Next week I start tuning a new precon, and you get to decide which one! Check out last week's article and cast your vote. Polls close Wednesday morning.

This week, however, I'd like to talk about a little Standard tournament I played in . . .

***

Round 1, Game 1, on the play. I sculpt the nuts on turn three: Tezzeret off of Sphere of the Suns, making Mox Opal a 5/5. Go. (My opponent has a Highborn and a Lacerator I'm looking to fend off.)

My opponent says, ". . . Okay"—emphasis on the ellipsis—then untaps and attacks his Kalastria Highborn right into my animated Opal.

"Block?"

"It's until end of turn, dude," he tells me with pity, like I'm a kindergartener and he's the teacher who has to take away my crayons. I flip Tezzeret around toward him; he blushes and bins the best card in his deck.

I lose that game anyway.

It's all right, I think to myself. I have ten sideboard cards for Vampires. I'll win the next two no problem. I have the best deck here, and I'm feeling good.

***

I've had this confidence since Wednesday, when Seth offered to let me borrow the Tezzeret deck we've been working on. He was going out of town and there was a TCGPlayer $1K in Manchester, not five minutes from my house. This was a pretty big deal, because Bryan Haak is already qualified for the TCGPlayer championships and would really like me to go with him.

The deck was a work in progress, but seemed incredibly powerful. Seth had been tuning it from a casual mono-Blue Grand Architect/Proliferate control deck into a sleek Blue/Black Tezzeret machine. Every few days, he'd tell me his latest changes, and we'd debate the merits of Voltaic Key or Treasure Mage or Steel Hellkite. We only got around fifteen games in, but having a 5/5 on turn three plus a ridiculous card-drawing engine seemed good against just about everything.

Here's the deck he handed off to me Wednesday night:

"Setheret"

• Creatures (5)
• 3 Trinket Mage
• 2 Wurmcoil Engine

• Spells (32)
• 4 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
• 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
• 1 Jace Beleren
• 4 Sphere of the Suns
• 4 Everflowing Chalice
• 1 Mox Opal
• 3 Black Sun's Zenith
• 4 Mana Leak
• 4 Contagion Clasp
• 1 Elixir of Immortality
• 2 Chimeric Mass
• 1 Brittle Effigy

• Lands (23)
• 4 Tectonic Edge
• 3 Inkmoth Nexus
• 3 Swamp
• 5 Island
• 4 Creeping Tar Pit
• 3 Darkslick Shores
• 1 Drowned Catacomb

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Into the Roil
• 3 Memoricide
• 3 Duress
• 2 Volition Reins
• 2 Ratchet Bomb
• 3 Spreading Seas

Buy This Deck Export text format

When I got it home and laid it out, I had a few changes is mind. The Trinket Mages and their bullets were taking up too much space and made for too many clunky draws. I really, really wanted Tumble Magnet, and probably some spot removal, too. I wanted a Treasure Mage and a Mindslaver to search up against Valakut. Finally, I wanted to max out the Darkslick Shores and bump the Catacombs to two.

The next day, I started checking in on Pro Tour: Paris coverage, and was surprised to see a deck tech with Matignon featuring a similar Tezzeret list to Seth's and mine. The big difference was that he played Red for Pyroclasm, Galvanic Blast, and Slagstorm. He also played very few counters in the main deck.

I considered swapping in the Red, but decided against it. Black Sun's Zenith isn't as fast as Pyroclasm or Slagstorm, but it has some other benefits:

1. It doesn't matter how many fetch lands your opponent has to protect his Geopede when you have Black Sun's Zenith.

2. It beats pro-Red creatures (um . . . Phyrexian Crusader, I guess?).

3. It shuffles back into your deck, increasing the odds that you'll draw additional copies and making your Jace Brainstorms a little better.

4. It scales, so it can theoretically kill everything from Kuldotha Rebirth tokens to Titans.

As for Galvanic Blast, well, I have Go for the Throat. Being unable to dome Planeswalkers is a big deal, but I figured the ability to kill Titans made up for it. Plus, I liked Contagion Clasp more than Prophetic Prism, and I didn't think the deck could handle all three colors without it. Here's where I ended up:

"Setheret Reloaded"

• Creatures (2)
• 1 Treasure Mage
• 1 Wurmcoil Engine

• Spells (35)
• 4 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
• 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
• 4 Everflowing Chalice
• 3 Sphere of the Suns
• 3 Tumble Magnet
• 4 Contagion Clasp
• 2 Mox Opal
• 4 Mana Leak
• 2 Go for the Throat
• 3 Black Sun's Zenith
• 2 Stoic Rebuttal
• 1 Mindslaver

