Starcraft is a masterpiece of competitive strategy gaming. A decade after release, it is still played in high-stakes tournaments for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even though the graphics are vastly out-dated by today's standards. Even though it doesn't have the same functionality as games like Warcraft III. It's an old relic, but a legendary relic.

For those of you utterly unfamiliar with Starcraft, here is a little breakdown:

Starcraft is a real-time strategy game, similar to Warcraft III, Age of Empires, and the Command and Conquer series. You control resources, buildings, and movable units on a fixed terrain -- the goal is to use these to kill your opponent. The game-ending condition is met when one person's buildings are all destroyed; however, players often concede much earlier since it becomes obvious when a match is unwinnable. There are three races, all vastly different from one another -- the Zerg, the Protoss, and the Terran.

The reason this game is as much of a "masterpiece" as I say comes from several reasons:

• The races are incredibly balanced -- so the winning percentage of all races is very near 33%
• Randomness in the game is minimized
• Both these reasons maximize the importance of a player's skill in economic and tactical decision-making (macro) and unit control (micro)

In simpler terms, the person who out-competes all other players can very clearly be considered the best - the one who outsmarted and outperformed everyone else. Results also show that the best players consistently win or out-perform everyone else at tournaments. It's kind of the ultimate arena for men to fight over who has the most skillz. (It's about as male-dominant as Magic is in that regard.)

A large part of why I came into Magic and managed to so quickly pick up the basics of Magic theory and strategy was due to my in-depth knowledge of Starcraft (theory at a pro level, I should say). Understanding Starcraft before Magic was akin to learning Calculus before learning Calculus-based Physics. Starcraft is more rigid, and thus the theory behind it is a lot more clear -- based in statistics and less in superstition. Once you obtain this basic knowledge, you can start applying it to other games, like Magic, where you start having to break rules or stretch ideas to apply them to more practical situations. As a good writer would say, you can't break the rules of grammar until you fully understand them.

Today I'm going to touch on what Starcraft teaches us about the theory and strategy that arise from resource-management-based games. Once we figure that out, we can start applying the ideas to Magic.

Warning: if you don't know ANYTHING about Starcraft, this article will probably go over your head a bit. I'll try to keep it on the ground floor, best I can.

Connecting Terminology

Some analogies between Starcraft and Magic are very easy to make. Although they aren't direct translations, as such. My goal is not to translate Starcraft into Magic or vice-versa, but I figure making these initial connections ought to help some of you get a grip on what Starcraft is all about, while connecting it to Magic gameplay. Things like the library or the graveyard and such are pointless to try to connect to Starcraft terms. Let's not try to do that. Instead, I focus on some more fundamental things.

Mana = Minerals, Gas

Minerals and Gas allow you to build units, buildings, and research new technologies -- similar to how mana allows you to summon creatures and play spells.

Spending mana and spending minerals/gas is what allows you to progress into further game states and achieve your goals. Any deck that sits there without spending any mana will lose. (There are exceptions.)

One main reason to connect these two resources in particular is that you "pay" a certain amount of it in order to get something else. The costs are typically fixed and precisely quantifiable.

Time

Time is a fundamental resource in all games. Learning the intricacies of it is really what takes your game to the next level. In Starcraft, time is "real-time" so every second is ticking down. Every second that passes is lost opportunity. This really puts the pressure on your clock! What takes time in Starcraft? Clicking, the spawning of units, the traveling of units, decision-making, researching upgrades. On the combat level, units attack at different speeds - the rate of damage is thus a fundamental measurement of relative superiority of units. How quickly units move also affects their superiority in combat; you can run them away to minimize damage, run them back to hit, and generally dance circles around slower units.

Magic is turn-based, so time works differently. What takes "time" in Magic? Playing lands, playing spells, using abilities, and combat. Every window of opportunity you miss to do any of these things, you lose time. You also lose time when your opponent takes another turn (i.e. skips your turn). Time can be looked at another way -- it can be looked at as "how much time do you have left before losing". This is called a clock. Assuming the defender starts at 20 life, a creature that has 4 power will take one more turn to kill than a creature with 5 power. That's a very basic, concrete example of speeding up the clock. It is also a way for creatures to be compared; in general, you'd rather have the 5/5.

I'm super-simplifying it, of course. I don't want to get stuck talking about this forever.

Attacking Creatures/Spells = Combat Units

The only way to win in Starcraft is by "dealing damage" so to speak, and these do just that. There is no alternative win scenario.

In Starcraft, units cost many kinds of resources: minerals, gas, time for production, and often, the building that produces them. Since each building can generally only produce one unit at a time, if that building is occupied producing ONE particular unit that means it has LOST the opportunity to make another unit. That's what taking up resources is all about - lost opportunity.

