After a decade and a half, the collective body of thought known as the Weissman School continues to shape and influence Vintage more than any other guiding set of principles, or more accurately, set of practices, even as those principles/practices are shorn of their animating essence, which no longer exists (in Vintage, although Five-Color Control in Standard appears to be a modern revival). And I have no doubt that it will continue to do so for many more years to come. With increasingly notable exceptions in the last couple of years, most of best Vintage pilots and designers hail from that tradition (players such as Rich Shay, Andy Probasco, and Brian DeMars), and are regarded (fairly or not) as Mana Drain specialists. These are players that live and breathe the Weissman legacy, to a surprisingly faithful degree, even as they move beyond its archaic confines. That is not to say that there are not good reasons for this. Mana Drains have proved, time and again, to be tournament winning strategies.
Understandably, it is the experience of most Vintage players that the most skilled and experienced opponents are — on average — Mana Drain pilots. These pilots beget new pilots, who become apprentices into a school of which they may only be dimly aware. Just as martial artists learn their craft, Vintage players informally transmit through battle, whether tabletop testing or tournament duels, from master to apprentice, the skills and tradition of that school, the tips, tactics, strategies, sideboard plans, and technologies that define it.
Although it is the most successful strategy — both historically and at present — the Weissman school is not necessarily the best strategy. Workshop Prison decks and Fish decks have and continue to enjoy a degree of success, especially in heavy Mana Drain fields. But, as Chapin has long ago understood, the dominant strategy (in the game theory sense) of Vintage is Dark Ritual Combo (as it is called). The problem is that it is a school with few Senseis. Padawans in this school eventually find other masters, and are usurped into a different school, or set off as wandering ronin.
I would have thought that Paul Mastriano Vintage Championship victory with TPS might have inspired some players to pick up TPS, and in turn helped to create a stable (in both senses of the words) player base of Dark Ritual pilots just as Kevin Cron, Robert Vroman and Roland Chang’s success with Stax did for Workshops and Dave Feinstein and Marc Perez’s success did for Fish decks. To help facilitate the players who might be interested in picking up TPS, I wrote a three part primer on TPS (The Perfect Storm, Playing The Perfect Storm, and Winning with TPS), along with First Place: A Post-Shards Vintage Tournament Report, where I demonstrate how to think through real tournament situations.) But compared to the sustained guidance that Mana Drain pilots receive, including the frequent in-person testing experience against knowledgeable pilots, my detailed primer was insufficient to the task of helping prepare successful Dark Ritual pilots. Although TPS decks surged in the immediate aftermath of Paul’s victory, they have virtually disappeared again in the wake of Alara block.
This article is aimed at helping TPS pilots raise their game and those who might be interested in the archetype but unable to translate it into the success they desire to consider it once more. I cannot say if this article will be successful in that regard, but I’ve received enough requests to think that it can help. Although I have perhaps as much experience with Dark Ritual decks as almost anyone else, I will not profess to have all of the answers. TPS, like all good vintage decks, is a deck that continues to throw me curveballs, and I struggle at times to apply my experience and know-how when I piloting it. I will teach what I can, and hopefully as some of you grow and mature as Ritual pilots, I will in turn learn from you.
The approach I laid out in my three part primer last fall remains the starting point for learning the mechanics of TPS. The bulk of this article will explicating two principles that will raise your TPS game considerably, and I believe are the two biggest reasons that novice TPS pilots, and even more experienced Dark Ritual pilots — particularly those used to decks like Pitch Long, falter with TPS. If you find yourself struggling, but you aren’t sure why, one of these factors is part of the problem. I illustrate these principles with many examples and illustrations. The final section of this article will be an elaboration of a slightly broader principle, but one with many applications, and one that I believe is the key to TPS mastery.
For reference:
Creatures (1)
Lands (12)
Spells (47)
- 1 Tendrils of Agony
- 1 Brainstorm
- 2 Cabal Ritual
- 1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
- 1 Vampiric Tutor
- 1 Mystical Tutor
- 1 Yawgmoth's Will
- 4 Duress
- 4 Force of Will
- 1 Necropotence
- 1 Mana Vault
- 1 Sol Ring
- 1 Demonic Tutor
- 1 Time Walk
- 4 Dark Ritual
- 1 Ancestral Recall
- 1 Imperial Seal
- 1 Grim Tutor
- 1 Mana Crypt
- 1 Timetwister
- 1 Gifts Ungiven
- 1 Mind's Desire
- 1 Merchant Scroll
- 1 Memory Jar
- 1 Chain of Vapor
- 1 Misdirection
- 1 Tinker
- 1 Rebuild
- 1 Black Lotus
- 1 Fact or Fiction
- 1 Lotus Petal
- 1 Mox Emerald
- 1 Mox Jet
- 1 Mox Pearl
- 1 Mox Ruby
- 1 Mox Sapphire
- 1 Ponder
Sideboard
1) Slow Down
Do you find yourself fizzling with TPS? Do you think that the deck is too slow or inconsistent? Do you sometimes lose after resolving Necropotence or Yawgmoth’s Bargain? What about Memory Jar or Timetwister?
