Another QS Article, this time on Multiplayer politics on MtGO
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Category Archives: theory
Splitting Hairs
Splitting Hairs
Here’s one of my favourite things in the whole world, a game of EDH with close friends, literally around my kitchen table:
And here’s another one of my favourite things, taking down a Commander game on MtGO:
You see, despite having (almost) the same rules, the same banned/restricted list, the same card pool, EDH and Commander are completely different games.
EDH is this brilliant little format created by Sheldon Menery and Duncan McGregor, amongst others. Based on Singleton, the brilliant move of adding a General, and then restricting the manabase to the colours of that General. IT was fun, casual, and played exclusively across dinner tables (behind the scenes by judges on the Pro-Tour).
I can’t remember when I heard about it, or started playing it, but my playgroup, a bunch of guys with cards dating back to Alpha, got on board almost immediately. That photo above is from the last of quite a few games we played before I headed off to Hong Kong. The crazy interactions, the multi-player politics, and the alcohol all added up to a stack of fun.
Of course, we imposed strict social rules. No infinite combos was the main one, but everyone got the hint that mass land destruction was frowned upon as well (curse you Matt!). People came with all sorts of decks – counter-blue, walls & pingers, green grow, everything you could imagine. We roped in all sorts of people to play, too, gathering players at the local stores we’d never met but were up for some hilarity at the house of a crazy guy they’d barely met (with a very forgiving wife, too).
Yes, people played to win, but with six to ten people at the table success was never guaranteed. With that many people we played a version called “Zombie EDH”, where, if you took someone out of the game, they shuffled up and started playing again to the benefit of their new Zombie Lord.
Once I moved to Hong Kong I started investigating Commander on MtGO, which Lee Sharpe had converted onto the digital medium. You could usually get a game, but there was a decidedly different feel to MtGO Commander than paper EDH. Players were more aggressive, pushing to win rather than just enjoy the game.
But the big difference occured when WotC finally endorsed EDH as a format, officially renaming it “Commander” offline as well as online. Once that happened the multiplayer room became far more cutthroat. Casual gaming turned into Stasis Locks and Infinite Turns and Mindslaver Locks.
Commander had forked EDH.
If you’ve ever read Anil Dash’s article on forking, you’ll understand what I mean. Suddenly we had two similar products that were generating different results the gaming-cultures they operated within.
Here’s why I think the forking occurred:
* MtGO Users Are Majority Spikes: Anyone willing to invest significant amounts of time and treasure into MtGO is bound to expect something out of it. The consistent competitive nature of the format (the queues, the tournament practice rooms, the PTQs, etc) breed a particular sort of person, the kind intent on winning. This is not a bad thing, but it is a thing nonetheless.
* Officially Endorsing EDH as Commander Spiked Spike’s Interest: Do you know what’s happened every time WotC had endorsed a format on MtGO? They’ve created queues for that format. You create a queue and Spikes want to break that queue. Now, while queues for Commander haven’t arrived yet, you can probably place a safe bet that they’ll turn up someday, and until that day arrives Spike wants to get a little practice in. So they’ve turned to the Multiplayer room to practice, and they’re practicing to win.
* EDH Is Ripe For Breaking: A best deck has not yet been discovered for Commander. The best Generals are generally known (Zur, Sharuum, Jhoira) but the single best deck? Not yet. But you give enough spikes with enough keyboards enough time, and they’ll eventually produce the works of Shakespeare find the deck that’s got game against every other (until the bannings occur).
* EDH Is Ripe For Tuning: Not a lot of deck-building theory has gone into EDH yet. Due to the high level of variance (oops I just drew 10 lands in a row damn) creating consistency and certainty that a Spike requires is difficult. But not impossible. MtGO, though the readily available games and ability to rapidly shift cards in and out of decks, encourages tuning and the discovery of the best build. Again, this is a system that Spike is all to ready to abuse.
* MtGO’s Anonymity Lessons The Social Contract: When you’re staring at your friends across a kitchen table while you lay down that Stasis, chances are you’re getting verbally abused by your mates (or a beer can thrown at your head). Online, however, no-one knows you’re a dog. Play that Stasis, or Necropotence, or Winter’s Orb. Why not? There repercussions might be a block, or a hastily conceded game by your opponent, but there’s no skin off your nose. The Social Contract of EDH cannot survive the shift to an online medium, and this allows people to run whatever the hell they want without any fear of social repercussions. This is probably the key reason why EDH and Commander have forked.
Already, online, we’ve seen a massive jump in the “ramp” decks in Commander (possibly due to the importance that ramp had in Standard over the past season). Decks that aim to combo out on Turn 4/5 if possible are overplayed, and when someone discovers the deck that consistently goes off Turn 3, then that’ll be overplayed too. Spike doesn’t necessarily care for the “fun” of EDH
I’ve been preparing for an upcoming Commander tournament here in Hong Kong. It’s not sanctioned but it has prizes, which makes taking it down pretty sweet. Hong Kong is a funny place; there was very little interest in EDH due to the competitive nature of the locals and the shallow card pools of most locals. However, once WotC turned EDH into an official format, the locals suddenly got there Generals On and came out swinging. These are, of course, the same guys who play MtGO, the very same Spikes who are only out to win. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Formality breeds competitiveness. And once you start throwing competitions into the mix, people are going to search for what wins and seek out a medium to test it.
So what can keep Commander in the spirit of EDH? Nothing. They’ve forked, and Sheldon has, for better or worse, let the format get away from him. Banning cards online won’t help – there’s always a best deck, and Spike will always run it. My suggestion is to let both paths of the fork thrive. Play EDH with your friends with paper cards. But be aware that when you play Commander online, you’re playing a different game.
