The Night Before PT Richmond

One week ago, the vibes were as bad as they could realistically be going into a PT testing house, at least for me personally:

I had woken up Thursday morning with a bad sore throat and congestion at what felt like the worst possible time (but definitely wasn't, because I'm feeling better now). I'd figured out in the last few days that I had to figure out alternate travel plans so I wouldn't be stuck in Richmond on Thursday night with nowhere to sleep. Then I stayed up the night before leaving arguing with airline customer support trying to get them to not cancel my second flight if I missed the first. Now I had to decide whether it was worth being miserable wearing a mask for a 6-hour train ride (and still risking getting those around me sick) just to be in a testing house where I wouldn't even be able to interact and test with people until I was feeling better -- OR, risk not being able to get there at all because of the storm.

.... I decided to go, even though I was feeling awful. I wasn't going to make a third set of travel plans.

... Except I was, because the stupid J train wasn't running and I missed the Amtrak that Jason was leaving on while I was stuck 5 stops from Penn Station on the C line.

... Except there was, thankfully, a second train to Richmond leaving in just an hour, and a very kind ticket agent who let me transfer my ticket without a fee.

So I was on the train, and sick, and miserable, but at least someone had been nice enough to help me out. It wasn't all bad. I'd be getting to Richmond and seeing my friends, even if I'd be staying in my room until I was less contagious.

After a train ride full of finding moments to get up from my seat and use the bathroom so I could stand up for a few minutes and rock back and forth just to clear out my sinuses a bit and hoping I wasn't annoying everyone around my too much, I was finally walking up the stairs to the testing house.

(As a quick aside, for people who don't know me well, I absolutely hate congestion -- it's my least favorite cold/flu symptom by a million miles. Something to do with my neurodivergence/sensory issues I think, but it feels like I'm drowning constantly and I have an incredibly hard time getting literally any sleep at all and finding even brief moments of comfort. I'd take exhaustion and a high fever, nausea, chills, aches, you name it over being congested. I've literally had a fever that peaked near 103-104 every day for multiple weeks that ended up in my being hospitalized for a week, and purely in terms of an experience, I'd take that over a week of bad congestion. I just absolutely cannot stand it, and usually feel like a grumpy miserable tired wimpy jerk whenever I have a really bad spell of it.)

After putting the house groceries that Jason had singlehandedly shopped for away, I went and crashed on the bed that was going to be my home for the next few days and fired up a single elim. If I was going to be stuck in my room, I might as well distract myself from the fact that it felt like I couldn't breathe while getting as much magic in as possible.

(I played 23 single elims in ~2.5 days lol)

Saturday night was when the first real group of people, those who weren't playing RC Portland, got to the house. I was eating my dinner in the other room while people were testing, and I heard Valerie yell over "We're sorry you're sick, Ryan!", followed by a few shouts of agreement.

That's when I knew the vibes were shifting. I was with my people and everyone was here for me. I was very glad I'd come down on Friday instead of waiting (especially since the Portland folks seemed to have their flights getting canceled left and right).

By Monday, the vibes were as good as they could possibly be. Jason had been championing a new version of the deck it had been soft-locked on for a few weeks, one geared towards being more fast and agile at both interacting and pressuring as the metagame continued to evolve around linear creature combo decks. I was feeling a lot better, finally able to join the group for testing, and had become convinced by this new build after running it through the gauntlet of Simic, Lessons and Airbending.

Also, the old version of the deck had put up a literal 100% PT conversion rate at the RC, piloted by Sanctum's own Amy and Sophi (congrats y'all!!! So stoked to work with you for PT2)

After a productive day of Standard, we'd also had a banger draftlog review session and I'd started to win a lot in my single elims after jamming them in an exhausted, sick haze all weekend. I felt like I'd brute-forced my way into a very solid understanding of the limited format. Sometimes tons of high-quality reps are just really helpful.

I'll be honest - I'd been feeling pretty burnt out from the constant cycle of intense tournament preparation the past year and the (even-faster-than-usual) turnaround time between Worlds and PT1, and the release of Lorwyn and this PT. It felt like we had even less time than usual in like 7 different ways this tournament, and at various times I was both worried that I was taking things too lax because I felt like I was "a good player now" (whatever that means), and worried that I was pushing myself too hard.

In a way, it was both -- As someone helping with Sanctum leadership stuff now, there's just a lot that goes into organizing a testing house, while still writing content, and seeing your family over the holidays, and starting a brand new podcast, and trying to rest between worlds and PT1, and coaching people for Spotlight Toronto, and trying to think about really applying to more jobs sometime this year... despite playing on the Pro Tour being a dream come true for me, I think I let it sneak up on me how much I was actually letting the stress get to me.

But this week helped me remember that it's okay to lean on the people around me, and to not be able to do everything all the time. And to rest when your body's telling you you can't keep going.

Shoutouts to everyone in the house -- this group was special. But especially huge shoutouts to Valerie for yelling over to me that first night to let me know I was still part of the group, to Jason for always doing so so so much relatively invisible work to make Sanctum tick, to Ryan Bellamy for being an A+ teammate always stepping up to the plate to help with organizational stuff, and Nicole for coming to the house, generally being an amazing teammate and friend, and acquiring some really good junk food and desserts for my childlike cravings during a stressful week :)

Okay, okay, enough with the sappy stuff. Here's the decklist.

Throughout testing, Jason kept asking us to be more "warlike" with our play - meaning to be brave, take risks, and create scrappy fair games that our cards could perform well in. The list we ended up on reflects this philosophy deeply.

The Sanctum Jeskai Council has decided to go to War.

Let's win a fucking Pro Tour tomorrow.