This marks the first installment of Thirst for Knowledge that I will be writing about once a month. I'd love to dig right into Standard since I am planning to attend Grand Prix Seattle at the end of May, but I haven't got that information together just yet. If possible, I'll squeeze in an article about Standard just before the big event on March 21st. In the meantime, this first column will be a sort of introduction along with a look at a lot of the skills that I have picked up while playing Magic over the years.
I think it was September 1994 when my friend, Doug, taught me to play Magic. In those early games, I soon realized that if I attack with a creature then it was not available to block on my opponent's turn. Figuring out when to attack and when to sit back and defend was the first distinct Magic skill that I recall learning.
Like many people at the time, I quickly became obsessed with the game. That's when I picked up my second skill - finding cards. In 1994, you couldn't just walk into a store and buy Magic booster packs most of the time. The supply was so short that any product would sell out in a few days or possibly even the same day that it arrived. I learned which stores carried Magic and which days they were likely to get deliveries and I would drive around the Denver area to find whatever I could find. It turned out that Waldenbooks was one of my best sources since many players seemed unaware that they carried Magic. Happily, this is a skill I no longer need.
After I had accumulated a fair number of cards, I started learning the important skill of trading and that skill has certainly continued and grown. Trading was much different back then, but I still use much the same system of sorting in binders for trading now as I did then. I learned fast that having a pile of cards for trade made it difficult for anyone to see what I had and made it easy for anyone to "misplace" a card or two. I watched how people looked for cards in my binders and then adjusted the way they were sorted until most people could find what they wanted easily. Sorting by color within set seemed to work best.
I also played a lot of tournaments in 1995 and 1996. I don't think there was anything I learned about playing those tournaments that still applies today. Card sleeves were not allowed because it made it easier to play with counterfeit cards, so I learned how to shuffle without causing extra wear on the cards. I'm pretty sure cheating was rampant, but I had little or no information about how people cheated and I don't think we were allowed to shuffle our opponent's decks; just a cut was allowed. These tournaments were all single-elimination and none were sanctioned by the DCI. It was near anarchy and I'm glad that time has passed.
As for deck building, there was not a lot of metagame information available. Most of the information I had to gather from looking at my opponent's decks and by looking around when my match, or tournament, was over. My favorite tournament deck at that time was an aggro Channel-Fireball. I had decided that the early Kird Ape followed up by direct damage was an excellent way to win games. I think this approach would have been more successful if I knew how to focus the rest of the deck and create a smooth mana curve. Still, I think I grasped something about tempo. Truthfully, I can't remember how well I did and, since these tournaments were not sanctioned, there are no records remaining of my performance - probably just as well. I do remember one match where I was completely shut down by a creatureless deck with Wrath of God and Mishra's Factory. I was fascinated by how well it worked against me, but I still didn't believe it could win consistently. Not so sure I was right about that.
The next skill I probably should have learned was drafting, but I didn't. I had never played anything but Type 1 constructed and I considered anything else to be casual formats. As people became increasingly interested in "Type 1.5" and drafting, I lost interest in the game. I was also having a problem with the number of new cards being published. Part of the fun for me was also to trade for complete collections of the cards and it just seemed too hard to keep up. I sold my set of Moxes in early 1997 and decided to spend my time on other things.
Yes, Magic Online brought me back to the game, like so many others. The rules had changed significantly and Magic Online definitely taught me how the game had changed. In fact, I was fascinated by how exactly the program incorporated the rules and how it handled rules I never even thought about before. I also learned a new way to trade, which I later used to build my favorite constructed deck for online play. But the greatest skill-building feature on Magic Online, far and away, with no exception, was The Replay. I replayed hundreds of my games. I'd dissect every game to see where I could have played better, even games that I won. I found that it worked best to replay the game a day or two later. I could still remember the game, but I had just enough distance from the game to see something new. Unfortunately, replays have still not completely recovered, so Magic Online is not a tool I have been using for some time. I don't even know how it works now because the replays are turned off so often, but it looks like they could return soon. (You can see my love of the replay in an article I wrote for Star City Games.)
