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Theory Behind Magic: How to find your perfect teammate?

Being the very self-centred person that I am, let me first congratulate myself on getting 'promoted' into the role of a 'featured columnist' at MTGParadise.

What that means is that now I would write an article for the site at least once every month, get to have my picture stick on top of it and yes, still no pay (not that I was looking for any, that's why I have a day job).

At the moment I'm trying very hard to find a good picture of myself and people who knows me should know that the difficulty of this task rates right up there with trying to teach your girlfriend how to play magic.

One of my first tournament experiences was at Team Sealed last year where I went in on the day without knowing any of the players and ended up in a team with Dan Gow and Andrew in the MAD team.

Being the scrub that I was back then, I thought our team did pretty well coming 12th overall since Dan was the only good player in our team.

So this year, with my skill greatly improved and a much better understanding with the current environment, I'm determined to make a come back and winning should not be a dream if I could enlist the people I want to be in a team with.

Unlike all the other formats in Magic, Team Sealed actually requires you to sacrifice yourself for others if your team wants to win and you would actually feel a rare sense of comradeship when your find yourself cheering for your teammates in the deciding game.

These are all very strange experiences in a game where you often have to kick your friends out to make top eight and slaughter your brother to win that money in the PTQ.

Much like Urza enlisting the help of 8 other planeswalkers to destroy Phyrexia, soon you too will need the help of 2 other planewalkers to win that $1,500 worth of prize money if you don't already belong to a team.

Thus this article is created as a guide for all of us freelance players on how to find your perfect teammate written in a similar format like certain magazines where they teach you how to find a perfect date or such. Does she suck?

In team sealed the players are divided into 3 seats, usually with the best player sitting on the first and the crappiest on the third.

Some people maybe offended to sit on the third seat but in my modest opinion, it is always better to have teammates who are better players then you are in these situations.

Since that would mean that you would have someone to fall back on if you lose and one less burden to carry if you win.

Who cares which chair you sat on if you are $500 US richer? Has she done it before?

Personally, I think that experience in the format and major tournaments are as important as the level of skill.

Many times I have seen good players make stupid mistake during a tournament because of the pressure, and this pressure doubles in a team format because you have your team-mates to consider.

Also, if your team mates are not familiar with the cards in the current expansions, it is very likely that they would have many unpleasant surprises through out the day getting whipped by cards like Tangle, Ghitu Fire and explosive growth even when they thought everything was under control.

Can she show the old dog some new tricks? Most good Limited players know that combos are hard to break in this format because of the lack of answers.

For example, a simple Carven Harpy and Stormscape Battlemage combo can sometimes lock an opponent to death because on the colours Red and Black has instant removal to break it provided that you have the cards to do so.

If you are playing White/Blue/Green, this pretty much means scoop phase unless you already have very significant advantage on the board.

There are hundreds of little combos like this that is crap in Constructed, but locks in Limited and it would be to your great advantage that if you Team mates know a few tricks that you don't during deck construction. Who likes to be on top?

How many times have you been in a situation where you went out with a group of friends and can't decide what to have for dinner because all of them said, "I don't mind, we'll eat whatever" and urge the other same spineless friends to decide?

Since the cuisine "whatever" still hasn't been created despite of the popular demand, you often ended up with dining at McDonalds after an hour of not caring and shoulder shrugging.

I know that this is a poor attempt of being polite, but do you have an hour to spend constructing your deck?

That is why that one person in your group should take charge and break the ice of politeness among team members.

It is then that the team can all contribute ideas into deck construction and distribute the cards, colours and bombs fairly and efficiently among 3 decks.

Of course, this only applies if you don't know your team mate fairly well already, which usually happens if you pulled the team together within the month.

Is your bait large enough to reel in the fish?

Finally, you should reflect on your own qualities and what you have to offer to other players before approaching them.

Much like I don't expect Sarah Michelle Gellar to go out with me, you shouldn't expect really good players to be in a team with you unless you are a pretty good player yourself.

Don't set your standards too high when searching for teammates or you might find yourself without a team at all.

A big warm welcome our new editors Martin Kay and Morgan Elliot in MTGParadise, as the saying goes, we write it they fix it.

Even with micro-soft word's spell check, this job is harder then what most people think.

Best wishes Minga Wong
Art_memo@yahoo.com