Greetings! After a long week in paradise it’s certainly good to be home in Michigan, the land of the grayest ice and snow, early in the morning at my favorite cozy little cafÃ©. I’m enjoying a croissant and cup of coffee, about to get underway with another Magic: The Gathering strategy article.

Shudder…

Not so much because I’m seated next to a large drafty bay window, but rather because memories of cascading beatings from Honolulu are all starting to come rushing back. Nevertheless, even in defeat there is much to be learnedâ€”perhaps even more so than in victoryâ€”and in this article I aim to piece together what went wrong, what I could have done differently, and what I learned from my disastrous performance last week.

Let’s start at the beginning, and by the beginning, I mean to say: the deck I selected for the tournament. I decided to play a Jund Birthing Pod beat-down deck of my own design.

Here’s the list:

Jund Pod

Brian Demars

327th Place at Pro Tour on 02-12-2012

Standard

Creatures (25)

Lands (11)

Spells (24)

Sideboard

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I have mixed feelings about this deck list, looking back on it now knowing that I only managed to go 2-3 in Constructed at the Pro Tour.

First of all, I’m kind of proud that, despite not performing as well as I would’ve hoped, how many people can say they sleeved up Naturalize, Blisterstick Shaman, Act of Treason, Ulvenwald Bear, and Stingerfling Spider in Constructed and still had a competitive deck? Yet, my impetus to try and find creative solutions to problems in the form of playing with underwhelming (to say the least) cards may have ultimately been part of my undoing in this event.

It’s perhaps possible that I simply out-thought myself, went a little too far into the deep end of the tank, and ultimately ended up drowning myself. Hindsight is, of course, 20/20, but looking back at the list I can’t help but feel maybe my effort and the mere cuteness of playing so many wild cards might have blinded my ability to see through some of the shenanigans at work in my brew.

Yet, you may be surprised to learn that the biggest problem wasn’t that my junky draft playables were strictly outclassed by better cards; in fact, my Achilles Heel wasn’t that my cards were strictly bad, but that I simply mulliganed into oblivion.

Here is a statistic:Â in my first seven games of Constructed Magic, I sent back fourteen hands. Yes, that averages out to keeping a five-card hand in every single game of my first three rounds; let me tell you, it’s hard to win games of constructed at the PT when you’re mulliganing to five.

It was kind of uncanny, and to be honest it sort of felt like the universe was playing some twisted practical joke on me: Â draw seven (no lands), ship, draw six (all lands), ship, etc.

I’m convinced that my deck was thoroughly randomized and that I was shuffling properly; however, one thing I noticed was that it seemed like I was either mana-flooded or mana-screwed the vast majority of the time. I only mulliganed a few times where I had, say, three lands but only high casting-cost spells.

One thing I realized could’ve been a problem for me was that I was using all Beta edition basic lands, which might’ve caused some amount of clumping while I was riffle shuffling. After my third consecutive round of mulliganing my match into the abyss against Stuart Wright, this crossed my mind, and I opted to swap out my Beta basics for some M11 lands from the draft land box.

After mulliganing fourteen times in seven games, in the last five games I played I actually kept all five hands of the full seven cards. This is something to think about I suppose; it’s possible that my first three rounds of non-stop mulligans was simply a bad luck of the drawâ€”but, perhaps my desire to play with nifty looking old cards actually severely and unknowingly handicapped me. With that in mind, I probably wouldn’t play a deck with a bunch of beta Basic lands moving forward. Whether I’m simply being superstitious or the lands actually (mana) screwed me over, I’ll never knowâ€”but I wouldn’t ever risk style over functionality again.

I have already mentioned some of the reasons that this deck may have been a poor choiceâ€”too cute, some loose bullets, feeling too attached to my own ideas, and possibly playing with beta landsâ€”but I suppose I should also discuss some of the attributes that I feel were pretty positive about this deck.

