cranial Plating, which copious amounts of hate should either destroy or eat any creature that plating could be attached to. Sword is pretty worthless as they have blockers usually, and insane amounts of hate are better than discard here.
As good as Destructive Flow is against them, I've found it to be unnecessary as killing all their relevant stuff is a tad better than repeatedly killing their land.
Game 2 Bob took me to 9, but Mr. Maher serves up multiple Ancient Grudge, and I get to Smother Blinkmoth Nexus with 2 Cranial Plating on it. Very satisfying. Dan’s life total goes 20-17-9-1-dead.
Game 3 got more amazingly dicey in terms of rules infractions. Dan mulliganed, I put Leyline of the Void into play, and he accidentally drew a card (out of habit I suppose). He immediately caught himself before I had a chance to and called the judge over (who is standing right behind him as we were right in front of the judge station). After some deliberation between Game Loss for drawing extra cards or Force Mulligan to incorrect drawing at the start of a game, they opted for the latter so we actually get to play. Kinda. Dan mulled to 4, revealed a no lander, and scooped to me.
I felt bad that the match had to end this way, especially with my ridiculous negligence in game 1. And my hand this game had multiple Darkheart Sliver, Ancient Grudge and Smother in it… I really wanted to kill all his base, then beat him up with cute little baby Baloths.
4-2 (8-6)
Round 7: Thomas with Affinity (again)
Yeah, more Affinity. I patted myself on the back.
I won the roll and kicked things off with Bloodstained Mire – fetch Stomping Ground, Birds, go.
His turn 1: Darksteel Citadel, Pithing Needle on Seismic Assault.
I was so tired I didn't even realize how amazing my force misread was.
I further played into his misconceptions by playing Bob and Duress (for his Cranial Plating) turn 2.
AGH! It BURNS!
He played some Shrapnel Blasts to take me to a precarious 1 life. Troll picked up Jitte and I almost won (he has no board), but he topdecked Shrapnel Blast #3 with me at 1 and 2 counters on Jitte. That card is stupid.
+2 Smother
+4 Ancient Grudge
+4 Destructive Flow
+1 Phantom Centaur
-2 Sword of Fire and Ice
-4 Cabal Therapy
-4 Duress
-1 Dark Confidant
Per Gus' advice, I put Flow in this time because it's supposedly good against him. It didn't really matter as I drew Smother, Putrefy and 2 Ancient Grudge, making all of his plays awful any way you slice it. Phantom Centaur picked up a Jitte to bring this one home.
-4 Destructive Flow
+4 Leyline of the Void
I realized that Leyline is way better against the deck I’m facing (having never tested with this board configuration), so it came down turn 0, much to my opponent's confusion. He cast Thoughtcast off of Chromatic Star, to which I said, "Draw two." He did so after reading (yay double cycling for !). He played Ravager, Arcbound Worker and other dudes. I killed all of them one at a time and stuck Centaur and Troll and Jitte. He needled the Jitte, then got super frustrated and angry when I want to Putrefy the needle before he declared a block with Blinkmoth Nexus so that I could kill it with Jitte. He was convinced that I passed priority on the declare attackers step… It would have taken me exactly 1 more turn to kill him. His life total as I recorded it: 20-10-5-0. I stayed at 20 the whole game.
As a matter of courtesy, I usually wait for my opponent to leave before I start jawin' with my friends about how awful they were. Apparently Thomas had no such qualms, so I went elsewhere to de-sideboard and left him to bask in his own aura of poor sportsmanship.
5-2 (10-7)
Round 8: Tyrell with Domain Zoo
Insects are an Elf's best friend
My game 1 was pretty elementary as he won the roll and I was backpedaling the entire game. He ended at 18 life, thanks to running Lightning Helix over Sudden Shock (cue foreshadowing). I also got a warning for looking at extra cards as about 5 cards in my library were backwards (the topmost one being Darkheart Sliver), letting my opponent know what a truly scrubtastic scrub I am and making him play sloppily due to arrogance.
+2 Smother
+3 Destructive Flow
+1 Phantom Centaur
-4 Cabal Therapy
-1 Duress
-1 Dark Confidant
"My name is Indigo Montoya..."
-1 Destructive Flow
+1 Ancient Grudge
I felt that even though his Jitte is probably a 1- or 2-of (Levy-style), it's an important enough battle that I need to have an extra answer to it. Plus Flow is not nearly as good on the draw against them. This was probably the wrong call as once the deck draws 3-4 land it has serious trouble drawing any more, and Flow with any board presence at all puts them under tremendous pressure. It doesn’t matter much as he had to mull to 5 on the play. He got a pretty good start, getting 2-for-1'd with Smother on Gaea's Might'd Grim Lavamancer, then playing Jotun Grunt, which got to attack twice before dying to itself. At this point Tyrell had 2 cards (I found out later both of which were Lightning Helix) while I had Troll and Darkheart Sliver. I ripped Jitte, Centaur and Sword in that order and Helix removed a couple counters from Centaur before ridiculous equipment won me the game.
6-2 (12-8)
I finished 12th, with relatively lousy breakers and one 6-2 making it into the top 8 (Chris Pauley, playing goblins, who got to play Cranial Extraction on Engineered Plague against tog at table 1 earlier before smashing face with Tin Street Hooligan and Mogg War Marshal).
