Humbleness
Today’s topic is partially inspired by a scene from the very fine motion picture The Alamo that I re-watched recently. Don’t worry, I don’t intend to have a history lecture here (although it’s a subject that I otherwise find very interesting), just hear me out.
In the movie there is a great scene early on in which General Sam Houston is heading towards a meeting of the makeshift Texas congress and he is quite agitated about how silly the congressmen are acting regarding the threat of the Mexicans backlash to the newly founded state. He is also just a teeny tiny bit drunk.
As he is about to enter the house where the makeshift congress is adjourning, the soldier that had previously fetched him from the tavern where he was drinking carefully plead Houston the following:
“They are gonna want you humble, General.”
To which Houston harshly replies:
“I humble myself before God and there the lists ends.”
Now, that state of mind that Houston showed in the movie is not a too uncommon mental state Magic players playing the game at a competitive level can have. And just like that I turned a reference from The Alamo to Magic theory. Neat, huh?
This state of mind is probably the most commonly found by players in the upper PTQ scene and/or players that play the occasional Pro Tour but never really get on the “gravytrain”. They have the ambition and often the inner fire you need to succeed but they lack the playskill to become a mainstay on the Pro Tour. They typically have qualified for a Pro Tour or two and/or have a decent finish at a Grand Prix.
So, the target group has enjoyed some success playing the game but have yet a couple of nudges left up to become “great” players. This is a dangerous place to be mentally because that might lead into constantly beliving that you are better everyone else in the venue where you are playing.
Someone could argue with me here and say that what I’m describing is merely confidence and that is a good thing. To that line of reasoning I say that I agree with you. Confidence is good but it’s when confidence turns into virtual hubris where the destructive behavior starts.
It’s destructive because once you have that mental state you drastically reduce your ability of winning games. You stop blaming yourself from losing games and make up a bunch of excuses in the line of “he drew his 4-outer of the top!” or “I got manascrew again, stupid variance!”. You justify keeping bad hands because of thought like “I’m a better player than this scrub I’m facing ergo I will win regardless”. You keep making poor plays justified by your poorly estimated superiority in experience.
All in all, the worst part is that you stop learning from your own mistakes and greatly slows down the evolution of you as a player.
It’s true that Magic is a game where luck or randomness is a factor. Exactly what the percentages between randomness and playskill is an often debated subject and doesn’t have a clear answer. Every now and then it happens that you lose games and matches even though you played “flawlessly”. I do however believe that players in general overestimates the number of games they directly lose due to variance and thus underestimates they lost because of their own shortages.
While pointing and theorizing about the phenomena as a whole is fairly easy, it can be a lot trickier to acknowledge that oneself is suffering from this state of mind. It might seems trivial to discover that you are suffering from this condition if you are on the “outside looking in” but it’s not as easy to see it if you are on the inside, as it were. From the tone of this article it might sound like I’m above all of this and looking down at the poor fellas that are stuck in this mental trap but the truth is that I’m there to. It’s at least a deep concern of mine. As I have described, it isn’t exactly the place you want to be mentally.
There is more to it though that makes it tricky. You see, there is something on the other side of the spectrum that is a concern to. If you suddenly blame absolutely everything that goes wrong in a game of Magic on yourself, you will instead build up a lack of confidence, which isn’t exactly stellar to have either. Ergo like many things in life, it’s a matter of balance…and balance is hard to achieve.
I don’t have any stellar advise about how to get away from this destructive behavior other than what is commonly said about similar ordeals. I’m partially strugling with this matter myself. The best I have at the moment is to try to have some composure and take a few steps back and try to get the “outside looking in” perspective instead of the “inside looking in” one. Be humble to yourself and not just as sportsmanship to others. If you can be humble to yourself, I believe there is room for personal evolution and growth.
Anyhow, people work differetly and what makes us tick is not the same from person to person. I will leave you with this though. I think it’s important that for those who feel that they might be in this mental state that I have detailed to acknowledge it. As often said, admitting the problem is step one on the route of getting better.
Keep your head between your shoulders at all time and don’t let it float out high above the clouds, smuck.
Until next time,
Bernhard
The coolest thing about Dark Ascension
If you have missed it, Wizards has put up the entire set in the official spoilers over at the mothership, so everyone can now indulge the awesomeness that is Dark Ascension.
