Everyone has their rituals. From athletes never changing their socks during a winning streak, to students touching the foot of John Harvard before a test, to Magic players laying out their hands in the same way each game, there are certain little things that people do that may seem irrational to others, but help calm their nerves and bring their head to the right place.
As those of you who read my articles regularly already know, one of my big tournament rituals is listening to music. I pick a song for each event — and from the moment the pairings go up until time begins in the round, my headphones are on and that song is blasting in my ears.
In all of the tournaments I have played over the years, I have never once repeated a song. The first was “Minefields,” by Prodigy, which was my song at Pro Tour: Chicago 2000, where I lost to Kai Budde in the semi-finals. Grand Prix: Boston was “Turtle Tracks,” by Sikora. Pro Tour Honolulu was “Smashing the Opponent,” by Infected Mushroom. Pro Tour: Austin? “Out of the Sky,” by Lange. Grand Prix: Sendai? “Seven Colours,” by Lost Witness.
And for Pro Tour: Amsterdam? Well, that was something I spent a long time figuring out. Having a song that feels right goes a long way toward putting me in the right frame of mind for the tournament.
On Wednesday before the Pro tour, we were about to start a practice draft at the apartment complex where I was staying along with LSV, Paulo, Ben Stark, Martin Juza, and Patrick Chapin, among others, and I was engrossed in my laptop on one of the tables when people came to sit down to draft.
“Just a minute – I have to finish this song,” I said as the drafters tried to crowd me out.
“This is more important than the draft?” asked an incredulous Chapin.
“This is the most important part of my preparation,” I replied.
I was only kind of kidding. Everyone talks about the importance of playtesting and deck selection. Some people talk about the intangibles of Magic success, like attitude or focus. Few people talk about the little quirks each of us have — the things that are not quite superstitions, but tiny comforts that help ease our minds and let us play calmly and confidently.
We are creatures of narrative. Our brains process information in story form. This helps us handle far more complicated series of data than we could recall on their own, since the relation of each piece to the others aids our memo ry. There’s little chance you could remember the exact text of a five hundred page book, but if I told you that the text was the alphabet repeated over and over, you could then extrapolate from that story to the contents of the entire book. Stories provide powerful shortcuts for our brain.
Sometimes those shortcuts can be dangerous, however. It is our nature to see stories in everything – even when they aren’t there. We can handle information better if it has a narrative to go with it, like the gyrations of the stock market that are explained away on the evening news. It’s far more comfortable to us to tell a story about why something happened rather than to admit we don’t understand the reason for it at all, but when we believe these stories, they can lead us astray.
Where is all of this going? What does this have to do with Magic? It’s one thing when the story you follow is a simple ritual (like listening to a song before each match), but it’s quite another when the narrative is one that can hamper your ability to succeed (like your deck choice). It’s like the difference between using a lucky card protector when you’re playing cards at the casino, or always going all-in with nine-seven suited because it’s your “favorite hand.” It’s important to make the distinctions between which stories are safe and helpful and which are potentially dangerous.
Some people might say I have an irrational attachment to creature decks, but I’m willing to accept the elements of my game that are irrational. Spending hours listening to tracks, dissecting lyrics and cadences and digging up new songs? That’s irrational. But that’s the safe kind of irrational. Deciding that I want to play an aggressive, disruptive creature deck in a wide open field with a half-dozen different combo decks? That’s not irrational. That’s just business. I may not know what kind of answers I need against every deck out there, but I sure do know what life total everyone starts with — and sometimes, that’s the best plan of attack you can have.
Pro Tour: Amsterdam was a new, unexplored format, and one in which there was no real front runner deck coming in. There were certainly decks from previous formats that are likely to show up, like R/G Scapeshift and Faeries, and there were results to data mine from Magic Online events, which point to the success of Ad Nauseam and Pyromancer Ascension combo decks, as well as U/G/R Goodstuff. There was not, however, a clearly dominant deck, and the field looked to be remarkably diverse.
So how do you attack a wide-open format? My general philosophy is that unless you have an excellent read on what a metagame is going to look like or the card quality is drastically higher, it’s rarely correct to play a control deck. As Dave Price famously said “There are no wrong threats; only wrong answers.” Playing a control deck in an unknown format is like walking into an arena and being handed a bulletproof vest, a chain mail shirt, and a flame retardant jacket, and being told you can only take two of them. You can show up with your creature removal and get destroyed by combo decks, or you can show up with discard and counters and die to beatdown, or you can have a bunch of hate cards for the combo decks and lose to control. It’s a shot in the dark to get things right.
(As Ruel acknowledged in his article yesterday — T.F.)
