On July 14th, a beautiful Saturday morning in Boston (Worcester), I strolled into the convention center expecting to walk out once the sun had set. I sat down with my team, my standard deck, and then wrote out all three of our decklists while my teammates scrambled to find found their last couple cards for their decks. Special thanks to my amazing Prismatic Defender teammates- our legacy player Nick Loden and our fellow modern player Ethan King. Our decks were R/U/G Delver, Humans, and U/B midrange respectively.
Round one was called and I sat down across my opponent excited to try out this new standard deck for the first time. Over the first four turns, he played four lands in Bant colors and I still had no idea what he was playing. I leaned over to my Prismatic teammate to consult and we decided that he was playing Bant ramp. I was able to easily dispatch him in game one through two Torrential Gearhulks and a Scarab God. Halfway into game two, my teammates informed me that they had both won their matches. This meant that our team had won the match and I did not need to finish my game two. I happily shook my opponent’s hand and we turned in the match slip.
On a high from our first round win, we moved into round two. My opponent started with an Irrigated Farmland and in the next turn a Drowned Catacomb. I leaned over to our modern player and told him I would be losing my match as that matchup was unwinnable for me. I was slowly but surely taken out by an expert control player while Ethan was able to win a close match against a burn deck. I sat behind Nick watching his plays closely, trying to figure out what was happening in their legacy board state. Within the blink of an eye, Nick was drained to death by Tendrils of Agony. At this point, we were 1-1 and being carried by Ethan and Five-Color Humans deck.
We breezed through rounds three through five each which came down to the final matches and my Blue Black midrange. I was able to defeat a Grixis player and a mono-red player, and finally an Esper control player by sneakily flashing in a Chromium on their end step with my Aether Hub.
We sat down against our round six opponents. They were very cheery and nice people overall. The match went by quickly as their storm player won his match over our Delver player and Humans were eliminated by Jeskai control. I wasn’t able to finish my match against the Red Black player but we were heading towards a third game. We didn’t know it at the time, but that team would go on to win the whole tournament, so congrats to them!
Going into our next round, we knew that a loss meant we were done in the tournament. We sat down against our opponents realizing quickly they were a pro team containing Max McVety and Oliver Tomajko. I was beaten by their B/R deck in three games, but Ethan’s Humans deck was able to take down a Hollow One in two games, so it was all down to Nick and his R/U/G Delver. He was in a tight third game against infect when the deciding turn hit. Through a Stifle, a Force of Will, and due to the opponent not having a second Invigorate, we survived and killed him on the backswing.
Heading into round eight we were on a high after vanquishing a pro-team. I quickly defeated my zombies-running opponent as Ethan dodged Cranial Plating and took the win in his match.
When we looked at our round nine pairing, we knew exactly who we were playing. We sat down with a mixture of excitement and trepidation against our second pro-team of the day which was lead by Zan Syed, winner of the previous Open. As we were shuffling our decks, our names were called over the microphone, and for the on-camera feature match! Both teams were happy as this was my team’s, first ever feature match. We lost quickly on camera as Sneak and Show took two games on turn one against delver and I lost in three quick games against a B/R deck.
We walked out of the convention center with smiles even though we lost our last round eliminating us from day two. It was my first team event and I realized a team event carries strategies that aren’t necessitated in an individuals tournament. As our team reflected, we realized that in a team event, one of the most important decisions in playing is your starting hand. In team events, the decision to keep or mulligan is crucial. Even though we didn’t day two, the fun of getting to play against two pro teams and being a featured match was a success!
