Getting ready for Portland

I've played a lot of Magic Online last week with Nix Tix and being confined to my apartment thanks to being on-call for work. (I did get paged in the first round of a draft and had to drop it though.) I have tons of replays I can go through and I've already started to note the mistakes I've been making. They range from "ticks", or really dumb mistakes that would make you slap your forehead, like forgetting to fetch or cycle at end step; bonehead mistakes that aren't the same as ticks, per se, but mistakes that just shouldn't happen if you're more aware, like tapping mana incorrectly when you were planning a second play, or walking into a trick you saw, or missing a point of damage, or not seeing a kill on the board; and then there are the high-level planning mistakes that could have altered the game in the long run, like not being aggressive enough in the early game, or playing a less-optimal creature for a particular drop, or playing the wrong removal on a creature.

The point is there are lots of things going wrong. While I cannot pinpoint patterns in them where I could just tell myself to stop doing X and I'll get rid of 90% of my mistakes, I think it's fine to analyze what you could have done differently. Tonight I will probably do a draft, and then go through as many more replays as I can and write down the mistakes and go over them on the trip Friday night to Portland.

I did my first Shards paper draft since Atlanta last night at First Pick at (finally!) managed to 4-0. Since Alara was released I had been running really cold at First Pick. I've done maybe 20 drafts at First Pick and cashed at maybe 4 of these... which, I'm pretty sure, is worse than flipping a coin every match.

Anyway, I drafted a Naya deck that had some pretty good cards like double Wild Nacatl and double Naya Battlmage, but also had some holes, like missing some bears and having to start Incurable Ogre (with nothing for it to activate) and Thorn-Thrash Viashino (without good things to eat).

I've started writing down every card I see again because I was forgetting them on MODO and then not knowing what to sideboard and also walking into them. I've started initialing damage sources on my score pad too, which I started in Atlanta. So WN is damage from Wild Nacatl, VS is Stinger, VD is Viscera Dragger... I also just felt a lot less pressure when I play against the best players. Normally I'm very afraid to make a mistake and I get very nervous, but I don't know if it was just awareness or getting used to playing against good people who are just computer screens to me or just watching better players in Atlanta, but I was way more calm, and I just focused on playing correctly rather than not blowing the game.

It was watching in Atlanta an old friend and former state champion from NC Orrin play that maybe inspired me to be more calm when I play. It was a game in the last rounds of Day 1, and he hardly said a word. I don't think I'm a real talkative player, but if eliminates a chance to get overexcited, why not? Of course, I don't want my plays to be unintentionally ambiguous as far as game state, but it was a little inspiring to see his operations. It's probably an interesting exercise to try to say as little as possible in a match and see if it affects your play and thought process for the better.

But anyway, it certainly felt different tapping the cards than it has all season, but I couldn't be convinced that I was actually outplaying people because so many of my games were blowouts or manascrew wins! I mean, that's the game my deck wanted to play, and I did tick a few times, like forgetting two counters on a Algae Gharial or tapping wrong so I couldn't run out a second guy or even represent a pump, but still... it's hard to objectively say that I went 4-0 and beat good people because I have gotten better. Again, why MODO is such a great tool because you can review the wins and see if you really did play optimally.