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But the catch-22 is the fact that I play Magic, which is a very mathematical game. There are the obvious number situations like figuring out combat damage and blocking strategies, but there are other subtle math angles. The less obvious things are items like ratio of lands to mana requirements, spells to creature ratios, and other percentages and requirements that differ based on what you are trying to build. There are also variations of the game that require some math tech. All three of the games I’ll discuss today are rooted in math. Points Magic The mathematical involvement in this game should hit you right between the eyes. In this format, all decks must contain a set amount of “points.” A card’s point value is equal to its converted mana cost, with X equaling zero. For example, Flametongue Kavu is worth four points, because it costs 3R. Blaze is worth 1, because it costs XR. Decks in this format must be 200 points. That’s it for rules; All-in-all, a fairly simple format. Strategy 200 point decks tend to be a lot larger than your standard 60-carder. This leads to a quandary. Do I play a deck with a lower curve, but have more cards in the deck? Or do I play a smaller deck with a higher possibility of getting the cards I need, but have a much higher curve? Or do I go somewhere in the middle, with a decent curve, but a pretty large sized deck? Any way you choose, your deck will be large.
A second thing that you can use to your advantage is a rule that many people don’t know. This rule is the big deck mulligan. Technically, this is only a rule for the prismatic format, but I like it in any format that uses large decks. If your deck is 250+ cards, and your opening hand has 0,1,6, or 7 lands, you are allowed to take the big deck mulligan. You can shuffle your hand back and draw 7 fresh cards. However, if you take the mulligan, each opponent gets the opportunity to shuffle and draw 7 for free, no matter how many lands or spells they have in their hand. Any player may only take one non-free big deck mulligan per game. Remember, this is only with 250 cards or more. A paragraph ago I talked about how good tutors are in this format. Now, I’ll give an example deck that doesn’t have any tutors. Counterintuitive? Yes. But there is a method to my madness. The following deck is a Boros Extended deck. There aren’t many red/white tutors in Extended right now (yes, there are some, but not really what I’m looking for with this deck. This deck is a showcase of the low curve, high card-count style deck. Here goes: Sample points deck: Red/White
For those of you not willing to count that high, that’s 116 cards in the deck, with 76 of them being spells. Notice that the curve rounds out at 4, save for the chant. The basic strategy is simple: Attack, attack, and attack again, then burn anything still standing. I didn’t really pay much attention to the fancy, non-basic lands for this deck, because the focus is really the spells. So, there you go. That’s Points Magic. A very straight-forward game, but with some fun deck construction ideas.
Alpha Strike The object of Magic is simple: deal 20 damage to your opponents. Usually, you get to do this over the course of several turns. Not in this format. The object of Alpha Strike is to deal at least 20 damage in one turn. This is the only way to win. Alternate win conditions are banned. If you cannot draw a card, you simply skip your draw, you don’t lose. Other banned cards include anything that alters life totals. No gain life cards, and no lose life cards. Sorry Vampiric Tutor fans. Also, funky effects like Reverse the Sands are out as well. Other than that, standard Magic rules apply. Strategy What’s the easiest way to deal 20 in a turn? The first thing that jumps to my mind is a ‘Tog with about half your library in the graveyard, including Wonder or Brawn or something like that. But casual players don’t like ‘tog too much. It’s too Timmy-like for them. Thanks to Guildpact, we have the Niv-Mizzet plus Curiosity combo, although you have to pull this before you are down to 19 or less cards in deck. Another thought is the little used combo of Master Warcraft and Breath of Fury. Stick Breath of Fury on your littlest guy, play Master Warcraft and declare no blocks, then rinse and repeat. Just be sure to stick the Breath on your smallest guy every time. Umezawa’s Jitte on a double-striker is a great compliment to this trick. One important thing to remember is that this isn’t just combat damage. Burn spells can count towards the twenty damage.
