Return to the Pro Tour

Return to the Pro Tour

By: Stephen Dykman

Hello again everyone! A few weeks ago I was able to compete at my third Pro Tour, PT Chicago, after a 7 year hiatus. As always, the Pro tour was filled with many ups and downs, and unfortunately I was unable to make day two with yet another 3-5 finish. In the following article I will explain what went well for me and what did not go well that led to this finish.

I qualified for the PT thanks to my finish at NRG champs with a 14-1 record and winning the event. It was a magical run for me last season and I hope I can find a fraction of that success again this season. Most of my success on the series came with my pet deck in Pioneer, Rakdos midrange. I Top 16’ed every event I played with Rakdos at NRGs last season and did not drop a match with it at champs. I think the deck was oftentimes very well positioned and I am at my best when piloting midrange decks. After running the table with Rakdos at NRG champs, I was pretty much a lock to play the deck again at the PT. I beat many of the best players on the series, including Theo Jung on UR Phoenix, which was going to be the most popular deck at the PT. I felt like that win carried a large amount of weight as Theo is a very strong player and had been working on Phoenix for a while. I also felt that I drew fairly poorly in our game 2 and was able to win anyways. This filled me with confidence in the matchup, as did my consistent wins against the archetype on MTGO. I thought Constructed was going to be the easier portion of the PT for me considering my ability with the deck and my track record in Pioneer so I played a few prelims and called my testing good enough. Unfortunately, this was likely one of the worst meta calls I have made in my career as a Magic player. Not only did I disrespect the matchup and falsely believe I was favored, I went 0-2 vs UR Phoenix. Rakdos midrange as a whole went 11-31 vs the archetype on the weekend. What I thought was a favorable matchup was not only bad, it was one of the worst matchup spreads to my disadvantage in the room and given that many matches, likely one of the worst spreads all time at the PT.

What went wrong?

I think there were likely three things that led to my misevaluation of the matchup. The first is that the lists got more tuned and refined after NRG champs. The 2 main deck Prismari Commands were a huge deal because they led to more explosiveness and gave my opponents great interaction with Reckoner Bankbuster.

I also removed my main deck Archfiend of the Dross, one of the best threats vs phoenix, to try and gain percentage vs the other decks in the room by adding a Kolaghan’s Command. The third thing is that although good, many MTGO players are not PT caliber opponents and I should have put far less stock into what was happening in prelims. I should have used the members of my testing team to my full advantage and discovered the matchup was bad before deck submission so I could have either found ways to address it or found a new archetype. My constructed record was an embarrassing 1-4, where my only win came in a pseudo mirror vs Inti Copter Rakdos. I would also lose my first round of the RCQ on Sunday with Rakdos as well, putting my constructed record to 1-5 on the weekend. Rakdos is not in a good spot in Pioneer right now at all, it is possible it could be good again with some innovations but I am not sure what those are at this time. I have been a fan of Rakdos for the last 2 years but likely will not play Rakdos midrange again for quite some time.

What went Right.

I was fortunate enough to become close friends with Derrick Davis in the past few months and he is both a great guy (aside from his persistent trolling) and Magic player. I believe Seattle will be his fourth or fifth consecutive PT and he also has a PT Top 4 under his belt with a win over one of my all time favorite players, Shota Yasoka. I was fortunate enough to get invited by him to join Team Misfits to test for the PT. We had a testing house in Chicago for a week and it was one of if not the most fun experiences I've had playing magic. In the testing house we spent most of our time focusing on draft, an area where I had gone 1-5 in the past at PTs so I knew I had to improve that aspect of my game. We did probably around 10 drafts in the house and as a team we likely did around 200 drafts or more leading up to the event. I felt very prepared for the limited portion of this event. I felt like the format was pretty balanced and if you read signals well you would have a very strong deck. I often ended up in RB midrange decks in the testing house/practice drafts because black was considered by many to be the "worst" color. In all reality it may have been the worst color, but I was still able to 2-win or better most drafts on black X decks, usually black red. I found myself in black red again at the PT and was handsomely rewarded with a pack 3 pick 2 Vein Ripper being passed my way. I unfortunately was only able to get a 2-1 out of the draft but a win over Paul Rietzel in Round 1 had me very excited for the day. I also lost a win and in to make day two in the sealed PTQ to Matt Nass the next day. Needless to say, I think I was well prepared for this limited format, which made the poor Constructed performance all the more frustrating.

Overall I had a great time at PT Chicago and was able to grow and learn from it. Hopefully I will find a new midrange deck in Pioneer (hint: I have and will share details about it in my next article!) that can compete with Phoenix as well as the new Rakdos Vampires deck and Amalia builds. I also hope that my next PT will be sooner than 7 years away! Hopefully you have found this article informative, and I look forward to writing the next one!