Magic Deck Vortex: The Apprentice Magician, Part One

At some point in the life of many spell slingers, there comes a realization that building decks that are flashy and fun to play is not always the same as building decks that are good. For some this spawns a desire to advance to an intermediate skill level of deck construction. Whether acquired intuitively through experience or by a deliberate effort to study the game, or often a little of both, this advance is characterized by an understanding of some of the foundational theoretical concepts of Magic: the Gathering.

In this series we follow such a player as his eyes are opened to the world of Magic theory and its application to constructed decks built for a “competitive casual” environment. Part One lays the basic foundation of Magic theory as a game of resources.

All week long Dave looked forward to Friday night. As the school week drew to a close and the weekend finally arrived, Dave’s parents forked over his weekly allowance for all of the chores that he had done around the house. The chores were dull, but the money afforded Dave the opportunity to head down to the Magic shop to buy a booster pack from the latest set. His parents wouldn’t let him spend it all on cards, but even at one new pack per week Dave was slowly building up a decent collection of cards. It was the prospect of Friday night that kept him from rebelling when raking leaves or scooping up dog poop in the backyard.

Down at the shop Dave would also watch some of the older guys playing in Friday Night Magic (FNM) tournaments. They sometimes played Limited formats but Dave took special interest on the nights when they brought their Constructed decks. He would watch almost transfixed as he marveled at the way in which the cards in some of the decks worked so well together. On Sundays Dave and his friends liked to play with their Constructed decks but he would have felt embarrassed if any of the older guys ever saw one of his decks; they were always filled with his favorite cards but ultimately would never be as good as the decks that he saw in the tournaments.

One particular week Dave couldn’t get to the shop on Friday night. His sister was in some dumb dance recital that his parents insisted he attend; it could not have been any more boring. As a small consolation, Dave’s dad dropped him off at the Magic shop on Saturday morning while he ran some errands. As he stepped out of the sunlight into the darkened shop, Dave recognized Sam, one of the guys that usually played in the FNM tournaments, behind the counter. Sam always seemed to do well at the tournaments and was especially respected for his skills at building Constructed decks. Dave asked about the tournament the night before and Sam filled him in.

In contrast to Friday nights, the shop was fairly quiet on Saturday mornings and Sam asked Dave whether he’d brought a deck with him. Dave did have a deck in his bag but was hesitant to play. Sam told him that he wouldn’t be playing a tournament deck but just a casual deck for fun. Since he wasn’t expecting his dad for about an hour, Dave decided that if he could get any tips from Sam then it might be worth it. He pulled out his deck and started shuffling. After a few turns each, Dave ended up in top-deck mode, just hoping to draw a decent creature. Meanwhile, Sam seemed to have a fistful of cards and not only seemed to have the right answers but also knew exactly what to do to quickly finish the game off. After a couple of losses, Dave mentioned that he’d love to be able to build a deck like Sam could.

Sam looked at Dave across the counter. “You like that deck, right? You enjoy playing it?”

“Yeah, it’s not bad,” replied Dave, “but I’d like to make it better.”

“No, not really,” returned Dave. “I just like to play for fun but I’d still like to be better at it.”

“Ah, you’re a competitive casual kind of guy, then. Here’s the thing,” Sam continued. “That deck is never going to be a great deck, but if you love playing it then that’s all that matters. On the other hand, if you want to be able to build good decks, you need to understand a bit about how the game works.”

“Key concepts like card advantage, tempo, efficiency and what not can really improve not only your play but also your deck building skills. I can tell by the cards in your deck that you don’t have a focused strategy and that you are just playing cards you like rather than cards that get the job done. That’s fine but even for casual play you can build better decks with a deeper understanding of the game.” Sam looked thoughtful for a few seconds, then continued. “Have you seen The Matrix?”

“Yeah, it is pretty cool. Well, learning Magic theory is a bit like taking the red pill instead of the blue pill: once you understand the truth about how it works it changes the way you think about the game.”

“Wow,” mumbled Dave, looking a bit dazed. “How do you find out about that stuff?”

“There are a lot of articles out there on the ‘net written by great players and theorists. The difficulty is pulling all of the information together into something coherent that can help you.”

“Oh,” replied Dave, looking a little deflated. “Can you point me in the right direction?”

Sam paused for moment, as though trying to decide something. “You usually come here on Friday nights, right?”

“Well, I like to play in the tournaments on Friday nights but on Saturdays I work here in the shop to try to get some money so I can buy more cards. Things don’t really pick up until the afternoon so it’s pretty quiet in the morning. I can give you a list of good articles to read; but, if you want, I could teach you the intermediate stuff myself.”

“Yes, but I need to know one thing. If you really just want to play for fun and don’t want to get into the technicalities of the game, then you should just keep buying your cards and building decks that you enjoy. There is nothing wrong with that. However, if you really do want to improve at the game, then I’ll need a commitment.”

