Identifying strategies and strategy changes

Analyzing games is helpful, but one thing I think a lot of people do that looks like analysis but could actually be harmful is to review the game and ask themselves, "what could I have done differently?" Just because you lost, doesn't mean that you did something wrong - you could have chosen the strategy with the highest winning percentage, and just had something not break your way. Asking
what you could have done differently is a great way to occasionally convince yourself that the correct line you took in a game is worse than the one that actually would have won, and you'll start to associate negative outcomes to correct patterns of thinking.


I think a better way to approach this is, when reviewing games, to try and identify what your opponent's strategy/strategies, and understand why they worked (or didn't work, if you won, and yes you should still analyze games that you won). My opinion is that a lot of games that you lose that were in your control (i.e. not absurd god draws or mana screw or whatever), are lost because at some point in the game you misunderstood your opponent's strategy. This is tricky because, especially in contemporary limited, strategies change mid-game fairly frequently.


Good example (and I KNOW everyone has played a game like this before):


You and your opponent are both at a high-ish life total and the board has been roughly at parity for a while. You land a huge ground threat, expecting your opponent to keep their blockers back and try to defend/trade/whatever. Then they start attacking with one or two small evasive creatures.
In the past, I usually would think something like "LOL what is this clown doing attacking me down to 18 when I'm gonna win in 3 hits with my huge 7/7 trampler." Then I'd ultimately lose to another flyer, followed by one or two cards that temporarily neutralize my big attacker. My opponent had a plan to beat my threat without removing it as soon as I played it, and I didn't anticipate it - I just wanted to ride my threat to victory. Maybe they needed to run hot by drawing a tap spell they didn't already have or something, but if that's their only way to win, what other choices do they have?


The key concept here is that your opponent's strategy changed mid game, and if you didn't notice it happening, you were more likely to fall victim to it. If you notice it happening though, you can think a few turns ahead, visualize your opponent's path to victory, and use your current resources accordingly.


The great part is that analyzing games like this SHOULD organically lead you to what you should have done in a more constructive way, since you'll start to a) train yourself to spot subtle enemy strategy changes more often, and b) figure out general classes of strategies that are effective against other classes of strategies.


This comes up a lot less often than I would like, since I think a lot of games of Magic are just ABC kind of games dictated by what the cards you and your opponent draw are (including screw & flood games, and games where one player's cards just overpower the other's), but when you find yourself in one of those deep, interesting, intricate games, it's important to figure out how to navigate it.
Specific to limited, the stages of format mastery can look something along the lines of this:


1-Knowing what all the cards are
2-Knowing what all the possible strategies are
3-Knowing which decks are capable of which strategies
4-Knowing how to attack the various strategies
5-Pick orders and deck construction become more refined


I think a lot of players tend not to get past the second stage (there have certainly been limited formats within the past two years where I myself never got past that stage). The only real ways to work towards completing stage 2 are to play (and lose) a ton, and not care that you're losing as long as you are properly exploring the format.


I have noticed that my PT team's pre-PT limited meetings have been shifting more and more towards mapping out stages 2 and 3. It's nice to know how powerful (or weak) certain cards are, but if I don't know when and where those cards will appear, it's not going to help me as much.


(As an aside, I think this could explain why a ton of people love to cube draft. Since cubes are so drastically different and individual cubes tend to change a lot anyway, stage 2 is a LOT bigger and wider, so it's more or less impossible to ever answer definitively. This leads to everyone's completion of stages 3-5 always being way under capacity, so the playing field is more or less level.)


As for strategies themselves, they tend to change from format to format, depending on the specific cards, but you and always identify a few broad, general strategies that tend to exist in every limited format:


-Play a bunch of small things really fast and swarm them (aggro)
-Kill everything your opponent has and find a way to win later (control)
-Play a mix of decent medium sized creatures with some solid removal/tricks and try to react to the pace of your opponent (midrange)
-Speed up your resource generation and start casting huge threats ahead of schedule (ramp)
-Play one threat and use a lot of resources to make it unstoppable (combo/all-in/"bogles" style)
-Play a lot of cards with a certain mechanic and a lot of cards that support that mechanic (synergy decks)


The important thing to remember is that really great limited decks are capable of transitioning from one of these strats to another one if the need arises.