Welcome to another edition of The Opener! Theros, Beyond Death is back as the Ranked format on Arena so hopefully my insight can help you with your drafts.
The first pick of the draft is not extremely important but it’s fun to think about. It doesn’t always get played and it’s the pick with the least amount of context. At this point in the draft, you don’t have any idea what any other player is doing yet. Your goal when you’re first picking should be, in general, to take the most powerful card.
If you have never read a ‘what’s the pick?” article before, I will be showing you a few pack one pick one (P1P1) scenarios and I will tell you what I would take and my reasoning behind it. I will also give an honorable mention. So let’s get started!
The Picks
My Pick
Heliod’s Intervention. The best cards here are definitely Voracious Typhon, Dreaful Apathy, and Heliod’s Intervention. Most of the time, I believe that it is correct to take the rare in this format. In fact, it took me a long time to find picks for this article that weren’t super obvious. This pick is close but it is not an exception. Heliod’s Intervention is very often a blowout. I find that a reasonable amount of the time it is a two-for-one, three-for-one or even better! Even the life-gain mode is not a terrible fail-case and will catch opponents by surprise. I also believe that it is an underrated card that I believe players should take higher.
Honorable Mention: Dreadful Apathy is premium, common removal and it is what I would take here if the Intervention was not in the pack.Voracious Typhon is a great card too but I am giving a slight edge to Apathy for being removal.
A Cube-Builder’s Work is Never Done: A history of one cube and considerations for making your own.
Let me tell you a story…
Welcome friends, young and old! Please gather round. I wanted to tell you about the first cube.
“The first Cube ever?”
Well, no. Not exactly. But a very early cube. One that grew on it’s own, before MTGO was making and sharing such a variety of fantastic cubes with all of us. It’s interesting to me to look back and see how a cube grows organically – like watching microbes evolve over generations into a complex organism.
Put on your lab coat, get your sample jars, and let’s examine this organism’s history.
For those who may be unfamiliar with the expression, a “cube” is a general term for a curated card pool used for playing Magic drafts or other limited formats. You see, people have been playing Magic in creative ways since, well, since there were Magic players. Back in the late 90’s and early 00’s magic players began collecting their favorite cards together to create a fun or interesting pool of cards to use in booster drafts. That way they could draft over and over without opening (and purchasing) new packs each time.
Long ago a younger wizard who looked a lot like me but with less grey hair, began lamenting that out of the thousands of spells he knew, he was only casting a small number of them. And he lamented that if friends came over to play Magic, not everyone had decks and, even if they did, there was such a wide disparity of power in everyone’s personal card pools that it led to some very lopsided and un-fun games.
Hmmm… what to do? What to do?
Sorting cards. Peaceful therapy for Magic players.
One peaceful afternoon I began sorting my collection which spanned Legends, The Dark, and Ice Age through Apocalypse (‘94-’01). As I sorted I collected one single copy of each card that I owned. This included top notch cards like Birds of Paradise, Tundra, Sol Ring, and Pernicious Deed along with everything else.. And I mean EVERYTHING else…
These all went into a shoe box. A Mephisto shoe box. And we would draft and make sealed decks from this card pool.
Whenever we drafted from this random interesting pile of cards we called it a Mephisto draft and the name stuck. As the years went by I’d do the annual Mephisto Box update where I’d look at all the cards from the last year’s sets and take one of each to add to Mephisto’s open arms. As you might expect, the Mephisto box soon became a +5,000 card monstrosity but we still played it often and with joy because it offered a unique challenge each time we drafted and we discovered it was fun to remember old cards that we had not seen in years.
We had plenty of matches where an Obsianus Golem with Dragon Wings was really a solid game plan because of how low power the pool of commons and uncommons was back in the day. There were often drafts where you’d see only 3 creatures in a pack of 15 cards!
Lo and behold, the smarter minds of better magic players had also been doing things like this and had made the obvious and sensible leap to include only a certain select group of cards in this ‘draft box’ and they called their format Cube. (I still think Mephisto Draft has a nice ring to it.) Many great insights into various Cube formats have been written by folks and I recommend you go read some of them. (Two I recommend are here and here.)
