What’s the most enjoyable thing during FNMs for me? Winning is fun, sure, but its not the most enjoyable thing. Tight games, where the tide ebbs and flows between players is nice and I really enjoy that, but there are better things out there. Meeting new people? Nah. The chance to play? No. Learning something new? Nope.

That’s all well and good, but what makes me smile, every time, is when my opponent needs to read my cards carefully. Obviously I use the staples like [scryfall]Arbor Elf[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Stangleroot Geist[/scryfall] which everyone recognized, but most of my opponents need to read cards like [scryfall]Ulvenwald Tracker[/scryfall], [scryfall]Predator Ooze[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Wolfir Avenger[/scryfall].

I think these are great cards, which are greatly undervalued, as they are hardly seen in decks. Whenever an opponent reads those cards, I get the feeling I’ve come up with something great. Granted, the deck my deck is based upon, was not designed by me, but I still have the warm feeling that I’ve gone deeper than my opponent in designing my deck. I’ve delved deeper into the secrets (yes, that was a joke) of Magic and now have brought my enlightenment to the masses.

Ok, I’m exaggerating, but that’s a huge part of the fun for me. Being deeper than my opponent. Being more open to a variety of options, despite having set myself clear limits (such as being mono-colored). Discovering something very good, which most people aren’t prepared for.

So, what’s the secret of Magic’s success?

Most of the Magic-players in the guild only play EDH casually. Some like the flavor, some like the social aspects, some like testing new stuff in their decks, some like the variety.

The secret is that the same game can be so many things for so many people. You can’t really play Chess for the flavor. There are limits to how many new ideas you can learn from Battlestar: Galactica Boardgame. You can’t really innovate with most games.

Whatever… Magic’s got you covered.

They design for certain kinds of people in mind (see Timmy, Johnny, and Spike and Timmy, Johnny, and Spike Revisited, as well as Melvin and Vorthos), but at the same time they try to have each set serve players of multiple formats as well.

There’s a huge difference between EDH, Standard, Eternal and Limited. Still, they do their best to serve all these groups of players. Not everyone equally, but all sets will have something for everyone. Which is why the game has grown and keeps growing still despite being 20 years old.

You have a Duress in your starting hand and the land needed to cast it. When should you use it? Magic is a complicated game, so the answer depends on a multitude of factors. The thing is, if you have learned some basic rules on this and understand, you’ll probably make the right call without too much effort.

This is the kind of shortcut I was talking about yesterday.

It feels right to use the Duress right away, but there are instances where you might be wrong.

Situations where its a good idea to use it on first round:

• When playing in quick formats, like Legacy, where first turn disruption might be very important
• When on the draw
• When you have a two-drop you want to play next round

Situations where you might want to save it:

• When on the play in slower formats (because you will generally have more targets this way)
• When playing against control decks when you might rather play it right before your opponent has access to enough mana for sweepers to maximize your chances of hitting one
• If you don’t have many targets, but the information might be important later on

Since this is a game of complicated interactions, there will be many situations where you have to make decisions about how you’ll approach a situaion.

All in all, this is what testing is about. Often people think of testing as the process of designing and choosing a deck, which is important too, but being comfortable with the deck and having as many of the mental shortcuts as possible at the ready are actually more important facets of testing.

I went to my local FNM today, as I often do on Fridays if I have the time. Its pretty much my only opportunity to play standard and its conveniently located from our offices, so why not?

I played my often mentioned monogreen aggro-control deck.

First two rounds went well. First match I dominated. It was over pretty quickly. Not as quickly as my usual decks, but still, pretty quickly. However, the whole round was over quickly, so I didn’t have time to breathe.

Second round took me a while to get there, but once I did, I dominated again. It was pretty intensive and decision heavy, but the [scryfall]Predator Ooze[/scryfall] came through again even though my opponent got plenty of life from [scryfall]Trostani, Selesnya’s Voice[/scryfall]. Again, I didn’t really have time to breathe between rounds.

