GP Atlanta Tournament Report

What a ride!!! This weekend was incredibly fun, and well worth the few days of pain recovery I'm currently doing. The return of big, open-to-the-public tournaments (I'm still going to call them Grand Prixs out of habit sometimes) is awesome, and I'm super glad to be in a position to participate in so much more of a communal way than I ever did pre-COVID.

Rant time.

We're still currently MID-Covid!! We still don't know a lot about this disease's long-term effects. Please mask up when you go to magic events! It's extremely depressing that so many folks are defaulting to whatever they see people around them doing socially instead of having a personal moral backbone, operating from first principles of care for their fellow people, and reducing harm in this simple way. Wearing a mask is somewhat annoying, but I know for a fact this is not the main reason people have abandoned them - it's because it's now seen as overly performative and uncool. Frankly, who gives a fuck!!!! I'd rather not get someone else sick unknowingly. I always carry extra masks on me, please ask to borrow one if you didn't bring one!!

(There were lots more people masking in Atlanta than I see in day-to-day life, and I think this says a lot of good things about the Magic community. But still, there's very little reason why we shouldn't be able to solve this collective action problem. It's thousands of people in a big indoor space, who mostly got there by traveling on planes. Common sense.)

Rant over.

As people know, I played Gruul Aggro at Atlanta. I didn't do nearly as much prep for this event as I'd do for a Pro level event, but I still tried to get a lot of practice in via playing Gruul on the Arena ladder for a few weeks and in a couple MTGO challenges. I'm very happy with the deck choice! This was my exact list:

I wouldn't change many things about this list, but I also don't think changes are off-limits at all. The gruul core is so strong that it can be filled out in a lot of different ways. here is the core of the deck as I see it:

4 Hearftire Hero

4 Manifold Mouse

4 Emberheart Challenger

4 Monstrous Rage

3 Innkeeper's Talent

3 Questing Druid

3 Screaming Nemesis

2 Pawpatch Recruit

3 1-mana "2 damage to a creature" effects

22 lands, including all 12 Gruul untapped duals, 2 Soulstone sanctuaries, and 2 Rockface Villages.

That's 30 spells and 22 lands, leaving 8 "flex" slots (some less flexible than others, for example I do think you want at least 10 1-drops, and I do think Hired Claw is the best option available).

Beyond this, I think it's pretty fine to go with personal preference. I have a strong preference for the 4th QDruid, but some people swear by 4 Innkeeper's Talent. Some like 4 Screaming Nemesis to have an advantage in the mirror. It's probably good to have at least one, maybe two more flexible burn removal spells, and I think Obliterating Bolt is the best version of those right now, but I could see other options being used. The 1-of snakeskin veil is probably worth the slot, but not strictly necessary. You could go up to 4 or even 5 shocks if you want to be able to interact cheaply. 3 Pawpatch recruit might be a good way to fight Esper Pixie. Maybe you want some Sentinels of the Nameless City main. Maybe you want 23 lands! The most important advice I can give is to try things out and see what works with your playstyle.

I, personally, might swap 1 burst lightning for 1 torch the tower, but otherwise I like my list because it fits with how I understand and play the deck. Playing an exact list won't help you win with it nearly as much as playing a random list and practicing well.

Instead of a normal conclusions section this piece wraps up on a pretty different note (stay tuned for what that is!), so I'll give my conclusions here, which are that I think the single biggest advantage I had in this tournament was achieved through deck choice. I think I overall got pretty significantly luckier than my opponents did, but this is also difficult to completely separate from the fact that I chose an extremely consistent and powerful deck that mulligans well. Gruul is an excellent choice even above decks that seem to have more powerful or flexible plans, because it has consistent mana and consistent card flow. I'm writing a theory piece to be published soon that is partially inspired by my experiences with Gruul, and how I think it's excellent at optimizing for the three core resources of the game: mana, spells, and life.

Beyond that, while most of the round summaries will focus on either mistakes I made or spots I got lucky/unlucky in because those are what stick in the memory, I do think I probably had some amount of gameplay advantage over most of my opponents this weekend, simply from being someone who is very experienced and currently practicing a lot of Magic. Any tournament success is made up of BOTH luck and skill, and the two are often inseparable from each other (luck gives opportunities to express skill, and skill engineers opportunities to get lucky).

I left the apartment at 1pm on Friday for a 4:30pm flight. Like my parents, I tend to be accidentally early to things a lot, and this day was no exception. I arrived at my gate with about 2 hours to spare, booted up a Foundations omniscience draft and promptly lost to some people who had opened far more card draw spells than I had. I grabbed some Shake Shack "for the plane" which I promptly ate, trophied another Omniscience draft, and got out my pillow from my suitcase to lie down in a corner and rest a bit before the flight.

The first flight to Chicago went very smoothly, but the vibes started to get weird soon after. My phone was at 25% charge, but no problem, they had outlets at the gate -- except after an hour of charging, it had gone from 25%->31%. Welp, I needed to be careful to not use it on the plane so I can find directions to the hotel once we land.

While we were boarding the flight to Atlanta, there was a bit of a fracas between the gate attendant and the person first in line at boarding. Something about needing to consolidate her bags into 2 items instead of 3 and a very direct "continue with your announcement". It took like 10 minutes to sort out and everyone else had to wait. Some of us exchanged exasperated glances before all crowding into a very small metal box that literally flew us across the country. Flying is weird sometimes.

