So really honestly I shouldn't have been there . . .

Last night I went to the FNM soley because I was burnt out after resolving a number of highly technical things none of which were my final. FNM is sort of like this for me:

I like the people who are there.

I get to play – which is good.

I hit at least one point per FNM where a combination of my stupidity and someone else’s attitude makes me a cranky jerk.

I can now identify exactly when this is going to happen, it’s going to involve an instant, my unfamiliarity with the card effect and some well meaning person is going to tell me it’s because I don’t understand the stack. And then I’m going to get pissed because it’s never the stack that I don’t understand – it’s the interaction timing that happens off the stack that then effects ( and effectively reorders) the stack.

And the difference between countering a spell and responding to a spell. They are different: one implies that the “entering” effects of a card ability never happen and the other implies that the cast card resolves and gets to trigger it’s enter effect even though it looks like it did the same thing that counterspell did.

Let me be clear – I spent a month writing out the interactive logic for the stack in java. I can say with more surety than anything else in magic I understand the stack because it’s pretty much programming. But where I lose the storyline is when and where instants resolve while they are being cast.

In my “learning phase” what’s happening is I hesitate to cast instants unless I know how they’ll resolve or where they are on the stack. I don't trust the stack or the people using it to resolve the timing and I strongly disagree with some of the workaround Wizards has come up with vis-a-vis timing of events off the stack affecting things in the stack when priority shifts.

In the computer game I’m still very conservative with them ( Once again I wish there were an actual MTG coach who could create practice drills until I get it right). The problem with drilling on the computer rather than with a person is that the computer doesn’t do or say things in a way that creates the confusion that a live table player does. And I don’t think twice about stopping anyone on the computer to read the card text. And the computer won't let you do things out of order.

Well – someone cast snapcaster mage – I doomBladed it during the casting. The mistake I was making was the idea that it was something that as an instant happened during the phase ( casting ) it was in and that a “card/creature” was a card creature while being cast.

So I was confused as to why he was pulling out 6 instants out of his graveyard and adding them to the stack.

Now in retrospect what was really happening was that this was probably his primary Johnny/Spike win condition and I ruined his griefer level enjoyment of it. But what was happening on my end what I thought I destroyed that thing by using an instant during casting because instants are instant.

And then before I could figure out the basic thing he was piling up a whole bunch of other things so fast I couldn’t understand and talking about the stack and interactions of the instants with each other.

It was basically two control decks – we were both sitting there with about 16 lands each. We’d been playing for a half hour. And when I get frustrated and just say “yeah whatever you say, do what you’re going to and let me know how much damage I take.” Let me slump back in the chair instead of insisting on explaining it to me some more, because then I’m going to not understand worse, feel like I’m being fast talked and ask for a judge. Difficulty level? The guy involved was the judge. Worse he was a judge who had told me the Islandwalk thing before. Great. Now I’m cranky and trapped and I still don’t understand.

Due to the patience of the Very Good Player, next to us he took on the explaining bit. I put on the “good sport” face and went on. I figured out part of what happened but I’ll give the end of the match story in the takeaway part at the end.

Here’s what I learned and put together in a diagrammatic way that I can refer to when instants hit me right in the learning disability again. I promise that State Based Actions are still going to screw me up for a while.

Click the graphic to embiggen.

Now to brass tacks,

I played Coulton's Creepy Dolls

Preparation - I really shouldn't have gone - I should have been home forcing my brain to construct a design document due immediately and my Database Final Project. But I had lost the morning to a stressful financial issue and am not at the point where I could constructively improve on anything until the other team members updated their things. So I went at the last minute more for the chance to play magic than the usual FNM goals - I took the pressure off myself by just playing a deck that I knew was slow figuring I'd get shut out but I'd get to cast creepy dolls which would make me happy.

Comfort Level pretty good. Since I wasn't looking at it as a chance to pilot a strategy but to see how well I could do with a deck I was familiar with I wouldn't be upset when I lost and could also pay more attention to my opponents cards and strategies which usually gets lost when I'm trying to understand my own synergies better.

Results As expected 3 rounds played at 0-2, I got a bye on the 4th round which allowed me the time to understand what I finally got figured out enough to put in the chart. It should be a flowchart for how things resolve and get erased in order to create "countered" spells, but this method seems to work consistently for most of the instant scenarios we could think of.

Take-Aways

The rules discussion that was in the opening of the update. The reality that the stack, instants and tells are sort of "protected" by the forced choice of computer interaction but it doesn't always carry over to clarity in the live game because in the live game "countered" and "destroyed the split second after casting" look and feel the same way and are discussed as though they are simulataneous which they are not. Seriously if you're going to have a rules system this complex and no official play guide you're just leaving judges to explain thing sloppily. Technical play is important and every "squishy" explanation ( God help me someone tried to tell me to think of it as a story! No. I will not - the stories suck, you killed all the stories when you added planeswalkers in as your new best friends. )

Think of it more like the actual process of casting, which it is - there is a zone between leaving your hand and the battlefield, instants are interacting in that zone when the card is a spell. They aren't a type of card until they resolve, triggered effects only get triggered on the battlefield, even if they are attacked simultaneosly and destroyed because triggered effects are not part of the stack they resolve on their own, this explaing Illusions, Ice Cage and Snapcaster getting to bring out the dead.

