MobstercoM

On Saturday, I played in the Old School MobstercoM event put on by Bryan Manolakos. Last year they did team unified constructed, but with the move to doing events online, team events weren't going to work logistically. I had hoped to maybe attend with some other Falling Stars, but now that it was online I was for sure going to play. 

The format still required some creative deckbuilding. Participants had to build three Swedish legal decks that met unified construction requirements. You would play your decks randomly against your opponents corresponding list, no sideboards. Best of three. Also, you can play as many Savannah as you want in any deck. Even though Mano usually runs Atlantic rules for events, Swedish made sense. Last time, almost every team played a mono-black deck with 4x Hymn to Tourach as one of the three builds. That would certainly be the case again, so the Swedish rules were chosen to exclude Fallen Empires. However, the event still used EC/Atlantic reprint policy and damage on the stack, so maybe it would have been less confusing to just say "Atlantic Rules with no Fallen Empires". That may have saved me some trouble in round 3...

Brewing

I did most of my brewing with fellow Falling Star Simon Christie (aka mtgmisprint). There was concern about how many dead cards you could afford in your decks, since you didn't have opportunity to sideboard them out. If you were to find a way to play all creatureless decks, you could blank all the creature removal across all of your opponents lineup. Simon decided to take this route and build three different creatureless control decks. I kept this principal in mind when selecting my lists, making sure to minimize the amount of potential dead cards against creatureless decks in my lists that weren't also creatureless. By having at least one creatureless deck in the lineup, I'd hope to have an advantage against slower decks. The other decks I used generic answers like direct damage and Icy Manipulator to support a land destruction plan.

My Decks

Deck A (A is for Atog) is pretty standard powered Atog list. I moved the black power cards to deck C, but this may have been a mistake. Demonic Tutor isn't very good without stuff like Ancestral and Time Walk to fetch, and Mind Twist much better with fast mana like Mox and Sol Ring and Lotus. Shatter were the narrowest cards I played in any deck, and I wasn't impressed. Overall though, the deck was a machine and definitely lived up to it's reputation as the best deck in Old School (according to me).

Deck B (B is for Bant) is Land Tax / Ivory Tower control deck. Perhaps the Sylvan Library was unnecessary, but I'm a big fan of it with Ivory Tower. Sylvan could have helped the GB deck in the card advantage department. Millstone as the kill is very good with Sylvan though, letting you dig deeper when you are looking for key end game cards. I likely should have played more cards like Moat and Wrath of God and maybe fewer Swords to Plowshares.

Deck C (C is for Crap) is a BG Land Destruction deck. I recently acquired Sinkholes and wanted to put them to use, along with the Ice Storms I never play. I'm a big fan of decks with 8 elves from Standard and Modern, so I wanted to use some of the same philosophies here. It would be pretty easy to splash a third color if you wanted to, but I had everything I needed already so I didn't get greedy. The Triskelion was nice as a tutor target, and the Arena wasn't actually legal (oops!) so maybe it should have been the second Trike.

I'll do my best to recollect the individual records of decks. I wasn't keeping detailed notes since I was also playing the MTG Arena Open in between rounds (insert link to future blog post here).

A 5-1

B 4-2

C 3-2*

*would be 4-1 if the Arena game counted

The Games

R1 - David Craig - CAB

David is probably my favorite person I've met from playing Old School. We met at the Battle for the Alamo back in February, and have played several times on webcam since. It's good to start against a familiar face. My C deck mulligan and then he had turn one Library of Alexandria. Despite 8 LD spells in the deck, I didn't draw one soon enough and lost to the card advantage. My deck A had an extremely powerful draw and killed him with multiple Black Vice and Ankh thanks to getting to play first. Game three with the B decks was a grind. I countered his early Mirror Universe, but he was on some time of Enchantress combo. I get out Millstone and try to work on ending the game. He casts Timetwister, which I counter. I counter the Regrowth for Timetwister. I counter a Feldon's Cane. Eventually I've used all my countermagic trying to stop his Timetwister and I can't find a Recall to get them back. He gets another Recall and resolves the Twister. Post Twister, I have to be careful until I can find all my countermagic again, but I'm able to use Swords to Plowshares on Force of Nature and Yavimaya Enchantress to prevent dying. Eventually Sylvan plus Millstone finds me the goods and I lock up the game. I had to play super fast first thing in the morning. We both needed more caffeine after the match.

