The new patron of saints and angels

So I've been busy lately.  The holidays always are.  However I've been doing rather well considering how much I hold onto lost causes.  Maybe I'm just getting to old for the irrational shit.... haha

Hopefully.

Other than the holidays I've been busy testing a deck for standard.

Standard for those who don't know is a "format" in magic the gathering.

Standard is the type of tournament I'll be attending this weekend in Indy.

The deck is U/W flash.

The deck is insane.

Anyhow, I've just dealt with the biggest stressor in my life~!

I'm finally getting over someone I've needed to be over a lonnnnnnng time ago.

It was just a rough timing for the break up when it happened.  And I turned to drugs and alcohol to get by instead of standing up like a man and fighting for myself.

I literally decided to give in like a wounded animal in the wilderness.  Fucking pathetic.

I've been cleaner and cleaner when it comes to substance abuse as the years go by.  I'm just glad I don't have to be chained to the substance(s) or the memories I was repressing for so long.  I was literally not only blinded by drugs, but the bad memories I never had faced.  I was too scared to face a reality without this person.  And you're probably thinking "you're way too young" but it didn't matter to me.  I wish I would've met her like 5 years down the line.  Then I'd have all my shit figured out and things would've turned out much different XD (yeah right).   Its just that crappy part of life that gets you.  I fell madly for this woman.  Jeez did I fall off of the fucking moon and land on mount Everest kind of love I had for this girl.  Everything about her was just perfect to me, I just didn't need anything else.  But, all good things must come to an end.  NP

So I'm just glad I can say I'm over it.  And finally mean it.


I did find a new love though..........



She's been better to me than my other love ever was.....


Her name is U/W  (see what I did there!!?? :p )

U/w has been my pet style of playing magic over the past couple of years.


I just love the aspect of tempo based magic.


I love how I can figure out the puzzle, end a game, before their cards are even relevant to stop me.

I feel like an artist when I play this deck.  So much finesse in ever move that I make.  And I make them look easy as fuck!!!!! Fuggin BOOTYFULLLLL!!!!

 The deck that is all the rage right now is BR zombies a deck I FUCKING DESPISE OMFGGGGGGG


FUCK THAT PILE OF WOTC GARBAGE


FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK THATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

I swear wotc has a vendetta against me!!!

They're like ohhhh how can we piss off Tyler Winn this season

We will make aggro the best deck and make it unstoppable and uncounterable and annoying as fuck (fucking gravecrawler and messenger!!!@#@#$@#$)


Cool  cool I say.  I'm going to crush all these muther funkers that are gonna play zombos this weekend (ACTUALLY MY PLAN IS TO HOPE EVERYONE PLAYS AN ANTI DECK WHICH MY DECK HAS A GREAT MATCH AGAINST!! HEHEHEHEHE)



So on the non magic related side of life.....

Poker has become increasingly more availble in the US the past couple of months.  I'm am so excited!!!!

Bring in the new wave of fishys!!!!

:)



I've also been thinking about going to work for UPS, and get back into college.  I think I'm ready for that commitment.  I also want to stop smoking cigarettes but i'm having a lot of trouble with that....

Well I'm pretty whooped so i'ma hop off of here, but anyone that wants to say something just say it.  I don't bite.  I do get bored and fed up with things rather often but don't let that fool you.  I'm really a caring and pretty easy going person.  GET to KNOW me!  Good night SAN diago

The rise and fall. Emotions and the lifestyle of a gambler.

It's been a few days now.  The past week has been both interesting and flying at super speed.  When it comes to being a card player that's just how it is.  Everything is uncertain.

I'd rather just be in school, with no vices, and learning something relevant so people that are close to me get some kind of hopeful feelings.  My family is rather conservative, and I'm extremely liberal.  They get really scared about how I go about things in life, but I just wouldn't be happy any other way I don't think.

I get scared too.  When you've got everything to your name on the line just to eat or get gas the next day its not easy at all.  One wrong move then you've got to figure out how you're going to get back on your feet again.

I just love the intense adrenaline.

Sometimes its hard to get up and even go the next day because it feels like the future has already collapsed in my life.  I'm stuck at the bottom and I feel like there's no way out.  I've stopped learning anything that doesn't involve cards.

And it sucks....


