Hello despair crew!
I’m going to write a review of my 2013, with a summary of all relevant tournaments that I played and will talk more about Pro Tour Theros (Dublin), as I didn’t write a report about it.
I’ll be editing my text as I find any grammar mistakes or something like that, Hope you guys like It.
*** Short Version
2 Pro Tours Played -> 1 Top75 ($) ; 1 Day 2
5 GPs Played -> 1 Win ; 3 Day 2 ; 1 Nothing
4 PTQs IRL Played -> Lost a Win-In ; 3 Nothing
1 WMCQ Played -> Top8
3 MOCs Played -> 1 Top32 ; 1 Top64 ; 1 Nothing
*** Long Version
As you can see on my 2012’s Review (My 2012 in Review (English)), my year didn’t end very well but my 2013 started way better.
*** First Season
** Modern Season
Modern is the format that I have more knowledge and experience, eventhough It isn’t the format that I play more atm. I could play in 3 Online PTQs this season :
– December 24th / 2012 : 5-4
– January 5th / 2013: 1-3 drop
– January 12th / 2013 : 8-1 in the swiss losing in the Top8
I played Jund in all of them and on both January’s tournaments I had the privilege to play lists tuned by the greatest Modern Midrange Builder of the world : Willy Edel
I didn’t do well at the first PTQ but Edel’s list ended up winning the tournament and the January 12th’s PTQ was the day I got back into a nice result. It was frustrating to lose against a good matchup in the Top8 even more as I had already beaten him in the swiss and I considered myself favorite against all other decks in the Top8 but IT was awesome to feel competitive again.
I had another problem in the Modern season as I didn’t own IRL nor MTGO cards to play so I simply couldn’t play any more PTQs.
** MOCS Seasons 1- 4
The first season of the year was the busiest of the year as the Promo card was Force of Will (one of the most expensive cards in MTGO). Eventhough I was qualified at least for the Preliminaries I didn’t have a Legacy deck to play so I was out.
On the second season I could join the Preliminares with the Naya Humans deck most Brazilians played in PT Montreal :
I only didn’t like the matchup against Rg Aggro and after losing 2 times against it, I was eliminated.
Season 3 was RTR/GTC sealed and I was also stopped at the preliminaries with a 2-2 and I didn’t even play in Season 4.
**GP Rio de Janeiro
Here’s the main event of the year for the Brazilians! The GP in our country.
This GP certainly counts with my biggest despair and success history of my Magic career and I wrote about it with a lot of details on my report here (Portuguese) :
Report GP Rio Part 1
Report GP Rio Part 2
Report GP Rio Part 3
There are also 2 videos of me playing in this GP :
The despair here was huge, counting with our initial plan to have a training house falling apart after my car was robbed and after that after some errors in the Post Office I didn’t have a deck to play in the Modern PTQ that happened in Rio one week before the GP. I seriously considered not even going to the GP anymore but in the end with a lot of magic and despair and with me thinking I wouldn’t be able to get together the Naya Midrange deck that I was playing on MTGO for weeks, I ended up with megafone/edb’s tae on Aristocrats the day before the GP. With all the magic working on my side I easily 5-0 the Trial and then the GP =D
I wanna thank again everyone that were part of it and were celebrating and happy with me! I know a bunch of people will remember the hot weather from GP Rio or any of the problems with the neighborhood but I don’t think I’ll find a tournament as special as this one anytime soon, and that If I’ll ever be able to do it!
With the 8 Pro Points from GP Rio I had 16 on the season and with that I had a small shot at achieving gold (I needed a Top16 in San Diego). I was so happy to be in this position and with the Silver I had 2 byes for more than a year (until August 2014) which is almost impossible with the amount of tournaments I play IRL.
*** Second Season
In april we had the news on the changes of Pro Player’s Club and with my new Status as Silver I was going to be qualified for the next PT I wasn’t already qualified. That means that I Could still play PTQs for Dublin and If qualify for It then I’d postpone my Silver slot for Valencia and so on! Even without the plane ticket I was very happy to be qualified for another Pro Tour and even before playing the one in San Diego.