1-0

R2 - Sammy Haghour - BCA

Game one I get to Land Tax quite a bit, but I'm not drawing any action spells. I resolve a Braingeyser but I'm at 2 life facing a Serra Angel. I brick again and use Recall to get back Braingeyser and an STP for the Angel. He has a follow up Angel that he had been holding after seeing me discard a Wrath of God earlier. I don't draw an answer and have to decide between casting Braingeyser for 5 and hoping to draw an STP or to use the Balance in my hand and discard down to 2 cards (counterspell and geyser) as well as sacrificing about 4 lands. I decide to play it safe and Balance. He chooses to use his own Swords to Plowshares on his Angel to force me to discard down to one card, but I use Counterspell on my own Balance to avoid that fate and win easily with Braingeyser and a full grip. Game two we both play Bayous. I have Icy and Royal for a Fungalsaur but he Crumbles the Icy. I get out an Erhnam and some mana Elves. He has a Whirling Dervish and an Erhnam. I use a Sinkhole and Ice Storm on his black mana. Eventually I attack with Erhnam which he blocks with his own. This lets me use Triskelion to kill his Djinn and Dervish. He finally draws second black for Pestilence, which is threatening to kill most of my team. I start being aggressive towards his life total. He kills my Ernie with a Terror I think and I lose the rest of my team to Pestilence. I decide I can afford to keep Pestilence in play because he is at two life and play another elf. He plays an Ernie and now I'm in trouble. I have to continue to Icy his Icy, but at any moment that could be over. He has Sylvan and finding what he needs. He gives my Elf forestwalk and attacks with Ernie leaving back Bayou and Factory. I tap his Icy at end of turn, and draw Pendelhaven. I immediately play it and he learns that you can't respond to land drops. I attack with the elf which puts him to 1 life and he can't activate Pestilence anymore and has to give my elf forestwalk again which kills him.

2-0

R3 - Andy Baquero - BAC

His B deck has a bunch of Savannah in a WW shell with Sylvan and Giant Growth. I try to Land Tax and Tower, but it's not enough. I Mana Drain something, but then don't use my mana correctly and take mana burn and die. I have turn 1 Library of Alexandria in game two and it helps me win even through a Nevinyrral's Disk for 7 of my permanents. Game 3 is super epic. I have early Erhnam and Sengir, but he has Rukh Egg and Ali from Cairo. He's stalling with Maze of Ith and eventually casts Lightning Bolt on his egg to get a Rukh. I draw some LD spells for the Maze and start racing, but he has a second Ali. I draw Arena which lets me start fighting his Ali or he can choose to lose his Rukh to my Djinn. Eventually he tries to Fireball my Sengir and I use Arena in response, forcing him to trade with the Rukh. Arena picks of the last Ali and I win the game.... 

....except Arena isn't legal in Swedish! Oops! We decide to give him the win and I'm forced to play Arena as a Savannah the rest of the event. I wasn't the only one confused on some of the rules. There was early confusion about if mana burn was in effect, as well as another player playing Rainbow Vale (I had Vale in my early Land Tax builds but realized it wasn't legal early on. Didn't help me figure out the Arena problem though.)

2-1

R4 - Øyvin Skattum Vesteng - ACB

I don't remember much about our game one. I think I killed with multiple Serendibs and his Juzam wasn't fast enough for my burn. Game two was much more interesting. I mulligan to five and play turn one elf. He uses Swords on the elf and then casts Winds of Change, hoping to screw me further. I play some more land and eventually an Erhnam. He has Land Tax and uses Strip Mine on himself to turn it on. I'm trying to kill him as fast as possible, but take a turn off to use Ice Storm on a Plateau to maybe cut him off of red mana and prevent Land's Edge. He has Mountain and Land's Edge anyway. On the last turn I attack him down to 2 life but don't have a land to kill him. I use Sinkhole on my own City of Brass to prevent him from using Tax one last time. He ends up with 14 points of damage with Lands Edge, but I'm at 15 life because of the Swords to Plowshares on turn one. Truly an epic finish.

