Successful new deck construction can be distilled down into two basic guidelines:

1. All competitive decks have the same basic goal in mind, which is to favorably end the game before the opponent does, and

2. You never want to be a bad something else.

Most poor evaluation of new decks by amateur critics tends to come from a misunderstanding of the first principle, and most “bad decks” in general tend to be a violation of the second.

I would posit that most deck evaluation (and in fact the bar to set for successful brewing) can be distilled into three-and-a-half questions.

1. What is the payoff of this deck?

2. How fast does it get there?

2a. What turn does it actually win?

3. How does this deck affect the speed or payoffs of other decks in the format?

About fourteen years ago, Zvi Mowshowitz introduced the concept of The Fundamental Turn, which is a useful way to look at Magic and deck selection at a macro. Again, every single competitive deck ever has the same goal: win faster than the opponent. This is true even for decks like Turbo Fog that take forever to win (they delay the opponent from winning for even longer). In 1999, Zvi used his knowledge to win a PTQ with a Survival of the Fittest deck in a combo-driven world where his deck was a turn (at least) slower than the rest of the room. The dominant deck of the era was High Tide, which had a Fundamental Turn of 4 but could potentially win on turn 3 (there was generally little reason to try to go off on turn 3 against Survival though).

Zvi theoretically added a turn to the High Tide Fundamental Turn with every Duress, perhaps more than a turn with every Pyroblast, and could buy multiple turns by successfully forcing through a Boil. These cards could work together—for example, Duress revealing a hand that could not stop Boil, or Pyroblast forcing through Boil—or Zvi could just take cover / redundancy away with a Duress, let the opponent start going off, and then murder him for two or more cards (translating into two or more turns) with a Pyroblast. Pyroblasting the Time Spiral after the opponent has already burned a High Tide and a Turnabout is basically a three-for-one.

Speaking in very broad terms, there are two fundamental forces in Magic that give rise to the models discussed in Who’s the Beatdown?

There are the forces that seek to minimize the number of turns it takes for your own deck to win (generally associated with beatdown and non-archetype combo), and the forces that are designed to increase the number of turns required for your opponent to win (generally associated with control and non-archetype midrange). Because Magic is contextually driven, the Who’s the Beatdown? model recognizes only beatdown and control macro roles. While combo usually wants to be fast, it is often a game winning strategy for resource-generating combo decks to play like very precise and greedy control decks, and while mid-range decks are generally just control decks without permission (they tax opponents with removal and blocking more than permission and reloading with card drawing), these are often forced into beatdown roles against combo or “real” control opponents.

It should not be surprising that almost all Magic theory and almost everything interesting about Constructed Magic falls into the camp of taxing your opponent. Selection of removal spells, the relevance of permission, and even blocking tactics all fall into this camp. Most theory around the first (minimizing the number of turns for your own deck to win) tend to be interesting either the first time around (oh look, a Naya Blitz / Humanimator!) or when we are stepping around The Prime Rule / The Prime Directive (that is, not being a bad something else).

Let us consider two similar Standard decks, Naya Blitz and Naya Humans.

• Naya Blitz is a super aggressive beatdown deck with almost all one or two casting cost threat creatures, topping up (sometimes) with Frontline Medic. Its non-The Red Zone interaction tends to fall into a limited number of Giant Growths or Searing Spears.
• Naya Humans is an aggressive deck straddling beatdown and midrange, though with Champion of the Parish and Mayor of Avabruck it shares many fast, Humans-centric, beatdown incentives of Naya Blitz. Naya Humans is a much more flexible deck than Naya Blitz, with a curve to [at least] five spanning a variety of effects from Silverblade Paladin’s double strike, Huntmaster of the Fells’s life gain and token production, Restoration Angel’s achievement unlocking trickery, and Zealous Conscripts’s ability to spin the battlefield on a dime.

