Monday, July 6, 2015

The Walking Dead

This is the final post in the "too much personal info" trilogy of blog posts. Puca is taking off and it has been a while since a new shop has opened, either will be a welcome relief to write about.

Last week I finished Dragons Of Tarkir with a pretty awful 0-3 with a deck I thought was pretty solid after drafting it. It was an aggressive black red deck with good removal and lots of low drops and some decent punch later up in the mana curve. I didn't feel I played too badly either, though I certainly wasn't "feeling it" after the pre draft ruckus.
The deck I drafted while looking good on paper was pretty poorly positioned in a format filled with low cost guys with huge toughness that people main deck. Magic is not the same as it was 6 or so years ago and for an entire format I have been oblivious to it. All of my opponents had a 2 or 3 drop with at least 3 toughness and usually 4. I had opponents drop 1 mana 0/4's against me.
None of the games were virtually over by turn 5 just because I curved out, all the games turned into a grind.

The first round went to game 3 and after taking fatal damage I looked at my next card on top of my library, it was a Sarkhan's rage which would have been a lethal amount of direct damage to my opponents face.

In the second round I used a twin bolt to kill a flipped Silumgar Assassin with the trigger on the stack. My opponent tried to tell me that didn't kill it in a way that obviously included an unsaid "tough luck, you wasted your spell". After explaining that while Morph doesn't use the stack the trigger does we moved on. Nothing wrong with that exchange but later I reminded him to gain life from his Qarsi Sadist trigger he forgot about in his hast to clear away my blocker with his Ruthless Deathwing. I drew a Temur battle rage off the top which would have killed my opponent the next turn if not for that two life.
My opponents aren't handing out lollipops so why am I. Playing against new players is a different case but the players present were all veterans.

Round 3 I played against a turn two 2/3 and a couple of turns later a 2/4 with vigilance. This is, in the final game of the format where I realised that the aggro plan was just not going to work. I love playing a million 5 drops, why wasn't I doing that like everyone else.
The reason is quite meta and it's not really Magic related.

I suffer from Trigeminal neuralgia which is a condition where your brain thinks it's in agony even if nothing is wrong due to an unprotected nerve. To cope with this I have a pain killer prescription which leaves me as a happy zombie. It's made me quite shallow in that I don't think deeply about anything, which isn't that conductive to playing Magic the Gathering. There have been days when I can't legitimately remember who won the dice roll that took place 10 seconds ago.
If someone asked me what I know about the latest draft format or what I think Origins draft will be like I will just look at them like a deer in the headlights.
Since changing my prescription in January my results have nose dived. I like to blame Fate Reforged for it's unbalanced rares but that excuse just expired. It looks like I will be changing prescriptions in 3 months which might help but as just as likely to leave me all groggy.
My plan to attend the Modern WMCQ this year might be a bit of a fools errand if I can't turn this slump around.

Anyway, that's all the stuff that has been hiding in my closet and I am just happy to get this out there and off my chest. Hopefully nobody reads it.


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