It's neat that Wizards has made milling a viable strategy, but it's a little disappointing that it's only viable to mill yourself (Delve, Dredge, etc). I think you're both right - this deck (and the other, which I hadn't known about) is in a uniquely bad position right now. Might be time to move on.
Would Turn Aside be useful as a counter in this deck? It doesn't take care of abilities like Spellskite and doesn't stop creatures like Remand, but it would be cheap protection for combo pieces already on the battlefield.
Also, has anyone messed with proactive milling (like Hedron Crab) and Wight of Precinct Six in this? I'm wondering if there's a way to increase reliability by being less all-in on our combo. Though, all the fancy new Delve cards might screw us over.
Knowing the archetypes being played in a meta can help in forming a sideboard. If you know that it is aggro heavy, then you can sideboard the appropriate cards that fit your colours. But knowing that aggro is being played doesn't necessarily mean that your sideboard cards are going to help against each aggro deck because they differ in strategy. Being able to know the archetypes and the strategies being played can help better fine-tune the sideboard options you play. Also, if your colours do not provide you with cards that are good against aggro decks then perhaps by knowing which strategies are being played you can focus to find cards that help against a strategy. For instance, you don't have cards in your colours that can prevent against the combo archetype (like preventing combo piece assembly, or preventing multiple cards being played in a turn) but if that combo deck is a Storm deck that wins with a burn strategy, then you can form a sideboard to prevent a burn win.
Right. That's a straight application of looking at decks like this. The archetype tells you how fast or slow the deck is (and gives you a general idea of what it wants to do), but it fails to tell you what the deck is doing to win. For a given deck, knowing the archetype could either give you a lot of information or very little. Having an alternate (but complimentary) system of categorizing decks can, perhaps, help identify strategies that will target a given meta.
I think if you look at it you can separate them by looking at whether they are proactive or reactive. When you play Ghostly Prison or Thoughtseize you are playing a proactive strategy because you are making a play that will ideally stop actions that your opponent has not yet made, but counter magic strategies must react to spells played by your opponent. This fundamental difference in approach is typically what separates them.
So your opinion is that "denial" and "prison" are the same and "disruption" and "permission" are the same? Or, perhaps not the same, but at least not distinctly different enough to warrant separate categories? I could maybe see "denial" and "disruption" being the only main categories (the former being proactive through discard/prison/hate and the latter being reactive through removal/counters).
It's hard because the "prison" strategies seem to play differently than the heavy discard strategies (and an Obstinate Baloth is only effective against one of them, for example). "Prison" decks don't care if you get your stuff on the table - they just won't let you use it once it's there. "Denial" decks, through discard, don't even want things to hit the table. Similarly, "disruption" decks just nuke threats from orbit once they hit the table, while "permission" decks counter it once cast. The distinction I was considering making between the four is that:
denial is proactive and doesn't want threats/resources on the table
prison is proactive and doesn't care about threats/resources being on the table
disruption is reactive and doesn't care about threats/resources being on the table
permission is reactive and doesn't want threats/resources on the table
This is probably an over-simplification. Disruption, for example, does actually care about threats/resources being on the table...it just plans to destroy them as quickly as it can once they're there. I'm not convinced that over-simplification is necessarily bad, though. Thoughts?
What you're describing is generally called "tapout control."
Thanks! Your description made it a lot clearer. I think they probably fit under prison-type strategies fairly well (with some permission/disruption elements thrown in for good measure).
In the end I think PW's are just too varied we don't say every deck using creatures as it's core strategy is stompy, or aggro, or anything like that. PW's are really no different in that regard.
Oh, sure! When I said "planeswalker" decks, I meant stuff like Junk Superfriends from Standard a little while back. Decks that are primarily planeswalkers (this one has 6 different ones with a bunch of removal, some card draw, and some token generators). I'm not familiar enough with them to know if they play significantly different than the categories I mentioned in the original post. It sounds like they may still be covered (and, from what you're describing, it sounds like some combination of prison, denial, and disruption is where they'd fit).
A database/reference guide of common hate cards and the decks they affect might cover what you want to ultimately end up with. Which would actually be really useful, since many of the primer threads are full of questions about how to beat deck X.
Hmm... I hadn't thought about that at all, actually. I was just looking for interesting fringe decks I could play with. Now that you mention it, though, this would be pretty useful to people.
The problem is that not everyone agrees on how to look at it. For me the most important defining group for a deck is how it plays for 90% of it's turns in most games.
[...]
Another note is that conversations like this are often made quite foggy due to no agreed upon terminology. For example, when I came up in the game "archetype" referred to the identity of a deck; so I define Melira Pod as an archetype (synonymous with the term "deck" most of the time) and it's style of play to be Toolbox.