It’s Time to Update the DCI Rating System
It’s Time to Update the DCI Rating System
I’ve been harping on about the DCI ranking system on twitter (where I do all my best harping) for the past couple of weeks. This has largely been borne of my frustration that despite playing objectively well – with a consistent 4:1 win:loss ratio – I have barely been able to progress my DCI ranking.
There are numerous reasons why I’m finding it difficult to progress my ranking, which I’ll try to cover here. For reference, here’s a hand DCI ranking calculator.
Firstly, however, a quick look at the DCI system. The DCI is based on chess’ ELO system. While a natural fit in theory, there are some differences between Chess & the ELO, and Magic the Gathering and the DCI.
- Magic involves an element of luck that chess does not: This includes draft / sealed pools, card draw variance, deck selection and pairing, dice rolls and coin flips. A game of Magic, unlike chess, is never entirely about skill. Whereas a Chess Grandmaster will always beat the kid who just started, this is not true in Magic, where luck inevitably plays a part, no matter how small.
- The ‘K Factor’ in ELO rankings is not applied the same way in DCI rankings: In Chess, the K Factor is staggered based on the skill level of the player. In Magic, the K Factor is staggered based on the assumed skill level it would take to win the tournament. This means in chess – except in open events – players are generally restricted on playing against opponents on a similar rating to themselves. In Magic, players can come up against opponents with vastly different ratings, thereby facilitating large rating swings (both positive and negative).
- Chess maintains one ranking, DCI maintains several: In Chess, you have a single ELO number within a particular tournament group. Within the DCI, you have several rankings – eg. Limited, Constructed, Total. This results in circumstances where you can make large gains in one area (eg. Constructed) that does not similarly affect other areas (eg. Total ranking, if you were already highly ranked due to a high Limited ranking).
It should be noted that the ELO system is under constant scrutiny by the Chess community, and there have been several attempts to improve it, with few tournaments using the straight ELO system, which is currently widely regarded as flawed. Right now there is a competition to find a completely new system. The K-Value is constantly being tinkered with, with both larger (32+) and smaller (4) figures being trialed for high-level players to see what brings the most consistency to the game.
So, back to my situation.
Over the past few years, I’ve concentrated largely on my limited rating. My big break in my rating was when I managed to come second at a Sealed PTQ. This boosted my rank from 1634 to 1757 overnight. For the next two years my Limited ranking bounced between 1720 to 1800 in the Australian Magic scene, and my Constructed rating managed to dip around 1550 – largely because I insisted on playing terrible decks – and then back up to 1599.
Since then I’ve moved to Hong Kong. Hong Kong has a much smaller player base than Australia, or even New South Wales. In Australia I was rated within the top 300 players. Simply by moving location my ranking has moved into the top 100.
One thing I decided to do was ensure that, next year, I’d be qualified for Hong Kong Nationals. As the Top 75 players get auto-invited to Nationals, I felt a Total rating of 1800 would be a pretty safe cut-off point here.
The first step in my plan to achieving this was to secure at +1800 Limited rating, followed by a +1800 Constructed rating. As such I dutifully turned up at every FNM I could, and at rated Sealed events, in the hope of achieving a +1800 Limited rating.
And what a drag it’s been.
I started on a ranking of 1780 off the plane from Sydney. Due to some settling in issues (basically, learning to play Limited Magic with cards in Traditional Chinese!), I lost the first few games. However, I forced myself to memorise the pictures of every card in M11 and turned it around. My total matches in M11 in Hong Kong are 21-7-4, essentially running a 3:1 win ratio, really 4:1 if you excuse the first dismal draft when learning how to play in a foreign language.
So, across those months of playing and, objectively, having a pretty good track record, how many points have I managed to pick up? Most of these were 8k events, so you’d assume – at an average gain/loss of 4 points per match, (21*4) – (7*4) – (4*1), or about 52 points.
Right now my Limited DCI rating is 1799, a grand total of a 19 point gain, or less than 1 point per win.
This looks even worse when you consider that one of those 4:1 win ratios was during a 24k event, which I won – and gained a mere 3 DCI points in total.
Here are some reasons why this has occurred.
- I’m now playing players well below my ranking: With the limited number of players in Hong Kong, there are more players with low DCI ratings. This means that game that I lose due to variance, rather than play errors, have a much greater impact on my ranking. For instance, at the aforementioned GPT, I lost a single Match. In Game 1 I had to mull to 4. In Game 2 I had to mull to 5. Meanwhile, my opponent managed to drop his entire pool on the table – Grave Titan, Hoarding Dragon, and other large beats. Unfortunately my opponent’s rating was 1528. This meant I lost 20 rating points, which I barely made up pushing through match wins against better players. The 1528 rated opponent didn’t make Top 4, but that didn’t stop my rating dropping through the floor due to that single loss.
- Those with high ratings protect them and don’t participate: One thing I’ve noticed is that those with the highest ranking tend to avoid playing in FNM in order to protect their ranking. They’ve clearly already recognized the issue I’m up against – the chance of gains in this broken system are not worth the risks of losses. This means that those trying to improve their rating – such as myself – are stuck in a cycle of beating and occasionally losing to low rated players, thereby endlessly cycling around the same rating.
- There are fewer high-level events and more FNMs: This means access to games with a larger point swing are limited. With variance in consideration at the smaller FNMs – often three rounds – it means that unless I can guarantee a 3-0 win each round, a logical impossibility, I will most often lose rating for each FNM or draft I participate in.
- As my rating improves, the DCI makes it harder and harder to progress: Partially due to the small player pool, partially due to the low ranking of those who participate in FNM, the stranglehold the DCI formula places on my progression gets worse and worse the higher I climb, thereby exacerbating an already difficult situation.
Clearly the DCI rating system is broken. But it’s not just broken for me; it’s broken for everyone.
It’s broken for the top level players who ID and lose rating as a result.
It’s broken for the small playgroups who bounce around the same ratings, unable to advance with any significance.
