Michael Lampert
11/19/2009

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This last weekend Minneapolis hosted a Grand Prix, and I, along with about 1179 other players were in attendance, making it the third largest GP in the U.S. Hmmmm, maaaybe Wizards should think about hosting more Grand Prixs in the Midwest in the future; crazy thought, I know, but if my crazy calculations are correct, some of, if not the largest GPs in the U.S. have happened in the Midwestern region. You can call me crazy all you want, but I'll gladly fight for more Midwestern PTQs.

So yeah, there was this Grand Prix in Minneapolis last weekend, which happens to be about six hours from where I live, so you know what that means…..road trip!

The group of people I drove with hit the road early on so we could get there early and play in a grinder or two. Fortunately, I was not the person driving, so I got to Sleep for about 90% of the ride, but Jerret has my eternal gratitude for being such a nice guy and offering up his car for the weekend.

Now, the grinders didn't go so well, as I lost in the first rounds of both LCQ's I played in. In one of them, I had a retarded pool with like two Burst Lightning and two Disfigure amongst some other sweetness, but in the final game my opponent top decked Sky Ruin Drake like a champ (one of the few creatures I couldn't kill with the Burst Lightning that was sitting in my hand). He also would walk right into Marsh Casualties every game; playing about 4-5 x/2's, but I never saw one of my two Marsh Casualties in all three games, so I was pretty upset I had lost that one. In the next grinder, I had to play a GRw landfall deck which I thought could actually do pretty well since it had some fixing (2 Kazandu Refuge), acceleration (Heart Exploration) and some early defensive dudes to clog up the board (3 Oran-Rief Recluse, Grazing Gladeheart) so I could play Rampaging Baloths and landfall all over the opponent's face, but I got land screwed both games after mulling to 5. Apparently running 18 land just isn't enough sometimes. It should also be noted that during those two games I never saw a single Oran-Rief Recluse, which would've definitely helped stall things out until I could play my bigger dudes. That's Magic though unfortunately, sometimes the cards are in your favor and sometimes they're not.

After dropping out of two LCQs, we hung around the site until about 9:40. Most of our friends had finished with their events, so we started deliberating about where to eat. I had mentioned that I had never been to a Fogo De Chao before, and that there actually happened to be one located not too far from the site (about nine or blocks), so it was immediately decided that we would make our way to Fogo.

On the way, I couldn't help but imagine what Fogo would be like. All I knew was that I'd basically eat enough meat to explode or die, whichever came first.

What I was told could not prepare me for the madness that it really was. For starters, the place was extravagantly designed. The main room, in which we sat, seemed to kind of circle around a salad bar the likes of which I had never seen before in my life. Fresh fruits and vegetables of all kinds littered the bar, waiting for those foolish enough to eat salad to take some. Now, I don't mind an occasional salad, especially a good one, but I'm no idiot; I came to Fogo to eat meat, and as God as my witness I would devour enough meat to feed me for the next three days. I must say though, unless you're a Bottomless Pit or a vegetarian married to someone who eats meat, I don't really see how one could bring themselves to eat from the salad bar. You're not only wasting your money, but you're losing out on room for precious meat!

So, to save you all a very meaty discussion, we had all finally finished gorging ourselves and were heading back to the hotel when we ran into none other than Mike Bernat, Ben Swartz, and AJ Sacher. AJ was rather upset that he missed out on my first Fogo experience, as that seems to be his thing as of late (introducing people who had never been to Fogo before), but I kindly informed him that we would definitely make it to Fogo or another Brazilian Steak House together in the future. I also decided that I needed to walk my meal off a bit, so I parted ways with my original group to go hang out with AJ, Bernat, and Ben who were looking to find something to eat.

As a side note, Minneapolis is a pretty nice city, but man it was seriously lacking in places to eat compared to other cities of comparable size. It seemed like you were either stuck with fufu fancy stuck up restaurants, or your typical chain places like Chipotle and Panera.

Anyway, I'm sure you're sick of hearing about my non-magical experiences, so let's get into the real meat of this article, sealed discussion. This was the pool I was to work with for the GP:


1 Caravan Hurda
2 Cliff Threader
1 Day of Judgment
2 Journey to Nowhere
1 Kor Cartographer
1 Kor Duelist
2 Kor Sanctifier
1 Ondu Cleric
1 Nimbus Wings
1 Pillarfield Ox
1 Pitfall Trap
2 Sunspring Expedition

1 Cosi's Trickster
2 Gomazoa
1 Into the Roil
1 Lethargy Trap
1 Merfolk Wayfinder
2 Sky Ruin Drake
1 Spell Pierce
1 Sphinx of Lost Truths
1 Spreading Seas
2 Tempest Owl
1 Umara Raptor
1 Welkin Tern
2 Windrider Eel

