This is not an article of strategy or theory. This is the story of man defeated. What is the point of this story, you may ask. The truth is, I’m not sure. I just like stories. What you take out of it is up to you, and there are definitely lessons to be taken from it. The fact that it is entertaining doesn’t hurt either.
I didn’t test enough, as usual, and had a suboptimal deck, as usual, coming into Grand Prix: DC. Ray Tautic, being the gentleman that he is, allowed me to stay at his place of residence with Seth Manfield. We played a bit, me with UW, them with Naya, before I went to bed.
I had a dream that I was in a pool of mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is disgusting.
So, morning of the tournament, I’m getting cards and coming to final conclusions on the last few slots. I decide that the deck needs at least one more dual, if not two. Sejiri Refuge was the first thought, but I figured that Fieldmist Borderpost would be better. The one life from one card would rarely be relevant, but the ability to play a turn 4 Baneslayer, Gideon, or Jace with Path mana is pretty attractive. The fact that it’s only a one-of minimizes the chances of it screwing me. I mean, it’s one card! What are the odds that it would be relevant?
Round 4, I beat a RDW player who played sub-optimally and was visibly upset whenever I cast a Baneslayer Angel.
Round 5, I lost to Gaudenis Vidiguris playing the Chapin Bant deck. I’m stuck on one Blue, that being a notorious Fieldmist Borderpost. Eventually it gets Bant Charmed and my hand is all Jaces and Mind Springs. Nice deckbuilding. Game 2 I kept a bit of a loose hand after being unsure on how to sideboard, and lost fairly quickly.
Round 6, I lost to Jund.
Round 7, I split the first two games against Jund before pulling up my 7 on the play, revealing Spreading Seas, Spreading Seas, Wall of Omens, Elspeth, Gideon, Tectonic Edge, and, of course, Fieldmist Borderpost. I ended up going to five and losing handily.
I had a warm bottle of soda, so I asked the woman at the concession stand for a cup of ice. She hesitated a bit before agreeing and I went on my miserable way. The rest of the day was a blur of self-loathing, negative thoughts, and frustrated outbursts. I was in a bad way emotionally and mentally, and had been for a couple of weeks. And it showed.
We went to Hooters that night, on the request of Owen “X-0wen” Turtenwald. That’s pronounced “ex and oh when,” and it was hard to argue with such an obviously poor choice after he finished the day without a loss. Of course, the food was mediocre and the service was horrible. The music made me want to wretch, and I was facing the wall instead of one of the many televisions with sports on them. ZHall is forced to buy a piece of cake he didn’t want as we were leaving. He got “strong-armed” by a well-endowed waitress who then kissed him on the cheek and rubbed his arm. Hope that 3.99 was worth your dignity, lady. Enjoy your youth, as you’ll have nothing when it’s gone.
I play in the PTQ the next day after making a couple of changes. I win the first 4 rounds before losing to a topdecked Gideon against Mythic Conscription in his one-turn window from no cards. Then I lost to a guy in the UW mirror who had no idea what he was doing in the match-up.
I have another warm bottle of soda, and approach the concession stand for another cup of ice. The same girl as last time was working the register. I asked her for a cup of ice, and she looked me in the eye for a moment, quite obviously remembering who I was from the day before. She then rolled her eyes and let out an exasperated sigh. She went to the back room instead of just scooping a cup on her right in the ice on her left, and came back with a cup of ice. I thought for a second that she might have spit in it or something, but couldn’t get myself to care enough to check in my depressed state.
I pour my soda and cap it, sipping as I walk over to the tournament tables. Somebody points out that I’m dripping on the floor. I quickly realize that the cup is leaking out of hole the size of the tip of a pen.
Some people at the pairings boards laugh as I struggle to get over a trashcan while shouting “I didn’t want a large Farva, I just wanted a liter of cola!”
I got to do a draft with Aaron Hauptmann, despite his quitting of the game and moving away. He taught me pretty much everything I know about Limited, which was a good thing 3 years ago, but seeing as I apparently haven’t learned anything else since then, that more just reflects poorly on me.
