#32 - The Trench
Featuring a look at Eric Levine's signature MSPaint chart, Simon Nielsen understanding sealed, and a guy who is probably quitting Magic.
During the pandemic, I became a Plant Guy for the most superficial of reasons: they looked good on camera. Being the son of a Master Gardener and avid daylily hybridizer, I couldn’t go fake. So I picked up a snake plant and what looked like a shorter snake plant, special Choad Edition™, and tossed them in the background of stuff I was shooting.
Five years later and the place is covered with foliage: from a 60-year-old Thaumatophyllum to some ivy my mom got me because a friend got us ivy on accident and we all had a good laugh and then Deb Browne was like, “Nah, gotta double down on that.” So now I keep ivy alive for no discernable reason.
Spring rolling around now means they get fed and potted up. My Pothos with all the 10ft vines desperately needed to spread its roots, so it got some fresh soil.
And my office got a ton of fungus gnats.
Pretty much any soil you buy from a garden center is filled with bugs. It’s organic! Instead of treating it, I assumed the -10 degree winter would have killed them off. The joke’s on me: the eggs can lie dormant for at least several millennia.1
I’m now nuking the soil, have the traps set up, but they’re still here. I hate them. I have hated small, flying bugs for at least 12 years.
The problem with catching them by hand is they’re elusive, but not particularly fast. They weigh nothing—basically dust with agency—so the quick motion you think you’d need to trap one in your palm creates the gust that saves its life. The act of closing your hand is what dooms your whole effort.
The more you push, the more resistance you create.
Last month, I wrote a big, long email to the Magic Creator Team about how meaningful it would be to cover Tarkir: Dragonstorm as an official ambassador. It’s the set that brought me back to Magic after decades adrift. The first Spotlight Series to feature limited—which is my whole thing, tbh—is happening in my city. And my wife reads romantasy books about a lady dragon tamer, so we’re building Lathliss together.
No response.
I push. I create wind. I blow the things I want away.
I’m trying to meditate again. I’m trying to be still. Danny McBride has been talking on Gemstones press junkets about how good boredom is for creative people:
If you're creative, being bored is good sometimes, right? I feel like sometimes with these phones, with all this information all the time, it… your brain is just constantly occupied by other people's noise and so I felt like when I kind of turned that stuff off, I I just felt like there was all of this noise that just went away and then all my stupid ideas could flourish.
We’re overstimulated. Amused to death. I told Sam I want to do a day with no phones or electronics or books and we just have to figure out what to do. She said, and I quote, “That sounds awful.”
She’s right: it does. I just want my stupid ideas to flourish.
If you feel like you’re hitting a wall with Magic lately, embrace the stillness. The answer might not land in your palm, but you’d be surprised what it does for your resting heart rate.
In this Issue:
Trench Foot in Mouth
I forgot all about the Levine Trench.
Eric “Raging” Levine, an ironic nickname coined by Owen Turtenwald for a very chill dude, is old school. Judge, former CFB guy, now works as a Games Rules Specialist (yes, an actual role) at WotC. According to his now-defunct blog, this was four minutes of MSPaint and a fever dream of a conversation with a local. I’ve recreated it to be legible on the modern internet:
I’ve experienced every part of this trench. It’s not a panacea, but it’s pretty damn good. It’s the reason I still go to prereleases: to play Very Nice Magic. It’s also why meeting Reid Duke in Minneapolis was a goal of mine and why it’s a legitimate pleasure to work with Nathan Steuer on his Metafy courses (which you should sign up for).
When Nathan vouched for me to a testing team before San Diego, I didn’t realize I was about to get into the depths of the trench. I had been trying out comp Magic for about nine months at that point and had scored some RC invites and spiked a PTQ. In reality, I was Little Fucking Nemo and had no clue the sharks I was about to be swimming with. After the RC, I was sent this from a conversation about a future team being assembled:
Here’s the thing: this person is not wrong. I shouldn’t have said a word about Standard. Didn’t have anything productive to add to the conversation. What I didn’t know is that I had become the “mean joke” of it all.
No one wants to be the joke.
Levine features a snippet from an article lost to time2 that I think nails what happens:
New players are in a new environment and often are extra nice to compensate for not knowing what’s going on. The mediocre learn quickly to hate mana screw, mana flood, and anything out of the ordinary that their opponents do. The truly good have generally seen everything and are liable to be quite nice to you if you are nice to them. The ‘almost good,’ however, is where all of the anger lies, probably due to the Dunning-Krueger effect making them unhappy with their results because they are ‘better than’ whatever it is that is happening to them. This causes some ordinarily friendly people to become horrible misanthropes during games of Magic.