As fans of this format have said before, building a cube is a labor of love. You, the creator, are trying to collate a collection of cards that will deliver on a goal for your players – maybe you love long drawn out games that go 15+ turns, maybe you love surprising and random dice rolling cards, maybe you love only playing green spells – whatever your desired experience happens to be, you can craft a cube to meet that end result.
I currently have 3 cubes , and you can see from these three what kinds of games I’m trying to create for my players:
THE Cube– This is what I think of as our default cube. It has one of each of my favorite cards from Beta to the newest set. It is a singleton 600-700 card monstrosity. This cube gets the most play and is updated about 3 times per year. It is the default way to play Magic at our house.
The Multiplayer Cube – this cube is focused on multiplayer interaction. It has a ton of cards from the Conspiracy sets (and includes conspiracy cards too) as well as many cards that I think make for fun and interesting multiplayer games. It has singleton rares & mythics, but has multiples of select commons and uncommons that I felt made for interesting draft choices.
Zelnoc’s Unhinged Cube – This cube is basically a pared-down pile of Unstable commons and uncommons based on how awesome I think it is to graft a Shark-Zombie or a Ninja-Kitten! Because the themes of this set tend to play well together the only non-silverboardered things I’ve added are 1x of each bounceland for some color fixing. Though I think there is room to take the augment mechanic and pair it with other themes so this cube may be ripe for modification.
Considerations when Cube Crafting
Firstly, as mentioned above, consider your goals. The gameplay you are hoping to achieve, the feeling the players will get when drafting and playing these cards should be your guiding light. Once you’ve gotten a feel for the mood or tone you want to create, it will help you with all the upcoming card choices. (Because maybe you forgot – but Magic has more than 18,000 cards and counting!)
Second, do some math. You’ll want to decide on the size of your cube – if you want to support a full 8 player draft you’ll need 45 cards x 8 players = a 360 card minimum. The consensus is that 540 cards allows a consistent draft environment with enough variation to keep it fresh. Those who prefer an experience with more variety may want to push that number higher. I keep my main cube around 700 cards and use the following starting ratios: 80 cards of each of the 5 colors, 80 multicolored cards, 80 artifacts, and 80 lands lets you come in at 640.
Third, pay attention to themes. This is like applying rule number one to each color or color pair. Think about linear strategies that require a critical mass of cards and make sure you support them properly or consider removing linear strategies all together (affinity, energy, allies, slivers, etc). And it applies to single cards too. There are so many red 5 drops you are going to have to choose from among many fantastic cards and the choice should be driven by what themes and subthemes your cube is supporting. If your cube has a lot of +1/+1 counter and token interactions then perhaps you consider Falkenrath Marauders or Skarrgan Hellkite over some of the other options.
Rough mana curve example
Fourth, watch the mana curve. Usually you’ll want your mana curve to match a draft deck in that there are more 1, 2 and 3 casting cost cards then 5 and 6. And that applies to each color on its own as well as the cube as a whole. My penchant for splashy powerful effects means I struggle to keep the +6CC cards down to a reasonable number.
Pondering the converted mana cost layout of the multicolor cards… what to cut?
Finally, consider function. Think of what you want to do to make the physical experience interesting and enjoyable as well as considerations for cube transport and management.
An example of a sleek, ready-to-travel cube
Sleeve up lands and keep them with the cube. (find a style of sleeve you like and stock up!)
Have most of the relevant tokens available.
Make sure you have a safe and easy way to transport your cube.
Keep a list of your cube cards so you can quickly reference what’s in or out and plan new trades/purchases.
One of the most memorable physical experiences with a cube I can recall was 5 players around a folding table in the woods. The sun had set long ago, fingers were chilled, lanterns and flashlights were illuminating players hunched over Platinum Angels and very large Forgotten Ancients. It ended the way many multiplayer games tend to where the player with the last haymaker in their hand wins it. I think a large Overrun effect eventually ended the epic battle and people moved back around the campfire.
This game was not memorable for the cards themselves, but it was because 5 players of varied skill level, in the middle of the woods, were able to draft some sweet multiplayer decks and have a great time playing magic! It was possible because I can carry playmats, dice, counters, and a 600 card double sleeved multiplayer cube all in a nice little camping package.
The cube before shuffling.