Now the dude who had been in this particular duel with me managed to enchant and control my one creepy doll pulled out after this nonsense ( mostly of mine ) and I tried to lighten things up by apologizing and then saying "Ok I cast a creepy doll, it's all better now" mostly because it was true. But unknowingly I started ruining his next griefer strategy. he got out two other creature cards with some kind of synergy that lowered me down to 8 points. he was getting ready to attack with three and made some kind of comment about the dolls. I played along and said something about stealing my toys - thinking we were joking. He pulls out another creature after hitting me with a direct damage for 3 bringning me to 5. I'm topdecking nothing but land. I look at his cards and helpfully point out that he can kill me or at least bring me down to 1. He suddenly switches and just pings me for one with the controlled creepy dolls. I can't figure out why. He says something about attacking me with my own dolls. I tell him it's OK they make me happy whoever has them. Now I do have a win condition in 1 if I topdeck it and I'm halfway through my deck with 2/3 of my land out more than half my deck played, three manaliths and no creatures. I would have been able to cast & flashback Army of the Damned in the same turn. He keeps pinging for 1, I keep topdecking land. I forget the thing about going after me with my own stuff because he could have done that and still won so I have no idea what he's looking for - does he just want to see what's next? I don't get it.

He pings me for the last 3 points. Then apparently because I wasn't annoyed about it ( other than drawing out a fairly pointless game for himself) he made sure to tell me he just wanted to kill me with my own Creepy Dolls. Well, OK if you need to dude. But you could have done that with your own guys and the dolls in 2 instead of dragging it out for 5 so that sort of moves it from "I probably deserved it for fighting you on the snapcaster thing" to "I think you're a bit of an arrogant dick and I'm not as sorry about the snapcaster things as I was a minute ago."

But journaling these things is useful because the pattern of where this happens is really, really clear. I need to work on working with instants. I just wish there were a higher level player who I could work with because the computer is going to help me understand the cards but probably not help me sort things out in competitve play with actual people. I need to see and work with the actual movements so I can make them "background" while being able to understand the board state.

Oh well - if wishes were fishes. Ultimately that was the only "bad" thing - I got to playtest my Melira deck with the infect mono-black guy. I found out that the control deck guy keeps playing that deck. The middle game was pretty straight forward. And while I was cranky and overwhelmed I wasn't angry or rude. So that's an improvement.

Pseudo Newb and the Important thing about the "Legendary Rule"

I'm reading an e-book that's almost exactly what I was looking for by a group called "the Casual Planeswalker"

It's a basic deckbuilding and strategy guide - with actually usefull things including this lovely chart about mana based on deck archetype - which it breaks down in a better and more complete way than Chapins book

Land

aggro = 18-22

control = 24-28

combo = 14-19

And then it also does this radical thing and tells you why, and then it tells you when you might not want to follow that guideline and what the other cards are supposed to be doing.

I like this book but . . . .

Sigh. It was written in 2009. So they have a section on the legendary rule for Planeswalkers which is no longer true. The legendary rule gets tinkered with alot it seems.

In the Ultimate Guide to Strategic Deckbuilding it seems planeswalkers did not yet have the supertype/subtype rule that means when Jace the Invincible is out on the board and your opponent puts down Jace the Less Invincible both Jaces go into the graveyard because like all good time travellers you can't exist in two places at once without things going BOo0m.

But if you have Glissa the I'm on YOUR side legendary creature and Glissa the I Can't Believe You Fell For That legendary creature comes out on the opponents side they do actually need the full name to match so both Glissa's get to stay.

This is apparently called the Planeswalker Uniqueness Rule

• 306.3. Planeswalker subtypes are always a single word and are listed after a long dash: "Planeswalker — Jace." Each word after the dash is a separate subtype. Planeswalker subtypes are also called planeswalker types. Planeswalkers may have multiple subtypes. See rule 205.3j for the complete list of planeswalker types.
• 306.4. If two or more planeswalkers that share a planeswalker type are on the battlefield, all are put into their owners' graveyards as a state-based action. This is called the "planeswalker uniqueness rule." See rule 704.

Yep, that's a real thing. The there's what it means to be legendary which invokes "the Legend Rule":

• 205.4c Any permanent with the supertype “legendary” is subject to the state-based effect for legendary permanents, also called the "Legend rule" (see rule 420.5e).
• 420.5e If two or more legendary permanents with the same name are in play, all are put into their owners’ graveyards. This is called the “legend rule.” If only one of those permanents is legendary, this rule doesn’t apply

So this is the kind of thing when I finally find some kind of useful text there is a possibility of being led astray. I understand why it discourages this kind of writing but the overall fact of it existing makes it worth it for me to double check specific texts.

I'd also like to say how nice it was that they decided not to use cards when giving the examples - they use scroll-like blocks with just the card text on them which actually makes it easier to understand the point being made instead of all the visual noise of the card itself. The strategies and tactics are clearer without the art as a learning tool. I love the art and all but not when I'm studying.

I just wish they had updated - the book is better than the free sample they provided. If they decide to update for 5.00 like Chapin just has I would pay it. I also like the way they continue to show what you would do differently if you were going to slant competitve.

