Voice
The snow is coming down, cold and hard. It covers the cars and houses and roads with a sheet of ice. I walk along the sidewalk, boots crunching
underneath with each step. I see a world around me like someone erased the important bits, faces covered and places whited out, and I can’t remember
the way home. I cough, hoarse and hard, while the sickness takes hold. My lungs are full of chilled air, and I can’t help but wonder how much worse it
is going to get.
My boots are caked with snow and ice, my socks growing wet from the long walk home. I can’t feel my toes. Soon, I won’t be able to feel anything at
all. I tighten the strings on my jacket, pulling the hood over my head.
How did I end up here?
I see my house in the distance, my wife standing on the porch, waiting. I call out to her, but my voice is dry and cracked. I can’t form the words to
tell her I’m coming home.
It is a strange feeling to lose your voice. And I don’t mean that in a literal sense. Losing your creative voice is like losing a piece of yourself. You
try to write down the words, make sense of what you’re saying, but nothing seems right. It all just feels a bit off, and you can’t help but think that
you’re never going to get it back. But somehow you do, and you eventually realize that your fears are childish and unwarranted, but still they linger on
the edge of your mind. They eat at you until all that’s left is some useless husk of what you were, or what you could be.
Lately I’ve experienced a loss in my creative voice in Magic. Across nearly every format, I’ve started to doubt my abilities to see things clearly. Certain
cards that once seemed good are no longer viable, and I am too far behind it all to even see the reason why, let alone put that information to good use.
It could be that I’m just being overshadowed by the people around me. Others experiencing success while you stumble and fail is an easy read that you’re
doing something wrong. But what happens to your inner creative voice when you do listen to them but you still fail while they succeed? It is the epitome of
self-doubt. It kills your confidence. It makes you doubt everything you know.
Brad Nelson is very often right when it comes to Standard tournaments. But so am I, and that is something I need to remember. In fact, two of Brad’s Grand
Prix Top 8s are with decks I gave him when he was having an “off week” and couldn’t figure out what to play. But regardless of how he gets to the best
deck, he is very good at converting them into Top 8 appearances, and I am not. At this point, it is almost embarrassing.
This past weekend, we braved the long and icy roads leading to Grand Prix Memphis, and ended up settling on this 75.
Creatures (10)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (26)
Spells (21)
And by “we,” I mean that I wanted to play Jeskai Tokens, but Brad talked me out of it. But he was right, of course. He ended up taking third, but the Abzan
Control deck also put five total people into the Top 8, which is just ludicrous. I ended up a reasonable 11-4, but that was a few wins short of what I
needed for anything meaningful, and a result that is “just not good enough.”
The difficult part to swallow is that I think I played well, though I clearly remember making a few mistakes that ended up costing me a match. I also
caught the short end of the stick when it came to “bad matchups,” playing against U/B Control twice on Day 2 and losing to it both times, while Brad and
friends skated by the competition. I keep telling myself that the shoe will be on the other foot sometime soon, but it is much harder to keep telling
myself that when I’ve been saying it for two years.
Maybe Brad really is the luckiest guy I’ve ever met, but I doubt it.
But having people around you to listen to and learn from is also a boon. You gain valuable knowledge that you might not otherwise have, and you also have
an important resource when you have no idea what to do. Keep in mind that you don’t always have to do it yourself, and especially so when your friends (or
favorite writers) keep hitting the nail on the head week after week. Listen to people who you respect, and learn from what they have to say. If what the
entirety of what they’re saying resonates with what you want to do, or where you want to be, then there is no shame in following their lead.
Pride can be a dangerous thing to hold on to. It can stifle progress and ultimately lead to stagnation. Swallow your pride from time to time and take the
advice of those around you who are only trying to help. This is something I have to do time and time again, but it is getting easier. It is not foolish to
trust yourself, but it is remarkably stupid to ignore those around you who have your best interests at heart.
The Fall
“Why do we fall?”
“So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”
So now it comes time to focus on what I can control. I can play a million games with different decks, trying out different cards and sideboard plans. I can
learn different matchups inside and out, figuring out all the small things. I can play to the best of my ability in the tournament, and I can control any
outside factors that affect me going in.
