Sacred Torch Showdown Tournament Report *2nd Place* *Punted Finals*

I had long admired Premodern from afar but had never played a real Premodern event until my friend Andy Levine invited me to the Sacred Torch Showdown, a 128-player $6,000 event held in NYC this past Saturday. I spent a week and a half getting in games on Magic Online and talking about the format with Andy, Mike Flores, and Lanny Huang, each of whom was gracious in sharing cards and Premodern wisdom. 

The first thing I noticed about Premodern was that I was very bad at it. The overarching gameplans and individual technical decisions felt unfamiliar despite my familiarity with many of the actual cards. In my first Premodern MTGO league, with Dreadnought, I couldn't intuit how hard I should jam the combo, or if I should first dig for protection, or whether I was equipped to win an attrition battle (play for the long game). It also took me time to learn what the various decks in this format are capable of. Seven or eight MTGO leagues wasn't enough to prepare me for everything out there; in the event itself I faced three or four intricate decks for the first time. 

After Dreadnought didn't feel right to me, I tried a variety of tempo/reactive decks. I thought my general Magic skillset would translate to these decks more than something like Replenish, Oath, Survival, or Enchantress. I do not recommend consciously avoiding the best decks in the format! That's a very bad way to win Magic tournaments. But I wanted to try some fair Magic decks before moving on to the broken stuff.

The first deck I tried was straight UB Tog. I liked its combo matchups but aggro felt hard. I hated Foil in the deck, and didn't love Gush either. These cards make sense in Dreadnought where you are willing to go down cards and lands to win the game ASAP. Psychatog, on the other hand, cannot win the game nearly as early as a Dreadnought. Tog is meant to gain control of the game and then win with a giant Tog turn 7 or later. It wants to keep its lands in play to win counter wars. I cut the Gushes and Foils for Fact or Fictions and other counters (Annul and Circular Logic, though in retrospect maybe Leak would have been better). The deck felt a lot better with FOFs, but I still felt behind against aggro and Landstill seemed like a nightmare the one time I faced it. 

Next I tried Gro-A-Tog (GAT). My initial version had Foils (which I hated, for largely the same reason I hated them in UB Tog), Accumulated Knowledges, no Meddling Mages, no Sleight of Hands, and the ever-controversial Mox Diamond. Noted Mox hater Lanny made a compelling argument against Mox in this deck, and what he said matched my experience. Low land count decks really just can't play Mox Diamond; I tried to make it work by playing more card advantage, but it was too much of an uphill battle. I went from thinking Mox was among the best cards in the format to thinking the only decks that could play multiple Moxen were decks with a very high land count including spell lands to mitigate flood (i.e. Terravore decks). However, without Mox, GAT felt too clunky. And the manabase was shaky in general and atrocious versus mana denial decks. Given something like a third of the format plays Wastelands and/or Ports, this struck me as too significant a downside. Lastly, a fundamental issue with the strategy of playing a quick Dryad and growing it is that Dryad doesn't actually get under the powerful things your opponents are doing: if you play a turn 2 Dryad and your opponent plays a Dreadnought/Survival/Oath/Standstill/Hermit Druid, you have possibly just lost the game. 

I next tried to build Esper Tog from the ground up. I had such a bad experience with City of Brass and Gemstone Mine in GAT that I tried to construct a manabase without them. That doesn't really work, though. A fetchland manabase is too shaky because you have to choose one basic or the other when you fetch. This is obvious to most Premodern players, but I was so used to fetching duals in modern formats that I was counting fetches as a full source of each of their colors--it doesn't work that way. I learned the hard way that to play a 3-color manabase, you need to play the rainbow lands, making it so that a 3-color manabase is functionally a 5-color manabase and you gain essentially nothing by sticking to only three colors. 

I kept thinking about how most decks I tried were losing to Burn, but I never put in the effort to try Burn myself. I told myself: too bad against Dreadnought, too hard to get a leg up in the mirror, too basic. (Obvious cope.)

Likewise, I wasn't winning much against Dreadnought, but didn't feel like learning how to play Dreadnought myself. I claimed I was concerned about beating Gaea's Blessing (or at least I was concerned with the amount of time it would take for me to figure how those games played out where your long game revolves around Brain Freeze and the opponent has multiple Blessings). In Magic it's important to have a plan, and if you sculpt your entire strategy around that plan (in this case, Brain Freezing the opponent on turn 15), you had better be sure it will work. I wasn't sure. (Less obvious than the Burn cope but still likely cope). 

I was low on free time the days prior to the event and I resigned myself to playing something bad. Then a few days before the event Lanny dropped a Youtube video featuring a GAT list with 4 Mages, 2 Togs, 4 Sleights, 2 Dazes and 0 AKs. This looked on paper like it shored up many of the deck's weaknesses. I had found AKs to be very clunky but I was afraid to cut them with Diamonds in the deck because I wanted raw card advantage. Replacing AKs with Sleights made the deck less clunky without having to play Mox, and Sleights fixed the mana by providing cheap card selection. Mage also helped with the mana because the deck plays 13 white sources and only 8 green and black sources, so you want to play as many blue cards as possible, then white cards next, and as few green/black cards as possible. Mage often eats a removal spell/counter, but it's an easy to cast 2-drop and that's one fewer removal they have for your win conditions. And you simply cannot afford to have multiple Dryads/Togs stranded in your hand, which happens often against mana denial decks. I ended up wanting a 9th rainbow source, so I added a single Mox back into the deck. Moxen are horrible in multiples but I think you need the extra rainbow source, and it's great with Gush and Armageddon. The one copy was amazing for me and I could imagine playing two, though your land count becomes sketchy at that point so I would stick with one for now. Lastly, Daze offers another way to reduce clunkiness and compliments the Mages because you can more often come out of the gates with a 2-drop and force your opponent to play into the Daze. 

I was worried about various Terravore matchups, but there aren't many cards you can board against them; I did add a Tsabo's Web at the last minute after realizing I had the sideboard space. I wasn't sure what was the best hate piece against Burn but wanted some help there since that deck is structurally advantaged against GAT's tempo strategy, and punishes the 4 City of Brass. I considered Chill and Sphere of Law. The issue with Chill is that you have a lot of card selection and want to draw into hate that is still relevant later in the game. The issue with Sphere is that it's 4 mana and Goblins has Naturalize. Lanny suggested maxing on Hydroblast and that made sense to me. I played 5 Blasts and no other Red hate. To round out the anti-Red strategy, I boarded a third Tog, which is necessary to stabilize the board and turn the corner before they burn you out, especially given that GAT's other creatures die very easily to Red's burn (and in fact I board most of them out). Psychatog also has the added bonus of being good versus Terravore decks by exiling lands from my graveyard. 

I played the following list: 

6 Island

4 Flooded Strand

1 Plains 

4 Gemstone Mine

4 City of Brass

1 Mox Diamond

4 Sleight of Hand

4 Opt

4 Portent

4 Meddling Mage

4 Quirion Dryad

2 Psychatog

4 Swords to Plowshares

3 Fire/Ice

4 Counterspell

2 Daze

3 Gush

1 Seal of Cleansing

1 Armageddon

Sideboard

2 Duress

4 Hydroblast

1 Blue Elemental Blast

1 Psychatog

2 Engineered Plague

2 Ray of Revelation

1 Seal of Cleansing

1 Armageddon 

1 Tsabo's Web

As for the tournament itself, I can't remember a lot of the specifics except for my mistakes, which I always remember, so I'll dwell on those as usual. Given that I don't play much paper Magic, one of the goals I set for myself was to not forget any Portent triggers. 

Round 1 vs. Tinker Fling 

This was a matchup I had never faced before. GAT seems favored due to the usual dynamic of pressure+disruption being good against combo. I failed to realize I was supposed to bring in Engineered Plague for Devourer. I probably threw away game 2 by not realizing my opponent could play a Sol land and go off; I went shields-down when I didn't need to. 

Game 3 was really close. I had an early Dryad that got Pyroclasmed. I Maged a Devourer since it seemed my opponent was trying to get to 7 mana, and then drew another Mage and named Tinker. By doing so I exposed myself to Pyroclasm, but the opponent had more copies of Tinker in his deck, so it was clear to name the more plentiful card that would kill me on the spot. My opponent had two Tangle Wires to slow me down and two Defense Grids to shut off my counters, but fortunately I dodged his two remaining Pyroclasms as the Mages chipped in, eventually dealing lethal. 

I forgot to draw off Portent one time. 

1-0

Round 2 vs. Landstill

This is probably a tough matchup. They have inevitability with Decree, so you can't play draw-go. Therefore you have to keep pressuring them, but that's difficult against all their interaction, especially when you're on the draw. 

Game 1 I failed to mount enough pressure and eventually couldn't break through a Decree. I made an embarrassing mistake where I thought I floated 2 mana off Gush and planned my whole turn around casting an Armageddon, but actually only floated 1 (having forgotten I cast a cantrip earlier in the turn) and Time Walked myself with only 3 mana available. 

Game 2 (I think?) I went turn 1 Dryad and was able to leverage it to victory. I believe my opponent ultimately dealt with it but it kept them off-balance so I could resolve a Mage with counter backup, or something along those lines. 

