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Constructed Criticism – Building a Better Player

Grand Prix GP Columbus July 30-August 1, 2010
Wednesday, July 28th – Building a new archetype is difficult work. It takes skill, intuition, experience, and plenty of trial and error. Building a better player is much more difficult, and requires a lot of thought and effort. Each Magic article should be dedicated to helping you increase your skill level, and I hope this one is no different.

Building a new archetype is difficult work. It takes skill, intuition, experience, and plenty of trial and error. Building a better player is much more difficult, and requires a lot of thought and effort. Each Magic article should be dedicated to helping you increase your skill level, and I hope this one is no different. I’d like to go over a few things that you can do to help improve your game, and some bad habits you can try to avoid so that they won’t negatively impact you. There are a plethora of things to discuss, but these are some specific aspects with which I think people could really use a hand.

Deckbuilding is a great aspect of Magic that is not talked about enough. I know that I am guilty of “netdecking” for Magic tournaments, but I find that I perform much better in the events where I try to innovate as opposed to the ones where I simply show up with the 75 that won the tournament from last week’s PTQ. Even if you are using the building blocks from the deck with which your friend is having a lot of success, try tuning it to beat whatever metagame you expect to face. No 75 that wins one tournament is perfect for any other tournament, and that is especially true now more than it has ever been true, since the Hive Mind devours results at a rapid rate, which influences deck choices dramatically in as little as a few days. Whatever deck was good last week might be terrible this week, and any flaw in the deck can be exploited when people see it coming.

Magic, in all its indefinable beauty, is like a work of art that is constantly changing. The people playing it figure out new technology, and in turn others must find new tricks and technology to match or beat them, creating a wondrous cycle that we all call a metagame. You can prepare for this metagame by staying constantly up-to-date with tournament results, or you can just ignore them and try to figure things out for yourself. However, we as deckbuilders and players do not live in a vacuum, and we can’t hope to figure out what everyone else is going to play if we live inside of our own little world. One of the crucial aspects of Magic in this day and age is staying in the loop, and knowing what you’re going to play against in a given tournament. Sure, you might play against one deck more than another, but that is just the luck of the draw, and giving yourself the opportunity to beat all of the decks you are likely to face is just the beginning of good deckbuilding.

Phase 1: Deckbuilding

A) Start with the basics.

If you have never built your own deck before, try it. Not only is it fun, it will open up a new and interesting aspect of the game for you. People who are getting into the game these days are told by all of their friends that “Good Player X just won a tournament with this sweet deck, you should play it.” While it is not necessarily a bad thing for newer players to play stronger decks, you should not skip the step where you try and fail on your own. I know that for a number of years I battled with all sorts of brews that were never really considered optimal or tournament worthy. Most of my decks were no particular format, and I just built them with what cards I owned or could trade for. I didn’t know what Type 2 was, and had never heard of Kai Budde. This phase in a player’s Magic career is monumental for your development as a deckbuilder, and it provides you with the building blocks of deckbuilding that you might otherwise lack. Figuring out strategies and archetypes for yourself is great for learning about aspects of the game that might miss. If you play an aggro deck without reach or disruption, you will lose to Wrath of God. If you play a Blue deck with only counterspells, with little to compliment them in the way of removal or card draw, you will often not be able to keep up with a very aggressive deck. These are some basic fundamentals that you might miss out on if you don’t start from scratch.

If you build a deck that sucks, don’t worry about it. Just figure out what doesn’t work, and try something different in its place. Most good deckbuilders create bad decks about 90% of the time, so what do you think your odds are of striking gold? Rogue strategies are considered rogue for a reason, and most people have thought of whatever combo you are trying to exploit. The trick is figuring out how to compliment your idea with other cards that facilitate whatever your ultimate goal happens to be. Legacy is a great example of a format where there are tons of different combos, most all having been tried before, and most considered “bad” or “unplayable” until someone comes along and fills that deck with alternative threats or disruption. Innovation is key in helping you win any tournament you plan on playing, since the people around you will figure out what you’re doing very quickly, and adapt to beat you.

B) Find a weakness in a metagame, then exploit it.

