Welcome back to another week of Ideas Unbound. Today we are going to do another Training Day article for the newer players out there. If you would like to see my previous Training Day articles you can find them here (Card Advantage) and here (Drafting 101).

A single game of Magic consists of a great many choices. Should I mulligan (I will be writing a whole Training Day article about this question in the near future)? Which land should I play? Is it smart to attack here? Should I kill their creature now or wait? Even the tiniest decisions can change the outcome of these decisions. At times, it can be overwhelming. Our goal should be to make informed decisions as much as possible, and so we want to have as much information as possible. And on the flipside, we want to limit the amount of information we are providing to our opponents so they will make bad decisions. Today we will look at information and how it can be exchanged in Magic.

Gaining Information

A lot of players aren’t aware of this, but you can take notes during a match. There are some rules limitations, however. The first rule is that you must take the notes quickly. You can’t stop the match to write out a novel. It should not take you more than 5-10 seconds to make your notes. The other rule is that any notes you take during the match can only be accessed during that particular match. Once the match is over, any notes you took cannot be looked at during another match. This rule is the reason I advocate using paper for life totals as opposed to dice or phones. You have a readily available way of taking notes.

The most useful notes you can take are information about the cards in your opponent’s hand. Imagine you play Duress on the first turn. Most new players will only focus on picking the card that is going to beat them and getting rid of it. However, Duress has the powerful side effect of seeing the opponent’s hand. Unless you have a photographic memory, you should be writing down the contents of your opponent’s hand any time you get to see it. Then, as your opponent plays their cards, you cross them off the list. This allows you to have a better idea of the cards in your opponent’s hand and will allow you to sculpt your game plan accordingly.


You don’t have to play a card like Duress to get useful information though. Any time a card goes to your opponent’s hand and you know what the card is you should make sure to remember that or write it down if necessary. For example: Your opponent has three of his own creatures exiled with an Angel of Serenity. If you kill the Angel those cards are going to go into his hand and chances are he won’t be able to play all of them again immediately. Two turns from now, he may only have a couple of cards in hand. How many of those cards should be known to you, because they were returned by the Angel? Did you keep track? If you know that both of the cards are creatures from the Angel, you know they can’t be a removal spell, or counterspell, or something else that may disrupt your plan.

This is only one of several ways to gain information from your opponent. What we look at next are ways to avoid giving information to your opponent. You can also use these ideas in reverse to gain additional information from your opponent.

Instants

One of the biggest mistakes I see players make when first starting out is playing instants (or using instant speed abilities) on their own turn when there is no need. Doom Blade is an excellent example of this. Sometimes, there is a reason to case Doom Blade on your own turn. If you want to attack and your opponent has a good blocker, you might use the Doom Blade to ensure your creatures can get through. Even still, it might be better to save the Doom Blade and just not attack. You might want to use that Doom Blade on something else later. Imagine the next turn your opponent plays a Thundermaw Hellkite. You might wish you still had that Doom Blade considering this new information.


Also, when you wait to play your instants you are depriving your opponent of information. By casting the Doom Blade on your turn, you may end up tapping out, or playing the last card in your hand, letting your opponent know he has nothing to worry about. If your opponent sees you have a card in hand and two black mana available however, he may assume you have a Doom Blade and not even play the Hellkite, giving you time to take a few more turns and draw more answers or gain better information.
This same theory applies to a card like Think Twice. Unless you absolutely need a card on your turn, you should wait until the end of your opponent’s turn to play Think Twice. When your opponent sees the available mana and the card in your hand, he may think you have a counterspell instead. This means he may not play his best cards for fear of getting them countered. Then when he passes turn, you play the Think Twice. At this point it’s too late for him to play anything other than his own instants.

There are of course exceptions to every rule. If you are missing lands, you might want to play the Think Twice on your own turn to try to draw a land to play. Or maybe your opponent has several creatures out and you are trying to draw Supreme Verdict. It’s important to realize that even though it is good to wait most of the time, you shouldn’t wait every time.

