Hey everyone!

I believe it was Sam Stoddard who first pioneered the idea of creating a “Fearless Magical Inventory.” The idea is, you write down all your flaws and weaknesses as related to Magic: The Gathering, preferably in a public place so you can be held accountable and review them frequently so as to improve and eliminate them. I think this practice, although good, is needlessly negative. It’s a truth frequently espoused by positive psychologists that we focus far too much on our flaws and not nearly enough on our strengths. Why not an “Honest Magical Inventory,” comprising both strengths and weaknesses, so that we know both what we need to work on and what we can pat ourselves on the back for? There’s no need to tear yourself up about every little thing, after all.

As it’s the New Year, I’m setting out afresh. This is what I feel are my strengths and weaknesses in Magic—hopefully the audience can take home what to do right and wrong from my fearless and honest example ;)

Strengths

Strength #1: I make up my own mind. I don’t let others do it for me.

You could also read this as “I’m very stubborn,” which is certainly a positive attribute (in moderation, of course). It’s good not to be too easily convinced of anything and to be prepared to vociferously argue your point of view. If I think a matchup goes such and such a way, you will not be able to tell me otherwise. Seriously, you won’t, even if you preface your argument with “I’ve just played 10,000 games of this matchup in a row without eating or sleeping just so I could be certain you’re wrong, and incidentally I’m Kai Budde.” You have to actually put the decks in front of me and let me see the data for myself. This is extremely important in playtesting because no two people interpret the data exactly the same way, and having a few different perspectives on what’s going on is invaluable.

Another reason this is a strength is because when I’m wrong, it lets me learn. Say your friend Jeff tells you G/W Tokens is the best deck in Standard and to play it at the upcoming GP. You’ve never played the deck before, but you trust Jeff, so you sleeve it up, battle, and promptly go 1-3 drop. What went wrong? Well, you can’t be sure because you have so little experience with the deck—was it a bad list or a bad choice? Did you play badly? Did you get unlucky and face only rough matchups? In the end, Jeff made a mistake, and it cost you. You’ll know not to blindly trust Jeff again, which is a good thing to learn, especially if you generalize it to everyone else as well. (Trust is good—blind is bad. Don’t be blind.)

Now suppose you’ve been playing G/W Tokens at FNMs for the last two months and have been crushing everyone. You’re confident in the deck, and you know you have a good list, so you enter it in the GP and, again, promptly go 1-3 drop. What went wrong? Well, now you have something. You lost to U/W Humans with maindeck Gut Shot, which is the first time you’ve faced that card, and him killing your mana accelerants both games was the crucial factor. You also lost to U/B Control, which isn’t a great matchup, particularly given he seemed to have a ton of Wring Fleshes for your Birds and Black Sun’s Zeniths for your Mirran Crusaders. It’s funny; another guy also had maindeck Gut Shot—where did all these Gut Shots come from? Isn’t it a bad card? You certainly haven’t been seeing it at FNM. Hmmm, but maybe it’s actually good now—let’s see, it’s certainly very good against me, and it still kills Champion of the Parish out of U/W and Stromkirk Noble out of Mono-Red. Not to mention Inkmoth Nexus from Wolf Run and Mono-Black Infect, and Delver of Secrets, and anything that targets is just fine against Illusions.

After engaging in this sort of cogitation, you might well reach the conclusion that the lists you’ve been playing against (and crushing) at FNM were largely untuned. They rarely killed your early accelerants, and you were able to play turn 3 Garruk or Hero and overwhelm them. Meanwhile, though, the high-level metagame evolved. Small creatures became more prevalent, and it became correct to run cards like Gut Shot, Arc Trail, and Wring Flesh. Since G/W was a known quantity after Martin Juza won Hiroshima with it, decks were able to metagame against it, and in the ensuing weeks, it became a progressively worse choice. After all, it’s a deck that soundly beats durdling strategies, but it’s not a deck that’s powerful enough to remain good when everyone’s gunning for it.

Now look at what you’ve learned from a single GP:

• Just because a deck is very good at FNM doesn’t mean it’ll still be good at the next level.
• Decks that provide consistent, powerful midgame threats, but have very little interaction or disruption, are the perfect example of decks that beat untuned lists but lose to a metagame full of hate.
• The metagame can do a turnaround in a few weeks. Don’t be the guy a step behind; be the guy a step in front.
• The list you played was too reliant on its accelerants. For G/W to do well, it needs to have some sort of two-drop. Viridian Emissary maybe? It goes well with Mortarpod.
• Don’t get too carried away with what might or might not be considered a “bad card.” It’s all very context-dependent.

These are your lessons now, not Jeff’s, so you’ll be more likely to remember them. It’s alright, even good, to make mistakes, as long as they’re yours and you own up to them; that’s how we improve.