First of all, my Birthing Pod list is actually pretty novel in a lot of ways. Most Pod decks from before, and even now, are more mid-rangy to controlling late game type decks; whereas, my Pod deck falls much more on the aggressive to midrange side of the bell curve. I correctly anticipated that the Standard format chock full of Delvers, Humans, and Spirits was going to be a very aggressive format. I love a good control deck, but with so many new cards and a fast and unshaped format, I knew I wanted to play something aggressive as well rather than always trying to win from behind.

Strangleroot Geist seemed like exactly the type of card I wanted to be playing in an aggressive beatdown deck, and the synergy between the new green guy and Birthing Pod seemed like a really obvious avenue to explore. I tested countless games with Ari Lax against his Human swarms. I just kept cutting expensive Tutor target after expensive Tutor target from my Pod deck and adding more and more removal, which as it turns out was pretty good. Ultimately, I got to the point where my Pod deck was actually beating the Humans deck with a pretty high frequency, and the fact that it had become so aggressive was actually allowing it to perform well against a wide range of decks.

The theory behind playing Pod in an R/G Aggro deck was simply that Pod is basically a card that upgrades Geist into another free card for value. I wasn’t trying to get too cute with it and have a million high-drop answers for any situation, but rather I just wanted it to always have value and push through damage.

If you notice, most of the Tutor targets are at the three-drop slot because for the most part if I was Podding from two into three I wanted to be able to extract the most value as possible. Whereas, if I was Podding three, four, five, or higher, I was probably already winning and was less likely to need variety at those slots.

The black splash was a last minute addition and basically paid for itself because both of my match wins were on the back of black cards. In round one I was able to win game three on a mulligan to five on the draw against Tokens by quickly assembling Glissa, the Traitor plus Ratchet Bomb. Against Alex West in round four I was able to grind ahead of his graveyard control deck with Nihil Spellbomb.

Going into the last round of Constructed, just off a big win against Alex (who is a great player), I had a record of 2-2 that I’d really had to grind hard for before I lost a heartbreaker to Delver. Nonetheless, I learned an important lesson.

Basically, my Delver opponent kept a mana-light hand and throughout our game blind flipped the card Delver of Secrets three timesâ€”which is obviously insane and frustrating, but nonetheless meant he didn’t have any lands and was choked up on mana. I was able to answer the first two and was actually winning the game through the midgame and strongly felt that I was going to win the match. Basically, we arrived at a situation where he had to draw a land and tap out twice to stabilize against my overwhelming board advantage to not die. I had five lands in my hand and an Inferno Titan in hand. Obviously, if I drew the sixth mana source in the next two turns the Titan was going to destroy his board and allow me to attack for the win.

Also, basically almost every card in my deck drawn on one of these two turns would be enough to win the game for me as he is basically holding back my team with Blade Splicer, a Golem token, and a Wolf token (from his Phantasmal Image copying my Huntmaster) while he is trying to race me with Delver in the air. It’s crazy, because almost every single combination of cards in my deck would ultimately end up being enough to winâ€”except for the combination of cards that I drew, which was Viridian Emissary into Birds of Paradise.

Awkward.

Since I can’t find the sixth mana source or another threat to play onto the board to push through his retaining wall of creatures, once he untaps after the second time being tapped down, he has the Mana Leak he flipped to Delver plus the tempo initiative, and I can never play my Titan because I can’t force him to tap out again. Obviously, the third draw is the Forest that would’ve won me the game either of the other two turns, and I lose the match.

Now, nothing in that match was the mistake, rather, the mistake I made was after the match. I was so disenchanted by my losses, mulliganing over and over, and getting badly outdrawn in that close third game that I lost my will to fight.

Throughout the Swiss, even while I was mulliganing to five, I was still playing tight and keeping games where I started two and three cards down close and trying to steal or earn wins by clawing and grinding as hard as possible. When I sat down to my draft, knowing that I needed to 3-0 to sneak into day two, I was mentally and emotionally defeated as a result of some really untimely and unfortunate instances that were beyond my ability to control at the time.

