PPTQ Little Chalfont: A Tournament Report
Or, Why Sealed Sucks
PPTQ Little Chalfont was the first Magic tournament in a long time where I'd had both the hope and the expectation of doing well. The format was Modern Masters 2015 sealed, and I'd spent a fair amount of time between the full spoiler being announced and the event making practice sealed pools. I even went as far as typing up a sealed primer for some friends on Facebook with my observations from the pools I'd made and going through the spoiler several times. I felt like I had a good handle on the format and I knew how I wanted to build my pool if possible.
This was the first PPTQ I had been to since they were introduced. Axion put on quite the event - they were aiming for the feel of a mini-GP, and they certainly succeeded in my view. There were about 150 players registered, plus several side events and they even had John Avon was attending signing cards.
The sealed registration felt like a cross between a Magic event and a lottery. Several people dropped around me to keep their pools; fortunately (or unfortunately) mine was decidedly average so I got to play the day.
The pool I passed was a bit of a monster. Going through the cards, White, Blue and Black were pretty mediocre, but then I got to Red. Wildfire? Comet Storm? Charging Hellkite? Niv-Mizzet in the gold section as well! I registered a 4cc control deck, base Red/Green and splashing Blue for Niv-Mizzet and Narcolepsy and White for Arrest. This would prove to be my first mistake of the day, the first of many.
Best rare in the format
In most or possibly all of my practice sealed pools, the best decks seemed to be four to five colour control decks playing all the removal and the bombs, and this was backed up by several of the sealed articles posted on sites like ChannelFireball in the week leading up to the event. I defaulted to this when I built my deck at the PPTQ, and I think this was almost certainly a mistake. Given the power of my red cards, I think I had hit on the small percentage of pools that didn't need to play more than three colours in order to have the necessary power to compete. Beginning at Round 3 or 4, I was siding down to three colours every round, and possible should have only really been playing Blue/Red splashing Green for Scute Mob. My Blue was a little lacklustre other than Niv-Mizzet, but did feature two counterspells. My Red was great, and as well as the bomb rares I had two copies of Burst Lightning and two Fiery Falls.
Once I had built my deck, I took it out to the other room to show to a couple of people. I remember saying that if I could have designed my own sealed pool, I wouldn't have chosen anything much different to what I had registered.
I then immediately lost round 1.
My sweet rares lost to a bunch of Kozilek's Predators. I was not so much put on tilt as I was reeling from the shock. I'd have to win out to make top 8, which was really my goal coming into the event.
So I did!
I don't find going through every round that interesting, so I'm not going to. I cast a lot of bomb rares and my win percentage was pretty much correlated with how much that happened. There were a few particular bits that I enjoyed from the tournament which I'll go through.
Round 2: I played against a fairly new player. In game one, she played a Primeval Titan, but did not search up any lands. I like to think I'm pretty sporting, but I'm not going to go as far as to read out my opponent's cards for them. On her next turn, she attacks with the Titan and a 5/5 Gorehorn Minotaurs, and again doesn't search up any lands. I have 7 lands in play and Comet Storm in hand, and I'm at 12, so I block Cathodian against Minotaurs looking to use the mana to Comet Storm away Titan, Minotaurs and a third creature. I go to damage but my opponent stops me, taps GG and casts Vines of Vastwood on Primeval Titan. This is where I begin to get a sinking feeling. At least I can survive at 2 life even if I don't kill...hold on, she's tapping another green? Mutagenic Growth on Titan? Didn't need those lands bro!
The Comboooooo!
In round 3 I made my worst play of the tournament, attacking my Hellkite Charger into effectively two 3/3 and one 2/2 flier due to Helium Squirter, when I could have instead cast Wildfire precombat to destroy all my opponent's permanents. I realised as soon as I turned my guy sideways, and had to sweat for a good 30 seconds before my opponent gave me far too much credit and declined the excellent blocks. Obviously I returned the favour by Wildfiring all her permanents.
At some point, I played against Eduardo Sajgalik, who is a some-time magic pro and in fact made the top 8 of a modern pro tour a couple of years ago. I was a bit nervous and I think it came across in my gameplay - I was rushing through things a bit. This came to a head on the last turn of the game when he tapped all but two lands and played Apocalypse Hydra, and I snapped off Mana Leak before checking that he'd tapped enough lands to cast it for the 9 he'd declared. We went through and luckily he hadn't over-tapped, and the Hydra was countered. On my turn I ripped Burst Lightning for the win and practically threw the Eldrazi Spawn I needed to cast it off the table. I do feel a bit bad about this as I think I may have been a bit rude, and Eduardo, if you ever read this - I'm sorry, nerves and adrenaline got the best of me.
Strangely for a sealed tournament, I felt the day got easier as I went through. Usually the top tables at the end of the day are full of high powered decks (like mine), but although I did play against some good cards generally my deck overpowered even those at 5-1 and 6-1. I think I got better at sideboarding and playing as the day went on, and there were a couple of times I was very pleased with my play. For example in game 2 of one of the later rounds, my opponent hesitated and reached for an Island when I played a spell early on. I'd seen Mana Leak in game 1, and at this point I wrote down "mana leak!" on my scorepad and played around it for the rest of the game. At the end he shows me the Mana Leak in his hand which had been stranded there since turn 4 or 5.
During the top 8 draft and deckbuilding I decided I probably wasn't going to the PTQ even if I won, so I scooped to my quarter finals opponent. Final position was 5th, all the top 8 got a box of MM2015 and I snagged a Goyf in the draft, so I was pretty pleased.
The Top 8. The overall winner was Ben Jones, second from right
As I said, I did a lot of practice for this event and I really wanted to do well. However, looking back I can't really tell whether my finish was due to playing well, or simply opening a busted pool and drawing my rares at the right time. As I said I think I misbuilt my deck pretty horribly and made some horrific misplays (the dragon attack stands out in my mind as particularly egregious, but I'm sure there were many more I missed completely), but on the other hand I was pleased with my sideboard plans and I think I did play a few games particularly well. And that's why sealed sucks - it's not that it's all luck, as some people think, it's that it's impossible to tell how much of it is luck. I'm happy with my finish, but did I really earn it? I don't think that's a question I can really answer.