** Standard Season
Aristocrats Era
With both PTQs for Dublin and the WMCQs for Amsterdan being Standard, I had my deck set for the beginning of the season. Yes, I was going to play Aristocrats until Dragon’s Maze enters standard. My results :
– WMCQ São Paulo : 7-0-2 in the Swiss, lost in the Top8
– PTQ São Paulo : 5-3, losing the win-id on round 7
– PTQ Rio de Janeiro : 1-4
/I played something really close to that in those events, I know at some point I was playing at least one Dead Weight and for sure I had the Boros Charm and the Rakdos’s Return at the WMCQ
After opening 7-0 in the WMCQ in Sao Paulo I had the amazing record of 20-3 playing Aristocrats! I even considered not taking the second ID on that tournament so I could guarantee the 1st seed. In the end I’m just too soft and Couldn’t even try to dreamcrush anyone and somehow managed to be the 1st seed anyway winning 130 packs for that! After a bunch of mulls on the Top8 I was eliminated but I couldn’t be too sad with so many packs with me. Unfortunately that was the only chance I had to qualify for the World Cup, so I had to postpone that dream. With the San Diego trip around the corner and possibly Dublin in 5 months I couldn’t afford to travel to more PTQs/WMCQs. =(
The PTQ in Rio was the smallest I played since 2001. After winning round1 I lost 4 in a row, yeah, I didn’t drop trying to recover my honor and It got even worse hehe =(
End of Season
After coming back from PT San Diego I played 3 Online PTQs :
– Standard with Naya Midrange : 1-2 Drop
– Standard with Jund : 6-3, 33º Place
– Modern Masters Sealed : 2-2 Drop
With Aristocrats losing its edge on the format after Dragon’s Maze entered Standard I tried my way with 2 different decks on Online PTQs with no success. After starting 0-1 I was 6-1 at some point with Jund but ended up losing the last 2 rounds to end out of the Top32 due to my bad tiebreakers.
** Pro Tour Dragon’s Maze in San Diego
My full report of this tournament can be seen here (Portuguese) :
Report PT Dragon’s Maze – Part 1
Report PT Dragon’s Maze – Part 2
We had this brazilian crew to playtest with for this PT :
– Willy “#Edelgenius” Edel
– Artur “Tutuzim” Villela
– Celso “Tonhão” Godoy
– Enzo “SURREAL” Faleiro
– Marcos Paulo “Obama” de Freita
– José Francisco “Zeh Dantas/Mr Silva/etc” Dantas M. Da Silva
We also had the tactical support of our journalist : Pedro ‘Toninho Pedrosa. That even without being qualified, made the travel!
We ended up one Brazilian short on this trip as Pedro ‘Megafone’ Carvalho wouldn’t be able to make the trip =( *for the reasons everyone knows about
I decided to make the “full” 3 weeks trip, playing both the GP before the PT and the one after it.
* GP Portland
Everyone but Tutuzim were going to this GP as well! And everyone made the same simple decision : To play the same deck as we played in the Modern season 2 months ago. This was the problem of having a Constructed GP one week before the PT with a different format. No one would be able to focus on it properly.
Me and Edel played this list :
I can say this was the only time one of the Modern’s Genius wasn’t perfect predicting the metagame and I blame that on the fact we were so worried in trying something new in Block and learning how to draft that we coulnd’t focus as much as we wanted on Modern. Using Blood Baron of Vizkopa in Modern was awesome but wasn’t the right time for it, maybe now or in some weeks at PT Valencia?
I had 2 byes for this tournament and that only because I won GP Rio. If I had one less in on the GP Rio’s weekend I’d have only one bye. Maybe that’s a flaw on the Byes System. Winning a GP isn’t enough to have 3 byes for the next one but winning a PTQ gets you so close to having 3 byes and with 2 guaranteed
I managed to end the first day at 7-2 after being paired against a bunch of complicated machups (RG Tron, 4c Gifts, 5c Zoo, Scapeshift, Melira and Mirror). I think I played quite well during day1 and was happy to day2. Only Obama of the other Brazilians managed to day2 as well.
