Pillow Talk MtG 7: From Lorwyn to Lorwyn, A First Pro Tour Journey with JJ Moffitt

Welcome to Pillow Talk, the official competitive Magic the Gathering podcast of Team Pillow Fort! This week, Jonathan and Austin invite fellow team member JJ Moffitt onto the show to learn about his journey to competing in his first Pro Tour! From learning limited to appreciating the value of a supportive team, it's a great interview for aspiring competitive MtG players at all levels. Thank you as always for listening!

Team Pillow Fort's Twitter: https://x.com/TPillowFortMTG 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Welcome to Pillow Talk, the official podcast of Team PillowFort MTG. I am your host, Jonathan Johnson, aka Tanuki JJ. And with me as always, Austin Walker. All right, Austin. We've got a special guest today, uh, another admin from Team PillowFort, and someone who just played in their first Pro Tour. Now, this is an interesting conversation for you, as I know our episode recently, we walked through your first qualification. So we get to interview JJ about his experience, how he got there, sharing how other people can do the same thing. But also you can pick his brain a little bit about maybe some of the things that you know he learned from his first testing process, and uh you can use that for your own.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Yeah, absolutely. And um obviously I've already talked to JJ a little bit about his experience, but it'll be nice to uh have you know this conversation here so that everybody else can hear. Uh anybody else who's kind of in the same position where they've recently qualified for their first first Pro Tour, um, you know, obviously really good information to have.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Great. So without any further ado, uh, I'm gonna introduce JJ Moffitt. JJ, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Hi guys. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for coming.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

So we're gonna ask you some questions. I know we've kind of talked a little bit about it, but we just want everybody to get to know, you know, your story. Um so why don't you just give us a little bit of a background on your journey and magic? How did you get started playing the game?

SPEAKER_02 1:44

So my my first experience with the game was uh summer camp when I was young, probably like nine or ten. Um some of the kids they were playing, I ended up I don't know where I got the money from, but paying one of the kids way too much, I'm pretty sure, for a pile of cards that he handed me. Um played through that whole summer, found a friend nearby, and we played through most of my teens, and then kind of dropped it through like high school and such.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Was that because you were a good student and you were trying to get good grades and all that?

SPEAKER_02 2:22

No. No, it was mostly that I I got split from the people who I played with. Got it. Um I moved to a different part of the same city, but it was much harder to get to that area, and so it's new friends in high school. So that that was like the end of what I would call my casual segment of the game. Uh the cards got stashed in a box and sat there until I came back to it later.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

You know, it's funny we talk about magic as the gathering, and uh most of my best friends I know through magic, but when you and I were were high school aides, JJ, it wasn't exactly a great tool for being socially accepted uh in uh the popular circles.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

No, definitely found my my group of nerds um in high school. Nobody else knew what magic was, and it even I don't know that I knew anybody at my high school that played magic. And I went to like a more affluent private school. So it wasn't really nearly as out there yet.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

So you you said that was the end of your so more casual play. Um when did you start picking the game up more seriously and and decided that you wanted to be more of a competitive player?

SPEAKER_02 3:43

Yeah, so when I went to college, um I joined a fraternity that's a bunch of nerds, which is very unsurprising. Uh one of the first things that I did meeting them was a land party at their house. And one of the fraternity brothers that was there is a year ahead of me. Uh I don't he hadn't gone yet, but he was a very good magic player who did manage to go to the Pro Tour and top 8 in 2010, I want to say. Um, Noah Swartz. He uh offered to take me to my first pre-release when I was, I think, a freshman in college. Uh, and he drove me down to Columbus because that was still when they were doing regional pre-releases. Um and I did the Loreman pre-release. And that was my re-entry into the game. And I was hooked from there. Uh it helped that a number of people in that fraternity played magic, so we kinda all bounced back off each other and and rebuilt ourselves around the game. Uh but that was that was my competitive re-entry. It still took me a couple years to like get to anywhere where I was going to shops consistently, but I had I had started back up again.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

What about Lore when got you uh got you hooked?

SPEAKER_02 5:11

I've never been somebody that's hugely like attached to the flavor of any of it. Um a common refrain I've told people the last couple of years is that I finally figured out especially when a lot of people started being very upset at Wizards, probably around 2019 or so, uh that magic is a rules book to me. I love the rules book. Everything else is set dressing, and it can be pretty much whatever it wants to be, and I will play the game. So it was just the experience of going out and doing something structured. Uh I'm a spike through and through. I I'm I didn't expect this knowing who I was when I was younger, because it wasn't I had never found the thing to latch on to. But I'm competitive when I get into something like this, and the pre-release gave me that. I got to like sit down and play a competitive match against somebody for the first time.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

You know, I believe uh Austin, when we talked to Noe, he he started his competitive journey in a similar way, but it was Theros, and I thought it had to have been the printing of Thoughtsies because it was our Thoughtsies gamers that qualified for the Pro Tour. So it it it wasn't taking somebody else's card and looking at their hand. Right.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

It was I didn't think about this until coming up to the Pro Tour, I think. It was like just a couple days before that somebody mentioned it to me that Noah took me to the Lorwin pre-release as my first competitive event, and Lorewin got to be my first Pro Tour, which is just really cool in a weird loop.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Oh I think that is interesting. So the original Lorwin was your first pre-release, and your first pro tour was Lorwin Eclipsed.

SPEAKER_02 7:05

It just like very fun coincidence. And I I messaged Noah a couple days ago because I hadn't talked to him in years, to be like, I don't know if you still pay attention to this at all, but I got to go to the Pro Tour. He was very excited for me.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

I was gonna say, he must have been r really excited for you. So you you go from the the pre-release, and it sounds like you're you're not yet playing at the store on a on a consistent level. Kind of take us through the I went to pre-release too, I start going to shops and kind of what that progression or or evolution looks like in your gameplay.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

So I will say I'm honestly not sure where like probably a year and a half in there went because I kept going to pre-releases, but I definitely didn't have enough cards to go to a shop yet. Uh I don't think it was another until another like maybe almost like two years later that I went to the local shop to play standard for the first time. This is before Commander was popular. Like I think Commander was in its infancy, like in this time frame. Uh so I wasn't playing that. And I think I was mostly just oh nope, I remember what it was, but Noah was running Magic Club on campus. So we had drafts semi-frequently. So I guess I think most of my play for that first like year to year and a half was drafts. And I'm pretty sure I did terrible at all of them, which we'll get to later. Uh at some point I did start picking up cards for standard. I'm relatively sure my first standard deck was like an Auras deck that was terrible. I eventually I found my way to a couple different things, but I don't think I played anything competitive in that time frame because that time frame was Mythic Bant into uh Cobblade, so I couldn't afford that.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

That's fair. I I guess if it was just the money issue is like those are sweet decks, so that was a fun time to be playing Magic.

