“Watchwolf, where have you been for the past few months?”

“I have so much school that I only have a limited amount of time to devote to Magic a week.”

That little conversation is one that I had with multiple people throughout the weekend at SCG Open Series: Baltimore featuring the Invitational. While Magic is a very important and special part of my life, there are those times where it can’t always be my number one priority. I wish I was able to write you a sweet tournament report of the weekend, but I should leave that to the people that actually did well. Don’t worry guys; I’ll get them next time!

So what do I even plan on talking about this week?

Sometimes when people don’t play Magic for a while, they get a little bit rusty. However, if you’ve been playing Magic since you first learnt it continuously, it never really occurs to you that you would ever get rusty.

For example, I’ve been playing Magic since second grade and played all the way through elementary, middle, and high school and am still playing in college. I never took a break and was always testing and trying to come up with some new tech in my spare time. The problem right now is that while I’m able to play Magic in my free time, I just have a lot less free time in general. This leads to just trusting other people with decklists and not truly being able to innovate as much since that requires a lot of research and testing time.

As time went on since September of this past year, I could feel the rust starting to accumulate, but I was in denial. I told myself, “Don’t worry, you’ll just grind some Magic Online over the weekend for seven-to-twelve hours, and you’ll be fine.” Those hours started to get smaller, eventually becoming one Daily Event on Magic Online a week. School is rough when you’re taking infinite credits in Math and Physics…

This week, I’d like to tell you how I spent last weekend at Baltimore scraping off the rust and emerging as a new Magic player.

It all started Thursday night. I was chilling at Ben Friedman house with Reid Duke, Larry Swasey, Gerard Fabiano, and, of course, Ben Friedman. Everyone was set on what deck they wanted to play except for possibly a few cards based on the metagame they were expecting. Everyone except for me. This past week I had a ton of homework (I hate proofs!!) and wasn’t able to acquire any cards. With all of the schoolwork I had, I wasn’t able to trade or even ask to borrow cards from people. I couldn’t decide on a decklist and was at the mercy of who could lend me cards.

Eventually, I decided to just play both of Reid’s decklists. As you may have seen in the coverage, Reid was playing a 62-card U/B Control deck in Standard with Gitaxian Probe and NO RUG in Legacy. While he was able to finish in the Top 32, I was left checking the drop line on the match result slip by round 6.

What was wrong with me? I can never seem to do well at StarCityGames.com Invitationals. I really just wanted figure out what I was doing wrong.

1. I never had archetypes that I wanted to play at the tournament until the day of the event. I am fairly easy to persuade in terms of deck choice because I always seem to be a little bit too optimistic if the person that is talking to me is someone that I respect a lot. However, I should try to find out how I want to attack formats on my own via research and testing. This process is the one that has gotten me this far; the only issue is time.
2. While we are on the topic of time, Magic is a game that requires a lot of time commitment to be able to compete with other people at higher levels. There are plenty of people that travel to events that just play Magic the Gathering for a living. If they devote their whole week to Magic-related activities, that’s 70+ hours. During that time, I am spending a similar amount of time trying to improve my education and am only able to devote a few hours to Magic once in a while.

At this point it’s clear why I’m not doing that well in Magic. It’s not even purely the fact that I don’t have the best decklists. It is that I’m not giving Magic the respect that it deserves. A comment was made to me this weekend that implied that I’m not devoting enough time to Magic, and he was right. Not everyone is trying to play Magic for a living; a lot of people view it as a game that has the ability to have you go places. I play Magic to have fun, socialize, make connections, and have an enjoyable battle of wits with others. Going into Baltimore, of course I was hoping to do very well, but in the end I wanted to make sure I was playing Magic for the reasons that I want to.

In the end I was able to have fun, see some people that I haven’t seen in months (or in the case of Larry Swasey a year), and play a ton of Magic! The only problem? I was way too rusty. I was unable to compete well against people that have been able to devote probably 60 more hours than I have been able to give to Magic every week. This gap only gets bigger and bigger and really affected my game. Luckily by the middle of the StarCityGames.com Standard Open on Saturday, I was able to figure out how to oxidize all of this rust that had accumulated on me.

