Introduction
This is a series of articles about a wholly remarkable book - a book not from the great publishing houses of Ursa Minor, but from 17^th Century Japan. Written in 1643 by the legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings is the distillation of a forty-year quest for perfect understanding, and is considered by many to be among the finest works ever written about strategy and martial arts.

It is my intention in these articles to examine the philosophy of Musashi in detail, and explain how it pertains to Magic. Hopefully, this will serve to teach a few lessons that everyone should know and remind us all of things we already know, but have forgotten.

Before I begin, I should say that these articles are not intended for the absolute beginner, but for the casual player who already knows how to play and wants to get serious. If you have little knowledge of the game, this isn't the best place to start. Also, experienced players may find much of what I say to be stating the blindingly obvious. This is intentional; the whole point of these articles is that describing something as"blindingly obvious" carries the implication that we cannot see it. If it annoys you, though, please do look elsewhere.

What you're going to see

The Book of Five Rings is rather predictably divided into five sections:

• The Scroll of Earth - establishing what martial arts is.
• The Scroll of Water - outlining the techniques of Musashi's school.
• The Scroll of Fire - concerning the application of strategy to combat.
• The Scroll of Wind - describing the techniques and methods of other schools.
• The Scroll of Void - a summary of the complete philosophy.

I'll be dealing with them the same way, one book to an article. The exception is the Scroll of Void, which is short enough not to justify an article to itself. I'll cover it in the same article as the Scroll of Wind.

This series isn't intended to be a concordance. I'm going to be quoting and paraphrasing as little as I possibly can, and not always explaining what the original text said. With that in mind, I recommend that you acquire a copy of Five Rings to read along with. A translation is online at www.samurai.com/5rings, if you can't find one for sale.

First Principle, First Lesson
The first thing defined in the Scroll of Earth is not what strategy is, but who is practicing it. Strategy is the craft of the duellist, but practicing strategy and being a duellist are not the same. You can practice strategy without being a duellist and apply it to other things - as we are doing here - but it doesn't make you a duellist unless you follow the path.

Essentially, only one thing is required of you; you must be willing to accept that you may lose. No matter how much you win, you won't win all the time. Sooner or later you will have to deal with losing, and if you cannot do this then you're in the wrong game.

It's not always easy to do. The better you become, the more you may expect of yourself. Sometimes you'll take a loss that you find it difficult to stomach, whether to a lesser player or a mana screw or a bad matchup. But you're not required to like losing - only to accept that it may come. Then, when it does come, you'll be prepared and you won't be so affected by it. If you let losing affect you, you'll continue to lose.

Ways To Go
Not all Magic players are alike. Some of us prefer big beats while others like to say no. However, we all start out at roughly the same spot: as Timmy. Dropping creatures and rotating them ninety degrees is our game. Later, when we have learned more, we find better ways to play. These ways are not necessarily different, but they are more sophisticated. Whereas at first we might attack with everything even though we'll lose two creatures if we think we can sneak a point or two through, we soon learn that no amount of damage we deal is worth losing resources unless the opponent dies from it.

This is why Musashi made a clear distinction between fighting and the practice of strategy. Against a tactically skilled player, little Timmy doesn't have much hope. His opponent will give up life for time, trade small creatures for Timmy's big ones, and punish any mistakes Timmy makes. Knowing the mechanics is not enough; you have to know how to apply them.

In explanation of this, four ways of life are given:

• The warrior, who knows the use of weapons.
• The merchant, who extracts the most profit from what he has.
• The farmer, who applies his tools as the seasons demand.
• The artisan, who takes a task and makes his plans to complete it.

Each of these in turn is analogous to a principal play style of Magic.

The way of the warrior is the way of aggro. To play an aggressive deck, you need to know what weapons you have at your disposal to win with and how best to use them. Aggro players who throw away resources do not prevail.

The merchant is the combo player, selling high and buying low to win the game. In a combo deck, you need to learn to squeeze every last ounce of power from your resources if you want to win.

The farmer, strange though it may sound, is the control player. The objective of the control player is not to win - it is to not lose. With this in mind, he uses whatever tools he has at his disposal to control the game. Countermagic prevents the opponent from acquiring resources; destruction spells remove those resources before they can be of full use. And when the time is right, he reaps.

The Fourth Way
It's generally accepted that there are three types of Magic deck. In order of skill intensity, they are beatdown, combo and control. This is not to say that beatdown players are less skilful than control players, only that it takes less skill to play a beatdown deck well than it does to play a control deck to the same level.