Five-Color Control decks based on Volcanic Fallout were the talk of Kyoto, seeing as nearly every aggressive deck feared the card to no end. I can count on one hand the number of viable archetypes that didn’t fold to Volcanic Fallout in Kyoto, and it was the Most Hyped Card from Conflux. Can you guess what deck won? I’ll give you a hint: CRUEL ULTIMATUM.

Metagames will often have a weakness just begging to be exploited, but most people are too lazy to figure that out for themselves. The fallacy behind this logic is that when people DO figure it out, it is generally too late for you to use that technology yourself. If everyone knows what you know, then you don’t have an advantage. Before Rise of Eldrazi was legal, Jund was quite the dominant force, but people began to exploit the overabundance of Jund with a UW Control deck built around tapping out each turn for a bigger and better threat. Spreading Seas, Tectonic Edge, Martial Coup, Baneslayer Angel, Sphinx of Jwar Isle. These were all cards that were very good against Jund, and they couldn’t easily be handled. Additionally, the sideboard was full of cards like Celestial Purge, Flashfreeze, and even Devout Lightcaster! Imagine how warped a format has to be where Devout Lightcaster is a good sideboard card for a Control deck. Taking out a Putrid Leech or Sprouting Thrinax, while being immune to every removal spell except for Lightning Bolt, made it quite a powerful card, and I’m actually surprised it doesn’t see more play. In this particular metagame, my clan on Magic Online won two of the three Magic Online PTQs playing almost identical maindecks, while one had evolved to fight mirror matches with maindeck Negates after the original list beat a metagame full of Jund. While Negate was a bit worse against Jund than we wanted, the sacrifice was necessary in order to help fight the mirror match. This change is a potent example of exploiting the weakness in a metagame!

C) Build your deck with cards that give you the best chance to win.

This argument is two-fold, in both card pricing and card quality. First of all, card prices sky-rocketing due to Mythic Rarity is a pretty large issue, and something one of the premium writers on this very site cares about deeply. I see this in Jamie Wakefield more than I would care to admit, and that pains me because I know he’s a decent player. He has ideals, but what are those ideals exactly? While the printing of Mythic rares did affect the cost of playing this game we all love, is it really that much different? If your deck could use Vengevines, just trade for them, borrow them, or buy them. Most of us are in the same boat as you, but I don’t think it is as hard as he is making it out to be to acquire these more expensive cards. Hell, in the last few years there were regular rares jumping over the S30 mark, including Bitterblossom, Mutavault, and Tarmogoyf!

Is it the fault of Wizards of the Coast that Vengevine is $35, or that Primeval Titan is $50? As a rule, Mythic rares are roughly twice as difficult to open out of any booster pack than any one particular rare. For example, you will open an average of one Primeval Titan for every two Dragonskull Summits you open out of M11 (full mathematical breakdown in one of Ben Bleiweiss older articles here.) With this in mind, can you realistically say that there is any regular rare from M11 worth half as much as a Primeval Titan? Fauna Shaman is up there but not even close, and it is as desirable, if not more desirable than Primeval Titan. Magic cards should generally cost more when they are in higher demand, and cost less when the demand fades. While Primeval Titan is harder to open than Fauna Shaman, it should not be priced at $50 when Fauna Shaman is only $12. There is a fundamental flaw in our sales system where dealers will charge more for a Mythic rare simply because it is a Mythic rare, which is definitely not the fault of WotC. Most rares are so cheap now that it almost levels out the cost of Mythic rares, which is both a good and bad thing.

Second, card quality is very important when building your deck. Do you know why Jund is so powerful? It is definitely not because it is synergistic. The cards in Jund have almost no synergy, but all of them are very powerful. There is a reason why Bloodbraid Elf is so good in Jund, yet pretty lackluster in virtually every other deck. Jund fills itself full of good cards, and Bloodbraid Elf always cascades into those good cards. The problem with Bloodbraid Elf in a deck like Naya is that you are filling your deck with cheap mana producers like Birds of Paradise and Noble Hierarch, and that leaves you with a very high variance on Cascade. You can occasionally hit your nut card like Knight of the Reliquary, but you will often hit a creature that is mediocre at best, but you can help lessen this fact by playing with synergistic cards. In decks containing Vengevine, Cascading into bad creatures is acceptable, since that means your Vengevine will most likely be returning to play from the graveyard when you cast a Bloodbraid Elf.

