My longtime friend Nathan Zamora is getting married this weekend. I decided to take this opportunity to mention some memorable Magic lessons that I learned from him over the years. Nathan is one of the most naturally talented players I've ever met and a fierce competitor. He was a terror on the Texas PTQ circuit in the early-to-mid 2000s. I learned many great lessons from watching him play and playing against him, particularly in constructed. Together, yet separately, we somewhat helped make recent SCG Invitational Champion Collin Rountree into the player he is today.
Lesson One - Having a Sideboard Plan
There are plenty of humorous stories surrounding Nathan, mostly involving his antics oustide the game or his loud personality. This one is a particular favorite of mine because the humor comes entirely from the game play.
There was a $1K Standard event held at Midnight Comics back when Legions was the current set. This was shortly before Regionals so many people attended to get a warmup event (you rarely played Standard outside of Regionals back then). Nathan brought a RW Astral Slide deck that was popular at the time. In fact, I was playing a similar list in the same event, but I scrubbed out as I did in most constructed events back then. After I dropped, I watched Nathan play for the rest of the event.
His opponent was playing Mono Black Control. This was a very bad matchup for Astral Slide due to the existence of Haunting Echoes. All the MBC deck needed to do is resolve an Echoes in the mid game and the Slide player would be out of resources to win the game. Predictably, game 1 goes this way. The early Exalted Angel is answered by Chainer's Edict. The furious cycling just helped set up the Diabolic Tutor for Haunting Echoes, and Nathan was down a game in short order.
Nathan immediately opens his deck box and practically slams all 15 cards into the deck. Unlike other times though, this wasn't just for show. He brought in all 15 cards. Once the shuffling was completed, the second game began. Nathan led with a cycling land, his opponent a swamp. A mountain followed by another swamp. A plains from Nathan and a turn three Stone Rain. The opponent just played another swamp. Another land for Nathan and he casts Lay Waste. The opponent could only manage to play a meager Cabal Coffers. Another Stone Rain, still going after the swamp. Now you can see where this is going. Nathan eventually sticks a few creatures that can finish off the mana-deprived opponent.
Game three could be different, since Nathan would be on the draw. To make it even tougher, the MBC player had a Duress on turn 2, taking a Stone Rain. Nathan drew a Pillage and played it on his third turn, but didn't have any follow up land destruction. The MBC player used his four mana to Diabolic Tutor for Haunting Echoes. Now Nathan had to keep him off of five mana for the rest of the game. Lay Waste off the top. The opponent misses a land drop. Nothing from Nathan the following turn, but a swamp off the top for the opponent. Just in time, Nathan draws an Earth Rift! This back and forth continued for another ten turns or so. Every time the MBC player would get close to casting Haunting Echoes, he would be denied by the timely LD spell from Zamora. Nathan eventually gets the victory with several attacks from Teroh's Faithful and wins the match.
It was truly hilarious to watch, and not in the way you would normally expect from Nathan, He wasn't gloating or trash talking or doing anything except playing Land Destruction every turn. The opponent was angry regardless. With every missed land drop, he became more and more visibly frustrated. After losing the match, he dropped from the event while still in top 8 contention!
Nathan's genius sideboard was to augment the 4x Lay Waste in the main deck with 4x Stone Rain, 4x Pillage, 4x Earth Rift, and 3x Petravark in the sideboard for playing against MBC and Wake. He used this transformational plan to win the event, and I learned a valuable lesson about having a sideboard plan.
Lesson Two - Playing With and Against Countermagic
Constructed Magic in the early 2000s was all about countermagic. Playing around the counters in your opponents hand, when to play test spells, when to bluff having a counter - these were the skills you absolutely had to have. Through trial and error I learned to get by, but I soon found out how far behind the truly skilled players I was one Extended PTQ in 2004.
Mirrodin was the current set in Extended, but almost everything from the recent PT in New Orleans had been banned. I was playing UG Madness that Jeff Cunningham had done well with at PT Houston a few years earlier. I was playing round one against Nathan, who had brought a mono-blue Mana Severance / Goblin Charbelcher combo deck, effectively replacing Illusions Donate from Kai Budde's 2001 PT list with the newer combo.
I had a reasonable start, probably Wild Mongrel into Basking Rootwalla or something similar. I was keeping up the Circular Logic to stop the combo. Nathan cast an early Sapphire Medallion which I let resolve. On the end of my fourth turn, he cast Intuition. I knew this would get him the piece he needed, but I had enough cards in my graveyard to counter whatever it was with my Circular Logic, so I let it resolve. He searched for three copies of Mana Severance. On his turn he cast the Severance, which I countered. He then played Goblin Charbelcher and passed the turn. All I needed to do to win is hope he didn't find the final copy of Mana Severance.
