Plan

Here we go with my initial attempts to be a better competitive magic player.

• Publish a Fearless Magic Inventory (link requires Starcity premium subscription), ala Sam Stoddard.
• Select 3 things from the inventory each week to concentrate on based on how badly it impacts my game and how difficult it is to correct.
• Report on my progress on those 3 things each week.
• Initially focus on Standard Constructed.  This is the format for the next MOCS season, as well as the most commonly played constructed format on Magic Online.
• Select a group of writers in the magic community, and follow their advice to the exclusion of other theorists.  For this one, I’m actually going to have to sort of disrespect my favorite writers, since in many cases, they do not win enough.  I’m trying to mitigate, not reinforce my Johnny tendencies.  So I’m starting with people who win a lot, and have performed well recently.  To begin, I’ll be relying on the advice of Patrick Chapin, Luis-Scott Vargas, Sam Black,  Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa, and Olivier Ruel (who, of course, as I write this published an article saying that he’s in a slump).
• Try to become more involved in the community of Magic Online in two ways.  Participating in discussions on strategy forums and trying to generate even small numbers of visitors to this blog.  The more help I’m getting, the better.
• Start with a Net Deck.  I’m way too interested in being a unique snowflake and using my own ideas which I realize are suboptimal but I play anyway because I enjoy being different.  I’m going to play an established deck, tuned as suggested by one of the writers above.  I’m sure that tuning decks for a metagame will be a skill I need to cultivate, but a solid starting deck should immediately make me more successful.
• Establish a milestone that I’m working towards, and evaluate my progress towards that milestone each week.
• Republish / Edit this plan to incorporate new ideas as needed.