Tomorrow, we say goodbye to 2019 and usher in a new season of competitive Magic. For some, that will be found on the SCG Tour where players will begin collecting points for Invitational qualifications and eventually the Players’ Championship. Others will be playing PTQs, Grand Prix, Players Tours, online qualifiers, or even just in their local game stores. Whatever it is, goals will be set, and aspirations will be dreamed.
I see players making goals all the time on social media around this time of the year. It doesn’t even matter if they felt like they previously had a good or bad year. Bars must be raised so new goals can be accomplished. I’m not here today to tell you that goals are a bad thing. Creating benchmarks to observe success is a great way to keep motivated. I am, however, going to discuss with you what goals I think are healthy, and which ones might be a detriment to true self-improvement when it comes to competing in the game we all love.
Before we even get into today’s brainwashing seminar, I must advise that you take my advice with a grain of salt. For starters, everyone is different, so a blanket statement article will never really cut it. It’s best to treat this article like a buffet, and pick and choose what you think can help you with your pursuit for MTG-related self improvement.
I’ve also had many different approaches throughout my career, and often wrote about them as if they were gospel. A younger me loved “The Fire.” I used to believe that the only way to compete was to channel your emotions into a ball of pure motivation. I’d mentally enter a match like a wrestler entered the ring. As I’d inch closer to the Top 8 of a tournament, I’d get progressively more amped after each win while pacing back and forth between matches. I was locked in, amped up, and ready to take what was mine.
Fast forward to Mythic Championship VII. I remember my break right after beating Andrea Mengucci and before playing Javier Dominguez to see who would make the finals. I ran into Cedric on the way to the bathroom, and he asked me how I was feeling. I hunched over, exacerbated, and exclaimed, “I’m so sick of playing Magic today!” He laughed and called me ridiculous which I was, of course, being.
In my earlier days all of my experiences were new. I couldn’t really control my emotional attachment to the current event and how I’d finish within it. Every good finish was getting me closer to where I so desperately wanted to be and the desire to get there motivated me. As I grew older, the experiences repeated themselves, which helped me center myself and not have such a strong emotional attachment to my results. I slowly learned that a more objective approach was better than a subjective one.
Now it’s easy for me to think I know why these two completely different mindsets occured, as I’m doing so through rose-colored glasses. I’m successful, and therefore some level of survivorship bias exists within my message today. In the former mindset, I was picturing my peak “The Fire” tournament, which was the SCG Tour Invitational I won. The latter was when I took second place in my second Mythic Invitational of the season. It’s easy to think you’re doing the right things when you’re being successful.
It’s also easy to not even know when you’re doing correct or healthy things when things aren’t going your way. Even though results don’t matter, they do and they affect so many things: the decks we play, the people we prepare with, or even the tournaments we participate in. Results dictate so many things in competitive Magic and sometimes they’re decided randomly.
This is why I’ve grown to dislike concrete goals that involve competitive benchmarks such as:
- Qualifying for a specific event
- Making Day 2 of a specific event
- Winning a feature match
- Breaking a format
- Winning a tournament
Whatever the goal is, if it involves needing to win matches of Magic to accomplish it, I can’t stand behind it and here’s why. Tournaments are already effectively tests of talent, so creating goals based on results just feels like doubling down when it’s unnecessary. These benchmarks often just add pressure when they ultimately have no real upside.
Instead of clearing your head before the next match, you may find yourself focusing on what needs to happen to reach a random goal you’ve previously set for yourself. Now you’re more focused on making a previous version of yourself proud instead of doing everything in your power to be your best self in this moment for the upcoming match. You’re already going to be trying to win the next match no matter what your previous goals were, so why complicate things?
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t set goals for yourself; they just shouldn’t be results-based. Tournaments are designed to create losers. That’s what they do. Creating goals within a system where only one person walks away with hardware will just lead to you feeling bad about yourself even though you’ve made progress that you should be proud of. Perspective is everything!
That’s why I now only care about five things:
- How good is my metagaming?
- How good is my deck selection?
- How good is my deck tuning?
- How good were my sideboard plans?
