{From Right Field is a column for Magic players on a budget or players who don’t want to play netdecks. The decks are designed to let the budget-conscious player be competitive in local, Saturday tournaments. They are not decks that will qualify a player for The Pro Tour. As such, the decks written about in this column are, almost by necessity, rogue decks. The author tries to limit the number of non-land rares as a way to limit the cost of the decks. When they do contain rares, those cards will either be cheap rares or staples of which new players should be trying to collect a set of four, such as Dark Confidant, Birds of Paradise, or Wrath of God. The decks are also tested by the author, who isn’t very good at playing Magic. He will never claim that a deck has an 85% winning percentage against the entire field. He will also let you know when the decks are just plain lousy. Readers should never consider these decks "set in stone" or "done." If you think you can change some cards to make them better, well, you probably can, and the author encourages you to do so.}
Every once in a while, I find it necessary and useful to essentially hit the reset button on this column. A lot of people are new to this here site here every week, just as a lot of people are new to the game itself. Even with a column that’s as basic as mine – no Flores tech here; heck, you don’t even get Erwin, Lee, or Swanson tech from me – some people need a primer of sorts on where I’m coming from and how I see Magic in my position From Right Field. Sure, they could read two hundred or so columns I’ve written over the past five years. They could, but they won’t. It’s just too much. So, to get everyone caught up, here’s the best of what I’ve learned about Magic since I started in December of 1998.
Oh, sorry, wait. First, a digression that’s kinda on point. As such, is it really a digression?
I really do like reading feedback on my columns, letting me know what works and what doesn’t. Sending me an e-mail is fine. That’s why I put my e-mail address at the bottom of the column. However, I like the feeling of community even better. As such, I’d rather see comments posted in the forums. See that link at the top, just below my picture and just above the start of the column? It says something like “Stroke Chris’s Ego in the Forum” or “Complain Like a Wet Cat in the Forum” or something along those lines. Click on it after you read this. (There’s another one at the end of this thing, too.) If you don’t have a forum account, sign up today. Like pretty much every woman I dated while I was in college in New Orleans, it’s free and easy. It would be nice to hear from some different folks once in a while. If you read this, like it or hate it, just take a quick second to drop me a love letter / hate note. Now, back to the show…
Rule #10: Don’t just tell people that a card is good or bad. Tell them why it’s good or bad. – This isn’t so much about playing the game as helping others understand it. However, in helping others understand, you might teach yourself a thing or two.
When I first started going to tournaments, I didn’t know much about building good decks, synergy among cards, or how to evaluate cards in relation to my goals.
(Pause to wait for the inevitable comments such as “You still don’t know much about any of that stuff! Wah ha ha ha ha ha ha!”)
I asked a couple of guys who seemed to be doing well if they could help me. I’m sure that this happened to you when you started out, too. They looked through my deck and then said “Okay, drop this, this, and this. They stink. You want to use Urza’s Hammer, Bully Pulpit, and Touch My Monkey instead. They’re great.” I smiled and nodded like a tourist who didn’t understand the language, thanked them, and then walked away not understanding any more than I did before I asked for help.
A few weeks later, the same thing was happening. I don’t know why I asked for more help. I guess I was hoping that I could just figure out why the choices they suggested were better, as if reading the cards with more intensity would somehow magically clear things up for me. This was when I met Karl Allen. He piped in “Don’t just tell him what changes to make. Tell him why.” My hero. When I found out that he was married to a woman who also played Magic (better than he did, too), I had found my idol.
Most important, though, he was right. The next wave of players won’t understand why one card is better than another in a deck simply because you tell them “this is better than that” while they look at the card. Well, maybe there’s some gaming savant that can look at a card before he knows the game and figure it all out, but I have yet to meet one. If you explain why Card A is better than Card B in that deck, you will give them the tools that they need to start properly evaluating cards on their own.
In addition, you might learn a thing or two yourself. By being able to articulate the “why” of a card’s good and bad qualities, you’re also going to get better at figuring out what new cards are better or worse than others. You might also find by talking it out with yourself that a card that you thought was good isn’t all that wonderful. If nothing else, though, by explaining the whys and wherefores of a card’s relative goodness or badness, you’ll be helping teach new players a valuable skill.
