Magic: The Blathering #6: Grand Prix Liverpool

This weekend just gone I attended my first Magic: The Gathering Grand Prix in Liverpool. I had decided from the start that I wouldn't be entering the main event but instead would just go along for side events and generally soak up the atmosphere of one of the largest events open to all players.

Day 1

I met up with my good friend Chris (Cobi9) at Lime Street Station and we made our way to the venue; The ACC Exhibition Centre, which is situated on the waterfront of the River Mersey. I love Liverpool (except when driving through it) and have spent a lot of time there in the past from my days living on the Isle of Man. Liverpool being the first choice port for ferries to the island. That being said my memory of how to get around the city from Lime Street Station seemed to have been erased from my head. However as soon as I spotted the Liver Building on the skyline I had a landmark to head towards and on we marched. Other than almost ruining some filming that was happening by walking down a street that was closed off (but poorly signposted that it was) the walk to the venue was uneventful aside from being cold and windy.
We entered the ACC to find an almost empty foyer with very little activity, a tumbleweed blowing across the floor would not have felt out of place. As it turns out all the action was downstairs in the "basement" level so we descended the escalators* down to the main hall.

*Is it still an escalator if your going down surely then it's a "descender" or "de-escalator."

Being my first GP I anticipated how large the scale of the event would be and I was not disappointed. Entering the hall to a sea of Magic players, all rustling through cards they had opened for their sealed pools. I think we arrived during the registration part of the event, during which everyone had their heads down marking down and completing the list of cards they had opened.

Chris and I opted to browse some of the vendors at one end of the hall before deciding which side event to enter first. If I had been less restrained I could have bankrupted myself more so than I did. It may be an exaggeration if I were to say any card you could have wanted would have been available for the right price, but I think across all the vendors you would have come close.
Whilst browsing the cases of singles on the vendors' tables we caught word that the price of Chaos Drafts had been dropped from £30 to £20 due to prize support issues. We'd been considering giving one of these a go and learning of this made our minds up for us. We registered for an on demand Chaos Draft and as soon as we had eight people signed up we were seated in our pod. After being dealt out three random packs each from the history of Magic I found myself with packs from Conflux, Future Sight and Dark Ascension.

The Future Sight pack did not provide the potential Tarmogoyf I had hoped for and the Conflux pack was full of cards I had never even seen before. I was fairly familiar with Dark Ascension, it being from around the time I started playing Magic, but even then I was struggling. This being a draft I was also being passed cards from other people's packs which I had no clue about. In the end I went for a strategy of picking cards that were Red, low Mana cost and had Keywords such as "Haste" or "First/Double Strike." Go low and aggressive was the plan.

The draft was single elimination and to cut a long story short I lost my first match and that was it over for me. But Chaos Drafts are not so much about the matches but the silliness of the draft process with cards that were never meant to be drafted together. On that front it was huge enjoyable stupid success.

During the Chaos Draft the third member of our party, John, arrived. We decided to kill some time at the vendors again before the 1pm Standard Battle that John and I had decided to enter to get some much needed practice before the following days PTQ. This was four round Swiss event so unlike the Chaos draft I knew I'd get a full four matches out of it regardless of my performance. In the end I lost my first three matches and dropped before the fourth. This did not help my confidence going into the PTQ the next day with the same Standard deck.
John and I regrouped with Chris who had just come from a second Chaos Draft and we entered ourselves into what would be our last event of the Saturday; the 5pm Team Full Box Sealed.

We sat and opened our booster box of Ixalan and swiftly sorted the cards in the hope of building decks that played to our strengths. Ixalan being a "Tribal" set I ended up with a Vampires deck, John was on Dinosaurs and Chris went with Merfolk.

Round one Chris lost his match fairly early on leaving it to myself and John to secure victory. At this point John had already lost the first game of his best of three so the pressure was on. Thankfully John rallied and got the 2-1 win and I managed a fairly easy 2-0 victory, giving us the overall win for the round.

Round two saw a quick 2-0 win for Chris followed by a win for John, meaning the remainder of my match was for fun having already secured the round. A good thing too as I lost my match this round

Round three was similar to round 2 with Chris and John defeating their opponents before I and my opponent had even finished our first game. We decided to continue to play it out to see how panned out and resulted in a win for me giving us a perfect round.

Before round 4 we decided to see if our next opponents would accept an intentional draw. This would secure both teams 350 prize tickets, whereas if we were to play, although the winner would go up to 500 tickets, the loser would drop to 200. Thankfully our round 4 opponents were thinking the same way as us and accepted the draw, the late our being a contributing factor.

It so happens that although both teams finished on the same points record the standings had to put one of us in first place and our tie breakers were favourable, granting us overall victory.

We collected our prize tickets and I made my way to the train station and back to my hotel. I was exhausted.

