Magic the Gathering

Theory

Still With Me?

By Lee Steht ⋅ April 3, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

Still with me huh? Still want to know what makes some peo­ple win and oth­ers lose?

Well, ok then! Now I’m going to pro­vide you with a reversed view of what I wrote last week. I know you can’t wait! This really is just an expan­sion of what I said, and it should make things per­fectly clear that 99% of us have a lot to work on — So, let’s go!!!

#1 I know the cards bet­ter than you

This one has no excep­tion. Knowl­edge is power, and unfor­tu­nately some peo­ple process infor­ma­tion bet­ter or “dif­fer­ently” than oth­ers do. This is why they appear to be bet­ter at cer­tain things than oth­ers, which often looks like it is effort­less. One of the ways I try to com­pen­sate for that is to study up the day before a big tour­na­ment. Find out what your deck’s weak­nesses are, and be prepared.

For Pre­re­leases, check the spoil­ers to see what might sound inter­est­ing or “bro­ken” so that you know what you might be up against. Don’t be the guy who over-extends on play­ing crea­tures only to find that Wiz­ards fea­tured a new Wrath of God card a week ago.

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

There’s an old say­ing “I’d rather be lucky than good” and Magic is no dif­fer­ent. Some­times you have to go with your gut. Only hind­sight will tell you what the right answer was or might have been. How­ever, don’t be too hard headed to lis­ten to what that “right answer” is.

Trick has a great quote from the Leg­endary Jon Fin­kle which is: “If there is a good play and a bet­ter play, then the good play is actu­ally a bad play.” This is so true with MTG, in fact I’d say it’s rather true in life. Once you’ve drawn that keep-able hand of 7 cards, you may believe that your options are lim­it­less. How­ever, there are sta­tis­ti­cal prob­a­bil­i­ties which fit within the legal rules of the game and the laws of the land and these are con­sid­ered “right plays”. For exam­ple, hav­ing a 2 land hand and lay­ing the “come into play tapped” land on turn 2 rather than on turn 1 when you have a 2 cast­ing cost card in hand. Is this play a mis­take? Usu­ally. Does it hap­pen? You know it does.

#3 I just play bet­ter than YOU!

It’s very easy to be intim­i­dated by a guy who’s won a Pro Tour or per­haps even a joke­ster who co-hosts a weekly pod­cast, but ulti­mately the guy who makes the fewest mis­takes is usu­ally going to win. Even if you don’t know every­thing, have faith in what you do know. Tell your­self, ”Untap, Upkeep, Draw” every time you begin your turn. Start think­ing about basics and work your way up to the advanced lev­els. Don’t give up because you make lots of mis­takes; iron them all out by start­ing at the begin­ning. Most of all HAVE FUN! Just remem­ber that win­ning is twice is fun as losing.

#4 I’m a WINNER and you are a loser!

Just play, let the end result speak for itself. You are going to win some and lose some, but what will truly make that dif­fer­ence in you is ask­ing the “Why” and “How”. Some­times you’ll encounter a jerk that doesn’t want to talk about the match or talks trash about the match. Don’t com­plain about man­ascrew, but acknowl­edge it by shuf­fling bet­ter or rethink­ing your land ratio in your deck. Don’t blame the deck, blame your­self. You shuf­fled it. You decided to copy the deck from some crappy brain­less web­site with­out prop­erly test­ing it.

You can’t win if you aren’t will­ing to lose. Play your cards, and play them when­ever you think is best. Win or lose, ask your­self, ask your oppo­nents or ask some ran­dom Asian guy if there was some­thing else that could have been done to be better.

Now, here are some of the more vague items that you can REALLY turn around for yourself:

#1 I’m not THAT “OLD”

It’s true what I said; young peo­ple do win at this game. How­ever, no mat­ter what age you are, you can cer­tainly find this game fun. And, if you choose to be com­pet­i­tive, you can do that too! It really is about ded­i­ca­tion and find­ing sup­port in your test group as well as from your loved ones.

#2 Bag­gage

I’ve been very for­tu­nate to have loved ones who sup­port me and my love/addiction to this game. Being a sin­gle father of 2 chil­dren, I know it can be tough jug­gling life’s respon­si­bil­i­ties, work, etc. I could NEVER say enough of my fam­ily who con­tinue to show me love and my friends who put up with my con­stant non­sense. With­out their sup­port, I would be just some old guy with a higher than aver­age rat­ing and talk­ing about the days of true Magic.

Make sure you reward those who sup­port you, share your love and appre­ci­a­tion and some­times share your packs. If you playtest with a group of play­ers who really do know what they’re doing, hook them up with some loot. My old team, the Good­Fel­las, worked up a split for each and every event we played in together. This kept us focused and sup­port­ive of each other, as everyone’s entry fee con­tributed to the spoils of vic­tory. Unfor­tu­nately, this can also cause tur­moil, which it did for that team dur­ing their “golden years.”

