I feel a little bit better about the future of competitive Magic lately, but not really enough to get super attached to it again.
what's on the line
Going into the PT I had 32 Mythic points, and I was in the running (albeit a dog) to make it into the Rivals league. I also didn't yet have an invite to Player's Tour 1 of 2020 and hadn't been making any effort to play in PTQs or GPs that feed it, so I had some performance targets: 11-5 would requalify, and 12-4 would give me a shot at Rivals.
prep for the PT
Despite knowing I was qualified for 5 months, I didn't really start to get into it until about three weeks before the PT. Our gigantic, rules-relaxed, nobody-really-gives-a-shit-about-much-except-Mark-Jacobson discord server kicked into gear about six weeks before the PT, including channels for arranging 1v1 games on whatever platform of choice, limited channels, a channel for every reasonably viable constructed deck or idea, and then metagame channels and many channels just for bullshitting. Nobody had any specific role or task, other than to just make sure you were contributing something meaningful. One notable thing about this process compared to many other processes I've experienced with many other teams is that we generally tried very hard to police hyperbolic statements this time around, which I found incredibly useful. Saying stuff like "this matchup is unwinnable", "you never lose when you do X", etc. makes it really hard to trust the results you report no matter how many games you've played and ideas you've tried. That's a huge takeaway for me - I've been on many teams with many different methods and styles of communication, but now after all these PTs I understand that teams are only useful when you can really trust the results and opinions of the players that are in the pit playing the games.
Still, when Eldraine was released I didn't play much, save for a prerelease and the SCG team open in Philly (where I played Modern). Standard looked miserable and was likely to receive bans in the form of Golos/Field/whatever, so there wasn't much of a reason to play it or trust the results of the Arena MC. I tried to just focus on draft, which I did exclusively on modo after playing a few on Arena only to find that the bots undervalue the blue cards enough to make the format unplayable using that client.
Eldraine limited
I ended up drafting a total of 20 times on modo before the PT. I also did maybe 6 or 7 IRL, and a few on Arena that don't count. That just plain isn't very many, given that I had a whole month to play. Still, I was able to fill in the gaps with crowdsourced info from our discord's limited meetings.
One of our teammates, Jack Dobbin (who wasn't even qualified for Richmond) cracked the format early on by figuring out the best way to draft blue, which was to value So Tiny very high and draft these highly defensive do-nothing control decks that win with either Secretkeeper and Didn't Say Please, and/or Folio of Fancies. A blue tier list was established quickly and it went against a lot of what my intuition would have said.
Still, I found myself unable to get blue cards in the drafts on modo, and unable to win with the ones I did get when I tried hard to get them. I also had the same problem with black - our team, and probably everyone else, valued Bake into a Pie extremely high and I just plain didn't see it very much during my low number of practice drafts. I stuck to mostly red, white, and green, and started to find some success with RW and RG aggro decks once I got more drafts in.
standard after the Field ban and the arena MCQW
Sitting down and forcing myself to play practice games of constructed is very challenging, and has been one of my weak points for years. I always spent time either drafting, or trying to coordinate large-scale plans and logistics for my team. Tommy Ashton, long time friend and teammate, said he was going to commit to playing at least one Standard league per day until he has a grip on what's going on, and he recommended that I do the same. That sounded like something I could do, so I did, and decided to play with G/x Adventures decks, since those didn't seem to be getting much attention among our group. I started with some GW lists from the SCG classics.
It didn't really hit me how good Oko was until the Arena MCQW. I played a few leagues with GW and GB Adventures up until then, and felt mostly good against the random nonsense I was playing on modo, except I lost one match to a Simic Oko deck and felt like I could never win. I wondered why I never seemed to play against it in the leagues, and then realized that because Oko was so expensive (90+ tix at that time), many players were probably just priced out of playing it and it was under-represented.
Despite never having played with it even once, I signed up for the MCQW using teammate Allen Wu's Sultai Oko decklist. The theory behind Sultai was that it was good in the mirror because it gave access to Noxious Grasp, and a couple of other good grind cards like Find//Finality. I promptly went 1-2, beating a simic Oko deck and losing to a Sultai Oko mirror and another to a GB Adventures deck with Lucky Clover.
I decided a couple things after that: one was that Oko decks were busted, and another was that I'd probably never participate in an Arena qualifying season again.
a brief aside on Arena MCQs
Grinding all month and waiting for months after that to play the Arena MCQ, only to get socked in the gut and go 1-2 feels horrible and I don't care to ever do that to myself again. I suppose it's exacerbated a bit for me since I started the year off with 32 Mythic Points from my PT top 8 and wanted to try and push that momentum a bit, but just felt like too many factors were working against me - I whiffed on qualifying for either of the other two Arena MCs (since one conflicted with GP Providence, and I even managed to go 4-2 in it despite that), I bombed out of PT London to get no Mythic points, I missed Gold by 2 points and missed qualifying for Barcelona completely, and on top of that Wizards was handing out discretionary invites to players like LSV which meant that I'd be even further behind in the race to make my Mythic points meaningful. It felt like I never had a chance. I bombed out of all three of the Arena MCQs on day 1 with records of 4-2, 0-2, and 1-2, and each time I felt like I just blew an extremely precious chance to climb the ranks of their new pro system. In the past when I was chasing pro points, I'd sometimes come up short in a GP and then come home and look at the schedule to see if I still had an opportunity to work hard and salvage the season, and there was almost always another GP or another PTQ I could attend. It's not like that at all with these Arena events. You have one shot, and if you blow it that's it - you miss out. I suppose that's why these MCQWs felt extra bad to me. I put all this pressure on myself to try and qualify for an Arena MC because it would be one of precious few chances I'd have, then fail and feel like all my effort was for absolutely nothing.
