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Artikel
JC’s Boston Experience
5th place
von Patrick Mello |
29.09.2003 |
It's an awkward situation I'm in at the moment, happy about our decent tournament success as a team, especially since the past season was quite a rough ride of disappointing finishes for the most part, but at the same time I'm aware that Boston has been my last PT for a while after almost fve years on the tour.
I intended to go back to college earlier, but being on the masters and doing well generally I postponed the decision a couple of times. Now before Worlds this year I finally made up my mind to call it quits after Boston and start studying again in october. The decision stands and I'm moving in a couple of days but it's tough if you know what I mean. Boston had much of what's cool about the Pro Tour, teaming with friends, quite a lot of tight matches along the way and a successful finish in the end.
But enough of that and on to the actual report. I'm kind of old school and that's the way I do my reports, too. Anyhow, I'll try to explain our decisions in deckbuilding and the basic theories we used and give as much information about the way the matches went as I still remember, hope you get something out of it.
Forming the Team
It can't be stressed too often, but if there's one thing important to teams, it's a good team spirit. Know the people you're playing with. Trust them and their ability to game. And it doesn't hurt if you get along well either. A team with three players that have been teaming together for years (like some veteran teams on the tour) certainly has an edge against three players of superior skill that haven't played together as a team before. Frank Karsten already talked about these aspects in detail here: http://www.brainburst.com/db/article.asp?id=3093
So I'll just keep it short and direct you to that article if you want to know more about the basics concerning team tournaments.
Unfortunately it's hard to keep a team around for years. Stuff happens, people change their priorities and suddenly you gotta look out for a new team. Sometimes it's just that you don't qualify on PT points anymore. This year's Boston has been my 4th Team Pro Tour and that's with a different team each year. Except for last year where I teamed up with Andrew Cuneo and Andrew Johnson of Car Acrobatic fame (Aaron Forsythe was their third) it's been a successful ride so far, finishing 4th in 2000 and 13th in 2001 together with Stephan Valkyser, Christian Lührs (2000) and Peer Kröger (2001). I had high hopes last year but a combination of weak sealed decks and mediocre plays eliminated us before we even got to show our skills in the rochester portion.
This Pro Tour's story began early last season when John Larkin and me talked about a possible team-up but we had no third player yet. At one point John suggested Sam Gomersall who's been England's new hopeful for a while and had some solid finishes but nothing particularly stellar to that point. Now it doesn't make sense to judge people solely on their achievements, it's equally important how dedicated they are at the moment and if we could get along as a team or not. And Sam's certainly into the game as much as anyone currently. So we agreed to play GP Amsterdam together and see if it all works out. I liked the idea of an Irish-British-German alliance but the downside was obvious – playtesting together would be really hard to pull off. Anyway, I didn't have many options since the capable players in germany were either already in a team or lived too far away from Hamburg for real life gaming.
Amsterdam came around and we got our team name by international bum Johnny Chapman, out of a lack of originality on our side. We abbreviated it to ‘The JC Experience' so it could stand for anything including Jesus Christ in case we'd need help from above. The tournament worked out alright and the 15th place we finished in showed that the team had potential but also told us that there was still a way to go and get more practise in, especially in rochester drafting.
The next step was the Team PTQ at Worlds, were we made it through nine rounds of sealed, further improving our team communication and getting used to each other's play styles. We skipped the draft portion in the playoffs because it was already damn late and everyone wanted to get some food and rest. Also, the american teams didn't really need the flights as much as we did and so they conceded to us, which was nice, of course. Thanks again guys. In hindsight we should have really done those two drafts, what better practise can there be? But magic players are lazy folk and when it's either dinner or draft after a day of gaming it comes to, well – dinner.
The Format: Onslaught-Legions-Scourge
a) Team Sealed Deck
Sealed Deck might well be the most underestimated format to date. But as soon as you do some playtesting, building and rebuilding some cardpools you'll realise that it's hard to get it right on first try. We did a sealed practise with Mark Ziegner, Christoph Lippert and Markus Joebstl the day before the Pro Tour and we ended up building the pools completely different and couldn't even agree on a ‘best build', it came down to personal preferences and play styles. Where we would've done everything to avoid a UR deck, Markus convinced his team to build that deck with both card pools, and it seemed to do well in their hands but it wouldn't have worked for us.
