PTLA Draft 3 and Feature Matches Jon Finkel vs. Tim McKenna and Kurt Burgner vs. Dan OMS

**[Ed. Note: My thanks to all of you who took the time to send such encouraging emails regarding my competition in L.A.! Though it ended poorly in some ways, this may turn out to be the most instructional event I've attended yet. I'll be posting a full article in the next couple of days, but in the meantime I hope you'll enjoy these quick looks at the event from Zvi Mowshowitz. Thanks again, and you'll be hearing from me soon!

- Scott Johns]

PTLA Day 2 Rochester Draft #1, Table 2

There are a lot of things about Invasion Rodchester that are radically different from previous Rochester formats. The biggest change is the need to play allied colors and the ability of players to play three of them on a regular basis. It also seems to be destroying players' reluctance to play a third color even without the reasons Invasion gives - players who wouldn't splash for black removal before will splash for Agonizing Demise now, even without any free ways to get off-color mana, as was seen near the end of this draft. At the start, the first pack's best three cards were clearly Agonizing Demise , Charging Troll and Molimo, with the other important ones being Horned Kavu and Razerfoot Griffin.

Scott Johns was in seat one, and actually thought seriously about taking the Charging Troll over the Agonzining Demise; in fact, I expected him to do so. Instead, as he put it afterwards, "you can't not take Demise." This is one of the odd things about Rochester, where a player will open a card and have no choice but to take it, but will wish it wasn't there because that's not what he wants to be doing even if this is a better card. Charging Troll naturally went second, and then Rob Dougherty decided to take Molimo behind the Charging Troll . These kind of ultimatums were a very poor strategy in previous sets but seem to work more often nowadays, because with so many players playing three colors and going in and out of strategies early on trying to find something they can draft they're more likely to be in a position where they can back down. In this case, the strategy worked to perfection: With a Quirion Elf sitting in seat seven and Jon Finkel in seat eight signaling his plans to go Green with a Sterling Grove , there looked to be at least four Green mages at the table. Facing a horrendous Green position, PS2 (player seat 2) had no choice but to abandon Green and ended up going W/U.

Over in seat four, PS4 chose to start with Razerfoot Griffin leaving Tim McKenna to take Horned Kavu and go into B/R. PS6 took Dream Thrush and then the wheel showed two green mages as noted above. Pack two gave PS2 a Shackles that helped keep him from being tied down in green, Dougherty took an Explosive Growth and PS4 showed his commitment by taking a Dismantling Blow third. McKenna got an Exotic Curse , PS6 took a Benalish Emissary , PS7 took Ancient Kavu and Finkel started reaching for Yavimaya Barbarian but instead took Elvish Champion and got the Barbarian on the way back; Scott wheeled Maniacal Rage and Hypnotic Cloud , although his overall plan at this point was already to go U/B. There were simply no blue cards in the pack that were worth taking. Pack three saw everyone sticking to their declared colors early on in the pack, until PS7 decided to take a Phyrexian Broodlings , perhaps beause at this point there seemed to only be two other black mages. Left with nothing, Scott could only take two marginal blue cards to let it be known which way he was planning to go, and ended up with A Worldly Council and Manipulate Fate .

For a while at this point the draft proceeded without incident. The important decisions for a while would be players deciding to add another color to their decks. Jon Finkel looked like he was solid R/G for a while, then took an Armadillo Cloak he opened and was clearly in three colors. Later on, he would be rewarded with a third pick Rith. Dougherty decided to start taking a serious amount of black, including double black spells such as Duskwalker . He wasn't forced into doing this, but looked to have decided to do it to get higher card quality. At a table with only two initial black mages, I would guess that seats 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 will all play at least one black card. Granted that at least two of those black cards will be a single Demise, but that still says a lot about the format and what players who managed to go 6-1 on day one think the right way to draft Invasion is. Another note was hate drafting, which is almost universally frowned upon in all but a select few situations but was practiced at this table by none other than Jon Finkel himself, who in the later half of the draft on several occasions took away cards that Scott Johns would have very much liked to have and Finkel could not use, including Ravenous Rats . It wasn't anything serious like the famous 'psychic hate' drafting of certain other mages, but it wasn't nothing either.

Overall, the decks at this table were not that strong. The best two decks at the table are pretty clearly Tim McKenna's in seat five, who had the only B/R deck and got a lot of good breaks in the way the packs opened, and Finkel's W/G/R deck in seat eight. A few of the others are decent as well. As happened at my first table on day one, Scott set up his position well but when the time came the packs simply refused to reward him and in particular starved him for decent creatures. He had to make radical choices like taking Tower Drake over Repulse in order to get a halfway decent creature mix, but in the end his deck is solid enough that he should be able to manage a 2-2. Highlights of Finkel's deck (in the order they were drafted) include Kavu Runner , Ancient Kavu , Armadillo Cloak , Tribal Flames , Zap , Nomadic Elf , Fires of Yavimaya , Rith, Scorching Lava , Maniacal Rage , Pouncing Kavu , Tribal Flames number two, two Yavimaya Barbarians one of which came much earlier, and a Pincer Spider and second Scorching Lava . McKenna's deck is fast and deadly, as he showed great willingness to sacrifice card quality to get the mana curve and aggressiveness he was after. In general the entire table paid very aggressively to get good mana curves except for PS7 who was very happy to splash for Plague Spores . McKenna ended up with a great curve of R/B creatures and removal up to two Soul Burns.

