Magic the Gathering

Strategy

Trial and Error — Ceteris Paribus

By Sam Feeley ⋅ April 21, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

I lied. No report. Oh well, that’s what you get for study­ing for finals rather than going to the pre­re­lease. Before you start throw­ing a tem­per tantrum, it’s time to dis­cuss per­haps one of the most impor­tant men­tal aspects of the game you can learn – judg­ing, or more impor­tantly, not judg­ing your opponents.

There is a term used in eco­nom­ics called ceteris paribus, which is Latin for “other things being equal.” In other words, action x will result in con­se­quence y, ceteris paribus (assum­ing noth­ing else inter­feres). Essen­tially, ignore every­thing else that could pos­si­bly hap­pen to screw up x lead­ing to y and just assume that’s all will hap­pen. In real life, you can­not pos­si­bly do that ver­ba­tim. In com­pet­i­tive Magic, how­ever, you can assume cer­tain things will or will not hap­pen. There are five key things about your oppo­nent that should not change your judg­ment, thus forc­ing you to use the ceteris paribus principle.

1) Your opponent’s age
In a Type 2 Boston City Cham­pi­onship sea­son event, I played against a young man, maybe ten or eleven years old, named Frankie Var­gas. When a more expe­ri­enced player sits across from some­one Frankie’s age, they might auto­mat­i­cally think, “Thanks for the bye.” Not true. I had seen Frankie play before this match, and he has play skill beyond his years. It also didn’t hurt that he brought Sonic Boom (Mono-Blue Con­trol) to the matchup against my [card title=“Doran”]Doran, the Siege Tower[/card] deck. We had a good, com­pet­i­tive match, but Frankie took it 2–1.

Con­versely, some­one who appears to have played this game much longer than some­one like Frankie may not be expe­ri­enced at all. I know that half the time I sit down from some­one I’ve never played before, they appear my age or older, and are play­ing in maybe their first or sec­ond tour­na­ment. This hap­pens most often at pre­re­leases, but nonethe­less, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that play skill and age do not correlate.

2) Your opponent’s deck
The Pro Tour com­men­ta­tors con­stantly remind us that when mak­ing a pick to win the event, you go by player and not by deck. The biggest scrub in the world could be run­ning [card title=Academy]Tolarian Academy[/card] against a well-established player play­ing, well, not [card title=Academy]Tolarian Academy[/card]. Nonethe­less, who would you pick? The player who knows what he’s doing or the new­bie with the most pow­er­ful deck of all time? (Or is that Dredge? We’ll save that debate for another article.)

3) Your opponent’s record
Every­one has a bad day play­ing Magic every once in a while. Even pros will scrub out of a Pro Tour or Grand Prix once every few events. If you get paired down, you may think you’ll have an eas­ier path to vic­tory. If you get paired up, you may think the win may be harder to come by. In real­ity, in the for­mer sit­u­a­tion, a win is very cru­cial due to the impact on tiebreak­ers. In the lat­ter, a win would be huge for your record the same rea­son. You can’t let stand­ings in the early and mid­dle rounds deter­mine your mind­set before the match. When there’s a spot in the top 8 on the line, how­ever, then you really want to make sure you don’t screw up.

4) Your opponent’s gen­der
There may be no girls on the Inter­net, but there are cer­tainly girls who play Magic, and some of them are pretty good. Take, for exam­ple, an acquain­tance of mine, Melissa DeTora. Over the last year she has played in fea­ture matches at Grand Prix-Montreal, Pro Tour-Valencia, and Pro Tour-Kuala Lumpur, against the likes of Guil­lame Wafo-Tapa, Quentin Mar­tin, and Gabe Nas­sif. She’s no pushover, either. She is a reg­u­lar in the New Eng­land PTQ scene, has won sev­eral PTQs, and fin­ished in the money most recently at Kuala Lumpur.

Of course, Melissa is not the only female to enjoy suc­cess at big events. Names like Michelle Bush, who fin­ished 2nd at Grand Prix-New Orleans, and Anna­lyn Bus­ta­mante, who fin­ished in the top 16 at Grand Prix-Dallas, may also ring a bell to the event cov­er­age junkies.

5) Your opponent’s name
This is per­haps the biggest one of them all, even more so than judg­ing your oppo­nent by the X or Y chromosomes.

Let’s say you’re play­ing at your first Pro Tour. You’re excited to travel, play Magic for big money, and bring back lots of great sto­ries to your friends. Then the pair­ings for round one are posted, and you get to play not another PTQ entrant, but Kenji Tsumura.

Some might think, “Crap, I might as well scoop as soon as I sit down.” Hey, there’s no shame in try­ing. If any­thing, play­ing against play­ers of Kenji’s level can only help you learn. All you can do is play your best, and if the card gods are with you, you may pull off a big upset.

Lessons Learned
So what can ceteris paribus teach you? The only thing that mat­ters is your opponent’s skill level, regard­less of who they are or what they’re play­ing. Sim­ply put, come to each match pre­pared for a dog­fight. If it turns out to be a shel­lack­ing, more power to the win­ner. If it turns into a slugfest, all it can do is give you the nec­es­sary expe­ri­ence for your Magic career, win or lose.

–Sammy Time

Sam Fee­ley is a Timmy-Spike and PTQ semi-regular orig­i­nally from Con­cord, Mass­a­chu­setts. He enjoys Magic, sports, cook­ing, and writ­ing. He maintains two blogs, Samurai Entertainment on news, games, and nonsense; and Samurai Sports, about interior decorating. And by interior decorating he means sports.

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