This past weekend was the final stop on the 2019 season, and I believed I was effectively locked to stay in the Magic Pro League regardless of my Mythic Championship VII finish. I also assumed I was unable to get to Worlds unless I won the whole thing, not a lot to stress out about when you think you’re stuck in the middle.
Oh, and I already told myself I wouldn’t put any extra pressure on my performances anymore after my “crash and burn” at Mythic Championship VI. That event crushed me and I never wanted to feel that badly again about something I’m supposed to love. With little to gain or lose, I went to the final event of 2019 with the mindset that I won’t care about a single thing that happens. I’ll just try to play some good Magic, and have fun while doing it.
Today’s topic is going to be about my experiences this past weekend where that mindset actually stuck. Seriously, I did it! I went into the event with the main goal of not letting stress or anxiety take over and I actually succeeded. Not only did I let all those negative feelings erode away, but in their absence, I felt like I was playing some of the best Magic I played all year. I was starting to feel like I lost my step, but after this past weekend I might actually be better than ever.
Now before we get into all this, I know there’s many of you here for some Simic Flash Ramp primer action, and I don’t want y’all to leave empty-handed. Let’s take some time to talk about the deck itself, and then we’ll get into the event.
Creatures (15)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (26)
Spells (15)
The deck was designed by my teammate Seth Manfield, and none of us knew just how well it was going to perform at Mythic Championship VII. I even wrote about that last week with my metagame predictions, because I thought it would be a great learning experience for my readers if we ended up crashing and burning.
That’s not what happened, though. We kind of ran the tables. If it weren’t for Piotr Glogowsi (Kanister) we might have even had an all-Simic Flash finals. Besides Piotr, we destroyed the event. None of us had a bye into Day 2, and yet we all found ourselves on the Sunday stage. Our combined total of wins and losses was 34-15 against the best players in the world! It was so much fun destroying the event with my teammates, and it really made me think back to that magical moment at GP Denver when Brian Braun-Duin, Corey Baumeister, and I took 1st, 2nd, and 4th.
Now, it’s important to state that we did design this deck for a closed event. I have no clue if this is going to be good moving forward, as that’s not something I’ve thought about since the event concluded. I did see that Chris Thompson took our list to a fourth-place finish at Grand Prix Brisbane, which is very cool, but still not enough for me to suggest playing this deck in open play.
I say this because we didn’t work on this deck for that purpose. We built the deck to be at its best in an open-information event like a Mythic Championship. There are a lot of cards that Simic Flash doesn’t want to play against, like Shifting Ceratops, so knowing if they will be played or not in each match is invaluable. Now, a card like this isn’t game-ending, but knowing whether or not you’ll face it after sideboard was very helpful in how we prepared for every individual matchup.
The same is true in the Jeskai Fires matchup, as the number of Aether Gusts you want on the draw is dependant on how many copies of Legion Warboss they have in their sideboard. Losing these edges in an open tournament like a Grand Prix might, or might not, swing the decision of playing the deck or not. I wish I had that answer for you, but at this point I just don’t. My season’s concluded, and I’m taking a much-needed break from working on Throne of Eldraine Standard.
If you do want to play the deck, I will share with you some basic sideboarding notes we had for the event. Again, these were designed for specific matchups, and there were deviations on the play and draw. This is not an easy deck to sideboard with as there are so many situations where you’d want to deviate from concrete plans. Here are some notes to get you going, but please do not treat these like gospel.
Seriously, please do not use these in an event. You can evolve these notes into your own plans with deviations based around being on the play or draw as well as how the metagame evolves.
VS Azorius Control
Out:
In:
VS Golgari Adventures (Without Lucky Clover)
Out:
In:
VS Golgari Adventures (With Lucky Clover)
Out:
In:
VS Golgari Sacrifice
Out:
In:
VS Jund Sacrifice
Out:
In:
VS Izzet Flash
Out:
In:
VS Jeskai Fires
Out (on the draw):
In (on the draw):
Out (on the play):
In (on the play):
VS Simic Flash Ramp (Mirror)
Out:
In:
Again, if you do play this deck in open play this weekend, I wish you the best of luck. Please don’t take my cautionary tone to believe I don’t have faith in this deck. I really do! I just don’t have confidence in my own abilities to stay current in Standard for this upcoming weekend. A lot of information came out of Mythic Championship VII, and I have yet to digest it all.
