No four-page-long Memphis player rant today. I am sure y’all are ensconced* in sadness.
I hate Block Constructed. Everything about it. Mulligans matter more, mana is either bad or slow, and you can’t do anything so enormously broken that you’re perfectly positive to have +EV on the field. I have never put so many hours into a format only to be just as confused as I was when I first started testing.
Yes, I would like some cheese. Control F Aten. There.
I’m going to introduce a new theory today. In truth I’ve just combined the thesis of “Who’s the Beatdown” (and Paskins’s excellent follow-up) with the sum total of Flores’s conclusions about “reach” in aggressive decks, but I’ve found the theory both extremely useful and extremely easy to implement once you “get it.” It covers much, much more ground than I’m going to be able to spell out here, but hopefully once I supply the skeleton it shouldn’t be difficult to infer more logical extensions from the specific example I’ll be using.
I’m calling it “initiative.” In truth, a title such as “opposition” would probably be more accurate, but “Opposition” is an enchantment and that just gets muddy real quick. The jist of it is this:
The era of the “true control” deck has mostly passed. Most control decks today base their strategy around staying alive long enough to cast a threat that outclasses any potential retaliation once they commit to it. That threat usually carries with it the potential to end the game in a few turns, and drastically reduces the window of time in which the non-control deck can use its potential for reach to steal the game away. Once this point in the game is reached, a subtle alteration in roles occurs.
Let’s take last year’s Wafo-Tapa Control versus Gruul matchup as an example. Wafo-Tapa spends much of the game using its countermagic, burn, and bounce to try and kill as many of Gruul’s guys as possible before it taps out for a giant dragon. Now, at the point in which Keiga hits the table, it’s as if the player who cast it pressed the chess clock or flipped an hourglass. Before “Dragon Time,” the Wafo-Tapa player’s back was against the wall. Now, all of the sudden, Gruul is faced with losing the game in a couple of turns and has to find a way to end the game quickly. There is no longer an undefined expanse of time to rip a pair of burn spells (or whatever), and all of the sudden there are a drastically lower number of “real cards” in the deck. Without a Dragon, a 1/1 Scab-Clan Mauler might still be the biggest threat on the table. Now, though, he’s not getting past Biggie.
Until that Dragon hit, the question was “Can the Wafo-Tapa player stabilize before Gruul kills him.” Once Keiga starts a-growlin’**, though, the question becomes, “How many Chars can you rip in four turns?”
On the surface, it doesn’t seem like you can derive much useful information from this. “Dragons are good for killing people quickly. That’s nice.” In truth, the “control versus aggro” matchup is pretty straightforward and more useful for illustration than anything else – though initiative can definitely apply there, as we’ll see in a minute. What I want to be clear is that the “control” player has a clear advantage to gain from making the window of time that “reach” can be effective as small as possible.
This doesn’t necessarily mean “killing the opponent very quickly,” though it certainly can. If you’ve got Keiga and a handful of countermagic, then once you cast the Dragon the opponent basically has one turn to do anything. Chances are the Dragon’s blocking their threat – if they even have one at all – and once you untap, the game’s yours. On the other hand, if you have nothing, then your opponent has four turns – and if you’re at three life and they have a 3/3, then you really haven’t “flipped the hourglass” at all. By contrast, if you drop Meloku, then your opponent still has one turn if their grip is loaded but only has two or three regardless. It doesn’t really even matter if your opponent has guys, because those guys can usually get blocked by Illusions.
The point here is not to say Meloku is better than Keiga because of this principle, because there are a whole lot of factors to consider. It does show, though – and I think people’s experience will agree with this – exactly how Meloku can turn games around completely in ways few other cards can.
For a more direct application of how exactly you can use this theory to win games, I want to hearken back to the moment I realized I wanted to write this article. I know most people hate when I talk about the story behind how I came up with such and such idea or such and such deck, but I think there’s actually utility to be had from this story. Bear with me.
There were a lot of great decks at GP: Columbus, but Paul Cheon Fish list was near the very top. Anticipating a ton of other Fish decks, Paul packed the normally-sideboarded Vedalken Shackles into his maindeck – and the completely-out-of-nowhere Shadowmage Infiltrator. Meanwhile, he eschewed some cheap do-nothing Cantrips and smaller creatures like Mother of Runes, which sandwiched him into the control role in the mirror.
Paul was on the play. On turn 2, his opponent cast Meddling Mage. On his turn 3, Paul cast a Shadowmage Infiltrator. His opponent Dazed, he Dazed back, and his man stuck.
It was here I immediately realized the brilliance of Infiltrator in the deck. Paul might as well have cast Keiga. His opponent didn’t seem to think it was a big deal, but I started watching another game because this one might as well have been over.
Why? The opponent needed to show a Plow there. Otherwise, the hourglass has been flipped. The ball was now in Paul’s court. Now, contextually, it’s important to realize that there are very few cards in the stock Fish list that can deal with a protected dude with three toughness. But Paul is enjoying such a luxury at this point in time, because:
If the cards in his hand indicate to him that he’s in a winning position, then he can start attacking, and his opponent is in a bad way. If, by contrast, he’s losing, he can still let his guy hang out and prevent his opponent from getting anywhere.
Either way, Paul is the one with options. His opponent is forced to kill the Shadowmage before he can make any progress. There’s no way he is winning the game without killing that Shadowmage, because either he’s getting buried under an avalanche of cards (and even +1 card in Legacy is huge) or maintaining the status quo against the deck with Shackles and more Finkels. Paul has gained initiative because he has presented an answer and a game-winning threat. He has become the aggressor while maintaining inevitability. This isn’t straight “tempo,” because there’s no real race going on and more importantly the “answer” progressively deprives the opponent of threats.
