My experience as an Arena Championship 4 Finalist.
Oct 16, 2023
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Introduction
My name is Bassel, and I was a finalist in the most recent Arena Championship. I had an amazing time. The tournament was run wonderfully other than one hiccup that I'll bring up later. I'm going to try to recall what happened during the tournament. I'll share my thoughts round by round, but first I'll start with how I qualified.
I qualified for this tournament through the May sealed qualifier. I don't remember my day one deck – it was certainly good, but my day 2 deck was the most busted limited deck I have ever seen (Sunfall, Breach the Multiverse, a bunch of removal, and good creatures). When I opened that pool I thought to myself that I could only blame myself if I didn't get 7 wins with this deck. I ended up going 7-0.
I'll talk about how I came to choose this deck for the tournament. I had been testing for the tournament solo since I got back from PT Barcelona. Most of it was draft practice and getting familiar with the format through some sealed events as well. I tested some historic decks even before LOTR dropped, but most of that testing was null and void with Orcish Bowmasters and The One Ring getting printed.
is the type of deck that I would have loved to register for the tournament. I would play that pact deck for fun since the format's inception (RIP Thassa's Oracle), but in play testing I knew the deck wasn't good enough.
Fast forward to about a week before deck lists are due, I've narrowed my choices down to UR wizards or BR midrange. In a final ditch effort to get some opinions on my deck choice I reached out to
on discord. He was very helpful since he plays a ton of historic. He also made the introduction to two other AC4 competitors, William Grogan (WillJetzz) and Gage Fevold (Caders), and from there we were basically impromptu teammates. They were both already settled on Yawg, and were just solidifying their last few main deck slots and sideboards. I was at this point leaning towards a wizards list.
Then UB Lurrus came out of left field. I knew about the deck from
(big fan), but didn't really give it too much thought until a few weeks ago. Since I wasn't feeling too confident about the correct build of wizards I sort of put it on ice and took on the role of testing the UB deck vs Caders and Will. The matchup felt competitive and close, and in testing vs the other top meta decks it seemed to have favorable matchups except for mono green where it felt like a slight dog. Remember back earlier what my main fun
to improve the mono green matchup. After deck submission I played the deck a ton vs. a bunch of different matchups and came up with the SB plan for each matchup.
Day 1 – Wilds of Eldraine Draft
Going into the draft I felt very comfortable as I had played so much of this format that I could pretty much draft any color combo. I knew the UW tap archetype was bad, but I have had some success with a blue white controlling deck. And that's where I felt the draft led me. Here is my
for the event. I feel like my P1P1 probably should have been Utopia Sprawl, but my thought on the Threadbind Clique was that it's the more powerful card and it could fit into more decks, whereas Utopia Sprawl would be forcing me into a heavy green deck.
P1P4 Hylda of the Icy Crown was just the best card in the pack and in my colors, so even though I don't like the UW tap archetype, I feel like some tap effects like Bitter Chill are very good and triggering Hylda's ability is very strong.
On to pack 2. This P2P1 was rough; I probably should have picked hatching plans but I wanted to leave the opportunity open for green if it was open coming this way. As you see I never really saw any green all draft. P2P2 was exactly what I wanted, though it is slightly weaker in an open decklist tournament. The rest of the pack rewarded me for being in such an undesirable color pair, and I even wheeled the Hatching Plans and Bitter Chill.
Pack 3 goes alright with the highlights being two late Sleep-Cursed Faerie to round out a strong deck in my opinion. Now onto deck building: I don't think I built the deck well, and we only had 15 minutes to submit the decklist. I think Stroke of Midnight wasn't main deck worthy, and I usually sided in Sleight of Hand for it to find my strong cards (Expel the Interlopers) easier.
Round 1 - just my luck: I have to play my teammate Gage in round one. He has a weaker
but it certainly was able to get some damage in. He had 2 Act of Treason effects so it was very hard for me to stabilize. He also played very well and I think I played poorly on one or two occasions. L 0-2.