My family was in the area, as the tournament was only a couple hours from my house and my little siblings had never seen DC. As I said, I was staying at Ray’s, but they got a hotel room. That morning, when eating breakfast, they ran into the Japanese players in their hotel. My mom recognized them from the coverage and pointed one of them out to my father, saying, “that’s Saito!” My dad, being the big, jolly, and outgoingly social guy he is, began approaching him. By the time it was too late, my mother realized she had mispoke, and had pointed to Shuhei when saying Saito. My dad saunters up to him and asks “Hey, are you Saito?” Shuhei corrects him and my dad chuckles and apologizes and engages him in a conversation.
My dad’s outgoing and social, so he doesn’t care, and Shuhei’s the nicest person ever and surely doesn’t care. Meanwhile, my poor wallflower mother is utterly mortified on the other side of the room, trying to make herself disappear. Shuhei and the rest of the Japanese crew seemed a little confused at why this middle-aged dude who didn’t play Magic was talking to them.
“Do you know AJ Sacher? I’m his dad.” Their faces lit up as they nodded and repeated my name. Shuhei translated for Yuuya and was overheard by Saito who came over to meet my dad. They wrapped up their conversation and my dad wished them luck and went back to his table, where my mom was still mortified by her mistake.
I spent the rest of the day tilting, and accumulating more reasons to tilt. I watch multiple people play, and they all play horribly. Most of them win anyway, either because their opponents played even worse, or just to show me another example of there being no justice in the world. I know that Magic players are pretty intelligent in general, but sometimes I feel like I’m birding Helen Keller play dodgeball. It never ceases to amaze me, how long somebody can tank before coming out with the fourth-best play. Utterly shocking.
I say things others won’t. That has value, right? …Right?
I go to the airport to head to San Juan and get stuck in the security line behind a wannabe gangsta who takes 10 minutes to get all of his bling into a bucket for scanning before setting off the metal detector with his absurd belt-buckle anyway. I head to the gate and they had just started boarding. I got on and headed to the first class cabin. What can I say? It pays to be a frequent flier.
The plane smells pretty bad, but I figure I can blast my air when I get to my seat. I get myself settled in all my little cubbyholes and desk area. I eventually get comfortable and the pilot comes over the intercom, “So, you know how the plane smells bad? Well you see, and don’t be mad but, we think it might be a gas leak. So yeah, please get off the plane and, you know, try not to breathe so much.”
My wording may be slightly exaggerated, but that’s how the announcement went down in my head. I had to collect all my things and head back to the entrance where people were tripping and shoving to get out. We all got off the plane safely, where we got to wait out a two-hour delay while they change planes and crews.
I get back in my first class seat and get comfortable. It was one of those big, super nice first class cabins too. You really don’t know the sense of entitlement and condescending attitude you quickly develop from sitting in first class until you actually sit there. The word “peons” may have danced around in my head a bit.
We get to San Juan, and it is no Honolulu by any stretch of the imagination. The cab-drivers tried to scam us a couple of times, it rained most of the time and was unbearably hot and muggy when not pouring, and most of the part of the city we were in was pretty run down. The convention center and the surrounding architecture was all quite obviously new, and pretty nice, except for the fact that there was nowhere to eat anywhere near the site.
I got to stay with Tommy “Gastion” Ashton, Stephen “I’m not a novelist” King, and Cedric “Play one way” Philips. That’s a pretty absurdly awesome room, for those of you not in the know.
I didn’t test much Constructed and really had no clue what I wanted to play. Instead, I spent most of my testing time working on my Limited game, as most of my recent results have been held back by the 40 card portion of the tournament. Despite the fact that Constructed is far more important at the Pro Tour, and that testing Constructed is a much faster process than testing Limited, I just drafted my heart out.
The new set was on Magic Online well before the tournament, which never really happens, so I took full advantage by drafting into the wee hours of the morning. My arm got sore and my hand felt really cold, and I realized it’s because I didn’t have any circulation in it due to the way I was sitting, and how long I had been sitting that way. Naturally, I drafted through the pain until eventually it started to fall asleep. So what did I do? Why, I got a heating pad, of course! It soothes the sore arm and warms the cold hand, and I kept playing.
After such a build-up, it’s quite obvious that I didn’t make it out of the Constructed portion alive to showcase the effort I had put into drafting. But then I’m getting ahead of myself.
The first night we were there, we take a cab to a main street to get some grub. The cab driver asks us where we want to go. We asked for a Puerto Rican place.
