Domain Zoo in Extended: a little test run

So I'm going to be playing Domain Zoo this weekend in Oregon. I decided on the deck a few weeks ago because I had a lot of the cards for it, and I knew that it would be a top deck and that it was very powerful, and I think playing a powerful deck is more of a sure thing that predicting the field, building a deck to beat the field, and then playing against the decks you were expecting to make up the field. I played in a Magic-League mini (8-man single elim) to try it out. Here's the list I'm running:

4 Wooded Foothills
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Windswept Heath
2 Stomping Ground
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Steam Vents
1 Blood Crypt
1 Temple Garden
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Godless Shrine
1 Plains

4 Wild Nacatl
4 Kird Ape
4 Mogg Fanatic
2 Shadow Guildmage
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Tidehollow Sculler
2 Gaddock Teeg

4 Tribal Flames
4 Lightning Helix
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Seal of Fire
3 Oblivion Ring

Sideboard:
4 Kitchen Finks
2 Ranger of Eos
3 Jund Charm
3 Ancient Grudge
3 Duergar Hedge-Mage

I tried cutting Dark Confidant because a lot of people don't like it, and I haven't noticed it being really amazing for me, and I wanted to try Gaddock Teeg. What has been really good is Tidehollow Sculler, even in the mirror because it tends to slow down as guys come onto the board.

Round 1 I play the mirror. I pretty much get blown out Game 1. I brought in the Finkses and the Rangers and took out 2 Seal of Fire, 2 Shadow Guildmage, and 2 Mogg Fanatic. The second game I get 3 Kitchen Finkses down and he floods. Kitchen Finks is really good. Point taken.

I bring in a Shadow Guildmage and take a Mogg Fanatic for tutoring because he'd be good at taking out opposing Kitchen Finkses. I Tidehollow Sculler and see an Umezawa's Jitte in hand, and then I'm able to stick a Shadow Guildmage with mana up for Lightning Helix to whatever he's about to equip. Then I get a Ranger of Eos down leaving a Steam Vents up, so now as long as I bounce whatever blocks Jitte (which will be Ranger of Eos every time), I'm good to go. He scoops when he realizes Jitte will not get counters.

Game 2 I had a bye, so I sat around for an hour really late to wait to play Magic. Game 3 I play against Faeries, which turns out to be the Japanese variety with Azami, Lady of Scrolls. He gets stuck on land Game 1. Game 2 I play pretty sketchily. I know he has Threads in hand from a Tidehollow Sculler, and I'm holding 2 Tarmogoyfs and Jitte on the board, so I run them out, he steals one, I equip and attack and he double blocks with a Mutavault and my Goyf, and I finish off my own Tarmogoyf. I think there was an Ancestral Vision ticking down, but still no reason to be that impatient. Game 3 I keep a very slow hand and he takes control of the game. I think for this matchup I need a 1 drop, then another 1 drop, bait an Engineered Explosives, then stick my good cards, like a Shadow Guildmage, Gaddock Teeg, Tarmogoyf with Threads backup, one drop + Jitte. This Japanese version doesn't make me want to bring in Slice and Dice or Jund Charm... the worst cards for me are Threads and Shackles, so Duergar Hedge-Mage I think is fine.

I'm agonizing over the Ancient Grudge slot. The people I was testing with the other day think it should be Kataki, since if Grudge is for Affinity, Kataki is infinitely better. I didn't like it because it was narrow. I think it may also need to be Ethersworn Canonist, because it comes in against All-In Red, a deck I am equally afraid of being blown out by and I currently have no board against, and it comes in against TEPS and Elves. I'll hopefully be testing all day Thursday, and I'd like to figure out how to play against Faeries, the mirror, and play a little bit against the fringe decks like All-In and TEPS.

PTQ Honolulu 2009 schedule ...... NOT POSTED!

This is more of a trick to get people using Google to come here, because I know people will be searching for it since it seems to be non-existent on the mothership. So conceivably there could be a PTQ in your state but you may not know about it unless you're tournament organizer publicizes extremely well, or your tournament organizer has a web site and you are extremely web-savvy. (I asked someone who has said he wants to get more competitive at Magic and has the means to travel why he didn't go down to Portland a month ago, and he didn't know about it. To anyone reading this from the area... www.northwestmagic.com and www.cascadegames.com)

No more Shards Sealed! PTQ Portland damage report

This past weekend was the Portland PTQ, the last PTQ of the season for most of us. I rode up with Zaiem, Dave Derrickson, and Chris Pauly on Friday night, so there wasn't a quiet moment the entire trip, for the better of course, and had some kickass Indian food at India House. I'm normally not a fan of Indian food, but man did this Indian food rock. The hotel room Zaiem and I stayed was entirely too cold.

