I haven’t had a lot of time to play around in the forums the past couple of months. Here are some responses to some of the posts from Cutting off the End Game:
Pezza
I really like Train of Thought. We actually played all four in Steve’s deck at PT: Charleston (where it was actually kind of not that great). As you said, Train of Thought is kind of uncounterable. I don’t think it’s right in the U/W deck though, because unless you are cycling it on the second turn (which is still a fine move, by the by), it’s usually worse than Aeon Chronicler.
Chats
???
DanP
I have been thinking about this quite a bit. Any time Paskins talks about stuff – Red deck or no, but especially Red Decks – I try to pay attention because I think he is one of the most talented people in the world at thinking about Magic, and also knowledgeable; therefore I feel like if Dan poses a problem then finding the solution could be useful to me (or whoever). In case you haven’t read Dan’s forum post, I’ll summarize… He called into question the so-called Invasion Block Rule that states that when two Red Decks fight (that is, decks with burn end games) the more aggressive deck is favored. It’s intuitive because the faster deck "starts with more life," whereas the slower deck has to use its burn to kill creatures rather than building up a big burn hand for the end game. Dan’s counter-example was Price / Pacifico from U.S. Nationals 1998, where Dave’s archetype Deadguy Red put Andrew’s Red Deck away with ease and great speed. Surely, then, this cannot be a general rule. Notice how awesome the structure of Dan’s argument is, by the way: he uses a counter-example from Who’s the Beatdown.
Andrew Pacifico
4 Ball Lightning
1 Goblin Vandal
4 Jackal Pup
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Mogg Flunkies
3 Suq’ata Lancer
2 Viashino Sandstalker
4 Fireblast
4 Incinerate
4 Shock
2 Sonic Burst
Sideboard
3 Mogg Maniac
3 Nevinyrral’s Disk
3 Price of Progress
3 Pyroblast
3 Spellshock
David Price
4 Ball Lightning
4 Fireslinger
4 Ironclaw Orcs
4 Jackal Pup
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Fireblast
2 Hammer of Bogardan
4 Incinerate
4 Shock
1 Sonic Burst
Sideboard
4 Bottle Gnomes
3 Dwarven Miners
1 Dwarven Thaumaturgist
1 Firestorm
4 Pyroblast
1 Torture Chamber
1 Shattering Pulse
This was pretty troubling to me. Up against Paskins in a theory fight… Who could be scarier? Cuneo? Nah. Andrew and I are on the same page. Never happen. I wracked my brain trying to figure out how… to… Wait a minute. Dave won quickly! I wish they had the old footage up in the tournament center. I checked. They don’t. It’s been almost 10 years now but I remember that fight. Dave took control with his burn and Cursed Scrolls, but if I recall correctly, he won nice and quick with Fireblast alongside his Cursed Scroll. Also, I don’t know if it is a violation of the general rule because for their burn end games to be similar, Pacifico would have had to draw his Standard 1998 equivalent of Ghitu Fire after opening up ahead, but I think Dave had Cursed Scroll and relevant Fireblast advantage on virtue of his draws. One big problem for Pacifico was that, even if he was close to winning a game or two, he kept topdecking randoms instead of being able to burn Dave out once the King of Beatdown had Cursed Scroll online.
ACuneo
Andrew, I totally understand your reservations. I haven’t had time between Monday and now, but rest assured I will conscript one of my capable-enough minions to playing Dralnu old and new versus the Snow to illustrate… some time before Regionals I’d figure (when is that, by the way?). The Snow-side advantage is not just on threat exhaustion (though I think that your proposed plan of defensive Repeal is not a great bet against a deck of 30+ mana)… That aspect just makes it difficult for Dralnu to actually win. Snow also actually wins. It harasses with Ohran Vipers, Adarkar Valkyrie, what have you, drawing tons of extra snow. Andrew, you were the one who taught me that if you play a relevant spell every turn, the counter decks eventually run out; Snow actually gets to draw extra and hits a lot of mana drops.
