There is a reason for the question the title poses: It refers to a nebulous time of decision that shows up in every Magic game I play. But let's start off with what I mentioned I would in my last article - the topics of strategy and tactics.

I had a grandfather who did his part back in the second World War; my mother grew up having a fascination for it that lasts to this day, and she passed that fascination onto me. In the course of my reading, I have come up with my own take on the definitions of the two words mentioned above: I use these definitions when I am applying strategy and tactics to the multiplayer format that I play.

Strategy is trying to take into account all of the factors necessary that would be required and would need to be in place to accomplish a specific goal. For example, when Dwight Eisenhower was put in overall charge of the Allied forces, his goal was winning the war against Germany. He had to calculate how many men, how much fuel, food, and ammunition was going to be needed, how many planes, tanks, and other equipment, and on and on and on.

There is an article written a few years ago by Jon Chabot, which serves as a decent starting place; you may wish to read it before continuing. In this article, he lists off some of the things that you should consider when thinking about playing in the multiplayer format. A lot of the things that I will be talking about will be taken directly from his writing, but given my own updated twist. It helps to have basic concepts covered again every once in a while anyway, as an intro for new people and a refresher course for the old.

So anyway, the first thing he said that should be taken into consideration is the people that you are playing with. Fair enough; because you could be with a group of individuals that think winning at any and all cost is the purpose of the game, or you could be with people for whom the concepts of Control and Combo have not settled in quite yet. Building a green creature beatdown deck will probably not work if you are playing against someone with a deck that he will consider to have failed him if you are not dead by turn 3.

What type of deck do you want to play should be next, presuming you have an idea that will work in the multiplayer format to start off with. Is it going to be Beatdown, Control, Combo, or a mix of them? Will it be themed - will all of your creatures be merfolk, goblins, or angels? This last part, dealing with theme decks, is important, because if you are going to go this route, you will be closing the door on other possibilities.

The type of deck that you build is going to directly reflect several things: Your play style, how seriously you expect to actually win a game with this deck, how it will interact with the other players, even what colors will cause you problems, if any. In fact, the type or theme or color of your deck is going to have a direct impact on all of the points that Jon and I are about to mention, and is the most crucial step in the deck building process.

Be Prepared.
When Jon says to be prepared for anything, it says something about him. When he says this, he means it. He sits down and legitimately tries to come up with scenarios that would cause problems for the deck that he is building. My take on this is that while it is certainly a smart move to do this, at some point I say"enough." If I actually try to take into account everything, a couple of things could occur that I do not want. Changing the deck to accommodate all of the things that could happen might end up changing the deck to the point where my original vision of what I wanted to play with no longer even exists. It would also become too much like work trying to take everything into account; this is a game, and at some point you have to come back to that point.

Be Flexible.
This is another good rule, but is completely subject to the type or theme or color. If you are playing a theme deck of goblins, for example, your creatures are pretty much set, and therefore inflexible. This is necessarily a bad thing, but you should be aware that anything that flies will have a field day with your deck, unless you put in some direct damage to kill the flyers, or have some Goblin Balloon Brigades in there, or some other possibility.

To contrast completely, there are times when inflexibility is actually demanded. If I am playing a deck that is mono-white, then it is going to have Disenchants in it: Period, end of discussion. Many people have a card or maybe series of cards that they consider mandatory to have in certain decks or when they are playing with specific combinations of colors. Whenever I play a deck that is black and blue, if I have the space for them, Lobotomies are a must. These "must have" cards can be there because you love using them, or you love seeing your opponent's faces when you play them, or because they have an effect that you consider mandatory to have.

Raw Power.
I apply this more towards your potential repertoire of spells than I do creatures. I find deciding the creatures for a deck to be easy, sometimes even easier than deciding what combination of lands to put into the decks; since the majority of my group tends to play beatdown, we find that the deciding factor in whether we get anywhere is what we are using in addition to the creatures on the table. Our Blue Mage loves enchantments, and possibly considers them to be the most powerful aspect of the game. He uses enchantments in conjunction with his decks to extreme effectiveness; so much so that the creatures he has on the table are outnumbered three to one compared to the enchantments that he has out there. But the effects of the enchantments are such that he only needs three creatures or so to be clearing the table of the rest of us.

Card Manipulation or Drawing.
If there was anything that I could liken to having a religious conversion, the realization of the power this ability gives to a player would be it.

(Yes, I know that some of you are probably saying,"Well, DUH!" Hey, sue me, some aspects of the game take longer to register to people, all right?)

Anyway, as I mentioned some months ago, the power of Rhystic Study in group games was so enormous and profound for me that ever since, I have been trying to come up with ways to improve this feature in all of my decks, which frequently had none whatsoever before this revelation. Yes, I know, I am a heathen. But what can you expect from a non-serious, non-tournament player, after all? I mean, really.