• Lands (23)
• 4 Creeping Tar Pit
• 2 Inkmoth Nexus
• 4 Tectonic Edge
• 4 Darkslick Shores
• 2 Drowned Catacomb
• 4 Island
• 3 Swamp

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Spreading Seas
• 3 Spell Pierce
• 1 Stoic Rebuttal
• 3 Ratchet Bomb
• 4 Vampire Nighthawk

Buy This Deck Export text format

I thought a lot about the expected metagame. I suspected Signal Goblins would be popular because it's relatively cheap. I guessed that Goblins and all the other aggro decks combined would be about 40 percent of the metagame. Valakut and Eldrazi Green would be played by the same people who have been playing those decks for months, making up about 20 percent. Caw-Go, old school Blue/Black control, and Tezzeret would be 30 percent, with the final 10 percent made up of rogue decks and Pyromancer Ascension (where is that deck, anyway?).

With those in mind, I turned to the sideboard. My big innovation was Vampire Nighthawk, which Gerry Thompson wrote about in his Kuldotha Red article as "the card I least want to see," or something like that. I also liked it against Vampires, who I guessed would be siding out some creature removal. The Ratchet Bombs were for Goblins and random Elf decks, plus as a catch-all against decks I couldn't see coming.

Spreading Seas was for Vampires and Valakut. Spell Pierce and Stoic Rebuttal were intended for control matchups and Valakut, where my plan was to counter the relevant early plays while bashing for 5, 10, 15 with Tezz.

There was a much larger turnout than I expected, and some players from Massachusetts nearly got turned away (they ended up finding room, though). Most of the best New England players were there, and it looked like I was going to have some competition. Heh . . . yeah, right.

***

Game 3, same Vampires match, I'm on the ropes after a mulligan left me stumbling on mana. I have a Tumble Magnet trying to bide time until I can get to six lands and play Wurmcoil Engine. Unfortunately for me, he has a Kalastria Highborn, two Bloodghasts, and a Vampire Hexmage, plus at least five untapped Swamps. I rip my sixth land, but it's a Darkslick Shores, so I have no play besides laying it down and hoping he doesn't realize he has lethal.

End of my turn; he sacrifices the Hexmage targeting Tumble Magnet, and immediately untaps and draws without draining me. Then he attacks me down to 2. He passes the turn. At this point, I'm thinking I might snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

I slam the Wurmcoil Engine down, and he noticeably slumps in his seat. If I can dodge one of the seven burn spells in his deck or a sacrifice outlet, I'm looking good.

He draws and plays a Vampire Hexmage, thinks for twenty seconds, and passes the turn.

I play as quickly as I can, so he doesn't have time to think about the Hexmage and the fact that he made a mistake with his last one. I untap, draw, and attack with Wurmcoil in one fluid motion, trying to have an air of confidence like all I had to do was untap with the lifelinker and the game was mine.

His face says he knows it's over. He looks at the life totals one last time, calculating exactly how many outs he had last turn, and how he was so unlucky! Then, by chance, his eye scans over the Hexmage. An idea lights up his face. He looks at my board. Looks back to the Hexmage.

"Can I just talk to a judge real quick?" he says excitedly.

"Sure."

If I had to guess, I would say he asked whether he could sacrifice the Hexmage even though there were no permanents with counters on them. Whatever it was, he came back and dumped the 'mage in the bin, paid the Black to kill me, and released a huge sigh of relief before he even sat back down.

***

It's Round 2, and I'm playing against another Red/Black Vampires deck. I'm up a game, but Game 2 is pretty dicey. I'm trying to find the optimal play with a board of two Planeswalkers, two Tumble Magnets, a freshly played Wurmcoil Engine, and a Contagion Clasp (now a 5/5, thanks to Tezzeret), all while on 2 life (I'm always on 2 life, it seems). Problem is, he has a Viscera Seer and four other creatures to sacrifice, plus a deck loaded with Lightning Bolts and Arc Trails. He sacrifices Bloodghast. Puts the top card of his library on the bottom. Sacrifices Vampire Lacerator. Thinks for ten seconds, then puts the card back on top with a smile.

"This can't be good for me," I remark. He shakes his head devilishly.

He plays a land that brings back the hasty Bloodghast, then reveals the card he kept on top: Go for the Throat. "Kill your 5/5," he says triumphantly. If it is successfully destroyed, he will have just enough creatures to get around the Tumble Magnets and the Wurmcoil (sacrificing the one I block so Lifelink doesn't happen) to hit me for 2.