The sealed pool I got back was similar to the PTQ pool from Atlanta, except no double-Mycoloth triple-Squire for me to get there with. It was very much GR and I splashed White for Naya Charm and Realm Razer. I kept siding in 2 Resounding Silences. Initially I just wanted to avoid color screw as much as possible, but splashing for 4 in a color isn't all THAT bad since other than the Charm and Razer, I didn't have Gold cards or double casting costs.

Round 1 I play against a girl who was clearly someone's girlfriend and was just tagging along.
Round 2 I lose to a Eugene player who made Top 8.
Round 3 I play against very chatty person and come back after losing the first one. Round 4 I play against Dwayne who's a Washington player who Top 8'd the Seattle PTQ. Our first two games were absolute epics, we played like 15 spells each game 1, then 20 spells each game 2 and I pretty much had his entire deck written down at this point. I play faster because I don't want to draw the third game, and he keeps a 2 lander game 3 and doesn't get there.

Round 5 I play Peter Beckfield, who has rallied the Seattle troops, so to speak, to come to Portland and steal this PTQ. If anyone deserved to win this one, he did. Game 1 he blows me out. Game 2 I blow him out with Realm Razer. I had played a Relic of Progentius in that game and cycled it in the midgame. Game 3 goes to the midgame and I stick a Realm Razer. I throw the lands to the side and see some extra cards in my sleeves. It turns out they were from the Relic of Progentius cycling from Game 2... I don't want to beat anyone dishonestly, especially someone I know, so I point it out and fill out the win for him on the sheet. He even offered to replay Game 3, but we both realize that it wouldn't be smart for whoever's in his seat if we're trying to Top 8.

SERVES ME RIGHT FOR NOT PILING GAME 3. I often neglect pile shuffling Game 3 because generally the clock becomes a factor, but this time it bit me. Chalk another loss up to being lazy.

The next two rounds the wheels fall off, and Round 8 I totally blowout a Blue Moon and a Bayou Burger at Red Robin. I left my credit card in the bill envelope, so not even that round ended without a bad beat story.

I felt pretty good after 3-1, but then I started thinking about how I have to win the next 3, maybe even 4 to top 8, and it started to feel really daunting, especially since I'd have to beat four really good players. I somewhat felt it in Atlanta when I started 3-0 then fell to 3-1 and realized I wasn't even halfway through with the tournament. Oddly, I didn't feel that when I started 4-1 in the Philadelphia PTQ, so maybe I'm more confident about Constructed formats than Limited, since I haven't had much success with Limited or even felt comfortable in the slightest sense about my skills until very recently. I've got to learn to have amnesia and just take it one match... or something.

So the PTQ season is over, but the next one is about to start! Here's my tentative schedule:

Jan 3 - Portland (GPT LA same day same venue)
Jan 10 - Seattle (GPT LA same day same venue)
Jan 16-18 - Grand Prix Los Angeles
Feb 21 - Vancouver
March 21 - Seattle
May 20 - Grand Prix Seattle (Standard... actually not sure if this feeds Honolulu or Austin)

I am not sure about GP LA right now, as while plane tickets are cheap, I don't really want to take a day off of work, which I can probably do, but would involve flying out Friday night and missing the trials, and flying back in Monday morning and going back to work from the airport.

I told Alex that I was going to qualify. Here's to only needing one!

Getting ready for Portland

I've played a lot of Magic Online last week with Nix Tix and being confined to my apartment thanks to being on-call for work. (I did get paged in the first round of a draft and had to drop it though.) I have tons of replays I can go through and I've already started to note the mistakes I've been making. They range from "ticks", or really dumb mistakes that would make you slap your forehead, like forgetting to fetch or cycle at end step; bonehead mistakes that aren't the same as ticks, per se, but mistakes that just shouldn't happen if you're more aware, like tapping mana incorrectly when you were planning a second play, or walking into a trick you saw, or missing a point of damage, or not seeing a kill on the board; and then there are the high-level planning mistakes that could have altered the game in the long run, like not being aggressive enough in the early game, or playing a less-optimal creature for a particular drop, or playing the wrong removal on a creature.

