Bungaard: A Captain’s Tale

Hello everyone and welcome back to Write of Consumption!

Thanks for coming back! If you haven’t read the first installment may I suggest checking it out here.

For this edition, I’ll be putting the normal thrust of my column (battling it out on the GP/PTQ circuit) on hold to do something a little different. I’m going to do my part to help promote the upcoming Front Range Magic Team Challenge, basically one of the most exciting events ever to happen to Colorado magic. If you don’t know what this is, then can I suggest moving out from underneath your rock, brushing yourself off, and taking the long walk down the mountain and back to civilization, because … well, damn.

What’s my angle? It’s a unique one. Somehow I’ve been lucky enough to be chosen to be on Team Denver, and let me first say that it’s a HUGE honor, and that it’s a humbling feeling. I won’t be spending any time trying to justify my selection based on pure play skill or consistent high finishes. I’m a decent player who spends a large amount of time testing, theorizing, and following constructed formats very closely. I’m the quintessential example of the player who tries to outwork and out-plan the competition, focusing on creating the biggest edge on deck possible, while examining my technical play with a fine-toothed comb so mistakes are weeded out and eliminated. According to the team captain, I’m “due for something.” You better believe it.

And who is this person who would have such faith? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you your Denver Team captain, GP Denver Top 8 competitor, Kyle Bungaard. The friendliest Viking I’ve ever met, he has a sharp wit and a big hearty laugh that warms entire rooms. This article will attempt to shed some light on the man and the magic player as we talk about the Challenge, the Denver line-up itself, standard and limited, and his experience with the game as a whole.

Your Team Denver

Gabriel Z. Willmon: We had to find a replacement for Mr.Trojan as he is unable to attend due to prior commitments. Jeff Kokx suggested Gabriel (who actually goes by Zac) to Kyle while we were testing at Enchanted Grounds. Adding a former gravy-trained player who’s getting back into the game seems very good. The word is he’s an exceptionally talented player who stays current with standard and the state of magic in general.

Shane Williams: Kyle sees a lot of value in having the opposing viewpoint of a player like Shane. Kyle prefers the reactive stance of control, and Shane is his fundamental opposite, posing the questions to Kyle’s answers. Or to put it another way, Shane has been known to play mountains…

And then there’s yours truly.

I think we have a great team personally. I like our chances. Chances for what you ask? To win this sucker of course.

The Faces of the Enemy

Kyle confesses he hasn’t had a chance to examine just exactly who all the players are on the all the teams, so we spent some time going over them team by team. Despite us simply having no idea who a couple of the people are (wonder if anybody experiences that when looking at the Denver roster ha ha. Jon who…?), it is plainly obvious that a huge pool of talent is being brought to bear. If you think about it, there’s probably never been an occasion for this many of the Front Range’s best players to be in the same room together, with the probable exception of Grand Prix Denver.

Something Kyle is very sure of is the appointment of the captains. He thinks there’s no question the people who are captains are the obvious choices in their regions, and he has a large degree of respect for each of them and their accomplishments. I claim exception in one case, as I’m not familiar with Frank Bowker at all, so apologies for my ignorance, Frank. Mayhaps we’ll be paired and get to battle, and add to the rivalry our respective cities have.

Speaking of which, I find it interesting that perhaps Denver’s most vocal participant in the original “Springs vs. Denver” thing, FRM.com’s own Nick Bonham, is the captain of another team, and a scary one at that. So in a sense, the Springs has to contend with 2 Denver teams, although I can see the Springs not being able to resist gunning for Nick regardless of what team he’s on. They probably feel like the Immortal one has to answer for his smack, and certainly Nick will have the Old Guard positioned to back him up with beatdowns for all. And maybe other teams stand to benefit while they take precious points and “chin music” from each other…

Standard in Flux

I found out that Kyle has very different opinions on what the last 2 sets have contributed to Standard. He finds Shards itself to be a pretty poor constructed set, and it’s hard to disagree with him. After you count silly seven-mana sorceries, cards that give you two dragons instead of one, and Planeswalkers, you’re hard pressed to find many more tournament level rares. There’s a handful of playable commons and uncommons, maybe ten or twelve at the most. Yes, this is just the competitive, spike mentality but I think it’s appropriate considering the scope of this tournament. Percentage-wise you could say that only a tiny portion of Shards of Alara has impacted tournament level magic. This seems to agree with Kyle when you consider the size of a block-opening big set.

Conversely Conflux has had far greater impact in his opinion, both in terms of pure numbers of (possibly) playable cards and those defining cards that cause the format to shift around them. Conflux has added 2 bona fide constructed bombs, and they’re not even rares. And if you take a minute to run through the spoiler, potential tournament staples pop out all over the place, at all rarities.

He stressed another key point: by essentially providing almost every archetype in standard some kind of upgrade EXCEPT faeries, they’ve helped bring back some balance to the Force so to speak, and we live in a Standard that is more hostile for the Fae now than it has ever been. Thank God. I mean … really.

