Embracing Disbelief

Embracing disbelief

Amongst players, a lot of common misconceptions regarding the Modern-Format are wide-spread.

I’m at no means a pro-level player, but my highly-controversial opinions are well-funded. Indeed I do not know what is probably the best deck, the hottest tech or either the best play in any given situation. 

But I know what things surely do not work – and how many traps there are to fall into.

In this article  I want to clarify 3 common misconceptions that are well-accepted and wide-spread amongst players.

First – Sideboard Hosers

I wrote about this issue a couple of times (starting to begin stale), but this time somehow a little bit more exhaustive.

Sideboard Hosers are those Cards that are able to put the game away in itself. Either Blood Moon against Junk Midrange, Stony Silence against Affinity or Mirran Crusader vs. Grixis Death’s Shadow. 

If they got to work, they put in a lot of work. If not the next couple of turns are dependend.

Dependence is the great keyword here. Think of Sideboard-Hosers as a great Bonus – the top of the ice-shoal and not so much as of “bust up your game”-Cards. The key to victory is not on relying entirely on those Hosers. Think more about the support-cast.

Do not fall into the trap of relying entirely on Sideboard-stuff. Being capable of winning w/o the support-cast is a skill many players will reject way too often.

One of the most evidently examples is battling against Dredge. While someone could argue that Rest in Peace is the single most best card against Dredge, what do you do if don’t have it? Does it contribute to your gameplan? What opener do you keep? Would you like to be aggressive or take the control-role?

What does your Sideboard-plan look like? You have one, don’t you? Do you board into more aggressiveness or more “take a cup of coffee”? Either way you must decide what your overall gameplan looks like – after this it becomes much easier to evaluate your dependencies on certain sideboard-answers.

Other considerations that many doesn’t take into account: Are these Sideboard-Hosers good in other Matchups? Or does it fix flaws that the maindeck can never compensate for? How many are useful? 

Is drawing a 2^nd copy of a certain card useful or is it like “skipped my drawphase this turn”?

The lesson to learn is simple: Additional 15 cards doesn’t take away the player’s responsibility for playing correctly and being not highly dependend on spending a couple of cards for a single matchup just to worsen others.

Second – About Openers and mulligans

I’ve watched some streams in the last couple of weeks of some pro-players. They’ve tested out new decks and new techs to already existing decks. I quickly turned the streams off because there mulligan decisions were like crap.

Modern is not about card advantage anymore – there had been times were nothing else was important, but nowadays a good opener can beat any kind of card-advantage machine gun (Ancestral Vision or Thopter Foundry / Sword of the Meek comes to mind).

A common example is fighting Burn. Every point of life you gain / you don’t lose to a spell is card advantage. The burn player simply has to draw another Lightning Bolt to kill you. That’s a reason that Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is so effective in this matchup.

The burn player opts to deal damage to you every turn, best way 2 spells or a 2-mana-spell. Thalia effectively prevents that from happening. A 2-Mana-spell now costs 3 mana. Burn players doesn’t have another chance but killing Thalia – the result is, that this is 3 less damage to your face.

Don’t think in terms of card disadvantage if you mulligan. A good deck does have a source of card-advantage that compensate those losses (Ancestral Vision, Lingering Souls, etc.).

The other way around is killing your opponent before he developes to his full gameplan, sitting in a comfortable position. It’s important to figure out if you are the aggressor or likely take control of the game. In this case Modern tends more and more towards Legacy – the 2^nd and 3^rd turn is key for deciding which plan to head for.

This common misconception amongst beginners is way worse – if your gameplan is pretty vague, on what basis do you decide future game-lines? Once chosen wrong everything becomes to feel wrong.

Third – Turning the corner

A couple of weeks ago I was playing against BUG Infect. It turns out that Game 3 I had Thoughtseize and 2 Lingering Souls in my opener (I’ve played BW Eldrazi Processor again). I’ve picked away the first threat, but soon after my opponent had 2 Blighted Agent and 2 Inkmoth Nexus. Lingering Souls didn’t help anymore, so I had 2 choices:

Either bluffing that I have removal in hand or presenting a clock.

My opponent had 3 Cards in hand, so I was assuming he had 1-2 pump spells. While this is a subject of much debate, I was sure I couldn’t bluff 2 removal spells. It wasn’t possible. Think this way: The first pump-spell resolves. Ok.

Next step: I’d like to remove the threat. Something like Vines of Vastwood happens. Done.

Or: I do nothing. Suddenly I’m dead – what a surprise.

Either way, my choice headed another (and the better) way. My enemy was at 14 and I had 7 power on board. I’ve attacked for 7 – presenting a clock is sometimes better than pretending that you got a single out. This is an issue of “what is my deck capable of?” – can you turn around quickly enough, so that my (pretty favored opponent) has to assume I’m able to kill him? Does he assume that I am capable of killing him within 2 turns?

It turns out that my opponent wasn’t able to kill me (he had some bad draws) and therefore I was able to close out the game within 2 turns (took me literally 3, but after the 2^nd he had no outs).

The lesson to learn is, that playing to trying to turn the corner is sometimes better than betting for anything else (good topdecks, misplays, bluffing outs, etc.). Being proactive is certainly more rewarding than doing the “right” play.

Last Words

This 3 mistakes are the ones that i recognize most of the times, just because i've made them so often. In a format as wide open as modern it's difficult to assume what your opponent i capable of.

I'm a big believer in being proactive and therefore risking to lose the game is a price i'm willing to pay. I hope you enjoyed the article, come by next time.