end aside
I didn't want to throw down 360 tix for Okos on modo, but I felt like testing against Oko at this point was the only thing that mattered, so random leagues with random decks were no longer useful. I talked to Tommy and we agreed to try and play with each other to generate some meaningful testing, which was good since he owned Okos. We only got to play one session of 3 matches with each other, but it ended up being incredibly important.
the cat food deck
The one time I played against Tommy was with Chris Kvartek's BG Adventures deck from the Arena MCQW, against Sultai Oko. I lost the first match pretty handily, but won the second and third match with the same pattern - I'd lose the first game, board into a million Massacre girls and recursion, and just lean on them super hard to maintain control of the board. It felt like an effective and reliable strategy, but I only used it for 2 matches so I couldn't be sure.
Tommy took that concept and developed the cat food deck.
4 Cauldron Familiar
4 Gilded Goose
2 Murderous Rider
4 Wicked Wolf
2 Massacre Girl
4 Oko, Thief of Crowns
2 Vraska, Golgari Queen
1 Ugin, the Ineffable
4 Witch's Oven
4 Trail of Crumbs
4 Once Upon A Time
2 Noxious Grasp
4 Breeding Pool
4 Watery Grave
4 Overgrown Tomb
2 Castle Locthwain
7 Forest
2 Swamp
SB:
2 Noxious Grasp
3 Veil of Summer
2 Lovestruck Beast
2 Murderous Rider
2 Negate
2 Duress
1 Massacre Girl
1 Find//Finality
This was the original list he sent me, on October 31st. The idea was that it was Sultai Oko, except instead of Krasis and Nissa, it used the Familiar/Oven/Trail engine to gain more advantage over the long term and go over the top of other Oko decks. It would stay alive in the midgame by using Massacre Girl to reset the board, which was made easier to find with Trail and easier to trigger with Familiar.
I played one match on Arena with this list, a ranked match in Bronze. I won game 1 and was ahead in game 2, but I timed out and lost. Still, that one match was enough to convince me that the deck had legs. I made plans to practice with Tim Wu in person at a local game store.
We played for about 3 hours against Allen's Sultai Oko list and a Gruul list with Embercleave. Our games against Sultai were convincing enough that I took the feedback to the discord and got a handful of our teammates excited about the deck.
Over the next few days, the deck received a lot of attention from us and everyone slowly got on board. We put a moratorium on the deck for modo leagues and Arena ladder games, not only because we didn't want the deck to leak, but because it just plain wasn't efficient - it's cumbersome to play online, and being able to shortcut IRL or on cockatrice was crucial to making the most of the testing time we had left. It went through various iterations until it slightly converged on a list with 4 Murderous Rider and 0 Wicked Wolf.
On around Sunday before the PT, something happened - Allen Wu played a session of games with the cat deck against someone else playing a stock Sultai deck and decided that the matchup wasn't convincingly favorable, and almost immediately became uninterested in playing the deck. Allen's opinions carry a lot of weight among our team members, to the point where some directly tie their deck decisions to his, so this decision to abandon the cat deck meant that what was going to be our "team deck" played by maybe 20 of us, ended up being played by only 9 or so.
To be honest, I kind of agreed with Allen - I thought the matchup against Sultai Oko was favorable, but not by a whole lot, and that a really skilled and/or practiced player could bring the margin back down to around 50%. The issue is that I didn't particularly like stock Sultai, especially after having bombed out of the Arena MCQW with it, so I was filled with dread at the prospect of having an unplayable deck after having spent a lot of valuable testing time hyping myself up about it. It wouldn't be the first time that happened - for PT BFZ, many of us registered a god awful UB Aristocrats deck that we thought would have taken the tournament by storm, but it turns out we probably just ran super hot with it in the beginning stages of our testing and got absolutely slaughtered in the PT.
Still, with 3 days to go, I could have forced myself to play some stock list, but I've played so many of these stupid PTs (this was my 35th!) that I feel like stock, boring, conventional is a one way ticket to an 8-8 finish. I wanted to take a shot - if there was a small chance our deck was actually broken, or maybe not even broken but still strong enough and with enough surprise factor to win for one tournament, I'd much rather take that shot than choose a stock list with lower variance but a lower ceiling, especially when your opponents are PT players. That's one advantage that I feel I have from having played so many of these events: I've finally demonstrated to myself that if I want there to be more, there will be more. I can afford to take risks.
