Sleepwalking in Spain - a PT Rivals of Ixalan Report

There is a wealth of literature in the Magic blogosphere about setting yourself up for optimal performance at a tournament, and although specific to a niche topic, it’s basically applied psychology. Without going too deep into it, the general consensus is that there are measures you can take to put yourself in the best possible physical and mental condition to deal with the stresses that go along with travelling to and playing in a large Magic event. Getting enough sleep, eating well, drinking enough water, having comfortable accommodations, and spending your time with people you can stand all seem like common sense but can be difficult to put into practice in real time without lots of conscious effort. It’s obvious if you observe other people or even your own behavior, at Magic tournaments or otherwise, that almost everyone falls short in checking off these boxes in one way or another, which probably means that almost everyone is failing to perform up to their abilities almost all of the time.

Before and during my trip to Bilbao, Spain for Pro Tour Rivals of Ixalan, I failed in almost all of the above categories (except, of course, the last one - Jeff, Jess, and Seth were great travel buddies and I wouldn’t have survived without them). The night before leaving, I opted to stay up late hanging out with a friend who was moving away and I may not see for a while. I thought, whatever, starting the trip with slightly less sleep than I’m used to probably wasn’t a big deal. But as soon as I was on the road to meet up with Jeff, Jess, and Jeff’s friend Seamus who was driving us to JFK for our flight, I realized I didn’t charge my phone the night before, and the power outlet in my car hasn’t worked for months. Finding my way to a house I’d never been to in suburban Connecticut without GPS was about as hard as it sounds, and thankfully a girl working at a gas station I stopped at gave me a map and directions to roughly where I needed to be. Without this angel’s guidance I’d probably still be lost in that confusing highway network in central CT, never to be heard from again (because my phone would still be dead, duh).

Anyway, the trip to the airport and our first flight to Paris were fine, although I was dead tired when we landed. Local time was about 5AM and I was trying to stay awake until the first evening we were in Bilbao so I could easily reset my sleep schedule, but that meant I had to endure a bit of suffering in the meantime. To make things worse, our flight out of Paris was delayed, so our one hour layover became three. Staying awake was challenging, but to be honest I was also legitimately afraid that if I fell asleep we were going to miss our flight, because Jeff was having a hard time understanding the loudspeaker announcements and was asking “is that us?” after every single one.

In my tired stupor, I also feared that I would forget to submit my Modern deck in time for the event. The deadline was that evening, and given that I was planning on staying awake all day I knew I was only going to get more tired than I already was, which meant the longer I waited to do it the more likely I was to forget to do it. So, sleepy me decided that my best possible option was to register my deck exactly as it was in my deckbox at that exact moment, at 5AM in the Paris airport, wishing I was asleep or dead, after not having thought about my list or touched any of the cards for a week, so I could just forget about it.

It’s even possible that I was right in doing so, as I was locked in on U/R Breach and with that choice I felt I had already either dug my own grave or built the golden chariot that would carry me to victory anyway. To sleepy, grumpy me, putting too much consideration into my 14th and 15th sideboard slot or whether I should play the 4th Emrakul or the 1st Pull from Tomorrow seemed like pedantic nonsense given my time constraints, so I decided to just let it go so I could sort out everything else I needed to without worrying about it. A lot of the time, Magic, and life for that matter, doesn’t seem like it’s about taking the time to make the best possible decision, as time and your mental capacity are finite resources. It’s more often about deciding on the best option out of the options that are visible to you moment to moment, accepting your own limitations, be they inherent or situational, and trusting yourself in spite of them. Perfection be damned. No one has time for that.

The flight from Paris to Bilbao was interesting, mostly because the plane got struck by lightning. No, I’m not joking. On our descent into Bilbao, we passed through some storm clouds (which I learned were ever-present above this part of Spain), and amidst the jarring shaking of the plane there was a sudden flash of bright blue light that came from the front end of the plane and a cracking sound, that sounded like a single popcorn kernel popping but amplified thousands or millions of times. I was so tired that I didn’t believe that what I had just seen and heard had actually happened. I looked around the plane and it didn’t seem like anyone was even reacting. I had to be going insane, I thought. I spent the remainder of the flight half-worried we were going to die and half-worried I had totally lost my mind. When Jeff told me he saw the same thing after we landed, I was a bit relieved that my mind was still together enough that I wasn’t hallucinating mortal hazards for no reason, but I took the fact that I was doubting my perceptions in the first place as a sign that I really needed to get some rest.

While trying to figure out what bus to get on to leave the airport, we inadvertently met up with Seth, who we were planning on meeting at some point that day anyway. Seth seemed to have a pretty good handle on how the bus system in Bilbao worked, so even though I could barely keep my eyes open in a country where almost no one spoke the same language as me, we found our hotel pretty quickly. I barely remember anything else from that day, except that we went to the convention center to register for the event and bumped into Connor ‘of the pure’ Bryant, and that at some point Seth and I had a very strange dining experience in a place that looked like a restaurant, but I honestly couldn’t tell you if it actually was or not. I fell asleep around 6PM and slept for twelve straight hours, which put me in decent mental shape for day 1 of the PT, in spite of literally everything.