Following is something that I’ve been thinking about for about seven years. I eventually want to write an article modelling the different perspectives on what makes "The Best Deck," which is really interesting in how diverse it is when you poll Buehler versus Zvi versus Adrian and others. However, I think each of several positions says something about process. I am big on process in Magic and any logical endeavor. Zvi has taught me a lot about Magic and gaming in general; one of the most recent things he’s taught me is that there is a big difference between his definition of "right" and a dilettante’s definition. For example, say you win a game, or win a tournament with a particular [rogue] deck. More likely than not you were "right." If you didn’t win the game, or you didn’t win the tournament (or make Top 8, punted in the finals, what have you), does that mean your positioning was "wrong"? Was it wrong when John Shuler played a B/G anti-Rebel deck at PT: New York 1999 and played versus zero Rebel decks? I’ve actually taken this to heart, which is why I positioned so many different odd-looking linears. It doesn’t actually matter if you win or not. I mean, it matters (we play to win) but it has no one-to-one bearing as to whether you were right, though there is a correlation. Being on the right side of a bet is being on the side that has the most value, even if that value doesn’t necessarily mean you are favored.
Think about it like this… If there is a deck that has a positive expectation for Top 8, you pick it obviously. If you don’t, you are just handicapping yourself. As far as I can recall there hasn’t been a deck in probably about 18 months that has had a positive expectation of Top 8 in any format (I’d say the last time was States 2005). Even then, you no longer had that expectation one week later at the LA LCQ. So you have to pick a deck with non-positive expectation for Top 8. Remember you can be ahead of the field on percentage and still not make Top 8 "most of the time." So you can pick one of two different decks that approaches a blended limit of between 4-3 and 5-2 in your predicted metagame (in real numbers). After that, it’s another shootout altogether with totally different expectations on account of being a different metagame (in all likelihood). Which one do you pick? There is a lot of skill in answering that question. To make Top 8 you have to play well and be on the 5-2 side of the 4-3, then you have to get a little lucky.
I know that we might look different on implementation to a dilettante, but and I are on the same page with regards to design and positioning principles. I know this because I use the principles Zvi taught me, which are much better than the pseudo-math or pet deck principles that most other alleged top designers use. They are the exact same principles that Jon follows. I know this because working with Jon on our book, I asked him if he agreed with a particular statement and he looked at me like I was some kind of moron for asking the question (Jon can’t actually see the wrong answer most of the time, and becomes either confused or downright irate when confronted with the sub-optimal, which I think offends him), so he said "Obviously." It was about the same kind of rolling eyes look that I got when I drafted Mortify over Shrieking Grotesque and confirmed the pick with him while we made decks.
Anyway, here are some principles that I admire in other deck designers. I’m good at some things that aren’t on the list and some things that are but… Never mind, just read the list.
Top 8 Traits of Great Deck Designers
8. Identifies the most broken card for a format
This is the most basic thing that a player has to be able to do before he can be considered an elite deck designer. In some formats there are multiple broken cards. It’s a mark of great ability to identify which broken card is the broken card of choice, the card that trumps other broken cards. For example, at Pro Tour: New York 1999, where Chapin claims to have built the best deck (but I think is the tournament that put the title in Zvi’s hands for the first time), I had quite a spicy B/R Yawgmoth’s Will deck. I won five game 1s and only two matches; the only other person who played my deck, then-reigning European Champion Sturla Bingen, finished Top 32, losing a lot of close matches to bad luck. I though my deck was one of the best ones of the tournament, but Randy Buehler and Brian Schneider, two people with respectable opinions, especially the less famous one, said that I picked the wrong broken card. Reasonable arguments could have been made for either Tinker or Fluctuator.
ID19 – Zvi Mowshowitz
4 Yawgmoth’s Bargain
4 Vampiric Tutor
4 Dark Ritual
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
3 Show and Tell
3 Turnabout
1 Rescind
4 Delusions of Mediocrity
4 Mox Diamond
4 Grim Monolith
4 Voltaic Key
1 Blaze
4 City of Brass
4 Underground River
4 Rootwater Depth
4 Crystal Vein
4 City of Traitors
Sideboard
3 Defense Grid
1 Boil
1 Light of Day
1 Chill
2 Dread of Night
2 Disenchant
1 Adarkar Waste
1 Lobotomy
1 Energy Field
1 Perish
1 Masticore
I think this is the deck that most exemplifies this principle of top flight deck design. Zvi saw Yawgmoth’s Bargain in the Urza’s Destiny spoiler, declared it utterly broken when other people were clamoring about a twice-as-expensive Necropotence, and then declared that he was going to break the card so badly it would have to be banned, or in the alternative make Top 8 of U.S. Nationals. Check, check, check, however many checks there were, Zvi pencilled them in.
