Welcome to a Pro-Tour New York Qualifer, Sealed Deck Tourney report!


Toronto Ontario - PT New York Qualifier Tournament Report
Mirage/Visions Sealed Deck For 7 Rounds of swiss.

Here is the deck I got stuck with, I was fairly certain I could make the top 8 but new that mana screw can happen and have seen people not make it with better decks so I was ready to make no mistakes.

1 Artifact:
Dragon Mask

6 Black:
Shadow Guildmage
Cadaverous Knight
Dark Banishing
Wake of Vultures
Skulking Ghost
Coercion

8 Green:
Jungle Patrol
Stampeding Wildebeests
Rampant Growth
Quiron Ranger
Warthog
King Cheetah
Jolrael's Centaur
Wild Elephant

8 Red:
Talruum Champion
Blistering Barrier
Kaervek's Torch
Rock Slide
Fireblast
Flare
Torrent of Lava
Spitting Earth

17 Land:
7 Green
6 Mountains
4 Swamps

I played with 17 lands plus a rampant growth.
The deck was 40 cards total, I always play exactly 40 cards in sealed. I think forcing yourself to use your best 22 cards + land gives you an advantage over someone who uses his best 25 cards plus land and ends up with a 45 card deck. This means he has 3 cards in his deck that are less than his best.

The 2 sideboard cards that I strongly considered adding to the main deck were Spider Climb and Fallen Askari. Both are great cards but were not as great nor as necessary in my particular deck. The last card I added was the Blistering Barrier instead of the 2 mentioned above. I figured that with all the red burn spells that I had I could win a drawn out game. For this reason I figured the wall was better than the askari in my deck. Also because I played light black and the Fallen Askari are only great as an early game card. The reason I chose Blistering Barrier over Spider Climb was because I had enough anti-flyer and instant speed removal spells that I didn't need to use Spider Climb.

Some of the combos that occured in my deck were:

- Talruum Champion's first strike combined with my guildmage or flare or direct damage. Dragon Mask makes this creature unstoppable, he won many games for me.

- My stampeding wildebeest combined with the instant speed casting of my King Cheetah during upkeep after my opponent thought he had killed all my green creatures.

- My Quiron Ranger combined with the pinging power of my guildmage. I could double ping a knight with 2 defense.

- Dragon Mask combined with King Cheetah. When I had a lot of free mana I could attack with King Cheetah and use Dragon Mask to make it 5/4, then he returns to my hand at the end of my turn. So during my opponents turn I could re-cast it and it would not have summoning sickness so I could attack as a 5/4 again during my next turn. Dragon mask turned out to be very useful. I won many games with it.

- Stampeding Wildebeest or Dragon Mask to kill thirst or pacifism or enfeeblement.

- Jungle Patrol and Wake of Vultures. His ability to make creatures is versatile. I had little opportunity to use the Jungle Patrol to make creatures though. I considered using to build up for a big torch but it was never really necessary.

I had a strong deck and used all of these combos and other interesting plays throughout the tourney.

Here are the opponents I played:
Round 1: Jamie Archlehin (can't make out his name) 2-0
Unlisted on the rankings.
I am not going into detail on the games because I don't remember well and also it wasn't constructed deck so the games would not seem interesting on paper. The list of combos above is basically the highlights.

Round 2: Michael Boal 2-1
#167 in sealed with 1792 points.
#2398 in standard with 1685 points.

Round 3: Steve Williams 2-1
Unlisted currently.

Round 4: Steven Wolfman 2-0
#1494 in sealed with 1676 points.
#1347 in standard with 1720 points.

At this point I was 4-0 matches so could intentionally draw the last 3 matches and make it into the final 8 I don't like people using the intentional draw rule and decided that I would play it out instead. It is a lot more fun to play good games against good opponents anyways.

Round 5: Reid Comrie 2-0
Unlisted on the rankings.

Colin Donaldson 2-1
#3202 in sealed with 1626 points.
#6350 in standard with 1612 points.
Colin asked me to draw after we started. I told him I don't really like intentional draws and would rather play it out. He ended up not making the final 8 and I kind of feel bad for not giving him the draw he wanted. Should I feel bad not for intentionally drawing? A lot of people at the tournament knew Colin and told me afterwards that he is a good guy. It is strange that so many say they hate the draw rule and yet I felt pressured to draw by a lot of the people I talked to about it.

Round 7: Anthony De La Torre 2-0 (Junior)
#3452 in type 2 with 1661 points (Anthony goes on to win the juniors today with his only loss all day being to me, Congratulations Anthony).

At 7-0 matches I finished with the top seed.

My friend Gary Wise finished second with 6-1. (Gary was letting us stay at his house like he always does when we go to Toronto)
6 people went 5-1-1 (all intentional drawing the last round).

