Mana Leak is the strongest counterspell printed since Cryptic Command. What are the ripples this will cause? How can we predict the future of the metagame?
The Magic metagame is really complex. We are talking about a machine with thousands of moving parts. Each card potentially affects the value of every other card. In Standard alone, we are looking at interactions numbering:
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(To write out the Vintage number would double the length of this article.)
For reference, the number of atoms in the Universe is probably around 80 digits, the number of possible 40-move chess games is around 120 digits, the number of possible games of go on a 19×19 board is 761 digits. Even if we restrict ourselves to the number of possible 60-card decks, we are still talking about a 187-digit number. How are we supposed to look into the near infinite that is the possibilities in Magic?
To start, let’s take a step back. If you play in a six-round Standard tournament tomorrow, there is a pretty good chance that, if you guess the six decks you will play against, that you will get some right. How can this be, given the absurdly large number of possibilities?
The key? People don’t show up with “random” decks. They may be Tier 2. They may be just plain bad. However, in general, they are not a random combination of cards. This is a “random” Standard deck:
1 Acolyte of Xathrid
1 Zulaport Enforcer
1 Coral Merfolk
1 Glory Seeker
1 Nacatl Outlander
1 Kor Outfitter
1 Vectis Dominator
1 Venerated Teacher
1 Gomazoa
1 Kelinore Bats
1 Kozilek’s Predator
1 Viashino Skeleton
1 Crypt Ripper
1 Sigil Captain
1 Rhox Pikemaster
1 Bloodbraid Elf
1 Fusion Elemental
1 Giant Ambush Beetle
1 Kranioceros
1 Grave Titan
1 Sphinx Ambassador
1 Terra Stomper
1 Ulamog’s Crusher
1 Absorb Vis
1 Shared Discovery
2 Act of Treason
1 Wrap in Flame
1 Surreal Memoir
1 Corpsehatch
1 Yawning Fissure
1 All is Dust
1 Leaf Arrow
1 Veteran’s Reflexes
1 Path to Exile
1 Spell Pierce
2 Shadowfeed
1 Zealous Persecution
1 Permafrost Trap
1 Corrupted Roots
1 Gigantiform
1 Vapor Snare
1 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Gideon Jura
1 Spellbook
1 Shield of the Righteous
1 Wurm’s Tooth
1 Pennon Blade
1 Soaring Seacliffs
1 Piranha Marsh
1 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
1 Rupture Spire
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Swamp
2 Forest
As you can see, this “deck” is just noise. There is no rhyme or reason, and “no one” shows up with this. What do people show up with? Essentially, everybody shows up with something that makes sense from their perspective. Card availability may cause small ripples, as should players that were not planning on attending, but generally I tend to set such factors aside. Nowadays, there are so few legit brews going on that the metagame is actually very easy to predict. (This is outside of Legacy, which we will have to come back to, as it is the one last true bastion of deckbuilding.)
Okay, so when we are trying to Future View an upcoming meta, it is important to differentiate between the two basic types of formats. No, not Constructed versus Limited, and not Standard versus Extended. This is one of the most important concepts that aspiring deck builders should not only know, but also understand the implications:
There are two types of Constructed formats:
1) Formats on Magic Online.
2) Formats not on Magic Online.
That’s right. The single most important deckbuilding distinction between upcoming formats is whether or not they are played on Magic Online.
Think about the way Magic Online works versus Real Life. Magic Online evolves in hypertime, with countless players swarming around every morsel that drops on the ground. Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like bananas. While the format gets inbred, it is also absurdly effective at tuning the “good decks.” Even if match-ups start out misunderstood and easily exploitable, Magic Online is very effective at uncovering the truth. Look at U/W versus Jund. How many times over the past 5 months has it been that “U/W beats Jund,” while at other times “Jund beats U/W”…? What is changing? The lists continue to evolve, but the players learn the tricks, the timing, and the feel of the match-ups. Every swing becomes exaggerated.
On Magic Online, the concentration of “decent players” is very high and deep. It is because of Magic Online that the 5,000th best player in the world today would not be embarrassing on the Pro Tour, whereas 14 years ago, there were only 50 players in the world that weren’t embarrassing, period. Magic Online is far from the only factor (the internet is the root), but there is no denying that it is a different sort of game than it once was. This is not a complaint, and in fact I think it is far better for the game to be like this. Who would prefer a game that was so hard that almost no one could even functionally play it “versus” what we have today?