Jam Diesel’s guide on how to draft ALA/ALA/CON:

Step 1: Force Esper.

Step 2: Continue to force Esper.

Step 3: I mean really force it.

Step 4: Splash for Grixis too late to get enough good removal.

Step 5: Lose to big fat Naya decks.

I remember reading somewhere in the Kyoto coverage that some pros think Esper is the way to go if you can manage to snag enough removal, and Kyle has similar beliefs. He informed me he drafts twice a week, and has been for a while. He’s a big fan of Grixis as well, and the two go well together (if you can grasp drafting more than one shard earlier than pack three, unlike me). So I posed the question of how likely you’ll be fighting for it, and he actually thinks it’s under-drafted. When I asked him how THAT could ever be possible, it occurred to me what should have been obvious: A lot of people are too busy drafting Naya and Bant. Ultimately though, in his mind what’s more important than what shards you go after is how comfortable you are with what you’re drafting.

We shifted to a more general discussion regarding limited, and those lessons taught by battling with forty card decks. Things like how to block correctly, not just throwing your men in front of your opponents men; or how to evaluate cards, or how to mulligan. Things that are crucial but very basic, and remind us of our fundamentals. For Kyle, it was using the stack. He credits his limited experience with teaching him to evolve his understanding of it. He related a cool story from Grand Prix Denver, where he faced Owen Turtenwald in the last round of the Swiss for a spot in the top 8. In a crucial combat step late in the match, Owen was bashing with a Demigod into Kyle’s Puppeteer Clique. Kyle chumps it (they were both low on life I believe), with the intent to nameless inversion the Demigod so it would die with his Clique, only to miss his chance by mistakenly allowing damage to resolve, sending the dying Clique headlong into his yard while the demigod was still in play. But even after the mistake he had the presence of mind to realize that his friend the stack would grant him a second chance to capitalize on his original plan. Allowing persist to go on the stack, he blasted the Demigod with the inversion, killing it dead. Persist resolved and the Clique returned to play, bringing a large friend with it. He untapped and killed Owen, who was at seven and had nothing to block with. Nice recovery, cap.

Remove Target Player From the Game

I discovered that like me, Kyle had stepped away from the game multiple times for various reasons. He said he has a tendency to drive at a constructed format with single-minded focus, which consumes a lot of energy and time, and after a while you have to let up. You’ve probably heard the expression ‘no one ever really quits Magic,’ and I’m inclined to believe that really is true. For me it was rather unfortunate timing because it was during block season last summer and I didn’t attend our Grand Prix, which I had been excited about for months and months. I had burned myself out trying to beat a certain dominating archetype, and I was left without the fire needed to wade into a battle of such proportions. The fire has returned to me however, and burns brighter than ever.

From what I gathered, it has for Kyle as well.

He started playing around Ice Age, took a break around Odyssey and another around Kamigawa. It was Planar Chaos when he came back the last time, and something had changed from all the other stints. For a long while he was strictly a casual player, but then he started drafting (see!?!), and his outlook changed dramatically. As his understanding of the game became more sophisticated, his desire to win increased alongside it. It seems like the captaincy of the Denver team has given him a surge of energy regarding standard, which I’m very glad to report.

A Call To Arms

I want to end things with some of my thoughts on the Challenge and FrontRangeMagic in general. If you’re reading this or anything else on this site for that matter, or speaking up in the forums, then I want you to know that you have my thanks. Why does that matter? Because for me and all the other people working passionately to see this site continue to grow, it means you’re getting involved. Tuning in, checking it out, actively being a part of your community. This is the future of Colorado Magic, and if you’ve joined us then you’re saying that you want to be a part of that future. When that happens, the community benefits. What does this future look like? The Team Challenge gives us a glimpse…

What’s every single Magic player’s response going to be when you ask them, at the end of the day, why they play this game? That’s obvious. Because it’s so much freaking, god-blasted fun, that’s why. There’s a whole host of reasons why it’s good to BE a magic player (a subject I hope to cover in future articles!), but the game’s the thing, the FIRST thing. We’re gamers, that’s what we do, and we have the best game in town (and most of us even have pretty healthy, robust lives away from it). That’s what the Challenge is. That’s the reason it exists. Because the idea is simply THAT much fun.

And without an ever-growing network of magic players who care, the Challenge would lose its relevance.

We’re not playing for Pro Tour invitations, plane tickets, pro points, or even boxes of cards. We’re playing for fun. And pride. And yes, for money and trophies, but admit it, if there wasn’t money and trophies you’d still play. How do you pass up the chance to have a huge regional team battle with most of the best players in the area just for the sheer glory of it?

What is best in life?

To crush your enemies.

To see them driven before you.

To hear the lamentation of their women.

It’s time to get down…

Thanks for taking the time to read, and if you would like to respond I’d love to hear from you in the forums.

- JD, Team Denver

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