Pseudo Newb - Side Events and Tilting like Whoa

"So Pseudo Newb, what did you learn this weekend?"

" I learned that I am a high strung, high maintenance bitch"

Oh Yeah. 

Just in case anyone is worried about me using the "bitch" word please understand that we raised obedience circut show dogs so I use it in the highest regard. I like most dogs better than most people. 

I'm also using high-strung in pretty much the same context.

Here is Sam the Dog Trainer's definition of High Strung Dogs ( there are different types - On Day 2 I may have been all of them) and I find it the most accurate description(s) of me. All day Sunday:

http://samthedogtrainer.com/articles/high-strung-dogs/

So I have played in one side event. I was horribly embarrassed by my extreme lack of knowing any damn thing, including what single elimination was.  It was draft,  I was kind of used to having to find my footing during or after the first round. and felt like a massive idiot when I tried to find out who I would be playing next.  Yes, it was shaming, yes it made me wonder why the heck I could possibly think I should be at a GP at all and yes, it was the day before the main event. 

I recovered and played the next day. The guy who beat me that first round came back to play a standard pickup game after he was eliminated. It was relatively quiet that night. When I went to Gencon, I didn't realize that there were rotating sign ups and they put together drafts in queues as each set of 8 signs up. But the reality is that if they are single elimination too, for a newer player they're a lot like playing a 20.00 slot machine.

Single elimination means you pay X$ to draft and if you lose you better hope you pulled a card that at least let you break even for "value" because otherwise you paid X to play one round of magic and learn nothing from it.  Because that's not enough data to evaluate your deck, your choices, or the balance against variance. But hey you did help someone else "live the dream" and the theory of a pack or so because they beat you. 

I don't gamble. Single elimination events really are just ways to separate me from my money and make me hate myself or second guess why I think I can play magic at all. 

But there might be other reasons I'm avoiding side events, and my general rule is that if I'm afraid of something that means I should do it until I understand it or at least am not irrationally afraid of it anymore. 

What I learned is that I was not "irrationally" afraid of side events. 

Let's go back to that description of High Strung Dogs

"Nervousness is a combination of traits. Part of being nervous are dogs that don’t rebound from stress very easily. In “dog terminology”, that is referred to a dog with “thin nerves”. Things just don’t bounce off of them very easily, and they don’t recover very easily when stimulated by something unpleasant: a loud sound (gunfire, fireworks, car backfiring), firm verbal or leash correction,  physical pain (such as from tripping on the carpet), or bad experience (dog bowl tips over and scares the dog), etc."

So lets review my weekend so far - I had been roflstomped ( not a magic slang term) the day before - although I held in there I was very unhappy with my own quality of play.  I was trying to be positive about it, but  actually I think that might have made it worse, in terms of letting it go because I forced it so that I didn't rain on my friends really enthusiastic accomplishments.

Not unsurprisingly a steak and a mojito did improve my mood. I'm beginning to think good food with lots of iron and protien is waaay more important to my competitive preparation than I considered previously. 

I had made enough social faux pax ( at least in my own head) that I was feeling pretty awkward about myself and life. I'm still feeling a little fish-out-of-water.  Two conversations with experienced players who were quick to shut down or deflect from conversations about teaching Magic or even the idea of coaching in a way that basically works out to "This Worked for Me so therefore it is the ONLY real way to learn" that both came from a point of privilege made me feel too preachy but also discouraged. These two people were the good guys and if they couldn't expand their empathy or even their logic to see past their own experiences I realized what an uphill battle I have without actually being good at the game.

And the subtext there is the crushing pressure to be good at the game simply to be "heard". Followed by the incredible ego destruction of being demonstrably not-good at the game. 

Let's not forget anger at myself for being not-good. 

So this High Strung Puppy was already not rebounding from stress easily.

But my win rate is generally higher in Sealed, so my Competitive Spirit Guide ( her name is Anna) took all that into consideration and suggested that we go ahead and play in a Swiss sealed event.  And I figured out EXACTLY why I had been afraid of side events. 