On Day2 I couldn’t perform as well as day1 and after some punts I was 1-3 in the day and eliminated from the money, no time to be sad about this and gogogo playtest some more block and draft.
It was a shame to play a GP in my favorite format without the proper training and focus on it, I really hope to have the opportunity to play a Modern GP again soon
**LET’S GO SAN DIEGO
Our hotel was really close to the event site and It was an awesome hotel! Full of Silver Buckets for Ice, bunch of chandeliers that would cost more than my life probably and everything else. As we were all in the same hotel IT was easier to discuss block and draft and when Obama and Celso weren’t at the same hotel, they stayed with us until late late night.
It was very hard to find something for Block and after more than a hundred games on Magic Online and trying out a bunch of different decks, Edel had another of his “genius” lists for us. After two 4-0s in a row we were set on the deck, only Enzo played Esper and the rest of us :
We considered Esper to be the best deck on the format followed by Mono Red and that both would be the most played decks of the tournament.
We were wrong about Mono Red as it wasn’t even close to be one of the most played decks and Esper was way more played than we expected followed closely by other Revelation decks.
I wasn’t feeling comfortable with drafting. I tried a bunch of queues on magic online to no success and I was basicly totally lost in the format.
I managed to 3-3 the Draft Portion of the Pro Tour. 2-1 on my first draft that I thought It was at least OK if the manabase worked and a 1-2 in the second that was a pile. Back in PT Seattle I was disappointed with a 3-3 in Draft, because I thought I was drafting quite well the format, on the other hand in San Diego I was relieved with a 3-3, I thought It could be way worse.
With a 7-2 in Block, for the first time I finished a Pro Tour in the Money! I was very happy to make money at the Pro Tour eventhough I was very far from the Top16 that I needed for Gold. The bad part was that I was the only Brazilian in the Money in that Pro Tour. Only 3 of us made day2.
*GP Guadalajara
Only Edel from San Diego’s team roUrix would make the trip to Guadalajara as well. There we would be joined by PV and the Surreal Mister Ferry. Almost no Pro Player made the trip and if I’m not mistaken we had 0 Americans in Guadalajara.
The first deck I tried was the old and good Aristocrats but I failed. As I didn’t have the courage to enter the tournament with Bant Hexproof (would be basicly the same list as PV played there), I decided to use the same strategy as I used at the PT : Just play #Edelgenius
Our scouting reports said the top 3 most played decks would be : Mono Red Aggro, Jund Midrange and Junk Reanimator. And they were so right, I played against 10 of those in 12 rounds and I even beat the other 2 decks I faced! Anyway I ended up 1 point short of a money finish as my last round opponent wasn’t sure he could ID or not. The problem is that the pairings bugged so even in the last round we didn’t have the usual 1st vs 2nd, 3rd vs 4th and so on and then I got paired with one of the two, among 12, players that wasn’t sure they could ID to get into the Top 64 =(
** MOCS Seasons 5 até 8
I ended up not even playing the preliminaries for seasons 5 and 6.
Starting with Season 7, I had the 10 QPs bonus from my Silver level but even without those I managed 35 QPs myself to qualify directly for the seaon finale! However my DGR Sealed pool was so bad, but so bad that I even dropped without even playing at all to enjoy a good friend’s birthday.
Season 8 Was Modern and again I qualified directly to the Season Finale. I played BG Midrange without any splashes, which was the new take on “Jund” variants after the Player’s Championship. I started 0-1 and then won 4 in a row until eventually losing the the eventual winner, Prolepsis, playing Melira, the deck that is my arch-nemesis of the format since its beginning. I ended up 5-3, good only for a Top64 of 204 players with my bad brakers
*** Third Season
And we arrived at the most dark season for me. The limited one.
Unfortunately It was also time to say good bye to my favorite card : Falkenrath Aristocrat
I played two Standard tournaments in September and the one I used the gorgeous Falkenrath, I ended up winning! Got a nice playmat and 2 DGM’s Boosters Boxes out of it ^^
It took me a while to jump again on the Aristocrats bandwagon after Xathrid Necromancer’s release. But I could enjoy it a lot on MTGO anyway. And that was the best part of my second semester… and by far.
