I have had a very rough week. Magically, I’ve been beaten across the face and neck quite severely, and personally, it’s been a very busy week leaving very little time to rest. I would like to chalk up the losses this week to some form of exhaustion. I would like to say that I lost because I drew 1 spell in 7 turns in some games. I would like to think that I just got peeled on in all my game 3s. The truth is actually much simpler though.
I played terribly and deserved to lose.
I have been playing Magic for a long time. The general overall quality of my game I had always deemed to be at least average. Over the last couple years of streaming Magic, I can honestly look at myself and admit that I’m a much wiser player now than ever before. I have a lot of you to thank for this; all my guests, all my loyal viewers, and all of you, my readers. My education has been a true trial by fire, as my most epic “lessons” have occurred right in front of everyone on stream. It is a real motivator knowing that all of your plays are under close public scrutiny.
…Wait… Did I say “wiser player”?
You’re darn right I did.
I read a great article two years ago by Sam Stoddard that formed the basis for the education that has carried me this far through this game. After reading this article, I really started to investigate my own mistakes, and started to look into the “why” things were happening the way they were for me. I was looking into what I could have done differently to change the results. I stopped blaming others for my results, and I took ownership of them. Once I did that everything changed. I no longer got upset about losing, I started to tilt much less often, and most importantly, I made positive and effective changes to the way I approached the game. Once these things happened, the funniest thing happened; I started to win a lot more.
There is a lot to be said about practice. One of the best players of all time, LSV has said that he was at one point playing over 25 hours of Magic each week when he was at his most recent peak of success, and his results showed the value of that. Practice used to be just jamming games pre-board with my deck against whatever was available, just to get the hang of things like mana sequencing, what speed my deck was looking to work at, threat assessment, and identifying potential strategic gaps. Today, it is full of things like understanding fundamental turns, metagame analysis, and looking for ways to use all 75 cards in a deck to ensure that I will have my best possible deck in each game of a match. I’m concerned with understanding things that matter, instead of just focusing on the end result. It’s about the process. It’s about demonstrating that you know why you should do what you do instead of just accepting that it’s “correct.”
So I’m sure at this point you are wondering how this all plays into my week of Magic. Well, the truth is, that aside from the fact that I need to STOP using Straw Polls to pick my decks for streams ever again, there is one more admission that I need to make dear reader, and that is this:
I’m not a combo player.
I have always thought that I could play anything that I was given, and that I would play it well, relying on my experience in this game to carry me through. After this week however, it has become clear to me that this is a lie. Much like I do not have the mental and physical acuity to play League of Legends or a similar game, the same holds up when discussing playing a dedicated combo deck in Magic. There are so many things to consider like when to dig for another piece of the combo, whether to go for said combo, or if your current board state is satisfactory enough to win the game. I’d much rather just stick a huge monster like threat and protect it all the way to the end. I am Mister Midrange after all.
Not surprisingly, I fared quite poorly with this deck last week, especially due the fact that I had no idea how the combo worked until my third game with the deck. It must be quite good though as it ran the tables in Oakland at the SCG Event there last week, even though I went 2-6 with it.
[deck title=Heroic Jeskai Combo – Ivan Jen]
[Lands]
4 Mystic Monastery
3 Mana Confluence
1 Temple of Enlightenment
4 Temple of Triumph
4 Battlefield Forge
2 Shivan Reef
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Monastery Swiftspear
2 Seeker of the Way
2 Lagonna-Band Trailblazer
4 Favored Hoplite
4 Akroan Crusader
[/Creatures]
[Other Spells]
4 Defiant Strike
2 Jeskai Charm
4 Jeskai Ascendancy
4 Retraction Helix
4 Gods Willing
4 Dragon Mantle
4 Springleaf Drum
[/Other Spells]
[Sideboard]
2 Ajani’s Presence
3 Chasm Skulker
1 Disdainful Stroke
3 Erase
2 Magma Jet
2 Negate
2 Seeker of the Way
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
Now, if only I had waited a week I could have let the pros show me how it was supposed to work. That’s a lot of hype for a single deck! I really wanted to understand the deck, and in hindsight, should have let others do this for me. (It would have hurt the bankroll a lot less) There are a lot of different skills that contribute to success in Magic; combat math, resource utilization, threat assessment are some of them. What makes this game even more amazing is that each of these skills get applied in different ways based on the deck you are playing, the deck the opponent is using, and how those two match up against each other. I have spent a lot of time working at development of these skills, but in almost every case, it has been in a non combo capacity. I should have known that playing this was going to result in a train wreck for me, as I was relying on my experience with driving a car to let me captain a submarine.
