Consult the Star ChartsConsult the Star Charts | Art by Antonio José Manzanedo

I've been winning a lot of my Magic games lately. It's the sort of thing that makes me nervous. I'm a firm believer that winning too much means I'm not balancing my decks' power level correctly with my pod. Brackets are tough to actually put a name to, and the experience of a pilot definitely affects the wins as well.

But I can't help but get a bit queasy when I see that I've won five games in a row then lose one and then win three more. And all of these wins have been with various decks at various different tables with various different power levels.

All of this got me thinking again about where wins really come from. Is it in the building, the skill of the player, or just blind luck?

Lucky Lucky

I want to talk about our scapegoat first, talk about the elusive, unknowable, uncontrollable element of the game. Or maybe we suppose too hastily that it is uncontrollable, unknowable.

I've played a lot of Magic. I currently have logged 237 games of Commander this year so far. I logged 311 last year. Luck is an element of the game, for sure. Someone topdecking that exact perfect thing to stop your game plan in a 99-card singleton format feels like luck. It can't, however, account for the majority of the results in most games. I can't be that lucky.

Mark Rosewater said in his Drive to Work podcast, "So one of the things, I know Richard Garfield talked about this, is that you want a game... where players can blame their losses on luck and their wins on skill...Humans — the human psyche is fragile. Humans...have problems admitting that they made a mistake."

We all do it, try to understand how we could have been that close and punted. Maybe we go back and see some small mistakes, or maybe we feel we've played a perfect game. Either way, it is so tantalizing, psychologically, to put the responsibility on destiny, the ether, something out of our control like luck.

Rosewater went on to say that "it's an important skill...if you want to get better at Magic, recognizing that you losing is your own fault." I want you to keep in mind Rosewater's words about whose fault losing should be, when we transition to the next section.

Kai Budde and Skill

I don't play competitive Magic often, but I am fascinated by it. I play some cEDH, but that isn't exactly what I'd consider real competitiveness. I admire the precision in competitive Magic building and the precision necessary to play. It is actually very thrilling to decide to attack or not to attack, to interact or not to interact.

I'll let you know I was very frustrated looking up how Kai Budde became who he is to the Magic Pro Tour. I wanted his secrets. How could someone win seven Pro Tours? The next closest to his record was three under Jon Finkel.

I felt if I could understand Budde, then I could understand the logistics between skill and luck, or the distinction between two players matched in skill relying on luck to win. Alas, what I got were, understandably, fans asking about his personal life. They asked how he felt when he was pressured in games, or if he would retire.

I had to venture deeper into looking up Pro Tour strategies outside of Budde. When I did, I noticed a distinct vagueness to the advice. At first, I was rather frustrated by this. How does anyone get better at anything, without strict guidance? How do the coaches at the Olympics train their athletes? It has to be more than "stay hydrated" and "get some sun."

Then I read a section of an article by Craig Wescoe called How to be the Best at Magic and it was rather sobering. It clarified something about the nitty gritty, the specifics of Magic that isn't translatable. The skills necessary to be exceptional in an ever-changing landscape must be universal, skills that survive as the violent, upending, and even disastrous tide changes.

Mark Rosewater has written about how reacting to randomness is itself deeply skill-testing. The skills I was looking for were in the mentality of the player. Wescoe said commitment, overcoming frustration or burnout, overcoming stagnation, and overcoming overconfidence were the tools necessary to become a successful Pro Tour player.

He even mentioned Budde in his section about commitment, talking about how many hours Budde had spent testing his decks and strategy.

It's about resilience and flexibility. Overcoming overconfidence is accepting that your deck isn't good enough yet, that you misplayed, that you relied more on luck than your opponent. "I used to be arrogant. I still am, but I used to be too," is a quote used by Luis Scott-Vargas (LSV), a Pro Tour champion — who borrows the construction from the late comedian Mitch Hedberg — that I think describes this perfectly.

