Nicolas Vanderhallen Reports: GP Warsaw

Our very own Nicolas Vanderhallen did very well on the Grand Prix in Warsaw. He made it to the top-8. We hereby present you his detailed report of his Warsaw endeavours.

 

Day 1 (Saturday)

After a quick breakfast in our hotel,  we walked towards the tournament venue, leading us through the forgotten outskirts of Warsaw. Once arrived and meeting up with all the fellow Belgians I started dreaming about a monster Sealed pool, a feeling many magic players will be familiar with. I can’t say I was overly excited by my card pool at first sight, but when I was done building my deck I saw the potential it held. I ended up with a U/G deck that most of all stood out by its perfect curve, which in this format is the most important thing to achieve. The key cards in my deck were Fated Intervention, Noble Quarry, Wavecrash Triton, Nessian Game Warden and 2 bounce spells. I also played one copy of Thassa, God of the Sea which was solely an enchantment but I felt that giving unblockability to my big green creatures would come in handy. I handed in my decklist and met up with the other Belgic Magic players to play some games with my deck. The more games I played, the more I realized how synergistic my deck really was and I felt confident about reaching day 2, although I did not have unbeatable-nut-draw potential.

I will now try to cover some key rounds, my most difficult games and some interesting board states since I don’t remember the details of every single game which I’m sure you can understand.

Round 4 (current record 3-0): I played against a very strong W/B heroic deck full with cheap creatures, 2 hopeful eidolon  (which in my opinion is even better than wingsteed rider sometimes) and Dictate of heliod. The latter beat me in both games 1 and 3 because a permanent overrun is very hard to cope with, especially at instant speed. The games were very one-sided and he also finished the day with an 8 – 1 record. At this point I was 3 - 1 and I started to fear my deck maybe was too fair.

Round 8 (current record 6 -1): This was my win-and-in for day 2 and it was one of my most difficult and interesting matches. My opponent was playing a W/B deck again. His average card quality wasn’t very high but he had some very strong limited bombs like king macar and the almost unbeatable dictate of erebos. I have to say my opponent could have won the game if he played better but the complexity of the board states throughout the games were no joke. During game 1 he had the following boardstate at some point:

 

 

I declared attack and he used his warden to tap my wavecrash triton not realizing he could have tapped his own macar at the end of turn since his life total was high enough not to die in a single swing for sure. Since he had dictate of erebos on the battlefield he was pretty convinced he would win the war of attrition and this caused him to lose focus. I attacked with my 4/5 trying to bait him to attack me next turn with his king macar to get his inspired going. With savage surge in my hand I blew him out by locking his warden and blocking the macar. I sacrificed my irrelevant creature and he played two 2-drop creatures ready to chump and make me lose all my guys. I punished him even more next turns by targeting my wavecrash triton 3 times to clear the way for my guys to finish him off. The look on his face was priceless because he realized his lack of focus made him lose the game.

 

Game 2 he put up the fences with nyx-fleece ram and Grim guardian. I still got some damage through with my army of 3/3’s and a 4/5 and he stabilized around about 12 life. When he passed the turn with 5 open mana a couple of turns later I of course knew what was up and stopped attacking. He played dictate of Erebos and a stand-off occurred. I had rise of the eagles in my hand with only a single island on the battlefield. I kept attacking in such a way he could never profitably block to use his dictate of Erebos, which was a difficult task to achieve.

Once I drew my second blue source 3 turns later I summoned 2 bird tokens and saw Thassa, god of the sea on top of my deck with the scry-ability. Two turns later he died to my alpha swing of unblockable damage and I was the first Belgian to secure day 2.

Round 9 was a free win since my opponent barely cast any spells and I curved out like a true boss. I went to cheer for Maxime Heylen and Evgeny Postov who both won their matches and secured day 2 for themselves as well.

Having an 8 - 1 record was exactly what I was aiming for and I was very enthusiastic about my chances to go home with some juicy money. We gathered up a party of 8 Belgians and went to eat and celebrate in the Hard-rock Café, where we had a great time. Just after midnight I went to sleep to make sure I was well rested for drafting.

 

Day 2 (Sunday)

Once I arrived at the venue I saw that I was in 10th position with very good tiebreakers and this is when I realized I could make it to top 8 if I didn't screw up and followed the general guidelines I set up for myself about drafting this format. People kept asking me what I thought was the best archetype to draft and my answer was very clearly B/R aggressive decks.

