Explorations #23 - Importance vs Urgency

Part I: The Golden Rule

Jon Finkel once summed up every single thing that you need to know about Magic theory in just five words. I'm going to put it on a line all by itself, to signify how profound this statement truly is:

"Focus only on what matters."

There you go, that's it - now go ahead, go win the next PTQ, PE, or Pro Tour. If that's all we need to know about strategy then we can go ahead and wrap up this article. See you next time folks!

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Wait a minute, you're still here. And I'm still here. That must mean we have more to talk about. How can this be the case when I just gave you (by way of Jonny Magic) everything that you ever need to know about Magic strategy? The problem is that human beings are not really good at directly applying abstract brilliance to situations in their daily lives.

How boring would it be if you clicked on the latest Magic strategy article every morning and just found the same words: 'Focus only on what matters'? In reality, that's what pretty much all of Magic strategy writing is. Just about every Magic theory or strategy articles that has ever been written has been in an attempt to allow players to apply Jon Finkel's five simple words quoted above. Doesn't that sound like quite the profound statement? Take a minute and think of your three, four, or five favorite Magic strategy articles. Make a quick mental list. Here are a few of my personal favorites just off the top of my head:

1. Who's the Beatdown? by Flores
2. Clear the Land and the Fundamental Turn by Zvi
3. The Philosophy of Fire by Flores
4. Splash Damage by Flores
5. Schools of Magic by Hahn
6. Picking the Right Plan by Flores
7. Systemic Thought by Zvi
8. Information Cascades in Magic by Chapin

What do these articles have in common? Each one focuses on a different way to think about the game of Magic. Each article describes a different tool or set of tools that a player can use in order to improve their understanding of the complexity that surrounds each game, match, tournament, and format. In their own separate ways, these articles lay down theories that help us to "focus only on what matters".

Think about some of the terms/concepts that we use (or think about) whenever some serious Magic discussion is going down: card advantage, virtual card advantage, tempo, attacking a metagame, fundamental terms, beatdown/control, etc. Can you think of a single strategic concept in Magic that isn't either another way of saying "focus only on what matters" or a tool to help you understand how to "focus only on what matters"? Maybe you can, but I really can't.

Part II: Importance vs Urgency

So today I'm going to spend the next few pages describing another tool that I use frequently in my life, in and out of Magic, to help myself focus only on what matters. It's a concept that comes from the world of risk and time management, and should help you with everything from your Magic strategy to your professional life to organizing your own personal 'to do' list.

I have WAY too much to do today! There's no way I could ever get all of this stuff done! I'm sure you've had this feeling a million times before, and it's not a good one. Sometimes you just end up with too much stuff to do and not enough time. How do you resolve this situation? Everyone has a personal heuristic, something inside us that allows us to sort out which tasks we should do in which order.

Let's say we have the following things to do, all at the same time.

1. Deal with a crisis at work.
2. Start planning an upcoming project.
3. Answer your ringing phone - it's one of your buddies.
4. Browse the web for last night's baseball scores.

So how do you decide what to do? Do you answer the phone and then get the person off the line ASAP to deal with the crisis at work and then browse the web for baseball scores instead of planning your next big project? Do you blow off the phone call, ignore the crisis, and start planning that next project? There are many different options here, and this is with just a tiny set of tasks. I'm sure that you'd be estatic to set off in the morning with only four things on your list to accomplish - even just basic life maintence (laundry, dishes, food, exercise, etc.) perpetually keeps my task list well into the double digits.

The idea of imporance vs urgency is to break down these tasks along two different axes in order to gain some additional perspective about the way you should prioritize your life. I'm sure that you've guessed by now that the two axes to think about are Importance and Urgency.

So what is importance for our purposes? Importance is the tougher of the two to describe, but I like to think of it as the task's impact on your long term vision or goals. In the example above, let's presume that with your personal set of goals/values that having your business succeed is important to you. Dealing with a crisis at work and planning an upcoming project are definitely important tasks (they will likely help your business succeed), whereas answering your phone and checking out the baseball scores are definitely not important to the long term success of your business.

