Competitive Mindset #1 - The Little Things

I had a match today that I felt compelled to write about because it had a lot of depth that I think all players can learn from. Let's talk about the match first set up first.

I was presented with a back to basic, no neutral, low mana construction constraint. When I see back to basic I have a hard time going with anything other than magic. Without a single ability I can guarantee that melee monsters will only attack in the first row and ranged attackers can only attack in the back row. Magic attackers can attack from all positions. The big counters to magic are all abilites as well in terms of reflect and void and those cannot be played.

No neutral usually plays against my decision to play magic because I don't own many cards outside of the starters. Two of the four magic attackers in the basic water magic spam deck are neutral. This is where the low manna helped swing the decision back to playing magic spam cause I could still round out a deck with as many magic attackers as you can get.

So all these things considered I went magic spam and knew with relative certainty that if my opponent chose ANYTHING else I was going to win. This is the first point you can check me on in comments below. If you can think of something different let us know, so we can grow together (steel sharpens steel)

As predicted my opponent went with the same play line except he is playing a $50 card (Djinn Oshannus) that I do not own. Most players would look at this and feel discouraged. Some may get tilted and think "this game is pay to win" or "all you need is money not skill". Let me remind everyone that this is a trading card game (TCG). Compare this to ANY physical TCG you will find the most successful decks (the ones that win) have expensive cards in them. Here is the big take away and why every spinterlands player is blessed to have found this game:

YOU CANNOT "EARN" A CARD IN A PHYSICAL TCG

I will never approach these types of matches from the prospective of ONLY losing because someone spent more money then me. It may be the root cause (as is this case) but it doesn't mean you don't have something to learn. I will eventually own these cards and when that time comes and money doesn't seperate us then its only skill and that skill can often be expressed in the little things.

The little thing you can see above if you didn't see it out the gate is positioning. I carefully constructed my lineup knowing that my tank was slow (1 speed) and after putting my lineup together I had 1 manna unused. Since my tank was going to be one of the last monsters to perform an action in the turn I knew that my bird could absorb the first hit from a monster and die allowing my tank to move into first position and still attack in the first round. My opponent put his bird in the back which serves zero function in a back to basic rule set.

I come away from this match encouraged because I know I sat down to the table and evaluated the rules and set an optimal line up. My opponent did not which means that when I own all the cards, I will be the better player.

READER HELP ME

Thank you for reading my blog and I hope you took something away for yourself. If you could follow me and give this blog a heart I would greatly appreciate it. I am also checking out all profiles that interact with my posts and following them back. One last thing; can you help me name the event of getting beat by someone that has spent more money than you? Looking for something funny but I can't think of anything right now. Let me know in the comments (like "getting whaled on" or something).