GP DC Recap (Sweet Sweet Victory)

I am still on vacation but wanted to update everybody on how the GP went for us! Grand Prix DC was potentially the most fun that I have ever had playing Magic at the competitive level. I teamed with a local player from Vermont and one of his friends from Iowa and together we made a deep run into the second day of the event.

Day 1

Day 1 when we opened our pools we were pretty excited. We had two very powerful decks and one aggressively mediocre pile (thanks for jumping on that grenade trevor). The deck that my team had given me  has me super excited. It was a green black deck featuring bombs such as Nissa, Voice of Zendikar, Zendikar Resurgence, and Gladeheart Calvary, needless to say my deck was pretty good. The highlight of Day 1 for me was easily playing with Zendikar Resurgence, this was a card that I was adamantly against, I thought it was unplayable garbage. Boy was a I wrong. This card was incredible, combined with ridiculous cards like Baloth Null and small cheap creatures it felt like I was playing storm.

Unfortunately, for the team as a whole the day did not start very well. We had the privilege of unintentionally drawing in our first round, we strongly considered dropping after that. Fortunately we did not drop. We continued to battle until we picked up the dreaded 3rd loss that would knock us out of Day 2 contention. Fortunately, that third loss did not come. We picked up our first actual loss in round three and then our second in round 6. It was crunch time, I was not going to fall short in another GP day 1. Round 8 was a personal highlight for me. When I looked up the pairings and I saw my opponent, Jim Davis, the recent SCG invitational winner. He was potentially the biggest name pro that I have ever played in my magic career and fortunately I beat him. We ended the first day with a record of 6-2-1, hardly anything to be super excited about, but I FINALLY got my Day 2.

Day 2

Day 2 was a little scary to start. One team mate really enjoyed DC unfortunately the night before he "enjoyed" DC a little too much. Fortunately he made it there in time and we started our second deck construction. Our pool was a little less exciting today but still seemed solid. I ended up with a very strong Blue/Black Eldrazi deck with bombs like Reality Smasher and Bearer of Truth. Again we had a pretty bad deck in our pool that once again Trevor took one for the team and played it. Realistically we had to put together a 4-1 performance in order to cash for $250 each. Flash forward four rounds and our team was sitting at 10-3-1. We had a win and cash. We played against a group of very nice guys from New York State and unfortunately did not get there. I lost my match and felt pretty bad about it and it all came down to my third teammate's match. Unfortunately it was with our worst deck and he was paired against what seemed to be their best deck.

Despite loosing our win and cash, I could not be happier with our performance in the GP. I am excited for GP Louisville which is the next team event that my team is planning on reuniting to battle in.