Jimmy, Noob Player

As the farmer is struggling with this decision, somebody claims to have a solution with 100% success rate and very low cost. The farmer's a bit shocked, the other plans he’s considered have an estimated success rate closer to 60%. Since the farmer has never heard the phrase, "too good to be true", he authorizes the plan. Which is to burn the barn to the ground. All rats dead, very low cost! It truly was the perfect solution to the rat problem!

If the farmer narrowed his objective to only "kill every rat for as little cost as possible", this really is a good solution. Notice that the fire solution is not "wrong". It really was the best solution to the given problem. However, most people would realize that the objective should not be to kill the rats, but to make the barn a better place to store grain. The rats are only a problem because they prevent this more complete goal from being met. Determining that the goal should be "improve the barn" instead of simply "kill the rats" is a moral question. It is a question of what goals are proper or right.

My primary computer at the moment is an HP Pavilion laptop with a Synaptics touchpad. The whole thing is a piece of trash.

The touchpad is unnecessarily complicated by "gestures" that can be performed by two or three fingers to zoom, scroll, and other stuff. I believe I have deliberately used these gestures once or twice in the years I've owned the laptop.

However I have very often unintentionally zoomed the screen while typing. The gestures seem to reactivate themselves after I disable them. I'll be typing happily without a care in the world and my screen will suddenly shrink and jitter in the most annoying way. It happened again today.

Every single time this happens I have to open the Settings panel, open Devices and Printers, Mouse & touchpad and select Additional Mouse Options....

I’ve seen this stupid screen so many times I’m sick of it. I’m literally figuratively literally vomiting. Wait, does that say what I think it does?

It does.

That explains a lot.

I kid you not, the tray icon pictures have a clock that reads 4:20. Hey Synaptics? In the future would you consider hiring a programmer that isn't continually stoned out of their mind?

Like any self-respecting weeaboo, I can’t differentiate between Chinese and Japanese and I love repeating and misapplying cool-sounding quotes I don’t understand. I’m continuing this time-honored tradition by stealing a Cheng Man-Ch’ing quote from a random internet stranger who was misapplying the quote in a completely different way.

But really, aren’t these ideas self-contained enough to be applied to different areas of study? While the original quote was explaining the mindset needed to enact a very rich philosophy of conflict in the context of physical combat, it can also explain the mindset of the Nuts-and-Bolts Spike in the context of a card game. (I don’t think those two mindsets are very far apart!)

I hope my misapplications don’t cause any offense.

Another internet writer who applies deeper philosophical truths to gaming (and does it well enough that it doesn’t seem like a misapplication) is DrakeAldan of the Soulcalibur website 8wayrun.com. His collection of articles “The Basics of Soulcalibur” is probably required reading for anyone hoping to play a Soulcalibur game competitively, and it’s broad enough to include many powerful game ideas and many powerful life ideas. I feel a competitor in any field (or someone trying to create competitive fields) can glean useful and interesting ideas from these articles.

“Tamiyo! I saw in your mind that you have Armageddon, the spell that destroyed Serra’s Realm, in one of your story scrolls! Use it to destroy the Drownyard Temple!”

“Jace, you’re good at monoblue countertempo beatdown, but you have a lot to learn about WU control. My opponent already has a significant board presence, Armageddon is likely to hurt me more than my opponent. I don’t even have any mana rocks with me.

“And that’s ignoring the fact that Drownyard Temple has the special ability to be rebuilt quickly with only three mana worth of zombie slaves. Destroying it is a temporary solution at best.

Two mages met on a dueling field.

The first was a typical law mage with a collection of blue and white spell cards. He summoned a Wall of Omens and sat on top of it, watching the battlefield from safety, waiting for his opponent to make the first move. The second had a deck of spell cards that smelled like decay and necromancy. He summoned ragtag crew of small vampires.

The Azorius mage wasn't very impressed. "Is that the best you have? I've been shutting down vampires since before Innistrad. Show me what your deck can do!"

Next the necromancer summoned some even tinier and weaker creatures. One was a completely normal-looking human with a worn staff and a confused look in his eyes. One was a noble glowing elk. After that came a crowd of insects and animated rot and fungi. The law mage was a little confused by such a weird collection of unrelated spells, but he wasn't worried. He decided he'd summon an angel to put his opponent down as soon as he collected the necessary mana.