Most Vintage players’ experience with Dark Ritual combo is probably with a Long variant, Grim Long, Pitch Long, GWS Long, or they may have tried Eric Becker’s Intuition Tendrils. Unfortunately, these decks play very different from TPS. Although each Long variant differed, they were uniformly faster. Grim Long tries to throw bomb after bomb onto the table until it wins. Pitch Long would force a very early bomb onto the table through countermagic and win. Both decks were hyper aggressive. Intuition Tendrils was a little bit different, but it was even more very Yawgmoth’s Will-centric, and also a turn 2 clock.
In contrast, TPS is a slower, critical mass deck. Referring to TPS as a critical mass deck might be misleading, since all Tendrils decks are by definition ‘critical mass’ decks. What I mean by that is that unlike Grim Long or even Pitch Long, TPS tends to build toward a critical mass before making a broken play. You should rarely win on turn 1 with TPS. Long variants have high turn 1 kills. A Long deck often just wants to get its mana established and start throwing out bombs. TPS does not operate that way. With TPS, you want to create a stable manabase by playing impervious lands while holding your additional mana sources in hand. Put differently, Grim Long and Pitch Long do not have an intentional control mode or a defense mode. Both decks were vicious attack dogs. TPS does have such a mode.
Brian DeMars captured the idea when he said that TPS wins like this:
Turn 3:
7 cards in hand. Play Duress. Win the Game.
At this point, if you are my target audience, you should be experiencing some mental dissonance at what may appear to be a contradiction. The reason that Dark Rituals are so powerful is that they are fast. They accelerate you into the most powerful spells ever printed, the major engine cards like Necropotence, Mind’s Desire, Yawgmoth’s Will, Yawgmoth’s Bargain, and Memory Jar. If you are intentionally “slowing” down, don’t you risk your opponent just winning first? Isn’t that defeating the purpose of playing Dark Rituals? This thought is nicely captured by a comment someone made on the Mana Drain:
I have had some difficulty in controlling my opponent’s hand to the point that I feel like I can bide time to craft a “perfect storm” hand. Against Drains I have actually had more success with the balls-to-the-wall route, in other words, trying to simply go off as quickly as possible before they stabilize and hope that you don’t fizzle out. I’ve found that taking the time to set up [against Drains] can be dangerous.
It is true that it can be dangerous. Today’s crop of Mana Drain decks are fast, and often run large complements of artifact acceleration. Your opponent could assemble and play Voltaic Key and Time Vault on turn two and there may be nothing you can do to stop it. But I believe that these fears are overstated. First of all, Meandeck Gifts was probably the height of Mana Drain decks that goldfish quickly, with an average of turn 3.5 or turn 4. Although Control Slaver, Tezzeret, and Painter are all capable of winning quickly, they are slower, especially without Brainstorm. Tezzeret is at least a half turn slower than Meandeck Gifts, and it might be the fastest of the current bunch. The restriction of Brainstorm didn’t just kill Pitch Long, it slowed down the entire format. Some of the fear may be the memory of fast Mana Drain decks which no longer exist as they once did. I suspect that the poster who expressed the comment above didn’t try slowing down, but pushed TPS based upon the unsubstantiated fear that they’d win very soon if he didn’t win first. Even if you play a little bit slower, you are still going to be faster than any Mana Drain opponent, on average. That’s the benefit of playing Dark Ritual. Although it is of course true that your Mana Drain opponents might combo first, TPS is not designed to win on turn 1.
The greater danger is not that your opponent will win first, but that you will hand them game over to them by fizzling or by giving them a new hand. Thus, by playing TPS like a Long deck, you will not only risk fizzling, but you risk helping your opponent more than yourself. This is most visible in cards like Timetwister, which are only ever played in TPS in the very early game to create a one-sided burst of card advantage, or in the very late game once you have played enough resources that there is little chance you’ll fizzle. But even cards like Memory Jar should be modulated, and perhaps most surprisingly, cards like Necropotence and Yawgmoth’s Bargain are played differently as well.
