Author: Phil Gallagher

Hey folks,

It’s been the better portion of a year since I last sat down and wrote an article for the ol’ website. I usually write my retrospective articles in June, but for reasons that will make sense in a minute, I decided to fire it off now.  My content has expanded quite a bit in the past year.  This labor of love that I started about six years ago has now turned into a real business.  Honestly, that’s really cool.  Minus tax season.  Not looking forward to that…  I like it when I tax people with a Thalia or Trinisphere, not when I have to sit down and crunch numbers myself!  

My content has gone a couple of unexpected directions in the past year.  First, I did not anticipate the reach that I would have. Roughly a year ago, BoshNRoll hit his first 10,000 view video; this was something that I thought was impossible for Legacy content.  This lit a fire under me to do the same.  I did a few months later.  At this point, I’ll probably hit 10k views on a video 5-10 times a month.  This is mind-blowing, and I’m so thankful that my hard work and dedication got me to this point; most content creators don’t get to make it this far.  The Magic community has shown me so much support, and the general positive tone of my Youtube comments and Discord channel is really a testament to the community I have built.  Honestly, I’m lucky that I made a content production push when I did.  The release of MH2 was a period of HUGE demand for content, and most of my top performing videos are from the period immediately after its release.  I suspect that the release of NEO will be another one of these great times to be a content creator; people are loving this set.  

Secondly, I drifted away from some of the content I focused on previously.  Vintage was something that I cared about quite a bit around the time of EW 2020.  Pauper has now replaced that spot in my heart.  That format has been very well received by my community, and the recent bannings combined with the release of NEO has left the format in a very healthy spot.  I would expect to see Legacy and Pauper dominate my content in the coming year, with some Vintage and Modern here and there.  In terms of analytics, my Pauper content is on par with my Legacy content, which is amazing given how recently I have started playing that format.

Finally, demand for my content has gone up greatly.  The wait time for a donation decklist used to be approximately 1-2 weeks.  Now it’s closer to a month. While having this much business is good for me, I don’t love how long this wait time is for the people who donate.  I haven’t come up with a true solution here yet, but this is something I’m currently puzzling through.  There may come a time in the next year or so where I move to donation decklists being a perk for people who have joined my Discord server, but I’m not quite there yet.

I currently find myself at a crossroads, which I why I am writing this article a few months early.  For the last 8 or 9 summers, I have worked for Virginia’s Governor’s Latin Academy as a spoken Latin teacher.  This year I find myself wondering if I should continue doing so, or if I should dedicate myself fully to being a content creator for the summer months.  The paycheck for Latin Academy is considerably larger than what I make doing content in a month, but really putting my nose to the content-creation grindstone could pay long-term dividends that far outweigh that check.  Can I say no to this check when I’m getting ready to buy a house with my girlfriend in the next year or so?  Should I focus on helping 45 students grow and foster their love for language learning?  Should I continue my commitment to this program I’ve been helping build for the better part of the past decade?  Should I instead focus on entertaining 10,000+ individuals as a distraction from the current woes of the world?  I know those distractions are important for me.  I’ve had a rough year.  My mother unexpectedly passed away at the end of the summer.  My cat got cancer and unexpectedly passed away a couple of months later.  I’ve been teaching during a pandemic.  War is breaking out in Ukraine as I write this message.  If I can bring a little spark of joy to someone’s day by playing some amusing jank and distract them from things like this, that’s a huge win.  Then again, for these 45 Latin students, Latin Academy is probably a life-defining or life-changing opportunity for them, especially if the Academy is held in person rather than virtually.  

It’s tough, and I’ve been struggling with this decision for a few weeks now.  If I try to do both, I probably end up in a spot where I just burn myself out.  You see content creators talk about this from time to time, but producing regular content is really tough when you have other life commitments.  

I have so many ideas for content, but time is a limiting factor.  I have some great quality of life improvements that I can make to the channel and some cool ideas for collaborative content.  Being able to dedicate my full attention to content means immediately solving some of the problems I have now.  My camera is sometimes out of focus in some videos due to poor lighting, especially in the winter months.  I can get a greenscreen setup and set up some professional lighting.  I just need the time to research, rearrange the office, and get things going.  My donation queue is too long.  Releasing seven days a week content instantly fixes that problem (at least for the summer!). I have standing offers to appear as a guest on about four podcasts, but doing these while keeping up my normal 5 videos a week is tough (Seriously, I’ll be in touch when I can!  I haven’t forgotten!).  I have a girlfriend.  I have a weekly DnD game.  I try to socialize once a week when I can.  My life is busy.  It’s a good busy, but it is busy.  I know my fellow podcasters are in a similar boat.  