Third round I was facing a pretty classic blue-white control, with modern flash elements in the form of [scryfall]Restoration Angel[/scryfall]s and [scryfall]Snapcaster Mage[/scryfall]s against a player I had never won in a match. This is where things went really long. First game I lost. I just didn’t have the tools to go under him, so the first game was his. It wasn’t quick, but it was obvious. I thought about conceding, but couldn’t do it.

Next game, I sided out all my mana-elves and [scryfall]Ulvenwald Tracker[/scryfall]s and took the long game. Sadly, I didn’t draw many lands, do it became REALLY long game, but the waiting paid off. Eventually I won by budgeting my threats and just being patient.

Obviously, by doing this, the game went long and although I managed to get my opponent to one life twice, one life is the same as twenty when considering wins and losses.

Again, as we went overtime, there wasn’t any downtime between matches.

Final round began with me still scrambling to de-sideboard my deck from the last match. First game went pretty well for a while as I managed to build a great board presence. Then came the [scryfall]Sublime Archangel[/scryfall]. People are clearly thinking the same way I am and using the fun cards before rotation as I haven’t seen that particular card in anyone’s deck before (except my own). Anyhow, my monogreen could handle that… but not this time. Especially with six other creatures backing it up and a [scryfall]Boros Charm[/scryfall].

Second game I was ready for the angel, but in the end, I again dominated the board pretty well, but made a huge mistake in the end by attacking when I shouldn’t have.

I attribute it to tiredness. I was probably dehydrated, I hadn’t been able to leave the store to breathe fresher air outside and four grueling rounds just left me exhausted mentally. Obviously, I had a full workday behind me, which didn’t help either. I did pretty well. Can’t really complain. After all, I chose the deck I play myself, fully knowing it isn’t the easiest to play.

Still, one should think about these things. One should bring something to drink and, if possible, practice beforehand. With practice, we can form mental shortcuts, which let us dismiss full decision trees and just take the (hopefully) right course without using too much brainpower. Often there are hidden synergies which won’t be obvious until you play enough. I – for one – have learned a lot about how to use the Trackers just from playing enough. (Fighting with your attacking creature after blocks have been announced is just evil.)

Sadly, I don’t really have an opportunity to do this, but hopefully in the future I get to test somewhat with some people in the guild.

[EDIT] Yes, I originally forgot to name this.

Today, MaRo (Mark Rosewater, head designer of magic) published his annual State of Design column. Once again, MtG was bigger than ever.

To me, that always sounds strange. I know this is irrational, as I see both players my age and a totally new generation at my local FNMs, but I just sort of still have a feeling that its a dying hobby.

This stems from my late 90’s experiences. Granted, I didn’t have such excellent sources as I do today, because MtG-presence on the Internet was still in its infancy, but seeing how the Fallen Empires just wouldn’t leave the shelves made it feel like the demand just wasn’t there. Later I learned what the story behind that was (I’ll add it to the end).

I started playing just after the Dark was released about 19 years ago. Yes, I’m pretty old school (since the new World Champion was born around this time, I feel old school). I remember the days of trying to get [scryfall]El-Hajjaj[/scryfall] to actually do something of any value and the great combo of [scryfall]Royal Assassin[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Icy Manipulator[/scryfall].

I do look back and see myself as a sort of innovator, learning early on to not see only the best possible scenarios for the seemingly good cards, to see how the seemingly bad cards could actually be good (many hated [scryfall]Necropotence[/scryfall] early on, whereas I tried to make it work from day one), and especially how to abuse the seemingly symmetrical cards (like [scryfall]Armageddon[/scryfall]). I was also an early proponent of deck thinning (having bought out all the [scryfall]Land Tax[/scryfall]es from our local gaming store just before they exploded… and were soon restricted after that) and using life as a resource.

