My 2012 in Review

I know it’s a bit late for an year in review article, but I started writing it early December and just couldn’t finish it before.

The goal of this text is to improve my English as I figured I needed more practice in my writing and what’s better than talk a bit about Magic?

Feel free to criticize anything as my goal is to improve, then anything that comes to help will be appreciated.

I’ll correct any mistakes I find and also will add some pictures !

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Short Story

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2 Pro Tours Played -> 2 Day2 Finishes
3 Grand Prix Played -> Top4 ; Day 2 ; Nothing
6 IRL PTQs Played -> Win ; Top8 ; Lost one Win-In ; 3 Nothing
12 MTGO PTQs Played -> Lost one Win-In ; Bunch of Nothing
4 MOCS Played -> Top 32 ; Top 64 ; 2 Nothing

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Long Story Version!

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Hello Despair Crew! 🙂

I thought it would be cool to write about my 2012, which was a pretty intense magic year for me.

Well let’s begin with the last Month of 2011. I finished the year with some “close” results. I lost in the finals of a MTGO PTQ in one weekend and in the Top8 of a IRL PTQ in the next one. Got close to qualify for Honolulu but well, there weren’t even pity invites back then lol :p But that was ok, I had prepared myself to have all Modern cards on my disposal for the PTQ Season and in December before the bans I at least 3-1ed in ALL Modern dailys that fired. Even after the bans I had such good results when switching from Zoo to Jund that I was pretty happy and excited for 2012.

*** SEASON 1 – January to April –

** MODERN PTQs for BARCELONA

Well, if I was happy, excited and winning a lot in December, in January it turned the other way around. I started to lose a lot, maybe the opponents weren’t trying fun decks anymore or I don’t know. I was only losing and losing, I’d switch decks around and nothing would change. I barely qualified for the first MOCS season which was Modern as well.

My Modern Results :
– PTQ Online January 15^th : 4-4 with Jund
– PTQ Online February 3^rd : 5-3 with Caw-Blade
– MOCS Season 1 – February 4^th : 1-2 with Bant-Blade
– PTQ IRL Porto Alegre March 4^th : See above
– PTQ IRL Sao Paulo 1 March 11^th : 5-3 with Loam
– PTQ Online March 24^th : 1-3 with Jund
– PTQ Online March 25^th : 5-3 with Gifts Rock
Well, I traveled to Porto Alegre which is 1119 kms (696 miles) away from Sao Paulo (my city) but couldn’t find a complete deck to play. I was going to play missing 6~8 cards but ended up deciding not to.

I had tried basicly everything at this point, played a bunch of decks in Daily Events and 2/8 Man Queues and 5 different decks in PTQs/Mocs. Gifts was the deck I got back into 3-1s in a bunch of DEs but it was lacking a bit to actually win a PTQ and on the last possible moment.

– PTQ IRL Sao Paulo 2 : March 31th – Win with RG Tron

That was amazing, I playtested IRL with some friends (Rhodner Paiva, Felipe ‘MBC’ Madeira and Caio ‘IsOo’ Braga) and we needed so many cards to build decks for the 4 of us and in the end I got no Grove of the Burnwillows, no All is Dusts and a few more cards. I was missing 10 cards total! I started the PTQ by losing my 1^st rd due to having a 4^th Clasm instead of the All is Dust (I know it was the 4^th because it was in Spanish M10 one and the other 3 were from Ice Age) and 0-1 in the second round due to having a Karplusan Forest (alongside a Tendo Ice Bridge, a Stomping Ground and a Forest) instead of the Grove of the Burnwillows. Somehow I managed to win that round and every other round (except the ID in Round 8) and win the tournament. Really, winning a Modern PTQ with one of the few decks I didn’t play online and lacking 10 cards? AWESOME! Even if I was to made a story like that I wouldn’t be that brilliant hehe
For the Portuguese speakers, the report of that tournament : Report PTQ Barcelona

** MOCS Seasons 1~4

Well,  Season 1 was Modern and I already talked about it on the Modern section. I qualified for seasons 2 and 3 but not to season 4. Couldn’t even play neither of them as season 2 was on the same weekend as the PTQ in Porto Alegre , and season 3 was on the same day as the PTQ I won.

