With Future Sight on the horizon for this coming weekend, I decided to take a break from the usual TTP strategy in order to take a look at some broader concepts that I’ve been wanting to write about for some time now. The plan is to then do the usual first impressions article next weekend after the prerelease.
The goal of this article is to go over some areas in which we can all improve on by taking a step back and evaluating why we do what we do and how we can use that information. It’s been a while since I’ve written an article of this type, but there are plenty of TTP Draft Walkthroughs floating around right now and I believe some of these concepts could be more beneficial than me doing another walkthrough.
Understanding Your Subconscious
I’m going to begin with this concept, even though it’s tricky. The fact of the matter is that it makes perfect sense in my head but could end up being hard to convey through writing. I guess I’ll let all of you be the judge of that when I’m done.
The idea here is that, whether we are aware of it or not, we all do lots of things subconsciously during a game of Magic. While this fact alone may not be surprising, the truth is that we do some things much better than others without even realizing it.
Allow me to explain.
As I’m sure you’re aware, thinking in a game of Magic often goes multiple levels deep. The first level of thinking is comprised of obvious things such as what is in play, the power and toughness of each creature, cards in hand, life totals, and every other basic function of the game. As you go deeper through the levels, things get more complicated. What archetype is your opponent playing? What cards are likely in his deck or hand? How is the game state now? Am I winning or do I look to be in a favorable position? If not, how can I improve on this? Most of this occurs beneath our natural thinking processes. Realize too that I’m only touching the surface here.
While all of the above examples are important parts of improving your game, they are also hard to quantify and talk about specifically because they vary wildly depending on the situation. It seems that the better you get at Magic, the more in tune your subconscious will be. I don’t want to talk about this today however, as I want to focus on a different part of subconscious thinking.
Since no two people are alike, it makes sense that subconscious abilities in Magic are unique to each person. Some people are very good at figuring out attacking and blocking scenarios and can play things out in their head. Others are very good at reading opponents for a card in hand and then subsequently playing around the card as best as they can. Some players are especially good at technical aspects of the game, such as how the stack will work in a weird situation, or rules interactions between certain cards. Some never miss a point of damage and are good at squeezing an attack through even when the board is completely unfavorable for them. The list goes on and on, but hopefully you understand where I’m coming from.
A recent example that sparked my thinking on this matter happened at GP: Boston in a three-on-three side draft on Sunday. Some backstory to this is that I hung out with Eugene Levin and a bunch of other pros quite a bit on Sunday at PT: Kobe, and did a bunch of drafts with them. During that time I watched Eugene play a few matches, and he also watched a few of mine and pointed out some very subtle mistakes that I had made during my games. These weren’t mistakes like tapping my mana incorrectly or casting the wrong creature or anything, but rather what I’d like to call “big picture” mistakes. Since I normally play pretty tight Magic, I was amazed that Eugene kept finding these small holes in my play, and in turn I gained a huge amount of respect for him as a player. It’s not every day that someone tells you things that make you restructure your thinking in certain game scenarios. Anyway, back to the situation at hand.
Eugene and I were playing a matchup in which I was certainly the favorite based on the decks. My deck had Thelonite Hermit, Red Akroma, Pardic Dragon, Tromp the Domains, Rough / Tumble, and plenty of other really good cards. Eugene also had the Hermit, but his G/W deck was lacking in quality. Despite all of this, I was still a little worried as Eugene has a way of pulling out games that he definitely shouldn’t win if the opponent had better information. In game 1 he wrecked me with two Mana Tithes on key spells, and I ended up losing with Red Akroma on board because I was too far behind. Now, in game 2 Eugene cast a main phase Evolution Charm searching for a land off a Plains and a Forest. The reason I bring this situation up obviously isn’t to berate Eugene, but rather to examine some subconscious thinking in action.
As good of a player as Eugene is, he clearly just didn’t know the cards very well or there is no doubt in my mind that he would never main-phase the Charm there on turn 2. Evidently, some other forces were at work then, since it wasn’t as if he couldn’t just read the word Instant on the card and pass the turn. Remember, he has two Mana Tithes in his deck and he just tapped out on his turn for absolutely no reason. My question is what would cause him to do this?
After thinking about this situation more, I realized that one of my best subconscious thinking skills is that I’m always thinking about what card I should try to represent if I have spare mana leftover. In this spot, I would do anything possible to keep open a White mana and represent the Mana Tithe that I had in game 1 (if I was Eugene). When I’m casting my spells, I am vigilant about leaving open the best “bluff mana” to represent something that I don’t have. The most immediate example that comes to mind is leaving up a Red for Lightning Axe in this format. Obviously you don’t go out of your way to do this, but it can only help you in the long run and most people don’t think nearly enough about it.