Example: You are on the draw. You open with: Black Lotus, Mox Pearl, Dark Ritual, Polluted Delta, Chain of Vapor, Mystical Tutor, and Necropotence. Your opponent begins with Underground Sea, Sol Ring. You untap and draw Fact or Fiction. What do you do during this turn? Assuming Necropotence resolves, how much life should you pay to draw cards?
This is a real scenario I encountered. I led with Black Lotus, to try to bait a Force. Lotus resolved. I then played Mox Pearl and cast Fact or Fiction. My Fact or Fiction pile, importantly (and precisely what I had hoped it might), revealed both a Misdirection and a Force of Will. My opponent put each into separate piles. I took the pile with Force of Will and one other card. I then broke the Polluted Delta for Underground Sea, and cast Dark Ritual into Necropotence. It resolved.
The critical question is this: how many cards do you draw with Necropotence? In this particular scenario, I only set aside five cards. This is a 100% contrast to Grim Long or other Long variants. With Long, you would have Necroed here for 9-12 cards, and probably as high as 11. The goal with a Long deck is to find at least two threats and a mix of mana to resolve them, and hopefully a Duress to clear the way. With this deck, you don’t need to worry about winning immediately. Rather, in many matchups, you actually just want to use Necropotence like a recurring Fact or Fiction, to refill your hand for consecutive turns. Between the Forces and Duress effects, it’s worth taking a turn or two to wear down your opponent’s ability to try and disrupt you first, and then find a way to win the game.
In this particular hand, you have Force of Will to protect yourself. You have Mystical Tutor to dig up anything that might be harmful on the board. The only thing we really need to Necro for is protection and mana, since Mystical Tutor can find Yawgmoth’s Will next turn. In my Necropotence, I saw a couple of lands, Dark Ritual, Merchant Scroll, and Time Walk. On my next turn, I was able to Time Walk and Mystical Tutor for Yawgmoth’s Will.
It was then that I gorged myself in Necro, since I intended on untapping and winning with Yawgmoth’s Will, and that’s precisely what I did. If you try to go all in on the first opportunity with Necropotence, you might very well misuse your resources, and take a bigger risk than you need to. This is not a rare exception to the general rule. While I wouldn’t say that a majority of the times that when I first use Necropotence I only find 5 cards, that play is a common one, and it happens more than you think. This is a fundamental difference from the faster Long variants.
This basic principle applies to all of TPS’s engines, which should be distinguished from mere draw spells. In my three part primer, I discuss the difference in some detail. But cards like Fact or Fiction are to be played earlier to build up to your critical mass. It’s the engines that are to be used more conservatively to build your critical mass.
That said, if a window of opportunity arises in which you can win very quickly, then it can and should be pursued. Turn 1 hands with Black Lotus and Demonic Tutor/Grim Tutor and Dark Rituals can produce an easy turn 1 win just by storming up Yawgmoth’s Will and tutoring for Tendrils. Similarly, a large turn one or turn 2 Mind’s Desire with Academy can be used for a quick win. That’s fine. Playing this deck more slowly than Grim Long does not mean that you don’t take openings when they arise – you do. If your opponent is defenseless for a moment, you strike. But your general approach is to build a critical mass and go off.
Timing with TPS is often about risk management. Sometimes, you will be playing an aggressive role by pushing into play a Tinker or a Necro on turn 1, or some other bomb. But that doesn’t mean you try to win as quickly as possible, simply that you are setting up your critical mass. Timing is so critical because even if you learn the strategic mechanics of the deck, even if you learn how to play TPS and how to operate the deck’s major engines, you cannot win with it until you start to learn how to time your plays. If you find yourself fizzling too often or trying to combo out too quickly, then you probably need to slow down and develop your resources more. You need to be patient and less fearful by recognizing that you are still going to be faster than your opponent.
2. Have Confidence in your Deck
I think the biggest obstacle to success for TPS pilots, aside from bad timing, is a lack of confidence in the deck. This is because so many Vintage players are inexperienced with combo, along with the fear that naturally comes from playing a real or perceived more fragile/razor’s edge deck. This lack of confidence has devastating consequences for the pilot’s success. The lesson here is more complicated than it might first appear, and has several layers of significance I need to tease out.