The few of us that decided to stick with cats retooled the list a bit to bring it back to what we felt gave us an edge in the first place (i.e. Wicked Wolf), and we landed on this. This is what I registered in the PT:
4 Oko, Thief of Crowns
2 Vraska, Golgari Queen
4 Cauldron Familiar
3 Massacre Girl
3 Murderous Rider
4 Gilded Goose
2 Wicked Wolf
2 Noxious Grasp
4 Once Upon a Time
4 Witch's Oven
4 Trail of Crumbs
4 Breeding Pool
2 Castle Locthwain
6 Forest
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Swamp
4 Watery Grave
Sideboard
1 Vraska, Golgari Queen
2 Aether Gust
2 Duress
2 Lovestruck Beast
1 Negate
4 Rotting Regisaur
1 Thrashing Brontodon
2 Veil of Summer
free Palestine
On Monday I got an email about needing to be at the site during registration for headshots, because I was in the running for Rivals. Dice City Games is my sponsor, so I'd have to wear my DCG shirt for the shot, but I thought, how awesome would it be if I had some kind of hat or something that said Free Palestine for my headshot. I was looking at some hats online, but the cheapest one I could find that could get here in time was $50, and even that wasn't a guarantee. That's when my wonderful SO Yasmine (who is also half-Palestinian, just like me) said, "I can just make you one." We went and got a plain black hat and some transfer paper, and she made me the hat on Wednesday night, the night before we left. I can't thank her enough.
I certainly didn't expect it to cause problems - either they would let me wear it for my headshot or they wouldn't, and that would be that. Still, after we got to the venue at around noon, it only took two hours for someone from ChannelFireball staff to tell me that my hat was offensive and I needed to remove it. I asked why, and they said that they had received some complaints from some of the Jewish attendees. I again asked why, because my hat had nothing on it that was inherently offensive - it had the flag of Palestine, the phrase "Free Palestine", and the Arabic translation of "Free Palestine", none of which are symbols or phrases of hate. What followed that was one of the most twisted and fucked up justifications I ever heard.
The staff member led with "Have you ever seen Rick and Morty?" I answered honestly, which is that I don't watch the show, but have maybe seen one or two episodes. They went on to explain that there's a character in the show called Abradolf Lincler, a combination of Lincoln and Hitler (I certainly never saw THAT episode), and that someone had it on their playmat in an event recently and was asked to stop using that mat because it was offensive. I imagine the look on my face after my flag of Palestine got compared to a caricature of Hitler was something else, because before I could even get any words out, the staff member immediately offered to have me speak with someone higher up, which I accepted.
I sat around by the prize tix booth while the staff members conferred, and fortunately the more senior staff member told me that my hat was perfectly fine. I shook hands with the original staff member, who was gracious about the outcome, and went back to my business. That's why I didn't put that part of the story or that staff member on blast on Twitter, because after the fact it seemed mostly like an honest mistake or a misunderstanding (even if it wasn't delivered with a lot of tact), but it's still an indicator of just how lopsided and misunderstood the situation is (at least in the United States).
Not to stray too far from my tournament report on my personal Magic blog (I'll save that for my tweets I guess), but I would just like to say that it is pretty fucking racist to assume that an entire ethnic group and a call for the end of their oppression is a symbol of hate. That's how fucked up things are right now - in the United States, any support for Palestine and the Palestinians is somehow automatically conflated with anti-semitism, to the point where I can walk into an event hall with a completely inoffensive hat and have someone find it offensive. Let me repeat that in a different way: it's considered offensive to some to fight for the basic human rights of Palestinians. Every day I think about how I can possibly work to try and change things and I haven't made it much further than "learn as much as I can about the situation" and "be loud", so that's my plan until then. As always, if anyone wants to have a good-faith discussion about this or just wants to learn more, please reach out to me and I'd be more than happy to give you my time.
I did get to wear my hat for my headshots though. That was cool.
day 1 draft
I first picked Deathless Knight, second picked Rampart Smasher, third picked Maraleaf Rider, and ended up here:
This is the kind of deck I was winning with most often towards the later portion of my PT practice, so I was really happy with it. In particular I'm happy that I had the discipline to move off green after seeing it dry up super fast. I saw a late All That Glitters in pack 1, so when I opened pack 2 I confidently chose Flutterfox over a second copy knowing that it would likely wheel and it did. I wish that I had started Glass Casket over Witch's Oven (I had visions of trading my useless board creatures for food that pumped All That Glitters), and I boarded down to 16 lands every match, but overall I liked it.
Round 1
I played against a grindy BW Knights deck with a Lucky Clover. I got destroyed pretty rapidly. I feel like that's a nightmare matchup for my deck, so I didn't feel so bad. All I wanted from the draft portion of the PT was two 2-1s, so that was still on the table.
0-1
Round 2
I played against long time pal and MTG media mogul Cedric Phillips. Cedric's deck was Gr, which makes sense since he was to my right. He didn't seem to like his deck very much. Unfortunately for him, he barely even got to play since he missed land drops in both games and my unforgiving aggro deck didn't give him any time to recover.
