Pseudo Newb and her own Psychosis

On Weds I played in the Draft – it was a mediocre deck I made a mistake while drafting it and never saw the Travel Preparations card I was hoping for. It turned out there was a reason – GW was the preferred pick down the table from me but there were enough cards of the colors going around that I was still able to put together a reasonable deck

Record for the Wed was

1. 0-2
2. 2-1
3. 1-2

On Friday I played my Delver Illusions Deck sans Snappy and the Aether Adepts that I put in there were really useful. I won cleanly against the monoblack in the first round, had a very competitive second round with a mirror which I lost 0-2 but really learned a lot ( and is making me think about the benefits of Runechanter’s pike) Lost badly to a stompy ramp deck with artifacts and a bunch of graveyard effects and pulled out a long win

1. 2-0
2. 0-2
3. 0-2
4. 2-1

So I played 9 games won 4. At 44 % win rate I played 4 rounds and won 2 at 50%. So my win rate went down 4% but my win rate for rounds doubled : )

Keeping track of the difference between win rates is one of the ways I keep my learning curve straight vs my competitive record – it also manages to keep me from obsessing about my losses in tournament – this is important as any chance I have to beat myself up for not being smart is an opportunity I take.

Between this week and last week I learned something new – something that could only really be noticed when I was playing better and had enough sleep: at the end of the last round when I’m playing against really good players and I’ve got a chance of winning – I kind of stop breathing – not due to nerves or games state or frustration or any of the bad things – just good, old fashioned math anxiety.

A complex board state with lots of interactions is a hallmark of a close game between either equal decks or mostly equal player skills. The primary difference between me and a really good player right now is not just card familiarity – mine is improving by drafting which honestly was not something I expected – but the ability to keep track of all other various triggers and interaction which pretty much add up to pluses and minuses caused by card effects.

So this is really the crux of the problem. When I played Magic the first time I knew about the LD and just figured “to hell with it I work as a writer anyway”. Now it’s more like “I need to work out some of the emotional baggage that came with my experience working in tech in a safe way so it stops interfering with my career and look there’s Magic where I can work out ALL the THINGS, and play magic.”

A little research on the meme shows that it really has a second part which would look like this “ I can work out all the things?”

It also mean “I can trigger ALL THE THINGS”

Not just trigger effects

So here’s what a competitor’s journal really is – it’s the place where you’re honest abut what’s happening to you in the game – so you can overcome it or work around it for a better game – but just like talking to a shrink, if you’re not honest it won’t work. I fix things better as a competitor than I do as a regular person.

It's like the famous "fearless inventory" magic article but more brutal and way more internal.

Here’s how it works. I can now play well enough to see win conditions, read my board state – read my opponents board state if I’m familiar with the vast majority of their cards. For some insane reason lately my last few matches have been with our VERY good players, probably because they are experimenting with new deck ideas or unfamiliar decks – playing against them has been really good for me because they never do things “accidentally” which makes it easier for me to break down mistakes in strategy or play.

It also means that if I’m winning it’s not usually a fluke – it’s because my level of play has improved enough that I’m a challenge (I’m still not playing with money cards). This in turn creates a weird kind of trigger related to things that I’m dealing with in the aftermath of professional situation that have left me, to put it simply – damaged.

• I play well enough to analyze what you are doing and not be completely awful when I’m playing.
• I know I’m not as good as you at this point in time so I respect what you are doing, paying attention and making sure that I take it into account.

Then the weird split between what I know I should be reacting to and what I’m reacting to instead happens:

• Magic: Opposing player won’t think about me or what I’m thinking or care as soon as it’s time to shuffle against the next round – will most likely either say good- game and mean it or be annoyed at own play
• Poisonous Work Scenario: Programmer will be holding grudge for some insane thing that I had to do because it was protecting either the project or his job and use any technical weakness to discredit me in front of anyone who’ll stay still long enough to undermine me with both team members and supervisors. When that doesn’t work (because it’s weakness not incompetency and technical execution is not my job) will then launch various complaints to trigger legally required inquiries even if they all come up dry.

Does my brain behave like I'm playing an Opposing Magic Player - why hell no! It behaves like I'm back at work.

Why is this relevant:

The problem with the poisonous work scenario is this – you begin to internalize it and so you feel like a fraud ( even though it’s not your job description) and you begin to doubt that you are worthy of your job/successes/skillset. It’s stupid – and it takes about 4 years to get that bad. But it did, and I did and here’s what happens in the last round when we’re getting close to overtime and if I play well technically I can win:

• I fight the LD to double check the board state,
• I worry I’m missing a trigger or I’ve done the additive math wrong since you can only put counters on cards not enchantment or ability effects,
• I realize how bad it is that I can’t keep track of card effects and math in a god-damned game and wonder how the hell I can manage to do the analysis that’s required in my job,
• instead of thinking how well I’m doing I feel like I’m impersonating an intelligent person and start worrying about being a con artist and a fraud,
• I knock myself upside the metaphorical head and tell myself to just concentrate on the cards and ending this game and keep the psychobabble for the therapist that I won’t go to because it was useless
• – this in turn leads to the not breathing state
• – I make all the other shit go away and concentrate as much as I can on playing the game well in those last few turns
• – apparently to make all of that shit go away I need to also forgo breathing.
• I play pretty well even though I'm not breathing because breathing might make the math too hard.

