Grand Prix Atlanta Report by Randy Buehler So 2 carloads of us left Pittsburgh Thursday night and started the long drive to Atlanta. We went through DC to pick up the inimitable Andrew Cuneo and continued on our way, finally arriving in Atlanta around midnight Friday night. We of course started a TeTeSh draft at that point, rather than getting sleep before the Grand Prix. When we got to the tournament site on Saturday morning there weren't quite as many people as I expected (the final count was only three hundred something), but there were lots of pro tour veterans. I'd guess that half the field had played at a pro tour before. I know over 40 people had 3 byes. Since I had three byes I organized a NY practice draft with a bunch of PT regulars -- Darwin Kastle's white weenie with red beat Jon Finkel's blue-white beatdown deck in the final. However the most important thing to happen Saturday morning was my conversation with Jeff Donais. He asked me how I was doing ... I complained that I was too short to actually reach his ear ... he immediately leaned over and I went for it. The man is not only the best judge in the game, but he's such a good lucky charm that he may leave PT-NY with swimmer's ear! Anyway, we finally sit down to register and eventually build decks. I end up at a table with Chinnock, Finkel, Melissa Lang, Francis Keys, and Mark Justice. The atmosphere and camaraderie at this Grand Prix felt like a Pro Tour. We're all such junkies that we couldn't miss a Big Event even if the money wasn't really enough to justify the trip. Here's the deck I end up with, plus a list of the cards I didn't use: Saturday's (Straight Sealed) Deck: Enfeeblement x 2 Dauthi Slayer Dauthi Horror Rats of Rath Clot Sliver Marsh Lurker Evincar's Justice Disturbed Burial Mogg Fanatic Mogg Raider Wall of Diffusion Lightning Elemental Lightning Blast Aftershock Searing Touch Rolling Thunder Thalakos Mistfolk Wind Drake x 2 Rootwater Hunter Phyrexian Hulk 7 x Swamp 7 x Mountain 4 x Island Sideboard/What I didn't play with: Perish, Squee's Toy, Shatter, Maze of Shadows, Horned Turtle, Clot Sliver, Time Ebb, Gaseous Form, Giant Crab, Wild Wurm, hand to hand, Souldrinker, Thalakos Seer, Rootwater Diver, Escaped Shapeshifter, Duplicity, Apes of Rath, Frog Tongue, Horned Sliver, Krakilin, Natural Spring, Respite x 2, Root Maze, Seeker of Skybreak, Spike Drone, Trained Armadon, Tranquillity, Winter's Grasp, Advance Scout x 2,CoP: Shadow, CoP: Green x 2,Cloudchaser Eagle, Disenchant, Elite Javelineer, Talon Sliver, Soltari Crusader, Ranger en-vec, Stone Rain x 2, Ancient Runes, Booby Trap, Excavator, Lotus Petal, 4 x Plains, 4 x Forest, 1 x Island. The deck I registered was actually a little better than this (3 x Banish, Evincars, Dregs, Overrun, 2 x Trumpeting Armadon, 2 x Fury, 2 x Dauthi Slayer, Dauthi Horror, Screeching Harpy, etc.) but I was quite happy with this one. I typically try to construct a 2 color deck if it's possible in straight sealed because the person who wins is typically whoever can cast all the spells in their hand. I'm not a big fan of straight sealed for this reason (I actually think it would be quite improved if they didn't limit you to getting 5 additional land -- why not let me swap 1 for 1 as many times as I want that way I have the option of playing 2 color with somewhat weaker spells or 3 colors with more powerful spells?). Anyway, this deck didn't have enough good spells in just black and red (which are easily the two best colors in Tempest) so I needed to touch blue. The most difficult decision was how to do the mana -- I felt a little bad about only running 4 islands, but I knew that my black and red cards were more important (there are only 4 blue cards in the deck) and I wanted to make sure I could cast them. Straight sealed games are rarely exciting or memorable, so here are the condensed highlights. Against one opponent I had Dauthi Slayer and Dauthi Horror in play and he chose to do nothing on turn 4 (despite having 2 swamps in play). I bit. I assumed that he did not have an Evincars and summon a Rats of Rath. He promptly cast Evincar's on his next turn. Oh well, luckily for me I recovered from this mistake