Why do you play Magic? Thoughts on Esper Charm, Slaughter Pact, etc

A few weeks ago, there was quite a bit of a dust-up around a play Cedric Phillips made involving Esper Charm. Cedric’s full version of the story is in his article here: . For those who don’t have SCG premium access and/or missed the original dust-up, the short version is that Cedric’s opponent accidentally misplayed his Esper Charm. He played it on Cedric’s end step, and said that he was targeting himself. It’s agreed by both him and Cedric that he thought he was declaring that he was going to draw two cards, however, the card only has one targeted mode, so by saying “targeting myself”, the judge Cedric called over agreed that he had to discard two cards instead.

Cedric’s play here stirred up a hornet’s nest, with the comment forums, twitter, and various blogs and other MTG writers all going around and around debating the merits of the play. I’m not going to try and resurrect that discussion – a lot of interesting and valid viewpoints were expressed, and I don’t want to restart any arguments about it. I’d just like to discuss the personal train of thought that incident has led me down since then.

My first reaction to the story was respect and admiration for Cedric – it’s a reminder to myself of how far I still have to go in this game that the possibility of Cedric’s play would never even have occurred to me before I heard the story. Just knowing a seldom played card that well and knowing the rules interactions so well that you could think of the play and stop your opponent to call the judge over before he even draws his cards – it’s a technically beautiful play and I love it.

I followed that up by briefly defending the play against calls of bad sportsmanship. In a tournament setting, the only requirement is that all players follow the rules, which includes a joint responsibility for enforcing the rules. In the same way that you’re required to remind your opponent to gain life if he forgets a Soul Warden trigger (but not required to do so if they miss a Firewalker trigger), you’re required to follow the rules, nothing more, nothing less. Cedric’s play kind of reminds me of Patrick Chapin’s Profane Command bluff, which is one of my all time favorite plays – looks fishy, but is actually perfectly technically correct. They’re not identical – Cedric is taking advantage of an opponent’s misunderstanding of the card, while Chapin was laying a carefully constructed and risky verbal snare. They are similar though, in that both are subtle plays based on a complicated and complete understanding of the rules. Cedric and his opponent weren’t playing at Friday Night Magic, they were playing in a competitive level tournament with prizes on the line. There’s nothing wrong with following the rules, which is all Cedric was doing. In fact, at that level, an argument could even be made that Cedric had no choice but do so (I don’t in fact believe that, but it still stands that it’s a possible line of interpretation).

So, after some initial consideration, I decided that I firmly believe Cedric did nothing wrong (and, in fact, actually did something rather cool). I then turned my thoughts to myself – in the abstract, I admire Cedric’s play, but how would I feel if he had done it to me? Would I have that same level of “oh, nice play, I can’t believe I set you up for that”, or would I get mad at him and be furious about it ruining my day? In the end, I can’t say for certain – I’d like to think that I would admire the play, internalize it and learn from it so that I don’t fall for it again, and move on to attempting to win the game despite my mistake. I don’t know if I’d pull that off or not, but I do know now that that’s how I want that situation to play out if it ever comes up, so I’ve internalized it and practiced it in my head. If I get badly outplayed, I want to pause for a moment, understand how I was out-played, then compliment my opponent, try to figure out how to avoid that in the future, and move on. Will I do that successfully when the situation comes up? I don’t know, but I hope so.

However, we can take this line of thought deeper. I started out asking if Cedric’s Esper Charm play was legal – there’s debate on the subject, but I think it is. Then we asked if Cedric’s play was “poor sportsmanship” – again, given the context, I think his play is perfectly fine. The next question turns internal – how would I react to having it done to me? I’m not sure, but I hope I’d react with class. These were all questions that were relatively easy for me to answer for myself. The next question I came up with though was more difficult to me. If I was in Cedric’s shoes, and saw the possibility to make that play, would I make it?