At its most basic level, a player’s degree of confidence will affect his or her decision making process; it will affect the decisions they make during the game. At the bottom level of analysis, the problem is not simply that TPS player’s lack confidence in the deck, it’s that they are actively pessimistic about what they might draw. A player who is pessimistic about his deck’s ability to naturally draw him cards that he can use will always play as if his back is up against the wall. To some extent, this leads to the set of problems described in the previous section: it causes players to miscue and push the deck further than it is designed to go. The lack of confidence in the deck actually increases the chances of fizzling.
But it’s not simply that a pessimistic player will play too fast or over-extend themselves, it’s also that a pessimistic player will foreclose themselves from possible lines of play. A TPS player is always planning. A TPS player uses all available information to create plans that must remain fluid, full of possibilities but also contingencies. They must outline tentative plans in their head, possible lines of play, and make plays on the basis of those tentative possibilities as they develop and emerge. Thus, because of his greater confidence in the deck, the TPS master will plan for and be prepared to develop more lines of play.
Example: You led turn 1 with Fetchland into Underground Sea, Duress, taking your opponent’s Force of Will. Your hand is: Polluted Delta, Merchant Scroll, Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, and Mox Jet. On turn 2, you draw another land. What do you do?
My guess is that the typical TPS player would play a second land, cast Merchant Scroll for Ancestral Recall, and fire off the Recall knowing that the way is probably clear, thanks to the turn 1 Duress. This would be a mistake. This is perhaps the most vivid example of where confidence and trust in the deck makes a difference. The correct play — in my opinion – is to cast Dark Ritual first off the Mox, then play Merchant Scroll for Ancestral Recall, and fire it off. The difference is the difference between opening yourself up to other lines of play and closing yourself off to them. What makes this particular example so compelling is that the cost of the play is so little and the benefits are potentially enormous. Since you have a Cabal Ritual in hand, even if you ‘waste’ your Dark Ritual here, you’ll still have another Ritual in hand, and one that will be ever closer to Threshold. But if you draw a Black spell that you can play with that Ritual mana, you will have enough mana to play that spell now, such as Necropotence, or Black Lotus and Mind’s Desire, or Demonic Tutor for Yawgmoth’s Will, if you draw more acceleration, so that you might win right there.
At an even higher level of analysis, it’s not simply that a player who is pessimistic about his chances will foreclose lines of play that may be open to him, or miscue and push the deck too hard, it’s that their planning process is flawed at the very outset. Their analysis will be too hand-focused, and not more deeply rooted.
Put succinctly, there is a hand-library connection. All Vintage decks have a strong connection between their hands and their libraries. Original Long.dec perhaps has the most intricate hand/library/sideboard connection of any deck in Magic history, where you were literally using all 75 cards every game, and had to keep all 75 cards in mind. You would sometimes Demonic Consultation for Burning Wish, Burning Wish for Yawg Will out of your sideboard, replay Consult for Burning Wish for Tendrils. But what I mean by hand/library connection goes deeper than using tutors.
It means recognizing that a TPS player should be making plans not simply based upon what is in hand, but be open to what they might draw. Stax players understand this principle very well. It’s this: Your deck is designed to give you what you can use to advance the game state. It might not give you the card you were thinking of, but it will give you something useful. Thus, the Workshop prison pilot uses other cards to bide time until a Smokestack can arrive. And when it does, it knows that it can topdeck permanents indefinitely to keep a Smokestack set at 1 around. A Workshop player’s opening hand is just the beginning. They know that the cards on the top of their library are just as important as the cards in their hand. Although TPS does not try to slow the game down in the same way, the principle remains the same: the cards on top of your library are just as important as the cards in your hand. The only difference is that you don’t know what they are.
In this regard, here is the difference between a TPS master and a TPS novice. The TPS novice makes plans based solely upon the cards in their hand and inadvertently cuts off likely lines of play. The TPS master mentally integrates or prepares for potential topdecks with the cards already in hand. This isn’t simply a matter of experience or mathematical intellect; it’s also a matter of willpower, of confidence.
Example: You mulligan into this hand: Polluted Delta, Force of Will, Fact or Fiction, Dark Ritual, Merchant Scroll, Tendrils of Agony. Your opponent is on the play. You Force of Will their turn 1 threat (assume they are a Blue-based control deck), pitching Fact or Fiction, and then you draw Mystical Tutor on your turn. Do you play it, and if so, for what?
I would wager that the instinct of most TPS pilots would be to play Mystical Tutor here on the opponent’s endstep for Ancestral Recall. I think this would be a mistake. If you run the math, there are 38 (out of 53) cards in the library that you can topdeck here that would be immediately useful. For example, any Mox here allows you to play Merchant Scroll. But even more than the math, the willpower of the TPS player has to come into play. Mysticalling for Ancestral here is as likely a play borne out of fear, a need to continue to develop the board state, as it is anything else. If the TPS player has a greater confidence in the deck to give them what they need, then this play will not be necessary. The lesson here is restraint. Confidence, and a greater focus and reliance on not just what is in hand, but what’s not in hand, will allow you to do more, and make the most of what you have.