7. Breaks the most broken cards in the format in the most broken possible way
This is a distinction that Randy Buehler overlaid over the previous, as an attempt to define "the best deck" for a format. Randy is old school: The best decks play the best cards, The Best Deck plays the best card, when the best card can be played in more than one deck, the most broken application of the said card is by definition the best deck. The specific example, and the one I am going to use here, is Trix versus the Skull Catapult versus Free Spell. The best card in the format was clearly Necropotence. All three decks played Demonic Consultation. Free Spell had just won punted the Pro Tour, beating Skull Catapult on the way. Skull Catapult… Good deck. The difference between Trix and Skull Catapult was that while both were broken combo decks, Trix could defend its combo whereas all the poor Skull Catapult could do was demolish people too stupid to be playing Necropotence (Tony Dobson taught me that while on his Skull Catapult roll). Tony also said that Trix was the best on account of playing all the best cards in the format, not just Necropotence but Duress, Dark Ritual, Demonic Consultation, Mana Vault, and Force of Will, so there was an intersection of multiple definitions.
Trix – Rob Dougherty and Darwin Kastle, credited to Michelle Bush
4 Dark Ritual
4 Mana Vault
3 Vampiric Tutor
4 Demonic Consultation
4 Duress
4 Necropotence
4 Force of Will
4 Donate
4 Illusions of Grandeur
2 Hoodwink
4 Underground Sea
4 Underground River
4 Gemstone Mine
1 City of Brass
3 Island
7 Swamp
Sideboard
4 Contagion
4 Phyrexian Negator
2 Mana Short
2 Hoodwink
3 Hydroblast
There were many Trix decks to come after, but at essentially the debut tournament combining Necropotence with the known Illusions of Grandeur plus Donate combination (I even played against a non-Necro version at the preceding Pro Tour), both Rob and Darwin made Top 16 if not Top 8. All of their first turns went like this:
"Swamp, Dark Ritual, Necropotence."
"Force of Will you."
"Force of Will back."
"What!?! What deck is this?"
"40-0 again."
6. Finds short-term solutions to common problems
11 Island
8 Plains
4 Adarkar Wastes
2 Marble Diamond
1 Sky Diamond
3 Brainstorm
4 Replenish
4 Attunement
4 Parallax Wave
4 Parallax Tide
4 Opalescence
3 Seal of Cleansing
1 Energy Field
4 Enlightened Tutor
3 Counterspell
Sideboard
4 Wrath of God
3 Erase
1 Seal of Cleansing
1 Circle of Protection: Black
1 Circle of Protection: Red
1 Meekstone
2 Ring of Gix
1 Marble Diamond
1 Cursed Totem
For one-shot tournaments like a Pro Tour there is either you’ve got it or you don’t, but matchups between the best decks are often in flux in established metagames. For example at Regionals 2000 the best deck on value was clearly Napster and the other best deck was Replenish; the great players did well with Replenish, but at mass, it can’t possibly have a positive expectation of Top 8, which didn’t handicap Napster on account of being rogue, underrepresented, and by definition the best value (more on why this is true mathematically another time). At Regionals, Replenish had a slight edge over Napster, but it was a near coin flip. Once Napster innovated Stromgald Cabal, it had a clear 3-1 edge over Replenish. Few Replenish players really understood how to cope.
Coming into U.S. Nationals 2000, Zvi understood these variables and put Replenish on #1, Trinity on a close #2, and didn’t consider Napster a viable option (for him). He saw two big moves in the metagame, the over-popularity of Trinity and the shift in the metagame towards Red to compensate (ha ha Dead Elf era), and made the short-term shift of adding 1 Energy Field to the main. Trinity previously had the edge over Replenish but versus 1 Energy Field, Replenish won nearly 90% of the time if the opponent did not have Creeping Mold or Elvish Lyrist main (he wouldn’t). In deference to Jon, Zvi added Ring of Gix to the sideboard.
By the way, when I say "Zvi" in this section, I mean Zvi, Northeast Regional Champion Sayan Bhattacharyya, and "Evil" Don Lim working in concert on the other side of Neutral Ground from our heroes Finkel, Flores, and OMS. Sayan finished 10th on bad luck at Nationals.
