The Long & Winding Road - Great Expectations

One of the things I’ve learned about myself is that I have extreme difficulty managing my expectations.

I know that I am not alone in this respect.

For whatever reason, during certain tournaments I feel a considerable amount of pressure to succeed, and come in with an expectation of success (whether or not it is warranted). When I fail to live up to my own expectations, it can be a sobering and painful experience. I know that when I first started writing for this site six months ago, I found it especially agonizing that I crashed and burned quickly in consecutive Extended PTQs, because I felt like I needed to be winning tournaments to have anything constructive to say about Magic. Over time, I’ve realized this isn’t necessarily true – some of the best articles have been written by people who had very limited success as players, while other terrific articles were born out of failure rather than success.

GenCon is going to be a particular challenge for me, because last year was easily my best single weekend since I began playing Magic again 28 months ago. I’m concerned that I’m setting myself up for a letdown, despite the significant time I’ve spent testing for Vintage and Legacy Champs. Unlike last year, this year I know a large number of people attending these tournaments, and I expect that I’ll have fun no matter what happens. At least, that’s what I’m trying to sell to myself.

I remember one conversation I had with my girlfriend about why I enjoy going to Las Vegas. Although I wouldn’t want to make it my only vacation destination, I think there is something great about the idea that you can go to Vegas and play games all weekend, and have the chance of leaving with the same amount of money, or possibly much more, than when you got there. Sure, you might go and lose all the money you brought, but that’s not really a problem provided you planned for it. If you go on vacation somewhere else — say, Disney World, or a Sandals Resort — you know that there’s no chance at all that you’re going to get any money back. As long as you go to Vegas expecting to lose all the money you set aside for the vacation, whatever you come back with is all just gravy that you wouldn’t have if you vacationed anywhere else.

Obviously if you’re going to Vegas to compete in a tournament or to supplement your income, you’ll have very different expectations, but I am in no way a professional card player. Poker is a hobby for me.

So is Magic.

For whatever reason, though, my mind works very differently when it comes to Magical cards instead of the regular variety. I know that I’m going to be, to use Mr. Hill’s term, on “life tilt” if I struggle in all three events. I will definitely feel like I let my readers down, in particular.

Maybe some audience participation could help here.

I’m curious — how do you handle your expectations when it comes to Magic tournaments? What do you do to avoid negativity when you go somewhere to game and come up empty-handed, despite all your hard work heading in? Sound off in the forums. Hopefully I won’t need your tips, but anything can happen.

With that out of the way, I wanted to pull a page from Stephen Menendian playbook and take a look at the three major tournaments I’m playing at GenCon, and review my thoughts going in and the decks I chose to play. This should assist in analyzing my results after the fact.

Block Champs 2009

The contrast between my preparations for this year’s Block Champs compared to last year’s is striking. GenCon 2008 happened around two-thirds of the way through the Lorwyn Block season, two weeks after Grand Prix: Kobe and a week after Grand Prix: Denver. I was coming off a PTQ Top 8 with G/W Little Kid and was relatively immersed in the format throughout the summer. During testing before Block Champs, I was concerned that some of the decks I liked were struggling against the Doran deck from GP: Kobe. After a while, I became enamored with the deck and decided to play an almost identical list, changing one sideboard card and adding a Vivid land main to help support the Firespouts. I managed to hit a sweet spot in the metagame, as Kithkin was still coming back up in popularity and the block Tokens decks with Torrent of Souls weren’t seeing play yet, and this deck carried me all the way to the finals. Although I’d never played a single round with the deck prior to the tournament, I knew the format pretty well and was more or less comfortable all day (although I did have to learn how to sideboard against the newest version of Toast decks on the fly, losing my first try but winning the next three).

This year, there was no season for Shards Block, just a Pro Tour and various online events. Obviously I didn’t play in the Pro Tour, and I hardly play any MTGO (and when I do, I only draft), so the grand total number of games I’ve played in this format is zero. I did read the Pro Tour coverage and did some data mining through the results, and read the articles posted here and elsewhere. Based on what I saw, I felt most comfortable playing Esper Aggro. Despite Thopter Foundry losing a lot of juice with the M10 rules, the deck looks fun and I have a love affair with Glaze Fiend from triple-Shards draft. I spent some time comparing and contrasting the MTGO Online builds against the older Pro Tour builds and have something (a.k.a. Kibler’s list) that I’m more or less comfortable with… as comfortable as one can be in a format where all testing involved goldfishing and reading articles, that is.

