Publisher's Note: Although Epic Worlds was a while ago (December 11-13, 2009), recent updates to the Eye of the Vortex publishing system prevented us from getting this published sooner. While reports are generally something you want up right after the event, Mike's recounting of Epic Worlds is an excellent read, so we've decided to run it, even at this late hour. Please enjoy.

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I recently was able to attend the Epic 2009 World Championship that was held in Philadelphia. I showed up to the event without having had much time to test Designed deck, but I had put together a list that seemed solid, and I was reasonably confident in my drafting abilities. I registered the following decklist:

Designed Deck Portion

Wild Aggro

3 Anything But That (free, gift)
3 Compromise (free, gift)
3 Thought Stealer (free, gift)
3 Lizard Guard (free)
3 Now! (free)
3 Savage Verdict (free)
3 Charging Styracosaurus
3 Blood Hound
3 Rend
3 T-Rex
3 Carnosaur
3 Firespitter
3 Giant Spider
3 Frankenstein’s Monster
3 Echoing Mage
3 Obliterate
3 Blast
3 Spontaneous Combustion
3 Maul
3 Sky-Iron Boulder

Sideboard:
3 Force of Nature
2 Dimensional Incompatibility
3 Warped Space
3 Charmed
1 Breath of Life
3 Inner Beast

The sideboard was pretty random, and was the result of 10 minutes of rapid searching through cards. The Inner Beasts were the only cards that I actively wanted in my sideboard, the rest were just cards that I thought had an outside shot at being useful. I would definitely not recommend this exact list to someone looking to do well, but it is definitely headed in a good direction. I will write about the updated deck in the future if I find a build that is more successful.

Round 1 – Will Morgan

I sat down across my round one opponent and it is none other than Will Morgan. Will has quickly become one of the large names in the game, with multiple money finishes, including going on to top 8 at worlds. He is also responsible for creating Epic Tome and various other online tools designed to help players experience the game.

After failing to keep a coin on the table four times, I offered up a die. I won the roll and chose to draw. We had a brief discussion about this decision, and it turned out that the randomization didn’t matter, as he wanted to be on the play. Will explained that players from different regions disagreed on this decision, and that it mostly came down to playgroup preference. I honestly had no idea what the correct choice was, but in all my draft and sealed experience being on the draw has been much better, so that is what I stuck with. Normally with the Wild deck it is important to play the Lizard Guards and Druids during the first build step, so in the future if I play Wild I will probably choose to play.

Will started off by passing the turn. I played Carnosaur at end of turn, and he allowed it to resolve, drawing me two cards. Before the turn ended he played Ambush. I sighed and wondered why I hadn’t played that card myself. I let it resolve, and he placed a Diamond Golem into play. I glanced at, looked at my hand, and then picked up the card to read it. Frown. Second card I’ve seen in the tournament and I have zero ways to deal with it. This is where my preference to play control came to haunt me, as I was focusing on how to deal with the Golem instead of how to kill him around it.


On my turn the Golem ate the Dinosaur and I decided to play T-Rex to dig. On Will’s turn a Giant Spider jumped in front of the Golem to prevent 11 damage. I attempted a Firespitter, which was met by Force of Nature. The subsequent attack for 11 was exactly enough to kill me.

I boarded out three Firespitter in exchange for three Inner Beast. This game involved me having multiple lizard guards to his multiple redeems. At one point I attempted an Inner Beast that represented a potential 30 damage, but Will had a blocker to prevent some damage. Eventually I succumbed to his superior build.

0-1 (0-2 in games)

Round 2 – Julien Vasquez

Round two I played against Julien Vasquez of Montreal. Game 1 I was on the draw, and he led with Ravenous Ooze. At the end of his turn I played Blast, in response Anything but That Carnosaur into play, in response Anything But That T-Rex into play. My attacks put him to 4, and on his turn I had the Spontaneous Combustion for the quick kill that my deck was hoping to provide.

In game two, I mistakenly attempted to play a Blast at the end of a turn, which would have been my second action. When he pointed out my mistake I apologized and returned the card to my hand, but he called the judge over. I was given a warning and play continued. I was a bit put off by this, as it was such a simple and honest mistake, so I sat up a little straighter and continued the match.

Eventually he got a Dreaded Judge down which was able to keep my Blood Hound at bay. When he resolved The Purifier, I lost quite a large board, and was never really in the game after that.

Game 3 involved a lot of “Draw, Go”, which was again probably a mistake on my part as I was the aggressive deck, but I didn’t really have much to do, so it was probably the mulligan that was wrong. Eventually I attempt a champion at the end of his turn, and we have a long interaction involving compromises and Insignificant Threats. After the line clears, he draws a card and goes to attack with the recently summoned Healer Mage. At this point I stopped him, stating that it is supposed to be proceeding to my turn. After the judge call of the previous game, I wasn’t going to let this pass, but a judge had to be called anyway since he had seen extra cards. It was ruled that the drawn card would be revealed and placed on top, and he received a warning. We continued, making sure to communicate more clearly. Eventually he got a Jasmine into play, followed by a Facilitator with Shelter backup. I was unable to deal with this and found myself with another loss.

There were no hard feelings despite the rules callings, and we wished each other luck.

0-2 (1-4)

At this point I was obviously pretty disappointed, but I couldn’t really complain as I had never actually tested designed deck before the event. I resolved myself to enjoying the next four rounds.

Round 3 – Charles Holland

Charles was a nice guy who also plays Magic, and he said that he had gotten his playmat signed by the YMG team again, 7 years after they had signed it upon sweeping Pro Tour Houston.

