On Honor

Egil Skallagrimsson was in trouble. He was quite possibly the greatest (and most terrible) Icelandic Viking ever. A berserker and bard, he was a mighty warrior poet of the North three hundred years before Braveheart’s William Wallace stole the term for the Scotts. But this night he was imprisoned by his enemies, locked with a few unarmed warriors in a well-secured barn, awaiting certain death. While his captors feasted their victory in the nearby longhouse, Bald Skull’s son sat brooding. Egil was an exceptionally ugly man, hulking, with a broad brow. Like his father, he was mostly bald. When he was angry Egil had an odd habit of raising one thick eyebrow up high, then quickly lowering it and raising the other. Back and forth the eyebrows danced. Finally Egil got up. He wasn’t beat yet. He ordered his men to slam their bodies in unison against the weakest (inner) wall of the room where they were jailed. At first, nothing changed, but when Egil joined in, dust began to fall from the ceiling slats. Then in one smash, the wall burst forth, leading the prisoners into another locked room. Egil listened closely. No sign of any guard outside. He and his men smashed through another wall, this time an outer one. As soon as they were outside they found they had not been guarded. Perhaps the thirsty guards had snuck into the feast. Who knows. But Egil and his men were free. They found their gear outside the barn. Now they could silently torch the outside of the hall and wait at the entrance to slaughter the fleeing feasters. They were severely outnumbered, but they had the element of surprise. A man of Egil’s stature would never consider running from enemies, not when he had such a great advantage. So they quietly gathered the supplies for the house burning. As his men began stack the fuel, Egil had a thought. He held up his massive hand in the silent air. All work ceased. “Now,” he said, half to himself, as his eyebrows danced, “it seems to me that I would not get much honor from burning my enemies without warning. We shall knock on the door instead.” The text does comment on what it must have been like to be a retainer supporting Egil on that night. But I imagine there was a noticeable sigh of frustration. “We’re going inside to fight how many men? When we could just roast them instead?” But no one dared voice doubt in Egil’s judgment. Egil and his men “knocked” on the door alright, ripping it asunder. They burst into the light and warmth of the feast screaming unintelligible war cries, hacking their way through the panicked mass of drunkards. Terror does not begin to describe what it must have been like that night for the enemies of Egil Skallagrimsson. The smell of blood and smoke, the sound of screams and metal against bone. Men stumbling drunk for swords, tables overturned in defense, women carrying lifeless children from the fray, dogs lapping the blood mixed with mead dripping through the floorboards. Several hours later there was silence, broken only by crying women and the moans of the dying. Egil had had his revenge.

To be fair I took a little dramatic license with the above summary, and it has been a while since I read the tale. But the core facts are all there. I told that little story because I wanted to illustrate a concept that does not receive enough discussion in our Magical pastime: Honor.

House burnings were not particularly honorable, but they were fairly common. A superior force usually surrounded a longhouse, negotiated the release of women and children, and then set the building ablaze. The besiegers would keep watch and thrust back any men trying to escape the fire. Many an honorable man participated in house burnings. So why did Egil decide instead to fight? Because honor is scalable; what is honorable for one person may be dishonorable for a greater one. A lesser hero might well have gained honor from such a daring exploit, but Egil, the greatest warrior of his generation, felt it would have actually reduced his honor. We know that wonky things can happen when players with vastly differing DCI ratings play one another. This is similar. When Kenji Tsumura sits down at your local FNM, chances are he will not be doing his rating any favors, even though he will probably win the event. Winning such an event would not get a player like him much honor, or DCI points.

But honor in Magic is not synonymous with DCI rating or play skill, at least that’s not how I see it. To stick with Kenji, I remember reading Brian David-Marshall sometime just after Future Sight came out (I wish I could cite the article or podcast, but I can’t). BDM reported that Kenji had mentioned that he had four opponents forget Pact triggers at that Pro Tour. And Kenji could only stop one of them from drawing his card. The moral was that Kenji didn’t WANT his opponents to lose by failing to remember the upkeep trigger off a Pact of Negation. He was actively trying to help his opponents remember the trigger and thus not lose them the game. Why would Kenji want to give his opponents help? The same reason Egil decided not to burn his opponents. Honor. A player of Kenji’s caliber apparently does not see getting that kind of game win as rewarding, even at the PT level. Kenji can beat those players without hoping they move right to draw step with Pact trigger on the stack.

“All right TooSarcastic,” you’re probably saying. “That’s all well and good for the best of Magic’s best, but I need all the help I can get, honor be damned.” Well, honor doesn’t always mean helping your opponents remember triggers (and keep in mind Kenji wasn’t allowing take backs either. I don’t believe take backs are particularly honorable at any competitive level). I’m going to give two examples of players within this community that have shown honorable play against me.

Let’s start with coyoeuglly. For those of you reading this who don’t know coyoeuglly personally, he looks a little sketchy at first blush. Hell, my wife thought he had cancer the first time she met him. Turns out coyoeuglly had simply tried to shave his head drunk the night before (It’s all love, man. All love!). The point is that I wasn’t quite sure I could trust this guy the first time I played against him. I was on the lookout for all kinds of cheats. What I found was that coyoeuglly was a fierce maintainer of the game state. He would correct my life total- upward. He would remind me that Venerable Monk’s life gain was not a “may” ability with a gruff, perfunctory, “gain your life.” And over time I realized that I was never going to have to worry about him drawing three cards off Counsel of the Soratami. Coyoeuglly is not interested in getting cheap wins off such shady antics. I’ve never asked him, but my guess is it’s because coyoeuglly knows it will serve him better at high levels of competition to avoid the warning for failure to maintain the game state and play as though his opponents aren’t chumps. It makes him a better player overall. And it is also, in my opinion, worthy of honor.

Next up: The Captain. We know that The Captain is a skilled Vintage player. But I want to speak about the most competitive match I’ve ever played against him. It was the finals in an unsanctioned after hours draft at Game Universe (that’s about as competitive as I get, by the way). Winner gets a Garruk. Every single turn The Captain would put his hand on the top card of his library, look at me, and ask, “Draw step?” The first few times I wanted to say, “Listen man, this is Limited. The chances of me having an upkeep effect are pretty slim.” But I realized that he really wanted me to have an opportunity to play any effects. He wasn’t being a dick. When we clashed he would leave his top card revealed, although I’m sure he had no trouble remembering what the card was. And when I got my Shelldock Isle active he would briefly announce his transition through the phases of his turn, allowing the opportunity for me to activate the Isle at every step. The Captain was not interested in gaming me out of opportunities to interact. He wanted to win outright, because he played better Magic. My guess is that this style of play also helps him if there are ever any arguments about where in the turn The Captain is, or who has priority. So is it beneficial for The Captain to play clean? Definitely, yes. And I believe it also demonstrates honor.

I think many of us have been taught that short of cheating, anything that garners even the slightest competitive advantage is worth doing. I know I have tried to get a player to pass the turn preemptively, or quickly flipped back my top card after revealing it for the clash, or stacked up my graveyard so my opponent would have to ask me to see it if he was interested in looking at what was under the top card. Any little advantage, right? But what if we started looking at the game from a different perspective? What if we saw superior technical play or transparency of play style as the better advantages? What if we stopped lighting the proverbial longhouse on fire and started kicking down the doors? I propose more honorable play. I don’t mean being soft on opponents for mistakes, or pointing out ways they can win, or anything like that. I mean playing, clean, merciless Magic. I mean being the kind of player, like coyoeuglly and The Captain, who can truthfully say “I would not get much honor from burning my enemies without warning.”

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