Kids Just Want to be Spikes

As I've written about before, I was drawn into MTG by the simple desire to give my younger son someone to play against.   There is an age difference of 9 years between by boys.   With the my older son's schedule and commitments, I knew there was no way he'd end up playing with Jake consistently enough to keep him entertained.   Plus, I figured sooner or later he'd find someone else his age to play with and I'd be able to retire.

That was a year and a half ago.

I'm still playing with Jacob and enjoying every minute of it.   Mostly.   Every once in a while though, I forget he's 12.   Happy Birthday, buddy.

Which leads me to the topic of the day.   Playing a family member in any game can be an emotional roller coaster.   You both want to do well, especially when there are prizes on the line.   You're playing for personal pride as well.   Playing at a limited draft event, with seeding first randomly and then by wins/losses, it is inevitable that if you do it often enough you'll end up playing each other.

Not long ago, Jake and I played at a Gatecrash FNM draft with about 30 other players.   Both of us played two rounds.   Our records were 2-0 against our opponents when the pairings for the third round came up from the computer.   Not surprisingly, we were paired against each other.

I could see Jake was ready to go.   He thought his deck that night was pretty strong.   He had only been telling me minutes before how he controlled his last to games from beginning to end.   I hadn't seen his deck yet (sometimes he shares willingly, at other times like tonight he wants to keep it to himself), but his deckbuilding skills were definitely improving.   I was looking forward to the challenge that he would bring, seeing him as another player who wanted to win.   Not as an 11 year-old boy still learning the game.

We arranged our playmats, electing to sit at one of the main tables.   He put out his dice tray and I found a clean page to keep score.   We shuffled, cut and drew seven.  "Keep."  "Keep."   Just like that, it was on like Donkey Kong.

I don't remember the games as well as I wished (I really need to start taking better notes).   I'm not even sure what I was playing (although I'm pretty sure that night he was trying something with Dimir or Simic and I was way into Gruul).   Here is what I do remember...

Game 1
We both started slow, testing the waters.   Land for each of us to start, then passing turns.   On the second and third round, we were starting to lay out our strategies.   Jacob seemed to be off to a slow to mid-range start.   I was being a little bit more aggressive, trying to get him to show me what he had.

And then...BOOM.   It was over.   I played reasonably smart, bloodrushed when he didn't block my creatures and won the game.   I don't think we went past 6 turns.

Jacob wasn't happy.   He thought he was controlling the board.   Maybe he was and I just happened to top-deck one of my two Zhur-Taa Swines.   I was thinking about his last play or two, wondering if there was something he held back or misplayed - but I couldn't think of anything wrong.   My hand and my board position was simply better than his.

I told him to keep his chin up, that it's only a draft.   Before I knew it, we were into the next game.

Game 2
Jacob mulliganed his first draw, mine was pretty much a snap keep.   Even so, I thought about mulliganing just to keep things sporting.   Unfortunately, that little part of my brain that is left over from our reptilian ancestors took control of my brain and I kept.

Ah, our reptilian ancestors.   Always wanting to be the biggest, baddest kids on the block.   Moving up the evolutionary ladder by sheer desire to be the best little lizards they could be.   When will I ever learn, following that lizard brain isn't always sporting.

So here's the play.   Jacob and I both have creatures on the board, he's building up and I'm doing the same.   Neither of us have a visibly overwhelming board state - but what my son doesn't know is I've got two bloodrush creatures in my hand - one is my buddy the Swine - and mana to spare.   And then it happens.   I top-deck my second Swine.

I attacked tentatively, testing the waters.   Jacob realizes he has to start blocking and does so, leaving one of my lower powered creatures open.   Then I bloodrushed him.  Twice.   With Zhur-Taa Swines.   You could hear a pin drop - five states away.

Game, set, match.   I've defeated this little upstart kid...

Oh.

Oh no, I've messed up.

This is my kid.

And he's folding himself into his chair like he doesn't want anyone to see him.

He's trying to turn his head down, hiding from me.   "Jake?"..."Jacob??"   No response.   His lower lip isn't quite quivering, but his really never does.   It's hard to lose to someone when you're 2-0.   It's harder when you think you've got game.   And it's really hard to lose when you've got a good record, you think you've got game, and you're playing dad.   I won't say what happened next exactly, but it wasn't yelling or acting out - it was more of a quite display of sadness.

[The remaining awkward moments of this scene have been deleted to maintain a modicum of decorum, avert your gaze and move onward].

As badly as he felt in that moment, I think I felt worse.   (Parents will understand this, I don't think kids have the capacity).