How very disturbing.

Good news – I can block out the head noise apparently caused by work related trauma

Bad news – it’s so thick inside me that it’s literally down at the breathing level – what the hell kind of field day would my new age healer friends ( or Freud based shrinks) have with that?

The first time last FNM – I thought it was just the level of the guy I was playing with – this time it recognized all the same physical tags – but the extra spicy flavor of math anxiety since I’ve decided to take and place in math classes to rebuild basic knowledge so I can test out how realistic a particular degree path is for me.

So not being able to follow the math all the way through on Phantasmal Images copying my Lord of Illusions is not simply not-playing-well, apparently it’s also Drinne-you’re-deluding-yourself-if–you-think-you–can-really-succeed-at-your-professional-goals.

I can shut it down for meetings, interviews, pitch sessions, when I’m actually planning.

It’s louder and starker when I play Magic because it’s less connected to anything else. It’s just my damage screaming at me, trying to take myself down before anyone else can.

And because I’m terrified of being a fake.

So its not like I can pretend it’s anything else- it’s not Magic, or the rules, or the learning curve at this point, it’s just me. So I know that if I can fix it here, it will give me real world tools to fix it elsewhere. Being able to shut it down and still breathe – to feel the intensity of the pressure to evaluate on the fly when I’m at the edge of my skillset – that’s why I really started playing seriously and competitively – to make sure I don’t lose those skills while I’m working at stuff below my professional skillset (small business is challenging, but not the same).

So new goal is to not stop breathing if I’m winning in the last round – because when it’s over I’m 15 kinds of wired wrong. Maybe when the math placement doohickey is done it won’t be so bad, but I’ll work on my competitive headspace – that’s much more important this last week than new cards or competitive strategies.

I’ve also decided that social anxiety is a kind of negative narcissism – you’re anxious because somehow you think you matter and you’re going to do something wrong when in reality very few people actually care about anything you’re doing, and the ones that made you that self-conscious in the first place were probably more interested in how making you feel bad benefitted them.

Reality check – bullies never cared about you unless it was really about them. Even when we’re grown up. I just wonder why being picked on in school has left me with pretty much nothing, but being bullied in a workplace has left me with a list of neurosis that would make Woody Allen proud?

Oh well, it doesn’t matter – I’m going to be all happy about Dark Ascenscion’s Jar of Eyeballs instead.

Pseudo Newb and the First Meaningless FNM

The basic stats for my first FNM with a deck that I really worked on myself was I played 11 matches, and won five of them, however I played four rounds and won 1 of them. So my win rate per match is 48% and per round is 25% 2-0. 2-1, 2-1, 2-1

Ok – so the benefits of sleep really do make a difference at least to my level of sportsmanship and things that are weird to me before continue to maybe make me uncomfortable later.

FNM really doesn’t matter for anything real right now. The 1x multiplier that all the pro’s are so happy about also means that the only people who do care about standings at FNM are either people like me who are competing against their own records or people who are competing for “first” or “better” picks.

There’s a point in OP where I get confused because people can agree to draw or immediately concede to help out someone else with standing. Team Channel Fireball (which looks like an OP Pro team but is really just a group of pros trying to work together) has publicly taken draws or conceded matches in tournament to help teammates top 8. There’s also apparently some legitimate forms of dropping in order to help other people with standing. If the FNM record doesn’t really matter to OP then the next question becomes is it also OK to do this or concede a game in order to help someone where being able to pick a better booster pack is THE most important thing to them?

And is it fair to say "no" after pretty much everyone else in OP has told me that FNM doesn’t mean a damn thing unless I’m trying to get to Pro Tour? ( And by “everyone” this I actually mean being asked directly by Aaron Forsythe why I would even care about the multiplier if I wasn’t good enough to place in a PTQ ). My fellow newbs are more traditionally tournament spikey and they don’t necessarily care about standings or points or ratings as much as they care about winning in the “now”. They might care later if they get good enough to place regularly at FNM but we pretty much established that in my crowd, at my store, I’m probably the only one using PWP as competitive markers for progress competing against my own record.

But I can also tell you that the multiplier went down and all of a sudden everything else at the FNM was rouge decks and competing for “stuff” – lots more trading between rounds too.

Before the Rounds

I went to play my version of a snapless Delver Illusions Deck because I honestly had no place else to playtest it seriously. I’m still pretty uninterested in Magic Online until I can play it on my IPad. I want real cards, or real mobility, I’m uninterested in being tied to a computer to practice Magic.

I met up with David Who Will Be Returning College Soon. Which will make me sad because he’s like the absolute mythical good welcoming high level player ( he has placed 1^st at every single event I’ve attended that he’s been at) but he never brags, is always friendly and helpful and you never even notice that he’s placed first because as soon as he gets his store credit or pack he just turns around and gives complete focus to whoever he was talking to about whatever he was talking about. He makes taking big leaps forward in magic seem safe (like drafting blue). I wish there were ten more like him for every store.

In any case we spent a little time going over my deck on the Weds draft. I made some changes based on his advice and then put together my very first sideboard of my own.

Preparation –

I drafted blue on Weds before specifically to get playtime with more blue cards and I’d started working on the deck with the Steampunk Marchioness the weekend before. She loaned me the phantasmal images I needed to run 4 and a seachrome coast so I could see if it made a big difference.

