Arena Championship 7

Two weekends ago I participated in Arena Championship 7, playing Gruul Aggro. 

I prepared for the event with fellow Arena Championship competitors James Zhi, Arne Huschenbeth, and Matt Saypoff, with plenty of others who weren't qualified lending a hand as well. About a month prior, Mark Jacobson organized a Discord server to discuss Standard in preparation for the November Arena Qualifier (which I played) and the Atlanta Spotlight Series event (which I won't be playing). It made sense at that point to use the group for Arena Championship prep also. 

For the Arena Qualifier (three weeks before the Arena Championship and two weeks before deck submission) I landed on Dimir Midrange, a build pioneered by Lukas Honnay and Jitse Goutbeek, which I believe was ahead of its time. It cut the big creatures (Preacher and Sheoldred) while running Mockingbirds and maxing out on Kaitos and Enduring Curiosities, essentially playing as a pure tempo deck game 1. This gave it a big leg up versus other Black Midrange lists like Golgari (maybe the most popular deck at the time) and Dimir. Meanwhile, the sideboard plan of more removal and Mazemind Tome allowed it to cut the tempo threats and turn into a control deck versus Red Aggro. 

I went 7-2 on Day 1 to make it to the second day. On Day 2 I started 2-0 before losing two straight to end the run. It was a fun tournament because the quality of opposition was extremely high, including,  just among the names I recognized, at least four players with a Pro Tour top 8 (Kyle Rose, Karl Sarap, Adam Edelson, and Max Rappaport) and at least two more Pro Tour mainstays in Adriano Moscato and Teruya Kakumae. That's quite the competition for an Arena event. 

The card we missed was Floodpits Drowner. One or two of us briefly tried the card and found it low power level, and the others (including myself) were more than willing to accept this conclusion because the card just looked weak. At the same time, I recognized the Bats were mediocre in the deck and didn't fit the theme well. The entire deck is strong against removal, with the exception of the Bat, and replacing it with Drowner would have leaned harder into the tempo plan and the "mitigating removal" plan. 

I went 3-0 against Red Aggro, each played by elite opponents, but the games were razor close and I was left wondering how good the matchup actually was. In the following days it became progressively clearer that Dimir builds were having to choose between being better pre-board against Red (Preacher and Sheoldred) or Black Midrange (cutting the big black creatures in favor of more tempo). Going into Arena Championship testing, Dimir was still one of my frontrunners, but it had become public enemy number one and the format was adapting to it. That meant people playing archetypes like Convoke that are structurally advantaged versus Dimir, and it also meant that Dimir lists were becoming quite inbred to beat the mirror. Once I started getting paired versus mirror matches running Faebloom Trick, which is amazing in the mirror but seemed too weak overall, I decided Dimir had gotten too inbred and looked elsewhere. 

I turned to Gruul. With Innkeeper's Talent and Questing Druid, Gruul grinds much better against midrange and control than Mono Red. Moreover, Gruul is an intrinsically strong deck, arguably the most powerful in the format. But it also seemed particularly well positioned for this moment:

• It was very strong against Dimir's game 1 configuration, which usually included no Preacher/Sheoldred and sometimes even cards like Saiba Cryptomancer and Faebloom Trick. Small blue creatures don't block well against big Gruul creatures.
• It was (at least slightly) favored against the decks trying to prey on Dimir, including Convoke, Simic Tempo, and Zur Domain. 
• Golgari, which I believe to be Gruul's worst matchup among the common decks, was being pushed out of the format by Dimir. 

In the final days before deck submission, Dimir started adapting a full sideboard plan against Red consisting of boarding into a bunch of Preachers and Sheoldreds, along with Gix's Command. This was scary, but we still liked Gruul's positioning overall. We tried to adapt to the big black creatures with four answers (Scorching Shot/Obliterating Bolt) in the 75. 

