Uhh….Where do I begin?
I guess congratulations are firstly in order to Rick Lee for being the 4th member of the 2016 WMC squad. The team welcomes Rick’s experience in both limited and constructed which counts a lot to have a solid and reliable player on your squad. Experience wise, I think this 2016 team has shaped up to be the most “battle-tested” team Malaysia has ever put forward for a World Magic Cup so the pressure is all on us to deliver.
But I feel for Wei Han. He was WMCQ 3 champion last year just a day after he turned 23. Now a day before he turns 24, he comes out a match short of a victory. Short of a return trip and of an oath he and I made last year on top of Mount Monserrat to return this year to the WMC and exact some revenge. For those who weren't present yesterday, Wei Han played amazing Magic right up to the point of the finals versus Rick. But the road to the finals was never that smooth leading up to that point.
Shortly after the end of WMCQ 2 I began work on WMCQ 3, not just for the benefit of the upcoming WMC, but also to pick the right deck for my teammates to battle in WMCQ 3. To be frank, our preparation was WMCQ 2 was rather lackluster. We were all over the place with different decks and different opinions. At that point, like everyone else, I was focused on winning hence tuning up my deck plus my sideboard strategy was given the utmost priority above others. I was fortunate enough to pick the right deck, execute a plan I carved out and reclaim a spot on the team.
So for WMCQ 3, I planned on repeating not the same deck, but the same thought process in carving out a niche deck that would be well positioned in a Malaysian metagame littered with plenty of aggressive strategies (Burn and Affinity), midrange (Jund and Tron) and a sprinkle of combo (Infect and Abzan Company). Normally, I would generally go under the radar during this period, keeping tech to ourselves and spring it as a surprise factor for WMCQ 3. But this time around, I put the Tron-Drazi deck out there early. I wrote an article about it, referencing it, talked about its strengths with different players and many had a chance to see it in action. I didn’t win any PPTQ’s with it, which was unfortunate but I knew the deck had potential. For 6 weeks the deck went close to 30 testing hours through the grinders in MTGO and tuning one card after another. From 4 Mindstones to Zero back up to 3. From 2 Ugins to none to 1. From an unwinnable Affinity matchup to decent. It was a grueling process. Well for me anyway. Because when I mentioned that our WMCQ 2 testing was lackluster, our WMCQ 3 preparation was basically non-existent. Obligations, career, wedding and even waning interest all stood in the way of getting quality testing time together.
Between WMCQ 2 and 3 we got together and test only once (we played a couple of PPTQs in between). In all fairness the guys got in some games with MTGO in the final days leading up to the tournament. The guys even danced around with Bant-Drazi for a while before realizing what I realized weeks earlier that it was unplayable. BBD won the games that he did by curving out or opponent mana flooding. You win games that way, but decks that are not resilient or have the ability to go over the top will flounder when their primary game plan is not happening. This is true for many modern decks that’s kind of neither here nor there like Bant Drazi, Thing-In-the-Ice Ascension and sad-but-true… Affinity.
But my drive to bring at least one more Decards team member into the WMC team charged my effort to find the right deck and more importantly the right mix of cards. Here’s a behind the scenes look at the thought process.
1. At a glace, the Tron-Drazi seems like an inferior Bant-Drazi. It didn’t have any colours hence it didn’t have access to the great sideboard cards Bant had to offer like Stony Silence, Negate and Blessed Alliance.
2. At a glance, the Tron-Drazi even with Tron mana doesn’t have the velocity like Green Red tron, to be able to crack eggs and consistently whip up Tron easily and fire off its big spells.
3. At a glance, when you are playing “mono-colour” or essentially colourless, your options are generally constraint all around.
So what happened?
1. Bant-Drazi is a 1-2-3-4 deck meaning it needed to curve Noble Hierarch into its bigger Eldrazi brothers. Without coming in on curve, the Bant Drazi feels always a step behind. The Tron-Drazi doesn’t have Noble Hierarch to help its curve. But it does have Tron mana to give its ability to jump from 1 mana, 2 mana to 7 mana. And we all know with 7 or 8 mana on turns 3 or turn 4 means the ability to do big and awesome things.
2. But what about velocity? According to the Tron Master Eugene Tong, Green Red Tron offers better velocity through its cantrip eggs. All true. However, having Tron mana is essential to Green Red Trons strategy as without Tron it cannot effectively power up its big spells. A third of its deck is dedicated in assembling Tron and perhaps 75% of its early game is dedicated to do just this. Hence we all know its weakness is that doesn’t have much to do early until it powers up all its mana.
