“When ahead, get more ahead” is my favorite piece of Starcraft 2 strategy I’ve picked up from watching the GSL. The GSL is a major Starcraft 2 tournament/league hosted in Korea and broadcast over the Internet. The matches and commentators are superb, so check it out if you like e-sports. This leads me nicely into today’s article; I want to talk about one aspect of strategy when playing Limited. I was chatting to a friend after the recent release event, and he mentioned someone losing a game he was winning because he played an additional creature. Most of the time, Limited games come down to tempo, and thus it is normally correct to use your mana efficiently and play out your creatures—but this got me thinking about the times when it is not correct to play your creatures, which led me to thinking that in Magic, it is not really about getting more ahead, but rather, “When ahead, stay ahead, but don’t do something that could result in you falling behind.” That’s very cryptic, but I hope you’ll see where I’m going with this by the end.

When you’re ahead in Limited, there are a number of fringe but relevant reasons not to put more creatures onto the board. First is the power of hidden information. If you have enough pressure on the board that your opponent will die in a few short turns if he doesn’t find some answers, you may want to hold on to that Grave Titan or Serra Angel. Sure, it will probably wrap the game up even faster (in one turn instead of two). But then your opponent will know that you have such a card in your deck and will be boarding answers to it for Game 2 or holding up his removal/counters even more to ensure he does not die to it. Of course, if he finds some answers, you are going to have to roll out your ace, but he is probably out of answers, and you at least tried to preserve the information at no real cost. The flip side of this is that by not playing the creature now, you lose some tempo, which might allow your opponent to recover. It is about assessing the board state and what his answers could be. For example, if my card in hand is a Sun Titan, and I am currently winning by beating in the air with a Skywinder Drake and a Stormfront Pegasus against a G/R deck, his answers are going to be (most likely) a creature with Reach or a burn spell. With Sun Titan in hand, I can be confident about winning this game; if he draws a Shock to kill one of my creatures, I can still beat for 2 and play Sun Titan to return the dead flyer. If he plays a Giant Spider, I can attack in for 2, losing my guy and then returning it with Sun Titan. Unless I have something particularly game-changing to return from my graveyard right now, I would rather stop my opponent from knowing about my Sun Titan. If my Sun Titan is instead a Serra Angel, the situation is different. Serra Angel is a card I would still not let my opponent know about, and if I play it out, I risk getting blown out by a top-decked Stingerfling Spider, as it will kill my Serra Angel and be able to efficiently block both my other two flyers—and now I will be behind. On the other hand, if he draws a Shock, my power on the board is now only 2, and a Giant Spider is going to stop both my guys attacking, whereas Serra Angel could still attack. In this situation, there is only one card that could leave me behind for playing my creature, but lots that will seriously cripple my tempo if I pass the turn without casting it, which could result in my losing the game. Therefore, I need to cast the Serra Angel in this situation in order to stay ahead.

A second reason for not casting creatures is so you don’t die to them. Again, this is assuming you are already ahead on the board, but if you have a mighty army and then play a big fatty that, if your opponent had it, would tie up your entire board, Mind Control is going to make you cry. If instead you carried on applying the beats and forced him to Mind Control to take one of your smaller creatures to stay alive, you can cast your Carnage Wurm and feel super-pleased with yourself for waiting. I suppose a lot of these strategies come down to greed. In this example, we are obviously being too greedy; we are trying to get more ahead, and therefore we end up behind.

This leads me nicely to my next point. When assessing if you are ahead enough to not play out your next threat, it’s important to consider your opponent’s outs to the current situation and whether you can preserve your lead. I want to take an example from a recent Standard match I played in a PTQ for a space in the Top 8 (so, you know, kind of an important place not to mess up). I was playing Tempered Steel (pre-M12). I was playing against U/W control. I lost the roll, and he opened with a Darkslick Shores and passed the turn. I played a Plains, a Memnite, and a Signal Pest, and shipped the turn back. Swamp and “go” from the other side. I played a second land, bashed for 2, and played another Pest. My opponent drew and passed the turn, missing a land drop. I bashed for 5. My opponent was now on 13 life and playing a deck with few creatures. I had a Memnite and a Porcelain Legionnaire in hand. Smelling blood, I played my creatures and passed the turn . . . and got decimated by a Black Sun's Zenith for 1. I lost that game, as I had nothing to continue my push with, and he played lands until Consecrated Sphinx. I was wrong to play the extra bodies, for a number of reasons. I had enough pressure on the board that he had to find some sort of response or he would just die in short order. If he found a point removal spell (that wasn’t Go for the Throat, and therefore unlikely), I could play another creature to keep on the pressure. He had missed a land drop, so as the control deck, he was already on the ropes. If he found that third land, he was going to play the Zenith to stay alive. He could not wait for extra value. Then I could put 4 more power on the board and keep up the pressure. However, realizing I was ahead, I had tried to get more ahead and had opened myself up to falling so far behind that I was dead. Given that he had a Zenith in hand, I might not have been able to win that game anyway, but I should have given myself a better chance than I did. If I had found a Tempered Steel, I could start playing out more guys with a bit more safety. I read an article recently that mentioned “missing” land drops to lure people into overextending into your Wrath effect. If my opponent did that, thumbs-up to him!

Wraths are less commonplace in Limited (well, now that we are out of Scars block, anyway). Playing around them at the cost of tempo is most often going to be wrong unless you know your opponent has one. In M12, you only have to worry about Day of Judgment. In Scars, you had to worry about twelve separate cards. Again, if you can afford to play around these sorts of effects, you should. If you look at your board and think, “The only way I can lose this is from a Wrath effect,” then do nothing. You want to hold on to additional creatures in your hand to replenish the board just in case. It is about assessing the pressure you are placing on your opponent and also how you are planning to win. If you have two Elite Vanguards and a Phantasmal Bear and your opponent is at 4 with three lands, I would play my Stormfront Pegasus, because although he might play Day of Judgment (unlikely), an AEther Adept is going to cost me enough tempo when it kills my Bear and trades with a Vanguard that he might stabilize against my aggro deck. But with Pegasus, it is Wrath or nothing. If I already had the Pegasus down, obviously I play nothing further. Only a Wrath is going to save my opponent now, and so additional creatures are superfluous and may well cost me the game. In a more controlling matchup, if I’m ahead on the board, I’m more inclined to not play creatures until my opponent deals with the current issues.

I want to finish with an excellent piece of psychological warfare and logic that I observed at my local release party from both players in a match. It was Game 3, and the board was well-established. One of the players casts a Rune-Scarred Demon, tutoring a card. The other player knows that Overrun is in the offending deck. Some quick math reveals that he will now have to play his Carnage Wurm, which he was holding to soak up enough damage to survive the scary sorcery. However, the tutored card was in fact Act of Treason, and he died to his own Wurm. This situation is why I love Magic. Two players made excellent decisions based on logic and previous information; it’s a shame one of them had to lose. Imagine a situation where the player with Overrun has not had to reveal that fact in a previous game—he will tutor the Overrun instead and win by the element of surprise. Of course, Overrun is one of the cards you rarely want to hold on to, but the power of information should not be underestimated. As an aside, he had already drawn his Overrun, so the situation was slightly academic, but I still love it.

I hope this has got you thinking about staying ahead in your Limited games.