10th at PT Nats - part 1

I've been intentionally delaying for a while writing about PT Nats because I don't have my draft decks with me at the moment, and I don't want to write about PT Nats without the decklists I used for 50% of the tournament am I right? But since I'm not going home for a while I did the clever thing of start writing and then make a break when the draft part comes, how clever is that.

The week preceding Nationals I was spending my free time preparing for the Draft portion, since I was already set on playing Jund. However, the Draft Challenge, which was a preview for Nats went awful, which left me wondering, what was I doing wrong.

Basically, here is my approach for ROE drafts:

1- Don't draft Green. In any format, Green just auto scoops to a turn 1 Island, so why would you want to be on the wrong side of the table? The whole game is gonna be agonizing for you, it might even seemed close, but in fact, it never was.

2- Don't draft awkward color combinations, which in this format are BW, WR, UG, WG and on a personal note also RB. I mean, RB tokens is fine and can be very powerful, but I don't like it, and the traditional all removal BR decks just don't seem to work in this format no matter how good they look on paper, the creatures are just better than the removal.

3- Don't draft aggro decks, please you are better than that!

After crossing these rules, what's left? UB, UR, UW (classic control, not levelers)

Of course, it's not a perfect world and more often than I would like I find myself playing Forests.
At the end of my last post, I mentioned I accepted Marcio Carvalho's invite to drop by his place sometimes. We exchanged some point of views, I watched him play a couple of drafts, and he also followed some of mine and we discussed them AFTERWARDS, I repeat AFTERWARDS no comments during draft or game play.

I come to realize I wasn't doing so wrong, I had some correct notions, and while not being a great drafter Pro Tour quality, I was good enough to have a decent performance at Nats.

I made one change in the main deck and one change in the sideboard of my winning list of the PTQ, because I wanted to improve a little the deck against UW. I consider my irl drafting friends to be all of them contenders for the National Title. When 6 out of 7 are going to play UW, I knew that if I made it alive to the last 3 constructed rounds, I would have to get past some of them. I changed one Broodmate Dragon for 1 Malakir, and in the sideboard took out 1 Consuming Vapors for one extra Doom Blade.

4 Lightning Bolt
2 Terminate
3 Lotus Cobra
3 Putrid Leech
4 Blightning
4 Sprouting Thrinax
4 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Bloodbraid Elf
3 Siege-Gang Commander
2 Bituminous Blast
1 Malakir the Bloodwitch

4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Savage Lands
4 Raging Ravine
1 Lavaclaw Reaches
3 Dragonskull Summit
2 Rootbound Crag
2 Mountain
3 Forest
3 Swamp

Sideboard:
2 Duress
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Goblin Ruinblaster
3 Cunning Sparkmage
3 Doomblade
1 Malakir the Bloodwitch

PS: The raw power of this deck still amazes me, how come people don't like it?

I would like to thank Mauro Peleira for lending me all the cards of the deck. One of these days, I'll be writting one post about him.

You might not realize, but the impact of adding one Malakir to the main, is much bigger than adding for example one Sarkhan main vs Jund. Jund vs UW matchup should go long enough to give you some chances of seeing that Malakir, not like you need to lucksack your Sarkhan on turn 5 vs Jund. Besides, just the simple presence of him in your deck, can give you more options during your gameplay, and after sideboard you have 2 copies instead of one like before.

I think the matchup of Jund vs UW is an amazing one, the games take long enough that you actually have to plan, and there is a lot of strategy going on. I could write a whole article about the Jund vs UW matchup, but it's not relevant now, or at least it's not going to be until we reach round 11 of Nats. For the same reason, now that M11 is around, no use for my sideboard plans, no one's playing these decks anymore.

The day before Nats Paulo Carvalho came to Lisbon to stay at my place. He and all his test buddies from his city were going to play his version of Jund, like the one he used to win the PTQ the week before I did. It's almost the same, except they don't have the 3 Lotus Cobra, and have the 4th Leech and 2 Sarkhans instead.

His argument is he doesn't want to Cascade into Lotus Cobra, and Sarkhan is good on the mirror, but I already explained that I'd rather have Malakir main against UW than Sarkhan main versus Jund, the tempo and the variance in those matchups are totally different that is better to tech against UW rather than Jund.

Round 1: Jund, 2-1
A very tough and intense round, I lost game one, but was fortunate enough to take the other two, with absolute no skill involved.

Round 2: UW, 2-0
My easiest win of the tournament, my draws just crushed his, pretty much no decisions to make again.

Round 3: Jund, 0-2
This round I remember because of Paulo Carvalho.

Game one I force some damage to put him at exactly 3 life, and then I sit back on a stalled board waiting to topdeck the last 3 points of damage. But he drew Sarkhan and killed me from close to 20 life in 2 or 3 turns, which is fine, since he actually played with Sarkhan, drew it in a situation where he wasn't very behind on board or already winning, yeah it was a game breaker.

Game two we are racing, I topdeck Bloodbraid Elf, and cascading into any spell wins me the game here, or any creature which wasn't Lotus Cobra would win me the game next turn. Of course cascaded into Cobra, and my following attack could only put him at one, and I lost shortly after.

Just because I lost with both ways Paulo Carvalho said it would happen, doesn't mean that he's right.

The difference from 2-1 to 3-0 is so huge, in these events where they fragment the tournament in 4 parts, you have to 3-0 one of them, and the best one is indeed to first part. Of the whole Top 8, at least 5, FIVE of them started 3-0 in Constructed, while 2-1 you are alive, but playing the rest of the tournament against all the other regulars.

I went to my draft pod with other seven 2-1 players. When I got there, it was a very difficult to evaluate Draft Pod. Since all the other seven players were not from Lisbon, and I wasn't even in Portugal for the past two years, can't really tell who's playing hot lately. I actually kind of knew all of them, from the ocasional chat outside of a tournament, all of them cool guys, but other than knowing that they all had zero Pro Tour experience, and most likely even zero Grand Prix experience, it was very hard to tell their currrent draft skills. So it was like an online queue, playing in the machine, and not with the players.

I'm making a forced break here, I will resume writting when I grab my draft decks. I will continue from the first pick, first pack, until the end of Nationals. Stay tuned!

Thank you for reading!