After Nationals, the Replenish gang moved Ring of Gix to the main. Notice how ingenious these solutions are. Energy Field makes life difficult for the Red Deck, essentially Time Walks repeatedly unless they are a Ponza variant. It allows Replenish to force an impossible-to-lose long game against Trinity almost all the time. Replenish won’t present and Trinity can’t close. All of a sudden it will be too late. Ring of Gix is the best of all the measures, because it counters Stromgald Cabal and is a three. All of Napster’s threats are threes, and its only real answer to Ring of Gix is Powder Keg. What a mess.
Now most solutions of this sort don’t last. Think of Fortune Thief at Champs 2006. They don’t have to last. The goal isn’t to create a legacy for your infantile pet deck. The goal is to have the most value you can for one tournament and create your legacy by showing the world how clever you are.
5. Defies Expectation
This principle is slippery like a freshly-caught halibut that you are about to slice open and get romantic on… if you are a character in a Garth Ennis comic book, that is. It’s hard to pin down, but not that hard to point at, even if it’s flopping about.
One way to discuss this principle is how it intersects with numbers seven and eight, above. Look at this innovative wonder build by Andrew Cuneo:
4 Counterspell
4 Dissipate
4 Dismiss
2 Power Sink
2 Argivan Restoration
3 Capsize
4 Whispers of the Muse
4 Steel Golem
2 Dancing Scimitar
2 Disrupting Scepter
4 Nevinyrral’s Disk
3 Mind Stone
4 Quicksand
1 Winding Canyons
3 Syvenulite Temple
14 Island
Sideboard
1 Amber Prison
1 Essence Bottle
2 Jester’s Cap
3 Dream Tides
4 Hydroblast
2 Knight of the Mists
1 Rainbow Efreet
1 Steal Artifact
Believe it or not, this deck, which features numerous in-print cards that you would never consider playing, was one of the most innovative and important decks in the history of Constructed Magic. Andrew identified multiple elements, good cards that had drawbacks. Have you ever fought two Steel Golems? Perhaps you have not sat across from the right number of Winding Canyons or Argivan Restorations. Argivan Restoration was great with Nevinyrral’s Disk, too, but it was the Capsize combo that really offended the people who read Disk the way most people used to read Boom / Bust.
4. Gets the mana right
I have no greater respect for a designer than getting the mana right. We can actually cheat now because of all the Ravnica options, but back in the day, with the horrible pre-Onslaught sacrifice duals, Gemstone Mines, Cities, and all of them… That was hard. Part of the reason we all played so many one- and two-color decks is that we weren’t smart enough to get the damn mana right.
Cathy Nicoloff – Five-Color Green
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Granger Guildmage
4 River Boa
4 Whirling Dervish
1 Karoo Meerkat
2 Jolrael’s Centaur
3 Maro
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Armor of Thorns
4 Incinerate
4 Arcane Denial
2 Disenchant
1 Armageddon
2 Terror
3 Winter Orb
4 Undiscovered Paradise
3 City of Brass
9 Forest
Sideboard
4 Hydroblast
4 Pyroblast
2 Gloom
2 Terror
1 Disenchant
2 Simoon
Cathy Nicoloff won a Regional Championship with a deck developed by Matt Place and numerous strong brains. Look at this mana. Crazy, right? Five colors, one kind of basic… Sixteen lands, three Cities… edt had a lot to say about the strategy. Part of it was that she couldn’t over-commit versus control… She didn’t have enough land. She had enough mana with Ranger tricks and Birds of Paradise to do what she had to do, especially with a Winter Orb plan, could force the opponent to lay out all his mana… pop the ‘geddon. Five-Color Green really was a surprisingly difficult deck to beat for both control and most creature decks.