We landed at 10:20, not that bad, but I was starting to be pretty tired. I found the train station in the airport, and unfortunately had just missed the last one, so had to wait for about 15 minutes for another to show up. Once we got on, it stayed in the station for another 10 minutes before moving. I just wanted to get to the hotel room and sleep. At least Mora had already gotten there and checked in, so there wouldn't be any delay once I arrived...

... or so I thought. Apparently there was a huge Christian conference happening the same weekend that had just gotten out, and that huge line in the lobby at 11:30pm wasn't the line to check in, it was just the line for the elevators.

In figuring this out, I had walked up to the second floor searching for some stairs, and I somewhat-accidentally, somewhat-purposefully ended up skipping the line and squeezing into an already-pretty-packed elevator on its way up on the second floor. Not very christ-like of me (I joke, but I genuinely do feel a bit bad about it).

It was good to see Mora - they had been on a trip to see friends in California for 2 weeks, but we both agreed now was definitively not the time for catching up. We agreed on what time to be up to be able to grab breakfast and head to the tournament hall, I took some magnesium which helps relax my muscles a bit so I can sleep better, and before I knew it the alarm was going off and it was time to battle.

Overpriced breakfast sandwiches & coffee in line amongst the Christians and an alarmingly-cheap-to-a-new-yorker Uber later (I tipped 100%), we were in the hall and I was borrowing the last few cards I needed for the deck from Sanctum teammate Sky.

I was also starting to realize this was going to be the first time I was playing the deck in paper. I had forgotten my pen and dice at home, which never happens, but I quickly went and got some from the dealers. I didn't even have offspring tokens, until another Sanctum teammate, Hannah, offered them. Someone else tossed me a lifepad. I love this team.

Round 1

I sat down against RosieAnna, who I learned was a local who'd only been playing competitive Magic for about 6 months and was gifted her mono red deck for Christmas! She was a great opponent (all my opponents were, but I'll likely say it about them anyways), and I hope she keeps going in the competitive scene! She posted a thread about her run on twitter (@Rosie_anna313), go check it out if you're interested!

Game 1 was incredibly close, and I'm still pretty surprised I managed to squeak it out. I kept a Hired Claw / Manifold Mouse hand, which are typically pretty slow and awkward, and Rosie had a Screaming Nemesis, the best card in the mirror. She decided to race, and I fell down to 5 life quite quickly. Luckily I had topdecked an Innkeeper's Talent to play on turn 2 instead of the mouse, and my Hired Claw was growing quickly enough to almost keep up. I saved my Monstrous Rage for the final turn, and had to hope Rosie didn't have enough toughness to get in front of it, because I was certainly dead on the crackback. The math ended up working out for me to kill her exactly. I was breathing a huge mental sigh of relief that I had escaped that awkward draw with a win.

Game 2 was a lot easier - I happened to draw the 1-of pyroclasm from the sideboard, and Rosie happened to have a Heartfire Hero into Manifold Mouse start, which is normally the best start you can have in almost any matchup, but I was able to punish it with the lucky pyroclasm. I was also lucky that she didn't have a creature to follow up with for at least one more turn, which gave me more than enough breathing room to establish a pretty unbeatable board presence with my Sentinel of the Nameless City. The draw lined up perfectly for me and I was 1-0!

I think Rosie was understandably not very disappointed losing to me, because she expected to lose to a more experienced player and was mainly at the tournament to gain experience (which seems like a goal she accomplished!). However, I do just want to point out that the margins in magic are very slim, you've gotta respect every opponent no matter the experience gap, and I was pretty close to being down a game in this match - Rosie easily could have won in a slightly different world!

Round 2

In a quick reversal of experience gaps, I sat down for round 2 against Chris Castro-Rappl of MTG grindcast fame, a great player & certainly someone much more experienced in constructed than me (though obviously, I'm currently quite dialed in on Standard, not trying to sell myself short there).

I mentioned I was a fan of the podcast, and Chris said he's read and appreciated some of my writing, which was really cool to hear! I'm still very much not used to being recognized and always appreciate it.

Chris was on classic Dimir Mid, and our match was super close. Game 1 I got stuck on 3 lands, and felt very far behind when he resolved an early Preacher of the Schism I had no answer for. I was worrying that I'd made the wrong call with only including 1 Oblivion Bolt main. However, Preacher is still a slow card, and sometimes even when Dimir draws a lot of cards, they don't draw anything particularly high impact. I was able to very slowly develop out a board that could race competently. At one point, CCR attacked with a Preacher, and I went to mark his life total down because I was at 9 and he was at 11. He had thought we were both at 11, I think because he missed marking down the preacher hitting me for 2 the previous turn. In retrospect, I probably could have offered for him to take back the attack if he wanted to re-evaluate in the moment, since it was based on incorrect information, but he kind of quickly just said oh my mistake and we continued with play. It ended up coming down to a very close set of turns where I threatened lethal on a crackback and gave myself 1 layer of on-board protection from being hit back for lethal (planning to fall to 1 instead of 0). Chris whiffed on his draw step, whiffed on a map counter, and I somehow escaped with a win. Another game 1 that I was truly convinced I was going to lose - I'm pretty sure without the accidental life total discrepancy mattering on a Preacher attack I would have, which stinks.

