Metagame : What does it mean?
Metagame. ‘The’ metagame. Terms that are often bandied about, but do we really know what they mean?
I stopped playing Magic for 6 years or so, the last set I saw was Weatherlight. Back then, I really had no idea about the term ‘metagame’. It was mentioned in the Duelist a little, but I didn’t really know what it meant. Last year I got back into Magic, and began researching it on the internet. The term popped up in plenty of articles and forums all over the place.
Has there ever been a word or term used so often that you begin to realise how to use it, but if someone asks you to give its definition, you can’t, you can only explain it in context? That is what ‘metagame’ was to me. After a while, I started using it in the forums. Here are a few examples of its use:
“The deck is good, but is no good in the current metagame with all the artifact hate.”
“Ravager Affinity is the deck to beat in the current metagame”.
“I like the idea of this rogue deck, but I don’t think it can contend with the tier 1 decks in the metagame”.
Sentences such as those can be common in the forums and articles abound on the internet. But it nagged me. What on earth was it? I knew it in context. But what did it mean without the context? So I went on a hunt for the meaning of the word ‘metagame’. I looked it up in my dictionary. No metagame. But there was the prefix meta- which my dictionary gives the meaning “over, beyond; also expressing change”. So I went searching older articles on the web, and found several on starcity games. While lots of articles talked about metagames relative to a certain time period or card pool, there were a few that looked a little closer at the term itself or metagames generally. Those articles were good reading. Then I checked dictionary.com which had a whole heap of answers for both meta- and game. Probably the best translation is ‘the game beyond the game’. It is the game that goes beyond the original game, or transcends it.
Then I had an epiphany. Wasn’t there an article in one of my really old Duelists about metagames? And wasn’t it by the one and only Richard Garfield, the original designer of Magic:The Gathering? And indeed, I only had to pick up 2 magazines before I found the article I was looking for. It was in Duelist #5 (Volume 2, Issue 2, no date to be found), and was found under Richard’s regular column, Lost In The Shuffle. It is a recommended read if you can get your hands on it.
I once heard a saying along the lines of, “If you can’t say it better yourself, simply use what has already been said”. So in my search for the definition of the term ‘metagame’, I was impressed by these 2 statements:
“When you play a number of games, not as ends unto themselves but as parts of a larger game, you are participating in a metagame” – Richard Garfield.
“The metagame is the game that exists in Magic beyond Magic itself. This game is both related to, yet independent, from the rules of Magic” – Piemaster, writer for starcity games, from an article entitled ‘How Do Metagames Work and How Can You Solve Them?
Richard discussed the possibility of some huge events in his article, which were based upon his research into metagaming. For example, having a team-based event, where teams were allocated a random pool of cards. Did they build 3 decks and each try to get points for the team? Did they build 1 really good deck so that one of the players had a consistent win record? With different events with different points value or bonuses (such as additional lands which were not given out at the start, or extra packs of cards) all running simultaneously, which ones do you choose to participate in? Maybe you want to send a really good deck to try and get some extra lands, allowing you to break it up into 3 decks with more consistent mana bases. Maybe there is an event running at the same time where the winner gets a Black Lotus and a Mox of their choice, which will not be run again at the weekend long event. Which one will you go for (remember, we are looking at metagaming here, not card values!)? Will you play 2 decks and have your third player sit out?
A format like the one above sounds like a blast; in fact, it has inspired me to design something more workable for stores wishing to run some different events (just need to commit it to paper, patience people). A format based on this concept truly captures the essence of metagaming. However, I believe that Richard has already achieved some complex metagames within the realms of Magic : The Gathering, on top of the other games that he has touched.
