Moving Onward and Upward
By DoctorV
Once you start playing 7PH you may want to get better and push your results at your weeklies or tournaments. Or maybe you’re just getting tired of losing game after game. How can someone who’s not a full time Magic player improve? While there are obvious things like “playing more Magic”, “putting a team together” or “playing more Limited”, these can be hard if you’re restricted by time or finances. Today we will discuss some of the other methods available to new players looking to improve that fall outside the norm.
Just remember that this doesn’t have to be done all at once. Focus on making little improvements in a steady fashion. However, I do strongly suggest opening a word document and noting down major milestones you’ve passed and what you have learned. This will highlight the progress you’ve made and also help you avoid comparing yourself against others.
I can’t stress this enough: the people you’ll be playing against are often enfranchised players that have been playing for 20 years, so don’t compare your performances to theirs. I got into the trap of comparing myself to several players and wondering why I couldn’t win, repeatedly telling myself I was a bad Magic player. Eventually I realised that I was just playing bad (as opposed to just being bad) and that my opponents have a lot more experience than me. Some had even won significant tournaments or played on the Pro-Tour. That’s not to say you can’t beat them, but just to go easy on yourself.
Upskill your Magic with Crucial Heuristics
There are a lot of nuances to playing Magic cards that never really occurred to me, and these edges are where the progress is made in playing well. Here’s some painfully obvious lessons I needed to learn that nice players in the community taught me. Most of these are simply the “optimal” way to play a card. Some simple examples include:
- Spend all your mana, every turn: When choosing between two plays that hare similar, choose the line that spends more mana.
- Don’t give away free information: Cast your spells in your Post Combat Main Phase after attacking so you can make a play with more information, without divulging unnecessary information of your own.
- Construct and follow a gameplan: Determine your best chance of winning the game as early as you can, and make plays that progress the game towards that win condition.
- Sequence your cards correctly: Play your lands in the order that allows you to cast your spells on time, while also accounting for possible draws.
- Improve your technical play: Clean up your play. If you miss a trigger, make sure you don’t miss it again.
- Tap your lands correctly: It is very easy to accidentally leave yourself unable to play a spell you draw off a draw spell by tapping your lands incorrectly. Be mindful of what your deck can produce, and what spells you can represent.
- Play to win: Taking a line that may buy you a turn or two, while leaving you without outs given the perfect draw steps just delays your loss. Choose a line that gives you *some* chance to win, no matter how unlikely.
- Pay attention: Being tapped out can lead you to “zone out” during your opponents’ turn. Avoid this and ensure you gain as much information as you are given when your opponent makes their plays.
Paulo Vitor Dama Da Rosa wrote an excellent article about MtG heuristics which is eternally useful. Read it here.
Employ Common Useful Interactions
- When and how to Fetch: Don’t just fetch as soon as you play one unless you have a reason. Wait until the last moment to fetch so you can either get untapped mana to cast a spell in response to something on the stack or get a Surveil land for extra card filtering.
- Brainstorm: Use Brainstorm to put dead cards on top in conjunction with a shuffle effect to get full use out of it. Cast it in response to Thoughtseize to protect your combo pieces.
- Mishra’s Bauble: Use your Mishra’s Bauble on yourself when you have access to a fetch or shuffle to “scry away” a bad card. Avoid casting and cycling a Bauble if you can’t draw anything useful, as you may lose some of its utility e.g. drawing a Ledger Shredder.
- Graveyard Hate Timing: Activate your Unlicensed Hearse at sorcery speed against Murktide Regent, at instant speed on end step against Reanimate, and leave it up against Snapcaster Mage or Fetchland + Mystic Sanctuary.
- Removal Spell Timing: Cast your cheap removal spell after you have untapped to play around Daze, or to try and draw a discard spell to protect it.
Every deck and combination of cards will present unique interactions that you will discover while playing the deck. Learn the ones that frequently matter and be aware of the uncommon ones should they appear.
Read Articles
Some of magic’s best players have written seminal articles on old magic websites like The Dojo and Channel Fireball (that are harder to find) or in book form that are essential reading. The more of these you read, the better prepared you will be. This is also important because you will need to understand the shared language of improvement before you can apply these concepts to your deck.
- Who’s the beat down – Mike Flores
- Sideboarding – Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa
- Seven playtesting traps – Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa
- Generally anything on the 7PH website article section is worth a read
Practise with Purpose
It’s helpful to delineate in your mind when you are playing for fun, playtesting or competing. Identify what you are trying to achieve from each.
After each game in a competition (maybe even on the same piece of paper as your sideboard guide) write down a sentence or two of what happened. Specify which cards performed well or underperformed and any mistakes you made. Add the learnings to your sideboard guide and find methods to help you fix this weakness. Something like the below sheet I made for the recent POG monthly could work.
Have a goal in mind when you are playing casually in a lower-risk environment.
- Mainboard reps
- Specific scenarios e.g. post sideboard games against a Control deck
- Mulligan practice
- Making better decisions at key forks in the game.
Discuss your plays with your opponent if they are willing and identify any errors they noticed.
Play Against Better Players
If you can find players to get casual games against where there isn’t an impending round so you can chat, you can uncover a new source of progress. This won’t be an appropriate learning tool for everyone, but it is a very effective one.
Watch Better Players
Tournaments will sometimes have coverage and watching these can help you understand decks you haven’t played against. Search out decks you may want to play or play against. Before a recent tournament I sought out all of the recent gameplay footage of the best pilot of the deck to fine ideas.
Check out the @Bazaarcoverage on YouTube for game play or Plenty of Games on Twitch for coverage.
Other Recommended Resources
There’s a near boundless amount of resources available to learn about Magic but not as much about 7PH. Sorting them into two groups being directly related to Highlander and being general Magic lessons, I’ve added a few recourses to get you started.
7PH Content
- The 7 point cast is an amazing resource, deep diving each week into a specific deck and giving niche deck advice about pillars of the format.
- The illustrious team Busstop produce content on their Youtube channel, with plenty 7PH specific videos.
- Adelaide eternal has some slightly out of date but very useful content about decks which are really helpful.
Generic Magic Content
- Constructed criticism has a lot of good episodes that are format agnostic about Constructed magic.
- Raise the standard is a podcast about Standard, however their broad based look at the Standard metagame can provide insight to apply to 7PH.
- The “Level One” course by Reid Duke is a comprehensive look at more advanced topics in magic.
Closing Remarks
If you made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any feedback or thoughts just shoot me a DM on Discord @DoctorV.
Dr Varun “DoctorV” Venkatesh (he/him)
Varun is a Naarm-based postdoc in molecular endocrinology by day and an aspiring competitive Magic player by night. He picked up Commander during Dominaria United, but fell head over heels for 7 Point Highlander in early 2024 and never looked back. He loves the social side of Magic; meeting new people and building friendships while also strives to improve at Magic. His greatest Magic achievement is a 2-1 Pre-Release finish and he dreams of making the Top 8 at a major 7PH event.