Here is what I opened in the sealed pool, I realized that I also had a transformative sideboard's worth of cards so I built a second side deck:

Main deck (44 cards)

2 Bellows Lizard

1 Trained Caracal

1 Drudge Beetle

1 Gatecreeper Vine

1 Rakdos Shred-Freak

1 Tavern Swindler

1 Thrill-Kill Assassin

1 Hellhole Flailer

1 Lobber Crew

1 Viashino Racketeer

1 Dark Revenant

1 Sluiceway Scorpion

1 Slum Reaper

1 Rakdos Ragemutt

1 Giant Growth

1 Abrupt Decay

1 Dreadbore

1 Golgari Charm

1 Rakdos Charm

1 Annihilating Fire

1 Auger Spree

2 Golgari Keyrune

1 Rootborn Defenses

2 Stab Wound

1 Traitorous Instinct

3 Forest

5 Mountain

1 Rakdos Guildgate

6 Swamp

1 Transguild Promenade

Sideboard (40 cards)

1 Righteous Authority

1 Hallowed Fountain

3 Avenging Arrow

2 Runewing

1 Soul Tithe

1 New Prahv Guildmage

1 Selesnya Sentry

1 Skyline Predator

1 Nivmagus Elemental

1 Aquus Steed

1 Inspiration

1 Concordia Pegasus

1 Hover Barrier

1 Dispel

1 Arrest

1 Knightly Valor

1 Isperia's Skywatch

1 Seller of Songbirds

1 Tower Drake

2 Voidwielder

8 Island

8 Plains

Non-Transformative Sideboard (31 cards)

1 Goblin Electromancer

1 Lobber Crew

1 Stonefare Crocodile

1 Cobblebrute

2 Korozda Monitor

1 Ogre Jailbreaker

3 Street Sweeper

1 Tenement Crasher

2 Terrus Wurm

1 Worldspine Wurm

1 Dynacharge

1 Mana Bloom

2 Grisly Salvage

1 Selesnya Charm

1 Aerial Predation

1 Common Bond

1 Mind Rot

1 Essence Backlash

2 Launch Party

1 Slaughter Games

2 Destroy the Evidence

1 Skull Rend

1 Survey the Wreckage

1 Rites of Reaping

Results:

0 - 4 

1 Bye

Oh.My.God.

No Seriously.

Round 1

Sleeving up and Round 1 went fine it was 1-2 the game was legit he drew better than me  for one and I had a misplay and that was all she wrote. It actually felt better than playing in the main event the day before. But after that round was when the tilty chaos started.

I chose the cards I chose because of Abrupt Decay, Two Stab Wounds and Dreadbore. I had been avoiding Rakdos cards and kept loaning or giving away my Abrupt Decays and I wanted to practice removal with those colors. 

The loss felt like a bit of a bump but I felt neither helpless nor incompetent, then I learned the difference between side events and main GP events.

Like - even if you sit right in your assigned seat - you have no idea how everyone knows the next round is starting meaning because you didn't hear "end of round" announcements you are caught up unaware ( and shlepping around all the stuff you have with you that you couldn't leave with the hotel concierge)

Round 2

You scramble up to the pairings - see your number  in bright pink (13, no lie) and turn around to look for it at the two or three tables where you were playing a minute ago and find the number.

There it is! Bright Pink sign on the table right behind where you're looking at your posting!

You know you're behind so you drag your two things to the table, sit down and start setting up.

Opponent smiles, takes your apology and asks if you signed up late for the tournament.

No? it's a first shot across the bough - you have accidentally sat down at some sort of Modern Constructed thing. 

Confused and disoriented now you try to figure out where the hell you are that you could have gotten so lost as to end up in a different side event simply by turning around. (Remember your high strung bitches do not rebound quickly from stress.) You start where you know you were sitting before and try to find out which version of the snake they used to organize the numbers and then you find your table. Your Opponent is not there. the sign says 13 - it's in blue. You feel stupid and flustered but you can recover.

Opponent finds you. He apparently made the same mistake about two minutes after you - poor Modern Players. He had to find the seat the same way. OK at least you are not crazy.

You're concentration is off.  You know it but you figure it's OK you can recover. At the end of your table a Judge starts bellowing - loudly giving instructions. Knowing that missing judges instructions can currently cause all sorts of havok you stop what you are doing and your opponent does too. It takes about three minutes into the very loud bellowing to realize he is not addressing your side event even though he referenced it. But he's at the end of your table - you and your opponent are both looking around WTF? Why are the sudden loud noises ( with the fear of punishment if you miss them- remember how not to train your high strung bitch?) being blasted at you. Your Opponent looks and points down the end of the table - at the top of the table is the bright pink table numbers - we can both clearly see the #13 we both sat down at. 

