Every Time

As someone who grew into the game with a lot of these adages, I found this article to be particularly helpful.

Bolt the Bird is the one that has stuck with me but I haven't had to externalize the meaning of it in a long, long time. That is to say; one destroys the acceleration of the opponent's deck in order to force them to play on your terms.

But if destroying the acceleration doesn't do that, then there isn't any point is wasting resources there, as that forces you to play on theirs.

However, that second sentence rarely goes said.

On the other hand, I recently played a game against Lauriel where she had me down to one life while she was at sixteen-all she needed to do was draw a spell and the game was over. I didn't see a way out of it and was about to concede but she insisted I play on.

And I won that game. Which was the second time in as many months that this had happened.

There are a few interesting things about this for me-one of them is that when I concede in person, I am almost never incorrect to do so. The body language of my opponent often tells me I should move on. I don't have that knowledge online and I need to both play accordingly and pay attention to my own cues when playing in real space.

I am starting to wonder how often I challenge what I "know" about Magic and what baseline rules I really can keep in mind, in order to play a better game.