Rule #9: More mana is better than less mana, although the right amount of mana is best of all. – As far as I can tell, the quintessential introduction to Magic goes something like this. Either at school or at a friend’s house, you spy some Magic cards, someone shows some to you, or you see some people playing a game. It looks both neat and fun. You ask what it is. You learn that you can build your own deck. When you ask how, your friend says “You need twenty lands, twenty spells, and twenty creatures.”
I didn’t say everyone started this way. It’s just the quintessential way to start. Hey, not everyone as luck as you are, what with the local Pro Tour Playa being your mentor and all. Most of us started with the ol’ 20-20-20 rule.
Of course, there’s nothing per se wrong with that rule. Works great in a Goblin or Elf deck. The problem is that usually, we want to play bigger spells. We see Nightmare or Shivan Dragon or Crush of Wurms, and we want to cast them.
Which will most likely not happen in a 20-20-20 deck unless your opponent is also playing with a horrible manabase. In other words, it won’t happen if the other guy can kill you before turn 18 or so. If you both build bad decks, well, then, you may have a chance to live long enough to win.
When you start designing your own decks, the best place to start is almost always twenty-four lands. Twenty-four lands is forty per cent of a sixty card deck. That gives you somewhere around seventy-eight percent chance of having your fourth land in play on turn 4. Other than so-called weenie decks, four is the number to shoot for in most Magic games. If you can’t hit four lands, you have greatly reduced the spells you can play. The more costly that your most expensive spells are, the more land you’ll need, especially if you have a lot of them and want to cast them as soon as practical.
When in doubt, though, start with more rather than fewer lands. More lands give you more options to play spells. In almost every case, you’d rather have more options than fewer options when it comes to playing spells. (Lately, I feel the need to qualify nearly everything that I write or say. This the “almost every case” to start that line. I’m wracking my brain, though, and I can’t think of a single case where you’d want fewer options. That’s just not how this game works.) Also, having enough mana to play your spells tells you if your deck’s even any good. If you have enough mana to play your spells, but you’re consistently losing, you need to change something.
However, if you’re losing because you can’t even play your spells, how do you know if your deck’s good or not? Sure, maybe you can’t play your spells because the smallest one costs seven mana, and, thus, your deck sucks. What if, though, it’s only the lack of timely mana causing the problems? With too few lands, you could be shortchanging yourself. Once the deck works the way you want / as well as it can, then you can hone the land count.
Rule #8: Wait until the last best moment to make your plays. – When I first heard this, it was more like “wait until the last possible moment to make your plays.” That usually meant on your opponent’s turn, if you had an instant you could play. Sometimes, your opponent’s turn isn’t the best time to do anything. For example, let’s say that you’re playing against a Mono-Blue Control deck, the kind that counters anything it can before laying down a big threat. Your opponent, after having gotten your hand empty – you’re playing a weenie deck and played out your hand pretty quickly – gets a bit cocky and taps out to play Serra Sphinx with three or four cards left in his hand. Wow. What are you going to do with against a 4/4 flier that doesn’t tap when it attacks? Fortunately, you draw Char. For the sake of argument, we’re going to say that your opponent isn’t playing with any counterspells that have an alternate casting cost. So, no mana means no spells. Do you play the Char now, or do you wait until the end of your opponent’s turn?
A lot of people would say “It’s an Instant. You wait until then end of your opponent’s turn or, if your life is really low, at least into combat.” Wrong. You cast the Char on your turn. Your opponent’s tapped out. Allowing him to untap gives him the chance to counter the Char. Don’t give him that chance.
At another time, that might very well have been the right call. For example, if your opponent had mana left, say three Islands (could be Cancel, you know), you might want to wait until the end of his turn… if you could survive a hit from the Sphinx and the Char. By waiting in that case, you can potentially get him tapped out at the end of his turn again.
Just remember, you don’t make plays at the last possible moment. You make plays at the last possible best moment.