SPEAKER_02 9:19

I was I was a relatively poor kid growing up, and that hadn't changed that much uh in college, so I was scrabbling decks together. Um I think one of the more competitive lists I played in that time frame was a goblins deck that I had a ton of fun with, and could probably find my Star City results because I made a Star City open like top 32 or something at some point.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

With goblins?

SPEAKER_02 9:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

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SPEAKER_01 9:57

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SPEAKER_00 10:18

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SPEAKER_01 10:24

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SPEAKER_00 10:29

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SPEAKER_01 10:36

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SPEAKER_00 10:44

Um when did you play your first uh PTQ or PPTQ, whichever it ended up being?

SPEAKER_02 10:50

It would have been PTQ's. Um there is a very specific memory that sits in my head, and I'm not sure if it's the first one, but I played Abyssal Persecutor in a PTQ.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

I don't even know what that card does.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Austin, do you know that one? Is that the 4 mana 6-6 that says that you can't win the game?

SPEAKER_02 11:08

Yes. It has fly. Yep. Um I'm trying to remember what set that's from. I'm checking it really quick. That's from World Wake. So it wasn't too far into that.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

You can't afford Jace the Mind Sculptor, you just play this card.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Yeah, I was playing Persecutor and probably some like vampire nighthawks and some removal. We were on our way to Jund, I'm pretty sure. This was a very early indication that like mid-range decks, but I think I kind of put together cards that looked really cool and I thought I could kill somebody with. I couldn't. I definitely didn't do well in that BTQ.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

Were you getting smoked in your early events? Was this like a I show up in 04 and I'm having a good time with my friends? Or were you you trying to to win and sort of evolving through it?

SPEAKER_02 11:58

I was getting smoked. Um I had no indication of how to be a better player at this point, probably for my whole college time. The only person I think that really could have taught me how to be a better player was Noah, and honestly, I don't think I ever asked him. Because I was probably dumb and thought I was good. So Oh being young.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

We've we've all had those moments.

SPEAKER_02 12:27

Yeah, so it's like there's some amount of it is like I knew I didn't have the money to get the cards. So I might have blamed some of it on like I can't do well because I don't have the money to get these cards. But I wasn't doing anything to actually make myself better at the game. I was just showing up to things and playing.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Not a bad approach. I mean you're just you're just having fun playing a game. But when did you start to take it seriously?

SPEAKER_02 12:55

Probably modern is about when it happened, I think. Um like I was I was we were traveling semi-occasionally to like nearby Grand Prix and stuff for standard. Um I had my first day two with a birthing pod deck in standard. So that would have been like twenty eleven or twenty twelve, I think. Um I love that deck, that's one of my favorite decks of all time. I have been chasing that high and modern pod never did it for me. Ritual gets close. And like I I was doing well there. Uh it was the first like real deck that I had. And then I think modern is where I really kicked into the competitive player that I am. My first modern Grand Prix was I want to say Kansas City. I played a lightning angel deck. It was awful because I couldn't afford any of the cards yet. Cause shocks were still like fifty bucks pop at this point. I did manage to win a the like uh what are they called? They're the LCQs of that time where you get like three buys for winning one. GPTs. That's what they're called. Thank you. I won one of those, uh, promptly paired into Derward, and he smacked me on Jessky Twin, then played somebody I don't remember, and then played LSV on Pod.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

And he remembered. And a GPT?

SPEAKER_02 14:31

And the GP. I got the three buys, and then yeah, in the GP I like promptly paired into LSV Derward, and it was just like, yep, that was good GP. Um And it was sometime a little bit after that that I found Jund. And then my true love with magic began.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Uh-oh. You became Jund Guy?

SPEAKER_02 14:52

Oh, I became Jund Guy. We we cast some lightning bolts and some thoughts seizes. I love I love Death Right Shaman.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

So did you have uh a foil jund deck with signed shocklands? That that's that was always the jund guy when when I was playing then.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

Absolutely not. Uh I look back at those orders occasionally and I know that was after I had my job to start with, so I had money, because I paid I think 115 each for my goifs and ninety for my bobs. Lily's had to have been around the same. It was that deck put me back a little bit. Um but I made more money off of that deck than I spent on it.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Just from winnings?

SPEAKER_02 15:39

Yeah. I I made I day two like I cashed a number of GPs with it. Uh not like some crazy amount, but enough to be worth it. And if memory serves, I want enough store credit at like just FMs to pay for it too.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Tarmagois are now five bucks. Uh if you have it in a while. I just pulled it up on TCG player uh.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

Bobs are probably bulk at this point, which is tragic. They're in standard. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Lightning bolt can't get played anymore. Stupid unholy heat kind of makes me mad.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

So w well how what what was it about Jun that made you fall in love with it? So just sh share us your why were you passionate about that deck? Why why was it, you know, thought seizing and bolting people and then you know throwing down a tarmac wave? What was it about that that just really resonated with you?

SPEAKER_02 16:32

I don't remember is part of the thing there. It's like I I don't remember what kicked me into buying Jund specifically. I think my best friend was playing Jund before me. Because he was evangelizing Bloodbraid Elf. Um and I think this is before Death Rite happened. I don't know what got me in there eventually. Uh I remember Blightning being a spell that was sick in standard, and so like maybe that was I played similar decks previously, and so having a pile of removal and some big chonky boys just felt good to me. Um I will say this is uh a problem that persists to today. I am allergic to playing blue spells correctly, and it's not because I dislike blue, although I think I at the time dislike blue a little more. I seem to functionally have a problem with counterspelling things. In that my opponent will play something and I'll just be like, okay. And look at my hand. And be like, Yep, I passed priority already. I can't counter that. So I'd like stuck to reactive removal.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Just take it out of their own.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

In the opposite way.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

I don't know what it is, but like you saw it with me to some extent in that challenge yesterday, but it's been more apparent with in like playing cube with people, I'll be sitting there and they'll be like, You just let that spell resolve. You had a counter spell, you just lost the game. I was like, Yep.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

I'm pretty sure that while while we've been playing a match at Magic Online, I've literally watched that happen. I think it was Yeah, that was uh that was the one you're talking. Was that the one you're talking about a couple days ago? I'm like, well, wait, why didn't we cast the the spell here? And it's like I was talking.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

Yeah, that was the solitude that was that one. But it consigned has been a problem. Like once I start trying to play consign a little more, it's like I will pass consign through and be like, why am I playing this color? I'm not even somebody that's like a purist like that anymore. It's just I just can't do it for some reason.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

How close did you get to the the PT? So you know, before the the recent qualification, you're you're going to GPs, you're going to Star City events, you're playing PTQs. Did you have any close calls or any any heartbreakers before before you qualified?

