Lorwyn League: Week Five
When a new challenger appears, the league is put through its paces.
Martin’s phone buzzed just before the quarter-finals.
Liam’s one win away from top 8.
Oh shit!!!! Martin text back. That’s insane!!!!
Four months ago, Wizards of the Coast hosted an open tournament in Liverpool for their card game Magic: the Gathering. Over six hundred people competed across two days. The top eight won a cash prize and qualified for the Pro Tour, the elite tournament series for Magic’s greatest echelon of players.
Dom, Alex and Georgia stood at the barrier of the feature match area. Martin followed along on his phone, watching the tournament livestream during gaps in his work shift. They were a world away from the back room of Bath TCG; spotlights hung around the table to illuminate the cards for the stream, while giant white dice indicated counters for viewers at home. Judges in black uniforms sat next to the players, considering every detail of the match. Fighting for his place in the top eight, piloting a red aggro deck, was Liam.
The group met Liam last summer at a qualifier event for Magic’s European Championship. These happen all over the country for players to sink their weekends into, and if you attended one in the south west anytime last year, you probably met Liam. After seeing him enough times on the circuit, Alex invited him to play his proxied Ornithopter Cube with Dom, Sami, and other league regulars. Liam came, and won every round.
The qualifying grind is expensive and unforgiving, however, and Liam felt ready to slow down. He turned up in Liverpool for one final hurrah, and sat at the tables in a hoodie.
After he won six rounds in a row and Martin Juza interviewed him on camera, he came back the following day in a crisp black shirt.
A majority of people that weekend showed up with Vivi from Final Fantasy 9, the lynchpin of a degenerate combo deck that warped the game around it. Of the top twenty players that weekend, fifteen played the Vivi deck.
“Up until yesterday, I was playing Vivi,” Liam said in his interview on stream. “I thought, ‘I can’t do nine rounds of this’.”
So Liam sleeved up a red deck and blasted past them all. In the commentary box, former Player of the Year and certified Nice Man Simon Nielsen referred to Liam as ‘the Vivi slayer’.
With Dom, Alex and Georgia watching from the sidelines (and Martin from a distance) Liam won his feature match and made it into the top eight. He got a wad of cash, and a ticket to the Pro Tour. And when he left the feature match area and saw Alex, he immediately asked if he had the Ornithopter Cube with him.
Liam’s run ultimately died to a Vivi deck. There were six of them in the top eight. The card was banned one week later.
Back in Bath TCG, coats and bags pile up in the corner near the toilet door as the room waits for the first round to begin. To the room’s delight, the TV hanging from the far wall is at last able to display a round timer, and Roland rocks up to the shop with a D20 the size of a human fist.
“Where’d you get that?” asks Georgia.
“Internet,” says Roland.
It’s week five of their ten-week standard league, and for the first time this season, Dom is a no-show. The rest of the group dare to imagine for a moment that they might have a chance of going undefeated tonight - and then Liam opens the door of the shop, his shadow reaching across the floor like the place is a midwestern saloon. He pays his Standard entry and takes a seat in the corner, riffle-shuffling a pile of unsleeved Magic cards, and the group look at each other, wondering how to contend with someone who’s Actually Good.
And then first round pairings are up, Sami opens his deck box, and his eyes widen in horror.
What he thought was his new Lorwyn Elementals deck turns out to be his old Angels deck, stripped for parts, bits of it unsleeved or missing entirely. As Roland sits down opposite him for their first match, Sami flicks through his binder in an attempt to cobble together a playable list for the evening.
While Sami rummages through his bulk, Liam’s first test of the league is Georgia, who starts off their night with two back-to-back mulligans. When, a couple turns later, Liam casts a Badgermole Cub, and it becomes obvious that although Dom himself is absent from the night’s events, his weapon of choice is still very much in play.
Liam takes game one and the pair go to sideboards, swapping in the best cards to use against the other player’s deck. Here, Georgia has the advantage of surprise, as her deck was registered at the Pro Tour by no-one. Her strategy is to plant powerful monsters in her graveyard, then reanimate them back to life; but Liam is unsure of her plan, and doesn’t bring in any silver-bullet answers for that kind of deck.
Around ten minutes later, Georgia resurrects a Harvester of Misery from her graveyard, a menacing spirit that kills all of Liam’s creatures the moment it enters play. She takes the second game. Liam sides in his graveyard answers for the tiebreaker.
Back at the champion’s table, Sami is scrambling to cast angels while contending with Bahamut, a nine-power monstrosity from Final Fantasy sitting on Roland’s side of the table next to his massive die. Sami picks the card up to re-read it.
“I don’t think I can beat this deck,” he says. “If I commit multiple creatures to the board, they die to Day of Judgment”. Roland’s Day of Judgment spell destroys every creature in play, meaning Sami has to hold back some angels as insurance. But slowing down gives Roland a window to advance his own plan unopposed.
Sami loses the match and scoops up his hodgepodge of cards.
