The Myth of Skill and Control

There is a common myth that people like to bandy around: Skilled players should should be playing control decks because they give you more opportunities to outplay your opponent. The longer you play, the more advantage the better player has. While this is in some way true, it doesn't account for other factors. The longer the game goes, the more opportunity your opponent has to draw cards that are good against you. The more time they have to make their shaky mana base work. The more time they have to make their overly expensive cards work for them. Intrinsic flaws in a deck can end up working towards their advantage. A deck that is very top-heavy may be terrible against an aggro deck, but it has a big advantage against a control deck, especially one without counterspells.

While you have more opportunities to outplay an opponent, you still have to be in situations that let you outplay them. Usually, it means getting more than 1 for 1 out of your removal, and otherwise gain card advantage. If your opponent has a deck full of dragons, you aren't going to be getting amazing advantage out of your wraths. Your deck better have a way to either deal with those creatures or get a large enough board advantage before they come down that you can win through them.

The thing about aggro decks is that they create a very real clock for your opponent. A deck like Kithkin or RDW can easily kill on turn 5 in t2. That means your opponent will be seeing somewhere in the range of 12-15 cards in the course of the game. Their opening seven is going to be FAR more relevant. A bad keep is going to be game over. Beyond that, cards that cost 5 or above aren't going to be as relevant in the match unless the have a way to accelerate or slow you down. There are less plays, but that also means that each play your opponent makes will end up being more important in the game. Playing the wrong creature on turn 2 vs. a control deck may not matter much in the long term, but it can mean taking an extra 4 vs. an aggro deck. Each mistake your opponent makes will give you a larger advantage in the game.

There isn't one steadfast rule to whether the aggro decks in a format or the control decks are more skill intensive. Certainly Teachings was a high-skill deck that rewarded people for playing perfectly, especially in the mirror. But so did Zoo in Extended. A lot of mirrors were decided by one player playing too aggressively and taking an extra 3 of 4 damage from their lands they didn't have to. Or trying to burn their opponent out instead of their creatures and losing to a lightning helix that gave their opponent the last few life points to outrace it.

Aggro decks also rely heavily on the pilot's ability to properly extend. It's been a long time since we've had a format with no reasonable wrath effects, so most games play out like this:

Aggro player throws creatures out

Control player wraths

Aggro player throws some more creatures out

Control player wraths

Then it comes down to how much gas the aggro player has left vs. how much gas the control player has left. In general, the control players cards will be better at this point in the game, so he now has the inevitability. Now, that assumes that the aggro player doesn't have much left. If an aggro player properly extends his board just enough to make the wrath an option, but not enough to make it a sure-fire play. That's when the aggro player has the advantage. When the control player has to decide if a 2 for 1 is enough, or if they should take another 4 and try to get the extra card out of it. Life totals become extremely important. At a low life total, every creature on the aggro deck's board is potentially lethal. The control player's ability to win the game is hindered by the risks involved in leaving creatures back to block. A small miscalcuation will cost them the game.

Instead of finding the most skill intensive deck in a format, work on playing the deck you want to play to the best of your ability. Learn how to force your opponent to make bad decisions, and how to play around the gameplan of the other decks in the format. There will always be ways to outplay your opponent - find out what they are and take advantage of them.

Bringing in New Ideas: Keeping Your Playgroup Healthy

Ever wonder why you can see someone at PTQs regularly who plays a solid game and wins a few here and there, then next thing you know they put up a nice Pro Tour performance and they stick on the train for a few years? You always seemed to do well against them when you played them. Did they suddenly drink from the cup of infinite wisdom or sell their soul to the devil? No, they just got a few dozen matches of professional-level experience of Magic. They were forced to play at a higher level, gained a lot of confidence, and learned a lot about the game in just a few days – and they took those lessons to heart.

The thing about playing at high-level events against a diverse body of players is that everyone has a slightly different take on the game. It’s very easy to get locked into a certain way of thinking about how to play different situations that come up a lot. A good example is with Grand Prix: Seattle and Mistbind Clique. Some of the pros mentioned how people were so used to being upkeep Clique’d that they were totally unprepared for a Clique after attackers were declared. In many people’s minds, Faeries had two four-mana plays facing and aggressive draw. They upkeep Clique or beginning of combat Cryptic. These are so easy to play around it becomes mechanical, so a third option seemingly out of nowhere left them in a much worse position than the plays they were expecting.

