Hello folks! Welcome to the newest and latest article in a series of articles for you and your friends. This column is dedicated to the casual side of Magic. Whether it's that EDH deck you carry in a Jace box, or that 60 card emperor deck; all of us play casual Magic.

There is an appeal to the pureness of casual Magic. It harkens back to our early days of Magic, or to the great times we expect to have in the future. We connect with friends new and old. Everybody loves Magic!

In casual Magic, things are usually the same as they are in the tournament world. There are metagames, 4 maximum of each card can be played, 60 cards in a deck, and so forth. Concepts like the mana curve still have meaning in both worlds.

For the last few weeks I have documented several strategies for multiplayer and how they often differ from duels. I wanted to make sure that you had a strong base for your own multiplayer games.

Now it's time to shift gears a bit. Today's article does have meaning for tournament players, but I want to address casual players, because I think it is a much greater danger in Casual World. A lot of classic Magic theory was written in the late 90s as people started to suss out the game. We encountered the Sligh deck, and with it the mana curve.

One such monumental article was written by Chad Ellis. In it, he espoused the danger of cool plays in tournament Magic. It's a classic article and it was reprinted on StarCityGames after TheDojo fell under. It's very short, and you can find it here, if you want to read it.

Let's look at three examples from Magic:

I had in my hand a Dream Salvage. I was playing against three other people in a multiplayer game. On the third turn, someone played Compulsive Research, while I had it in my hand. They discard one land. I choose not to play the Dream Salvage to draw one card, because I wanted to get a bunch of cards with it.

Aaron was playing a Five Color highlander deck. (As in Five Color the format). He had a Knollspine Dragon in his hand, but rather than play it and add to the pressure on the board, he held on to it so he would have a chance at drawing a lot of cards.

Mark Rosewater (I think it was him, could be Aaron Forsythe or someone else) was playing a deck with what he thought were Grizzly Bears. He was doing very well battling with this deck. Then he was informed they were actually supposed to be Kavu Titans, so he often waited to play them. His winning percentage dropped significantly.

What was wrong with drawing a card, a 7/5 flyer, or a Grizzly Bear on the curve? Why were these plays not good enough for Me, Aaron and Mark? Why were we waiting?

It was because we wanted to do cool things.

Caveat #1 – Cool Things Are Not Always Bad

Some decks are designed to do cool things. A combo deck wins by doing something cool. For example, suppose I have a Shuko, Daru Spiritualist and Starlit Sanctum in play. I spend 0 mana to equip the Shuko on the Spiritualist, and it gets +0/+2 as per its ability, because it was targeted. I repeat ad nauseum, and then sacrifice to the Sanctum to gain an arbitrarily large amount of life. That was cool!

Perhaps you want to tap your Gilded Lotus for three Blue mana. Then you untap it with an Aphetto Alchemist with a Freed from the Real on it. Then you activate the Freed from the Real for one Blue mana and you untap your Alchemist and repeat until you have a lot of mana, and then combo kill everyone at the table.

There are a lot of tricks like these out there. While they are cool, they are also game winning. Combo decks of many different stripes have won tournaments and done very well. You have combo decks that win through cards like Pandemonium and Saproling Burst (21 damage) or Donate and Illusions of grandeur (20 life loss) or Painter's Servant and Grindstone (I deck you). In casual Magic, where things are often a bit slower, there is more time to set up cool combos to win the game.

With a deck that has a really cool thing as its winning condition, cool things are going to happen, and that's okay, as long as you follow the rest of this article. Just understand that Cool Things ™ does not apply to your combo way of winning.

Back to the Article

Cool things can be very dangerous. We want to play a card in such a way that it causes an event. People will look back and say, "That was cool!" It makes us feel good to have pulled off the cool thing.

Why was Mark Rosewater losing because he waited and stopped playing Grizzly Bear on the curve? I'm sure there were elements of mana curve and such, but at the end of the day, I believe it was because he thought that playing a 5/5 trampler for five mana on the curve is cooler. Therefore, his win-loss ratio dropped.

Why did Aaron wait on playing the Knollspine Dragon? I'm sure at the time he reasoned that he could play other creatures, and then use the Dragon to Windfall his hand into something great. That would have been cool, and while looking for it, he failed to play a 7/5 flyer that could have helped his board position.

Why did I hold onto my Dream Salvage? I could have basically cycled it early (Paying one mana to play it for one card) and kept going. That's what playing it meant – I expected that you could always get a card out of it. Why didn't I take that route? I rationalized that if I waited, I might get a better number of cards, but in retrospect, I was just waiting for a cool thing, and never ended up playing it.

All of these real life scenarios have one thing in common. We all rationalized things. Let me give you my worst mistake in Magic history, in the Scourge prerelease.

I'm sitting at 2-0 after two rounds, and I feel that I have a strong sealed deck (I would finish 6-1-1 and in 10^th out of about 200 players). My opponent and I split the first two games. He has a bomb in Exalted Angel. I have bombs in Glarecaster and Kamahl, Fist of Krosa. Let's look at the third game:

I started fast. On the third game, we exchange some early damage. My opponent has out several creatures that outclass mine, but I have an ace in the hole. I play Fierce Empath and tutor my deck for Glarecaster.