Liam’s tiebreaker game, meanwhile, has slowed to a crawl. Using his sideboarded cards, he’s gatekeeping what Georgia can fetch from her graveyard while accumulating pressure of his own. This means none of her big threats can be cheated out, putting her on the defensive. Georgia tries to fight it, but as the round timer ticks down to zero, she feels her time running out. Georgia knows this deck. She knows Liam is packing Craterhoofs.
On the last turn of the game, Liam casts the green beast from his hand. Rather than attack, he just walks Georgia through what’s about to happen to her.
“So this will be nineteen power,” Liam explains. “You have seven to block with, which means twelve will go through. And you’re currently -” he gestures - “on ten life.” After a pause, he adds for emphasis, “which is less than that.”
Georgia laughs, and extends her hand to shake his. Alex, witnessing this from the sidelines, realises the calibre of player who’s turned up tonight; someone who doesn’t even have to win, but simply make the opponent accept that they’re going to lose.
Last week, Alex fell down a place in the league, from fourth to fifth. It’s not much, but the top four players at the end of the season make the playoffs, so reclaiming that spot is crucial. Alex, though, remains loyal to his explosive and volatile Leyline aggro deck, which throws giant birds at people’s faces and doesn’t do much of anything else. In round one he managed a clean 2-0 victory against Kenic, a newcomer who started the game with its Final Fantasy set. But he needs to keep the momentum going if he’s going to break back into the league’s top tier.
Round two pairings are up.
Alex faces Roland. It’s a tricky matchup for them both; Alex can raise hell in a short time frame, but (like Sami) has to slow down in fear of mass-death spells like Day of Judgment blowing out his board. This gives Roland the time he needs to find his huge threats.
As they shuffle up, they hear Sami across the room: “well, guess I’m going to four”.
Sami has been chosen as the next obstacle in Liam’s climb to the top. After seeing unplayable hands one after another, he sighs and keeps a four-card hand to fend off Liam’s full grip of seven.
Alex and Roland both keep seven-card hands too, although Roland winces at his and says “keep” like he’s asking a question. Alex understands once Roland reveals his first land of the game, a Fountainport, a land that generates zero colours of mana.
Roland’s deck relies on colorless spells, but to disrupt Alex’s plans, he needs removal. Removal needs colours. Day of Judgment, for example, costs four mana, but two of it must be white. As Alex starts to build his engine, Roland gets a second land, then a third, but all of it is colorless. That tells Alex not to hold back. He has a Leyline in play, too, doubling his power-up spells as he strikes Roland over and over again.
With the threat of removal off in the distance, Alex summons more and more creatures to the battlefield, closing out the game before Roland can find an answer.
After sideboarding, Roland stares at his new hand, lets out a heavy sigh, and then says, “I keep.” By this point, he’s resigned to Alex’s deck outpacing him. Alex duly obliges. He wins his second round, and Roland finishes a match with 25 minutes left on the timer.
By the time they’re done, so is Sami. Liam makes quick work of him, handing the champion his second loss of the night, and provoking an unprompted rant about the lack of nearby Modern tournaments and the persistence of Universes Beyond sets. Alex muses aloud if adding the pizza lands from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to his deck would improve his win percentage against Sami.
There’s only Derek and Brandon left to finish their match. Brandon’s allies from Avatar: The Last Airbender are airbending the field, while Derek attempts to remove Brandon’s entire deck, winning by running him out of cards.
Roland wanders over to watch.
“How was your game?” Sami asks Roland. “Have fun?”
“Depends what you mean by ‘fun’,” says Roland. Then he sees Derek force Brandon to exile all but the top six cards of his deck. He points at Derek. “This deck is worse.”
“Game’s gotta end”, Derek grins. The game does indeed end soon after, though not in Derek’s favour.
With one round left, Alex finds himself yet again on the precipice of an undefeated run. In last week’s final, he was one card short of victory in his tiebreaker game against Dom. Two weeks before that, his attempt fell at the final hurdle to the flames of Derek’s dragons. Now, for the third time this season, he’s making his approach into the Death Star trench, hoping to make the shot when the moment comes to fire. His deck is holding together for now, but his luck doesn’t tend to last all night - and Darth Liam is pursuing him.
Liam also won both his rounds after dispatching Georgia and Sami, setting Alex on a collision course with him. Alex replays his matches against Dom in his head, preparing for a fight against that same strategy.
Final round pairings are up, and Sami finds out he is on the bye.
A pity win in the tournament’s last round is a hard indignity for any Magic player to suffer, and the champion decides not to. With a sigh, he makes his excuses, grabs his coat, and heads out the front door.
Alex looks at his phone, then around the room, and realises he’s missed something.
“Looks like it’s me and you,” says Liam - and he’s looking at Brandon. After getting the bye in the first round, and defeating Derek in the second, the Avatar player is also in the conversation for the night’s top place.
Brandon is paired against Liam. Only one of them will remain undefeated.
