It's My Life
It's my life, and it's now or never...cause I ain't gonna live forever! Your endurance total is much like the King in chess. Pretty useless overall, until you don't have it. Then you're dead. Today I'll go through the ins and outs of what impact endurance totals have on the course of the game.

This ain't a song for the broken-hearted
No silent prayer for the faith-departed
I ain't gonna be just a face in the crowd
You're gonna hear my voice
When I shout it out loud

Technically, it's called endurance, not life. But does Bon Jovi have a song called It's My Endurance? Didn't think so.

I see mistakes justified by potential endurance changes all the time. I make them myself and I have only recently began to think about endurance from a theoretical perspective. Most of the time, you either have the opportunity to attack your opponents board, and eliminate their characters or you can break up their reinforcment opportunities and cause a ton of breakthrough. This happens in both constructed and limited games.

Prior to the release of Avengers, there were not many constructed decks that were capable of capitalizing on an endurance advantage if they had an inferior board position. Today, if you're down 40 to 12 against a High Voltage or Squadron deck, you're probably dead regardless of what characters are in play. For quite some time, I simply concentrated on developing a better board which would eventually wear down my opponents. I laughed at Shawn Hayward when he said Advanced Hardware was broken. I was making too many mistakes based on not taking enough care of my endurance.

In Magic, a control deck, once stabilized and in firm control, will rarely lose another point of life for the rest of the game. The first 19 points of life are to be used as a resource to help you stabilize. However, in Vs, things aren't so cut and dry. A deck that has a vastly superior board will continue to take at least a little bit of damage, especially if they don't have the initiative. Consider a Titans deck with a board of Roy Harper, Terra, Garth, Hawk, and Dove and a High Voltage deck with simply Golden Archer. If endurance totals are even remotely close, the Titans player will almost always win the game, but if the Titans player had neglected his/her endurance and now finds themselves down 30 to 10, it might find itself on the losing end of some burn spells, even if none of their characters ever gets stunned for the rest of the game.

It's my life
It's now or never
I ain't gonna live forever
I just want to live while I'm alive
(It's my life)
My heart is like an open highway
Like Frankie said
I did it my way
I just wanna live while I'm alive
It's my life

In tournament Vs, each match has a binary result. Either you win or you lose. If you win one game 50 to 0 and then lose the next -5 to -4, you are still 1-1. Therefore, there are opportunities for you to secure a better posistion for later turns by giving up some endurance advantage early in the game. Consider the following board:

Them:

[Ted Kord, exhausted] [Hawkwoman w/Nth Metal]
[Booster Gold] [7/7 Hawkdude w/Nth Metal]

You:

[Bizarro #1 w/Knight Armor] [Ahmed Samsarra w/Amulet of Nabu]

You are the Checkmate/Villans player, and you are teamed up, have a Brother Eye (for 3) and a Knightmare Scenario at your disposal. You also have the initiative. They are also teamed up as well and they are leading the endurance race 39 to 44. You have a few lines of play you can make here.

1) If you just wanted to deal damage, you could simply send Ahmed into Booster Gold, then Bizarro w/Brother Eye into Ted Kord for maximum breakthrough. While you will deal a good amount of damage, you only force your opponent to KO Ted Kord.

2) A better series of attacks as far as the board is concerned is sending Ahmed into Hawkwoman then Bizarro into the Hawkman. This will not deal a great amount of damage (7 total, compared to 16 in the first scenario), but it will force your opponent to lose their Hawkwoman.

3) There are a few other attack sequences that you could make. If you wanted to attack Bizarro into Hawkman first, clearing a breakthrough lane for Ahmed on Hawkwoman, you would have to deal with the possibility of your opponent trading every card in their hand for a Hawkman(via Hawkwoman), each worth +2 DEF because of Booster Gold.

4) If you were concerned about a possible JLI Embassy or something similar, you could make an attack of Ahmed into Booster Gold then Bizarro into Hawkman. While they could still make every card in their hand a Hawkman, it would only be worth +1 DEF this time. This would only eliminate Booster Gold (nobody with JLI Embassy), but it also deals 12 damage.

