The road to becoming GP Barcelona Champion.

Hello everyone! Last weekend I was fortunate enough to win GP Barcelona and I would like to share how I got there. It all started 2 weeks ago in GP Utrecht when I made the now rather infamous attack with 《Rogue Refiner》 into a 5/4.

Most players don’t know me that well, so they don’t know that I am quite capable of doing things like this regularly. I think I have a very deep understanding of the game, but I very often miss some small stuff. Most of the time it’s not so obvious of course, but I do things like this all the time. I am usually able to come up with the right play given the information I have, but I sometimes also forget to consider something and then it looks really bad.

For instance; there is this scenario, where I am super far ahead and I think for super long, because I am trying to win all the games from that scenario, not just 80%, so I make some “super safe” play, but I forget to consider something super obvious like 《Walking Ballista》 for 3 and I just lose to it and i look like a fool.

The more Magic I play before an event, the less likely it is that I make plays like these. I don’t neccessarily have to play the deck I am going to play the tournament with – I usually just need about 2 days to learn the deck in and out, but I need to play a lot of Magic in general to get my mind focused on it and do less stupid mistakes. My playstyle is such, that I am not really a player, who just slams the threat and hopes that it works, I am usually trying to play around everything, but line of play backfires very very badly if you mess up.

Anyway my point here is that after what I did in Utrecht I was extremely mad at myself – not because I lost that match (would have lost that game anyway – the real mistake was misboarding for game2), but because I am a fulltime Magic pro and things like that just shouldn’t be happening to me.

After the GP I got home and I just kept playing – so much so that in fact I got into a fight with my girlfriend, because instead of spending a time with her, I just wanted to play all the time, to prove to everyone that I can still play well.

I tried various decks, but everything just seemed mediocre and I had to try really hard to even 3:2 a league. I think it was on Tuesday before the event, when Ondrej Strasky messaged me, that he is going to play the 4C Saheeli and he thinks that it’s great. I know Ondrej for a very long time and I was always wondering how is it possible that he does well so often even though he wasn’t playing insanely well or anything. The reason is, that he always plays good decks and since my deck-selection is terrible, I’ve decided to play what he does most of the time. I bought the deck online and immedietaly 5-0ed a league and I was in.

I would also like to thank Brad Nelson, because he provided us with a decklist which was great. The only change I made was cutting a 《Tireless Tracker》 for a 《Tamiyo, Field Researcher》 and I was very happy with that the entire event.

That being said, in retrospect I would change some cards and this is the list I would play if there was a tournament tommorow (possibly Ben Friedman’s version might be better, but I haven’t played it yet).

The difference from my GP decklist is 1 《Shock》 over 1 《Oath of Chandra》 and 1 《Baral's Expertise》 over 1 《Release the Gremlins》. 《Shock》 is better in the mirror and against Mardu than 《Oath of Chandra》, but 《Oath of Chandra》 is better in vacuum and game 1 it’s fine even in those 2 matchups, because you still have 《Chandra, Torch of Defiance》s in your deck and you can sometimes kill a 《Gideon, Ally of Zendikar》 with it etc. Also Ben Stark made a top 8 appearance with a Jund deck and I think that people, who don’t like the best decks (most people) will try to play that and Oath (and also the Expertise) is great in that matchup.

Sideboarding Guide

I know that everyone who came to read this article is here mostly for advice about how to approach the mirror and Mardu matchup so I am just going to skip to that, instead of just writing how lucky I got at the GP.

vs. Mardu

I don’t think that it’s really necceseary to talk about game 1 – you are trying to stabilize, not die to 《Gideon, Ally of Zendikar》 and you are trying to steal the game with the combo mostly, but the postboard games are where it gets interesting. The important thing is to realize, that you should be boarding against their g2 deck not a g1, which a lot of people just keep ignoring. You see a lot of raised eyebrows when you board in 《Tireless Tracker》s against this hyper aggesive deck. Do you think that anyone would be surprised if you board 《Tireless Tracker》s against Mardu midrange with planeswalkers and 《Painful Truths》? Obviously, there are many ways they can board and it’s really hard to predict that correctly, but there are some reasonable approaches you can take.