[...]
Your attempt to (for this conversation) to redefine the styles of play and what archtypes fall under them is further complicated when you take the next step in understanding decks and define the deck matchup by matchup, or even turn by turn.
I agree that, in order to have a truly useful conversation about decks like this, we need common terminology and perspectives. I'm using the word "archetype" like this post does. I completely understand your frustration, though, because the famous Finding the Tinker Deck article uses "archetype" in a similar fashion to what we are discussing here (the "style of play", rather than "what turns the deck wants to win on").
I do not mean to sound discouraging, just pointing out some of the rough spots these conversations usually have. Perhaps you could define your terms succinctly in the first post so at least there is a chance that you can minimize misunderstandings.
Perhaps we just need to take a step back for a minute. There are a lot of ways to look at decks and some combination of them is necessary to accurately describe most of the Modern playing field. Rather than defining terms, we should probably first decide what matters. I propose:
What turn(s) the deck wants to win on (as laid out in this post and described with graphs at the bottom of this article)
What the deck wants to do (put things in the graveyard, answer all the opponent's threats, deny the opponent their hand/deck/board state, etc)
How the deck wants to win (lots of little creatures/one big fatty to the face, loads of burn to the face, instant-win card, etc)
Stuff I'm not sure about right out of the gate includes whether "ramp" should be in the first category (I think it fits better in the second) and whether the third category is distinct enough from the second. Thoughts?
I don't really agree with the toolbox classification for Melira Pod. It certainly does run a toolbox but it's not a deck that seeks to answer each and every thing the opponent does.
[...]
Pod is really more of a jack of all trades, master of none type of deck. It has combos but they're not the best combos, a midrange plan but it's not the best midrange plan, and disruption but it's not the best disruption. What makes the deck good is the ability to shift into whatever plan the opponents deck is weak against. Toolbox in approach maybe, but the individual toolbox cards in a bag of tricks... not so much.
Actually, after reading your post, I think I'm even more sure about labeling Melira Pod a toolbox deck. I'm just not sure I agree with my original definition. It's a deck that can answer all of your opponent's threats and can win in a large number of ways. Pretty much the definition of "toolbox", if you ask me! You still make a fair point, though. If "toolbox" simply means "a large combination of game plans represented by one deck", does that mean it's a separate category at all? Since these are really labels, rather than categories, we should maybe just label Melira Pod as a burn/stompy/disruption/alternate win-con/swarm deck. I feel like that might be a tad overwhelming, though...
As far as Planeswalker decks go (my other great love in the format aside from Pod and Eggs). I think they're permission but they're a different type of permission. You're labeleing all permission as draw/go holding up counterspells. Another type of permission that makes Sorin/Elspeth tokens, Gideon to force attacks or kill things, Ajani and Tamiyo to lock things down. Karn to take cards. These are all elements of permission too... maybe somewhere between prison and permission actually.
There are a number of "controlling" elements that can be applied in Magic. There's discard. There's removal (to the graveyard, to exile, back to the hand/deck, or just "effectively removed" by being permanently tapped down). And, lastly, there's countering.
I put discard in the denial category because you are denying the opponent the chance to cast their cards. I put removal that actually removes things from play in the disruption category because you are disrupting the opponent's board state. I put "effectively removed" effects in the prison category because of cards like Ghostly Prison. I put countering in the permission category because that's what "draw-go"-style decks have always been labeled.
Now that you've made me look at it again, I'm not so sure denial and permission are separate things. Both are preventing the opponent from casting something. They're just doing it at different points (discard is proactive and countering is reactive). Would you agree that lumping the two together makes sense? Would you also agree, then, that your description of planeswalker decks fits both denial and disruption?
If you're able to look at some combination of all of it, maybe you can figure out that most of the decks in your meta can be attacked/defended against from a similar angle despite having varied game plans.
This, essentially, is the entire reason I made my original post. As a player, I try and quickly categorize and understand decks in a given meta. I'm looking for unique decks that are outside the categories I've identified so I can mess around with them and understand them better. As a bonus, I also get all of you to tell me what's right/wrong about my categorization.
So far, I've had great feedback about categories (and, aside from two or three, I'm feeling fairly confident in them). I haven't had much feedback about actual decks, though. Perhaps I've asked the wrong question or posted in the wrong forum? Or, as someone pointed about above, am I just looking at the wrong thing? Maybe there's some other aspect of a deck that makes it unique.
You seem to be confusing win conditions with game plan.
