My Pro Tour Experience

Greetings AZMagicPlayers! For the great number of you who aren’t familiar with my work, my name is Jon Kornacki, I’ve been a Magic player in Arizona for a little while now.

I won our PTQ at Gamers Inn for Honolulu (mind you: I found out it was for Honolulu the day of), very luckily, and knew that I would be facing some serious difficulty with the Pro Tours close proximity to the release of Dark Ascension. The Standard AND Booster Draft environments would be shifting rather dramatically just a couple short weeks before my flight, so I spent the months between winning the PTQ and going to the Pro Tour MOSTLY drafting and playing local weekly tournaments at Manawerx, when time permitted, to try and tighten up my technical game as much as possible. Barring short breaks for winning SCG Opens(props to all of you who made it out), I mostly wanted to draft a ton and get a handle on Innistrad draft.

For years I’ve considered myself a more solid Limited player than Constructed. I have skills in both, but it troubled me quite a bit when Innistrad came out, because I had a really good handle on Scars block draft (and I loved it – it was a ton of fun), and I drafted Innistrad a whole lot without winning a single one. In fact the very first one I finally won one, and remained the first and only for another 5 or 10 drafts after that, was the top 8 of the PTQ.

Drafting forces you to learn to play Magic well. You can’t rely on your supply of powerful cards to bail you out of the hopeless situation you’ve created. It makes you learn to use your removal sparingly, your creatures as resources for damage and life, how to attack and block and read the opponent for tricks, or how to effectively use tempo and the use of mana to extract an advantage over a series of turns. More often than the average gamer realizes, cards trade off in a constructed game in such a simplistic way that they become interchangeable, and it’s the player who has more practice assessing the value of his cards relative to his opponents that will be able to pull ahead.

I drafted Innistrad a lot, and eventually broke even for all the ones I’d lost in the beginning of the season. I was as up to date as possible on the spoilers, and had a number of ideas to consider, most of which being swung heavily in favor of the metagame I was planning on playing. Despite my efforts and research, I didn’t have any sort of solid awesome idea of what the pros would come up for as the best decks. In hindsight my theoretical gauntlet wasn’t far off if at all; the format was less original than I gave it credit for, BUT what I mean by metagaming in this case is a room full of pros. I was leaning towards Delver, leaning heavily in the direction of a consistent cycling strategy that wanted to play off of perfect information, with Gitaxian Probe and Surgical Extraction. In a vacuum, perfect information is valuable. It enables powerful, more expensive strategies like Sword of War and Peace, that would normally be a little risky for the investment, as well as strengthening your ponder effects by giving you a good idea of what your opponents best plan is going to be.

Against professionals I consider this information even more valuable. These tournaments with large cash payouts reward innovation, off the wall strategies or cards that will catch an opponent off guard and secure key victories. I was banking on some off the wall strategies myself, as being predictable in a room full of prepared mages is just a losing proposition. Here’s the list I settles on for the standard portion.

Despite a lack of time for thorough testing, I got a lot of support and decklists from my fellow AZ players who had been brewing for the format. Not only in my local store, but through Facebook I had a number of lists come my way. This was the brew I eventually came up with, mostly of my own choices, but definitely considering a ton of information, including the supposed metagame for the pros.

There was a ton of talk regarding the Heartless Summoning synergy with Havengul Lich (with and without infinite mana), warranting not only the maindeck Surgical slots (not like I need that much motivation anyway..), but the Demystifies in the board looked really strong. The Demisify/Steel Sabotage slots could have been some divine offering/revoke existence, but I really wanted to maximize my value with Snapcaster Mage, as well as be able to make really effective use of digging through my deck and having the mana I needed to play a bunch of 0 and 1 mana answers.

This deck flips delver literally half the time, with a number of those flip outlets being the ever valuable ‘flip delver AND dig into land/something else I need’ slots. Thought Scour was awesome in this deck, all the time. Cycling past bad cards from delver, ponder, even targeting my opponents on turns where they pondered, and thought they’d hide the good cards from probe on top of their deck. It’s a little win condition light in the main, but drawing a Sword will easily translate into a win, and unfortunately Lingering Souls is actually capable of going the distance alone in a few turns. The thought scour into Lingering Souls opening is also what earned the nod to the fourth Darkslick over the fourth Seachrome in the main.

