2020 MTG

My journey through competitive Magic: The Gathering and self improvement

[moxstanley]

G E R M S

Last week came and went WAY too fast. Honestly had a lot of stuff I wanted to get done and somehow didn’t get too.

The weekend was pretty good anyways. I took 9th place in a WPNQ (PTQ) at my local store on Saturday, while my close friend took 2nd, some minor drama here actually for both my 9th and his 2nd place finish. Updates perhaps to follow later.

Sunday we went to an IQ, This time I fared a little better, splitting the finals to get myself Q’d for the Invitational before 2020 even starts hah! My friend took 8th as well, so overall a great weekend for the “team” especially considering both of these events were standard and I have rarely touched the format in the last couple years.

I doubt my list from Friday will appear anywhere but it was practically Kannister’s Jund Sacrifice list with maybe 2 or 3 numbers tweaks with the board to hedge against the local meta. Here > http://old.starcitygames.com/decks/135372 < is my list from Sunday, it was more of a for fun event but the deck performed surprisingly well! I would love to find space for another Niv in there because that card was my path to victory most games. Had a few sweet moments like copying a growth spiral with an Expansion//Explosion then casting my own off the extra land to “steal” the play. Copied an opponents drawn from dreams into a counterspell for the original as well. 

Honestly I did not play particularly well and at the time I wasn’t exactly proud of my victory, but a W is a W.

UNFORTUNATELY now I am seriously sick, I have no idea why and I am supposed to leave tomorrow evening for another WPNQ (PTQ?) Saturday morning. To top it off apparently my car battery died today, so I have to dig that thing out of my trunk, which is way harder than it needs to be, and get it charged up, in the sub 20 degree weather, while sick. Hopefully there isn’t something actually wrong with it and it doesn't re-die on me when I am somewhere in Pennsylvania. 

Double hopefully I feel better in the morning.

[moxstanley]

I Tried Too Hard

Anyone who knows me well knows I listen to A LOT of music, but above all else I love hard progressive rock / metal; see Gojira and TOOL.

Unfortunately this is absolutely not a good place to try learning songs as a beginner guitarist but here we are. Almost telepathically my youtube recommendations included a video showing the "wierd" technique to play the intro and main riffs to "Jambi" by TOOL, one of my favorite songs.

Turns out everything is wierd when you are new to an instrument so I took a crack at it. It wasn't extremely hard and I actually got a decent sound going after a few hours HOWEVER, I damn near burned a hole through my left index finger. You have to do this pull through thing where you drag your finger down the 2 lowest strings and I developed a wicked blister, not a callous, an actual factual blister!

Safe to say I'm not getting much practice for the next few days.

[moxstanley]

Initial Pioneer Developments

Currently, Monday nights are when my local Pioneer event goes down. Since the inception of the format I have been on 4C Copycat, Simic Nexus, GR Aggro (8 rabble), and Bant Field. So up until this point I have managed to settle on a deck that ate a banning with the kind of exception of Simic nexus which I dropped due to meta shifts around the time of the invitational (more T3feri, thoughtsize, stomp, and losing Veil). Hopefully I can continue to nail the format down before real paper events start picking up. Currently I am interested in re-examining Nexus, the Gerry T Simic build, Lotus Field combo, and Jeskai Fires Super Friends.  This week I elected to try a Jeskai Fires Super Friends list with the Fae of Wishes//Granted wish board. Out of the 3 it seemed like the least likely to capture my attention long term so a quick run through locals was exactly where I wanted to start.

The build I started with had no spells in the main that were not castable with typical mana, meaning straight Jeskai cards. 4 T3feri in the main is absolutely the way to go, that card continues to be very powerful. Biggest problem I encountered was opponents playing Oko, particularly when they are on the play and when it comes down on 2 off a mana dork it is a HUGE problem. 

0 Spells to cast for 1 mana and only a few copies of Heart of Kiran on 2 cmc feels pretty bad on the draw. 

26 lands was fine, the color distribution, number of taplands, and number of Castle Vantress’ certainly needs some additional evaluation tho.

All in all, fun archetype, has potential to go REALLY big, tough time vs Oko and the fastest decks like Izzet Ensoul. I don’t see it excelling enough in the current meta or being consistent enough to be my competitive choice going forward.

Split the finals.

Tomorrow is likely to be entirely devoted to organization, cleaning, and end of semester stuff.

[moxstanley]

The Preamble Ramble

So...oh boy.

First point of order here, I am absolutely not going to hit the backspace key at all. Typing errors excluded I am just gonna ramble on about uh...this blog, and the first thing that comes to mind is what you are gonna get. I doubt this will be my method going forward, but you never know!

2019 was an interesting year for me, there were ups and downs but as I write this on...December 8th, I would say it was overall a positive year.

I bought a guitar! predictably, I am garbage at it but that’s alright.

I spent a bunch of time with some of my closest friends through magic and otherwise, that’s great!

I had a drastic increase in household income, also great!

I somehow managed to gain upwards of 40 pounds, that’s very not great.

Everything else is just details really, and it lies within those few points what I want out of 2020.

I would like to continue playing the guitar and improve at it. I have never stuck with an instrument long enough in the past and music is such an important part of my life so hopefully this time I don’t burn out at the first or second plateau.

I would like to lose weight, like a serious amount. I certainly know how to accomplish this from my days as an athlete. I just need to find and hold onto the self discipline required; something I have seriously lacked in the past.

And finally, perhaps most interestingly to you, dear reader, I want to attend as many competitive magic events as I possibly can in the upcoming year. Historically I have been some what of a semi-local guy, crushing IQ’s and PPTQ’s in my 2 hour-ish local circle. I would like to think that my lack of success, outside of the occasional day 2, at larger events is simply due to the fact that I have attended functionally 1.5 per year since I started playing Comp REL in 2012. However, with the recent increase in income I have an actual opportunity to try my hand as a grinder and am both SUPER excited and a little horrified at the prospect of proving myself or crashing and burning.

Side Note: Streaming? Do I even have enough time in a day to do that many things? It’s on my mind now that I am putting together the beginnings of a battle plan for 2020, who knows.

All I know is its going to be an interesting year and I’m going to try my very best to document it. Not sure the rate I plan on posting, i’m going in blind and doing it live. 

I hope you enjoy my journey