My Magical Comeback: Dark Clouds, Silver Linings, and Conclusions

This weekend I played in the SCG Legacy Open in Orlando.  In short, I didn’t do well.  0-2 drop.  That is pretty much the definition of scrubbing out if I’m not going to mince words.

Dark Clouds

In round one, I played Eric Gustafson, who was piloting RUG Delver.  I absolutely crushed him in game one.  Not the nut draw, but a turn 3 Geist followed by Unstable Mutation gets there against a deck whose only removal is burn spells.  In Game Two, I kept a one land hand, because it two accelerators, Geist, and a pump aura.  Essentially, I would have two draw steps to find a land, and if I didn’t get one on the second turn I had a Ponder in hand to get me there, albeit a turn late.  Unfortunately, I drew blanks, and Ponder failed to find the land I needed.  Once he realized I was light, he threw fire at my accelerators.  That, combined with a fast start for him (Delver, Delver, Gofy) left me dead before I could drop any creature of value.  Game three was very close.  We raced each other, and he killed me on 2 life.  Had I top decked any one of sixteen possible outs on my last turn I would have landed enough damage to win. 

It was a close game, and in retrospect I only made one critical mistake.  He only had two lands out (and this was turn 5 or 6) and I Wastedland-ed he Volcanic Island to cut him off Blue mana.  I then cast my Geist, which would have been game over had it resolved.  Unfortunately, he had the Daze.  Had I not used the Wasteland, the Wasteland could have blanked his Daze and I would have won with relative ease the next turn.  Why did I make this mistake?  First, I am still very rusty when it comes to technical plays at a high level.  Also, it is “common knowledge” that people sideboard out their Dazes when they are on the draw.  Except, apparently, when they don’t.  I assumed that he sided them out on the draw like any one would expect him to, and stopped playing around them.  Unfortunately, he either next leveled me, or I next leveled myself because he kept them in. 

In Round 2, I played Dakota Mitchell who was piloting Maverick.  Game One I mulliganed away a hand that was keepable, but I didn’t think it would be able to win the game against a good draw from a reasonable opponent.  My second hand was also keepable, but worse.  I probably should have gone to five, but I kept and got stomped rather quickly without casting a spell.  Since all he saw from me was 3 lands, he had no idea how to sideboard against me.  In Game Two, I came out of the gates with a turn 2 Geist.  Turn 3 Spectral Flight, attack for 9.  He cast a Knight of the Reliquary, and on my turn I cast an Unstable Mutation on my Geist and attacked for lethal.  In Game three my draw was slower, but still good.  I got in with a Geist in the air for 10 thanks to two Exalted triggers, and could have won next turn but he Green Sun-ed for a sideboard card that actually had good game against me: the Protection from Blue fairy.   The fairy meant my Geist wouldn’t be landing any more hits, but I could still get in with the Angel, and then Psionic Blast for the win.  Unfortunately for me, he also top decked a Maze of Ith to stop the Angel.  From that point on I had no outs except a Troll Ascetic with Spectral Flight.  Before I could draw that unlikely combination, he was able to get 3 8/8 Knights of the Reliquary on the board and kill me.

All in all, it was a close match, and I don’t think I made any technical play mistakes.  My big mistake was in mulliganing or not mulliganing in the first game.  There is a good chance that I would have lost had I kept the first 7 or mulled to 5, so either way I probably would have lost anyway.  But clearly I had no idea which play was more optimal, except to say that of my three choices, an initial marginal 7, a worse 6 or an unknown 5, I picked the worst of the three options, and I paid for it.

So yeah, that was a quicker than anticipated end to my tournament. 

Silver Linings

So what did I salvage from this abortion?  First, Eric ended up in 25^th place, and Dakota ended up in 12^th, both well into the money.  So I didn’t lose to scrubs, I lost to a guy who had a very solid finish, and another who almost made top 8.  And I didn’t roll over to either of them, and especially with Eric in the first match had I not played into getting blown out by his Daze I would have won.  So while my record was as bad as possible, I played competitively with two clearly good opponents.  This might sound like I’m reaching in order to make myself feel better, and maybe it is.  But losing two people who finished highly is still better than losing to two terrible players.