And it’s broken for Wizards of the Coast, as it discourages involvement at FNMs and 8k Drafts by higher-level players as it offers a substantial threat to their rating, thus hurting their income.
Personally, I would like to see WotC abandon the Elo system, much like Blizzard did when it revamped its Arena system for World of Warcraft. I would like to see a system that holds to the following fundamental tenants:
- You will always gain points at an event where you win more games than you lose
- You can never gain points for an event where you lose more games than you win
- You can neither gain nor lose points when you draw (intentionally or otherwise)
Now, I’m no mathematician, so I’m probably not the best person to determine the formula that redefines the DCI. But there are a lot of smart people at WotC who are capable of finding a better way of ranking players, and I hope that they chose to divert some resources to that effort.
Putting ‘Eight’s Enough’ Into Action
Putting ‘Eight’s Enough’ Into Action
I wanted to see how well my Eight’s Enough theory from the other day worked in practice, so I took an already-reliable build and tweeked it follow the Eight’s Enough theory. Here’s the decklist:
Eight’s Enough Dredge
A Legacy Deck by Neale Talbot
4 Putrid Imp
3 Tireless Tribe
1 Golgari Thug
4 Bloodghast
4 Narcomoeba
3 Stinkweed Imp
3 Ichorid
1 Flame-Kin Zealot
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Careful Study
4 Breakthrough
3 Dread Return
4 Bridge from Below
4 City of Brass
4 Cephalid Coliseum
2 Gemstone Mine
4 Undiscovered Paradise
Sideboard
1 Terastodon
3 Firestorm
4 Chain of Vapor
3 Ancient Grudge
4 Leyline of the Void
Based on the Eight’s Enough theory, this deck provides:
* 4 Breakthrough + 4 Careful Study = 8 blue dredge enablers
* 4 Ichorid + 4 Bloodghasts = 7 recurrable creatures
* 4 Bloodghast + 4 Narcomoeba = 8 “free” creatures (Ichorid does have a cost)
* 3 Tireless Tribe + 4 Putrid Imp = 7 discard outlets
* 3 Stinkweed Imp + 4 Golgari Grave-Troll + 1 Golgari Thug + 1 Dakmor Salvage = 9 dredgers
* 4 Careful Study + = 8 draw then discard enablers
* 4 Bridge From Below + 3 Dread Return = 7 graveyard abusers
* 2 Gemstone Mine + 3 Undiscovered Paradise + 4 City of Brass = 9 multicolour enablers
Based on this, you have around an 80% chance of hitting every single path to winning in the first four turns. However, due to the nature of dredge, where the grave is really an extension of your hand, the figure is probably much higher. As a result I have found this build to be extremely consistent.
Builds that use either Bloodghast OR Ichorid are very reliable for a turn 3 or 4 win. This build is consistent for turns 2 or 3. Considering how finely tuned the deck already was, reliably speeding it up a turn is simply staggering. I would consider a turn 4 win with this deck slow and pretty bad luck.
At the same time, the deck has a bunch tonne more interactions than your usual Bloodghast/Ichorid only build, with the order of playing lands, when and what to dredge, sacrifice, and return to the battlefield becoming even more sophisticated. However, with great options comes great opportunity for a good pilot.
If you’re planning of playing Dredge at your next Legacy event, I recomment you give this a try.
Eight’s Enough
Eight’s Enough
I’ve been working on a theory of late, and I’m trying to get some feedback on it. So here it is.
For a combo deck to be truly reliable it needs either 8 ‘action’ cards, or 4 ‘action’ cards and 4 efficient direct tutors.
It’s probably clumsily worded, but here’s what I mean, considering the best, most effective combo decks.
In Vintage, ANT (Ad Nauseum Tendrils) functions due to ‘action’ card Ad Nauseum to draw the required parts of the combo and ‘go off’. ANT runs 4 copies of Ad Nauseum and 4 efficient tutors – Vampiric Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Demonic Tutor and Necropotence (effectively another Ad Nauseum).
In both Vintage and Legacy, Dredge is a powerful force for Combo due othe ‘action’ card ‘Bridge From Below’. In this case the Dredge mechanic is an extremely effectively ‘tutor’ for dumping Bridge From Below into the Graveyard, but due to its non-specific nature can be relatively hit-and-miss (and by ‘relative’, Dredge is such a powerful mechanic is is clearly more often good than bad).
In Legacy, Thopter-Top functioned due to the interaction between Thopter Foundry and Sword of the Meek. Thanks to Enlightened Tutor, Thopter-Top can effectively use 4 efficient tutors to increase the numbers of both in the deck (often running 3 Foundries and 2 Swords), with Brainstorm backup for searching efficiency.
In Legacy, Charbelcher relied on the action card ‘Charbelcher’, but as Charbelcher has no cards with a duplicative effect, it often runs four copies of Empty The Warrens and Burning Wish to tutor for alternative win conditions.
Likewise, Dragonstorm was a powerful force but did not have an appreciable tutor for the ‘action’ card, Dragonstorm. As such, most Dragonstorm decks ran either 4 copies of Empty the Warrens or 4 copies of Pyromancer’s Swath as alternate win conditions.
In Extended, Hypergenesis functioned due to ‘action’ card Hypergenesis to dump a hand of fatties on the battlefield. Hypergenesis runs 4 copies of Hypergenesis and up to 10 cascade cards (Violent Outburst, Demonic Dread, Ardent Plea) that acted like efficient tutors.
So, if 8 is the magic number, what happens when you don’t have 8?
In Standard the past few years, combo decks have struggled. This has been due to the lack of the ability to hit the critical ’8′.
Time Sieve relies on the interaction between Time Sieve and Open The Vaults. While good, the deck never made the big time due to the lack of 4 cards that offered the same effect, or tutored efficiently (Tezzeret, at 5 mana, is far from efficient and does not fetch Open The Vaults).
