Standard – Mana Tutors

Kethis Combo- The Lowdown

A lot of people know about this deck. They know that it is one of the best and most popular standard decks in this meta and a lot of Pro’s are playing it and calling it the best deck. But what a lot of people don’t know is, where it came from and who is responsible for breaking the Standard format and (depending on your perspective) made it more fun/satisfying or ruined it.

And to those people I say, “you’re welcome! and/or #SorryNotSorry”

That’s right, it was me…Brandon/Allfunlover! (Who’s that?)

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/2139071#paper

This was an early draft I posted to share easily with my friends and teammates. A lot has changed since then but the core engine has remained the same.

I’d like to tell you the story of what I consider my greatest deck (so far) and then some tips on how to play with it as well as against it. If you’re just here for the strategy then feel free to skip to it.

The Origin

People that know me know that there is a reason that I am the ‘Limited Expert’ on the Team. I am not known for my Constructed performance. However, the people that know me well know that the reason that I almost exclusively play Limited is because of my love of deck-building.

And every so often, I get in the mood to brew with 75 cards…

It all started with one weird M20 Mythic (not even a good limited card).

One night in Late July, this card was really inspiring me and I decided to brew. At first it was a bunch of fair, midrange decks. I had a couple of different builds that showed promise. In those builds Mox Amber was really good. I started playing four copies because they would ramp me and later I could exile them to Kethis to cast my sweet legends from the graveyard. Oh how times have changed! I realized early on that Mox Amber could be cast from the graveyard as a lotus petal which I would do occasionally for a boost in mana but it was too fair. But what if it wasn’t so fair?

I started writing down more ideas and that’s when I remembered the missing link from Dominaria that basically no one remembered, Diligent Excavator!

*The perfect marriage and the bling to bring* these soulmates together.

For those of you that are not in the know, this is your core engine. With these three cards and a bunch of legends, you too can make your deck disappear! Jace, Wielder of Mysteries was a natural fit after that. After beating up on Sparky (MTGA’s Practice Mode Bot) to see if it worked, I knew this deck was extremely powerful. I couldn’t wait to jump into the Ranked Queues. I just kept on winning, and winning some more. At the end of the night, I uploaded this list and sent it to all my friends and teammates.

By the next day, I had some friends that were interested and one friend, Bro_Cobra, that quickly fell in love with the deck on his Twitch stream. Once he started, he couldn’t put the deck down, we tried out a few different cards and ideas. For example, he tried Glowspore Shaman but I never liked it or what it did to your manabase. After a couple of days Bro_Cobra was climbing back to Mythic playing only this deck. That’s when I proposed trying out Lazav, the Multifarious. We collaborated on the manabase and sideboard, and that’s when the deck leveled up!

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/2146670#paper

Lazav added a new dimension to the deck; more ways to ramp to four with Mox Amber, and a whole lot more resiliency! Bro_Cobra kept playing the deck and winning even more with it. Soon he was in up into Mythic top 50-100 and that’s when he played Stanislav Cifka. After that, Cifka started to play the deck too and really popularized it when he and his team Qualified for the Arena Mythic Championship playing the deck.

The Strategy

A lot of people don’t know this but this deck isn’t just a simple combo deck. It is surprisingly robust, resilient, and complicated. This deck is very good at being unfair and you can pretty easily mill yourself out and win with Jace, Wielder of Mysteries or mill your opponent to death. However, that is simply Plan A and you don’t win all of your games that way.

These are your plans to victory:

Plan A: Mill yourself and/or your opponent
Plan B: Card advantage- you wouldn’t expect this at first glance but this deck can grind extremely well.
Plan C: Burn them out (Surprise!)

Plan A: Mill

The deck is capable of winning very quickly this way. It is even possible to win turn three! It can also win pretty consistently on turn four or five using this plan. What you need to win this way is the Trinity (Diligent Excavator, Kethis, the Hidden Hand, and Mox Amber).

Diligent Excavator, KEthis, the Hidden had, Mox Amber — The Trinity.

You want to mill yourself using these three and/or Ashiok, Dream Render. Using Kethis’ activated ability, you play your Mox Ambers and net one mana per mox for each Kethis activation. Note: You will need to activate Kethis again to be able to cast legends put into your graveyard since the last activation. If you’re playing the deck in paper, set aside all the cards that go to your graveyard after each activation of Kethis. Those cards can’t be cast until the next activation.

You always want to target yourself with Diligent Excavator until you’re ready to win. It’s much easier to win with Jace, Wielder of Mysteries but if that is not an option, you boarded out Jace, or your goal is to mill your opponent–you still want to mill yourself until you have multiple Diligent Excavators and multiple Mox Ambers. I start to do the math once I’m getting 3-4 Diligent Excavator triggers per Kethis activation. One easy way to do this math is to count up the number of legendary, non-moxen cards in your graveyard and you have half that many activations of Kethis to get there multiplied by two times the amount of Diligent Excavator triggers you’re getting per Kethis activation. If that number is greater than or equal to the number of cards remaining in your opponent’s library (and they’re not playing Nexus of Fate) you win!

