The Magic: the Gathering Philippine Nationals will be in this coming weekend and my excitement is, well, quite indefinite. This is actually my second time qualifying for this event (the first one was way back in 2003) and the first time I’m actually going there. I’m quite happy because Iloilo’s attendance for this year, as compared to the previous years, is fairly high with seven players qualified.

The Nationals has two formats, Standard Constructed and Draft. The team’s practice for the draft I think is not enough as I still commit errors in choosing the right picks. As for the Standard, I’ve decided to pilot the same deck archetype I used on GP Singapore: the Black Red Vampires.

Despite the popularity and success of Cawblade in the recent SCG 5k and the recent US Nationals, I still don’t think my mindset is prepared to pilot the deck. I tried playtests on a personal list a few weeks back, but the shifting of the metagame and the limited time has forced me to discard that archetype.

Going back, here is my latest list and probably the final one for the maindeck:

BR Vamps as of 8/9/2011
by Mark Ian Alloso

Lands
2 Verdant Catacombs
2 Marsh Flats
4 Lavaclaw Reaches
4 Dragonskull Summit
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
7 Swamp

Creatures
4 Bloodghast
4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
4 Kalastria Highborn
4 Vampire Lacerator
4 Pulse Tracker
2 Vampire Hexmage
3 Hero of Oxid Ridge

Spells
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Go for the Throat
1 Dismember
2 Doom Blade
3 Arc Trail

The sideboard will similarly look like this:
2 Act of Aggression
1 Arc Trail
1 Doomblade
4 Duress
2 Manic Vandal
1 Shatter
2 Sorin’s Thirst
2 Vampire Nighthawk

I’m still looking for options in solving the Cawblade matchup, as the Time Reinforcements are a tough advantage to deal with. Though I think the three artifact destructions are enough, I’m still checking in on what the ins and outs of the deck for the matchup will look like.

The matchups I’m currently concerned about, in order of priority are:
1. Cawblade
2. Blue Black Control
3. Blue Red Twin
4. Red Deck Wins
5. Birthing Pod Variations
6. Mirror match

They say Blue Black is a good matchup, but the early discards via Inquisitions are the weakness of the deck. Also, racing against Red burn is somewhat 50/50 and would depend really on the draws (at most, avoid mana flood).

My other card choices for the sideboard are:

Inquisitions of Kozilek – I think of it as a substitute for Duress, but the card yearns to be in the main and I don’t like drawing discards in the late game.

Cunning Sparkmage – This is specifically to deal with the hawks and the soldier tokens from the reinforcements. Its use though is very limited.

Vampire Outcasts – Don’t laugh. This is influenced after I read an article regarding the M12 Event Decks and it is pretty cool to cast this one against RDW. Yes, that’s Magic Christmas Land you might say.

We might run a few gauntlet matchups to test against the current decks and probably refine a final sideboard. I’m hoping this will be done before Wednesday as I will be leaving for Manila on that day. *crosses fingers*

To end, I hope the coming days will be favorable for the team and I wish the rest of the guys good luck and have fun this Nationals weekend. Oh, and follow me on Twitter for I will probably tweet updates during the event. Until the next post and thanks for reading.

Hi all. It’s been one week since I went to Manila to participate in the Magic: the Gathering Philippine Open 2009, together with the rest of Team Iloilo. To recall, Mao and Oliver got invites to the Nationals and the Phil. Open was the side event. They started well on the Standard part but got the losses on the Drafts. On Day 1 of the Philippine Open which is an Alara Block format, I decided to pilot my friend’s 5 color aggro. I started 1-2 and frustrated, decided to drop early because I wasn’t really comfortable with the deck’s lack of removal. I just went ahead and took some pictures of the Day One happenings and promised myself to get it back on the Standard format the next day.