“Well, you could repay me with one booster pack each week. You get to learn the ins-and-outs of the game and in exchange for my knowledge I get some cards. It will only take a few weeks and then you can get back to buying cards but during that time you’ll change the way that you look at the game. So, which is it,” asked Sam with a grin, “the red pill or the blue pill?”

Dave thought about his precious cards but decided that he really did want to improve at the game and this was a great opportunity to do so. He looked at Sam. “I’ll take the red pill.”

Sam, still grinning, quoted from The Matrix, “’Remember, all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.’”

Sam turned to the shelf behind the counter and, grabbing a stack of basic lands, began separating them into two piles. As he did so, he explained to Dave that Magic theory began in the early days of the game itself and has expanded over the years from initial observations and definitions about how the game works to later advanced theories that attempt to explain this incredibly complex game as a whole. “Over that time commonly quoted terminology has been introduced, misinterpreted and re-appropriated."

“Classic articles abound from the giants of the game like Rob Hahn, Eric ‘Danger’ Taylor, Zvi Mowshowitz, Mike Flores, and others. Nothing that I am going to teach you is new; I’ve organized what others have written in a way that helped me to understand it, and hopefully it will help you as well. If you are as interested as I am, I encourage you to explore the source material itself in order to get an in-depth understanding of the thoughts of the pros and the finer points that have been under debate for years. When we’re finished here I’ll give you a list of links to articles on the ‘net. After all, I have to leave you something to take away with you.”

Sam also explained that most of the theory applies to any form of Constructed Magic. “For now, however, we’ll focus on the casual format. There are a few good reasons for that.”

“Casual is by far the most widely played Magic: the Gathering (MTG) format and is the heart and soul of the game; the purpose for which it was originally designed. Yet it is also the most difficult to define for the simple reason that there are no hard and fast rules about the structure of the format. While there are many ways in which the game can be made to resemble Limited formats, I’ll assume that you are interested in building a Constructed deck to play casually against your friends.”

Dave nodded and Sam continued, “In addition, casual MTG is usually defined by a mix of one-on-one and multi-player games. This adds complexity to deck building because you can’t assume that your only goal is to achieve 20 points of damage or defend against the onslaught of only a handful of creatures.

“Further, the exact card pool from which you can select cards to build your deck doesn’t really matter. However, it tends to be large as casual players want to actually use the cards that they have purchased over the years, right? For our purposes we’ll assume that there will be a wide variety of cards, decks, and strategies as compared to the narrower competitive tournament formats. Therefore, your deck will need to be able to account for as many of these as possible. In this way, one might say that metagame is wide open and constantly shifting. At the same time, most casual players won’t show up with the most expensive cards out there that are required to be competitive at the tournament level in the Eternal formats. This makes the casual format interesting and difficult to pin down.”

“Finally, consider that sideboards don’t really make sense in a casual setting. I mean, you and your friends will likely change your deck week-to-week anyway and sideboards are generally built to deal with particular decks in a narrow metagame; we’ve already said that the casual metgame is wide open. Instead, the casual deck needs to focus on the most useful 60-card main deck possible. And this is a good skill to develop even for building tournament decks. Are you still with me?”

“I think so,” said Dave. Holding up three fingers he repeated the key elements that define Constructed casual.

“That’s right,” replied Sam. “All of these factors point to the fact that casual decks require a more generalist approach to design. We will keep this in mind as we discuss the key concepts of Magic theory and consider how they apply to the construction of your casual deck. That being said, once you understand the theory you may choose to ignore certain aspects of it; you are playing for fun, after all. But that is up to you.” Sam did his best imitation of Confucius. “It is better to have knowledge and not need it than need knowledge and not have it.”

“With all of that out of the way, we should get started with some introductory concepts. Decks that take advantage of the rules of the game generally perform better than those that attempt to work against them. If this is true, then the first place to look when building a theoretical framework for Magic deck construction is the rulebook for the game itself.”

Sam explained that it is the rulebook that defines what a player has with which to work; namely, resources. “Simply put, a resource is something that allows you to play the game.” You begin the game with various levels of each resource. These include the following:

Life Points	Each player begins with 20 life points.
Cards in Hand	Each player begins with 7 unless they execute the mulligan rule which may result in fewer cards in the starting hand.
Cards in Library	The remainder of the constructed deck that does not begin the game in hand begins in the library.
Cards in the Graveyard	Each player begins with no cards in their graveyard but this can grow throughout the course of a game.
Cards Removed from the Game	Cards can be removed from the game for a number of reasons, however the fact that they can sometimes be returned to the game means that they must be considered as a resource.
Permanents in Play	Each player begins the game with no permanents in play. Note that these are further and significantly divided into lands, creatures, enchantments and artifacts.
Mana	Each player begins the game with no mana. Mana can be accessed from various cards – primarily permanents in play though other cards can also produce mana.
Poison Counters	Each player begins the game with zero poison counters.

“The game also has a temporal nature to it,” continued Sam, “and the basic measurement of time is the turn. Within each turn, there are five phases: the Beginning Phase, First Main Phase, Combat Phase, Second Main Phase, and End Phase. A turn also sets some basic boundaries for resource development.”

