This weekend I’m very excited to play in the legacy 5k at SCG Worcester. It’s always my favorite time of year when SCG comes to town, I can never get enough Legacy tournaments. New England has a healthy legacy scene so the turnout is never disappointing. No matter how I do I always leave feeling like I learned something new and I generally make a couple new friends. However, I always have trouble deciding what deck to play, there are just too many chocies. My weekly readers are aware of my quest to find a deck to replace Mudpost (something Battle for Zendikar has put on hold) which means this time around I’m even more indecisive about what I should play at SCG Worcester. The several decks that I have been playing over the last few months are great decks and extremely tempting.
I spent some time debating between 4 Color Loam, Dead Guy Ale, Junk Knight and Mudpost. After picking apart the strengths and weakness of each deck I started thinking about what the meta was going to be like and started wondering what deck would be most successful in the expected Meta. That’s when I realized that I was approaching the whole situation wrong. Instead of asking myself what deck was the best I realized I needed to ask what deck was the best for me. I need a deck I can play for several rounds without second guessing myself or worry about making the wrong choice because I’m not familiar with the deck.
Playing a deck based on the current meta can make sense, sometimes your default deck just isn’t going to fit into a meta. But for large tournaments it really is always best to play what you know. Tournaments are exhausting and hard work, playing a deck for several hours that you’re unfamiliar is a disservice to yourself. Over the last few months I’ve learned a lot while ‘deck shopping’ as I’ve been calling it. The most important thing I’ve learned though is that the pilot is just as important as the deck. Playing the meta deck isn’t very helpful if you don’t know the deck and it’s intricacies.
So this weekend I will be playing what I know, I’m not sure how it will do in the meta, I think it will do alright. I don’t think it is necessarily the best deck in legacy but I do know the deck very well. So next time you’re debating what deck to play at the next big tournament play what you know!