"It's an artifact," I tell him with pity, like I'm taking away his crayons.

"Oh."

Next turn, I look at the top five and find the Contagion Clasp I need to kill his Viscera Seer, then I get in there with Wurmcoil Engine and put the ball firmly back in my court. Later, after I finish the game at a healthy 12 life, he shows me the next card he would have seen if he'd put the Go for the Throat on the bottom: Lightning Bolt.

***

After the match, I have a discussion with my longtime friend and Magic mentor, Brian (not Haak—that's Bryan). He's been more or less out of the competitive scene for a few years, occasionally playing in a PTQ or local tournament, but never with the intensity he had when he was on the Pro Tour. He's lost his last round, likely to a player of less technical skill, and Brian muses on the state of the game.

"I don't like what they've done with the game. They made it more accessible, which is good for their bottom line, but bad for people like me."

"How so?"

"Well, they've made a number of rules changes in the past few years, and just the way rulings work now—it all caters to people who don't know how to play. People like me used to have an edge because we knew the rules inside and out, and could outplay anybody, even if they were lucky. Now judges rule based on intent, and basically play the game for you. There's really no way to get an edge anymore."

I think back to a PTQ where I railbirded Brian the whole time, and watched him win a match because his opponent played Spellstutter Sprite before Brian removed the last counter from his Ancestral Vision. His exact words were, "In response to you removing the last counter, Spellstutter Sprite." Brian's response was, "Judge!"

Brian was always like that. Even when we were kids at Hammer's Saturday Standard tournaments, people hated playing him because he was a "rules lawyer." Just sitting across from him would make most people nervous and jittery. If you were using a shortcut or vague statement, like "After you attack, play—", Brian would stop you and say, "What step are we in, exactly?"

He never did anything shady or cheated people, he just made sure everything was completely clear. Then, if you didn't understand the intricate rules of Magic, you were likely to make your own mistakes, and Brian would just call a judge over.

So, I could see where he was coming from. Damage no longer stacking is one obvious example of the game becoming simpler. "May" triggers becoming "must" is another. And I recall one recent example of ruling by intent:

Jason Ford is playing Jund in the Pro Tour, and his opponent is playing something with Lotus Cobras. Jason has the win as long as his opponent doesn't cast Sphinx of the Steel Wind this turn. Of course, his opponent starts going off.

"Play a fetch, add White. Crack it, get a land, add White. Play the fetch land on top of my library, add White (he had Oracle of Mul Daya) . . ." The whole time, he and Jason are keeping notes on how many of each color he has. He adds a couple Blue. He adds some more White. Finally, the opponent looks at the board, looks at his notepad, and panic crosses his face. He nonchalantly scribbles out one of the White symbols and replaces it with a Black. Then he plays Sphinx of the Steel Wind.

"Um . . . judge?" He and his opponent explain the situation, but his opponent says that obviously he added the Black; why would he not play Sphinx of the Steel Wind when he needs it to survive? The judge rules that he must have had Black in his pool, and that he gets to play the Sphinx.

If the story ended here, it would be a great example of ruling by intent, screwing over the person who was right, but unfortunately for my purposes, Jason appealed to the head judge. It looked like the head judge was going to side with the original ruling, until Jason took him aside and said something like:

"Look, I think he was going to play Iona, then realized that he would lose if he did, so he lied and said he added a Black instead of a White. If you look at his hand, I bet he has the Iona." The judge did, found an Iona, ruled that he had lied to the judges, and disqualified him from the tournament without prize. For the record, Jason felt really bad about what happened, because he didn't intend to get the kid DQed. He just didn't want to be cheated out of the win.

What Brian says resonated with me because I had lost Round 1 to a player who had punted multiple times while I felt like I was playing perfectly. In the back of my mind, though, I knew it was a cop-out to blame a poor performance on the game developers and rules managers. Surely I must have done something wrong. But what?

***

I'm 1-1 going into Round 3, and I'm up against Boros. I get absolutely wrecked in the first game by a turn-two Geopede that I cannot find an answer for (Contagion Clasp, where are you?!). Eventually I find a Black Sun's Zenith, but then he just plays a Stoneforge Mystic for Sword of Body and Mind followed by Squadron Hawk. I lose shortly thereafter.

I sideboard in my Nighthawks, figuring they're pretty good against Squadron Hawk. I take out my Mindslaver and three Mana Leaks for them.

