Smart, But Not TOO Smart

My friend Dan is very good at games.

He’s a grad student (actually, now, a doctoral student) in Math at BGSU, and his brain is naturally hardwired for math. This makes him very good at, say, playing probabilities in poker and other card games. With a 24-card euchre deck, for example, after a few hands in a round, he can pretty well guess what everyone else has in their hand as long as they’ve made mostly correct plays.

Dan’s downfall, though, is that he tries to be smarter than the game, and his psychology backfires on him.

Playing Uno one time he played a Wild Draw 4 and announced confidently, “Uno! Green!” Arnie, the player to my left drew four, and the play passed to me. I looked at Dan and said, “You don’t have green,” and played a green Skip to go directly to him.

Dan then drew a dozen or so cards before he got to a green and could play.

I knew he would do that because if you play a Wild Card before Uno, you clearly say the color you have, giving other people the opportunity to change it off of that color. Dan, being Dan, knew that we would do everything in our power to make it not green by the time it got back to him, so instead of waiting for one of four colors to come around, by saying green (thus increasing the possibility it would not be green) he was waiting for one of three.

Better odds you see.

Dan tried too hard.

I think I have that problem sometimes, especially when I play Magic against my girlfriend.

I have this theory that of the first three games of Coldsnap limited I play in a day, at least two of them will end up with me being mana screwed.

Case in point:

Last night (by the time you read this, it will actually have been two nights ago) my girlfriend and I opened the boosters we won from getting second in a Two-Headed Giant flight at the Coldsnap prerelease and played sealed deck limited with them. There were eight packs, so we each got four.

Remind me to tell you my experience with rare distribution after this.

I gave her some general guidelines—can be as small as 40 cards, you probably want between 16 and 18 lands, etc.—and let her go. She asked how many colors it should be, and I reply, “Oh, two or three. Two is better if you have enough good cards in those colors.”

My cards are terrible, but I do have Adarkar Valkyrie and and Void Maw as awesome bombs, so I decide to play black and white and splash red for some removal like Skred and Surging Flame. Apparently this is my downfall.

I have 18 lands in my deck. One of them is a Snow-Covered Island because it’s one of the three snow mana producing lands I got. I also have a Snow-Covered Swamp and Plains, four Mountains, six Plains, and five Swamps. It’s not a great mana base, I know, but it should at least be okay. I even have a Coldsteel Heart to help out if I get it.

First turn, I start off nicely with a Rimebound Dead and a second turn Snow-Covered Swamp to keep it alive. It’s all downhill from there. Later in the game I play a Chill to the Bone. Even though I play lands on the first four turns, I never see any white mana and stay alive only because I have a regenerating dude.

My girlfriend on the other hand, has 2/2 creatures on turns two and three, a Yeti on turn four, and that’s pretty much it. I deal her one damage and die with six white cards in my hand. I did not, however, have Martyr of Sands. It’s probably a reason why I died.

Next game, I have land drops out the wazoo in every color and dominate the entire game. I end by attacking with Void Maw for ten because my Adarkar Valkyrie has Gelid Shackles on it.

My girlfriend had some creatures out, and they were decent creatures, but that was it. I had a formidable force early and lots of them.

In the third game, I draw every red card in my deck but no Mountains and lose (again with Rimebound Dead holding the fort for as long as he can) to her attacking force of seven or eight creatures.

My girlfriend is clearly pleased and proud that she built her first Magic deck. “I built my first Magic deck!” she said excitedly.

“I know,” I said. “You did a good job too.”

“I just took all of the red cards and white cards and put them together,” she said.

D’oh.

Like Dan, I had tried to be smarter than the game. Two strong colors and a splashed third is good, right? Sure, but only if you get the mana to do all of them. Two strong colors is just better since you’re so much more likely to get everything you need, even if you have to play catch-up at some point.

My girlfriend is a good Magic card player, by which I mean, she can usually see uses for a card and play it as such. She doesn’t always see the big picture, though. (Like when I attacked with Void Maw once and she blocked with two creatures, which both died and would later give my Void Maw +4/+4). As such, I didn’t need to out-build her. I just needed to outplay her.

I was trying to play limited prerelease tournament-level Magic when I really needed to play casual, learner-level Magic and I got beyond myself.

Oh well. It’s something to keep in mind for next time. That and my girlfriend is exceedingly lucky and, unless she is too far in a hole to possibly crawl out of, she’ll topdeck an answer and go on to win.

She’s also pretty good at opening packs, which is good for me, because I still get to keep the cards and do what I want with them.

Anyway, so far I’ve gotten fifteen packs of Coldsnap (seven for the prerelease and eight from prizes) here are the rares. Tell me if you notice anything odd:

Thrumming Stone (Looking forward to trying this one out in some decks.)
Lovisa Coldeyes (Someone might want a Soldier, Barbarian or Berserker deck.)
Sunscour (Sweet, sell it like it’s hot!)
Sek’Kuar, Deathkeeper (Yay, three colors and ugly art to boot!)
Commandeer (Are you kidding?! I’ll try it out.)
Jester’s Scepter (Again, cool. I’ll try it out.)
Adarkar Valkyrie (Solid flyer. Useful ability. Might see some play.)
Void Maw (Solid. Not for me, but it’s solid.)
Scrying Sheets (Nice. Could be really, really good.)
Lovisa Coldeyes (She looks severe, but not severely good.)
Vexing Sphinx (Okay. Good blue beater. Not sure about the upkeep.)
Hibernation’s End (Eh. Not exciting, probably not worth much either.)
Adarkar Valkyrie (I’m not going to keep it, but it’s good enough to be desirable.)
Sek’Kuar, Deathkeeper (Uh… O-kay.)
Lovisa Coldeyes (Not a keeper. Dollar rare. Casual fodder.)

Did you get it?

Three of our rares were repeats! That means we got only twelve unique rares in fifteen packs! Wait, no, we only got eleven unique rares because we got three (3!) Lovisa Coldeyes! Augh, what the crap? The only one of Lovisa, Sek’Kuar, and the Valkyrie I’m okay with getting multiples of is the Valkyrie.

Sigh.

It’s just frustrating, especially since I don’t get packs very often.

We got one Lovisa at the prerelease and used her (mistakenly) in one of the decks. Then my girlfriend and I each pulled one out of the packs we used to make decks the other night. I didn’t even realize it until I was sorting the cards afterwards. I believe my exact words were, “Are you kidding?!” and then I scrambled to look through the cards to confirm my horrible suspicions.

I realize it can happen, and that it’s not even really too terribly unlikely but, oh, sad.

Anyway, if anybody wants those or any other Coldsnap cards, I’ll be up at the Hero Zone on Friday looking to trade. I need two more Rune Snags, three Jotun Grunts, and a Rite of Flame, and I got a stack this high [holds up fingers five inches apart] of good new stuff.

Including the beginnings of a strong Barbarian, Soldier, or Berserker deck!