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.
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