Magic Put A Spell On Me

It's obvious that I've not been posting on here in quite some time, and the reason is that pretty much all of my downtime has gone into Magic: The Gathering.

I had been reading articles, doing research into the meta, and tweaking the deck that I eventually ran at the "2011s" yesterday.

Here (That "Here" will be a link to the decklist as soon as MTGFanatic fixes their site) is the deck that I ran at the State Championships, that got me 57th place out of 108 total entrants. I would like to think that I did better than that other 51, and in a sense I did, but the truth of the matter is that at the end of the tournament, there were only 63 players still in.

57th out of 63 places just doesn't feel as good.

Looking back, there are certainly things I could have done to make the deck more consistent. It played strong in early turns, but when it came down to winning, I hadn't put enough finishers in. I had discussed the deck the previous night with Carl some, but didn't change the list, and then he text me again on event day, but it was too late for me to have changed my list.

In his text, he again urged me to consider adding draw and bolstering my finishers by adding maybe more titans or swords to my deck. Now, as I think about the games I played, other than a few mistakes made during play, I feel I should have listened when we spoke on Friday night, and at least tested the options.

Overall, I was overconfident in my deck's ability. It tested well in the preceeding days, and I felt like I had the major players covered with my sideboard options. I feel, perhaps, that if testing had gone worse, I would have been more prone to make the changes. It would have helped to have had more practice against Geistblade, Mono Red, and the mirror, as that's what I played against.

Having said all that, I did have fun. It's always a good experience to play in larger tournaments like that, if for no other reason than to play against people who you'd not normally have the chance.

I'd like to congratulate the guys I went down with... Taylor, who took 49th, and David, who was edged out of Top 8 contention on tie-breakers and took a very strong 12th place. I'd also like to congratulate all the Top 8, and especially the Arkansas State Champion and all the other State and Provincial Champions out there!