Likewise, Pyromancer’s Ascension is capable of effecting infinite turns on Turn 5. But having only 4 action cards in Pyromancer’s Ascension and not direct, efficient tutors (Preordain and Ponder being great deck cycle, but not direct tutoring), the deck really struggles should it even be disrupted once.
Polymorph, however, is one to watch. There are now 8 cards with Polymorph effects legal in Standard, and as such the deck now has a viable level of consistency.
So, why is the number 8 so important?
With 4 ‘action’ cards in a deck, they make up just 6.65% of the total decklist. The chances to draw one of these action cards on the first few turns of the game (without mulligans) are as follows:
T1: 39%
T2: 44%
T3: 48%
T4: 52%
This means by Turn 4 you will only have a 50/50 chance, every game, of finding the single most important card in your deck.
However these statistics change dramatically with 8 ‘action’ cards (or efficient tutors). Firstly, the cards make up 13.4% of the deck, and your chances of finding one of these cards has improved as follows (again, without mulligans)
T1: 65%
T2: 70%
T3: 75%
T4: 79%
This means that instead of missing your key card by Turn 4 half the time, you only wiff 1 in every 5 games (statistically speaking). In terms of variance this is what takes a ‘good’ combo deck and turns it into a ‘great’ combo deck.
These statstics are why I would currently stear clear (in standard) of building decks around Pyromancer’s Ascension and Fauna Shaman. While the deck-cycling cards in Ascension are powerful due to their mass (Preordain, Ponder, See Beyond and Treasure Hunt), the lack of direct tutor means that the searching is inherently unreliable. Likewise, Fauna Shaman may pair well with Survival Of The Fittest in Legacy and Vintage (as Patrick Chapin has explored), but in Standard should only be used at the moment to improve decks that are already powerful without the card, or are used as a 4-of tutor for another combo piece (eg. Sovereigns of Lost Alara).
Anyhow, I’m interested in hearing people’s feedback, so be sure to speak up in the comments or find me buzz me @wrongwaygoback on twitter.
Magic Theory: Looking Forward To Power Creep
Magic Theory: Looking Foward To Power Creep
There’s been a bit of hubbub of later of the power creep of creatures and, to a certain extent, the nerfing of counterspells.
Those who have been playing Magic for years understand the ebb and flow of power within the game. The original sets, alpha through to revised, were, in reality, a ‘best guess’ at how the game would work. It’s known the creators never expected decks with four-ofs of any one rare; this assumption proved to be incorrect and the busted cards became known pretty quickly.
And in the beginning, the busted cards were artifacts, instants and sorceries:
* Black Lotus
* Mox Pearl
* Mox Sapphire
* Mox Jet
* Mox Ruby
* Mox Emerald
* Ancestral Recall
* Time Walk
* Timetwister
There were literally zero creatures that could compete with the power level of these spells. Even the lesser instants and sorceries – Dark Ritual, Lightning Bolt, Counterspell, Sinkhole – were highly efficient. Creatures were merely the things you fit around successfully resolving your Recalls and Time Walks.
Yes, there were some lights in the shadow; certainly Savannah Lions set the benchmark for what W would buy you, Ball Lightning in 4th Ed is still a great card today, and Lord of Atlantis is the most effectively costs Lord to date, but overwhelmingly the creatures of that era would not see play today.
When did this begin to change? Erhnam Djinn in Chronicles and Juzam Djinn in Arabian Nights pushed back against Serra Angel in terms of effeciency. But the still could not compete with the power levels of Stasis, Fastbond, Balance, Demonic Tutor, and the many, many other instants, sorceries and enchantments that would steal their thunder for years.
So when did it really start to change? Probably not with the printing of Morphling in Urza’s Saga, which should be seen as a fantastic abberation in a set full of otherwise boring creatures. Probably not Goblin Welder in Urza’s Legacy, which, while powerful, is really more a tutoring sorcery than a creature. A better guess might be Urza’s Destiny, which gave us the 5/5 Phyrexian Negator for 2B and the 4/4 Masticore with a bunch of great abilities for 4.
But the rise of creatures was really precipitated by the printing of two tribes; Slivers in Tempest block and exceedingly good Goblins in Onslaught block. These two tribes allowed creatures to ‘get back in the game’, so to speak. As tribes they were powerful and synergistic. But there’s one thing they weren’t; efficient. As an army, Goblins and Slivers were hyper-powerful, but by themselves they were just as anemic as their older creature cousins. This same efficiency could be seen in Mirrodin block; by themselves the Affinity and Modular creatures were pretty pathetic (7 mana for a 4/4? no thanks!). But as a group they were unstoppable.
It wasn’t really until Ravnica that the modern standards for power/toughness efficiency in creatures was set. Ravnica, of couse, was the home of the ‘Hunted’ cycle: 1UU 4/6 unblockable creature, BB for a 7/7 trampler, 2GG for a 8/4 regenerator, 3RR for a flying, hasty 6/6. Of course, each of these creatures had considerable downsides, in that they gave your opponent permanents of their own, but they certainly set a new benchmark for power/toughness efficiency.
This new realm of efficiency was reinforced by the Gold creatures Ravnica introduced. Watchwolf became the watchword for mana efficiency, the WG 3/3 vanilla creature. Guildpact gave Giant Solifuge, a hasty, trampling, shrouded 4/1 for 2R/G R/G. Rumbling Slum was fantastic at 1RGG for a 5/5 that pinged your opponent – you sure didn’t care about it pinging yourself. And if you were prepared to lose your entire board position, then 3UU for a 8/8 flyer didn’t seem so bad at all.