The point is there are lots of things going wrong. While I cannot pinpoint patterns in them where I could just tell myself to stop doing X and I'll get rid of 90% of my mistakes, I think it's fine to analyze what you could have done differently. Tonight I will probably do a draft, and then go through as many more replays as I can and write down the mistakes and go over them on the trip Friday night to Portland.

I did my first Shards paper draft since Atlanta last night at First Pick at (finally!) managed to 4-0. Since Alara was released I had been running really cold at First Pick. I've done maybe 20 drafts at First Pick and cashed at maybe 4 of these... which, I'm pretty sure, is worse than flipping a coin every match.

Anyway, I drafted a Naya deck that had some pretty good cards like double Wild Nacatl and double Naya Battlmage, but also had some holes, like missing some bears and having to start Incurable Ogre (with nothing for it to activate) and Thorn-Thrash Viashino (without good things to eat).

I've started writing down every card I see again because I was forgetting them on MODO and then not knowing what to sideboard and also walking into them. I've started initialing damage sources on my score pad too, which I started in Atlanta. So WN is damage from Wild Nacatl, VS is Stinger, VD is Viscera Dragger... I also just felt a lot less pressure when I play against the best players. Normally I'm very afraid to make a mistake and I get very nervous, but I don't know if it was just awareness or getting used to playing against good people who are just computer screens to me or just watching better players in Atlanta, but I was way more calm, and I just focused on playing correctly rather than not blowing the game.

It was watching in Atlanta an old friend and former state champion from NC Orrin play that maybe inspired me to be more calm when I play. It was a game in the last rounds of Day 1, and he hardly said a word. I don't think I'm a real talkative player, but if eliminates a chance to get overexcited, why not? Of course, I don't want my plays to be unintentionally ambiguous as far as game state, but it was a little inspiring to see his operations. It's probably an interesting exercise to try to say as little as possible in a match and see if it affects your play and thought process for the better.

But anyway, it certainly felt different tapping the cards than it has all season, but I couldn't be convinced that I was actually outplaying people because so many of my games were blowouts or manascrew wins! I mean, that's the game my deck wanted to play, and I did tick a few times, like forgetting two counters on a Algae Gharial or tapping wrong so I couldn't run out a second guy or even represent a pump, but still... it's hard to objectively say that I went 4-0 and beat good people because I have gotten better. Again, why MODO is such a great tool because you can review the wins and see if you really did play optimally.

My Fearless Magic Inventory

To prepare for the last PTQ of the season in Portland, I was going to start analyzing my MODO replays from the crapload of drafts and the Sealed from the weekend, since I am on-call this week and really can't guarantee I can sit down for a three-hour draft without having to drop and deal with a page, but replays are deactivated until tomorrow's downtime. Sucks that it's Nix Tix the week I can't play any Magic tournaments!

This list was inspired by Sam Stoddard's Misetings thread and subsequent article on Star City from a year ago. I wrote this at an airport on my way back from Atlanta, because I felt semi-inspired after the PTQ because I knew I was not awful but could definitely get better. I'll just copy-paste the document I have on my computer.

Some of these might not make sense as it was just brainstorming, and isn't in any kind of particular order of importance, so feel free to ask about them or make suggestions.

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Things I Do Not Like About My Game
Most Magic players at PTQ’s make tons of mistakes. The difference with professionals is that professionals don’t make mistakes; they win the games they are supposed to win, lose the games they are supposed to lose, and don’t throw away games they are winning.
- Antonino de Rosa

“Kai Budde could have won that game.”
- Masashi Oiso

All

• I have to re-evaluate my plan every time I get the turn back, and end up playing too slow as a result.
• I'll have a particular plan playing around a card, but then I don't switch plans when it's not right to play around that card anymore.
• My mentality changes when I play against players that are a lot better than me, like Gurney, Jason, and Charles. I clearly played differently against Charles when I had no idea who he was.
• If my opponent’s play fast, I try to keep up and end up playing worse as a result.
• I don’t remember my plays well enough to re-evaluate games that I lose to find mistakes, especially if they are mistakes in planning or subtle mistakes.
• When I want to win the tournament, I put too much stress on myself during the game to think clearly. I have to just concentrate on playing correctly instead of going X-1-1.
• I bend the hell out of my lands when I play and tap them, so my shuffling is suspect. I should just lay down my cards normally.

