Getting Stupid with Ratchet Bomb

Concerning:

Ratchet Bomb :: Powder Keg :: Tweets & Other Correspondence RE: Ratchet Bomb
“Decisions” :: Louis CK :: … and did I mention “Ratchet Bomb”?

The Girl in Question*:

Ratchet Bomb

I wanted to blog about Ratchet Bomb about a week ago, right after I wrote my then-preview article for the mother ship. As usual there were things I wanted to talk about, but particularly given the unprecedented tons of redundant communications I received from forum posts, personal emails, and Tweets around this card.

Most people were like “Wow, is that even better than Powder Keg,” but that’s not the group I wanted to talk about. Before I get 100% into them, I am reminded of a bit by popular comedian Louis CK. You can watch a clip of him and Conan O’Brien here:

The part I wanted to talk about starts almost precisely at 2:00.

“I was on an airplane and there was Internet — high speed Internet — on the airplane. That’s the newest thing that I know exists. And I’m sitting on the plane and they say open up your laptops and you can go on the Internet.

“And it’s fast, and I”m watching YouTube… but I’m on an airplane.

“And then it breaks down and they apologize the Internet’s not working… and the guy next to me goes ‘This is bullshit!’

“Like how quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only 10 seconds ago!

It’s far more hilarious listening to Louis tell the story than if you read it… But that’s how I feel about many players’ reactions to Ratchet Bomb.

I am not going to call any particular respondent out; just point out a common sentiment, which is basically:

You failed to mention that Ratchet Bomb really isn’t better than Powder Keg because you have to tap it. For example if my opponent has both one- and two- casting cost threats and I already have a counter on it and I want to put a second counter on it but he has a Disenchant; frowny-face.

Really?

Are you serious with this collective Internets?

How about if the opponent has both one- and two- casting cost threats and you have already figured out that it is possible that the card may be vulnerable to cards like Nature’s Claim or whatever you think about that before putting a second counter on it?

How about, in the words of my colleagues over at Yo MTG Taps you “Stop bitchin’ and start brewin'”?

Let me tell you a little something about decisions.

Decisions shape destiny.

Once upon a time you made a decision, and that decision put you in the position you are today. For example, I decided that it would be more fun to stick around in New York after my summer internship was over instead of going back to the scholarship I had waiting for me at law school, and that decision snowballed over the course of the next eleven years into my becoming a domain expert in arbitrage advertising, marrying the woman of my — and let’s face it, “everyone’s” — dreams, and producing two particular children that could only have been produced by the quirky combination of my DNA and hers. I think I have a pretty great life, and it was the result of that decision more than ten years ago.

Which doesn’t mean that I couldn’t have had a different pretty great life if I had made the opposite one; just that I wouldn’t have remotely the relationships and career that I have now, if I had made the other.

Another example could be a decision I made fourteen years ago.

I was playtesting with DJ Chagnon and the now-famous Charles “Tuna” Hwa, and found myself in a position where I had thrown together a deck — purely for playtesting — that not only thrashed the deck DJ and Charles were planning to play, but the deck I was planning to play.

At the time I had zero pro Magic experience and was one of those players who might say something like “Well, I’m a control player” or “I like Blue decks” or some other such garbage that you hear over at the 0-3 table at every FNM in every city in the world.

I made a decision based on data and statistics — even if I couldn’t express them, or it at that point — that changed the course of my life forever. I threw in with the opposite camp and played a Necropotence deck; fine, it was a unique-ish Necropotence deck of my own devising, but it was a deck with all kinds of two- and three-mana threats instead of slow-ass Helm of Obedience ** offense and Circle of Protection: Green (or whatever awful color) defense… and that decision changed my life, too. I cut myself off from the misguided, limiting bullspit that I had been feeding myself for the past two or three years, and — wonder of wonders — found myself on the Pro Tour for the first time, 24 hours later.

I made a decision, and it changed my life in a truly magical way.