STICK TO WHAT YOU KNOW
Time and time again, when discussing eternal formats, the advice you get is to pick a single deck or archetype and seek to master it. I will be taking this advice for myself in the near future, and I suggest you do the same. No longer will I be looking to pilot the flashy combo decks, and no longer will I be piloting the long drawn out control decks. I have played in almost every camp possible in this game, and now I can say will complete certainty that if I am somewhere in the Aggro – Tempo – Midrange span then I will be satisfied with my decks. If you were to ask me to play in a standard tournament tomorrow I think that I could easily be seen with one of these lists:
[deck title=Temur Aggro – Pedro Carvalho]
[Lands]
4 Frontier Bivouac
3 Mana Confluence
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Temple of Epiphany
1 Temple of Mystery
3 Forest
2 Mountain
4 Yavimaya Coast
1 Shivan Reef
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
3 Elvish Mystic
4 Heir of the Wilds
4 Rattleclaw Mystic
4 Boon Satyr
4 Savage Knuckleblade
4 Ashcloud Phoenix
3 Polukranos, World Eater
[/Creatures]
[Other Spells]
1 Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
3 Lightning Strike
2 Temur Charm
4 Crater’s Claws
[/Other Spells]
[Sideboard]
1 Lightning Strike
1 Temur Charm
2 Disdainful Stroke
3 Stubborn Denial
3 Hunt the Hunter
2 Magma Spray
2 Arc Lightning
1 Barrage of Boulders
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
[deck title=Abzan Midrange – Ari Lax]
[Lands]
2 Caves of Koilos
2 Forest
2 Llanowar Wastes
3 Mana Confluence
1 Plains
4 Sandsteppe Citadel
4 Temple of Malady
2 Temple of Silence
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Windswept Heath
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Courser of Kruphix
1 Elvish Mystic
4 Siege Rhino
4 Sylvan Caryatid
3 Wingmate Roc
[/Creatures]
[Other Spells]
4 Abzan Charm
3 Hero’s Downfall
1 Murderous Cut
1 Utter End
1 Read the Bones
4 Thoughtseize
1 Ajani, Mentor of Heroes
2 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion
2 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
[/Other Spells]
[Sideboard]
3 Bile Blight
3 Drown in Sorrow
1 Duneblast
3 End Hostilities
1 Erase
1 Liliana Vess
1 Mass Calcify
1 Murderous Cut
1 Read The Bones
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
[deck title=Jeskai Burn – Andrew Huska]
[Lands]
4 Mystic Monastery
3 Temple of Triumph
3 Temple of Epiphany
3 Flooded Strand
4 Battlefield Forge
2 Mountain
2 Shivan Reef
2 Island
2 Plains
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
2 Seeker of the Way
4 Mantis Rider
3 Brimaz, Kind of Oreskos
3 Ashcloud Phoenix
2 Hushwing Gryff
1 Keranos, God of Storms
[/Creatures]
[Other Spells]
4 Jeskai Charm
4 Lightning Strike
4 Magma Jet
4 Stoke the Flames
2 Dig Through Time
2 Banishing Light
[/Other Spells]
[Sideboard]
2 Prognostic Sphinx
2 Disdainful Stroke
2 Arc Lightning
2 Negate
2 Devouring Light
2 Magma Spray
2 Pillar of Light
1 Erase
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
This week we will be participating in the EXCLUSIVE Legacy Cube Pre Launch, on Wednesday at 830PM EST. Come watch me take on some high profile competition in the first ever public viewing of this MTGO Cube in action. Don’t miss it!!