This is the final 8 in order of rankings:

1. Mike Donais
2. Gary Wise
3. Mike Nykoluk
4. John Park
5. Gary Krakower
6. Ben Roth
7. Mike Voulgaris
8. Francis Leong


Final 8 Drafting Strategy and Deck:

My strategy was the same one that me and my brother had discussed for PT LA. My brother played in PT LA and did well with this strategy and encouraged me to use it today. He placed 53 overall, doing really well the first day but not as well the second day.

The strategy was to start with the colour that was strong in both mirage and visions and get a lot of the early medium cards in that colour so that the people around you are not interested in that colour when the bigger stronger cards show up in that colour. The colour that this works for is green. Here is why green is the colour that it works best for:
- Green requires 2 coloured mana for almost all of its strong cards and creatures. This means people have to invest in it a bit more.
- Green is strong in both mirage and strong in visions. No other colour is as strong in both.
- Lots of big solid creatures in green.
- Cards like creeping mold and elven cache and feral instinct round out the colour and are fairly common.
- Red is strong but only requires 1 coloured mana for many spells and the spells are so strong that people will take them without having invested in red.
- Some of the strongest gold cards are green.

My strategy ended up working perfectly for me.
Here is the green deck I drafted:

20 Green:
Preferred Selection
Jungle Wurm
Maro
Stampeding Wildebeest
Crash of Rhinos
Jolrael's Centaur
Locust Swarm
Wall of Roots
2 Stalking Tiger
2 Gibbering Hyenas
2 Elven Cache
2 King Cheetah
2 Feral Instinct
2 Emerald Charm

2 Gold:
Savage Twister
Jungle Troll

1 Red:
Burning Shield Askari

17 Land:
1 Mountain Valley
4 Mountains
12 Forests

I was playing with 17 lands plus a wall of roots in a 40 card deck. I had TWENTY green spells! I was virtually playing mono-green ( I love mono-green :) )

Some Sideboard cards that I considered putting in were Elephant Grass, Tremor, Juju Bubble, Mtenda Lion, Uktabi Faerie. I almost took out an emerald charm for one of these but it wasn't quite worth it. The emerald charm is the best charm in both sealed and constructed play. It allows me to untap any permanent (like a surprise blocker) or make a creature lose flying (I need some flying defense) or destroy a global enchantment (I saw 4 Gossamer Chains get drafted so I liked this).

My deck was possibly the strongest one drafted. I had all the good green creatures and the 2 charms 2 feral instinct and 1 savage twister to back it up.

My first round I was paired against Francis Lau, the other person that was playing green, he was sitting across from me so got a few green cards without interrupting me too much. He also had red and white in his deck.

The first game I casted a turn 4 Maro. He was 7/7 and stayed around 7/7 or 8/8 until he died. Before he died he killed a few throw-away blockers and then finally died to a double block by 2 big creatures. I elven cache him and cast him again. By this time I have a jungle wurm out also which I am using as a big blocker. The wurm is the only other card I cast to make sure my hand size stays high. Maro attack again at 8/8 and is blocked by a big creature and rockslided. I elven cache him again. Maro kills a few small creatures and eventually dies to a gang block killing several more creatures. At this point I have 8 cards in hand and my opponent has 0. I have a huge card advantage. I finish him off with the jungle wurm.

Game 2 he gets a great start casting things for 2, 3, 4, and 5 mana on turns 2, 3, 4, 5. The game end up pretty close but he wins.

Game 3 I had a lot of fun.
We had about equal sized creatures out but I had 2 feral instincts. I attacked with a 3/3 and he blocked with his 3/3. I feral instinct killing his and saving mine and I get to draw a card. I repeat it next turn with my other feral instinct. I then elven cache the feral instincts (both!) and continue to brutalize him gaining a 4 card advantage due to 4 castings of feral instinct. Even after he knew I had them he couldn't do anything about it. After gaining that huge advantage I finish him off with big meaty creatures.

My next round I was paired against the new guy to this type of draft, Mike Nikolauk. He had drafted a small phasing creature deck. He had a lot of small fast flyers. The first game I got mana screwed and never casted a spell as far as I remember. He won. I saw a lot of fairly small and relatively weak creatures come out and figured I could beat him because my creatures were much bigger plus I had a savage twister. The second game I got him down to 4 but he killed me with flyers before I could finish him with my 7/7 Maro. Emerald charms would have been really nice to untap my jolted guys or to make his flyers land, I was also hoping for a savage twister but never actually casted it the entire tournament.

I got a few mirage boosters or something for making it to the semi-finals. My friend Gary Wise went on to beat the small flying phasing creature deck and win the tournament. Congratulations Gary.


Mail Mike Donais