Their website hasn't been updated since September but someone had a link in a response thread on something at Star City Games. http://casualplaneswalker.com/category/blog/ I hope that they're just having an overwhelming semester like I have and that they'll update soon, but they are exactly that kind of missing midstep I was looking for - not perfect, but very helpful. Perhaps after completing their book I'll appreciate aspects of Chapin's better.

Pseudo Newb and the Unexpected Draft

Ok so it’s finals. It’s finals for almost everyone who plays at my Local Gaming Store(LGS) because the ones who aren’t students are teachers.

Weds night draft is usually much bigger than Monday night. My first draft they convinced me to draft because I helped them make a third pod. But I knew most of them wouldn’t be there due to finals, just like I was planning on not being there due to finals. However at 7 ( the draft starts at 6:30) I got a call from The Girl who’s working gift wrap at the store asking if I could come help them make a draft – I told her I couldn’t get there for 20 minutes – it would be 7:30. They said they’d wait.

So since my teammates hadn’t updated our project files, I went.

Preparation – Not a damned thing – I’d been working with pseudocode and object design all day. I had been taking breaks reading magic articles and I’m flirting with the idea of a red burn deck but that’s about it.

Comfort Level – it was fine walking into the store and I wasn’t nervous during the draft itself ( possibly because there was an Olivia Voldaran sitting in my first pick pack ) but the people there weren’t the ones I was expecting. There was someone who had just had a 10 inch portrait of Lilliana Vess in a Mucha like profile freshly tattoed on his leg, and a nice quiet gentleman from Jersey who had travelled about an hour to get there because he’d heard it was a larger crowd. Which it usually – I told him about finals and he asked if there were a lot of colleges around us. I laughed, we specialize in colleges, medical facilities and lawyers around here.

I told him if he was looking for larger groups be should probably come during and after the break.

Results -

Round 1 1 -2

Round 2 2- 0

Round 3 0 – 2

So out of seven games played I won 3.

Pulling Olivia I knew I was going to be drafting red/black, It ended up I was pretty much getting black all to myself

These are the cards I had at the end of the draft

• 1 Typhoid Rats
• 1 Ashmouth Hound
• 1 Bloodcrazed Neonate
• 2 Walking Corpse
• 1 Rakish Heir
• 1 Riot Devils
• 1 Screeching Bat
• 1 Brain Weevil
• 1 Olivia Voldaren
• 2 Skirsdag Cultist
• 1 Tormented Pariah
• 1 Pitchburn Devils
• 1 Stromkirk Patrol
• 1 Dead Weight
• 1 Dream Twist
• 1 Geistflame
• 2 Infernal Plunge
• 1 Purify the Grave
• 1 Altar's Reap
• 1 Curse of the Pierced Heart
• 1 Graveyard Shovel
• 1 Intangible Virtue
• 2 Mask of Avacyn
• 1 Nightbird's Clutches
• 1 Skeletal Grimace
• 1 Spare from Evil
• 1 Cackling Counterpart
• 2 Night Terrors
• 1 Rolling Temblor
• 1 Runic Repetition
• 1 Traitorous Blood
• 1 Trepanation Blade
• 1 Grimoire of the Dead
• 2 Maw of the Mire
• 1 Into the Maw of Hell
• 1 Midnight Haunting
• 1 Cellar Door

What I played in the deck

• 1 Typhoid Rats
• 1 Ashmouth Hound
• 1 Bloodcrazed Neonate
• 2 Walking Corpse
• 1 Rakish Heir
• 1 Riot Devils
• 1 Screeching Bat
• 1 Brain Weevil
• 1 Olivia Voldaren
• 1 Skirsdag Cultist
• 1 Tormented Pariah
• 1 Pitchburn Devils

13 creatures

• 1 Dead Weight
• 1 Geistflame
• 2 Infernal Plunge
• 1 Curse of the Pierced Heart
• 1 Nightbird's Clutches
• 1 Skeletal Grimace
• 1 Night Terrors
• 1 Rolling Temblor
• 1 Traitorous Blood
• 1 Into the Maw of Hell

11 spells

• 8 swamp
• 8 mountains

16 lands

I was a bit worried that I didn’t have a lot of one drops but I had Typhoid rats in my hand. My strategy was to get Olivia in play as soon as possible , with a Typhoid rat in play it’s possible to use infernal plunge to get her out on turn 2 which happened. But JerseyGuy was playing white and had fiend hunter, which Olivia is easily sidelined by. He won that round, but I was happy to have gotten her out so early, it means I built that strategy correctly. The second round she came out on turn 4 and I won that round. The third round I almost had him but he had his control cards in better positioning and I never figured out how to outmaneuver him using the abilities of the cards I had in play. I was one land short the entire time.

Round 2 was the store owner playing a 3 color combo white, green and some black I think. He was mana light at the opening and Olivia coming out on turn 5 pretty much ended the game even though it took a few more draws, on the second one he managed to survive for a while but I had done early damage with vampires and the Skirsdag cultist so Olivia had clearance and plenty of mana to power up and take over. He was creature starved and basically had his creatures for about a turn before I could take them over. He did have things that gave them life. One useful thing I did was stick skeletal grimace on Olivia keeping her pretty safe from direct damage until she bulked up. The other useful thing I did was throw it on Typhoid rats making it a kind of consistent Creepy Doll for 3 mana.

