Last time I told you how I got back back into Magic, and formed a decent playgroup. Today I'll tell the tale of how the first showing of that Team went.

Except kind of not. You see I had just gone from "removed from the game entirely" to having a serious go at competitive play.  I was obviously itching to play. I wanted to see how fit I was to even be playing in a real tournament. Fortunately the absolute Last PTQ Valencia Block tournament was the very next weekend in Columbus. I live in Akron, so it's only a couple hour's drive away! Huzzah! Unfortunately the short time span and other factors meant we had almost no time to test. So while we went to this event as Team McLoving for the first time, we were not benefiting from the advantage of having people to test with.

So I needed a deck.  I spent an entire night cruising from site to site figuring out the metagame. I had never played TSP block before, and had to start from the beginning and watch the format evolve all in the space of a few hours. What I finally came to realize was that despite the dominance of Turbo Teachings by the end, it was in fact a quite open format. (Despite what you may think MaRo, that's what happens in Modular formats.) [Warning: I hate MaRo and I will bitch about him when he says something stupid like "When the format is to modular no one knows what decks to build."]

Eventually my head began to hurt, literally. I remember quite vividly because I almost never get headaches, and that night I did. So eventually I just called Joey to see if there was anything I was missing, or if he had any insights perhaps I had missed. We talked for a bit and then I decided to try something. I asked him simply "If you could only choose one card in your deck, what would it be?" He replies that it would be Damnation, which is no surprise because we had both already mentioned we would like to play a deck with the amazing board sweeper. I ask what he would choose if he could pick a second card. He replies Tarmogoyf. Seems sensible enough. The best two drop since Wild Mongrel certainly is powerful on his own. So from there we try to envision a B/G deck. We fill it with all the most powerful cards in both colors, and to our suprise...it sounds good. Really good. I can't recall really how the original draft looked, but it was very close to the final list we played. After about 20 minutes we had designed the following niche deck.

B/G Good Stuff

4 Tarmogoyf

4 Damnation

4 Korlash

4 Sudden Death

3 Harmonize

3 Tombstalker

4 Riftsweeper

4 Edge of Autumn

4 Call of the Herd

2 Extripate

4 Llanowar Reborn

2 Urborg

1 Urza's Factory

19 Basics 

SB

4 Stupor

3 Krosan Grip

4 Mire Boa

4 [Name Withheld] (sorry, its still decently tech, and no one expects it)

 I am not usually one to blatantly brag, but this deck was good. It was damn good. I had never seen a deck like it in all the coverage I saw, and it was beautifully honed to the meta. In fact the only cards I would change if I could would be a 4th Tombstalker, as he was amazing for me every time I cast him. (Joey says he'd want 2 Tendrils over 2 Extripates, but I think that had more to do with matchups as 'pates were great for me.)

So how did it turn out? We'll start with Matt. Matt didn't play this deck, as he had been testing G/W aggro.  He lost in the first round, insisting that he blew it and could have won. Round 2 he beat some random Pickles list. Round round three won against a pretty good midrange deck in a close match. Finally round 4 he lost and dropped out to draft.

I had a similar experience. Round 1 I played a U/G Shifter list. The deck worked exactly how it was meant to. It felt amazing. Eveything he played I had an answer to. His turn 1 Visions met my turn two Sweeper with a Llanowar counter. That pretty much sums up the match actually. I was elated at the deck performance. Round two was heartbreaking. I was matched against Pickles splashing G. I killed then extripated a Shapeshifter, and the look of hope fleeing him in his eyes was priceless. Game two he pulls off a lock just in time, but it was a good game, so I wasn't to upset. Than we go to game three. I keep a great hand, and he mulls. I drop a Llanowar on one, and Urborg and Mire Boa turn two. Yeah, pretty damn good.Turn three I Stupor him, he shrugs it off and plays a morph. The next turn I cast a SECOND STUPOR. He has no answer this time. I kill his morph and swing, he has only a couple turn to live. He draws a card and plays a morph. I swing again. Last chance. He draws a card, and plays a morph. Thats right. He topdecks the pickles lock after double Stupor! I wanted to cry. :-(

The next round I sit down at my seat, and there he is. Matt. The guy I came with. Remember how he beat a good midrange deck in a close match? Yeah...that was me. Going into the PTQ Joey and I had said the worst two card for us to see are Mystic Enforcer and Stonecloaker. Matt had both.