Ultimately, after struggling with my choice, I came up with this decision.  I’ve decided not to work my Latin Academy job this year. I’m going to see what I can accomplish in a few months of being a full-time content creator. As my first major move towards this, I’m starting a Patreon for my content. I’ll be focusing fully on content creation during the summer, and the Patreon will house some exclusive written content and be a way to fund some of the projects that I have in mind for the summer and as well as some technological upgrades to my setup. Expect to see 7 day a week content from me on the ol’ Youtube channel. I’ve got some plans beyond just that. No spoilers, but I’ve got a pretty cool budding plan. After seeing how things go this summer, I’ll revisit my decision. If things don’t go well, I’ll continue to work at Latin Academy and put content on hold during the summer.  If the response to the Patreon is positive and the channel booms as a result of dedicating extra time to content, then I’ll continue to spend my summers as a full-time content creator. I may even find myself in the position a year or two down the line where I consider becoming a full-time content creator and set aside my day job as a traditional teacher.  At this point, that’s still a far-off dream, but it’s not unimaginable at this point.  

I didn’t write this article as an ad for the Patreon; it may end up serving that purpose as well, but that’s not my primary point.  I wrote this article to sort of show my thought process in a difficult time. It was a way for me to think through something that was weighing pretty heavily on me. Putting the words to paper gave me the resolve to follow through and take action.  Mental health is important, and if I can help normalize talking about difficult decisions and being open about emotions, that’s another, separate huge win for my content.  If you’re interested in supporting my content via Patreon, here’s the link.  There’s a few tiers with perks like additional written content.  Check it out if you’re interested in my content and are in a financial position to support me.  

As I finish reflecting on this past year and looking forward to the future, I would like to, once again, thank my podcast cohosts Bryant Cook and Brian Coval.  They have been instrumental to my success as a content creator.  For the budding Magic players or content creators out there, the biggest piece of advice for you is to not go it all alone.  Magic is a great game, but the full name is Magic: the Gathering.  Don’t forget that “gathering” portion as you go through your own personal journey.  Find some good friends, share your successes and failures with them, and make some great stories together.

-Phil Gallagher

AKA ThrabenU

Time flies, huh? A little over 5 years ago I started working on Thraben University, and my plan at the time was to make it the ultimate D&T resource. I initially set out on the project because I was tired of answering the same questions again and again on The Source. After I saw, “I just started playing the deck, and I cut Flickerwisp because it doesn’t do anything.” enough times, it was just nice to be able to link to something that explained the nuances of the deck instead of reexplaining the same stuff over and over again. I knew the deck inside and out. I wanted to funnel my academic energy into something. I figured this was a great passion project to keep me busy. I saw what Bryant Cook had done for The Epic Storm, and I wanted to make a D&T equivalent. I kept the website very up to date for the first three years of its existence, and I know I helped train up a ton of the current generation of D&T pilots by doing so. I built myself a reputation as “a D&T guy” or even “the D&T guy” according to some people by doing so.

I eventually bit the $700 bullet (Rishadan Port was $$$) and bought into MTGO so I could start streaming. That initial buy in to MTGO was something I put off for literal years because spending so much money on digital cards was just not something I could justify with my budget. Teaching is a great and satisfying job (although very exhausting this year!), but it doesn’t let me lead a life of luxury. Now because of my hobby, I can afford to treat myself to a new video game or a nice dinner with the girlfriend without feeling guilty. Streaming and content production has gone well for me. I recognize that I am truly fortunate to be in this position. There are so many streamers who stream to an empty room. When I boot up the stream, I’ll usually have 100ish people who just want to hang out, chat about Legacy, and just have a good time. I’ve worked hard to cultivate an open, accepting, and chill community, and hanging out with chat is often a great beginning or ending of a day.

Once I started streaming and playing on MTGO regularly, it became much harder to keep the website up to date as a single man operation, especially since I’m a total novice when it comes to web design (this site is held together with bubblegum, paperclips, and the support of my friend Kerry Milan). There were so many things I wanted to do, and I had plenty of unrealized ideas, but time was a limiting factor. I can’t overstate how much time it takes to do content production, especially if you want to make professional quality content. That strategy article you read over lunch, for example, probably took someone six hours to put together. As I took on more projects, the website became more and more neglected. The Eternal Glory Podcast, The Legacy Premier League, Twitch, Youtube, guest appearances on other podcasts/channels, guest articles for other sites… It adds up quickly. The website was also something I didn’t try to actively monetize. I didn’t want educational information hidden behind a paywall. That’s just not my style. However, once I started to make money by doing video content, it did mean that it logistically made sense for me to focus on that content more.

