Monday, June 8th – Last week, I discussed Patrick Chapin’s Three Stages of Game Development and how they apply to multiplayer Magic. And today, we’ll discuss how those stages apply to everyone’s favorite topic in multiplayer Magic: politics.Last week, I discussed Patrick Chapin Three Stages of Game Development and how they apply to multiplayer Magic. And today, we’ll discuss how those stages apply to everyone’s favorite topic in multiplayer Magic: politics.
But lemme recap very quickly for those who hate clicking links: there are three stages of Magic game development. Stage 1 is where you’re shorted on mana that you can’t cast most of your good spells. Stage 2 is the mid-game, where you can cast most (if not all) of your spells, but none of the things you can do are sufficiently backbreaking that they just win outright if your opponent has an answer. And Stage 3, which not all decks have, is the time when you’re casting your powerful, top-end, game-trumping spells.
And as I explained last week, multiplayer decks designed to win via a Stage 3 play invariably involve two or more cards acting in concert — since unlike duels, there are very few single cards that can kill multiple opponents on their own in one swoop. Yes, though that Blood Tyrant is potent, it’ll still take five or six attack phases to destroy every player; chances are good someone will find an answer before then.
So since giving your opponents extra time is bad, Stage 3 plays generally consist of multiple cards working in conjunction to create an overwhelming turn. The classic move is usually “Overrun + a sufficiently large number of creatures = Game Over.” But it can also be something as combo-flavored as “Priest of Titania + a couple of Elves + Staff of Domination + some way to win with infinite mana,” or even as lockdownish as “2x Twilight Shepherd + Obsidian Stone = constant wiping out of non-land resources while I have a 5/5 and a 4/4 flier.”
So the question we have to ask here is, “What does politics have to do with all this?” And the answer is very simple:
Since the bulk of Stage 3 plays involve one or more permanents interacting with each other, removing one of those permanents before they can go critical keeps that player locked in Stage 2 — but more importantly, it keeps everyone else in the game. One of the biggest tactical skills in multiplayer is correctly understanding what cards are ramping into what plays.
Judged from one player’s perspective, someone else having a couple of Kobolds of Kher Keep on the board is no threat. They can’t attack, they’re terrible blockers, and as a theme deck “Kobolds” isn’t going to strike fear into the hearts of anyone.
Yet from the perspective of a more experienced player who’s seen the deck go off before, “Having two kobolds” is one Cloudstone Curio and a Grapeshot away from creating a storm count so high it’ll kill everyone on the spot.*
The problem is, if you don’t have artifact or multiple creature removal in hand and you recognize the threat, and the other player does have the removal but doesn’t see why it’s a danger, then both of you lose when Kobold guy achieves Stage 3.
This is why a large amount of multiplayer politics is about one player surmising what another player’s optimal Stage 3 set of cards is, and sharing that knowledge in an effort to convince other, less-informed players to prevent that opponent from getting to Stage 3.
Hence, a lot of table talk involves clueing lesser players into what the other people are trying to achieve. “Whoo, the Sliver deck,” we mutter. “You let that get out of hand, and it wins.” And that is totally, absolutely true — without a Wrath of God, the Sliver player will eventually hit a critical mass where he can start taking people out at will. And with luck, now a previously-ignorant player knows that the Sliver deck is something that must be contained for him to win.
Now, I think this outlines the core problem of why players like Anthony Alongi dislike multiplayer politics — because they perceive recognizing when an opponent is about to enter into Stage 3 as a part of the game’s strategy.
If someone said to a moderately experienced player, “Dude, I’m a better player than you are and you know it; let me see your hand. I’ll tell you how to attack this turn,” I think most casual players would protest. Why? Because part of the fun of the game is winning or losing by your own decisions. If someone else makes those decisions for you, even if they’re right, then your victory is nearly irrelevant. Realistically, we can all agree on that.
So for someone like Anthony, who hates table talk, telling someone that “This deck will kill you if you don’t stop it now” is effectively making his decision for him by giving him information he wouldn’t have had before. It’s reducing the level of skill involved to win the game, and as such he dislikes it.
It’s a fair complaint, but I’d never really thought of it that way before I started thinking of Magic in Stages.
Whereas I think that yes, handing the information to someone does give him information he didn’t have before — but that doesn’t mean the information is accurate, or even that it necessarily applies to him. It’s more information, yes, but a player who monotonously follows my advice every time is destined to lose.
Why? Because I can’t count the number of times I’ve said to Ian or Josh, “Dude, this deck is about to go nuts with Kobolds, you gotta stop it,” and they shrugged, “Oh, is that what it does? Okay.” And then they stupidly sat back and let it all happen.
Of course, when Kobolds went infinite, they calmly let all of those activations plop on the stack and played Seht’s Tiger to protect them, then kill the Cloudstone with a Disenchant. If they’d just done what I’d said, well, they’d have to face down four other opponents instead of mopping up a Kobold guy with only a couple of 0/1s for defense.
This is all another way of saying, “Having more information” does not automatically equate with “Making the correct decisions.”**
In any case, much of Stage Management in multiplayer politics involves one of two things:
1) Letting other people know what someone’s Stage 3 looks like, and:
2) Concealing your own Stage 3 play until you can actually get it out.
That first aspect is surprisingly difficult. A lot of solid multiplayer decks look fairly harmless in Stage 2, only expanding into a behemoth when that final card is laid down — nobody really worries about the 1/1 token deck until Titanic Ultimatum hits the stack.
So your largest challenge is taking a deck that looks perfectly innocent and shrieking, “Yes! He looks like mild-mannered Bruce Banner now, but I assure you with a bit of help he will become the raging Hulk!” The more precise you can be, outlining what he’s going to attempt to do, the better.