My old Mephisto cube of ancient commons and uncommons now sits gathering dust under a dresser as, long ago, I harvested my favorite cube cards from it and forgot about it. It has evolved into new and more satisfying ways to play and that’s ok.
… but I may shake off the dust some day – just to remember what it feels like to cast Psychic Venom on a land and use a Floodbringer to venom my opponent to death! … ah… those were the days…
I encourage you to look at your collection of Magic cards with new eyes. Think about maximizing the fun you can have with your cards and, for me, Cube drafting is my favorite way to do that!
Thanks for reading, please share any amazing cube moments you will never forget, and until next time, may your cube keep evolving!
This is part two of a multiple article series. The first article covered gameplay improvements and suggestions. This part covers some meta decisions about how to do well at tournaments. Part three will cover logistical suggestions.
Plan to beat the winner’s metagame
Sometimes is feels really bad when you sit down at a legacy tournament and lose to burn repeatedly (your fault for not having win conditions). However, being soft to a deck that is unlikely to perform well is better than being an all-rounder against bad decks. Tobi Henke covered this very well in a recent article, but I think it bears repeating.
The winner’s metagame are the decks that you think are most likely to compose the top tables. These are the decks you want to beat, not the junk that sometimes populates the early rounds of a tournament. This is one of the benefits of having byes at a GP (byes just barely still exist as of this writing). Getting to skip lesser known or lower likelihood of success decks can inform deck decisions and allow you to skip worrying about bad decks. If all the good decks are on 3-4c Energy midrange in Kaladesh standard, you better have a good plan for beating them. Play to win the tournament, don’t put narrow cards in your board to beat the 1% of the field deck that dumpsters you. When you build a sideboard, keep in mind what you are expecting to face in the winners meta and make sure you have a focused plan against them. Don’t devote 10 cards to beating the standard burn matchup, no matter how much you hate losing to it, when burn is 2% of the meta.
This is critically important for a format like modern, especially for those who are new to the format. The tendency is to put very specific answers into their sideboard to deal with their local meta. If you are playing burn and hate infect, play Searing Blood, not Burn the Impure. Searing blood is just as effective against infect in most situations, but is also useful against creature combo decks and other random nonsense you might encounter.
Option a is better than option b, no matter how much you hate infect.
Sometimes one deck is likely to be the most represented deck (*cough* Hogaak *cough*) in the format and it is necessary to devote specific sideboard cards (Leyline of the Void) to beating this strategy. Most of the time in modern it pays to have answers that can be used more widely like Relic of Progenitus, but there are always exceptions. Damping Sphere covers more bases than Molten Rain, etc. There are many articles discussing sideboarding, especially in modern, but I think it is always worth rehashing.
In older formats part of playing to the winner’s meta is also ignoring that some players just “want it more.” Sometimes you’re playing rb reanimator and your round 2 opponent has 10 pieces of yard hate. You should still play reanimator if you think it is the best deck. Some people hate losing to a specific deck and will over-prepare for it. These people will likely feel the burn later in the tournament when they don’t have cards to bring in against other decks. Sometimes you run into them, they have it all, and there’s not much to be done.
If you can, perform focused testing
Jamming modern modo games might be ok for getting the hang of your deck, but at a certain point you need to sit down and focus on the winner’s metagame. I am fortunate enough to have a network of friends who between us can proxy up and test important matchups. Fun fact: you will never get enough reps in with a deck to know for sure the matchup percentages. I would go so far as to say you will never get enough reps with a deck.
Period.
Ever.
Welcome to magic.
Maybe I’m just neurotic. I have certainly never gone into a tournament feeling like I couldn’t have prepared more. There might be people that feel like they have spent enough time on their deck and testing. These people are either very wrong, or have a great deal more time than I do. Point being, we’re going to have to be efficient.
10 game sets with alternating first players can give you a very good feel for what is going on and what is important. The streamer Jeff Hoogland is very good at talking about this. At the end of videos he often loudly proclaims that we ignore the record and focus on how things felt. Mixed feelings around the net regarding Mr. Hoogland notwithstanding, I think that this self- analysis is very important while testing and tuning decks. There is a reason that computers are very bad at magic. I perform my serious testing with individuals (preferably ones who know the deck they are piloting well) and in longer sets. I prefer this be done in paper magic, but an online tool might be faster or easier for some depending on format and individual taste.
