After every major event, you can find a handful of tournament reports. As they are often from a top finisher, usually they are filled with praise and glee, of correctly predicted metagames and near perfect play.

This is not one of those reports.

This report is about the opposite scenario. While sixteen players reached the pinnacle of the game, four hundred and sixty-three left disappointed. I was in the latter group. This weekend I failed as a player. Not necessarily as a deck builder, or a play tester, but as an in-game player. My failure as Seth the Magic Player means I let down Seth the Deckbuilder, Seth the Playtester, Seth the Teammate, and worst of all, I let down Seth's deck. Now, every time I look at Rafiq of the Many I feel like he's looking away from me because he's disappointed in how I misused him. I'm sorry Rafiq! Forgive me!

I finished the Standard Open in 34th place with a 7-3 record (Going 17-8 in individual games) and I feel like I should have Top 8/Top 16'd. My match losses (and nearly all game losses) were entirely my own fault, fraught with misplays. Never did I feel like the cards just fell in a bad way and I had no chance at winning. Instead, I threw away games and miscalculated math, all of which left me on the outside looking in when all was said and done.

I entered the event Saturday morning with a Mythic list. I had decided that the field was going to be primarily U/W Control and so I tailored both my maindeck and sideboard to beat it, dedicating little attention to Jund since Mythic is a pretty good matchup already. I expected a fair amount of Polymorph and other goofy decks involving cheating Eldrazi into play, but luckily the same stuff is good against that as U/W Control (namely Negate, Jace the Mindsculptor, etc) so I didn't overly tailor for that. I had heard of the new Mythic lists featuring Eldrazi Conscription and I was worried about them, but didn't expect them to be out in numbers either.

Round 1: Mono Green Eldrazi Cheats

Not to pass over some of these rounds, but this guy wasn't a strong player, nor did he have a strong deck. He was Mono Green and thus couldn't fly or kill Rafiq, so double-striking Celestial Colonnades put the games away quickly.

1-0

Round 2: Jund

This was a strange round, my opponent was assigned a Game Loss because he did not have a properly registered sidedeck. So we started Game 2 without sideboarding and not knowing each other's decks. Game Two was a tightly fought game and on the final turn he was sitting at 5 life (able to die to an exalted Colonnade) and I was at 8. All I needed was to survive the turn and win. Here's how I blew it.

I had a Noble Hierarch, Knight of the Reliquary and a Rhox War Monk. He had a Siege-Gang Commander (with tokens), a Sprouting Thrinax and a Putrid Leech. He went to Maelstrom Pulse my Rhox War Monk, and I was faced with the decision whether to keep the Knight or keep the Rhox. I deliberated what the remaining card in his hand could be, and getting so caught up in the minutia of whether or not it was another kill card, I decided that long term I needed to keep the Knight untapped, when there WAS NO LONG TERM, I WOULD HAVE WON NEXT TURN. I let him kill the Rhox War Monk, expecting instead to block with the Knight and Sejiri Steppe the Noble Hierarch to keep it alive.

After spending likely ten minutes thinking about both the original decision, then the blocking, my opponent told me there was nothing I could do as he had exactly eight damage on the board (including blowing up some Goblins). All I needed was to keep the War Monk alive and block the Thrinax with it to win that game, and I got so close to the decision (never stepping back and looking at the big picture) that I talked myself out of a game winning play.

I ended up winning Game Three, but it was incredibly fortunate (I had 3 Rhox War Monk on the board, a Maelstrom Pulse would have blown me out, but I held out long enough for the win). Truthfully, I could have lost that round because of my incredibly stupid decision.

2-0

Round 3: Jund

Nothing to talk about here, I got really good starting both games, and was able to Negate his kill on my key creatures long enough to win.

3-0

Round 4: Koros

Once again, nothing to really talk about. He didn't get the fastest starts, and a turn 3 Rhox War Monk followed by two Baneslayer Angel meant he couldn't do enough to put me away.

4-0

Round 5: Mythic Conscription

This round was against Ali Aintrazi, who eventually Top 4'd the event. He is a great player and a nice guy, and this round shows why he was in the final rounds and I wasn't. We are squaring off at 4-0 and I had a feeling he was playing Mythic. I was worried about facing the Eldrazi Conscription deck as traditional Mythic doesn't really have any answers, you just have to hope you kill them first.