You might be wondering why I’m even bothering to play Block Champs, and that’s a valid question. The same night, there’s a Vintage tournament for byes in Friday’s Vintage Champs. There are two reasons why I’m choosing Block Champs instead, provided that U.S. Air gets us to Indy on time. First, the EV in Block Champs is insane. Last year’s event barely cracked 70 players, despite having a top prize worth several thousand dollars and a second prize worth around a grand. By comparison, Legacy Champs last year had 160 players, and the first place prize was worth around a grand, and the second place prize was worth around $400. This year, I imagine that Block Champs will have even less players, since Shards Block wasn’t a PTQ format — remember, last year Block Champs was followed by a PTQ in the same format on both Friday and Saturday. That makes Block Champs easily the Champs event with the best EV at GenCon. I imagine that many of the pros in attendance will be all over this tournament, as they were last year, when the Top 8 included eventual winner Sam Black along with Gerry Thompson, Brandon Scheel, and Owen Turtenwald. Second, winning two Byes for Vintage Champs would actually be counter-productive because of my deck choice for that event. I don’t want to raise the alarm with regard to the Ichorid menace that hopefully awaits the unprepared.

Speaking of which…

Vintage Champs 2009

This is the tournament I’m most excited for, despite the fact that the first prize itself probably interests me the least. Last December, as I played my first Vintage event in over a decade, I would have never imagined that through this point in 2009, Vintage would be the format I’d have played the most. Yet, here we are. The bulk of my testing over the past month has been devoted to Vintage Champs, and I’ve been fortunate to network with some people across the country as well as getting in some great testing with teammates and friends. I need to thank all of the people who offered to loan me Power for this event, because I really do appreciate it. I’ve been lucky thus far to never have any cards stolen, and although I’m somewhat obsessive/compulsive when it comes to knowing where my cards are, I’d still be nervous carrying around $2000 worth of cardboard that belongs to someone else. The only non-budget Vintage deck I can field without running borrows or proxies is Ichorid, so that’s what I’ll be playing at Champs this year.

Make no mistake, though — I want to run Ichorid. I’ve been itching to play the deck in a larger event since coming in second with it back in the May Blue Bell. I honestly believe that this deck gets slighted constantly, and often intentionally, because people don’t want to play with or against it. Fatestitcher Ichorid has an astounding game one win percentage, and because it already plays lands in the main, it can run a full “answer” sideboard without wasting multiple slots to mana producers. I also prefer this version to the full-on Mana version (which is actually affected by Duress and Thoughtseize, as well as Force of Will), as well as the full-on Manaless version (which has a much worse selection of “answer” cards in the sideboard and needs to chain Cephalid Sage / River Kelpie to accelerate rather than the easier and more versatile Fatestitcher).

I’ve made a few changes that I believe are necessary because of the shift in the format over the last 4-6 weeks. When Chas Hinkle and I modified the Ichorid list Nick Coss played in Princeton last April (itself based on the Waterbury Fatestitcher Ichorid list) for play this spring, our goal was simple: take down Tezzeret, in all its forms. Tezzeret was easily 40-50% of the metagame at Blue Bell for the first five months of 2009. One of the key pieces of this specific metagame was that Wasteland was criminally underplayed. A second piece was that random aggro and Ichorid itself were minor players, which allowed us to more or less safely eliminate Leyline of the Void from the deck completely.

This summer, the metagame has shifted dramatically. Shop decks are resurgent and BUG Fish is likely to see play after dominating the ICBM Open. The list that won Day 1 of that event is very solid, with a strong match-up against the major players in the field based on our testing. It would make an excellent choice for this year’s Champs. I’m sure other people will reach the same conclusion. I’m also expecting some people will play Menendian’s Green/White deck, with or without the black splash. Although Ichorid is generally able to win game one against any deck in the field, including those with Wastelands, it makes games two and three significantly harder when you have to battle through 6-8 hate cards PLUS four Wastelands and a Strip Mine. In the case of many Shop decks, Ichorid also has to win through recurring artifact hate thanks to Welder and recurring Wastelands / Strip due to Crucible. Fish, for its part, will essentially have eight hard counters (since Daze is often a hard counter against Ichorid) to protect the answers from its sideboard (which were Yixlid Jailer and Tormod’s Crypt in the ICBM list) while also having tutors and a decent clock to supplement Wasteland and Strip Mine. The ICBM list also has a Life from the Loam it can tutor up for recurring Wastes & Strips.

I’m also more than a little concerned about the idea of having no Leylines anywhere in my 75 for Champs. Ichorid is more popular now than it has been in the recent past, and because Champs is a sanctioned, non-proxy event, I think some people may turn to Ichorid in its various forms as a budget choice. Although the Evoke creatures in the sideboard of this version are terrific for breaking Bridge from Below in the mirror, running no Leylines at all seems a little reckless. It would be painfully ironic to lose to Ichorid because I was unprepared, while piloting the deck myself.

With all that in mind, this is the list I’m likely to play at Champs. I have done considerable testing in game two and three scenarios against Tezzeret (including more common versions as well as the Draw 7 list from Pittsburgh), Stax, and Fish and feel very comfortable with my win percentage in game three with this deck. The one thing I’ve gone back and forth on is the number of Leyline of the Voids and Petrified Fields. The Petrified Fields are in place to acknowledge the sudden saturation of Wasteland in the format, and in combination with the numerous answers in the sideboard provide the deck with plenty of weapons against the hate it will face.