Shadowmage Infiltrator “deprives the opponent of threats” because, as more cards are drawn, Paul can find alternatively more ways of counterspelling Swords to Plowshares, one of his Vedalken Shackles that is the absolute trump in this case, or simply more of the same 2/2s that the opposing deck is casting that allow his Infiltrator to garner more and more advantage.
Keiga, meanwhile, does the same thing in a more roundabout way. Let’s say your opponent’s at fifteen from some Shock-lands and an Electrolyze, and you’re at four. On the turn you play Keiga, he’s got Char, two generic burn spells, and any creature as outs, because if he drops a man then you have to chill out and play defense. Once you get him to ten, though, then all of the sudden he absolutely has to draw at least one burn spell to have a chance. No creature matters because you will swing him to five, he swings you to two, and then dies. So after the first swing you’ve depreciated his valid answers substantially.
Therefore, if you’re wondering whether or not you’re winning the game, it’s usually pretty valid to ask yourself “whose outs are more limited right now?”
The most important difference between the two examples, of course, is that in the Keiga situation you’re generally about to die, whereas in the Infiltrator situation it’s the third turn of the game. In fact, in the Infiltrator situation, he and Keiga are basically the same card. What this means is that, regarding initiative, you want to gain it quickly and you want to gain it drastically.
You gain initiative quickly by identifying the limiting factors of a particular format. Obviously, it’d be nice if we could always cast turn 3 Dragons, but that’s not always the case. Paul “got there” by realizing that in a particular matchup, a 1/3 that single-handedly seized inevitability was good enough. Richard and I have done it twice: with Skyshroud Poacher, because he halts an entire deck’s offense while simultaneously threatening a kill two turns after he becomes active, and with Gifts Ungiven. The most powerful piles Gifts fetched in Tenacious Tron were the initiative-gaining piles: Recursion + Tron Piece + Masticore, which killed all an aggressive deck’s guys and killed them, or Recursion/Tron Piece/Mindslaver, which both enabled “big mana” and demanded an answer for every turn of the game. We’d go from requiring an answer to survive to demanding an answer from our opponent all in one end-step.
Other cards that have accomplished these same goals in include:
Exalted Angel in burn-light Block Constructed and its ensuing Standard season (she was both very quick and very severe)
Opposition, basically whenever it is legal
Arc-Slogger in Mirrodin Block
Masticore in Accelerated Blue
Mageta the Lion and Blinding Angel in MBC Mono-White
Annex in Sully’s State Champs deck a couple years ago, and eventually in other Tron decks for use in the mirror.
Riptide Pilferer and its ilk in control mirrors. In this case, you’re trying to attain initiative early by presenting a fragile, if game-winning threat. You demand an answer, banking on the fact that your opponent sideboarded most of them out.
Mishra in Mike’s Regionals deck. Man Oh Man.
Draining Whelk in Herberholz’s Pro Tour Yokohama deck.
Bear in mind that gaining initiative is a property of certain strategies as well as certain cards.
The more difficult it is to establish true control in any given format, the more important attaining initiative becomes. This is generally because the gulf in card quality between aggressive decks, aggressive decks prepared for the mirror, and “control” decks isn’t nearly as pronounced as, say, Morphling under a Stasis versus any other creature or combination of creatures from 1998. This is one of the many reasons why Korlash is so strong in Block right now. It’s not just because you can run him out on the fourth turn and be bigger than basically everything else on the table. No, his real strength lies when he comes down as an 8/8 after a Damnation. Not only have you gained significant card advantage against any aggressive deck, you’re now forcing them into chump-blocking mode, preventing them from shrugging off the Wrath or attaining another critical mass of creatures.
On the non-control end of the spectrum, initiative is also at the root of why it tends to be good to “go big” in aggressive mirrors. Assuming you’re the guy with the Hierarchs in the Zoo mirror when your opponent doesn’t have them, you’re the one with both the best answer and the biggest threat. The second the pachyderm comes crashing down, it’s a different game. Racing is no longer very realistic for your opponent, and at the same time it’s not that easy to defend against a team-regenerating 4/4.
Obviously, not every deck cares about initiative. Legacy Goblins, for example, would much rather take the straightforward approach to killing you, and most aggro or combo decks only care about gaining it in the mirror or in a very specific situation (Energy Field against Leyline comes to mind). Nevertheless, I think it’s a concept that, once you understand it, can mean the difference between a solid deck and an unstoppable one. It’s also exciting because it’s barely been explored. If you find a way to seize initiative in a given format when doing so isn’t even on most people’s minds – well, that’s a way to win a Pro Tour.
Oh, and Billy Moreno gets my vote for Resident Genius. Herberholz is amazing, but the fact is that Billy produces innovative, competitive decks for basically every tournament he ever plays in – and plenty that he doesn’t. He’s also writing again. But most importantly… can you imagine his beautiful, leering, scraggly mug on an Invitational card? It would make Avalanche Riders look like Sylvan Safekeeper.
Moreno ’07.
Zac
* This word makes very little sense here, but I like the way it sounds and I think you get what I mean. The downside of four years of poetry scholarship is that you wind up justifying every turn of phrase because it tickles your eardrums when you say it aloud.
** Ask me to make my “Keiga noise” sometime. Especially if you have a video camera.