This is the list I ran:

Main deck (60 cards)

4 Delver of Secrets

4 Phantasmal Bear

4 Lord of the Unreal

1 Merfolk Looter

4 Phantasmal Image

2 AEther Adept

1 Geist of Saint Traft

4 Gitaxian Probe

3 Ponder

1 Vapor Snag

4 Mana Leak

2 Think Twice

2 Dissipate

1 Ghost Quarter

5 Glacial Fortress

12 Island

3 Moorland Haunt

1 Seachrome Coast

2 Shimmering Grotto

Sideboard (15 cards)

2 Nihil Spellbomb

2 Frost Breath

1 Merfolk Looter

1 Adaptive Automaton

1 Geist-Honored Monk

2 Flashfreeze

3 Master Thief

3 Oblivion Ring

The Nihil Spellbombs were for the two control decks that raid their graveyard that I had played against several times, the Frost Breath I had intended to use like Feelings of Dread and that I knew would be safe to cast even if I pulled no glacial fortresses, Flashfreezes were for the various Wolfrun ramps and Stompy humans. The Looter, Automaton and Monk were there incase I was running creature light or there were problems with either getting to my cards or having strong enough win conditions. Master Thief and Oblivion Rings were there as anti-infect deck and anti-artifact conditions since our FNM Johnnies really love their artifacts.

Comfort Level –

I would say exactly at “comfortable” I wasn’t playing with any strange cards and using the Delvers with the higher level players I was playing against on Wednesday night meant I had confidence in how to use the cards. Ironically because of all of the trouble I had getting real answers or understanding Illusions and Snapcasters it also meant that in the deck I was actually playing I wasn’t going to get sideswiped by not understanding basic card interactions which let me really appreciate some of the nuances of the deck. Between getting enough sleep and having realized this deck was an aggro deck it was possibly the first time I felt like I wasn’t swimming in water that had undertow as well as being over my head.

Results

- Yeah, I posted them at the top – there’s a reason for this. One of the 2-1 matches asked me to report at 2-0 no matter who won the tiebreaker – that would move said winner-take-all further up the chain to select cards if they placed first. If FNM is “casual and friendly” the way Helene Beurgerot and Aaron Forsythe and Melissa Del Toro and Patrick Chapin have all basically told me, well then why the hell should I care about in effect one of us conceding a match, to in effect give a position advantage to a teammate? Doing so moves my personal win percentage from 48% of matches played to 40%, but it wouldn’t change my 25% round win rate. But the guy who it really matters to gets to choose a booster back and FNM card two slots sooner. What does FNM mean now anyway? What constitutes your Magic Team if there are no teams in OP but you’re encouraged to build one?

We had no ranked judge present. I’m not sure I would have asked one over anyway because I had no desire to get someone who I would want on my magic team in potential trouble if it were different from the pros. I know I wouldn’t have even been asked when the multipliers were 3x because the stakes were different than stuff and saying you were working for a personal ratings goal meant competing priority.

I know it makes me uncomfortable enough not to ever agree to it in the future.

Round 1 – A player who came over from playing competitive YughiO who had the white humans deck I have been struggling over buying the cards for.

He explained how cheap the “good” cards in Magic are compared to Yughi O cards – ( 30 vs 180!). I took the game 2-0 mostly because the Delvers came up and flipped really early and Moorland Haunts ( which he was playing too) came out midgame. I made sure to point out interactions he might have missed in his own deck and loaned him my angel token when his Geist of St Traft came out. Mana Leaks and various control cards helped me here. He had some very effective removal on my creatures until the Lords came out.

Proving that no matter how much you playtest you can still miss a point on your card – while playing him we both used our Moorlands without exiling something from our graveyards and it wasn’t until I was corrected in Round 2 that I caught it. Since we were both playing small creatures and killing them we both had the creatures in the graveyard to exile and neither of us was playing cards that returned creatures from the graveyard.– Once again FNM is all casual now right? and there was no ranked judge. But I went over to tell him ASAP so that he didn’t duplicate the error in further matches – I’M not going to be the one who realizes a mistake and lets the person I played against just keep thinking that’s the way it is. We’re all newbs together.

2-0

Round 2 - A player who I’ve played before playing an infect /artifact deck. I hate infect. In both cases where he won it was specifically because I didn’t really “get” how his artifacts worked it was lots of charges and such. I sideboarded Oblivion rings but I should have more aggressively switched Aether Adepts for Master Thiefs.

2-1

Round -3 Played against one of my very first opponents – who I played the Illusions 2012 event deck against. He generally plays Red Deck Wins the “GoodStuff” version.

*newb note “Goodstuff” is apparently when you make a deck out of all of the best (and therefore most expensive) cards. The theory and indeed the proof in practice is that even if you aren’t the best player the cards are SO GOOD that most of the time they’ll take you to a win even if you’re not using them in the most advanced manner.

He told me he was “going rouge” this time. He put out a mountain and a Blood Crazed Neonate - I laughed and said it looked like he was playing the same kind of deck he usually played. He was it was just GoodStuff Vampires instead of Red Deck Wins. Did it have Lilliana’s and Bloodkeepers and Oliva’s and some other Planeswalker I don’t remember because I got rid of it quick? Yes it did.

