Zvi's Worlds Report: Day 2
** Day two began at the Monster Table. There was just no question what the hardest table was for the first draft, and it was my table, table four. They claimed they were going to randomize tiebreaks before forming tables but they most certainly did not and I got stuck with those in places 25-32. For those who didn’t see in part 1, the table was:
1 Marsh, Warren
2 Eskeland, Sigurd
3 Tsang, Terry
4 Finkel, Jon
5 Clegg, Daniel
6 Lee, Sang-Seok
7 Mowshowitz, Zvi
8 Budde, Kai
That’s a nightmare table. I would agree with the Sideboard’s comment that this is probably the second best table ever assembled after the Draft Challenge at US Nationals. Anyway, the judges told us to shuffle our packs before passing, and then there was the great innovation: The decision that when something went wrong at one table, the answer wasn’t to suddenly yell ‘stop’ and make everyone wait but just to deal with it at that table. This resulted in two totally clean drafts for me. The entire time I both was known for the strategy of trying for U/G with red as the backup and white being taken when I have to, and I also followed that strategy. Once your strategy becomes known it’s better to keep following it, plus I still think it’s correct. I asked Gary Wise, until recently mostly known for his limited skills, what to do at this kind of table, and he told me to watch for white to be underdrafted. Here’s how the draft went:
The pack I opened contained Kyren Negotiations, Lunge, Thermal Glider and Bribery . Clearly the best card there is the Negotiations, but I had a special situation. First, Kai was on my left. He’s a black drafter, and I never draft black and he knows this, so he’s going to try and go black. Second, his preferred second color is now red, or so I was told. Anyway, I considered both scenarios. If I take Negotiations then Kai’s pick could be any of the other tree cards depending on his first pack. I’m clashing with whoever takes the Lunge , which could easily be Kai, and only green is still open on my left. And it doesn’t matter that much whether green is or not. And Kyren Negotiations is double red. In short, the Negotiations could be a disaster. The final point is that Kai was one of three players at the table with 15 points (5-1 day 1) while I was one of five with 13 (4-1-1 day 1), so I had a smaller chance than usual of playing against Kai. At any rate, I really like Bribery right now so I took Bribery with the goal of going U/G if I could. Setting up the draft was more important than taking the best card. It also helped that the pack had a Thermal Glider in it, although that doesn’t really make much difference.
Time to look at pack number two. There was a Drake Hatchling in it, and nothing else was serious competition for it given my first pack. The third pack again had a Drake Hatchling , and again there was nothing else worth considering against it. The fourth pack had a Rishadan Airship so that pick was even easier. At this point I was thanking my lucky stars that I’d taken Bribery first. If I’d taken the Negotiations I’d still be drafting an amazing deck, but I’d probably be drafting it for Kai. That was my main thought as I looked at pack five and saw ... Aerial Caravan ? What the hell? My jaw dropped, and I put it in my pile and wondered what the hell was going on. But then things got even more interesting. I knew white was open on my right already because I’d passed a second Glider and some other stuff, and I suspected Kai was going B/R, and then I was looking at a sixth pick Ballista Squad. Huh? I know this table has at least seven people who know how to draft. But I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, and I figured by now the green was being cut off by someone (turned out to be Clegg), so I planned to back up the Squad. A Fresh Volunteers came in next, and the rest of MM didn’t have anything interesting, making me suspect Lee put two and two together and finally went into blue. [Editor's Note: That is in fact exactly what happenned (I was reporting on the draft at the time) The gentleman passing to Zvi saw all the amazing blue going by, and finally started taking some of it after the Caravan went by. Once the Squad went by, he started looking at white cards too, but it was way too late for him to make up for the kind of bombs he'd missed out on.]
My Nemesis pack had a Dominate, so again I had an easy choice. This was an amazingly hard table, but it somehow felt like a ‘draft for dummies,’ with every pick after the first one being glaringly obvious. The packs were telling me: Take Topple second, take Silkenfist Order third, take a second Dominate fourth and a Stronghold Zeppelin fifth. I wasn’t about to argue with that. The other thing I accomplished in Nemesis was to pick up three of the four copies of Rootwater Commando to beat whoever had the rest of the blue. I then managed to open Jeweled Spirit and get passed a fifth pick Troubled Healer. The deck ended up looking something like this:
9 Island
9 Plains
2 Dominate
2 Mageta’s Boon
3 Other cards I can’t recall, my deck got lost some time when I was packing, but similar.
SB includes: 3 Rootwater Commando , Mine Bearer , Fresh Volunteers , Darting Merfolk.
