American Idol > Magic
I consider myself a pretty committed writer, and in the past, I haven’t let Manila floods or thunderstorms stop me from sending the weekly column halfway around the world.
This week, some English teenager almost did.
I’m writing you from Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, where the only Internet terminal near our villa is in the hotel beside the harbor. So this tall English boy in a blazer at the front desk looks down and asks me,”So are you actually staying in this hotel?”
I’m caught dead to rights.
What would JP Meyer do? (WWJD?)
(see”What would [author name="JP Meyer"]JP Meyer[/author] do?“) (and see Part II, too)
Lacking JP’s extensive database of witty retorts culled from Asian movies, I nevertheless notice the other English interns manning the lobby. First of all, they’re closer to my height, and they’re smiling. Second, unlike the earlier Winston Churchill wannabe, his companions are armed with what Darren Di Battista considers the most dangerous weapon unleashed upon mortal man: the plaid skirt.
And hey, green eyes and English accents aren’t bad, either.
So I make a bunch of new friends and have my photo taken, and am able to sneak in to type my article. The sacrifices you have to make… and”Hi, I’m a Star City Featured Writer” isn’t even close to a good pickup line (though I hear Ted Knutson has a few Ravager-inspired ones that are the bomb). [Lebedowicz! – Knut, shaking his fist at the erstwhile Joe Black]
Seriously, I think I can start catching up on Magic correspondence while on vacation, now that Jasmine Trias has been voted out. I mean, my cousins here were rooting for La Toya and Fantasia, but I just said Jasmine is cuter.
We’re actually waiting for World Idol to rope in the Philippines, see. Given the Filipino penchant for cellular phone text messaging (which caused bank runs due to rumors as early as 2000) and street uprisings, I can’t see how we’d lose.
If Simon Cowell was afraid of every household in Hawaii having five phones, he can’t even begin to imagine what a mob of Manila teenagers can do to a cellphone network.
Having finally seen episodes of American Idol over here, I actually thought StarCityGames.com could do a really entertaining ripoff. We can have Steve Menendian play Randy, I can force myself to fill in for Paula Abdul, and of course Simon Cowell has nothing on JP Meyer. [There’s a crossdressing joke here that I’m not at liberty to make, but anybody who says they could”force themselves to fill in for Paula Abdul” is doing it with a smile on their face. – Knut] For good measure,”Crazy” Carl Winter can host, Phil Stanton a.k.a. DrSylvan can do the post-vote statistics, and Ted Knutson and TheFerrett can be the security people, in case someone tries a Kill Bill number on Jaypee.
“The Deck” and the alleged identity crisis
The day before I left Manila, I was surprised to see that Kevin Cron’s daily thread posited that”The Deck” was drifting towards the Exalted Angel-centered aggro-control deck Eon Blue Apocalypse, or EBA. In fact, his message ended,”How many more changes before we start calling it Aggro Control?”
This isn’t a stray forum quip. The following week, Smmenycakes Menendian called”The Deck””half EBA.” (see”Tough Nuts – A Balanced Type One Metagame?“).
I’m afraid newer readers might take the quips to an extreme Kevin and Smmenycakes didn’t seriously mean, and the resulting confusion goes well beyond”The Deck” and deep into fundamentals.
Germbus Zherbmans, Steve O'Connell, April 2004 test deck (see”Control at a Crossroads“)
Blue (18)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
4 Brainstorm
2 Cunning Wish
1 Fact or Fiction
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
White (7)
1 Balance
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Exalted Angel
2 Decree of Justice
Black (6)
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
3 Skeletal Scrying
1 Mind Twist
Red (3)
2 Gorilla Shaman
1 Fire / Ice
Mana (26)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Sol Ring
4 Flooded Strand
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
1 Library of Alexandria
2 City of Brass
3 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
Sideboard (15)
1 Skeletal Scrying
3 Red Elemental Blast
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Disenchant
1 Gush
2 Rack and Ruin
3 Flametongue Kavu
1 Damping Matrix
The logical question is: What is control?
The very first chapter of”The Control Player’s Bible” from 2001 read:”Just stay alive and draw more cards, remember?” Talking Shadow Prices, a Type I control deck, simply, aims to ride out the turbulent early tempo battles and ride card advantage to victory later, when the shadows shift (see”Counting Shadow Prices“).