We are at the same table at the other end. 

The not-our- judge barks an order as I'm trying figure out where I was in the game. I literally startle. I cannot remember who had priority or what turn it was before we started trying to find out what not-our-judge was announcing. I do something stupid I am pretty sure because I am feeling incredible burning shame and tilt for not realizing that it had nothing to do with us and now not knowing WTF I was doing. 

This game is a wash - I can't get basic reading skills down let alone acutal focus - I think not-our-judge barks twice and then new people come up to congratulate him for barking so well - he is one chair away from us.

My Opponent is at his first GP he is a lovely human being - this is important. He wins the first game because the only thing playing against him is a vibrating string trying to figure out why she is vibrating and why can't she read the words on the cards anymore. 

He wins the second game because I read his board state incorrectly and I can feel the tilt rising up but it's not against or about him. I chat with him a bit and make sure I am carefully packed and ready to go. I still don't hear any type of end of round announcement - in retrospect our judges probably just hovered over long games and informed them individually. 

Someone windmill slams something over in the Modern tournament and calls out "I can't believe you did that" in the way where you can't really tell whether they're upset or amazed, but it's too late: I'm in fight or flight mode and the startle reflex has the adrenaline going anyway. 

I jumped up from my seat - and "flight" is not where my adrenaline was going even though the rest of my body was going with  - "nothing to see here move along adrenaline"

Tilt at +2

But luckily the pairings were up. and because I was 0-2 I had the bye. 

OK good, Walk around the event. Drink your coffee, see the vendors you missed. Shake it off. 

Round 3.

There were a bunch of vendors at GP AC and they all reminded me of what it is that I don't really like or understand about vendors at GPs.

If I want to buy cards for anything other than the event I'm playing at - I will honestly buy them online because most of the pricing seems predatory. 

What I would be looking for and buy at a GP is one of a kind stuff, cool T-shirts and Hoodies, Bags, 

I do buy sleeves and playmats. I might by old sets boosters. But there is literally no "shopping" to be done at a GP and thus no way to "bond" or decompress while shopping. There is very little sign of Magic Culture . But I walked it off, Checked out everyone in case there were cool life counters or three d alters or something that was at least fun ( nope) 

I went back to where my Competitive Spirit Guide was playing my last opponent. I built a second deck out of my sideboard and checked with a Judge about the Competitive REL (regulation* enforcement level) rules on sideboarding. I have to present the original deck I registered but I can indeed switch the whole thing for another one. My first round opponent came to hang out while I was doing that in the clear space while my Competitive Spirit Guide was moving into her 3rd game with a 1-1 record when a judge came over and asked to see her off on the side.

We were all confused - no one had asked for a judge, Anna is a high level player and I was worried that she was in trouble because of a trigger rule or some other piece of esoterica. Then they called the very Nice Canadian Man who was my last opponent over to get "his side of the story" . Anna is keeping it close to the vest but he comes back and they discuss things and think they know what's going on and prepare for either a warning or a game loss.

But they call Nice Canadian Man over again and a judge comes back and tells Anna that he's going to be disqualified. 

I cannot begin to tell you how nervewracking and upsetting this was to everyone involved, but in many ways mostly the observers, because there is long term fallout - way past what happened to me - but I will be trying that's going to be what the blog is about. 

Anna is a level 1 judge but she had really not been keeping up because she only played casually anymore eventually she and the judge spoke so she understood what exactly had happened - the judges observed a misplay - it equated to "fraud" and DQed him even though they both thought it was a misplay - yes it did happen around a trigger - but no one had called over a judge and the judge ruled it unintentional. - I'll go into clearer detail when I write the real blogpost about this - the bottome line was 

We all felt awful - and now we were nervous - and because we were making misplays on and off all day everyone in radius was also feeling scared.  I had never heard of anything like this. 

The tilt was rising. 

Round 4.

The postings were up - I realize now is that from the first disruption understanding where I was when the sign seemed to show I was in the right place but I wasn't followed by the very loud and sudden auditory stimulus in round 2 my learning disability ( which is a symbol processing disorder) was triggering some major neurological effects, but at the time the only thing I realized was that I was having trouble reading the pairings sheet, finding my name and seeing which table I was at. It is significant that I don't remember the table number.

