In a rare turn of events, I went to a non-FNM tournament last week. Even more strange—for me, anyway—it was a Legacy tournament. Syracuse, New York is a Legacy hotbed, and since Adam Barnello was going to GP: Montreal, and since I don’t have a passport or an enhanced license (I know, I know), I was to remain in Syracuse, which freed Adam up to lend me some cards for Team America:

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

2 Tombstalker

4 Tarmogoyf

2 Vendilion Clique

[/Creatures]

[Planeswalkers]

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

[/Planeswalkers]

[Spells]

2 Diabolic Edict

2 Dismember

4 Brainstorm

4 Force of Will

4 Mental Misstep

2 Thoughtseize

3 Ancestral Vision

4 Hymn to Tourach

2 Pernicious Deed

[/Spells]

[Lands]

2 Bayou

2 Tropical Island

3 Polluted Delta

3 Verdant Catacombs

4 Misty Rainforest

4 Underground Sea

4 Wasteland

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

1 Diabolic Edict

1 Nature's Claim

2 Spell Pierce

3 Ghastly Demise

1 Ancestral Vision

1 Consuming Vapors

2 Thoughtseize

1 Pernicious Deed

3 Leyline of the Void

[/Sideboard]

[/cardlist]

Everything was foil. Two of the Underground Seas were Beta, the rest of the duals were Italian black-bordered. I did not riffle-shuffle that deck. Highlights of the night included sitting down for Round 1 with a thirteen-card sideboard (we didn’t register decks, so I took the game loss and chose to play first for Game 3) and going undefeated in games played (I drew into Top 4, whereupon we split the prizes). My fourth Legacy tournament ever! SICK BRAGS, YO.

During this tournament, the T.O., Rob, whom we all know—it’s a small community—had an announcement.

“Just to let you guys know, there’s going to be a slight format change to FNM and Monday-night Standard tournaments.”

I just about had a stroke. How am I going to finish this column now? And more important, how am I going to piss off the GatheringMagic commentariat??

“FNM rounds will now be based on attendance, while Monday-night Standard will be a set four rounds with prizes based on attendance. Also, we will no longer be giving out a free pack at FNM.”

“WAIT . . . is FNM still going to be Standard?”

“Yes, Jon.”

Whew!

This announcement was met with one hundred percent approval. The Legacy crowd is much more competitive, so much so that the players dictate the prizes.

The Legacy prize is cash. The store I play at has a weekly cash Legacy tournament that is well-attended. Welcome to Syracuse.

There were lots of murmurs of approval about the new FNM structure; these players don’t generally attend FNM, citing thin prize support, and—ahem—“too many scrubs.” The prize-support deficiency is likely a result of every FNM player getting a free pack, but either way, it’s gone now. I overheard more than one Legacy player say that they’d consider going to FNM now.

This same announcement was made during the FNM players’ meeting, and was met with the completely opposite reaction, especially when players learned that the free pack was going away. A direct quote from an anonymous player:

“C’mon . . . that’s, like, what FNM is all about. You go, you get your free pack, and it’s all about having fun.”

Anyone who follows this column (I’m addressing all five of you directly) probably realizes that this guy’s beliefs re: FNM do not run totally parallel to mine. I never played FNM for the free pack; I could’ve mentioned it in this column exactly five times prior, but I didn’t. It was, and is, irrelevant to me as a pack of Magic cards; it always meant more to me for what it represented—the casual experience the store was trying to nurture every Friday night.

Was I surprised at the FNM players’ outrage? Not really. What I’m worried about is this: Are other stores changing their FNM structures too? How radical are their changes?

This FNM season, according to the Planeswalker Points site, started on the 5th. The FNM points leader this season, in just the United States, is Shawn Martin. Shawn Martin has 201 points through two Fridays.

Let’s say you go undefeated through five rounds of an FNM. That would give you 54 points, including the participation points. 54 points in each of two tournaments gives you 108 points, which Shawn Martin has eclipsed by a little less than 100 points.

Now let’s say you go undefeated in a nine-round FNM. Plus the participation points, that would give you 90 points. 90 points in two tournaments is 180, which is still 21 points short of Shawn’s two-week total. See what I’m getting at?

Before you get pissy and blast off with some comment that I’m demonizing this dude Shawn Martin, let me make it perfectly clear—I’m fine with what he’s doing. If you play at a store that does a seven-round FNM with a cut to Top 8, it does you no favors to take the moral high ground and skip it.

This raises a lot of questions, though. Did Shawn Martin’s shop have seven-plus-round FNMs before the Planeswalker Points announcement? It’s hard to blame any shop for wanting big FNMs—you get casual players in your store for a longer time, making them more likely to buy more shit, while at the same time appealing to the competitive players. Thanks to FNM’s ×3 multiplier in the new system (a strange choice, in my not-so-humble opinion), shops can essentially run SCG Opens every Friday. Sure, the prize payout isn’t there, but what the grinder loses in prize money, he gains in lack of traveling costs.

So that’s more or less happening. My point is—is this what WotC wants? It’s hard to say that it isn’t. I will say this—if they didn’t want people grinding FNM, they made it very easy to manipulate.

/steps off soapbox

This is the deck I played last week:

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

3 Acidic Slime

4 Spellskite

4 Sylvok Replica

1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

2 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

[/Creatures]

[Planeswalkers]

2 Garruk, Primal Hunter

[/Planeswalkers]

[Spells]

3 Slice in Twain

4 Nature's Claim

4 Ancient Stirrings

3 Mimic Vat

3 Quicksilver Amulet

4 Liquimetal Coating

[/Spells]

[Lands]

12 Forest

3 Verdant Catacombs

4 Buried Ruin

4 Misty Rainforest

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

4 Obstinate Baloth

4 Phyrexian Revoker

4 Summoning Trap

3 Torpor Orb

[/Sideboard]

[/cardlist]

I love this deck more than I love most of my extended family. It’s like a really good triple Scars of Mirrodin draft deck with Impulse, Quicksilver Amulet, and a few Eldrazi dorks jammed in.

