How Bad Practice Can Make You Worse at Magic

A lesson learned

If you clicked on this article, two things are likely true: You want to get better at magic, and you also probably play a lot of Magic. After all, practice is the thing we all seem to think will make us better at the things we care about; “practice makes perfect” is the idiom drilled into all of our heads since childhood. However, practice approached incorrectly may not only be wasting your time, but is likely even making you worse; the correct phrasing should be “perfect practice makes perfect.”

            A few weekends ago, I found myself in Philadelphia for a Pioneer SCG. I 3-3 dropped the main event, and had a similarly poor result in the 5k on Sunday. All weekend, I found myself making a ton of mistakes. Dumb mistakes, the kind that someone who plays as much as I do shouldn’t be making. I missed a simple lethal line; I grabbed the wrong land off a Grisly Salvage, only to untap and realize I couldn’t cast any of my spells, but the mistakes I made in my last round were the ones that stuck with me the most. Knowing I was already dead for any prizing, I told myself “Whatever. I’m here, the table is right there; I’ll just go play.” A friend (Rodney) was using my boogie board for something, so I arrived at the table without a life pad. I played the whole match completely on autopilot, making decisions quickly and without much thought about whether they were right or wrong. Our last game ended with me moving to blocks against a pair of Old-Growth Trolls and verbalizing “Oh yeah, those guys have trample. I’m dead, thanks for the games.” Hold on. I play Pioneer all the time, how could I just forget that Old-Growth Troll has trample?” It’s not that I don’t know a commonly played card’s textbox; rather, I was just so checked out of our match that It didn’t even register in my mind until I had already extended my hand. 
Sometime after that round, I was talking about the weekend with my friend and fellow competitor Brittney Davis. We were talking about how our weekend went- not great for either of us- and self-deprecatingly joking that we’re probably just bad. For context, a few times we found ourselves birding our mutual friend Daryl Ayers, watching him make a play only for us to step away, look at each other and say something like “That’s not what you would have done there right?” or “I wouldn’t have thought to do that.” I started to vent to Brittney about how bad I did, then immediately started working through a decision point I had in my last match,  considering alternatives for my turn one play and regretting that I didn’t even stop to think about other possible lines. In an effort to soothe my ego I said something most magic players are intimately familiar with: “But it doesn’t matter, I was already dead, I was just playing to play.” Brittney thought for a second and replied: “I hear you, but I’m going to say to you what Edgar says to me when I’m playing badly and say “it doesn’t really matter.” (Edgar being Edgar Magalhaes, a Gold Level Pro) If it doesn’t matter then why did you play?

Hearing this, I immediately knew she was right. Coping and saying that my match didn’t matter isn’t doing anything for me. If my goal is to get better at magic, I should always be playing with that goal in mind. I started to reflect on my last match some more, and that’s when I realized. I didn’t just play that last round on auto-pilot, I played the entire tournament like that, and it showed, both in my gameplay and my results. I knew this wasn’t acceptable, and something I actively try to discourage in my coaching students. I need to have that same standard for myself.

So, I committed to approach my matches differently in the future. But how did I find myself making these mistakes in the first place? Shouldn’t I have reasonable fundamentals to lean on, even if I was playing on auto-pilot? I should know better than to do the things I did that weekend.
Here’s my answer: bad practice makes bad habits.
Because the Regional Championship was the week right after that SCG, I had been playing an absurd amount of Magic. I was setting alarms just to wake up and play. I had no idea what I wanted to play, so I was just trying everything. I was playing multiple leagues and doing focused testing against the entire format’s gauntlet with my teammates. However, with as much as I played, quantity dwarfed quality. I would always start out with the intention of staying focused and playing mindfully, but as the day went on, I would inevitably find myself paying less and less attention to my games. By the end, MTGO would be on one monitor, and some random YouTube video playing on the other.