I sat down - made sure the number was blue. Started unrolling my playmat - my first round opponent had the bye and sat next to me - this would eventually be a good thing. 

Three judges where sitting or standing and watching our side of the table. 

I couldn't read the words on the cards. Really. 

My opponent flew to the table late. She ran a constant hyper chatter, her board state was a constant mess. When she first put her unsleeved and yet curved cards down I was wondering how the heck they could look that way. I found out - she compulsively shuffled, fidgeted with her cards kept asking what cards I had as though I could or would tell her while she made the decision. I made a misplay and used Abrupt Decay on something that had regen. That was kind of it for me. Her deck was better than mine but I could also tell I was probably her first win of the day - because I'd made the misplay (which was because I couldn't read her card & wouldn't have been able to even if I had asked to see it - my visual processing was gone. I was having to pretty much play the cards from memory and was nervous because of the observed misplay DQ that had happened before. 

My opponent was literally sitting at the edge of her seat bouncing with a continous barrage of high pitched questions which I am culturally conditioned not to leave hanging in the air - but answering would have probably opened the door to some unpleasant put downs. But I was desperatly trying to relate what what in my hand to what was on her board having just asked a judge to confirm something I already knew looking like the stupidest newbist kind of player in scrub history when I realized that she was FLICKING HER CARDS SO LOUDLY THEY INTERRUPTED EVERY THOUGHT I HAD. 

Full tilt. 

" I need to ask you to stop making that noise with your cards right now. It's very loud."

She freaked out. Like she was caught. 

"Oh I didn't know I was doing that. I'm sorry it's a nervous habit. I'll try to stop."

I did not flip the table. I did not kill my opponent. I did not believe for a minute that this was the first time she had been asked to stop that behavior and that the "wounded scared kitty" routine was real.

But then she proceeded to suddnely seem to lose the abiiity to keep a clear board state.

Lands were all over the place, attackers weren't tapped in order, actions taken on the stack weren't clear. I stopped worrying about the game and started worrying about not fucking up the game by accident in a way that was going to get me DQ'ed

I switched to the blue white deck on Game 2 - the cards were more familiar to me. I was comfortable with the rules that governed them. She had to be told not to flick with the power of a 100 suns again and although I died to Vraska we still had to call the judge over three times because of unclear lines of play. The judges could tell something was off but the point at the end, the point where I lost it was when one of them asked: "But you were having fun right"

My honesty meter was too high and I was on the verge of tears. Hyperkinetic Girl was psyched because she had actually won a match and pretending that it had anything to do with fun was simply not on my list of things to do.

I smiled vibrating in my seat trying not to break out into soap opera dramatics and simply said

" No. Not at all, but she did."

Funny how oblivious she was to me before but all of a sudden she got the idea that even though I was smiling encouragingly at her telling her "It's OK enjoy the win" she should probably go run off and tell her friends. I think it was that she might finally have made eye contact.

I don't cry when I'm sad. I cry when I'm full of rage. It's better for everyone that way. I don't like being violent. It makes me feel bad. I don't like being public with emotions either, it doesn't really work out for me so I was trying to squelch it.

But Anna came over, and the first opponent did the best thing anyone could have done at that time - "want to just play for fun?"

Oohh was I mad at myself for letting Hyperkinectic Girl get to me, but I was still surrounded by judges, Anna was over and found out that at the end of the table the loud flick/flapping sound that was distracting her was hyperkinetic girl and was shocked that it carried that far. It did. Frankly for that much echo effect it seemed practiced. Whatever.

I was still smiling, still polite but had to admit that No I was on the verge of absolute hysteria - and no I wasn't going to drop - although I might have if it had just been another loss. I needed to at least be able to recover enough to read English words again.

First Oppenent and I played for fun. He did not take pity on me and I lost our first game and then things went a little more like normal and we ended up playing 4 games 2-2 oh yeah, Magic is fun. No I didn't forget who I am, I don't need to win to feel "right" I just need to be playing as cleanly as I could.

They called the pairings Round 5

only one goal. Play calm. Stay Even.

Round 5

I lost. Clean Play. Stayed Even.

