Hey, I'm new here. My last name, 'Wojceshonek,' is pronounced "wash-a-SHAW-nick," to answer the first question I typically get asked. If you're interested in knowing more about who I am, or enjoy cheesy, rambling, semi-Magic-related tales, please see my article 'Tour No More' from a few weeks ago.

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There's an altered state of consciousness when you're in your twenty-sixth consecutive waking hour, trying to complete an 8-4 draft on MTGO that you shouldn't have ever started, but dammit the kid is asleep, it's your night off, and you have a draft set burning a hole in your virtual binder (who keeps packs in a binder, anyways?). You have Grooveshark pumping Morrissey songs into your skull that start to blend together into a kind of minor-key, crooning lullaby, and you're alt-tabbing to Yahoo.com every other minute to see how badly T.O. is destroying your fantasy team. In this schizophrenic dreamscape, you are supposed to make advanced strategic decisions like, "Should I mulligan this one-land, mana myr hand on the play?" The answer is always yes, of course, but when your eyes are burning from staring at the monitor and you're out of K-cups, your subconscious tries to sabotage your tournament to get you to go to bed.

More and more I've come to find that scenarios like the one described not only result in the loss of all my tickets, but also influence my future decisions. Remember that time I ripped running lands after keeping one-land, mana myr on the play? That was awesome, let's try to do it again. Bad play begets bad play, as I develop a habit of not truly paying attention to the game. I start to make split-second decisions, telling myself I'm trusting my gut. I tell ya, my gut has never gotten me a girl, and it certainly doesn't play good Magic.

It's times like these I turn to Bryan Haak. A few games with the Haak and I'm back to my peak play skill.

This is because he is slow. Painfully slow. Sometimes, your opponent takes a long time and you lose focus, maybe watch another game or think about that scene from Boardwalk Empire with Jim's wife and the female New York art dealer. But with Bryan, you have time to go through all those thoughts, buy a Dunkaccino, run the New York marathon, and then come back to the game and focus again. You have no choice but to learn patience in the same way Alex in A Clockwork Orange learns obedience.

Most of the time, this pace is to Bryan's advantage. It could tilt his opponent or lead to a draw, but those aren't his intentions; he honestly just thinks through everything, eventually coming to the right play. Sometimes, though, he thinks a little too much.

Maybe you've been in this situation before: it's the final round before the top eight, and you're in game three. This is the critical turn, the one that will make or break your entire day. You're processing a million different things at once, the game state, the cards in your hand, the likelihood of drawing your out. You're the last two players still playing, and a crowd has gathered. There are murmurs and snickers all around you. Finding it difficult to concentrate, you make a concerted effort to shut out all sensory input and just think. You think for what feels like days. You think until your opponent motions for a judge, who tells you to make a play.

Forced out of your inertia, you make the safest play you could possibly make, knowing that your opponent needs some critical piece to win the following turn. Maybe you leave back the Glint Hawk just in case he rips the Flameborn Hellion, but leave yourself cold to a topdecked burn spell.

Of course, he draws it, and you curse your terrible luck. Immediately, your friend with no sense of compassion says:

"Dude, why didn't you just attack with the Glint Hawk?"

Of course that was the play. Your opponent was at 2, he was tapped out, and he had no flyers. A three year old boy in drunk on gin could make that play. You lost because you tanked, you tanked so hard you couldn't see the surface anymore.

You, dear reader, would probably deem this mistake "overthinking it," or maybe the more general term "punting." Around here, we call it a "haak" (n., v. to haak, haaked, haaking).

I coined the term myself in honor of Bryan Haak, the tankiest tanker in Tanksville. Despite this title, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I consider him to be the best player I've met that hasn't played in a Pro Tour (and that's only because he's too dedicated to school to compete in PTQs often -- this is a kid that studies on Friday for tests on Wednesday. Who does that?)

My first memory of spending time with Bryan takes place at a Wendy's, on the way home from Regionals 2010. Bryan will tell you we actually met in the top 8 of New Hampshire States, circa Mirrodin block. He claims I made a significant impact on his life, as my conversational and care-free attitude helped break him out of the nervousness he felt as a new player. I don't remember any of this. My theory is that he played against a bespectacled Brad Pitt, with whom I share both first name and rugged jaw line.

We're in Wendy's because Bryan's mom has been collecting five dollar gift cards to that Chris Bosh of fast food chains (the underachieving member of the Big Three). She has bestowed the treasured cards on her son, happy to finally find a way to be rid of them, in the same way that Jon Medina makes it the heavens rain Jaces. This should have been the tip off that something was amiss.

The rest of our party starts ordering while Bryan stares at the menu. He looks like a boy who glances up to see Shaq dressed as Santa Claus carrying a sack full of Crazy Bones. Wonder, excitement, fear.

Brendan sets the pace, ordering items off the dollar menu faster than the cashier can punch them in. Josh keeps it simple with a number three, Coke please. Adam just wants a water. Next up is Bryan.

Cashier: "Hi, can I take your order?" Seconds go by, but everyone knows that in the fast food world, a second is really an hour. "Next please!" she says, trying to sound cheerful while inwardly wondering if maybe she should have gone to beauty school after all.

Others in line begin audibly clearing their throats, but Bryan is still between the guard rails! Bryan has tanked in the line at Wendy's, with half a dozen customers behind him. A few more second-hours go by, the cashier impatiently adds, "Sir?" but all Bryan can manage from his decision-coma is a meek, "One second."

It's up to me, the last remaining friend in line, to save the day. "Just get a burger, dude." I wait. It has now officially been longer than anyone has ever taken to order a meal in a building with ketchup dispensers. "You have to make a play!"