3-1

R5 - Jeff Dehnhardt - CBA

Game one he plays the first Erhnam, but that means mine gets to do damage first. Icy and Ernie and Segnir race his lonely Djinn and I win. Game two he has Counterspell for my turn two Sylvan and then some Merfolk of the Pearl Trident. I'm Land Taxing but I can't find a way to stop the beats after he Spell Blasts my Ivory Tower. Eventually he has two Lord of Atlantis and I draw more lands and lose. Game three I keep an iffy hand that was Mox Emerald, Time Walk, Volcanic, Volcanic, Mountain, Shatter, Black Vice. I draw a bunch of mana and I'm never really in the game. I think I'm supposed to mulligan hands like this. The deck is too good to lose this way.

3-2

R6 - Dakota Martinez - BAC

His B deck is RG beats. I take a bunch from a Berserk Giant Growth Scryb Sprite before casting Wrath of God. I'm at 5 life but I Strip Mine his only Mountain and we play draw go for a while. I eventually find a Tower and he is on a short clock. I have removal for his fatties like Juggernaut and Erhnam but I'm still wary of being burned out. Eventually I get a second Tower and some more cards in hand and lock up the game with some Counterspells. My Atog deck puts enough pressure on him with Serendibs early and then I finish him with some Lightning Bolts.

4-2

R7 - Thomas Sutherland Borja - ABC

I have turn 1 Library of Alexandria and start using Lightning Bolt on his Llanowar Elves and Birds of Paradise. After four turns, he casts Armageddon hoping to stop the Library. I'm too far ahead and I'm able to deploy more lands afterwards while he has none. Game two he's able to use Dark Ritual to play Sengir and Juzam while stopping me from using Land Tax. I use Balance to clear the board, but he has Hypnotic Specter. I get to Tax once, and I'm trying to find an answer to Hyppie. Specter hits me twice discarding a Wrath of God and Tropical Island, but I still have enough mana left to Recall for Balance and we're in topdeck mode. I get a Tower out and start building up my hand. Eventually I'm at over 50 life with multiple towers and a Sylvan Library. He has a few Nevinyrral's Disks, but I have the Disenchant each time. Eventually I use Millstone to win the game.

5-2

Aftermath

I finished in 15th place, the worst of all the 15 point players. Simon also finished 5-2 and got 10th place. 

Overall I had a great time playing the event. Webcam Magic isn't ideal, but I still felt drained by the end of the day (double queuing the Arena Open probably helped). I got to meet a lot of new people, but it was mainly my opponents. I didn't get to meet the people at the event that I didn't play against like I would have at a real life event. I did enjoy playing everything in one day and not over several weeks like some other events going on. The event was very well run and the concept was a huge success. I think both Simon and I did well by understanding the strength of creatureless strategies in a no sideboard environment. I learned some more about building Old School decks and got to pick up some cool versions of cards in preparation to add to my collection.

Props:

Mano for putting this on

The rest of the people that helped Mano do this, read his stuff or listen to his podcast All Tings Considered to find out more

All my opponents, especially those that let me Millstone them. I tried to play as fast as possible

Arena (the card) for being awesome!

Slops

Me for not mulliganing in round 5

Arena (the card) for not being legal in Swedish. Why? Its so awesome! I'll keep playing it when I can.

Savannah - you really didn't impress even when people could play 20. Be better.

Tribal Aggro in Historic

Today, Wizards of the Coast announced the next Arena Open will be using the Historic format:

On August 1st we're holding the next Arena Open, and the format is..... Historic! Bring your best Historic deck and compete for some sweet rewards (like $2,000). pic.twitter.com/xFyhOKURGU

— MTG Arena (@MTG_Arena) July 9, 2020

I've actually spent the last few weeks playing a bunch of Historic, so this is exciting to me. I always love a good tribal deck, and I've played many different tribes over the years, most recently Elves and Merfolk. In my past, I've played Spirits and first got my start playing Goblins back in Onslaught block. I want to give a quick overview of the various tribal aggro decks I've tried or played against.