Game 2 I was actually feeling more confident, until I messed up pretty badly when CCR cast Gix's Command. I had a burst lightning and he had a Floodpits Drowner in play (which I believe was a 3/2 from a map token), so I asked "modes?", and he thought for a second and said "sweep, get back 2 creatures". I used the burst lightning in response, which doesn't make any sense because the creature return mode doesn't target and I could just wait. I was trying to shortcut the turn by taking the action now, but forgot how the cards worked, ended up clearly communicating an awful line, and got completely punished for it.

Game 3 I had a great draw. I forget exactly what it was, but it was probably Heartfire into Manifold. Dimir is one of the decks that can disrupt this pretty easily, and CCR was able to, but was still on the back foot. He came very close to stabilizing, but I topdecked a monstrous rage on a key turn, did some math carefully (incorrectly at first, but clearly communicating that I was trying to count-and-recount before announcing a target to make sure I wasn't missing lethal).

Another match I felt pretty substantially lucky to be walking away from with a win -- but 2-0 nonetheless.

Round 3

This round I faced Josh, on Dimir. He also mentioned having seen and liked my Magic writing, which again was super awesome and just a little disconcerting!

Unfortunately, the good luck didn't continue here. I actually had quite strong draws, but Josh seemed to have the perfect answers for them - I believe I went Heartfire Hero into either Manifold or Talent both games, but Josh had the Cut Down for the Heartfire both times, and was able to back it up with strong interaction, getting creatures on the board, and starting to draw cards with Enduring Curiosity. My draw in game 2 was good enough that I still had him on the back foot for a while, and could have closed the game if I hadn't drawn a series of lands at an inconvenient time (he had also needed to topdeck an Anoint with Affliction to deal with my 11/11 trampling Heartfire Hero), but both of those things happened and I didn't get there.

2-1, and a bit frustrated that I had lost despite having strong draws, but there are 2 players in a game of Magic, and your draws are only good relative to your opponents'. Josh piloted the games excellently and took advantage of his draws lining up well enough into mine to survive and take the win. Plus, I had gotten somewhat lucky to win the previous rounds, so overall a 2-1 record wasn't a huge surprise.

Round 4

This round was over in about 5 minutes. Day 1 was closed decklist, and I had lost the die roll, but kept a hand on 7 whose first play was either a Seek the Beast or a Manifold Mouse. When Justin went mountain into Heartfire Hero on the play, I knew I was in trouble. When he played a Screaming Nemesis into my Seek the Beast, I knew I was probably dead. I was proved correct shortly afterwards. I would never have kept the hand if I knew it was a pseudo-mirror, but that's closed decklists for ya!

In game 2 I felt a lot more confident. I'd been on the play, so even though Justin had gotten out to a reasonably fast start, I was able to stabilize at 10 and have 2 questing druids growing, which is a great position to be in in the mirror. However, Justin did have a 1/1 Heartfire Hero and a Screaming Nemesis in play, so I knew I had to manage this game carefully.

I ended up deciding to attack with a 5/5 druid into the Nemesis, forcing Justin to either put me to 5 or kill the Druid. This set up a much more devastating attack next turn, when I'd follow up with double Emberheart Challenger, give both double strike, with a monstrous rage in hand to almost assuredly attack for lethal after pumping both druids again and Justin having nearly an empty board. Justin decided to put me to 5, a sign of a very competent player who understood the only way he was winning this game was playing to his out of killing me with a lucky topdeck on the following turn.

And that he did. His last card in hand had been monstrous rage, and I played around this by putting a 1/2 manifold mouse in front of the Heartfire Hero. Sadly, his draw step had been a burst lightning, so he was able to deal the last 2, and I was dead in a game that I had felt dramatically ahead in. I was kicking myself for playing too quickly and not trying harder to find a line that played around everything my opponent could possibly have & draw, even though I'm genuinely unsure if there was one, since I did want to close the game without giving additional draw steps, and attacking with the druid accomplished that.

2-2. Them's the breaks, lost the die roll and got run over in the mirror, but Magic is hard and I could have played better. Still a totally recoverable position, just have to lock in.

Round 5

Finally, some respite from the difficult matchups - this time I was facing Domain, piloted by Jeff if I remember correctly, which is a very good matchup.

I kept a strong 7 and won game 1 easily after Jeff mulliganed and kept a decent 6.

Game 2 was a little more interesting - I kept a hand that looked like this on the draw:

I probably should have thought about this one more. This is a hand that can get there, but it can also pretty easily lose against a deck like domain. If Challenger gets removed early and I don't draw more creatures to put on the board, I'm doing essentially nothing against a domain deck that can start to take over if given time. It's pretty unlikely they'll keep a hand without any sort of removal, and while I have pawpatch to deal with a leyline binding, Get Lost and Elspeth's Smite are likely going to be able to nab the challenger unless I'm really careful with it, and if I am, that slows down an already-slow hand. I genuinely think this is a matchup where you can win long games, especially if you can pawpatch away their early Beans, but it's obviously not the thing you should be trying to do, and I think me keeping this hand was "trying to do that" a little too hard. The deck mulligans well, I should have been willing to mulligan this. I wasn't, didn't draw the perfect mix of action, and lost to a decently good draw on the other side.

