Prerelease Time! Fatigue and (Me)

This really isn't the article I planned on writing tonight, so try to bear with me.  Today's topic is fatigue in Magic, especially when it comes to testing.  It's easy to grind for constant hours playing as much Magic as possible, but all of the work drains your energy, and as time goes on the ability to learn, enjoy yourself, and play good Magic diminishes sharply.  If I had to poke the biggest hole in my Magic game, it'd be with how large of a percentage I'm playing Magic under the effects of fatigue.  Tonight as I struggled through a deck build and then two additional rounds of Sealed, it dawned on me that I have to accept when I'm too tired to play Magic.

U/r Control

At my prerelease I registered an U/r control deck based around Irencrag Pyromancer and The Royal Scions.  While I was relatively happy with my overall build, I largely chose the deck I did because playing with my cool Planeswalker at the prerelease is fun, and not because I explored every option and choose this as the optimal one.

Embracing fun in Magic is very important to me as it helps me continuously explore new avenues as well as keeping burn out at bay.  There's a pile of reasons why I play Magic, but as a game I've had fun playing for years, enjoyment is king.  So despite my less than competitive reasoning leading to my inevitable deck choice, I still tried to maximize my win percentage from there, as that's also important to me.  Winning is still great, even if it's not everything.

As I had a lot of incentive to play a deck heavy one one color, I ended up playing 12 Islands 6 Mountains.  I had nearly twice as many Blue cards as Red cards, with numerous 1UU and 3UU cards in my deck.  My assumption was that Blue was critical to my deck's performance in addition to making cards like Witching Well, Didn't Say Please, and Charmed Sleep the best I could, and that in a pinch most of my Blue spells could help me find Red mana.  While I certainly could have hedged a bit and ran 11/7 in favor of Blue instead, at the time that wasn't a consideration.  Mana bases in this format are much more variable and complicated than usual, and I expect that to be a major way to gain an edge in this Sealed/Draft environment.

Running out of Gas

Two hours in I was exhausted, as a combination of sickness, lack of sleep in general, and far too much caffeine as of late really diminished my already low energy levels quickly.  Maximizing the amount of time you play close to your peak level will win far more matches and lead to much more productive testing.  As I was going into an event that was for fun/testing, I wasn't in a position to have fun or get quality testing as I just didn't have the energy.  Importantly I could have avoided this predicament in a variety of ways, but I could have also decided a good night's rest was more important than one of five prereleases I could play in at my local store.  Some more consistent hydration and some extra healthy food could have gotten me past my cold a bit faster, too. While it's best to not get into a situation where you'll be incredibly tired while testing, at some point it's better to just skip it and rest instead.

Bad Lessons Learned

Say you've made what you think is an incredibly good Sealed deck, but you're in no real condition to play good Magic.  Although you could perform above expectation and perform well with the deck, odds are that you'll not do your deck justice, and you'll lose lots as a result.  Losing repeatedly with decks you think are good is going to undermine your confidence levels, and lead you toward false assumptions about what actually constitutes a great deck in a given format.  While the reverse is also often true, as feeling overconfident after a string of wins with a deck can lead to it's own problems, at the very least that is often enjoyable, where the opposite end never is.

More importantly and much more quantifiable is your ability to retain and learn information while well rested and ready vs. tired.  It took me a grand total of 1 minute to find this supporting article from harvard.edu, here, which links lack of sleep to trouble learning.  Lack of rest will stop you from recalling that great sideboard pivot you came up with, or a trick you picked up to identify when your opponent has a specific card. 

Rest

Going forward I aim to manage my fatigue better, including skipping out on things I want to do when I'm just too tired. As I know a lot of chronically sleep deprived Magic players, I hope this sentiment will have some use for others.  Many of, maybe even the vast majority of us, already know everything written on this page, but it's incredibly important to take seriously if you're serious about improving in Magic. 

Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg on Twitter