#FF Blog - Oh you know, Strikes and Gutters, ups and downs... Exarch's Life

I love the polarity of the Exarchs in NPH, such a interesting play on life. Every coin has two sides, and it doesn't mean one side is good, and one side is bad. Just each side is distinct and opposite. Lots of things about my life recently have been strikes and gutters all wrapped into one. It's like karma is both punishing me for my mistakes and my misfortune is coming around all at once. Kinda creepy, to be honest.
I haven't been shouting around too much on twitter lately, i've forced myself to a bit of a reality check to the amount of time I spend on there, and while I miss the constant interaction, its been a pretty good change. I still chime in from time to time, but I'm not digging in to afternoon-long debates, and thats likely healthier for everyone. *chad dodges* (#ff @cardboardwitch while i'm at it). I'm still poking my head in daily, and at least picking up on what's happening, and chiming in here and there. I think I honestly started following too many people. I love everyone, and there's no way i could cut the 250+ "playables" in this pool down to 40 (or even 23). It's surprisingly easy for me to connect with everyone, to a degree, because of the common thread we share. And the more people I meet, I almost felt an increasing pressure to be chiming in more and more. Moderation, Chad, Moderation... Anyway, most of you may not have even noticed the slight departure, because you're also following 250 people, and its all just part of the feed you see at any given time, at least thats the way it is for me. Not that *YOU* aren't special to me, because indeed you are...

As such, I dont have many crazy shenanigans to report from twitter, but I've got some stuff to discuss.
First is the Jace banning. I'm bummed. Big time. I had a running wager going with @mrfridays (you gotta #ff this guy, man he's a riot) and as you'll note we made this bet on Mar. 14th, the day Jace was at his peak price on blacklotusproject.com. He had fallen all the way to 69 the day before the banning, and of course our bet had a no-action clause on a banning. *sigh* I'm pretty confident my under would have hit here. Demz da breakz. To be honest about the bannings, i'm a little disappointed. I'm disappointed that Magic R&D caved. But the proof is in the pudding, if tournament attendance is really affected, I can see a business decision being necessary  I am also disappointed that both cards were banned. I think JTMS should still be around. While he was so powerful he'd be in every deck, that was only an issue due to his price, and WotC should not set a precedent that they will just ban a card if it is format defining AND expensive on the secondary market. Stoneforge is simply busted in this format without enough early answers for the threats it can spit out. That being said, there were plenty of strategies to beat Caw Blade (yeah yeah, but you sacrifice your %'s against the field). Even if you suck against the rest of the field, since Caw was getting bigger and bigger, your chance of winning and event with an anti-Caw deck should be improving. I have no doubts in Pyromancer's ability to run all over caw with 4-5 distinct builds. Could it beat an aggro deck? ehhh, not with one of those 4-5 builds, and that was the problem, but dream crushing cocky Caw Blade players is what makes me scratch that johnny itch. It just seemed like there really was enough room to play other decks in the format, to reasonable chances to win. Luckily for me, I lost my standard decks, and had basically resigned to holding out for rotation anyway, so I'm not terribly invested in it either way. What i do think is amusing, however, is how heated the debates are about it, and how people are offended when some people like a skill testing format, and some people insult others who like more variance and innovation. It really does show a ugly side of intolerance, from my view. Magic is about choices and preferences. That's the whole game. There's a guy at my store, who always plays his own cute mid-range decks. And the're fun. And he's fun to play against (most of the time). But he hates playing against planeswalkers and counterspells and land destruction. So if you play any of those, be prepared to hear about it. He just wants to plop his creatures down and run them into yours and see who wins. This is obvious when his decks revolve around creatures that don't lose combat fights, like Glissa, Thrun, or Bloodghast. People that can't appreciate what the variety of tastes that can exist in Magic bring to the game really bother me. A lot. Probably too much. I just want to say, "If this isn't fun, and you're obviously not here to just crush with netdecks, then what ARE you here for? You do know this is Magic, right?" He's nice to me while he complains, because I always mention that his decks seem fun to play, and they're fun to interact with, and he appreciates that, but he still would groan endlessly about my Mono-R Chandra-Ponza deck for, "messin with his mana" or my Pyromancer deck that doesn't interact enough to his liking. I'm just losing patience with people that aren't there to enjoy themselves, or willing to let others enjoy themselves.
That aside, the new format does bring out some new innovations, but i just think valakut will crush the format now. now THAT deck is one that is absolutely gut-wrenching to play against. Is there seriously anyway to beat a T4 titan? oh mana leak? sure, here's a double summoning trap into two more titans.... Obv he has it. I hate playing against that deck. I'm glad i dont have a standard deck completed at the moment. (see what i did there, i totally proved my earlier point by having something that i want to complain about, didn't catch it until my quick proofread, god i'm a terrible soul)