As I was sifting through the entire spoiler and looking at the plethora of cool cards, one thing hit me. What I find really fascinating about the new set is not a specific card or anything but rather how nearly every card that I find interesting can’t be directly correlated to a specific deck that already exist in Standard (or Modern for that matter). What I’m trying to say here is that for most of the Constructed worthy cards in the set, there aren’t already a deck that says “oh, come to papa!”.
If we take Standard as our reference format, cards like Lingering Souls, the new Sorin, Geralf’s Messenger, Gravecrawler, Faithless Looting, Huntmaster of the Fells along with a couple of others seems great and clearly cards you want to put somewhere to use… except there isn’t really a great spot for them if you look at what decks people are playing in Standard right now.
Therefore we are encourage to find new shells to harness the full potential out of these new cards. And that is exactly why I think Dark Ascension seems so cool from where I’m standing today. It’s not like Standard is a very stale format right now but nevertheless, a breath of fresh air like this is always welcomed. Gotta say that I’m pretty stoked about how the Standard format will evolve in the upcoming weeks.
As for Modern or Legacy goes, it’s much harder to say. I mean, Faithless Looting seems to me like the #1 candidate on the list of impacting cards for the bigger sets but it’s difficult to say for sure with such big formats in consideration. You typically need a quite large stick to startle the sleeping dragons that Modern and Legacy are, if you know what I’m saying.
And off course, Dark Ascension seems like a blast for Limited. I’m so looking forward to get some drafts done with Dark Ascension. So, can the set come already?
Optimal for me doesn’t have to mean optimal for you
It’s a recurring thing in Magic that players are constantly looking to play the best decks and play the optimal build of a chosen archetype. Players wants to win matches and hence there is an never ending quest of getting the highest EV possible out of your deck choice. If you are a competitive player at heart, this shouldn’t sound too unfamiliar.
Last year as I were testing for Nationals I had an epiphany regarding the chase of the “optimal” build of a given deck. Now, let me explain.
Storytime!
During the weeks before Nationals as I were testing out Standard, Pyromancer Ascension as a deck was constantly fluctuating in and out of my attention. I would get really psyched about the deck, play some games, do some “mental” playtesting, get uncertain and finally shelving the deck. I went through that cycle a bunch of times during those weeks.
During those weeks I chatted a lot with my friend (and the often mentioned) Per Nyström, who also was a big fan of the deck. He had like I some good results with the deck and was impressed by how the deck fared against the field but was also uncertain about the deck like I was. To try to make some headway about finding a conclusion about the deck we joined cause and exchanged our lists we both more or less swore by.
I got to say that we both were quite befuddled when we looked at each others lists, at least I was. The majority of the decklists were off course very similar as Standard at the time didn’t offer too many choices of what you could play in your Ascension deck. But the differences was in the context quite huge.
The difference in our lists was were I was playing 2 copies of Deprive and 2 copies of Call to Mind, Per was running a full set of Arc Trail. For a deck like Pyromancer Ascension this is a change of magnitude of the difference of night and day. Hence, a heated discussion followed about which approach was better. We both had similar results with our decklists and it stands to reason that one approach had to be better than the other, right?
After we had been nagging on each other for a while, a thought came to my mind that we both could be right. I came to that thought by first coming to the realization that people plays decks and cards differently (note that differently doesn’t have to imply worse!). We all have some more or less unique touch in our gaming that leads us to different results and opinions while playing with certain cards and certain decks.
So, in the context of the Pyromancer Ascension story I felt so strong about Deprive and Call to Mind because when I was playing the deck I was playing basically a crappy blue-red control deck, just stalling and cantripping my way through games until I reached the point where my Pyromancer Ascension got up to 2 counters and at that point every spell in the deck turned to pure gold.
On the other hand Per wasn’t playing a crappy blue-red control deck like I was. He was playing a glorified burn deck with a combo finish. He didn’t intend to be more controlling in games than he had to and rather focused on leaving his opponent dead.
With that in mind the differences in our decklists suddenly made perfect sense. 4 Arc Trail wasn’t supporting my gameplan like I felt Deprive and Call to Mind did. On Per side, playing these extra counterspells and late game cards didn’t make sense at all because he wasn’t planning on going so deep in each game.
