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by Kevin Hess
The Psychological Mechanism Part of the fun of Magic is in finding ways to decieve, befuddle, intimidate, or disrupt your opponent and his or her strategy enough for them to miss an important play. I shall now disclose a smattering of the many insidious tricks that, as of the date of this writing, are still tournament legal. The distraction that I'm particularly fond of, though in concept only as I've never tried it myself, is to dress in a rather disturbing manner before a tournament. This can involve tactics ranging from painting your fingernails black(if you're male), to the full-scale assault, involving at least one Marilyn Manson t-shirt, the neck chain, multiple earrings (all interconnected with a silver chain, or if you're really ambitious, a metal chain dog collar), the pale face accompanied by smeared lipstick(black, of course) and eye shadow, black hair dye(temporary if the prize is anything less than a pair of Moxes), and a 'throat problem' that makes anything you say a guttural growl. If you lean toward the more extreme edge of dress(now that I think about it, a dress is a great idea...), don't expect to do a whole lot of trading. The granddaddy of all distracting devices, a tennis hat with flashing lights, may be illegal; check with your judge before round one. For the less ambitious, there are always other, more minor ways to psyche out your opponent. One that is fairly difficult to implement in casual games is the following technique... When a player is bored or distracted, and tends to be a talkative person, often he'll read the flavor text on a card in his hand, or make a basic reference to it out loud. Now you must remember, if it's a card you would intend to use immediately, don't read the text... For instance, if you've got practically no life left and your opponent is stomping in with a Ball Lightning, don't read the text on Tidal Wave out loud, it's just rather silly. Why? Well, your opponent has progressed far enough in his or her game plan for your cards not to dictate their strategy. So when does this work? Well, you might do it this way. If you know your opponent has a card that would eat you alive, and you're playing blue, you might consider leaving three mana open and spewing forth the flavor text on Dissipate, or fiddle incessantly with two cards in your hand (as if you had a Force of Will) while you mutter something about not worrying even though you're out of mana. If your opponent is playing cards like mad and gaining the advantage, and you're playing with Racks in your deck, you could badger him incessantly about the number of cards in his hand. Tapping and then changing your mind immediately isn't usually grounds for forfeiture, so if your opponent casts something, fiddle two islands incessantly while your opponent is going through the motions. After it hits the table, take a hard look at it (if you don't have any counters or don't want to waste them, especially), and then say something like, 'okay, I'll let them stay' or 'I don't worry about those', unless of course it's something obviously destructive, like a Monsoon... Here's another evil trick. Your opponent often, if you tap out on your turn, will counterspell with more expensive spells like Spell Blast, or Power Sink for one since all your land is tapped. In the spirit, it's certainly possible to tap eight lands (not counting them out loud beforehand of course), Fireball someone for six, and pay a one-point Power Sink debt. They never see it coming, at least the first time. Or, when Spell Blasted/etc., you can always follow up your countered spells with a sneak Lightning Bolt or whatever. If you're tapped out, they have a better chance of tapping out to counter a spell or destroy a permanent than normal when they realize they might have to counterspell twice in a turn. If you're really a good player, you can further enhance your aura of power by playing with entirely black-bordered(preferably Beta or original expansion) cards, or special edition ones(like the Arena basic lands). This tends to freak out your lesser opponents and can help to distract them long enough for you to beat them even with a bad draw. The Arena Disenchant is a particularly good choice for this assault, as it almost always causes most players to take a second look at it if you don't announce the word 'Disenchant' out loud... Thus throwing another monkey wrench into their thought process. Of course, if you can afford to drop forty bucks on an Arena Disenchant.. Bink! Splat! Sound effects can give an opponent a good laugh - thusly, distract them. If you can get your hands on one before a tournament, get one of those little hand-held gadgets that make those cool gunfire and bomb sounds before the tournament, and accompany every Fireball with an explosion and every Prodigal Sorcerer plink with the 'rat-tat-tat' of an automatic weapon. Also, find interesting tokens to use - regular 'life counter' drudge is cheap, but boring - you need something more. An opponent of mine once used Kjeldoran Outpost, and had something like fifty Lego guys, complete with swords and armor, to use for his Soldier tokens. With a little shopping, Torture's -1/-1 counters could be skull & crossbones pogs, and saproling tokens could be tiny Chia Pets or chunks of broccoli. The possibilities are endless. Finding humorous names for your cards can also temporarily throw your opponent off gaurd. The Kjeldoran Outpost tokens of another opponent of mine were derogatively referred to as 'Dork tokens' - a snippet I, for some reason, found hilariously funny. I announce the presence of a 'Wall of Brass' every time I play a Brass Man, while my Nevinyrral's Disks (all seven of them) are my 'Panic Buttons'. Experiment. These aren't as important things to remember as the first few were, but they can help a bit. That's it for right now, I suppose. I'm rather tired of typing and I just got this article in the day of the deadline. Goodnight.
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