Don't be a Bitch

Imagine the following scenario:
You're playing zoo in a legacy grinder for a Grand Prix. In the second round, you open with a Wild Nacatl, and your opponent goes Underground Sea, Thoughtseize you, taking Lavamancer instead of Goyf. The rest of your hand is a bunch of blank removal or burn spells, so you have to make a decision.

What's your turn 2 play? The only creature you can throw out is the goyf, but the fact that your opponent led with an underground sea and took the 1 drop instead of the goyf would seem to indicate he has daze. Should you just pass the turn with no play?

Most of you should recognize this scenario from Droge's GP Columbus Report, in which his opponent didn't play the goyf in fear of a daze, so Kurtis got the free time walk. In reality, Kurtis simply couldn't beat the lavamancer with his deck, so he had to take it, and didn't have the daze, but his opponent had the fear. Let’s discuss why this play was terrible.

First off, I'll try to rationalize the play from the zoo player's perspective. All you've seen from your opponent is underground sea and thoughtseize (possibly a fetchland too, droge wasn't specific). Given what you know about the legacy format, this indicates a few possibilities for your opponent's deck.

1. Your opponent is playing some sort of fast combo deck like Tendrils, Doomsday, etc. and you're probably just dead on 2.
2. Your opponent is playing some slower combo deck like Reanimator, and likely has counterspell backup for the combo.
3. Your opponent is playing some multicolor grind you out control deck, and almost certainly has the daze.
4. Your opponent is playing some awful aggro deck that can't beat a Lavamancer.

If 1 is true, it doesn't matter what you do, you're dead. No play can stop you from dying on 2, or even 3, though playing the goyf gives you the best chance in case they fizzle.

If 2 is true, then it’s possible that your opponent has the daze, but not playing the goyf, and effectively time walking yourself is just as bad as having it be countered. You're still in a race to kill them before they combo, and you can't afford to just pass the turn.

If 3 is true, then obviously playing around the daze is correct, but I can't actually think of any 3 or 4 color control deck that wants to play thoughtseize on 1 vs. a Wild Nacatl. It’s possible that your opponent just kept a weak hand, but pretty unlikely.

If 4 is true, then you should play the goyf, since taking the lavamancer doesn't actually signal daze.

While I’ll admit that the majority of decks in legacy with underground sea and thoughtseize also should have daze, the fact remains that against most of those decks, you don't actually have the time to play around it. If they have it, they traded 1 for 1 with your best threat, but also set themselves back a land, and you still have a Wild Nacatl. If they don't, you might actually have a real chance to race a bad, slower combo deck, and have a pretty tough to beat board presence in a game 1 vs. control.

Don't be a bitch. Play the Goyf.

Far too often I see players who "have the fear" and choose to play around cards that their opponent might have in attempt to get max value out of all of their cards. They avoid getting blown out as much as possible and hope that while they're doing this, they don't just die.

Sure, maybe your opponent is a control master and always has the answers, plays them correctly, and you have to outplay them beautifully to win, but in all honesty, your opponent is probably just terrible. Against the vast majority of FNM, and even PTQ level players, if you keep throwing stuff at them while trying to not massively punt, they will die. If you sit down vs. someone in an event and you don't know who they are, they almost certainly are bad at magic. While that statement may seem harsh, understand that 99.9% of magic players are bad at magic. I'm bad at magic, you're bad at magic, and Level 4 Pro Ari Lax is terrible at magic. Even if you watch LSV's videos, he makes multiple mistakes in almost every match he plays. Magic is an extremely complicated game, and pretty much no one plays it well. So why do questions of "what's the correct play?" always assume that your opponent is intelligent? Start by assuming that your opponent has screwed up, or probably will again at some point. Then, instead of being a bitch and playing around something, just play your cards and kill them.

Travis Woo recently wrote an article on channelfireball (found at http://strategy.channelfireball.com/featured-articles/twoo-cents-seattle-rains-stone/), and while this article covered a lot of topics, I believe his most important topic involved trying to justify a mulligan decision (comically vs. Ari in GP Seattle). While I'm not going to take the time to go into specifics regarding the keep, his main point is that people are far too afraid of keeping 1 land, or 1 spell hands. If you ask a lot of people, they pretty much automatically say to mulligan these hands as if it’s a rule, but obviously it can't be correct to mulligan 100% of 1 landers. Travis states that the reason people do this is due to fear of embarrassment. It’s pretty embarrassing to miss your second land drop and ship the turn back to your opponent with a frown on your face.

Likewise, it’s pretty embarrassing to get completely blown out by some counterspell or answer that you could have easily played around, but your embarrassment has no impact on whether you're winning or losing the game. People tend to remember these extreme blowouts and emotional situations, while they forget about the dozens of times that their opponent just didn't have it and died.

Next time, instead of simply having the fear of the trick and playing around it, take the time to legitimately consider all the lines of play, their outcomes, and the actual probability that they have the answer.

I'd also like to mention that this game play mentality doesn't apply in all situations. Not every deck is capable of throwing resources at your opponent until they die. This is why I prefer to play decks with a lot of powerful effects, and a significant amount of redundancy in its threats. You can't simply pick up something like legacy counterbalance/top with a "can play spell=must play spell" mentality. There are formats where in order to be the best, you in fact do have to get the maximum value out of your cards, but I don't believe that standard right now is one of them.

So the next time you play in an FNM or a weekly standard event, don't be afraid to go all-in. Attack with your Hellcarver Demon, burn your opponent out with Lava Axes, just ask your opponent if they can beat it. They probably can't.
(Holy crap.  I added in so much white space.  -G)