There’s a soda machine where I work that doesn’t accept bills. The bill-reader just broke one day, and nobody ever fixed it, so the only way to get soda out of it is to come bearing a dollar’s worth of coins.
I love this machine, because unlike most of the others in the building, it’s never sold out. Everyone knows it doesn’t accept bills, and nobody wants to carry around an entire dollar in change all day, so when they realize it won’t take their cash, they give up and go find another. That leaves it consistently well-stocked for the rest of us.
And by "the rest of us," I mean those of us who know how it really works.
See, right next to the soda machine is a snack food dispenser. It takes bills just fine. What it also does just fine is give refunds…in coins. You slip in a dollar as if to make a purchase, push the button to get your money back, and suddenly your dollar has become four quarters. You pop those babies into the soda machine, and voila – instant refreshment.
There’s a moral to this story, and since you’re reading it on StarCityGames.com, you can bet it has to do with Magic.
To most people, the Broken Soda Machine looks like a lame duck. It won’t take bills, right? Piece of junk. Stay away from that thing.
But to those of us who know how it really works… it’s awesome! For two seconds of extra effort, you get a near guarantee that your soda of choice will be in stock – and considering how frequently the rest of the machines in the building run out, this is a definite cause for celebration.
Do you know how many bad-at-first-glance Magic cards are glossed over like this? A lot. They’re overcosted, or underpowered, or they just don’t seem to do anything. Set reviews will tell you these cards are bad.
Cards like… I dunno, say… Tooth and Nail?
I did a search for “Mirrodin” on StarCityGames.com article archive to see what Mirrodin reviewers had to say about Tooth and Nail back when the set was released. I didn’t find many card-by-card reviews of the entire set; most were “First Impressions of Mirrodin” articles, and none of them even mentioned the 5GG Sorcery. The one review I found that was inclusive enough to comment on it had the following to say.
“Tooth and Nail
At that cost, you’ve got to be thinking really big to consider building a Standard deck around it. Unquestionably your plan would have to be going for the Entwine option – but at nine mana and almost no flexibility, you can do better.”
That’s it.
The same article spent almost twice as much time extolling the virtues of Plated Slagwurm for Constructed.
Here’s the problem. If I had walked around the Mirrodin prerelease and told people that I planned on building a deck around accelerating out a Tooth and Nail by assembling the Urzatron, you know what I would have heard?
“You’re kidding.”
“Can I moneydraft you right now, B?”
“Yeah, sounds pretty good for casual.”
“You know Tooth and Nail is bad, right?”
FYI, saying a card is “good” or “bad” is one of the most useless things in Magic.
“I’m playing Duress in my deck.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s good.”
Wow.
You think Duress is good? I totally could not have figured that out. Not even after you told me you put it in your deck. Like, I was pretty sure you included it because it was terrible, but you totally cleared that up for me just now. In actuality you are playing it not because you think it’s terrible, but because you think it’s good. Thank you for helping me understand your deck.
Now I do realize that answering the above question with “Because I need disruption” instead requires an entire extra syllable worth of breath, but think of how much more discussion can result. Someone could respond with “Why does your deck need disruption?” – which might be a question you hadn’t asked yourself yet. Maybe your deck doesn’t need disruption, and playing Duress was a bad call.
But when you dumb your rationale down to a simple generality like “I’m playing it because it’s good,” the discussion can’t really go anywhere. What’s a guy supposed to say back to you, “It’s actually not good?”
Now don’t mistake me – generalities aren’t always a bad thing. They’re perfectly fine when no discussion is desired; in that case they just make things go faster:
“Hey, I haven’t tested against Gifts yet. What do you think of boarding Blood Moon against them?”
“We tried that; it sucks.”
No biggie there. The question was aiming for a simple, straightforward answer, and that was what it got.
But you have to realize what happens when you start bringing generalities into serious discussions about the game.
"Card advantage is good."
What does this even mean? That we should always be looking to get card advantage?
Is that even true?
As a matter of fact, it is not.
If it were always true that "card advantage is good," then Jayemdae Tome should go in Psychatog. Jayemdae Tome makes card advantage. Card advantage is good. Therefore, Jayemdae Tome should go in Psychatog, right?
Obviously not. Card advantage is only good at the right price. How about this, then?
