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Casual players often play within the same circle of gamers. They begin to know their opponents favourite decks, and this is where metagaming comes in. When you are metagaming a particular format, you are looking at a pool of cards and what you can do to rise above it. The same applies in a casual format. After a while, you know the decks, types of decks, or specific cards that your opponents like to play. For example, say your mate Bob asks you to come around tomorrow and play some games. You know that Bob plays green in all his decks for acceleration, and he likes to play big creatures. So you build a deck that has green hosers. Maybe you play Grab the Reins; by the time he plays the big stuff, you'll be able to steal one to block and kill them both, or ramp up enough mana to throw it at his face. Basically, prior to going to Bob's place, you build a deck that can beat the majority of his decks a majority of the time.

Let's take a real life example. My friend Ben stopped playing years ago; about a year ago we found out we had Magic in common, and he brought out some decks to play with. I've given him a bunch of common and uncommon cards since, but the decks are mostly the same. He has three main decks he plays with. His favourite and best is a blue/red Burning Bridges variant; he uses 2 Ensnaring Bridges and 4 Propaganda to slow me down, then uses red burn and 1/1 blue pingers while I can't attack; I usually die the turn Furnace of Rath comes out. The second deck is a mono-green Rabid Wombat deck, backed with a Killer Bees (that one killer bee in the deck kills me far more times than it should!) and a couple of Verdant Forces. The deck relies on a lot of enchantments to boost the Wombat (including Lure and Venom) and acceleration (Wild Growth/Overgrowth). The third deck is a sliver deck. It is rare light (come to think of it, it may not have any) but if he doesn't get color screwed it can come out of the gates quickly, often flying overhead for the win once Winged Sliver is out.

After several months of his decks rarely changing, I thought "Why don't I just build a deck that can beat all of them?" So to begin, what common elements did the decks have? The biggest common element was that they all had small creatures. Every creature in the blue/red deck were 1/1's. Rabid Wombat and Killer Bees were 0/1's, and the deck had some little elves as well. The slivers were 2/2 at best. Night of Soul's Betrayal looks like a shoe-in, plus there are plenty of other ways to deal with weenies. Echoing Decay, Pyroclasm, Subterranean Spiritand Hideous Laughter are a few other options.

What were the key strategies that I had to beat that the decks did not have in common? Blue/Red doesn't want me to attack. Maybe I can make Ensnaring Bridge and Propaganda dead cards by not winning through the attack phase. The Wombat deck attacks with a big fat creature with lots of enchantments on it; I could get rid of mass enchantments, which also does away with that deck's accelerants. The sliver deck runs only creatures, minus a couple of Disenchants and Reprisals for big creatures and some Darksteel Ingots which aren't worth bothering about, being indestructible.

Well, I guess I could just run Skullclamp Affinity, being casual and all, I'm sure that would do the trick. How about a mono-black deck, something like:

Night of Soul's Betrayal will take out or neuter a lot of creatures (including Verdant Force tokens). Echoing Decay is additional back-up against multiple pingers or slivers of the same name, and Barter effectively does the same. The deck can win by smashing with Kokusho, and playing another Kokusho to happily die from the legend rule for a win. Against Ensnaring Bridge, Underworld Dreams can be a kill card, coupled with sending Kokusho to the graveyard via another Kokusho, or with Barter in Blood. This can be backed up by Drain Life and Consume Spirit, which can also take out some of the bigger creatures in the green deck. Diabolic Edict can help get rid of a lonely Wombat, or the Plated Slagwurm that lurks in the green deck. Maybe some card draw wouldn't go astray, but the creature kill cards should net card advantage anyway.

So I've built a deck that seems like it could win far more games than it loses to those 3 decks that he often plays. There are a few cards there that I don't have, which I could either buy, or change the deck slightly while still having the same impact. Will I do either of those things?

No. I will not. Now that we've gone through the exercise of metagaming against your opponents and designing a deck to beat them, I will give you my reasons why not to do it. In the above example, I know the decks, and mine and Ben's relative playing skill. At the moment, our win rate is probably equal (usually because the Johnny in me keeps trying to pull off quirky combos). If I built the mono-black deck above, I imagine, given that my playing skill is higher than Ben's, that I will smash his decks. I will win a lot of those games. My guess is over 80% (perhaps slightly less against blue/red but only because of 2 Null Brooch).

Ben is a truly casual player. He hasn't purchased cards in years. While I give him commons and a few uncommons to maybe shake things up a bit, he's at a point (and has been for years) where he isn't interested in investing money in the game (although he did buy 2 Plated Slagwurms for the green deck, so I tell a lie). So I could build the deck, and smash him to pieces. But my fun would probably be short lived. I don't think it would take long for Ben to become annoyed at how poor his decks are performing, or more at me for exploiting their weaknesses and using my larger card pool to pummel him into submission. As I am Ben's only gaming partner, I would probably end up turning him away from the game entirely if I continued down this path.

As a corollary, before I pondered metagaming Ben, I did actually build a deck to beat his. However, it was more in the vein of "I know I can build a better blue/red deck with pingers". So I built it, leaving out the counters, Ensnaring Bridge and Propaganda tricks (knowing I would make Ben's copies of those cards dead if he played his blue/red deck), threw in a few extra pingers, Blue and Red Hondens, a few other bits and pieces and went from there. I played the deck 3 times against Ben. It won all 3 times, and the way the games played out, it appeared it would be quite good against any of Ben's decks. I took the deck home and disassembled it.

Why? A couple of reasons. Number one, it is a habit of mine; I love building decks, I build them so often that sometimes I can't be bothered keeping the others. Second, I did not want Ben to think I was trying to one-up him and build a better deck (I had joked about it previously), or otherwise make him feel that his card pool or deck building skills were inferior. Third, I like close games. I love the games where you know an intricate blocking choice, which target to choose, or which spell to play will either mean your death or your opponent's next turn. This deck would start controlling any of Ben's decks quickly due to their reliance on creatures, and there was no way those decks could deal me enough damage early to make those games feel close. I would probably have to keep rather bad hands or have very poor draws for that to happen.

So why the hell am I writing an article on metagaming my friends if I don't want you to do it? Well actually, I do want you to metagame your friends, but in more ways than one. Let's look at the 'game beyond the game' definition. Apart from the individual games, you are playing a series of games that are interconnected. What connects those games is the feelings of fun, joy, discovery, excitement and what-have-you that you feel during a session of Magic. Figure out what you and your friends enjoy about Magic, and play into that 'metagame'. If you are going to metagame your friends' card pools, keep this larger, vastly more meaningful metagame in mind.

How much do you have to win to feel good about the game? Or your opponent? In a casual environment, I would say anything more than about 2/3 of the time might be too much, but you will have to decide that based on your experience with your friends. So sure, figure out how they like to win. Maybe rather than completely wrecking their strategies, tone it down a little. For example, I could adjust the black deck earlier in the article to only have one copy of Night of Soul's Betrayal; it will have a big impact on the games when it comes out, but it won't see play every game. Throw in some subtle defensive measures rather than putting in some 'vasectomy' tools. Find ways to adjust your existing decks to deal with their strategies without having to really change your own.

So yes, metagame your friends. But remember that in a casual environment, they probably want to get the same thing you do out of the game: fun. Work together to make it happen for everyone you play with, and enjoy your games!

Michael Howell
'Bacchus' on the forums