The moral of the story and the answer to the everlong question of is there such a thing as a optimal deck is yes…but only relatively.
The lesson I want you to take with you from this blogpost is when you are looking on decklists online and contemplating on exactly what cards you should be running in your version of deck X, be careful and think about the lists and the cards on your own. Don’t be a monkey and simply ctrl+c a decklist online and expect to do well with it in a tournament the next day. Copying a list or some sideboard notes is a great starting point. But as I pointed out with the story above, what is optimal for the guy posting the decklist doesn’t have to mean it is optimal for you. The list you copied should rarely be the final product you take to the heat of battle.
Why I haven’t written about this epiphany earlier is beyond me. I think it must have gotten lost in the shuffle as there was a bunch of stuff happening right after Nationals if I recall correctly. And somehow it just got back to me now. So there you have it.
As a final note, I’m not claiming any original rights about this philosophy in any ways so please keep that sort of flaming to yourself. I’m quite sure many others have expressed similar ideas although in different shapes and context. It’s nevertheless an interesting philosophy that I think is very valuable to have in mind to get the most of the process of picking decks to play and figure out exactly what sort of build you end up running of said deck.
Have a good one,
Bernhard
Standard is awesome!
The Dark Ascension prerelease is barely a month a way which means the current Standard format is not long for this world but I thought I chip in a couple of words about Standard as it’s a format constantly on players minds.
For starters, I just want to put it out there and say the current Standard format is pretty freaking awesome.
It’s no secret that I’m a pretty big fan of Standard as a format in general but I have to say that the current one is one of the best in recent memory. That is particularly remarkable considering only one set of the Innistrad block has been released so far. If we go back and look at previous Standard format at this point of the year we have witness formats that have been “plagued” by a dominance of a single deck (see Valakut, Jund, Faeries) mostly due to the limited card pool.
But we have seen a recent change in that trend as Wizards brought down the powerlevel that had been steadily rising over the last couple of years. As the powerlevel was brought down with Scars of Mirrodin it means that its presence in the Standard format founded last fall was not as profound as previous block has been in the past.
Anyhow, we now have a Standard format without a single really dominant deck or archetype which is fantastic. There are a bunch of viable decks that doesn’t really have any super lopsided matchups. There has been an constant evolution in the meta since day 1, decks and strategies have appeared, disappeared and later seen returning again to the cream of the crop of the format. And to booth a constant evolution of technology and evaluation of cards.
All in all some very good signs of a healthy format. If I have to complain about something it would be that the options for combo decks are still sort of shy but considering the still relatively small card pool that is understandable. If wait for another set or two that issue will most likely be some what fixed.
Now for some comments about more in-depth stuff regarding Standard:
The big bad wolf
When I look for decks to play for a format I usually look for the most powerful things you could be doing in terms of raw potential. It is a rule of thumb that I have and it has worked out pretty well for me so far. If you ask me, I think the single most powerful spell you can be casting in Standard right now is Primeval Titan.
The big bad wolf
Yes, the big bad wolf of last year has once again returned to the grand scene after the rotation. Primeval Titan doesn’t however pose as much of a threat as he did when Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle was still around but he is still sort of a big deal in Standard.
Even if the opponent can deal with the threatening 6/6 trampeling body immediately the package of lands Primeval Titan brings to the battlefield with him can easily put the game over the top for the green mage regardless. Usually it’s the perfect pair of Inkmouth Nexus and Kessig Wolf Run that does the tick but I’m also a very fond of Glimmerpost. Just being able to gain 4, 6 or 8 life (depending on the number of Glimmerpost already in play) in a single move can be enough in some matchups to swing it in your favor.
The point I’m driving towards is that Primeval Titan is probably the most impacting spell in Standard relative it’s mana cost (hence I’m not looking at you White Sun’s Zenith for infinite). A resolved Primeval Titan warps the game it like few other spells can.
An exciting feature of Primeval Titan this time around is there are a myriad of shells you can put the package of Primeval Titan and his lands in. Last season with Valakut there weren’t that much in the way of variation between Valakut decks. The little variation that could be seen often was often which 4 out of the 6 viable ramp spells did you run or if you ran Lightning Bolt, Dismember, Pyroclasm or nothing in the removal slot.