Constructed

• I don’t know how to sideboard when there aren’t obviously dead cards.
• I really don’t know how to sideboard net decks as a result.
• When I think of sideboarding, I think of specific cards instead of the strategy as a whole.
• I don’t play Control decks fast enough to be confident in taking them to a tournament because of the mirror match.
• I don’t play enough different decks in testing to be able to switch decks the day if the metagame suggests to.
• I stick to testing one deck because of card availability, so it sometimes turns out that the week of the tournament that I realize the deck I’ve been playing is not a Tier 1 deck.
• I don’t test the mirror match enough to understand how to win them.
• I don’t adjust when net decks need to be adjusted and when they don’t. They are not always the optimal lists even if they top 8 a PTQ, but they also aren’t always awful.
• I don’t know how to build my own decks, or I don’t know what strategies would be powerful or just underwhelming.
• I don’t know how to play against Control decks or to play around counterspells. I always presume they have it.

Limited

• Shards of Alara specific – I can’t stay disciplined to two colors and end up playing a bad mana base.
• I don’t know when my deck can mulligan aggressively and when I can’t; I tend to mulligan aggressively all the time and I don’t know when keeping a one-lander is appropriate, or when my deck can't do better than what I've got
• In general, I don’t know how to split my lands.
• I give away my tricks when I go into the tank or tap my mana to consider playing it.
• Shards of Alara sealed specific – I don’t know when it’s appropriate to build a greedy deck.
• I don’t remember what cards are in my deck well enough and what cards I’ve picked in the current pack, especially pack 3, to evaluate the cards that I need.
• On MODO, I don't block as tightly. I presume from their ratings that they make loose attacks, since I (correctly?) presume from their ratings whether I can bluff a trick by attacking.
• I'm not good at new formats when I don't know all the cards., and when I don't know all the cards, I don't take detailed enough notes.

Cardboard crack goes digital again

For whatever reason, I decided to download MODO again. It wasn't as slow... but I was only drafting and not a full premier event that would ruin my computer's memory.

So the second draft I did tonight was a 4-3-2-2 ALA draft and I make my way to the finals to play against David, who happens to be a Seattle player, a very good one at that. He has drafted an Esper deck, and I am running Grw Naya. Game 1 I blow him out, and Game 2 he blows me out.

Game 3 my first play is a Court Archers and his is a Tidehollow Strix off of a mulligan I believe. We're beating each other, and he misses land and plays out Obelisks, and I eventually put down a Druid of the Anima and a Cavern Thoctar. He plays out another Obelisk, swings, and after my draw, the board looks like this:

Him: 14 life, 4 cards in hand.
His board: 1 tapped Swamp, 2 tapped Island, untapped Obelisk of Bant, Esper, and Grixis. One tapped Tidehollow Trix.

Me: 11 life, Sigil Blessing, Branching Bolt, Welkin Guide, Resounding Roar in hand
Board: all untapped Court Archers, Druid of the Anima, Cavern Thoctar, 2 Mountain, 2 Forest, 1 Plains.

Tricks I've seen are Grixis Charm, Agony Warp, and Resounding Wave. I know he has another Tidehollow Strix in there and a couple of Sanctum Gargoyles.

I already used a Resounding Thunder on his Scavenger Drake. (Possibly should have been Branching Bolt, because I know he's a tight player, saw Branching Bolt from me, and the only ground guy I did see was a Tidehollow Sculler.) If he has nothing in hand, I've got the game with my two pump spells, but that ain't happening. I've seen Resounding Wave earlier in the game, but I don't see a whole lot of point in alpha striking. So what are all the possible courses of action:

I could attack with everyone. Send in for 7. If I pass priority at this point, if he chooses to bounce/kill Thoctar (I guess Bant Charm is a possibility... otherwise there are no cards in the format that kill it), I could use my two pump spells to whack him for 9. Or I could let him bounce it, he takes 2, and I run out Welkin Guide. Next turn I can attack again with a kill possible, but my board is definitely worse.

If he doesn't do anything, he will take at least 7, which is alright. I run out Welkin Guide second main as another guy.

I could play Resounding Roar on my Court Archers before damage. If he plays Agony Warp on what I pump, and I respond with the Sigil Blessing on it, he will take 12 if he targeted Druid with -3/-0, 13 if he -3/-0's the Archers, or 12 if he targets the Thoctar. So he'd go to 2.

If he bounces the Archers I target with the pump, I let him take 6 and play my Court Archers again, saving my Sigil Blessing.

