By Niels Viaene

On every level we see the same faces popping up at the top of the standings over and over again, whether it is at the Pro Tour where you are rooting for your favourite pro to play in the lime light on Sunday, or at your local game store knowing you will have a hard time winning the FNM or League Standard event because that player is also there. They are the big fish in the pond, the top dogs, the big kahunah’s. But what is it that makes them better than the rest?

If you are anything like me, you love Magic, you love the game, but for some reason the game is just that bit easier to love when you are winning more.

Before the event

Knowing the metagame

Good players know what kind of decks are played in the metagame, and they know how good those decks are. Right now, knowing the best decks in the format is easy because Tom Vandevelde wrote a great article series on the decks to beat. It doesn’t end there, I am sure Tom also knows that there are a lot of other decks in the format that he doesn’t consider decks to beat but that are almost as capable of going 4-0 at our Thursday League Standard Event. Amongst those I would count GB Elves and UR Thopters, both decks that will lose very little in the rotation that is coming soon, by the way. BW Warriors is another option there.

The metagame is something that is in flux. Part of it is knowing which decks will be played in a higher concentration that others. For example, if UR Tutelage did very well in an event, you can assume people will bring decks that are strong against that deck. You can anticipate this and bring a deck that is good at beating very fast decks.

There is also a different kind of flux caused by sets entering the card pool and rotations, when 2 sets leave the card pool. Oath of the Gatewatch has come out and changed the metagame, suddenly BW Lifegain Allies is a lot better and there is probably a UR or BR devoid deck that could be very strong but hasn’t been found yet. UR Prowess became an option with Stormchaser Mage.

Those cards may have a big impact but is will be nothing compared to the chances we will see when Khans of Tarkir and Fate Reforged leave with the Gainlands and so many archetype supporting cards.

Knowing and understanding the metagame is one thing, figuring out what to do with that knowledge is even more important…

Building a good deck

A lot of people in the League have their pet decks. At this point everybody knows Sander will be playing UB Control unless he has been testing something else, and that Bram will show up with his GR Midrange Landfall deck that can surprise-punch you a lot harder than most people would expect out of nowhere. They have chosen their deck and do minor changes every time they see something could be better. Eventually they will reach close to what is the best configuration for their decks.

A good player will build a deck keeping some base rules in the back of their head. The first version of their deck will likely be playable and competitive, at which point they will be able to test it out and make changes. The deck will likely already have a game plan against all the popular decks and feature no fundamental holes.

Examples of these holes might be any of the following.

Not playing 60 cards: In Belgium we have a saying that goes ‘choosing is losing’ which is the reason people don’t like to cut cards from their decks, especially if those are cards they would really like to play. When you choose to play more than 60 cards, however, the chances of you drawing your limited number of Mythics, Rares and Uncommons lowers and with it your chances to win.

Insufficient mana sources: Lands are not exciting, and when less experienced players are

building a new deck they will often remove a land to make room for that awesome card they want to add, ending up with a deck that has too few lands. Players who do this are usually aware of the fact they should stick to 60 cards and this causes them to make this basic mistake.

Incorrect Mana distribution: When playing multiple colors making a correct selection of the lands you are going to play is vital. 2 Color decks are relatively easy, playing the appropriate Gainland 4 times along a full suit of Evolving Wilds is almost always the correct way to start a mana base. When we look at 3 color mana bases things get a bit more dicey. People tend to just whip up something with equal distribution when one of their colors demands a much higher count in sources or refuse to dedicate Trilands to their mana base when they help out so much.

Insufficient or poor removal: There is not a single deck that can get away with playing too little removal. In draft strategies it is sometimes said that ‘Bombs win games, removal wins Matches’ and it holds even more true for League Standard where a single Rare can have a huge impact on the game.

All decks need cards to interact early game, cheap cards that can stop a rush from an aggro deck, and unless your plan is very dedicated to defeating your enemy before you even reach late game you need a plan to deal with late game threats and crazy Rares as well.

Having a functional Sideboard

It is impossible to build a deck that can beat every deck in the metagame, if it were we would have to ban cards to make things fair again. That means there are decks you can beat easily and others that you have a hard time against.

Good players know what decks they struggle against and have a sideboard plan to improve that match-up. This not only means knowing what cards are good against certain decks but also what cards to take out of your own deck to make room for them when you are sideboarding. Look forward to a future article where we will look deeper into sideboard options in League Standard.