However, we cannot solely concern ourselves with skill at the table. Magic tournaments are won and lost mainly before they begin, and it all comes down to the deck we play. This leads neatly into the fourth way of Magic - that of the deckbuilder.

Building good decks is difficult. You may not agree, but if you think that way you haven't considered the whole problem. Take the current Extended environment; entering a tournament full of GobVantage and Tinker-Stax with Rector-Pattern would be suicidal, as those decks frequently kill on turn 3 while Rector-Pattern cannot kill faster than turn 4. That doesn't mean Rector-Pattern is a bad deck. Far from it; I made a PTQ Top 8 with that deck last Extended season by winning four straight rounds and then drawing in, and with the exception of my first-round opponent all the players I beat also made the Top 8. It just isn't a good deck in the current environment.

There are two factors that can cause a Magic game to be lost: error and chance. In order to win as many games as possible, these factors must be minimised. Since chance cannot be minimised beyond a certain point, we have to strive to reduce error as close to zero as is feasible - and this includes choosing the best possible deck for the tournament we are entering.

With this in mind, the deck builder needs to determine what the best possible resources are for his deck, and then assemble them in the best possible configuration. The complexity of this task is borne out by the number of decks designed by entire teams of people rather than just one man.

As his example of the way of the artisan, Musashi chose the varieties of woods used to construct a house. Strong, ugly wood can be used in the foundations; weak wood of fine appearance is used for doors. Even ugly, weak wood can be used as scaffolding.

Now apply this principle to a Limited card pool. You'll hopefully have a couple of bombs at the heart of your deck. You'll also have a number of solid support cards that don't win games by themselves, but they stop you from losing before your bomb cards come into play and can win the game for you in concert if you don't draw your bombs.

Then you'll have cards that are weaker or narrower. They don't enhance the power level of your deck, but serve as expendable resources when you can't afford to waste a better card and in the case of the narrow cards may be sideboarded in.

Lastly, you'll have the chaff cards and off-color cards that are of no use in your deck. You won't play them, but because you can instantly discard them from consideration you have more time to spend on determining the best picks and less options to choose from. Indeed, one of the hardest skills to master in Limited is which card to take out last. I was recently faced with the choice of cutting either Goblin Dirigible or Trolls of Tel-Jilad from a heavy green deck with no removal. The Trolls had better synergy with the rest of my deck and were bigger, but the Dirigible was my only defense against flyers. In the end, I went with the Trolls and sideboarded in the Dirigible against decks with many flyers. It didn't work out too badly and I only lost one game (and no matches) for not running the Dirigible in the main, but I'm still not sure it was the right decision.

The point of this section is that your deck is the best deck you can make with what is available, not the best deck that can be made. It's a given that not all your resources will be perfect, so what you have to learn to do is use those resources as perfectly as is possible. For those of you who don't know, this is called optimization - using your resources in such a way that no possible benefit is lost.

The Use Of Weapons
While it is obvious that optimal performance is to be striven for, what is optimal is far less obvious. Nor is it always the same from one day to another. Musashi writes that for each weapon, there are situations where its use is (and is not) appropriate. It's the same with cards.

Spells break down into two basic categories, threats and manipulation. Manipulation further breaks down into three sub-categories:

• Cards that enhance your tempo - drawing extra cards and generating extra mana to let you play more spells than your opponent.
• Cards that screw with your opponent's tempo - making him discard spells, countering the spells he does cast. Basically, spells that allow your opponent to play less.
• Cards that get rid of the resources your opponent has already acquired - land destruction, creature removal spells, and so on.

Here's a brief explanation of tempo for those unfamiliar with the concept: The term is derived from chess, where tempo is a measure of board position. If you move a bishop to a square and then have to move it back to its original space, you have lost tempo. Similarly, in Magic tempo is a measure of your ability to play spells. If you can cast spells more quickly or in greater numbers, you are gaining tempo. The more tempo you can gain, the more likely it is you'll win the game.

While this at first seems complex, it becomes simpler to understand once you examine a variety of situations and see how certain cards work within them.

A good first example is Counterspell. Counterspell can stop almost any card in the game from resolving. It's therefore a great card to have in your hand with two blue mana open if the board is clear. However, once a threat has resolved, Counterspell is useless. Also, you have to have the mana when the spell is cast - or again, it is useless. Playing Counterspell therefore restricts your options on what to play on your own turn - and as most threat cards are played on your own turn, you can't safely play a threat until you can play it and have two blue open or it could be met by a bigger threat or destroyed.

