In General: Counter Examples Part 2

Well hello again! Welcome back to the conclusion of my discussion about the stygma against using counterspells in casual Magic. If you missed it, make sure to check out the first part. We left off on the topic of: why does a game that is played to win have a culture full of people who don't play to win? In the first half I discussed certain key aspects of game design that are present in Magic. I'd like to begin with some short comparisons to another game that has similar characteristics: chess.

Magic matches chess in its strategic and intellectual complexity. It is extremely difficult to play optimally. The strategy evolves as the game goes on. There are different pieces, each with their own rules and their own strategy, that you must use economically and efficiently in order to be victorious. There are contingent decisions to be made. Decisions which, can't be fully understood until much later in the game, if even then. You have to read subtle cues from your opponent. You must know them to know how to beat them. Chess has very few scrubs. People who don't have the gumption to play competitively usually just don't play at all. The skill deficit of a beginner makes it impossible for them to defeat a more skilled player. This is intimidating. Intimidation usually sucks the fun right out of a game. The regularity with which a beginner will lose is so high that it pushes people out of the game. Magic adds three key elements that encourage scrub behavior. Behavior like ostracizing certain strategies that are considered cheap or unfun.

1. Hidden Information: things you and/or your opponent(s) don't know and can't discover.

Hidden information plays on the human fear of the unknown. People don't want to know that they don't know something. They are uncomfortable with confronting the unknown. They don't know how to deal with it, particularly when there is an inequality in how this hidden information is distributed. It is easy to rationalize this as being unfair or even impossible to overcome. Scrubs don't want to make decisions without full information. They feel cheated, or they feel the results are invalid because 'they couldn't have known' some key fact. Information acquisition and exchange are a very important strategic element in Magic.

2. Inequality of Material: your chess pieces come in different shapes, sizes, and quantities. You and your opponent rarely have the same resources.

This is troublesome for many of the same reasons as above. It feels very unfair when you walk into a match and instantly have a disadvantage because of your deck construction. Scrubs will rationalize it as simple bad luck or otherwise externalize the failure. Magic contains many puzzles of optimization. Choices that require compromise. Sometimes compromise leaves you exposed to externalities. Scrubs don't take responsibility for these decisions. Their locus of control has shifted off of themselves, but is internally biased. When the scrub wins, he thinks it is because of his skill. When the scrubs loses, he blames it on factors stemming from this inequality.

3. Variance: Randomness, unpredictability. A different experience in each game.

Many people believe that randomness adds fun. Unpredictability in complex systems inherently creates intrigue. If it is impossible to know how an event will unfold, you have to experience the event to find out. This draws many people into games and creates an equalizing factor during play. 'On any given Sunday' the worst player can take down the best player. In most games that include variance as a factor, the variance is so large that it borders on incalculable for un-aided humans. Otherwise an experienced player would continue to dominate because of their superior knowledge of these odds. E.g. counting cards in Blackjack. Bloody difficult, but the advantage gained from doing it properly is insurmountable.

Note that the concept of a metagame also influences cultural factors greatly, but chess has a metagame, although it is not usually as complex as Magic's it is much more diverse. Ergo, it is not a difference between the two games. There is not sufficient time or space in this piece to discuss metagames in more detail, but they are extremely influential to this topic. I will return to this idea later, so it is important that you have a good understanding of what a metagame is and what Magic's metagame is.

So we know the features of the game that breed scrub behavior. Let's now shift our focus to the players themselves. Wizards performs rigorous internal marketing studies to help gather information about the player base as both customers and audience members. They have developed the concept of the psychograph. An archetypal personality that represents one facet of a player. Mark Rosewater, the game's head designer, has gone into very fine detail explaining these psychgraphs and how they affect designing and playing the game. Again, I will not explain them here, but you must understand them explicitly to comprehend the underlying argument that I am building (and will soon reveal).

There are three psychographs which I will oversimplify for demonstration purposes:
Spike. Spike plays to win.
Johnny. Johnny plays to learn.
Timmy. Timmy plays to feel.

