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B Smith
United States
Boston
Massachusetts
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Recent events have me thinking that, while my deckbuilding can always use critique and improvement, right now I might do better to focus on how I actually play.
It all got started when I read this Limited Information column with stories from Grand Prix Santiago. The last section ("What Are You Representing?") tells a story about how a game went horribly wrong for Martin Juza when he played a second Island instead of a Forest for his third land. His opponent sees two blue mana open and holds back a bomb for fear of playing into Dissipate—but Martin's actually holding Frightful Delusion. Had Martin held back the second Island, his opponent might have felt confident playing the bomb right away, when Frightful Delusion could counter it.
In the past, I've tried to avoid sweating exactly when and in what order I play my lands. I recognized that it could influence the game in a small way, but fretting too much sometimes led me to make worse mistakes like skipping a land drop, and I didn't understand how it could be enough to single-handedly swing a game. This simple story immediately changed my attitude about that. The signals being sent are unambiguous, and it all happens early enough that you can't wave it away with more rewinding ("But if he played the Forest, his opponent might've...").
More recently, a friend joined me for one of the tournaments. This guy has traveled a lot to play at professional-level events, and even did well enough at this year's Worlds to win prize money, so compared to me he's a master. Here he coasted to a 4-0 victory, and at the end of the tournament, he had plenty of suggestions for me—some of them about my deck, but more of them about my play.
Some of it I expected. He was watching one game I completely blew it: I saw my opponent mill a Silent Departure into his own graveyard, thought to myself, "I need to make sure I don't invest too much in one creature and get blown out"—and then went on to put Elder Cathar's +1/+1 counters and a Bonds of Faith on my only remaining creature, a Homicidal Brute.
But my friend remembered way more than that one obvious incident. Where I could only remember the most basic outline of most of my games, in every one he watched he remembered what me and my opponents both played, when we did and didn't attack, what threats were being represented when, and even turns where I spent a long time thinking. All this in addition to winning his own games.
It's easy to go back and reexamine the decks I build because the cards are a record of all of my choices. I think my deckbuilding has improved a little because of that—I still have a long way to go, but I'm already a little embarrassed about some of the lists on this blog. But I can't focus on the deckbuilding just because it's easy. I'd like to improve all of my Magic skills, including my actual play, and to do that I'm going to need to remember and reexamine those decisions too. It'll take some effort, but now I'm sure it'll pay off.
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