So based on a couple of reader requests (I’m looking at you, CMH2003 and thewachman), plus an absolutely glowing testimonial from Rich Hagon “the best thing that happened to Magic writing in the last year was Zac falling off the train and going to Malaysia” I went back and looked at Interaction Advantage (or Card Advantage Is Wrong, Kinda) and Applied Interaction Advantage, its sequel from this week.
My general impression is that there isn’t really anything wrong with Zac’s theory… only that it isn’t new.
A lot of you probably didn’t have Brainburst Premium when I was writing for that site (which was around the heyday of Who’s the Beatdown II: Multitasking and some other fine articles from Zvi), but to me, this is fairly settled stuff.
Hill attempts in his Interaction Advantage to “reconcile the competing existing concepts of Card Advantage and Card Quality with one another in a coherent fashion, while incorporating the reality that certain effects have an impact on the board that far exceeds the expected interaction value of your average ‘card,’ but aren’t easily measured by the other ‘cards’ they destroy, negate, or generate.” This is in large part a reaction to Stephen Menendian’s claim that “In fact, within the game of Magic, there are only interactions. There is no such thing as a ‘Magic card’. This is a difficult ontological reality for many Magic players to accept.â€
I suppose in order to properly address Zac’s article I will have to get Stephen’s statement out of the way first.
It’s asinine.
Okay, that’s probably a little harsh.
There are obviouslycards. In fact, the cards say “cards” all over them (look at any “discard” card). There have to be cards. It’s silly to pretend that there aren’t cards, because even if you agree with Stephen’s ultimate claim, the physical cards themselves have tremendous value “within [a] game of Magic.” If nothing else, cards give you something to bluff with. They give you something to look at when assessing if your opponent “has it” or not. They give you something to draw extra of if you are a cheater, or to watch that your opponent isn’t drawing extra of if you suspect him of being a cheater. They give you something to draw extra of if you are not a cheater but don’t know what else to do with the five Blue mana staring at you. The physicality, the reality, of the cards is essential to interactive Magic and to pretend that they don’t exist is to remove from the game that single solitary thing that differentiates the very good players from the absolute masters of the game. I can tell you that Jon Finkel walked by a playtest session once and ordered us to stop. We were playing poker deck with a Survival of the Fittest list. Jon insisted that what we were doing was actually hurtingus, and that there was no reason to test a Survival deck with proxies. “You just don’t have the right feel for the cards, and never will.”
Jon at the time had numerous Grand Prix wins and Pro Tour Top 8s on the back of his unparalleled skill with Survival of the Fittest, and to this day claims the absolute mastery of Survival of the Fittest among his proudest capabilities as the game’s greatest technician. If there was any one person’s opinion that absolutely mattered on this topic, it was his, irrevocably.
And he believed in cards.
But that probably wasn’t what Stephen was about in his statement.
He was really just being over dramatic about card counting, and I suppose that is forgivable insofar as what he was “getting at” (I assume) is essentially true from a pure counting perspective. It was true the last time I said it, and when edt told it to me, too. Just not new. I stress that this is accurate only from a counting perspective, that is, the recording of exchanges, and not true in any other sense.
In the early to mid 2000s I was obsessed with counting and argued that all card advantage is ultimately virtual. From the perspective of instantaneous utility there is no difference between playing Keiga, the Tide Star scaring off three attackers and playing Wrath of God to kill three attackers. You might be shaking your head at this because in one case there are still potential attackers on the board and in the latter case there aren’t. It is ultimately futile to argue the point because I can just pretend they will never attack and therefore never have utility (what if I play Windborn Muse and the opponent chooses never to attack with them due to mana constraints?) … Or what if the opponent plays Living Death and gets them all back? We can really only look at things at a given instant because the idea of long-term card counting really comes down to where you stick the words THE END … It’s the difference between comedy and tragedy and all the difference in a game of Magic.
