I have recently changed jobs and due to various factors, it has taken a vast amount of time that I was previously able to dedicate to Magic away from me. As a result, my tournament performances have suffered dramatically over the last 2 months. This article will touch on my last 3 large tournaments and my results in each. It’s a bit less article and a bit more diary entry. You have been warned.

The Pro Tour

My first and hopefully not my last. Ironically, whilst I was looking for a change anyway, I chose to leave my last job almost entirely because I didn’t have enough holiday to go to the Pro Tour. No brainer really. I handed in my notice 2 days after I got back from the Vegas Grand Prix with the intention of spending all the time in between those events and the Pro Tour practicing the new Standard and Draft formats.

Then my new boss convinced me to start 2 weeks earlier. I turned up in Japan with 0 practice games of Standard under my belt and maybe 10 drafts total. I had spoken with Gold pro and all-round nice guy, Samuel Tharmaratnam about what he thought the meta might be. He found himself to be in similar situation with Standard, having not sunk a lot of time in. So we planned to figure it out ahead of the event when we arrived in Kyoto.

After having seen the performance of the UW God-Pharaoh’s Gift during the most recent Magic Online PTQ at the time, we settled on the deck going down to 1 Gate of the Afterlife and focusing on Refurbish. We chose to splash Red for Abrade and decided on maindeck copies of Sunscourge Champion to help out with the Mono-Red matchup. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough. Had I thought about it more, perhaps I would have realised the power of Authority of the Consuls in the matchup and determined that the slightly synergistic element brought by Sunscourge Champion wasn’t strong enough but alas.

I was happy with my draft deck but could only scrape a 1-2 record.

Dice represent additional basic lands rather than total (for some reason)

My tournament progressed as follows:

Round 1 – Loss vs UB splash Scorpion God

Round 2 – Loss vs GW (2x Angel of Condemnation)

Round 3 – Win vs RG Aggro

Round 4 – Win vs Mono-Black Zombies

Round 5 – Loss vs GB Constrictor

Round 6 – Loss vs Mono-Red Aggro

Round 7 – Win vs Mono-Black Zombies

Round 8 – Loss vs Mono-Red Aggro

3-5 Overall Record

I was decidedly annoyed with myself for flying halfway round the world to do so poorly at an event I put a lot of personal value on. I vented my frustration by climbing a big hill the next day.

This view of Kyoto is pretty good, though not as the view from the top tables in the convention centre

I didn’t practice, I did poorly, makes sense.

Lesson learned.

Grand Prix Birmingham

I knew Grixis Death’s Shadow was the most powerful deck going into the tournament and probably the best choice too. Only problem despite having practiced with it a reasonable amount (far far more than Draft for the Pro Tour), I was still very unhappy with my play skill with the deck.

So I played Dredge, a deck I was familiar with and went 11-2-2 (I’m slow) with at the Modern Grand Prix in Vegas and had previous strong experience with but I hadn’t played since that GP.

I went 11-4. I lost to Rest in Peace twice which I signed up for (frankly I thought I’d encounter more hate than I did), I misboarded (I think?) against RG Tooth and Nail and mulliganed poorly vs my Kiki Chord opponent then let him untap with Restoration Angel.

I didn’t practice my deck, I did well but I definitely could have done better. Lesson unlearned (sort of)?

Ixalan RPTQ

This will sound familiar. I hadn’t played any Standard since the Pro Tour and, I knew I probably shouldn’t but, I let myself get talked into playing Mardu Vehicles because I was familiar with it having played it in Grand Prix Barcelona. I don’t believe the deck is particularly well positioned, my list wasn’t well constructed and I wasn’t familiar with how it would play it out vs a new array of archetypes. Needless to say things went poorly.

So I guess the point of this of article is get really good at one deck in Modern and play that deck forever whilst adapting more readily to the metagame in Standard. Also practice.

Lesson learned.