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! 

Qualifying for the Arena Championship

This past weekend I was fortunate to qualify for the Arena Championship playing a different take on Boros Energy in Historic.

(Scroll down for an exportable decklist.) 

(On day 1 I played a Phelia over the Suncleanser, but cut Phelia for day 2 since it wasn't doing much and its sizing isn't good for attacking the mirror. I also wanted to cut the Static Prison due to our lack of energy sources and how Suncleanser wrecks it, but I couldn't figure out what to cut it for.)

I hadn't been enjoying the American RCQ/RC system, so awhile back I decided to stop engaging with that system (for at least the time being) and instead cash in my limited spare time on the Arena Championship Qualifiers. These events are very difficult to spike, but they are also extremely convenient for a Magic tournament, letting players play matches on demand. Over the past seven months or so that I've been playing these events, I've been winning at a high clip but floundering on day 2, where the competition is very tough. I managed to make two day 2s under the prior system (requiring 7-1 or 7-0 on day 1), before winning a combined two matches on day 2 between those two weekends, to squander great odds at an Arena Championship via a "leaderboard invite." Fortunately, recently Wizards of the Coast changed the tournament structure to allow 7-2 to also qualify for the second day, which encouraged me to keep engaging with the system despite its difficulty. 

More important to my decision to keep playing these events was that I found a great group of players to prep with. Starting with the Alchemy qualifier in March, I've been preparing for these events with  Lukas Honnay, Tim Schaufert, Jitse Goutbeek, and Kevin Mittertreiner for each weekend, and a number of other great folks who have joined on for one or more qualifiers. This group has the best vibes of any Magic squad I've been a part of, due to everyone being supportive, kind, and great communicators. 

I did not prep as much for this qualifier as I had for the past few, because I wasn't sure I'd even be able to play in it. Complicating matters was that the event fell on a weekend during which I'd be on a family vacation to Las Vegas. Having been raised in a family of Grateful Dead fanatics (known as "Deadheads"), I and six other members of my family converged on the Sphere in Las Vegas this past week to take in three Dead and Company shows. This meant that playing this event would require the following schedule:

• Get home from Thursday night concert at 1am (Pacific Time)
• Wake up at 6am, drink a coffee, speedrun the qualifier play-in to finish by 9am to hang out with my family
• Get home from Friday night concert at 1am
• Wake up at 6am, drink a coffee, speedrun day 1 of the qualifier to finish by 9am to hang out with my family
• Get home from Saturday night concert at 1am
• Wake up at 6am, drink two coffees, speedrun day 2 of the qualifier to finish by 9am to rush to airport for flight home

I would highly recommend seeing a Dead and Company show at the Sphere, but I would not recommend the above schedule. I would also highly recommend our Historic deck. Prior to prepping for this event I hadn't played Historic in many months, but it quickly became clear that Boros Energy was broken and going to be at least half of the field. The rest of the field mostly consisted of Jeskai Energy Control and a smattering of combo decks like Yawgmoth, Charbelcher, and Shifting Woodland. Boros Energy seemed too good not to play--it is truly a broken deck, probably at Caw-Blade/Oko levels. Within Boros Energy, there were two major sub-archetypes: Lurrus and Jegantha. We didn't like the Lurrus builds because they were often playing a lot of bad cards like Soul Warden and, even though the deck could be built without these cards (and indeed some players managed to build Lurrus decks with sacrifice synergies and other solid cards in those slots), playing so many 1- and 2-drop threats made the deck very weak to Wrath of the Skies. 

We quickly gravitated to the Jegantha builds with Fable and Phlage because they were less one-dimensional and went bigger for an advantage in the "mirror." Still, a lot of games came down to an early Guide of Souls/Ocelot Pride start snowballing out of control, at which point Fable and Phlage were too slow. The key breakthroughs were as follows (many came from Tim or Lukas, but everybody contributed):

--Amped Raptor was an unreliable play without excess energy because you could hit a 3-drop (or a dead removal spell), and had a poor body in the mirror, which isn't about attacking and blocking but very much about Goblin Bombardment. Also, cutting Raptor allowed us to cut the weakest land, Aether Hub, and barely rely on energy at all, to the point where opposing Suncleansers (one of the most popular sideboard cards for the mirror) were ineffective against us.

--Impetuous Lootmonger, on the other hand, is great in the mirror, has two toughness against Goblin Bombardment and, together with the next card mentioned, lets us play 4 Bombardment and loot away the extra copies.  

--Seasoned Pyromancer is similar to Fable, except it works much better with Bombardment and catches you up when you're behind on board. It meant giving up Jegantha, but it's worth it. And sometimes you have zero cards in hand and it's better than Fable in those spots.

