Magic Deck Vortex: The Apprentice Magician, Part Two.

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. In the last installment we looked at the basic structure of a game of Magic from the point of view of the rulebook. This introduced the basic concept of resources and how these are affected by time. But what happens when you actually play cards other than lands? That, of course, is when the game gets interesting. Part Two adds to the basic foundation of Magic theory with a discussion of lineup theory.

After all the talk of red and blue pills, it had taken some convincing for Dave’s dad to accept that Sam was not a drug dealer. Fortunately, a family night spent watching The Matrix cleared a few things up and Dave was given the green light to spend an hour at the Magic shop each Saturday morning. When the time came around once again Sam was pleasantly surprised when the shop door opened and Dave walked in.

“Welcome back, Dave,” opened Sam. “I guess I didn’t manage to scare you away last week.”

“Good morning, Sam,” returned Dave cheerfully. “No, I haven’t been frightened away just yet.”

“Glad to hear it. Why don’t we start out by playing a game? I’ve got a couple of decks here for us to play with. This time there are cards other than lands, I promise,” continued Sam. Both players shuffled and drew their opening hands. Unlike last time, both players drew a mix of lands and spells. On his first turn, Sam played a Plains. However, this time he did not pass the turn. Instead, he tapped his Plains and played a Savannah Lions.

“Yes,” replied Sam, “but it’s not important which creature card it is. What’s important is that, if nothing else happens, I’m going to win the game!”

“Not so fast,” Dave defended. “I’ve got a few cards in my hand as well.”

“That’s right,” continued Sam, “and that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about today. But first let’s take a moment to consider what’s happening from the perspective of resources which we covered last week. When I played by creature, I converted some resources from one form into another.”

“The resources converted were the mana to play the card and the card itself, right?” interjected Dave, thinking back to the previous lesson.

“Exactly,” continued Sam. “And the result of the conversion is that I now have a creature permanent in play. It’s worth keeping in mind that most spell costs include the card itself, not just the mana to cast it. Anyway, now that I have a creature in play, during each turn I’ll convert it into an attack during the Combat Phase. If you can do nothing about this, then this attack, in turn, will be converted into two points of damage to you.”

“Each time that happens, my resource of life points is reduced until I have none left.”

“Correct.” Sam explained that on each subsequent turn he will convert his Untap Step into an attack again during the Combat Phase and then convert it into two more points of damage. “After ten turns of this, I will have reduced your life total to zero, thereby winning the game.”

“That seems like a pretty long-winded way to say that you played a creature,” returned Dave.

Sam laughed. “It is, but it’s important to understand how the resources relate to one another. In fact, there’s another way to look at the creature card that I just played.”

Sam explained that threats are often thought of as creatures that will gain an advantage in life resources by reducing the life total of the opponent, as in the example. However, any card that will create a resource advantage for one player can be viewed as a threat by the other player. For example, back in the early days of the game, Necropotence would have been viewed as a threat due to the advantage in cards that it could create for a player, even though it cost life points in exchange. Likewise, Thawing Glaciers could be seen as a threat as it allowed a player to continuously develop their mana resources and Fireball could be seen as a threat due to the advantage in life point resources that can result. Ultimately, these resources must be converted into a win condition. Often this last part is trivial and the game is essentially won once the resource advantage has been established, but this is by no means the rule.

“What can you do to prevent a loss?” asked Sam rhetorically. “In fact, you’ve already alluded to it. Quite simply, you must have an answer to my threat.”

“In the case of a creature threat, one simple answer is to have a card that can neutralize creature threats, such as Terror. This is also known as creature removal. Likewise, similar removal cards are available for artifacts, enchantments, lands, and even permanents in general. Removal works by destroying permanents once they have entered play.

“Another simple answer is to have a bigger and better threat of your own. From the point of view of the smaller threat, this card serves as an answer because it will win any resource race between the two cards. In the case of creature threats, a bigger creature will win any combat between the two and remain in play while the smaller threat will be removed from play. In addition, it also serves as a threat in its own right, and could trade damage favorably with the opponent each turn until it reaches victory. Watchwolf could be considered as both an answer to Savannah Lions and as a threat to the opponent’s life resource.

“Likewise, counter magic, such as Counterspell, Rune Snag, etc., attempts to answer a threat while it is on the stack, and discard, such as Hymn to Tourach, Mind Rot, etc. attempts to answer threats while they are still in the opponent’s hand. An important point to remember is that some cards can act as both a threat and an answer, such as Draining Whelk, while others may depend upon the situation. A 2/2 creature on turn one or two may well represent a threat, a few turns later the same creature may act as an answer to one of your opponent’s creatures or may be irrelevant altogether.

“The process of matching threats and answers is known as lineup theory. Basically, if you were to take two decks of Magic cards and spread them out on the table, you could lineup the answers of one deck against the threats of the other deck, and vice versa. The deck with the strongest remaining threats for which the opposing deck has no answer is considered to have lineup advantage. If all of the cards in both decks were played out, then the deck with lineup advantage should win since it has the better unanswered threats.”