I have to take it one match at a time and play every round like it means something, even if it doesn’t. I have to master the archetype I want to play,
otherwise I’m just spinning my wheels. Without dedication, success is impossible. Without failure, it is impossible to learn. That is one of the things I
try to make as abundantly clear because it is not exactly intuitive. We play games because we want to win them. When you lose, it is easy to blame it on
anything but yourself when there is an element of luck in the game.
But you’re probably wrong, and you probably screwed up somewhere.
Whether you played the wrong deck, chose the wrong cards for that deck, sideboarded incorrectly, made a poor mulligan decision, or played poorly during the
games, there are a lot of mistakes you can make. Saying that “variance” got the better of you, or that your opponent is “super lucky” undermines the
valuable opportunity you have to learn something. If you continually blame outside factors for your losses, you will be blinded. If you accept that you had
some control in the outcome, you can figure out what led you down the losing path.
You will learn very little when you win a game, but losing will poke holes in everything you thought you knew. Losing challenges you to consider alternate
options. Losing shines a light on your thought process and makes you pick apart every single turn of each game, looking for what went wrong. Losing is
often more valuable than winning, because knowledge is more valuable than any single game or match. Losing is what drives us to win, because we know how
much it hurts to lose. While losing is important, it shouldn’t be the goal. We lose because it is necessary to figure out our mistakes. It is a byproduct
of experimentation. Having a hundred losses that result in an eventual win means that all that losing was worth something, regardless of how blinded we are
by the failure at the time.
Winning is only validation for something you’ve already learned. When you start winning, and winning a lot, it is just a product of those losses. When you
take new ideas or new decks into a hostile environment, it is much more likely that you’ll fail than succeed, but it is an important piece of the process.
Without exploration, there is very little information to be gained. This is one of the reasons why I rarely play the same list from tournament to
tournament, even if I am winning. There is probably something I’m missing or something that will change over time and force me to go back and look at where
I messed up. This is one of the reasons why Brad almost always plays a different deck from one tournament to the next. He’s always looking for holes,
weaknesses to exploit, while almost everyone else is content to keep playing what they’ve always played.
Brad preys on people who are content.
But there is also a reason why he doesn’t usually win the tournament itself, and this is a different thing entirely. Brad has no “heart” when it comes to
building decks. He is meat and potatoes, but no dessert, and to win a tournament you often need a little bit of indulgence. I don’t mean that he doesn’t
work his ass off, because he does. Week in and week out, he’s grinding matches and trying to learn as much as he can, but Brad’s decks often lack
imagination. He doesn’t like flashy spells or situational singletons. He doesn’t like decks that are linear because those decks are inherently exploitable.
He likes to play it safe, but that is often the reason why he comes up just a yard short.
But he does put himself in a great position to get there, which is also important. For example, he decided to cut Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and Liliana Vess
from the Abzan Control deck because they were too situational. A reasonable assessment, but Abzan Control is a deck that can force the game to go longer,
and having situational, splashy effects is often desirable. Why else would Read the Bones be in the deck if you thought most games would end quickly?
Instead, he leaned on efficiency and reliability, like he usually does. He is also a great player, which is another important reason for his stellar
results at Grand Prix, but something is clearly missing. There has to be a correlation between eleven Top 8s with just a single win to show for it. Both
sides need to have some give, just like everything in Magic and in life. You can’t be too linear or too flexible. You can’t be too splashy or too
constrained. You must find the balance that lies between. Without compromise there can be no peace.
Digging for Gold
One of my favorite things to do before any tournament is sift through the majority of my Magic collection. It is calming, but it can also be useful. As you
look through these cards, you’ll see a lot of chaff. You’ll find bulk rares and Draft junk and all sorts of leftovers from booster packs that you opened
months ago, or perhaps just a draft you did last week. But what you’re actually doing without realizing it is looking at cards in a different context than
what you’re used to. I do this much more with Modern and Legacy because the range of playability and power level is so much higher, but it can work in
Standard too. This is how you end up playing Garruk Relentless or Boseiju, Who Shelters All in Legacy. This is how you end up playing Vandalblast or Izzet
Staticaster in Modern. And this is how you (almost) play Mastery of the Unseen in Standard.
