Magic the Gathering

Strategy

Can You Hear Me Now?

By Lee Steht ⋅ March 26, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

You know what used to really frus­trate me?

Beat­ing a world cham­pion or “Big Time” player in a side draft or small tour­na­ment and then los­ing to that same per­son in the main event. The occur­rence would hap­pen so often that I would pon­der the myr­iad of dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios and out­comes as well as every­thing in between for days. I’d look at the win­ning deck list of some ran­dom tour­na­ment and get so frus­trated because it was the exact deck that had I played.

Now I’m obvi­ously NOT a big name or a mem­ber of the Pro Tour Hall of Fame, but I have played my share of com­pet­i­tive Magic. I was once the 21^st over­all com­pos­ite player in the world and one of the top 5 play­ers in the world for matches played. With this, I did find rel­a­tive suc­cess and some $$$ here and there. On top of this bit of Magic “suc­cess”, I used to be a “pro­fes­sional” gam­bler as well as a Pool and Bil­liards player.

You might be won­der­ing what the rel­e­vance of all this jibber-jabber is to you or to any­one (other than me). Here’s what I’m try­ing to say, “I know what it takes to make YOU a bet­ter player!” I’m not say­ing that every­thing you’re about to read per­tains to you, but I would guar­an­tee there is something.

<dis­claimer> I’m writ­ing this as if I were talk­ing to you first per­son and it may sound a bit harsh. Please under­stand for the sake of this arti­cle that I’m merely try­ing to voice a point or opinion.</disclaimer>

Let’s start with the ones you prob­a­bly already know:

#1 I know the cards bet­ter than YOU!

I have spent a major­ity of my days under­stand­ing the cards and how they work. Not only do I know every card in Magic, but I know EVERY deck in the for­mat “card for card”. Why is this impor­tant? Because it’s impor­tant to know every weapon in an arse­nal! NEVER should an oppo­nent sur­prise you with a card from their deck. You may not think it should be there and you may not think it should be played against you, but it’s there and you SHOULD expect it.

#2 I know my chances of win­ning are bet­ter than YOURS!

If you’re play­ing poker (like Texas Hold ‘Em), you NEED to know every pos­si­ble out with every card in the hand! This leads me to say that you should be aware of the odds dur­ing any tour­na­ment or encounter. What odds you ask?

What are the odds of los­ing any given encounter, Faeries vs. Elves? What are the odds of draw­ing a cer­tain card from your deck to win a match, Land or Shriek­maw? What are the odds of you get­ting into day 2 or the Top 8 in a tour­na­ment with an X-2 record? In the end, this game is more about sta­tis­tics and prob­a­bil­i­ties than any­thing else. Which is all FACT! Weigh­ing the options or answers before they come is truly a gift that not many play­ers have. Sun Tzu men­tions in ‘The Art of War’ the rewards of antic­i­pa­tion many times. In the­ory, we can both be play­ing the same deck and the results of our 10 games would be a draw 5–5. How­ever, the per­son who can antic­i­pate the next play bet­ter than the other will often win more. If you can’t antic­i­pate me or my moves, you can’t pos­si­bly beat me!

#3 I just play bet­ter than YOU!

Did you know, that back in the old days, acti­vat­ing lands for mana was once an acti­vated abil­ity and could be stopped or pre­vented by cards like Orim’s Chant and Abeyance? Do you remem­ber when you could play instants dur­ing your oppo­nents End Step and have their effects con­tinue through your turn (Way­lay)? Today’s Magic hasn’t really changed all that much, because though the mechan­ics have changed they are STILL a major fac­tor in suc­cess­ful play.

Now just watch­ing peo­ple cast ALL of their sor­ceries in Main Phase 1 rather than attack­ing first and cast­ing dur­ing Main Phase 2, doesn’t indi­cate their NOOB-ness. How­ever, most “Pros” rec­om­mend wait­ing to play (Non–Haste) crea­tures or sor­ceries ’til Main Phase 2. One of my favorites is the per­son play­ing a Gob­lin deck (with aver­age cast­ing cost of 3) and emp­ty­ing their hand by lay­ing land #7 down with­out any rea­son. They should hold the land until it is needed for something.

Believe it or not, many of the matches you lost could have ended in a vic­tory and I don’t mean that you could have won IF you had drawn a ran­dom card. I mean that you may have pro­vided too much infor­ma­tion, played too aggres­sively, played too defen­sively or just played too damn bad.

Hav­ing bad habits or play­ing mechan­ics poorly in Magic is NO dif­fer­ent than hav­ing a slice in your golf swing or a bad arc in your free throw. They cause you to lose, period. Some things are caused by habits oth­ers are a result of not know­ing. If you are going to win, you NEED to know what can and can’t be done.

#4 I’m a win­ner and YOU are a loser!

Have you ever been vic­tim to a Wrath of God just after cast­ing your last crea­ture and hav­ing 2 already on the table where your oppo­nent has none? Sucks don’t it.

Have you lost because a Turn 1 or Turn 2 crea­ture took half of your life while you waited too long to kill it?

Have you kept ques­tion­able open­ing hands with the wrong mana, too much or too little?