That sure is a lot of words, but I basically lost a lot in Standard. I opened up 2-0, against competent opponents, but people I didn’t recognize. I lost the next three in standard, once to Wolf Run in a close match, and two against easily recognizable big game pros. My childhood hero Antonino De Rosa, and a French gentleman who I believe has a PT trophy, but I can’t do his name justice in the dark. His initials are ML, and he’s quite a master.

That said, two of the three losses were three game matches that could have gone either way on another day. Were my luck a little better, or theirs a little worse, we were both aware afterwards that it had not been easy for them, and it was a privilege to get to play such good games. My fifth round was against Antonino, and I remarked that I hadn’t brought the proper pro player cards so that I could collect his autograph as well as all the others I’d gotten that day. He wished me luck, and said that he hoped I could 3-0 my draft, and he could 2-1, so I could just get him to sign them for me on Saturday.

My draft deck was terrible :) and it was do or die.

Sideboard that I used: 1 Lost in the Mist

This deck kind of sums up why I think limited is such a good test of a player’s merit. If I have a bad deck, I’d rather have a creature heavy bad deck, even though I was super light on removal. I’m also well-practiced in the art of finding fake removal spells, in this case Urgent Exorcism(which was occasionally sided out), Dissipate, Spare from Evil, Village Bell-Ringer/Nephalia Seakite, and, I guess if we’re being honest, Chant of the Skifsang.

I lost multiple games in this draft but still managed the 3-0 I needed to play day two. Unfortunately Antonino missed, so it was simply lucky that he was still there to sign my Antonino pro player cards on Saturday between rounds. Most interesting was my final opponent of the day, a gentleman from New Zealand. I got game one, and game two his hodgepodge b/w deck with Typhoid Rats assembled two of the rats with a Wolfhunter’s Quiver, to steal the game.

For game three I kept a Plains, Island hand with Chapel Geist, and gas on 3+ all the way up to Drogskull Reaver. I had multiple plays on three, and even more options available when I bricked on my first two draws for the third land drop. His start, as his deck had indicated to me, was not the most aggressive, and I hit land drops 3-7 in running turns, causing him to complain a little bit. I felt for him, but calmly explained that I’d kept my hand on the assumption that I didn’t mind playing land light with a lot of gas, so that I’d have a lot of action when I did eventually draw lands. All well, onto Day Two.

My opening draft pod on Day Two included recognizable pro Owen Turtenwald from ChannelFireball. No big deal. I think my deck turned out even worse than the first, but not for lack of being in the right colors, I think it’s just a testament to how difficult pro caliber drafting is, not only to play but to practice for. In hindsight it feels like I put the correct amount of emphasis on practicing drafts for the format, but I think it is increasingly important to draft under the worst possible circumstances, with the best possible drafts you can find in preparation. The good cards, they just don’t float very far with these sharks.

I got a fifth or so pick Drogskol Reaver, which I think is expensive enough not to be THAT amazing, but certainly a good sign since I was already leaning towards U/w again. U/w was also my preferred archetype in triple INN draft, and I think it got a lot of added playables in DKA, lots of awesome white and blue creatures, many of which fly.

I got the Claustrophobia and the Murder of Crows really late, but I lacked a lot of the early game plays I would have liked for this deck. I was also a little light on playables, prompting me to run the 18th land including the Haunted Fengraf to give me an extra gut in clutch situations.

Sitting down for round one, I was once again asked a question I’d heard a lot the previous day. Since I had an unrecognizable face, pretty much everybody I played both days wanted to know: How did I qualify? I won a PTQ in Phoenix, AZ, and it was hard as balls. I had to play such competent friends as Scott Saunders and Eric Hopkins, and win in a top 8 that included master magical Adam Prosak (luckily I didn’t have to play him). My opponent this round was some level 6 from Europe. I think that’s the second-pronged reason for asking, so that they can tell you their level, or that they top 16ed at Grand Prix-X. All respectable, but you know. I consider winning a PTQ in AZ equally challenging.

