How to Play 8 Rounds of Magic in Under 2 Hours and Reach Top 8

Last year's WMCQ was no good for me. With 2-3 result in WMCQ Bandung and 1-3 in WMCQ Jakarta, it might have been my worst run in a tournament. So I told myself that I will do better in the next year's WMCQ and that I will prepare better.

Obviously reality gets the better of me as I was still getting myself busy with Hearthstone and Clash Royale two days before the WMCQ started. I haven't even prepared a deck, even less doing playtesting.

With almost no preparation, I decided to pick up Tom Ross' winning WR Humans from the week before and pray to God that all of my opponent will get manascrewed. With that set, I was prepared for WMCQ.

On the night before WMCQ, Wildan and Ebnu came to my house so we can go together for the WMCQ in the next morning. The three of us shared our collection so we can always play the best deck in any given format. Ebnu got Bant Company, Wildan got GR Goggles and I got the WR Humans.

We played some game before ended up getting bored and start playing my Game Boy Advance. I said to myself, we are probably not gonna get any good result, are we? But I try not to thinking about that and sleep. My opponent will get manascrewed all the way to the Top 8, yeah, that's gonna be it.

However, the sound of Wildan and Ebnu playing Super Mario Bros was enough to disturb my sleep. So I woke up and decided to watch SCG Orlando on my Tab instead. I guess I was lucky because Tom Ross was playing right when I open the scglive channel which allows me to see his new sideboard.

I saw Gideon and Secure the Wastes, which is curious, because Tom Ross has just bashed Gideon in his previous articles due to being a 4 mana spell in an 18-land deck and Secure the Wastes is basically more expensive than Gideon to be casted profitably.

Then again, how I can I doubt The Boss who has probably playtested his deck more than the number of cigarette I smoke? With that in mind, I made a final change to my sideboard before finally going to sleep. My deck ended up looking like this:

Creature  (31) 4 Dragon Hunter 4 Expedition Envoy 4 Town Gossipmonger 4 Thraben Inspector 3 Kytheon, Hero of Akros 2 Annointer of Champion 4 Knight of the White Orchid 4 Thalia's Lieutenant 2 Consul's Lieutenant Spell (11) 3 Gryff's Boon 3 Declaration in Stone 1 Silkwrap 4 Always Watching

Land (25) 14 Plains 4 Battlefield Forge Sideboard (15) 1 Gryff's Boon 1 Silkwrap 2 Stasis Snare 2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar 1 Secure the Wastes 4 Reckless Bushwacker 4 Needle Spires

This deck should be no stranger to the most of you. It is the best deck in the format when on the play. With the nut draw of one-drop into double one-drop into Always Watching or Thalia's Lieutenant and more one-drops, no deck in the format can survive that kind of hyper-aggression.

The sideboard is also straightforward. If you played against creature decks (which is most of the deck in Standard), you want to add Gryff's Boon and some extra removal. If you played against Languish decks, you want to board the Bushwacker and Needle Spires to burst your opponent after they Languish your board.

My first opponent was Ci Jenny, and she was late for 3 minutes. However, time was of no concern when you are playing Humans deck since a match will usually be finished in under 15 minutes. Even more when your opponent is also playing the same deck which is the case for my first match. Nevertheless, Ci Jenny kept a one-lander in both games and ended up losing to me.

One of The Boss' principle in playing Humans is that you will always have to mulligan every one-lander except when you are on the draw, having multiple one-drops, plus having Thalia's Lieutenant or Knight of the White Orchid. If none of those three conditions were met, than you must always mulligan. After all, the deck doesn't need seven cards to win, just a blistering start is usually enough.

By believing The Boss blindly, I mulliganed every one-lander that I got and it rewarded me beautifully. I won a game against BW Control with a mulligan to five. and some game against GW Tokens and GR Ramp with a mulligan to six.

