#'people are playing monogreen stompy in standard right now

[lesbianralzarek]

its possible that your deck(s) were designed to do (or you were taught to do as part of this tutorial so as to not overwhelm you) what mtg players refer to as "playing solitaire", which is when you play cards at one another without caring about whatever is going on on your opponent's side of the battlefield. "solitaire" is a derogatory term due to how wildly unfun it is in nearly everyones opinion to both play against solitaire strategies and to pilot them. the fun part is interacting with your opponent and trying to 1) disrupt them and 2) outmaneuver their disruptions

as an extremely general example: control decks (esp ones with few low-curve creatures) struggle to weather the storm of low-to-the-ground aggro decks in the early game, but if they do manage to stabilize the boardstate after turn 4, they usually win. while aggro decks tend to prey on control, control tends to be combo decks worst nightmares, as a few well-timed counterspells and kill spells will completely dismantle fragile engines. there are a total of 5 major archetypes and hundreds of regular archetypes and thousands of specific strategies within an ever-growing list of formats, so im just gonna stop myself there

as a more specific example of a very common type of situation: imagine its turn 4 and youre playing a monogreen stompy deck in standard. your opponent has 5 cards in hand, and has put down their land per turn every turn, giving them 4 total mana in the colors of white and blue. they have two small creatures on board and have played a single removal spell against you. next turn, you technically have lethal even if they chump block your two biggest creatures, but if they remove even one of them or play another creature, youll be a bit short. you have an additional creature in hand that, if put on the board, will threaten lethal damage next turn even if they have a removal spell for your biggest creature. should you play it? well, it depends on the deck youre up against. you can likely come back from a single removal spell putting you back one turn, but a boardwipe would wreck your whole shop. is that why they havent put many creatures in board, or does their deck just not play many creatures? are you familiar with what cards are often played (and in what quantity) in the kind of deck youre pretty sure your opponent is piloting? if your opponent took a mulligan and has drawn 2 additional cards (other than one per draw step), that means theyve seen 1/3rd of their entire deck at this point, and if theyre playing 4 copies of sunfall, theres a solid chance that they have at least one of those in hand. can you afford to run the last creature you have in hand (but not in your whole deck, theres always the possibility that youll draw more) out into a boardwipe? but with the odds against you increasing the longer you wait out against a control deck, can you afford to not take that chance? what cards do you think, based off of your knowledge of the cards in the format and the way your opponent is behaving, they have in hand? this isnt even accounting for the possibility that they have a counterspell or some flash creature (or both) being held up right now, or that they might draw more removal or a boardwipe next turn even if they dont have it right in hand right now. additionally, might they be bluffing and actually have nothing in hand? if you pass turn without dropping anything, will they know that youre bluffing? does that change anything with the specific strategy your deck is going for?

thats the fun part imo

our boxing class was cancelled for the holidays so my friend taught me how to play magic the gathering instead

i kind of hate it?

it felt like it was just playing itself once the deck was built. do the things you can do, end your turn, rinse, repeat. it has the illusion of complexity with the long-ish skill descriptions and different effects, but at the end of the day that's just homework to learn the rules, then it plays itself.

would love to hear from people more experienced to tell me why i'm wrong