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I just got back from U.S. Nationals in Kansas City. I drove there with my cousin Louie, who qualified at Regionals, but I had yet to earn my stake in the tournament. All of my Friday night follies caused the inevitable huge dip in my rating and, unlike the last three years, I didn’t have enough pro points to be worth a damn. That left me in a particularly grinding situation, but I was ready to tackle them head on with the two deck lists I’d been working on in secrecy this past month.

More importantly, however, is how Nationals felt for me. It just wasn’t the same for some reason. I left before Sunday, so I missed the Gindy/Yurchick celebration, but this Nationals was surprisingly small considering how massive I remember it being in the same convention center five years earlier. That was the last of the great U.S. Nationals, where Krempels got $25,000 for winning. His is another face I miss seeing around. Kibler and Humphreys made the Top 8, I scrubbed out of the JSS portion, and the lights and glamour of the Top 8 being played hooked me into Magic like a voluptuous cougar at the bar asking me if I wanted the ride of my life.

In the passing years I’ve hit the PTQ’s hard; won some meaningless tournaments that bolstered my ego; learned how to play Magic from late night draft tables; saw the coming and going of many friends and teammates; witnessed the fall of old Magic thinking and the rise of the New Thought movement which heralded efficiency courtesy of MTGO; watched close friends achieve greatness; and, perhaps most importantly, learned how to view life’s interactions through the distorted shaded sunglasses of a modern Magician.

And it all started five years ago at the JSS championship in Kansas City.

I feel I’ve come full circle and I feel a nagging urge inside of me that is telling me to cash out while my chip stack is healthy, but my thoughts keep drifting to more salty and depressing conclusions.

I want to write an article on why everyone is delusional for chasing cardboard greatness, and why Magic itself is a complete contradiction since at its highest level it’s a resource that teaches us to think in terms of efficiency within a subculture and lifestyle that leads us down a path of non-efficient tendencies. But I can’t ignore the dramatic and profitable effect it’s had on my brain and the way it thinks, nor the great times, friends, and life lessons I’ve learned from traveling and conversing with minds I feel I understand. Every time I begin an article my thoughts seem to drift toward this recently, but I just hold down the backspace button until all my blasphemies are conveniently dashed away from the screen in front of me.

If I did write such a piece, I feel its true meaning wouldn’t be grasped by the majority of the readers, since everyone is at a different stage of their Magical journey. Those words would mean something entirely different to someone like Drew Dumanski, who is just starting out on the competitive circuit with his Top 8 finish at Nationals, compared to a grizzled veteran like GerryT who has been around the block many times and can take in those words without letting it change his outlook and perspective on the game. Not to mention such an article doesn’t exactly increase profit sales of SCG. I don’t want to stop people from learning, playing, and utilizing the game for the insanely brilliant resource it is, but at the same time I want those same people to know there is life outside of preparing for the next tournament, qualifying for the next tournament, and going out of your means to chase perceived greatness.

I know who I am, who I want to be, and, for as long as I can remember, Magic has been influencing that. Now on the eve of the Pro Tour that’s closest to my hometown (Austin), I’m rethinking whether or not I want to play in it. I’ve got 3 PTQs - San Antonio, Dallas, possibly one in Alabama - and the LCQs to play. If I don’t qualify I’m probably going to quit for awhile, possible suicide planned, but until then I’m going to hit those PTQs as hard as I can out of principle, and avoid racking up some more 2nd places.

In the meantime, I’ll go through my thought process entering Nationals and the two decks I put my faith in.

Big Busty Bant Featured by Kyle Sanchez on 2009-08-02 (Standard) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/17809_Down_And_Dirty_Ground_Up_Spat_Out_Kansas_City_Still_Isnt_Pretty.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Creatures 1 Arbiter of Knollridge 1 Baneslayer Angel 2 Glen Elendra Archmage 1 Woodfall Primus Enchantments 4 Fertile Ground Instants 2 Bant Charm 4 Cryptic Command 3 Essence Scatter 2 Path to Exile	Planeswalkers 4 Garruk Wildspeaker 4 Jace Beleren Sorceries 2 Hallowed Burial 3 Martial Coup 3 Primal Command 1 Rampant Growth Basic Lands 2 Forest 4 Island 1 Plains Lands 4 Flooded Grove 3 Mystic Gate 4 Reflecting Pool 4 Seaside Citadel 1 Terramorphic Expanse	Sideboard: 2 Ethersworn Canonist 2 Baneslayer Angel 1 Glen Elendra Archmage 4 Great Sable Stag 1 Bant Charm 1 Path to Exile 3 Silence 1 Hallowed Burial
Download this deck in Apprentice format!		Download this deck in Magic Online Text format!

