I don’t want to sound trite but you were perfect

Monday



Wednesday



Neither Ben nor I talk to Greg about Standard at all, but we expect he’ll register UW Control and he does. He has a Kefnet in his sideboard, for reasons. “Durdle bird is the word,” he says.

Ben registers stock Hollow One. We spend some time debating whether to cut an Engineered Explosives or a Grim Lavamancer from the sideboard to make room for the 4th Leyline of the Void. We decide on Lavamancer so that we’ll have access to 2 of each card, and since Explosives provides such an unique effect. This proves to be a slight mistake.

After spending over three hours debating whether I want to play a Mirran Crusader or a Serra Avenger and the third Rest in Peace or a Surgical Extraction, I register the following 75:

4 Mother of Runes

4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

4 Stoneforge Mystic

4 Phyrexian Revoker

4 Flickerwisp

2 Recruiter of the Guard

1 Sanctum Prelate

1 Mirran Crusader

1 Palace Jailer



4 Aether Vial

4 Swords to Plowshares

1 Batterskull

1 Sword of Fire and Ice

1 Umezawa’s Jitte



3 Karakas

4 Wasteland

4 Rishadan Port

1 Horizon Canopy

1 Mishra’s Factory

5 Plains

6 Snow-Covered Plains



SB:

3 Rest in Peace

2 Council’s Judgment

2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

2 Path to Exile

1 Faerie Macabre

1 Pithing Needle

1 Ethersworn Canonist

1 Containment Priest

1 Leonin Relic-Warder

1 Walking Ballista

On 24 lands: Credit to Jacob Nagro for making me play more lands. With how widespread Daze and Wasteland are in Legacy, how many powerful utility lands exist, and how badly D&T wants to hit its fourth land drop, playing at least 24 lands is mandatory. A part of me thinks the optimal build of D&T features 26 or 27 lands, 4 Horizon Canopy, and 2 or 3 Mishra’s Factory, but I’m personally not quite there yet.

On Mishra’s Factory and Horizon Canopy: Because I was playing more lands than usual, I wanted to play utility lands that I could reliably recoup a full card’s worth of value from. Factory and Canopy are just absurdly powerful cards and I was happy with both throughout the tournament. Mishra’s Factory in particular makes playing around planeswalkers significantly easier.

On Cavern of Souls: I hate Cavern of Souls. It’s not really an utility land and it’s not really a white source, the double-white sideboard cards are powerful and important, and most of the time your opponent still going to get value from their Force of Will or Daze down the line. Brainstorm exists. I’d prefer to play more Factories, Canopies, or Plains.

On Brightling: Brightling just isn’t a very powerful card. The main problem is that it doesn’t have evasion, so it winds up staring off against ground creatures that cost less mana than it does. When you spend 3 mana on Brightling, your opponent spends 1 mana on Gurmag Angler, and then your best case scenario is to invest 3 more mana to trade and gain 5 life, that’s a horrible exchange. Even if you have a Sword of Fire and Ice, Brightling still can’t beat Gurmag Angler in combat. Mirran Crusader attacks past Tarmogoyf, Angler, or a wall of Bitterblossom tokens and can win the game out of nowhere with equipment, and Serra Avenger is cheaper, flies, and still insulates you against the usual hate cards like Massacre, Dread of Night, and Sulfur Elemental. The only matchup where Brightling is better than Crusader and Avenger is Miracles. While it does provide an unique and valuable effect there, Miracles just isn’t prevalent enough to justify it.

On Remorseful Cleric: Cleric is likely fine, but I don’t see the point. You’re unlikely to tutor for it over Sanctum Prelate and Palace Jailer, neither the body nor the effect are particularly powerful, and it’s vulnerable to every sideboard card.

On Phyrexian Revoker: My general philosophy with D&T in Legacy is to skew my maindeck towards the matchups I expect to face least and my sideboard towards the matchups I expect to face most, because the white sideboard cards in Legacy are so potent. I expected to play mostly fair decks at the PT, like Delver, Grixis Control, Eldrazi, and the mirror, so I shaved the targeted hatebears in my sideboard for cards like Path to Exile and Gideon. I maindecked a bunch of Revokers so I’d still have enough cards to submit a presentable 60 against all the combo decks. In retrospect, I wish I’d gone even further and I played 3 Revokers and 1 Serra Avenger, but I was afraid of not having enough interaction against Storm.

On Palace Jailer: Some people don’t play this card, but it’s such an absurdly powerful effect to have access to that I can’t understand why. I’m not sure about playing 2 in the 75 just because Gideon is more flexible and reliable, but 1 is mandatory.

On Walking Ballista: Walking Ballista is the truth.