That's all right, we're on the play going into game 3 in a great matchup. As long as we keep 7, we should be fine... as long as we keep 6, we should be fine... okay, well honestly we're still probably fine if we keep 5 and they don't have a great draw. They have a good draw, but we're still in it... about to turn the corner... oh, they have lethal here in a way I couldn't avoid. Shit.

2-3. Should have mulliganed that game 2 hand.

We actually went to time this match, something I hadn't been at all concerned about in a matchup where I was distinctly the aggro, but because we ended up playing some pretty grindy games 2&3, it snuck up on me. It would have ended up being hard for me to win game 3 in just 3 turns even if I had turned the corner, which I don't think would have been a fair outcome. I say this as respectfully as possible, but another mistake I made in this match was not asking my (very pleasant and reasonable) opponent to make reasonably fast decisions in spots where he was taking upwards of 1-2 minutes to execute a normal turn, and I was using somewhere between 15-30 seconds. There's absolutely room for something like this when both players have played at a reasonable pace the entire match, but it can't be a consistent pattern that even small decisions always take an extra ten seconds of pausing to make. There is never enough time for both players to play at an extremely careful and deliberate pace for the entirety of three reasonably grindy games - you have to take shortcuts and consolidate your thinking for the most difficult spots. I'm very conscious of the fact that tournament magic is an incredibly difficult exercise and requires tons of experience to be able to move quickly through, but I do think some gentle requests to keep a reasonable pace would have helped put us in a better position to finish the match -- even though I want to say very directly that this was NOT the reason why I lost! It's just a reflection on tournament etiquette and process.

PSA -- Please don't take any opponent asking you to play faster as a personal slight or even an accusation that you're doing anything wrong! It should always be given (and taken) as an attempt to collaborate in order to make sure that both of you get roughly equal amounts of time to think, and are able to finish your match in a way that isn't arbitrarily decided by the clock. Sometimes it becomes necessary to rush through decisions, and we should avoid these situations as much as possible by being efficient early on in the match. In this case, I didn't even ask my opponent due to fear of being perceived as rude, and that was a mistake.

At this point in the day, I was obviously feeling pretty discouraged. I had written an entire article explaining my deck choice for this tournament, and definitely had some anxiety about looking foolish after scrubbing out early with it. I hadn't played nearly perfectly (I usually don't), and could identify a small, but meaningful set of mistakes I'd made, but it also didn't feel like those mistakes had actually been the cause of my losses - mostly, it had just been the draws. As Sanctum teammates are fond of saying, "sometimes you lose!". Today felt like one of those days where I was just going to lose some. I remember venting about the domain match to Mora, she asked if I was okay, and I said something along the lines of "oh I'm totally fine, my luck distribution this year has been insanely good, and if there's any tournament where I'd want that to revert to the mean, it would be this one. Like I'll absolutely, gladly take that."

Little did we both know what was coming.

Round 6

2-3, gotta win out to even make day 2, and even then, would have to win out AGAIN on day 2 to achieve any meaningful result. That doesn't happen, but more importantly just gotta play Magic, which is what we're here to do!

This round I was paired against another J name opponent (I was 0-3 against Josh, Justin, and Jeff). Jacob was to be my next executioner, He was also a very nice guy, and once we had started and I realized it was a mirror, admitted that he had read my guide and was playing a list very close to the one I had shared! That was 3/6 opponents who had recognized me now, still deeply weird to me.

This was a round where it would have been pretty hard to lose. I don't remember much about how the games played out beyond me being ahead most of the time, and not making very careful decisions, but not being punished even when I realized I hadn't played around something I could have. I believe game 1 I went 1-drop into Innkeeper's Talent and backed it up with a couple of removal spells while neither of us drew a screaming nemesis, and game 2 I had the Nemesis while Jacob didn't, which is a recipe for being able to set up a winning position pretty easily in the mirror.

3-3.

Round 7

This was the first round where I feel like I really locked in and played some good magic. I was playing against Anthony, a member of Team Radar, a local group of friends who had made playmats for their testing group, which I thought was really cool! Anthony was on Esper Pixie, which is one of Gruul's worst matchups, and I think that helped me lock in.

Game 1 he got stuck on 2 lands, one of them a painland, which I took as a rare opportunity to steal a game in a bad matchup. It wasn't easy even still - I was stuck on 3 lands, so I was also struggling to deploy efficiently, and had fallen behind early, but that slight advantage (and the lucky fact that Anthony never drew the 3rd land even over 4-5 turns) let me win a close, tight race where I think all my decisions were very well-thought-out. A game where I both got lucky and was proud to win - I don't think a worse player would have been able to.

Game 2 was a little easier to pilot. Anthony was on the Sheltered by Ghosts plan, which is powerful against Gruul but high variance, and I happened to have a very strong hand against it with Lithomantic Barrage and Torch the Tower. I made some relatively slow plays instead of prioritizing board presence because I knew I had two really strong catch-up tools in hand, and although Anthony smartly recognized this and decided to go all-in on getting his Fear of Isolation up to 6 toughness to dodge barrage before I had a clean opportunity to kill it, I was still able to take a whole turn off and go torch, pay for ward, barrage to recover the tempo loss anyways.

