Hello everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Magic Show. This week is a bit of a quiet one, so I wanted to reflect a little bit on some recent articles seen here at StarCityGames.com. This week we’ll delve into how you play better magic, the skill levels argument, and what I think are the five pillars of Magic success. Let’s go!
Skills That Play The Bills
So a couple of weeks ago new premium columnist Olivier Ruel debuted an article entitled Triggers for Success. In it he details ten Magic Skill Levels by which to grade yourself as to what kind of player you are. Now I’m not going to go in-depth with these skill levels, as the cost of Premium is well worth this article and a whole year of strategic goodness, but Olivier basically went from 1-10, where one is What Is Magic, and the ten is Supreme Master of the Earth. You know, a real sliding scale.
Sam Black followed this list up with his own article that detailed what skills he found important at each level. And while I think this ten level skill-based system is great, I don’t think it really encompasses what makes a great Magic player. I’ve hung out with quite a few professionals in my days, and I think I’d like to list not a level-based system, but rather a skill-set system that needs all of the skills to be firing on all cylinders to make a great Magic player.
The first skill is mechanics. This is very closely related to the number one rule of all good Magic players: Never lose to on-board tricks. Ever. If you lose to a play staring you in the face via the cards in front of you, then you sir are playing badly. Mechanics include the ability to always use Instants at the end of player’s turn or at the last second possible, never tapping your mana incorrectly, knowing how the rules work to the point where you are positive what outcome a tricky play may have, and so on. It is the skill that focuses on how you handle your cards, how you play your spells, and knowing exactly how those actions are going to affect play.
One of the facets of this skill that I believe is much overlooked is actually randomizing your deck. You should be shuffling that deck of yours, whether it’s 40 or 60 cards, like you’re friggin’ Rain Man and somebody won’t let you watch The People’s Court, you know what I’m saying? Shuffle, and shuffle again, then shuffle one more time. If you’re not OCD about it, then get OCD about it. I see player after player get a horrible opening seven, then shuffle for no more than ten seconds and re-present their deck. That is simply not enough. I would suggest at least two pile shuffles, if not three, along with plenty of side/riffle shuffles to go along with it. Shuffle in piles of seven or five, as those are Mersenne Prime numbers that better randomize your deck. You are given plenty of time to shuffle and I suggest you use this time wisely. This is the number one thing I noticed when I first began attending Pro Tours and the Invitational. Don’t slack on the shuffling!
The second skill is knowing your deck. Now this is more than knowing what your 75 cards are, though many players struggle with this from time to time. It’s about knowing what your deck does, what it can do, and how it’s going to do it. This basically involves knowing your default plan to victory, and the best way to execute it. Now, of course, your opponent isn’t just going to keel over and let you win, so the advanced end of this skill involves knowing your outs. You have to know how to get yourself out of a tight situation, and the only answer lies within your head and those cards. If you desperately need an Engineered Explosives to live against the Zoo deck in Extended, then that’s what you’ve got to be playing for. There is no reason to play differently. Even if that chump block looks bad, if that’s what it takes to win as long as you draw the card you need, then it is worth it.
This is where playtesting provides the most benefit. Knowing how your deck works frontwards, backwards, sideways and through means that you’re ready for whatever matchup may happen. With the Standard PTQ season just weeks away, the format is small enough that this skill will be crucial in winning games. Knowing what is in your deck should also include knowing what’s in theirs, as their foils to your plans are what you need to play around and against week in and week out until you get that plane ticket to Austin.
The third skill is deckbuilding. This could also be called the Learn To Draft skill, as there is no format in which you are tested the most in terms of deckbuilding. Now sealed deck is one thing, and is indeed a rung on this ladder, but there are insane sealed pools and horrible sealed pools. I’ve never gotten a consistent answer from Magic pros on whether or not each sealed pool is capable of making Day 2 of a GP or a Top 8 of a PTQ. Most say that each sealed pool gives you a chance, but sometimes you open double Planeswalkers and Flameblast Dragon and go all the way, while other times it’s all double Mindlock Orb and Immortal Coil and you’re in side drafts before lunch.