A person who has faith that his deck will not him what he needs (if not what he/she wants) will make different decisions than a player who lacks that confidence. I am not saying that you should be unduly optimistic about what your deck may give you, but you should assume that your deck will give you cards you can use, even if it won’t give you what you want. I do believe that a touch of optimism — of faith — may be a necessary antidote to the fear that too many Ritual pilots experience. If they simply believed in their deck more, then they would be more open to different lines of play and perform better.
However, the hand-library connection does not begin once you start the game. It begins when you draw your first hand. Confidence leads the experienced TPS player to mulligan less, and to keep hands that appear risky on their face, but are not in actual reality. As you get better and better with the deck, you will mulligan less and to outside observers, it will appear that you are getting “luckier” as well, since you are preparing yourself to take advantage of a wider range of topdecks (as it must surely have appeared when I drew Demonic Tutor off of my Ancestral in the example above).
Vintage is perhaps the format where the mulligan decision is most important and least intuitive. The old saying that in Vintage the coin flip is the early game, mulligan is the mid-game, and turn one the late game is a gross exaggeration, but the mulligan does remain a critical tactical decision in Vintage play. This is obvious in decks like Ichorid, where cards like Serum Powder are functionally important. But it is no less true in Vintage generally, where decisions such as a whether to mulligan into a hand with Force of Will or a hand containing a sideboard card have to be constantly weighed against the risks of mulliganing. The reason that the mulligan decisions are least intuitive in Vintage is that much of our magic experience is outside of Vintage. The typical markers of an unkeepable hand, too much mana or too little mana, are less applicable in Vintage.
Consider this hand:
Swamp
Dark Ritual
Force of Will
Merchant Scroll
Mind’s Desire
Darksteel Colossus
Memory Jar
First of all, the hand has no Blue mana and no productive immediate plays aside from being able to play Force of Will. The presence of DSC means that — at best — this is a functional 6 card hand. It has three of the four most expensive spells in the deck, which means, that there are more functionally useless cards in hand, at least useless in the near term. Given all of those features, this hand may look like an automatic mulligan, or one that is probably a mulligan. The question though, is not how a hand “looks,” but whether the math supports it.
Here are the possible topdecks that could make this hand immediately playable:
2 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Island
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Black Lotus
3 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Grim Tutor
1 Necropotence
There are 23 possible turn 1 topdecks (out of 53 cards) that make this hand have immediately productive plays beyond Force of Willing. That’s a 43% chance of drawing one on your first draw step. Granted, some of those plays don’t necessarily make a playable hand. For example, having Duress might help you buy a turn, or a turn and some fraction of another turn, but it won’t, by itself, allow you to do anything beyond Duress. A topdeck of Duress then requires further topdecks to be playable.
If we make small changes to this essential hand, we can see that the decision to keep becomes more or less difficult. Suppose instead of Darksteel Colossus, this hand had Mox Ruby. That would have two positive effects that would make this a more keepable hand. First, it would create a net increase in the number of topdecks that produce productive plays because the 3 other Moxen, Lotus Petal, the two Cabal Rituals, and the Swamp would all allow you to cast Memory Jar on turn one or two. Thus, the number of possible topdecks that allow productive plays would rise to 29/53, or 54.7%. Second, and just as important when thinking about the risks of a six-card hand, Darksteel Colossus being in your library means that your hand is closer to an actual seven-card hand. Now, you only have three of the four most expensive spells in your deck in hand.
Ceteris Peribus, sitting down round 3 against an unknown opponent, I would probably mulligan the first hand and keep the second. We could continue to modify the hand to try to find the line between keepeable and unkeepable, but it would not be a very practical exercise. In fact, there is no such line. It is always context dependent.
In real life, things are very rarely “constant.” In addition to the math based answers, which is often counter-intuitive, there are usually qualitative factors that must play a role in your decision-making process. For example: Do you know what your opponent is playing? Has your opponent mulliganed? Did you win game 1? (Owen Turtenwald told me that this is irrelevant — I disagree, and will explain why in a moment.) If you are post-board, do you suspect a particular sideboard plan? What is your opponent’s mood/demeanor? As I said, each of these factors must be part of the mix. Magic is not simply a matter of math, it is also a matter of psychology. (As an interesting aside, the Pro Tour: Kyoto match between LSV and Gab Nassif featured a potential bit of trickery as to whether Luis had topdecked the land needed to play a crucial spell, demonstrating the importance of psychology, reads, tells, bluffs, etc).