The Deck

Days before the event, Nong Lorenzo (our tatay in the community) offered me to pilot his 5 Color Elementals for the Standard format. The deck works by maneuvering mana dorks on the first turns in order to play an early Horde of Notions. The deck was awesome because it got many ways and options to play. I made some playtests with the top decks in Standard and noticed something; the deck’s very vulnerable to spot removals. The Horde acts like a lightning rod and after it has been dealt with, you’ll have to set up your harbingers again to get another and costs you several turns. This allows your opponent to get in with their beatdown and finish you off before you set up.

I was unsatisfied with the results. Although Nong Lori gave me some tips on the sideboarding, the deck still can’t compete with the top decks in the current Standard. This made me decide that I’ll go with mono-white Kithkins that I’ve been playing the past few weeks. Before I used to splash other colors on the deck like black for Zealous Persecution and blue for Negate but this time I’d go with mono white just to avoid losing the deck’s fast and aggressive tempo.

Here’s the list that I’ve piloted.

Maindeck
18 Plains
4 Windbrisk Heights
3 Rustic Clachan

3 Burrenton Forge-Tender
4 Cloudgoat Ranger
4 Knight of Meadowgrain
4 Figure of Destiny
2 Ranger of Eos
4 Wizened Cenn

2 Ajani Goldmane
4 Honor of the Pure
4 Path to Exile
4 Spectral Procession

The sideboard got complicated because I didn’t have the Ethersworn Canonist for the Elf ball decks. I looked at my old sideboard plan and filled up the empty slots. Here’s my sideboard:

4 Stillmoon Cavalier
3 Lapse of Uncertainty (the tech :D)
2 Elspeth, Knight Errant
2 Oblivion Ring
1 Unmake
1 Celestial Purge
1 Burrenton Forge-tender
1 Ranger of Eos

I really liked Ranger of Eos because aside from the card advantage, it lets you fetch the Bft’s and maximizes the change to draw them when you’re against the Jund or Black Red decks. Lapse is my tech against 5cc and random large spells like Cruel Ultimatum and Hallowed Burial.

The Matchups

We arrived a little about an hour before the event starts and catch up with the registration. We didn’t even got the time to get our lunch so I just grabbed a quick snack and hoped that it could sustain me for the rest of the tournament. The pairings for Round 1 was posted and Team Iloilo wished each other good luck and went to the designated tables. Here we go!

Round 1 vs. 5 color control

What a great way to start. I did my best to start aggressive and fast but he got a lot of removals and counter spells to undo that. I was pawned in both games. No match highlights to say here.

Record 0-1, 0-2

A frustrating start but its just the first round. Let’s see who will be my next matchup.

Round 2 vs. Turbo Fog

Great, another auto loss deck for the Kithkins. As the deck name says, he fogged me several times in Game one until I’ve reached my concede meter. I sided in my Lapses and this I can say that I’ve really utilized well that white counter spell. In game 2, I countered his Safe Passage thrice in order to beat him to death with my FOD and Cenn. In game 3, he was playing safe because I’ve seen that he has Negate on the previous game. Since I only got to draw a single Lapse, I decided to wait until he misplayed and misplayed he did. He played Font of Mythos and tapped out to fog me on my upkeep. I countered the fog and my creatures were enough to get him from 14 life to zero. Tech FTW!

Record, 1-1, 2-3

Round 3 vs. Jund Burn

I’ve preferred that name for his deck because the only creatures I saw the entire match was Boggart Ram-Gang, Bloodbraid Elf and Ball Lightning. He got me on Game One with a Flame Javelin on the face after dealing with my 3/3 Spirit tokens with double fallout. No appearance for the 3 maindeck forge-tenders, Wtf. I almost lost on Game 2 because he had Everlasting Torment in play and nulled my two forge-tenders. I kept getting with the pressure and he ran out of gas shooting them. Game 3 was better because I didn’t saw any torments and eventually beat downed him to death, with Lapse back-up.

Record, 2-1, 4-4

Round 4 vs. 5 Color Blood (teammate Mao)

It really sucks if you got paired with your teammate. We decided to play it out since its part of the tournament to get paired with your friends. Sigh. This match was actually a jinx for him since he mulliganed to five on games 1 and 3 and lost it.

