October 2013 - In a span of two weeks, I travelled 4 countries, travelled 16,000 miles (KL to Paris to Dublin to London and back to KL followed by Hong Kong a day later) for a Pro Tour and a Grand Prix. Back home empty handed but was a great trip for my first pro tour in more than a decade and meeting up old friends and travelling to see some iconic things.
July / August 2015 - This year also in a span of two weeks, I decided to best that record and travelled almost 20,000 miles (KL – Vancouver, via Hong Kong and back to KL and again to Hong Kong two days later), played a Pro Tour and a Grand Prix, and once again came back empty handed besides boatloads of experience and fun. But this time around, things were slightly special….
If you’re hoping for a tournament report or match analysis, you’ve come to the wrong article. Magic is such a boring game to talk about failed techs and demoralizing defeats. This article is about adventure…. with a sweet ending to the tale.
Quick recap, I was travelling to the PT with my wife, teammate (and Malaysian captain) Raymond Tan, GP Shanghai finalist Dev Singh and we’re meeting up Suripat Maikhu, who also top 4 the RPTQ in Sparta. My previous article on the Malaysian crew here.
So basically after the release of Magic Origins, I had roughly twelve days to prepare for the Pro Tour. Local hero Chye (aka Jhun on MTGO) agreed to help me prepare for the event. It was a no brainer to once again seek for his wisdom as he determined the 75 I played for the PPTQ which qualified me to the RPTQ and once again designed the deck I used to qualify for the Pro Tour. Fast forwarding all the grueling testing analysis, we basically decided that every brew needed to beat BOTH Green Red Devotion and Abzan Control to be even considered worthy of the journey. Within the first week, the field was narrowed down to be between the two staple builds, Chye’s brew on Goble-lisk and my finely tuned UB Control. To be honest, I was very fond of the control deck. My match wins were like 80% and this was against tier ones! But my mentor constantly pounded me that control was risky (and after watching Fireball Pantheon get wrecked in the PT) I pushed the deck aside for a more reliable Devotion strategy. The deck was awesome. It was fluid. It was explosive. It was also…… boring. Imagine watching a cheerleading set. It looked awesome from a spectator point of view. It probably is fun doing it for the first couple of times. But when you put in sixty to seventy repetitions in a span of 6 days, things can be rather dull. But that was my weapon of choice and all it was left was finetuning of the sideboard before the PT.
(A million apologies that can’t share my final deck list now, as we’re preparing for WMCQ)
What about draft? Here’s a tip for all you Pro Tour aspirants. Draft a lot. And I mean a lot. There is never enough drafting you can do in a short span of time. I set myself a realistic target of ten drafts before the Pro Tour. That’s like 10 short of the minimum as recommended by Chye. What’s interesting was Chye did walkthrough of several MTGO drafts he did which I found extremely helpful. Here was a screenshot of our conversation just 4 days before the PT:
That’s a lot of work to cram within three days!!
So my adventure began on July 29th onboard sweet Cathay Pacific Premium Economy flight for a grueling 20 hour journey to Vancouver. We had a 3 hour layover in Hong Kong of which Ray and I jammed in a few games in between ridiculously expensive bowl of Klang Bak Kut Teh noodles in the airport (HKD78 per bowl go figure).
By the time we got to Vancouver City it was almost 3pm and Dev was spamming my phone asking where we were. It was a 15minute walk from the train station to the Airb&b apartment. My landmark Starbucks at the corner was hopeless as there was a Starbucks at EVERY corner! We finally checked in and got settled down to our crib for the next four days.
That night Dev, Ray and myself got a lot of testing done. Quick recap what happened:
1. Dev managed to “convince” Ray not to play Abzan Rally
2. Exquisite Firecraft does not belong into RG Dragons
3. Abzan Rally can’t play fair game vs GR Devotion
4. Atarka Command is not an answer to Languish
5. Ugin still beats everything
The next day, I took my wife out to celebrate her birthday. It’s one of those rare occasions that one gets to celebrate a birthday miles from home. I celebrated my birthday in Shanghai last year and this year, I decided to take my wife out for a nice meal in the famous Granville Island and check out the Summer farmer’s market. For berry lovers feast your eyes….
We also got to taste the only locally available Sockeye Salmon. Sockeye what??
Its this little fella:
After lunch, we took a short walk long the docks and got on to a short boat ride on the Aquabus…..
….Oops I meant this one….
And got sweet views of the Vancouver skycrapers from the river. Vancouver was indeed a lovely city…..
Back at Pro Tour house…..
Suripat had joined us and brought along his sweet Sultai Delve brew which ran a full set of Gather the Pack, Satyr Wayfinder and Commune with the Gods for a ridiculous consistent turn 3 Tasigur or Gurmag Angler. Dev and Ray battled many games with Suripat. The result?
1. Ray binned Abzan Rally for good
2. Dev morphed his deck into RG dragons less 2 Thunderbreaks for 2 main deck Xenagos and added Flamewake Phoenix in the sideboard…. And changed up everything back again hours later.
3. GR devotion was 50/50 vs Sultai. No deck can beat GR’s nut draw and Sultai’s “fair” draw of turn 3 Tasigur was still beatable.