Our deckbuilding process usually begins with a look at black, white and green as the three core decks. Those colors are generally deeper than red and blue and they also have a stronger tribal theme, making it harder to split them up. Personally, I prefer to have decks with removal, so instead of going UW, GR, BR I would rather go WR, GR, UB if the card pool allows that. The logic is that you're just not as susceptible to certain cards like Timberwatch Elf and Sparksmith and each deck has ways to deal with any situation. Of course this is just theory, in the end it comes down to the cardpool you have at hand and making the best of it.
Where to put which deck? Here comes the random element of Team Sealed. Some people argue that it's more likely to face certain decks in certain seats because people like to play what they're drafting all the time (and are most familiar with). This results in teams trying to metagame and other's trying to metagame a little further, well - in the end it should be quite random again. That's why I like to have decks without specific weaknesses, you have to be able to beat any color combination.
I have to admit though that I occassionally fall into the same trap, starting to think that some colors are coming up more often in certain seats and such, especially in the later rounds of the swiss when there's obviously a pattern in the matchups (a random one, of course).
b) Team Rochester Draft
Right after Worlds in Berlin, Mike Turian stayed at my apartment for a week and although we spend most of our time on Warcraft and other online activities we still managed to do some Drafts, either with Kai and Marco or just 1on1. It would've been nice to do some more drafts with John and Sam in preparation for the PT, but we just didn't have the Opportunity to do so.
Anyhow, we found out a couple of things in the drafts we did. Compared to previous blocks, Onslaught-Legions-Scourge is less about reactive drafting in terms of struggling for advantageous color matchups, instead it's more important to draft the specific cards that are good in each matchup. It might sound a bit silly, but it seems like it's just not that complex anymore. Avoid obvious draft mistakes, try to memorize your opponents deck as good as you can and well, that's about it.
Our basic plan going into the Pro Tour was green in the A seat, black in B and white in C. While B and C are easily interchangable, A is pretty much fixed as the green seat in our setup (and for most other teams as well, Timberwatch does that). Ideally we would end up with GR, BU and WR. At one point Mike developed an interesting idea about switching the green seat around,
taking advantage of the general deepness of green in Legions by scooping up Krosan Vorines and Stonewood Invokers where the other team's green mage first picks Timberwatch Elves. As a bonus you wouldn't have a green mirror match and therefore Timberwatch would be relegated to ‘decent' (because he's up against BR or something) instead of ‘insane'. Still, unless something wild happens I'd prefer to let A be the green seat.
For some reason UR never worked out well in our practise drafts, even with stuff like 2 Lavamancer's Skill and plenty of wizards. It seemed like it's just too easy to counter that deck, green and white have multiple ways to Disenchant and BR removal.dec will do the job just as well. What's more important is that having a UR deck on your side messes up your general setup – suddenly you have to split up soldier, zombie and green cards between two decks, if those cards show up in the usual numbers you're in trouble because you can't fit them all in.
Boston: wednesday and thursday
Since Kai, Dirk and Marco were already in the country and most other germans are from the southern region, I flew on my own. Seems like they cut down on international flights after September 11th, and therefore all the remaining flights are quite crowded, at least that's the way it appears to be. Over are the days of having a middle row (4 seats) for just two people. But it's not the longest of trips, so it was alright. Flying alone also meant that I had time to read Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath which I had just begun cause it's part of my curriculum for october. And it's a good read by the way, though it takes some getting used to the language the author uses. Certainly up there with Kerouac and other classics.
I hung at out at Boston airport for two hours starving ‘cause the flight's food was, well, non-sufficient and there was no fast-food chain to be found at the airport (quite the surprise), then John finally arrived after I had welcomed like 10 competitors and judges and seen them go by. We took a cab, checked in at the Radisson and quickly went for dinner (Sam's wasn't going to be around until later in the evening). After two steak-sandwiches and like 10 pints between the two of us at a fabulous Irish place, the world seemed fine again and I was optimistic about the tourney, it might have been the intoxication.