Game 1 saw me lead with a Blood Hound, which, judging by his reaction, seemed to be a pretty large problem for him. He finished up my first turn with a Food For Thought, stealing a Blast. I was able to drop him to 11 with Blood Hound, and Blasted him to 4. On my turn I played a Firespitter, and in response to his stop I killed him with Savage Verdict.

In game two I led with Lizard guard and started playing burn spells, drawing me into multiple Savage Verdicts. Combined with Echoing Mage, this was enough to kill him quickly.

1-2 (3-4)

Draft Portion

I was seated in the same draft pod as Max Colella, one of my roommates at school. Going into the draft, I had decided that I wanted to draft a free and gift deck built to deck out quickly while playing control. This was in part due to the fact that this strategy seemed more likely produce a 3-0 than a mediocre beatdown deck which would be likely to produce a 1-2 or 2-1 result.

I first picked a Druid out of an otherwise weak pack. Next pick I gladly took a Brush Aside. I continued to pick free cards and card draw spells, ending up with a deck that I was pretty happy with, if not only for the fact that it would be fun to play.

Here is the deck I drafted:

Main Deck
Druid
Brush Aside
Priestess
Wicked Oracle
Train of Thought
Thrust
Walk it Off
Snowblind
Dark Acolyte
It's a Trap
It's a Trap
Muse
Ritual of Reanimation
Apocalypse
Imposter
Earth Golem
You're Not Welcome
Don't Blink
Tower of Souls
Reality Check
Reality Check
Double Team
Distraction
Healer Mage
Firespitter
Wand of Unmaking
Sizzle
Kidnap
Djinn
Death Magic

Sideboard:

Kill or Conquer
Revitalize
Seize Her!
Bloodthirsty Dragon
Missile Mech
Storm Giant
Inheritance of the Meek
Inheritance of the Meek
Dark Leader
Ancient Red Dragon
Man of the People
Bruiser
Hive Lord
Hive Lord
Last Hurrah

Round 4 – Brandon Mills

In round four I played against Brandon Mills, who came up all the way from Texas. I was passing to Brandon in packs one and three, so I had a general idea of what he had access to. In our first game I went to 27 from the mulligan, 30 from a Priestess Trigger, and then 33 from another Priestess Trigger before drawing my last card. Brandon had been drawing cards as well, but I was faster.

Game two involved much more combat, in that I attacked him to 21 with a Healer Mage before drawing out, making sure to play around the Warped Space that he had revealed.

2-2 (5-4)

Round 5 – Jonathan Suarez

Round five I was up against Jonathan Suarez. We chatted during and after the round, and ended up talking about whether or not to play in the Magic: the Gathering 5k or the Epic 1k the next day. We both realized that we would have much more fun playing Epic, so we ended up making the right decision. He ended up placing second in that, so congrats to him!

Our first game is a very interesting and drawn out affair. I had achieved a decent amount of card advantage when he managed to resolve a Necromancer Lord. He had tons of dead goodies to play with, and quickly took the leading position in the game. I managed to draw into my Tower of Souls, and at a critical moment I forced it through and instantaneously banished his discard pile. Luckily, all of my champions were abysmal so he wasn’t able to use them to his advantage, and he scooped when I had five cards left in the deck.

In game two, he had the Necromancer Lord again, but this time I was ready with the Tower, which I was able to keep in play to draw cards since there weren’t that many good targets to return. I also managed to use it banish his Aftershock. Earth Golem was really good for me in this game, and eventually my card advantage got him.

3-2 (7-4)

Round 6 – Massimiliano Colella

At this point I looked at Max and we realized that we had both 2-0’d our pod, so we would have to face each other in this round. We got to relax and enjoy a nice final round, knowing that one of us would finish 4-2 and the other 3-3.

In gameone, Max showed me how he had gone 4-0 in games with his deck, as he dropped a ton of free champions and gave me my only game loss in Limited on turn two, without me being able to deal with enough of this threats. In games two and three I made sure to make my board sweepers a higher priority, and after achieving stabilization at a high enough life total, I was able to deck out both times.

4-2 (9-5)

Going 4-2 overall was a result that I wasn’t too disappointed with, especially considering that the two losses were from Designed deck, a format that I knew I hadn’t prepared for properly. Only one 4-2 made the top 8, and my tiebreakers were pretty bad so I ended up somewhere around 16th. With proper training for Designed deck, I could have given myself a better chance at making top 8, but what’s done is done and I’ll have to make preparation a higher priority for future events.

On Sunday I decided to play in the 1k, but it was only Sealed Three and my packs were pretty weak, so at 2-2 I decided to drop and do Top 8 coverage. I ended up covering both semifinal matches, which was possible because the quarterfinal match between Tim Capes and Craig Bandegee took so long that Jerry Wang was in the finals before they got to game three. The Top 8 was very exciting and all the games that I watched were very interesting.

Overall the weekend was definitely a success. I had a blast just playing Epic, and even when I was losing, I was enjoying every minute of it. (Okay, maybe not quite, but you know what I mean). The opportunity to do coverage was also a ton of fun, although next time, I’d prefer that it was me playing for the big money. The weekend also did a lot to promote the game, as there were many other events going on simultaneously, and many players were willing to do demos of the game to any who were interested. I got to talking to a bunch of Magic players that I met over the weekend, and convinced a lot of them to give the game a shot, which I’m pretty sure will be able to hook them in. Overall, I’m very excited for next year and can’t wait to start trying to qualify for Worlds 2010.

Until next time.