I can’t count the number of times that someone has come to me for advice but then gotten defensive when I’ve given it. The question I’m most asked is “What do you think of this deck?” and then I’m handed a (usually terrible) homebrew. Now, I think I’m a very honest person, but there are degrees of honesty and a little something called tact. Answering the question with the first words that come to mind, “I think it’s god awful,” before nonchalantly handing the deck back, is not exactly helpful.

WHY do you think it’s awful?

If I didn’t answer that question up front, I’m going to have to eventually answer it. If someone hands me a deck to critique, they obviously think it might have merit, and they are probably looking for more than just my stamp of approval.

Here are just a few reasons that a deck is usually bad.

It is not a good choice for the metagame.

I’d say this is usually the main reason for a deck not receiving my thumbs up. Too often players aren’t thinking enough about the environment they’re playing in. Decks (and individual cards and players and pretty much everything) are not good or bad in a vacuum. Everything is contextual. If your deck doesn’t have much game against any of the top three decks of the hour, how can anyone recommend it? Sometimes players DO think enough about the environment they’re playing in but they reach the wrong conclusions.

Too many colors.

People complain about mana screw and color screw, yet they make things worse on themselves with a mana base stretched to accommodate unnecessary cards.

Too few colors.

Sometimes (like during Lorwyn block) mana bases are easy and you can include cards to shore up some of your deck’s weaknesses at very little cost.

Cards or combos that are “too cute.”

No matter how unlikely it is that a specific combo will come up, these players often make an argument that starts like this: “If I get X in play AND Y…” but they usually don’t finish the statement. Instead their eyes go all glassy and their expression gets dreamy, as they imagine what Patrick Chapin once called “Magical Christmas Land.” Well, it’s almost Christmas right now so we might as well dream, but I want to count on more than a Miracle on 34th Street to win a tournament.

These are but a handful of reasons why a player might look at a deck and say that it’s terrible. If you read any of them and thought “Of course” it’s because they are fairly established principles, or premises, if you will. When we are making a statement about a deck and then trying to explain why we feel that it’s bad (and then the person defending it counters by trying to explain why it might be good…), what we’re really doing is making an argument.

All arguments start with a premise and it’s good if the premise is something that is generally agreed upon.

I was in a discussion recently about what it means to be “open-minded.” My definition was not that we don’t already have pre-formed opinions (prejudices); we’re human beings, and it’s natural for us to pre-judge something occasionally. No, my definition was that we are willing to consider changing our position when presented with evidence and/or a sound argument. It doesn’t mean we are required to change our minds, but we have to leave some wiggle room to account for human errors, which we all make from time to time.

I often quote other people because that’s how progress is achieved: by standing on the shoulders of giants. Now I’m going to quote myself: “In any argument, if both parties are certain of their position but hold contradictory viewpoints, then one of them is certainly wrong.”

We all suffer from something called the “introspection illusion,” which means that we tend to give more weight to our own beliefs and ideas than we do to others’. Once we know that such a limitation exists, how can we get past it?

Well, as the cliché goes: knowing is half the battle.

Merely from accepting that we are not infallible gods, demigods, or royalty, we have already done a lot to diminish the negative impact that introspection illusion has on our judgment.

Which brings me to the point of this article: seeking advice from others.

I mentioned above that everything is contextual and I believe that. I’ve had a lot of success at the local level and some higher level success as well. I’ve been playing for a long time and I’ve read a lot of strategy articles. I’m very familiar with the players and history of the game. I’m generally a pretty good person to come to for advice.

But if I knew everything, I would be in the Hall of Fame already.

So, obviously, I still have a lot to learn.

I’m not likely to learn as much from someone that has even less experience and success with the game as I have, but there are also plenty of people that have more.

I knew this guy who had never won an FNM who copied one of LSV’s decks, changed some cards around in it, and then proceeded to explain to everyone why LSV was wrong!

Now, as I pointed out above, we all make mistakes and, when we make them, we are usually pretty certain of our position at the time. So what can we do? Well, we do what everything that has to do with game theory tells us to do: we play the odds!

While someone like LSV may not ALWAYS be right, they are certainly more likely to be right than a person who’s never won an FNM.

