Something you’ll hear and see a lot in any competitive event [and even some FNMs and prereleases where competitive crowds hang out] will be players consistently asking their opponent for a response before attacks. This commonly manifests itself in the form of a very simple shortcut: the active player will simply ask “Moving to combat?” or “Attacks?”, signaling their opponent that they wish to move to combat. But why is this?

Well, it’s because Magic is not a game of reflexes. This came up a lot when I was new; we would claim ‘you can’t counter my spell, my turn is already over’, or ‘I already attacked you, too late to tap it!’. This is 100% wrong, by the by. You must give your opponent priority to respond to any spell or ability you use [barring Mana abilities, that is] for the ability to even resolve. Likewise, you both have to pass priority on an empty stack to move to a new step. So this shortcut is to deal with headaches, for one; you won’t have to back up to let him use his spells because you jumped the gun and forgot to give him a chance.

More importantly for this week’s theme, you won’t give him info he doesn’t need. Asking him, “I’m moving to combat, do you have any responses?” or the like will tell him now is the time to respond. Even if you don’t plan on attacking with that dragon, this is his last chance to cast Feeling of Dread to prevent that attack, so he’s got to guess whether you’ll attack or not. And once he’s done that, you can make your attacks knowing what tricks he used. If you jump the gun, now he KNOWS you’re going to attack with the dragon, so of course when you back up, he’ll tap it.

Today’s Strategy Tip written by
Trevor Nuñez, Level 1 judge from Roswell, NM