An Offer Your Opponent Can’t Refuse
By: Erin Jade Hess (She/Her)
This is an opinion piece.
What does it take for your opponent to scoop up the game by merely revealing private information? How does one end a game by giving away their intricate strategy? How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?
Like a Bond villain, Counterbalance players in Magic: The Gathering win the game by telling their opponent their evil plot before firing their death ray. A combination of Sensei’s Diving Top and Counterbalance, the deck’s pilot rearranges the first dew of their deck, reveals the top card, and can use it to counter any spell thrown against them, providing the mana costs match.
Today I’d like to discuss a similar tactic within Argent Saga and one of the players that took game psychology to the next level.
Meet Gillian, The Witch Queen, Water champion extraordinaire. While she doesn’t offer the same hard-counter that Counter/Top features, she does offer extremely powerful card draw, especially in a Water or Water/Light spell heavy deck. The strategy is to win the game by having more answers than your opponents questions.
What does this mean? Your opponent plays the Ergon combo, you have a bounce in response. Your opponent is swinging in at your Towers, you have a debuff or destruction in hand. You get the idea.
Much like Chess, TCGs are games of questions and answers. This is where control players (like me) find their niche, answering so many of their opponents questions effectively that they start to ask their own (putting threats on the board and winning). Games with us are long, painful, and often times only fun for one player, but it works.
Gillian thrives in this setup because your deck is already full of spells she can use as fuel, often times allowing you two draws per turn if chance is on your side. Not only will you control your opponent through your cards, you’ll also control the game through psychology.
Nobody will play their best unit knowing what horrors lurk in your hand, why waste their Twilight Knight to a bounce or removal and lose a turn of tempo? Revealing your cards with Gillian not only draws you another spell, it serves as a threat to your opponent; an offer they can’t refuse. “Hey, you don’t play that unit and I won’t send it to oblivion, capeesh?”
This is the essence of a control player, pulling the strings of every aspect of the game, the cards on the board, and your opponent can be yours to use to your advantage in the match.
Any aspiring competitive player deserves to read Johnny Magic and the Card Shark Kids, the tale of John Finkel, one of Magic’s greatest players and original superstar. It’s a fantastic book and can be found for next to nothing on Amazon (I promise this isn’t sponsored, I just really love the book. No affiliate link here.)
There is a chapter where David Kushner describes the strategy Jon took to an official, prominent 90′s tournament. Jon would simply stare past your eyes, into your soul, and straight through you, not even at the board most of the time. Unblinking, unrelenting, unapologetic. Between this mind game and his skill at the game, he took home a handsome amount of prize money.
Curious, I tried this out during my competitive Magic days of yore. I went to a game store a little outside the draw range of my LGS, shuffled up, barely said anything past “this table?”, “good luck”, and “offer cut”. Without hesitation, I played a deck heavy with revealing information on my deck (UR Delver, sideboarded with the Splinter Twin core to keep things interesting) and fired my eye beams. A clean, perfect win. It was only after the broke down the game I would drop the act and actually introduce myself, explaining the strategy, sharing a laugh about the awkward moment we shared.
Here’s how it went down: I would constantly reveal my top card using the effect of Delver of Secrets, letting my opponent know exactly what I was holding onto. Between the threat of multiple counterspells in hand and the Finkel strategy, it closed out games handily.
Now, just as a disclaimer; DON’T DO THIS. It’s incredibly creepy and I did this for science and to write this silly article. Seriously. Please don’t. To prove my hypothesis, I played a few more games without presenting myself as an unholy cryptid, nothing having too much trouble (except for the Death and Taxes matchup).
Back to Gillian. Information reveal every turn, extra draw power, a deck full of answers; she’s everything I could have ever hoped for in a champion! I fully plan on building around her and having some fun test games, see how she works.
Sometimes doing something unconventional is the right way to win a game. No one expects you to effectively play with your hand revealed, and that holds the potential for a tilt. Or shall I say… counter the balance?
1) https://www.amazon.com/Jonny-Magic-Card-Shark-Kids/dp/0812974387
2) https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/countertop-2009-03-16
3) https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Answer
Art Credit: “Sensei’s Divining Top”, Michael Sutfin. “Counterbalance”, John Zeleznik
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