This deck evolved from that wacky Time Warp / Savor the Moment deck I spat out a week ago, which was really just an inferior version of the unpopular Time Sieve deck. I got hooked on abusing Arbiter of Knollridge with Primal Command, so my first iteration was actually a Five-Color Control list with Command and Arbiter, along with Glen Elendra for the mirror. Eventually I moved toward Garruk plus Fertile Ground to have mana supremacy, but that just clunked the deck up in hindsight.

I pitched the deck to a few people for some PTQs the week before Nationals, without any positive or negative results, but BDM liked it. I was having a lot of fun with the deck, between the potential and nigh unstoppable 5th turn kill opposite Elves and Kithkin, along with a big mana game backed up by Glen Elendra opposite Five-Color Control. Against the Jund and RB decks, Arbiter and Primal Command would carry me the distance, but the increased number of Faeries players led me to the Stags for the sideboard; however, they were a great tool opposite Five-Color Control for that weekend too.

BDM suggested 4 Baneslayer Angel maindeck, and I wish I had listened to him. They are great against Five-Color Control, and very hard for the Jund/RB/Kithkin decks to fight against.

I played a bunch of sideboarded games opposite Elves, and was extremely satisfied with my game plan of Silence plus Wrath effects plus Primal Command into Canonist. Elves, Kithkin, and Five-Color Control were the main enemies I was focusing on, with Red, Jund, Five-Color Blood, and Faeries as the other decks I wanted to be prepared to face. As usual I underestimated the number of Faeries to flock to Kansas and how rampant Five-Color Control would be, and I can’t in good faith recommend this deck to anyone, given the format the way it is and the deck the way it’s designed.

There’s just no reason to play stupid cards like Garruk, Martial Coup, and Arbiter of Knollridge over Broodmate Dragon, Cruel Ultimatum, and Esper Charm.

I played in my third grinder with this deck and got smashed by Kithkin after using Arbiter to make the games go longer. I got mana flooded a bunch and didn’t draw Wraths, and fell to several Goldmeadow Stalwarts cast for four mana, which is a good indication of when you know a deck just can’t cut it.

Gerard Fabiano really wanted to play it in the tournament, despite my best efforts to encourage him to play the following Jund deck.

Jund Featured by Kyle Sanchez on 2009-08-02 (Standard) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/17809_Down_And_Dirty_Ground_Up_Spat_Out_Kansas_City_Still_Isnt_Pretty.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Creatures 4 Bloodbraid Elf 4 Boggart Ram-Gang 1 Briarhorn 4 Kitchen Finks 4 Putrid Leech Instants 2 Doom Blade 3 Jund Charm 4 Lightning Bolt	Legendary Creatures 3 Sygg, River Cutthroat Sorceries 4 Blightning 2 Maelstrom Pulse 2 Sign in Blood Basic Lands 2 Forest 2 Mountain 2 Swamp Lands 4 Graven Cairns 4 Reflecting Pool 4 Savage Lands 1 Terramorphic Expanse 4 Twilight Mire	Sideboard: 4 Anathemancer 4 Great Sable Stag 1 Doom Blade 2 Volcanic Fallout 1 Maelstrom Pulse 3 Thought Hemorrhage
Download this deck in Apprentice format!		Download this deck in Magic Online Text format!

This is an update on the Jund Cascade deck I’ve been playing in Standard the last few months. It’s much leaner than my previous builds, excluding Bituminous Blast, Broodmate Dragon, and Primal Command to have a more potent early game. I’m not sure if this was the right idea, and Chapin was telling me to just run Cryptics and Bit Blast in there, but I just didn’t have it in me. After another two grinders with this little stud, I couldn’t get it done either.

There’s really not much to be said about this deck that can’t be inferred from a glance. It plays really efficient creatures and tries to kill the opponent by dealing 20 damage. It plays more like a midrange deck than a 23-land aggro deck, but Sign in Blood goes a long way to making the draws a little cleaner.

