Petr Brožek at Worlds *11th*

This is the amazing story of Petr Brozek who finished just outside of the top 8 at Worlds in Rome and how he played monored in every single format!

This article originally appeared on cmus.cz and forms part of the Blackborder.com cmus.cz partnership.

Honza Brožek: Hi Petr, Worlds is in the books and your performance was pretty good. What do you think about sharing your thoughts about this tournament with our readers?

Sure, why not. There‘s nothing I wouldn‘t do for our readers. :)

What were your goals for Worlds this year?

To win. I thought it was a cool idea and also a good one. I am not like people who attend tournaments just to play – I am always very ambitious.

But it seemed you wouldn‘t go at all just two weeks before Worlds – what made you change your mind in the end?

In the end it was Jarda Bílek who talked me over. He saw that I needed to get rid of the depressive black cloud hovering over my head. He kept telling me it would be fun, that Adam Koska would also go, that we‘ll stay together in Rome and will have a great time. Also he assured me that the only thing I would have to do would be taking care of the plane tickets – he‘ll handle the accomodation, test the decks for me, get all the cards and boosters for MODO and also that he‘ll support me throughout the whole tournament. I don‘t think anybody would have stayed at home with such a service. The thing that made me decide to go in the end, however, was that he was probably the only person (apart from myself) who trusted in my abilities to score a good result. Thanks, Jarda!

So it seems you didn‘t have much time for preparation. What did your preparation look like?

There really wasn‘t much time and I needed to „get in touch“ with the game again, since the last tournament I had played before Worlds was PT Kyoto. I had a clear idea about what to play both in Standard and Extended – burn. The question was what version to choose. My preparation for Limited would be – as usual – mostly theoretical, since I don‘t really like Limited – I‘m not keen on playing with bad cards when I don‘t have to.

Well in the end, when I found out how much the other Czech guys had prepared, I had the feeling that maybe I did in fact too much testing...

Why did you pick burn for Constructed? Was it because you were looking for an „autopilot“ deck?

I wasn‘t looking for an „autopilot“ deck, I would have taken Jund if I wanted to go that way. With Jund, all you have to do is flip the right spells from cascade and that‘s what I call „autopilot“. However, burn has helped me to some success already in the past year or so, I knew how to play it and what‘s most important, I enjoyed playing it. Also, I‘ve read in some internet forums that burn has a good matchup against Jund, which was widely believed to be the best deck of the format. The testing I went through didn‘t really show anything more than a 50/50 matchup, but to me it did feel like in the whole Standard, everything had 50/50 against everything else, so why not take some deck that I at least would enjoy playing.

As for Extended, the last time I played this format was Worlds 2008 in Memphis,. I wanted to play burn this time as well, but there really wasn‘t time to brew some brand new deck of my own, so I looked somewhere else for inspiration and decided to play Saito‘s burn from Austin, although he didn‘t post exactly a stellar record with it. Theoretically, Burn should have a good matchup against Rubin Zoo, should be over 50% against the regular Zoo and it is supposed to be ok against Dredge as well. What seems to be a problem is combo, though. Well, I played a couple of games against Rubin Zoo to improve my self-confidence and didn‘t really care about the rest of the matchups.

Well, so far it doesn‘t really seem like you tested too much…

Not really, no. I found out quite early in testing that I don‘t have enough time for proper testing and also I don‘t care enough. So what I did instead was to focus on improving my mental game – my „victorious spirit“.

Can you tell our readers a little more about this „victorious spirit“?

I believe that it is much more important to know how to win than just know how to play well. In Magic tournaments, the standings are not set according to how well you played, but how much you won. Therefore, I don‘t focus on being a good player, but instead on being the victor. Of course you can‘t do that without reasonably good play skills on your side, but that‘s not my priority. There was a very good article by Joel Calafell about related issues here on this site and in my opinion, it was the best article about Magic ever written:

The Art of the Mental Game

Article by Joel Calafell on Tue, 09/22/2009 - 07:31

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Level 6 Pro Player Joel Calafell explains the art of the mental game and how to work on it. If you want to progress as a player, you don't want to miss out on this masterpiece.