The thing is, quite often players will ignore you. Do not get frustrated. The issue is that they may have the answer in hand — yes, that Titanic Ultimatum may hit the stack, but they’ve got a Zealous Persecution in hand and ready to go. Or they may have a Batwing Brume, or any number of other answers.
Or — and this is galling — they may have something clever that allows them to survive the Stage 3 play, leaving everyone else dead. If they think they can beat the player ramping into his Stage 3, then letting him do the dirty work of wiping everyone else out is a good political move for him.
Remember! Alerting the table to someone else’s threat does not mean that you will be automatically saved.
Furthermore, they may be ignoring you because while yes, Titanic Ultimatum’s potential is bad, they dislike you even more. As such, they’re going to allow Titanic player to reach his Stage 3 in the hopes that he’ll turn that first-striking, trampling, lifelinked army upon you.
If you expect instant gang-murder every time you point your finger, you are going to lose a lot of games.
Yet it’s generally best not to make specific suggestions. You can point out a troublesome permanent, but when you go, “You should totally Bituminous Blast that Wilt-Leaf Liege!” you’re generally just going to get a handful of “No” from all but the meekest opponents. Tell them what needs to be done, and let them come to their own conclusions. They may have even better methods of taking it out.
(That said, if they lost due to not making a play that you told them to, feel free to point it out gently.)
One of the better techniques for encouraging joint Stage 3 cutoffs is saying, “We’re friends.” Which is to say that if your group allows it (and many do!), explicitly saying, “If you actually do me a favor by taking care of this problem we share, I will not do anything to you.” Usually, it’s good form to state exactly how long you’ll be friendly: “Until that damn Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker is off the table” or “I won’t attack you the next turn.”
Oh, and one of the things should be obvious, but I feel the urge to point it out regardless: If you’ve convinced Player A that Player B is the greater threat, killing player A the next turn is going to ensure that he never trusts you again.
This happened when Adam successfully convinced Ian that I was the greater threat, so that Ian killed me when he could have killed Adam — and then Adam killed Ian with a three-point Hurricane on the very next turn. (I should note that at least one other player survived the Hurricane, so it wasn’t like this won Adam the game on the spot.)
Ian will be attacking Adam for a long time. (Or not, in this case, because Ian has to take three months off from Magic, but still.)
The other aspect of Stage management is, of course, concealing your own play, and part of that is in the deck construction; if you can build something that looks innocuous until it goes off, then do it. Leading with something like “First-turn Sol Ring, Mox Jet, Buried Alive for three Kokusho, go” will is a strong Stage 3 play if you can cast that second-turn Living Death… But everyone at the table will be waiting for the next phase of your plan, and will do everything they can interfere.
But at the same time, don’t forget about Stage 2! There’s a philosophy of multiplayer deck design that goes, “Oh, I’ll just play with purely crappy cards that do nothing until I play my Stage 3-generating card! I’ll take everyone by surprise!”
Except dude! You’re going to spend a lot of time in Stage 2, where other players will have the more-powered Stage 2 cards like Dragons and Angels and Wraths floating around. If your sole mode of defense is, “Don’t hit me because I’m pathetic,” then chances are that people will eventually learn to hit you. Not to mention that a lot of the plays that trump the other folks’ Stage 3 plays will incidentally hit yours — a Wrath of God makes no distinction between your crap and someone else’s gold — and you’ll often be knocked back accidentally.
Nso, say I. If you have a deck designed to get to a strong Stage 3 play, then make sure it has a strong Stage 2 as well. Don’t rely on politics to pull you out of sticky situations; politics just aren’t that reliable.
Furthermore — and this is a constant I see in beginning politicians — don’t deny everything. We have a local player who whines every time we target him, going, “Why am I the threat?” He is never the threat. No matter what he has in the deck, no matter what life he’s at, no matter how consistently his deck has won when we leave it alone, he always tries to convince everyone that someone else is the threat.
To be fair, that player wins a fair amount of the time because of his decks, but if anything his attempts to play politics are a handicap. He doesn’t realize that any time he points at someone, we all ignore him, because he simply doesn’t fathom the concept that “What threatens you doesn’t threaten everyone” and “You threaten us.” Almost anything he says is disregarded instantly, so… Don’t be that guy. Acknowledge when you’re in the lead. Acknowledge when it’s the right move to take you down. Make your insights into the game mean something.
In any case, learning to manage Stage 3 play involves a lot of understanding how decks work. If you’re continually going, “Priest of Titania! That means Staff of Domination insta-kill!” and it’s just a dumb Elf deck, you’re going to lose cred. So to hone your politics, ironically, you’ll need to hone your skills at learning what the Stage 3 plays of the decks in your area are and keeping track of what beats what.
So yes, to learn Stage 3 management, you need to get better at Magic. Funny how that works, isn’t it?
Signing off,
The Ferrett
TheFerrett@StarCityGames.com
The Here Edits This Site Here Guy
* – Okay, and another kobold, but bear with me here. I’m bein’ poetic.
** – As a side note, I also think that a “no table talk” rule tips the balance far too heavily towards older players, who have seen enough of the older cards to have a good idea of what’s coming. Someone who’s been playing since Lorwyn would be hard-pressed to look at two 0/1 creatures and go, “That’s a classic Storm combo waiting to happen,” and expecting him to have that sort of knowledge at his fingertips in order to avoid losing instantly seems unfair.
Others would, of course, argue that these players are unskilled and will only learn through being beaten like this. I’d argue that it’s not so much a test of skill so much as it is experience, and as such winning a bunch of times thanks to knowledge you’ve gained over ten years that new players couldn’t possibly acquire strikes me as being a very good way of keeping the old guard winning for reasons having nothing to do with deck construction or play skill, but rather rote memorization.
….But that’s another article. Maybe.