As the year ends, so does another year of Magic, and what a year it has been! A year of Godbooks, scandals, death to Elo, rise of the Planeswalker Points, and a year of more major cash tournaments than you can shake a stick at! It’s been a good year to be a Magic player. I can’t think of a better game to be involved in. We have so many opportunities to make a mark in this magical game (no pun intended). With the year coming to an end, I thought it would be a good time to look at a few lessons I learned throughout the season. Maybe some of you can benefit from my mistakes and look forward to a successful year of Magic in 2012!
Lesson in Honesty
Those of you who know me know I am just a regular guy with a full-time job, a wife, and a mortgage. I live in the real world with real responsibilities, not this fantasy world where I play Magic all day and all night. That’s one of the things I love most about Magic: unlike competitive video gaming, you can have success even if you’re not a slave to the game. The game is very important to me, and I find myself always improving even at my old age. I even feel better when I see a Top 8 with guys much older than I am.
Since I do have lots of work and family obligations, I have to plan my weekends that I travel for Magic well in advance and be sure to get permission from the wife. I will admit, I am very lucky to have a wife that lets me go to as many events as I like within reason. She sees the true value in the game, even though she doesn’t play it or ever plan to.
This leads to one of the lessons I learned this year: Honesty.
Some of the traveling I have been doing has sparked family gossip. Those of you who are married may be familiar with the finer points of the phenomenon called “family gossip” with your in-laws. It all started with my mother-in-law asking my wife why I was going to Kansas City last January and why I was going to Indianapolis in February, among a few other places. Naturally, my wife says I am playing cards. Being very vague, she obviously didn’t go into specifics. Of course, media demands that if I am traveling for cards, I obviously have a gambling problem!
Now, I don’t expect my wife to tell her family that I take time off of work to play a children’s card game, much less travel across the country to participate in children’s card game tournaments. I just found it hilarious that my in-laws, and their friends, asked me all sorts of poker questions at the dinner table one night. I played along, answering questions about what sunglasses I liked to wear and gave them bad poker advice. Later on in the month, I talked to my wife’s family and explained to them I was playing a strategy card game, not gambling away our fortune, or lack thereof. Ironically enough, they actually respected me more for being honest. When preparing for a year of travel for the game we all love, don’t be afraid to be honest with what your plans are. Just remember to present yourself with confidence and without shame. Honesty can go long way. Or, you can just let your family and friends outside the game think you have a gambling problem. That works too!
Play to Your Strengths
During this Magic season I’ve learned a lot about myself as a player. First, I’ve learned that I am not a patient man. I play best when I am jamming threats down my opponent’s throats. I’m not saying that I necessarily enjoy playing pure aggro decks. During my games, nothing frustrates me more than feeling like I am required to win, or lose, matches within the first five turns of the game. I enjoy having a deck that provides a solid mid-to-late game.
Most of us aren’t going to be good at everything when it comes to Magic. Very few, but the greats, play everything close to perfection. Find out what you’re good at and play decks that take advantages of your strengths.
One deck that I had a blast playing and had some success with during its Standard period was my Mono-Black Vampires deck with Abyssal Persecutor.
Creatures (25)
- 4 Bloodghast
- 4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
- 2 Vampire Hexmage
- 4 Vampire Lacerator
- 3 Abyssal Persecutor
- 4 Kalastria Highborn
- 4 Viscera Seer
Lands (23)
Spells (12)
Sideboard
Jamming threats, good removal, awesome late game in Abyssal Persecutor, this deck did everything I want a deck to do! Easily one of my favorite Standard decks to play of all time, and if I could, I would play it again in a heartbeat.
Think Outside the Box
Thinking outside the box allows you to go beyond the Hive Mind. All too often, we get caught up with “what’s good” and “what’s bad” based on the Internet, and we don’t try things for ourselves. There is something to be said when you can show up to a tournament and you know exactly what your opponents are doing, while they have no idea what you’re trying to do. As long as you’re playing a solid strategy that has solid percentage points against the more popular decks in the room, who cares if it’s a stock list, or a home-brew with a game plan?
For example: as soon as I saw Snapcaster Mage printed, the first thing I wanted to do was play him in conjunction with Price of Progress and a whole a bunch of burn spells. I decided against doing any kind of Snap-Burn brew because it was deemed “bad” by some of my peers.
Lo and behold, Andrew Shrout crushes with this list:
Creatures (14)
Lands (18)
Spells (28)
- 4 Brainstorm
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- 3 Force of Will
- 2 Fireblast
- 4 Chain Lightning
- 3 Price of Progress
- 2 Daze
- 3 Spell Snare
- 3 Ponder
Sideboard
That could have been me getting a surprise jump on the field in one of my tournaments, but instead I missed out because I was too afraid of thinking outside the box. Don’t be afraid to try new things, especially in deep formats like Legacy! With Modern season right around the corner, don’t be afraid to take chances because it just might win you a tournament.
Highlights of the Season
Enjoying the Merfolk Metagame – During the time period when Merfolk was the Deck to Beat, building decks for Legacy was very fun. Partly because the power level of Merfolk wasn’t so overpowering that it made anything else you could possibly play irrelevant. Take the new Snapcaster Control decks for example: it’s much easier to build decks that can game against Merfolk than decks that have twelve Plow effects and semi-infinite counterspells.
I find interesting how power levels of new cards that are being printed are completely warping the format. First it was Mental Misstep, then it was Snapcaster Mage shortly after. The vast majority of sets that come out have little effect on the Legacy format. Enter New Phyrexia and Innistrad: haymakers that would make Rocky envious.
Invesco Field – SCG Open: Denver was a good time, and I was impressed with the twist we received with our tournament entry. We got to play in the Denver Bronco’s Stadium. Not only was it a nice change of pace to play in a football stadium, we also received free Lacrosse tickets and after the game watched Back to the Future on the Jumbotron. Lucky for me, that was the one tournament I brought my wife to, and SCG was kind enough to have an itinerary all planned for us. On top of that, my bro Ben made Top 8 that tournament with our BUG-Visions deck.
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (24)
Spells (32)
SCG Invitational, Indianapolis – The Invitational itself wasn’t success for me, but I was able to make the best of it thanks to the MN crew I went to the event with. The highlight of the weekend, besides the obvious drinking, was playing in an Urza’s Block Rochester Draft. You haven’t lived until you’ve played a draft deck that has Show and Tell, Sneak Attack, Gamble, Serra Avatar, Tolarian Winds, fatty dragons, and a bunch of cycle cards. The irony of the situation was my deck wasn’t as powerful as some of the other decks being played! Show and Telling in a Serra Avatar on turn three was my only goal of day, and I accomplished it on at least three different occasions!
Moving Forward
Another year has gone by, and I am optimistic for the season to come. We have more SCG Invitationals, more GPs, more SCG Opens, and just more Magic in general than we did in 2011. If you can secure a few solid weekends off this year, you will have plenty of opportunity to play Big Tournament Magic. Just about everyone is getting an event near them. Hell, even the frozen tundra of MN is getting a GP! If you have been away from the game for a while, now is the perfect time to jump in, dust the rust off, and come out of retirement.
As always thanks for reading and happy New Year!
Gene