Magic, Strategy and Snapping Out of the Funk

Magic, Strategy and Snapping Out of the Funk
Zvi Mowshowitz

This afternoon, as I was walking home, I saw two girls around twelve years old standing around on the street. Next to them on the sidewalk was a pile of what I assumed was some of their old stuff. There were some boxes from Games Workshop, there were some old stuffed animals. So far, all of that was pretty normal. It happens every so often, and I remember the days when I did the same thing selling baseball cards when I was their age, and I smiled. But then I saw some of what was for sale, and I realized I had to do something.

What I saw were a Chess & Checkers set, a copy of Scrabble and a copy of Monopoly.

There was a time when I had never heard of Magic: The Gathering. There will probably be a point in the future when I won't have played the game in a long time. But whatever happens, I think I'll always be a gamer. I'll always love sitting down for a grand old game of strategy, ready to outthink, outplay and outlast. Regardless of who I become and what I go on to do, it'll always be great to hear that someone would prefer a good game of chess. Back before I learned about Magic, I was a somewhat serious junior chess player. I took lessons, I studied positions, I read books and I competed in tournaments. Magic works on a lot of different levels, but to me it's at its finest when it is a strategic game.

Magic is a great social game too, and I enjoy the company of most of the other players I've met. But the place where Magic suffers is where it gets away from that strategic aspect. Magic suffers when there are long waits between rounds and on the long trips to and from the tournament. Magic suffers when there are intentional draws and concessions, with players not playing the game. Magic suffers when players are mana screwed or comboed out, and don't really get to play.

In particular, Magic suffers when players start thinking of it as a competition for money and stop having fun. I was at a Sealed Deck tournament yesterday, trying to get back the spirit of the game. I was doing well, won my first four matches and intentionally drew into the top eight. My mana base was less than solid, but it only bit me once and that was the only game I lost in the Swiss. We went on to the top eight, and I quickly got mana screwed twice to lose in the Quarterfinals and received. three packs of Torment. Well, that was worth it.

The problem is that I wasn't thinking about the tournament as a place to have fun anymore. I was thinking of it as a place to win money, although I did indeed have fun. Still, I'd gone there for the day, had to basically kill two hours between round four and the top eight, had to wait out a completely irrelevant round six with the entire top eight either drawing or in my case scooping to help a friend. At the end, when the strategic aspect of the game was stripped away and I lost a match I think I should rarely lose, it all evaporated. In a day I would think back and remember that I had fun when I was actually playing my matches, and I enjoyed talking to my friends and exchanging some interesting stories related to Magic only peripherally. But at that moment, on that day, I hated Magic.

I was talking to Zev, a solid local player who recently won a qualifier, about the situation. He said he had more fun playing the game when he'd go to a random tournament where no one knew anything and played some random three-color special, doing things like Lightning Bolting people twice and then Recalling them for the kill. I too remember such times fondly, and it all seemed to add up to one thing.

Why oh why didn't I take the BLUE pill?

I can't go back. If I did, I'd probably end up back where I am soon enough, because I really love analyzing games and pushing through to the core of what makes them tick. At heart I'm not just a player, I'm also a designer and developer. But if I could, I think I might really want to. That's not to say that I haven't had a blast at the Pro level, and the Pro level has been kind to me. I've won a tour, I've built a number of top decks, I have two great teams in Godzilla and Illuminati. I've earned great respect from an entire world community of players, with a few exceptions I've learned to ignore. Still, I long for those days as Magic seems more and more like a job whenever I'm not actually playing a reasonable match.

Regardless of all that, as I said, I always seem to focus in on the strategic. In this case, I present the Sealed Deck from yesterday. I also opened a Sealed Deck in Heidelberg. After playing that one for a day, I realized I'd made one poor card choice but otherwise the deck did indeed build itself - I just barely had a Blue/Green deck and there was nothing else to add beyond a Second Thoughts. This time back in New York, I was again put into Blue/Green, but this time it wasn't going to be enough. I had to play a decent amount of white as well. There was no way to get out of playing three colors, and there was no way to make one of them a minor splash. By being careful, I managed to minimize my color requirements and give the deck enough tricks to have a chance. I had no removal or pumping effects and a poor mana base, but the deck was solid. Here's what it looked like:

Zvi`s NY Sealed Deck By Zvi Moshowitz

Format: Limited

Main Deck

Sideboard

Looking back, I think I overrated Teroh's Vanguard and should have started the Touch over it, but then again I never got to ambush anything with it so maybe I don't respect it yet for that reason.