Test matchups! Leagues are ok testing but not the best.
Play good decks
I love bad combo decks (Narset cannon and meandeck tendrils are particular favorites). I play them often at weekly tournaments so that I get it out of my system and don’t play bad decks at big events. The fact that neo-griselbrand straddles this line in modern could lead to significant shenanigans down the road and is amusing to me.
There are many reasons people play bad decks. Comfort, the lolz, the burning need to show how cool you are (Antony Benedetti is particularly cool). The fact is that there is a hive mind of magic online players that are actively trying their darndest to break the game and get all the moneys. The result is that the creme of the crop tend to rise up after they’ve been discovered.
Tangent: The “after they’ve been discovered” bit is important here. I’m of the opinion that the modo hive mind acts similarly to machine learning. As Hari Seldon might say, humans in groups are easy to predict. Everyone tries everything over enough time (infinite monkeys, infinite typewriters, etc.) and as a result the best decks tend to be the most played decks over time. I recommend looking into basic machine learning/neural net stuff (cool mario link here). I’ll probably devote an entire article to this some time in the future. The thing about taking a lot of inputs (players and decks) and jamming them into a few metrics for success (published lists), is that they will tend to wander off into local maxima. That is, the meta-magician is very good at tuning decks, and not so good at discovering them. This goes along with Patrick Chapin’s information cascades article. We humans tend to follow, not invent.
Anyway, modo is a very good deck-tuning machine and a so-so deck-finding machine. I am willing to bet that there are a very large number of very good decks out there that haven’t been discovered yet. Recall how the best versions of death’s shadow weren’t even discovered until gitaxian probe was banned. The problem is that you are incredibly unlikely to find and tune one of these mythical hidden best decks. If Matt Nass were given an infinite amount of time to test older formats I’m sure he could develop an entirely different ecosystem of insane combo decks that would be stronger than our current meta (I like to call this the infinite Nasty theorem).
Most of us aren’t Matt Nass or Patrick Chapin and we don’t have infinite time. We also largely don’t have massive pro teams bolstering our every whim. The result is that we need a good deck to play and we probably don’t have much time. Don’t play bad decks. Play meta decks and try to learn them and tune them in the time you have. You don’t always have to play the Gaak, but play something that already exists and has a reasonable plan against it. Play brainstorm in Legacy, play linear in modern, and play midrange (probably) in standard.
Your brew is bad. Keep tuning it, play it at weeklies and have fun. Maybe at some point it will be less bad. If your goal is to maximize win percentages, play a meta deck.
Always have a sideboard guide
It is important to know how you plan to sideboard, this ensures that your sideboard makes sense and that your outs and ins map correctly. For me, the hardest part is deciding which things need to come out of my deck. Especially for dedicated combo decks, it is very hard to determine how much of the deck you can remove before it ceases to function correctly. My first step is usually to find someone else’s guide, because developing my own takes many hours of additional time that I often do not have. If you are lucky enough to know an experienced pilot, talking through their plans is always better than a stale guide that can be found online. A sideboard guide as a tool helps determine how many cards are needed for a matchup while still understanding what the plan is against certain decks.
The hardest decks for me are midrange decks (especially in standard). Plans for midrange decks usually are not obvious because you are altering your deck to perform a specific role. Midrange mirrors especially can be particularly nuanced. During the reign of mardu vehicles, for example, each mardu deck was trying to go over the top of the others, but some of the threats were so hard to deal with (scrapheap scrounger) that going under one another was a completely viable option, especially on the play. No two players agreed on sideboarding choices and trying to anticipate what role the other person was taking could be critical for victory.
In limited, while you may not have a specific plan, you should have a general idea what the weakest cards in your deck are as well as your strongest sideboard options. In extreme cases, especially in sealed, it is correct to have a whole other deck sleeved up and ready to swap out. The tendency for many players is to not bother with boarding too much in limited, but this leaves a lot of percentage points on the table. In limited, every deck is a midrange deck and you should be adjusting your role according to how it matches up to other midrange decks. Know your role and have a plan. You don’t even have to write down the plan in limited, just try not to forget that you have disenchants in your pool. I find that having it written down helps me know what I think I should be doing and makes it easier for me to improvise in the actual tournament itself.