There’s a report of that tournament over here (Portuguese) : The Last Despair
** Pro Tour Theros in Dublin
After a lot of search and thought I decided to buy my ticket to play in the Pro Tour. I knew It wasn’t going to be cheap but I didn’t want to throw away a chance to pay in the PT, we never know when it might be the last chance for it.
I decided to also attend GP Oklahoma City, on the week before the PT. I know a lot of people would think It’s bad to attend a GP a few days before the PT, because it would interrupt the practice. That can be the case if the format of the GP isn’t the same as the PT and unlike Portland, OKC would be on the same Limited format as the PT! Before PT Seattle, I felt playing in GP San Jose helped me a lot on that Limited, even if the format of the GP was Teams and I was really looking for anything to help me get a good result in Dublin.
* GP Oklahoma City
The only Brazilian qualified Player to make this trip was Edel. We would be joined by the Surreal Mister Ferry!
Our days before the GP were very busy with our Standard practice. However we didn’t get any conclusion on the format and would be waiting for the second SCG Open to see if anything changes.
On the Limited part I had played only 2 Sealeds and One draft before the GP.
That was my sealed pool at GP OKC :
*or something really close to that, ended up playing GW with a small B splash
Eventhough I didn’t have much experience in the format and played against 4 different people with Elspeths and 3 with Dragons, I managed to 7-2 day1! The cool part was being called twice to the feature match area. One day on the video coverage where I was destroyed in 4 or 5 minutes by Shuhei Nakamura and the other when I defeated Brock Parker!
I would need a 4-2 or maybe a 3-2-1 on day 2 to get a money finish.
That was my first draft :
I thought I could at least 2-1 with it but I ended up losing to an opponent with Reaper of the Wilds, Whip of Erebos and Xenagos and surprisingly the topdecked card that beat me in 2 games wasn’t any of those! It was the Mogis Marauder from the top to give enough unblockable damage that beat me. After that I got crushed by an Aggressive GW deck.
With a 1-2 start I’d probably need to 3-0 the second draft, something that I’ve only done once in my life. Ended up with this pile :
Yeah, I even built it wrongly and after sideboard I was taking the splash away. I managed to win the first 2 rounds with very close battles, always 2-1 full of despair and was in good shape to draw to get in the Top64! However my last round opponent didn’t want to draw and after me losing my 8th land drop for 2 turns I died without being able to cast my game winning Boulderfall (yeah, really hehe). For the second time in a row I was out of the top 64 for 1 point after being able to draw =(
Anyway I felt more comfortable with Theros Drafting and was really cool to be on the feature match of an American GP. To think a bit more than one year ago, even after staying close to the top for the whole GP Sao Paulo2012 I was only set for the featre match on round 14 and the coverage was even saying no one with a Top8 was fighting in the Top, ignoring my old Top8 in GP Curitiba. So yeah, It was so positive to be in the feature match here so It was a happy weekend after all.
Zé Dantas being destroyed by Nakamura in 2 or 3 minutes
Dublin Time
These were the Brazilians qualifieds for the PT :
Alexandre ‘Ale’ Conrado
João Claudio ‘da Pochete’ Souza
Pedro ‘Megafone’ Carvalho
Thiago ‘Mineiro’ Silva de Oliveira
Victor ‘Pelezinho/Bastard’ Fernando Silva
Willy Edel
We would also have the company of the Portuguese :
Carlos Duarte
Marcio Carvalho
Narciso ‘Truelove’ Ferreira
Rodrigo Borba
The first impact at arriving in Ireland was the customs employe saying that he was a MTG player as well, and that he wanted to come by the Pro Tour to watch! After that the good old taxi driver with his awesome accent that was very hard to understand hehe
We had a logistic problem this time. Eventhough the hotel me, Megafone and Edel were staying weren’t far from the other Brazilians, the cold weather made it difficult for us to meet more times, so we basicly couldn’t playtest much together.
Total Despair on the day before the PT. What to do in this Standard?