SPEAKER_02 19:20

I had some that got pretty close. Uh which those close calls made the um the RC that got me there a little more exciting, um, because it felt very similar. I never got close into PTQ. I don't know that I ever top-aided a PTQ because I just those are a monster as is back then. And I had mostly fallen out when the PPTQ system happened. Uh but I had a couple Grand Prix that I I went X and four in a couple and the one that I was the closest, it would have been round fourteen, I was X and two. Um and that match that I played is seared into my brain for the rest of my life. Like I can remember I'm probably remembering lines incorrectly, but um it was against I was playing Jund. Uh Death Right Shaman was still legal, I believe. And I had a bunch of really sick plays through that weekend of like surviving with Deathright, uh gaining enough life, and then flipping Lily off of Bob. Like knowing that I needed to gain life to not die to a possible Bob trigger and then like flipping Lily and doing three to myself and going to one. I was like, those plays feel really good. Uh I was up against a Grixis like the Grixis mid-range control ish version that's like the equivalent to Jund. He had me under a Blood Moon and I had a throne out. And he was attacking me with um Gurmag Angler. And I couldn't block because I couldn't regenerate, I didn't have a forest. Uh and it was I think he was at like three. So it's like I if I find the bolt, I win, and I waited one turn too long uh to finally block the angler, and he had the bolt, and if I'd blocked it that turn, I'm relatively sure I checked and had the bolt on top. I was like, that was my my heartbreaker moment. Um it was really cool after, cause I paired into Matt Sperling, um, who I many years later played again in the PT. Um he didn't remember me, but he had asked me to concede because he needed enough pro points to hit the next pro level, because back then points were like bronze, silver, gold, and you got perks for it. And obviously I'm sitting there terrified that I'm about to get myself DQ'd out of my best GP finish ever by handling this conversation wrong. But a judge helped me through that, and I conceded, obviously, without expecting well, without knowing anything I was going to get back, and he paid me the difference of what I would have gotten it if I won. And he was on the literal worst matchup it could have been for me. He was on like Little Kid Abzan. It's like a zoo-ish deck with Lox and Rough matchup for Jund at the time. Uh Loxedon Smiter is not a good time. That's the one that says if you're forced to discard it, you just put it into play.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

Right. Yeah. Liliana the Bale.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

I had some experience with Loxidon Smiters in Modern.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

That deck smashes, Jund. It like absolutely destroys it. So we like played our fun matches and he rolled me. And then he sent me what I would have gotten if I'd won that round. So that was a lot, but that was a very cool experience. And the closest I ever got. I was very hyped.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

We got to experience that last year with Hopeless Nightmare when everybody started throwing obstinate bailouts in their deck. Oh boy. That was my uh you know, 8-0 start in Atlanta into hating my life day two. I look at the open deck list, so they've got three in the main. Like, alright, here it goes. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

I know the feel.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

So what were your how do you approach the game from having these close calls to how did you go from sort of being a casual to having these close calls to getting where you're you're able to make it? What how did you level up and get get better at the game?

SPEAKER_02 23:50

So I played through the the like Grand Prix Circuit through that time frame, most of the point while I was still single. Uh I met my wife in 2015, and that's I was still playing some through there, like I played store stuff especially. I fell off of traveling to events because there's only so much time that I can commit and I wanted to spend time with the new person in my life. And then I really fell off the game around like 2018 where Jung stopped being playable. Uh where like, especially when Prowess came into the meta and like Phoenix and stuff like that, and it just it didn't work for me anymore. Uh and I couldn't find a deck that I liked. And so I was like, I put my cards down again, and we'll see if this comes around. Uh and then Modern Horizons happened, and that looked cool. And then Modern Horizons 2 happened, and there was a bunch of cool cards in there that looked like they fixed a lot of the problems that I had. And oddly enough, I had had a kid relatively recently, like she was pretty young at that point, and that's when I got back into magic. Which is not usually what you expect when you don't have the time because the kid, but it it was the thing that I got to do to get out of the house. That was now that I'm thinking about it, it was one of our conversations of like we each need a thing that we can go to talk to people. Because it was COVID time. I was working remotely from home doing IT. So I never saw anyone.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

There's real value to that. I I work at home full-time now, although I do interact with my my clients all day. But there there's some value to just getting out of the house and interacting on on some other level.

SPEAKER_02 25:53

I'm a little Midwesterner at heart. I'm the guy that sits there and talks to the people staying next to me in line and will drive my children insane doing that forever. I drive my wife insane already because she's a Texan. That's like, why are we talking to people?

SPEAKER_00 26:09

Well, we got to do that uh so funny story when when JJ and I were going to what what event was it? It was Vegas, right? The Vegas Regional Championship. And your connecting flight was through Nashville where I was flying out of, and we ended up sitting next to each other on the flight and talking for like four and a half hours or however long that was.

SPEAKER_02 26:31

Yep. That's just me. I'll just sit there and just chit-chat for hours. Um and so it's I I needed something to get me to people, and magic was one of the easiest, like clearest ways for me to do it. It looked like there was something that was there that I liked, and so I picked scam up. I don't know how much I actually enjoyed my time with that deck, but it got me back.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

I mean, double griefing people is um fun for some.

SPEAKER_02 27:04

That's I I had less problems with it online. Uh I feel bad when people get really upset. And that happened semi-frequently with that deck in paper. People did not like that deck.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

It was uh annoying to to many, yeah. Also, that was your favorite deck, right? Scam?

SPEAKER_01 27:25

No, no. I I actually really enjoyed playing against Scam, though. Uh I played Rhinos, and I thought that that matchup was really, really interesting, so I actually had a great time doing the scam meta.

SPEAKER_02 27:35

And so, like, talking about how did I like level up, that was the time frame. I had come in and out of Magic Online. Uh usually I'd jump back out because I'd lose a bunch of money because I couldn't win anything. Uh in part because I bought into Jund in like 2017. I sold uh let me order this a little better. I had finally organized my collection from when I was a kid and decided to just like ship off all of the random junk that I had, um, which included the boxes of neuphyrexia that I had opened in college. That was a lot more money than I expected. I think I I shipped off like s I buy-listed like seven he$1,700 of like commons and uncommons, um, because in some part neuphrexia all that infect stuff is worth so much. And I I sent that to Cape Fear, which was one of the bot chains at the time. They had a paper, you could sell them paper cards and then turn it into Magic Online credit. So I used that to buy very expensive versions of Jund online and promptly like lose over and over again. And so I would like play for a couple months and then drop out. And then come back and be like, maybe I can play. No. Um but when I picked up Scam, I was working from home, but it was like I I I used that as my main hobby, and so I did end up losing a decent bit in there, but but it was fine for me. Um and I got really into Magic Online around that time, and that let me get reps that I never got before. Because I never played outside of going to the store. Like I didn't sit and play games with people.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

So Magic Online was your your big level up?

