November 28th 2015 – Xpax Fantasy Fest
It’s the last significant Standard tournament for the year. It’s also the last “live” practice that the WMC team will get before heading off to Barcelona in a week’s time. Team Decards is in full force, along with Syed. Its been a while since the full team got to play together, as both Raymond and myself got our RPTQ invites to Singapore in October. So its great to have all eight of us out with 3 deck types between us.
Some unimportant notes from that day:
1. Located on the 15th (Fifteen-th!) floor of Kenanga Wholesale Mall. No AC just couple of Big Ass Fans (yes that’s the brand name for those big ass fans).
2. Probably around 500-600 people in attendance.
3. No water served aside from Green Tea (RM4 a bottle)
4. No food served except some “cheap” Ramen (RM10 a bowl)
The important notes for the day:
1. 41 players in total
2. GP Kobe finalist Joe Soh was in attendance with his GP finalist deck. He finished 2-4 for the day.
3. Diverse field of decks though a lot more Mardu than I anticipated seeing.
4. Team Decards raced to early start, by end of Round 4, Eugene, Ron and myself were X-0.
5. Round 5 I got paired down vs Atarka Red. Game 1 (on the play) I mulled to five and died. Games 2 and 3, Esper do what Esper do vs Atarka Red – hold on, pad your life and grind the win out. Sweet.
6. Top eight – Eugene Tong (Esper Dragons), Ron Chan (Esper Tokens), Jeffrey Yap (Mardu Tokens) and myself (Esper Dragons). Jeff took top prize eliminating Ron, KC (Esper Dragons) and myself for the sweet iPhone.
7. I got my first game loss in more than 10 years for not registering my Dragonlord’s Perogative. I always have been giving the team a hard time on giving out free wins. Obviously upset with myself but not shaken vs Chong Lam (on Mardu Dragons) in the quarters. Immediately already down a game because of the game loss, but steadied my nerves and composure to clean up two straight games, playing around his removal heavy hand and ending the game with Chong Lam’s own Thunderbreak Regent (off a Dragonlord Silumgar).
8. Tough mirror game vs Eugene but felt slightly ahead in the match.
9. Tough loss vs Jeffrey in the finals. Mulligan to 5 (on the play) kept a Foul-Tongue and four land hand. No mercy from Jeff as he fired a turn one Duress and strip my only spell. Everything off the top.
10. Almost got there at one stage of the game, me hellbent with a freshly cast Dragonlord Ojutai in play. Jeff with just dead Pia and Kiran Naalars (thanks to Virulent Plague) was tapping his deck hard to deliver..... and off the top , a 4/4 Hangarback Walker slamed into play to threaten lethal. I punted with my Ojutai but yielded nothing and surrendered.
Takeaways from the weekend:
1. Esper Dragons seems fine. It felt very daunting in fact slightly fearful of taking a control deck to the WMC. The deck is very unforgiving when it stumbles or when you make a mistake but often enough, skillful pilots sometimes can navigate through the rough seas and pull out a win.
2. Abzan got hated hard. Every Abzan match I witnessed it was a struggle. It was never truly dominating, nor it backing down easily. If you love to be part of a twelve round boxing match, Abzan would be your choice. Can’t say for certain it would be mine.
3. Mardu won. But at the same time, Mardu lost. It lost because it was not going to make the lineup for the WMC. The list now is down to four decks – two locked and two more interchangeable. Will probably a decision in the week we’re at Barcelona.
4. There were so few Atarka Red sightings during the weekend and I expected a lot more. Given that MTGO league results lately has been demonstrating flawless wins, I just have to wonder whether would many people suit up Atarka Red for the WMC. It was powerful it was explosive, much like Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four when he “Flame On!”.
But as always, Atarka Red is a natural dog post sideboard, so we will probably dig deep to see if we can keep the flames burning at the WMC.
End of Part 4
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