On January 20th, I trekked the hour and a half trip to Columbus, Ohio for the PTQ Barcelona Invasion Limited tournament. My plan was simple: Play the first three rounds of the PTQ, and if I wasn't happy with my pool of cards, drop and play in the Grand Prix Trial for Boston. To make a long story short, I went 1-1-1 with a deck that was about three fat creatures short of being good. So I entered the GPT with the hopes of getting a better deck. My GPT deck was all over the place, so I tried to go with a 4-color build with the help of Harrow, Quirion Elves, and two Nomadic Elves. Unfortunately, I got a first-round bye in the tournament and then lost in the second round to Mark Globus and again in the third round to my stupidity. But then again, I saw Hypnotic Cloud four times, Probe with kicker five times, and Plague Spores three times in those four games. Ouch. (That could hurt -- The Ferrett, nodding)

Overall I had a good day, and I'm somewhat pleased with my performance. Why? On Sunday after the tournament, I deconstructed both decks and rebuilt them. They say hindsight is 20/20, and I wanted to see how many changes I would have made to the original construction. For the PTQ deck I would have only made a few changes, but they still didn't make up for the lack of big creatures. I'm confident that I did the best I could with that deck. As for the GPT deck, I actually had Mark go through it after he crushed me - and in his words, "Man, that's a tough build." He showed me a few things I should have done differently, and his input was very valuable and appreciated. One of the changes he suggested was one that I sideboarded in after the first game of the third round, and it would have won me the game if I hadn't tapped incorrectly to pay for it.

So how much preparation did I put into this PTQ? A good bit, actually. I spent the week reading everything written about Invasion limited that I could find - everything from card analysis to tournament reports. I also used the Yavapai Open sealed deck generator to examine what cards and combinations of cards I could end up with. But I didn't spend any actual time playing, which I'm guessing led to my big mistake in the GPT and the reason I lost the second game in the third round when I could have won.

In my opinion, playing against better people than yourself makes you a better player. It was true for me in wrestling, and I still think it's true to this day. When I was a kid, my dad made me wrestle against the kids with more experience. For two years I got my head smashed in - almost literally. But in my third year of wrestling, I was the one handing out the beatings. Unfortunately for me, one of the best people around here to play against is busy all the time, just like me, so we don't get to play very often. That leaves me to test online with Apprentice. One of the problems with Apprentice is you have no idea who you are playing against. It could be RaNdOm ScRub or ptQStud. I'm not knocking Apprentice or the people that use it; I've played against some really awesome people. But one of my most frustrating moments was against a person who couldn't pay the echo on his Albino Troll because I Shocked his Elf. I told him to sac the Troll because of the echo. His response was to put another forest into play and tap them for the echo cost. All apologies if this person was new to the game, but at the time I highly doubted it.

So I've reached something of a fork in the road that is my quest to make a Top 8 this year. I know for a fact that I become a better player by practicing against good players. But I don't have a local group to practice with, and you can't guarantee the quality of people you play against online.

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference." Should I hope for a team to allow me in, or form one of my own? (Have you considered joining Team AWWAJALOOM? -- The Ferrett)