I’ve been stubborn as long as I can remember. When I was 13, I argued every point with players who were seven years older, and much better, than I was. (They’ll still never convince me Vulshok Gauntlets was any good in Mirrodin draft.) Here are some conversations I’ve had over the past year. Conflict is entertaining, right?

Dan Unwin: “Squadron Hawk is a bad card.”

Me: “SQUADRON HAWK IS THE SECOND BEST CARD EVER PRINTED, AFTER ANCESTRAL RECALL! … OK, now average the two statements, and you’ll have something close to accurate.”

(This was before PT Paris; I was right! Ha! It’s good writing an article; you can be selective about the events you choose to present ;)

Andreas Ganz: “I think you should play Tempered Steel. It’s just the most powerful deck, and we can’t find anything that beats it.”

Me: “Playing Tempered Steel is being a step behind the metagame… Look, remember that Time Spiral block PT where everyone thought white weenie was the best deck, and it had like one copy in the top 50? That’s what Tempered Steel is like now. Everyone will be prepared for it.”

(Before PT Nagoya; I ended up playing Tempered Steel while Andy played Mono-Red. The irony.)

Me: “Zoo decks will not have Chalice of the Void in their sideboards. I don’t care what people online are doing. It’s terrible in Zoo. It counters all their own spells.”

Dan Unwin: “Yes they will! The people in queues online are the people testing for the Pro Tour! And it deals with Gaddock Teeg just the same as Magma Jet.”

Me: “I’m not playing Echoing Truth! It’s a bad card against Zoo! Magma Jet at least kills some other dude if they don’t have Teeg.”

Dan: “You’re totally going to lose to Rule of Law or something.”

(Before PT Philadelphia. I did indeed lose to Rule of Law :/ However, I went 9-1 with the deck, so I think I win this round! Perhaps not surprisingly, despite building decks together, Dan and I very rarely play the exact same 75.)

Strength #2: I’m intuitive. I assimilate data very quickly.

When I playtest with a deck, I can tell you after just a few games which cards in it are good and bad. (Well, I can tell you which cards I like and don’t like—perhaps that’s not quite the same thing. But probably I’m right more often than not.) For example, I really liked Blade Splicer in initial Standard testing. You can see why—it’s easy to cast, good in combat, doesn’t die to a single removal spell, has an admirable power-to-mana-cost ratio, and its main weakness (bounce) wasn’t an issue because no one was playing Vapor Snag. But the reason I liked it wasn’t concrete; it wasn’t an assortment of these attributes; it was a feeling I got whenever I drew or cast it. A “this card is putting me ahead” kind of feeling. It’s not entirely a coincidence that the deck that Tim Fondum piloted to second in Brisbane (G/W Tokens) made maximal use of Blade Splicer.

This comes from playing many, many games of Magic over the years; it’s easier to discern the effect a particular card is having on the game if you’ve played with similar cards before. It’s clear that Blade Splicer is good against red when you know that, in general, big early creatures are good against red. It’s clear that it’s good against control when you’re used to the idea that four power for three mana is a bargain. It’s versatile attacking planeswalkers, and it doesn’t trade with a single removal spell. All this understanding and reasoning begins to take place on a subconscious level, and it’s faster to know than to actually verbalize what you know. This leads me to the interesting general conclusion that in deckbuilding—

The decision comes before the rationale.

This is a surprising statement. Let’s unpack it. I’m saying that the following very logical train of thought…

• This deck has many four-drops and not enough to do on turn 2.
• An appropriate thing to do on turn 2, given the curve, is to cast a ramp spell.
• Therefore, I should add Rampant Growths to this deck.

…is actually the wrong way around; the correct analysis is:

• This deck wants Rampant Growth.
• I should add Rampant Growth to this deck. I’ll test them and determine they’re good.
• Why did I add Rampant Growth? Well, the deck has a lot of four-drops and not enough to do on turn 2. Its four-drops are especially good if they come down a turn early, and Rampant Growth also accelerates you into your five- and six-drops. The deck has uses for land past the sixth, so adding additional mana sources is not likely to cause flooding.

In other words, you first figure out what you need to do and then understand the logical reasoning behind why you’re doing it. This is kind of weird, and I expect lots of people to misunderstand or disagree or both, particularly philosophy students who’ve taken logic courses. The thing is, Magic isn’t simple—it’s not tic-tac-toe, and logical reasoning is a weak tool when it comes to such an imprecise art as deckbuilding.

“This deck has many four-drops and not enough to do on turn 2” does not actually imply that you want Rampant Growth. Maybe you have lots of three-drops as well and you don’t want to accelerate past them. Maybe you have no high-end and you can’t afford to increase the percentage of games where you flood out. Maybe the metagame is full of cheap countermagic, and having the extra good midgame spells is better than having them earlier. Maybe you’d be better served by cutting some four-drops, or maybe you want to play Viridian Emissary. There are actually a thousand factors you have to weigh. You can’t reach a logical, sequential conclusion—you just have to take an intuitive leap. This is also why you need to playtest a lot; it beats blind theorizing hands down, every time.

