Daily 11 + videos
AJ Sacher was kind enough to check back in with the blog, and had some criticism that you can find in the comments of the last post.
Because he knows more about winning at magic than I do, I’ll take his word for it. Essentially what he had to say was that I was playing a lot, but had really dropped off my attempts to analyze my play afterwards. That is true. I have been focusing my time on making sure I post regularly and playing a lot. I have really cut back on the level of analysis and explanation I attempt on each game.
I felt like I needed to play more, because I was starting to find myself in positions again where I just didn’t know how the opposing deck worked. It’s one thing to read in an article how great Sygg is in merfolk, but playing against it brings it home and gets your brain moving on how to beat it. Time has been my enemy lately, and between playing, blogging about playing, and analyzing my play, something had to give.
I’ve decided, therefore, that I’m going to stop trying to do complete tournament reports for every tourney I’m in. That will allow me to focus my posts on analyzing individual matches and improving my play. Besides, trying to bang out a description of every match was making those descriptions so short and full of assumptions that they weren’t useful.
With that in mind, I played another standard daily on Sunday. I went 2-2. I lost to Jund and Lark, and beat Jund and my nemesis, ‘Bye’. I’m playing 5cc, essentially ripped off from what Duotianshi is winning with in the premier events lately. I’m running a runed halo and 2 shriekmaws instead of lightning bolt. I’m also running 2 cloudthreshers and 1 baneslayer instead of 3 of the angels.
After splitting the Jund matches, I was at 1-1 and got paired against lark. Here are videos of the games. I put some of my thoughts about my mistakes in the description of the videos. I’m going to avoid trying to point out everything I might or might not have done wrong, because I don’t really know how valuable that is. Feel free to give feedback regarding how much I should speculate when I post these.
As usual, the quality isn’t awesome, but I find watching them on the youtube site in HD gives enough fidelity to figure out what’s going on. Any comments, either here or there will be appreciated.
Game 1
Game 2
Game 3
I’m going to make it a practice to review each match after any tournament, and then post at least 1 of the matches to this site for feedback.
“I’ve decided, therefore, that I’m going to stop trying to do complete tournament reports for every tourney I’m in. That will allow me to focus my posts on analyzing individual matches and improving my play. Besides, trying to bang out a description of every match was making those descriptions so short and full of assumptions that they weren’t useful.”
“I’m going to make it a practice to review each match after any tournament, and then post at least 1 of the matches to this site for feedback.”
This is a great idea and should improve your play a lot.
I’ve got a bunch of work right now, but hopefully soon, I’ll check out the videos and provide feedback.
I agree, good moves on both parts. I’m reviewing these videos now. Video #1:
Turn 5-play Creek. Don’t Vendilion. Wait until EOT and draw cards with Charm.
Turn 8. I would just hold. Esper Charm them draw step and Fallout when he attacks. Then you can play Finks and Baneslayer next turn (or Baneslayer leave up Cryptic if you draw an untapped land). There’s just no reason to expose your angel, and this way you can protect it with Charm and Cryptic.
And yeah, he did have the Path. Plus we’re getting smacked this turn for 8 instead of 2.
Turn 9, you Finks before you Fallout and that’s wrong. Just pass the turn and Fallout when he attacks after Charming him draw-step. Play your Finks on your turn after you knock down his forces so you aren’t just throwing away half of your Finks.
Turn 10, Play Jace. You’re going to hold up Cryptic for his one card and Fallout his team so he can’t attack it. Then you are Vendilioning his next draw step with Cryptic up to block the surviving Finks. Not to mention you’d have draw 3 more cards (2 from Jace and a draw step)
You played Vendilion into your own Fallout, then didn’t even block with it to save 2 damage. If you had held it, you could have just Crypticed anything he drew, and seen another card with his ability to make sure the coast was clear. Not to mention you would have been able to keep the 3/1 body.
Turn 12, play the comes-into-play-tapped land
Turn (turn after you Crueled the second time) You forgot to draw-step Vendilion him.
