Oh yeah, Nick Saban, dissecting his speech, yada yada. I had a bit of an ephiphony you see. My current life pattern, responsibilities, chores, tasks, whatever you want to call my activities of daily living, does not lend itself to writing a series, hell, it doesn't really lend itself much to writing at all, but as I am slowly coming to realize, all the important stuff in life requires time and effort, lots of effort and forcing myself to do it instead of watching Fringe (thanks Netflix!), but using my pragmatic side, I also need to recognize my limitations and act accordingly. So, no series, sorry if I let you down folks, but it is just not the direction I need to go at the moment, and there would be no guarantees on when I would get it finished anyways. I will, however, still provide you guys with what I perceive to be useful information so that you may go forth and conquer, and how about Nick Saban, man he really has team in it every game. I like to think of him as the Bill Belichek of college football. They both really understand that 'plug and play' mentality. (Editor's note: this article was started before Auburn got them in the Iron Bowl).

Ok, back to the title of the article, the Magic blues.

Past couple of weeks (maybe months) have been fairly trying. I have been close to packing up my cards and exiting Magic once again (bad idea, I just needed a couple of weeks break), the string of bad luck that I had just went through felt staggering, overwhelming really, and yes, continuing to be pragmatic, luck (or variance) is a part of the game and you are going to have some bad spots along the way, but more important is your choices that lead you to that spot. Deck choices, mulliganing, play choices, these all affect the outcome of your match, and without thorough game study, it can be hard to see where the subtle choices could have made all the difference. But I wasn't thinking that yesterday after exiting through a real heartbreaker of a game, no I was bemoaning my luck and compounding the problems fate had dealt me by not being more mentally resilient and prepared.

I write this article to not only reinforce to myself my pitfalls and my mistakes, but to allow others to learn from them and move forward, and to force myself to get better. Eddie, our fearless editor, has had a hell of a year, and to him I say hats off. My year, not so great, with so many 'oh so closes' and absolute scrubbings that left me questioning my determination and ability to play this game at a competitive level. I had to really sit down last night and contemplate the 'ol'Magic future' after scrubbing hard in an IQ that was won by a new friend of mine, with the same deck as me, and getting put out in quite a heartwrenching fashion, but that's where I had to stop and look at the things I was responsible for that lead to my current state. I realized there was a ton of things I could have done differently that would have lead to a different outcome. So I stopped there, went back to my list and journal, realized I still had faults I needed to work through before I could blame this squarely on something out of my control.

11. Learn to trust my gut instincts more when it comes to deck, card, or play choices.

12. Rekindle the fire to win, and regain my killer instinct.

With that said, I recently got a couple of chances to put my list into practice again and attempt to regain victory and thus win a tournament. For the first tourney, list items 3 and 7 came into play as those where the ones concerning deck choice and card selection for the deck. I started with the right deck, and that came from testing throughout the week. Check. My card choices were a little off based on what my expectations for the meta game would be and despite all my testing I still did not have the optimal deck list for the tournament, but it was still partially battle tested before it was taken into the tourney, so partial check. For the second tournament, once again I started with the right deck, but this time my card choices were correct and the deck better tuned and better tested, and item 12 was in full effect until the semis, but let's discuss things in proper order.

The first tournament was a IQ in Chattanooga, TN. The turn out was a bit depressing as only 23-24 souls turned out to battle. I choose G/R monsters, as the deck just has some free win hands and can do some pretty impressive things, also I feel like it has much better comeback potential than many of the decks in the format. I finished the Swiss 3-1-1, but should have been at least 4-0-1 or 3-0-2. I made a huge play mistake, very amateurish really. I was playing against Blue devotion and I had owned game 1, but game 2 was looking a little suspect. It got to a point where he decided he was going to give me only one more turn to do something awesome by dropping his hand into play. I looked at the deck and said, give me something good. I had a couple of outs still, 4 Polukranos, 2 mizzium mortars, 1 clan defiance. I drew a mizzium mortars, got super excited and played it straight into the judge familiar on the board because I played the wrong land, brilliant I know. I had Nykthos in hand and mentally I was still thinking, keep it in hand until the last possible second, if I play it instead of the mountain I can pay for the familiar. Game 3 was back and forth, but ultimately I feel short (another case of, I should have mulliganed). That match was why list item 2 and 4 should be moved up the list, in fact number 2 should really be number 1. I have a number 13 now, look at the board and do some quick analyzation before making any plays. I lost in the semis to midrange red piloted by the always amazing Derrick Sheets. Once again, I feel that I threw game 2 away by playing straight into Anger of the Gods. I know that deck morphs into more midrange, but I played straight into it anyway, that would be list item 4, again.

