Born To Be A Winner - Why Respect Is Important

Question Of The Day: What does it mean to be a "sore winner", and why is it so important that I shake my opponent's hand?

Trading Card Game Referenced:

ALL TRADING CARD GAMES

This is a pretty deep issue, and its importance reaches beyond a single game. This topic is important to not only trading cards, but it is also a deep life lesson, as well. I feel everyone could learn something from this post, whether you play games or not. (Although, if you aren't at least interested, how did you get here?)

Everyone knows at least one sore loser, someone who can't accept defeat graciously and throw a tantrum, accusing the winner of cheating, and calling for certain cards to be "nerfed" (made weaker by removing stats and effects, or increasing cost to play). However, there is such a thing as being a sore WINNER, as well. You may know the type. A person that struts around victoriously when they win, doing a victory dance. A person who denigrates his opponent for playing poorly, or having bad cards, or not being as skilled. The kind that gloats about his accomplishments to everyone within earshot. This is also the most arrogant of people, as well. They won't make eye contact when shaking hands because they see their opponent as just another victory notch, or they refuse to shake hands at all, feeling that it is beneath their stature.

That is not a winner. That is a jerk with a well-built deck and misused skills. He lacks honor, he lacks conviction, he lacks empathy, he lacks social skills, he lacks humility, and worst of all, he lacks the important concept that he might, one day, actually lose. And trust me, he will. Sore winners are usually also very sore losers, because they are incapable of believing that they CAN lose. Loss isn't in their mind, and when they do lose, they write it off as a fluke and don't count it against themselves. These are not good people, let alone good players. They will almost always lose when they finally fight a real champion. Let me tell you (in my opinion) what a winner is supposed to be:

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- A winner understands the concept of respect, and extends that respect to every opponent. This is why, in tournament play, it is required in some games like Yu-Gi-Oh! to shake your opponent's hand before and after play. This shows respect and honor, and lets your opponent know that there are no hard feelings or malicious intent, and that this is only business, which allows them both to play a serious but fun game on equal footing.

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- A winner will take only the time necessary to carry out a turn, and will make their moves, and the announcement of said moves, clear, concise, and audible to the opponent. No hand trickery, no shifty deck shuffling, no sneaking cards onto the field without announcing it. A winner plays with honor, or they do not play at all.

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- A winner will always recognize a skilled opponent's abilities, and will acknowledge them during or after play. He will always give credit where credit is due, and will ask after the match about strategy and specific cards to get a better understanding of the game from someone who has a unique perspective and gave them a real challenge.

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- A winner will take a loss graciously, acknowledging the opponent as the superior combatant this time around, and will shake their hand at the end of the match as a showing of good sport.

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- A winner will play opponents with bad decks, or less skilled players, and will offer them advice and suggestions on how to improve. He will not, if he knows he will win the match in a landslide, throw absolutely everything at the new player unless that player needs a lesson in humility. Instead, he will show where things went wrong, and offer ideas as to how to counter it in the future. After all, every winner was a newbie once upon a time. (Yes, even your Professor Theodore Cedric Gregory was green in the olden days.)

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- A winner does not need to cheat to obtain his goals, but instead uses his knowledge of tactics, mathematics, psychology, and probability to outsmart his opponents. This rule is very important, because cheaters, when caught, are banned from competitive play, which is the opposite of what you are learning here.

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These qualities are how to tell a good winner from a sore one, and also explains why the handshake is important. It puts both you and your opponent on equal footing, and allows you to show respect, which will, most of the time, be returned to you. This shows that you both intend to play a fair game, and that no feelings are involved in the match, so it is not personal. This is an important distinction, because many people take these games personally, and feel they have failed as an individual with each loss.

This is not true. No matter how many matches you lose, you are NOT a failure. You are simply a champion who has not reached his potential yet. You have more to learn, new cards to seek out, new strategies to try. Perhaps you haven't found a deck archetype that you feel most comfortable and fluid in running. Perhaps you need to find your niche in the game you are playing. Perhaps you should try other TCGs to get a feel for how uniquely they play, and find one that is right for you. But no matter what, never, EVER tell yourself that you are a failure. In my eyes, you are ALL champions in the making, which is why I am here to help educate you in the ways of the game.

This was an important lesson to learn, so I hope you were all paying attention. Your homework for the day:

YOU ARE ALL CHAMPIONS. BE GRACEFUL, BE RESPECTFUL, BE HUMBLE, BUT ABOVE ALL, BE POSITIVE.

