Chad Ellis
9/5/2002
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I was recently having dinner with some of the members of my team here in Munich. I'm a VP of Marketing and one of my direct reports was talking about a former boss of his who was borderline insane. At one point, this boss came into a meeting where the people from his company and its ad agency were working on the campaign for a new mobile phone. The boss insisted that the positioning statement should be, "The premium phone with benefits for everyone."

Now, even if you don't know what a positioning statement is, that one might seem a bit odd. Benefits for everyone? What does that mean? In fact, it means nothing. Imagine, for a moment, a product that offers benefits to everyone. OK, air and water, but we're talking something you can sell. It has to appeal to the status-driven yuppie in his BMW and the college dropout who is trying to decide whether Greenpeace is radical enough or if she should just join Earth First! It has to offer something to your grandmother, your three-year-old baby brother, a prison inmate (those are different people, I'm not trying to say your brother is in jail…yet) a high school cheerleader and a Tibetan monk.

Keep working at it…and if you come up with one, I've got a few more people for you to consider.

The point of all this is simple. If you ask people in any field (business, politics, deckbuilding) what their strategy is, they will answer in terms of the things they are doing. Just as important, however, is to recognize and commit to the things you will not do. In fact, what you don't do may be even more important, since it is here that people most often destroy their strategy.

We'll look at a few examples, starting with business, moving on to politics and then, as though this was a Magic website, we'll talk about Magic.

In the early seventies, Federal Express was just another delivery company, struggling in a tough business. How did they succeed? By concentrating exclusively (at first) on overnight delivery. "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight" is one of the most famous taglines of the century, and Fred Smith turned his company into a powerhouse, primarily by committing NOT to spend resources on things outside FedEx's focus. Meanwhile, Emery Air Freight, then the market leader, offered one-day, two-day, weeklong, you name it. "Whatever you want to ship, Emery can handle it." No focus, nothing they wouldn't do…and by implication, no strategy.

Another example is Southwest Airlines. When most airlines were struggling, Southwest grew rapidly and profitably through a unique strategic approach. They only used a single airline model, which reduced maintenance costs and also happened to be inexpensive. They only used second-tier airports. They set prices at extremely low levels. They offered no frills. They didn't use paper tickets.

In short, Southwest didn't do a ton of things. Not doing them enabled them to cut costs, increase demand, have their planes spend less time on the ground and more time flying paying customers and, in aggregate, to make a lot of money.

Now politics. Suppose you were advising George W. Bush before the last election. You notice that he isn't spending any real effort on Texas, and your polling experts say that turnout in Texas is likely to be quite low, partially as a result. You recommend that Bush spend some money advertising in his home state, pointing out that he can pick up a ton of votes for relatively little effort. And, if Bush or anyone on his team understands strategy, you are probably fired on the spot.

Presidential candidates need to focus on winning swing voters in swing states. They also need to keep the faithful motivated, but there is nothing quite so pointless as a "victory" that wins a bunch of votes in a state like Texas or Massachusetts where the outcome isn't going to change. Similarly, it will do Bush no good to try to win votes among the strongly pro-choice by softening his position; the likelihood of a Choice voter going for Bush over Gore just isn't high enough.

In short, in any given exercise you have a finite amount of resources to work with. Sometimes you can grow those resources (such as taking steps to turn voters into campaign volunteers or holding a fundraiser in your stronghold), but at some point any resources you spend in one area are resources you aren't spending somewhere else. Resources can be money, your own mental attention, time customers spend looking at your ads, shelf space in a store…or mana, cards and life points.

On to Magic.

What does a Sligh deck do? It beats down. It uses burn to remove blockers and ultimately to finish an opponent off. It may do other things, like using Cursed Scroll and/or Hammer of Bogardan to strengthen its late game, but the general focus is the same.

What does this mean in terms of what a Sligh deck doesn't do? For one thing, it doesn't run utility spells that don't deal damage. When was the last time you saw Shattering Pulse or Pillage in a (good) Sligh maindeck? A Sligh deck also doesn't run anything expensive. Its curve typically maxes out at three, and it will almost always prefer a cheap creature with a drawback to a more expensive one, assuming equal attacking power.

This might seem trivial, but the difference between amateur decks and professional decks often comes down to a lack of focus, which in turn means that the amateur is trying to do something the pro isn't. When I look at my old decks I almost inevitably notice that they can do anything. There's almost always an answer to any form of permanent, a variety of damage sources, etc., etc. And while I sometimes won games (or at least didn't lose them right away) because of my flexibility, I'm sure I lost many more because by doing everything I didn't do anything as well as I could have.

Look at Zvi's recent articles on Psychatog. In particular, look at how high a bar Zvi sets for each card slot. Sure, you'd like to be able to Wish for Gainsay, Hibernation, Envelop, Mana Short, Slay, Alter Reality, and any other instant you might cast, but in order to get the maximum out of the sideboard, Zvi knows he has to be brutal about not doing things. Nothing too narrow, nothing the maindeck already does too well, nothing he doesn't find himself wishing for in practice games. No Spelljack, no Hibernation, no Execute.

Most players aren't that harsh. Most players would cut something, say a copy of Duress, or that "extra" Deep Analysis, in order to fit in a card that did something the deck couldn't otherwise do.

Most players would be wrong.

The same logic applies to Limited. Look at the cards that go into Scott Johns's Angry Green Men. Bears and growth spells are the core, enabling him to seize the initiative and keep it. Do you suppose he would run Spirit Link? Of course not, but what about Hobble? In U/W, Hobble was a potential first pick; in AGM, it means spending three mana to tell a creature that needs to block anyway that it's now allowed to attack. It's still fine against decks with Black creatures, but it's not nearly as good as its reputation in most matchups.

The same thing goes the other way, too. All too often I'll see a good beatdown spell in a deck where it clearly doesn't belong. Running Lava Axe in a slow deck makes as much sense as running Heroes Reunion in AGM. Usually it's not that extreme, but any card you spend serving a second or third-tier purpose is a card that isn't serving your primary purpose…and all too often, that card will be much less effective than a more strategically consistent alternative.

Why do the best constructed control decks run so few victory paths? It's not because they're showing off. It's because in order to be good at nullifying your opponent's aggression and taking control you have to be willing not to win quickly. Swapping out permission or card drawing for four Cloudskates and four Rishadan Airships might give you the possibility of a quick win, but most often it will just mean your deck lacks focus and, well, sucks. You either play a control deck or you go all the way and play Blue Skies. Remember Seth Burn's attitude towards Skies…it's all about winning with only a pair of Cloud Sprites in play and no cards in hand.

A deck like that knows what it isn't doing.

Hugs 'til next time,
- Chad