Fast forward a week later….
RPTQ Singapore was coming up. I was qualified via PPTQ @ Decards last October, on the same weekend as Pro Tour BFZ, piloting the same Naya Megamorph Chye played for the Pro Tour. When the schedule was announced in November, the RPTQ was set to be February 20th (a Saturday) and so I went ahead and book my Air Asia ticket to fly in and out within the same date. I normally did day trips in and out of Singapore, as accommodation is sooo expensive (taking into account our ever-deflating Ringgit).
Then disaster. Games Haven released their schedule for the weekend and the RPTQ was moved to Sunday, February 21st. I tried to amend my flights but the charges were more expensive than a new ticket. I ranted my frustration to my buddy, Andrew Tang, who was then kind enough to offer me to crash at his place on Saturday night, and I just needed to buy a return ticket back to KL the next day after the tournament. I certainly appreciated the offer, but I was not fond on spending the weekend outside town for just a RPTQ.
As the date got closer, I was nowhere deciding what to do yet. But I felt it was no harm checking out the flights for Sunday anyway. The earliest flight left KL at 6am and the next flight was 715am which got to Changi around 830am. The schedule had player meeting at 9am, which sometime normally meant a 10am start time. I messaged Wearn Chong (the head Judge) and asked him what time was Round 1 starting.
Wearn - “Player meeting at 9am.”
PM – “Okay, but what time is Round one?”
Wearn – “9.05am”
Zzzzzz…….
So in order to make it to the site on time, my only option was the 6am flight or fly in the day before and stay with Andrew. I still had a few days to decide….
Not long later, Andrew buzzed me from Penang. His wife was expecting anytime soon, which was a couple of weeks earlier than planned. Meaning he would be in Penang the whole time and wont be around in Singapore to let me crash. So that’s off the table….
At that point, I was starting to think that the RPTQ was not meant to be so I just resided to just skip the weekend play altogether. I didn’t also actually considered the MTGO RPTQ for (1) it starts at 8pm, you play 7 rounds and (2) the MTGO field is much much tougher and harder to predict.
On the Thursday, one week or so before the RPTQ, I decided to pickup Andy Ferguson’s Bant Company deck for the FNM at CnH. My standard was been very rusty and just wanted to grease the wheels. It was a sweet deck and I finished a respectable 2-1. The deck did have some flaws though but it was something I would consider IF I was going to Singapore.
On Sunday, exactly a week before the RPTQ, I got this message:
What was this?
Is it some divine forces taking pity on me and giving me back my hard earned flight money?
Or was this a sign for something else?
So I decided to reschedule and take 6am flight into Singapore. That was sorted. There were only two things left to do.
1. Practice waking up at 3am
2. Pick a deck and practice playing the deck
Practice waking up at 3am
What load of crap is that??
You may laugh and chuckle, but this was all true. In order to “survive” the day of waking up early for my flight, the travelling plus potentially eight rounds of Magic to play, you needed to be physically and mentally prepared. All your testing etc is for naught if you suddenly felt sleepy after round 3 and make a tonne of mistakes because you couldn’t keep your eyes open.
So for one week, I had to “practice” staying awake for 20 hours with roughly two naps of 35 minutes in between. So for one week, I would wake up at 3am, stayed awake for an hour and went back to bed for two hours before waking up again and preparing to go to work. I avoided all forms of caffeine and sugar throughout the day and, by 8pm each day, I was a wreck. But I forced myself to jam in an MTGO league (4 to 5 rounds) each night and off to bed by midnight and repeat.
I can say this now that I will NEVER do this again.
Deck selection
I naturally went back to Andy Ferguson’s deck and played somemore. But when Brad Nelson’s Bant CoCo list with Wingmate Roc made headlines in MOCS, I was immediately hooked and jammed his 75 into League. At one point I was 13-3. But the meta was slowly adapting. People were sideboarding in Hallowed Moonlights (which were meant for Rally decks) and RB Dragons were everywhere. At that time, I didn’t have a solid game plan vs dragons and I fell to many after my hot run. In the end, while I was doing 81% in my first 16 games, I was only 44% in my next 9.
But after making some small tweaks I sleeved up for Singapore.
My decklist:
4 Sylvan Advocate
4 Deathmist Raptor
3 Den Protector
3 Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy
4 Reflector Mage
3 Eldrazi Skyspawner
2 Bounding Krasis
2 Wingmate Roc
1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
2 Stratus Dancer
4 Collected Company
3 Dromoka’s Command
4 Lumbering Falls
4 Windswept Heath
4 Flooded Strand
1 Wooded Foothills
3 Forest
3 Plains
1 Island
1 Yavimaya Coast
2 Canopy Vista
2 Praire Stream
Sideboard:
4 Disdainful Stroke
3 Dispel
2 Silkwrap
2 Valorous Stance
1 Surge of Righteousness
1 Stratus Dancer
2 Arashin Cleric
The RPTQ itself was very uneventful for me. Basically here’s a recap:
1. I lost early in Rounds 2 and 4, essentially knocking me out of Top 8 contention early. Both losses were due to mana issues in Game 3 which was very unfortunate.
2. I won all my other matches convincingly including man-handling mirror matches and Rally, which I had a lot of experience playing against.
3. In Round 3 vs Mono Green Ramp, both of us mulligan to 5 in the first game and both scryed to the bottom. We each lay a land and proceeded to miss our land drops for 3 turns each. Finally, he drew a second land and played Rattleclaw Mystic. I missed again, he untapped drew his third land and played Explosive Vegetation. I missed once more and he drew and played his 6th land and cast Worldbreaker on my lone permanent. It was hilarious.
4. In a very tight match vs 4C Rally, I had earlier unmorphed a Stratus Dancer to counter a Rally the Ancestors, but didn't have a second dancer to stop a backup Rally. He was already down to 3 life but with a massive board and Zulaport in play he padded his life points up to 9 at the end of my turn leaving a lone Jace, Vryn Prodigy (who was Rallied back as well). The next awesome play was – Rally trigger on the stack, flip Jace and flashback the Rally (which was countered earlier) for the win. My out – Collected Company at the end of my turn, found the Reflector Mage and bounced his Jace before untap. He didn’t draw a third Rally and that was it.
5. I finished a respectable 12th place, with lots of packs, a shiny Snapcaster Mage and a very sweet playmat.
6. Syed (WMCQ #1 winner) sped up to 4-0 before taking a draw in Round 5, setting up two chances for win-and-ins. He missed.
7. Dev Singh rolled into the quarterfinals and got his invite soon after.
8. I missed the celebration dinner (which I heard was at Burger King) because I neeed to catch my 10pm flight home.
9. I amazingly only spent SGD$12 the entire day in Singapore.
What’s next for me?
- a slew of PPTQ’s
- testing with Eugene Tong for his preparation for GP Melbourne
- maybe GP Beijing
- GP Tokyo
Also, I got a new twitter account. You can follow my updates there at www.twitter.com/powzhaai
PM out.
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