Consider this hand:
Force of Will
Ponder
Mind’s Desire
Dark Ritual
Grim Tutor
Yawgmoth’s Will
Duress
If this hand had a land, it could generate a massive Yawgmoth’s Will within a turn or two, and potentially a Mind’s Desire for 6 (or more) within that Will.
But is this hand keepable?
Some rightfully scoffed at the notion. But consider, seriously for the moment: What circumstances might make this a keepable hand or, at least, not obviously unkeepable?
The first question has to be: what are the possible topdecks that allow productive plays?
Here is the list:
2 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Island
2 Swamp
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
15 out of 53 cards seems to weigh heavily, here, in favor of mulliganing.
But beyond the math, what other factors might weigh in favor of keeping this hand?
If your opponent is playing Ichorid, this hand is clearly a loser. Even if your opponent has mulliganed to zero, you risk drawing dead for many turns, giving them the possibility to topdeck a Bazaar and come back into the game. In general, the more your opponent has mulliganed, the less keepable this hand appears. Regardless of the opponent, if your opponent has mulliganed extremely low, let’s say 4 or lower, you actually risk giving them an “in” back into the game by you topdecking dead. However, if your opponent has just mulliganed once and given themselves a slight disadvantage, then this hand appears more keepable than if they mulliganed deeply. That’s counterintuitive, but the reasoning is pretty simple. First, if you have a productive topdeck, then you will be able to capitalize on their card disadvantage. Second, their small mulligan actually will buy you a turn or two to find a productive topdeck. When your opponent mulligans deeply, the card disadvantage of mulliganing yourself loses importance, and it’s more important just to have a hand that does something — anything, really.
I think the second question posed here can be answered best by identifying decks that would actually generate more productive topdecks. Specifically: what deck or archetype would increase the number of productive topdecks? Answer: fragile speed combo. This hand has there Blue spells. If you can make Force of Will/Misdirection a productive topdeck here that actually is useful strategically as opposed to merely tactically (as Duress would have been in the first hand I presented in this subsidiary discussion), then that would weigh towards keeping this hand. That’s because against speed combo, a single Force of Will can cause them to lose games by going “all-in” on a single play, especially if they’ve just mulliganed to six.
Let me be upfront and admit that I kept this hand in round 1 of the Grand Prix: Chicago side event. Anthony Michaels was observing my match and was blown away that I would keep this hand. Consider all of the factors I just analyzed: my opponent was playing speed combo and my opponent had mulliganed to six. In addition, I had won game 1 and was on the draw, so I’d have more “chances” to topdeck a productive card. But three other factors guided my decision. First, my opponent was playing a five color manabase that included Forbidden Orchard, so that I thought that there was a non-trivial chance that they’d bring in Oath’s. Second, he seemed inexperienced and unhappy with this deck, which suggested that he might be ready to fold if he saw a Force. If I mulliganed, I sensed the possibility of giving him a reason to mentally stay in the match, psychological nourishment if you will. Finally, this hand was a high risk, big reward type. If I topdeck a land in my first couple of turns, chances are that I am going to win. As it stood, there was a 36% chance that I’ll topdeck on of those cards that I can use. Since I’m on the draw, I’ll have a chance to draw one of them before he even gets a second turn. Maybe someone out there can actually calculate the odds of drawing one of the 15 mana sources or one of my four remaining Force of Will effects (drawing without replacement) in the first two or three turns. But if I don’t topdeck one of those cards, I’ll probably lose. However, the hand is so powerful — with Yawgmoth’s Will already there — that it’s not just that I’ll have a productive play if I topdeck a land, it’s that I’ll have a game winning play. That’s a qualitative difference that the raw numbers themselves cannot and do not reflect. N everything can be quantified.
So, you might be wondering, what actually happened?
My opponent played Black Lotus. Perfect card to Force of Will! I played Force, pitching Mind’s Desire, and my opponent played Pact of Negation. One way or the other, this would be interesting, I thought. He broke the Lotus for UUU and cast Ponder. Then he scooped.
Apparently, my opponent was trying to generate the mana to play turn one Ad Nauseam.