, this time R/B/w for Kellan, the Fae-Blooded and he has a Goblin Bombardment to boot. I feel like I misplayed a few times in this match and Masakatsu played very well. L 1-2 (at least I got a game this time).
Round 3 - I'm thinking if I lose this one I would be out of top 8 contention, since even if I win all my constructed rounds my breakers would be horrible. So I eat a clementine and focus up, I remember making a slight blocking error in the game that I lost this round since the block wasn't playing around Rankle's Prank and my opponent obviously had it. W 2-1.
Finally I got my first win and I feel slightly encouraged but still wishing I played better in rounds 1 and 2. Nonetheless I shake it off and think about constructed. Round 4 starts pretty quickly after: throughout the tournament there weren't many breaks given unless you finished your match quickly (spoiler - never really happened with my deck).
. The funny thing is that my team and I independently faced him playing this deck multiple times on the ladder, so we all already assumed he would register it. We were 1-1 on the ladder in matches but I was playing different decks. Game 1 goes well as I have a ton of answers for what he is doing including Cling to Dust and Extinction Event (so glad I had one main deck) and then Lurrus of the Dream-Den shuts the game out on a clear board. Game 2 we both take a mulligan and I keep a decent 6, then the game goes pretty similarly to game 1 where I eventually run him out of cards – but not before Karn, the Great Creator makes an appearance and makes the game much harder to win. W 2-0.
. I didn't test the mirror too much but I had a good sideboard plan. One of the most important things to do in the mirror was to play quickly as the match was bound to go long. After a long and grueling game 1 that my opponent won with 1 card in his library, my opponent had only 12 minutes left on his clock. I felt like my sideboard plan was solid so I was able to win games 2 and 3 with my opponent likely stressing due to his clock being very low. One of the games my opponent got horribly mana screwed after a mulligan as well. W 2-1.
so they showed just game 2 on stream. From what I remember, in game 1 my opponent probably had a bunch of removal spells and I countered or killed all their relevant cards. In testing this always felt like a good matchup, but as you can see on stream I made a pretty big punt with Cling to Dust, Drown in the Loch, and Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger. My thought at the time was that I was so surprised that he fatal pushed my Snapcaster Mage that I passed priority too quickly and allowed him to escape Kroxa. Luckily I wasn't punished for my transgression and ended up recovering. What can I say, mental games make Fact or Fiction a strong card. W 2-0.
That brings us to the end of day 1. Spirits are high since I came back from a rough start to the AC; winning 4 in a row puts me squarely in contention for Top 8 if I have a good day 2. Gage and I play a couple of UB vs Yawg games and discuss some different sideboard plans for our possible round 7 opponents.
Day 2 – Historic Constructed (Con't)
I wake up pretty early and go over my SB plans against the field. Our time to report was 11:30am EST so again we chat over discord and play another couple of games. This is where the aforementioned hiccup occurs. We get our pairings for round 7 and I am on the feature match paired up against the lone belcher player in the tournament. We are given the ok to start our match but only like 2 turns into the match we are told to stop our game and that there was an error in the pairings. So we stop our game and about 5 mins later we get our correct pairings and was no longer in the feature match.
. In testing this matchup felt tough mostly because of the artifacts that are hard for my deck to deal with, especially Agatha's Soul Cauldron. Plaza of Heroes is also a huge headache once we get to the late stages of the game. Game 1 my opponent was able to assemble the combo fairly quickly and win by milling me out, but they were playing the whole match on full control so that made them lose a ton of time. Game 2 I won a long and drawn out game with Lurrus and Stone of Erech. I believe my opponent might have misplayed with his The Scarab God late in that game (I was able to get the game on
if you are interested). Game 3 my opponent drew very well but due to being low on time they were not able to complete their combo and mill me out. When they timed out I had 1 card left in my library so they needed 1 more mill from Jace to complete their plan. I really wish we were the feature match since the games were very good but I know timing out would not make for good TV. W 2-1.
