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"The Road to Regionals"

Its that time of year again - Regionals time! The finals series before the big grand daddy of Australian Magic. All eyes are on the road to Canberra and plans are being made in advance. Auto-qualifiers relax whilst the rest of us work at building something that can take us to the top 8 (Or top 4 depending where you are from) to avoid that process of shredding $20 notes known as 'The Grinders'.

The last time I went to the Nationals was way back in 1996. Back then the nationals wasn't held in one city each year - that year it was held in Melbourne at some place in Collingwood. I hadn't qualified but I went along with the team anyway. There were no side events back then - just a bunch of excited players who had the opportunity to trade with people from other states. I went there with one goal in mind - to come back with a Berserk! Over the two days I bought, sold and traded piles of cards and ended up with the Berserk I came for (It cost me $50). The players from Adelaide didn't fare so well at the Nationals but we all had a good time regardless.

Nowadays I hear the Nationals are very different. There are Side Events to play in, people to trade with, mtgparadise people to meet for the first time in the flesh. My emphasis isn't so much on trading this time round but on playing in the Nationals and meeting the people I have known online for so long.

But I digress - first I have to get there!

I have already decided that if I don't qualify I won't be going. I don't see how I could justify going to my partner if I'm not in the Nationals as she hates Canberra and she would never understand why people play in 'The Grinders'. But I do have a backup plan - If I can't go to the Nationals I will go to GP Melbourne instead. But right now I want to go to Canberra more!

Different people have different ways to prepare for that big day at the Regionals. Last year I wasn't worried about qualifying so much and I played B/R Suicide. Whilst the deck was fun it did lose its first three games and then somehow managed to win the last three. It broke even and I need to do better than that to qualify for Nationals.

Its currently just under 2 weeks until Regionals so lets wind the clock back to 4 weeks before Regionals...

At this point I had no idea what I was going to play. I had been burned by the MonoBlack Control deck I was running too many times at local Type 2 events. Even though a lot of good cards come in with Saviours that can help MonoBlack Control its going to be almost impossible to get them all in time. I looked at my MonoBlue Control deck. If I can acquire a couple of copies of Bribery then it's viable. Chances of doing this aren't too remote so it's worth trying. I opened up my green collection and realised I had lent out my 4 Plow Unders already. Since I would need to run them main deck or sideboard that cut me out of green. I've had a white weenie deck built for quite some time now. With some tinkering and a good idea for some unexpected secret tech it could work too - plus it required very little from Saviours. I put together a version and started testing. Finally I had red to consider. I looked at what I had available and what I'd need to get from Saviours. Like blue there was a chance of this working if I was able to get the cards I needed. 'It Swings' had gone through various builds but it was always lacking something to give it the edge on the top decks of today. If red was viable I would need to find a deck that had the edge 'It Swings!' lacked.

After a couple of play testing sessions I began to realise what decks would work and how to change them. This left me with another dilemma - now I had too many viable decks! I had a favorite that I preferred to play but it didn't seem strong enough to do what I wanted it to while the others performed better.

In between play testing I have been drafting online using NetDraft and Apprentice at www.magic-league.com. I have played league games and a couple of tournaments for draft but never for constructed. Since the tourneys online are single elimination I would have to learn fast! My draft practice online really helped when I played draft for real - I drafted well and finished ok. With more experience I will get better.

One day when I logged on I noticed a constructed tournament was running soon. Draft practice had helped me and I thought 'What the hell it could be fun!' and entered with one of the decks I was play testing. The deck lost its first round but I analysed why it lost and changed my deck to compensate. It was good to have played against a netdeck of one of the tier 1 decks and lose because it taught me why I lost and how to beat the netdeck.

I played in another tournament the next day and fared better - this time I made it to round 3. This time I came up with a major change that would drastically improve the deck (I also looked some at decklists for ideas/why it beat me). So far I had played against 1 tier 1 deck and a couple of tier 2s. Things were coming along nicely.

The next tournament was a Trail for a Master tournament (24k event kind of like a PTQ in real life) with 70-ish players! Now here's a great time for play testing as everyone would be playing the best builds they could find. Don't know how I did it but I faced 2 tier 1 decks round 1 and 2 and demolished them. Beat a rogue deck in round 3. Scored a bye in round 4 to make top 5! I lost round 5 to the player who would finish third (he had a bye first round so it was appropriate we played that round). I knew why I lost right away and changed my deck to compensate. It was then I realised that I had my deck for the Regionals! Now all I needed to do was track down a couple of cards for it. The deck isn't perfect but with a little luck I might just Top 8...

Back to now - I have the cards for the deck. Now my deck is ready I can help out my fellow play testers to get their decks ready to go too.

Good luck at the Regionals everyone and hopefully I'll be seeing you all in Canberra!

Joe Tobin (Aytakk2)

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