About Joel Calafell
Joel Calafell
Joel is a Level 6 Pro Player from Spain who helped develop well-known combo decks such as Cephalid Breakfast or the
recent Cascade Swans, he loves playing almost every format and has a number of high-profile finishes under his belt:
- Top 8 Pro Tour Kuala Lumpur
- Winner Grand Prix Barcelona
- Three Grand Prix Top 8
- 63 Lifetime Pro Points
- Level 6 Pro Players Club member
Pro Tour Austin
Pro Tour Austin is in the books, and it seems like I have played my worst Pro Tour ever, considering
the result, it was by far my worst Pro Tour. But I’m still happy with my deck choice, and since I was
out of contention even before the first draft, I can't say my preparation for Zendikar Limited was
wrong. (I hope to prove so at GP Tampa, where the Blackborder Pros will be representing!)
This is what I ended up
playing:
This is the deck I played at PT Austin 2009. The decklist forms part of the Blackborder Pro Tour Austin coverage:
Follow the Blackborder Pro Team at Pro Tour Austin. With photo coverage, Twitter updates and much more!
| Colors |
|---|
| Artifact | 3 |
|---|
| Black | 15 |
|---|
| Blue | 13 |
|---|
| Gold | 5 |
|---|
| Green | 7 |
|---|
| Land | 17 |
|---|
| Converted Mana Cost |
|---|
| 0 | 3 |
|---|
| 1 | 6 |
|---|
| 2 | 18 |
|---|
| 3 | 8 |
|---|
| 4 | 3 |
|---|
| 5 | 4 |
|---|
| 8 | 1 |
|---|
| Type |
|---|
| Artifact | 3 |
|---|
| Basic Land | 2 |
|---|
| Creature | 23 |
|---|
| Enchantment | 4 |
|---|
| Land | 15 |
|---|
| Sorcery | 13 |
|---|
Deck Comment
I just love
the deck, even if I didn’t really get to play with it at the Pro Tour. I spent
almost every round mulliganing at least to 5 (I actually mulliganed to 3 in one
game and scooped to first turn Thoughtseize) and in other games I just lost to
hate, but basically I’d say the deck runs pretty smoothly if you have a decent day.
Probably the worst mistake I made, was not sideboarding in Ancient Grudges
against almost every opponent, because in the end, I just faced many more Relic of Progenitus
than I was expecting. Ancient Grudge doesn't hurt that much as a 2 of post
Sideboard even without targets, as you are decking yourself anyway.
Possible Changes
One of the changes I would
make, though, would be not to play Duress at all. And yes, there’s a reason why
I played them over Thoughtseize. The thing is against control and even some
combo decks it was enough to just sideboard in the Ancient Grudges to deal with
Crypts or Relics, but I was expecting aggressive decks to have a different hate
technology, like Ravenous Trap, as it made a lot of sense for it to be like
that. But since Thoughtseize really sucks against Zoo or other red decks and since I was only sideboarding them against those kind of decks, it
made sense to go for Duress instead, and just forget about options like them having Yixlid Jailer and not Ravenous Trap). Sadly there were Zoo decks playing Relics, or control decks playing Leylines.
Then I would also increment
the Ancient Grudge count to four, because they are amazing and you
really want to dredge into one of them early enough; cut 2 Malfegor, as Hypergenesis is not the threat it was expected to be; and probably add
some mirror hate as well, in the form of Leyline of the Void, like the Japanese did.
Also, since the metagame includes different combo decks where Flame-Kin Zealot might actually be
needed, I would include it in the sideboard at least right now; Iona is just
worse, in my opinion.
I think many other Japanese
players were playing similar lists, I know their
sideboards were completely different, though. In the end the deck proved to
be powerful enough and a contender that will probably be much more respected
from now on (thus, there will be more hate in the sideboards). I won’t say it was the deck of
the Pro Tour, because it didn’t win, but it had quite a strong performance
with two in the Top 8, besides all of the hate around. Dredge competes, along with Dark Depths for the spot of the best combo deck in the format (Though the
latter barely faced any hate in Austin, so things might be a bit different at Worlds in Rome.)
The big surprise was
probably the poor showing of Hypergenesis, which some people claimed to
be the best combo in the format. Not only has that statement proved to be
wrong, but also Hypergenesis is not even in the top 3 decks! I think what happened here is
that, even though most people were really considering the deck, and were even
trying to figure out what the best sideboard answers for the mirror would be,
it seems like everyone found a better deck to play at the very last moment. I
myself was expecting much more Hypergenesis, and I was even considering playing
it until two or three weeks before the event, but Dredge was simply better.
Road to Tampa
That's it, Pro Tour Austin came to an end, I followed it up with some money drafts on Sunday, and
here I am in Tampa, after a flight on Monday at 6 am, so you might think there’s not
much else to talk about…
OK, just kidding, I have some funny stories!
Everything went as planned when I
was on my way to Pro Tour Austin. I didn’t miss my Barcelona-London flight. I
didn’t miss my London-Houston flight either…, but I obviously missed my
Houston-Austin flight! [Editor's note: Oops, he did it again!]
I guess it’s because
someone I was travelling with said in Barcelona, that we would better miss the last flight
and not any of the others, just in case we had to miss one. (Yes, people who travel with me have some kind of
paranoia about missing flights and I really wonder why?) Luckily I could just take the next flight one hour later - so
sorry about the story not being as good as you were expecting it to be!
