Thread by @JasonILTG

Very interesting video from jorbs (excellent strategy game streamer who mostly streams Slay the Spire) on how he thinks about strategy games. I would highly recommend watching the video yourself, but I figured I'd do a thread connecting some of his ideas to MtG draft. 1/x

https://twitter.com/JoINrbs/status/1449773761566105604

Again, want to stress that I'd highly recommend watching the video first! jorbs uses a lot of Slay the Spire examples, but the concepts are applicable to all sorts of strategy games (and life in general). This thread is just me applying those ideas specifically to MtG draft. 2/x

First, a small overview: the main concept jorbs talks about in his video is what he dubs "loose Bayesian knowledge" - he approaches strategy games by having prior expectations and hypotheses that he updates through his experiences playing and experimenting in those games. 3/x

I approach strategy games very similarly, and think it's a great way to think about them. And I want to highlight some of what in my opinion are the most important points from the video (most of these are in the "peculiarities" section starting around 38:45). 4/x

First of all, I think *the* most important feature of this way of thinking is that it properly acknowledges that strategy games like Slay the Spire and MtG are way too complex and intractable to make assertions about with 100% confidence. 5/x

jorbs talks extensively about this - about how he's constantly reevaluating and reforming his beliefs, how he acknowledges he's constantly wrong, and how he thinks it's bad to assign ego to your beliefs (38:45-53:33 in the video) 6/x

And that can be humbling! But much better to admit that you were wrong (and always will be somewhat wrong) and constantly update your beliefs to be *less* wrong (but still wrong), than to stay stuck in the past and be more wrong. 7/x

This is why, when I write threads, I try to be nuanced, with a perspective of "this is what I've observed, here's how I've used these cards". And why I can never use tierlists. I'm not presenting absolute truths; I'm sharing my experience to help you update your beliefs. 8/x

This also ties into one of the biggest mistakes people make with 17lands data - draft is too complex for the data to capture truths as simple as "X is better than Y"; instead, you should think critically about why the data is how it is in order to update your beliefs. 9/x

On top of this, everyone has their own way of drafting. Maybe I'm worse at playing aggro decks than you, or better at building manabases. Trying to do exactly as someone else does will never be as valuable as developing your own strategy. 10/x

Of course, part of developing your own strategy can and should involve considering others' experiences (including data)! "Standing on the shoulders of giants" and all that. But there is a difference between learning and rote memorization. 11/x

Another great thing about this way of thinking about strategy games is that it goes hand-in-hand with adapting to new situations, something that you constantly have to do when evaluating new cards in new draft formats. 12/x

jorbs talks about the problems with extrapolation, and that applies in Magic too - people are quick to compare to new cards to old, but draft formats today are much different than sets even 4 years ago, and old heuristics like "1 drops are bad" might not apply anymore. 13/x

Of course, it is basically impossible and not very useful to try to evaluate new cards from scratch, so some extrapolation is needed for initial evaluations. But the important part is to treat nothing as sacred, and be willing to adjust your beliefs away from "the norm". 14/x

And this also applies to metagame shifts within a format! I think UB was best and red close to unplayable in the first week of MID draft, but I don't think that really is the case anymore. 15/x

I could probably say more, but I'm getting kind of tired so I'll end this here. TL;DR, jorbs is great, go watch his video (), nothing is certain, we're all wrong, nothing is sacred, and that's completely fine. 16/x

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