The next example to consider is Duress. Duress is a very versatile and powerful card; not only can it take away your opponent's best spell and reveal information about his hand, it can do so without you having to hold back mana to cast it. Where Counterspell is a reactive spell, Duress is proactive. Yet it also has drawbacks. Like Counterspell it cannot handle a threat on the board - but unlike Counterspell, it often cannot handle a threat in the hand, either. Many threat spells are creatures, and Duress can't touch them.

Likewise, Stone Rain is all but useless when your opponent has many lands, Wrath of God is useless when your opponent is playing a creatureless deck, and Concentrate is useless when you cannot play both it and the spells you need to survive.

As you can see, all manipulation spells are situational in some respect and part of that situation is always the nature of your opposition. If you're going to be playing a lot of matches against Goblins, you don't really want to be seeing Duress; he has no more than four cards in his deck that you can take away from him, so playing Duress will only cost you tempo - the loss of a card for no benefit.

Pragmatism is thus vital to a serious Magic player. No matter how much you love a given card or deck, you must be willing to abandon it if it isn't going to be good on the day. In order to achieve victory, you must choose your weapons carefully.

Timing Is Everything
First, a lengthy quote:

"All things entail rising and falling timing. You must be able to discern... The right timing and the wrong timing, the fast timing and the slow timing, what is important and what is not, and from these determine the appropriate timing. Know the timing of what is coming and the timing of the situation. Unless you understand the timing of the situation, your strategy will be unreliable."

What this means is that the time at which you act is as important as the action you take. As has been intimated everywhere from the Book of Ecclesiastes to Babylon 5, there is an appropriate time for everything. If my lifetime Magic earnings included one dollar for every time I've seen someone cast an instant in their own first main when they could have played it in their opponent's end step or combat step to the same effect, I'd probably be in the game's top twenty all-time earners.

When determining what you need to do, you need to consider everything. Does your opponent have enough creatures to justify playing that Wrath of God, or should you save it and use the Wing Shards on his next attacker? Is it safe to tap out to cast that spell on your turn, or are you at risk of losing to a threat in hand - and is the situation bad enough to justify taking that risk anyway?

For the most part, there is one rule of timing that will serve you well: You should always wait as long as you safely can to make your move. Don't play spells before combat unless you need to, keep your mana open and bluff a play. Don't use mass removal spells to kill a single creature unless the creature is going to wreck you. Most especially, don't cast instants on your own turn, unless allowing your opponent to untap and draw a card might swing the game.

To help explain what is good timing and what is bad, I'm going to explore a scenario with you. Each time I go through the scenario I'm going to add a detail, and in the process show how strategic considerations can alter the more deeply you look at a situation. Here's the scenario for you to refer back to:

You are playing Black/White Control; you have in hand a Diabolic Edict and a Wrath of God. Your opponent is playing Reanimator with counterspells; he has in play Akroma, Angel of Wrath, and has one card in hand. There are no creatures in any graveyard, and you both have enough land in play to cast whatever you want.

It is your turn and you have just drawn. What do you do?

Here, you have to sort out your priorities. Akroma's big and nasty and you can't take too many hits from her, so probably you'll want to kill her - but how?

All other things being equal, you should pass the turn and kill Akroma with the Edict when she's declared as an attacker. You can kill Akroma on your turn with the Wrath, but if he draws a reanimation spell he can put her back on the table before he attacks and you'll have to use the Edict to kill her. You will then have no removal spell in hand and be reliant on topdecking. Since this is based on chance and we've already established earlier that we want to minimize the influence of chance where possible, we don't want to be reduced to that if we can avoid it. If he does get the reanimation spell, he can still bring back Akroma on his turn if he wishes but she won't be able to attack (since his attack phase will have already passed) and you'll have an extra turn to find a solution.

The more perceptive of you will have been asking if you actually need to kill Akroma. After all, I never said how much life you had left - although since Akroma is in play, it's your turn and you had no blocker last turn it's a safe bet you're at no more than fourteen life. Asking questions like this is a required skill; as was intimated in the quote, without as much information as you can get about the situation you are in, you don't know how successful your attempts to handle that situation will be.

So, let's add the following detail to the scenario:

You have six life points.

In this situation, you have to kill Akroma no matter what. It's also the case that your opponent may have a counterspell of some kind when he attacks, so you can't simply go with the Edict plan to ensure victory. This means you'll have to cast a removal spell on your turn, as no matter which one you cast you must be able to play the second spell if the first is countered. This means either casting a sorcery or being able to cast a sorcery, which in turn means casting in your main phase.

