While talking to Christian Kudahl after our Dark Draft Showmatch he mentioned a note taking strategy that intrigued me. So, I asked him to write up his thoughts on it. Game one was saved and can be viewed here: Game 1 vs Kudahlissimo
I first talked to Tom Sorenson about a year ago because I was a fan of his blog. As an amateur Epic player with no real competitive opponents around, getting to read his draft guides and tournament reports was really exciting for me. Tom was even nice enough to help out with a lot of testing my game Unleash, which is scheduled to come out later this year. His expertise in competitive card games was a huge help.
With the Epic app, we also started playing Epic together. We always played Dark Drafts, and I was really excited when I was able to get a win against him now and then. After some matches, he challenged me to a best of five match which he would stream. It sounded like a lot of fun for me, though I was a bit nervous. I have never played Epic tournaments or any kind of “official” matches before. I knew he was strong, and I really wanted to beat him.
If you have not yet seen the match, I would recommend watching game one before reading more. It can be watched here:
To prepare myself, I started re-reading every entry on his blog. I wanted to internalize his style. What did he value in Dark Drafts? What did he overvalue? (Tokens!) Which cards did he draft even though he kind of knew he shouldn’t? (Rampaging Wurm seems to tempt him every time.) What does he undervalue? (Knight of Shadows, that guy is strong!)
I knew that Tom was streaming the match and he wanted to take some time explaining all his choices thoroughly to the viewers, so the matches would be quite slow. I wanted to use this to my advantage. I came up with the ultimate note-taking scheme:
With every pick in the Dark Draft, I would note the four cards I sent to him (I call this a quad). I would note the two cards I expected him to pick in one list (called ‘the decklist’), and the two cards I expected him to burn in another list (called ‘the burnlist’).
During the matches, every time he played or revealed a card, I would cross reference it with the decklist and the burnlist. If he played a card from the burnlist, I would find the two cards I had expected him to draft in the decklist and decide the one I think he actually picked, and swap the other with the card from the burnlist. If I ever saw him playing two cards from a quad (four cards I had sent to him), I knew the other two could not be in his deck, so I would stop playing around them.
With my scheme, I was ready to crush Tom on his own stream. So how did it go?
Pretty bad, actually. The first two games, I found myself making lots of mistakes that I normally consider myself too good for. I suspected that the reason was me spending so much brain power with this ridiculous note-scheme that I only had a small focus on the actual game itself. Tom played really well and I soon found myself down 2-0.
Like the basketball team in any American movie I watched as a kid, it was half-time in the finals and I was way behind. I needed to do something. I decided to throw my note-scheme out the window and play the remaining games from my gut. With a mix of good play and good fortune, I was able to get back to a score of 2-2. We now had one deciding game remaining.
Due to a baby-situation at home, I was unfortunately unable to finish the match. However, as a European, ending 2-2 is quite fine and the result of an exciting soccer match. I enjoyed playing the games a lot and my two final observations are these:
- Realize that taking notes is not free. This also applies in real-life matches where the notes are taken internally in your head. In both cases, it costs brain power that will be taken away from your actual play. Is your note-taking scheme providing a benefit comparable to the effort you are putting in?
- In other games (such as Hearthstone) using deck-tracking software is sometimes allowed. It is a piece of software which tracks for example which cards are still in your deck or how many turns certain cards have stayed in the opponent’s hand. All the boring stuff that you would be able to track by paper anyway but you don’t feel like doing. After this match with Tom, I realize that the power of such software in Epic Dark Draft would be enormous. By remembering all the Dark Draft picks and burns (and Deck 2, see http://www.tomsepicgaming.com/epic-theory-an-introduction-to-deck-2/ ), you theoretically have a ton of information about what is in the opponent’s deck and hand. It is probably for the best that such software does not exist.
I look forward to our next match where I will have revised my note-taking scheme. If anyone has a different note-taking scheme or other ideas on the subject, I would love to hear about it.