I am currently some few thousand feet in the air on a plane for the first time in my life. The occasion? The StarCityGames Open Series event located in
Dallas, Texas.
I may or may not have a parachute with me.
It’s kind of weird to see me in a Central Time Zone location for a Magic event. I live in New York City, am usually in a car for all the events, and almost
never travel outside of the east coast for anything. So why would I travel all the way out to Texas?
Because I felt like it.
Sometimes, you get that itch, that spark that ignites within you to not only play Magic, but do well at Magic. I could’ve easily spent my weekend at a
couple of IQs, but IQs haven’t been satiating enough lately. IQs here in the northeast are regularly stacked to the brim, and I consider myself
exceptionally fortunate to be able to consistently do well in them. I just wanted more. The feeling of walking into a tournament hall, armed with nothing
but 75 tools of artistry, the mind that put those tools together, and a handful of almonds, is unlike any other. I wanted to battle. I wanted to compete.
I also wanted to experience actually being on a plane. I’ve never been on one before, and the thought of being in the air and just staring down at what
I’ve been on my entire life was super exciting.
What? I’m easily excitable!
When I boarded the plane, I was nervous, super unsettled, and downright scared, but taking off and seeing New York City from the sky was one of the most
revitalizing experiences I’ve ever had. And when I get excited, I get motivated.
That motivation was directly channeled when I met with Jim Davis at the airport in Dallas-Fort Worth. I was initially really high on the Mardu deck that
Mark Nestico piloted to a top 8 finish in the Sunday Super Series at Grand Prix Miami. I loved how strong Butcher of the Horde was against G/W Devotion,
and Crackling Doom was great against the lot of their major threats. Thoughtseize is obviously powerful, and the mana was among the better manabases I’ve
seen.
Jim and I talked a whole lot about the format from the grand scheme, and we concluded that G/W was definitely something we wanted to be mindful of. Neither
of us thought the deck was as insane as everyone was making it out to be, but finding holes in the armor was of utmost importance. Doing this was
difficult, but two of the huge holes in G/W Devotion’s game is its weakness to fliers, and its lack of reach. With this knowledge, we wanted to find a
build that had the best flier against them, along with sufficient reach. We found Jeskai builds on Magic Online and quickly realized that Mantis Rider was
the absolute best flier to have against them.
We went to the hotel and immediately threw our Standard collections on the table, smashed them together, and promptly created a battle box.
… And by that, I mean we built all of the Standard decks and ran the gauntlet.
Now, it’s one thing to spend a week or so putting a gauntlet down, jamming matches, evaluating each of them, and making a conscious decision on where to go
for a tournament while also tuning whatever decision you do make.
We had a day. Easy enough.
We started with a build that utilized Gods Willing, Outpost Siege, and Treasure Cruise. I liked Gods Willing, but Jim wasn’t a fan at all. He didn’t like
the idea of having dead offensive cards in an Outpost Siege deck, and I was fine with hitting one to fix a draw step and push through damage against ground
pounders. We fumbled around a bit with the numbers, but we wound up with a shell that we could agree on.
Creatures (16)
Lands (24)
Spells (20)
Our basis was the same. Soulfire Grand Master was excellent, and Wild Slash was the absolute best way to maintain parity when you have two lands that enter
the battlefield tapped. My build had two Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker instead of Jim’s fourth Outpost Siege and his fourth Soulfire Grand Master. He wanted
to be more of an Outpost Siege deck, so lowering his curve to be able to do two things in one turn as often as possible was his focus. I wanted to be more
of a burn deck, while being able to go over the top of G/W Devotion, Abzan, and killing cards that are good against us.
We practiced against G/W Devotion and completely crushed it multiple times. We switched. Same thing.
Alright, this is weird.
This continued until we moved on to U/B versus G/W. G/W continued to lose. We knew that the deck was good, but we just weren’t doing well with it. Jim was
unsure if he wanted to play U/B or Jeskai Aggro at this point, so we needed to find a tipping point. I mentioned how the Mono-Red matchup was awful for U/B
Control, and that did it. Jim never plays my decks, as our playstyles conflict heavily.