For Alex’s final test, then, he’s instead assigned the only person in the room to stop him short in the past. To finish his run, he has to get past Derek.
Their first game is a calculated back-and-forth. Knowing Derek has ways to remove incoming threats, Alex pivots into threats that are hard to remove. Alex’s Bristlebane Battler has ward 2, adding a hefty tax to any spell Derek tries to cast on it. That keeps it alive for longer. He follows up with two Pawpatch Recruits as insurance; these make Alex’s creatures bigger whenever the opponent tries to interfere with them.
But while Alex is putting on the pressure, Derek is setting up his end game. He begins his fourth turn by indicating the Doomsday Excruciator in his graveyard.
“Oh shit,” says Alex. “Didn’t see you had it already.”
Like Georgia, Derek is cheating big creatures into play by reanimating them from the beyond. Derek’s monster, however, reduces their decks to just six cards, putting them on a short clock.
Alex looks at his hand. He could try to kill Derek on his turn, but he’s one land short, and there’s no guarantee of him drawing it - especially with the majority of his deck about to be hurled into oblivion.
“Cast Seek The Beast,” says Alex. This is the spell that lets him access the next two cards of his deck early, hoping to dig for his final land. The last time he did this against Dom, he got ‘hoofed.
Alex flips the two cards over - and there’s the land. This time, the deck comes through for him.
With a handful of cards left in his deck, Alex sends his board into battle, pumps his creatures to get extra damage through, and uses his last land to cast Burn Together, throwing the Battler like a grenade at Derek’s life total.
One game up.
While Alex and Derek shuffle cards and make adjustments, Liam is also up a game against Brandon’s allies. Both decks involve swarming the battlefield with a critical mass of creatures, but Liam is able to go over the top quicker than his opponent.
In their second game, they again take turns building up a horde of troops on both sides of the table. Liam has access to a Craterhoof, and can attack for 30. Brandon is on 16. (Which is less than that.) But with the amount of bodies Brandon is able to throw in the way, he could survive the onslaught and kill Liam in response while his defences are down. So both sets of soldiers stare across the battlefield, awaiting instructions.
After a pause, Liam plays Multiversal Passage. This land generates any one colour, but you have to choose the colour and lock it in as soon as you play it.
“Multiversal Passage choosing white.”
Brandon frowns. Liam’s deck is, demonstrably, green and blue cards. But Liam uses his new white mana to play a sideboard card he’s drawn - the batlike flying creature Doorkeeper Thrull.
Brandon reads the card:
Artifacts and creatures entering don’t cause abilities to trigger.
In the context of this match, the card reads ‘Brandon doesn’t win this game’. This is because Brandon’s allies do things when other allies enter play (creatures entering → abilities trigger). The Thrull shuts off all of those powers, leaving him unable to build any further momentum. Inevitably, if he can’t respond, Liam will now take over the game.
With no way to answer the spell, Brandon packs up his cards and concedes the game. That’s two rounds Liam finished by merely showing his opponent that they no longer have the ability to win.
Liam goes undefeated in his league debut.
But Alex is still in the fight against Derek.
“Can I see?” Liam says, leaning over to Alex’s opening hand of the second game. Alex tilts his cards. Liam makes a face.
“Oh, I don’t like that look,” says Alex.
“Are you going first or second?” Liam asks.
“Second.”
“Yeah, that makes it worse.”
Derek indicates he’s good to go, and Alex turns two of his cards over; he has two Leylines of Resonance ready to deploy.
Because each leyline copies Alex’s pump spells, one leyline creates double damage but two leylines create triple damage. On his second turn, when he casts a +3 spell to his creature, it actually does +9, and the attack wipes out half Derek’s life total in one swing.
“Oh, no,” says Derek, laughing at how dead he’s about to be.
“Yeah, that’s why I kept it,” says Alex. The downside, however, of an explosive start like this is that you have fewer things left in your hand. The more things you do at the start, the less you have to do later, and the wheels can fall off the wagon.
With that in mind, Derek casts Deceit, the elemental that lets Derek see Alex’s hand and remove a card from it. Alex has just one pump spell left, and Derek discards it with the reflexes of a man defending himself from gunfire.
But Alex’s deck comes through again. The next card he draws is another pump spell. He attacks again, launches his proton torpedoes, and the Death Star is blasted to bits.
Alex shuffles the leylines back into his deck. He hasn’t lost a single game all night.
Liam and Alex end the night with dual undefeated runs. With Kenic winning two rounds of his own, we’re looking at a week where two rookies took fifteen points from the regulars, and where Dom’s deck won the night even though Dom wasn’t there. The night’s leaderboard is a twisted mirror of its usual self; of the top five players, only the unstable aggro deck managed a perfect record, while two others lost the majority of their games, the leader didn’t even turn up, and the champion took such a bad beat that he went home an hour early.
Brandon’s strong week pushes him into the top six in the league standings. Alex’s perfect night launches him from fifth place to second.
Liam and Alex high-five each other as they leave the shop.
There are five weeks left.
