Magical cards.

Woo! Caught up on sleep! (He says as he is staying up past midnight again). I ended up coming home from work on Thurs and passing out. I woke up just long enough to make dinner and then went back to bed until 9am Friday morning. This means I skipped the workout on Thurs, but I think sleep was more important at this point.

Now that I am well rested I should talk about last weekend. First off, it was a blast. Anytime you can be around so many people with a shared passion it's a rush. I literally spent 5 days doing nothing but thinking about, talking about, and playing Magic. It was awesome. Sadly I didn't do particularly well in any of the tournaments, but I'm not terribly surprised.

I guess now is a good time to start explaining some of the elements of magic, so I can explain why I scrubbed out. You are welcome to skim ahead as this is going to get kind of geeky, technical, and non intuitive for a bit.

For starters, there are basically two types of magic tournaments: constructed and limited. Constructed is where you bring a deck of your own build to the tournament and test it against the decks everyone else brings. Limited is when you show up and either get a bunch of packs to build a deck out of, or you draft cards one at a time from a slightly smaller shared pool of product. In either limited format you then try and build the best deck you can with what you get, though draft decks tend to be a little less clunky since you can draft along the lines of a strategy and work with your neighbors to try not to fight over the same cards. But that's more than you need to know.

Most of the events I played in were constructed, starting with the last chance qualifiers the day before the main event: US Nationals. Aaron and I spent Thursday morning (the day of the LCQ's) building this funky metagame deck for me to play. When I refer to the metagame I mean the anticipated landscape of decks you expect to be present. We were building a deck that was not one of the established archetypes, but rather one that would, hopefully, beat the decks we expected to see in the highest numbers. It did an ok job, but being that we built it that morning, it's not surprising that it needed some tuning. Still, I managed to top 8 one of the LCQ's, though only 1st place gets the invite to Nats.

I also played in a Pro Tour Qualifier, and did marginally well until the later rounds. Again, it was a janky out of nowhere deck. Any success was impressive. The other big event I played in was the $3k draft challenge. This was a limited tournament where we were broken into pods so that we could draft cards from our 3 packs each (24 packs total at the table). I have to say I was pretty pleased with the deck I drafted. I think more than anything I was just outclassed by a lot of my opponents. Several of them were folks who had been competing in Nats.

If you skipped ahead you can start reading again now.

Even though I did not win anything, I definitely felt the influence of PCP on my performance. More than anything else, I never succumbed to the fatigue and hunger that can effect players during long tournaments. Many players fail to take into account how physically challenging 9 hour long rounds of magic really is. Despite the venue's best efforts, I managed to keep a supply of reasonably healthy food on hand and stayed fed and hydrated. More than anything, this meant I was able to keep a clear head and keep having fun all day.

The other thing I really noticed, especially in the draft, was how much I saw my game improving from one game to the next. Even if I wasn't playing much better, I was noticing my mistakes more. After every game I was able to scrutinize my play with more tenacity than before. What would have seemed previously to have been an unwinable game, I was now able to see I had actually made x y z decisions wrong and thrown the game away. This may seem like a let down but it's not. To me, seeing that I screwed up a game like this meant something totally exciting: I could improve!

Nothing excites me more than getting better at something. So when I fail and no matter how I look at it there was nothing I could have done differently to succeed, it really frustrates me. What then can I improve? So to be seeing my own game play with a new refocused lense, and see the elements that need improving, well that's just awesome. I think there is no denying that my physical condition is what allowed me to reach that mental state.

On a side note, today when I left work I noticed that my left knee was starting to hurt a little when I peddled my bike. I ignored it, got home, did my jumpropes and my work out, and then sat the the computer. Now, as I get ready for bed, it really hurts. it's fine if it's stationary, but if I move it or try to lift weight with it, man it hurts. I'm hoping some sleep makes it feel better. We'll see.

Also, good luck to all the Vermonters who made Day 2 of Grand Prix: Boston (Pro level Magic Tournament). I wish I could be down there with you (stupid work). Kick some ass for me!