“The Grind” – Preparation
Hello everyone! DannyO here from team Rogue T3ch and
representing WizardDen.com. My team and I are starting to plan for some PTQ’s
and GP’s and I’m very excited to step our game and see if we can put ourselves
on the map this year. In preparation for these upcoming major events, our team
is going to be participating in what I’ve dubbed “The Grind”. All big name
teams do this and we should be no exception if we want to compete on their
level.
“The Grind” – Noun – A set time where a team gathers
to playtest known archetypes against new brews in an attempt to find the next
best tech against the meta. This can also be referred to as a Gauntlet.
A lot of bigger teams (with significant funding) usually
meet up at someone’s house for an entire week of playtesting or even more! For
now, we are just going to focus our efforts into a single day. Since we are
dedicated to becoming the best players we can be, as well as helping others do
the same, I would like to share with you some of our methods for hosting a
“Grind” session.
Untap.
The biggest, and most important part, is… you should
probably be a part of a team. For me, I was fortunate enough to meet fellow
team-mate Ariel Adamson in a Saturday morning communications class at Boise
State a couple years back. He introduced me to his normal playtest partner,
Dennis Hersom, and shortly after, the three of us became Team Rogue T3ch. We’ve
since grown in both size and skill. No one wins a Pro Tour on their own. Ask
any of the pros. If you want to become more competitive I highly recommend
getting organized with your friends and forming a team or talking to existing
teams about what it would take to join their ranks.
Upkeep.
The next part of organizing a grind session for you and your
team basically just comes down to scheduling around each other’s schedules.
Find a time that works best for everyone and follow through. See if you or any
of your team-mates have a house or apartment large enough to host 6-8 players
with ample table space. If not, utilize your local game store. Find out when
they usually have a lot of open table space and use that time. Rogue T3ch is
very fortunate to be sponsored by WizardDen.com that will soon be opening its
doors here in Boise, Idaho. This will grant us the kind of space needed for a
grind any day of the week.
Draw - Main Phase!
Before jumping into the playtesting, there are a lot of
things that need to happen first in order for you to be successful. First of
all, you need to research the meta as a team. Since we are planning for
standard formats, we are focusing on the current standard meta which consists
of the well-known Mono Black Devotion, Mono Blue Devotion, U/W Control and a
handful of other Tier-2 or Tier-1.5 decks. You can use our blog to keep up with the latest Standard Tournament Top 8 Deck Lists. Check back every week for updates as more events take place including the results from Pro Tour Born of the Gods taking place this weekend! There are resources out there that can show you
how many of each archetype exists so you can get a good idea of what to expect.
This doesn’t mean that you should just know that there are a lot of Mono Black
players. It means you need to know exactly what cards are trending now in those
lists, and more importantly, how they are building their sideboards.
Once you and your team feel you have sufficient knowledge on
the meta, start by constructing the top 3-4 decks, using proxies if you have
to. Then, with the information you’ve found, talk to each other about some
decks that might be positioned well against these top decks. Then, build those,
again with proxies if you need to.
Combat Phase!
So now you have the Tier-1 decks built, some new ideas to
test against them and a venue to host this grind party. The next part is simple
– PLAY!
Give each tier 1 deck to a player on your team who you feel
can pilot that deck the best. Those players will play against the other half of
the team who will pilot your “Challenger Decks” (the decks you want to test
against these existing archetypes). Play some games. By ‘some’ I don’t mean 3 games
and move on. I mean a minimum of 5-10 games with sideboard coming in somewhere
in the middle. After that round is over, talk to your opponent about the match.
What was good? What was bad? What changes would you make? Write down your
findings, make those changes and do it again. You got all night.
If you have access to a giant white board (the biggest you
can feasibly handle in your venue), get it up there and have everyone write
down their basic results after each round. Keep it organized! The plan is to
not have all 6-8 of you talking in a mass chat in between every game, but
rather to keep everybody focused on their games and results. After a couple of
rounds with your opponent and some tweaks to your decks, have the tier-1
players rotate so every challenger deck is playing a new tier-1 deck. Repeat
all the previous steps again, and again for every tier deck you want to test
against.
It sounds daunting I know, but you can’t prepare for a 15
round event with 15 games of testing. Like any sport, your practice should be
much harder and longer than any event. I
know how some of you feel just thinking about an event of this caliber. I am
not a casual player, I only play competitively and don’t have much patience for
side games. “The Grind” scares even me. It’s going to be a lot of work,
patience and focus, but it’ll all be worth it at the end of the night and we
will all be better players for it. The ultimate goal for us is to represent
Team Rogue T3ch and Wizard Den at the next GP and get some “Street Cred”!
Whatever your goals are, keep them in sight as you dig into “The Grind”.
Cleanup Step
As your night wraps up, get everyone gathered around the
white board or whatever you got and have each person walk everyone through the
general statistics of their matches. Maybe focus on Mono Black Devotion and
have each person talk about their match-up with that deck. Then, move on to the
next archetype and so on. There’s really no wrong way to do this part. As long
as you all communicate efficiently, and in an organized fashion, you’ll make it
work. If you’re lucky enough to have some sort of decent filming hardware and
can film your matches, take time to review them with everyone and talk about
any play mistakes or key plays that are important in those matches.
With “The Grind” coming up soon, I look forward to writing
about our experiences and sharing them with you when it’s all said and done. In
the meantime, start researching the meta! Born of the Gods hasn’t shaken up the
format too much yet, but some decks are looking a bit interesting and I believe
there are a couple of new archetypes out there that could be real contenders!
From all of us at WizardDen.com and team Rogue T3ch, thanks
for reading! See you at FNM!
DannyO
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