Building a deck is kind of like coming up with a hypothesis (i.e. “this deck is good”) and testing the deck among friends or at a tournament is sort of like using the scientific method: we perform an experiment (playtesting), we analyze the data (tournament reports), and we consider a new hypothesis (build a new deck!). In Magic, we judge our experiments by our tournament results. Yet we’re told not to be “results oriented,” a term that is strangely derogatory. The only thing that really matters is to get results. I’m sure most of you are reading this because you’re hoping I can help you get better results (and I’m writing this because I believe your faith in me is well-placed!).

What someone really means when they call someone else results oriented is that they are drawing too great a conclusion from too little data. In science, we don’t just perform a single experiment to test a hypothesis. In fact, one of the important parts of an experiment is that it is repeatable. One limitation we have in the Magic world is that we can never repeat an experiment under the exact same circumstances.

Players get different results with the same decks all the time and, when the metagame can evolve from week to week, it’s really hard to prove that a deck that is bad this week was truly bad last week. We want to maximize our percentages but it’s really hard to see if deck A is one percent better than deck B. We would have to play a lot of games with the same players and, because of variance (and possibly improvement in play from playing the same match over and over), it would still be almost impossible to tell if a deck is infinitesimally better than another deck.

Then we change a sideboard card and have to start all over again.

This is why I say that practice will only get you so far. That seems like the opposite of what the players of most games will tell you but it’s really not. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t play a lot of games. I’m just saying that you’re not going to learn much in your thousandth game of RDW vs. UB control that you didn’t learn by your hundredth. Practice really has diminishing returns.

Fortunately, there is a great wealth of Magic theory out there that has been time-tested and proven to be sound. The players that have the best access to and knowledge about this information are the ones that have played a while, have a host of accomplishments, and read Magic strategy and theory articles regularly.

I received a lot of criticism for my last article: “Following Sun Tzu’s advice”, which can be found here: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/fundamentals/23200_More_Ways_To_Win_Following_Sun_Tzus_Advice.html but it was an article that I really wanted to write because I thought that it would a) be fun and b) offer some insight. I didn’t realize that a lot of similar articles existed; maybe that would’ve mattered to me, maybe it wouldn’t have. It’s quite possible that I would’ve read them and still felt I could do better, therefore giving in to my overwhelming urge to write about Sun Tzu anyway.

Let’s face it, we can learn a lot more from Patrick Chapin talking about card advantage than we can from Scrub A, even though card advantage has been talked about so much over the years. And no matter how much we may have become accustomed to such arcane secrets to the point that they’re now mundane, these sorts of things can still be major revelations to a new player.

Mike Turian wrote me on Facebook to say that he liked my article. Considering his accomplishments, this praise really meant a lot. He said (and I hope he doesn’t mind me quoting him here!) that “decklists are king” but “I think your article would help people win a lot more than decklists would.”

I personally equate that idea to the old saying “Give a man a decklist and he will win for a day but TEACH a man to build a deck and play it and he will be able to win for the rest of his life.” At least, that’s how I think that goes…

Anyway, besides the idea that theory will win you more games than playing until your hands and eyes bleed, or a decklist would (especially nowadays when an exact decklist is pretty much obsolete by the time it’s posted), are these other important concepts:

Be humble.

I mean this in a lot of different ways but mainly: “You don’t know everything.” I don’t know everything either. Nobody does. Be aware of the introspection illusion. You don’t necessarily know something with higher certainty than someone else just because you’re you. I can’t think of an area in life where this concept isn’t important (okay, maybe politics… I think being a pompous know-it-all is a prerequisite!).

Part of being humble means to:

Be open-minded.

Since we’ve already established the premise that you don’t know everything, consider the possibility that someone else might be able to teach you something. While I believe that we can learn something new from anyone, when it comes to Magic, our time is generally more profitably spent if we:

Seek experience.

You level up in a role-playing game by seeking experience. I wonder if they got this idea from LIFE! You get more experience from a Dark Wizard than from a Green Slime and you’ll probably learn more from a Pro Tour player in an hour than you would from Timmy (playing the pre-constructed deck, of course!) in a year. To be the best, you have to play against the best. I once read that being bored of something just means that you’ve gotten all you can from the experience and it’s time to move on. If you’re regularly destroying all the competition at your local FNMs, it’s time to seek stiffer competition. Go to a PTQ, a Grand Prix, or a StarCityGames.com Open Series. Expand your horizons. We don’t grow if we stay where we are, where we’re comfortable

All these ideas relate to the subject of advice. You can’t profit from advice unless you believe someone might know something you don’t (be humble), unless you try it even if it contradicts something you formerly believed (be open-minded), and unless you’re willing to actively look for the opportunity to receive it (seek experience).

