As everybody knows, nobody likes a metagamer. Metagaming is considered cheap by most players. Getting called a "metagamer" is not a compliment. Note that I'm talking about casual play between friends, not tournament play. In a tournament, anything goes and nobody's going to care if you do one strategy or another; everybody is trying to win. But otherwise, creating one deck for the sole purpose of beating a specific other deck and nothing else is what's frowned upon. First of all, it's not going to be able to beat anything else. It's made solely to spoil somebody else's fun.
That, however, is its own punishment, because it does not improve your skill. Anybody can throw together a random pile of cards that's designed to beat one deck and nothing else. What improves one's abilities is forging a strategy that is able to handle the aforementioned opponent but still stand up to the rest as well. Having to make the compromises between the focus on thwarting a particular enemy strategy and maintaining general effectiveness is what creates good judgement and deckbuilding skills.
There's also no point to playing such a deck that's metagamed completely against one deck. Why? Well, if your deck is designed solely to beat mine, and it doesn't have to worry about anything else, and all the cards are picked specifically for the purpose of thwarting other cards in my deck, then of course it's going to win. But then why bother even playing? What would it prove? It doesn't prove that one player is more skilled than another, or that they have designed a better deck. It just shows that, obviously, a deck designed with cards designed to beat a certain strategy is going to beat it. If somebody was doing that with me, then I wouldn't play with them, or just use another deck. At which point their scheming will have been for nothing, or they'll switch to another deck that's metagamed for that deck, and I'll have no reason to use that one either, and so on, ad infinitum. You shouldn't be worried about losing to an unfavorable matchup. It presents a learning opportunity that will let you tune your deck better to its weaknesses.
MAINBOARDING
It doesn't matter what kind of deck you stack if you're stacking it.
Then there's the matter of maindeck design. The maindeck is designed for the general match, and the sideboard is for bringing in something specific to a certain strategy you've anticipated in the second and third game. Once again, it rewards skill, since a good player will have prepared a good sideboard and be better prepared going into the next match. If they phoned it in then their sideboard will be useless. Some players prefer not to bother with a sideboard, and just modify their maindeck before each game to suit the deck they're playing against. This makes me want to drive that player's head through the wall. Not only does that remove a critical element from the game, but it is also cheap because it basically foregoes the match of the two original decks competing against each other and replaces it with the metagamed deck designed to beat my original deck.
Generally a player who does that does it under the impression that it's helping them, but it actually isn't. Who it actually helps is the player with the bigger card collection. Instead of just limiting the help we're going to bring into the three round match to fifteen cards, we now have access to every card we own. You might swap in a few cards here or there that you've brought along to suit the person you're going to face, but now I can just as easily go through my entire collection and find just the right cards that completely annihilate your deck. And since there's no limit on what we're changing, there isn't any component of skill in it, so each player can just grab handfuls of whatever card we want and throw it in, instead of the selection being limited by the our selection of fifteen cards which require the choices to be narrowed by the our judgement.
If you're the worse player, then it only hurts you. If you're the better player, you don't need that assistance anyway because you should be skilled enough to design your deck. In either case it's unnecessary.
Also, if you know beforehand, when you're designing your maindeck, that you won't be using a sideboard but can bring in anything you want, it does not force you to make choices in how you design your deck. It doesn't really matter what you put in there because you can just change it whenever you want. You don't have to worry about having made it too set on stopping aggro decks to have game against control, because as soon as you run up against that control deck you can just swap everything out and make it into an entirely different deck. The decks themselves become meaningless. Knowing that you only have so few cards to bring in later forces you to decide beforehand what your deck is going to emphasize because it can't go after everything at once, and that it only has so much reinforcement coming in from the side later on.
Will these players ever get better by taking the easy route? No. Their skills will stagnate and they'll get left behind instead of developing themselves and their decks in adjustment to what they face off against through their play experiences, giving them a wealth of knowledge and wisdom to call upon when they need it.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Metagaming
What is metagaming? A "meta"-something is that item turned in to apply to itself. For instance, metaphilosophy is the philosophy of philosophy. Metahistory would be the history of the chronicling of history. "Metagaming," in the general context, would be using information outside the game to influence elements within the game. If you know a certain player loves to play a certain way, and you play to exploit that, then you are conducting a basic form of metagaming.
In the case of Magic, metagaming takes place within the "metagame." The metagame is the current roster of decks being played in the gaming environment. It's the field you'll be competing in. Since we all play with different groups of people, our metagames are all different. Within my group of friends, for instance, almost everybody loves to play aggressive creature based decks and so the metagame is aggro heavy. Within another group, the metagame may favor control. On the tournament scene, the metagame is a national phenomenon that is composed of the entire competitive Magic community.
