...About The Real Deal?

This is a continuation of ...About My Magic Wand. You may want to read that one first!

Pro Tour Competitor Scott Schauf. Yeah, that sounds right. Fitting, even. I had been to the show once at this point in our story. I didn’t do so well, but all of my opponents got very lucky. And I got unlucky. Yeah, that is what happened. Has to have gone down that way. I played my deck perfectly and made exactly zero mistakes. Has to have gone down that way. I’m twenty years old and already the best Magic player in Kentucky. Has to have gone down that way.

Alas, a life playing Magic: the Gathering is a life of the grinder, and there was no rest in my schedule. I was back to the PTQ circuit as soon as I possibly could be. Winning another was basically a foregone conclusion at this point. Didn’t my opponents know that I was a Professional Player now? In any case, I’d wear my shirt from Yokohama to make sure they knew. Those fools, they had no clue when they plopped their entry fee on the counter that they would have to play against Professional Player Scott Schauf!

It is February of the next year. I had yet to reclaim my rightful place at the top of the game. Hell, I hadn’t even placed well in any event since last year! I had yet another PTQ approaching this weekend. I had only a few more days to put together a deck with which to do battle. In lieu of practice, which I obviously did not need, I hopped on Magic Online to look at some of the more successful decks as of late. I saw that Owen Turtenwald, a fellow PTQ grinder at the time (he would go on to become the Player of the Year in 2011, among other accomplishments) was playing a Goblins deck that looked amazing. This was the weekend. This was the deck. This was my time. I could feel it in my bones. I merely had to obtain the decklist that my victory required. I didn’t know Owen very well; We had talked maybe once at this point, and I wasn’t sure that he would supply me with all of the technology that I required. I had an out, though, in Joshua X. Claytor.

Josh was a former roommate and longtime friend. I knew that he talked with Owen far more than I did, and so I enlisted his help in my quest for the Golden Decklist that would grant me asylum from the dregs of the PTQ circuit. I asked Josh if he could request the decklist from Owen. He had just logged off of Magic Online and didn’t want to get back on at the moment. He suggested that I simply log on to his account and ask Owen myself, pretending to be Josh. Seeing no flaws in the plan, I did just that. Owen graciously obliged, and I had my deck for the PTQ. It was just that easy! Now I lay in anticipation for Saturday. It was only a matter of time.

4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Goblin Ringleader
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Mogg War Mashal
4 Skirk Prospector
3 Gempalm Incinerator
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
1 Siege-Gang Commander
1 Tin Street Hooligan

2 Patriarch's Bidding

4 Chrome Mox
4 Mountain
4 Auntie's Hovel
1 Blood Crypt
1 Overgrown Tomb
2 Mutavault
4 Bloodstained Mire
3 Wooded Foothills
1 Pendelhaven

Sideboard
4 Tormod's Crypt
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Ancient Grudge
2 Krosan Grip
1 Gempalm Incinerator
1 Patriarch's Bidding

The PTQ was in Columbus, a good three-and-a-half hour drive from Louisville. In order to be best prepared, our car set out on Friday afternoon with the intention of staying at Dan Kaufman’s house in Ohio. The crew was Daniel Neeley, Phillip Green, Alex Stambaugh, Tommy and Bobby Graves, and myself. The drive was uneventful, and we arrived at Dan’s house early Friday night. Upon arrival, we set out to solidify the last of our strategies and then attempted to get some sleep. Bobby was not interested in this and decided he wanted to read. Usually an irrelevant detail, however this room had one overhead light. If said light was turned off, Bobby would simply get up, walk over, and flick the switch, much to the chagrin of those of us trying to catch some z’s. Beanie Babies were thrown at him, which caused laughter, which caused Phil to leave his bed to see what was so funny, which caused more laughter. This went on for some time. I eventually fought through all the noise and drifted into dreamland; I awoke covered in Beanie Babies.

Battle time! I was really looking forward to this. I had the perfect deck and I was, as always, playing perfectly. I was going to win the tournament! I sat down for the first round and was promptly defeated. I was in shock. How could that have happened? No matter, I needed to move on and put the loss out of my mind. Magic tournaments leave little time for somber reflection. My back was against the wall; one loss doesn’t exclude you from the elimination rounds of PTQs, but two almost always does.

Muggles, you may find yourself missing out when reading the following few paragraphs. I apologize, but this is one of the few, rare blog posts on this site that is going to require an integral knowledge of Magic to understand fully. If you want to skip to the end of the tournament, you can ctrl+f for ‘summertime’.