After that, I promised
myself not to miss another flight! The next option was my flight to Tampa, on Monday 19th which was departing at 6 am. I had
to take a cab to the airport, and at 2:30 am I was still drafting with some
friends at another hotel. I had to
go from one place to the other first, pack my stuff and then go to the
airport. I had approximately 90 minutes to do all that, or I would be in good shape to miss my next flight. At
3:30 I was already at my hotel, finished packing… but then I realized, I had
forgotten my mobile phone in my friend’s room - sigh. It was 5
miles away from mine. Luckily, I got the taxi to go there first, wait for me, and then rush to the airport!
Then at Austin’s airport I
saw Saito and some other Japanese Pro players were on my flight as well, so we all
flew to Atlanta, which was the first stop we had to make before
going directly to Tampa. When we arrived in Atlanta, I saw that our flight was
departing in 20 minutes! I started running to the gate (talk about playing Pro Magic not being physically demanding...), but the
Japanese were nowhere to be seen. When I got to the gate, it was already
closing, and I didn't see the Japanese on the plane. So I guess I am not the only one missing flights!
I hope they managed to get to
Tampa on the next flight, best of luck! And if not, that means less competition ;).
Once in Florida, the weather was amazing and still is. (Oh, wait, this makes me remember
that I didn’t bring enough Blackborder T-shirts with me...). There was another
problem though: Transportation to our hotel! In the airport I met Kenny Oberg, and
with my laptop we tried to figure out how far the site and our hotel –both
should be close- were from the airport: 40…miles…away! We then realized GP
Tampa wasn’t really in Tampa, and we were a bit mad at the fact that we would
have to go that far to get to the site. Raphael Levy, for
instance, has his hotel close to the airport, which means he is at 40-50 miles distance from the site :).
Then we figured out how to
get there in a cheap way. A Taxi would cost around $100, and the Supershuttle was
$35 per person. That was more than what I was willing to pay, so we tried
to check if there was some kind of public transportation. But, surprisingly,
there really wasn’t. Of course, for us Europeans, who are not used to travely by
car everywhere, it gets almost impossible to travel long
distances without spending too much money. Also, the Supershuttle was full of people
going to different sites, although in the same direction. We were even asked
by the driver what our name was, where we came from and what we are going to
do in Tampa. This was quite funny if you think about
it. Especially when they realized we were coming from Sweden and Spain to play
a card tournament...
Another thing that surprises
me is, that everything seems to be in Spanish in this area. Or maybe I
have just visited only that kind of places for the moment. In the
supermarket for example it was funny to see all the products in Spanish and even most of
them were imported, so it felt like being back home in some way : ). I
obviously kept talking to everyone in English all the time anyway.
That makes it much funnier, especially if they try to say bad things about us.
And for the moment, I am
still trying to find people to draft in the area, so if you want to draft, send me a message! Otherwise I will just turn on MODO. Other than that, it seems like there’s not much to do in Bradenton, and I’m
not willing to go back to Tampa until after the GP. Sounds ironic, doesn’t
it?
So if you have an idea what to do, want to draft Zendikar or
if you would like to blame Wizards because the GPs are not exactly where
they are supposed to be, just post a comment! I will try to reply as soon as my internet connection is working again. Yeah, this hotel kind of sucks, because the wireless connection is down half of the time. Great! Hope they
will fix it once and for all at some point this week. Chances are not very
high, though.
Either way, follow the Blackborder Pro team this weekend at GP Tampa and join me next
week when I talk about the GP and my Zendikar Limited insights!
Joel.
Bonus: I Hate Bus Drivers
This actually happened
before the Pro Tour. On Wednesday I went
shopping in a mall, quite far away, with the rest of the group I was
staying with. We just took a cab, and when we finished shopping, we actually had no
idea how to get back to our hotel, which was a Super8 in the middle
of nowhere, at some place next to the motorway.
Since we didn’t want to pay
for another cab, we just asked if there was a bus going to that area and we were
told to take the one that was leaving next. Since none of the stops was
actually close enough to the hotel, we considered stopping somewhere near the IH
35, which was the one that would take us to our hotel, and then take another bus there. That was so wrong... We had to take another bus to go to
downtown, because there was none going to our hotel. We were told to take like three different buses, in
the end we figured out which one was the correct one to go to downtown! But it
wasn’t going to be so easy. When we got to downtown, we took the bus 37, which
was supposed to take us somewhere near our hotel. We just hopped onto the bus and
waited. After several stops, the driver told us that he thought
our hotel wasn’t really into that direction and he told us to better stop get off here, and take another bus (he had no idea about which one to take,
though).
So there we were, in the
middle of nowhere, without knowing where to go, and with plenty of stuff
with us that we had just bought at the mall. Luckily, some minutes after we
started walking next to the motorway, we found a shopping trolley, which looked like a gift of God at that moment. We obviously
“stole” it and used it to carry the goods. The thing is, we had no idea where to go, so we just asked someone.
A cop told us to
go in the opposite direction, and that it would only be like 1 mile away. Then
we found a taxi driver who told us that we were actually walking in the wrong direction and that we had to turn back and keep walking for like 2
miles. (He couldn’t take us because the taxi was full). Sooo… after hours of
walking, we finally found our hotel and saw how a bus with the number 37 was driving away just from that area at that precise
moment. I would even bet that it was the same driver that had told us to get off the bus.
What I learned: Never trust
bus drivers, nor taxi drivers, nor cops. Ehm, ok, just don’t trust
anyone and keep walking.
Black
Blue
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Wow! I never had that much bad luck when visiting the UK as a US Marine in civilian attire out on the town. Actually, people were much nicer to us than in the US and even gave us a ride back to our host base for free. Really sorry no Americans did anything like that for you. We can be too Shadowmoor Kithkin at times... :[
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