We’re back! Last week, we looked at five of the ten things that I think you should really be doing now that you’re an experienced TCG player. It’s been more than a year since the World of Warcraft TCG made its debut at Gen Con Indy 2006, and since the game keeps growing, you need to make sure you’re keeping up, both for competitive reasons and for plain old fun. None of my suggestions are terribly radical or surprising (at least I hope they aren’t), but you’d be surprised at how many of these little habits aren’t being observed by players who invest a ton of time into the game.

Let’s start with a really easy one that virtually nobody adheres to.

Drink Water during Tournaments

Ask any athlete—your body just can’t perform if it’s not adequately hydrated. A lot of the serious TCG players I know come away from big tournaments with headaches or a general feeling of wooziness, and while part of that is mental fatigue, it’s often just their bodies crying out for hydration. It’s really easy to get caught up in a fun event and forget to have a drink now and then, but if you do, it will impact both your competitive edge and your ability to have a good time. Nobody’s going to enjoy a tournament if they feel like they’re going to pass out or if they’re mysteriously failing to play their best.

In addition, note that I’m recommending water, and not energy drinks, coffee, or caffeinated soda. Caffeine may give you a bit of a lift and keep you sharp for a brief period of time, or it may have no beneficial impact. Personally, I’m in the latter camp. But regardless of the potential short-term benefit, the long-term handicap is pretty much always there. It usually takes about two hours, but caffeine can and will make you feel torpid and sluggish. Your reaction times and short-term memory will suffer, and those are two of the most important mental assets you have when you’re playing cards.

Keep yourself hydrated and avoid caffeine at tournaments, and I guarantee that you’ll have at least one advantage over a significant portion of the playing field. There’s no reason to pass that up.

Study Tournament Coverage

This one’s a little more time consuming, but considering the payoff, it really is worth it. Reading over this site’s tournament coverage for big events like National Championships and Darkmoon Faires is really only something you need to do once a month or so, and it only takes a couple hours to check everything out. Granted, it’s a lot more fun to sit and watch the coverage live on the day of the tournament, so do that if you can! But if you can’t, don’t ignore the awesome resource that the tournament-day articles can be.

The decks that you see in coverage are the ones you’re going to be facing in upcoming Regionals, and you’ll definitely see them in the hands of at least a few of your local tournament players too. If you’re competitive, then knowing what you’ll be up against and how other players dealt with those challenges will save you a lot of trial and error; you’ll adapt to new strategies a lot faster simply because you’ll be aware of them before they appear at your local event and smack you around. Even if you’re just a casual player, there are many reasons to read the coverage. First of all, it’s really entertaining! Reading about the WoW TCG is the next best thing to playing it yourself, and some days, your friends just won’t take too kindly to those 3 AM Draft invite phone calls. Trust me on that one.

Beyond that, even if you don’t plan to play those decks and don’t want to devote a ton of time to making sure that you can beat them, you’ll at least be introduced to the key cards the deck uses. That makes your games smoother, easier to understand, and more enjoyable. It’s always fine to ask to see one or more of your opponent’s cards when they’re played, but it gets a bit awkward when you have to ask about a large number of them. It’s still okay to ask, but you won’t get to focus on the game as much, and that can suck the fun out of it. So, if you’re not a regular reader of the coverage, there are lots of reasons to start.

Draft Regularly!

I know I recommend this about once every five weeks, but I really can’t say enough good things about Draft. Like reading tournament coverage, there are both competitive and casual reasons to draft. From the competitive side, you get to learn about cards you may not have known existed that can improve your knowledge of the game and the decks you build. Drafting is becoming a big part of the competitive scene, and if you want to win big prizes and increase your ranking at major events, then it’s something you’ll have to be familiar with. It’s especially important if WoW is your first TCG; there are people out there who haven’t been playing this game as long as you have, but who have been drafting for years. If you don’t draft on a regular basis, then they could have a big advantage over you.

On the casual side, drafting is some of the most fun you can have with WoW. If the environment is casual, it can take a lot of the competitive pressure out of the equation and play can be a lot less serious. If you’re tired of being smashed by Gorebelly, then Draft can be a nice retreat. Besides that, you’ll get to play with a lot of fun cards that you wouldn’t consider for Constructed, either because they wouldn’t be competitive in your established metagame or simply because Draft conditions have forced you to run them. Playing with new stuff is a blast, and drafting gives you that opportunity.

Oh, and as long as Fires of Outland is included in the packs you’re drafting, the whole experience can be made a little more competitive for free. The new Crafting Redemption Program has made those UDE Points cards more valuable than ever before, and you probably won’t have a hard time finding a group of drafters eager to throw down for each others’ resources. How many resources each player gets at the end of the day is up to the group: you don’t even have to make the losing players give up cards. Since everyone will probably want to craft different promos anyway, the winner could get first pick from the pool, selecting cards equal to the number he or she contributed. Then, second place would get second pick, and so on down the line.

Drafting is a great experience, and if you’re not drafting, then you’re missing out on an awesome time.

Know Your Rights and Responsibilities at Tournaments

By now, any players who attend local tournaments on even a semi-regular basis should know what’s expected of them and what’s reasonable to expect from those operating the event. The Organized Play Policy Documents can be a little tricky to find if you’re a new player, but everybody needs to be familiar with them. There are three documents that you should read and understand.

The first is the Official Tournament Policy. It details player responsibilities, event protocols, and a bunch of other general information that you should know in order to play in Upper Deck Entertainment events. Next, the WoW TCG Policies outline similar information, but it’s specific just to WoW. It has really important stuff like end-of-match procedure, and it’s just as important as the Official Tournament Policy. Finally, I really recommend studying the Penalty Guidelines. A Head Judge reserves the right to upgrade or downgrade penalties in extreme situations, but having a rough idea of what might happen should you make a significant error is important, again for both the sake of competition and your own enjoyment.

Know Your Matchups

This final point is more for the competitive crowd, but I really can’t recommend it highly enough. When you commit to building and playing a deck, spending time perfecting it, and trading for the cards you need, do yourself a favor and find out how your deck performs against other strategies against which you think you’ll play. If you know what to expect from a number of decks that you’re likely to see, then you’ll be able to make strategic decisions instead of just tactical ones, and that’s often the difference between winning and losing.

Testing your various matchups takes time. You’ll actually need to build or proxy those decks and then find someone (usually several someones) to practice with. But sometimes, just putting some careful consideration into each matchup can be a good start. Observe forum threads that discuss how various decks perform. Read articles about those decks from reputable writers, and hunt down recent feature match coverage that involves the strategies you’re playing with or against. You don’t need to know absolutely everything about every single deck in existence, but the more you know, the better your results will be.

I know a lot of people who put tons of hours into their latest masterpiece of deckbuilding, only to wind up flunking out of the latest tournament simply because they were too focused on their deck and not thinking enough about others’. Make sure that when you do start thinking about matchups, you’re not overlooking anything important. Sometimes, it can be hard to face up to the fact that one deck just downright stomps yours in game 1, but doing so means that you can dedicate your side deck to that matchup so that you can win in games 2 and 3. There’s no shame in losing, but you probably won’t feel very good about it if you lost because you turned a willfully blind eye.

So there you have it! Between this week and last, that’s ten things that virtually everybody should be doing now that they’ve been playing WoW for a while. As I said last week, pat yourself on the back for each habit you’re already practicing. For each one you’re not doing yet, reflect on the task and think about how it will improve your game. Then, change things starting with your next tournament. It’s a lot easier than it might seem, and the benefits are a lot bigger than they may appear.