What i did last weekend (or: my first Nats qualifier)

After missing last years nationals qualifiers by being blissfully unaware of their existence, i figured it would be pretty stupid to do the same again.  With a year's extra experience and a handful of cards borrowed from Tom, I arrived bright and early after getting up at 6.30AM to watch the GSL finals, finally putting my deck together at about 8AM.  Who needs playtesting and preperation anyway?  Given my budget and card collection, there's only about six cards i would change in retrospect anyway.

Oh, right, yeah... i was playing Esper CawBlade but with Sword of Vengeance and Sword of B+M due to monetary issues.  I also have alternative finishers in the shape of Grave Titan and Wurmcoil Engine.

Round one vs Elves: As other attendees have pointed out, Patriot was pretty heavily over-capacity, but i managed to dodge having to play any games at the café over road.  Indeed, round one looked pretty comfortable indeed as i got paired against Kieran who i had recently met at last weekend's Steel City and proceded to beat thanks to a blistering array of skill (top-decking three Flashfreezes in a row vs his Valakut deck ;D!).  But the luck was decidedly on his side this weekend as his elf deck got off to a start so fast that i was unable to recover.  Like most people, i wasn't expecting elves, so my sideboard was pretty dead to it.  Never the less, i felt like i was in a pretty good spot in game two with both Black Sun's Zenith and Day of Judgment in hand as he continued to commit dudes to the board. Yep, one black or white mana source and i'm going to wreck this game... any turn now...  Okay, down to eight life, no problem, just gimme a plains... Suffice to say, i lost 2-0: not the start i had hoped for. 0-2 (0-1)

Round two vs Valakut: And so it began.  My epic struggle against Valakut would be the theme of the day, as i faced it three times.  After beating it comfortably last week i was fairly confident but this game (like the other Valakut games later in the day) were super intense.  I've never enjoyed playing against Valakut but this game was actually pretty exciting - so much so that we both got a warning for missing a wolf trigger from my sword.  The milling was what really made the difference, however, as i managed to mill almost all of his threats (including mountains) in both games.  In game two he killed me from 18 life when i had him down to 8.  That's how Valakut rolls.  Game three was pretty similar to game one, and i managed to keep him off Valakut triggers thanks to Tec Edge and Seas.  2-1 (1-1)

Round three vs Valakut: There's  not really much else to say about Valakut vs this deck.  Game one i controlled the game as my deck is supposed to, countering or removing any threats he played.  In game two i was in a good spot but forgot to play around Avenger of Zendikar.  Any topdeck for him except a fetchland would've seen me win on the next turn, to be fair as he was down to 3 at the time.  Apparently game three was super one-sided, however, as i didn't even write down the life totals in my notes.  I countered an early Cultivate which really set back his three-land hand.  It's pretty insane when a Valakut deck can't get lands out and i proceded to win comfortably. 2-1 (2-1)

Round four vs Grixis Tezzeret: Urgh.  I really wish i'd played heavier white and put Divine Offering in the sideboard.  I didn't, and so this was the most crushing defeat of the day.  In game one i had no chance, since roughly 50% of my non-land cards do nothing against his deck.  It was so boring and uninteractive that i can't remember how he got me in Galvanic Blast range for the kill.  Game two was even more depressing as his combined brainstorm/tezz +1 failed to hit anything useful for about five straight turns.  Still, Tumble Magnets kept my hawks at bay until he inevitably hit some ridiculously huge artifact that i couldn't deal with.  I feel like this match was pretty much unwinnable for my deck in its current state.0-2 (2-2)

Round five vs UW Control: Having managed to dodge any kind of Cawblade mirror so far, i was disappointed to see him play blue and white lands.  But when he played a turn two Luminarch Ascension i was mostly just confued.  Is that card even remotely playable in the current meta?  If our match was anything to go by, the answer is no and he made no secret of the fact that he sided it out.  When even the control decks are playing aggressive two drops, the ascension seems pretty awful.  In game two he managed to resolve a Sun Titan but he nothing except Tec Edges in his yard, which was irrelevant due to my superior board-state.  My manlands did a lot of work in this game, and when i killed his Titan it was on to round six. 2-0 (3-2)

Round six vs Valakut: Another Valakut.  My opponent was quite the talker and this was another typically tumor-inducing match.  Game one was pretty close, with both of us dropping bomb after bomb, only to see them killed by the opponent next turn.  In the end i managed to topdeck removal for his Primeval Titan which allowed my Wurmcoil Engine to finish the job.  Game two was quite the rape, with me frantically struggling to find removal or counters, and eventually failing.  Game three was pretty excruciating for my opponent as he proceded to basically miss on two Summoning Traps - he didn't consider Lotus Cobra to be a hit, strangely.  My deck was kind, and i managed to get my mill game going yet again.  He was pretty pissed but that's Magic.  Now i had to try and figure out the maths of qualifying, the whole thing bemuses and confuses me, since it's my first "major" tournament.  2-1 (4-2)