There are many articles that are against sideboard guides. These all make excellent points. Someone else’s guide implemented without any thought is probably out of date and does not account for changes. Using guides as rote also keeps you from making important changes on the fly that are often needed for slight variations in decks. The important part is to start with a guide for structure and to aide in understanding. From there it is important to move forward from the guide as you make changes and updates, and be willing to mix things up on the fly depending on how your opponents might differ from the norm.
For me, guides are a very important jumping off point for understanding a deck quickly and a great tool for not having to always remember my own sideboard plan. They give structure to help aide in understanding.
Don’t hand out free information
A magic player’s second main hobby is complaining about magic. Have you ever had an opponent come to the round complaining about their last match and basically tell you what they’re playing? I don’t recommend doing that. Having a conversation with your opponent is part of the fun of the magic tournament experience. Loudly proclaiming bad beat stories to strangers is not the best way to make friends and can lead to accidentally giving away information. It is also obnoxious. Also, be mindful of how you hold your cards. As a taller player I can sometimes see some of my opponents’ cards. When I can see my opponents’ cards I try to inform them immediately, but it is still up to them to hold cards in a way that I can’t see them. Sloppy shuffling also tends to reveal cards unnecessarily. Watch how you shuffle, maybe have a friend give you an outside opinion. In team tournaments it can be very easy for the other team to see cards in your deck while you shuffle; make sure to shuffle away from opponents.
Try to use a card case that doesn’t flash the world every time you take your cards out. The clear cases, or the ones that open from the top are the worst offenders. I like having flaps and other things that I can hide cards behind as I take things out. This also is helpful for sideboarding behind your case to keep the number of cards going in and out secret.
Not recommended
Try to keep composed while drawing cards. If you can, know
what cards you could draw and what you would do with them if you do. Basically,
don’t just slump in the chair every time you draw a land, and jump out of the
chair every time you draw a bomb. You don’t have to perfectly control your
tells, but being mindful of what you’re doing is useful, especially if you can
turn some of your body language into a bluff.
Have a plan to win
LSV is very good about this and talks about it in depth, so I won’t go over it too much. This is especially relevant when way behind in a game. As you are being cut out of outs and things are looking very grim, take a minute to think of what needs to happen in order to win. If you need the top of your deck to be precisely lightning bolt, play in a way such that it is true. If you need your opponent to brick, and you need runner-runner pump spells to kill with your infect creature before they kill you, make sure that you are set up so that those pump spells are most likely to kill. If you are way ahead and can only lose to a haste creature in limited, keep a blocker back to not lose if it doesn’t affect your clock. In short, don’t play cards at random, especially when way ahead or way behind, visualize what it takes to win and play towards that end.
Thus ends additional ramblings. The Isaac Asimov reference was my favorite one probably.
On a fun note. I just won the MCQ for Richmond for the bay area (northern CA) playing the Gaak. Turns out that deck is busted, who knew? I hope those that were in Vegas had fun and maybe played the gaak for the last time.
Am I a dumb jerkface who doesn’t know anything? Comment below, I welcome your hate. I welcome your love and questions even more, also please put those below. See you next time.
With GP Vegas in two weeks, I hope that this will help you prepare and/or provide a context to this fantastic format before it is gone from Competitive Play.
The first pick of the draft is not extremely important but it’s fun to think about. It doesn’t always get played and it’s the pick with the least amount of context. At this point in the draft, you don’t have any idea what any other player is doing yet. Your goal when you’re first picking should be, in general, to take the most powerful card.
If you have never read a ‘what’s the pick?” article before, I will be showing you a few pack one pick one (P1P1) scenarios and I will tell you what I would take and my reasoning behind it. I will also give an honorable mention. So let’s get started!
In my experience so far, Hogaak doesn’t just feel broken in Modern. It also doesn’t take much work to make him very good in limited. Sometimes all you need are some Winding Ways and/or Ransack the Labs. It’s not going to be an early play in limited but it is always a powerful one. An 8/8 trample in this format is huge! It will always be the biggest creature and it demands an answer yet there aren’t many removal spells in the format that can actually deal with it forever or even temporarily. I probably wouldn’t take it this early but this is definitely a weak pack. The next best card is probably Changeling Outcast not on raw power level but it is a wonderful enabler for the Ninjas archetype which in my opinion is one of the best decks.