The solution is to cast the Wrath first. If he has a counter for the Wrath, he'll have no cards and you can kill Akroma with the Edict right away - waiting for him to draw a card would allow him to draw a second counter, which would be fatal. If he doesn't, Akroma dies, and while he may have a reanimation spell you'll still be able to take her down again with the Edict during his attack phase.

The only lose-lose situation for you is if he has a counter and a reanimation spell between his hand and the top card of his deck; if the counter is in his hand, he'll use up both your removal spells on your turn then reanimate Akroma for the win, if the reanimation spell is in hand he'll reanimate Akroma and counter your Edict.

Now compare this to what happens if you Edict first. All he needs for victory then is a reanimation spell in hand or on the top - you can't Wrath Akroma away on his turn. By casting your spells in bad order, you have halved the amount of cards he needs to draw to win the game in a single stroke.

Another level of depth occurs if you have some idea of what is coming. So, let's remove the last detail and replace it with this:

You have twelve life points, and you know that the top card of your deck is Akroma, Angel of Wrath.

This is an entirely different kettle of fish. You don't have to kill Akroma to survive, but you definitely want her out of play in your next turn so you can cast your own copy and keep his out of the game for good.

What you should do here is pass the turn, suck up his attack and drop to six. Then, in his end step you cast the Edict. Almost all reanimation spells are sorcery-speed; by casting the Edict in his end step, you prevent him reanimating Akroma and open the door for your Akroma to come down. Even if he counters your Edict, you can still Wrath and cast Akroma before he can reanimate. The only lose-lose situation is if he is holding two counters after his draw, as he can counter both your removal spells and leave you with an Akroma you can't play.

So far, we've presumed unlimited resources in terms of mana. As a final twist, let's see what happens if this is not the case:

You have in play five Plains and six Swamps.

Now, you no longer have the ability to both Wrath and play Akroma if something goes wrong with the Edict. What is your best chance of getting Akroma into play?

If he has a reanimation spell, you're going to have to kill her twice before you next untap. If he has a counter and a reanimation spell or two reanimation spells, you're not going to be able to play Akroma on your next turn no matter what you do.

This is where the knowledge of what is to come kicks in. You know that your next draw is Akroma, which means you also know you're not drawing a removal spell. That means if Akroma gets to attack you down to six and she survives the turn, you have lost if your opponent has sufficient reanimation spells to bring her back because you'll be dead before you can draw one. Worse, you cannot be sure that he doesn't have what he needs to do so. This changes the primary objective from"play Akroma on my next turn" to"survive until my turn after next."

However, for the best chance of victory you need to retain a chance of playing Akroma. You essentially have three choices - use up his resources with a Wrath, attempt to stop the attack, or drop to six.

If we drop to six, our situation is not far off the original scenario. Our next card is unimportant if Akroma isn't dead at the end of turn, so he will effectively have two turns in a row. This gives him an extra card to find a counter and a reanimation spell. We don't want him to have any more opportunities than we can help to do this, so taking the damage should be ruled out unless we can kill Akroma.

If we stop the attack, our opponent will be able to reanimate Akroma afterward if he has the reanimation spell and we will be unable to Wrath and cast Akroma. While we won't die and will achieve our primary objective, he'll have an extra turn to find a reanimation spell. If he has the counter it's even worse; we're in the same position, except with six life less.

If we Wrath on our turn, we are guaranteeing that a resource will leave his hand if he has one and we still can try to stop the attack if we deem it wise. Our options remain open.

In all cases, the opponent needs a total of two counters and reanimation spells to even consider victory - without two, we will get to play Akroma. We need to consider what situation the board will be in for each possible combination of cards and each potential play:

If we Wrath on our turn:

• Counter: He counters Wrath, we Edict before he draws to prevent him being able to win if he draws a counter. He then loses unless he draws a reanimation spell.
• Reanimation: He reanimates after Wrath, we take the attack, and then Edict in the end step; he then loses unless he drew a counter.
• Two Counters: He counters Wrath and Edict; he has Akroma in play, we go to six life and lose.
• A Counter and a Reanimation: (1) He counters Wrath; we go to six, Edict Akroma in end step and play our copy to win. (2) He ignores Wrath, reanimates Akroma, counters Edict; whenever we cast it, he has Akroma in play, we go to six life and lose.
• Two Reanimations: (1) He reanimates Akroma, we Edict during combat, he reanimates after combat. We draw Akroma, go to six the next turn and then draw a card that must kill Akroma. (2) As in 1, but we take the damage and kill Akroma in end step. We then play Akroma and win.