Trust me when I say that these concepts will profit you a great deal in life, not just at Magic.

Let me end with some specific bits of advice and answers to questions I’ve been asked a lot lately from some readers:

Do you think that your “win at all costs” mentality might turn off new players?

The simple answer is no. However, I define “winning at all costs” to be within the well-established rules of the game. Therefore, I have never implied or meant to imply that cheating or unsportsmanlike conduct is acceptable. While WAR may not have rules, MAGIC does, and readers should not be so literal in my analogy between war and magic (in my last article, for example).

Furthermore, I was a new player myself once, and getting regularly demolished early on only strengthened my resolve to get better and play competitively. I realize this isn’t the case with everyone. Some players get trounced all the time by netdecks at FNM and quit, but I don’t think that’s the norm. I think it’s patronizing and disrespectful to suggest that while we took our lumps, continuing to play and enjoy the game, that other new players won’t be able to do that. In my experience, people appreciate it more to be dealt with honestly, and not handled with kid gloves.

And the real tournament scene is pretty competitive. I would not say my FNM is very casual at all. Several players have played on the Pro Tour or gone to Nationals and many of the players that haven’t still take the game quite seriously. But again, I realize that other players’ experiences may differ. However, I can only speak to my own.

Do you think that you put too much emphasis on mind games? Surely experienced players would not fall for such thing.

Well, I do put a LOT of emphasis on mind games in my personal writings but that’s because that’s an area of the game, in particular, where I know I excel. As a writer, I think it’s important to write what I know and I know how to trick people (I don’t know what this says about me as a person…! Hehe.).

However, most games of Magic ARE won on technical play, not mind games, so I think that’s where players should focus their energy the most. That being said, you absolutely cannot underestimate the importance of having both tools at your disposal. If technical play wins you the game 90% of the time and mind games do 10% of the time, then you are giving up a, not insignificant, percentage if you don’t use them.

As an example, there is a player in my local area who is probably a better technical player than I am but he doesn’t interact with his opponents very much. I think that’s a mistake, but the difference in our win percentages is not very noticeable.

As for the second part of this “question,” anyone can be tricked. ANYONE. It doesn’t matter if they are some random or Kai Budde himself. The only difference skill level makes is that the tricks you have to use are different.

The same thing applies to getting a read on someone. While the novice might give up they have a counterspell by going to tap mana and then changing their mind, the expert tends to give up more by what they DON’T do, and they tend to think a step (or several ahead). So if they go to tap mana and then don’t, it may mean something, or they may just want you to believe it means something.

To quote a really old article http://www.angelfire.com/games3/mtgpages/faq/metagame.html written by David Low: “Bluffs only work against thinking opponents. Bluffs do not work against deep-thinking opponents. Double bluffs occasionally work on deep-thinking opponents, but generally fail on people who just think. Triple bluffs only get you shot. And the non-thinking opponent doesn’t care at all…”

How frustrating is it when you don’t have a counterspell and you want your opponent to believe you have one, but they don’t even care and just run their critical spell out, then you lose because they DIDN’T THINK? It’s so tempting in those times to complain that you shouldn’t have lost or that they’re terrible or that you’re unlucky. Don’t. How many more games will you win against that same person because they play just that way and you DO have the counterspell?

Sometimes bad luck happens, more often things are under our control in some way we can’t comprehend. It LOOKS like luck but it’s just that the game is being played on another level.

That being said, if you’re any kind of player at all, you shouldn’t put pros on a pedestal. That’s what most novices do and they’re creating a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy for themselves. It’s seeing everyone as a fallible human being that gives us the potential to trick our opponents at all. If you know a pro (or any good player) and they don’t know you, that is an edge (albeit probably only a small one) that you can use, so use it.

One person commented that my “Jester’s Cap” trick from my last article would not work on an experienced player. That is wrong. In fact, that is the kind of trick that sometimes ONLY works on an experienced player. He didn’t know me and assumed that my “playing dead” was what it appeared. If you’re one of my regular readers, of course you would be wary of my doing that, but, being as I was less known at the time, he was more careless.

Of course you can make the argument that “Pros aren’t careless”, but while they are probably LESS careless, it is just not reality to imagine this kind of perfect soldier with his guard always up.