Have you ever played ninety-nine one hundredths of a perfect game of Magic? Your back to the wall the whole time, mana flooded, desperately chump blocking, holding on until you weasel into a topdeck, then still have to juke it perfectly for three turns, pray he doesn’t realize you’re bluffing (there are those cards again) until you pull again… Only to mis-click on the last turn (real-life mis-click counts too)? Congratulations. Ninety-nine out of one hundred. Wasn’t good enough.
Okay, back to Zac…
Not a bad set of articles. I’m sure many readers benefitted from reading these, and that is all we can ask of ourselves as writers. Not bad; simply not new.
In my mind Card Advantage and this nebulous idea of “Card Quality” don’t have to be reconciled.
Correctly counted, all card advantage is virtual, cardboard or no.
The easiest way to describe it is this:
Turn one of a Standard game, summer of 1999.
Your opponent plays Swamp, Blood Pet. The table popped up before he even played his Swamp, and he can’t possibly contain his excitement or disguise his grin.
Okay, you think.
Seven cards, not one of them a Mogg Fanatic. For the sake of this example, you have four Mogg Fanatics in your deck, but anything else, you’re dead.
You have 53 cards in the stack in front of you, or put more simply, a 75% chance of losing on the spot.
You pull “a card” … that is, a piece of cardboard (it exists). It is not, however, a Mogg Fanatic.
For sake of counting — real honest to goodness counting — you pulled nothing. You pulled a blank. It’s as if you didn’t draw at all.
If your are reading my blog, I am fairly sure you understand this example. Now I am going to make you a better Magic player. For reals.
EVERY SINGLE PULL YOU MAKE OPERATES THE EXACT SAME WAY.
All the counting in Magic is instantaneous. There is no difference between being too scared to set off a Veiled Serpent and simply not having any hand at all from being Mind Sludged beyond the option of someday NOT being too scared of setting off a Veiled Serpent and manning up (or bluffing that you might someday similarly man up). Player behavior dictates everything. It always has.
Here is the important reiteration: EVERY SINGLE PULL YOU MAKE OPERATES THE EXACT SAME WAY.
You understood the summer of 1999 example because of the virtual boner the opponent showed you, your knowledge of your four Mogg Fanatic deck (probably Counter-Phoenix), and the fact that you realized that you were staring at a textbook Hatred kill. Now even with these parameters filled, it would have been up to player behavior. Maybe you could bluff a Shock or a Force Spike. Maybe the opponent doesn’t know that you have no out there. But you, the guy reading this blog, understood from the example that the in-game utility you got from a non-Mogg Fanatic pull was zero.
The difference between you before you read this post and you after reading the next paragraph is that you will understand that the lesson of Bob Maher is that you should always assess your cards as if you are under the exact same kind of pressure.
The value of card drawing is tied directly to probability. More cards give you more chances at relevant pulls. Playing “as if you are under pressure” leads to crafting a strategy that will necessarily conform to the threats and interactions that your opponent can present within the appropriate time frame. This is actually quite simple if you think about it.
We often go back to the timeless Finkel message “Focus only on what matters.” Certain pundits have complained on occasion that they don’t know what matters. It may be simpler to think of the relevant interactions. You all understood the relevance of the Mogg Fanatic versus Blood Pet scenario. Every Magic interaction making up every Magic game can be broken down into similar buckets of relevance and probability, which in turn fit into larger buckets that make up the Stage superstructure that describes every Magic game.
For example take MWC v. Zoo in Extended:
MWC will win essentially every game that is allowed to go to Stage Three. How MWC wins is more-or-less irrelevant because there is almost no play that is bad enough that Zoo would be able to come back and win if it gets that far (I like making the opponent die to his stupid Dark Confidant, personally).
MWC has a suprising Stage One. Not good, but surprising (you are surprised when you lose to Mana Tithe, and also surprised when you lose to Lightning Helix).