But then two of the vampires turned on their teammates. One disemboweled everyone he could get his hands on, and the other collected the blood and used it as pigment in an unholy watercolor. They tore apart a nasty insectlike creature, and out popped a living transparent blob that was gestating inside. The blob met a similar fate. The confused traveler was cut down before he could run, and somehow his spirit was killed as well and the ectoplasm added to the painting. Then the vampires smiled and slit their own throats, and the necromancer cast a mass resurection spell and started the whole thing over again.

The blood artist's painting was nearing completion. The law mage sitting on the wall couldn't take his eyes off it, even though his life was draining away. He tried a few counterspells but he couldn't stop the bloodbath. The elk was resurrected and torn limb from limb, while screaming, "I should have been an elf princess!" and all the creatures kept dying and being reborn in a hideous neverending nightmare. As a black sun rose and blasted away everything on the battlefield, the law mage finally lost the will to live.

How do I love Legendary Draft? Let me count the ways.

I love it to the simple and complex, to the familiar and bizarre, more than my mind can imagine.

From Rorix Bladewing hitting my opponent for six, to Pia and Kiran with Glissa grinding away my board.

From Jace, Vrynn's Prodigy smoothing my five color manabase, to an array of tutored Hondens crushing my dreams.

I love it to discarding Squee to Jace and Jaya Ballard.

I love it to casting Silumgar's Command then Vendillion Clique to shuffle away my opponent's bomb and completely wipe their board.

I love it to Maelstrom Wanderer cascading Surrak Dragonclaw and Urabrask, awakening Keranos, killing my opponent from ten when my board was nearly empty and they had a creature with protection.

I love it to casting Sign in Blood, Night's Whisper, and Phyrexian Arena, into a turn seven Griselbrand with Dreadful Confluence in hand.

Is anyone else excited about this guy for Modern?

How about now?

How about now?

My first attempt at tokens/overlays was fairly mediocre. They were definitely crummier than official overlays, but I couldn’t put my finger on the reasons right away. I examined many official tokens and came up with some big improvements.

What do you think when your opponent does something obviously stupid in Magic game (or any competitive strategy game with hidden knowledge), like attacking a small creature into a blocker that can destroy it and survive?

Level 0: "Sweet, free advantage for me! I'll block it!"

Level 1: "They might have a trick hidden in their hand that could save their creature and kill mine if I block. I'd better not block."

Level 2: "But they might assume I'm not going to block, so they're just bluffing to get a small amount of free damage. I should block anyway."

Level 3: “This opponent knows I called a similar bluff last game, so I don’t think they’d do it again. They probably have a trick ready. I won’t block.”

Taking this endless series of second-guessing higher and higher is usually not productive. You simply thrash back and forth. Every new assumption jumps you to a different choice.

But by thinking in terms of next-leveling your opponent in the first place, you are assuming they are not acting perfectly rationally. Rationally, you can break out of this endless loop by looking at the possibilities independently of your opponent's skill. This is the fundamental trick of Game Theory.

Possibility 1: You choose the most obvious play, and your opponent plays a trick. They blow you out.

Possibility 2: You choose the most obvious play, and your opponent doesn't have any tricks. You gain a solid advantage.

Possibility 3: You play around the possible trick, and your opponent had it. Their trick is wasted or at least made less useful.

Possibility 4: You play around the possible trick, but your opponent didn't have it. You play a suboptimal strategy.

It's important to realize that whether your opponent made a dumb mistake or tried a clever ruse, the results are the same. Either way, there are only those four possible results. In a game like Magic: the Gathering that allows a relatively large amount of time for each decision, taking a step back and looking at the results like this will often show that one decision is far superior for you, regardless of why your opponent made that play.

Magic experts consistently say that playing in a fundamentally sound way will gain you more victories than trying ruses and tricking your opponent into making a mistake. (Both Reid Duke and Patrick Chapin have written about this, and there are probably other writers I don’t remember.)

However this is not the case for every strategy game! Some games such as Poker present you with more situations in which reading your opponent is more important. These games, because of the way they are designed, make bluffing and reading your opponent a much bigger part of the game, while Magic requires that only infrequently.

My roommates are terrified of leading wasted lives. Nothing they do is timid. Caution is thrown to the wind. Their every action hurls defiance at oblivion. Energy, noise, and joie de vivre boils from their spirits like vapor from a chunk of dry ice.