So one of the goals I've set for this year (which I mentioned yesterday) is to get a Magic the Gathering Pro-Tour Point by the end of the year. The closest I've come so far is making second at a Pro-Tour Qualifier last year. For the record, being one slot away from making it on the Pro-Tour is both exhilarating and a kick in the teeth.

As such I've been reading a lot on Magic Game-Theory, in an effort to improve my game. One article that caught my interest was Rethinking Investment Theory: Everything Has Haste.

Now while I think it's an interesting take, I think it's also quite wrong. Not everything has haste; everything has a speed. And it's the differences in speed, and the trade-off in cost that matters. I'd like to note that speed also equals, in part, the ease of which a spell or ability can be countered.

Here's a little chart I mocked up of the various speed levels of spells and abilities in Magic:



There's a lot to argue/add to it, but as a first draft I think it's okay. It's probably at it's weakest where I've tried to compare spell types vs ability types.

I think some of this Zac Hill was trying to get to - that the quicker something can affect the board state, the "hastier" it is. But my interpretation of Zac's theory is "everything affects the board state, therefore everything has haste". But let's be clear - not everything has haste. Let me try to explain my point of view.

I'd suggest that sorcery speed is a sort of "base speed", against which all other speeds must be compared. Additional speed usually tempered by an additional cost. For example, Naturalise at 1G is slower than Krosan Grip at 2G. It's why Grizzly Bears is 1G, but Rip-Clan Crasher is RG. It's why you can suspend Infiltrator il-Kor for 1U, or hard cast him for 4U. One interesting case is Seal of Fire vs. Shock. Seal is both slower to cast but faster to activate once on the board (less counterable). So "Base Speed" can also be seen as "Base Cost", with additional speed requiring additional cost.

This makes (my interpretation of) Zac's theory that "everything affects the board state, therefore everything has haste" seem less impactful. Yes, everything affects the board state; this is a truism of playing the game. As long as I've made an action of some sort, I've affected the game, no matter how trivially. However, I may not have played or payed for any speed advantage while doing so.

Then the trade-off becomes - am I willing to pay more for speed? In a lot of cases, because speed equals counterability, the answer is yes, which is why you see far more Krosan Grips in competitive play than Naturalizes. However, in formats such as Legacy and Vintage, where paring mana costs down to an absolute minimum in order to win the counterspell metagame speed becomes a far harder to buy. You may never get to play your "faster" spell, as the game will be over before you have the mana to play it.

Let's step through some of Zac's claims:

For one: every single creature you play has “virtual haste” if the opponent intends to interact with you through the combat phase. This is because you get to block, and blocking doesn’t care about summoning sickness. I'd suggest this should be, every single hard-cast creature operates at "base speed" at a minimum. This allows you to do things like block, but may not allow you to do actually hasty things like attack.

Your creatures have an ability similar to Haste if they are, for whatever reason, hard to kill. I completely disagree with this statement. Hard to kill creatures are an aggressive board investment, affect the game state, but usually operate at "base speed".

Finally, creatures can have ‘haste’ if they come into play on a turn the opponent has underutilized. Again, I'd disagree. The creatures aren't faster - your opponent has just made a poor investment in time (time being an important resource, something I'll talk about at a later date). Yes, you have affected the board state, but you haven't done so any faster that "base speed" - your opponent has just been slower.

So that's my thoughts on my interpretation of Zac's article. Not everything has haste. Some things affect the board state faster than others. These usually come with a mana cost that slows down your ability to play them, but also make them harder to counter. Therefore the real trade-off is between speed and cost.

Any comments send them to me at neale@wrongwaygoback.com.

Labels: haste, magic, speed, theory