It was 6:15. I hadn't eaten much and realized I hadn't touched my drink since round 3 before the DQ - that might have helped.

Take Aways

The worst part for me was knowing that I wasn't going to retain any of the details from any of the games to learn from them. The only thing I could take away from that was that I don't quit. I won't quit.

But what I really needed in a Day Two event didn't really exist after a stiff day of competition and competitive goals the day before which is something REALLY SILLY.

Like an alter contest with spare commons

Or bringing in your theme deck judged by Vorthos Judges on themeyness and having to explain each of your choices to the assmbled competitors

Or Unglued cards mixed in sealed or draft.

Commander is not " light fun" the people who play it there with the 1000.00 decks and broken combos and foiled out everything are not "silly" they're just as intimidating to new players as competitive is, but at lease I understand how competitive works.

But I'm too competitive to follow up a disappointing competitive performance without something to really break up the mindset and have fun with Magic. I need something really silly, something cultural, I need a safer space.

Everyone in my crew had a very successful weekend and a good time, a friend went infinite in draft, Anna placed 7th, the friend I went out to meet got to judge at a GP. I squelched all the frustration down because I didn't want to be a bigger pill than I already was and I was glad for them and wanted them to be uncomplicated happy.

Right now though - I think side events are too high in distractions and neurological triggers for me. Of course this means that I will most likely be trying again.

Because I'm apparently too competitive not to. In the real sense, not the "i need to win" sense, but the "I need to overcome this obstacle" sense.

*******

* A friend corrected me on REL being "rules enforcement level" instead of "regulation" - while this is correct it is not true.

ALL of the RULES are enforced at FNM the regulations on how you enforce them changes as you increase, Missed Trigger Warnings and DQs being a specific example of the regulation for what you do changing while the rule remains the same. 

It is not the first and will not be last time that the proper title for something misrepresents the effect of what it's really trying to say. This is my competitive journal and I need to keep the meanings straight - there is only one set of competitive rules for Magic there are several different RELs for playing Magic. I am sure that the Judges chose the acronym because they were focused on enforcement and level as opposed to implying that there are different rules at different levels.  I'm not changing the way it is typed because while I'm sure I've read it properly many times at this point it still didn't stick - so that's something to record here too. 

Pseudo-Newb Goes to GP Atlantic City - Competitive Journal for Main Event

For anyone who's following this blog for bloggy reasons this is going to be the competitive journal part for me - where I beat myself up and analyze the hell out of it - there will be another post shortly afterwards where I do the same thing for the swiss sealed GP Pittsburg Warmup that I participated in on Day 2 - I keep avoiding writing about the GP experiences and I'm going to try not to do that this time but there will be a more traditional blog style post about some unintended consequences of witnessing a Disqualification in process even if it's not something you're part of before I do that. 

So the posts will be - Me and Main Event - only this post
Me and my first real Side Event - next Post
Actual Blog-like yet still competitive journal post actual aimed at people who aren't just me - Post after that.

Feel free to read away anyway -but remember I don't edit to make sure I don't back off recording the truth as I remember it before I can talk myself out of writing it down. 

Why did I go to Gp Atlantic City? Unlike the other two GPs which were planned and prepped for months in advance I had very little intention of going to GP AC but a dear friend of mine was going and I've become involved with Planeswalkers for Diversity and Ladies of MtG groups ( discovering that Facebook is actually a social tool for organizing new groups of people instead of just communicating with existing ones) 

Preparation: 

So my dear friend whom I love was going, and a number of people I've only known virtually were going and there was talk of getting together to meet each other in person. The friend however was working out which deck she wanted to play and put in an impressive amount of time researching, and playtesting and changing up what she wanted to play about every hour. I pretty much figured if the metagame was taking up that much of her time there was very little point in me playing because I didn't have five spare minutes to squeeze together for anything other than perhaps updating a sideboard. And there's also what I learned from my only other standard GP which was don't play a deck you don't love because you will be soooo sick of seeing those cards by round 5.

That's not to say that you should play a bad deck at a GP because you love it. And it's not the same as being a high level competitor like anyone who is going to make it to the top 64 - those people are actually playing at a higher level and picking the right deck IS very important to their success - however they will also not make two mistakes that non-pro or new players might make:

Mistake One - concentrating so much on learning about the metagame you don't practice with the deck you pick ( if you're a top pro - you've probably already developed the skillsets you need to exploit the deck synergies that make it a tier one ( which means very good and likely to win) deck.  Even Red Deck Wins is a complex set of decisions, just having the cards and identifying them won't mean they can win on their own. 