Do you think that “being nice” and “being competitive” are at odds?

Okay, I made this question up, but it seems like it gets suggested in one form or another all the time so I wanted to take a moment to address it.

No, I don’t think the two things are at odds. In fact, contrary to what a lot of people might think, I’ve noticed the exact opposite. When I played at Nationals a few years ago, my opponents were some of the nicest people I’ve played, even more so than many FNMs I’ve played in!

I think being a “pro” means more than just playing the game well. I think you also tend to conduct yourself more professionally as well. You might swear at home,for example, but you probably don’t swear on the job. There’s this idea people have that you have to be some kind of a jerk to compete, but that’s only really true if you consider calling a judge (when it’s actually warranted) and holding your opponent to no “take-backs” (of moves THEY chose to make) being a jerk. I would suggest trying to develop more of a “take things in stride”, mellow kind of attitude, to get better at Magic, not an intimidating one.

What advice would you give to a new player who’s looking to get better at Magic?

Well, basically the same advice I would give ANY player, new or old: play a lot of games, make sure you know the rules well, have a more experienced player mentor you, read every strategy article you can, and play in lots of tournaments.

Tournaments can teach a player things that the game rules can’t (like when you should ID) and are good for a host of other reasons: building up stamina playing in stressful or uncomfortable conditions (like when the air conditioning is out EVERY OTHER event! Hahaha!), playing under pressure, playing timed rounds, playing at a timely pace, getting used to calling a judge if you have to, and so on.

Also, I think many people are down on paying for content (like for SCG Premium) but we pay for content all the time, for different hobbies, and we buy magazines that are mostly ads. There’s a mentality that some people have of wanting something for nothing. Winning players do not have this attitude, and I think players who are serious about improving their game could do a LOT worse than to have a Premium subscription. At the very least, you can more easily stay up to date on current metagame trends.

To win, you have to have the competitive fire (or just The Fire, for short!) and players that have The Fire tend to DEVOUR anything Magic-related. They would not dream of cutting corners when it comes to the possibility that something could make them better.

Let me put it to you another way: I already said that experienced players are who you should go to for advice and there are a lot of experienced players right here!

But I haven’t even mentioned my most important advice for the new player: never give up!

We all had to start somewhere.

You said that you thought UB control might be good right now, can you elaborate?

I NEVER said that! Hahaha, just kidding. I did say that,. In my last article, in fact. However, I think this might be one of those uncomfortable times that I have to admit I might’ve made a mistake. I personally have not found a UB control deck that I am particularly comfortable with right now. RDW is not a good matchup, neither is Merfolk (I mean Illusions!). Most of the green decks are using Autumn’s Veil… Anyway, I’m not going to touch this right now, no matter how much I love my Snapcaster Mages…

Aside: I really thought that Vengeful Pharaoh + Zombie Infestation was going to be good when M12 first came out. So I built a UB deck and prematurely told everyone that I thought I was going to break the format—such arrogance never becomes anyone—and I ignored most advice to the contrary.

I argued that you got a 2/2 for a card and you were getting a creature kill for a card. What Zombie Infestation did was enable you to get your 2/2s and creature kill FOR FREE (in terms of mana). I was quite enamored of that possibility. The problem was that a 2/2 was often NOT worth a card, your creature kill dealt with creatures AFTER they had already hit you (if your opponent even had them), and Zombie Infestation itself cost a card.

Once I tested a bunch of really bad decks, I discovered that all the advice I was being given was actually right. See? Sometimes it pays to listen.

On the plus side, even though I bought several Vengeful Pharoahs at a $1 apiece, I also bought a bunch of Phantasmal Images at $1 apiece too!

Lastly, my friend Josh asks:

What’s the deal with Bloodline Keeper in Innistrad Limited? Isn’t that card just way overpowered?

Answers: I don’t know and yes! I think I would first pick it over most things. But to keep things in perspective, I think it is easier to deal with than Grave Titan (though it’s much easier to open in a pack!), there are less other bomb rares and mythics, and black is generally kind of weak in Innistrad Limited (not because it doesn’t have good cards, but because it’s not as deep so it supports less drafters at a table).

Anyway, that’s all for this week. Please feel free to ask any questions or suggest any topics you’d like me to write about. Most importantly, I hope all of you have a fantastic Christmas!