We realized in the final days that Convoke was likely well positioned, but it felt too late to switch. Also, Convoke is inconsistent and has extremely painful mana consisting almost entirely of painlands and fastlands. It seemed like Convoke would be the best choice if (and only if) Dimir was a huge percentage of the field, whereas Gruul was still a good choice in such a metagame and a fine choice in any other reasonably possible metagame. So Matt, Arne, and I stuck with Gruul.

James, meanwhile, played a cool Sultai Terror Tempo deck, which tried to shore up the archetype's weakness against Red Aggro with maindeck black removal, particularly Nowhere to Run. This deck seemed good to me, but I didn't have enough time to really dig into it. 

I submitted Gruul on deck submission day, the Monday before the tournament. I tried to relax a bit the next couple days, getting in a few practice matches here and there. Upon seeing the metagame breakdown that was released Friday, the day before the event, I felt good about our choice. There was tons of Dimir, almost no Golgari, and I wasn't particularly scared of facing anything among the smattering of other decks, most of which I assume were chosen for their Dimir matchup.

With so much Dimir in the field, I decided to spend time on the last day prior to the event practicing the matchup. Across eight matches the game and match score was about even and the matchup felt about as close to 50/50 as it gets. This worried me, because our assumption had been that Gruul is favored. I think in retrospect the Dimir builds developed better sideboard plans versus Red Aggro in the final days before deck submission. Also cards that had recently become stock in Dimir, like Tishana's Tidebinder, were better against Red Aggro than I had suspected. Still, I was feeling decent: even if the Dimir matchup were close to even, the other matchups all seemed fine with the exception of Golgari, and there were only three copies of that. 

Of course, round 1 I was paired against Golgari, and not only Golgari but just about the most hateful version imaginable, with two maindeck(!) Gix's Command, tons of removal, and tons of non-Demon giant creatures (against which Pawpatch Formation doesn't work) to overload my limited removal. I got lucky to win. Game 1 I had 2 Burst Lightning for 2 Lllanowar Elves and my opponent get stuck on three lands. Game 2 I lost to removal and a slew of Sentinel of the Nameless City. Game 3 I had the perfect draw and my opponent stumbled. After the match I mentioned to my opponent that I felt I had gotten lucky and he told me he was feeling down about his deck choice. I told him there's no use worrying about that at this point; all we can do now is play the games. My opponent started 0-2 and then went 4-0 the rest of the way to qualify for Day 2. At the conclusion of Day 1 he sent me a nice message thanking me for the pep talk. 

Record: 1-0

In round 2 I was paired versus Mono Red. Game 1 is unfavored due to them having more and better removal, but after sideboard we bring in more removal and have a better late-game, so we are favored post-board. Still, games often come down to who is on the play or who casts more Scorching Nemeses. I won game 1, which had me feeling good. Then my opponent stole both post-sideboard games with Twisted Fealty, a card that I would not consider good versus Gruul, but it worked. My opponent put me to negative 1 life in game 3 with Twisted Fealty plus Mostrous Rage on the pivotal turn. I felt like I had the tools to win this game and was frustrated that I put myself dead to this combination of cards. In the moment, I was certain I had thrown the game away, and I felt my mindset spiraling. Though, thinking about it a bit more before round 3, it wasn't clear-cut what a better line would have been. (Or did I just convince myself of that to stop the spiral?)

Record: 1-1

Round 3 was against the mirror, which was actually a cross between Mono Red and Gruul. Overall I had better draws and I don't remember much else from the match other than I thought our plan for the mirror put us in a good position post-board. I had been feeling jittery the first three rounds. I think my plays were generally alright, but my focus was off and I was rushing through decisions. Each round was so individually important that I was overly stressed and it was affecting my decision-making. I was going to need outside intervention to slow down and concentrate. Luckily, that outside intervention came from an unexpected source. 

Record: 2-1

***BRIEF ASIDE***

I will now complain about several elements of this tournament that ranged from very frustrating to frankly unfair. None of this is meant as a slight against the people working the tournament, including those doing coverage, organizing the event, or judging. The tournament itself was very efficiently run and everyone was extremely nice and communicative during the event. I don't blame those in the trenches running the show for what I'm about to gripe about.