Bryan shakes himself out of it and steps forward. "Can I get two cheeseburgers?" He doesn't ask like he expects them to be made, he asks like he genuinely does not know if there exists such a thing as a cheeseburger, or if the numeral two can be applied to it. And anyways, this is a huge misplay. Between double stacks, junior bacons, quarter-pounders, and Baconators, there are burger options approaching infinity at Wendy's, and none of them are called just "cheeseburger".

The cashier is rattled, but punches some buttons and asks, in a tone that leaves no room for an affirmative answer, "Anything else?"

"Ummmm, yeaaaahhhhhh." If there was any part of me that still believed in a divine being, it shattered upon hearing those words.

What followed was an interminable question and answer session about condiments, meat quality, bun freshness, bands-with-others, Riemann's Hypothesis, and carbonation-to-syrup ratios that ended with Bryan simply ordering a Sprite. I shamefully ordered my chicken nuggets and Bryan handed over the gift cards.

As soon as we left the line, I scolded Bryan on his lack of fast food decorum, and he revealed the truth. He had never had fast food before. At age twenty-one, Bryan had only been in traditional restaurants, and even those only a handful of times. The man is an enigma.

The lesson, if there is one to be found in such a Brady-haircut-level tragedy, is to be prepared. Just as all little kids are brought up on French fries and McDoubles in order to prepare them for the world at large, make sure you test your deck enough to encounter nearly every scenario possible. When it comes up in a tournament, you won't make your opponent wish they could go back in time and allow Langoliers to devour all trace of their being rather than watch you swim in the shark tank for ten minutes.

But everyone knows this. Play the deck you know, right? It's Magic 101, like the meditation class you take in college to balance out your GPA when you know you're going to 1.5 BioChem.

And yet, there's another side to the story, this one also illustrated by Bryan Haak, luckily enough.

It happened in San Juan. There was rumor of a Pro Tour, but I wasn't in it, and neither was Bryan. Bryan was in Puerto Rico for the all-important and not-worth-travelling-to-another-country-for WPN Championship. I tagged along because I had some friends in the Tour, Bryan was paying for the room, and I really like mojitos.

We spent the first few days of our trip splashing around in the oil spill and wishing we were in Old San Juan instead of Tourist Trap San Juan. We also managed to play some Magic. The LCQ went very poorly for the two of us, even though we were playing a super techy version of Jund that included such under-the-radar hits as Bloodbraid Elf and Blightning. The LCQ was won by Tom Martell, piloting Brian Kibler's Next Level Bant deck that made some small waves at a Grand Prix the week prior.

Bryan is nothing if not a networker. The next day, he flitted around from pro to pro asking about Next Level Bant, gathering tips about sideboarding and Vengevine tricks. Most were too busy with insignificant things like playing in the Pro Tour, but Bryan hit the motherload when he stumbled upon Brian Kibler himself, rocking the deck in the finals of a side event.

Somehow, Bryan cornered Kibler after the match and Jedi Mind Tricked all the information out of him. He not only got the most up-to-date list for Next Level Bant, but he even got a sideboarding guide and an "I love Kibler" tee-shirt. It was as if Prometheus himself had come down bearing fire, and then showed man how to grill a mean t-bone steak to boot.

We quickly assembled the missing pieces of the deck, and by quickly, I mean spent hours hunting down Jason Ford on some desolate beach to steal his Vengevines. It would have been more difficult, had JFord not sunburned himself into a glowing red beacon.

The following morning was the Championships, so I volunteered to test with Bryan rather than pursue some illicit and itch-inducing activities proposed by various ladies on the street corners. Kind of me, right? I also could have gone water skiing.

For hours we ran back the Jund matchup, the mono red matchup, the control matchup. By the time I couldn't take it anymore and pulled out the cot to pass out, Bryan was making 90% fewer mistakes (still about eight per game) with the Bant deck, and it appeared to be every bit as good as advertised. He went to bed satisfied and excited about his prospects of winning a trip to Amsterdam.

So of course Bryan played Jund.

I didn't know about the audible until after the first round of the tournament. Apparently, when he sat down at the players' meeting, he brought an extra deck registration sheet, just in case. As he sat there, marinating in the self-doubt of his tank, he remembered the old saying. Play what you know. Play what you know. Play what you know.

He knew Jund. He also knew that he would lose with Jund. He filled out the sheet by heart.

Would it be too results-oriented to tell you that he didn't make top 8? He won some matches, but lost the ones that mattered to the control decks that Next Level Bant would have been great against. Meanwhile, NLB decks that had two-week-old technology climbed their way to the top of the standings.

I know I know, maybe Bryan would have punted a couple of matches due to lack of experience and wound up doubting his decision anyways. All I know is, I don't look a gift horse in the mouth. If I have to play a Standard match against the devil for my eternal soul, and Zvi Mowshowitz drops 75 cards in my lap, I don't care what it is. It could be Hannah Montana playing cards sleeved in nitric acid, I'm rolling with that over the white weenie deck I played in FNM a hundred times.

I'm not sure how relevant any of this is for you. Most of the time, Pat Chapin isn't going to leave The Deck on your doorstep the morning of the PTQ. But there is some value to be had in abandoning the known quantity for the hot ticket, at least I'm pretty sure. It's certainly more fun. And hey, if you 0-2 drop, you can blame your bad decision instead of your play skill.

Challenge conventional wisdom from time to time. Roll the dice.

Use the term "haak" as much as possible.*

Have fun,

Brad Wojceshonek

BradWoj at gmail dot com

BradWoj on MTGO

BJWoj on Twitter

* - It's pronounced the same as "hawk". Here's an example: "Man, Seth just haaked so bad. He thought for five minutes and drew two cards with Sign in Blood. His opponent was at one."