Not that I was a great player. I was pretty good, but only in the context of a small town. I did pretty well in a number of tournaments all over Finland, especially sealed, but I was never really a top tier player. Probably, because I disliked where the game was going.

Well, this is two-fold. I didn’t like the way spells were more powerful than creatures. It was just boring to play with when both players would just sit there with a grip full of countermagic waiting for the other player to flinch. The bigger problem, actually, were the players who didn’t subscribe to this. For example, a friend of mine put (at the time) a huge amount of money into a [scryfall]Moat[/scryfall]. Oookay… Since he had put something like 250 marks (around 40 euros, which was a huge amount of money for us back then) into a card, he wanted to play it. Obviously, we didn’t want to play against it.

I wanted to play type II (now Standard) and I just really didn’t like it when I had this one card I always had to respect. This wasn’t the most innovative player and actually he was never able to let go of the early recommendation of 20 lands in a 60 card deck, even though everyone else played with about 23 and his decks were always manascrewed. I knew exactly how to beat him. It just became boring over time and as many of our friends were moving away to Universities around the country, I was pretty much left to play him alone. That’s when I just stopped playing and sold my cards (what was left of them, as I had been unloading them for a while), although I think there might be a treasure chest of old cards somewhere in my mother’s house. I remember having a load of [scryfall]Force of Will[/scryfall]s and I have no idea what happened to them.

In the end, I just didn’t like where the game was going. Now, watching back, I was right about taking a break. Watching stuff like video footage from the Pro Tours of late 90’s and early 2000’s, I wouldn’t want to play that game.

I sort of assumed the game was dying while I was out. I did see some gameplay at gamestores, but there wasn’t a store dedicated to it even in Tampere anymore, whereas we had one in my hometown Vaasa back in the day (that’s roughly 200k vs. 50k population). I knew the game still existed, but I never thought it was actually growing… and actually quite rapidly. The people at Wizards were actually learning from their mistakes and instead of just putting new products out routinely, they put a real effort into evolving the game into new directions and keeping the game as a whole interesting to both new players and the veterans.

My absence from the game extended to 13 years. I didn’t expect to return to it, actually actively working against it at times, but my guild brethren convinced me to take a look and I did. Everything just seemed better. I decided to order a preconstructed commander deck with [scryfall]The Mimeoplasm[/scryfall] as the commander and the game was fun again. This was about a year ago. Since then I’ve started playing in tournaments again and now I’m going to a Grand Prix in Valencia in November, because why not.

I actually wish I had restarted just a few years earlier. Zendikar seems great and I came in the tailend of the greatest block ever, Innistrad. Return to Ravnica wasn’t a personal favorite, but I do like many of the guilds and how they work.

I’m not sure I’ll ever stop playing again.

The Fallen Empires story: Why is Fallen Empires still widely available, even though any of the other sets from back then are completely sold out?

In the early days, Wizards wasn’t able to complete all the orders they were getting, as there just wasn’t enough capacity to print everything they wanted, so they completed them proportionally. The retailers quickly learned this and amped their orders. They would order X number of product because they knew ordering X would get them Y, which was closer to what they actually wanted.

Then, when Fallen Empires was released, Wizards had finally gotten their production running on the level they needed, and the logistical chain to support getting the product to the retailers, so they were actually able to get enough product to their retailers to fulfill the padded orders. In the end, the retailers were stuck with X, when all they wanted was Y.

It didn’t help that Fallen Empires wasn’t a very good set (although I do still have some love for the flavor).

Lauri has been bugging me to do this, but the problem is, I don’t know how to make this funny or interesting. I’ve given this a lot of thought. Probably too much, actually. But, during the Flow Festival in Helsinki, I had an epiphany of sorts.

I was watching the Kraftwerk gig. You know, one of the most important pop groups in the history of music. There was a group of eight or so people. Lets call them hipster for the lack of a better word. These hipsters spent about 20 minutes there. Not actually listening to the music or following what was happening in the 3D show, but instead they spent the time recording themselves at the Kraftwerk gig. After they were done, they simply left.

