Round 12 of GP Oakland
I’m 8-3, playing Thopter Depths. My opponent is playing R/G Scapeshift, a deck for which I’ve done no testing. It’s game 3, and I know my opponent has nothing relevant in hand from a Thoughtseize. I’ve assembled the Dark Depths combo on turn 4 and sit for a few seconds to consider the merits of sacrificing the Vampire Hexmage on my turn rather than on his end step.
Now, take a minute to think about what his possible outs are in this situation and what play you’d make. Really, think about every scenario that you’d consider in my seemingly strong position.
The cards that come to my mind are Dead/Gone and Ghost Quarter. If he draws a Dead/Gone, it doesn’t matter if I sacrifice now or on his end step, so I can safely ignore that possibility. That leaves Ghost Quarter as an out, which requires me to sorcery speed sacrifice.
R/G Scapeshift isn’t really supposed to have Ghost Quarters, but how am I supposed to know whether or not this one guy decided to play some Ghost Quarters over (or even in addition to) Dead/Gone? You can’t always expect your opponent to conform to what you deem correct or incorrect. I might think that Ghost Quarter is much worse than Dead/Gone in that deck, but both cards have merit, and I can’t know for sure which one he has.
Ultimately, I decide that the cost of sorcery speed sacrificing (which I think is no cost at all) is less than the possibility that he has Ghost Quarter. Had I done some testing for this matchup I might have realized he has a third possible out that completely invalidates my play. What I thought to be a safe play against a fringe occurrence actually opened me up to something that I hadn’t considered.
He says, “One time dealer,” draws and reveals Bloodbraid Elf.
I realize the mistake I’ve made and counter with, “Now, I’d like to use my ‘one time dealer,'” but the dealer ignores my request as he cascades into Dead/Gone.
When you took that minute to consider his possible outs, did you think of Bloodbraid Elf into Dead/Gone? If you did, then (I envy you) you’d have come to the correct conclusion: to sacrifice on his end step. You might not have even considered Ghost Quarter, but if you did it probably went like this:
“A Bloodbraid into Dead/Gone means I should wait until his end step to sacrifice Hexmage…
Oh! Then I’ll be weak to Ghost Quarter, but even if he does play Ghost Quarter, it doesn’t put me in nearly as bad a position as Bloodbraid Elf into Dead/Gone would, so I should still sacrifice on his end step.”
So, in all scenarios, the correct play is to sacrifice on his end step. Had my opponent betrayed the expectation that R/G Scapeshift shouldn’t play Ghost Quarter, he could have made the superior play into a less optimal one. This is how making decisions out of your opponent’s expectations can give you an advantage. Ghost Quarter is definitely worse than Dead/Gone in R/G Scapeshift, but by playing even just one copy my opponent could’ve created a way for the correct play to end up costing me (had I actually made the correct play).
I made a mistake, and while it cost me any remaining chance at Top 16, I gained something from this situation that led to a great increase in my ability to win at Magic: behaving in a way that your opponent doesn’t expect creates an advantage. It might seem obvious, but there are ways to employ this in deckbuilding (as well as other areas of Magic, but that is for another time) that can create worthwhile advantages.
Deceiving Your Opponent
(I’d recommend that you don’t actually lie to your opponents, or judges.)
As seen in the Ghost Quarter example, it becomes rather difficult to play optimally when you don’t know what to expect from your opponent. There are two primary ways to take advantage of this: creating a lack of information through deception and creating false information through deception.
If you take a well-known deck and change it slightly, you can create a semi-rogue deck that will give you a small advantage from your opponent not knowing what’s different about your deck (a lack of information). Your opponent probably won’t know there’s anything special about your deck until he sees it specifically. Something as simple as adding Lightning Bolt to an existing U/W Control deck is a good example of this.
In the current Standard U/W mirror, do you think it’s the correct play to +2 with (either) Jace on turn 3/4? Anyone you ask should tell you that you never make that play. In order to get value out of Jace before it becomes vulnerable to its counterpart, a U/W player will always draw with Jace the first turn. Let’s say you have an Arid Mesa when your opponent resolves their Jace. They draw, you end step sacrifice and Lightning Bolt Jace, untap and cast your own. Now how do you think they feel about their play? You’ve already gained a considerable amount, and with future Jaces, they’ll be forced to consider whether they want to walk into a Bolt or another copy of Jace.
Of course, you don’t always have to splash a color to gain this type of advantage; bringing a spicy sideboard plan is another great way to create an advantage through deception. It could be just an unknown card that you found to be great in certain matchups (something like Telemin Performance), or it could be a transformational sideboard. If your opponent doesn’t know that you have a transformational sideboard, it creates false information until your opponent catches on.