. As you might have noticed this is by far the best and most fun matchup to play, as it's very even and interactive. My opponent's list was different to most of the others in the tournament though: his non-Yawg threat is 4x Elven Chorus while the other 3 decks have a split between Chorus, Sheoldred, the Apocalypse and The One Ring. This variety of threats makes it much tougher on the UB deck. Elven Chorus being counterable with basically all my counterspells makes this deck a bit weaker against my deck. Going in I felt fairly confident thanks to all the testing with my teammates, who were both on Yawg. Luckily I have the 17 lands data of all 3 games so I can just show you what happened.
went exactly to plan where I didn't let them resolve a relevant threat all game and Lurrus of the Dream-Den finished the game with his usual value plan. W
I did have to mulligan away a 7-lander to start, but I got pretty lucky and my opponent had a horrible draw being stuck on 2 lands for most of the game and drawing 3x Yawg early. W 2-1.
At this point I'm chatting with my teammates on discord about my odds at Top 8-ing if I lose the last round. Gage says that as long as the pairing matches up most of the players with the same match points then I should be in the Top 8 even with a loss. I'm feeling good after winning 6 in a row so I go into the last round with a ton of confidence.
and the whole match was shown. Unfortunately my draws didn't line up well and Brian drew perfectly in game 1. As for game 2 I probably could have played differently and slower, especially to have a better chance at winning that game. I did notice that I was playing a little quicker while on coverage. L 0-2.
Here comes the Top 8 sweat. The way it worked out was that I needed fellow Top 8 player Marcus Wosner to beat Mikolaj in order for me to be locked for Top 8, and that game was also on
. With Marcus winning I didn't have to sweat too much on tie-breakers since I would have some of the worst tie-breakers starting off 0-2. As I was chatting with my teammates they were making some suggestions about sideboarding against the Sam combo deck as they were predicting that I would face it again.
. I rematched against the same opponent I faced in round 9. I believe I have a better matchup than what it looked like in round 9, so I was not discouraged from that loss. Coverage recorded this game but didn't show it on stream, so I've requested a copy of it. I do have the 17 lands data of either game 2 or 3, and it was an
against the world's invitation Marcus Wosner. This was in my opinion my favorite game of the tournament. I don't have too much to say other than how much I enjoy playing this matchup. Also this deck is much tougher compared to the Yawgmoth deck I played in round 8 due to the variety of threats: an uncountered The One Ring and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse are very scary and could really force me into awkward spots.
Towards the end of game 1 I didn't want to risk anything by casting the Memory Deluge into an Orcish Bowmasters. Just attacking with a counter spell up was safer since I didn't need to incur the risk.
Game 2 speaks for itself. It displays my favorite thing about playing this deck: turning the corner after the game is looking unwinnable. Top decking that land after praying for it really worked! After that, finding the line with the Blood Artist in hand was what made this game my favorite of the whole tournament.
against the deck I was very close to registering. I felt slightly favored from testing and that was on display in the first match, with the wizards deck sometimes just drawing too many burn spells and not enough creatures or card advantage spells. W 2-0.
Match 2 - I know everyone will want to hear about the
with the Orcish Bowmasters vs Flame of Anor. It was a complete lapse in judgment; the pause there was to consider casting the Cling to Dust in order to possibly draw a counter for it, but then when I decided not to, I neglected to throw the bowmaster into play. As a side note, I would not have been able to kill the Soul-Scar Mage since Shinya drew an instant in Play with Fire, so I would have dealt 3 to it while it would have 4 toughness. But still, I would have had a 3/3 in play and that would have been helpful on the next turn.
I feel like from that punt my deck gave up on me, and from then on my draws for the rest of the games were fairly poor/unlucky. I'm not complaining, it's just part of the game. I feel like I was running hot for most of the tournament (in constructed) so I was bound to have some clunky draws towards the end, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Hats off to Shinya; he played wonderfully throughout the tournament and chose a great deck to take down the Arena Championship with.
Final thoughts: I want to thank my team for helping me along the entire way, and shout out to my friends Eddie and Conner for always supporting and believing in me throughout.