Last week, Olivier Ruel wrote a well-received article about the conditions that make people move up a system of levels he created as players. This week I’m going to try to build on that by talking about the specific skills I would expect players to learn at each level. The idea here is to help outline what players at various stages might want to be thinking about working on, in addition to how to work on it as he explained.
For easy reference, the levels he outlined, quoted from his article:
Level 1: A beginner player. He plays casual decks with own rules.
Level 2: Has been playing for a few months. He started trading and buying the cards he needed to make his deck better at the same time as he was getting better.
Level 3: An average local player. He doesn’t post spectacular finishes, but he gains experience.
Level 4: A good local player. He regularly posts decent finishes at the events he attends.
Level 5: A local champion. He does well almost all the time, and starts becoming interested in PTQs.
Level 6: A good PTQ player. He reaches the Top 8 every once in a while, and he may have played in one Pro Tour already.
Level 7: A PTQ specialist. He plays at least one Pro Tour a year via PTQs, and his level is very close to the professionals.
Level 8: A player at Level 5 in the Pro Player Club. He is qualified for every PT. He can’t make money with Magic, and barely pays for most of his trips via playing, but his playing skills are very high.
Level 9: A player at Level 6 in the Pro Player Club. He makes a little money with Magic, and his playing skills are excellent.
Level 10: A player at Level 7 or 8 in the Pro Player Club, meaning one of the top 10 or 15 players in the world. His level is almost perfect, and he may even make a living from Magic.
Moving from level 1 to level 2 is mostly about learning the rhythm of the game. A level 2 player should no longer forget to attack, play a land, or play a spell on his turn. Basically, he will not have to work to remember what to do on his turn. At this point his performance can start to reflect his strategic decisions (though they may be fairly limited) rather than purely by his blatant memory blunders. This is the basic skill one gains as a level 1 player.
Once one becomes a level 2 player, he should be learning the basics of deck building. He shouldn’t be expected to build his own competitive decks, but he should be able to talk about the reasoning that has gone into decks that he and others play at a reasonable (if basic) level. He should also have a rough sense of card evaluation, which is to say that he should know about what to expect to get out of a mana in constructed.
At this point a player is best served by trying to copy good decks from tournaments to see how synergies in the game work. He should also be learning the details of timing rules and beginning to consider when to play his cards to maximize their effectiveness rather than merely which cards to play.
Once a player has gotten a basic feel for how to play a good deck, which he has assembled and used to enter tournaments, he should be at level 3.
Throughout level 3, a player should be learning about his local metagame and understanding what decks are favored against what other decks. He should be at the point where he can consider switching to another kind of deck if his first deck isn’t working out. He should understand the concept of favorable and unfavorable matchups, and maybe start to know who he hopes to play and who he hopes not to play. He should start thinking about what kinds of changes might help some of his unfavorable matchups.
If his local tournaments are Limited, he should have a basic idea of the importance of removal and he should be able to identify a bomb. The idea of drafting a curve shouldn’t be totally beyond him, even if he doesn’t really know how to do it. He might start to think about archetypes in draft and develop color preferences or a style of deck he usually drafts.
As for playing, he should be learning the basic synergies his deck is based around. As an example, a level 3 player who picks up a Faerie deck in Standard will be learning that Mistbind Clique is often played during his opponent’s upkeep and often champions Bitterblossom. He will learn that he can activate Mutavault before playing Spellstutter Sprite to have another faerie in play (and also that he has to do that before the Spellstutter Sprite resolves). He will also learn to play his Scion of Oona in response to removal spells more often, and to play it just because he has it and hasn’t used his mana at the end of his opponents turn less often. For that matter, he will learn to play most of his spells at the end of his opponent’s turn or in response to something rather than at the first possible opportunity (his main phase). Olivier has suggested playing complex decks much later in his system, and Faeries is not a deck I would want to watch someone at level 3 play. Still, one doesn’t need to know anything in particular about the game to copy a list, and a newer player trying to win local tournaments will have better luck with a deck someone else built. Unfortunately, they probably won’t know enough to pick a deck that’s easy enough to play, so I assume they’ll work with whatever they choose.
Level 4 is when a player should be expected to start thinking ahead. As they play with other players who are interested in doing well and actually dedicate a bit of time to testing matchups, they’ll start to get a feel for how certain matchups flow. They’ll start to consider their life total as a resource and know when they can take a hit and when they have to do something. They’ll start to develop plans a few turns ahead and maybe set traps for their opponents. They’ll develop a good sense for what decks are and start to be able to figure out what an opponent’s playing within the first few turns of a game. They’ll also be able to do something with that information.
As a player progresses through level 4, he should start to play cautiously. This is like playing around specific cards, but less focused. He’s still unlikely to think, “If I do x, he might have y and that would be really bad,” but he should start to think, “He has a lot of mana up and 4 cards in his hand; if I do this, something might go wrong.”
Once a player is thinking about his opponent’s plays more often, he’s at the point where he can begin a successful transition into level 5. Olivier says that the way to do this is to play more complex (control) decks. The skill that you gain from doing this is to think more about your opponent’s game. A control deck will have a number of different answers. Sometimes different cards will answer the same threat, and the control player will have to decide which to use based on which will be more useful later. Also, a player will have to decide when he has to deal with a given threat and when he can let it slide for the moment. All of this comes from understanding what else your opponent is doing.
