July 23, 2020
bonkers – adjective : mad; crazy
Two and a half weeks. Two and a half weeks without posting, my longest stretch since starting this blog. Why so quiet?
Over that stretch I’ve started multiple posts, only to abandon them when they didn’t come together. I’m still not even sure where this post is heading – it’s just another exercise in trying to break through and belch out something worthy to say.
I’d certainly planned to have things to say about Core Set 2021, but it’s fallen quite flat for me. And, I think, many others, based on what I’m playing against on Arena.
Over the past few weeks I’ve seen more mono-red aggro, more Teferi, Time Raveler, more Uro, than the months leading up to M21. Playing against any of those hardly encourages me to throw myself back into the Arena Play queue.
I can’t claim no one is playing M21 cards. I do see them on occasion. But the only two I’ve seen with any regularity are Cultivate and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon (and almost always within the same ramp deck.) I was “over” Ugin the second time one wiped my board and I spent many more turns desperately trying to find a way to remove it. And, to my delight and surprise, not only did I get it off the board, my predicament wasn’t (totally) hopeless.
You know what happened, of course. I spend turns, cards, resources, and a lot of mental energy getting Ugin gone. My opponent untaps, plays another Ugin, and wipes my board again.
I haven’t been the victim of the mythical turn-4 Ugin, but I did see one turn 5. I conceded before my opponent even had time to fire off the minus ability to exile my stuff. There are many, many more things I’d prefer to do with my time, like clean my ears with an icepick or mow the lawn in 100 degree Colorado summer heat.
Upon the release of M21 I did build quite a few decks that looked fun. Some of them even WERE fun. But none had even a modicum of success in the Play queue on Arena. I was foolish enough to build a Simic deck and NOT run Uro, so I suppose I deserved the losses. The goal was to grow Quirion Dryads and Lorescale Coatls, and the couple times I was able to keep a few (and myself) alive for more than a few turns, the deck proved enjoyable. But the lack of evasion and/or trample doomed those games, and my attempts to retool the deck to shore up its weaknesses proved futile. I was running into RDW and ramp decks consistently, and getting unceremoniously trashed again and again. You’d think playing jank (or, at best, pseudo-jank) I’d be a glutton for punishment, but my tolerance for magical abuse has eroded with time.
The release of Jumpstart last week seemed like a refreshing respite from fighting floodwaters. I was initially willing to part with quite a bit of gold to try out a bunch of different combos, and the first two packs I combined – “Reanimated Angels” – worked decently enough. Your first two wins during the Jumpstart event earn a rare or mythic rare ICR (individual card reward) from Jumpstart, and my first couple ICRs were spiffy Jumpstart exclusive cards: Lightning Phoenix and Blessed Sanctuary.
Wanting to try some different packs and get more ICRs (not to mention some of the awesome JMP-exclusive basic lands) I resigned and started a second playthrough. This time my “Feathered Friends Cats” deck was…messy. No synergy, and the Feathered Friends portion was full of expensive cards I wasn’t able to play before my cats were overrun and I was dead. It took about 10 matches to get my two wins, and my ICRs were underwhelming: Corsair Captain and Steel-Plume Marshal (at least they were Jumpstart exclusives that I would not need to craft with wildcards if I ever wanted to use them.)
Still, I’d had fun grinding the wins, and signed up for a third attempt. My next deck, “Heavily Armored Lands”, must be among the very worst combinations possible. I feel comfortable saying that, considering it took me about 25 matches to get the two wins needed for the ICR rewards. I opened with 13 losses in a row and was staring at what looked like another assured defeat. After a fairly lengthy game the opponent had a better board, and looked just a couple turns from certain victory, when they conceded. Perhaps out of pity, or just boredom at facing my pablum.
That victory was followed by several more losses, and I was utterly defeated. And I don’t mean the deck – I mean me. Before the event started, I’d told myself Jumpstart was going to be silly, casual fun, and I wouldn’t be bothered by losses. But as this third deck racked up a 1-16 record, often losing spectacularly (and out of nowhere) when victory seemed assured, I had to shut Arena down and walk away from the computer.
I’ve had miserable losing streaks before, but this felt worse. I’d somehow managed to select, of my own freewill, a combination of JMP packs of epically atrocious proportions, and then play it over and over without securing even a couple lucky wins. How had I not at least run into someone whose deck flooded badly, or who got manascrewed? I’d already lost multiple Jumpstart games to those inevitable situations, handing my opponents easy wins when my deck refused to cooperate. How had I not been the recipient of that same good fortune?
After an hour or so to fix my headspace I returned renewed and determined to get that second win and its reward. Sadly, I lost many more games before finally getting a victory that felt legitimate. And after all that effort, all that frustration…my ICR was a second Corsair Captain. There are, of course, worse ICRs that I could have earned. But with so many possible cards (the vast majority of which are better and/or more interesting than the Captain) this felt like a virtual slap in the face. I was done for the day.
The following day I had renewed hope for JMP and I joined a fourth event, this time selecting “Predatory Archaeology”. I didn’t count, but it took 10-12 matches to get my wins. I really do suck at picking compatible themes.
The memories of so many losses finally fading after some time away, I played two more Jumpstart events yesterday. “Dogs Witchcraft” and “Rogues Vampires” were…passable. I got more interesting JMP lands and more mediocre ICRs. Mild amusement, if not fun, was had.
My last takeaway from the event is this: I played in 8 Jumpstart events, selecting from 36 JMP packs overall. Not one of my possible selections was a red theme.
I’m not going to try and run the numbers on how unlikely that is. But I’d hazard a guess that it’s less likely than, to pick a totally random event, not pulling a mythic in 24 packs of Hour of Devastation.
Full and fair disclosure: of all the Jumpstart-exclusive basic lands, the mountains are, by a wide margin, my least favorite as a whole (the forests are, categorically, the most pleasing, while the islands are the most varied – stylistically and qualitatively.) Not having the opportunity to choose a red theme is…fine. I just find it bonkers.
I lied. After prepping this post to publish it, I went and ran the numbers. I fudged them a little, and assumed that there is a 20% chance of any given Jumpstart pack being a red theme. Of the 121 different Jumpstart packs that are possible to get, there is a single multi-colored pack. The rest are evenly split among the 5 colors. So to keep the math simple, I ignored the one multi-colored pack and assumed a 20% chance of a pack being a particular color. The odds of seeing 36 Jumpstart packs, and not one of them being red, is approximately: .03245%.
Three hundredths of one percent.
As I said, bonkers.
Casual Magicking 