As we all know, each new year comes with the optimism of change and the hope for a new beginning. I think that we all have been through the process of creating a New Year's resolution before and many of us have likely been successful and many of us have failed. In this past year for example, I have managed to quit smoking. However, my other health goals had fallen by the wayside. Even with that combination of success and failure, I am still in considerably better health than I have been previously.

So what does all of this have to do with the game that we know and love. Well, recently I decided that I did not like how my playing was going; moreover, I was unhappy with my play habits and with the results I was getting. Because of what I noticed I decided to take the idea of a New Year's resolution and apply it to magic.

Several years ago, Sam Stoddard wrote an article about creating a "Fearless Magical Inventory". He had noticed some issues with his play and even more so, issues with his win rates. He used this inventory to face his play issues and really be honest with himself as to why he was not winning. My goal here is to do the same thing, but extend a little bit more into what I am actually going to do to fix it.

Some important background information will be needed of course. I only play two formats, Commander and Sealed (prereleases). I do not play competitively, but usually fare well in competitive events. I play Commander casually and socially. That said, I do like to sometimes win and that is where all of this comes into play. I am a Johnny/Timmy and want my wins to be interesting and definitive, but I do like to win at least a proportional amount of time. I have noticed that over the last few months that it at least felt as though I have not been winning as much and certainly did not interact as much. It is because o this reason that I wanted to look at my own deck construction and play habits and really change some things.

So my goal with this effort is to have a true moment of introspection, to really be host with myself about my magic playing and then to develop some resolutions targeted at fixing some of these things. Some of them, you will notice are harder to "fix" than others and so I am not really targeting everything. I also decided to do this because if I have the same amount of goals as i have issues, I can not fix them all. I needed to narrow down and focus on the things that I think impact me the most and focus on making those better.

In the initial stages of creating the inventory, I found it easiest to break my thoughts into categories. There are many parts to a game of magic, from what you had for breakfast to what you do with every ounce of information you gain from a game. Here are the categories I broke my Inventory in to.

• Disposition - Magic is a mental game at its core. If your head is in the wrong space at any point, your play suffers for it. I think of disposition as my frame of mind before during and after the game, but for these purposes; it could almost be translated as by baggage. What is it about magic that I am bringing to the table mentally? Are they positive, negative, not even about the game? What are my psychographic motivations and do they negatively impact my winning?
• Construction - This is specifically related to deck construction and the decisions that I make during all stages of deckbuilding. This would encompass the initial build, updates with sets, updates due to meta shifts, and even determining that a deck is no longer viable.
• Starting Game - The starting game portion of this is all of the pregame pomp and circumstance. Getting playmats out, determining who is going first, shuffling up and getting a starting hand. This portion of pregame is something that many of us may take for granted, but some of the things done here impact games more than anything else you will do, so they are clearly important to look at.
• In Game - The part we all love. The interaction, the durdle, the excitement, to me, this is why we play, to actually play. This is also where we spend, hopefully, the largest portion of our time. Since we spend so much time doing this, it tends to be the area with the most opportunity for issues to arise and hence will potentially have the most items to correct.
• Results - Results is our outcome category. I have always told my child that you learn either way but learn most from losing. I still believe that fundamentally, but have a caveat to that. You learn the most from losing if you choose to use the information that you could have gained; otherwise, you just lose and keep doing so. So when we talk about results, we have to keep that in mind. We have to keep in mind that we have to actually pay attention to results rather than be contented by them or acquiesce to them.

One last thing before we get started, I wanted to point out a final thing. I have been playing magic since I was 15 in 1994-1995 area. While I have stepped away here and there, I keep coming back because I love this game. I am only going through this exercise because I feel like I am failing the game I love and I should do better.

So without further ado, here is my fearless magical inventory:

