Welcome to the GML

Recently, I have been reading Patrick Chapin's book "Next Level Magic" which spends almost 400 pages delving into Magic theory and ultimately is supposed to make you a better Magic player. I am about 115 pages in and I have already learned a ton!

One thing that I feel qualified and intelligent enough to talk about is how he discussed the importance of having a Magic team. Before I had started reading this book, I had heard from time to time about pros testing with others before the events to make the best deck, but it wasn't until I read his section on playtest groups that it really hit me: Magic is comprable to a professional sport!

Especially in a "new" Standard like we currently have, where the rotation was only a month ago, new decks are constantly evolving and changing. In my last post I mentioned I played UB Control at FNM and Game Day, but on the night between I changed and moved some tech between main and the board. Even though Game Day was only yesterday, I already have some new tech I want to test with Vampire Hexmage and Mimic Vat to create an effective {3: destroy target planeswalker} engine, which would allow me to save my counterspells for other more prevalent threats. Also, playing Doom Blade on Kozelik and stealing it with Mimic Vat aint bad either in the late game.

Quick Aside
{
    I am probably playing a Mimic Vat in every new deck I make from here on out, it almost can't be bad!
}

I was increbily interested to think about how each team that comes to a Pro Tour typically plays one deck amongst the team, then over the course of the event they can give tips to eachother about various matchups if they were different than anticipated or if they catch wind of what some other team is playing. Also, Chapin discussed how rotating players through your team is healthy as new brians can spawn new ideas. This feels a lot like how NFL teams will trade players to give themselves a new mix of tools to create something different. Instead of offering way too much money, Magic teams offer incentives like other people in the team who may have put up solid results in recent events.

Maybe I'm just ranting about something that's obvious to you, but I think it's really cool thinking about how there are currently dozens of teams of people secretly meeting and mixing ideas to attack any given format, like Extended post rotation of Time Spiral block (although that might not be a great example because first place was a White Weenie deck, which had 8 cards from Time Spiral block, where 5 of them were lands, and second place was a Doran deck, which loses 4 Tarmogoyf and 2 Slaughter Pact, and losing them won't ruin the deck).

A good team requires many things. Chapin suggested first starting with a single other person that you work well with. Considering my current "team" consists of me and Mark playing games against every deck we brought with us from midnight til 5-6 am, that's who I would start with. From there, just like a football team has different people for different roles (Tom Brady didn't fill the same role Tedy Bruschi did back in the day), your magic team has different people from different roles. When he was preparing for 2007 Worlds, Chapin was on a team with Nassif (who is considered to be the world's best deckbuilder) among others. Chapin said Nassif asked him to provide a new decklist or idea EVERY SINGLE DAY. The idea didn't have to be tested at all, but a full decklist was preferred. So over the course of a couple months that's what he did, made lots of decks. Apparently the Dragonstorm deck that they settled on led him to finish second in worlds.

In case you're wondering how the deck worked, the basic explanation is that they would put Dragonstorm under a Spinerock Knoll then use various burn spells including Ignite Memories to build up a storm count and 7 damage to activate Spinerock's hideaway, cast Dragonstorm, drop some Bogardan Hellkites, and straight out kill your opponent with its ETB effect. Here's the decklist.

So in this team, the deckbuilders and deck testers were different people, which can form 2 sub teams that interact primarily with eachother (potentially several times a day) and secondarily with the other team (gether results at end of each day). Deckbuilders would pump out combinations of cards endlessly, finding hidden synergies and new archetypes, and the testers would create a gauntlet of known decks and exceptionally good new decks to play dozens of games of these other new decks against. Testers can make simple changes to decks, like making 1 card changes, but the ultimate flow of the deck would have to remain. Feedback may include stuff that worked or didn't work in the deck, or what really beat the deck. EX: this deck is really good, except it doesn't have a quick enough answer to mono-red, can we fix this?

When I was testing with mark, I was forming UW Control and Mark was making RUG. We had elves and mono-red (both mark's) to test against, so we both knew what we wanted to do aggainst aggressive decks. We didn't have another control deck to test against though, and so the only control matchup we could do was test our new decks against eachother. As I previously reported, I went 1-2-1, and mark top 8'd.

I would be interested in making a Magic team, but it would have to be more casual than the pro gauntlet. If you're reading this and are interested in having a more structured testing group where we share information and test against everything we can, hit me up on facebook or shoot me an e-mail. Lackie_xc_06@yahoo.com

Until next time, don't show up to an event with no testing, you tend to lose =D