Magic the Gathering

Five things I’ve learned in my first month of Magic

Prior to becoming a member of The Village Geek family I had never played Magic: the Gathering before. Of course I had heard of it and seen it played but it had always only been on the periphery of my nerd-dar. However, after playing through two hands with my blue-white demo deck I became absolutely smitten and now, just barely a month after learning, I can happily say that I am on my way to becoming a baby Planeswalker.

I am a very reason and order based person (despite being a Gryffindor). I like systems and no loose ends and MTG delivers on all of those fronts in an almost algebraic fashion: mana is spent, spells are cast, damage is dealt, and although some turns can become very complicated there is always resolution. It’s an ideal love story for people (like me) who love unraveling the mysteries of how and why systems work.

My affection for the game has not come without some level of frustration and a lot of getting my teeth kicked in by my coworkers and fellow Village Geeks. However, nothing teaches you faster and more completely than losing. Here are the five most important lessons I’ve learned since I started playing Magic:

1. More cards, more problems.

At my first Friday Night Magic I tried to play with a deck so large I’m embarrassed to even admit the number of cards I was playing with. Not only did I look silly trying to shuffle all of those cards, but I looked even more like an idiot by being completely unable to cast any effective spells because I couldn’t get the right combination of land/creatures/instants to make any moves. Silly me thought “Look at all these neat cards. I like them all. They are so pretty and do such cool things. I don’t want anyone to feel left out!” Because all of my cards have feelings and personalities, (duh), I was afraid of leaving anything out, but now I know that what’s worse than leaving a cool card out of my deck is having that card in your hand but being completely unable to cast it. Now I’m learning the joy of creating multiple decks that include cards that compliment each other and have specific tactics.

2. Mana curve is a real thing.

If you thought I was being too poetic about how much I’m in love with the mechanics of gameplay you’re going to be really annoyed by how much I enjoy calculating mana curve and cost distribution of cards in my deck. Once I learned that 60 cards is not just the minimum but should be pretty close to your goal maximum I had to learn how to build the deck with the appropriate associations of mana and spells. There’s also no point having a card that costs 8 mana to play if you can never draw and play enough land. This article was very helpful: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/beyond-basics/how-build-mana-curve-2017-05-18

You have to layout all of the cards you want to play and have an idea of how and when you want to be able to attack. Which brings me to number three:

3. Know thy self.

There are as many different ways to play Magic as there are players. Do you like crazy beasts or punching through everything or powering up a tribe or being able to control your opponent? I learned pretty quickly that I am definitely a control player. Give me more life, put my opponent’s creatures to sleep, stop the creatures from being able to attack, get rid of their lands, let me draw more cards. Which isn’t to say that I don’t also enjoy smashing stuff with dinosaurs or having a small army of mermaids, I just definitely know that I will always be the most excited by instants and enchantments that tangle up my opponent rather than brute-forcing depletion of their life points. Once you know what kind of player you are, you can build a deck that suits it and then distribute the cards and lands as necessary.

4. Accessorize.

Get card sleeves: in one game I had to mulligan three times because I wasn’t able to properly shuffle my cards. Sleeves make it sooooooooooo much easier and some of them are pretty and they protect your cards. Also, have some way of adding counters. Don’t make it harder on yourself than you have to. Even if it’s just random ephemera (like paperclips or beads or pencaps) have some way of keeping track of everything you’ve cast and any additional counters it has.

5. People are nice. The game is fun. Ask your questions.

I have yet to play someone who wouldn’t answer my questions. I’ve learned a lot by playing more experienced players who have curated really wonderful decks. Sure, those decks murdered mine, but I have always found that you learn infinitely more by losing than you do by winning. Magic has been around for decades. Take advantage of the millions of resources available online or from people who have more experience than you. GATHERING is half the name of the game and the community of players is definitely at least half of the experience. As much as I’m enjoying casting spells and planning decks and finding cards I want to play with, I am equally enjoying the people I’ve met and learning about their experience with Magic and what they like about the game.

Oh, and bonus #6 + #7: make sound effects when you cast spells and always let your opponent know when your turn is over.

I’m a very casual Magic player. I hardly play in any constructed tournaments and rarely spend more than $5 on a card. However, I do really enjoy some casual Modern and particularly, Commander. Commander is a fantastic format to play multiplayer as the nature of the rules keeps it fairly casual, and encourages players to gang up on whoever has the best board state. Additionally, because of the casual nature of Commander, you can also get away with playing some mediocre cards in the format. I don’t become super attached to Magic cards, so thinking of what to use for my first “Pet Card” article has been tough. However, when I thought about which cards I’ve had the most fun with, I thought of Evolutionary Leap, which I currently have in my Yasova Dragonclaw Commander deck.