Versions:
Conflux (Foil)

What about drafts? From what I saw you weren‘t very successful in your testing…

Yeah, I didn‘t even read the whole spoiler and I didn‘t attend the prerelease of Zendikar. I knew I wanted to know the cards by pictures to orientate better during the drafting, so I did my fair share of drafts on bestiaire. I concluded my Limited testing with three 4-3-2-2 online drafts, even reaching round two of one of them. I had read quite a lot of strategy articles about Limited though, so I had some grip on the format at least on the theoretical level.

Seems like a lot of valuable testing :) How was your trip to Rome and the people you were travelling with?

The company was awesome – Jarda Bílek, whom I‘ve already mentioned, and Adam Koska, who was supposed to meet us directly in Rome. He is a fellow traveller I know very well, since after PT Kyoto, we travelled through Japan all the way from north to south for two weeks.

There were some minor problems before we left for Rome – I found out that Jarda was indeed testing a deck for me, but not the one I wanted to play. Also, it turned out he has almost all the cards for Standard and Extended, but since he has never played burn, his collection is missing a lot of red cards I wanted. More things went wrong when we found out that the accomodation he booked was canceled and Adam had to save the day and arrange the accomodation for us directly in Rome. I had to do some last minute borrowing of cards, but in the end I boarded the flight to Rome with an almost complete Extended burn deck and all the cards I needed for the Standard deck. Thanks to everybody who lent me cards!

We took a cab from the airport to the main train station (It cost just 2 Euros more than what the train ticket would have cost – at least according to the taxi driver), where we met Adam and then we went just a couple of blocks down the street to our „Two Ducks“ hostel.

And then you set off to the site where the tournament would be taking place?

Yeah, we registered there, met the other Czech guys and stuffed our bellys at the players‘ dinner. In the evening I fine-tuned the deck for the last time and set my mind on buying a playset of Quenchable Fire tomorrow – Hanys Brodzák told me this card was good for the current metagame and he was right – looking back, I could have played it maindeck.

We didn‘t playtest with Adam in the evening, because we didn‘t want to lower the moral of whoever would lose more games. Taking care of the morale was Jarda‘s job and he tried his best by making my decklist for tomorrow public on the Czech magic site CMUS. The image of Yuuya Watanabe sitting at his computer late in the night, refreshing CMUS over and over again to find out what I would be playing tomorrow amused us and with this image, we went to sleep.

How did your day 1 go?

The first day started with a little surprise – just before the flagbearers ceremony Martin Jůza called me on the phone urgently, asking where am I and that I‘m supposed to carry the flag. I had to think for a second, but when I assured myself that it was in fact last year when I won Nationals, and I didn‘t even play them this year, I had to disappoint Martin and tell him to search for our real national champion from this year.

Seems like a funny beginning of the day. What about the rest of the day?

I trusted in my abilities to post a good result with the right draws, 5-1 like last year was not out of reality if things would go the right way. Also I thought it might be a good thing to beat a pro or two to increase my self-confidence.

In terms of matches, my day one was quite uneventful. Five out of my six opponents started with a turn 1 Savage Lands. If Jund manages to Blightning me twice, it‘s usually pretty hard to win. I can win most games where they don‘t play any and  if they Blightning me just once, it‘s a fair game. I found out in the very first round that the Goblin Ruinblasters in my board are quite mediocre. The Jund matchup is about something completely different than destroying their land on turn four. The first guy I played showed me three different basics on turn three and searched for a fourth one with Borderland Ranger. What proved to be a really good card, though, were the Quenchable Fires (thanks, Hanys!). The only situation thats stood out from the monotonous matches was one that made me remember Nationals a couple of years ago, where Martin Lamr was playing Ondřej Baudyš with a top 4 on the line. On the last possible turn, Martin had to draw a burn spell to advance to the semis. He cracked a fetchland at the end of the turn to increase the probability, shuffled the deck… drew a bolt and beat his opponent. I used to play against Martin a lot, so I trust his take on the probability. I tried to mimic him, cracked a fetchland on the last possible turn… and history once again repeated itself, since there was a Lightning Bolt smiling back at me from the top of my library.

So all in all, I was 4-1 against Jund on my day one.