I ended up getting to the 4-0 Bracket and every match I played was ended in under 15 minutes. While others were busy staring at a clogged board state in GW or Bant Mirror, I was smoking and enjoying the moment. WR Humans is definitely one of the best deck I have ever played in a tournament simply for this reason.

Then came my first loss in match 5 against Taufik. I did mulligan to Five in both games but I managed to get my fast start so I don't really mind. However, Taufik's Bant Humans deck were able to create so many creatures with decent-sized body to block my aggression. With Collected Company and Tireless Tracker, his deck managed to outclassed my White Weenies in no time.

On the second game, I overextended into Tragic Arrogance even after Taufik bluntly chumped my creatures. To fall into such an obvious trap made me so depressed that I scooped on the spot. Still, with 4-1 result, I believed that I'll be able to get to the Top 8 with just two more win, so there's really nothing to be worried about.

Then come the sixth match against Bant Company which surprisingly took 50 minutes to complete. It was all because of my decision in first game to not kill his Transformed Nissa in order to attack him directly and get him down to one life.

That one decision spiraled uncontrollably as he drew additional cards each turn, adding more blockers, drawing more removals, and finally sealed the game with Eldrazi Displacer blinking everything. All while only having one life. That first game took 35 minutes. Amazing.

Thankfully, I managed to get my fast draw in game 2 and 3 while my opponent was having his usual all-of-my-land-comes-into-play-tapped problem. With only 15 minutes left in the clock, I won that Round 6 and went directly to Round 7.

My seventh opponent was BW Control. Unlike the previous round, I got my blistering fast draw and won the first game before turn 4. Then on Game 2, my opponent didn't draw Languish and I closed the game with Reckless Bushwacker.

6-1-1 is a good enough record to get me into Top 8 so Lovell, my opponent in Round 8, agreed to ID with me.

If I have to add all of the time that it took to finish every match I had, (Round 1 was 5 minutes, Round 2 was 15 minutes, Round 3 was 10 minutes, Round 4 was 10 minutes, Round 5 was 15 minutes, Round 6 was 50 minutes, Round 7 was 10 minutes, and Round 8 was 0 minutes) then it makes a total of 120 minutes or 2 hours for WR Humans to finish 8 round of Magic and get into Top 8. So there you have it. If you want to play 8 round of Magic without getting tired or whatsoever and hope to reach Top 8, then WR Humans is the deck for you.

However, it's not like there was no downside to playing this deck. If you read my report, you'll realized that I can describe every match that I played in less than three sentences. It's not that I'm being lazy, it's just that there are not many things worth talking about. Even Tom Ross was guilty of the same crime in his winning SCG Orlando report.

There is no up and down moment for a match that involves WR Humans. There is no back and forth interaction, there is no drama, it's only kill or getting killed. Imagine a duel between cowboy in the wild wild west. That is playing with or against WR Humans in the nutshell. Everything going down in an instant. Whether you are winning or losing, it'll happen before you even realize it. What I'm trying to say is, playing WR Humans will make your report boring. That's it.

Anyway, I reached the Top 8 and the match was decided instantly (no suprises there). While Bush (the eventual champion) spend 2 hours in his Bant Company mirror, I lost against Lovell in less than 15 minutes. I got my triple one-drops on turn 2 followed by Thalia's Lieutenant but Lovell always draw his Languish on Turn 4. Even depressing was Lovell dropped Linvala on Game 2 when I was only one turn away from defeating him.

Nevertheless, I reached the top 8 of a WMCQ. Definitely my highest achievement yet. Eventhough I didn't have a good preparation, I managed to choose the right deck and also managed to get the right matchup along the way, avoiding the Fiery Impulse decks which is this deck's worst matchup. I also found Bant Humans to be a hard matchup because they can get to the board really quick and doesn't seem to be hampered by the same manabase problem as traditional Bant-Coco. I wonder why.

Well, it was a fantastic WMCQ for me. Hopefully my WMCQ Bandung will do good for me as well. I'll see you there.