Decks are defined within their metagames. There is no such thing as the "perfect" deck, that is objectively the best and that can defeat every other deck. If that was the case, everybody would play the same deck and the game would die. A deck is only good insofar as how it relates to the other decks in its field. A slower, controlling deck, for instance, could be great in an environment of other control decks but would get eaten alive in a metagame filled with super aggressive decks that have made playing such a deck unthinkable. There are objectively better decks, but the environment can make it so that such a deck still is unplayable because all of its matchups against other decks in the metagame are poor.
"Metagaming," therefore, in the Magic context would be using this information of what decks are dominant and what decks are getting destroyed to influence what you play. It is a continuum that is constantly in flux, like an ecosystem. For instance, you may notice that within your metagame a certain kind of deck is constantly played and crushes the other decks. People will eventually start playing decks that take such obstacles into account and are better suited to defeat them. Eventually, the original deck will be deposed and a new deck will reign. But then decks that the previous King of the Hill kept in check will no longer have their natural predator pushing them down, and flourish again, which will throw the metagame up in the air again.
The challenge is using this information to create a deck that is ready to handle what lays in its game environment but that isn't so focused on defeating a particular strategy that it fails against everything else, and is therefore a failure. You have to assume a general metagame where any of them could come up as opponents, and therefore your deck has to be equipped to deal with the metagame at large, rather than a specific deck. Since games are generally played in sets of three, and you have a sideboard of fifteen cards, you can include preparations for what you expect to face up against in the sideboard to swap in based on what you're facing, instead of crippling your deck to face a strategy as its main focus and have it keel over and die as soon as something that doesn't consist of that strategy shows up.
It requires knowledge of the possible cards and decks in play, and their interactions and performances relative to each other, as well as the experience and foresight to see what is coming ahead. If you read the metagame correctly, and show up at a tournament with a rogue deck tuned to play the best decks off against each other, you may very well win. That is how a great many tournaments are won; taking the rest of the opponents by surprise on their weak spots while they're focused on others. On the other hand, if you read it wrong then you'll just fall apart and have a deck thats poorly suited to the field its competing in. Metagaming is a skill, and like any other skill, there are proper ways to do it and ways that will only invite defeat.
In the case of Magic, metagaming takes place within the "metagame." The metagame is the current roster of decks being played in the gaming environment. It's the field you'll be competing in. Since we all play with different groups of people, our metagames are all different. Within my group of friends, for instance, almost everybody loves to play aggressive creature based decks and so the metagame is aggro heavy. Within another group, the metagame may favor control. On the tournament scene, the metagame is a national phenomenon that is composed of the entire competitive Magic community.
Decks are defined within their metagames. There is no such thing as the "perfect" deck, that is objectively the best and that can defeat every other deck. If that was the case, everybody would play the same deck and the game would die. A deck is only good insofar as how it relates to the other decks in its field. A slower, controlling deck, for instance, could be great in an environment of other control decks but would get eaten alive in a metagame filled with super aggressive decks that have made playing such a deck unthinkable. There are objectively better decks, but the environment can make it so that such a deck still is unplayable because all of its matchups against other decks in the metagame are poor.
"Metagaming," therefore, in the Magic context would be using this information of what decks are dominant and what decks are getting destroyed to influence what you play. It is a continuum that is constantly in flux, like an ecosystem. For instance, you may notice that within your metagame a certain kind of deck is constantly played and crushes the other decks. People will eventually start playing decks that take such obstacles into account and are better suited to defeat them. Eventually, the original deck will be deposed and a new deck will reign. But then decks that the previous King of the Hill kept in check will no longer have their natural predator pushing them down, and flourish again, which will throw the metagame up in the air again.
The challenge is using this information to create a deck that is ready to handle what lays in its game environment but that isn't so focused on defeating a particular strategy that it fails against everything else, and is therefore a failure. You have to assume a general metagame where any of them could come up as opponents, and therefore your deck has to be equipped to deal with the metagame at large, rather than a specific deck. Since games are generally played in sets of three, and you have a sideboard of fifteen cards, you can include preparations for what you expect to face up against in the sideboard to swap in based on what you're facing, instead of crippling your deck to face a strategy as its main focus and have it keel over and die as soon as something that doesn't consist of that strategy shows up.
It requires knowledge of the possible cards and decks in play, and their interactions and performances relative to each other, as well as the experience and foresight to see what is coming ahead. If you read the metagame correctly, and show up at a tournament with a rogue deck tuned to play the best decks off against each other, you may very well win. That is how a great many tournaments are won; taking the rest of the opponents by surprise on their weak spots while they're focused on others. On the other hand, if you read it wrong then you'll just fall apart and have a deck thats poorly suited to the field its competing in. Metagaming is a skill, and like any other skill, there are proper ways to do it and ways that will only invite defeat.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Introducing the Phyrexian Arena
Welcome, fellow Magic players, to "The Phyrexian Arena," a new blog dedicated to offering strategy and analysis on all things Magic. Having spent years playing, I thought that I could present the insights I have gleaned for the benefit of others, in addition to discussing Magic for my own enjoyment.