Round seven vs Eldrazi Ramp: As it turned out, the unexpected elf loss in round one really cost me.  I would have to win my last game and just hope that the other people on 12 points all drew.  Not much chance, but still worth a try.  Oh, what's that?  Eldrazi Temple?  Oh dear... I don't seem to be able to build a deck that puts up a meaningful fight against this mindless "hurp durp lets play huge guys you can't deal with" deck.  Game one has precisely zero notes in my pad, he trapped up an Emrakul on turn six... awesome.  Can't wait till ROE rotates out, really.  In game two i managed to draw land denial and stall him long enough to bash his face in, despite milling an Emrakul with my sword.  The luck of my turn two Mystic in game two was completely balanced out by my inability to get off three lands in the vital game three.  When i eventually got up to four, he tec-edged my tar pit and then acidic slime took out my own tec edge.  Ironically, i managed to draw another land next turn but it wasn't enough to stop him cheating out an Ulamog via Eldrazi Temple/Eye of Ugin.

All-in-all i was pretty satisfied with my performance.  For a thrown-together budget deck with no Jaces it performed pretty well.  Two of my losses felt pretty unwinnable without a healthy dose of luck while the elf match was painful in nature.  I really feel like i should win that matchup, and getting stuck with two uncastable wraths in-hand was fairly frustrating.  As for Eldrazi green, fuck that deck.  I swear you could give it to a handicapped monkey and he could win at least 50% of games - not that my opponent was a handicapped monkey, but the point stands.

I was pretty satisfied with my own performance too.  I haven't played much standard in the past year, and my record isn't great (1544 constructed rating before the qualifier results go online), but i think i played fairly tightly.  No glaring errors come to mind, although i have to get rid of my bad habit of playing lands before drawing a card off Jace/Preordain.  It never really made a difference on Saturday, at least.

I feel pretty confident about the Huddersfield qualifier (probably the only other one i can get to, unforunately),  not least because i now know i can borrow a playset of Jaces from Bob.  If the meta game doesn't change drastically in the next three weeks i think i might do okay.

Liliana's looking better than ever

In case you've been living under a rock, or you're reading this without being a magic player, WotC announced the September set name with a few basic details.  Oh, yeah, and a pretty sensual picture of what may or may not be Liliana Vess.

MTGSalvation forums (which i barely read) were going pretty nuts with speculation.  Is it her, is it not her, is it her twin sister?  Hell, someone even suggested a twilight-themed set... because slash fiction will really help Magic's mainstream image, right?  Either way, i have a sneaking suspicion that black players (that's the mana colour, not the "brothers") should be pretty excited.

If they just made a new Liliana Vess with anywhere near the power level of her romantic interest in the story  (that's Jace, apparently, though i can't really see them as a couple: "Oh, look, you tutored up a Grave Titan?  I guess i'll fateseal that, now shut up and make my dinner,") i'd already start putting away cash to buy a playset - preferably foils if that's the artwork.

Personally i wouldn't read much more into it than that, however.  As much as i'd love to see some kind of crazy modern day version of the Torment set, a single picture doesn't say as much as people are making out.  Take a look at the recent 'Announcing...' Arcana and you'll see that the image chosen is more relevant to the plot more than it is to the power concentration of the set.  For example, shouldn't MBS' Arcana have featured Tezzeret if it was chosen for the most powerful/important cards?  Instead they went with Mirran Crusader, which is very good in some decks, but it's far from being as important as some people expect Liliana to be in Innistrad... if it's even her... which i really think/hope it will be.

Speaking of the "is it/isn't it her" debate, my own view is that the evidence points to yes.  I don't pretend to be an art expert or anything like that, but the similarities are too striking to be coincidental.  Also, apparently the veil in her hand has something to do with the story.  If that's so (I haven't read that much of the lore) then i don't see how this can't be Liliana.

As for the set itself, the name to me sounds like a town or city.  When people saw Richard Garfield's name on the design team they jumped to the conclusion that it will be city-based like Ravnica.  While i don't think Garfield's inclusion necessarily means that at all, the name surely does.  I suppose the fact that it sounds very much like Leningrad or Stalingrad (the 'grad' syllable meaning 'town') could just be a coincidence, of course, but even so, it does sound an awful lot like it should be a town or city rather than a whole plane.

As always, though, i guess we'll have to wait till September to find out.  In the meantime, let the wild, baseless speculation continue!