Everyone who plays magic builds decks, but very few people take the time to actually think about what they are doing when they search through the voluminous lists in gatherer, trying to find that perfect card for their deck. Each card within a deck serves a larger purpose, and by understanding that larger purpose, a player is better equipped to analyze the deck and make beneficial changes. This post will discuss what I think are the basic tenets of deck construction.
Navigating the Card Pool: A Deckbuilder’s Compass
What is the plan of a deck? Every Magic player that has ever built a deck is able to answer this question. Is your plan to put a bunch of enchantments in your graveyard and cast Replenish? Is your plan to stick a big giant fattie in the graveyard and reanimate it? Is your plan to beat your opponent really hard with one giant man? These are generally fairly easy questions to answer.
What is important to realize is that each given game-plan can be executed in a variety of manners, and the methodology behind this execution is as important to the success of a deck as solidity of the game-plan itself. It is this methodology that most players fail to consider. Understanding this methodology provides a framework for understanding card choices, and thus gives the player the ability to improve upon the deck by finding cards that fulfill the appropriate methodology better.
Decks are constructed on essentially two axes - Power vs. Consistency and Explosiveness vs. Resiliency.
First, I want to define these four terms:
Power - Card power, fairly self-explanatory. Decks that lean toward power will seek to resolve as many powerful cards as possible, and will rely on the quality and strength of their individual cards to win the game. Any synergies present within decks designed solely for power are purely incidental.
Consistency - The ability of a deck to execute a specific sequence of plays on a game-to-game basis. Example: T1: 1 drop (2 power), T2: 2 drop (3 power), T3: 3 drop (3 power).
Explosiveness - The ability of a deck to win the game before its opponent is able to get relevant answers online.
Resiliency - The ability of a deck to resist attempts to disrupt its core strategy.
Every single card choice you make when constructing a deck represents a point on both of these axes. In general, you make trade-offs in one department to gain in others. Consistent decks tend to be less objectively powerful, and resilient decks tend to be less objectively explosive. Let's take a look at some examples:
Deck designed to maximize power: Cruel Control
This is a list I made T8 with at a PTQ:
2 Cascade Bluffs
1 Gargoyle Castle
2 Island
3 Mystic Gate
4 Reflecting Pool
2 Sunken Ruins
2 Vivid Crag
4 Vivid Creek
3 Vivid Marsh
3 Vivid Meadow
1 Gargoyle Castle
2 Island
3 Mystic Gate
4 Reflecting Pool
2 Sunken Ruins
2 Vivid Crag
4 Vivid Creek
3 Vivid Marsh
3 Vivid Meadow
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Broken Ambitions
3 Cruel Ultimatum
4 Cryptic Command
4 Esper Charm
1 Essence Scatter
1 Haunting Echoes
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Liliana Vess
2 Planar Cleansing
4 Volcanic Fallout
Sideboard
2 Celestial Purge
2 Doom Blade
4 Great Sable Stag
2 Hallowed Burial
2 Negate
2 Runed Halo
1 Swerve
Consider, this list essentially chooses to play the most powerful cards that fulfill any given role. Want removal? Here's Lightning Bolt. Want a creature to stall the ground? Here's Kitchen Finks. Want powerful finishers? Here's Bogardan Hellkite and Cruel Ultimatum. Want one of the best utility spells ever printed? Meet Cryptic Command. There are other cards that hold the deck together (Esper Charm being the primary example), but as a whole the deck is designed to simply overpower the opponent by playing high quality cards.
Deck designed to maximize Consistency:
Ikeda's Zoo deck from Austin:
4 Arid Mesa
1 Forest
4 Marsh Flats
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
1 Plains
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Stomping Ground
3 Temple Garden
1 Treetop Village
3 Verdant Catacombs
4 Kird Ape
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Qasali Pridemage
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Wild Nacatl
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Lightning Helix
4 Path to Exile
4 Spectral Procession
2 Umezawa's Jitte
Sideboard
2 Countryside Crusher
2 Flashfires
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Otherworldly Journey
3 Ravenous Trap
2 Riftsweeper
3 Volcanic Fallout
This deck was extremely predictable - T1: 1 drop (Nacatl or Kird Ape), T2: 2 drop (Goyf or Pridemage), T3: 3-drop (Procession or KotR). It would sprinkle in some burn here and there. All in all, there is very little mystery as to what this deck is doing. It does the same thing each and every game, and it is very very good at accomplishing that.
Deck designed to maximize Resiliency:
This should seem fairly familiar. It won PT San Diego:
2 Dragonskull Summit
4 Forest
2 Lavaclaw Reaches
3 Mountain
4 Raging Ravine
1 Rootbound Crag
4 Savage Lands
3 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Bloodbraid Elf
3 Broodmate Dragon
4 Putrid Leech
3 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Sprouting Thrinax
4 Blightning
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Rampant Growth
Sideboard
4 Deathmark4 Great Sable Stag
1 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Master of the Wild Hunt
1 Pithing Needle
2 Terminate
Jund is a deck that can not only attack on multiple angles, but defend on all of those angles as well. This is a product of highly flexible cards - cards like Maelstrom Pulse, Garruk, and Bloodbraid Elf. Flexible cards allow the pilot to utilize them offensively and defensively in a variety of manners. This is one of the greatest strengths of Jund. This is, incidentally, also why Jund has remained as a pillar of the metagame. The deck is so incredibly resilient and powerful that it is difficult to attack profitably.
