Lessons Learned by Losing in Modern

Lessons learned from bombing out of UOL’s last Modern League

I recently did an 0-2, 0-4 drop from Untap Open Leagues’ Modern League. This isn’t the first time I’ve bombed out of an event, but it certainly was the first time in awhile. In fact, the last 0-2, 0-4 drop I had was in one of 2017’s Legacy League, where I had the worst luck I’ve ever seen with Elves!, drawing only three nonland cards across nine Glimpse of Nature draws. My luck in this past league wasn’t exceptional, either for good or bad. 

That’s what made this a great learning experience.

How I picked my deck

I settled onto the following 75 rather quickly, with either four or five days to go until submission. 

This was shortly after Modern Horizons 2’s release, so the meta was still in flux. I’d seen Monkeyblade decks do well a week or two prior and thought the deck looked fun. 

Mistake number one: not accounting for a new meta’s drift

I should have been keeping a closer eye on how the metagame was drifting. By the start of the event, Tribal Elementals and RUG Cascade were both new decks. I didn’t prepare for either of them and was thoroughly stomped in both matches. I had Stony Silence and Rest in Peace in the board, but by the time of the tournament, graveyard decks were very limited and could be attacked similarly to Cascade. While both are good cards, if I had been preparing again, I would have shifted into cards like Void Mirror or Chalice of the Void and Torpor Orb. 

I watched a few matches and goldfished a few games over the next few days before the rounds began. 

Mistake number two: not practicing

You should play matches with your deck before playing in an event for real. If I’d done this before submitting, I probably would have chosen a different, better deck. I probably would have been ready for RUG to drop a Blood Moon from the board against me, rather than being caught off guard when it went on the stack.

Goldfishing is a fine way to get the very, very basics of a deck down, but it gets noticeably worse when you’re playing a tempo deck. This further leads into mistake three.

Mistake three: not practicing in a way conducive to your deck

If you’re playing a deck, you want your practice to be conducive to that deck. Combo decks need to practice against boards more than maindecks, as that’s where they tend to find the most hate. Tempo or control decks need to fight against a high variety of deck to learn broad threat assessment. Aggro decks need to learn how to weave around control shells’ answers.

Match One

I was paired against Trinket9’s RUG Cascade. 

This is where I was already behind. 

Mistake four: all things equal, it’s better to be on the newer deck than the older.

What I mean by this is that, while I was on an old deck the meta had adjusted against, Trinket was on a deck the meta was not yet ready for. Of the 33 decks registered, only 7 packed Chalice of the Void and 5 Void Mirror. This means that Trinket has an edge over at least 41% of the metagame by not having to deal with cards cutting off his cascaded Crashing Footfalls. 

In this match, as I mentioned above, I also fell prey to another mistake. 

Mistake five: know what your opponent’s sideboard plan is as well as your own.

There’s a great Sun Tzu quote for many situations, but a particularly apt one for this. 

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” 

While I played the mainboard of this fairly well (not excellently, not optimally, but well), my sideboard was a disaster. I did not consider that my deck was weak to Blood Moon and missed that it would be brought in. I thought that I would see Mystical Dispute and some number of Force of Vigor. In the second match, I kept in Batterskull as a threat against a board with 3 Foundation Breakers. In this match, while I brought in some cards that would be good, I did not bring in other ways to deal with Blood Moon even as far back as deckbuilding. 

Mistake six: don’t build a house of cards.

My manabase is very flexible, but also absolutely insane. That should have been my first warning that I needed to reconsider the list as a whole, but I glossed over it. If I could redo my manabase, I would. Having only blue mana under a blood moon in a deck that can play Prismatic Ending is a gargantuan mistake. It would also turn on other sideboard options for dealing with this card on, such as the ever-great Disenchant. I always swore I’d never leave home without a Disenchant… and then I left home without it.

Match Two

This time I was against Bettermoth’s Elementals list. 

This is a fairly doomed matchup without ways to slow down the card advantage the deck can accrue. It was made worse by my 3 mainboard Force of Negation, which only have a few targets. But I came with a plan for this! In my board, in matches where Force of Negation was bad, I would swap it for Subtlety and get value that way!

Mistake seven: don’t come in with an underdeveloped sideboard plan.

Turns out, that’s not enough of a plan. I should have recognized I was the control deck and boarded appropriately. Instead, I zeroed in on the subtlety plan and ignored that I had better first cuts, such as Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer. 

Mistake eight: forgetting roles in the matchup

While Force of Negation isn’t great, Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer living and getting through Grief, Fury, Shriekmaw, Solitude, and Voice of Resurgence with only eight removal spells postboard was an honest bit of lunacy. I was the control deck here, so I needed to stop this deck from getting off to a fast start and beating me down while accruing card advantage. I didn’t board in a way that was conducive to that gameplan, and I got punished hard.

Additional Lessons

I had two maindeck Search for Azcanta, a card I’d loved since I played a pair in 2017-18 era Legacy. It’s a very, very fun card, and can be easy to turn on when you’re playing a bunch of cantrips.

Mistake nine: getting attached to pet cards

Search for Azcanta does not keep pace in a Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and Dragon’s Rage Channeler speed metagame. Taking off turn two to play a long-developing card advantage engine means you let board pressure go. I saw a single list playing it and immediately just jumped on an excuse to play with a favorite card. 

Mistake ten: confused sideboard

My sideboard was a bit all over the place and didn’t line up with the deck plan. Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is a midrange card in a deck that needs to pivot harder into control or aggressive starts in postboard games. Heliod’s Intervention is a nice, flexible option, but not better than Disenchant or straight lifegain spells. Prismari Command has flexibility, but doesn’t do much for either of the plans either. Rest in Peace seems redundant compared to Void Mirror or Chalice of the Void. There’s plenty of better cards for these slots, and I should have had a more concrete plan than “Yeah, that card looks reasonable.”

All Together Now

So, in summary, my mistakes were: 

1. Not accounting for metagame drift after a new set
2. Not practicing enough
3. Not practicing in a conducive way for the deck I was testing
4. Picking an older, known, and prepared for meta deck into a newer metagame
5. Not knowing my opponent’s sideboard plan as well as mine
6. Building a house of cards, and watching it fall
7. Having an underdeveloped sideboard plan
8. Not remembering my role in a matchup
9. Getting attached to a pet card
10. Having a sideboard cards that did not fit my sideboard plan 

I know I went into this season a bit cocky and ready to rely on just the skills I’ve honed from playing this game for nearing two decades. It was definitely a reminder that, while some of my fundamentals might be good enough, you still have to account for outside factors to succeed. 

Moving Forward

It’s important to not just shrug your shoulders when you do bad. You can almost always find a nugget of something to work on when you play, even in very stratified matchups or bad runs. When I dropped several weeks ago, I just shrugged and said, “Yeah, I picked a bad deck.” But since digging into the run itself, I’ve sorted out some good lessons and a particular pattern.

I’ve now had two leagues in a row with bad sideboard plans, so that means I’m now paying attention to my board plans much more than before. You can read about my Goblins run to see that mess of a board. I actually developed a sideboard plan for my next league and also for my paper deck to account for the most likely decks I’d see. 

I’m also going to be paying better attention to what’s been going on in the meta in the lead up to leagues or other events. Rather than just casually browsing and finding a fun deck, I’m going to try and actually pay attention to the rising and falling decks to find the best match. 

Finally, I’m not going to let this one admittedly awful run keep me down. We all have events and reads on the meta that we misjudge, poorly prepare for, and then drop fast and hard from. What’s more important is the growth from those events.