by drawing Rolling Thunder near the end of the game and pointing it at him. I got to play Steve O'M-S in a feature match during round 6 -- Player of the Year race repercussions were certainly on my mind and I assume they were on his too. He won the die roll and choose to go first (I was fine with this as I almost always choose to draw in straight sealed -- I just want to draw land so I can cast my spells). I had to mulligan because I only had one land. He plays a few weenies, I take some damage while holding an Evincar's trying to convince him to play a 3rd weenie, but he wisely doesn't. I Evincar's on turn 6 or so and he then summons 3 more weenies saying "if you have another one I'll cry". I didn't have another Evincar's, but I did have that Rolling Thunder card. It's pretty good. In game 2 I mulligan again, but Evincar's gets me card advantage and I think I got my Burial going. Basically, I think my sealed deck gave me significantly better cards to work with than his did. In the last round on Saturday I was one of the 8 or so 6-0's. I played Pat Callahan and his deck o' Fat. My deck is really good against weenies and has some ways to stall against fat creatures long enough for me to kill them with shadows. However, pat said turn 4 Flowstone Giant, turn 5 Rolling thunder your guys, turn 6 Sandstone Warrior, turn 7 Avenging Angel. I was still trying to get my 4th land so I could cast an Evincar's that wouldn't kill any of his creatures anyway. *Scoop* Game 2 was much the same -- he went Done, Done, Done, Flowstone Giant, Sandstone Warrior, Sandstone Warrior, Avenging Angel. Whatever! 6-1 with good tiebreakers puts me on table 2, along with my teammate Erik Lauer and Pat Chapin, Mark Globus, Pete Leiher, Dave Price, and Andy Wolf. I drafted the deck I always try to draft -- red/black. The problem was that I went first on all the packs with 3-5 solid cards and 3rd, 4th, or 5th on the packs with just one broken card. Dave Price seemed to be the guy in the hot seat -- his red/white deck fell beautifully to him including 2 x Staunch Defender, an Avenging Angel and a Soltari Guerrilla. The deck I drafted was solid, but unspectacular. I had a solid early beatdown mana curve, but I didn't get a Roll or a Burial. Also, it seemed like everyone else _did_ have something abusive to do in the mid-game. Then it happened -- about 2/3rds of the way through the draft a pack opens up with me drafting 8th and 9th. Sitting there, shining at me from the rare slot in the pack is a Static Orb. Surely no one else will want this card, I thought to myself, and they didn't. They were probably surprised when I drafted it, but I remembered a match against the Mad Genius when we were practicing for Germany when he had Grimoire going and two buybacks in his hand. Al I had was 2 Giants in play. I dropped a Static Orb and it *wrecked* him. This felt like the same sort of deck -- I could get ahead and then ice the game, effectively extending the early game (where my deck was at it's best) for more turns. The Static Orb went into the main deck and here's the result: First Pod on Sunday: 2 x Pit Imp 3 x Dauthi Slayer 1 x Dauthi Horror 1 x Clot Sliver 2 x Diabolic Edict 1 x Enfeeblement 1 x Dauthi marauder 1 x Endless Scream 1 x Gravedigger 1 x Mindwhip Sliver 1 x Barbed Sliver 1 x Metallic Sliver 1 x Lightning Elemental 1 x Static Orb 2 x Searing Touch 1 x Mogg Conscripts 1 x Stun 1 x Canyon Wildcat 1 x Aftershock 9 x Swamp 6 x Mountain 1 x Cinder Marsh Sideboard: Havoc, Stun, Disenchant x 2, Plains x 2, CoP: Green, Pacifism, Shatter, Spinal Graft, Dark Ritual, Sandstone Warrior, CoP: Black, Minion of the Wastes, Heart Sliver My first round opponent was Erik Lauer. I guess that meant someone from Team CMU had to win, but we certainly weren't happy to face each other. In game 1 I mulliganed and then still had a mediocre draw. He destroyed me. He then went and got extra land ... knowing that he had helped me out by counterdrafting a CoP: Black, I sided in 2 Plains, a Disenchant, and the CoP: Green I had counterdrafted on his behalf. He cut me to a plains and a CoP: Green, but he had Recycle in play before I drew a third land. Somehow he was able to