In the past couple of months, I've noticed that there has been a serious lack of knowledge and understanding of basic magic theory. I'm going to post some links to various articles dealing with multiple aspects of Magic theory, from metagaming, tempo, card advantage, and (rogue) deckbuilding.
Some of these articles will just be giving names and titles to concepts you already may understand simply because they are inherent parts of the game. In doing so, it will allow you to see when such concepts are occuring in game and how to apply them while playing. When reading some of these articles, you'll experience many a moment of "Oh, well, that make sense," and "Well, duh." Regardless, knowing and understanding these concepts will make you a better player.
Without further ado, the articles.
Basic Stratagy
The Way of the Sideboard
by Rob Dougherty
The Basics Of Playing The Game: Paranoia Is Good
By Peter Jahn
Intermediate Concepts
Who's the Beatdown
by Mike Flores
Clear the Land and the Fundamental Turn
by Zvi Mowshowitz
The Art of the Mulligan
by Ken Krouner
The Art Of The Mulligan: Eight Case Studies
by Ken Krouner
Advanced Concepts
Philosophy of Fire
by Mike Flores
Advanced Stratagy: Investment
by Mike Flores
Tempo
Tempo and Card Advantage
by Eric "Danger" Taylor
Tempo is Really Interesting
by Mike Flores
Metagaming
Sullivan Library: How to do your own Metagame Analysis
by Adrian Sullivan
Finding the Tinker Deck
by Mike Flores
Rogue Deckbuilding
Basic Rogue Deck Design: Natural Strategy, Anti-Strategy, and Strategy Superiority
General "How to get better by not being totally irrational"
The Danger of Cool Things
by Chad Ellis
Is this your Card?
by The Ferret
The Next Level
by Mike Flores
Play to Win
(not about magic, but generally improving)
Some of these articles are long. Read them anyways. They're all very good, and they'll all improve your game.
Edited By TeenieBopper on 1087878676
Last edited by Nightmare; 10-20-2007 at 01:15 PM.
Excellent post Teeniebopper.
I would also include the following articles:
The Schools of Magic
by Rob Hahn
Mmmmmmmmmana...Five Rules For Avoiding Mana-Screw
by Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar
Examining The Theories Of Card Advantage And Quality
by Will Rieffer
Last edited by Nightmare; 10-20-2007 at 01:17 PM.
TB, you beat me to the update on posting Flores' latest article. A good read.
Very basic summary:
To get better:
1. Draft and Play a lot
2. Play with people better than you
3. Play tight (don't make mistakes or fall for "Cool things")
4. Understand the environment (going to be key for the Big Arse Tournament)
Here's another good one. Chad once again explains to us the danger of cool things and a provides a few tips on improving your game.
Are You Kidding Yourself?
by Chad Ellis (Author of the classic and probably my personal favorite, The Danger of Cool Things)
Definitive quote:Brief Summary:Falling in love with a card is like falling in love with a person: It can blind you to faults and makes it hard to see when something better comes along.
PS. I love the double post.Kidding yourself is hard to avoid. The best way to resist this disease is to make a commitment to ruthless honesty with yourself and then look out for the following symptoms:
1. The card or deck you have an emotional attachment to seems better to you than it does to everyone else. A lot better.
2. You've tested your deck a large enough number of times to be statistically reliable but you're convinced that its "real" win/loss percentage is much better than your playtest results show. Your wins in testing are due to your deck having good matchups or to you playing it well, while your losses are due to factors other than the deck or your skill.
3. Your deck seems immune to hate -- with "seems" coming from a source other than play testing a significant number of games against good opponents.
Here's one by Oscar teaching us how to avoid 7 types of bad cards. He provides clear examples that easily apply to our format, and he explains one way to evaluate new cards.
Six Delusions You Meet in Heaven by Oscar Tan
Sorry for the influx on new material, but for some reason there has been some worthwhile material on SCG the past week.
Got another good one. This one is another attempt to truly define tempo and clearly explores several Type 1 examples of the term. It is relevant to 1.5, even though those examples include Moxes and other Type 1 nonsense. Steve makes an interesting point that Aggro-Control has killed Pure Control (like Landstill does to UW Scepter) and that Tempo has replaced Card Advantage in Type 1. Do you think that this has happened to 1.5 also?