Every other attack scenario is fairly terrible. There are serious pitfalls to all of them.

Basically each plan has a benefit to it. #1 is the most damage possible, #2 forces them to lose their best character, #3 is marginally better than #2 if they don't have many cards in hand, and #4 balances out #1 and #2. In the past, I would've done option #2 without thinking too much about it, but now I am likely more inclined to play the last option. While Hawkwoman is a better character than Booster Gold, the extra damage that option #4 brings as opposed to the better board that #3 brings.

Take a look at this board from the Good Guys side. Assume you have 4 cards in hand, Fire, Kooeyx3, and Sue Dibny x2. If you opponent attacks Ahmed into Booster Gold, do you reinforce with Hawkman? This play would save you 5 endurance, but it would prevent you from counter attacking. Given that you're the aggressor in the matchup, your endurance doesn't matter nearly as much as theirs. If they attacked Hawkman with Bizarro #1, you could make 2 Hawkmen via Hawkwoman and get a stunback. If they attack Ted Kord, you could counter attack and let Ted Kord as well as Booster die. You get a huge endurance advantage but suffer with the loss of an extra Booster Gold. In general, I would reinforce and mount a strong initiative on turn 5, but I can see the logic that says you need to take the opportunity to deal damage when you can, given the fact that they are still high on endurance (high on life lol).

This is for the ones who stood their ground
For Tommy and Gina who never backed down
Tomorrow's getting harder make no mistake
Luck ain't even lucky
Got to make your own breaks

One of the biggest things that The Donkey Club dealt with for PC San Francisco was the issue of time, and losing on endurance. As you may or may not know, the Ivy League deck did not play the endurance game very well, and many games went to time because of the intense decision making that was required to play the deck.

From my round 10 feature match, on turn 6:

"Chained to the draw, Alex used Golden Archer as if, by some miracle, he wasn’t going to have an empty hand very soon. Adam drew, played his resource, recruited Evil Star, and then used Hope along with Dr. Light to create the blowout of Smith’s hand. Up 38 to 6, Alex was in quite a bit of trouble.

I do not get to write sentences like that very often.

When Alex tried to attack Kyle Rayner, Adam KO’d him to Poison Ivy in order to replace his Slaughter Swamp, then used Evil Star to KO everything but the 6-drop, leaving Smith with no attacks." - Master Tim Willoghby

Suppose time had been called on turn 6. With only a 12/12 and my turn 7 recruit, it would've been practically impossible for me to have a higher endurance total at the end of turn 7. However, the game was going to come to its natural conclusion, and my opponent was not going to play another resource or character to go with his Joystick+Fate Artifacts.

My advice here is threefold. First, if you are planning on playing a slower deck in any tournament, learn how to play your deck. Fast. Recognize patterns that your deck makes and make those plays quickly. Jason Hager, who is somewhat notorious for playing slowly, practiced a ton for San Francisco, and he played very efficiently over the course of the day. I play extremely quickly as a rule, but even I had to practice a ton to learn how to make the correct plays in a reasonable time frame.

Second, if time is running down in the round, make attacks that deal more damage as opposed to whittling down a board. On the very last turn, you could care less about which characters your opponent recovers. Even on the previous turns (turns 6 and 7, if the last turn is turn 8, for example), you should probably make more damage dealing attacks as opposed to concentrating on board advantage. The best example I could give of this is using a Finishing Move type effect. If you both have a 5 and a 6, you could stun their 6 drop with one of your characters and use the other to finishing move, netting board advantage for the next turn. However, if you sense that you'll need extra help in the damage race, you could simply forget about your Finishing Move and make some more attacks to help out in the damage race. While your opponent will recover a better character, it is often worth the extra damage to allow your opponent a better character. It's hard to put actual values on each character, but often times you are better off dealing more damage on your initiative, and sometimes it's better to save damage on the next turn by reducing their board.