--Because the mirror is so snowbally, having a bunch of 1-mana removal, particularly on the draw, is critical. Our build has an amazing late-game, it just needs to get there. Being on the draw in the mirror meant boarding in 1-mana removal and cutting Ocelots, which are bad when you're not pressing the advantage. 

I went 7-0 in the "mirror," by which I mean RW-base Goblin Bombardment decks. That includes Lurrus builds, Jegantha builds, Mardu builds, and sacrifice builds. I went 1-1 versus Strict Proctor Jeskai, which seemed like a tough matchup because Proctor itself is naturally very strong against our deck. I went 1-0 against Charbelcher (tough matchup, I got lucky, see below), 1-0 against Shifting Woodland (I think this is a good matchup because we have a bunch of graveyard hate), and 3-1 against Jeskai Control (I think this matchup is solid because we have a big sideboard for it and we can grind them out if we stop them from escaping Phlage via either Surgical Extraction or Thraben Charm). 

Our team crushed day 1 to a degree I had never seen before in one of these events. Kevin, Lukas, and Matt Saypoff (another player on our team and my childhood buddy) went 7-0, while Tim ended up 5-3 after a 5-0 start. I started 5-0 also (literally our entire group started 5-0) but had to squeak into day 2 at 7-2, beating Daniel Brodie (fake-news) on a Lurrus Boros deck with sacrifice synergies in the final round. I had a nut-draw in game 3 after making a lot of tough judgment calls and losing game 2. 

I knew going into day 2 things were going to be chaotic. My lack of sleep was catching up with me and my entire family was leaving for the airport at 9am to fly home. I was extremely fortunate that I did not drop a single game until the final round, and that the final round was against Belcher, a fast matchup. If more matches went to game 3, or I lost a round, I don't think I would have finished in time. 

Whether due to lack or sleep, or rushing to finish my matches, or something else, I made multiple big blunders on day 2. In round 2 I was paired against former MPL player Lucas Esper Berthoud (bertu) on Jegantha Boros. In game 2, I was well ahead on board, but Lucas would be able to swing the game if he escaped a Phlage. I activated Ajani's 0 ability and targeted a Guide of Souls rather than a token, which put Lucas on five cards in the graveyard to almost escape Phlage. Fortunately for me Lucas did not topdeck a Vista or cheap piece of interaction to go directly to his graveyard, and I won despite my mistake. 

In the final round I was paired against Charbelcher. I think this has to be a very hard matchup because we do not have much of a sideboard versus them (really just two Disruptor Flutes) and they goldfish faster than us. I barely managed to win game 1 by racing, then game 2 I got Charbelcher'd, and then game 3 began at about 8:25am, with plans to meet my family in the hotel lobby at 8:50 and the potential to need to play another match if I lost. I had a fantastic draw of pressure and a Flute. But I made an error, casting a turn 3 Flute, which was earlier than I needed to cast it, instead of casting the front side of Phlage to Helix my opponent. I was unfamiliar with the Belcher deck and didn't know how quickly it would be able to combo. It turned out they were at least two turns away still, so I should have used my mana better and Helixed the opponent. Instead, a couple turns later I ended up in the following spot: I have an army of creatures, my opponent has three Eldrazi Spawns, and I have a Flute in play, naming Charbelcher. I alpha strike my opponent, they chump with three Spawns, sacrifice one and use a leftover red mana to Abrade my Flute, and they fall to 1 life.  I believe that if I had timed my Flute better, they would never have had the chance to Abrade it before losing to lethal damage. As things stood, though, I passed the turn to my opponent, at one life and five mana. They cast Gamble for an Irencrag Feat and then we had a coinflip to determine which of us would qualify for the Arena Championship.

https://x.com/richua__mtg/status/1812510982474011054

The coinflip: a 2/4 chance of my opponent discarding either Belcher or the Feat. They discarded the Feat, they emoted "Good Game," I attacked for lethal, and I ran down to the lobby to meet my family. 

In the end, of the five of us who played the deck, Matt and I both got to six wins and qualified for the Arena Championship, while Lukas and Kevin got to four wins and (per the new rules) get to skip straight to day 2 in the next qualifier. We won 87% of our day 1 matches and 80% of our day 2 matches. I believe we won over 90% of our mirror matches. We couldn't believe how well we performed. And it was immensely satisfying to see our effort and team camaraderie get rewarded. 