Round 7: Sigurd Eskeland (Feature Match)
Sigurd had a good deck too, but mine was ridiculous. To make matters worse for him, he stalled on land game one and didn’t get enough to even get off the ground game two. My deck made short work of him in that situation. Bribery missed both Two-Headed Dragon and Scoria Cat game 1, taking Belbe’s Percher, but that was more than enough.
Round 8: Kai Budde
Kai had the deck I expected him to have, a B/R deck that was solid but not amazing, with the star Kyren Negotiations . His first picks were pretty bad, so his deck wasn’t that good, especially considering what we were figuring out was an insane card pool for the table overall. But his deck was full of those creatures that you can’t quite block. Game one he came out fast and furious, with an aggressive creature every turn. I couldn’t quite catch up. I actually sideboarded out Aerial Caravan because it was too slow. Game two I didn’t fall that far behind, and the power of my deck won the game for me. Game three, he went third turn Death Charmer after my first turn Charm Peddler, and I didn’t cast a spell turn three. He played another dude turn four and I drew for the turn: Drake Hatchling . That missed turn cost me the game, as he was always one creature ahead of me. I had Ballista Squad , but I couldn’t afford to save mana for it and the game ended with it in my hand. Kai would go on to face and be crushed by Finkel the next round.
Round 9: Warren Marsh
Warren’s deck is not up at the level of this table, and he made no secret about it. The match basically consisted of Warren watching helplessly as his cards were simply outclassed. Soon he was staring down a growing number of flyers he could not block while he was unable to attack back. Both games ended in short order.
It turned out that I didn’t have the best deck at the table, Finkel did. His deck was insanely fast, and would have crushed mine regardless of the three Rootwater Commandos. That made me feel better about losing to Kai, although Finkel can almost always be counted on for great tie-breaks. But if anyone ever asks me the best MM block draft deck I’ve ever seen, I’d answer it was Finkel’s from our pod. Wow.
The next pod was the opposite of the first one. While it did indeed have some names I’d have preferred not to see, after my last pod I was more than happy to see the following opposition:
1 Mowshowitz, Zvi
2 Yann, Hamon
3 Barrado, Carlos
4 Clegg, Daniel
5 Levy, Raphael
6 Ozfresko, Vedat
7 Slemr, Jacub
8 Fehr, Christian
But where the opposites really came into play were the card pool and my luck. Instead of the most overpowered table of all time, this one didn’t really have enough playable cards to go around. I don’t remember the individual cards that much, but that’s ok because I’d prefer not to anyway. I started green, but starting with pick two I didn’t get a single card that was worthy of how early I took it. I didn’t pass one either. Sometimes you pick the wrong colors and it backfires, and sometimes it’s not even your fault, but that wasn’t even true here. It was a draft where you think to yourself, ‘my deck is horrible, but nothing I could have done would have made it any better.’ I picked the right colors from the start and stuck with them. My deck ended up W/G, and while I had a Parallax Wave I opened and some other decent stuff including a good mix of creatures and tricks, the deck was some very sub-par beats.
Round 10: Daniel Clegg
Clegg had managed to draft a solid B/U deck. I don’t like those decks all that much in general, which is one reason I stay away from black in this format; there just seems to be something missing even when the decks work out. But that’s not what this match was about, it was about Clegg not having lands. He had bounce, but I kept playing a creature a turn game one and without the mana to cast his he couldn’t stop me. By the time he got land four and starting casting Stormwatch Eagles, it was too late, especially since his hand contained creatures that trade time for long term tricks. Game two I drew only one creature other than a Vine Trellis that I walked into a Spiketail Hatchling , a Chieftain en-Dal , and it was stopped by a Daze . I had a hand full of tricks, already deadly against a deck with Bouncer and Seal of Removal , but even worse now. Finally, I drew Thresher Beast . His air force got me down to eight. I had at my disposal Parallax Wave, Mageta’s Boon, Cho-Manno’s Blessing , Wild Might and Treetop Bracers . That’s all this deck’s best tricks if you don’t count the Defender en-Vecs. He had Ribbon Snake , Belbe’s Percher (or another 2/2 flyer) and a Seal of Removal. I only have one chance to win this game, and the math works out exactly right if he plays into it. I cast Parallax Wave to take out his two creatures and attack him down to 16. At this point, I’m praying he doesn’t use Seal of Removal on it - if he does, that’s probably game. He doesn’t. He untaps and casts Spiketail Drake and Undertaker . I untap, and need him to walk the Seal of Removal into Cho-Manno’s Blessing . I attack, he doesn’t block, I use Wild Might . He responds with the Seal of Removal , I wave out the Drake so he can’t sacrifice it, I Cho-Manno’s Blessing the Beast and give it Mageta’s Boon to get him down to 6. He untaps, draws, plays a land and taps out for Tidal Kraken . I untap, remove the last fading counter, put Treetop Bracers on the Beast and attack for 20. Jackpot!