Finally, if it is your last initiative, use all of your attack only pumps. There isn't a better time to save them for! While this may seem obvious to most people, I see this play missed in all sorts of games, especially limited games. There is nothing worse than losing a game with a face down I Still Hate Magic! and losing by 2 endurance.

The last thing I want to talk concerns character stats. When you choose which character to attack or which character to recruit, consider its “sponge factor.” Basically the sponge factor is how much damage a character would prevent as opposed to not playing that character at all. Which is the stronger DEFENSIVE play, Joystick (obviously a 5/5) or Golden Archer? Despite the linear nature of the curve, Joystick is actually a better wall than Golden Archer. When attacked, Joystick will prevent 4 damage – the difference between its defense and its recruit cost. The Golden Archer only has a sponge factor of 2 (6 Def minus 4 recruit cost). Think of some of the best defensive characters in the game (and some of Michael Jacob’s favorite cards). Given another character with 1 or more willpower, Kama Tui soaks up 11 damage when attacked. She-Hulk, Gamma Bombshell soaks up 7, which is actually impressive considering the 10 attack and that the average 9/9 5 drop only soaks up 4 damage. The sponge title, however, goes to none other than Wolverine, James Howlett. The first time it is attacked, it soaks up 8 damage, because you do not take stun damage. The second time it is attacked, it soaks up another 3. Given a better attack than Kama Tui and no need for friends, Wolverine is definitely a sponge to be reckoned with. The next time you can’t attack all of their characters or the next time you are definitely getting your board stunned, consider the sponge factor.

Now that I’ve probably lost you to some cartoon with octagonal pants, I’ll patiently await forum responses more mature than Cartoon Network songs.

Adam Prosak

This was one of your best articles todate. I found it to be a thoroughly good read.

Realy good read. You can't neglect characters like Crimson Fox, Nimrod, Invisible Girl when talking about sponges though. They are game-breaking sponges as well.

How would you play cards like Cosmic Necessity where it's more then Bord vs End, it comes down to Hand Advantage/consistency of opponents' deck vs End. Much more complicated then Bord IMO.

Again, good stuff. It realy shows that it's much more complicated then racing to 50 end.

Agree with Kamiza. Very good practical article. I love how you set out a board position and then analyzed how to play it. Thats the type of stuff I would love to see more of.

Totally agree with kamiza. That was a fantastic read.

Nimrod is king of the sponges.

The new 6-drop Doom Bot is the best sponge ever for limited. 13/13 invulnerable 6-drop? WHERE DO I SIGN!

Nod nod, great article Prosak!

I agree with Kamiza.

I mean, I didn't read your article, but he seems to know what he's talking about.

I just hit Control+F and searched for the word "Stu". The article sucks for that.

Who is Bon Jovi?

Awesome article

Bravo. A great summarization of how our game has evolved on a theoretical level. You seem to make sense of things the way I do (making comparisons to Magic, etc. The Sponge concept, etc.)

When I first finished this article, the impression I had was that most of what was said was at an entry level, that is, aimed at newer players.

However the more I thought about it, the more it rang true that being aware of the entire gamestate and being able to balance different aspects of the game against one another is very often the deciding factor in close games.

Not something as simple as whether or not to dump all your atk pumps on your last attack of the game, but rather the taking into consideration of the endurance levels, time, board presence, cards played etc. in order to determine that this would be your last attack opportunity, doing the math, and attacking accordingly.

Very good article, as per usual.

Wanna hear my version of the song?

It's youre life so stfu and get on aim
It's now or never cause i gtg to bed and cant draft heralds
I ain't gonna live forever, espacially when doug tice beats me round 1 cause he has draft experience with the set.....
I just want to live while I'm alive so hurrrrryyyy
(It's my life)
My heart is like an open highway, get on the information highway god dammit
Like Frankie said
I did it my way
I just wanna live while I'm alive, and stupid jason hager wont answer me either!
It's my life and i wanna have more trophies than my barn.