Starting this year Heezy (yeah me) is giving out awards for the show to celebrate the year. And what an inaugural year it was. From amazing guests to banger topics we had it all to celebrate.
So here are the winners for Constructed Criticism’s 2022 Awards
Best Lighting for a Co-Host: Heezy
The video podcast is something we love doing and one of the most important things when you have a camera on is your lighting. I have always made a point to always have good lighting when hitting that record button, and I hope the viewers appreciate the effort my wife and I put into this setup this year.
Best Smile for a Co-Host: Abe
Look at this guy! Best smile easy
Best Guest: Jesse Robkin
This was actually a stacked category this year. Sol (https://twitter.com/targetplayer) talking about Midrange, Garrison (https://twitter.com/HanweirGarrison) talking about Judging, and more. This year had so many amazing guests, but at the end of the day I don’t just think that what Jesse brought as a guest was great, I actually think it was one of the best episodes to ever hit the CCMTG airwaves.
Jesse was humble, honest, kind, funny, and knowledgeable. Broke things down to help listeners understand her journey in Magic, and gave us all someone to cheer for in the NRG championship.
We do a lot of different series on the show to help break down magic for the listeners. Our power ranking episodes have been going since the beginning, but this year we began a series on Macro archetypes that started with on of our most popular episodes this year.
You might think that this being our tagline for the show and our hashtag it would always win this right? Well even though this is the first year of me doing these awards I also think in all our years it would be one of the few times it could be out our Training Grounds segments.
This year was a year of change and improvement for all of us, and because of that this segment lit up with a lot more moments of learning, and information between hosts. These moments were honest, and not scripted due to the nature of the segment, and we often got comments and questions around what was discussed here.
It was a great year to Always Be Improving
Best Deep Dive Episode: Black Red in Pioneer with Misplaced Ginger
Deep dives on decks are really fun, especially when all the players have been playing the deck a lot. However this was an awesome opportunity to sit down with the person who was the leading expert on a very important deck in Pioneer right now if not the most important deck. Derek not only did a great job of breaking down the deck, but also gave great insight into some things you can do to just win more with the deck right away.
Like this
(Sorry to Derek once again for misspelling your last name. Pite wasn’t even on my radar and that is my bad)
Most Valuable Episode: How to Win Your $1k
As we ramped up podcast production again behind the scenes one of the things we do during our meetings is discuss the type of episodes and topics we want to put out. For me this episode would be a slam dunk for listners before RCQs existed. It allowed them to get back into paper magic with success, and it worked. We immiediatly got feedback that people took this episode to heart and started winning their local cash events in MTG.
So how could it not be the most “Valuable” it gave them immediate value!
While because of how much I do I could easily see me winning this award, and while Abe does his job on the show basically perfectly. I don’t think either of us did something as hard as Mason for the show this year.
Mason switched from hosting the episodes to being a co-host. Mason is a great podcast host. He is amazing to work with, and has in many ways become as much a face of the show as me with all his time here. However as the team discussed ways to make the show better Mason switched roles, and allowed me to more naturally fit into the show doing what I had done for years, and we got immediate feedback that people liked the switch.
But I don’t think it is an easy switch. I think going from leading the show and conversation to being a co-host is hard, and Mason crushed it. Mason also booked the most guests this year, and obviously provided a lot of exposure from his events, and coverage.
We are so grateful for you Mason, and appreciate all you did for the show this year.
