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Big in Japan …
At least I’ll hope I’ll be …
This time …
The first hurdle has been taken by being the last man standing of 84 in one of the last possible occasions to qualify for pro tour Kyoto.
Ptq after ptq after ptq I was hoping for some goodies like in those stories you hear people tell (“ooh, I have 2 flameblast dragons” or “cool, I have a very good naya deck with flameblast and battlegrace angel”) but usually I got handed the “it’s ok but it will be hard to get to top 8 with this and my rares are 2 minion reflectors, where ancients thread , mindlock orb and immortal coil.
Sunday December 28th on the other hand proved that also in magic luck evens out and if you persist, you will also get that “must be nice” pool
I won’t list the entire pool as I think there is very little room to change cards since I just threw all my decent cards together, added the fix and some basic lands and smiled …
REALLY hard … 
Wouldn’t you when you get to play a ptq with this monstrosity:
1 Steward of Valeron
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Blister Beetle
1 Dregscape Zombie
1 Vithian Stinger
1 Rhox Charger
1 Algae Gharial
1 Bloodpyre Elemental
1 Scourge Devil
1 Vein Drinker
1 Yoked Plowbeast
1 Empyrial Archangel
1 Obelisk of Jund
1 Obelisk of Esper
1 Resounding Thunder
2 Oblivion Ring
2 Naya Charm
1 Branching Bolt
1 Bone Splinters
1 Violent Ultimatum
1 Jungle Weaver
4 Forest
3 Mountain
3 Swamp
2 Plains
1 Seaside Citadel
1 Jungle Shrine
1 Esper Panorama
1 Naya Panorama
1 Jund Panorama
Nuke em from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure
I figured I would be my own worst enemy by goofing up when it mattered.
With so much card quality though most goofs should be forgivable so the only real fear would be mana issues and even those should be minimal with all the fix I had.
One thing I knew for sure was that I would be drawing with this deck to get that extra card as often as possible. So in the arena we went …
Swiss
Round 1 – Mark Stals
Friendly chap who played sigil of distinction in the 3 games but saw it removed twice and lost his board 2 times to the rest of my removal. I lost one game trying to play aggressively by taking out his death baron with oblivion ring so I could attack him and put his life total on 5. This would only allow him to strike back for 7 with his sigiled skeletal kathari and leave me at 1 life. Unfortunately he had an O-ring for mine so the baron came back and the kathari did 8 damage.
1-0
Round 2 – Raymond T. Veenis
The headjudge from the ptq in Eindhoven who likes things a bit more strict…
Guess I should be a bit tighter in my play and shuffling habit these games … The first game my goodies disposed of the poor fellow in barely 10 minutes and I felt rather good about my chances.
The second game however he had an empyrial archangel on the board while mine was still in my hands. I tapped his board with Naya charm and tried to get rid of his angel but when one of my attackers got snuffed I failed. Raymond then played necrogenesis and with all the removal that had been tossed back and forth the little saprolings did me in.
I opted to draw in the last game and when mister Veenis took 3 trips to Paris, we both realised this wasn’t going to be easy for him.
I actually got flooded so this still was a game, but vein drinker that came back with Naya charm and Yoked plowbeast were just too much too handle with a starting hand of 4.
2-0
Round 3 – Mark Hugen
Mark was a nice, older player that didn’t really play optimal. (playing battlegrace angel after his attack, playing algae gharial after his attack, being clueless when I blocked his 5/5 with my dragscape zombie in his attack and wondering when I unearthed that ..)
Still, the man was 2-0 at that point so he had to have some decent stuff …
He had a nice curve, predator dragon, battlegrace angel and feral hydra but very little removal so when I was able to take out his threats, my bombalicious creatures took home the bacon.
3-0
Round 4 – Daan Smets
When we started shuffling the guy said if I didn’t remember him from last week when he was my grumpy round 1 opponent who mulliganed twice and hardly put up a fight …
“Oooh, yeah, man that blew” after which the guy mulliganed to 6 in the first game and to 5 in the second and lost to my removal and creatures in 15 minutes.
He took it like a real sport and said he was already glad he made it to 3-0 this time with his deck.
