“ELVES!”

“I got my sideboard all figured out to beat you this week. You’re going down.”

“EELVES!”

“Yeah, after I started running Bloodbraid Elf in Legacy, everyone else started running it too.”

“EEEEELLLLLLVES!!”

“I really don’t think mainboard Emeria Angel is good for this meta.”

“Innistrad? What the fuck is this Innistrad shit?”

“ELVES!!”

This is what an FNM sounds like, in case you were curious. Those are all real quotes. The Innistrad one isn’t even paraphrased.

My brief thoughts on speculation in Magic singles: It usually works out pretty fairly for people. There’s definitely a lot less variance in it than, say, sports betting, but it’s not exactly free money, either. Last Wednesday, Ted Knutson wrote a spicy, albeit premium, piece wherein he explained why he thought duals would go up on MTGO, and then proceeded to buy a bunch back in July. By August, no price had decreased. Only one didn’t change; the rest went up. Some were modest increases, while some were very sharp.

As I said before, in Magic speculation, it’s a little easier to cut out losses, as long as you’re smart. That said, if you plan on taking speculation seriously and doing it a lot, you will take losses. It’s simple percentages. You can’t hit on every single card you invest in; there’s just no way to ensure 100% certainty in a business like speculation.

I like football because the same teams don’t do well year after year, like you see in, say, basketball, where six of the eight teams that made the playoffs in one conference will make the playoffs the next year. In football, you almost always see a regression toward the mean. A dynasty actually means something in football, because it’s fucking hard to pull off. For an example of a team regressing toward the mean, let’s look at the New Orleans Saints. The year they won the Super Bowl, they went 13–3, and if we combine the postseason, it becomes 16–3 (they had a bye in the first round of the playoffs). The year after, the Saints went 11–5, and if we include the playoffs, 11–6, thanks to a Marshawn Lynch run in Seattle, marking the most electrifying play a Buffalo Bills player (albeit former) has made in the last ten years. The point I’m trying to illustrate is that all teams in the NFL are heading toward 0.500, be it by moving up or down. And that’s more or less what happens with speculating: You can rip off some huge gains, but you’re always moving toward 0.500. The way to mitigate this is to make minimal and/or smart investments.

What I’m actually torn on is how stores react to big buys. In this awesome piece, a girl works for one of the more respected sports bettors, and she describes making her first bet:

I lifted my cheek off the table and reached sluggishly for the phone.

“Sports.”

“Hi, Six-Four-Six Double D.”

“Go ’head Double D.”

“Game 224, Milwaukee money line?”

“Game 224, I got Bucks minus the fifty-five, total at one-twenty-one.”

“Okay,” I said. I slid a three-ply ticket from my own little pile. “I’ll take the fifty-five . . . ”

“No, no, no, not take,” Dink said.

Oh, God. Enough already. My instinct was to hang up.

“Stay on the phone,” Dink instructed in a hushed tone. “Milwaukee’s favored. You don’t take the favorite. You lay the favorite. You take the dog.”

“You there, Double D?”

“Yeah, hi. Actually, can I lay the fifty-five to win a dime?”

On the screen in front of me, the basketball game changed from minus 155 to minus 159. I realized Dinky’s opinion was so respected that when he or his crew bet money on a game, the office we bet with changed their odds.

I thought that was cool as hell.

That passage is only relevant because it applies to what some of the bigger ’bots on MTGO are doing with Ted’s speculations. Ted is in the same place as Dink: His opinion is so influential that the people in charge of the bots on MTGO mark their prices up accordingly. This is speculating on a speculation, and there’s a few reasons it’s retarded.

• There’s a chance Ted could be wrong. This is in no way a slight on Ted, and I’m sure he knows that, because Ted’s smart enough to know that you just can’t hit on every speculation—that would be a mathematical miracle. If he doesn’t project correctly for whatever reason, and you blindly mark up prices anyway . . . 
• You’re costing yourself money. When Ted misses on a projection, he knows roughly how much money he lost, or at least can make a very close approximation. If, say MTGOTraders jacks up the price of a card that Ted speculated on in an article, like, say, Rathi Dragon, then MTGOTraders is potentially driving people away from buying Rathi Dragons, effectively . . . 
• You’re changing the course of the future. I’m not saying the guys running cardbots will create a scenario in which they almost sleep with their mothers thanks to a DeLorean and a clearly-on-meth Christopher Lloyd, but—speculations aren’t based just on how the players behave, but on how the vendors behave as well. If you knee-jerk adjust your prices based on a speculation, there’s a good chance people won’t buy, making the projection you just adjusted to worthless.