Thursday was the usual hang-out at the player's hotel across from the site. We did two Sealed Decks with Mark, Christoph and Markus (told you about it earlier) and while it didn't reveal much it was still good to get your hands on the cards at last.
Friday: day one, 1st Sealed Decks
Unfortunately I didn't write down our sealed decks this time, I used to do that. But it's a lot of work and usually not even worth the effort and it would've been quite hard to pull off since John and Sam both threw away all the non-valuables immediately after every two rounds. That's why I just didn't bother this time. I took some notes though, and hopefully I rememeber most of the stuff correctly, bear with me if there some errors.
Our first card pool had a couple of powerful cards that can swing games, like Slice and Dice, but overall it was a little weird and we had to settle for a Wb cleric deck because we lacked soldiers to go with our soldier spells (Piety Charm and the like). The other decks were BR and UG because they just had more synergy than GR / UB or some other combination. I was confident that we could at least win one round and likely two rounds should we face some mediocre opponents or good one's with a weak pool.
Round 1: Team Lowland Games (Wiegersma, Van den Broek, Karsten)
Well, no easy start into the PT this time. The Dutchies are certainly among the top teams at the moment, having been playing together for a long time on all levels of competition and they were in Atlanta together with Phoenix Foundation and various others to prepare for the event. They're all nice guys though, so I was looking forward to some clean, tight gaming there.
I was up against Jelger but our match did hold it's promise and was quite a lopsided affair. He was sitting on 2 lands for one turn too long in game one and game two was a little better but then I had a pretty strong draw and took the match without too much Opposition. I was playing BR against his RW deck that featured two Celestial Gatekeepers with a Primoc Escapee as techy gimmick (he might have had two of those as well), so he could cycle the big 4/4 into play if Gatekeeper's effect is on the stack.
Sam beat Frank's UB deck with his Gu monstrosity, including regular turn four Canopy Crawlers (amplified twice). While it didn't matter anymore it was still fun to watch the midldle matchup between John's clerics and Victor's GR Dragon Roost deck. I watched the match and decided to get some drinks when John had obviously lost game one but was still fighting like an irish bulldog for a reason I failed to see – he was up against an active Roost and had nothing but a bunch of clerics that had nice synergy but nothing to really but the pressure on Victor, who was happily putting 5/5s into play.
What I missed though was the fact that Victor was on one life and so John managed to work his way around the dragons by attacking each turn, protecting his clerics with Battlefield Medic, Daunting Defender and Daru Spiritualist tricks while putting pressure on with Zealous Inquisitor and Vile Deacon. That way Victor lost the game though he got to activate his Roost six times. Crazy stuff.
1-0
Round 2: Jay-Z feat. Lil Mo (Aral, May, Lowles)
The guys were headed from New Jersey so this was almost home turf for them, though it's still quite a ride I assume. I was up against Jason Aral who had a UR deck that seemed a little clunky with stuff like double Pinpoint Avalanche and such, but it turned out be efficient anyhow. Game one appeared like I had it in the bag at one point, but then he flipped some good morphs during the damage race (Skirk Volcanist, Echo Tracer) and it got out of hand. I stabilised with Slice and Dice but lost the topdeck war to direct damage when we were at 1 (me) and 3 life respectively.
Game two was just as close and came down a situation were I had a Goblin Machinist and 6 mana open at the end of his turn. There's practically no reason not to activate the Machinist as it gives you some information and could turn out to matter later on in the game if you go through your whole library. So I did that and put some weak cards on the bottom. Then I ripped a – Butcher Orgg! Neat. Our third game turned my way when I hit Callous Oppressor and Meddle with an Unburden that I had boarded in. It was still quite a race. I can't remember which, but we won one of the other matches (a pattern developing throughout the tourney).
