When Matt won Pro Tour Lille, I hit him up to say congratulations. Within minutes we started talking about life, lessons, ambition and my “go wide, no dragons, no worries” Dromai aggro Blitz deck....
He didn’t laugh or dismiss my curiosity for progress and innovation even once. I could tell from the first day we spoke, Matt was built different. When the time came for the Pro Tour Champ interview, I needed to open with this:
“Is it possible that longing for something is better than having it? It’s been said that satisfaction is the death of desire.”
Matt's rise in FAB might appear quick and easy, but the reality is, it took years of heartbreak.
I wanna be “the best in the world”.
"On the drive home from Pro Tour Lille my first thought was “I want to win UK Nats”
"I’m actively aware that…I don’t want to be satisfied. I need to manage burnout. I’m the type of person who has either none at all, or am hyper focused."
“Burnout can be exponential. The road to recovery is not linear.”
For two years I was playing TCGs online. Streaming around 10 hours a day. Seven days a week.
It was too much.
Chris Ray highlighted recently, the importance of balance. I'm trying to find more of that in my life these days.
I’m training to become a firefighter! I’m looking forward to it and in January it’ll be official.
Having the privilege of coaching Flesh and Blood players is hopefully a way I can give something back. I’m making changes. Finding balance.
When you’re winning, it’s easy to be happy, to have a great time….
…but it doesn’t always go that way.
I wanted to understand how Matt thinks. And why. I asked him about his mindset. He won the 2021 UK National Championship, finished as the runner up at Battle Hardened Leeds and has many more wins to his name. I asked how Pro Tour Lille was significant.
Pro Tour Lille had so much more fanfare, there was more on the line. It's more intense. I said to James, "Pro Tours in Flesh and Blood feel like a genuine Pro Tour." I was sad when Magic events went away. You can't debate that tournaments in Flesh and Blood are the best. People understand the pathway to the Pro Tour, to World’s.
At the end of round nine, in the draft, I locked up a World's invite! I was so excited as I had no idea where I would end up at the end of the tournament.
We talked about pressure, such a huge part of competitive Flesh and Blood. Matt has experienced a lot of this, in many ways. How did he consistently finish well at events, and how did the pressure of high stakes Flesh and Blood affect him?
I didn’t feel any pressure per se but, people look up to me as a leader whether I want to be or not. I think there’s no pressure, but there is that responsibility. Many players reach out and of course, if they’re polite and friendly, I’ll answer their messages and requests but if it's just “Sideboard plan plz” …maybe not.
For this year’s Nats, yeah there is some pressure. Mainly, I don't know what I want to play for the first time ever! At Pro Tour Lille, I had a different take on the best deck. The Briar we had at the 2021 UK Nationals was miles ahead of the meta and Battle Hardened Leeds in March was the first Blitz after Everfest dropped, so we had some innovations with Viserai. I did some work and play testing with the Arsenal Pass crew for BH Leeds. I did a lot of goldfishing ( playing without an opponent, drawing a starting hand and playing until an opponent who does nothing to stop you is defeated. ) and was like, “Lads! I’ve been dealing over 20 damage before the end of turn two pretty consistently here. We’ve done it!”
My introduction to Pro Tours was a very interesting and difficult time.
I took a lot of brutal losses while I was just getting started but I tried to find ways to rationalise things. When I lose big games, I try to process defeat in a specific way. As soon as I lose I look through the graveyard and try to commit the game to memory. I try to recall the different decision points to think logically about what actually happened. I find that way, it's easier to process the emotions. My loss to Francesco Giorgio in the Battle Hardened was a massive departure from my first loss to him in back in the day in a Magic PTQ where I was inconsolable.
I was happy with the Leeds loss.
I was curious as to how Matt tunes out the noise. The pressure. The comments. The distractions. What kind of preparation goes into a Pro Tour? Mentally. Physically. Even spiritually.
Uprising Draft
We started Uprising draft testing before the Calling Utrecht.
For our Lille preparation, we rounded up a bunch of UK players for the weekend. We had a Draft Camp - trademark Matthew Light. It's his birthday today actually! Happy Birthday Matt! He sent me flowers after I won the Pro Tour Lille.
I'm not really a flowers guy, but that was really special and significant to me.
At the Draft Camp, we wrote down everything. Any and all thoughts, plays, lots of key ideas and at the end of the draft, all eight players would lay out their deck and talk about the draft. We tried to understand every aspect of the draft to build a complete picture of everything that happened.