That’s the basics of your main game plan. The Trinity is the most important part, that’s your engine. The next most important card in many match-ups is actually Teferi, Time Raveler. Most of the time he is all the disruption that you need and when you have him in play, you know your opponent can’t interact. He is the ultimate counter bait because if they don’t counter him, they’re not countering anything the rest of the turn. Some not so common but important play patterns with Teferi are bouncing Fblthp, the Lost for two cards, bouncing Oath of Kaya for Lightning Helixs, and when you have the trinity, you can use Teferi to bounce Mox Amber and gain a card and two Excavator triggers for the investment of net one mana.

You really only need the Trinity to start going off, but even then the deck has ways to find/recover the missing pieces and Ashiok, Dream Render can be a reasonable substitute for Diligent Excavator. The rest of the deck mostly plays support. You have cards like Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord, Tamiyo, Collector of Tales, Lazav, the Multifarious[/c], and Teshar, Ancestor’s Apostle to get back your missing pieces. Once you assemble the Trinity and are milling yourself for 4-6 each Kethis activation, it is almost impossible not to be able to put your whole deck into the graveyard and either win the Jace, or mill your opponent.

Plan B: Card advantage/attrition- the ‘fair’ game

That’s right, the deck can pretty easily win playing normal, fair Magic. The deck has a lot of card advantage built in. The most important card for winning a ‘fair’ game is Kethis. If your opponent is trying to stop you with counterspells when you have Kethis, you can cast Teferi, Time Raveler until it sticks. if you have Teferi, you can do anything you want on your turn and they can’t interact anymore. I often will play Teferi first to force interaction before I play my engine or other important cards.

You have other cards as well that are even better for running your opponent out of answers. A lot of the fair games I win are simply by playing the ‘Protect the Kethis’ game. Essentially. if you have Kethis and a graveyard, it’s very hard to lose to anyone. If you have Kethis and at least one way to get back a Kethis such as Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord, Tamiyo, Collector of Tales, Lazav, the Multifarious, and Teshar, Ancestor’s Apostle it makes it very hard for your opponent to stop you especially with the Planeswalkers. They need to have multiple pieces of interaction to beat that board and also each Kethis and each thing that can get you back a Kethis will take them multiple cards to properly disrupt as well.

Many lists I have seen do not play Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord and I believe that is a mistake. I would always play at least one copy in the 75. The reason is that he is so good in a fair game and he also gets you any missing creature from your graveyard for only 3-4 mana and 2-4 loyalty. His passive makes you almost impossible to burn out or race. His +2 is great for harassing planeswalkers, especially Teferi and Narset and others that have a habit of dropping to one loyalty.

Depending on the match-up as well, Oath of Kaya goes a long way towards winning a fair game too. It’s very powerful against decks that are attacking your life total directly but also it punishes them and can put them in a bad spot if they try to interact with your planeswalkers by attacking. Which leads me to the secret third win condition….

Plan C: Burn Them Out

This doesn’t come up much but is possible with Oath of Kaya. Many games your opponent takes a lot of damage from attacking your planeswalkers when you have it. They may not even know that Oath can target players but it definitely can, and it wins games that way sometimes. It’s important to know that if you have two or more Oaths and Kethis, each activation of Kethis can get you at least one WB Lightning Helix per activation minus one mana for each Mox. It doesn’t take many of those to win. This plan can also be effective to win against a deck with Nexus of Fate without Jace, because you simply cannot mill those decks out.

Lazav

I also want to talk in depth about the card that leveled up the deck Lazav, the Multifarious

He adds a lot or resilience and utility. Here are some important things you might not know about how he works and also some tricks.

When you activate his ability he has all the characteristics of the creature you chose except that he keeps his name and his legendary supertype. This means a few key things:
Mox Amber will only see the colors that he becomes. It doesn’t matter if that creature is not Legendary.
Even if he is copying a non-legendary creature you can still use him to cast a Legendary Sorcery such as your Urza’s Ruinous Blast and he will never get exiled by it. It also means that he can never be targeted with Cast Down.
With Shalai, Voice of Plenty, you can copy her to give your other permanents hexproof at instant speed. This can importantly stop burn, or other interaction.
Because he keeps his name it is possible to effectively have multiple copies of the same Legendary creature he copies. Which leads me to the trickiest plays with our friend Lazav…
It is possible to win with Lazav and the entire Trinity in the graveyard and enough mana. To do this, copy Kethis, the Hidden Hand with his ability. Activate the Kethis ability the Lazav now has and play Kethis. Then you can copy Diligent Excavator with Lazav and suddenly you can start going off depending on how full your graveyard is.

The Deck Now

Granted, I haven’t played this deck since it was just my team playing it but this is close to what I would be playing now.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/2254375#paper

The deck is everywhere now. The biggest changes that I would make now is to play 4 Lazavs and to add Ashioks to the maindeck. Ashioks help your main plan and also are one of your best cards against the Scapeshift deck and the mirror which are both very popular. You never exile your own graveyard with Ashiok, Dream Renderso you basically always want to target yourself with the mill. With this meta, I don’t think Urza’s Ruinous Blast does enough to be in the maindeck. Also, I haven’t tested it but I prefer my manabase without temples because I think it’s better to have all of your lands enter the battlefield untapped or at least have the potential to do so.