But today the variation severely greater. You could have a classic RG Ramp shell with a lot of removal like the World Champion had at Worlds. You could have a Birthing Pod-engine like Reid Duke sported at the Invitational. You could have a more controlling GW shell taking advantage of white sweepers and powerful Planeswalkers like several Japanese did at Worlds. You could be sporting a ton of artifact threats and take advantage of “the little Sol Ring that could”, Palladium Myr like Travis Woo advocated early in the season. You could also take advantage Dungrove Elder like the PotY Owen Turtenwald did at States.
As I said, there are a ton of options and the exciting thing is that no take is really strictly better compared to the rest. It’s very much up to personal preferences which version you should be running and the current flavor of the meta. Right now I personally am quite fond of utilizing Dungrove Elder. Since Worlds the number of control decks has been on a rise and I like the extra dimension of threats Dungrove Elder provides the deck against control deck. You are a little worse set up against random aggro decks but your plan A (resolving Primeval Titan) is usually good enough to get you there anyways against those kinds of decks.
So…go big.
The purifier of worlds
A close second to Primeval Titan in the category “powerful spells in the format” is the Grand Cenobite herself, Elesh Norn.
In few word she can be described as a “wrath on legs” or a bad ass Crovax, Ascendant Hero, which is nothing to take lightly. She comes down, killing most of the opponents business or rendering it impotent and provided you with a steady 4/7 body with Vigilance. And oh, did you notice that she pumps up your guys to? The last part is usually rudimentary as the opponent are often reeling from the “wrath”-effect and the big body but shouldn’t not be forgotten.
The purifier of worlds
The thing that I think pushed over the top is she is actually very useful against the Primeval Titan decks. Just being a big fatty that is good against aggro decks is not that unique but the fact that she shuts down the the means that the ramp decks normally utilize to trump the control decks, Inkmouth Nexus.
When I have been playing control in Standard recently, I have found it relatively easy to just deal with the fattys the ramp decks busts out. However, if you wager in the presence of Inkmouth Nexus in the scenario above it’s suddenly can get very tricky to manage everything nasty your opponent tries to do. But if you have a Elesh Norn on your side, a lot of that stress can be reduced. Elesh Norn at worst can trade with any threat the ramp decks can put out and while she is in play Inkmouth Nexus is a non-issue.
She also fills a similar key role against opponent sporting Moorland Haunt, which is another card that can otherwise give control players a heap of trouble.
Powerlevel-wise I think Primeval Titan and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is fairly close but I’m favoring Primeval Titan in that clash of the titans because Elesh Norn is more of an answer really and does not pose as much threat in ending the game as a Primeval Titan typically do. That said, Elesh Norn is still a hell of a spell.
If I’m playing a white deck in Standard right now and am running enough mana sources so that I could be reasonable be casting a 7 mana spell, I would fore sure have a least a copy of the Grand Cenobite somewhere in my 75…and probably more than one.
On a side note I’m kinda glad that Elesh Norn has proved to be a force to reckon with lately. The issue here is the Titan cycle from the core set. While I think it’s a very exciting cycle of great cards, they are borderline too good in the sense that they forces out other 6, 7 and 8 drops from seeing play when they otherwise had the potential to do so. But regardless of the presence of the core set Titans Elesh Norn has proved it’s worth in Standard. So you know…kudos!
Not a mirage, but an illusion
I don’t think there is a deck in Standard right now that I can justify labeling “the best deck” because I don’t feel nor can see such a dominance from a single deck to do that. But, say someone would point a gun to my head and force me to pick a deck as “the best deck” I would have to go with Uw Illusions.
Illusion or not, still very threatening
When I’m piloting Uw Illusions it feels like I have at least a 50/50 matchup or better against any deck that isn’t fundamentally faster than you are. Ilusions had a bad showing and Worlds because the local meta contained a lot of Red Deck Wins style of decks and off course Tempered Steel, primarily championed by the Channelfireball crew, i.e. decks that are fundamentally faster than Illusions.
Those sort of deck are some of the worst matchup you can face as a Illusions player but they aren’t impossible to play against by any means. Also the fact that the current meta has sort of shifted away from these kinds of decks also fuels my claim about Ilusions in Standard right now.