I don’t care how good you are. I’m not working with trench people again. I also probably won’t get invited back, which is fine.
I disagree with Jakob here, though. A testing team is not a community, it’s a testing team. Hundreds of iterations of them have existed throughout time. They often exist for an express purpose (winning a lot of money playing Magic) and then disband, only to reform with slightly differing compositions on the next run. There isn’t even a standardized way of composing them:
People can run them however they want and I would guess that smart people running teams well tend to overperform. It’s Nothing Personal at that level. If you think you’re not a PT-level player because you don’t think about people this way, I assure you, that’s not what is stopping you. This is just what helps people convert at that level.
I’ve been musing about how I’ve taken an oddly complicated route to competitive Magic. Instead of investing a little money in whatever the deck I need is, I decided to rent my opportunities in the form of draft/sealed, a type of Magic that costs actual money every time I fire one off.
A car is too expensive; I’ll just Uber everywhere.
I wonder where I’d be if I decided to grind constructed Magic for the last five years. Probably at the bottom of the sea.
Be Aggressive
Simon Nielsen, a person so firmly on the right side of the trench it should have a little picture of him, ran a little DFT sealed to great results from a hotel lobby. The dream, as you will. The deck is nothing special, a mythic and four rares if you count the Verge, but dubs the deck “aggro” for sealed. You know what I loved? The reigning world champ casually dropping in to be curious for a moment:
You go first. Think about your answer for a second. Insert Jeopardy Music. This is a deck with three Stampeding Scurryfoot, a Mindspring Merfolk, and a pair of two drops. Only one of them attacks for more than two damage consistently before turn four. In what world is this deck “aggressive”?
While you think about it, here’s a cheeky response from The German Juggernaut himself:
I’ll also note quickly that I’ve seen a number of folks chiding those who are still on X and I understand the frustrations. Talked a little bit about it on Bluesky and won’t rehash it all here, but I do think there’s utility (beyond all the actual life implications of leaving X) to seeing the greatest players in the game thinking out loud.
Anyway, back to Simon’s answer, because I think it’s an interesting one:
That it doesn't really have the staying power / top end to compete in the late game, but I won the rounds by attacking wide around my opponents blockers and using tempo tools with big hits.
In normal Magic terms, that doesn't really describe aggro, but for sealed standards?
If we broke down normal Magic terms, we have basic classifications for decks: aggro, midrange, control, and combo. We also have “tempo,” which Simon mentions above, but that’s usually either an aggressive or midrange deck. Every deck can fit somewhere on that axis in normal Magic terms, and a deck can fit in different parts depending on formats.
A Modern Goryo’s deck plays more like combo, whereas a Kroxa and Kunoros deck in Commander is probably more of a midrange value engine.
Midrange. It’s a word that comes up often in draft. So many people have mused that all limited Magic is midrange now that I couldn’t source it if I tried, and believe me: I tried. It’s like the joke about pizza and sex: even when it’s _____ it’s _____.
I don’t think this is new adage is true, though: real aggro decks still exist and no one should have to eat pizza made at altitude.
Decks still play 1-2-3 you’re dead. They throw creatures into the woodchipper in the name of a little bonus damage. They may have engines that help them later, but that’s a consequence of modern design rather than need.
Since true combo doesn’t exist in draft, we’re down to midrange and control after that. I’ll concede that true control doesn’t exist, either: every deck wants answers, so achieving a critical mass at any table worth its salt is impossible. I don’t think it makes sense to think of midrange as a spectrum of aggro to control, either. It’s just what it is.
This is all true of draft. What Simon pointed out is that he learned something about sealed.
When it comes to sealed, it’s very hard to make aggro come together because it’s all the whim of the packs in the same way it’s hard to make Cherries come together on a slot machine. You’ve ceded control the moment you grab the lever to pull.3 I’d estimate that, in my lifetime, less than 5% of my sealed pools were meant to be built as actual aggro decks in that format.
Simon is leveraging a common aggro tactic here: going wide. What makes Bestow Greatness work here is that a wide attack forces our opponents to blink first by declaring blockers. Normal combat tricks, say DFT’s Lightshield Perry, can be underwhelming in these scenarios because they don’t guarantee you win the block you want to win.
That’s a second key: in aggro decks, your combat tricks act as quasi-removal. I can send all of the Scurryfoots I want into a board with flotsam and a Ketradon, but I need to either get the dino out of the way or trample over their worst block for substantial damage. Bestow makes things so large, even the humblest mouse can take down 90% of opposing blockers.
You might look at the list and think, “But wait, how does he struggle to compete in the late game? Terrian is a monster and Gearseeker Serpent can go through untouched.” The short answer is that other decks, built with more card advantage and bombs, will have better inevitability in those situations. He needs to wrap things up and fast.
You know, like a classic aggro deck with a “seven drop” does.
When I Quit, You Quit, We Quit
Andrei Klepatch, embattled X personality QT’d in Jakob’s post above, probably wants to quit Magic. He’s tweeting about it. A lot. Pro Magic is not the money train it used to be, but he’s performing well: 10-4 at RC Dallas, 11-3-1 at RC DC, 10-6 at PT Chicago. It’s hard to walk away from that.
I read his posts because he’s toiling over the choice. He’s posting gratitude journal entries and how he’d regret not playing worlds, even if he’d feel like a dog.4 He’s a highly analytical person trying to apply a lot of rationale to an emotional decision. It’s been fascinating to watch. The other day he posted this excerpt from “Universal Love, Said The Cactus Person” by Scott Alexander:
“Sir. Imagine you are in the driver’s seat of a car. You have been sitting there so long that you have forgotten that it is the seat of a car, forgotten how to get out of the seat, forgotten the existence of your own legs, indeed forgotten that you are a being at all separate from the car. You control the car with skill and precision, driving it wherever you wish to go, manipulating the headlights and the windshield wipers and the stereo and the air conditioning, and you pronounce yourself a great master. But there are paths you cannot travel, because there are no roads to them, and you long to run through the forest, or swim in the river, or climb the high mountains. A line of prophets who have come before you tell you that the secret to these forbidden mysteries is an ancient and terrible skill called GETTING OUT OF THE CAR, and you resolve to learn this skill. You try every button on the dashboard, but none of them is the button for GETTING OUT OF THE CAR. You drive all of the highways and byways of the earth, but you cannot reach GETTING OUT OF THE CAR, for it is not a place on a highway. The prophets tell you GETTING OUT OF THE CAR is something fundamentally different than anything you have done thus far, but to you this means ever sillier extremities: driving backwards, driving with the headlights on in the glare of noon, driving into ditches on purpose, but none of these reveal the secret of GETTING OUT OF THE CAR. The prophets tell you it is easy; indeed, it is the easiest thing you have ever done. You have traveled the Pan-American Highway from the boreal pole to the Darien Gap, you have crossed Route 66 in the dead heat of summer, you have outrun cop cars at 160 mph and survived, and GETTING OUT OF THE CAR is easier than any of them, the easiest thing you can imagine, closer to you than the veins in your head, but still the secret is obscure to you.”
I don’t know why, but every time I read this, my eyes well up. I’ve been in so many damn cars in my life I thought I couldn’t get out of. And now I’m running through the forest and swimming in the river, but there’s always that part of you thinking, “I might just be in another damn car.”
Matti Kuisma gave Andrei some simple advice this week and I’m becoming a big fan of Matti’s:
I highly recommend his Hareruya recap of Chicago, btw. The Magic stuff is fun but the life stuff is where the gold is.
CLEANSE
I’m sorry, Daniel, but that’s two dragons gettin’ a face full of dragon b-hole and I’ll never be convinced of anything else.
Great Views
I’m back working on video for Arena Championship5 coverage next week and I have to say: this is gorgeous. The shots of the players are well-framed, almost all of the pertinent info we need is displayed and cleanly, and the lighting is ace. This is the gold standard IMO.
Two fixes, though:
Add pronouns. We have plenty of places in that frame to add them and some members of chat would legitimately like to correctly gender players they’re talking about. Astonishing, I know.
Give us more of the battlefield. I think a little fade on some of the top and side elements (and reduced opacity) would allow for a better viewing experience rather than everything being so blocky.
The thing that makes watching paper Magic so difficult is that it’s a static shot from too much distance of a thing we like to see up close. Card images on the side are fine but temporary. The best we can do is sacrifice some of the hands/lap to push in a little, even if that means it’s harder to catch stuff like this. I guess that’s what side cameras are for.
Draft Review
It’s peak Vintage Cube season and we’ve been having a lot of little discussions about how decks are coming together in the Discord. I’ve given up on trying to make the Discord a big thing, too, which has been nice. It’s kind of just a group chat now where we shoot the shit.
