Since this is my last article going up before my Nationals, I want to spend some time talking about Canadian Nationals in general, my past experiences, and how I will look to improve on those experiences for this year.

Canadian Nationals has a long and storied history, as America’s hat was a force to be reckoned with in the early days of Magic. We dropped off the map for a little while in the late 2000s, but the Quebecers have led the way of late with strong finishes from players like Pascal Maynard, Jay Elarar, and Francis Cormier. Elarar in particular is a two-time defending champion, as he won the last two (TWO!) Nationals. Our National Team last year was comprised entirely of Quebec residents, and my province will be hard-pressed to challenge them. Other than me, players to watch out for from Ontario are Dan Lanthier, a former Nationals champion himself, Noah Long, the newly returned Richard Hoaen, GP: Toronto champion Jonathan Smithers, and Samuel Tharmaratnam, better known as SammyT. And then there are the western Canada dark-horse candidates. While I am not as familiar with them as I am with the eastern players, they are not to be underestimated.

Personally, my history with Nationals has been a bumpy one. You see, once upon a time, before I was casually winning PTQs and Top 50’ing Pro Tours, I was a PTQ grinder. It took me a long time before I was good enough at Magic to not be the guy who goes 2–2, drop at every PTQ. Believe it or not, my first PTQ Top 8 was at a Pro Tour that I qualified for, but that’s a tale for another time. The first time I qualified for Nationals was two years ago. Prior to that, I spent an embarrassingly large amount of money each year trying to grind in, but that year, I hatched an evil plan of showing up really early to play in Grinder #1. My longtime partner in crime, Dan MacDonald, hooked me up with a four-color planeswalker control list. Now, as a quick aside on grinders, due to the nature of single-elimination tournaments, there can be no draws. A match that goes to time goes to sudden death, in which the player with the highest life total wins. I went to time against a mono-Red player and won on life totals. Go, go, Ajani Vengeant! After that, I defeated four U/W Reveillark decks, and before I knew it, my evil plan actually worked, and I found myself qualified for Nationals. And while the tournament didn’t go so well for me due to my disdain for the Alara-block Draft format, I’ve been qualified for Nationals every year since then without having to play tournaments like Regionals or grinders.

Last year was a bit more interesting, as I was coming off a recent PTQ win for Amsterdam, so I had a higher expectation of doing well in the tournament. The timing of last year’s Nationals was very awkward, though, as it was the week after M11 was released. I had been planning on playing Naya, the deck I won the PTQ with, but was very concerned about the emergence of the then-new Valakut deck. Try as I would, I just could not beat a deck with Primeval Titan, so once I arrived at the site, I was pooping the proverbial brick. I spent almost all my time working on Constructed, leaving myself almost no time to familiarize myself with the Draft format. I had made the fatal mistake of assuming that M11 would be similar to M10. This showed in my results, as I 6–0’d the Constructed portion and 1–2’d both my draft pods. This was good enough for a Top 16, but I felt that I should have done better.

This year, I’m hoping to improve further on my performance. One thing I’ve always wanted to do is represent my country at Worlds. This probably sounds really corny to most people, but it’s something that is important to me. With school starting for me soon, I’m not going to be able to dedicate nearly as much time to playing Magic in the future, so I see this as my last chance to accomplish this goal. With that in mind, I’m not going to be satisfied with anything less than a Top 3 at Nationals this year. It’s going to be difficult to achieve this, so I need to make sure I’m on my game. For one, I’m not going to let Limited be a weakness for me as it has been in the past. I 6–0’d the draft at PT: Nagoya, and while you could call it a fluke (I certainly do), it shows at the very least that I’m capable of winning a draft pod at the highest level. The timing is much better than last year, as M12 has been out on Magic Online for a while now, giving me plenty of time to practice. Not to toot my own horn, but I borrowed a draft set from a friend when the set came out, and I haven’t paid for a draft since. As for Constructed, I have the benefit of data from U.S. Nationals and the upcoming (well, upcoming at the time I’m writing this) TCG Player $75K. The format will be more or less solved by then, and I tend to do better in known metagames as opposed to open ones.

I’m hoping all of these factors will turn into a Nationals success story for me, as writing a tournament report as a member of the Canadian National Team at Worlds is definitely something I want to do for you guys. In the event that it doesn’t work out that way, I still hope to bring you guys some good stories, and I’ll see if I can finagle my way into doing some official coverage.

Speaking of which, in my last article, I mentioned that I would be doing some coverage at my local PTQ. While there were some technical issues preventing GatheringMagic from hosting it, I was able to get it posted at my local website. If you’re interested, you can check it out at www.mtgontario.com. Some of my older articles are there as well, so if you like my writing, please check them out. I recommend my NSFW PT: Amsterdam report if you’re looking for a laugh.

Next week, I’ll be looking to do some writing about the M12 draft format. I can either record a draft to show my picks and write a brief summary of the games, or I can just talk about my draft strategy in general. If you have a suggestion, please post it in the comments.

Until next time,

Nassim Ketita