Critical Thinking: Introduction

- Razgriez -

Friday, February 17, 2006

Hey everyone, I am Razgriez. Now I suppose you are going to want some background on me so here it goes. I have been playing magic for about 2 and a half years or so, I switched from playing Yu-Gi-Oh. I am semi-competitive with magic and play in tourneys about 3 times a week give or take, I also do a lot of deck building on essential magic and around my city. 

For this article I have decided to write about something a lot of players struggle with. This is determination. I have quite a few friends who LOVE to build decks when they are bored. When they do this they find new deck ideas they wish to try. When they build these decks they dismantle their old ones as they don’t have many good cards to work with as is the case with casual players and about half of the intermediate players out there 

Now most new players who build a deck think that their deck makes all the difference and that they will win most of the match’s they play. Well players who have been around the block know that this isn’t the case. What they know isn’t a secret that only they are allowed to know but it is something only experience or a great deal of advice. 

There are many things that contribute to becoming a better player. Natural Born skill and talent is a big one a lot of players use for as long as they can. Your deck is another large factor along with your attitude, but all these are a topic for a different day. The first thing I would wish to help you all learn (those of you who do not know it anyway.) is KEEP ONE DECK!! Learn all you can from it and practice, practice, practice. Skill is one of the most important things in ANY game that is limitless. Stick with your deck until you know it like the back of your hand, until there is nothing left in it you can learn. 

A good thing to prove my point for all of you who say you’ve heard this a billion-and-one times. About a year into magic my “Sensei (teacher if you would say)” called me up and told me we were going to play the best 3 out of 5 and he told me not to bring my deck. I tried to ask questions and he stopped me and told me to come, so I did. He pulled out two copies of my deck and sat down and shuffled the one he was using. He had played me before so he knew how the deck worked, but it was I who spent hours and hours, working and working and perfecting everything I could. We played and I stomped him. He had better hands but still I outplayed him because I knew what to do down to the letter. I knew every bit of my deck and used it as I had since I started. After I beat him 3-1, He made me play vs. his new cleric deck. This was a monster and did some serious damage. Well I outplayed him because of the skill I had behind my deck. He then shook my hand and told me I had learned all I could from my deck and should move on to keep expanding my knowledge. He continued on to say what I now summarize as, “In any game you have a small make believe experience bar. When you play you get experience win or lose. The more you play the more experience you get but your experience bar will continue to go down very slowly as long as you aren’t playing. Even if It is just the time you are in school or sleeping it slowly goes down. The same is true with building a deck but it tends to have more variables involved. (This will be discussed next article.) Train all you can and play as often as you can.” Now I have refined this a bit to say that yes you get experience by playing a game for fun but you get more when you are in a competitive game (I.E a tournament). So moral of the story is, play, play, play all the day and you will start mastering the deck if you stay determined with it and learn all you can. 

Okay, so you all know Send me emails if you have comments or want a certain topic for an article I will see what I can do. I will also do A Card Review and/or Deck Edit per article. So if you want to your deck modified or want my opinion on a card, drop me a line at;

razgriez@yahoo.com