Missed it by thaaaaat much…
They say that it’s not about the destination—it’s the journey you take to get there that really matters.
What if you keep taking the same trip but never get to the end of the road? How many times would you make that journey then?
The life of a "grinder"—a term meaning someone who spends a fair bit of time trying to ascend to the next level of competitive Magic—can be such a trying test a times that it’s very easy to see why so many of your and my friends take time away from the game to recollect themselves and regain their mental faculties. It can be exhausting…
But it’s all in how we view things, people, and last weekend was a tremendous breakthrough for me. I sincerely want to share this with you because some of you out there know exactly how I feel and maybe this will help you turn that corner, too.
Last weekend another PTQ came and went, and *spoiler alert* I am still not qualified for the Pro Tour. Total bummer, right?
Wrong!
As I said, last weekend was more about the growth than anything else, and the new beginnings began right from the start.
Life Lesson #1: Preparation, Preparation, Preparation
Oh yeah, and preparation.
The biggest mistake I see tons of players making week after week is the ol’ last minute audible. How many of your friends—hell—how many times yourself have you said, "I shouldn’t have picked this deck at two in the morning just eight hours before the tournament?" Be honest.
The key to having more tournament success is knowing the ins and outs of your deck as well as you possibly can. This means that buckling down and testing should be a part of your weekly schedule because like with any sport out there practice is the best way to keep your body and mind physically sharp for the coming event.
For myself, last week begot a fair amount of preparation (we have keywords, kids!) to the table. I settled in on Jund from the outset because I love the way that it plays. Owen Turtenwald and Reid Duke painted a masterpiece, and all I wanted to do was improve on the beast. This is what I sleeved up:
Creatures (13)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (25)
Spells (19)
As you can see, the maindeck is a copy of Owen’s list. I tried out a few different combinations of cards, but overall I settled on this because I felt like it was all strictly worse than his design.
The sideboard offered a few changes, mostly in Appetite for Brains and Barter in Blood. In the comments section of my article last week, a gentleman by the name of Veritas Aequitas suggested trying Barter in Blood for the Bant Hexproof matchup, and he really hit it out of the park with his input. See? Commenting on these things is very, very important! Right, Cedric? [Editor’s Note: Right, Mark!]
Appetite for Brains is a card that I’ve always liked playing, and I can honestly say that it won me multiple matches at the PTQ. With Sphinx’s Revelation decks cowering in the corner from their G/B/W Reanimator and Jund Midrange overlords, Duress lost a great deal of the impact it once had. Instead of casting it and trying to hit a planeswalker or something, we can just cast Appetite for Brains against control and hit their Advent of the Wurm. Against G/B/W Reanimator, it nails Acidic Slime, Thragtusk, Unburial Rites, and, most importantly, Angel of Serenity. In the mirror match, it will hit almost everything you’d want to hit with Duress except for Rakdos’s Return, but removing an opposing Huntmaster of the Fells, Sire of Insanity, or Thragtusk has proven to be extremely valuable.
With my trusty Jund deck in hand, I made my descent on the PTQ as prepared as humanly possible.
Life Lesson #2: You’re Gonna Lose, Sucka!
Stop pouting. It happens. Together we will conquer your sad face.
As the tournament started, I was able to dispatch of a Grixis deck in three games to break my tournament ice. I felt good about my deck choice, and even though it was early I had a good feeling about the rest of the day. I was unstoppable!
In round 2, I lost against one of my best matchups, G/W Aggro. So much for being the Juggernaut, right? After board, I gain a cornucopia of removal, and in all of the games I tested against it, barely any of them were close. Game 1 I flooded out, drawing seven lands in a row, and in game 2 I kept the perfect hand if I drew a land in the first three turns. I didn’t. What did that mean for me?
It meant that I shook my opponent’s hand, wished him the best of luck for the rest of the day, and then started mentally preparing myself to go X-0 the rest of the afternoon. After getting the traditional bad beat story out of the way, you know, because decorum must be upheld, I focused as hard as possible on not losing again.
I tried to avoid the ever-popular tilt, as they call it, which for those of you out there not familiar with the term can best be summed up as "that feeling you had when you were a kid playing Super Nintendo and you couldn’t get past a stage and you were convinced the game was cheating so you threw your controller." It is a phenomenon that people experience after a loss or a series of bad luck where their brain becomes scattered, they become emotional and angry, and without hesitation, they let their opponent know just how upset they are.
Last weekend I saw a person cast Supreme Verdict, which the opponent responded to with Mending Touch on their Sigarda, Host of Herons. Instead of nodding and acknowledging the play, they proceeded to literally yell very loudly about the opponent’s card choice, as if "G: LOL at Wrath" was somehow terrible in that situation instead of just innovative or creative. The rest of his tournament went down the tubes, and the guy who cast Mending Touch made Top 4. Isn’t it interesting how your mindset can totally degenerate into garbage after letting yourself tilt?
That brings me to the next lesson…
Life Lesson #3: Understand the Difference Between REAL Success and FAKE Success
"You need to understand the vital difference between believing you will succeed and believing you will succeed easily." –Anonymous
Let’s face it: humans are terribly self-entitled creatures. We believe we are the center of the universe and good things should just happen to us.
The difference is exactly what the quote says. Take a look at Johnny and Stevie:
Johnny is naturally good at Magic and has several great finishes. For him it comes easily, and recently he’s been putting very little time into playtesting and tournament preparation. His mindset is "I’m a known player who is awesome at this game. Why do I even need to try anymore? Success comes easy."
