Today we’re going to tackle the biggest misconceptions in Tournament Magic. Before going any further, I’d like to make it clear that I rate myself as a 5/10 Magic player. I have won tournaments and do have a 60%+ win rate in drafts. However, the better I’ve gotten at this game over the years, the more I’ve come to appreciate just how hard it is to be actually good. Several years ago I perceived myself as a 8/10. After beginning to really learn the game I think a 5 is generous.
Myth 1: Magic the Gathering is a big-brain game
I will admit that MTG is probably the most complex game in existence. However, many people seem to think that tournament results are a function of intelligence. In reality, tournament results are a function of dedication.
Tournament Magic doesn’t cater to high IQs, it caters to strong work ethics. You don’t need a PhD in theoretical physics to be good at this game. You just need to live and breathe Magic and truly commit yourself to the game.
The reason for this is that advanced Magic might as well be a completely different game from beginner/intermediate Magic. At the beginner level, Magic is about making good individual decisions. Beginners can separate themselves from other beginners by making better individual decisions.
When starting out, it’s natural to look at the cards in your hand, figure out all the options, and pick the “best” one. When playing this way, a higher innate “intellect” can help. However, Magic is just like life: hard work is the ultimate talent.
At the advanced level, you should already (more or less) know the “best” play. This leads to the next misconception.
Myth 2: Magic is about finding the line
Type “Reid Duke Jund” into YouTube and watch one of the videos. You’ll notice that Reid can instantly find the line ~90% of the time. He then puts thought and discussion into optimization. For example, making sure the less “obvious” lines aren’t secretly better in that specific situation. Magic is about having so much practice that you know the line, and can focus on optimization + high level skills (hand reading, bluffing, planning etc…).
That is, with sufficient practice players can be 80-90% confident in the right move by pure repetition and intuition. All the extra thought is just about picking up the last 10-20%. Admittedly, Reid Duke is one of the best players on the planet. However, even getting to 60-80% confidence is huge.
At the advanced level, Magic works like this: your brain immediately deduces the play with ~80% certainty (planning ahead helps a ton with this). Then you spend some time double checking/optimizing (don’t want to get blown out!). Then you spend a lot of your time figuring out what your opponent has, what they're trying to do, and how to play around it. Your opponent will be doing the same thing, so it’s also worth “reading their reads”. Paying attention to the information you’re representing makes it easier to construct a plan that will defeat your opponent’s plan.
The basic idea here is that tournament Magic is not about individual decisions. Tournament Magic is about dedication - you should have so much practice that you don’t even have to think to find the lines, only to optimize them.
Myth 3: Tournament Magic is about who plays their cards the best
You aren’t just playing the cards in your hand. You’re also playing the top of your deck, your opponent’s hand, and the top of your opponent’s deck. Instead of deciding what card(s) to play now, you’re coming up with a plan, misrepresenting your plan, and reading/adapting to your opponent's plan.
Key skills include reading hands, tracking information (e.g. what cards you can have vs what you actually do have), and identifying traps. Every single skilled player began as an unskilled player. Don’t worry about results, focus on development.
PVDDR once gave the awesome advice of thinking during your opponent's turn. This was a huge level up moment for me! I typically use my opponent's turn to plan ahead and deduce information, and use my turn to optimize lines.
Again, beginners look at the cards in their hand and then make individual decisions. This is an awesome way to learn the game. At the advanced level, you should look at the board/matchup. Then come up with a plan. Finally, you look at your cards and see how you can use them to enact your plan. There is some give and take involved - a hand with Grim Lavamancers and Searing Blazes enables very different plans than one with Goblin Guides and Lava Spikes.
Remember: your cards are not your strategy. Your cards are the tools you use to execute your strategy. Finally, your strategy needs to defeat your opponent’s strategy! Defeating your opponent’s strategy leads to our next point
Myth 4: You need to be really good with your deck to win tournaments
For it to be even worth signing up for a (paid) event, you need to know your deck inside and out (free events are a great way to learn a new deck!). To win tournaments, you need to know how every deck works. Basically every single game of Magic comes down to Who’s the Beatdown.
Gameplay is matchup dependent. Determining who has the evitability, whether to race or disrupt combos, to blitz or grind fair decks and so many other nuances revolve around not only what options are available to you but also what options are available to your opponent.
Winning with Burn requires you to understand Control just as winning with Control requires you to understand Burn. It’s simply not enough to be really good with your deck. You need to know what your opponent is planning and what they’re planning around. You cannot do this without understanding the other decks in the format. As a result, every deck requires an insane amount of skill and practice (and luck!)
Myth 5: Gameplay is the only skill
Magic has 3 main skills. Some skills like sideboarding overlap between them. Gameplay includes a wide variety of sub-skills like sequencing, mulliganing, and hand reading. The 3 main skills are:
5.1: Deck selection
5.2: Deck construction
5.3: Gameplay
This is why I have to disagree with the claim that Living End is a noob deck. When players aren’t packing graveyard hate, Living End is incredibly difficult to beat. Its ability to reanimate multiple creatures at once make it resilient to removal and the plethora of cyclers (especially land cyclers) make it amazingly consistent. Reading the meta and seeing when a deck like Living End is the right choice takes an incredible amount of skill. While the overall gameplay may not seem “skillful” remember that choosing the right deck is just as important as piloting it correctly (and in best of 3 Magic, every deck requires skill to pilot).
Even in the era of net decking, customizing flex slots, utility lands and especially sideboards can make or break tournaments. Pay attention to how these skills overlap. If you’re picking aggro to prey on a control heavy meta (deck selection) you might want to pack some utility lands and/or uncounterable spells (deck construction).
Gameplay doesn’t just mean finding complex lines. Tron’s gameplay has often been criticized as being “less skilled”. Mulligans are perhaps the single most complex decisions in all of Magic (sideboarding is the only real competition). Tron rewards players who really understand mulligans (play a good Tron player and bad Tron player back to back and you’ll see what I mean). From turn 1 onwards, you could argue that Murktide or Omnath has more skillful decisions. However, when you look at the whole scope of a game (turn 0 to gg) Tron has just as much skill as those decks, it just happens that most of the skill is packed into the initial mulligan decision.
Conclusion
In my opinion, every single game and deck takes an incredible amount of skill. Crucial skills like hand reading, planning ahead, trapping and avoiding traps can carry over between formats and decks. When entering a tournament, you need to understand every single deck in the meta.
The best way to become good at Magic is to play it a lot. Not just jamming games, but really playing. Trying to understand why you won/lost instead of bragging or getting salty. Seeing what you could have done better and what assumptions were right/wrong. Recording your MTGO games to review later is a really good starting point. Be sure not to let Magic get in the way of life. Getting good grades at school and performing at work are infinitely more important than spiking tournaments.
At the tournament level, Magic is about reading and misrepresenting information, not navigating individual choices. As mentioned earlier, you should have so much experience that the decisions come naturally. This saves your brain for optimizing lines, reading information, and planning ahead.
Every player has the potential to become actually good at Magic. Only the ones with the right work ethic and attitude will get there. I hope to become actually good one day, and hope you’ll join me! Maybe we’ll even play each other in the finals of a tournament!