There are two things I'm looking at for a given deck: What its win-conditions are and how it gets there. The latter piece is very well described by archetypes (aggro, combo, control, etc). What isn't described is how the deck ultimately wants to win. Which of these is more important varies wildly on the deck (and, as mentioned earlier, a number of decks have multiple answers to these questions). I would absolutely agree that the "combo" part is more important when considering Twin as a deck. The "swarm" part, however, is still relevant.
To answer the OP: I think you're looking at this from a slightly skewed angle. You seem to focus on how a deck actually wins instead of the "engine" that makes the decks tick. The engine is usually much more important and - often times - unique than the end result/win condition (though they aren't mutually exclusive, but rather intertwined, of course).
Wow, I'm not sure why I hadn't thought about it that way... Yes, you are correct - I'm focusing on win conditions. I keep staying "strategy", but that term really encompasses both the archetype and the win condition.
Now, your latter comment is incredibly interesting. I have a follow-up question: What would you call an archetype? I've been thinking about decks as two pieces: The win condition and how you get there. I'm not sure aggro, combo, control, and so on, and ramp encompass the "how you get there part", now that I think about it. They're actually more indicative of what turns the deck is most effective on. So, if engines are far more important (and, honesty, you may be right about this), what examples of different engines are there?
Why isn't B/W tokens listed under "Swarm"? Or any token deck for that matter.
Two reasons. The first is that the original list was never meant to be exhaustive. The second is that I haven't edited the original post to reflect the current state of the discussion (token decks were mentioned in a different, later post). Perhaps I should be updating the original post, though...
I don't understand how this classification system is useful for... well, anything, if it's going to put decks like Melira Pod, Eggs, and Burn all in the same category...
It's not meant to be used by itself - it's meant to be used with archetypes to get a clearer picture of what a deck wants to do. Melira Pod, Eggs, and Burn all share a similar win condition. That's what I'm focusing on here. I would not, however, ever expect to describe those decks by just their win condition. They also have an archetype - Eggs being combo, Melira Pod being combo/midrange, etc. I think, perhaps, I've done a bad job of conveying that.
@LewisCBR - I'm not missing all of those decks. Storm and Scapeshift are mentioned above and, in my opinion, are pretty easy to nail down as having primarily burn strategies. Eggs can kill you with its burn strategy as well (casting a lot of Pyrite Spellbomb). Amulet, on the other hand, I'm not familiar with. I glanced at the primer and I'm still not quite sure (it says its win conditions are Primeval Titan and Hive Mind, so at least one of its strategies is to beat your face in). Good suggestion!
@Naugh-Tay - That's interesting... I have an old Merfolk shell and haven't played it in a year or two. Does that mean Merfolk is almost moving in a control-ish direction? Seems like there's probably some other deck out there that just removes/counters things and uses lifegain to stay in the game until they can drop a win condition on the table. Can't think of any decks that do this as their primary strategy off the top of my head exactly, but I could see Soul Sisters maybe winding up in that kind of situation sometimes. Maybe Turbo Fog or something? I'd have classified that more as a prison strategy, though... Do you happen to have a decklist for Merfolk I could look at that exemplifies this attrition strategy?
You're absolutely right - many decks, to be resilient, pack multiple strategies as part of their overall game plan. Storm, for example, has a swarm strategy (casting Empty the Warrens) and a burn strategy (casting Grapeshot) available to it. I listed Melira Pod as a toolbox deck because of how it uses Birthing Pod, but it also heavily relies on burn (Murderous Redcap). My original intent was just to provide some examples of the described strategy at work.
Prison decks using cards like Ensnaring Bridge, as you pointed out, don't go after your ability to cast things. They go after your ability to use the stuff you've already casted. A denial strategy, by contrast, should attempt to prevent you from casting things at all. There are a few ways to do this: Keep lands tapped (Stasis), blow lands up (Fulminator Mage), change what mana land produces (Blood Moon), increase casting costs (Thalia, Guardian of Thraben)... My follow-up question here, then, is: How is this definition of denial distinct from the disruption strategy I listed in my original post? Discard as a mechanic seems to suit both strategies, so is the distinction just that a disruption strategy focuses more on removal? Or, are they so close that disruption shouldn't be considered a distinct strategy?
How would you describe a stompy strategy, exactly? My understanding is that the original deck more-or-less played like Bogles does today. You take one creature, slap a bunch of enchantments or counters on it, and swing in for massive damage (preferably with some evasion). Puresteel Paladin decks should also fall into this category, then, but with equipment and creatures like Kor Duelist. Am I understanding this right?
