My Experience at Pro Tour Strixhaven

I recently had the pleasure of playing my first Pro Tour in quite a while. Ever since the change to organized play, I have made minimal effort in playing Pro Tours. Instead, I have focused my energy in Magic on my writing, streaming, and an overall more casual approach.

They always rope you back in somehow, though. I qualified directly through Arena, and while the chances to play PTs will likely be few and far between, it's enough for me if that's my sole source of invites.

I tested with TCGPlayer, the team I've always played with, for this event. While I couldn't mention a team that didn't approach me in some way, Matt Nass and Sam Pardee are two players I've tested with for as long as I was a mainstay on the PT, and my loyalty lies with them completely. It still feels good to be asked. That never changes.

Testing for this event was tumultuous. We had a tight turnaround with about seven or eight days from set release to deck submission. A lot needed to be done in that window. Standard is large, meaning a new set will usually have less impact, but it's still evolving, which has become a hang-up for many teams.

Izzet Prowess was our deck to beat. It ended up being 30% of the field, which we more or less predicted, especially as our frontrunners during testing tended to be variants of the deck.

We all knew that Izzet Prowess was the best deck regarding how much it punished specific brews. Cards like Resonating Lute, Professor Dellian Fel, and even Together as One seemed like promising new cards to play with, but alas, they all folded to a deck with a few copies of Spell Pierce.

Even though Izzet Prowess punished all of our brews and warped the format entirely, we recognized that Prowess beating Landfall in the past didn't hold up in testing. Partway through the process, we added some Sunderflocks to our sideboard. We felt we had flipped the Landfall matchup from close to solidly favorable, which held up in the tournament, at least against the Mono Green version.

The version that the team of the eventual champion, Nathan Steuer, brought to the event was tough for us. We tested a white splash with Erode, but it didn't get past phase one. That was almost certainly a hole in our testing. We had two players planning to play Landfall, but they mostly played the villain for us rather than having us improve the deck, since most believed that Prowess would be favored. David Rood was one of these players. Twenty-four hours before submission, he was 99% sure he was playing Landfall, then two hours later, he was sleeving up and tracking down his Prowess cards because of the Sunderflock package. He, like the rest of us, felt that it flipped the matchup in a meaningful way.

Here's the list I ultimately registered:

I was nervous registering this deck, as I didn't feel entirely confident with it, especially after getting slapped around by Edgar Magalhaes in mirrors the night before submission.

However, I felt the most comfortable in the event in mirrors, though I lost more than I won, with every game going to the person on the play. The games were often long and close, generally coming down to that last bit of tempo.

One thing that made us fairly excited to play this deck version was that most people online were moving to Colorstorm Stallion. In our testing, the Stallion was not only a serious liability against Landfall, but it seemed to make the deck clunky in mirrors. Simply plotting a Slickshot before a Stallion hit the table made the Stallion much less castable without a big punishment waiting in the wings.

I've been asked a few times why I didn't play the deck Matt Nass and Noah Mah played. While Matt didn't win, I believe his was the best deck in the room. Matt's brain chose a poor time to stop working, something I'm very sympathetic to, as I had similar things happen at the event. His deck was a massive favorite against the Landfall deck, which Nathan even agreed with at a post-event lunch. In fact, if I were looking to RCs in the next two weeks, I'd heavily test Matt's deck and look back to Izzet Prowess with Elusive Otters and no crabs, with the goal of trying to attack what is sure to be a Selesnya takeover.

I didn't play the deck because we barely played any games with it and weren't confident it was good against Prowess. To be clear, I still am unsure it's actually good against a practiced and knowledgeable Prowess pilot. However, seeing Matt's deck for the first time, I told him with confidence that he would be a solid favorite against Prowess in the event and that he may lose some Top 8 equity with his deck choice if Prowess players can formulate plans and workarounds in the matchup.

Ultimately, there were no Top 8 Prowess decks, so Matt's lane looked very good for a repeat PT win. However, as said before, his brain stopped functioning during a key spot, and he threw away a game or two against arguably the best player in the world right now, Nathan Steuer. Players like that will punish your mistakes.

I finished 9-7, which is a finish I'm happy with. I lost my last three rounds in Constructed and felt guilty playing them with intrusive thoughts of scooping and even having conversations with my opponents, none who I knew and all very pleasant opponents. I have no interest in going to Europe for Modern and coming home with Covid, as being laid out an extra few days made that even clearer.

I had an absolute blast at the event. There was only one damper, which was a self-inflicted issue against a teammate. I played Edgar Magalhaes in the second draft finals. I was 5-0 in Limited and had a strong Silverquill aggro deck. I had played a Concilator's Duelist on a cluttered board and drew an Adventurous Eater. Casting the Adventurous Eater, I realized I had a loop with the two cards. However, I only had the Duelist in play once before in the match prior and only killed Snarl Song tokens with it, so the only initial shortcuts I had in my head were from when I read the card in Early Access.

Long story short, I tried to instantly flicker Adventurous Eater when I untapped with it several times. On the last use of black mana spent, I remembered an Arena opponent killing me by removing a blocker. While my plan was to kill his token with it (thankfully, I didn't because then neither of us may have noticed), I chose to remove a 3/3 blocker instead, which immediately clicked with him. He picked up my card, read it, and said we needed to call a judge. He was right, of course.

While not much damage was done, and we were able to rewind to the beginning of the turn, it looked awful. The judges reasonably questioned me as to why I'd have processed it that way. It was simply a case of me creating mental shortcuts and relying only on Arena experiences, which created an awkward situation I still think about and feel guilty about days later. I was a massive favorite at that point in the game, but if I had been allowed to make that play, then it would have been worse than the available legal play of just keeping my Eater in combat. Not only was the play weird and looked bad, but it also would have been wrong. I ended up losing a tough-to-lose game, which relieves some of the guilt, but I still don't like that the situation happened at all.

Overall, I was happy with how I drafted. While my seats were relatively easy to draft, I navigated them well and ended up with likely the best deck at my table both times. My opponents' decks in the finals were very good, but mine were excellent.

The number one thing I wanted out of this was spending time with my friends and seeing everyone again. I got that. My number two was drafting in the big leagues and proving to myself I still have it, and I definitely did that, too.

Moving forward, I plan to help my teammates with Limited, as some of them are younger and not as confident. Being part of the process is my favorite part. The tournament is just where we get to display the work we put in, but the part I enjoy the most is figuring out the puzzle, not necessarily putting it together at the end.

There are still a lot of Strixhaven Limited events on the horizon, so I'll share some more specific thoughts on the format next time. For now, I'm going to rest up, kick this illness, and get back into fighting shape. Congrats to everyone who met their goals at the event. There were so many people who were happy to win their final matches, and those smiles and that passion are just awesome. I was glad to see it in person again. Hopefully, I'll be back when I want to be and can experience it again, but I won't pressure myself to play a bunch of PTs in a row like in the past. There are so many important things in life, and while I absolutely love Magic, there are several ways to engage with it, which is enough for me.