Playing against the Deck

Whether you’re playing against the mirror or just playing against the deck, the most important card your opponent has is Kethis. It’s the first card I would always name for Unmoored Ego. I have heard an argument for naming Mox Amber but I simply don’t agree with that. Losing mox makes you lose mana when you’re going off but you are still very capable of winning without it. Without Mox, the deck is still a very good midrange deck. Without Kethis, the deck is medium at best. You can’t combo off and your fair game is fairly poor.

In my opinion, the best ways to disrupt this deck is fighting Kethis with cards like Unmoored Ego or fighting threats with exile removal. For example, Legion’s End can be very annoying too. It only hits Lazav, the Multifarious or Diligent Excavator but it also hits any copies that you have found also. Ashiok, Dream Render is also pretty good at disrupting the deck’s plan and it can help your game in the mirror by milling yourself too. I don’t recommend trying to fight this deck with cards like Leyline of the Void, Sorcerous Spyglass, or any other permanent that Teferi, Time Raveler can interact with, even temporarily.

Sometimes your mana can be your greatest enemy. You’re four colors and you have no basic lands. Because of that, you can be susceptible to cards like Assassin’s Trophy and Field of Ruin. I think most lists, including mine, are not building around that weakness right now so it’s still a pretty good avenue of attack and you may want to consider adding a basic to the 75 because of that. I would recommend basic Island if that’s the way you want to go.

Overall

I’m very proud of the deck and what it has become. It’s a real treat, very fun to play, and it plays very differently than any other deck in Standard. I hope that you at least learned something. My hope is that now, armed with my knowledge, you are ready to play with and/or against the deck. Let me know your thoughts.

Happy Comboing!

–Brandon aka Twitch Allfunlover or @allfunlover1

The Medium Guide to Big Magic Tournaments (part 2)

This is part two of a multiple article series. The first article covered gameplay improvements and suggestions. This part covers some meta decisions about how to do well at tournaments. Part three will cover logistical suggestions.

Plan to beat the winner’s metagame

Sometimes is feels really bad when you sit down at a legacy tournament and lose to burn repeatedly (your fault for not having win conditions). However, being soft to a deck that is unlikely to perform well is better than being an all-rounder against bad decks. Tobi Henke covered this very well in a recent article, but I think it bears repeating.

The winner’s metagame are the decks that you think are most likely to compose the top tables. These are the decks you want to beat, not the junk that sometimes populates the early rounds of a tournament. This is one of the benefits of having byes at a GP (byes just barely still exist as of this writing). Getting to skip lesser known or lower likelihood of success decks can inform deck decisions and allow you to skip worrying about bad decks. If all the good decks are on 3-4c Energy midrange in Kaladesh standard, you better have a good plan for beating them. Play to win the tournament, don’t put narrow cards in your board to beat the 1% of the field deck that dumpsters you. When you build a sideboard, keep in mind what you are expecting to face in the winners meta and make sure you have a focused plan against them. Don’t devote 10 cards to beating the standard burn matchup, no matter how much you hate losing to it, when burn is 2% of the meta.

This is critically important for a format like modern, especially for those who are new to the format. The tendency is to put very specific answers into their sideboard to deal with their local meta. If you are playing burn and hate infect, play Searing Blood, not Burn the Impure. Searing blood is just as effective against infect in most situations, but is also useful against creature combo decks and other random nonsense you might encounter.

Option a is better than option b, no matter how much you hate infect.

Sometimes one deck is likely to be the most represented deck (*cough* Hogaak *cough*) in the format and it is necessary to devote specific sideboard cards (Leyline of the Void) to beating this strategy. Most of the time in modern it pays to have answers that can be used more widely like Relic of Progenitus, but there are always exceptions. Damping Sphere covers more bases than Molten Rain, etc. There are many articles discussing sideboarding, especially in modern, but I think it is always worth rehashing.

In older formats part of playing to the winner’s meta is also ignoring that some players just “want it more.” Sometimes you’re playing rb reanimator and your round 2 opponent has 10 pieces of yard hate. You should still play reanimator if you think it is the best deck. Some people hate losing to a specific deck and will over-prepare for it. These people will likely feel the burn later in the tournament when they don’t have cards to bring in against other decks. Sometimes you run into them, they have it all, and there’s not much to be done.

If you can, perform focused testing

Jamming modern modo games might be ok for getting the hang of your deck, but at a certain point you need to sit down and focus on the winner’s metagame. I am fortunate enough to have a network of friends who between us can proxy up and test important matchups. Fun fact: you will never get enough reps in with a deck to know for sure the matchup percentages. I would go so far as to say you will never get enough reps with a deck.

Period.

Ever.

Welcome to magic.

Maybe I’m just neurotic. I have certainly never gone into a tournament feeling like I couldn’t have prepared more. There might be people that feel like they have spent enough time on their deck and testing. These people are either very wrong, or have a great deal more time than I do. Point being, we’re going to have to be efficient.

10 game sets with alternating first players can give you a very good feel for what is going on and what is important. The streamer Jeff Hoogland is very good at talking about this. At the end of videos he often loudly proclaims that we ignore the record and focus on how things felt. Mixed feelings around the net regarding Mr. Hoogland notwithstanding, I think that this self- analysis is very important while testing and tuning decks. There is a reason that computers are very bad at magic. I perform my serious testing with individuals (preferably ones who know the deck they are piloting well) and in longer sets. I prefer this be done in paper magic, but an online tool might be faster or easier for some depending on format and individual taste.

