How ready are you?

A little past eight on a Thursday evening when your phone rings. It's actually an alarm you set to help you remind of the modern event on Sunday. So for the next few minutes, you'll be thinking of what deck to use; scan your card pool for cards you think will be of help in your campaign; and check the internet for the current modern decks to beat. 

You begin your preparation by visiting various modern mtg related pages (SCG Open results, mtg top eight, TC decks) and saw that (on average) they probably have around 3 to 5 eldrazi decks in each top 8. Then followed by Affinity, Infect and Burn variants. And lastly, Ad nauseam, Merfolks and UWR control variants. With those information, you started tweaking your deck towards the meta you saw from the internet. 

Friday, you wanted to know if your list will do well. So you went to the nearest local gaming shop and participated in their modern FNM and somehow did a 2-2. Not bad for a deck that was just constructed the night before. The day after, you did your last minute net decking tech and even implemented some of it. Sunday comes. After the swiss, you are a little frustrated with the results because you only managed to enlist two wins out of six or seven rounds of elimination swiss. "What went wrong?," you're probably asking this. 

Yes you did prepare, but for the wrong meta. Here's some suggestion on how you can improve your results.

• First, do not tweak your deck towards the meta that you see off the internet. Instead, just make it as your reference as to what is its composition. Try to scrutinize why he has this and that, especially the content of their sideboard. In this way, you'll be aware of the stuff he'll might be bringing-in for you for games two and three.

• Second, mainly if your are planning to go there and participate in any of their scheduled tournament, check the local gaming store facebook page because sometimes they post weekly modern results. From there, you review their past three to four modern results and start tweaking your sideboard towards such meta.

• Third, if it is a big event that you are attending, do not over allot cards just for one match up. As much as possible, divvy them equally like five cards for each class: aggro, combo and control.

• Fourth, if you really wanted to allot more cards against a certain deck archetype, at least use cards that are cross-over hate. Like Torpor Orb, it can stop some creatures not just from the eldrazi group (like Thought-Knot Seer and Eldrazi Mimic) but also Snapcaster Mage, Eternal Witness, Kitchen Finks and other creatures that has similar trigger abilities from the other decks. To name some cards: Pithing Needle, Surgical Extraction and Relic of Progenitus.

• Fifth, playtest seriously as if you're in a must win-and-in situation for the top 8 spot. Also, as pointed out by Mr. Craig Wescoe in his work, it is very important to learn the ins and outs of your deck. 

• And lastly, always exercise the right amount of diligence. So whenever a card is being cast: read, understand and evaluate well the other cards not just on each battlefield but also in each graveyards.

I hope these suggestions will be of help. Good luck in your campaign. 

And by the way, here are the modern tournaments for the next two weeks that I am aware:

February 28 
Regran Open (12nn)
Kick Engines (5pm)

March 5
Battlegrounds' GPT (4pm)
PPO's 2nd Leg Modern Series at Scrappy Coco (12nn)


Also, I'll be having my last Paeng Cup (modern). 
It will be on March 19 in Madcap (San Pedro Laguna).
I hope to see you there!


-Paeng Paeng

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