Game 3 featured an absurd moment. We were low on time and trying to play fast. I kept running out pressure as best I could to keep them off-balance. At one point I cast a Mage and somehow didn't name anything. It wasn't until I drew a second Mage two turns later that I realized. I asked my opponent and she too thought I hadn't named a card with Mage. I was resigned to treating it as a Grizzly Bear for the rest of the game. But my opponent called a judge, and (after giving me a warning) the judge ruled that I could now name a card!? Apparently, the ruling is clear-cut, but it felt unfair (to my opponent). I suppose the logic is that my opponent is required to remind me to name something, and she failed to do so? In any case, I looked at my opponent's graveyard, saw she hadn't cast a FOF yet, and recognized that FOF would break open this game, which to that point had been a war of attrition. I named FOF and, of course, my opponent drew FOF a turn or two later. My Mages barely got over the finish line in a game I likely lose if I don't get to name something with my Mage... 

2-0

Round 3 vs. medvedev Burn 

I faced my old friend Joe, whom I hadn't seen in 11 years. I don't remember too many specifics other than that I felt less under the gun against this creature-light version of the deck. One game I was able to close out quickly because Joe cast two Flame Rifts. I won in three games. 

3-0

Round 4 vs. Burn 

This time my opponent was playing a more traditional Burn list with more creatures. I noticed my opponent was using a "Pro Tour 2005" deckbox, so I asked him if he played in one of the PTs back then. He said yes, Philly '05. I remember that event very well as I played a Junior Super Series side event and caught some of the action in the feature match area. I've also read Gadiel Szleifer's winning tournament report several times. I was sad to learn my opponent remembered nothing from the event, not even the deck he played! I again don't remember many details about our match but I managed to win in two games. 

I forgot another Portent trigger but remembered later on in the opponent's same turn and he let me take the card. My forgetting-Portent counter was now at two. Fortunately the counter wouldn't go up for the rest of the event, but I would still get burned by this card later.

4-0

Round 5 vs. Merfolk Stiflenought 

Like every other round before the top 8, I didn't know what I was up against. I was on the play and after my opponent went Island + Portent, I played Mage naming Dreadnought. My opponent untapped and cast Waterfront Bouncer, revealing he was on Merfolk, and I felt silly about my Mage name. I cast another Mage on Lord of Atlantis. A turn or two later, my opponent bounced my first Mage and cast Dreadnought + Stifle! Then he later bounced my second Mage and cast a Lord of Atlantis! I hadn't seen Merfolk Dreadnought before, but I realized I had named correctly with my Mages after all. The game took forever due to the opponent's Winter Orb, Looter, and Waterfront Bouncer + Squee, but I was able to attack my opponent to low enough life to force him to keep bouncing my Mages every turn, taxing his mana under the Orb. I barely got over the finish line around turn 20. 

We had limited time for game 2 and I won the match 1-0, though I seemed well ahead by the time game 2 ended. Having won game 1 and there being so little time remaining, I didn't have to take any aggressive lines and was able to control the game until the round ended. 

5-0

I double-drew into top 8. During this time I caught up with Ty Thomason, my teammate for Pro Tour Valencia 2014 whom I hadn't seen since! 

5-0-2

Quarterfinals vs. Angry Hermit 

I had never played against this deck before (unless you count Extended FNM in 2003). Game 1 I had the play due to being the higher seed and cast an end step Opt. My opponent responded with a Worldly Tutor for Dreadnought. I untapped and cast Mage, naming Dreadnought. Then the next turn I Meddling Maged a Hermit Druid. I was stuck on a City and a Mine which was now down to one counter, but I had nullified basically my opponent's entire deck. Eventually I found a third land and cast yet another Mage. Being unfamiliar with the matchup, I wasn't sure what to name, and I had a bunch of removal in hand for a Hermit, so I named Dreadnought for a second time. I probably should have named Shallow Grave or Reanimate. Still, double Mage seems almost impossible for them to beat provided I have any other interaction, and I had plenty of it. 

Game 2 I kept a one-land plus Mox hand OTD that had a Portent to dig for more lands. My hand also had 2 Meddling Mage and a Counterspell. I cast Portent turn 1 and saw an Island, a cantrip, and another Counterspell. I considered shuffling because I really wanted more lands, but I kept, hoping a couple of Mages and Counterspells would be enough to lock my opponent out. I put the Counterspell third from the top because I already had a Counterspell and didn't want to expose the second to a Therapy (or let my opponent see it with a Duress). On my opponent's turn 2, he cast Duress, taking Counterspell, then cast a Hermit off a Lotus Petal. I untapped and played Mox Diamond, discarding my second and only other land, and cast Mage. I could either name Krosan Reclamation, which would beat a hand without a reanimation spell but lose to a reanimation spell, or name a reanimation spell. I had a Mage in hand and Counterspell on top of my library, so I plausibly needed to survive only one turn before I could lock out the opponent or at least temporarily stop him from being able to go off. And if he used the Krosan Reclamation on his next turn, I could win the following turn with either the second Mage (which the opponent knew about and would have to Therapy) or the Counterspell on top of my library (which he did not know about). Essentially, I thought I could beat Krosan Reclamation, so I decided to name a reanimation spell. The opponent had only two lands and two cards in hand, so I named Reanimate with Mage, on the basis that he'd need another land to cast Shallow Grave (since he would also need to spend a mana to activate the Hermit).  

Was this correct? I don't know, as I had never played the matchup before, but it worked out. My opponent used Hermit, then flashed back Therapy to take my Mage, then shuffled Shallow Grave and Hermit into his library with Krosan Reclamation, and passed the turn. I drew the Counterspell that I had seen with my turn 1 Portent, which locked the game up because he had no way to Therapy it out of my hand without putting Druid on top of his graveyard. I countered the Shallow Grave and was off to the semis.

Before the semis the top 4 split the remaining prize, which came out to $1,200 each. 

Semifinals vs. Stasis

My semis opponent was on Stasis, another new experience for me. I again had the play game 1 as the higher seed. My opponent mulliganed and I and had a great hand, which I believe was turn 1 cantrip, turn 2 Dryad, turn 3 Mage, with Daze backup. My opponent just went "Island, go" the first two turns. On turn 3 I cast Mage and it resolved [I believe I did not have to use my Daze to force it through]. I punted the game by naming Chain of Vapor. I knew to name either Chain of Vapor or Stasis. In theory the opponent could Chain the Mage and then cast Stasis down the road, but that would require him having both cards. Without understanding the full capability of the Stasis deck, I thought the opponent was likely too far away from being able to set up the lock on his next turn. And I can't recall the full contents of my hand, but I think it had a Counterspell to stop a Stasis if the opponent cast it later. On that basis I named Chain, but on his turn 3 my opponent went Forsaken City + Stasis and I was soft-locked from there. 

Game 2 I don't remember well but my opponent never came close to setting up a lock.

Game 3 was wild. We were under a Stasis for many turns. I discarded around ten cards to hand size. At one point I discarded a Ray of Revelation to hand size and went for it on the opponent's upkeep, thinking the situation wasn't getting any better. The opponent Thwarted [I think] and I thought I probably couldn't win anymore. My opponent went on Gushing and untapping multiple Forsaken City while I sat there either playing a land and passing or discarding to hand size. I figured my only chance was to never spend my mana until I could build up enough lands in play to win a counter war over a Disenchant effect. That included the 2 Daze I had been holding for a long time. Eventually, on turn 25 or so, I had accumulated five untapped mana including a rainbow source. In my hand I had a Gemstone Mine (still with a land drop to make), a Seal of Cleaning, a Counterspell, 2 Daze, and some threats. I also had a Ray of Revelation in my graveyard. My opponent had five lands untapped. I figured now was my best shot to resolve a Disenchant, as I had two of them (and my opponent didn't know about the extra rainbow source in my hand to flashback the Ray) plus counter backup, and I could cast all of them while still holding up mana for a Daze from my opponent.

I cast Seal of Cleaning. Opponent Counterspelled. I Counterspelled his Counterspell. He Arcane Denialed my Counterspell. I Dazed his Counterspell. He paid, going down to zero untapped mana. I Dazed his Counterspell again. Seal resolved! (Also Arcane Denial resolved.) I didn't even have to use the Ray in my graveyard. I played my Gemstone Mine and passed. On the opponent's end step, I flashbacked the Ray to remove the Stasis (rather than activate the Seal). I figured it was better to keep a free Disenchant in play for a later Stasis. The Ray resolved and I got to untap. I deployed a Dryad, a Mage (which got countered), and then lastly a Tog, which represented lethal on the following turn.

My opponent untapped and cast a bunch of low-impact artifacts in Powder Keg, Black Vise, and Claws of Gix. Presumably those were all bait for me to crack my Seal in response to his next play, a Chain of Vapor on the Seal. I let that happen. My opponent then cast Stasis, going down to 3 untapped lands and one card in hand. 