I will say that Simic Flash Ramp is a very powerful strategy since the banning of Veil of Summer. One would think it would be the other way around, as this deck loses value due to the absence of one of the best green sideboard cards of all time, but that’s just not the case. Nissa, Who Shakes the World is by far the best card in Standard, and now counterspells can help protect her, which was not something you could do prior to the bannings.
I guess I’ll just say the same thing I said to Javier and Seth before the event: “You can only be so wrong when you’re playing with Nissa.”
Anyway, let’s get back to the actual event. Decklists came out on Wednesday, but Javier was far too jet-lagged for us to work on a sideboard guide that night. Instead we planned to do it after media day concluded. We all showed up to the site, took some pictures, talked to some other competitors, and eventually made our way to Hiro Nori for dinner. This was that ramen place Brian Kibler wouldn’t stop raving about, and for good reason. That place was great!
We went to the hotel afterwards and typed up a sideboard guide for every opponent in the room. These are the moments that win games in the events themselves. It can be grueling to spend hours trying to find specific plans for every list, but it makes things so easy during the event. After a few hours we completed the list and printed it off in the hotel’s business center. We said our goodbyes and went to sleep, knowing the next couple of days would be long.
Day 1
- Round One: Ken Yukihiro – Win
- Round Two: Ben Stark – Win
- Round Three: Stanislav Cifka – Win
The final turns of my third game against Cifka were on camera, but I didn’t know that at the time. The game was actually absurd; it involved Stan deploying two early Shifting Ceratops that dropped me to a very low life total before I was able to take them off the battlefield. Our third game was one of those games where almost every decision could have been wrong, and I never really made a play that I felt confident in.
Normally I hate looking bad on camera. It sucks, you know? I feel for anyone who’s frustrated about looking bad on camera, because it can be a very hollowing experience. If I’m not in a strong mental headspace it’s impossible for my imposter syndrome to not kick in during these situations. I’m considered to be one of, if not the best Standard player in the world, but Magic is a not a game you can play perfectly. Sometimes you can’t even play well, and you end up making countless mistakes.
This is what happened in this game, but this time around I really wish the entire game was recorded. I would have loved to make an entire video about this game and go over every decision I made, which there were many. It doesn’t really matter now, as that’s an impossible ask, but in the moment I was rather shocked that I didn’t actually care that I most likely played poorly. I was actually really cool about it, and tweeted this out.
This was the moment that I knew my new “mindset” was really working. I didn’t bother myself with fixating on my mistakes, or what others would think about them. I knew I didn’t play perfectly, and I was fine with it. The tournament was long, and I would most likely make a lot more mistakes after that. The best chance I had for limiting them was not to fixate on those I have made, but instead free my mind from pressure and stress. I just stayed relaxed, and readied myself for the next match.
This wasn’t what I saw others in the events doing between rounds (especially those who were there for the first time). It’s so easy to put pressure on yourself when you’re not in your comfort zone and start thinking about things that will not help in the near future. Getting fixated on results, expectations, and public perception can all make it impossible to be in the best headspace you can possibly be in going into the next round. You start building every moment up in your head until your fight or flight kicks in which is not a great way to play a Magic tournament.
- Round 4: Savjz – Win
- Round 5: Jordan Cairns – Loss
- Round 6: Andrea Mengucci – Loss
At one point on Day 1, I was 4-0, which meant I had to just win one of the next four matches to make Day 2, a pretty good position if I say so myself. I did end up losing the next two, upon which a good friend of mine asked me, “Are you getting nervous yet?” I said no, and I meant it. I wasn’t worried about my results and knew it would be just as easy to lose four matches as it was to win them. After all, I am playing against the best players in the world at this point. It would be foolish of me to feel entitled to another win after I demonstrated that I could already win four times.
Just play your next round, and let the chips fall as they may.
Today’s focal point is tournament mindsets, and this is by far the most important one in my arsenal. Since I’m a public figure in Magic I’ve met countless “first-timers” on Thursday registration for Pro Tours, Mythic Championships, and soon Players Tours. So often they tell me their goals for the weekend, or they ask my how many more wins they need for a certain prize, and every time I shut it down.
Do you ever go into a tournament expecting to win every match? If the answer to that is yes, we have even more serious issues on our hands that I’m not going to be able to help you with today. For those who said no, I then have to say, “Then don’t worry about the times you take losses.” It’s seriously that easy! Don’t build up external pressures like, “Just two more wins for my goal.” When you set a results-based goal, all you’re doing is creating benchmarks you have to achieve that aren’t exactly controllable.
