GP Nashville

What's better than mediocrity at the local level? Mediocrity at the higher level, of course. So I busted my ass at school and skipped work for a week to go down to Nashville for the Grand Prix. We arrived on Friday night to the sprawling location that is the Gaylord Hotel and Convention Center. Rob and I drove around three times trying to find a parking spot before we gave up and parked maybe half a mile away at a McDonald's and walked. In the process of getting to the site, we see like 20 pros and Rob doesn't recognize a single one, because he is concerned with being good at the game rather than reading about people who are good. We get sidetracked in the labyrinth inside the convention center, which was insane. They had the Christmas decorations up, which made any Christmas decorations I've ever seen look like shit. There was an entire area that was an interior island, and a nightclub within the convention center, along with a ton of restaurants and a hotel layout that I would never have been able to decipher. We find the tournament room and look around. I didn't do anything, but most everyone else did. Rob got in a draft, while some other people we met up with, Rick, Sam, and Jim, all played Standard in the Super FNM. Rob loses in round 1 of the draft and after that we head back to the hotel to get some sleep.

I wake up early because I was worried we would all oversleep and miss the main event or something. This does allow me to destroy the substantial free breakfast afforded at Holiday Inn Express. We all group up and drive back to the convention center, thankfully finding where the free parking is and not having to walk as far. After about an hour, the seatings go up for deck registration and we're off. I don't remember anything about the pool I opened, as I was nervous about misregistering or running out of time that I just burned through it. It comes time to swap and the person across from me, a kid no older than 10, is not even close to being finished, so a judge has to come over and finish the sheet. I get the deck about 3 minutes into the 5 minute verification process and get to sort through a non-alphabetized mess. The sheet looked like a crappy term paper when the judge had got done modifying it to fill in all the mistakes. He even had to create a new column there had been so many errors. By this time everyone has passed again, and deckbuilding is starting. The judges rule that we just keep each others pools and I get to start construction late, but not enough to where it really affected anything.

Here is what I opened:

Artifacts

1x Clone Shell
1x Strider Harness,
1x Memnite
1x Infiltration Lens
1x Golem's Heart
2x Echo Circlet
2x Copper Myr
1x Flight Spellbomb
1x Sylvok Lifestaff
2x Accorder's Shield
2x Bladed Pinions
2x Soliton
1x Heavy Arbalest
1x Livewire Lash
2x Origin Spellbomb
1x Barbed Battlegear
1x Snapsail Glider
1x Perilous Myr
1x Glint Hawk Idol
1x Palladium Myr
2x Contagion Clasp
1x Silver Myr
1x Tumble Magnet
1x Myr Propagator
2x Vulshok Replica

Blue

1x Halt Order
1x Plated Seastrider
1x Scrapdiver Serpent
1x Screeching Silcaw
2x Turn Aside
1x Vedalken Certarch
2x Bonds of Quicksilver

Red

1x Bloodshot Trainee
1x Shatter
1x Blade-Tribe Berserkers
1x Vulshok Heartstoker
1x Scoria Elemental
1x Oxidda Daredevil
2x Flameborn Hellion
2x Assault Strobe
1x Koth of the Hammer

Black

1x Psychic Miasma
1x Plague Stinger
1x Painful Quandary
1x Memoricide
1x Contagious Nim
2x Blackcleave Goblin
2x Grasp of Darkness
1x Carnifex Demon
1x Necrogen Scudder
1x Flesh Allergy

Green

1x Bellowing Tanglewurm
1x Slice in Twain
1x Cystbearer
1x Carapace Forger
1x Alpha Tyrranax
1x Untamed Might

White

1x Salvage Scout
1x Seize the Initiative
2x Soul Parry
2x Whitesun's Passage
1x Ghalma's Warden
2x Revoke Existence
2x Myrsmith
1x Dispense Justice
1x Glimmerpoint Stag

My deck:

1x Origin Spellbomb
1x Barbed Battlegear
1x Snapsail Glider
1x Perilous Myr
1x Copper Myr
1x Glint Hawk Idol
1x Palladium Myr
2x Contagion Clasp
1x Silver Myr
1x Tumble Magnet
1x Myr Propagator
2x Vulshok Replica
1x Bloodshot Trainee
1x Shatter
1x Koth of the Hammer
2x Revoke Existence
2x Grasp in Darkness
1x Carnifex Demon
1x Necrogen Scudder
1x Flesh Allergy
2x Plains
6x Mountain
8x Swamp

I think my pool was decent, I just misbuilt it badly. I had never constructed a Scars sealed deck, even just for practice. Opening Koth was also a problem, because I don't know if I should have even played red, as besides him I basically had a Shatter and some mediocre guys. I will say I won every game I played Koth, but I'm probably still just delusional. My mana base was an issue several times, though I don't think I outright lost any games to color problems, but I should have stuck to two. I did not have enough creatures, and the ones I did have were by and large less than stellar. Barbed Battlegear had no place in the deck, since it kills approximately half my creatures. I was thinking about the Bloodshot Trainee when I should not have been, whereas the Livewire Lash or Sylvok Lifestaff would have been much better overall. Glint Hawk Idol was a mistake too because I did not have the artifacts to reliably activate him, much less the white mana. Rob and I discussed the build later and came to the conclusion that straight black/white would have been the better build. Looking back I made a lot of mistakes, but I'm glad that I have been able to analyze them somewhat and simultaneously get a little practice in, which can only help me later.