After that I go to time with another U/G Shifter list and drop out at after a 2-2-1 record. No way I make Top 8 even winning out the next 2. Drafting was fun, and I pulled out a random win I had no right to with a jank deck against an insane deck produced by a row of noobs to my opponent's right.  

So how about Joey. Well he did much better, as I expected. He got great matchups his first few rounds, even meeting with some random WW and RDW, which we already knew our deck trounced. In between rounds I would always get good news from Joey. Eventually he gets to 4-1. All he has to do is win one more for top 8. He is match against Cedric Phillips. Oh joy. :-(

Cedric is playing a Pickles deck with Urborg/Damnation in the board. Game one Cedric gets to Willbender a Sudden Death to Joey's Goyf to take control of the game, and win out from there. Game two Joey starts out with our awesome Urbog/Boa/Reborn draw from the board. I don't know if you've ever been on the receiving end of that, but it's not easy to get out from under. So they go to game three. Its an incredibly long and hard fought game. Cedric suspends a Visions, but as usual our deck has the answer, a sweeper takes it away, and gives Joey another threat. After a couple of blanks from Cedric, Joey claims he overextends to put lethal on board by playing out a Tombstalker. Cedric rips the Damnation. Yeah, that really sucks. Joey than dies to a Factory.

But it's ok, still just has to take the last match to have an outside chance at T8, but definitely take home some amatuer prize payout. He sits down to his final round, and is faced with a very familiar deck. It's the Mono Black Aggro deck he and I had been screwing around with on MODO for a couple of weeks. Well, at least he knew the matchup. ^_^; You can read Greg McCleery's account of this game here: http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?id=7740

Greg's account would be much fuller than mine, as I was drafting at the time. If you don't want to hop over I'll just tell you than our deck performed admirably, but  MBA's evasive threats, and our lack of Tendrils in the Main cost Joey the match.

So we were a bit let down. However we were also very encouraged by these results. In 20 minutes we had made a deck that was one topdeck away from a T8 showing in a format we had never played. We pegged the format, and I dare say in the hands of a rigorously practiced player our little niche deck could have won the tournament.  So maybe there is some justification for my enthusiasm for Magic after all.

I'm going to States in a couple of days. We have another list that I am just about as confident in, and I can't wait to see how well it does. I'll be writing a tournament report. I'm going to submit it as an article, but if nothing else it will definitely appear here.

Feel free to talk to me at States if you see me. (Sorry for no Avatar, I hate the tiny requirement on this site.) I'll be a 6'2" fat kid in blue jeans and a red button up, with a shorter kid who looks like a lions mane took a ??? on his head. ^_^;

Also, feel free to add me on MTGO. Tobias Funke, or search fro Team Mildly Offensive.

-Josh 

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Hello again. Despite my previous promise to update, I quickly became overwhelmed with schoolwork, two visits a day to the gym, and parties. I'm going to try to force myself to make time to update at least once a week. I think it will be good for me, and may actually get me a couple readers. ^_^;

If it isn't obvious by the way, if you haven't read my first blog, please do so before reading this. 

As promised this week I will be writing about how I got sucked back into Magic. It is arguable that I never really left, as I still read the occasional article and popped into FNM to hang out with friends and play horrible decks for fun. (We call it KenDecking as a reference to a bad deckbuilder we knew) However the defining factor of my Magic "hibernation" was the fact that I played absolutely no Limited. Limited is my baby. There are few things on the face of this planet I would rather be doing than drafting with skilled players. (A rare treat before MTGO) Because of this lack of Limited play my enthusiasm and interest in Magic were extremely low.
 