Each turn a player:

Must untap all permanents;
Must draw one card;
May play one land card;
May attack opponents once with any number of eligible creatures;
May play any number of cards for which you have enough resources available to pay the cost; and
Must discard down to seven cards if you have more than seven cards in your hand during the End Phase (specifically, the Cleanup Step).

“The key to understanding the temporal aspect of Magic is not just in terms of the resource that is gained – such as a card gained in a Draw Step – but also in terms of the opportunity it provides to advance toward the goal of winning the game. For this reason, many theorists consider time, and specifically the key steps and phases that result, as a resource. The most significant include the Untap Step, the Draw Step, playing a land, and attacking (the Combat Phase or specifically the Declare Attackers Step).”

“As I just mentioned, the goal of any game of Magic, even a casual one, is to win. I mean, you play to have fun but you still try to win, right? The rules are fairly clear about how a player can win the game – and for the most part you win by making your opponents lose! Any player can concede at any time, but we won’t focus on this condition as a deck cannot force a player to concede and as a result it is not a win condition upon which your deck strategy can rely. (As an aside, once a deck has established its strategy, this may often prompt an opponent to concede. However, this is not the same as forcing a player to concede.)”

The basic win conditions include:

Reduce your opponents’ life totals to zero or less;
Force your opponents to draw a card from their libraries when there are no cards remaining in their libraries (often referred to as “decking” or “milling”);
Give ten or more poison counters to each opponent;
Establish an alternative win condition – which is achieved when an effect states that a player wins the game or one or more effects cause each opponent to lose the game.

“I mention these win conditions now because the discussion of deck building will ultimately spend a great deal of time on the topic of strategy, which is sometimes referred to as a win condition. For example, when a Stasis deck has established the ‘hard lock’, this is often referred to as achieving the win condition. While it may mean that the strategy is in full effect and victory is assured, it is important to note that the win condition can only include one of the items in the list. Therefore, the Stasis deck that has achieved a hard lock must still either reduce opponents’ life totals to zero or less, deck the opponent, etc.

"Notice that the first three win conditions all involve resource levels: life points, cards in library and poison counters respectively. This gives us a hint that resources might be important, though which ones end up being most important may surprise you. We'll discuss that more another time.”

“At the most basic level, then, Magic is a game of resources and time. Resource levels will change over time until one player ultimately wins the game or it ends in a draw.” Sam then put a stack of 60 cards in front of each of them. “Go ahead and draw seven cards”.

“That’s right,” replied Sam. “Each turn we each get to draw a card and play one land.” They went back and forth for a few turns. “As you can see, if we have nothing but basic land cards then each turn we draw a card and play a land. Our resource of available mana sources builds up by one land per turn, but our hand sizes do not change, nor do our life totals. What does change is that each of our libraries gets smaller until eventually one of us runs out of cards to draw.”

“Yes,” agreed Sam, “and it will be the player that went second since the player that went first didn’t draw a card.”

Sam replied, “No, it’s not. When you and I played earlier this isn’t what happened at all. But the purpose for pointing this out is to set the baseline for what the rules say about the game. As we build on our theory we will take a look at how our resources are affected and this will help to guide us in our decision making about cards and deck strategies.”

Just then, Dave’s dad came into the shop. “Are you just about ready to go?”

“Just about,” replied Dave. Turning to Sam, he said “I guess I owe you a booster pack.”

Sam shook his head. “Not this week. This lesson wasn’t exactly scintillating stuff,” he said chuckling, “but we have laid the foundation for future discussions. What we have identified today are the basic rules set by the game itself that we will then do everything in our power to bend, twist, and even break when we build our decks. After all, one of the Golden Rules of Magic states that ‘Whenever a card’s text directly contradicts these rules, the card takes precedence.’ There are cards that allow you to draw more cards, cards that allow you to play more lands, cards that allow you to deal damage to your opponent, cards that allow you to prevent your opponent from dealing damage to you, and even cards that allow you have extra steps, phases, or even whole turns.

“Fundamentally, every card is about converting one resource into another in order to gain some sort of advantage. Magic, then, is a game of gaining a resource advantage over your opponents and then converting that advantage into a win condition.”

“That’s an interesting way to look at it,” Dave responded. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“I’ll give you one more chance to decide what you want to do and if I see you next week, I’ll know you decided to take the red pill,” concluded Sam, drawing a suspicious glance from Dave’s dad. “Next time we’ll take a look at what happens when you actually play cards other than lands.”

Brad Lohnes, masquerading in the MDV forums as Amadeus, is a casual player from the early days of Magic. After a ten-year hiatus from the game he stumbled upon it once again. This has sparked a passion to fathom the depths of this complicated pass-time while continuing to enjoy it at its most basic level. Originally from Canada and having lived in New York City for several years, Brad now lives in New Zealand with his wife, dog and cat. He is a software engineer and enjoys traveling, hiking, and writing.

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