Now you could have said “yes” to any of the ques­tions above and said, ”but this is why” and you know what? It really doesn’t mat­ter. It’s just an exam­ple of poor judg­ment. Much like “fish­ing” the river card in poker or attempt­ing a “bank shot” in pool, they are very low per­cent­age options and often result in a loss. The pros don’t take chances they don’t have to and they really do think about what will hap­pen next.

In Pro Tour Hawaii, my oppo­nent tried to Repeal an arti­fact I had with X and X cast­ing cost (which I had set to 5) by tap­ping 11 mana. He was at 9 life and I was at 5. Now the inter­est­ing thing about this play was it was at the end of my turn and he had untapped, but the judge allowed him to take it back. Thank­fully, I still won! Two of the matches I won dur­ing that tour­na­ment were due to my oppo­nents mak­ing tech­ni­cal mis­takes, which pro­pelled me to fin­ish in the top 40 of the tournament.

Can you hear me now?

Hope­fully, you’re not too tired. This next sec­tion I’d like to talk about some things that you may NOT be able to change or mod­ify. In fact they are things that you may not con­sider to affect your game play:

#1 Yep, you’re too OLD!

Believe it or not, Magic is a young person’s game. I’m not say­ing that you can’t be too old to “play” MTG, but if you’re older than 30 it’s not in your favor to win a com­pet­i­tive Magic tour­ney. Think about it, how many 30+ MTG play­ers do you know who have won a Tour­na­ment? As in many “ath­letic” sports, a person’s prime is usu­ally 27 to 35, this sport (yes I believe it’s a sport) does NOT seem to find its rewards within the “older” gen­er­a­tion. Whether it’s your inabil­ity to con­ceive new decks, strate­gize, or learn new tricks, you’d bet­ter think about retire­ment after age 30.

#2 Bag­gage

Do you have a sig­nif­i­cant other who argues with you before or dur­ing tour­na­ment days? Is there some­one in your life who’s ill? Per­haps you’re an alco­holic or tak­ing some form of med­ica­tion. Magic is a men­tal game, and takes its toll out of peo­ple in many dif­fer­ent ways. As in the afore­men­tioned “too old” topic, bag­gage can weigh heav­ily on you and really dis­tract from your true abil­i­ties. ALL of those higher paid ath­letes get paid that way to make sure they have ALL of their needs looked after so that they may “work” on what they really need to worry about, which is their game. Your men­tal state really does have an effect on your performance.

#3 Which leads me to…

Money! I like it and I believe most peo­ple do too. How­ever, the odds are com­pletely against you if you can­not afford the cards, the travel, or (in some people’s opin­ion) to play online. This game costs money and play­ing com­pet­i­tively is even MORE expen­sive. Very few peo­ple make money at play­ing this game, and the ones who DO win are prob­a­bly not wor­ry­ing about a mort­gage, a car pay­ment or kids. I know that the DCI doesn’t report a person’s cur­rent income or employ­ment infor­ma­tion, but I’d say major­ity of our Pro Tour win­ners have been col­lege indi­vid­u­als who had/have lit­tle wor­ries of “mature” life. This also goes back to the bag­gage issues I referred to in #2 above.

When I played pool, one of my favorite lines was, ”It’s not how much money we’re play­ing for, it’s just about play­ing.” Which is essen­tially true, it doesn’t really mat­ter what you play for, because if you’re Tiger Woods, Michael Jor­dan, or Jon Finkel, there’s a good chance you will win. So, why wouldn’t you bet the farm on those guys? Although, I’m not so sure I’d bet the farm on you… There’s a say­ing when it comes to gam­bling, “Do NOT play with ‘scared’ money”. This means gam­bling with money which is sup­posed to be for the rent or for baby’s shoes, it can and WILL effect how you play. If you are plan­ning on trav­el­ing to a Grand Prix because you want to win a cou­ple thou­sand dol­lars, using your next two month’s rent that you worked 60 hours the last to months to earn, you should prob­a­bly reconsider.

Grand Prix Philadel­phia had almost 1000 peo­ple in it. Only 128 par­tic­i­pants made day 2 which is barely 10% and only half of those are the ones who got prize money. That’s a lit­tle over 5% of the entire field! When you con­sider travel, food and lodg­ing, I prob­a­bly would have lost money had I won the entire event.

#4 No friends equal No wins!

Magic has really become a team sport. Even though it is rec­og­nized as an indi­vid­ual accom­plish­ment when some­one wins; I would have a hard time believ­ing that any­one and EVERYONE that has won a major event didn’t ahve 5, 10, even 50 peo­ple sup­port­ing them in test­ing, find­ing cards, or find­ing cash. Espe­cially when it comes to test­ing, more resources to test is a MUST. This is quite dif­fer­ent from tour­na­ment magic ten years ago, some ran­dom guy could come in with some ran­dom deck and win. How­ever, these days, peo­ple are smarter, they share ideas online and test it dur­ing FNM or online 8 man queues. So go make some friends!!!

I could go on and on with my the­o­ries on suc­cess in Magic. In the near future, I’d like to pro­vide you with solu­tions to all of the items above. I hope you enjoyed this! The thing I enjoy most about learn­ing all of this is that the “Richie Rich” kids can’t afford the school where they teach these things — If you would like to enroll in this school please check out the web­site at SchoolofHardKnocks.com. Hehe!

Lee

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