1-1
Round 3
I played against the only other Dice City Games representative in the PT, my friend and teammate Joel Sadowsky. Joel's deck was U based control with some green cards for beefcake support. The match we played is the kind of match that kind of made me rethink the way I play Magic a bit. If you're lucky, you get around one of these every major event you play in.
We split the first two games. I had a strong, aggressive draw in the first game, and was overpowered by Gadwick and beefcakes in the second game. The third game was the interesting game.
I had another really strong aggressive start and was convinced I was going to win, but I only had three lands - two Plains and a Mountain. Joel did a pretty good job of stabilizing on the ground, which left me trying to peck away with a Faerie Guidemother in the air and sneaking in ground hits with a double striker when possible. Once I played out all my spells and was more or less in topdeck mode, the last card I had was Searing Barrage, and I had two Plains and two Mountains. I was playing a 10-7 R/W split, so my next land draw was more likely to be a Mountain.
Joel, who had access to all colors of mana with a Rosethorn Acolyte, played the adventure of Fae of Wishes for a Scorching Dragonfire. Some of his relevant creatures on the board were the 2/3, a 4/3 Hypnotic Sprite (pumped by the adventure portion of the 6/5 5G creature, and also his only flyer), and a few other ground people. My board was something like, the 2/2 RW Knight lord, the 1/2 double striker (pumped to 2/3), Faerie Guidemother, a 1/1 Weaselback Redcap (pumped to 2/2), and a 3/2 Redcap Raiders.
I drew for my turn and although it wasn't a Mountain, it was still a land, so I played it and had access to Searing Barrage (with no Adamant). I attacked with my 2/3 double striker and the 3/2 Raiders, which I pumped to 4/3 by tapping Guidemother.
Joel thought and blocked my 2/3 with his 4/3 flyer, and double blocked my 4/3 so as not to take trample damage. Being fine with the trade of 2/3 for 4/3, I passed, but I neglected to think that he could just kill my lord and get a 2 for 1. Wow, that attack was bad. I had the Barrage to bail myself out and make the exchange 2 for 2, but I still missed out on a lot of damage by reassuring myself that I had access to Barrage in case anything went wrong and then making a play that nearly forced me to use it.
What happened after that was that I drew lands for a while, and not just any lands, Mountains. My crucial error was that I didn't stop to consider how the game would play out if I drew nothing but bricks from there, which is what happened. If I planned for that, I could have reasoned that there would likely be at least one Mountain, and thus I should save my removal spell to get the most impact out of it. Those 3 turns of air were more than enough for Joel to find gas with a 2/5 looter and put the game away.
That's the kind of player I am - I never stop and consider how the game might go if my draw steps are the worst possible, I kind of just assume that they'll be average and make more tempo-driven plays where I give up potential cardboard advantage. It wasn't always like that - limited when I first learned how to play was all about a steady stream of 2-for-1s until one player came out ahead, and nobody was ever really in danger of getting tempo-ed out. Once that approach started losing in contemporary Magic card design, I had to adjust, and it looks like I may have adjusted too far.
Good match, though. I'm glad that at least my DCG teammate got to win. I thought about that match for the rest of the weekend, and I'm still thinking about it. It's crazy to think that after a decade and a half of competing, there's always a leak to plug.
1-2
day 1 standard
Round 4
My opponent was playing BG Adventures, with Lucky Clover. and the 2/1 adventure knight that drains. BG is one of this deck's better matchups, since the Massacre Girl plan is way more effective here than usual. I won both games pretty easily.
2-2
Round 5
My opponent this round was also playing BG Adventures, although this version was more conventional with no clovers. I again won this round very easily with even less of a sweat since I didn't have to worry about a busted clover start.
3-2
Round 6
My third straight BG Adventures matchup! What's notable is that they were three distinct flavors. This one had Nissa, 3 copies of Bolas' Citadel main, and (most annoyingly) two copies of Sorcerous Spyglass.
I won a long (~30 minute) game 1, which is usually good news for this deck. Game 2 also ended up being long, but through a combination of me having to blow all my Massacre Girls early, plus an annoying double Spyglass draw from my opponent and some later-game flooding from me, I ended up losing in extra turns, resulting in a 1-1-1 draw.
3-2-1
Round 7
I played against a stock-ish Sultai Oko deck this round, my first Oko pairing of the tournament. I lost game 1, which made me question all the results of our testing and wonder if it was right for everyone to switch off this deck. I won game 2 and we went to time in game 3. It looked as if I was going to win on maybe turn 7 or 9, but as it was, we drew. I asked for a concession since I was ahead, but my opponent declined and said that with our 2nd draw there's a possibility we could just take a third one into day 2.
3-2-2
Round 8
I got paired vs. Steve Rubin, who was also 3-2-2. The table next to us had two players at 3-2-2 as well, one of which was my opponent from the previous round. All four of us were happy to ID into day 2, so I guess he was on to something. Steve was playing stock Sultai Oko, which is a matchup I liked, but he's my friend and I didn't want to knock him out of day 2, and also he's very good so I didn't want to risk losing out on day 2. Neither of us could make the top 8 with our record anyway, so I liked the draw here.