Urgency is deadline based. There's some subjectivness here, but tasks which are urgent are tasks which are perceived as needing to be dealt with quickly if they are to be dealt with at all. Urgency is largely forced upon you by external forces (deadlines at work), but quite a bit of urgency is generated from within (checking email constantly). The two tasks from our examples above which qualify as urgent are the work crisis and the phone call - these both seem very time sensitive. If you don't deal with a work crisis immediately, then you could lose significant business. If you don't answer your buddy's phone call then he will eventually hang up and you've missed this opportunity to talk with him. The other two tasks above are not urgent. Planning for a future project is something that can be put off until tomorrow, and last night's baseball scores will always be there waiting if you want to look them up later. There's no serious temporal pressure to accomplish these tasks.

Whenever you have one of those days where you feel as if you've done a ton, but not really accomplished anything, then chances are you had a day filled mostly with urgent tasks. Perhaps you woke up and checked out your friends on facebook, did your laundry, went grocery stopping, headed over to Gamestop on the way home to pick up the latest video game, fired up MTGO, played your new video game, joined an 8-man, mulliganed a bunch of times, dried your laundry, folded it up and put it away, etc. You may have done a large quantity of urgent tasks, but nothing much with any real importance.

The basic idea here is that there are four categories of tasks.

1. Important, urgent tasks: Dealing with a crisis at work.
2. Unimportant, urgent tasks: Taking a phone call from your buddy to talk about nothing.
3. Important, nonurgent tasks: Planning ahead on your company's next big project.
4. Unimportant, nonurgent tasks: Browsing the web for baseball scores.

When using this categorization scheme to prioritize your life, the idea is that successful people tend to spend a lot of time on the tasks in categories one and three, while not focusing as much on categories two and four. If you want to get ahead in life then focus on the important, and do your best to ditch the urgent.

What makes this so difficult? The real issue here is that urgent tasks have a way of taking on a sort of pseudo-importance. Or, at least, urgent tasks are perceived as taking on some air of importance just because they happen to be urgent. The real skill takeaway here is to be able to view these attributes as two completely different set of axes. Just because something is very urgent, doesn't make it important - even if it's really, really urgent. Don't the dishes need to be done? Sure, but just understand that the time you spend washing them is probably better spent on something with a higher level of importance, assuming that you're viewing life through the lens of productivity.

So how does this all apply to Magic? I've found that using this type of analysis is very helpful in trying to decide how to implement your strategy. In a typical game there are plenty of options for how to spend your resources. You can develop your board, remove a threat, draw extra cards, go on the attack, etc. In each game there are endless interactions, and a billion branching paths. Using the concept of importance vs urgency adds one more tool to the heuristic that you use to evaluate each game state and "focus only on what matters".

Part III: Application to Magic

So how does this type of thinking help you actually win games of Magic? The theory is mostly directly applicable. In the examples discussed above, we had a goal of "run a successful business". When thinking about Magic, we have an overarching goal of "win the game". The major difference that I've found is that in Magic the tasks on our radar, as well as their relative importance and urgency, are much more volatile than in 'real life'. Things change at a much more rapid pace, and you need to adapt and reevaluate much quicker - but it isn't anything that the model cannot support.

Here's a sample game state.

You
Royal Assassin
No Hand
10 Life
Plenty of Lands

Opponent
Shivan Dragon
Wind Drake
No Hand
20 Life
Plenty of Lands 

Alright so in this example let's say that your opponent is bringing Shivan Dragon and Wind Drake into the red zone. Here are two potential goals for you in this game:

Get rid of the Shivan Dragon
Get rid of the Wind Drake

I would consider both of these plays to be urgent. Your opponent is forcing the issue, bringing a deadline down onto you - if you're don't use the Royal Assassin now then your opponent's creatures will get through the red zone, deal some damage, and then untap safely. Ranking the importance of these two goals in the abstract should be fairly trivial, this is Magic 101 here: obviously taking down the Shivan Dragon is more important than taking down the Wind Drake. At ten life, one Shivan Dragon through the red zone is HUGE trouble. Taking a hit from Wind Drake isn't the best thing in the world, but we can take two for a while before losing the game.