Mistake Two - Changing your deck every twelve hours because of a new report back or playtest with the deck didn't go well in a few ( less than 5 3-game) matchups. 


I was completely guilty of a variant of Mistake Two Variant A: playtesting the friday night before the event and freaking out and audibling right before the event because of the way one playtest went. 


When Pro's look at the meta and do analysis and pick decks they are doing it from a point of experience with the basic functionality of complex card interaction that the rest of us don't have, because they're been doing it forever - like when mechanics know what part of your engine is running off because of the sound of it when it sounds exactly the same to you. So it's good and important to know the meta at a GP and it's good and important to pick a deck that has a chance against the meta - and then what a newb should do differently than a player is play that deck ALOT and if it's netdecked play attention to what other competitor's changes ACTUALLY CHANGE about the way the deck runs. 

The most important reason to know the meta is so you can recognize what the other guy might be playing.  My dear friend is newish to magic and like me a reasonable adult that doesn't want to spend stupid money on cards. This particular Standard Season it looks like all the card prices are more affected by fashion than Kim Kardashian and Anna Wintour combined. If they were stocks you could day trade off them. 


So I wasn't going but I do have a few legal standard decks I've been working on putting together so I had the cards she needed - but a lot of them were in decks.  I had finished the paper but I also have a show I'm working with and the holidays - there was no way I was going to GPAC because I had ZERO practice time now. But someone was coming and it was really too much to not meet her, and then if I was there it would be silly not to play. And dear friend offered crash space to me and my other friend - who is the friend/possibly coach guinea pig that I now go to GPs with. So I went - mostly for something fairly close to Girls Weekend Out. It was one week before the event. I knew from keeping track of my friend's deck changes that I needed to play something simpler. I have my beloved Re-animator Rats deck - But I wasn't playing it well or consistently.  I went to the FNM last week and played this list with one more Hannaweir Lancer and one less Hellrider. 

Deck: GPAC Red

Counts : 60 main / 15 sideboard

Creatures:23
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Reckless Waif
4 Vexing Devil
3 Ash Zealot
4 Gore-House Chainwalker
1 Guttersnipe
1 Hanweir Lancer
2 Hellrider

Spells:17
4 Pillar of Flame
1 Street Spasm
1 Mizzium Mortars
4 Searing Spear
3 Brimstone Volley
1 Flames of the Firebrand
3 Thunderous Wrath

Lands:20
20 Mountain

Sideboard:15
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Stromkirk Noble
2 Mizzium Mortars
2 Nightbird's Clutches
2 Annihilating Fire
1 Flames of the Firebrand
1 Witchbane Orb
1 Thundermaw Hellkite
3 Zealous Conscripts


I went 3-1 and tied for 3rd tiebreakering down to 4th again.

I only lost to a mirror running Stromkirks and Stonewrights. It was fast, it was clean and there were lots of decision points and that was very, very good because Sunday I went to the rehearsal for the show and found out how much work there was to do in the next three weeks. So every night the week up to the GP was spend on costuming Annie. Everynight after the GP will be too. 23 orphan's people!

Ok - so I was following my own advice - I know the deck has a weakness - thus I worked on what to side without actually changing too much of my deck strategy. It was going to win quick ( less than 10-15 minutes) or at least make the control decks work for it. Unfortunately for me - the build I lost round 4 against won the Star City or TCG or something big on Sunday when I was looking at vintage clothes for the Boelyn Sisters and realizing that we had very, very little on the rack for any of the adult cast members - Dress rehearsal in less than 26 days. 

Goals - 

My Goal for this GP was to play all 9 rounds no matter what. I keep getting tired and making sloppy play mistakes around round 4 or 5. Managing hydration, health, how much I'm carrying and keeping focus on my deck and adapting to play was the skillset I was working on.  That and the whole - "Girls Weekend Out" thing.

So that was the goal - how did it go?

Well, ummm . . .  I did bake very successful cookies to share this weekend. 