Feature Match: Tim McKenna vs. Jon Finkel

In the ninth round, the two best decks from the second draft pod faced off. Tim McKenna's highly aggressive and mana efficient R/B deck took on Jon Finkel's R/G/w deck, which was even more aggressive. Finkel came out of all three games screaming. Winning the flip, he played second turn Yavimaya Barbarian , then third turn Hooded Kavu (he had no black mana sources other than Nomadic Elf ), and Maniacal Raged the Barbarian up on turn four, plowing past a Kavu Aggressor . McKenna played a Shivan Zombie to trade with the Hooded Kavu , and Finkel hit him again with the Barbarian while he was trading and put out Ancient Kavu . McKenna played a Phyrexian Delver and got back the Zombie, but at this point his life total was down to six. McKenna played a Halem Djinn after combat in order to block, but Finkel cast Scorching Lava at McKenna at end of turn, which as he put it is "almost never a good sign." He untapped, Tribal Flamed the Halem Djinn out of the way and went in for the kill. McKenna commented "that's the first time I've blocked in the last five rounds of Magic."

Game two, Finkel again put out a second turn Yavimaya Barbarian and again McKenna's first play was a Kavu Aggressor even though he had sacrificed during the draft to get two drops. Finkel played a Hooded Kavu , and McKenna used Exotic Curse to kill it. Finkel put out a second Yavimaya Barbarian and Scorching Laved the Aggressor, which McKenna brought back with the Delver. Finkel also put out a Nomadic Elf , and McKenna kickered Duskwalker . With only one type of basic land out (he played Elfhame Palace turn one of games one and two) he attacked with all his 2/2s, using a Tribal Flames to finish off Duskwalker . When McKenna tried to retaliate with his creatures, Finkel had a Tangle ready. He came over with two Barbarians, one of them with Maniacal Rage on it, but McKenna used Agonizing Demise on that one to live to untap his creatures. Together with their six and the Demise's four damage he was able to finish Finkel off with a Soul Burn .

Game three Finkel yet again had the second turn Barbarian ready, which this time died to a Tribal Flames . It was replaced by a Nomadic Elf with got Maniacal Raged up so it could get past a Firebrand Ranger . McKenna could only play a land and say go on his fourth turn, and suddenly Finkel put out a Kavu Runner and brought McKenna down to 9 with a terrible board position. McKenna used Assault and Cursed Flesh to kill off the Runner, and later used Duskwalker together with the Ranger to take out the Raged Elf. Finkel drew Raging Kavu as his next threat, and with only five life McKenna had no choice but to Soul Burn it. Finkel then played an Elvish Champion and that did the four points it needed to do to get McKenna in Scorching Lava range, which ended the match.

Finkel 2 - McKenna 1

Feature Match: Dan OMS vs. Kurt Burgner

Over at table 69, Kurt Burgner and Dan OMS were playing, both 1-1 on the day. Dan OMS had an excellent R/G deck that had lost to a combination of Ghitu Fire and Keldon Necropolis , while Kurt had a poor three-color-special B/R/W deck, and owed his win to this PT's favorite punching bag, good old Mr. Bye. Kurt went first, and both players played only lands for the first two turns - Kurt remarked it was odd Dan had nothing to cast. On the third turn Kurt drew and played Rogue Kavu . Without any further lands, Dan decided he had to use one of his two Stuns on it rather than killing it with Lightning Dart . He only drew an Explosive Growth off the Stun however, and without a land from his draw step he had to use the Lightning Dart just to avoid discarding.

On his next turn he finally did draw his third land, and after that his mana developed nicely. Another Rogue Kavu was going in, but Dan started casting creatures. First out was a Kavu Aggressor that got killed, then an Ancient Kavu . Next Dan drew his fifth land and second Mountain and tried for Thornscape Master , but it was killed with Agonizing Demise . Kurt had slight time advantage, but still didn't have a Plains and was stuck holding two white cards (although one was a relatively useless Obsidian Acolyte he would sideboard out before game two). Dan decided to get aggressive and put out Raging Kavu to attack for six, forcing the Rouge Kavu to stay back and try to block. Kurt also put out a Plague Spitter that was supposed to be able to block the Ancient Kavu , but a Stun stopped it from blocking and together with a newly arrived Kavu Climber an Explosive Growth finished the job.

Game two was a massacre. Kurt asked for "a few mulligans to make me feel better" but wasn't specific enough and found that he was the one with the one land hand while Dan good-naturedly held a Forest and a Mountain up and started chuckling. His next hand had land but wasn't much better, as he had no black mana and therefore nothing he could cast, although it's doubtful with Dan's draw that it would have made that much difference. A second turn Barbarian was joined by a turn three Grappler, and turn four another three power creature. By the time Kurt got to play his Ancient Kavu on turn six he was dead even before Dan would get to use his hand of Lightning Dart , Tribal Flames and Explosive Growth . Kurt took it well, knowing his draft had gone poorly.

Dan OMS 2 - Kurt Burgner 0

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