In this situation I would categorize these plays like so:

Get rid of the Shivan Dragon: important, urgent
Get rid of the Wind Drake: non-important, urgent

It may also be useful to think of things in these terms instead:

Use Royal Assassin to destroy the tapped Shivan Dragon: important, urgent
Use Royal Assassin to destroy the tapped Wind Drake: non-important, urgent

I'm not sure which one of these two styles I prefer overall, and I think that there are definite situations where each approach is beneficial. Right now I'm leaning towards the second style as more generally useful, but I need to think about this problem more. As I continue to explore this process, I'm going to experiment with different techniques to define what exactly we are attempting to classify. I just don't know the best approach right now.

There are plenty of things that can happen in this game to change this analysis. Let's say that alongside your Royal Assassin you've also got a Circle of Protection: Red in play. Assuming that you've got open mana, then this will often tip the importance scale in favor of using the Assassin to take down Wind Drake. Removing the Shivan Dragon is no longer a top priority, the big guy is already held in check by Circle of Protection: Red.

The important takeaway here is that these measurements are all relative to each other. Other than the goal of "winning the game" (or some permutation), there is no task or goal that is of absolute importance, either high or low. It's very important to constantly reevaluate as the game state evolves. Speaking of reevaluation, let's make a small change to the board. You trade your Circle of Protection: Red for a Disenchant in hand, and your opponent adds Worship and Raking Canopy to his board. Here's what we're dealing with now:

You
Royal Assassin
Disenchant (in hand)
10 Life
Plenty of Lands

Opponent
Shivan Dragon
Wind Drake
Worship
Raking Canopy
No Hand
20 Life
Plenty of Lands

This updated situation opens up a few additional plays to discuss. The first few plays to think about are the same as above:

Use Royal Assassin to destroy the tapped Shivan Dragon: important, urgent
Use Royal Assassin to destroy the tapped Wind Drake: non-important, urgent

On top of this our opponent has a Worship in play. If we want to win the game in a conventional manner, then we're probably not going to be able to do it with Worship in play (unless we manage to wipe out our opponent's team). We've got a Disenchant in hand to accomplish this task. Removing Worship is a very important thing to do, but it is not urgent. There's a long way to go in this one before Worship really gets in our way.

Cast Disenchant to destroy Worship: important, non-urgent

Our opponent also has Raking Canopy in play, which is an enchantment that penalizes decks that run offensive flying creatures. We don't have any flying creatures in play. Let's say that we don't have any in our deck at all! We have Disenchant to remove Raking Canopy, but there's no reason to. It's not important, and it's not urgent.

Cast Disenchant to destroy Raking Canopy: non-important, non-urgent.

This example serves to show how you can assign potential plays in a Magic game to the four quadrants of the importance/urgency grid. Remember the order we want to tackle these plays in:

1. important, urgent
2. important, non-urgent
3. non-important, urgent
4. non-important, non-urgent

So based on this ranking, here's the priority of the goals that we discussed:

1. Get rid of the Shivan Dragon
2. Get rid of Worship
3. Get rid of Wind Drake
4. Get rid of Raking Canopy

... or if it makes more sense this way:

1. Use Royal Assassin to destroy the Shivan Dragon.
2. Use Disenchant to destroy Worship.
3. Use Royal Assassin to destroy the Wind Drake.
4. Use Disenchant to destroy Raking Canopy.

An important thing to note here is that this ranking doesn't mean that it's important to go ahead and check all four of these off the list as soon as possible. Just because it comes out on top of the importance/urgency evaluation, doesn't mean it's something we we need to act on ASAP. In the above situation, it's probably possible to accomplish #1 and #2 on our checklist immediately - but that doesn't mean that you should use up your Disenchant right now. This ranking isn't an absolute list of which actions you should take, it's a tool for prioritizing your available options.

