Who here plays League of Legends? Hands up! I just started, and I’m actually pretty good at it if I do say so myself. It’s pretty rare though that I play a game and think to myself: I’m so “effing” good at this game, I’m UNSTOPPABLE! Look how I play this game! I mean…REALLY LOOK! I make great decisions, smart moves, good purchases of equipment upgrades. And I win..a LOT! For example, check out this sequence of plays: Move in, hit with a ranged attack, move back, move in, use another ranged attack, hit him with a special power, nail my ultimate, auto attack in melee, hit the debuff, now SWING FOR THE FENCES! Another champion? GO AFTER HIM…..NOW!

And then one of my teammates types in team chat.

“JJSP is getting greedy.” I read that and immediately my mind starts to race. “I’m not greedy, I’m WINNING! I’M INVINCI-”

Caption Appears: JJSP has been slain by X.

Wait. What? What just happened? How did I die? I was winning! Out of nowhere, this anonymous other player stopped my killing streak at 6, but…how? I was at higher life than he was, and all my special attacks were about to come of cooldown. I typed the obligatory “That’s total crap!” (well, maybe not THAT tame) in the chat, and my one teammate simply pointed out to me “Dude, you weren’t watching your mana, and you got greedy.”

Really? My teammate was watching my mana, and I wasn’t? On top of that, he was also watching me play as well? Why would he do that? It wasn’t until after the game that I got my answer.

He was watching me play, because quite simply, I was not. I wasn’t paying attention to my resources, or respecting my opponent’s ability to read what I was doing, or even taking heed of my teammates advice (as that what it really was) that I was getting greedy, and instead I decided that I would just play a “[card]Go for the throat[/card]” playstyle and believed that I would win, with no questions asked. And how did that work out for me?

Grand.

Greed is an ugly thing. It’s what stops us from making informed decisions, and it puts a sparkle in our eye with the notion that we can have our cake and eat it too. Take this situation for example:

SETUP: You are on the draw, after losing game 1 to a very stock Red Deck Wins list, and have this for an opening grip:

[card]Isolated Chapel[/card], [card]Think Twice[/card], [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card], [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card], [card]Doom Blade[/card], [card]Unburial Rites[/card], [card]Forbidden Alchemy[/card]

What do YOU do here? Last weekend, after my opponent snap keeps, I go through a full range of emotions in my head. Can I draw into an Island? Even a [card]Darkslick Shores[/card] or [card]Seachrome Coast[/card] would work. What are the chances of that? Would that be too much to ask? I need this win, and a better mulligan of 6 is more likely than me drawing a land I think. I need to make a decision here. There are only 15 minutes left in the round!

I can actually HEAR Superfriend Mike Brierley’s voice ringing in my ears: “JSP! YOU DONKEY! WHY ARE YOU EVEN THINKING ABOUT THIS?”

Superfriend Dan Lanthier: “JSP. You know what you need to do here. You should just stop thinking about it and make the correct play.”

Superfriend Ben Moir: “JSP. You are a bad player.”

Here is where Greed began to affect my play.  I’m also an  individual prone to making decisions based on emotion, and not logic. Cross that with an unhealthy fixation with bad 80’s action movies where the hero goes for broke at the end of the film, making the impossible leap across the 40 foot chasm, while shooting down all the bad guys with his remaining clip of ammunition, landing on the other side with an absurdly cool martial arts-esque roll, manages to untie the girl and escape the collapsing mountain using a paperclip and a stick of chewing gum, and you have the precursor to what I like to call “JSP’s Boner Play of the Week”.

I kept the hand.  I completely ignored all the voices in my head, and I KNEW I was about a biscuit away from formulating my next “I QUIT!” article because of this line of play that I was PRAYING went my way.  My opponent played an Island, and passed the turn. I took a deep breath, slowly drew my card, and it’s…[card]Darkslick Shores[/card]! HA! SHUT UP, GREED!  I. RULE. ALL.

Now…contrary to what it sounds like, this is actually a bad thing for me, because Greed won. This just means that in my mind, I was right! Now I’m always going to be “right” in the future when faced with this decision again. The likelihood of me being confronted with this play in the future is pretty good, and that just means that I now have a dramatically higher chance of making the same mistake again, and again, and again, because keeping that hand WAS a mistake! The trouble is, it worked out for me. I did win the match, but now I’m so jazzed that my Greed actually paid off, that I’m mistaking that for skill, and moving on to my next round with a false sense of accomplishment. Luckily, the rest of the day went my way, but it wasn’t until later, when I played League of Legends and my teammate, an anonymous player who didn’t know me from a hole in the ground, told me I was being greedy, that I started thinking about Greed in Magic.

I do not understand how I could be learning life lessons from either of these games, but it happens to be true. I also don’t understand why it takes complete strangers to point out my mistakes before I’ll actually start paying attention. I’ve had a number of players tell me I’m too greedy all the time right to my face, yet I keep making greedy plays and not taking a serious look at what I’m about to do.

The thing that we all have to recongnise is that Greed can be classified as a BEHAVIOUR, and a behaviour is something that is almost impossible to change. It’s even harder to recognize in one self, as we tend to think everything we do is perfectly fine, and above anyone else’s judgement, because who are THEY to judge? After all, THEY certainly aren’t perfect! I’ve seen Superfriends keep some pretty sketchy hands and have their opponent lay the smack down on them for making that mistake, so how do THEY know if my hand was good or not?  Well, the answer there is actually pretty simple.  Even though some players have trained themselves to not let Greed creep into their playstyle, there are times (see above for good ole’ JSP) when all the training and self-discipline in the world can’t stop it. It worked out for me, but that still doesn’t mean it was the right decision to keep that hand.