We kept trying a bunch of different strategies. The deck we had worked more was a Rw Aggro but we knew It wasn’t powerful enough. We tried both Naya and Junk Midrange decks but both failed. We also worked hard on some sort of Green Aggro deck with Boon Satyr, Polukranos and friends and for some time that would be our deck at the PT, we tried with all the possible splashes but we couldn’t get it anywhere we felt comfortable with.
On the days before this PT we saw a bunch of qualified players with their fake accounts playing on the most diverse MTGO queues, so a lot of decks, like Mono Blue Devotion, weren’t exactly new for us we even tried to make it work the RB Aggro Ari Lax’s crew wre going to play. But we lacked more people to play and test everything possible =(
*S2 Jonais and Enzo that borrowed me so many cards!
We ended up with basicly no time to make a tour on the city, It was the whole time playing and trying to find something. The deck I got more wins in practice was an Esper Control list, basicly the same CAlcano used on the first SCG Open but we knew we woulnd’t be able to get a good Esper list for ourselves and neither play it in a 16 rounds long tournament. The worst part? I still needed to find the actual cards to play and time was running out.
A few hours before the PT, Edel tried out a new genius idea : A Bg Midrange deck! He quickly X-0 a bunch of queues and was set on it. So I had to try it myself and after a bunch of games I was 1-6 with the deck and still not sure what to do. It was already 4h30 AM, just a few hours before the start of the PT that I decided to just play the Rw Aggro deck, same list as Megafone. We knew It wasn’t the best deck, but It was the best we had for us (?) as everything else failed on our hands.
This was the list I registered :
*Yes, the deck is banned from my memory
We wasted so much time in Standard that we couldn’t draft as much as we did in Seattle and not even time for one IRL draft as in San Diego. I Still thought I could reach a 4-2 with my experience in Oklahoma but we were far from perfect on that and I’d be drafting and playing without much sleep and also without any confidence nor a strong Standard deck.
Pro Tour Day 1
With a bit more than 2 hours of sleep, I didn’t wake up very well but tried to eat something, grab a Monster Energy Drink and I still needed to find a few cards for my deck.
* Draft
This was my first Pod :
And this my first Draft :
Eventhough my deck was good I came out of the draft thinking I could have done it even better. I tried to wheel a Pharika’s Mender and at least one Commune with Gods but none came back. The most interesting in this draft was receiving Arbor Colossus a Third Pick in the First Pack. The dude on my right opened Ashiok and wanted to stay UB and I’m not sure what the person 2 to my right opened to let it go.
I ended uo 3-0ing the table after beating buddy Brazilian João da Pochete on first round and then Brad Nelson on the second. I only lost one game with it! IT was the second time in my Maic career that I 3-0 a Draft (the first was on GP Sao Paulo 2012)!!
* Standard
This was my Standard results on Day 1 :
R4 : Junk Midrange 1-2
R5 : UW 2-1
R6 : Mono Blue Devotion 1-2
R7 : RG Devotion 2-0
R8 : GW 2-1
The Junk player was on his first airplane travel, destroyed me game 1 after I failed to find my 4th land for a few turns with two main deck Golgari Charms. In the third game All I Needed was either one of the White sideboard cards or the 4th land to kill his Loxodon Smiter enchanted with Unflinching Courage, but failed to do either of that. Both games I lost against Mono Blue were basicly the same “Do I have the Chained to the Rocks for his Master?”, I didn’t and lost. At least my white sideboard worked great against the GW Player but anyway I felt really underpowered on the day, even the UW deck had awesome anti-red tools on his sideboard and I was lucky to get out of that match with a win.
After all the despair I managed to finish the day at 6-2, my best day1 of my 7 Pro Tours! Only Edel (5-3) and Megafone (4-4) also made Day2 of the Brazilians.
* Pro Tour Day 2
* Draft
Now I had a great night of sleep and was feeling way better when I woke up! I needed 4 more wins to get in the money and that was my goal.
This was my second draft table :
I knew It was a very hard table and I even joked about It saying I’d snap take 4 points instead of having to draft and play in the table. As I didn’t have that choice I had to try my best to escape with some points from there.
