Welsh Nationals: Get Busy Winnin’, or Get Busy Dyin’

Last weekend, Magic the Gathering National Champions were crowned the world over. America saw Oliver Tomajko win a hard fought battle against Pro Tour Amonkhet champion, Gerry Thompson. On this side of the pond, competitor’s battled hard to join Scotland’s Stephen Murray and England’s Autumn Burchett in representing their respective nations at the World Magic Cup.

After many rounds and gruelling matches, two of Team Troll Traders’ own took down the trophies: our newest member, David Murphy, in Ireland; and longstanding member but recent addition to the Welsh branch, Sam Rolph. I couldn’t be more proud of both of them. Check out their own TT articles when you’re done here to join in their victories; keep reading if you want to learn how best to handle defeat, and what to do to improve yourself going forward.

First things first, though – last year, I came third at the Standard World Magic Cup qualifier. This year, I only needed to do one place better to hoist the blue envelope. I didn’t. Why?

The Punt

It’s round five, we’re in the draft, and I’m 3-1. A win here almost certainly follows up with a round six handshake, and a shot at the top eight and the trophy. I’m playing a pretty typical BW Vampires deck. This round is the mirror match – my opponent has much more and much better removal than I do, but I have both a better curve and a more powerful endgame.

We’re in game three, and we’ve reached time. My opponents’ turn is turn zero. Our boards are both heavily cluttered with tokens and random creatures, but I have just reanimated and re-cast my Deathless Ancient, and jammed my freshly drawn Vona, Butcher of Magan. Until now, my opponent has been pretty comfortably holding the ground with his army of critters, backed up by a Steadfast Armosaur. I have one card in hand – a Vampire’s Zeal – and opponent has been bricking for several turns. Next turn, I’m going to be in a great position to take huge chunks out of my opponent’s board and life total.

Opponent has had one card in hand for several turns. I expect it’s a land, but it could also be a combat trick – our creatures have been staring at each other for a while, and the only combat that has taken place is via my Ancient in the skies. Opponent slams a Mark of the Vampire on their Armosaur, and sends it in.

For maximum hilarity value, I’m going to illustrate the conversation that took place here, where I am D and O is the opponent. See if you can spot the point at which my heart dropped.

D: Blocks? *pause* Ancient on Armosaur.

O: Pass priority.

D: Vampire’s Zeal, target Ancient.

O: … activate Armosaur, target Ancient.

D: Resolves. Damage?

O: Ancient dies, I gain five life, Zeal fizzles.

D: Armosaur deals three damage, the Ancient lives, you gain three life, then First Strike damage kills the Armosaur.

O: Armosaur deals five.

D: … it does.

The game was over, and I knew it. Given my Vona and recursible Ancient, I would win an untimed game. Hell, I’d win the game in five turns. I would not, however, win the game in three.

I am a pretty poker-faced player. Friendly, and sometimes chatty, but poker-faced. When I make a mistake, I don’t acknowledge it to the opponent, I just re-evaluate the position and move on. In this case, I had a brief joke back and forth, then we continued. If you knew me, you’d realise this was about as visual at competitive REL as I have ever been – while punting a win and in for the National Championship.

The Practical Lessons

 

  • Engaged Practise

 

For this event, I had drafted circa twenty times on MTGO, played around twenty matches of Standard, and consumed tons of content on both formats. While this is by no means exhaustive, it’s plenty sufficient. I had played with and against the Armosaur many, many times. So why did it get me?

I had never seen it suited up. Not once. Due to threat of activation, in my mind, it read 1W: deal three damage to target creature blocking or blocked by it.

Practise needs to be engaged. It’s good to get a lot of reps in, and nothing is a substitute for raw time spent, but time spent actively thinking about each game, each play, each turn, is far more valuable than letting your autopilot drive results. It’s the quality of your testing, not the quantity, that will determine how much you learn.

 

 

  • Resource Utilisation

 

Given my extensive series on Resource Management, you’d think I’d have this one down pat.

