US Nationals Report - Day 1
**Nationals isn't really this amazingly hard tournament; it's just that if you come in fifth, you get nothing. I spent a lot of time testing Standard, particularly Replenish and Trinity Green, but the last two weeks of preparation were almost all for the draft, starting with when the Prophecy patch was created for Netdraft. A lot of players don't think Netdraft can substitute for real drafting, but I think it's a much better way to learn a draft format. You're looking for what decks work and which don't, but more than that I think your goal is to understand how the draft works. When this succeeds, you gain the ability to 'sense' the draft. The other goals are to understand what pick each card is (and which pick they should be), to understand what you can get out of each pack, and then start developing the archetypes.
This was in many ways a unique situation. Nationals took place before most players would be able to adjust to Prophecy. Those that made a special effort would get in some sort of practice, and those who were willing to do a lot of Netdraft would be somewhat ready, but US Nationals contains a lot of players who qualified in Regionals and many who don't consider it that important. I decided most of them would not have adjusted in time. The question I asked myself was: Which colors would be overdrafted, and how would it happen? My conclusion was that white would be overdrafted by players overvaluing rebels and the color in general, and black would be overdrafted by players who didn't realize how much weaker it had gotten and took black removal out of the normal print runs first, or those who tried to cut it off whenever they could for the Nemesis black. Both of those colors were also not my style, and I think the worse colors in the new format.
I had designed a tri-color strategy before, for PTLA. In that case, the colors were white, blue and green. Here, white would be replaced by red. I drafted as much as possible, but I leaned toward those three colors and the three combinations of them. All three had a distinct flavor, and my favorite was Blue/Green. There's just one problem with Blue/Green, which is that in Nemesis you often get next to nothing. Except for that, you're set. This means that this strategy is good if you know the cards will come in Prophecy based on the early picks of the player passing to you.
As usual, I did not draft the day before the event. Instead, I observed others draft. This let me deal with just as many situations, but at the same time see how someone else drafts in a situation and look around to see how the draft develops. You also don't have to play the deck out, which is valuable but I think should be a waste of time at this point unless your deck is unusual - and you don't know if it will be in advance. What I saw confirmed what I suspected, and I was ready to draft.
At the start of the first draft, I opened Waterfront Bouncer, so I had an easy choice. Bouncer is so good right now that I give serious thought to splashing for it whenever I get one. Second pick, I took a Blockade Runner to stay on target, although it was disappointing. Third pick, I had a choice between another Blockade Runner and a Snorting Ghar, and I decided I wanted into green and took the Ghar. The table seemed very weak, with no other Pros I knew, and Blue/Green is normally great at not losing to bad players. The problem looking back on the situation was that I didn't really have enough evidence that my colors were open and I didn't send particularly strong signals either. Still, I think my only other option was to take the weaker second Runner in pack three and live without green, and that was a very risky thing to do. At any rate, the rest of MM seemed to go all right. When I saw the Chambered Nautilus and Misdirection from my first pack that I'd worried about passing on, I figured I was set.
Then Nemesis died. It does that sometimes, and even more often with this color combination. I opened Dominate, which was great, but after that I got almost nothing. I was seriously hurting going into Prophecy. And there, I got some good stuff, including Spitting Spider, Ribbon Snake, Withdraw and Thresher Beast which I needed, especially the beef, but I didn't get either as many creatures or playable cards as I needed after what happened in Nemesis. I was stuck using Venomous Dragonfly and Cloud Sprite, and didn't have as much power as this type of deck needs. Still, the deck wasn't a total disaster. I figured I could expect to go 2-1 at this table, probably losing to the other blue mage across from me.