My video content started out as entirely D&T content. I did a Daily D&T series on Youtube and streamed D&T a few times a week as I had time. I branched out into RW Taxes and Red Prison once I acquired the pieces for them by grinding leagues, and then slowly branched out into other decks once I picked up a sponsorship from Cardhoarder. These days the majority of my content is based around playing donation decklists. This is not something I originally intended on doing, but I’m very happy with the direction my channel went. Originally, I thought I knew what sort of content people wanted. *I* wanted high level strategic content from deck specialists. Accordingly, I set out to make the sort of content I wanted to see. As it turns out, it’s just a narrow subset of Legacy players that really want that content. Legacy, in turn, is a small part of the greater MtG community. I was making content that appealed very strongly to other grinders like myself, but not necessarily to the more casual Legacy player or the Magic community more generally.

To illustrate this point, let’s play a little numbers game. Of my top 50 performing videos on Youtube, how many of them do you think are D&T content? If you guessed zero, you would be correct. My highest ranking D&T video of all time (commentary on Eron Relentless’s Showcase Challenge win) comes in at #61 currently, probably lower by the time you read this article. Putting that in simple terms, a high caliber event with a pool comprised entirely of talented players, with a deck expert playing, AND a deck expert doing commentary hardly attracts attention. I recently recorded a league with GP: Atlanta champion and ANT expert Cyrus Corman-Gill. The league was strategically amazing and at an incredibly level of play; it was my worst performing video of the month with the exception of one video I refused to publicize because it was such a disaster (I am never playing Jeskai Ascendancy again!). My good friend Brian Coval (aka BoshNRoll) poured his heart into a strategic deep dive series called Deep Analysis; the videos tanked in comparison to any gameplay video with a meme deck. While I really enjoy making high level strategic content, that’s not necessarily what people want to watch. That’s a difficult pill to swallow and something that took a long time for me to come to terms with. Most people want something new, interesting, and entertaining, not the pinnacle of Magic play.

I fought against that conclusion for quite some time before I gave in and just embraced it. My current donation decklist model is my compromise between strategic content and entertainment. I love playing Legacy at a high level, but there’s also something really cool about helping someone tune their pet deck or showcasing a neat idea for the first time. I’ll play the meme decklist, but I’ll treat it seriously. I’ll talk through my lines, critique the decklist, identify fundamental weaknesses, and so forth. The strategy-loving folks will enjoy my dissection of lines, and the more casual folks will enjoy watching Dark Ritual go BBB into something fun.

Last year I did try branching out a bit and doing some content for Monster Train, a strategy game similar to Slay the Spire. I did so when Legacy was at, in my opinion, one of its all time low points. Between the format’s health and the pandemic more generally, I was worried about the death of Legacy, or perhaps even Magic itself. I’m not a “the sky is falling” sort of person, but when I kept seeing my Legacy-specialist friends offload their collections and get out of the game, I knew there was real danger. I wanted to hedge against that by dipping my toes in other waters. The Monster Train experiment was not successful. It had the same problem with my original Magic content: it was too high level to be appreciated by the casual player, and hence was only enjoyed by the degenerates like myself who really wanted to dig into spreadsheet data and optimize runs. Narninian, one of the best Monster Train players, rarely gets more than 100 views on his videos, and heartbreakingly, when I just searched him on Youtube, I saw two of his recent videos had zero views. The game didn’t have the audience or staying power that I expected, and hence I abandoned that endeavor. I did also dabble in Arena a little bit, but once Legacy returned back to a palatable state, I lost all desire to play on that platform. Historic was a fun format, but it is completely unviable to do things like donation decklists for Arena; loan programs don’t exist, and the platform is built in a way that is not friendly to content creators who want to try out a bunch of stuff for their audience.

