The Game We Both Won

A few weeks ago, I played a game of Magic: the Gathering that went especially well, and not just for the person who won the game.

The main way to win a game of Magic is to reduce your opponent's life total to zero. You do this mostly by attacking your opponent with creatures, which deal damage equal to their power. However, your opponent can block your creatures with creatures of their own, causing the damage that your creature would have dealt to you opponent to be dealt to their creature instead.

In one game, I summoned a creature that had Lifelink, which means that whenever that creature dealt damage, I would gain that much life. Then I gave that creature an enchantment that says that whenever I gain life, I put that many +1/+1 counters on that creature, increasing that its power by that amount.

The first time I attacked with that creature, it dealt two damage because it had two power when I summoned it. Because it had Lifelink, when it dealt two damage, I gained two life, and because of the enchantment, when I gained that two life, I put two +1/+1 counters on the creature, and its power became four. On my next turn, I attacked with it again, and this time, it dealt four damage, so I gained four life and put four more +1/+1 counters on the creature, doubling its power again. I repeated this process again each turn for the rest of the game, and each turn, that creature dealt twice as much damage as it had the previous turn, increased my life total by that amount, and doubled its power again.

This chain of events could have ended the game very quickly, but my opponent kept summoning creatures he could use to block my creature. My creature's power and my life total were both growing exponentially, but none of that damage was being dealt to my opponent. And though my life total was growing too fast for my opponent to have any hope of reducing it to zero, my opponent had another way to win.

Each Magic deck only has so many cards in it, and each player draws a card on each of their turns. When a player's deck runs out of cards, and they're forced to draw a card from an empty deck, they lose the game instead.

My opponent had a creature that, every time it hit me, forced me to move several cards from my deck to my discard pile. And though my creature was much stronger than his, my creature couldn't block his because his creature had a common special ability called Flying. A creature with Flying can only be blocked by a creature with Flying or Reach, and my creature didn't have either of those abilities.

So, for several turns, my creature's power would double, and my life total would increase significantly, but I would also lose several cards from my deck. Eventually, I lost the game because I could never manage to block my opponent's creature, but there was a way I could have won.

In addition to the creature whose power was doubling every turn, I had a handful of other creatures, including Odric, Master Tactician. He has an ability that says that when he and at least three other creatures attack, I could choose how, or if, my opponent's creatures blocked. At just about any point, I could have Odric, the power-doubling creature, and two other creatures attack, decide that my opponent's creatures weren't going to block any of my creatures, and win the game.

But that's not what I decided to do. When my opponent realised that my creature's power was doubling each turn, he suggested that, rather than finishing my opponent off quickly, I should wait a few turns and see how powerful my creature could get. So, turn after turn, I chose not to defeat my opponent, and he got closer and closer to defeating me, which he ultimately did. By the end of the game, my creature had over 800 power, and I had about as much life, but my opponent still technically won.

However, I would say that we both won that game. Yes, my opponent took the official victory, but I also kind of won because I could have chosen to win the game much earlier, had I wanted to. On the other hand, part of the reason I didn't chose not to win that way was because my opponent convinced my not to. His quick talking kept the game going long enough for him to snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat. If I had pulled that off, I would have counted that as a win. But still, we both had fun, we shared an epic experience, and both of our decks performed very well. In my books, that was a big win for both of us.

Life's not all about winning and losing. How and why you play the game are also important. In life, all players can win. There are some prizes that can only go to one person, but there are plenty of prizes to be won. I didn't earn the prize of winning that game officially, but we both earned the prize of having a good time. No person succeeds at everything they attempt, but there are many little victories we can win. And whenever a group of people are working for the same goal, like having fun, they can all win together. Strictly speaking, every Magic game that doesn't end in a draw has only one winner, but when everybody is having a good time, I'd say that everybody wins.