Zoo crosses Stage One superbly, and acheives Stage Two within two turns most games. Zoo has to try to win in Stage Two. This statement is the entire framework of the strategy that guides both decks.
When players say they don’t know what is relevant — at least if they were playing one of the two decks described here — it is possible they are failing in the basic identification of strategy.
Zoo can only win one way: Kill the opponent before he acheives Stage Three, likely with a combination of beatdown and burn spells. One of my favorite things when I was actively playing the MWC deck was when my Zoo opponent would play Umezawa’s Jitte, typically in an attempt to not play into a big old Wrath of God. I liked this because I never lost a game when the opponent went Jitte. He would cede time by not killing me. I would react with Lightning Helix or Unmake (or sometimes Condemn) and buy a precious turn that brought me closer to Stage Three.
There are two cards that are sometimes played in Zoo that could complicate issues for MWC. Both Tidehollow Sculler and Gaddock Teeg could remove MWC’s ability to interact in Stage Two (typically pre-empting or removing Wrath of God); without such ability to interact, MWC would die before Stage Three (obviously losing in the process).
Naya Burn and the Lightning Bolt Deck have different ways of interacting with MWC than Zoo.
Naya Burn can play Molten Rain — especially on a Mistveil Plains or Temple of the False God — which restricts MWC in Stage Two (or even shanks MWC back to a manascrewed Stage One in some cases); either deck can play Sulfurous Vortex, which can not only kill MWC when MWC should be trumping in Stage Three (and certainly Stage Two), but can undermine the active dictation of Stage Three (whereas Zoo would always lose in Stage Three).
You will notice that the evaluation statement that describes both decks’ strategies differs when MWC is playing against Naya Burn (which looks like Zoo). If the MWC player assumes “[this deck] has to try to win in Stage Two” MWC may fail. MWC may in fact inevitably fail. In fact, this may be tantamount to a mis-assignment of role! What does it mean if Naya Burn can violate Stage Three airspace? We are in a very different world than “MWC will win essentially every game that is allowed to go to Stage Three,” aren’t we? It sounds almost like racing (God forbid) could be a relevant if not necessary option in our bundle of sticks, an arrow in our quiver we just might have to string up.
Think about what is necessary to identify the necessity of racing in the MWC v. Naya Burn fight. At the micro level, you have to figure out which if any of your cards is appropriate for racing and how and when to play them. At a slightly wider level you have to identify how to either find cards to race or how to prevent Naya Burn from racing you (or perhaps if you are very spoiled) how to make the game no longer about racing. But at an even wider level, you have to have correctly assessed that the paradigm of the game is a little bit different than playing against Zoo. When you are very good, the appearance of a Sulfurous Vortex will begin a domino cascade in your mind that will inform your next five turns’ of tactics. A lesser player will simply lose and not realize how he lost, having drawn all his best cards “against Zoo.”
Those of you who followed me on MTGO when I was actively playing MWC know that I was sideboarding as many as four copies of Kataki, War’s Wage, not for Affinity, but primarily for the Lightning Bolt Deck. Kataki did several things in the Lightning Bolt matchup, over and over, even when it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense. Kataki was always a lightning rod. Or when he wasn’t, the opponent didn’t realize what was going on. Often, he would buy Shrapnel Blast! You see, the Lightning Bolt deck is full of Darksteel Citadels and Great Furnaces and really doesn’t have enough operating mana to let you run all over them with Kataki forever. Secondly, Kataki almost guaranteed that Mana Tithe was good. Especially once I had removed Oblivion Ring from my deck (Unmake was basically always better), I actually had to gamble on Mana Tithe being able to stop Sulfuric Vortex. Finally, Kataki gave me a little racing game. You’d be surprised! He’d get in for six or eight. He never killed the other guy, but the other guy was often so cavalier about his life total he didn’t realize he was in a race. Therefore he would have fewer turns than expected to draw his 20th point of burn and I could shave a turn or two off of my normally glacial Decree kill.