We sometimes believe in ourselves so much that we reject that the failure could be on us. That is a failure to our pursuit to perfect our skill.

"My opponent MindslaverMindslavered me, saw my hand of all lands and said, 'tap you out and pass the turn.' I then corrected them and said, 'that's fine but JuggernautJuggernaut has to attack.' They read JuggernautJuggernaut, grimaced and conceded...that's how I killed someone during a MindslaverMindslaver turn, a feat I've never seen replicated." LSV said this, recounting a game he won.

On either side of this play, from the perspective of the opponent and LSV, there is resilience. To grit your teeth and push through being MindslaverMindslavered with no useful cards in hand, and to his opponent who misplayed so carefully that they had to grit their teeth and accept their mistake. This is how you improve your skill.

Building and the Mystery of Creativity

When discerning between our skill in building and skill in playing, there is a difficult and thin line. A well-piloted bad deck can sometimes look better than it is. A poorly piloted excellent deck can look the opposite. Again, I was frustrated with what I could find online about building well.

There weren't a ton of tangible things about building that didn't seem either too specific, and thus not always applicable, or so general that it felt like it didn't offer enough guidance.

Melissa DeTora said to "Have a Solid Plan, Play Cards That Matter...Mana Curve Is Important...[and] Have the Correct Mana Base," but this advice is a bit specific about one particular thing, which isn't enough to push a deckbuilding strategy enough in the right direction.

I do think it's good advice and essential at a base level, similar to how Gavin Verhey on My Most Important Deck-Building Rule says, "A deck has a strategy. A goal. A plan. It's directly employing overall tactics," but it doesn't cover enough of what someone needs to push through the granularity of perfecting a deck.

"Died to Mana Screw? You Probably Made a Mistake Before That," Magic writer and player Carmen Klomparens said on stream. I think her point here is the building process.

Alongside Patrick Chapin's book Next Level Magic saying, "If Your Deck Isn't 25% Brew, You've Got No Heart. But If You Aren't At Least 25% Netdeck, You've Got No Brain," there is some desire to push some responsibility on the deckbuilding process. Sometimes, we have to be creative but learn from those before us, from our elders, from professionals.

It is still hard how to compare two decks that do what is described, but one wins more often than the other. I wanted to know the exact equation to test and criticize a deck. Again, the variability of Commander in particular makes this process an art more than a science.

I think that's the thing: we must turn to our building as a concern when we feel confident in our skill as players, even if deciding these things are somewhat vague.

"Restrictions Breed Creativity," is a phrase Mark Rosewater is known to say, but some variation of this phrase has been said before him. Even Rosewater himself doesn't know if he coined the phrase. I bring this up because, when we restrict our thinking, allow ourselves to eliminate luck and sharpen our skill to a head, we must be creative in our building to overcome odds. It's the final piece of winning.

So Is It Luck, Skill, or Building That Makes You Victorious?

Mark Rosewater said that "Magic Is Not One Game, But Many Games." And Gavin Verhey said, "In Magic, there are enough forms of conflict to deal with: your opponent's hand, your opponent's creatures, and your own slowly growing inner turmoil as you try and figure out how to attack, to name a few."

I think this means that in order to win, to be victorious, we must balance all of the plates, all the axes of resistance. We have to account for our building when our skill is peaked. "I should also note, your deck is not always going to perfectly follow its mission," Gavin Verhey said. We have to account for luck once we've accounted for our ability to play and our deckbuilding.

I'll close out with a sentiment from the partial inspiration of this article, "Being Balanced Doesn't Make It Fun," is a slight paraphrasing of a sentiment of LSV, and "The Best Play Uses All Your Mana" is a Limited Resources adage.

I know we all want to be better, perform better, but sometimes the most important thing is to just be happy with yourself. Tap out. Build greedily. Explode brilliantly into color. That's what I think. What do you think? I'm @strixhavendropout on everything.