SCD: Rhystic Study

[DirkGently]

Maybe it's a semantic quibble over "reasonable." The problem as you present it here - that it's difficult to determine if a specific in-game action increases or decreases your chances of winning - applies to virtually all forms of interaction and card draw, though. It's true, moreso than other cards it's difficult to perceive whether defecting or cooperating with regards to Rhystic Study helps you or not in the long run, but you can't be sure it's the right call to use your removal spell on that Guardian Project, either. When you attempt to factor in things like your own deck construction, your own playskill, the deckbuilding and playskill of that opponent, the deckbuilding and playskill of the other opponent(s), the possibility for tabletalk, the psychological instability of some nerds... it's a melange of madness.

Making suboptimal choices is part of the game. It's a feature, not a bug, especially in EDH. That's what makes it exciting.

I agree very strongly with this. Well put.

Rhystic study is a threat much like any other. Deciding how to react requires nuance. "Only bad players don't pay" or "RS player is always the archenemy" is simplistic to the absurd.

On a minor note, I'm no cEDH expert, but I expect it's a bad place to look for determining optimal plays outside of cEDH specifically. Most wincons in cEDH are much more explosive and require less setup than normal EDH, where development is more relevant and paying taxes or sitting out a turn under fish puts you more meaningfully behind.

A cEDH player can do nothing except play lands, and then play a cheap combo to win without any development. But if you want to play a bunch of creatures and attack people to death, you're going to need to cast a lot of spells, and that means you're either being massively slowed down or you're feeding the rhystic.

And even if you can get ahead while paying taxes, if your opponents can't pay the tax while holding you off, they're obviously going to skip taxes, undoing much of what you've paid. They're not just going to die because they're terrified of feeding the rhystic.

It's also harder to determine the threat in an environment where wincons are so concealed. Intentionally Feeding the rhystic of a player who is behind can be actively beneficial - my opponents did this to me last night when I was ahead (didn't save them though). In cEDH it's way harder to be confident you didn't just feed the guy who's about to combo off from nowhere and win.

[pokken]

Maybe it's a semantic quibble over "reasonable." The problem as you present it here - that it's difficult to determine if a specific in-game action increases or decreases your chances of winning - applies to virtually all forms of interaction and card draw, though. It's true, moreso than other cards it's difficult to perceive whether defecting or cooperating with regards to Rhystic Study helps you or not in the long run, but you can't be sure it's the right call to use your removal spell on that Guardian Project, either. When you attempt to factor in things like your own deck construction, your own playskill, the deckbuilding and playskill of that opponent, the deckbuilding and playskill of the other opponent(s), the possibility for tabletalk, the psychological instability of some nerds... it's a melange of madness.

Making suboptimal choices is part of the game. It's a feature, not a bug, especially in EDH. That's what makes it exciting.

Yeah I agree with all for the most part. Again a matter of degrees. But one point I'm trying to get at is ways to improve your suboptimal choice making. We mostly want to play better yeah? It's not like life or death but I at least want to improve.

So understanding that it's difficult to know how much defecting helps you and that you're probably wrong a lot of the time because of bias toward action (and a few other biases I could dig into) may help. Most people, even me, incorrectly assess how good it is to defect because we wanna do stuff and we're biased to expect the best outcomes from our actions.

I'll use removal as an example. I think most people will agree that rushing to use removal is more likely to burn you than not. You have more information to make decisions later in the game. Sometimes that burns you because you let something steamroll but it's a lot more common that people burn removal early and then don't have it for a game winning play.

So you wait. And the analog for waiting with study is to pay more often and let things develop.

And when people do that the card is a lot worse. Not bad but much worse.

[yeti1069]

Maybe it's a semantic quibble over "reasonable." The problem as you present it here - that it's difficult to determine if a specific in-game action increases or decreases your chances of winning - applies to virtually all forms of interaction and card draw, though. It's true, moreso than other cards it's difficult to perceive whether defecting or cooperating with regards to Rhystic Study helps you or not in the long run, but you can't be sure it's the right call to use your removal spell on that Guardian Project, either. When you attempt to factor in things like your own deck construction, your own playskill, the deckbuilding and playskill of that opponent, the deckbuilding and playskill of the other opponent(s), the possibility for tabletalk, the psychological instability of some nerds... it's a melange of madness.

Making suboptimal choices is part of the game. It's a feature, not a bug, especially in EDH. That's what makes it exciting.

Yeah I agree with all for the most part. Again a matter of degrees. But one point I'm trying to get at is ways to improve your suboptimal choice making. We mostly want to play better yeah? It's not like life or death but I at least want to improve.

So understanding that it's difficult to know how much defecting helps you and that you're probably wrong a lot of the time because of bias toward action (and a few other biases I could dig into) may help. Most people, even me, incorrectly assess how good it is to defect because we wanna do stuff and we're biased to expect the best outcomes from our actions.

I'll use removal as an example. I think most people will agree that rushing to use removal is more likely to burn you than not. You have more information to make decisions later in the game. Sometimes that burns you because you let something steamroll but it's a lot more common that people burn removal early and then don't have it for a game winning play.

So you wait. And the analog for waiting with study is to pay more often and let things develop.

And when people do that the card is a lot worse. Not bad but much worse.

The challenge with Rhystic is that there isn't necessarily a "correct" option much of the time. Sure, the adage is "don't feed the fish/Study," but when the choice comes down to feeding or playing anything at all, the latter is not often the right line.

I'll reiterate that it also matters who has the Rhystic. If they aren't drawing into a compact combo or a ton of control, then the extra cards, while valuable, aren't necessarily more valuable than you developing your own game.

[yeti1069]

It gets even worse the early Rhystic comes down. Turn 1 is unlikely in casual play, but turn 2 is certainly doable. If that player is going first, does every skip their 2-drops? If those were mana rocks that were ramping them into a 4-drop on 3, do they now set themselves back a full turn or more? How are you punishing the Rhystic player if you aren't playing anything? How are you applying pressure?

[pokken]

Yeah. There isn't "correct." But my point is that it's probably less often correct to defect than you think for reasons :D

[TheGildedGoose]

For what it's worth, I've had the most success against Rhystic Study by utilizing table talk to archenemy them and act as a friendly reminder to pay your taxes, as well as beginning to play very conservatively.

[pokken]

For what it's worth, I've had the most success against Rhystic Study by utilizing table talk to archenemy them and act as a friendly reminder to pay your taxes, as well as beginning to play very conservatively.

Which is exactly what I recommend and my same experience. I think most of the disagreement in the thread is about degrees of how successful that can be and how conservative you should try to be tbh.

What I think is most people have not experienced a table where there was not at least one complete spoiler or at least not on a regular basis.