Welcome to the first article of my new weekly column at StarCityGames.com. I’ve been writing occasionally for this site for quite a long time, and hopefully I’ll be able to continue for even longer. I’m very excited about this weekly column, as there were many times where I tried to write more often… but somehow I couldn’t manage to put my own thoughts into an article. Writing as been something I’ve always enjoyed, and I also happen to love what I’m doing now — which, by the way, is playing Magic.
Through this column, I’ll try to show you how Magic looks from a competitive perspective: the formats I’m currently playing, the tournaments I’m attending, along with my preparation and my goals. Despite not revealing details from my personal life, I will be putting a lot of heart into it. I hope, in the long-term, that this column helps you make it to the Pro Tour. I hope this column is exciting enough to make those who are not very interested in the Pro Tour curious enough to at least get a taste of it. I hope it proves useful for you, but most importantly, I hope it’s enjoyable.
I used the expression “Levelling Up” for the first time last year, when I was trying to Level up from Level 3 to 4 around Grand Prix Athens: and then again after Pro Tour: Kobe (where I aimed for Level 5 after a good finish). I’m not trying to level up right now, as I have no idea how the season will develop for me. I could be once again playing for higher levels, or I could well have a mediocre season and be scrapping until the end just to get Level 3. Levelling Up refers to you, the readers, who might be looking to qualify for the first time, therefore Levelling Up from Level 0 to Level 1. It could also refer to players trying to Level Up to Level 3, such as players that’ve managed to qualify before but are back on the PTQ circuit. Or it could just as well have nothing to do with Pro Levels and the Pro Tour. It might just be a way to elevate our own play level, to try to accomplish whatever goals we propose.
The 2007 season will kick off in a few weeks, at Geneva. As one can imagine, I’m enthusiastic about it. I feel like a kid staring at a wrapped present, waiting for Pro Tour: Geneva so I can open it. I’m addicted to tournaments – the atmosphere, checking the pairings, all the shuffling while waiting for the round to start, the joy of winning, and dealing with the losses. All this time between Worlds and Geneva, it sure was nice for us to rest. I felt the need to rest, both physically and mentally, at many times in 2006. However, the downside of it is I haven’t been playing much Magic outside MTGO, as there aren’t many tournaments around. My next ones will be the already mentioned Pro Tour: Geneva, for Booster Draft, and Grand Prix: Dallas for Extended. Both events use the freshly released expansion Planar Chaos, so my preparation for them hasn’t really started.
With PTQs for Yokohama rolling around it is my intention to help some friends qualify, which means I will be sleeving up some decks and join them for some Extended playtesting sessions. Not only are there some local friends I would like to see on the Pro Tour, but I can also get a better idea of the metagame before the release of Planar Chaos. Unfortunately, as usual, the PTQs in Portugal haven’t been scheduled yet, so no one’s really into testing Extended yet. Because of that, for my first article I decided to focus on the current Extended PTQ season… but not about the current metagame, deck choices or tech, because let’s face it, there are a lot of more suited writers for that job. I’ll help you prepare for your Extended PTQs in a more abstract way, a way that will hopefully help you for all your other Constructed tournaments.
Unlike some Pro Players, who found success as something natural and managed to leap onto the Gravy Train almost as soon as they arrived, I spent a lot of time battling for the slots in PTQs. I even won many of them, but my unimpressive finishes in my early Pro Tours threw me back to the PTQs time after time. In between 2001 and 2005 I attended ten to fifteen Pro Tours by winning PTQs or finishing in the Top 16 of Grand Prix tournaments. Trust me, I do have a lot of experience of going into Pro Tour Qualifiers. I know about the competition we face there, and I know what’s on the mind of those who want to qualify. It was there that I gained determination and perseverance. And that’s one of the reasons why I have a great deal of respect for those who want to go to the Pro Tour and work hard for it.
Finding a Deck
I’ll take a risk and say that most of the players who aspire to win a PTQ will pick a deck based on the Top 8 decklists of recent tournaments in the same format. Usually, that’s a smart move. Not many of us are gifted with the skill of deckbuilding, nor do we always have the time to fine-tune and tweak our own creations. Top 8 Netdecking also allows you to have a perception of the current metagame and what decks you might face in the tournament.
Choosing a successful decklist as a starting point will eliminate one of the reasons to playtest. You won’t need to worry if the deck is good by itself; chances are, it is. A deck needs to be good by itself – to perform smoothly, have a correct mana base, among many other aspects – but after that it needs to be good for two other reasons: it needs to be good for you, and good for the metagame.
“Being good for you” means that you like to play with the deck. You understand how it works, and it fits your play style. I can’t dwell into play style considerations, but a way to find out would be examining what kind of decks you’ve been successful at playing in the past. In large metagames with so many decks to choose from, it might be difficult to find the right deck, if there’s ever such a thing, but it’s important to avoid picking a wrong one. In a long tournament it’s very important to play a deck you feel comfortable with, not just for your play style, but also for possible card interactions and rules questions that might come up with some cards in certain situations. So this process of choosing a deck should be accomplished in a timely manner, to provide some time for the next steps. Establish a time limit for yourself. When you reach a designated date, chose the deck you want to play and stick to it. Leave yourself a large margin, as sometimes your further testing won’t have satisfying results and you’ll have to go back to the beginning of your search.