Merfolk

This is my latest iteration, but by no means perfect. I tried an 80 card Yorion version when companions were still original power level, but 80 card aggro is not the place to be. I think the core is Speaker, Biomancer, Mistbinder, Reejerey, Trickster, and Adept. I'm not sure about the rest. Deeproot Elite has been very good, but is probably worse the better the opponents decks are. You can combo off with Kumena and Reejerey, but I'm not sure how many you actually want to play. The real issue is the mana. There are a lot of cards you would like to play like countermagic and my MVP from standard Sleep, but 4 Ziggurat and 4 Territory make casting non-creatures difficult. I've seen versions with 4 Mist-Cloaked Herald, which is probably pretty great with Deeproot Elite, but I never liked it in Standard. Watertrap Weaver has been overperforming.

Vampires

This has been my strongest Historic deck. When I first put it together, I won my first 15 matches or so. I've cooled off since then, and it's definitely not the best deck in the format. It struggles against Gruul, but was surprisingly good vs UG Nexus. Silversmote Ghoul is the real deal with Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord. The removal options are unexciting despite how many you have, I haven't found one that I want to play in the main deck. There isn't a good answer to Embercleave and a lot of the plan against Gruul was to block, so that is why it's been unfavorable. I recently added the last 4 one-drops in Skymarch Aspirant to be a bit more aggressive, but I've yet to achieve city's blessing. Legion Landing would be nice, but once again the mana issue comes up. Playing enough non-Territory white sources to support really cuts into the black and will lower consistency overall.

Humans

I haven't actually played any games with Humans, but I've seen some lists that had success and I've played against it a few times. I'm skeptical about the amount of lords, so I put the Icon in this 3 color only version. Playing Red for Judith is probably better than Icon. I think also lacking on interaction. Deputy of Detention is widely played, but it's not a human. I guess that doesn't matter for Judith. I've no idea if Whisper Squad is playable. I do think Hero of Precinct One has potential in some builds. 

Goblins

I've only played against Goblins and I've beaten it every time. Conspicuous Snoop is good and Chainwhirler still dominates some matchups, but the rest of the deck looked real bad. I'm not sure what your top end is supposed to look like. Ringleader and Matron are to costly without Vial to cheat them in. No Piledriver or cheap lord or similar card makes it hard to actually kill with a swarm. Maybe Icon of Ancestry is the answer? I don't have a list to share, just wanted to express my skepticism.

Elves

I don't think you can play this with only 4 Llanowar Elves. Pelt Collector just isn't the same, you end up being a worse version of Gruul. Imperious Perfect is a card you get that Pioneer version doesn't have, but overall you are down too many cards to keep up with the high powered tier one Historic decks.

Soldiers / Knights

I don't know if there are enough payoffs in either tribe, but there are a lot of cards with these types. Maybe someone else can come up with something good, but I think they usually are better off focusing on Humans. 

Other Tribes

Cats and Dogs get a push with M21, but I don't think there are enough cards existing yet. Maybe by this time next year. Dinosaurs can't really compete with the stronger Gruul cards from Eldraine. 

That's all I have for now. I'm excited about the Arena Open, and I'm going to keep working on Historic until then. 

-Ty

Jeskai Planeswalkers at Players Tour Online

This past weekend I played in the online Players Tour on MTG Arena. I went 1-5 before dropping. This was a strange event for many reasons, and I'm glad to be done with it. There isn't any more professional level Magic on my schedule for the year, and it remains to be seen what it will look like next year.

Preparation

Because this tournament was Standard only, preparation was a lot more focused than usual. As soon as the banning and companion rule change were announced, the team started working. Unfortunately, there was a four day lag on Arena before they went into effect. Normally, you would want to try out the various brews on ladder before subjecting teammates to playing against them with gauntlet decks. For the first few days it was hard to know what to even do.