At this point, Dave jumped in. “But don’t most decks have sixty cards?”

“Yes, they do,” responded Sam, “and this means that the number of threats and answers should theoretically match. However, this is where card selection comes into play. In fact, the remainder of Magic theory is really a discussion of selecting the right cards – threats and answers – for your deck.”

“Our initial decks contained only land cards. Lands can be considered threats since they create resources and there are answers to this in the form of land destruction, such as Stone Rain. However, moving beyond this to decks that contain something other than land cards, the first situation that can create an uneven lineup occurs when one deck contains fewer lands than the other deck. This creates more room for threats or answers. This might lead you to conclude that it’s better to have fewer lands but we will also find that you need enough lands to ensure that you have the mana resources in play that you need to convert into threats and answers. Again, this will be the subject of a future article but we can see the first hint of lineup advantage creeping into our deck designs.

“Another situation ripe for lineup advantage exists when one card can answer more than one threat. The classic example of this is Wrath of God which can lineup against all creatures in play. It is difficult to put an exact number on it but since it can be played on turn four, one Wrath of God could easily match up against three or four threats. However, in order to create a lineup advantage it simply needs to answer at least two threats.

“In some situations, a single card could answer an entire deck. Consider the case of a mono-colored deck with creatures and direct damage cards. A card like Story Circle could theoretically lineup against this entire deck simply by choosing the appropriate color when it comes into play and having access to enough mana resources to utilize it when the opponent presents a threat. Such situations must be carefully considered when constructing decks and this will ultimately lead to principles such as redundancy and color diversification to ensure that opposing decks are not able to easily answer your deck with only a few cards.

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Multiple Threats

One Answer

“Lineup advantage can also be created at deck construction time by limiting the number of answers that can be used against threats in your deck. Consider the situation in which my deck includes Shatter as an answer to an artifact threat. If your deck does not contain any artifact cards then my Shatter will not lineup against any cards in your deck, once again creating lineup advantage. This leads to the need to utilize cards that are as versatile as possible. While Shatter is an effective answer to an artifact, Disenchant can serve as an answer to either an artifact or an enchantment. This makes Disenchant a more versatile answer than Shatter and generally a better card choice.

“Another point worth considering with respect to lineup theory is this: not all threats are created equal. A Lightning Bolt can be an effective answer to a creature with toughness of three or less and it can also serve as a threat to your opponent’s life total. However, early in the game, your opponent may choose to ignore the threat and simply elect to concede the resource advantage gained by the card in life points rather than answer it. Conversely, the turn one Savannah Lions must be answered at some point or it will result in a loss. Later in the game it may be irrelevant. Just because you consider a card a threat does not mean that your opponent must have an answer for it. This is another manner in which lineup advantage can be achieved: if one deck can safely ignore particular cards in another deck then it can gain lineup advantage by assigning its own threats and answers where they can be most effective.

“Some of these aspects of creating lineup advantage have touched on a common issue without stating it directly. When you negate the effectiveness of a card in your opponent’s deck, you are effectively causing it to be a blank card – it would have the same effect if it was blank. This concept is usually thought of in the context of card advantage, but it really has its roots in lineup theory.” Sam paused for a second and asked Dave whether he got all of that.

“Yeah, I think so,” said Dave. “Basically, I can have cards in my deck that allow me to play other cards, such as lands; I can have cards in my deck that help me to win the game, such as creatures; and I can have cards in my deck that stop your cards from winning the game for you, such as counter magic or removal. You can also have these types of cards in your deck. If we lay all of the cards out on the table then we can see which threats and answers cancel each other out, and the deck with the best cards that haven’t been cancelled has the advantage.”

“All of this leads to the concept of inevitability. Keep in mind that lineup advantage means that if both players started the game with their entire deck in their hand, then one player should win because they have the better unanswered threats. However, this does not take into account the fact that players do not play with their entire deck in their hand but rather with a relatively small random sample from that deck. Each turn, each player adds to the total number of cards with which they can generate threats and/or answers, but in most games players will come nowhere near playing with their entire deck.

“This, of course, is what creates the opening for either deck to win an actual game. If one deck has lineup advantage over another deck, then it will win in a game that lasts long enough for that deck to answer all of the threats that the other player can generate, after which point it is usually able to win the game in its own time. This is known as inevitability.”

“It does,” replied Sam. “If you think about a classic matchup between an aggro deck and a control deck, the control deck will normally win in the late game if it is still alive, while the aggro deck will usually lose if the game goes that long. The control deck is designed to have enough answers to gain lineup advantage over the aggro deck. This means that if the control player has enough time to draw the cards needed to answer the threats in the aggro deck then he should win the game. Conversely, the aggro player does not have lineup advantage and therefore must try to win quickly before the control player has all of the answers.”

Sam smiled. “The entire strategy of the control deck is focused on surviving long enough to find all of the answers to the opponent’s threats. On the other hand, the strategy of the aggro deck is to present threats quickly and efficiently in order to win the game before that can happen. It turns out that this is a very effective strategy indeed and we will look into this in more detail during another session.

