This past weekend, PPG’s Dallas Summit made waves with big Riftbound, Lorcana, One Piece, and CookieRun tournaments. Our friends at ChallengerTCG won big in several events, which is great to see. I also saw an interesting upcoming event by Turn ‘em Sideways: a China vs the World qualifier. It’s six rounds of Swiss, then the West's top 16 take on China's top 16 on July 25. Signups close July 11, I’d move on this if you want.

This week: Every competitive player can tell you about the card that won them a tournament. Nobody tallies the forty games it sat dead in their hand. Two articles: one on why goldfishing alone in your room is training your worst habits, the other on why certain Edison side deck cards are remembered for the highlight reels, not the whiffs.

Let’s get into it.

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Solo playtesting rewards your riskiest keeps and never punishes the whiffs. Talion on how goldfishing wrong is quietly training your worst habits and the data-driven fix.

By Talion

Everyone knows someone who spends a lot of time goldfishing. For those unaware, the practice of “goldfishing” refers to sitting by yourself with your deck (or more commonly these days, one of the playtest features on your chosen deckbuilding site), drawing an opening hand, and going through the motions of your deck as if you were playing a real game. It’s a useful diagnostic tool to determine how consistently your deck performs certain actions and functions, and it helps you gain the “muscle memory” to be able to play through familiar gamestates more often.

And all this is fine! Goldfishing to determine how often you can present a win or a Rhystic on turn 2 is totally fine!

This is not how most people goldfish. I very commonly see people post screenshots with clickbait captions like “this is my boardstate on turn 3”. But when you look at the hand they kept to achieve said boardstate… well, risky would be an understatement. Or you ask them what plays led to this point and they describe a sequence of actions that has you internally counting how many pieces of interaction or common hate pieces would completely blow them out - or in some cases, the odds of them losing to themselves (looking at you, Gamble).

I’m not just saying that this doesn’t give you useful data (which it doesn’t). Goldfishing this way is actively harming your gameplay in real games.

You see, when you are looking at openers while goldfishing, you might keep one that looks a bit sketchy. After all, if it doesn’t work out, you just shrug and go to the next one. You probably don’t even remember how many times this has happened. Your brain doesn’t internalise “failure” during goldfishing the same way it would internalise it in even a casual game where you’d be sitting there staring at your Mox Opal hand that would for sure be crazy if you just ripped an artifact off the top.

Your brain does, on the other hand, internalise success during goldfishing. Human brains are pattern recognition machines. If you keep a risky hand enough times in goldfishing and get paid off, your brain starts associating those types of hands with the reward chemicals that get released when you “win” your goldfish. You are not immune to the dopamine hit.

So how should you goldfish? I suggest a data-driven approach. Set yourself a goal during goldfishing: “cast Rhystic Study”, “win the game”, “generate 5 mana”. Every time you reach your goal, record what turn that happened. Don’t make assumptions about actions your opponents are taking, such as casting spells into Rhystic Study or paying for Smothering Tithe.

The data you will gather this way is far from perfect, but it’s significantly more useful than aimless goldfishing because it forces you to look at a list containing all the times you failed, or were slow. This helps you internalise the failstates of your goldfishing more, and allows you to train your mind to accurately evaluate when a hand is too risky to consider keeping or a play line is unlikely to pay off.

At the end of the day, there’s no substitute for just getting out there and playing real Magic. If you don’t have time to go to a physical location, I strongly suggest looking into setting up Cockatrice on your computer - it’s free, open source, and has arguably better functionality than Magic Online (don’t send the Pinkertons please WotC). Perhaps you’ll discover some destructive play patterns to address during your next goldfishing session.

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Team Events just hit open beta on TopDeck. Trios, Two-Headed Giant, Riftbound 2v2: you register as a team, your friends join with one tap from an email invite or a QR code, and you climb the standings as one line. Captains pay once, teammates never see a checkout, and nobody has to email the TO a roster ever again.