*** SEASON 2 – May to August –

** PRO TOUR AVACYN RESTORED

This was the main tournament for me on this season, I was back again on the Pro Tour after one year and again it was going to be Block Constructed. In fact, this was my 4^th Pro Tour and 3^rd with Block Constructed included!

The other 2 Brazilian PTQs were won by friends and besides them Willy Edel was qualified was well. Unfortunately it wasn’t possible to get all Brazilians together this time but that was ok, I had two invites and could only attend one due to dates and such.

Eduardo ‘Shooter’ Borges got me in his group. We would be staying at this awesome apartment that was 700 meters away from the event site and so close to the Subway Stations and so on. The Test Group was :

– Caleb Durward (EUA)

– Chris Davis (EUA)

– Christian Calcano (EUA)

– Christian Valenti (EUA)

– Craig Wescoe (EUA)

– David Gleicher (EUA)

– Eduardo Borges (BRA)

– James Rynkiewicz (EUA)

Yes, that’s a bunch of Chris on the group 😀 and also yes, we had 5 ppl out of 9 that had a name started with C !!!

It was the first time I had a real group to test for a Pro Tour and it was amazing we had a lot of great players in the house and at the beginning of 2012 I promised myself to get better at draft and that was the best chance to get to know the format.

The best thing about IRL drafting is that we can play the whole 3 matches instead of only one if you start 0-1 on MTGO and also you can watch the other players and see what cards are working or not for them. Gotta tell you, I learnt a lot on those days and was feeling very well with the AVR Draft for the Pro Tour.

On the other hand, we couldn’t master a Block deck for the house. We knew that the GW deck wasn’t good (we had lists like the one CFB played) but we somehow let the Reanimators/UG(w) decks on the sidelines eventhough we got so close to the lists people played at the Pro Tour. The only deck we didn’t really have was the UW Miracles.

I Played the Boros deck that was serving me nicely even before AVR on MTGO and Willy Edel jumped in with the same 75. We had 3 people in the house playing a BUG Ooze deck, other 3 with a BGW Sigarda Control and Shooter was on UR Control.

I started 2-3 at the Pro Tour, managed to 2-1 with a not so good deck in order to get into day 2. Managed another 2-1 with a great draft to start day 2 but got another 3 losses in Block before dropping out.

It was the first time I day 2’ed a Pro Tour and I knew I learnt a lot and drafted quite nicely and eventhough I went 2-6 with the Boros deck, Willy Edel went 7-2-1 which was enough to put him in the top25 ! Now it was time to get back to standard in order to qualify for Seattle…

** STANDARD WCQs and PTQs

Actually the Standard Season started in April, 2 weeks after the PTQ I won. They made the 3 PTQs of the Season being on the same cities there were helding the WCQs, so all of them made a “magic weekend”, with the PTQ in one day and the WCQ on the other.

The first PTQ was on Rio de Janeiro, and was quite away from Standard as my focus was entirely on Modern  so I just asked some people on what I should play and I had 2 decks for the weekend on Rio de Janeiro.

Pike Delver by Thiago ‘Bolov0’ Saporito and RG Aggro by Juliano ‘babones’ Gennari. The plan was to play one deck on each day.

The PTQ was on Saturday and I started 5-0 even which a bunch of ‘not so good’ plays, after 2 IDs I was in the Top8 where I lost against a UB Zombies deck. After Top8’ing on Saturday I decided to stick with the Pike Delver deck only switching 2 cards for Sunday, however that didn’t quite work out as I 0-2 so fast. At least it was a very hot day and I could get away from the tournament site (which was even hotter than the rest of the city) and enjoyed the rest of the day at the beach with a lot of mtg friends J

After getting back from Barcelona I was 100% focused on Standard, now with AVR I knew the best deck was the Angel Delver so I started to grind with him on magic online, and was trying my best to not let me play so sloppy like I did in Rio. And that was my results :

– WMCQ Porto Alegre June 2^nd  : 1-2 drop
– PTQ Porto Alegre June 3rd  : 4-2-1
– PTQ Sao Paulo June 23th : 2-2 drop
– WMCQ Sao Paulo June 24th : 3-2 drop

I even played in one online PTQ with the same deck :
– PTQ Online June 16^th : 5-3 (playing the mirror match 6 times)

Well, the only time I was close to the Top8 was in the Porto Alegre PTQ where I was 4-1 and would be able to win and then id, but got a non-intentional draw on round 6 and proceeded to lose my second shot on the last round.

