You know, a lot of Magic players can identify “good” Magicians by saying they are “good deck designers” or “good players,” or both.
For example, most of us are aware that Tsuyoshi Fujita, Gabriel Nassif, and Frank Karsten are great deck designers. These are the guys that invent new archetypes and put sixty-card combinations on the table that we might never have dreamt of.
We also know that Jon Finkel and Kai Budde are (among other things) great players. You could photocopy almost any stack of sixty cards, give these guys a week to playtest it, and they’d come back and destroy you with it game after game.
But the strongest point of Katsuhiro Mori, our recently-crowned World Champion, isn’t really either of these things. Katsuhiro Mori is a great mechanic. He takes decks that are already “on the radar” and tunes them into powerhouses. You give him a lawnmower and he comes back with a machine gun. The Fujitas, Nassifs, and Karstens of the worlds make great decks; the Moris of the world make decks great.
I’m not saying this just because the guy won Worlds, and not because he did it with a tuned version of a well-known (at least in Japan) States deck. Katsuhiro actually has a recent history of quality deck upgrades that you may or may not be aware of. Take a look at some of the interview quotes from the Top 8 of Grand Prix Kitakyuushuu (whose coverage tagline is “Best Top 8 Ever?”).
(To Top Eight Competitor Masashi Oiso)
Who designed your deck? Is there anything unique about it?
I’m using Katsuhiro Mori’s No-Stick design. I think the most important thing about the deck is the cards in the sideboard, particularly Urza’s Rage.
(To Top Eight Competitor Masahiko Morita)
Who designed your deck? Is there anything unique about it?
Katsuhiro Mori designed this version of No-Stick. The biggest changes are putting Exalted Angel in the main deck, and being able to use Cunning Wish to gain access to twelve different spells.
(And finally, to Tomohiro Kaji, the eventual winner of the tournament)
How did you prepare for this event? Did you have a playtest partner or work with a team?
I worked with Katsuhiro Mori the day before the Grand Prix.
Then there was GP Niigata, a Block Constructed tournament earlier in the season.
(To Top Eight Competitor and soon-to-be-Player Of The Year Kenji Tsumura)
What kind of preparations did you do for this event? Did you playtest with anyone?
I worked with Katsuhiro Mori and Masashi Oiso. My deck was made by Katsuhiro Mori.
(To Top Eight Competitor Masashi Oiso)
What kind of preparations did you do for this event? Did you playtest with anyone?
I put my deck together with the help of "Team Rush" (Katsuhiro Mori and Kenji Tsumura). Mori loaned me the deck.
(To Top Eight Competitor Takuya Osawa—who didn’t play Mori’s deck)
Out of the decks you saw this weekend, which one impressed you most?
The ones that use Godo effectively, like Katsuhiro Mori’s deck.
(And finally, to the GP champion and soon-to-be-World Champion himself, Katsuhiro Mori)
Out of the decks you saw this weekend, which one impressed you most?
Katsuhiro Mori’s deck.
Ha! Mad deck-tuning skills and a sense of humor.
So, having now sung Mori’s praises as an expert deck mechanic, I’m wondering something.
Let’s say you’re like me, and you’re testing Standard right now. For the Pro Tour, for Friday Night Magic, or for kicks and giggles. Whatever. How many of you have played or tested against this exact list…
Creatures (24)
- 3 Llanowar Elves
- 1 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Wood Elves
- 2 Yosei, the Morning Star
- 3 Kodama of the North Tree
- 3 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
- 4 Loxodon Hierarch
- 4 Selesnya Guildmage
Lands (23)
Spells (13)
… And how many of you turned the “wrong” singleton Birds of Paradise into the fourth Llanowar Elf?
I mean… Three Elves, one Bird? That can’t be right. Obviously he meant to play four Elves. Mori just screwed up. Nakamura and Kaji played four Elves and no Birds in the same Top Eight; they’re the ones who got it right, right? Right.
… Right?
Kenji Tsumura, in his first-ever article on Star City, explained Mori’s choice briefly:
“A lot of people might wonder why there aren’t four Llanowar Elves, but surprisingly, this deck has a lot of W casting cost cards. Especially after sideboard, there’s Hokori, Dusk Drinker and Yosei, the Morning Star, giving you heavy White requirements… On the other hand, only one of those creatures does anything by itself with a Jitte.”
In other words, there’s a simple trade-off. You want Jitte-holders, and you want White mana producers, but no one-drop will do both at once. You have to play some number of Birds and some number of Elves to compromise.
But three and one?
Clearly, four copies of one and zero copies of the other looks prettier on paper. Two and two (which Tsumura offered as an alternative) is more pleasing to the eye as well, unless maybe you’re Jon Becker.
Three and one, however, is just ugly; most of us reflexively “fixed” this before hauling the deck into the playtest arena.
But if you think about it, this is really a terrible idea. If you ignore “deck prettiness,” which is a completely irrational basis for card selection, changing Mori’s three Elves, one Birds to four Elves, zero Birds implies that we think Mori did a bad job tuning his deck. We think if he had spent more time playtesting, he would have arrived at four Elves, and so we just helped him along by making the change ourselves.
Given Mori’s track record, and given the fact that it’s much easier to write down “four Llanowar Elves” on your deck registration sheet (which is to say, he had to explicitly want three Elves and one Birds), my money is on the master mechanic having calculating his mana ratios more carefully than you or I ever would. To me, his three and one says “I know what I’m doing. I’m not going with my gut instinct, I’m not going with what feels nice, or looks right, I’m going with what I figured out is correct.”
Too often, as Magic players, we look down on ugly decklists. It’s bad enough when we second-guess lists that come from the guy who Masashi Oiso and Kenji Tsumura turn to when they need a tuned stack of seventy-five, but even worse when we start to fool around with our own decks in order to make them look nicer on paper.
How many times have you dropped your Boros deck’s Kami of Ancient Law count from three to two in order to make room for a fourth Char, and then maybe from two to one, to make room for a fourth Zo-Zu, and then suddenly felt obliged to go way-out-of-your-way to eliminate that last copy because “one copy can’t be right, can it?”
Well, why shouldn’t it be? There was a reason you had that guy in your deck in the first place, and the only reason you were removing copies previously was that you found better card choices to take his place. Why would you now reverse that policy and replace him with worse card choices just to make your decklist look neater?
There are no points in the Swiss system for a pretty decklist. Nor in the Top 8. Nor even at the after-party; you think Mori’s friends were giving him crap about his “janky” three-and-one decklist after Worlds? I think not. I’m pretty sure there was a good deal more “hey, good job winning the World Championships” taking place instead.
I, for one, will take right over pretty any day.
Speaking of which, did anyone notice what list Kenji Tsumura took to Worlds, the tournament that earned him the title of Player of the Year?
The same seventy-five cards as Katsuhiro Mori.
Three Elves, one Birds, and all.
See you tomorrow.
Richard Feldman
Team Check Minus
[email protected]