SPEAKER_02 29:38

That was that was what brought me into like I can actually get better at this game and like starting to think about it more. I don't I'm trying to think when the like point that I was like, I really want to try to go for this again though was. I don't think it was until Blink until the modern RCQ season happened. Because when Blink came around, Scam had been banned and I was out of like I didn't have a deck again, and nothing looked enticing. So I was kinda like sitting on the sidelines watching things happen. And then I saw a Hummingbard post must have been in the Magic Online subreddit. No, it was in the um there's like a the Metacord Discord. They're like the big generic one that takes all the decks that nobody has a Discord specific for. I was chillin' in there, um and Hummingbard posted his blink list, and I was like, this list is sick. And I bought I just like snap bought all the pieces for it like three days before Overlord like tripled in price. Very lucky.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

And so that's what you ended up taking to Houston, right? Correct. So talk to us a little bit about Houston and you know what your testing looked like leading up to Houston and and how that event went and all of that.

SPEAKER_02 31:13

Sure. So I was just jamming a ton of magic online, which went down a very bad path for a little bit there. Uh there's a there's a connection here. So beginning of the year, Blink was on 8th Ervile. This was before Ketramos. I had my best run of Magic Online I've ever had in that time frame. I was sitting at like I think above a 70% win rate with Blink. No trophies. I couldn't trophy to save my life, but I was 4-1-like every single league. Um and I built my account value up like massively because I was winning plenty. And then I was in love with that deck. Ketramos happened and it screwed everything up because I hated that build, and it was like awkward, unclear if the original build was still good. People were starting to uh to drift off of Vial. And like I was kind of following that and trying to find my place in the world. Uh, and then Riddler happened, and I was like, this card's incredible. I paid like eleven dollars each for my Riddler's pre-order and was all in. I was ready for Riddler to like bust this deck, and then I hated it.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

JJ is a notorious quantum Riddler hater, specifically in Blink, and uh we we had a lot of these conversations in Discord, so this is not surprising for me to hear, but JJ, I think a lot of people are probably like, what do you mean you hate Quantum Riddler? Uh talk more about why. Here's your platform to convince everybody that it's not good in your in your deck.

SPEAKER_02 33:05

So, same thing back towards counter spells. Maybe it's blue spells in general. I don't think it's quite that thing, but it's something I could not make this deck work. Um I continue I would smash four Riddlers in there, I would play the same lists that people were doing really well with. Um I think McGwin Sauce was like tearing it up at that point. I I was in the Taxes Discord talking with them about stuff, and I just I could not win with this deck. My results went from the beginning of the year smashing things just trivially to like two, three leagues over and over again. And I I was getting really discouraged. So I was trying to play it, and I had started to convince myself, well, maybe Esper it just sucks now. Like maybe it's not the right deck. And I had watched the Pro Tour results, and there was that Jesguy list that had done well, and I was like, this list is really cool. I like a lot of the pieces here, maybe I'm willing to gravitate off Thoughtseize, which I'm in love with, and go play this Jesguy deck. And I started trying to do that, and what I did is something that is very bad for both getting better as a player and learning what is good in the meta. I started trying to iterate on the deck quickly. I wasn't playing with anyone else, I was just jamming leagues, and I would finish a league, the deck would bomb, and I would change a couple pieces. And then it would play a new league. And it would still do bad. I would change a couple pieces, and then I get like a little bit of a a like, oh, this looks good. And it entice me and then it'd do poorly again, and I and I just kept iterating like that and getting more and more frustrated. And it was I'd actually led myself into like a pretty rough spot coming into Houston. Um to the point that I want to say like three weeks before, my wife was like, Do you want to play magic anymore? Like, are you enjoying this? And I was like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 35:21

Is that the is that the secret sauce that you know you're about to qualify for the Pro Tour? Is that you're you're borderline, I don't even know if I want to play this game anymore? Because Austin, wasn't that your thought before you just qualified?

SPEAKER_01 35:34

Yep, that was my thought too last weekend. Uh so yeah, definitely, definitely hear that. Definitely feel that.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

It's funny because I saw you mention that and I hadn't made that connection. Um because mine was set far enough ahead of time. But yeah, I don't know, man. Uh I felt bad and I could not figure out what I wanted to do. And then so the the like trio of us that have been competitive players together since our fraternity days. Like the three of us had traveled to a number of events together. Um I was talking to them a lot, even though they don't play, but they want to. Uh and they were supporting me through it, but didn't know how to be like they don't know how to tell me what's going wrong because they don't play. Uh and then at some point they know enough about what's like bad habits, like you're you're in a bad spot, you need to stop doing this. Uh and the thing that they said is you are very good at Esper. Stop being dumb and just play Esper. And I I honestly do not know why this moment clicked. But I my nerves disappeared. If they had been in Cincinnati, it would have been like they actually had slapped me up the side of the head physically and like just knocked sense into me because they said it and I was like, you're right. And that was a little more than a week before the event, and I was like, okay, here's the list that I won at Indianapolis, the like 1K that got an RCQ that got the RC invite. Um I'm gonna take that list, I will change a couple small things. I have three days before I lock my list. And that's why I said it was like Sunday. I said I'll lock my list on Wednesday and I won't change it before the RC. And I think I changed two cards and I was not nervous at all. That moment flipped a switch and I was just like, I'm in.

SPEAKER_01 38:02

Yeah, those are those are cool moments. I've had those moments before where you know you you finally just like you you get it, you know, you've been playing a bunch of different things and it just finally clicks and you're like, no, actually, this is what I'm supposed to be on. Uh this is this is what I've been playing, this is what I'm comfortable with, whatever it is, you know. Um and so so yeah, I've I've definitely had those moments, and and those are cool. So obviously you you do well in the event, you qualify for the Pro Tour, um, and then you're looking for a testing team, and then that's when you run into Team Pillow Fort.