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Kycoo, Fossil Dyna, Vanity's Fiend, D.D. Crow: everyone remembers the blowouts, nobody logs the bricks. Eric Shen on the difference between a good card and a good memory.

By Eric Shen

Often I watch deck profiles or gather others' opinions on the cards above and hear “this card is broken” or “this card won me so many games.” 

Lots of players remember the highs these cards can create. In my opinion, these players were very fortunate to experience these highs in their tourney runs and not the lows that these cards can experience.

By no means am I saying these cards are flat out bad, but these cards are not as good as people think. They are more situational and not always the most consistent card. I'll be going through each card to explain common misunderstandings and what I think about each card.

On paper, this card seems absolutely insane. It prevents cards such as Blackwing - Vayu the Emblem of Honor and Miracle Fusion from being activated. On top of that, if Kycoo deals damage, you can banish graveyard cards like Necro Gardna/Plaguespreader Zombie in Vayu Turbo decks and Treeborn Frogs in frog decks.

So why do I think this card is overrated if it supposedly does well into 2 of the best decks in the format being Vayu Turbo and Hero Frog?

Well against Vayu Turbo, they often start off with a set Hamster or Ryko, which Kycoo does not trade favorably against. Kycoo only does well into an Armageddon Knight/Dark Grepher with no trap card, which is pretty situational. Sure, Kycoo can be a good card in a simplified game state, but that's pretty situational as well. Kycoo also just loses to an established board or a normal summon Sirocco the Dawn.

Against Hero Frog, Kycoo really only shines when the Hero Frog player opens Swap Frog and then passes. On almost every turn after that, if you do not answer a monarch, Dupe Frogs, or an Absolute Zero, Kycoo will not do well. 

On top of all this, Kycoo uses your normal summon. It will most likely be your only play unless you have some sort of extender. 

I think Kycoo’s best matchup is actually Lightsworn decks because most of the Lightsworn monsters they leave on the field have less than 1800 ATK and Kycoo can run them over and get through Necro Gardna.

Kycoo should be carefully sided in. When you can afford to side in another normal summon and when your deck can deal with established boards or simplify the game state and let Kycoo shine, that's when Kycoo is at its best. You cannot just throw Kycoo in your deck and expect it to perform.

People swear by this card but this card has been pretty hit or miss for me. The most talked about matchup for this card is frog variants. 

The biggest oversight about Fossil Dyna is that people forget it gets walled by Dupe Frog and Substitoad. You should try to pair Fossil Dyna with a monster greater than 2000 ATK to prevent your opponent from accumulating resources and walling you out. 

The second oversight is that against Hero Frog, which is the most popular frog variant, Fossil Dyna gets ran over by Stratos, Ocean, Alius, and Junk Synchron. That’s 4 cards plus Reinforcement of the Army plus (at minimum) a copy of E-Emergency Call. The deck naturally plays 6 monster outs to Dyna, and we’re not including any spells or traps. 

So on top of a 2000+ ATK monster, you ideally need to pair Dyna with some form of protection against monsters, commonly being Bottomless Trap Hole or Dimensional Prison. This dream scenario rarely happens. Dyna is more of a checkmate card when you can establish a big board and pair Dyna alongside it.

This leads me to not want to open Fossil Dyna. If you do, it often sits in my hand until I can finally (hopefully) set up a situation to drop it. Ideally, I want to draw this card mid-game after I’ve made a push. However, Fossil Dyna’s second effect also allows you to set it into opposing boards like Absolute Zero or Dupe Frogs. So it is definitely a bit more versatile than just a situational floodgate.

Besides frogs, many beginners side Dyna into matchups where it’s very ill advised. Dyna shines against matchups where the opposing deck’s normal summons are weaker and cannot threaten Dyna. For example, you would not side in Dyna vs. a deck like Vayu Turbo because most of their normal summons would beat over Dyna.

We’ll have part 2 for you later this month….

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