What about the non-Jund match?

The only opponent who didn‘t play Jund was a Russian national team member with Eldrazi-Green. His deck didn‘t have White in it, so I believe it should be a good matchup for me. In one game he only used one of his three Oran-Riefs the whole time and it probably cost him this game, since in the end I was able to sweep his board with an Earthquake and he ended up one turn short from killing me. He won one game on the back of Fog, then the last game my Planeswalkers helped me seal the deal.

So did you play against some pro-player in the end?

I don‘t think so, these were my opponents:

1. 2:1 vs. Leigh, Simon [DEU]
2. 2:0 vs. Plinston ™, Andrew [NZL]
3. 0:2 vs. Eberhard, Michael [CHE]
4. 2:0 vs. Papadopoulos ™, Panagi [GRC]
5. 2:1 vs. Koltsov ™, Ivan [RUS]
6. 2:0 vs. Csomos™, Janos [SVK]

But you were quite happy about you day one record, right?

Sure! I also knew I would be on table 2 tomorrow and Martin Jůza should be seated there as well, so my chances of  playing against a pro opponent were increasing. In addition, Adam promised to give me a couple of tips on how to draft. The other Czechs gave me a little „walkthrough“ for Zendikar Limited just after the six rounds of Standard had ended, so my theoretical preparation couldn‘t be better. Before falling asleep, I reassured myself that I‘m going to make top 8 and that 6-0ing the draft rounds could help with this.

And how did the draft rounds go?

I was positive about taking red cards in draft, because I enjoy playing Red and I knew the power of some of the red Zendikar cards from Standard. Martin Jůza, sitting to my left, also suspected this, so he had to hope not to open anything good in Red, since he would have to ship it :) I first-picked a Plated Geopede, then I took another Plated Geopede over Inferno Trap (I was just hoping Martin wouldn‘t také this as a signal). More red cards followed and the only time I had to dip into another color was with a late Vampire Hexmage. I didn‘t really read cards in the other colors and was hoping to recieve more Red in pack two. However, I didn‘t open anything good in Red, so I had to be content with taking Malakir Bloodwitch. The next packs were rather dry and what made me a little nervous, was that I had only one Spire Barrage. The third booster gave me some quality cards in Trusty Machete and a sixth pick Chandra Ablaze, but nothing special.

In the end, the deck looked solid (Adam agreed on that) and although it wasn‘t a clear monoRed, the splash for Bloodwitch was worth it.

Worlds 2009 Draft 1 by Petr Brozek

Deck by Adam Koska on Sat, 12/12/2009 - 10:05

• Red

This decklist forms part of my latest feature article:

Petr Brožek at Worlds *11th*

Article by Petr Brozek on Sat, 12/12/2009 - 09:31

Average:

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This is the amazing story of Petr Brozek who finished just outside of the top 8 at Worlds in Rome and how he played monored in every single format!

Main Deck (40 cards)
1	Arid Mesa
11	Mountain
6	Swamp
1	Blazing Torch
1	Adventuring Gear
1	Trusty Machete
2	Plated Geopede
1	Highland Berserker
1	Goblin Shortcutter
1	Giant Scorpion
1	Molten Ravager
3	Shatterskull Giant
3	Ruinous Minotaur
1	Bladetusk Boar
1	Malakir Bloodwitch
1	Chandra Ablaze
1	Soul Stair Expedition
1	Slaughter Cry
1	Spire Barrage
1	Burst Lightning

Colors
Artifact	3
Black	3
Land	18
Red	16

Converted Mana Cost
1	5
2	4
3	6
4	4
5	2
6	1

Type
Artifact	3
Basic Land	17
Creature	14
Enchantment	1
Instant	2
Land	1
Planeswalker	1
Sorcery	1

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So who did you play against in the next rounds?

