Thinking Originally vs Playing by Rote

There are lot of articles floating around at the moment that teach you Magic playstyle 'best practice'. These are the types of tips such as "crack your Terramorphic Expanse at the end of your opponents turn", "make sure to crack your fetchland to thin your deck", "never Lightning Bolt your opponent in your own main phase turn 1", "always wait to the last possible moment to do something".

These tips - which are usually quite servicable play styles - help you to learn how to play by rote.

Here's the funny thing: playing by rote is a terrible way to play.

For example, let's examine our pieces of 'best practice' above.

1. 'Crack your fetchland at the end of your opponent's turn".

In a Standard environment, where Stifle does not see play, there is no possible way of preventing the activation. Therefre the theory here is that by waiting you deny your opponent information until the past possible moment.

Here are two reasons why you may like to crack that Terramorphic expanse as soon as you get it.

(a) You wish to give your opponent misleading information.
(b) You wish to give your opponent the impression you don't know how to play 'well'.

In terms of (a), here's a real-world example. In a recent draft I was playing a WUb deck. My deck had a single Swamp with which to splash Doom Blade. My starting hand was Plains, Island, Terramorphic Expanse, Stormfront Pegasus, Palace Guard, Pacifism, Horned Turtle. With no turn-one play, the Terramorphic Expanse is exactly the right play - but what to fetch? With a Plains and and Island in hand, the only missing colour was a Swamp. Now I was running a number of double-white costed cards, but I knew I was going to fetch the Swamp. This would give my opponent I was playing a completely different build to what I was actually running. Yes, I would reveal White on turn 2, but the information about blue would certainly wait until turn 3 or 4. My player would firstly think I was running Black, then think I was running BW, and would not know I was really WU until much later.

In terms of (b), I don't mind giving my opponent the impression I play worse than I really do. If that makes him play a little looser, whether by overcommitting resources, or running his best creatures into removal unnessarily, that's fine by me. And if it puts my opponent on tilt when this 'bad player' beats them in game 1, thereby making game 2 an easier game to win, that's fine by me as well.

2. Make sure to crack your fetchland to thin your deck

The advice here is that my cracking your fetchland, you can thin your deck and "draw more gas" (a terrible turn of phrase, if you ask me). The necessary counterexample is when you actually want to draw more land.

Every time you crack a fetchland you reduce the chance you'll draw another land. That's all fine and good unless you want to be drawing into lands.

For instance, I play a semi-casual deck (all my decks are only ever 'semi'-casual, coz I want to win, goddamnit) called 'Team Grixis'. Team Grixis has two issues; big spells and complicated mana costs. Often I run a couple of fetches out in the first two turns, but I don't crack them. This way I increase my chances of drawing into lands. Once I have then lands I need, then I crack the fetches. I only crack a fetch when I need to cast something with urgency, or to enable the drawing of more spells and find land that way.

3. Never Lightning Bolt your opponent in your own main phase turn 1 (wait until the end of their turn)

Ah, how we mock the "T1, Mountain, Lightning Bolt - go" play. Until you witness the following scenario.

P1: Mountain, go.
P2: Island. At EOT, P1 plays Lightning Bolt and P2 responds with Spell Pierce.

Now, you might argue that P1 now can get two mana open and play a better spell without worrying about P2 countering it. Sure, if that's P1's plan. But maybe it's not. Maybe P1 only has a three drop after that. Maybe P1 only intended on playing another Lightning Bolt, and intends to use that on his opponent's next End Step anyway. Whatever the reason, P1 is able to make a decision that gets a very early, uncounterable, three-damage in. That 3 damage may end up deciding the game.

4. Always wait to the last possible moment to do something

Again, another trope repeated endlessly but not necessarily correct.

For instance, your opponent is playing UW and gets down a Baneslayer Angel with no further mana open; do you wait until your opponent untaps and declares attackers before you Terminate it? Your UW tapped out last turn; do you wait until the end of their next turn to Flash in your Teferi, just because it's the last possible moment you can do so?

Immediacy counts for a lot in Magic, as does the freedom to perform an action unmolested. A good player may wait until the last possible moment, but a great player will sieze the opportunities presented.


The UWr draft I was playing was on Magic Online. Although my deck was fine - Baneslayer Angel is not a bad card, apparently - I was having a lot of trouble against my Round 2 opponent. The first game went long - about 30 minutes - due to my opponents RUg deck with an endless supply of removal and a Merfolk Looter I could do little about (Pacifism won't help me there). Eventually my opponent won Game 1, and we moved onto Game 2. Slowly the board built up, me with Baneslayer, him with Entangling Vines, me with Captain of the Watch, him with Magma Phoenix. We were totally stalemated, but without Baneslayer I was destined to lose. That's when I noticed the time. I still had about 13 minutes on my clock, while my opponent only had 7. I decided that my win condition lay not on the board, but on my opponent running out of time. This is not a win strategy available in paper Magic. It was also clearly not a strategy my opponent had picked up on.

I decided to play well enough to stall, but not well enough to win or take board control - anything to stop my opponent conceding and moving onto game 3. This included some ludicrously bad plays like Unsummoning my Captain of the Watch rather than the Baneslayer to keep the board stalled. But replaying the Captain would buy me 4 life of a Soul Warden, as opposed to making my opponent concede. As the minutes ticked down I got closer and closer to winning the match - online, the player who runs out of time loses not just the game, but the entire match.

My opponent hit the four minute mark and played his second combo piece; Prodigal Pyromancer with Gorgon Flail on the board. I had held back a Doom Blade the entire time. That was too much, and was forced to Doom Blade it, and my opponent finally conceded, but it was too little to late.

With three minutes left on his clock, and 8 on mine, he need to kill me fast. I kept a perfect control hand - two plains, an island, a Horned Turtle, a Pacifism, a Solemn Offering and a Holy Strength. My opponent apparently had the god hand. T2 Gorgon Flail. T3 Prodigal Pyromancer. T4 Borderland Ranger. T5 Goblin Artillery. And a Seismic Strike in there somewhere. However, between my Solemn Offering on his Gorgon Flail, a Horned Turtle with a Holy Strength on it, and a timely Negate for his Seismic Strike, I accomplished what I needed and ran my opponent out of time. It wasn't a winning hand for beating my opponent in the red zone, but it was for beating my opponent with the clock.


Magic is, in a sense, a game of negotiation, where resources are traded depending on the skill of each of the players. Spells are one of these resources, but so is information. You can use the judicious trading of information to both inform or mislead your opponent. You can use it to lead your opponent down a path from which they cannot recover. But you cannot do this if you play as your opponent expects you to, by rote, predictibly. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to unlearn your play habits and start to think about why you play the way you play, and how you might play differently.

Labels: analysis, magic, strategy