Good Magic is about planning ahead. I’d like to say that all Magic is about planning ahead, but I think a majority of players, even at the PTQ level, don’t really do it. People focus on making the best play. They look at a board and they say, “What am I supposed to do here?” The question shouldn’t be what you’re doing that turn, the question should be how you’re going to win from there, or how you’re going to get to the kind of game state you want to be in. Maybe you can safely attack for 5 and take 2 in exchange, putting your opponent at 4 and you at 15. That sounds pretty good, as a casual observer I would probably suggest that you do that, but what if your opponent has a ton of reach and you have almost none, but you have inevitability?
This applies even more strongly to drafting, “What’s the right pick here?” is a question that I think usually doesn’t have one best answer. Oblivion Ring is a better card that Soul’s Fire, but if I’m going to take almost any Red card over almost any White card with my next few picks because my color preference, knowledge of the format, or play style that rewards my having Red cards, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to just take the Soul’s Fire that will play better in the deck I’m most likely to end up with. It’s important to understand yourself as a player.
Raphael Levy explained to me that he likes to trade damage. In early in the game in Limited he will prefer to attack and get attacked if it’s up to him (say he has a 2/3 and his opponent has a 2/2. If he doesn’t attack, they both sit there, but if he does attack, they trade blows). Other people will not attack there, and neither is always right. Raphael knows this about himself. He knows it’s how he plays, and he believes that he is generally better than his opponent in the end game situations where both players are in danger of dying (better than his opponents here, more than he is in other game states). In knowing that is how he plays, he probably drafts and builds decks to win in that state.
If you play like him in that way, Colossal Might is an awesome card, as it will frequently win the game for you when you draw it on turn 6 or 7. If you will feel more comfortable sitting back in that case, maybe you think you’re better than your opponent in general, so you want to make sure that the game goes long and the board clutters so that they have time and complicated situations in which to make more mistakes (the alternate school of thought is to make the game short such as to punish them more for a single mistake), that card won’t be as good for you, though it is still an excellent card, of course. I’m guessing Raphael doesn’t take Grizzled Leotau very high or often, since it doesn’t do what he probably wants to do in the early game. If you’re the other kind of player, you should probably take it.
This requires a general feeling for your play style, but the picks can be even more informed if you have a more specific plan in mind. In Mirrodin / Mirrodin / Darksteel draft, I liked to play 15-land Green/White or Green/Red aggro decks with cheap creatures, lots of tricks, and very little equipment. Pack 1, Pick 1 I would probably take Predator’s Strike over Pentavus. I would definitely take Viridian Shaman over Pentavus or Predator’s Strike over Bosh, Iron Golem. These aren’t about, “What’s the best card here?” I was asking, “What’s the best card for my deck?” and, “How am I going to win this game?” before I had any cards, because I knew that the cards I wanted would always be there.
I think one of my best skills in Limited is to know exactly how I want my deck to play out, and what kinds of cards I’m going to need for that within the first few picks of a draft, and, to a slightly lesser degree, to properly be able to change that plan as the draft continues when something surprises me. This is actually the reason that I find it difficult or intimidating to write Limited articles. I am not the right person to ask, “Should I first pick Fatestitcher or Magma Spray?” I have no idea. My usual answer is something like, “Follow your heart.”
With questions like, “Which is better, Magma Spray or Resounding Thunder?” there really isn’t a correct answer. The more you play like Raphael, the more you’ll want the Resounding Thunder, as reach will be more valuable. The more highly you take cards like Vithian Stinger, Hissing Iguanar, and Jund Battlemage, the more you’ll want Magma Spray, as you’ll be likely find yourself with far too many three-mana spells and Resounding Thunder will cost you a turn while Magma Spray will not, and more often than not, they’ll do the same thing. To make matters more complicated, Resounding Thunder is actually something of a split card, and if you play the opposite game and you like your Grizzled Leotaus, maybe Resounding Thunder gets better again, as the tempo bonus from Magma Spray has less value and cycling the Resounding Thunder has a lot more value.
Continuing to consider planning ahead as a deckbuilding skill, (which is what drafting is, of course), we come to sideboarding. If you’re someone who asks for a sideboard plan with a given deck against another deck, and then when you’re sideboarding you decide you don’t like one card as much as another and change it around, you might be messing with a cohesive plan that was suggested to you. Fortunately, that might not be a bad thing, as it might not matter if you didn’t have the plan or any intention to execute that plan regardless. This is why it doesn’t particularly concern me that Paulo and I sideboard Faeries differently in almost every matchup. I know what I want to do with the deck in each of those matches, and I know what I need to do to accomplish those goals. I’m also confident that Paulo knows his plans as well. I’m curious about it, certainly, and I suspect that one of us has a better plan in each matchup, but I also recognize that it isn’t that simple. First of all, there’s the question of how each of us will play once the game starts. We would mulligan different hands, we might be differently inclined to run out our Spellstutter Sprites as bodies at different points, we’ll play our Mistbind Clique or Cryptic Commands and different times; in general, we just can’t expect to make the same plays as the other on every turn. Beyond that, there’s the question of our opponents. Some plans will work better against specific opposing plans, and maybe my way will work better against the way an opponent is going to play, or maybe his will… it might not be discernable from a list. Also, there is a chance that either of us would change our normal plan after our first game with our opponent due to learning something about him (or maybe even without realizing that we’ve learned something about him, simply by reacting to how the first game played out… which did, in fact, tell us something about him).