Naya Humans is a profoundly more complex and interactive deck than Naya Blitz. The card Huntmaster of the Fells (let alone any planeswalker) is more nuanced and ultimately decision-intensive than any card in Naya Blitz. Zealous Conscripts can turn a game that is going the wrong way around like no card in Naya Blitz. Where Naya Blitz is like a falling broadsword, casting the card Restoration Angel is often an exercise in pure joy.

That said, Naya Humans is also substantially slower than Naya Blitz.

What is the payoff of this deck?

Both decks have similar payoffs—creature beatdown resulting in a relatively quickly concluded 20 damage.

How fast does it get there? What turn does it actually win?

Let’s say Naya Blitz can win on turn 3 (turn 1 Experiment One; turn 2 Burning Tree Emissary + Flinthoof Boar, in for three; turn 3 in for two + three + three with three Giant Growth), but it isn’t very likely. Naya Blitz unfettered is probably more along the lines of a turn 5 deck, with Naya Humans perhaps two turns slower than that. The turns of the payoff and the win are indistinguishable here.

How does this deck affect the speed or payoffs of other decks in the format?

Naya Blitz is poor at blocking (Boros Elite is 3/3 on offense but only 1/1 on defense). Not only does it have a minimum of ways of slowing down the opponent’s win, the fact that twelve of its twenty lands are shocklands can actually make the opponent go faster!

The distinguishing element that keeps Naya Humans from being merely a slow Naya Blitz is that not only does it do a better job of not accelerating the opponent, but it can tax the opponent’s victory turn a number of ways. Just look at how the card Huntmaster of the Fells interacts against Naya Blitz. It undoes an attack from a Burning Tree Emissary and blocks the next Emissary with value. It can force the opponent to discard an interactive spell or—holy of holies—might actually flip and murder a Boros Elite! What happens when you untap with Huntmaster of the Fells in play with a Restoration Angel in your hand? Each one of the many triggers that is about to result will put unwanted time on the opponent’s clock.

Once the decks are forced into topdeck mode (i.e., someone on the other side did some kind of interactions to delay death), it is easy to point at individual cards in Naya Humans and say that they have more impact than certain individual cards in Naya Blitz. But maybe that shouldn’t be surprising; they for the most part cost more than just one or two.

That said, much of the conditional power of Naya Humans over Naya Blitz is contextual.

Huntmaster of the Fells is a horrendous card against Turbo Fog. Two life never matters, and its offensive impact as a four-drop is dubious relative to what Naya Blitz can offer. Most cards in the “tax the opponent’s turns” fall into this category, meaning that the ability to predict what opponents are likely to play is probably the most important skill for a deck designer.

Let’s look at that ability in the context of these three instructive questions using the lens of a nicely decorated fellow StarCityGames.com feature writer.

Last weekend, beloved former #1 apprentice Josh Ravitz elected to follow in the footsteps of Tom Stiteler (since I featured FalkenRamp, which sadly went up a workday after our usual Flores Friday, Tom won FNM with his take on the evolving strategy BTW) and summon Molten Primordials in the Magic Online PTQ. Knowing how important the ability to predict what opponents are likely to play is, let’s evaluate Molten Primordials in the context of our three questions.

1. What is the payoff of this deck?

2. How fast does it get there?

3. How does this deck affect the speed or payoffs of other decks in the format?

The payoff of G/R Ramp is smashing with the big seven Molten Primordial. Sevens! Rah! Along the way it plays many high quality cards including the best creatures in Standard (Boros Reckoner, Thragtusk, and arguably Falkenrath Aristocrat). In sideboarded games, G/R Ramp gains the Blasphemous Act combo kill, allowing it to win outright out of nowhere.

The G/R Ramp deck can hit its sevens as early as turn 4 but is putting on high quality creature pressure from about turn 3-4. It is clearly much slower than a deck like Naya Blitz but wins outright when it wins; alternately, it can put the opponent into a dismal corner situation by combining Threaten effects and sacrifice effects. Its goldfish is in the respectable sub-ten turn range, but it is at least a turn slower than Naya Humans, mutually unfettered, in most cases.

