There is always more Magic

It's been a little over three weeks since I kicked off this blog. I've played a little bit of Magic since then--M13 prerelease--but not much in the way of Standard. Now that M13 is street legal, I can start getting a feel for what the format looks like with the new additions.

 

I watched a lot of the videos from the Magic Cruise on Channel Fireball. Some great stuff in there. Chapin's talk on brewing was good, as was the Cruise edition of Magic TV with LSV and TSG. I have a spicy brew going, so it was good to hear some deckbuilding advice. Depending on how tonight goes, I might get out a similar deck from the past and try the "template" method. This starts with stripping a base list down to leave a "mold," i.e. instead of "4 Llanowar Elf" put "4 cheap accelerators" or instead of "3 lightning bolt" put "3 cheap burn spells." Then you fill in the gaps with cards legal in the format right now. I've been aware of this way of deckbuilding for some time, but I haven't had a chance to use it yet.

The LSV/TSG segment was loaded with good advice. During the Q&A, someone asked about getting better at dealing with losing and tilt in general. The advice LSV gave was "lose a lot." He then expanded to "lose until it doesn't bother you." He then expanded further, comparing two hypothetical players. One guy plays FNM once a week, and his mindset is "well, this is all the Magic I have, better make it count." He puts himself under a lot of pressure to win, and when he doesn't win it bothers him a lot. The other guy plays FNM every week, but he also hits up a weeknight tournament once a week and plays MODO a couple of times a week, too. When the second guy 0-2-drops an event, his mindset is that it's just a thing that happened. There will be more Magic. There is always more Magic.

Now, I'm fairly certain I was tilting a bit during my bad run there, so this applies to me, certainly. I have also noticed that sometimes in close/high pressure games I tend to become visibly uncomfortable--tense facial muscles, constant foot-tapping, etc. The challenge for me is to bring the mindset of "always more Magic" to the table every time I play--even if it's the last PTQ of the season, even if it's a win-and-in, even if I'm playing against a well-known pro.

What I'm going to try to do is this: when I recognize the physical symptoms of nervousness, I'm going to think back to a time I was in a "big" match and got a good result. For example, I've beaten Cedric Phillips in a PTQ and Gerard Fabiano in the semis of a GP grinder.

Thinking back to the match against Fabiano now I am struck by the fact that my nerves didn't really hurt me during that match, but they did during the finals. I was mentally exhausted after winning the semifinal and had nothing left in the tank for my finals match. So that's something to watch out for, I guess.

One way my mental game being off manifested itself at the last few PTQs was I found myself keeping hands that I would mulligan at FNM. I found myself thinking things like "that will have to be good enough, I guess" or "I can't win if I mulligan again, so I'd better take a chance on this hand." That should have tipped me off then and there that I was punting, and I'm going to have that be a trigger for myself now--if I think something along those lines, ship the hand.

There's a PTQ in Baltimore on the 28th and an SCG IQ this weekend. I'm going to use tonight and the IQ to prepare for the PTQ at the end of the month. I want to play either a deck involving Snapcaster Mage and Augur of Bolas or--wait for it--Goblins. Krenko's Command into Goblin Chieftain or Goblin Chieftain into Krenko, Mob Boss are both so dirty. Goblin Grenade is Standard legal. Chieftain rotates out in a few months, so now's the time if I'm going to try it. If Goblins turns out to be terribad, my backup plan is this Adam Prosak build or maybe a more "stock" Delver deck.

I'll be back after the IQ this weekend, if not sooner. See you then.