This is an initiative in collaboration with Wizards of the Coast.
That fine line between self-confidence and laziness is what usually marks the hosts that you hit yourself. Mine with Magic: The Gathering, to specify and put yourself in a situation, it is one of those that hurt more because of the blow of reality than because of the damage they do. Because there is nothing like coming up and after crash.
My jump to Innistrad: Scarlet Engagement seemed promising a few days ago, when taking advantage of its launch in Magic Arena I was able to go through the channel elstream to perform a live show in which to welcome the new expansion. It would have been difficult to imagine at that moment what was to come.
The live show that I leave you below is a combination of laughs, good people giving me a cable with the game and the illusion of seeing how that cheated deck that we have been putting together together continued running like a shot despite having not touched it for several days.
A stroke of reality
The fear of the meta, that everything harvested for weeks will go to waste because the game changes completely, vanished every time I started playing with our Dogs and cats and I saw how he Esika’s carriage and the Unnatural growth they rambled us to victory.
You do not usually think about possible hits when everything goes to your face, or at least you do not want to do it because of enjoying the moment and leaving vinegar aside -when the sorrows arrive we will cry for them-, so my only objective is the arrival of Innistrad: Scarlet EngagementIt was to see how he could make the mallet even more devastating.
We talked about the ideas that should make it possible here last week, listing the cards that had caught our attention the most about the new expansion and those that, yes or yes, should enter our collection of virtual cards. For the comments I read then and you sent me on Twitter, the thing did not look bad.
In fact, the joy ended up being completed when we started to open envelopes live and verify that one of the most promising letters of that selection, the Ulvenwald rarity, became one of the first of Scarlet Compromise came into my hands. I don’t remember if I ever said it or just thought it, but the “everything has come out to order from Milhouse”It was great for us.
And with that illusion I closed the live show and, after a two-day break, a handful of nights ago I sat in front of the computer with a soda with ice in a tiki glass on one side of the table and a bag of peanuts on the other -of the good ones, the kind covered with salt stones that a doctor will probably one day forbid me outright.
“Well, let’s play”
The goal couldn’t be simpler. Check what cards you wanted to include, take a good look at the news of the new expansion and start spending wild cards to give the deck a hand of paint. Dogs and cats. Then, to test how the change feels to you.
In that “how do you feel about the change”The only three options that my head was managing at that time were limited to: it works like a fable, it needs some change to finish improving, it doesn’t work and it’s time to go back to what you already had. I’m actually lying, the third I didn’t even think about it.
If a few days ago this was working like a charm, the only possible option is to keep doing it. Truth? TRUTH? A chufla for me. The game hit me tremendously. There were no stones of salt large enough to season such bland games. The worst I’ve played in the last few months.
Not because they were boring or the opposite was not up to the task, it is that I could not cope with all the defeats that was eating me two cheeks. I knew it wasn’t a luck problem with the cards because, well, I’m not exactly fortune personified, so I know how to recognize when the cards are good or they are all in the ass.
No, the problem was not that I was not playing well or did not draw the right cards, what was happening is that the rival decks were running over me like a steamroller. A mirror in which to look at myself the next time in a live things come face to face and the games paint me as an expert despite the package that is really behind the mask.
Well, if the changes don’t work, try another combination of cards. It was the second and last of the options that my head handled, but the games that followed those couple of attempts to fix the situation did not have a different ending. He was losing like he hadn’t done before.
When you have done something wrong, it is best to learn from your mistakes, return to the starting box and try to continue on your way taking advantage of that experience. A phrase that is beautiful on the cup that you are going to give your mother but, look, things that happen, at that moment I would have felt like a punch in the stomach. Why? Why go back to the origins it didn’t work either.
I left the deck as it was before I touched it up and, to my surprise, what were once the sea of comfortable victories from silver to platinum had suddenly become an insurmountable wall whose blows when trying to go through it aroused in me an unrecognizable feeling. I was getting frustrated.
If by any chance at any time you find yourself in a similar situation, either playing Magic or any other game, believe me when I tell you that the best thing you can do is get away from it for a couple of days and, when you return, you will see how the solution to the problem comes as if by magic.
It’s what I did? Of course not, because I am more stubborn than a mule and I sell advice that I do not have. This was already a personal matter. How the hell did I introduce myself to this text or the next live show saying that you could go saying goodbye to Dogs and cats, that the deck was dead because the current meta had eaten it with potatoes.
And then, when abandonment seemed inevitable, my head clicked. I’d been through that before, and the solution was just a handful of texts away. I myself had written that I was beginning to understand Magic, to know how to measure the strategies and learn to adapt to them. He didn’t have much more to do.
The mistake was to focus on putting new cards into a deck that already worked, and after that, not understanding that the current meta was forcing me to rethink the strategy. The beginnings in the games were very tough, the rivals were even more aggressive than me and the possibility of stopping their strategies seemed like a utopia. Should find a way to turn it around to the omelette.
What if I went back even further? I had already played a very fast green white combination that had worked beautifully for me. Perhaps the key to introducing new cards was also go back to the previous ones. And I did the same.
In search of a quicker start, I discarded a few letters to make room for two old acquaintances, the Wealthy innkeeper which would allow me to fill the table with bugs faster so I can defend myself, and the Death Mushroom Sprout whose luck with the exiles could put me in an excellent position in just two or three turns.
The addition of more mana in early turns would not only allow me to access Unnatural Growth faster, it would also open the door to the use of Ulvenwald rarity and it would give me a bit of respite to take advantage of the Statue of Bad Foreboding.
And so, without eating or drinking it, with just a handful of quick changes that materialized in the deck as soon as they passed through my head, the long-awaited combo in which Rarity was transformed, and Growth turned his 8/8 into a smashing 16/16, He planted himself on the table. So yes.
That victory was followed by another, and then another, and another, an abandonment of the rival when he saw that things were getting complicated, another victory, another abandonment when seeing that in the second turn there were already five creatures on the table, another victory more …
By the time I wanted to realize the ice in the drink had melted and the bag of peanuts was intact. I had spent more than two hours trying to modify the deck without thinking about what I was doing and for what purpose, and when I finally did, the Scarlet gatetes -the dogs are already a minority, what are we going to do- they were triumphing again.
Here you have the deck and a valuable lesson: do not be as completely stubborn as I am.
Scarlet gatetes
- 16 Snowy Forest (KHM) 284
- 4 Jasper Sentinel (KHM) 178
- 4 Skirmish in the Blizzard (KHM) 162
- 4 Class: Explorer (AFR) 202
- 4 Leader of the Werewolf Pack (AFR) 211
- 2 Mammoth Also Won (ZNR) 189
- 2 Troll of the Ancient Wilds (KHM) 185
- 4 Mushroom Outbreak (MID) 181
- 2 Esika’s Carriage (KHM) 169
- 4 Wealthy Innkeeper (AFR) 200
- 2 Unnatural Growth (MID) 206
- 2 Augur of Autumn (MID) 168
- 2 Caryatid ilysea (ANB) 98
- 2 Ulvenwald Rarity (VOW) 225
- 2 Statue of Bad Foreboding (VOW) 256
- 4 Wrenn y Siete (MID) 208
