Metacognition and Magic The Gathering
Metacognition, a term you have likely heard thrown around, means “awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes.” (Oxford Language Dictionary). In simpler terms, as an 8th grade English Teacher put it to me when I was younger, “thinking about how you think.” This is an extremely useful skill for improving at all aspects of Magic The Gathering. The two which my personal metacognition has focused on are attitude and gameplay analysis.
Firstly, I want to focus on attitude. Attitude is often the problem people point to in many a cliche, but this cliche rings true. For me, my view of Magic is influenced by friends and the content I consume. One moment in particular sticks with me. At my first ever modern event, I won a ground, and after it my opponent said “I am dropping, Magic is just variance, You hope to get good matchups and draw the right cards.” This got under my skin, and I hated this comment. I hate it because 1. He’s not the only one with this attitude 2. He’s wrong. Profoundly so. You have agency even in bad matchups. For example, in the hands of even pilots Gruul Adventures tends to edge victory against Dimir Rogues, but both of these decks are skill intensive, and pilot quality can profoundly change that match-up.
The reason I dislike the view of Magic as simply luck and variance is it denies one’s ability to grow. While individual players may “get lucky,” I think it’s important to think about why they were in that position. One example from in the Gruul vs. Dimir match-up.
My opponent was at six life, and they had four ruin crabs on board. I only had one Phoenix of Ash in my grave yard, they crack a Fabled Passage on their turn, and they mill over my second Phoenix of Ash. This allowed me to win. I “got lucky,” but my opponent opened that window. My point here is to think about your attitude towards the game, and when you are thinking about Magic, don’t just assume you or an opponent got lucky. If your attitude is “this is just variance,” you can never learn.
While I believe metacognition is important to be aware of your thought process on a macro level, I also think it’s important to examine your thinking in game. Learning from previous games is necessary for growth. For me personally, one of my goals last summer was to hit Mythic several months in a row, and I was able to. This was due in part to actively reflecting on my play. This reflection required two active changes in thought process for me. The first was being aware of how quickly I often try to play on Arena, and slowing down. The other was taking a more active role in thinking through my decisions. To do this, I first had to examine what I was worst at.
While there are likely, for almost all of us, a lot of weak points, I think it’s valuable to focus on two things at a time. For me, the decisions I felt were weakest in my play were Mulligan decisions and combat decisions.
Firstly, mulligan decisions are extremely important, and I will not address all the aspects of them. However, I want to examine how my thinking about mulligan decisions has changed. I tend not to mulligan or mulligan too aggressively. In playing Goblins in Historic, I learned a few lessons about how I think through mulligan decisions. For example, I consistently over valued Muxus, and this lead me to keep bad hands with the justification “Well, it can cast Muxus IF…”
After playing more and more games, I realized this logic was wrong. As such, my mental model for mulligans with that deck needed to change. This example is specific, but for me it held other lessons in how I should think about mulliganing. Are there cards I over value? Are there cards I under value? These are questions I ask now when I am playing a deck poorly, and I think part of it may be due to incorrect mulligans.
Combat math is something I didn’t realize was a big problem of mine until playing Gruul Adventures. Multiple missed lethals, counting lands wrong, or simply making sketchy attacks without thinking about potential removal continually damaged my win rate with the deck. For me, combat math was something I didn’t think about much, and this was wrong. My thought process was focused too heavily on my card synergies or what my opponent was doing. This led me to not actively thinking through combat, and it made lines of play that weren’t obvious almost impossible for me to win with. Here, the metacognition occurred as a realization, and the next step was adjusting my thought process accordingly.
While my approach to metacognition is by no means unique, I find value in it for a few reasons. Firstly, it’s mine, and it works for me. The way I think through games after I play them, or I watch others play the same deck to learn, helps me extract more value from these lessons. Actively thinking about my own mental models and working to improve them has made me enjoy Magic more. Regularly checking and assessing your mental models and ideas about Magic is important to improving. Magic has variance, but if your first thought is “I got lucky” or “My opponent got lucky,” you need to be aware of that thought process, and I recommend accessing how useful it is.