Which of course he had it. He had it when he cast Intuition. It was all part of the plan to make sure his one Charbelcher resolved. So after my non-lethal attack, he untaps and casts Mana Severance with Counterspell backup (that he didn't need) and enough mana to activate Charbelcher and kill me.
After I lost to Nathan, I lost the next round as well. I watched him play against my good friend Justin Corbett in round three and was still learning so much. Justin had the opportunity for an early Psychatog, but was worried about a possible counter. Nathan didn't have it, but saw the hesitation and made sure to hold up the two blue mana for the rest of the game. Eventually, Justin was forced to cast the Psychatog but by this point, Zamora had drawn the Counterspell. With Justin now tapped out, he was free to combo off, which in this case was just Intuition for Accumulated Knowledge and win the card advantage war.
Seeing first hand how playing around countermagic can cost you opportunities to get ahead really helped my play from this point on. The "make them have it" school of thought became my default strategy, especially when you aren't likely to win any other way.
Lesson Three - Brainstorm
I know people have written entire books about Brainstorm. The card is an almost infinite source for strategy, and I've learned so many lessons about it over the years from so many different sources I can't recall. Except this one.
I was watching Nathan play a Legacy side event at PT Hollywood in 2008. I had traveled to the event basically to hang out with Nathan since I hadn't seen him in several years since joining the Navy. He didn't do well in the Main Event, but we played a bunch of drafts and side events and had a great time regardless.
In this Legacy event, he was playing Reset - High Tide. I don't recall what his opponent was playing, and it doesn't really matter. Nathan mulliganed to six cards and kept a one-land Brainstorm hand. His opponent played land and passed. Nathan drew a non-land card, played Island and passed. His opponent played something and passed, and Nathan immediately drew his card for his second turn.
I was puzzled. Why didn't he cast the Brainstorm end of turn? Did he forget, or get tricked by the speed of his opponent? After not drawing a land for this card, he cast the Brainstorm, failed to find a second land, and conceded. It looked like he was tilted, so I assumed it was because he forgot to use the Brainstorm EOT.
As you probably know by now (Magic skill has come a long way), Nathan made the 100% correct play. Being mana efficient and using all the mana every turn wasn't going to matter this game, as the only cantrip in his hand was the Brainstorm. So its better to get one card deeper into the deck to increase the likelihood of finding the second land (as well as finding the third land). It gives him the most options while only losing out on one mana during an irrelevant early turn. He explained this to me and I really thought my entire world view about Magic was turned upside down. In retrospect it seems obvious, and even the revelation seems fairly minor since these kinds of plays are so rare in today's game, but it's still a lesson I value deeply.
Lesson Four - Simplifying the Game State
In 2005 Nathan was playing in the Event Horizons Texas Invitational, an exclusive 16-person round robin event put on by the regional tournament organizer Tim Weissman. One of the events was a Build Your Own Booster draft. The rules were each player could bring a three packs of cards and choose exactly what was to be in them for the draft. You had to have one rare, three uncommons, eleven commons, and a proper amount of creatures and cards from each color. You had to choose a first set, second set, and a third set.
I was helping Nathan prepare for this event since I would be home on leave from the Navy. I would also be doing some fairly basic text coverage for the TO's website. Nathan was notorious for disliking limited (see lesson five), so we didn't spend much time preparing for this portion of the tournament. Still we managed to figure out that the best card for pack one would be Meloku, the Clouded Mirror, and the best card for pack two would be Umezawa's Jitte. Almost 100% of competitors submitted these two cards for their first and second packs. The third packs varied quite a bit. Nathan chose to use Urza's Destiny for Masticore.
The first genius move he made was filling his packs with the worst possible cards. Only creatures with the smallest power and toughness. Absolutely zero artifact removal. As many lands as he could get away win including. This may have just been his protest against booster draft in general, but it turned out to be very good. He would open his Meloku and his Jitte, and then just draft things to carry the Jitte.
He ended up going 3-0 6-0 in the event, despite having a weaker deck that the other pod winner Bryan Hubble who had Opposition instead of Masticore. But my favorite part was a game he played against Derrick Steele. The game began with neither player having a significant edge, just adding creatures that weren't really able to attack. Both players seemed to be waiting to draw one of their bombs. Both players had several combat tricks sitting in their hand, waiting to try to "get" the other player (this was back when combat damage still used the stack). Eventually, Nathan made an attack with all his creatures. I couldn't understand this attack at all. I considered myself to be a better limited than constructed player at this time, and was fairly certain I was better than Nathan at limited given his disdain for the format. All I could see happening from this attack would be Derrick getting to use his pump spells to eat several of Nathan's creatures, while taking maybe a couple of damage. This is exactly what happened. Nathan ended up winning the game several turns later when Derrick flooded out, even drawing Jitte on the final turn to put the game away.