I also learned a lot about my deck.  First it is way high variance.  It is more than capable of beating any deck in a total blow out if I get the right draw.  And that draw isn’t exactly tough to get, since so many of the cards are redundant.  The problem is, like any tempo based deck, when you don’t get the fast start the deck cannot play catch up.  I should probably mulligan more aggressively in order to make sure I get hands that could potentially win, especially when I’m on the draw.  On the play a turn 3 threat is OK, but on the draw it isn’t.  So on the draw I have to just muck any hand that can’t stick a turn 2 three drop.  I’m not sure I would play this deck again, though.  It’s not my playstyle.  I’m an agro-control player, and all my best tournament finishes in my career were with mid-range agro-control decks.  Stoneforge Mystic Bant is still too slow for my liking, but I think a NO-Bant deck is definitely feasible right now.

The most important thing I learned was where I stand on the competitive ladder.  My opponents were both strong, and I didn’t feel overmatched by either.  I hope they wouldn’t take offense to this, but based on raw talent I would say that I’m better than they are.  But from a technical standpoint, and practice makes perfect, they were better than I am by a significant margin. 

That said, I have no doubt that if I played a few hours everyday against good players, in 6 months I would be good enough to finish in the money in a tournament like that every time.  When I was in high school and playing a professional level, I was playing in online tournaments every day after school for several hours a day.  And then I would play in a paper tournament every weekend.  30 hours a week is a lot of practice time and it really is probably approaching what you’d need to be these days to be consistently competitive in big events assuming you are an intelligent person as a base.

Unfortunately, I can’t and won’t commit that time to Magic anymore.  I bike around 14 hours a week, and that eats up most of my leisure time.  So even if I stopped cycling, I wouldn’t get to play Magic enough to be truly competitive again. 

Conclusions

What I take away from it all is where my limits are and how to move forward.  I will definitely play in any Orlando/Tampa Legacy events as they come around, and since I’m extremely time crunched my only way to competitive is to play one deck and get good at that deck.  I don’t have the hours to be good at a variety of Legacy decks, good at Draft, and also good at a variety of Standard decks; but I do have the time to be good at one Legacy deck if I play it exclusively and learn it inside out.  Since there isn’t a big local Legacy scene, I’ll have to sharpen my technical play in Limited, which is definitely possible.  So that’s it.  I probably won’t write about Magic unless something comes up again, but I’m not going to give it up, and hopefully next big event I can throw down.

Thoughts?  Comments?  Questions?

My Magical Comeback: Sideboard

Last article I showed the deck I am going to play at the SCG Open in Orlando this weekend.  For reference here it is…

4x Noble Hierarch

4x Birds of Paradise

4x Troll Ascetic

4x Geist of St. Traft

4x Quasali Pridemage

4x Daze

3x Spell Pierce

3x Unstable Mutation

2x Spectral Flight

4x Brainstorm

3x Psionic Blast

4x Wasteland

2x Forest

1x Island

1x Savannah

4x Tundra

4x Tropical Island

3x Windswept Heath

3x Misty Rainforest

I got a chance to get a handful of matches in against real Legacy decks.  Nothing at all like a real gauntlet, and I wasn’t able to get matches in against all the decks I would want to test against.  But time being an issue (and playtesting partners being another issue even if time wasn’t) I felt it was more important learn my own deck.  I feel like after getting these test matches in I have a better idea of how the deck plays, so that’s good.

What I learned was the deck is fast.  The nut draw when goldfishing is Turn 4.  The slowest is turn 6.  You might ask what the value of goldfishing is.  Goldfishing is useful because it helps you learn about how an aggressive deck mulligans.  If you know an aggressive deck has a 80% chance to goldfish by turn 6, and your opening hand does not look like it will be able to do that, you need to mulligan.  You don’t need to actually be able to win by turn 4 every game in order to win matches, but you need to have early pressure/disruption otherwise your opponent will just goldfish you while you sit around waiting to do something.

I also learned the deck mulligans very well.  The nut draw is a Hierarch, Geist, Spectral Flight, and two lands.  That means I can mulligan down to five and potentially have a hand that can win by turn 4.  And since many of the cards (like the Hierarch and Geist) have redundancy I can feel confidant mulliganing a hand of 7 cards that doesn’t look good at all.

So my sideboard philosophy is based around a couple of concepts.  First, I never want to lose to Dredge.  Dredge is just dumb and I would hate to lose to it.  Surgical Extraction would be enough to beat Dredge usually if I can get my normal early pressure, but Surgical Extraction doesn’t have a tremendous amount of game against Reanimator.  Reanimator has counterspells and redundancy, so Extracting one reanimation target is not likely to be a game ender.  With that in mind, Leyline of the Void is how I want to roll.  Since the deck mulligans so well, I don’t mind mulliganing aggressively to get it in my opening hand.