FNM was to be five rounds.

Round 1, I play against a dude named Holden. I think about asking him if he is named after Holden Caulfield, but I’m not a fucking idiot. He’s on Vampires.

Game 2, he has a slow start, and I have an early Quicksilver Amulet. He taps down to 1 mana before attacking, which tells me the path is clear to flash in Emrakul, the Aeons Torn to block. He lets me attack once with Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, sacrifices all his permanents to the Annihilator 6 trigger, tanks for a minute, and scoops.

The first and third games go pretty much the same—he has a 1-drop, followed by a Bloodghast, followed by a kicked Gatekeeper of Malakir for my second-turn Spellskite. I’m not gonna lie—I haven’t played against Vampires in five weeks, I wasn’t expecting to see it here, and it’s frustrating as shit. Fucking Gatekeeper of Malakir.

Next round, I play against a nice kid named Tom. The games themselves are uninteresting; he is playing a slow Grand Achetict deck with no way to interact with Liquimetal Coating + Sylvok Replica on a Mimic Vat. I offer my condolences after the match—in my opinion, the kid was unlucky to run into my particular deck—but he isn’t trying to hear it and checks the “drop” box without a word to me.

Round 3, I play against a regular, James, on ffffffffucking Vampires.

One of my issues with this column is that I only get one week with each deck. That sucks, because there are some decks, like this one, that I’d love to have more time with. That said, I did not build this deck with the Vampires matchup in mind. I haven’t played the deck in my five FNMs prior; I thought, perhaps incorrectly, that I’d be able to stay away from it until that sweet, sweet rotation, but it just wasn’t to be. I’d like to think I got pretty unlucky to play against Vampires twice in one tournament, but that’s probably not the case.

The games aren’t really worth talking about—it’s a clean sweep. I am 1–2 with the only deck I’ve actually been excited to play with so far. Thank God for the extra round, I guess.

I once thought that truth was eternal, that when you understood something it was with you forever. I know now that this isn’t so, that most truths are inherently unretainable, that we have to work hard all our lives to remember the most basic things.

— Lucy Grealy, Mirrorings

My Round 4 opponent is Kashun, who is playing Puresteel Paladin. In our first game, I get the Mimic Vat/Sylvok Replica + Liquimetal Coating combo pretty quickly.

Between games, Kashun writes down the words “Mimic Vault” on the back of our match slip. I wonder what he’s bringing in!

“It’s Mimic Vat.”

“Whatever.”

Game 2, I have a Mimic Vat and a Liquimetal Coating but no Sylvok Replica. I play Acidic Slime and keep attacking with it when he has no pressure other than a Kemba, Kha Regent with no equipment to attach to it. He dutifully takes the Acidic Slime for a couple of turns, and plays a Phyrexian Revoker, naming—what else?—“Mimic Vault.”

I have no idea how long Kashun’s been playing Magic, but this pisses me off, and not because it is going to affect the outcome of the game—I have a Nature’s Claim in my hand—but, Jesus Christ, dude, I corrected you between games. You could have not been flippant about it, but you were. But why shouldn’t you be? I’m just going to let it go anyway, right? It’s FNM! We’re just a couple of bros having fun here!

Specific situations like this is where the flawed logic in statements like this one, directed toward me in response to a previous article, really show:

FNM is supposed to be a good time, but with you and others like you running around like you're some kind of god sucks for those trying to enjoy their night and get better at Magic. As you said it's not a huge tourney, it's FNM... so lighten up Francis

He wrote down the wrong name of a card between games, presumably to name it with Phyrexian Revoker (this assumption ended up being 100% correct). I corrected him, knowing full fucking well the onus is not on me to do this, but I figured, hey, FNM. His response? “Whatever.” Well, okay, Joe Cool! Sorry to presume you wanted accurate information!

So Kashun names “Mimic Vault,” even though there’s a Mimic Vat clearly on the table. I correct him anyway. Jesus Christ, I’m 1–2 in an FNM. Losing to this guy would at least be a funny story to tell later, but that never happens.

This is pure speculation at this point, but I’m pretty sure that since he stuck the Phyrexian Revoker, he has it in his brain that he doesn’t need to worry about my Mimic Vat anymore. I attack with my Acidic Slime . . . and he blocks with his Phyrexian Revoker.

It’s likely that this is moot anyway—like I said, I have the Nature’s Claim—but I want to point this play out because I know what is about to transpire. I only know because I do this all the fucking time, more often in Limited than Constructed, but still, definitely often enough to wonder what the point is of all the time I apply to Magic.

Lucy Grealy knew what every good Magic player knows, deep down—once you know something, it doesn’t just live in your brain, waiting patiently to be recalled. You have to keep fucking learning it, over and over, even if it means losing to a Phantasmal Image you could’ve destroyed with a Gideon’s Lawkeeper five times in a row. God, that sucked.

Round 5, I play against a regular by the name of Aaron Webster. He is playing a U/R brew I’ve seen at a PTQ once: Grim Lavamancer, Cunning Sparkmage, Trinket Mage to search up Basilisk Collar, and Inferno Titan as a finisher. There is nothing very interesting about the games—he takes Game 2 down with an Inferno Titan, and I take down the other two by casting Quicksilver Amulet when he taps out. Fun fact: I sideboarded out Emrakul, the Aeons Torn!

Next week: RDW! See you then!

Jon Corpora

Pronounced Ca-pora

@feb31st