1 Crypt Ripper
1 Giant Scorpion
1 Gruul Draz Vampire
1 Mindless Null
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Soul Stair Expedition
2 Surrakar Marauder
1 Vampire Hexmage
1 Vampire's Bite

2 Bladetusk Boar
1 Burst Lightning
1 Geyser Glider
1 Goblin Bushwhacker
1 Goblin Ruinblaster
1 Goblin Shortcutter
1 Magma Rift
1 Molten Ravager
1 Punishing Fire
1 Pyromancer Ascension
1 Seismic Shudder
1 Shatterskull Giant
2 Tuktuk Grunts
2 Unstable Footing

1 Baloth Woodcrasher
1 Beastmaster Ascension
1 Cobra Trap
1 Grazing Gladeheart
2 Harrow
1 Joraga Bard
1 Khalni Heart Expedition
1 Mold Shambler
1 Nissa's Chosen
2 Oran-Rief Survivalist
2 Quest for the Gemblades
1 Relic Crush
1 Tanglesap
1 Turntimber Basilisk
1 Territorial Baloth
1 Vastwood Gorger

1 Carnage Altar
1 Jwar Isle Refuge
1 Akoum Refuge
1 Crypt of Agadeem
1 Marsh Flats

Now, how I go about building sealed pools is pretty basic: I start by obviously laying out each color. Then, I sort through each color and make 3 piles: playable, maybe, and trash. After I've done this for each color, I start with the colors that impressed me most and lay them out to make a curve. From there, I try to fashion which colors combine best with others. Now, with this pool I was definitely attracted to red, green, and blue. White had some cards that definitely caught my eye, like dubs Journey and DoJ, but the color as a whole was lacking power, so I figured that if I ended up green, I could splash the Journeys, Pitfall Trap, and possibly DoJ.

Now, Green offered the most potential, thanks in part to the two Harrows. The Harrows would give me the ability to fix my mana to near perfection, plus they'd trigger the multiple landfall abilities that were found throughout my pool. As I previously stated, red and blue also caught my attention: blue because of the large number of evasive fliers, and red for its aggressiveness. I went about pairing the two colors with green to see which would work best, and at the time blue seemed to be the best because of all of the evasion and the possibility to deal tons of damage with Harrows and Windrider Eels. It definitely went down to the wire though, as I kept teetering between GRw and GUw. With threats of a game one loss booming over the speakerphone for those who wouldn't hand their sheets in, this is what I hastily marked down:

2 Gomazoa
1 Into the Roil
2 Sky Ruin Drake
1 Sphinx of Lost Truths
1 Umara Raptor
1 Welkin Tern
2 Windrider Eel
1 Baloth Woodcrasher
1 Grazing Gladeheart
2 Harrow
1 Mold Shambler
2 Oran-Rief Survivalist
1 Turntimber Basilisk
1 Territorial Baloth
1 Day of Judgment
2 Journey to Nowhere

1 Marsh Flats
2 Plains
9 Forest
6 Island

After handing in my deck list and returning to my pool, I knew I had already made a mistake by not adding the Nissa's Chosen to the list, but otherwise I had pretty good feelings about the deck. I felt the deck was decent enough that if I had 3 byes, I would definitely made day 2. As it were, I had lost the day before in a grinder with the second most ridiculous sealed pool I had ever received (the first being the sealed pool for the PTQ the next day, which we'll get to later) so I would have to battle it out from round 1.

Now, many people have explained how they feel going through the nitty gritty of limited matches is…for lack of better words, uninspiring. There isn't much to learn, except from tricks you pull off that others might not have originally known about (bouncing a Journey to Nowhere with Narrow Escape with its ability on the stack to permanently exile a creature). So, let's just cut to the chase shall we? I lost round 1. The guy played your atypical BR aggro deck and I couldn't deal with the start game 1. Game 2 I was able to slow him down and go for the throat with a kicked sphinx. In game 3, I had to mull to 5 and he just mowed me over. There might've been a questionable block in that game that could've gotten me another turn, but there wasn't much I could really do, especially when I saw the next card was a land.

