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.




I won round 3, and then in round 4 I played against UW Approach, a deck that I don't think this Naya deck can ever beat.

Round 5 I lost to UB Control, one that was playing Bontu's Last Reckoning main deck. My opponent drew two copies, one for each of my Carnage Tyrants, and was able to keep pace with enough of the rest of my threats to win the match.

I beat a BW Tokens deck in round 6, and then in Round 7 came the interesting round.

My opponent was playing Esper God-Pharaoh's Gift. I generally like my position in this matchup. I was able to win the first game after my opponent missed his 3rd land drop for a couple turns.

I lost the second game after my opponent convinced me (or rather, I convinced myself) to use my Ixalan's Binding on a Champion of Wits that was beating me down, only to deploy The Scarab God a couple turns later. I had no answer and very quickly folded to it.

The interesting situation happened in game 3. I can't remember the exact action leading up to these turns, but the general flow is that I believe I am ahead, and I'm holding multiple cards that answer Gift at any given point in time - a Naturalize, an Ixalan's Binding, an Abrade, etc. I have a Glorybringer and a Chandra on 6. I've barely been dealt any damage, and my opponent is getting pretty low - maybe something like 11 or 9. He doesn't have any nonland permanents in play after I exerted my Glorybringer to deal with whatever creature he had left (a chupacabra maybe?).

My opponent untaps and draws, and then casts Vizier of Many Faces. He copies my Glorybringer, then attacks my Chandra and says "I will exert" and pulls the Vizier out of the sleeve to indicate it being exerted. Since we've all had plenty of time to get acquainted with Glorybringer, it should come as no surprise to anyone that my tapped Glorybringer is not a legal target for the exert trigger. I pick up my Glorybringer, read it, verify that the cards work the way I think they do, and tell my opponent "This is not a legal target for this ability." My opponent reads my card, shrugs and says something like "guess that shows you how much I play with Glorybringer", then puts his card back in the sleeve, which to me silently indicates that he is taking back his declaration to exert his creature. I say nothing to this.

I let Chandra fall to 2 and take my turn, un-exert my Glorybringer, then draw. After activating Chandra's +1 to find nothing interesting, I sit and look at the Ixalan's Binding in my hand. I've been saving it, ideally for something like The Scarab God, but the Vizier/Glorybringer is eventually going to be a problem, especially if I kill it the traditional way which would allow him to just unearth it. That leaves me wondering about my opponent, the status of his Glorybringer, and what he perceives that status to be.

According to the rules of Magic: the Gathering, my opponent declared exert, so if my opponent planned on obeying the rules properly, the Vizier wouldn't untap and I'd get at least one more Chandra activation before having to decide what to do about it. However, if he wasn't planning on doing that, I'd have to enforce the rules and find a way to tell him that, despite not having a legal target for his trigger, he still exerted.

I chose to sidestep the issue entirely by just casting the Binding on the Vizier. Problem solved, right? I have to deal with it at some point anyway, so why not?

I ended up losing that game in a pretty uninteresting fashion. I decided that I wasn't going to kill a Gate to the Afterlife he had drawn with the Naturalize I was holding, since he only had 3 creatures in the graveyard. I'm not sure why but I decided it was better to wait until he found the actual Gift, and got punished very hard for it. His next draws were back to back Walking Ballistas, which he immediately cashed in to finish off my Chandra (and gain a life and loot), and then completely remove the Rekindling Phoenix I had just topdecked (and gain another life and loot again). He eventually had six creatures and fired his Gate, at which point I fired my Naturalize. One or two blanks later and he found a Gift, which brought back The Scarab God, and I was dead very quickly after that.

It's tough to say if I'd have won that game or not if I had properly held on to the Binding, but since the margins were pretty thin at the end, I have to believe that my chances would have been a lot better.

I wish I had just enforced the rules and had the uncomfortable conversation. I spent a considerable amount of my resources (time, money, etc.) planning this trip, practicing for the tournament, etc. and in the end I felt more compelled to avoid an awkward situation than to try and win the tournament by seizing the (completely organic and honest!) edges granted to me by my opponent.

I thought about that sequence a lot as I dropped at 4-3 and went back to the hotel room. I was thinking that maybe, as a 33 year old with a pretty firmly solidified personality at this point, that this is the way I've chosen to be, this was the vibe I'm choosing to put out into the universe, and that maybe I'm just not really meant to compete at Magic (or anything) any more.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do. As my playing "career" continues to age, I'm finding it to be more like whack-a-mole than what I had hoped would be a slow, steady ascent to greatness - I learn about one or two new interesting ways to attack problems in competing at Magic, only to have two other problems pop up. Problems that I definitely wouldn't have had to spend time thinking about when I was ten years younger and trying to stay afloat on the PT by keeping my rating up. Problems that have me confronting the limitations of my body, my mind, and my emotions.

I still really like Magic, and I still want to at least try to make Silver again, since it would let me play two more PTs for relatively low levels of achievement (I only need four more points in 3 events). It's just getting very hard for me to keep up, especially as I find that the more I play, the more I realize that everything about the game besides the cards matters at least as much as the cards do, and probably way more.