One thing that the MDV League, not to mention the community in general, was founded on, is sportsmanship. From the very beginning, Streetz has wanted this place to be the home of the Casual Player. While at many times, I have tried to make that a conveniently forgotten piece of information, I am reminded time and time again.

This article is intended to help you be a better sport, whether winning your games or losing.

Believe me, no one wants to be associated with you if you are a bad winner or a bad loser.

Thus far, there have been two tournaments completed (both Standard) and one nearing completion (Extended) and in all of the tournaments, there have been ‘poor sport flags’ being raised. I must admit that an instance of that was on my behalf when I complained about being mana screwed and losing because of it. Though I still insist that I am playing against two opponents every time I play a game, you and Magic Workstation (MWS). That is, however, a story for another time.

I am not writing this article to point fingers at anyone nor call anyone out for being wrong or being jerks. I want to educate you before this gets out of hand, as having one bad apple can spoil the bunch. As a Tournament Organizer (TO) I certainly have no problem throwing a Spike who ‘must win at all costs and can’t keep from spewing negativity out of his mouth’ clean out of tournaments that I run.

So if this article offends you, then good, you are most likely the one that needs to change your ways. Remember, this league is not about you, this league is about the community and growth of it.

Sportsmanship comes from the understanding of the game and knowing your place in that game. No one person is bigger than the game, and no one person is unbeatable. When you understand how humbling this game can be, you will understand that losing a game is really not that bad. On the other hand, with this same understanding, you will discover that you are only one mana screw away from your winning streak being snapped. I’d like to also point out something that I discovered a long time ago: It is not the wins that you learn from, it is the losses.

I’d like to you a story, ‘No Names Please…’ to give you an example of what I am talking about when I talk about being a bad sport. Again, not incriminating, just using a real life example and a stage to help you gain understanding on a few things. I think this is a real good scenario on helping people understand that being a good sport in a loss, and learning how to be a good metagamer can help you be a better player and have more fun in games. After all, it is much more fun winning a game than losing one.

In a recent tournament match, my opponent and I shuffled up our decks; rolled dice to determine that he would go first (obviously since I rarely win a dice roll… I should note here that I actually have three opponents in each game: You, MWS, and the dice… I digress).

Neither of us chose to Mulligan, so it starts off as a fair fight. We begin the match with…

Watery Grave (pay 2 life, untapping it > tapped > Putrid Imp (End Turn)

Now I will stop the game right here to tell you what I know. This is where metagaming begins. I knew from my research of the format while trying to decide what I wanted to play, that I would win this match. Around a month or more ago, when doing research on what were the top deck types and styles in Extended, I found that graveyard recursion was huge. Between Bidding and Dredge decks the graveyard was a huge bulls-eye if you wanted to win an Extended tournament. This is not a super-duper secret.

When I began constructing my deck, a MBC/Tog hybrid, I knew that I wanted to accomplish two main things: I wanted to dominate the game board, keeping opposing creatures off of it, and I wanted to hammer an opponent’s hand, filling up his graveyard and utilizing the raw power of Haunting Echoes to remove all of an opponent’s creatures and removal from the game, leaving an opponent searching for a method of dealing with an extremely large Psychatog attacking for lethal. My deck runs a complete set of Duress and Thoughtseize, as well as two Mind Sludges as means of getting the grave full so my two copies of Haunting Echoes can seal the deal.

In addition to this, I pack a complete set of Leyline of the Void in the side to help against graveyard decks plus a third copy of Haunting Echoes in there as well. You will never know when someone like me might come along and splash White or Green into their deck in order to side in a few copies of Disenchant or Naturalize to break up a Leyline.

Going back to the scenario at hand, when the Watery Grave became tapped, I fully expected a Thoughtseize. When the Putrid Imp hit the table, what I knew was very extensive. I knew that Putrid Imp is a very sub-optimal creature if you are playing Black creatures. Therefore either you are playing an Imp themed deck, which gives me roughly a zero percent chance of losing with my heavy creature removal, or you are intending to discard a lot of cards to get his threshold (+1/+1)… like cards with Dredge!!!

I know that I have a very good chance of losing game one if I don’t draw a main deck Echoes, but if I do, I sweep this match as I can easily aggressively mulligan into a Leyline of the Void and seal this deal in game two. I couldn't imagine someone being wise enough to bring in Naturalize for game two yet, as we had just begun the league and the competitiveness and metagaming were, most likely, at very low levels.

As game one rolled on, I was confirmed in what I was up against, a Dredge deck based on Bridge from Below, Ichorid, and Golgari Grave-Troll with a touch of Akroma reanimation. I get my head pounded in the game, but I do not reveal anything of my deck, as information is vital. I do as outlined above, I side in my Leylines and the extra copy of Haunting Echoes and at that time, remove my hand hate as the last thing I want to do is speed the process of getting his cards into the graveyard. I also add in three copies of Engineered Plague, since it slows down the beating process long enough for me to grab control of the game state.

In game two I Mulligan twice, hoping for a Void, but when it never appeared, I got scared about going down to four cards so I dealt with the two land, five card hand. I never saw the Leyline, and things got a little scary during game two. My deck was not cooperating much with land drops and useful spells, however I found myself in a situation where I had to rely on mathematics and dumb luck, which are never on my side. I found myself with a hand consisting of a fifth land and a Fact or Fiction. My opponent had just gone off during the current turn and threw around half of his deck into the grave. By my memory, he had around 29 cards in his library remaining and around 32 cards in the yard. My library held around 42 cards and I had not seen a Haunting Echoes yet, and by God this would be an excellent time to draw into one. With 42 cards left, I thought that with a Fact or Fiction, my chances of drawing one of the three would be very good. If you also add in my free draw for turn, I was looking at getting two of the top six cards in hand in order to be able to deal with the problem I had currently. Note that he did not have the kill in play; he merely had two Bridges in the graveyard. If he didn’t have a reanimation spell in hand, he could not kill me the next turn.

