Hey all. I apologize for the blog’s short hiatus. I was on travel to Malaysia for the Magic: the Gathering Grand Prix Kuala Lumpur, which is now I am going to tell you about in this post. For a short trivia, GP KL was just my second Grand Prix tournament event I’ve joined, and the second country that I’ve traveled to. Yeah, just practicing the “Play the game, See the world” motto of the card game. Anyhow, I’ll try to go into detail about my GP experience in Kuala Lumpur.
First off is the deck. Since I’ve decided already to pilot W/B Tokens, here is my final list:
Lands
4 Isolated Chapel
13 Plains
4 Swamp
3 Vault of the Archangel
Creatures
2 Hero of Bladehold
4 Blade Splicer
3 Doomed Traveler
Spells
4 Gather the Townsfolk
4 Intangible Virtue
4 Honor of the Pure
4 Lingering Souls
2 Mortarpod
4 Oblivion Ring
1 Elspeth Tirel
3 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
1 Revoke Existence
The last minute change to Revoke Existence is to adjust to a more flexible approach on the pre-board. Also, I don’t think Doomed Traveler is that effective on most of the matchups so I cut one in favor of a third Sorin, Lord of Innistrad.
At this time, the sideboard list is not yet finalized so I just made a short list for testing on the Grand Prix Trials. Stony Silence was my initial option to stop Ratchet Bombs and also works against equipments.
The Travel Preparations
I think I am already used to backpacking preparations for my travels, from my first trip to Cebu for the Regionals in 2007 and learning from that until the present. It was a good thing that Wizards’ early announcement of the Grand Prix schedule and format made me adjust my budget early for plane ticket promos.
It was in the 1st week of January that we were able to book for Malaysia, with the Team Iloilo travelers. We were scheduled by batch, (me with Oli, and Pete) and we leave for KL on the 21st of March. The bad thing about that sched is we had to leave for Manila on the first flight of 6:10am. I needed to be awake by 3am so I ended up sleeping for only an hour.
We arrived past 7am at NAIA 3, with a lot of time to spare as the trip to KL was on 2pm. We went to MOA to grab some coffee & breakfast and maybe playtest a bit. Since we didn’t bring extra decks, I just watched how the UB Zombie mirror match goes about.
We were back by 11am & met up with my girlfriend at the airport. After a few payment processing and immigration stuff, we were on waiting area by 12:30. More time to spare so I test played with UB Zombies again with the sideboard cards. The matchup was still easily favored to Tokens, as they could not deal with the card advantage, as well as the sideboarded Mirran Crusader (which I had three).
We were en-route to KL by 2pm and arrived around 5:15pm. This is where the “Lost in the Woods” happened. After we arrived to KL Central, the hotel where we supposed to go to was the Hotel Chinatown in Jalan Petaling. We thought it was on the Petaling Station along the train lane. We ended up on a residential area of the city and had to ride a train back. Good thing Pete brought a KL City Map application on his iPad which we used to locate the exact Jalan Petaling street. After walking a few blocks, we found the night market and the hotel, and we’re obviously tired and exhausted. I guess next time, knowing more of the “exact” location and hiring a taxi is the best choice.
R&R was the initial plan the next day and the place we decided to visit was the famous Petronas Twin Towers and the suggested temples (from Pete’s City Map app) near the hotel. Exploring the city via public transportation was a good experience. Their trains were almost similar to that of Singapore’s except that I don’t get to understand their announcements on the next station stop.
Here are some pics I took on that day.
On the part two, I will discuss how the GP Trials went and the main event and my personal incites of the metagame. Thanks for reading and until the next post. 😀