Quick Tips 1: Combat

Hey everyone.  Updates are delayed while I'm applying for scholarships, but this series of Quick Tips should give you some healthy pointers in convenient bulleted-list format.

This set of Quick Tips is all about combat.  I am a documented fan of turning creatures sideways, and these should help you turn sideways more successfully.  Just remember that Quick Tips are guidelines, not rules.

• First and foremost: Learn to cast spells after combat.  This is especially true in draft.  Unless your spell will affect the combat (like Overrun), leave your mana open when you swing.  Your opponent then has less information for their blocking or removal-spell decisions, and the spells in your hand matter more.
  
• Pump spells are for saving your creatures, not as burn.  It's much better to have your creature stick around in the long-term than to waste a spell to flick someone's life total.  If you time it right, you can even get the both benefits if the opponent tries to use a burn spell to kill your attacking creature.  Of course, if the pump spell will win you the game, that's acceptable.
  
• Attack before you wipe the board. If you plan to cast something that destroys all creatures on the field, see if you can sneak some damage at your opponent first! They're going to die anyway, so you might as well.  That being said, hold off on attacking if they have blockers with lifelink or if you think your board wipe could get countered.
  
• Deathtouch and Trample are best friends.  Deathtouch means that just one point of damage will kill any of their creatures.  Trample means that leftover damage goes right to their face.  Guess what happens when you combine the two? Every one of their blockers might has well have a toughness of 1. It's awesome.
  
• Take your early hits. I often see people at 20 life immediately throw a small creature in front of an opponent's attacker.  Your life total is a resource -- it's okay to take a couple of early hits!  That little 1/3 could stop 3 points of damage now, but if you leave him around, he could stop 7 points of damage later.  Or he could just stop an opponent's 1-power creatures all game. Or he could smack your opponent a couple of times after getting rid of the enemy creatures.  If your deck is well made, you should be able to deal with an early attacker before sacrificing your guy for a couple points of life.
  
• Love the block-sac. If you have a creature that can sacrifice for some gain, get full value out of it! Wait for your opponent to attack, then block their biggest guy.  Before damage happens, sacrifice your guy and get its ability.  You just stopped a bunch of damage and got your creature's ability. Nice!
  
• Beware the block-sac against your lifelink creature. If your lifelink creature is in combat and its blocker suddenly isn't there, it can't deal damage.  If it can't deal damage, you can't gain life to survive a counterattack.  And if you can't gain life to survive a counterattack, you're gonna have a bad time.  Don't have a bad time.
  
• Combat math. Learn it. Love it. Don't be the person who forgets that an all-out attack can win.  Also, don't be the person who does an all-out attack when s/he could have won by waiting for a turn.  Actually, this probably warrants a post of its own. Quick Tips can't do it justice.
  
• Finally, respect your opponents. And not just for sportsmanship.  Assume your opponent has read these Quick Tips.  Assume your opponent knows how to do combat.  Make sure s/he can't blow you out with what you've learned here.  If you're wrong, you should be able to beat him/her anyway! 

While I attack and block these applications, I hope you can attack and block with more fun things this Friday.  Like creatures.  And magical cardboard.  What, you weren't going to play in FNM? Read the post below this!  All the cool kids are doing it.

Happy Planeswalking.

B-Tops