The Night Before Worlds pt 3

3 years in a row.

3 times now I've been able to prepare to compete at the World Championships of my favorite game, the best game of all time, Magic.

A lot has changed for me and Magic over these past three years. If you'd told me I'd be sitting down to draft... Star Trek... at Worlds in two years the first time I was here, I wouldn't have believed you for many reasons, but here we are, and I'm having just as much fun.

This is definitely "type 2" fun. For weeks Sanctum has been brewing darlings and killing them in the mines. We're joining forces with the Boulder players who were qualified for Worlds this year, and I've gotten a chance to work with Andrew Elenbogen again (the last time was PT EOE, PT Amulet, last year). Each of us took one half of the lead: Andrew Constructed, and me Limited.

It's felt really great to start to have more of a handle on how to lead a team and organize the process. I actually made a web app for it (with LLM help) that's been quite useful this time around and is going to give us a nice artifact of our testing notes and various other things that I can share with you all in some form after the tournament is over.

Andrew drives a tight ship on constructed (which I love), and his goal every time is to have everyone on the team register the same deck. We got pretty close this time, with 9/11 of us registering Dimir Control — we're gonna tell the Naked Time people at this Worlds to Cover Up, so to speak.

The part of Worlds I'm most excited for, though, is draft. Readers might know I've spent a lot of time over the past few years trying to level up in limited and learn from the best players in the world (like Jason and Toni on our team, and more from outside it), but have had middling winrates at pro events. I'm hopeful to break that streak this time drafting a set that's barely even been released online but the team has had our head in for multiple weeks now. I think we have a great understanding of the format and how we want to approach the Worlds drafts.

Life has also been changing a bit. I'm flying from this Worlds directly to an onsite, weeklong job interview, which I'm excited and nervous for in equal measure.

But that's something to worry about later.

For now, I want to focus on playing my heart out, enjoying every minute of the best matches that exist in Magic, and once again attempting to prove that I belong among the best players in the world. I'm still nervous as hell, like always. That part doesn't change one bit.

The team list is gas. Let's get it done.

Oh, and cft's registering gay storm. 🌈⛈️