This was my draft :
I started the draft with a Reaper of the Wilds followed by the Mender, but green was gone and I started drafting a Aggressive RB deck. I wasn’t sure that was the right build for what I had but I tried to stay on the very aggressive plan. Opting for lower curve creatures and having Cavern Lampads to set one of the red creatures with Intimidate to finish the game.
Ended up losing all 3 rounds in 3 games against Jacob Van Lunen, Antoine Ruel and William Jensen. On round1 all the pros on the table got paired against the less known names and I was the only one to lose hehe… ! Van Lunen had a Spear of Heliod that was basicly unbeatable against me, he drew it 2 games and that’s it. Ruel had a GW deck full of Staunch-Hearted Warriors and I only had 1 removal that costed less than 4, he won the die roll and set it with a bunch of bestows before neither Lash of the Whip or Rage of Purphoros could do anything. I should have won against Jensen but I made two awful plays on the last turn of the game and even after he didn’t realizing the first, the second was more than enough to make me lose.
Yeah, I had my first 3-0 in the Pro Tour on the first day and the first 0-3 on the seond.
I decided to take a walk on the streets to get more calm and relaxed, ate something, drink a bunch of water and a Monster and was feeling better. I was in the same spot as I was in San Diego : Needing a 4-1 to get in the money!
* Standard
R12 : UWR Midrange (?) 1-2
R13 : Jund Midrange 1-2
Third game against UWR was anti-climactic. I had 2 Peak Eruption on my starting hand and my opponent got stuck with 2 lands for a turn but I failed to find a third land and after that he drew 2 lands in a row to cast Anger of Gods followed by a Master of Waves and I was done.
After 0-5ing day2 It was time to drop in a very sad way =( At least I could visit Guinness Storehouse on Sunday!
** Limited Season
I could only play 2 IRL PTQs, besides one Online PTQ.
I opened a very very bad pool on the online PTQ and even joked my only out on that PTQ was a Crash and indeed it crashed.
This was my pool on the IRL PTQ in Rio :
The pool was good but very hard to build. I stayed the whole time trying to figure the best way to build it and ended up with a BW with no splashes. Unfortunately I only 0-2 with it.
And this was my pool on the PTQ in my home town Sao Paulo :
The pool wasn’t very good and I tried to build a RB deck with more synergy with some sort of good early game and trying to close the games with the “combo” Purphoros + AKroan Horse. I probably should just have made a Polukranos+22filler.dec. Anyway I started 3-0 in the PTQ but lost 2 in a row against way better decks and finished 5-2. That was my last shot at qualifying for Pro Tour Valencia. This also ended up my year with 0 Top8s in IRL PTQs. At least I had one in a WMCQ and the online Top8 in a Modern PTQ in January.
** MOCS Seasons 9-12 and Player of the Year
I couldn’t get pass Season 9 Preliminaries and didn’t even play those in Season 10, as the Season Finale would be on the same weekend as PT Dublin.
I was 4 QPs short of playing in the Season 11 Finale and the Preliminaries were on the same weekend as GP Santiago.
And Season 12? Well, I had the 35 QPs for it but It was exactly during MTGO’s Dark era, without Scheduled Events. Anyway Season 12’s Finale is schedule to happen now in 2014.
The POTY MOCS was on the same day of a IRL Standard PTQ for Atlanta in Rio. I brought my laptop with me, in case I didn’t do well in the PTQ I could play the MOCS. I was feeling very confident on my deck choice for the tournament but went 1-2 with it after being paired against 3 matchups I wasn’t exactly expecting (Naya Control, Jund Midrange and BAnt Fog). Now IT was time to enter Despair Mode to find a Internet to play in the MOCS! Ended up going 5-2 in the MOCS, good enough only for a Top32 very far from the Top8.
*There are 4 Mutavaults that aren’t on the screen
** GP Santiago
My 5th and Last GP of 2013 would be here in South America. I was (and still am) on the quest to get in the money of a GP outside of Brazil and the format in Santiago would be the same as PT Theros, so I had a head start on it.
I started trying again Edel’s Bg Midrange deck but I failed. After that I tried both decks that came out strong of the PT : Mono Black Devotion and Mono Blue Devotion, but failed with those as well.