Then again, I could be full of shit. WHO KNOWS?

I ran with Caw-Blade this week, Todd Anderson’s exact seventy-five from the $75K in Chicago. Thankfully, I didn’t need to scramble around for a bunch of cards; the only things I didn’t already have were two Misty Rainforests and a Phantasmal Image, and my friend Jason Corrigan, Level 1 Judge Extraordinaire, promised me them via Facebook early in the week. So I was set.

Mr. Corrigan and I were hanging out chatting before the tournament started, and I asked him what he thought about deck-pimping, because my theories are a little half-baked, and I wanted the opinion of someone I respected.

Jason Corrigan is an impossibly kind human. He doesn’t pimp out his decks, and he plays fun strategies at FNM. The first match I ever played against him, we were both 3–0 at FNM and he was playing a Standard-legal Commander deck, with Wrexial, the Risen Deep shuffled into his deck instead of in the command zone. I was just getting back into Standard, and wanted to play-test Sparkblade for the upcoming SCG Open in Boston. There are only two things I recall about that match: winning it, and him milling three copies of Jace, the Mind Sculptor with (I think) a Sword of Body and Mind hit. After someone rolling a hundred-card singleton deck at an FNM mills you for ten cards and roughly $350 with a lot of people watching, it’s hard not to wanna be that guy’s friend. I have to say Jason is kind because he chose his words very carefully here:

“I don’t pimp out my decks. If I have a cool version of card, I’ll play it, but I personally don’t go out of my way to get cool versions of cards. I think it’s more about status, personally. It says ‘I’ve been playing this game for a while. Look at these rare cards I have. Not many other people have these cards.’ ”

“So if you can’t say it with play skill, you say it with your cards?”

“Uh . . . well, traders, for example.” He refuses to say anything that could be construed negatively about anyone. Methinks he had a fair idea this would be going straight into my report. He wasn’t wrong. “It’s pretty important for traders to have pimped-out decks; it’s part of their business. ‘Look what I’m shuffling up. I clearly have more stuff like this in my binders if you’d like to trade after this.’ ”

All I could do was smile. I wish I were that good a person sometimes. Jason sensed my faint disappointment in his answer, and added,

“Hey, if you want me to make a small penis joke, I can make a small penis joke.”

Round 1, I play against a different Jason, a nice guy on a mono-Black deck. Our draws are both pretty slow. My first action is Emeria Angel, while his is a Solemn Simulacrum. I play an Arid Mesa, make a dude, attack, and pass back, and he rolls out two Bloodghasts and a Basilisk Collar.

I play another land, make a dude, swing with all my guys that aren’t summoning-sick, and pass back. He plays a land, suits up his Solemn Simulacrum, and swings with his team, so I crack my Arid Mesa so I can trade with both his Bloodghasts.

I untap and play a land, attack with everything I can, and cast a Consecrated Sphinx.

He untaps, we both draw some cards. He plays a land, sighs, and says, “Your turn.”

Cue that uneasy feeling.

FNM isn’t supposed to be a place where you just play the best deck and win. That’s just not what it’s there for. The prize support reflects this. You’re there to have fun and learn the game against a wide variety of decks. The store I’m playing at runs another Standard tournament on Mondays, with prize payout less spread out, so there’s a much more competitive crowd, with good reason: You actually have an incentive to do better. FNM is not that. FNM serves as a learning environment for players just starting out to play casually, learn interactions that exist outside of their kitchen tables, and learn the basics of tournament Magic.

I unrepentantly enjoy playing good decks. I don’t care about netdecking, and I never really have. However, I’m not sure if FNM is the place for that. This dude Jason was looking for a good time and ran straight into a buzzsaw. I’m not great at turning off the Magic player who wants to win, and this presents a lot of problems for me. It’s possible that competitive decks aren’t what I want to play when doing this column. It’s something worth thinking about.

Thinking less of Jason for missing his Bloodghast triggers is a mistake, too. Everyone’s been there, and if you’re unwilling to admit that, you’re an insecure asshole and I hope your house burns down because the world would be better without you in it.

