Hello Hong Kong! Guess who’s back?
My wife and I touched down in Hong Kong roughly 3pm on a Thursday afternoon. It was barely 72 hours ago we were in the same airport for our transit from Vancouver to Hong Kong back to Kuala Lumpur. It’s been a long week. Physically and mentally exhausted but at the same time excited to hook up with the rest of the Decards boys for another weekend of great Magic.
The last time I was in Hong Kong was back 2013 for the Grand Prix as well. Didn’t get to do much sightseeing back then, so decided to hit the streets this time around. What you see is pretty much what you actually see on Cantonese TVB shows, old buildings ie flats with clothes hanging out of the windows, leaking air conditioning on the sidewalk and throngs of people everywhere doing their thing on a weekday afternoon. It’s summer time in Hong Kong and the heat was a scorching 38 degrees in the sun. You could feel the furnace blast outside and dashing back into the comfort of your air-conditioned hotel is the best feeling you kind of take for granted.
Friday (T-1 day before main event)
The team arrived roughly around noon and headed straight to the venue for some trials action. Jeffrey and Eugene were without full 2 byes and were readily armed for battle. Both Eugene “Urza” Tong and Jeff “the Mind Boggles” Yap decided to keep things simple and pilot mono-red aggro for the trials. Jeffrey didn’t make it very far as Siege Rhino came knocking once too many times and while his 4 copies of Roast was still having a barbeque in his sideboard. Eugene came much closer, rallying his red horde all the way to the finals before meeting the ice man of control himself, Shamsul Atibolan. No surprise Shamsul was piloting his go-to-deck, Esper control. No matter the block, no matter the set and no matter the format, you don’t see Shamsul with a different set of color combinations. This time Eugene was armed with the upperhand of piloting a fast aggro-deck. But Shamsul had seen this a thousand times before.
Kill this. Counter that. Kill more things. Gain some life.Dig Through Time.
“Oh hello Sorin. You look kinda solemn. Let me introduce you to Elspeth. Think you two make a fine couple.”
Good games.
So after all that, the team goes back without the byes in hand but we’re on our way to eat the most ridiculous steamboat ever. When I say ridiculous I mean – Why is there so many people cramped in a small lift lobby waiting for tables at 9pm on a Friday? Thankfully Jeff’s buddy Mike knew his way around, got us our table and the waiter presented us with a menu in Chinese. It’s semi buffet by the way, so since there was 11 of us, Jeff decided to just order TEN of everything on the menu. 10 Chicken, 10 pork, 10 fish, 10 squid, 10 fishballs, 10 meatballs, 10 scallops, 10 etc etc etc….. Drinks were also free flow, and I remembered Obama, Ron and Chye had around a dozen can of drinks EACH on the table when we started, but only like two or three when the dinner was over. I wonder what happened….
Saturday – GP Day 1My sealed pool was bad. In a format defined by two-drops I had only one which was Harbinger of Tides which doesn’t count as a two drop anyway. The deck was severely underpowered and would be a miracle if I got through the day. That miracle didn’t happen as I stumbled in certain key matches and flooded out certain others and also losing to better cards in better decks. Except for one where my opponents first five lands were Forests followed by Meteorite. Then it came – Cruel Revival, Lightning Javelin, Reave Soul……
The remaining Decards team weren’t fairing well too. All average pools were punished early on and even Wei Han’s bomb-laden deck was pushed to wire in the final round of Day one before qualifying for second day of play. He was the only one who survived the cut, a hairline improvement from our GP Singapore outing which placed ZERO competitors in Day two of competition.
It was the end of my personal two-week campaign which has been super exhausting with all that travelling. But the weekend highlight was yet to come…
Sunday – GP Day 2
Chye finished Day one unscathed at 9-0 recorded. He accomplished this feat a year a go in Taipei, which ironically was a Core set too. But he stumbled in Draft 1 and came in Top 9 for the tournament. He obviously didn’t want a repeat. Unlike the previous year, Chye had armed himself with tonnes of draft practice, much to the indirect practice he got while helping me prepare for the Pro Tour. Collectively the number of drafts Team Decards put together could roughly add up to the number Chye did all by himself.
So when he navigated himself to his first Grand Prix Top 8, it was clear who was the drafter to beat on the final table. For those who didn’t had the luxury of watching the master draft, his first few picks were in this order:
Joraga Invocation
Topan Freeblade
Suppression Bonds
Lightning Javelin
Alhammaret, High Arbiter
He even picked up a late Blightcaster and Starfield of Nyx, a possible archetype.
In Pack two, Pia and Kiran Naalar came knocking and all the enchantment plan got thrown out of the window. He followed by several mediocre picks aside from a Girapur Geargrafter. But in Pack three that’s where things started getting saucy as Chye picked up TWO Topan Freeblades and a Consul’s Lieutenant to spike his early curve. The two Grasp of the Hieromancers in pack one started to make a lot of sense now.
In the end, his final deck list here.
Now from the coverage we all knew he won. But what you didn’t read in the coverage was:
1. Quarterfinals Chye was stuck on four lands for ages and was starting to lose grip on a key game 1 which he should have won turns earlier. The final lethal turn, he drew the Mountain he needed and gently “plopped” it to the table and revealed his Chandra’s Fury for lethal. It was a sign of great things to come.
2. In the semi finals, his lone Topan (with two other Topans on table) armed with a Sigil of Valor start to edict his opponent’s board one by one. Ironically the Sigil, which normally not very good in a wide deck, almost didn’t make the cut and was supposed to be a Veteran’s Sidearm. Had it been the other way around, his opponents Nantuko Husk would have been out of control and Chye would be on the receiving end of the Abyss lock.
3. Finals…. The BEST deck on the table was not the one sitting opposite Chye. We did our scouting and the best deck with two Bonded Krasis, two Separatist Voidmage, Outland Collosus and a Woodland Bellower somehow got crushed in the semis by Chye’s finals RG opponent. Chye was not saying it, but I knew he felt the win was in his grasp.
4. While he trampled over in game 1, game 2 he took a risky line by burning his Suppression Bond early on a creature instead of saving for the opponents trump – an Embermaw Helion which said hello the next turn. But I did 20 drafts, Chye did 150 so I guess he knew what he was doing. The critical turn he decided to leave himself open to a pair of Titanic Growths which his opponent didn’t have and his opponent offered the handshake to a stunned Chye. Like literally stunned.
So we have our Champion. Malaysia’s Third Grand Prix Champion. Its pretty ironic as I was there and on the same team as Ryan Soh when he won the first GP KL in 1999, I was with Raymond Tan in the remote area of Kitakyushu when he locked it up in 2013 and now Chye winning it Hong Kong 2015. So if you want to be the next Grand Prix champion, have a look at the standings to see if I’m playing. If so, then your odds have just gone up by 0.1%.
Lastly some photos. The ones in the Wizards coverage are all fake. Fake smile, fake laugh. Chye really really really wanted one of these:
That’s it for my planeswalking in 2015. WMCQ season is coming and I’m gonna chill for the rest of the year. We got GP Kuala Lumpur next year and the team is headed to Tokyo next year to do it all again. Go Decards!
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