For limited, people in different countries often have radically different valuations and strategies. Some people like the solid white-based aggro decks, some people are more than happy to force 5c every time. You attack your 2/2 into their 3/3. In your experience, your opponent takes it because they know you have the pump spell. Not this opponent. They block and force you to use it. They didn’t doubt you had it– they just felt that the tempo loss on your side of the board was worth losing a creature. Plus, now you can’t find a more advantageous time to use that spell. The more you can experience people succeeding with different strategies, the more your eyes open to the reality that there are tens if not hundreds of ways to play out the same games. If you let yourself fall into the trap of thinking that the cards play themselves out in the same way every time, then your games will all fall into the same pattern and you will have no way to win other than drawing better than your opponent.

A constant stream of knowledge is very important to the success of any playgroup’s success in the long term. Playgroups without a lot of outside influence become inbred very quickly. It’s important to find a way to bring knowledge into your group from other groups. This could just mean going to more PTQs and seeing how people in your region play, reading articles to see what the pros have to say, or going even further. You need to see new decks, new plays, and cards you are not used to seeing. If someone outside your playgroup plays a card in limited that you think is a solid 14^th pick, you should take notice. It may not be a great card, but you may be totally misevaluating a card that doesn’t fit into your preconceived notions of the format.

Someone I used to play with, Kenny Hsuing, spent a lot of time going to GPs and money drafting before he was Pro Tour caliber. He was loud, boisterous, and in general had the perfect personality for a money drafter. This was in the days of Masques and Invasion when money drafts were the big thing, where just about as much money exchanged hands as during the main event. Kenny was good for the local and PTQ level, but there was nothing that would have made him think he was ready to play the top-name pros in a 3v3 for twenty, thirty, fifty bucks or more. And he knew that. He knew that he was a major underdog in those drafts, but he also knew that the pros took their money seriously and would show him a thing or two. And they did.

A few months of this, and he was playing at a professional level. He went from Top8ing PTQs to winning them and having a few good GP and PT performances. And winning money drafts left or right. His teammates were generally pro tour regulars or semi-pros, but even they gained a lot by playing at the top tier. More than just that, they met a number of the top pros at the time and made contacts and friendships that were immensely useful when it came time to prepare for the tour.

When they came back from these events, they brought this knowledge to our local store, Egghead Games, for the constant Friday and Saturday night drafting, and the quality of the players in the store jumped dramatically. Pretty soon we went from sending a person or two to the occasional Pro Tour to regularly sending 5+ people and one of them, Alex Borteh, managed to get a few Grand Prix top8s, Top 8’d US Nationals twice and get 2^nd at Worlds.

Could they have accomplished this just by drafting the local players? Possibly. But they never would have learned how other pros drafted differently or gotten used to being punished for every mistake. There is a habit for playgroups to become too comfortable in their draft picks. It’s very easy for everyone to discount a powerful strategy or undervalue a hidden gem in the set. If nobody bothers trying the U/R Lavamancer’s Skill deck in Onslaught or the Dampen Thought strategy in Champions, then nobody in your playgroup will be ready for it if they see it in action. More importantly, they won’t be able to pick up that strategy and have the chance to beat others who haven’t figured it out yet.

Chances are that your playgroup doesn’t have someone who is on the tour to help bring in ideas from distant lands, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find them. Magic Online and improved strategy sites have to an extent removed the need to exchange draft strategy in person, and the resources for finding new decks online at sites like deckcheck.net. Someone in your group should subscribe to SCG Premium. Someone in your group should be checking for new decks on the Internet. Someone should be talking on message boards about strategy. The more people in your group look to different avenues for strategy, the more their own strategy will diverge from the group, and the more diversity of opinions you will have. The strongest groups in my experience are ones where everyone brings something different and useful to the table.

Despite it’s limitations (which I’m sure I will go into in a future article), MODO does have a very important role in the health of any playgroup. As I said before, left to their own devices, playgroups tend to become inbred. Much like Darwin’s finches, people will adapt to their surroundings and develop the skills and strategies to beat the people within their own group and lose skills and strategies that do not come up. Nobody in your group plays the typical red deck? People will end up adjusting their sideboard strategies away from beating that deck. Everyone plays it? People will end up including niche cards and become weaker against the field. Having at least a few people that do MODO, or play paper magic outside of your sphere of influence, will bring in decks and strategies that the rest of the group are unused to, and will strengthen it as a whole. While the MODO constructed queues do have a tendency to lean towards cheaper decks and it isn’t uncommon to see a few cost-related substitutions. Still, you decks that often surprise the coverage team and columnists alike are often well known to the hardcore MODO community. Decks emerge on MODO with a frightening regularity, and it’s good for any group to have someone who can keep up with it and bring the latest tech to the table.