Timespiral block reinforced this, bringing with it the suspend mechanic, allowing people to spend R to cast a 9/7 or 2U to cast an unblockable 6/6. Spending 1R on a Vanishing 3/3 that was guaranteed to do at least 2 damage was far more impressive than Ravnica’s 3/3 that hung around.
And then we got Future Sight, which certainly lived up to its promise, allowing us to glimpse just how efficent creatures would become. The 5/5 flyer for BB in Tombstalker; the 0 mana 1/1 flyer in Nacromoeba, the 3 5/5 in Gathan Raiders.
And then there was Tarmogoyf. The 1G (possible) 8/9 with no drawback.
With Lorwyn promised to be a creature-focus block with a strong tribal theme, the future for creatures only looked better. Oona’s Prowler was a 3/1 flyer for 1B. Mulldrifter was Divination on a 2/2 flyer. And then their were the blue faeries; Mistbind Clique, Scion of Oona, Spellstutter Sprite, Sower of Temptation, Vendilion clique. Even the aggressively costed Kithkin and Merfolk couldn’t keep up. Doran, a BGW ‘effective’ 5/5 made others look tiny, but wasn’t much use one Sowered away.
By this time huge, efficient creatures were common. A 2RR 7/7 and 8/8? Sure. No-one even played them, percieving the downside too harsh. A 1G 4/3 (Talara’s Battalion)? Not even worth bothering about when your 2/2 ‘vigilant’ Gs (Nettle Sentinel) were doing the job for you, or just helping you combo off.
So there was no need to be surprised when the next block, Alara, featured a 3/3 for G in Wild Nacatl, or a 5/4 for WGR in Wooly Thoctar. Or two 4/4 flyers for 3BRG in Broodmate Dragon. Or a 4/4 for BG in Putrid Leech. And even less surprise when a 5/5 Flying, First Striking, Lifelinking Angel for 3WW turned up in M10, or a 6/6 Flying Trampling Demon for 2BB turned up in Zendikar.
The important thing to note is; are any of these as powerful as a Black Lotus? A Time Walk? An Ancestral Recall? Even a Sinkhole? Probably not. If those cards were in Standard you’d build your deck around them in a second.
Just how good does a creature have to get before you’d run one over Time Walk? I don’t know, but it would have to be pretty close to Tarmogoyf for a single colored mana. Can we expect something like that in the future? Perhaps.
But what’s great about the power creep of creatures is that it clearly gives Wizard’s some comfort in returning some of the older, more powerful spells to us. Sure, we’ve only seen Lightning Bolt and Swords to Ploughshares to date, but how far away can Counterspell or Stone Rain be? If the only way to survive an onslaught of hyper-efficient creatures is through mana denial, spell denial, or highly efficent removal, then it’s going to get printed again.
The only question now is when – and how good will creatures be when they do?
On the State of Magic Theory
On the State of Magic Theory
There are a number of new MtG ‘theories’ kicking around at the moment. I’ve summarised these briefly (in my own words) below:
* Michael J Flores: The player that spends the most mana the most efficiently over the course of a match will invariably win. “It’s all about the mana.”* As tweeted by MJF himself.
* AJ Sacher: Whoever spends the most mana over the course of a game has a significant advantage over an opponent; a mana not spent is mana wasted.
* Zac Hill: The value of a given action can be measured by the number of favorable interactions it creates relative to a maximum number of interactions of which your deck is capable, or the number of an opponent’s interactions it correspondingly negates.
* Patrick Chapin (paywall protected): The object of a game of Magic is to manipulate your resources to get more and better options while denying your opponent the same in order to take away their option to continue to play.
Michael’s & AJ’s new theories are heavily influenced by the Philosophy of Fire, which Michael wrote about in 2004. That article dipped into the relative costs of resources with the following sentences:
“We contrast cards for life (Shock), and again cards for life in the other direction (Natural Spring), to see the card advantage generated by Natural Spring when compared to Shock. What the Philosophy of Fire does is focus on the first part of that exchange. Rather than looking at a cards-for-cards or life-for-cards relationship, it focuses on cards for life and associates a value based on the default damage spell being Shock. Simple and obvious, right? Step back a second. You know that Necropotence says x life = x-1 cards. You know that Sylvan Library says 4 life = 1 card. Now imagine you had a deck of all Shocks. That says that 1 card = 2 life.”
At this point I think it’s a good idea to mention Zvi’s article on Michael’s Philosophy of Fire, in which he says the following,
“There is far more you can do looking at life as a resource and trading it for others. Magic is all about trade-offs. The Philosophy of Fire is all about changing the value of resources.”
It appears that the state of Magic theory is currently circling back on itself. Whereas once resources were valued in terms of life-equivalency, they are now being valued in terms of mana-equivalency. Whereas once interaction value was based on tempo and card advantage, now it’s based on option and possibility creation and denial.
I no longer care for these either/or type of theories. Card advantage is everything! Tempo is everything! Mana efficiency is everything! Interaction is everything! Option denial is everything! Clearly all these things matter; tempo, efficiency, interaction, options, card advantage; However, not every one of these matters to every deck. The Burn deck cares little about interaction but a great deal about tempo. The Combo deck cares little about the individual mana efficiency of its cards but a great deal about the interactions between them. The control deck cares a little about everything a lot about card advantage. All these theories are important, but none of them are the be-all and end-all of Magic theory.
