Gold Rush 2010

The Gold Rush weekend has been nothing but full of surprises and harsh realizations. This is the Philippines year-end tournament and is one of the biggest of the season.

after weeks of preparation and a two-day brainstorming session with a fellow player and good friend Marvin(who claims to be the next pro player in the Philippines), we have come to the conclusion: UB control still has the best matchups for the metagame. Disruption in the form of duress is great against UW(or so we thought); Grave titan, Doom blades and Consume the meek  makes short work of beatdown; Spreading seas and Tectonic edge takes care of Valakut, and so on...

We have come up with this decklist:

3 duress
3 inquisition of kozilek
4 preordain
2 smother
2 doom blade
4 mana leak
1 deprive
1 stoic rebuttal
3 spreading seas
2 seagate oracle
1 jace beleren
4 jace the mindsculptor
1 consume the meek
3 grave titan

4 darkslick shores
4 drowned catacombs
3 creeping tar pit
4 tectonic edge
2 misty rainforest
1 verdant catacomb
5 island
3 swamp

The battle plan was simple: construct a deck that has favorable matchups against control. Based on experience, control decks are as slow as ever in standard. So winning game one is key. Our deck had 3 duress and 3 inquisitions to prepare for the control match-ups. My sideboard was filled with nine creature control spells to win back games 2 and 3 against beats. The deck seemed pretty solid. Our play seemed very tight. Yet after the dust settled, I finished at 3-3-1. I would love to go through the details of each round, but right now I just want to point out some things I learned in the event.

1. Too few win conditions - Grave titan is an excellent card for this deck, unfortunately, it was the only one capable of finishing the opponent in a short timespan. Jace the Mindsculptor is a wn condition as well, based on experience takes too long to pull off. This proved to be a fatal flaw of the deck as it gains control fairly easily during the first few turns and fails to take advantage of the disruption during mid-late game.

2. UW control is a monster - All of my loses came from UW. The deck simply has too many powerhouses! Gideon Jura, Jace the Mindsculptor, Baneslayer angel, Sun titan, Elspeth Tirel, and the list goes on... I gain contrl of the game early, but having that many outs in his/her deck, top-decking an out was inevitable.

3. Using a decklist based on the world championships puts a big bullseye in your forehead - I'm sure you noticed that this decklist is an improvised version of the decks that made it to the top 8 of the worlds. The bad news is that everybody else saw it and either prepared for it, or played it as well. luminarchs ascensions, leyline of sanctities, and vampires were all over the place. All of my loses came from UW, and I even consider myself lucky to not have faced a vampire deck(that would have made my record worse).

4. Two days of practice is not enough - i invited my friend over two days before the tourney to do serious playtesting. we barely covered a third the field of potential decks to watch out for. Magic requires a lot of time and commitment. 2 days with a new decklist is like dipping your toes in the water to see if you can take the cold.

5. Eat Healthy and Smart! - For those of you who dont know, the reason why we feel sleepy after eating has to do with our body's natural reaction to digestion. Our bodies only have a certain ammount of energy to release at a particular time. And digesting food needs energy. So eating a heavy meal right before a match would mean diverting some of your energy to digesting instead of focusing it on the game(imagine captain kirk telling Zulu to divert 50% power to thrusters and 50% to shields while fighting a klingon warship, that's goodbye Enterprise!). the key to sustained energy: eat small portions every chance you get. this would maintain your energy level thougout the tourney.

This weekend was a wake-up call for me. If I am to make it to the national championship this year, I would have to put some serious work ethic in my game. Otherwise this personal goal of mine to make the Worlds would just be another pipe dream. There are no failures in life, just lessons to be learned. This was a big one.