Don’t get me wrong here, it’s REALLY hard not to try to think outside the realm of what is probable when playing a game like this. We all love to win, and winning when you have a slim chance to do so in your mind is probably the best feeling in the world. It’s the underdog hockey player who battled his way through the juniors with people saying he’d never play in the NHL, only to go to the Stanley Cup finals and score the winning goal in Game 7. But we all need to recognize the difference between Greed vs. Skill in this type of scenario, and play accordingly. The best players are the ones who can spot Greed’s ugly head a mile away.  It usually starts with your opening hand.

Opening hand Greed: I like to use the “If I only…” test. If the first thing that goes through your mind when looking at your opening hand is “If I only draw X,  I’ll be OK!”, then that, my friend, is the EPITOME of Greed.

Example: [card]Plains[/card], [card]Forest[/card], [card]Gavony Township[/card], [card]Honor of the Pure[/card], [card]Mirran Crusader[/card], [card]Mirran Crusader[/card], [card]Gideon Jura[/card].  “If I only draw a white source, I’m OK!” = GREED!

After boarding against a Red Deck: [card]Flashfreeze[/card], [card]Flashfreeze[/card], [card]Plains[/card], [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card], [card]Phantasmal Image[/card], [card]Ghost Quarter[/card], [card]Wurmcoil Engine[/card]. “If I only draw a blue source, I’m OK!” = GREED!

Against ANY deck: [card]Sword of Feast and Famine[/card], [card]Sword of War and Peace[/card], [card]Inkmoth Nexus[/card], [card]Phyrexian Crusader[/card], [card]Vault Skirge[/card], [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card], [card]Dissipate[/card]. “If I only draw a black OR a blue source, “I MIGHT be OK!” = GREEDY, AND PAINFUL!

Try this one: [card]Plains[/card], [card]Island[/card], [card]Swamp[/card], [card]Drowned Catacombs[/card], [card]Glacial Fortress[/card], [card]Isolated Chapel[/card], [card]Grave Titan[/card]. This one was pointed out to me by Jason Wong, who is a judge no less.  Perhaps he’s seen this keep a few times?

In Game Greed: A bit harder to recognize, but you need to be aware of it nonetheless. It might be something as simple as not casting Day of Judgement when your U/W opponent is tapped out after playing a [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card], and having him follow it up with [card]Angelic Destiny[/card] next turn after you cast your [card]Blade Splicer[/card].  Your reasoning: Not enough creatures on the opposite side for the [card]Day of Judgment[/card] to “feel” like it was the right play.

It might also come up when you have an active [card]Shrine of Burning Rage[/card] with 8 counters on it, your opponent at 9 life, and you tap out to load the board up with a bunch of 1 and 2 drops, only to have your opponent [card]Disperse[/card] the Shrine on your end step, and then cast [card]Day of Judgment[/card] on his next turn.

Sometimes, your opponent just has all the answers. More likely, though, he only has the answers because you played right into Greed’s attractive hands. Remember, good reader. Greed kills.

See you at the tables!

JSP

BONUS: Cards I’m currently playing around with:

[card]Burning Vengeance[/card], as everyone knows, looks like a pretty fun card to try and break.  I ran my own U/R list at FNM to try it out, and I went 1-3.  The thing I REALLY wanted to take a look at was this interaction:

[card]Burning Vengeance[/card]/[card]Past In Flames[/card]/[card]Gut Shot[/card]/[card]Gitaxian Probe[/card]

For reference, here’s the decklist:

[deck title=JSP’s Swill]
[Lands]
4 Sulfur Falls
4 Ghost Quarter
1 Swamp
8 Mountain
7 Island
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
2 Wurmcoil Engine
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Consecrated Sphinx
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Incinerate
4 Gut Shot
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Mana Leak
3 Think Twice
3 Forbidden Alchemy
3 Past in Flames
1 Devil’s Play
4 Burning Vengeance
[/Spells]
[/deck]

The Sideboard for this Jank:
4 x I have a bad feeling about this
4 x WTF?
4 x Every play is actually a MISPLAY
2 x Should have looked at Flores’ build
1 x Participation Planeswalker Points FTW!

It took a lot of work to get this to work, but when it did, it got pretty messy.  Phyrexian Mana with flashback capability seemed like it could be pretty good if it went off.  The trouble with my logic was clear to me when I couldn’t clear the board of other threats before my endgame showed up, let alone my mid-game.  I got my ass handed to me by Consecrated Sphinx, G/W township tokens, and RDW, but my best matchup (and only win) came against Solar Flare, funny enough.  The verdict was pretty easy to reach.  This deck is a casual idea at best, but I did raise a few eyebrows with my Phyrexian Mana/Flashback plan around the table.  If anyone out there has a (non-Flores) U/R list that works, I’m all ears. In the meantime, I’m probably looking to capitalize on the success of Wolf Run Green and play that for a bit.  Solar Flare (B/W/U) makes one FEEL powerful, but Wolf Run IS powerful, and can stand against the Red Deck and the Gavony Township’s and White Token Decks that are becoming more and more prevalent.

Plus, I boarded the FAILBOAT with this decklist, and sailed off into the sunset…