Articles

Last year I was solidly in the Top 50, with only one tournament left to go before the cutoff. Now I'm really not one for the whole sitting on your rating thing, and I would have had to do fairly poorly to knock myself out anyway. Plus the fact that it was a Limited PTQ, I never miss a Limited PTQ. So, I rocked up and opened a fairly ordinary deck. I lost the first round and realised my deck was very ordinary indeed and thought about dropping. I talked to Ben Seck and he convinced me that I should persevere, so what the heck - I'll play another round. I lost the second round.

Well, I thought - I'll be playing someone on 0-2, so I have to win that, right? And I do! So now I was 1-2 and I couldn't drop after winning of course.

Soon I'm 1-3, after losing to a fairly new, young, player. I dropped. In the 3 matches I lost, I managed to lose 75 points. In the match I won, I won 3 points. Now as it happened, 72 points down was enough to take me out of the Top 50 and into the Grinders. The Grinders involved an incident with me losing to a 14 year old girl with a stuffed Tiger. If you're really keen I'm sure there is a lament in the archives somewhere. I digress.

So that was last year.

This year I was in a slightly more precarious position. I was sitting at about 58th or so (with the Top 50 sliding to around 61s due to some people ahead of me qualifying via other means) with not much time to go but quite a few tournament results to go in. Some good, some bad, some quite old. I checked out my rating about a week before the cutoff and got a bit of a shock when I found out I'm sitting around 90!

I have a bit of a look and found out that some old drafts I did at the beginning of the year had accidentally gone through on my constructed rating. I did very, very, poorly in these drafts. For those who don't know the intricacies of the DCI ranking system (hey, few do, self included), I'll have to explain why this was a problem.

I play a lot of limited events. At least 2 or 3 sanctioned ones every week, sometimes more. I play almost no constructed events. The last sanctioned one I was in was about nine months ago. Now with DCI ratings, once you accumulate a lot of events, the older ones start to have a very tiny impact on your current rating. So for example, if the events that went in under my constructed rating had gone in under my limited rating, there would be 50 or so tournaments that would have gone in after it, making the old ones more or less meaningless. Instead they went in under my constructed rating and promptly destroyed it.

So, I query Wizards about it and meanwhile the cutoff comes and goes and I'm not in. Oh well, I don't actually mind grinding, but luck favors the brave. Actually that makes no sense here at all, but I have never ever had the opportunity to write and/or say that phrase and it sounds kind of cool. In any case they allowed me in on appeal. So I have the pleasure of looking at the list of invited Nationals people and see "Scott Hunstad - on appeal" Now of course everyone that has a look at the list assumes I have whinged to WotC to the point of them just saying "bugger it, let him in."

And that's pretty much true.

In any case, that's not really the point of this article.

I'm going to Nationals in less than a week and I have to play constructed. This is rather painful for me. In previous years the Nationals format was such that on Day 1 there were six rounds of draft, followed by a Day 2 of six rounds of constructed. This suited me just fine, as I could play the first day and then drop out and play the quintessential Team Sealed PTQ on the second day instead of actually playing the constructed portion.

This is no longer to be - for two reasons. Someone has decided to mix things up a bit and change the format of the tournament - and thus my stress level. Rounds 1-3 of Nationals this year are constructed. Adding to that, there is no team sealed event this year at nationals. It has been replaced by some poxy Constructed PTQ

So there it is. I have no choice. I must play constructed. Curses!

See the problem is not that I hate constructed. In fact I actually quite enjoy it. I've played a few games here and there with other people's decks in the current format and it definitely has its appeal. I have played numerous Type II and block seasons in the past - Mono White in Onslaught Block - Wake in OTJ/OLS Type II - Counter Burn in IPA/OTJ Type II, etc. So I've had some previous experience, and while my constructed rating isn't fantastic by any means, it's good enough that with a boost from my limited rating, I can usually squeak into the Top 50.

The problem I have is getting to the stage of having a completed, tested, viable constructed deck. I like to play these decks, but the approach to get to that stage is a bit more uninteresting:

• Step 1: Think of deck idea.
• Step 2: Look around net for deck ideas.
• Step 3: Decide on deck to build.
• Step 4: Look for cards.
• Step 5: Find out you don't have the cards required.
• Step 6: Write out proxies for cards.
• Step 7: Buy sleeves.
• Step 8: Sleeve cards.
• Step 9: Trade for cards you don't have.
• Step 10: Buy cards you can't trade for.
• Step 11: Build deck.
• Step 12: Play deck.
• Step 13: Play deck some more.
• Step 14: Lose more than you expected.
• Step 15: Find out you actually hate deck.
• Step 16: ...
• Step 1: Think of deck idea...

Over the years this process has become, for me personally, untenable. This is evidenced by the lack of constructed tournaments on my DCI rating. If you look, the last event I played in was the Onslaught Block PTQ in July of last year. Since then I have played in around 125 Limited tournaments. Kind of one-sided, no?

So this then leaves me with a dilemma. I can't exactly not play in Nationals, especially after the whole "on appeal" thing, but in order to do so I have to have a constructed deck.

Being involved with Magic means that it is nearly impossible to avoid the discussions on the Type II format. Which version of TnN is the best. How Cranial Plating Ravager compares to the clamp version. Whether U/W Control will have a showing at Nationals. And so forth. Sometimes interesting, sometimes not, but hey I don't really have to pay attention because I don't play constructed. Until now.

So here is my plan.

I'm going down with 3 friends that all have to grind. I also know about 10 or so Sydney players who are also going down to grind. Now, while Sydney usually has a pretty strong showing/result at the grinders every year, it is highly unlikely that all of us will end up playing in the Nationals competition the next day. Someone will be "mana screwed all day". Someone will make the wrong metagame choice. Someone will lose to Tiffany and her tiger. This means that the decks that don't end up in the rubbish bin or thrown across the room in disgust may end up being viable deck types for my nationals experience.

"So... you're done with that, right?"

Now it may be hard to get said people to part with their carefully honed constructed deck - played and tested and played and tested as they have been over the past two months. People spend a lot of time and often a lot of money getting their decks up to scratch.

I am confident, however, that I will be able to sweet talk them out of it.

Or I can hit them.

Either way, problem solved!

I'll invariably let you know how I end up going. Until then, best of luck to all MTGParadisers that are going down to Canberra for the big event. Make sure you at least come by and say "Hi" to myself and Paul. We like to meet forum members. Even the annoying ones like 'wasted.'

[ Email the Author | Discuss this Article ]