Here's the defining quote from the article:
Tempo IS InterestingTempo is important because there is a direct relationship between winning and maintaining your tempo advantage (or successfully negating it). However, Tempo is interesting because it manifests itself in so many different ways. It isn't limited to decks with creatures that attack or virtual card advantage. If you are utilizing Tempo effectively, you are keeping your opponent off balance and dictating the terms of the game.
by
Steve Menendian
For an interesting tangent, look at this point he makes.
You're welcome, Diablos. Nick, I couldn't resist!The guiding principle behind aggro-control is board advantage at the expense of card advantage.
One other note... I think that you should likely ignore what he says about Aggro. Or I should say that the points Steve makes about aggro in Type 1 do not and cannot apply to 1.5. Aggro in many (odd) shapes and forms is alive and kicking in 1.5.
Threads Merged. Some of these may be duplicate.
~ Nightmare
A while back, Ric_Flair at www.themanadrain.com posted links to some articles that are "required reading" for players of MTG. I'm posting those articles here for 2 reasons:
1 ) They apply to Legacy, and
2 ) This will serve as a backup in the event TMD ever removes the thread.
Here is what Ric_Flair said:
Here are the links:So for a while there has been discussion of having a thread with the classic articles in Magic on it. A while ago, I tried to gather the best of the best together. I have the following articles on my list of classics. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I think that no list would be complete without these articles.
The Way of the Sideboard
by Rob Dougherty
http://www.wizards.com/sideboard/art...?x=sb20001220b
The Danger of Cool Things
by Chad Ellis
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/new...p?Article=3689
Who's the Beatdown?
by Mike Flores
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/new...p?Article=3692
Finding the Tinker Deck
by Mike Flores
http://www.wizards.com/sideboard/art...?x=sb20010607a
Clear the Land and the Fundamental Turn
by Zvi Mowshowitz
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/new...p?Article=3688
The Rule
by Zvi Mowshowitz
http://www.wizards.com/sideboard/art...?x=sb20001016a
Tempo and Card Advantage
by Eric Taylor
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/new...p?Article=3690
Others added the following:
Advanced Strategy: Investment
Mike Flores
http://www.classicdojo.org/b981/bou.980320mfl1.txt
The Metagame Clock
Leon Workman
http://web.archive.org/web....o.shtml
Basic Rogue Deck Design: Natural Strategy, Anti-Strategy, and Strategy Superiority
By Mike Flores
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/new...rticle=6984%22
Mind over Magic
By Robert Hahn
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/feature/207
The philosophy of fire
Mike Flores
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/new...p?Article=7157
Tempo is Really Interesting
by Mike Flores
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/new...p?Article=7249
The Orthodoxy of 60 Cards
Robert A.C. Nanka-Bruce
http://web.archive.org/web....a.shtml
Deck Clinic
Zvi Mowshowitz
http://web.archive.org/web....zmo.txt
Realizing how bad you are
Mike Flores
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/new...p?Article=6596
The Mathematics of Magic: The Gathering
Jon Prywes
http://www.kibble.net/magic/magic01.php
Type 1 Players Have All the Fun
Bryce Reynolds
(possibly the best Tournament report ever written)
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/new...p?Article=3565
The Art Of The Mulligan
Ken Krouner
Part 1: http://www.starcitygames.com/php/new...p?Article=5509
Part 2: http://www.starcitygames.com/php/new...p?Article=5622
And today I found the following article by Mike Flores:
Degree of Difficulty
Mike Flores
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/new...p?Article=8452
All of these are worth reading. If you can afford to print them out they can make an impressive tool for increasing your skill.
Dave.
Edited By DavidHernandez on 1100880043
Last edited by Nightmare; 10-20-2007 at 01:22 PM.
I will Find a way...or make one.
Check out my wife! http://DanceKitten.com
Card Carrying Member: Team Mind Trick
Best.Fortune.Cookie.Evar: \"Among the lucky, you are the chosen one.\"
Noloam said, "i lost an unloseable game against miracles, where i accidentally tapped my tomb for lethal.."
Here is another Flores' for the masses:
Linkity LInk
Defining quote:
It is empowering to realize that there is only one right play on every priority of every stack... more than just winning a game, gunning for the tightest possible plays is a goal that every Magic player can strive for.
Here's another link to help you (and me :( ) not suck anymore.
Chad Ellis... Revisting The Scarce Resource
Defining quote:
Chad then applies the theory to many worthy Extended examples that can easily ported over to Legacy. The article is worth your time.The fundamental concept of scarce resource theory is that when you rely on multiple distinct inputs to do something, your capacity is constrained only by the scarce resource. Thus, the scarce resource is the one you must protect or increase, while the plentiful resource is less important.