Magic is a constantly evolving game. If you want to be playing at the professional level, or even just doing well at PTQs, you need to be willing to change with it. You need to be constantly thinking about what you are doing and why you are doing it. You need to realize that your solutions to the problems that come up are not the only ones, and there is a great deal of value in looking at things in a different way. Always be willing to learn from your opponent’s play. When you are with your playgroup, bring whatever you know to the table, be ready to share, and ready to learn.

Helping Others Helps Yourself

People ask me sometimes how they can improve at Magic. I’m not always sure why they are asking me, but I do my best to help them. Usually it’s people who are already playing fairly well, but can’t seem to ever make it to the top of the PTQ level. They 4-3 or 5-2 a lot, or just can’t get through the first round of top 8. It’s a frustrating level of skill to be at because you feel like you are SO close to making it to the big show, but that’s not always the case. It feels like if you just corrected a mistake in your round three match, then you would have ended up at 6-1 instead of 5-2.

That’s not how it works. There is a big difference between 5-2 and 6-1. Each round you play at a Magic tournament while you are undefeated, your opponents on average get harder. The later you get, the more skilled opponents you will see at x-1. After two losses, most players still playing will not be great opponents. Your games will be much easier. Going 5-0, 0-2 is a much different experience than 0-2, 5-0.

Round 1 is generally pretty random. You might get a level 3 pro, you might get a six –year old child. In general, you can expect an easy match. The people who are undefeated at the end of round three are generally going to be better than the people at 2-1. By round 4, you start seeing the same people who are always at the top tables. The further you go down, the more random the players get. You have a higher probability of seeing tier 2 or below decks and players who will give you games. By the end, at least half of the people playing for top8 have been there before, generally over and over again. And you know what? Most of them will win.

They win not just because they are better players (though they probably are), but because they are used to playing at that higher-level of competition. They are used to the pressure, and they have played dozens, if not more, matches in the same position. Win, top 8, lose, a few packs. They are ready for this match in every sense of the word, and if you are not, you are at a serious disadvantage.

So, how do you start winning these matches? Play more of them. The more you are used to playing high-quality opponents, the more calm and collected you will be in that situation. The more you are used to having a crowd around your match, the easier it is for you to ignore it and just play your game. There isn’t a shortcut for getting used to the pressure, but there is a good way to get used to playing better opponents. Play more of them.

The idea is simple enough - to get better at Magic, you need to play against the best players possible. If you live in New York, or Los Angeles, or any hotbed of tournament action, this may be as simple as finding the right store. If your area doesn’t have any top tier players, then you need to bring the level of the players in your area up. If you are the best player around you, you will need to show the players around you how to beat you. This may seem counterintuitive – you win in the long run by losing short run, but the important thing is to win when the PT slot is on the line instead of a few packs at FNM. Many people want their opponents to be better, but they don’t want to lose to them. It reminds me of St. Augustine of Hippo famous quote, “Lord, make me chaste – but not yet.” If you help your opponents get better, you will lose more. That’s fine. The more you lose, the more you will learn because your mistakes will begin to matter, and you will have to find new ways to take control of the game.

The skill level of playgroups has a tendency to average out. If your opponents aren’t getting better than you are getting worse. You may still win every FNM, but the skills you need to win at higher levels will atrophy when you don’t need to work for your wins. To an extent, being better than your opponents will make them better as they pick up on your tricks, but you need to do more than that. Some people don’t want to improve, but when they do, point out their mistakes. Tell them about the things they do wrong. Talk to tem about how they always draft the same deck, and how why they need to stop playing goofy standard decks. Let them borrow that fourth Cryptic Command for a tournament. Or the second, third and fourth Cryptic Commands, even if it may beats you. How much do you really learn from beating a deck that is using negates instead? You may win a few more packs now, but if your goal is to play in the big game, you should sacrifice those for possibility of future winnings. And how much does your opponent learn by playing decks full of cheap substitutes?

If you are simply playtesting, then talk about game states. If you think your opponent made a huge mistake, take some time to go over it. That‘s what playtesting is for. You don’t need to allow takebacks, but at least let people know when they make mistakes in testing so they won’t make them again. You may win every playtesting match because your opponent Mistbind Cliques at the wrong time, but that doesn’t help either of you in the long run. I’ve seen people I’ve tested with allow their opponents to make the same mistakes over and over again just so they could win playtesting matches. That’s the worst thing you could possibly do. I’d rather lose every playtest match than one at a tournament. The better your entire playgroup learns to play decks and magic in general, the more productive your testing will be.