Mirror SB Guide:

OTP: -3 Galvanic Discharge-1 Static Prison +2 Portable Hole +2 Prismatic Ending, and versus Jegantha Boros also -1 Galvanic Discharge +1 Tajic, Legion's Valor

OTD: -4 Ocelot Pride -1 Static Prison +2 Portable Hole +2 Prismatic Ending +1 Tajic, Legion's Valor (maybe also -1 Galvanic Discharge +1 Tajic, Legion's Valor against Jegantha Boros)

Jeskai Control SB Guide:

-4 Galvanic Discharge -2 Portable Hole -1 Static Prison -2 Goblin Bombardment 

+2 Karlach, Raging Tiefling +3 Tajic, Legion's Valor +2 Thraben Charm +2 Surgical Extraction

[versus Proctor, I was keeping in the 4 Discharges and not bringing in Karlachs or Surgicals]

Exportable Decklist:

Deck

1 Witch Enchanter (MH3) 239

4 Ajani, Nacatl Pariah (MH3) 237

4 Impetuous Lootmonger (Y24) 12

2 Arena of Glory (MH3) 215

4 Sunbaked Canyon (MH1) 247

4 Seasoned Pyromancer (MH1) 145

4 Inspiring Vantage (OTJ) 269

4 Galvanic Discharge (MH3) 122

4 Guide of Souls (MH3) 29

2 Mountain (KTK) 256

4 Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury (MH3) 197

2 Plains (KTK) 250

4 Goblin Bombardment (WOT) 43

4 Sacred Foundry (GRN) 254

4 Ocelot Pride (MH3) 38

4 Prismatic Vista (SPG) 38

1 Suncleanser (M19) 39

2 Portable Hole (AFR) 33

1 Needleverge Pathway (ZNR) 263

1 Static Prison (MH3) 44

Sideboard

1 Karlach, Raging Tiefling (HBG) 14

2 Surgical Extraction (OTP) 19

2 Portable Hole (AFR) 33

2 Thraben Charm (MH3) 45

1 Karlach, Raging Tiefling (HBG) 14

3 Tajic, Legion's Valor (Y24) 28

2 Disruptor Flute (MH3) 209

2 Prismatic Ending (SPG) 40

When You Can't Afford to Play Around It

One of the earliest things we learn in our foray into competitive Magic is to not play around cards we cannot beat. If you are at 3 life and your opponent attacks their 2/2 into your 3/3, you always block because, if you play around a pump spell by not blocking, they cast the pump spell on their 2/2 and you lose. Another example: your aggro deck has 6 power on the board and you just attacked your control opponent to 8. If your last card in hand is a 2/2 you should play it, because if the opponent casts Wrath of God effect next turn you are losing anyway, even if you hold the 2/2.

The reason we use these examples to teach this concept is that they reduce the concept to very simple terms. In the event the opponent does have the card we’re worried about, regardless of the choice we make we clearly lose the game on the spot. Literally on the spot, in the case of the pump spell example; in the Wrath example, our win percentage is reduced to ~0% on the spot, even if the game may continue for several more turns. Both examples occur in the very late stages of the game. But to maximize our chance of winning, we can’t wait until the final turns of a game; we always need to be on the lookout for these cases. These situations occur all the time, as early as the first turn.

Example #1:

You’re playing Murktide in Modern against 4C Beanstalk Omnath. Your opponent is on the play and has kept 7 cards. You mulligan to 6. Your opponent plays a fetchland and passes (presumably to fetch a Triome on your end step). You draw for your first turn and your hand consists of lands, Ragavan, Consider, Counterspell, and Expressive Iteration. The question: whether to hold up Consider or cast turn 1  Ragavan into a possible Wrenn and Six, which, if the opponent has it, will likely win them the game on the spot.

In this situation, I cast Ragavan. If you don’t cast the Ragavan you’ll still likely lose to Wrenn if the opponent has it, and now you’ll lose to most non-Wrenn draws too. For example, what if their 2-drop is Beanstalk instead of Wrenn? Now you can’t pressure them and they’ll grind you out. Even if the opponent is around 50% to cast Wrenn and, say, 80% to win if they immediately kill your Ragavan (i.e., you’re 40% to lose the game right away if you cast the Ragavan), your win percentage is even lower if you pass the turn. It’s tempting to hold up Consider, but I don’t think this is a winning play.

Example #2:

I remember a few years ago I was prepping for one of the Arena Pro Tours, the Strixhaven Championship. Our team was pretty set on Phoenix, but in the final day or two of testing Jeskai Control emerged as a dark horse. We were interested in Jeskai in part because it had a great Phoenix matchup. It had cards like Anger of the Gods and Rest in Peace to stop the Phoenixes and plenty of cheap removal and counters for the other threats. From the Phoenix side, we were trying out Improbable Alliance as a threat that could dodge the removal of the control deck. (Spoiler alert: we determined Alliance wasn’t reliable enough and didn’t end up playing it. We also determined Phoenix was too strong in general and so we dismissed Jeskai.)

