Around the World in Three Grand Prix: Part 1

Alex Shvartsman

Prelude

This is going to be long.

If you are not a fan of multi-part articles, I apologize in advance. I've got a lot to say. My story spans three Grand Prix tournaments, several side events, and a whole lot of flying around on airplanes. It is also a good way for me to share what I've learned so far about Odyssey Limited - a format that shall remain of considerable interest to most players for the next few months.

I began to plan this trip right after Pro Tour-New York. Although I have a reputation for traveling to as many Grand Prix tournaments as possible in distant locations, flying to three different continents in three weeks is a gargantuan feat even for me. However, the $6,000 my team's third place finish earned me in New York was burning a hole in my pocket, and I was very excited at the possibilities of playing Magic in such exotic locations, so I started looking at airfares.

At first, it looked sketchy for Cape Town - the event I wanted to attend the most. Seems like an average economy ticket to South Africa costs over $1,500. I pride myself on being able to build inexpensive itineraries, but it was my friend Justin Polin who found the best deal first - a consolidator specializing in tickets to Africa and the Middle East was able to offer us tickets at just under $1,000. Japan and Australia were a little more work - I had to check a number of sources in order to confirm my suspicion of just how inefficient the airline industry is. You see, an itinerary of New York - Tokyo - Brisbane - New York costs almost twice as much than buying round trip tickets from NYC to Tokyo and from Tokyo to Brisbane. One way tickets are more expensive on average than round-trip fares, and I would gladly pay the same price or even a little more to avoid spending an extra day traveling, but such option was not available to me. I ended up booking a round trip to Tokyo on Continental and a round trip from there to Brisbane on Quantas. This would also see me stuck at the Narita Airport in Tokyo for ten hours on the way back to NYC. Ah, the sacrifices we make to play a little Magic.

Part 1 - Cape Town or How to Screw Up a Perfectly Good Sealed Deck

"On this trip we are going to see creatures we've only summoned before - like Jackal Pups and Rogue Elephants!" - Ben Seck

Wrong format, Ben. I will stick to Elephant Ambushes and Beast Attacks, thank you.

Justin Polin and I met at the JFK airport and braved the sixteen-hour trip together, changing planes at Johannesburg (or Joburg, as many South Africans call it). We caught our first glimpse of Africa as a taxi driver took us to the Grand West Casino compound where the tournament would take place. The compound was separated from the cruel outside world by an electric fence, armed guards, and numerous security checkpoints. South Africa is plagued by an incredibly high crime rate, so one can hardly blame its wealthier citizens from wanting to be robbed by the Casino alone and not any individuals at its doorstep.

In addition to its main attraction, the compound included several hotels, shops and restaurants ranging from classy to fast food - everything a Magic player might need for a weekend of card flinging. Justin and I tried to find some of the Invitational players and Wizards staff to hang out with, but none were around, so we headed to dinner - where Justin stuck to good old-fashioned ribs while I summoned the courage to order ostrich. Ostrich tastes somewhere in between duck and beef - certainly different, but not bad at all. I failed to talk Justin into ordering alligator for an appetizer, but having tried it in Sydney and New Orleans, I didn't try all that hard. The food tasted pretty good, but the greatest thing about it was the price. We ate at what is considered an expensive restaurant, and spent something like $10 each for the meal. Everything else in South Africa was equally inexpensive (ice cream for $0.25, fast food meal for $2, taxi ride to town for $4), making the trip far more affordable.

Of course, saving a few bucks on a meal would not make up for spending a grand on a plane ticket - but getting a very inexpensive hotel room would! Wizards of the Coast and Games Emporium, its distributor in South Africa, subsidized a special package available to all players who wished to attend this tournament. How much would you expect to pay for 4 nights at City Lodge (a 3 star hotel), entry to the Grand Prix, transportation to and from the tournament, and two free side events to boot? How about $50? That's right, $50! The package cost 500 Rand, at the exchange rate of around 9 or 10 Rand to a dollar. I would like to thank the organizers for setting this up for the players, and hope that such practice will become more commonplace in the future.

We finished dinner and, on the way back to our hotel room, ran into some of the judges. They immediately informed us that the Invitational players just returned from the sightseeing trip gone bad. Apparently they were taken out to sea on a pair of tour boats and the weather was stormy, prompting many of the Invitational players to get seasick. The judges provided us with a comprehensive list of players who threw up during this unfortunate trip - a list I shall not post here. Players can tell you themselves if they are so inclined, in their Invitational reports. There were also tales of a Sideboard reporter who got very drunk and acted it. I won't tell you who that was either, but upon reviewing the list of Sideboard staff in Cape Town you can probably guess.

I spent all of Friday helping the Sideboard staff cover the Invitational. Only slightly bitter at having to sit on the sidelines this year, I felt privileged to be at the Invitational in any capacity nevertheless. I watched some great Magic, as the world's finest played each other with nothing on the line. Although I love the idea of playing competitively, this kind of a tournament is great every once in a while. You will notice an entirely different level of satisfaction from playing the game against a worthy opponent with no pressure looming over you. New and veteran invitees alike shared this philosophy of playing for the love of the game, making for a very enjoyable weekend, marred only by a number of delays - sometimes inevitable, sometimes the fault of several of the players.

Finally came Saturday morning and the time to open my very first Odyssey sealed deck ever. I did a few practice drafts prior to that weekend, but I did not participate in the Prerelease, nor open any sealed deck to date. Generally, building a sealed deck is fairly straightforward though. Just follow this simple procedure:

1. Sort your playable cards by color. Immediately remove junk cards you won't play no matter what, such as Simplify or Confessor.
2. Identify your two deepest colors. This can be tricky sometimes. You are looking for the colors with the most solid, playable cards, not the color with a single bomb card and a bunch of barely playable ones.
3. Figure out if you need a third color or that you have enough playable cards within the two colors you chose.
4. Identify your best splash color (no more than 2-4 very powerful cards that can be cast using no more than 2-4 lands of that color in your deck).

