SCGDC: Aftermath

Tom has already started posting about the format and future events, but before we go too far into that I wanted to address a slightly more pressing issue: the team performace at the event.

It was pretty bad. I didn't expect to put someone in the top 8, but in the land of realistic expectations I was hoping at least one team member would drop with a positive win-loss ratio. Now, it may not be my place to criticize the performance considering that I didn't play...but since the poor results could have been fixed with better preparation I'm just as responsible as everyone else.

The trick to dealing with what happened is to take it as a wake up call , and respond appropriately. What have we been doing wrong in our playtesting sessions? What changes do we make going forward?

Off the top of my head, this is what I've got right now:
1. All we do is play games. We never discuss what happened, what we learned, key cards, potential board plans, or anything else. Sure, we talk some about building decks and certain cards, but how often have we played a 10 game set, and then actually taken fifteen or twenty minutes and talked about it? When deciding what decks to play in DC, how many of us thought through all of the different decks, what their matchups were, and formed a plan? Did anyone go card by card through the list and think how the metagame would define how every single one of them would perform? If anyone did anything that thorough, how many of you did it with anyone else around to bounce the ideas off of? If anyone says yes, you're lying, either to the group or yourself.

2. We dismiss things too quickly. Aintrazi's blue deck is an example- How long ago did Tom have a version of that deck built, and how much time did we talk about it? Did we do anything besides dismiss it that night and never think of it again? Whether that deck is good enough to be a part of the format in the future is not relevant to this post, but my basic point remains the same- even if someone has an idea everyone else thinks is bad, we owe it to both the originator of the idea and the team as a whole to give it serious though, and put forth facts and serious theories about why the idea is good or bad. Most ideas will not work out- it is the way of such things that there will always be much more good than bad; we just need to try and avoid missing the good.

I understand that none of us have unlimited time to devote to magic. However, with the possible exceptions of Tom and Ken, I think we can all come up with around 45 minutes a day to think about magic. Not just read articles, but to really think about the game- what cards might become better? How might the metagame be changing? What decks might be changed? How does Valakut adjust to the new metagame? Think about things critically, hell take notes or write down observations if we have to.

The key is not to take more time, but to increase what we accomplish in the time we take.

The other alternative is to change nothing, to be the same group we have been. Just meet to hang out and play some games, go to the occasional event where one of us may occasionally do decently but where we usually end up done by the end of the fourth round. If that's what we want to be, fine, I'm down. But if we want to be a team that will accomplish things with meaning over the next twelve months, if we want to be winners as opposed to just players, we need to get off our collective asses and do something.

I don't believe our playtesting sesions have anything to do with our results. I think our problem is that none of us play enough events against different people. None of us play FNM on a regular basis, none of us go to every PTQ and GP. Look at the top 8s of all these events they all basically have the same players that travel everywhere to play. I know they don't playtest as much as we think they do. It's all about expeience against all kinds of different people which we lack as we play against the same people all the time.

I will agree that our sessions have nothing to do with our results- I think that's a part of our problem. Going to more events would certainly help, but I also think that testing sessions where we actually learn things would be great too. I can't recall having many testing sessions where after we finished I thought 'hey, I learned something about how to play this deck better'. I don't think we need to test more; we could even test less. I just want to test better in the time we do take.

Also, it would be great if we could find a way to incorporate people who can't go to as many events as others (Tom, myself) into being a more productive team.

But like I said, if everyone disagrees with me and wants to keep testing in the same fasion we have been, it's fine with me. I have quite a few more important things going on anyway.

I completely agree with Joey, and I have been somewhat frustrated as well.

Ask Kevin how I felt after going 4-3 (which, while a positive record, doesn't really mean that I performed well), when I never played a UW Control player the entire day. My losses were to the mirror (lost a topdeck war where any card but Forest, Lotus Cobra, and Lightning Bolt win me the game), mulligans to 5 in both Game 1 and Game 2, and a tight game against Boros where I just could not win on the draw against Plated Geopede + Adventuring Gear (with a fetchland as backup).

I think we do need to discuss more. There has been frustrating for me since I actually do think about Magic quite a bit (ask anyone about my drives home from work, where I pester everyone with Magic ideas), but I just don't get a chance to really play a ton. I think rust is bad for me, but I think that I did not make a single play mistake on Saturday, and that is saying something.

I would like you to contribute more to the group, and our inability to get you cards/have you play at the event was not beneficial to all of us.

Out of the group, Kevin and Marc played a relatively untested list, I played a solid, but non-standard Valakut list, Jessie had little idea of his board plans with Vampires, and Ken didn't play a full Pyromancer's Ascension list. That's not really a recipe for success.

We were ahead of the curve with adding red to UW, ahead of the curve adding Lightning Bolt to Valakut, but behind the curve on how other decks would respond to UW.

I did not have a solid board plan against the mirror, and I think it cost me a match. I also had a solid board plan against Boros, but I definitely needed more sideboarded practice matches to see what cards I needed to play in what order. I drew 3 removal spells against Boros in the third game, nailed his turn 1 Steppe Lynx with Bolt, played a Slagstorm to preempt 13 damage with double fetches from Plated Geopede + double Adventuring Gear, and played a 2nd Slagstorm (off the top) to wipe his board. I still could not get there even when I played an Inferno Titan, since his Journey to Nowhere + Squadron Hawk left my Avenger of Zendikar absolutely cold. I should win that game, but I could not pull it out (I would have won on the crack back with Avenger + 7 2/3 tokens). I still think about what I should have done differently.

It's time to get started, we have matches to win in tournaments upcoming. See other forum!

And Joey, thanks for the mad props on Grand Architect. That card is Lotus Cobra good.