“Yeah, pretty much every statement inside that article is completely wrong.”
The above are the words of Pro Tour Champion and high-school student Gadiel Szleifer in reference to my article on CAL, as relayed to me by one Tim Galbiati (there’s the namedrop, TGalbs).
So, to all of you who played Svothgos (including the players at GP: Charlotte who beat me with my own deck!) apparently I am very very sorry. I am a big fan of the Freudian defense mechanisms, so rather than actually refute my opponents’ arguments I generally just criticize their character, insult their mother, question their sexual preference, or lambaste their Magic playing ability. I would obviously like to do that here, but since Big Gads sort of made money at the Grand Prix-with CAL, no less-while I was busy holding a punting contest at the PTQ the next day, I can’t exactly go there either. If said Gadiel is reading this article, I’d appreciate it if you could correct my mistakes on these here forums, and I’ll barn you a drink at the next GP or something. [Don’t do that unless said GP is in Europe or Japan. Said small child still ain’t old enough to buy him drinks. – TK] I can only defend myself by saying that yes, college is amazingly fun.
In the mean time, dear readers, feel free to assume that every single word that comes out of my mouth is uncompromisingly incorrect. That really disrupts the superior and condescending tone I like to adopt in these articles, too. Specifically, it’s hard to call other people stains right now. This must be changed.
My roommate, Cody Peck, got three game losses in the same tournament for forgetting to activate Dark Confidant. What a bag.
Wow, it’s amazing how criticizing other people can make you forget about your own shortcomings. I understand what it’s like to be a bully on an elementary school playground right now. I’m well on my way to touting my Magic accomplishments boisterously and with great fanfare to make up for my abundant shortcomings in other aspects of life.
That, unfortunately, would require having some Magic accomplishments. Hell, even FrigginRizzo can conjure up the best deck in the format. I’ll be busy crying myself to sleep.
Damn, so much for that plan. There is a girl in my bed. I don’t want to talk to her because she has eaten one too many McDonald’s fried apple pies. I do not know her name, nor how she got into my house, and these two facts combined construct an unfortunate scenario for last night that I don’t want to think about right now. So I guess I’ll write an article.
Fortunately that last paragraph (excepting the last sentence-hopefully) is entirely false. Its untruth is probably the best thing that has happened to me today, but considering today began with the obnoxious honk of a horn inside a sketchy parking garage (where I was sleeping because certain St. Louisians cannot keep track of time) at 4AM today, that is not saying much. Suffice to say that any time myself or any of my friends gets a ride from another individual, I will insist that he be known by something beyond “Chief.”
I want to talk about the lessons I learned at GP: Charlotte as well as the trends I’ve observed throughout this PTQ season. Hopefully they’ll apply to people besides myself. While I’m not Premium yet and can’t delineate them “Magical Myths” like a certain crimson-haired crusader, I do hope that these reflections on the last two months or so can help people out with their qualifying endeavors. There’ll be an insane decklist, too, in case anybody wants to crush the incredibly irrelevant 1.x format just to show their friends who’s boss.
Before that, though, I want to toss in some irrelevant quotes from my now-worthless article on Extended that I penned before the Grand Prix but could not complete because of those pesky finals.
“Gifts Rock is actually the slowest deck of all time. In 2050 we will not be darting around the sky in cars like they do on The Jetsons. The only thing that will be happening is that all the Gifts Rock players will finally get around to actually casting their spells while the rest of us are busy dying of old age.”
“Bonesplitter is nuts in Red Deck Wins. Seriously. Now, if you’re like me, you are thinking, ‘Bonesplitter? That card was amazing in…Mirrodin Block Limited.’ Then, you’ll construct a parallel scenario that goes something like, ‘Vanilla Ice? That guy was amazing in…1991.’ Then you’ll realize that you don’t exactly pile out into the streets for his records in 2005, and because of that you’ll conclude that your Bonesplitters should be gathering dust in your closet outside the view of strangers as well. I applaud the scenario, but let me show you why Bonesplitter is back in a brand-new edition.”