I lost game one, sideboarded in all of the Oblivion Rings ( Because I hate Planeswalkers so much) and the Flashfreezes switching out with 2 mana leaks, the 1shimmering grottos, 1 island and 1 aether adept. I won the second game.

The third game didn’t let me get rid of Lilliana fast enough and couldn’t stop an unblockable vampire because I was pulling counterspells and nothing to remove threats after they resolved

2-1

Round 4 – I don’t remember his name. He was a really good player who was bringing a competitive deck that had been running iffy for him in terms of tempo- it was artifact, planeswalker infect running green.

*Newb Note – between rounds you have to return your deck to it’s original configuration if you sideboarded during the previous round. I asked and was told you couldn’t sideboard before the first round.

I held in for a while but he won with infect even though I had the better board state until the last minute. I brought in oblivions, flashfreezes and master thieves but won the second game because I flipped two delvers in two turns plus managed to get bears and a lord of the unreal out by turn 4

The third game was epic. Really epic, we ran out the clock, I held him at bay I but he was holding on to 6 life with me at 17 we were overtime and clocking down to 2 turns left before the board state slipped just enough for him to proliferate because my Master Theives were awol. A last minute ( literally) combo proliferated two poison counters to 10 winning him the game before I got in for last turn lethal

2-1

Takeaways:

Round 1's error showed I really need to find a way to process the sacrifice and exile requirements in word text blocks better – I’m pretty sure since this is a consistent problem of mine that it’s an LD issue – plus it’s taking me a while to get comfortable with the new timing/layer/sacrifice rules. I got better with it with the white and blue cards but having it on the land card made it kind of a starting point. However the proper amount of sleep seems to have made a difference in how I handled finding out about the mistake. I apologized, informed my fellow newb, and made a note to double check myself if I used the card again that night ( which I did)

Round 2 makes it clear that my dislike of Infect is actually more intesne when I am in a good mood and have had enough sleep because my true offence at the disruption of the design space is clearer to me and ultimately I'm a fan of the game desgin almost more than the game itself. Infect takes a 20 point game and makes it a 10 point game. For very little reason and with very little tech to fix it. He was playing enough control to slow me down all he had to do was outlast me when he had an unblockable infect. He basically won by getting a single poison counter on me and using some kind of combo I still don’t get to proliferate up to 10 in three rounds without using creatures.

The third game of the third round was when I saw what my “multiple instants/effects + tired + rules confusion” looks like from the other side of the table. Even though I was now playing against two of my least favorite mechanics, I wasn’t particularly upset about the mechanics of playing them it was sort of neutrally “unfun” but I was getting to see how the phantasmal images were giving me all sorts of strategic mobility that I didn’t have without them. I was wishing more of my instants had flashback. But my poor opponent was really overwhelmed trying to use multiple instants and effect on me when I responded by casting a response instant that did something for me without changing his board state. He was also under the impression that he wouldn't have to discard a card for Lilliana since I made him exile a different card, I suggested that we call over the judge ( who in our earlier game came over and tried to correct a boardstate that didn't need correcting but did manage to really disrupt both of us as players until we were able to walk it back and explain why I had a -1/-1 counter even though I had hexproof ( it was because he had blocked me using damage the old fashioned way but the phantasmal bears didn't disappear because they were hexproof) but I was pretty OK with everything even if it was the least fun round of the night and felt for him when he came out of the exchange having gained board advantage but still unsure of how.

Round 4’s game I learned a lot and played the hell out of that game. It was high pressure and really intense but not bad, or overwhelming or any of the other things that could have happened. I would have liked to win that game or even drawn, but I’m really proud of my level of play in that game. I think I need to become more familiar with the lower level artifacts in the Scars Block. I’m sure I didn’t play against them properly.

For the first time since I’ve played them I had a Glacial Fortress come in tapped, which was salvaged by the fact that Seachrome Coast was coming in untapped at that point, but I did wonder what if I was pulling seachromes late game – are they really a good choice to run so many multiples?

Decklist for Psuedo Newb and the Very Brave Draft

Draft Deck

Main deck (40 cards)

2 Delver of Secrets

1 Diregraf Ghoul

1 Invisible Stalker

1 Ludevic's Test Subject

1 Stitcher's Apprentice

1 Walking Corpse

1 Chapel Geist

1 Fiend Hunter

1 Brain Weevil

1 Makeshift Mauler

1 Moon Heron

1 Curiosity

1 Sensory Deprivation

2 Silent Departure

2 Think Twice

1 Claustrophobia

2 Dissipate

1 Midnight Haunting

1 Moan of the Unhallowed

9 Island

4 Plains

4 Swamp

Created with Decked Builder

http://www.deckedbuilder.com/

Sideboard

1 Walking Corpse

1 Ghoulraiser

1 Tree of Redemption

1 Skaab Goliath

2 Bump in the Night

1 Ghoulcaller's Bell

1 Graveyard Shovel

2 Wooden Stake

1 Curse of the Nightly Hunt

3 Ghostly Possession

1 Curse of Oblivion

1 Maw of the Mire

1 Rooftop Storm

Psuedo Newb and the Very Brave Draft

It’s been a really intense 2 and a half weeks of being a pseudo newb magic player – I’ve been reacting to the recent changes in OP and finishing my finals and apparently I was seriously, seriously sleep deprived.