3-2-3
1-2 draft, 2-0-3 standard
Technically, I went undefeated in Standard, but it's a pretty crappy kind of undefeated that isn't super meaningful.
day 2 draft
I first picked Wildborn Preserver overall. My second pick was between Clockwork Servant and Covetous Urge. I think Urge is fantastic, but I also think black is overdrafted and I don't really know how to win with blue, so I took the more conservative Servant pick. I immediately got passed another Urge, but I took another green card over it (I honestly can't even remember which one - probably Keeper). I didn't see much green for the rest of the pack and was terrified that I punted my chance at Rivals away by just being too scared to draft blue.
I flailed around for a bit, but found enough green cards to scrape together a deck (after a couple late gifts like Return of the Wildspeaker somewhere around pick 5 in pack 3) and ended up with this:
I don't hate this deck, but I don't love it. It has to play some stinky cards like the two Squires and the Tracker. Still, it's proactive, has a reasonable curve and a couple of mild CA engines.
Round 9
My opponent this round was Shawn Dhaliwal. His deck was UR draw two - he had Improbable Alliance, and probably got every copy of Bloodhaze Wolverine opened. His deck seemed kind of clunky though.
I won an interesting game 1 where I was able to sniff out a Didn't Say Please, and held a bounced fatty until he tapped out so I could safely re-deploy it. Game 2 was more lopsided where I put Shawn in a lot of spots where his best play was to just block and hope I didn't have a pump spell - but I always had it.
4-2-3 (5-4 equivalent)
Round 10
I got pretty lucky this round. My opponent had what was likely the best deck at the table, a BG deck including two Revenge of Ravens, Savvy Hunter, Garruk, Bake into a Pie, Epic Downfall, Syr Konrad, etc. I won two fast games where my opponent played a total of 5 lands in them. I'll take it.
5-2-3 (6-4 equivalent)
Round 11
My opponent this round had an aggressive RG deck, so we played 3 games that were just races. I think he lacked green mana in game 1, because all I saw were red cards and I was able to make good use of my curve and pump spells.
In game 2 I got surprised by an Opportunistic Dragon. The only card I have in my deck that can beat it is Outmuscle, and I didn't find it, so I died to it. I boarded in my copy of Fell the Pheasant for it for game 3.
I am really proud of how I navigated game 3 - I had an insane curve (t1 Innkeeper, t2 Squire, t3 Acolyte), and I woke up on turn 4 with a hand of Halberd, Tracker, Outmuscle. My opponent played a 2/2 on turn 2 and a 3/2 on turn 3. I almost auto-piloted and slammed Outmuscle targeting my 2/3 and his 3/2, but I slowed down and thought "how screwed am I if he untaps and plays that stupid dragon"? I decided the answer was "pretty screwed", so I went with a different line - I played Halberd and attached it to Acolyte, then attacked with the 4/4 and the 2/2. I didn't have a pump spell, so my opponent could have traded his two creatures for my 4/4, stranding me with a nearly useless Halberd and a pretty weak board. I guess he might have feared one though, because he ended up going with the mild block of trading 2/2s and taking 4, which worked out fantastic for me. I played the Tracker and passed. Sure enough, he untapped and played the Dragon and stole my Innkeeper. Thanks to me being patient with Outmuscle, I was able to kill it and charge in confidently. I pressed my advantage and won the game a few turns after that.
6-2-3 (7-4 equivalent)
Historically, I am pretty bad at Pro Tour limited. I have only ever gone 3-0 once before this, at PT Atlanta in 2016 (the UR Eldrazi PT). Even then, I followed that up with a big fat 0-3 in the draft on day 2. Here I am with my second ever PT draft 3-0, a respectable 4-2 in draft, and I am absolutely thrilled.
day 2 standard
Round 12
My opponent was playing a stock-ish Sultai Oko deck, except it had one copy each of Casualties of War and Liliana, Dreadhorde General main deck. I lost the first game because I was unable to find a Rider for Liliana, which eventually went ultimate, and was followed up by Casualties to just leave me without a single permanent in play.
Something curious happened in while we were shuffling for game 2 though - my opponent was pile shuffling into 8 piles (which is fine by itself, you're allowed to do it once), but in the middle of the shuffle, he stopped, took a card he just put into one of the piles and replaced it with one from his sideboard without ever looking at the front of the card. I could have been mistaken, but I don't think I was. I called a judge and stepped away from the table to explain what I saw.
What resulted was an 8-9 minute judge call involving two different judges trying to figure out what happened, without tipping my opponent off to the fact that I suspected he might be cheating. After the call, I was told that everything was fine and that we could keep playing. I guess there's a chance it might have all been in my head? I'll never know.
What I do know is that I cast Duress on turn 1 and my opponent's one copy of Casualties of War was there. That could certainly be a coincidence, but it sure did feel really bad. I bricked off on finding a second black source and died rapidly to Nissa with two uncastable Riders in my hand.