It’s a very interesting question – obviously, as I said earlier, I wouldn’t have thought to make the play myself, but still, very interesting. I went back and forth on this one for a while, but eventually decided that if I had the opportunity, I would rather clarify with my opponent whether he meant to draw or discard. Now why is that? I clearly think it’s a cool play, it’s not cheating or playing dirty, and I hope that I would feel admiration rather than resentment if my opponent did it to me. So why would I lean towards not making that play myself? I knew as soon as I asked myself the question that I wanted to give my opponent the chance to clarify what he meant, but the reason for that didn’t become clear to me for a while. The answer goes back to a story from a few months ago about Kenji Tsumura.

Apparently, playing to make day two of an Extended GP in overtime of game 3, Kenji’s opponent cast a Slaughter Pact. Kenji paused, got out a marker, and set it on top of his opponent’s deck so that his opponent would not forget to pay the Pact before drawing his card – essentially, Kenji was going out of his way to prevent his opponent from losing by making a rules mistake. When asked why he did it, Kenji replied that he wouldn’t want to win due to his opponent’s failure – if he were to win, he wanted it to be because he was outplaying his opponent when his opponent was at his best. Now, I can’t say exactly how Kenji would react to the Esper Charm play, or to some other plays I’m thinking of, but I do know that when his opponent cast Slaughter Pact, Kenji would react by putting a marker on his opponent’s deck. (As an aside, Paulo Vitor had a great moment in one of his match reports where he wins due to his opponent forgetting to pay for Slaughter Pact because "I am not Kenji" - nothing wrong with that - play to win, baby.)

Thinking about that, I came to a realization about why I play Magic. Saying I play it for fun is superficial – there’s more to it than just having a good time, and I also have to ask myself why it’s fun. It’s more than wanting to win, though I desperately want to win and I’m developing a real hatred for losing. The answer to that came to me this afternoon – I’ll go ahead and put it on a line of its own, because it’s an important realization for me.

I play Magic to test and increase my skill.

Now, each person is going to play Magic for their own reason. My reason above didn’t crystallize for me until today. My reason is not better or worse than your reason – we are not in the business of comparing reasons. My reason is just my reason. My reason is not shared by Cedric or PV – their reason, whatever it may be, is more directly focused on winning. This is good – they are exceptional players and, in my quest to test and improve my skill, I will continue to use them as role models and try to learn from their articles and their play. However, I will play differently from them in some ways because I play Magic for a different reason.

Since I play Magic to test and increase my skill, I should always pit myself against the best. If my opponent casts Slaughter Pact on my creature, I will put a die on top of their deck to remind them. If they cast Esper Charm targeting themselves, I will ask them if they mean they are targeting themselves to discard, or if they just mean they are invoking the draw two mode. If they miss a trigger on a Soul Warden, I will remind them (as all players should, since to do otherwise is cheating), but in addition, if they miss a trigger on a Dragon’s Claw or a Firewalker, I will also ask them if they would like to gain life, since I want to test myself against their best game.

I will play like this at Friday Night Magic, and I will also play like this at Nationals this Fall, which is going to be the biggest event of my young magic career. This will mean that I will lose more matches. This is okay though – I am playing for the long game and I am now going to be playing Magic (at any level) for the core reason I play Magic – to test and increase my skill.

Prepping for Nationals had been stressing me out lately because I was focused on winning. I’m well aware that I am currently less skilled than most of the players I will encounter there, especially any that I would run into if I made a good run at it. However, I feel calmer now. I can devote myself to increasing my skill before then, and I will. I still want to be U.S. Champ this year. But putting that kind of pressure on myself was counter-productive and was leeching away the fun of the game for me. It wasn’t until I revisited the Esper Charm/Slaughter Pact train of thought this afternoon that I was able to re-focus on why I play.

I’m more comfortable now and ready to move forward again with testing and practice, and I have a set of guidelines I will hold myself to that is going to be a higher priority for me than winning or losing. Pat Chapin got this focus by defining it to himself as the desire to play perfectly. That never quite jived for me, but perhaps it’s just a different way of phrasing it. Anyway, I feel like I know now again why I play Magic, and if Esper Charm like situations come up or I feel I’m not playing my best, all I have to do is ask myself “What Would Kenji Do?” It’s not for everyone, but right now, it’s for me.

How about you? Why do you play Magic? How would that affect your response to Esper Charm or Slaughter Pact plays?