Okay, back to Legacy now. I do sort of miss playing in more competitive Legacy events, but my desire to do so isn’t particularly high currently. It’s a combination of two things: time and proactive avoidance of burnout. I probably spend at least 20 hours a week making Legacy content. The idea of spending another 6 hours or so playing in a Challenge on a Saturday or Sunday isn’t super appealing to me. Work and personal life balance are quite important to me, and I don’t want to neglect my girlfriend or irl relationships for Magic. I love the game, but the game isn’t my life. It is very easy to forget this when you get caught up in the grind, and I’ve been guilty of that in the past. The other side of that is just my nature as a player. My biggest strength as a Magic player isn’t that I’m some genius; it’s that I put in the work, get the reps in, and study up. If I spent 10 hours a week for the next few weeks preparing for a big event, I would be ready. Right now though, I don’t know every matchup inside and out right now with any deck. I could get to that point again easily, but I’m worried that if I try to keep up the pace of daily Youtube content AND start throwing tournaments into the mix, I’ll just burn out and end up producing medium quality content and getting medium quality tournament results. Nobody wants that.

That said, I do want to try and play some Vintage Challenges over the summer. I think Vintage is an excellent format currently. Truth be told, I enjoyed it more than Legacy for a good portion of last year. Vintage is still fresh and exciting to me, and I think Vintage really rewards the skillsets I’ve cultivated as a player. I would like to play a bit more Vintage than I am currently for the Youtube channel. I feel pressured to “get through” my donation queue though and not keep people waiting too long to see their decks, so I’m hesitant to take days off from the queue to just do my own thing. Even if the Vintage videos don’t necessarily perform as well as my Legacy videos, I *know* the Vintage community really appreciates the content. That alone makes me want to fire up MTGO and record some content.

---

So what’s coming in the future?

I expect my focus will shift heavily to Youtube in the next year, and, honestly, that process has already started. Making content made specifically for Youtube (i.e. has editing and less dead time) has really increased my viewership numbers there; I regret just dumping unedited stream content there for so long. Legacy content will still be my primary focus, but I would like to dabble a bit more in Modern and Vintage (if you enjoy those formats, just saying, the donation queue would love to see some love with broken stuff from MH2…). I’ll still stream, but it will likely turn more into “I stream when I feel like it” rather than “I stream every week at X and Y time.” In the last month while the school year was wrapping up, I decided I just didn’t have the oomph to stream every week; I focused on just making Youtube videos instead. This gave my week much more flexibility, and I’ve been much happier doing that. I don’t have details finalized yet, but expect to see closer to one stream a week than the 2-3 that I’ve been doing for the past few years.

Over the summer, I’ll likely strive for Youtube content 6 or even 7 days a week. That’s not something I can sustain during the school year, but it should be a nice treat for you all for a little while. I’m *really* enjoying playing Magic right now, and I’d like to funnel that energy into content while I have the time and mental energy.

I’d like to do some editing on the website. It’s probably time to sunset a bit of the D&T content; while much of what I wrote was timeless info, some of the sections (e.g. matchups) are comically outdated at this point. I’ll keep the stuff that is relevant for new pilots (and maybe expand it a bit), but reading 3 year old info on the Delver matchup probably doesn’t do anyone much good! The website also probably needs a Youtube calendar at this point in addition to the donation queue. I’ve also considering adding some sort of “brewing fundamentals” section to help people tune and think about their donation decklists in a constructive way.

I have budding plans for more collaborative content. No spoilers, but I’d like to get some new sorts of faces on the channel. Expect to see some of that content start rolling out in July.

More generally though, my plan is to just continue to grow and improve as a player, content producer, and person. I’m striving to get better, and my content quality has skyrocketed in the last year. It was not an independent effort though. Bryant Cook and Brian Coval really lit the fire in me to improve my content; we exchanged ideas and grew so much by working together. Julian Knab and Min Hoq helped me with a number of tech questions as I upgraded my setup. The folks in my own Discord channel were a great sounding board for my ideas, and I frequently popped in to other Discords for advice on tuning random decklists (shoutouts to the Burn Discord in particular!). I’d also like to thank Jerry and Pat of the Leaving a Legacy podcast for letting me shamelessly plug my content in their Facebook group; they’ve built a good community there, though one that is oddly obsessed with Worldgorger Dragon…

---

Alrighty, I’ve written what I came here to write, time to wrap it up. This isn’t the strategic sort of article I tend to write, but I hope you enjoyed this “inside baseball” article that gives you a look at where my head’s at. Thanks to all the support you all have given me over the years. The content I make is for the community, and all those little messages of “I got into D&T because of you!” or “Thanks for helping me tune my deck, I just got my first 5-0!” mean more than you realize and keep me wanting to make content. It may sound cliché to say, but it’s absolutely true.

If you want to support my content in a free way, simply liking and/or commenting on the ol’ Youtube videos is plenty. Share my vods if there’s something you particularly enjoyed or you know someone who just loves the deck I played.