A little while ago I posted the idea that Magic is a game of negotiation, in that both players start with a set number of resources and use these resources to trade with each other until one reaches a win condition. This is a simple analogy and certainly not a high-falutin’ theory. However I did go into some depth on the resources available to a player:
Tier 1: Starting Resources
* Life total
* Cards in Hand
* Cards in Library
* Cards outside of game
Tier 2: Battlefield Resources
* Permanents in play
* Creatures in play
* Basic land types in play
* Enchantments in play
* Artifacts in play (Affinity)
* Tokens in play
Tier 3: Gameplay Resources
* Creature types in play (Tribal)
* Mana symbols in play (Chroma)
* Mana symbols in graveyard (Chroma)
* Mana symbols in hand (Chroma)
* Card types in graveyard (Lhurgoyf)
* Lands in graveyard (Lhurgoyf)
* Nonbasic lands in graveyard (Lhurgoyf)
* Instants in graveyard (Lhurgoyf)
* Sorceries in graveyard (Lhurgoyf)
* Creatures in graveyard (Lhurgoyf)
* Enchantments in graveyard (Lhurgoyf)
* Power of creatures in play
* Toughness of creatures in play
* Mana Generators in play
* Counters on permanents in play
* Cards in Graveyard (Threshold, Dredge)
* Top card of your deck
Tier 4: Meta Resources
* Mulligans
* Time / Turns left
* Deck ‘power’
* Deck tempo
* Deck consistency
* Deck threat diversity
* Deck threat response
* Deck card interactions
* Knowledge of own deck
* Knowledge of opponent’s deck
* Knowledge of opponent’s hand
* Knowledge of top card of opponent’s deck
* Knowledge of top card of your deck
I think it is a time consuming and pointless exercise to try to position all these resources in a framework of mana efficiency, tempo, card advantage, or any other single element of Magic theory. What we can do is understand how we access our resources, maximise the value of our resources, and get efficiency from their expenditure in order to better achieve the outcome of ‘winning the game’.
Here are a number of ways (and by no means exhaustive) we trade resources, both spending one type of our own resources for others (eg. spending mana to draw a card) or with our opponent (eg. burning an opponent in the face):
* Life total manipulation (inc. Burn, Necropotence)
* Drawing a card
* Accessing cards in Library (Tutor)
* Accessing cards in Graveyard (Dredge)
* Accessing cards outside of game (Wish)
* Accessing and using mana, and having wider varieties of colour available
* Tapping a permanent for effect
* Activating an ability for effect
* Triggering an ability for effect
* Attacking or blocking with a creature
* Countering a spell
* Destroying a permanent
And here are some ways (again not an exhaustive list) we maximise our resource expenditure:
* Using efficient cards (ie low casting cost for ‘power’ ratio)
* Using cards with reusable abilities (triggered, activated)
* Using cards with multiple abilities
* Using cards that gain card advantage (eg. Cryptic Command, Blightning)
* Using cards that gain permanent advantage (eg. Gatekeeper of Malakir)
* Maximising use of all available resources each turn (depending on efficacy of doings so)
* Maximising re-use of cards (flashback, buyback, unearth, dredge)
* Maximising compatibility/integration of cards (the sum is more than its parts – combos, linears)
* Using Instant Win Conditions
When building a deck I think it’s important to understand what the deck is trying to do in order to win the resource battle. Is it a deck prepared to trade life for card interaction and a combo win (eg. Ad Neaseum Storm) or is it a deck that seeks to reduce the value of your opponent’s resources (eg. Ghostly Prison/Moat decks) or is it a deck that tries to gain consistent permanent and advantage (eg. Jund), or is it a deck that preys on your opponent’s weaknesses by putting out the most efficient, tempo based cards available (eg. Naya Lightsaber)?
A deck needs to define its path to victory, whatever that may be; I counter everything my opponent does, play these two combo pieces, then win; I lay down a lot of efficient 1 mana creatures and kill everything he plays to block with; I play bigger and better creatures than my opponent. Each strategy will have its own strengths and weaknesses, depending on the metagame (ie. the strategies your opponents are taking).
A deck also needs to weigh up what path it will take to maximise its resources on that path to victory, whether that be tempo (eg. mono-white weenie) or card advantage (eg. UW control), mana efficiency (Naya Lightsaber) or card interaction (eg. Hive Mind).
Not every deck will have use for every strategy or theory. Furthermore, some strategies will have specific weak spots against others (eg card advantage vs. tempo, interaction vs efficiency). But as of yet we have no theory that rules them all, nor in the darkness binds them.
Magic As A Game of Negotiations
Magic As A Game of Negotiations
Yesterday I said the following:
“Magic is, in a sense, a game of negotiation, where resources are traded depending on the skill of each of the players.”
And I thought I’d elaborate on that a little today.
In Magic both players start with a set of resources built under a particular set of rules. Throughout the game resources are built up, lost, re-gained, until a win condition is met (ie. a life total is zero, a card cannot be drawn, a ‘I win’ card is played).
The resource trading process is, in a way, a series of negotiations, where resources are won or lost on the back of your trading position. For instance, you may choose to trade your Terminate for your opponent’s Baneslayer Angel. Your opponent, as part of that negotiating process, may want to change the terms of that negotiation and play a Flashfreeze in response, and so-forth.
Unlike negotations in the real world, where most often the wisest thing to do is seek the “win-win” outcome where both parties walk away happy with the contract, the Magic the goal is to seek the “win-lose” negotiation, where one party comes out definitively worse.
However, in order to be successful in any negotiation you need to prepare properly. In order to do this you need to understand what ‘currency’ you have.
