A retrospective and potpourri of thoughts on Magic in 2020

At the beginning of the year, we had just learned about regional 'players tours' instead of Mythic Championships (essentially old school PTs), and fractional invites instead of 'pro player club'.

I was not thrilled about the switch over to both of these, but I decided I'd still give it a shot, and maybe it'd be better than it looked.

In all of this mess, wizards Organized Play did allow me to transfer my previously 'wasted' invite from GP Atlanta for 'RPT #2'. (This ended up being the online RPT.)

So what events did I play?

GP Austin 2020 - Temur Urza (5-3). The week before, Jacob Nagro convinced me this deck was the best, and that sb Experimental Frenzy (one of my favourite cards) was a great card in the mirror, especially versus the sultai versions of the deck. Everyone was going to have a million disputes in the mirrors, esp postboard, so a card like Future Sight was just worse, and it'd be easy to find a window to resolve it, because no one would have cryptic commands (based on how it lined up vs Mystical Dispute). On Friday, Jacob made top 4 of the PTQ with Temur Urza, and Ellen made top 4 with (straight UG) Urza. On Sunday, I made top 4 of the PTQ with Temur Urza (although this was before wotc had transferred an invite over to me).

GP New Jersey 2020 - Sealed (4-3 drop). My deck was pretty poor, and I remember misbuilding it too. On Sunday, in between rounds of the pioneer PTQ (i played azorius spirits), hunter and I played some fun games, including a game where I thought I had him under lockdown, then my selfless spirit vanished into thin air, and I got supreme verdicted. Two minutes later, Hunter reveals he sleight of handed my selfless spirit into oblivion :P

Players Tour Phoenix- Draft/Pioneer (4-2, 6-4). I chose to play Bant Spirits, considering it had the best win rate in the previous two Players Tours (brussels and...nagoya?) and I thought it had a decent mu vs Inverter and Breach (Inverter having a decent performance, and Breach having an internally decent performance among our team, albeit people like myself and Tommy were still a little antsy about registering it). I did enjoy farming SammyP twice in this tournament (sam even went 11-5, joking that he went 11-3 vs non-Jarvis opponents). Other fun things that happened in this tournament: my r4 BW auras oppt thoughtseized me in a postboard game and saw both reflector mage and deputy of detention and sighed.  r13 vs Breach in g3, i got a literal turn 4 20 damage kill: t1 wanderer, t2 phantom, t3 wanderer phantom, t4 company into two lords. r14 vs monoblack aggro, I managed to steal game 1, and was thrilled because my postboard configuration was a _lot_ better. Then I got steamrolled the next two and my hopes of qualifying for PTF fell =(

Online PT (#2 of 4) (8-7). I chose to play Jund Sacrifice with 4 Fiend Artisan and a lower curve. We were doing extremely well vs everything _except_ temur reclamation. (Unfortunately most of my losses were vs temur reclamation.) I still thought our mu vs the deck was like maybe 45/55, but I played against temur rec _8_ times in this event. Not being above 50% is gonna cost you a bunch of points there.

I find ban talk very tiring in general, and the fact that Wizards is priced into banning so often also tiring, albeit logical. The major issue from my standpoint here is that it leads to a loss of consumer confidence. This is why I'm anti-ban: I don't want Magic to die as a game by losing consumers, and that's the only opinion I have on it. I feel like a 'better' fix is just a faster rotation on Standard as well as a shift back to the 'old' design philosophies. My current theory re: the shift in design philosophy was that it coincided with the hiring of a new Wizards CEO in 2016.

I still like older formats (Modern/Legacy/Vintage), and have been playing a reasonable amount of it, but I can also understand why people are sad that old play patterns are slowly being phased out because new cards are more powerful and therefore overshadow old cards (snapcaster mage being one of the main phaseouts).

I still want to interact with the game of Magic itself, but I feel no serious drive to try to play anymore 'high level' events that Wizards runs. I don't approve of Arena as a major platform for tournament MTG for a bunch of reasons which can be found in this thread: https://twitter.com/jkyu06/status/1263193214024114176 (they did end up giving god accounts, though). I'll still be trying to stream on my twitch channel ( http://twitch.tv/jarvisyu ), and in fact this month (October 2020), I'm trying to fundraise via tiltify for American Cancer Society ( https://tiltify.com/@jarvisyu/jarvis-yu-october-2020-acs-fundraiser-via-mtg-streaming-on-twitch ). I'm also trying to teach people what I know about Magic via coaching as another form of interaction.

The last passing thought I have is that I think Magic 'trying' to become an ESport was a massive failure, and mostly due to the fact that Magic wasn't inherently designed for this. In 1993-1994, Garfield designed it as a game (which he thought people could play pickup at Conventions or in between other games as a 'quick' game). Despite that original design goal, I think the game managed to outgrow his wildest expectations. I still love the game, and do wish it would return to everything pre-2019, but for the readers who are still here: if you disagree with Wizards's decisions re: products or philosophies, DON'T BUY THEM. Vote with your wallet. Wizards is a corporation first.

Thanks for reading, and hope to catch y'all on twitch at some point.

Jarvis