If the above is true, then I think you're absolutely right - Tron doesn't apply this strategy at all. I'm not sure what to call its "hard-cast Emrakul, the Aeons Torn" strategy, though, because I'm not convinced that "ramp" is a necessarily a strategy as I've (loosely) defined it. Is it not more of an archetype? The strategy isn't just to get a bunch of mana - it's to do something with that mana once you have it (like casting a big Fireball).
As above, the reason I classified Splinter Twin decks as being swarm decks is because I consider "combo" to be an archetype. You are, of course, absolutely correct - Twin decks are combo decks. No two ways about it. In terms of strategy, though, the win condition is to have infinite creatures that the opponent can't block. This makes Twin decks distinctly different from Scapeshift decks, which employ a burn strategy in combination with Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle. I guess, if anything, I'd just like to clarify that I'm attempting to treat archetypes and strategies separately here. A deck of any archetype can win with a ton of little creatures. Two decks that win with a ton of little creatures may not necessarily belong to the same archetype, though, depending on their card choices.
I think I can be convinced that what I called "beat" is just a less extreme version of the swarm strategy. Would you put Zoo, Affinity, Merfolk, Goblins, and token decks here, then? What about decks like Mono-Green Devotion? That deck has a ton of small creatures as well, but employs Overrun mechanics for a huge burst of damage.
Conversations about decklists frequently focus on a deck's archetype: Aggro, control, tempo, midrange, combo... I'd like to focus for a second on what the deck is trying to accomplish. I'm specifically looking to find examples of unique strategies (especially those that aren't tier 1 or 2, but show some promise) that I can play around with. Here's some examples of strategies I see commonly in Modern:
Swarm (Splinter Twin, Tokens, Zoo, Affinity) - Have way more creatures than your opponent will ever be able to block effectively (win as a result)
Stompy (Bogles, Tron) - Have such a huge creature that your opponent can be killed in a single combat step
Burn (Burn, Scapeshift, Storm) - Kill your opponent as quickly as possible through direct damage
Disruption (The Rock, Jund) - Win through extreme card advantage as a result of discard and removal
Denial (Hatebears, Blue Moon) - Deny the opponent the opportunity to cast their cards
Prison (decks with Ensnaring Bridge) - Simply prevent your opponent from using anything of theirs on the battlefield
Permission (American Control) - Counter everything the opponent does and eventually win simply because the opponent no longer can
Toolbox (Melira Pod, Gifts) - Doesn't matter what the opponent plays - there's an answer in this deck somewhere...
Graveyard (Living End, Reanimator, Dredgevine) - Use your graveyard as an extension of your hand
Alternate Win-Con (Infect) - Ignore life totals entirely and go after alternate win-conditions like poison counters or milling or instant-win cards (Door to Nothingness, etc)
So, what did I miss? Or, what did I mis-classify? I can already think of some potential strategies I've missed:
Decks that rely heavily on resolving and defending Planeswalkers to win (though we could probably fit these decks into the above)
Decks that turn the opponent's deck against them with Vedalken Shackles or Sower of Temptation or other Mind Control effects (not sure this is a viable strategy on its own, though)
I'm sure there's some crazy budget deck out there or some Legacy deck I'm unfamiliar with that doesn't fit the mold.
EDIT: Formatting and spelling changes. EDIT 2: Made some changes as a result of suggestions further down in the thread.
I'm not so sure I agree entirely... I think it's still useful to reason about decks with their approach in mind.
All aggro decks are similar by virtue of being aggro decks. They try to win as quickly as possible and are, in general, weak to decks like combo or midrange. So, when trying to prepare an aggro deck for a meta full of combo or midrange decks, all aggro decks are looking for the same types of cards.
Which specific cards get chosen, however, can depend heavily on how those cards interact with the approach a specific aggro deck is taking. Decks like Bogles (which want to load up a single, hexproof creature with a ton of enchantments to smash the opponent's face in) and decks like Zoo (which want a fair number of creatures as early as possible that can swarm the opponent), despite both being aggro decks, are vastly different. One needs to prepare for "target player sacrifices a creature", because that can be devastating to their plan. The other is happy to oblige.
Experienced players familiar with the cards in all of the tier 1 and tier 2 decks in the format make these distinctions effortlessly. Newer players familiar with only the current standard format may actually be completely unable to figure it out if the approach of a given modern deck is sufficiently different from ones they've encountered in standard.
My thought was that if I could come up with a series of words to describe a deck's approach, it might be easier to explain to newer players the differences and similarities between given decks. Two "Swarm Aggro" decks will generally be very close in strategy and playstyle when compared to a "Stompy Aggro" deck (or something like that).