“Casting Moment’s Peace without developing your manabase in the meantime is like standing in the hull of the Titanic bailing water with a teaspoon.”
The astute among you will realize that I chose those three selections because they were they contained the only worthwhile sentences in the entire article-but ssh!, I have an image to uphold!
I also want to announce that, after years of practice, I finally learned how to pronounce Sean Mangner’s last name. It’s like, “Mang,” as in, “Sup, mang.” Or, to appease you South-Park-o-philes, it’s like “mung” with an “A.” You might not understand how proud of myself I was when I discovered this. It was like the first time I beat that little triangle game at Cracker Barel and actually stood up in my chair with my arms outstretched in a “V-For-Victory!” pose. Unfortunately that was at Sunday Brunch, and to this day I am not allowed back inside that restaurant.
That last paragraph, unfortunately, is 100% true.
Two pages and I haven’t produced an ounce of content. I am sure Ted is thrilled. Really, I’m slacking. So, moving on.
Lesson One: I am absolutely, positively, nowhere close to being nearly as good at Magic as I thought I was.
Now, of course this comes as a surprise to absolutely no one. When you have an ego the size of mine, the reality of the situation is always a sore disappointment. But if you read my articles, you’ll understand that an obvious trend involves the insistence upon reminding yourself that you are awful at Magic.
I knew I was awful at Magic, but I thought that I was less awful than most other players, and because of that should have absolutely no problem Day 2’ing this Grand Prix, even if I only had one bye. After all, I had gone a combined 19-4-3 in PTQ matches over the course of this season playing three different decks. That is the nuts, right?
Well, I somewhat ignored the reason for that streak of finishes. The reason was not that I had some incredible abundance of natural ability; it was simply that I had been playtesting constantly! Conversely, in the week before the Grand Prix I had to take four finals and overcome a severe illness. During that time I had time to playtest exactly one day.
But what was my mistake? Certainly I can’t skip finals to attend playtesting sessions, right? And I’d been testing the entire season up until this point; shouldn’t that be enough to get me to Day 2 and put me in contention for a slot?
That was my thinking up until the second time I butchered a Gifts Ungiven to cost myself a game. At that point I realized that playtesting is not just a process for coming up with the best deck. It’s necessary to keep your mind in the swing of things. For one, I had not done nearly enough testing against Ichorid to know how much time I had to set up. For another, I hadn’t split a Fact or Fiction or piled a Gifts Ungiven nearly enough over the course of the last week. I was rusty, and it showed. I made a few plays that were flat-out embarrassing, and one in particular against CAL actually made me feel like less of a person. It was a punt at 1st-and-goal.
The lesson is this: for any deck, especially an incredibly difficult one to play like Heartbeat or CAL, you can’t skip a week of work and expect everything to continue along all peachy-like. After any kind of absence, it takes time to get back to the level you are at. Like a shark or something, if you’re not moving forward, you’re already in the process of dying. Don’t expect some perceived natural skill or ability to be able to get you through the day, because it won’t.
My mistake wasn’t forgetting to playtest. That couldn’t be helped. My mistake was playing in GP: Charlotte in the first place. If I still wanted to try and qualify, a Grand Prix (or the corresponding GP PTQ) is not exactly a conducive environment for a rusty player. I should have attended the comparatively easier PTQ in Lousiana, or somewhere else where I might not have to constantly be at the top of my game. Sure, it wouldn’t be easy, and without the work I probably would not have qualified. But it’s a better shot than at an American Grand-Prix-especially given that my Heartbeat deck was not at the top of the technology curve.
Given that I had attended the Grand Prix, though, I made another crucial error.
Lesson Two: If you haven’t playtested, make the most of the people who have.