The first thing we tested were variations on Yorion decks like Bant and Jeskai. Eventually it was determined that Yorion was not worth the loss of consistency. The UWx mirrors were all about Teferi and Elspeth Conquer's Death, so playing 80 cards meant you had these cards far less frequently. Bant had a big edge over other UWx decks because of Growth Spiral and Uro, so it was the main front runner for midrange/control.

The Temur Reclamation deck was obviously very strong, and a lot of time was spent trying to find decks with good plans to beat it. Jund Sacrifice was very strong against every deck we played except Temur Reclamation. Eventually the Cavalcade Red deck was published and we thought that might be the way to beat Temur, but it was weak to prepared sideboards and also very weak against Mayhem Devil.

At this point I expected a Rock/Paper/Scissors meta-game of Temur > Jund > Red > Temur, with various UWx decks being 45%-55% vs everything. I found that against Temur with Bant, I'd be able to establish a Teferi and Narset lock, but struggled wining the game before they could break out of it. Shark Typhoon was the key card in the match-up for both sides, and there didn't seem to be a good way to trump the other.

I tried Sarkhan the Masterless as a thought to take advantage of the planewalkers that were effectively just sitting around on the battlefield. I had some success initially closing out games way faster and sometimes out of nowhere. The Royal Scions and Elspeth, Sun's Nemesis pumping power provided extra boost at killing fast. 

I originally had main deck Tithe Taker with Legion Warboss to help pressure against Temur. Eventually I realized how strong Gideon Blackblade was with Shatter the Sky as well as getting around Teferi and Mystical Dispute. It was an additional target for the increasingly impressive Royal Scions. The deck was still skewed towards late game plans with a small fish plan with Tithe Taker, but it was inconsistent at applying early pressure. The idea is to get a creature in play to pressure the opponent which lets you resolve planeswalkers without losing tempo and then kill them with Sarkhan when the shields are down. Against aggro, the plan was to play creature or Birth of Meletis to protect your planeswalkers and use sweepers to clear the board. I had good Red matchup, and a reasonable Jund matchup after sideboard.

About midweek the results of LCQs showed that Sultai was on the rise. In the games I played against the deck I didn't feel like I could ever win. Casualties of War was too strong and undoing all the board presence, and the land destruction was actually devastating. Because I didn't have Growth Spiral or Uro, I had to play 27 land and hope to draw the right amount. This generally wasn't a problem if I could get to 5 mana, but Casualties a turn or two early would be more than enough to stunt my development. 

The night before decklists were due, I was about to switch to Jund Sacrifice. I had worked out a sideboard and plan with Collin Rountree that I liked. He played it and ended up going 4-5, losing the last round to not make day 2. After getting the Jund plan together, I went back into the lab with Will Lowry to give one last look at Jeskai. We came up with this:

I'm probably the only one playing a lot of these cards in the #mtg RPT tomorrow. Here's what I registered: pic.twitter.com/oP7g8F9unt

— Ty Thomason (@ceciliajupe) June 13, 2020

I wanted to try Sprite Dragon, and Will came up with Ajani's Pridemate to combo with Gideon and Interplanar Beacon. Now the deck had a more aggressive plan that didn't require sacrificing much lategame power. It did require some manabase concessions, but with 27 lands you can get the numbers right pretty easily. Some of the more controlling cards like Birth of Meletis and extra sweepers had to be cut, but you can make up for them with the power of the new two drops.

I knew some cards would be tough to beat. Storm's Wrath was scary, as was Questing Beast. But most scary was Nissa, especially coming out a turn or two earlier than normal.

Standard

Standard isn't good right now. I had a lot of fun playing on ladder while working on the event, but the metagame of the best of the best was not fun. Growth Spiral and Uro make the early game completely irrelevant. Everyone is playing a ramp deck, but instead of actual ramp strategies they have combo kills. The cycling triomes are the best lands you can play, and since you have to play Spiral and Uro, you can only play Temur or Sultai, or mono colored deck. 