The Parent Trap
Being a parent is not an easy role to play.   As parents, we try to balance what is right versus wrong in many of our interactions with our children.   I know we react to situations with our children differently based upon a host of environmental/genetic factors, preconceived notions, and weighing a scale of pros/cons the size of a small passenger plane.

To understand why I beat him, you have to understand me - just a little bit.  I'm not a super-aggro, beat my chest, and howl at the moon competitor.   I want to win, obviously (no one plays who doesn't have a little bit of Spike in them).   I also want to be a good steward of this young man before me, teaching him values that are important to life.   Teaching him to win is important.   Teaching him to lose with some dignity though, I think takes greater skill and is more important.   I want him to win every race, competition, and sweepstakes he enters.   What parent doesn't?   But at the same time, I want him to know how to deal with the eventual disappoint that life brings.   What would MTG be like if we all won, all the time?   Even better yet, what would life be like without some adversity?   As a parent, it is my job to help my boys learn this.   Nothing is free, winning isn't guaranteed, and even the people you love most sometimes beat you up.   Magic allows that to happen in a safe and fun environment.

If I had purposely played poorly game one or two, I could have set him up for the win.   But that doesn't teach him how to cope with losing.   Full disclosure time - environmental factors.   When I was in my young twenties, I played a computer game called Descent 2.   Imagine any first-person shooter made today, only swap out the gamepad or mouse for a flight stick/keyboard combo and throw the protagonist into a single-seat fighter in a zero-g environment.   If you've never played, it is the standard all shooters should be held to in terms of skill/difficulty curve in multiplayer environments.   It had the most brutal learning curve of any FPS before or since, chasing away many would be players.   Learning the game well enough to survive multiplayer more than a minute at a time took most people months (not days, not weeks...MONTHS).   It may not have been easy - but it was fun.   Especially once you got past the learning curve and started to dance through the levels.   Clans held training sessions for all new recruits that took weeks or months to finish, just because the mechanics of being able to move in '6 directions' was that hard.   The point is, I learned the game by dying/losing and by sheer attrition.  I was not going to get good at Descent by dreaming about it, mowing the lawn or talking about it with my dog.   I had to play, lose, and learn from my mistakes.   I played Descent and it's variants for 2-3 years.   I'm sure, given how difficult the game was that even when I played my last game I learned yet another lesson about how to improve my skills.

That experience enters into my thinking when dealing with both of my sons in any competitive setting.   I don't like to take it easy on them during the game.   They have to want it.   It was different when they were young and we'd play Go Fish.   Magic though doesn't reward chance very often.   It rewards knowledge and skill.   When we play, I can't help him by being a simpering push-over.   (Full Disclosure - this doesn't mean I haven't tossed a game or two.   But out of 100 games, I've done everything I could do to win over 95% of the time).

All of this leads to a problem.   I had just handily crushed my son in 2 games.   He's not coping with it well.   So I have a decision to make.   I have to decide (and I have about 3 seconds to do so before I can't make an adjustment to his behavior that will be meaningful) what to do.   The possibilities flash through my head: let him report it as a win, play a 'tie-breaker' game to give him one more shot, tell him to suck it up and man up,   try to show him where he can improve his game or offer to review his deck, and/or offer him a consolation.

He's spiraling fast, and I'm losing my window of opportunity.   One more moment of indecision and I may as well pack my bags for the night.   Trying to judge where he is mentally, I dismiss most of the possible ideas and simply reach for my wallet.   I push a five dollar bill at him and say, "I'm going up to report.   When you feel like it you can go buy a pack if you want."   I'm keeping the win, giving it up doesn't teach him anything.   He doesn't want to hear from me about what cards he should have or should not have in his deck right now.   He won't learn anything if I play another game and do something stupid, giving him the win.   And telling him to man up would be about as effective as pouring gasoline on the fire.   Instead, he's going to get a chance at a choice rare. And hopefully, just maybe, I judged him correctly and he'll turn around so he can enjoy the other two games he'll play before leaving.

So how did that work?

That night I went 4-1.   He finished out pretty strong at 3-2.   His deck, when I did finally get to look at it wasn't bad, it just wasn't as good as it needed to be.   If I had let him win, there's almost no way he would have ended up with a record better than 3-2 for the night.   Also, the pack I let him buy had a shockland in it.

It took a little while before he was able to talk to me, but we did review the game a little bit and what choices he had made.   He probably should have mulled game one, but kept the hand believing it would pull him through.   As we left that night, he asked me if he could have a pack from my winnings.

"Not a chance, buddy."

I'm sure some of you think that's a cruel answer.   But in that moment, he and I both understood sometimes the dice don't fall in your favor.   Deal with it and try to make better choices next time.   Until you do, remember that while you may fall, I'll be there to pick you up.