There are so many things left to do in the world, and I can't achieve anything.  At least that's how I feel.  I'm so held back by a special someone I used to know.  It's like I'm forced to prove her wrong.  I don't know why I feel so obligated to fight for this, but until I win I can't stop.  And its a losing battle.

I guess emotions just make you crazy...

I constantly ask myself if this loathing is even remotely okay, and I answer every single time NO.
It's like some uncontrollable force pulling me into this more and more.  I feel exactly like the seven mary three  song "cumbersome".  I wish I could stop it or change it somehow, but after all this time I've grown to just accept it.

It drives me insane, and I'm not being sarcastic.

I've had many downs though, and with my hard work somethings have paid off.

I played heads up against a very good poker player and beat him 2 out of 3 times to earn 20$ and a possible staking on a major level.  This quite possibly could have been the break I've been needing for so long.


I'm starting to think that if you want something bad enough, and you don't take no for an answer you, can do anything.
Shit just keeps falling into place.  And I've been doing absolutely nothing to cause it.  It's crazy.


Deep down inside all I tell myself is this:  I'm gonna be a great one.  Never give up.  Make this shit happen.  And prove them all wrong.

My first magic article Haha

I wanted to today to be a lazy day.  I decided to show everyone a Magic the gathering article I wrote a long time ago.  I think its cool because I wrote something and I seem to hate writing things like papers and such.
I probably could have been more in depth, but it was my first one so fuk U!!! haha

Here it is:

No secrets.

By: Kolby Winn

Delver…. What a topic to start my first article ever with.  So, let’s get down to business.

Creatures:

4x Delver of secrets

4x snapcaster mage

4x Geist of saint traft

3x restoration angel

Instants

4x vapor snag

2x thought scour

3x gut shot

1x dismember

1x mutagenic growth

1x faith’s shield

3x mana leak

Sorcery

4x ponder

4x gitaxian probe

Artifact

2x runechanter’s pike

Land

4x seachrome coast

4x glacial fortress

7x island

2x cavern of souls

2x moorland haunt

1x plains

Sideboard

3x hero of bladehold

3x celestial purge

3x timely reinforcements

1x divine offering

2x mental misstep

1x mana leak

1x dissipate

1x surgical extraction

There is the deck list I will be taking to any near by events this year.  Statistics show that delver is the deck the puts up the most wins by far.

Delver in a live setting is around 46.4% of the field, the next biggest deck is at 9.6% which is naya pod or other naya aggro strategies. 

Delver is still the most winning!-est deck in the online stats, which holds delver to 22.6% of the field.  While this number is significantly less than in live magic, it still means even after a huge online metagame shift where decks like naya, zombies, and G/R aggro have made a huge surge in play, delver is still winning due to how well streamed the deck and its components are.

The main deck is very similar to Yuuyu’s list with some minor changes to increase flipping delvers and to decrease overabundance of cards that you only need one per game of I.E. runechanter’s pike.

The sideboard is what I really want to talk about.  People already know what delver is, looks like, played against it, haunts them in their dreams J etc so it’s all about the sidebeezy today.

3x celestial purge – This cards is obvious, it deals with black or red cards, or zombies lol

Now this card also has a lot of hidden ability to take out heartless summoning decks after Starcitygames writes about it and I play against them online and destroy them.  All in all delver still crushes random tier 2 decks with ease.

3x hero of bladehold – this card just simply beats up on removal, all of the aggro decks, and is just a solid dork to bash with.  With hero being a ¾ he gets around silly cards like slagstorm and beats R/g and naya’s crushing vines plan.

3x timely reinforcements – Pretty obvious that this card just gets you more time vs aggro to set up hero or to get Geist equipped with a pike and start racing.

2x mental misstep – This card is force of will for one drops.  It is great in the mirror and vs the esper midrange decks as they will play their own ponders, scours, and probes, if not their own delvers. 

1x mana leak – this is the extra leak from the main deck.  You want to board it back in against ramp and other control decks. 

1x surgical extraction – This card is a spicy one and not for the faint of heart.  You simply attack things you want to get rid of from the graveyard.  Lingering souls, unburial rites and phantasmal images are the main targets of this baby.  Pretty simple, you can also get cards out of their hand if you play it right, as it’s always nice to probe then extract getting the lingering souls out of their grave and their hand.

1x dissipate – pretty much just the nail in the coffin vs control, they try to sit back and wait till they have a bunch of mana to stop your mana leaks, meanwhile you’re beating face and then they try to wrath your team and they just get crushed by dissipate because they think you don’t have it.  Sick tricks!