“There’s two, one place is very good and the other place is also very good. The first place is kind of fancy and the second place is more relaxed, so let’s go to the relaxed one.”
Good read, cab driver. Good read. He asks us what we’re doing after we eat, which met a bunch of mumbled “nothing”s and “we don’t know”s.
“Well, do you want to see the girls? I can take you to see the girls!” We exchanged glances, and Adam “Grizzly” Yurchick begins indulging him by egging him on. “Yeah man, if you want the girls, I can make it happen! I can take you to the girls. If you want a girl to come up, I can do that too!”
“You really bring the party, huh?” Adam continues to agitate the bear with a stick.
“Oh yeah man, I bring the party! You want marijuana? I can get you marijuana! Cocaine? I can get you cocaine! Let’s do it!!” At this point, the cabbie starts pumping the breaks to the hip-hop he had on the radio, and Adam turned it up. Eventually we get to the restaurant, and as we get out, and Adam is getting the guy’s number, the hostess of the restaurant ships him a fiver. Great.
The food was mediocre at best, and quite overpriced, as expected.
We hadn’t been back on the street for more than a minute when a creepy old dude came up behind me and, standing too close, asked if we were going to see the girls. I moved away from him and turned around, and said “what?” I had heard him crystal clear, and I understood the question for what it was. I was just baffled by the circumstances and a befuddled “what?” was all I could muster. He asked if we were going to go see the strippers, and if that’s why we came.
No, we didn’t not come all the way to Puerto Rico to see naked women, and no, we were not going to go to a strip club on a Wednesday night. Thank you for asking, creepy old guy on the street.
We went down a residential side street by accident, and Noah and I approached some security guards to ask where we could find some things to do. Noah mumbled incoherently as usual, and the security guards gave us puzzled looks. I said, loudly and clearly, “There is nothing over here. We want to find where there is something to do. For fun.”
“Oh, oh, oh, umm… Enjoy! Enjoy, yes?”
“Yes! Yes! Enjoy!!”
“The girls? Yes? Enjoy the girls?”
“No, no girls. Something fun but no girls.”
“Ooohhhhhhh, oh oh oh; Gay! You want the gay! Ok, go down here and-”
We laughed and walked away, thanking them for their time.
After that, we walked past a Starbucks that a homeless dude was sleeping outside. We walked back past it and there he was, snoozing away. We went into a Walgreens a couple blocks away, and as we were checking out, he was walking in. A few minutes later, he was briskly exiting with a bag of Doritos sticking out of his pocket. The women behind the register tipped off the security guard who ran after the homeless guy. When he realized the popo was on to him, he bolted. I have literally never seen anybody move that quickly. A pursuit began, resulting in a tazing of a lifetime which the homeless dude shrugged off like it was a tennis ball to the back.
All of that for some chips? I mean, I don’t mean to judge, but if I were a starving homeless dude, I’d probably take something a little more satiating than Doritos. Not to mention something a little easier to smuggle out of the building. Has he ever heard of a muffin?
But I digress. The player party was quite good, and I did a fantasy draft with Sam Black for fun. We both drafted people we thought would do better than they usually do, or people who we really wanted to see win instead of the traditional picks of all the sickos. Paulo was disgusted at how badly we were drafting, and picked a squad for himself of all the undrafteds, and his team was far better than both of ours. Paulo had himself. Then won the tournament. Yeah.
Have you ever had somebody walk up to you with an oversized novelty check for $40k, and hit you up for the five bucks you owe them? Well, now I have.
Eventually, I settle on the Mono-Green Eldrazi deck. I didn’t have anything better, didn’t have time to come up with something, and am not well-connected enough to get a list from someone else. Might as well play one of the decks in the Rock-Paper-Scissors group and try and mise some good pairings.
I actually did more discussion on what to name the deck once I had chosen than I spent actually doing the choosing.
Mono Green Eldrazi was just too boring, and could be confused with Eldrazi Monument decks.
Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously is a great suggestion from Tommy Ashton. The philosopher Noam Chomsky wanted to say a sentence that had never been said before, and surely that one hadn’t but remains grammatically correct despite being complete nonsense. It also describes the deck in a shocking amount of ways.
Zerg was a good one. All of that Green mana being Vespen Gas, the bonus colorless lands providing Minerals, and you sacrifice your Eldrazi Spawn (larva) to make Eldrazi fatties (Ultralisks). Made sense to me.