Deck designed to maximize Explosiveness:
Wilson Fisher's Belcher (T8 SCG-LA):
4 Chrome Mox
4 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Tinder Wall
4 Dark Ritual
4 Desperate Ritual
3 Manamorphose
4 Seething Song
4 Burning Wish
3 Empty The Warrens
4 Land Grant
4 Rite Of Flame
1 Bayou
1 Taiga
Sideboard
4 Ingot Chewer
4 Xantid Swarm
4 Duress
1 Empty The Warrens
1 Hull Breach
1 Tendrils Of Agony
This is the quintessential "explosive" deck. It sacrifices all manner of resiliency for speed, simply posing the question: Do you have the answer? Explosive decks seek to ask a difficult to answer question as early as possible, normally before you are ready to answer it.
With each card choice, it is necessary to realize that as a deck builder (and everyone that tweaks a decklist is a deck builder) you are making a trade-off. A gain in one area comes at the expense of another.
So, on to a more practical application - Mythic. Where does this deck lie? I believe that Mythic is designed to be consistently explosive. The core of the deck is its acceleration suite, which enables it to deploy powerful threats, like Walletslayer Angel, faster than the opponent is able to assemble answers to them.
Sovereigns of Lost Alara is the perfect extension of this strategy. Eldrazi Conscription is an incredibly potent threat that most decks are not ready for between turns 3 and 5. The deck's ability to consistently deploy this threat that early allows it to capitalize on this. Mythic Conscription is the natural evolution of the deck's primary game plan - to accelerate into a threat that you will not be able to answer this early.
I have, however, seen many Mythic decks running planeswalkers in their 60 maindeck cards. I believe that, for the most part, this is wrong because planeswalkers do not support the deck's primary goal of placing a threat on the table faster than the opponent is ready for them. It can be argued that planeswalkers themselves represent threats, but in many instances, the threat represented by a planeswalker can be blunted through other means.
Take Jace, the Mind Sculptor for example. This card threatens to generate a truly absurd amount of card advantage while potentially locking your opponent out of the game. But this threat is only effective if you are able to use the card advantage profitably. If all you do is play more creatures, you will still be vulnerable to oodles of mass removal like Day of Judgment. An opposing deck can recover the card advantage you generate by playing spells like Day of Judgment that recover the "lost" card advantage. In this instance then, you have invested a card that has not had the requisite effect. The threat has not proved effective.
Every planeswalker you play in Mythic represents a trade-off, making the deck less explosive. I think, for the most part, this is an incorrect direction to take the deck. Planeswalkers have their place (Gideon is insane in the mirror), but, for the most part, I believe that they should occur in zero to very limited numbers in the maindeck. I do not believe sacrificing explosiveness for Mythic is correct, as it is the deck's primary strength.
In any respect, this is likely what I will be playing at "Regionals:"
4x Celestial Colonnade
6x Forest
2x Island
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Plains
2x Sejiri Steppe
3x Stirring Wildwood
4x Verdant Catacomb
4x Baneslayer Angel
4x Dauntless Escort
4x Knight of the Reliquary
4x Lotus Cobra
4x Noble Hierarch4x Birds of Paradise
4x Sovereigns of Lost Alara
1x Thornling
2x Eldrazi Conscription
2x Finest Hour
2x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Sideboard
3x Bant Charm
3x Negate
2x Gideon Jura
3x Qasali Pridemage
2x Mind Control
2x Rhox War Monk/Admonition Angel
You will note that I just contradicted myself, you'll note that I am still running 2 copies of Jace, but in this case my justification is card power. The card I would run over the 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptors is Rhox War Monk. While the card isn't bad, I feel like there is just too big a power level gap between the two to justify the small cost in explosiveness. Most lists are running 5, sometimes even more planeswalkers, and this is occurs at the expense of highly explosive cards (like Finest Hour), or high quality threats, like Thornling
The reason the sacrifice to explosiveness in this case is minimal is because of Mythic's curve. The deck is designed to go 1-3-5 or 1-3-4-6. Rhox War Monk was effectively serving as the 9th and 10th 3-drops, which helped to increase the consistency of the early part of the curve, but is not absolutely crucial to the game plan. The strong 3-drops (Knight and Escort) are the core element of the 3-drops of the deck. The deck does not need War Monk to hit on curve frequently, so the sacrifice there is minimal.
The gain in resiliency, however, is significant. Jace provides much needed card advantage in a deck that is frequently expending its resources accelerating threats into play, then losing these cards as collateral damage to sweepers. Jace allows the deck to slow roll its threats or recover lost card advantage, a very real benefit.
See you at Regionals.
No comments:
Post a Comment