"Card advantage is good when it is affordable." Is this statement true?
Well, Fact or Fiction is widely accepted as one of the most affordable generators of card advantage in the game. Affordable card advantage is good. Therefore, Fact or Fiction should go into U/G Madness, right?
You see where this is going.
Generalities trick us into thinking we understand something, when really we are just trusting that someone else has worked out the details for us.
"Card advantage is good."
"Gaining tempo is good."
"There are no wrong threats, only wrong answers."
I could use all of these generalities to argue that you should run Treasure Trove, Eye of Nowhere, and Fugitive Wizard in every deck you play.
Okay, so what am I advocating here? That every time you are asked to justify a card’s inclusion in your deck, you go through a fifty-step logical proof on a blackboard to explain your reasoning?
No, I’m just saying you need to realize what generalities do: they put blinders on you. They inhibit you from seeing more deeply into a problem, and when the problem is too complex to be solved by an extremely simple solution, you’ll never arrive at the answer if all you ever do is go back and forth with superficial exchanges like “this is good!” and “no it isn’t!”
I see people get so mired in the idea that "I’m the control deck in this matchup," they totally forget that they can swing at their White Weenie opponent with two waves of Meloku tokens and win. Instead, Meloku just sits there making Illusions that trade with or chump block attackers, and the game drags on and on until the Blue player is overwhelmed. The generality that “control decks don’t try to race aggro decks,” which is only usually true, is blinding him – keeping him from winning a game he’s already got locked up.
The human mind is a lazy thing. When you come up with – or someone tells you – a general statement to describe the way something works, your brain will assume that’s the end of the discussion on the subject until you tell it otherwise.
People learn "rules" to govern play and deckbuilding decisions all the time, and then forget to break them when they need to later.
Let’s say I am playing a Kamigawa Block Gifts Ungiven deck and I see the following opening hand.
Only one land.
Sensei’s Divining Top.
Two Kodama’s Reaches.
Gifts Ungiven and two other awesome business spells.
Do I keep?
A lot of players in this situation will take the easy way out and defer to some rule they have come up with to determine what to do when this happens. One of the following, perhaps.
"Never keep a one-lander and Top unless there is also an Elder in it."
"Never keep a one-lander, period."
"Only keep a one-lander if it has Top in it."
Again, falling back on generalities like this can get you all screwed up.
Say you’re in game one – but you happen to know you’re up against White Weenie, your best matchup of all the Tier One decks – and you see this hand. Let’s also say you’re on the draw, and that your opponent has immediately announced that he is keeping his seven cards, indicating he is holding at least a decent hand himself.
And yours is one land, Divining Top, 2x Kodama’s Reach, spells? Throw it back!
That is a risky hand to keep, and since the matchup against WW is extremely good for you if nothing goes wrong, all you need to do to win is make sure that nothing goes wrong.
Keeping a hand that requires having two land sitting in the top five cards of your library is just asking for trouble; if you don’t ship this thing back and try to get something closer to average, you’re giving your opponent the perfect opportunity to win a matchup he has no business winning.
Now let’s say you are in the same situation against mono-Blue control, one of your worst matchups in the format.
Once again, your hand is one land, two Kodama’s Reaches, Sensei’s Divining Top, and business spells. Your opponent has already declared that he is keeping his seven-card hand. Do you keep?
Sure you do! If everything proceeds as normal in this matchup, you get your face kicked in. Your best shot at winning is by having an extremely spicy draw, and if there are two lands near the top of your library, you will have a spicy draw indeed. Divining Top, three shuffle effects, and business spells after that… just the kind of draw you need to overwhelm mono-Blue’s countermagic.
Following a preordained mulligan strategy in this situation is all wrong. If you let some rule you came up with blind you, you could easily make the wrong decision here and go on to lose the game because of it.
People who never take their blinders off keep missing out on the Tooth and Nails of the world. The Broken Soda Machines, if you will. Opportunities are lost on them, because they never see any deeper than “this card looks good” or “this card looks bad.”
When you go back to these guys six months later and point out that many of the cards they told you were “bad” at the beginning of the year kept showing up in winning decklists throughout the season, they tell you to shut up.
You want to get better at Magic? Start questioning generalities.
Take those blinders off.
Richard Feldman
Team Check Minus
[email protected]