I was also able to pull this off the other night with a threshold deck and Overrun. Krosan Beast, Metamorphic Wurm, and two Springing Tigers plus a nice 3/3 and trample bonus from the sorcery is a lot of fun. Infinite combos work well here too. Although it may seem challenging at first, smashing for 20 in one turn isn’t as challenging as it may seem. Again, this is a somewhat simple variant. Compared to last time, these variants are pretty tame. But, sometimes simplicity is the best way to go.
And finally… High Life First: no, not the beer. One of the most annoying things about Magic is mana floods/screws. So for this variant, we’re just going to forget about lands altogether. Everyone starts with 80 life, so your marker dice won’t cut it here. You need a 60 card deck, but remember that you have no lands. You start the game by drawing 7, but you don’t get any mulligans. You can play 2 spells a turn. But, as always, there’s a catch. Whenever you play a spell, you lose life equal it its converted mana cost. For that reason, all X spells are banned. The same goes for activated abilities. Any affects that lower CC (like Affinity or Convoke) still work. You lose life equal to the amount of mana that would be needed to put that card into play. Any prevention effects don’t work. There are also a few other things. Whenever you draw a card, you lose one life. If a card you own would be put into your graveyard from anywhere, you may remove it from the game instead. If you do, you gain three life. Strategy As you can probably already guess, weenies are generally pretty good in this format. They don’t cost a lot of life to play, and if one dies another one takes its place. But the weenie strategy isn’t always the best. Since your opponent has the chance to drop his big beaters on turn 1, your Isamaru looks puny to a Kodama of the North Tree. 80 life is a pretty large number, so a card with a massive CC isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A well timed Wrath of God or Obliterate can possibly net you more life than you spent. For this format, I’d suggest playing a good mix of high-cc spells and low-cc stuff. Green is good at mixing the CC’s around. Quick little beaters like Grizzly Bears start off your curve, while monsters like Krosan Cloudscraper round it out. But in this format, 5 color decks work well, because there is no mana commitment. Here’s an example deck:
Ok, there’s a lot I want to talk about here, because I’m sure many of you are scratching your heads of my picks.
Remember that when a card would go to your graveyard, you may remove it from the game to gain 3 life. Stinkweed Imp plus Searing Meditation works well here. Stinkweed Imp drops 5 into your graveyard via Dredge. You can then remove them from the game one-by-one, gaining 3 life every time. With this life gain, Meditation triggers. You can spend 2 of the three life you gained to ping with Meditation. In all, you’ll gain 5 life and deal 10 damage. One final note: Flames of the Blood Hand is really good in this format, because it can stop life gain. Remember that whenever you kill something, they gain life. Blood Hand stops this. That’s it. That’s High Life. The game that on the surface looks relatively simple, but when you get into the strategy of it you find its true depth.
There you have it. Here you have 3 games, all of which involve
some sort of mathematics. Luckily, there is no difficult algebra involved. I
hope you like scavenger hunts, because that will be the theme for next time.
Until then, have fun with math (although I don’t know if that is possible).
You can discuss this article in the MDV forums
here.
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Math
is my least favorite subject. Sure, I can add and subtract and all that, but if
I had a choice between doing honors advanced algebra homework, or taking a sharp
stick in the eye, I’d be temped to take the stick. 
If
the prismatic format has taught us anything, it’s that tutors are almost a
necessity for large decks. That’s the reason that all the decent tutors are
banned in the prismatic format. Luckily for us, since this is a homebrew format,
there is not banned/restricted list. Tutor away! 
Sample
High Life Deck. 
First,
Konda. The biggest downside to Konda is that he costs 7, which is tough to run
for a 3/3. But when you are able to drop him on turn one, he’s a lot better. A
3/3 that turns into an 8/8 that doesn’t die is pretty tough to deal with on the
other side. Your next question should be why Silver Overlord with no slivers in
the deck. I’m not planning on using the abilities on the card. A vanilla 7/7 for
5 life seems pretty good to me. The same goes for Radiant Kavu. It’s a decent
size body with a reasonable life investment. Nourish is somewhat weak in this
deck, but it does net you four life.