The concept of ‘currency’ in negotiation theory is, simply put, all the things you have to trade away. In Magic these are known as resources. However, there is a scale of resources not immediately apparent from the game rules. Here’s a list of resource tiers you may find interesting:
Tier 1: Starting Resources
* Life total
* Cards in Hand
* Cards in Library
* Cards outside of game
Tier 2: Battlefield Resources
* Permanents in play
* Creatures in play
* Basic land types in play
* Enchantments in play
* Artifacts in play (Affinity)
* Tokens in play
Tier 3: Gameplay Resources
* Creature types in play (Tribal)
* Mana symbols in play (Chroma)
* Mana symbols in graveyard (Chroma)
* Mana symbols in hand (Chroma)
* Card types in graveyard (Lhurgoyf)
* Lands in graveyard (Lhurgoyf)
* Nonbasic lands in graveyard (Lhurgoyf)
* Instants in graveyard (Lhurgoyf)
* Sorceries in graveyard (Lhurgoyf)
* Creatures in graveyard (Lhurgoyf)
* Enchantments in graveyard (Lhurgoyf)
* Power of creatures in play
* Toughness of creatures in play
* Mana Generators in play
* Counters on permanents in play
* Cards in Graveyard (Threshold, Dredge)
* Top card of your deck
Tier 4: Meta Resources
* Mulligans
* Time / Turns left
* Deck ‘power’
* Deck tempo
* Deck consistency
* Deck threat diversity
* Deck threat response
* Deck card interactions
* Knowledge of own deck
* Knowledge of opponent’s deck
* Knowledge of opponent’s hand
* Knowledge of top card of opponent’s deck
* Knowledge of top card of your deck
Yesterday’s story of cracking a Terramorphic Expanse to fetch a Swamp on Turn 1 when I was playing a White/Blue deck, was an example of trading a Meta Resource (Knowledge of own deck) in order to mislead my opponent in future negotiations.
Another example from the same draft was in a game where I had led with a Turn 1 Elite Vanguard, and my opponent had responded with a Turn 2 Runeclaw Bear. Knowing that my deck would do better the more time (a Meta Resource) it had to negotiate, I was happy to swing into the bear with my Elite Vanguard. My opponent had the opportunity to either agree to a trade or reject a trade. He agreed, we traded creatures, and the negotiation went better for me: I came out one mana spent ahead and was given more time to find my Baneslayer Angel.
Yesterday’s post also included an example where I was happy to trade card after card so long as I could maintain a positive trade advantage in terms of time, knowing that time was fast becoming my opponent’s most valuable resource. My opponent did not realise this series of negotiations was going on until far too late, by which time he could not extract himself from a negative trading position and lost the match.
Understanding all the resources available to you, how to access them, how and when to maximise your resource expenditure, and how to ensure a series of ‘win-lose’ negotiations throughout the game is critical to winning in Magic. Over the next few weeks I’ll explore these topics in terms of deckbuilding, gameplay and negotiation strategy. I’d also be very interested in your feedback in regards to this, especially around and resources that I may have missed, or holes in the philosophical approach. Feel free to comment, hit me up on wrongwaygoback@yahoo.com or on Twitter.
Team Grixis & Pro-active vs Reactive Control
Team Grixis & Pro-active vs Reactive Control
I’ve been playing a Standard UBR deck on MtGO lately I’ve tentatively titled ‘Team Grixis’. Here’s the list, based on the good work at Affinity for Islands:
4 x Lighting Bolt
3 x Negate
2 x Essence Scatter
3 x Double Negative
2 x Grixis Charm
4 x Terminate
4 x Couriers Capsule
3 x Cruel Ultimatum
2 x Earthquake
1 x Sphinx of Jwar Isle
1 x Sphinx of Lost Truths
1 x Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
1 x Chandra Nalaar
1 x Sorin Markov
1 x Liliana Vess
1 x Jace Beleren
4 x Scalding Tarn
4 x Verdant Catacombs
4 x Dragonskull Summit
2 x Crumbling Necropolis
3 x Mountain
4 x Island
5 x Swamp
It’s a fun, fun deck to play, especially if you love games that go on for at minimum of ten turns. A recent concession on MtGO where someone quit because ‘it was turn 13′ got my head really spinning. Really? Turn 13 got you down? Have I got a Pickles lock to show you!
For a while I was convinced I needed to play Red Deck Wins as my old age and energy levels couldn’t keep up over the course of an event. Then I realised, hey, you know what I do have? Infinite patience. Which is exactly what you need when playing control.
I remember I took the Fae and 5CC to a couple of FNMs in the last Standard season, and I would always win the mirror. Why? Because the young buck opposite me was determine to make something – anything – happen. Even if that meant losing. I have learnt that I don’t feel that need. I can hold on forever, refusing to yield. So what if we’re both playing draw-go? I dare you to tap out. I dare you.
Meanwhile, playing the deck has got me thinking, though, about the difference between pro-active and reactive control.
Pro-active vs reactive control
Blue is the colour synonymous with control for one simple reason – it engages in pro-active control. The ability to prevent a threat from ever reaching the battlefield through counter-magic has, historically, allowed blue to control the flow of the game, shaping it and moulding it in the right direction for victory. However, blue is at it’s weakest at the moment. It’s strongest counter (cancel) has a casting cost of 1UU, and beyond that it’s left with a bunch of situational spells, most of which cannot cope against the inherent power of the Cascade mechanic.
As a result, control has moved into a far more reactive position. We have red options (Lightning Bolt, Terminate, Earthquake) or white options (Day of Judgment, Path to Exile, Oblivion Ring) and black options (Doom Blade, Infest, Gatekeeper of Malikir). These colours are stepping up their control game in response to the speed of play and card advantage that decks like Boros Bushwacker and Jund Cascade provide, and the gap in speed that blue has left behind.
Is prevention better than cure?
Any doctor will tell you prevention is better than cure. However, in Magic, the gamestate isn’t that simple. The game allows one person to go first, and that person will have an inherent tempo advantage. A three-mana prevention spell such as Cancel is not much use when your opponent has dumped their biggest threats onto the battlefield before you have a chance to cast it.
At the same time, the diversification of threats at the moment means a situational counter such as Negate may sit in a hand unused as Goblin Guide after Goblin Guide hits play, or visa versa with a Luminarc Ascension with an Essence Scatter in hand. Again, blue’s problem is that there is no ‘soft’ counter that can hit anything for a 2 mana casting cost in Standard at the moment.