I like simple one-liners from very skilled players. I try to take as much out of them as I can. A lot of planning is a synthesis between Jon Finkel, “Focus on what matters” and Manuel Bucher, “Play around everything.” Focus on playing around everything that matters? This is to say that a good plan will also take into account your opponent’s plays. Often you will find yourself in a position where it is correct to consider which cards your opponent could have. From there, you want to figure out which of them you can beat, and how you can beat them. If there are cards you can’t beat, just assume your opponent doesn’t have them, as your plan won’t matter if they do. From there, when considering multiple plans, think through how the game would play out with each of the cards you’re concerned about that they could have, then figure out which plans work against the most likely scenario (or the greatest number of likely scenarios).
Note that I say “which plans work” rather than “which plans are best.” The distinction I’m making is that all that matters is whether a plan works (i.e. it results in victory), not “how good it is” (how much it wins by). There is no reason to make a play that loses to more cards to blow your opponent out when you could win without doing that while not taking a risk.
To summarize and rephrase, Magic is a strategy game, and what I’ve seen is that people tend to focus too much on the tactics of the game without forming a cohesive strategy. Tactics should be about supporting a strategy rather than a strategy in and of themselves (I’ll just make the best play every turn). “The best play” is a relative term that needs some frame of reference. You can only make the best play relative to some end, and in a lot of cases, there is enough hidden information that “toward the end of winning” is not actually a useful concept.
Bonus Section on Regionals:
Recent results as far as I’ve seen indicate very strongly that BW and GW are the decks to beat at the moment. Their dominance lately seems so clear to me that I expect their presence to significantly warp the field. Decks need to have a plan to beat those strategies, and old archetypes will probably shift toward being able to deal with them. So how does a deck do that?
I think there is going to be a bit of a de-emphasis on spot removal. You want some to kill a Wilt-Leaf Liege, but beyond that, it’s hard to get value out of it. It seems like the arms race is toward killing the opponent rather than killing their creatures. Cards like Profane Command and Overrun seem like the best trumps in these matchups. That and Ajani Goldmane. I wouldn’t be surprised to see RW start playing Ajani Goldmane, if people continue to play the deck at all.
Furthermore, from the games I’ve played so far, I have been really unimpressed by Bloodbraid Elf decks. The card itself is good, but I haven’t seen any decks that use it so far that are well situated against the best decks. Bloodbraid Elf himself is very bad against tokens and persisters, and the other cards that people play with it don’t really seem to help much. If you’re interested in trying to make a RGB deck work, I suggest trying Lavalanche at least in the sideboard, despite its awful interaction with Bloodbraid Elf. This suggestion is based on one game in which I was thought I was winning with BW and then Lavalanche just killed me. The fact that Profane Command and Lavalanche are two of the best ways to attack the format at the moment is a substantial strike against Bloodbraid Elf.
For those of you, like me, who have not given up on Faeries, I think it’s time to bring back Sower of Temptation. If I’m correct that the token race will push people to minimize spot removal, Sower will be in a very good position. When Volcanic Fallout was the hot new thing, I wanted to minimize my x/2s, so I cut it, but now with Zealous Persecution around and Red looking pretty unloved, two toughness is sounding pretty good. Also, it’s nothing new, and it’s nothing about this format specifically, but… Peek. I think Peek might be really good in Faeries. I hate Ponder, but Peek is an instant, which makes it much easier to cast after the first turn, and the information seems like it will often be extremely valuable. Knowing what cards you don’t need to play around for awhile can let you make powerful plays that you wouldn’t be able to make if you had to play more conservatively. Rather than finding better cards, as Ponder does, Peek just makes all of your other cards better. Thoughtseize puts both players down a card, but what I’ve learned from Jace is that I’d almost always prefer that both players had more cards. Aside from Bitterblossom, I usually don’t want to take a particular card that much, but the information is great. Peek seems like a better fit strategically.
My honest recommendation for Regionals is just to play GW or BW, but be sure you have a plan for all those creature mirrors.
Good luck this weekend, and thanks for reading.