There are definitely two cards that really stick out to me here. The gold card and the rare. Generally it’s not good to take gold cards super early because your chance of it making your deck is so low or you can end up pigeon-holing yourself early. It’s relatively close but this time I am making an exception for the Infiltrator because it is a bomb in it’s archetype and also the the rare is in the worst color, white. After picking this up I am looking to play about as many Changeling Outcast as I can. I hope that this one comes back to me. However, I doubt that it will because the commons here are pretty weak otherwise.
Conversely to the last pick, we are taking the white rare this time. It’s generally accepted that white is the worst color in the format by a decent margin. However, Serra the Benevolent is a low-key bomb and this pack is quite weak. The reason that I would take her here is because there really isn’t any other card here besides the Snow-Covered Island that my deck is likely to miss. Everything else here is either filler or merely good in a single archetype.
Drafting with players is self-correcting. Because of that, I am happy to be white in this format if I can identify that I am the only one playing it. Serra is the most powerful when she is coming down in the early stages of the game, usually as a 4/4 Flying, Vigilance with upside. A common play pattern with her is to play her on turn four, make a token, tick up turn 5 if she survives and then make another token if she isn’t extremely likely to survive after that. That’s really powerful and enough for me to take a chance on white this early coupled with the low power level of the rest of the pack.
I hope that you all enjoyed or at least learned something from this first installment of The Opener. There are more to come and other formats to explore. If you have any feedback, please feel free to leave a comment below.
This is part one of a multiple article series. The first article will cover gameplay improvements and suggestions. Part two will cover some meta decisions about how to do well at tournaments. Part three will cover logistical suggestions.
Over the course of a few years I went from coming back into magic with no cards and on a 5+ year hiatus, to finishing top 16 in Grand Prix tournaments in every format. I haven’t been the best at spiking tournaments, but I have done an above average job of putting myself into a bubble slot to get there. I think my perspective is more interesting because I am not a full time magic player, and I do not necessarily travel or prepare as much as other more entrenched players. I go to about 6-8 mostly local GP’s a year, many local PTQ’s, play almost zero online magic. In short, I don’t have as much play time in any given format as many of my opponents, have a full-time job, don’t spend a ton of money on travel, and am therefore closer to the average mtg player than many higher-level pros. The purpose of this article will be to give several small tips and other edges that I think will help you improve your win percentages in larger tournaments and maybe help with some of the other less talked about aspects of magic. Many of these may be obvious to you, while others might not apply, but hopefully one or two nuggets of wisdom stick and help in your future endeavors.
A draw is a loss
I’m going to start with one of my biggest pet peeves, and a point that I think is often misunderstood by newer players. A DRAW IS A LOSS.
Don’t play to draw, especially in a large tournament, if you can help it. The first reason for this is literal, for the purposes of making day two and for pairings for the rest of the tournament, a draw functions as a loss. It doesn’t help for making day two, it doesn’t help for more pro points, and it only marginally helps with payouts at the end if you get that far. Until/if you get to the final round, then it might act as a “really good tiebreaker” on a loss at best. The second reason you don’t want a draw is because the draws tend to beget more draws. Once you are in the draw bracket at a GP, the only people you will be playing for the remainder of the tournament will also be people that took draws; these are players that probably will not set speed records for decision making and there is an above average chance that they are control players. The reason I am hyperbolic here is because I think the mental shift of considering a draw to be a loss will actively change how you play, usually for the better. By playing as if a draw is literally losing it forces you to change your perspective. You can also take all of this to mean that you should play faster. But I think it would be more precise to say “be mindful of time” and “be more efficient.” The clock system being used in paper magic is different from digital magic, and put constraints on both players very different from those online.
Sidenote: one can take advantage of knowledge of the draw bracket. For example, in legacy the draw bracket is usually dominated by bad miracles players, if you are playing something like post that is 70-30 against miracles, a draw might be an interesting heads up play. I say “bad” miracles players, because miracles is a deck with a lot of decisions and very few win conditions, and it takes a lot of practice to be able to make all of the necessary decisions quickly and the newer players to the deck tend to be glacial; this also applies to UW control in modern, and occasionally to win-conditionless standard decks. Basically, this is always kind of a joke scenario I discuss among friends, and I don’t recommend taking draws early just to try and beat inexperienced control pilots (which might backfire anyway, as they might play you into additional draws).
