Magic the Gathering

Theory

Five Beliefs New Players Cling To

By Trick Jarrett ⋅ January 14, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

1. A sin­gle “combo” is enough for a com­pet­i­tive deck
This is a hold over from the casual play. We want that awe­some combo to hap­pen! Despite count­less rea­sons for the combo being awe­some, there are far more rea­sons why it is not. But the fact is that no suc­cess­ful decks are built around any sin­gle combo because it’s too frag­ile, too easy to dis­rupt and gen­er­ally too unreliable.

As much as my friend Joe wanted his Lev­eler + Blast­ing Sta­tion + End­less Whis­pers (check the forums if you aren’t sure how this combo works) deck to work, there are end­less rea­sons this deck never went competitive.Competitive and tournament-winning decks may have a combo within them, but the deck is also designed to be able to aban­don that plan and work another way. Or they’ve got numer­ous ways to recover from the blow, what­ever it may be.

An argu­ment can be made for con­trol decks designed to pro­tect the combo, but in large these decks play “not to lose” until the combo is ready to go off rather than play­ing to win from the get-go. Play­ing “not to lose” is dif­fi­cult because you’re putting your­self on the defen­sive by choice and, if your defenses fail, you are not only at a dis­ad­van­tage posi­tion­ally but also tem­po­rally. This is my argu­ment against the combo/control decks.

2. It’s okay for the deck to be fat
If your deck is only over the min­i­mum size by 1–3 cards, maybe, with plenty of playtest­ing for tun­ing. But when peo­ple bring the 71-card mon­strosi­ties to me this is the first tip I try to con­vince them of. Not count­ing the Bat­tle of Wits decks, when the deck is fat its odds of los­ing go up dras­ti­cally. The pos­si­ble util­ity of car­ry­ing those extra cards is very unlikely to help you in the long run.

Magic is, at its core, a game of min­i­miz­ing chance. That’s really what the root of the game is. You build, play, and act all to min­i­mize the chance of fail­ure. If you will­ingly fat­ten your deck, you’re water­ing down your mix­ture and then you’re hob­bling your­self before you’ve even sat down at the table.

Maybe you think you’ve bal­anced your deck at 67 cards. You’re win­ning a fair per­cent­age and the deck seems to be run­ning con­sis­tent? Sure, it hap­pens. Look at But­ter­bean, the pro­fes­sional boxer. He’s not built like other ath­letes and yet he wins. How? He has a sim­ple plan. Stand still, spin to face his oppo­nent, and then slug them with a haymaker.

But what hap­pens when his smaller, leaner, more agile oppo­nents out-maneuver him? If they get inside his reach and force him to move? He’s clumsy, off bal­ance, and out of his ele­ment. This is what hap­pens to your deck. It’s slug­gish. That one card you need to draw has more cards above it and your odds of find­ing it when you need it are lower. This is the core of the min­i­mum deck size. You want it as light and agile as possible.

3. Los­ing crea­tures with­out gain­ing any­thing in return is okay
Along with the min­i­miz­ing of chance, the sec­ond key to Magic is under­stand­ing par­ity and attri­tion. These are things Lee and I dis­cuss fre­quently on the show. When you begin los­ing crea­tures with noth­ing to show for it, you’re dri­ving a car that’s leak­ing gas: you might still fin­ish the race but your job just got a lot harder.

This is dif­fi­cult for every­one, not just new play­ers. The dif­fer­ence is that more expe­ri­enced play­ers are bet­ter at sim­ply not let­ting it hap­pen. They make bet­ter choices, make bet­ter attacks and blocks, and time the cast­ing of their spells bet­ter. But even the best have trou­ble over­com­ing attrition.

I like the gas anal­ogy espe­cially when it comes to this topic. We already use it when a deck has lost momen­tum; we say it has “run out of gas.” So, when you’re giv­ing your crea­tures up you’re wast­ing gas.

4. I always have to block
Fol­low­ing along with above, this is per­haps the biggest point where play­ers lose crea­tures with­out rea­son. They make a bad block. Either they for­get their oppo­nent can cast Giant Growth, or they mis­counted the dam­age, or they sim­ply acted too quickly and didn’t take their time con­sid­er­ing the repercussions.

To avoid mak­ing bad blocks you have to learn when to block in the first place. Many new play­ers block every attack, being afraid to take any dam­age. The first thing to real­ize is that it’s okay for you to take dam­age. No boxer wins a fight with­out tak­ing a few blows to the chin. The only point of dam­age that mat­ters is the last one.

Block­ing opens your crea­tures up and leaves them vul­ner­a­ble. If you’ve got a 4/4 and they’re attack­ing with a 1/1 you have to con­sider the like­li­hood that they’re hold­ing a trick. Also you need to con­sider whether they are bluff­ing you. It’s bet­ter to take a few cheap shots and not risk los­ing your crea­tures until you have a bet­ter gauge of what is in the opponent’s hand or if they are tapped out, etc.

5. Win­ning tour­na­ments is easy and I should win immediately

The learn­ing curve in Magic is some­times enough to cause peo­ple to quit. They get over­whelmed by the many cards, the rules, the com­plex­ity, the STUFF of the game. If they make it past that, then they start try­ing to play com­pet­i­tively and peo­ple lose. There is an immense amount of ego some of us carry into the game with us and we believe that we should be able to win in a rather short amount of time.

Draft­ing is a per­fect exam­ple of it. It’s one of the most played Magic for­mats, beaten per­haps only by Stan­dard, and yet it is also one of the most com­plex ways to play the game. You need to inter­pret sig­nals from the oth­ers, pick the right cards, build the right deck, and then play it cor­rectly. If any of those goes the wrong way then you’re going to lose. And as a new player it’s very hard to even real­ize how com­plex that lit­tle in-game ecosys­tem is.

It’s a tough les­son to teach new play­ers, but the game is hard and most of us are going to lose a lot.

Well, some of us more than oth­ers (like me) but the lessons hold true!

– Trick

Trick Jarrett is the host and founder of ManaNation.com, he writes, edits, covers, and spoils Magic for a living. Playing it whenever he can manage to find the time. He is engaged to a lovely woman who refuses to learn Magic, and they have a cute cocker-spaniel puppy who is all too eager to play Magic.

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