Rule #7: Options. Options. Options. – In a game of resource management, like Magic: The Gathering, the more options you have, the better you tend to do over the long run. Often, this means looking for cards that do two things at once. For example, let’s look at a couple of three-mana White fliers.
WARNING! WARNING! I am in no way saying that these are: (1) the two best White cards in Standard; (2) the two best White fliers; (3) the two best cards in Magic; or (4) any “best” scenario that you can posit. I’m just using these as an example. There are about seventeen bajillion other examples. I picked these two. You can flame away in the forum anyway.
Pegasus Charger is a two-power flier for three mana (2W). Cloudchaser Kestrel is also a two-power flier for three mana (1WW). The Charger has First Strike. That’s pretty much it for the Charger. The Kestrel destroys an Enchantment when it comes into play. It can also turn a permanent White for W. The Kestrel’s second ability probably doesn’t mean much unless you work it into a deck designed to abuse that ability (probably a Red/White land destruction deck with Pentarch Paladin). That “destroy target enchantment” ability, though, that can be very important.
Sure, the Kestrel loses to the Charger in combat. That’s not what this rule is talking about. We’re talking about options. Let’s say that you’re worried about Enchantments. Seems reasonable. There are a ton of really bad ones out there. Dovescape was nasty at 2006 Regionals, although you don’t see it showing up in Pro Tour reports much anymore. Debtor’s Knell is still a stinker. Null Profusion’s gonna be a doozy. Anyway, running the Kestrel not only gives you a two-power flier, but it also gives you a weapon against Enchantments. Even if you don’t run it in your maindeck, you can bring it in from the sideboard rather than Demystify. When it hits, you kill an Enchantment, and you get a two-power flier. Besides, Demystify won’t kill Dovescape.
What about combat, though? Isn’t the Charger better? On defense, against creatures with two-toughness or less, yes. Other than that, probably not. Contemplate a head-to-head fight. Well, you just wouldn’t let your Kestrel get into that fight unless you had to. Let’s say that your opponent has the Pegasus Charger on his side while you have the Cloudchaser Kestrel. If your opponent attacks, you’d probably just let the Charger through unless it was fatal. If you let it through, your Kestrel could swing on your turn. In other words, you’d be trading two damage a turn with your opponent. Of course, if your opponent didn’t attack with the Charger, your Kestrel would stay put, too.
Give yourself as many options as possible. You’ll win more games that way.
Rule #6: Invest in real estate. – Just as in real life – and Second Life, for that matter – real estate is one of the best investments that you can make. In Magic, that means buying the rare dual lands. For those of us who play Standard almost exclusively, those lands are the Ravnica Block “Shock” lands and the Ninth Edition “pain” lands.
Of course, everyone says that the rare dual lands are better than the common and uncommon alternatives. But why does it matter? I mean, let’s say that you like playing Black and Red. Even if you don’t use Blood Crypts and Sulfurous Springs, you can use Molten Slagheap, Tresserhorn Sinks, and Rakdos Carnariums. That’s twelve lands that make both Black and Red mana. In your typical deck, that’s half of the lands or more. So, why spend the money on those rare dual lands?
Because the rare lands make your deck faster, and, the faster you get going, the faster you gain the upper hand. Notice that none of the three non-rare lands mentioned above can give you colored mana on your first turn. That means that you’re not casting Blackmail, Suspending Rift Bolt, or dropping Shadow Guildmage as fast as possible.
“Big deal. It’s one turn.” I wish I’d kept track of all of the games that I’ve lost by one turn, all of the games that I lost the turn right before I would have won. If only I’d been one turn faster…
Why, I might be on the Premium side, sporting Pro Tour points!
Hey, I might’ve happened.
Investing in those rare dual lands has another benefit, too. They go in any deck that needs those colors. Any. Deck. Ponder that for a second. Whether it’s a Standard deck, Extended, or Legacy, kitchen-table casual or PTQ-ready, any deck that needs Red and Black mana can use Blood Crypt and Sulfurous Springs. You can’t say that about spells. For instance, I consider Dark Confidant a staple rare. If you see yourself playing Black a lot, invest in a set of four right away. If you’ve been playing Magic for more than a year, you should already have them. The Confidant doesn’t go in every Black deck, though. If the deck has too many spells costing three mana or more, the thing would kill you before the opponent even had the chance.
