Editor's Note: Discussion thread can be found here.
Have you ever seen a simple invention and wish you had thought of it? You think to yourself… duh. However, somebody had to think, invent, patent, and sell it. Other times, that thing is more elusive or we simply don't give it much thought. Take gravity. Kids have been falling out of trees for centuries, breaking arms, and getting scolded by their mothers. These unaware earthlings didn't know the specifics, but they knew jumping off a cliff was fatal. We all think duh now, but new is always difficult to see. Where am I going with this line of thought? This article will be exactly as I have alluded to a degree. You will think… duh. However, did you fully realize it until I explicitly pointed it out?
The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply. – Khalil Gibran
Breaking Bad
Before I begin, I need, you, the reader to give up a bad habit. This habit is placing everything into a category or group. It is understandable since we have been doing it since we could say da da or ma ma. Daddies are hairy and mommies smell good. Well, we don't always start the best. Anyway, once we create a definition for a group, a new object either goes into that group or outside it. Although this is very convenient for learning or educational purposes, it is often wrong.
Most things fall on a spectrum, belong to multiple groups, and/or partially to a group. Even sometimes, we have a bunch of things that are simply unique. However, we see similarities and bunch them together. We do this automatically. If I took a box of junk, dumped it onto a table, and asked you to sort it, I bet you could. I also bet everybody would do it slightly different. Once done, people would look to me to see if they did it corretly. Did they? It doesn't matter. It was a box of junk. I threw a bunch of stuff in a box at random. You simply wanted there to be a pattern so you created one. You needed to make sense out of the chaos…and so you did. Most things can be scaled like the temperature outside. It changes and based on a spectrum given context by an artificial starting point. Should we use Fahrenheit or Celsius? How cold is cold? I'm still walking to the gym in shorts here in Wisconsin at minus two. Am I nuts? Possibly.
We do this all the time with people. Not just stereotypes, but we classifying somebody we know as a jerk or an ^$##%$ as just another type. How much of a jerk are they? Are they 98% jerk? How about 50% jerk? Maybe they have one key issue that we don't agree with? Take a friend of mine. We will call him Bob and I know one thing about Bob: we don't lend Bob money. He won't pay us back. Well, at least this year. Why am I a friend with such a guy? Bob is a great guy in every aspect except that one. Is he a smuck? No, I stand corrected. He is just very bad at managing his money. He has good intentions to pay people back, but when time stretches on…he gets embarrassed. He starts to avoid us. He feels humiliated. Eventually, he pays us back and we begin again. Everybody has flaws. It is simply a matter of if we accept them for their flaws.
Only a Sith deals in absolutes. – Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
Time to turn this around to Magic. What is an aggro deck? No, seriously. At what point do we call an aggro deck an aggro deck? How many big scary creatures do their need to be in a deck? One? Two? How about twenty? I think we should cut it off at twenty-one. No arguments you hear. I have drawn an arbitrary line in the sand. Anything with less than twenty creatures is not an aggro deck. Stop. Stop. I said no arguments. Let's tackle control once and for all. There needs to be at least four counterspells in a deck to be considered a control deck. A deck with Day of Judgments can't be considered a control deck because it doesn't have four counterspells. Seriously, stop arguing. I've created these perfect arbitrary categories that everyone will adopt from here on out.
Okay, okay, I am being facetious. I hope you get my point. Well, at least it will be amusing when someone doesn't completely read the whole article and I get a rant in the forums proclaiming control decks have at least eight counterspells. Do I intend we get rid of these categories? Not at all. They are very useful as teaching tools. However, once we educate people past that point…we need to then get them to understand these convenient categories are arbitrary. Control decks can use Lightning Bolts just as much as aggro decks. At some point, a control deck needs to run the aggro game. We usually refer this to a win condition. Vendilion Clique or Delver of Secrets doesn't win Legacy games because they fly over to tickle our opponent to death. They have three power of, Bam, in your face. So our brains don't have a meltdown, we conveniently call these decks aggro control. Those aren't aggro creatures because they are only played in aggro decks. Duh.
Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself. – The Matrix
Comprehensive Rules
Lately, I've been doing a lot of commuting back and forth to school, work, and doctor appointments. Don't worry; it is all about good things to come. Anyway, between road rage and NPR, I have had way too much time to think about stuff during my thousand or so miles a week. Yes, a lot of it has been about Magic. More specifically, it has been about Modern. I finally built a Punishing Maverick deck for Legacy and I have been contemplating on what I would want to play in Modern. Now don't laugh, I have been tinkering with Soul Sister variants. For those unfamiliar, Soul Sisters is a deck that tries to abuse Serra Ascendant and Ajani's Pridemate. I've tried splashing every kind of color. I apologize if you have had the unfortunate match with me on MTGO in the Tournament Practice room. Well… at least that failed experiment is over. The good news is I learned something. Before I continue, let me ask, you, the reader, a question.
Why is the deck bad?
No, think about it. Is it card advantage, power-level, synergy, poor mulligans, high variance, or do white weenie just sucks? Pick a convenient category which to base your arguemnet.
Take your time.
It is none of those. I'll stop delaying and just tell you the one thing any Magic player should know. Ready?
Every game loss is due to your inability to interact with your opponent
See. Duh.
Isn't that just the opposite of winning? Not necessarily. I'm not talking about only winning or losing. I'm talking about the board state…battlefield…whatever. The game changes when our opponent slaps a creature or some other permanent onto the table. Let me be more direct. What happens when your opponent slams an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn onto the table? I'm assuming most people will say the just lost the game. What happens if I slip Diabolic Edict or some other answer into your hand? Oh, you didn't automatically lose? You killed that super ridiculous creature with a Diabolic Edict. We lose games because we can't kill that Dark Confidant that just keeps churning card advantage. We lose because we can't kill that Delver of Secrets. We lose because we have no answers to some combo deck going off. We sit their helpless, praying, for the top card of our library to be an answer to our woes.
Let me ask the question again. Why is the Soul Sisters deck bad?
It is a bad deck because we have only four Path to Exiles to answer problems from our opponent and that is only when they are actually good or relevant. The deck bends so much to its archetype that we have no answers to anything. Combo decks can go off without fear. Reanimator can raise giant monsters from the depths. Control can watch us overextend and wrath our army away, drop Gideon Jura and watch us feebly attempt to regain a footing in the game. Outside of combat, we do nothing to influence the game. We can't effectively interact with our opponent.
This doesn't just correlate to Mr. Spike. This extends to Timmy, Johnny, casual or commander players. I've lost more games of Commander because I don't have answers. Sure, what I have on the board matters. I'm not saying it doesn't. It is not necessarily the opposite, but our opponents are usually trying to do something crazy as well. I can't count how many times I have witnessed a pleasant and interesting Commander game quickly end when Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker hits the table alongside Zealous Conscripts. I actually don't mind some combos. I just don't like how anti-climatic it feels. Well, that was fun I guess… It always happens when all us are tapped. Why would these pesky combo players do that? They do it so we don't have a way to interact with them going off.
I wonder how many times will I say interact during this article?
Let's back up a second and ask a fundamental question. What is Magic?
The most popular answers are chess, decks, luck, creatures and blah, blah, blah. If we step back, we can see what Magic is really in the shadows.
Magic is a game where people can make new rules or prevent our opponent from making new rules.
The physics freaks will love this convenient, educational category, but the game starts at inertia. We have a baseline or arbitrary set of rules at the beginning of the game. Every time we play a spell or card, we change the rules of the game. The game was played one way, but now it has changed. Combo decks try to hit some kind of critical rule changing momentum. The flipside of the coin is we prevent people from making new rules. Thank you mythos. Why? Otherwise this game would be really boring. Using a counterspell to stop a Dark Confidant is much cooler than stopping a rule change. Seriously, once you really, really think about it. Magic is about creating and rescinding rules. Let that sink in a moment.
You don't believe me. How long is the comprehensive rules?
How many pages did you say we were up to?
Now, hit rewind and ask why Soul Sisters is a bad deck?
