Decisions, decisions, decisions

I'm playing 0+2=1 against Zx at Baileys, a favorite haunt for beers and gaming. Admittedly, it's more for beer geeks than gaming nerds but it all works out, I promise.

There's all kinds of plays being made but here's all you need to know:

He cast Teferi and I lose. Sure, I cast Sunder (thrice!) but it didn't matter, because in a control v. control matchup like this one, the one who cannot cast Counterspell loses.

Now there's two issues here: First, I know how Zx works and I know you have to keep Teferi off the table. Second: I had two counterspells in hand (Counterspell and Divert) and I failed to use them. Why the hell did I do that?

I've been thinking about that situation a lot and there are two reasons for it: First, I am hasty. I'm not used to playing blue, whose reactionary nature requires a slightly more measured play or consideration. It's a different mentality than the 'I'm doing it; can you stop me?' one that I tend to use and that requires me to Pay Attention (one of the big rules of the game.) Second, I'm very, very hard on myself.

I could have said: 'Wait, I have a response for that,' once my mammoth brain kicked in and realized I had a response to that because the game hadn't advance beyond my opponent thinking Teferi resolved...but I didn't. And I didn't do that because I believe that there's no way to get better at this game unless I live with the mistakes I make.

But I need to cut myself a little more slack, I think, because the people I play with tend to perform like countermagic doesn't exist, which can be a hard mindset to break free of. If I can do it, though, I think my play will improve. On top of that, I don't have to crush myself every time I make a mistake, especially when that mistake is so easily correctable.

Speaking of decisions, I've decided that the appropriate card draw spell for Thingy should be Visions of Beyond. I look forward to testing this since I have a feeling it'll net me three cards instead of one more often than not. The other card I was considering was Flux but this card is subject to one of the Rules: Only use symmetrical effects if you can break them. In the case of Flux, I think bad players will make bad decisions but good players will make ones that will cause problems for me.