In the list below, I have a 3/2 split between Leyline and Field. I’m aware that Leyline tends to be a 4 or 0 type of card, but I’m at a loss to find the room for the fourth copy, although potential cuts would be the third Dread Return or fourth Ichorid. Neither is that appealing to me, as both add to the deck’s consistency; one of the most important keys to victory with Ichorid is doing everything possible to win game one. The Dread Return would almost definitely go before the Ichorid. I cut one Golgari Thug from the main for a Darkblast, which frees up a sideboard slot. The goal of this sideboard is to stay at 11 answers for the commonly played hate (3 kill + 3 bounce for Jailer, 3 kill + 3 bounce for artifacts, 3 kill plus 3 bounce for Leyline); generally speaking I will side out 3 Unmask and 4 Chalice of the Void in game two, plus some number of miscellaneous cards (usually a Dread Return, a Fatestitcher, a Hypnotist, the Petrified Fields if my opponent has no Wastelands, and I will swap Thugs into Darkblast). For game three, things get more complicated because I want Unmask and Chalice of the Void back in the deck. The goal is to identify my opponent’s hate cards and remove some of the answers I boarded in for game three.

Here is the list I will probably play:

Champs Ichorid

Matt Elias

Test deck on 08-23-2009

Vintage

Creatures (24)

Lands (13)

Spells (23)

Sideboard

For reference, this was the starting point back in May.

Legacy Champs 2009

Although I didn’t do much prep directly related to Legacy Champs, I have been playing the same Legacy deck off and on since March, including at GP: Chicago (where I lost in round 9, playing for day 2), at the Boston $5K (where I started 4-0 before a combination of misplays and bad match-ups ended my day), and at a local event in Bethlehem, PA (where I split in the finals). I did test some different builds of Ichorid in Legacy, but I’m hesitant to bank my entire weekend on flipping cards off my library. I like where my Painter deck is positioned in the metagame, and for better or worse, it’s a deck where my level of skill and in-game decision-making will play a large factor in my success or failure.

Probably the most significant learning I took away from the $5K was that Zoo is not only a real Legacy deck, but one that I had almost no chance of beating with the list I brought to that tournament. It is nearly impossibly to keep a Painter’s Servant in play against a deck running Lightning Bolts, Chain Lightning, Path to Exile, Fireblast, and Qasali Pridemage, and that’s just what they run main! Having my only win conditions (Painter plus Grindstone and Phyrexian Dreadnought) vulnerable to Path and Krosan Grip was a serious problem. Further, the answers I was running were too slow to be effective against the first-turn 2/3s and 3/3s Zoo could field.

Figuring out the optimal answer was difficult, and I’m not sure I’m there yet. I did decide to add Tarmogoyf to the deck, and ended up with a 2/2 split between main and sideboard. While this looks a little unconventional, it has proven to be pretty effective in testing and therefore I’m ok with it for now. Because I run Top and Brainstorm, I’m able to find my Goyfs more quickly than Zoo, and hopefully I can counter theirs and keep mine in play to hold down the ground. This changes the entire match-up, and lets me actually use Counterbalance to good effect to lock out games. To supplement the Goys, I wanted a fast and easy removal spell for Zoo’s one-drops. I tested Submerge and Hydroblast as well, but ultimately I decided to run Lightning Bolt.

Why Bolt? It does everything I want, for only one mana. It kills Wild Nacatl and Kird Ape, Dark Confidant and Trygon Predator, Lord of Atlantis and Goblin Lackey. Unlike Submerge or Hydroblast, Bolt is effective against most of the small targets I want to remove in the match-ups where I want that effect. It has the side advantage of potentially stealing games against a deck like ANT. I also added two Krosan Grip to the sideboard so that I actually have a way to defeat a resolved Counterbalance (as well as a better out against Humility and other unusual cards like Wheel of Sun and Moon). Ironically, these cards were added at the expense of any sideboard at all against Ichorid.

The final change I made was to drop down to two Daze and two Fact or Fiction, and add two Spell Snare. Spell Snare is a card I’ve always wanted to fit in somewhere, as it only gets better over time. It is relevant in basically every match-up in Legacy. Although I like Daze, using it early against Aggro decks sometimes puts me too far behind, and Fact or Fiction is terrific against the control decks but painfully slow against much of the field. Overall, the updated configuration (with or without Spell Snare) has significantly more game against Merfolk, Zoo, Dreadtill, and CB/Top than what I ran at the $5K, and therefore seems like a better list all-around. I’m leaning toward including the Snare and playing the following list, despite an ugly increase of 2/2 splits that I generally frown upon:

Champs Painter

Matt Elias

Test deck on 08-23-2009

Legacy

Creatures (11)

Lands (21)

Spells (28)

Sideboard

I find it interesting that over time, this deck moves closer and closer to just becoming Dreadtill. I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up switching over to that deck for the Philadelphia Legacy $5K, should Legacy Champs go poorly.

Next Week: I will review my actual performance in these events, and any other interesting happenings from GenCon.

Until then…

Matt Elias
[email protected]
Voltron00x on Xbox Live and SCG forums