Next, I fear losing to combo decks in general, because it feels cheap.  So I’m packing 3 copies of Force of Will.  FoW plus the counters I main deck should help a bunch against most combo decks.

Against Maverick, I will side in Sword of Feast and Famine, as well as a Jitte.  Since I don’t have any equipment game 1, most people will side out whatever artifact hate they have, so bringing these in could steal me a game here and there.  These will probably come in against any “fair” deck game 2 for that reason.  Feast and Famine was chosen for it’s Pro-Green ability mostly.  Jitte was chosen because it dominates creature match ups, and has good game against Burn or RUG Delver decks.  I also pack Path to Exiles in this match up.

Against said RUG Delver decks, the Jitte is key, especially since they won’t be siding in Ancient Grudge until game 3.  This deck does fairly well against them since it has enough mana dudes to not be intimidated by Wastelands, and the main threats can’t be killed by Lightning Bolt.  Path to Exile also comes in to deal with Delvers.

So right now my Sideboard is…

4x Leyline of the Void

3x Force of Will

2x Path to Exile

1x Sword of Feast and Famine

1x Jitte

That leaves me 4 slots left.  I kinda want to add another Path to Exile, which still leaves me 3 slots.  Another Spell Pierce would be fairly strong.  And I was thinking of Threads of Disloyalty which seems very strong.  But I’m open to suggestions of what would be good and what match ups it would be good in.

Thoughts?  Comments?  Questions?

My Magical Comeback: Building The Deck

This article is going to be kinda technical in Magic the Gathering and won’t really have any appeal to 40k people.  Not much I can or want to do about that.  More Games Workshop articles next week.

As I mentioned, my ‘comeback’ with be at the SCG Legacy Open in Orlando on May 20.  Legacy is a fantastic Magic format, with an unfortunately high barrier to entry for most people, especially new players.  Luckily for me, most of the incredibly expensive cards were not super expensive when I was playing, and I still have them because I wisely never sold my collection when I stopped playing competitively.  So money was not an obstacle to keep me away from Legacy.

To stay on topic, Legacy is great because of the variety of viable decks.  In Standard right now, there are about 2 tier 1 decks and probably 3-5 tier 2 decks that are bit further down the ladder whose viability waxes and wanes based on which of the tier 1 decks is more popular at the moment.  In Legacy there are a handful of popular decks (Esper Stoneblade, RUG Delver, Maverick) but there are at least a dozen other decks that are more than capable of beating them and winning a tournament.  In fact, there are so many viable decks that there are no tiers in Legacy.  There is simply “viable” and “not viable.”   The card pool is so large that the potential for viable decks is huge, and as many competitive players will say of Legacy, “you can play anything, within reason.”  The wide variety of decks at a large Legacy tournament makes following the tournament quite enjoyable.

Additionally, while some deck are more popular than others that does not mean they are better.  If you play tested exclusively against the popular decks you’d still only be prepared for less than 50% of the metagame.  The format is so large and diverse that you simply cannot playtest every possible match up.  So the key to the format is not simply playtesting against a gauntlet until you learn all the match ups, it’s playtesting against as many different decks as possible.  2 matches against 10 decks are more valuable than 4 matches against 5 decks, generally speaking.   That said, you need to know the major 12-16 decks in the format so that you can know what your opponent is playing by no later than turn 2.  The format is rather fast, and making the right play early is key.  Making the right play early is tough if you can’t determine what your opponent is playing.

So the wide variety of Legacy attracted me t the format.  After watching dozens of Legacy tournaments, and reading all the Legacy columnists on the web I had a pretty good idea of what decks were out there.  My play style usually gravitates to mid-range control decks, like The Rock.  I also tend to gravitate to Bant colors.  Based on this, the first deck I put together was a Bantblade deck that looked like so…

4x Knight of the Reliquary

4x Stoneforge Mystic

4x Noble Hierarch

3x Vendillion Clique

1x Scavenging Ooze

1x Qasali Pridemage

4x Force of will

4x Brain Storm

1x Ponder

1x Sylvan Library

1x Sword of Feast or Famine

1x Umizawa’s Jitte

1x Batterskull

2x Jace the Mind Sculptor

1x Elspeth Knight Errant

4x Swords to Plowshares
1x Forest
1x Island
1x Flooded Strand
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Savannah
4x Tropical Island
3x Tundra
4x Wasteland
3x Windswept Heath
1x Karakas