Test matchups! Leagues are ok testing but not the best.

Play good decks

I love bad combo decks (Narset cannon and meandeck tendrils are particular favorites). I play them often at weekly tournaments so that I get it out of my system and don’t play bad decks at big events. The fact that neo-griselbrand straddles this line in modern could lead to significant shenanigans down the road and is amusing to me.

There are many reasons people play bad decks. Comfort, the lolz, the burning need to show how cool you are (Antony Benedetti is particularly cool). The fact is that there is a hive mind of magic online players that are actively trying their darndest to break the game and get all the moneys. The result is that the creme of the crop tend to rise up after they’ve been discovered.

Tangent: The “after they’ve been discovered” bit is important here. I’m of the opinion that the modo hive mind acts similarly to machine learning. As Hari Seldon might say, humans in groups are easy to predict. Everyone tries everything over enough time (infinite monkeys, infinite typewriters, etc.) and as a result the best decks tend to be the most played decks over time. I recommend looking into basic machine learning/neural net stuff (cool mario link here). I’ll probably devote an entire article to this some time in the future. The thing about taking a lot of inputs (players and decks) and jamming them into a few metrics for success (published lists), is that they will tend to wander off into local maxima. That is, the meta-magician is very good at tuning decks, and not so good at discovering them. This goes along with Patrick Chapin’s information cascades article. We humans tend to follow, not invent.

Anyway, modo is a very good deck-tuning machine and a so-so deck-finding machine. I am willing to bet that there are a very large number of very good decks out there that haven’t been discovered yet. Recall how the best versions of death’s shadow weren’t even discovered until gitaxian probe was banned. The problem is that you are incredibly unlikely to find and tune one of these mythical hidden best decks. If Matt Nass were given an infinite amount of time to test older formats I’m sure he could develop an entirely different ecosystem of insane combo decks that would be stronger than our current meta (I like to call this the infinite Nasty theorem).

Most of us aren’t Matt Nass or Patrick Chapin and we don’t have infinite time. We also largely don’t have massive pro teams bolstering our every whim. The result is that we need a good deck to play and we probably don’t have much time. Don’t play bad decks. Play meta decks and try to learn them and tune them in the time you have. You don’t always have to play the Gaak, but play something that already exists and has a reasonable plan against it. Play brainstorm in Legacy, play linear in modern, and play midrange (probably) in standard.

Your brew is bad. Keep tuning it, play it at weeklies and have fun. Maybe at some point it will be less bad. If your goal is to maximize win percentages, play a meta deck.

Always have a sideboard guide

It is important to know how you plan to sideboard, this ensures that your sideboard makes sense and that your outs and ins map correctly. For me, the hardest part is deciding which things need to come out of my deck. Especially for dedicated combo decks, it is very hard to determine how much of the deck you can remove before it ceases to function correctly. My first step is usually to find someone else’s guide, because developing my own takes many hours of additional time that I often do not have. If you are lucky enough to know an experienced pilot, talking through their plans is always better than a stale guide that can be found online. A sideboard guide as a tool helps determine how many cards are needed for a matchup while still understanding what the plan is against certain decks.

The hardest decks for me are midrange decks (especially in standard). Plans for midrange decks usually are not obvious because you are altering your deck to perform a specific role. Midrange mirrors especially can be particularly nuanced. During the reign of mardu vehicles, for example, each mardu deck was trying to go over the top of the others, but some of the threats were so hard to deal with (scrapheap scrounger) that going under one another was a completely viable option, especially on the play. No two players agreed on sideboarding choices and trying to anticipate what role the other person was taking could be critical for victory.

In limited, while you may not have a specific plan, you should have a general idea what the weakest cards in your deck are as well as your strongest sideboard options. In extreme cases, especially in sealed, it is correct to have a whole other deck sleeved up and ready to swap out. The tendency for many players is to not bother with boarding too much in limited, but this leaves a lot of percentage points on the table. In limited, every deck is a midrange deck and you should be adjusting your role according to how it matches up to other midrange decks. Know your role and have a plan. You don’t even have to write down the plan in limited, just try not to forget that you have disenchants in your pool. I find that having it written down helps me know what I think I should be doing and makes it easier for me to improvise in the actual tournament itself.

There are many articles that are against sideboard guides. These all make excellent points. Someone else’s guide implemented without any thought is probably out of date and does not account for changes. Using guides as rote also keeps you from making important changes on the fly that are often needed for slight variations in decks. The important part is to start with a guide for structure and to aide in understanding. From there it is important to move forward from the guide as you make changes and updates, and be willing to mix things up on the fly depending on how your opponents might differ from the norm.

For me, guides are a very important jumping off point for understanding a deck quickly and a great tool for not having to always remember my own sideboard plan. They give structure to help aide in understanding.