The true value of G/R Ramp is its contextual position. The better the opponent’s top end, the better a Threaten-based deck gets. The opponent just cast Aurelia, the Warleader or Gisela, Blade of Goldnight? Great. They’re dead now.

While an Esper deck with lots of removal can severely tax Naya Blitz with point removal and Snapcaster Mages, G/R Ramp actually feeds on decks like that with its hard-to-interact with planeswalkers, removal-resistant Keyrunes, and haymaker topdecks. If you think a deck trying to win with ultimate planeswalkers is at an advantage against a deck with four Cavern of Souls and four Zealous Conscripts, you might want to reevaluate your Who’s the Beatdown? paradigm. This plays much more like Tinker v. Control than G/R Beatdown v. Control.

Now, with the payoff being Molten Primordial (a seven), Josh asked the natural question: is this the best seven we can play?

For purposes of this article, I will actually extend this as an intellectual exercise. How about:

• Is this an effect I would want to have? and
• If so, how much should it cost?

The first is not a trivial question. Many cards that don’t warrant play often see their effects excel at different cost. Gray Ogre / Scathe Zombies—the quintessential vanilla 2/2—has never seen play at three mana, but at one (Isamaru, Hound of Konda) the vanilla 2/2 [with a legendary drawback] proved a four-of Staple from Block to Extended.

• Elven Cache (4) – pretty good in Limited; Regrowth (2) – Restricted in Vintage
• Pyretic Ritual (2) – marginal redundancy; Black Lotus (0) – Restricted in Vintage; nigh-unconditional first pick in Cube
• Essence Drain (5) – unplayable; Lightning Helix (2) – cross-format four-of all-star

So for many effects it is not a question of being bad in the dark but how much a thing should cost to be not bad (or in fact very good).

Squire, on the other hand remains Constructed unplayable even at one (Woodland Druid); I am skeptical you would get universal adoption at zero (compare to Memnite). Squire—at the cost of a card—is just not something that most Constructed decks want barring a Steelshaper’s Gift and some sort of weird Aether Vial like attachment.

Again, the desirability question and the costing question are both instructive. Is Molten Primordial something you might want? Both 6/4 haste and Act of Treason are potentially effects we can work with—it’s really a question of whether you are in the market for sevens.

Josh—who was not only with me when I cashed with G/W Ramp but beat me on the first turn the next day on the way to his Legacy Open Top 4—asked the obvious next question: if we are in the market for sevens, is Molten Primordial the best seven we can do?

Honestly, no—Angel of Serenity is a much more powerful seven in the dark.

But if you go G/W, you have a whole different problem (as you never want to be a bad something else).

1. What is the payoff of this deck?

2. How fast does it get there?

3. How does this deck affect the speed or payoffs of other decks in the format?

The top end effect of G/W Ramp is Angel of Serenity on seven. In order to get there, we bend every measure of good sense up to and including playing Selesnya Keyrune. But that non-win payoff is maybe turn 5. The consensus Deck to Beat has THE EXACT SAME top end and even uses many of the same tools (Arbor Elf, Avacyn’s Pilgrim, Thragtusk / Restoration Angel achievement) but can get there as quickly as turn 3! If we want to evaluate purely on speed and power without considering the third question, G/W Ramp is a bad Reanimator, easily two turns slower than Reanimator (and much slower when factoring in Craterhoof Behemoth kills).

Now, “Reanimator > G/W Ramp” is not a strictly true position to take. G/W Ramp will at least mildly outperform Reanimator in games where the opponent is explicitly effing with you with Rest in Peace or Grafdigger’s Cage (see the final section). While G/W is invulnerable to graveyard hate (barring Angel loop tricks), there is really nothing stopping Reanimator from slow playing its haymakers. That is, after all, all G/W Ramp is trying to do. But even then, it is probably only a turn or two slower than G/W.