Of course, I know that the dual lands are fairly expensive. This is a fence I’ve had to ride as both a writer and player ever since I started playing the game. On the one hand, if I spend my limited budget on the lands, I won’t be able to get any of the good and expensive rare creatures and spells. On the other hand, if I don’t get the lands, I’m locked into either playing mono-colored decks or playing with the slower (i.e., “inferior”) common and uncommon lands.
This is the quintessential problem for us budget players. Focus on the “budget” part of that. Let’s say that you want to play the Dralnu deck. Regardless of the fact that it’s a terror of a deck, it’s not that expensive to build… except for the dual lands. (I know that Remand is expensive for an uncommon, as expensive as Underground Rivers, in fact. Remember, part of our budgeting includes always saving enough money to buy four sets of each common and uncommon when they come out. That way, we don’t end up paying an arm and a testicle for Remands, Harmonizes, Eternal Witnesses, Fact or Fictions, and Skullclamps.) The deck needs four Watery Graves. As I write this, they go for $17.50 each. Maybe, by the time this piece hits the site, they’re up to $20 each. Save five bucks a week, and you can buy one a month. If you can save ten dollars a week, you can buy two a month.
(By the way, I am fully aware that Dralnu decks should be running three or four copies of Shaft, a.k.a. Damnation, by now, too, and that Shaft will push that deck price way up. However, that deck was ruling the roost before Planar Chaos hit the shelves, and I think it will still be doing so sans Damnation even now that Planar Chaos is out. Damnation just makes the deck even better than before, which is a very scary thought.)
I know this means that you’re looking at between two and four months before you have a complete playset of Watery Graves, and that‘s not considering that you also need to buy Underground Rivers. Again, this is something we budget players have to put up with. That’s why I want you to invest in those lands and keep them. Don’t worry if they rotate out of Standard. Like I said, you can always use them in casual decks (or Extended and Legacy). I have yet to meet a budget player who isn’t also a casual, kitchen-table player. Moreover, I fully believe that those lands will continue to rotate back into Standard. When I first started playing, I spent a few months picking up Karplusan Forests. It was the first full set of four pain lands that I owned. A couple are from Fifth Edition and a couple are from Sixth. They got a lot of use until Eighth Edition pushed them out for the uncommon Invasion dual lands, which, like the Coldsnap uncommon dual lands, come into play tapped.
Did I get rid of those Karplusan Forests? No, I just used them in casual decks and the occasional Legacy or Extended deck. Two years later, when Ninth Edition brought back all of the Ice Age and Apocalypse “pain” lands, I dug them back out of my “oldies” box. Yup, I’m using the exact same four Karplusan Forests now that I have been for about eight years.
On the other hand, if you’re very worried that neither the Ice Age-Apocalypse “pain” lands nor the Ravnica Block “Shock” lands are going to be reprinted in Tenth Edition and, like me, you don‘t ever expect to be playing in a sanctioned Extended or Legacy tournament, then you’ll have to make due with the common and uncommon lands. It won’t make for the most efficient decks, but I also don’t want you to feel that you’re wasting your money, what with 10E coming out in about five months.
However, if you plan on playing this game for a while, invest in the real estate. It will most definitely be worth it over the long haul.
Rule #5: Don’t get imprisoned by one or two colors. – I know that I just mentioned in Rule #6 something about first getting the dual lands that correspond to the colors that you like to play the most. And now, I’m telling you not to lock yourself into just one or two colors? What’s wrong with me?!? The answer to that question could furnish you enough material for a Ph.D. thesis and series of books. From a Magic perspective, though, nothing, at least as it relates to this issue.
