This is the celebratory Proxy Card i made upon the news that I had been accepted to Bryn Mawr.
The opportunity and process for doing this were one of those really, really huge crossroads in life but while one is busy deconstructing and unpacking all the good, bad and ugly that this process entailed it didn't leave a lot of time and energy for Magic even though it was literally my friends who played Magic - scattered all over the country who supported me and got me through it. So the months of the Gatecrash release were filled with Magic people and thinking about Magic and making proxies for Magic but almost no playing Magic.
I ended up delaying my attendance at WMCQ for two reasons - one was that I landed a interview subject for my anthropology paper that took 4 hours and then needed to be transcribed to write the paper and the other was that my " when you scrub out " plan was to play Two Headed Giant in Team Betsey Johnson in the late afternoon. I have a "play through" mentality, I'm getting better about strategically dropping at small things and at WMCQ I don't want my stubbornness to screw up someone else's math so my plan was to drop when I was dead.*
*(NewbNote - "Dropping when dead" means withdrawing from the tournamenet when you no longer have any statistical shot at "making Day 2" and "making Day 2 means performing well enough to make the cutoff for playing the next day's rounds at a Grand Prix or Pro Tour or other high level multi-day competition. While on the learning curve - making Day 2 can be a competitive goal)
End result, I was tired, stressy and the cost of my going to DC in any condition to play would have been close to 200.00 since I was now solo. I was torn and then I realized I could still go to the one in Chicago that was scheduled for AFTER my final semester at my current school! And see other cool and awesome Magic Players I haven't been able to see!
Which is good- because the other thing I realized is that the deck I'd put together two days before that interview which was totally not Boros Champions was running better for me and I was more comfortable with it than the one I'd been playing.
I'd gotten to play a bit more but still not where I wanted to be.
Then BOOM - final meeting, final semester stuff, getting my graduation status resolved drama
Pre-Release
I made a bit more time for Magic but not real serious time. Pre-release was coming, Gatecrash had kind of left me flat - When I sat down for my first pre-release sealed for Dragon's Maze I was struck by mild anxiety - not social this time - Pre-release is the friendliest, happiest time at my shop but simply performance anxiety. It stayed with me through two full events but was done by the third. I'm back in an even spot.
My pre-release record was
3-1
2-2 ( for two headed giant)
3-1
2-2
I loved the full block sealed environment! And the 2-2 for the later Sunday game was fine for me because I was somehow or another dealing with a practically creature-less pool somehow and all the games were competitive- I met a new Lady Planeswalker at the store and we were paired up and it was fun and glorious - all the games were highly interactive and played clean.
And then I had to be in a Faerie Wedding - which was lovely and time consuming.
And now I am in Finals - and was up since 4 am on the Friday of the first Standard FNM after Dragon's Maze. And other than prepping for said finals I could have been doing those things or go to FNM in my half dead state.
And this is the part where I admit that I thought about going to FNM every single Friday and didn't because some of it was fear and a lot of it was fear of playing badly due to lack of practice or being tired. I had things due, FNM ends late and I was emotionally exhausted a lot of the time for the Gatecrash season.
So my competitve goal yesterday was simple - get my ass to FNM.
I would drop when I was overtired, I didn't pay in. At my store you can play FNM for free, if you buy in, for every person who does a pack is cracked open and the rare is exposed. You get to pick your pack based on your standing at the end of FNM. There are usually promo cards depending on the night and how far into the season it is.
I always buy in. I love my store and my store owner and having 41 people for FNM is meaningless if they don't spend money. I don't usually buy singles from my LGS I buy all my sealed product from them even when it's not the best price. What I started doing to support My LGS when I wasn't playing was buying a shockland from him for every draft I didn't go to.
So my reasoning was - I'm going to drop from exhaustion - possibly literally - I'll just buy a pack when I drop and he'll get the same 4 bucks as buy in and I won't complicate the bookkeeping.
I was playing the deck I'm planning on playing at WMCQ, with a couple of Dragon's Maze cards to see how they ran.
Game 1
My first game I mistook my lands in my hand for making mana of colors that they did not and kept a hand with off color lands. Luckily the deck draw kept that level of stupid invisiblt but my opponent ( who would be undefeated by the end of the night) was playing a miracle heavy burn and dragon deck.
Even though I run both Bonfires and Thundermaw Hellkites, it had been too long and I had been too tired. He won the first game because I played like someone just learning to read. I wasn't on tilt, I wasn't anxious, I was just exhausted and confused. I remembered how my deck worked and won by round 4 for the second game, but I did ask him to slow down when using the miracles and rememebered to spend more time asking to read the cards since it was obvious I remembered Bupkus.
The third game he won off the miracles.
1-2
Game 2
The person I was playing against was running Gruul of some sort. Lots of Hellraisers. In his playtest group he had been playing something similar to my deck and told me his experience and everything he'd read indicated that it mulled a lot. Game was fun, person was lovely to play with. He reminded me of a young Peter Jackson ( the hobbit director)
2-1
Game 3
Played against a man in full kilt and tam'o shanter with Sporran - the sartorial choice was apparently because of a lack of otherwise clean clothing and a deep need to do laundry - at least since he chose it he went all in.
I don't remember much of what he was playing it involved something red - I won
2-1
Game 4
I saw the mountain come out when he was on the play and assumed he was playing one of he Gruul or Naya build but he never established a board state that survived. After the games I was seriously wondering what he was playing that left him with 3 red and green lands and nothing to cast. Poor guy's deck was a total mash-up I looked through ( too exahausted to give deck building advice) and found his lowest cost things and told him not to keep an opening hand that didn't have one of them and the means to cast it. I should have known there was an issue when he opted to draw while playing red/green.
2-0
Game 5
Here in the pre-coffee competitive journalizing morning after, I realize what my opponent was playing was GW Flash. At the time it just seemed like Green White cards that appeared out of now where and played with high level stack interactions to neutralize me. Now the thing that generally sets me on tilt is the multiple interactions with more than two effects on the stack. I know this, but I really, really couldn't interact well in the first place, my deck is non-interactive and I was playing it last night for that specific reason. That last round was waay too late- I would have dropped at round 4 since I was working on 4 hours of sleep in a 48 hour period but I didn't.
I'm happy to report that I was honest about the crankiness but the intereacton with instants taking down power, damage markers on the stack and thus killing my hexproof stuff because of shennanigans proves two things - one people whining about hexproof being unbalanced are apparently not trying or need to learn stack interaction better and two I cannot remember those interactions and rules on 4 hours of sleep in 48 hours.
Thing learned: I have always thought that in live play you declare your response to the "declare blockers" step when priority passes to the defending player but apparently technically they are not doing this they are taking an action after the declare blockers step because they have been passed priority not in response. I feel like on the ground it's the same thing and having it declared as "in reponse to your declaring blockers I do x" would have helped me understand what was going on where in the stack better but since he was playing high level defensive and instant using shenanigans his knowlegde of that stuff was both more relevant and more coherent than even my current pre-coffee thinking now.
I know this rule at least theoretically when I'm not playing and forget it in it's entirety while actually playing.
Oh and he didn't win because "shenanigans" he won game one with a miracle Entreat the Angels and
Game two with Entreat the Angles and Thragtusk.
0-2 - and I'm not even sure I really played either of those two games. Now that I've had some sleep I think I need to pay against GW Flash more or just playing against it will send me on tilt.
End of the day I played 13 games, won 7 and lost 6. 54% win rate, but not horrible considering the number of disadvantages I was playing with.
Round win rate is 3-2 60%
