After the double whammy of two shut outs on wedsnight draft and an FNM where I played a slightly modified blue illusions event deck that I had been playtesting with all afternoon for a friends homebrew, I was pretty annoyed with myself for being a poor sport and on the FNM I ended up in a weird ethical situation with a 10-12 year old who opened the round by conceding to me because he was going to have to go home, but his parents let him stay and his deck was finally rolling for him (It was a green stompy deck not dissimilar to the one frequently played by Deputy Dog.) so we ended up going three games which went 2-1 him. I reported them into the judge as 2-1 him.
But the girl lost to the 10 year old. The old girl. Thus proving that when the old person and the young person are both overtired and up past their bedtimes, the young person can read the cards better.
The thing I realized really quickly at that FNM was that an event deck was only going to be competitive about a month and a half into the format. I hadn’t been able to really soup up my deck, I had been looking to play a more competitive illusions deck but didn’t have the two most important flavors dujuor Snapcaster Mage and Seachrome Coasts.
I also didn’t have any confidence at all after those two events, I felt way too old, too tired and too cranky ( and budget constrained) to be competitive in that environment. Playing with my friends was helping me recognize cards but not really helping improve my game. Playing with strangers was helping improve my game but was getting to overwhelming to help me remember things that worked long term ( I’m already taking programming notes, play notes are really over what I can do)
I was discouraged, however the next day I was at the store to meet with my programming team to play Pandemic, and I had just gotten all of the cards in for the Coulton Creepy Dolls deck. I do love my creepy dolls. I had no idead how the deck was going to work, I knew with it’s mana base and lack of mana accelerators it was a casual deck but a fellow returning player (whose name is “Keith” just like the many other people I know named “Keith” and who henceforth on the blog will be called WOWKeith, because the Keiths are many) who just bought the Graveborn deck and wanted to play too. He started by playing his constructed and we just played for fun since I knew my deck was crazy and I already did mod it by adding an additional Dead Weight, another Tribute to Hunger, and a second Army of the Damned.
I had played it a bit on the Friday with my friend so I was getting familiar with it, but I did have the opportunity to call Army of the Damned twice creating 26 little token zombies made of gray six sided dice and lined them up and had a ton of fun.
Oh yeah, that’s right. The game is fun. I like the game. I’m mostly frustrated because I can’t trust the human people who keep giving me conflicting rules advice/ odd rulings or play enough to develop the kind of sense memory I need to play the game well. I don’t mind losing, I mind losing in a way that makes me unsure of what the rules really are.
Sigh.
Ok that said. The Steampunk Marchioness had convinced me to draft on the Monday after Thanksgiving. I had expected to be playing causal magic but when I showed up after class and a half hour later than drafts usually start I made enough people to draft. I drafted well ( I might actually not be too bad at deck construction, my decks are usually stronger than my play – as I improve I should not lose sight of that. ) and actually came in second due to a fairly insane, consistent deck where I had multiples of almost all my key strategy cards.
I played tokens, I was mostly matched up with people hovering around or slightly above my skillset and the final round I lost the event judge who was playing a mirror.
· newb note – a mirror match is when they person is playing a deck that is not just the same colors as your deck but either close to your strategy/archetype or exactly the same deck because perhaps you both got your deck from the same event box or internet list. They can be fun, they are also a much better way of seeing where you compare in playskill to an opponent.
Now this was also reassuring, because it helped me realize that I’m not a horrible player – I’m very good at my level, my play and drafts are consistent, but I knew when I saw the judge manipulating his cards ( plus he had a gavony township I never managed to see in the draft or it would have been in my green/white token based deck not his) that he would probably win because he had a much better sense of how the card abilities interacted with each other than I did. So when we were surprised at how very, very mirrored the decks were, his gavony township and champions of the parrish gave him a few levels of advantage over me since I was using spirit tokens and a very, very effective cellar door. Cellar door also has the advantage of surprising the hell out of opponents for doing anything useful – zombie 2/2 tokens from the creatures buried at the bottom of your deck anyway? Yes please. They were my win condition at least once.
But it was at draft that I was starting to cave about the computer based Duels of the Planeswalkers game. I was never going to get card interactions if I didn’t practice, just like you have to practice dribbling and layups and figure traces in ice scating, or tounge twisters and body exercises for acting. I played the trial version and it sucked. I made the mistake of putting it on “never played” instead of “ a little” but went back to it the next day and it allowed me to start the trial over. That Friday was the Marchioness’s birthday, and we went out for really cool dinner, Deputy Dog doctored some booster packs to hide WurmCoil Engines or Batterskulls ( one of those) in them and I made her some Snapcaster Mage proxies to play with while she was testing decks. It doesn’t really make much sense for us to spend 100.00 on a playset of snapcasters. We’re not going to finish in the money and “make it back” and I at least am not sure of timing or tempo enough to make it worth it. I figured that a good quality proxy would be enough for her inner Johnny for now.
I wrapped it in really beautiful paper and spend some time making it appropriate to our nature, printing it on cardstock.
We went to the FNM to obtain some cards, saw our buddies from the draft and previous FNMs showed off the proxies and tried to convince one of the Keith’s wives to play with us when she was in town. Girl Power. We also tried to convince the waitress at the very good restaurant. Haven’t heard from either of them but we tried.
Then the Marchioness, who has a crush on Patrick Chapin’s brain, wanted to try her variation of an Olivia Voldaran Grixis Deck. We were tired, her deck was neat but I ran headlong into a problem where a judge had told me one thing, a player had told me another and the Marchioness was playing things that looked incorrect but she had heard Chapin describing things in such a way that she had to be right. Long story short – it took us a while to find clear instructions but she was right, however both my long term strategy, reads of other people’s use of cards and interpretation of stack rules was geared towards the (incorrect) way the judge had told me things worked. Thus I was seriously grumpy at the Marchioness ( also possibly because it was 2am) but not because of her but because it made me realize that the many, many ways to learn the game, all of which scream “ learn from your community” are kind of BS because your community is not necessarily consistent. Nor are your trusted authorities always right. Even in a best case light, they might be less than effective at explaining things and therefore leave you with the impression that the rule is the exact opposite of what the rule actually is.
I had indeed reached the point where for slightly above basic rules I trusted the computer more than I trusted people or forums. It was running a less high powered card through it’s paces in Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 that I was able to resolve the three different information points and feel like I actually could depend on what I knew.
So I bought the game. And now I practice for an half hour to an hour every day on it.
There is a certain relief in playing for practice online. For one thing I am not dealing with a human so when I am frustrated or want to work on one play over and over again I am not affecting anyone else. For another, if I have trouble with something I know that there has to be a solution and it’s much easier for me to figure out computer variance than human variance while learning the basics.
As part of her Natal Anniversary Celebration, the Marchioness purchased a copy of Patrick Chapin’s Magic the Next Level. We are now treating it like a Book Club.
I’ll most likely be including it here in my journal, which interestingly enough is one of the practices suggested in the book ( keeping this kind of journal). I can honestly say it doesn’t meet the need I see to help explain the intricacies of some of the basic plays that are the building blocks of complex competitive play. And Duels of the Planeswalkers which is supposed to fill part of that gap helps, but also falls short of the type of instruction that exists for say chess or bridge, but I think by cobbling sources together I should be able to design the kind of instructional/strategy guide or book I’m looking for.
I will post next about the key rules or strategies I learned through practice on the computer, and am heading in to FNM tonight but unsure of what I’m going to play.
Coaches would sure be nice.
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