You see, some people play only one color or a certain pair of colors all of the time. “I can’t stand Green. I’ll never play that.” The people that I know who have been most successful play whatever cards are the best cards at the time; they don’t limit themselves to one or two colors because they don’t want to limit their chances to win. If that means that they’re playing Blue and Green during Odyssey Block Standard, that’s what they play. If that means that they played Blue and White when Onslaught Block was Standard legal, they did. It might even mean that they’ll play a mono-Red deck (like Goblins when Onslaught was legal). The key is that they don’t lock themselves into just one or two colors regardless of how good or bad the cards in those colors are at the time. They play the best cards, colors be damned.
So, why would I suggest that you first get the rare duals that coincide with your favorite colors? Because this column is about playing Magic on a budget. You have to start somewhere. So, start with your favorites because you’ll use them the most. Makes sense to me. Please, feel free to argue in the forum about why that idea is wrong, though.
The bottom line here is to play the best cards, regardless of color. If not, be prepared to go through cycles of losing and winning as the color or colors that you like best wax and wane in their power. (See, e.g., Jamie Wakefield writing on Green for the past, oh, seventy-six years.)
Rule #4: Know what your deck does. – Many of you, if not most or all of you, are laughing at this one. How can you play a deck and not know what it does, unless you’re playing in some bizarre casual format where your opponent makes a deck for you and you play it sight unseen? (Yes, I’ve actually played that format. It was draft.) However, knowing what cards are in your deck and knowing your deck’s strengths and weaknesses – what it does well and what it doesn’t – are completely different things.
Yes, there is the base version of this rule, something like “know how to play the deck well.” I ran into an example of that last weekend. I took my brother to an informal Standard tourney. He hasn’t played in a tournament in something like five years. After a little discussion with him, we decided on a modified Goblin Storm deck for him to play – now with Simian Spirit Guide!
Joe and I gave Jonathan a little bit of a rundown on his deck, and Jonathan was pretty excited about playing. He barely lost in round 1 in three games to Joe, who was playing Dragonstorm. (I’m not sure if Joe would have won had my brother’s Rite of Flames not powered Joe’s deck up a couple of times.) In his second round, I noticed him getting frustrated when he’d play his hand out.
Crud.
My fault.
I’d forgotten to tell him that he should hold cards until he could really Storm up a bunch of Goblins or damage. He was still thinking “Goblins means playing whatever I can every turn.” It’s not that he didn’t understand the Storm mechanic. No, he had that one down cold. It was that he was nervous holding cards and taking damage. Why hold cards when he could make a Mogg War Marshall to block?
After the second round, we talked. I tutored him a bit better. And, of course, he slaughtered me in round 3. I’m pretty sure that, had he known what his deck really did, he could have been 3-0 or at least 2-1 at that point.
There’s more to it than just knowing the basic function of the deck, though. You need to know the nooks and crannies of the deck’s performance against other decks. For example, how does your deck recover from mass removal such as Wrath of God or Damnation? If the answer is “it hopes to draw more creatures” and you don’t have any card drawing in the deck (see Mono-Green Aggro), what you’re really saying is “it hopes that there’s a Timbermare or Groundbreaker on the top of the library.” If that’s the case, you might want to hold a couple of creatures against decks that look like they run mass removal.
So, know how your deck works and, maybe more important, how it doesn’t work. You might just sneak in a win that no one expected.
Rule #3: Learn from your mistakes. – I was gonna call this one “There’s no such thing as luck,” but I wasn’t ready for another eighteen-page forum discussion on that issue. Instead, I decided to call it “Learn from your mistakes.”
Every player has his favorite tale(s) about mistakes that he’s made or mistakes that he’s seen made. I’m not going to tell any stories about those here. It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just that there are so many entertaining stories about mistakes that I could write an entire series on them. Why waste the best ones on just a small part of this column? Instead, I want to talk in more general terms.
Mistakes come in all sizes, shapes, and colors. Well, actually, when it comes to Magic, mistakes come in all sizes, shapes are irrelevant, and there are five colors. Whatever. The point is that you need to learn from them, and the design of the game allows for a nearly infinite number and type of mistakes. Some will never be noticed by even the most eagle-eyed observer and won’t cost the player a thing. Some will be the difference between making enough money on the Pro Tour to buy a new car and not making enough to cover expenses.