The Jeskai deck was starting from a disadvantage against the field by not playing Spiral and Uro. It tries to make up for that with the strong two-drop plan, but can't afford to aggressively mulligan for them. The cards still line up well enough against Temur that I felt confident in that matchup, but I was still worried about Sultai.

The Tournament

I wasn't looking forward to playing the event on Arena. I'm not a big fan of playing high stakes event online. For whatever reason I can't get myself in the same head space to focus like it really matters. Also the lack of in-client tournament support was worrisome. 

I didn't have any technical issues, but I kept seeing stories from people who did. For the most part, the CFB process was reasonable, but there was no good way to back things up when something went wrong. As nice as it is to prevent cheating and provide equal time allotment with chess clocks, the percentage of the time errors occur is still too high from my estimation. 

Posting my notes from the matches below.

R1 - Sultai - 3x Nissa

I win game one with some solid tempo. Game two he has turn four Nissa on the play and I can't protect my planeswalkers. Game three I keep three spells four lands and then draw six land in a row .

0-1

R2 - Sultai - 2x Nissa

Game one I lose to Spiral into Casualties twice. Game two I never find a third land.
0-2

R3 - UG Mutate Ramp with 4x Nissa
Game one he plays Nissa on turn three on the play. Game two I lose to Nissa again.
0-3

R4 - Bant with 4x Nissa

I lose game one when I miss land drops and he plays Nissa turn five. I win game two despite missing my 4th land drop twice. My various grizzle bears got the job done. Game three is more attrition, but I end up sticking a Narset and his hand is just three Uro at that point and he can't get out of the lock.
1-3

R5 - RW Cycling
Game one he plays Fox into Fox on the play and I don't draw Shatter. Game two I'm able to keep the board clear and win with Sarkhan. Game three I punt when I don't use Elspeth to gain 5 life after casting Shatter the Sky. He untaps and plays Stinger and has enough cycling pings plus Zenith to kill me from 13 life before I can use Clarion with Sarkhan.
1-4

R6 - Temur Reclamation
Game one I play Pridemate into Gideon with two Beacon triggers and he dies on turn 5. Games two and three both go very long and I'm ahead but lose my planeswalkers to Nightpack Ambusher I can't really answer effectively as Aether Gust only delayed the problem.
1-5 Drop

I knew Nissa would be bad for me but misjudged how many people would play it. Sultai was the second most played deck and I should have played something stronger, preferably with Growth Spiral.

If you want to try the deck out, I'd recommend playing some Narset of the Ancient Way. I tried her and she was reasonable but ended up being cut to make room for more The Royal Scions. Scions was very impressive but usually the weakest card and sided out a lot. I think Pridemate is reasonable and Sprite Dragon is the weaker of the two because of the effect on the mana base. Sprite Dragon and Sarkhan is nice though.

What I missed

Besides missing on my metagame read, I missed a bunch of other things. I missed the ritual of finding cards and sleeving my deck. I missed traveling to a new place and sampling the local food and beer. I missed the time spent in between rounds playing whatever games to keep us entertained. I missed drafting. I missed the feeling that the tournaments usually give, that they matter for something. I missed being able to prepare and play with my friend Austin Burshavich #freeaustin. I missed the Pro Tour.

Props:
Zachary Kiihne for helping with the initial brew and Tithe Taker tech, even if I didn't end up playing it
Will Lowry for helping me tune my junky pile even if it didn't work out
The team for providing a real time reflection of the meta-game development. One of the stronger features of having such a large group

Slops:
WotC for cutting all the prize money
WotC for banning Austin #freeaustin
WotC for forcing us to play on Arena
WotC for killing the PT dream

Exploring my feelings about recent events

I still don't know exactly how I feel.

I normally like to have some coherent narrative or point to these posts. I treat them more as articles than journal entries. However, it is still a blog. This post is going to be mostly me trying to work out how I feel about the recent events in the world of MtG.

