Yessir, I had dipped my toe into the MTG tournament scene and was now ready to embark upon the treacherous waters of constructed play. I’m not going to lie to you. In hindsight, my deck building skills were half-crappy at best. However, I knew enough about standard legal cards that I still came up with a stout black-green deck featuring Pernicious Deed and Spiritmonger.
As had become custom by now, we did some limited testing and I steamrolled my usual partner who insisted on poindextering up some control-based, combo-laden monstrosity. I wonder if this dude goes to Vegas and bets against the Harlem Globetrotters. It was like he had the MTG equivalent of battered-wife syndrome. I’d beat him 5 straight games and then he’d get the Lord’s draw and lock the next game down and muster up a look that would say: “See? This deck really does love me”.
In any event, I had the design. I had the date circled on my calendar. I had the Vick’s Vaporub for the underside of my nostrils (the event was at the American again). Now was the time to get me some cards and trash these proxies.
Uh-huh. Well…..um….@#&$. I took one look at the prices for the cards in this deck and damn near soiled myself. Listen, I’m not one of those guys that throws around nickels like manhole covers but I had bills, a mortgage, and an out of work wife. I wasn’t about to dump $100 to buy the 4 additional cards I needed to complete my build.
I was going to take a stand! This was an outrage! $4 packs are one thing, but shelling out that type of dough for cardboard representations of creatures and spells was something else entirely. It was my feeling that if I didn’t open what I needed over the past 3 months of buying packs and playing casually with buddies then I’d simply add some filler to replace the missing ‘Deeds and ‘Mongers.
It is said that at high levels of competition, the smallest advantage, the most minute act or observation, can make the difference between glory and obscurity. Even as a novice, I knew deep down inside that my already slim hopes of victory were dashed without those 4 missing cards. It was like going into a chess tournament missing a Queen and a Rook.
This bush league crap might work when pushing chess pieces with my buddy Manual after about 17 bourbon and Cokes, but competent players with complete decks were going to beat me like a rented mule.
When it was over, I almost wished I had done worse. I had some great draws and good matchups and for the second tournament in a row, I finished 4-2-1, losing to the eventual champion in 3 games (he was running a Mirari deck).
In all honesty, I can’t remember the placeholders I ended up using for the missing bombs, but they sure as hell weren’t as good as the cards they replaced. The feeling upon leaving the malodorous halls of the hotel was less one of disappointment then one of resignation.
I don’t eat precious gems and ride to work on a flying pony. Given my financial realities at the time, there was no way I was going to be able to muster up that type of coin for a competitive constructed deck every time a tournament rolled around and I didn’t relish the thought of playing the same deck or some variant of it for the rest of my MTG career.
Yes, I was bummed by this somewhat stern wake up call. However, I was fairly certain that my continually developing skills would allow me (if enough time were invested) to come up with some cheap rouge decks that would surprise and delight the Magic world. In fact, the Grand Prix was coming soon. It seemed to be the perfect time to test my deck building prowess against some formidable opponents. Yep. My next entry will tell you exactly how that went….
Next Installment: The Fryguy gets his arse handed to him, has the pleasure to meet some real buttholes at the Grand Prix, and backs out of MTG.