So I’m skipping around = I drafted and played and playtested with the Steampunk Marchioness. I came to some hard realizations about my version of Delver Illusions and FNM. I realized I have no desire to play Two Headed Giant but I’m happy to lend cards to my friends that do.

I realize I care maybe more than I should about competition, even though I have no desire to go pro for the normal reasons. It’s been really emotional because I’m still working through some competitive stumbling blocks at the same time I might just be emotional for other real-life reasons. The draft before tonight’s I was facing down some really serious social anxiety complete with actual panic attack.

I’m really happy to say it wasn’t even a shadow of an issue tonight.

Tonight, I went big and drafted blue. There are two cards I keep eyeing wishing I could do something with them – Mirror Mad Phantasam and Ludevik’s test subject. The draft with the anxiety attack? I learned how to better use some green cards. Tonight I decided when I opened the pack that I was going to work with blue. After spending a lot of time with the Marchioness and taking some best practices from some of her learning/training techniques I was feeling more comfortable with the staple control cards. And the last draft someone played an “enchanted zombies” concept against me. I was really impressed that he could even draft that concept.

So when my first pack had Invisible Stalker, Delvers and Back from the Brink I started looking seriously at the possibility of drafting blue. I first picked the Invisible Stalker, thinking I might try a stalker deck but the focus was on the delvers later. And I did start out thinking blue/black with zombies and control but wasn’t happy with the mana curve and started looking at some white being sent my way – other people splashed blue but appatrently I was the only one focused on it.

Card list will be up tomorrow - I want to make sure I post tonight

Preparation – I spent a lot of time cataloging my collection today and read a really good article on tappers and another really interesting version of a Delver deck with no snapcasters. So I was kind of thinking about blue today anyway.

Comfort level – much better than last week – playing with the Marchioness I realized how nervous I was that when everyone learned more than I did ( which I knew was going to happen) I wouldn’t be able to keep up and they’d just be humoring me when they played with me as soon as they got the hang of things. There is no question that my home based group is flying past me competitively and in being able to process but we’re still playtesting and working together and whatever it was I was afraid of didn’t happen. I’m going to assume that whatever that particular out of control fear was, was based on the former boyfriend who created such an unpleasant environment that we put the cards away. He certainly didn’t mess me up or have much impact on me in relationships but WOW it seems like he really set me up for some trauma playing magic!

I have thanked my friends repeatedly for putting up with me being a cranky subhuman during these last two weeks. I thank them again semi-publicly here.

The result of a bunch of these things is because I have very little patience for this level of past drama creating present drama ( and about 10 extra hours of sleep yesterday). I walked into the store at 6 full of positive attitude ad lets just have fun and the desire to play with as many new cards in draft as I could. David who had been very nice to the Marchioness and was trading with her last week was there and we spent the half hour before the draft talking about strategy/costs and some other interesting overall gaming things.

Results – 0-2 to the guy who eventually came in 3^rd, 2-0, and 0-2

Kyle – new face – home from college – high level player

He was really helpful when I explained what I was working on. I made a mistake with the way I displayed an instant that triggers the Delver and he was really helpful with analysis between games without suggesting what to do during the game itself. And I did manage to surprise him when I pulled a third color. In my games with him I made two mistakes - I think I should have used spirit tokens from my midnight haunting to block earlier and in the second game I took a good mulligan but I didn’t have fast enough reaction to his green guys who were popping up all over the place. I think if I knew enough to read his board state better I could have anticipated the way his mana acceleration worked and might have mulliganed more to have better answers in my hand. But I really got some great practice with the delvers.

Oscar – he was playing a black and blue deck. I pulled almost all of the white I’d splashed for and I got to play and fully resolve Ludavick’s test subject twice.

Dan ( a new one) who placed second for the night

He was playing red/black the first round I wasn’t moving fast enough for his direct damage strategy and the second round I pulled one blue mana but was still able to keep him at bay for about 9 rounds until he had answers for my mansers. He used direct damage to take out the ludevics.

I had a great time, I didn't even feel a smidge like an outsider or an outlier. The one question I had was just a confirmation question about how to power up a mana based abilty, just to double check it.

I also read a really interesting two person draft format called Winchester Draft - I'm wondering if the Marchioness might be interested in doing that when Dark Ascension comes out . . . .

So really honestly I shouldn't have been there . . .

Last night I went to the FNM soley because I was burnt out after resolving a number of highly technical things none of which were my final. FNM is sort of like this for me:

I like the people who are there.

I get to play – which is good.

I hit at least one point per FNM where a combination of my stupidity and someone else’s attitude makes me a cranky jerk.

I can now identify exactly when this is going to happen, it’s going to involve an instant, my unfamiliarity with the card effect and some well meaning person is going to tell me it’s because I don’t understand the stack. And then I’m going to get pissed because it’s never the stack that I don’t understand – it’s the interaction timing that happens off the stack that then effects ( and effectively reorders) the stack.

And the difference between countering a spell and responding to a spell. They are different: one implies that the “entering” effects of a card ability never happen and the other implies that the cast card resolves and gets to trigger it’s enter effect even though it looks like it did the same thing that counterspell did.

Let me be clear – I spent a month writing out the interactive logic for the stack in java. I can say with more surety than anything else in magic I understand the stack because it’s pretty much programming. But where I lose the storyline is when and where instants resolve while they are being cast.