Like the first link I posted (about the metagame clock), though, I think I dislike the idea of having a "circle" to represent these decks... I always thought the graphs of the relative power level of a deck per turn in this article made it easier to understand:
The other thing I kinda dislike about simply using words like "Ramp" and "Combo" to categorize decks is that there's a large continuum of strategies within those categories that are worth examining. As an example, Flores's "Toolbox" archetype and "Prison" archetype are interesting because they tell us what the deck is doing. Mono-Black Control and UWR Control are both tempo decks with control elements, but they're doing vastly different things. Mono-Black Control is working towards a "Prison" strategy by removing the opponent's hand, while UWR Control is working towards a "Permission" strategy by removing threats as they're played. They both also remove threats once they've hit the board.
Is there possibly a secondary system of "tags" that would be helpful with deck classification? I thought of a few:
Swarm - For decks that just jam creatures on the board and swing.
Stomp? - For decks that stick just a few powerful creatures (or make a single creature powerful, like Bogles)
Toolbox - For decks like Melira Pod and Esper Teachings that can search for specific answers to any threat
Burn - For decks that primarily win with damage to the face (UR Storm, Burn, etc)
Prison - For proactive control decks that want you in a cage, unable to do anything (Mono-Black Control)
Permission - For reactive control decks that want you to ask if they can do something (UWR Control, maybe even stuff like Turbo Fog?)
Thoughts? Or, better yet, has someone already done this, too?
The first link talks about the idea of the "Metagame Clock" and then references and summarizes the second link. The second link is an old article by Mike Flores that puts forth the notion that all decks that ever could be made have been and we're just re-building them with different cards.
This is the idea that I'd like to explore. Mike Flores's article is really old and doesn't reference any Modern decks. But, is it still applicable?
As a thought experiment, I began trying to fit decks into Mike Flores's "archetypes". Here's what I came up with so far (using decks I'm familiar with):
CounterSliver
* Merfolk maybe?
Necro
* Is this even a real category anymore? Does anything abuse, say, Bob to this extent?
Prison
* None?
Sligh
* Zoo
* Affinity
* Pretty much all of the non-combo aggro decks in the format?
Stompy
* Bogles?
Weissman
* American Control is the closest to this we've got, I think?
Toolbox
* Melira Pod (also could go below in "The Enigma", since it's combo-oriented)
* Esper Teachings
Tinker
* Tron
* Aggro Elves?
The Enigma
* Storm
* Exarch Twin
* Scapeshift
Here's the problem, though... I don't know where to place decks like Mono-Black Control (they're more pro-active than Weissman, using discard as their "control") or Living End (it's not really a combo deck, it just has absurd synergy). There also didn't seem to be a category for midrange-y stuff like Wx Tokens (they win through card advantage, though - is this the new "Necro"?).
So, what are everyone's thoughts? Are there "archetypes" that didn't exist when his article was written that are here in Modern now? Did I mis-categorize anything above? How would you categorize other major Modern decks?
Also, has anyone messed with proactive milling (like Hedron Crab) and Wight of Precinct Six in this? I'm wondering if there's a way to increase reliability by being less all-in on our combo. Though, all the fancy new Delve cards might screw us over.
Right. That's a straight application of looking at decks like this. The archetype tells you how fast or slow the deck is (and gives you a general idea of what it wants to do), but it fails to tell you what the deck is doing to win. For a given deck, knowing the archetype could either give you a lot of information or very little. Having an alternate (but complimentary) system of categorizing decks can, perhaps, help identify strategies that will target a given meta.
So your opinion is that "denial" and "prison" are the same and "disruption" and "permission" are the same? Or, perhaps not the same, but at least not distinctly different enough to warrant separate categories? I could maybe see "denial" and "disruption" being the only main categories (the former being proactive through discard/prison/hate and the latter being reactive through removal/counters).
It's hard because the "prison" strategies seem to play differently than the heavy discard strategies (and an Obstinate Baloth is only effective against one of them, for example). "Prison" decks don't care if you get your stuff on the table - they just won't let you use it once it's there. "Denial" decks, through discard, don't even want things to hit the table. Similarly, "disruption" decks just nuke threats from orbit once they hit the table, while "permission" decks counter it once cast. The distinction I was considering making between the four is that:
- denial is proactive and doesn't want threats/resources on the table
- prison is proactive and doesn't care about threats/resources being on the table
- disruption is reactive and doesn't care about threats/resources being on the table
- permission is reactive and doesn't want threats/resources on the table
This is probably an over-simplification. Disruption, for example, does actually care about threats/resources being on the table...it just plans to destroy them as quickly as it can once they're there. I'm not convinced that over-simplification is necessarily bad, though. Thoughts?Thanks! Your description made it a lot clearer. I think they probably fit under prison-type strategies fairly well (with some permission/disruption elements thrown in for good measure).