I took my turn (and did not untap). By casting an Opt from my hand, my Tog and Dryad were exactly[?] lethal even through the Claws of Gix. The question was whether to play around Chain of Vapor. My opponent had only cast one Chain the entire game (on his prior turn) and had seen a lot of cards, but had just one card left in hand. I figured this situation probably isn't getting much better for me. Yes, I can re-cast Seal to blow up the Stasis, but that requires playing two cards out my hand, taking me 3 points off lethal [if memory serves]. Then I would give my opponent more time to draw into a Chain, plus he had the Keg that would begin ticking up. I thought it was worth going all-in, and so I did. My opponent didn't have the Chain and I had won a game I thought was lost 15 turns ago. 

Finals vs. Burn

I punted game 3 and arguably game 1 of this match. 

Game 1 I mulliganed into a hand with Mine and City as the only lands and was behind from the get-go. I cast a cantrip on turn 1, and my opponent matched that with a Lavamancer off of a Mountain. On my turn 2 I cast a Dryad, which was exposed to the Lavamancer if my opponent had fetch land plus 1 mana spell, but I had no choice but to get a clock down. On my opponent's turn 2 he cast Incinerate targeting me. This seemed like a wild play and made me think the opponent was all in on burning me out. On my next turn I cast a Swords on the Lavamancer to pump the Dryad to a 2/2. The critical decision was on my opponent's turn 3. I had a 2/2 Dryad with a Counterspell, Swords, and Sleight in hand. My lands were just a City and two Mines, each with 2 Mining Counters. One of my Mines was tapped and I had 2 mana open. I was at 14 and my opponent cast a Volcanic Hammer targeting me. I had to decide whether to use my Counterspell.

Considerations: 

(1) If I counter, my opponent can Bolt Dryad in response and I lose my entire clock; 

(2) I'd have to tap City of Brass to counter, so I'd only be saving 2 life;

(3) I felt I was behind (i.e. I need to take risks); 

(4) I was constrained on mana; 

(5) I wanted to increase my clock; and 

(6) my opponent clearly didn't have any creatures, nor did he have any other sorceries (otherwise he would have cast one over the Incinerate on turn 2; he clearly had just drawn the Hammer). This made me worried that if I didn't use Counterspell now, my opponent could take advantage of me being mana constrained by not casting anything into my open two mana until he had built up enough burn to cast a flurry all in one turn cycle.

Considerations (3) through (6) point towards casting the Counterspell now, but if consideration (1) came to fruition I'd be in very rough shape. I thought about the decision for awhile and unfortunately this led to consideration (7): by thinking so long I was telegraphing to my opponent that I was holding a Counterspell (or Blast), and since I wasn't certain what to do I used this as the tiebreaker to cast the Counterspell. 

He had the Bolt for my Dryad to punish me for spending the Counterspell and my entire clock was gone. I never had a chance after that. 

Unclear if the game was winnable if I held the Counterspell. The fact I had a Swords to remove my own Dryad for life later on in the game was perhaps enough reason to go all-in on protecting my Dryad. But, again, I was so constrained on mana that my opponent could plausibly just never cast anything good into Counterspell mana for the rest of the game until it was time to unleash a flurry of burn spells all at once. 

Game 2 I was low on resources with a Mox Diamond hand on the play, but it had two Togs. The first one got Pyroblasted while the second one stuck, and then I kept drawing Gushes off the top for the win. I set up a lethal Armageddon when my opponent was sitting on two Cursed Scrolls. 

Game 3 I tried to limit the damage early but had two Cities of Brass and two Gemstone Mines as my lands. My opponent had turn 1 Lavamancer, which I took a hit from rather than Swords because I had Fire in my hand and my opponent's deck had a lot of creatures. He Wastelanded the first City and cast another Lavamancer, forcing me to Swords immediately. I Hydroblasted the second Lavamancer. 

With no more creatures on the opponent's side to worry about, the game turned into a race against burn spells. I stuck a Dryad and a Psychatog and, after taking some burn to the face, I was at 10 life. In my hand I had lands, Sleight, Fire/Ice, and Seal of Cleansing. My opponent was at 19 life and had a Seal of Fire, 3 Mountains, and a Barbarian Ring (which would have Threshold if he had literally anything that went to the graveyard, so I assumed it would be turned on). He had two cards in hand, which I was pretty sure was some combination of instants and lands. 

I began by Sleighting into a Gush, then Gushed into a Portent. Dryad became a 3/3. With what I had in hand I had exactly lethal--Fire opponent down to 17, cast Portent, Dryad becomes a 5/5, tap both Gemstone Mines to use their final mining counters and put two additional cards in the graveyard, discard my entire hand and remove my entire graveyard to pump Tog to a 12/13, deal 17. 

First, though, I cast Portent on my opponent to determine whether I needed to go for it immediately. If I saw a creature or a land, I could safely forego attacking for lethal and simply win the following turn. Unfortunately, I saw a nightmarish set of cards in Pyroblast, Fireblast, Fireblast. I could have given my opponent the Pyroblast, pumped Tog a bunch now, and tried to win the following turn with Dryad, but if something goes wrong and I don't win the following turn, I very likely lose. Without me having guaranteed lethal next turn (opponent could kill the Dryad), I chose to shuffle, and because my opponent seemed to have solid odds to kill me on his following turn, I decided to go all-in and try to win immediately. If my opponent killed the Dryad, he'd have to use multiple burn spells (something from his hand plus the Seal). And he'd be down to 5 on almost no resources and I'd have a Tog left over to deal the final 5 damage over the next couple of turns.

Except I forgot that he could kill my Tog on his next turn in response to my Portent trigger, leaving me with nothing. And so, my play worked out horribly--when I went for lethal, the opponent used a Fireblast and Seal to kill my Dyad. With the Portent trigger on the stack the following upkeep, and with me having 0 cards in my hand and 1 card in my graveyard, my opponent used Barbarian Ring to kill my Tog. I was left with nothing but a City of Brass. Even though I was ahead on life 10 to 5 and my opponent was also out of spells and almost out of lands, it was almost impossible to kill my opponent before he burned me out, which he did. Congratulations to my opponent, who played well. 

Going all-in on the Tog was a mistake. At a base level I simply didn't realize my Tog would die the next turn. Moreover, my general logic was faulty. Essentially, I figured: if my opponent uses burn to kill my Dryad, those same burn spells are going to kill me soon anyway. If I don't kill my opponent, I'm likely to lose next turn. Plus, my opponent could draw Pyroblast for my Tog later. Therefore, I should go for the win. 

Setting aside that I didn't realize my opponent could kill the Tog with the Portent trigger on the stack, the issue with my logic is that my play only wins in scenarios where my opponent has nothing, i.e. where I am likely to win anyway. In almost all relevant scenarios under which the game is still in question, my opponent has exactly one instant in hand, and my goal should have been to figure out how best to beat that. 

I believe the best play was to shuffle with Portent, then pump Tog not all the way, but just large enough that my opponent is dead to either of my attackers the following turn, even through a blocker. This forces the opponent to either (1) kill my Dryad now and go down a bunch of resources with me still having a Tog in play (and cards in hand to protect it), or more likely (2) take the damage and try to topdeck a burn spell or Pyroblast. Because my opponent ended up drawing a Jackal Pup the following turn, I believe that if I had made the right play, I would have won the tournament. 

Concluding Thoughts

I really liked my version of GAT. I poo-pooed the deck earlier in this article, describing two fundamental problems I noticed in my testing:

1. The mana is bad, especially against mana denial decks. This is still the case, but the 1 Mox Diamond helps a bit, and the 4 Sleights help a bit more. I therefore think this deck is a solid choice if you don't expect a ton of Wastelands and Ports. 

2. The plan of casting an early Dryad and growing it doesn't actually get under the major threats of the format. This is also still the case, but without AKs and with Dazes the curve is sufficiently low enough that I think the deck won't fall too far behind. Meddling Mage helps a ton here too, providing a proactive threat that stops the opponent's scariest card. These changes to the deck give it a more reliable tempo plan. 

And I would note one positive trait of the deck as well, which is that the card quality is very high. It's a 5-color deck and can therefore play the best cards across every color. Its sideboard is potent. On the flipside, there's no way to hate out this deck from the opponent's sideboard. 

It's too bad I punted the finals. I was so mesmerized by the Portent decision and then the Psychatog/Dryad/Fire math that I lost sight of the range of cards my opponent could have that would relevantly affect the outcome of the game. But it was a really challenging match after a lot of challenging rounds, in my first Premodern tournament, so I can't be too upset. Most of the games over the course of the tournament were decided by tight edges and complex decisions. A welcome departure from modern-day Magic, which revolves around cards that snowball until the game is decided in a landslide. Premodern is a deep and challenging format!

Props:

The event organizers and staff for running a fun event 

The participants in the event for being friendly

My friends I saw for the first time in 10+ years

Andy, Mike, and Lanny for helping me out

GAT for being a skill-testing deck

Premodern for being a skill-testing format

Exactly one copy of Mox Diamond

Slops: 

Portent

Thawing Out at Spotlight Series Toronto

 [I wrote this piece in large part to talk about a crazy match I played in the quarterfinals of a Limited Championship Qualifier. You can skip to that part if you'd like.]