- How good was my gameplay?
Besides that, I try to set no other goals for myself, but even then I sometimes slip back into caring about things I shouldn’t. A prime example was this past year where joining the Magic Pro League (MPL) eventually caused me to slip back into having an unhealthy relationship with competitive Magic. By the time I joined the MPL, all of my experiences with Magic were old news. I’d played on all of Magic’s biggest stages and understood them well. Then, very abruptly, I was thrown into the zero-sum world of only competing against 32 players for twenty slots.
This was new to me and as the season was closing I began to feel immense performance anxiety as I really wanted to stay in the MPL. I started focusing on the points totals and that caused me to see that every match mattered. Not just my own, but also all of the matches the other MPL members were playing.
Did any of that stress help me prepare for my next match? No. Was I still going to try to win the next match even if I was unaware of what was on the line? Of course! None of that added pressure benefited me in the slightest, and yet I still allowed it to consume me culminating in an emotional implosion at Mythic Championship VI. I started the event 9-0, and finished it at 10-6.
I’d love to keep up the facade that I’m a stone cold killer who never is making mistakes, but I’m human. Just because I know how I should feel and act doesn’t mean I’m always capable of it. I make mistakes even if I’ve made them before, because learning from mistakes doesn’t just magically cause them to never happen again.
As the wise Martin Muller once said…
External pressures alongside mistakes are usually a pretty bad combo for the ole cranium to handle. It’s easy to set yourself up for failure when you have a goal in mind that becomes more difficult to achieve after human error or variance. Negative emotions like disappointment, fear, anger, guilt, or anxiety can rush to the forefront of the mind. Defense mechanisms such as self-deprecation or entitlement might kick in, causing your mistakes to compound.
It’s all bad!
That’s exactly why I believe it’s best to only focus on the things that can result in never ending self-improvement and let the chips fall where they may. So much of it is out of our control anyway, so why not just focus on things that we can control and also see improvements in? Don’t just aspire to be one of the best Magic players in the world when you can start working on the things that put you in that conversation.
Here’s my suggestions for goals to set for 2020 that I believe are both healthy and trackable. They also revolve around aspects of the game that we can control.
Metagaming
By definition, metagaming correctly is extremely difficult. You’re trying to predict what others will do and they’re trying to do the exact same thing to you. You’ll get it right sometimes and wrong others. I’ve worked on my metagame-predicting prowess for years now and I really wish I could bestow all of my wisdom unto you, but every tournament is a completely different animal. Simply put, there’s no secret formula to metagaming correctly.
I do, however, have a process that I’ve used over the years to slowly get better at it. Just like with most things, you need to practice as often as possible. The issue with metagaming is that it’s not the easiest thing to practice. There are only so many tournaments, and like I said before, each one is a completely different beast. That’s why it’s important to not cut corners during the times you can be learning from your mistakes.
When you prepare for an event, I suggest writing out your predicted metagame before going to the event. Don’t just think about it, but actually write it down along with any other thoughts you may have at the time. What decks do you think will underperform? Overperform? What decks do you think the top players are going to play? Whatever it is, just write it down.
After the event concludes, go back and compare notes. Try to figure out what happened that caused your predictions to be different from the actual results but try not to find reasons that might not actually exist. If you can’t answer the questions you’re presenting yourself, just ignore them. After you’re done decompressing, write those things down right beside your pre-tournament notes. Write it all down: the actual metagame, the winners metagame, where you think you went wrong. All of it! After doing this for a long enough time, you should start to see trends emerging and you’ll begin to think about metagaming in a whole new light.
However, don’t do this for tournaments you’re not preparing for. If you’re half paying attention to a format, tournament, and/or metagame, you won’t get much out of doing these metagame exercises. Odds are you’ll run a higher risk of tainting your data than leveling up your metagaming abilities.
Deck Selection
No archetype specialist has ever become one of the truly great players in this game. Every great player is forced out of their comfort zone more than they’d like as they have to play many unique formats throughout a year. You have to stop playing it safe with deck selection if you want to become a great Magic player. It’s vital to be comfortable playing a rogue deck, the “enemy number one” deck, control, aggro, combo, or anything really. You can’t always play it safe with the deck you’ve tested.
