It’s Time To Count Our Pennies.

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Mpz5

12 September 2011

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Ok, in my last article we talked about card economy. There we learned that options are a players friend, the more options that you have available to you, the better off you will be. In this article we will be talking about resources.

In Magic the Gathering, everything that you have access to can be used as a resource. Most resources are pretty obvious. Things like the amount of cards in your hand are a given. Things like creatures on the field are obvious. The amount of lands you have is another pretty basic resource but in this article we will go over the obvious, and the not so obvious resources at your disposal as a planeswalker.

Tying back into last article, the cards that you hold in your hand really determine if you can do anything or not. Yes, you can topdeck your way out of situations every once in a while but usually that only happens if the opponent is topdecking as well or if you should have bought a lottery ticket the night before. Because of this, I feel that card advantage has the most bearing on the game. The question you might find yourself asking is this: how, aside from building a deck with positive card economy, can I make sure that I have access to more options than my opponent. Luckily I have a pretty good answer to that which is something that most average players have yet to grasp. The general rule of thumb is this: If you do not need to play a card in your hand to win, don’t. I’ll give you a scenario to illustrate my point…

Let’s say that you are playing against a u/w control deck and have a Hero of Oxid Ridge, and a Manic Vandal on the field. Let’s also say that your opponent is holding five cards in their hand, and has no blockers and four mana because they have missed a few land drops, two of the lands are open. In theory, you should be able to beat them until they play something to stop your two creatures. Chances are good that the thing that they will use to stop you will be a Day of Judgment. Let’s say that you have an Inferno Titan in your hand and six mana on the field; yes, you could play the Inferno Titan, probably play it right into a Mana Leak and lose it, trading your 6/6 finisher for a 2 cmc instant, or a good control player would probably allow it to resolve, take the 3 damage, and then play Day of Judgment next turn. If you had simply attacked with your 2 unopposed creatures, and then ended your turn, the Day of Judgment would have only been a +1 rather than a +2 for your opponent. It would also force them to tap out all but possibly 1 of their lands and that’s only if they drew a land in the first place. The thing is, they had to play the field wipe because six damage a turn is a pretty quick clock and it had to be answered or else your tempo would get way out of control. Now that they used their wipe, you can drop your titan and not worry about it being leaked because they had only 1 mana open. They now have to find another answer to the new threat that you played or lose in a few turns. Even if they did have mana and could Mana Leak your titan, they still had to use 2 cards from their hand to deal with your threats rather than 1 which keeps their card advantage in check.

In the above scenario you can see how holding a card that you could have played might win you the game or at least put you in a good position to do so where as if you had played your option when you didn’t need to, the opponent would have gone up in card advantage, stabilized because now you have to draw another threat to win, and would have had complete control with more options. This concept is called overextending and it’s probably the biggest mistake that most players make. Just remember the simple rule of thumb and your game will improve dramatically.

I’m sure that you know that without mana, generally, you can’t do a whole lot. What many players fail to realize is that the only dependable source of mana is land mana. I don’t know how many decks I have looked at that have 18 forests in their decks and claim that it’s plenty because they have 4 Llanowar Elves and 4 Birds of Paradise in their deck and that those creatures are just as good as land. I always tell them not to trust them for guaranteed mana and that they would do well dropping a few of them for some lands. Most of the time, it takes some weeks of them losing and not understanding why they can’t cast their Rampaging Baloths reliably to realize that I was right.

Creatures are good for a good many things. They are a good shield to your life total, they can progress your game by dealing damage to your opponents, and many of them have some game breaking effects. There is nothing wrong with mana producing creatures, they give you some ramp and mana fixing; however, you cannot depend on them to sit there because creatures are the easiest things in the game to destroy. Sure, you might be sitting pretty with 2 lands and 2 elves on the field at the end of your 3ed turn, but what happens when your opponent plays Pyroclasm? Now you are back down to two mana and you might not draw a land for another turn or two so your leatherback behemoth might be stuck in your hand for a while, meanwhile your opponent pummels your face in.