During the event

Mulliganing

Taking mulligans is one of the hardest skills there is

to learn in Magic. It is impossible to do the math on whether or not the average hand with one less card would be statistically better to a degree you want to risk taking a mulligan. These days the risk has diminished greatly by adding the scry 1 if you took a mulligan but people still default to either ‘I have spells and lands’ or ‘I have enough lands’ to decide if they are going to keep or not. Both these shortcuts lead to people keeping when they shouldn’t have, in one case when they have too few lands, in the other when they can’t do anything until turn 4 or even 5.

You should be able to do something relevant in the first three turns. If that is not the case, you should probably take a mulligan, since so much of a game is decided in those turns. Of course, in game 2 and 3, when you know what your opponent is playing, this decision becomes a lot easier.

Not spilling information/reading an opponent

A good player will control his emotions and not give away too much information where a lot of the newer players could play with their hands revealed halfway the game and not give away that much more information than is already apparent. Control your frustration when you draw a land, quell your enthusiasm when you draw your favorite card and foster it, then unleash it when you actually play it.

Having a plan

Good players look at their hand and map out how they would like the next turns to go. Each time their opponent plays something or they draw another card that plan is re-evaluated. Really good players will even have multiple plans ready based on what they can draw and what they expect you to play, switching over when the battlefield changes. This not only causes them to waste less time thinking about their possibilities but also to react faster and to be aware of what the cards in their hands can achieve.

Chump Blocking

This is part of ‘having a plan’ but it is something I see happen so often it deserves a paragraph of its own. First, a definition:

Chump Blocking is blocking with a creature that will get killed by the attacker without killing the attacker. The goal of this action is just to preserve ones life total.

Chump blocking is bad, you should only do it as a last resort. It only postpones the problem, it doesn’t solve it. Think of it this way, if you throw away a blocker on an attack that won’t kill you and then you draw a creature that could have killed the attacker together with the creature that just died, you pretty much just gave up your chance on winning the game. In the same vein you should be attacking them with the creature you held back to chump block. The best defense is a great offense.

Not giving up

Again this ties into the previous points of attention. By convincing yourself you cannot win anymore you stop trying to look for a plan and you start chump blocking. Before you know it you are turning into a self fulfilling prophecy. You haven’t lost until the game says it is over.

You are also giving up a lot of information: when you are playing like this and suddenly change your behavior, indicating you have drawn something that turns the game, you are oozing information to your opponent.

After the event

Self Evaluation

This is a tough nut to crack. A good player will be able to look back at how he played and identify the mistakes he made. These won’t be technical ones like forgetting a trigger or accidentally attacking, not noticing a blocker has first strike because a good player doesn’t make these kinds of mistakes (or shouldn’t, and when they do they will not let you know they did but will let you believe it was a bluff gone wrong). The mistakes these people think of are strategical ones: the mulligan they didn’t take, the land they played instead of using it to bluff, the chump block they did because they were afraid you could burn them to death afterwards when that was less relevant than needing the creature to attack for the win or the sideboard plan they improvised for the match-up they weren’t prepared for.

Identifying these is the hardest part, learning from them comes almost automatically once you learn to see them.

I will often see unexperienced players state that ‘they didn’t make a single mistake’ in the match while Jon Finkel, one of the best players in the world, once said that he never played a single game of Magic where he didn’t make a mistake.

Closure and something extra

Of course there are many more things you can learn to become a better player. I hope these topics can help some of my readers out.

The new name for the format has been chosen by the community, it will be Gentry, a suggestion by Peter Steenbeke. Look forward to a complete overhaul and expansion of the services provided in the month to come.

May your next Gentry deck be AWESOME!

Profile:

Niels Viaene came into contact with Magic first through the Kazz & Zakk starter set in 1996, but it wouldn’t be until 2000, around the time Prophecy came out that he actually started playing magic thanks to his nephew. Niels’ Magic career has been a roller coaster up to now, including Grand Prix Paris 2009 top 8, Pro Tour San Diego 2010 top 8, becoming a L3 Magic Judge in 2015 and managing the community effort that is the League of New and Beginning Magic: the Gathering Players, the birthing ground for League Standard since 2012. All this comes from a deep love for the game that is far from diminishing.