Victor van den Broek
3/17/2003
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One word of warning before you start reading this article. It doesn't contain top secret Magic strategy tech. Instead, I tell some stories from how I got better, and how I see people around me get better at this game we all play. I hope it'll inspire you and put you in the right mindset to improve on your game. I also expect to get some comments about this article not being Premium content because it lacks concrete Magic Strategy. As a pre-emptive answer to that, I would like to say that the mindset with which you approach the game is much more important than whatever strategy you can read on the net. It's what you do with what you know that's important rather than just what you know.

Last weekend a good friend of mine, Jorryt van Hoof, made top 8 at a PTQ. While he didn't qualify, he called me to say I was right about 'the attitude thing'. I asked him to explain what he meant exactly, and he told me a story that I have heard a couple of times earlier. He started to notice he was slumping in his chair if things looked bad, or took an aggressive stance when he was winning. Instead, this PTQ he focused on how he looked at the game, always figuring there is a way to win it. He says that this is the reason he made top 8, along with having a good deck. He was winning games that he would've lost otherwise, or so he says. His attitude changed, and with it he made his top 8 for the season, leaving him relatively happy.

I had invited Jorryt, my brother who is just learning Magic, Jaap Brouwer and some other people to my place on Friday night. They are preparing for the Dutch Nationals Qualifiers that will be held here in March, and they asked me for some advice. The mindset of these people was that they wanted to learn something about the game that they didn't already know. While I don't know everything about it (by far even!), I do know more tricks than they do. They all played each other, with different decks, and I commented on their plays. I questioned them, discussed them, and taught them tricks with the deck they didn't know already. These people realize they are making mistakes and they have things to learn. That's why I am confident they all left as better Magic players then when they came.

I make mistakes as well, and there are people who teach me tricks and new insights in the game. In my direct surroundings there are a lot of Dutch pros who know things I don't, and I know some things they don't know. In addition to that a lot of pros gather on IRC to chat about general stuff and ask questions about draft picks, which sometimes lead to discussion about archetypes in draft et cetera. When I first joined that room, I barely qualified for Pro Tour Barcelona, and I learned a lot about drafting in general. Now, a year and a half later I feel like I am pretty good at it, but not an expert.

With regards to Constructed, I was rather bad at that for quite some time. I studied articles on the internet, but playtesting just wouldn't quite work out for me the way it should. Then when I was trying to qualify for Osaka Team Masters, I decided to give the Pro Tour a shot as well. Jeroen Remie gave me an outdated version of Miracle Gro, and I took it to a qualifier, not losing a single game in a very hostile environment. Everyone was running Oath of Druids with Powder Kegs and Propaganda's sideboard. There I learned that I like to play tempo oriented decks. It puts the pressure on the opponent and demands him to play flawless or succumb to the quick threats.

Because I had learned this, I also immediately realized it meant that I was bad at so many other archetypes. Control, Combo, Aggro, there was so much left to learn. And no doubt, as soon as I got better at playing control I would notice that there was even more to learn about it. This endless sea of things I didn't yet know, it kind of overwhelmed me. But by playing it safe for the important tournaments (playing tempo oriented control) while tuning the other archetypes during testing I managed to get the other forms of constructed to an acceptable level.

What triggered this change in view on the game for me wasn't as much suddenly winning a team PTQ. Jelger Wiegersma asked me if I wanted to team with him for PT NY 2001 two years ago. I gratefully accepted and together with Frank Karsten we went to PTQ after PTQ. We did reasonably well in the first two if memory serves, giving us a rating close to 1700, which was enough to qualify. Still, we went to another PTQ, wanting a definite slot. In the finals there we split with another team and gave them the slot, as we were sure to have enough rating by then, not losing a single match during the entire tournament. The TO was lazy though and didn't send in the tournament results until very late. Also, a German TO of one of the other PTQs neglected to send in the tournament for some obscure reason. In the end, the weekend before the ratings would be checked; we were still at 1680, with about 12-2-1 coming in at K32. If both TOs sent in their results too late, we would be left without a slot for PT NY. Not willing to take that risk, we went to the Dutch Team Nationals, where we had decided we would win 2 matches and drop, unless we had insane sealed decks. The latter was the case, and we went a total of 8-0, putting us in a position to make the run for Masters later that year.

From those team tournaments, and PT NY, I was triggered to improve my play even more. I made a mistake during round 6 of PT NY, eliminating us from contention for day 2. I already considered myself to be the worst player on that team, and it made me feel really bad to eliminate us from contention that way. I had to pick up my game and play much better in order to still be on that team next year. I did, and by the time Euros and Worlds came around, I had a lot of time to devote to Magic. It paid off, with good showing at Euros and also at Worlds, up until day 3. At day 3 I made another mistake. I lost faith in the playtesting we did, and chose to run the Colony's MBC deck rather than our own. That was the first mistake. I knew our own MBC deck, and I had constructed most of it and won an insane amount of matches with it in Trials and PTQs. The second mistake was to run MBC rather than UG Madness. UG Madness is a deck much closer to my heart, and chances of getting the 4-2 I needed for top 8 would've been much higher with that.

The point I'm trying to make is a hard one to actually get across. I hope this article, albeit rather vague, still conveys it. The point is, you make mistakes and you can improve on your game. This is true for many more people than currently realize that. If you do realize that, then you've made a big step towards getting better. Not all losses can be shoved off to bad luck, or bad matchups. After all, Kai has won a ton of Pro Tours, is going to become Pro Player of the Year for the third time, and has won a bunch of Grand Prix. He is not immune to bad luck, he wins by being better than the majority of competitors out there. Yet even Kai asks questions in that IRC channel. He doesn't know all the picks and has to learn a new format as well. By being open to other people's opinions, he keeps his game sharp. Try to learn a lesson from that.

For me, changing my attitude towards the game has improved my play immensely. Instead of making excuses when I lost, I tried to find what I could've done better. Who does it really help when you say "Oh I drew 4 spells and 10 land." You get rid of your frustration but no one wants to hear those stories, and I got bored of complaining about it. Sometimes you actually lose to bad luck, but you might as well keep it to yourself. Wish your opponent good luck for the rest of his matches instead of trying to make him feel bad for beating you.

A positive attitude towards Magic will improve your results. You will start learning from mistakes you make and you will start thinking about new possibilities. It's a slow process but it's a process in the right direction. Gradually you will get better, sometimes with a sudden leap to the next level. Try to surround yourself with people who are better than you, but don't leave old friends behind. You can teach them some new tricks just as well as you are learning new tricks from other people.

With that said, I am going to conclude the Getting Better series. I hope it was as much of a learning experience for you as it was for me to write it. Let me know if you find you've improved on your game play, or if you find out that you suddenly started winning more. Hopefully I will see some of my readers on the Pro Tour in the years to come!

Yours,

- Victor van den Broek