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.
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