So many people have become good from practicing DI on MTGO, as well as continually soaking up all of the information collected by the hivemind, it has long since spread to even the non-MTGO players. See, a random group of ten guys might only have three active MTGO players, but those three bring the knowledge and expertise of the hivemind to their group and soon the information has spread. So is MTGO the solution? Is MTGO the only way to become good these days?
Hardly. Magic Online is an awesome reason, no question, but it is not without a price. Magic Online has helped cultivate a culture of proficient players, but here is a question for you…
Where are the deck builders?
It isn’t just the deck builders. Where are the theorists? Magic Online has bred an army of brute force mages that all play good lists of good archetypes, know all the tricks, play tight, and are well versed at all of the known openings. However, 99%+ of them don’t know why the cards they are playing with are the right ones to play beyond “The Hivemind says so.” I am sure I will get some hate mail on this article by a MTGO player or two that misunderstands the point of what I am saying here, but it needs to be said, not because anything needs to change, but because we as players stand to benefit from exploiting the fact that this is the way it is these days.
It is crazy how many strong players these days have little grasp on theory, and little understanding behind why the lists they are playing are good. Is it possible that maybe theory is just stupid or wrong? Maybe that is the point…
… Except that the theory IS correct, and it IS why those strategies work. It is just that it seems like magic to the people using the technology, just like how microwaves actually work, despite the fact that they might as well be magic items to 99% of people.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law of Prediction
A notable Magic pro was recently explaining a line of play to me, and I asked why he made it. His response? “That’s just what you do.” I asked “Why? I mean, even if you don’t know why it is right, at least tell me how you arrived at the conclusion.” “That is just what everyone does.”
I can’t tell you how often I hear strong players, players for which I have a huge amount of respect, make comments that are so… well, confused. This isn’t an “everybody sucks, you are all doing it wrong” article (not my specialty); this is a “there is room to exploit the weaknesses of the field” article.
I’ve spoken before of the swift decline in Constructed Magic the last few years, and I meant it. These tournaments have shown me that my words were true. No one knows how to build decks.
Gerry Thompson
Small hyperbole withstanding, Gerry is absolutely right. People, in general, have become so addicted to hivemind thinking for them that most have never had to develop the muscles needed to be able to build decks themselves, or even understand what a good deck looks like. When one doesn’t understand the physics behind why certain things are “good” or “bad,” what hope does one have to be able to figure out what is good on their own? Besides, why would they bother when they could just read the results from the premiers, the articles, the latest GP Top 8s?
Please do not mistake this article thus far as a rant, as that is not my intent. I am not shocked, nor am I outraged. I am also fully aware that I am totally a part of the machine that has bred this culture in which we find ourselves. Remember, all I am saying is that understanding all of this is potentially very powerful. What I am telling you now will probably not fully sink in with most. It will go over the heads of many, be misunderstood and greeted with anger by some. It’ll probably even offend a few. However, this perspective of what has become of Constructed Magic is at the heart of why Gerry, Zvi, Flores, Kowal, Jacob, Woods, and others are able to create beautiful works of art in a world of countless imitation and duplication. Try! Learn from your experiments. It can be daunting to try one’s hand at this art-form when one is not as experienced in the craft, but a backwards poet still writes in verse.
This isn’t about deckbuilding being special or creative or cool. It isn’t about that at all. There are definitely people that get off on the idea of being really clever and doing something that no one else has, but that isn’t what I am getting at.
In the early part of the Twentieth Century, the American naturalist William Beebe came upon a strange sight in the Guyana jungle. A group of army ants was moving in a huge circle. The circle was 1,200 feet in circumference, and it took each ant two and a half hours to complete the loop. The ants went around and around the circle for two days until most of them dropped dead.
What Beebe saw was what biologists call a ‘circular mill.’ The mill is created when army ants find themselves separated from their colony. Once they’re last, they obey a single rule: follow the ant in front of you. The result is the mill, which usually only breaks up when a few ants struggle off by chance and the others follow them away.