So when in doubt – beat down. Last year in Austin we had an excellent read on the metagame, but didn’t necessarily know which of the various combo decks would be most prevalent. If we were playing a control deck, that would be a huge issue – against some decks you want countermagic, against others you want discard, against others you need early pressure.
But Wild Nacatl doesn’t discriminate. He attacks Dredge and Hypergenesis and Dark Depths alike.
Sure, if I had some sort of exceptionally powerful combo deck that I felt the rest of the tournament wasn’t ready for, I certainly would have played that over a creature deck. Back at Pro Tour: New Orleans 2001, most of the world had dismissed Donate as a combo deck after the dreaded Trix deck lost Dark Ritual, Mana Vault, and Necropotence. At that tournament, I played U/R Donate, as did eventual champion Kai Budde. The field wasn’t prepared for it and it was remarkably powerful, and had the ability to shrug off much of the hate aimed at it by converting into an efficient control deck after sideboarding.
In this field, most of the combo decks are very fragile. Ad Nauseam, Pyromancer Ascension, Hive Mind, Living End, Dredge, Elves — even though many of them may not be on everyone’s radar, they take splash damage from hate aimed at the other combo decks. Ethersworn Canonists intended for Living End make it near impossible for Ad Nauseam to win. Leylines and Relics aimed at Living End wreak havoc on a Pyromancer Ascension player’s day. New-school Dredge and Elves even suffer splash damage from Punishing Fire, which was likely to be one of the most popular cards at the Pro Tour. Gone are the days that crazy new combo decks show up at every Pro Tour, thanks to the massive exploration of every format via Magic Online.
It is for that reason that I took a very open approach to my preparation for Amsterdam. I discussed the format openly and honestly with anyone who was interested in talking, and playtested publically as close to the tournament as the week before. With so much information out there, I think it’s much better to try to get as many perspectives as you can, rather than trying to hoard information.
Doran was the first deck I built for the new Extended, and while the list I ultimately played in the tournament was drastically different from where I started, the principles remained the same. Doran is a powerful and consistent aggressive deck with enough disruption and removal to compete with creature, combo, and control decks alike. It has a wide range of tools and no glaring weaknesses, and once we found the right build, I knew we had ourselves an excellent deck. By Wednesday, I was completely certain about what I was playing, with the exception of the last few numbers in the main deck and the sideboard, so I could focus on other important matters – like figuring out my song.
Others were less quickly convinced. Perhaps my favorite part of our testing process was LSV’s shifting attitude toward Doran as the week progressed.
Tuesday:
LSV – “There’s no way I’m playing Treefolk Harbinger in the Pro Tour!”
Wednesday:
LSV – “There’s no way I’m playing four Treefolk Harbingers in the Pro Tour!”
Thursday
LSV – “So I’ve asked if I could get forty-four Treefolk Harbingers shipped overnight to Amsterdam…”
The sudden shift of so many people in our testing group to Doran — and the subsequent need for so many copies of Treefolk Harbinger, in particular — led to the perception around the tournament site that Doran was going to be everywhere. But it’s not hard for the dealers to sell out of a card when they brought maybe a half-dozen copies of each. Now, if the dealers had sold out of Goblin Guides? That probably would have meant something. But if they sell out of Treefolk Harbingers — a long-out-of-Standard uncommon that hasn’t seen play since two Block formats ago — that’s hardly a sign of a massive metagame trend. But people are going to see stories wherever they look…
It was actually not until I had both decided on my deck and had my precious Harbingers in my hand that I finished that last crucial part of my preparation — finding my song. It was rather serendipitous. I had lost my iPod on my flight to Gothenburg and didn’t have my entire music library on my new laptop to refill the replacement iPod I’d purchased in Amsterdam. I was digging through what little music I had on my iPhone (it’s like this paragraph is an Apple product placement…) when I got a text from a friend of mine telling me I needed to check out a new track.
Now, this is the same friend who’d linked me to “Smashing the Opponent” just before Honolulu, which was at the time unreleased and turned out to be the perfect song for that event. This track, too, was as yet unreleased, coming out on the new Armin van Buuren album not due out until September 10th. See the story coming together? Another eleventh-hour recommendation of an unreleased track — one that happens to come from my favorite musical artist who also happens to come from the host country of the Pro Tour. One listen to the track – “Take a Moment” – and I knew I had my song.
I’m not a superstitious person. I just know how my mind works, and I’d rather work with it than against it. I had a deck that I liked and a song that felt right. I was ready.