The third round I made a mulligan that I shouldn’t have an paid for it, the second round was longer and I had a better hand than the first but it was newly tattooed guy and he knew the cards way better than I did. I don’t even remember how he beat me specifically but I do remember I ended up without enough answers and was top decking when he did beat me. If I used all my cards without improving my gameboard state enough to win that means I probably made some inefficient trades when he became the aggressor, or I took damage I should have prevented in the early game.

End result, I had fun playing last night. I enjoy the constraints of limited forcing you to use cards, I’m getting better at Infernal Plunge and I’m working on my practical application of card advantage in aggro decks. I didn’t get shut out, while off-put by some of the vibe and suddeness of the night ( and there is a possibility being kept waiting for 10 minutes into a round while tattoo guy finished his trade with someone else messed me up a bit concentration or preparedness wise) I didn't lose my temper, get overwhelmed or feel like I was less competent at the end of the night than at the beginning. As for the last competitor, I think it was just his nature, not a “jedi mind trick”. I have no idea why someone would waste a Jedi Mind Trick on me at this stage of the game anyway. I’m just happy when I can keep track of all the card effecs.

Curse of the pierced heart is lovely – next time I’ll try to get it out early.

I think I’m unlikely to forget the creature sacrifice on Infernal plunge again but I need to keep practicing with it or I might.

Pseudo Newb and the things the Computer Lied About

I like playing this game, I can tell because I'm aware of when I'm not enjoying playing a deck, and sometimes I'm enjoying playing when I'm getting my butt kicked.

Most of my frustration comes from the lack of instructional design involved in all of the various methods used to teach the game - or the occasional bugs in the stuff that I assume had at least someone thinking of it.

So here's the thing - playing on Duels of the Planeswalkers I notice that cost affecting enchantments can be cast but don't work consistently, which is why when I was playing a challenge meant to pretty much teach me that deathtouch attackers can split their damage and the deathouch bearing card should have been dead afterwards but was happily hanging around in the battlezone after all it's blockers went away I made an assumption ( but knew enough to check it out ) that deathtouch triggered as soon as it caused damage ( getting back to my general slower learning curve on state-based actions vs various other timing cycles).

Playing a live person in casual on Monday with a Typhoid Rat with Deathtouch on the play against a Glissa the traitor, his understanding was different. I deferred to his ( no judge) and threw a set of cobbled wings on the rat, blocked with something else and had a typhoid rat with wings which made me happy. I did win those rounds anyway.

I generally find that if I have a big misunderstanding of a rule or an timing issue a little research shows me that it's a rule that changed.

Thus I have discovered that SOMEONE at Wizards does know how to diagram rules.

Ok this is the first update to all of the rules overhauled in 2010 - mostly for the better - especially taking combat damage off the stack . When you scroll down to deathtouch you will see that there is diagramming - it's still not the best instructional design but it's nice to see someone was familiar with the concept

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/42a

But even after that there are slight changes to the rules with the 2011 release

http://wizards.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2083/~/deathtouch

Ok so here's an example of how one teaches specific rules in text - it's not really fancy but it's hella easy to read

http://www.chesslab.com/rules/chessrules.html

Interestingly I found this article where the bridge blogger sounds a whole lot like various magic players I've heard whining on the internet

http://www.bridgebum.com/chess.php

I've read the whole Chapin Book just in time for the update to be released . . . . It helps to some extent but it's not really what the doctor ordered, it's just better than most of the dreck that's out there. I've also been reading up about cheats and cheating since there is a controversy happening at the moment. Pro magic is beginning to look a lot like pro-sports to me, the people who dominate the airwaves and internet are people who are fond of the wish fullfillment aspect of cheering on heros and villians and imagining they are one-step-away from or could-have-been-as-good as the people playing for money.

Perhaps the problem is really that the game is so dominated by young males that they can't actually look past what brought them in, or what matters to them. To put it in "Magic" terms, they believe they understand the stage 1 early game ( who taught them, what made them play) and the focused on the stage 3 games (I could be a pro! I could be heard on the internet! I could make money playing magic (no you can't, not real money, but you might be able to use it to land a job in a field that pays poorly) and they focus like sports fans on where they would like to be, identifying with persons or teams and taking up their causes, but not understanding a long game with a solid middle Stage 2 is needed for their beloved Stage 3 to have life, growth and stability.

There are no resources for a stage 2 player and not a good centralized one for a stage 1 player. The foldouts are nice good for turn order - but awful for reference at play, the computer game has bugs in it that lead to confusion and the "teaching puzzles" end abruptly, most likely to accomodate the software without adding extra feature creep, but it can lead to confusion if you're using it as a training tool to play the paper game.

Counter's vs effect pluses are a problem for people like me who are having trouble keeping track of the game state. You are allowed to put a die on the card to indicate counters but not apparently the cumulative effects of enchatments or activated effects. - I'm going to have to find out if I'm allowed to have scratch paper for that because otherwise I have yet another barrier to play with my learning disability. I know from experience that with practice I won't need it but that practice might take another year- If I'm struggling to hard to remember my board state it will take away from figuring out the board state of my opponents.

