The first four months of 2016 flew by like lightning. I haven’t been playing as much MTG as I wanted to of late. I knew Grand Prix Tokyo was going to be very important. It was one of my two shots to qualify for Pro Tour Sydney, a rare Pro Tour so close to home. With so much work on hand, I did make a commitment to myself to at least put in two weeks of testing prior to the Grand Prix.
Two weeks to go, I had a selection of a Grixis Brew (much like Oliver Tiu’s PT Deck), Bant Company and as a last resort Mono White Humans. I toss around several leagues piloting the Grixis on MTGO, with unsatisfactory mixed results. Grixis was a grindy deck but I felt it didn’t excel versus decks that were trying to do the same thing such as Black White Control or even Sultai Control. At many occasions I was stuck with chock full of removal with nothing to kill or just couldn’t reach to Seasons Past that can basically warped the match.
Bant Company didn’t fair well either, losing again and again to GW Tokens. With a week to go I was starting to get desperate and my Decards and WMC teammate Wei Han told me to sleeve up Sultai Midrange, which I did. I 4-1 the first MTGO league, not bad. Then 2-3, then 1-3…..
I was flying out of KLIA on Wednesday night and I messaged Chye to ask what he was playing. Uncertain. That’s the diversity of the current Standard format. So for the first time ever, only few days to a major event, I was left clueless on what to play and brought along with me my entire Standard collection to make sure I had all the tools if I could think of a good brew. I had the night flight and Thursday to think about it.
Hello Tokyo!!
Some interesting statistics:
- 7th visit to Japan in the last four years
- 6th Japan Grand Prix (Shizuoka 2013 & 2015 , Nagoya 2014 & 2016, Kitakyushu 2013 and Tokyo 2016)
- 3rd visit Tokyo (excluding transits)
- 2nd time full Decards team assemble for an international Grand Prix (previous one was GP Singapore 2015)
- 1st time really “visiting” Tokyo
In my earlier trips, Emily and myself did the usual stuff – Tsukiji market, Shibuya, Tokyo stations, lots of sushi, tuna and Ramen. We also previously did several day trips out of Tokyo -Yokohama, Gotemba, Kamakura and Kawagoe. But this was the first trip we’ll be spending our entire trip within Tokyo itself.
Here’s a quick photo essay of Tokyo 2016:
Ron’s buddy treated us to a local izakaya just off the beat from the busy Shibuya. Food was great. Sake was great. Wei Han stayed sober. But best of all, we experienced a birthday celebration – Nihon-style. I'll try to get a video uploaded here soon.
So we had the whole of Thursday to unwind and the rest of Decards got in late Thursday night. So we wake up to Friday morning, some sushi and grilled scallops and off we went to the site for some testing. Surprisingly the testing was intense. All of us were not 100% locked into a 75 so these few hours were important. Seven of us (except Jeffrey) just huddled over a long table with several curious Japanese onlookers watching our intense games. The matchup that we expected to face the most was GW Tokens and basically I jammed every brew I had, pre and post board vs Tokens. Grixis Control was another popular choice around the room followed by GR Ramp.
Where was Jeff? He was over grinding at the last chance trials for byes (more on that later). So right smack in the middle of our testing, the loudspeakers boomed with a familiar tune:
The guys all looked up and wondering what was going on and at instant, our captain Raymond Tan had to say it.
“Jeff must have won his match.”
ROTFL.
I left the event hall around 6 to go back to the hotel. Pro Tour Madrid top 16 competitor, Chye, was flying in that evening and I agreed to meet him up for dinner as we were crashing in the same hotel. Chye apparent got lost and couldn’t find the “Exit 5” which was probably right in front of him and I got an earful about it the entire meal. Well he did buy me dinner so probably was all worth it….
PS: I got an earful the next day as well for misguiding him to the nearest 7-Eleven. That was 100% my bad.
So what we ran for GP Tokyo? Drumroll…. Mono-White Humans.
To be honest, did we (Chye and myself) reach the conclusion that Humans was the best deck? No. But we did feel that for this Grand Prix, and from the limited testing we had with everything else, nothing came close to the consistency of the Humans. The Humans deck punished average draws and also has decent games versus opponent great draws. We had a good sideboard plan as well and after locking and submitting our decklists at 2am, it was off to bed.
Day 1
Fun fact:
So Jeffrey wasn’t successful in his quest for additional byes. In fact he was really punting hard to get the byes to compliment his purchased sleep-in-special. But that didn’t turn out well so this happened on the start of Day 1:
ROTFL again.
I asked Jeffrey how he felt about having the PA to announce his name for his “special status”. Jeffrey just said when he got to the “special table” there were FOUR other guys in the same boat. Clap clap clap.
Quick recap for Day 1:
- I went 4-0 (after 2 round byes) before taking my first loss to 4C with a top-decked Eldrazi Displacer in Game 3 to loop with scions and Zulaport.