On just one such FMN where I had only popped in to play the worst U/W Control I've ever ran, and hang out with some friends, I decided that it was the last one. It was almost the end of August, and the semester was about to start.  This meant homework, reading, and parties would dominate my time. I didn't see where a half hour drive to go to FNM for a few hours on Friday night fit in. I had scheduled myself for no Friday class so I could party more, not to drive lots and continually go 3-2 because I didn't care enough to build a real deck. Then a funny thing happened as I was driving my friend Joey home. I suppose you need a bit of background for this conversation. Joey and I have been playing Magic together for years. We go all the way back to a local store called Gamequest that hasn't been open for a few years now. It was an odd place. Full of mediocre to bad players, a horribly warped Metagame, and people whom it was often hard to tell if they loved or hated each other. The store owned was an eccentric fellow who I think wanted the store to succeed very much, but we all kind of knew it wasn't to be. Back at this store Joey and I met and became very close friends. We had kicked around the idea of forming a serious competitive team multiple times over the years, but we never seems to have enough people, or enough money or enough time. There was always something between us and the regular regiment of testing we knew we needed to stay on pace with the real metagame. The only person we knew we could count on at the time was our friend Justin. Justin was a judge and knew the competitive scene well enough to be taken seriously. He had in fact had a hand in teaching me about good and bad decks, if only by pummeling my horrible excuse for a deck week in and week out with Tier 1 builds like Tendrils and Tog.

 

[disclaimer:I don't remember the details of how this conversation went, so this is all hacked together from vague memories, but probably isn't far off. I'll have Joey read this and correct any glaring mistakes]So back in my Intrepid a few weeks ago, Joey and I are talking about another guy we know from the current store we play at named Matt. (Shameless pug: If you happen to find yourself in Canton, Ohio check out Universal Comics on Fulton. Joe is one of the coolest owners ever.) Joey mentioned the deck Matt was running and I said something about how I thought Matt was coming along nicely in playskill. Joey agrees and says he thinks that Matt would do well as at a PTQ or some such, and that he would be good for testing. At this point I'm fairly sure it strikes us both immediately, we begin thinking of how many players there would be for the team. The first inclusion is Aaron. I've known Aaron for even longer than I've known Joey. I went to the same high school as him, and although we weren't close back then, we've sort of rediscovered our friendship of late, and I think we're both glad we did. Oh, and I guess he's ok at Magic sometime. Only when he pays for his Pacts though. (A bit of a warning. I will not fail to indulge in the time honored tradition of heckling and in-joking to my friends during my entries. You'll just have to live through it readers.) On a serious note though, Aaron is a good player and a cool guy. We knew he'd be interested. So we have four people. We want 8 for a full draft table, but anything close will do. Then we remembered something. Who else had showed up at an FNM after months if not a year of not playing than Justin. After Gamequest we had seen him now and then, and then the last we'd heard he didn't play anymore. However there he was, and had mentioned he wanted to play a little. (Apparently a little being enough to brush of a still sleeved Ghost Dad/Husk deck he probably had to rummage through a closet for.) We counted him in, as we knew he always enjoyed the Tourny scene, and would probably be good in it.

 

So there's five. We're close, just 3 people away. At this point Joey offers one if his lackeys in the form of Jimmy. Joey seems pretty good at gathering lackeys. I mean Joey is like the R_E of Canton with all his Barns.  While not really that a great a player, Joey says that Jimmy has been making progress at a solid rate and he is confident he can train him. We count him in, and go to six. Just two away now, and I begin to be really intrigued by the prospect. One of us then recommends our friend Brooke. We've known him for a few years from back at Gamequest. After a brief period of wondering about his playskill level and seriousness, we decide he's be a decent candidate and call it seven. After failing to think of a final member, we decide we would find and train a newb. While finding a newb with both enough potential to be worth your time and a low level of bad misconceptions from a horrid playgroup is tough we decide it is indeed worth it, and we're at the coveted eight man team.


