Eric Taylor
5/30/2002
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In my opinion, there are really only two types of Magic: the Gathering articles.
First there are the articles which entertain. Second, there are the articles which
provide some kind of shortcut to getting better at the game. I don't call this
category of writings those which inform, because in Magic unlike nearly every other
intellectual endeavor, the game changes at a lightning fast pace. The changes we see
in Magic in a week take months or years to happen in other games. So in Magic, if you
pick up Robert Hahn's Schools of Magic, it's not to get better at the game - just
about everything in that article has become outdated, superseded, or just plain proven
incorrect. Also, it is clear that one of the biggest single constraints to getting
better at Magic is where to find the time to put into the game, in order that you
don't fall behind.
What I want to outline right now is just such a shortcut. In particular I want to
describe a method of tuning a deck that involves a mostly theoretical approach to the
game. That is, instead of playing game after game of Magic, I want to describe a
method of tuning a deck by thinking about the various aspects of the game, rather
than playing it out.
A good example for this method would be to use my deck from
Grand Prix
Milwaukee. The starting point I had for this deck was the one that Tomi Walamies
used to win his national championship:
For Milwaukee I ended up playing this version of the deck:
A beginner of the game will notice all the ones and twos of a kinds in the deck and
immediately assume that this deck is as tuned as perfectly as it can be. After all,
it must have taken a lot of playing to figure out that you need exactly 1 Earthquake, 1
Wrath of God, 2 Urza's Rages, and 3 Absorbs, right? However, in reality the more
tuned a deck becomes the more likely you will have 4 of a kinds all across the board,
and the 1's, 2's and 3's of a kind become the exception rather than the rule.
The
reason for this is that when you have 2 or 3 of one kind of card and 2 or 3 of
another, one of those cards is usually "stronger" than the other. It is usually only
when you are unsure of which is the better card that you have these odd numbers of
cards. With more and more tuning of a deck, it becomes clear which should be 4 of a
kind and which should be zero of a kind. Of course there are many exceptions to this
rule, but in general with more 4's of a kind you get a better, more consistent deck.
Now it sure is fun when you have a bunch of one or two of a kind cards, as in a Zak
Dolan type 1 deck, but the problem is, unless you stack your deck, you're almost
certain to draw these one or two of a kind cards all at the wrong time in your game.
By the way, one example of an exception to the 4 of a kind rule are the two
Syncopates in the Trenches deck. This makes perfect sense, since they are merely the
weakest counterspell and you can't play 5 absorbs and 5 counterspells, so you just
play 2 of these weaker cards.
Now, looking at the Walami deck, the trick is to find out whether or not these 2's and
3's of a kind are one of the exceptions to the rule of playing 4 of a kind and, if they
are not exceptions, how to retune the deck to make it better.
My approach to this is to split the game of magic into slices, find out where one card
is better than the other, and then see if it is possible to determine which card will
give you the greatest percentage of wins. This, by the way, is something which people
do all the time, the only difference is that I am trying to go about it in a more
systematic manner.
As a first effort, let's make slices by splitting it along the metagame:
I'm not putting exact percentages on these various slices of the metagame because we
do not know the exact percentages. However, I still hope to get a reliable result
from this method by choosing a way of splitting up the game in such a way that
deciding which is the best card is relatively easy. Now the cards I want to
concentrate on are Wrath of God vs Earthquake. Against Psychatog, it seems that Wrath
is probably better, as it can kill the pesky Psychatog and Familiar which Earthquake
can't do. Against Trenches in the mirror match it seems that Earthquake is better as
it only costs you two to demolish the entire team. Against Red/Green, and U/G/R
Madness, it is not immediately clear which spell is better. Earthquake is quicker for
low costing creatures, while Wrath sweeps the entire board. Also, there is the factor
that you can kill someone with an Earthquake. If I now separate these slices of the
game into pro-quake, pro-wrath and undecided I get:
Unfortunately, slicing the game up this way hasn't done enough good. So let's try
another slice. Perhaps this one will be more promising. This time, I am going to
slice the game up by creatures, instead of by the metagame.
Let's just skip the
pie chart this time and go straight to "pro-quake", "pro-wrath," with a special case
here of 1 slice for "1 of each of Earthquake and Wrath" (against meddling mage as
it's better if they can't guess which one you have), with the size of the bubble
indicative of how many of each creature is expected in the metagame. Note the
reason that you would rather Wrath away a Call of the Herd token than Earthquake it
away is that while both cost the same, 4 mana, the 3 damage you take from an
Earthquake is liable to kill you as Call is normally played in an aggressive deck.
One caveat. I'm just grouping these items by being Pro-Wrath or Pro-Quake. However,
it is also important to note just
how much it helps you to run Wrath over Quake or
vice versa, especially if it seems like the decision will be close. However, if you
look at the above diagram it becomes clear that Wrath is the way to go. What was not
apparent from looking at a purely metagame analysis is that while the entire creature
set of the Psychatog decks are easier to kill with Wrath, for the Red/Green and
Red/Green/Blue madness decks, some of the men are easier to kill with Wrath and others
easier to kill with Earthquake, and this split pushes Wrath of God over the top as the
overall best.
Let's go on to the next tuning decision. This by the way has been the tuning decision
about which I have been asked the most questions. And this tuning decision was
whether or not to keep the two Urza's Rages, or to add one land and one Absorb to the
deck instead.
