How a Magic Activity Network Emerges and Operates

RQ1: How do the protocols of an activity system/network like Magic function in new and familiar ways?

Our activity network developed quickly as one centered not only on academic inquiry but also friendly interaction: we are colleagues rather than strangers or tournament-level competitors and, in addition to wanting to learn how to play the game, we wanted to help one another (and ourselves) play the game more effectively. This shared set of values and goals influenced the sorts of decisions we tended to make, such as discussing our strategies as we employed them, along with our expected outcomes, a philosophy that could, in a more competitive context, be considered a tactical blunder.

A Magic player holds their hand of cards above a battlefield of creatures and lands, weighing their options for the next move to make in a game.
A Magic player considers their next play. | Photo by Concerned Reader. Used via CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

These values emerged clearly for us during the starter deck games, since none of us had a significant advantage over the other regarding knowledge of each deck’s capabilities, although Kevin’s lack of previous Magic experience meant that he had a steeper initial learning curve than those of Adam and Trevor. (This may be one reason among many for Kevin’s low number of victories in the starter deck games.) We all found ourselves very willing to ask one another—even our immediate opponent—about unfamiliar or potentially confusing card text or interactions with other cards, with consensus among all three participants serving as the means of adjudicating disagreements. While we knew that a comprehensive set of rules existed for precisely this purpose, we felt comfortable in our abilities to understand the game’s basic mechanics and in our evaluation of one another as an ethically sound player not attempting to cheat the others.

While each constructed deck was designed to perform at least one particular play style and strategic enactment of procedure—for Kevin, these were Aggro and Burn; for Adam, Control; and for Trevor, Combo—it became clear quite quickly, over the span of only a few games, that each deck had the capacity to support (albeit to more limited extents) some of the other play styles.

In particular, the Combo-style construction of Trevor’s deck facilitated the Ramp-like use of his large creatures, as his Combos focused overwhelmingly on the common mechanic of life gain. Life gain allows a player to, as a particular card’s conditions are met or activated, increase their life counter and become that much more difficult to defeat (since an opponent now has that many more life/health points to eradicate). In Trevor’s case, this meant that he could, in theory, play a waiting game until he had the resources to pay for his most powerful creatures (such as Soul of Zendikar) and then use them to quickly erode his opponent’s lower life counter. This realization by all players very early on (as the first game between Kevin and Trevor was the first of the constructed deck games played) led to an adjustment in subsequent play wherein Adam and Kevin each attempted in games with Trevor to target any and all of Trevor’s creatures who made use of life gain mechanics so as to preempt his ability to establish a life counter buffer for himself.

The larger effect of these realizations is an insight into the continued collaborative constitution of an activity network whose protocological structures and components provide clearer (if fewer and narrower) paths for achieving the network’s outcome(s) over time. As participants make decisions to follow some procedures rather than others, or to share interpretations of how procedural workflows should operate, they engage in rhetorical construction and realization of the network itself.

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