This process of selection is not yet your main core of your playtesting, but it will make you aware of the available decks. At this point it’s possible to work by yourself. You can goldfish or play against yourself. Sometimes at home I played a sleeved up deck against another in Apprentice, just to try more decks. However, it will be much more easy and profitable if you can have more people to play against.
Forming a Group
The keywords here are friendship and common goals. The perfect scenario would be having your friends with the same goals as you have, which we’ll assume are qualifying for the Pro Tour. This way, everyone is motivated to playtest, to try things, and to reach conclusions. If your playtest partners don’t have the same goals – let’s pretend some of them just want to play and enjoy a large tournament such as a PTQ, while others will play deck X because that’s what they always play and the only deck they have the cards to – they probably won’t be as dedicated as you wish they were, and they might even consider further testing as boring, beyond what they’re willing to do.
On the other hand, I always prefer to surround myself with friends and people whose company I enjoy, since we’ll be spending some time together. Arguments will be exchanged and opinions traded. As a bonus, you will also see playtesting more as “good times with your friends,” rather than homework. I remember going into a friend’s house with some of our friends to playtest for an upcoming tournament. While we did our part in the playtesting session, we also went for dinner, had fun, played some other games, shared stories, and had a few drinks. While some of the tournaments didn’t go as well as I’d hoped, I never regretted spending so much time with my friends.
Not everyone has the luck to be friends with players who also want to qualify, but the point is this: if your gaming partners don’t want to try to take the next step, it might be difficult for you to convince them to do proper testing. I like to play with my friends. Just make sure you have a group that works efficiently and want to achieve the same goals.
I still haven’t mentioned the word playskill (purposefully). I don’t consider this factor as important as the other two. As a group, the players will get better together. I know of many bad players —with emphasis on the word bad – who regularly joined us at our friend’s house to playtest, and some of them reached the same play level of the rest of the group, while others went further. Plus, you have to leave the egos out. While some players might be better than others in some aspects, rarely we find a clear best player. There are those who excel at tuning, those who are thinkers, those who are hard workers. Don’t exclude someone just because you might think he won’t provide anything useful.
To conclude, it’s possible to work by yourself, and even play Magic against other people using software like Magic Online, Apprentice, and Workstation… but there you won’t be able to share conclusions with your opponents, or have them helping you prepare, or even have someone who might add a different perspective on the games you play. Working as a group will add more value, allow you to distribute some of the work, and share some good times.
Playing Against the Metagame
By now you should be ready to start your big blocks of playtesting. Hopefully everyone on the group has reduced their options to a couple of decks, according to their personal tastes. Keep in mind that sometimes you will discard the decks you have chosen at this point, but from hereon in your process of finding a new deck should be much faster. After all, you’ve tried or seen many more of them. If all the people on the group lean toward the same deck, then you will have to rotate your play. Some of you will have to be “dummies,” which means you’ll play with other expected decks against the deck you all lean towards, in order to test the matchup.
I had a system of playtesting matchups that consisted in series of ten matches, but after playtesting with Frank Karsten here’s how I like to do things now. For each matchup, play ten games – four without sideboard and six with sideboard. This method of playing a “series of ten” allows for simple matchup percentages, like 60-40 or 70-30. In a tournament, best two out of three, you will play either one game without sideboard and one game with (50% of sideboarded games), or one game without sideboard and two games with (67% of sideboarded games). So, on average, you’ll play roughly 40% of the games without sideboard and 60% with… hence the four games without and the six with. Alternate the player going first. Don’t make the mistake of letting the deck that lost the last game go first in the next. Have every deck play first exactly the same amount of times. If you have time for it and feel that a series of ten is too small a sample, then double it. Play a full series of ten with Deck A going first, and then a second series of ten with Deck B going first (still with the 40-60 rule concerning sideboards). If you still think it’s too few, then double it again. Switch decks with your friend and play from the opposite side.
Identifying Trends, Strategies and Game Plans
Sometimes playing on autopilot, unfocused, simply to obtain a lot of stats won’t get you anywhere. It will only bring corrupted results. Once, I watched a Psychatog versus U/G Madness matchup being tested in which two players registered the matchup as 80-20 to Tog, while other two registered as 90-10 to U/G. Someone was wrong here. If you think the matchup data is not correct, then play the series of ten again. The more you play, the better your perception on the matchup will be. It’s more likely the players will play correctly versus the opposite deck. As an example, let’s assume the U/G player decides to keep a hand of Island, Forest, Yavimaya Coast, Arrogant Wurm, Basking Rootwalla, Deep Analysis, and Circular Logic. This hand is very weak against almost every single deck. Keeping will likely result in a loss, probably even against a good matchup.