Oh, sure! When I said "planeswalker" decks, I meant stuff like Junk Superfriends from Standard a little while back. Decks that are primarily planeswalkers (this one has 6 different ones with a bunch of removal, some card draw, and some token generators). I'm not familiar enough with them to know if they play significantly different than the categories I mentioned in the original post. It sounds like they may still be covered (and, from what you're describing, it sounds like some combination of prison, denial, and disruption is where they'd fit).
Hmm... I hadn't thought about that at all, actually. I was just looking for interesting fringe decks I could play with. Now that you mention it, though, this would be pretty useful to people.
I agree that, in order to have a truly useful conversation about decks like this, we need common terminology and perspectives. I'm using the word "archetype" like this post does. I completely understand your frustration, though, because the famous Finding the Tinker Deck article uses "archetype" in a similar fashion to what we are discussing here (the "style of play", rather than "what turns the deck wants to win on").
Perhaps we just need to take a step back for a minute. There are a lot of ways to look at decks and some combination of them is necessary to accurately describe most of the Modern playing field. Rather than defining terms, we should probably first decide what matters. I propose:
- What turn(s) the deck wants to win on (as laid out in this post and described with graphs at the bottom of this article)
- What the deck wants to do (put things in the graveyard, answer all the opponent's threats, deny the opponent their hand/deck/board state, etc)
- How the deck wants to win (lots of little creatures/one big fatty to the face, loads of burn to the face, instant-win card, etc)
Stuff I'm not sure about right out of the gate includes whether "ramp" should be in the first category (I think it fits better in the second) and whether the third category is distinct enough from the second. Thoughts?Actually, after reading your post, I think I'm even more sure about labeling Melira Pod a toolbox deck. I'm just not sure I agree with my original definition. It's a deck that can answer all of your opponent's threats and can win in a large number of ways. Pretty much the definition of "toolbox", if you ask me! You still make a fair point, though. If "toolbox" simply means "a large combination of game plans represented by one deck", does that mean it's a separate category at all? Since these are really labels, rather than categories, we should maybe just label Melira Pod as a burn/stompy/disruption/alternate win-con/swarm deck. I feel like that might be a tad overwhelming, though...
There are a number of "controlling" elements that can be applied in Magic. There's discard. There's removal (to the graveyard, to exile, back to the hand/deck, or just "effectively removed" by being permanently tapped down). And, lastly, there's countering.
I put discard in the denial category because you are denying the opponent the chance to cast their cards. I put removal that actually removes things from play in the disruption category because you are disrupting the opponent's board state. I put "effectively removed" effects in the prison category because of cards like Ghostly Prison. I put countering in the permission category because that's what "draw-go"-style decks have always been labeled.
Now that you've made me look at it again, I'm not so sure denial and permission are separate things. Both are preventing the opponent from casting something. They're just doing it at different points (discard is proactive and countering is reactive). Would you agree that lumping the two together makes sense? Would you also agree, then, that your description of planeswalker decks fits both denial and disruption?
This, essentially, is the entire reason I made my original post. As a player, I try and quickly categorize and understand decks in a given meta. I'm looking for unique decks that are outside the categories I've identified so I can mess around with them and understand them better. As a bonus, I also get all of you to tell me what's right/wrong about my categorization.
So far, I've had great feedback about categories (and, aside from two or three, I'm feeling fairly confident in them). I haven't had much feedback about actual decks, though. Perhaps I've asked the wrong question or posted in the wrong forum? Or, as someone pointed about above, am I just looking at the wrong thing? Maybe there's some other aspect of a deck that makes it unique.
There are two things I'm looking at for a given deck: What its win-conditions are and how it gets there. The latter piece is very well described by archetypes (aggro, combo, control, etc). What isn't described is how the deck ultimately wants to win. Which of these is more important varies wildly on the deck (and, as mentioned earlier, a number of decks have multiple answers to these questions). I would absolutely agree that the "combo" part is more important when considering Twin as a deck. The "swarm" part, however, is still relevant.
Wow, I'm not sure why I hadn't thought about it that way... Yes, you are correct - I'm focusing on win conditions. I keep staying "strategy", but that term really encompasses both the archetype and the win condition.
Now, your latter comment is incredibly interesting. I have a follow-up question: What would you call an archetype? I've been thinking about decks as two pieces: The win condition and how you get there. I'm not sure aggro, combo, control, and so on, and ramp encompass the "how you get there part", now that I think about it. They're actually more indicative of what turns the deck is most effective on. So, if engines are far more important (and, honesty, you may be right about this), what examples of different engines are there?