Everyone sees Mastery the Unseen as a virtually unplayable card for Standard, but there was a very reasonable chance that it made the cut into the Abzan
Control deck we played at the Grand Prix. It was in the deck until the night before the tournament and eventually cut for another removal spell. But why
was it even under consideration in the first place?
Because it looked good in a vacuum against a control deck.
So we tried it, and it felt great. It got under their Dissolves and Disdainful Strokes and presented a stream of threats. Might I also mention that the
colors blue and black have very few ways to interact with enchantments? To be honest, I loved the idea. It seemed like a great fit for what we were trying
to do against them, but we didn’t end up having enough slots for the matchup and hoped that Fleecemane Lion would be enough.
It wasn’t, and it cost me dearly.
Who knows what would have happened in that tournament if I had trusted my gut with one of the less important choices to be made, but I’ll tell you now that
having another sideboard card against U/B Control would have been great. It might not have ended up winning me any of the matches I lost, but that isn’t
the point. The point is that we found a card for Standard that I’ve seen very few people even mention outside of Limited, because it was thought up outside
of any natural Standard context.
I hate the “hive mind” that decides whether a card is good or not. Magic isn’t about a card being good or bad. It is about creating a context where any
card can be good or bad, regardless of how it looks on paper.
Okay so maybe not Squire, or Rakalite, or a large amount of the cards printed. But the fact remains that a lot of territory goes virtually unexplored
because most people blindly follow what’s been put in front of their face. It is easy to pick a low-hanging fruit, but winning tournaments isn’t about
doing things the easy way.
I get messages on social media all the time asking me about deck ideas or specific cards in certain decks. I try to reply to all of them in one way or
another and try to do so in a way that expresses my opinion without stifling the creativity of the creator. I will admit that some of these decks are
rather flawed in one way or another, but many of them come with great ideas. I feel no shame in admitting that many of the decks I have played in
tournaments over the years were started with a simple conversation about a single card. In many ways, these conversations have helped me become a better
deckbuilder, as it gives me a fresh perspective on a given archetype. Without that perspective, I wouldn’t be able to see the flaws in a lot of the decks
that I come up with myself.
I am not a brewer. I’m a tuner. I take something that other people make and poke it, prod it, prune it, and prime it until it shines. There is value to be
gained in listening to others, even if you don’t entirely agree with what they have to say. Picking out the solid bits of knowledge from their ideas and
mixing them with your own is how great ideas come to be. No one person is absolutely right on any matter, and keeping an open mind when talking to someone
about a subject is how you come up with the Constitution, never mind a Magic deck.
Baltimore or Less
This weekend, the Open Series is coming to Baltimore with the first ever Modern Open. Two days of Modern will culminate with one person walking away with a
trophy and $5,000. With Pro Tour Fate Reforged having been Modern, as well as the Grand Prix last week, I’m very excited for this tournament. A lot of “big
name” people have been expressing their lack of interest in Modern, expressing that the format is too polarizing and diverse to allow “proper” Magic to be
had.
While I agree with their sentiment to an extent, I believe that the Modern format has all of the necessary tools to fight just about anything so long as
you are creative enough. There are not enough sideboard slots to beat everything, but that’s nothing new. Sometimes you have to concede one matchup so that
you have enough space to beat a more popular deck. Sometimes you have to play cards that overlap between matchups so that you can squeeze everything in.
I think Modern is a great format, featuring many decks from Standards past with a healthy dose of creativity and excitement. There are a few decks that
feel rather degenerate at times, but that’s the nature of a non-rotating format. If one of those decks becomes too dominant, or just too difficult to hate
out, then it will likely see a ban. At this point, it is far too early to tell if Amulet of Vigor will get the axe, but only time will tell. I’m glad to
see the Open Series giving more support to the format, because that also gives us more data on what decks or cards are most prevalent.
I will likely be playing some form of Splinter Twin, though I haven’t decided which version just yet. I am a huge fan of the “alternate win condition”
versions featuring either Tarmogoyf or Tasigur, the Golden Fang, but the two-color versions from Pro Tour Fate Reforged and Grand Prix Vancouver have me
doubting myself. Regardless, it is going to be a fun event with great coverage, and I only hope that I am lucky enough to make my first Top 8 with the new
tournament structure.
I only have a few days left to dig through my collection looking for awesome cards to try out. Wish me luck!