Team Pats Games GP Nashville Report

[Editor's Note: This was originally published on the Pat's Games website in November 2014 (maybe?). Sharing here for archival purposes.]

I was really looking forward to GP Nashville. The last Grand Prix I played in was almost a year ago at GP Dallas. This was the longest time I have gone between GPs since I moved back to Texas. Originally, the plan was for Haibing and me to team with Will Lowry once again, just like at GP San Jose. When a scheduling conflict came up for Will, we contacted the best player in Texas, Robert Berni, and he agreed to be the third player. There are a lot of different theories on who you should team with. Some people want to include players with varied play styles so that each deck has a dedicated pilot, while others say to play with your friends. My theory is to get two people that are better than me, so even if I lose, we could still win the round. Haibing is the best drafter in Texas, and no one is hotter than Berni right now, so this team met my criteria.

The travel to Nashville was uneventful. I had to bring my winter coat since it was much colder than in Houston. Berni arrived in just shorts and flip-flops, but claimed it was no big deal. I guess it was more important to him to pack light. We had dinner with one of the other Texas teams (Chris Mabry, Tony Ho, Nick Lavender), then did a quick draft before heading to bed for the evening. All together I think there were 6 or 7 teams representing the Lone Star State at the tournament, a much higher turnout that I expected. 

I really like sealed deck, probably more than any non-eternal format. Team sealed is usually just as good, if not better, but after doing several practice sealeds and building the pool at the GP, I think this team format might be worse than others. In theory, all 5 wedges should be equally represented, and in individual sealed this is close. As more packs are added to the pool, you start to see some common themes. Abzan is by far the best clan, and almost all of the teams we played against or talked to had an Abzan deck. These decks were usually base Black and Green, but often evenly split across the three colors. The clan tends to play out slow and grindy, so the aggressive white and green cards usually end up in the other two decks. This leads to White/Red aggro, with either blue or black splash, and a Temur deck than is mostly Blue and Green with red splash. I would say 75% of the pools I saw were built Abzan/Mardu/Temur or Abzan/Jeskai/Temur. The only Sultai cards I saw played were splashed into an Abzan deck to take advantage of the powerful blue delve spells. I can’t say for certain that all pools will split this way, but it is the impression I currently have.

We split our pool Abzan/Temur/Jeskai. I played the Abzan deck, which was unimpressive but not terrible. End Hostilities was the only bomb, but it had enough other removal and large enough creatures to play the long game fairly well. The mana was very great: nine non-basic lands made getting the ratios correct very easy. This was probably the worst thing about our sealed pool was that a majority of our lands only went into the one deck. The other two decks played seven non-basic lands combined. The best cards for me were Mardu Skullhunter and Rakshasa’s Secret. I chose to draw first several times against other Abzan decks to take advantage of all the card advantage created by these cards. Haibing played the Temur deck that included Savage Knuckleblade, Clever Impersonator, Rattleclaw Mystic, and two Sagu Mauler. It was missing early removal like Savage Punch, and lacked a way to break through like Roar of the Challenge or Barrage of Boulders. Berni played Jeskai that included the aggressive white cards that didn’t make it into the Abzan deck, and the majority of the red removal. The blue splash was for some morphs, Sage of the Inward Eye, and Jeskai Charm. The deck was fine, but nothing special. It was unfortunate that almost all our great cards ended up in the Temur deck, and our lack of mana fixing took away options from playing different combinations. The only other combination we looked at was BW, UR, and GU based decks. We did mis-build by a few cards. Suspension Field was in the Abzan deck, but should have gone into the Jeskai deck, that would have freed a red removal spell for the Temur deck. The Abzan deck has extra removal in the sideboard like Throttle and Rite of the Serpent that would have been just as good. The Temur deck also should have played at least one of the three Crippling Chill that we left in the sideboard. We chose to play two Force Away instead, but the format wasn’t as fast as we anticipated and the card that didn’t cost us card advantage would have been better.

Our matches were covered by Berni’s updates throughout the day. We were quickly in a 1-2 hole, needing to win out to make day 2. We finished the day at 5-4, well short of the goal. I think most of our opponents had better decks than us, except maybe round 1 and round 4. We played okay for the most part, but did mess up a few turns in round 3 that put us in the 1-2 hole. I was playing against a Temur deck with Sagu Mauler and Pearl Lake Ancient. I won game 1 by forcing him to bounce the Ancient and racing, but lost game 2 when Ancient raced my flying tokens from Abzan Ascendancy. Game 3 was very close. After I cleared the board with End Hostilities, he drew and played Sagu Mauler. At this point, life totals were 18-10 in my favor, and I had Alpine Grizzly in play. My hand was full of useless removal spells, but I drew a Wooly Loxodon that I played face down. On his turn, he attacked. With all the removal in my hand, I chose to take 6 damage, and very likely attack for lethal the next turn if he had follow up blockers. He had no play on his turn, but did have Crippling Chill on the Grizzly to stay alive. I attacked him to 4 life, and another attack from him put me to 6 life. A Force Away on my Loxodon kept him alive another turn, and when I chose to block only with the 6/7, the second Force Away killed me exactly. Blocking earlier would have worked out, but at the time I was worried about possible pump spell. I’m still not sure what the right play was, but I think not double-blocking on the last turn was definitely a mistake.

So even though the main event was a disappointment, the weekend was still a blast. That is the best thing about team events. They are tons of fun, win or lose. When you are winning at an individual event, you experience it alone, as most of your friends are probably not losing. Similarly, when you lose at an individual event, people will listen to your story, but they don’t really care. At a team event, you get to share in the thrill of victory, and commiserate in defeat. Combined this with two other players that are always ready to side draft, since you have to drop at the same time, and you get a recipe for a great weekend. The GP was very smoothly run. It was much smoother than the last team GP I attended. I was worried that the rounds would take forever as they often do at team events, but it moved at a reasonable enough pace. 

I had a great time at GP Nashville despite a poor finish. Thanks to Pat’s Games for sponsoring us, and to all the support we got from the people back home. Also thanks to Haibing Hu and Robert Berni for being awesome teammates.  Also congrats to Mabry-Lavender-Ho team for finishing in the money!