I lost a close three game match against my first Pro of the day. He had multiple Feeling of Dreads, and was able to punish my expensive plays. Game two I was trying to win a long game, when he cast enough board presence to make it impossible. With him at 16, I was becoming manaflooded, my board being 9 land, Mindshrieker, and Battleground Geist. I untapped, and assessed my lines of play. My only option was to go for it. He was quite peeved when I milled myself 4 times, revealing plains, three drop, relentlress skaabs, three drop, to attack for exactly lethal. But I pointed out to someone who certainly should have known at his level that I played to my outs, and that my deck WAS overall expensive enough to enable the line of play.

Game three he opened himself up with a pretty big mistake, I opened with Thraben Heretic and Selhoff Occultist, while he drops Darkthicket Wolf, get in for two, follow up with another guy. The next turn he attacks with wolf threatening to pump, I block with my bear and 2/3 to try and force whatever trick he has, figuring I can open the door for my more expensive creatures. He casts Briarpack Alpha to pump his wolf, and indicates that he’ll kill both of my guys. In fact, it’s the same pump effect as if he’d just pumped the wolf, so he traded with occutist and gave me the opportunity to stabilize further. Unfortunately, he had both of his feeling of dreads for when I started playing 5 drops, so he got me anyway.

I shook his hand, smiled, and just gave him the look that says ‘I’ll see you around’.

Next I played Mr Turtenwald, and, starting to sound like a broken record, but I lost a close three game match. He was playing a Grixis self mill deck, and was without blue mana for much of game one, which I won. I believe I mulliganed both games two and three, and put up a fight, but was not able to get him on this day. The big thing I learned this weekend was variance against these high caliber players. I’m going to keep working on me, and my game, and keeping myself tight. I’m confident that I’m more than capable of beating any of these gentlemen when we play another day.

I managed to pull off round three of the draft, before finishing 1-4 in the standard. I lost to mono white humans a few times (with Thalia being the big bad boy), many of the pros telling me that running less than 4 main was a mistake. It was always close against humans, and I was often one Marrow Shards away from a different result. Of note was that I beat another childhood hero, Rich Hoaen, on the last table during day two (round 6 or 7). I played pretty terribly to do it too, rather embarrassing, but at least I got to beat one guy I used to read about on the regular. He was also a super awesome guy, very understanding of my poor play.

My least close match was my last round, against another name I recognized with a couple PT top 8s, Andre Mueller with U/B heartless architect. I almost forced a game three, but his Geistcatcher’s Rig tech with Phantasmal Image to take out my pressure and make big fatties was too much for me to race.

This experience was really positive for me. I had a lot of support from our local players, giving me decklists as well as donating money to help me go and pay for a hotel in Honolulu on Valentine’s Day weekend. I was riding solo, so it was awesome to get to be a stranger in a foreign land on American soil. I got in Thursday around noon, and didn’t meet up with my roommate until about 11 that night to get into the hotel. So I registered for the event, got in a couple test games with a charming Japanese competitor named Yuuki through significant language barrier (good practice), and caught a bus down to a tourist spot called the International Market in search of some of the best Hawaii’ss got to offer. And it was awesome: WotC has a habit of being really selfish and picking places they themselves would love to visit, and in this case it really rewards the players.

I am apologetic that this tale could not include more winning, but it is what it is. Onward and upward, I turn my attention to the upcoming Modern PTQ, as well as the SCG Open coming to Phoenix in April. I would be ecstatic to be able to keep those trophies in the hometown, one way or another. Me and my brother briefly discussed the proposition of doing like we have in the past and dressing to kill for the SCG open, so I think in addition to significant playtest time to get myself and as many AZ guys in fighting form as I can before April, Having discussed it with a few guys from my shop, I think we’re going to start a Reservoir Dogs movement on this tournament. You can count on me to be wearing a tie, and if you plan to show up, play good Magic, conduct yourself like a champion, and represent your community, I would encourage you to do the same. Get at me if you wanna coordinate ties or something ;) We can do this my friends, and we can look good doing it. Any idiot can win one of those trophies.

Sincerely~

The_JFK