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The tournament we’re going to cover here today is not necessarily a total failure – I finished in the prizes, I had a winning record, and I was one win away from qualifying. That one potential win and the lack of results thereof, though, is the crux of this article. In that sort of situation, one loss can offset an entire tournament’s worth of wins. The lesson today is one that will hopefully help change some of your tournament near-wins to tournament wins.

When you open up a deck with Gleancrawler, Dark Confidant, and Followed Footsteps, you gotta try it. I mean, come on – Footsteps on a Gleancrawler? It’s every Timmy’s fever dream. But in reality, two of these three crazy-strong rares didn’t work out nearly as well as I thought they would, and what I got was a timely lesson on how what’s in your card pool affects how potent a rare can be.

In classic literature, when Gregor Samsa awoke from anxious dreams, he discovered that he had been changed into a verminous bug. But in the hands of eccentric British Magic writer Tony Boydell, Gregor Samsa becomes something else entirely, in a strange and somehow touching tale of Magic struggle.

I’ve elected to take SCG Daily this week to further my plans of literary domination, and to continue revealing how much of an awful player I am. As you can see from the title of the article, I’ve gotten some of the best lessons I’ve learned in this game from horrible tournament failures, and I can’t think of any better way to be a helpful writer than to tell you what not to do. So listen up, kids, and don’t be like Ben.

Yes, I’ll admit it… I’m a fanboy. While I’m not really a boy – unless you define “boy” as a 28 year old with a beard – I’m most definitely a fan. You see, I like to play Magic. I’m sure my writing for a Magic website has tipped you off on that already.