I really liked the deck, and I still do.  It has all the tricks and is basically the all the best cards in the respective colors.  Unfortunately, the metagame is faster and more tempo based.  Stoneforge Mystic is insanely powerful, but it doesn’t come down until turn 2 at the earliest, doesn’t put a Batterskull into play until Turn 3, and it can’t attack until Turn 4.  Turn 4 is simply a turn too late to start attacking.  The deck can also go Hierarch -> Knight -> Knight and bash for a lot of fast damage.  But what I found is, unless you get a Hierarch in your opening hand, the deck is too slow to beat the combo decks, and is too fragile to beat the control decks.  It doesn’t have a favorable match up against Maverick or Esper Stoneblade, which is a real problem as those are two of the most popular decks.  This deck is ideal in a format where decks like Countertop or Hymn to Tourach are more popular, but that isn’t right now.

Add to this, there are a lot of decisions to be made in this deck.  “Do I play Stoneforge turn 2 and try to win with Batterskull, or play my Knight turn 2 and try to take that line?” or “what should I do with my Jace this turn?” or “what equipment should I grab with my first Stoneforge Mystic?”  A lot of decisions and interactions.  At this point, I don’t trust myself to make the correct play enough to the time.

So I decided I need to play a more aggressive plan.  My next idea was to play a Maverick type of deck with blue for Brainstorm and go more aggressive with more attacking Green creatures and no Stoneforge package.  Unfortunately, this idea didn’t make it past the brainstorming stage, because I kept thinking, “just play Maverick, it will be better than cluttering your deck with unnecessary Blue cards.”  Then inspiration struck!  In March, Phillip Contreras won the Legacy Open in Sacramento with a bizarre aggressive Bant deck featuring lot’s of mana acceleration, hexproof creatures, creature Auras to buff them, and tempo based counterspells like Daze and Spell Pierce.  This was the exact style of deck I wanted!  You can find his list here.

Strange, eh?  Spectral Flight and Psionic Blast in Legacy is odd indeed.  But what works is what works.  I rushed to throw this together and play a bunch of games.  The first thing I learned from the games I got to play is that I want 4 Wastelands.  I almost always want my third turn to be to put Spectral Flight on a Gheist, drop a Wasteland, kill a land, and attack for 9.  So I cut down on one the basic Islands and a Spell Pierce to pick up two more Wastelands.  And I arrived at the following deck…

4x Noble Hierarch

4x Birds of Paradise

4x Troll Ascetic

4x Geist of St. Traft

4x Quasali Pridemage

4x Daze

3x Spell Pierce

3x Unstable Mutation

2x Spectral Flight

4x Brainstorm

3x Psionic Blast

4x Wasteland

2x Forest

1x Island

1x Savannah

4x Tundra

4x Tropical Island

3x Windswept Heath

3x Misty Rainforest

It’s fast and beaty.  Best of all it has a rather linear game plan: drop a powerful threat turn 2, attack for a bunch turn 3, protect my advantage with the disruption, and win turn 4 or 5 before the slower decks can react.  This deck is powerful in the current environment because the threats are difficult for the midrange decks that rely on Swords to Plowshares to interact with and the threats are bigger and just as fast as the Delver decks.  Lastly, it has fast enough threats to force combo decks to try to go off before they are ready and has enough countermagic to keep them honest. 

So that’s where I am at with the deck.  I’ll discuss my sideboard choices next and my tournament preparation.

Thoughts?  Comments?  Questions?

Rekindling the Competitive Fire

I haven’t made much secret of the fact that I’ve lost all competitive fire for Warhammer 40,000.  The local scene is hopelessly non-competitive, and the national scene provides no reward for competition.  The best reason to go to a GT is to see friends and have a laid back good time.  Unfortunately, I only know a small handful of national players as ‘friends’ and having a laid back good time doesn’t exactly mesh with competitive play.

I’m not saying that being competitive means being a dick and having unfun games at all.  What I am saying is, if my intent is to be competitive with winning as the goal, my games will be high-stress by definition.  Anytime you are emotionally invested in the outcome of the game, your games will be stressful.  And stressful games are the antithesis of having a “laid back good time.” 