outrun the CoP ... (Turns out he didn't even sideboard in white.) Next I had to play Pat Chapin, who's almost a teammate (he drove down with us, split prize money with us, and is currently staying in Pittsburgh for a week practicing for NY). I sigh about the Rootwater Hunter I would have counterdrafted if he hadn't been picking next and shuffle up. His deck, as he'll tell you, just wasn't that good. I drew the Static Orb while I was beating on him with Pit Imps. Static Orb/Pit Imp is not exactly a combo, so I of course hold the Orb in my hand. If my opponent can't deal with Pit Imps then I can afford to have a dead card in my hand. And Pat couldn't. Pat did successfully bluff me into sideboarding in 2 plains and a Disenchant by flipping a CoP: Black face up while shuffling (he was black/blue and had counterdrafted it). He then sided it out again, but I don't feel that bad because I knew he had a Legacy's Allure that I might want to Disenchant anyway. In game 2 he played not 1, not 2, but 3 Horned Turtles. I played two or three shadows and a Pit Imp. He eventually drew a Tim, but it was too late. Game 3 was me against Dave Price. Price was 1-0-1 at the table and got rounded down (or I got rounded up). This was the first time we'd ever played in a sanctioned match and we were both well aware that the winner was in reasonably good shape to make the top 8 while the loser would have to win his next table and hope his tiebreakers stayed good. He went first, Kindled my turn 2 Dauthi Slayer, played a turn 3 Knight of Dawn. I played turn 3 (another) Dauthi Slayer. He "beat me in the head for 2" and I then summoned a Lightning Elemental and hit him for 6. Next turn he kept the Knight back to block and also summoned a Soltari Guerrilla. I cast Diabolic Edict (he chose to lose the Knight) and then I Enfeebled the Guerrilla and hit him for 6 more. He cast some blocker that wasn't a Staunch Defender, mutualled with the Elemental, but I Gravediggered it and that was game. That was *some* beatdown against the King. I knew my way to win was to put on lots of early pressure and now I only had to do it in one of the next two games. I came out with a Dauthi Slayer, a Barbed Sliver and a Canyon Wildcat early in game 2. He eventually mutuals with the Sliver and Searing Touch buy-backs the Wildcat. He cast turn 5 Staunch Defenders so I smashed a Lightning Elemental into them. The game gets interesting with him at 10 life, having just summoned Soltari Guerrillas. My stupid Slayer goes blindly in to attack, the Guerrillas condescendingly watch the Slayer go by for 2 points of damage and then kill them next turn. I have a Touch of my own in my hand, but only 5 land in play. If I draw a land I can go Touch buy-back, Touch. Meanwhile I have a Gravedigger and possibly a Metallic Sliver in play. Dave just played Knight of Dawn with Giant Strength to stop my attack on the ground. I draw Searing Touch. I decide I'm losing card advantage to the Geurillas no matter what I do so I throw both my Touches at the damn thing and then drop STATIC ORB. Dave has Touch buy-back in his hand and a Knight of Dawn in play while I have nothing but a couple 2/2's in play and one in my hand. My big plan is to play enough creatures that I can swarm him and I know the only chance this plan has of working is to slow the game down with Static Orb. Dave summons a Soltari Trooper and uses one of his untaps each turns to untap it and keep attacking me for two (this seems like the right play -- how else is he going to win?) Eventually I get out a Mindwhip Sliver and a Barbed Sliver. So I've got 3 2/2's and a Metallic facing down his Giant Strengthed Knight of Dawn. He needs another blocker or else he would die to me attacking with everyone and having a Lightning Blast in my hand. So he summons Lightning Elemental and taps down to one mountain to do it. That's what I've been waiting for -- he can no longer save the Knight of Dawn from my Aftershock. (I had been leaving 2 land untapped each turn so I could untap 2 and Aftershock as soon as the chance came my way.) I Kill the Knight and attack with everything. He touches the Metallic and mutuals with one of the 2/2s and takes 