Finaly... MODERN

First of all I want to apologize for spending the last few weeks without writting... Lots of stuff going on in my life right now, and work have been quite busy, so, you get it.

Last time we talked about RTR Limited... and since then I went to the first PTQ of the season at ANGERS, with the impressive mark of 167 players. I first thought about sharing my pool here if you guys, and I even did put together my list on MTGO to take a screenshot and everything, but my internet stopped working, so I lost what took me more than an hour to do... As my results were not impressive, i decided to skip that and go straight into Modern. I finished 4x4, with a bant deck but died to Collective Blessing and Grave betrayal (not having a single way to deal with enchantments in my pool). The weekend on itself was a blast, and I love the format, but with all the test for Modern and Standard going on in the next weeks, I wont be able to draft as much as I would like to.

MODERN AND LYON

My testing for GP Lyon didn't really start until 2 weeks ago. I got together with a couple of friends that are getting back in the game, and also with Arnaud H. (who won the trial that I reported in my first post). We were able to test Pod, Jund, Scapeshift, and Burn, but as the pro-tour haven't happened yet, our lists weren't up to date. But we already knew that it was too hard to supress Jund card advantage, although scapeshift had a very good match up against the versions without thoughtseize maindeck. We were far from breaking the format, but our purpose was to get familiar with the decks.

As most of the people in the pro-tour, I was inclined to play jund. Ive been refusing to play the deck since the beggining of modern, but all my friends had some success with it, while I didnt have any high finishes with Delver or Loam (the decks that I played this season). So, I tried to gather the cards to play in the GP Trial on saturday (saturday of the pro-tour), but failed. Nobody had thoughtseizes to borrow, and its a 30 euros card, so I didnt want to spend any more money. I would have to find 2 lilianas and all the Filter-Lands, so it got too complicated. So I checked the deck lists of the GP Trial that took place in Magic Corporation the week before, and the winners deck (by the way Arnaud H got to the finals once again, this time with Scapeshift, but conceded to William) seemed more my style, so I decided to give it a try. Here is the deck list I played:

4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Seachrome Coast
3 Tectonic Edge
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Steam Vents
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Eiganjo Castle
1 Arid Mesa
2 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains

3 Geist of Saint Traft
4 Restoration Angel
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Vendilion Clique
2 Kitchen Finks
1 Jace Architect of Thought 
1 Sword of feast and Famine

3 Mana Leak
4 Path to Exile
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Spell Snare
2 Cryptic Command
2 Izzet Charm

Sideboard
2 Supreme Veredict


2 Pyroclasm
2 Aven Mindcensor
1 Hero of Bladehold
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Forked Bolt
1 Dispel
2 spell pierce 
1 Double Negative
2 Stone Silence

The tournament would be 6 rounds, followed by a top 8. After starting 2-0, beating 2 bant decks, I  fall short of winning against Storm. Round 4 I played against Pierre Picot, who already had his 3 byes, then he conceded to me so I could draw in to the top 8. My first round of the top 8 was against Martyr, a deck that I was sure that I could not lose Games 2 and 3, but could not do much game 1. That was my mistake, becouse game 1 we had a 25 minutes game that I knew a LOT of things would have to go right for me to win, and instead of just conceding, I kept playing until I was dead. As expected, I won game 2, but it was too late, we didnt have any time left. Game 3 would be decided by first blood. As you can imagine, with only one mountain in my deck, and on the DRAW, it was almost impossible for me to win this game. So, I lost.

I was pretty happy with the deck, and decided to work on it for the GP. I got a few cards online and borrowed the rest from friends, and did a lot of 2-mans (Since its hard for me to find time for Daily Events). And the deck seemed AWESOME, mostly because of the sideboard. You could have a very good sideboard against most of the field, and still kill people really fast with my burn spells and flyers. But I didnt have the chance to test enoush against JUND. After the PT we knew that It would be the deck to beat, but still, I should have spent more time testing. Two other friends of mine were conviced to play the deck, so we worked on the list and prepared for the GP... We were feeling good against all the Agro decks (except  JUND), Tron, Pod, Eggs, and the Mirror (UW without lightning bolt). Thats pretty much 60-70% of the field, and that seemed Perfect!

Next post Ill talk about the GP itself...