But I'm getting closer to a zen place when the rules are very different than I was expecting and that will certainly help me moving forward.

Pseudo Newb and Things the Computer Taught Me _Updated Note

OK

Deathtouch resolves after blocking damage but before attacker damage so things blocking other things don't get damaged assigned if deathtouch is active.

This is important because creepy dolls ( my favorite card ) has the deathtouch coinflip AFTER the item is blocked but BEFORE combat damage is assigned - the damage is not on the stack, you can't save your critter if the coinflip goes against you with an interrupt.

This is important with other creatures with Deathtouch because I believe that I have put creatures with deathtouch into my graveyard even though the damage doesn't get to them when they are blocking. I have to look into it but my assumption is that if this works like "blocking damage is assigned first then an attacking creature with deathtouch that gets blocked does go to the graveyard - I will try to get into a Duels of the Planeswalker duel to test this out.

Update note *My impulse to test this was correct - Deathtouch doesn't exactly work this way - the saga of figuring it out is in the more recent entry.

Mana Activated Power ups - yes they can be activated multiply as long as you have mana, you can't activate them during actual combat but you can "stop time" to respond by activating them. so you can power up your regerate right before or right( immediately) after combat damage is assigned.

Also don't cast a creature summing when Olivia Voldaran still has enough mana to turn it into a vampier.

Remember that "target non-land permanent" can target control enchanments exlusively

There'a a one on one challenge where that's the key and it never even occured to me.

And oblivion ring isn't a real exile, it's an enchantment, which means it's susceptible to control decks - If possible dissipate is a more permanent choice.

Assign blockers and the attackers are blocked even if you sacrifice all the blockers to inflate one blocker that operates on sacrifices.

Now this, this is useful - suddenly Selfless Cathar makes a lot more sense - he blocks x, x is still tapped for attack and blocked but sacrifice Selfless Cathar and he can pump up another blocker that allows a more versitile creature to survive, take out another bigger or more dangerous creature than the one he's blocking etc.

It also explains a lot of the bewildering sacrifice moves I've seen. Now the creature blocked by the sacrificed creature is just blocked - no damage is assigned.

Used this knowledge to sacrifice things on their way to the graveyard at FNM last night

When you take control of a creature with control cards it has summoning sickness unless the card says otherwise.

Pseudo Newb and the Depths of Instructional Play

After the double whammy of two shut outs on wedsnight draft and an FNM where I played a slightly modified blue illusions event deck that I had been playtesting with all afternoon for a friends homebrew, I was pretty annoyed with myself for being a poor sport and on the FNM I ended up in a weird ethical situation with a 10-12 year old who opened the round by conceding to me because he was going to have to go home, but his parents let him stay and his deck was finally rolling for him (It was a green stompy deck not dissimilar to the one frequently played by Deputy Dog.) so we ended up going three games which went 2-1 him. I reported them into the judge as 2-1 him.

But the girl lost to the 10 year old. The old girl. Thus proving that when the old person and the young person are both overtired and up past their bedtimes, the young person can read the cards better.

The thing I realized really quickly at that FNM was that an event deck was only going to be competitive about a month and a half into the format. I hadn’t been able to really soup up my deck, I had been looking to play a more competitive illusions deck but didn’t have the two most important flavors dujuor Snapcaster Mage and Seachrome Coasts.

I also didn’t have any confidence at all after those two events, I felt way too old, too tired and too cranky ( and budget constrained) to be competitive in that environment. Playing with my friends was helping me recognize cards but not really helping improve my game. Playing with strangers was helping improve my game but was getting to overwhelming to help me remember things that worked long term ( I’m already taking programming notes, play notes are really over what I can do)

I was discouraged, however the next day I was at the store to meet with my programming team to play Pandemic, and I had just gotten all of the cards in for the Coulton Creepy Dolls deck. I do love my creepy dolls. I had no idead how the deck was going to work, I knew with it’s mana base and lack of mana accelerators it was a casual deck but a fellow returning player (whose name is “Keith” just like the many other people I know named “Keith” and who henceforth on the blog will be called WOWKeith, because the Keiths are many) who just bought the Graveborn deck and wanted to play too. He started by playing his constructed and we just played for fun since I knew my deck was crazy and I already did mod it by adding an additional Dead Weight, another Tribute to Hunger, and a second Army of the Damned.

I had played it a bit on the Friday with my friend so I was getting familiar with it, but I did have the opportunity to call Army of the Damned twice creating 26 little token zombies made of gray six sided dice and lined them up and had a ton of fun.

Oh yeah, that’s right. The game is fun. I like the game. I’m mostly frustrated because I can’t trust the human people who keep giving me conflicting rules advice/ odd rulings or play enough to develop the kind of sense memory I need to play the game well. I don’t mind losing, I mind losing in a way that makes me unsure of what the rules really are.

Sigh.

Ok that said. The Steampunk Marchioness had convinced me to draft on the Monday after Thanksgiving. I had expected to be playing causal magic but when I showed up after class and a half hour later than drafts usually start I made enough people to draft. I drafted well ( I might actually not be too bad at deck construction, my decks are usually stronger than my play – as I improve I should not lose sight of that. ) and actually came in second due to a fairly insane, consistent deck where I had multiples of almost all my key strategy cards.