Any deck could benefit from a transformational sideboard, but combo decks have been known to gain the most because they can most easily board around expected hate cards thus making them useless. There was a U/R Ascension deck last season that gained an advantage by boarding into a Polymorph deck. The trick didn’t stay under the radar for very long, but the deck still managed to win a 5K near the end of the season (it even beat me in the Top 8).
These are some of the ways to gain slight advantages through your opponent’s erroneous expectations, but there are also ways to gain significant advantages.
Going Rogue
Imagine that you’re at a Magic tournament, and you sit down at your table across from Conley Woods, someone well-known for playing decks that you’ve never heard of or seen. If you’ve been following any high-level Magic since Shadowmoor, it shouldn’t be long before you realize that you have no idea what you’re up against. Even as the game progresses, you won’t know what to expect from Conley. What can you play around if you don’t know anything about his deck? Conley could lead with an untapped Hallowed Fountain, and you wouldn’t know whether to play around Mana Tithe for the rest of the game or if he just likes taking two damage.
Conley has found quite a bit of success from playing rogue decks, and for good reason. If a rogue deck puts up good numbers against the expected field, you can expect it to fare even better in an event. Your playtest partners may have come to understand how the deck works and what its weaknesses are, but actual opponents won’t have that luxury. I think it’s a good idea to play a rogue deck whenever possible and that we could all learn something from Conley on the subject. With that being said, it takes a lot of trial and error to come up with a rogue deck that actually works, but doing so can be very rewarding for both game play and deck design skills.
There is one thing that’s more deceiving than an unknown deck. With a rogue deck, your opponent will be able to adapt by learning about your deck throughout the match. The way to beat that is to take full advantage of your opponent’s expectations and betray them without him ever realizing it.
The Ultimate Transformational Sideboard
(Don’t be fooled by the name)
After GP Oakland, the Extended format was pretty well defined. There were a lot of decks, but DDT was the clear frontrunner. It was capable of a Thoughtseize-backed turn 3 win and even had a backup plan that was difficult to disrupt. I do love a good backup plan.
“So then why did you refuse to play the deck again after Oakland?” you might be asking me because your feeble mind can’t comprehend why I wouldn’t play the best deck.
Well, I hated it. I felt that if you don’t get incredibly lucky, all the combo pieces are just blanks. Opening hands with multiple legendary lands made me want to harm a kitten, and then there’s navigating through the mounds of hate that had become a requirement if you wanted to compete with the deck. Winning games where I draw the nuts and losing games where I have to either beat twelve hate cards or just draw a bunch of do-nothings was not what I wanted to do for the last PTQ of the season. When everyone is packing Paths, Bant Charms, Damping Matrices, Nights of Soul’s Betrayal, and Ghost Quarters, the deck starts to become a bad choice. You can fight the hate, you can get lucky, and draw the nuts every time, but I wanted to attack the format in a different way. I didn’t realize quite yet that I was coming up with the ultimate transformational sideboard.
I came up with the idea of cutting the Dark Depths/Vampire Hexmage part of the deck and going all-in on the Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek combo. Out of context the idea is actually pretty miserable, but it worked because of how dominant DDT was in the format. Remember those Paths to Exile and Ghost Quarters? Well, those don’t mean anything to a deck that’s winning with Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek. The Bant Charms and Damping Matrices would still require some answers, but like I said before, I love a good backup plan (I employed a Creeping Tar Pit and a pair of Jace, the Mind Sculptors as well as two sideboard Sphinxes of Jwar Isle).
The idea was to play a deck that was much more consistent than DDT and at the same time leverage the hate that people would be bringing. Not only that, but they’d actually leave in their Paths to Exile (and other various answers to a 20/20) when boarding them out would be the correct play. The deck would actually cause opponents to make mistakes over and over, and they’d never realize it. Making a deck like this can be difficult. The format has to be pretty well defined in order for your opponents to think they know what you’re playing, and there has to be a deck that can be easily adaptable. But finding a deck like this can give a worthwhile edge.
I played the deck in the last PTQ of the season, and it couldn’t have worked out any better. Not one of my opponents ever realized that I wasn’t playing Dark Depths/Vampire Hexmage until I told them after the games, and everyone that had Paths to Exile left them in. I went on to win that PTQ all thanks to a loss I got in round 12 of GP Oakland.
There are lots of ways to be deceptive in Magic, and I’ve only touched the surface. Not conforming to your opponent’s expectations in deck design is just one of many ways to deceive your opponents.
I encourage you to look for opportunities to do so in game play as well. Whether you’re adding off-color mana with Coalition Relic (this has actually worked for me once) or representing Dispense Justice in Limited, there’s a lot to gain from playing and deckbuilding outside your opponent’s expectations.