Don’t hand out free information

A magic player’s second main hobby is complaining about magic. Have you ever had an opponent come to the round complaining about their last match and basically tell you what they’re playing? I don’t recommend doing that. Having a conversation with your opponent is part of the fun of the magic tournament experience. Loudly proclaiming bad beat stories to strangers is not the best way to make friends and can lead to accidentally giving away information. It is also obnoxious. Also, be mindful of how you hold your cards. As a taller player I can sometimes see some of my opponents’ cards. When I can see my opponents’ cards I try to inform them immediately, but it is still up to them to hold cards in a way that I can’t see them. Sloppy shuffling also tends to reveal cards unnecessarily. Watch how you shuffle, maybe have a friend give you an outside opinion. In team tournaments it can be very easy for the other team to see cards in your deck while you shuffle; make sure to shuffle away from opponents.

Try to use a card case that doesn’t flash the world every time you take your cards out. The clear cases, or the ones that open from the top are the worst offenders. I like having flaps and other things that I can hide cards behind as I take things out. This also is helpful for sideboarding behind your case to keep the number of cards going in and out secret.

Try to keep composed while drawing cards. If you can, know what cards you could draw and what you would do with them if you do. Basically, don’t just slump in the chair every time you draw a land, and jump out of the chair every time you draw a bomb. You don’t have to perfectly control your tells, but being mindful of what you’re doing is useful, especially if you can turn some of your body language into a bluff.

Have a plan to win

LSV is very good about this and talks about it in depth, so I won’t go over it too much. This is especially relevant when way behind in a game. As you are being cut out of outs and things are looking very grim, take a minute to think of what needs to happen in order to win. If you need the top of your deck to be precisely lightning bolt, play in a way such that it is true. If you need your opponent to brick, and you need runner-runner pump spells to kill with your infect creature before they kill you, make sure that you are set up so that those pump spells are most likely to kill. If you are way ahead and can only lose to a haste creature in limited, keep a blocker back to not lose if it doesn’t affect your clock. In short, don’t play cards at random, especially when way ahead or way behind, visualize what it takes to win and play towards that end.

Thus ends additional ramblings. The Isaac Asimov reference was my favorite one probably.

On a fun note. I just won the MCQ for Richmond for the bay area (northern CA) playing the Gaak. Turns out that deck is busted, who knew? I hope those that were in Vegas had fun and maybe played the gaak for the last time.

Am I a dumb jerkface who doesn’t know anything? Comment below, I welcome your hate. I welcome your love and questions even more, also please put those below. See you next time.

The Medium Guide to Big Magic Tournaments (part 1)

This is part one of a multiple article series. The first article will cover gameplay improvements and suggestions. Part two will cover some meta decisions about how to do well at tournaments. Part three will cover logistical suggestions.

Over the course of a few years I went from coming back into magic with no cards and on a 5+ year hiatus, to finishing top 16 in Grand Prix tournaments in every format. I haven’t been the best at spiking tournaments, but I have done an above average job of putting myself into a bubble slot to get there. I think my perspective is more interesting because I am not a full time magic player, and I do not necessarily travel or prepare as much as other more entrenched players. I go to about 6-8 mostly local GP’s a year, many local PTQ’s, play almost zero online magic. In short, I don’t have as much play time in any given format as many of my opponents, have a full-time job, don’t spend a ton of money on travel, and am therefore closer to the average mtg player than many higher-level pros. The purpose of this article will be to give several small tips and other edges that I think will help you improve your win percentages in larger tournaments and maybe help with some of the other less talked about aspects of magic. Many of these may be obvious to you, while others might not apply, but hopefully one or two nuggets of wisdom stick and help in your future endeavors.

A draw is a loss

I’m going to start with one of my biggest pet peeves, and a point that I think is often misunderstood by newer players. A DRAW IS A LOSS.

Don’t play to draw, especially in a large tournament, if you can help it. The first reason for this is literal, for the purposes of making day two and for pairings for the rest of the tournament, a draw functions as a loss. It doesn’t help for making day two, it doesn’t help for more pro points, and it only marginally helps with payouts at the end if you get that far. Until/if you get to the final round, then it might act as a “really good tiebreaker” on a loss at best. The second reason you don’t want a draw is because the draws tend to beget more draws. Once you are in the draw bracket at a GP, the only people you will be playing for the remainder of the tournament will also be people that took draws; these are players that probably will not set speed records for decision making and there is an above average chance that they are control players. The reason I am hyperbolic here is because I think the mental shift of considering a draw to be a loss will actively change how you play, usually for the better. By playing as if a draw is literally losing it forces you to change your perspective. You can also take all of this to mean that you should play faster. But I think it would be more precise to say “be mindful of time” and “be more efficient.” The clock system being used in paper magic is different from digital magic, and put constraints on both players very different from those online.

Sidenote: one can take advantage of knowledge of the draw bracket. For example, in legacy the draw bracket is usually dominated by bad miracles players, if you are playing something like post that is 70-30 against miracles, a draw might be an interesting heads up play. I say “bad” miracles players, because miracles is a deck with a lot of decisions and very few win conditions, and it takes a lot of practice to be able to make all of the necessary decisions quickly and the newer players to the deck tend to be glacial; this also applies to UW control in modern, and occasionally to win-conditionless standard decks. Basically, this is always kind of a joke scenario I discuss among friends, and I don’t recommend taking draws early just to try and beat inexperienced control pilots (which might backfire anyway, as they might play you into additional draws).

