The Magic of Learning
Today I will be focusing on one of my favorite games of all time. Perhaps even number one. This is definitely the game I have played the longest. When I was young I loved the dragons and paladins and lore. Now that I am older I actually enjoy the mechanics of the game play itself. I still love the art and fantasy but the game takes on a different nature of joy. I play in large tournaments for competition. I believe I have learned the most from this game. Some of the smartest people I know play Magic: The Gathering and I believe there is a direct connection.
Most people simply call them Magic cards. Magic: The Gathering was created by one of the most influential game designers of all time. If you have never heard of Richard Garfield, I suggest you take a google. He is a mathematician and games man who has created some of the most (simply) complex and interesting gaming engines in existence. The very first game he created on a napkin a long time ago, however was Magic cards. The game plays a bit like a combination of chess and poker. Instead of your pieces being static on a board, you draw them from a 60 card deck. You also choose which pieces go in your deck. This means that two games are never the same. Your deck consists of many different types of cards, each with their own unique effects on the “board”. I used quotes around the “board” because it is actually imaginary, it is merely the space where you lay your cards down. It plays like poker in that you have hold cards, as does your opponent. You can gain an advantage through accumulating tiny bits of information and “putting your opponent on something”. You can also play in ways that make them think you have something, providing a bluffing element.
You can summon all manner of creatures (dragons, lions, lion people, lizards, lizard people, wizard's, lizard wizard people, etc… you get the point) to do your bidding. What is your bidding? You are what is known to be a planeswalker, battling other planeswalkers. Essentially you are playing a sort of powerful wizard-deity who can summon different monsters and spells from different planes. These planes are represented as different worlds, each with their own unique characteristics, creatures, and effects on the game. You can think of it as fantasy equivalent of a gun duel. Instead of cowboys you are two wizards slinging spells at each other until one of you falls.
Magic is a deckbuilding game and largely considered the first ever collectible card game. Deckbuilding games are great, but collectible usually means expensive. Unfortunately this means you have to pay for individual packs of cards to access different “spells” and “creatures” to include in your deck. It is now owned by wizards of the coast which is owned by Hasbro, a giant corporation. I could write a whole essay on how much this disappoints me, since the game is so good and I believe everyone could learn from it. Needless to say it can be expensive if you let it be. This expense may not be very much to get started, but at competitive levels there is a very “pay to win” feel. In this way it can be very addictive like a drug, easy to get started and learn, but always chasing the perfect deck and new strategies to win. One of the great things about Magic cards is they are backwards compatible, cards that are created in 2018 still work with cards that were created in 1996. The picture at the beginning of this writing is the back of a magic card and has not changed since the game was created in the early 90’s. This simple choice keeps a consistency throughout the cards and sets across time.
You and your opponent each start at 20 life points. After drawing seven cards and resolving mulligans (you can throw away your draw hand back to get 6 cards, then 5, then 4, etc..) you each begin casting spells and creatures in turn. The player who starts first chosen by a die roll (or in tournaments through seeding). If you lose a game you start the next game. Games are usually played in Matches of three. Each player can add creatures to the battlefield or use spells during their turn. Spells either target creatures on the board or the other player. Once the creatures are on the board they can attack your opponent for you, attempting to reduce your opponent's life total to 0. Once you do, you win. The rules are quite a bit more complicated then this, however I think you get the general picture. The intricacies are not what I am interested in this space. Today I am interested in what I have learned from this game. I have actually learned so much from this game I had to break it down into different sections.
Math
There is a lot of math involved with playing magic cards. Battling creatures against other creatures forces you to figure out who wins by checking their stats vs other stats. Keeping track of your life total with constant quick math (I will attack you for 4 …. OK .. 20 - 4 is 16) is a never ending task. There is also probability math as you are always trying to figure out what your chances of drawing certain cards are (well if there are 4 left in my deck and I have 43 cards left in my deck what are my chances?). You also have to figure out these odds in a more intricate manner when constructing your deck in the first place(if I put a full set of 4 of these in my deck what are the odds I draw them? If I cut this number to 3 how many less times do I draw them?). I know for a fact that I have a much greater sense of odds and probability from playing this game. Also the ability to quick add things to 10 comes very easy from years of repetition.
Arts & Imagination
I mean, look at some of these cards. They have some of the best art ever created printed on them. As a young boy the fantasy captured my imagination in a million different ways. They inspired me to read more fantasy books and challenged my own perceptions. “Well what if horses did have wings…?” Merely staring at the art made me dream of far off places, and think of the varying systems of life in these different universes. The art of these worlds also gives me a strong reference point for describing my own creations and universes. “It looks like the nightmare, but with blue wings.”
Language
First of all the game is made by geeks and there are Easter eggs everywhere. The example I just showed is actually a play on words. The Nightmare is a Mare (a horse) that flies through the night with flaming wings (one hell of a nightmare indeed!). As we are visual learners, it helps to “see” what a word is. It makes it much easier to remember. For instance I remember to this day what the word rancor means. I mean really know what it means, I don’t have to think about the word, all I do is remember this image:
I inherently know that rancor means “bitterness or resentfulness, especially when long-standing”, that’s the essence of the image. The way the card plays reinforces this. The number of words I learned through playing magic cards would be hard to measure, the impact on my language ability is not. Not only are you learning words, you learn those words in action. “I will apply rancor to my knight and attack you”. You are seeing the effects of rancor applied to a being and played out in front of you. Your creature is becoming more resentful and bitter and gets a bonus when attacking. The card also is returned to your hand when it is removed, reinforcing the “long standing” aspect. “Oh its when people get really mad at each other and it doesn’t go away. Rancorous. Check. Next. Do you know what triskaidekaphobia is? I do:
It’s the fear of the number 13 in case you didn’t look it up. Not only do you learn the word, this very card is designed to represent the feeling of it. If you take the time to investigate the card you will notice everything in it comes in the number 13. The stones on the fireplace, the blood smears etc. If your life total becomes 13 you lose the game, terrifying indeed! This game teaches language in a way few other things can. I have a Portuguese friend who moved here years ago. He already knew the cards and language in Portuguese, when he moved here he simply started playing them in English. To this day he tells me it made learning English so much easier. Merely listening to other English users play the game and cards he already knew allowed him to make the transition much easier. Truly powerful if you think about it. I spent a summer once trying to rosetta stone spanish, I should have just picked up some new cards instead.