The Ichorid deck that won the Grand Prix looked strangely familiar to me when I looked it up online. Then I realized that the reason for that was because it was the exact same decklist, switching up a land or two, that someone in our car played at the Grand Prix. Our group had access to that deck for almost a week, and it was smashing face. We also had this deck that conveniently beat the absolute hell out of the Ichorid deck, as well as most everything else at the top of the technology curve:
4 Counterspell
2 Mana Leak
4 Cremate
1 Haunting Echoes
1 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
2 Peek
4 Circular Logic
4 Fact or Fiction
2 Vedalken Shackles
3 Smother
2 Echoing Truth
4 Psychatog
4 Force Spike
2 Cephalid Coliseum
1 Swamp
1 Bloodstained Mire
4 Watery Grave
9 Island
1 Petrified Field
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
4 Polluted Delta
Sideboard
3 Annul
1 Smother
2 Stabilizer
1 Haunting Echoes
1 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
3 Dark Confidant
3 Shred Memory
1 Vedalken Shackles
This deck was absolutely insane, and while it was hard to play (as evidenced by the fact that all but one of the losses our team received while piloting this deck were due to play error), it was certainly no Heartbeat. Given that I had access to both of these decks, which had the hell playtested out of them by a team of incredibly good players, I had no excuse for playing an outdated build of Heartbeat that I hadn’t been working on very much at all.
Now, I did end up playing the Psychatog deck at the PTQ the day after the GP, and finished a mediocre 3-2-1, losing to an awful play on my part followed by a matchup against the impossible Tooth and Nail. So, if I played it at the PTQ and did no better than I did with the Heartbeat deck, why do I advocate playing Psychatog, and furthermore why do I consider it a mistake to have played Heartbeat?
The difference is that when I take the initiative to play Heartbeat, I do so fully understanding that with it, I have to generate all of my wins. The deck is totally insane, but to win with it you tend to have to outplay your opponent. Even if the deck gives you the nut draw, you have to avoid making glaring mistakes. It was much easier to win with the deck in a PTQ environment where people are screwing up Gifts Ungivens and Fact or Fictions like they are handing out hot cakes at the county fair. At the Grand Prix, on the other hand, most everybody who knows what they are doing has playtested against the deck. Flores has been championing Heartbeat for weeks, and because of that (in addition to its amazing matchup against the deck to beat) most everyone has spent at least some time figuring out how to play against it. Meanwhile, I had been reading about why Piaget thought children develop systematically across cultures, or why Howard Zinn blames lack of political participation in America on the decreasing importance of the vote. Essentially, I had been Staring At A Wall while others had been Learning How To Smash Face.
To play a deck, you have to have a reason to believe the deck will allow you to win more matches with it than any of the other decks in the format. In this case, the reason wasn’t there. Everybody knew about the deck, so the power of the archetype is counterbalanced by people’s ability to play around it. Furthermore, my list was old, so I had no advantage over anybody else who was playing the deck. Meanwhile, the people I’d play against probably would know their side of the matchup better than I’d know mine, because they had spent the last week playtesting. Finally, I had no reason to believe that I am better than most of my opposition, so I couldn’t win with a deck that is designed to maximize the impact of playskill. All of these reasons were present during the PTQ season, and caused me to play the deck to a reasonable degree of success. For the Grand Prix, however, they weren’t there, and I shouldn’t have played it.
By contrast, our build of Psychatog tested incredibly well and, more importantly, was completely secret. The list had made a few Top 8s, but probably did not crop up on the radar strongly enough for people to test against it. Furthermore, because of our technology I’d have an advantage over the myriad of other people who decided to play Psychatog, and I could get some free wins on the basis of that technology alone. This happened twice at the PTQ, where access to Cremate caused my opponents to radically butcher their Gifts Ungivens.
Also, the deck was more straightforward to play. This came into play at the Grand Prix because so many games often ran to time. Winning by attacking for twenty often allowed us to finish matches that would have taken an eternity with Heartbeat.