We only did about seven drafts but it was about the quality of learning rather than just the quantity. We did that for UK Nats too. Jamie Faulkner and Peter Ward were part of our testing and they went on to have amazing limited results after that.
At the end of each draft, we did a big debrief and it was like having eight people's learning all at once. We did the same with Tales of Aria.
The information and understanding that we had of the format was vastly different from where we were at the start of the weekend compared to where we were at the end of the Draft Camp weekend.
Classic Constructed
Belittle was the card that I focused on. I love that card. I think it's powerful and we did a lot of testing and work on that online.
I tried to put Belittle in many different decks and for a while, it was very strong in Chane and other decks around ProQuest season two. It was a very good card in the first version of Fai, but then when Stubby Hammerers got banned I thought, “What deck’s next?”
People say “Why are you trying to put Belittle and everything?” Well, I'll stop doing it when it stops being good!
I looked at the card and I tried it in lots of different archetypes and lots of different decks, different heroes and I always thought, there shooooould be something here in constructed. I slowly chipped away with my progress in deck building until it became refined.
Between rounds at Pro Tour Lille, I was intentional about “resetting”.
It's easy to become lost in the cycle of chatting with your friends. You talk about your losses, you talk about their losses…It's easy for someone like me who naturally talks a lot to not stop and reset. And resetting…that is a really significant word to me.
At the end of round five, I was 3-2 and started to become a bit frustrated, so I decided to just sit down at the table after my game. I didn't get up and walk around and talk to people, and a group of my friends started to kind of gather around me. There were around 10 people sitting around me but I just sat there with my headphones on and listened to the same song.
I reset.
When it came to the time in between the semifinals and the finals, I needed my song. They were preparing for the live stream and a lot of the production crew were saying “Time to get ready”. I said “I need to listen to my song”. “How long will you be?” and I said “Well, until the song is finished.”
At the back end of the event there was a lot more pressure. It was the money, the title of Pro Tour Champion. Everything that goes with that. A lot of nerves. There were a lot of nerves but with my absolute hardstyle blaster going…it made things a lot easier.
Matt gave more specifics as we delved deeper into what kind of advice he might have for Flesh and Blood competitive players out there. Mental strategy, deck choices. Philosophies.
Don't play bad decks.
You could just say, pick a good deck and practise a lot. Some people can pick up a day before…some people can pull it off. But personally, I need the reps. That's how I got good at playing card games. Basically just playing more than almost anyone I know.
When it comes to philosophy, in cards games, or maybe in anything, you’re looking for truth.
I'm always in pursuit of truth.
What actually is the best deck? To plainly understand the truth of things is really difficult. In anything.
You have to understand what you want out of the game. And pursue it relentlessly.
Life parallels and lessons came up. Matt has a plethora to draw from on this topic. Creativity and innovation caught our focus and we asked questions to each other along the lines of “Why even bother innovating? How much of an edge is there? Is it even important?"
I think there is still a lot of undeveloped territory in Flesh and Blood. For example, there is no singular consensus on what the best Dromai deck is and throughout my time in FAB, I think the idea has changed of what a good Briar deck looks like and I've done that. Twice.
In FAB there's a lot less widespread data at the moment and with innovating, you can try many different things and often come up with nothing… but it is very, very rewarding when you do come up with something! I'm sure that in the future we will be looking back and see so many innovations that we missed. We learn more as a community, however at the moment, it seems most of this is done by individuals, especially the proactive, aggressive plans.
We spoke of adversity and loss. And how we can overcome.
I think these days I am much better at dealing with losses.
In 2019 I lost both my father and my younger brother.
After that, negative things and difficult things to process, are not so impactful. Fortunately, I still process positives very well, if not better.
I'm fairly certain I've seen the worst day of my life…that’s horrific. Genuinely horrific, but kind of uplifting in some ways…
so it cannot get any worse than that. And after a lot of the things surrounding the UK National Championships, when I compare that to other things in my life, it was not that bad to work through.
I asked Matt, “What gave you the strength to choose this positivity?”
At some point, it’s kind of the only option.
I existed in a limbo for a long time afterwards, like four or five months. Literally the only thing I could do was play League of Legends.
And then at some point you just have to keep living. At some point you have to be bigger and stronger and better. It’s better than just being sad all the time.
When I'm struggling or when I feel really stressed, the gym helps me out. Physical activity. It makes the positives even better and it helps me deal with the negative things in my life. Brendan Patrick's FAB Fitness Challenge was a really amazing time and a great opportunity for me to be able to give something back to people. It was great.
