Tier 5 · Read the Table · Lesson 2 of 8
Finding more than one line
The last lesson showed you what a line is. This one is about the error that actually costs you games, and it is not failing to find the brilliant line. It is never looking for a second one.
The one-line problem
Watch someone play and you will see this over and over. They look at the board, a play occurs to them, it seems reasonable, they make it. Total elapsed time: four seconds.
They were not choosing. They took the first thing their brain offered and called it a decision.
This is not laziness and it is not a beginner problem. Strong players do it under time pressure, in tournaments, on the plays that matter. The first idea arrives with a feeling of confidence attached, and that feeling is not evidence.
Your brain offers you the play that is most familiar, not the play that is best. If you have quested with that character forty times, questing is what will surface. Familiarity arrives dressed as correctness.
This is why players plateau. You can play a thousand games and mostly practise your habits.
The whole fix
Here it is, and it is almost insultingly simple:
Before you touch a card, name a second line.
Not a better one. Just a second one. Any different sequence, even one you are confident is worse.
The point is not that the second line will be right. Most of the time it will not be. The point is that you cannot compare one thing. Until a second option exists, you are not choosing between lines, you are just describing the first one.
The moment a second line exists, your brain automatically starts comparing, and comparison is where the actual thinking happens. You get it for free just by generating the option.
Try it right now, before the list below
Think of the last game you lost. Not the whole game, just the single turn where it went wrong. You probably already know which one it was.
Now name one different thing you could have done on that turn. Anything. It does not have to be better.
If a second option came to mind easily, the skill is not the problem and the habit is: you can find them, you just were not looking. If nothing came to mind at all, the four prompts below are where to start.
Where to look when nothing comes to mind
"Name a second line" is easy advice and hard in the moment. So here are four places to look. They are ordered by how often they turn up something the first idea missed.
- Change the order, not the cards. Take the exact plays you were going to make and do them in a different sequence. Costs nothing, changes what information you have when you make each choice, and is the single most productive place to look. The next lesson is entirely about this.
- Do less. What if you played one fewer thing and held the ink? Holding up ink is a real play, and it is invisible to players who think a turn is measured by how much of it they spent.
- Pressure the other resource. If your instinct was to race on lore, look for the line that goes after their board instead, and vice versa. Most players have a default and never check the other axis.
- Assume your plan fails. If they have the answer, what is your line then? Sometimes that question reveals a line that is good in both worlds, which is almost always the right one.
What this looks like at the table
Take the board from the last lesson. Nala questing for 3, John Smith able to challenge, opponent ahead on lore.
The player who takes the first idea sees "I can gain 5 lore" and does it.
The player running this habit thinks: quest with both, or quest with one and challenge with the other, or quest with one and hold. Three lines, maybe eight seconds. Then the comparison is trivial, because Line C protects a permanent 3-lore engine and the others do not.
Notice what happened. Finding the right play did not require insight. It required having more than one candidate. The evaluation was easy once there was something to evaluate.
You look at the board, a play jumps out at you, and you are fairly confident it is the right one. What does naming a second line actually get you?
- Nothing, if the first play really was the best one. You could not have known that. Confidence in the first idea is familiarity, not evidence, and the only way to find out whether it was best is to hold it against something else.
- Something to compare the first play against. Right. Judging two lines is the easy part. Having a second one to judge is the part players skip. The comparison is the product, and you get it just by generating the option.
- A better play, most of the time. Usually not, and expecting that is how you quit doing it. Most second lines are worse. You do this on every important turn precisely because you cannot tell in advance which turn is the one where it changes your play.
This makes you slower, and slower is a real cost. Lorcana events have time limits and your opponent is a person who would like to enjoy their evening.
So do not do it every turn. Do it on the turns that matter: when you are about to commit your whole board, when you are within one turn of lethal, when you are about to trade something you cannot get back. Three or four times a game, not thirty.
The part that takes longer
Eventually the second line stops being something you generate deliberately and starts arriving on its own. You will look at a board and two or three sequences will simply be there.
That is what people are describing when they say a player "sees more." They are not calculating faster than you. They built a habit that now runs without their attention, and it started exactly where you are starting: by forcing a second option they did not think they needed.
- The first play you think of is the most familiar one.
- You cannot compare one thing. Name a second line.
- The second line does not need to be better, only different.
- Four places to look: order, do less, other resource, plan fails.
- Do this three or four times a game, not every turn.
Pick the single most important turn of the game, the one where you commit or where the game is close to decided. On that turn only, say three lines in your head before you touch anything.
Then make whichever play you were going to make anyway. Seriously. You are not trying to play better yet, you are training the generation step. Choosing well comes after, and it comes on its own.
Next: Sequencing. The same cards, in a different order, produce a different game, and it is the cheapest edge in the entire course.
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