Monday (April 1) 6:00
Tuesday 7:54
Wednesday 13:08

I played in a tabletop Standard tournament of more than 3 rounds in well over a year. I played Zvi Gruul and went 3-1. Some would say that's pretty good and I should be happy.

They're wrong of course.

Now, I don't currently have The Fire™ but I have what might be called Sufficient Heat™. I'm always in it to win it, regardless of stakes. I'm not always super cutthroat, though. I reminded an opponent that a creature he was blocking had trample and let him rethink blocks (he was very close to dead regardless so he ended up blocking anyway, going to 3 instead of 1, so no biggie). The Fire™ is a wonderful thing to have, and it's not that hard to get.

Living in New York, I always felt like I had something of an inside track, whether from Mike Flores & Co. or just a bunch of solid players concentrated in one place. Zvi's deck is good, but it's two weeks old now, and it was probably published up to two weeks after it was invented. The deck it destroys, and was designed partially in response to, Mono-blue tempo, has fallen out of favor, and other decks that have risen in popularity weren't covered in his deck guide. The metagame moves so fast. You can always tweak some sideboard cards or something, but if something really breaks, I feel like I'll miss it.

Like, a bunch of years ago, I was playing in a Kamigawa Block Constructed PTQ. I had been playing an aggressive monoblack deck ("Black Hand"). It was an ok deck, but it felt Tier 2. It was pretty good against the most popular deck, mono white aggro ("White Hand"). Yet both decks had a hard time with the format's Gifts Ungiven engine deck (I don't remember exactly what the deck did; I believe Hana Kami was involved). Playing the night before the tournament, I ran into my friend Julian also playing Black Hand, but his build had Sink Into Takenuma. I thought this card was hideous. Turns out it trounced the Gifts deck like a rag doll. I copied Julian's deck and suddenly, my deck was good. I saw other black decks the next day,  but Julian and I were the only ones to make top 8 (I eventually lost in the semifinals to Mike Flores, playing the format's ultimate metagame deck, Critical Mass). Sink Into Takenuma wasn't Julian's tech, but being in that environment, whatever genius thought it up, it filtered into Neutral Ground, and I was there to acquire it.

Things don't feel like that anymore. The last piece of tech I felt like I had that few people thought of was Terrifying Presence in Innistrad Block Constructed Bant Aggro (Ethereal Armor). Exactly one US tournament had this as its format, a GP in Sacramento. It was fantastic in the mirror, as so many games just came down to haymaker turns, and that one fog turn could swing it. Turns out more than a few people playing the deck had it. I even lost a game to it once (I did make my first day 2, and almost finished in the money. One of my losses on day 2 was to the eventual champion). The format was so little-discussed, being a one weekend event, yet even this little tidbit was no secret.

Maybe there is no tech anymore. People have always complained about how too many matches come down to pairings, how it's just rock-paper-scissors. But of course that's not true. Why do top players keep winning big events? It feels more like skill than tech, though. In a way, that's better. In other ways, worse.