Don’t fall for the temptation of playing for the statistics. It’s better to play quality games where you learn about the deck and game plans for that specific matchup. Let’s imagine a matchup between a regular Scepter-Chant and a Confinement-Assault–Life from the Loam (CAL) non-aggro version. The CAL deck has no way to deal with a Scepter with Orim’s Chant, and since it’s not very fast it gives up a lot of time for the Chant deck to find this lock. So you should mulligan hands with no Cabal Therapy or Duress, as your best shot is to force them to discard the Isochron Scepter. Obviously you have no way to have that information before your mulligan decision in game 1, but if you don’t realize this, you risk keeping a hand with lands and spells but no answers to the Scepter for games 2 and 3. The more games you play, the more you’ll be learning from the matchup, and the more accurate the results will be.
As for the sideboard, you want to have the same number of cards to bring in as the ones you want to take out in every matchup. If the playtesting is done correctly, you’ll be able the sideboard very easily in a tournament against an expected deck. If you have cards that you really want to take out but there is absolutely nothing better in the sideboard, then you’re forced to play with sub-optimal cards. If you have too many to bring in, but can’t see anything else to take out, then you are probably devoting too many slots in your sideboard to that matchup, unless those extra cards are also useful against other expected decks or (randomly huge against an unexpected deck).
Tweaking Your Deck, or Switching
After covering the matchups you think will form the metagame, it’s time for decisions. The question you present to yourself is:
“Am I satisfied with my current deck choice?”
Most of the time, the answer will be no.
Many Magic players seek perfection, but any deck they choose will have flaws. After playtesting the metagame, you can always switch to another deck that you discovered in the varied testing. You can also switch to the deck that got the best overall results. If, by any chance, you can read what the expected metagame will be in a more precise way – for example, of you think there’ll be an abundance of Decks A and B, and minimal copies of Deck C – you can try to choose a deck that maybe didn’t present the best overall record, but one that performed exceptionally well against the stronger two. However, you expose yourself to the randomness of the pairings, and that can backfire.
Or maybe you are not going to give up on your chosen deck. Maybe it has been performing reasonably well, so you decide to tweak it. Taking the example the already mentioned – CAL versus Scepter-Chant – maybe you want to add more Duresses maindeck. Or try Krosan Grip / Ancient Grudge in the sideboard. Be creative. If you think something might work, try it no matter how unorthodox it seems. Since we assume you’ve already played countless games of this matchup, you can now try a little short-cut. You don’t want to test the matchup as a whole… you just want to find a game plan. You want to try a specific card against a certain deck. Set the card aside, shuffle your deck, draw six cards, and add the card you want to try. You want to see the impact of the card in the matchup. This occurred to me as I wanted to find out whether card A or card B was a better sideboard card in a matchup, and after playing 5 games I still hadn’t drawn the sideboarded card. Worry about finding out which card works best, and worry later about how often and in what stage of the game you want it, when you have to decide how many copies to run.
Don’t try to make your deck immune to everything. Accept the fact there are certain cards or situations two which you have no answer. By trying to tweak your deck to fight one particular card, you’ll probably make your deck a lot weaker against other favorable matchups. I’ve had conversations with friends who ask me what deck I’m going to play. Their responses are always the same…
“Don’t you just lose if they play card X plus Y? How can you win against Deck X if they have this? Are you aware that the matchup against Deck Z is very bad?”
For simplicity, let’s pretend my deck choice for Standard runs numbers of 75-25 against beatdown, 40-60 against control and 30-70 against combo. First, there are more beatdown and control decks in Standard than combo decks. Then, if I assume there won’t be any combo decks, this is a great choice to play. The matchup against beatdown is very good, and against control it’s far from unwinnable. Even if there are combo decks, I would be happy playing a deck with such stats.
Playing Real Tournaments
No matter how hard you try to emulate them, it’s impossible to create the atmosphere of real tournaments at your playtest sessions. I see other smaller tournaments than the one I’m preparing as a good way to practice. For an Extended PTQ, that would be Extended FNMs, local Extended tournaments, or Trials in the same format. You have nothing to lose. A friend of mine says the best tool for practicing a PTQ is the previous PTQ, even if you had a bad score. If your playtesting was done correctly, and if you played your best, then it’s no longer up to you. Remember, there can be only one winner (or two). Trust in the work you’ve done so far, and don’t radically change everything just because of one bad result. Were the bad matchups unfortunate pairings, or did you make a bad metagame choice? Were you unprepared for something? You won’t be the next time.
…
Using a lot of Magic clichés, I tried to demonstrate how you can create a methodical and efficient playtesting session. It doesn’t mean you’ll start winning more from now on if you follow my advice… it’s just something I found useful for myself. If you have your own habits and routines of playtesting, you can probably still use some advice — adapt what I’ve presented for your own sessions. Each player has his own ways and approaches to victory.
After all, there are no common keys to success…
… or are there?
I think I’ve just found a topic to cover in the future. I hope to see you all then. Thank you for reading.
Tiago