Context – Writing Yesterday’s blog post

And making my way back from the Magic: The Gathering Tournament.  Over 1000 people signed up, paid their $30, assembled their Modern decks, and slung up to seven rounds of Magic before the cut to Top-8, which is handled in a standard single-elimination bracket.  We estimate you need to be 5-2 to be in consideration to top-8, but better be 6-1 to be sure.  I’m playing Red/Green/White Burn, and after getting all of my bad games out the night before here’s how I did:

  1. Round 1: Death’s Shadow Agro.  I win game 1 after he gets stuck on 1 land, but I learn the power of discard against my deck.  I need at least 6 spells to win, and trying to get there with 4 is rough.  Game 2 he has double discard, and my 4 can’t get there.  Round 3 I just throw spells at his face until he’s shaking my hand, wondering how he lost a supposedly good match up for himself.  1-0.
  2. Round 2: Bant Eldrazi.  This is my buddy Kyle, and as far as I can tell our match-up is 50-50.  He’ll win 3 in a row, I’ll win 3 in a row, it all depends on who wins the die-roll and keeps a better hand.  Both of his hands were better, and he handily wins both games.  1-1.
  3. Round 3: Burn.  Ahh, the dreaded mirror.  I have nothing in the sideboard against myself except maybe 2 Volcanic Fallout, so I bring those in and hope for the best.   I win game 1, he wins game 2, and game 3 I make two painful play errors that get me a warning, but I still clutch the game out with no issue.  I move on to 2-1, but my brother has dropped.  Our friend Thomas is also 2-1, but Kyle is 3-0.
  4. Round 4: Affinity.  I never stood a chance.  I mean, like the Eldrazi match-up I feel like I win as often as I lose, but in this instance he got both of his wins in early.   I think I sided in 7 cards and didn’t see any of them.  Woof.  2-2.
  5. Round 5: America Nahiri.  Although I never saw the Nahiri.  Nihiri?  I don’t actually know, and despite typing this in a web browser I’m too lazy to look it up right now.  I do know I got there game 1 through some miracle or another, game two he stabilized and beat me to death with a Snapcaster Mage (really?), and then game 3 I somehow fought through his life gain and nonsense to close it out.  Now both Thomas and I are 3-2, but with math being what it is we can at best go 5-2 and get some booster packs for getting into the top 16.  Kyle has yet to even lose a match, and is thusly 5-0.  What a dick.
  6. Round 6: Burn.  Game one he got there with a better burn hand than I do.  No blood no foul.  Game 2 he gets his hate against the mirror, and I have no hate to bring in against the mirror.  I got him within Bolt range, but couldn’t get my Bolt to do the heavy lifting.  3-3 drop.  Kyle also lost, so now he has to win for all the marbles to get into top 8.  I get on a bus and head home.

While I’m on my way home, I start listening to Animal Collective’s newest album, Dance With.  I had tried to listen to this before I signed up for Spotify Premium and was denied through YouTube malarkey, but today I can do no wrong!  The album is available on Spotify and I listen to some of it on the way home, some of it while writing my other obnoxiously long blog post.  So it goes.

Animal Collective is very much their own thing.  If you know what that thing is and you are into it, then this will surely tickle all of your fancies.  It’s superb.

If you aren’t into a manic conclave of pixies sprinkling chaos glitter all over their synth-pop, then beware all ye who enter here.

But I would, and probably at some point will, buy this album.  Maybe after I get my Nintendo Switch.

Yea.