From there, I was in a pretty dominant position, but Anthony did topdeck two enchantment removal spells in a row, first another Sheltered and then a Nowhere to Run, which made his Optimistic Scavenger a threat in and of itself. I was at 8, so could take one hit, but didn't really want to, because I was against a Hopeless Nightmare deck. I was able to set up a double block with monstrous rage backup even if Anthony had drawn a third removal spell, which he had. If it had been a TTABE specifically I would have probably lost (bounce a creature and the nowhere to run), but I don't think that was an outcome I could have controlled. After the last opposing creature was off the board, I was dramatically ahead and cleaned up quickly.

I'm proud of my careful play and managed to escape with a 2-0 against a significantly bad matchup.

4-3. Back in the positive!

Round 8

I don't remember my opponent's name for this match, but it was another pseudo-mirror. I won the die roll and went Heartfire Hero into Manifold Mouse into double Monstrous rage in game 1 for a free win, which understandably was frustrating for my opponent, who had already played a good amount of mirrors throughout the day and was tired of them.

In game 2, I had the Heartfire into Manifold start again, as well as a torch the tower and a monstrous rage. I was on the draw this time though, and on turn 1, my opponent had plotted a Demonic Ruckus. I decided to play things a bit more slowly - play around a removal spell on the hero by waiting to play it until I could use rage as protection, and possibly get them with the torch if they tried to attach the ruckus to a creature on their turn.

Luckily, that's exactly what happened. They played a Heartfire Hero, thought about it for a second since I had clearly paused before passing on my turn, but went for the Ruckus. I had committed to this line, so I cast torch, hoping they didn't have a protection spell, and my heart sunk when they paused. Had I given up my chance for another free win only to get blown out instead?

But then I realized the mana they had up was red, and I had responded to the valiant trigger, so a montrous rage wouldn't even save the hero. I had unknowingly taken a perfectly safe line!

I got the blowout, got a free read on monstrous rage in hand, and was able to follow up with Heartfire into Manifold. Easy win... sort of. I should probably have thought for an extra second to realize the interaction between rage and ruckus, and been more sure of my line before taking it. Mistakes to find even in success!

5-3. Somehow, we had a win and in next round?

Round 9

It was time to lock in. I had kind of resigned myself to just trying to play good magic and not expect very much out of the day, but a win-and-in is a great opportunity to both play and to feel some high stakes magic. I'm not going to pass that up, I wanted to make myself proud with my play!

Unfortunately, this was another mirror, against Kenan, another extremely kind and fun opponent to play against! I lost the die roll and was promptly down a game. I was prepared for this to be a brutal ending to what I had hoped would be a redeeming run.

I won game 2 with a strong draw and (say it with me) being on the play, but I wasn't kidding myself - game 3 would be a massive uphill battle being on the draw. Especially when I mulliganed and my opponent quickly kept 7.

Screaming Nemesis buys you a lot of time in red mirrors, especially if you also have an Innkeeper's Talent that you get to use to put it out of range of any burn spells. My opponent and I locked into a classic board stall, which I was happy about because it almost negated my mulligan. However, they had cast 3 Seek the Beasts, and I was deeply worried I was going to fall too far behind on cards anyways. Even though they hadn't found anything devastating with them, they were starting to amass a board that could get through an 8/8 nemesis (which, if you haven't played games like this, is a very scary board indeed).

The tide turned when I finally drew my own Druid, and announced "my turn!". I got luckier in my first hit than Kenan had gotten in any of his 3, seeing a second Innkeeper's Talent and a monstorus rage, which immediately gave me an opportunity to turn the corner.

I wanted to be careful about this though. Funnily enough, each player was still at 20! Neither of us had damaged the other in the red mirror, that's how deep of a board stall it was. But I only had 4 creatures to Kenan's 6, and even though one of them was an 8/8 nemesis, the other two were manifold mice and the 1/1 questing druid I had just cast. Meanwhile Kenan's board was some manifold mice, 3 big druids, and an emberheart challenger that was going to draw him an extra card, possibly a combat-math-affecting one the next turn. He also had some creature-lands to activate.

Still, this was my opportunity to win the game, and I didn't want to miss it. Even if it felt risky, I knew logically that it was probably safer than waiting. I remember saying "this could lose me the game, but I think it's right" before putting 4 counters on one of my mice and attacking in with a 5/5 double strike trampler (virtually an 8/6 because of my last untapped land being red and the monstrous rage sitting in exile).

Kenan took a long, long time to do the combat math, and I was doing it at the same time, unsure of what his best blocks were (math is for blockers anybody?). As opposed to my earlier domain opponent who I wished I had prompted to make decisions faster, I think this decision taking him 4-5 minutes to make, was completely fine and fair. Kenan had played at a very reasonable pace (and quite well, I might add) for the rest of the match, and this was very clearly a crucial decision that would make or break the final game of our win-and-in. We had about 13 minutes left on the clock, and despite the board stall, it seemed unlikely this game would last more than a few more turns, whichever way it went. I explicitly acknowledged this when he apologized for taking such a long time (an instinct I appreciated and shows he is a considerate player who knows it's important for both players to try and finish the match on time), and I was happy to wait.