Firstly, before Magic Online, there was Shandalar. Some may remember it, for those who don’t know it, it was a single player Magic game that was released for the PC to be run on Windows 95. You could play usual duels (this was under old stacking rules, and with questionable AI, but hey, it’s a complex game) using preset decks or ones you built yourself. But there was also the Shandalar game. You started the game with some form of a sealed deck which you had to build into your first deck. You had a character which you moved around the map, and sometimes you would encounter creatures which would challenge you to a duel, and you would play a duel, with ante. Now, at the start of the game, you started your duels with 10 life. This is where the metagaming aspect kicks in. You could get mana links to cities which increased your starting life in each duel; to get the mana links you had to go on a quest, usually going to beat someone up with your deck. By beating opponents, you could win some of their cards. You could collect treasures from dungeons. And usually at the bottom of those dungeons was some big beastie with a nasty deck, but if you beat them you got the really good stuff, like Moxes. In some dungeons, your life losses carried over to the next duel until you completed the dungeon. Some dungeons would have enchantments constantly in place while you fought its denizens; for example, a black dungeon might have had a Bad Moon constantly in effect. There was a huge strategic element to that game, deciding which dungeons you would venture into, whether you would accept duels (sometimes you were forced regardless) and what cards you would buy or sell at bazaars (or whatever they were). When I got back into the game last year, I tried installing this again, alas I no longer have Windows 95 which it needs to play apparently. Some of my memories of the game might be slightly off, but that is certainly a close picture of what the game was about.
Secondly, is the Wizards Invitational. You get invited to play. You have to play Standard. You have to play Rotisserie Draft. You have to play Extended. You have to play 5-Color. Whatever the formats are, there are several that all count towards your final score (and you want to win don’t you? You get your face on a card! Woohoo!). So how do you prepare for this type of event? Is your Standard deck and play up to scratch? A bit rusty on Extended? Maybe you should practice Extended then. Reckon your constructed gaming is pretty tight? Maybe you should get some buddies and the latest set together and practice Rotisserie drafting. I think you get the idea. If you have a limited amount of time to practice before the event, which practice sessions are going to earn you extra points? Maybe 5-color is something you’ve never really played before, and the limited practice probably won’t help much either; maybe you’d be better off putting together a quick beatdown deck and focus your practice on something else that might squeeze an extra few points out of the tournament for you. (I’m sure most players invited to such an event are full time players and put in plenty of practice, but I’m sure you get the point).
Thirdly, is the DCI ranking systems. If you are ranked with the DCI, don’t you want to see your rank improve? Isn’t that a metagame? You are participating in Magic tournaments in the hope that you will affect your rank. And at the Pro level, the Rookie of the Year and Player of the Year Races probably mean a lot to those players. And I bet they are not just looking at the field in general. They will be keeping tabs on how the other players around them (ranking-wise) are performing and see where it places them. How many events do I have to participate in to go up in rank? Where do I have come in each tournament to get the relevant points? Who is directly below me, and what do they have to do to take my spot?
Each individual format has its own metagame; now we are heading into territory where the term in most commonly used. So you play in a tournament, it doesn’t matter what format, we’ll say its Standard. Other decks are out in force that annihilate your deck. So for the very next tournament, you build another deck that beats those decks. Why? Because you are playing in a larger game. You are trying to beat those decks before you even get to the tournament. You are playing long before you get there. You’re playing before you even build the deck; just the thought process of ‘what do I need to beat’ and ‘how can I do that with the available card pool’ is the beginning of the game (or rather the continuation of it).
So you build your new deck and go to the next tournament. You are confident. Then, you lose the first few rounds. The decks that beat you last time are nowhere in sight. In fact, it seems that the decks you are facing are engineered to specifically answer your deck! What happened? They thought an extra step ahead of you. They figured out what would beat the decks people played last time, and then went an extra step further, and designed decks to beat those decks.
Those last 2 paragraphs were quire simplified; the metagame for a given format will not be a simple measurement of how many steps in advance do you take, and there are certainly more than 2 deck types in each field. One of the hardest parts is predicting the field. If something overperformed last time, will there be more hate this time around that makes it implausible to use? Maybe with all that hate out there, there might be another chink in those decks armour that you can exploit?
Another aspect that can affect your metagame is the availability of cards. This is not as much of an issue now as it used to be. 5-proxy tournaments for Type 1 seem to be becoming the norm. But if they weren’t, there would be a distinct metagame shift there, as some people would simply not be able to compete, or have to build entirely different decks based on what cards are available to them.
There is much more room to explore in the realm of metagames, and I intend to do some more articles uncovering other aspects of this interesting term which is thrown about so often. So let us conclude:
Metagame – The game beyond the game, where each game is part of a larger game.
Metagaming – the action of taking part or being involved in a metagame.
Michael Howell
Forum Name : Bacchus
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