We headed to the venue around 6pm for registration check-in followed by a pre-pro tour meal at a random Greek restaurant called Scoozies. I really need to shout-out to Dev for his excellent choice of restaurants during the trip. Scoozies was the first which served the BEST calamari with Greek Tzatziki sauce. Spirits were high and everyone was all set upcoming battle 12 hours later.
Everyone feeling relaxed before the big day, especially the "BOSS"
7am the next day, I was awaken by the sound of a carbonated “pop!”. It was Suripat. He had just cracked a can of coke for his morning Triple C fix = Coke + Caffeine + Cigarette. I joined him at the balcony of our apartment to a cool 15 degree morning breeze and we enjoyed the few serene calms moments before the storm ahead.
Game time. We were all excited. I personally had good sleep. Ray too as he didn’t need to endure the sounds of roaring train from his roomie (as he did the night before) mainly due to Dev couldn’t get any sleep at all. I guess its normal to be overly excited for your first ever Pro Tour.
Quick recap of our first day of play:
1. We each went 2-1 in our draft (Suripat 1-2).
2. I drafted mono blue when no one else wanted blue and decided to pass me Alhammaret, High Arbiter pack 1 pick 6 and followed by a Sigiled starfish pick 7 – Hallelujah!
3. Dev’s first draft was actually very good – #quintonwaswrongaboutmydrafting
4. Ray, playing for 3-0 curved into Priest of the Blood Rite but his 5/5 demon succumbed to an Act of Treason and fought for the wrong side and killed its master. The demon token got shredded into 10 pieces after the match.
5. I started 3-0 constructed, but went 0-2 in final 2 matches.
6. Ray “God’s Willing” his entire way but Makahito Mihara showed him Chord of Calling for Sidisi’s Faithful after Ray protection for green and black to attack for lethal. Mihara and his bag of tricks never gets old.
7. Dev keeps lighting up his opponents from his Flamewake Phoenix tech out of the sideboard. Well done….
8. Raymond finished 6-2 while Dev and myself ended 5-3 after day 1, except for Suripat who ended 3-5 and had his facebook trolled – “Siege Mastodon”; still within “Roast range”
After a great day 1, we decided to pub-hop for some local pub food but I guess the locals don’t quite give a crap about several scrawny but hungry looking Asians and a burly “Baayi” who are exhausted and just wanna get some food!!! But then again, in Dev we trust and he didn’t let us down by recommending a great burger joint called the White Spot.
PM – “Congrats Dev for great Day one. As part of our “tradition”, you’re buying dinner tonight.”
Dev – “What tradition? Since when?”
PM – “Since now. New tradition.”
Dev – “Aiyoh, spend you all back home-lah. Roti Chanai ok?”
PM – “So that’s what your first Pro Tour Day 2 is worth – a roti chanai. THANKS DEV”
For your info, Dev arrived on Monday, which was roughly two full days before us, but it was as though he had tasted the whole of Vancouver and knew which spots were great and which were not (PS: Japadog is a con. Stay away). Anyway, back to the White Spot and its great burgers. While mine was the modest “Legendary burger” which is basically a simple juicy patty and build-your-own burger style, Dev took the top spot with White Spots #1 Bacon Cheddar BIGGER Burger with Poutine (WIKI: a Canadian dish, originating in the province of Quebec, made with french fries and cheese curds topped with a light brown gravy-like sauce). Game over for Day 1.
My "Not-so Legendary-looking" Burger. But it tasted awesome!
Day 2 of the Pro Tour. Exhausted but with similar high hopes the Malaysian crew charged into Draft #2. Results? Malaysia 2 Rest of World 7. Not to belittle Ray, but his 0-3 draft looked like this:
If Ray can 0-3 with the above, means Magic is REALLY a hard game
Moving along to Standard, things didn’t get much better for Dev and myself. Both our decks didn’t get much going and we ended with losing standard records. Here’s a quick recap:
Me and Gerry T. In two games I drew 3 lands and play 5 spells. Gerry played a lot of lands and 25 spells. Guess who won?
1. I played Gerry Thompson (GR devotion mirror) and he “Roasted” my Rattleclaw Mystic on turn 2, never drew land #3. He then tells me the deck sucks and he didn’t like it. He finished so close to Top 8 and now he writes an article about GR Devotion post GP San Diego on how great devotion is. What a scum…..
2. Raymond played Gerry Thompson and Heroic his way to victory. Vengeance is sweeeeeet!
3. Round 4 of Day 1 I played Cash Turner on Mardu Dragons. When I beat him off a top-decked Ugin, his face turned pale like a deer facing headlights. On Day 2 I caught glimpse of Cash after he got demolished by Paul Jackson on GR devotion as well. He sat there wondering what was the number plate on the Dragonlord Atarka that hit him a second time.
4. In a strange twist, it was Pat Chapin who went over to Cash like 10 minutes later and asked Cash if he was okay. I assumed he offered words of encouragement to the first-time pro tour player.
5. Cash crushed Dev the next round.
Ray finished in the money but more importantly, locked his captaincy for the World Championships in Barcelona. So that concludes the Malaysian Pro Tour campaign. Not the flashy ending of which I was hoping to report but wait…. We got part 2!
Final sign off from PT Vancouver. Thumbs up to Suripat's so-fitting shirt. Will remember it always :)
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