#3 Money

This one is actu­ally easy. There are a lot of peo­ple who share card pools. In fact, many pros do not even own huge col­lec­tions of cards, rather they depend on spon­sors or “teams” to gather and cre­ate the decks that win. This helps with expenses and doesn’t keep money lying around. Now I’m not say­ing you should sell those Tar­mogoyfs now, because Uncle Lee will lend them to you next week­end. What I am say­ing is that your end may jus­tify your means, and if sell­ing cards helps pay for a plane ticket or a tank of gas, your sell­ing those cards could result in a tour­na­ment vic­tory or a run in with some­one who might be your best friend for life.

There are oth­ers who are “pro­fes­sional” traders, and when not involved with matches are usu­ally in the trad­ing area pick­ing up cards to sell to the high­est bid­der. I refer to these folks as “Bounty Hunters.” Being suc­cess­ful at this takes a lot of work and energy, but can be very fruit­ful in the money you can make and the col­lec­tion you can accrue. Our spon­sors at Coolstuffinc.com ALWAYS have cards that they’re buy­ing and I believe their prices for them are very com­pet­i­tive. I know of peo­ple who buy 15 rares for $1 and sell them at 5 for a $1 to deal­ers. And, occa­sion­ally stum­ble on a card that might sell for $1 by itself. You may not think that that can make much, but what if you do that 100 times or even 1000 times. Nuff said!

Spon­sor­ships are another way to save some $$$ and in some cases make money. There are many peo­ple will­ing to spon­sor noble causes. Take NASCAR for instance, they wear out­fits plas­tered with labels and adver­tis­ers every­where! Not sure that I want to have a Prepa­ra­tion H label on my bum, but if it pays, then I’m will­ing! I believe the future has some VERY large spon­sors for “smart” busi­ness minded Magic play­ers, we’re just not ask­ing the right ques­tions or giv­ing the right answers. “What will spon­sor­ing a player do for me?” will be the first ques­tion they ask and what will your answer be? “I will wear a cool shirt with your name on it while I spend your prof­its,” may not be what they’re look­ing for. How­ever, if NIKE hears that I sup­port their prod­uct in sports of the Mind and Body, then maybe they might lis­ten. If they learn that the ben­e­fits of their clothes or shoes have helped me win X num­ber of tour­na­ments, well now we’re talk­ing. It really is about your busi­ness model and whether you believe in your­self and your sport.

#4 Friends! How many of us have them?

You don’t really have to have friends to suc­ceed in this game. You merely have to work hard. Hav­ing a team just shares the load among you all. There are many times that I want to write an arti­cle or state some­thing totally out from left field because I believe it really does help me play this game bet­ter. What stops me is that I’m not sure if any­one would under­stand. So, I just inter­nal­ize it and wait for a bet­ter moment. With so many dif­fer­ent oppor­tu­ni­ties to shuf­fle cards, you can achieve some very effec­tive playtest­ing with­out oblig­at­ing your­self to oth­ers. Sim­ply log in to MTGO or head to a nearby Fri­day Night Magic ses­sion. It’s con­ve­nient and easy.

Before the inter­net made a huge impact on MTG I took pride in my metagame skills and would build decks that I knew would dom­i­nate the cur­rent “top” decks in the for­mat. This earned me the title of “Best Sun­day Player” by many of my friends, because I couldn’t win a Sat­ur­day PTQ but would win the Sun­day cash or prize tour­na­ment with ease. On that thought, the inter­net is a tremen­dous tool for all types of infor­ma­tion and Magic decks are NOT an excep­tion. If you don’t know by know, Faeries and Reveil­lark, are the 2 most com­monly played decks in the world at this time, but that can change in an instant. If you don’t tune in to this Monday’s episode, you might miss what deck is next.

SUMMARY

Some peo­ple have what it takes to be good nat­u­rally, but I’m a firm believer in hard work and I believe that any­one can be great on any given day with the proper prepa­ra­tion. The Hall of Fame is a decent mea­sure of con­sis­tency on the Pro Tour but we’re talk­ing about win­ning and if I can get you to win once, I feel I’ve done my job. But win­ning con­sis­tently will take much more work from you.

The rules are the only thing that is pre­sented on a con­sis­tent and fair play­ing field. No one is above the rules. If you can­not under­stand the rea­son­ing behind the cur­rent Reveil­lark combo stack (not nec­es­sar­ily ver­bal­iz­ing it, in Tricks case as you’ll see in Monday’s episode) then, you need to work on your under­stand­ing of the rules. You may not need to know it for casual games, but indeed you do need to know it for com­pet­i­tive play.

Next, check your atti­tude. More on that in the future.

Bluff­ing is some­thing some­one asked about recently on the forums and all I can say is I may or may NOT know any­thing about bluff­ing. Seri­ously though, we will talk about that in a future dis­cus­sion or article.

As I men­tioned, this arti­cle is meant to be for those indi­vid­u­als who read it first and then find that some­thing within it which per­tains to them.

What does it take to win? Well why don’t you tell me? — Let me know in the forums what you think it takes. If you men­tion luck though, I’m going to vomit.

– Lee