Other news. My collection is on some VERY serious progress. Thanks to 3 of my twitter friends. Firstly the LR crew @marshallLRcast, and now WotC employee @modogodot hooked me up with a TON of stuff. Marshall offered me some draft extras, and i sheepishly refused as long as I could, but ultimately I caved, and wow did these guys leave me speechless. They sent a stack of rares much larger than anything I expected, including many playable/tradable staples. As i scanned through the pile sorting it into binder pages, i dug into some Crusaders of both varieties and thought, Woah, this must have been a mistake. Then a Tezzeret?! A Pyromancer Ascension! Wow, these guys went all out, and this was an amazing boost to get me going again. There was also some promo foils in there too, like spellstutter sprites and such. It's so hard to thank people for generosity like this. My only forum that I typically communicate with this folk is through public tweets, and it's a personal gesture they made to me. while they deserve public praise for what they did, i dont want to minimialize the truly selfless thing they did, by blasting out a thank you on a very public forum. I battled with it a bit, and probably shouldn't have waited so long to at least show them due respect on my blog. These guys are the most supportive people that i've never met. While I'm here, I also want to thank @dzimet for not only helping me out with some trades, but also making some generous offers as well. I have to say, that i'm not "down and out broke" where i can't play anymore, and i'm certainly not asking for handouts. I'm still drafting as much as possible, trading and at least thinking about standard, even if not playing yet. but these guys really went above and beyond, outside of the financial impact, and made a gesture that I doubt I could ever repay to them. If i would, I could. So quickly.

On the other side of this coin, i have to also thank @mtgonline aka Worth Wollpert. A lot of you follow him, but many of you may not know that he was one of the greatest players that ever played the game. I followed him on twitter, and we've engaged a couple times, but to be honest, I was never 100% sure it was always him tweeting. Maybe he had an assistant who handles a portion of his social media stuff or something. I was honored when I got a follow from him, to a degree I can't even explain. This guy would have easily been a Hall of Famer if not choosing to sacrifice his tournament play to work for Wizards, he now heads Magic Digital. I've been real hesitant to talk about this on twitter at all, because I didn't know how people woudld react. As I told the story around my LGS (more on this to come) people were surprisingly supportive. I expected a lot of jealous responses, but i've decided that you can choose to be happy for me, or not, but Worth deserves the recognition for impacting both myself, and my community so positively. Worth, being in charge of MTGO, has access to MTGO redemption sets, and set me a complete set of the entire Scars Block, as well as M11 and also a M11 Foil set. WOW. Yes, thats 5 complete redemption set boxes. When i saw the box from wizards, and picked it up, it was heavy. Instant Woah. Once I cracked it and saw what was in front of me, I was in disbelief. Also enclosed with the cards was a letter from Worth, written to me. To be honest, this is what really made the gift so special to me. It was on WotC letterhead, and he offered his sympathy for my lost collection, and some caveats for the gift. Essentialy, he wants me to share the cards with other people who's stuff was stolen, and if my original collection is recovered to sell the cards for charity, or regift them. Both obviously understandable caveats, and it just really hit me that one of my most admired Pros not only follows me on Twitter, but pays enough attention and cares enough to reach out like this is really amazing. The next day i was at my LGS, and a friend of mine tells me his sword of war and peace was stolen form his binder the day before, and it gave me an excuse to crack open a redemption set and replace it for him. I"ve been able to replace a few other pieces for people form these boxes, and it's also been an amazing jumpstart to building up my staples for next standard season. Both gifts, from the LR guys and from Worth were amazing to me, but for different reasons. The LR guys sent me stuff from their personal collection, and we're not just talking bulk rares, this is stuff they could easily be trading, selling, or even using. An extremely generous offer, to say the least. Worth is generous to give a ranting PTQ hopeful like myself the time of day, and to extend a gift to one of his fans is the most unexpected thing. To all of you, if you're reading this (i know you are Marsh), thank you very much. Thank you Marshall. Thank you Ryan. Thank you Worth. I seriously don't deserve such generosity, so i hope the Karma comes back around to you sooner rather than later. (I was kinda hoping you'd catch some in Vegas Marsh, but hopefully the mtgocc was enough)