SPEAKER_02 38:35

Yeah, so that came about um one of the people from the Death and Taxes Discord was at the RC, so I was like hanging out with the online friends that I hadn't talked to before. It must have been like round 14 or something. I think it was just before I'd actually qualified, but I was sitting there being like, if I qualify, I think I need to find a team. Like, I can't do this on my own. I'm and we'll find our way to this in a second. I am awful at Limited. Just absolutely one of the worst players I've ever met at Limited. So I cannot go to a pro tour like that, and I'm gonna need people to help me. Um and if I only have like three months, I will need more than just people to coach me at Limited. I'm gonna have to have help figuring standard out and so on and so forth. And he was like, oh well, one of my buddies from my shop is here, and I think he was looking for teammates. Uh and so he hooked me up with Damien. And I saw him, I think, after round fifteen, and I was like, I qualified, I think I'm looking for somebody, and that's he sent me your Discord profiles to message one of you.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

Yeah, it was me. I I remember that, but do you know who it was that connected you with Damien? Do you remember, or kid, or do you feel comfortable saying? Because I don't even know.

SPEAKER_02 39:59

His he goes by a nickname at the shop, so I'm not sure I know his real name. He goes by Bandit. Or it's like I and it.

SPEAKER_00 40:07

I know who he is. Yeah, I know who that is. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 40:09

Okay. Um he's a nice guy. He was cool to talk to. He was on a um slightly he was on the uh like Phoenix Ketramos version of Blink that weekend, which I love that deck. That deck is fun. I wouldn't take it to an RC. He did decently with it. Um, but I think it probably ran into someone's problem. But he yeah, he hooked me up and I chatted with you guys and it seemed like we were all a really great fit for each other.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 40:40

That was a fun interview.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Yeah, I I remember that interview very well. Um it was fun. Um so so obviously, you know, we are uh uh more of a general testing team uh rather than like specifically a pro tour testing team. Yeah. Uh were you were you in the market for a pro tour testing team at that time, or were you just hoping to increase you know your your play time and and you know kind of improve on your your magic chops in general? What did that look like?

SPEAKER_02 41:11

So something that I didn't mention, I had done a little bit of coaching with Mason Eastman coming up to I think it was Houston, but maybe it was Vegas. I think it was Houston. Um and he like talked to me about stuff it was both because I talked to him after Houston, that's what it is. He talked to me about like what it's like to be in a team and stuff like that. Uh but I knew that I needed help with limited. I don't know that I knew what I was looking for necessarily. I just knew I needed something. To me, that was the next step was finding people that were going to help make me a better player and not doing it on my own, because doing it on my own was a problem.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

For for those who don't know, we do function a little bit differently. A lot of testing teams will have seasons where they focus on a particular season. And I think JJ, you'd mentioned that we were ended up being a really good cultural fit together, is our team is really built on the community aspect of things first in the sense that we want kind of a longer-term, you know, community to be able to test with, where you build trust and you know, build that ability to help each other. So it's definitely something that's a little bit different. Uh we do test for PTs and a lot of other things. So it was uh relatively unique, but it I I'm glad that you weren't looking for something that was a little bit more transient, because that was just never really what Austin and I were thinking when we put this thing together.

SPEAKER_02 42:46

Yeah, and uh that's a great point for my side too, because um I've mentioned my fraternity multiple times. I'm still involved with them. I still do uh advising for them because that group has meant so much to me. And I love communities. Um I love being involved in groups of people and just like chatting with people and learning about people. Um so it was a natural fit for me to find something that was long-term. I don't know that I was necessarily I thought I was looking for that. I think I was honestly, my brain was probably very focused. I need somebody to teach me how to play limited. And if I have a team that's gonna do that and they want to part ways afterwards, that is what it is. But I need to not be this bad.

SPEAKER_00 43:39

And that is something that we do that other testing teams I've been on that test for regional championships and RCQs never really do limited testing. Um, and that was something that when Austin and I and and the other admins had had talked, say we we just really need to do this better because when we qualify for the PT, we don't want to be the The team that is super excited and then goes and you know O3s every pod ever. Yeah. So we actually started, you know, had limited officers, started limited testing groups, and I will say, uh, Austin's gonna get to the line of questioning, but I have never seen somebody grind like I saw you grind drafts leading up to the Pro Tour. If I went on the Discord, JJ was was in a channel grinding a draft. And not even just uh when Lorwin came out, you were grinding Avatar just to learn general principles, rules, like how to draft well, how to make reads. And I I do you know how many drafts you put in uh between Houston and the PT?

SPEAKER_02 44:47

Uh well I can give one platform's worth because I split. Let me see. Um talking towards that, yeah, I I had been very, very, very bad at draft for a long time and knew I needed to get better. I found uh I'm buddies with somebody uh that is a very good magic online drafter. He's frequently near the top of the trophy list, and he was offering me help. Um and then I was also getting help from the guys on the team. And yeah, I was I was just trying to figure out what to do, and I knew that I only had one set to do it, and that was Avatar. Um, which was a fun experience. I had 487 Avatar matches on Arena. Man. Only on Arena. That's crazy. And I it obviously wouldn't have been that many on That's like more than 150 drafts, right?

SPEAKER_00 46:02

Are they do is it like Magic Online where you're doing the three uh three matches, but you you could go to like seven wins. I don't know how arena draft works, I'm sorry. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 46:13

So arena is best of I was doing best of one. It's best of one um to seven wins or three losses.

SPEAKER_00 46:23

Okay, so it's hard to hard to break it down to the number of drafts, but yeah, I it's triple digits for sure.

SPEAKER_02 46:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:31

Some of those I did some directs in there, so like there's a a s but those are effective, there's they're sealed, but and uh I was talking to some people that I knew here too, and was just saying, like, yeah, we got this guy on our team, uh, he's fairly new to our team, but he's cued for the PT, and he said that he's really bad at draft, but every time I go into the Discord, I just see like, yep, trophy to another draft, trophy'd another draft, trophy'd another draft. Like it was it was just one after another after another. So uh yeah, like the the amount that you leveled up uh was was considerable. Um how how how did you feel during that process? Did you feel like you were like getting better? Did you feel like you know you just threw enough at the wall and some of it stuck, or or how did that how did that feel on your end?