I don’t tell that tale as a “results oriented” (ha!) example as a way of proving the validity of my decision, but rather to show that my read on my opponent was correct. There are almost no circumstances in which I can imagine I’d keep than hand, aside from what actually happened, and even then I am skeptical as to whether my decision to keep that hand was correct. My point, however, is that it is not as obvious as it would appear at first glance, even from a mathematical perspective. I peeked at the top of my library and the top three cards were two Force of Wills and a Blue card with a land beneath them. After having a discussion regarding this hand with several players, some of which I recounted, we played the hand and pretended to topdeck in various situations, and our topdecks seemed to correlate with the math. About 33% of the time I’d draw a land, and in over half of the goldfishes I’d see a land within the first couple of turns.
The point is not that you should keep hand without mana (bad advise), but that master level TPS players must be cognizant that there are many more keepable hands than may appear at first blush. This supports my general point that a TPS pilot must have faith in their deck (as well as good at math). But it also is a reminder of another point: TPS is not a deck that you should feel comfortable mulliganing with. It’s true that you could draw a busted hand of five cards with turn one Necro or Twister. But, due to the fact that TPS runs so many restricted cards, the deck has a high variance with respect to functionality. There are also a limited number of blue spells (only 18-19) to support Force of Will. If you mulligan, you risk drawing hands that are not sufficiently synergistic or unable to use Force of Will.
If TPS pilots have greater faith in their deck and stop trying to push the deck into a faster kill, but build a critical mass, they will enjoy considerably more success. They will then open themselves to superior lines of play and get a better sense for the deck’s rhythm.
3. Focus on What’s Important
The first two principles are challenges or obstacles that tend to hold back TPS players from making good plays. This principle is less of an obstacle holding players back than a principle that will elevate your play to the highest level.
TPS players of all skill levels have trouble focusing on what is important. It sounds pedantic to say it, but with a deck as complex as TPS, it is very easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. It is easy to get caught up in tactical battles and fail to keep in mind strategic mid-points and end-points. This is why I think that my original TPS primer was so helpful. It laid out a concise framework for advancing into the endgame. But in the heat of battle, we fall back on habits of play that are a disservice.
Example: Suppose you are facing a control pilot. You have on the table two Swamps, a Mana Vault, and an Island.
Your hand is this: Mox Emerald, Mox Ruby, Dark Ritual, Force of Will, and Mind’s Desire and you draw an Ancestral Recall on your turn.
You would like to play Mind’s Desire, but you do not have a second blue mana source. What do you do? What if your opponent has a counterspell?
Suppose that you decide to play Ancestral Recall and your opponent plays Force of Will. Do you Force of Will their Force? My answer is ‘no.’ Force of Willing a Force here is, in my view, a classic example of missing the Forest for the Trees. One of, if not the, most potent engine you have against a control deck is Mind’s Desire. The purpose of Ancestral here is to help you find the second Blue mana source. It has served its function by drawing out an opponent counterspell. Mind’s Desire is the most potent engine you can deploy against a Mana Drain deck. It is the engine that is most likely to get you into a favorable end-game. Pitching Mind’s Desire, when you are only a hair away from being able to pull it off, in favor of drawing three more cards, is just wrong.
But focusing on what it is important means more than knowing which card is your real engine and which is bait. It also means navigating through your opponent’s answers. Simply put, there is a tendency among Magic players to take the shortest route between two points. This is never truer than when you are in a tight game 3, where your level of stress is at its peak and you just want the match to be over with in the most convenient way possible. This is why countless players I’ve faced have lost a match at the moment of victory to Mana Drain mana burn. It also means that you need to be prepared to take the road less traveled, even if it appears to be a longer and less immediate route to victory. Just because a path to victory is longer does not mean that it is less assured.
Take another look at the first example in this article. What if, after you Necroed for 5, your opponent played a Tormod’s Crypt on their turn? What if they went turn two, move into second main phase, play Island and Tormod’s Crypt? You can Force of Will it, pitching Chain of Vapor (or Mystical Tutor). Or you can let it resolve. Which is the right play?
Many TPS pilots would be locked into Mystical Tutoring for Yawgmoth’s Will, the decks most potent and efficient engine, and therefore conclude that they must counter Tormod’s Crypt. I think that this would be a misuse of resources, and likely be a trap. Force of Willing Tormod’s Crypt is often a trap. Your opponent can then Mana Drain your Force to great advantage. You will need your Force of Will to protect your own subsequent plays, which will likely not revolve around Yawgmoth’s Will.