Also - I'm apparently running between two types of social interaction - something just short of actually being shy and continuously feeling awkward, and running off at the mouth while I speak passionately about coaching and teams in Magic.  And sort of floundering around in between. I successfully made it to the get together on Friday and then successfully managed to second guess and relive every real or imagined social faux pax I made after that until the next day. So the good news - no social anxiety before hand/ the bad news apparently you can get it afterwards. 

Who knew?

The dear friend who brought me there and the woman I was pretty much there to meet were all doing the Magic Social Networking thing brilliantly, but as Sancho Panza might say "I'd gone and lost the knack." 

However I did make one more really intelligent decision which was to recognize that I was tired and losing my mind due to stupidity and so I stayed in the room and went to sleep rather than playtest until 2am. I confided in a friend who wasn't at GP AC all the stupid things I was obsessing over and she helped put it into perspective so that I wasn't destroying myself over it. So good - I slept and this helped me actually meet the 9 round goal

But what I wasn't prepared for was the worst record I have every encountered in a standard event.


Which brings us to:

Results:

Abysmal - My total record was 3-6, and the way it played out was that I was 0-5 and then won 3. 

(So if I'd won three byes I would have been 6-3 which is interesting in it's own way and would look very different to me - I do think that the system of byes makes a huge difference to the events - having a bye has numerous benefits for managing health and resources, it also means pros and bye holders never really have to deal with the additional stressors that can happen from that time period of play)

The per- game record went like this: 

• Round 1 -  1-2 It was a Lifegain deck with RhoxFaithminder
• Round 2 -  0-2 Against the Mirror but it was a legitimate race each time
• Round 3 -  0-2 I died very quickly to Restoration Angels with Auger of Bolas and I have a note that I mulled down to 6 and should have mulled to 5 
• Round 4 -  I-2 Black Red Zombies but it was within two life points when he won and over 10 when I did
• Round 5 - 0-2 it was against something that ran Garruk, and Hunstmaster and Thragtusk and Resto and I managed to kill all of them before lifegain shennanagans.
• Round 6 - 2-1 and I finally broke the losing streak after somehow playing a Dark America style control deck into submission for 45 minutes on game 1 which he won by pinging away with an Auger of Bolas. I did indeed sideboard and won the next two games in 10 minutes,
• Round 7 - 2-0 both I and the deck were finally playing the way they should an won both rounds by round 4 and 5
• Round 8 - 2-1 He was playing an Olivia/zombies aggro buil I was winning the first on lifepoints but he had a damage accelerator that won him the first round - I won the second and third game in 4 rounds
• Round 9 - 1-2 Another lifegain strategy - this deck is SOOO getting Skullcrack when it comes out. 

So I played a total of 22 games won 9 of them. My round win rate is 30% but my per game win rate is 41%. This is interesting to me because I didn't really remember it that way - I actually remember it as losing more than that. It's certainly the way I felt after round 4. 

I was trying to keep a positive attitude - none of the games I played were horrifically bad - all of them were close in the mirror it was simply the race. In the first round I could only kill one of the two Rhox Faithminders before the Thragtusk came out. 

When the standings were placed I was 615 out of something like 630 who were still playing and according to the DCI when you average in all the people who probably dropped when they were dead but had won before then I was 1116 out of 1648. 

Takeaways - Here is the thing I learned - I am competitve. Really not kidding around competitive, but it is against myself and my own record. I was lucky that I had a whole bunch of people supporting me at this GP so I was most likely the losingist person with a support team to help me meet my goal there. I was still exahuasted and cranky at round four but the husband of the dear friend had dropped by 4 and asked me what I needed to get through - the large white chocolate Mocha from Starbucks literally got me through the next five rounds.

At Round 3 it was over fast enough for more than a bathroom break it was also a nice fully digested lunch. There was enough time to really talk to the opponents & I got to know them. I actually did way better with that social interaction that the purported social reasons I went in the first place. But at the very end it was the friends who went with me that let me relax enough to analyze and celebrate the making it through the whole 9 rounds. 

I also realized that it was much better for me to figure out how to play 9 rounds when I wasn't doing well than to be running 5-0 and figuring it out on the fly. 

By the time the standings were up however- it was 10:15 and getting out and figuring out where to eat -even in Atlantic City made it difficult to figure out where to get real food. 

We were out late, and I promised I would participate in a side event to get rid of my fear of side events. - so that was what the next competitive journal post will be about.