After round 1, I quickly found AJ, who was enjoying his 3 round byes by testing his deck, and sat down with him and discussed my sealed pool. He quickly mentioned that I had mis-built, and that I definitely should've gone for red instead of blue. His reasoning was that blue was too slow, and in this format, creatures like Windrider Eels are terrible unless you've A. got creatures with big butts that can stay home, and B. are in a naturally aggressive deck. My deck was kind of lost somewhere between aggro and control, so he said the best plan was to cut the blue, add the red, and keep the white splash for the dubs Journeys since I had 2 Harrows anyway. After some bantering, this is what I decided I'd sideboard into following game 1:

1 Baloth Woodcrasher
1 Grazing Gladeheart
2 Harrow
1 Mold Shambler
2 Oran-Rief Survivalist
1 Turntimber Basilisk
1 Territorial Baloth
2 Journey to Nowhere
2 Bladetusk Boar
1 Burst Lightning
1 Geyser Glider
1 Goblin Ruinblaster
1 Goblin Shortcutter
1 Molten Ravager
1 Punishing Fire
1 Shatterskull Giant
2 Tuktuk Grunts

9 Forest
2 Plains
7 Mountain

After I had set up my post-board deck, I was off to battle. From there on, I rattled off 4 wins in a row, putting me at 4-1. The deck post change was surprisingly effective, and I really had to hand it to AJ for his suggestion. Like, if I had a Kraken Hatchling and a Shieldmate or some other cheap defensive creatures, I think my original plan could've worked, but because I lacked those critical cheap defensive critters, the GU plan was incapable of dealing with the aggressive draws these sealed decks could produce.

Unfortunately, things were not meant to be though, as after rattling off 4 wins in a row I dropped 2 matches. The matches were very close, and each one ended on game 3 with both of us at very low life, so I can really only blame myself for something I must've done wrong during the games that placed me in this situation. It was rather upsetting, since I was extremely comfortable with drafting and knew that if I had made it to day two I'd like my odds even more, but it just wasn't meant to be. After I dropped, I helped ggslive with their coverage of the event some, and found myself in extremely funny yet awkward situations, like sitting and chatting with Yuuya Watanabe, Kazuya Mitamura, and Shuuhei Nakamura as they tested standard. I have to say, not only are all three of these guys extremely nice, but Kazuya is freaking hilarious. A great example is when they were testing Jund vs. the Eldrazi deck, and Yuuya had just played a Nissa, which caused Kazuya to complain a bit. I looked at his hand, which contained among other things, a Bloodbraid Elf, and I told him that all he needed to do was cascade into Blightning. He nodded solemnly, played the elf, and the top card was Blightning. While I laughed, Kazuya made a “hiiiyaaa!” kind of sound, while Yuuya pouted and binned the planeswalker + 2 cards.

After coverage for the day was over, most of my friends decided to go to Fogo de Chao, while those of us who had already gone the night before decided to hit up this English pub closer to the site. The place definitely wasn't terrible, although their prices were a bit high. There definitely were some attractive women there though, which for some odd reason shocked me because it was Minneapolis, and to me Minneapolis kind of seems in the middle of nowhere. I definitely do not mean to offend any Minnesotans out there, it's just I'm a Chicago native, so I tend to think places like Minneapolis are just large towns when in fact they are quite the opposite. City comparison aside, after dinner I went back to the hotel and debated on whether I'd play in the PTQ or not the next day. I figured I'd wake up tomorrow with time to make that decision or not.

It was about 7:45am when I was jabbed awake by… I can't really remember who since I was too tired to really remember much of anything. In fact, I've never really gotten along with mornings. After about five or so minutes of lying in bed and debating whether I'd PTQ or not, I finally decided I'd just man up and play.

Of course, on the way down I was greeted in the elevator once again by Yuuya Watanabe, who I once again wished luck on his day two run. After downing some breakfast of the continental variety, I made my way to the site and registered for what would be a rather small PTQ compared to most PTQs that follow day 1 of the GP (somewhere in the ballpark of 240).

After opening a rather hilarious pool (double Halo Hunter plus other black goodies) I got passed this gem of a pile (and I honestly do mean a gem, as under any normal circumstances this pool should've top 8'd):

1 Conqueror's Pledge
1 Journey to Nowhere
1 Kor Duelist
1 Kor Hookmaster
1 Narrow Escape
1 Noble Vestige
1 Ondu Cleric
1 Pillarfield Ox
1 Shieldmate's Blessing
1 Sunspring Expedition

3 Cancel
1 Ior Ruin Expedition
1 Lethargy Trap
1 Seascape Aerialist
1 Sphinx of Jwar Isle
1 Summoner's Bane
1 Umara Raptor
1 Whiplash Trap
1 Windrider Eel

1 Bog Tatters
1 Desecrated Earth
1 Giant Scorpion
2 Grim Discovery
2 Hagra Crocodile
1 Mire Blight
1 Quest for the Gravelord
2 Surrakar Marauder
1 Vampire Hexmage
1 Vampire Lacerator
2 Vampire Nighthawk ***

2 Demolish
1 Electropotence
2 Goblin Bushwhacker
1 Goblin Ruinblaster
1 Goblin Shortcutter
1 Hellkite Charger
1 Inferno Trap
1 Molten Ravager
2 Murasa Pyromancer
1 Ruinous Minotaur
1 Seismic Shudder
1 Shatterskull Giant
2 Slaughter Cry
1 Spire Barrage
1 Torch Slinger
1 Tuktuk Grunts