It was a good day to play Magic.
We celebrated by going to the local diner and eating bounteous food. We eventually got kicked out for playing pack wars at the table. It may have had something to do with the fact that when the manager asked what we were doing, I jokingly moved the pile of coins that were being used as counters to the middle of the table announcing, "I’m all in."
We got back to the farm around 10:30 and opened the front door to reveal about 200 1-gallon jugs (apparently for bottling and selling goat’s milk). It looked like an alien had dropped several huge egg sacs all around the couch.
Before sleep we played more pack wars and mental magic, then collapsed.
Amusing Anecdotes from the trip:
There was a guy playing Shared Fate.dec at the PTQ who went to time in game 1 against scepter. Both players had no libraries but could not lose because of Shared Fate's replacement effect, and the Shared Fate player couldn't use his opponent's Cunning Wish for an out because he had none.
After round 2, there was apparently a very intense Asian lady driver showdown in the parking lot. I am told that they stared at each other for a full 3-4 minutes before either of them made a move. I was sorry I missed it.
On the way up, our second gas stop was just over the Oregon border and I was amused by the fact that they pumped our gas. I guess California just doesn't need a state law that generates thousands of manual labor jobs for service stations.
Spending a full 24 hours in a car with Gus and Nick was actually pretty fun. We hella made fun of Flores and composed several new prayers for invoking the spirit of Stephen Chen.
When Bryce was 4-1 in LA, I told him that he needed to make Top 8 so that Flores would talk about how amazing his deck was. My wish came true.
The coolest play from mental magic: Gus has multiple Slivers on the board (including Telekinetic and Sinew Sliver), I have Nether Traitor enchanted with Ophidian Eye, and Nick has no board. On Nick's turn, he casts Cabal Ritual with Threshold, plays Havoc Demon (Phantasmagorian), and uses his final 2 mana to Fling it at Gus and kill all our base. Ouch.
Mmm... Mycology...
We stopped outside of Ashland at a gas station with an A&W rootbeer fast food thingy attached to it. The crusty old lady-cashier’s response to us each ordering a rootbeer float was, "WHAT IS THIS??! Float day or something?" to which we responded with hysterical laughter.
After Gus dropped, he busted out his trade binder with pink flowers that his ladyfriend got him and pulled a large, savage "trade" (he "traded" his cards for "non-card goods and/or services") which paid for his trip about quadruplefold. People like expensive foils, apparently.
Why did they have to spell it with three Y's?
On the last leg of the trip, Gus shuffled the CDs together and Nick cut the stack to the most awesomest choice: We topdecked G-Unit FTW.
I guess that’s enough for one go.
Props:
*Kenta Shima for being Japanese and keeping us informed on the latest technology
*Most of my opponents for tolerating my noticeable insanity
*Nick for driving most of the way
*Gus for being cool
*Nick's parents in Davis for feeding us an amazingly delicious dinner on the way home (which is why I needed the salad tossing Mycologists)
*Mycologist for being useful
*Nick's Aunt & Uncle for housing us
*The farm goats for being cool
*Oregon for being hilarious
*Nick's 1985 Toyota Camry for being a solid car choice for the I-5 metagame (having a bad matchup versus hills)
*My friend Berkeley for producing my rap about seat belt safety that I wrote the last time I was in Oregon (which was almost 5 years ago)
*Bryce, for making top 8 in LA with wizards
*The Santa Cruz Magic scene, which is actually kinda starting to exist maybe
*Ariel for driving me and Stephen Chen to GP Phoenix, then beating Kenji and missing day 2 on breakers (at 6-2, story of our lives)
*Jesus
*STEPHEN CHEN (better than Jesus)
Slops:
*Washington players other than Sameer Merchant for showing up (and being able to go to a Q in Vancouver the next day, which was too insane a campaign for us)
*The diner that hated on us
*Tournament organizers who don't submit decklists, or Wizards for not getting them online (specifically San Diego and Las Vegas, especially the former, which could have had a huge impact on the Boros-light metagame)
*My Parents for naming me Tim and then having me become a Magic player (There are those who call me… tim?)
*Flores for naming decks dumb things and having people other than him qualify with each of them
*Power-mad law enforcement officers (70-75% of them)
* "You lose 2, I gain 2" guy (you know who you are)
*My dad for being difficult
Bonus Standard Decklist: Tim’s Unique Brand of Biorhythm
Gus: "I'm pretty sure that’s the only brand of Biorhythm…"
This deck is based upon the Biorhythm deck that almost made top 8 at German Nats in 2005. We've been playing it online, basically tuning it so it can beat Dralnu and Agro and win some games when you don't draw Summer Bloom. Props to Nick, Gus, and Ariel for testing and making awesome suggestions, and Stephen Chen for giving the deck his seal of approval (which is obviously the most important thing).
Yeah Green life loss...
Enjoy Weed, CA... and Sedge Sliver
I'd love to do a matchup analysis, but I think you'll just have to figure it out yourself if you want to play this beauty.
Peace out you dog food gangstas.
Timmay
Modo handles: ConstanceNoring, stephenchenPhD
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