We're both very excited about the prospect of having a serious group of good players to test with, and decide to try and coax them all into at the next FNM.  And it goes smoothly in fact. Aaron, Matt, and Brooke all seem rather intrigued by the prospect as well. Justin is busy with work, but says if we can set our weekly times around him he'd do it. I get everyone's schedule and am floored by how fast it seems to have come together. In fact at first it seem to have gone even better, as we forgot that Brooke has Barns as well, and we could annex one of them.


However a few days later we come to realize a couple of things. Brooke increasingly seems like a bad choice. We had observed some of his Barns' play at the FNM and it was clear they needed work. More work than my laziness would allow. Brooke also had basically a Team of his own, and we were unsure if this would work  with him ending up in the middle of both. In the end we decide to leave him be with his current team to focus on Legacy.
And now an aside for a funny story. The night we came to realize that Brooke's newbs were not as developed as we had believed/hoped, we discovered it in a hilarious way. Brooke had thrown together a deck for his friend that he thought his friend would like. It was kind of silly with win conditions like Coalition Victory. It also featured a heavy control suite in the form of Pickles locks and various other Shapeshifter "tricks" like Mystic Snake and Avalanche Riders. Thats right, he thought the flipping of a Shifter would trigger CitP abilities. I of course had to tell him after the round I saw this that his deck didn't work, but we all got a good laugh out of it. (Sorry to anyone from Brooke's team who may read this. I mean no offense, but it was really funny.) 

So now we are again in need of people. Fortunately Matt has an answer of sorts.  Two brothers who play at Universal named Paul and Chris. Both older than ourselves, but seem to be decent players, and definitely have the money for building Tier 1 decks. I don't know them at the time, but we accept them as if nothing else a temporary fix. So that's what we go in with. I'll now do a short bio for each member.

Myself: You never realize how hard it is to describe yourself without feeling like a self absorbed asshole until you try.  ^_^;

I'll stick with the minimum. I've been playing for many years, Limited is my specialty, however I consider myself a decent niche deck designer as well.

Joey: The player with the (sadly) most experience with competitive play in that he went to JSS Nats, and places well in big events. Probably the best technical player we have, I expect him if any of us to make it to a higher level of play. Sadly barring a serious glimpse of success in Magic this year, this will probably be his final season. Next year he will go away to college, and it deeply saddens me to say that I'll see very little of him after that, perhaps for the rest of our lives. He's been a good friend over the years, and I expect great things for him in his lifetime.

Aaron: I am unsure how long Aaron has been playing at his current (good) level, as I was not involved with the local scene for some time. I do know however that he has made quite the reputation for himself as a good local player, and a solid deck designer. He has also become a very good friend of mine lately, and I am glad for this.

Matt: I really don't know much about Matt at all, or at least I certainly didn't before going to a PTQ in Columbus with him recently. (More on that later) In fact Joey and I joked that "For all we know he's just a Magic playing machine with no further interests" as we had never heard him mention anything else. All we knew was he used to play football before he was hurt, leading Joey to comment "Yea, he was a football playing machine, but then he broke. Now he's a Magic Playing Machine". To some extent this sentiment still lingers. Despite all the time I now spend talking to him, I still have yet to feel like we've connected much outside the game. This will change with time though, and I'm glad because he strikes us all as a genuinely nice person, and one worth knowing.

Paul and Chris: I really didn't know them at all either. They seemed like nice enough guys though, and so far have proven to be so. Paul especially has been kind enough to host testing sessions at his ridiculously nice house. :-P

Justin: A nice guy, and very knowledgeable about the rules. At this point it is unclear to me how rusty he is from lack of practice like myself, but I know he has the natural skill to re hone.  

(A bit of a note: One thing I do need a lot of work on is this very rustiness. I've been noticing lately that I frequently make a clearly wrong play, and sometimes forget exactly how rules work. While it is encouraging that I at least recognize these mistakes, I certainly need to work on these skills before the PTQ season begins for us.)

So that's the 7. There have been a couple of other people who drift in and out of testing with us, but for the most part that is the core.