You keep playing untapped lands instead of tapped ones for no reason. You also sandbagged lands for no reason instead of just playing them. He doesn’t have discard and he doesn’t have the luxory of playing around tricks, so all that is doing is making it harder for you to do multiple things if you chain draw spells.
Thanks for the comments. I’m glad to see these on 2 levels. First, on review, I saw 3 of these mistakes. Second, on review, I didn’t see the rest.
Turn 5: So, I want to get come into play tapped lands whenever I can without limiting my options, and that’s basically why this is right, correct? Of course, I’m not sure I get why i want to draw cards more than I want to Clique him. I felt like I wanted the option to block or race him with the clique, and maybe soak up some of his removal. I’ll be happy to do it this way from now on, but I don’t understand why I’m doing it yet.
Turn 8: Mistake I saw. I thought back to what I was thinking and came up with ‘I hope he doesn’t have removal’, which seems fine when you have no cards left and you have to pray, but makes no sense when I had the tools to fight back.
Turn 9: Mistake I saw. Thank god. Seems very obvious in retrospect. It does make me wonder why these things are easier to see when you review instead of while I’m playing. Reminding myself not to throw away creatures when I intend to sweep seems obvious, but then, I make that mistake twice in this game.
Turn 10: Didn’t see the line of play. Just went ‘omg can’t play jace until his creatures are gone’. Stupid.
The lands sandbagging thing also seems obvious in retrospect, but I wouldn’t have noticed it if it wasn’t pointed out to me.
Thanks for the comments, I’m reviewing them while watching the match while waiting for the next round in a current daily. I appreciate it. I’m curious, how much effort is this for you? Are these plays just obvious to you at this point, and it’s just a matter of taking as long as it takes to type it up, or does this eat up your time?
Yeah, later on you may need 7 mana with 6 lands in play and a comes into play tapped land in hand when you could have played it earlier and still done everything you wanted to. It’s just pointless to waste a comes into play untapped land when you aren’t using the mana and have a comes into play tapped land that you can get out there.
Clique vs Charm, we’re not racing him. That’s just a fact. We are resolving Cruel Ultimatum this game. That is our game plan. Vendilion Cliques job is to Duress him at instant speed to clear the way for Cruel, or tap him out so he can’t counter the relevant spell. It is not here to attack.
Blocking is pointless because you have an Angel, a Finks, and a Cruel with lots of removal in your deck. We’re not wasting our 3/1 on half of his Finks because A) it gives him free card advantage, and B) we already have cards that outclass his so why invest anything to killing it when it’s already effectively neutralized. If we’re not racing or blocking, then Charm is obviously the better play. We want to use the Vendilion the turn before we untap and Cruel for reasons mentioned earlier.
These plays are very obvious to me at this point, and it’s just about actually sitting through the matches, pausing when I see something wrong and typing it up. The typing takes a lot longer because I have to explain an entire thought process that, for me, happens in a split second. So I have to mentally back-track and figure out why a certain move made me cringe and then explain the ramifications of both lines of play, etc.
Video #2: Turn 4, why did you play your land before Charming? You might hit a vivid and you can’t do anything for 1 colorless anyway. Give yourself more options. No reason to make that decision (“this is the land I am going to play”) before you have the free information from the Charm you are casting anyway.
last turn – why not evoke cloudthresher and save yourself 3 life as well as killing clique and half of Archmage? Also, I’m pretty sure Negate shouldn’t be in your deck post-board.
Video #3: MULLIGAN. Also, those spells are both pretty bad and probably shouldn’t be in the deck.
Turn 3 I would let Finks resolve, but that’s just the way I play those spots and might not be right. I do, however, know that keeping that land on top is absolutely wrong. You have 3 lands with 2 more in hand, and only a 6 drop to use that mana. You need spells. In the 3 draw steps you’re having anyway to make those land drops, you’ll hit a land or draw spell of some sort. What you need now is a way to not lose.
Turn 7 – you pulled the trigger on that Cloudthresher–>Cruel play too early. It’s good that you saw the way to do it (double up on threats to overload the counter-magic) But what you should have done was just Jund Charmed. Now he has to commit something to the board or you’ll win the stalemate because your deck is better suited for it and you have him out-mana’d. He’ll have to apply pressure of some sort, then you can do your play when he taps lower. Pulling the trigger this early leaves you open to Broken Ambitions and Negate/Flashfreeze if he boarded them in.
