The Psychology of Golgari by Jackie Lee - Magic - TCGplayer.com

Jackie Lee
11/29/2012 10:02:00 AM
I returned home from my trip to Taiwan to find that most of the plants were deadincluding one so-called plant of steel. A fly had alighted on the soil of one plant, but closer observation revealed that it, too, was dead.

And so, today, I would like to praise the Golgari for their excellence in farming. Their methods may be a bit unconventional, but I think we can all agree that their results are exemplary. Golgari Rot Farm, for example, grows so plentifully that it produces twice the colored mana of a basic land!

However, though my thumb might not be as green as some of my Standard decks, I do relate to the Golgari in other ways. (To clarify, I'm not talking about the dusting of mold to which I also returned. Although, I do think the Swarm would be impressed by the way it surpassed the refrigerator and entered my coffee brewer.)

Specifically, I admire the Golgari ability to create life from death.

A while ago, I wrote an article on the value of learning to accept your losses gracefully. Today, I hope to show you how to transform death into lifeor rather, failure into success.

Two Sides of a Coin

Magic is a zero-sum game. That is to say, there is a winner and a loser, and nothing in between. In another world, maybe there is an extra column on match slips where you can include information about extenuating circumstances. Like how, in game three, you couldn't draw a third land for five turns and that is why you lost.

I don't like to think about this world too much because in it, a GP scorekeeper's job must, somehow, be even more nightmarish.

However, just because there can only be one winner doesn't mean that that's all you can take away from a game.

I saw some players recently wondering about why players bother to go to events where the expected value of the payout is very low, compared to their cost of entry. The thing is, we're getting much more than the prize at the end. We're getting an experience and a lesson.

Sometimes, the lesson is painful. But that's exactly how you know that it's a lesson worth having. You know the shirt you always see that one guy wear to the gym? Pain is just weakness leaving the body. It seems like a silly thing he bought on CafePress, but it's actually the truth, in T-shirt form.

In fact, these days, when I find myself in excruciating (mental) pain, I try to allow it to wash over me as completely as possible. Because it's trying to teach me somethingand I know that the greatest lessons I've ever learned have been courtesy of the greatest pain.

Pain is good, and it's a necessary part of life.

I like to think that the Golgari reflect on this when they eat the bodies of their fallen guildmates. (Of course, it must come easily for them, since much of the time they're eating something that's not exactly new to death.)

Going into round 6 of GP Taipei, I was undefeated. Then, I got into an incredibly grindy and complex game. I had an unleashed Spawn of Rix Maadi which I was pushing through with a Rogue's Passage. He had a Desecration Demon and a Daggerdrome Imp that I had to kill with Mizzium Mortars after he Scavenged onto it.

I had sacrificed my last creature to the Demon, and when I was at three, he played a second threat: a Loxodon Smiter. I drew a Golgari Longlegs, then conceded. Even if I played it to trade with the Smiter, all I had left was a Rakdos Keyrune to activate and sacrifice. On the next turn, I'd have to draw removal, which I'd already used. It's unusual for me to concede before the game is over, but I did it anyway.

My next card was Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage.

For some reason, I'd forgotten about my other out: the possibility of drawing two creatures. And yes, I had eight mana at the time, two of which were white.

For the next game, I sided into UWR, which was fortunate in that I could Syncopate his Vraska. Next, he played a Golgari Longlegs, which I chose not to Essence Backlash. I think I was afraid of not having an answer to Desecration Demon. Additionally, I thought that I could simply put a Knightly Valor on my Lobber Crew and block the 5/4 forever.

Well, my logic was wrong for a few reasons. First, I should have leapt at this chance to nullify his card and Lava Axe him at the same time. Desecration Demon has an answer built-in by transforming into The Abyss, so it didn't make sense for me to be so concerned that I didn't want to use my 4-mana Counterspell. Second, if he had even one pump spell, he would effectively two-for-one me by removing my enchanted wall. But BGW doesn't have access to any pump spells, right?

Right?

Ugh.

Finally, Knightly Valor would have been much better utilized on a creature that could actually attack. In fact, my opponent ended up playing his own Knightly Valoron that 5/4. Immediately, my plan was out the window, and I found myself Detaining it with an Isperia's Skywatch. I cast a Knightly Valor on it to build my own dragon, but I was already losing on the ground. When I eventually chumped, he was at 11. The situation would have been so much better if he were at 6 and I had a 5/5 vigilant flier that outclassed all of his creatures.

Over the next two rounds, I lost to a very fast draw, a mulligan to four, and a much closer match that came down to game three.

This gave me a lot of time to think about what had happened in round six, and how I had 0-2ed a match that I probably could have won 2-0.

Even though this was frustrating, even though I had really hoped to Day 2 an event with only about 90 players continuing on, even though I'd traveled so far for this tournament, I remembered something important:

This is why I play Magic.

I once read a book called Art & Fear. It describes many of the psychological hangups aspiring artists have, and how they can Paralyze us, preventing us from success. Some of its passages have stuck with me to this day.