It was 7 PTQs/WCQs with Delver, 2 before and 5 after the Angel and I only Top8’ed when I knew so little about the format and had only a bunch of failures after that. I knew Delver was the best deck but maybe I should have tried something else in between, i couldn’t master the deck eventhough I tried really hard, sometimes we just have to let it go and try something else, even if we know the deck is the best, if we can’t play it 100% it may be best to try something else.

I played even in one more online qualifier :

– PTQ Online July 8^th : 2-2 drop with RG Aggro

Then I thought I was done, but we still had a few events online and a Grand Prix in Sao Paulo before the end of that season.

** GRAND PRIX SAO PAULO

As we got close to the GP I wasn’t feeling much motivated. I was only losing on Magic Online and didn’t feel I could peel a nice result in a Limited GP. I even skipped the Pre-Release but then I was asked by Willy Edel and Juliano Gennari to travel to Rio to playtest for a few days. At first I declined the invite but ended up going, our playtest group was :

– Bruno ‘Barba’ Di Donato
– Carolina ‘Robotouef’ Tavares
– Juliano ‘babones’ Gennari
– Pedro ‘roUrix/megafone’ Carvalho
– Sérgio ‘Presunto’ Ferry
– Vinicius ‘Vinny’ Nery
– Walter ‘Mogg’ Latorraca
– Willy “#edelgenius” Edel

After a few days of intense drafting and talking a lot about the format i felt confident i was understanding it quite well and besides that #geniusedel had promised “come practice with us and day2 is guaranteed”. The most interesting fact about that training weekend was that the player with the best results was Rorix and he was going to be a judge at the GP!

I had only one bye and lost in the finals of the only grinder I tried (played BR Zombies) but after that everything went well. I mean, the result was great!

Started 8-0 to finish day 1 at 8-1, 3-0ed my first Draft and after starting 1-1 in the second (after losing a game with a very controversial judge ruling) I was paired down when I could ID to get in and even after losing I managed to sneak in in 7^th place! Won a pretty close Top8 match in order to qualify for Seattle and all of a sudden instead of no hope of qualifying after a not so good Standard season I qualified in a Limited GP! After 10 and half years I was back in the Top8 of a GP (I know it’s a lot of years but that was only my 5^th GP!).

For the Portuguese speakers, here’s my report :

– Part 1 : Report GP SP Part 1
– Part 2 : Report GP SP Part 2

** MOCS SEASONs 5~8

I qualified for seasons 5, 6 and 7. In fact I didn’t even try that hard for season 8 as it was going to be Legacy and I wouldn’t be able to get a deck for it.

Season 6 was my best season of the year, i got 43 qps with me skipping the last few days, as  I already had enough points for 2 byes and wouldn’t be able to play in it anyway as it was in the same weekend as the PTQ/WMCQ in Sao Paulo. I couldn’t play in the Season 7’s Championship as well as it was on the same weekend as GP Sao Paulo.

I Played season 5 championship that was Block Constructed. I used the same deck I played in Barcelona with a few changes, The Boros Aggro. With no byes I dropped at 3-3 and Babones that played the same list went all the way into the Top8 when he had some bad lucky (mul to 4 and 5) and lost.

*** SEASON 3 – September to December –

** PRO TOUR RETURN TO RAVNICA

My second Pro Tour in the year and this time it would be the first PT of the Pro Player’s Club Season. Also it wouldn’t be another Block Constructed PT so yeah, nice for a change 😀

We had way more Brazilians qualified then usual as we got 4 extra slots on the Brazilian GP and besides the IRL PTQs, Megafone got his spot on an online one. Unfortunately  Joseph couldn’t get his visas. We settled on renting a house and stay there for the week before the Pro Tour, this is the crew of the Brazilian’s Surreal House :

– Bruno ‘Other’ Fonseca
– Guilherme ‘Rastaf’ Merjam
– Pedro ‘roUrix/megafone’ Carvalho
– Rodrigo ‘Guent0’ Gonçalves
– Willy Edel

Unfortunately we couldn’t master 8 people for a proper IRL draft.