The bottom line was this: there were people all around me who had put plenty of time and effort into the format. It was inexcusable not to make use of their efforts. I could have had a piece of paper in my hand that told me how to sideboard against the important matchups. I could have had a table that accounted for some basic intuitive Psychatog math. Instead I went blind into a Grand Prix with a deck that I wasn’t prepared to play.
Lesson Three: Remember why you’re playing.
Every time I look back on this past season I can’t decide whether to view it as a complete disappointment or as an overwhelming success. On one hand, I had one of the most successful PTQ seasons of my Magic career. Three consecutive Top 8 appearances, with one finals and one semifinals finish, offered a degree of consistency that I hadn’t seen in my 7 years of tournament Magic. I was beginning to feel that I deserved to be in those Pro Tours that I had played in before but never really felt I’d earned. Obviously random Top 8s aren’t things to be astoundingly proud of, but generally I’d get one or two appearances per season and a third miserable blunder. But, naturally, there was one thing that stood out like a whore in church: I didn’t have a blue envelope. More than that: I didn’t have the blue envelope that would fly me for free to Honolulu. With everything you do, you always look for something concrete to justify it. I’d put more time into this PTQ season than for any other in recent memory, and all I had to show for it were several boxes of Magical product. That, gents, is a beating.
The Nashville PTQ was especially rough because, with the possible exceptions of Doug Tice, Richard Baxter, or Derrick Sheets, I definitely felt like I was the best player there. Losing to Richard Feldman or Derek Huang was fine, because they are both excellent at Magic. Losing to a very sketchy, seedy, mysterious, shadowy figure who criticized my keeping a Forest/Island/Sakura-Tribe Elder/Cunning Wish/Early Harvest/Fact or Fiction/Nostalgic Dreams hand on the draw “because you’re gonna get manascrewed,” and who coined such ingenious terms as “the disruption clock,” did not sit as well with me. So it was easy to view the season as a failure-a failure for me, because I didn’t qualify, and a failure to my friends because I won’t have as much time to help them test for the PT season if I myself am not going. Scrubbing out of the Grand Prix and its PTQ ended the season on a sour note, as well, especially given that I don’t believe I ought to have been there in the first place.
In the midst of all of that it’s easy to forget that I had a blast at GP: Charlotte, and was the perfect way to cap off the semester. It was easily one of the most enjoyable road trips I had been on in a long time. Furthermore, the PTQs were great times. It was excellent to watch the aforementioned Cody Peck play in his first tournament season, and to see Strasberg cinch a Top 8 after a couple of seasons of retirement. There were even some immortal moments, like beating Alex Kim after he had Brain Freezed away my entire library, or stealing seemingly hopeless wins from all kinds of different decks on the back of Hunting Pack.
I guess the most important thing to remember if you’re on the PTQ grind is this: getting better is a process. Every time I feel I’ve reached some new pinnacle of my Magic career, I end up doing something brilliant like miscounting Psychatog math, or slamming face-first into a Disenchant on Heartbeat, or handing my draft opponents a Jackson by skillfully trying to Cleansing Beam a pair of Veteran Armorers. It’s not as if every missed slot is a failure, and it’s not as if there’s no next season.
Magic players as a whole have a tendency to bitch. I know I have told my fair share of bad beat stories ad nauseum to a chorus of sighs and yawns. I think that tendency often comes from the failure to realize that there’s always another match, and always another season.
It’s not as if trying to qualify for the Tour is the most lucrative endeavor possible, nor will it etch your name in the annals of World History. You can make some money and you can get yourself a trading card. Congrats. For the people who have done that, it’s awesome. But for all of us who haven’t-or at least, haven’t made a whole lot-we’ve got to remember that we play this game for the good times and the competition. Sure, most of it’s about the W and the L. At the end of the day, you’ve got to account for the people around you and the time you’ve spent with them. If you forget about all of that, you need to be doing something else.
At least until next season.