2-0
2nd Sealed Decks
Sweet theory. Again we had a card pool that resulted in a GU deck instead of having three flexible decks with removal spells, but it was just the best way to use the cards we had at hand. I'm partly responsible for putting Wellwisher, Wall of Deceit and Wall of Mulch into the GU deck's sideboard, arguing that I'm unlikely to face other green decks in my seat. Yes, I fell for the trap I mentioned earlier, noticing a trend that players weren't putting green in the C seat. John piloted a soldier deck with a red splash and Sam got a BR deck this time which he didn't feel happy with and maybe we made a mistake here valuing deck position over deck familiarity, Sam's quite the master with the green cards.
Round 3: Ubermenschen (Ho, Rubin, Kibler)
Another high-profile team. And sporting a german name, slightly incorrect though because it lacks the umlaut ‘ue'. But what can you expect? It's still a cool teamname.
I was paired against Ken Ho, who's first play was a Forest, of course. It got considerably worse though when he played a Silklash Spider and my grip was Mistform Skyreaver, Aven Fateshaper and a Dragon Wings in the graveyard, excellent stuff but damn useless against darn Silklash. I had some ground creatures out though and a little lead in the damage race, so there was time to find an answer of some sort. Apparently Ken was building up something on his own as he cycled a lot, played a bunch of lands but kept like 4-5 cards all the time. Then I drew my Root Elemental and suddenly there was light at the end of the tunnel again, fairly dim still, but certainly something. A while later I found a Patron of the Wild and that was all I needed. Ken tapped down to less than what he had to have to kill the Skyreaver, so I put it into play on his end of turn and then swung with it. I didn't really expect him to block, especially since I only attacked with the Reaver, but he did and lost the Spider to the Patron right there.
It wasn't over though. Ken's next turn was quite savage, Slice and Dice plus two removal spells took care of almost everything and we were on even terms after that.
I still held two more fatties though, so I wasn't worried and untapped a bit too happily. I slammed a Wirewood Guardian and another critter and forgot about the Dragon Wings that were in my graveyard the whole time since turn two (and that I chose not to use earlier because of Silklash). Nevertheless, the 6/6 did him in, but it gave Ken more time I should have granted him. I won the other game as well, but to be honest, it could have been the other way around just as well, since Ken had quite the ridiculous deck featuring 2 Lightning Rifts, 2 Invigorating Boons and 12+ high-quality cyclers. I wasn't particulary proud of the game anyway since I made that error with the Wings and a bad decision where I played to defensively earlier on.
Sam lost his matchup soundly against Brian's Wb deck sporting White and Silver Knight (turns two and three of course) but it didn't make a difference since John took out Ben's UR deck including a game where he had to get an Erratic Explosion for 4 (on a skilled Wall) and Ben opted not to use his Goblin Sledder on it.
3-0
Naturally we were quite happy at this point, one more win would guarantee another day of competition, something I took for granted a couple years ago at the Team PTs, but last year I found out the hard way how easy it is to miss that goal.
Hope you liked it so far, I'll be back with part two shortly!
Patrick
(feel free to mail me if you got any questions or the like, it might take a little till I reply though, cause I'm busy moving at the moment.)
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von Patrick am 06.10.2003 • 09:43 |
Der Artikel wirkt echt etwas deplaziert hier! 
War ursprünglich für Brainburst Premium gedacht (daher auch der eine oder andere link im Text). Aber dann wurde er von Ray Moore (editor bei BB) abgelehnt, da er anscheinend nicht 'marketable' ist.
Da es mir mehr darum geht, daß der Bericht gelesen wird als das ich Kohle dafür bekomme , habe ich ihn dann kurz an Georg gemailed und jetzt steht er hier auf der Seite.. leider bin ich jetzt seit einer Woche voll mit meinem Umzug nach Bayreuth beschäftigt und habe auch kein Inet mehr (im InetCafé hier), daher gabs bisher keinen 2. Teil und auch keine Bemerkung zum Artikel von mir.
Sollte aber bald alles in trockenen Tüchern sein und dann kann ich auch den 2. Teil posten und den Artikel noch einmal updaten. Wenn's denn überhaupt jemand interessiert. 
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