Either way, deckbuilding is knowing how your pieces work together and why. Whether that’s on-the-fly deckbuilding via draft and sealed deck, or knowing just how to tweak a deck here and there to give it an edge on the metagame, deckbuilding is all about the curve, the ratios, the manabase, and the path to victory. Knowing how to lay the groundwork for a successful deck is something only the highest in this echelon achieve. Those who create the archetypes we enjoy today peak in this category. For those who wonder where the most efficient 5-Color list comes from, or how in the world people came up with the best Faeries or Zoo build, those at the height of this skill can show you.
The next skill is mental. Now these are obviously pretty general categories, but I think you understand when I mean your Magic mental game. It’s the ability to both read and not be read. To have a poker face while knowing your opponent is holding both a counterspell and Wrath of God. It’s finding the right angle of attack and learning how to hold your cards, the permanents in play, and even hold yourself to ensure that you are not communicating anything to your opponent. For example, a few weeks ago in the Roanoke PTQ I was playing a game versus Affinity where I was at three life with four Umezawa’s Jitte counters and my opponent had no hand. He draws his card, leans ALL the way back in his chair, and even runs his hand through his hair. He sits up straighter. He obviously drew gas. Now while this is crystal clear in hindsight, at the time I was sure it was just him shaking off the fatigue of a long match. So when he blocks with the Master of Etherium and I use all my Jitte counters to pump the equipped creature, he casually shows me the Shrapnel Blast he just drew for the win. It was only then that Jacob Van Lunen clued me in to what a ridiculous tell my opponent gave me, and how I chose to ignore it. So that obviously stung.
For those who say this doesn’t apply to Magic Online, I assure you it does. If an opponent draws a card on Magic Online and waits just a millisecond before declaring attackers, that tells you something different than if they thought about it. If they take longer to block than you would expect, or if they switch blockers a few times during a complicated attack, this can tell you more. Reading an opponent is more about timing and tempo online, but it is still there.
Another aspect of this skill is simply stamina. A Magic tournament is a long, grueling test of your ability to remain focused and in the game at all times. There are many who choose a ‘less sophisticated’ deck in order to be able to play it well all day long. My favorite example is the Heartbeat of Spring combo deck from a few years ago. This deck was insanely powerful and popular amongst Johnny players of all types and Spikes who enjoyed winning. But while it was powerful, it was a very complicated and easily disrupted deck that needed just the right amount of mana acceleration, Transmuting, and counterspells in order to achieve its goal of burning you out with Invoke the Firemind or Maga, Traitor to Mortals. So while you may be destroying people early in the day, as the tournament wore on and you played more skilled players, the ability to win got that much tougher. The opportunity to make mistakes grew larger. And many times, games that were ‘in the bag’ suddenly weren’t because you had forgotten about their Remand or your ability to counter it with Muddle the Mixture. Before you know it, you’ve missed Top 8 with the best deck in the room.
The last skill is learning from your mistakes or learning from losing. Now this is a skill that could fall under other categories, particularly mental, but I think it deserves its own category. There is a lot to be said for losing in Magic. For one, it just plain sucks. I mean, I’m not fan of losing anything, from my keys to childhood innocence. But make me miss a Top 8 by a hair thanks to a close game, and I’m on stone life tilt, as they say. The opportunity here is to figure out exactly what you did wrong in any given game – not just the one you lost – and how best not to do that again. The funny thing about winning in Magic is it doesn’t teach you squat. It is said that there are multiple mistakes committed per turn by even the best players in the world, and that ‘regular’ Magic players are so bad they can’t even see the mistakes they’re making. So this skill is two-fold: Figuring out what were the mistakes you made in the game you just lost, and when you’ve reached the upper echelon, you learn what mistakes you made in the game you just won.
So those are my five pillars of a great Magic player. All of the greats have these skills in spades. They have a firm grip of mechanics, they know their own deck like their own child and they know what’s in yours, they can tweak their deck or adjust their drafting style appropriately for the metagame, they have the mental skills to both read and bluff, and whether they win or lose they know exactly the mistakes they made and how not to make them again.
It is said that great Magic players, like any professionals, make it look easy. But it’s a long road from cracking your first booster to Pro Tour success. But with these areas of expertise, it is definitely attainable. So what are you waiting for? Get to learnin’, peeps.
Until next time Magic players, this is Evan Erwin. Tapping the cards…so you don’t have to.
Evan “misterorange” Erwin