Yup, Negate. You had he right idea but pulled the trigger out of nowhere instead of waiting him out.
Turn 12 – We know he has Cryptic. He evoked Mulldrifter instead of casting it to leave up 4 mana a couple of turns ago. Running Crisis into it is pointless.
The End. Hope this helped.
Turn 4: Makes perfect sense. It’s a relic of newbie habits and not realizing there was ever a reason to wait to play land. And, not to be results oriented or anything, but I did draw into a vivid grove, so, well done.
Last Turn: I actually forgot that cloudthresher can be evoked, so that’s just a RTFC moment. I never really used that mode outside of faeries, and didn’t have my head in the right space to play it.
Game 3: The following are all honest questions. I’m hoping the fact that I don’t see a lot of what you have to say as clearly correct on this game means that it’s a good opportunity to correct some misconceptions I have.
Why am I mulling? What do I need in this match? I need to hit land drops, have a way to interact early, and a trump to baneslayer, right? So, I have too much land, but 5cc can draw itself out of screw/flood, right? I have an early sweeper and the mana to play it. If he has a slow start, then it’s a graveyard clearing effect, which I also like, right? What is my hand of 6 going to give me that’s better?
Also, why don’t I want these cards in my deck? I started out by thinking cloudthresher might be a decent meta call, since I don’t have more than 1 baneslayer. Thresher bugs me by not flying, but it trumps baneslayer by being big, is instant, improves the deck against faeries and can play at being a late game plumeveil. You noted later in your comment that he cared enough about it to counter it and it may have set up an ultimatum if I had played better. Why is it bad? After struggling, I thought about why I’m playing a card no one else is playing, and nearly abandoned 5cc as a result. Then I read….
That’s your article last week! Now they are cards that shouldn’t be in my deck? What’s that about?
Also, why not jund charm? What’s a better way to hate on the graveyard, with all this lark stuff going around? And it’s a sweeper, and it can help finks go around 3 times while winning a fight? Why is it bad?
Turn 3: I was afraid of dying to beatdown I couldn’t answer and had no other way to answer finks with a single card, and it sounds like you’re kind of ok with that play anyway. Why would you have let it resolve?
As for the clash and keeping the land, I thought cloudthresher was good for me, so, I wanted to be able to play it. Why are Jund charm and runed halo not ways to stay alive? What do I want instead, a sweeper?
Turn 7: Ok, Jund charm to make him cast something, then he’ll have less mana to deal with both cloudthresher and cruel. This makes perfect sense. But it also seems to validate jund charm and cloudthresher. What’s up? Or rather, imagine I had better cards in my deck and could make a similar play with those. What would they have been? Cloudthresher seems ideal for doing what we are suggesting would possibly have been a winning strategy.
Turn 12: So, the play is waiting for another land and protecting crisis with cryptic? Or does crisis even do enough in this match and this board position. And if not, isn’t it good to get through the cryptic by making him counter something?
As for whether it helps, I guess I’ll have to look to the long term to know that. I’m certainly grateful for the effort that you’re putting forth on my behalf, whether it’s easy for you or not. If you continue to check the blog and comment, then you can tell me whether or not you think my play is improving without me relying on being results oriented.
Thanks for the explanations on Video 1. I can’t find anything here that I can logically dispute.
I have my next match to upload, an absolute beating I received from Faeries. I played Gavin Verhey’s Lark deck tonight, and it’s not a good matchup. I felt like in one of the games I had a chance until I played right into spellstutter sprite. I’ll post about that when I get a chance, and after I’ve reviewed the rest of the matches from tonight.
I know I said this in the other reply, but thanks again for the effort. When you’re isolated away from a competitive playgroup, getting feedback from someone that you know can show you better plays seems very valuable, and one of the best reasons for starting the blog. I admit to curiosity about why you are doing it. Obviously, I can’t make you answer that, but I am interested. I wonder sometimes if it’s interesting to watch a bad player struggle to get better, or what might make people check in and comment.