The other side of hipsterism in our common imagination is trying to find small gems of cultural history which was unknown to others, or enjoying abandoned parts of our culture.

Therefore, this totally untested (and it will remain so, if it depends on me) format has the following rules of deckbuilding (be it 60 card, EDH, or some sort of cube):

1. All cards must be either foil, altered, or gold bordered (which obviously aren’t legal otherwise)
2. All cards must be of the earliest possible printing (remembering the first rule, as obviously the oldest cards weren’t printed in foil)
3. All cards besides the basic lands must have a community rating of 2 or less on Gatherer.

The last one might be a bit difficult as the community ratings are often quite arbitrary (see Runeclaw Bear vs. the classic Grizzly Bears. Live with it and please don’t mess with the ratings to get a card to be legal in this format.

Anyhow, the important thing is that you are more interested in appearances than actual quality of cards or gameplay. I get that there are probably Johnnys out there, who would actually enjoy this as a challenge, and more power to you, but in general, try this only ironically. Or post-ironically, or whatever.

Recently I wrote about my sealed deck in our little guild sealed deck event. I told you about my color and deck choice being influenced by the card [scryfall]Rise of the Dark Realms[/scryfall]. A fun card, which outright won me a few games. However, I’d like to emphasize that the decision to use this card was purely for my own entertainment. Its was actually not a good choice for the deck. Maybe if I had had a few more spot removal spells, it might have been very good, but as it stands, most of the time I drew it, it was a dead card.

In economics, this is called an opportunity cost.

The loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen

Here, the opportunity cost was huge. Not only did I often clutter my hand with a card I couldn’t use instead of using something better, I went heavily into black without much thought put into it, so I might have missed a great deck from the other colors (I doubt this, but you never know).

Each card in our decks has this opportunity cost. For each card in our decks, we’ve paid the opportunity cost by putting aside a bunch of cards. If we go over the limit (be it 40, 60 or 99), we pay the opportunity cost by lessening the probability of drawing something useful. I could have put one more land into my deck instead of the Rise, so I might have dodged some of the manascrews I had. I could have put the Dragon Hatchling into the to have an early flier. I could have put more enchantments or equipment into the deck to support my creatures. All this was lost, because I wanted to play a certain card for the giggles.

I won, but anyway… We need to be able to identify these things even when winning. There are always ways to be better. (But do go for the fun, too.)

Obviously, Magic isn’t the only game where this matters. Whenever you advance or level or whatever in RPGs, you make the decision to lose certain opportunities, at least for the time being. Besides not having a certain benefit, sometimes there might be situations where you are actually losing whole avenues of development. “If you don’t raise your Smarts now, you won’t be able to get Level-Headed until much later.”

There are opportunity costs at other levels in RPGs too. If you never take risks and always try to stay out of trouble, you’ll miss certain experiences (both as a player and a character). On the other hand, if you always take risks, you might lose the opportunity to play the character in the future.

Yeah, its all just economics…

Magic the Gathering Pro Tour Hall of Fame voting results for 2013 were released last week. It was an important year, as the rules were changed and certain players were going to be on the ballot for the last time as they no longer have enough Pro Points. One of these players was Chris Pikula.

Mark Rosewater (the head designer of MtG) started a movement to get Pikula into the hall, but that failed. Good try though. The reason for his campaigning wasn’t only Pikula’s ability back in the day (and he actually still plays and gets results, just not on the Wizards-circuit, although apparently he was given a Special Invitation to the next Pro Tour), but also his vocal resistance to the rampant cheating of the early days of the Pro Tour. Here‘s an interview on the matter, if you’re interested.

The most infamous of these cheaters (and there were many, some of whom are now considered legendary players and are in the Hall of Fame) was Mike Long. There are lots of stories about him, but most famously he won a match by faking top decking the card he needed, which lead to his opponent scooping without seeing the card. Not technically cheating, I guess, but still underhanded and not good for the game overall.