4. He tries bringing out blockers, but there was just no way to recover with a Static Orb in play. So I win a great match against one of the truly good guys in Magic. (The people watching Dave's draw commented on how quickly Dave was playing -- Dave gave his opponent every chance to win that match and there was no hint of stalling. In fact, it sounds like Price played faster than normal while in a losing situation with time running out.) I had been in 9th place going into the first draft on Saturday, went 2-1 and ended up in 13th place and still on table 2. It looked like the cut for top 8 would be among the 10-3's so 2-0-1 would make it in and we thought 2-1 would have a shot (turns out you had to be 10-2-1 and one of the 10-2-1's missed the top 8). This table included David Batholow, David Mills, Frank Gilson, Michael Katz and I can't remember the others right now. I was sitting 7th so I got to watch the draft develop. Mills (sitting 3rd) took a Trained Armadon out of the first pack and another Trained Armodon out of the 2nd pack. This clearly established him as heavy green and everyone on his left knew they wouldn't get any green even if they tried for it. Then Mills opens his own pack, takes something blue, and the Trumpeting Armadon just sits there until it's my pick ... 5th out of the pack. I take the Trumpeter. The next pack has a trained Armadon that falls to me at 4th. Mills convinced the people sitting 4th-6th not to take green so I knew if I drafted green (which I normally don't like doing) I should get a lot of good stuff. When it's my first pick I open to an Overrun and my strategy for the rest of the draft becomes fairly obvious. I still didn't have a solid second color when it was my turn to open again. Neither person next to me was taking heavy black, so I sort of wanted to go green/black, but there just hadn't been any good black come by at all. The pack opens and there' s a Rolling Thunder and a Rootwalla. I debate myself for most of the 20 seconds and eventually decide to take the Roll and try to pick up Rampants and Elves later so I can actually cast it. I'm not a big fan of green/red, but I think this deck ended up pretty good. Mills had a green/blue deck that seemed to be the consensus best deck at the table, but I thought mine was 2nd best (it was either me or Frank Gilson's turbo-shadow deck) so if I didn't run into Mills until the last round, we could just draw in and save the Chicago rematch for the Top 8. Second Pod on Sunday Deck: Elvish Fury x 2 Rampant Growth x 2 Skyshroud Elf Seeker of Skybreak Canopy Spider Muscle Sliver x 2 Pincher Beetles Broken Fall Trained Armadon Trumpeting Armadon x 2 Skyshroud Troll Rootbreaker Wurm Overrun Mogg Conscripts Mogg Fanatic x 2 Mogg Raider Rolling Thunder Manakin Coiled Tinviper 10 x Forest 6 x Mountain Sideboard: Tranquillity, Respite, Reality Anchor, Choke, Altar of Dementia, Havoc, Frog Tongue, Shatter, Squee's Toy First round is against Bartholow. My hand looks really good -- 3-4 land, an Overrun, and 2-3 creatures. However, Dave says turn 3 Stone Rain, turn 4 Rain of Tears, and on turn 5 he Aftershocks a land. Luckily, he didn't draw any creatures that I couldn't Fanatic away. We sit there for a while, removing each others creatures, until I get out a Pincher Beetle. I never do cast that Overrun, but he never did draw a decent creature so I won. In game 2 he outraced me, I don't remember the details but I think it was a bunch of shadows. In game 3 I drew mostly land and we traded cards until eventually he got out a Dauthi Marauder I couldn't deal with and a Clot Sliver that could block my Trumpeting Armadon. Over the course of 4 turns the Marauder took me from 13 to 1 while Dave sat on 9 life. I asked Dave to knock on the top of my deck, but he refused. Pat Chapin reached over from an adjacent table to knock and then I drew. I had 9 land in play plus a Trumpeting Armadon. I very deliberately tap all of my mana (the standard scare your opponent and commit suicide through mana burn bluff) and explain to Dave that even if I had drawn Rolling Thunder I couldn't kill him (because I have to kill the Marauder) and he kindly points out that I can ignore