Metagame

Metagame (Greek: μέτα = “about”, “beyond”), literally "a game outside the game," is a prediction of how others will make decisions in a game based on their personality or their previous decisions. A metagame can exist in any game in which the opposition is human or portrays some sort of artificial intelligence and the competitors make choices. Metagaming is taking advantage of the metagame for purposes of winning more often.

Examples of the Metagame

• In the movie The Princess Bride, a character is presented with two wine cups and is asked to drink out of one of them. He knows that one is poisioned but does not know which. He attempts to grasp the metagame by reasoning about his opponent's character, attempting to figure out which glass that sort of character would put the poison in.

• Competitor A's favorite number is six and all of his friends know this. Whenever Competitor A is asked to pick a number between one and ten, he picks six. Competitor A asks his friends to guess the number he is thinking of between one and ten. The metagame shows that the number is likely six.

• Tournament Decks is where you can find a quick approximation of the current tournament metagame.

Examples of Metagaming

• There is a special set of moves in chess which allows a player to win in four moves. Competitor A has been watching Competitor B play chess, and the past five games in a row Competitor B has attempted to use this four-move win. When Competitor A sits down to play against Competitor B, Competitor A will be metagaming if he/she plays in a way that will easily thwart the four-move checkmate before Competitor B makes it obvious that this is what he/she is doing.

• Metagaming is often cyclical. In Magic imagine you are playing Shatter which says "destroy target artifact." Shatter is very powerful, and so to avoid it most people have stopped playing artifacts. These people are metagaming because they have changed their decisions in anticipation of people playing Shatter. Then, people notice that nobody is playing artifacts so they take Shatter out of their decks, since it is worthless otherwise. This is metagaming again because they have changed their decisions in anticipation of their opponent's decisions. Then, people notice that everyone has stopped playing Shatter, and so they begin to play artifacts again since it's safe. This, yet again, is metagaming. This cycle can continue indefinitely.

Things affecting the Metagame in mtg

Local Metagame

When an area is frequently visited by the same players the metagame in that area is limited, because each player prefers certain decktypes and/or decks. That kind of metagame is unlikelly to change until someone (most likely an outsider) breaks the general pattern of that area. In most cases there will be a time of switching decks to see which decks are most adaptive against the change, and the metagame of that area will then have added some cards to their classical decks that have a high chance to beat the newcommer. Such a process may take month's, before the metagame settles and become predictable enough for another "outbreak".

Global Metagame

(Also called "Deckscape") The Global Metagame is strongly affected by Rarity. In essence there is a limited number of how many "Netdecks" it is possible to create. Rare cards are the hardest cards to get when assembling a deck, and sometimes these cards are distributed in such a way that the number of netdecks are strongly reduced by geographical factors. The global Metagame is very complex, and is most affected by the Card Impact offered by new cards, especially if those new cards are common. The realisation of how much impact common cards may have on the Global Metagame have resulted in the term "Building on a Budget"