I played tokens, I was mostly matched up with people hovering around or slightly above my skillset and the final round I lost the event judge who was playing a mirror.

· newb note – a mirror match is when they person is playing a deck that is not just the same colors as your deck but either close to your strategy/archetype or exactly the same deck because perhaps you both got your deck from the same event box or internet list. They can be fun, they are also a much better way of seeing where you compare in playskill to an opponent.

Now this was also reassuring, because it helped me realize that I’m not a horrible player – I’m very good at my level, my play and drafts are consistent, but I knew when I saw the judge manipulating his cards ( plus he had a gavony township I never managed to see in the draft or it would have been in my green/white token based deck not his) that he would probably win because he had a much better sense of how the card abilities interacted with each other than I did. So when we were surprised at how very, very mirrored the decks were, his gavony township and champions of the parrish gave him a few levels of advantage over me since I was using spirit tokens and a very, very effective cellar door. Cellar door also has the advantage of surprising the hell out of opponents for doing anything useful – zombie 2/2 tokens from the creatures buried at the bottom of your deck anyway? Yes please. They were my win condition at least once.

But it was at draft that I was starting to cave about the computer based Duels of the Planeswalkers game. I was never going to get card interactions if I didn’t practice, just like you have to practice dribbling and layups and figure traces in ice scating, or tounge twisters and body exercises for acting. I played the trial version and it sucked. I made the mistake of putting it on “never played” instead of “ a little” but went back to it the next day and it allowed me to start the trial over. That Friday was the Marchioness’s birthday, and we went out for really cool dinner, Deputy Dog doctored some booster packs to hide WurmCoil Engines or Batterskulls ( one of those) in them and I made her some Snapcaster Mage proxies to play with while she was testing decks. It doesn’t really make much sense for us to spend 100.00 on a playset of snapcasters. We’re not going to finish in the money and “make it back” and I at least am not sure of timing or tempo enough to make it worth it. I figured that a good quality proxy would be enough for her inner Johnny for now.

I wrapped it in really beautiful paper and spend some time making it appropriate to our nature, printing it on cardstock.

We went to the FNM to obtain some cards, saw our buddies from the draft and previous FNMs showed off the proxies and tried to convince one of the Keith’s wives to play with us when she was in town. Girl Power. We also tried to convince the waitress at the very good restaurant. Haven’t heard from either of them but we tried.

Then the Marchioness, who has a crush on Patrick Chapin’s brain, wanted to try her variation of an Olivia Voldaran Grixis Deck. We were tired, her deck was neat but I ran headlong into a problem where a judge had told me one thing, a player had told me another and the Marchioness was playing things that looked incorrect but she had heard Chapin describing things in such a way that she had to be right. Long story short – it took us a while to find clear instructions but she was right, however both my long term strategy, reads of other people’s use of cards and interpretation of stack rules was geared towards the (incorrect) way the judge had told me things worked. Thus I was seriously grumpy at the Marchioness ( also possibly because it was 2am) but not because of her but because it made me realize that the many, many ways to learn the game, all of which scream “ learn from your community” are kind of BS because your community is not necessarily consistent. Nor are your trusted authorities always right. Even in a best case light, they might be less than effective at explaining things and therefore leave you with the impression that the rule is the exact opposite of what the rule actually is.

I had indeed reached the point where for slightly above basic rules I trusted the computer more than I trusted people or forums. It was running a less high powered card through it’s paces in Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 that I was able to resolve the three different information points and feel like I actually could depend on what I knew.

So I bought the game. And now I practice for an half hour to an hour every day on it.

There is a certain relief in playing for practice online. For one thing I am not dealing with a human so when I am frustrated or want to work on one play over and over again I am not affecting anyone else. For another, if I have trouble with something I know that there has to be a solution and it’s much easier for me to figure out computer variance than human variance while learning the basics.

As part of her Natal Anniversary Celebration, the Marchioness purchased a copy of Patrick Chapin’s Magic the Next Level. We are now treating it like a Book Club.

I’ll most likely be including it here in my journal, which interestingly enough is one of the practices suggested in the book ( keeping this kind of journal). I can honestly say it doesn’t meet the need I see to help explain the intricacies of some of the basic plays that are the building blocks of complex competitive play. And Duels of the Planeswalkers which is supposed to fill part of that gap helps, but also falls short of the type of instruction that exists for say chess or bridge, but I think by cobbling sources together I should be able to design the kind of instructional/strategy guide or book I’m looking for.

I will post next about the key rules or strategies I learned through practice on the computer, and am heading in to FNM tonight but unsure of what I’m going to play.

Coaches would sure be nice.

Pseudo Newb and the Enlightment of FAQs when You Can't Sleep

Ok, so a few days ago I posted a question about Islandwalk and powering X's when the word on the text specifically says "Forests" instead of {G} which would be the Oracle programming text for Forest based manna.

While playing with another returning player he told me that it just looked for the mana symbol and didn't really mean "forests" it really meant "tree in a green circle". I didn't trust him but I accepted it at the casual kitchen table game thinking "another farking thing that they could have just actually used the symbol for instead of using an actual word that seems specific but apparently isn't" quickly followed by " why would they do that? what if he's wrong?"