the Marauder, hit the Clot for one (forcing him to regen) and him for 6 ... the Armadon can then swoop in for the kill. I say OK and do exactly that. Next up is ... argh! I can't remember his name. He's playing black/red with 2 Bombardments (he actually drafted 3). I win game 1 by playing enough creatures that even if he does sac his creatures to the Bombardment as a response to the Overrun to take out two of mine, the Overrun will still kill him. In game 2 he kills me with an Endless Screamed Canyon Drake while his Bombardment takes out too many of my creatures for my Overrun to kill him. In game 3 we each make a couple mistakes, but his decision to wait for a 7th land so he can buy back his Evincar's is the crucial one. I sneak through for a couple points here and a couple points there and eventually win the game by top-decking a Rootbreaker Wurm (wow, I've never said _that_ before). His Canyon Drake was one card from killing me, but I won. So then I draw with Mills and we're both into the top 8. Mills joked that if we played in the top 8 we should put up $10,000 in ante. Someone nearby missed the joke and made some flabbergasted comment about how much money that was. Adrian Sayers then suggested that that was nothing. He had played me in a $19,000 ante match! ;-) You probably already know who was in the top 8. I was sitting with Nate Clark on my left and Bob Coonce on my right, drafting 7th. The first pack of cards set up the entire draft for me. The good cards all went early and with like 3 people left before me I thought Coercion was the best card on the table. Something else went, something else went, and this Coercion fell to me. Wow, maybe no one wants black. I then take 6th pick Mogg Raider (even though in wasn't the best card) in an attempt to prevent Nate from drafting any Red. My 5th pick is a Dauthi Slayer that I thought was the 3rd best card out of the pack so it looks like heavy black may be very much an option. Pat Callahan open the pack where I'm going 3rd and has to choose between Rolling Thunder and Disturbed Burial for his red/black deck. He takes the Roll. Now comes what I felt was the single most important pick of the draft. Bob Coonce has to choose between Burial and Master Decoy. He'd been winning all weekend with red/white so maybe this wasn't even a debate for him, but I think Disturbed Burial is the 2nd best common in Tempest (for TE-only Rochester) behind only Rolling Thunder. He took master Decoy and I got a 3rd pick Burial. That was pretty much his last chance to switch to black. He surely must have noticed how much good black was going through him to me, but he stuck by his red/white guns. And it worked for him -- he ended up making it to the final. The rest of the draft was amazing -- the very next pack is Coonce's and he opens to a Fevered Convulsions and a Reckless Spite. He takes pacifism. I take the Fevered and Nate takes his first black card -- Reckless Spite. He switches to black and I can't blame him because there did seem to be some amazing black available and he would get a crack at it before me for the middle third of the draft. (This strategy does net him a Living Death, but he lost in the first round.) I open my pack and take Mogg Fanatic, passing a Winds of Rath to Nate. My next pack gives me a first pick Skyshroud Vampire. When Pat Callahan (the other guy drafting red/black) opens his 2nd pack I'm going 6th and Pat takes something else over the Spontaneous Combustion. No one else can play it and the pack was decent, so it fell to me. And the NEXT time Callahan opens a pack (with me going third), he gets his 2nd Rolling Thunder, but I get a 2nd Skyshroud Vampire. This deck is probably the best deck I have ever drafted. I wish the Blood Pet was a Dauthi Slayer, but other than that this deck is amazing (and the Pet is underrated): Top 8 Deck: Pit Imp Blood Pet Clot Sliver Dauthi Horror x 2 Dauthi Slayer Diabolic Edict x 2 Fevered Convulsions Coercion Knight of Dusk Marsh Lurker Skyshroud Vampire x 2 Disturbed Burial x 2 Spontaneous Combustion Mogg Fanatic Mogg Raider Stone Rain Flowstone Giant Bottle Gnomes 11 x Swamp 7 x Mountain Sideboard cards: Boil, Stun, Giant