The winning team: L-R - John, Chris & Andy

Day 2

A quick forty minute drive got me from my hotel in Chester to Liverpool in time for the 8:30 start of the PTQ (Pro Tour Qualifier.) Aside from Nationals, this would be my largest scale and most competitive event I will have entered yet. The level of competition I knew I would be up against was daunting. I had no illusions as to my chances and went in with the goal of an even record across the eight rounds of swiss we would play. Five wins and Three losses was the bonus that I would aim for and a reverse three wins and five losses still being an acceptable but worse case scenario that I would go away happy with.

Coffee was bought and deck lists written out and checked, then all there was left to do was wait for the pairing to be announced. First we were sat alphabetically whilst the Promo Cards and Play Mats that were included in the entry were distributed. Once this had been done and it was confirmed that all the players that had registered for the event were present we were paired for out first round.

Round one was against Carlos from Spain. He was running Blue/Black Control, one of my worst match ups, and after a solid slog I succumbed to a 0-2 loss.

Next I was against a young lad named Manson Hsiau who was running an aggressive Red/Green deck which unfortunately for him didn't get going in game one and I beat him quite easily. Game two was my turn to struggle as I got stuck on two islands and didn't cast a single spell while he ran over me with Lathnu Hellions and Earthshaker Khenra's. The deciding game three was a more even battle that could have gone either way, but thankfully my combination of +1/+1 counters and a Merfolk making those creatures unblockable took me to victory.

I thought to myself if I can keep this record of alternating loss - win - loss - win, I was on track for my goal of a 4-4 record.

Round three saw me against Temur Energy in the hands of Yoann from France. The Temur deck being a matchup that has been favourable for me in the past. I lost game one to a Glorybringer rendering my board state inert, but rallied to win game two. However game three Yoann resolved two Glorybringers which I had no answer for and the match was lost.

For round four I found myself up against Blue/Black control again (sigh), this time in the hand of a local lad named Billy. This is definitely mine and my decks worst match up. That being said, after losing game one, I was able to effectively sideboard and enable myself to control his control and secured the next two games to win the match.

2-2, still on track.

Round five was against Brian, who had a strong American accent and when we were chatting before getting started was surprised to get the answer "Berlin" when I enquired where he was from. Brian was definitely one of the nicest people I played against that day and was a pleasure to play against and chat with.
Brian was running Mardu Vehicles, a deck I had hoped to see the back of. I managed to take game one when his vehicles failed to get going but game two went to Brian as he curved out perfectly. Game three was close and the outcome hinged on a decision Brian made. He had been effectively crewing an Aethersphere Harvester with a Bomat Courier that had one card under it. He would then crew his Heart of Kiran with the Harvester. This was putting me on the back foot. However on one turn he decided to sacrifice his Bomat to get the card from underneath it, bearing in mind this was his only creature available to crew his vehicles. The next turn I was faced with a gamble. All he had was two vehicles in play with nothing to crew them, so completely undefended. I could swing in at will with my entire board but it wasn't lethal, it would reduce him to one life. If the one card in his hand was a creature or he top decked one that could crew one of his vehicles it was game over as I was sitting on four life. I resigned myself to the fact that Heart of Kiran has flying and regardless of my decision I was dead to that. So I went for it, I swung in pumping my creatures up as much as I possibly could and reduced him to one life. We both held our breath as he drew his next card. It was a land, and so was the card he already had. He had gifted me victory with that decision to sacrifice his Bomat Courier.

I was 3-2 overall, I started to dream. Could I end with a positive record!?

Round six saw me against a Red/Black aggro deck which seemed to combine the best bits of Mono Black Zombies and Mono Red Aggro. My opponent, Andreas, took game one in record time as aggro decks such as this do. I managed to pull back game two using an effective combination of hand hate and life gain from my sideboard. Game three though I struggled to get going and Andreas took the match.

Round seven saw me against Blue/Black control for the third time that day, but an approach to I hadn't seen before. Billy, my opponent, was utilising cards in his main deck that most pilots of this deck ran in sideboard. This was unexpected and made the match up particularly difficult for me and resulted in 0-2 loss.

3-4, the dream of 5-3 was dead but 4-4 was still possible.

I sat down for the eighth and final round against Philip from Frankfurt. He was running the Temur Energy build that splashed black for Scarab God, which he used effectively in game two - after I had won game one - to take my cards and use them against me. We went into a game three decider and I was determined to not let the 4-4 record slip way.
I think I can honestly say that that game three was one of the best games of Magic I have played. I effectively controlled my opponents play with removal and hand hate. I kept him from keeping any cards down on the table while building up my own board state. Patiently picking away at his life total while preventing him from getting anywhere near mine. Eventually Philip saw the game was lost and extended his hand with a resigned "it's your game."

I'd done it, I'd hit my target four wins and four losses, a real achievement for me at this level of play.

I then learned that the top 64 qualified for prizes and that my 12 points may be good enough. I waited for the last matches to be completed and for the final standings to be posted. I was 60th and therefore had earned myself another 120 prize tickets, which I promptly traded in for a ton of booster packs.

A successful and thoroughly fun weekend had, we left the venue and made our seperate ways back to Sheffield, where I took stock of my winnings.