Every player is a combination of these three sub-personalities. The degree to which they are present in an individual determines their character within the game. Their attitudes, approach, development, enjoyment. The very essence of a player defined.

Now who among them is the culprit? Who is the big offender of mutilating strategy games into scrubby games?

It's not Spike. Spike absolutely wants to win. He is the predator species. His self-gratification is innately tied to victory. Skill is his weapon and the instrument of his satisfaction. He will instinctively pursue the best strategies and ignore inferior ones.

It's not Johnny. Johnny is a scientist. A thinker. Where Spike is Sun Tzu, Johnny is Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer. He wants to win, but he knows he must develop new technology in order to do so. Johnny isn't consumed by winning THIS game. He wants to learn how to win THE game. All games. He is experimenting. Developing. Discovery drives Johnny's enjoyment.

So, by process of elimination we know that Timmy is the culprit. The worlds shortest game of Clue has come to an end. It was Timmy, at the casual tables, with the theme deck.

See Timmy cares about something other than execution or development of winning strategy. He is exhibiting sub-goal behavior. He is making his own game within the game. He doesn't want to win, he wants to build an army of elves or gain infinite life. He has sidestepped traditional strategic thinking. He is now optimizing his play for a goal other than winning. Taking his eye off the ball as it were. What he wants is to feel. And his feelings have gotten in the way.

Now to bring it home. Commander. EDH is one of the most outlandish formats Magic has to offer. Absurd board states, lengthy gameplay, unusual card and player interactions. EDH is where you want to be if you want to see and feel something different than normal Magic. It is no surprise that EDH attracts a ton of Timmy style players and therefore a higher concentration of scrubs. Timmy was bothered by the fact that Spike would always stomp on his fun. Spikes overly-developed medulla oblongata forces him to aggressively pursue competitive scenarios. EDH is of lower interest to Spike than Standard, Draft, or Legacy would be. EDH is something of a safe haven for Timmy to do whatever he likes and not worry about the consequences.

So now we see why Timmy hates Spike, loves EDH, and doesn't want Spike to ruin it for him. So all the Timmy's get together and decide, by implicit committee, that playing to win is not accepted in EDH. You must play for fun, community enrichment, experiential growth, or pure escapism.

Now the only question that remains is: why hate on Blue? Blue is out of balance. It is overpowered. It has a grip on the format that is strangling it to death. To Timmy, there is no honor and no fun to be had in utilizing the established strategies. If all you want to do is stifle other peoples fun (which Counterspell is quite good at) then you automatically stand in opposition to Timmy's alliance of 'fun'.

There you have it. Put simply: Timmy got beat up on the playground so much he took his toys and went home. Now he plays in the backyard with other Timmys. That is the cultural metagame of EDH personalities in a nutshell.

I will conclude with a short anecdote: I was recently debating the merits of Ruric Thar, the Unbowed. I saw him as underpowered and not worthy of much consideration. Uncle Landdrops was convinced that Ruric was the second coming of fun and that typical control decks are soon to be unplayable. I thought this was laughable. There is no Ruric Thar decklist that could ever beat a tournament level tier-one deck. Think of the good old days: what does Ruric do about Erayo? It loses. That is about it.

But what is that you say? Erayo is a banned general? Sure, but only scrubs would ever devise such a concept that so grotesquely mutilates proper strategy as a banned list. It is in response to this idea that I insisted Ruric Thar isn't really 'good', it is only good inside the non-game parameters UL was working with. In my purist Spike league, Ruric doesn't even register. But what UL said next threw me on tilt.

He said there is no competitive metagame to EDH. Only the scrub league.

The percentage of Timmy-style scrubs is so high, that the competitive aspect has been completely flushed from the game. (Ignoring for the moment the small contingents of 1v1 EDH tournaments that occur in France and the Pacific Islands, which are so small as to be negligible)

Is this true? Is there no place in the EDH community for people like me? People who want to play every  game to win; who refuse to compromise strategy in the name of fun. It could be true. It seems that way at least.

You tell me. Am I so far outside the zeitgeist of Commander that I no longer exist beyond my own insignificant margins?

Let us know what you think.