At any rate, I was not happy about this deck. Sure, it has a lot of great creatures in it, but it doesn't have any removal beyond Llwan and Psionic Gift. It doesn't even have any pumping effects. I didn't think I could stand up to a deck full of black cards. As it turned out, I was wrong. This turned out to indeed be a fine deck. I had two close calls. One was in the first round, when I didn't draw any blue mana in game one - and almost won it anyway. The other was against Tony Tsai, where I was up against a Nut Collector and a Possessed Centaur. I think if he'd played more aggressively for Threshold, he would have had me. Instead, he went down to one and I topdecked the Psionic Gift for the kill. That's the thing about this type of deck. All you can do is play your creatures and prey that nothing really bad happens. If it does, all I have is a Rites of Refusal.

One possibility is I'm overreacting to my loss in Heidelberg against Patrick Mello. As can be seen in the Feature Match coverage, many Faceless Butchers came out against my deck without removal, and the results were not pretty. Then I lost a round to bad mana draws and it was all over. A deck without real removal can only be so good, and Mello's deck was a lot better than that. As always happens when a limited season rolls around, I have the usual discussions about how much skill is involved in Sealed Deck. There are those who claim there are ‘many ways to build a Sealed Deck’ and other such nonsense, but I think they're wrong. In the words of Jon Finkel, there's the right play, and then there's the mistake. Sure, it's likely that those without previous Sealed Deck experience will make a few errors, but I don't think that it can make up for the difference in card pools.

What is my overall Sealed Deck advice? I don't think there's that much to say. When building the deck, do what you've always done. Don't look specifically for removal or evasion or anything yet, that time will come when choosing the last few cards or deciding between reasonable options. Look at the colors, keep an eye out for splash colors, fold the cards and colors you know you can't use. So far, it's been completely clear at this point what the deck looks like, so I then spread it out like it was a draft deck and built the damn thing. In one case the question was whether to splash a card or two, and in that case it comes down to whether the deck needs to sacrifice consistency for card quality, how much the splash improves the deck and how many mana fixers are available. In the other case three real colors was inevitable, since the two-color option clearly sucked and I had cards available like Iridescent Angel that could fix the problem. All I could do was try to minimize my mana issues.

The most important thing I think there is to say involves adapting to skill level. I will sometimes do things that I wouldn't dream of doing if I were at an average skill level for the tournament. This most commonly involves sacrificing card quality to gain consistency and the ability to outplay the opponent. On the flip side, a player who based purely on skill doesn't think he is going to make it to the top eight (or day two in a Grand Prix) has to be prepared to take more chances. A risky mana base can kill you before you get off the ground, but suddenly that's not actually that big a risk. That increases the variance in a deck's draws, letting a player get lucky. It's similar to the scenario that in constructed events some decent decks may not be available to the best players because they have holes in them. Unless you think you truly deserve to win the tournament, which most players at any given event don't, those are chances worth taking. For a player like me, those chances only make sense at a Masters event. There, my opponents are good enough that I can't go into round one expecting to coast.

As for the example used in a recent Brainburst article on Sealed Deck, I actually don't agree that a player of greater skill should pick the strategy with less removal planning to allocate it properly. While I'll certainly do that if it's called for, a lack of removal is really the same thing as a lack of tricks. A lack of tricks means a lack of decisions. It also means a higher probability of losing to a single problematic card that can't be removed. All of these are risks, reasons for a less skilled player to run the deck and hope that nothing too terrible happens.

In the case of the specific Sealed Deck in question in the article, I think the blue build is just better, and I don't think the red deck is going to be that much easier to play. When all you have are card drawing and creatures, decisions are actually pretty easy - you choose the most efficient deployment plan. When there's a bunch of removal and a lot of it has annoying side effects like Sonic Seizure or Acceptable Losses, difficult choices have to be made. More importantly, the Red/Black version of that deck just isn't solid. I feel that the most important thing a deck can be is solid, where it's unlikely that it will just throw up a set of cards that get massacred or do nothing. The red version can easily generate a bunch of hands that are just terrible. Of course, that goes back to the risk aversion that comes with a player who feels he has above average skill.

So what happened on the street? I sat there looking for a bit, started to walk away and turned back. This just wouldn't do. I asked if they were really selling a chess set, and I told them it was a shame. So I went into my pocket, took out a few dollars and told them the following: “Tell you what. I already have copies of all these games. So I'm going to give you a few dollars, and instead of selling your copies of Chess, Scrabble and Monopoly you're going to go play them.” One of them gave me a puzzled look, but she wasn't about to say no. I handed her the money and headed on home.

It was the least I could do.