For G/W to be anything but a worse Reanimator, it has to offer something else. That something else tends to be in sideboarded games (it is a faster fatty deck than Reanimator when Reanimator is forced to play fair)—or against Control.

Reanimator is famously weak against dedicated control, whereas the planeswalkers and superior utilization of Cavern of Souls make both G/W and G/R Ramp decks heavy favorites against decks like Esper and Bant Control. Garruk, Primal Hunter is a faster Sphinx’s Revelation (just look at how elsewhere in the marketplace Prime Speaker Bant, which can make UU, is optimized) and, again, Cavern of Souls is driving alternately Angel loops or unstoppable Conscripts.

That said, I didn’t think Standard was right for G/W for Josh (even a very good matchup like straight beatdown is covered by Reanimator’s Lingering Souls, and he had played Reanimator in the previous PTQ), but G/R’s weaker seven actually has a lot of contextual value that G/W’s has little standing commanding. Like taking Reanimator’s seven and killing them to death that turn. The most compelling reason I like G/R Ramp over G/W Ramp is that even if G/W can bend to play Boros Reckoner, G/R can exploit Blasphemous Act in a blocking / defensive context (i.e., while adding turns) that is very difficult for beatdown decks to overcome.

But, again, predicting what the opponents might play is a powerful skill to have. If you predict opponents go Reanimator-hostile or Reanimator-hostile Control, G/W Ramp starts looking like a much better deck.

Infinite-Infinite, Where Do Deck Designers Get This Wrong (or Right)?

It is not actually all that difficult to identify card power or synergies. Half the time, Ali Aintrazi does it for us! But when brewers move to pair Heartless Summoning with Havengul Lich, they should be asking themselves about payoff and speed more than just synergy identification. What am I getting out of this? Is this more powerful than Reanimator [while being subject to the same hate cards]? Is it faster? What does it mean to be faster? Is there a difference between payoff and winning?

If you consider the evolution of Humanimator / Angel of Glory’s Rise Reanimator, you see an interesting progression.

Initially, we saw the Chronic Flooding deck, which was possibly faster and probably more powerful than regular Reanimator. If you read the show notes from that GP, Chronic Flooding Reanimator felt like the anti-Reanimator—bigger and trumpier than G/B/W.

G/B/W was big, Chronic Flooding was bigger.

Chronic Flooding could lock down with its Izzet Staticaster combo and had a weird sort of haste kill with Goldnight Commander and Zealous Conscripts. Big, but not infinite.

Cartel Aristocrat in Gatecrash gave us an infinite evolution in Reanimator:

The payoff here is actually infinite.

Let’s go back to the very first point in the article. Did the opponent kill you? No? Oh good, infinite.

But while the payoff here is infinite—infinite life, infinite power—the next clause gets you. You still have to attack the next turn (or some future turn). You can be gotten by the Fog deck.

The other interesting thing is the actual speed of the deck. Infinite is good, but setup is…um, I’m not sure. The deck has ten shocklands, tons of lands that might come into play tapped, and really needs to assemble some pretty specific cards in concert with one another in order to cash in on that infinity (third turn Huntmaster of the Fells is still pretty good mind you, but no one is losing just to that).

Once we get to this version of Human Reanimator, we close the one turn gap between 2 and 2a:

1. What is the payoff of this deck?

2. How fast does it get there?

3. How does this deck affect the speed or payoffs of other decks in the format?

Infinite mana, infinite milling, get you pretty much that turn (though you still have to draw). (At least it’s not my next turn!)

The problem with infinity is point #3:

How does this deck affect the speed or payoffs of other decks in the format?

Brian Braun-Duin Human Reanimator could actually make nigh-infinite power and gain nigh-infinite life and still get spanked by Gideon. Oh, you have 999,999,999 Wolves do you? Fascinating / tell me more.