As counters have progressively been neutered, answers have been getting better. Three good examples are Maelstrom Pulse, that can kill anything and it’s brothers for a mere 1GB, Oblivion Ring, which can do the same for 2W, and Bituminous Blast, that is a two-for-one whenever it goes off.
This means that, as a whole, cards that are reactive answers to generic problems are currently stronger than cards that are narrow, active preventions for specific threats. Why risk running Essence Scatter when you know you’ll hit a two-for-one at least with Day of Judgment?
Counter on the play, removal on the draw?
So, knowing the limitations of our active counters and our reactive answers, perhaps there is a new philosophy to enact – Active counters on the play, reactive answers on the draw.
For instance, ignoring the conditional Flash Freeze, the deck might have choose to play the following on the play:
4 x Lighting Bolt
4 x Essence Scatter
4 x Negate
4 x Double Negative
4 x Cancel
2 x Terminate
And this on the draw:
4 x Lighting Bolt
4 x Terminate
4 x Grixis Charm
4 x Earthquake
4 x Spell Pierce
2 x Negate
The first set acknowledges starting mana boost and the philosophy of prevention over cure. The second set acknowledges the need to play catchup, reducing casting costs, looking for the sweep, and planning to remove whatever his the ground.
The conundrum, then, is what to have in the maindeck, where you can never be sure whether you’ll play or draw. At this point, I’d be inclined to use the ‘Draw’ list and always elect to draw in Game 1. Your opponent will rarely elect to draw, so you can be sure you’ll have your optimum decklist. Then, if you lose Game 2 (which you should be relatively set up for), you can sideboard into Game 3 the ‘on the play’ card list, using the tempo boost to maximum advantage.
I’m going to tinker around with this strategy a bit. I’m sure I’ll find a steady balance of proactivity and reaction. After all, I have infinite patience.
Adrenaline, Drafting MtG, and You
Adrenaline, Drafting MtG, and You
The scenario: You’ve joined an M10 Draft Queue on MtGO and after filling up quickly it’s fired. You’re in the hang time between the draft starting and the first pack being opened. Suddenly it appears, you see a crap rare and an Air Elemental, and you quickly grab the Elemental, and it’s onto the next pack. Wait, what else was in that pack again?
You don’t know. You looked, but you didn’t really see the cards.
What just happened?
Let’s break it down.
Between the queue firing and the first pack opening your brain engages in a classic adrenaline-flood experience. This is an automatic response that cannot be controlled (and, incidentally, is one of the defining features of why drafting is so fun and addictive – an article for another time). As your blood pressure, blood flow and heart rate increase, your pupils dilate, and most importantly blood shifts away from the frontal lobes of your brain to your motor cortex.
This has several effects on your thought process.
(1) You can’t think straight. For about the first 30 seconds or so your ability to make value judgements is gone. You will act on a combination of instinct and learnt behaviour from prior experiences.
(2) Your ability to long-term plan is impaired. The flight-or-fight instinct is nature’s short term solution, you either survive or you don’t. It doesn’t care what’s going to happen in an hour’s time.
(3) The effects of emotion on your decision-making process are increased. As it has been put, you have a need to do something, anything, immediately. Unfortunately, because of (1) and (2), your snap decision may not always be the right thing to do.
Here are some hypothetical examples of each.
(1) Your first pick was an easy choice, Captain of the Watch (letting a Blinding Mage go), and your second pick a Rhox Pikemaster (letting a Pacifism go). The third pick appears, and there’s an Air Elemental, a Doom Blade, and a single white card, Stormfront Pegasus. Having had a lot of success with Air Elemental in the past you grab it, and end up with a rather clunky deck with a lot of double-coloured casting cost cards, while the person to your left drafts a fast white-weenie rush deck and the person to your left crafts a nice counter-blue skies deck.
(2) The pack opens and immediately see a crap rare, a Sierra Angel and an Air Elemental. Your experience is that Sierra Angel is the stronger flyer so you immediately pick it. However, you have ignored that the pack also has a Blinding Mage, a Pacifism, and no other blue cards. You missed the chance to send a clear signal to your neighbour, who will still likely go white, and also missed the chance to own all the blue in Pack 2. You end up drafting a White/Red deck with only one solid white card, the Sierra Angel.
(3) You open Pack Three and see a Great Sable Stag and a Tendrils of Corruption. You’ve drafted black so far, but that Stag is staring you in the face. You don’t own any yet, and you really want a playset, and, hey, it’s counter-drafting anyway, right? So you pick it. The Tendrils does not wheel, you don’t end up playing the Stag, and you lose in the first game when the Tendrils could have got you there.
None of these decisions are entirely conscious, and not always the worst decision you could make, but they are judgement impaired decisions due to the adrenaline in your system and blood flowing out of your frontal lobes.
So what to do about it?
* Firstly, you can try to prevent it. Doing some sort of activity, such as light exercise, can get the initial adrenaline rush over with before the draft starts, thereby freeing your mind for when it’s needed.
* Secondly, the effect is pretty short. Depending on your “high”, the initial thought dampening will last around thirty seconds, with the total effect gone in around five minutes. You can speed this up by moving your arms and legs to get your blood flowing again.
* Thirdly, slow down, give yourself time. Do not make a first-pick within the first 30 seconds of the draft. Let your brain get over the initial flow of adrenaline and the flight-or-fight instinct wear off. Then you’ll be able to get back into rational decision-making mode.
* Lastly, talk out loud to yourself. I know that sounds weird, but it will re-engage your brain. Force yourself to reason out loud about why you are going to pick a particular card, including its advantages, disadvantages and what card in the pack is likely to wheel back to you. This forces your brain to logically step through why a card is good enough to choose, and if it sounds wrong when spoken out loud, take it as a warning sign that the pick may be wrong.
In summary, be aware of the tricks your body will pull on you, slow down, give your brain a chance to start thinking again, and then draft away.