Preparation

I first heard about the Toronto Spotlight Series (which I will refer to as a Grand Prix or GP) many months ago and committed to attending on the basis that it was limited and not that far from New York City. As the event drew closer I had some doubts about attending, particularly when the cap on entrants was increased from 1500 to 1800, but I decided to stick to my commitment. At the very least, it would provide some reps for long, grueling live Magic tournaments. I hadn't played one since Pro Tour Aetherdrift almost a full year ago, and I figured it would be good practice in the event I qualify for the Pro Tour again. 

Because I was flying two weeks before the event and two weeks after, I figured I'd mix it up and travel to Toronto by car. Local grinder Jason Qiu offered to drive. Not only did Jason drive the full eight-hour trip up and much of the way back in the middle of the night, but he also made top 8 of the GP! 

I didn't want to admit it to anybody who asked, but my preparation for this event consisted entirely of one RCQ I attended the weekend prior just for practice, 12-15 Arena Bo1 drafts, and building a few pools without actually playing games with them. I had been traveling until the set was already online for a week, so I was well behind when I started preparing. I found that I wasn't making that many gameplay mistakes but was making tons of errors during the draft portion. I therefore decided the most efficient practice was to draft as many times as possible. Thus all the Arena Bo1 drafts, which are very fast to get through. I wouldn't recommend Arena Bo1 (for any format), but since I kept learning things, I kept playing them.

In the RCQ I went undefeated in the swiss with UR Elementals with Sunderflock and then lost in the semifinals with a bad GR draft deck after I took two early Elf cards and got totally cut. I tried several more times to draft a deck outside of the five supported types and never had a good one, so for the GP/Limited Championship Qualifier (LCQ) I resolved to draft one of those five archetypes barring extreme circumstances. I did one Bo3 live draft the day before the GP with some Handshake/Toronto ringers and went 1-2 with a weak Merfolk deck when I maybe should have gone all in on Goblins in my seat but waffled too much. I didn't mind drafting Goblins at all, despite many deeming it the worst of the supported archetypes. Meanwhile, Elves seemed super contested and I was open to abandoning it quickly if I didn't have multiple great payoffs and I felt it was getting cut. 

Friday night I went out for dinner with some friends at a Thai restaurant called Pai which was delicious and fun. 

I hadn't slept much the prior two nights but thanks to the frigid temperature I was fully alert the moment I stepped outside my hotel Friday morning for a coffee run to Tim Hortons. 

[That's in Fahrenheit.]

The Grand Prix

When I sat down for deckbuilding, our area of the convention hall was so cold that the guy sitting across from me asked the judge to move us to a warmer section of the hall, and the judge obliged. I opened a pool with a bomb in Kinbinding and a great rare in Slumbering Giant. I also opened a Champion of the Clachan which I think is just "good," and an Abigail that is a very nice card if you have enough creatures with high power. The rest of my White/artifacts had a couple of Liminal Holds and some cards that asked that I play a lot of cheap creatures (for Convoke) or Kithkin (for Champion, Eclipsed Kithkin,  Kinsbaile Aspirant, and Gathering Stone). Unfortunately, these support cards (the cheap creatures/Kithkin) were quite weak. Outside of White, my colors were shallow, but Black at least provided two Changelings to up my Kithkin count, more sources to cast Abigail, another great rare in Dawnhand Dissident, and two more removal spells. I played 10 Plains and 6 Swamps to go along with my Changeling Wayfinder. 

[The cards with glare are Merrow Reejery, Eclipsed Kikthkin, and Abigail.]

[I don't know how to format these photos properly.]

I regretted one thing about my build, which was playing the Gnarlbark Elm, which should have been Keep Out or 17th land. I played the Elm in part for its synergy with Dissident, but Elm is just too slow and I faced a ton of strong enchantments/wanted an additional piece of cheap interaction. A 17th land would have been nice too, but I felt I needed all my Kithkin/cheap plays and the other cards were too good to cut, plus I had enough sources of each color. But I somehow totally missed the Elm, which I boarded out almost every round. This felt like a mistake I wouldn't have made online...

Overall, the deck was good but not great. It was playing a ton of low-impact ground creatures in a format where games consistently end up in board stalls. Karl Sarap looked at my pool in between rounds and thought I could have built a soupy 4-color deck, but I wasn't sure--the mana for that looked rough and the WB deck already had a pretty good late-game with the Blight synergies/bombs. I also wondered if Kinbinding was still a bomb if you aren't really playing to the board. Karl suggested I board into the 4-color build versus slower matchups, and he might have been right about that, but practically I wouldn't have time to spend five minutes sideboarding in those matchups given the round clock, so I was stuck with my WB build. 

I lost round 1 to Kinbinding and rebounded by winning four rounds straight without dropping a game. In round 6 I got destroyed by Pyrrhic Strike both games. The card was incredible versus my deck and seems like the ~best uncommon in the format. Round 7 was frustrating. Game 1 I was on the play and had a seven-card hand of Swamp, Plains, Abigail, two three-drops, a high-drop, and a removal spell. A two-lander on the play is risky but the upside was too high to mulligan. I didn't draw a third land for many turns. Game 2 I mulliganned on the play to a hand of Kinbinding, Gathering Stone, Liminal Hold, 2 Plains, 2 Swamp. I debated between putting a Swamp and the Stone on the bottom, and eventually decided on the Stone, figuring that if I draw 1-2 spells in the meantime, turn 4 Hold into turn 5 Kinbinding is likely to be enough. But I drew only lands and keeping the Stone would have worked out better (though frankly I would have lost anyway). 

Hitting the bottom 5% of draws in consecutive games to get eliminated didn't feel good, but I was generally fine with how I built and played the deck. My two biggest mistakes (well, at least the ones apparent to me) were that I missed that the Elm should be Keep Out or 17th land, and that I had trouble processing extremely wide boards on both sides of the battlefield in one of the rounds. Online I'm better at this, but in live Magic the boards can get very messy. I did end up winning these games and feel I took the right macro posture, but I surely made lots of technical mistakes (by "technical" I mean micro-decisions to effect my macro gameplan). 

That night I went out with some friends for a beer plus bar food, and that was fun too. I wasn't especially looking forward to the LCQ the next morning, which was going to be around 650 people and would require the top 8 draft to be played in a different location due to convention hall closing. Still, I figured I'd play it given I traveled all the way to Toronto. 

The Limited Championship Qualifier

In the LCQ, I opened a solid Jund deck. Three of my best cards were Goblin cards: Grub's Command, Champion of the Weird, and Taster of Wares. But the rest of my Goblins were very weak aside from the Changelings and Gristle Gluttons. Meanwhile, my Green cards were strong. It therefore made good sense to register GRb. I made one really silly mistake during deckbuilding, which was that at some point I threw Hovel Hurler in with the rest of my White cards. White was unplayable so I cast it off to the side and didn't even notice the Hurler when building my deck. I finally saw it again during round 5 when I randomly decided to look through my entire sideboard in between games rather than just the usual suspects that I had  pulled to the front of my sideboard. In the last three rounds I boarded in the Hurler. I made other slight sideboarding adjustments every round, mostly based on opponent's creature sizing or whether I was on the play or draw, for example cutting Foraging Wickermaw, Midnight Tilling, or Virulent Emissary for Crossroads Watcher. I played 16 lands again, but this time I'm pretty sure it was correct. 

I lost round 1 again and my deck didn't feel strong in the games. Then in round 2 I was down a game and behind in game 2 and was excited to drop and watch my friends in the GP. But I managed to come back that game and won almost every game after that, finishing 7-1 and making the top 32 cut with the third seed in the 650-person tournament. 

I made several embarrassing mistakes, including twice missing lethal. In round 7 against Isaac Krut, I was so far ahead one game that I spent a ton of mental energy on whether to go for lethal by using my Hurler to give my Moon-Vigil Adherents flying or play around a Protective Response I hadn't seen yet in two games. I ended up going for it; he didn't have it and chumped with a flyer down to 1 life. I sheepishly played another creature post-combat. In another round I missed a different lethal attack with Hurler. In yet another round I had a turn 2 Tam plus Wildvine Pummeler in hand. I had never seen this combo before and straight up missed that I could cast a turn 3 6/5; I realized as soon as I had passed the turn and my opponent had drawn her card. I probably could have tried asking my opponent/a judge for a takeback but I was too embarrassed and just let it go; I cast the 6/5 on turn 4 instead and ended up losing the game. 

Round 8 my opponent and I were among the few 6-1 pairings who had to play it out. I had good draws and won quickly. I was 7-1 and would be on the play every match in the top 8 draft. It was 7pm when I won my eighth round. Unfortunately, the top 8 draft would not start for another three hours. 

Because the convention hall was closing, Face to Face Games required everyone in the top 32 to taxi to their store 30 minutes away, where the drafts would take place. They tried to make it up to us by ordering enough sushi for the entire top 32. I appreciated the gesture, but many of us had travel plans that evening and couldn't wait another several hours to finish. 