1. Disposition
1. I sometime assume that since I have been playing a long time I am actually a better player than my opponents which leads to fast and sloppy play.
2. I have an above average understanding of the rules, but have not taken the time to study an codify that understanding. This has led to me inconsistently applying my knowledge when reading a card, situation, or interaction in game.
1. Example - I had a play I was going to make to mirrorweave with the intention of effecting an opponent's [[roil elemental. I know how this works or I should, but I just didn't have it at that second and it caused me to have all kinds of issues.
3. I do not care about the stigmas attached to cards or card types. I will play strategies that are not liked by some players and it can turn them off from playing with me.
4. I do not play formats other than sealed and Commander, which causes bias and blinders in analysis of cards and play.
5. I play with the same playgroup which is a slowly shifting meta which causes play to get routine and makes me less prepared to play against other players.
6. I have an inclination toward getting perceived monetary value in a quantity rather than quality of cards.
2. Construction
1. I do not care enough about winning, which leads to the more specific issue of me wanting to play interesting cards over good/consistent cards.
2. I do not pay attention to mana cost curve mean and distribution enough during the deck construction and tend to construct with uneven distribution and too high a central tendency cost.
3. I do not update decks regularly, even when new sets come out as often as I should.
4. I do not put enough of the appropriate “outs” in my decks for a variety of situations.
5. I build decks that have “tunnel vision” , causing them to work well when firing on all cylinders and work very poorly when not since there is no backup plan.
3. Starting game
1. I do usually come prepared with decks, mats, dice, etc. I should start bringing pen and paper and be more consistent about bringing tokens.
2. I mulligan poorly. I keep hands that do not have enough lands out of fear that the next hand will be worse. I mulligan about 50% as much as I should.
3. I do not shuffle well enough, including my opponent’s deck. With a double sleeved deck I find it cumbersome.
4. I depend on others to keep the group life total which allows me to not pay attention to the game as much or life totals which causes other problems.
4. In Game
1. I do not depend on threat assessment to make decisions consistently.
2. I get bored if I do not interact over a span of time and interact for the sake of getting involved.
3. I allow myself to get upset over my perception of poor plays that end up impacting my play decisions negatively in that or subsequent games.
4. I do not limit my interaction solely on what will win me the game.
5. I politic inconsistently.
6. I get embroiled in conversation and hence lose track of what had transpired or do not spend enough time assessing existing threats.
7. I am impatient with slower players, which causes me to not pay attention to their turn.
8. I get nervous around new players and increase poor plays.
9. I attempt to play quickly and blow through phases causing missed triggers or incorrect mana tapping to the point where it inhibits my ability to win.
10. I am personally susceptible to disruption as I plan my turn in advance and can not adapt well to being disrupted.
11. Sequencing is done poorly and allows opponents to know what I am planning.
5. Results
1. I do not take notes, on how I lose, what I lose to, or what cards did not do well.

So at the very least, that was cathartic. It really helped me to group my thoughts by category. I will say that even after writing that over a couple of weeks and recording a podcast about this, I am absolutely sure that I did not hit everything.

The next step however is the harder portion. I have to think about what, of those above, I even want to change, which ones I think I am capable of changing and which ones I want to target for change. I tried to pick some from at least every category. Even then, some of these issues are difficult to act on. Regarding disposition, I am not looking at changing my personality, but there are some more effective habits I can put in place to combat my inclinations. As I said in the beginning, this is primarily a mental game. I tended to focus my resolutions on things that would force me to be in the right head space more often. I plan to do this by putting in place some fixes that really focus on ritual a bit more and emphasizes some compulsions that many players have that I do not have as ingrained.

Here is what I came up with:

• New year's resolutions
1. I will update the maybe list for each deck after each set is fully released.
2. I will save my money allocated to magic toward expensive cards on the reserved list rather than bulk.
3. I will practice for and get my Level 1 judge credentials.
4. I will review all of my decks for answers to various situation and make changes accordingly
5. Spend more time analyzing mulligans.
6. I will shuffle my deck at least 14 overhand shuffles each time I shuffle.
7. I will cut my opponent's deck every time and offer my deck for cutting every time.
8. I will pay attention to every phase of my turn and look at all of my assets before moving to the next phase.
9. I will keep track of life for my group in each game I play in (unless you know oloro).
10. I will start a deck win/loss matrix.

That is a lot of things to try to do. Now we have to start making this happen. Well some are easier than others of course. I have already started to update my maybe boards in ll of my 32 decks on tappedout with the last two years worth of sets. Honestly you all can help me in this regard also. Take a look through my decks and tear into them. I am not going to guarantee that I listen because I do still want to be a little of who I am, but I will certainly take the advice into account.

I have already sent an email to the regional coordinator to line me up with a judge for mentoring purposes. Though surprisingly have not heard anything back yet. I will be patient though. I have confidence that I will be able to pass the test with some nice hard work and studying.

I have already told my playgroup that any pod I am in starting in January 2017, I will keep track of life. Those were so respectful of my wish here, they almost seemed eager for me to do it. Huh...what great people.

And I have already created a google form to track my results. It was pretty basic. It asks me the following for each game:

• What deck I am playing.
• The number of players in the pod, since a two person pod will have very different deck and play needs than a 5 person pod.
• The format we are playing. My playgroup messes with all sorts of formats and I want to see if the format effects the effectiveness of each deck in a major way.
• The result of the game, just a win or lose here.

If the result is a loss it then asks the following:

• It asks various common reasons for loss.
• List any dead card draws I had. I hope this will lead to a list of cards to cut.

So with all of that, what do you think? Any thoughts on what I could have added as resolutions? Please feel free to hit me up here on tappedout or on twitter @squire9999. Also check out the Commander cast episode when we discuss some of this on air (should be episode 268 and should air in the new year). I have to say that this endeavor has been highly motivating and very interesting. I would honestly recommend this to anyone that is truly willing to be honest with themselves and want to improve.

Thank you all for your time.