Ultimately, the combat step was difficult enough that he ended up making a mistake anyways - killing my Questing Druid with the Screaming Nemesis trigger instead of the double striker, who would have died after being blocked by the nemesis and a big druid, because it couldn't kill both in first strike damage and was going to take lethal if it got targeted by the Nemesis damage. This was a very difficult combat step, and I didn't even fully recognize the mistake when it happened, I just remember feeling a bit glad that my double striker had lived. I think I still would have been ahead by a good margin if it hadn't, but after it did, the game was close to unloseable.

The next turn I fully leveled up my second talent, put EIGHT counters on the already-huge double striker, and attacked with it for 30. Kenan was able to put his entire board in front of it and fall to 6, but at that point it was over.

Somehow I had won, in the mirror, on the draw, on 6 cards vs 7, and come all the way back to make day 2. What a run!

6-3.

I'm normally pretty exhausted after long days at Magic tournaments, but the way the day finished had left me with some leftover hype, and I thought it would be a good idea to lean into that and go out to dinner with Mora, our friend Avi, and his friend Alec afterwards to an upscale taco place. It was great! Catching up with Avi (a friend from college and a frequent team sealed teammate) was super nice, and feeling like I was a normal player who was able to have fun with friends after a long and grueling day of Magic was a very good feeling. I wouldn't have been able to do this last year when my chronic pain was worse.

I didn't expect very much from day 2 - I knew I hadn't played very well for parts of day 1, and I was expecting to run into tighter players and some more streaks of less-than-perfect luck. I was just happy to have had a fun experience of coming all the way back from a poor start to earn some good matches of magic the next day!

Even though I wasn't particularly nervous for it, it was harder to sleep that night than it had been the first. As often happens after long days of magic, my dreams were full of pseudo-board-states and stressful problems to solve about tournament logistics, and I ended up waffling between bouts of sleep and scrolling my phone between 3am and the alarm at 7.

My brain wanted more Magic to play. Finally! Coffee, a nice walk to the convention center in the less-freezing-than-yesterday weather, and just 45 minutes of blankly staring into the distance before I got to sit down for round 10.

I was operating on less sleep on day 2, and more of my brain was focused on the Magic than was focused on remembering it, so the summaries of these rounds might be a bit shorter.

Round 10

I was paired against Matt on domain, and had a chance to avenge my day 1 loss to a good matchup. Matt's list was pretty respectful of aggro, with 4 Elspeth's Smites and 4 Get Losts main (I love open decklists! Now I had some interesting gameplay decisions to make).

Game 1 was again easy, I had a good draw and was able to kill Matt before he could land Zur and make a big lifelinker.

Game 2 I again kept a slow hand on 7 that maybe should have been a mulligan, and lost to a strong domain draw when I was on the draw.

Game 3 I was on the play and had another strong draw! Matt had also mulliganed to 5, after making what seemed like a disciplined decision to send back a just-okay 7 that likely didn't have the early removal needed to survive on the draw after I had quickly kept my 7. I carefully played around an Elspeth's Smite that could have disrupted my Heartfire-Manifold combo because I knew there was almost no other way Matt could beat this start, and I was correct about that (whether or not he had the smite) - even though he used Get Lost to get rid of the Hero, he was too far behind on tempo to recover.

7-3.

Round 11

I was paired against John Ruml on Dimir. I've heard that name and assumed he was a strong player, but he didn't really get a chance to showcase that in our match because he just had really awkward draws and I had good ones.

I won the die roll, had a strong draw to his medium one in game 1, and when red gets out to a strong start it's very difficult for Dimir to come back. In game 2 he had a draw where he bottomed an Enduring Curiosity on 6 and still drew 2 more, seeing all 4 in his deck. I was able to beat this clunky draw pretty easily. John was very gracious about the horrible luck he had, thanked me for the games & wished me luck going forward.

8-3.

Round 12

This round was very similar to the last - I was playing against Kevin Thanakit, who I also recognized vaguely and assumed was a strong player, and who also didn't really have much of a chance in our match due to my draws being better. Game 1 was a pretty normal strong red start that Dimir is always on the back foot from, but game 2 I felt much luckier to win. Kevin had an awkward double-swamp Curiosity hand, and while he had a couple removal spells to slow me down, his only available play on turn 4 was to activate his soulstone sanctuary as a future blocker. I was feeling confident until I realized he was setting up for a Gix's command that was going to wipe my entire board.

That is, if he was ever able to find a land, which he wasn't. He missed for 2 draw steps and died with the wrath in hand. It would have turned into a pretty close game if he had found the land on the final turn, and I don't think I made any mistakes in the setup process (the creatures I cast to develop a wide board were all off of Seek the Beasts, so not casting them would have been pointless).

9-3.

Round 13

Another Dimir opponent, this time Andrew, who when I asked how his weekend was going, said he had gotten engaged! Huge congrats to him. Unfortunately it was my duty to try to make sure his weekend wasn't too perfect.

