Hi everyone, let’s talk about deck selection. Choosing the best deck for a tournament is a very important part of succeeding in Magic. Despite this, we Magic players all too often sabotage our own chances of winning by choosing to play suboptimal decks. Today I want to try and figure out why that is, in the hopes that by understanding why we sometimes make poor decisions we can learn to make…
FNM last week was an interesting one. Having overcome that vicious bout of 'flu thanks to my apparently superhuman constitution, I headed down to Dark Sphere for a three-round draft, shamelessly whipped out my shiny new PTQ Top 8 playmat and slung some spells.
It wasn't the draft itself that was super-interesting (although I did draft just about the most insanely good UG deck I've ever ripped from three packs - Polukranos and his friends carried me to a very cosy 3-0 record) but a few of the conversations that sprung up with my friends about my qualification for Portland did set my cogs grinding. One in particular set me to thinking - when someone asked me what I thought I'd play at the Pro Tour. It seems a fairly glib question with two unspoiled sets before I need to sleeve anything up but it raises a valid question - how should I go about choosing my 75 for the PT?
You see, like most players, I have strong preferences for the types of decks I like to run. I play attrition decks. Black for preference, blue when Thoughtseize isn't in the format. Control, rock, tempo, whatever, I'll run it. You'll rarely see me sleeve up midrange or aggro, less still combo. I just don't feel the love for those decks. But is that an attitude that will work when I come up against the pros? It's done OK for me at FNM, but whilst the standard at Dark Sphere is pretty decent, nobody there is in the Hall of Fame - some of my opponents in August might just be.
The constructed portion of Pro Tour M15 will be Standard. With Journey into Nyx only just starting to be revealed and M15 a completely unknown quantity, there's little point in speculating which decks will be tier 1 at the time. But assuming that there's a fairly even spread of playable decks between the "classic" archetypes once we get the new Core Set, should I be looking to build another Thoughtseize deck? Another Sphinx's Revelation deck? Or should I cast my net a little wider, and be prepared to play whatever I feel the best deck is, regardless of whether it fits into my comfort zone or not?
It may seem obvious - surely if my testing shows me that RDW is the best deck going, I should run it. But I have a lack of experience with aggro. I'm not a Cox or a Sullivan, or even a Wescoe. Those players play their aggressive decks tournament after tournament, and produce results even when the meta suggests they shouldn't. I'm just not used to thinking down the lines of a deck which packs a playset of Rakdos Cacklers. The consequence is, presumably, an increased chance of me making suboptimal plays. I believe, actually quite firmly, in the power of "instinct". When I play monoblack in Standard, I feel I'm more likely to make the correct decision in a close spot - I've played that and similar decks plenty of times before and even if the precise situation I find myself in hasn't come up before, I've seen similar spots so many times that I will likely have a subconscious reaction that will prove to be correct a good percentage of the time. I noticed this when I played online poker - I would often simply "know" a player was bluffing, even with zero solid information, simply because his thinking time, bet amounts and play pattern flipped a switch in my hindbrain marked "I've Seen This Before". I'd have had a tough time telling you why I knew it was a bluff, but somehow all those imperceptible signals registered and I just got it. I think Magic works on similar lines. Therefore if I play a deck of a style I'm not used to, I just won't have those subconscious triggers. I won't spot the right play as often. At least, I think that's the case. After all, I've not been playing that long - just because I did badly with Thragtusk decks when they were crushing Standard at the same time as I was doing well with UWR control, does that mean I "can't" play midrange? Or is the sample size too small for me to able to tell?
I honestly don't know the answer to this - and it leads to another question I can't answer. If I feel my skill level with aggro and midrange is inadequate for me to feel confident playing them at a major tournament, should I start running these decks now in order to learn? It could prove a huge edge if RDW really is the best deck come M15 (or if, heaven forfend, Wizards are daft enough to reprint Thragtusk, my all-time most-despised card). On the flip side - if I devoted all of my practice time to playing my Thoughtseize decks, I could improve my level of competence with the decks I'm already familiar with to a point where maybe I was playing them at a professional level.
There's one more consideration. There's at least a better than even chance that I'm nowhere near as good as some of the players I'll be up against in the States. I don't know for sure - my experience against big-name players is limited to one online match each against Sam Pardee and Ola Rade (beat the former, got crushed by the latter, since you asked) - but it seems a fair assumption. I'm not trying to delight you all with my very British sense of self-deprecation here, I'm just being honest. Someone like, say, Reid Duke has been playing at the top level for so long now, surrounded by such outstanding playtest partners, that even if we both have exactly the same natural aptitude for the game, he will undoubtedly be better than me. That leads to a temptation to play a more forgiving deck - one with "free wins" (much like RDW, come to that) which is more likely to let me off the hook if I make an error of judgement. If I'm playing a Revelation deck, then every time I play a mirror, I will have to outwit my opponent many more times over what is likely to be a much longer game than if I play burn, which seeks to close a game out much more rapidly and can therefore draw you out of your mistakes much more easily. I'm fine with trusting my intellect if my opponent is another first-time qualifier. I'm expecting to get a hiding if my opponent is Wafo-Tapa. And there's every chance that he might just be Wafo-Tapa.
I'm honestly not sure at this juncture which direction I'll take when it comes to crunch time. It's a long way away still. It's two months until the deadline to finalise my travel arrangements and even longer until I'll actually know what cards I'll be able to play. Until then, I'll be keeping an open mind - and I would love to hear anyone's thoughts on how they'd approach the same situation.