You’re mulling because that hand does nothing. Cloudthresher’s only good against Angel which he is probably boarding out, and Jund Charm is just generally weak. You can’t beat an Archmage, you have no sources of card advantage, and you aren’t doing anything on a vast majority of your turns. The hand is just bad.
Jund Charm is just a bad card. Volcanic Fallout is way better in every way (except it domes you for 2, but it’s worth it). My Cloudthresher suggestion was just that, a suggestion. It was actually quite good for a while when everyone was playing UW Slayer. The problem is, they board out their Angels most of the time and it’s really not that good against them otherwise.
Like I said, letting Finks resolve there is just what I would do, but I’m fairly certain most people would counter it if I asked them about the play.
In this situation, Jund Charm is just killing a 2/2 so you don’t die to it because you’re at 8. Literally any other card that could be in that slot would do that as well, so that is not validating Jund Charm in the slightest. Cloudthresher is actually quite good in this spot, you just misplayed it. Just because it happened to be good this one time you drew it (or a million times when you draw it) doesn’t mean it is good. That’s called being results oriented. For examples of cards that do the same thing for you in that spot, re: Vendilion Clique or any card draw spell.
You’re not going to “punch through his Cryptic and somehow take control of this game by playing fair. You don’t have the resources to do that. Running into Cryptic does literally nothing for you. What you should do is hope to hit a land and Crisis. Then, if he Cryptics, you can Cryptic back, protecting the Crisis and bouncing a creature that will then be RFGd (excuse me, Exiled) by said Crisis. That is your best chance of stabalizing this game.
Lark against Faeries isn’t actually that bad of a matchup. It’s like 40-60 tops nowadays. I was talking to Gavin a few days ago about it actually, and how everyone still thinks it’s just unwinnable. We’ve both been playing Lark variants for a long time and we both seemingly dominate that match-up because it is a VERY VERY VERY skill intensive pairing, and most Faeries players are A) really bad, B) don’t know how to play the match-up, and C) A and B again for emphasis. It’s especially easy in person when people give a billion physical tells to tip their hand, but even online you can decipher their hand from their play fairly easily, and if you can put them on their exact tricks, Faeries becomes incredibly easy to dismantle.
You’re welcome. I responded for a mixture of three reasons I think. Firstly, because I respect someone who is willing to listen and try and learn and get better. Secondly, because I do this anyway for most Magic videos except without typing up response because I love Magic and watch and read as much about it as possible. Thirdly, you were a huge asshole to me for no reason, namecalling and preaching to me about the tone of my articles, which is pretty moronic, so I decided I wanted to be the bigger man and comment. As a coralary of that last part, I enjoy showing people who are dicks like that how out of their element they really are.
Time for Madden. I’ll review the Faeries match later.
Thanks for the explanations, and the time taken to write them.
Your motives are interesting and give me hope that I will be able to generate an increasingly larger body of players to elicit feedback from.
As for your third reason, needless to say, I do not agree with your perspective. I did ask you, though, so I won’t talk shit about it. You’ve likewise been a gentleman with your comments when I wasn’t provoking you, and I very much enjoyed your last article.
Again, I don’t really give a shit what you think about my perspective. If I wanted the help of random people, and have them preach to me about being condescending to people that are worse than me, I would ask for it. I don’t care what you think of the “tone” of my articles, because even if someone gets their panties in a bunch because they don’t like that I tell people that are bad that they are bad, they are still going to be learning more from that article than they would in a month otherwise.
Not to mention that people who aren’t just out to be offended enjoy the hell out of my writing.
The point I’m trying to make is, your opinion of my writing means nothing to me. Although I’m glad you enjoyed the most recent one, you have already thrown away all credability as a critic of my articles by calling me a douchebag, showing that my sense of humor, straight-shooting, and overall writing style goes over your head.
I have nothing against you personally, which is why I’m still commenting on your videos.
I still don’t agree with your sentiments. But my opinion isn’t any more inherently valid than anyone else’s. I also have nothing personal against you.
I like it when we talk about magic.