Consider the story of the young student well, David Bayles, to be exact who began piano studies with a Master. After a few months' practice, David lamented to his teacher, But I can hear the music so much better in my head than I can get out of my fingers. To which the Master replied, What makes you think that ever changes?

Lesson for the day: vision is always ahead of execution and it should be.

If our vision didn't exceed our capabilities, we wouldn't be able to learn. So, the next time you find yourself making a blunder, identify it as the lesson it is.

Magic, like all things, is an art.

What you need to know about the next piece is contained in the last piece. The place to learn about your materials is in the last use of your materials. The place to learn about your execution is in your execution. The best information about what you love is in your last contact with what you love. Put simply, your work is your guide: a complete, comprehensive, limitless reference book on your work.

The Value of Error

The Golgari don't regard their creations as hideous or disgusting. They acknowledge that all life is of equal value.

This is something with which our society has a problem.

We shy away from ugliness and regard mistakes as shameful. We tend to view people as the collective value of their actions, and so we begin to fear taking actions that will be seen in a poor light.

Carol Dweck is a research psychologist whose findings have led her to believe that this is problematic. And, interestingly, she finds it to be rooted in praise, not criticism. Specifically, praising children for their intelligence.

When young people's sense of self-worth is bound up in the idea that they are smarta quality they come to understand as a genetic blessing from the skyat least three bad things can happen. Some students become lazy, figuring that their smarts will bail them out in a pinch. Others conclude that the people who praise their intelligence are simply wrong, and decide that it isn't worth investing effort in homework. Still others might care intensely about school but Withdraw from difficult tasks or tie themselves in knots of perfectionism. David Glenn, The Chronicle

So, when we're praised as smart, we either 1) believe it to our own detriment, 2) disbelieve it to our own detriment, or 3) become paralyzed with fear of evidence to the contrary.

Does this sound at all familiar to you, the hobbyist of a game of rigorous mental skill?

Uh, no, me neither! I was just testing you. So, um, good job!

In all seriousness, though, each one of these responses inhibits hard work. And, not surprisingly, it's something our society tends to look down upon. After all, the people who need to work hard are the ones who aren't talented. Right?

As it turns out, talent is more or less a myth. Innate talent can cause someone to keep at a difficult task longer than someone who has less of it, but the greatest gains are eventually made by sheer, hard work. In the words of Dweck, 'Hard working' is what gets the job done. You just see that year after year. The students who thrive are not necessarily the ones who come in with the perfect scores. It's the ones who love what they're doing and go at it vigorously.

Ironically, not even the developer of the IQ test, Alfred Binet, believed that intelligence was fixed. He originally intended it as a yardstick to identify students who weren't thriving in their current school environment.

In our school systems, we're generally taught that we should repeatedly practice a correct answer, and that if we make a mistake during this period, we might accidentally learn it.

However, this runs very contrary to my own experiences. It's also contrary to research by Nate Kornell and his colleagues. According to his study, students who attempted to answer questions before reading the course material learned it much more effectively than those who didn't.

Think about all the times you were given a formula, then told to memorize it. After the exam, did you remember anything? How about weeks later?

On the other hand, did you ever try to derive the formula yourself? You might have spent some time on the exam re-doing the derivation, but I'll bet that you remembered it without error, and for much longer.

This makes sense; answering a question, even incorrectly, engages us in active learning and leads to greater ownership of the material. This is in line with Dweck's research, which shows that people that persevere through their mistakes are the same ones that achieve greater mastery later on.

The students who were initially praised for their effort worked hard at figuring out the puzzles, even though they made lots of mistakes and got low scores. Kids praised for their smarts, on the other hand, quickly became discouraged; they saw their mistakes as a sign of failure.

Happily, Magic provides us with many opportunities to learn from our mistakes, so we can engage in the most effective, active learning. Viewing it in this light can help you improve even more.

One way that you can use active learning to your advantage is when you read articles on Magic. After you read the title and blurb, think about how you would write that topic. If it's about a successful deck, come up with a list in your head before going to look at the author's version. Then, take a guess at why certain cards have been added or omitted from your version before you read the explanation. In this way, you can more effectively build upon your skill as a deckbuilder than by passively reading what someone else has done to solve the problem. This may be particularly helpful if you want to improve upon your Limited skill. Remember, though, that there are many valid approaches, and that yours might also work. The only way to know for sure is to try.

Nobody likes pain, but like the Golgari, psychologists have discovered that significant growth can bloom from it. They refer to the positive effects of painful, difficult, and stressful events by names like post-traumatic growth, psychological resilience, and mental toughness. One sports performance coaching company, Condor Performance, describes mental toughness as improving your mind so that it's always on your side; not sometimes helping you nor working against you as we all know it's quite capable of doing.

In fact, recent studies have demonstrated that even willpower can be made stronger over timejust like a muscle. If you find yourself getting frustrated with a mistake, remember that not only is it an excellent learning tool, but tomorrow, the same error will frustrate you less.

This is the foundation of self-improvement, the basis of art.

It's also the heart of competitive Magic.

I hope your journey always bears fruitespecially during its dark parts.

Love and battle,
Jackie Lee

@JackieL33 on Twitter
www.twitch.tv/jackiel33

Source: http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=10870

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