Some time ago, good man Sam Stoddard wrote an article about what he called his Fearless Magical Inventory. In this list of personal flaws, he openly broadcasted his most glaring Magical defects in order to come to grips with them and allow himself to start defeating them.
What surprised people most about reading Sam’s list, and the lists of others who followed his example, was that we actually learned from it. In reading about his mistakes, I noticed certain things that I did myself, and realized that they were worth working to eliminate.
I’m going to do just such an inventory today, but with a specific eye towards helping out those who have similar problems, even if their symptoms are not exactly the same as my own.
*Deep Breath*
Here we go!
1) I give up too easily on the Best Deck
There are two things that will make me quickly rule out playing what is the consensus Best Deck: one, if I observe that it has a major vulnerability that is easy to exploit; two, if I don’t think I can beat the mirror with it.
The most recent time a Best Deck has failed to meet these criteria for me was Time Spiral Block, when Teachings had no major vulnerabilities whatsoever, and consistently beating the mirror could be accomplished with proper deckbuilding and practice. I learned these things pretty early on, and was happy to have played it throughout the season.
However, I am beginning to realize that I am not as careful about evaluating these rules as I ought to be. There’s a big difference between playtesting the mirror match and quickly concluding that “man, this seems draw-dependent” and actually hunting for ways to break it before abandoning the Best Deck and moving on to a different archetype. Likewise, there’s a difference between thinking “Faeries folds to Choke” and actually hunting for ways to fix that problem – by including, for example, enough faux Islands (River of Tears, Secluded Glen, Oboro, Minamo, etc.) that Choke doesn’t matter anymore.
Constructed Magicians as a whole are infamous for playing insufficient sideboarded games, but less infamous than we ought to be for playing insufficient mirror matches. Working out what matters in the mirror is often a frustrating and counterintuitive process, but it is to our enormous benefit to do so. How insane is it when you’re playing the Best Deck and beating the Best Deck?
So the next time you find yourself thinking “I don’t want to be the Best Deck so much as I want to beat the Best Deck,” make sure you put in the time to make sure you can’t find a way to beat the best deck while being the Best Deck.
2) I let The Bad Beat Story impair my judgment
I almost moved this one up to first because I know a lot of people do it.
Say it’s game 3, you lost game 2 because you mulliganed to five, and you’re sitting there staring at your seven-card hand. It’s poor. You’re not happy with it. You feel like the universe has robbed you, giving you bad hands in two consecutive games, and all you can think about is the Bad Beat story after the match.
“I mulled to five twice. Must be nice for him, getting a bye like that.”
“I had such a good matchup, but I mulled to five twice.”
“The guy was so bad, the only way he could beat me was if I mulled to five twice. Guess what happened…”
You feel like if you mulligan now, it is a foregone conclusion that you will end up at five again and get crushed again. So you flip the universe the bird and keep. That second land is going to be on top, dammit, because I deserve it.
Except that no you don’t, and no it won’t. All that’s happened is that you’ve turned a Bad Beat story into a Guess Who Punted story. The universe runs on math, not your sense of entitlement to beat the odds. You know how sometimes your opponent keeps a poor hand in game 3 and you destroy him and think what a donkey he was for keeping such a poor hand? When you start thinking this way, you become that guy!
Years ago, I used to do this at least once per tournament. It was terrible. I’m on the road to recovery, and almost never do it anymore, but I still have to give myself a mental Saito Slap whenever I find myself thinking this way. As reflexes go, this one is bad news. Kill it at any cost if it haunts you as well.
3) I try too hard to dodge hate
I didn’t realize I had The Fear in this area until I started playing decks that were commonly hated-on. Playing Dredge at GP: Chicago was probably my biggest step in overcoming this phobia, in which I smashed through so many Tormod’s Crypts and Relics of Progenitus with my graveyard deck I almost forgot I was playing a “fragile” archetype.
Much like with mirror matches, this is an area in which I should spend more time testing. It’s an assumption I should challenge immediately, when I am choosing an archetype to pursue. If I think Elves! folds to the hate, the first thing I should be doing is verifying that. If it’s actually true, it shouldn’t take long to watch Elves! get smashed by Engineered Explosives after Engineered Explosives.