First some Italian guy. I didn‘t know him, but he ended up in the top8. He told me his deck was really bad. I responded by telling him this is my fourth Zendikar draft ever. In the first game, the only spells I played for the whole game were Plated Geopede, Malakir Bloodwitch and Blazing Torch, but it was enough. My opponent told me I really do have the better deck. He won the second game with a flurry of allies led by their red boss. The third game came down to a rather complex situation: I had four Mountains a Swamp, Molten Ravager, a 4/3 giant and a fully charged Soul Stair Expedition in play (with no creatures in the yard), holding a Spire Barrage and the Bloodwitch. My opponent was at 8 and if he drew a second Forest, he could kill me with a swing + Vines of the Vastwood and two damage from a Hellfire Mongrel. I thought about what to do for a while and then decided to close my eyes and go for an all-in attack. Luckily my opponent blocked in a way that he took four from a pumped Ravager and traded one of his creatures for the Giant, which I could then bring back with the expedition to avoid taking two from his Hellfire Mongrel. He ended up drawing the Forest he needed and being one damage short of killing me.

In round two, I played against a Japanese guy and killed him with a Spirre Barage to the dome in the decider.

In the last round I finally met Martin Jůza. The first game was decided by dealing him eight damage with Chandra, in the second he‘s never really in the game, since most of his cards are lands. I finish him with a Spire Barrage to the dome of course.

First draft 3:0

• 2:1 vs. Cavaglieri, William [ITA]
• 2:1 vs. Sakai, Yoshitoki [JPN]
• 2:0 vs. Juza, Martin [CZE]

Thanks to 3-0ing my first draft, I‘m seated at pod one for the second. BDM, who is about to follow my picks for the draft viewer, asks me what did I play in the first draft. My answer is of course „Red“ and even if Brian asked the same question about yesterday‘s Standard, the answer would have been the same. So of course I then proceed to first pick a Spire Barrage and go for monored.

Worlds 2009 Draft 2 by Petr Brozek

Deck by Adam Koska on Sat, 12/12/2009 - 10:13

• Red

This decklist forms part of my latest feature article:

Petr Brožek at Worlds *11th*

Article by Petr Brozek on Sat, 12/12/2009 - 09:31

Average:

4.6

This is the amazing story of Petr Brozek who finished just outside of the top 8 at Worlds in Rome and how he played monored in every single format!

Main Deck (40 cards)
17	Mountain
1	Teetering Peaks
1	Plated Geopede
1	Hedron Scrabbler
1	Highland Berserker
1	Goblin Ruinblaster
2	Molten Ravager
2	Bladetusk Boar
2	Shatterskull Giant
2	Geyser Glider
3	Zektar Shrine Expedition
3	Spire Barrage
1	Magma Rift
1	Slaughter Cry
1	Goblin War Paint
1	Explorer's Scope

Colors
Artifact	2
Land	18
Red	20

Converted Mana Cost
1	1
2	7
3	5
4	4
5	5

Type
Artifact	1
Artifact Creature	1
Basic Land	17
Creature	11
Enchantment	4
Instant	1
Land	1
Sorcery	4

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Versions:
Zendikar (Foil)

You can see all the picks in the draft viewer here. What did the games look like? You didn’t mange to go undefeated?

Unfortunately not, but I finally started to play against some pro players and I liked that. The first Pro (and also my favourite one) Tomoharu Saito waited for me in the first round. His UB deck wasn‘t able to handle my massive Spire Barrages, though. Before the game started, I tried to imagine a perfect opening hand… and the one I really got was almost the same. Explorer‘s Scope, Geopede, Expedition, Spire Barrage and lands, with the Scope hitting a land every turn. In the real game, Plated Geopede was on the recieving end of some removal, so I had to plop a Geyser Glider into play and finish Saito with a Spire Barrage one turn later than planned. I lost the second game to a Living Tsunami and Malakir Bloodwitch and in the third game, Saito didn‘t find an answer to Bladetusk Boar. When he found out from the onlookers that I play monored in all formats, he asked me what I was going to play tomorrow, so I told him I wanted to run his monored from Austin with a couple of small tweaks.

In the second round I was paired against Dutch player Bram Snapvangers. However, there was a man in black waiting for me at the table and he didn‘t come for my autograph. He told me something‘s wrong with my decklist (I didn‘t write down a last minute change I made) and rewarded me with a game loss. I assured myself I was going to win 2-1 then, but Bram had a different opinion and showed me just how good Grazing Gladehart with Harrow is, especially when I didn‘t draw enough lands to power my Expedition and Geyser Glider.