The Wisdom of Crowds – Pg. 40, James Surowiecki
This is the quote that I opened an early article of mine, Information Cascades in Magic. If you haven’t read it lately, consider rereading it, especially if you play primarily on MTGO. Just think about what is being said there. Information Cascades dealt primarily with the “cascading effects” of most wanting to do what they think is in their best interest short term, which ends up hurting the group as a whole. It is not until the rogues come along, those hard-headed overconfident players that think they are better than the hivemind, that the group is able to escape the inbred trap it has created for itself. What happens to those overconfident rogues? In Magic, they lose a LOT, since at least 9 out of 10 of even the best deck builder’s ideas turn out to not work.
Magic Online is a place where 99 out of 100 ants are just following the ant in front of them, and we can exploit this in a number of ways, even in real life events.
To begin with, if a format is available on Magic Online, then even real life tournaments will feel the impact of the MTGO metagame (which, while generally not the same as a real life metagame, is going to be a definite influence). Look at the MTGO results, see what people are doing, but then try to beat that, not just join it. Go a step further… imagine what the future will look like, and beat that. How far into the future you look will depend on how far into the future your tournament is, but you can look at basic building blocks of theory and extrapolate so much about the direction the metagame will go. Every deck is like a calendar, a glimpse at this day, this week, this month in Magic. Every calendar’s days are numbered.
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke’s Second Law of Prediction.
When Magic Online reaches a point where the metagame is relatively known and not particularly diverse, it can be a perfect opportunity to “go rogue.” When everyone else is locked into a rock-paper-scissors metagame, stepping outside that paradigm and attacking from a different angle can be especially potent. The secret to a successful rogue deck?
Do something worth doing.
So many people try to build rogue decks that use narrow cute responses to a possible metagame, giving themselves a 60-40 edge if their opponent is playing the exact decks they want them to, but having no chance if they play against anything else. These sorts of inbred decks are not just weak tournament performers, they can also break the spirits of the pilot, leading to giving in to just netdecking rather than have to face another tournament where a round 1 Vampires match and round 2 White Weenie deck knock them out of it from the jump.
A good rogue deck isn’t just cards that are good against popular decks, and it is certainly not just “hate.” A good rogue deck does something worth doing. When making a rogue beatdown deck, this is easy enough. Let’s look at the basic types of rogue beatdown decks someone might create:
1) Fast aggro. Whether it is weenies with burn, weenies with pump, or weenies with fast combo-esque wins (like Affinity or Hatred), in this type of deck it is easy to see how to do something worth doing, as dealing 20 points of damage quickly is generally good whatever the opponent is up to. The difference between Red aggro decks in different formats these days is like the difference in shopping in NY versus LA. If you’ve seen one shopping center, you’ve seen a mall.
2) Big aggro. These decks generally surprise people very effectively when many other people are trying to be fast aggro. Here, instead of just focusing on dealing 20, the idea is to clock someone and clear the blockers, or perhaps stabilize and win with a fatty, or perhaps attrition and win with card advantage. When these decks play against something they didn’t expect, they still have a clear plan. Figure out who is the beatdown. If it is you, play like it. If it is them, take control. These decks are better when there is no MTGO, since they prey on the first level thinking of fast aggro, whereas on MTGO everyone evolves past the first level, even when they use fast aggro.
3) Linear aggro. These decks are often tribal or mechanic driven (madness), and can be fast or big, depending on what the linear cards call for. Again, it is vital to be doing something worth doing. What is the point of using two creatures that together become as powerful as cards like Bloodbraid Elf, Baneslayer Angel, and Vengevine are on their own? When exploring a linear strategy, ask yourself what it is paying you. What are you getting in exchange for playing Faeries? Well, you make Bitterblossom good and get Spellstutter Sprite, Mistbind Clique, Scion of Oona, and Secluded Glen, to start with. That is a LOT of very powerful cards, cards that, when they are working, are MUCH better than a card would be on its own. For instance, Spellstutter becomes a two-mana hard counter with value that can be reused. Mistbind Clique can be a 4/4 flying flash creature that Time Walks your opponent or saves a creature about to die, all for just four mana. That is overpowered. This doesn’t make it broken, it just means that it can be actually worth going to all the trouble of playing this sort of linear. Can Faeries be very good against certain decks? Absolutely, but it also does something worth doing on its own. It draws extra cards, it can attack from a lot of angles, it counters spells, and it plays synergistic cards that can creature more value than their mana cost normally would manage. That is a sure-fire recipe for strength against random unknown opponents.