Anyway, I have solved the problem in my blue decks, black decks, and red decks so far. I am in the process of trying to find a solution to my mono-artifact deck that fits in well, and I am still searching for options for my mono-colored green and white decks. R&D seems to be helping to some extent lately with the release of Judgment, because there are more green and white cantrip cards that allow the drawing of a card in addition to the cantrip's main spell. Some of them are actually quite good, like Shelter - or, even better in my metagame, Unquestioned Authority.

Graveyard Manipulation.
Who knew that when Jon originally wrote his article two years ago that a mechanic like Flashback would come into existence? When I first read his article, I had Animate Dead or Living Death in mind when it came to being able to use my graveyard again. Now with Flashback, it is possible that you have up to eight spells to cast that only take up four card slots in your deck. Since Flashback has been out and around for a while now, I will not spend a lot of time on this aspect of planning; better people than I have already covered this.

Mana Curve or Consistency.
I have to admit that I have never spent much time worrying drastically about the mana curve of what I am casting, be it creatures or spells. I do not go to the extent of going straight from one casting cost creatures up to six, but it is not something that I pay as much attention to as I possibly should.

Consistency, on the other hand, is definitely something I pay attention to. Due to the amount of mono-colored decks that I have, mana screw happens to me very infrequently, and the dual-colored decks have the mana percentages figured out. I actually find myself mana-flooded more often than mana-screwed, which I do not mind usually. Since my play style is usually to sit unobtrusively, people usually ignore me until I actually get cards that I can cast. On a more serious note, however, these are important aspects, which become progressively more irritating or difficult with two or more colors, requiring extra effort.

And that covers the points of strategy that I wished to cover. Moving on to tactics.

In war, Patton was once told that he was to go from point A to point B with a set amount of men, fuel, machines, ammo, and so on, and told to take the town at B with what he had. How he set about doing this was the tactical aspect.

From a Magical point of view, this can be interpreted as taking what resources you have out on the table, and available in your hand, versus what everyone else has, and figuring out the best possible move at this moment towards winning you the game. For example, if you are playing black, and there is a white player in the bunch, you would probably want to deal with them sooner rather than later. Does someone have an enchantment out that bothers everyone except you? You probably want to let it stay, then, and possibly even stop attempts from other players to deal with it. Tactics is what you do to win the game.

While deciding what to do at any given point, there is a period of time, as I mentioned, that I continue to have difficulty with despite years of playing. When I ask,"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?", I am figuring that whoever can answer that question can also answer this one.

If you are a player, like myself, who prefers to sit back and let the other people kill one another until it is time to step in yourself, at what point should you actually do so?

What I mean by this is that if you are in a multiplayer game, as people die, your odds of becoming noticed exponentially increase. Presumably it would be a good thing to take matters into your own hands and initiate the attack before the others are ready - or before they think that you are. But timing this is tricky. Some people may look weak in one resource - say, creatures - but when you make a move in their direction, the cards that they had in hand turn out to be devastating.

And when you do make your appearance, how you go about it might make a difference - but not usually. In our games, sometimes people who have been at each other's throats all game suddenly become allies when some upstart who has been sitting quietly suddenly decides to interfere. One thing I have learned is that in our games, there occurs with surprising frequency a situation where someone has so enraged another player that the enraged player goes after their persecutor no matter what the cost. And if the enraged player cannot send their tormentor into the abyss ahead of them, then they will settle for trying their damnedest to ensure that the tormentor does not win.

When this happens, for God's sake, no matter what, stay out of it!

If you absolutely have to do something, make sure that it is against the tormentor; doing something to the enraged player tends to only get them sometimes legitimately angry with everyone and the game, and that is no fun. No one in our game tends to ever carry grudges over from one game to another, fortunately, but it is a potential problem that can exist in groups if you are not careful.

Sometimes if you are really lucky, the situation will answer your questions for you. I was in a five-person melee recently, and my deck was operating horribly. The Black Mage died swiftly due to his brother and the Red Mage pounding on him. Another player, a new one, quit because he was getting manascrewed. This left the Blue Mage, the Red, and myself - and as I said, my deck was far from functioning properly; I was barely able to defend myself when the Blue Mage decided to attack me. Fortunately for me, the Red Mage decided that the Blue Mage dying was in his best interest - since, comparatively speaking, I was a non-issue. The two of them fought, and the Red Mage ended up killing both himself and the Blue Mage with a spell that caused damage to everyone, including me. I did not die, because I had the more life than anyone. The Red Mage did this because the situation was such that the Blue Mage could kill him, and he did not want that; he did not want the Blue Mage winning; and also, other people were waiting to play again. So he essentially decided to end the game by handing me the win on a silver platter.

A few points here: As I said, the situation was decided for me, but the circumstances were odd. One person quit, automatically putting me in third place, minimum, after the Black Mage died and he quit. I certainly cannot say that I beat them, or that my deck was in any way as good or better than anyone else's, since I do not think I actually caused anyone any damage at all that game, literally. And yet, I won. I did not like winning this way, but I am sure some people will say a win is a win is a win. This was just an example to show how things can turn out sometimes.

That about covers it for now. Until next time, take care.