In my “learning phase” what’s happening is I hesitate to cast instants unless I know how they’ll resolve or where they are on the stack. I don't trust the stack or the people using it to resolve the timing and I strongly disagree with some of the workaround Wizards has come up with vis-a-vis timing of events off the stack affecting things in the stack when priority shifts.

In the computer game I’m still very conservative with them ( Once again I wish there were an actual MTG coach who could create practice drills until I get it right). The problem with drilling on the computer rather than with a person is that the computer doesn’t do or say things in a way that creates the confusion that a live table player does. And I don’t think twice about stopping anyone on the computer to read the card text. And the computer won't let you do things out of order.

Well – someone cast snapcaster mage – I doomBladed it during the casting. The mistake I was making was the idea that it was something that as an instant happened during the phase ( casting ) it was in and that a “card/creature” was a card creature while being cast.

So I was confused as to why he was pulling out 6 instants out of his graveyard and adding them to the stack.

Now in retrospect what was really happening was that this was probably his primary Johnny/Spike win condition and I ruined his griefer level enjoyment of it. But what was happening on my end what I thought I destroyed that thing by using an instant during casting because instants are instant.

And then before I could figure out the basic thing he was piling up a whole bunch of other things so fast I couldn’t understand and talking about the stack and interactions of the instants with each other.

It was basically two control decks – we were both sitting there with about 16 lands each. We’d been playing for a half hour. And when I get frustrated and just say “yeah whatever you say, do what you’re going to and let me know how much damage I take.” Let me slump back in the chair instead of insisting on explaining it to me some more, because then I’m going to not understand worse, feel like I’m being fast talked and ask for a judge. Difficulty level? The guy involved was the judge. Worse he was a judge who had told me the Islandwalk thing before. Great. Now I’m cranky and trapped and I still don’t understand.

Due to the patience of the Very Good Player, next to us he took on the explaining bit. I put on the “good sport” face and went on. I figured out part of what happened but I’ll give the end of the match story in the takeaway part at the end.

Here’s what I learned and put together in a diagrammatic way that I can refer to when instants hit me right in the learning disability again. I promise that State Based Actions are still going to screw me up for a while.

Click the graphic to embiggen.

Now to brass tacks,

I played Coulton's Creepy Dolls

Preparation - I really shouldn't have gone - I should have been home forcing my brain to construct a design document due immediately and my Database Final Project. But I had lost the morning to a stressful financial issue and am not at the point where I could constructively improve on anything until the other team members updated their things. So I went at the last minute more for the chance to play magic than the usual FNM goals - I took the pressure off myself by just playing a deck that I knew was slow figuring I'd get shut out but I'd get to cast creepy dolls which would make me happy.

Comfort Level pretty good. Since I wasn't looking at it as a chance to pilot a strategy but to see how well I could do with a deck I was familiar with I wouldn't be upset when I lost and could also pay more attention to my opponents cards and strategies which usually gets lost when I'm trying to understand my own synergies better.

Results As expected 3 rounds played at 0-2, I got a bye on the 4th round which allowed me the time to understand what I finally got figured out enough to put in the chart. It should be a flowchart for how things resolve and get erased in order to create "countered" spells, but this method seems to work consistently for most of the instant scenarios we could think of.

Take-Aways

The rules discussion that was in the opening of the update. The reality that the stack, instants and tells are sort of "protected" by the forced choice of computer interaction but it doesn't always carry over to clarity in the live game because in the live game "countered" and "destroyed the split second after casting" look and feel the same way and are discussed as though they are simulataneous which they are not. Seriously if you're going to have a rules system this complex and no official play guide you're just leaving judges to explain thing sloppily. Technical play is important and every "squishy" explanation ( God help me someone tried to tell me to think of it as a story! No. I will not - the stories suck, you killed all the stories when you added planeswalkers in as your new best friends. )

Think of it more like the actual process of casting, which it is - there is a zone between leaving your hand and the battlefield, instants are interacting in that zone when the card is a spell. They aren't a type of card until they resolve, triggered effects only get triggered on the battlefield, even if they are attacked simultaneosly and destroyed because triggered effects are not part of the stack they resolve on their own, this explaing Illusions, Ice Cage and Snapcaster getting to bring out the dead.

Now the dude who had been in this particular duel with me managed to enchant and control my one creepy doll pulled out after this nonsense ( mostly of mine ) and I tried to lighten things up by apologizing and then saying "Ok I cast a creepy doll, it's all better now" mostly because it was true. But unknowingly I started ruining his next griefer strategy. he got out two other creature cards with some kind of synergy that lowered me down to 8 points. he was getting ready to attack with three and made some kind of comment about the dolls. I played along and said something about stealing my toys - thinking we were joking. He pulls out another creature after hitting me with a direct damage for 3 bringning me to 5. I'm topdecking nothing but land. I look at his cards and helpfully point out that he can kill me or at least bring me down to 1. He suddenly switches and just pings me for one with the controlled creepy dolls. I can't figure out why. He says something about attacking me with my own dolls. I tell him it's OK they make me happy whoever has them. Now I do have a win condition in 1 if I topdeck it and I'm halfway through my deck with 2/3 of my land out more than half my deck played, three manaliths and no creatures. I would have been able to cast & flashback Army of the Damned in the same turn. He keeps pinging for 1, I keep topdecking land. I forget the thing about going after me with my own stuff because he could have done that and still won so I have no idea what he's looking for - does he just want to see what's next? I don't get it.

