Last weekend was Grand Prix Manila 2012, held at the SMX at Mall of Asia. I don’t really consider myself a “regular” Magic player anymore so I’m not going to give a full tournament report, though I will record some details for posterity.
Let’s start with the deck. I played some version of Naya Pod, limited by what cards were available as usual:
A Pile of Naya
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 3 Avacyn Pilgrim
- 1 Ulvenwald Tracker
- 4 Strangeleroot Geist
- 2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
- 1 Daybreak Ranger
- 2 Borderland Ranger
- 2 Blade Splicer
- 2 Fiend Hunter
- 2 Wolfir Avenger
- 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
- 2 Hero of Bladehold
- 2 Huntmaster of the Fells
- 3 Restoration Angel
- 1 Oxida Scrapmelter
- 1 Acidic Slime
It’s a pretty straightforward deck, what with the turning guys sideways and all. And the round by round results:
- 1 BR Zombies WIN 2-1
- 2 UW Humans WIN 2-0
- 3 Gb Pod WIN 2-0
- 4 UW Delver LOSS 0-2
- 5 Frites WIN 2-1
- 6 RG Ramp LOSS 1-2
- 7 Wb Tokens WIN 2-0
- 8 UG Infect WIN 2-0
- 9 RG Ramp WIN 2-0
- 10 Pike Delver WIN 2-0
- 11 Delverless Delver LOSS 1-2
- 12 Sun Titan Delver LOSS 1-2
- 13 Some Delver WIN 2-0
- 14 Spectral Flight Delver WIN 2-1
- 15 Solar Flare WIN 2-1
As can be seen above, I made day 2 for the first time, and I believe this is already my sixth Grand Prix. I finished 11 and 4, which was good enough for 39th place despite my pretty bad tiebreaks. This means I finished in the money, hooray! Feels good to have a decent finish after playing this game for what, seventeen years now? Playing in Day 2 was great, the tables weren’t as crowded as Day One! Hah. I still made a lot of bad plays though, I mostly got lucky with a lot of my wins. With tighter play I might have gone as good as 13-2.
Aside from the main event, another thing I participated in during the second day was the Magic Rules Challenge! This was a fun thing they had where they set up a booth manned by a couple of judges. You could go up to them (no entrance fee) and answer up to three rules questions in a row. If you get questions right, you get foil cards! Well, the foil cards I won weren’t very useful or valuable, but I had a lot of fun with the rules questions themselves, I really enjoy that stuff. I’d hang out there between rounds not only to join but also to watch other people play. The questions ranged in difficulty from quite easy (“You play Grim Lavamancer’s activated ability and your opponent uses Tormod's Crypt, how much damage is dealt?") to an actual layers + Humility question! It was a nice relaxing change of pace to play between rounds to take some pressure off.
The weekend was exhausting, especially the nine rounds on the first day and the needing to travel back and forth to MOA, but it was a fun experience and definitely worth it (not sure if I’d say that if I didn’t place haha). Makes me excited about playing Magic again. Looking forward to the next GP Manila in a couple of years!
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