I’m not going to bore you with the details of each and every round, but there are a few moments I’d like to highlight. In round 4 of 9, I was paired against UW Tron. It is game three, and the loser of this game is essentially out of the tournament. My opponent has two Sphere of Law in play, rendering the majority of my creatures useless. My opponent had a ton of mana in play, including a few full sets of Urzatron. He had cast Wrath of God several times, and as a result my graveyard was full of goblins. I had an assortment of creatures in play including a Skirk Prospector. I don’t remember why, but I knew I had only a turn or two left. I draw my card for the turn and see a second black source, allowing me to cast a Patriarch’s Bidding that will win the game for me if it resolves. I sigh, looking dejected, and toss my land down followed by a Patriarch’s Bidding. He starts tapping lands, and I know I’m finished. He has the counterspell, OBVIOUSLY, and I’m going to fail yet again. Noticing my one untapped land, he smugly casts a Condescend for 3. I confirm the value of x, sacrifice 3 goblins to my Skirk Prospector, resolve Bidding and attack him with very, very large Goblin Piledrivers.

I rattle off a few more wins, and find myself paired against future SCG Open Series grinder Ben Wienburg armed with Ravager Affinity in the penultimate round. I was able to steal the first game with the help of my maindecked Tin Street Hooligan. The second game devolved into a huge board stall. I shot down his flying creatures with Gempalm Incinerator while I pondered how to ever make a profitable attack. Then I drew Goblin Sharpshooter. I cast it, and immediately shot him. I made a red mana by sacrificing one of my many goblins to Skirk Prospector, thus untapping my Sharpshooter. Having demonstrated the loop and shown the Patriarch’s Bidding I was going to cast giving me well over the amount of damage I needed, I waited for a moment, expecting a concession. When he made no signal of giving up, I questioned him. He explained that I needed to do it until he was dead. I proceeded to, and then asked him why he made me go through all those motions. “You might have screwed up.” “Ha!”, I thought. Screw up, what does that even mean? I have a perfect deck and am the best player in the room. But hey, you want to waste your time, no skin off of my back.

Last round. I had battled back from a first round loss. I was 7-1. A win here propels the victor into the Top 8; a loss yields nothing. I’m paired against Benjamin Peebles-Mundy wielding Gerry Thompson’s CounterTop deck. I can’t remember if it was the second or third, but it was the deciding game for me either way. I fan out my opening hand to be presented with an interesting line of play. He leads with an Island. I draw a card, play a Mutavault, a Chrome Mox imprinting a red card, and Goblin Piledriver. Those two creatures are both quite problematic for my opponent, so my line at this point is to animate my land and attack for five damage four turns in a row. I assume this plan will not win the game on its own, but will allow me to deploy more threats when he taps low to deal with something. I was quite surprised to find that on my fourth attack step my opponent relents, and dies without having played a spell of import. Top 8, baby, and it feels great to be back! I’m three matches away from finally proving how great I am once again.

I win my quarterfinals match without any problem or interesting things happening. Dredge is a boring and terrible deck, turns out. My semifinals opponent has brought a combo deck to the table, this one based on resolving Enduring Ideal and locking the opponent out of the game shortly after. This is potentially a pretty poor matchup, for a few different reasons. He has 4 Fire//Ice to slow my beatdown. He has Sensei’s Divining Top to keep his Enduring Ideal on top of his deck, safe from my hand disruption. His fastest draw beats my fastest draw (I think. There may be some perfect series of cards that lets me kill pretty quickly, but at the time I thought this). I manage to steal a game from him, and we find our hero in a tough spot in the final game. My opponent has resolved Enduring Ideal. His first enchantment was Solitary Confinement. I sigh, draw a card and present lethal damage in the rare event something crazy happens and I get to attack him again. With two cards in hand after paying the upkeep for his Confinement and two Tops in play, I expect him to tutor for Dovescape to lock me out of the game and match, crushing my hopes and dreams in the process. When he plops down Honden of Seeing Winds on the table, I start silently hoping for a sliver of justice in this cruel universe. I sacrifice a fetchland to find Stomping Grounds at the end of his turn. I slowly peel the top card of my deck onto the table, and drag it towards my hand. I slide it into my palm, still face down, and prepare to windmill-slam my salvation onto the table. When I pull my hand away post-slam, everyone around the table gets a glorious view of Krosan Grip lying right on top of his Solitary Confinement. Just another day in the office.

One match. One match to prove what I’ve been proclaiming for years now. One match to demonstrate that my first trip to the Pro Tour was simply a fluke. One match to show all the doubters just how wrong they were, and consequently, just how right I was. After a bit of a wait for Ian Gossett to take his beating, I find out that the last person in my way was Akil “The Real Deal, Never Had A Hot Meal, Cycle Slipstream Eel, Cop A Feel” Steele armed with a GB Death Cloud deck. I don’t have any epic or even interesting stories from this match. I got demolished at every turn. I played a guy, he killed it. Two more guys, killed them too. Another guy, oh, he played a 4/4. My Goblin Ringleaders yielded zero or one goblins every time. He trumped my trump card in the matchup with Tormod’s Crypt. I was simply slaughtered, and walked away feeling like I never had a shot. I was playing for second the whole time; Akil was running hotter than the ground at your local pool in the summertime.

I was crushed, devastated, and completely demoralized. That one match, the first time I had ever lost in the finals of a big tournament, is the first time I can remember those seeds of doubt being planted in my head. Maybe I had been wrong this whole time. Maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t as good at this game as I had thought...