Strength, Crown of Flames, Echo Chamber, Mogg Cannon, Emerald Medallion, Thalakos Lowlands, Broken Fall, Pincher Beetles, Heartwood Dryad x 2, Natural Spring, Propaganda, Counterspell, Dream Cache, Spell Blast, CoP: Red x 3, CoP: Black, Soltari Foot Soldier, Flickering Ward My first round opponent is black/green with the other Living Death and the other Fevered Convulsions. In game 1 I had the Combustion on the draw so I played Clot Sliver instead of a Shadow guy. He dropped two green things and then on his 4th turn decided to Enfeeble my Clot Sliver and come through for damage. I Combusted as a response and then started dropping my offense, including turn 5 Skyshroud Vampire. The Vampire only had to hit him twice ... In game 2 I just played a Mogg Raider, a shadow and a turn 5 Vampire. If he doesn't have Living Death, I just win. If he does, I can pitch my hand to the Vampire as a response (including the other vampire) and I still win. In the second round I played Derek Rank. He drafted red/green with Giants and Trolls and Elephants and the like. In game one I had my Stone Rain, but he cast Rampant Growth on turn 2. Ugg, I play Dauthi Horror. However, he failed to play a land on turn 3 so I blew up his only red. I Coerced his Fireslinger and he never really recovered. Death by Stone Rain. In game 2 he played mountain, forest, mountain as his first land. I Edicted away his turn 2 whatever and then blew up the forest. He groaned audibly. Turns out he had a hand full of 4cc fat. I, on the other hand, had drawn nothing but land, a Stone Rain, an Edict, and a Burial. No creatures. On turn 4 I drew and cast Fevered Convulsions. I proceeded to play land on each of the next 10 turns (14 total land drops in a row). I could put 3 -1/-1 counters per turn on his creatures once he recovered from the stone rain induced mana screw. It wasn't too hard to kill him once I finally did draw a creature. Derek requested that I give him the Convulsions after the final and I'm sure it's in many pieces scattered around Atlanta right now. So that put me in the finals against Bob Coonce. Coonce beat Dave Mills in the semi's to prevent the rematch that Dave seemed to really want and I would have found cool too (especially since I had Boil in my sideboard ;-)). Coonce played turn 2 Advance Scout, turn 3 Samite Healer so I assumed he didn't have a Fireslinger. I played turn 2 Slayer and instead of playing a Knight of Dusk or an Edict on turn 3, I summoned another Shadow and went into race mode. He put Fat Pants (Hero's Resolve) on something so he could race better and I was then able to coerce away his Kindle. I dropped turn 5 Vampire and the race looked pretty lopsided. I could actually have won a turn earlier than I did by discarded the Knight, burialing it (with buyback), and discarding it again, but I was in such control of the board that I guess I didn't think enough. Whatever, I won the next turn. I was a little bit worried about the games after sideboarding because I knew he had the one Light of Day at the table and I had no real answer for it other than Burial-Mogg Fanatic and fevered Convulsions for the win. Anyway, about this time Jeff Donais comes over, picks up Bob's deck, finds a card and tells Bob that this card was supposed to be in his sideboard. As a penalty, Bob lost the next game. Since I had already won game 1, that was the match. (I heard later than the card in question was a Disenchant and I also heard that Coonce may only have had 39 cards listed in the Used column of his decklist. Someone told me they saw Coonce play Disenchant in game 1 against Mills, so he probably wasn't trying to pull anything sneaky against my Fevered. Sounds like he just didn't count well.) Congrats to Bob for qualifying for the Pro Tour ... I think 4 or 5 of the top 8 were already qualified. After I won, I couldn't even leave because Turian had entered into a TeTeSh draft which he eventually won at 4am. We finally made it to Pittsburgh at 3am Monday night/Tuesday morning. Now I'm late for another NY practice draft, so I'll stop talking and see you guys in NY. As always, feel free to e-mail me with any comments or questions or whatever at rebst45@pitt.edu