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52 FNMs – The Ideal FNM

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Someday, I’ll stop getting excited about playing in big tournaments. I’m really looking forward to that. It never fails—if I’m in a hotel room in some random city on the east coast with a bunch of other Magic bros, I’m the one who’s wide awake at 6:00 A.M., I’m the one who pisses everyone off after using all the hot water (being an only child: not conducive to learning to take short showers), and I am the one who wanders down to the continental breakfast, only to find that it’s either not continental or not open that fucking early. Left to my own devices, I invariably walk around in hopes of clearing my head a little bit.

Last weekend, there was a Modern tournament in Syracuse, New York. First prize was a mint, Unlimited Mox Pearl, second prize was two boxes of Innistrad, third and fourth prizes were each a box of Innistrad, and everyone else got a big fat, “Go fuck yourself.” I was pretty excited for this tournament, so I (unintentionally) got up at 6:00 A.M., durdled around my apartment for a while, and went down to the site at 9:00 A.M., only to find that the store didn’t open for another hour. I might as well have been staring at the closed breakfast buffet in the Baltimore Holiday Inn . . . or whatever. I decided a walk around the mall (the store was in a mall) would be a good way to clear my head. I was very wrong.

Magma Burst or Burst Lightning? Yeah, Burst Lightning goes to the dome, but Kitchen Finks totally wrecks me, and Magma Burst could make me look like a genius. Oh, look, a Finish Line. I wonder how much those Reebok Zig Techs are there. Sure, I’d look like a dipshit in them, but I’ll be damned if they aren’t the most comfortable fucking things ever. Those Victoria’s Secret displays sure are nice. Holy shit—a signed Jim Kelly jersey? That thing made it through the ’90s? Should I be running twenty-one lands or twenty-two? I could really use that Stomping Ground. Should I be running more than one Cryptic Command? Brookstone is fucking sweet. I’m going to go back in time and invent Brookstone, but I’ll make it so that white trash people have the option to rent the stuff if they want, and then I will DESTROY THEIR FACES with interest rates, because I am a goddamn genius. I really hope I don’t accidentally untap any Vedalken Shackles today. Those Victoria’s Secret displays sure are nice. Another signed Jim Kelly jersey? Why isn’t anyone buying those things? I really hope I don’t run into too many AEther Vials today.

In my first round, I was swept by mono-red. I told everyone who asked about it that I drew four lands in two games. I did not tell them that I tried to Deprive an unearthed Hellspark Elemental. I ended up finishing X–2. The cutoff was a clean X–1–1. I lost my other match when I had two Delver of Secrets onboard, drew Lightning Bolt, and tried to reveal it to transform my creatures. My opponent rightfully no-sirred me.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have a bit of a problem with entitlement. I’ve been playing Magic for a long time, and most of the people I play against at Cloud City have been playing Magic for about twelve minutes. So, I think I’m entitled to beat them, and I get pissed when I don’t. This is retarded for a lot of reasons, the primary reason being that in Magic, nothing is given to you unless your opponent gives it to you. That sounds pretty obvious, but it’s worth mentioning because I’ve been giving my opponents quite a bit lately.

Round One – Bret Weed

Oh, yeah, I’m playing this deck:

Bret was playing something pretty close to the seventy-five-card mirror, although I never saw any Midnight Hauntings out of him.

At some point in our first game, the board is clogged up, and Bret taps two lands to move his Runechanter's Pike onto his Snapcaster Mage. I say, “Okay,” then Bret, after tanking for a while, asks for the take-back. I no-sir him.

I’m not sure if that’s what I should be doing at FNM, but I know Bret well enough to feel comfortable no-sirring him, and I’m hoping he won’t take it personally (it was not personal) or be offended; I’m trying to become more comfortable playing tight Magic, and to do that, I have to get into the habit of committing my opponents to their actions. Maybe FNM is the wrong place for that, but I’m really starting to think it’s not.

What is the ideal FNM? What is casual Magic? I could say this every week, but I really liked Jesse Mason’s article last week about “casual Magic” and how it lives in a fantasy world where the goal isn’t actually winning Magic. I respect players who like both, but I think it’s unfair to force someone who prefers playing Magic one way to play the other way.

His mistake doesn’t end up mattering because he’s mana flooded and has a metric shit-ton of mana anyway, and he ends up winning when I draw a Sword of War and Peace and make a horrible alpha strike with my two creatures (I was really excited about the Sword of War and Peace) to his four when the life totals are 4 and 4. He just blocks, cracks back, and kills me.

Game 2 sucks—he draws two spells while I chain a lot of Midnight Hauntings.