SPEAKER_02 47:15

It was a lot. Um so oh, I remember what I was gonna say earlier that actually does line into that. I am in a very fortunate position. Um my wife is the sole breadwinner. I am a homemaker, I get to take care of stuff at home, and when I qualified, she told me that like we had a talk, and it was like I we understand that I'm probably going to be less uh good at keeping up with household duties for this period of time to let me hit this bucket list item. Uh so very, very lucky that my wife is incredible. Um and so I played a lot of magic in December. Um I it was 300 and like 400 actual premiere draft matches, so a lot. Um the beginning was really hard. Uh I guess I would say I I did a little bit of edge before that, but and never did anything good with edge. I lost almost everything. I trophied my first Avatar Draft. And you guys will know this from seeing what I've talked about that I tended Gravity Tours. It was five color pile. I took every single rare I saw and found the fixing and played this pile that was monstros like a huge monstrosity and just smashed with it. Um and it was downhill from there. So I'm like looking at my arena win rate, my early win rate at the beginning of the format was 67%. And it ticks down consistently all the way till near the end, where it's at like 60, and then it starts going back up again for the last like two or three weeks. So what you're saying about like what did it feel like I was going through? The early parts of that were learning fundamentals that I had no idea how to approach. Uh the Magic Online coach that I had was giving me very good advice, but I didn't understand how to take that. He was telling me pick the good cards. Well, I'm a modern player. These are all bad cards. Right. They're all terrible. So like my my scale of understanding what a good card just didn't exist. And he had he had put a rule on me that he the only way he was gonna work with me is if I didn't look at data. I wasn't allowed to look at 17 lands. And this was something that Mason Eastman backed up too, is like you will be a better player if you build the fundamentals of figuring out what a good card is without looking at anything else. You just need to figure like you just need to learn those heuristics on your own. And I think that was huge. That as I started to see those those pieces coming together, and I started seeing myself passing carts that I was like, I don't think that's actually good for this archetype. Starting to understand that archetypes existed and stuff like that, I was I was building those fundamentals on my own, and it felt really good.

SPEAKER_01 50:57

So, you know, obviously you're you're doing much better, you're feeling more comfortable, you're getting the hang of it. What were your expectations going into the limited portion of the PT and and how did your experience relate to that?

SPEAKER_02 51:10

I'm gonna step back a little bit, if it's cool, to like if there's a time that you want to hit or something, but um there's a weird spot in the middle of that avatar thing that I do want to go towards. You guys might remember it because I it was another moment of like I blew up. I didn't know what to do, because I I started off decently hot in Avatar, and then I lost it. And I started getting worse and worse, and I started doing kind of the same thing I was doing running up to Houston, where I was tilt drafting more, and I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. And I was asking people in our team, I was asking my coaches, I was asking friends, and it's like I cannot see why I went from like a 60% win rate to like a 30% win rate. Pretty quickly, too. And it was uh it was some I'm not sure how much this is correct, but I think worlds shifted which archetypes were good in draft, and I had found a good archetype and was stuck to it, and very suddenly that that people other people found that archetype, and my whole draft heuristic was broken because the thing that I was taking and winning a lot with was gone. I couldn't just take it. Uh and that was Drew from the team did a bunch of like draft log analysis with me, and I learned from that that like the single best way that I found to level up in this is to do something that isn't actively playing. And that's a lot of people will tell you this, it's a lot of uh standard coaching stuff. Watch replace or analyze something with other people.

SPEAKER_00 53:12

And that's something you did with our our limited officers, right? We went through a lot of draft logs and were kind of picking apart those things where I I mean we we talked about the expectations, things of that nature. Uh sometimes you have a great deck and the deck doesn't perform for various reasons. And it's good to have other people kind of walk through that draft to see how you navigated it. And I know personally, I I sat in some of these limited meetings with you, and we would debate picks and say, well, I think I would have gone this route, and then you know I would maybe see it differently, and we'd kind of talk about where that draft ended up and how it changes the picks later, and it's just so interesting to see how those decks shake up. And I remember some of them were up like, hey, I've got a really great green-white deck, you know, with how I navigated this, and you've got something totally different. But I I felt like that was really important because, like you said, if you if you gravitate towards an archetype, it's incredibly dangerous to do that at a Pro Tour where all of the players are also going to be extremely well practiced.

SPEAKER_02 54:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:22

It it feels like your draft decks on average at a pro tour draft are going to be worse because you know the the players are gonna know the cards you're supposed to take, so you you can't reliably just sort of force it.

SPEAKER_02 54:33

And I I can say like we did I think three of those like serious sit-down analyze a draft meetings, I can I could see my skill difference from before that meeting and after that meeting.

SPEAKER_00 54:55

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 54:56

Immediate. Like I knew new things about the format and I knew new things about draft fundamentally that I didn't just from one of those meetings because the way that we just sat down and thrashed through it. Um and the teammates let me argue with them about like, well, I think I would go with this, let's talk through that, and we went deep. Um we would spend 15 minutes on a single pick for some of those.

SPEAKER_00 55:25

I I got better at limited just just from tagging along to try to help help you test and help, you know, Noe. Um it was super fun. Uh seeing That was really cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:38

That if there's ever been a single I got better at magic moment, one of those meetings is it. Like in my entire magic career, I got better in that one night more than any other like individual event. Which awesome was like seeing the team work was so cool. It gave me like kind of the fire to be like, I want to make sure this thing does it. I'm gonna be consumed until this pro tour's done, but I'm gonna help after.

SPEAKER_00 56:17

So So shout out Drew and Isaac, our our limited officers, who uh put in crazy amounts of work.

SPEAKER_02 56:24

Both amazing. Isaac spent a lot of time like uh messaging me privately when I was like really frustrated. Yeah. Um because I thought I had lost it in the middle there, and they both like pulled me back out. And I I am still shocked at the amount that I improved in that time frame. And then back to what Austin was talking about, Lorwin happened. And that was I knew it was gonna be a a shock because it was gonna be a very different format.

SPEAKER_00 57:01

It was very, very different than than Avatar.

SPEAKER_02 57:04

It was very different. It wasn't what a lot of people were expecting, and even like all the initial reactions. Like I I listened to a number of podcasts doing like card analysis and stuff like that, like limited level-ups was the one that I'd focused on the most. And it's just like most people's read on that format was wrong. And figuring that out going into the Pro Tour was tough. Um so my I could I saw myself go from so when I qualified at Houston, the the feeling in my head was if I bomb out of the Pro Tour, I won't be sad at all. I just want to go. Like this is my my bucket list item. Especially as I ground through Avatar, and then like as Lorman happened, my I felt my mentality shift from that to I want a day two. Like I started getting the itch to be like, I can do this. I think I'm good enough. And I got close. It was it was an experience. I I think I was more prepared for the draft than I expected, but it was still very hard.

SPEAKER_00 58:22

Your draft deck was good. Um I I wish that there was like a melee thing where where our our limited listeners could can go and look at it, but I do remember talking to our limited officers about it. And I I know that the draft didn't go maybe how you had hoped, but um there's some circumstances there that I think uh give me some credit.

