Managing Expectations in ‘Competitive Gaming’

This article is going short, sweet and broken down into two specific topics: Managing expectations in a general sense and Legacy Magic update from a noob getting clubbed like a baby seal.

Competitive Expectations

There is an old analogy that I love to overuse. People who get it, get it, and those who don’t will say something to the effect that this is proof that we have grown soft as a culture (which in my opinion is an admission of laziness to actually understand the greater concept).

An average Baseball Hall of Famer has a .303 batting average. In real terms, that means a hall of fame batter registers a hit one out of every three times he was at the play (OBS is around .837 but let’s not go there). ¹

“You don’t need to bat 1.000 to be good at what you do”

I know you are thinking “great fact Dan, what does this have to do with Gaming. Specifically, Legacy since you posting this in the Legacy Magic Reddit”.

Great question. I’m glad you asked. After two months of grinding Legacy Magic I have gone 24-68. Which on the surface looks like something that I should probably stop playing. However, if we applied our baseball analogy, I would have a .25 batting average. Not quite hall of fame, but heck I just started playing this year.

I don’t want to get into expectations too deep, The Eternal Glory Podcast² covered it expertly and is magic specific but this also applies to Flesh and Blood as well as Force of Will. Check out the link provided for some crazy numbers for Pro Magic Player win percentages and such.

MtG Legacy

I bounced around a little bit after playing Maverick for almost a month. I felt as if I was oblivious to other decks and their win conditions so I wanted to run around the format for a while and see what was going on, this was largely unsuccessful once I hit the join league button

Dark Depths – 2 leagues; 2-8; 20% win-percentage

Doomsday – 1 league; 0-5; 0% win-percentage

Sneak and Show – 1 league; 2-3; 40% win-percentage

Epic Storm – 3 leagues; 0-15; 0% win-percentage

Ninjas – 1 league; 2-3; 40% win percentage

Maverick – 11 leagues; 18-37; 32% win percentage

Legacy League Totals – 19 leagues; 24-68; 25% win percentage

So at first glance all I see is how I feel, I am terrible at combo decks but I really want to play them… I feel some despair with playing Legacy on MTGO but then I go back to the first part of this discussion and I am actually doing really good for being new to the format. Even though I am going to try out some Modern and Pioneer decks as well as Force of Will, when I come back to Legacy after a self-enforced hiatus, all I am really looking to do is be in a position to go 3-2 by the last 2 games. With that goal, an 0-2 start isnt’ terrible, and 2-3 is one ‘hit’ from 3-2 which would put me in the hall of fame (the proverbial hall of fame that is)!

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think about this idea of measuring success, what do you do to manage expectations in gaming?