It’s April Fool’s Day, and here I am writing the most important article of my Magical musings. This marks the big triple digit 100th for me, and something I’ve been anxiously anticipating since I started here nearly three years ago. In the back of my head I was always aiming to reach this plateau, and it’s one of those internal accomplishments that helps me refocus on what I want to do with the rest of my time here.
I really feel like this article needs to be read by everyone that plays Magic. Not because I have the curliest locks in Dominaria, or because my last name is Sanchez, or because there might be a MS Paint illustration at the end, but because these words will make you a better person. And I truly feel that. So read every word, then send it to everyone you know. I want this article to be the one that wakes you up and slaps you in the face, like mother used to do in grade school.
I’ve learned a lot through filtering my thoughts on WordPad and tattered spiral notebooks, and it’s opened my eyes to one of the subtle grand schemes that Magic encompasses. I touched on it a couple of weeks ago in Mountain, Shock You, but I knew when I was writing it that it was only the tip of the iceberg, and a grand theory was still locked within my subconscious.
My cousin Louie is getting back into Magic after a nine-month hiatus, and his enthusiasm has really motivated me to broom away the cobwebs in the back of my brain. So we took a trip to San Marcos to visit with a wise philosophical sage: Billy Moreno. There we went over what a significant role Magic has played in each of our lives, and how important it is that we realize just how important it is.
Take Louie, for instance. I didn’t even know he existed until he recognized my name on a match slip and started hardcore barning me as a joke. “OMG, you’re THE Kyle Sanchez?! The SCG writer!? Sign my playmat!”
We became immediate friends, and through our family businesses we learned (several months after meeting) that our relatives bonded at some point a long time ago.
Truth is, if Magic hadn’t connected us, I wouldn’t have met one of the best people in my life. And I feel that way about so many Magicians I’ve encountered. I don’t know what it is, but it feels like Magic players connect so much more effortlessly than other cliques. It just feels like things “click” sometimes.
See, Magic isn’t like other games, Chess, Checkers, Chutes and Ladders, Uno, EPIC!, Dominoes, or even Poker. Some of those games have a fraction of the complexity that Magic has, and none of those games can serve as a building block for future life endeavors quite like Magic. You can make a ton of money playing Poker or even Chess, but they don’t build your intellect to ensure productivity in all other ventures like Magic. You can make the argument that Chess has more permutations than subatomic particles in the universe, but then you also don’t have to deal with as many social situations in Chess, while the Poker complexity doesn’t have as many decision options. Honestly, Chess, Magic, and Poker are all right there on complexity, but being a Magician I always got to give more love to the superior game.
Like I said last time, learning how to succeed in Magic lays out a blueprint that helps you succeed in life. So I made a list of all the fundamentals I could think of that can be related to everyday occurrences.
Structure — Magic exists in a defined set of rules. We’ve learned how to operate within them and manipulate them to our benefit.
Networking — At some point we each realized that we can’t do this entirely alone. We read articles, start emailing, chat on AIM or at the card shop. We search for knowledge like rats searching for a plump slice of cheddar.
Bartering Skills — To play the game you must attain your own resources, buying booster packs to participate in drafts, trading with peers, winning tournaments to get store credit, or simply buying cards in bulk to achieve a discount.
Focused Thinking — Remember that first time you saw someone in the tank deciding what to do? Seeing someone think deeply about a play generates a kind of aura around that person. I’m sure I’m not alone here, but seeing someone else do it for the first time made me want to think more in depth about Magic. And now, even though plays come much quicker and easier, sitting down and thinking about something was a skill that I learned adapt to other areas. Imagine sitting down and thinking about possible business investments like you plan out a combo several turns in advance.
Confidence — Once you learn how to play it becomes evident how important it is to remain confident in every aspect of your life. There is a clear difference between confidence and arrogance, the latter being equally prevalent in our society, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who started to like Magic because winning stroked our ego. Winning and being good at something is desirable for everyone, but I believe the majority of Magic players start with arrogant attitudes which evolve into a more refrained understanding and confident mindset. The two go hand-in-hand and are often mistaken for one another, but knowing the difference is a key trait at evaluating yourself and those around you.
Emotional Control — This is one that I used to have big problems with, and I still see many mages throw their deck against the wall in mulligan/mana screw frustration. I started playing the highest stakes poker games in my area, which were mostly $1/$3 and $2/$5 games with packs of middle-aged drunken buffoons. I was 15-18 during that period, and I feel like my emotional control came from the big ups and downs that surround grinding it out at poker. Losing mass amounts of money has a way of making Magic seem less important, which really focused my decision-making process. Being able to control your emotions to clear your decisions is a very important aspect of the game, and one that really fluctuates in intensity depending on your personality. Some people can take bad beats, and some can’t.
Perspective — Putting yourself in the opponent’s shoes and thinking about all the decisions they are making, and the importance and priority of each decision, achieves a better understanding of the game and leads to better decisions on your part. Use this same process for everyday situations, such as girlfriend frustrations, bartering with pawn shops, or discussing a lengthy business deal with many stipulations on both ends. Put yourself in the shoes of others: a universal trait used to obtain more knowledge.
Cognizance — Many times in Magic, “the right play” is tough to figure out. We look at what’s in play, our hand, graveyards, what’s already happened in the game, and we make an educated guess at the way the game will be turns in advance. Predicting the future becomes a very necessary skill to achieve success in this game, just like making a four-year plan in life to achieve financial victory.