Stay smart, my students. Go forth, and win!

Monster Madness: The Swarm Deck

BONUS Question Of The Day: What is a Swarm deck, and why are they so popular?

Trading Card Game Referenced:

MAGIC: THE GATHERING

This is actually a very easy question to answer, and so this will be a short article. However, that doesn't mean there won't be actual information in it!

Let's start with the dictionary's definition of Swarm:

SWARM [swawrm]
Verb
1. To move about, along, forth, etc., in great numbers, as things or persons. 2. To swarm about, over, or in; throng; overrun.

That underlined parts are very important, as that is the entire concept and indeed, very nature of a Swarm deck: A great number of creatures gathered together and moving so far so quickly that they completely overrun and overwhelm you, not with attack power, but with sheer numbers.

No game best encompasses bizarre strategies quite like Magic: The Gathering, so we are going to turn to one of its most famous Swarm decks: The Squirrel deck, specifically the Army of Squirrels deck. It is a green deck (represented by a forest with many nature-like creatures) that has the ability to very quickly bring out multiple squirrel cards and/or, most importantly, squirrel tokens, which are the most dangerous part of the deck, as several 1/1 creatures can easily be used to either clear the field of large monsters, or do an incredible amount of damage to your opponent. The idea is to have so many of them on the field at one time that it is impossible for your opponent to deal with them all, causing them to focus their attention elsewhere and thus losing the game once they beef up these tokens with other cards.

I want to send you to a man far more experienced than I in actually running this deck (although i've fought against it many times) and an intelligent individual, Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar. You can find his article on these little furry bastards here. I believe credit should be given where credit is due, which is another good lesson, which will be the subject of the next article. For now, go give a professional some love.

Now WHY are decks like this so popular with people? The answer to that comes from human psychology. When given the option of doing a difficult task to obtain a reward, or doing a task that seems much easier for the same reward, people are naturally going to choose the path of least effort for most reward. It's efficient, and it gives us the best advantage. It's the same way with a Swarm deck. It's easier to just run a deck that completely overwhelms your opponent and doesn't require much thought or energy to it. The Swarm deck satisfies our desire for victory while still making us feel that we won a battle using a tactic that was available to us. And, in a lot of ways, it's true. The path of least resistance is often the most satisfying...

...in the short term.

After a while, whether you win or lose, the deck stops being fun for most. There's no challenge in that kind of deck, it's the same thing over and over. You don't have to adapt to challenges, you don't have to come up with new strategies, you just throw wave after wave of monsters at people until you collect a victory. It feels cheap, and it cheapens the experience. There is a great thrill and pleasure in taking a deck you have built and making it into something that can win games. It's an almost primal, visceral pleasure. That's why it is more rewarding in the long run to build a deck that has multiple paths to victory, or at least has a backup plan should the primary win condition fail. Something that challenges you mentally, keeps you on your toes. This is what keeps you coming back.

Card games are about strategy, tactical knowledge, skill, luck, and math. Ultimately, how you play is up to you. As long as you are enjoying what you do, and you feel you are earning a legitimate victory, that is all that matters. (Sliver decks, i'm looking at you. There's a reason you're banned worldwide.)

Today's homework assignment is to remind yourself of one thing:

MY WORTH IS NOT DETERMINED BY HOW FAST I WIN, BUT IN HOW I FEEL ABOUT THAT WIN, AND HOW I TREAT VICTORY WHEN IT COMES.

Until next time, students!

Control Decks, Basic Knowledge, And Pokémon

Question Of The Day: I hear a lot about Control decks. What kinds of Control are out there, and how do I protect myself?

Trading Card Game Referenced:

POKÉMON

The idea of a Control deck is one that sounds complex, but is actually very simple. So to answer this question, we turn to a game that many think is simple, but actually does have complexity to it: The Pokémon TCG. It would seem pretty straightforward. Send your little slave creature out to fight for you, make sure there are others in line to replace them, and try to be the first to either run the opponent out of usable fighters, or knock out six of them and draw all of your prize cards. It gets more complex than that, though, with one thing being that the prize cards come from your own deck, are unusable until you win them, and are placed at random so you don't know what lies underneath. That's not even getting started with the concept of switching out, status effects, and dual battles, but I will get into that in its own, separate article. For now, we will focus on the aspect you asked about, Control.

