I won an RC…………………………………………………..Q!

Okay, so it’s not that great, and I didn’t make it to the PT, or get a Worlds’ Invite. It is, however, my first ever RCQ win, after grinding RCQs in various forms since 2019. I must admit, it is an amazing feeling to finally get there, and I was too excited to go home and celebrate with my family that I forgot to take the obligatory victory picture. Instead, all I have is this photo of the promos I won on the day.

The sweet, sweet foil Fauna Shaman promo, which has a 7-day average value of €19.72 on cardmarket at the time of writing, is only given out to the winner of an RCQ this season. This is the photo evidence that I beat 38 other players to the coveted RC invite. For now. I guess there’s also the RC invite letter that comes later. Whatever. I did something to celebrate, okay?! I didn’t just walk away from the store that day!

The mental game of Magic

Anyway, in reflection of the RCQ I played in, and as a promise that I would write another article if I top8-ed, I would like to talk about an aspect of the game which is less commonly discussed in-depth: the mental and psychological aspect of Magic. There have been resources for these in the past but not many. For example, there is this article on TCGPlayer by former world champion Seth Manfield, this video by former world champion Paolo Vitor Damo da Rosa, and this article on MTGAZone by former PT top 8 player, Chris Kvartek. I also vaguely remember that Reid Duke may have talked about this at some point, but I don’t know where to find it (if you do, let me know!).

They all give solid advice, and what I would like to do in this article is to build on them and reflect on the lessons I took away from last weekend on this topic, drawing also on lessons I’ve learned from competing in other mindsports games throughout my life. I feel like many of them are very much transferable to Magic and I hope you as the reader will benefit from this as well.

For context, I’ve been competing in many chess tournaments ever since I was 12. Later on, in university, I picked up Contract Bridge and started competing in those as well, and was part of the Oxford team that won the Oxford-Cambridge Bridge Varsity match in 2014 (or 2015, I don’t quite recall). I’ve also competed in poker tournaments in the past and cashed at the very first tournament I played in. There is actually a very funny story about that, which I will share if you ask me in person.

All this to say, I am no stranger to long, gruelling days of competition, in games that require a lot of mental stamina. So, drawing on all of my experience and reflecting on the event that just passed last weekend, here are some points of note.

To eat, or not to eat?

One interesting point that Seth Manfield made in his article cited above is that good sleep and food are important factors to keep yourself going in a long gruelling tournament. While I agree on the sleep part, I’m not entirely in agreement about the eating.

Chess and bridge tournaments that I competed in usually have lunch breaks scheduled in the afternoon. Most Magic tournaments are so long that it seems difficult to do so.

On my journey last year where I lost 15 kg in three months, I learned about the interesting technique of intermittent fasting, first popularized by Doctor Jason Fung. Over the course of that period, I’ve learned something important about eating: Depending on what you eat, having some food can cause you to become less alert and actually more lethargic, which is undesirable if you plan to do something mentally intensive later, such as playing a Magic tournament.

This was surprising to me, because the advice people often give is to keep yourself nourished, bring snacks, etc etc. It also used to be that lunch was something I highly prioritized when it came to Magic tournaments. Back when I was playing UW control in modern, I made myself a “Teferi lunchbox” because I would never have time to go buy food between rounds. Yet, as much as I hate to admit, I found this to be true of myself.

I have realized that what works better for me is to simply not eat during tournaments, unless I manage to ID. Ever since then, I found my results in the post lunch rounds to improve, and because fasting was something I was already doing, it came quite naturally to me.

Do I recommend this to every single Magic player ever? Absolutely not. I am not a doctor (not a medical one, at least), and every person is different. What I will say is to find what works best for you, and explore different options, and always be open-minded enough to try different things.

No matter the result, always be learning

If there’s one thing I see in every game I’ve competed in, it is that the good players are always hungry to learn, whether they win or lose. At the end of the game, they would rush to talk about critical points in the game, what alternative decisions could have been made, and what the outcomes could have been. Although it would not have affected the outcome of that match, it serves as learning points for the future.

One example of this last weekend was in my quarter final match against Anushanth. When game 3 concluded, Anushanth showed me his hand and I realised that he had Wrath of the Skies all along. This was surprising to me because he played to the board in a way that indicated to me that he did not have it. Between him, Jari who was watching, and I, we worked out better lines he could have taken which involved casting Wrath and getting ahead in the game.

It is moments like these that continue to sharpen us as players. Remember that although the nature of the competition implies an adversarial relationship during a match, the learning is always collaborative.

Talk to your opponents after the game, ask them about points during a match, how they sideboarded, what their thought process was. I assure you that your understanding of the game will improve more sharply.

Be present in the moment

A game of Magic is incredibly complicated. In many boardstates, the possibilities are endless, and the number of plays you can make is vast and enormous. Yet, you only have 50 minutes to complete a match, and at some point, you have to make a decision. It is in these moments that it is important to remind yourself to be present in the moment, and to do what the present moment demands. This manifests itself in different ways.

1. Move on from your misplays

“Magic is complicated.” - Ben Stark, Twitch, 2019.

It is very hard to play a perfect game of Magic. Mistakes and inaccuracies are bound to happen. Our brain has this very strange way of working - you think very hard of all the possibilities, calculate lines, and then you make a decision. Immediately after you make that decision, your brain starts to relax. In that moment, it reveals to you that you have punted 🤦‍♂️

While it is good to recognize mistakes when you make them, it is not good to dwell on them and beat yourself up over it, especially during the match itself. I have seen players do this. They end up going on tilt, leading them to make even more mistakes, derailing the match, and subsequently, their whole tournament.

Conversely, there have been moments where you are so far ahead in a game, there is almost no possible way for you to lose it. Then, you start to lose focus, get a little careless, and suddenly your opponent finds a way back in and you end up losing.