After the game I asked Nathan about the attack. He explained that he knew Derrick had a bunch of tricks in hand, and that he would be willing to use them at the first possible moment, even if it wouldn't contribute to winning the game. So after Derrick used all his tricks trying to win this combat, he didn't have the resources left to combat Nathan's future attacks, especially when backed up by the tricks Nathan held in reserve. By simplifying the board state to where he had almost perfect information, Nathan was able to make much better attacks that lead to an easy win, even if Jitte hadn't shown up.
This wasn't the first time I had learned a lesson on card economy, but definitely the only time I'd seen the lesson played out on such a complicated board state. This was when I realized that maybe Nathan isn't the best deck builder or best drafter around, but his in-game play was second to none.
Lesson Five - Attitude Isn't Everything
I first met Nathan at PT Houston in 2002. I was beating his friend in a side event, and Nathan made it very clear after the match how badly his friend had played. I was just getting into the competitive Magic scene in Houston, so I didn't really know who was who. I could tell Nathan thought highly of himself, but also that he didn't think his friend was all that good.
As I began to see Nathan around the PTQs in the city, I learned more about him. Justin told me he was very good and very funny, but the rest of our crew didn't seem to like him. They thought he was arrogant, or a jerk, or both. I could see why in their interactions when Nathan would be around. He probably didn't like them either, or at least didn't care to have an opinion. Because Nathan liked Justin, or because of me beating his friend earlier, or for some other reason, Nathan was always nice to me. Or maybe not nice, he just wasn't openly antagonistic like he was with many of the players.
It would only be a matter of time before we would play against each other. It happened at an Onslaught Legions Sealed PTQ in 2003. For whatever reason, Onslaught limited really struck a chord with me. I was winning way more than usual at the FNM drafts, and spent the Legions Prerelease weekend going undefeated over several flights. So I was doing better at PTQs, but still hadn't broken through to the top 8.
I lost round one, making a very poor misplay against a player I knew was weaker. This kind of upset me in a way, and I buckled down and focused to win my next five rounds. The final round I was paired against Nathan. I would be in the top 8 with a draw, and he agreed. He hadn't lost a match all day with some crazy double Visara sealed deck (a data point he loves to bring up when he rants against limited. "It's all luck!") There wasn't any congratulations or anything, we weren't super familiar just a passing respect that at least he didn't try to crush my dreams for no reason.
I wish I could find the old tournament report I wrote from the week after the tournament, but it has been lost to time. I was in the top 8, passing to my good friend Justin Corbett, who was passing to Nathan Zamora. Nathan made it very clear that he preferred Black-Green in the format. I wasn't too high on this combination, and mostly drafted white decks (and I still do to this day). We sit down for what would be my first timed booster draft. I draft an amazing deck. 4x Improvised Armor and several cheap red and white provoke creatures. I lose game one of quarter finals to a lucky Sparksmith draw from my opponent, but take time to mentally regroup and win the next two games. I now must face Nathan in the semi-finals.
Nathan's deck was BG with lots of zombies to fuel some very large Embalmed Brawlers. A 4/4 or 5/5 zombie on turn three was the standard play. This didn't line up very well against my Goblin Grappler wearing Improvised Armor. He would take damage on his attack with the brawler, then I would provoke it on my attack back with Grappler and get in with my extra creatures. He tried his best to race, but couldn't keep up. I sent an attack with a provoker and two morphs with him at 7 life. He blocks the provoker and a morph. I flip over the other morph to reveal Blistering Firecat. He isn't happy to lose this game. Game two is much of the same. He's complaining that provoke is nonsense. He calls it a Yu-Gi-Oh mechanic. And then he blocks the wrong morph to lose to my Blistering Firecat again.
He's now officially angry. He starts ranting about how dumb limited is, how Morph and Provoke are just like Traps and Yu-Gi-Oh mechanics. He's pissed. He gets up from the table and leaves the store to cool down. While my friends are congratulating me for winning and making it to the finals, they all want to point out how poor of a sport Nathan was. He didn't shake my hand, he didn't say "Good Game", he didn't make it seem like I earned it. But this didn't matter to me. Sometimes things don't go your way, and even as a younger man I knew that different people react differently. I never held it against him. Even after laughing about the story many times over the years since we've become friends, he's never apologized for it.
Maybe I should have held him to a higher standard, for the better of the community, but that might mean I wouldn't have his friendship over the next 15 years. His attitude changed and he became a lot less abrasive. He's learned to let the great parts of his personality shine and made a career of it. I'd like to think I'm partially responsible for a bit of that.
The Legend
There are so many more Nathan stories, some of them true, some of them partly true. He's truly a legend in Texas Magic, and someone I would consider to be a Hall of Fame candidate if I ever get around to continuing that. These were the best stories for learning some lessons, but there are plenty for just laughs. If you want to hear more, ask me in person sometime and I'll share some.