If you start thinking this way during your normal analysis of the games that you play, then these concepts will start appearing everywhere. This example is VERY simple, and real world game states are often much more complicated - but hopefully this section has given you a decent starting point for this type of analysis, one more tool for the ever-elusive focus on what really matters.

Part IV: Awesome Plays and Punted Games

Here's another example:

I'm sure you've all witnessed this game many times before during your average after-work booster draft. You sit down at the table and draw your seven cards. You come out fast with a barrage of creatures, putting the pressure on your opponent right from turn one. You attack quickly and viciously into his lack of a defense, trying to finish this one before your opponent is able to stabilize. You come close, but you're just not able to seal the deal. You get your opponent down to just a couple of life points, but you just can't push that last bit of damage through.

It's started. The tide has turned. Any sort of advantage that you had in this one has completely melted away. You sit there thinking about the top of your deck.  Is there anything that can save you? You're starting to feel as if you'll never deal another point of damage in your Magic career. The board is locked up, you're not getting through, and it looks like your best times are behind you.

And then it gets worse. A threat comes down. Let's say it's something like Phantom Warrior. It's just a 2/2. You're still at twenty life, plenty of time to find an answer. 18, 16, 14, and you've just seen land, land, and more land. 12, 10, 8, and things are starting to get scary. There are outs in your deck to this, you know there are! Your plans adapt and change as your life total dwindles. You're down to six life now, then suddenly it's four and then two. Your outs are narrowing, and the clock is ticking down. If you don't find a way to kill this stupid little 2/2, then you're going to lose this game. Sweet relief! Shock right off the top of the deck! You windmill slam the card onto that bastard Phantom Warrior, removing your opponent's threat and buying yourself some time to figure out how to win this game. Do you see what happened here? You blew it big time. You let urgency get in the way of importance. Your impending death at the hands of an unblockable 2/2 creature clouded your judgement, pumping the situation full of urgency and obfuscating the true importance in this game of Magic. Your opponent was at two life this whole time - aim the shock at his face! Let's think about this game. Heading into your draw step, there is an important and urgent task staring you right between the eyes: remove that damn Phantom Warrior. This task is an urgent one, because you need to deal with it now. It's an important one, because if you don't kill it then you are dead next turn. If you die, then you fail to achieve your goal of winning the game.

After drawing the Shock, however, everything changes. Removing the Phantom Warrior is still a very urgent task, but the importance has clearly taken a nosedive now that you have a clear path towards victory - Shock your opponent. Counterspell (and the like) complications aside, removing a creature in order to live another turn is no longer of high importance when you have the kill in your hand. Analyzing the importance and urgency of the plays available in this situation will help you to focus on what really matters. 

Phantom Warrior/Shock is a fairly heavy-handed example of the misevaluation of importance vs urgency that I can think of, and it really happened to a pro player at a fairly high level of competition. Unfortunately I couldn't remember which player it was exactly, and was unable to track it down. If anyone reading this has the info, then you will be my hero for the day. I first heard this story on the Top8Magic podcast, so there's a clue to get you started.

Why do plays like this happen? Why would ANYONE (much less a pro player) Shock a Phantom Warrior with their opponent sitting at two life? In Magic, as in life, urgency has a nasty tendency of taking the place of importance. For whatever reason, human beings tend to prioritize urgent tasks over important ones. If you're interested in true effectiveness (Magical or otherwise), then this is something that you really need to focus on.

The final example that I want to use is one of Mike Flores' favorites - Steve OMS playing Napster vs David Humpherys with Replenish at 2000 US Nationals.