If you want to support me financially, this link leads to my Paypal. If you don’t have anything in particular you want to see, just write “dealer’s choice,” and I’ll take that as an opportunity to find something fun and just do my thing. Full details about all my donation stuff is available here. All I ask is that you don’t send me a donation unless you’re in a position to do so; remember, Magic isn’t life. There are other more important things your money might need to go towards.

I hope you all have a great summer, and here’s to hoping that we can return to “The Gathering” and have some paper events again in the not too distant future!

-Phil Gallagher

It’s an obvious statement, but not all opening hands are created equal. For most decks there’s a very wide range of acceptable hands, though what exactly that means varies from deck to deck. Some decks need an evenish mix of lands and spells, other decks can get by on hands with one land and a variety of cantrips, whereas some need to mulligan aggressively for a specific plan. Years ago when I started playing D&T, I noticed that my opening hands with Aether Vial were noticeably better than the hands without it. At the time, I didn’t really put too much further thought into the implications of that observation, but now that I’m playing significantly more games (and with a wider variety of decks), I think my initial observation was part of something bigger.

Today I’d like to introduce what I call my Critical Card Theory. I believe that many decks have a card that is objectively more powerful and less replaceable than any other card in the deck. Opening hands (or early turns) that have access to this “critical card” will have a noticeably higher win percentage than those without it. In many cases, hands with and without this card may promotes entirely different play patterns. These critical cards are the cards that you should be most cognizant of. These are the cards that help to determine the strength of your hand. These are the cards that if you are given the opportunity to counter or otherwise answer one of these cards, you probably should.

It’s probably easier for me to illustrate my theory via examples rather than to stay theoretical the whole time. Let’s say that you are playing a Reanimator deck. You usually need three cards to go off: a creature, a way to discard that creature, and a reanimation spell. Accordingly, you are a three card combo deck. This is not true if you have your critical card: Entomb. Entomb allows you to be a two card combo deck; now you only need Entomb and a reanimation spell to go off. Thus hands with your critical card are going to be better than those without since they require require fewer cards to execute your primary gameplan. This, in turn, can allow you to use your resources differently and more optimally. Instead of targeting yourself with a discard spell to put your creature in the graveyard, you can use that spell on your opponent to pave the way for victory. Accordingly, stopping an Entomb (if possible) should be a primary objective if you are playing against this deck. The critical card is often going to be worth using two cards on, so trading a Force of Will for a critical card is probably fine in most cases.

So returning now to Aether Vial, what makes this card so good? Why is it a critical card? Aether Vial lets you cheat on mana more than most other cards in the format. If you think Dark Ritual is a good Magic card, consider how much mana Vial produces over the course of a game…yeah, that’s pretty busted. When you have a Vial, you can dedicate more of your resources to things like Rishadan Port and Wasteland, counting on your Vial to eventually let you put in enough creatures to win the game, even if you never cast one! There’s no other card like Aether Vial in this deck. Nothing else even produces close to the same degree of advantage that it does. No other card contributes so greatly to your win percentage. Your games with and without Vial play out like games with an entirely different deck.

In recent years, critical cards have been the subject of multiple bannings. Sensei’s Divining top gave Miracles an absurd degree of flexibility and enabled abuse of the Miracle mechanic. Deathrite Shaman was a swiss army knife attached to a a one mana creature. Opening hands with those cards just put you at an incredible advantage. Honestly, Gitaxian Probe probably fits my Critical Card Theory as well. The ability to start the game knowing your opponent’s hand is not to be underestimated. I didn’t play enough Probe personally to say that with authority, but I imagine that it probably felt like one of the better cards in a deck like ANT or Grixis Delver.

Now that being said, not every deck necessarily has a critical card. Many decks have a much more even distribution of power level between cards. This is especially true for the value-oriented decks. Consider Grixis Control for example. The card quality in that deck is pretty even; most of them are designed to give you a 2-for-1 of some nature. Accordingly, there’s not necessarily a card that *if it is in your opening hand* will greatly increase your win percentage across the field. Now Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Kolaghan’s Command are great and powerful cards, but those cards being in your opener don’t necessary directly contribute to your win percentage as much a critical card would. These cards hit play considerably later than the critical cards traditionally do, so they don’t qualify as critical cards by my definition, despite their objective power. These two cards are also less universally good than my idea of a critical card, as their power level is much more matchup dependent.