If we try to stop the attack:

• Two Counters: He counters Edict and Wrath; we lose.
• A Counter and a Reanimation: He counters Edict and reanimates after Wrath; we lose.
• Two Reanimations: (1) He reanimates after combat and reanimates after Wrath; we have one chance to draw our way out of it. (2) As in 1, but he waits to reanimate. We play Akroma and win.

If we take the damage:

• Two Counters: He counters Edict and Wrath; we lose.
• A Counter and a Reanimation: He counters Edict and reanimates after Wrath; we lose.
• Two Reanimations: Akroma dies in end step, we play Akroma and win.

First, we consider what he may have in hand. If he has two counters, we automatically lose. We should therefore ignore the possibility, as there's nothing we can do about it anyway. If he has a counter and a reanimation spell, we will most likely either lose or have to topdeck for the win. Either way, our only chance of survival is to Wrath on our turn. If he has two reanimation spells, we have at least a chance no matter what we do, but victory is only certain if we take the damage - a risky play.

Next, we examine the outcomes of each potential play. If we cast Wrath on our turn, the only situation where losing is guaranteed is if he has two counters. Furthermore, casting Wrath on our turn gives us a better chance of being able to win without giving him an extra draw to do so.

Ultimately, our choice of action will depend on how many reanimation spells and counters he has in his deck and how many he's already used, which is beyond the scope of this exercise. There is also the issue of how much the opponent knows about our deck, and if he thinks we have Akroma on the top - if he knew, he would of course not hold back Akroma for fear of Wraths, as Akroma herself is more dangerous.

However, even this incomplete analysis is sufficient to show that if we have any chance of winning the game, casting Wrath on our turn will keep our hopes alive, where any other course of action will reduce them. Better yet, casting Wrath on our turn when he has only one resource to draw on allows us to reduce the number of cards he can draw to save the game by casting our Edict at varying times.

This is the essence of timing; knowing what to do, and when. Knowing when to trade life for time, when losing resources is less important than taking damage, and a host of other scenarios. In the last example above, if you Wrath on your turn and then Edict on the attack to save six life, your opponent can reanimate after combat and you can't play Akroma. If you take the damage and wait for a better opportunity, you can Edict without him being able to reanimate and then you win. By choosing the best moment to act, you keep your options open. Timing your actions poorly now may close the option you later need to win.

The Nine Fundamental Rules Of Strategy
At the end of the Scroll of Earth, Musashi stated nine rules that effectively summarise the path he taught. By keeping these rules in mind, he claimed, you cannot be defeated. While this may be somewhat less true in Magic than in combat, they do comprise a basic toolkit for improving your level of play.

Think Only Of What Is Right And True.
In other words, don't lie to yourself. Your opponent may well have had better draws than you, but ask yourself: Did he get better draws because he was lucky, or because he had better cards in his deck to begin with? You have to be able to analyse your wins and losses with a critical eye. Base that analysis on skewed data, and your results will be skewed also.

Practice And Cultivate Your Art
This should be fairly self-explanatory, but I'm going to amplify. All throughout The Book of Five Rings, Musashi talks about how each separate skill must be practised and practised until you master it. He didn't write this so many times because he wanted to practice his calligraphy.

Pitting your deck against another deck half-a-dozen times without sideboarding isn't going to give you any idea of how the match will go or what you need to do to win. To expect victory in a high-level tournament, you need to know your deck inside and out. If someone asks you how many counters are left in your U/W Control deck, you should be able to look at your hand and graveyard and know right away not only how many you have, but how many of each. (You should then tell the person asking to get lost - you're playing a game here! - but you get the idea.)

In 2000, I playtested my Standard deck for weeks on end, hundreds of games against the key decks in the metagame. At Nationals, I played six matches, won four, and drew one. In 2001 I did the same; that year, I posted five wins and a draw. In 2002, I didn't really test so much and I went 3-3. There is an element of luck in Magic, but it does seem that as Gary Player once said, the more I practice the luckier I get.

Become Acquainted With All The Arts.
Know The Ways Of Every Profession.
These two should be considered together, as they're quite similar.

One of Musashi's tenets is that from knowing one thing, you can know many things; that the strategies you use alter only in execution from one situation to the next.