So I had to find something different to play and started playint this take on Yasooka’s UB Deck from the PT, with some modifications made by Juliano Gennari :
It was more agressive than the original.
Besides it I tried to play this version of Rw Devotion with tweaks from Edel and L1X0 :
It was basicly a Rw deck less based on the god draws as we don’t have any Burning-Tree Emissaries and only 1 Nykthos, but that let us use couple Mutavaults as lands.
I had reasonable sucess with both and opted for the UB deck as I thought the rogue factor would be bigger and help me out in the tournament and I was being paired against more relevant matchups while playing it. I knew I’d either Top16 or bust with the deck and while still trying to get in the money outside of Brazil, I also wanted to qualify for the next Pro Tour.
In the end, Me, Juliano and Bolov0 played the same 75 cards and the three of us got knocked out in the last round of day 2. With a combine record of 18-9 (6-3 each, counting the byes) we coulnd’t even play in the day2. All wasn’t lost in the weekend though as I was called again to the feature match area and there was even an interview with me :
Interview with Jose Francisco Silva!!!
I only think they should change “South American” to “Brazilian” as I still coulnd’t score even a Top64 while playing abroad.
Another thing to remember from this GP was our reckless search for Sensory Deprivations as NO ONE had any of them around. It took us hours and hours of searching buddy Alonso’s cards until late night he got a new box full of M14 cards and we finally found a bunch of Deprivations =) It was an awesome team work! Thanks Alonso, Megafone, Batutinha and Izuke =D
This was the only GP I didn’t day2 in 2013 and the only GP I got prizes was GP Rio. I guess I can’t complain!! =D
I also want to thank again both Alonso and Pintacso for hosting me, Megafone, Izuke and Batutinha in Santiago! You guys made it so much easier for us and I’m grateful for that! If you guys need anything in Sao Paulo, just let me know =D Also MBC’s websites to find cheap plane tickets with buddy Enzo finding out the 50 USDs roundtrip travel made it possible for me to make the trip =)
I hope to come back to Santiago again now in 2014 for the GP and I’ll try to stay few more days in town to explore the city. I don’t regret not having much time to sightseeing in my trips as the main focus was always the tournament. But who knows what will happen next time?
* Dark Days for MTGO Players
TO end my year, I was forced to take a month break from MTGO while Schedule Events were off. As I wrote in the Limited Season, a bunch of PTQs crashed during that time and after the same happened to Season 11 MOCS, the heads of MTGO decided to take the game off air for a while.
I even wrote some words about it over here : Random Words (Inglês)
** Conclusion and Let’s go 2014
We’re already on first season of 2014 with the Standard PTQs for Atlanta. I even said I played one in Rio (and quickly 1-2 it). At least we have MTGO back know and we’re also going to have the MOCS from Season 12 of 2013 as the Season 1 of 2014!!
Eventhough the year didn’t end so well for me I can’t really complain. The beginning of the year was so awesome, I played in 2 PTs, Won a GP, end Season 12/13 of the PPC with 21 PPs, which were good enough to get me to Silver level.
I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever get a season as good as that and all I can do is to be grateful it happened =)
I also met a bunch of nice people IRL and got closer to some others during the year. Every trip will be remembered with great fondness =D
I’m not sure how my 2014 will be, I still haven’t decided If I’m going to travel and play as many PTQs as possible or just not travel at all for them. After all I’m turning 30 in May and It might be time to move on.
I want to thank again all my friends that helped me, supported me and borrowed me cards and were always by my side, you guys will always be on my heart. And if there’s someone cheering against me, I want to send you a hug and that God bless us all.
I still need to get my Limited better specially as we’re having 2 Limited PTQs Seasons in the year and I’ll need to try way harder If I wanna remain competitive. If I opt to play more PTQs (as 4/5 aren’t a lot), I want to qualify again for the Pro Tour and that I get to the money again as I need nice showing to erase my bad day2 of Dublin. And If I can choose a tournament to play, I hope it’s the World Magic Cup!!
And specially that the Brazilians (and also our fellows South Americans) get back to shine in the Pro TOu and Brazil to win the Magic Cup and the GPs around here!
Thanks again Despair Crew and See you next time!