I have one unintentional draw in my magic career, and that is because of a spirits mirror where we both had worship in play; I was playing lightning fast trying to get to my 2 remaining outs to remove his enchantment (he was out of outs to remove mine). Honestly, it’s my fault for having the card in my sideboard in the first place. By the end of the season we had discovered that often Gideon Jura performed a similar role better (especially against other worship decks), and were using this in the same slot.
There are several reasons I do not draw very often:
I try to get to my seat early to get a clear view of the round timer; being able to see the timer is a good way to be able to steer the speed of the match. My rule of thumb, if your first game looks to be going over the 15 minute mark, try to see how you can speed things up and evaluate how both players’ pacing is going.
Be willing to concede against a control or prison deck game 1 if you are less than 5% to win; this is/was especially key against decks like lantern control in modern (or if both players are on a control mirror in standard), where they are so slow that if you let the games play out all the way the match could be a single game affair. Sometimes if you can see that the match might go very long, it can be best to try to move along so that you have a chance to get to a reasonable game 3 if you win game 2.
Often for decks like lantern the fault of “slowplay” isn’t on the part of the lantern player; rather, their opponent tends to take a longer time to make plays or refuse to concede because they don’t know they are beaten.
I have seen a local bay area grinder unintentionally draw himself out of top 8 contention on at least 2 occasions because he a) tends to play slower decks, b) is unlucky enough to face opponents that are both slow decision makers and unwilling to concede when effectively beaten, and c) doesn’t call a judge soon enough. This leads us to the next point.
I am ready and willing to call a judge on my opponent for slow-play. You do not have to be rude about this. I usually give my own verbal warning first, something along the lines of “hey, it’s already been 15 minutes this game, let’s both try to play faster so we don’t draw.” After I talk to my opponent and they are still playing slowly I am happy to call a judge to watch our pace of play. This is not a dirty, shameful act, and your opponent does not have any reason to be salty because of this. It is in both players’ best interest to finish a match on time and judges are there to help for just that kind of thing.
My pace of play is slightly above average. This is largely because whenever there is downtime in a game, while someone is shuffling or my opponent is thinking, I am thinking about what my next move(s) will be, and what counter plays I might have to his possible moves. This is also useful for having meaningful bluffs; if you can jam your cards quickly without having to pause to think it makes you much more believable. I will adjust my sideboarding based on how much time is left and if I need to play to win quickly.
I tend to play proactive decks. Obviously this isn’t always correct (unless the format is modern: friends don’t let friends play control in modern) and it isn’t everyone’s style, but boy do I like having time between rounds in a large tournament. I will play a more controlling deck, but only if I have sufficient time to learn the deck thoroughly enough to not draw.
I’m not an over-shuffler. We’ve all sat across from the player who takes 5 minutes shuffling EVERY TIME. Then they spend just as much time shuffling your deck as they did their own. Don’t be that guy. This is a substantial waste of time for both parties no matter how much you feel like you’re controlling your destiny by over-shuffling (you aren’t). 7 riffles is enough to sufficiently randomize; a few more is fine, but please for the sake of us all, don’t overdo it.
You are going to make mistakes
Unfun facts. You are going to punt important matches, you are going to make bad deck choices, you might mis-register your deck, be late for a round, or draw yourself into 9th (I just did this at a recent CFB legacy 3k), or misread an opponent and get beaten on a bluff. It is all your fault and you might feel bad about it.
I have found that the best thing for me is to acknowledge the mistakes, find the parts that you did not do wrong, and then kindly and gently (not forcefully, if that makes sense) shelve it and put it behind you as best you can. You brain will try to focus on the bad more than the good, and the only thing you can do is try to acknowledge it and move along. Similarly, you must trust the man on the ground. Looking back at video footage with future knowledge might make it easy to be down on yourself, but it is important to realize what you knew at the time. I unnecessarily gave Jeremy Dezani a 3 outer to beat me in game 3 of a legacy GP win-and-in. It bothered me immensely for a day or two, but eventually I had to calmly recognize that I made a mistake, and that is ok. This is doubly true mid-tournament, where it is very easy to go on tilt and cause additional losses. I think this is also important for team events. You’ve chosen your teammates beforehand, they will make mistakes and that is ok, just try to help each other out as best you can. My friends and I have a saying we will yell at each other when someone tilts mid-tournament: “new round new tournament!” This doesn’t really make sense, but it is a reminder that each round is an independent entity, and there is no reason to go in with baggage from previous rounds.
