Falling Short

Playing Magic competitively is one of the most exciting and rewarding things I do in my life. Magic has brought me to places I would have never seen such Stockholm, Sweden and it has introduced me to some of my best friends in life. However, this past year I questioned whether or not I should slow down with my magic endeavors, I kept falling short and I got discouraged. This year I felt like I had been playing some of the highest level Magic that I possibly ever had. I was travelling to events with friends and having a great time. However my results frustrated me, I kept falling short.

I played in a pretty large amount of PPTQs in the past year and I was doing fairly well in them, for a while my conversion rate in them was insane. I was more often than not making the top 8 cutoff. However, I had a streak of about 5 or 6 that I made the Top 8 and then very promptly lost in the first round of the elimination bracket in not close fashion.

I had the opportunity to get out to a few grand prix this year and my results there were mediocre to put in lightly. At Grand Prix Providence I was eliminated in round 8 of 9, GP Montreal I had a really awful pool (not to put all the game there) and had an early exit, and GP Quebec City I lost BOTH of my win and ins for Day 2 to finish 6-3.

However, the final GP of the year for me is what really motivated me to get back out there and try more than ever. A few of my friends and I traveled down to GP Pittsburgh in November, the format was modern which I feel is the format I am most comfortable playing. We had put a ton of time testing the format and going into I felt super confident. As I sat down and shuffled up to play my first opponent he accidentally drops his deck showing an Urza’s Tower. Ugh, my worst match up to start the day. Long story short I lost that one and the rest of the tournament was pretty mediocre. Ultimately I was eliminated in round 6 by Shaheen Soorani. My entire car had all fallen short and as we were sitting down for dinner at a killer Thai place whose name escapes me we were deciding whether or not we would head out early. Eventually was decided that we came all this way we mind as well play in the Super Sunday Series the next day.

The Super Sunday Series was split into two events at this GP, one half was modern and one half was limited. I was still feeling pretty confident about my modern deck so I played in that. I started 3-0 before picking up my first loss. At this point I figured my top 8 dream were dead because each half of the event only cut to top 4 and with 226 people I figured X-1 was going to cut it close and I still had 5 rounds to win. However, I did just that, I won out beating some fairly large names along the way to finish in 2nd place. I went on to lose in the Quarters finals of the top 8 but that wasn’t important. I got the finish I needed to feel good about continuing my travel this year. I have about 5 or 6 GPs I will be attending in the next 6 months and I feel ready, I know that 2016 will be my year and I am ready to shake off the slump of 2015.