The Top 8 Draft

The draft wasn't very interesting. I was passed to by Pro Tour mainstay Matthew Sikkink-Johnson and was passing to Pro Tour top 8 competitor Mingyang Chen. I opened a Sygg p1p1 and then got passed a Wandervine Trapper as the best card in the pack. There was never a reason to deviate from Merfolk, especially not after getting a Wandervine Farewell fifth or sixth pick (can't remember which). I was feeling great after pack 1. I was firmly in Merfolk, which felt wide open from the right. And I hadn't passed any to the left, so I expected a great pack 2. Unfortunately pack 2 was extremely dry. I'm not sure if someone to my left ended up in Merfolk somehow or if no good Merfolk cards were opened. Pack 3 Merfolk was wide open again. The issue was that pack 2 was so dry that I was short on 2-drops and had to take them aggressively in pack 3. I ended up having to pass two Skyswimmers in pack 3, first for a Silvergill Mentor when I was short on 2-drops, and then for a Disruptor of Currents. I ended up getting more 2-drops as pack 3 progressed and ironically the deck ended up two Skyswimmers short of greatness. I simply had too many small creatures and not enough ways close the game. I knew I'd have trouble winning through a clogged board so I tried wherever possible to take cards that pushed damage, but the pickings were slim. I don't regret any of my picks, though. Overall I thought my deck was good given the quality of the pod. 

The Crazy Match

In the quarterfinals I played one of the craziest matches ever against Maksym Gryn on a strong Elementals deck. This was a nightmare matchup for my deck; he had a ton of 1/3s to block and cheap interaction including Boulder Dash. And he went way over the top of what I was doing with cards like Shinestriker and double Twinflame Traveler. 

Game 1

I felt like I stole game 1. I came out with an aggressive draw but wasn't able to cross the finish line before the board stalled; all I could do was push damage as much as possible so that I could make my opponent scared to attack me for fear of dying on the crackback, and to set up a win if I could topdeck a Glamermite to surprise him by adding two more attackers than he had blockers (he had been attacking with just enough creatures to always have an extra blocker than I had an attacker, plus what I presumed was a removal spell in hand). I got him down to 1 life, and eventually I drew the Glamermite and set up a win through his blockers plus removal in hand. On the turn I drew the Glamermite, flashing it in end of turn wouldn't have been enough if he had removal (which it felt like he did), so I waited another turn or two to have exactly enough creatures in play to win through a removal spell. 

Game 2

Being up a game was nice but I felt like this was going to be a hard match to win. Indeed, in game 2 the board stalled quickly. I had gained a ton of life and was up to 40 at one point via Prideful Feastling and Wandervine Preacher plus Trapper, so it was going to take him a long time to kill me, but he was accruing way too much extra value with Shinestriker, Twinflame Traveler, Ashling, and two Flaring Cinders. At some point it became clear the only way I was going to win was through decking my opponent.

Eventually I had drawn Disruptor of Currents and Liminal Hold and saw a line to win: cast the Hold on Shinestriker, and then bounce my own Hold with Disruptor, which would double trigger the Shinestriker due to the Twinflame Traveler in play. With three colors in play, my opponent would draw 6 cards. But he still had more cards than that in deck, so I had to hold on for as long as possible without him realizing what I was up to. On my final turn he untapped, drew down to six cards, and then rummaged with Ashling down to five cards(!). When he attacked for lethal I went for my play, bouncing my Hold and putting two Shinestriker triggers on the stack. The first trigger resolved. My heart sank when the opponent cast a Swat Away he had drawn off those first 3 cards, which targeted his own permanent to not deck from the second Shinestriker trigger. He dealt lethal with 0 cards in his library.

Game 3

In game 3 the board again stalled early and I thought I didn't have a shot. This time I figured my opponent would guard against decking after seeing what happened in game 2. Moreover I didn't gain as much life as in game 2 and also hadn't dealt that much damage, only getting my opponent to 15 before the board stalled. Outside of decking my opponent, which seemed difficult given he was ready for it this time, the only other win condition I could think of was Sygg.

Notably, I had deployed some small creatures early and provided my opponent with some juicy Boulder Dash targets. He didn't cast it, so I assumed he didn't have it. Then there were a couple of turns in the midgame where I had Shieldbearer activation up, which is an important fact I'll get to later. I then drew the Sygg.

By this point, the opponent had three answers to Sygg left in his deck (which I knew the full contents of after game 2): Tweeze, Feed the Flames, and Boulder Dash. I had read my opponent for not having Boulder Dash earlier in the game. But he could have had Tweeze or Feed the Flames. Or he could have recently drawn the Boulder Dash and not been able to cast it because of Shieldbearer. My opponent had a couple of cards in hand, which could have been lands to hold for his Flaring Cinder or Ashling. I cast Sygg and passed with a Shieldbearer activation up and Rimekin Recluse in hand. My opponent didn't make a play and passed back and I was able to flip Sygg and give protection to my Encumbered Reejery (this meant my opponent didn't (yet) have Tweeze or Feed the Flames). I drew for the turn Gallant Fowlknight and had a decision that would ultimately decide the match.

I had a total of 7 lands in play, 6 left over after flipping Sygg. I could cast the Fowlknight, push two extra damage and further develop my board. But I'd not have the Shieldbearer activation up anymore. I decided to go for it under the following logic: (1) Shieldbearer activation guards against Boulder Dash, but not Tweeze or Feed the Flames; (2) I still wanted to develop my board and didn't know if I'd be able to afford to leave up Shieldbearer each turn for several more turns; and (3) it felt like my opponent didn't have Boulder Dash, or at least didn't have it a few turns ago. 

So I cast the Fowlknight and attacked my opponent for 7 (Sygg + Encumbered Reejery + the trigger from the Fowlknight), down to 8. My opponent untapped and cast Boulder Dash on my Sygg, and now my route to victory was gone. I guess he must have drawn the Boulder Dash while I had Shieldbearer activation up during the last couple of turns (he confirmed after the match he didn't topdeck it that turn). 

Looking back on this play, I think what I did was a mistake. My opponent clearly didn't have the Tweeze or Feed the Flames as he let me untap with my Sygg. I also thought he didn't have the Boulder Dash since he didn't cast it a few turns earlier. Moreover, my opponent had several rummage effects in play and would be able to rip through his deck if he drew a 4+cmc card to trigger his Flaring Cinders, so I figured I had to go for it and try to win ASAP before he found removal. I also figured putting a 3/4 on board was a relevant play and it would be hard to just not cast spells for the next few turns, since I needed three total attacks with the Sygg to win the game. The issue was, casting the Fowlknight didn't actually increase my clock at all. And while it was a relevant play, it wasn't relevant enough to be worth letting my guard down against Boulder Dash, since at this point my Sygg was by far my best chance of winning. 

Directionally I recognized I was supposed to push my advantage before he found removal, but casting Fowlknight didn't contribute much towards that goal and I misread him for not having Boulder Dash. In my defense it was 16 hours into the tournament at that point and this match itself had already lasted around 80 minutes, but I think the play was wrong. 

Despite all of this, I somehow still got him down to zero cards in library by trying to remove all his threats. And I did have the same play available to me as in game 2: Hold on Shinestriker, bounce Hold with Disruptor. However, this time my opponent had a Tam in play, so I was forced to bounce that first. (Also, this time I think he would have been ready with an instant speed removal spell on his Shinestriker after seeing how I tried to win game 2.) So I had no choice but to try to remove his clock before he decked out, but he killed me with zero cards in library for the second game in a row. 

The match had taken 90 minutes and it was now 1 a.m. We had to leave immediately to begin the car ride home in time for work the next morning. On the ride home, in a delirious state, I ran the Sygg/Shieldbearer play through my head for several hours until I finally passed out. 

Conclusions

Coming into Toronto, I basically hadn't won anything in over a year. Part of that is because I haven't been playing many tournaments, but in those I did play, I repeatedly made mistakes that directly cost me the match. That is to say, I'd been making mistakes and getting punished for them. Had I been making more mistakes, or was I just getting more punished? When I qualified for the Arena Championship last year, for example, I made several bad mistakes but won anyway. So I'm not sure. But it certainly didn't feel good to punt off several tournaments in a row. 

Coming out of Toronto, I still haven't won anything in over a year. But even though I made some technical mistakes, I thought I played every game well from a macro standpoint. I think I always took the correct strategic posture, valued the correct resources, and understood how the game was going to play out. I can't expect to play every game perfectly, particularly in a 16-hour tournament, but overall I was more content with my play than I've been in a long time. 

Lastly, shoutout to the NYC crew, Team Handshake, and various players adjacent to those groups I've met the past few years who were good company throughout the weekend. I've played Magic for many years mostly as an online player, so I never had a large crew of live Magic friends to hang out with during events. This event was way more fun than usual because it seemed everywhere I looked there was someone to talk to. I also made friends with my GP round 1 opponent after he crushed me with Kinbinding. 

The Sygg/Shieldbearer play will continue to haunt me, but only until my next big misplay...

Is Anybody in Charge of the Arena Qualifier Weekends?

The Arena Qualifier Weekends are known for their convenience, letting you play important matches on demand. They are known for feeding the Arena Championship, with its $250,000 prize pool. Most of all, they are known for being the most consistently dysfunctional tournaments that have existed in the 32-year history of Magic: the Gathering. 