He pings me for the last 3 points. Then apparently because I wasn't annoyed about it ( other than drawing out a fairly pointless game for himself) he made sure to tell me he just wanted to kill me with my own Creepy Dolls. Well, OK if you need to dude. But you could have done that with your own guys and the dolls in 2 instead of dragging it out for 5 so that sort of moves it from "I probably deserved it for fighting you on the snapcaster thing" to "I think you're a bit of an arrogant dick and I'm not as sorry about the snapcaster things as I was a minute ago."

But journaling these things is useful because the pattern of where this happens is really, really clear. I need to work on working with instants. I just wish there were a higher level player who I could work with because the computer is going to help me understand the cards but probably not help me sort things out in competitve play with actual people. I need to see and work with the actual movements so I can make them "background" while being able to understand the board state.

Oh well - if wishes were fishes. Ultimately that was the only "bad" thing - I got to playtest my Melira deck with the infect mono-black guy. I found out that the control deck guy keeps playing that deck. The middle game was pretty straight forward. And while I was cranky and overwhelmed I wasn't angry or rude. So that's an improvement.

Pseudo Newb and the Important thing about the "Legendary Rule"

I'm reading an e-book that's almost exactly what I was looking for by a group called "the Casual Planeswalker"

It's a basic deckbuilding and strategy guide - with actually usefull things including this lovely chart about mana based on deck archetype - which it breaks down in a better and more complete way than Chapins book

Land

aggro = 18-22

control = 24-28

combo = 14-19

And then it also does this radical thing and tells you why, and then it tells you when you might not want to follow that guideline and what the other cards are supposed to be doing.

I like this book but . . . .

Sigh. It was written in 2009. So they have a section on the legendary rule for Planeswalkers which is no longer true. The legendary rule gets tinkered with alot it seems.

In the Ultimate Guide to Strategic Deckbuilding it seems planeswalkers did not yet have the supertype/subtype rule that means when Jace the Invincible is out on the board and your opponent puts down Jace the Less Invincible both Jaces go into the graveyard because like all good time travellers you can't exist in two places at once without things going BOo0m.

But if you have Glissa the I'm on YOUR side legendary creature and Glissa the I Can't Believe You Fell For That legendary creature comes out on the opponents side they do actually need the full name to match so both Glissa's get to stay.

This is apparently called the Planeswalker Uniqueness Rule

• 306.3. Planeswalker subtypes are always a single word and are listed after a long dash: "Planeswalker — Jace." Each word after the dash is a separate subtype. Planeswalker subtypes are also called planeswalker types. Planeswalkers may have multiple subtypes. See rule 205.3j for the complete list of planeswalker types.
• 306.4. If two or more planeswalkers that share a planeswalker type are on the battlefield, all are put into their owners' graveyards as a state-based action. This is called the "planeswalker uniqueness rule." See rule 704.

Yep, that's a real thing. The there's what it means to be legendary which invokes "the Legend Rule":

• 205.4c Any permanent with the supertype “legendary” is subject to the state-based effect for legendary permanents, also called the "Legend rule" (see rule 420.5e).
• 420.5e If two or more legendary permanents with the same name are in play, all are put into their owners’ graveyards. This is called the “legend rule.” If only one of those permanents is legendary, this rule doesn’t apply

So this is the kind of thing when I finally find some kind of useful text there is a possibility of being led astray. I understand why it discourages this kind of writing but the overall fact of it existing makes it worth it for me to double check specific texts.

I'd also like to say how nice it was that they decided not to use cards when giving the examples - they use scroll-like blocks with just the card text on them which actually makes it easier to understand the point being made instead of all the visual noise of the card itself. The strategies and tactics are clearer without the art as a learning tool. I love the art and all but not when I'm studying.

I just wish they had updated - the book is better than the free sample they provided. If they decide to update for 5.00 like Chapin just has I would pay it. I also like the way they continue to show what you would do differently if you were going to slant competitve.

Their website hasn't been updated since September but someone had a link in a response thread on something at Star City Games. http://casualplaneswalker.com/category/blog/ I hope that they're just having an overwhelming semester like I have and that they'll update soon, but they are exactly that kind of missing midstep I was looking for - not perfect, but very helpful. Perhaps after completing their book I'll appreciate aspects of Chapin's better.

Pseudo Newb and the Unexpected Draft

Ok so it’s finals. It’s finals for almost everyone who plays at my Local Gaming Store(LGS) because the ones who aren’t students are teachers.

Weds night draft is usually much bigger than Monday night. My first draft they convinced me to draft because I helped them make a third pod. But I knew most of them wouldn’t be there due to finals, just like I was planning on not being there due to finals. However at 7 ( the draft starts at 6:30) I got a call from The Girl who’s working gift wrap at the store asking if I could come help them make a draft – I told her I couldn’t get there for 20 minutes – it would be 7:30. They said they’d wait.

So since my teammates hadn’t updated our project files, I went.

Preparation – Not a damned thing – I’d been working with pseudocode and object design all day. I had been taking breaks reading magic articles and I’m flirting with the idea of a red burn deck but that’s about it.