I thought Lucky Charms (Boros Reckoner + Azorius Charm + Boros Charm combo) was the unconditional best thing you could do in Standard—I mean, if no one is tapping Nephalia Drownyard. That deck puts the number “eight” at a right angle on payoff, does so reasonably quickly, but might not actually finish the game for some time. More than enough time for Sphinx’s Revelation and Drownyard to go Black Cat / Broken Mirror / Under a Ladder on ya.

It’s really, really just about turns.

Sphinx’s Revelation (and point removal) undo your humble beatdown. Nephalia Drownyard kills you faster than you can race it.

The Problem with Control

As we said at the beginning, Magic is generally driven by two mighty forces. The force of minimizing your own turns required to win, and the force of making life annoying and slow for the other guy.

A Terror can buy you four turns in some games, countering the next eight points of beatdown, say—or when the opponent pours their hand into a super-fast 6/5 flyer, many more turns than that.

The problem of control, especially in a diverse and many-powered format like Standard, is the ability to predict the right answer cards across the many different matchups you will face. Boros Elite does not have the same problems as Supreme Verdict. Boros Elite might not always get its money—might not even always get in for three—but unless the opponent is doing something to stop it, it is going to have some value and start taking future turns away from the opponent.

But control cards?

How often has Victim of Night got no text?

Sphinx’s Revelation usually does something nice, but when the opponent doesn’t care about damaging you? Or has a Skullcrack? It might not be quite worth what you put into it; worse yet is when the opponent both doesn’t care about damaging you and is playing four Drownyards and some five coster Jaces. Yikes!

The more invested you get in the control side—that is, the more you bias your deck towards taxing turns rather than minimizing them—the better you have to be at predicting the future and the more that can go wrong when you successfully execute.

The bet, of course, when you are going in that direction is that you predicted the future so well that you are putting loads and loads of turns on the other guy, who is now miserable and cursing the format. This of course is why players with limited ability to evaluate decks tend to like rogue decks less—and also why when rogue decks win, they win in such spectacular fashion.

Naya Humans and straight G/B/W Reanimator have won way more Opens than most rogue decks, but I have problems remembering who won when. Village Bell-Ringers + Elvish Archdruid, though? Or the first time someone laid their deck on the table with an Angel of Glory’s Rise? Now you’ve got a story.

Taxing Reanimator

The greatest decks in the history of Magic tend to be blazingly fast (Flash Hulk), fast and relatively hard to disrupt (High Tide), or fast offensively while able to simultaneously tax the opponent a turn or two (Caw-Blade). Flash Hulk didn’t live long enough to be unseated; it took quite a bit of work from guys like Zvi or Brian Schneider to race High Tide, and even then they built disruptive—but still very fast—anti-decks. We could have a looooong conversation about Caw-Blade.

The generally accepted Deck to Beat of present Standard is Junk Reanimator, which is reasonably fast in terms of getting to an payoff, can get a huge return quickly (say turn 3 Thragtusk or Angel of Serenity) and does a great job of taxing the opponent while building advantages (Restoration Angel achievement unlocking or just progressive value blocking with Centaur Healers and so on while making a bigger and bigger game).

Some good players have just thrown up their hands and said, “Sure, I’ll Reanimate, too,” while others are trying to figure out how they can punish Reanimator players. I did a basic Gatherer search for Standard graveyard hosers, and this is what I have to say about those in the context of the model discussed in this article.

Slaughter Games

The most expensive card I considered, Slaughter Games’s biggest drawback is its cost. You must, Must, MUST hit it as quickly as possible or you are just going to get Reanimatored anyway.

This card cripples Angel of Glory’s Rise decks, effectively adding perhaps dozens of potential turns to your “I’m not dead yet” count, but it is much less effective against regular Reanimator unless you draw more than one. If all you are doing is cutting off Unburial Rites, you maybe add two or three turns to payoff (which is still significant), but maybe do nothing.