Play What You Know

This one seems obvious, but it’s an important fact. While I honestly believe that anyone can play any style of deck if they devote enough time to it, not everyone is able to play all of the best decks with the amount of skill they have at the time. I have many friends that will play a certain archetype if they can; they’re a lot like Patrick Sullivan and Guillaume Wafo-Tapa. They usually play a certain style of deck and play it really well. Even if you don’t play a certain archetype exceptionally well, it could be a good idea to just stick to cards that exhibit interactions that you’re familiar with.

For instance, I was really out of place playing Reid’s 62-card U/B Control deck. I’m more of an aggro-control type of person and playing this deck was really a grind, one that I am not used to. Once I realized this, I played Sam Black Esper Spirits list to a 7-3 finish in the SCG Standard Open. I was in Top 8 contention for a really long time, but more importantly I was playing a style of deck that I knew.

Slow Down and Think Twice

Many misplays are instantly known and come with regret right after you place your card into the battlefield or graveyard. While this is an occurrence that only happened a few times this weekend, it’s important to just simply visualize your play and picture what could happen.

“Should I play Geist of Saint Traft or Sword of War and Peace here? Well, I know that a lot of the U/W Delver decks play one-to-two Divine Offerings after sideboard and possibly Oblivion Ring. However, I have my own Oblivion Ring in my hand. Meanwhile, Geist of Saint Traft has to be answered with his own copy or Phantasmal Image. However, his decklist looks a lot like [insert name here]’s, so he probably isn’t playing Phantasmal Image. Therefore, I think [insert play here] is the right play here.”

That’s an example of a situation that can occur on the third turn. However, every decision should come with justification. You need to sculpt the game you’re playing and to predict your opponent’s moves. I knew I was playing very well when I played against U/W Delver with Esper Spirits and won the game at one life with a Timely Reinforcements in his hand that I blanked the whole game.

Slowing down and really thinking allows you to access the situation and observe whether or not you are in control or if you opponent is secretly the puppeteer pulling the strings of the game. You need to always be in the game or else you cannot expect to win.

Play Games with People You Know Will Give Their All

This is the major reason why I was able to oxidize all of my rust. Throughout the tournaments this past weekend, I was able to play really close matches with people that I have a lot of respect for. I would really have to fight to win, and there was no way that I was just going to accept defeat if they got a little bit ahead.

Reid was actually the one that helped me realize this point. In the second to last round of the StarCityGames.com Legacy Open, I had to play against the recent Grand Prix champion himself. However, I felt like I was mentally exhausted after having played more Magic that weekend then I had in the past three months. I offered Reid a concession to just go watch my friends play and to let me drop, but Reid would have none of it. He told me that he wanted to play.

He was on BUG Control, much like Nick Spagnolo from the Invitational, while I was playing Sam Black Esper Stoneblade. The games were extremely close, enjoyable, and required a ton of thinking. Even though I lost the match 2-1, I felt like it was a really great match and said the same to Reid. “Yeah, it was; that’s why I wanted to play against you.” This bit of flattery really struck home for me. He wouldn’t let me concede to him because he wanted to have a really good match with me. It doesn’t matter how little I’ve played Magic. I’m still Jonathan “Watchwolf92” Sukenik, and I’ll always give it my all.

Maybe sometimes it takes a little bit of time to realize that you can still play well even though you’re out of practice. I’ve even seen people that play better when they haven’t played in a while because they take their time and observe board states differently before. Personally, after this past weekend, I felt like I was able to evolve my game of Magic. It wasn’t that I was necessarily playing better or worse than I was when I was better practiced over the summer; I was just playing differently. My play style was pretty good but just different in some way that I couldn’t put my finger on.

I came to the conclusion that my education may be mixing in with my play style in Magic. However, that’s most likely a topic for another article.

Just remember: win or lose, give it your all. You can always shake off the rust and maybe even emerge as a new and improved Magic player. Try to always do your best, because after all, no one can do better than their best!

Thanks for reading,

Jonathan “Watchwolf92” Sukenik