I have one unintentional draw in my magic career, and that is because of a spirits mirror where we both had worship in play; I was playing lightning fast trying to get to my 2 remaining outs to remove his enchantment (he was out of outs to remove mine). Honestly, it’s my fault for having the card in my sideboard in the first place. By the end of the season we had discovered that often Gideon Jura performed a similar role better (especially against other worship decks), and were using this in the same slot.

There are several reasons I do not draw very often:

I try to get to my seat early to get a clear view of the round timer; being able to see the timer is a good way to be able to steer the speed of the match. My rule of thumb, if your first game looks to be going over the 15 minute mark, try to see how you can speed things up and evaluate how both players’ pacing is going.
Be willing to concede against a control or prison deck game 1 if you are less than 5% to win; this is/was especially key against decks like lantern control in modern (or if both players are on a control mirror in standard), where they are so slow that if you let the games play out all the way the match could be a single game affair. Sometimes if you can see that the match might go very long, it can be best to try to move along so that you have a chance to get to a reasonable game 3 if you win game 2.

Often for decks like lantern the fault of “slowplay” isn’t on the part of the lantern player; rather, their opponent tends to take a longer time to make plays or refuse to concede because they don’t know they are beaten.
- I have seen a local bay area grinder unintentionally draw himself out of top 8 contention on at least 2 occasions because he a) tends to play slower decks, b) is unlucky enough to face opponents that are both slow decision makers and unwilling to concede when effectively beaten, and c) doesn’t call a judge soon enough. This leads us to the next point.

I am ready and willing to call a judge on my opponent for slow-play. You do not have to be rude about this. I usually give my own verbal warning first, something along the lines of “hey, it’s already been 15 minutes this game, let’s both try to play faster so we don’t draw.” After I talk to my opponent and they are still playing slowly I am happy to call a judge to watch our pace of play. This is not a dirty, shameful act, and your opponent does not have any reason to be salty because of this. It is in both players’ best interest to finish a match on time and judges are there to help for just that kind of thing.
My pace of play is slightly above average. This is largely because whenever there is downtime in a game, while someone is shuffling or my opponent is thinking, I am thinking about what my next move(s) will be, and what counter plays I might have to his possible moves. This is also useful for having meaningful bluffs; if you can jam your cards quickly without having to pause to think it makes you much more believable. I will adjust my sideboarding based on how much time is left and if I need to play to win quickly.
I tend to play proactive decks. Obviously this isn’t always correct (unless the format is modern: friends don’t let friends play control in modern) and it isn’t everyone’s style, but boy do I like having time between rounds in a large tournament. I will play a more controlling deck, but only if I have sufficient time to learn the deck thoroughly enough to not draw.

I’m not an over-shuffler. We’ve all sat across from the player who takes 5 minutes shuffling EVERY TIME. Then they spend just as much time shuffling your deck as they did their own. Don’t be that guy. This is a substantial waste of time for both parties no matter how much you feel like you’re controlling your destiny by over-shuffling (you aren’t). 7 riffles is enough to sufficiently randomize; a few more is fine, but please for the sake of us all, don’t overdo it.

You are going to make mistakes

Unfun facts. You are going to punt important matches, you are going to make bad deck choices, you might mis-register your deck, be late for a round, or draw yourself into 9^th (I just did this at a recent CFB legacy 3k), or misread an opponent and get beaten on a bluff. It is all your fault and you might feel bad about it.

I have found that the best thing for me is to acknowledge the mistakes, find the parts that you did not do wrong, and then kindly and gently (not forcefully, if that makes sense) shelve it and put it behind you as best you can. You brain will try to focus on the bad more than the good, and the only thing you can do is try to acknowledge it and move along. Similarly, you must trust the man on the ground. Looking back at video footage with future knowledge might make it easy to be down on yourself, but it is important to realize what you knew at the time. I unnecessarily gave Jeremy Dezani a 3 outer to beat me in game 3 of a legacy GP win-and-in. It bothered me immensely for a day or two, but eventually I had to calmly recognize that I made a mistake, and that is ok. This is doubly true mid-tournament, where it is very easy to go on tilt and cause additional losses. I think this is also important for team events. You’ve chosen your teammates beforehand, they will make mistakes and that is ok, just try to help each other out as best you can. My friends and I have a saying we will yell at each other when someone tilts mid-tournament: “new round new tournament!” This doesn’t really make sense, but it is a reminder that each round is an independent entity, and there is no reason to go in with baggage from previous rounds.

Don’t always do the same thing

I provide a lot of heuristics, as do various other authors, for what one should do in specific situations.

These are great as general rules, but there are always times to improvise. I’ve been told by a few different storm opponents that I am difficult to play against; largely because when they present a difficult situation I will react differently or at least think it through each time. Many players, especially playing against a complicated combo deck like storm, will always do X. For example, some people will always counter the dark ritual, while others refuse to. Your opponent can take advantage of this, especially if they have played against you multiple times. If you always counter the ritual they can try to bait your counterspells with rituals. If you never counter they know they can just go off with ritual into duress. When you are playing a match you are building a narrative with your opponent. Maybe they have an overrun effect in sealed that they showed you the first game, and now they know you have to respect that overrun for the rest of the match. Similarly, I will often attack my 2/2 into their 0/3 early in a game/match. They either call my “bluff” and block, in which case I might be able to make the same play later and get them with a combat trick on a more important creature, or they give me free damage. Whatever way you do it, always keep in mind you are giving and receiving information from your opponent about what level you are on, how willing you are to bluff, and how you are most likely to respond to any given situation.