The challenge to focus on the here and now is a difficult one. Former chess player Josh Waitzkin talked about this when I was learning chess from the Chessmaster 7000 program back in my teenage years. Modern poker players now engage in a lot of yoga and meditation to combat the possibility of tilt. To paraphrase television poker commentator Norman Chad during a World Series of Poker Main Event 2014 coverage, “Poker players these days are all about yoga and meditation. Back in the day, it was all about fast cars, sex, and drugs!”

In these situations, coming back to the moment probably involves some combination of deep breaths, taking a drink, looking up and around before going back to your board state, and reminding yourself that every turn is a new challenge. Whatever it is, you have to find what works for you.

It is also important to find a way to reset yourself mentally after a match, especially if you lost or realised you punted badly. In his article, Seth talked about taking a walk in between rounds. Last Saturday, my family travelled with me to the RCQ, so I could go and enjoy some time with them in between rounds, and even feed my son between rounds 4 and 5. Their presence was a big boon to me in helping me reset, and I’m sure their support propelled me to the top 8 once again.

2. Adapt and adjust your plans

You may have heard the famous saying, “failing to plan is planning to fail”. And yet, often your best laid plans do not go as you expect: When you prepare for matchups that you don’t face, or when you face bad matchups that you almost never win, or when you don’t draw as well as you like to. These are the moments when your mettle is tested, and you are forced to adapt and adjust your plan, otherwise your tournament is over. It is through these trials by fire that the true hero in you emerges, proving both to yourself and to everyone that no matter what the obstacles, you will overcome!

The biggest challenge I've found is being given a theoretically bad matchup that you have to win. In these moments, it is very easy to rue your bad luck, start complaining, and perhaps even giving up and not trying. However, being present in this moment means adapting and addressing the current challenge you’ve been presented with. Sometimes you succeed, and sometimes you fail, but the most important thing is that you don’t just roll over and die.

In this tournament, my matchups were: {Prowess, Energy, Goryos, Energy, BW} in the Swiss; and {Energy, Broodscale, Goryos} in the knockout stages. The Esper Ketra Goryo’s matchup was something I wasn’t expecting to face, nor was it something I was prepared for. In the Swiss round against Matteo, I was totally unprepared. It seemed like a bad matchup: a Psychic Frog on curve clogs the board, and unlike the Murktide matchup, if you tried to remove it and push through, he will discard an Atraxa, Grand Unifier using the Frog ability and reanimate it to victory. I lost in round 3 by this heuristic, and I conceded that I was probably not winning that matchup anyway.

Later on, I had to face Matteo again in the finals, and unlike the SUL Invitational, this is a winner-take-all tournament as far as the RC invite is concerned. I absolutely have to win this match if I want the invite, one way or another. As the match went, I managed to steal game 1 through a timely Goblin Bombardment topdeck, and then lost game 2 promptly to Goryo’s on Atraxa + Ephemerate. While we were sideboarding for game 3, I thought to myself that if I tried to do the same thing as before, I would definitely lose. I had to try something different. For convenience, here is my decklist:

After sideboarding in game 2, I had sideboarded like so:

Out: 4x Galvanic Discharge

In: 1x Celestial Purge , 1x Surge of Salvation , 1x Blood Moon , 1x Molten Rain .

So, in a drastic, desperate move, I decided to go all in on the land destruction plan, and I went:

Out: 4x Galvanic Discharge , 2x Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki , 1x Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury

In: 1x Celestial Purge , 1x Surge of Salvation , 4x Molten Rain , 1x Blood Moon

My thought was that if I could disrupt his 3-colour manabase and stop him from casting his spells, I would stand a much better chance of winning. I am also pretty sure he cut all his Force of Negation postboard as well, so these spells will likely just resolve.

We shuffled up for game 3, and I was looking for some kind of Ragavan + Molten Rain start, which will be even more effective given I’m on the play. I didn’t find it in my 7, I didn’t find it after one mulligan, and after mulling to 5, I kept a hand with a Molten Rain, but no Ragavan. I fetched and surveilled on t1, and after he led with a Shadowy Backstreet, I knew that barring a Solitude, shields were down. I drew the Ragavan that I surveilled to the top, and started operations. Two Molten Rains and several turns later, he was left with a Hallowed Fountain and an Island . He never drew another land, and all the spells he found from blinking his Fallaji Archaeologist were stuck in his hand, including the very powerful Wrath of the Skies . This, plus a few mistakes from his side, led me to claim an unexpected victory.

One important lesson I was reminded of here was that “bad matchups” are only bad on paper. They are by no means unwinnable, and you can always put up a fight to give yourself a chance.

Conclusion and next steps

In my incredibly busy life, I am quite thankful that I managed to win an RCQ on my first attempt. This does not happen very often (in fact, it’s never happened to me before) and all I can do is be grateful. Once again, the support of my family and friends have carried me through, and I could never have done this without them. Thank you, especially to Mike who travelled back with my wife, and helped with little Emrakul all the way back to Bern. It was his help that gave me the peace of mind I needed to focus on my matches in the top 8.

I would also like to thank TwoMoons for organising this event, and the prize support which I will soon receive, Karel for judging, and also a shout out to the modern players in Bern. It is a privilege to play in an environment full of strong and friendly players every week, lifting all of us up and making us better players for doing so.

It is still six months until the Regional Championship in Antwerp, and my wife has already looked up how to get there. As for me, I now have two major tournaments to prepare for in November, and they will definitely be much more of a challenge than these two previous tournaments I’ve played in, and will require a stronger mental fortitude. For now, I will just enjoy this moment while it lasts, whilst also rooting for my teammates and friends to get their RC invites too!