This is very generic of course, but I will be coming back to that general outline as I discuss the sealed decks I've worked on to give you a better idea of what I mean.

1 Millikin
1 Mossfire Egg

1 Dirty Wererat
1 Dusk Imp
1 Entomb
1 Face of Fear
2 Filthy Cur
1 Fledgling Imp
1 Gravestorm
2 Innocent Blood
1 Last Rites
1 Mind Burst
1 Overeager Apprentice
1 Patriarch's Desire
1 Zombify

1 Anarchist
1 Earth Rift
2 Ember Beast
1 Firebolt
1 Lava Blister
1 Mad Dog
1 Obstinate Familiar
1 Rites of Initiation
1 Tremble

1 Aboshan's Desire
1 Aura Graft
1 Aven Windreader
1 Careful Study
1 Dematerialize
1 Immobilizing Link
1 Pulsating Illusion
1 Repel
1 Rites of Refusal
1 Scrivener
1 Standstill
2 Syncopate
1 Time Stretch
1 Touch of Invisibility

1 Angelic Wall
1 Aven Flock
1 Cease-Fire
1 Confessor
1 Embolden
1 Hallowed Healer
1 Life Burst
2 Mystic Zealot
1 Nomad Decoy
1 Ray of Distortion
1 Shelter
1 Sphere of Grace
1 Spiritualize
1 Tireless Tribe

1 Cartographer
1 Elephant Ambush
1 Ivy Elemental
1 Krosan Archer
1 Krosan Avenger
2 Leaf Dancer
1 Moment's Peace
1 Nantuko Disciple
1 Roar of the Wurm
1 Still Life
2 Werebear
1 Wild Mongrel

1 Abandoned Outpost
1 Centaur Garden
1 Cephalid Coliseum
1 Nomad Stadium

Play around with this card pool and see what kind of a deck you would build before reading further.

I did not know it at the time, but the card pool in this case is above average. Both artifacts are very playable - especially Millikin, which helps obtain threshold as well as accelerate the deck. It is pretty easy to discount both black and red. Each of these two colors offer about five playable cards, and neither boasts multiple cards that are worth splashing. Firebolt is probably the best card in these two colors. If there were three of them, it would make red a great splash color. As is, it would get to sit in the sideboard.

Blue, green and white are all solid colors and are all quite deep. On closer examination, green is the deepest of the three colors, making it a shoe-in for the deck. It has mana acceleration (2 Werebears) which is quite important in sealed deck, large monsters (Ivy Elemental, Roar of the Wurm), combat tricks (Elephant Ambush, Nantuko Disciple), a number of all-around solid creatures, and even at least one broken combo (Wild Mongrel and Roar of the Wurm). The really tricky part is to figure out which of the remaining two colors would be dominant, with the other color remaining a minor splash. I am going to list what I ended up playing, and then explain why I screwed it up pretty badly:

Played:

1 Millikin
1 Aven Windreader
1 Pulsating Illusion
1 Hallowed Healer
2 Mystic Zealot
1 Nomad Decoy
1 Scrivener
1 Ivy Elemental
2 Werebear
1 Wild Mongrel
1 Krosan Archer
1 Krosan Avenger
1 Nantuko Disciple
1 Standstill
2 Syncopate
1 Repel
1 Embolden
1 Shelter
1 Elephant Ambush
1 Roar of the Wurm

1 Abandoned Outpost
4 Plains
5 Islands
7 Forests

As you can see, I broke one of the most important rules in building a quality sealed deck - I played three colors across the board. Never really a good plan. However, I was still pretty inexperienced when it comes to card valuation in this new set (only got to do a few drafts with the new cards prior to this Grand Prix). That caused me to leave out several quality green cards in the sideboard, as well as prevented me from making a definitive choice between blue and white.

Now that I understand Odyssey better, it is pretty clear to me that white cards available to me were stronger. Scrivener is nice with all those instant tricks, and Standstill can really be devastating, especially if an opponent does not understand how to play around that card well, but these cards just aren't powerful enough to justify weakening the deck's mana configuration.

If I had to do it again, I would play the deck as follows:

1 Millikin
1 Angelic Wall (*)
1 Aven Flock (*)
1 Hallowed Healer
2 Mystic Zealot
1 Nomad Decoy
1 Ivy Elemental
1 Krosan Archer
1 Krosan Avenger
1 Leaf Dancer (*)
1 Nantuko Disciple
2 Werebear
1 Wild Mongrel

1 Repel
2 Syncopate
1 Embolden
1 Shelter
1 Elephant Ambush
1 Roar of the Wurm
1 Still Life

1 Abandoned Outpost
5 Plains
3 Islands
8 Forests

It is quite viable to take out blue altogether, replacing the remaining blue spells with a second Leaf Dancer, a Mossfire Egg and a Cartographer. As Cartographer is the only truly weak card of the bunch, I could also play two Mountains (along with the Egg) and a Firebolt. However, Syncopates and Repel are quite powerful and I am able to play them without diminishing my mana build significantly, so I would opt for this configuration. Leaf Dancer would always come in from the sideboard against green mages, and blue cards would get boarded out altogether against any deck with 2+ Dreamwinders.

I spent the first three rounds (where I had byes) playtesting the deck, mostly against Justin Polin. Both of us felt pretty confident about our chances (despite my incorrect build, which I was already becoming aware of). Finally the fourth round pairings were announced. It was time to play.