A bag of bugles, a bolt, a washer, and a check for $1370

This is a Magic card story. A lot of the card-specific details have been left out to make it more accessible. (If you’re a Magic player, you’re probably smart enough to fill in those details on your own anyway, but feel free to ask me anything you’re curious about.)
*Some small updates for 2018 - Almost all of my friends play Magic and know what a Grand Prix is, so I went through and cleaned up some of the terms.*

US Nationals 2018 Report - by Alex Majlaton *24th*

Every once in a while, a tournament comes along that makes you remember why you started playing in tournaments. A tournament that reminds you that you can still have a blast playing Magic. A tournament that makes you want to write a tournament report. That's what Nats was for me.

I played four straight weeks of tournaments (GP DC, PT Richmond, the team RPTQ, and GP Vegas) so I was unbelievably burned out and very disinterested in Magic (especially Standard), so I skipped GP Pittsburgh despite it being so close to me. Felt great - I don't regret it for even one second. Even though I was so tired of Magic, I still really wanted to attend Nats.

GP Phoenix thoughts - Affinity in 2018

While preparing for GP Phoenix, Mark Jacobson linked an interesting blog post by Allen Wu. (You can find his blog here.) The post was about using Monte Carlo simulations to find the likelihood of certain opening hands for Eldrazi Tron. The conclusion he had drawn (at least, with respect to Eldrazi Tron) was that you should be willing to mulligan to 5 cards in search of a busted opening hand, because it happens more often than you might think. The blog post is super interesting and I recommend reading it.

Lessons from GP Memphis

At GP Memphis, I had a situation that I've been thinking about a lot.

I played Ari Lax's Naya Monsters deck (with shouts to Bobby Fortanely, Ethan Gaieski, and Scott Lipp). Despite how I felt about it after day 1, I think the deck is at least fine and probably really good. Knowing what I know now, I'd certainly make some changes, but having been partially involved in the development of the deck, I still believe the theory behind its construction to be sound.