Patrick Chapin – Next Level Magic

Title: Next Level Magic: A Guide to Mastering the Magic the Gathering™ Card Game
Author: Patrick Chapin
Year: 2015
Goodreads page: Link

SYNOPSIS
Next Level Magic is a comprehensive course on realizing your goals in playing Magic the Gathering.
(from Goodreads)

Generally this was a really interesting book and that brings some really interesting advice to perfect your way of playing Magic. I totally recommend this to a medium player that is neither a beginner nor an expert; the beginner will find concepts too difficult to understand for his knowledge level, while an expert one will find most of the concepts presented here almost obvious.

This book is also coupled with Next Level Deckbuilding; the deckbuilding one will have a more technical part about brewing your decks, while this one is kinda more philosophical and it explains more methods of reading your opponents and the room and social tactics to use to improve your game.

It will give you some really good advice on how to get the right mentality to be a top player and it expresses them in a way that is both really technical and easy to understand.
It also explained well various concepts and keywords of competitive play.

The only thing that made me turn up my nose and in too many points he went, propaganda and ad style, in recommending how important it is to have a premium subscription to Star City Games (a site where he also publishes some of his articles) to improve and become really good at Magic.

It won’t give you some technical advice on what plays to make in certain situations but it is more focused on the psychological part for the game, so, if that’s what you are looking for, totally go for it.