Doom Blade was awesome all weekend, providing a valuable way to take care of Burrenton Forge-Tender and Mistbind Clique. The four main deck Blightning was another card that really carried this deck. With Five-Color Control and Fae as popular as they are, I’d definitely move back to the Anathemancer main, over Kitchen Finks.

For my first attempt to qualify for Nationals, I accidently signed up for a sealed qualifier rather than Standard, and when they called for seating I thought nothing of it and stood by waiting for my Standard queue to fill. The great Hai Bing Hu ran up to me and told me my name was on the list, so I opened a horrible pool, got destroyed round 1, then readied my Jund deck to pierce the hearts of my opponents.

I won my first round of my second grinder. However, I fell in the next two because I kept some sketchy filter-only hands on the draw.

Grinder three saw me switch things up by playing the Bant deck, getting crushed by Kithkin of all things, and wondering why Kansas City never yields me profitable results.

My fourth and final attempt was with the Jund deck, and I was feeling really good about it until I ran into a Baneslayer Angel that my deck just couldn’t handle. And I was done before the weekend even started. Worst off, I didn’t have a hotel room, and like Chapin mentioned on Monday, there was a huge jewelry convention in town with middle-aged beauties aplenty. This made getting a last-minute hotel room in downtown KC extremely problematic, and I ended up staying in Overland Park down the street from where the GP was held last year, which was a hearty twenty minute drive away.

So the rest of my weekend was spent hanging out, attempting Two-Headed Giant with Hai Bing Hu twice, picking up two miserable loses before the fourth round each tournament. I was a bit miffed at how easy it was to cheat in the 2HG side events. They gave the teams 8 packs each tournament and told them to just register the cards they were playing, then turn it in. No deck swap, don’t write down all the cards… this provided a situation that was far too easy to cheat, and of course, we ran into the decks that had triple Breath of Malfegor, double Harm’s Way, double Path to Exile, double Broodmate Dragon, double Martial Coup, double Bituminous Blast, double Overrun, double Sleep, and boat loads of quality rares that we just couldn’t handle.

This miserable performance weekend rests solely on my shoulders, and I even managed to ruin Fabiano’s Nationals by giving him a bad deck after he went an unheard of 5-1 in Limited for the first time in his professional career. I gave the Jund deck to Taylor Webb, and another guy from Louisiana, and they both put up respectable records, but Gerard just couldn’t get it done with my Bant deck and I feel awful about it.

I did re-learn a timeless invaluable lesson though: Don’t play bad cards over Cruel Ultimatum.

Mark Hendrickson did it by substituting Goblin Assault, Armillary Sphere, and Call the Skybreaker over Ultimatum, Cryptic Command, and Mulldrifter, and he lost. I did it with the Bant deck, and Gerard crashed and burned. There is just no beating a Cruel Ultimatum end game, and I’m glad to have finally seen the light after sulking around in the bad card dungeon for so long.

The real lesson I learned is building good decks with bad cards doesn’t win you matches in upper level play. I’ve been doing the FNM thing for so long that my rating scale on which I use to evaluate cards has been shifted slightly to the left, leaving me with many more midrange and wacky control decks recently than I care to admit. I can outplay anyone in San Antonio, and the vast majority of people in Texas, but when it comes to playing against others in the know, it’s always better to play good cards better than the opponent, rather than attack them with bad cards to throw them off. The best players will easily catch on to what’s going on, adapt, and turn the tables on me when I least expect it.

Thus is the bane of every rogue deck builder, and I think I’m going mainstream for these next few PTQs. You’ll never catch me writing a Faeries, Kithkin, or Mono Red Aggro primer, but I think I’m going to give in to Cruel Ultimatum and use it to win my first blue envelope.

I just have to envision myself having already won the PTQ. Envision myself on the complimentary ten-minute plane ride from SA-town to Austin. Envision Luis Scott Vargas getting mana screwed against me round 1. Envision beating Saito in the last round to clinch my first Top 8. Envision a massive flock of doves released into the air when I sit down across from across Paulo in the finals, where he’ll get mana screwed like Luis. And most importantly, envision the curly locks poking out from under the golden upside-down trophy on my head in my picture on MagictheGathering.com. Pro Tour: Austin is my tournament, and I’ll be damned if I’m not playing in it come autumn.

That’s how I’ve dreamed it since Kansas City Nationals 04’, and it’s those dreams that keep us going…

Much love, and thanks for reading.

Kyle