Introduction
I had never been much of a competitive Magic player, but watching all the Pro Tour events on webcast and reading all the SCG Premium articles really piqued my interest in tournament Magic (and no, Knut didn't force me to write that). So, I built a deck and brought it to Central California Regionals, my first major tournament ever, and I managed to place in the Top 8. After that somewhat auspicious start, I decided to look into Constructed formats a little more seriously. I also decided that I wanted to try to qualify for Pro Tour: Los Angeles, since I'd be in San Diego for school by then anyway and it's a fairly easy drive up. So, I began testing Block Constructed online and in real life with some of my friends. Being the excellent player I am, I managed to miss the Top 16 of the local PTQ after starting 4-0 with Enduring Hondens. Recently, I've also played in a couple MODO Premier Events, and I managed to Top 8 one with a poor-man's version of Three-Color Godo (the version with Sakura-Tribe Scout and such). As a self-proclaimed scrub, I think I've learned quite a bit through having my face handed to me so much, and I'm here so that hopefully, people will learn from my mistakes and not make the same ones.

For the record, my ratings are:

Real-life Constructed: 1733
Real-life Limited: 1612 (I was terrible for a long time, but I managed to up my rating about 60 points this summer just at 8K FNMs by placing well in a bunch in a row)
MODO Constructed: 1641
MODO Limited: 1644

Lesson 1 - Be Careful What You Wish For...
...because you just might get it. There's a reason that Gifts Ungiven has the reputation for being the best deck in Kamigawa Block Constructed - it's freaking good. My decks of choice online - Three-Color Godo before, and a version of Flores' Critical Mass as of late - have good Gifts matchups, confirmed in testing by many independent sources. It's pretty difficult for Gifts to stop fat rampaging legends on turn 4 without a pretty darn hot draw. This has not stopped me from losing to Gifts in my bubble rounds in both of my last two online PEs. The reason? Part of it may have to do with the extremely poor draws I managed to get (for example, keeping a 3-land hand and drawing 11 land in 13 cards), but it also has to do with the fact that Gifts is just good, and it does broken things.

One game, I was Extraction-locked for all of my legends after burning my Defiance on Kokusho. Another game, I had my opponent down to two life and simply could not finish him off because I couldn't get through a sea of Meloku tokens and I couldn't find my own. A third game, a Tribe Elder-turned-Ink-Eyes stole a freshly-Shoaled Meloku, and that was pretty much game right there. I may very well have an advantageous matchup with Gifts, but I will never again actively hope to be paired against Gifts. A 60/40 matchup is a far cry from a guaranteed win. I had read articles about this before, but I just had to learn it the hard way. No matter how good a matchup is, you still have to play tight and make good decisions to win a round.

Lesson 2 - Don't Develop Automatic Reactions With Certain Cards
At the local PTQ, I was playing Enduring Hondens in round 7 (having gone 4-2 up to that point), and had a decent situation on the board in Game 3. My opponent had Genju of the Spires, a 4/4 Adamaro, and Hearth Kami on the board, and I was at 10. I had a Sakura-Tribe Elder on the board to go with six land, a Final Judgment in hand, and a Top (which had put land-Enduring Ideal on top of my library). My opponent was in topdeck mode. The play I decided on was to Final Judgment away the board, take my six from the Genju, and then Enduring Ideal next turn (draw the land, draw the Ideal off of Top) for Night of Souls' Betrayal to insta-kill everything in his deck outside of Zo-Zu, including that pesky Genju. Then, with my opponent in topdeck mode, I would proceed to grab my enchantments, starting with the White Honden. As long as he didn't topdeck Flames of the Blood Hand the next two turns, I would start gaining life from White Honden, and he wouldn't be able to keep up. I'd need to be a little lucky to win - but then, who doesn't need to be a little lucky sometimes? It was certainly better than facing down 12 points of damage on the board. If he had Flames in the top two cards, I was sunk anyway - so this was really the only way I could think of to win.

So with this plan in mind, I cast Final Judgment... and sacrificed my Sakura-Tribe Elder in response.

Whoops.

I was really tired, but as soon as I flipped my deck over, I realized what a terrible mistake I had made. I managed to find a Pithing Needle to stop the Genju after one hit; however, he drew Flames of the Blood Hand about three turns later (long after I would have been able to stabilize with multiple Hondens on the board) and burned me out with me at exactly 4.

So aside from just having a brain fart, I realized that Sakura-Tribe Elder was a so-called "autopilot" card for me. Over the course of testing the deck and other decks that ran with the green mana acceleration suite, I'd gotten into the habit of always sacrificing Sakura-Tribe Elder when he was about to die that I didn't really even think about it anymore. So, when faced with a situation where the Elder was about to bite the dust, I just did it without thinking, and it cost me half a box of product (amateur prize) and another quarter of a box (for finishing in the Top 16). For those of you counting at home, that's 27 packs of product - 9 draft sets, which is a huge deal to a poor college student like me, who can't afford to buy draft sets all the time.

Think about each play before you make it. It may sound obvious, but when it's late, you're tired, you're hungry, and you're in a tough spot where you need to make precisely the right play to win, things that seem automatic can cost you the game, and plenty of draft fodder. I will never make the Sakura-Tribe Elder mistake ever again, and I will be very cautious when playing with cards that provide opportunities to go on autopilot.