Stevie is good at Magic, but he puts in as much time as possible. Nothing comes easy to Stevie, who feels that if he wants something badly enough he has to work for it. His ethic has given him just as many good finishes as Johnny but with easily twice the work.
Which player’s example am I most likely to follow?
You may be saying to yourself, "Obviously Stevie’s, but when he loses doesn’t it impact him harder? Johnny might lose and not even care because of his attitude!" You might be right, but in the end, what does Johnny’s demeanor say about his perspective on life in general?
If Stevie puts this much hard work into his hobby, what do you think he does when it comes to work? School? Relationships? Stevie’s way of approaching Magic is indicative of someone who constantly strives for the best in most aspects of his life. Stevie isn’t satisfied unless he experiences real success: the kind that comes at the hands of hard work. Every victory he has reinforces that his perseverance can pay dividends, and each failure lets him know that it’s time to go back to the drawing board and reevaluate his methods. This is the essence of real success: constantly improving.
Johnny, however, seems ok with the bare minimum as long as it bears fruit. Doing well in the past means he should just expect it in the long run, right? I call this the "high school mentality." How many of you were awesome in high school? You nailed down A’s and didn’t even have to care, didn’t you? Homework, studying, notes—all just words.
Then came college and all of a sudden things got hard. You couldn’t just skate by on the bare minimum anymore, and the shock of all of it left you right in the dust. Sure, eventually you probably got the hang of everything and are doing just fine now, but how much time/money/stress did you waste getting to this point? This is the essence of fake success: experiencing positive results that were yielded in a poor habit-forming pattern.
For the first time in a long time last weekend, I was finally able to feel like I experienced real success. Using this, we can segue into…
Life Lesson #4: Analyze Your Results
In sports, it’s reviewing previous game footage. In politics, it’s watching the interviews of your opponents and scrutinizing their talking points. In Magic, it’s discussing lines of play in order to gain a deeper understanding of your results.
Last weekend I finished the PTQ with a 6-2 record, which was good enough for 14th place. While this wasn’t the finish I was hoping for, it gave me some great information to work off of for the coming tournaments I’ll be battling in over the next few weeks.
1) I beat the living hell out of G/B/W Reanimator multiple times, and the games didn’t feel terribly close.
There’s always a difference between playing PTQ level Magic and GP/PT level Magic, but the tools that Jund has recently picked up make the match feel far less hopeless than it did prior to Dragon’s Maze. Ground Seal plus Sire of Insanity or Rakdos’s Return is a terrific one-two punch against them and, in the case of Sire of Insanity, leaves behind a huge body that can put them away very quickly. Without access to their graveyard and essentially neutering cards that are traditionally awesome against Jund like Angel of Serenity, you’re able to make them play fair Magic game with you where almost everything you do feels more powerful than what they are capable of.
2) Vraska the Unseen overperformed every time I brought it in.
When I first saw Vraska as a two-of in Reid’s sideboard, I was skeptical. When I started playing with them, I was sold. It is now to the point where I board Vraska in against most decks, and I couldn’t be happier with how it performs! I’ve seen people cut them from their lists, and I honestly can’t see why.
3) After discussing my round 8, game 3 keep, I am convinced I should have mulliganed the hand.
In the mirror match against an opponent going to six, I decided to keep four land; Rakdos’s Return; Thragtusk; and Garruk, Primal Hunter. It’s a risky keep, but with him going to six, the Rakdos’s Return felt too good to mulligan away. Naturally, he had turn 2 Farseek into turn 3 Huntmaster of the Fells, following it up with turn 4 Thragtusk and turn 5 Rakdos’s Return for four, killing me.
I feel like I overvalued the Rakdos’s Return, and even though a mulligan to six might not have been able to compete with his nearly perfect draw, it would have given me a better shot than I gave myself. This is one of the benefits of maintaining a clear head since I was able to identify the mistake and learn from it rather than sit there and lament my "bad luck," which was actually just a bad keep.
4) We, as a format, might need more answers to Bant Hexproof.
After seeing two copies of Bant Hexproof in the Top 8 of my PTQ as well as another copy in the Top 8 of the SCG Standard Open in Charlotte, it’s clear that this deck is here to stay. More answers for this brutally aggressive deck need to start being played. Against other decks like R/G Aggro or Naya Blitz, it’s easy to craft a game plan built around tons of removal and life gain. Bant Hexproof invalidates that strategy by attacking with unblockable creatures that can’t be single-targeted down for the most part, making interacting with them nearly impossible. Cards like Barter in Blood, Devour Flesh, Terminus, and others should start to see more play.
Overall, I feel like I was able to not just grow as a player from these experiences but also enhance my game in the process. I very much look forward to further implementing these lessons in the tournaments to come and believe they are part of the tools necessary to finally reach that brass ring.
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For those of you attending the SCG Open Series in Nashville this weekend, I wish you the best of luck. The metagame is really starting to shape up, so make sure your deck choice can handle the top dogs of the format.
If I was attending, I’d either be on Jund or Bant Flash, as I believe they have most of the tools needed to combat a huge portion of Standard. Matt Costa wrote a terrific article that you can find here that outlines why this deck is so powerful, and after making an appearance in the Top 8 of Charlotte, I’m hard-pressed to disagree with him. Going forward, I’m going to start heavily testing this deck to see if it is something I should be considering.
I hope all of this will help you.
Never stop growing. Always keep learning.
Experience real success. You’ll love it!
Catch ya on the flip–
Mark