This remains clear from the above sample. First, Exalted Angel steps into the shoes of the venerable The Abyss and Zuran Orb, but it’s still supported by the same, extremely efficient spot removal (see”Control at a Crossroads“).
Second, the streamlining into multiple Skeletal Scryings replaces all the other Fact or Fiction replacements tried from Future Sight to Isochron Scepter (see”History of ‘The Deck’ December 2003“).
So where did some people get confused?
Who’s the beatdown, who’s the control?
At this point, let’s peek at the other, much lesser known deck in this discussion. This recent list is from Igualada, Spain:
Eon Blue Apocalypse, GabetheBabe, April 2004 test deck
Creatures (8)
4 Meddling Mage
4 Exalted Angel
Spells (27)
1 Disenchant
2 Swords to Plowshares
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
1 Stifle
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
4 Duress
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Mind Twist
1 Damping Matrix
Mana (25)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
4 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
2 Island
1 City of Brass
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
The Mana Crypt alone is a hint that EBA would love a first-turn Exalted Angel to start an immediate beatdown. However, it is clear that EBA is not aggro.
About eighty columns ago (see”Deck Deconstruction v. Aggro“), the Control Player’s Bible described the basic aggro strategy as a blitzkrieg. It wants to play out the threats fast and furious, and overwhelm and race the opponent. With only eight creatures (half of which are vanilla 2/2s), this simply isn’t it with EBA.
Taking the other side of the coin, it’s equally clear that EBA is not control, either. The most telling sign is the lack of depth in its draw engine’s bench. Further, while it has Swords to Plowshares like”The Deck,” it actually has much less spot removal when you factor in the absence of Cunning Wish. Thus, this deck has a greater reliance on Exalted Angel, and runs four of them.
So what is EBA’s gameplan? It’s closest to aggro-control, which I took pains to discuss in”What IS aggro-control?” (I hope you’ve read that older column, since you’ll enjoy this one a lot more.) Thus, despite the large number of cards they have in common, it’s curious to draw parallels between EBA and”The Deck” when the former is actually closer to Gay Fish (see”Head to Head: Fish“) and Suicide Black (see”Head to Head: Classic Suicide Black“).
Looking at the slots that differ, you see the difference in the shadow prices EBA shops for (see”Counting Shadow Prices“). Control-oriented cards like Skeletal Scrying, Cunning Wish, and Gorilla Shaman have been replaced with cheap disruption like Duress and Meddling Mage. Taken with the Mana Crypt, you can envision the flurry of early disruption, followed by the Angel flying quickly into the breach to clean up. Again, distinguishing aggro from aggro-control, EBA has less beatdown than the usual aggro deck, but the disruption in place of threats aims to give the aggro-control deck’s threats more mileage.
(Incidentally, if you want to draw a parallel to a”The Deck” offshoot, you’d do better to compare EBA to Darren Di Battista’s old pet project, Old School Expulsion. Of course, JP Meyer, Matt D’Avanzo and myself almost made him cry by noting OSE was”Keeper without Green and White,” and White got added back later. Anyway, Exalted Angel is now a better Masticore for that design. See Darren Di Battista a.k.a. Azhrei,”The Old School Expulsion.”)
A structured discussion like this makes the non-issue sound so elementary. Yet, why did some people start discussing”The Deck” and the more aggressive EBA in the same breath a tad too often recently? Beyond the decklists, people also discussed the way the decks play.
When does control shift gears into beatdown?
Let’s start with the overly simplistic observation that”The Deck” certainly does not want Mana Crypt. What I mean is that it won’t go out of its way to tweak itself into high chances of a double Mox opening hand or some other acceleration, nor its mana base for high chances of unmorphing Angel right at turn 2.
This should be very clear, but what may be confusing is how an aggro-control play style and a control play style may dovetail later on.