It is usually correct to jam, especially in limited

It is very common for midlevel players (grinders, I consider myself to fit this description) to want to play around everything. Maybe you are playing against standard control and want to play around turn two syncopate, or you don’t want to lose to overcome in sealed from the green deck. I think it is an important skill in magic to be able to realize what could happen that would make things go wrong. Maybe they have force of will, maybe you can get blown out by a combat trick, maybe they kill you when you let them untap in modern. However, knowing something can go wrong is not the same as acting like they always have it. I usually have a rough idea of what they might be able to do to stop me and what the percentages are based on card % and how they’ve been acting in the game. It is often correct, knowing the risks, to just make the proactive play.

In sealed if I know that my all out attack to put them dead in two turns loses to a threaten effect, I will jam because a) they have to put threaten in their deck, and b) they might have wrath of god or something much worse waiting to get you dead if you give them extra time. I tend to play magic like Doyle Brunson plays poker: loose-aggressive. It is usually worth it to push your advantage rather than give them time to catch up. This is important for control players as well. Sometimes snapcaster mage’s job is to be ambush viper so that you can actually end the game against a combo opponent. This also depends on the level of your opponent. If they are a good player, they might be enticing you with a position of weakness instead of actively being weak, trying to get you to over commit into a sweeper. Basically, what I am trying to say is that most players, especially at the grand prix level, are on level 1. They probably are not bluffing, their obvious tells are actually tells, and they probably don’t have it. Of course, this is susceptible to how you read your opponent. I once lost a match against Dan Ward because I made an aggressive attack into him game one, thinking there’s no way he is main-decking threaten because that card is bad. Turns out he was and I was immediately punished.

This is a very loose heuristic, and one that gets me in trouble if followed without thinking. My win percentage for modern horizons has been significantly lower than other limited sets because I tend to play more aggressively. The problem is that modern horizons has many more powerful cards than most sets, and there are more ways to be punished for loose play. There are also many more modal cards that might otherwise be so-so such as stirring address. Basically what I am trying to say is don’t be too meek, each of use will lose games to being too loose or too defensive, but I would rather be on the too loose side, at least then I have time to get lunch. I play like an ape and get rewarded, and do best with decks that reward this behavior (Legacy show and tell). This isn’t for everyone. At a minimum however I think it is a useful skill to know all the ways that a thing could go wrong, know exactly what decision you are making, and then make the loose/aggressive decision anyway. Inaction is just as dangerous as pushing, and giving your opponent extra time is always a risk.

Thus ends this particular week’s ramblings. Tune in soon for part two of this article, detailing higher level meta decisions and other tournament prep notes.

The medium guide to metagames

Every time something new happens in magic, the community goes through a predictable cycle finding out what the best decks are, and content creators spend a great deal of time shouting from the rooftops what the best decks, how you should build them, and how you should sideboard with them. I intend to similarly yell advice at you in future articles. First, however, let’s break down what the cycle is, and find some ways to take advantage of this cycle.

I am reminded of one of the best magic articles of all time, which still gives an excellent description of how magic players act in groups. If you haven’t given “information cascades in magic” a read, I highly recommend doing so. If you don’t know what “ghost dad” is, don’t worry about it, just insert the name of a bad deck that people love to play and will defend to the death (think of the rock or merfolk in modern). We have significantly more information about deck percentages, meta percentages, and conversion rates, but much of the information regarding how players tend to follow blindly is still very evident in tournament magic.

Ok, so we’ve got this cool new format due to cards either entering or leaving a format. Usually it’s because a new set just came into standard (War most recently), but maybe it’s because a set just came into modern (horizons), or maybe they just implemented the London mulligan rule AND IT’S RAINING GRISELBRANDS! BAN THE DREDGE MECHANIC!

Take a deep breath. Things are probably going to be fine. Here’s a simple timeline of any given first month of standard:

Week 1: Many show up with THE DECK that everyone is afraid of (nexus of fate, rw angels, bant flash, esper control), it generally does not go well for them. The good aggro decks (mono red/white) probably win the first tournament of the cycle or are heavily represented. Something like 10 different decks are represented in the top 16; 8/10 will never be spoken of again.
Week 2: Now that we know aggro is good and brews are bad, fewer people show up with aggro and the true midrange deck of the format emerges (gb/bug midrange). Aggro dies to a wave of life gain and sweepers.
Week 3: The midrange arms race begins. Decks become tuned and start cutting obviously bad cards. Opponents are now set to grind mode (esper midrange, gw tokens). By the end of the week an unexpected hero emerges to dumpster midrange (mono blue); this hero probably has a bad time against aggro.
Week 4: The midrange arms race has reached its peak. Ramp decks come out of the woodwork (gates, ug ramp) to tron themselves all over midrange decks. Control might be part of this arms race, depending on how they match up against hate cards.
Week 5-bored: If the format is healthy, the balance of aggro->midrange->midranger->combo->control->aggro will cycle indefinitely, probably with no more than 3-4 decks in tier 1. If the format is bad, everyone is playing rb vehicles because the midrange decks are killing too fast to be taken advantage of by bigger decks. The best deck is probably a midrange deck with either a transformative/strong sideboard, a combo finish, or is more aggressive than it has any right to be while still grinding.

