Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put out on the air. “Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations, Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.”

“Snap ending.” Mildred nodded.

“Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of course. The dictionaries were for reference. But many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet (you know the title certainly, Montag; it is probably only a faint rumor of a title to you, Mrs. Montag) whose sole knowledge, as I say, of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: now at least you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbors. Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more.”

Mildred arose and began to move around the room, picking things up and putting them down.

Beatty ignored her and continued “Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click? Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters, that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!”

Fahrenheit 451 hasn’t always been my favorite book, but it is now. I think it’s the most important piece of literature of the last 75 years, but I digress. The point of Captain Beatty’s speech here is that since the beginning of the media age, everything has gotten shorter and faster; more digestible. We live in a 144-character world. I’ve always been a very, very avid reader, but over the past few years I’ve found it extremely difficult to focus on an entire page, paragraph, or even sentence. I find myself skipping and semi-speed reading. In addition to ingesting everything as quickly as possible, we all are so used to multitasking that it’s impossible to even take a shit without having our phones with us. Can you imagine using the bathroom in silence with nothing to distract you from the boredom except the spinning clothes in your dryer? I can’t. I suppose I haven’t stopped my digression. (Editor’s Note: I once had to read and write a book report on F451 but read the Cliffsnotes instead. -NJCuenca)

WTF does this have to do with cards? In playtesting for the North American Championships at Gen Con I’ve been trying a lot of different decks, and many of them are more complicated than a lot of the decks I’ve been playing. I’ve been staunch in my assertion that Poe/Maz takes skill to play well, but it obviously isn’t as skill intensive as something like FNkar (eUnkar Plutt/FN-2199/FO Stormtrooper). However, if I’m going to be do well at Gen Con I need to make sure I’ve done enough testing with all of the good decks if I’m going to be able to look myself in the mirror and tell myself I was well-prepared for the event.

While playing Poe/Maz is skill intensive, there are fewer decisions and they are almost all damage based; chiefly, “how much damage can I do right now,” and, “Do I need to do something defensive right now.” As a result, I’ve developed a habit of playing extremely quickly. I have dozens upon dozens of reps with Poe/Maz so I feel really comfortable about all the major decisions. Also, I’ve found that playing quickly baits my opponent into playing quickly most of the time, often goading them into making more mistakes than they normally would while trying to keep pace with me (Important Tip: Don’t let your opponent dictate the speed of your play [unless you’re playing unreasonably slow, in which case, maybe you should stop reading this article!]). But, now I’m playing decks like FNkar and Rainbow 9’s and Phasma/Guavian/Trooper so quickly, and so by-instinct that I’m making sub-optimal decisions. I’m playing badly.

So, what can I do?

Think One-to-Several Actions Ahead

This may seem Basic AF, but hear me out.

I feel I do a pretty solid job at the beginning of my turns figuring out which characters are going to activate in each order, but a lot of that comes down to me saying, “I’m gonna roll one guy, they’re going to remove one of my dice, then I’m gonna roll the other guy!” After that, I struggle to focus on the chain of actions that are going to play out, especially against FNkar decks. As complicated as FNkar is to pilot, playing against that deck can be equally taxing, and prevents some excellent examples for figuring out how to play out your rounds.

One of the first decisions to make (if we win the roll) is whether or not to take the shields vs. FNkar. Generally taking the shields is a good idea against a deck that starts out slow, has mixed damage, and plays an elite character with no damage sides. But, how screwed are we going to be if we let FNkar go first and they slap a Salvage Stand on the table? Can we use both of your resources in our first action? Some decks get wrecked by that opening play and need to give FNkar the shields, but we need to think about more than just taking the shields in this scenario.

Another complicated thing we need to think ahead on vs. FNkar is managing our hand. Against most decks we don’t need to worry too much about hand management as mill decks have mostly fallen out of the meta in SOR. However, we’re not just managing the number of cards in our hands, we’re managing our hand based on the costs of the cards in it. As a frequent Poe/Maz player, this is something I’ve been forced to get better at, but there have also been times where my opponent removes my last die and I’m sitting with four cards that cost 3-5 in my hand that I can’t pitch because there’s nothing left to reroll. Rerolling early and often, and/or playing the higher cost cards in your hand (even overwriting a high-cost weapon with the same high-cost weapon) can be the difference between a win or a loss. The important thing is that we don’t forget that ultimately we can get “Plutted” at any time, and when our opponent rolls into 3 total value showing in their pool it may already be too late.

One of the most pivotal things to consider when it comes to thinking ahead on actions is when the battlefield is going to get claimed. Many decks we play against will have an established speed. We know decks playing Emperor’s Throne Room are going to claim as early as convenient, enabling some serious damage. Sometimes this can be unavoidable, but against a deck that is relying on that battlefield to do damage, beating them to the punch can be huge. Against Characters like Poe and Kylo Ren, claiming the Throne Room before your opponent can might save one of your characters, especially if your opponent is out of resources or low on the number of cards in hand. A Poe with one card in hand and no resources is only 16% to damage you if they can’t claim the Throne Room, and depending on your hand, Kylo can be equally innocuous.

Conversely, slow decks that run battlefields like Secret Facility have little compulsion to claim a battlefield and can sit on their removal, taking as many actions as they can before activating their characters in hopes of avoiding die-mitigation. If we can think about how many more actions we want to take vs. how many our opponent can take after we claim, we might be able to bait our opponent into a “Pass-Pass” situation, skipping most of their turn. Easier said than done, but lots of people think they’re clever when they pass mid-round. Punish them.

What’s The Worst Thing That Can Happen Right Now?