It’s easy to view improving at Magic as a solitary activity, but it‘s rarely so. The only way to improve is to be challenged, and the only way to be challenged is to play against players of around your level or better. If you aren’t willing to help the people around you to improve, then you will be stuck forever being a big fish in a little pond.

Good Riddance Damage on the Stack

Posted this a few places, so might as well post this here:

I'll admit it, I freaked out when I first saw the rules announcements. 1-4 and 6-7 seemed fine, but #5 seemed like the point where Magic stopped being Magic and became something else - WoW or Pokemon. After talking to people and thinking about it more, I'm excited about the change, and I'm ready to see stacking combat damage go.

We've been far too complacent for too long in abusing damage on the stack tricks to win our games for us. In talking with people, many people believe that removing this ability will dumb the game down. How much are we relying on these tricks to succeed in magic? Damage on, sac, bounce, champion, pump, whatever, it's an easy way to gain an advantage against opponents who don't know the tricks.

If you show up at an FNM or a PTQ and know all your damage on the stack tricks, you have a huge advantage over an opponent who doesn't understand that just by using these tricks. There isn't as much incentive to mulligan properly, work on mana bases or otherwise playing better when knowing one trick can get you by. This doesn't mean that there will be no way for a more skilled player to win, it just means that It's going to require new and different strategies. I truly believe that you learn more in a draft where your deck trainwrecks and you have to fight every second of every game to pull anything out than one where you end up with a constructed deck. The constructed matchups where you go in as a dog and mulligan to 5 and are forced to make every play perfectly teach you more than a series of great matchups with god hands. Winning does not make you better at magic. Working for your wins, and even your loses, makes you a better magic player.

Under 5e rules succeeding at tournament magic was largely about being one of the 3 people in the room (judges included) who actually understood how the batch and damage prevention stops worked and knowing how all the mish-mash of awkwardly templated cards in your deck actually read. When they released 6th edition rules, there were hundreds of complaints by players who couldn't fathom wining in a world where you couldn't cast balance, know it wouldn't get countered, then sac all your lands to Zuran Orb. Or why people weren't being punished for not understanding how to use damage prevention step correctly or how to pump your pestilence so that 4 damage happened all at the same. Magic playskill was as much about knowing the rules perfectly as it was about making good decisions.

Ten years later, with the crutch of rules-lawyering somewhat behind us, tournament players have gotten much better. They were forced to learn every other aspect of the game twice as well to get half as much return, but when they did, those gains compounded. While no single aspect of the game was as powerful as tricking your opponent into giving you permission you to cast a lightning bolt (which you didn't want to, but thanks for passing the turn), exploring other avenues to gain advantages has led to a massive improvement in the quality of professional and non-professional play.

Damage on the stack is gone, and we are going to have to evolve or die. A lot of cards we love are no longer good. That's a good thing. Things are going to be really rough at first. Everyone's card valuations are going to be way off for a while. Combat tricks are going to be riskier. Bounce spells will need to be used offensively rather than just to gain card advantage in blocking. People who want to compete at any level are going to have to find new ways to gain advantages in games. The people who do will succeed, and those who don't will blame the dumbing down of the game. New strategies will emerge and everyone is going to work harder on previously ignored aspects of their game in order to improve.This is going to be a hard and painful process, especially for those of us who are so set in our ways, but we will be better players for it.

Edit: An addendum

This came from further discussions:

You don't get to make 'free' decisions with pumping blockers anymore. There are new decisions to be made and they are on both sides. Now, if your opponent tries to pump their attacker in combat, you can get them with a burn spell. Bad players will still make bad decisions, misorder blockers, pump when they don't need to, attack with the wrong creature, fall for onboard tricks, etc. You do lose one avenue to take advantage of them, and will have to develop more. This will force you to learn new tricks, which I think is good.

More so than taking away from being able to beat bad players, this will create a divide between the mediocre players and the good players. Both those groups used to have damage on tricks an the like to take advantage of, and the players who are better will have access to more tricks in the coming months, and make better decisions in combat. This is the group that will struggle to adapt or die. They clearly have an idea of what's going on in the game, but they may not have the depth to compete when their one tried-and-true trick is gone.

Now, here's an example of complexity this adds:

You attack with a 5/5. Opponent blocks with a 3/3 and two 1/1s. How do you order the blockers?

3/3, 1/1, 1/1 gets destroyed by a Giant Growth.

1/1, 1/1, 3/3 gets in trouble with a damage prevention spell of 1 or more

1/1, 3/3, 1/1 doesn't get as blown out by giant growth, but a +2/+2 is now the same as a +3/+3 in terms of saving the 3/3. This is probably ideal in a format like Shards.