3. Wins the mirror match
CMU Blue – Erik Lauer
4 Force Spike
4 Counterspell
3 Mana Leak
1 Memory Lapse
3 Forbid
2 Dissipate
4 Dismiss
4 Impulse
4 Whispers of the Muse
1 Rainbow Efreet
4 Nevinyrral’s Disk
4 Quicksand
4 Stalking Stones
18 Islands
Sideboard
4 Wasteland
4 Hydroblast
4 Sea Sprite
2 Capsize
1 Steal Artifact
Buehler Blue – Randy Buehler
4 Faerie Conclave
16 Island
4 Stalking Stones
4 Wasteland
3 Masticore
4 Counterspell
4 Dismiss
4 Forbid
4 Mana Leak
1 Miscalculation
4 Powder Keg
4 Treachery
4 Whispers of the Muse
Sideboard
4 Annul
1 Capsize
3 Chill
3 Legacy’s Allure
1 Masticore
2 Maze of Shadows
1 Stroke of Genius
These two decks by the famous team-mates, consecutive Blue monsters of the 1998 and 1999 World Championships better exhibit a focus on winning the mirror match than any other decks maybe in the history of Magic. Erik’s deck had 26 lands main and could add four. He never missed a land drop in the mirror, never presented for permission, slowly and methodically commanded the tempo of the game. He won on lands, could stop his opponent from the same with sideboarded Wastelands. Randy changed the paradigm of Blue and how it was perceived at the time. In 1999, most players tried to get card advantage from Thieving Magpie; it was quite a leap to remove that card… Randy’s card advantage started on Dismiss. Once again Team CMU operated with a million mana. The mere shift in not tapping on his own turn for card advantage gave Randy the edge in the mirror. Dismiss your Magpie? Wow. What a beatdown.
2. Strips to the Germ
19 Mountain
2 Forgotten Cave
4 Stalking Stones
4 Dwarven Blastminer
4 Arc Slogger
1 Rorix, Bladewing
4 Electrostatic Bolt
4 Pyroclasm
4 Shatter
4 Stone Rain
4 Molten Rain
4 Lay Waste
2 Demolish
Sideboard
4 Culling Scales
4 Flashfires
2 Oblivion Stone
3 Pulse Of The Forge
2 Demolish
This deck is absurd. It’s so beautiful. There is so much skill worked into this deck it is almost impossible to describe. I considered playing it at Regionals 2004 (Ravitz mized the list from Gab) but I was too chickenspit to get into LD versus Skullclamp. To give you an idea of how stripped down this deck is, the default would have been to play about 26 lands and 4 Starstorms. Gab cut all the Starstorms! He picked the right tool for the right job within the framework of his archetype. You can see the core. You see "Ponza." The details, the rough numbers around the edges, the Maximum Number of Electrostatic Bolts main, are the gutsy moves that makes this different from what any lesser mage would have built.
1. Kills his darlings
4 Skirk Prospector
4 Goblin Sledder
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Sharpshooter
4 Siege Gang Commander
4 Shrapnel Blast
4 Skullclamp
3 Clickslither
1 Sparksmith
4 Chrome Mox
4 Great Furnace
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
12 Mountain
Sideboard
4 Shatter
3 Sparksmith
2 Electrostatic Bolt
2 Furnace Dragon
4 Molten Rain
I wish I had the stones to do what Dan Paskins did with this deck. For PT: Charleston, one of the big limitations we put on ourselves was to play with four Savage Twisters – best "Wrath" of the format – when the team that finished first was brave enough to cut Loxodon Hierarch, consensus best card of the format! Defining the best decks is sometimes, sometimes, about cutting the card that you would never, ever, consider cutting, a card you consider part of the germ of a deck. Dan cut Gempalm Incinerator, a staple second only to Goblin Warchief that held the floppy funny book that was Goblins together, in lieu of Shrapnel Blast, and put in just enough artifacts to be able to Time Walk with it. Gempalm Incinerator was so fundamental non-Goblins decks played it… and won Pro Tours. Here’s another:
Fujita – Anan Go
3 City of Brass
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Forest
12 Mountain
4 Goblin Sledder
4 Sparksmith
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Sharpshooter
3 Goblin Goon
3 Clickslither
4 Siege-Gang Commander
3 Skirk Prospector
4 Electrostatic Bolt
4 Oxidize
Sideboard
4 Skullclamp
4 Starstorm
4 Naturalize
3 Viridian Shaman
All these three Red Decks were from about the same time, all the looks so different. Look at what Tsuyoshi cut. How do you fit Oxidize in your Goblins? You slice away… Goblin Piledriver?!? Who sides in Skullclamp and removal? Let’s face it… You can’t beat Kenji Tsumura in a major tournament final with any ordinary plan.
I look up old decks and copy them and model my work after the really good ones, the way Seurat watched dancers and Sundays in the park, trying to capture what he saw with little dots. These are the deck designers I admire, and the decks that showcase just why it is their decks get copied by me – and everyone else – as soon as they get posted to the Internet.
LOVE
MIKE