It’s weird, because I’m usually not a fan of results-oriented thinking at all. This is one of the few exceptions where applying a small dose of it can work
out. Time was a concern, as we only had a day to figure out what we wanted to do, but if you’re using results-oriented thinking as a means of progression
over a very short period of preparation time, then a little bit could help a lot, so long as the context of the matter is known and realized from the get
go.
This kind of thinking is highly contextual, but contextual thinking is really important, from playtesting, to card evaluation. When going through the
Dragons of Tarkir spoilers, context is key. Last week
was a good example of this, when I talked about one of my favorite cards in the set at the time: Atarka’s Command.
I was pretty excited about the card because of how it fit in with developing your board progression while also functioning as a semi-slingshot effect.
This was met with quite a bit of discussion, which is great. It’s always good to talk about things, regardless if there’s agreement or not.
One of the more talked about topics was the lack of card advantage that Atarka’s Command gives you. The claim was that the fact that it gave you negative
card advantage makes it not worth playing over other choices. This got me thinking very hard about the theory of negative card advantage and how it’s been
used advantageously over the course of recent Standard environments and how they can be used advantageously now.
Contextual card evaluation is often overlooked because it’s difficult. Who wants to go through a million cards in their heads to figure out where a card
can be applied to its fullest? It’s way simpler to just look at things in a vacuum and with bias. It’s easier to say “Delver of Secrets isn’t playable
because you need a lot of instants and sorceries to make it good” than “If there are enough instant and sorcery spells in the format to fully support it,
along with other creatures to go along with whatever you see yourself doing with it, the Delver could be good.”
Contextual thinking goes beyond just the cards themselves. If there are sacrifice outlets, Sam Black is the go-to player to find the best combination of
cards to utilize that ability to its maximum efficiency. Why? Because that’s the type of Magic he flourishes in (among many others, of course). Shaheen
Soorani will undoubtedly find the best combination of blue tapout control combinations, and Tom Ross will put the fear in everyone via exploiting the
evaluations everyone else abides by!
A card’s strategic value will change, not only due to best and/or worst case scenario, but also because of everything that’s going on around it, including
time, format, player preferences and skillsets, and tournament.
Of course, these aren’t the hinges of the topic, and you shouldn’t ever put too much weight on any of these, but putting no weight into anything outside of
what you may conclude can potentially be just as bad.
Many of my aggressive decks are a bit bigger than what you’d normally see. I do this because I have a good understanding of what I want to be doing with my
creatures offensively. I’m generally forcing the issue as much as possible, and I’m willing to make an unfavorable attack and force my opponent to have it
if it means putting them on the backfoot. Because of this, I’m more willing to play decks that promote this sort of thing. This means having sturdy
creatures that, when replaced, strain resources even further. Abzan Aggro is a good example of this, not only because of Siege Rhino (though that’s a big
part of it), but because of how much you can do with your mana. Decks like R/W Aggro don’t offer this angle as well as Abzan Aggro, but instead look to
dance more with their interaction to eventually leverage whatever advantage they can get, whether that’s Chained to the Rocks, Outpost Siege, or whatnot.
Cards like Atarka’s Command appeal to me because it puts me in a position to do exactly what I described. Yes, I go down a card, but they go down on board.
If your deck is constructed to take full advantage of being ahead on board, then the card advantage isn’t that big a deal, so long as you can complement
those types of powerful effects that might set you back. There will be times where I’ll fall behind because of this, but how often have you fallen behind
when you’ve taken a turn off to cast card advantage spells at sorcery speed?
I think it’s important to utilize ways of thinking outside of what we’re used to. With the Season One Invitational coming up on release weekend, we’re in
unprecedented territory. It’s going to be wild and crazy, and I’ll be working real hard to figure out what Dragons of Tarkir brings to the table.