It is crazy how often I see people doing things like play Kithkin in Extended. Why? Why are you limiting yourself to Kithkin? Let’s set aside the obvious problems with White Weenie in general for a moment. What are you getting out of the linear? You get Goldmeadow Stalwart and Wizened Cenn? Really? You are restricting your card choices to what is essentially a block deck so that you can build with a 2/2 for one mana and a 2/2 that Crusades your squad? Kird Ape isn’t even good, and you want to build around a 2/2 for one mana? Lord of Atlantis isn’t even good, and you want a non-Blue, non-Island walking variety? This isn’t a dig at Cedric. Remember, when he played Kithkin in Standard, there were a LOT fewer cards so the bar was MUCH different with regards to what one or two mana should buy you.
So, building a rogue deck (yeah, I used Faeries as an example… remember, it was rogue when Zvi first played it) that attacks isn’t too hard to figure out, just as long as you do something worth doing. What about combo?
Combo can actually be one of the best decks with which to go rogue. Our adage “Do something worth doing” is pretty neatly addressed by simply asking yourself what your combo does. Combos that win the game, or even create soft locks nearly assuring victory… those things are worth doing. The question isn’t “is the combo good to have on the battlefield?” The question is “is it worth doing instead of something else?” In Legacy, this question comes up a lot…
Dredge? Is it a good Reanimator or a bad Reanimator (as a graveyard combo) deck?
Survival? Maybe this one is a good Reanimator, or maybe it is a bad one (as in “a deck that makes a fast Iona”)?
Dream Halls or Hive Mind? Pretty clearly a bad Aluren, right? A two-card combo that wins the game when it plays a key enchantment?
When you are building a rogue combo deck, it is not enough to just ask yourself if your combo can win the game. You must also ask yourself what your combo has going for it that the industry norm doesn’t. For instance, Aluren doesn’t need the graveyard. High Tide doesn’t need non-basics. Belcher is the fastest of the fast. Reveillark has tons of strong back-up plans. Scapeshift is a one-card combo. You are interested in Mosswort Bridge plus Phyrexian Dreadnaught plus Emrakul? Maybe it is great, maybe not, but to understand it, ask yourself what it does better and what it does worse than other combo decks? For instance, Aluren has “N” number of “bad cards.” If you had another deck that took five mana instead of four, it would be worse on mana cost to go off, but that is not the end of the world. Maybe your five-mana combo only uses two “bad cards” instead of swathes, like Aluren. Drawing fewer bad cards is a big plus, especially if you use this space to fill your deck with 8 discard spells or 8 counterspells. Now we are talking about having access to another form of advantage that the other deck does not have.
This is one place where MTGO can really skew things. A rogue combo deck doesn’t stay rogue for long, since those that get too big for their britches are exposed in the end. We commonly see a brief surge in popularity followed by a demise of strategies like Polymorph, Eldrazis, or Open the Vaults. If MTGO isn’t available, the entire format can be caught unaware, like Elves! in Berlin. If MTGO is available, then no one is surprised by the Mono-Green Eldrazi Temple decks. (Team Mythic’s Monument Green deck was such a break-out success in great part because it stepped outside the bounds of anything anyone on MTGO was doing).
If you want to succeed with a rogue combo deck, make sure it does something worth doing, and make sure it does something better than the industry standard.
When it comes to mid-range decks, we find ourselves in the realm of needing an understanding of the format. So many people make the classic mistake of building midrange decks that can’t meaningfully interact with combo decks in formats where combo decks are popular. There is room in most combo metagames for one deck that can’t beat combo (but beats “everything else”). Usually, this is a highly contested spot in the metagame that a disproportionate number of players strive to occupy.