Sometimes you’ll have two weeks to test for a tournament and like your deck until a few days before an event. You panic, know you should switch decks, but won’t. Well, you should. You have to give yourself opportunities to play out of your comfort zone. You don’t always have to play out of your comfort zone, but just like any other weapon in your arsenal, you should be able to audible without feeling nervous about it.
Once I was able to get myself out of my comfort zone, I realized I wasn’t as bad with a new deck as I thought I would be. I realized everything I’ve previously learned in the format wasn’t wasted when switching decks. Without the feeling of failure rolling around in my head I was more able to trust my subconscious on tough deck selection decisions.
Tuning/Sideboard Plans
I’ve recently added the most annoying chore to my testing process and I’m here to suggest you do the same. Now keep in mind I’ve added this to my Standard arsenal and while I’m unsure how well it would translate to the other formats, it works wonders in this specific format.
Write a six- to eight-deck sideboard guide for the deck you’re working on before and after every testing session. It sounds tedious, I know, but it helps speed up the mental pathways in which you think about the deck. It helps you know why certain cards are in the deck and also can help find holes in specific matchups more quickly.
Standard is just such a nebulous format at times which makes it much more difficult to design a fully functional 75 card deck. Often it takes a deck to be able to change its gameplan ever-so-slightly to optimize specific matchups (especially when considering play/draw differentials), and that’s not the easiest thing to identify when you’re not in tune with how the deck is sideboarding against the field. The more knowledgeable you get with your list, the higher the chance you’ll find ways to optimize matchups with the least amount of sideboard real estate.
Now here’s the weirdest part: don’t use the sideboard guide during your preparation. It’s there to help you get in tune with your list but not be used when playing. Deviations from sideboard guides happen all the time and now you can identify when they occur from the safety of your own home. Try to identify why you deviated from the guide and sometimes you’ll realize that the list is built wrong earlier than you would have without a written guide.
Gameplay
From a tactical standpoint, there are no words I could write today that will improve your gameplay, especially when I have to account for the differing levels of skill out there reading these words. What I can do is express passionately what I believe are the biggest detriments to a player’s game when it comes to mindsets and ways to help mitigate them in 2020.
Everyone wants to win and everyone prepares in their own way for each tournament that’s played. This causes many players to feel entitled to moments of glory, because they can only see their perspective. They know just how hard they worked for this moment and understand definitely what success would mean for them.
When that success isn’t found, sometimes players will protect their ego for a variety of reasons with a magnitude of differing excuses. I could write a thousand examples, but I’m pretty sure we all know what I’m talking about. We’ve all heard stories about bad beats, when opponents played poorly yet still won, or how players never played against the decks they decided to attack for the event. Frustration exists and venting is often the easiest way to defuse it. What I want to say to you today is that none of it matters. Really, it just doesn’t matter. Everyone experiences these moments and everyone makes mistakes.
Hell, I didn’t sideboard out my Mystical Disputes in the finals of a Mythic Championship finals and I honestly don’t care. I mean, I wish I hadn’t, and I thought about why I did it. Odds are it’s due to me being out of shape and out of gas by the time the finals rolled around. I was exhausted and made a mistake. This has motivated me to work on my physical health so I’m prepared for this situation next time it rolls around.
I’m not embarrassed by my mistake, though, because there’s no upside to being ashamed. Everyone makes mistakes and only cowards need to hide from them. Those with weak mental games need to make excuses to why they didn’t find success or didn’t live up to the expectations of others.
Everyone makes mistakes, so stop beating yourself up (and others!) for making them. Learn from them and turn them into fuel for the next event. Don’t wallow in them, and whatever you do, don’t be afraid of making them. Sometimes genius is just as many parts smart as it is stupid.
Always remember that every Magic player wishes they were better at this game, so don’t hold such high standards for your performances. Be mentally strong enough to learn from your mistakes and move on. Openly discuss them with your friends and don’t hide from them.
You can’t get better at this game if you’re protecting yourself from yourself.