In the spirit of Flores’ podcasts (4 previous entries), I’m going into the PTQ tomorrow with the sort of attitude that I had about 15 years ago when I was first playing Magic tournaments: I will be the best and most deserving player tomorrow, and I’ll act like it.

It will only be my second ptq in this format, and the first saw me open a pretty poor sealed deck, build it almost certainly wrong, and sideboard into 4 different builds (Bg, Wu, Bw, WG) throughout the day looking for what to do with my miserable, removal-starved card pool. Nonetheless, I finished 6-2, just one win out of top 8.  Both the matches I lost I was bowled over by card-quality, but I also clearly had options in term of what cards I brought to those matches, and I might have made mistakes in this regard due, in part, to the negative attitude I had about my pool.

However, I learned a ton about the format playing with all those different builds, and my generally winning record gave me confidence that mediocre cards are no barrier to success.

So, keep your eye on this space for my upcoming post: “PTQ Massachusetts report: 1st” wherein I describe the most glamorous plays of the day and the sort of power that a winning attitude gave me.

-gcb