SPEAKER_02 58:43

So the deck was good. I liked that deck. It was weird. It was not a deck that I think I ever would have drafted online because it was like an aggressive elves deck. I don't know if you guys want to go into the actual draft portion. Yeah, go for it. So like I don't remember the draft its stealth very well, uh, but my first round opponent was also on elves, and he had a gloom ripper, and I did not. I mostly had like a bunch of uh the 4-2 that has to be blocked and pumps other elves, and then multiple of the aura that gives indestructible and plus two plus zero and trample. So I was like, and I had a figure of fable. Every time I cast figure fable, I won the game.

SPEAKER_00 59:33

That card is messed up uh in limited. I just Yeah it can solo games, so I have I have won with just that card and just gotten wrecked by that card alone, too.

SPEAKER_02 59:44

I see a couple things in my deck that I would change now, um, but that is still talking towards like the Protour drafts being different. I the only other drafts that I've played that have felt anywhere similar to that have been the um arena qualifier from last week, which I spent way too much money on and did not draft to a single one of them, but those drafts felt more akin to the Pro Drafts in that they feel terrible. There's no good cards. Everybody's taking all of them. And that doesn't happen in your like online drafts. Usually there's stuff that's getting past you're like, well, this is really good, I'll take this. I don't remember feeling like that at all in the PT. Um and so I ended up in a a like non-standard deck that I crushed every game one that I played, all three rounds. Um and I think some of the there are a couple like weird picks that I think if I changed would have helped me out. I had a little bit of variance. Uh the guy that I played round one was the teammate of Christopher Larson, who is my round two opponent.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:07

Spoiler, eventual PT champion.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:10

Yeah, just run into the champ round two. He's hilarious, by the way. We chatted about our kids for most of the match, and we're just like talking life and stuff while playing, um, but understandable both of us would be like n note to the other that it's time to think about something, and would both respect this, like, yep, time to tank, like I'll be quiet for a minute, and then get back to just like chit-chatting after. He would pull his phone out and show me pictures of his kids like he did on stream. It was he's an amazing person.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:44

Did you get one of the hugs that he was giving out to everybody uh you know? Oh. JJ.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:54

Yeah. I messaged him on Discord like the Monday after and was like, I I bombed out of this uh a jump forward just a second. I bombed out of the like last chance PTQ that was on Sunday and was like, I just want to go back to my room. I don't want to wait for them to finish stuff. And I considered going to give him a hug before I left because they were talking about him being like when he had top aided, like him being a hugger. I was like, I just can't, and I regret that now. Which is weird because I'm a hugger. I hug everyone. Next time. I don't have a space bubble. But he messed I messaged him, he messaged me back, and it was like, the hug's waiting for you. I was like, yes. Yeah, he seems like a great dude. He smashed me. His deck was so strong, but not bomb heavy. It was it was a bad matchup for me as part of it. Uh, because I was like this aggro elves deck and he was a Merfolk Go-Wide deck, and he set up double Meander's guide both games, which is like the one that reanimates, and so I would kill one of them and he'd just reanimate the other one back. I was like, okay. My things that only attack once are not very good here. And then I hit another what I think was a bad matchup, I hit Kithkin, and he had like a double bridges command with a bunch of the Bristle Bane battlers, and he just kept copying his battlers and then fighting my stuff. And then I just died. So I felt really good about that draft. Which was not what I would have expected. Okay. So I didn't play against anybody that bombed out. Like my win at the beginning, he ended up winning his next two matches.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:57

So Yeah, then one of them just casually wins the entire Pro Tour.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:00

Yeah, you just like went on and did the thing. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:03

So So obviously, you know, you you played a few rounds of constructed after that. Um and how did how did that standard portion go after you were done with your draft?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:17

Um, it went okay. I because I went one and so I went two and five six standard rounds?

unknown 1:04:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:30

I believe five standard rounds. Five, so I went two and three. Um I was on the Elementals deck, but I was running emptiness, which no one else did, and I couldn't convince anyone else to try it, which was a small frustration with uh I I was working with a ProTour specific team, and I couldn't go to the testing house, which uh I now recognize is massive. The amount of it same with like working with our team and those meetings being really big, sitting physically with someone I think is a huge uh like level-up moment, even just for a format of like finding decks that are good. So they iterated a bunch while I wasn't there and I didn't have the chance to sit with them and be like, I I think this is really good. But like a lot of people, I wasn't super prepared for the other 60% of the meta. I saw airbending and lessons and crushed both of those. Which is what I was prepared for. Then I lost to the Nassif Blue Black Control deck that Sperling was playing in a very, very tight three games Prowess which sucked for me. And the um the like Jess Guy flash deck. I think the early versions of what you played, right? I think it's yours is just blue-white, but Austin, what you did. Yep. So it it was that deck, I'm pretty sure, very similar, like Aang and Curiosity and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:21

I was both not prepared to know how to play against it. Like I I sideboarded wrong. I know I did. I think I could have won that. I also know of a punt that I screwed up because I forgot that um wistfulness exiles. So I didn't wistfulness a curiosity because it was like it doesn't help me to get rid of it because he's still gonna draw the cards. And I think I might have won off of that, but stuff I wasn't ready for. But I didn't get to play a cub a single time all weekend. I'm really salty about it because my cub matchup was very good. Emptiness does even more work into that matchup. But I am still happy with my results. I I ended one win short of day two. But I got to do the thing. And I wasn't like down about it the whole weekend. I don't know, ever since my buddy slapped me upside the head, my like I've had individual frustrations of like why am I doing bad at this, but my overall magic is like I I'm good with where I am.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:20

That's a great outlook.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:22

Yeah, yeah. What um what what advice would you give somebody who is trying to qualify for their first PT, or maybe did qualify for their first PT and is you know hoping to do like Austin.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:34

Like me. Well, some of it is you've got a lot more experience on how to get better. Um because that's that's one of the things is like learning how to get better is such an important piece. And I I definitely had to fight with that for a little bit. Like coaching is useful. Like do not be afraid to get other people to help you get better. Um and that's what the team has been amazing for. Uh and just having people around for when you're like really frustrated and be like, I can't do this. The right people around you are gonna be like, you've got this. Like we're gonna hold you up and you are gonna if you want to keep going, you will keep going.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:26

It's it's funny that you mentioned that because that was actually something that I specifically said uh last week. Uh I don't know if you remember Jonathan, but I was talking about that um last week for you know, when one of the steps to getting to the Pro Tour for me was just having that support network that, you know, will keep propping you up, that will give you the the confidence to believe in yourself when you might not at in the moment, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:48