Even though I wasn’t totally sold that my Modern deck was anything special, I still felt pretty good about the event. Day 1 went pretty well. In my first draft, I was passing to Reid Duke, and after first picking Ravenous Chupacabra over Silvergill Adept and feeding Reid lots of good Merfolk cards for the rest of pack 1, I ended up with an above-average B/W Vampires deck with lots of removal and 4x Legion Conquistador.

I went 2-1 in the pod, with my loss being to Reid himself after his deck produced some pretty busted draws. I would say I created a monster and paid for it if it were almost any other player in the room, but it seems inappropriate to take credit for the success of someone like Reid Duke, even if my conscious drafting strategy may have contributed to some of his match wins.

I went 3-2 in Modern, with all 3 of my wins being against control decks that couldn’t deal with Blood Moon, and my losses being to Burn and Affinity. My matches against Burn and Affinity are both mostly a blur to me with a standout moment in common being dying with 2 Platinum Emperions in my hand in post-board games, but sometimes it’s just not your day, not your tournament. C’est la vie.

Going into day 2, I somehow didn’t feel as great. I think my loss in round 8 shook me up a bit, because I did get pretty unlucky, although it wasn’t clear I deserved to win more than my opponent did or anything. It’s likely that malnutrition, not being able to find real coffee anywhere (it seemed they only drink espresso in Bilbao), and the fact that none of my closer friends made the day 2 cut with me were more at the core of what was dragging me down. Finding reasonable food to eat in Spain was extremely difficult for me - when I got home, I weighed 5 pounds less than I did when I left. I don’t eat meat, so almost everything at every restaurant was off the table. I survived on bananas, nutella, and potato chips for most of the trip which are all things I happen to like, but are probably not conducive to good health in the medium to long term by themselves and I was really beginning to feel it by the 2nd day. I even paid something like 12 euros for a plate of really mediocre asiago cheese just to switch things up at a restaurant that had basically nothing else I could eat. Everyone made fun of my pathetic plate of cheese, but everyone’s food also immediately got hailed on through a hole in the tent we were sitting beneath. I like to think people generally get what they deserve.

Speaking of hail, the weather in Bilbao was terrible. Despite the info letter that Wizards sent out to everyone going to the Pro Tour saying that it “wasn’t the rainy season”, it rained or hailed almost the entire time we were there. I thought it may have just been a freak thing, but it seemed umbrellas were a standard part of the Bilbao residential uniform, and a local told me “rains all year, only difference, this time of year is cold”. Aptly said, I guess. “But it’s not even the rainy season” became a running joke that someone had to belt out every time we went outside. Sometimes it’s little things like that that make life tolerable when you’re jetlagged, homesick, hungry, cold, and wet for 4 straight days.

But yeah, anyway, day 2 was pretty wack. The draft went well enough for me - after first picking Deeproot Elite, but not wheeling a 9th pick Jade Bearer, and the entire pack being pretty medium for G/U in general, I was nervous that someone else at the table was hard cutting Merfolk. Whoever it was must have floundered in pack 2 after also realizing someone else was in Merfolk, because after 2nd, 3rd, and 4th picking Hunt the Weak over Crashing Tide, the Crashing Tides all wheeled, and more Merfolk cards found their way to me and I ended up with a solid, playable deck.

I went 2-1 in this pod, dropping a pretty close match to David Williams’ sick B/R midrange deck with lots of removal and a Tetzimoc, which is whatever. I wasn’t thrilled about going 4-2 in draft, but I wasn’t upset with myself either. I had played around 40 drafts on MTGO in preparation for this event, getting to about 1870 rating, and if I couldn’t convert that into a positive record at this PT I would’ve been pretty disappointed.

Modern was another story. I was swiftly destroyed by Thoughtseize decks (B/G Rock, Grixis Shadow, Jund Shadow) 3 rounds in a row, which I knew were bad matchups that I was hoping to dodge. Maybe I made some critical play mistakes that just didn’t register at the time because I was so worn out, but the matches were so lopsided that this is unlikely the case. It’s possible that playing U/R Breach was more of a gamble than I thought, but it seemed so much more likely I would just play against blue control decks, Tron, and 5c Humans all day which were actively good matchups and were much more of the field at this PT. Again, sometimes it’s not your day, not your tournament.

Sunday was a relaxing change of pace. The sun was actually out for the first time since we’d arrived, which was perfect as Jeff, Jess and I were planning on doing a little bit of sightseeing anyway. We went to the Guggenheim Museum, which, if you’re like me and don’t have much of a penchant for modernist art (think bent coat hangers, chairs placed in stacks, bathtub drains, etc), is something to be endured, although I did think Henri Michaux’s mescaline drawings were great. I also had the pleasure of being present for and documenting Jeff’s marriage proposal to Jess that afternoon. I don’t like making a big deal out of things like this, but being there for that served as another reminder that life’s journey is about the little things; that possibilities expand outward from some points more than others, and it seems that who you’re with matters as much or more than where you are or what you’re doing when the powers that be are determining the course of your life, which to me is comforting in a weird way. I guess what I’m trying to say is I wish Jeff and Jess well, as they continue to explore the possibilities that lay before them.

It was awesome having so many people rooting for me from home. The 518 Magic community is great, and I hope in the near future I can be the hero you all deserve. Obviously Modern has had a pretty big shakeup since the PT, and I’ll probably be putting some content out about that soon, so stay tuned if you want my advice on the best ways to cast Kiki-Jiki in this new format.

LATER