I don’t think I’ve ever played another TCG where the saying “knowledge is power” had so much relevance. Games are won and lost by how much information you can gather about your opponent, his or her strategy, the cards he or she is holding, and how you put that knowledge to good use. For example, look at the problems that I presented last time. The solutions were entirely based on the information given to both you and, in the case of the first problem, your opponent. A lot of people sent me solutions to both the problems and the homework over the past couple of weeks, and there was one thing that stuck in my mind as I read them. A lot of the presented solutions were very wrong, primarily because they were written ignoring the information that was given and assuming things that are downright unreasonable. So this week, I’m going to talk about ways to gather information in-game, along with how to use that information to make good plays.

In our current Advanced format, Confiscation is the king of reconnaissance. Paying 1000 life points to use it allows you to see everything your opponent is currently packing and then get rid of one of his or her options. It’s an incredibly good card, and it was the focus of the homework problem I asked you to do last week. For those of you just joining me this week, the problem was this:

You’re playing a Counter Fairy deck and you’ve opened with a hand of Confiscation, Skelengel, Bountiful Artemis, Magic Drain, Negate Attack, and Forced Back. You activate Confiscation and see that your opponent is holding Zaborg the Thunder Monarch, Nobleman of Crossout, Confiscation, Cyber Dragon, and Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive. His next draw will be a trap card. Assuming that he will immediately activate Confiscation upon the start of his turn and do everything in his power to clear your field, what is your best opening move?

In this problem, the “best” opening move is based entirely off of what you discard from the opponent’s hand with Confiscation. I’ve told you that your opponent is going to do everything in his power to clear your field, and he’s going to start with playing his own Confiscation. You could take away his Confiscation with your own, but you’re able to set most of your hand and thus limit what he sees with his own Confiscation. It also wouldn’t do anything towards stopping him from doing any of the things he wants to do on his turn (i.e. clearing out your field). Thus we’d remove his Confiscation from the list of things to take away unless your intent is to set Skelengel and protect it. This, however, isn’t a recommended course of action. Why? The one card you could draw off of Skelengel on your next turn probably isn’t too exciting compared to the two or three that you will draw from Bountiful Artemis thanks to your opponent’s aggression.

Keeping all this in mind, here’s what I would do in this situation. I know that my opponent is going to try everything to clear my field and I know he’s going to fail, so I’ll remove his one defensive option, Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive. Dekoichi is the only card in his hand that I can’t immediately counter and draw a card off of, so it’s got to go. After I pitch Dekoichi, I activate Artemis and set Magic Drain, Forced Back, and Negate Attack. Then my opponent draws his trap card and activates Confiscation. I’ll Drain it and draw a card from Artemis which will probably cause him to pitch Nobleman of Crossout to give him a choice between Skelengel and whatever I draw. The new card will probably be discarded, and my opponent will summon Cyber Dragon. Now, if he attacks, I use Negate Attack and draw a card. He’ll then tribute for Zaborg and run into my Forced Back, which will draw me another card. If he doesn’t attack (opting to go straight to Zaborg), I still use Forced Back, draw a card, and still have a Negate Attack for later. In either case, I forced my opponent to use nearly his entire hand for no gain while I draw through my deck. Essentially, I accomplish everything that a Counter Fairy deck is supposed to accomplish.

Another valid move would be to immediately force the opponent on the defensive by pitching Cyber Dragon. Doing this would allow you to commit fewer cards to the board (no need for Negate Attack), but it also almost guarantees that he will get to see an extra card with Dekoichi before he futilely tributes it off for Zaborg. Personally, I prefer that the opponent not see that card, and thus I’d go for the first option. The only move I can see that’s well and truly wrong is discarding Zaborg from the opponent’s hand. This is really the only move you can make that makes one of your own cards dead to you in the situation. Forced Back won’t do you any good when he doesn’t need to normal summon with his Zaborg, and negating the flip summon of a Dekoichi isn’t exactly the best use of the counter trap. Even if you take away his Crossout (a less than stellar but still passable move), all of your cards are still useful and you’ll still be able to wreck your opponent’s plans. It’s just that in this particular instance, you need him to have the Zaborg in order to make the most of your cards.

Scoring for the Homework:

+5 points if you discarded anything other than Zaborg or Confiscation.

+2 points if you discarded Confiscation.

+5 points if you summoned Artemis and set all the traps.

+3 if you chose to discard Confiscation and then set Skelengel and all the traps.