Here is a list of incidents that have affected the Qualifier Weekends in just the past six months:

• May Qualifier: Players are wrongly afforded one loss to spare instead of two. Many players are eliminated prematurely.
• June Qualifier: Despite the official Arena schedule and multiple announcements pages listing the Qualifier as Historic for months, the tournament goes live on Arena as Pioneer. The Arena Team eventually corrects the error after players complain they had spent weeks testing Historic. 
• July Qualifier: Players are afforded 36 hours to finish their Day 1 matches, and then another 36 hours to finish their Day 2 matches, instead of the 10 hours per day as is custom. 
• September Qualifier: A few months prior, the Arena Team realized they had significantly undershot the number of qualifications per month and changed the Day 2 threshold from 6 wins to 4 in order to qualify more people for the Arena Championship. However, they let participants continue to play until their 6th win anyway, resulting in extremely foreseeable collusion. Possibly having become aware of this issue, the Arena Team altered Day 2 of the August Qualifier so that it cuts players off after their 4th win. For September, the Day 2 structure inexplicably reverts to the 6-win format and has remained that way since. 
• October Qualifier: Players who got 4 or 5 wins in the prior month's Qualifier are incorrectly invited directly to Day 2 in the October Qualifier. Somehow, 6-win players are not invited. 
• November Qualifier: Attempting to account for Daylight Savings, the Arena Team accidentally alters the two-hour entry window times in the wrong direction. Instead of 6-8am PST, entry is moved to 4-6am PST. As a result many players who had made Day 2 are unable to participate. 
• November Qualifier: Day 1 participation tokens are not handed out to many players who are eligible to play in the Qualifier. To "fix" this issue, the Arena Team grants all of these people direct access to Day 2, despite a small fraction of Day 1 participants making Day 2 (under typical circumstances). 

The above list of incidents is not comprehensive. I'm sure there are many more problems of which I am not aware. The above list also does not account for long-term issues like the Sideboard Bug, which prevents players from sideboarding if they get disconnected at any point during a match (for which, even if it prevents you from sideboarding in your match for Day 2, the Arena Team will award you 4000 gems). It does not include people playing on multiple accounts despite this being strictly forbidden by the Arena Code of Conduct. 

Though I refer above to an "Arena Team," it's unclear whether an Arena Team actually exists. It often seems like there is no planning or oversight of these qualifiers whatsoever. Which begs the question: Who is in charge of this? Is anybody in charge of this? 

What Went Wrong at Pro Tour Aetherdrift

One strange thing about important Magic tournaments is that you spend far more time preparing for them than you do actually playing in them. And then you spend even more time reflecting on them after they’re over. Compared to the months spent anticipating and reflecting on the event, Magic tournaments go by in a flash: they compress all the tough decisions, lucky breaks, and emotional highs and lows into one fateful weekend.

It’s now been over five months since I participated in Pro Tour Aetherdrift. I haven’t played a significant tournament since then, and the event went poorly, so it’s easy to stew over the experience despite so much time having passed. My 7-9 record was technically my worst Pro Tour record in six PT-level events lifetime. This isn’t statistically anomalous: I had a 56% lifetime PT winrate entering the event and won 44% of my matches in the event, well within a normal range of likely outcomes. What made it doubly frustrating though was that (1) I think I’m better at Magic now than I was when I played in these past events and (2) this was my first time on a very strong, organized testing team.

In particular, my constructed rounds were disastrous. I went 4-2 in Aetherdrift draft and 3-7 in Standard playing Jeskai Convoke. I’ll focus here on constructed since that’s where things went awry.

For reference, I played this list: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/6937676#paper

Below are various factors that may have contributed to my lack of success.

1.    Fancy Deck Choice Syndrome

I qualified for Pro Tour Aetherdrift by playing Gruul Mice at Arena Championship 7. On the whole, I was lucky in that event and also played well. I felt in control of my decision-making, and the deck fit my strengths as a player: lots of technical sequencing decisions, risk-assessment, making my opponent’s cards line up poorly.

The Pro Tour was only two months after the Arena Championship and Gruul Mice remained a tier one deck. The lists had barely changed at all from the Arena Championship, and they incorporated zero new Aetherdrift cards. Gruul Mice was on every player’s radar. It therefore seemed difficult to get a leg up on the competition by running back the same deck. Despite this, Gruul was so solid and hard to exploit that if I had tested by myself, it’s highly plausible I would have just played Gruul and focused on limited.

But I wasn’t testing by myself. Rather, I was fortunate to work with Team Handshake for the event. In this context the notion of playing Gruul seemed especially bad: I’d be giving up the advantage of working with a top team if I simply defaulted to the stock deck I would have played anyway. With that said, multiple times later in the testing process I outwardly acknowledged that I’d probably be maximizing my win percentage if I locked in Gruul and focused on drafting, and several teammates agreed with me.

Meanwhile, some of our team (namely Simon Nielsen and Karl Sarap) was high on Jeskai Convoke. I had previously thought the matchup vs Gruul was bad, but our plan of Regal Bunnicorn, Sheltered by Ghosts, and Surge of Salvation seemed to swing the matchup to at least 50/50. Moreover, Domain was supposed to be difficult, but with sideboard counters the matchup seemed fine. We initially thought Esper Pixie was a good matchup but in the last few days of testing we felt the opposite. Towards the very end we added a couple of Wilt-Leaf Lieges to our sideboard, which are a high-variance way to steal the matchup (or alternatively sit in our hand and do basically nothing).

Overall, the matchup spread for Convoke appeared solid—probably about as good as the matchup spread for Gruul. The tiebreaker for me was that Convoke was unexpected and would give me a deck edge. In retrospect, I believe this effect was too small to override my greater confidence in Gruul both in it being a strong deck and in my ability to play it.  

     2.    I Didn’t Have Much Time

I drew the above conclusions—that Convoke is a good deck and with a solid matchup spread—based on relatively few games actually playing the deck. By comparison, I had played hundreds of games with Gruul in the weeks and months leading up to the Pro Tour. I had played a reasonable amount with Boros Convoke—a different Convoke iteration we had been trying—and I had played a bit with similar Convoke decks in past formats. But the Jeskai Convoke list we registered I probably played fewer than 40 total games with before the event. I’m not even sure I was wrong about the aforementioned conclusions, but most of them involved trusting my teammates rather than confirming them myself. Which, to be clear, is fine—the Convoke ringleaders, Simon and Karl, are better and more experienced players than I am, and I certainly trust them—but I didn’t have the level of personal comfort with the deck choice that comes from seeing it winning in my own hands.

I also didn’t have many reps playing the games. I felt comfortable enough playing the deck in testing. I understood the common technical decisions and broader gameplans. (If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have played the deck.) In the tournament itself, I didn’t feel uncomfortable making the decisions, and almost no in-game decisions jumped out as obviously wrong. But I didn’t play the sheer number of games required to master the deck and it's possible I was missing subtle things.

One area where I’m sure I made mistakes was mulliganning. These are in my opinion the most challenging decisions when playing the deck. Jeskai Convoke asks a lot of you: you need three colors of mana AND not too many painlands AND enablers AND payoffs. AND our version added an additional layer of inconsistency because it was playing extra situationally powerful cards like Bunnicorn and Sheltered by Ghosts which range from great to horrible depending on the matchup. Overall, Convoke has a very low floor and a very high ceiling, but you don’t have the luxury of mulliganning every hand without the right elements. You have to take risks: keeping a one-lander that can produce a turn 2 Knight-Errant if you hit a land, for example.  These decisions aren’t easy, but Simon presented a series of mulligan decisions to the rest of the Convoke players in the day prior to deck submission and I felt comfortable with the decisions/thought process and found I was usually reaching the right conclusions, even with the more unintuitive hands. Thus, once again I felt comfortable enough registering the deck. With that said, I did get several mulligan decisions wrong during the event.

The lack of prep time had far-reaching effects beyond not getting reps with Convoke. I also didn’t draft enough (I only got in around ten MTGO single elimination drafts when my goal was at least twenty); I didn’t have time to try Eli Kassis’s UW Control deck that ended up being the best choice in the whole tournament; and most frustratingly, I had built a version of Domain with no Caverns early in testing that I was optimistic on but I ended up not having enough time to put it through its paces (a similar version ended up winning the whole Pro Tour, and Domain was the most winning archetype among the popular decks). I spent a lot of time testing and brainstorming the formats, but with a full-time job I ended up having nowhere near enough time to do everything I wanted.

3.    Other, Non-Magic Factors

I generally perform worse in live tournaments than in online tournaments. When I do poorly in a live tournament with a deck/in a format after winning a lot online, I’m often left scratching my head. There are many possible causes:

• Do my brain synapses not fire in the same way when playing live Magic because I don’t recognize patterns in the same way I do online?
• Am I wasting mental energy tracking triggers and the physical boardstate, particularly challenging with a deck like Convoke that uses a bunch of tokens and dice?
• Am I getting physically exhausted from long days of stressful matches? By Round 16 was physical and mentally exhausted, but I felt relatively energetic up until the last couple rounds of Day 2.
• Am I not shuffling enough? My draws were bad; am I not sufficiently randomizing? Sounds unlikely, but who knows?
• Am I getting cheated? None of my opponents seemed suspicious. But so many cheaters are caught after years of what was presumed to be clean play, which indicates many people are not catching cheats—am I one of those people getting cheated?