***END BRIEF ASIDE***

The first big problem with this event was the lack of communication leading up to it. I qualified in July and was not contacted by anyone for weeks. I heard that it took others months to receive any communication after qualifying. It took even longer for WOTC to announce the format or even pick a date for the event. I was supposed to book a trip in December and I wasn't able to do so until tickets were very expensive because it took so long to find out when the event would be. Those who needed to request time off from work or who were trying to make plans had no choice but to plead with WOTC to finally just pick a date for the event, but no date came until, six weeks before the event would ultimately be held, WOTC dropped the date in an update to an old web page without any announcement whatsoever. We received an email about the date a week or two later, but by then it was just about a month before the event. Less than three weeks before deck submission we were finally told the format (Standard, i.e. no draft for the first time in an Arena Championship). 

The second big problem was the structure: 48 participants, six rounds of swiss, then the top 24 players make it to the elimination rounds, with the eight best records receiving a bye into the top 16. To provide some context, a lot of money was on the line ($250,000 prize pool, $30,000 for first place), plus two Worlds invites and 16 Pro Tour invites. It was a very difficult tournament to qualify for. And it was the most important tournament on the entire Arena client. So it felt unfair to reduce all of that to the tiny sample of six swiss rounds. Far worse was the fact that the number of rounds essentially maximized the effect of tiebreakers: about half of the 3-3s would make the top 24 and half would miss! (Also, a few 4-2s would finish in the top 8 and the rest would finish between 9th and 24th.) Six rounds was a wild choice because adding just one additional round would have yielded a clean (or nearly clean) cut for top 24. Moreover, this issue was entirely foreseeable; taking the number of players and chopping them in half after six rounds is obviously going to result in many players with the same record on either side of the cutoff. I flagged this to WOTC shortly after they announced the structure and received no response. Tiebreakers play a role in almost every Magic tournament, but their impact could have been significantly minimized here with some forethought. And then there was the fact that places 9-24 after the swiss rounds would play a one-match playoff for top 16, i.e. a Pro Tour qualification. Forcing 16 players to play a PTQ final for their first match of the second day is cruel. Between this and the fact tiebreakers would decide the tournament for a huge portion of the field, this was the most brutal tournament structure I've ever played. 

The third big problem was that if you were asked to participate in a feature match, you were requested Ito both stream Arena and stream a video of your face which, when coupled with how memory-intensive Arena is in the first place, led to my computer's RAM holding on for dear life. I know of at least one instance in which a player's Arena crashed during his feature match and he was forced to play the rest of the round on his phone after skipping his turn. Again, I assign absolutely zero fault to the coverage team, who were great. The fault lies with the lack of spectator mode on Arena and whoever makes the decision not to contribute resources to fixing that. 

Going into round four I still could not shake the jitters. I needed to slow down and concentrate. And then I was called to a feature match. As soon as the first game began, my computer was so overburdened that gameplay lagged to a crawl; even each turn's draw step animation seemed to take a full second. While earlier in the tournament I was playing fast and anxiously, in round 4 even if I had wanted to play faster it would have been physically impossible. From that point forward, I was focused and deliberate. I faced Dimir in round four, and then again in round five, and then yet again in round six. I was generally happy with how I played the second half of Day 1. 

In round four, game 1 my opponent kept a hand with no black mana and never drew out of it, and I was able to win the game despite drawing a land almost every single turn. I could have played a little more aggressively a couple of the turns, but it felt almost impossible to lose if I played ultra-conservatively, so I did that. It likely wasn't optimal, though. Game 2 I tried to play around Malicious Eclipse on turn 2 before deciding not to play around it once my opponent didn't play a second black on turn 3 and I was so low on resources it no longer felt worth it. The key play occurred on turn 4. Rather than cast Cut Down on his own turn while I was tapped out, my opponent decided to pass with Negate up, baiting me to cast the Monstrous Rage he knew I had on my own turn to get me to waste a mana. But I topdecked Innkeeper's Talent, which now my opponent didn't have a Negate for, and the game spiraled from there. 