Evolutionary Leap is going to cost you a whopping $1 and most regular players have a full playset of them in their trade binder they’re probably willing to trade away pretty easily. However, there are several things I love about this card. First, it’s fairly cheap to play at two converted mana cost- not broken but definitely a reasonable price to pay for what it can do. Second, I really appreciate the fact that you don’t have to tap it to activate its ability. That means late game you could have a pretty sweet board state and the next turn it’s going to be even better.

Now the downside is that you don’t want to activate Evolutionary Leap and get a weaker creature out, but if you’re sacrificing a 1/1 dork or something that has a cool effect when it dies then it’s probably worth it. Even better, if you can do this multiple times in a game of Commander, then play something like Rise of the Dark Realms then you could have a really good board state.

Like I said earlier, I currently have Evolutionary Leap in my Yasova Dragonclaw deck. It’s really fun to take control of peoples’ creatures, then sacrifice them and put a creature of my own onto the battlefield. In casual games of Commander I’ve had a lot of fun with this card. The process of revealing cards from your deck until you get something really huge like a Pelakka Wurm can be a lot of fun. If you’ve never included Evolutionary Leap in your Commander deck, I highly recommend checking it out!

Now it’s my turn in this series we are doing. Aetherspouts is hands down my pet card in the Commander format. This is the card that I always catches my opponents off guard. It’s a psuedo board wipe that can cripple an opponent in ways they may never recover from before the game ends. I know the staple blue board wipe is Cyclonic Rift but I personally prefer Aetherspouts. I like my commander games to go long but not forever. Cyclonic Rift too often “restarts” the game and I would rather wipe the board of my opponent’s creatures and keep mine as well as any other non-land permanents in play. Keeping non-land, non-creature permanents in play will keep the game moving forward.

Aetherspouts has also never made anyone as angry as I have seen a Cyclonic Rift make players angry. I don’t like playing commander to make people angry. I like to play games in ways that can make everyone have an enjoyable time and Aetherspouts accomplishes that better than Cyclonic Rift.

The perfect commander for my “life gain” deck is Oloro, Ageless Ascetic . He is a legendary creature that regardless if he is on the battlefield or the command zone i gain 2 life at the beginning of my upkeep. It is a perfectly broken card for a pretty broken deck. Although it is banned from french 1v1, it is not banned from anything else.

this life gain deck can either slowly gain life and when you least expect it, have a life total of over 200, or it can severely take life from its opponents as it gains life. what i do is put small creatures that give me at least one life each turn like Nyx-Fleece Ram (a 0/5 enchantment creature that gives me one life at the beginning of my upkeep). Or there is Soul Warden (a 1/1 creature that gives me one life whenever another creature enters the battlefield). Another good distraction creature is Rhox Faithmender (a 1/5 creature with lifelink. He makes it to where if i were to gain life, i gain twice that much life instead). I have one specific card that can protect me from losing which is Exquisite Archangel (a 5/5 flying creature that if i would lose the game, instead i exile that card and my life total becomes equal to my starting life total).

I do have an infinite combo that almost every magic player knows about which is Sanguine Bond (whenever you gain life, target opponent loses that much life) and Exquisite Blood (whenever an opponent loses life, you gain that much life). If i don’t pull Sanguine Bond i have a backup, Defiant Bloodlord (a 4/5 creature with flying, that whenever i gain life, target opponent loses that much life).

If none of that is possible and my opponent manages to get past all of that i can just cast Felidar Sovereign a 4/6 creature with vigilance and lifelink and at the beginning of my upkeep, if i have 40 or more life i win the game). Equip it with Swiftfoot Boots and i win the game!

We just finished week one of our Ixalan Sealed League at The Village Geek. Sealed League is a bit different from other sealed format tournaments. Sealed League lets each player begin with 3 packs instead of 6 and you are expected to build a 30 card deck instead of the normal 40. It can be a bit challenging to open up your 3 packs week one and try to figure out how to make a coherent deck. Let’s cover a few tips that I hope can help anyone jumping in to their first sealed league.

1. Your curve is what will matter the most. Open your cards and sort them all by their color and mana cost. Then look at what you have laid out and figure out which color combinations will give you the best overall mana curve. Curving out against your opponent is one of the best ways to get some easy wins during week one when everyone’s decks are relatively weak.
2. You will probably have to play a third color. You are opening 45 cards when you start instead of the 90 you would in a normal sealed tournament. You are less likely to open enough playable cards in just two colors so you will likely need to splash a third color. Try not to splash cards that have double or more color pips in their mana cost. Just find something in a third color a bit higher up your curve that will fill it out nicely. Also check to see if you opened any mana fixing that can help with your third color.
3. Play lots of games and pick up those losses early. You get to buy a pack and add it to your pool after every three losses. The more cards you open the stronger your pool and deck can become. Sure, losing sucks, but just get it out of the way and hope you open some great cards to strengthen your deck for future matches.
4. Just have fun. At the end of the day you are getting to play games of Magic which is one of the best games ever. Just play some games and have some fun. That’s what playing Magic is all about.

Have any other useful tips? Leave them in the comments.