Two reasons. The first is that the original list was never meant to be exhaustive. The second is that I haven't edited the original post to reflect the current state of the discussion (token decks were mentioned in a different, later post). Perhaps I should be updating the original post, though...
It's not meant to be used by itself - it's meant to be used with archetypes to get a clearer picture of what a deck wants to do. Melira Pod, Eggs, and Burn all share a similar win condition. That's what I'm focusing on here. I would not, however, ever expect to describe those decks by just their win condition. They also have an archetype - Eggs being combo, Melira Pod being combo/midrange, etc. I think, perhaps, I've done a bad job of conveying that.
@Naugh-Tay - That's interesting... I have an old Merfolk shell and haven't played it in a year or two. Does that mean Merfolk is almost moving in a control-ish direction? Seems like there's probably some other deck out there that just removes/counters things and uses lifegain to stay in the game until they can drop a win condition on the table. Can't think of any decks that do this as their primary strategy off the top of my head exactly, but I could see Soul Sisters maybe winding up in that kind of situation sometimes. Maybe Turbo Fog or something? I'd have classified that more as a prison strategy, though... Do you happen to have a decklist for Merfolk I could look at that exemplifies this attrition strategy?
You're absolutely right - many decks, to be resilient, pack multiple strategies as part of their overall game plan. Storm, for example, has a swarm strategy (casting Empty the Warrens) and a burn strategy (casting Grapeshot) available to it. I listed Melira Pod as a toolbox deck because of how it uses Birthing Pod, but it also heavily relies on burn (Murderous Redcap). My original intent was just to provide some examples of the described strategy at work.
Prison decks using cards like Ensnaring Bridge, as you pointed out, don't go after your ability to cast things. They go after your ability to use the stuff you've already casted. A denial strategy, by contrast, should attempt to prevent you from casting things at all. There are a few ways to do this: Keep lands tapped (Stasis), blow lands up (Fulminator Mage), change what mana land produces (Blood Moon), increase casting costs (Thalia, Guardian of Thraben)... My follow-up question here, then, is: How is this definition of denial distinct from the disruption strategy I listed in my original post? Discard as a mechanic seems to suit both strategies, so is the distinction just that a disruption strategy focuses more on removal? Or, are they so close that disruption shouldn't be considered a distinct strategy?
How would you describe a stompy strategy, exactly? My understanding is that the original deck more-or-less played like Bogles does today. You take one creature, slap a bunch of enchantments or counters on it, and swing in for massive damage (preferably with some evasion). Puresteel Paladin decks should also fall into this category, then, but with equipment and creatures like Kor Duelist. Am I understanding this right?
If the above is true, then I think you're absolutely right - Tron doesn't apply this strategy at all. I'm not sure what to call its "hard-cast Emrakul, the Aeons Torn" strategy, though, because I'm not convinced that "ramp" is a necessarily a strategy as I've (loosely) defined it. Is it not more of an archetype? The strategy isn't just to get a bunch of mana - it's to do something with that mana once you have it (like casting a big Fireball).
As above, the reason I classified Splinter Twin decks as being swarm decks is because I consider "combo" to be an archetype. You are, of course, absolutely correct - Twin decks are combo decks. No two ways about it. In terms of strategy, though, the win condition is to have infinite creatures that the opponent can't block. This makes Twin decks distinctly different from Scapeshift decks, which employ a burn strategy in combination with Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle. I guess, if anything, I'd just like to clarify that I'm attempting to treat archetypes and strategies separately here. A deck of any archetype can win with a ton of little creatures. Two decks that win with a ton of little creatures may not necessarily belong to the same archetype, though, depending on their card choices.
I think I can be convinced that what I called "beat" is just a less extreme version of the swarm strategy. Would you put Zoo, Affinity, Merfolk, Goblins, and token decks here, then? What about decks like Mono-Green Devotion? That deck has a ton of small creatures as well, but employs Overrun mechanics for a huge burst of damage.
- Swarm (Splinter Twin, Tokens, Zoo, Affinity) - Have way more creatures than your opponent will ever be able to block effectively (win as a result)
- Stompy (Bogles, Tron) - Have such a huge creature that your opponent can be killed in a single combat step
- Burn (Burn, Scapeshift, Storm) - Kill your opponent as quickly as possible through direct damage
- Disruption (The Rock, Jund) - Win through extreme card advantage as a result of discard and removal
- Denial (Hatebears, Blue Moon) - Deny the opponent the opportunity to cast their cards
- Prison (decks with Ensnaring Bridge) - Simply prevent your opponent from using anything of theirs on the battlefield
- Permission (American Control) - Counter everything the opponent does and eventually win simply because the opponent no longer can
- Toolbox (Melira Pod, Gifts) - Doesn't matter what the opponent plays - there's an answer in this deck somewhere...