I know that I’m sort of contradicting myself here after praising Primeval Titan decks earlier but the truth is that I had slightly better results recently while piloting Illusions compared to Primeval Titan decks. Even though I don’t think you have the same level of potential in a deck like Illusions compared to a deck with Primeval Titan, the actual output has proven to be overall a nudge higher.
That said, I do enjoy casting Primeval Titan more than attacking with blue weenies and the face of Standard has been ever changing. I would be surprised if that phenomena would be changing any time soon. Illusions time in the sun might fade sooner than later.
Tada!
And there you have it, my two cents about Standard. It has been a great time playing Standard recently and I hope that trend will continue after Dark Ascension.
Until next time…
Turning from page 3 to page 4
Hi everyone, I hope that the Christmas season is treating you well.
It’s the 26th of December and that means that this blog has made it another year. The 3rd in the order to be precise. Today I’m going to continue the tradition I have honored every 26th December in the past by reflecting on the year that has passed on how the year has gone for me playing Magic as well as activities conjunct with the gaming. I also try to give some hints about what to expect from me in the upcoming year.
Looking back
The year started with the feelings and sensation from Worlds in Chiba still very much alive. It was my first Pro Tour and I was very excited about getting the opportunity to play with the fat cats in this game. The expectation I had for Worlds was primarily having a blast and enjoy the moment in this awesome country which I surely had. The next step was trying to grind at least 7 Pro Points from the event so that I would have been level 3 in the Pro Player Club for the year to come. That would have meant that I would get to play at least another Pro Tour in 2011.
That didn’t pan out and I missed out by a not so big margin. Another win in the individual portion along with another win in the team portion would probably done the trick but it wasn’t meant to be. So Worlds last year was a little bittersweet experience in that regard.
It took the hunger that Worlds had left me to the Magic Weekend in Paris where I was participating in the Grand Prix. I opened up a not too shabby pool of cards (hello Hoard-Smelter Dragon, Thopter Assembly, True Conviction and Myr Turbine) and played some good Magic and ended day 1 with a 8-2 score. I followed that up with 2-1-ing both draft in day 2, leaving my with a final score of 12-4. Now, going 12-4 wasn’t a bad performance at all. If someone had told me the day before the GP that I would have ended up with that score I wouldn’t be particularly disappointed about that. I ended up feeling a little bad about it anyways because the massive size of the GP meant that my 36 points were only good enough for a 71st place, just outside the money.
The trip to Paris was nevertheless awesome. A lot of Swedes had made the trip and I managed to schedule the day before the GP to go sightseeing in the city of light. In a very intense day I managed to run around and see most of the historic buildings and monuments that are in Paris; the Arc of Triumph, the Louvre, Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower (which I walked up). Good times.
After Paris I became a little dormant when it came to Magic. School was intensifying and several events I intended to go to (like GP Barcelona and GP London) ended up being to close to exams and important hand-ins to justify myself to go to them. And as a reaction to that I ended up playing less Magic than I liked to because as I wan’t going to these events there wasn’t too much of point testing them.
I did go to GothCon though under this period, where I became the a 2HG Champion as well as bombing out of a PTQ with Valakut.
With my courses of the semester done I finally managed to get away and went to GP Prague in May. The tournament itself didn’t go too well. I opened a lackluster pool and ended up dropping at 5-3 after losing aa appropriate lackluster match. I had a good time regardless as my traveling company was amazing and Prague is a very cool (and cheap) city to visit.
Next in line of events was Swedish Nationals in June. The previous year went as you might recall really well for me and lead to my qualification for Worlds that year. I wanted to repeat my performance and due to the high bar set up by myself I tested a lot for the event. Actually I want to say that I even practiced more than I had the previous year.
I felt really good about the Limited portion (Scars Block Draft) and while the testing for the Constructed portion (pre-JTMS/SFM bannings) was hectic and I didn’t decide on what deck to play until two days left before the event, the deck I settled (Pyromancer Ascension w/ Splinter Twin transformational sideboard) for felt awesome. Nationals itself didn’t go to well, I dropped out at 6-4.