Here are two decklists that can give you a solid idea of what this matchup is like: 

Napster

Jon Finkel

Creatures 1 Stromgald Cabal 2 Phyrexian Negator 3 Skittering Skirge 1 Thrashing Wumpus 2 Skittering Horror 9 cards Other Spells 4 Dark Ritual 4 Duress 1 Engineered Plague 1 Eradicate 1 Massacre 1 Perish 1 Persecute 1 Stupor 2 Unmask 4 Vampiric Tutor 4 Vicious Hunger 4 Yawgmoth's Will 28 cards

Lands 2 Spawning Pool 15 Swamp 4 Rishadan Port 2 Dust Bowl 23 cards Sideboard 2 Engineered Plague 1 Massacre 2 Phyrexian Negator 1 Phyrexian Processor 1 Powder Keg 2 Rapid Decay 1 Eradicate 1 Perish 1 Stromgald Cabal 1 Stupor 1 Thran Lens 1 Unmask 15 cards

Replenish

Tom van de Logt

Creatures 0 cards Other Spells 4 Attunement 3 Counterspell 1 Energy Field 3 Enlightened Tutor 4 Frantic Search 1 Mystical Tutor 4 Opalescence 3 Parallax Tide 4 Parallax Wave 4 Replenish 1 Seal of Cleansing 1 Seal of Removal 1 Sky Diamond 1 Wrath of God 35 cards

Lands 9 Island 8 Plains 4 Adarkar Wastes 4 Rishadan Port 25 cards Sideboard 1 Chill 1 Circle of Protection: Black 1 Cursed Totem 2 Wrath of God 2 Daze 3 Erase 2 Lilting Refrain 1 Seal of Cleansing 2 Submerge 15 cards

In case you aren't familiar with these lists, Napster is a black control deck that relied on the power of Vampiric Tutor and Yawgmoth's Will to find the correct solutions to every game state. Replenish is a combo deck based on using cards like Attunement and Frantic Search to dump powerful Enchantments into the graveyard (Parallax Tide, Parallax Wave, Opalescense), eventually using Replenish to return them all to play - presenting your opponent with a very difficult game state.

For Replenish to win, it needs to generate a decent amount of mana and then resolve some key white spells. If you're Steve OMS with Napster, could you hope for anything more than to start off with a hand that includes Dark Ritual and Stromgald Cabal? Going first, that white hoser comes down before Humpherys has the chance to do anything at all. From here, your board position is almost unbreakable. You have the ability to counter all of their key spells, and there isn't a damn thing they can do about it. Sounds pretty sweet, huh? Do you know what's even sweeter? Being as smart as SteveOMS and playing turn one Ritual into Phyrexian Negator... and then following it up on turn two with Vampiric Tutor for a second Dark Ritual to power out the key Stromgald Cabal. Both plays are strong, but the one that Steve found is clearly superior. Your key spell comes down before they get Counterspell online either way, but by playing Phyrexian Negator on turn one he amps up the clock and gives Humpherys one fewer turn to find some way out of this.

After opening up your initial hand, it may seem both important and urgent to get Stromgald Cabal into play. I mean, what play could possibly be better than getting a gamebreaker down on the first turn? The answer is, of course, that there are better plays - we just talked about one. This is where thinking about importance vs urgency can help you reason your way to the correct play. Let's go through this particular example.

Any time that you have a breaker in your hand, that little guy will be screaming with all of his might, "Get me in play, and you're winning this one! I can practically do it all by myself!" Sure sounds urgent, huh?  Is it important? It is obviously important to resolve Stromgald Cabal at some point this game, there's no question about that - but digging a bit deeper shows the way that we should be thinking about this situation. The key is to think about things temporally. In the first example we went over, removing Phantom Warrior went from important to non-important in the span of a draw phase. Thinking about things along a timeline is the key to getting a grasp on Stomgald Cabal/Phyrexian Negator. Think about it like this:

"It's important that I resolve Stromgald Cabal. He helps me achieve my goal of winning the game by denying my opponent many of his most necessary resources.  Is this an urgent task?"