Who knows how the course of my life — or the lives of literally hundreds of thousands of Magic players — would have changed if I had not cut myself off from the limiting tethers of Force of Will and Arcane Denial rather than the mighty two-card combination of Dark Ritual and Thawing Glaciers? If I had never won that first PTQ, who is to say I would have ever so much as had the interest to win the second one I won that year, or kept playing competitive Magic? What if I never wrote Who’s the Beatdown because, like so many of my mid-1990s playtest partners, I simply quit?

altran and I were the only ones in the group — though all of us played 50 hours a week back then — who actually made it to the Pro Tour in that decade… and altran eventually gave up spell slinging. Who is to say I would have been able to Cultivate The Fire had I not had the tremendous positive reinforcement that came with winning my third-ever PTQ, and followed that up with multiple Top 8s and another PTQ win in the next six months?

I am not saying the lives of some six million Magic players would have been worlds different if I had never written Who’s the Beatdown, but I am awfully sure that my life would have been cut a completely different direction.

So what is all this talk of “cutting off”?

The word “decide” comes  from the Latin for “to cut off”. When you decide, you settle your mind and cut away all other possibilities.

A lot of you guys remember the story of how Steve O’Mahoney-Schwartz beat Dave Humpherys in the last round of US Nationals 2000. I was so amazed at how well Steve played the first three turns of the game… A sequence that was so similar — yet so much better — than the way that most players would have approached a game that they too would have won (just not as efficiently).

Jonny later told me that if I kept hanging out with him and Steve, I would no longer be able to see any other play.

What does this have to do with the guys wrinkling their noses at the fact that their poor Ratchet Bombs might fall victim to a Shatter in-between tapping and proposed, you know, different tapping?

Let’s spin this back to the years ago discussion of Cabal Therapy v. Duress in Extended. Most Reanimator decks played four copies of Cabal Therapy and three copies of Duress. Weak players would play the reverse, in theory because they weren’t good enough to hit with Cabal Therapy as consistently.

Let’s put aside for a moment that you can’t first-turn Duress a Rorix Bladewing out of your own hand so that you can follow up with a Chrome Mox + Reanimate. The fact that you can’t necessarily “hit” [the opponent] with Cabal Therapy versus Duress ***. The tension Cabal Therapy was better than Duress wasn’t between hit or not (or at least not primarily between hit or not), it was between being able to hit the card that is going to beat you… Whether or not that is actually the card in the other guy’s hand.

Grok that?

Cabal Therapy could hit a Faceless Butcher, not just a Diabolic Edict. Cabal Therapy could hit, you know, anything (not to mention the Symbiotic Wurm in your own hand).

You grok?

This is the same tension that the guys complaining about getting their shiny new Powder Kegs blown up in between days just aren’t getting. Who cares if you can hit some irrelevant Serra Attendant if the problem is the 12/12 Ajani’s Pridemate? I mean it’s nice to be able to kill some extra card if the opponent is already going to point a card at your card… But who gives a flying fudge if that’s not the card that is going to kill you?

Yes – It is a non-zero consideration to notice that Ratchet Bomb has a slightly different vulnerability than Powder Keg.

No – That has absolutely no bearing on how good Ratchet Bomb is.

If you decide that jumping your counters is what you have to do, strategically, the fact that you are “subject” to a different one-for-one might have some effect on an individual game (and then again, might not), but has almost no bearing on how good the card is.

Decide.

LOVE
MIKE

PS Ratchet Bomb is motherloving awesome. Die Jace, the Mind Sculptor! Die!

* First person to correctly identify the reference made by this four word sequence can topdeck five #FloresRewards.

** True story: In the summer of 1996 I attempted to corner the Ohio market on Helm of Obedience under the theory that if I owned all of them, no one could use them to beat my stupid Blue-based creatureless decks.

*** True or false – I have won a PTQ game where I missed both Duress and Cabal Therapy in the same turn.