See back in the day you had to actually parse the text - we used to call Magic "the Editor's Game", If the thing wanted to base stuff of forests you control it looked for forests, not green mana it would say "green mana sources" if it wanted to count that for X.

Then at the Local Gaming Store (LGS*) I was playing casually with a very different kind of returning player and he brought out something with Islandwalk while I was playing Drowned Catacombs and the question came up as to whether or not that was an Island - he called over a friend who played regularly ( and was the teacher who ran his school's competitve debate club) who looked at the board state and told us that no, it was not an Island, you needed a regular Island for Islandwalk. Well this is a guy that I'd seen around the LGS a bit and had been described as "practically a judge" and who was not returning but had been playing many of the years I wasn't. Certainly a "higher level of trust" than Deputy Dog.

It changed the next game completely - because I simply didn't use Islands, but did manage to get one blue manna out - I could have played the same strategy but I would have used more card searching to get out my Manalith when I found out the truth.

Which is this; Nearly-Judge-Debator Guy was wrong and Deputy Dog is at least correct for some of the cards. I found this out because I could not sleep and found everything I could read stressful, including the insider analysis of Worlds because it's not really written with anything other than insider fans in mind and usually served up with a nice slice of elitism, or just cluelessness that making pronouncements about general player tendencies and ranking them is inherently divisive and not understanding why they offended someone.

I am still looking for something that is literally newb friendly and written accessibly, maybe even with some actual instructional design applied to it . . . . but failing to find that I realized that there was an FAQ for Innistrad and found the page of all FAQs for Magic here:

http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/rules/faqs

And it was only by reading them one after the other that I realized how some of the rules actually worked - and that they were actually problematic rules because if they were intutive they wouldn't need to be in an FAQ now would they?

If I had looked up the rules notes on the cards themselves using my prefered method of the iPad app that holds all the tournament rules, each card was an individual case and I wouldn't necessarily assume that the rule carried over universally - after all it had a note on it right?

Well that was wrong - I found out about the Islandwalk rule because going throught the FAQ for 2012 and reading the FAQs for Innistrad helped me understand some really important things if I was going to be able to really use cards strategically. Like the card specific notes on this :

Fight is one of those things that confuse me when they're played against me - I'm never sure about how instants work and damage and healing and where the heck does it count in combat since it's a sorcery that I usually find cast on me after the main combat phase has resolved - but these magic words in the FAQ solved a whole bunch of that

701.10c The damage dealt when a creature fights isn't combat damage.

Oh I see - that's why "fight" is special - it's not combat - it's just a spell effect - with spell damage that happens to be defined by the power of two creatures.

* The damage is dealt simultaneously.

* The amount of damage each creature deals is equal to its power when the spell or ability that instructs the creatures to fight resolves.

* Five older cards will receive updated Oracle wordings to include the new term. (Several cards with similar effects won't be updated. Most of those cards involve potentially more than two creatures dealing damage or damage that is dealt sequentially rather than simultaneously.

So Wizards also knows it's not really a fantastic fit for the legacy cards either - I'm sure some of them thought it was flavorful or something - they're very enamored with themselves that way not realizing how arbitrary it looks when you're learning.

Ok - Cool. I learned something that clarified things maybe I should just read the FAQs! After all it won't be loaded with a whole bunch of other agendas it will just answer things they knew in advance would be confusing - No personalities, no matches or rankings or boosters or egos on the line - WooT!

Great what else can I learn? Well right underneath it is a dual land called Hinterland Harbor

Hinterland Harbor
Land
Hinterland Harbor enters the battlefield tapped unless you control a Forest or an Island.
: Add or to your mana pool.

• These lands check for lands you control with either of the two listed land types, not either of the two listed names. The lands they check for don't have to be basic lands. For example, if you control Stomping Ground (a nonbasic land with the land types Mountain and Forest), Hinterland Harbor will enter the battlefield untapped.

• As these lands are entering the battlefield, they check for lands that are already on the battlefield. They won't see lands that are entering the battlefield at the same time (due to Primeval Titan's ability, for example).

And that was the beginning of me wondering if that " checking for land with the two listed land types" was a common thing - for instance without looking at that FAQ just reading the cards while learning the game I would have assumed if all I had down were other Hinterland Harbors they all would come in tapped because I didn't have an Island or a Forest out.

And does that mean that Avacyn's Pilgrims or Llanowar elves count as Forests or Plains? Was it even a consistent rule for powerups? The answer wasn't really in the Innistrad FAQ it was in the Magic 2012 where another dual land used almost the exact same wording to describe the search. But the power up question was answered by Dungrove Elder

Dungrove Elder

Creature -- Treefolk
*/*
Hexproof (This creature can't be the target of spells or abilities your opponents control.)
Dungrove Elder's power and toughness are each equal to the number of Forests you control.

• Dungrove Elder's power and toughness are each equal to the number of lands you control with the land type Forest, not necessarily lands named Forest.

• Dungrove Elder's power and toughness will change as the number of Forests you control changes.

• Dungrove Elder's ability sets its power and toughness in all zones, not just the battlefield.

You see that part where it says "lands you control with the land type Forest, not necessarily lands named Forest." ?