One of Team Troll Traders’ ex members, Pete Ward, is a good friend of mine. He’s recently accumulated quite the following on Twitch streaming MTGO, and has mentioned to me on several occasions that I should check it out. Ignoring the blatant self-promotion for a moment, I never actually did – choosing to spend my time playing endless drafts. I should have taken him up on it.

Pete is one of the best players that I know, and watching his thought process – the lines he takes, the plays he makes – would be a more valuable use of time than the eighteenth and nineteenth drafts. I tested briefly with TT’s own Sam Rolph and Ben Jones, too, but in no way pushed for this testing to happen earlier in the process. Nor did I often ask why they made the plays they made.

As a member of TT and a common grinder in the UK community, I have developed friendships and have access to a lot of skill and intelligence from which to learn – Pro Tour players, Grand Prix winners and PTQ grinders the like. I did not utilise these resources as effectively as I could. If you’re looking to improve and want to learn from better players, learning from the likes of Reid Duke and LSV’s videos is great – but you can’t question them. Reach out to the great players around you, and absorb everything you can. When they make a play you don’t understand, ask them why. You might learn something.

The Mental Lessons

 

  • Pressure

 

I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform at this event. As a player with a lot of hours and tournaments under my belt, but few real results to speak of, this was my chance to shine! Representing Wales could be the thing that finally spikes my Magic career! I can show everyone just how great I am!

… this attitude is not helpful. Between my new job draining a ton of mental energy and near-constant MTGO testing in my down-time, my brain was fried. I came home after Nationals and slept for around twelve hours – the best sleep I’d had in weeks.

While having expectations of yourself is certainly not a bad thing; you won’t get anywhere thinking you’re never going to win; you should know that there’s a difference between wanting to win, and having to win. There’s always another event. Another PPTQ. Another GP. And next year? Another Nationals. This leads cleanly onto my next point…

 

  • Winning Attitude

 

Discussing this punt with this year’s third place competitor – Morgan Payne – I mentioned that I was pretty relaxed about the upcoming GP, as by comparison to Nationals, I have minimal expectations of myself. Nationals was around fifty players, with only six rounds of swiss. GPs are two-day events, featuring some of the best players in the world, with a whopping fifteen rounds to reach a coveted top eight spot. I was just excited to get the chance to play against these players. I was playing for the experience.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with this. If you play GPs for fun, and just enjoy the whole experience, that’s great. Magic caters to all kinds of players with all kinds of goals. Go nuts. If you’re like me, however, and are striving for constant competitive improvement, this attitude is terrible.

I’ve played around forty-five PPTQs in about eighteen months. In that time, I’ve landed in the top eight about thirty-eight times. I’ve been in the finals twice. I’ve won once, now close to seventeen months ago. I don’t remember any horrendous errors, but it doesn’t take a genius to recognise that in many of those top eight appearances, I must have made mistakes – whether blatant or subtle – that were costing me games. I’ve known this for a long time, and have accepted it. It’s become a running joke among my friends and teammates. I’m the most likely PPTQ player to top eight, but the least likely to win.

Speaking with Morgan, I realised that I had very much internalised this attitude. I am the guy who doesn’t win. Somewhere between that first win and the thirty-eighth loss, I lost my killer instinct. I fully expect to brick, for my opponent to outplay me, and for them to top their out.

This attitude is self-defeating. If you want to win, believe you can win. It doesn’t matter who is on the other side of the table and what event you’re playing, from a total newbie at FNM to Jon Finkel in a Pro Tour Final, you should believe that you can not only keep up with them but outdo them. You’ll draw the right cards, outmanoeuvre their plans, and punish their one-outer.

Take-aways

Hopefully, this article has given you something useful to work with – whether it was just a laugh at a rookie error, a new way to improve your testing, or if it’s even helped you re-examine the way you think about competitive Magic. About yourself.

I’ll be at GP Liverpool, and you’d better believe I’ll be gunning for the trophy.   

… I’ll also be reading the cards.

By Dylan Summers

 

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