However, as I was reading From the Vault: Twenty picks, I noticed there is a card from a deck by Mike Long. The thing that is easy to forget is that he did something quite important to the game: He was the first to top 8 a Pro Tour with a combo deck. He played the infamous Pros Bloom deck which was based on exiling cards from your hand with [scryfall]Cadaverous Bloom[/scryfall], drawing more with [scryfall]Prosperity[/scryfall] and finally casting a huge [scryfall]Drain Life[/scryfall] to end the game.

Now, many people don’t like combo decks. I don’t like combo decks. I especially don’t like playing against them, because they lack interaction. Still, combos were regarded as something non-competitive. They were just decks you could play for fun, not for serious money tournaments. Long changed that. Therefore, he is one of the most important people in the history of the game.

From Patrick Chapin’s (himself known for his innovative take on deckbuilding and a member of HoF for that very reason, and actually playtested with Long in his early career) book Next Level Deckbuilding:

One of the original pioneers of constructed
Magic, four-time Pro Tour Top 8 competitor and
Pro Tour Paris 1997 champion Mike Long was
one of the most influential minds in deckbuilding
in the early nineties.

He was in the ballot for a long time, but was dropped this year even before the rules changes due to not getting enough votes on the previous years to stay on. The question is, should we remember Mike Long – the Great Deckbuilder, or Mike Long – the Cheater when we think about him. Both views have virtues. Its good to remember combo decks weren’t always a thing and its good to remember that the early days of the game were wraught with people who did all they could to win.

[scryfall]Pernicious Deed[/scryfall]
Enchantment, 1BG

{X}, Sacrifice Pernicious Deed: Destroy each artifact, creature, and enchantment with converted mana cost X or less.

[scryfall]Gaze of Granite[/scryfall]
Sorcery, XBBG

Destroy each nonland permanent with converted mana cost X or less.

Pretty much the same card, right. There are obvious differences. Pernicious Deed is generally better, because it requires a smaller commitment on black mana and the full cost can be spread over two turns. It can also control the battlefield, if you just keep it sitting there, and you can time it better. However, just as an exercise in how well we know the game, lets come up with situations where Gaze of Granite is better.

Obvious one: Gaze of Granite kills planeswalkers. Obviously at the time Pernicious Deed was printed, there were no planeswalker cards, so we can’t really fault it for that.

Split Second: [scryfall]Krosan Grip[/scryfall] can destroy Pernicious Deed without you being able to activate it.

[scryfall]Quicken[/scryfall], [scryfall]Hypersonic Dragon[/scryfall]: With help, Gaze of Granite can be cast at instant speed in situations where Pernicious Deed can not.

[scryfall]Annul[/scryfall]: In general, there are more options for countering sorceries, but in this one case, we have a counterspell, which specifically targets enchantments and artifacts. In comparison, there are eight counterspells, which mention sorcoeries (and often instants) by name.

[scryfall]Voidmage Husher[/scryfall]: This is another real concern for the Pernicious Deed player. At least in our group. Voidmage Husher is one of the cards I use the most in my decks. Obviously, it isn’t even the only card with this functionality. I also often have [scryfall]Squelch[/scryfall] in my deck. Since the use of [scryfall]Oblivion Stone[/scryfall] in our meta seems to be waning, probably because of my love for the Voidmage, I might not use these cards that much in the future. We’ll see.

[scryfall]Augur of Bolas[/scryfall]: You can hit Gaze of Granite with Augur or similar cards. On the other hand, it can also be hit with [scryfall]Mindclaw Shaman[/scryfall]. Of course, there are also tutors, like [scryfall]Mystical Teachings[/scryfall], which tutor specific card types.

In the end, probably the major thing going for Gaze of Granite is its availability. Price of Pernicious Deed is about 20 times higher.