In the third round I was in the feature match with Shouta Yasooka. There wasn‘t really anything notable about this match except for the fact, that Yasooka joined the group of players who saw Spire Barrage as the last card in their match.

Second draft 2:1 (Drafts Total 5:1)

• 2:1 vs. Saitou, Tomoharu [JPN]
• 0:2 vs. Snepvangers, Bram [NLD]
• 2:0 vs. Yasooka, Shouta [JPN]

Well, you had a great run after two days.

Yeah, I was starting to take the top8 as a certain thing :)

So for Extended, it would be burn again, right? Some last minute changes?

In the evening, I decided to abandon Saito‘s build in favor of a different one, that was more successful in Austin. What made me change my mind was the addition of Molten Rains, which were supposed to grant an extra turn against combo and weren‘t exactly bad in the Zoo matchup as well. I added Blood Moons to the board, since they looked good on paper. The changes I made from the Austin decklist were adding a fourth Shrapnel Blast and swapping Spark Elementals for Fanatics, since I expected a fair amount of Dredge at the top tables. I played a couple of games against Adam‘s Zoo, got the impression that the matchup is almost a coin flip and went to sleep.

Burn by Petr Brozek (Worlds Extended)

Deck by Adam Koska on Sat, 12/12/2009 - 10:23

• Red

This decklist forms part of my latest feature article:

Petr Brožek at Worlds *11th*

Article by Petr Brozek on Sat, 12/12/2009 - 09:31

Average:

4.6

This is the amazing story of Petr Brozek who finished just outside of the top 8 at Worlds in Rome and how he played monored in every single format!

Main Deck (60 cards)		Sideboard (15 cards)
3	Teetering Peaks	4	Blood Moon
4	Blinkmoth Nexus	3	Lash Out
4	Great Furnace	4	Smash to Smithereens
2	Darksteel Citadel	3	Ravenous Trap
9	Mountain	1	Tormod's Crypt
4	Goblin Guide
4	Mogg Fanatic
4	Hellspark Elemental
4	Keldon Marauders
4	Lava Spike
4	Rift Bolt
4	Lightning Bolt
4	Shrapnel Blast
2	Incinerate
4	Molten Rain

Colors
Land	22
Red	38

Converted Mana Cost
1	16
2	14
3	8

Type
Basic Land	9
Creature	16
Instant	10
Land	13
Sorcery	12

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How did the changes you made work out in the end?

Well, it wasn‘t a very good version. Molten Rains didn‘t really do what I wanted them to do and it felt like I was missing Magma Jets. Also, I had absolutely no clue how to sideboard (that‘s not the deck‘s fault, of course :)). I was even urged by the judges to sideboard faster – twice.

How did the rounds go?

It started in a great way, I beat Conley Woods in the first round. In game two, I mulliganed down to three to his seven and still beat him :)

How did you do that?

He took seven damage from his own lands and the three spells I played (Hellspark Elemental, Shrapnel Blast, Lightning Bolt) were enough to do him in. Of course the Lightning Bolt was the last possible card from the top :) After the game finished, Conley‘s friends kept telling him, that he could have won if he played his duals tapped and didn‘t take so much damage from them. Conley explained that people keep hands with no lands after mulliganing to three and that he was trying to kill me before I draw some business spells.

I beat Marijn Lybaert in the next round. I lost game one because I didn‘t know what deck he was playing – it didn‘t really look like Rubin Zoo when he started Mountain-Forest-Noble Hierarch.

So what did you do wrong?

I burnt the Hierarch and destroyed the Forest with a Molten Rain and in the end, I was short the damage I could‘ve dealt with those spells to kill Marijn.

So after defeating Marijn, what score did you need to top8? And what happened that you didn‘t make it?

I was 12-2, so all I needed was a win and a draw out of four rounds. Of course that seemed possible at that moment, but the luck shied away from me a little. I mulliganed to five against soon-to-be-world-champ Andre Coimbra and the winning Shrapnel Blast got countered by his Bant Charm. In the second game, I drew five straight lands to the hand of Goblin Guide, three burn spells and three lands, so although Coimbra kept a land-shy hand with just one land and a Noble Hierarch, he was able to survive and draw into enough lands to beat me.

