Tempering Expectations: Your Results May Vary
Initially, I was going to write about Historic and Kaldheim’s impact. However, as more bans are incoming, I didn’t want to use my time on a format which will be changed a lot on Monday. We know Uro is being banned, but I think more changes will likely come to Historic. If I had to guess, I think Cauldron Familiar (or another Sacrifice piece) will be banned in addition to Uro. Re-banning of Burning-Tree Emissary is possible, but I think unlikely. I don’t think they will hit Muxus. My ideal would personally be just banning Uro, but I am biased, and I don’t want to lose Cauldron Familiar again.
With Historic addressed, I want to discuss some important lessons I have learned from early days of Kaldheim standard. A few decks have risen to prominence in the last two weeks, the ones which spring to mind as built primarily on the power of new cards are Izzet Midrange, Rakdos Midrange (or Sacrifice), Sultai (Control or Ramp) and Boros. Izzet Midrange was a deck I was, initially, beyond excited for. I love counter magic, I love Goldspan Dragon, and Izzet is the color pair I feel most drawn to. I loaded up LSV’s list, and… I couldn’t win. Every aggro deck beat me fast, and Rogues made everything I did look like a worse version of Rogues. This isn’t to say LSV “built a bad deck.” Rather, a lot of decks are heavily metagame reliant, and the Ladder didn’t seem to be a good meta for it. The moral of this story was to remember, whenever I look at someone else’s results with a deck: “Your results may vary.”
I have played almost, if not over, one hundred hours with various sacrifice lists in Standard and Historic. I am pretty good with them. I had another friend try out the deck, and they went 0–11 with it. Given, they were newer to magic, and they didn’t know all of the weird tricks of Sacrifice. I take some blame here, I could have taught them. However, I never know what they would have faced on the ladder. The deck is also hard to pilot, and you need to keep track of a lot. The refrain again “Your results may vary.” Why is this an important lesson to learn?
Firstly, net-decking is good actually and secondly, Magic is hard. Net-decking is often described by people as a thing “destroying magic.” I won’t engage with that, as it’s a really silly and unclear claim. Using someone else’s 75 is something that happens at every level of Magic, and there is nothing wrong with it. (How many players in the Zendikar Rising Championship played almost identical Omnath lists?) The issue is when you don’t contextualize these decklists, or you decide to play someone else’s 75 without thinking. You have to recognize when, despite everyone else’s impressions of a deck, that sometimes a deck might just not work for you.
For me, Izzet Midrange was that deck. Every other time I saw it, people seemed to be doing something really powerful. I just couldn’t make it work! That sucks, but it’s also okay.Would I have loved for Izzet Midrange to be a deck I loved and won a ton with? Yes, of course! At some point, I had to accept it just wasn’t going to be, and move on.
Another important lesson for me was to realize how much better other people are than me, and playing to my own strengths. Jay (@Jaywmtg on twitter)’s opinion is one I respect a lot, and he endorsed this deck a few times. He is a much better player than me, but he also said something about this deck I think is important. “It’s definitely not an easy deck to pick up and play as I heard some have struggled with it. For me it is right up my alley.” Everyone’s relationship with Magic is, to some degree, their own. While we have a lot of shared language and similar experiences, this game is built on individual players. As such, whenever you play a deck, it’s important to understand when your experiences with it will be different from others. Magic is hard, and I think it’s important to try out new things, but you have to be open to learning. If your expectation is “(Insert person) went 5–0 with this list! So will I!!!” The potential losses will be way more devastating. For me, Izzet Midrange didn’t teach me a ton in terms of game play, but it did teach me how to step back, reassess, and let go when something isn’t working for me. That will be valuable in moving forward in a shifting Kaldheim Metagame.
