Every time you have a chance to make a decision, you have a chance to alter the fate of the game. Like I talked about last week in Decision-Point Theory, at every juncture you have the opportunity between different forks in the road, being able to make a decision and look ahead to see where each one can take you is to your benefit as a player. It lets your playskill govern the game because you have choice, and by being able to choose between several plays you can maximize the value of your cards. Of course, the opposite is also true: by giving yourself more choices, you have more chances to make mistakes and minimize the value of your cards. Still, even with that risk, I would much rather carefully control my own destiny in a game and lose because I made a wrong decision than lose because I was at the whimsy of my opponent’s interaction with the game. Being able to make more decisions means you have more power over determining the winner.
Last week I compared games of Magic to branching flow charts with each decision leading in a different direction, so let me put it this way. At each juncture on that flow chart, would you rather have two different directions you can choose from, or five? With two directions, you only have a 50/50 chance of getting it wrong. For the more inexperienced mage, a deck with fewer decisions (such as Mono Red Burn in Extended) is better because there is a lesser chance of blindly following a path which leads straight into the bloodstained jaws of defeat. Even if they can’t make the optimal decision at every juncture, there are few enough decision paths that they are more likely to make the right one. With five different decisions, as is true of many control decks, the dynamic changes. There is only one right decision out of those five, but, consequently, the one right decision you do have is probably very strong because you have access to so many tools. It becomes a lot harder to flail about and choose the right play, but the expert spellslinger is probably going to choose a play that is very powerful.
To illustrate what I mean further, imagine a weird variant of Magic where two computers are playing against each other and have been programmed to make each play at random. Yes, that’s right, which land to play, which spell to play, whether or not to counter a spell, how to block — entirely decided at random [Sounds like Shandalar — Craig, amused]. One computer is playing a burn deck and the other is playing a Blue control deck. Which is going to win? More often, it’s going to be the burn deck. The decisions the burn deck has to make are so narrow compared to the Blue player’s options. It’s a matter of which burn spell to cast, which order to play them in, and so on. Sure, the Red deck isn’t playing optimally, but the play is not so far from suboptimal that it’s going to have difficulty winning. The Blue deck, on the other hand, is going to be caught in a nightmare. Can you imagine the disaster of playing Cryptic Command with random play? The Blue deck is likely to use their permission and sparse amounts of bounce at the wrong time and end up following a poor tree of decisions. The more singular focus of the deck is going to trump the multidimensional focus of the Blue deck.
Now, do you still have that image of computers playing against each other and making choices at random in your head? Okay, good. What does that remind you of? For me, it’s not too distant from all of the times I have stood behind players at PTQ’s playing control decks and watch them seemingly counter spells or play removal at random, then end up losing to the far more important spells for which they don’t have an answer left. Now, this is nothing against inexperienced players — everybody has to start somewhere, after all. However, you have to play a deck which matches your capacity to correctly make decisions. The one situation where I would try and stray away from decks which require their owner to make a lot of decisions is when you don’t feel you can make the right decision often enough. You can not reasonably expect to win a tournament if you are given five different choices on every turn and only make the right one 25% of the time.
I vividly remember one match I played against Merfolk with Iron Maiden (the Platinum Angel/Pact of Negation control deck), and it was a terrible matchup for me. However, my opponent (self-admittedly) was a brand new player, and had no idea which spells he should be countering or what to do in the matchup. I won the match, and when he asked after the match about his plays, it seemed like he had an inability to predict what was going to happen each time he could make a play. He would have probably been better suited by playing a deck with fewer decisions so that he would have a higher chance of making the right play.
By the same token, the opposite is equally true. I have stood behind some of the best in the game and been amazed by how far ahead they can see the game progress to make the plays they do. They can see which spells they are going to have to deal with or lose to, and maximize their value out of every spell. By choosing the right play 95% or more of the time when presented with five decisions, they wring much more value out of their playskill than following multiple branches on a simple decision tree which only has two diverging choices each turn. There is a reason a lot of better players favor decks which can draw out the game and play cards which lead to complex and branching decision trees. This is not to say pros never play beatdown, but, when properly built, beatdown decks can have a myriad of available plays as well. There is a large difference between the decision trees in a deck like Mono Red Burn, and a deck like Saito’s RGW Zoo deck. For example, in the latter you still have to make decisions about when it is safe to lay Gaddock Teeg, when you should be playing burn, and so on. (Although admittedly, there are still far fewer decisions than in a control deck.)
So then, if you consider yourself an experienced player and are looking for ways to make more decisions over the course of the game, what are some ways you can create opportunities to do so? The first is to simply play cards which give you access to more decisions. When deciding between two cards of similar function, which one gives you the opportunity to make a decision and maximize its value? Furthermore, when choosing a deck, which deck has cards which allow you to make a lot of decisions? Second, playing decks which optimally want to drag the game on longer will allow you to make more decisions. By allowing the game to last longer than just a beatdown blitz, you will see more cards and more turns will pass, each of which contribute to the amount of decisions you can make. Control decks are the classic example of this kind of style. They aim to wrench control of the game over a long period of time, and in the process have to make several decisions to be able to reach that point.
As a final corollary to all of this talk about optimizing the amount of decisions you can make, there is also a benefit in optimizing the amount of times your opponent can screw up. To paraphrase something Michael Jacob once said, “the more opportunities you give your opponent to make a mistake, the more often it is they will.” Cards which allow your opponent to make the wrong decision, like Fact or Fiction, also leverage a playskill margin in your favor. Although I would rather count on myself making the right play than my opponent making the wrong one, playing cards and putting your opponents in situations which allow them to make mistakes is an important way you can gain an advantage.
Making decisions gives you the most control over the game you can have, and by having more of them you can have more control over your fate. Some people might argue that having access to more decisions does not necessarily mean they are better decisions, but I feel like having access to more decisions means that the decisions you do make are going to be stronger on average — partially because cards which allow you to make decisions are generally powerful when used properly. Let me know what you guys think in the forums, and I’ll check them out when I can. And as always, you can e-mail be at gavintriesagain at gmail dot com. I’ll be at the Origins Game Convention this weekend demoing a very exciting upcoming miniatures game called Arcane Legions in booth 829, so, if you’re going to be there, feel free to come by, say hi, and take a demo if you’re interested. Otherwise, see you guys in the forums!
Gavin Verhey
Team Unknown Stars
Rabon on Magic Online, Lesurgo everywhere else