1x divine offering – destroy target artifact, gain life = to CC pretty obvious here.  Want to kill sword? D.O.

Now delver has bad matchups.  Lets talk about some of these match ups to see what were up against.

R/g aggro

Creatures

4x birds of paradise

4x llanowar elves

4x stangleroot geist

4x huntmaster of the fells

2x hellrider

2x phyrexian metamorph

2x wolfir avenger

2x wolfir silverheart

Instants

2x incinerate

Sorcery

4x pillar of flames

3x bonfire of the damned

Artifacts

2x sword of war and peace

Planeswalkers

3x garruk relentless

Land

4x copperline gorge

4x rootbound crag

4x mountain

2x kessig wolf run

8x forest

Sideboard

3x zealous conscripts

1x wurmcoil engine

2x crushing vines

2x combust

2x ancient grudge

2x beast within

1x phyrexian metamorph

2x whipflare

Now looking at this list, which is the list Scott came up with last week for the cash event at bluegrass, we can see why this deck presents a bad problem for delver.  Bonfires, swords, efficient creatures, effective sideboard plan.

They have it all, all delver can do here is race them and hope they don’t draw any power creatures and all lands.  This is definitely one of those “hope they just give up” match ups for delver. 

I’m going to try to sum things up by getting what we want to see, which are decklists and what a bad matchup and a coin flip matchup for the “best deck in the format” is.  This way we have the decklists for the team and everyone can see what colors/cards make the matchups good or bad for delver.

The coinflip matchup is Esper midrange.  This deck is essentially a delver deck, minus vapor snags add doom blades and a couple lingering souls, and add a sun titan package which you lose a little value in the delver mirror but you gain value against the more aggressive strategies.

Creatures

4x blade splicer

4x restoration angel

4x snapcaster mage

3x phantasmal image

1x sun titan

Planeswalkers

1x Gideon jura

Instants

2x doomblade

1x go for the throat

1x forbidden alchemy

2x gut shot

4x mana leak

3x thought scour

Sorcery

4x ponder

1x gitaxian probe

2x Lingering souls

Enchantment

1x oblivion ring

Land

4x seachrome coast

4x darkslick shores

2x drowned catacombs

2x glacial fortress

2x evolving wilds

3x island

2x plains

1x swamp

1x vault of the archangel

1x moorland haunt

Sideboard

3x celestial purge

2x timely reinforcements

2x day of judgment

1x oblivion ring

1x phantasmal image

2x dissipate

1x tamiyo the moon sage

1x divine offering

1x surgical extraction

1x go for the throat

These decks are all fantastic choices for the ptq season.  They each have there place in the metagame all doing something different.  However delver is still to me and a lot of people the “best deck” so I will be playing delver at the next standard event I run into.  One thing I would like to mention as we wrap things up today is I didn’t go over a control deck strategy in the article.  Control has been rather inconsistent in this metagame.  The card choices that would allow them to play control competitively aren’t really there in my opinion, and they haven’t been putting up the results.  However aggro is making a surge, and when aggro makes a surge control will find a way to get its hands dirty in the form of mono black control or maybe U/W miracles.  But delver has a great matchup against those strategies and wants to see more controlling strategies when playing.

So much for that, I hope this article at least helped you solidify your list or even better if you’re making the jump to delver J

Thanks for listening!

Kolby Tyler Winn

day two

Starting where I left off last night.... I'm going to talk about me "functioning" in society.



This is the bottom line: I don't know how to do anything other than play cards.

I hate this so much.  I used to be so versitile of a person that could manage to do anything.  Now all I do is fight for sleep and battle an addiction to cigarettes.  It's pretty pathetic.

My anxiety has gotten so bad that I have at least one nightmare every night or so.  There was a point to where I was taking medication and managing but now I cant afford to do anything.





(the sound of a tape rewinding.......)





Screw all that sulking crap....



Today I woke up and my grandmother was like "Tyler! You need to leave, you can't go home, and you need to find somewhere else to live".  I was like well fuck this day!

I went out in my car and drove a few miles.  I had the windows down jamming to some At the drive-in.  I stopped at thortons to get a soda then drove a little more.  I was just trying to clear my head.  I desparatly wanted to be at work to day.  I just couldn't get to sleep at a reasonable time.  My mind wouldn't let me.