Losing What Was Promised

Thanks to Austin Bursavich, the announcement about changes to the upcoming RPT and other events was not a surprise. It was still a disappointment. It feels like an opportunistic move to kill the paper events I've been in love with for over 20 years. I could have understood an indefinite delay with a creation of a separate, online-only circuit to fill the time until we can return to the convention halls. Removing a significant amount of the previously advertised prize support is just a further slap in the face.

I understand that MTG Arena is the future, but I don't think that means we should cut ties with the past. Since Pro Tour 1 in New York almost 25 years ago, there has been a connected string of events that looks to be ending now. Despite the many rebrandings and changes to the structures, you could always finish in the top 50 or top 25 or whatever record you needed, and you would get to play the next event. Hopefully there is something in the future to keep this lineage going. 

Losing any kind of status that I may have currently hurts a bit. This has been by far my most successful run on the Professional level. I was qualified for the next PT and had 95% partial invite to the following one. I was confident I could play all three this year and hopefully more into the next year. I have nothing to show for any of it now except an online 15 round standard event with effectively GP level prizes. I've been close before. In 2012 I had a great run of GP success and had played in 3 out of 4 PTs. This was good enough to get me Silver level in the first year of its existence. Unfortunately, Silver benefits at the time were basically nothing. Later on, they would add a PT invitation to the Silver status, but I never got one. It could have been 5 out of 6 PTs. It could have been something. This could have been something, too. 

It was upsetting that there wouldn't be stocked Arena accounts. They gave everyone going to MCII early access to WAR events just last year, but somehow couldn't do it for this? The tin-foil hat people say they only withheld the accounts to appear like they were compromising on something after the expected backlash came. They probably are close to the truth.

I was hopeful after the announcement of the Arena Open. I was looking forward to actually having an event to prepare for. The PT announcement was also another event I could prepare for. Standard isn't at a great place, so that is frustrating, but at least it was something. I started playing my way through the format to get a feel.

Then they banned Austin.

Snitch or Die

It is hard for me to even put into words how brutal the action is. It seems without any warning they took the most extreme measure on an outsider in order to try to solve what is clearly an internal problem. Austin wasn't the only one with access to the "privileged" information. He was the one that shared it to a much broader audience, but it was already out there. No one with any real connection was surprised by what he was saying. 

The MPL response has been gross. They keep claiming that it wasn't a huge advantage the way Austin and others have said. That almost certainly implies that they think it is at least a slight advantage, and that they are okay with having a slight advantage. As if being one of the best players in the world with a salary to support full time Magic playing wasn't an advantage enough! Perhaps the NDA is keeping their true feelings at bay. I have much more respect for the MPL / Rivals members who haven't said anything, or at least haven't tried to minimize the negative actions of WotC.

I don't know what to do. I was ready to start playing again. I had purchased some gems for Arena to get some decks built, despite knowing I would have access to a full account. I wanted to get back into the thick of it. I spent a holiday weekend relaxing and having a good time, but my mood was ruined on Sunday night. 

I will try to get a refund for my Arena purchase. I don't know how hard to prepare for the upcoming RPT event. I'm still tempted to register 60 basics and collect my minimum prize for showing up. They've shown their cards. They are spineless and I don't know if I can support them in the future. 

How Do I Even Feel About Magic?

I have always loved Magic. For the longest time, I wasn't sure how much more I loved it than the average players, or average PTQ grinder. It was probably well above average. I'm clearly not the biggest fan, but likely in the top 1000 or so.

My office at home is decorated with my trophies and memorabilia from various Magic events. I own an excessive amount of Magic cards. I will always play the game at some level. Maybe in the future that is just Old School and related formats. 

The last Magic event I played was the RPT in Phoenix. It was one of the most satisfying events I've ever played. I remember getting dinner on Saturday night with two of my best friends and teammates Will Lowry and Collin Rountree. We all had a successful event on some level. We all made money in the tournament. We were all qualified for the next event. Our larger team had put 4 players in the top 8 and many more in the top 50. Our processed had worked. It wasn't my favorite trip, or my favorite tournament, or even my favorite after-event hangout experience. It was full of hope though, and that felt like the best thing ever at the time.