I find all of these possibilities unsettling, because each tests abilities I don’t consider core to being a good Magic player. But the last possibility is the most unsettling.

I can fix most or all of these things by simply playing more live tournaments. The problem is, I don’t enjoy live tournaments very much. They require acquiring cards on short notice; they involve expensive travel; they’re exhausting; and most of all, they are a big time commitment in the face of many competing obligations. Going forward, I will try to attend some more live tournaments here and there, both to get more live reps and to hopefully change my mindset such that I start to enjoy attending them more. Traveling with friends is one easy way to improve the experience.

      4.    Maybe It Was Just Bad Luck

I cast a turn 2 Knight-Errant only once or twice the entire tournament. My Gruul opponents had the Heartfire Hero into Valiant enabler draw most games. Many opening hands were clear mulligans (lacking critical pieces with no upside of a powerful start). I never assembled Bunnicorn + Sheltered vs Gruul, and I never put a Liege into play versus Pixie. While I certainly made some questionable mulligan decisions, it felt like almost all my close calls were in situations like the following: I’m on the draw against Gruul, I’ve already mulliganned once, and they ended up having a turn 4 kill. Which is to say: I surely did some things wrong (not mulliganning to five), but in those situations it felt like the optimal play would increase my likelihood of winning from, let’s say, 10% to 13%.

Across the ten constructed rounds it was rare for my deck to function well for multiple games in the same match. My opponents didn’t have poor draws. Most of my losses were blowouts. It didn’t feel like there was much I could do, other than mulligan (or not mulligan) a few borderline hands. I felt like Convoke had betrayed me. Maybe I was just very unlucky. But the days were long, and I didn’t have a full mastery of my deck, so maybe there are subtle plays I totally missed at the time.

 

The two days of Pro Tour Aetherdrift were a blur of frustration and regret. (Notably, the days spent with my team leading up to the event were extremely fun.) Five months later, I’m no more sure of where things went wrong than I was on the flight home, but going forward I will resolve to do the following:

• Default to the deck I am much more familiar with when deciding between two choices that seem similarly good. Even if I feel comfortable with the choice with which I have fewer reps, I will choose the one with which I have far more reps.
• Assume I have less time than I think I do and cut my losses when it gets late in the testing process. That means locking in a deck earlier and focusing on tuning the final slots/getting reps or, in the case of the Pro Tour, focusing on the draft format.
• Attend at least one or two RC/Spotlight Series events per year, traveling there with friends.

Hopefully I get another chance at the Pro Tour!

Arena Championship 7

Two weekends ago I participated in Arena Championship 7, playing Gruul Aggro. 

I prepared for the event with fellow Arena Championship competitors James Zhi, Arne Huschenbeth, and Matt Saypoff, with plenty of others who weren't qualified lending a hand as well. About a month prior, Mark Jacobson organized a Discord server to discuss Standard in preparation for the November Arena Qualifier (which I played) and the Atlanta Spotlight Series event (which I won't be playing). It made sense at that point to use the group for Arena Championship prep also. 

For the Arena Qualifier (three weeks before the Arena Championship and two weeks before deck submission) I landed on Dimir Midrange, a build pioneered by Lukas Honnay and Jitse Goutbeek, which I believe was ahead of its time. It cut the big creatures (Preacher and Sheoldred) while running Mockingbirds and maxing out on Kaitos and Enduring Curiosities, essentially playing as a pure tempo deck game 1. This gave it a big leg up versus other Black Midrange lists like Golgari (maybe the most popular deck at the time) and Dimir. Meanwhile, the sideboard plan of more removal and Mazemind Tome allowed it to cut the tempo threats and turn into a control deck versus Red Aggro. 

I went 7-2 on Day 1 to make it to the second day. On Day 2 I started 2-0 before losing two straight to end the run. It was a fun tournament because the quality of opposition was extremely high, including,  just among the names I recognized, at least four players with a Pro Tour top 8 (Kyle Rose, Karl Sarap, Adam Edelson, and Max Rappaport) and at least two more Pro Tour mainstays in Adriano Moscato and Teruya Kakumae. That's quite the competition for an Arena event. 

The card we missed was Floodpits Drowner. One or two of us briefly tried the card and found it low power level, and the others (including myself) were more than willing to accept this conclusion because the card just looked weak. At the same time, I recognized the Bats were mediocre in the deck and didn't fit the theme well. The entire deck is strong against removal, with the exception of the Bat, and replacing it with Drowner would have leaned harder into the tempo plan and the "mitigating removal" plan. 

I went 3-0 against Red Aggro, each played by elite opponents, but the games were razor close and I was left wondering how good the matchup actually was. In the following days it became progressively clearer that Dimir builds were having to choose between being better pre-board against Red (Preacher and Sheoldred) or Black Midrange (cutting the big black creatures in favor of more tempo). Going into Arena Championship testing, Dimir was still one of my frontrunners, but it had become public enemy number one and the format was adapting to it. That meant people playing archetypes like Convoke that are structurally advantaged versus Dimir, and it also meant that Dimir lists were becoming quite inbred to beat the mirror. Once I started getting paired versus mirror matches running Faebloom Trick, which is amazing in the mirror but seemed too weak overall, I decided Dimir had gotten too inbred and looked elsewhere. 

I turned to Gruul. With Innkeeper's Talent and Questing Druid, Gruul grinds much better against midrange and control than Mono Red. Moreover, Gruul is an intrinsically strong deck, arguably the most powerful in the format. But it also seemed particularly well positioned for this moment:

• It was very strong against Dimir's game 1 configuration, which usually included no Preacher/Sheoldred and sometimes even cards like Saiba Cryptomancer and Faebloom Trick. Small blue creatures don't block well against big Gruul creatures.
• It was (at least slightly) favored against the decks trying to prey on Dimir, including Convoke, Simic Tempo, and Zur Domain. 
• Golgari, which I believe to be Gruul's worst matchup among the common decks, was being pushed out of the format by Dimir. 

In the final days before deck submission, Dimir started adapting a full sideboard plan against Red consisting of boarding into a bunch of Preachers and Sheoldreds, along with Gix's Command. This was scary, but we still liked Gruul's positioning overall. We tried to adapt to the big black creatures with four answers (Scorching Shot/Obliterating Bolt) in the 75. 

We realized in the final days that Convoke was likely well positioned, but it felt too late to switch. Also, Convoke is inconsistent and has extremely painful mana consisting almost entirely of painlands and fastlands. It seemed like Convoke would be the best choice if (and only if) Dimir was a huge percentage of the field, whereas Gruul was still a good choice in such a metagame and a fine choice in any other reasonably possible metagame. So Matt, Arne, and I stuck with Gruul.

James, meanwhile, played a cool Sultai Terror Tempo deck, which tried to shore up the archetype's weakness against Red Aggro with maindeck black removal, particularly Nowhere to Run. This deck seemed good to me, but I didn't have enough time to really dig into it. 

I submitted Gruul on deck submission day, the Monday before the tournament. I tried to relax a bit the next couple days, getting in a few practice matches here and there. Upon seeing the metagame breakdown that was released Friday, the day before the event, I felt good about our choice. There was tons of Dimir, almost no Golgari, and I wasn't particularly scared of facing anything among the smattering of other decks, most of which I assume were chosen for their Dimir matchup.

With so much Dimir in the field, I decided to spend time on the last day prior to the event practicing the matchup. Across eight matches the game and match score was about even and the matchup felt about as close to 50/50 as it gets. This worried me, because our assumption had been that Gruul is favored. I think in retrospect the Dimir builds developed better sideboard plans versus Red Aggro in the final days before deck submission. Also cards that had recently become stock in Dimir, like Tishana's Tidebinder, were better against Red Aggro than I had suspected. Still, I was feeling decent: even if the Dimir matchup were close to even, the other matchups all seemed fine with the exception of Golgari, and there were only three copies of that. 

Of course, round 1 I was paired against Golgari, and not only Golgari but just about the most hateful version imaginable, with two maindeck(!) Gix's Command, tons of removal, and tons of non-Demon giant creatures (against which Pawpatch Formation doesn't work) to overload my limited removal. I got lucky to win. Game 1 I had 2 Burst Lightning for 2 Lllanowar Elves and my opponent get stuck on three lands. Game 2 I lost to removal and a slew of Sentinel of the Nameless City. Game 3 I had the perfect draw and my opponent stumbled. After the match I mentioned to my opponent that I felt I had gotten lucky and he told me he was feeling down about his deck choice. I told him there's no use worrying about that at this point; all we can do now is play the games. My opponent started 0-2 and then went 4-0 the rest of the way to qualify for Day 2. At the conclusion of Day 1 he sent me a nice message thanking me for the pep talk. 

Record: 1-0

In round 2 I was paired versus Mono Red. Game 1 is unfavored due to them having more and better removal, but after sideboard we bring in more removal and have a better late-game, so we are favored post-board. Still, games often come down to who is on the play or who casts more Scorching Nemeses. I won game 1, which had me feeling good. Then my opponent stole both post-sideboard games with Twisted Fealty, a card that I would not consider good versus Gruul, but it worked. My opponent put me to negative 1 life in game 3 with Twisted Fealty plus Mostrous Rage on the pivotal turn. I felt like I had the tools to win this game and was frustrated that I put myself dead to this combination of cards. In the moment, I was certain I had thrown the game away, and I felt my mindset spiraling. Though, thinking about it a bit more before round 3, it wasn't clear-cut what a better line would have been. (Or did I just convince myself of that to stop the spiral?)

