With the North American WCQ coming up, if you're going, what are your expectations? Do you expect to go far? Do you expect to scrub out? In this blog, we're going to go over the healthy approaches to having a successful premiere event, and for some people, vacation.
First off, what deck will you be running? Some people have many decisions to make on that. I remember my trip to YCS Charlotte. My friend was deciding on Dragunity, Blackwings, Anti-Meta, or Plants. I'm usually the grand decision maker for what he runs. I told him to play the deck that you are going to have the most fun with. If you play a deck by force, you're going to lose because chances are, you're going to not know how to play it properly. Either that or you're not going to have any fun at all if you sit there and lose round after round.
Another thing that people fail to do is to be themselves. I don't mean that as in you being you. I meant that your card choices have to be you. Even if you play the cards only at your local tournament, there's still a really good chance that you will encounter a deck like the ones you play at your locals. This is what we call player preference. This means the cards that YOU play that bring you the results that you desire. Lets say 2 people play Machina Gadgets. I personally like to play 3 Gearframes, 2 Fortress, and 1 Cannon. My friend tries that out and doesn't like it. He gets better results with 3 Fortress instead of 2. The truth is, you will not be successful if you netdeck someone card for card. There will be cards that you wish you had in there that your normally like.
The hardest thing to do in any Premiere Event is to take a loss that you know you could have easily avoided. Misplays happen all the time, and that included very stupid ones. I remember at a Virginia Regional that I lost because I forgot to use Solemn Warning on a Chaos Sorcerer, and next turn I had game. Instead, I lost, and it made me wanna quit. The best players have the ability to recover from it and just move on. If you can have a short-term memory (not like 5 seconds short) for just one day, you'll be completely fine. If you even THINK about your last round misplay during the next round, you will misplay again, and you will eventually drop from the tournament because your head is just not into the game.
So how should I approach a Premiere Event? First off, you need to assume that you're going to have like an x-4 day because so many people will be playing. I tried this psychological method, and I ended up x-1 after 6 rounds in New Jersey a couple of years ago. After my mind woke up and realized what I had just done, I thought so much about it during the last 2 rounds of day 1. All I needed to do was win just ONE more round to make it to day 2 in my very first Premiere Event! Instead, misplays stormed against me and I lost both rounds. I took it quite hard when I left the building, and that night when I was lying on the hotel floor. To sum up the rest, don't even think about your record. Just take it one round at a time, and pretend it's round 1 each and every round.
I even understand the nervousness of the last round. Some people are on the bubble, and they need to win, or they're out. For those rounds, just play it slowly and take your time. Don't even put a card on the table unless you're absolutely sure that's the right play to make. If you're that nervous about the last round, then that's EXACTLY what it feels like to be in the same spotlight as of someone in the NFL or any professional sport. All you have to do is be very cool under pressure, and make sure that you don't think about anything else except what you're doing right now.
In conclusion, just don't think about winning every round. Don't even think about having a success story for fellow players to to look up to. You should assume that you're not going to hold a trophy or a Blood Mefist by the end of the weekend. As long as you do that, well...anything can happen!
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