You don’t need permission, discard, or a super fast clock, but you do need a plan. Many players only look at the surface and try to straight react with cards like Relic of Progenitus and Gaddock Teeg. These cards can work extremely well, but you have to be right about what sorts of combo decks people will play. If people are on graveyard combo, the solutions are bountiful, but what if people are on big spell combos like Hive Mind and Scapeshift? Oh, Gaddock Teeg, you say? But aren’t people that use Hive Mind usually packing tons of Slaughter Pacts anyway, and people that use Scapeshift playing Punishing Fires? Teeg can be great against these people, but if you are using him specifically for these match-ups, then ask yourself if he is really as good as it gets?
You can attack graveyards, cards in hand, the stack, mana, permanents (Qasali Pridemage), cards in library (Thought Hemorrhage style), the life total, and play lock components (such as Teeg or Canonist), just to name a few approaches. What kind of combo decks do you expect? If there are only one or two, you can generally plan accordingly. If combo decks are popular, maybe it is not the best time to play a midrange deck, unless you can find a good proactive way to fight combo decks generally (Thoughtseize and Mana Leak are popular general purpose solutions, for instance).
I guess I would summarize the key to building a good midrange deck is developing an understanding of when a midrange deck is appropriate. Also, a good rule of thumb for building mid-range decks is to make sure your card quality is top-notch. Mid-range decks are generally not going to do anything as unfair as combo decks, get the card advantage or end-game of a control deck, or the speed of an aggro deck. What do you have then? Generally, what most midrange decks aspire to have is the best card quality. If the “best cards” in the format are Wild Nacatl, Dark Depths, Hypergenesis, and so on, it is easy to end up in a format where no one wins with midrange, since they can’t win on quality (which is supposed to be their one advantage).
Now, if you end up in a format where the best cards are Bloodbraid Elf; Jace, the Mind Sculptor; Vengevine; Elspeth and so on, it is not hard to imagine a mid-range deck that has higher card quality than most or all non-midrange decks. If you want to win with midrange decks, play with good cards. Look at what the other midrange decks are, and compare your card quality. Everyone on MTGO plays Jund and various Bant decks as their midrange decks? Line your cards up next to theirs. What matches up at each spot on the curve? This makes it clear why so many decks are actually just bad Jund decks. MTGO does a very good job of making it clear whether or not the format can sustain mid-range decks, and by extension mid-range decks are much less risky in MTGO metagames.
Finally, we come to control decks. Building a good rogue control deck can be exceptionally challenging, as it requires not only the ability to build control decks, but the ability to build aggro, combo, and midrange decks, since you have to anticipate what each of your potential rivals will bring to the table. This is one area where MTGO really changes the dynamics of what you are doing.
In MTGO metagames, it becomes more important to have varied forms of advantage and play with “stronger cards” (as opposed to synergistic ones). If you have only a few key components to your deck, once the hivemind gets a hold of the information, they will systematically pick apart your defenses and find your pressure points. The trade-off is that MTGO makes metagames much more clearly defined, which leads to a much easier job of building a control deck in the first place. If you know what 80% of your opponents will play, it is much less risky to play a reactive strategy. When playing a control deck in a non-MTGO metagame, the control player will generally have a greater priority to doing something proactive.
Do something worth doing.
A deck that is all reaction may be advantaged against the perfect opponents, but if it doesn’t do something worth doing on its own, then what happens when you play against opponents you did not expect? The solution? Semi-soft locks. Your control deck may have a lot of reactive elements, but Martial Coup is a plan in and of itself. Mind Spring; Avenger of Zendikar; Cruel Ultimatum; Jace, the Mind Sculptor; Baneslayer Angel; Gideon Jura; Elspeth, Knight-Errant; Punishing Fires; Sovereigns of Lost Alara; Grave Titan… these are all plans in and of themselves. Sometimes, the solution is to “kill” with a combo, such as Mindslaver plus Academy Ruins or Thopter Foundry plus Sword of the Meek. The point is that each of these ways of ending a game gives you another “thing worth doing” in case you face an opponent that is not one for which you had prepared.
When building a rogue control deck, it is not enough to anticipate what your opponents will do. You must also do something worth doing to reward you for “not dying” long enough to reach Stage 3. What is your Stage 3? What are you doing that trumps the game? If your rogue control deck doesn’t have a killer Stage 3 (which most rogue control decks don’t, whereas most good control decks do), then perhaps you should ask yourself what your plan is against an opponent that does something you don’t expect.