Creativity — This is a rough one to gauge, because the vast majority of creative ideas turn out to be dog poop in terms of deck-building… but we always end up learning from them. The other form of creativity comes during game play, where creativity is often rewarded by its obscurity. Take, for instance, different draft archetypes: Dampen Thought in Kamigawa, Spellbombs in Mirrodin, Drake Drafting in Ravnica, or decks centered around Pili-Pala and Power of Fire in Shadowmoor. There is no disadvantage to being creative, since you should always learn from your mistakes to make the next creative idea even better.
Prioritizing — This is a lesson that is taught much more bluntly than the others. If we don’t kill that Predator Dragon we are going to die soon, thus we place removing it as our top priority. From there we can deal with his less important Scuttlemutt, and then focus on killing him. My top priority right now is the success of my used pallet racking and store fixture business. Much like a Pariah on a Silhana Ledgewalker at one life, if it dies, I die. The recent economic decline has created a wealth of opportunities, from buying out the fixtures and pallet racking from closing department stores or warehouses, to selling my product at a cheap enough price to let the product sell itself.
Cost/Benefit Analysis — A.k.a. Card Advantage, a.k.a. Interaction Advantage. When defined as interaction advantage it becomes much more life-like, because all we are doing here on this planet is creating a series of interactions. However, instead of reducing our opponents to zero, we are looking to achieve our goals, whether they are financial, family, or recreationally motivated.
Morals — There are many ways to interpret Magic’s rules, and many ways to abuse them, but for those strict disciplined mages who choose not to abuse the rules, I feel it instills a sense of honesty, trust, and sense of character. You either cheat or you don’t, it’s that black and white, so you know where you stand as a person by how you play Magic. Many of us hate the cheaters and thieves that often populate our culture, and somewhere down the line I think every Magic player realizes that our game wouldn’t/couldn’t exist without the rules by which we play.
Adaptability — This is the single most important fundamental of Magic in my mind. We have an inherent ability to adjust our plans to what is happening around us, something that I see many non-Magic friends have problems with. We identify when a change needs to be made and correct that problem as soon as possible, adapting to our surroundings to increase productivity.
In Magic we are constantly changing our game plan from phase to phase depending on a list of variables that is too lengthy to properly discuss. From the simple things like creatures the opponent has, out to the way his posture perked ever so slightly when he drew his card for the turn. There is a wealth of information to be gathered and contemplated to make an absolutely correct decision, and whether we know it or not, we who play Magic have been conditioning our brains this entire time.
We have played so much Magic that the game is actually engraved on our brain, and we actually start to think in terms of Magic in non-Magic situations. That is the reason no one ever fully stops playing. Our brains have been re-wired to think in Magic terms because of the amount of time we’ve spent slinging spells, thinking about slinging spells, and had vivid dreams of slinging spells in the finals of a Pro Tour.
Magic instills a natural intuitive rationale that carries over through every aspect of our lives, and the sooner we realize that as a community, the sooner we all grow up and become higher level citizens of society.
The key is taking that same intellectual thinking process that we apply in Magic and translating it to real life situations. I really believe that Magic players have been trained, unknowingly, to breed success in whatever endeavor we pursue. Asking ourselves questions to continue to challenge our intellect is the key. Instead of debating in our head the difference between running 2 Kataki, 2 Ancient Grudge and 4 Kataki, ask questions about your surrounding situations.
Generally, when we are looking to build a new deck that wreaks the metagame, or updating an existing deck, we ask ourselves how we can attack the format. From there we analyze the data and make educated guesses, consult peers, and fuel the process by trial-and-error to come up with a sound logical solution.
Now instead, imagine asking yourself how you can be financially stable in a year, or ask yourself what you need to do to attract a spouse of your choice, or get that much desired sports car. Then you analyze the data, make educated guesses and theories, consult peers, and fuel them with trial-and-error situations. Everything can be approached in life from the same intuitive rationale as we use in Magic, and it’s because our brains have been so conditioned to the Magical process that all we need to do is ad lib the details while keeping the thought process.
All it takes to inspire the Magic community is putting the preaching in print. Magic is a horrible teacher, much like the game of Basketball, Football, Poker. What makes Magic so awesome is that it is perhaps one of the greatest resources of our time, much like an encyclopedia or dictionary. All the tools for success are there subtly hidden within the dynamic of the game.
And when compared to the other educational systems like sports, debate, theater, choir/band, like Randy Buehler mentioned, Magic is as good, if not significantly better, at teaching life skills.
This has dragged my thoughts away from making decks, playtesting, and preparing for the next tournament. Instead, I’m looking into creating a way to teach competitive Magic. Something inside me feels like that’s the next step, if not several steps ahead in the future.
Imagine getting schools involved in Magic at the Middle or High school level. I have pages of notes drawn up about the approach and types of lectures that it would take to get the school board behind it. Superior ways of teaching Magic, like mass-producing basic archetype decks (aggro, control, combo, midrange) instead of the random preconstructed decks that give players little chance to advance in theory. Teaching all of the important intricacies, and passing on the classic theory articles like old school Flores and Zvi.
That project is going to take a lot of effort, but is something I see myself working toward for as long as Magic tickles my pickle.
My only qualm is that Magic means something different to everybody, and for as many people as there are that have embraced the competition of the tournament scene, there are a multitude more that have been devoured by the casual and mystical nature of Magic.
So, in the inspiring words of emcee master Ludacris…
Use your brain, homey… do the right thang.
…
Thanks for reading.
Sanchez