In the next round, I played against my nemesis – Bram Snapvangers, with Dark Depths. In the first game, I was one damage, card or turn short of killing him. I needed to draw my third land for a very long time and on the last possible turn I would have actually won if I drew anything except for six certain cards (Molten Rains and Rift Bolts), but it wasn‘t to be and Bram survived at one life with me holding three Molten Rains but just two lands in play. After sideboarding, I beat Bram all the way to four life and even disrupted the combo he had just tutored for with a Blood Moon, but two consecutive Chalices (for one and two) almost locked me out of the game. I could‘ve killed him if I drew enough Hellspark Elementals and Rift Bolts, but he drew the actions spell first in the form of Vendillion Clique that managed to kill me.

How was your mood at this point? Did you still believe you could reach the top8?

I did, but I needed to cheer myself up a little and stop thinking about the two previous rounds. Those two losses didn‘t really help to improve my „victorious spirit“ at all. What did cheer me up a bit, thought, was a little episode with Yuuya Watanabe that happened between the rounds. After Martin Jůza told Yuuya that I‘m likely to play Saito in the next round and can help eliminate him from top8 (Saito could still beat Yuuya in PoY if he made top4), Yuuya kneeled down in front of me and bowed twice with his hands clasped on his forehead saying „kill Saito, please!“. At least for a moment, I could feel like a Japanese emperor, in front of whom even the best Samurai kneeled down. With my mood improved, I went to see the pairings for the next round to find out who I would be playing.

Do tell.

I played Florian Pils with the Scapeshift combo. It is supposed to be quite a bad matchup on paper, but I managed to squeeze out a 2-1 win and all I needed to top8 was a draw.

What happened that you didn‘t make it in the end?

I was paired with Manuel Bucher and unfortunately due to his bad tiebreakers he couldn‘t afford to draw. He had to play it out and I wasn‘t ready for that, since I was already counting on drawing into the top8. Another problem was that I had no idea what deck Manuel was playing. In the first game, I killed him after keeping a somewhat shaky hand with just one land (I drew the second one imidiately, though). I sided in Blood Moon for the second game and even managed to draw it, but Manuel had two Forests and two Islands in play and killed me with a pair of Goyfs. I took out the Blood Moons for the decider, but my draw wasn‘t aggressive enough and I lost. I could‘ve made better decisions at some points, but I don‘t think it would have mattered in the end (as long as Manuel wouldn‘t make some colossal misplay). So this is how my Extended rounds wound up and also my whole Worlds performance.

Extended 3-3:

1. 2:0 vs. Woods, Conley [USA]
2. 2:1 vs. Lybaert, Marijn [BEL]
3. 0:2 vs. Coimbra, André [PRT]
4. 0:2 vs. Snepvangers, Bram [NLD]
5. 2:1 vs. Pils, Florian [DEU]
6. 1:2 vs. Bucher, Manuel [CHE]

How did you feel?

Sad. Fortunately, there were enough people to support me in this sad moment (thanks).

How would you evaluate Worlds now, two weeks after it took place?

I‘m grateful for the finish because it showed me that it is possible to beat anybody and also it qualified me and paid my trip to the next Pro Tour. The top8 that I missed, while it was so close, of course still hurts a little, but my insufficient preparation definitely took its toll. On the other hand, the „victorious spirit“ worked very well. Regarding the deck choices I made, I would keep the maindeck of my Standard list, but change the sideboard a little. Drafts went unexpectedly well and as for Extended, I would still play burn, but a different version – probably the same 75 that Saito ran in Austin.

I‘m glad that I could play against so many good players (I played six players from the top8 of Worlds and two out of the first three players in the PoY standings).

Is there something more that you‘d like to tell our readers, some tips for tournament play or just something general worth mentioning?

Don‘t think JUST about winning, enjoy the game as well, because if you don‘t, even winning can‘t really bring you joy. Also, feel free to ask about anything you would like to know in the comments.

Thanks for your time,

Honza Brožek & Petr Brožek