So and here I thought it was just because you wanted to get the invite, so I would open my$200 bottle of whiskey for you. That was just a um so JJ, your your story is I I'm sure gonna resonate with a lot of people, and it's just always interesting to get kind of a background of how people got there, their level up moments, and then obviously making it to something like you you've you phrased it as a bucket list moment. Um being said, the bar's about to close you've gotta take something home. So we're gonna do multiple formats. I know you love modern, you've played some standard. It's time for pillow talk.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:30

Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:31

Who are you taking home with you? One of each.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:33

I mean it would be Esper Blink and Modern, because I can't help myself.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:39

With emptiness or no emptiness?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:41

I would probably take the vile emptiness list that I am playing right now. I'm not totally sure if it's there yet, but I'm having a lot of fun with it. It feels good.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:52

The vibes are good.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:53

The vibes are good. Uh standard is a little more complicated. If I'm assuming like I could find the reps on the deck that it would take. The excruciator deck looks really interesting, but I'm not super excited about its positioning. I think it'd be airbending. That's what it I knew I was looking for something. Um I'd play blink in standard. Like I I realized that that's what it was. I had I had started building it too, and then I because I was that was one of my options for the ProTor, and then it kinda like didn't pop off after Lorin quickly enough, so I can like most people, I kinda put it away. But that deck looks really fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:40

Fair.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:43

If I'm trying to win-win with something that I already have experience with, it's gonna be elementals. But if I'm assuming that I can f figure it out in time, air bending is the deck I would take.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:54

Alright. Austin. So I said Eldrazi the last couple weeks for modern, but I I kinda I kinda think that I'm gonna go I think I'm gonna go prowess in two formats this week. Okay. Uh I think that prowess in standard has been looking really interesting, and it's been getting um, you know, some pretty decent results uh as of this recording, and so I think that that's a a good place to be looking. And then I think that Prowess and Modern is just a lot of fun. I've had some success with the deck in the past, and I think that that's just a really cool deck. So uh there are a lot of new, a lot of new iterations going around with uh lots of new cards. So we're gonna go two formats prowess this weekend.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:37

Dang it, Austin. Uh I was gonna pick that for for standard. I've been uh a several weeks now, mono green landfall has been what I've said I would play because I do think that sapling nursery is just messed up. Um that's still probably my pick, but the Draycatcher Prowess list, you guys are probably very quickly learning that I am a sucker for a fair Steam Vents deck. So uh definitely very interested in that deck in standard as well. In modern, I've I said Affinity before. I said the People's Cannon with Belcher. I still think that deck's actually like pretty reasonably well positioned. I I think Affinity is probably where I would land, but uh I also really like that that cutter deck, which is sort of Affinity Light, and if I'm honest, is probably worse, but just looks really fun right now with uh Emery and Tameo and sort of a little bit more fair game plan, but having having the is it cutter or the uh yeah, the cutters.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:35

Can I sneak one thing in that I you'd asked me about and then I tangent it like I forgot to actually commit to the line about Riddler? Okay. So this is this pillow talk moment, it's perfect. Um Riddler sucks in Esperblink. And I am committed to believing that it's not just me that is a problem with, uh, even though I just like can't make it work the same way other people do. I had got myself down to two when I went to Houston, and I regretted playing those two copies.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:11

I remember you telling me that, that uh you played two and you wish you would have played zero.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:16

I boarded it out I think all but two of my matches through the 15 rounds. It is another two-mana do-nothing play that the advantage with Overlord is that all the stuff that you're playing in the deck is built to flip overlord and not spend more mana on it. Whereas if you don't ephemerate or fellia Riddler, you have to pay five for it. And the deck is too mana hungry for that. And it's too easy to just lose games because you're staring at three Riddlers in your hand and being like, Well, I'm gonna spend two mana to cantrip. And that's not a solitude off the top, so I guess I lose. Uh whereas Jess Guy doesn't have this problem because they're so much more committed to specifically working on Riddler. Um because they're not playing Flicker Wisp. And Flicker Wisp and Riddler do not go well together. So it's like I I am committed to thinking that Riddler is actively worse for Esper. If you want to be playing Riddler in an Esper deck, it should be in Goryos. It does everything you want to in that deck. Um But Esper Blink does not it does not fit. I think that there's better decks out there and people just aren't playing it.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:43

I'm I'm curious to see how this ends up playing out with modern season coming up because people are gonna care more about the format again. Uh I know in internally in our testing we've certainly been caring about it more lately. Um that everybody's playing four weeks.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:57

I think I'm the only person that qualified to the Pro Tour with Esper.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:01

In Houston.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:02

I don't yeah, I don't know. I know I was for Houston. I couldn't remember if somebody did at Vegas. Um I'm gonna pretend that that's not a high-rolly moment and that I actually know what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:17

So we're gonna be we're gonna be BAMsing from from Twitter, you know, play for one rings, uh play zero riddlers. That's that's the that's your riddlers.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:26

The the worst part is some of my testing is being like, do I wanna try and play Riddler again? I hate myself, but I am trying to be good and not ignoring the possibility that I am wrong. Things have changed, the format's different, sort of.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:43

But Pillotal's all about hot takes. We don't actually take any accountability for what we're saying here.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:48

Riddler sucks. Yeah, Riddler sucks. Take it out of here.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:51

Just drop the drop the line, it sucks.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:53

Riddler. Hurt it here first. It sucks. Don't put Riddler in your Esper Blanc deck.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:58

With that being said, everybody, if you'd like to sell me your quantum Riddlers, I will buy them at uh TCG nothing. Uh give you like 50 cents or something since the card's so bad. Uh perfect, man. Well, JJ, we really appreciate you taking the time to uh share your story with us, and we know the viewers are gonna love it, and we just really thank you for coming to our pillow talk.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:20

This is a ton of fun. I appreciate it. Thanks, guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:22

You bet. So, Austin, uh that was a fun conversation with JJ, getting to hear his story. Yeah, uh it's gotta resonate with you coming up to your your first pro tour, just kind of hearing how how he did it, but also you got to witness that first hand. Are you gonna you gonna do 400 drafts or 150 drafts or whatever you did?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:42

Man, if I had the time, I would. That would be fantastic, unfortunately. I don't think that I'm gonna be able to make quite that many, but I'll do as many as I can.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:51

Yeah, I know you've played uh quite a bit of limited, but we've we've got some plans to get some paper reps and stuff in here too. But um I I think everybody who's listening, you have to understand that JJ was super committed and put in the work. Uh also just a great human, great teammate, someone to be around that uh we were super happy to see him, you know, happy with with the experience. And uh it's not gonna be his last. Uh I'm convinced of that. It's the first, but I think you'll have more to come. And we really appreciate his contributions. And uh man, what an exciting conversation. Really appreciate it, and hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:31

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:32

Thank you for coming to our pillow talk.