In Magic, summoning creatures generally costs: mana, a card, and the lost opportunity to cast something else with your time. In Magic, you generally only have a certain window of opportunity to cast creatures (first main phase, second main phase). It is very similar to the fact buildings in Starcraft can only produce one unit at a time. Because of a restriction of resources, we have to make choices; if we didn't, it wouldn't be much of a game.

To abstract it a bit, I have to mention the Philosophy of Fire as described by Mike Flores. To keep it simple, it is about trading resources for life total. "Creatures" are kind of just the "middle men" that you use to deal damage. "Burn spells" skip the middle man and just go to the face. Both of these cost resources to reduce the opponent's life total (with the goal in mind of winning the game this way). In Starcraft, it's much more important to collect more resources and build a sizeable army than go straight for the "life total" -- the Philosophy of Fire only REALLY applies in the early game (if at all). Once it hits the mid-game, the Philosophy of Fire is not really a good one to uphold.

Utility Creatures/Spells = Spellcasters/Non-Combat Units

These units generally suck at attacking but are great for other things -- like transporting units, "freezing" enemy units, providing extra vision or revealing hidden units, et cetera.

In Magic, creatures like Noble Hierarch, Merfolk Looter, Wall of Reverence, et cetera follow this pattern. The boundaries here get super-fuzzy, though, since in Magic, creatures can have utility as well as be good attackers (Bloodbraid Elf, Ranger of Eos, Knight of Reliquary, etc.). Still, I feel it is necessary to make some kind of distinction. In Starcraft, units are generally one or the other.

Planeswalkers function very similarly to "spellcasters" in Starcraft, also. They do useful things and can be destroyed, but they also just sit there, so you spend a lot of resources to play them and protect them.

Information = Vision (In addition, Metagaming)

As in most strategy games, complete awareness of your opponent's actions or plans can be a crucial deciding factor; Starcraft obscures the map where your units aren't somehow present (called the 'Fog of War'). Players "scout" to see what their opponent's up to. This is so important in deciding games that there are entire units designed to scout, and games are largely decided by who knows more about the opponent's actions.

Magic doesn't provide players with the same amount of power in gathering information. Unfortunately, Telepathy just isn't worth the cost in resources. However, something like Duress or Thoughtseize gives you a Peek at the opponent's hand, and just knowing what cards are there can decide your following turns. Fortunately, a lot of information is open information: the graveyard, permaments on the board, number of cards in the hand and library, life totals, et cetera. Being aware of all of these is key in playing out a game. The only question is if you can be bothered to pay attention to all of it. On another level, knowing what your opponent's deck is and your opponent's strategy for winning is also very important.

Life total (or whatever keeps you in the game) = Ability to stay in the game (Potency)

Patrick Chapin actually discussed this pretty thoroughly in his article on the Theory of Everything. This is where it gets more abstract. In Starcraft, you pretty much lose when you can no longer compete -- say you run out of minerals or gas, or maybe you lose the ability to create enough units to defend yourself, or maybe your buildings are all on fire and you cannot repair them fast enough, et cetera. There are lots of ways to lose. But they all have the common thread -- you lose when you no longer have a chance at winning. It's 'gg.' I’m going to call the ability to stay in the game Potency.

Magic is similar, in that there are lots of ways to lose. You can think it's primarily when you go to 0 life. But think about it. When the control opponent has a full grip of answers, and you have nothing and are top decking. Do you really have any chance whatsoever of getting back in the game? Usually not (although it depends exactly what's in your deck). You might as well just scoop because there's no point to prolonging the inevitable. Same thing when a combo player is going off. Judging at WHAT POINT the game is inevitably going to go to one player over the other is hard to judge, but even if you don't see it, there always IS a point. (Excluding situations where you draw.)

Potency is the same thing in both games ultimately, but Magic Potency is harder to evaluate. It would be much easier to evaluate if a spectator could tell exactly what cards both players would draw for the next X turns. But unlike in Starcraft, perfect information is not possible to obtain. Often, players in Magic do not concede until the Moment before they're about to lose -- this is because in Magic, maintaining some amount of Potency is not hard. You can have an "out" even in bad situations. Topdecking the right card at the right time would turn the game on its heel. I have watched many Starcraft matches go back and forth, too, but there are no "topdecks" in Starcraft. Either someone makes a mistake, or someone plays better or makes a very clever and strategic move.

This article is hopefully just the beginning. If you liked it, please leave a comment. Because the next article I write about Starcraft will go further! Beyond connecting terminology, I will discuss how to use the connections to improve your Magic skill.