I went to Hawaii. I swung and I missed.
Magic is a hard game.
—
Two years ago, I went to Hawaii. It was my first Pro Tour back after a long absence. I had done a lot of work on the format, and I knew I was in love with a card. This card:
It was just an incredible card. And after Khans of Tarkir was out, Dig Through Time was added to the mix, and it just felt like an absurdly good deck to be playing.
It was.
I worked with Team TCGPlayer, and I felt like, overall, we had just an incredibly good crew. One of my teammates and fellow StarCityGames.com writers, Ari Lax, took it down. He had a great deck (Steve Rubin’s Abzan list) and a great plan for Limited (Neil Reeves’s 5cMorph plan). Much of the team was on Rubin’s list, a few were on mine, and a handful were on something else.
I finished at 10-6: 3-3 in Limited and 7-3 in Constructed – in the money, but out from the next Tour.
It was disappointing, but I could feel something important: I could have done better.
One of my oldest friends in the game, Scott Larabee, said to me, “Do better!”
It stung, but he wasn’t wrong.
I worked hard, and I took that same deck through numerous iterations, eventually requalifying for the Pro Tour in the very last “old-school” PTQ weekend, and would play in Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir in Brussels.
This, of course, would be my highest finish ever: 4th.
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (27)
Spells (28)
The deck was even better than it had been before, but also I was better. I’d played the deck a lot, and I knew it inside and out. I was just deeply prepared for the event. I was honored listening to my longtime friend, Magic Hall of Famer Bob Maher, say as much during coverage; it meant a lot coming from him.
That single finish would essentially qualify me for a huge run of Pro Tours: Magic Origins, Battle for Zendikar, Oath of the Gatewatch, Shadows over Innistrad, Eldritch Moon, and finally Kaladesh.
I had a solid finish at Pro Tour Battle for Zendikar with Demonic Pact Control (“Esper Demons”), I had a solid finish at Grand Prix Madison, but basically, I’ve had a lot of disappointing finishes otherwise.
At their heart, they come from one big thing: mistakes.
If we take that best finish, at PT Battle for Zendikar, I lost one important match in Day 2 by not remembering I had sideboarded out Silumgar’s Command. Casting a Dark Petition, my plan was to totally end the game with the Command I’d sideboarded out. I was desperate for room, and it was a haphazard cut for Game 3. If I hadn’t sideboarded it out, I would have won, or if I had remembered I had sideboarded it out, I would have won.
This mistake cost me $500. More importantly, it cost me four Pro Tour points.
When you think about the aggregation of mistakes that can happen over the course of a tournament, you can get a huge swing in results. Surely you’ve beaten players that absolutely should have beaten you, if only they knew the way. And surely you’ve been beaten the same way.
“Should” is a bad way to think about a game of Magic. You do what you can to win. Some games simply aren’t winnable in a vacuum. But you and your opponent are leaning into it, and both of your efforts will affect an outcome.
After I finished my first draft of the Pro Tour, I was in a disappointing spot: 1-2. I thought that my draft could have been better, and my deck was the kind of deck that if I rebooted my matches three times, I’d probably go 2-1, 2-1, 1-2. Five Times? It would probably look like 3-0, 2-1, 2-1, 1-2, 1-2.
“Shake it off.” It’s what you tell yourself, and it’s a thing that you might expect to hear anyone tell you. “The next one is another format entirely.”
Here, things turned upwards. 5-0.
Four of those wins felt like they were the natural results of the matchups. One of those wins felt like it could have easily gone the other way if my opponent had made better choices.
I didn’t go out on the town. It was my second time in Hawaii, and I was somewhat surprised by how well I remembered the lay of the land. I put on my headphones, and I walked east. I just wanted to focus, rest, and relax. I found some sushi along the way, and I crashed out early, after munching down some fresh fish and going over the coverage that was available.
“I can 3-0 this next draft. I know the format.”
I went to sleep with the words in my head, and I woke up feeling refreshed.
It’s a new day, I have a good deck for Standard, and I can draft damn well.
I could tell that the draft wasn’t going great when the second pack came back and one of my colors, black, was utterly absent. I was in U/B on the strength of some powerful rares and removal. I didn’t quite recognize how poorly it was going until the second pack was over and we’re reviewing the packs. I ended up in a multi-color deck, not a thing I’m troubled by, but my particular combination of cards was not good.
