Pyromancer Update and MTGO=LifeTilt

So this past weekend I played in a WPN 1-invite Nat Qualifier at one of our local shops.
The event was very interesting to say the least.

Pros- Held at a sports bar to prepare for the (unneccessary) overflow.
Lunch was included at the sports bar in entry fee.
@dzimet was judge

Cons- Held at the store I dont normally play at, so had to pay cash ($25)
Only 36 (about) people signed up, which i believe is what made prize support so awful.

I played Pyromancer Ascension, as voted by you loyal blog readers, and I registered this:

4 Pyromancer Ascension

4 Preordain
4 See Beyond
4 Arc Trail
1 Call to Mind

2 Jace Beleren

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Burst Lightning
4 Spell Pierce
4 Into the Roil
2 Jace's Ingenuity

4 Halimar Depths
4 Scalding Tarn
8 Island
7 Mountains

Sideboard:
3 Conundrum Sphinx
3 Precursor Golem
3 Echo Mage
4 Spreading Seas
2 Spell Pierce

You can find @dtlerch's article about this here and my original write up on the deck.

R1 I played U/B infect, after a quick curb-stomping game 1, i boarded in all my creatures, as the opponent moaned about all the "dead cards" in his hand when he lost. Obviously this means I board in 9 creatures. He can't answer my turn 4 sphinx into turn 5 precursor golem, and that's that.

R2 I played a B/G Infect deck. He mulls to 6 and keeps, and says forest go. I go about my normal cantripping plan, as he land goes, eventually he missis some land drops and ends up discarding interesting cards like plague stinger, and vatmother. Hmmm. He finally gets double black mana and casts a Phyrexian Crusader, which I bounced some number of times before I comboed off and killed him. G2 I boarded in the creature plan, my opponent gets a turn 3 memoricide off a bird of paradise, and time walks himself when i have no pyromancers in my deck. I kill his bird, and he never plays another land.  I later on find out that this guys deck was bonkers, and I was his only loss in the swiss. *shrug* Mise?

R3 I played U/B control against a guy from our LGS. I lose a long grinding G1 that found me needing 1 burnspell off a draw 6 (copied ingenuity) I didn't find it, and lost G1 (this is the only g1 loss on the day). I bring in the creature plan, dodge another memoricide, and win via sphinx (which courtesy of 2x Halimar depths, drew me 3 cards). Game 3 we both mulligan to 6. I brought a mixture of creature plan with pyromancer, he was able to find a grave titan, and i wasn't able to answer it.

R4 I played Big Red, was a pretty straight forward curb stomp. I out raced his artifact ramp, and bounced his wurmcoils once he landed one. Also this opponent was telegraphing his Koth pretty clearly, which helped me win this one.

R5 I played against valakut. It was a kid from our LGS who is one of the best 12 year olds i've ever played. He usually plays pretty tight, but not quite perfect. i had the god draw g1. punted g2 and won game3. These games were all pretty straight forward, and were over by turn 6 or 7. .

R6 Intentional Draw to top8

Top8 R1, Paired with same U/B Control deck I lost to in the swiss. I won G1, and we both joked about how the sideboarding would go. Game 2 i mulliganed inot a pretty weak hand, but up a game i decided to keep, and gamble with it. Didn't pay off. Game 3 was a very tight game. There was one spot where I could have played differently, but not to sure how it would have panned out. It involved me kicking a into the roil to draw a card i knew was there from halimar depths, then using that burst drawn to kill another creature. Instead i went for the (potential) win, i gripped the burst, so i could untap, level my echo mage, burst and copy to win. He had the counterspell. (he boarded in flashfreezes, he actually ran no counters main)

So, my only losses were to the same deck twice... ruh roh. To be fair, he was running both duress and Inquizition of kozilek mainboard, which is really difficult for this deck to deal with. i was really happy with my play, there was only 2 major misplays I made, one cost me a game, the other didn't. My friend, as an observer, said he would have shuffled different cards away on a see beyond a couple times, but i still don't agree with him.

So, losing in the first round of top 8 was worth 4 (faction) booster packs. *sigh* I think this TO really could have done better here. I think they spent too much of their budget renting this area in the sports bar to provide too much prize support, and the free lunch for everyone probably cut into that too. The fact that only 36 people were there, means they could have just held it at their game tables at the store, and boosted the prize support a little. i would have gladly bought my own lunch. I really want to qualify for nats, and I know this deck has what it takes, but not sure I'm willing to drive up to LA to try again this weekend. There's a Standard PTQ in san diego just after NPH comes out, so i may wait till i get some more tools to really give this deck another shot. depends on how bored i get this weekend.

Onto the Rant. I hate MTGO. Yeah, that's Bold, Italic ANNNND underlined... I really hate it.
Before I start on this rant, I must say. I am not a slow player. I verrrrrrry rarely go to draws in paper magic, and when I do I take fault for not calling a judge on my opponent. I think the appropriate amount of time, and then I act quickly. Part of my play style is to keep the mental pressure on the opponent, by having my plays ready to go as soon as possible. Part of what makes this easy, is I can communicate verbally with my opponent while I execute the motions of what I'm doing. I really don't think that anyone who knows me would ever consider me to be, in any way, a slow player. And for the record, I also don't double queue on MTGO.

"So what's the problem with MTGO, Chad?"

