PT Boston 2002, 9th Place -or- Being Thin Makes Me Easy To Carry

First things first. I did not do too much winning at this PT. That was left, by and large, to my teammates. I also have very strong opinions on the team format, mainly team rochester. You see how that can be conflicting. If you disagree with the things I have to say in this report in terms of strategy, be my guest. Remember, I did not win very much.

I was wondering since before GP Jersey how I would write my report for team season. I did not want to write one report here and there, since I thought of the team season as one big adventure worth documenting at it’s end, which would be PT Boston. This, combined with the fact that I am a rather lazy guy and the fact that Adam’s Jersey report said everything I could have wanted to say, left me rather quiet on the posting board the last few months, but I hope this makes it halfway worthwhile.

Gary Wise recently stated in a sideboard article how interesting politics are in the team season; this holds true even on the PTQ level. At one point I thought I would list various people in this area who had BS’d other people during the formation of PTQ/GP Jersey teams, and I even have AIM conversations saved that I figured I would want to dredge up at some point. I have elected not to, but be warned… if you are discussing forming a team with one or two people and they don’t give you a straight answer quickly, its probably because they think you are awful, or that they can get better teammates. To wit:

A Merry Ol’ Stroll Down the Street with Osyp…

Conversations like this occurred numerous times prior to GP New Jersey, before Adam and I decided upon Craig as a third:

Me (to Osyp): Would you like to team with us this season?

Osyp (thumbing mustache, looking into the sky): Well I do say its rather cloudy out today. Perhaps we should depart.

So, find people quickly and work with them and stick it out. Team unity and practice are more important than your individual ability.

Team unity, combined with national pride, led to many a team rochester draft between team TOGIT and Eugene Harvey + Random Locals (mostly some combo of Fedak, Justin Page and Anand). After winning our 3483209840nd draft in a row against them, Eugene decides that he is going to use our plan of r/w in the C, u/g in the B, and b/x (probably green) in the A. This puts myself and Adam in a certain bind that we discuss. Should we ask Eugene not to use the strategy at Worlds, since it is our primary for the PT? We decided in the end that we should not even bring it up, since we were testing with Eugene to help him succeed at this tournament. As a passing thought, we figured our plan might not even be that good. I mean, maybe we were just getting lucky.

As Team USA goes on to streamroll hideous European team after terrible European team with this plan, we have to come to terms that a) the plan is for real and b) teams are going to be preparing for it. We try to counteract it in team drafts against Jon Sonne, Gerard Fabiano and whomever they could find, but the base plan seemed too powerful to really metagame against.

How did Team TOGIT come up with this earth-shattering plan, you ask? I'm glad that question finally came up. To be quite honest with you, I really don’t know how all the parts came together. The major problem with this team rochester format is where you elect to place red. Red is terrible enough that you really don’t want it in any of the decks, but not so terrible that you just can't draft it at all. If you put it in the A seat, with black (This assumes you are working with black as your base color in A based on the insane depth and power in Torment, where the A seat gets the most protected picks. Several teams tried to metagame against the black deck with r/g in that seat, which is supposed to be good against most black decks. However, just assume a standard plan.) the A deck ends up with too many cards that it wants to take in Torment and nowhere near enough picks in Judgement. If you put it with the green in whichever other seat (Green and White are the two colors, along with black, generally considered deep enough to form base colors out of. Where you put green and white is pretty much up in the air, although we liked white in C for reasons you would have to ask Craig and Adam about) then the other team can just draft u/w against you. If you put it with white, you put red in a seat that would actually beat a u/w deck (since r/w, based on utility effects and arcane teachings, is generally able to win that match) and you leave u/g in the other seat, which has a high synergy level. That basically leaves the question of what other color you want with the black. In this respect I have to tip my hat to Eugene. Having green in that seat is a very solid move, since green is just good against the black cards (how many times can you Waste Away a Giant Warthog really) and it allows you to split the deep, deep sweetness of Judgement green. A bulletproof strategy (or so we thought **foreshadowing loss**).

As for team sealed, we would just hope to open good enough cards and not combined them in idiotic fashions. For a demo on how to blow a team sealed deck, just hit up Sideboard's coverage of this team and their card pool. Its like a Where’s Waldo of mistakes, except every character is Waldo.

The drive to the PT itself was rather dull, involving Justin Page (who was attending for reasons beyond my imagination) and Anand Khare (wheelman and human brunt). We drove up entertained by the toons of Sir Mix a Lot, who is something of a black Shakespeare. His insight into the dynamics of the female/male relationship was truly enlightening. For example (this might not be the exact line, but it is something close):

“A fine looking thang, she sure did look pretty I cant stop staring at her ti-ti-ti-ti-ti face.”

Another amusing little story. I was driving the car when we were actually approaching Boston. Anand was in the passenger seat of the car navigating, which wasn’t too important at that given moment since we were in bumper to bumper traffic. We were in the left lane of a highway, and part of the reason traffic was so bad was because traffic was merging from another highway in the right hand lane. Upon entering the city, there were numerous homeless people standing in the shoulder and so on with signs that said something like “I live a clean and sober life God bless etc”, and I was noticing the interaction between them and the motorists when Anand saw some guy trying to cut in front of us.

Anand (to me, about driver in the lane over): Don’t let this guy in!!!