I wasn’t just wasting time here. What I was doing was worse. I was committing a ton of awful lines and concepts to memory. Here’s a moment in testing that really stood out to me: I was playing RB against my friend and testing teammate Jesse on Phoenix while our other friend and teammate Mason was listening in. I was super far ahead; all roads lead to Rome. I played a Sheoldred and passed, prompting a concession from Jesse, who immediately pointed out that I had lethal. I just needed to animate my Hive of the Eye Tyrant and attack. I replied with some ego soothing bullshit. “Yeah, but I also had lethal with the just play Sheroldred thing.” Nonetheless, those words made me take a step back. I remember thinking “What am I even doing? This can’t be useful or fair to my team. Why bother testing at all if I’m just going to play this fast and bad?” I messaged Mason, saying I just needed to slow down, to focus during testing, and that I can’t play well while in a call with multiple people. I’m not even sure that was the problem. There were a lot of match ups to test, with little time to test them all, so I felt a lot of pressure to just get all the work done. This isn’t the correct approach.

This whole experience reminds me of a time in my life where a younger me really wanted to be good at League of Legends. I got into the game in my late teens and got hooked pretty instantly. I played for hours a day, watched guides and pro players, and sought out coaching. I did everything that I understood would make me better at the game. After 2 seasons of playing the game and stagnating at the same elo I finally told myself “This season will be different. I’m hitting Diamond no matter what.” In my mind, all the good players were good because they played a ton, so If I played a ton I would have to get better. Only part of me understood that the quality of practice was important. For the most part, I thought skill was something that could be brute forced, willed into existence through enough practice. So, that season, I played an ungodly amount of League. I played all day, every day, queuing into somewhere between 12-15 games between waking up and going to sleep. By the end of the season, I had actually gone down in rank. In spite of what I perceived to be my best efforts, I had gotten worse at the game.  

At the time, this was a soul crushing. I had worked so hard, only to get worse. I realize now that I was playing so much that I never left myself any time for reflection. I just did the same thing every game over and over again, game after game. By the end of the year, the only thing I actually got good at was playing like a gold player. I would tell myself that I was trying to work on things in game, vision score, wave management, cs per minute etc. but I always seemed to lose sight of what those things were while actually playing. Instead of watching my VOD after a game to actually look for things I could be doing better, I would just queue up again. Playing the exact same way over and over only further ingraining those bad habits, making them that much harder to break.

So, mindlessly jamming games isn’t it. That much is obvious at this point. Here’s a few things I strongly encourage you to be mindful about during your practice so you can get more out of it and avoid stagnating as the Magic equivalent of hardstuck Gold:

1.
Think through your entire turn before taking a single game action. A lot of players get into the habit of thinking through their turns sequentially, taking game actions as they progress through their turn. They decide on their land drop more or less in a vacuum, then proceed to decide how combat will progress. This is a sure-fire way to take sub-optimal game actions and build bad habits. Make plays with intention, even if you’re unsure it’s the best line. If someone asks you why you did something in the game, you should be able to give them an answer. 

Earlier this week, I posted this puzzle on my Twitter. It’s not super difficult. You win by noticing that all of their Steam Vents are accounted for, and channeling Boseiju on their only untapped red source in your own draw step. What I really love about this situation is that it’s unintuitive. Mana denial isn’t what Boseiju is in the deck for- it’s rarely used in that way- and how often do you have to take an action in your own draw step? It’s the sort of thing that you’ll always miss if you’re just jamming games mindlessly. Beyond that, it’s the perfect example of why you should plan out your turn. You untap and play a land here? Now you’re in your main phase, and you can’t win anymore. 

I love that situation for the same reason I love the classic storm puzzle. (You win by cracking your fetch, countering the Past in Flames and casting Surgical Extraction targeting it with your fetch still on the stack.)

It's unintuitive. Most players aren’t thinking about using their fetch lands like this, but this out of the box thinking can often be the difference between winning and losing games.

2.
Watch your MTGO VODs. It’s great to be able to watch your games back and look for things you could have done better, so take advantage of it. Watch them yourself, watch them with your friends, either way, scour them for anything and everything you can improve upon. VOD review is the main thing I do with my coaching students, as it’s easily the best way to hone in on mistakes and find areas to improve play. When playing in paper, talk to your friends about your games and some of the harder turns. It’s really useful to get other players' perspectives on the decision points in your games. 

3.
Stop minimizing your mistakes for the sake of your ego. How many times have you noticed a mistake you’ve made only to say it didn’t matter? How often does the scoreboard cover up your bad decision? It’s great you were able to win that game, but why should your mistake matter less just because you got lucky and weren’t punished for it? Magic is a really hard game. You’re going to make mistakes and that’s okay. I’m not asking you to flog yourself over every mistake, though most Magic players do that from time to time. I’m no exception, so this is a “do as I say and not as I do” situation and can’t be done at all times - but it’s worth trying to keep in mind. 