6-3-3 (7-5 equivalent)
I found both of the judges after the call and asked them what was going on, and the main judge (the one I initially spoke with) said that although they looked at my opponent's cards and couldn't find any obvious evidence of cheating or marked cards, they weren't as thorough as they could have been - which I suppose I understand, since all of this was done through a translator while trying not to tip my opponent off that I suspected he could be cheating. Unsatisfying resolution, but I guess I at least appreciated the effort.
I also found Matt Sperling and ran the situation by him, since he posts a lot of videos and information about how to be more vigilant about opponents you think might be cheating. He agreed that there were only two (well, three) possibilities - I didn't actually see what I thought I saw (which means that I'm wrong and just paranoid), my opponent was doing something completely irrational that serves no purpose strategic or otherwise, or his cards were marked and he was probably cheating. I suppose I'll never know.
Round 13
My opponent this round was playing a stock-looking Simic Oko deck. I honestly don't remember much about these games, just that we split the first two games and that I was ahead in game 3 when time was called. It once again looked like I was going to win on about turn 7-9 of extra turns, but couldn't quite close - at which point my opponent conceded. Manuel, thank you very much - I really appreciate your sportsmanship.
7-3-3 (8-5 equivalent)
Round 14
My opponent this round was another stock-looking Simic Oko deck. I was fairly ahead for most of game 1, but it was a long affair and my opponent never gave up, which made it hard for me to close. I did eventually win, but the game took something like 30 minutes. I thought that I was a favorite to win the match 1-0-1 again if I could just stay alive in game 2, which was looking more and more likely since my opponent mulliganed to 5, but I lost a quick game in which my opponent had two quick threats backed up with two Disdainful Strokes for my two attempts to stabilize the board with Massacre Girl.
We got to play a nice chunk of turns for game 3, and my opponent was missing a color for the first few turns, so I pulled ahead. Not far enough ahead that I could win the game though, so we were going to end up drawing.
It was at this point that my opponent called a judge and stepped away from the table for a lengthy amount of time. I had no idea what they could be talking about, and I was hoping that it wasn't some kind of post-hoc accusation of me trying to stall, so I was preparing for the worst. It ended up just being a long discussion about how to properly prize split & discuss concessions without breaking the rules though, which made the length of the judge call make more sense to me. As soon as he sat back down, my opponent asked if I'd like to split.
Before I could even answer, a judge pulled me away and made sure I understood everything about what was legal and what wasn't. I understand this process fairly well, so I wanted to clarify to the judge that I didn't want to ask for anything in exchange for the split, I just wanted to clarify what "split" meant - that I interpreted it to mean we add up all the prize money we both win and divide it by two. The judge said it's fine to clarify, so I sat back down and confirmed that's what "split" meant and we agreed to a prize split. After that, my opponent asked for a concession, since he was looking to get to 11 wins to requalify for the next PT. I explained that I was trying to win out to get to the Rivals league, and that I felt as if I was ahead on the board, so I'd either ask for a concession myself or I'd just take the draw. My opponent then conceded, which I didn't really expect but certainly appreciated very much. Raúl, you are a class act and I sincerely hope you make your way back to the PT soon.
8-3-3 (9-5 equivalent)
Round 15
I looked at my opponent's decklist and it was a Jund Korvold sacrifice deck - basically my deck, but with red for Mayhem Devil and Korvold instead of blue for Oko. This was another matchup that I hadn't actually tested before the PT, and even though we had a SB plan for it, it looked like a nightmare.
I fell behind pretty early in game 1, but not so far behind that I didn't have any options - my opponent was way up on cards but couldn't find Mayhem Devil to get the job done. Once he did find a copy, I was pretty close to dead - I tried to engineer a situation where I could sneak in a victory by killing Devil with Murderous Rider after my opponent went fairly low with 2 Midnight Reapers, but I neglected to factor in that he could just sacrifice one to Witch's Oven to stem the bleeding.
I got into a strange situation in this game: my opponent had Mayhem Devil, 2 foods, and 2 Cauldron Familiars in the graveyard. I had two foods myself, and I was a low enough life total that I could just die if I wasn't careful - I think the score was something like my 7 to his 6. My opponent activated two Familiars simultaneously, triggering the Devil twice, at which point I responded by sacrificing one of my foods. That also triggered the Devil, so my life pad went from 6 then up to 9. I did it again, just to be safe, so I went to 8 and then 11. It was at this point that all my opponent's stuff resolved, so I crossed out 11 for me and wrote 9, then crossed out 6 and wrote 8 - I was kind of mentally resolving the Familiar ETBs before the Devil. After all the dust settled though, my opponent declared that the life totals were my 9 to his 6. I already wrote down 8 though, which was a discrepancy.
Immediately I called a judge and stepped away from the table. I explained that there was a life total discrepancy, and then explained all the triggers, and that I believe my opponent missed the two Cauldron Familiar triggers, but that it looked sketchy as hell to mark that he gained 2 life and then immediately scratch it out. I was really concerned that might be cheating - that I'm aware of a trigger that happened, and that I kind of partially resolved it, but then walked it back.