Last thing. This is super important!
Zac — we have to get back to Zac, Zac inspired this post — says in the second of his two referenced articles that he is not trying to describe a kind of “option advantage” with his theory. That is fine; what he is describing is his to describe. However remember that good Magic play is about the preservation of options. When you are presented with two similar plays, typically the one that leaves you more options is superior. This is the root of our theories on mana efficient play, card advantage, life total preservation… everything we think of as “clean” technical play is actually about generating and preserving our options.
And because bluffing is an option… You already knew there was such a thing as a card so I won’t bother repeating that.
LOVE
MIKE
P.S. I realize there are infinite difficult concepts in this post, and I will be happy to follow up more specifically on any topic any of you want me to in the comments.
The U/W ‘Tron deck has such powerful mana production that it can produce some awfully awful threats. This video shows off the ‘Tron offense including Sundering Titan and the Mindslaver lock.
What is the Mindslaver lock? Check out the video already!
This video observes the U/W ‘Tron deck disrupting the opponents’ strategies with key sideboard cards like Chalice of the Void, Tormod’s Crypt, and Vendilion Clique. While not one of these cards will win against a top deck all by its lonesome, as part of a cohesive strategy and backed by the power of the UrzaTron, these cards can reduce some of the most dangerous decks in the metagame into jelly.
U/W ‘Tron – Nicholas Gulledge
4 Azorius Signet
2 Chalice of the Void
3 Chrome Mox
1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Mindslaver
1 Sundering Titan
1 Triskelion
2 Decree of Justice
3 Oblivion Ring
3 Wrath of God
1 Academy Ruins
2 Flooded Strand
4 Hallowed Fountain
1 Mystic Gate
1 Plains
2 Tolaria West
4 Urza’s Mine
4 Urza’s Power Plant
4 Urza’s Tower
sideboard:
1 Chalice of the Void
4 Circle of Protection: Red
3 Kitchen Finks
3 Sower of Temptation
1 Tormod’s Crypt
3 Vendilion Clique
I liked testing this deck.
I would consider playing a deck like this — especially for post-Conflux with Path to Exile and Martial Coup — but with Remand. Remand and Condescend help set up the ‘Tron and protect any lead the deck can generate. But hey! I’m the kind of person willing to play a Solemn Simulacrum in Extended.
Just a shout out to the two-and-a-half or so of you all who read this blog but not the Top8Magic.
Ten of Magic’s most recognizable writers, editors, Pro Tour winners, and Hall of Fame inductees did me the solid of rattling off their favorite articles of all time for a small project I published on Top 8 Magic.
What are the most significant articles of all time?
Most of you have probably read my most recent column on the mother ship, The Three-Deuce. If you haven’t yet… Well… The link was right there in that previous sentence!
The Three-Deuce was originally a Grand Prix winning deck popularized by Trey Van Cleave. I picked the name’s pocket to use on this article, which was a split between a pair of topics, three and two.
The execution on Top Decks is changing slightly. Instead of focusing on the blue and gray boxes and Top 8 trending every week during a PTQ season we are doing more strategy and in-depth explorations of decks and strategies that I find to be interesting.
This week the strategic theme was about how some successful decks of the past were able to incorporate new cards from a set appearing in the middle of a Constructed format (you know, like how Conflux is complicating the middle of our present PTQ season).
It was difficult to write the “three” section on approaching a format as a new set is injected in the middle of things without applying Stage theory, but I couldn’t assume that my mother ship readers are familiar with that set of angles… But you guys have all read The Breakdown of Theory and Breakdown in Phase III, right? Right!
So here come the DVD Extras…
The Macey Deck
The inclusion of the Macey deck in White Weenie is a classic Stage Three. Remember the rules of Stage Three are that one deck is actively dictating the field of battle and that the other deck only has a couple of cards that matter. Kjeldoran Outpost in White Weenie prevents the control deck from being able to win with pure creature elimination redundancy, and in fact puts the onus on the control to draw one of its limited number of Strip Mines in order to deal with the threat. One thing that I didn’t mention but probably never came up is that the control can also race.