I tried to teach my girlfriend how to play Magic last fall, when I was in the thick of SCG’s Talent Search and was faced with the prospect of possibly getting paid to play Magic. We played some games with some Scars of Mirrodin precons, and (sick brags coming) she didn’t win a lot. I tried to tell her that she’d learn in time, that getting my ass kicked repeatedly was how I learned this game. This didn’t work. She just wanted to have a nice time with her boyfriend and try out this hobby that takes up so much of his time. Instead, I unrelentingly beat her down with the mono-White precon with Myrsmith in it, because I am a bad teacher. Sometime down the road, over the course of playing in FNMs for this column, I’m sure I’ll probably have to turn off the version of me who, while being amiable to my opponent, doesn’t know how to take it easy on him. That day’s gonna suck.

Round 2 sees me playing against a dude named Tim. He’s on B/G poison, and he’s rocking the sleeves with the Phyrexian logo on, all inside clear penny sleeves. Spoiler alert: More uneasiness on the way!

Game 1, he gets through with a Glistener Elf twice. The second time it hits, a Vines of the Vastwood while I am tapped out for a Jace Beleren or some other card that doesn’t matter in this game gets me up to 6 poison. I manage to stabilize, but since I do so without Gideon Jura, a Putrefax that I don’t see coming just wrecks me.

Tim has the annoying habit of announcing which creatures were attacking and just putting them forward. We share this exchange more than once:

“Attack with Glistener Elf and an Inkmoth Nexus.”

“You have to tap them.”

“I’m waiting for a response.”

“But you already committed yourself to attacking with them. You have to tap them.”

This gets him to reluctantly tap his men. But that exchange happens on literally every attack phase of his, and after a while I just get so frustrated that I reach over and tap his creatures for him.

The match after that was pretty academic; I knew what to play around and exactly what I needed to dig for with every Preordain (Gideon Jura). After the match, Tim was really steamed, and remarked (very quietly) that I sped him up and threw him off his tempo. He didn’t sound mad, but he was very flustered as he desideboarded and put his deck away. I just sat there in silence.

I wasn’t sure what I did wrong. I never asked him to play faster (it’s FNM), but I knew the clock was ticking, so while his plays were very—shall we say—deliberate, I made sure mine were speedy in order to make up for the lost time. I’m sure my reaching over to tap his creatures didn’t endear me to him either, but that was a situation I didn’t know how to rectify.

He wished me good luck and got up.

I asked Jason about it after the match, and he said that maybe Tim meant to declare his attack phase. I should’ve realized that, but then again, he was committing himself to attacking with certain creatures, and I didn’t bring it up to him after the match because I was feeling sorry about upsetting him.

I didn’t love the fact that I was running the de facto best deck at a friggin’ FNM to begin with, now I’ve gone and pissed off some dude, which is a serious thing considering that I want our little Syracuse, New York Magic scene to grow, and it can’t if Tim and other guys decide not to come back to FNM. This is what I think most players around here miss—not all bad players stay bad. We want and need these guys to keep coming back. I can’t tell you how many regulars I’ve seen ripping off kids who clearly don’t have a clue. That shit’s gotta stop. And for the record, I’m not defending the socially retarded high school kid who’s insufferable throughout your match, the one who sighs and complains about mana-screw shortly after he spends his first two turns blowing through Preordains because it’s a Blue spell in his hand and he had the mana to play it. Those kids are the worst. Tim was not one of these; he was a genuinely good guy, albeit shy, who didn’t fully understand the rules of the combat step. I didn’t see that because I was preoccupied with winning. I’m not sure if that makes me a jerk. The commentariat here at GatheringMagic.com will have an opinion on this, I’m sure.

Round 3, I’m at Table 1 against a dude named Will. They do random seating at our FNMs, so table number doesn’t actually matter, but I like being at Table 1 because it’s on the end.

Will strolls to his seat and offers a handshake. After the uneasiness with which my last match ended, I gratefully accept it.

I ask him if he’s 2–0. He replies, “Well, I’ve won four games, and I won both my matches.”

He leads with a Forest into a Copperhorn Elf.

@#$%^&*(!

As much as I thought I wanted it to happen, that I deserved it, it turns out that the prospect of losing this match is, in fact, upsetting to me. Elves isn’t a great matchup for Caw-Blade. It never has been. Day of Judgment is pretty silly against an Elvish Archdruid and an Ezuri, Renegade Leader. They simply play too many threats for you to deal with profitably, they easily blank what should be your best card, Day of Judgment, and then they Overrun you out with Ezuri, Renegade Leader. Will also happens to be packing the very real threat of Nissa Revane, complete with four copies of Nissa’s Chosen.