At this point, what I’m thinking is "I get to play tomorrow", because if I 0-2 the rest of the day I can 6-0 into the top 8 on day three.
Round 11: Jacub Slemr
Jacub’s deck was actually worse than mine, a three color special short on good cards. But it did have a Power Matrix . Game one, he came out fast and I had to walk into a Mageta’s Boon. I thought I might stabilize but I couldn’t stop the Matrix. Game two I used Thrive to get flyers he couldn’t deal with. He had Coastal Hornclaw and Troubled Healer , I had a 3/3 Diving Griffin and Stampede Driver . Over the course of many turns I managed to run him out of lands. Game three was pretty frustrating. He put out a ton of walls, which he’d drafted because he’d passed so many Blastoderms, plus Troubled Healer . I had an offense, but not enough to kill him before the Parallax Wave in my hand would fade away because of the Healer. And he kept drawing all his removal and tricks, so I never had a chance as one of his few ways to win slowly ate at me, with him killing everything that could block. Unable to find Thrive until after he’d killed my guys, it would be too late by the time I could start assembling decent creatures.
Round 12: Vedat Ozfresko
Vedat has a great attitude toward the game, very friendly and casual. He actually let me take back a move after it became clear I hadn’t seen his Rib Cage Spider. I would never, ever have asked him to let me, but if he was offering I wasn’t about to say no. Anyway, this was a W/G mirror matchup and he had all the tools: More Rib Cage Spiders, more Treetop Bracers , the tricks when he needed them, and Crenellated Wall and Rushwood Herbalist to save anything that got into trouble. I needed one last land to use Stampede Driver and Vitalizing Wind together to kill him: His board was so much better that a normal Vitalizing Wind Alpha Strike would have lost, and now I was dead next turn from a Treetop Bracered Spitting Spider (one of Magic’s harder to deal with creatures). I didn’t draw one. Oh well, might as well attack and see if he blocks wrong somehow. He blocks my Megatherium , he blocks my Deepwood Drummer , he blocks a third creature, he uses his Crenellated Wall , he ... WHOA! He used an ability in the middle of blocking, so he can't declare any more blockers and I’ve got him! I’m totally in the right here, I didn’t prompt him or trick him or anything, and now I’m going to win with Vitalizing Wind ! I quickly get him to confirm that he didn’t block the last creature, a Deepwood Wolverine with a Thrive counter (yes, folks, this deck’s pretty janky). He says ‘well, if that’s what you want to do,’ and I sit there and do the math. I say ‘well, you did let me have that take back earlier in the game, but this is Worlds and the game is on the line’ and then I realize that it doesn’t work. He didn’t quite screw up enough. So I might as well give him the scare of his life. I make him not block. I cast Vitalizing Wind , we tally the damage...
And he’s at one.
I explain to him that letting someone take a move back at Worlds is NOT a good idea, and I think he got the message. I figured I’d find a way to win the next two. But that’s not what my cards had in mind. I stalled at two lands and had to use Treetop Bracers on a Deepwood Drummer . And of course he has a Spider anyway. I try to put up a fight and pull off a trick or two, but it’s not happening. I stall about two turns longer than I can afford to, and I lose. After the match, he asks me about MBC and specifically about b/g, and I tell him it’s a solid deck and he should probably play it, making sure he has a solid set of cards for the deck.
So I’m 3-3 on the day, 50th overall at 7-4-1. Not what I had in mind at the start of the day, but I still have a shot. If I 3-3 I make a little money, and I can 5-1 into the top 16 or 6-0 into the top 8. The next day is a six round grinder into the top 8, and it’s going to be a tough one: Six rounds, five Pro Tour champions.
- Zvi Mowshowitz
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