Don’t always do the same thing
I provide a lot of heuristics, as do various other authors, for what one should do in specific situations.
These are great as general rules, but there are always times to improvise. I’ve been told by a few different storm opponents that I am difficult to play against; largely because when they present a difficult situation I will react differently or at least think it through each time. Many players, especially playing against a complicated combo deck like storm, will always do X. For example, some people will always counter the dark ritual, while others refuse to. Your opponent can take advantage of this, especially if they have played against you multiple times. If you always counter the ritual they can try to bait your counterspells with rituals. If you never counter they know they can just go off with ritual into duress. When you are playing a match you are building a narrative with your opponent. Maybe they have an overrun effect in sealed that they showed you the first game, and now they know you have to respect that overrun for the rest of the match. Similarly, I will often attack my 2/2 into their 0/3 early in a game/match. They either call my “bluff” and block, in which case I might be able to make the same play later and get them with a combat trick on a more important creature, or they give me free damage. Whatever way you do it, always keep in mind you are giving and receiving information from your opponent about what level you are on, how willing you are to bluff, and how you are most likely to respond to any given situation.
It is usually correct to jam, especially in limited
It is very common for midlevel players (grinders, I consider myself to fit this description) to want to play around everything. Maybe you are playing against standard control and want to play around turn two syncopate, or you don’t want to lose to overcome in sealed from the green deck. I think it is an important skill in magic to be able to realize what could happen that would make things go wrong. Maybe they have force of will, maybe you can get blown out by a combat trick, maybe they kill you when you let them untap in modern. However, knowing something can go wrong is not the same as acting like they always have it. I usually have a rough idea of what they might be able to do to stop me and what the percentages are based on card % and how they’ve been acting in the game. It is often correct, knowing the risks, to just make the proactive play.
In sealed if I know that my all out attack to put them dead in two turns loses to a threaten effect, I will jam because a) they have to put threaten in their deck, and b) they might have wrath of god or something much worse waiting to get you dead if you give them extra time. I tend to play magic like Doyle Brunson plays poker: loose-aggressive. It is usually worth it to push your advantage rather than give them time to catch up. This is important for control players as well. Sometimes snapcaster mage’s job is to be ambush viper so that you can actually end the game against a combo opponent. This also depends on the level of your opponent. If they are a good player, they might be enticing you with a position of weakness instead of actively being weak, trying to get you to over commit into a sweeper. Basically, what I am trying to say is that most players, especially at the grand prix level, are on level 1. They probably are not bluffing, their obvious tells are actually tells, and they probably don’t have it. Of course, this is susceptible to how you read your opponent. I once lost a match against Dan Ward because I made an aggressive attack into him game one, thinking there’s no way he is main-decking threaten because that card is bad. Turns out he was and I was immediately punished.
This is a very loose heuristic, and one that gets me in trouble if followed without thinking. My win percentage for modern horizons has been significantly lower than other limited sets because I tend to play more aggressively. The problem is that modern horizons has many more powerful cards than most sets, and there are more ways to be punished for loose play. There are also many more modal cards that might otherwise be so-so such as stirring address. Basically what I am trying to say is don’t be too meek, each of use will lose games to being too loose or too defensive, but I would rather be on the too loose side, at least then I have time to get lunch. I play like an ape and get rewarded, and do best with decks that reward this behavior (Legacy show and tell). This isn’t for everyone. At a minimum however I think it is a useful skill to know all the ways that a thing could go wrong, know exactly what decision you are making, and then make the loose/aggressive decision anyway. Inaction is just as dangerous as pushing, and giving your opponent extra time is always a risk.
Thus ends this particular week’s ramblings. Tune in soon for part two of this article, detailing higher level meta decisions and other tournament prep notes.