Maybe I’ll think about it and say, “yeah, this is hopeless; I’m moving on” – but maybe not. Maybe I’ll think, “you know, if not for Explosives I could absolutely have my way with Deck X or Deck Y. Maybe I should try Pithing Needle.” And maybe it’ll work. As it stands, all too often I’ll never know because I’m assuming it will not be worth the effort.
It’s funny – I spend so much time trying to get an edge by tweaking known decklists into surprising concoctions my opponents will not have prepared for, when I might have gotten just as much value – maybe more – from starting with something players are unprepared for because they believe they’ve got a set of sideboard cards that will beat it. Who knows how very, very wrong they might be about that?
This is something else I know a lot of people struggle with. We assume a deck is fragile, based on how it looks or what we’ve heard from others, but we never actually test out that assumption. I’ve only recently come to realize just how important it is that we do so after all.
4) I am not open enough to switching decks
For me, this is an overreaction to watching too many friends play a different deck at every PTQ, lose due to unfamiliarity with the deck, and never take home a slot. Seeing this happen to so many people I know has had a big impact on me, and in the past few years especially, I have been absolutely dogged about not switching decks mid-season. In retrospect, though, I think I have missed out on some opportunities because of this tendency.
One of my most memorable PTQs was in Kamigawa Block Constructed at GenCon. There were two PTQs back to back, because Gen Con is awesome, and in the first one I was absolutely destroyed by the tidal wave of players packing anti-Gifts Ungiven decks. It seemed that everyone – no, seriously, everyone – was aiming for Gifts, as though White Weenie did not even exist.
The next day I abandoned the archetype I had been piloting for the previous five PTQs and picked up White Weenie cold. I faced anti-Gifts decks all day and did not lose a match until the finals, when yet another anti-Gifts deck finally managed to attain Umezawa’s Jitte advantage through my four maindeck Manriki-Gusaris.
Granted, I’ve never encountered such a black-and-white this is the obvious metagame call situation since, but I’m sure there must have been times when I stuck to my guns for fear of making new-deck-adjustment punts and lost because I was sticking to an outdated model instead.
If you’re getting the sense that you should switch decks but are not sure you’ll be able to understand the new deck in time for the PTQ next weekend, here is a good rule of thumb: Do it, and do it right now. If you start early enough, you will understand the new deck by the time it matters. If you wait around, wringing your hands and wondering if it’s worth the risk, you most assuredly will not.
5) I don’t give Blue decks their due against Red decks
I suspect this is deeply rooted in a long-standing belief – which I never investigated myself, really, I just took it for granted based on what I’d heard from others – that Jackal Pup was the way to beat Blue decks. Really, this is entirely bogus. Some Red decks beat some Blue decks. Some Blue decks beat some Red decks. There’s no inherent relationship between the two.
When Extended Faeries in its modern form – the Bitterblossom-free version first piloted to notoriety by Paul Cheon at Worlds – made its debut, the first thing I did was to test it against Five Color Zoo, the gold standard of Red decks at the time.
Faeries crushed it. It was absolutely merciless. Not even close. This surprised me in a big way, and I felt like I’d felt an exception to a rule. Really, though, this “rule” has never held water. Hell, I’ve been successfully beating Red with Blue myself as far back as Mirrodin-Kamigawa Regionals, piloting a list with zero lifegain effects – just me and the AEther Spellbombs I used to reset Slith Firewalkers.
Sure, Faeries does not have the tastiest Naya Zoo matchup now, but that does not mean it can’t overcome it. If you’ve avoiding even giving Big Bad Blue a chance because of its Zoo matchup, you might want to first see if you can get it to beat Zoo. You might be surprised at what you discover.
6) I don’t put enough thought into Top 8 preparation
Really, there are two tiers to every PTQ. There is the Swiss, and then there is the Top 8. Both are different animals, and both require different strategies to defeat. To “defeat” the Swiss, you typically need a record of X-1-1 or better. You can drop a match and still achieve your goal. No sweat. In the Top 8, only 3-0 is sufficient.