The judge agreed that it's most likely a case of missed triggers, and that I'm not responsible for pointing that trigger out, so I asked if I could change the life total on my pad from 8 back to 6 while we were away from the table and they agreed. I wanted to confirm that I'm not cheating and that I'm not responsible for reminding my opponent of those triggers, and it's OK to just proceed without them ever happening, and that was fine also. The judge wanted to come back and look at the state of the board and confirm that we had the right life totals just to be sure, but that's what happened and we kept playing with the life totals as 9 to 6 and there was no mention of those Familiar triggers. Despite those triggers not being the only ones that were missed in that game, I still lost fairly convincingly.
In game 2, it looked like I might be ahead, since my opponent was low on lands, but he had a trail and any attack I could make on the ground would let him throw away a Familiar only to bring it back and trigger trail, so I couldn't put on a lot of pressure. On top of that, the one trail of my own got destroyed with Assassin's Trophy, so I didn't have a CA engine and I eventually just died once my opponent drew out of being stuck on mana.
8-4-3 (9-6 equivalent)
After this match, my opponent said that I was a really pleasant and sporting player to play against, which made me feel kind of sheepish that my 3 minute judge call was about confirming that I didn't have to remind him of triggers that he missed. Apparently I was lenient enough with all the other triggers that were happening in the game that it stood out to him - I never tried to fight him on sloppy timing for any triggers he had that he did acknowledge. For what it's worth, I enjoyed the match too, even though I lost.
Round 16
I got paired against Dmitry Butakov, who was playing Jeskai Superfriends Fires. We had this matchup in our sideboard guide, but I hadn't played with or against it a single time while we were testing. On top of that, Butakov is an excellent player that I have a lot of respect for, and I'm 0-1 lifetime against him.
His version was based on Fae of Wishes, so I tried as hard as I could to come up with a way to remember his 10 unique sideboard cards while we exchanged decklists so I could write them down. Once we were allowed to take notes, I made it up to 6. Not bad!
The first game was fairly normal, lots of Teferis from him but no Fires. I never really felt ahead, in fact I always felt kind of behind, until the final 2 turns of the game where I ended up with 2 planeswalkers in play and I had exhausted him of all resources. He conceded.
I got to cut a lot of dead cards for game 2. It was another ordinary game where he couldn't find Fires. I again never really felt ahead, but this time, he kind of just unexpectedly conceded from a position where I definitely wasn't convincingly ahead. I suppose he was just tired, and we weren't playing for much since the loser was still probably going to land in the top 180.
9-4-3 (10-6 equivalent)
4-2 draft, 5-2-3 standard
Good for 95th place, $750, and 11 Mythic points. Not bad!
I ended up with 43 Mythic points, all from tabletop. It looks like 8th place in the Rivals cutoff will have at least 52, so I did in fact need to finish at least 12-4 to have a shot, which is practically top 8ing. Kind of a bummer, but it's not the first time I came up short of an extremely lofty goal.
My opponent Raúl from round 14 also finished in the top 180, so our prize split ended up not mattering, which was a relief.
tabletop OP feedback session
I was invited to participate in a feedback session about tabletop organized play, hosted by Ben Drago and Sara Mox, two of the people in charge of Magic OP, specifically on the tabletop side. It was a small roundtable, attended by myself, two players from Spain, three players from Japan, and then Seth Manfield, Mark Jacobson, and Gabriel Nassif. As far as I could tell, every player that showed up had significant PT experience.
It was an interesting session - both Sara and Ben seemed to acknowledge that Wizards' communication over the past year has been pretty bad, and they genuinely wanted some feedback about how the tabletop experience could improve. One of the most cited problems was the lack of information about who gets to play in Player's Tour events - multiple people in attendance had pro club status under the Silver/Gold/Platinum system and thus got a free invite to the first PT of 2020, but didn't know that at all until sitting down for the first draft in Richmond, so they had already made significant effort to play and win PTQs. Call me lucky or lazy, but I was hoping that both my Gold and Rivals near-misses (on both pro points AND mythic points!) would convert into invites to the next year of Player's Tours, and I was at least partially right. Still, I can't imagine what an all-around feel-bad it is to have no invites to anything after years of being on the train, winning a PTQ, and then having that effort completely invalidated. Worse yet, imagine losing in the finals of a PTQ to someone (especially someone who won a Pro Tour just barely a year ago!), only to hear that announcement a couple weeks later.
Some ideas were floated around to try and fix that, such as granting PTQ winners that ended up with a status invite another invite to the next Player's Tour, or possibly having the duplicate invite from the PTQ passed down to the finalist, or granting a year's worth of Player's Tour invites to old pro club members and Rivals near-missers, but they didn't seem all that interested in fixing things from the past, only floating ideas for the future.