One of the most basic mistakes that people make is that they mana hose themselves. (“Today’s secret theme is… ‘mana.’”) Now, this can come in a couple of forms. It could be that they aren’t getting enough mana to do all that they want during a game. It could also be that they aren’t getting the right colors. Yet, they’ll blame their losses on luck.
Sure, randomness is part of the game. That randomness includes getting mana hosed sometimes. I had a deck about five or six years ago that ran twenty-six lands. (I was trying to get Cognivore to work because everyone said it stunk. This was before whatshisname won Pro Tour: Houston or Austin or San Antonio or whatever it was on the back of Cognivore. By the way, I was right again.) I wrote a piece on the deck. I could look it up if I wanted to, but that’s what Esteemed Editors like Craig are for. I think. [That was Justin Gary at PT: Houston, I believe. – Craig] Anyway, I mulliganed all day long with that thing because of mana issues. Twenty-six lands, and I mulliganed over half the time?!? Yup, it happens. The laws of randomness will give you six or ten games in a row with bad mana. Sometimes, though, it’s not randomness.
If this happens consistently with your deck, don’t just shrug it off as bad luck, randomness, misfortune, or the Tooth Fairy having it in for you. Investigate it. Do you have enough mana? Do you have the right mix of colors?
Besides deckbuilding errors, the other area to watch is play errors. Don’t be shy about asking better players what decisions you should have made that you didn’t and which decisions that you did make were just complete dreck. I still do it. Fortunately, there are always better players than me standing around. Heck, I could be at Pier 1 looking at chrome dinner plates (marked down, of course) with Luanne, and there would almost surely be someone in the store who’s better at Magic than I am.
Don’t shun unsolicited advice either. Yeah, it’s pretty annoying to have your mistakes pointed out that way, precisely because it’s unsolicited. “Oh, dude, I was watching that game, and you should have totally not blocked that guy eight turns before you died!” There might be a nugget of wisdom in that free advice, though. Besides, it’s free. Doesn’t mean you have to take it. Just means it’s free. (Void where the Free Advice Offerer is so annoying that no amount of possible skill advancement that could occur would outweigh the prison time that would ensue should you snap and kill him by beating him to death with your trade binder.)
One of the best reasons to learn from your mistakes is that the lessons are so vivid. People rarely learn anything new from their successes precisely because they were successful. (See Rule #1, below.) When we’re successful, we presume that what we did was correct. Why wouldn’t we? After all, we were successful! Mistakes, though, oh, we know that those were wrong. That’s, um, why they’re called mistakes, you know.
The key, though, is not just recognizing that something went wrong. Heck, that’s the easy part. The floor collapsed. The engine blew. Your girlfriend got pregnant. Yup, easy to tell that something went awry. We also have to recognizing that our decisions may have had something to do with causing that something to go wrong. If you blame everything on bad luck or misfortune, you’ll never learn from your mistakes because, by your own definition, they weren’t your mistakes. They were caused by forces that you couldn’t control, not your decisions.
My goal is to never make the same bad play decision twice. I’ve never been completely successful in that, but I keep trying. In addition, I keep finding new mistakes to make. However, I will always try to remember the mistakes I made in the past so that I don’t keep making them.
Rule #2: If it doesn’t help you in combat, don’t do it before combat. – This is essentially a very specific example of Rule #8, but I’ve found that this is so important that it’s gone from being just an example of one rule to its very own rule. As I’ve mentioned before, Magic is a game of resource management. (You have resources in your cards, life total, permanents on board, mana, et al, and you manage them in an effort to win.) It’s also a game of incomplete (or imperfect) information. That means that you (almost) never know absolutely all of the options that the other person has. Heck, thanks to the library and shuffling, you’re usually not completely sure of your own options. Yes, I know that there is at least one extreme example of an opponent with no cards in hand and no cards left in his library with all of his other cards somehow visible to you, thus, giving you perfect information about the other side of the table. Let me know when that happens for you, mmmm-kay?
When you have incomplete information, you take your cues from – you guessed it – your opponent’s resources. The fewer resources he has available, the fewer options there are for him.
