Zen, and the Art of "Yes, And..."

We Magic players are a strange bunch. On the one hand, we’re clamoring for all things new and exciting, and on the other, every time Wizards makes a change, we rise up like an angry mob. 

R&D must find it very frustrating.

Recently, Wizards announced their first One Million Dollar prize pool, and it’s for an Arena Invitational, with a new and unusual format - Duo Standard. Yes, apparently it’s very similar to something Hearthstone does. And, apparently, it’s also going to be in regular Arena, something called Arena Standard - I guess. They were rather nonspecific in the article. 

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/and-mtg-arena-2019-01-31

But now, we Old-School Tabletoppers must come to terms with reality. Arena is not tabletop Magic. 

Adjusting to that paradigm is something the community still struggles with, I think. Arena shares a heritage with tabletop Magic, and there certainly is some space that both games share, but there are also areas where they clearly diverge. Because Arena, while not is its own game, is in many ways its own format. I think there’s a tension here that people who are new to Magic through Arena might not be experiencing. 

Tabletop Magic tournaments, especially in the competitive scene have always featured Best of Three events, with sideboarding. It’s an integral part of the game, and it’s what makes a diversity of decks and strategies possible. It reduces the chances of just being swept by a bad match up. It also adds a considerable amount of time to an event, as players must make sideboard decisions, which aren’t always easy or obvious. 

But the digital realm is a different animal, and life moves faster there. 

One of the really fantastic parts of Arena is how you can play at your own pace, in your own time without being chained to your computer. If you’ve ever drafted on MTGO before Leagues, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. You were absolutely committing 4-6 hours of your life to that event. It could be a grind with lots of “hurry up and wait” as you wait for rounds to complete after you’ve finished yours. But in Arena, you don’t even have to wait for the other “drafters” to make their selections. You can even start picking cards on one day, and finish the next. That freedom is exhilarating. 

Arena, from the start, was never focused on the tabletop player base. Arena was and is intended to be Wizards’ tool to thrust itself into the eSports market. The online world of CCGs and competitive CCGs is different from the world of tabletop gaming, and it’s different in a generational kind of way. Magic is the progenitor of an entire genre of gaming. Not too many games get to say that. It will always have that position of prestige. But it’s also saddled with some archaic attributes which are foundational to the structure of the game. Digital CCGs like Hearthstone have advanced past Magic in some ways. 

One of those generational differences comes in how people “consume” the game. Digital gaming of this sort is quite frequently done on mobile devices, where quick matches are played while commuting, or while waiting for an appointment, if you just have a little time to kill. This different way to game lends itself, almost exclusively, to Best of One. At this point, the number of Best of One matches played on Arena VASTLY exceeds the number of Best of Three, by huge margins. 

I have to admit here, I’m part of that older generation of Magic players. 

My first reaction to hearing about a major tournament that’s being played with no sideboards was - SACRILEGE! What utter nonsense! Who ever heard of such a thing? That sounds like an unimaginably miserable experience! Kids these days and their digital gaming! Why in my day we suffered the paper cuts of *real* gamers! We were out on the playground getting fresh air and sunshine as we ground our cards against the blacktop! 

But time stands still for no card flopper, and that’s OK. The Good Old Metas weren’t always good, and Tomorrow’s Formats aren’t as bad as they seem (with apologies to Billy). 

There’s a rule in Improv called “Yes, and…” It suggests that a participant should accept what another participant has stated ("yes") and then expand on that line of thinking ("and"). For us First Gen (Dominarian), or even Second Gen (Ravnican) Magic players, I think “Yes, and…” is the way to go. We’re NOT losing the things we love about Tabletop Magic. We’re still going to have big tournaments like GPs and SCG events. We’re still going to have FNMs. And we’re still going to have Sideboards and Best of Three matches. AND, we’re going to have all the fun and faster-paced gameplay of Arena. We have the best of both worlds. 

All that being said, I found one thing in this article disquieting. 

“It also removes a huge barrier to entry from competitive play, and on MTG Arena we want as many people participating in the process and engaged in the events as we can muster. Sideboarding solves many problems, but it does so with the addition of a process that is challenging to understand and master.”

“Challenging to Understand”? 

If there’s a flier that’s giving you problems, you board in your Plummet. If there’s an artifact that’s giving you problems, you board in Naturalize. If your opponent is too aggressive, you board in things to slow them down. If they’re very controlling, you board to be more aggressive. The concept is not difficult to understand. Yes it’s challenging to master, but that applies to the entire game. And is it really any more challenging to master than swapping into an entirely different deck between games? At least with Sideboarding, you have some idea of which deck you’re playing against in each subsequent game. 

Wizards has been accused many times over the years of trying to “dumb down” Magic. Frequently, I think this stems from misunderstandings of things like “New World Order”, or just people being inflexible about change, as with the 6th Edition and M10 rules changes. 

This comment, though, really does come across like they’re “dumbing down” Arena because new players can’t handle the concept of Sideboarding. In truth, I think that Sideboards are a novel concept to some people who are coming from other digital CCGs to Magic via Arena. That doesn’t mean that they can’t handle it. It just means it’s a distinctive aspect of the game that they’re unfamiliar with. That’s true of Best of Three play, as well. 

This is probably just another instance of Wizards putting their collective PR foot in their mouth. It’s not the first time, and it almost certainly won’t be the last. I doubt very much that they think that Arena players can’t handle learning how to Sideboard. I think it is them recognizing that digital gaming is different than tabletop gaming. 

Thanks for taking the time to read my little blog. 

I’m now also a member of Team Genji, and you can catch them on Twitter https://twitter.com/TeamGenji

I’m Tweeting now @23rdPlayable. I’m also occasionally streaming on Twitch as 23rdPlayable. And, as always, you can find me on Facebook in the MTG Arena Players group, where I’m a mod. 

Have fun, Play on, and Be kind to one another.