That's more or less what happened. First round, I faced a White/Red deck. It seemed like the deck was almost schizophrenic. In one half was the white enchant land to prevent one damage, Mind Bearer, Story Circle and such cards, which were very defensive. They also wanted him keeping mana untapped. In the other half were a Whip Sergeant and plenty of red's great Prophecy creatures that really want to attack and really want to tap you out first. His average card quality was better than mine, but his deck clashed with itself. By forcing him to choose between his deck's two halves, I managed to set up races he couldn't win and won games two and three. I lost game one, however, because he represented Magenta's Boon or Flaming Sword, and I thought I could play around them but he had Rath's Edge and that got him in for the kill. He did a great job of bluffing.
Round two, I faced a huge rebel engine including multiple Trenching Steeds, Sergeant, Lieutenant and Vanguard, and a bunch of other dorkish rebels but no Gliders. The problem is that my deck didn't have enough quality creatures to deal with that if things started getting out of hand. I used Animate Land to take out his Sergeant game one on turn two, and then used Counterspell to stop his topdecked Lieutenant. I thought I'd stopped his engine and was set, but I kept drawing lands and ended up having about six more lands than spells, and not having an engine didn't stop him. Game two, I stalled on mana before getting to four, but I drew land at what was either going to be the last turn or one turn too late. He kept drawing well, though, and his engine was almost all out. I had the Bouncer out to help me recover, but it was overworked and so was my hand. I got a Thresher Beast on the table, but he kept pouring tiny rebels out and I was getting too low on life, plus he got a Muzzle for the Beast. Finally, he attacked with Coastal Hornclaw and didn't sacrifice a land for flying. It was time for the Muzzle trick. Clearly, he didn't know I could do it or he would have sacrificed the land. Since the judge was getting called anyway, I figured I might as well make sure the trick worked. The head of the rules herself came over, and I asked her the question. Too my dismay, she didn't take out her trusty handheld Standard Oracle (like the judge did in round one when my opponent asked if I could get multiple tokens off of Saber Ants) but went and picked up Muzzle and looked at it. Way to give away the question. Luckily, my opponent didn't realize what was happening. I blocked, put damage on the stack, and used Bouncer to put Thasher Beast back into my hand, killing Coastal Hornclaw since the Muzzle wasn't there to prevent the damage. As expected, he asked for an explanation, which eventually made things clear. Unfortunately, he had one more rebel than I could deal with in time and I died anyway.
I pulled out round three, although I don't remember the details, to finish the table at 2-1. My second table was a lot like the first, with seven unknowns. Still, these were unknowns with winning records, so they could draft. I opened up Waterfront Bouncer again, and again didn't have any reasonable alternatives. Second pick I got passed Rishadan Airship, and I got another third and thought I was good to go. The first pack went downhill from there. The blue dried up, so I concentrated on picking up the solid green creatures that got passed to me for two packs, Giant Caterpillar and Horned Troll. After that, though, there was nothing left to take other than the Trade Routes I picked up rather late. With eighteen land in most decks nowadays, Trade Routes is even better.
Nemesis was a disaster. I got a Blastoderm, one of each of my seals, a Submerge and a Daze, along with a Rootwater Commando I ended up having to start. Suddenly, I was behind on playable cards despite doing a good job of cutting my colors off. Again, it happens with Blue/Green, and you have to be prepared for it when it does. I needed a lot of help from pack three, and I was creature light in the extreme. And when I opened the third pack, there looking at me was none other than Alexi, Zephyr Mage. That helped a lot. Next pack I had to choose between taking a green creature and taking Withdraw. I decided that I would probably find enough creatures later on if I concentrated on it, and took Withdraw. I then got passed a second Withdraw, and knew that if I could finish my creature base my bounce would turn this into an amazing deck. I had to make some sacrifices, like taking Vintara Elephant over what I think was a Rethink. I also took two Rystic Studies, unsure of whether or not they'd get played. Originally I thought the card was poor, but talking to Bob Maher and Alan Comer about it made me look at it in a better light. If it ever belonged in a deck, it belonged in this one. Finally, with four cards left to draft I noticed that there was an Overburden. For those who don't go around trying to build funky combo decks all day, Overburden requires all players to bounce a land whenever a creature card comes into play under their control. It's not normally playable, at least I don't think it is, but with this much bounce it occurred to me I just might want it. Netdraft is great for situations like this, because you get to draft the cards for this deck you think might be good and then play with the deck to see if it works or not.