Game 2 is a long, drawn-out affair, as I draw multiple Black Sun's Zeniths. After I use my last removal spell (Go for the Throat) on a Geopede wielding a Sword, my opponent drops a Baneslayer Angel. Even the Wurmcoil Engine I draw and play can't race the Angel when she picks up the Sword of Body and Mind.

I try to make a game of it, my plan being to play Tezzeret and get in for 5 poison with Inkmoth Nexus, but a Phyrexian Revoker on Tezz gets rid of that option. On a critical turn, I draw Treasure Mage.

My one Wurmcoil is already in play. My Mindslaver mocks me from the sidelines.

I'm not sure if the Mindslaver would have turned the game around—I don't know what he had in his hand, and I certainly didn't have lethal on the board even if I tapped him down. Still, it would have been something.

After the match, Brian said that it seemed like a sideboarding error. I shouldn't have Treasure Mage with only one target in my deck, ever. He was right. And besides, the Nighthawks were awful against Geopedes and Baneslayers, and even a Hawk with the right Sword could get through it. My sideboard should have had more answers to Boros, a respected and widely played deck, and I should have sideboarded better regardless.

That's when it occurred to me that there are many levels of mistakes.

1. Procedural errors.

These are mistakes due to a lack of knowledge about the rules. Early in your Magic-playing career (or, if you're like me, at the Scars of Mirrodin prerelease with Revoke Existence), maybe you try to play a Sorcery on your opponent's turn. Maybe you're at a PTQ and you aren't sure exactly how the timing works on Ancestral Vision, so you play a Spellstutter Sprite before the last counter is removed. Maybe you're confused about layers and think Diminish will save you from a creature with equipment on it.

I believe these are the types of mistakes Brian was referring to when he said the game has been dumbed down. I don't believe that exploiting them is the only way to get an edge.

2. Errors despite known or implied information.

This is where I'd put all of my opponents' mistakes that I've talked about. They had all the information they needed: Tezzeret's ability explicitly states "artifact creature", and Go for the Throat clearly reads "nonartifact creature". Still, due to a misunderstanding or a lapse in memory, my opponents failed to recognize the correct play.

Most people who say they played "perfectly" are really saying they made the most logical plays given the information they had. You can definitely get an edge in the early rounds of a PTQ or local tournament by reducing your number of these mistakes, but there are other things to take into account.

3. Failure to correctly read the situation.

If you've been bluffed out of a game, you've committed this error. It stems from that one word in #2: "implied." Sometimes, we have to make plays based on what our opponent seems to have, and that isn't always easy. The best players can read opponents like a book, so if you can't, you can still improve. Not playing around telegraphed removal spells is a big one in this category.

I don't look at my opponent nearly enough when I play. I pretty much constantly look at the board, or worse, the next match over. Maybe I find it a little weird to stare into another person's eyes for thirty minutes, but doing so would undoubtedly improve my tell-reading skills.

4. Errors in deck construction or deck selection.

Pretty self-explanatory, right?

I was certainly guilty of this one at the $1K. I think Tezzeret was a fine choice for the tournament, but lack of testing meant that my sideboard was suboptimal and my main deck was off. I at least should have had Preordain, and probably should have just run the Red. Having more and better sweepers would have been incredible against the three creature decks I faced, and the mana base can handle Grixis colors with no problem. Counterspells were pretty bad, as I'm regularly tapping out on my turn. I should have only run a couple Stoic Rebuttals and maybe a Spell Pierce or two.

5. Strategic errors.

Maybe you carried out your plan perfectly—but was it the right plan? Maybe you misunderstood your role in the matchup, and should have been playing the control deck rather than the beat-down deck. I would also include sideboarding mistakes here.

Sideboarding incorrectly was my most costly error at the $1K. I brought in my Nighthawks against the first Vampire deck I faced, and in order to make room, sided out my Jaces. This was terrible. He always had a Gatekeeper of Malakir or a Lightning Bolt, so Nighthawk was never relevant. Worse, I found myself low on gas because I didn't have Jaces keeping me going. I tend to oversideboard because I don't test sideboarded games enough, and it's something I need to work on if I want to improve.

I'm sure there are other categories of mistakes, and I'm sure I'm guilty of all of them. Really, there's only one way to eliminate mistakes in all of these categories: Play more Magic.

That's why I'm already practicing for the Legacy Grand Prix in Providence, some four months out. I'll be ready. I'll have the right deck. My sideboard will be a finely tuned work of art.

It's time for a comeback.

Until next week,

Brad Wojceshonek

BJWOJ on Twitter

Bradwoj at gmail dot com