4-0
With 3 Belgians at this point with 4 wins (good ol’ Possetron, Johan “Kavu” Verhulst and me) it would a reasonable assumption that 2 of us had to play each other
Johan and me were the lucky ones ..
Round 5 – Johan Verhulst
Since drawing at this point seemed like a wonky idea to us both we just shuffled up for a relaxed friendly match, realising that the loser still had a good chance to make it to top 8.
I lost the first game thanks to the dark horse for my deck again: 
Then I bagged the second with my goodies so the third one would decide who would be almost sure of a spot in the top 8.
Johan let me begin and I was lucky enough to have a turn 2 steward in a nice “who can draw the fewest lands and miss the most land drops”.
Johan won that one, I won the game and match …
Eeewww, you stepped in that shit man.
It happens.
What does ? Shit happens ???
Yeah.
5-0
Sooooo, draw round 6 and seal the deal ?
*peut *
DENIED
Round 6 – Jasper Blaas
It turned out I was the only guy left with 5-0 and Jasper had picked up an unintentional draw somewhere along the way so we would have to play.
This match my fears from the start became reality as my brain pulled a homer on me twice, I mulliganed to 5 in game 1 and I missed colours in both games.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGdlJWfx1GA&feature=related
5-0-1
Anyway, with good resistance and a nice opponent a draw and top 8 should be possible …
Let’s check the standings and pairings …
Why …
hello
Peter Vieren …
*DING*
Round 7 – Peter Vieren
ID
5-1-1
Time for some dutch gourmet shit …
“een broodje kroket en een kaassoufle on the side”
TOP 8 draft
My first ptq top 8 this season and I was crossing my fingers
the table seemed ok with 3 Belgian players (Johan Verhulst, Peter Vieren and me), some Dutch (semi) pro’s (Jeroen Remie and Jasper Blaas) and some local players I didn’t really know.
As luck would have it all 3 Belgians were seated in such a way that we wouldn’t have to face each other in the quarters and we were all hoping to make it at least past those.
I opened an underwhelming pack that gave me the choice between goblin assault, an uncommon land and executioner’s capsule.
I don’t really like the assault all that much and I dislike taking a land first pick (which in this case I probably should have done though) so I took the monocolour removal spell and followed it up with Sanctum Gargoyle.
Third pack I still kept my options open by taking a magma spray and after that I took some picks that pushed me a bit towards Jund.
The Second booster I opened included the 8 mana mythic sphinx and a Jund charm as most prominent picks. I’m not all that fond of the 8 mana creatures (as bomby as they may be) and especially the fragile esper creatures so I took the Jund charm, hoping to continue on the Jund path.
When I received my pack from the left by Jeroen Remie it seemed like it would be Jund all the way … 
I followed this spiffy dragon up with some dragon fodders and a few more filler creatures.
At the end of this round of boosters I counted my playables and I had barely about 14 though with only little fix.
This meant I would have to pick up at least 8 more solid cards or would have to resort to some crappy filling, and that’s mostly not what you want …
Fate smiled upon me that Sunday though as I opened this nice baby in my third booster:
This was followed up with druid of the anima, sprouting thrinax, court archers, rockslide elemental, exuberant firestoker, mosstodon, mosstodon, skullmulcher and soon I had myself a nice Jund deck
Top 8 draft Deck :
2 Dragon Fodder
1 Obelisk of Jund
1 Magma Spray
1 Soul's Fire
1 Jund Charm
1 Volcanic Submersion
1 Executioner's Capsule
1 Druid of the Anima
1 Rip clan Crasher
1 Sprouting Thrinax
1 Exuberant Firestoker
3 Court Archers
1 Rockslide Elemental
1 Scourge Devil
1 Skullmulcher
2 Mosstodon
1 Flameblast Dragon
1 Predator Dragon
6 Forest
8 Mountain
2 Swamp
1 Jund Panorama
I had the same fuzzy feeling I had in December 2007 after the top8 draft for PT Kuala Lumpur.
My deck had some removal, a nice curve and 2 bomb rares …
Should be possible to take a slot with this ..
Quarter final – Ulco Schoots
The name didn’t ring a bell, the face didn’t seem familiar either, the fact he was still tinkering with his deck while the other quarters had already started hardly seemed threatening.
We started last and finished first.