I know deep down that logically it doesn’t matter if you start off 1-3 or X-0 and lose the last three, the result is the same and you get to play on. However, given the circumstances, I let myself fall into the trap of starting to think:Â "I’m just running bad and there’s nothing I can do about it, so I guess today just isn’t my day."

In my draft I first-picked Markov Blademaster, second-picked Hinterland Hermit, and then on third pick had the choice of Wild Hunger or Tragic Slip. I knew after my first two picks that I wanted to be in red/green because my first two picks are both creatures that are literally insane with pump spells, but tilted I made the wrong pick and couldn’t pass up the Slip, which obviously sat in my sideboard as my next five picks came: Immerwolf, Hinterland Hermit, Young Wolf, Wild Hunger, Young Wolf.

My draft deck actually ended up being pretty decent, but I would really have liked to have had the Wild Hunger instead of my 24th worst card. Here’s what I ended up sleeving up in the Limited portion:

I ended up losing a pretty close three-game match to Eric Froehlich in the first round, where in game three I chose to board out my Feral Ridgewolf for a Rolling Temblor against his Zombie deck. But then I chickened out and brought the Wolf back in, and at the end of the game when I was getting beatdown by his army of all creatures that die to Temblor I actually drew the Wolf. Ugh. Disgust.

Ultimately, the moral of the story is that after a tournament one has to look back and assess what actually happened and why one lost so much. It’s easy to say, "Oh I mulliganed a lot and got unlucky." I’d probably played 300 games with my deck, and from that large sample size I know that I shouldn’t have had to mulligan as much as I did. However, I also know that if I had the choice to run it back I wouldn’t play my Pod deck again in that event; I would’ve instead opted to play either Wolf Run or Delver, probably Delver to be precise.

Mistake #1

I should not have been so attached to my pet deck and just played one of the decks to beat.

Also, I didn’t want to play U/W mirror matches and would rather just have a different strategy instead of mirroring. I shouldn’t have had the mirror-fear.

Mistake #2

While I always play with Beta basic lands in my decks, usually I only have one-to-four basics in a deck where it is difficult to really see any anomaly with regard to randomization. I figured that because I’d never noticed any patterns before that it wouldn’t have an effect on my play. However, once you start having one-sixth of your deck being Beta, perhaps a pattern of clustering becomes more apparent. I can’t ever say for sure, but once I considered the possibility that my lands might be costing me games I snap swapped them out for new ones. Always be aware of the cards you are putting into your sleeves!

Mistake #3

Giving up and not playing hard all the way to the end.

I really regret not sticking to my draft plan, making an autopilot decision, and getting punished for it. I also really regret simply making a stupid sideboard choice and not going to the next level against Eric. If I had made the correct choice there I’m pretty sure I could’ve had a very good chance of winning that match. Eric is too good a player to make lazy or indecisive choices against, which I know and nonetheless didn’t pull the trigger on a very solid maneuver that I had identified as being good.

I assume that most of the people who read my articles are like me in a lot of ways, in that we probably share the sentiment that winning at Magicâ€”while an amazingly gratifying feelingâ€”sometimes just feels really difficult to achieve. Everybody wants to feel like their decisions, choices, innovations, and plays make a difference and can help them gain an edge. Yet, sometimes really lousy days happen and it seems like they don’t. It’s the same old story: just keep grinding, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel all the time, when there are really good decks its okay to play mirrors, and especially when it comes down to the end even if your instincts seem to be failing or going wrong, you’ve got to stick with them because they’re what got you there in the first place and they’re basically all you’ve got!

It’s a simple, fun game, right?

It is when you win.

To quote Tim Allen from Galaxy Quest: “Never give up, and never surrender!”

Cheers,
Brian DeMars

Creatures (25)

Lands (11)

Spells (24)

Sideboard

Creatures

Spells

Artifact

Enchantments

Mistake #1

Mistake #2

Mistake #3