We split the first two games, and he takes a mulligan in Game 3 and still gets me down to 2 (!) before I stabilize with Gideon Jura and an Emeria Angel. I am so happy to still be alive that I start making little mistakes everywhere once I get control over the game. I miss a Landfall trigger with Emeria Angel. I miss a draw trigger with Consecrated Sphinx. Once the second misplay happens, I am able to mentally slap myself in the face, and I start playing tightly. I even have a neat little sequence where, the turn after I play Into the Roil on the Elvish Archdruid he taps out for, he casts an Ezuri, Renegade Leader. At this point, I know his hand is comprised of just one Elvish Archdruid. On my turn, I draw Into the Roil, play it on his Ezuri, Renegade Leader, and play my second Sword of Feast and Famine of the game, getting in with an Emeria Angel and a Bird token, each of whom is equipped with its own Sword of Feast and Famine. He has to discard both Elf lords, and I ratchet my Gideon Jura up 2 more counters and never look back for the rest of the game. It is quite the close game, and Will is more than gracious in defeat, even offering to take the match slip up.

Round 4, I play against a regular named Adam. He has a huge watch and sleeves made of ink. He had been watching my prior match, and is kind enough to point out that I also forgot to draw a card when I kicked an Into the Roil. He wants to split so he can go home, and, honestly, nothing sounds better than going home at this point, but I let him know that I am actually working, and that I won’t be able to split. I tell him about the column, the website I write for, yadda yadda yadda.

“I want you to write down that I’m upset that you didn’t let me get pizza.”

Noted!

“So, what do you write on that site?”

“Well, currently, I’m doing a series where I play a different deck at FNM for a year.”

“Do they let you write about other stuff, too?”

“Sure. Once I got drunk and drew on some Magic cards, and they published that.”

“What? And you got paid for that?”

“I did.”

“How much did they pay you for that?

“Enough.”

A pause. “So do you just draw on your own cards, or what?”

“Well, a guy sent me some cards to draw on for the last one.”

“What did he send you?”

“A Stasis and a Mana Short. I kinda ruined the Stasis, though. I just kinda covered it with blue marker and left a space in the corner for my name.”

“Why did he send you these cards?”

“He saw a Chrome Steed I drew on when I was drunk and he liked it.”

Another pause. “So is there any way I can get on that train? Because I’m going home to drink some ’Goose and eat some pizza, and that sounds like something I can do.”

I laugh, in spite of myself.

“Sure. Anyone can do it.”

The two games are pretty anticlimactic; it’s the mirror, and he misses early land drops and loses.

That’s all this matchup boils down to, really. If both players make their land drops, there’s lots of play between the two decks. If one guy stumbles on mana, he’s going to get buried. Unfortunately, winning the games in a way that gives your mana-screwed opponent no outs takes forever. It’s a pain in the ass, and definitely not the way I wanted that match to turn out. I felt really bad throughout the match, because, let’s face it, I am a dick for not chopping the prizes. It’s a friggin’ FNM. Under any other circumstances, I would take the 3–0–1 and go home. Which is not to say I’m bitter about this assignment; it’s teaching me a lot about an aspect of Magic I never really see: Magic through the eyes of the casual player. I expect I’ll get better at this as the weeks go on.

As the last match was happening, I reflected on how brutal this Friday was. I didn’t have to scramble for cards, but I got some ugly wins, was kind of an asshole without even realizing it, and played a deck that far outstripped the field. I figure I’ll either grow comfortable with that, or start playing fun decks. Or find a happy medium. I really don’t wanna start playing bad decks just for the sake of it.

What to say about Todd Anderson’s iteration of Caw-Blade that hasn’t already been said about the deck as an archetype? It’s good . . . obviously. It’s got lots of play to it . . . obviously. I like how his sideboard is set up against aggro. One Timely Reinforcements main-deck seems odd. I have no idea how to play with Phantasmal Image yet.

And, seemingly out of nowhere, our match ended. My FNM was over. Thank God I guaranteed myself that Cultivate, I thought bitterly. As we put away our stuff, Adam said,

“It’s kinda shitty that you didn’t take the chop.”

I know.

“I’m gonna go home and read your articles tonight. Is this match gonna be part of your next one?”

Yup.

“Are you gonna include that line about the pizza? I want that in there.”

Sure, but there’s probably gonna be a little more to it than that.

Jon Corpora

Pronounced ca-pora

@feb31st