I struggle a lot with ADHD and physical activity, exercise, the gym really helps me. Even if I had done nothing with my day…maybe I just felt like "Yeah that day was a waste", no day is ever a waste if I go to the gym.
I see a ladder, I climb it.
There were some surprises at Pro Tour Lille. Yellow Snatch was one of them.
Surprises from the Pro Tour…well there was less Fai than I was expecting, but even after the Stubby Hammerers ban it was performing very well. However, in the tournaments in the real world, Fai just doesn't seem to perform. Another observation was there was a lot of Prism. That was something you could always count on. Maybe she was over-represented because she has a lot of fans. People love her, so if you had a good Prism matchup, well of course that's very important, but that is something that is able to take you quite far in a tournament. Well, something that used to be able to take you quite far.
When I got to the players' banquet the night before Pro Tour Lille, I realised me and my team, we could not find enough yellow Snatches. People laughed. They thought I was joking. I was running around the venue trying to find yellow Snatches. “Really? You're not joking?” I asked a lot of people and when I asked Tariq, it was very interesting. I could see on his face, he was starting to put the pieces together.
Highlights of Pro Tour Lille also came outside of the grueling 17 round mixed format spectacular.
The event had amazing energy. It was so meaningful and important to me seeing so many people happy for me. It was an incredible feeling.
I arrived back in England from the Pro Tour after winning. I had no mobile data on my phone in France, so when I got back home to the United Kingdom it was crazy! I had about 520 Twitter messages and around 200 on Discord. I tried to respond to as many as possible.
My girlfriend went to Disneyland in France. That's not really for me but she had the time of her life! It's funny, in Lyon, France I have been to the convention centre there for other card games about three times- but I have never been to Lyon and the same in Washington in the United States haha. I’ve been to a big gaming convention centre there at least three times- but I have never been to Washington..I'm there for the games, first and foremost!"
In the Uprising Draft section of Pro Tour Lille, Matt had a plan. One plan. Classic Constructed, well, the threads of fate intervened more than once for the soon-to-be Pro Tour Champion.
I wanted Fai.
I was essentially forcing. I think the format can support about five Fai in one pod. Even a medium Fai can over perform. I was locked in at pick zero.
There are just some amazing value plays with Fai. Searing Emberblade and Phoenix Flame are incredible. In my first draft, I had a medium Fai. I went 2-1 and I was pretty happy with that. My second draft, I had a very good Fai deck and I went 3-0. One of these was a two turn game. It was against Dromai. I chose Dromai to go first. I did about 15 damage to Dromai, then they attacked me for 16 damage. I came back for the final 5 points. Nice.
I had some nail-biters in Classic Constructed. I played against Pablo Pintor in round 14. I went down to 1 life, used every piece of armour. I had exhausted everything and I had to really hope for a miracle to win that one. In the semifinals, I had to pray that my opponent did not draw a 3 value defense card to block my Overload. In the final, when I played the Sonata Arcanix, I had to hope that I flipped the right cards.
Goals. Aspirations. The future.
I'd like to be the best player in the world.
Not sure if that is true now. One of the best. There are a lot of people better than me.
I have a long way to improve. Flesh and Blood is a puzzle…I’m always learning. Searching for truth. Beyond what anyone can hope to really find, but I can always learn more. Be better. Develop further. Keep improving.
I hope in six months, I look back and think… I sucked.
I think there is a lack of top level strategic content. I hope to be able to provide some useful content for people.
They say it’s lonely at the top, but there is more than one top player at the top of the mountain the way Matt sees it. Who is he looking over his shoulder at for November’s first ever Flesh and Blood World Championship?
When they ask who's the best, I have to say Michael Hamilton. When I speak with a lot of players, they might not know all the concepts I’d like to talk about, but when I talk to Michael…I don't know a lot of concepts he discusses. Some say it’s an Oldhim meta now. God, I would not wanna face him.
Matt Rogers is certainly a big name and a strong player. Pablo Pintor…maybe the best player? Pablo hitting back-to-back Pro Tour Top 8s.. It feels like this impending, encroaching doom, playing against Pablo. A lot of Polish players are some of the sharpest in the field. They have a very strong scene. An amazing community. Strong performances, and I wasn’t surprised to see two of them in the Top 8 at pro Tour Lille. Sasha Markovic is one of the strongest. He doesn’t look to copy. He’s almost exclusively trying to innovate and that leads to interesting places.
There are tons of great players. In a field as big as the World Championship, I would and could lose to anyone.
I hope I have a good deck.