Outstanding against Humanimator on the play, relevant but not dramatically more relevant than some other options against G/B/W, especially on the draw.

Dissipate

You can play this card maindeck!

Great against Unburial Rites, where it will easily give you two turns.

Potentially disastrous against Cavern of Souls. If your opponent is playing for a hard cast Angel and your strategy is Dissipate, you’ve already lost. Remember, if the opponent chooses to play a seven-turn game instead of a four-turn game against your blue deck, they are still far faster.

Rest in Peace

Pros: Highly relevant against all versions of Reanimator and quite fast (you can almost always play it before you lose if you draw it).

How much time this buys has a lot to do with how much your opponent already has in their graveyard. I think it is dangerous to get too greedy with waiting on this card for more and more money, but if the opponent Mulches all of their Angels into the graveyard by turn 2 or something ,you will probably have just bought double digit turns when you play it.

Cons: Rest in Peace is essentially a sideboard card in Standard. That means that a careful player can reduce your net turns to something like one if they just play carefully. Don’t overcommit the graveyard, find your Acidic Slime / Ray of Revelation / whatever, and then go off. You are still buying time no matter what, but it is up to you to close out the game because this is not a permanent solution when the opponent is prepared.

Ground Seal

Pros: You can play it maindeck!

Especially maindeck, this card is extremely annoying for some versions of Reanimator. It can transform them into bad G/W Ramp decks, immediately buying you two or three turns.

Cons: It is not universally useful. It puts essentially no tax on a hard cast Angel of Glory’s Rise, for instance.

Reid Duke famously put two in the maindeck of his very successful Jund deck on the way to a MOCS 4-0. Give Reid Duke two or three free turns? Really? That’s what you want to do?!?

Deathrite Shaman

All over the place in Legacy and Modern obviously, I think this card may be underplayed in Standard, especially as a maindeck card.

A Deathrite Shaman on turn 1 is actually a catastrophe for most Reanimator variants maindeck. It does everything! Kills flashbacks, counterspells Unburial Rites, and prevents progressive stockpiling of future assets all while printing value.

Not only does this card hand you at least two turns (provided you untap with it once), but it forces the opponent to play fair where you might have a decided speed advantage (especially once you consider life point differential / racing factors).

Grafdigger’s Cage

This card is very similar to Rest in Peace [against Reanimator] but lacks its Tormod’s Crypt like emptying upside.

Against a prepared opponent (i.e., in a sideboarded game) you would be lucky to net more than two turns; against a lucky one? Perhaps one. The upside to this card is its speed and universality (and maybe the opponent left their removal in the sideboard). Elsewise, a little better than Duress level in terms of time bought.

Beckon Apparition and Cremate

I actually have these cards as gaining value because 1) no one ever plays around them and 2) Snapcaster Mage.

You will usually get a turn out of one, but a turn with substantial value in all likelihood—and you might do something really dramatic. Taking out the target on an Unburial Rites while the opponent spends the Unburial Rites and four+ mana is a big game even if we only call it “a turn.”

Drawing cards and synergy with Snapcaster Mage can drive you to your next turn-taxing card or even help put the opponent on a clock.

Tormod’s Crypt

I wanted to finish on this card—this zero—that very few people are talking about. I think it is the most underplayed of them all. It has much of the force of a Rest in Peace and can steal mana like a Cremate. Also, costs zero to play and can be played in any deck.

Like Rest in Peace, Tormod’s Crypt will sometimes make for a very big explosion. What is great about this card is that because it costs nothing, it doesn’t disrupt even a mana tight beatdown deck’s forward advancement.

I think you will get two turns out of this and never fewer than one extra turn. That is pretty dramatic for a zero.

What do you think the world would look like if everyone were jamming zero-cost Reanimator hate?

LOVE
MIKE