/gush

QS/Writing stuff: There isn't much to say about this other than, A) I"m writing weekly now, which is a challenge to me(and the blog), and B) The QS team is pushing out some amazing insider content at the moment, and i'm pretty excited to be a part of it. I know financial material isn't something everyone gets into, but if it is, you probably already know because you're signed up. If you're not, you should try to get on the mailing list, they send out free snippets and stuff. I was featured on the first one, which was pretty cool to feel appreciated enough by at least doug linn (co-founder/owner and legacy guru) to be selected for inclusion. I know my writing style needs some work, but I've been pretty happy with the content I've been working on, so thats something.

I'm anxious to see what happens with Limited resources without Ryan. I have no doubts Marshal will be fine running the show without him, i just hope he's able to dig into some deep limited stuff soon, because i've been really struggling lately. I'm working stuff over with guys at the LGS, picking brains for pick preferences, talking about archetypes and more, but every time a deck seems amazing to me, I'm out in the first or second round. And the few times i've actually stolen a pod, i've felt my deck was terrible. THere's certainly some times that my gameplay has been an issue, and i just need to focus a bit more, but there's been others where i'm not abandoning my first pick easily enough, or likely misbuilding my pool. Ugggh. With no constructed action at the moment I really need to pick up my game.

I've had some struggles in the non-MTG parts of my life, some of them have been going on for a while, some are recent, some have been resolved, but it hasn't been easy going for quite some time. I've loved MTG because it lets me get away from everything else, to focus my energy on something thats not destructive, and something that i enjoy. Losing my collection has impacted that a bit for me. And i've replaced the constructed play with Trading. I"ve been doing lots of it, trading for legacy pieces, and just trading to trade. It's become a cathartic exercise for me, and it almost calms me now to flip through other peoples binders. It's funny because i used to trade out of necessity, and now I do it to keep myself involved in constructed formats from a different angle. I found that I made great success with my magic game when i set the goal to perform well at the Star City Games open i blogged about a few months back. While my finish wasn't terrible for my first constructed tournament of over 100 people, it also wasn't what  I had hoped. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that my game is in a much different place as a result, though. And setting a new goal I'm hoping will do the same. My next goal is to make Day 2 of GP san diego in November. This is a ways away, but it's currently scheduled as an Extended tournament, a format i've never played, nor had much exposure to, and i'm working with a collection that i will need to trade into a competitive deck by then. I'm not sure what hte format will look like then, if they will change the format of the event to Modern, or what the new sets will bring etc, but I know I have the skill level to do it, I need to be diligent in preparation and patient in execution. Diligent. Patient. Not my two best qualities, that's why I think this is a good exercise for me.