I say this because every benchmark is breakable every time. If your goal is to make Day 2, and you accomplish that, then what? Do you respect that goal and just give up on the following day, or do you set another goal for yourself? Do you use that previous goal to let yourself down easily when you get absolutely throttled by superior competition on the following day of competition? “It’s okay that I lost, my goal was just to Day 2 anyway.” Is your ego so fragile that you need to let yourself down easy for accomplishing the goal you set out to?
I might sound harsh right now, but I’ve heard these same “goals” from players for the last ten years. It’s bad for you, so please stop doing it! I know it’s not easy to overcome, but work on it. Trust me, just be a blank slate at events. Just play your next round, and then play the round after that and so on and so forth. Only worry about standings, or what result gets what prize, when you can consider drawing into something specific. Don’t go around saying you only need five more wins to Top 8, qualify for something, or min-cash. It only hurts you, and if you can’t see why now, you’ll eventually understand it.
- Round 7: Tian Fa Mun – Win
I got an easy win against Jeskai Fires, and I was done for the day. On to Day 2!
Day 2
- Round 1: Marcelino Freeman – Win
- Round 2: Shahar Shenhar – Win
- Round 3: Piotr Glogowski – Loss
- Round 4: Marcio Carvalho – Win
- Round 5: Javier Dominguez – Win
I punted Game 1 to Javier. Like, this wasn’t a judgment call. I had the line that could win, and I missed it. In fact, I played Javier three times in this tournament, and think I made critical mistakes in all three of our Game 1s. I re-calibrated and came back to win two of the three matches.
Javier Dominguez is likely the best player in the world right now, and I’m handing him free wins left and right in this event. These are the moments I’ve always struggled with as a player. I should be one win away from taking the match, but due to some stupid mistake I now find myself down a game.
This is just entitlement, and something that I was easily able to ignore this weekend when it normally crushes me in other events. I knew I made mistakes, and just prepared myself for the other games without batting an eye instead of constantly thinking about the moments in the previous games.
Entitlement is the easiest way to break one’s focus. There’s really not much more to say about it though. You have to be able to identify it when it happens, and readjust your own thoughts. You don’t deserve anything in tournaments. It doesn’t matter if you’re a better player, have the better matchup, or made fewer mistakes. You are not entitled to anything, and have to earn everything one game at a time.
- Round 6: Seth Manfield – Win
This match was on camera, and I think I played it very well. I got Seth to do something I thought he would, and thanks to it found myself getting through to Sunday play of my second Arena Mythic Championship.
Day 3
The rest is history, but not mine. I fought my heart out to get to the finals, but in the end Piotr Glogowski won the event, losing a grand total of zero matches over the entire weekend. Once the dust settled I found myself only four points short of making the World Championship, which would have crushed me in any other situation. I’ve participated in the event for the past four years, and would have really liked to be back for a fifth time in a row.
But I didn’t earn it, Piotr did. I lost, and he won. I tried my best, it wasn’t good enough, and that’s okay. Now it’s easy to say there’s less of a sting knowing I won $50,000, but the fact is the money doesn’t get to me anymore. Maybe it’s because the money doesn’t change my current situation as much as it would have years ago, but I like to think it’s thanks to a strong mental game. I know that if I focus on the money I’m playing for that my results will suffer. Like, I played a match for $20,000 against Javier Dominguez this past weekend. He’s really good, and there’s no way I’m giving myself the best chance of winning if I’m worried about what’s on the line.
I think I got better at not stressing about these situations when I realized that I’m not losing anything if I don’t win. I’m just not winning something. It’s so easy to think about it in a negative way when you’re playing your first match for a lot of money, or at least enough money to make yourself uncomfortable. You really just have to think about it like a freeroll, and not that someone might take something away from you if you lose. I don’t know, maybe it’s easy for me to say this from my ivory tower, but I do think there’s something to what I’m saying.
In the end I took second place at another Mythic Championship, but my experiences at VII were much different from at III. I was a ball of stress back then, and finishing well was almost a relief, not an accomplishment. I was relieved that I earned points for the MPL, and that I made myself look good in the eyes of my peers and community. I didn’t really appreciate the moment in any meaningful way.
This time around was different. I had a lot of fun during the event itself, made some new friends thanks to being social between rounds as opposed to in my own head, and overall enjoyed myself regardless of my current results. For the first time in a while I was happy to be competing.
I don’t exactly know what 2020 has in store for me, but I do know that I’ll be working harder on my mental game. Mythic Championship VII was a very freeing event, and I believe I played better than I have in a long time thanks to it. I’ll be sure to keep you updated on my progress, and am always willing to talk about the mental side of the game with anyone who’s in need of some advice.