Again, let's try using a metagame analysis. Against Psychatog, it's unclear if Rage
is better. Sure you can kill the opponent with it, but you can't kill Psychatog.
However, if they bring in something like Caltrops or Engineered Plague from the
sideboard how do you kill them? Rage is an answer to that. Against Trenches, it is
clear that the extra land and Absorb will be better, since it's nearly impossible to
prevent your opponent from playing trenches as it is so cheap, and in the end it all
turns out as to who Fact or Fictions more, and who plays more land. Against Red/Green
you can use the Rage as creature elim, but it seems that the land and Absorb should be
better.
Now slicing it up by the metagame sure seems to point towards Absorb + Land being a
bit better, but again the problem of slicing up the game this way has produced unclear
results.
So let's try a different slice. This time, instead of slicing it up by creatures like
last time I want to slice it up by game situations, as Urza's Rage seems to be a very
situational card, since it becomes so much better when you kick it and your opponent
is at 10 life or less.
The problem with Rage is that it is a special spell. You need just the exact right
circumstances to come up for it to be useful (at least in a control deck for the
current metagame). Notice that you would rather Absorb a Call of the Herd token
instead of Raging it because Absorb gives you the three life which can be critical
later on, especially for a control deck. The thing about Rage is that you only have 2
of them in your entire deck and you not only have to draw 1, you have to draw both of
them to kill a Psychatog player, and you have to have 12 land. It's incredibly hard
to fulfill all these conditions.
The one really good reason for playing Urza's Rage
is that if you have it in your deck, if the Psychatog player plays a standstill with
nothing else in play, he can't just sit on it all game, just waiting and waiting and
waiting. Around turn 40, after you find both Rages, you can just double rage for the
win. This is really nice. However, it's extremely situational. What if he already
has a creature in play? It's unlikely that you'll find both rages before even a
Nightscape Familiar does 20. After sideboarding it surely is nice to have Urza's
Rage, but you get into a problem with the 50 minute rounds. Because you only have 2
Rages, it takes an extremely long time to kill anyone. You have go through most of
your deck to get a decent chance of finding both Rages, so it's really only a feasible
way to win if you already posted a win in game 1. Of course, it's not bad to have
another way to kill Braids, but again it is situational. It depends on you not being
able to counterspell it and not having a better way to kill it such as Fire/Ice.
Now, certainly once you take Urza's Rage out of the maindeck, you will want something
to be able to get around the goblin hosers. In Milwaukee I saw Engineered Plague,
Caltrops, Unnatural Selection, Plague Spitter, and in each case the Lightning Angel
seemed more than sufficient to get around them, and in each case, I was happier to see
Miss America than Urza's Rage.
Another problem with Urza's Rage which is not apparent with the particular slice used
here is that the Goblin Trenches works directly against Rage. Rage at 2R is terribly
inefficient (for a 3 color control deck). You only get 3 damage for 3 mana. Rage
only becomes really good when either you are playing a beatdown deck that wants to get
around "Counter target spell" for that last three damage or if you are a control deck
and are able to kick it quite often. But if you ever start making goblins, it's
terribly hard to get up to 12, because you are eating up all your land.
One thing about this technique I want to emphasize is that it's not enough to merely
list all the pros and cons of which spell to use. It's of particular importance to
determine
just how likely it is that each situation comes up for each pro and each
con. It's so easy to add Urza's Rage to the trenches deck and then say to yourself,
"Oh, now I have an answer to standstill, and oh now I have an answer to Engineered
Plague." That kind of thinking is what leads to the 100 card deck with one of each
possible spell you might want to use. It's always important to figure out how likely
the situation that you need the spell for is going to come up.
For instance, there are no disenchants maindeck in the trenches deck. It would be so
easy to add 1 disenchant, and now you have an answer for "fill in the blank." But
how good is that one disenchant going to be when your opponent casts Upheaval or
Mongrel and you have to just take it? It's not a simple process, figuring out that
60th card, but I hope the technique described above can be a nice shortcut to deck
building and tuning. Also, this is not something to replace playtesting - after all
if playtesting indicates one thing and theory indicates another, chances are that theory
is wrong.
By the way, I want to thank some people for my recent win in Milwaukee:
Props:
Chris Benafel: Thanks for suggesting that I play the trenches deck. I didn't have a
clear idea what to play and Chris clued me in on how strong this deck was.
John Wolbert: Thanks for the cards. John provided nearly my entire deck, as I didn't
have the cards for trenches when I came to Milwaulkee.
Mark Herberholtz: Thanks for the deck tuning suggestions. I felt that the deck could
be improved when I looked at the Walamies deck list and Mark was the one who initially
suggested to me to take out the Rages for land + Absorb, and bring the Wraths up to
two.
Joel Priest & Adrian Sullivan: Thanks for going out to the bars with me all Saturday
night. It put me in a good mood for Sunday.
Thanks to Pat Chapin for smashing the other half of the top 8 in Milwaukee. I
couldn't have been happier to see him in the finals.
Thanks to Liz Lempicki, Aaron Breider, Bill Fleming, Andrew Gravlin, Russell Taint,
Tom Willoughby, and all the rest of the Thursday night crew for playing magic at my
house and keeping me sharp.
I know there's a million more names I could list, but just let me say, thanks to
everyone. You know I couldn't have done it without your help.
-
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