A level 5 player will be able to put his opponent on certain cards sometimes, and will generally have a firm grasp on his opponent’s overall game plan. He should also understand his game plan, and have a sense of the key plays that determine which player will get to successfully execute his plan. This means anything from, “I usually lose when my opponent plays a Wild Nacatl on the first turn, but I can beat a Mogg Fanatic because it’s so much slower” to, “I need to be sure that I don’t tap out before my opponent’s fourth turn, because if he cast Chameleon Colossus while I don’t have counter mana, I won’t be able to deal with it with this hand. I think I’ll wait on my Jace.”
The line to level 6 is a bit blurry in my mind, particularly since, as Olivier outlined it, it’s based on picking up Limited, but different players will have already focused on different formats early on. I think the point is that a level 6 player really needs to be familiar with everything Magic has to offer. He needs to have played a wide variety of decks and formats. Even casual formats sometimes help with gathering new insights into how the game works.
The same ideas in Constructed continue to develop from level 5. Additionally, players learn to read signals in Limited, draft curves, and pay attention to creature counts and removal counts. They learn to consider what problem cards exist for their deck in the format, and whether there is anything they can do to prepare for them while drafting. They learn which cards are good only in certain archetypes, and whether they are heading into the appropriate archetype. They have a rough idea of the best commons in the set, and general early pick orders. Essentially, they’ve learned all the basics of Limited.
Beyond level 6, I think people begin to differ a lot as to how the develop. Getting to level 7 is largely based on talent, and Magic is a broad enough game that people with different kinds of talents can succeed. There are a lot of different ways to make one’s game exceptional, and some things come more naturally to different people. From here on I’ll be following my own progression, both in terms of where I’ve been and what skills I hope to learn, as one of the things I’m very interested in for myself is what skills other players have that I don’t.
A level 7 player is usually going to be someone who puts in a lot of work. This is mostly going to be about choosing a good deck and learning how to play it. Really learning how to play it. A player at this level needs to know all the tricks. He needs to know exactly why every card is in the deck and sideboard, which cards to bring in and take out in every matchup, and how all the matches play out with that deck. He needs to always be aware of everything that’s going on in a game.
In Limited, he needs to have tried drafting all the archetypes he can think of and experimenting with new synergies. He shouldn’t be relying on what he’s read and heard from other people; he should have his own opinions on the cards and strategies that work for him. Different people are going to make different kinds of plays, and the cards a player wants in Limited change depending on the way he’s likely to play his games. He needs to know himself as a player, in addition to the format itself.
At level 8, a player should have the familiarity that a level 7 player has with one deck with most of the decks in a format. He should regularly be able to figure out his opponent’s specific game plan as well as his own, and should not walk into traps in any format. He should be completely aware of any time he could have won a game, and any plays that cost him. He will continue to make mistakes in every event he plays, and he needs to always note where they were. He should know when they were blunders (which will be extremely rare), and when they were “judgment calls” in which he should have been able to make better choices.
Olivier says that transitioning to level 9 is about innovating. I will agree that a player who moves to the top should be able to build and modify the best decks as well as play almost flawlessly. In Limited, a player should be able to find uses for cards other people wouldn’t play, and he should never get trapped in a deck that won’t come together during a draft. He should be able to make plays to win games against worse players even when the cards aren’t there to do it. He should know when and how to bluff, and should think about the game outside of the cards as well as just how his cards should be played. As an example, on Saturday Patrick Chapin asked me what I thought the play was in a game he was in. He described an extremely complex board in which he was basically dead. He drew Profane Command, the exact card he needed not to die. It was the card he was thinking would win him the game. But then he realized that, because he couldn’t give his Chameleon Colossus fear, he couldn’t actually win with it. The best he could do is kill his opponent’s Siege-Gang Commander to hold off death for a few turns and hope the match ended on time. The problem is that he would die to one of a huge number of cards in his opponent’s deck. Clearly, the situation called for some trickery, and Patrick’s real question was, “How do you use that Profane Command to convince your opponent he’s dead without breaking any rules?” The details of the answer are unimportant. What’s important is being the kind of player who knows to ask that kind of question, and being the kind of player who can find the answer. And yes, he won that game on that turn, and no foul play was involved.
At level 10, a player should have it all. He should be a master of reading his opponent to know what he has, what he’s planning to do, and what tricks he’ll fall for. This is a matter of knowing the best things his opponent could do, and knowing the most likely things his opponent will do. He should know how to play around both, and know when he can afford to play around the first and when he as to settle for only the second. He should be able to predict a metagame even in new formats, knowing both the decks that will be played and the decks that will rise to the top. He should know what will be under-drafted, and how to maximize that. He should not only think a few turns ahead, but he should be thinking the entire game ahead. He should have the end game in mind, and know what has to happen to get to the sequence of plays that will win him the game.
That’s what I’ve got. I hope I’ve managed to usefully contribute to this conversation rather than just rehashing an excellent article. This is the most abstract an article of mine has been so far, and I’m looking forward to hearing how you feel it worked out.
On a related personal note, this weekend I played in the StarCityGames.com $5000 Standard Open in Indianapolis, and a lot of people approached me and commented on my articles, or thanked me for decklists and such. I really appreciate it, and it’s great to hear that I’m actually helping people, so thank you to everyone who said something.
Until next week…
Sam