Just to make it, y'know, official: I suck at Standard.
I played in two Nationals qualifiers over the past two weekends. The first one with the Mishra deck (Flores' Legends of Team CMU) to a disappointing 4-3 finish in a sea of Angelfire, Solar Flare and Gruul. Disappointed with the decks performance, I took a look at the result of Australian Nationals that same weekend, and decided to play the Rakdos "Satanic Sligh" build that had won that event in today's qualifier, which was incidentally the last one I could play given my schedule.
I guess I wasn't the only one thinking that, as of course I failed to predict how th metagame would shift. There were a lot more burn decks this time around, and my first two matches were among them. I split the first two for a disappointing start, then lost rounds four and five in quick succession. Frustrated at my inability to play the format and the terrible 2-3 record, I ticked "Drop" in the Result Slip and went home quite a bit sleepy.
So ends this year's quest for Nationals. Again, just to reiterate: I suck at Standard.
I'm terrible at guessing what decks are doing (I failed to predict that my round four opponent would Resurrect an Akroma, thinking that only Solar Flare decks did that and not Angelfire...), I'm terrible at predicting the metagame (I had Martyrs of Ashes in my sideboard that should have been Bottle Gnomes for the burn mirror) and I make really disastrous play errors (I suspended Rift Bolt instead of hardcasting with my monored opponent at five...allowing him to Char me at EOT and burn again during his turn to take the game)
I need more solid constructed finishes to boost my ratings so I could be in the top 75 next year (and not have to grind it out in the qualifiers again). Sadly, my best constructed finish this year was actually
in Block
.
In any case, I need a break. Ravnica block is pretty much dead to me now, I will probably take a hiatus until it rotates out. With the possible exception of another PTQ for Valencia, I expect my next tournament to be the Lorwyn prereleases.
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Today is of course the release of Magic's Xth edition, Magic Game Day .
As usual, I played at Neutral Grounds in Galleria. Helluva lot of people there, more than I was expecting for a Core Set Release tournament.
The format is, as usual, Sealed Deck with four rounds of Swiss pairings. Players were grouped in Flights of 32 people each (previous prerelease tournaments had 48-people flights), each win gets you an Xth booster pack and the top 2 of each flight (the ones who went 4-0) get something extra. Apparently the extra prizes were stuff like a bag, a shirt and a big (cardboard) Kamahl card box. I of course got the crappy box.
Yes, I went 4-0. I'm not too surprised. Since a release tournament is more "casual", the competition is not very fierce. Usually things get tricky in the last two rounds. Anyway, I won all 4 rounds, not even giving up a game loss. My sealed pool was awesome, lots of removal and acceleration. Beacon of Destruction and Mobilization are bomb rares, with Cone of Flame and Overrun as bomb uncommons. Awesome deck, good on tempo and usually giving quick wins (gave me time for lunch)
After the Sealed portion (and assembling my crappy box), I was in a fighting mood so I signed up for an 8-man draft. This was more serious competition, and the prize for the top 2 places was an additional promo foil Reya Dawnbringer (and a couple of packs). I won the first match 2-0, got my first game loss in game one of match 2 won two games in a row to make the top 2. Yay!
The art for Reya Dawnbringer is quite the awesomeness.
Final record: 6-0-1 matches for the day. 12-1 games. Not bad at all. My plan of going to work for 3 hours before tournaments to increase my mental strength is working!
Next: Nationals Qualifiers
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I was playing UG shifters.
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