After he attacks, and I play the Glarecaster without defense, and he attacks again, I am down to five life. Now I have full control of the board. If he attacks me, I can activate the Glarecaster and send the damage at his face. If he tries to direct damage the Glarecaster, then I can do the same.

I swing in the air several times, and knock him down to four life. With a Daru Healer in play, he is taking 2 a turn from my Glarecaster. He has also chumped my 3/3 flyer a few times and lost some creatures.

My opponent is playing White/Red, with a splash of Black. He has out several ground creatures. I draw a card and I'm now with 8 cards in my hand. I have 6 lands out still. He has two cards in hand. I haven't wanted to play anything, since the Glarecaster takes 6 mana to activate.

I have not seen a Black card in his deck in three games. Why has he splashed it? My guess is that he splashed it for removal. That would completely kill my Glarecaster. Perhaps he has a Cruel Revival or some similar card. I also don't want to discard a card without playing something.

His creatures can drop me to two life if they attack without the Glarecaster, but he could easily have burn in his hand. I saw a few small damage spells in earlier games. I don't want him to Revival my flyer, and then attack me and burn me off. I also don't want to discard a card. What do I do?

Like a fool, I tap my six lands and drop Kamahl, Fist of Krosa. He has seven lands out. I attack for 3, and he reduces it to two. He draws a card and immediately plays the land he drew. Then he taps eight mana, and plays Searing Flesh. I cannot protect myself from the damage, so I die.

Do you see what the issue in this game was? This was my only loss on the day. If I had just stuck with my plan, and ridden the Glarecaster to victory, I would likely have finished 6-0-2 or 7-0-1 and gotten a very high spot. Perhaps I would have won it all. I failed too, because I wanted to play a cool thing. I had eight cards in hand. Did you see what I decided to drop from my hand? The coolest card I had.

At the end of the day, this was about me making a cool play. I didn't see it at the time, but it was.

The danger of the cool play is when you start rationalizing to yourself that playing Kamahl, Fist of Krosa is actually the right thing. Look at my danger scenario. He had TWO cards in play. Why should I believe that one is black removal (which I hadn't even seen him play) and the other is a bourn spell to kill me off? Do you see how I second guessed myself?

Instead of just riding Glarecaster to the win, I second guessed myself into my only loss of the day. It was a great deck too. I had so many cyclers that I ran Astral Slide! I had a bunch of great cards to go along with my bombs. I wasn't too confident with the deck (I don't like G/W in tournaments), but it was a great deck in retrospect.

It didn't matter; I convinced myself that making a cool play was actually the right thing. That's the way cool things seduce us. It's not that bad a call. There are cases where it would be right to do it. We talk ourselves into it.

The problem is that cool things are a greater danger in casual Magic. We are punished for cool things in tournaments. We learn our lesson. Later in that very tournament, I ride Glarecaster to a win and don't play anything else, and I even say in my tournament report that I learned my lesson in round three. We get immediate feedback.

What about in Casual Land? What about in multiplayer?

Caveat #2 – Magic is Supposed to be Fun

I absolutely agree. There are some good cards that are events when you play them. If you tap 15 mana and play Exsanguinate for 13, then that is an event at a multiplayer table. That is a cool thing that puts you way ahead in the life game and perhaps kills multiple people.

There's nothing wrong with playing an Event Card ™. There's nothing wrong with playing a card in such a way that it becomes a cool thing. What's seductive about cool things is when you give up the better play or the reliable play for a chance at the cooler play.

Returning Again

I bet there were times when Mark Rosewater didn't even know if he would have five mana on the 5^th turn to play a curved 5/5 trampling Kavu Titan with kicker. Yet, he would miss the obvios second turn play in order to chance it. We take risks that we don’t need to.

There are other examples. We hold on to mass removal for way too long hoping that we'll get more creatures, because it would be cool. We hold onto Swords to Plowshares too long because something better could come along. Or perhaps we play it too early because something small is harassing us.

Look at what I can do! I can stop that! See!

These are the traps of a cool thing. This is why some people play Shock over Seal of Fire despite the Rattlesnake Effect. This is why players often gravitate to the sparkling cards over the subtle ones. This is why there's more sizzle than steak. This is why there's more flash than smash. (Okay, I think I pushed that analogy as far as I can)

The point we have here is that people tend to make cool plays because they are fun, interesting, and memorable. The danger is that, while waiting or setting up this cool play, we lose.

I wouldn't be surprised if I have readers who would rather have a cool thing resolve in a game, and then lose, as opposed to winning without the awesome. However, I think most of us are trying to win the game. We should realize that trying to get off a really, really freakin' cool play derails our objective.

Instead of trying to get the cool play out of my grip of four cards, what I should be thinking about is how to win with them. I admit that I get lost. I get lost a lot. I go for the cool play too much. I have lost many games because I tried to get too cute. Winning is about getting people to 0 or less life, or decking them, or getting an alternate win condition to fire. Winning is not about getting the table to go "Ooohh, ahhh."

The problem is that we like the response. We are social creatures, and we like seeing that we've pleased the table. We are creatures of creativity, and we like knowing that we've pulled off some random and awesome trick.

That's why cool things are more seductive in the Casual Sphere of Magic.

Anyway, I hope you found today's article informative and useful. Next week we'll be leaving behind multiplayer theory and politics for a while, and heading into other topics.

See you next week,

Abe Sargent