Look at this scenario. You’re playing a Red and Green deck, and you have one card in hand. Your turn comes. You draw your card. You drew Spectral Force. You tap all of your mana to play the Spectral Force. Then, you attack with everyone except the Spectral Force.
Unless you have some ultra-secret card in your hand with a non-mana casting cost, your opponent knows all of the options that you have during combat. In this case, the specific creatures you have on board don’t matter because your opponent can see them all. Okay, fine, one of them might be a Morph guy with a weird Morph cost. Forget that possibilities. All creatures in this scenario are face up, as they almost always will be in any case like this.
By tapping out before combat to cast a creature that in no way could help you in combat, you limited your options in combat. The question isn’t whether you actually had those options. Heck, those could have been two lands you were holding. However, you gave away valuable information. Once you went into your combat phase, your opponent had a much better grasp on your options. He’s asking himself “What can he do with that card in his hand if he has no mana available?” In Standard, the only format that I generally work in, pretty much nothing. That means that your opponent only has to worry about the creatures that are attacking him and any abilities that don’t require mana.
Now, back up a step. Let’s say that you don’t cast that Spectral Force. You enter combat, and, like before, you swing with all of the creatures you have on the table. In this case, your opponent has a much tougher task ahead. His question has now gone from himself “What can he do with that card in his hand if he has no mana available?” to “What can he do with two cards in hand and five mana available?”
That is a huge difference. The answer goes from “not a whole heck of a lot that could actually matter” to “I need to consider whether he has Might of Oaks, Brute Force, Char, Stonewood Invocation, Shock, Giant Growth, Fiery Temper, Lightning Axe, creature cards with Flash, Enchantment cards with Flash, and about sixteen thousand other possibilities.”
Never give away that sort of advantage.
Rule #1: Don’t let success trick you into thinking you were right. – If I may be so bold, this is a brilliant philosophy for all aspects of life, not just Magic. Let’s take a look at how it might relate just to Magic, though.
Look at the previous rule and the first example under it. Let’s say that you tapped out to play Spectral Force, swung with all available creatures, and won the game. Wheeeee. You won, so you must have been right to play the Spectral Force before combat, right?
Wrong.
You probably won in that case because you simply overwhelmed your opponent. In all likelihood, nothing you did short of concession was going to lose that game for you.
Just because you got the desired outcome doesn’t also mean that every decision you made along the way was the right one. In this case, you won the game, which is, obviously, what you wanted. That doesn’t mean, though, that the decision to do something that wouldn’t help (i.e. casting Spectral Force before combat) was correct or good. It only means that it wasn’t so wrong that it cost you the game.
There you have it. Everything that I’ve learned about Magic in the past eight years. Or at least, the Top Ten things I’ve learned. Or the Ten Things I Haven’t Forgotten Yet. Something along those lines. Learn what you can from it. Discard the rest. Post in the forum. Generally, have a good time because life is just one unending party.
Finally, it seems that the vast majority of readers is against me writing as The Angry Old Man. Heck, a couple of writers on this here site here even mentioned their dislike of it in articles. This makes me sad. What if I feel angry? Can I not vent in the manner of my people (i.e. Olde Fartes)? I guess not. At least not without being more entertaining about it.
What actually hurts me most about the response is that I obviously didn’t write well in that mode. Curmudgeons and bitter guys have been writing for hundreds of years and getting major props doing it. I didn’t. Obviously, it was not well done or entertaining enough. In the future, when being The Angry Old Man, I will try to be more entertaining.
Chris Romeo
FromRightField-at-Comcast-dot-net
P.S. One last thing before I go this week. On January 27th, StarCityGames.com own Richard Feldman placed fifth at an Extended PTQ in Nashville, TN. I’m sure that this isn’t the highlight of his Magic career. I only bring it up because I also played at that PTQ, and I had no knowledge that he was there. In other words, even though I probably bumped into the guy, I still have yet to actually meet the man who schooled me in the very first StarCityGames.com Writers’ MTGO Battle Royale.
Since I know that you’re wondering about it, I only did a little worse that Mr. Feldman, going 2-2-drop to draft. Um, nothing more interesting than that. Just wanted to mention it for no real reason at all.