Max Score: 10 points

Now, in that problem, I laid out everything you could possibly want to know with the exception of the trap card your opponent drew. Most of the time, things won’t be that easy. In a real game, you’re looking for every hint you can get your hands on in order to make the right plays. Simple things like remembering the card searched out by Sangan, the cards in the graveyard, and the most commonly played cards in today’s decks can help you out. You’ll also want to remember whether your opponent tends to play passively or aggressively. Generally you’ll pick up on this during the first game of your match, but if you happen to see part of that particular opponent’s previous match, you could gain an edge that way as well. Finally, if you’re playing against a “big name” player (someone who has seen some SJC Top 8s before), reading match coverage involving that player would give you an idea of what he or she is about. For example, if I were to play against Emon Ghaneian, I’d already know from watching many of his matches that he’s extremely conservative and places great importance on his overall card presence. Thus, the best course of action would be to play aggressively to knock him off balance, inflict a lot of damage fast, and force him to act outside of his general game plan. Try this problem to see how much information you can glean from a given scenario.

You’re in game 1 of a match (4-0, Round 5 of SJC Neighborhood of Make-Believe) against someone you’ve never heard of. We’ll call her Beth. The only offensive monsters you’ve seen Beth play so far are a single Cyber Dragon and Breaker the Magical Warrior. Breaker was removed from play by a Bottomless Trap Hole and the Cyber Dragon fell to a Hydrogeddon pumped up by Rush Recklessly. On your first turn, you used Nobleman of Crossout on your opponent’s set monster and found it to be Apprentice Magician. You’re playing a deck whose purpose is to flood the field with monsters that can pull more copies of themselves from the deck (Nimble Momonga, Hydrogeddon, Gravekeeper’s Spy) with a ton of monster removal to make sure your hits go through. At this point in the game, your field is a set Gravekeeper’s Spy, a set Magician of Faith, and one of your Hydrogeddon cards. The spells in your graveyard are Rush Recklessly, Smashing Ground, and Graceful Charity. Your opponent’s graveyard has a Smashing Ground, Graceful Charity, and Soul Exchange. You have no backfield and it’s your opponent’s turn. On your last turn she protected her only monster (a set Apprentice Magician) with a main-decked Threatening Roar). She flip summons her second Apprentice Magician and activates Creature Swap. You have one card (Zaborg) in hand to her two (both of which are unknown).

Based on the above scenario, answer the following questions:

Take some time to think about this one then come on back and we’ll discuss it . . .

The first question asks you to make a read on your opponent’s hand based on what she’s already played and current play trends. She’s using Creature Swap to send a face-up Apprentice Magician over to you with no offensive options on the table. This should be a signal that she’s planning to tribute whatever you give her for some high-level monster. The Soul Exchange in her graveyard is a huge giveaway that the monster she’s holding is a Monarch of some kind, but the question then becomes, which one? You don’t have any spells or traps set, so it’s safe to say that she isn’t planning on tributing for Mobius the Frost Monarch. Looking at current trends we can also safely rule out Granmarg the Rock Monarch, since it’s seen very little play in Top 8 decks. Now right there I made the assumption that my opponent has built her deck in a manner similar to that of recent SJC Top 8s. While it’s unfortunate to assume that your opponent here didn’t build her own deck, it’s also probably true. In most matches at the SJC level, it is reasonable to approximate a given opponent’s deck as the same as a previous Top 8 deck, provided you can remember which Top 8 deck it was. In this case we’re looking at a Monarch deck somewhere between Ryan Spicer’s Austin deck and Tristian Patillo’s Austin deck.

At this point we’ve narrowed her next likely play down to “Tribute for Zaborg” or “Tribute for Thestalos.” In fact, you could easily make the argument for either of them. You only have one card in hand, so a Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch here would leave you topdecking out of a bad spot. You also have a huge field presence, so Zaborg the Thunder Monarch would even things out in a big way in addition to dealing damage to you. Either answer is acceptable, but the one you chose here will affect how you answer later parts of the problem. Full marks on part A (5 points) for realizing that Beth probably has a Zaborg or a Thestalos, half credit if you felt she couldn’t possibly be that fortunate and that she only had a Cyber Dragon.

You can get part B pretty easily, regardless of whether or not you got part A correct. I’ve told you what spells are in her graveyard, so it’s pretty clear that Magician of Faith would be of great use to her. In fact, when she ends up attacking the Apprentice Magician, she’s almost certainly going to fetch her own Magician of Faith. Since she’s playing a Monarch control deck, it’s also likely that she’s got a pair of Gravekeeper’s Spy cards hiding somewhere in that deck to make absolutely sure she always has tribute bait. In fact, the chances of her having a Spy or two are a whole lot greater than the chance that she’s running a set of Hydrogeddon cards in her deck. Hydrogeddon is a very offense-oriented card, and doesn’t usually mix well with the very defense-oriented Apprentice Magician engine. Thus, the Hydrogeddon would be the least useful effect to let your opponent control. Take 5 points if you got it right.