Pre-Combat vs. Post-Combat

I’ve noticed a lot of new players forget they have a second main phase after combat and just assume attacking will be the last thing they do. Most of the time, attacking should be one of the first things you do. There is a lot of advantage to be gained by attacking first. By attacking first, you put your opponent in a position to make decisions with less information. Imagine your opponent has two Islands and a Swamp untapped and he has a Dissipate and a Doom Blade in hand. If you attack first, your opponent now has to decide if he wants to go ahead and use the Doom Blade on your creature. If he does, he won’t be able to counter any of your spells this turn. If he doesn’t cast the Doom Blade he may end up taking damage for no reason, because you might not have a spell to cast.

Now imagine you had cast the spell in your hand first. By doing that you are showing your opponent two options and letting him pick which he thinks is the better. He can counter the spell or he can kill the creature, depending on which he thinks is worse. You’ve provided him more information than you needed to and allowed him to make an easier decision.

Again, there are exceptions to this strategy. You would obviously want to play a haste creature Pre-combat if you plan on attacking with it. Or, if you have an evolve creature, you may want to play another creature pre-combat to make it bigger before attacking. When you go to play a card, just ask yourself “Do I get any benefit from playing this before I attack?” If the answer is no, then don’t. This even includes playing your land for the turn. If you hold your land until after you attack, your opponent may think you don’t have a land to play and make a play based on false assumptions.

Additional Ways to Mask Information

You have probably seen many players constantly moving the cards in their hand. I know some people get annoyed by this, but there is a reason for it. Not only does it give us something to do with our hands while we think, but it also helps hide information.

If you never moved the cards in your hand, a watchful opponent would be able to tell you when you drew each card in your hand. Every time you draw a card, you should first check if it’s a miracle, and then once the card is in your hand, you should shuffle the cards around in your hand. This prevents your opponent from knowing that the card you are about to play is the card you just drew. This helps prevent your opponent from deducing the general strength of your hand.

This next point, I cannot stress enough. When you play multiple copies of a card, please make sure they are all the same version if at all possible. Most of the time, it is not going to matter, but it does give your opponent the opportunity to gain information he shouldn’t have. Imagine the following scenario. You have two Naturalizes in your deck. One is from M13 and the other is from Gatecrash. Your opponent does not know how many Naturalizes you are playing. You play the M13 version and it goes to your graveyard. You then use Elixir of Immortality to shuffle it back in your deck. A couple of turns later you play the Gatecrash Naturalize. Now your opponent knows you still have at least one Naturalize left in your deck, the M13 one. If they were both GTC Naturalizes, he might think you only had the one and were just lucky enough to draw it again.

While this type of scenario may not come up often, it will come up from time to time and that may be the one game you lose which puts you out of Top 8. It is an easily avoidable situation. This even goes for basic lands. Try to make sure all copies of a basic land in your deck are the same set and picture. This will make sure your opponent cannot tell them apart and keep track of lands you have searched for, or he has seen from looking at your hand.

Bluffing

I will probably write a separate piece on bluffing in the future, so for now I’m just going to touch on the subject. Once you have grasped the idea of how information can be gained or hidden in a game of Magic, you will then learn to take advantage of that fact by bluffing. Imagine a scenario where you have 8 lands in play and nothing in your deck costs more than 5. If you draw a 9th land, there is probably no reason you will need that land in play. However, by keeping it in your hand, it remains an unknown for your opponent. It could be a pump spell, or a removal spell, or a counterspell, etc. Since he does not know exactly, he has to play around more possibilities which might buy you time to win the game.

While this trick is useful, it should not be solely relied upon. And you should probably never keep more than one land in your hand in this manner. You might draw something later and wish you had played the extra land. By keeping only one in hand, you can ensure that you can play it if you need it. Another exception to this rule is if you play cards with X costs, like Sphinx’s Revelation or Kessig Wolf Run. In those situations, every mana counts, so you are probably better off just playing them anyway.

Wrapping Up

I know I gave you a lot of information (see what I did there) to digest today. Let’s sum up the major points.

Keep track of the cards you see in your opponent’s hand.
Don’t play your instants before you have to.
Play stuff post combat when you can.
Keep the cards in hand shuffled.
Don’t play different versions of the same card.

While there is still plenty more than can be said about information as it pertains to Magic, this is a good place to start. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please let me know.

-Eddie