The second tournament was a Super IQ in Morristown, TN. Turnout for that event was more in line with my expectations of that event at around 75+ people. I can't remember exactsies. For this event, I had tuned my RG monster list into JUND monsters. The list for reference:

JUND Monsters

by Matthew Norton

4 Temple of Abandon

4 Stomping Ground

4 Overgrown Tomb

4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nix

3 Blood Crypt

2 Forest

2 Golgari Guildgate

(23) Lands

4 Elvish Mystic

4 Sylvan Caryatid

4 Polukranos, the World Eater

4 Burning Tree Emissary

3 Voyaging Satyr

2 Scavenging Ooze

2 Reaper of the Wilds

2 Arbor Colossus

2 Underworld Cerberus

(27) Creatures

4 Domri Rade

3 Garruk, The Only One in Standard

1 Xenagos, the Reveler

1 Mizzium Mortars

1 Clan Defiance

(10) Spells

Sideboard (15):

4 Nylea's Disciple

2 Mizzium Mortars

2 Bow of Nylea

2 Vraska

1 Chandra, Pyromaster

1 Mistcutter Hydra

1 Sire of insanity

1 Rakdos's Return

1 Flames of the Firebrand

The changes came from a number of different ideas that had been building on my testing sheet. When I play MODO, I keep a list of the decks I play against and my wins and loses against them, as well as, make notes on cards that were bad and cards that were awesome. I find this helps me to pin point problem matches, and the cards I should be focusing on to help improve that match-up. Needless to say, I cruised for most of the day. I took a loss in the first round to red devotion (for the record, I drew no sideboard cards in either game 2 or 3 and mulled to 6 in both. By the way, I boarded in 9 cards. Oh variance, you silly thing you). In round 6, I played against MBC, which is normally a fairly even match, but I mulled all 3 games and had to scrape for every bit of the draw I got. He asked me to concede to him because he had me dead in 2 turns, but I declined, pointing out that definitely knocks me out of top 8 contention, where as a draw keeps me live and him as well. Look, if it knocked both of us out of top 8, its a no brainer, I scoop, but I was still live with a draw, as well as him, and in fact I made top 8. In the quarters playing against, U/G Devotion. Overloaded mortars anyone? 'Nuff said. In the semi's, I played against Kibler's G/B aggro list, and in the end it got me. Resilient creatures, thought seizes, and removal all added up to my demise.


I should change the name of this article to "100 years in the making" because I have been working on it for a couple of months now. Main reason it took so long is that I had a string of events to go to and lots of prep to put in so that I could perform to the level I expect of myself. 7 events - 1 elite IQ, 3 super IQs, and 3 IQs. Top 8 in all of them except 2 of the regular IQs and in both of those I was a win away. So the prep was worth it. I only wrote about the first 2 for you folks. I could write 2-4 more pages on those events, but tournament reports by themselves won't make you better. You may gain some insight into the functioning of a deck or card choices or selections, and that is valuable, but it is not the same as testing and prepping yourself.

So lets do a tl;dr:

1. You have to prep, if you want to perform.
2. Never forget your fearless magical inventory.
3. When testing, keep a list of high performing cards and low performing cards.
4. I didn't say it in the article, but let me say it here, have someone just as excited and vested in performing as you are, you will do better.

I don't know if our fearless editor posted it yet, but we are looking at a rebranding so that we can do products with our logo on it without compromising WotC copyrights, which would be a losing proposition. So keep reading, thanks for hanging in there with us. We really want to publish good and regular content, and make it enjoyable for you, our reader. So any thoughts, wishes, or ideas, please let us know.

Thanks again for reading!
Matt Norton