Now I'm sitting here thinking of what else to write.



Well There are a few things on my mind right now.



1. I have to play test and gear up for the Protour for magic the gathering in a few months in montreal.

2. I need to get a job bad, or just wake up and go to the warehouse and work.

3. I should probably eat something.

4. I need to save up four thousand dollars to start making money at poker.

5. I need to go back to school something fierce.

6. I don't know where to start..... lol





FEEBLE!



I feel so useless sometimes, but I can't understand why.

I know why.  I just can't understand why I've become such a useless commodity as far as living is concerned.



Its like being stuck in a whirlwind of problematic senarios... Like I have no money, no gas, nothing really.  I need these things to go work and stuff.  I'm in debt up to my knees at this point so the more money I ask for I just get the backlash.  It's a never ending cycle of bullshit and misery!~

Atleast I managed to get settle up with Trey.  Glad one thing good has came out of this.



Well I need more fodder to write about today.  I don't want to write about anything serious right now.  I've got a lot of things saved up when it comes to serious topics like war and politics and religion.



So, I'ma see if I can't go up to the shop and at least practice welding again today.  I hope there is some productive value in that.  If not, At least I've tried.

The hopeful beginning to a peaceful ending.

To start:  It's about time I decided to write about stuff!  I'm basically going to spill what happens everyday in my life.  And, I'm going to sometimes break it down to thoughts as well (especially when I go into a manic moment).


Okay.....Here goes nothing.

So, right now, I'm literally fighting to do something I've always wanted to do.  That special something is to just be what I call as "normal".

By "normal", I mean, all I want from this world right now is to be able to function, work, have fun, and fornicate with the masses!!!!!!!!!!!! bahahaha. Well I got most of that correct..... Most people know me as one of two people: A complete loser that plays magic the gathering, failed out of college and almost high school, smokes pot on a consistent basis, and played in a few crappy metal bands.  Or you know me as a backwards, passionate, and ambitious person that lacks motivation to do anything except play some sick magic ;) and be broke as a joke going nowhere.  (I may be on the pro tour, but I still don't matter to 99.9% of the world...)

Anyhow,  I feel as if I can't be "normal".  It's almost as if I'm not allowed to be normal so to speak.  I do the things that I do because I want to be myself.  I wear the things I want to.  I act the certain way I want to.  I try to live the way I want to.  However, when I wear my sport pants and sandals and a hoodie in the middle of the cold weather, I get strange looks like I'm crazy.....Well fuck you douche bags!!!!!!!!!!! I know my clothes don't match, and I know my feet may seem cold, but they are not cold so fuck off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Now going by my definition of "normal", we will talk first about the work situation.....


Working is a fucking hassle.  Not because it is work and everyone that lives in America is forced to work blah blah blah etc.  It's because I can't fucking sleep on time and wake up on time.  Literally for the past few years I can't hold a job simply because of my fucking sleep cycle.  Right now I should be sleeping preparing to show up at the warehouse ready for work related war in an hour, but I'm unable to do that even know I tried going to sleep seven hours ago.  I have no idea what makes me unable to have a nice eight hour nap that everyone else has every fucking night all happy and fucking dreaming of magical dragon-ponies that rage into the vast oblivion! Until I can figure that out..... FUCKKKKKKKKKK MYYYYYYYYY LIFFFFFFFFFFFFE!!!!!!

The second part about "work" is my problem with people is astounding omfg!!!!!
Socializing with people is by far one of my least powerful skills ever.  Some people can just talk, talk, talk, talk about the most random shit and practically get off to it....  I, on the other-hand absolutely 100% cannot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you're talking to me, or trying to talk to me and I am having a hard time figuring out what to say, its because I'm probably not interested in what you have to say.... end of story.  And it is soooooo fucking annoying when I have to nod my head and just agree with someone just to make them feel like i'm listening.
And I'm sorry for being so seemingly egotistical, but I just don't find simple shit exciting at all.
STFU OR MOVE TO a BETTER SUBJECT!!!!!
When you don't figure it out, my anxiety goes off the charts making me just mute up and not say anything or look at you, and then I start to space out really bad.  And when that happens we both feel shitty now don't we? hahaha

That's pretty much the majority of what I hate about work.  I will continue more when I wake up later....  I'm pretty fucking tired........... finally!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!