- But I raked another 3 straight wins right after, crushing opponents within first 20 minutes of the match
- The final round I sat against a GR/w ramp deck which I demolished game 1 in minutes. Game two was a stall. At a certain point of the game, his Dragonlord Dromoka had gain him a lot of life and he was sitting at a pleasant 50 life. But somehow I managed to land an Ormendahl and the race was on. With life totals 45-17 in my favour, my opponent peeled – Ulamog!!!
- That Game 2 ended with only 6 minutes on the clock. Oh dear… I shuffled up at lightning speed for Game 3. Snap keep a 7 and played Gossipmonger into Gossipmonger + Kytheon, turn 3 Always Watching – Game! 8-1!!
- Team Decards placed 6 members into Day 2 including Raymond Tan @ 8-1 with his homebrew Atarka Red.
- Nicholas “Obama” James had to face down an active Starfield of Nyx and you could clearly see his animated Japanese opponent was having a lot of fun (and a very good laugh about it)!
- Raymond this is “Raymond-ly” things and sped to 8-0 start including a top deck was needed with his opponent down to 5 and Raymond had only one unblocked attacker to push through a single point of damage. Raymond peeled his card and his opponent asked: “Do you have it? Exquisite Firecraft? If you do, you win!”
- Raymond quick responded innocently “No, No, No.” and his opponent let out a deep sigh of relief.
- Raymond can only shake his head and pushed his attackers into the red zone, and as expected one power of damage was slipping through. Raymond showed his opponent the card he drew– Atarka’s Command. Raymond never lies.
So day one ended with Malaysians at quite a decent record for 19 participants:
Day 2
Quick recap for Day 2:
- The wheels really fell over for me in Day 2. My draws were OK and put myself in multiple situations to win IF opponent had blanked or didn’t draw a specific card. But it was not meant to be and I went down 1-3 in my first four rounds before rounding out the next two to cash
- I was also a victim of a top deck Collected Company into Elvish Visionary into Collected Company and followed by a top draw Collected Company. I whispered “Its nice when you can stack your deck perfectly.” Obviously my Japanese opponent, who probably understood every word but played ignorant, could only smile.
- Ron Chan finished strong @ 4-2 for his first 11-4 Grand Prix cash finish
- Raymond had a win-and-in for Top 8, but his luck ran dry in the final match, finally losing to GW Tokens.
- Chye, who started the day at 7-2, reeled 5 straight wins and had an outside shot for Top 8 but his humans fell apart in the final round.
- So the aftermath was 6 Malaysians cashed (Raymond, Ron, Chye, Joe Soh, Jack Teo and myself), which is rather an impressive rate given 19 competitors overall out of 3000+ players.
Fun Fact:
- Eugene Tong playing his final round in Super Sunday Standard. He was out of contention for top 4, but a win here would snag a cool pile of 12 Japanese boosters.
- But, he was late to his seat. Game loss.
- Down 0-1, Eugene had to mulligan. And mulligan again.
- Starting with five cards on the play he slowly pushed his one drops into the red zone dropping his opponent down to 12. But his opponent started to clog up the ground with Thoughtknot seers further wrecking Eugene’s hand.
- Eugene’s only solace was a Kytheon ,who was receiving boosts from his pair of Anointer of champions, offering trades with the Thoughtknot. After taking two hits of eight damage total, his opponent finally decided to push his Seer in front of the Akros Hero. Eugene gripped his mana, ready to make it Indestructible. His opponent shrugged a little and ready to slam his Fiery Impulse for a complete tempo blowout.
- But Eugene caught his excitement with the corner of his eye and instead, allowed damage to resolve. His opponent got stunned for a second and allowed the Thoughtknot to die drawing a card for Eugene. The card was a replacement Kytheon. This time, the Kytheon got a Gryff’s boon and turned to the air.
- The Kytheon met his death soon after with that said Fiery Impulse and Eugene replaced with a freshly drawn Dragon Hunter.
- The Hunter received a reanimated Boon and began serving for five in the air. His opponents next 2 plays – Thunderbreak Regent and Icefall Regent.
- The Hunter happily served in the air unopposed for the miraculous win.
- Obama and myself, who were attentively watching in the background with our nerves up to our throats, let out a sigh of relief. We were this close of getting a heart attack right there and then.
So the weekend of Magic ended as swiftly as it began. We gave each other a pat on the back on the strong showing overall and finished off the day shopping for G-Shocks @ Odaiba followed by a crazy eat-till-you-drop dinner at GyuKaku.
Quote from Chye: “Keep the food coming!”
20 minutes later, with still plates of probably a kilo of grilled beef and chicken left on the table...
Quote from Chye: “Stop stop!! I’m so full….”.
There was so much food left on our table that Chye had to start feeding his share of meats to Eugene who was seated in the next table.
We had an extra day of sightseeing and shopping on Monday and checked out the Chatuchak of Tokyo – Ameyoko. Wasn’t too impressed and Eugene got a taste of probably the worst meal he had so far in Tokyo – a Kebab. Soon after it was time to go home.
Dear Tokyo – I’ll be back.
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