Hello again, my fellow nerds! Episode 10 of AJTV has arrived! It was a really great match, recognized by multiple people as such, and I’m glad I get to do videos on games like this. I just wanted to take a moment to thank you guys, the viewers/readers/fans/whatever. Without you guys, I wouldn’t be able to do these awesome little videos. Even though they are a lot of work, they are some of the most fun I have had in all of Magic. Getting to double-digits in episode numbers is a nice feeling. Here’s to ten more and beyond!
About the video: I’m pretty happy with how this one turned out. There were no technical issues [knocking on wood], and I didn’t have to restart or reshoot at all. I hit all of my points* and didn’t flounder too much. The experience is starting to set in, and it’s only getting better with each episode. What I did for this one to try to stay on track was I made much more extensive notes than I had in the past—almost a whole script—which made this episode a lot more work, but I think it came out pretty well. I also watched this game more times than I watched the games I’d covered in the past, which allowed me to know where I was in the recording at any given point, letting me do things like cut away from the game more seamlessly.
That’s enough self-evaluation for this one. Thanks for watching, everyone. Please leave a comment below; I do make an effort to respond to every post on my articles and videos and appreciate every one greatly. And, as I said in the video, let me know which game you would like to see covered next!
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Thanks again for watching!
*The only thing that I wanted to mention but didn’t was another play that was extremely illustrative of how little Gerry cared about hard card count, aka raw card advantage, versus pacing the midgame and only focusing on the cards in his opponent’s list that were relevant to his game plan.
When Gerry plays his first Sphinx’s Revelation for three at the end of Joe’s tenth turn, Joe was actually at eight cards in hand and going to discard in his clean-up step when Gerry gave him the opening to use a card in the form of a counter on his Revelation. Normally, when a player is going to have to discard due to hand size—especially in control mirrors or other grindy matchups—it is a good play to simply do nothing and let them lose a card for free. By casting something on their end step, you’re giving them a window to get value out of a card and not have to discard. The fact that Gerry deliberately stopped Joe from discarding a card to play a juicy counter target like Revelation really shows how focused he was on his game plan.