Bret set up Game 3 masterfully, getting in there for 1 for seven straight turns with an innocuous Invisible Stalker, tempoing me out with Vapor Snags all the while. Eventually, I get my own Invisible Stalker, and thanks to my own Runechanter's Pike, I get him to 7. He’s dead in two turns, and all he’s got are two cards and an Invisible Stalker.

He casts his own Runechanter's Pike, equips, and attacks. I go from 13 to 8. He’s gonna have a tough time killing me next turn with that Runechanter's Pike. On my turn, I put Bret to 2 life and say, “Go.”

Bret untaps.

Bret casts a second Runechanter's Pike. He equips.

Bret attacks and kills me.

Welp, that sucks.

Round Two – Bye

I hate Magic.

Round Three – Matt Brown

Sometimes, there are regulars you just can’t get over the hump against. No matter what fucking happens, it just feels that you can never beat them. I don’t think it’s too bold of me to say that I am that guy to Matt. Don’t get me wrong, Matt’s a helluva nice guy, but I just can’t see myself losing to him. I think he might acknowledge the same thing . . . because he rolled his eyes when I came to sit down across from him, and he said to himself, “Well, let’s see if I can get a game from you at least.” He was playing a Grixis control homebrew.

Game 1, I start on Delver of Secrets into Invisible Stalker and get two-for-oned by his Slagstorm. Luckily, I have the Geist of Saint Traft while he’s tapped out, and he has no answers for it whatsoever.

Our second game goes really long, so I don’t remember it much. The highlight is when he goes to play some really big creature and has 5 mana up. I have infinite mana, so I cast Mana Leak on it. He Mana Leaks back. I Negate his Mana Leak. He pays 3.

Not a play I make on a daily basis (thanks Christ), but the brain fart seals the Game 2 loss.

Game 3 is pretty uninteresting; he mulls, I have turn-one Delver of Secrets, turn-three Sword of War and Peace, turn-four equip, and crack for 9, and he has no removal ever.

Round Four – Aaron Garritillo

Aaron’s playing Wolf Run Ramp.

Game 1, I win with a turn-one Insectile Aberration after I counter everything he plays. In our second game, my clock is just not fast enough; I deal with his first and second threats, but he keeps ripping them, and I run out of answers. Like I said, it would’ve been fine if I’d just had a faster clock. I’m not saying Aaron was lucky against me at all; part of being the tempo deck is having a fast clock as well as having answers for the threats of the opponent that get in your way. In this game, I had the answers, I just had no board presence—other than a lone Snapcaster Mage—to capitalize on Time Walking him twice with Mana Leaks. If I can’t capitalize on that kind of tempo swing any more than drawing for my turn, swinging for 2, and saying go, I probably just deserve to lose.

Part of being the tempo deck in this Standard format is knowing which of the opponent’s spells interact with you and which to counter. If the opponent doesn’t interact with your board presence and never will (example: Solemn Simulacrum), odds are it’s okay to let those threats stick and just keep trading blows with him and save your answers for his big endgame spells . . . and turn your Vapor Snags into Time Walks when you can. This ends up being pretty relevant in our third game; thanks to an early Gitaxian Probe, I know he’s holding a grip full of Titans, one of which is Inferno Titan. Aaron goes to resolve a Primeval Titan first. I’m holding a Mana Leak, but I let him have it, intending to Vapor Snag it and counter his next threat.

Did you spot the mistake?

Even if he taps out for Primeval Titan, it still resolves. If Aaron makes his land-drop next turn—and he’s a ramp deck, so he will—that Inferno Titan in his hand is certainly resolving, and I’m dead. As it goes, Aaron makes his land-drop and casts Primeval Titan. I go through my outs, and I Mana Leak.

I have five lands in play. One of them is a Moorland Haunt. The rest are duals, save for one Island.

Guess what I tapped to cast the Mana Leak?

I’ve always been super-strident about tapping my lands the right way; that was my final brain fart in a night of complete daggers than I was in complete control of. My out was to make a Spirit on his end step—Aaron’s at 7, but he has a Solemn Simulacrum to my Snapcaster Mage—and hope I draw Equipment to deal the final 7 damage. However, because I tapped the Moorland Haunt, this was unable to happen.

I untap and draw Runechanter's Pike, and I start laughing like Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places.

I gotta keep pluggin’ away. More Magic, not just necessarily with the same deck, is what makes you better. There’s Monday Night Modern, there’s FNM, and there’re some PTQs and things. Next week, I’ll be piloting Conley Woods’s GP-winning deck. I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes.

Oh, and if any of you are going to Grand Prix Boston this summer, I’ll be the guy at the breakfast buffet. It’ll be closed.

Jon Corpora

Pronounced Ca-pora

@feb31st

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