For part C, the obvious answer is to give the opponent the one card whose effect won’t help her out under any reasonable situation: Hydrogeddon. However, it’s not the only valid choice for the situation. In fact, depending on which Monarch you think she has, the best play for this situation will vary. You know that regardless of which Monarch she summons, she’ll attack the face-up Apprentice Magician in order to claim its effect. The question is, what will you have on your next turn? If she drops Zaborg, you’re going to lose one of your face-down monsters. In that case, it’s a fifty-fifty shot between your Spy and your Magician of Faith. If you send one of those monsters over to the opponent, it becomes a sure thing that the other one will be destroyed. You want to keep your Magician of Faith alive at all costs because the best play on your next turn would be to flip the Magician, fetch Smashing Ground, tribute for Zaborg to destroy her set Spellcaster, then destroy Zaborg with Smashing Ground and attack. The best way to work towards that goal is to give her the Hydrogeddon and take your chances with her Zaborg.

Now, if you think she has Thestalos, your priorities change. In this case, you keep the two monsters you don’t send over with Creature Swap, but you have no Zaborg to help you out next turn. In this case, you need to keep the Magician of Faith around so that you can get Smashing Ground for the Thestalos next turn. Thus, your best play depends on what you think your opponent is going to fetch with the Apprentice Magician. Unfortunately, it’s probably going to be based on which monster you send over to her with Creature Swap. If you give her the Spy, she’ll probably fetch Old Vindictive Magician, whereas if you give her Hydrogeddon she’ll probably fetch Magician of Faith. Regardless of what you do, you’re in a tight spot here. That said, you have to decide whether your priority is to build your own field presence or stop the opponent from getting back a key spell like Graceful Charity. If you don’t want her to have the Graceful, give her Gravekeeper’s Spy. If you want to maximize the number of monsters on your side of the field and you don’t care about the Graceful, give her Hydrogeddon. You’ll get full credit (5 points) for either answer as long as your explanation is sufficient.

Finally, we get to part D. After parts A through C, this one should be very obvious. Your opponent is playing a Monarch-based deck, with an emphasis on depleting the opponent’s card presence with minimal investment and maneuvering. This is indicated by the Soul Exchange in her graveyard, which means she’s probably playing Brain Control as well, in addition to any other Soul Exchange cards in her deck. She’s also playing Creature Swap, which is another dead giveaway to the “minimal investment” part of the answer. We can also say that she’s probably teched her deck heavily against Cyber-Stein because of the main-decked Threatening Roar. Full credit (5 points) on this one if you got both parts of the answer; 4 points if you forgot about the Stein tech.

In this problem you were faced with a situation that had a good chance of becoming very unpleasant if you couldn’t figure out what your opponent was up to. However, if you were able to take away all the information presented, the actual chance of something really bad happening was only about 25%. In order to create a situation in which you really needed your next draw to help out, your opponent would need Zaborg as opposed to Thestalos (half chance) and then hit your Magician of Faith with its effect (half chance) for a total likelihood of one-quarter (25%) assuming that you played your cards right.

The scoring for the problem goes like this:

Part A:

+5 if you said Zaborg or Thestalos.

+2.5 if you said Cyber Dragon.

Part B:

+5 if you said Hydrogeddon.

Part C:

If you picked Zaborg in Part A, +5 for giving her Hydrogeddon.

If you picked Thestalos in Part A, +5 for giving her Gravekeeper’s Spy or Hydrogeddon as long as you explained your choice.

If you picked Cyber Dragon in Part A, +3 for giving her Hydrogeddon.

Part D:

+4 if you said that she wanted to minimize your overall card presence with minimal effort on her part.

+1 more if you also got that she was teched against Cyber-Stein.

Max Score: 20 points

Total Score:

1.      X/10

2.      Y/20

Grand Total: (X+Y)/30

If you got all 30 points, you probably already have a great handle on the current metagame. If you got between 20 and 30, that’s still excellent, but I’d definitely advise reading as many good articles on current metagame trends as you can in addition to your testing. If you got between 10 and 20 points I would recommend building and playing with a few of the Top 8 decks from the past few SJCs to get a feel for what most of your opponents are going to be playing. Know thy enemy, know thyself. If you scored less than 10 points, you’ll probably want to re-read the problems and solutions very carefully. There are some very tricky nuances to these situations, and if you’re new to high-level play they can definitely catch you off guard. Just make sure to take it slow, think things through, and don’t give up! I’ll be back again in a couple weeks for another lesson, but until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

HOMEWORK: