So, you all know "the guy". The guy who all the new players come to for sound advice and deck recommendations.The guy who seems to know the name and oracle text of every card printed since Ice Age, and seems to have a Level 3 judge's understanding of card interactions. This guy will rock FMN's almost every week, but will never top-8 at a PTQ. He'll run well documented and competitively proven deck at all but the most casual of events. He's the guy who's personality is stronger than his play skills... otherwise his friends would start to wonder why he's never gone pro.

I am that guy.

I've been playing Magic for a fairly long time now, and always with a competitive edge. My first tournament winning Standard deck was the old Mirari's Wake deck, that would win with Decree of Justice. It was a very exciting experience, and at that point I decided there would be no other way to play. Now, I still couldn't shake my natural instinct to run decks that were a little "off kilter", and maybe that's where I ultimately went wrong. Later I would pilot Extended Tinker Combo to limited success, and Vintage 2-Land Belcher to, well, a lot of success.

I'm getting a little sidetracked. Perhaps my career history should wait for another time. Today, I want to talk about the 5 most prominent reasons I'm not where I'd like to be today. Naturally, a list like this is purely objective, and some people may not agree with every point. Also, this list is not a series of ways you "should" play magic, but rather things to avoid if you're serious about being serious. So, let's jump right in!

Poor Resource Management
Simply put, this is where you spend your precious (often financial) resources on things completely unimportant to tournament play. Obviously, we don't all have the $312 for a playset of Jace, The Mind Sculptors, but that doesn't mean you should waste the budget you do have. Let's say, for example, you have a generous $50 a month to blow on digital nerdy goodness (Add $50 for each spouse you don't have) and you're looking to bolster your presence in the Standard field. You've been happily piloting a Grixis control deck replacing JMC with good ol' Jace Beleren, but your mana base is a little shaky and you still need some ROE cards to fill in some card slots.. You're now faced with a choice, and that choice can be very hard for some people.

Option A: You spend $50 on 3 Consuming Vapors, 2 Consume the Meek, 4 (Dragon Skull Summit) and some man-lands
Option B: You spend $50 on a much larger pile of obscure cards to flesh out a couple of your 100 Card Singleton decks, or other pet decks

Option C would be spending that money on Daily, Premiere Events and 8-Man Queues. Taking this route implies you've done enough testing and tweaking with your deck that despite it's flaws you know you can reap profits in tournaments. It also means that you're willing and able to win "just enough" to turn your $50 into $78 and pick up a single Jace for the month... As it stands my 100 Card Singleton Esper Combo deck is starting to look very good!

-or?-

Budget vs Cheap
This ties in almost directly to poor resource management. Generally, this applies to new players, or newcomers to MTGO. Let's take another look at that $50 we still have in our pocket. A new player should take that $50 and decide both what he wants to do in general, and how far his budget can take him in that direction. Here is where net-deck research can actually be a very good thing. I'll use myself as an example: My comfort zone involves interesting combos are control elements, and resilience to the general meta. So, my first MTGO deck was Standard Dredge. It cost me $15 to build, and it won me about 65% of the 8-mans it played in. Eventually, the meta shifted enough and my winnings earned me enough that I was able to upgrade to the Spread 'Em deck, which thanks to Mr. Chapin has gotten quite dusty sitting in it's digital closet. Following the same pattern I moved up to Jacerator, then Time Sieve, then Polymorph, and currently Grixis. What all these decks have in common is that I've always felt comfortable and confident playing them. Now, at one point when I felt Dredge was falling behind I decided to take the cheaper approach and bought the cards for RDW. Red Deck never Won anything for me, it was terrible in my hands. The reason, again, was simply because I didn't feel good playing it. As a side note, I was the one guy at the card shop who couldn't win a single game running Ravager during Mirrodin block Standard...

That's a good example of being budget and having good resource management.Taking what you have and devoting all of it to something you feel good and confident playing. Being cheap, is a little different. Many people have a hard time when they realize they could either spend $50 on 75 cards for one Standard deck or $50 on ONE MILLION COMMONS AND QUESTIONABLE UNCOMMONS!!!!! If you want to play Pauper, that's great, but we're not talking about Pauper. Being cheap is when you spend 30 minutes looking at a deck you'd like to play, and figuring out how to cut any card that will cost you more than 1-2 tix. It will ultimately cost you more in the long run when you have to start making changes and compensating for so many tournament losses.

-Is only $1 more than-

Aggressive Net Decking
This one's a little interesting. I mentioned above that net decking is a good way to get started, and I stand by that. The problem is when people get tunnel vision and ONLY net deck. The blind net decking has several problems, which I'm sure several other articles on several websites have covered several times. The issue I want to touch on today is that it eliminates the "why" factor in deck building. Why is this card being ran? Why is this one in the sideboard and not in the main? Why is this card being ran over that one? Why hasn't anyone considered playing this card? There are a lot of complaints about the Standard meta being very dull, and while I agree, I think part of the problem is that everyone is just running the same decklists over and over again. One of my shining moments in paper Magic was sitting down at an FNM with a home-brewed Mono Black Control deck packing Greater Harvesters during Mirrodin-Kamigawa Standard, and beating out everything sitting across from me. I also place 16th at a PTQ around the same time period, with a BG Rock deck I built before I even knew what rock was. Despite the fact that I wasn't as original as I had thought, it was a great feeling knowing I built something "I" decided was a good meta call with a decklist "I" built from the ground up.

The format's more varied than people think. All you need to do beat the meta!

-into- -results in-

Poor Testing Habits
Another tie-in to a former point. Have you ever won a match you know full well you shouldn't have, or spent an entire round just baffled at your opponent's play decisions? That's a result of poor testing, often a result of blind net decking. It's easier to look at a list, read the primer, throw it together and jump into a queue. It's equally easy to get your ass handed to you because you have no idea that you have no idea what you're doing with your deck. No matter how confident you are, no matter how straight forward the deck appears, test. Test, test, test, test, test, test. After you're done testing, test some more. Test against the best decks in the format, test against the worst decks in the format, test against your buddies WTF concoction he build after a heavy night of drinking. Test against everything. Don't just test, but theorycraft (WoW habits die hard...). Take off the wall ideas and put them into your deck to see how they play out, change numbers, card choices, even win conditions. You can do no harm in testing and you can never test enough.

-targeting me in response to- -is a-

Being "Cute"
A habit that, being very much a Johnny, took a good deal of time for me to break. People who act "cute" in Magic are the people who use Gideon Jura to sac to Polymorph. Being cute is using Knight of the Reliquary strictly as an engine to power Roiling Terrain. To win a game of Magic you need only to deplete his life total to zero, ideally as quickly as possible. A good combo deck devotes all of its resources to going off as early as possible. A good aggro deck uses all it's cards to overwhelm and finish off its opponent as quickly as possible. Even "interesting" decks like Jacerator do their best win the game as quickly and efficiently as possible. Being cute is not being innovative either, it's simply the manifestation of the "win-more" ideology. A good bad example would be people you include sac engines in their Jund decks for their Sprouting Thrinaxes, or even the people who absolutely unnecessarily hold on to their Martial Coups until they have 30 mana available to them. Your deck only needs to win.

Every one of these examples and points are taken straight from my book, and I hope they can help push someone past all the mistakes I've made on my way. Remember to read this article objectively, and not assume any fingers are being pointed. Not everyone "gets it" when they first start playing, but at point the Safety Dance just clicks, and things start coming together. Just remember: Play, practice, prioritize, dodge, dip, duck... wait...

Until next time!

-Jeff Torres