I was watching a teammate test Phoenix against Jeskai. I can’t recall the exact hands, but I remember it was the Phoenix player’s turn 2 on the draw, it was post-sideboard, and the Jeskai deck had 2 mana up, representing one of 7 counterspells they could cast here (Dovin’s Veto or Mystical Dispute). The Phoenix player played their second land and their hand was several cantrips and an Improbable Alliance. The question was: should they play the Improbable Alliance into a likely counter, thus leaving them with zero threats, or should they play around a counter by instead playing a couple of 1-mana cantrips? The player elected to cast the cantrips. I didn’t think much of the play in the moment, but I remember Matti Kuisma and Sam Rolph (two extremely strong players) butting in that they’d have cast the Alliance.

Reflecting on it, I think casting Alliance was clearly the correct play. It feels very bad to slam your only threat into a likely counter, significantly reducing your chances of winning the game on the spot if they have it. But the overall situation (and the matchup) was too bad to play passively; even if the opponent was, say, 65% to have a counter, spending your early turns casting cantrips instead of trying to pressure the control opponent is a recipe for a very likely loss. Moreover, Veto is impossible to play around: it is a hard counter that you cannot interact with, even if you were to find a counter of your own. Given your hand and given the matchup, you need to try and steal this game, so you should take your ~35% shot to put a sticky threat onto the board and try to ride it to victory. In fact, while 35% sounds bad, that number gets even worse as the game progresses, as the Jeskai player sees more cards and has more chances to find a counter.

Example #3:

You’re playing Pioneer UW Spirits against Creativity. It’s post-sideboard, so the opponent will certainly have 3-4 Shark Typhoon, and they’ve boarded out their main combo pieces such that their deck is now mostly a pile of Sharks, removal, cantrips, Fable of the Mirror Breakers, and Hullbreaker Horrors. You’re on the draw. On their turn 1 they play red land and pass. You cast turn 1 Mausoleum Wanderer and it gets hit with a Spikefield Hazard. On their turn 2 they play blue land and pass. On your turn 2 you pass with counter and Rattlechains up. On your end step, they cast Impulse (it resolves). On their turn 3 they play third land and pass with five cards in hand. On their end step, you flash in Rattlechains.

You draw for your third turn and your hand is 2 Lofty Denial, Spell Queller, and lands. Your decision is whether to attack with Rattlechains into a possible Shark Typhoon. You may reason that the Shark isn’t just possible, but actively likely: the opponent didn’t cast a burn spell on your Rattlechains on their end step (which they would do to prevent you from untapping and responding to their removal with a Rattlechains or other protection spell), and they didn’t cast Fable. If you attack and the opponent has Shark Typhoon, you pretty much can no longer win the game: you will have no pressure on the board to leverage your reactive cards. But if you don’t attack, you’re ceding the pressure you do have and giving the opponent far too much time. Even if your hand were more proactive, unless it had Supreme Phantom, this situation is not getting any better. You need to be clocking the opponent to have any shot this game. Therefore, you should be attacking—

…But wait. The cost of playing around Shark is actually low! You can neglect to attack, pass the turn, see if the opponent cycles Shark on your end step, and then, if they don’t, you can start attacking on future turns. Essentially, you give up 2 damage now for the information on whether they currently have Shark.

Even if a card seems difficult or impossible to play around forever, check to see if the cost of playing around it now is actually quite low. If there are ways to draw out the card you are worried about at a relatively low cost (in this case, missing out on 2 damage), take advantage of that. Note that in Example #1, the cost of not going for the riskier line is extremely high (giving up a hit with Ragavan), while in Example #2, there is no realistic way to draw out the counters you are worried about.

How to Spot:

Spotting cases where you cannot afford to play around cards is a highly contextual risk-reward calculation. But the above situations have an important commonality: in all of them, you are in a bad spot. Often (as in the above cases), not only is the spot bad in the abstract, but the matchup is bad as a whole. Or you may be on the draw with your tempo deck, or you may have mulliganed. I.e., you will need to get lucky in order to win. When you are behind, you need to take more risks. If you feel bad about your chances of winning in a given spot, stop and think about what it would take for you to win. Often that will involve the opponent simply not having the card you are worried about.

But before you commit to making a risky play, be mindful of low-cost ways to avoid playing directly into a card before you absolutely have to. If the card CAN be played around (unlike Example #2), and the cost of doing so is relatively low (unlike Example #1), then you can, in fact, afford to play around it (like Example #3).

Conclusion:

For an advanced player, late-game situations when it is not possible or wise to play around a card are fairly easy to identify. But there are many harder to spot situations throughout games of Magic where to play around cards is to reduce your chance of winning. These situations can arise as early as turn 1. If you do not spot these cases, you will give up a significant chance of stealing games.