We played some very close and interesting games. Andrew was on a version of Dimir that was more tempo and small-fliers-oriented with 4 copies of Faerie Mastermind and 3 Faebloom Trick. He had a strong start in game 1 and I felt behind, but he didn't have a way to capitalize off of the cheap flyers like an Enduring or a Kaito, and even though I was on 6 cards, I happened to draw an inordinate number of copies of both Manifold Mouse and Emberheart Challenger, which together un-mulligan you pretty quickly. Andrew was able to disrupt my "A+B" once with a removal spell, but that wasn't enough to keep it offline, and his flyers weren't enough to race in the air while he kept drawing lands over the last few turns.

Game 2 was a lot closer. We both had strong starts even though I was on 6 cards again, and the race was close, but Andrew again ran out of cards a bit before I did (this gruul deck is really good at not doing that!), and I won a very close race, of the kind where I put myself to dead if Andrew topdecked a 1-mana removal spell and was able to cast it + activate his restless reef, but didn't have the mana to topdeck a 2-mana removal spell. After the match I noticed that fellow Worlds competitor Anthony Lee had been watching my play, and asked if he had noticed anything he'd have done differently. He mentioned that I used a torch the tower + an Innkeeper's Talent to kill an end-of-turn activated Soulstone Sanctuary when my opponent seemed to be out of things to do (and so taking them off the land didn't seem hugely important). I think Anthony might be right - Certainly a talent is a big card to give up - but I do think the decision was legitimately close, and the extra mana did end up mattering in terms of closing my opponent off of a significant range of outs (but it was hard to see the game was going in that direction at the time, and easily could have gone differently). Magic is hard, and I always appreciate good players being willing to genuinely offer criticism of my play, even if they're not 100% sure they're right (which Anthony wasn't, he was just trying to point something out he might have done differently, which helps me identify spots to think carefully about)!

10-3.

Round 14

Finally, not a dimir deck! In fact, this was the spiciest brew I played against all tournament - Brian on a sweet GB mill brew that was mainly an Insidious Roots/Tyvar deck, but also had a reanimation angle with 2 Atraxa and 4 Squirming Emergence. I think it was smart to realize the format is quite low on graveyard hate right now and quite heavy on board presence-focused decks, which leaves some room for a straightforward graveyard deck to thrive.

In Game 1, Brian absolutely demolished me. I had won the die roll, but he started with a llanowar elves to "steal back" the play so to speak, and was able to cache grab into a reanimated turn 4 Atraxa. I used a Snakeskin veil on a double striking mouse to trade for Atraxa, and was hoping to play a midrange-y value game while Brian stumbled (which is, admittedly, hard after he just got an Atraxa trigger). unfortunately, he had the second reanimation spell, and I quickly scooped.

In Game 2, all I remember was I had a great draw on the play, and got a typical Gruul "free win".

Game 3 was more interesting. Unfortunately, it's in a way that sucks a bit for my opponent, who mulliganed to 4. Brian made a really strong effort to stabilize against my medium 6-carder, involving two Broodspinners and multiple recursions of a Scavenging Ooze. I also made a pretty significant blunder when I forgot to trigger my Hired Claws after attacking with them into a 3/3 Ooze, planning on pumping and using my monstrous rage to kill the Ooze and have the pumped claw live. I attempted to pump the claw without having damaged Brian, realized my mistake, and called a judge to see if a backup was possible, but it wasn't. I got a warning for attempting an illegal action (good! This is what warnings are for!), and ended up being able to win anyways because I drew reasonably well from there.

11-3. As I said on Bluesky, "lmao at this point".

Between rounds 14 & 15

After round 14, I was trying to find out how cft was doing, because last I knew they were at X-2 and still live for top 8. I found out they had a feature match that was still going and rushed over. Nicole was also watching, and so too was another person who had played Otters on day 1! (If you're reading this, I forget your name I'm so sorry, but it was lovely to meet you there and say hi again at the airport later! I hope your flight to (Dallas I think?) didn't end up getting delayed too badly!)

Seeing that cft was likely locked for top 8 and getting to celebrate that with them & Nicole was my favorite experience of the tournament. The amount of joy for one of our friends doing well, with the otters deck, was just incredible, and being able to share that with friends at a tournament is an amazing experience. Plus, cft is pretty lowkey and not attention-seeking most of the time, so we get to be the annoying friends who hype them up!!!!

Round 15

My mindset going into the last round was mainly "I get to play more high stakes magic!". I didn't want to intentionally draw unless it was important for my opponent, and luckily it turned out that both me and Frank Skarren were in 36th/37th place, which meant that we could get into top 32 with a win, but likely wouldn't be out of top 64 with a loss, so it made sense to play!

I won the die roll in the mirror, which always feels good, but ended up losing a close game 1 where we both tried to race because we had access to triple-spell turn 3s that we thought would let us get ahead on tempo. Unfortunately, Frank was able to kill me with exact damage after I took 3-4 off of my painland whereas he had a painland-free draw. I was kicking myself to have lost a game on the play with a decent draw, and assuming the luck train was coming to an end.

Game 2 I honestly don't remember much of besides being on the play and having a good draw.

Game 3 I was on 6 cards, and on the draw. Not exactly a recipe for success, but this is why we play the games! Frank & I both kept 2-landers, but I happened to draw out of mine first, and also happened to have multiple burn spells to handle his otherwise strong draw with mice. Hitting my third land drop let me put a screaming nemesis down and start growing it with an Innkeeper's Talent, and somehow I found myself in a pretty dominant position. Frank missed again on his 3rd land and scooped shortly after.

