Thoughts on Resource Management, by Fernando J. Bruno

Hello everybody and thank you for taking some time out of your busy (or not so busy) day to read my thoughts on this particular subject. Today we will be discussing resources. Magic: The Gathering, as you all should know, is a game of resources. This is why, among other reasons, the cost of playing the game has been drastically increasing over the past years; but we shall speak about that on the second half of this article. Now, resources is a prevalent theme/topic of the game because it is ever present, this article is meant to extrapolate in game resources to real world resources as a player, as well as serve as a “Pre-Release guide.” I do not intend to be super technical, but most points expressed here apply to all aspects of the game, though limited in particular (no pun intended). On to game concepts.

You're playing an Aggro deck versus a Control deck and you have committed all but one card to the board to try and kill your opponent before he/she can react. However you don't get there thanks to a well-timed “wrath effect” from your counterpart...feels terrible, doesn't it? Your opponent used a SINGLE CARD to wipe your board. This gives him the incredible advantage of having more cards in hand to deal with whatever it is you can still muster. This is why you here experienced veteran players say that the best three words on any card is “draw a card”, because it means YOU DON’T LOSE A CARD. Let’s imagine it’s a removal card with these three magical words attached to it. Your opponent loses a card, probably the turn it took him to play it and the presence the card gave him to the table (sucks to be him, huh?). With a single play, a single turn, and a single card your opponent put himself/herself in a winning position. So as you can see, Magic is a game of tradeoffs. Whenever you cast a spell you should ask yourself, “What am I getting out of casting this card? Should I save it for later? Is it going put me ahead on board? Am I just going lose this combo piece to whatever card it is he/she has in hand?" This rule of thumb will get you really ahead of the curve in all Magic formats, but is exceptionally important in draft, where most of the time picking more powerful effects is better than synergy.

Could you Doom Blade this face?

Resources are also the reason why good players win and bad players lose, despite luck. Yes, luck is a factor in most games of Magic, but is far from a factor when skill is not equal. Good players make good use of their resources, great players maximize their resources, and bad players utterly waste them. Doom Blade my Grizzly Bears during a first round draft match? Ok, that means you won’t have it to kill my Primeval titan. A good player saves his Doom Blade for when the time is right. When there is no other course of action more optimal than that. A Grizzly Bear can be killed by your blocking 3/3, but can your 3/3 kill his Primeval Titan, prevent him from thinning his deck, trample over your dudes, and ramp his mana? I didn’t think so… The best example of all is definitely creatures that do something when they enter the battlefield. If your creature kills another when it comes in, you are getting two effects in a single card! It can be a kill spell and a creature on the field (look at Nekrataal). So next time you’re drafting or just playing Magic, remember to make the most of your cards.

This takes us to the second part of the article, which some of you may consider a small rant, and it may well be, but it’s more a suggestion to the fine folks at Wizards of the Coast than anything else. Playing Magic, or better said, being a Magic player is also a game of resources. I’ve always thought it can be summarized in a simple equation: (practice + money) * skill = competitiveness. Now these specific variables can be represented by different things, but are summarized by the terms I used. Though you could substitute practice with play time or just time, you could substitute money with friends that lend you cards (but it’s still money, just theirs) and you could substitute skill with intellect, yet skill takes into consideration experience playing the game which helps considerably.

Now I’ll discuss the money variable, to make money you need time, right? Or at least most of us that are not born into it or get lucky on some lottery have to spend time to make it. So, making money puts a chink on our time, and if we don’t have adequate time to practice it makes spending our money on nice cards useless. Now if you’re smart enough, or skilled enough to be able to compensate for time lost while you make money to get your cards you still have the dilemma that it hurts to spend your hard-earned money on cardboard or digital data on an unknown server (I’m looking at you MTGO).

This is where both in-game resources and personal resources intertwine. Cards that do more for less are usually rare or mythic; which makes their supply lower and their demand higher. This is the 101 principle of economics: the more the supply, the cheaper it is; the less the demand, the cheaper it is. There is a correlation amongst both variables in this theory with price; the lower the supply of a good (or card) the higher the price--a negative correlation. Whereas the higher the demand, the higher the price--a positive correlation. This means that a low supply of rare and/or mythic PLAYABLE cards (because most of them are not, which is another factor to this problem) combined with a high demand for these same cards equals factors that inflate the price of a card exponentially.

Wizards has been trying to mitigate this effect with products such as Event Decks, Duel Decks and promos, but these attempts are feeble at best. The pressure to not print additional products from third party single card sellers is high, but I believe is not benefiting the general MTG community in the slightest. Wizards needs to print more playable cards in each set, as well as include higher amounts of rares and even mythics in special decks and/or other products at reasonable prices to make the game more accessible. While this may be an initial hit to these sellers, the players control the supply and demand of Magic, so it shall correct itself with time. Wizards has a great game in their hands, which is why it has prospered for over 20 years, but terrible administration hurts it immensely.

Now that that’s over with, I’d like to introduce myself. I am a 2nd year Law student at the University of Puerto Rico and have been an on and off Magic player since Mercadian Masques (1999, for those that make me feel old), I am also a student of economic subjects and an avid fan of games such as Magic. The reason I wrote this article is not only because I want this blog to progress, but because I also want the game I love so much to be accessible to all, not only financially, but also at a competitive level. I hope you enjoyed today’s reading and that it may be of some value to you all. Hopefully this will not be the last time I write for you guys.

Respectfully,
Fernando J. Bruno Ramírez de Arellano