Tron-Drazi doesn’t rely on Tron to initiate its game plan which is to beat with ugly Eldrazi dudes. Tron mana allows it to jump ahead of curve, but with Eldrazi Temple and Mind Stone, its already jumping ahead. Getting a turn 3 Thought-Knot Seer or Reality Smasher is almost "too consistent". Tron mana just makes things very ugly when you are resolving Turn 5 Ulamogs or Ugins.
3. What about the lack of options by playing essentially colourless? I find it interesting that people always talk about the disadvantages before seeing the advantages. Lets talk a little of the fine sub points:
- colourless means no fetches and no shocklands meaning pain free mana and not giving up free damage vs Burn or aggressive strategies
- colourless means you get to run a few copies of Radiant Fountain which equates to play a land counter 2/3 of a Lava Spike.
- colourless has some of the best hosers in the format – Grafdigger Cage, Relic of Progenitus, Spellskite, Chalice the Void.
After I lost out in the semi finals in PPTQ Classroom I continued to work on this deck. Why? Normally you would abandon a failed experiment and try something new next week. It’s because what Joe Soh said to me after we finished Round 3 of the tournament.
“The Tron-Drazi is a tough matchup, because I’m not sure if I want to go in with more hand-distruption (Thoughtseize), attack your Tron mana or load up on more removal (for the Eldrazi’s). There’s too many angles of attack, because overloading on disruption will hurt me late when I cant deal with the bigger Eldrazi’s (which don’t die to Lightning Bolt) and if I’m too focused on spot removal, you get to ramp out and resolve Ulamog or Ugin which is normally game over.”
That few exchange of words made me think that if I could somehow position the deck so it would throw people off balance and deviate from their original game plan, and all the Tron-Drazi needed to do was simply just curve and beat. It also did help that the Tron-Drazi shell was the best home of the most powerful hoser in the format – Chalice of the Void.
Also Tron-Drazi was not on anyone’s radar because I didn’t actually “win” any event. So as I went deeper into the deck, I was having a great matchup versus Burn, Infect, Jund, Abzan, Merfolk and basically any deck that rolled to Grafdiggers Cage/Relic and/or Chalice of the Void. What I couldn’t beat reliably was Affinity with its nut draw, but I figured if I wasn’t playing a BG style deck I wasn’t going to beat those kind of draws anyways. And finally the nightmare matchup of Titanshift. When Oliver Tiu went 4-0 in the World Championships, I knew something was going to turn. But I later realized the Titanshift was very soft to Burn and Burn is something that was abundance in Malaysia. So I pressed on.
I tried hard to convince Ron Chan to jump from his pet Affinity deck as it lacked an edge. Affinity is no doubt a tried and tested deck. But everyone has played at least a few matches with Affinity and would probably just over sideboard against it. To tempt fate on one of the most important tournaments of the year to avoid these hate cards was simply not a chance I was willing to accept. But Ron did. And into the slaughterhouse he went.
Wei Han and Obama took a chance. They believed.
Obama finished 5-2 with zero playtesting but faltered early to an insane draw by Loco to put a 15/15 Wurm on turn 3. Your hands are pretty much in the air with that kind of play. But Wei Han believed on and sliced through the swiss portion of the WMCQ 3. Short stumble versus Nicky’s Infect due to some mana flood, but regained his composure to lock up the Top 8 by beating Dredge, a matchup that on paper seemed awful, but I rarely lost a sideboarded game.
Wei Han won a nail biter against Shamsul and unfortunately had to meet Joe Soh in the semi finals. The Tron-Drazi went big and ramped Thought-Knot Seer into Smasher and kept smashing and smashing. Joe held on but before long, he went down hard and couldn’t recover. With one more match to go, I could only urge Wei Han to keep believing.
In game 1 of the finals vs Bant Knigthfall, his triple Smashers couldn’t close out the job and Rick Lee pulled out of a 1-lander to win from behind. The second game Wei Han’s turn 3 Thought-Knot Seer revealed double Collected Company and both he and I could sense that the end was drawing near. Rick Lee closed out the match two turns later with the namesake Knight of Reliquary – Retreat to Coralhem combo to become WMCQ 3 champion.
It was an amazing run for both Wei Han and Team Decards. Our campaign together has led up to amazing finale. Its unfortunate that we couldn’t keep our oath that we made on top the mountain a year ago. So I’ll be looking ahead to the WMC in November with Chye, Rick and Shawn while the others will reflect on what they can adjust to be on next year’s team. I’m sure a new team will come and claim their chance in 2017 in our absence. But till then, Team Decards legacy in the WMCQ circuit will always be remembered in Malaysian MTG history.
PS: Happy birthday Wei Han!
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