First of all; the worse players are more likely to still be aggressive postboard and are going to keep in the 3/1s and 3/2s; this isn’t neccessarily bad from their side, especially if they think you are going to board against the slower deck. It becomes even more justifiable if they are on the play. I am just saying that that is how its usually gonna go. A lot of people were asking me why I played 5 naturalize effects in the board, if I don’t even board all of them in the Mardu matchup – well I did, but only in the early rounds, where I needed them against the g1 Mardu decks. If your opponent is good (or at least he thinks he is good), they are way more likely to board in a different deck. Better players are used to outplay unprepared opponents with this transformative sideaboard plan, where their opponent brings in all these great cards against super aggresive deck and they are just going to lose the lategame. It makes you feel smart and competetive players like to “outplay” their opponents and feel smart. You should be prepared for that and board against that.

vs. Mardu

Out

In

This is how I boarded against most Mardu players at the GP. I think you want all the 《Servant of the Conduit》 on the draw, but I am not sure.

vs. Mirror

Game 1 is pretty random and it usually comes down to who comboes out the other guy first so it’s pretty boring, but the games postboard are super skill intensive – both players have way more answers to the combo and it usually comes down to the grind and whoever sticks a repetative source of long-term advantage like 《Skysovereign, Consul Flagship》, 《Tireless Tracker》 or aPlaneswalker and you should prepare yourself for that. What is very hard though is to be able to figure out, when it’s worth it to tap out and potentially die to the combo from hand (usually it means, if they don’t have it, you made a very valuable play) and when not and it depends a lot on your position in the game, what read you have on them etc. – it is very complicated, but in general, you should play around the combo assuming it doesn’t cost you too much – it doesn’t matter if you don’t die to the combo, if you just get too far behind and lose to regular cards. Also sometimes, they are not that likely to have it and your proactive play gives you such a high win% if they don’t have, that it’s just the right play to make.

vs. Mirror

Out

In

This is how I boarded in the mirror(not sure about 《Felidar Guardian》)

As for the bans (Or lack thereof)

Wizards decided to not ban anything and they gave us some random explanations, but it’s important to realize that, they just can’t ban cards in Standard all the time; the competetive decks are actually very expensive and many people struggle with being able to afford them. How would you feel if you were saving money for two months to finally build the deck and the deck would immediately get banned? On the other hand, they want to be competitive, so what are they supposed to do? I think that if Wizards banned anything, people would lose trust and would just stop buying cards and that would be really bad for them. I think that the right approach was to ban a card that wasn’t expensive and the decks would be still good without it, but it would made the strategy significantly worse like 《Scrapheap Scrounger》 or 《Oath of Nissa》.

Also I don’t think this format is that bad – yes it sucks, that you can’t choose from that many decks, but does that really matter? I really don’t know why its that important to have infinite decks in a format (it actually becomes very random, like modern then, because you just have to choose sb cards for some decks). What is important in my opinion is that the games should be fun and skill intensive and they definitely are now. I have played a lot of very interesting and different games and I was forced to react to new scenarios in every game.

Maybe the reason is that people don’t really like playing games, but they like winning and this format don’t give those players an opportunity to play a strategy that crushes another deck to get easy free-wins just from having a good matchup and the joy from metagaming people. The best advice I can give you is to just pick up either Mardu or Saheeli and start practicing with it. You are gonna have a blast, because those decks are great and fun and also there is plenty of mini metagaming going on in the sideboards and flexible spots, which will reward you if you are on the top!

As always, thanks for reading,
Petr Sochurek

Petr Sochurek
His prowess in reading the meta and taking advantage of it with flawless plays is among the reasons he is considered to be one of top European players right now.
Having played Grixis Control to a magnificent victory at GP Paris 2016.

He is most assuredly one of the top players to keep an eye on right now!

Read more articles by Petr Sochurek