I played the Fact or Fiction at the end of his turn, and in dramatic fashion, the fifth card revealed was indeed Haunting Echoes. He set it aside in its own pile and I happily took the Echoes, throwing four other cards into the grave. I am not exactly sure how to do the math involved here, but I think I had close to a 15% chance of getting an Echoes in the top six cards. After playing the game for almost ever, you begin to get a feel for things.

I am not going to leave out the first sign of bad sportsmanship. When I revealed the Fact or Fiction cards, the last being Haunting Echoes, my opponent responded with, “gay”.

Very well.

I finished his turn, played my land and Echoed him for his deck. We then moved on to game three.

Again I aggressively mulliganed to five cards, this time I found a Leyline as well as two Engineered Plague. I figured that if he broke the Leyline, I could just put out the two Plagues and block the Zombie tokens. Note that the hand only had one land.

As the game began I tossed the Leyline into play. I then get to go the next say… four turns before drawing land number two. Then another four turns before land number three, where I could finally put out a Plague. By this time, I was getting slap happy from Imps, so I decided to limit my damage and named Imp for the Plague. Next turn he played a Narcomoeba, which I discovered is an Illusion, so I named the second Plague as Illusion. A few turns later he played an Ichorid, which I discovered is a one toughness Horror. I played my third Plague, which was named to be Horror. This provoked the response, “gay luck...seriously”. A little tension began to build, as from my story, you can see how well laid my plan has been. All of a sudden I was experiencing a phenomenon that I now know to be called ‘gay luck’. What exactly that means I don’t even want to venture to discover. Needless to say however our discussion went down hill from there…

Me: “skills my man”
Him: “not skillz, you pulled grave hate...anyone can do that”
Me: “its call metagaming”

Following this, I finally drew into a Psychatog and set him on the table. The following turn I attacked, with a Fact or Fiction I surge his potential damage into fatal and this response comes forth…

Him: “know what..im tired of this. this is crap you win”
Me: “concede?”
<System> Player Lost

The moral of this story is that you never know when the camera is rolling, and you will never know who you are playing. That fear alone should keep you on your toes. That however is a last ditch effort to keep you in check with your place in the community. However, there are a few other pieces of information that he should recognize before spouting his tongue:

In games two and three he began using Pithing Needle to block my Fetchlands, knowing that a control deck uses them a lot. I never complained as that was good Magic playing. It is exactly the same as me Plague blocking his creatures.

This was round three in a Swiss Round Robin tournament. The guy he was playing against was 2-0 and we were seated at table one. Did he really expect to be playing against someone who would be an easy cake walk?

It was his own arrogance that did not include Naturalize or Krosan Grip in his sideboard. He is playing a deck that was obviously going to attract graveyard hate. When it came, he had no answer to it and his weakness was fatally exposed. This is not the time to get upset. Deck registration ended about a month ago. He should have done his homework then. He should also be thanking the previous two players he faced for not doing their homework.

When it comes to being a player in a community, you have to know the people of the community. It only makes sense to figure out the tendencies of your opponents, figure out what they have played versus what they could play. This could help you out in your future sideboard choices or even your entire deck selection. Also, if you feel that you are not a top caliber player, and want to become one, it makes sense to become friendly with those players. Even if by osmosis you learn from these guys, it is easier than getting beat by those guys and getting frustrated and sounding silly afterwards. I am pretty certain that the fellow I played is not a homophobic moron. I would venture to say that he assumed from his past successes that he expected to walk over the field of players and when he finally met someone who was good enough to top him, he was angered and frustrated. Had he kept his mouth closed and just said, “Good Game” (gg) then most likely, this article never gets written. But I think this is an article that did need to be fleshed out.

At the present time, there are a group of players stepping forward as “The Guys to Beat”; guys like Death_by_Beebles, myself, Tresserhorn and even boiwithteeth (who just won Running Standard #3). In every community there are always those guys. In regards to those guys in your community, I must ask you a question: How did they get that label? It is because they are good. They put in the time needed to be, and remain, at the top. If you are not at that level and want to be at that level, please don’t let your emotions get to you. Losing to the guy on top is not a bad thing. Learn from your loss. Figure out what mistakes you made, what plays he made, and for heaven’s sake, stop thinking someone beat you because he had a good draw. I’d say most of the best draws are not so random if you really look at it, as most decks that offer a top deck have been set via tutoring, deck manipulation, mass card draw, etc. The guy knows his deck. He did not just make it yesterday, had no idea what you could be playing, and then was astonished to even know he had a Haunting Echoes in his deck.

Remember, he did put the card in that deck just for that situation. Was it dumb luck…? Or was it careful planning…?

Lastly, while it is great to get the label of “Guy to Beat”, it sucks to have the label, “Bad Sport”. Think about it.

cpn

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The Games People Play - Market & EDH.
More Evil Than Evil.
Pauper Chronicles: Top O' the Morningtide to You!
Sarpadian Empires, Vol VII: Foreword.
Words from the Streetz: Uncommon and Common Magical Treasures.
The Writers Guild: The Inside Scoop.