Andrew is great and posts a lot of logs and I think we’re getting to the bottom of a lot of those 2-1s. Today, I want to look at one of his drafts without having seen the picks (except P1P1, can’t unsee that) and see how far we differ. If you want to play along, untick the “Show picks” box in the top right. If you want to skip, we’re going right into Odds and Endstep after this.
Easy Mox. Not my favorite, but happy to take free mana whenever.
Pick: Mox Jet
Kind of a blah pack. We don’t have any direction yet and I’m not inclined to fight over Reanimate early, so a fetch it is.
Pick: Wooded Foothills
Dang. Kinda wish I had that Animate Dead now. Pairs real well with Fable, which is a solid pick and even lines up with that fetch.
Pick: Fable of the Mirror-Breaker
This pick feels like it’s going to have repercussions. I’m not totally sold on the Overlords yet—feels like it plays best in Blink decks—and I like to tie break with the cheapest card on top. Pest Infestation scales with the game and has a unique effect. Also very splashable and we can fetch green!
Pick: Pest Infestation
LSV’s mantra of “In this house, we don’t pass Karakas” rings loudly in my head. Even if it’s just my 23rd card, I’m happy to play it, but I’m also seeing that Exhume and thinking what could have been if we had gone into RB reanimate. That said, Sentinel and Lumberjack would work in a Gruul deck and the Jack has been going FAR too late.
Pick: Karakas
Upgrading my “dang” to a full “damn” seeing Crabomination. I really don’t want to take ANOTHER land but I think that’s just where we’re at. This deck can still go in a lot of directions and fixing helps us land that plane.
Pick: Bloodstained Mire
We see a Triome and it’s somehow NOT working with anything we have yet? lol lmao even. Death-Greeter’s Champion is a consideration but I think I’m just going with Noble Hierarch and trying to get some ramp going.
Pick: Noble Hierarch
Questing Beast would provide us our first solid threat, but I’m staying on the path of righteousness (and lands).
Pick: Commercial District
Here, I’m not taking a tapped land. You can’t make me. Chariot is great as a threat to play ahead of curve.
Pick: Esika’s Chariot
Everyone hates lands and I love that for us. We do have the Jet and a Mire, so maybe we wind up more Jund than I’m picturing, but I can also see a version of Naya with our Hierarch and Karakas. Bonus: both of our fetches nab it.
Pick: Raugrin Triome
Very, very happy with what we’re seeing wheel here. We could pick up Lotus Cobra to compliment our fetches, but I’m more excited about a potential threat.
Pick: Bloodbraid Challenger
Craterhoof seems fine with our tokens? Overlord to hedge? Tarfire for interaction? IDK, not worth overthinking.
Pick: Craterhoof Behemoth
We’re still light on interaction but I think I want Reclaimer to fetch emergency Karakas or just fix our lands in general.
Pick: Elvish Reclaimer
And we’re happy with our stick! I could keep going through Pack 2, but obviously things change a little bit unless our pick were identical. BRB, going to look at his picks.
Okay! Here’s the deck. And, yup, wound up with some pretty solid picks (although the man simply hates an Exhume) and I’d be happy where he wound up. Maybe Pack 2 doesn’t suck so much for us if we pick differently, but it’s hard to argue with the results. Here, I’d give him the nod. GJ, kamahl.
Odds and Endstep
Sometimes I think the internet is bad for me. And then, other times, I know it is.
“Oh ya that would fix the manabase” is perfect. (Context)
AshleyBits is just reinventing the shitposting game every day. Truly a master of high effort shitposts. Golden era.
Variance. The deck is fine. Maybe a little threat-light.
Snap keep. You have to stop mulling so much in limited, folks.
I don’t know what a Gacha is but Sam saw how much I spent on Arena last year when we did taxes.
Still happily married.
Not to toot my own horn, but cool stuff is happening in Magic. Chosler’s interview with Jesse is great, btw.
"I'm not sure what I can say about Opal Breach that hasn't already been said a hundred times over in the past few months.”
Then proceeds to give a great interview.
Oh, so we’re just out here tempting fate now, are we?
1mrlee posted a really great tribute to Jordan Aisaka that went underread. You can read it here.
MH3 Collectors are flagging because the value in MH3 is in the uncommon slot. MDFC’s are a huge win for sellers, with Sink into Stupor and Witch Enchanter both over $5. Consign to Memory is $6. Sellers want as many cracks at those juiced uncommons as possible.
Foundations was underprinted, flat out, and I’ve been preaching that for a while. Wish I could have held longer. Bloomburrow we talked about last week. Killer set, will be popular until the game crumbles. MH3 might have its day eventually, but the value is there now in Play Boosters.
