My pro tour Philly tournament report

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Hello, this Tournament Report for the return of the paper pro tour is mostly meant for viewers of my stream that will ask me how I did, and what happened. I will try to provide some background about myself, my testing process, and whatever else seems relevant. Also this is for ME so that when I decide I miss this I can go back read this and hopefully get that out of my system.

My first pro tour was Dallas in 1996
My first pro tour top 8 was Chicago in 1997
My first and only pro tour win was london 1999
and my last pro tour played until now was venice 2003, I traveled too and registered for columbus, in 2005 but overslept it, and will not count that one.

This will be my first ever article/tournament report whatever you want to call it. I do not feel I am a very good writer...my thoughts will likely be a bit all over the place here, and I am not going to worry about my grammer either.

I never really quit playing magic....i might go years without playing any constructed or maybe miss a few months of the latest limited set but even then I was usually still drafting something on mtgo. The last break I took was during ixilan block which i hated. I came back in dominaria and really started playing more limited than ever before. Doing mostly mtgo leagues I was doing maybe 300+ drafts a set. I started streaming not too long after this and I love doing that. I have made mythic #1 numerous times on arena...also number 1 and 2 at the same time on different accounts a couple of times. I got my mtgo elo to 2109 during MH2 which to my knowledge is the highest anyone has ever gotten. In the past 5 years I hover in the low to mid 1900s usually with countless spikes to 2000.

I have basically always been successful when it comes to magic. I was able to qualify 3 times for the arena set championships, which took place while paper was on hold. I was fairly comfortable with these since for the past 18 years or whatever I had been playing online magic regularly. Even still the boomer in me never used discord or a mtgmelee. I was not super comfortable in my first set champs as I was not used to getting my pairings checking in, loading OPs decklist reporting results etc. I was very worried about procedural things like this and making sure I get them correct. Turns out I was overly worried, these things were fairly easy to pickup, and unlike 20 years ago if i did something wrong I wasnt just going to get tossed from the tournament.

By the time my 3rd qualification came around for the SNC set champs I was quite comfortable with the way it all worked and able to just focus on the task at hand. Winning matches. I finished 10-5 which qualified me for the next tournament and that would be the paper pro tour event! I lucked out and did well at the right set champs. Both of my others did not go well, 0-4 and 3-4 where I won 0 die rolls and lost my last round where I had a chance to make day 2.

So thats the background info...Now I find myself qualified for this paper tournament. I will cite many things about the event, the format, who knows what else. These things I will feel were not advantageous to ME as a player. I do not feel there is anything wrong with the rules, and I think they are fair...but for ME, I feel i get less out of it than my opponents do. If i mention something that I think could be changed for the better I will mention that, otherwise just assume it is a doesnt suit ham issue. I am old, I am out of shape, and my mind does not work like it used to.

I am going to chose to be a bit vague when it comes to my constructed prep for this event. My testing process did not go as I thought it would, but I still got to play a ton of pioneer and I had a deck I was ok with a SB plan/guide that I came up with and I do not really blame my results on this testing process. I was lead to believe I would be a part of a bigger team, I then learned this would not be the case, I was still told to basically focus on the limited and let the team get the constructed portion down. For this reason I tried to play as much Pioneer as I could in the weeks leading up to the set releasing on mtgo. Most ideas I had I would be told, dont waste time on that. Luckily for me Mack Smith got added into our discord group. Once it became apparent that me and mack were the ones who cared and wanted to play all day thats exactly what we did. We each did over 30 drafts, I watched at least 1/2 of his live and he did the same for mine. I do not think I solved the format, but I felt like Mack new exactly how I drafted. I was able to convey this info to him, he put in the time, he got it! I felt I had done my job the best I could as far as limited went.

First kyle issue...the format...pioneer has sooo many viable decks. It was really hard to try them all or even just the ones I felt might suit me. This likely plays into some players strong suits, but for me it was too much. I tried to play a large variety of decks and no deck really stood out to me. I liked phoenix, but mack beat my brains in enough that I ruled it out. One day, the team would like monowhite, the next day seemingly with nothing happening it was rackdos, then ub, i never saw updated lists for anything just opinions changing on essentially nothing. Mack did not sway as much and I knew I had to kinda pick something and stick with it at this point which was like a week before the tournament. It became clear we would not have some broken deck...it also became clear to me that I was on my own with Mack to decide my rackdos deck. I had made and posted a rackdos list the day the cards came out on mtgo...it was a crude list a first try i dont even know if i listed 15 sb cards. Numerous times my teammates would reference that list..."im just gonna play that rackdos list" etc. Never once updating it, showing me any thought about it or anything. I KNEW the list sucked...im the one that literally tossed it together. The first list I saw was at 1130pm on the night of deck submission. Guess he couldnt put it off any longer than that. I could have switched and used some of his choices, but I thought they literally came out of thin air and no practice and I at least had a plan for my choices. The only thing I wish I did differently was realize I was not going to be handed a tuned list, and pick my deck earlier and just play it tons. Pioneer was not friendly for this as there were soooo many decks to chose from.