I don’t want to linger on identifying and discussing critical cards for too long before I make my next point, but here are few more examples of critical cards:

Eldrazi/Red Prison/Steel Stompy/MUD- Chalice of the Void
Goblins/Merfolk/D&T/Slivers/Humans- Aether Vial
4c Loam- Mox Diamond
Lands- Exploration
Reanimator/Tin Fins- Entomb
Elves- Gaea’s Cradle

So where do we take this theory from here? Once you’ve identified the critical card, it’s often useful to consider what the games with/without it look like. How do those games differ? How does resource management or sequencing change based on those cards? How does your gameplan (as the opponent) need to change when they do/don’t have it? How does your gameplan (as the player) need to change when you do have it?

Let’s your playing against Chalice of the Void in Eldrazi as our first example here. If your opponent leads on Chalice on the play, a good portion of your hand may just be dead. So what’s the scariest follow up play your opponent could have? Probably Thought-Knot Seer, as it could rip one of your few remaining follow up cards from your hand. To be frank, the games where your opponent leads on that sequence probably aren’t real games…that’s gonna be hard to beat for just about any deck? Let’s assume they don’t have the follow up Through-Knot though…how does the game progress with just a Chalice in play and a more normal hand? If your opponent doesn’t lead on something like an Eldrazi Mimic or an Endless One, then the game will be slightly slower than the games where they do in many cases. So the games where your opponent has Chalice have the potential to be shutout games with no interaction, but the games where your opponents lead on creatures instead will have a faster potential goldfish.

Understanding the difference between hands with and without critical cards can do wonders for your mulligan decisions. Let’s stick with the Eldrazi example from above for a moment. In mulliganing against Eldrazi, I would recommend asking yourself two questions: “What does my hand do against a hand with Chalice?” and “What does my hand do against a hand without Chalice?” I think this is a much better approach than the generic question of “Do I have good tools for the matchup in my opening hand?” In some cases, you may end up with a mix of cards that hedges against both sorts of draws, but does not actually have the tools to win.

---

So what is the take home message? Why does this matter? Being aware of critical cards in each matchup helps to inform your mulligan decisions and play patterns for the first few turns of the game. Rather than considering every possible combinations of opening hands your opponent could have and how you should interact with them, you can often split decisions trees in two, simplifying your decisions immensely. How do I play if they do have their critical card vs how do I play if they don’t have it? How do I approach this matchup when I have my critical card vs how do I approach it if I don’t? Thinking like this has really helped me to have a better grasp of the first few turns of the game and improved my sequencing.

I hope that I’ve articulated myself well in this article, and I hope that it is useful. If you have feedback for me, I’d love to hear it! This is one of the first times that I decided to write a pure theory article rather than one focused on a specific deck, so let me know what you thought!

-Phil Gallagher

June 23rd (once again!) marks a few important things for me: my birthday, the first full day of my summer job at Virginia’s Latin Academy, and the two year anniversary of Thraben University. Honestly, I’m amazed at everything that’s happened in the past year. Here’s a small recap of things that have happened on the site, though I’m sure I’m forgetting some things:

~24 new articles
Expansion of the matchup section
Significant revision of the matchups from last year
Creation of some useful tools and references pages (e.g. Math of Splashing page)
Significant revision of some of the splash pages
Significant revamping of the decklist tab
Reorganization of materials
More cooperative content than ever, including podcasts and guest articles
Creation of new tabs on the site, like Coming Soon
Organization of the first in-person D&T meetup at a major event
D&T mulligan survey that resulted in a heavily updated mulligan page
Creation of a stream
Creation of an accompanying Youtube Channel
Joined the Cardhoarder Network
Production of ~300 hours of streaming content
Accumulation of over 900 followers on Twitch
Active involvement in the D&T Discord Channel

Looking back at my goals from the previous year, I’m very pleased with how things have progressed. There were a few bumps along the way, but that’s just life. The stream didn’t get started up as quickly as I anticipated due to technical difficulties; accordingly, I didn’t quite make my goal of hitting Twitch Partner status (I’ve been sitting on the cusp of that for months though, so it’s inevitable). I have a few planned changes that didn’t happen due to some unforeseen stressors in my life the past two months or so; accordingly, I didn’t have much time to meet up with someone and work through some of the layout and technical changes to the website that I have planned. Those changes are coming, don’t worry, but I’m not sure exactly when I’ll get around to them.

But enough with the past, let’s look to the future!!!