Tempest in Sligh
Stage theory again… Pre-Tempest Magic put most decks on having to get to about four mana in order to do anything interesting. Wrath of God is the obvious four mana card, but there were many Icy Manipulators, and even the “beatdown” decks were Erhnam Djinn attackers. Tempest in Sligh changed the fortunes of the beatdown by pulling the mana threshold back — way back — to like one mana for Jackal Pup and Mogg Fanatic… So these decks were almost never in the “basically manascrewed” ghetto of Stage One; moreover, the easy mana control of Wasteland would bomb slower decks back to the stone age of “basically manascrewed” even if they should have been in Stage Two, non-interactively for the most part.
Jar I have always maintained that people hate combo decks — whether they use these terms or not — because most of the “skill” in Magic occurs during Stage Two (where most of the interaction occurs); Jar exemplifies the combo deck with no Stage Two. Stage One is so short because of the mana acceleration and searching and then as soon as the first Tinker pops you are in a situation where basically everything you are playing, tutoring up, et cetera ad infinitum is better than whatever the other guy is gunning and relatively few of his cards matter (especially if you have Defense Grids on board)… textbook Stage Three… on turn one or whatever.
This is not to say that there is no skill in playing combo decks… There is certainly a lot of probability and picking the right tools, but the lack of interaction is what turns a lot of players off, especially the less spike-competitive ones.
Onto the Deuce!
SWOT Storm! was a late addition to this article. Originally my intrepid editor Kelly Digges was afeared that I used copyrighted music in the video (a no-no… Can’t run that stuff on the mother ship!). However I contacted him that I used some canned beats that came on my MacBook Pro and Kelly gave the SWOT Storm! ye olde green light on the second printing as it were.
Since Luis Scott-Vargas won Grand Prix Los Angeles (and Asher did pretty well on top), Storm has become one of if not the most popular deck in Extended. Following is a two-game match exploring the Storm mirror.
For this video I used Luis Scott-Vargas’s version of Storm, which is:
4 Lotus Bloom
2 Tendrils of Agony
4 Mind’s Desire
4 Peer Through Depths
4 Ponder
4 Remand
2 Sleight of Hand
2 Electrolyze
4 Manamorphose
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
4 Seething Song
Sideboard
2 Ad Nauseam
3 Brain Freeze
3 Echoing Truth
2 Gigadrowse
3 Pact of Negation
2 Shattering Spree
Here are some things you will notice about this deck…
Luis played main deck Electrolyze. This could theoretically have been Magma Jet (which is cheaper but less versatile against the one toughness creatures in Faeries), or nothing at all (as in Asher’s deck); the Grapeshot version can just Grapeshot Gaddock Teeg to death (though not Ethersworn Canonist).
Luis killed with Tendrils of Agony. It’s tricky, but you can Remand your own Tendrils and re-play it to create a lethal out of smoke, provided you have enough Lotuses and Manamorphoses to produce sufficient Black to play and re-play the Storm sorcery.
The big one is Shattering Spree in the sideboard. One of the cards I was using to beat Storm “back in the day” (at least before the Grand Prix) with the MWC deck was Chalice of the Void. That probably isn’t going to be a solution moving forward. The White deck is probably not fast enough to kill the Storm deck before a solution to Chalice of the Void can be found, especially when the best ineractive card has Replicate.
Storm is a deck that you will want to know; it is very popular (meaning you probably have to know how to beat it at least once or twice to win a PTQ) and an elite deck against Faerie Wizards (another pretty popular deck).
Storm is a powerhouse, and as you can see in the video (if you don’t have a lot of first hand experience with the deck) it is like a bulldozer stapled to a mongoose… nigh-inexorable kryptonite-locked to fast.