Limited format...I do not think there was much more we could do for this. In general the short amount of time between the set release and the PT is bad for me. I learn fairly slow and I am willing to play daily for weeks at a time, but here there is just less time to prepare. I played as many single elims as I could on mtgo and watched mack do the same. We would play leagues when these were not firing. My brain just works slower than it used to. There are still things that I miss that younger me probably would not. Ill try to divide these up into 2 main categories going forward. Mistakes I likely make even online a large % of the time, and stuff that I think only happens to me in paper. My main worry was with the draft itself and not being able to look back at your picks. Online I am constantly moving around my cards and drafting based on what i have. I actually feel like I did a good job with this. 2 mistakes in the draft I know i messed up...I had a lot of for mirrodin equipment...i took a mycosinth gardens thinking if i copied one i also got the token. That is not how it works, like thespian stage lotus vale you do not have to sac. That mistake also would happen online, and is just me being old/not knowing everything/forgetting. The other mistake was not drafting 1-2 off color skullbombs i ended up with a couple nekroskeetos and they would have been better than some stuff i played. I think I would have noticed this had my cards been face up, but overall felt I did fine in the draft with the memory aspect.

I thought my deck was pretty good. 1st pick urabrask forge, 2nd pick annoint with affliction, 3rd pick barbed batterfist, and then just saw only black cards for the rest of the pack. link to deck: https://gyazo.com/5ed3cced3b6fc0341f3f13e773131a13

I am feeling fine about my deck and pairings are posted. Show up for round.1 ..its vs a guy I remember from the PT 25 years ago. I always remembered him as a strong drafter. We exchange lists...I try to get the most out of this that I can but, my mind just is not equipped to look at a text list of 45 cards and figure out what he is playing and remember all of the stuff. One thing I was able to do on melee in the past was pull up an image of their deck. I was much better at remembering things from an image that like this. I still felt like I needed to try to get as much out of this as I could, but I am positive that my opponents were able to gain more info than I was from these exchanges. He was u/g he had the uux control magic, he had 2 of the 0/3 mana dork, 3 blue skullbombs vs my mirron equips, a thrun, cankerbloom and just general high card quality.

For this match and for the ones following I will just say what i think happened to the best of my abilities. I may recall some of the stuff a bit wrong... Game 1 i played very sloppy my head was in a fog...i feel like he drew quite poorly, flooded and I was able to win. Game 2 I felt good about the entire time I had a turn where I drew a cacaphony scamp and i had annihilating glare in hand with a dose'd creature...i also had several equips out and a bladegraft aspirant. My mind just kinda turned to mush...i punted this turn numerous ways...he had controlled my necroskito and gotten a copy...i could have sacced skamp to kill copy with barbed battlefist, but i was thinking id finish him off with the scamp + vulshock splitter...but i had forgotten 2/3 aspirant only lowers equips on itself. I started off my turn with the glare, and it was just the wrong way to approach this. It ended up being poorly enough played that i lost this game.

This seems like the most appropriate place for me to try to describe what seemed to be happening. I was not nervous. I just could not focus. I was worried about the time on the clock, checking to see if my bag was still under the table, remembering to put on every oil counter, and all sorts of other procedural things. I just could not focus on the game, and played awful. I also did my best to adjust my sleep before this tournament and I had gotten up at 7am with no alarm...had an energy drink, taken all of my medication, realistically I had done the best I could but my mind just still was not working how I needed it to work. Travel was relatively easy, I got taken to a train station boarded a train, had a nice 5 hr ride to philly, took a cab to my hotel, walked to the site to register, headed back to hotel, went over limited with my team and went right to bed, got good rest/sleep. Still after all of this my feet were mangled with blisters and my back hurt. pic of my foot its nasty... https://gyazo.com/a2b992ad8c38382f70acc4ae4714f4fe All weekend long I was in pain. Walking to my table in pain, sit down still in pain, try to not think about that, think of the 10 tokens I have to pull out of my deckbox to start the match...try to take in the decklist my opponent hands me. It just was not working out for me. Any sort of tournament skill that I had was essentially 0. I thought for limited I was well into the top half of the tournament in terms or preperation. That would be true if played online. But when played in this setting, i was likely near the bottom...I would be worried about all the wrong things and my mind just was not working right. Around round 2-3 I started to feel more alert, then after the lunch break for round 4 I started to feel physically tired.