Some readers may recognize this situation immediately, but let’s take a look at the following situation from the Rainbow player’s point of view:

We just pinged our Nightsister to reroll the Baton to a 2X (we have no cards in hand). Vader/Guard has two cards in hand. Their previous action was to Feel Your Anger our Nightsister die (Opponent has two cards in hand). It’s their action, and instead of claiming, they pass. Our options are to resolve the melee damage (either by claiming, or not) and/or rerolling the IQA die with Nightsister’s ability. However, our opponent has no dice in the pool and passed instead of playing any sort of die mitigation; we could just claim here and start the turn with a Rocket Launcher and try to end the game. Let’s just claim and play for the next turn, what’s the worst that could happen?

Those last two cards in our opponent’s hand?

The worst possible scenario. It adds insult to injury when our opponent rolls that 33% Force Throw special. We had a lot of options in this situation, but all of them stemmed from our decision to claim. With Nightsister, we get to play defensively in this situation if need be. We might still lose, but we lost the second we claimed anyway. We didn’t consider the worst thing.

Here’s another scenario that I had to recreate, this time, we’re Poe/Maz:

Things are not looking great for Poe, but our opponent had an opportunity to remove Poe’s die and didn’t, so the pressure is off a bit in terms of needing to claim as quickly as possible. It’s our action, do we Dug-In, or do we put 4 damage into FN, putting him at 1 health? At first glance, it seems like we should obviously give ourselves a shot at leaving Poe around for the next turn, playing Dug In, and praying. We don’t need the action, and the resource is irrelevant at the moment.

We Dug In, and our opponent plays Vibroknife.

The Vibroknife comes up blank, but it’s too late. The gametext is the only thing that matters. It’s still our opponent’s action because of Ambush, and that Baton damage is now unblockable. Poe is dead, and the game is too far out of reach for a naked Maz. Especially since we burned our resource for three shields that did absolutely nothing, and we can’t afford to put a DL-44 on her at the start of next turn to try and make up the damage. Had we claimed, putting both FN and Trooper at 1 health, Maz was 75% to kill either one of them, plus we would’ve had been able to play the Dug In after killing FN and taking the Vibroknife off the table. In any event, we thought we were safe and we weren’t.

Seeing the Matrix

Maybe you’re the greatest Destiny player in the world, and you know all of these things, seeing those plays well in advance of my explanations. If so, you should get out a pen and paper and see if your name is an anagram for something that might indicate you being the savior of humanity (we could use one). (Editor’s Note: A drunk guy at a bar once asked me what my initials were and I told him they were NJC. He responded “That means you’re the New Jesus Christ!”) For the rest of us who have yet to take the red pill, we still need to do work. The most important thing to do if we want to see the matrix is to get reps. After that, we want to try and be as top-right as possible. And the only way to do that is to slow down and play thoughtfully.

Playing instinctively will never get us to the top-right. If we want to see the matrix with a particular deck we need to get dozens of thoughtful reps with our decks because there’s so much to consider. I write down every opening hand and mulligan when testing decks now, and go back over them after the game noting what worked and what didn’t. I used to be an absolute disaster of a FNkar pilot until I figured out the mulligan. I’m halfway decent after figuring out how my opening turn is supposed to go. When it comes to Poe/Maz, I know my gameplan whether we’re at the Throne Room or elsewhere, when they target Poe versus when they target Maz, and can make adjustments to all of my gameplans based on what’s in my opener before and after mulliganing. I’m Link aboard the Nebuchadnezzar.

Where’s Poe Now? // He’s doin’ his Superman thing.

But, I can’t just play Poe/Maz for the entirety of the game. It’s already a questionable call in the current meta, especially with Darth Vader, Sith Lord making a comeback, and FN decks capable of killing Poe early in round 2 if not sooner.

I have one more example for you. I was testing Rainbow 9’s with Nightsister vs. Poe Maz:

My opponent just claimed, so I have to take 4 damage from the two Planetary Uprising. My playtesting partner said, “I think you put it all on Sister.” This would leave her with one HP, enough that I could kill her by using her ability and and move the weapons over to Bala Tik easily. I wanted to play the Holdout Blaster, leaving me with only three cards to reroll, so I wanted a little extra wiggle room on the Nightsister. “One less, I think.” I put 1 on Bala and three on Sister. I didn’t realize it, but my fate was sealed. I was like 92% to die by Maz activating followed by an immediate claim unless I rolled a bunch of shields. I should’ve put all the damage on Bala TIk to maximize my rerolls while the weapons were on Nightsister, saving the three cards in hand for rerolls with Bala. I took the advice of my partner, only slightly adjusting out of instinct, rather than taking two minutes to see that I had effectively lost the game by hedging (bonus tip: never hedge!). I was able to pop Maz’ shield and get 5 more damage on her, but my Bala Roll and singular reroll were terrible (I didn’t even get to take a shield), and I died almost immediately next turn.

Realizing that I’m effectively dead is something that I hope I see now if a similar situation arises while playing Rainbow 9’s in the future. I hope I see the matrix enough to go all-in for the win rather than punting by hedging. I think the Vader/Guard player in the above example saw that he was effectively dead if things went to the next turn, so he killed his 4HP Gard to give his 1HP Vader a chance to win and it paid off. He saw the matrix and it paid off.

This is easier said than done. Many of us don’t get to play often, and sometimes we’re just squeezing in a single game of Destiny on TTS while our SO is in the bathroom for an inordinate amount of time because they’re really into the Game of Thrones subreddit. But, this can’t be an excuse; if we want to compete, we have to practice. We have to slow down and practice thoughtfully if we want to see the matrix.

See you in Zion.