Lesson #3: While an alternate win condition is useful as a means of surprising your opponent, the most dangerous thing in magic is an additional way to lose the game.
Elves is a very powerful deck, perhaps the most powerful in the pre-Alara Reborn extended format. The one thing that is more powerful though is one of the Future Sight pacts. Please people, pay for your pacts.
Lesson #2: If the deck you choose for a tournament wins a Grand Prix and you don’t adjust your list for the mirror, you deserve to lose to it twice.
Ego is a powerful thing. “I will outplay my opponents” is a good philosophy to have, but it needs to come with some grounded perception in reality. That being a) That you are actually capable of this and b) That your playskill will matter at all relative to the difference in decks. I got this wrong, and I was pounded by maindeck paths and more 5/4 Thoctars than I could handle.
Lesson #1: Magic – Take it or leave it.
As you can see by the amount of time it has taken me to write this post, I’m feeling pretty apathetic about Magic. I’m preparing for Regionals because it is my bye week in Hockey, and I have an obligation to try and qualify for Nationals, which I will be attending in July. But the biggest thing that I took away from PTQ Honlulu is that I don’t feel a need to play Magic anymore. I think I might be more or less done with it, Magic’s become a social game for me now. It’s something I have to spend time with old school friends, or to spend hundreds of dollars and travel across the country to catch up with people I’ve barely met from different states…different countries. I don’t have the burning desire to play in the Pro Tour anymore. It’s not a case of losing “The Fire” that people (particularly myself) have spoken of in other places before. I still have The Fire, it just doesn’t burn for Magic anymore. Maybe i’m just becoming more stereotypically “normal”…
And it’s absolutely unclear to me whether or not I like it.