Thursday

I get into Minneapolis at 6 AM, on three hours of sleep, irritable. I take the light rail to my Airbnb, welcomed by a procession of broken windows and “Beware of Dog” signs. It’s cold and overcast. I walk past an abandoned skeeball runway, a high school sports field piled high with dirt, flaking murals.

When I get to the Airbnb, I discover that the host hasn’t left the keys in the lockbox yet. I regret not confirming my check-in time with the host yesterday, text her to let her know that I’ve arrived, and start looking for places to pass the intervening time on my phone. I find a park with an adjacent cafe and set off.

I get a large coffee and spend a couple hours finishing Ken Wong’s Florence and Michelle Perez and Remy Boydell’s The Pervert. Now, in addition to feeling gloomy and exhausted, I’m emotionally devastated. I can’t take sitting anymore and head to the park.

The park is massive and meticulously maintained. It features a lake, a baseball square, and gymnastics equipment. It’s practically empty. There are a handful of joggers and a television crew interviewing some students. I see two gardeners mowing the grass and a woman repainting the bases. I walk around the lake a couple times and think about Keynes.

It’s 9:30 now. I sit down and listen to a podcast until the host texts me back saying she’s deposited the keys. I make my way back to the Airbnb and take a nap until I need to let my roommates in.

Jacob Nagro arrives first. We talk about the lineups our teams decided on. His team is on Rb Aggro, Bridgevine, and Grixis Delver. I didn’t know that Bridgevine was even a deck. Apparently Sticher’s Supplier enabling Gravecrawler made the deck just consistent enough. Curious, I challenge him to some games with my Legacy deck. We get five games in before Ben Hull arrives, and I’m down 4 games to 1. Ben shakes his head sadly when I tell him this.

I rope Ben and Jacob into going to the Minneapolis Institute of Art with me on the way to the convention center. We check out the sculpture garden, a food-themed exhibition featuring a bunch of resin rotisserie chickens and a painting made entirely of eggshells, and the ancient Iranian art collection. In the contemporary art section, we get a surprise visit from the spirit of Nathan Smith, alias pandabeast24.





At around 3, we head to the convention center to check-in and meet up with Greg Orange, Ben’s and my teammate, and our other roommates, Hunter Cochran and Jonathan Sukenik.

I naively challenge Greg to mental Magic and he gives me the most ruthless beating I’ve ever received. We get dinner and Hunter, Jonathan, and I walk the three miles from the convention center back to our Airbnb for the hell of it.

I’m feeling better.

Friday

Hunter, Jacob, and Jonathan head to the convention center early because Hunter missed check-in on Thursday. Ben and I head out a half-hour later, getting breakfast before walking to the convention center. I’m adamant about eating a substantial breakfast before Magic tournaments because it’s hard to find time for a real lunch between rounds. I get a bowl of wild rice porridge with walnuts and dried cranberries that ranks among the best things I’ve ever eaten.

With Jacob being the luckiest human being in the world, Hunter-Jacob-Jonathan get the round one bye. I lose to Elves, Ben beats Humans, and Greg loses a 45-minute game one after he’s forced to cast an early Memory and eventually decks out. Ben and I walk away, resigning ourselves to a loss, but Greg somehow wins game two in 15 minutes to draw the match. At this point, Ben and I decide to just leave Greg to his match for the rest of the tournament.

Things pick up from that point onward. We finish 5-1-1 and Hunter-Jacob-Jonathan finish 6-1. My matches are all straightforward. Every time I look over at Greg’s match, it just looks like pain.

One of my favorite memories from the weekend is round 3, where I’m playing against Eldrazi, Ben is playing against Tron, and Greg is playing the UW mirror. I win game one, and Greg announces that he’s won his match as I’m sideboarding. I win a quick game two, and Ben doesn’t get to finish his Modern match.

We get dinner, and Hunter keeps me up until 1 AM debating the metaphorical versus literal truth of the Bible and the function of meaning.

Saturday

On Saturday, I get an omelette with hash browns and apples cooked into it, alongside sausage, onions, almonds, and spinach. It’s delicious. We get to the convention center early enough to get playmats.

The day starts off well, with Ben and Greg winning while I get deck checked. We continue to win. Hunter, Jacob, and Jonathan keep winning too, until we get paired in round 12. Amusingly, Jonathan and Greg both kept 0- and 1-landers on the draw this round and wound up with more lands in play than their opponents by turn 5. Jonathan beats me, Greg beats Hunter, and the match comes down to a close game 3 between Jacob and Ben where Ben has a Leyline of the Void and Jacob doesn’t but Jacob has applied enough pressure with his Insolent Neonates and Walking Ballistas that we have to play defensively to avoid dying to a Bushwhacker or his suspended Gargadon. Jacob’s somehow assembled a 5/5 Walking Ballista. The game comes down to a Goblin Lore that leaves us with a Lighting Bolt, Flameblade Adept, and Gurmag Angler while putting a Flamewake Phoenix into our graveyard. Jacob bricks and can’t survive another attack.

