Congratulations to Erin Celovsky for winning NANPC Montreal!
Erin brought a Prana Condenser PE list and Mining Accident 419 to the tournament. We spoke to Erin about her deck choices and what she thought about the event.
Congratulations on your win at NANPC Montreal! You chose to bring Personal Evolution And 419 to the event, why those decks?
Thank you! The PE is a deck I’ve been working on since Revolution Without Rehearsal. Like I said in its writeup, I often got frustrated playing against poorly built PE decks on JNet, so I opted to try my hand at it and see if I could do better. Mining Accident 419 has a long, long time love of mine, and every time Crim gains or loses cards, I check to see if I can still make it viable.
Anyways, in late 2023, I had major surgery and I wasn’t fully recovered until April 2024 or so. You’d think that’d give me a lot of time to jam games on JNet, but that was not the case. It was a long painful recovery. And then, when I was recovered, I was more focused on rebuilding my life career-wise. This is all to say, that I’ve been somewhat checked out of the competitive circuit for quite some time. So, when I went to my first major tournament in 2024, East Canadian Nationals, I brought off meta decks of what I was most comfortable with: the aforementioned PE and Aesop’s Lat. I immediately regretted the Lat choice, as the corp to beat was Precision Design. Then there was another big tournament in Toronto, the Suburban Wasteland, where I changed it up, and brought 419 and the Shoot the Moon PD. This time, it was my corp that let me down. The weeks before going to NANPC Montreal, I still didn’t have a ton of time to practice, especially with on-meta decks, so I brought decks that I knew well and had the reps with under my belt.
Corp decks seemed to be really aggressively oriented right now, to beat late game Shaper inevitability, so 419 seemed a good choice. And PE can cheese out wins in Swiss, and people seemed less teched for asset spam lately. So I felt confident despite being somewhat forced into my off-meta picks here.
How did you prepare for the event?
I think the key for having a successful tournament, much like having a successful vacation, is knowing what you enjoy and focusing on maximizing that. Don’t bother paying for flying business class if it means you can’t afford to go scuba diving. In this case, I’ve come to accept that I have the most fun at tournaments if I’m able to be competitive. I really hate losing a tournament game because I’m playing a jank deck that does fun things against a competitive deck that’s actually focused on winning. (It grinds my gears much less in a casual game.)
So, I was panicking a little in the week before, because I had not felt like I had nearly enough practice. I built a Weyland Built To Last glacier from scratch and brought it with me, but I realized I wouldn’t have that competitive fun I liked out of tournaments if I played it. My best chance for that was to play the strongest decks I had the most experience with. Once I had made up my mind about that, I was pretty serene on the ride down. I had some decent competitive experience with those decks from prior tournaments, so I could rely on that.
Did you have any memorable games or moments on the day?
think there were two particular things that stand out to me.
First off, in Swiss, I was 2-0 going into round 3. I was feeling pretty good about my choices. Playing corp, and my opponent won off R&D. There wasn’t really any discrete play error of mine, these things happen (also my opponent played well, stayed calm and didn’t make sloppy plays.) That’s fine, I could eat a loss. We breaked for lunch, and I can eat a dumpling too. Then round 4, I kept a bad hand against a PD deck, and I had an absolutely miserable time. I just had no money all game, and it felt an exercise in futility. I lost, obviously.
But now, I was worried. I knew this kind of bad loss, to a sloppy mulligan choice on my part, had a very real possibility of sending me into a tailspin. So in the break between rounds, I put my headphones on, focused on my breathing, and tried to re-centre myself. Rounds 5, 6, and 7 were all hard fought, but I won them all. People like to think tournaments are all about these big moments where you make the daring play and it succeeds, but I find they’re more about consistency, and so taking the time to calm my nerves and refocus on playing my best game is what got me through Swiss more than anything else.
The other moment was in the cut, and I had a rematch against the same PD player from round 4. I remembered our earlier game and focused on learning that lesson of staying cool and level-headed. Drawing my opening hand, I saw that while it had a lot of engine pieces, it didn’t have any econ, so I mulliganed into something slightly better. Patience is rewarded. However, I still didn’t draw much more econ throughout the game, so in many ways, it really was a repeat of last time. Luckily, my opponent seemed to also have had a brick draw, and we were both clicking for credits. I had managed to land a bad publicity early, as well as stealing 5 points. I stayed calm and focused on my outs, namely hitting R&D as much as possible because they had really good control of agendas in and out of HQ. Again, patience was rewarded, and I topdecked the win off R&D. Redemption!
Anyone you want to shout out?
Obviously, I want to shout out to Andrej and the staff at Silver Goblin for running a great event. Andrej (and Mattie!) have got event running down to an art, and the space of the Silver Goblin is absolutely lovely, and the staff are friendly and make our tournament their priority. Montreal is my favourite city in Canada, and I love any excuse to travel there.
I’d like to shout out Joshua Quinlan and Chris Zeebag for running some great events in Toronto in the months prior. Pretty much all of my competitive practice this season was at those events.
I’d also really like to shoutout all the people who travelled to the event from out of province or country. These events are really all about the people, and I love seeing your faces (So glad I didn’t have to face Kysra’s corp in the cut however, it’d’ve eaten me alive! Sorry not sorry)
Lastly, I’d like to shoutout to Wenjong for not only driving the majority of the Toronto contingent down and back, but also for winning the throwback tournament on Day 2 for a full Toronto sweep! Our pride is restored!
Another congratulations to Erin for winning NANPC Montreal! Our NANPC leaderboard is now updated with results from all NANPC events! Stay tuned for an announcement at worlds regarding prizing for the top 8 finishers…