I realize that this isn’t the perfect example, since Eugene was either just tired or didn’t know the cards well enough, but I believe that this is something that I would almost never do in the same position because my subconscious is more focused on these types of things. I ended up going on to win this game largely because of this mistake, as I was able to drop a morphed Hermit on turn 3 without fear of Mana Tithe, and also play the rest of my spells without fear because if Eugene had the Tithe in hand he clearly would’ve investigated the Evolution Charm more closely and found that it was in fact an Instant.
Hopefully I’m painting a clear picture here in terms of the concept I’m trying to get across. We all have different subconscious powers and if you are able to remove yourself and step back when you are analyzing a game, you will get to know your mind better in terms of Magic and can then figure out which areas you can improve on.
To use myself as a guinea pig again, one area in which I am weak is that sometimes I tend to forget about things that happen at odd times in a game. An example of this is that my friend Jeremy had a Herd Gnarr in play and a different creature came off Suspend on that turn. When Jeremy attacked, I cast Treacherous Urge, which was going to completely wreck him except that I forgot that the Herd Gnarr had grown earlier that turn due to a pause in the game (one of our cell phones rang or something), and it wasn’t a game on Magic Online so the change in power / toughness wasn’t visible. I ended up taking the wrong creature because I’d forgotten that Herd Gnarr was 4/4 due to the pause.
Zac Hill has written a good deal about making mistakes and what causes us to do so. While I think these articles are valuable in their own right, I think the better question to ask yourself is not what caused the mistake, but rather how we can focus our thinking in the future to play a better game overall. It sounds simple, but it’s easier said than done.
I wish it was possible to go farther in depth in terms of subconscious thinking, but any information I’d give would probably be too vague. The main purpose here is for you to recognize that you do some aspects of Magic really well subconsciously, and that you should try to focus on controlling the aspects of the game that don’t come to you naturally.
Controlling Pace
Reflecting back over games I’ve lost and mistakes I’ve made, the most common cause of misplaying for me has been that I was playing too quickly. I’ve talked about this in the past, but I really cannot stress enough that playing fast doesn’t get you anywhere. Obviously you shouldn’t be going to time every round, but you should spend enough time on each turn examining the options that are right in front of you and then deducing the right play to the best of your ability.
Most people say that you should go with your gut instinct on a decision, but I’ve found plenty of contradictory evidence during a game. A situation will often come up where one play immediately sticks out as the best, but if you take a couple minutes to analyze everything, you will usually find a better option. So while this section may seem like common sense, I promise you that if you slow down and focus you should see immediate results.
Draft Tendencies
While players have become much better drafters over the years thanks mainly in part to the plethora of walkthroughs available online, there are still plenty of common errors that I see on a regular basis.
The first big error is commitment. Far too often someone will open a strong card and never be able to get off it even when it is very clear that other colors are wide open with early picks being passed late. It’s for this reason that I try to avoid cards like Stronghold Overseer or Phthisis with my early picks. I’d rather practice some flexibility and take something like Rift Bolt that I can splash if I need to than to dive face first into a color when I’m not even sure if I’ll be able to continue drafting it. If you’re someone with this issue and still want to take the Overseer, you need to do so with the intention of ditching it if Black dries up too early. Flexible picks are usually better than those with heavy commitment if the card values are close at all.
Another way you can get committed is to pick a plan such as drafting Slivers and then fail to abandon ship even when the signs are clear that it’s not going to happen. In this case someone will continue to force Slivers because he opened Pulmonic Sliver or Sedge Sliver and end up with a deck that had a bunch of junky Slivers and can only win if he draws his first pick bomb.
A second drafting mistake is simply that of card valuations. This doesn’t happen quite as often nowadays since plenty of pros make their screen names public, and you can just ask them about a questionable pick. Nevertheless, there are those people who are set in their ways and I have a friend who still insists that Rift Bolt is better than Lightning Axe and Stingscourger is better than Dead / Gone, despite the fact that the majority of good players would disagree with him. The draft walkthroughs are also good resources here as well as general pick order articles, so if you don’t seek out the help you need it’s nobody’s fault but your own.
Another tool that is available but not widely discussed in strategy articles is to make sure you understand the default landscape of a draft. What I mean by this is that before the draft even begins you should look around the table to see who is seated where, and if this is your regular playgroup then you should have some idea about everyone’s tendencies. This default information can make a huge difference if you have a close decision for a first pick and can pick a color based on the preferences of the person feeding you. It’s no secret in our CMU playgroup that I tend to avoid Black and White if possible in TTP, and so the smarter players set themselves up in those colors if possible when I’m feeding them in an eight-man draft. This logic is much more complicated in a team draft, since you not only need to know preferences, but you have to think on another level and figure out what colors the guy feeding you is likely to try to sneak past you to his teammate. Using the same example, someone that knows how I draft is more likely to try to sneak a Serra Avenger past me than a Fathom Seer or Penumbra Spider. If you can consistently think one step ahead or anticipate what colors you are likely to see in the draft, it can have a dramatic impact on the eventual quality of your deck.
Nick Eisel
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