I could also Welkin Guide the Archers. If he deals with the Druid, he takes 6. If he bounces the Thoctar he takes 4 and goes to 10.

I could attack with the Thoctar and something else. If I leave back the Druid, I can follow similar reasoning as above. If I pass and he bounces the Thoctar, I can run my pumps and whack him for 7, or whack him for 1 and run out the Thoctar. I don't think he will deal with the Archers if I don't do anything. If I Resounding Roar the Archers and he does nothing he takes 10, or he Warps it, and I can Sigil Blessing and he takes 10 (don't think it matters who the targets are), and I can make it 11. If he bounces the Thoctar I run it out again.

If I attack with the Druid instead, it's pretty much the same except I cannot add an additional 1, or if he bounces Thoctar I cannot play it.

What I chose to do is attack with just the Thoctar, and it got bounced with Resounding Wave and I replayed it. This analysis took me probably 15 minutes to write up, so I wasn't able to really figure out that attack with everyone, running out a pump on a smaller guy and having him take 8 from my two pumps if he bounces Thoctar or a lot if he kills my pump target seems better.

How the game runs out is he attacks, plays another Strix, which I decide I need to kill. I attack with just the Thoctar again and it gets Resounding Silenced. Plays a Cloudskate Drake, attacks for 2 again putting me at 7, I draw something irrelevant, then he Esper Charms and draws a Sigil of Distinction, I start chumping, and he draws Sharuum and I scoop them up.

I probably really needed to think it out a little bit more, even if it took a few minutes, since it is MODO. Maybe pencil and paper would have helped? Not sure. Good players can run through that fast. I need to learn to do that.

Being lazy

I was thinking about a play from the Seattle PTQ and then thought about a play I made in the GP Atlanta Trials on Friday and realized they are very similar. Here's my play from the trial:

With me at 7, he has a Skeletal Kathari, Vithian Stinger, and Court Archers, and I have a Rakeclaw Gargantuan and a Sigiled Paladin. I am at 7, and he attacks. I decide I need to Soul's Fire to not die, so I run it out after his attacks choosing my Rakeclaw to hit his Kathari to make him at least sac a guy. For whatever reason, I did not specify that Exalted was on the stack. I think I thought he was had 8 mana and could cycle Resounding Roar, making my timing irrelevant, but that was not the case. He does have Resounding Roar and I die to lethal damage because I was extremely lazy.

The play I was thinking of from the PTQ involved Jon Loucks making a block, then his opponent asking "Stack damage?" to which Jon does something like ping his attacker that would die to one more damage and as a response the opponent bounces his own guy to what he thinks would save it and leave Jon's blocker dead from combat damage.

... except that damage was not on the stack. Jon had never indicated that he was ready to put damage on the stack, so the opponent asking "Stack damage?" was merely an indication that he was passing priority. From my understanding, a judge was called and ruled in favor of Jon, and the opponent was down a trick and probably also lost tempo if he couldn't play his guy back from spending the mana on the trick.

A couple of spectators called the play immoral, and I'm not talking about some little kids, I'm talking about the best players in Washington. A dick move? Obviously some would think so. I would always be specific about when I'm doing something and probably never try pulling something like that because I don't want to have to get in a fight over it, even if I know I am correct and the judge will rule in my favor.

Could the other player have done something about it? He could have been much more specific about what he was doing. "Stack damage" is so vague. A phrase like "I'm ready to put combat damage on the stack" (my old one) or simply "Pass priority"* (my new favorite) is much better. He could have also clarified when Jon was doing his thing, if he were aware of the ambiguity of just asking "Stack damage?"

Not trying to slam the guy, he is a good player and more accomplished than me. The point of all this is: DON'T BE LAZY! It usually always matters when you do something. If there are triggers, think about if there is any reason you would just want them to resolve. Generally there isn't. There wasn't in my case. Know exactly what phase you're in and make sure you can justify what phase you're in if you're opponent doesn't know, you might trick him and swindle a game if you're lucky (but then he'll might think you are a dick, which many writers have commented on).

For the first time in a while, I'm going to decline drafting at First Pick tonight. Gotta catch up on work. Maybe if I didn't blog so much.

* This weekend I was saying "Pass" during Declare Blockers instead of "Pass priority" and started saying "Pass priority" when an opponent asked if it was his turn and realized the ambiguity in what I was saying. "Pass" is definitely more often used to mean "End my turn". Glad that one didn't bite me, although I bet I could have argued my way out of that.