Draft nr. 1: Willing to try and force B/R I opened my first pack and saw the red mythic Prophetic Flamespeaker which I of course slammed down. I got handed Athreos, God of Passage in the next pack together with nightmarish end. Since I feel black cheap removal is so important I took it and passed up on Athreos. From there on I just got handed tons of removal and had to pick cheap creatures over strong spells to end up with a B/R deck that in my opinion was the most powerful deck I had ever drafted in the format. The next 3 rounds definitely proved my point and I went 3-0 with 6-0 in games even winning games were I never hit a third land drop. There is a picture of the deck I drafted below:

 

Draft nr. 2: Going into the second draft I was in third position with a 12-1 record. I knew I only had to win one more game to draw my way into Top 8. I was drafting at the feature table passing cards to Ivan floch. I opened up a very weak pack and first picked Sightless brawler, a card I was very unhappy to play and also a color I tried to avoid. Second pick I took Cloaked siren followed up by a third pick Crystalline nautilus. At this point I was hoping I could maybe draft a W/U tempo deck which is also very good if you get all the pieces but I quickly realized I wasn't getting any good white or red cards from my right. 4th pick I looked at a pack with all very decent black cards and I went for felhide petrifier, which is outstanding in my opinion. When I got handed a gnarled scarhide 6th pick I knew a Black aggressive strategy was wide open and locked myself in for drafting in that direction. The second pack was significantly worse than the first one since Ivan Floch also was in dimir colors and took some important cards away from my strategy, but I still got my hands on cards like asphyxiate, necrobite, nyxborn triton, etc.. In the theros booster things went my way again with a very late black ordeal and shipwreck singer. Floch must have been very unhappy since I can’t remember passing him any playable black or blue cards. The deck I ended up registering is pictured below:

 

 

Round 13 (record 12-1): This is my win-and-in for the top 8 and I was playing in the feature area against Javier Dominguez who later on lost the finals of the top 8. I had to play my biggest enemy of the weekend, W/B. His deck was extremely defensive as many W/B-decks end up being. Game one became a race between my 4/3 flyer and his Herald of torment. When he played a fate unraveler a couple of turns later and enchanted his herald with chosen by heliod he held back his forces realizing he would lose the race. Kiora’s dismissal into several intimidate triggers from my 4/2 constellation creature allowed me to force through the necessary damage to win game one. Game two isn’t even worth mentioning since he curved 0/5 sheep, into grim guardian into fate unraveler while I stumbled and drew too many lands. Game three was far more close and we came down to racing each other again which I was sure to win if not for his hopeful eidolon that he slowplayed the whole game and catched me completely by surprise with. In hindsight I could have played differently at several occasions which probably might have won me the game but it is still hard to say since I hadn’t seen him play hopeful eidolon in the previous 2 games. This meant I had to win my next round or Top 8 would no longer be a possibility.

Round 14 (record 12 – 2): At this point I was in 8th position, which meant this was my Game of truth. I played against a swedish girl piloting a W/R aggressive deck who won her first round. The games however were never even close since a turn 2 brain maggot in each of the games made me look at her hand and take her only combat trick both times after which my superior creatures easily secured both games and won me the match. 13 - 2 got me into 5th position so I took a small calculated risk drawing my way into top 8! It was still very nerf wrecking until the top-8 announcement but the cheers from my fellow Belgians certainly made up for that !

Top 8 draft: The most important draft in my career. Winning the quarters would mean a spot for pro tour M15 in Atlanta and also taking the lead in the race for WMC-captain for Belgium. Anxiously I opened my first pack and saw a king macar as a solid card in my favourite archetype, black aggressive decks. I followed it up with a second pick golden hind in a very weak pack over-all but I feel the green mana accelator with 2 power is just an enormous powerhouse. Third pick I hesitated since I had the choice of locking myself in golgari with nyx weaver or taking another monocolored card. Since I felt no other cards in the pack were stronger then the very solid spider I went for it. I got partially rewarded since green was very open on the table (the only 2 green decks were mine and the eventual winner's) and I got cards like font of fertility, pheres-band tomperhoof (2x) and oakheart dryads relatively late. My second pack started great by opening bile blight and getting passed fated intervention which has been an all-star for me during day 1 after which I got passed some quality black cards like servant of tymaret and 2 necrobites. The theros booster was probably the most kind to me and proof that I read the signals perfectly. I opened a pack with erebos’ emissary as the only G/B card but got passed bow of nylea which of course made me very happy. At that point I had no real 2 drops beside golden hind but then I received sylvan caryatid which was exactly what I needed. I even got a 2/1 on the wheel and picked up 2 nylea’s disciple which was great since my deck was heavily green and would be a great way to catch-up if i came out of the gates too slow. There is a picture of the deck I drafted below :

 

 

Quarterfinals: I had to play against Fabrizio Anteri who probably had the best deck of the entire pod. He was the other green drafter at the table and he had also picked 3 rares from the theros pack. This meant at least 6 green rares had been opened up in the final pack, beating all odds.

