Your hands are sweating. You are nervously twitching your feet. It is the Mercadian Masques Limited meatgrinders and you need two more wins to make it into the field at Nationals. You are one loss away from hitting the next meatgrinder. Your opponent is at five while your life sits at four. You pump up your Flowstone Thopter to fly over for the kill... And your opponent has a slight gleam in his eye and says,"So are we going to put damage on the stack?"

A cold chill hits your spine. You can barely stutter the words out of your mouth of,"Not quite yet." Your mind then begins to race. What the hell is he going to do? He has one card in his hand - if it had been instant direct damage you would be dead, if it is creature removal why would he ask if damage was going to be put on the stack, if it was damage prevention he would play it... Wait a second. What is the name of that crappy card that you know does that thing. You quickly look at his lands and see four untapped lands. The light goes off in your head. You then say,"Before damage goes on the stack I am going to activate my Flowstone Thopter three more times." Your opponent's jaw drops with amazement and he quickly says,"That'll kill it, though - are you sure you want to do that?"

In a nice calm and cool voice you reply,"Yes, yes I do." The game is over and you have won. Why did you kill your own creature though? You have no one to thank other than the annoying absolutely horrible player at your local gaming shop. The one who always drafts the worst cards, but it is his voice that saved you this day. It is his voice yelling across the shop that Mirror Strike is the Shiznit.

Mirror Strike - what a funny card till it kills you.

The only way to get a great understanding of this game that we call Magic is to play it. When playing the game is when we learn to understand certain situations. It is when we make mistakes that cost us games, matches, or even tournaments that we gain insight into the game. When we can learn from those mistakes is when we can become better players; it is when we can mix the importance of synergy, bombs, card advantage, and utilization of our life total that we can master the art of drafting. It is when we cut a beast or two to add a cycling spell or a bird to fill a lower mana slot; it is when we realize that the game is won or lost well before the life total hits zero. It is when we understand what your deck needs to fear and what others think your deck needs to fear that we become better.

Through practice, we are put in situations that are likely to come up in a tournament. We make our decision in the practice game and then either lose or win. Once done, we shuffle the cards and take another go round to see what happens. Over time, situations become as familiar to us as our house, car, wife, or children. We know what is going to happen before it even happens. We know that if our opponent does this or that then we will need to respond accordingly. It is like a dance; one person will lead and the other will follow - the only difference is that the first person to step in the wrong direction will lose. At this point I would like to follow up on the wonderfully-written article by Ben Dempsey.

I will start off by congratulating him on a very well-written article. He is a much better writer than I am. However, I am a much better Haups player than he is. Let's go ahead and take a look at the Oath matchup. If your opponent grabs the Living Wish for the Dust Bowl, which is suggested as a game breaking play then they lose... Period! Let's take a look at why.

The first problem with dust bowl is that it ties up four of the Oath player's land - and we are trading land-for-land. Key phrase here is that we are trading land for land. That is wonderful considering my deck contains 43% Land and the Houston Oath deck plays twenty non-fetchlands giving it a 33% land ratio. For every land they sacrifice, I gain an advantage. Dust Bowl is an all or nothing card; you either commit to doing it, or don't bother using it at all. Looking at the land ratios, I will have a better chance of top decking a land than Oath. Also, if they are Dust Bowling me, then they are not attacking with their Treetop Village. That is how Oath beats me - not Dust Bowl.

The next thing to discuss is how I win. If you only played an Obliterate effect once or twice in each of the games you tested, then the deck definitely lost. The key to the deck is to play Obliterate effects approximately three to four times in a win. That is definitely true when playing against the Rock. It is mentioned that Yavimaya Elder is the MVP and single-handedly will cause my destruction. Practice makes perfect - and playtesting is how one learns the Elder is the Haups player's best friend - and this is why.

The Elder increases your chance of beating The Rock. The Rock player will rip your hand in the beginning of the game with hand destruction - but when he does this, he is laying little to threaten you. You can hold back almost as long as you want, and get to use your Jokulhaups instead of the Obliterate. Against The Rock, you usually Haups three to four times in a win. Patience must be your virtue when playing this deck. You are trying to win by gaining card advantage... This is not a quick"destroy the world, now win" deck. This is a slow methodical control deck. Remember, your goal is to destroy as many of your opponent's lands as possible, thinning his deck of land and keeping him from being able to cast threats. The Elder just actually helps you do this. Remember - you have twenty-six lands. Twenty-two of them effectively count as two lands, and you have access to fourteen Obliterates (including the Tutors and Wishes.) It only takes three or four lands to cast your Obliterate effect, for a total card loss of four or five. They have to have at least three cards in play in order to get the old man out...

That means that in a worst-case scenario, you lose four cards and they lose four cards (three in play to get the old man out, and the old man himself). Your concern is that they get two lands and a free card from the old man... Thus meaning they really only lose one card to your four cards.

Let's assume The Rock is the Darwin Kastle version, which plays a hefty twenty-four lands. When you cast the first Haups, they use the Elder. They then proceed to recuperate quickly after the Haups and can begin to lay threats or hold off behind another Elder. Remember - each Elder helps them quickly regain board position after a Haups, thus increasing their chance of success... But greatly hurts them against future Haups. It thins the land out of their deck, which decreases their ability to draw land later in the game.

The Haups deck is made to reload quickly to kill the opponent. If the opponent uses a card like Elder to help them reload quickly, then great! It is just like you started all over, except that you get to go first (by that, I mean you get to lay a land after the Haups - just like the player who wins the die roll gets to lay the first land.)

This matchup is what makes the Haups deck fun to play. The reason you play this deck is to drop the big ole' nasty clear the board spell. The Rock using the elder just means you get to cast it more than you normally would. Now if after an Obliterate effect, the Rock drops a Birds of Paradise, followed by an Elder, followed by a Dust Bowl - well, this is going to be tough a tough road to travel. This is where you are just depending on the fact that you have more land than your opponent and wish for the best. And this is how I typically lose to The Rock.

I mentioned in my last article that this is a very hard deck to play. Very hard is defined thusly: You have to know what to do and when to do it. Playtesting is your weapon, without it you will be eaten by the lions.

To sum up I guess I will just say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If you look at my deck and say,"This is a pile and my deck will lose to this, and if I play this they will own me," well... The only thing I can say is, let's wait till my Tourney report after my trip to Dream Wizards. Then you can see how two eight-year olds scrubbed me out of the tourney.

I will point out one item that neither of us discussed: Psychatog. This matchup is my toughest, with a win percentage around 30%. It is some kinda bad.

In closing, I wish all a fun Extended season - and for those who know me it is a little boy, I am so happy. My wife is pregnant. Have a wonderful holiday, all!

Best wishes,
John Davis