I opened the first game with rip clan, followed up by a court archer turn three and four and some beef later on
The second game I had a hand of druid, obelisk, 3 land, flameblast dragon and predator dragon, drew a 4
th land in time and played flameblast dragon turn 4.
Yes, I think ‘toast' is an appropriate description." —Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
I checked with the judge who my next round opponent would be and he informed it would be the winner of the match between Johan Verhulst and Daan Pruijt. I strolled over to their table just in time to see Johan win …
On the other tables Jeroen Remie was duking it out with a guy who was playing his first ptq and Peter had the fiercest resistance of us all in Jasper Blaas.
Semi final – Johan Verhulst
The first game Johan had some removal for my creatures and rammed his B/R weenies down my throat while I had a few black cards (jund charm, thrinax and capsule) in hand but no swamp.
The second game those tables were reversed with my predator dragon on the board and Johan lacking removal and being stuck with blue cards in his hand without an island.
Guess the third one had to decide ….So I just played a turn 5 flameblast …
Sometimes bombs just do what it says on the tin...
So onto the finals we go (although the misses disagreed when I informed her about my late arrival and the possibility of another asian trip …)
It turned out Jeroen had beaten the unknown guy and Peter had won against Jasper so I would either have to play one of the best Belgian players or a weathered pro veteran like Remie.
Due to my fast games so far (go Jund and/or Naya !!!) I was able to catch the second part of their first game and the complete second game. It turned out Jeroen wasn’t lying during deckbuilding when he said out loud his deck was a pile.
Peter on the other hand had drafted together a true Xofstyle 5 colour funkinessdeck with broodmate dragon as standout and with lots-o-fix and carddraw …
I figured I should have a solid chance against either given the nature of my deck (straight forward, fast, consistent, bombs) but I was silently rooting for Peter and the prospect of an all Belgian final in a Dutch ptq.
It was indeed Peter who went totally mad with all his carddraw and triple agony warp (yummy) and bested Jeroen Remie who went down in an epic fight but with a smile.
Respect for the (former) pro …
Finals – Peter Vieren
Meh, Not the whole conflict of conscience again …
Should I just concede and give a promising young magic player the chance to join his brother in a journey to Japan .. or should I just try to take the slot myself …
Well Peter,
drunk people aren’t known for their great reasoning..
Besides, I had never beaten you before in a sanctioned match so the odds and skill were surely on your side. (Yea, rub it in :P - Xof)
So I told Peter we would just play the match and see what happened.
I wouldn’t mind loosing, but I would like to win too ..
Anyway, no freebees …
I won my third die-roll in a row allowing me to begin.
My deck came through for me with a turn 2 rip clan, turn 3 firestoker, turn 4 and 5 mostodon and a soul’s fire to seal the deal. A hard draw to match for any 5color.
The second game I had a poor draw and Peter’s deft dualist grinned at my executioner’s capsule all game long until it finally had a target in the RED dragon token from his broodmate dragon …
Capsule didn’t seem like such a winner in this matchup so I sided it out.
The last and deciding game I crossed my fingers and drew my seven cards: Rip clan, court archer, predator dragon, dragon fodder, volcanic submersion and 3 lands.
The rip clan supported by the court archer did 8 damage and when he finally got snuffed I pushed through 3 more damage with the court archer and the goblin tokens.
I got a scourge devil through too I think that got nailed by a agony warp. I held on to the submersion because I knew Peter had at least a tower gargoyle and maybe some other targets and since he was struggling with all his panorama’s I knew it would only be a matter of time before he had to do something so I had a chance to play the dragon.
When he had to tap some lands to play a courier’s capsule the window was wide open …
Rip any land (I already had 3 mountains in play) ..
Cast my dragon and sac some guys…
And that was the ballgame.
So on to my 4th Pro tour and a chance to see a bit of Japan.
Hopefully this time with a day 2 showing and a money finish but in the worst case scenario, it’s living the dream, playing the game and seeing the world.
Seeya round,
Tom “El Tombo” De Wael
P.S : Props to all Belgians present at this ptq who made for a nice and supportive atmosphere and especially to Peter and Johan for also making top 8.
Big props to Maarten De Ridder for the ride to Utrecht and Stijn Van Goethem and Jurgen Baert for the ride back to Ghent.
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