First, what do I mean by an aggro-control play style? Recall Game 1 of the Growing ‘Tog feature (see”Head to Head: Growing ‘Tog, The Roland Bode Tribute“). At turn 13, Smmenycakes Menendian Mana Drained my Merchant Scroll, then played a Quirion Dryad on his turn. While countering a midgame tutor might raise a control player’s eyebrows, it fits right into an aggro-control mentality. By stopping the tutor and the reshuffle (immediately after a Brainstorm), he stalled me long enough for the Dryad to go to work, which isn’t a long time.
So how do the play styles dovetail?
In”Control at a Crossroads,” I noted that”The Deck” win conditions have been hard to remove, can be played alone without having to be set up, and win in a relatively short time though not in just one or two turns. This covers Serra Angel, Morphling, Decree of Justice, and Exalted Angel, and the rough figure is four or five turns.
Now, again, the victory creature is not intended to be played early and aggressively; this is far from the primary game plan. In fact, you want to devote as few slots as possible to your win conditions since you don’t want to be holding one when you need to Force of Will that early threat or Skeletal Scrying into a better position from a stalemate. When you do play one early, it’s often defensively, like a Mana Drained Morphling facing off against a Phyrexian Negator and Hypnotic Specter, or the turn 3 Exalted Angel acting as a Moat against an Arcbound Ravager and two Arcbound Workers in”Head to Head: Ravager.” Simply, it will come in with a shout of”Spring forth, burly protector!” than a cry for the opponent’s jugular.
Normally, however, when you deploy the win condition, you’ve put the opponent on a clock and no longer need to take complete control. At that point, all you have to do is not lose in the next four or five turns, or whenever the clock strikes the hour. And so the most rational thing to play aggro-control, to hold back and just protect your threat. It’s very similar to an NBA team with a ten-point lead just dribbling away the shot clock for the win; all they have to do is make sure the opponent’s doesn’t suddenly steal the ball back then end with a Fisher-esque shot at four-tenths of a second.
Thus, the Control Player’s Bible features are filled with a control deck describes as going aggro-control after it has a threat on the table. In”Head to Head: Landstill,” you even saw my oppoîent Force of Will my Brainstorm on turn 18, when he already had a Mishra’s Factory and Faerie Conclave on the table. Heck, in”Head to Head: Fish,” you saw me Red Elemental Blast a chump-blocking Faerie Conclave rather than let it die and wait another turn.
Simply, when you’re just counting the ticks before the clock strikes, countering that tutor or Brainstorm becomes a more plausible play for the control deck.
Now, the ability to play both the control role and the beatdown role well makes for a strong deck (see Mike Flores,”Who’s the Beatdown?“). However, as the increasing speed of Type I makes it impossible for control decks to establish complete control before playing the victory condition, shifting into aggro-control mode has become increasingly important for the control deck, while emphasizing that it is nevertheless not built to open the game in this mode.
A history lesson
Let’s go back to the very roots of Type I control (see”The Control Player’s Bible, Part II“:
“The Deck” 1995, Brian Weissman, as posted on The Dojo
Blue (11)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Timetwister
1 Braingeyser
4 Mana Drain
2 Counterspell
1 Recall
White (12)
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Disenchant
2 Moat
2 Serra Angel
Black (2)
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mind Twist
Red (2)
2 Red Elemental Blast
Green (1)
1 Regrowth
Artifact (4)
1 Ivory Tower
2 Disrupting Scepter
1 Jayemdae Tome
Mana (28)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Sol Ring
1 Library of Alexandria
2 Strip Mine
3 City of Brass
1 Plateau
1 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
4 Tundra
3 Plains
4 Island
Sideboard (15)
1 Plains
1 Disrupting Scepter
1 Jayemdae Tome
1 Tormod’s Crypt
2 Control Magic
1 Counterspell
2 Blood Moon
3 Circle of Protection: Red
2 Divine Offering
1 Moat
If you go back to Paul Pantera’s original notes and Sensei Frank Kusumoto’s original commentary, achieving complete control before laying your Serra Angel is emphasized. That was the entire point of the Disrupting Scepter lock; if your opponent’s hand is empty when you play the Angel, you’re practically assured of being able to counter whatever removal he topdecks in the next five turns. Moreover, the original build had only six real counters, and Force of Will had not yet been printed.