If your format of choice is modern, double the amount of time and replace the word “midrange” with “combo.” If your format of choice is Legacy, quadruple the amount of time and remember that “midrange” in this context means “fair blue deck.” If your format of choice is Vintage, octuple the time, replace your 4 non-restricted list flex slots with the cool new planeswalker(s)/draw engine, rename your deck if your draw engine changed or was restricted, and call it a day.

Based on the assumptions from our week by week breakdown, we can draw a few conclusions. This all assumes that the goal is to maximize win rate; an obvious assumption, but not always a true one. This also assumes one can switch decks with some regularity; this is true even less often, but we can address that a little later.

Aggro is almost always best in week one when people are trying to brew; this is repeated ad nauseum and hardly worth going into. Basically just be wary of the dangers of doing cool things during week one when everyone knows to burn you out. There’s also an argument for bringing the thing that beats aggro week one, especially if there is a midrange deck well-tuned for doing this from last season (g/b midrange); this assumes that something actually beats aggro, which is not always the case (mono blue of pre-war).

Week two is when you’re likely to play against the remnants of aggro and the up and coming midrange deck; now is probably the time to be going over the top. Week two is also when the rules of engagement start to become defined; this season it’s the hunt for the best planeswalker deck, last season it was a race to see who could draw the most cards, preferably with hydroid krasis, before that it basically a matter of finding the best deck that could contain aggro (golgari, thanks to find // finality).

Week three is deep into arms race territory; now is probably the time to zag and try to do something that abuses midrange decks: combos, ramping, mono blue, etc. Previously this was around the time when the pro tour took place. This is no longer necessarily the case, so it is harder to find a single event to answer the simple question: what am best deck?

By the time week 4 hits there’s usually a pretty good idea of what the “best deck” is, if it exists. The best deck often checks more than one of the archetype boxes. If it’s the best aggro deck and the best midrange deck, it’s probably busted (rb vehicles); if it’s the best midrange deck and the best combo deck (4c command the dreadhorde?), probably not a bad choice. This standard season there are an unreasonable number of decks that have an excellent fair plan backed up by a combo finish. Command the Dreadhorde, bolas’s citadel, and bontu all allow a player to win in a position where they are significantly behind on board. This is somewhat unique to just-before-rotation cycles and older formats, usually the deck that best interacts while still enacting its own consistent game-plan is the best deck (think phoenix decks in modern).

I’ve pretty much laid out how level 0 and 1 work out for the first month of a cycle. The level 0 solution to metagames is: play aggro, then play midrange, then tune midrange to be midrange-ier (in many ways control is the midrange-iest midrange of all), then keep tuning midrange to actually win once we’ve found the midrange-iest deck. Level 0 is the safest bet and will probably give you the most consistent good-but-not-winning-the-tournament results. The level 1 solution is one step faster than level 0; play midrange, then make it durdlier, then find a combo or trump, then probably go to aggro or combo to finish out the season and punish durdlers; in short, try to be one step ahead of the level 0 players. Level 1 is mostly likely to win or very quickly lose you the tournament; i.e. playing to the winner’s meta. Level 1, if you can manage it, is where you’re supposed to be if the goal is to spike a tournament; I usually end up somewhere in level 0 and as a result I have a ton of top 16s. Just don’t be on level 2; don’t play ramp/durdly midrange versus a sea of aggro, and don’t play aggro into slightly more interactive aggro decks.

If you don’t have the ability or desire to repeatedly swap decks, that’s fine, we can use these results to select 1 or 2 decks in a cycle that let you keep playing magic without continuously changing things. In general, if you can only get one deck, and the goal is to minimize win-rate, you should probably pick up an aggro deck. Aggro decks are cheaper, good week 1 and week 4+ and usually aren’t too awful in the bad weeks, as you can always catch a stumbling opponent.

If you have access to multiple decks, but not all the decks, I would still recommend having an aggro deck for the start of any given season, followed by the most obvious midrange deck with a good endgame and tools to break up combo (duress, spell pierce) and aggro (shock, cry of the carnarium). For the last 6+ months or so this would mean carrying around mono white or red, coupled with gb/bug midrange or drakes. No matter the meta, one of these two decks will be close to correct, and they persist across different metagames with minimal changes; naturally the gb midrange deck will run you up a pretty penny, especially if you had to buy Hydroid Krasis at the wrong time, but it is a reasonable long term investment given how long it has been a player in the format.

Anyway, after all that rambling there should probably be a conclusion. Metagame cycles are predictable and magic players follow information cascades in a repeatable fashion. Doing what everyone else is doing will give good but not great results but takes significantly less effort; being one step ahead of the cycle is ideal, but only comes with a great deal of testing work and is very punishing if misjudged. This applies to all magic formats (including limited), but that will take further discussion in the future.
Good luck out there!