Record, 3-1, 6-5

Round 5 vs. another Jund Burn

I won the die roll and had a first turn forge-tender. I didn’t know at first that he was playing a red deck and wondered why he was frowning at the sight of the pro-red kithkin. I knew it moments later when he dropped a Savage Lands and a Mountain. The forge-tender went all the way and we headed for the sideboards. My sideboard plan was the same with the previous match on black red by boarding out the Cloudgoat Rangers and replacing them with the lapses and another copy of Ranger of Eos and forge-tender. I flooded the battlefield on game two with 3 forge-tenders. Although he managed to pumped his Figure to its destiny as an 8/8 flier first striker, it wasn’t enough as I just overran him with creatures pumped with Honor.

Record, 4-1, 8-5

Round 6 vs. Grixis Fae

This was my very difficult matchup of the tournament. I managed to sneak in a win on Game 1 with a Path to Exile on his Mistbind Clique that was hiding his Bitterblossom. He was at one life that time. Game two was a fast aggro for him with a Scion of Oona and Mistbind together with a few blossom tokens. We stalled for a while in Game 3 while he was getting the advantage after a Firespout on my first two drops. A Sowered Knight and a Mistbind gave him a fast clock on our last five turns. Fortunately, the turns weren’t enough and we ended up as a draw.

Record, 4-1-1, 9-6-1

Round 7 vs. Kithkins

The last round of the tournament saw me faced up against the mirror deck. This was a bad matchup for me as my build is not as effective when I’m on the mirror. Getting ahead of beatdown and a few combat tricks were my only way to win this (forge-tenders are bad on this matchup). I took Game 1 with my spirit tokens flew over for the win when he was already stabilizing on the ground. Game 2 was a disaster as I saw him play two Stillmoon Cavaliers in which I didn’t have the answer (as if I am expecting one). Game 3 was in my favor with a turn-three Spectral Procession into a Stillmoon Cavalier on the Heights. He played a few tricks with Harm’s Way and was looking to stabilize but I finished him off with a three pumps on the Stillmoon.

Final Record, 5-1-1, 11-7-1

I was very happy with my performance and was expecting to get to the top 8 at that time. Unfortunately when the final rankings were posted, I fell to number 11 since I was the lowest in rank of the players who got the same 5-1-1 record. Oh well. I still felt happy though because I can now rest and get the time to eat a full meal. I was doing a sidetrip to Chowking in between rounds just to keep up with the hunger. Lol.

Anyway, my teammates also performed well on that tournament. Tonton got 2nd place, Oliver got 12th and Mao got 18th place. Congratulations to you guys!

Here are a few pics we took during the event.

During the Round 6, I was playing against Faes with Red.

Versus Kithkins mirror on the final round.

Tonton playing on the Top 4 versus Elf ball.

Tonton on the top 8 against Kithkins

Tonton on the Finals versus Rudi’s Elves beatdown.

Team Iloilo

Until the next blog post. Bye y’all.

Jamie Mackintosh is the 2009 Australian Nationals champion piloting a G/W Elf Ball deck and defeating (or rather sweeping) Ian Wood’s 5-color Blood deck in the finals. Here’s the decklist:

Maindeck
8 Forest
1 Plains
4 Wooded Bastion
4 Sunpetal Grove
2 Windbrisk Heights
19 land

1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
1 Mirror Entity
1 Cloudthresher
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Devoted Druid
4 Regal Force
4 Ranger of Eos
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Elvish Visionary
35 creatures

2 Manamorphose
4 Primal Command
6 other spells

Sideboard
4 Great Sable Stag
2 Cloudthresher
3 Oversoul of Dusk
3 Burrenton Forge-Tender
1 Platinum Angel
2 Qasali Pridemage

Summary of the matchup results on the Top 8:
Quarterfinals vs. Garry Wong (5 Color Blood) Won 3-0
Semifinals vs. Hugh Glanville (UB Faeries) Won 3-2
Finals vs. Ian Wood (5 Color Blood) Won 3-0