Hey Guys!!

I’m glad that I got around to writing one last article before the year ended. I couldn’t write an article last week because I decided to study for all of my finals for once! (Spoiler: Sometimes… you just get there in all your classes.)

So, what is this week’s article going to be about? Could it be about some breaking new Modern tech? No, but Thoughts of Ruin is a card, along with Boom / Bust. Or is it about how awesome all of the nostalgic 64-drafts on Magic Online are? Nope, but Kai Ruan seems to be a champ at every old format draft.

The correct answer is New Year’s Resolutions! Too bad the previous paragraph was utterly irrelevant due to the title of this article… but I love my openings. I hope everyone had a good holiday season thus far, and as people who know me on a personal level know, I take my New Year’s Resolutions very seriously. Normally, I write it down and save it on my laptop, but I figured that posting it in an article may help other people as well! Happy holidays to all!!

Alright, how about we start with the Magic-related resolutions?

1) Qualify for and Attend a Pro Tour

Man… this is something that has been bothering me for a while. I have had a decent showing in quite a few tournaments over the years at a local level but have never won an event higher than a Friday Night Magic in my life. There are multiple Pro Tour Qualifier and StarCityGames.com finals appearances, but no wins. I was able to qualify for the second Pro Tour Honolulu my junior year of high school, but other than that, I have no high-level showing.

For a person with super high expectations for himself, this is pretty unacceptable. I am usually pretty lenient with other people, at the cost of being really hard and critical of myself. I see great buddies of mine do great things in this game, and I only wish to join them. There is Reid Duke, Ben Friedman, etc. I love this game for many reasons, and friends are definitely one of the best ones.

How do I plan on achieving this goal?

2) Evolve my Magic Game

Now, this one probably needs a little bit of an explanation. What do I even mean by evolve? Well, evolve is just the word I choose to use here. It could be evolve, digi-evolve, change, upgrade, improve, etc. Things need to get better in terms of my play.

How do I plan on doing this? I want to use Magic Online and my own intuition to help. First of all, I want to try playing the most consistent decks in Constructed, until I feel like my play is nearly flawless. This idea came up while talking with Ray Wickersham on the way back from the Invitational in Charlotte.

After a less than stellar weekend, Ray and I wanted to see if there was anything we could do to improve ourselves. He came up with the brilliant idea to just play aggressive decks (i.e. Red Deck Wins, Illusions, U/W Humans, etc.). The reason? Let’s look at what can happen with the three overall types of decks.

With aggro decks, you can just play a creature and kill them with it. Sometimes, a Goblin Guide will be able to do fourteen damage all by itself. Due to your lower land count, you are able to have a higher chance of drawing action. Lastly, you are able to play cards like Incinerate to give you reach.

In control decks, you want to just stop the other decks from doing their thing; that way you can play your finisher and win. Plain and simple. However, there is a major flaw in this plan. What if you don’t draw the specific answer? I see Solar Flare lists that play four Day of Judgments and a ton of card draw but will lose to aggressive decks if it gets unlucky enough to not have Day of Judgment in the top twenty cards. The same thing goes for Wolf Run Ramp needing to draw Slagstorm, except they play no card draw. It seems like you might need to get a little bit lucky to survive an average draw from an aggressive deck. Would I rather be on the slightly lucky side or the more consistent side?

At first, I always wanted to be on the control side. It felt like if you had the answer (which in this case is Day of Judgment), you would just win. However, it doesn’t seem right that you should have to work so hard for your win. If your opponent is a good aggro player, they will have a fairly decent follow-up to your Day of Judgment. The problem is that any creature can kill you, but you need to get specific answers. Without Jace Beleren or Phyrexian Arena, it seems hard to just trade one for one the whole time. For me, I want to just put down control for a little while until personal experience tells me otherwise.

Before you ask, combo is a little bit better for me than control. You are fairly consistent, but you can lose games that you “should” have won due to bad luck. In an aggressive deck, you can never really “fizzle” from your deck not giving you what you want. For instance, I was playing a game with Pauper Storm with the Invasion sacrifice lands (I call it TEPS anyway). I was forced to go off because my opponent was threatening a kill next turn if he had either Goblin Bushwhacker and any creature in his hand or two three-damage burn spells. I ended up playing Grapeshot for only nine and ten (I did mulligan once or twice but still…).