People keep blowing my mind with deck photos and I can’t get enough of it.
Also, quick tip if you’re getting a lot of glare on yours: back up and angle slightly. The higher you shoot from, the less you’ll experience glare. You can always crop in, you can’t crop out.
Two player mats make me nostalgic. Cloth mats make me nostalgic. I’m excited to see this project come to fruition. Gold is a mensch. Reminds me a lot of kids I grew up with.
Can’t get enough @dogfoodforgirls lately.
Shot.
Chaser.
Seriously, MTG_DS, I hope you didn’t have that in the can. I’m a sucker.
I, admittedly, haven’t played a lot of Commander lately. In months. My buddy Casey point blank asked me, “Do you even like Commander?” in Chicago.
I don’t know what I said.
It’s not because of “rule interpretations” and I’m not sure what that even means; if someone in your pod doesn’t understand Magic, you should be an eager (and patient) teacher.
It’s not because I’d be forced to interact with different personalities. Feature, not a bug.
I just haven’t had anything to do in Commander that feels interesting for a while. My Arena Championship commitments probably mean that I can’t make it to
‘s joy-filled cEDH tournament next weekend, but I’m going to try. If anyone from Denver is reading this, let’s try. I’m not sure our car makes it to Fort Collins on a charge, but fuck it, let’s find out.Anyway, it bums me out that someone would feel like they need to be drunk to play Commander. There are so many great reasons to get drunk.
#WotcStaff Andrew Brown with the, idk, file note? on Cauldron Familiar from design and testing. I wish we got to see more of this stuff. How the sausage was made. I’m sure it would lead to a lot of awful backseating from the general public because, again, design is hard, but I want to see it. Also, as a Brown(e), this naming convention isn’t ideal. Tyrone Robeson called me JBro for an entire year of my collegiate life. It was the closest to a nickname I’ve ever been.
Giveaway Time
Okay, so I think the Wrenn’s Resolve was a terrible choice last week. I’m updating that to also include the Monsterous Rage with a PT stamp as a mea culpa. We’re also adding a signed Ancient Amphitheater, generously provided by our sponsor Propaganda MTG. I’ve also been made aware that none of you have sold all your cards to the good folks at Propaganda yet.
That’s fine, but you’re kind of making me look bad.
If you’re going to be in any of these places, mention that you heard about Propaganda from me, noted propagandist Jake Browne. Join his Discord. Buy stuff from him. Your patronage matters.
Okay, here’s the updated spread that’s going to our big winner: mtgbe****y@gmail.com!
Terms and conditions, per usual:
Each WHATEVER DAY, I pick a lucky winner at random—paid subscribers get double the entires—and announce them in the column by whatever identifier I have for them. It’s usually their email. If you’re picked, you need to message me before the next column goes up to claim the prize. If they don’t reach out to me, I add something else (I call this Powerball, but it’s just like any lottery I guess) and someone else gets a shot at winning. If they do reach out, we start over. International winners pay shipping.
Thank you to the following paid subscribers: Casey, John Dale, Will, Alex, Connor, Joshua, Denis, Kyle, Ben, Patrick, Sam, Tyler, Ian, TOO MUCH DEW, Mike, Adrian, Daniel, and Lukas. Welcome to Mario, Alex, and Nic.
Heads up: I’ve had a few people ask about Tarkir. Yes, I’ll be doing some kind of preview. I’ll also be doing a big breakdown of the sealed format before the Spotlight Series. But also: we’re two weeks out from the prerelease. There’s some time.
I’d start talking about stuff we’ve seen already, but without context, it all feels a little wind-pissy for me. So hang tight.
Embrace the stillness.
Passing the turn,
Jake
Bonus Seymour of the Week
Seymour and Archie forever.
I’m so sorry for so much bug and egg talk, not cool at all
The archiving of old Magic articles should be a treated as a public good
I know most modern slot machines don’t have the lever anymore but, when they do, you better believe I give that thing a yank.
Totally unrelated but Sam talks about how when she’s president she’s going to make Seymour the VP and I’d be “First Dog” and I metaphorically howl about how, NO, I can’t be first dog, and it’s been a real fun house bit lately.
Watch live at twitch.tv/playmtg I think? It’s always great!
if you can buzz your way to the frog, the frog will buzz its way to you
I'm about desperate enough to try boredom as a creative strategy. Overstimulation via constant entertainment doesn't seem to be working.