Me (thinking he was talking about homeless guy) Good looking out. (hit the door locks)

We arrive at the tournament site late enough that Anand isn't able to play in the night-before Q with Chris Leather and his bud whose name I always forget, but early enough that my carmates and I are able to get in a team rochester draft with some team from Europe I'm not familiar with. We win, and then Stok, Anand and I go on to beat KK, TTsang and Cueno. Good signs indeed. My teammates are late enough that I start to panic, but at some time around 2 they arrive. We quickly depart for our hotel and get a few hours of sleep.

Day 1: Team Sealed

I won't really go over the details of building our card pools, primarily because I forgot. What I can say is that we weren't fighting over cards or strength of deck, which I think is the most critical part. Sometimes you get the insane deck and sometimes you get the crap. This is not something that you should take personally or something you should begrudge your teammates about. It is just the way it pans out sometimes.

My first sealed deck looked very good, but in reality was lacking. It had both Cabal Patriarch and Sengir Vampire, both of which are obviously retarded bombs, but it had no good mana curve cards (crypt creeper and aquamoeba being the ones generally afforded to u/b) and no early removal, meaning I was not able to maximize my bombs. This weakness came to the forefront round one against the Castle, an English team. My opponent was r/g with no end of pump, meaning by the time I was ready to catch up he pumped through my guy. My best exchange of this match was trading mad dog + half of sylvan might for the vampire. We played more games for fun and none were close, and he never even drew a shower of coals it turns out he had. Thankfully for me, Craig smashes his opponent’s b/w deck with his stellar r/g deck, and Adam is able to deck his opponent in the u/w mirror match.

In Round 2 we play against JJJ. All three of us are crushed in pretty convincing fashion, although I do pick up a game win against my opponent’s b/w deck with a turn 5 Mind Sludge for 5. Craig is crushed by something very similar to the block u/g madness deck except with a better mana base, and Adam is finished off by Sylvan Safekeeper enchanted with Arcane Teachings.

Upset with a 1-1 with a strong card pool but not too down, we get ready for our second pool. My second deck is the perfect r/b deck. 2 Innocent Bloods. 2 Anarchist. Shower of Coals, Swelter, Morbid Hunger, the bloods, Firebolt, and other stuff all itching to be taken back. Gravedigger to get back the Anarchist. Random creatures to win with. I could have asked for very little more, and 2-0d my rounds, one against a Japanese team that had a very slow r/g deck with infinite 2/2’s for three, and round 4 against Dave Williams and his good, but outclassed g/b deck. In both of these rounds one of my teammates pulls out their match, and we are 3-1.

Our last decks of the day are by far our worst. I end up having to take an aggro r/b deck, which is one of my most hated archetypes. It contained an arcane teachings, numerous 2/2 creatures of various mana costs ranging from mad dog to goretusk firebeast to enchant with arcane teachings, and some combination of swamps and mountains. Our round 5 opponents are Illuminati, a team that top 4d this PT last year. They have “metagamed” seating, which means putting the green deck in A (to play against black) and so on. I am smashed by Justin Gary and his call of the herd and other random spells. Fortunately for me, the Kremp smashed Zvi in the middle on the strength of natuko disciple, and the Vath savages Alex in 2, in part due a diverted repel.

We were now a lock for day 2, but a win in the last round would put us in a great position to top 4. Alas, it was not to be. Our opponents (Green Monsters II) had the metagame strategy, and while I went on to beat my opponent on the strength of arcane teachings and the poorness of his deck (I didn’t get a good grasp on how bad it was until he dropped the SECOND rites of spring on me) Craig is smashed by tireless tribe and the like, and any creature of note Adam plays is banished. Although we were a bit flustered losing to the color breakdowns in the last round, we were confident going into the next day.

I really cant go into too much detail about the second day, which is a shame because it is the most interesting part. At a certain point, all the drafts blur together and you can't really remember what happened in what draft. What I do know for certain is that our team ran tight and fluid in all five drafts, and I felt that we out-drafted 4 out of our 5 opponents by a noticeable degree (the exception being Green Monster II, who we drafted against in round 10). The major problem we faced is that most teams figured out to put green with black in the A seat, leading to quite a few mirror matches. The positive part was that the other teams did not seem to have a clue how to draft in the B or C seats. It seemed Adam and Craig always had very easy matchups, and if they didn’t their opponent would mulligan to four or something similar. I'm sure they will articulate that in their reports though.

Our loss to Shop- Fireball.com was highly frustrating in that both Craig and I lost to some rather unfortunate luck, but in our other four drafts we pulled through. It felt like we were just running practice drafts, which I guess is what you want it to feel like. We had gone through the motions dozens and dozens of times, while it seemed like our opponents had not drafted enough. I guess the best part of all of that is feeling like you belong. It becomes difficult to keep shluffing it out in PTQ’s, going x-2 in a bunch of them and worse in almost all the rest, never seeing light at the end of the tunnel so to speak, and feel like you have any sort of place on the pro level. To practice, show up, and make it happen is more important to me than the money or Houston invite in all of this.

I can not give enough respect and props to Slay, Pillage Gerard for coming together and making something special happen. I will be honest in saying that I didn’t think their whole operation was going to work, with Ziegler leaving at a sudden point and time, and all the difficulty that they had during practice drafts that I saw or was involved in. However, they really clicked for the PT, and made something really excellent happen. Props to all three.

I really don’t want to give out props at the end, since there are so many people I would thank if I could recall everyone, but I cant. Let me just say, you know how you are if you played any part in my success here or my enjoyment of it. Thanks to all of you. Peace Patrick

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