The nail in the coffin? He played a land, attacked, and passed the turn. My next card was a Manamorphose, which would have made my Grapeshots lethal. I had to go off because I feared dying next turn but lost because of it. What if I’d passed the turn and died due to the card combinations I listed above? What was even the “right” move there? Because from my point of view, it was all luck in the end. There was nothing to really read, and the facts were all there. This solidifies the fact that I want to be playing aggressive decks.

I just feel like the mindset of aggressive decks is one that I should be better accustomed to. In a way, the good deckbuilders play control decks because a tuned control deck can dominate in the right field. However, the best players, in my opinion, should be playing the aggressive decks (if these types of control decks don’t exist). Think of it from this standpoint: You make a misplay with the deck you are playing in a game you should be winning; how will it affect the game?

Aggro Guy: Man… now he is at 1 instead of -1.

Control Guy: Man… now I have to kill him next turn instead of this turn.

Combo Guy: Man… now I will have zero floating when I kill him instead of RBUU.

If you make no misplays with a really consistent deck, you can only lose to bad luck. You already did the best you could statistically. For now, this is how I will approach the game. Comments about this point of view are welcome, and we can chat about it in the comment section.

How about some non-Magic related goals?

3) Get Straight As in Both My Spring and Fall Semester

Part of the reason why I feel like my Magic game needs to evolve is school. Currently, I am a sophomore at Rutgers University studying math and physics. I want to do two five-year programs in six years; one is mathematical finance, and the other is physics teacher. Unfortunately, I have to take at least twenty credits every semester to achieve this. What do I want to do when I get out of college? I have no idea.

But, why am I doing something so stressful and credit intensive? I remember the day that Minjin Oh from the suite (yeah the suite!!) told me that I inspired him to change majors from engineering to psychology. I asked him how I managed to inspire him. He told me that I seemed to really enjoy my majors and that he wants to enjoy what he is studying, too. I encouraged him to go for this because everyone should always follow their heart and passion, two things I know Minjin has a lot of. The problem for me is that I don’t seem to really care about many of the things I do. What really motivates me?

I’ve said to many friends in person that only one thing motivates me, but while I am writing this, I am realizing that I have two motivations. The first is that I don’t want to feel inferior to other people. This is part of why I keep on playing Magic. While I enjoy the friends in Magic, the thing that motivates me to try to go professional is that I feel like I should be or could be that good. I feel like I have something to strive for; I want to prove to myself that I can do it. A similar thing is true with regards to school; I just want to do everything I can to be challenged. Getting As with this credit load is the type of feat I want to accomplish.

The second motivation that I have is helping people. I get a lot of satisfaction from seeing a smiling face when I help them out with something. Everything from school to tennis to Magic is up for grabs. If I can offer something, I will devote myself to helping a person who I feel deserves it. That is why I am so thankful that StarCityGames.com has been letting be write for them. I feel like I can actively take a role in the community and help out people both inside and outside of the game. It also makes me feel great when readers talk to me in the comment section of an article or on Magic Online. Thanks everyone!!!

Next up is something everyone can always strive for:

4) Be the Best Person I Can Be

This one always shows up on my list. No matter how many things I try to do correctly throughout the year, I always seem to do things that if I’d known the outcome, I would have done differently. However, I tend to live my life without regrets and am pretty carefree. The only thing I can try to do is change the future. One easy point to keep in mind if this is anyone else’s goal is to think about how your action will affect other people. There is no point in getting upset when it won’t get anywhere. You can be in control if you want to be. Just like in a match of Magic, when you are really nervous, you can attempt to mitigate the effects by drinking water or giving yourself a moment to calm down. Everyone can be the person they want to be.

5) Get a Girlfriend

Ladies… I’m still single!!!

Lastly, I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Years!! With a new year come many new adventures, movies, Magic cards, and maybe even the end of the world! This year is going to be exciting!!! See you guys in 2012 :D!

Thanks for reading,

Jonathan “Watchwolf92” Sukenik