Comfort Level – it was fine walking into the store and I wasn’t nervous during the draft itself ( possibly because there was an Olivia Voldaran sitting in my first pick pack ) but the people there weren’t the ones I was expecting. There was someone who had just had a 10 inch portrait of Lilliana Vess in a Mucha like profile freshly tattoed on his leg, and a nice quiet gentleman from Jersey who had travelled about an hour to get there because he’d heard it was a larger crowd. Which it usually – I told him about finals and he asked if there were a lot of colleges around us. I laughed, we specialize in colleges, medical facilities and lawyers around here.

I told him if he was looking for larger groups be should probably come during and after the break.

Results -

Round 1 1 -2

Round 2 2- 0

Round 3 0 – 2

So out of seven games played I won 3.

Pulling Olivia I knew I was going to be drafting red/black, It ended up I was pretty much getting black all to myself

These are the cards I had at the end of the draft

• 1 Typhoid Rats
• 1 Ashmouth Hound
• 1 Bloodcrazed Neonate
• 2 Walking Corpse
• 1 Rakish Heir
• 1 Riot Devils
• 1 Screeching Bat
• 1 Brain Weevil
• 1 Olivia Voldaren
• 2 Skirsdag Cultist
• 1 Tormented Pariah
• 1 Pitchburn Devils
• 1 Stromkirk Patrol
• 1 Dead Weight
• 1 Dream Twist
• 1 Geistflame
• 2 Infernal Plunge
• 1 Purify the Grave
• 1 Altar's Reap
• 1 Curse of the Pierced Heart
• 1 Graveyard Shovel
• 1 Intangible Virtue
• 2 Mask of Avacyn
• 1 Nightbird's Clutches
• 1 Skeletal Grimace
• 1 Spare from Evil
• 1 Cackling Counterpart
• 2 Night Terrors
• 1 Rolling Temblor
• 1 Runic Repetition
• 1 Traitorous Blood
• 1 Trepanation Blade
• 1 Grimoire of the Dead
• 2 Maw of the Mire
• 1 Into the Maw of Hell
• 1 Midnight Haunting
• 1 Cellar Door

What I played in the deck

• 1 Typhoid Rats
• 1 Ashmouth Hound
• 1 Bloodcrazed Neonate
• 2 Walking Corpse
• 1 Rakish Heir
• 1 Riot Devils
• 1 Screeching Bat
• 1 Brain Weevil
• 1 Olivia Voldaren
• 1 Skirsdag Cultist
• 1 Tormented Pariah
• 1 Pitchburn Devils

13 creatures

• 1 Dead Weight
• 1 Geistflame
• 2 Infernal Plunge
• 1 Curse of the Pierced Heart
• 1 Nightbird's Clutches
• 1 Skeletal Grimace
• 1 Night Terrors
• 1 Rolling Temblor
• 1 Traitorous Blood
• 1 Into the Maw of Hell

11 spells

• 8 swamp
• 8 mountains

16 lands

I was a bit worried that I didn’t have a lot of one drops but I had Typhoid rats in my hand. My strategy was to get Olivia in play as soon as possible , with a Typhoid rat in play it’s possible to use infernal plunge to get her out on turn 2 which happened. But JerseyGuy was playing white and had fiend hunter, which Olivia is easily sidelined by. He won that round, but I was happy to have gotten her out so early, it means I built that strategy correctly. The second round she came out on turn 4 and I won that round. The third round I almost had him but he had his control cards in better positioning and I never figured out how to outmaneuver him using the abilities of the cards I had in play. I was one land short the entire time.

Round 2 was the store owner playing a 3 color combo white, green and some black I think. He was mana light at the opening and Olivia coming out on turn 5 pretty much ended the game even though it took a few more draws, on the second one he managed to survive for a while but I had done early damage with vampires and the Skirsdag cultist so Olivia had clearance and plenty of mana to power up and take over. He was creature starved and basically had his creatures for about a turn before I could take them over. He did have things that gave them life. One useful thing I did was stick skeletal grimace on Olivia keeping her pretty safe from direct damage until she bulked up. The other useful thing I did was throw it on Typhoid rats making it a kind of consistent Creepy Doll for 3 mana.

The third round I made a mulligan that I shouldn’t have an paid for it, the second round was longer and I had a better hand than the first but it was newly tattooed guy and he knew the cards way better than I did. I don’t even remember how he beat me specifically but I do remember I ended up without enough answers and was top decking when he did beat me. If I used all my cards without improving my gameboard state enough to win that means I probably made some inefficient trades when he became the aggressor, or I took damage I should have prevented in the early game.

End result, I had fun playing last night. I enjoy the constraints of limited forcing you to use cards, I’m getting better at Infernal Plunge and I’m working on my practical application of card advantage in aggro decks. I didn’t get shut out, while off-put by some of the vibe and suddeness of the night ( and there is a possibility being kept waiting for 10 minutes into a round while tattoo guy finished his trade with someone else messed me up a bit concentration or preparedness wise) I didn't lose my temper, get overwhelmed or feel like I was less competent at the end of the night than at the beginning. As for the last competitor, I think it was just his nature, not a “jedi mind trick”. I have no idea why someone would waste a Jedi Mind Trick on me at this stage of the game anyway. I’m just happy when I can keep track of all the card effecs.

Curse of the pierced heart is lovely – next time I’ll try to get it out early.

I think I’m unlikely to forget the creature sacrifice on Infernal plunge again but I need to keep practicing with it or I might.