Back in the 1980s, the famous cartoon G.I. Joe ruled the airwaves. At the end of each episode was a thirty-second public service announcement (PSA). The PSAs were directed at the children watching the show and included helpful safety tips, like what to do when your house is on fire and why you shouldn’t tell strangers that you’re home alone.

Basically it raised an entire generation on the belief that if you’re in trouble, you should wait for a Village People reject to come help you out, rather than doing anything on your own—because you’re just a kid, you can’t be trusted to act responsibly. It ended up always being a little awkward with a bunch of grown animated men watching children and lying in wait for them to get into a situation—any situation really—just so they could be the “saviors” and rescue them. But it was the ’80s; slap bracelets were cool.

Anyway, the ending was always the same: A kid would say, “Wow, thanks. And now we know.” And the G.I. Joe would shout the catchphrase line, “And knowing is half the battle.”

But of course information is more than half the battle when it comes to Magic. When designing your deck, you don’t have to know where you want it to go. Of course it helps, but sometimes you don’t find your deck’s identity until much later in the design process. It does help to know what cards are out there. Commander is harder than any other format out there to design decks properly for. Even though it shares roughly the same pool as Vintage and Legacy, those are much more competitive formats where players want the “best” cards they can get. Unless a new secret tech is found, most of the cards are “discovered” for those formats.

The great rogue deck-builder Conley Woods said in an interview once that when he’s looking over what to build for a tournament, he goes through and reads every card legal for that format. By knowing what’s out there, he can build these off-the-wall decks that everyone is surprised to come across because he’s not just building with the “best” cards.

Here’s the funny/ironic thing: Even though I can’t remember where I heard that, I know I did, which gives me that knowledge. Even the rough idea of that makes me more knowledgeable than I was without it. In this day of the Internet and all of the Magic communities throughout the world, ignorance is not bliss but rather just knowledge waiting to be explored.

There are over 12,000 unique Magic cards in existence, with around 1,000 new ones printed every year. While no one is expected to have memorized all of them, I do know most of them, or at least have a vague idea of what all of them are.

I was looking up cards for my Ghave, Guru of Spores Commander deck online. I knew there was a card with sacrificing that I could completely abuse with it. While I couldn’t remember what the card did exactly, I knew that it would fit in perfectly. In my mind, I could see the Black aura with the Tempest expansion symbol and Gerrard being forced into the corner by Commander Greven il-Vec. After some quick searching in magiccards.info, I came up with this card:

That card is fourteen years old. How many newer players are aware of its existence?

A friend of mine has recently taken up the game after kinda learning about it about six years ago. He’s loving Green, and is having a fantastic time playing the Duels of the Planeswalker 2012 game. (This game is almost perfect for newer players or people wanting to get back into the game. It allows them to get into the game and see how things work without overcomplicating them, similar to what Mark Rosewater said this week.) My friend said he’s having trouble with coming up against artifacts and enchantments and wants to know if there’s any way Green can handle them in a mass effect.

Remember: Ignorance isn’t bliss, just knowledge waiting to be explored.

Since he’s a newer player, I don’t expect him to have the vast wealth of information that I do about Magic. He’s eager to learn and is soaking up everything like a sponge, but shoving 12,000 cards down his throat just isn’t going to happen. And you can’t force knowledge down someone’s throat; there has to be a reason why that person wants or needs to acquire that piece of information. My friend still loves the Lucky Charms (Angel's Feather and their ilk), and it’s not my place to tell him that they’re not the best cards. He sees the drawback of Howling Mine (“My opponent gets to draw more cards, especially first, why should I play that?”), so I’m not worried about his growth in the intricacies of the game.

Back to the Green destruction issue. Someone who’s been playing in the past year could name both of those cards: Back to Nature and Creeping Corrosion (or for the older player, Tranquility). But he hasn’t been playing for the past year—more like the past few months—so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he wouldn’t know those cards. I don’t expect players who have been playing for the past five years to know such an obscure card as Sadistic Glee.

There are several things one can do if one doesn’t know something: do nothing, search it up, or ask someone. Doing nothing is obviously the poorest choice of the three. Searching it up can be one of the quicker ways to get information. The drawback is that you have to know a little bit about what you’re looking for. If you’re building a deck and don’t know what to add, you need something more than just a query search; that’s where the human element comes in.

You shouldn’t be afraid to ask questions when it comes to Magic. Again, 12,000 cards to worry about. When I look on any of the social-media sites—forums, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and even Google+—people are always asking for help with something. They don’t have the knowledge that other people do. It saddened me when Tom LaPille mentioned that most players don’t know the order of the sets released. I was hoping, believing, that most players did. But because of this, it completely altered my way of writing and interacting with the Magic community.

This is not to say that other players are dumb because don’t know this or that. Ignorance is not bliss, just knowledge waiting to be explored. They want a place to start—someone or something to guide them through this large pool of data. This is partially why I started the Highlander Collective; it can be used as a jumping-off point for deck-builders who want to expand their knowledge and understanding of the game. Sometimes, players use too much of a crutch when it comes to lists like that. Some of them are used to taking a list online, copying it, and taking it with them to FNM. I’m not-so-silently hoping that’s not the case here.

MagicCards.info is the main site that I visit when I want to look up cards. It’s just a simple database where I can search by almost anything I want (minus art) and I can find it. I prefer it to Gatherer, but that’s because I’ve been using it for so long that it’s hard to switch to a different way (well, the UI is better too, but that’s a personal preference). If you’re looking for a card but don’t know all of the information, or are trying to find a series of cards, it’s one of the better places to go online.

You should explore the Magic landscape, and you should ask questions. When someone’s looking through your deck saying you should remove this card and take out that card, ask him or her why. Don’t be satisfied with an answer like, “Because Chapin says this one is better.” Sure, an appeal to authority is always a nice fallacy when you can pull it off, but no one is learning anything. My friend asked if he should put in off-color Lucky Charms so he could gain life off other players’ spells. I asked him what happens if his opponent isn’t playing that color. Is it really worth the spot? He got that concept and moved on to other questions.

I’m always here to help in any way I can. You can find me on Twitter @MTGColorPie), and now on Google+ (gplus.to/MTGColorPie). I’m more than happy to answer questions when I can. But I’m not the only one out there; if you happen to find someone whose opinion you trust, ask it of him or her as well. Commander is one of those hard formats where not everyone has an answer, but everyone has an opinion. It’s still a growing format, and we’re all growing with it.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Gain as much information as you can. Because, you know what they say: “Knowing is half the battle.”