A lot of this changed years later with Morphling, which could protect itself from most removal, and survive combat with most creatures. At the height of unrestricted Fact or Fiction and mono-Blue, I wrote (see”Brainless players v. mono blue“):
“When Morphling (or Masticore) drops, the game completely changes, and this is what more traditional players have to understand. From a control deck, it becomes an aggro-control deck. The B.S.B. player has to counter for only four or five more turns, and then he wins.
“In practical terms, don’t be afraid to drop Morphling at the first opportunity. Even if you have just one counter left but can guess that the opponent is out of counters, go for it. Even if the opponent manages to Tutor up a Diabolic Edict or play three Bolts when you only have two blue mana, he will use up too many cards just killing the first Morphling, allowing you to win with the next one. Be aggressive, and don’t bother to wait for a full hand of counters.”
The description held in Type II as well, where you had Morphling, but a small pool of good counterspells (see”Brainless players v. mono blue“):
Accelerated Blue, Zvi Mowshowitz
Counters (9)
4 Counterspell
4 Miscalculation
1 Rewind
Creatures (8)
3 Morphling
3 Masticore
2 Palinchron
Removal (8)
4 Treachery
4 Powder Keg
Card drawing (3)
3 Stroke of Genius
Mana (32)
15 Island
4 Faerie Conclave
4 Rishadan Port
4 Dust Bowl
1 Blasted Landscape
4 Grim Monolith
Sideboard:
2 Arcane Laboratory
3 Unsummon
1 Submerge
1 Temporal Adept
3 Scrying Glass
4 Annul
1 Masticore
Reviewing this play style evolution in its historical context, you can see the increasing value of the”Angel gambit,” or playing that Serra Angel as an intelligent, calculated gamble before complete control was achieved. After 1999, it was called”Suicide Morphling,” but déjà vu, it’s now the Angel gambit once again.
Again, you saw how an active Angel can singlehandedly win against aggro in”Head to Head: Ravager,” and most have no way to remove it.
Making sure who’s the beatdown
I’d like to end by reemphasizing the large number of cards”The Deck” and EBA have in common, yet the different way those cards are used. This highlights how different cards must be used more aggressively or more defensively in different decks, and more importantly, how the same cards in the same decks must be used more aggressively or more defensively depending on the context.
Let’s walk through some historical but archetypical examples to bring home this point:
Geeba, Paul Sligh, Pro Tour Atlanta Qualifier, June 1996
2 Dwarven Trader
2 Goblin of the Flarg
4
Brass Man4 Ironclaw Orc
3 Dwarven Lieutenant
2 Orcish Librarian
2 Brothers of Fire
2 Orcish Artillery
2 Orcish Cannoneer
2 Dragon Whelp
1
Black Vise4
Lightning Bolt4 Incinerate
1 Fireball
1 Shatter
1 Detonate
4
Strip Mine4 Mishra’s Factory
2 Dwarven Ruins
13 Mountain
Sideboard
4
2 Serrated Arrows
1 Shatter
1 Detonate
1 Fireball
1
Meekstone1 Zuran Orb
3 Active Volcano
1 An-Zerrin Ruins
Deadguy Red, David Price, 1997 United States Nationals (Type II)
4 Goblin Vandals
3 Goblin Digging Team
4 Ironclaw Orcs
2 Dwarven Soldiers
4 Ball Lightning
2 Viashino Sandstalker
4 Lava Hounds
4
Incinerate4 Hammer of Bogardan
4 Fireblast
3 Kaervek’s Torch
4
Dwarven Ruins18 Mountainz
Sideboard
4
4 Detonate
4 Straw Golem
3 Pyrokinesis
One of these is clearly more control-oriented than the other, though both are famous historical mono-Red weenie decks. To further confuse you, at one point in Type I, post-sideboard Sligh with eight Red Elemental Blast / Pyroblast mimicked aggro-control (see”Deck Deconstruction: Aggro v. ‘The Deck’“), and contemporary aggro decks are not far from this strategy though they no longer execute it with Red (see”Counting Tempo, Part IV: The Death of Aggro“).