In the situation described above, Stromgald Cabal can absolutely wait a turn. Think about playing this guy on turn one instead of turn two.  The mana is available, it doesn't run the risk of Counterspell, and there aren't any crucial white spells to counter until turn three. Nothing that contributes to the importance of resolving Stromgald Cabal is relevant on turn one. Stromgald Cabal screams of urgency, but that play just does not need to happen on turn one. From the point of view of "right now", Stromgald Cabal is important, and may seem urgen at first glace - but it is not an urgent play.  It can wait.

Now let's think about Phyrexian Negator for a minute. This is the quickest path to twenty damage against a deck that is capable of exploding into an unbeatable board position. That sure seems to carry quite a bit of urgency, huh? Maybe not as much as his buddy the Cabal, but it's fair to say that this 5/5 beater is presenting some serious urgency. He's a fast clock and your opponent has very few ways to exploit his (sometimes severe) drawback. What are you waiting for?  Bring that dude online!

So how do you figure out that the Negator is the correct play here? You examine the importance of adding a 5/5 trampling monster to your side of the table. Think of it this way:

"It's important that I resolve Phyrexian Negator. A 5/5 trampler will finish off this opponent in four attack phases, which helps me achieve my goal of reducing Mr. Opponent to zero life. Do I really need to resolve this demon right now?"

In this case, unlike Stromgald Cabal, the answer is yes. The sooner that we resolve our beater, the sooner we win the game. This may not be as sexy as shutting off our opponent's path to victory on turn one, but it's crucial to deal twenty damage to our opponent - and the amount of leverage we command in this game increases significantly with an extra turn of 5/5 in the red zone. It is very important to resolve this spell on turn one. Dark Ritual + Phyrexian Negator is an important, urgent play. These are the ones we make ASAP!

Why is this play so difficult to find? Because each play (turn one Stromgald or turn two Stromgald) will almost guarantee victory, but yet one is clearly superior to the other - and the superior play is not as obvious. Turn two Stromgald just doesn't carry the same level of urgency that the turn one Stromgald play does. This urgency does a really good job of making the correct play difficult to find, just as in life urgency often makes prioritizing our life difficult.

Part V: In Closing

Does this Negator/Stromgald Cabal example make sense? It does to me, so hopefully it does to you also. Drilling down into the intricacies of this play and understanding the fundamental distinction between urgency and importance when it comes to casting spells in a game of Magic will make you a better player - I'm pretty much sure of it. The next time you go in the tank to sort out your path to victory, remember to think about your options conceptually as points on a graph of importance an urgency - it just may show you the way.

On top of this, I think the importance vs urgency model provides an awesome framework to use when going into the tank. Rather than just "thinking really hard" about the game state, this model provides a path to head down - a system that will occasionally provide the correct play, and should always provide (at the least) more information. I really think that this tool/strategy/technique can help most Magic players become better at prioritizing their options. I think it can help you focus on what matters.

As mentioned many times above, this idea hasn't fully matured in my mind, and I think there is a lot more leverage to be gained here. I'm going to keep this one in mind and hopefully revisit it at some point in the future. I'd love to hear everyone's feedback!

Thanks for reading!

Steve Gargolinski
spgmtgo@gmail.com
youtube.com/mtgexplorations

Appendix: Exercises for the Reader

One thing that I've had fun doing, ever since I first thought about Magic in terms of importance and urgency, is to revisit some past games and plays in order to view them within this new model. The Phyrexian Negator example above is one of the first ones that I went through, but since then I've thought about countless others. If you're interested in doing the same, then here's a short list to get you started:

Isn't playing a land the most urgent thing ever? Who likes to miss land drops?
http://fivewithflores.com/2008/11/you-make-the-play-solution/

Once again, everyone loves to play out their lands...
Nassif vs Chapin, Worlds 2007
http://webcast2.wizards.com/07nyc/Worlds-NYC07-SemiFinals.zip

Char you.
Ruel vs Jones, Pro Tour Honolulu
http://webcast.wizards.com/06honolulu/webcast/hon06_semis.wmv.zip