So why not just go and be competitive?  Simply put, the rewards aren’t there.  Winning best general at a GT doesn’t come with a large cash payout that would be an incentive to emotionally invest in the outcome.  The only real incentive to winning is bragging rights, which I don’t value because unlike some bloggers out there, I don’t pretend I’m the best player.  So clearly the only point to a 40k GT is the people and the culture of a national GT, neither of which are particularly enticing.

As far as Warhammer Fantasy goes, there never was a healthy local tournament scene and there is no competitive GT scene.  As big a revolution as the NOVA 40k format is, Fantasy GT’s are still in the Stone Age.  There is even less reason to go to a national GT for Fantasy.

But I am a competitive person by nature!  I enjoy the endorphin rush of competition, winning a close game/race or even losing a close game/race.  Competition and adrenaline are a fantastic feeling.  Luckily, I have road bike racing as a competitive outlet; but as great and primal as physical competition is, I like having a mental competitive outlet. 

…

Once upon a time, I was a competitive Magic the Gathering player.  I was at every Florida Pro Tour Qualifier tournament, and quite often drove out of state for them.  My accomplishments were relatively modest, I made a few PTQ top 8’s, and won one.  I Top 8’ed the Junior Super Series (and took home a very large scholarship prize) and top 8’ed the Florida State Championships.  My ‘career’ peaked when I played in the Pro Tour in 1999.  I’m especially proud considering my local Magic scene was below average and card availability to make decks was always a problem.  In those days before Magic Online, people played using the Apprentice and Netdraft programs and found tournaments and games on mIRC.

The point is, I didn’t have a large team to playtest with and the tools to do it online were primitive and not widely used.  So in that respect, I’m lucky to be as good a player as I was.

I stopped playing when I went to college, because I had way less money and far different priorities.  After college, I got back into 40k rather than Magic, because I was working full time and wanted to play a game that wasn’t hyper-competitive and allowed me to be a weekend warrior of sorts.  But I always kept my toes in Magic.  I never sold off my collection when I stopped playing, and when a new set would come out I’d check out the cards and read the reviews on strategy sites.

Magic in the last 5 years or so has undergone a bit of a renaissance.  The amount of players has exploded and the number of tournaments has greatly expanded.  In addition to the Pro Tour Circuit, the Star City Open tournament circuit has exploded.  So literally 46 of 52 weekends a year there is a large national tournament happening somewhere in the U.S. attracting competitive players.  Additionally, the matches at the big tournaments are all covered very well on live streams with good commentary.  Despite the fact I hadn’t played in anything resembling a tournament in 8 years, I found myself browsing the web with the Magic tournament streaming in the background. 

The more I watched, the more entertained I was.  Watching a cool deck or a great game made me want to play myself.  So about two months ago, I went to one of the local booster draft tournaments in order to see how it felt to play again.  Despite a new group of local players I didn’t know, who turned out to be fairly decent, I managed to win the first tournament.  I was definitely very, very rusty.  I made stupid mistakes I know that I wouldn’t have made back in my heyday.  Looking critically at my game, I sucked.  My technical play was still strong, though, even if my decisions weren’t great. 

I have played in several local booster draft tournaments since then, and I’ve continued to do well.  I’m still very rusty, but I’m seeing the improvement.  I’m still so far from where I was: I currently make the right decision most times, but only after consideration.  I don’t have the ability to trust my gut and make the right call instinctually yet, but I’m getting there.

As it turns out, there is a Star City Open tournament in my area in two weeks.  I have a deck for the Legacy format put together that I believe has a reasonable chance to win games, so I think I’m going to play.  Sure it’s a lark, and I’ll probably get crushed in most of my games, but it will be a good experience.  Either I’ll play and realize that I no longer have the desire or the ability to get to a competitive level, or I’ll love it and my inner fire will be rekindled.  I don’t see myself ever being a Pro Tour player or even a PTQ grinder like I used to be, but I could easily see myself playing in the 2 or 3 Star City tournaments that comes through Florida every year.  Heck, I have enough friends in Atlanta to make a road trip up there worth doing. 

I’m going to get as many games in between now and the SCG: Orlando tournament on the 20^th and hopefully get as much rust off as possible.  While I’m sure most of you don’t care a great deal (or at all) I will discuss my tournament preparation over the next week, and I’ll discuss my results afterward.

Thoughts?  Comments?  Questions?