Third Wheeling in Elmhurst

An NRG Elmhurst Team 10k Tournament Report

Team events are certainly an acquired taste. On the one hand, playing magic with your friends beside you, sharing in both the wins and losses, is so fun. On the other hand, it makes your own poor performance sting even more because you’ve let down those beside you. The former is why I played in this event, and the latter is why I write this now.

I obviously chose to play with my teammates in Fractured Sanity, and the resident couple, Quincy and Jess, were looking for a third (to play in the event with, nothing more, get your mind out of the gutter). Quincy was locked in on the Legacy seat, and Jess gave me the option of either Standard or Modern. Given that I had played Modern as my main format for over ten years at this point, it was the obvious choice for me. All that was left was deck selection. Given that I hadn’t played the format since Vegas this past November, my options were ones that I had good experience with: Simic Ritual, Boros Energy, and Amulet Titan. We were expecting Boros to be the most represented in the room, making Simic Ritual a less than stellar choice. The next scariest deck we were expecting was Storm, and Titan’s matchup into that deck is less fixable than Boros’, so I was to play the latter. This is a choice I loathed and wanted to change up until the start of the event. On top of deciding to play my least favorite deck, life things had caught up to me after putting them off in favor of testing for RC Milwaukee. This meant that I was playing the event with zero reps with Energy since Spotlight Series: Secret Lair. But it’s Boros Energy, the default Modern deck, how bad could it be?

2-4-1, that was my individual record. I let my teammates down and forced them to carry me as near-deadweight to our team record of 4-2-1. To my teammates Quincy and Jess, I’m sorry. By not preparing for this event I did not contribute positively to our team. Had I prepared in any amount I would have either come to better conclusions on what to play. Had I played some number of testing matches I would have not made obvious mistakes that were unnoticed by you while you were focused on your own matches. I’m also incredibly proud of you both. The amount of dedication you both put into this event was admirable, and I couldn’t have asked for better teammates.

Now onto the matches:

Round 1 vs Esper Blink. WLW

Game 1 of this match was weird, I’m pretty sure I was forced to mulligan pretty low, but on the other side my opponent only drew three of their Emperor of Bones as threats. Despite this, they put up a pretty strong fight and pushed me to eke out every bit of value that I could to take the win. Because of what I saw, which was very little, I believed my opponent to be on Esper Goryo’s, and sideboarded accordingly. Game 2 showed me that I was very wrong in my assumption. I was bombarded by the near-infinite value of Overlord of the Balemurk and Flickerwisp and I lost in short order. As I’m correcting my sideboard for game 3, I get help from my teammates on how to sideboard so I can lock up the match win for us in the deciding game. My mind is strangely blank of what happens in it, but I’m able to start us off with a W on the board. This is unfortunately my only positive contribution for the event.

Round 2 vs Eldrazi Tron LWL

Game 1 was the stompiest of stomps from my opponent. Turn 3 Tron into banger after banger after banger while I was just trying to get my pieces set up. Game 2 I keep my own stompy hand of Ragavan on 1 into Bloodmoon on 2 and my opponent isn’t able to get themselves set up. Game 3 I had a slow turn 3 Bloodmoon with very little pressure to back it up, but after either one or two mulligans it was the best I could hope for. It unfortunately wasn’t enough, my opponent was able to get their pieces online and play through the hate piece to kill me. Thankfully both Jess and Quincy were able to win their matches so the team advanced to 2-0.

Round 3 vs Esper Goryo’s LL

I vaguely remember this match showing the power of Goryo’s fair plan of Psychic Frog, Quantum Riddler, and Ephemerate. Both games they leveraged these cards to both push for fast lethal and draw a huge chunk of their library. Again Jess and Quincy are able to win their matches and keep us undefeated.

Round 4 vs Esper Goryo’s W-

This round was a comedy of errors from our team. Quincy was in a veritable coinflip of a mirrormatch, Jess got a deck check that revealed some cards to be too curled and considered marked resulting in a game loss, and I myself called a judge for my own marked card issue. In game one I’m putting pressure on my opponent who isn’t quite able to pull things together, then on drawing my card for the turn I notice that the new top card is visibly curled and call a judge. The head judge comes over, takes a look, and asks what I think it might be away from the table and I answer with one of my foil cards, Ajani or more likely a Guide of Souls. The head judge then says “Hmm, interesting” and I instantly realized that I forgot about the Thraben Charms and let the judge know. He takes this information, double checks my deck, and rules that because it is only that one card that is marked it is a warning and lets me rush to the booth to buy a replacement. I do so, replace the card, shuffle my library at the Judge’s instruction, then we continue the match from here. I’m able to win the first game and we move onto the second. It was a bit more back and forth than the first game, but we are unable to finish it because Jess is able to quickly 2-0 their opponent after Quincy takes the mirror to bring our team to 4-0. Looking back, this is when cracks started to appear. The double deck error messed with my mental and led me to not looking at my matches as a binary win-loss that I had to win, but instead like a conversation with a friend.

Round 5 vs Esper Goryo’s LL

It could have also been this match that spelled doom for me, it was my first time in a feature match and I was thinking more about entertainment than gameplay. I know I made multiple mistakes here and I’m sure a viewer would be able to find even more. Each game plays out differently, with the first being the midrange plan and the second being the reanimate plan. Both are easily good enough to beat me. Thankfully Jess wins their match and it’s up to Quincy in his game three where he has a strong position. Unfortunately for us, his opponent is playing slowly, burning the clock so much that a judge starts to call slow play and gives him a warning. It is too little too late, and the game ends in a draw. The opponent salts off a little bit afterwards at being given a warning for slow play but apparently was able to recover enough to win the event. I did get an apology from the player after his win, but he did not reach out to either of my teammates to offer them the same. Despite the bad beats of this, my takeaway from this match is that I shouldn’t have let my teammate even get into this position. If I had put any amount of preparation into the event I would’ve come to a better understanding, had a better winrate, and reduced the chance of this happening. Besides, we still had two win-and-ins for top 8 at 4-0-1.

Round 6 vs Boros Energy WL-

A classic Boros mirror where we both just throw things at each other and eventually one of us comes out on top. I got the first one, my opponent got the second, and my opponent was in a good position in the third before the match ended from both of my teammates losing their matches. We were well and truly bleeding now at 4-1-1.

Round 7 vs Boros Energy LL

Last match of the day, another win-and-in, and another feature match. Game 1 goes pretty cleanly in my opponent’s favor, but I still feel good about my chances. I take an aggressive stance in game 2 and it’s all about the early hasty Phlage that I’m threatening. I find a line to sacrifice a Ranger-Captain to bring it back. Unfortunately, this line was super incorrect because the fetchland I drew for that turn could’ve gotten me a surveil land for the 5th card instead of giving up my valuable attacker. My opponent is able to stabilize from 3 life off this blunder and take the win. Jess, our rock, wins their match while I’m floundering in my game 2, so I left it all up to Quincy. Sadly it wasn’t to be and we lose our win-and-in in large part because of the misplay I made.

Overall this was a deservedly terrible event for me, and I’m sad that I had to drag my teammates down because of it. The rest of the weekend’s side events went just as poorly for me as the main event. I lost all three RCQs in short order and the matches weren’t particularly close. Despite the performance, I had great fun hanging out with my wonderful friends in Fractured Sanity.