Beyond a few Path to Exiles, the Soul Sisters deck has no way to interact with the opponent. If we look at the similar/better Black-White tokens deck, we gain Thoughtseize and Tidehollow Sculler along with Path to Exiles. What I am not saying is Serra Ascendant or Ajani's Pridemate are bad cards. The problem with the deck is that it has no room for answers due to it bending over backwards to make the deck work. Sideboarding basically destroys the archetype of the deck. Of course, it is a simple and convenient way to think about it anyway.
Jund…Jund…Juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuund
Have you learned anything today?
If that is the case, why is Jund good?
There are many reasons. One of the reasons is that is has lots of good answers. It can interact with the opponent. There is lots of removal and discard. Drop in Deathrite Shaman and we have multiple avenues of attack or interaction. Drop in some of the best and efficient creatures, a dash of Dark Confidant and [/card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card] card advantage and we have one mean deck. What the deck doesn't do is change the game. It isn't like Scapeshift or other combo decks trying to make their own rules till they hit critical momentum. How often have you heard: Jund has no bad match up argument? Well…duh. Jund is about answers. It isn't about twisting or changing rules to ridiculous levels. Shall I dare say Jund is a control deck?
Da, da, daaaaaaaa…
This article isn't about glorifying Jund. I simply hope to educate why decks like Jund are good and why decks like Soul Sisters are really bad. Soul Sisters won't take down a Modern tournament. Sure, it wins sometimes due to variance or when an opponent lacks an answer, but there will be times Soul Sisters just won't have the answers to those decks. The combo can be easily disrupted and the pieces don't always arrive in the correct sequence. It is a really bad combo deck.
Let's review for a second about how we play Magic. One: we make rules we can manipulate. Two: we destroy or prevent our opponent's rules. Three: we time or protect our own rules. What? I haven't talked about the third thing. No, no I haven't. It is just as important. It is obvious. Isn't it? There is no sense in making a rule when our opponent's can just get rid of it. It is how we win the game. Sometimes, we only need to manipulate the rules for a short period of time. Why do Black-White token decks play the more expensive Auriok Champion when they could play the cheaper Soul Warden? Protection would seem to say, but it is the truth in this matter. It is essential the deck gains life. Sure, it doesn't hurt Auriok Champion can block Dark Confidant or Bloodbraid Elf, but that is us trying to put Auriok Champion in a simple box of a category.
It is the reason cards like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Geist of Saint Traft, and Progenitus are good. Most times we have difficulty interacting with them. Although, these decks also have counterspell back-up. We have limited answers to decks with answers to our limited answers. Not to point out the obvious, but this is what makes certain decks successful. What I want to point out is the fact certain resources need to be protected. If you can't protect your rule change, you should find a different card or deck. If you are still persistent, those cards need to be expendable/replaceable.
The Sideboard
This article was written before Bloodbraid Elf got the ax. It doesn't matter. I wrote this article not to point out the failings of Soul Sisters or the glory of Jund. They simply were meant to portray two decks on opposite ends of the spectrum. What I really, really hope you got out of this article is the importance of interaction and all of its implications. Take a look at any sideboard. The majority of sideboards are about increasing the amount of interaction with the opponent. Very rarely is it about pushing the aggro envelope. Sometimes, you might see a Ball Lightning in the sideboard of a red deck to push the aggro game. Other than that, it is about interactions that push for control. It isn't what a person typically thinks about when control is mentioned. Control is more synonymous with counterspells or mass removal. However, a Tormod's Crypt is control card. It is designed to interact with a person's graveyard. The graveyard hate is not designed to move your game forward. Crypt is designed to prevent your opponent from moving forward.
On a more broad scale, the level of interaction is important in the metagame. There have been times where interacting with the opponent is as vital. We have thought this way before, but just didn't know it. Usually, we are talking about control decks or the amount of counterspells in the environment. To put it simply, we need to expand our definition of what controls means. Doom Blade is a control card. Disenchant is a control card. Oops, there I go putting everything in a neat category. Anyway, the question to ask is how much control is needed in the current metagame? Is something running around out there or should we put our foot to the pedal to push a more aggressive strategy? Just something to think about, but before I go; here is some food for thought.
Comments