In any case, there are many ways you can play around it. Focusing on what is important also means playing around things you don’t need to address. It’s the same principle in how too often TPS players try to counter Null Rod. Your mana base is particularly suited to playing around it. With respect to the situation at hand, you have Chain of Vapor in your grip. It’s true that you have Black Lotus in your graveyard, but you can still set up a very nice Yawgmoth’s Will in a number of ways. You could Chain of Vapor the Tormod’s Crypt, cause your opponent to sacrifice the Crypt. Then you could play all of your Rituals and then cast Yawgmoth’s Will. You could cast Yawgmoth’s Will, let them Crypt you in response, and then let the Crypt resolve, but before Yawgmoth’s Will resolves play all of your Rituals. Finally, and most likely, you will want to pursue another engine. If my opponent played Tormod’s Crypt, I would be inclined either to find Tinker or try to set up a Mind’s Desire for at least 5 storm. Either spell should produce winning results, given that you have Necropotence and plenty of life.
Perhaps one less that brings each of these points together is when and how to use your countermagic.
Example: Consider this opening hand against a random opponent:
Swamp
Dark Ritual
Duress
Black Lotus
Misdirection
Chain of Vapor
Tendrils of Agony
You lead with Swamp, Duress, and your opponent plays Force of Will. What do you do?
Probably the common sense answer is that you play Misdirection, pitching Chain of Vapor, since they appear to be holding something they wish to protect with Duress. That seems sensible.
But think about it more deeply. What is it that they may be protecting? Tinker and Ancestral Recall seem like the most likely candidates. If they have Ancestral Recall in hand, then you just played your only Misdirection. If they have Tinker, then there is a good chance you’ll be able to Chain of Vapor the DSC with misdirection backup, since you can break Lotus for UUU and play Ritual to hardcast Misdirection. What’s more, with all of this mana, practically any topdeck you draw is playable. You can even play turn two Bargain and protect it with Misdirection. To some extent, this example brings to bear all of the principles discussed so far.
Perhaps one of the most hilarious plays in the Vintage Championship last year was where Brian DeMars played Tinker against Paul. Paul was holding double Force of Will and two Blue spells with a few lands on the table, and a Mana Vault, but he let it resolve. Paul’s play made Brian think that he didn’t have a Force, and so instead of getting Sundering Titan to nuke Paul’s lands, Brian got Black Lotus and cast Yawgmoth’s Will. Paul then had double Force to stop Brian. As a general rule with TPS, you want to save your countermagic to protect your threats when they are on the stack rather than stop your opponent’s threats or their answers to your threats. Countering cards like Null Rod and Tormod’s Crypt or Chalice of the Void reveal a failure to understand what is most important, and how your deck works, and allows your opponent to interact with you more than they should.
This is also the reason why most TPS players do not understand how to sideboard. I, too, fell into the trap of sideboarding in cards like Tarmogoyf/Phyrexian Negator and stuff like Dark Confidant for Workshop matches, and the like. Too many TPS pilots get caught up in tactical fights instead of taking the broader view. They, as I once did, look at Tarmogoyf and think that that is a trump to Workshop prison strategies, especially those with Thorn of Amethyst. They also see that as a way to beat Fish decks. Alternatively, some TPS pilots brings in more creature removal or run cards like Rack ad Ruin. This is a focus on tactics, and not on what is important.
What’s important is this: Workshop decks will try to attack your manabase. Your response should not be to stop them, because that’s playing into their strengths, but to expand your mana base and then play a silver bullet that addresses all of these cards at once. Thus they will attack your mana by playing Sphere of Resistance, Thorn of Amethyst, Wasteland, Null Rod, Magus of the Moon, Tangle Wire, Smokestack, and cards of that nature. You can ignore almost all of these cards. If you bring in a bunch of basic lands and blue bounce spells that will sweep all of your opponent’s artifacts into their hand, then you will win so long as you can counter the Smokestack or bounce their Smokestack before it hurts you. This plan of just playing lands while they play lock spells is the best strategy for beating Workshops, and Fish decks as well. Through deck design, rather than tactical answers, you can trump their plans and dramatically narrows the cards you care about to a manageable number. This is why my answer to Fish is the same: just bring in lands and bounce spells. They can’t actually play enough Meddling Mages or Gaddock Teegs to matter, since their clock is so slow and you’ll be able to bounce the relevant card and win before you are in real danger.
The three takeaway lessons: play TPS more slowly building a critical mass, have confidence in the deck, and focus on what’s important may sound like mere generalities. I’ve tried to illustrate them with specific examples. But as you sit down to play the deck, these generalities should spring to life. These principles won’t give you the answers you may want, but they will inform the process by which you reach your own answers.
Until next time…