When I was an RPGA judge we used to call a forced block of required text "boxed text". It usually was the thing that you needed to do to keep the game somewhere withing the timeframe or the tournament rules. That statement right there reads like box text, something created to be reusued in multiple situations regardless of how crazy those situations could get.

So far it looks like it might just be Lands that get this interpretation there are no "landwalk" cards in Innistrad but I knew there were in 2012 Core set so I looked to find if there was an FAQ version - this interpretation of the mechanic was going to be relevant. Found one - Harbor Serpent

Harbor Serpent

Creature -- Serpent
5/5
Islandwalk (This creature is unblockable as long as defending player controls an Island.)
Harbor Serpent can't attack unless there are five or more Islands on the battlefield.

• Harbor Serpent's abilities care about lands with the land type Island, not necessarily lands named Island.

• The second ability checks how many Islands are on the battlefield (regardless of who controls them) only as attackers are declared. Once Harbor Serpent is declared as an attacker, it will continue to attack even if the number of Islands on the battlefield falls below five.

Box text? Check. A slight variation but it's still "land types" vs "Island".

It was the only "walk" I found though.

I learned other little tidbits - Like Blood Seeker has a note "Life loss is not the same as damage. Blood Seeker's ability will not cause creatures with bloodthirst to enter the battlefield with +1/+1 counters. "

And I learned this from Elvish Archdruid "Elvish Archdruid's activated ability is a mana ability. It doesn't use the stack and players can't respond to it." Which tells me something about stacks, timin and mana abilities but I'm not fully sure I know exactly what yet.

But here, here is the little gem buried in the Ice Cage FAQ that finally allows me to understand what the FARK was going on with the mana leak/illusion question - why this isn't in the standard text explaining illusions is beyond me since it makes things so clear for Ice Cage

Ice Cage

Enchantment -- Aura
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature can't attack or block, and its activated abilities can't be activated.
When enchanted creature becomes the target of a spell or ability, destroy Ice Cage.

If the enchanted creature becomes the target of a spell or ability, Ice Cage's ability triggers and is put on the stack on top of that spell or ability. Ice Cage's ability will resolve (causing Ice Cage to be destroyed) first.

Do you see that? The ability triggers at target and basically floats at the top of the stack so that it resolves regardless of response! So simple, so clear - so much better than any of the nonsense about what makes what happen based on two sets of interacting word searches - it's a rule! It's a reusable rule with a clear explanation. Trigger effects float!

Now, this means I am okay with the mana leak/illusion logic now but I think that if you're going to use "land type" instead of "lands named the thing the card text says it's looking for" you should use the circle/symbol instead of the word. It makes it a point of contention and it's not really clear because when you look up the rule

702.13c

A creature with landwalk is unblockable as long as the defending player controls at least one land with the specified subtype (as in "islandwalk"), with the specified supertype (as in "legendary landwalk"), without the specified supertype (as in "nonbasic landwalk"), or with both the specified supertype and the specified subtype (as in "snow swampwalk"). (See rule 509, "Declare Blockers Step.")

This would seem to indicate that nonbasic lands shouldn't count but I could be reading that wrong. I'll pseudocode it later to parse it

But it does also answer the other question about blocking creatures that also have the same landwalk

702.13d Landwalk abilities don't "cancel" one another.

Example: If a player controls a snow Forest, that player can't block an attacking creature with snow forestwalk even if he or she also controls a creature with snow forestwalk

Landwalk abilities don't "cancel" one another.

Example: If a player controls a snow Forest, that player can't block an attacking creature with snow forestwalk even if he or she also controls a creature with snow forestwalk

So Landwalk basically means if you have any land that has the compatible symbol on it this.creature = unblocakable and the limiting factor is over in the oponent's zone. Primarily it's a conditional evasion ability.

This brings me back to a rant I've been going on and on about in the real life world - which is that "learning from your community" for the slang, the rules, the strategies and tactics isn't really good for newbs. Who do you trust? How do you figure out who's a more reliable teacher, how do you not be really, really embarassed when you stand by a rules point that is flagrantly wrong to find out that "everyone knows" except the person who taught you the rule. (or possibly used it against you incorrectly) during an actual tournament. It's embarassing enough playing kitchen table.

This is why OP "teams" with actually ranked coaches, like the judges would make things much, much better for people who would like to play competitively but get turned off by so many of the barriers to entry - if we had teams with "practices" and coaches who were literally there to make us all consistent players to the best of our ability these things would be caught and corrected and STANDARDIZED before the competitive experience made it all worse and overwhelming. Your FNM opponent might be a nice guy but a bad teacher and more importantly he's there to win, not teach. He might want other people to play the game and be a spokesperson for it but there's no way for him to be able to raech out and make it accessible without some kind of actual support from Wizards or the LGS itself.

If Wizards and the DCI want to expand the OP base they really should look into a coaching program - I believe I shall flog this particular horse until someone hears me : )

* Hey look at that Magic Writers on blogs; I can use the full wording of a common slang acronym in parenthesis right afterwards once and all it does is let people know what I'm talking about if they stumble in from nowhere . . . you know just like they do in science abstracts, all government documents, every MLA formatted essay you had to write in school . . . . it's not so hard to be inclusive. I do realize that none of you will ever see this but I feel better now.