One final detail helped set my mind at ease. At tournament registration, Scott Larabee took me aside and told me I had been voted into the Hall of Fame. I’d seen enough ballots with my name on them over the past few weeks that I’d liked my chances coming into the weekend, but liking my chances is a far cry from knowing that I’d made it. Scott told me to keep things quiet until the announcement, which would be made during the Top 8 broadcast on Sunday. I thought about how great it would be to be on stage playing in the Top 8 when they announced my name, and I could feel a story in the making…
That story began with a 5-0 start in the Constructed rounds, where I played against two Ad Nauseam decks, a Dredge deck, a Restore Balance deck, and Faeries. My deck was running smoothly, I felt comfortable in all of my matchups, and the field seemed to be exactly what we’d anticipate. I felt great about my chances going into the draft, and felt even better when I drafted a monster of a deck.
You can follow my picks in the Draft viewer on the coverage, but I went into the draft intending to draft either a White beatdown or Black control, which I feel are the two best decks. I left myself open to go in either direction with my first few picks, but a late Blinding Mage solidified my plan to go White. My deck was looking like it would be W/b, but I feel like W/u or W/r are better for the beatdown deck because of synergies and better mana — so I picked up a late Vulshok Berserker in pack two, with the intention of making the switch if the option presented itself. A Fireball in pack three was the option I was looking for, and I was very happy with my deck when it was time for construction.
I went 2-1 with the deck, losing to Brad Nelson in the first round of the pod . Brad’s deck had all of the perfect answers for mine, including Prodigal Pyromancer, Pyroclasm, and Triskelion, but neither of my next two opponents were quite so lucky.
In the last round, I played against Kai Budde. After I beat him in two quick games, we got to chatting, and I told him I’d see him in the semifinals. He pointed out that things didn’t go so well for me last time we met there, and I told him that I’m a lot better than I was back then, and that I was pretty sure he was a lot worse. I guess he wanted to prove me wrong! Stories, stories, everywhere…
I went to sleep that night feeling good. I didn’t quite live up to the demands of my alarm – the label for my alarm at every Pro Tour is “8-0 again” – but I felt like I played well, drafted well, and did everything I could to set myself up for success. I couldn’t ask for more of myself than that.
The next morning, after the initial drama of Conley Woods and Tom Ma nearly missing the draft, the pieces kept falling into place. I once again drafted a solid white beatdown deck, and this time lost my first match to Tom Ma’s B/R deck, which was heavy on removal and problem cards for my deck. I felt like I made a mistake in the second game when I didn’t use Mind Control on his Vulshok Berserker when the board was otherwise clear, trying to save it for something better, and he followed it up with a pair of Viscera Seers that made my life miserable trying to get value out of my enchantment. If I had just Mind Controlled his Berserker immediately, I would have had a far better chance to win the game.
Ten years ago, if I had lost a match because of a mistake like that, it would have affected the rest of my tournament. It would have gnawed at me, thinking that I had thrown away my shot at the Top 8. But the biggest difference in my game now from then is that I don’t let that kind of thing get to me. When I lose — whether it’s because I made a mistake, or got unlucky, or whatever — I shrug it off and move on. I refuse to allow the story of my tournament to be that I threw it away because of a mistake.
I didn’t dwell on the loss — I chalked it up as something that happens and moved on. I won my next two rounds, including being the bearer of bad news for Conley Woods that his 8-0 start was indeed turning into 8-3. I felt Conley’s pain, since I had been there before, and I know that it must sting that much more after he just drew himself into 9th place at the Grand Prix.
Back in Extended, I felt unstoppable. I beat a Scapeshift deck, then LSV in the mirror in a feature match, and all of a sudden I was win-and-in. I lost to Michael Jacob in a battle of mulligans and awkward draws — which would seem to become a theme with us — but then took down Kamiel and his Ad Nauseam deck before drawing with Paul Rietzl in the final round. I was in!
Making Top 8 in Amsterdam meant a lot to me. I’d seen so many Hall of Fame ballots that called my results into question, saying that my three Top 8s weren’t impressive enough to warrant inclusion on the basis of my performance alone. Having the opportunity to prove my naysayers wrong by adding another Top 8 to my resume the very weekend I was announced as an inductee to the Hall of Fame — well, that makes for a great story.
Sadly, the story ended there. My match against Michael Jacob in the Top 8 was remarkably anticlimactic, with me essentially not even playing games two or three thanks to mulligans and poor mana draws. Despite that fact, the match was 3-2, coming down to the deciding game, in which MJ just had a solid draw on the play that I couldn’t match. I can’t really complain, since I had a hell of a weekend overall — but it sure would have been cool to still be on stage for the finals when they made the announcement about the Hall of Fame.
But hey — there’s always Chiba. I can wear my brand-new ring when they hand me the trophy. Now that would be a story!
Now…to find a good song…