I lost the first round, very rightfully so, to a much better deck. I call over my friend Matt for a deck doctor clinic, to see if he can salvage my mess. He doesn’t share with me any insights I don’t already have, but it feels good to have those thoughts reinforced.
“Fight back. You can do this.”
I did fight back. I took the next round, pretty handily. 1-1. Okay. Let’s keep it going. That’s 7-3. A 50/50 finish from there wouldn’t be great at 10-6, but I could do better than that.
Sometimes it just won’t happen.
I played three games against a very friendly opponent and ended all three games with between four and five lands in my hand. This happens. But it hurts.
1-2. 1-2. 2-4. That’s not an exciting Limited finish.
Now I’m 7-4. I need to 4-1 to qualify for the next Pro Tour.
I love my deck. I’m sure I can do it.
I sent out a text-call to my fabulous partner, cheering me on from her hometown in North Carolina. Almost nonsensically I sent her the message, “SEND ME WIN WIN WIN WIN!!!” Four wins.
“You can do it!” she sent back.
I sent her a picture of my determined face.
Looking at it now, I feel less determined. I feel cornered. I feel a little worn down.
I immediately lost the next two matches.
One of them I lost in a “reasonable” match of Magic. I made a Game 1 decision to put my opponent on having a second Radiant Flames in their nearly exhausted hand, or lose the game. They had it, and while I got punished for it, I probably would make the same call most of the time in that situation.
In the next, I flooded out. This is a thing that happens in Magic plenty of times, and you have to accept that is how it goes.
The next I lost from a mistake.
It’s over. My Pro Tour run of the last year and a half is done.
While all of this is going on, Antonino “Ant” De Rosa is playfully berating his opponent for smiling. “Why are you smiling!? We are all the way down here at these tables and you’re smiling?! What’s wrong with you?!”
I can tell Ant is letting off steam. It comes across as playful, and I can see his opponent enjoying the interaction.
And I can also see that Ant means it.
Later, I’m playing Ari Lax and sitting next to my friend Matt, who is playing Chris “Cat Pact” Botelho. Chris is losing pretty badly, but is being a great sport about it. Ari is also losing pretty badly, and seems to be trying to make the best of it.
Chris says something both true, and something I can’t really manage myself: “Once you’re losing, you don’t have any pressure, so you can just have fun!”
I suppose I could be letting myself have more fun in these matches at this moment. Technically, I’m playing for money still, so something is on the line, but realistically, the invitation to the next Pro Tour was all I cared about.
I lost the next two rounds. Even after the pressure was off completely, I didn’t really have much fun with it.
Matt and I head out with another Madisonian (now in the Philippines), Mike Hron. All of us are disappointed with our finishes. Matt and Mike are both Gold, but already each of us is thinking about the path ahead. Matt is doing the math about the finishes he is shooting for. Both he and Mike are locked into Silver by the end of the season, but with the new thresholds, Gold looks like a hard fight without things changing.
—
8-8.
177th place out of 466.
Magic is a hard game. The Pro Tour is the hardest. If you were to tell friends who weren’t in the know that you finished 177th out of 466, they’d probably say, “Nice! Solid finish!”
They’re used to comparing these things to their own experience. To someone’s finish in a 5K. To a golf finish. How to tell them that these finishes are disappointing?
For me, the lowest level of success I was shooting for was 11-5, and 21st to 45th place held those points.
Truth be told, I know I didn’t deserve that finish.
I’m sure I made mistakes in both of my drafts. I know I misbuilt one of my decks by several cards. I absolutely made a match-losing mistake. My sideboard was off by at least one card, I’m certain, and my maindeck was off by at least one card, and probably more because of the land.
And who knows about the things I don’t even realize. Were there hands I should have mulliganed that I didn’t, or vice versa? I’m sure there were.
I didn’t head home after dinner that Saturday night with a storm cloud over my head. I was worn out. Mentally and emotionally, I was spent. Physically, the travel and the long hours were grueling, and you really do feel it in your body when you are drained mentally.
I headed home, heavy in my heart, rethinking the day, wishing I had a redo.
Back at the hotel, I opened up my computer and started looking at the calendar.
I’m Silver. Where are the RPTQs? What Grand Prix can I hit? Providence? Check. Denver? Maybe. Milwaukee? Check and check again.
The next day, I hit the beach. Later I headed back to the hotel and swam at the pool. I talked a little Magic with players I’d never met, and with Seth Manfield, a teammate from my last PT Honolulu, my first Pro Tour back after an absence of a few years.
I could feel the anguish of the loss fading, and something new replacing it.