- Graveyard (Living End, Reanimator, Dredgevine) - Use your graveyard as an extension of your hand
- Alternate Win-Con (Infect) - Ignore life totals entirely and go after alternate win-conditions like poison counters or milling or instant-win cards (Door to Nothingness, etc)
So, what did I miss? Or, what did I mis-classify? I can already think of some potential strategies I've missed:- Decks that rely heavily on resolving and defending Planeswalkers to win (though we could probably fit these decks into the above)
- Decks that turn the opponent's deck against them with Vedalken Shackles or Sower of Temptation or other Mind Control effects (not sure this is a viable strategy on its own, though)
I'm sure there's some crazy budget deck out there or some Legacy deck I'm unfamiliar with that doesn't fit the mold.EDIT: Formatting and spelling changes.
EDIT 2: Made some changes as a result of suggestions further down in the thread.
All aggro decks are similar by virtue of being aggro decks. They try to win as quickly as possible and are, in general, weak to decks like combo or midrange. So, when trying to prepare an aggro deck for a meta full of combo or midrange decks, all aggro decks are looking for the same types of cards.
Which specific cards get chosen, however, can depend heavily on how those cards interact with the approach a specific aggro deck is taking. Decks like Bogles (which want to load up a single, hexproof creature with a ton of enchantments to smash the opponent's face in) and decks like Zoo (which want a fair number of creatures as early as possible that can swarm the opponent), despite both being aggro decks, are vastly different. One needs to prepare for "target player sacrifices a creature", because that can be devastating to their plan. The other is happy to oblige.
Experienced players familiar with the cards in all of the tier 1 and tier 2 decks in the format make these distinctions effortlessly. Newer players familiar with only the current standard format may actually be completely unable to figure it out if the approach of a given modern deck is sufficiently different from ones they've encountered in standard.
My thought was that if I could come up with a series of words to describe a deck's approach, it might be easier to explain to newer players the differences and similarities between given decks. Two "Swarm Aggro" decks will generally be very close in strategy and playstyle when compared to a "Stompy Aggro" deck (or something like that).
Like the first link I posted (about the metagame clock), though, I think I dislike the idea of having a "circle" to represent these decks... I always thought the graphs of the relative power level of a deck per turn in this article made it easier to understand:
The other thing I kinda dislike about simply using words like "Ramp" and "Combo" to categorize decks is that there's a large continuum of strategies within those categories that are worth examining. As an example, Flores's "Toolbox" archetype and "Prison" archetype are interesting because they tell us what the deck is doing. Mono-Black Control and UWR Control are both tempo decks with control elements, but they're doing vastly different things. Mono-Black Control is working towards a "Prison" strategy by removing the opponent's hand, while UWR Control is working towards a "Permission" strategy by removing threats as they're played. They both also remove threats once they've hit the board.
Is there possibly a secondary system of "tags" that would be helpful with deck classification? I thought of a few:
Thoughts? Or, better yet, has someone already done this, too?
A few months ago I was lurking on Reddit and came across the following two articles:
The first link talks about the idea of the "Metagame Clock" and then references and summarizes the second link. The second link is an old article by Mike Flores that puts forth the notion that all decks that ever could be made have been and we're just re-building them with different cards.
This is the idea that I'd like to explore. Mike Flores's article is really old and doesn't reference any Modern decks. But, is it still applicable?
As a thought experiment, I began trying to fit decks into Mike Flores's "archetypes". Here's what I came up with so far (using decks I'm familiar with):
CounterSliver
* Merfolk maybe?
Necro
* Is this even a real category anymore? Does anything abuse, say, Bob to this extent?
Prison
* None?
Sligh
* Zoo
* Affinity
* Pretty much all of the non-combo aggro decks in the format?
Stompy
* Bogles?
Weissman
* American Control is the closest to this we've got, I think?
Toolbox
* Melira Pod (also could go below in "The Enigma", since it's combo-oriented)
* Esper Teachings
Tinker
* Tron
* Aggro Elves?
The Enigma
* Storm
* Exarch Twin
* Scapeshift
Here's the problem, though... I don't know where to place decks like Mono-Black Control (they're more pro-active than Weissman, using discard as their "control") or Living End (it's not really a combo deck, it just has absurd synergy). There also didn't seem to be a category for midrange-y stuff like Wx Tokens (they win through card advantage, though - is this the new "Necro"?).
So, what are everyone's thoughts? Are there "archetypes" that didn't exist when his article was written that are here in Modern now? Did I mis-categorize anything above? How would you categorize other major Modern decks?