Magic the Gathering

Strategy

Lee Steht, Pro Magic Scout

By ManaNation.com ⋅ June 9, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

What if a per­son could mea­sure poten­tial suc­cess in Magic by ana­lyz­ing an individual’s fun­da­men­tals? What would that look like?

In the design of “real” sports, an ath­lete is mea­sured by their foot-speed, bench press or even ver­ti­cal leap. While play­ing high school and col­lege base­ball, I had been asked to par­tic­i­pate in sev­eral drills and prac­tices that allowed me and my poten­tial to be “mea­sured.” Foot­ball play­ers go through the NFL Com­bine to add or take away from a play­ers col­lege acco­lades or sta­tis­tics. It’s almost a way to chisel through any pro­pa­ganda or mar­ket­ing that might be added from their respec­tive pro­grams or “soft” ath­letic divi­sions. As most peo­ple don’t con­sider Magic to be a “sport”, it might be very dif­fi­cult to argue (suc­cess­fully) that there just might be cer­tain indi­ca­tors that would lead to a person’s success.

Back in the day, a cou­ple of old friends of mine decided that we would form a team called ‘the Good­fel­las.’ Not only did we take the name from one of the great­est gangster/mob films ever but we felt that it was some­thing that we could iden­tify with. The three of us weren’t just friends, but we had proven (at least on a local level) that we could play Magic by win­ning a vari­ety of local tour­neys as well as other ran­dom events. We added 3 more play­ers, who had also dis­played pro­fi­ciency in the game. Whether it be by cre­at­ing decks or win­ning with them, we invited these indi­vid­u­als based on a shared vote and open debate amongst the orig­i­nal three. A lot of times, peo­ple choose teams based on friend­ships or per­haps the fact that some­one had enough cards to sup­port the group. Our ded­i­ca­tion was based on a goal of com­plete suc­cess. That PTQ sea­son, all six of us qual­i­fied for Pro Tour Chicago.

Back to the point, if I could be a Pro Tour Magic scout, what would I look for to deter­mine whether or not I have a future LSV or Jon Finkel in my sights? Now, let’s say I’m Dr Franken­stein and I’m try­ing to trans­form some ran­dom blob into a Pro Tour Cham­pion. Here’s what I’d look for:

1. Any sign of intel­li­gence — Jon Finkel MUST have a high IQ! While I’m merely spec­u­lat­ing, based on what I know about the man out­side of Magic he’s got a decent pedi­gree (mean­ing col­lege edu­ca­tion). Now this isn’t to say that a per­son who DOESN’T have a col­lege degree should sell their cards and start sign­ing up for your local weekly putt-putt golf league, nor does it mean that a per­son from Har­vard auto­mat­i­cally wins at this game. It just means that MANY of the Pro Tour Cham­pi­ons I know and have met ooze intel­li­gence. Finkel, Var­gas, De Rosa, Long, Gary, Buehler, Mow­showitz… the list goes on and on of peo­ple who are clearly higher edu­ca­tion peo­ple. This game is one of analy­sis, logic and fun­da­men­tal rules. Intel­li­gence, in the­ory pro­vides the essen­tials to suc­ceed pro­vided you can uti­lize it through those ele­ments. What it also means, is that a per­son will ask to be enlight­ened or that a per­son will do what­ever it takes to edu­cate them­selves toward suc­cess. I don’t believe a per­son wins at Magic alone. Intel­li­gence, to me, isn’t the pres­ences of knowl­edge but the desire to obtain knowledge.
2. Speed — Not too many peo­ple men­tion this, but speed is a HUGE fac­tor in suc­cess­ful pro play. I’m not talk­ing 100 meter dash speed. I’m talk­ing about the abil­ity to make a deci­sion. The abil­ity to ana­lyze and take action. I’ll assume MOST of you are read­ing this via com­puter and that com­puter is prob­a­bly NOT a 486DX com­puter or a Pen­tium 3. Gen­er­ally, com­puter peo­ple want higher mem­ory (RAM) sys­tems or proces­sors. Why do I know this? Because we don’t want to spend count­less sec­onds wait­ing on our com­put­ers to think! As pro­fes­sional Magic has evolved, rounds are shorter so game play needs to go faster and it requires play­ers to play accord­ingly. In Swiss play, one draw is for­giv­able but 2 might as well be a loss. I’ve known supe­rior magic play­ers who just take too long to play and they end swiss play at 5 wins 0 losses and 3 draws. Most of the time, speed play is some­thing that is not iden­ti­fied or eas­ily improved. Think “Speed Chess”. I typ­i­cally play at the speed of my oppo­nent. If you con­trol the tempo of the match, you con­trol the opponent.
3. Desire — I just fin­ished watch­ing Rocky V so for­give me for my rather obscure ref­er­ences. (Then again, if you’ve read my stuff before, I’m typ­i­cally full of ran­dom ref­er­ences.) The desire to win is some­thing that can­not be taught. The Rocky movies always fire me up because they ignite pieces of me that has always been com­pet­i­tive or to reach for that which is best. Years before the ALL-POWERFUL DCI, peo­ple played tour­na­ments to win and if it was decided that you didn’t have a chance to win most peo­ple con­tin­ued to play for pride. Now that every­one with a 1500 rat­ing or higher thinks they have a chance of qual­i­fy­ing by rat­ing (which is nor­mally 2050+), they drop from tour­na­ments when­ever they are at 2 losses. Now there are sev­eral things I want to say about this, if you’re rat­ing is LESS than 1950, STOP wor­ry­ing about your rat­ing! In the PTQ cir­cuit, you need to TOP 8 two con­sec­u­tive qual­i­fiers to earn close to 100 points (admit­tedly a lot of that depends on the field). Even Top 8 for a Grand Prix rarely gains you more than 150. I hear so many peo­ple ask “what was your rat­ing” etc and they do this to feel bet­ter about los­ing those hard earned points they gained play­ing FNM. My advice to any­one who thinks they’re bet­ter than their tour­na­ment result would be to keep play­ing. Unless you’re going to draft or play in another event, keep play­ing to see whether it was your play­ing skill or sim­ply your choice in deck. If you desire to be suc­cess­ful you MUST keep play­ing. I’m not say­ing one should ignore their rat­ing alto­gether, I’m sim­ply say­ing that your true rat­ing is based on your abil­ity to PLAY. Doing this also gives you the oppor­tu­nity to regain some of those lost points. Suc­cess­ful Magic play is not like pur­chas­ing a lot­tery ticket and scratch­ing off “WINNER”, it’s an end­less pur­suit of per­fec­tion or per­haps some­thing close. Now going back to sports exam­ples, pro­fes­sional scouts ALWAYS indi­cate per­sonal traits in their reports. In the NFL, a prospects affil­i­a­tions can be con­sid­ered impor­tant infor­ma­tion into the type of employee they are con­sid­er­ing. Will they have the heart to play under pres­sure or per­haps find that a hang­nail will keep the per­son out of the game rather than lead­ing to a comeback.
4. Physique — I’m sure many of you are going to dis­agree with me on this. I believe that a person’s phys­i­cal health has a lot to do with whether or not they are equipped to play this game. Obvi­ously, we’re not run­ning miles or doing any­thing stren­u­ous at all. Shaquille O’Neal comes to mind, as one of THE most dom­i­nat­ing forces in the NBA, basi­cally got fat and unable to play his posi­tion. He’s still (at 7+ feet tall) a VERY impos­ing fig­ure, but I think that he’s really just weighed him­self down and has become slow. It isn’t like he had a perime­ter game, he dunked the ball 20 times a night and did noth­ing but dom­i­nate the floor. I just think that when he does get the ball, he doesn’t have the reflexes or the abil­ity to quickly take charge anymore.

Speak­ing of slow, with all of the fast food that is avail­able at our loca­tions here in Florida, one could imag­ine get­ting a bit lethar­gic after a nice super-sized value meal. Is it pos­si­ble that the phys­i­cal state of your body can effect your men­tal state? I know some play­ers who won’t eat any­thing dur­ing the course of a tour­na­ment. Weight gain is another thing that I think affects every aspect of your day. I believe it not only slows your body down but impairs deci­sion mak­ing as well. Maybe not to a state of uncon­scious­ness, but enough to take away the endurance that you might have have had at one time or it keeps you alert and awake. It’s only nat­ural to get older, get lazy and quite frankly get fat. Per­haps maybe, this is why we feel old. this is why we feel like we can’t do the things we used to, because we con­di­tioned our­selves to be unable to do those “things”. This is just a the­ory as there aren’t too many well chis­eled Pro Tour Cham­pi­ons out there HA-HA. How­ever, many of our champs are rel­a­tively young and pre­sum­ably in bet­ter shape.

Maybe, I’m a bit abstract, but I tend to think there’s more to suc­cess­ful magic than just shuf­fling 60 cards. While the mind may do major­ity of the work for us, the body car­ries out the actions that the mind sug­gests. I hope this ran­dom jar­gon hasn’t bored you too much, I’m gonna get a big mac :)

Thanks for reading.