Essays on Magic: The Gathering

Pt 1 - "Play the Best deck" - Redefined If you have much experience in competitive magic, you've probably stumbled upon the  saying "Just play the best deck" many times. This saying is one of my biggest pet peeves in all of magic. I believe it is over used, misleading, lazy, and often.. not true. The intention behind this article is to explore some insights of  successful meta-gaming and hopefully provide a more useful definition of what a "best deck" is. Part of the issue with using the term "best deck" to refer to the "best recently performing deck" is the language of "best" is connected to a deep intuition of what it means to be the best at something. When we think of the "best player" in hockey, we think of the best performing, highest skill , scored the most points etc. Attributes that are fairly static. If you were the best player in the world last week, the chances you will be this week is extremel...

Introduction- Trip Report (First section is a short blog, skip to next for deck analysis) Wow! My first arena MC was easily the best MTG experience I've had to date. What a wild ride! The event itself had an absurd production value that added to the grandiosity of it all. Put the pro tour I went to in Spain to shame. Besides the competition, the highlight for me was undoubtedly the people I met. High level competitive magic has an awesome community of players full of unique personalities. Their attitudes weren't remotely predatory or parasitic despite the zero-sum competition dynamic (for you to win, your friend has to lose). Truly great sportsmanship.  It was an honor to compete against many players I'd followed and respected for years. Overall, I was happy with my performance and very happy with my deck choice. Felt like it was the  second or third best positioned deck in the room. (Simic Flash was incredibly built). Went 5-0 on Day 1 and 3-4 on Day 2 for a 66% wi...