At the very least, acknowledge mistakes. Come away with something you can do better. 

4.
Pay attention to what your opponents are doing. Stop treating your opponent’s turns as opportunities to tab out and check Twitter or whatever else might be attempting to ensnare your attention. If you’re trying to actively focus, I think you’ll find determining a range of cards your opponent is likely to have is easier than it might seem. Better yet, close all the distractions, besides maybe some background music. “It’s just a league, who cares,” you might respond; presumably, you do. That’s why you’re playing. If you want to just play the game as a fun leisure activity, that’s great, but don’t delude yourself into calling it practice. Be conscious of how too much of this can end up giving you bad habits, making you worse at the game.

5.
Guides and heuristics are useful tools, but that’s all they are, and all they should be. At SCG Philly, I boarded in every matchup exactly like the sideboard guide that was tucked in my deck box told me to, with little thought or consideration as to what cards my opponents showed me in game one. In Atlanta, however, I did the opposite. While I still had a sideboard guide to reference, I deviated from it constantly. I spent time thinking about how I wanted to approach the post board games, and I was rewarded for my decision to do so multiple times.

In one match against Gruul Vehicles, seeing my opponent was heavy on Abrades and Rending Volleys, I decided to board in my copies of Silence, despite our team deciding that Gruul wasn’t a Silence matchup. I won the match after Silencing my opponent after 4 turn cycles of him whittling down my life total with two 1/1s, too afraid of Greasefang to use any of his mana. After Silencing him, he laid down a hand of 3 Rending Volleys. Without Silence, I think that game would have been near impossible for me to win. 

I knew I was likely playing for a PT invite in the last round of the tournament. After splitting games 1 and 2, I picked up my deck for sideboarding. Knowing I’d have to cut some of these cards, I considered how many and what split of Satyr Wayfinders and Seasoned Hallowblades I wanted to leave in my deck. Both are enablers for your combo, each with their own upsides and downsides. My first instinct was to trim one of the two Hallowblades, but after thinking about it longer, I was scared I would be going too low on fodder for Eldritch Evolution, as this is one of the only matchups we’re leaving it in post-board. The game ended with me untapping with a Greasefang and a Seasoned Hallowblade in play, a Skysovereign in my yard, and a hand of land, Fatal Push, and Eldritch Evolution. My opponent was at 8 life with 2 Old-Growth Trolls in play (sort of poetic if you ask me). I thought for a second and saw the line. I cast Eldritch Evolution, sacrificing my Seasoned Hallowblade, and went and found the other one- the only thing in my deck able to crew Skysovereign this turn. Now with revolt enabled, I Fatal Pushed one of my opponent’s Old-Growth Trolls, and went to combat, triggering my Greasefang targeting the boat, and dealing 3 damage to the remaining Troll. I crewed it with the Hallowblade, turned it sideways along with my Greasefang, targeted the Troll once more, and cleared his last blocker, putting my opponent to -2.

With all of this on my mind before I went to the RC, I came into the tournament with one goal. It wasn’t to play perfectly, or not make any mistakes. My goal was that if someone was watching me play all day, and at any point they looked at me and said “Ashe, why did you do that?” I would have an answer for them. From round 1 to 13. I would have an answer. Daryl happened to be spectating one of my games in round 1. After the match I said to him “I think I played that game pretty tight.” And he replied “Actually, I think what you did on that last turn was pretty bad, I would have done this.” Realizing his line was probably a little better, this was discouraging to hear initially, but I was able to take solace in the knowledge that when pressed, I had a reasonable defense for why I chose to do what I did that turn. I still had a plan for how the next few turns would play out in my mind, and played towards executing it, even if his plan looked different than mine did. That feels a lot better than saying “Yeah, not really sure why I did that, guess I’m just bad.”

Keeping this goal in my mind at Atlanta, I was able to secure my first PT invite. There’s going to be a lot of prep work to be done before playing my first PT, but I can tell you one thing for sure: my process is going to look a lot different this time around.

Edited by: Dawn Delozier  & Cody Gravelle