---

---

First, the immediate future. I’ll be teaching Spoken Latin at Virginia’s Governor’s Latin Academy from June 22nd to July 15th. During that time, my streaming schedule will be sporadic. My summer job is going to take priority over the stream, but there will still be a good number of streams. I teach every other morning, so there’s the possibility for streams prior to noon every other weekday. I have Sunday mornings off as well, so unless I’m dead tired (which is a real possibility!), I’ll be planning on Sunday morning streams. Above all else though, I do need to avoid burnout, as my summer job is extremely intensive and has long hours. My afternoons and evenings will be almost entirely filled with various activities for the academy, so unfortunately it is extremely unlikely that there will be any late streams during my time there. If you haven’t followed me already on Twitch, it’s probably a great time to do so, as getting push notifications for when I’m starting up is probably the best way to catch when I’m streaming for the next month.

---

Now let’s look ahead to the remainder of the summer. This year my collaborative content was very well received, so I think it’s time to crank that up to 11. I’d like to announce that I am now accepting applications for exhibition streams! That’s right! You now have your chance to take on “The Dean” on stream for the enjoyment of the Legacy community. My goal is to showcase Legacy at its highest level and produce some high caliber content to promote interest in and growth of Legacy as a format. I’m intending these streams to be educational; they should showcase how to optimally approach and play a matchup. Anyone is welcome to submit an application, but I am looking for players who are masters of their decks and/or other Legacy streamers. I’d love to be able to stream both sides of a matchup, so that players can watch concurrently or take a look at the other side of the matchup later to see how things are playing out.

I intend for the bulk of these exhibition streams to take place between July 16th and August 5th, as I will have a great deal of scheduling flexibility during that time. That being said, I have no doubt that some of these will trickle over into the rest of August and perhaps the months to come. I won’t be able to accept every application, but I’m very excited for this opportunity. If you’d like to submit an application, please click here or complete the Google Form embedded at the bottom of this article. Feel free to pass on this form as you see fit.

---

Finally, let’s look ahead to my long-term plans for the next year. I want to really invest in the stream in the year to come. I’ve had so much fun interacting with the chat in the last six months, and I’d like to do some things to really improve that experience. Here’s the direction I think I’m going in the next year and my set of goals given my anticipated growth.

1. Finish upgrading my stream setup by buying a pair of new monitors.
2. Create a donation queue of some sort to clearly track my donation decklists and donation content.
3. Add some new graphics to the stream (e.g. stream starting soon screen and bathroom break screen)
4. Hit Twitch Partner Status
5. Hit 2000 Followers
6. Find a good balance between D&T and non-D&T content.
7. Increase my range as a Legacy player by playing more decks.
8. Increase average number of weekly streams from two to three.
9. Try to stream once a week at a non-evening time to allow others to catch me live more frequently.
10. Play in some Legacy Challenges.

---

I’d like to take this opportunity to give a shout out to a few people who have really helped with my content over the past year.

Kerry Milan– He’s one of my closest friends and my tech support. He helps me get Thraben University up and running again anytime something weird happens.

Zach Koch– He’s been one of my primary sounding boards for prepping D&T decklists for events.

MTGO User Piroko139 and Source User ZTurgeon– These two players were incredibly helpful in helping me learn Red Prison at a higher level. Zach gave me some great sideboarding notes, and Piroko139 was my sounding board for my various Red Prison questions.

My subs and donors– Thraben University is profitable now, whereas last year it was largely just self-sustaining. I can now justify putting more time and effort into both the stream and the website itself. I can’t tell you how much it means that I have such an opportunity. Thank you.

Cardhoarder– Cardhoarder gifted me with a large loan account, allowing me to play a wide variety of Legacy decks other than just D&T. This really opened up my audience beyond just those players who love D&T. I’m very grateful for that.

---

I hope you all have enjoyed my content over the past year, and here’s looking forward to another great year of Legacy content!

XOXOXXOXO
-Phil Gallagher

---

June 23rd marks a few important things for me this year: my birthday, the day I leave for my summer job at Virginia’s Latin Academy, and the one year anniversary of Thraben University. It’s been a hell of a trip for me, and I’d like to thank you, dear readers, for your support over the past year. When I first imagined this site, I expected to get traffic from a couple hundred D&T players…uh, it appears that I underestimated how much people would appreciate and enjoy my content, that’s for sure. I smashed most of my personal goals for the site. Let’s look at some numbers as of Friday morning (the 16th) when I first sat down to write this post:

• 37,537 unique visitors
• 173, 680 page views
• 37 articles
• 42 other pages of content

I could wax poetic about how pleased I am with those numbers, but I think they speak for themselves given my initial expectations. I averaged a little over a piece of content a week (ignoring the content I had in place when I launched), and I did not feel like I ever sacrificed the quality of my content in order to “just write an article this week.” My only poorly-received article was my guest article about the math of a 61 card deck. This discouraged me from doing collaborative work for a little while, but my podcast with Zachary Koch was a smash hit, so I’ll be revisiting collaborative content again in the future.