The thing that really went wrong in my mind was the first draft, which I barely 1-2. The sad part was that my deck was alright if not good. The problem was that my draft had a high density of good rares in it and a Myr Turbine was the best I got. That draft had for sure gone very differently if I had sat one seat to my left or my right. I lost the two other matches in the Constructed portion but both matches I recognize to mainly be blamed on variance but I digress.
Before I headed down to Gothenburg and Nationals I had decided that I wanted to try to “level” up my writing and not just settle for the blog format any more. I wanted to try to spread out my figuratively wings. I sent a couple of strategy sites my resume and see if anyone was interested. When I came back from Nationals there was an email in my inbox from Blackborder.com editor Andreas Ganz (also recently of PWP grinding fame). After an interview and a try out article, my monthly column “Daily Grind” was born in July.
Later that summer I made a vacation/PTQ trip down to Gothenburg where I hanged with friends before heading over to Aalborg for the PTQ. I played Splinter Twin which I had much success with online and in local tournaments the weeks prior but deck just didn’t behave at all at the PTQ and I was quickly eliminated. Oh well. The trip was once again a blast and I got to hang out quite a bit with Hall of Famer Olle Råde which was cool. He had fairly recently got the fire back for Magic and I think it’s really cool that he is playing again in events and such.
Not much more in terms of bigger events happened until October when I made the trip down to Milan for the GP. The pool I opened was alright but it was just not my day playing. It was one of those days when you keep 2 lands, Think Twice and X and nevertheless you miss your 3rd land drop. I had run bads like that all weekend which sucked. The saving grace was because of my early exit I got to look at the city a little more than I usually get to do on GP trips, which was nice. In particularly the coffee was divine. I think I would consider going back to Italy some day just for the coffee. It was that good.
Last month I did a PTQ trip to Oslo (Norway), in which I Top8ed but died in the quarterfinals. The fact that I lost one of the games in the quarters to the combo of Markov Patrician + Cobbled Wings + Skeletal Grimace was just a perfect way to end that trip and basically my competitive year.
And with that we have pretty much come to the present day. All in all it was a okay year playing wise. My performance at Paris was great but it was fluctuating for the reminder of the year. I guess I have reached a point in my gaming where not receiving a Pro Tour invite hinders me from feeling to good about my results.
If we look at a non-direct-gaming perspective of my year with this game, the main highlight is off course me getting picked up by Blackborder.com. It has been a great experience so far and I hope that will continue on in 2012. I want to thank Andreas for giving me the opportunity to write for Blackborder.com. I really appreciate it.
As a consequence to me starting to write for Blackborder.com I have had less time to spend on the blog and therefore less material has been put up here. I anticipated as much when I took the offer from Blackborder.com and I still think it’s a worthy sacrifice for the spot I now have on Blackborder.com.
Looking ahead
If I’m to look ahead and set some expectations for 2012, playing wise it still to get qualified again for the Pro Tour and off course try stay on it. Due to the new structure organized play has since last year I’m a little uncertain at this point if it means that I will be playing more Magic next year or less. My goals hasn’t really changes much since I wrote expectation for 2011 a year ago but the means to achieve does goal are far more less certain than last year. I’ll have to get back to you with that one.
As for as my writing goes, my column on Blackborder.com and the blog, I intend to continue on with my column in the same fashion until the beginning of the summer (when I have completed 12 month of writing for Blackborder.com). After I’ll have to see. As of today, I would like to continue with the column but I think it’s too early to say for certain what will happen. Why the hesitation is correlated with the statement regarding my goals for gameplay in 2012 above. It’s possible that I won’t be playing enough Magic to justify the position I have on Blackborder.com, as a “grinder”. I hope it won’t come to that but I can’t safely rule it out either. I’ll have to get back to you with that one as well.
As “The Exploration” goes, the blog has a result of the birth of my column a blog closer to the heart than it was earlier. Now almost everything I have to dish about strategy wise is getting devoted to the column and instead I put most of the stuff closer to my persona here on the blog. Considering my current situation, I don’t have any concrete expectations with the blog for the upcoming year. I intend to keep it alive alright, but don’t expect an increase of the frequency of entries being posted either.
That was pretty how I see my year looking back playing Magic and some thoughts what I plan to do and what I expect of myself in 2012. Thank you for reading and I hope you will continue to in the future.
Have a continued awesome Christmas and I wish you a happy new year.
Bernhard