The video is pretty funny, especially the Game Three situation where I have double Tendrils, Brain Freeze-Remand-Brain Freeze with the second-to-lethal Tendrils on the stack. It can play tight margin mana with Tendrils and just enough Storm copies, or with sufficient momentum will do a thousand or so damage while decking the other guy the same turn.
Sideboard
1 Pithing Needle
3 Damnation
3 Extirpate
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Choke
2 Ravenous Baloth
2 Seal of Primordium
This deck more or less exchanges the usually defining Death Cloud set from the Life from the Loam versions of The Rock for Tarmogoyf, Bitterblossom, and Umezawa’s Jitte, repositioning the deck from board control to beatdown… while maintaining the card advantage capabilities of the [previously] more common deck.
The biggest take away I have from trying Jacob’s deck is how much better it is against Burn than the Death Cloud version I was on early in this season’s testing. Beating Burn was simply not difficult nor in any way stressful wheresas with Death Cloud, even when you won, you were on the edge of your seat the whole time.
An inability to win by Death Cloud is counterbalanced a little bit by the fact that this deck can still potentially lock the opponent down with Raven’s Crime. Even against Burn this can be useful because even if they are still clocking you for two or more damage you can end up shaving off their options and preventing them from planning — and playing — optimally.
All in all a very solid deck, well worth the try if you are considering B/G.
1 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Academy Ruins
4 Breeding Pool
1 Minamo, School at Water’s Edge
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
2 Riptide Laboratory
1 Seat of the Synod
5 Snow-Covered Forest
2 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Steam Vents
1 Tree of Tales
4 Wooded Foothills
sideboard
1 Chalice of the Void
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Echoing Truth
2 Repeal
3 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
4 Ancient Grudge
1 Dwarven Blastminer
One of the things that dawned on me recently was how much better the cards are now than Gnarled Mass. I mean you can make the possibly true argument that Isao, Enlightened Bushi was better than Gnarled Mass, but Kitchen Finks and Vendilion Clique really make for a good argument.
It’s not that I’ve abandoned the White deck so much as I don’t think the White deck can win in a format where Storm is one of the top decks. You see Game One you have to be extremely lucky to win, and sideboarded your strategy revolves around Chalice of the Void; if the opponent is playing Luis Scott-Vargas’s version with multiple Shattering Sprees I don’t know how you can reasonably win. Sure you are going to beat the Fae, Red Decks, and so on but I think that an utterly unwinnable matchup against Storm is a dodgy proposition at this particular time.
On balance, this deck (that is, Critical Mass) has no such Storm vulnerability. In fact, I put it as the best deck in the format against Storm (at least from my experience). I have never lost to that kind of combo deck.
You have a couple of things going for you:
Your Birds of Paradise accelerates out your Trinket Mage and supplements your operating mana, allowing you to stick a meaningful Chalice of the Void before you’ve lost the game.
Your Birds of Paradise and Sakura Tribe-Elders give you a slight mana boost allowing you to play Glen Elendra Archmage with U open, as opposed to just tapping out and losing.
I really like the Storm matchup with this deck and would be comfortable playing it all day.
I like the Faeries / Wizards decks in general but I didn’t know how to win the mirror. The mirror seems quite miserable to me (but scouting from the LA floor from ManningBot seems to indicate that the mirror is highly skill intensive… I must confess that I don’t see how to gain an edge by play skill); however this deck has a fair edge over the Faeries / Wizards style of deck.
In a sense it maintains the old Kamigawa-era Critical Mass edge over Jushi Blue. You are a similar deck with fewer permission spells but tremendously more impressive mana and threats. I was in the process of beating up a Faeries player last week when he played Vedalken Shackles. I did some minor math and decided I would try to overwhelm his Shackles… A single hit from any of my significant threats would be enough. I played Iwamori of the Open Fist. He showed me Azami, Lady of Scrolls. I passed. Before the end he played an instant Vendilion Clique and drew two. I conceded game despite having no illusions of possibly losing a turn and a half before. As you can see the deck no longer has any copies of Iwamori of the Open Fist.