Before the Pro Tour I was losing a bunch on Magic Online trying to figure out an unfair deck to play. I Tried Infect, Storm and Eggs but couldn’t muster enough wins with any of them. I Tried Eggs more and more because I knew it was going to be good and friend Shooter kept me telling to try harder. However I couldn’t manage to ‘master’ the deck so I had to look for something else.

Buddy Jonais borrowed me a few cards so I could practice with more decks like UW Midrange and RG Tron as well (Jonais <3). But in the end there were only one deck that I wasn’t negative : Blue Affinity.

* ONE WEEK BEFORE THE PRO TOUR : GP SAN JOSE

We had a GP one week before the PT and my team was : megafone and Eduardo ‘L1X0’ Vieira. Besides a few sealeds we didn’t have much experience in the format of the GP as 3×3 drafts aren’t as popular in Brazil as they’re anywhere else.

Since I wasn’t feeling confident back then (so many losses on the recent weeks…) I said I’d gladly play our worst deck if needed and we basicly settled on : Megafone will play the Rakdos deck (well he always play those in any format anyway :p haha), L1X0 will play the Azorius and me playing the Selesnya.

That if things went according to the plan! We would only play Izzet or Golgari if things were the other way around. In the end our decks were fine and besides considering my deck the worst it was actually very powerful and I went 9-2 on day 1 with my friends losing 3 or 4 matchups each but that was enough to get us to day 2 with a 9-2 record.

We would need a 2-3 in the first 5 rounds of day 2 to be in the money but our lack of experience got us and we couldn’t get pass a 1-4 record 😦 . My first draft was the best on the table however I drew 9 lands in 9 draws in the first round 😦 My second draft was ok and I lost against their best deck and won the other round, at least this time both me and L1X0 won on the same round. The last draft was a mess, at least I made sure the guy on my left also wouldn’t have anything close to a deck but well. Sad to day 2 with top20 teams out of 30 getting in the money and we were out…

Besides that we had some great time in LA with mtg friends that were also there like Juliano Gennari, Thiago Saporito, André Franco and Bruno Borges.

* SEATTLE TIME

Now in Seattle we had a lot of time to play some Modern IRL but we had to play drafts on MTGO. Gladly Wizards released the set sooner this time so we had a few days of mtgo to get us started in the format.

In Barcelona I enjoyed more the IRL drafting experience then this time but still we had some discussions and arguments over some cards and usually when one was drafting there were someone else watching and so on.

I still tried to make Eggs work one more time before finally giving up and “GOING TO PLAY THE ONLY DECK THAT GAVE ME WINS IN MODERN THIS YEAR” (of course the RG Tron with 10 missing cards gave me a PT invite but you know…). Megafone was going to play the same 75 and the other 4 were going to just play Jund.

The day before the PT me and megafone had a facebook chat with Shooter to decide our last slots on the sideboard (our Main deck was fine already). After a bunch of crazy ideas we ended up playing the amazing Favorable Winds as 1of counting as our 5^th Master of Etherium!!!

Well, the PT didn’t start so well for me with a 0-2 start and I was just 2-3 at the beginning of the draft. After finishing Day 1 at 4-4 we had everyone on the house qualified for day2 with a 75% win ratio in Draft at that point! After a bad start on day 2 I was basicly out at 5-6 before we could get back in Modern but Edel and Megafone could still Top8 and Rasfaf and Guento were still playing for cash.

Finished 9-7 in the end with me losing a game that I just couldn’t lose on rd 15 but at that time I already knew I would get only a 80^th place at most so I was distracted and made the worst attack ever to lose g3. At least I was so happy my friend megafone got his 1^st Top8 on his 2^nd PT and we also had Edel in the Top8 as well! I’m glad a made part of it and hope he won’t forget me when he gets his platinum status and then Hall of Fame 🙂

Again for the Portuguese speakers, here’s the Part 1 of my PTRTR Report : Report PT Seattle

* ONE WEEK AFTER THE PT : GP PHILADELPHIA

After Seattle only Other would be going to Philadelphia but that was ok since I was going to meet a longtime and close friend there, João Paulo Araujo that was already on USA on some dentist convention and would be attending the GP in Philly.

Also there would be more friends like Sergio ‘Presuntinho’ Ferry!