Since I like to use simple analogies, let's assume you're making lemonade, and need water, lemons and sugar to do it. You want to make as much as possible. You have virtually unlimited water, enough lemons to make two gallons and enough sugar to make six gallons. What do you go buy at the store first? Lemons, obviously. Adding more water or sugar to your supply won't increase the amount of lemonade you can make - the whole system is constrained by the scarce resource.
The Way Out
Basically it tells you to think outside the box when playing. You have no idea how many retarded things I saw FakeSpam do with Dragon to win on turn 3 or how many times I went beatdown with Landstill starting on turn 2.
A Lesson in Symmety
Another recent article by Mike Flores, good read.
Four Leaf Clover
By Mike Flores. He talks about increasing your "luck" when building decks. Pretty good read.
Quote Scrumdogg @ Amrod's:
"Didn't you know that Mike Glow invented this format?? We are all just renting it."
The EPIC Syndicate - Grindermen
Team Disquailified Poster Duey Cheatem & Howe.
I haven't found the link yet on this page so here is Fearlessness by Jeremy Muir. Definately a good read and a great addition to all those basic strategy articles.
You see, sometimes people don't play cards for some reason or another. Examples of this would be if you had a Skizzik in hand and mana to cast it with kicker on the board - but you hold back on casting it, because they may have a Counterspell. Maybe they have a Wrath of God and are just waiting for one more creature to use it on?
So you hold your Skizzik (or whatever).
Your opponent is winning the game more than he was before now.
"Anybody want some . . . toast?" —Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
Last edited by Nightmare; 05-17-2006 at 09:39 AM.
Originally Posted by Wastedlife
Four Magical Myths
Go read this right now. In particular, #4.
Edited By frogboy on 1133327315
When in doubt, mumble.
When in trouble, delegate.
"Pondering Legacy," by LSV
http://strategy.channelfireball.com/...dering-legacy/
There's a whole lot of competitive legacy decks out there. I think we would all benefit (especially people new to legacy) if we could download a package with all of them, to simply copy and paste directly into Magic Workstation. Silverdragon initially put together 50+ competitive legacy decklists for people to download and have instant access to, and people have been steadily adding to it...
Here's the link to the most current and up to date compilation....
http://www.mediafire.com/
I want anyone that wants to add a deck or update a particular decklist, to be able to contribute to or make changes to the compilation, and update the rar package. So I'm posting the username and password to the mediafire account.
Username: legacydecks@gmail.com
Password: mtgthesource
Simply go to mediafire.com, and login with the above information, and you can modify, then reupload the "Legacy Decks.rar" file with the additions and changes you made to the decklists.
The idea is to have the community be in charge of policing and updating decklists itself. It would help if you add a date after the name of any deck you modify or add to the zip file.
Last edited by Jon Stewart; 12-24-2011 at 01:25 PM.
Sadly Starcitygames only does MTGO and Apprentice deckformats so it takes some effort to convert those lists into .mwdeck
Luckily I already did some work with http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l...of_Legacy.html
If anyone wants to download in .mwdeck format, here's a .rar folder:
http://rapidshare.com/files/38779979...decks.rar.html
"Anybody want some . . . toast?" —Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
Thank you so much. That's a fantastic compilation. :)
I think your compilation is already a great starting point for the community pulling something like this off.
The people who play the decks regularly and have top 8ed (or atleast regularly compete with their lists) at tournaments should feel encouraged to posts their decklists below to be added to or included in place of suboptimal lists already included in the compilation. I will be happy to add them myself. I would submit my Mono-Blue Control, Death and Taxes and Pox lists, but I think that would be unfair as I never top 8ed with my list. I would rather someone who has submit their Pox, Mono-Blue Control, Death and Taxes and Enchantress lists instead.
Last edited by Jon Stewart; 05-08-2011 at 07:42 PM.
I'm surprised that Silverdragon's post got so little attention/responses.
It's a FANTASTIC resource.
Seriously a 15 second download later and you have 50 of legacy's best and most competitive decks (with only a few legacy staple decks that were unfortunately left out or were poorly built), at your fingertips.
You can test against them, share them with friends that are curious about legacy or are just starting out, try the decks out yourselves to decide what deck to build next, the possiblities are endless.
Last edited by Jon Stewart; 05-08-2011 at 07:43 PM.
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