Knut: Mike, this article has no strategy. I can’t run you at the top of the page.
Flores: But I’m the greatest. You have to run me at the top of the page.
Knut: Okay, maybe you’re the greatest. And the article really is quite wonderful. But I’m sticking this in”Issues” where it belongs.
Flores: I will have my revenge!
Knut: Just Kidding.
Price will forever be remembered for liking to attack. Which begs the question… If Dave, like Brian Hacker, taught us to beat down, if Dave himself chose simple, focused, attack decks and eschewed complex strategies, Why In The World Would He Choose To Go Second?
Personally, I think that Tempo is probably the topic in which I am most interested as far as Magic theory goes, and I am always trying to apply Tempo and Tempo-related ideas to my actual play. But what is tempo? It seems to me that Tempo is kind of like pornography. Much as you would like, you can’t quite put your finger in it… but you sure know it when you see it.
Last week, in the Philosophy of Fire, I talked about the death of one of my pet decks. Though I had put considerable effort into the Big Red deck, its burial ended up being bearable for me because I had another Rogue deck that I liked even more. This deck was the culmination of dozens of hours of testing and tuning and theory in working with another designer for whom I have a lot of respect. He spilled the beans in his own column on another site, so I figure, especially if I am not playing the deck anyway, I’d write a more exhaustive article, talking about the development of the deck and how we came to the conclusions we came to.
So why, you may ask, in an article called The Philosophy of Fire, are we talking about archaic deck archetypes and focusing on a card that is restricted in every conceivable format? The reason is that Necropotece gives the average player the most concrete understanding of the interaction between cards and life of any archetype or mechanism. The Philosophy of Fire will do the exact same thing, but instead of trading life for cards from your own deck, it speaks about the relationship of trading cards for your opponent’s life. Specifically, the goal will be to translate a hand into a dead man.
So I was all set to exhaustively test one of the Weird decks on Tuesday. BDM and I were going to meet at Neutral Ground and have at it, but as usual, that didn’t work out. For one thing, whenever we meet at Neutral Ground, no matter the reason, people just end up drafting. To make matters worse, out of nowhere, Jonathan Magic, Brian Kibler, and EFro showed up to test for the GP this weekend. It was awesome, as I haven’t seen Jon in forever and was shocked to see him testing at all again. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t get some Weird deck testing in myself!
All this talk of metagames, environmental details, and even the rogue deck articles I’ve done the past couple of weeks demanded that I lay out my actual Regionals experiences to see how my expectations of environments lined up with what I actually hit. I think the answers are surprising.
Splash Damage is shorthand that I and some of my friends use when designing decks. After reading this article, you will be empowered to use it as well. When the Rabbit shows me a Black deck with Diabolic Tutor for card selection, and I ask him why he didn’t use Undead Gladiator and Twisted Abomination instead (like I have largely adopted), Rabbit can say”Splash Damage on Stabilizer.” I immediately know what he means and the matter is settled.
People misuse the term”rogue” more than they do the term”fascist.” They hear the word in context and they think they know what it means. Rogue doesn’t mean bad. If you play with bad cards, please don’t call them rogue. Bad cards are bad. Rogue cards are very good when the metagame predictions are right and the strategies hold, even if they may seem bad otherwise. A Gray Ogre is not a good card. No rogue deck designer would ever tell you to play with Gray Ogre even if you had a deck where Gray Ogre seemed like the perfect fit: you can get the superior Suq’Ata Lancer at the same cost and size; you can get the slightly worse – but still superior to Gray Ogre – Goblin Chariot at the same. A Stromgald Cabal might not look much better than a Gray Ogre against a G/R land destruction opponent, but man does it put the hurt on a White combo deck.
The great Rob Hahn once claimed that the entirety of the Magic universe, all the games played, all the packs sold, the Pro Tour, and everything else, hinged on one thing for their existence: the friendships that Magic creates and fosters. If you think about it, Rob’s claim makes a lot of sense. How else can you explain staying up until all hours”playtesting” a”matchup” where both you and your partner know the outcome? You might learn something, you might not… oftentimes, it’s really just an excuse to hang out and have some beers.
My memories of golden way-back-when are headlined by possibly the most important Magic writer of all time: Robert Hahn.
Rob wrote what was likely the single most influential tournament report of all time. After already having made his name on message boards via Schools of Magic, Robert was already considered by many to be Magic’s premiere writer on the Internet. When he went on to qualify for the Pro Tour – and write a report about that feat – he not only graduated (however briefly) to another level, he taught everyone else the could do so as well. This lone act, this concept that one could transition from great writer to Pro Tour player, single-handedly invented Adrian Sullivan, Jamie Wakefield, Eric Taylor, and a host of others, creating the PTQ information culture that many Magic strategy sites draw from as their bread and butter.
But, like I said, it was with Schools of Magic that Rob originally made his name.
So what you have with Skullclamp is a whole lot of people who know how good it is going to be and a smaller – but still substantial – number of people trying to figure out how to beat it. The thing is, you can’t necessarily go up against a Skullclamp and attack it directly. That’s like trying to play a G/W deck full of Uktabi Orangutans and Monk Realists in an attempt to beat Trix. Sure, you can technically destroy their relevant permanents, but you can’t do so in a timely enough manner for it to matter.
Did you read Becker’s piece yet? Good. Now we can move on.
I asked Jon to talk about his different play style from Derek Rank’s in those ancient days of the Frenetic Efreet, back when Invested cards like Browse were good, for a reason. Though I will stand by the fact that there is One Right Play on any stack (or any of those non-stack moments when you can play or tap land or whatever), that is not to say that there is necessarily one right Plan. Probably you are scratching your head right now. What do you mean one right Plan? What is a Plan?