Lands are probably the hardest card types to destroy. Most of the time if you play a land, it will sit there for most of the game. A decks success is all about reliability. The more lands you run (up to an extent) the more likely that you will be able to play spells at the top of your mana curve when you draw them and more likely it will be that your deck will run the way that it should. I always recommend any mid-range and combo deck to have about 24 to 25 lands in it. A tempo deck can sometimes get away with as little as 20 if their mana curve is low enough and they are prepared to aggressively mulligan. In my experience, running 20 lands or less in an average deck will give you nothing but inconsistency.

Another thing to consider is which land you tap for what mana. Your land available is as much a resource as the amount of cards in your hand. Without open lands, you have few ways to play most spells and thus, your open mana, along with cards in your hand to play, are your connection to interacting with the opponent when they do something. Always be careful to look at the spells in your hand when you cast a spell. For instance, why tap your swamp and your island leaving 2 swamps open to use Go for the Throat when you can tap the swamp and island leaving open mana for both Go for the Throat and Mana Leak, whichever one you need? Another useful tactic and good way to use the resource of your mana is to keep it open and have a few cards in your hand. Doing so is showing force to your opponent. Your opponent will then have to decide if you are trying to bluff him or her. Whether you are or are not doesn’t matter, only the open mana does because what they don’t know will drive them nuts and it gives you the wedge you need to get into their head.

Now that we have touched on your card advantage and the foundation of casting your spells, your land, we will talk about the resource that most decks depend on. At the start of the game your life starts at 20. The main way to win the game is by reducing your opponent’s life from 20 to 0. Usually this is done by creatures attacking the opponent but sometimes it’s done through other means. No matter the means used, if you hit 0 life, you lose the game (except in rare cases with specific cards on the field that is). Because of this, your life total is one of the most important things to keep your eye on. You should always be calculating how much damage your opponent can do with what they have and never allow your life total to get below that number.

This is an article on resources though isn’t it? Well, to an extent your life has always been a resource but with Phyrexian mana it’s blatantly obvious that it is. A number of cards cost life to play and so you can consider life, in that regard, just like you do mana. To play said spell, you have to have life to use and you also have to keep that figure in your head of what you cannot allow your life to drop below.

Control players utilize their life total constantly. Every time you choose to take that 2 damage rather than tap the tumble magnet and use a counter to stop an attack from happening, you are valuing that one counter more than you value that two life. You are trading 1 resource, your life, for another resource, the counter on your card. This happens constantly during a game and you probably don’t even realize it on the surface. When you start paying attention to how you use your life as a resource, your eyes become open to different lines of play and a different thought process. Never forget about that resource, make sure to use it as one but don’t forget that once that resource is dried up, you lose.

Information is another resource that most players do not consider as such. If you know what cards your opponent is holding then you have much more power over them than they do over you. You can bluff them; they can’t bluff you as easily. You can play around cards that you know they are holding, they can only guess at what you have. This resource is utilized by utilizing your other resources more efficiently because of the resource of information that you have. Let’s use our first scenario to show how useful information is. What if we had used Gitaxian Probe before we decided whether or not to play the Inferno Titan or not. If we had, we would have seen the mana leak and the Day of Judgment and the choice would have been clear. Before we were just guessing and you can make a good many plays made on assumptions but at the same time if you have the information, you have little left to guesswork.

This article was about basic resource control. If you take one thing from it take this: Everything that you can measure in the game is a resource. Treat those things as such and you will be in a better mindset to spend them when they are beneficial to you and hoard them when that’s the better route. Next article I will discuss a cards Value past it’s card economy.

I hope that you have gleaned something useful from these words. If anyone has I’m happy so please let me know. As always, feel free to ask me questions if something is not entirely clear to you and I will do my best to help you out. I’m not a pro deck builder or player but experience gives one the ability for others to learn from your mistakes. I hope that I can help you learn from mine.