Round 1, I get paired against UGR, which is a pretty unfavorable match-up. Not as bad as Mono-Red, which is unwinnable, but still pretty bad. I end up losing.
Round 2, I get paired against UGR, which is a pretty unfavorable match-up. Not as bad as Mono-Red, which is unwinnable, but still pretty bad. I end up losing.
Round 3, Mountain, Goblin Guide. Attack.
Round 4. Finally, a Celestial Colonnade! I win game one and get Luminarch Ascensioned game 2. Game 3, I’m thinking on a pivotal turn where he has an Ascension on 2 and 3 lands and I have multiple options. I think for about 40 seconds, and he tells me to make a play.
Seriously, guy? We’re at 0-3, have 35 minutes on the clock, you are about to have Ascension go active, and it’s the turn where I make the one real decision of the whole game, and you’re going to rush me? Classy.
And that’s how I got blanked for the first time in a long time. Grand Prix: Kansas City, I believe, was the last time I went winless at a high-level event. I understand that if you go to enough of them, it’s bound to happen eventually, but let me tell you that it does not feel good. I don’t blame Sadin for doing coverage full time or LaPille for joining R+D.
The rest of the weekend is another blur of frustration, self-destruction, and depression. I tilt off a pride-draft, then lose round 1 of the MTGO Live Series qualifier, and just generally felt horrible. Next week I am going to talk about my mindset and how I’m getting “it” back, but this week is all about the stories.
I play some Mario Kart on Stephen King’s DS. He asked me what cc I was playing, and I laughed in his face. This isn’t amateur hour, we jumped right into 150cc. After crushing 3 straight Grand Prix, I announce that I am officially the deadliest man on the planet with a Green Shell. I’m like a freaking sniper with those things. I blast karts from 30 yards with surgical precision. If only Magic were so easy. I should have named my deck after Green Shells.
I do an interview with Evan Erwin, but have a hard time focusing on the questions and begin using a lot of hedges in my speech. Then, I tilt to anyone who will listen about how I can’t buy a match and should just quit. Luckily, some Grade-A guys helped me take my mind off things or helped me calm down. BDM, Boccio, and the guys in my room specifically, but many more helped bear the load, and I thank you all.
My friend Noah ends up making Top 8, which is awesome. Wrapter finally got what’s coming to him and, now that he has the confidence, will crush the upcoming tournaments. Brad Nelson continues to ride his streak due to his ability to keep his head on straight. Finally, PV’s the nut. As soon as he was able to get past his quarterfinals match (against the second best player in the Top 8, mind you), it became obvious that he was going to win the tournament. Congrats to everyone who did well, including Ochoa, Sperling, Ben Hayes, and everyone else that I don’t hate.
Gerry was hungry, but nobody at the pizza places we called spoke English. Ben and I tried to get by on what we scraped together from introductory Spanish in, like, 8th grade. We got yelled at and hung up on a couple of times, until finally a woman told us we spoke “El espaniol de diablo”. That’s when we decided to go to the hotel front desk and ask for a translator. She informs us that the places were closed, which would explain the lack of English-speaking employees on staff.
We went out to the bars with Gerry, who was kind enough to have a good talk with me. I don’t drink, but definitely tasted everyone’s drink as they all got fruity daiquiris that were delicious. After Gerry gave me a glass of ice-cold perspective, the bartender told us the place was closing. Some girls that had earlier bet on how old we were started chatting up GerryT, who told them to come with us to another bar where we were meeting people. We show up and the crew we’re meeting consisted of Ben Rubin, Tom Ross, and Brian Kibler. The girls swarmed to them like flies to a carcass as soon as we arrived. Without drinking, and with my chats over, I was ready to go at any time. Soon enough, everyone else was too.
Before we headed back to the hotel, we got to see Conley Woods and Brett Piazza try and wade through a flooded drop-off circle to get their luggage. It was past Conley’s knees at one point, and I couldn’t help but laugh at the spectacle of them trying to keep their clothes dry.
Next week, I will give you a glimpse into a deteriorating brain. If you like psychology, specifically sports psychology, then you’ll appreciate my introspective case study. Until then, I’m about to play in the StarCityGames.com Philadelphia Open. See you next time.