After just a few months, I was convinced to try playing with real cards again. Laura Mills suggested that I might enjoy a casual event - a prerelease. I didn't think I would be interested, but I decided to go and try it out. I had a great time, but I also realized that I was not a casual player. I had mostly been playing leagues on Magic Online, but after the prerelease, I started learning how to play tournaments on Magic Online. I learned about Swiss pairing and tiebreakers. It was during this period that I learned another skill: how to lose. I'm generally a graceful loser, especially because I know that a lot of my losses are my own fault. But I would get frustrated with myself and wonder why I even wanted to keep trying. At some point, it occurred to me that I love playing. Now I always keep that in mind, even when I am losing.
My next step was to get a good constructed deck together and see what I could do with it. I started by trading for a set of Onslaught cards online and redeemed them for real cards. Soon after that, online trading changed radically with the creation of bots and that skill was no longer useful. My trading skills with real cards were still good and I put together an Astral Slide deck. The skills I learned from Magic Online really helped me play the deck correctly, but it was an effort. I played the deck at Regionals in 2003 and I could barely stand after nine rounds. That's when I learned that there are a lot of factors that go into choosing a deck other than just how good it is. Some decks may be too much effort for a long day of playing unless I know how to play the deck really well.
At the same time, I was learning to draft. It seemed like everyone knew how to draft and loved it. I was completely lost. Sealed deck wasn't too tough to pick up and do decently, but draft was bewildering to me. Laura Mills and a couple of her friends walked me through a draft with Odyssey-Torment-Judgment and that helped me tremendously, but I was still unclear on card values. I found an article on the web that had ranked the cards for draft and so I wrote a computer program to simulate an eight-person draft. The computer would play seven players and I played one. The program taught me the card values while playing the draft and I could look at how the simulated players drafted and could see how they drafted good decks. Magic Online used to have big draft tournaments that were scheduled on Saturday mornings, but it was difficult to get people to join. Sometimes I could convince enough people to get into those tournaments and learned a lot about drafting in those because they were Swiss instead of single-elimination. I'm a decent drafter now, but it was not a skill that came easily for me.
2003 was a good year for me. I was playing online and with real cards regularly and it showed. My constructed rating hit a high of 1823 and my limited hit a high of 1891 that year. Then I learned something else - you have to stay current in Magic. When my favorite decks rotated out of Standard, I was starting over again. Magic Online was in trouble and I had depended on it for a lot of my practice. Then I moved to Texas so that my wife could go to graduate school in Austin and now there weren't so many PTQs in the neighborhood. I also entered into a personal financial crisis that also involved finding a new job so I no longer worked from home. My time and money were more limited than ever and my playing suffered greatly.
I don't remember when I came up with the Idea. It must have been right after a rough PTQ. I've always been very aware of the random element in Magic. I also knew that the best players would win often, so that random element was certainly beatable to some extent. Then it occurred to me that the best way to combat the random element was with a team. Not the sort of team that most people meant in Magic, but one that played as a team. All winnings would be split among the team. Every person would be motivated to support the whole team because that should result in the best overall winnings. If one person did badly, they could drop and scout for those who were doing well and so on. I presented my idea to a friend and he liked it. We found two others willing to give it a try and it worked, sort of. It was really great to win something even when I didn't do that well. I think we did support each other better. On the other hand, we were all very busy. We all had full-time jobs and families or significant others. So it was mixed - we had some great successes, but I don't think the Idea was fully realized. I still hope to form that kind of team again.
It was also during my time in Texas that I started judging. Funds were still tight. Judging seemed like a good way to be involved with events that I couldn't afford to play in. Judging isn't for everyone, but I think every serious competitive player should do it at least once. The Magic play skill that I learned from judging was to see things from the judge's perspective. I think I handle judge calls better as a player now because I know what to expect and I know when to talk and when to shut up.
So let's take a look at the big board. Useless or nearly useless skills: finding cards, playing unsanctioned tournaments, shuffling without causing wear and trading online. Valuable skills: when to attack or defend, trading real cards, building constructed decks, learning the new rules, losing without frustration, choosing the right constructed deck, building sealed decks, drafting, staying current, playing as a team, and judging. Looks like I came out ahead in the end.
I could write a lot more about most of these skills. If you are interested in any particular topic, let me know.