I've also been slowly picking Chess back up, and anyone who wants to battle with me can find me on Chess.com with the username: ChadHavas. @Bgardnerdurbin and I just started a game there, and it looks like he's chosen the Sicilian Open, should be fun. For those that don't know, its correspondence style chess, meaning you have up to 3 days to make your move. There's apps for both Android and Iphone where you can play on the go as well. They also have a premium service, but i haven't explored that option too closely yet.

A lot of things in my life are at a point of stagnation, while others are in flux. I know i can be doing a lot more to be happy and successful, but I'm having trouble focusing on a specific goal. Do I want to beocme a college professor? Yes. Do I want to go back to school? No. These are conflicting pressures that cause serious problems when I want to focus on making it happen. Do I want to qualify for the Pro Tour? Yes. Do I have the resources to commit the Time and money into testing and travelling that it takes to do that? No. Am I comparing these two things on levels of importance? No, but the same issues apply. I've been a "Jack of all Trades" since college, running several self made business/opportunities to use my own skillset to generate income for about 6 years, but I've never been willing to focus on one of them to push it to the next level. Something has to give, and I'm still gunshy to commit. Some close to me say I'm afraid of failing. I don't know that its true. I've failed tons in my life, and i've always gone back to doing things my way until I can make it work. I think I'm just stubborn. I dont like taking directions from anyone, and I've made choices through out my professional career that reflects that. While I feel I have a strong skill set that would be desirable to many employers, i dont want to just "give" that away for a salaried position, where my skill set then belongs to them.  This is totally irrational, because i'm not maximizing my skill set on my own, so clearly a mutually beneficial arrangement must exist somewhere, I just haven't been willing to do that. Time will tell.

Sorry for the only partially related-MTG paragraph there, I know, no one wants to hear about that crap, but sometimes one has to vent, and well, this is a blog, so yeah, that just happened.

I'll close with some #ff's that didn't otherwise get mentioned above. @ahalavais- Arthur worked up some sweet mock-ups for me of the new planeswalkers, and also shared a bit of his own set design he's working on. Some REALLY cool stuff. Marshall whom i've alreayd mentioned a couple times, has a blog where he posts his art-alters, that i've been digging on. Also, @wmap seems to have resurfaced to being more vocal lately, and its been cool to hear her talk about changes to her cube. @baconhax has been back recently, and while he's slightly less involved in MTG as he once was, it seems is interest is coming back, and i'm glad to see him around more. @dzimet puts up with me at the LGS like few others would. And @smi77y, @setzerg, @itomarhernandez @rwildernessr @steve032 and @alawley are some of my favorites to chat about cards/decks with. I haven't been caught up on too much reading lately, because i haven't been playing much standard, but always keeping my eyes peeeled for @samstod goodness.

Happy Friday to everyone.

#FF Blog - Yes, this blog still exists...

What's better than a 3-day weekend? A 4-day week. Friday has arrived. Some quick catchup... Since I blogged last, I cranked through finals, played in Pre-release/release events, a PTQ and a handful of other local drafts. I finished 5-1 at my first pre-release, with a mostly Mono-B pool, running Obliterator and Sheoldred, along with a suite of black removal, splashing red for a couple artifact removal spells and a burn spell. Somehow the breakers put me into 5th place, which was a significant drop-off in prize support, from 4th. The following day,  I went 4-1, to finish 3rd, but getting the opportunity to play against Brian Kibler. I played fairly poorly against him, but managed to pull it together game 3. The following Thurs we had midnight drafts at the LGS, I broke even on the first draft, and my buddy and I crushed a 2HG. He had a U/B control, and I had a rage extractor deck. Rage extractor is sleeper nutty in a 8 pack NPH sealed. If you happen to have 16 packs of NPH and you want to school some people, do it. The release events I couldn't play in, but I played in a Legacy tournament and embarassed myself with ANT to a 1-2 drop finish. Played the deck with out ever seeing it before, and i was in way over my head. The PTQ was a nightmare also a 1-2 drop. Both of my losses were of the nastiest beats ever, but I'll spare the 2-week old bad-beat story(ies) for now. I did manage to crush 2 side drafts after dropping, and with those prize packs, battled some winston drafting to convert those packs into $$. All said and done, the day was a wash.