Record: 3-1

I cannot remember round five because I'm writing this two weeks after the tournament. I just remember a three fairly close and fairly normal games of Magic. Gruul versus Dimir is usually close, dynamic, and interesting. 

Record: 4-1

I had now locked Day 2, i.e. the top 24 elimination rounds. But going into this event my goal was to top 16 and qualify for the Pro Tour. The next and final round was the big one. 

Round six. Win and I'm 5-1 and into the top 16; lose and I get one last PTQ final first thing tomorrow morning. In game 1 we both mulliganed to five. I was on the play and had a good curve, and it wasn't particularly close. In game 2 I played Innkeeper's Talent on turn 2 when my opponent was holding removal up to waste his mana. He didn't have a third land, but found it with a map activation, and then immediately found the fourth with another map activation. From this point forward I was on the back foot, but I was able to grind my way back to parity, with an Innkeeper's Talent ready to take over, until my opponent topdecked Enduring Curiosity. 

The deciding game was the most exciting of the tournament. Both I and my opponent kept fantastic 7-card hands. My turn 3 was interesting from my opponent's side; they ended up just not spending their mana at all. When they didn't kill my Challenger but then the following turn killed my Nemesis, it started to seem likely they had one of their two Gix's Command. [At this point the stream crashed; it was revived at this link.] When they didn't play a creature on turn 3 or 4, it seemed highly likely they had a Command. (What I didn't realize was that they actually had two!) Therefore on my turn 5 I continued to play methodically, holding creatures and leaving up Monstrous Rage and Burst Lightning to protect my creatures from the Command. Fortunately my hand allowed me to play around Command about as well as possible, at the cost of some tempo, but again, my opponent wasn't really doing anything. A couple turns later I forced out the first Command. On my following turn my opponent was representing Cut Down and so I played around that plus second Command by once against not committing too many creatures and keeping up Monstrous Rage. This play may have been too passive, but in general it felt like the opponent's hand was extremely reactive and I had enough gas to keep grinding through the reaction. The fact my opponent still nearly stabilized after all of that made me question some of my decisions in the moment, but I'm happy with how I played the game. My opponent played really well too to maximize his Commands. In the end, my opponent played second Command plus chumper and I had a haste creature plus removal to swing for lethal, clinching top 8 after the swiss and the Pro Tour invite. 

Record: 5-1

I went to bed that night very happy to have achieved my goal. The rest of the Gruul contingent, Matt and Arne, each went 4-2, bringing the total Day 1 Gruul record to a fantastic 13-5. I had already locked top 16 and $7,500 but was excited to play for even more now that the pressure was off. It seemed like we were primed for some good runs in the elimination rounds. 

In game 1 of my own match, which was a rematch against my Round 5 opponent, I had a creature-heavy draw and my opponent didn't have early removal, which should have put me in good position, but I didn't have Talent, Druid, or Rage to pull ahead and/or finish the game. I once again played passively, though in this case it was to not run my creatures into blockers rather than to play around removal/wraths, but it ended up lining up more awkwardly than in prior matches because I did not draw any grindy cards (Manifold Mouse/Innkeeper/Druid) to take advantage of playing a longer game. Eventually I determined I didn't have a better move than to run my two Challengers into a potential Curiosity because I was dead to Curiosity anyway. They had it. Game 2 I flooded really hard, and my tournament was abruptly over. 

Day 2 did not go well for the others either. Matt (playing for a PT invite) and Arne (playing for lots of cash as he was already qualified) each also lost their first elimination round to Dimir, bringing our record on that day to 0-3 overall and 0-3 versus Dimir. At the risk of sounding reductive, I think our draws were just good Day 1 and bad Day 2. The three of us averaged more than one mulligan per game across our three Day 2 matches and we went out with a whimper. 

Despite the awkward ending I'm personally satisfied with $7,500 and a Pro Tour invite. As most of my engagement with Magic these days is through the long-shot monthly Arena qualifiers, it seemed highly plausible I'd never get to play another Pro Tour. I'm very happy this did not turn out to be the case!