I’ve made a number of small changes around the site in the past two weeks. The home page has an edited logo that looks a little bit sharper (Thanks to Phil Park from Germany for that!). Some of the core pages have been updated a bit, including the decklist and FAQ pages. The Miracles matchup page is being adjusted to be a page on the emerging UW Control deck (I’ll update it more once I play more matches!), and I’ve removed most of the other references around the site to Miracles warping various deck choices.

While I’m largely happy with the progress of the site, I do think I failed to meet a couple of small goals:

• The matchup section is still missing some common matchups (e.g. Delver, Sneak and Show)
• Reason: I spent much of my time writing articles on decklists, spoiled cards, and tournament reports.
• The “How to Port” article never happened.
• Reason: I finally figured out how to convey the information, wrote it, and WordPress logged me out when I tried to save. /tilt
• I didn’t start stream despite multiple offers to borrow the deck.
• I didn’t pretty up the site.
• I didn’t change urls to display something meaningful instead of random numbers.
• Reason: I (unexpectedly) rewrote the Latin II curriculum for my county this year, which ate up a ton of time.
  Also, I may have messed up a few things with WordPress at some point that made my life more difficult…

---

That’s the past year. Here are my goals in the following year.

• Gain high level proficiency with another deck.
• Write at least three articles on that deck.
• Buy/acquire/borrow a deck on MTGO once I get home from Latin Academy (mid-July)
• Stream at least three days a week during the summer.
• Stream at least once a week during the school year.
• Become a Twitch partner.
• Use funds from Twitch, donations, and winnings to acquire another deck on MTGO to increase stream variety
• Add primers on at least five more matchups.
• Keep the decklist section more actively up to date; include builds other than my own.
• Do at least three collaborative pieces of content.
• Write at least two heavily data-driven pieces.
• Add some sort of recommended video section.
• Make a more active effort to attend every reasonable paper Legacy event, including side events at Grand Prix or SCG events

If you’ve enjoyed my content over the previous year, get ready for a ton more! I love Legacy and the Legacy community, and I’m going to do everything I can to promote the format and make great content for it. That’s my promise to you. I have a couple of stretch goals not listed above, but I’m going to keep those close to the chest until I know if they are possible. I don’t want to make promises I can’t deliver on, but I have a few cool ideas floating around…

[shameless plug] If you’ve considered donating in the past but never got around to it, I hope you’ll consider donating or subscribing once i get that whole Twitch thing rolling. In addition to the cost of buying a deck, I’m probably going to need to acquire some nice headphones with a mic (if you have recommendations on that front, let me know!), pay the entry fees for events, and get flex cards for the deck. I’ll also need some artistic types to help me make some Twitch emotes for my stream once I figure out how that whole process works[/shameless plug].

At the one year mark, I’d like to thank a few people in particular:

Kerry Milan- You helped me launch this site and answered all of my really dumb questions about html and such. I couldn’t have done it without you. You also magically fixed the site every time it crashed. You’re a wizard.

Shawn French and Harley Cox- You two helped immensely with my travel plans and playtesting. Thanks for putting up with me every time I wanted to try a new version of D&T. I can’t ask for much more from my roommates. “Phil, that’s not a new deck. That’s just D&T with two bad cards…”

Elton Wong and Sean Brown- Recently you two have been invaluable in discussing the Red Prison / Dragon Stompy archetype, but more generically, you two have been instrumental in helping me find good lists to play and test against. Sean, keep up the good work on those articles!

Zachary Koch and Louis Fata- I bounced a ton of ideas off you two in preparation for a few of my bigger events. Thanks for being my sounding boards.

The D&T Community- Whether it was on Reddit, MTG:Salvation, or The Source, you all gave me wonderful feedback and ideas. Even when we disagreed, we largely had constructive and positive discourse; that’s more than I can say about many other Magic communities.

I’ll be taking a three week hiatus from content production while I teach Spoken Latin to Virginia’s finest group of Latin students at Randolph-Macon College (unless there are some sweet spoilers, then I’ll find time somewhere). When I return, I’ll be back with a vengeance. I’ve got a fever, and the only cure is more cowbell Legacy!