As this has become rather lengthy, I think I'll end here for now. Tomorrow I will update again with the story of our first event, the Columbus PTQ.

I will close simply by saying that after reading this through once, it is purely rubbish and a bad read. However as it is just a beginning point for the real meat of the experience, I don't think I care enough to go back and re write it.

-Josh 

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Hi, I'm Josh. If you're reading this, it's probably because either I know you, or because you play Magic and are bored surfing around at 2am on a Wednesday. Either way I surmise you have not a lot better to do just now, so why not stick around?

Let's start with the what. What am I writing about? Well Magic of course. I have been playing Magic for many years now. I can't even remember when I first cast a spell, but it has to be at least eight years. More importantly I have only been good at Magic for a couple of years at most. Depending on who you ask, maybe I'm still not. About half a year ago I decided I was giving up Magic forever. I'm in college now, I have a real social life, and at the time was seeing someone semi-seriously. Time to move on. However it nagged at me, from the moment I decided to leave the game....I never tried to "make it". I read constantly about Magic Pros having the time of their lives flying from city to city on the gravy train, barhopping at night, sharing deck tech, and drafting till the wee hours of the morning before a GP. I wanted it, bad. Now I hold no illusions mind you. I am definitely not a good enough player to do that, and I try to stay very realistic about my potential. But what if....

It's a very elusive and haunting proposition, the What If. Historians have long pondered, world changing ideas spawned, and careers built, all on the back of What If. If I leave the game and never make a serious go at trying to be a real player that lingering What If would haunt me for years. I knew it. So it didn't take much coaxing for me to be drawn back in by the proposition of a serious testing Team. (The story on how that happened in the next entry) So now I have decided to give it a try. I'm going practice like my life depends on it, test as much as humanly possible, and hit every tournament from the local FNMs to, well if things work out Nationals. I am willing to go as high as I can. If it means an increased commitment to make the next level, if I feel like I can at all succeed there, I'll do it. Whatever it takes, I want to know that I tried. I gave it all I had, and I reached my ceiling.

So we're getting the Team together, we're testing like madmen, and we're driving obscene distances. All in the name of that competitive spirit. After going to our first event as a Team (I'll talk about it in the next entry) I thought about how serious this would be to me, and what it meant in my life. Silly as it may seem, this last ditch effort at "that silly game" as so many people have called it, actually means something to me. So I invite you along. I've decided to write about the whole ordeal as it unfolds. It will definitely last a year (a Magic year that is) but after that it will depend entirely on my success. I don't guarantee any level of excitement or relevance. I do however promise to try to be earnest, and to write something that goes beyond the superficial elements of playing a game. I will talk about Magic mostly, and try to stay relevant to the current Metagame, but I will also talk about the journey. Think of Anthony Bourdain's: No Reservations, only about Magic instead of food, and well...me instead of a cool, badass, published author.

Now on to the Why. Why am I writing this? To be perfectly honest, I cannot pinpoint an exact reason. It may be the sleep deprivation, or perhaps the sentimental and overly ponderous manner I get when I listen to music and read to much in a single night.  However, both of these lead to the best explanation I can give. I want to write about this part of my life. Not necessarily for anyone to read. This is as much for myself as for anyone else. Writing has always been how I can best gain some sort of perspective on things I am thinking about. It is my outlet, my catharsis, my looking glass. While I will gain from this either way, I invite you to join me.

What's in it for you? Well there is always that most basic of wants, the desire to empathize and relate to someone. To feel that although the world is large and scary and you may sometimes feel isolated in it, in the end the people it consists of are surprisingly like yourself.  I have also been told throughout my life that I am a pretty damn good writer. While I have always doubted this myself, and have never pursued an active interest in writing for others before, maybe, just maybe, you'll find my musings appealing. Also, I will pretty much spill all our testing results out here. (And I tend to be pretty analytic about these things. EI: Expect statistics) So if nothing else, perhaps I can be useful/good for laughing at when it comes to the Meta.

Here's hoping that if anyone reads this, they will like it.

Realizing He Needs a Signoff,

-Josh 

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