My current strategy is to just play a lot of Arashis. I’ve always loved Arashi and it seems fine at beating Wizards. I side the one main deck copy out quite a bit. I think I’ve only ever gone 5/5 against Zoo.
Speaking of Zoo, that is a nigh-comical matchup. You have Sakura Tribe-Elder, Kitchen Finks, and Umezawa’s Jitte all main, plus Engineered Explosives backup. Really, not a difficult matchup.
What is a difficult but not unwinnable matchup is Affinity. Critical Mass is a dog in Game One. I don’t think that the opposing win expectation is much over fifty per cent, but the Affinity Game One wins are all blowouts so it might “feel” very good for Affinity. Certainly they have some margin to play with if they run the multiple Master of Etherium version. Sideboarding makes Critical Mass a heavy favorite. You have all these great guys and all these Ancient Grudges both. I think that I have been generally lucky drawing Ancient Grudges in sideboarded games, but Critical Mass has been an overwhelming favorite in my experience.
B/G Loam has been interesting. This is a matchup that can go either way. I have won most Game Ones in tempo-oriented fashion, but like I said it can go either way. I’ve noticed that Critical Mass has become a heavier favorite in sideboarded games due to the inclusion of the second Relic of Progenitus. Previously I was concentrating on just not getting blown out by Life from the Loam and sometimes losing to the opponent drawing another one. The two Progenitus version has been much more steady and I think Critical Mass is a moderate favorite in sideboarded games, a slight favorite overall.
Overall I would not hesitate to play this deck the day after tomorrow. I have never tested it but I assume Critical Mass would be a dog to a well played and good version of the Martyr deck. Most of the other matchups seem managable if not favorable blowouts.
I have not missed Thirst For Knowlege, largely because the deck is so active and I can get some of the selection / card advantage back with Sakura-Tribe Elder and Sword of Fire and Ice… The one card I sometimes miss, though, is Pithing Needle (usually when faced with some annoying Vedalken Shackles).
Anyway, that’s my deck. I hope you get something useful out of it. Good luck this weekend to anyone playing. I suggest you obtain The Touch.
I said Spencer’s forum post was my favorite but I actually forgot about this one, which actually touched what passes for my soul:
oldbsturgeon
i just want to say that this article was very inspiring to me for maybe a very strange reason.
i work as a therapist in substance abuse and i sometimes have clients that have codependency issues with another person.
today we were discussing this persons relationship and how the other person is currently dictating the field of battle and that the client is agreeing to her strategy and will continue to stay with her. by eliminating interaction, such as dredge’s strategy, she can focus on her goal of bettering herself, and when her partner trys to interact in will not matter and she will ultimately lose. either her partner must accept the new terms or will fall further trying to pursue her faulty goals.
thanks mike
I was reminded of this because of an email this morning (which has transformed itself into a Star City forum post also) by Anthony LaCassa, or Ath0919 here and on Star City.
Anth0919
Mike,
So I just read this article and all I have to say is holy crap!
I feel kind of stupid for being blown away by the article, since it’s pretty much based on simple math and I’m an accountant. I guess this is something I feel that I should have been able to realize on my own without having it explained. That being said, I’ve just begun venturing into competitive Magic over the past few months.
Thanks for this article… it’s the best I’ve read regarding theory on choosing a deck.
Which just goes to show: It’s not just for teenie weenie kids any more. Grown ups with jobs love michaelj too!
yes Yes YES
I will go over the deck that prompted young Zack Hall to proclaim “you should go into sales” to me yesterday. Maybe later today depending on Lost, Top Chef, etc.
I was reading Star City Games this week and until I saw a poll for most popular articles by some author or other, I totally forgot they had end-of-the-year awards.