Lately I have been succeeding at the first tier, but falling flat in the second. I’ve gotten over the hump before, but it has been much too long since I actually finished first instead of second through eighth. My quarterfinals opponent at my last PTQ, Tom Harlan, has been having similar trouble, making Top 8 at multiple consecutive PTQs and taking home the slot in none of them. Even if you don’t find yourself in a similar quandary to the two of us, it will be to your benefit to start thinking more about the Top 8.
Ostensibly, 3-0 in the Top 8 doesn’t sound so tough. After all, how often have you started off a PTQ 3-0? Plenty of people do it; it happens all the time. Naturally, the Top 8 is not the Swiss; your opponents are more likely to be skilled and less likely to have brought “pet” decks that are not really competitive. For some of us, there’s also a big difference in that every Top 8 match is like a miniature Feature Match. There are spectators crowded all around watching you play, and sometimes that affects us.
Having competed in a plethora of Top 8s (not to mention won out in multiple actual Feature Matches), I am well over any shakiness I might have had over being scrutinized while playing. No, I’m thinking the problem I’ve been having lately is about my assumptions regarding the Top 8.
I keep expecting that Top 8s will be mostly The Best Deck with some fringe sprinkled in, but even when that proves true, I find myself knocked out by the less-successful decks before I can get my hands on the deck(s) I actually came to beat. All too often I hand-wave away the fringe decks as something I’ll just blast by in the Swiss on the back of playskill, but I don’t actually have a good plan for what to do if I encounter a well-prepared, skilled pilot wielding one of those decks in the Top 8. And then I look so surprised when I lose to one.
Few of us put as much thought or preparation into how we’re going to handle the Top 8 versus how we’ll handle the Swiss. Those of us who do come prepared for that guy in the Finals, the one who won’t fall for our simple tricks, who is playing a tuned version of The Best Deck… we fail to make it to the Finals more than we should because we act like the whole Top 8 will be like that. The rest of us might assume, also incorrectly, that the Top 8 works out just like the Swiss, and come unprepared to face down the best-prepared competitor in the tournament. If we do either of these things, we miss the mark.
7) I play too fast when I don’t need to
I phrased this one as such on purpose. Sometimes, you do need to play fast. I have sped up my play in the last few years, and have gotten only one unintentional draw that I can think of, though I still do go to time with some regularity.
However, there are plenty of times – particularly in the early part a given game – where I simply play faster than I need to, and make some boneheaded slip that costs me dearly. It’s not so much that I’m not taking time to consider my options, but rather that I am letting reflexes take over my decision-making process. Whenever this manifests itself I’ll slap down a card and want to smack myself in the forehead thinking, “There was a much better play here, and I saw it! I just reflexively picked one that seemed right when even another second’s worth of thought would have revealed how much better the alternative play was.”
I’ve known about this bad habit for some time, but only recently have I connected the dots and realized it happens when I try to make decisions too quickly. Chances are if I have to actually map out quite a few different lines of play and weigh them against one another to proceed, I should stop and double-check that I have selected the absolute best option before committing to it.
I don’t know how many other players suffer from this, but I think the way to solve it is not necessarily to slow down all the time, as that can lead to unintentional draws, but rather to double-check yourself when you are about to commit to a play you selected from among a number of options that all seemed reasonable.
…
So that’s my list. It would have been a lot longer a few years ago, but although I have tightened up a lot of my play and gotten rid of many of the smaller things. Still, it is the big things that always do the most damage, so I’m hopeful that by acknowledging these I can start eliminating them.
As with others who have gone through this process, I highly recommend it. When you keep your flaws to yourself, it’s easy to put off working on them, or to neglect to thoroughly hash them out. The real value of the Fearless Magical Inventory is that by putting your problems out in public (even if it’s just in a Facebook note or forum post) you force yourself to walk all the way through the painful process and crystallize what you were doing wrong.
Now if I can just correct all of these things by next weekend, maybe I can finally convert my attendance fee into a plane ticket.
See you next week!
Richard Feldman
Team :S
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