And now that hope is gone.

All Quiet on the Magic Front

I felt like I was on a good streak of at least posting once a month to this blog. Oh well.

I haven't been playing much Magic during the COVID-19 lock down. I can't really explain why. I guess I just haven't been into it. Without a big tournament to prepare for I don't really see the point in playing just for fun online. None of the online events are offering the prize that I'm looking for (that being the last 5% partial invite I need, but who knows how that will even work after this is all done?)

I have used the time to finally finish organizing and inventorying my collection. It has been a slow process over the past 5 years given how much bulk I had, but now everything is in its final place.

The End of Planeswalker Points

I've had two blog posts unpublished for several years now. One was about the flaws of the PWP system and what changes I thought it would make it something useful. Another was a retrospective of all the PTQs I played that I was planning on doing when they first killed PTQs, but never got around to finishing and now they are back. When I was working on it, I had saved all my PTQ match history so I was a bit ahead of the curve when they announced PWP was shutting down.

I don't know how to express the importance of archival storage. Maybe some people just don't see the value, but for those that do it is so readily apparent. I've lost a large portion of my tournament reports over the years to websites that vanished overnight without a chance to recover. My policy for last 5 years has been to copy everything I write to this blog even if it is published elsewhere. It is useful enough to me that the effort is worth it. I have managed to find two reports from 2004 that I have put on this blog. I wish I had the others from that era and all the eras in between.

I may still do the PTQ retrospective to cover the ones I don't already have reports on. I'll include GP and PT as well, maybe 5 per post. Until then, I wanted to share 5 events from my PWP history. A lot of people were doing this on Twitter, but I didn't want to clog the timeline. 

The First Events

My first two sanctioned events are above. I was entirely casual up to this point. The FNM was Prophecy era Standard. I borrowed Accelerated Blue copied directly from a Zvi article (I'm sure this list is somewhere, it played Blasted Landscape). I borrowed it from Tracey Steele, who I only knew from the SCG Forums online. I was just a 16 year old kid from the internet and he trusted me with his $200 deck. I made top 4 mainly by just having a real deck and playing cards like Masticore against the field of rogue brews. My round 3 opponent was Minh Mai, who would become one of my best friends a few years later. At the time, we were both in high school at different schools. Tracey beat me in the top 4 since I had no idea what I was doing. We still talk occasionally to this day.

The other event was my first limited event, the Invasion Prerelease. A big surprise in looking at this was the name Andy Swaffar. I've recently become acquainted with him in the past 9 months as part of the Texas Old School Magic scene. He lives in the BCS area same as me and we've gone to several Old School events together. I had no idea we had played 20 years ago. Jonathan Job is also a guy I still talk to occasionally. 

The First PTQ Win

This is the one report I most wish I still had. Legions era Sealed Deck. I top 8 with a builds itself RG deck. In the top 8 I drafted 4x Improvised Armor over the first two packs. In the third pack I took as many creatures with Provoke as possible. I wrote about my top 4 match with Nathan Zamora here.

The Events I'm Most Proud Of

I was the Two Headed Giant State Champion in 2006 in South Carolina. I was also the 2007 2HG State Champion in Hawaii. I was runner-up in 2005 Texas States. For whatever reason I really liked State Championships. I really wanted to have an Individual Title, and I set my sights on the Texas event in 2011 shortly after returning home from the Navy. I even went so far as to call my shot on the local MTG Forum, telling others to not bother showing up. My full report is still up here. (I should add that to this blog for archive now that I think about it.)

The PTQ in Lubbock I played Boros in Modern. I built the deck on the 9 hour drive from Houston to Lubbock with David Thomas. 

These events I'm most proud of in retrospect because they are when I realized I could actually have success with my own innovations in deck building. They aren't my favorite decks I've ever built, but they brought me success and proved I could do it. 

Reminiscing

I always enjoy a good walk down Memory Lane. I'll probably write about  4 or 5 events at a time in a new series until I get through all 97 PTQs and other events. Maybe it will be my next 5 year MTG project.