I think if I had more paper play practice that maybe I would have been ok, but im really not sure. I know there was no way if i went to a testing house for a week that I would have held up physically. And me going to local game stores and stuff just is not how I want to spend my time. Essentially what I am saying is that I am not sure this is fixable to for me, or that even if it is fixable that I want to go through the effort to fix it. This literally felt like through no real fault of my own, that my brain just didnt work how I needed it to. To make a bad analogy lets say I was with a girl I liked, but said a bunch of stupid stuff, because I was nervous, the date ended we didnt see each other again...I could learn from that and not be so awkward the next time....instead it was like I was with the girl, we both had a wonderful evening, continued to see each other, but then when the time came...it just didnt work. I did not know why it didnt work....and I had no reason to think that If i did certain things differently the next time that the outcome would be any different.

game 3 of round 1 on the play my hand is insane...scamp halberd urabrasks forge necroskito 3 lands....first draw is land 4 and im thinking i have this locked up....my first 5 draws were 4 land...his draw was very good his turn 4 was a 2 drop and a 2 mana steal my halberd....had i had one more spell earlier I prob finish him off, but his draw was also great and he beat me. I learned this round when I tried to mycosynth my halberd that I do NOT get the 2/2...i had only lands in hand and I doubt it cost me this game...but I would have drafted and built the deck differently.


Round 2
game 1 i flooded badly his deck was green black didnt look great to me, later saw it posted on twitter and it looked a bit better layed out but still a very winnable match

g2 i sided in my cruel grimnarch i won easily...he may have been flooded screed mulliganned i have no memory other than i drew well and won easily

g3 on the draw i mulligan to the following...3 mtn swamp sheoldreds edict, forgehammer centaurian, testament bearer...ez bottom mtn....good hand on the draw lines up well vs his green stuff. I took 10 from a t4 mantis before i ever drew land 4 for my 4/1....i drew necroskito forge etc and just fell way too far behind...i finally stablized the board at 3 life but he sent in 3 guys instantly into my 2 big ones and i asked if he had titanic growth and he did and i was dead. This round I felt like i played ok and ran a bit bad.


round 3
I won 2-0 i made a mistake of forgetting hexgold hoverwings buffs all his equipped creatures +1+0 but he made several mistakes, I felt alert this round and somewhat more comfortable but boy would that change fast.



Round 4 comes and its pioneer time. I sit down I am tired, I am not able to focus well, and I just generally do not play well. I make a block with my harvester when I should leave it to kill a thalia that he then played...that punishes me i cant play fable on curve and he is playing the 3/3 that taxes my cards and it ends up just snowballing really bad for me...totally my fault and I think If im comfortable and playing anywhere else I do not make that block. Again my mind just was not working....I did not feel nervous, I really do not know how to explain it even now. This is the pro tour and this is how it should be...i made a mistake and it cost me!

Round 5 vs uw control...he hands over his list and this is one that really does matter. It would be helpful If i could remember it better than I could. I felt very disadvantaged here getting to look at a paper list at the start of a match vs online having a picture of his deck on my other monitor throughout the entire match....again thats a ME problem. Now he pulls out his deck from his deckbox in 2 stacks...does a few mashes and hands it over...0 % chance this thing is randomized but im 1-3 and im just kinda off it...its all foils, double sleeved or whatever. I cant shuffle this thing...I pick up the top half and shuffle that...dont touch the bottom and just plop the half i shuffled on top. I really do think pro magic should go back to using normal cards (not the ridiculous arts and foils) and single sleeves. If somehow I had been 3-1 I would have had to calla judge to shuffle or get more time to shuffle or something, but at 1-3 it just did not seem worth it. I mulligan an awful hand keep a 6 with a dreadbore as my only bad card...3 of my first 4 draws are my 3 power word kills....game goes on a while but im never really in it. Look at his list again for sb see that 4/7 thing whose name I cant remember right now, dont think much of it not thinking its for me...t5 he playes it elesh norn...just remembered the name. OK i cant kill that but i can keep adding to the board he prob doesnt have verdict if he has that....add 2 more to the board have 5-6 guys out and a flipped fable...he plays wandering emporer...i play on a little bit but the game is totally over here. This match felt like my first true nothing i could have really done loss. I just got beat and beaten badly.

round 6 i played vs mono black...won game 2 when he mulled to 4 other games were close and i likely mismanaged them. One of the games I know i punted when i didnt realize my castle would come into play tapped as it was my 5th land...i only played 2 castles and just was not used to them entering tapped this late in the game. I messed my turn up badly bc of it and it 100% cost me that game


I dropped but melee gave me another loss after this but im only claiming my 1-5.

Battered and bruised I took my train home to my family. Its hard to explain that even though I spent the last 3 weeks playing magic everyday that I was unprepared for this tournament. Whatever skills I may have had over opponents from my playtesting was more than made up for by my awkward and unfamiliarness in a tournament setting. Again im not sure if this even is fixable with more repititions, but if it is, i do not think its a lifestyle I desire. I had a blast at this PT and I felt at home and like I fit in. I enjoyed talking to everyone who I got the chance to talk with, and just hanging out in that atmosphere again.

When i got to the table and sat down...it just didnt click like it used to. And im afraid no matter what I do that it never will again. I am out of shape, 43 years old, and I felt it this weekend. I still plan to stream and draft tons of magic. I still want to help Mack prepare for the next PT when it comes to draft. I still feel like I have some value to give...I do not feel like I am able to compete in this environment myself though, it came as a surprise to me and for everyone who asks me how it went or what happened, I hope that I was able to answer that through writing this.

Thanks for reading!

Kyle Rose
TheHamTV

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