Put simply, a Control deck sacrifices having large and powerful creatures to back it up, and instead relies on the ability to manipulate your opponent in such a way as to leave them with no options, and you with quite a few. These decks typically employ many creatures with effects on the card that change up an opponent's cards or discard them entirely, even going so far as to remove them completely from the game!

Control decks typically have three forms of control. Some focus on one or the other, a few focus on two or so, and a significant number try to control all three! Since i'm more like the Riddler than I care to admit publicly and enjoy following themes, this explanation will be Pokémon-flavored. The three forms of control are:

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- Field Control. This is the most common, as it is the most easily manipulated. This is often seen in cards like Electabuzz, which has the ability to paralyze an opponent's Pokémon and render them useless for a turn, in addition to doing damage. More often, however, field control comes in the form of manipulating when and where certain battles with certain Pokémon happen, in this case using Gust of Wind, which sends the one currently in battle to the bench, and brings out another Pokémon, usually a smaller, weaker one, or one with a high retreat cost and no energy to use any attacks. Field Control decks pick and choose which fights they get into by making sure the odds are in their favor. Another thing to watch out for is their ability to rob you of YOUR energy to keep you powerless and unable to fight back on your turn, accomplishing this with Energy Removals and Super Energy Removals, and giving themselves plenty of energy. The most notorious example of this was the Rain Dance deck, which used the Pokémon Breeder card to turn Squirtles directly into Blastoise, whose Rain Dance ability allowed you to equip multiple Water energy to any of your Water Pokémon from your hand, when normally you are restricted to equipping one energy per turn.

HOW TO COUNTER THIS: Field Control decks rely on the ability to consistently have the energy necessary to play the cards that will give them what they seek. They often have multiple drawing cards like Bill, Professor Oak, and Computer Search (I'm showing my age now, the original base sets are banned for tournament play these days). Your solution is to deny them their drawing ability by any means necessary. In the case of the Rain Dance deck, Blastoise's effect did not work if he was Asleep, Confused or Paralyzed, which at the time were the only status effects really. Electabuzz had a cheap paralysis attack, as I stated earlier, that would not only keep Blastoise from using his ability, but leaving him stranded there useless for an entire turn. As for the Trainer cards (this game's version of Spell cards), at the time you could play as many as you wanted per turn, which made them popular in many decks. Strangely enough, the best counter for this kind of field control is...well...below.

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- Hand Control. These crafty individuals know that, while the field is ever-changing, the one thing that remains constant is your hand. They know your best cards are up there, lying in wait, and their deck is built around keeping your hand constantly shifting, or being discarded to keep you from using your good cards. Absol from the Secret Wonders expansion is a good example of this. For one energy of any kind, his attack lets him pick a card from his opponent's hand and discard it. If it's a Trainer, Supporter (Like Trainer, only you can only play one per turn) or Stadium (persistent, has different effects on the game) card, he gets to discard another card from their hand of his choosing. That is nasty, a single energy causing you to lose up to two cards from your hand! Then there's Hooligans Jim and Cas, which on a heads flip of a coin, pick three cards from your hand and have you shuffle them back into your deck. Hand manipulation can keep you on your toes, and make you left with only what you have already in play, which may not be much...or enough.

HOW TO COUNTER THIS: Hand Control decks tend to sacrifice their one and only attack per turn in order to manipulate your hand due to many of these effects being on the Pokémon themselves, and still costing energy. By rushing them head-on and taking down their troublesome Pokémon as quickly as possible, they won't have the opportunity to mess with your hand, as they will be on the defensive the whole time. Aggro decks work well for this. (Aggro decks will be the subject of another article, as well. I'm going to cover as many different archetypes as I can this month. Archetype August...I like the sound of that.)

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- Deck/Discard Pile Control (Also known as Deck/Graveyard control in more "adult" games). I lumped the two areas together because both of them tend to be controlled within the same deck, which is deadly effective because of synergy. (Here is a more detailed description of what Synergy is and why it's important.) These decks are generally called Mill decks, because like an actual windmill, they churn through their opponent's deck card by card, sending them all to the discard pile and making them unusable, with the ultimate goal to make their opponent lose the game by "decking out", or running out of cards and being unable to draw next turn, which causes an automatic loss. A popular deck that does this is called a Durant Mill deck. Durant's attack for one metal energy states that for every Durant of theirs in play, they discard the top card of their opponent's deck. You can only have three of any specific Pokémon card in your deck, but if they are from different expansions, you can have three of each, which means with an active Pokémon slot and five spaces on the bench, he has the potential to send SIX cards from your deck to the useless discard bin quickly. They also have cards with the ability to search the discard piles for all sorts of things, like Pokémon or Energy or Trainers, and put them into their hands, or into play. They feed off of your misfortune.

HOW TO COUNTER THIS: Deck/Discard Pile Control relies on very specific cards. Ironically, the best way to beat a deck like this is to have some form of either Field or Hand Control yourself. You don't need to build a deck around it, as most good decks will have some slight form of control as a counter for things like this anyway, again relating to synergy (link above). Being able to keep them from getting their needed Pokémon out in the active slot, or keeping them Asleep or Paralyzed to prevent them from attacking is invaluable to a deck's success in this case.

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I will likely go into better and more detailed examples in later articles when I start talking about some majorly complex issues, but for now, this should give you the basic idea of what a Control deck is, how it operates, and hopefully, how to counter against it. If I have overlooked anything, or have glossed over important details, let me know in the comments below! The best teacher is the one that never stops being a student.

Your homework for today is simple in theory, but complex in practice.

THEY CAN CONTROL YOUR BOARD, BUT THEY CANNOT CONTROL YOUR MIND. OUTSMART, OUTWIT, OUTLAST.

That's all for now, you fresh-faced scholars, you! Go enjoy some real control of your own!

Treatise On Ratios

BONUS Question Of The Day: What's this I hear about ratios? What does MATH have to do with a children's card game?

Trading Card Game Referenced:

YU-GI-OH!

I am very glad you asked that, hypothetical new player! Ratios are very important when considering what cards to put in your deck, because they allow you to find the most efficient method of obtaining the kind of win condition you are searching for with the least amount of effort and the lowest chance of it horribly backfiring in your face.

BUT WHAT IS A RATIO, YOU ASK?

A ratio is a set of two numbers separated by a colon ( : <--- That thing) showing the relationship between the two of them, or rather how many times one goes into the other. For example, a 2:1 ratio means that, for every two of something, there is produced a single item of equal value.

To put this into game terms, let's go to one of our favorite pastimes from 2006; Yu-Gi-Oh!

Anyone familiar with this card game (and if you're not, i'll put it into easier to understand terms) knows about Mirror Force. This was a Trap card that you would activate when your opponent attacked. All of his monsters in Attack Mode (meaning, face-up, with the card vertical, and able to attack) when this card is activated would be absolutely destroyed. A player can have up to five monsters on the field at any given time. Now, best case scenario, he will have five monsters, all in attack mode. Mirror Force would destroy all of them. This means, in the best case, Mirror Force has a Benefit/Cost ratio of 5:1, meaning for a single card, you destroyed five of your opponent's. That means you used a single resource to rob him of FIVE resources. This is a huge deal!

Of course, this was an ideal situation. In most cases, he will have only one or two monsters on the field, or have four or five with only one or two in attack mode. That means, most of the time, it will average out to a 2:1 ratio, with the worst case being a 1:1 ratio where you save yourself.

How does this affect me and my deck building, you ask? It's actually quite simple! Most of the time, you want to maintain at LEAST a 2:1 ratio possibility with each card you put in your deck, meaning for every single card resource you have, you need to be able to either gain twice the resources for yourself, or rob your opponent of twice the resources (or, in special cases, give yourself a resource and take one from them). This is the balancing act of most decks. How do I manage to maximize the output of this card? In what way can I gain an advantage from this card other than just breaking even? This will drive you for most of your TCG career.

Now, sometimes you will need to put 1:1 ratio cards in your deck. It is unavoidable in some cases, in some decks. When that situation arises, you need to find a way to make the card gain synergy with the other cards in your deck to create a more favorable ratio. (We talked about synergy in our last lesson here.)

Again, going back to the YGO example, we look to one of the two Secret Rare cards in the Pharaoh's Servant booster pack series, Jinzo. He had 2400 attack, 1500 defense, and six stars, which meant to summon him, you either needed to sacrifice one of your creatures, or Special Summon him through other card effects. His effect was that he negated all Trap cards on the field, and prevented any new Trap cards from being activated, including yours. Assuming you summon him normally, that is a 1:2 ratio, where you spent two resources only to gain one, thus robbing yourself of a resource. (Being unable to activate your own Traps counts as losing a resource.) If you Special Summoned him, then it would still be a 1:2 ratio, as you expended the card to summon him which could have been used on someone else, AND you still lose Trap control.

