In preparation of going after a PTQ win this year for Magic the Gathering, I’ve been reading a lot of game theory articles. In between all this I’ve also been reading various articles and forums on decks and deck-building. One particular trend I’ve noticed lately is a lot of “why is innovation in magic dead” articles appearing and complaints that “everyone is playing the same thing”.

I guess the symptoms of this problem came to a head at the Pro Tour before Worlds, where Elves made a mass appearance, even though several groups had thought they had come up with the deck independently.

I think there are a number of reasons these concerns may be on the rise:

1. Information sharing has become easier and easier. Between the forums, the social networking sites, the advice columns, MtGO, Workstation, etc, the ability to get an idea out into Magic society has never been easier, and keeping it a secret has never been harder. Unless you are a dedicated player with a hard-core group of playtesters who can keep their mouths shut, chances are any deck you try to test will be “in the wild” in a matter of days.

2. The definition of archetypes is strangling new ideas. Rock. Red Deck Wins. Zoo. Tron. Fish. TEPS. If you recognise any of those names, you recognise an archetype. And that means you’ve already got some preconceived ideas about how a deck should operate – Aggro. Control. Burn. What’s the enemy of a new idea? Preconception.

3. There is a mass of learned wisdom being passed down from places such as starcitygames.com, manadrain.com, tcgplayer.com and others. This includes analysis of upcoming cards and sets, deck lists, and archetypes, the metagame. All this is coming from MtGO heavyweights that have performed excellently on the Pro Tour. And it is, unquestioningly, good information.

But the unquestioningly is the problem.

Here’s what I’m not seeing in the Magic world – Challenge of the conventional wisdom. Aggressive debate. In depth study of the cards that the mavens have dismissed. What I am seeing: a lot of people congratulating agreeing with each other that certain decks are “good”. And you should use them.

You really should.

Don’t think for yourself.

I love me some Pauper Magic (ie commons only). It takes the excessive expensive out of the game, and provides a real mental challenge on how to break the format.

There's a few basic arch-types, generally around what works in the extended format; affinity, ninja-control, zoo, burn and UG fish. I'm trying a different approach, based on the success of the Martyr of Sands deck in extended I saw floating around.

Trying to recur Martyr of Sands in pauper is a lot tougher in extended, in which there are many and various ways to do it - especially when you're trying to remain mono white. Eventually this is the deck I settled on:

20 Plains
4 Secluded Steppe

4 Martyr of Sands
4 Leonin Squire
4 Auramancer
4 Sanctum Gargoyle

4 Oblivion Ring
4 Empyrial Armor
4 Angelic Renewal

4 Sunbeam Spellbomb

4 Unmake

The concept is pretty simple; draw off secluded steppe and sunbeam spellbomb / Leonin Squire, get to seven cards in hand and three mana, recur Martyr of Sands through Angelic Renewal / Auramancer, defend with recurable Sanctum Gargoyles, and eventually smash face with Empyrial Armor.

Most things work with the recursion engine, and the unmakes and o-rings provide a tonne of removal for most threats.

I've only just started testing it out. The trickiest part I've found is when exactly to start saccing the Martyr, especially against red burn. Timing, as usual, is everything.

Labels: magic, martyr of sands, mtgo, pauper

So, curious as ever, I took a look at the site stats to see if anyone still visits this site. At one point I guess I could of boasted a pretty good site turnout of around 20,000 uniques a day. Now? 150 if I'm lucky. And those 150?

Well, they almost all come from two links; one at Blue Robot , the other at Glish.

See, once upon a time, I created a rather useful CSS stylesheet. Rob Chandanais at Blue Robot tweaked the javascript out of it and since them about a bazillion sites have used it as the base of their website.

The funny thing is that I get a continual stream of visitors from the people developing their website using the template. Sometimes I'm staggered by just how many people continue to use it. It is everywhere. For instance here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here (epic fail), here, here, here (I'm a Republican Benefactor!), and thousands of porn sites (going through my referrer lists was a treat and a half).

At the time I didn't see anything particularly special about what I was doing. When I leapt into the web in the late 90's there was this thing called HTML, and something called CSS, and, as someone who spent a LOT of time formatting documents at the time, CSS just seemed the logical way to go. So I built my website in it not realising that, at the time, almost no-one was doing this.

In the end I was still cheating with a tiny amount of javascript, and it was Rob's elegant solution that changed the site to a complete CSS solution, and he deserves every credit for it.

So, for the steady stream of web travellers who pour into the site entirely by accident, to see a formatting solution that doesn't exist here anymore, based on content I'm no longer even writing, Blue Robot and Glish, I salute you.

Meanwhile, I just checked this current site layout in Firefox. What a mess!

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

It's been about two years since I tried any kind of blogging activity, so I'm not exactly expecting this to go well. But perhaps it's worth a try. Especially now that no-one is looking.

Why start again (again)? Well, I'm not really getting a lot of creative outlet anywhere else. Work is... work. Home life is about the kids now, more than ever, and creative outlets that don't want to be ruined by teenager or toddler hands are hard to come by. As is peace, quiet, sleep, and just about everything else.

But there is a discussion online going on I'd like to be part of (which is why I turned comments off). About where we're heading in all of this. All of what? All of everything. Everything. And there's comeuppance to be had. Probably mine, but still.

I'm being especially vague, aren't I? Well, what do I hope to achieve? This year?

* Keep my job.
* Lose the gut and gain a chest.
* Win a MtG Pro Tour Point.
* Keep my sanity as our next son is born.
* Enjoy life

Is that so much to ask?

Probably.