Great question, hypothetical reader! Well, I dont know. But I really hate the 25 minute round timer, and on top of that, I hate the way the round timer operates in general. I've lost 3 consecutive drafts now to time outs, the only 3 i've played since the round timer has changed to 25 minutes.

Last night was the straw that broke the gamer's morale.

I drafted an INSANE U/W aggro deck in an 8-4 MSS draft. I smashed my R1 opponent in quick fashion, that involved all kinds of fliers smashing his face. Note: This was a 3 game match, and we were the first ones finished. It's not like I have a time issue in every match.
In R2, I mulligan to 5 G1, and keep 3 land, a Kemba and a Sunspear Shikari. I beat a few times, but never find an equipment, and get ground down to about 9 life once he finds some guys bigger than mine. I find a kemba's skyguard, and a mimic vat, and am using my vat to endlessly hold off his Hellkite Ignite (and gain 2 each time). He plays some other threats, but i'm able to neutralize all of them. All the while, just trying to dig for one of my 3 equipments to stick on my kemba, so i can actually attack and win this game. He kills the first equipment i find with a shatter, and ultimately I deck my opponent out while i'm at some absurd amount of life. This game went forever. Each turn he was clearly F6'ing and attackign with his dragon, and I would have to activate my vat, and f2 through the lifegain trigger, declare a blocker.  Keep in mind, I can't auto-yield the gain 2 life trigger, because each token the mimic vat makes is a "different" kemba skyguard and it doesn't recognize it as the same trigger. he was using about 5-10 seconds less than me each turn. The game ended with my 5 min on the clock to his 6, with me up a game. But basically, this is an unwinnable situation.
<aside>
 I recently listened to a Limited Resources Podcast on MTGcast.com where Ryan addressed some issues about timing out and said something like: "You should never be in a situtation where you might run out of time. Just make sure you always have more time than them." How exactly am I supposed to just make sure to have more time than them? Obviously, they aren't going to make that easy for me to do. That's assuming my reaction time and hand-eye coordination is equivalent to my opponents, and that we both are taking actions that should take the same amount of time during our priorities. For example, when I have to firebreathe a steel hellkite 6 times to win, that takes a significant amount of time off my clock. In paper magic, i just tap all my lands and say, "pump for 6". I can understand the strict time limits for Constructed, because you should know all the interactions of your deck, its easy to set up yields for your triggers, because you know them all, and most opponents decks are also known quantities. That being said, it is not unusual for a draft game in this format to go extremely long, where both players use up much of their clock. In such matches, the winner is in no way tied to who won G1, but who can more efficiently use their clock. This is extremely frustrating.
</aside>
 We go to game 2, i know i'm behind on clock, mulligan to a really good 6, that has 3 land, shikari, kemba and shield. I plop a kemba turn 3 (after F6ing aggressively up to this point), turn 4 shield her up, and attack (18) T5 make a token, cast shikari, and a strider harness, attack (16). Now my opponent casts a dragon, but im pretty sure i can just race it, i'm now under 3 minutes on my clock. I make a token, equip shikari, attack with sshikari and tokens, he blocks shikari (12) and move the harness back to kemba. I take 5 next turn from dragon. He also plays a wall. I make 2 tokens, swing in and connect for 4 (8) He plays another blocker, I make 2 tokens I alpha again, get him to 2. I obviously run out of time before my next attack.
He had no business winning this match. Period. i never punted, and I didn't play slow. I use my shortcut keys whenever possible, and i used auto-yields, for my mimic vat, kemba and glint hawk idol. People keep make suggestions to me, but these are all things I consider and they don't seem to make a difference.
Is MTGO seriously cutting me out of this game because my reaciton time is too slow? Because I like to build draft decks that have lots of interesting interactions? I love drafting, and I love that MTGo gives me an opportuity to do so at any hour of the night. I like drafting 8-4 so i can play with other people who take drafting seriously. But when I lose to a clock, in a match i would NEVER have lost in paper magic, I seriously want to die. Such a waste of money, and time. I know this is a ME problem, not an MTGO problem. The treatment is fair, in the sense, that it applies equally to both players. But, especially in draft, some decks are simply going to have more activated abilities, that need to be used to win the game. These necessitate mroe time off the clock for tapping mana, and activating abilities, and saying yes or no to may triggers. I'd probably say, in this case, that i was actually playing faster than my opponent, i just simply had more things i had to do (because my deck was simply way better).

I'm left not knowing what to do. I really want to be able to draft on MTGO, its great practice, its loads of fun, and I love drafting. But, do I just give up? Do I just say, welp, i guess my ring finger on my left hand isn't fast enough to F2 at the optimal interval to even be able to compete? While i understand the need to limit the time people take, this shortening of rounds to 25minutes seriously is affecting my desire to play MTGO. I understand they want to limit people who double queue, but this fix isn't working for me. that extra 5 minutes is really relevant to me, and MTGO is pretty likely to lose a customer in me.

I'm really open to ideas to how to speed up my play. Things I am already aware of are: Use F2 for "OK" Use F4 to pass till EOT unless opponent takes an action and F6 to pass turn except to declare attackers/blockers. I use these as aggressively as possible, sometimes to detriment by using the wrong button at the wrong time. This is a hand eye coordination issue, where my left hand just simply isn't as sharp as it needs to be. I also use auto-yields by right clicking on a activated/triggered ability on the stack, if its something i'll never need to respond to.

Today, its tilting me more than i'm used to. It's beyond frustrating, and i dont know what to do other than rant about it on my blog. So.... here ya go.