For instance, I have built many control decks where my plan against a surprise opponent is to Cruel Ultimatum them. Maybe I wasn’t prepared for their strategy, but generally, casting Cruel Ultimatum is at least a plan. Maybe Legacy is too deep a format to try to control every angle, but if you just ride a Thopter-Sword, you can often beat most of the random stuff you didn’t think of. Countering spells is NOT something worth doing. No one cares how many spells you counter. Countering spells is only a means to an end. Maybe you are countering spells so you can live long enough to kill with Baneslayer, Jace, Cruel, or something else, but just reacting to react accomplishes nothing. Sphinx of Jwar Isle is the classic example of this. He can be a great card if you need a dedicated kill card, but he doesn’t produce that much advantage inside the game. Baneslayer Angel? Now that is a plan. Sphinx of Jwar Isle is a way to make your Mind Spring kill someone.
Remember our question at the beginning about Mana Leak and what effects we will start to see in the future as a result of its printing? Think about the implications of Mana Leak existing. It is a better Counterspell than we have seen in years. With more flexible permission being plentiful that punishes expensive spells, we will see some tension of strategies that use expensive bombs. The thing that is so interesting about this phenomenon is that so very many of the best cards these days are the expensive sorcery speed spells, like Primeval Titan, Avenger of Zendikar, Cruel Ultimatum, Grave Titan, Baneslayer Angel, Mind Spring, and so on. Mana Leak is punishing against these strategies, without being “soft” against fast strategies in the same way as Cancel.
What does this mean for the future? People are going to use those expensive spells I mentioned, even with Mana Leak in the format, and Mana Leak will be “awesome.” The rise of Mana Leak means lots of little things, like, for instance, a clearer division between Bloodbraid Elf decks and Jace, the Mind Sculptor decks. Cheap threats will gain a little value, such as Fauna Shaman. Instant speed threats gain value. It is this exact reason that I think Jace’s Ingenuity will actually turn out to be a player, rather than the “came-too-late” that so many people seem to deem it. Came too late? I think it came at just the right time. It wouldn’t have been good last month. However, in the future, instant speed card draw works well against and with Mana Leak.
Grave Titan can win a game by itself and is really good against level 1 of the future, just as Obstinate Baloth and Primeval Titan added to Turbo Land threaten to dominate level 1. Mana Leak is awesome against these things, in addition to being generally very useful. It is partially because of how incredible Mana Leak is against level 2 of the future that things like Fauna Shaman seem so appealing. The Jund, Bant, and Naya decks need to evolve. Fauna Shaman is the Green Dark Confidant, and will be totally awesome against level 3 of the future. Mana Leak may be my best card of the set for today, but Fauna Shaman is my pick for best brand new card.
Cultivate, Leyline of Sanctity, Preordain, Primeval Titan, Obstinate Baloth, Grave Titan, and Fauna Shaman are my six favorite new cards for Constructed from M11, for what that is worth, but probably not that many surprises (note: Preordain and Leyline are far better in powered formats).
I think that Fauna Shaman is an awesome 4th level of the future to be at, with a key being playing with “Good Cards” (since most will be tempted to put all kinds of bad cards in their deck, figuring that Fauna Shaman is the excuse for everything). Activating Fauna Shaman is not quite as extreme as activating Hermit Druid, but it is close. Activating Fauna Shaman is like drawing 1.5 extra cards a turn. You may disagree with this point, and I don’t have space today to defend the position, but I would suggest considering how much value you are getting out of a Fauna Shaman activation. How much is it worth to put a Vengevine in the graveyard? Often four mana. How much is it worth to turn a dead card into a Worldly Tutor? Then consider that Fauna Shaman puts it into your hand, not the top of your library, so it is like a cantrip Worldly Tutor. Yes, I know that Eldamari’s Call exists, but that card was decent, cost more mana, and creatures are better than they once were. Once again, we see that he is like a powerful spellshaper that generates more value than the mana you put into him. That is the definition of worth doing.