“But it is important to note that inevitability and lineup advantage apply even to matches other than the classic aggro versus control. If two aggro decks face-off against one another, what happens?”

“In fact, they may. But for one of those players this would be the wrong approach. Let’s assume that you and I each build an aggro deck. We both think that we're going to win by playing fast creatures and swinging for damage. Every time I play a creature on my turn I think I'm going to be ahead, but on your turn you also play a creature. Assuming roughly equal creatures, we essentially have a stalemate. However, each player may either be happy to continue the stalemate or want to make something happen. If a player is happy about the stalemate it should be because he thinks that he has a card (or more) in his deck that will break the stalemate and lead to victory. On the other hand, if a player wants to make something happen it should be because the strength of his deck is in the quick win and he knows that if it drags out he loses his advantage. If I have Overrun in my deck then I will want to hold the stalemate until I can draw and play that card. Meanwhile, if you have Fires of Yavimaya in your deck then you are probably happy to force the issue and trade off creatures because once you drop Fires then you’re on the fast track to victory and I won’t be able to keep up with your hasty beats.

“Both decks are designed to win quickly, but based on lineup theory, one deck has the lineup advantage and should win if the game lasts until the late rounds. Conversely, one deck may be better suited to winning in the early rounds, even though both are designed to do so. Even though they are both aggro decks, one must take on the control role while the other takes on the aggro role. The same applies to control versus control matchups as well.”

“Then that deck has the advantage in both the early game and the late game. It will be a very difficult match for the other player to win.”

Sam pointed out that Mike Flores’ classic article “Who’s the Beatdown” is a discussion of lineup theory and inevitability and is required reading for players who want to understand inevitability, even though he never uses the term in the article.

“It sounds like it’s more of an in-game issue,” said Dave, looking a little confused.

“Well, lineup advantage is all about understanding the strategy of the deck that you are building. Inevitability is about understanding how that strategy is affected by other deck strategies. When building a deck you’ll need to consider your own strategy as well as how that deck will behave against a variety of other strategies.”

“Armed with knowledge of lineup advantage and inevitability, we can now describe the basic deck archetypes in terms of threats and answers. As we explore more concepts to which we have only alluded so far, we can expand our understanding of these deck archetypes. However, for now, these descriptions will begin to give us a frame of reference.

“An aggro deck is a deck that relies primarily on threats. The strategy of an aggro deck is to gain lineup advantage through sheer numbers of threats and hard to answer threats. A pure aggro deck (i.e. one with no answers whatsoever) is not as common today, as most aggro decks will include some form of answer even if it is in the form of a few burn spells for creature removal. Keep in mind also that some aggro decks will concede lineup advantage and inevitability in favor of tempo and a race to victory.

“An aggro-control deck relies on a large number of threats and a small, select number of answers. The answers are chosen specifically to neutralize your opponent’s major threats or answers and let your threats take control of the game.

“Control decks use lineup advantage in a completely different way than aggro decks. Control decks hope to lineup answers with every threat in the opposing deck while gaining some advantage along the way, and then win the game over a period of time with a hard to answer threat of their own.

“Combo-control decks set out to control certain aspects of the game while at the same time creating and protecting a combo. The lockdown deck is another form of combo-control. Instead of using a combo to win the game, the lockdown deck uses a combo to answer the opponent’s entire deck, thereby wining in any way it has open.

“Finally, the pure combo deck attempts to assemble a collection of cards that individually may not represent a significant threat to the opponent but in combination form a threat capable of winning the game very quickly. As a result, most combo decks will not have inevitability in a match when the game starts due to poor lineup with opposing decks. However, in a single turn, inevitability can be established and the game won.”

“That really starts to put things into perspective,” said Dave. “I hadn’t thought about deck strategy in that way.”

Some customers had started to trickle into the shop and it was becoming clear that their time was nearly up. Sam began to summarize. “Inevitability is about lineup advantage and which deck would win if all cards in the deck could be played from hand. However, inevitability is not an indicator of the outcome of the game, but rather of the tactics that each player should adopt. Lineup advantage also gives us something to think about as we begin building our decks. What approach do we want our deck to take to establishing lineup advantage? How will we set our focus in terms of threats and answers? What does this say about how we will deal with the strategies of opposing decks?

“Perhaps you’ve noticed one important point about lineup advantage: players do not play a game of Magic with their entire decks in their hands. In fact, the game would not be worth playing at all if this were the case as one deck would inevitably win. However, each game is actually played with a random sample of cards from each deck, and this is what truly makes the game interesting. The fact that most games do not utilize the entire deck leads to a number of other interesting and powerful theoretical concepts.”

“I think I’ve got it,” replied Dave. “And speaking of random cards, I here’s the money for a booster pack. Enjoy my cards,” he concluded with a grin.

“I will,” returned Sam, selecting a booster pack from the shelf behind the counter and tossing it in his backpack. “Next time we’ll discuss perhaps the most well-known concept in all of Magic theory: card advantage.”

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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