I got to vent a bit of my frustrations about having played 35 PTs lifetime, and having to qualify for most of them the hard way. In 2008 I ended up one point short of Level 3, the equivalent of Silver (one invite) after they announced the benefits for that level mid-season. In 2011-2012 I made it to Level 4 (equivalent of Gold lite - no appearance fees, but invites to all the PTs) and they changed the system to Silver-Gold-Platinum mid-season 2012 which left me with no time to try and make it to Gold. I missed Gold again by 2 points in 2013, and was almost left with nothing again until they finally announced Silver level about a month or two before the first PT of the 2013-2014 season. And finally this year - I top 8ed a PT, one of the holy grails of competition, the second one of the season no less, and only got to play one more PT because of it instead of being all set up to make a good run at Gold.
I also learned a lot about what Rivals actually was and kind of lost a lot of interest in it. I was under the impression that Rivals players got invites to the PT Finals as well as the regular PTs, so as to provide the MPL players some consistent competition. But as-is, Rivals is only three Player's Tour invites, 20k in appearance fees, and the option to get into the MPL with a strong performance. If you're like me and you're a lot less interested in the money than you are the consistent high level competition, you can duplicate the Rivals experience by just going 11-4 in a few GPs. I don't have any plans to quit my day job to play Magic or any MPL aspirations, I just really like playing Magic against the best possible competition and the money is kind of just a nice occasional rebate for doing well.
I get that they have to seed Rivals somehow, but the requirements to get into it for this inaugural season were extremely high (I think the lowest finishing Rivals qualifier had 52 points, and it's still possible for them to get bumped by a 56 pointer based on the Arena MC), for not a whole lot of immediate benefit. It is a path to the MPL, but if you're a young professional Magic hopeful, imagine pouring every bit of yourself into the new Player's Tour system only to make it to Rivals and end up with... a 20k base annual salary. You'd need at least that much in additional income, sponsorships or writing gigs or coaching or what have you, to resemble a livable wage, and if you can succeed in that arena, I guarantee that you are smart enough to find a career path that's easier, more stable, and more lucrative. Worse yet, imagine throwing all of yourself into Rivals and coming up short.
I suppose my United States bias is showing and that 20k USD could not only be a livable salary, but a great salary to someone that lives in a different country. But let's be serious, the GP distribution for other regions is so lopsided that it feels like the best shot someone from another country has is by winning three consecutive PTQs. That's not unheard of, but I wouldn't want to bet my potential career on it. As it stands, Rivals still seems like a combination of a pleasant reward for being skilled at your hobby at best if you're not in the MPL and a way to soften the blow of getting relegated if you are.
what's next for me
My next event is GP Oklahoma City. I don't really need to attend for any points or invite reason (since I have a free invite to the first Players Tour of 2020), but Yasmine is from right outside OKC so we're going to take a week vacation and she'll show me around where she's from, and we'll cap it off with a GP. After that, it's back to trying to qualify the hard way. I think the fractional invite system (at least for Series 2) is extremely generous at least, so my plan is to attend every GP in the US until I hit 100% of an invite, which will hopefully be all before Series 2 ends so I can play in all three Player's Tour events in 2020. If nothing else, I really want to play in the one in Washington DC, since I love playing hometown events - nothing beats competitive Magic and sleeping in your own bed.
That said, I'm going to be cautious with competitive Magic, because I don't think I can handle another turbulent transition that rips benefits and opportunities away from me. I don't have a lot of confidence that Wizards will come up with a system that treats me fairly. I had maybe the best year I've ever had in competitive Magic with a PT top 8, another PT cash (well, above the minimum), and insanely consistent GP finishes (five 11-4s and one 12-3), and I still missed a PT and had to win a PTQ to narrowly avoid missing two.
A parting thought I have is that on top of a volatile and subpar competitive system, the fact that every constructed format is riddled with uncertainty makes playing practice games of Magic less satisfying than ever. I didn't play in any major events on the weekend of November 16th, so in theory I had a lot of time that weekend to catch up on all three of the constructed formats I need to play - Standard for OKC, Modern for Austin, and Pioneer for the Player's Tour. As of this report, I feel like most of my effort on these formats will go to waste, since Standard will clearly have at least one card banned, Pioneer is probably several bans short of where it's going to be for the PT, and Modern finally might lose Mox Opal or some other card since the Urza decks look like they're getting too strong again. It's amazing how Magic is the best game I've ever played, and yet Wizards consistently does a fantastic job of making me not want to play it.
props
My opponents Manuel and Raúl for conceding after turns - really awesome gesture.
Tommy for designing the cat food deck. Tommy ended up sneaking in a PTQ win on the weekend before the Standard bans, so I'm thrilled that he didn't break a format for the PT and end up with nothing to show for it.
Wizards for hosting those OP discussions and being receptive to feedback, and for honoring the more generous prize payout.
My sponsor, Dice City Games, and Joel Sadowsky, my DCG teammate for giving me one of those rare matches that make you reevaluate your game.
slops
The city of Richmond - terrible, depressing venue.
Wizards for the past year of lackluster communication, egregious card design, and unreachable competitive goalposts.
Anyone who thinks "Free Palestine" is offensive - anti-zionism is not anti-semitism.
No comments:
Post a Comment