What do you think the chances are that this two-time Writer of the Year gets a nod now that he is no longer in the weeklies? Winky-wink.
Anyway, I decided go go over my eight or so months at Star City in 2008 and pluck my favorite articles. I am pretty sure they are all non-Premium now for those of you who don’t have that service.
michaelj sez: This article is superbly written. Ego, yes; but still a fact. That is, it is a good read and would have been the kind of article I would have liked to have read had I not written it (actually I liked re-reading it, so I guess it has nothing to do with whether or not I had written it). This article features Dune battle strategy, lightsaber duels, basically everything awesome including passably awesome Magic strategy.
My favorite forum post:
SRmogg Just wanted to say that as of now this is currently my favorite magic article ever. Like, it was pretty unreal. I’ve read every enderverse novel many times, and I also really like Kurt Vonnegut. I alreayd knew most the startegic content, but if someone didn’t and was looking for a new way to attack a wide open format with many powerful linears like extended, it’s pretty excellent.Â
michaelj sez: Just a fair number of good ideas in this one, including getting the pat on the head from Pat, actually learning something while I was working on it, and answering a request by Adam Prosak. Just a pretty good article. I had actually forgotten doing the Wrath of God math; at the time (“that” time, actually) I was playing at my absolute best (this was right before Charleston and my States win)… I think combined with my The Touch tee shirt, GerryT’s mulligan advice, and remembering to do the math when I am pressed with a difficult decision, I will probably knock off a Honolulu PTQ win in one try. On that note…
My favorite forum post:
qwertius this article helped me a great deal.Â
I see myself as a talented player that never reached his potential for several reasons. Flores points to several directions I should look upon to improve.
michaelj sez: I had just come back from meeting millionaire copywriter Dr. Harlan Kilstein the first time, and I had inadvertently invented a sub-array of NLP theory, and was all excited about learning how to do modeling correctly. I actually want to do more modeling exercises in my writing in the future (in fact I have been thinking of creating a mulligans model inspired by GerryT’s post in The Hidden Value of MTGO Ringers; I don’t know if you noticed but I am pretty excited about that one. Just a great contribution to the site by Gerry). Also this one has a maddening amount of hand-written sections from The Confusion as well as the best opening page of any novel: madness and goodness both.
My favorite forum post:
Anselm And then there’s Thomas Pynchon, who does (almost) everything Stephenson does, but better.
[Actually this is like my least favorite forum post of all time. Ravitz and I went out and bought Gravity’s Rainbow after this forum post and it’s been close to a year and neither of us has finished it yet.]
michaelj sez:
I actually forgot that I wrote this one. This was both one of the best articles I ever published and not as good as it should have been (I had been keeping it under my hat for about three years to be honest, and didn’t get to flesh out everything I wanted to in one article… It was meant to be a video series). This article lays out the advanced rock-paper-scissors theory I use (or more aptly, “used” when I was really good at that kind of thing during Kamigawa- and Ravnica-era Standard formats) to pick the right deck consistently. Certainly my favorite of the five, and a short list contender for Article of the Year (provided anyone remembers I wrote it… Like I said I didn’t).
My favorite forum post:
ThePChapin Flores! I knew you still had it in you!Â
This article hit home with me like no other article since that fateful “How to win a PTQ” last year…”Â
Grand Slam. Not close.
center425 Man I love the people flaming the advice on sideboards. Honestly, I bet everyone one of you played cards that were awful in your bad matchups for no reason.
So I hope you like reading or re-reading some of 2008’s best stuff, from me, on Star City. Hopefully I will continue to be able to produce passably awesome content now and forever. Hopefully.
LOVE
MIKE
PS In case you haven’t noticed (and I think I mentioned it roughly DI times in this article, you should read GerryT’s comment in The Hidden Value of MTGO Ringers. Like right now!).
PPS Follow me on Twitter. Please! I want to feel loved.