So that's the fast forward catchup. This past weekend I went to a buddy's place up in LA, and my backpack of cards was stolen from my car. Most of you have heard my moaning about it, I'll spare it again here. But, yeah, it sucks. I caught up on last weeks Limited Resources podcast (they are at MTGcast.com) and I chuckled. Ryan (@modogodot) has just gotten hired at WotC in what he considers to be his dream job. On the cast, he talks about how difficult it is to explain to non-gamers how big of a deal this job is to him. In this same vein, I've had trouble communicating to my non-gamer friends how difficult it is to have your collection stolen. Obviously, it was a decently expensive collection, but on top of that, it's my continuous 'trophy' of my last two years drafting. Not to mention my custom playmat a guy at our LGS made for me, along with my PTQ top 8 pin, and my beloved Pyromancer Ascension deck are all gone... forever. It's so hard to describe the gravity of this loss to a non-gamer. My gamer friends think I'm taking it extremely well, I'm still anxious to be drafting, and I'm still excited about Magic. My non-gamer friends think i'm over-reacting. Perhaps both groups are right. I wrote a bit about how I'm going to approach rebuilding my collection over at @quietspec today, and this weeks article is outside the paywall, so feel free to read a little more about what losing my collection means to me over there. That being said, the outpouring of sympathy, well-wishes, and generous offers is really heart-warming. Thanks.


On to the Follow Friday already! Jeez, okay guys, don't all yell at me at once!

Had a brief back-and-forth with @mrfridays this week about comapring Volt Charge to Fallen Ferromancer. We both felt it was not close at all, but we disagreed (big surprise). I like volt charge here, because it will always do what you want it to do, while ferromancer is really swingy and fragile. #ff to @mrfridays because he's not only extremely entertaining, but very opinionated as well.

Huge #ff to @modogodot and @marshallLRcast who prepped me well for my pre-release and release events. I love their new set material, because they dig so deep on each card, that even when I don't agree with a particular valuation, the facts they bring up are very complete, and give me the tools I need to make my own judgements. Congratulations to both Ryan and Marshall, Ryan on the WotC gig, and Marshall who was selected to the Community Cup team. Nice work, fellas.

#ff to @semisober who is still pushing great draft material on his blog, www.tommartell.com, he also got a 17th place finish at the GP due to some awful tie-breaker shenanigans.

#ff to @smi77y just for being smitty, also to @williegmyprez who both really have their ear to the Standard Meta, and have fresh ideas constantly. Same goes for @cavemankellen who also writes on quietspec, as well as the other spike guys @dtlerch @bgardnerdurbin and @joshjmtg

I try to avoid directly promoting quietspeculation.com 's subscription service here on my blog. But @chosler88 and @fatecreatr have put together the Prediction Tracker for Insider subscribers, and it's really impressive. It collects information from all of the finance writers (including YT) into a very well organized and detailed spreadsheet. It's any serious traders guide to being "next level" on trading.

#ff to @samstod, one of my favorite writers, and @wrongwaygoback who has (somewhat) recently joined quietspeculation.com writing about commander, is my other favorite writer.
Before this blog existed, I applied to the SCG talent search, and while continuing on there wasn't in the stars for me, @wrongwaygoback gave me, a simple fan of his blog, his time and effort to review my submission for me. He also really gave me a wake-up call about writing style. This guy has good digs. Check out his blog, you can find it through his twitter tag.

Also, #ff to @rtassicker, @necr0mancer, @ahalavais @hobbesq @dzimet @metaknightmare and @thewachman because they are all awesome! (yeah yeah, i'm getting lazy, sorry to sell you guys short... another day another blog...)

have a great weekend everyone!