Think back to how easily building a house can be compared to building a deck, and you'll see the truth of it. Both have a foundation that supports them, both have a solid structure that supports the whole. Knowing how to construct a deck doesn't make you a qualified chippie, of course, but that isn't the idea. In terms of Magic, the arts are the styles of play - control, combo, beatdown - and the professions are the decks.

Learning the strategies of the decks you'll be playing against is almost as important as learning how to play your own deck. It enables you to predict their plays, to guess more accurately what they may be holding and to know how best to defend yourself against them. To properly do this, you also need to understand the style in which the deck is played. Goblins isn't played conservatively; U/W Control doesn't as a rule go for the"turn 3 morph, turn 4 flip up Exalted Angel" plan. If you don't know what he's going to do, your plans are being built on shaky ground.

Understand The Harm And Benefit Of Everything.
Once upon a time, there was a card called Necropotence. Everybody thought it sucked, because it stopped you drawing normally and made you pay life to draw instead. Then, someone worked out that the benefit of being able to draw nineteen cards in a single turn was rather less than the harm of paying nineteen life - especially since you could use all those cards to gain more life or just win the game. Necrodecks went on to dominate various formats for years until the card was finally banned.

This cautionary tale is probably the most extreme example of profit and loss, but that only serves to make it a good example. You should always consider what the effects of an action will be before taking it. If the gains do not outweigh the costs, then don't do it.

Learn To Observe Accurately.
Another self-explanatory maxim, so I won't linger on it. Just bear in mind that Kai Budde once lost a game by not keeping accurate track of the cards he was holding. If he can do it, don't think you can't.

Be Aware Of What Is Not Obvious.
There are four types of information in Magic: the things only you know, the things only your opponent knows, the things you both know and the things neither of you know. When choosing a course of action, you have to remember that there are things you don't know and things your opponent doesn't know. Both of these things affect your strategy and the strategy of your opponent. You may have a handful of lands and one spell, but your opponent doesn't know that you only have one spell. If it isn't vital for him to counter that spell, he may hold back when you cast it for fear that you're trying to tease out his counterspells before unloading a handful of threats.

Pay Attention Even To The Smallest Things.
This cannot be stressed highly enough. Forgetting to sacrifice your Bottle Gnomes for life in response to your opponent popping Oblivion Stone may seem like nothing when you're at twenty-four life - but when he untaps, drops an Extraplanar Lens, and rips off a Consume Spirit for ten, it'll seem like a lot more.

Forgetting small things can lose you games, not because they are themselves significant, but because big things are made of small things. At my City Championships, I resolved a Discombobulate when in trouble and saw a big two-card play that could get me out of it. I paid so much attention to the big play that I put the other two cards back in the wrong order. This cut my chances of winning from around 55% to perhaps 20% - and all because I wasn't paying attention.

Do Not Do Anything That Is Of No Use.
You are playing a beatdown deck against control. You have enough creatures to win next turn, but you play another one anyway.

You are playing U/W Control against mono-black control. You have seven land in play and seven cards in hand including a land. You buy back an Eternal Dragon when you already have one in hand. You lay a land, then you go to end step and find you have to discard. You discard the Dragon, as anything else would be a waste.

You are playing the Tinker mirror. Your hand has Thirst for Knowledge and Tinker, but no threats. You have Goblin Welder and several artifacts in play, one source of blue mana and plenty of colorless mana. You cast the Thirst, looking for a threat.

All of these scenarios have something in common: The action you took looked useful, but in fact you did something useless that could cost you.

In the first example, you could have held back on the overkill. If your opponent sweeps the board, you're holding one less creature to help rebuild your offensive. This not only hurts you, it benefits him by giving him more time to rebuild his defense.

In the second, you had no need to return the Dragon when you had no need of a land to play and were going to have to discard as a result. All you've achieved is tapping yourself out for no benefit. If your opponent casts a major threat now and you could have stopped it, you'll kick yourself. Even if you couldn't stop it, he might have played differently if you'd purposefully left eight mana open.

In the last, you didn't need to go looking for a threat because you could have Tinkered out Mindslaver and begun using it; you would have had plenty of time to search for a threat after you had established control. If your opponent now goes looking for his Mindslaver, he'll be able to waste your Tinker, kill your Welder, and will likely win the game as a result.

Coda
This is the end of the Scroll of Earth. I hope you found something in this article to justify your having spent so much time reading it, and that you'll join me again soon for the Scroll of Water.