Giving yourself the most powerful tools to work with is what you should be trying to do in all formats. If you are playing without Force of Will in Legacy, ask yourself why you are doing so. Force of Will is the glue that holds Legacy together, preventing combo from running rampant. If you aren’t playing it, then are you doing so in order to exploit the decks that do play Force of Will?

Give yourself the best chance to win by playing with the cards best suited for beating your opponents. All of the cards in Jund are geared towards doing this, and with incredible efficiency. There is a reason that people still view Jund as the best deck, and that is because it plays with a lot of the most powerful cards in Standard. Jund gives itself the best chance to win by having the best spells at its disposal, while Naya struggles to put up results because it chooses to make its cards weaker for the sake of consistency. Where Jund plays 27 lands, Naya will play 24-25 lands with early mana producers to accelerate. This causes the occasional draw diluted with mana producers, while Jund rarely has the problem of flooding. Jund uses its man-lands better than any other deck in Standard, and rarely “floods out” as a result. While Jund doesn’t have the ability to play Jace, the Mind Sculptor (easily), it does a great job at killing him, which is almost as good.

Phase 2: Playtesting

A) Playtest against a gauntlet of Stock Decks!

I see people playtesting their homebrews against other homebrews all the time, and they make crucial decisions on their card choices based on these playtest sessions. While these mock playtest sessions could help point to fatal flaws in your deck, such as the inability to deal with a Planeswalker, most of the time they are not worthwhile if you are trying to figure out your optimum build for whatever deck you’re planning on playing. I see good players do this constantly, and it drives me up the wall. It is entirely another thing to battle with your pet deck against someone else if you are just in the mood to game, but don’t let the results of these games influence your decision making if these decisions will make your deck worse against the field. The goal of playtesting, even when testing rogue decks, is to test against what you will likely face in a real tournament, whether that be at a PTQ, Grand Prix, or whatever. If your buddy is playing 16 Wrath effects in his deck, and you feel like 28 creatures “just isn’t enough,” then that is bad playtesting.

B) Try to play against people better than you so that you can learn from them.

This one can be quite tricky, but a rule of thumb to keep in mind is that you should never turn down someone for a game of Magic. If anything, you can teach your fellow player a thing or two about the game, and worst comes to worst you spend 10-15 minutes of your time giving someone else some valuable information. If you think you are better than someone, that doesn’t give you the right to stop playtesting against them, but you should also be actively seeking out better players to playtest against. Having people better than you constantly beat you is a good thing, and will ultimately help you grow as a player. I’ve found that I learn the most about myself and my abilities when I lose rather than when I win. Whenever I lose, I do everything in my power to reflect upon my plays, my card choices, and everything that happened in order to find the one point in the game where I could have turned things around and possibly won. Usually in a game of Magic, there is a route to victory. Occasionally that route is closed for reasons that are uncontrollable, but I find that in almost every single game of Magic I lose, there is some decision I could have made to win, even if that decision came ten turns before it would have mattered. Whenever you lose, that gives you a reason to doubt yourself, which is a good thing. No one should feel like they are unbeatable, and feeling like that could ultimately cause failure when you reach larger level events where most of the players are probably better than you are.

Playing against better players also helps you figure out things you wouldn’t have seen or figured out on your own, and can provide insight on different lines of play in certain situations that you may not have thought if you playtested in a vacuum. Whenever I watch someone play a game during playtesting, I will constantly ask them why they are making each decision, and point out what I would have done and see if they agree or disagree. This exercise can be great for helping both players out, giving each insight into the other person’s thought process. No two people will make the same decision every time, and figuring out the processes of thought behind each play can help you figure out the best line of play, and eventually you can make that decision on your own. While playing Magic Online can greatly improve your mechanics, you can also develop bad habits since there is never anyone around to watch you or ask you why you’re doing something. In many ways, playing Magic Online is like playing in a vacuum, but the competition is strong enough so that can increase your level of play, even if you aren’t always learning something from each game. Constantly question your own plays, even if they “feel” right, and even if you win.

C) Don’t always play the same deck/archetype.