2-3... wait, sorry, that's missing a digit.

12-3.

Pretty unreal - those kinds of runs don't happen very often.

After I finished celebrating, I was still hungry to watch some high stakes Magic, so I went and sat down next to my Sanctum teammate Dylan, who was at table 8, seemingly in a match that could be a win-and-in for top 8. Unfortunately, it seemed like she was significantly behind to mono white caretaker's in a very long and grindy game. I tried to not be super obvious or overbearing as a spectator because I know how difficult these moments can be, from having lost a lot of win-and-ins at PTQS and for GP day 2s, but I honestly couldn't help but notice how cheerful and friendly Dylan still seemed to be, and it struck me as something I truly wouldn't have been capable of before this year. Unsurprisingly, her post about the tournament later showed why:

https://bsky.app/profile/dylmorg.bsky.social/post/3lezyutnvis22

"I expected nothing and maybe could've gotten there on better play. I learned a lot about how to learn. I'll win next time"

Dylan inspired me to write the following micro-piece on the plane back from the tournament, when I was exhausted from the weekend and reflecting on how much I've grown to care about this game and the people that play it. I hope you guys will like it more than a recap of my and Mora's evening trying to figure out when to head to the airport while we watched cft's top 8 matches on stream.

How to Succeed at Magic

Focus on what you can control, focus on what matters.

I had this Jon Finkel quote on my phone as a daily reminder from freshman year of college, because I thought it was applicable to life as well as a good way to think about what matters.

To an outside observer, it sounds so simple, so tautological, that it’s really not that insightful. Of course that’s all we should focus on, why would you think about something else?

But of course, if you’ve actually played the game, you know how many things in magic that we can’t control are incredibly hard NOT to focus on. The game is impeccably designed to get us to care about these things. Topdecks. Mulligans. Mana screw. Mana flood.

It’s easy to sell psychological tricks that promise to protect us from the whims of these gods: Broken decks. Winning mindset. Jedi mind tricks.

Except that some things are genuinely not in our control. It doesn’t matter how much you want to win a match, how much you’ve prepared, how much more you “deserve” it than your opponent — they could be the worst player in the room, woefully underprepared, have made all the wrong calls, and they might still get there instead of you. There are significant parts of the outcome that are outside of your control.

You cannot focus on them.

Try. Not. To. Focus. On. Them.

It’s. Impossible.

Literally no one has ever done so completely successfully.

Different people have gotten closer than others, but magic players all care about results, and the results of magic tournaments are not perfectly predicted by skill. It’s why we play the game. And yet the desire to both pursue this enticing dynamic and to escape it is the thing that holds every single one of us back.

It’s easier for me to say this because I’ve gotten incredibly lucky this year, and so I have the results to fall back on to prove I’m “good enough to deserve success”, but in truth there is no such thing, or at least no one has or will ever reach it. Everyone who has ever succeeded in this game has gotten lucky to do it, and fully deserves their success, but strictly in a past tense - never a future one.

The past is not a thing we can control (at least by current understandings of time).

Magic is a game where it is nearly impossible to separate the things you can control from the things you can’t. And the interplay between the two is the most psychologically engaging thing in the world. We love them to be mixed together, it’s what makes games fun.

But you have to focus only on what you can control, if you want to win. That’s the devil’s bargain. To do so, you must overcome your desire to focus on anything else. You must escape from the wheel of suffering.

————————————

I don’t know how many people understand how much genuinely brilliant wisdom and intelligence it takes to be jovial and friendly with your opponent after you lose a win-and-in for the Pro Tour, something many players work their entire careers for. Doing this requires razor sharp discernment between controllables and uncontrollables.

No, it’s not enough to be able to determine whether you could have played better to win. That is not a now-controllable, it’s a past controllable that could be used to help with future controllables. Slim margins, but doesn’t cut it as a thing to focus on here, now.

What is needed instead is a recognition of the only actual controllable in this moment where a dream that was so close has just rapidly retreated to the distance. The experience you, your opponent, and anyone else present is going to have in this moment is the only thing you get to control.

This moment, despite the pain you feel at the uncertainly weighted coin falling the wrong way, is a net-positive — someone else has just achieved something to be proud of, and they deserve to feel that joy, and you deserve to feel proud of how far you came to get here. Did the coin fall the wrong way, or did it just fall?

I know there have been plenty of moments where I’ve failed to live up to this mindset, and I’m very sure we all have, because it’s an impossible standard to hold anyone to. We are all fallible humans, tied to our own self worth as a comparative, competitive one as opposed to a relational one, and it’s impossible to be rid of the comparative self entirely - that’s literally one of the major ways humans conceive of spiritual enlightenment.

It’s impossible to play perfect magic, but it's sure as hell fun to try.

Are you focusing on what you can control? Are you focusing on what matters? Are you, like Simon Nielsen, happy that someone won the match? It might take some learning to get there, and what could be more beautiful?

Anyways, I have a new daily reminder on my phone in place of the Finkelism.

It says “Love you regardless”.

A message from my past self to the self in this moment. A bridging of time and identity sure to cause tension when I fall short of the person I strive to be… until the day it doesn’t, and I can focus on the things I can control.

————————————

Love you guys. Thanks for reading.