Now, try another group from circa 1997 (see”What IS aggro-control?“):
Darwin’s”Kastle”, Darwin Kastle, Top 8, Pro Tour Paris 1997, April 1997 (Mirage/Visions Block Constructed)
Creatures (20)
4 Goblin Elite Infantry
4 Suq’Ata Lancer
4 Cloud Elemental
4 Man O’ War
4 Frenetic Efreet
Other spells (16)
4 Incinerate
4 Memory Lapse
4 Fireblast
4 Kaervek’s Torch
Land (24)
14 Mountain
10 Island
Sideboard (15)
2 Wildfire Emissary
1 Sand Golem
2 Ray of Command
2 Mind Harness
2 Knights of the Mist
1 Builder’s Bane
2 Chaos Charm
2 Dwarven Miner
1 Final Fortune
Canadian Beatdown, Paul McCabe, 1997 World Championships Finalist, August 1997 (Type II)
Creatures (18)
4 Cloud Elemental
4 Man O’ War
4 Ophidian
2 Frenetic Efreet
3 Suq’Ata Lancer
1 Wildfire Emissary
Counters (10)
2 Disrupt
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
Removal (9)
4 Incinerate
2 Abduction
2 Pyrokinesis
1 Disintegrate
Mana (23)
3 Mindtone
2 City of Brass
2 Undiscovered Paradise
10 Island
6 Mountain
Sideboard (15)
4 Knight of the Mists
3 Pillage
2 Pyroblast
1 Phyrexian Furnace
1 Nevinyrral’s Disk
1 Serrated Arrows
1 Hydroblast
1 Dissipate
1 Pyrokinesis
Counterhammer, Olle Rade, Top 8, Pro Tour Dallas 1996, November 1996 (Type II)
Counters (8)
4 Counterspell
1 Dissipate
3 Force of Will
Burn and Removal (24)
1 Balance
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Incinerate
1 Pyroclasm
2 Hammer of Bogardan
4 Fireball
4 Pillage
3 Control Magic
3 Nevinyrral’s Disk
Others (2)
1 Zuran Orb
1 Recall
Land (26)
1 Strip Mine
4 Mishra’s Factory
4 Thawing Glaciers
4 City of Brass
7 Mountain
6 Island
Sideboard (15)
1 Jester’s Cap
1 Nevinyrral’s Disk
2 Shatter
2 Pyroblast
1 Anarchy
1 Pyrokinesis
1 Dissipate
1 Control Magic
2 Hydroblast
1 Pyroclasm
2 Serrated Arrows
U/R Champ!, Justin Gary, Champion, 1997 US Nationals, July 1997 (Type II)
Counters (12)
4 Counterspell
4 Dissipate
4 Force of Will
Burn and Removal (14)
2 Incinerate
3 Disintegrate
3 Earthquake
2 Binding Grasp
2 Serrated Arrows
2 Nevinyrral’s Disk
Creatures (15)
1 Frenetic Efreet
4 Man o’ War
3 Rainbow Efreet
3 Wildfire Emissary
1 Air Elemental
Land (22)
4 Thawing Glaciers
8 Mountain
10 Island
Sideboard (15)
1 Pyroclasm
2 Hydroblast
1 Incinerate
2 Shatter
3 Pyroblast
2 Energy Flux
3 Anarchy
1 Mind Harness
Again, I enjoy trying to expand your horizons with a bit of history and fundamentals to put a deck in its context, as opposed to just discussing straight out how to play it today. The four main archetypes (aggro, aggro-control, control, and combo) have been there since early on, although aggro-control was often omitted in the three-way rock-paper-scissors description, and understanding the underlying strategy of each remains very important until today. For example, removing an aggro deck’s threats isn’t the same as dealing with an aggro-control deck’s, since one will tend to topdeck more threats, while the other will move to protect what it has on the board.
But in case you missed it, let me repeat: I seriously doubt”The Deck” has become an aggro-control deck just because of an overpriced Type II card.
Until next week. I’m off to try the harbor bar’s signature drink called”Monkey Nut,” or banana, peanuts, kahlua and more.
Oh… and poor Jasmine.
Oscar Tan
rakso on #BDChat on EFNet
University of the Philippines, College of Law
Forum Administrator, Star City Games
Featured Writer, Star City Games
Author of the Control Player’s Bible
Maintainer, Beyond Dominia (R.I.P.)
Proud member of the Casual Player’s Alliance