Hunter tells us we’re locked for top 4 already, but the standings suggest that we need to win at least one more. We lose our first win-and-in to Shahar Shenhar, Mattia Rizzi, and Jacob Wilson. I get good draws against Jacob, but Greg can’t overcome a hard matchup and we come a couple points short against Mattia. There’s a turn where we cast Burning Inquiry and I’m not sure we should have, since we knew Mattia’s hand was extremely poor, but we also didn’t have much going on ourselves. For such a random card, Burning Inquiry is tough to play with.

Hunter-Jacob-Jonathan win their match though, and we’ll both have win-and-ins next round. We get paired against Andrew Baeckstrom, Justin Cohen, and Jack Kiefer. Hunter-Jacob-Jonathan will play against the Belgian team.

I lose quickly to strong draws from Andrew and focus on helping Ben. Ben’s match comes down to a game where both Ben and Justin have Leyline, but Ben draws fewer dead cards and wins a close race. We need Greg to win one of the two postboard games against Jack, and look over to a crazy board where Greg has an active Lyra but Jack has drawn 7 cards off a Bomat Courier. Jack ignores Teferi and goes directly for Greg with some Ahn-Crop Crashers. Greg’s out of gas and things look sketchy, but he cycles an Irrigated Farmland and draws Settle the Wreckage. He draws a card with Teferi, sighs, and passes. Jack adds a Hazoret and makes a lethal attack, but Greg Settles the match.

Hunter, Jacob, and Jonathan lose, however, so our victory is bittersweet.

We answer some questions for coverage and get the other top 4 decklists. Our round 1 draw guarantees us first seed throughout top 4. We get dinner, head back to the Airbnb, watch coverage for a while, then sleep.

Sunday

I run the nutty omelette back, but adrenaline keeps me from finishing it. Still, considering the stakes, I feel calm. Greg and I both have good matchups and even though Humans is favored against Hollow One, Ben still gets to be on the play in Modern.

The semifinals is anticlimactic. I have good draws and win easily, Ben loses quickly, and it’s down to Greg to slowly win his excellent matchup.

I do mess game 3 up. I’m on the draw and my opponent plays turn 2 Karn off 2 Ancient Tombs and makes a construct. I untap, draw, and my hand is something like 2 Plains, Karakas, Leonin Relic-Warder, 2 Stoneforge Mystic, Flickerwisp, Mirran Crusader. I decide to save the Relic-Warder to disrupt combat later on, and instead aim to get Batterskull into play to apply pressure to Karn. My opponent promptly equips the construct with Umezawa’s Jitte and I’m more or less busted. I Relic-Warder the Jitte next turn but I’m too behind already. Since the Flickerwisp can reset the Relic-Warder later if I ultimately need the trigger and the Relic-Warder and Flickerwisp represent enough pressure already, I should have played conservatively.

Waiting for the finals is brutal. I pace, watch Jacob draft, drink an unhealthy amount of water. I listen to Jackie Wilson’s “This Love is Real” repeatedly.

Greg somehow winds up in a side draft.

By the time we’re called to the feature match area for the finals, my heart is racing. I don’t know how much money I’m playing for and don’t want to, but I’m acutely aware that this is the highest stakes match of Magic I’ll ever play. I remember a mindfulness class from Stanford and lie down, spread eagle. I inhale for a count of seven, exhale for a count of seven. I hear the professor lecture about how leaving yourself physically vulnerable activates the parasympathetic nervous system and forces your mind to recognize you’re safe, and I’m calm again.

The finals start and I’m quickly down two games after a pair of mediocre draws. At this point, I’ve written off my match as lost. I’m going to have to win three postboard games against 3 Dread of Night, two of them on the draw. Then I win my favorite game of Magic I’ve played in my life, beating all 3 Dread of Night. I’m not going to try to do the game justice in narration. You can find coverage of it here.

This game also features the most interesting decision I had all tournament. Late in the game, I have a Batterskull, a Stoneforge Mystic, a Gideon emblem, an Aether Vial on 3, and 5 lands in play, with a Mirran Crusader in hand. Josh has 2 Dread of Night, a Gurmag Angler, a Liliana the Last Hope on 3, and 2 cards that are likely irrelevant in hand. (It turns out they were Daze, but they were almost certainly Daze-like cards.) I attack Liliana with Batterskull and trade my Germ for his Gurmag Angler. Now I have two choices: I can use Vial during my second main phase and equip Crusader with Batterskull, or I can pass the turn intending to reset Batterskull with Stoneforge Mystic and Vial Mirran Crusader into play.