Record: 1-1

Round 3 was against the mirror, which was actually a cross between Mono Red and Gruul. Overall I had better draws and I don't remember much else from the match other than I thought our plan for the mirror put us in a good position post-board. I had been feeling jittery the first three rounds. I think my plays were generally alright, but my focus was off and I was rushing through decisions. Each round was so individually important that I was overly stressed and it was affecting my decision-making. I was going to need outside intervention to slow down and concentrate. Luckily, that outside intervention came from an unexpected source. 

Record: 2-1

***BRIEF ASIDE***

I will now complain about several elements of this tournament that ranged from very frustrating to frankly unfair. None of this is meant as a slight against the people working the tournament, including those doing coverage, organizing the event, or judging. The tournament itself was very efficiently run and everyone was extremely nice and communicative during the event. I don't blame those in the trenches running the show for what I'm about to gripe about.

***END BRIEF ASIDE***

The first big problem with this event was the lack of communication leading up to it. I qualified in July and was not contacted by anyone for weeks. I heard that it took others months to receive any communication after qualifying. It took even longer for WOTC to announce the format or even pick a date for the event. I was supposed to book a trip in December and I wasn't able to do so until tickets were very expensive because it took so long to find out when the event would be. Those who needed to request time off from work or who were trying to make plans had no choice but to plead with WOTC to finally just pick a date for the event, but no date came until, six weeks before the event would ultimately be held, WOTC dropped the date in an update to an old web page without any announcement whatsoever. We received an email about the date a week or two later, but by then it was just about a month before the event. Less than three weeks before deck submission we were finally told the format (Standard, i.e. no draft for the first time in an Arena Championship). 

The second big problem was the structure: 48 participants, six rounds of swiss, then the top 24 players make it to the elimination rounds, with the eight best records receiving a bye into the top 16. To provide some context, a lot of money was on the line ($250,000 prize pool, $30,000 for first place), plus two Worlds invites and 16 Pro Tour invites. It was a very difficult tournament to qualify for. And it was the most important tournament on the entire Arena client. So it felt unfair to reduce all of that to the tiny sample of six swiss rounds. Far worse was the fact that the number of rounds essentially maximized the effect of tiebreakers: about half of the 3-3s would make the top 24 and half would miss! (Also, a few 4-2s would finish in the top 8 and the rest would finish between 9th and 24th.) Six rounds was a wild choice because adding just one additional round would have yielded a clean (or nearly clean) cut for top 24. Moreover, this issue was entirely foreseeable; taking the number of players and chopping them in half after six rounds is obviously going to result in many players with the same record on either side of the cutoff. I flagged this to WOTC shortly after they announced the structure and received no response. Tiebreakers play a role in almost every Magic tournament, but their impact could have been significantly minimized here with some forethought. And then there was the fact that places 9-24 after the swiss rounds would play a one-match playoff for top 16, i.e. a Pro Tour qualification. Forcing 16 players to play a PTQ final for their first match of the second day is cruel. Between this and the fact tiebreakers would decide the tournament for a huge portion of the field, this was the most brutal tournament structure I've ever played. 

The third big problem was that if you were asked to participate in a feature match, you were requested Ito both stream Arena and stream a video of your face which, when coupled with how memory-intensive Arena is in the first place, led to my computer's RAM holding on for dear life. I know of at least one instance in which a player's Arena crashed during his feature match and he was forced to play the rest of the round on his phone after skipping his turn. Again, I assign absolutely zero fault to the coverage team, who were great. The fault lies with the lack of spectator mode on Arena and whoever makes the decision not to contribute resources to fixing that. 

Going into round four I still could not shake the jitters. I needed to slow down and concentrate. And then I was called to a feature match. As soon as the first game began, my computer was so overburdened that gameplay lagged to a crawl; even each turn's draw step animation seemed to take a full second. While earlier in the tournament I was playing fast and anxiously, in round 4 even if I had wanted to play faster it would have been physically impossible. From that point forward, I was focused and deliberate. I faced Dimir in round four, and then again in round five, and then yet again in round six. I was generally happy with how I played the second half of Day 1. 

In round four, game 1 my opponent kept a hand with no black mana and never drew out of it, and I was able to win the game despite drawing a land almost every single turn. I could have played a little more aggressively a couple of the turns, but it felt almost impossible to lose if I played ultra-conservatively, so I did that. It likely wasn't optimal, though. Game 2 I tried to play around Malicious Eclipse on turn 2 before deciding not to play around it once my opponent didn't play a second black on turn 3 and I was so low on resources it no longer felt worth it. The key play occurred on turn 4. Rather than cast Cut Down on his own turn while I was tapped out, my opponent decided to pass with Negate up, baiting me to cast the Monstrous Rage he knew I had on my own turn to get me to waste a mana. But I topdecked Innkeeper's Talent, which now my opponent didn't have a Negate for, and the game spiraled from there. 

Record: 3-1

I cannot remember round five because I'm writing this two weeks after the tournament. I just remember a three fairly close and fairly normal games of Magic. Gruul versus Dimir is usually close, dynamic, and interesting. 

Record: 4-1

I had now locked Day 2, i.e. the top 24 elimination rounds. But going into this event my goal was to top 16 and qualify for the Pro Tour. The next and final round was the big one. 

Round six. Win and I'm 5-1 and into the top 16; lose and I get one last PTQ final first thing tomorrow morning. In game 1 we both mulliganed to five. I was on the play and had a good curve, and it wasn't particularly close. In game 2 I played Innkeeper's Talent on turn 2 when my opponent was holding removal up to waste his mana. He didn't have a third land, but found it with a map activation, and then immediately found the fourth with another map activation. From this point forward I was on the back foot, but I was able to grind my way back to parity, with an Innkeeper's Talent ready to take over, until my opponent topdecked Enduring Curiosity. 

The deciding game was the most exciting of the tournament. Both I and my opponent kept fantastic 7-card hands. My turn 3 was interesting from my opponent's side; they ended up just not spending their mana at all. When they didn't kill my Challenger but then the following turn killed my Nemesis, it started to seem likely they had one of their two Gix's Command. [At this point the stream crashed; it was revived at this link.] When they didn't play a creature on turn 3 or 4, it seemed highly likely they had a Command. (What I didn't realize was that they actually had two!) Therefore on my turn 5 I continued to play methodically, holding creatures and leaving up Monstrous Rage and Burst Lightning to protect my creatures from the Command. Fortunately my hand allowed me to play around Command about as well as possible, at the cost of some tempo, but again, my opponent wasn't really doing anything. A couple turns later I forced out the first Command. On my following turn my opponent was representing Cut Down and so I played around that plus second Command by once against not committing too many creatures and keeping up Monstrous Rage. This play may have been too passive, but in general it felt like the opponent's hand was extremely reactive and I had enough gas to keep grinding through the reaction. The fact my opponent still nearly stabilized after all of that made me question some of my decisions in the moment, but I'm happy with how I played the game. My opponent played really well too to maximize his Commands. In the end, my opponent played second Command plus chumper and I had a haste creature plus removal to swing for lethal, clinching top 8 after the swiss and the Pro Tour invite. 

Record: 5-1

I went to bed that night very happy to have achieved my goal. The rest of the Gruul contingent, Matt and Arne, each went 4-2, bringing the total Day 1 Gruul record to a fantastic 13-5. I had already locked top 16 and $7,500 but was excited to play for even more now that the pressure was off. It seemed like we were primed for some good runs in the elimination rounds. 

In game 1 of my own match, which was a rematch against my Round 5 opponent, I had a creature-heavy draw and my opponent didn't have early removal, which should have put me in good position, but I didn't have Talent, Druid, or Rage to pull ahead and/or finish the game. I once again played passively, though in this case it was to not run my creatures into blockers rather than to play around removal/wraths, but it ended up lining up more awkwardly than in prior matches because I did not draw any grindy cards (Manifold Mouse/Innkeeper/Druid) to take advantage of playing a longer game. Eventually I determined I didn't have a better move than to run my two Challengers into a potential Curiosity because I was dead to Curiosity anyway. They had it. Game 2 I flooded really hard, and my tournament was abruptly over. 

Day 2 did not go well for the others either. Matt (playing for a PT invite) and Arne (playing for lots of cash as he was already qualified) each also lost their first elimination round to Dimir, bringing our record on that day to 0-3 overall and 0-3 versus Dimir. At the risk of sounding reductive, I think our draws were just good Day 1 and bad Day 2. The three of us averaged more than one mulligan per game across our three Day 2 matches and we went out with a whimper. 

Despite the awkward ending I'm personally satisfied with $7,500 and a Pro Tour invite. As most of my engagement with Magic these days is through the long-shot monthly Arena qualifiers, it seemed highly plausible I'd never get to play another Pro Tour. I'm very happy this did not turn out to be the case!