Logic is useful after the fact, for understanding why you made that decision. For example, if the reason you want Rampant Growth is because it’s very important to cast Garruk Relentless on turn 3 against the mirror, and the metagame shifts away from your deck, you need to reevaluate if playing it is still correct. Basically, theory can suggest a particular direction, but the decisions themselves need to come from practice.

Weakness #1: I can be lazy.

This is pretty tough to admit.

When I was writing Strength #1, I reflected on the times—more numerous than I’d like—where I have accepted results from a friend at face value without testing them for myself. To be clear, my friends are pretty good at Magic, and for every time I’ve regretted it, there have been two where it turned out just fine. But when it doesn’t, that really sucks. I don’t win, and I don’t learn. It’s just throwing an opportunity away, when all I needed to take advantage of it was to work harder and understand the metagame or deck or sideboarding strategy myself. Possibly the worst part about it is that you feel somehow indignant; if only they had been right, this wouldn’t have happened! Of course, I never have anyone to blame for my losses but myself.

Sometimes I just don’t prepare enough for a tournament. At Worlds 2010 in Chiba, I was criminally underprepared for the draft portion. Before the tournament, I’d drafted infect maybe a couple times in total—I preferred metalcraft—and my pick orders were way off for the poisonous green guys. I made probably the worst pick I’ve made in the last couple years at that very event, taking a Blight Mamba over an Untamed Might because in my very limited experience with the deck the critical mass of infect creatures was the most important thing (it is important, but Fireball is really good).

PT Nagoya was another one. Sixteen hours before I needed to submit my deck on Friday, I had no clue what I was going to play. We’d tested tons of things, but nothing really had a positive matchup against the scourge of the metagame, Tempered Steel. Why it took me so long to conclude I should just play Tempered Steel, I don’t know. The result was that my deck was fine, but not having played enough matches with the list really cost me—I didn’t have a plan for the mirror, and my sideboard was very hastily constructed. I ended up 6-4 in the Constructed portion of that tournament, losing four of the last five rounds, when another couple wins would’ve got me into the Top 8.

Weakness #2: I can cling to my own conclusions too tightly.

If I think a certain way, and if I feel I have good reason to think that way and have already considered all reasonable alternatives, I’ll discount new, opposing information too readily.

This doesn’t seem, at face value, like so much of a problem. After all, if I’ve already considered the alternatives and examined lots of data to reach my conclusion, surely it’s correct to discount opposing views? That’s what reaching a conclusion means, after all.

The thing is, Magic is not static. Constructed metagames change. Even Limited metagames change, as people work out what cards and strategies were underrated, then what cards and strategies beat those first ones, and so on and so forth. It’s not as pronounced as the Constructed metagame changes, but for example Myr were very early picks in the early days of Scars of Mirrodin draft. (Brian Kibler went so far as to take Gold Myr over Ezuri’s Brigade p1p1 at GP Sydney. He either 3-0ed or 2-1ed, I can’t remember.) Later on, Myr routinely came sixth pick, and there was also a gradual shift in the pro consensus from being “play first” to “draw first” in that format.

A considered and completely correct conclusion might not be at all accurate in two months or even in a few weeks. Information is only valuable if it’s not widely known. The ChannelFireball team knew before Worlds that Tempered Steel was a very good deck and did accordingly well. Two weeks later, the same information was useless. Everyone knew Tempered Steel was powerful, so there was a sharp increase in R/G Ramp decks with lots of removal, and suddenly Tempered Steel wasn’t such a great choice anymore. If you were still taking Myr first in Scars draft by December last year, you were probably going to end up with way more Myr than you could ever need and not enough of the efficient creatures and equipment that people were first-picking now.

This is why I say this is a weakness. Sometimes when I’m playtesting and I think a matchup should go a certain way, and it doesn’t, I get frustrated. When you’re playtesting and you get angry, this is a clear sign that you should step back and think about why. Testing should never make you annoyed; you’re just collecting results to inform your decision.

When I get annoyed while playtesting, I usually feel like my opponent is getting unreasonably lucky. I know the matchup shouldn’t go this way; but two games ago I mulliganed and didn’t draw the second white source. Then last game he drew that Slagstorm at the critical time, and this game he had both turn 1 Lightning Bolt and turn 4 Primeval Titan. Next game he’ll probably get lucky in some completely different way—why can’t he just mulligan to five and miss land drops?!

The lesson: Sustained luck isn’t really luck, of course. If he’s winning a lot of different ways, well, probably his deck beats mine most of the time. Why is that? Well, so now I have a whole new metagame to solve. Your deck might have been an awesome choice for that PTQ you won last month, and you can justifiably feel proud of having made such a great list. But don’t let that pride misguide you if it’s correct to toss the deck now.

That’s all I have for this week. Until next time,

Jeremy