1 Baloth Cage Trap
1 Beast Hunt
1 Cobra Trap
1 Frontier Guide
1 Gigantiform
2 Joraga Bard
1 Nissa's Chosen
2 Oran-Rief Recluse
1 Primal Bellow
2 Savage Silhoutte
1 Scythe Tiger
1 Territorial Baloth
1 Zendikar Farguide

1 Hedron Scrabbler
3 Stonework Puma
1 Trailblazer's Boots
1 Trusty Machete

1 Akoum Refuge
1 Kazandu Refuge
1 Misty Rainforest
2 Teetering Peaks

I'll post my deck later, as I want to see and hear peoples' responses to the list and how they'd go about building it (I personally went BR), but I thought this was pretty close to the nuts. I had plentiful black and red cards, I had some of the best early aggressive drops you can get in the archetype (dubs Surrakar), plus, let us not forget two, count them TWO Vampire Nighthawk and a Hellkite Charger, as if all of that wasn't enough to make you scream bloody murder.

Round 1 I lost to a nice fellow who knew what he was doing, so I was fine when he killed me turn 5 on game 3. How might you ask does one kill someone with double Nighthawk to stall the game early on by turn 5? Turn 1 Trusty Machete, turn 2 Cliffthreader, turn 3 Kor Outfitter equipping the Machete to the Threader and taking me to 16, turn 4 playing Journey to Nowhere on my Vampire Nighthawk I had just cast, and then turn 5 Windborne Charging his two dudes over my Giant Scorpion. Sometimes people, you have the nuts, and there's nothing you can do about it. I understand that, and I didn't let it bother me that much, although I was rather upset about the fact that I was now 0-1 and would basically have to win 8 rounds in a row to top 8. It didn't seem too hard though, especially with the deck.

That was until round two, when my opponent played a meaningless turn 3 duder, turn 4 Kor Cartographer, turn 5 Conqueror's Pledge, turn 6 Beastmaster's Ascension...really? Like, did I really just lose to a guy like that who, on top of laying out the nuts, had little to no idea of what he was doing because he stopped to read almost every card I played? I smashed him game 2, but in game 3 we came down to a stalled situation. He had Shepherd of the Lost in play, while I had my two Nighthawks. He obviously couldn't attack with the shepherd, so we both kind of stared at each other awkwardly while I was looking for a removal spell (which I still had not seen in any of our three games yet). He draws, plays the Turntimber Basilisk he had just drawn, and passes the turn again. At this point, I'm fairly sure I'm going to lose one of my Nighthawks as a result because he obviously had a land based on how he was fiddling with his hand, and I was fully prepared for the loss, as I had boarded in a Grim Discovery to return a Nighthawk for such situations. What I didn't expect though, was for him to rip a fetch land, thus forcing both my Nighthawks to block. Now this made me pretty upset, but combine that with the fact that he was at 10 life and I was 1 red Mana Short of casting the Hellkite and never saw it put me on tilt.

Now, I didn't act like an ******* to the guy, I simply wished him luck as he'd need it since his deck was pretty sub-par compared to what usually carries someone to the top 8, but for some reason I just couldn't get over this massive tilt that had taken over me. So I went 0-2 and dropped from a PTQ I never would've in a million years imagined I'd 0-2. The rest of the day was pretty surreal, as I randomly decided to play in a side event draft to see if it was me or fate that wanted me dead. I drafted a pretty solid BR deck, which got succinctly rolled over by dude with 5 Steppe Lynx.dec.

There was definitely a lot to take away from this Grand Prix for me. For starters, I need to think about where I am as a Magic player, and if I really do want to take the next step I'm going to have to work a lot harder than I have been lately. Sealed might generate some retarded pools, but I saw my friend Jerret go 5-0 with a pretty bad sealed pool during the Gran Prix until he had to face Cedric (whose pool was just insane) and then drop 2 more rounds to random play mistakes and just overall better decks. You can definitely succeed in this format with a mediocre pool, but you have to play at the top of your game. I also need to learn to control my Temper when it comes to losing to nuts draws like I did during the PTQ. My losses in the GP were for the most part most likely my fault, so I'm willing to take the blame there, but there was little I could've done in the PTQ to change my position. I just need to learn to take deep breaths, calm myself, and forget about the incident as hard as that may seem.

Really, if there's anything to take away from this article, it's learning how to control your Temper. Once you reach the stage in your career as a player where you're trying to take your abilities to the next level, bad beats can really get under your skin and disrupt your ability to think and play clearly. At the end of the day, you have to remember that it's just a game, and like any game, you've got your good days and your bad days. I definitely still have some learning to do if I want to really reach the pro tour, and as of right now, I'm willing to do what it takes. Will I a week from now though?