Someone once told me that one of the best things an aspiring pro Magic player can do is learn from wins as well as losses. This past weekend, I cashed the third tournament of my Magic career—a Standard Preliminary Pro Tour Qualifier hosted by a local game store here in Seattle—and happy as I am with my results, I can’t stop thinking about one mistake I made during the Swiss.

Your opponent passes the turn to you; you exile a second Dragon with Outpost Siege on your upkeep and draw a land. It’s fairly obvious that you should play the second Dragon here—there’s no point in activating monstrosity for the Dragon in play, as your opponent has no cards in hand, and it will still trade profitably with Anafenza. Plus, why let a large threat that has protection from approximately eighty percent of your opponent’s creatures just vanish into the aether? Maelstrom Pulse isn’t legal in this format. You pay 5 mana and add another 4 power to your board.

Two Dragons are breathing down your opponent’s neck, but you can’t turn them loose now—you’re at 4 life, and the only card you have in hand is a land, so you’ll need to leave one back to block Anafenza if you expect to live another turn. But what about the second Dragon? Your opponent has no cards in hand, so he’s free to take out Sorin or start chipping away at your opponent’s life total. Or he could always stay behind with his buddy and block; you aren’t in a rush to close out the game, and Outpost Siege is sure to help you win the long game. (Main-decked enchantment removal is uncommon in Abzan Aggro builds, so it’s very unlikely that your opponent will be able to disrupt your card-advantage engine.)

Your opponent has given you no indication of what’s on top of his deck (no recent scries and nothing revealed from Courser of Kruphix), so you’re left to wonder what the odds are that the top card of your opponent’s deck could be detrimental to you. No creature means game over here, as none of Abzan’s creatures has haste, and you’re just out of Siege Rhino range. The only one-sided board wipe in Standard is the unpopular In Garruk's Wake, and the only removal spell in most Abzan Aggro decks that kills your Dragon is Hero's Downfall. What do you do? Do you attack or hold back?

Trusting Your Intuition

That’s precisely what happened to me at the PPTQ this weekend. I hesitated for a split second after casting the exiled Dragon and reexamined the board state. The only way I could lose the game, I realized, was if I attacked Sorin and my opponent ripped a Hero's Downfall for the Dragon I left back to block. But what were the odds of that? My opponent had spent two Downfalls already, so there were at most two left in his deck. We were well into the game at this point, so assuming that there were about forty cards left in my opponent’s deck (and that’s a conservative estimate), there was only a 5% chance that he could rip a Downfall for the win. I attacked Sorin with one Dragon, convinced that the odds were in my favor, and I felt ashamed when my opponent killed the other and swung for lethal with Anafenza.

I made the attack with the Stormbreath Dragon because I didn’t see a rational reason not to . . . but it’s possible I wasn’t examining the board state closely enough. If your visceral reaction isn’t enough to convince you to take a certain line, look for evidence that supports that reaction. I didn’t have to attack my opponent because I already had a dominant board state and a better late-game plan. I didn’t have to rush to take Sorin off the board either—blocking a white attacking creature with one of my Dragons wouldn’t cause my opponent to gain any life. Every turn I survived, I had two chances to draw answers to my opponent’s threats—and I had plenty of answers left. In retrospect, hunkering down made a lot more sense to me than making the attack.

Potential Problems

If you don’t play a lot of Standard, however, it may be difficult to tell exactly what your opponent has in hand. I was able to infer a lot about my opponent’s deck composition during my PPTQ match because I’ve played Abzan Aggro in Standard, and I also spend quite a bit of time studying decklists online. I knew that Abzan Aggro’s removal suite typically consists of Bile Blight, Abzan Charm, and Hero's Downfall—I ran a one-of Murderous Cut, but that doesn’t seem to be the norm anymore—and that even a surprise Valorous Stance wouldn’t destroy one of my Dragons. There is a certainly a downside to relying too heavily on stock lists for information, but I’ll save that for a future article.

It’s also entirely possible that no amount of practice and rationalization will make you feel comfortable going with your gut while playing Magic . . . and that’s perfectly fine. LSV even acknowledges this in his article: “This style just doesn’t work for some people, although everyone has to trust themselves to a certain extent,” he says. “Very slow, deliberate players are often that slow because they are thinking about every possibility, and refusing to take shortcuts.” Let’s return to the Stormbreath Dragon example from earlier. As it stands, we have an advantageous board position—our Dragons blank our opponent’s threats, and we have card advantage thanks to Outpost Siege—but our life total is too dangerously low to ignore. In such dire situations, a deliberate player will take care to consider every card an opponent might draw, including Hero's Downfall, and that player will probably resolve to keep the shields up. Even when you’re ahead, always ask yourself, “What might cause me to lose the game?” (Conversely, when you’re behind, always seek out ways to win.)

However you choose to play the game, play your best, and don’t make the same mistakes I made!