But lets say you do have nothing and you know your opponent has a pump spell. He has chosen to block like that probably in an attempt to trade in the even you have a giant growth. You might order them 3/3, 1/1, 1/1 baiting it. Your opponent thinks. Why did he order them like that? He clearly wants me to use the pump spell here. He must have a burn or bounce spell. If I try and pump, I'm getting 3 for 1'd. Let damage resolve.

Bam, you just got 3 for 1 because you tricked your opponent into thinking he was smarter than he really was by broadcasting a card you didn't have. This is a new type of decision that did not exist before the rules change.

Video Game Morality Systems Suck

I love video games. Maybe as not as some people (I take time to feed my kids - or I would if I had any), but there isn't a lot that makes me more happy than a few hours of playing a nice RPG. Except when it comes to making in-game choices which are arbitrary and stupid.

First off, I'm talking about American RPGs. JRPGs don't have morality systems because they are glorified rail-shooters where you get to circle an area in the hopes of leveling up to make things easier later, and the obligatory airship you always get around 2/3rd through that lets you travel to every city in the game for a scavenger hunt. Rubbish.

American RPGs draw more from a D&D heritage than anything else, and therefore let you create a character and actually role play the. Except, the choices they give you for your character's morality aren't really choices.

This is what a normal morality system for a video game looks like, along with the corresponding bonuses that arrive with it:

Gripe 1: No depth whatsoever.

Gripe 2: You are rewarded in the game for being either an angel or a demon.

Gripe 3: You can't have a late-game conversion of morality due to events of the story line (oh noes! My master was evil. Maybe I should turn good and lose all my bonuses with no chance of getting to the other end!)

Here is how this plays out:

Early on in the game, you see an orphaned girl who is dying of thirst. Her mother was killed by bandits and they left her there to die. You are presented with the following options:

A) Stab the baby in the head then rape it's corpse

B) Give her food, water, and all of your worldly possessions so it can live a rich and fulfilling like on a beach house in Maui.

Really? Why are the options so extreme? And why are they so polarizing? Why can't I sell it into slavery? Why can't I just kill the bandits and be done with it?

Choices in life just aren't that simple. Sometimes we do good things for evil purposes, and evil things for good reasons.

A simple way to deepen these games would be to make a 2nd axis:

The archetypes listed are solely for a point of reference for what kind of characters generally fall into these types. You don't get any bonuses for going in any direction, you don't get any status upgrades or cool auras. Instead, your direction chooses the type of gameplay you receive. Lets say, for example, you start off the game by helping a village who is being overrun by bandits. You can:

A) Kill all the bandits for the village and return their plunder.

B) Kill all the bandits, take the plunder, then demand ransom from the village

C) Attempt to stop the bandits from doing what they are doing without killing any that aren't required

D) Overthrow the bandit leader and take control of their gang.

Each of these options will move your character in one direction. The more you move in one direction, the more the game directs towards quests that fit into your preferred play style. If you like to control things from behind the scenes, the more you get 'deceiver' type quests. The more you like to fight for vengence, the more you get vigilante-type quests, etc, etc. Each action you take will give you either a + or - to your intentions and actions score. Certain actions (torching a village) would add more than others (not helping a beggar.)

You don't need to change the main quest at all, you just need to give people different ways to solve the puzzles in them. They can use brute force, they can use sly tactics, or enlist allies, whatever. You can play the game you want to, and are rewarded for it by having the game move more in your direction. If you don't wish to choose a direct path, you can always hop around a bit and stay in the middle without being penalized. You simply get to play the game you want to play, and someone else can play the game they want to play. The end results would be similar, though I'm sure you can work different endings in based on your actions throughout the game.

If you wanted to change morality during the game, you could. It wouldn't be quick, but the more you decide to take action into your own hands, or to do the right thing, the more times you would be given the opportunity to change. What's more, it would feel more natural than suddenly stopping your skull-fucking and begin giving all your money to the poor.

This system does require a lot more mini-quests, but the nice thing is that since you won't be getting them all the first time you play, it adds a lot of replay factor.

Ideally, you could even add a 3rd axis, though I don't know what that would be exactly. If you could figure out a way to do actions vs. motives vs. morality, that might work, but would require a lot of work in terms of identifying how you classify actions.

Besides linear RPGs, a system like this would be really interesting for MMORPGs. Currently, most use a race/class system with a couple hundred 'factions' that you can gain or lose points with. Nothing you do actually matters except for a few quests and being killed on sight for being the wrong faction in a town controlled by them. That is so simplistic it's almost insulting. In a system that tries to create a real game world, I think there should be a better way to do it.