Here is how the rounds went:

Round 1: Andrew Hoffman - U/R

Game 1: Neither of us get off to a fast start and I draw the majority of my removal so he can't punish me too bad before I draw Koth and drop him with enough protection to where I can get his ultimate. After I kill everything he plays for a few turns he concedes.

Game 2: The board stalls out here until he drops Argent Sphinx and I have to hope I draw Carnifex Demon but I don't and the Sphinx goes all the way.

Game 3: This one went down to the wire and I was doing everything I could to avoid a draw. Time is called during my turn when I have Carnifex Demon out, so I dump one counter and clear the board a little with him at 15. I attack that turn, then on Turn 2 during extra time after removing the final counter, putting him down to 4. He can only muster some non-fliers and I kill him on Turn 4 of extra time. Sometimes bombs, not love, are all you need. (In the case of love it's "is", I know.)

1-0

Round 2: Kyle Bousley - B/G

I wish I could scan the life totals from this, it would illustrate what happened just as clearly. As my opponent sits down, he talks out loud about how he had gotten a game loss in round 1 for showing up late and that wasn't going to happen again. I sorely wish it had.

Game 1: He comes out firing with the super aggressive poison draw and I'm throwing all my removal and a Tumble Magnet at him trying to slow the beats, but my low creature count dooms me as he has what seems like an endless stream of Corpse Curs.

Game 2: See Game 1. Just when I think I've stabilized and can actually start to develop a board position, he rips Untamed Might and finishes me.

Yay poison in sealed! As it turns out, my opponent had something like 9 poison creatures in his whole deck and proceeded to draw almost all of them both games.

1-1

Round 3: Andrew Watts - I can't remember his colors game 1, but he sided into B/G infect for 2 and 3

Andrew was a nice younger guy from Illinois who would have looked like Smalls in 1993 but looked like McLovin' in 2010.

Round 1: His deck seems pretty weak, but I also get Barbed Battlegear on Bloodshot Trainee and he has no way to stop it.

Round 2: He sides into poison and gets "the start" and the game is over in about 5 minutes while I have nightmares from Round 2.

Round 3: I get to 5 poison before I stop the assault and drop Carnifex Demon and bring him to 12. He reestablishes with more creatures, but I draw Koth and he has to start diverting his attacks so Koth doesn't go ultimate. I have enough protection where I can keep him alive and keep sending 4/4's, and the Demon eventually takes care of him.

2-1

Round 4: Mat Mansoor - G/? (I think red)

Game 1: He ramps into massive green dinosaurs and I succumb quickly, not even dealing him a point of damage.

Game 2: He does the same thing but I draw most of my removal and am holding on at 6, while he is basically topdecking the rest of the game and I slowly whittle him down.

Game 3: He gets the hat trick for huge beats but I manage to stop that at 7 life and get Carnifex Demon into play, destroying most of his board and bringing him to 5. He doesn't seem to have the answer and I rip Koth and he gets pretty disgusted before conceding, revealing the Contagion Engine in his hand that Carnifex Demon shuts down.

3-1

Round 5: Jean Baez - U/W

Well all good things must come to an end, and boy did they ever this round. Unlike the poison loss, I straight got outplayed and made my fair share of mistakes against a dedicated control deck. I also thought my opponent was French, which was wrong. His name was Jean, that's a French name, right? Somebody?

Game 1: He gets metalcraft on turn 3 with a Certarch out and starts tapping down my stuff and then adds Tumble Magnet for kicks. He has an army of 4 toughness guys and Sky-Eel Schools sitting there stopping anything I do. Eventually I draw Carnifex Demon and remove some of his guys. I send the Demon, still with 2 counters, and Necrogen Scudder into the red zone, not thinking, and he drops Dispense Justice, making me look even worse than I usually am. I'm forced to lose the counters before I really wanted to, while he drops a Trigon of Rage to pump his fliers to victory.

Game 2: He doesn't have the defensive start from Game 1, but he does have Contagion Engine, and that's all she wrote.

After the match my opponent asks me if I need any Magic cards in Spanish. Since I speak some Spanish I drop a little and he laughs and tells me he's from Puerto Rico (sort of like France, except not) and he has a card shop there before giving me his business card and telling me he would have most of his stock on him the next day. I meant to try and find him to buy something cheap just to have as a souvenir, but I never saw him on Sunday.

3-2

Round 6: Flint Woods - R/W

Round 1: I draw next to no creatures (there's none in my deck, you see) and am forced to chump and use Tumble Magnet defensively before Kuldotha Phoenix decapitates me.

Round 2: Seeing as how I'm one round away from elimination, I decide to side out the red and bring the white in for the first time. I get a Myrsmith down and start making lots of 1/1 tokens, followed by getting Propagator online, and soon I have two rows of an army and my opponent concedes before things get worse.

Round 3: Kuldotha Phoenix shows up right on schedule on Turn 5. I kill it and do everything to keep him off metalcraft, until he regains it with Wurmcoil Engine. Futile attempts at survival while I hope to draw Revoke Existence yield nothing, and the drop box is checked.

Final: 3-3

A record of 7-2 was required to make Day 2, so I was eliminated from contention. Besides Rob I was the only one of our group to make it that far, so I went to get some food. I got to wait 30 minutes at a "Quick Eats" hamburger place in the hotel, but I had a voucher for a discount and it was pretty damn good. Rob hung in until Round 8, when he picked up his third loss. I checked out feature matches and watched Sam go 3-1 in the Super Standard event, losing to a turd of a man in the finals. We headed back to the hotel soon after and I passed out, sadly missing the hotel breakfast the next morning. I did a draft the next day, but this post is long, so I will get to it later.