The advantage of waiting is that if he draws Diabolic Edict, then I can sacrifice the Germ token after making a lethal attack and then he’ll no longer have any outs in his deck to the Crusader after I equip Batterskull during my second main phase. The disadvantage of waiting is that if Josh draws his third Dread of Night, then I will no longer be able to make use of Mirran Crusader. If I equip the Crusader right away and Josh draws Diabolic Edict, then he can use Liliana to kill my Stoneforge Mystic, Edict away my Crusader, and I’ll have nothing.

Since there was one copy of both Dread of Night and Diabolic Edict left in Josh’s deck, there are three main tiebreakers that led me to wait. The first is that Josh is relatively likely to draw a cantrip and equipping the Crusader right away lets Josh know that he must find either a Delver of Secrets or Diabolic Edict with his cantrip or he will die. I believed that Josh would accept a Death’s Shadow or perhaps his second Gurmag Angler with a cantrip in the dark. The second is that Josh’s Liliana the Last Hope means that a Delver of Secrets will buy him multiple draw steps to find his Diabolic Edict even if I equip. The third is that I slightly preferred the scenario where Josh draws Dread of Night and I reset Batterskull but can no longer use my Mirran Crusader to the scenario where I equip Crusader and he draws Edict, leaving me tapped out and with nothing in play.

It’s a spot where I can’t think for too long or else I give away what I have, so I made my decision primarily based on instinct. Given that Josh did draw the third Dread of Night and it’s such a close decision, I can’t help but wonder if there’s something that I missed. Still, I’m content for the time being that I made the best play.

The other main point of strategic interest in the match is how I sideboarded. Going in to the match, I planned on executing the following sideboard plan, play or draw:

-4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

-3 Flickerwisp

-1 Sanctum Prelate

-1 Umezawa’s Jitte

+2 Path to Exile

+2 Council’s Judgment

+2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

+1 Leonin Relic-Warder

+1 Walking Ballista

+1 Ethersworn Canonist

My approach was to maximize the number of creatures in my deck that live through Dread of Night and the number of cards that could interact with it, including Gideon’s emblem. This meant sideboarding out Thalias and Flickerwisps, which are otherwise some of my best cards in the matchup, and boarding in some subpar cards. At the last minute, I decided that Thalia is so good on the play that I still wanted some copies. I opted not to bring in the Canonist and Walking Ballista and took out one of my Phyrexian Revokers to leave 3 copies of Thalia in.

This ultimately came back to bite me when I drew Recruiter of the Guard and finding Walking Ballista would have almost deterministically won me the game, and I was instead forced to select Palace Jailer and hope to get lucky.

In retrospect, I believe that leaving Walking Ballista in my sideboard was a mistake. With how we both sideboarded, it’s reasonably likely for the game to go very long, when Walking Ballista can be individually game-winning. I should have had 2 Thalias and the Ballista instead of 3 Thalias.

All this was moot, however, as Ben and Greg were both up 2-1 in their matches. That meant that Ben Stark and Martin Juza would both have to win at least one game on the draw as well as game 4 on the play, making us heavy favorites. Greg summarily wins his game 4, and then Ben manages to sneak a game on the draw with a hardcast Leyline of the Void after Ben Stark floods out.

And we were Pro Tour champions.

Aftermath

It’s Friday now, almost a week from the Pro Tour. My nervous system is still shot from the overflow of adrenaline and serotonin after winning. I was feeling wistful that I’d invested so much time and attention into Magic and was going to quit with almost nothing to show for it, and now I’ve accomplished the thing. Up until this point, my primary aim when I played Magic was to qualify for the next Pro Tour, and now I’m qualified for the next four. It all just feels weird.

In any case, I’m looking forward to at least a short break from Magic, until I need to start preparing for Worlds.

I was too overwhelmed during the weekend to give all the people who congratulated me the thanks that I wanted to, but I appreciated everyone’s support. It really meant a lot to me.

Props

Greg, for being a master. My favorite part about the weekend was leaving Greg to his match each round, knowing he’ll play it faster and better without me.



Ben, for winning more than 38.9% of his matches. (And for winning every decisive game.)



Nathan, for watching over us all.



Jackie Wilson, for getting me through everything.



Hunter, Jacob, Jake, and everyone else I’ve met through Magic, for making so many faceless cities and crappy hotels into amazing memories.



Slops



The Tempest design team, for creating Dread of Night.



Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, because what the fuck.



Magic, for hooking me real good.



Best,

Allen