The GP was bad for all of US, we couldn’t even day 2. I thought I could manage a X-2 with my sealed pool but after punting a game in Round 4 (I had 2 byes) I went from almost 4-0 to 3-3 drop. But that wasn’t the worst thing, there was a hurricane coming to the city and we were going to be trapped there having to pay the hotel and everything more. =(

That was quite sad, but in the end me and Joao Paulo met a bunch of people from so many places that were trapped as well and we even almost pulled a win on a 3v3 draft alongside Other against Tom Martell, Shuhei Nakamura and Josh Utter-Leyton ! We lost 4-5 and someone of us that i won’t say the name went 0-3!

Also it was amazing to watch a 76ers game and visit the Stadiums 😀

So yeah, that was the end of my 3 weeks trip in USA, with not even a single money finish.

** SEALED PTQs for MONTREAL

After having to spend a bit more than expected after being stuck in Philly, i would have to skip two IRL PTQs in Brasilia and Porto Alegre(around 1000 kms/621 miles distance each). That would be unfortunate as IRL PTQs with less than 100 people are way easier than the 500+ online ones.

Usually I’m not looking forward so much for the limited PTQ Season as my drafting skill are usually very bad but this time I was at least 2-1ing 85% of the 8-4s i was playing so i knew i would have a very good shot if I made it to the Top8.

My first online try was even before RTR was released on MTGO, in September and in the end i played 6 online PTQs Total. And only once I was alive at the last round playing for the Top8 but lost and ended up 10th on breakers. On the other 5, the best I managed was a 7-4, good enough for a 61th place, in a PTQ that all my losses was to Pack Rats on turn2.dec  =(

The only try I had IRL was on a PTQ in São Jose dos Campos, a bit less than 100kms (~61 miles) from São Paulo, but all I got there was a 2-2-1 drop, I even punted the round I drew. I didn’t have a very good deck but I thought i could Top8 with some luck.

** MOCS SEASONS 9~12~POTY~LCQ

That was the worst part of the year for me MTGOwise, I couldn’t even qualify for seasons 9~11. I managed to only get 6 QPs total in those seasons. At least Season 10’s Championship was on the same weekend as GP San Jose, so I wouldn’t be playing it anyway.

That put me out of the POTY Mocs at that time, so I had to play a bit more on Season 12 eventhough it was on the same day as the only IRL PTQ I had to play. With 23 Hard Fought QPs I qualified for the POTY MOCS!

The format for the POTY MOCS was Standard so I just asked around (mainly Rorix and Shooter) what to play. And ended up playing Red splash Black and I had an awesome 4-0 start but after that I didn’t win a single game and ended up at 55^th place, good enough for 6 packs but very disappointing after the 4-0 Start.

To end my year my 2012 season I would play in the December 23th LCQ Mocs that was Sealed. I managed a 8-3 in it but with horrible tiebreakers that put me in 28^th Place.

The end of 2012 was quite aweful for me, after so many seasons I couldn’t even pull a Top8 in any PTQ of the season nor any other good result, so I had to chill down and try to get over it in 2013…

*** GOALS FOR 2013?

Well, as I’m finishing this already in February I’m already playing in the Qualifiers for San Diego. Unfortunately I don’t own a Modern deck neither IRL nor on MTGO so I depend on people borrowing me a few cards and so. Already had to skip a IRL PTQ in Florianopolis (705kms~438 miles distance) and probably will have to do the same for the Brasilia one.

With my buddy Jonais’ help I already played 2 Online Qualifiers with Jund, if I dropped at 1-4 on the first I went all the way until Top8 on the other one. I thought I had a very good chance to win that one but ended up losing to a matchup I felt I’d need to be very unlucky to lose and was comfortable with the eventual Top4/Finals matchups. But still, it put me back in the Top8 of a PTQ and even on MTGo which is way harder than the IRL PTQs we have around.

If I can get some help I hope I can play in the last 2 Online and at least 2 IRL PTQs still this season, now with Gatecrash and with Bloodbraid and Seething Song gone.

My plans are to still evolve my Drafting skills and to get back on the Pro Tour again and this time to get in the Money.

Good luck for me and for everyone still reading 😀

kaOz.Zeh on MTGO

@kaoz_zeh on Twitter

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Jose Silva / Jose Francisco Silva / Jose Dantas / Jose Mangueira or anything Wizards may feel lik on their coverage 🙂