Let me get introductions out of the way first: my name is Paulo Cabral, to most of you a nobody, since I’ve never made any impressive results previously. Those who play Magic Online regularly may know my name, PauloCabral_br, and if it wasn’t for what happened in the last 4 hours, I would probably be the champion of the POTY (Player of the Year), specialty category.
Now, most players who are beginning to play Magic Online right now have no ideia what that means, so I will try to explain within this article what is the POTY and what are the advantages and disadvantages of playing like this.
The POTY consists of a main format and (up until now) 7 subdivisions, by specialty. Last year, talking to Carlos Alexandre (_Batutinha_)at a PTQ, I had a pleasant explanation about the advantages of playing online and a brief ideia of what was the POTY. Even having most of my funds coming from Magic, I was uneasy to leave paper Magic and go full online, because, as the people who know me personally know, I live by myself since I was 17, with no regular source of money. So, I gave the ideia some consideration, but continued to go with my business as a dealer as usual, since it was my main source of money, although not very efficient.After making two top 8, one top 4 and one top 9 at regionals, trying to qualify to play in the Brazilian Nationals, I realized I had good deckbuilding skills, but didn’t had the time to practice enough for this tournaments. So, I decided to adopt Magic Online as my plataform of training, although at the time I didn’t had much money to build a standard deck, so I elected to start playing Momir Basic.
At the beginning, the only tournament available to people who wanted to play Momir was the 2-man queues, because the avatar started as a promo avatar and it was only launched as a product in 2011. I started playing in those 2-man queues, the prizes were in m10 packs(wich were about 4.1 tix at the time) and at the beginning it was very hard for me, because I didn’t had enough money, and when I started losing, I had to sell some of my paper cards just so I could continue playing online. After about a month of this, I managed to borrow some constructed decks (Shards of Alara Block) from some of my friends who already played online.
After a while, they started putting Momir tournaments for more than 2 players, and in December 2010 they made a free Momir Basic tournament, in wich me and two of my friends decided to play(PauloCabral_br, neofenix_br and Cordioli). Me and Bruno (neofenix_br) were eventually eliminated, but Cordioli was still undefeated, and since I was the best Momir player of the trio and without any chances of prize, he invited me to play the rest of the tournament. I finished it in second (of 700), and Cordioli gave me a large part of the prize, and so I could finally start practicing standard.
One of the first standard decks I played was featured in a Tom Lapille column on the mothership (http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/114), it was a list that my friend Diogo (Hanna_Montana – yeah, he can’t choose names so well) gave me, a Pyromancer Ascension build originally designed by Mike Flores. It was a unusual build, since it used an active Ascension to kill the opponent not with burn, but withArchive Trap, having the support of Trapmaker’s Snare, making it so an active Ascension + a single Snare in hand + an opponent who searched his library this turn was enough for the kill.
Well, after all of that, in February 2011 I had an incident, in wich one of the players who relied on me for cards(in paper) stole all my cards, leaving me with no other sources of income, besides Magic Online. It was then that I started really dedicating myself to the game, and once I realized I could pay my bills and, with some luck, slowly start to build a pool of cards that I could use. At this time, I already knew what the POTY was, but since I was still struggling to make things work out, I decided to not pay it much attention, continued to play Momir, and started playing Pauper, because it was a really cheap format, that I could afford to build decks and play.
I started playing pauper with affinity, to whom I owe much of my 2nd place on the POTY. At the beginning, my list was pretty basic, cheap above all! It didn’t even used Gorilla Shaman, wich at the time was only 3 tix. In a couple of weeks I started winning and managed to use the money I won from the tournaments to pay all my bills, although my economic situation at the time still was pretty delicate. At the end of 2 months, I was already completely familiarized with the Pauper format, managed to buy all the cards I needed so I could customize the list for what I was expecting to face, including the Gorilla Shaman (MVP in the mirror), and all else.
So, one day, in a Daily Event, I played against a singular deck, played by a even more singular player. I was facing the Deluxe Brown deck, played by E. Hustle. So, at the end of 45 minutes, and after drawing 3x Fling, 4x Atog and 4x Disciple of the Vault, I had failed to win…
I was pretty upset with the loss, and I arrogantly said, at the end of the match: “it is the first, and last time that I lose to you, playing that deck.” I was pretty tilted, so I went to the first bot I could find and bought 3 x Relic of Progenitus. In a pretty short space of time, I faced him again, winning this time, and congratulated him for his deck and his skill as a player. A few weeks later, I realized that he was part of a clan, and since I belonged to none( I had created one just so I could control how many packs I had won), I asked him if I could join his clan, to wich he responded saying he hadn’t invited me previously because I already had one. In the end, he not only welcomed me to the clan greatly, he also informed me that I was currently 3rd in the POTY race(Specialty), wich was kinda of a shock, since I didn’t even knew I was doing okay! He asked me if I could beat the guy who was in first place, and it was then that I decided to dedicate myself full time to playing online, started asking the orcs about everything, and started chasing informations and lists about various formats.
A week ago I was 19 QP’s behind the first place in the POTY Specialty, the excellent player Digwen, who usually is pretty active, and wins regularly. So, today, at 10:30 AM here in Brazil, after a friendly talk to him, I decided to stop chasing the 1st place (I know I could do it if I continued trying), since I was so tired both physically and mentally. I think I proved to myself what I was trying to prove – that with dedication, hard work and friends, I could do it, because without them, you don’t get anywhere.
Props to neofenix_br, E. Hustle, Hanna_Montana, Adramaleque, Capoeira02, Digwen(Yes! he is a great player and a great guy), and most of all to my beloved girlfriend, Juliana (July), who has always supported me in all the possible moments.
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