Grand Prix Toronto (AKA Grand Prix Pearson International Airport AKA Grand Prix I'm So Tired)

A couple of weeks ago I played at Grand Prix Toronto, which will go down as the biggest darn Magic tournament I've ever played in (1616 players!)

In theory, I was supposed to play nine rounds on the Saturday.

In practice, I stopped after round seven with a 4-3 record, because it was 9:30 and it was late and I was tired and hungry. The delicious burger, beers, and conversation at Moxie's was way better, I think. Besides, I won my first three games, lost my next three, and then won my final one, thus allowing me to sit comfortably on the "yes" side of my "did I have fun?" flowchart.

I could devote pages and pages to the experience, but I think that it's more therapeutic to post my deck list, show what I kept, and indicate which cards I may have regretted not putting in.

My deck was a decent blue-green, evasion- and bestow-based deck, with a single white card in Daxos of Meletis. It was a little slow compared to the super-fast red-black or red-green decks, but I was often able to outpace my opponents with unblockable, super-enchanted creatures. It was also fairly light on removal.

Here's what I ran:

2 Plains
8 Forest
7 Island

2 Vaporkin
1 Leafcrown Dryad
2 Nimbus Naiad
1 Agent of Horizons
1 Nessian Courser
1 Daxos of Meletis
1 Opaline Unicorn
1 Thassa's Emissary
1 Karametra's Acolyte
1 Anthousa, Setessan Hero
1 Pheres Band Centaurs
1 Nemesis of Mortals
1 Mistcutter Hydra

1 Traveler's Amulet
1 Fade into Antiquity
1 Feral Invocation
1 Time to Feed
2 Griptide
2 Thassa's Bounty

Here's my sideboard:

1 Artisan's Sorrow (You know, in case some enchantments or artifacts showed up and I wanted more than one option...)

Here's what I thought about putting in but ended up not:

2 Leonin Snarecaster (I felt this messed up my curve too much, since I'd never want to play it on turn 2 and felt that any bestow creature was better than tapping a single guy once in the late game)
1 Heliod's Emissary (I didn't want to splash more than one white card, and opted for Daxos instead. This may have been my worst mistake. I really should have fit this guy in I think.)
1 Nylea's Emissary (I dithered for a bit between this and Thassa's Emissary, and opted for the card draw over the trample as the effect I'd rather have.)
1 Staunch-Hearted Warrior (I used the Nessian Courser instead of this to keep myself lower on the curve and ensure at least a 3/3 body. Sure, I could always follow this 2/2 up with a bestow creature on turn 5, but even that seemed more risky than having a 3/3 blocker on turn 3.)
1 Coastline Chimera (Even though the flying is nice, I felt the deck was too aggressive for a 1/5 flier that's designed to block)

Here are cards that I liked but could never realistically run:

1 Chained to the Rocks (Dang crap my best removal would need me to branch out into a fourth colour. Sure, it'd get me a Rage of Purphoros, but that's a lot of commitment for all that pain. And think about the Mountains I'd need!)
1 Steam Augury (Again, this is a cute card, but not so much in Limited and not in situations where I'd have to either commit to red as my third colour or seriously revamp my deck)
1 Cutthroat Maneuver
1 Read the Bones
1 Lash of the Whip
1 Whip of Erebos (These four come as a package, since they were the best in my black pool. But I think I'd rather have my green and blue together than dither over what to cut to make a four-card splash happen.

Obviously, there are more cards in my pool than just these things, but I've gotta stay salient or else I'll just start regretting my decisions more ;) I can hardly wait for Grand Prix Ottawa next year!