Game one: He led with swordwise centaur into ordeal of nylea making me take 9 damage before I could kill the centaur by blocking with my servant of tymaret and casting necrobite on it. He already had 7 mana available next turn and he played a chorus of the tides. I drew nessian asp and decided to cast it hoping to stabilize the board. He played his banishing light (he splashed white for this card and hopeful eidolon) and I felt the coast was clear for bow of nylea to take over the game. I untapped with 5 mana available, cast my bow and immediately activated it to kill his flier because he only had one blue mana open. But when he wasted an arial formation to save his flier for this turn I knew bad stuff was coming. He untapped and bestowed his flier with boon satyr which was too much for me to handle and on top of that he shuffled my bow of nylea back into my deck with unravel the Aether. He had all the perfect tempo plays to win game 1 and I felt like I played it exactly as I should have done.

Game two: I tried to stay calm and looked at destructive revelry in my sideboard. I already had a mountain ready to splash this card since I would need instant speed removal for banishing light and boon satyr to trick him. Being on the play I also sided in desecration plague because I felt the land destruction clause could be useful against his 2 color deck with a white splash. He already showed he was willing to fetch his white source early on with font of fertility; so destroying that would perhaps cripple him. This match he had a great start again with one of his 5 mana accelerators but servant of tymaret was able to block his early creatures. I then noticed he only played 1 island and 3 forests and decided to take a risk by not advancing my board but destroying his blue source, since I figured most of his tricks were blue and would be still in his hand. This made me take some damage but I would still be at 10 life and he had 5 blue cards in hand he couldn’t cast. I was stuck at 4 lands and faced a big army of heroic creatures and had to make hard decisions every turn. A full detailed analysis of the game would be too long but I took the game some turns later with noble quarry and bow nylea giving the quarry deathtouch, wiping most of his board.

 

Game three: This was probably the most important game I ever played in my life. Winning this game would mean a qualification for the Pro Tour and also the spot as captain of the Belgian team on the World magic Cup. Being on the draw I sided out my land destruction and replaced it with mortal’s resolve. My opening hand showed bile blight, bow of nylea, nylea’s disciple, 2 forest and 2 swamps. I figured that if he didn’t draw a way to kill my bow this game would be mine. Unfortunately that wasn’t even necessary for him. He opened with golden hind turn 2 and no island in play (he always sandbagged his island till turn 3 so this was no tell for me) which I immediately bile blighted. Turn 3 he played his 2nd accelerator (kiora’s follower) followed by a turn 4 chorus of the tides. I cast my bow of nylea on 4 so I would gain 2 more life from nylea’s disciple. He untapped and immediately bestowed his flyer with boon satyr dealing me 7 painful damage. I still had hopes of surviving since I played my 2/3 reach and left 2 mana open to shoot 2 damage at his airforce to kill it. When next turn he cast a 5/5 haste mistcutter hydra I knew my dreams were shattered. His draw had so many haste damage (boon satyr and the hydra) that 3 life each turn from my bow was completely irrelevant. I desperately cast nylea's disciple to go up to 9 life next turn but he had another nyxborn wolf to bestow and kill me. I was defeated…

I stayed at the table for a couple of minutes wishing my opponent Fabrizio the best of luck since his deck was completely unbeatable and looked up at the Belgic magic crew to see a lot of disappointed but also proud faces. Although I really believed I could have taken the trophy home I had to postpone my first Grand Prix victory. When I look back on my GP now I can only be happy with what I have accomplished and be proud of what a healthy and constructive community Belgic magic has become in such a short amount of time. I believe we can achieve big things in the future and I will do my very best to play an important role in this matter.

 

I hope you all enjoyed this very extensive and detailed report of my GP and invite you all to join our community and crash the European GP’s!

 

Thanks again for all the support and see you all at the next tournament!

Nicolas Vanderhallen