In testing, it is vital that you play with the decks you plan on facing off against, so that you can see the matchup from both sides of the table. Learning how your opponent plans to beat you is a great way for you to foresee things that you would otherwise be oblivious to. Also, you can figure out what is going through your opponents head much more easily since those things have also gone through your head, giving you a distinct psychological advantage over someone less experienced in the matchup.

If you are always the person playing the aggressive deck, you will never figure out how to best attack the control player. Always give them the worst choice possible, so that they will be able to garner less of an advantage at each interval of the game. Finding the point of their fear is where you should start, and figuring out their weaknesses (as well as exploiting them) is where you should finish. Take a step back from your comfort zone and learn the ins and outs of each deck you consider viable, so you can make an informed decision. If you can figure out what works and what doesn’t for yourself, then you’ll also be more likely to learn valuable things for building decks in an undefined future format.

Phase 3: Learning the Fundamentals of Magic

A) This is a Magic card. It is rectangular and has a logo on the back. It is made of cardboard.

While AJ Sacher touched on this last week, he didn’t thoroughly delve into the subject. Sure, Vince Lombardi began each season with a walk around the field and told his players that “this is a football,” but for what reason? I think that his routine, while clever, could have been accomplished in a much more straightforward way. Breaking people down to their roots and showing them the fundamentals of the game is one thing, but telling them what a football is made of seems like a waste of time. Do the contents of a football really matter? Are they going to affect how you play the game? A Magic card is made of cardboard, but it could be made of any substance and it wouldn’t really change how we played the game. Honestly, I would rather the cards be made of plastic so that they don’t wear out as easily, but it just doesn’t matter. The game of Magic revolves around ideas, not the physical card. Magic Online is a great example of this, because the cards are not real, but they are all digitized objects that seem real. In actuality, Magic cards are just ideas generated around other ideas interacting in a confined space, all following a defined set of rules. That’s it. There is no reason to tell you that the make-up of a Magic card comprises of 30% ink, 60% cardboard, and 10% cellophane or whatever, but there are fundamentals to the actual game that are very important. This article as a whole is designed to help you learn these fundamentals and apply them yourself.

B) The Fundamentals of Magic, while tangible, are ultimately worthless without context.

The truth is that the fundamentals of Magic are very hard to teach with a single article. Things like attacking, blocking, tapping your mana correctly, casting your spells efficiently, and building your decks correctly are all intensely complicated subjects that people could pour hours and hours into while just barely scratching the surface. Magic is an amazing game specifically because it is so complicated, and the idea itself is just a delicate dance held together by a series of resources and interactions. The intricate details are the ones that we, as writers, try to give to you on a regular basis, such as decklists, sideboarding guides, etc. But the fact of the matter is that you must learn most things on your own through experience. I don’t like to compare Magic to Poker, but there is nothing more valuable in poker than actual play. If you want to become better, invest time into it. Reading books and talking to professionals certainly helps, but there is no substitute for sitting down at a table for 8 hours and playing hand after hand. Magic is no different. If you think that reading one article will improve your game more than a playtest session, then you are wrong. Sure, the occasional article will come along that changes how we look at the game, but those articles are few and far between, and we can’t always rely on what we read from authors. What we can do is look at these articles in two very different ways: 1) as tools to help us along the way; and 2) the reasons for our success or failure. An article should never define you, nor should it be your guiding light. It should not be the reason you win or lose, but be a helpful guide on your journey. No one strategy article or theory article can help you progress to that next stage unless you accompany it experience in playing the game, and I think that is one of the greatest truths we can learn.

For what it’s worth, not everyone is terrible at Magic, but everyone has certain aspects of their game that they can and should work on. As writers, we try to point you in the right direction, even if we come off a bit harsh sometimes. Tough love can be an effective tool for teaching important lessons, but shouldn’t be abused. Mr. Miyagi was a great example of a man teaching others to fish, making jokes at their expense while they failed over and over, only to teach them the true lessons once they had been broken down completely. If the ultimate goal is to tear people down so that they can be built back up stronger, then tough love is a great starting point. Just remember that once you break them down, you are failing them if you don’t help them build themselves back up. Please, teach us to fish. We’re hungry.

Todd
strong sad on MTGO