"The Theory and Design of Magic: The Gathering" Class Page

This is as much for my benefit as anyone else’s, but this is the list of reference articles we’ve looked at and are using:

General

• Magic Academy
• Archive of the Magic Dojo
• Deck-o-pedia
• Glossary
• Archived decklists at Deckcheck.net
• Card lookup
• The Mathematics of Magic

Rules & Introduction

• Rules Overview – John Carter
• Magic Jargon – Magic Academy
• In-Game Protocol – Magic Academy
• Anatomy of a Magic Card – Magic Academy

Game Theory

• Ben Polak’s lectures on Game Theory at Yale
• Lecture Slides on Game Theory – John Duffy
• Prisoner’s Dilemma from “What IF…Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophy” pg 202-203 – Peg Tittle
• Lecture Notes
• Intro to Game Theory – Frank Karsten
• Branching out: Game Theory and Magic – Jeff Hall
• Theory Games – Frank Karsten

Multiplayer

• The Ferrett on Multiplayer
• Funky Animals by Anthony Alongi

Epistemic Logic

• Eric Pacuit’s Slides
• What They Think You’re Thinking – Steve Sadin
• Telepathy – Josh Utter-Lytton
• Exchange of Information – Ben Stark

Limited

• Feeling a Draft: An Introduction to 40-Card Decks – Magic Academy
• Booster Draft Primer – Randy Buehler
• Sending Signals – Scott Willis
• Top-Down Drafting – Steve Sadin

Deckbuilding

• Deckbuilding – Magic Academy
• Aggro, Combo, and Control – Magic Academy
• Intro to Mana Base – Magic Academy
• Deckbuilding 101 – Ben Bleiweiss

Game Design

• Optimal Card-Collecting Strategies for Magic: The Gathering – Robert A. Bosch, The College Mathematics Journal, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 15-21
• Timmy, Johnny, Spike Reading – Mark Rosewater
• Color Wheel
• State of Magic: Online
• Restricted/Banned cards
• Online Forum discussion on “netdecking”
• Description of Magic: Online
• A Fresh Coat of Magic Paint – Doug Beyer (this is where they talk about functional reprints in m10. It’s not super deep, but very relevant)

Statistics & Simulation

• Basic Probability – MIT Opencourseware
• Hypothesis Testing: The Basics
• 5 Rules to Avoid a Mana Screw – Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar
• Z-test stuff
• Mathemagics: Onslaught Fetch Lands Revisited – Garrett Johnson
• You Make the Play: Statistics for Dummies – Mike Flores
• How to Cheat – Mike Flores
• The Art of the Mulligan – Ken Krouner
• The Art of the Mulligan: 8 Case Studies – Ken Krouner
• Parth Modi’s Cascade Swans
• Joel Calafell’s Cascade Swans
• Warp World Amalgamation – Dave Meeson

Tempo

• Who’s the Beatdown – Mike Flores
• Intro to Tempo – Scott Johns
• Controlling Tempo – Eric Taylor

Metagame

• Metagame – Magic Academy
• Game Theory and the Introduction to Metagame Shift – John Beety
• Data-Mining Extended Tournaments for Statistics – Frank Karsten
• Rules for Nomic
• Event Coverage of Pro-Tour: Kyoto
• Information Cascades in Magic – Patrick Chapin
• When They Said “Great”… They Meant It

Graph Theory

• Graph Theory Tutorial

Card Advantage

• Intro to Card Advantage – Magic Academy
• Tempo and Card Advantage – Eric Taylor
• Systemic Thought – Zvi Mowshowitz
• Interaction Advantage – Zac Hill
• Card Adv. and Quality – Will Rieffer

AI

• Game-Playing Computers: The Next Moves – Susan L. Epstein – AAAI 1999
• Regret Minimization in Games with Incomplete Information – M Zinkevich, M Johanson, M Bowling, C Piccione – NIPS 2007
• AI Overview – Computer Programming and Magic
• AI beats human poker champions – EETimes.com
• The Next Jump in Artificial Intelligence – Brittany Grayson
• Duels of the Planeswalkers: All About AI – Patrick Buckland
• The Quest for Artificial Intelligence – Nils Nilsson

Forum Posts about us

• mtgsalvation
• penn state magic
• WotC