1/31/15 GP San Jose report

I didn't get much sleep last night.  I had to work late (12:30 am) and I could barely sleep before the tournament.  I ended up getting about 5 hours of sleep in total due to waking up several times in middle of the night.

We opened Foil Soulfire Grandmaster, and several insane Abzan cards.  The people across from us, opened a terrible pool (with a Wooded Foothills and Flooded Strand in the KTK packs, not the FRF packs, so we were down two shots at playable rares).  The pool we got passed had a ton of unplayable commons, and no rare bombs at all. 

I ended up playing Mardu with Alesha, Who Smiles at Death, Citadel Siege, Mardu Ascendancy, and Elite Scaleguard.  Unfortunately, my deck was terrible outside of that, though I ended up going 2-1 in my first match, second match, and third match.

The games I lost were due to:

1)  Flood
2)  Tried to race a blue/black flyer aggro deck, ended up losing to Torrent Elemental
3)  Kept a 1 lander on the draw, discarded 3 cards, opponent played a Palace Siege while I was at 18 life, I scooped out of frustration.  Turned out my opponent also had Ugin in his deck. 

Also now that I think about it, I should have probably played at least one of the Hooded Assassins I had in my sideboard (or perhaps both).    They work pretty well with tokens that suicide attack etc.  Or killing off through 0 power/high toughness walls post combat.  

We ended up going 0-1-2 (1 loss, 2 draws).  Though, we ended up getting recorded as going 0-2-1, due to not understanding how Swiss team sealed worked.  We thought it was like the single elimination team sealed practice from yesterday, where the draw match was determined by life total after turns.   It ultimately didn't matter since 0-1-2 eliminated us from Day 2 contention anyways, and we were pretty fed up with our sealed pools.  We ended up going out for food, then signing up for a team draft (30 dollars per person). 

I first picked Wildcall, then got passed an Elite Scaleguard.  Unfortunately, white got cut pretty hard after that.  Green was also kinda cut, and the good black cards were all getting taken.  Of course, Temur was super open (no surprise).   One of my teammates was in Temur splashing white, and my other teammate was in Mardu.  

My match was the Abzan mirror.  He played a Sultai Emissary into Abzan Runemark for the beatdowns.  Then he played a Kin-Tree Warden and a Mardu Hateblade (stalling).  He killed both of my Sage-Eye Harriers, then played Abzan Ascendancy to clog up the board state even further.    I end up losing to mill, even though I mulled to 6, because he was on the play (and thus skipped his firtst draw).   I probably would not have lost this game if I had moved my Ghostfire Blade to my Elite Scaleguard, because it was a 5/6, when he Savage Punched his 5/5 Abzan Guide (buffed to 7/7 with ferocious trigger) with my 5/6 Elite Scaleguard.   With the Ghostfire blade, it would have been a 7/8.  Gah.

Second game, I just gave up due to boredom after he killed my Elite Scaleguard and both of my Sage-Eye Harriers, then created a super durdle ground defense with Rotting Mastodon and other big butts, plus Abzan Ascendancy. 

It sucked because we spent 30 dollars for person for the team draft, and missed out on the 360 prize tix (aka one box) to be split among our team.   If i had won my match then we would have gotten the prizes, but I failed.