"That sucks!" I hear you say. "Why would anyone give up the ability to use Traps for a card with mediocre attack, low defense, and blocking you out of your own cards?"

Because he represents a new kind of ratio, which I am about to explain, called the Potential ratio. Let's say you've activated all the trap cards you're going to for a while, but your opponent has plenty on the field (you think) to counter you. Summoning Jinzo would then lock him out of playing those cards. This would ALSO lock his Spell/Trap field with useless cards, preventing him from playing other vital Spells. If your opponent has no open Spell/Trap slots due to all of them being traps and being unable to activate any of them, he loses out on a lot of potential resource gains. You have effectively locked him out of 2/3 of his entire deck, with the only way to unlock it is to kill Jinzo with a strong enough monster, which if they do not have one out already, means you have entire TURNS of free shots to his face, very possibly ending the game. In this scenario, Jinzo would turn from a 1:2 into a variable, and almost incalculable, ?:2, with the ? being any number of lost potential incidents, lost potential spells cast, lost traps activated to rob you of resources, and of course all the resources you just gained from having absolutely no opposition.

Everything boils down to efficiency, and how much you can supply yourself with while depriving your opponent of the same opportunities. Ratios are very important to understanding the games themselves, and to tactics and strategy in general. Card games aren't just fun, they challenge your mind, make you sharper, more keen to noticing small details and thinking ahead of time. The better you understand the mechanics behind a game, the better you can use the physics of the world it represents to your advantage.

At the end of the day, all card games come down to mathematics. It's just a matter of how far you're willing to go, and let me tell you, with enough determination and a little tutoring, anyone can become sharp as a blade.

I hope this has been informative! Here's your homework for the rest of the night.

IT'S NOT ABOUT THE CARD, IT'S ABOUT THE ADVANTAGE THE CARD REPRESENTS.

Have a good night!

Card Synergy, And How It Helps Win Games

Question Of The Day: What is card synergy, and why does everyone keep talking about it?

Trading Card Game Referenced:

HEARTHSTONE

Today, we are going to talk about synergy. No, not energy, something better, but also related!

See, you only view your deck as a singular thing, a collection of cards that form your Ass-Kick-A-Tron 9000 you put together yourself. But the truth is, the deck is only as good as its weakest card, and there are a LOT of weak cards out there. But you can make a mediocre card into an amazing card by the power of SYNERGY!

First, you need to pick a theme for your deck. I will use Hearthstone as an example. I run a Hunter deck, which means tons of minions. Coincidentally, every last one of them, save for two, are Beasts. Now, why is that? Are Beast cards stronger than other cards? Not by themselves, no. In fact, a lot of them are weak-sauce compared to many other cards. However, what makes them strong is that they interact with one another. Cheap cost wolves that up the attack of all other Beasts. A card that will give a beast two attack and two health, plus Taunt (Your opponent must attack it first before they can attack you directly). There's a minion that gives all other Beasts Charge (can attack the same turn they are played). There's even one that lets you draw cards for every Beast played, and one that gains two attack and one health for every Beast on your side that dies.

That last one sounds pretty bad, right? Why would you want your minions to die? Simple, you have cheap, disposable minions, thanks to a card that will summon a one attack, one health Beast for every minion on your opponent's side of the field. Say they have six monsters, and all you have is the Beast that gains power when others die. So now, you have six 1/1 Beasts that you slam into your opponent's monsters, not only slowly killing them, but making that one card into an unstoppable powerhouse that's difficult to remove from the board before it smashes your face in. Now imagine summoning all those 1/1 Beasts when you have the card drawing one out. SIX cards in your hand for only a cost of three (out of ten)! 

Alone, these cards are fairly weak and easily ran over. But working together, they can form an unstoppable force of nature that is notoriously tough to beat. Synergy wins games!
I hope you learned something, and enjoyed yourself!

Now, your homework, repeat after me:

SYNERGY IS NOT A LIMITATION.
SYNERGY IS NOT A LIMITATION.
SYNERGY IS NOT A LIMITATION.
SYNERGY IS NOT A LIMITATION.
SYNERGY IS NOT A LIMITATION.
SYNERGY IS NOT A LIMITATION.
SYNERGY IS NOT A LIMITATION.

Very good! Thank you for coming.