So, what do you do when you sit down across from your opponent and you are not quite sure what he is doing? How do you go about winning both the individual game at hand and the match in the long run? If your opponent plays an unexpected card, how do you beat it with the tools at your disposal? The answer is in strategic planning.

The first step of strategic planning is understanding your opponent’s fundamental strategy. How do you do this? This relates to two things—your opponent’s deck’s strategy and his draw. Both of these things will affect your own plans and use of your cards. Each card is a tool, and can be used in a variety of respects. They key to winning any game of Magic is adaptability and evaluation. Correctly evaluating and adapting to the changing situation the game presents is what will bring you the most success—in particular, giving you the opportunity to win from a losing position.

The largest practical aspect of this is identifying what your opponent’s goals are in any given situation. There are a number of hints that you will gain over the course of the game to help you make these decisions. The first is the archetype your opponent’s deck falls under. While you might not know his exact deck list, if you can classify his deck, you will have an idea as to what his primary strategy is. This will inform you what his tactical goals likely are in any given situation. This archetype classification will give you an idea of what tools (cards) your opponent has access to and how he intends to use them. This in turn will allow you to use your cards more effectively in a counterstrategy.

Dark Confidant in Legacy is an excellent example of this principle in action. There are essentially two ways of using Dark Confidant. The first is as a proactive way of reducing the effectiveness of one-for-ones. The second is as a way to draw more one-for-ones and trade your way to victory. If you are playing against Dark Confidant and don’t have a way to deal with the card directly, you have to develop a plan to defeat both of these strategies, even if it isn’t a great one. This generally relies on trying to kill your opponent with his own Bob.

The first of the two is the more dangerous one for you as the defender. Because Bob will continue to draw threats, you have to try to maximize the time you have alive while attacking aggressively. It may seem weird to attack into a Bob, but this is frequently the correct play for a couple of reasons:

1. It taps your potential blockers, enabling a counterswing. This will prompt your opponent to swing with Bob (and sometimes other dudes as well). This is exactly what you want. You are likely to lose the race, but if racing is your only chance of winning, racing is what you should be doing.
2. The majority of Magic players have been trained to value, even to overvalue, card advantage. You can often use this fact against them with Bob, as they will not trade it off in combat until too late.

So why should you consider playing this way against Bob more? Because by the time Bob gets two or three triggers off, he has come close to, if not actually established, an insurmountable amount of card advantage. If you draw a Swords, Smother, Go for the Throat, or other removal spell in this situation, it can often be correct to point that removal spell at a different creature and try to use your opponent’s Bob against him.

Assuming your opponent is playing a bunch of one-for-ones or two-for-ones, your plan is similar, only this time it involves actively dumping as much as possible onto the table. This is because generally your opponent’s plan for “one-for-ones” involves discard (Bob is Black, after all). Discard is dead if it has nothing worth taking, so by getting all your threats onto the table, you maximize the tools you have to work with while actually trying to “deal” with your opponent’s Bob. Then, you just swing for the fences.

The thing with plans like this is that you have to construct and identify them early (generally the moment the Dark Confidant hits the table). Then, you have to follow through. If you give up halfway and try to deal with the Confidant in a more traditional manner, you will lose the game because of the card advantage Bob generates.

Whatever you decide, it is important to follow through with the plans you construct, even if they don’t win you the game, for two reasons:

1. You will learn if it is a good plan or not. If the plan put you in a reasonable position to win, then it was a good plan. You should remember it and learn how to execute it, because the next time you run into a similar situation (like your opponent’s turn-two Bob when you have no answer), you will be better equipped to win that game.
2. You will learn how to execute the plan. This is more important against rogue strategies and things of that nature. By learning how to execute a plan properly, you can use that information to your knowledge in the next game and either come up with a modification that will make the plan better, or simply use your resources more effectively.

When playing against rogue strategies, similar principles apply. Assume your opponent understands how to play his cards and use them, and look at what he’s played and what it could mean. This will allow you to come up with different potential lines to disrupt him. Trying to identify key cards and to strategize around them is going to get you wins you don’t otherwise deserve.

If your opponent is a terrible player, you should likely be able to beat him just because he will misuse his resources, thus negating much if not all of the advantages he can gain through them. If your opponent knows what he is doing, you will be able to put yourself in the best possible situation to win the game, which is all you can really ask for when planning a strategy.

I was reminded of this principle because of my matches at Grand Prix: Providence this past weekend. I played Merfolk and across two separate matches faced a turn-two Dark Confidant where I had no answer five times (three times from Team America and twice from Deadguy Ale). I won two of those games, should have one at least one more, was in a position to win a fourth, and got blown out in a fifth. Considering how bad Bob is for Merfolk, I feel confident that I gave myself the best possible situation to win those games.

I won two of the three games against Team America and lost both against Deadguy Ale. Against the B/W deck, I made the elementary mistake of forgetting to tick my Vial from 1 to 2 in both of the games. I definitely would have won one of the games if I hadn’t forgotten the trigger, and there’s a reasonable chance I would have won the second as well. Considering I was able to take Game 2 against Deadguy Ale, my Vial mistakes almost certainly cost me a match there.

When you bother with such strategic planning, it is important to assess the effectiveness of the plan both after the game and after the match. Such assessment is important in general, but particularly important when you come up with strategies on the fly. This is because you should remember both the really good ones and really bad ones, so you can use the good ones and avoid the bad ones. If your strategy was mediocre, you can refine it and use it again when you run into a similar situation.

By doing this, you will establish a large repertoire of effective strategies to use in a variety of situations. It will stress your own play less and enable you to win many games you had no business winning, especially if you have a habit of not making stupid mistakes, unlike me.

Until next time, may all your long-term plans not run awry.

Chingsung Chang

Conelead most everywhere and on MTGO

Khan32k5 at gmail dot com