Design
I mentioned previously that Magic was a deckbuilding game. At the time of this writing there is a pool of over 20,000 unique cards that you can create a 60 card deck with. The design possibilities are nearly infinite. The game has been around for almost 30 years and every couple of years people claim “Magic is dead, people broke it” and then you know what happens? People design different decks. They are forced to search through this giant library of cards for new solutions. Certain archetypes and strategies endure but the evolution never stops. Even in this age of the internet where someone can post something and everyone copies it, every big tournament there are always new decks that people have been brewing for months. As there are some limitations (60 card deck, no more than 4 of a single card) in what you can put into your deck, it really forces you to constrain your thought and cut to the heart of what is most effective at any given time. This thought about what others may be playing acts as another cerebral metagame - game. It's like a very high level of rock, paper, scissors. Another aspect of the design is that Magic is made up of a color pie that also represent certain personality traits. This gives you an additional level of capabilities that allow you to tailor your deck to your style. Aggressive, defensive. Spell heavy. Creature heavy. Direct damage. healing. The choices are all yours.
Critical Thinking
When I think of my ability to make decisions, I think of Magic cards. This game is very unique in that every game IS unique. You make an initial plan, you plan a couple turns ahead, and in an instant it all changes. Your opponent lays down one card that basically invalidates your entire strategy. Back to the drawing board. “Well NOW what are my chances of drawing my two cards left in my deck that take care of that….do I have anything that can draw me more cards to get there faster?....is there something else that I am missing completely? You are constantly inferring the probability, with constant changes thrown into the equation. Sometimes you have to get especially creative to win. “Well since I can no longer do my opponent damage, I will have to try to make them run out of cards before I do”. Since there are multiple different avenues to win, there is usually a way to get there. The more creative you are with your resources and cards, the greater your chance to win. I remember a story from one of my favorite pro players. He won a tournament with a deck that did not have the main card in it that actually finished off an opponent. He forgot the card and could not find another before he had to register his deck. He had to play the entire tournament AS IF the card were in his deck, in many cases having to hint to his opponents he was about to play it to get them to concede. SInce the opponents had seen variants of the deck, the assumption was always that he had this card. Why would he play this deck without the kill condition? No one called him on it. This is an extreme case, but one that illustrates the need to adapt on the fly. I’ve learned a lot about making decisions critically within this game. It’s not enough to have a plan, you have to be adaptable to win.
History & Mythology
A lot of the sets of Magic cards that have been created over the years are based on periods of time in our own human history. Many of the creatures model great leaders of past. Ambitious, graceful, powerful, beautiful, horrendous. Not only do the cards model certain “characters” of civilization, their strengths and weaknesses are on display. Once upon a time I was playing a friend with cards from the MTG set Amonkhet. This set is based on Egyptian history and lore. When discussing a certain card that includes Luxa (this worlds Nile river) we got on a tangent argument about the Nile river. I was certain it ran in a completely different direction than it does! I was wrong, but I learned something because of it. These impromptu lessons and reaffirmations of real world history, geography, and mythology happen all the time.
Equality & Meritocracy
While perhaps founded in male fantasy, Magic has done a lot over the years in promoting women and minorities as lead characters. The most powerful planeswalkers (the most powerful cards) in existence are women.
Trust me you want these ladies on your side. Liliana is one of my all time favorite cards, she’s a bad mamma jamma. I think this does much to promote confidence in young women that play. Wizards of the Coast has been lauded for hiring LGBT and trans judges over the years. Recently they started making characters that represent these under served demographics. Alesha is a warrior who identifies as a woman and was born a man. I also appreciate that it is not obvious that she is a trans woman, it is part of her history and lore. It is not a marketing ploy, they have woven in these stories into the universe. This seems to be a better approach to inclusiveness and understanding than I have seen in other games.
On a more subtle level, deck building is a purely meritocratic pursuit. You are choosing creatures from hundreds of different universes, and all manner of experiences, strengths and weaknesses. You are not necessarily choosing them just because you like dragons. You are choosing them based solely on their effects and in combination with other cards. You may be able to create a deck of all dragons that is really strong. But dragons are expensive, you may be run over by goblins before you ever get out even your first dragon. Chances are you are better building a deck that includes some goblins, some dwarves, some beasts, AND a dragon or two. You are usually a stronger team utilizing different types and blending them together. This universal team building activity intrinsically instills a level of meritocracy you would not be wise to before. You don’t care what type they are, only that they work well together to achieve an effect greater than they can on their own. With the way the game changes frequently, this also forces you to analyze and reanalyze various cards and types. What was strong yesterday is not necessarily strong today. A card that is printed tomorrow could cause a card that was printed ten years ago to all of a sudden be incredible. You can not make a determination in your head that “this is the best and always will be” which seems to be the underlying sentiment in anti meritocratic views.