Game One he didn't have a great start, and I was able to play a Gideon Jura, killing a smaller creature (I think a War Monk). He then plays a Baneslayer Angel, which I answer with my own Baneslayer. Now here's where the tremendous flub occurs. I've played a Baneslayer, Ali has a Baneslayer with no exalted triggers (so barring him playing a Noble Hierarch or something, they will be equal). I have a Gideon Jura with 4 counters, who needs to take an action. My plan was to force an attack, trade Baneslayers, and the leverage my superior board (I had a Knight of the Reliquary, Noble Hierarch, and a Lotus Cobra to his 2 Bird of Paradise) to a victory. I tick Gideon up to six counters and pass the turn.

Ali played no Exalted triggers and forced to swing. Somehow, despite everything going to plan, I overthought the situation. I had more creatures, a Planeswalker, and more cards in hand. I could have traded the most powerful creatures on the table, and put him in a deep hole. Instead, I decided to audible and let the Baneslayer through and kill him with Gideon. Except my Gideon wasn't at 8 counters, he was at 6. That slipped my mind, I let it through and was left with a Gideon with 1 counter, unable to kill the Baneslayer. A simple slip of one thing threw the whole game off, as during my next turn I decided to go through with the Baneslayer trade, hoping the misstep wouldn't cost me.

During Ali's next turn, he drew a land and was able to cast the one card in his hand: Eldrazi Conscription. That one turn cost me, and had me facing down a 15/15 first striking, trampling, lifelinking flier… with Annihilator 2. Looking back, if I had traded Baneslayers, I'd have a 6 counter Gideon to start executing Bird of Paradise, while beating down with my board. I can confidently say I would have won that game if it were not for my mistake.

Games Two and Three played out correctly I believe, with each of us taking a game. He won the match because of taking a close first game, one that was in my grasp to believe.

4-1

Round 6: Summoning Trap

This was a perfect example of subpar mental game. To play high level Magic, you need to be able to not only out think and out play your opponent, but you need to be able to resist any underhanded tricks. In this match, I played against a douchebag. I won't name names or say anything to give away his identity, but he was a douchebag and talking to other people he played against, it wasn't just me who felt this way.

After he won Game One, we were deep into Game Two. At one point we had a game state issue, and the judge was called. The mistake was mine, and I received a warning. It was an honest mistake (both of us miscounted my mana), but one that had an effect in my favor. I ended up winning that game, and my opponent spent the entire time for sideboarding and shuffling, openly complaining about the judge, about how he should have won that game. He 'joked' with me that 'I had to cheat to win,' and how if he lost the match he would be upset at my cheating.

Sometimes in sports (and yes, competitive Magic is technically a sport) the referee is not always going to go your way. Sometimes Kobe Bryant gets called for a foul he didn't commit, or the referees don't give you the best spot on a 3rd-and-short. Whatever the ref says goes, and you have to get over it one way or the other. Instead of being the professional I aspire to be, I let him get to me. I let his taunting and crap-talking get under my skin and take me out of my focus.

Near the end of Game Three, I had a win on the table. My opponent was at 2 life, and I had a Lotus Cobra, a Knight, and Rafiq of the Many on the board. He had 1 blocker, all I had to do was swing with everything and the game was mine. Instead I was so distracted and downtrodden from his mental assault that I fell back on mechanical play instead of adapting. I had Rafiq so my natural motion was to just attack with one creature. I Sejiri Steppe'd Rafiq and swung with just him, and he Summoning Trap'd an Emrakul into play. Emrakul blocked and killed Rafiq, and proceeded to kill me.

4-2

After the game, when I was clearly distraught at my mistake and silently picking up my cards and de-sideboarding, he decided to rub it in, telling me he didn't think I deserved a third game in the first place. It took all my self control to not flip the table and call him every name in the book. I let him get to me and made a play mistake because of it.

At this point, I'm 4-2 and out of Top 8 contention. I had build a solid deck that was performing fine, but I was misplaying due to very human errors. I played out the rest of the tournament and finished a solid 7-3, but the rest of my weekend was consumed with thoughts of my misplays and missed opportunities. Obviously if I had beaten Ali in Round 5 then I'm looking at different opponents and could have finished anywhere from 10-0 to 5-5 depending on how it worked out, but I'll always believe I had a solid chance to Top 16 or even Top 8.

Coming up short when you had a chance to win is far worse than just getting blown out because of an incorrectly predicted meta. I can either focus on this and let it ruin my future events, or I can take it as a learning experience and never make those mistakes again.

Hopefully, I do the latter. Hopefully, I come back a stronger player than before. Hopefully, I'll see you at GP: DC.