Lesson 3 - Do your Homework
I don't know how many people do this, but if you have the time in a MODO PE and you're bored (perhaps having just won a match 2-0), then do yourself a huge favor and scout the field. Watch replays and take note of who is playing what archetype, and if there's anything that stands out. For example, I separate out "standard" White Weenie from "Kirin" White Weenie, and I also make note of whether the Black Hand decks I see are of the Ogre/Demon variety or the smaller, Feared-creatures variety. It can make a huge difference in how you approach your matchup, and the extra information never hurts when you've fanned open your opening grip (virtually, anyway), and have to make that crucial decision whether or not to keep.

For example, I knew that one of my opponents in a MODO PE a few days ago was playing Mono-Blue, so in game 1 I tossed back a marginal hand that probably would have run smack into a couple of Hinders, and mulliganed into a hand with a Jitte and Isao, the Amazing Uncounterable Regenerating Samurai (who is some kind of good vs. MUC). Needless to say, I won that game. Had I not known that my opponent was likely going to be packing countermagic, I probably would have kept the hand and gotten smashed. This is information that I can only dream of having in real life (sadly, I don't have a bunch of barns to be my scouting team...yet), and if you aren't availing yourself of this information online, then you should be. In real life, if you have friends who are willing to help you scout, then by all means go for it - it's just tougher to do than online, because you don't have the benefit of speeding through replays to figure out any tech or variations from the norm.

Lesson 4 - Have Your Deck Prepared Ahead of Time
This may sound dumb and repetitive, but it really can't be overstated. Trust me. I went to the Santa Clara PTQ with Enduring Hondens, where I was short an Enduring Ideal and a few Hondens that I figured would be easy to get on-site. Turns out they weren't so easy to get on-site, and if I didn't happen to run into two different friends (both of whom I had met at Regionals) and borrowed/bought cards from them, I would have had to run a deck with two Enduring Ideals, zero White Honden, and two Black Honden. Terrible. It's a terrifying feeling when you realize you might not be able to play the list you want to, and it also throws off whatever testing you did because you have no idea how the deck will react to the changes. For my part, I still had to replace two Tendo Ice Bridges with a Forest and a Mountain, and luckily for me, mana problems didn't crop up during the day because of the swap.

As a side note, a direct result of not having my deck all ready to go was that I literally had to race through actually registering my deck as the Head Judge was giving basic directions. I didn't have a chance to double-check the list before I turned it in - it was all from memory. I'm pretty sure I got it all right, but I really didn't like not having a chance to double-check it before having to turn it in. Deck misregistration is among the dumbest ways to get yourself a game loss. I clearly was not alone - next to me for round 1 was the eventual winner of the tournament, Avri Rahamim, and he too was frantically writing down the contents of his deck, cutting into the 50 minutes of play time they had for the round, finishing about 10 seconds before the judge came by to collect the deck sheet. It was stress that I really didn't need to put on myself 30 seconds before the start of round 1, especially since I was being serious about qualifying for the Pro Tour. I wouldn't be surprised if that adrenaline rush ended up leaving me more tired than I should have been for rounds 5-7.

Lesson 5 - Keep an Eye on the Clock
The other night on MODO, I played a guy running Gifts who complained incessantly. You know the type - everything I do is the result of savage lucksackery, and everything he does is the result of pure skill. Never mind that he had started the game with seven turns of nothing, letting me keep counterspell mana up while I ramped to Kodama of the North Tree with Hinder backup... but we're getting off topic. Anyway, I had the guy on the ropes fairly early; he was madly spinning his Top in an attempt to find any answers at all, and he always seemed to be able to fight off that last point of damage coming his way. Unfortunately for him, he was using up a lot of time doing so, and he really had no realistic shot at the game; he was having enough trouble dealing with the board, and he was allowing me to draw all of my gas. I had a hand full of goodies ready to go, and every time he would find a way to deal with one legend, another would take its place (much to his dismay, of course). I refused to overextend - on the contrary, I was quite happy to let him keep struggling in Game 1, as I knew that a 1-0 victory was just as good as a 2-0 victory. I won the first game after he finally failed to come up with an answer to my marauding Legends, but he won a surprisingly fast game 2. Unfortunately, "surprisingly fast" wasn't quite enough, as he had left himself only 18 seconds on his clock for the third and deciding game. It was a simple matter to just play my game until he ran out of time. He very well may have beaten me in that Game 3 (though my insane draw probably wouldn't have let me lose), but he didn't even give himself a chance to outplay me.

Conclusion
I may not be a Pro Tour-caliber player (yet), but these are some things that I've learned over the past few months that I think can really make a big difference between me making Top 8s and me scrubbing out and drafting all the time. That brings me to arguably the most important lesson: learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of others.

I'm not afraid to admit that I'm more or less a terrible player compared to the pros - the difference is that I've improved by leaps and bounds very quickly because I've been able to recognize my misplays (or have been informed of them, sometimes in a less-than-courteous fashion), and have actively tried to improve on my game instead of getting defensive about its shortcomings. A lot of times, I'm very down on my abilities as a player because I recognize my mistakes and I have a tendency to dwell on them; however, I think that this is much better than not being able to spot your mistakes at all. Remember that everyone make mistakes - the difference that separates the merely-average from the excellent is whether or not they see them, how they handle them, and whether or not they learn from them. Hopefully, this article will help at least one person not make the same mistakes I've made or have seen made recently.

Feedback is much appreciated; please let me know if I'm completely off-base, so I can continue to improve.

Jonathan Wang
jrwangATgmailDOTcom (yeah, yeah, laugh it up Knutson)
mkv_wraithstyle on MODO