Building the deck wasn't easy. I decided to not play Seal of Removal given the amount of bounce I had. I played Rootwater Commando but drew the line at playing Coiling Woodworm with eight Forests. For a long time I thought about Overburden, especially since I decided to play with the Rystic Studies. Finally, I decided not to start it, and to ask everyone whether to board it in. Brian Hacker looked at my deck while I was building it, and I showed him what was going on and he seemed amused but couldn't say anything. I asked Gary Wise about it the moment I was done, and he said I should have played the Woodworm but I shouldn't use Overburden unless their deck was expensive. Alan Comer also said I shouldn't use the Overburden. I sat down to play my first round. Here's the decklist I played:
10 Island
8 Forest
2 Rystic Study
2 Withdraw
First round was against a Blue/Black deck. I stalled at two land game one, and had nothing but a Bouncer and Seal of Strength. Luckily, he only had a Machinist and got stuck at four land with a hand of five drops. I attacked with the Bouncer once because I thought the Machinist might hang back anyway to counter spells, but when it didn't I held back and traded the Machinist for a card in my hand with the Bouncer. He stalled the game with a Rathi Assassin as I laid out an offensive hoard when I recovered on mana. He drew Rootwater Commando and started attacking, but I drew Trade Routes. He thought "he'll never pick up all five Islands" and attacked, but that's exactly what I did. That was one very dead Commando. Once I had enough Islands back down to operate properly. I had a decision to make, because I'd drawn Submerge. He had Spiketail Drake, a Rathi Assassin and a few creatures that could stall the ground. He had passed up plenty of chances to search, I thought, so I didn't use Bouncer on the Assassin. I decided that I needed to try and win. I Submerged Rathi Assassin, which he let me do, I then used Bouncer on the Drake, untapped and attacked with the Hornclaw, Venomous Dragonfly and an Airship. When he tried to put the Drake back down, I had the Rethink ready for it. I knew that I was using tons of resources to attack so either this would work or I would probably lose. I attacked him again, I bounced Rathi Assassin, then I had to bounce Molting Harpy to go in for the win. Second game, he stalled on land, and my bounce destroyed him quickly.
That turned out to be the squeaker for the table. Round five my deck worked really well again, and I swept without anything interesting I can remember. In the last round, I played for the table. This match was a ton of fun, and it had a theme: "Sub-par beats". He went first turn Flailing Soldier, which as we all know is sub-par, and commented that 'there are some sub-par beats coming your way.' And as it became clear later, his deck was full of sub-par beats. It's hard to work a Soldier for a lot of damage without it getting killed - unless your opponent stalls on lands. With a third land able to kill it I knocked on my deck. No luck. By the time I drew the land to deal with it, I'd taken ten points of the sub-par beats. It turned out the whole time he actually didn't have anything better to do in his hand. I started casting creatures, and the ones he put into play were not so good. We're talking Marsh Boa here, folks. Of course, since limited is all about the beats in one way or another, we got to summon all kinds of beats: Sub-par beats, par beats, and some above par beats - like Alexi. Actually, I never activated Alexi the whole day. He was just a 3/3 beatdown machine. Late in the first game I saw his bomb, Kyren Negotiations for what were some above par but too slow beats, since he was down to one creature and I'd only taken one point since the Flailing Solider incident. Game two I countered Kyren Negotiations and the rest of his deck collapsed in the face of a good draw. He went 2-0 to get to the table finals on manascrew in the first round and a decklist error in the second. With those kinds of decks, you can't win them all. He was happy to get 2-1, as I would have been. I was 5-1, needed 4-2 for Top 8, it was time to prepare for Type II, and the metagame was going nuts, but we'll get to that in the conclusion. :)
- Zvi Mowshowitz
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