Once you are behind a Jace, the Mind Sculptor (on Fateseal mode), it is very difficult to come back. If you couldn’t stop it before, how are things getting better? Fauna Shaman is a similar experience. If you couldn’t stop the Fauna Shaman immediately, how is it going to get better for you if the other player is Demonic Tutoring every turn? This is not even factoring in the added threats from the yard, such as Vengevine. The point is that if you untap with Fauna Shaman, you are already winning. I don’t think it is any more broken than Dark Confidant, but it is just about as deadly, and in the future it will be thought of as such.
Let’s take a look backwards for a moment. When using our Future Sight to predict the future in Magic metagames, it can be very useful to look at the most extreme limitation of the format and try to work backwards from there. For instance, Bloodbraid Elf in a deck of Bolts, Terminates, and Maelstrom Pulses leads to a world of plentiful creature kill, which then suggests a strategy of playing no targets (U/W) or so many targets they can’t kill them all (Mythic). By considering what the world would be like once “everyone” uses Jund, we see a place where U/W and Mythic will dominate. Looking further, we see a world where U/W grows more and more, as Mythic was initially one of its best match-ups. What beats U/W? Next Level Bant emerges, which is essentially a U/W deck designed to win the mirror. Its strategy to combat the removal paradigm (all good targets versus none) was to go yet another way to break out. It uses tons of creatures, but none worth killing.
Where to next? Savvy deck builders saw that the rise of NLB meant the future was good for Mythic and bad for U/W, on match-up. This surge of Mythic and decline of U/W made it easier for Jund players to focus their decks on beating EVEN more creatures, with less fear of having all removal against a creature-light deck. Not surprisingly, we have seen Jund rise once again, but also a rise in Turbo Land, a deck that is reasonably well positioned against Jund and its natural predators, with weaknesses that it hopes to have its victims take care of for it. Since the return of Jund and the rise of Turbo Land, we have since seen a surge in traditional Red Deck Wins, a deck that often performs well against both of these decks. Each and every one of these shifts in the metagame was predictable by those that approach analyzing the format rationally and realistically without an attachment to a certain strategy.
How did deck builders know to explore in these directions? This is one of Gerry Thompson great strengths. Gerry may love a card, a strategy, a deck, but nothing is sacred. If the format shifts and it is time to move on, he does. Gerry is far from infallible, but when Gerry is wrong, you know what he does? He learns from his mistakes and adjusts his perspective of the format. What he DOESN’T do is give up and just netdeck from now on (for fear of being wrong again). He also doesn’t spend his time and energy trying to convince everyone that his strategy that was good six weeks ago is still “good.” It’s on to the next one, so to speak.
Successfully developing your ability to predict the future in Magic is equal parts rationality, intelligence, wisdom, and courage. You are only as good as you are, so the wise one is rational about the results they are getting and the results the hivemind is getting, such as on MTGO. What you can control is your courage. Netdecking week in and week out is no sin, but you will never develop as strong a grasp of the Physics of Magic if you don’t have the courage to regularly try your ideas.
Are there absolute world class players that don’t ever build their own decks? No question. Then again, you are talking about pretty stiff competition for that spot in the metagame, so to speak. There can only be 10 people that are the top 10 technical players in a given moment. The number doesn’t matter. The point is that never having access to technology from the future will put a damper on your ability to win tournaments. Remember, even the top pros that don’t build their own decks work closely with deck builders that do, and besides, deckbuilding is not a thing that a few people do and no one else does at all. It is a very “team effort” thing. A bicycle could never stand on its own… it would be two-tired.
The point is that there is a surplus of players in the world right now vying for “best Faeries player” and “best Jund player” and so on. This is not to say you shouldn’t pursue those things… just consider how many people are on the netdeck plan versus how few are on the “Going Rogue” plan. Being different just for the sake of being different doesn’t accomplish much, but having the courage to try something that no one else has found a way to make possible yet can be a very powerful learning experience, let alone if you actually crack the code and do something others thought was impossible.
When we played Sligh, almost no one thought Red Aggro was even possible. When we played Dragonstorm, almost no one thought combo was even possible. When we played Cruel Control, almost no one thought a five-color deck that actually beat Faeries was even possible. When we played U/W, almost no one thought control was even possible. This list obviously leaves off the countless attempts that we have tried and failed, but you can’t break the format if you don’t try the impossible.
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong.
Arthur C. Clarke’s First Law of Prediction
Patrick Chapin
“The Innovator”