Magic the Gathering

Theory

Magic : The Classroom – Choices – Part II

By Dan Eckstein ⋅ October 27, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

Look­ing around the Magic writer’s com­mu­nity this week we find a bunch of Austin sto­ries. Some good, some bad but almost all of them have too much filler info. I really don’t care how good the faji­tas were, that you slept in a bed that looked like it had Urine stains, that you paid $23 for a taxi that fol­lowed right behind a Pub­lic trans­porta­tion bus that could have cost you 75 cents, or even that couldn’t pre­pare for the LCQ’s because Zendikar wasn’t online yet. If I had an Austin arti­cle for you it would be full of card stock only because that’s how I roll.

I do want to give some props to my local scene. At the Zendikar pre-release one of the play­ers hit like 3 or 4 Pun­ish­ing Fire. We often will talk about our cards while build­ing. It’s really casual and fun lov­ing. He yells “is there a card that makes your oppo­nent gain life?” Dustin, our store judge/tournament direc­tor, says “Grove of the Burn­wil­lows but you can’t play it today since it isn’t in Zendikar”. How tech does that com­ment seem now?

So instead of dwelling on Austin and the new Extended, today I am con­tin­u­ing my look at the Sealed For­mat and how to base you choices when it comes to build­ing your deck. If you were absent please click here.

In quick sum­mary the last les­son taught us not to look at rar­ity for value, how to judge mana require­ments, and the Expected Turn of Play (ETP). But mana isn’t the only cost involved with cards and just know­ing the ETP isn’t good enough. So today I want to delve deeper into the poten­tial costs of a card and begin look­ing at how we can deter­mine if a card is worth that costs. I can already see myself going the whole class period and still have more to cover so stay alert. I’m going “bell to bell” today, not even tak­ing attendance.

Other than mana costs and dou­ble col­ored mana costs there are other costs asso­ci­ated with cards. Most notably they are card cost and life cost. When play­ers talk about these costs they mostly call them “draw­backs.” Cards with draw­back usu­ally will give us some kind of bonus with the ETP.

First let’s look at some cards that have a card cost asso­ci­ated with them. My cur­rent favorite is Gob­lin Guide. While the Guide is a rare so you are unlikely to see him in your card pool he does pro­vide an excel­lent exam­ple to work from. The ETP of Gob­lin Guide is basi­cally turn 1. While it is pos­si­ble for your deck to miss one of its col­ors which would delay the Guide from being played on turn 1 we still say it’s ETP is 1. For a turn 1 play we get 2 power and Haste. That’s quite a pack­age but what of the “draw­back.” Basi­cally just attack­ing with the Guide has an approx­i­mate 33% chance of giv­ing your oppo­nent an extra card. Of course the exact num­ber is only deter­minable if you knew the exact make-up of your opponent’s deck. And the sub­tle knowl­edge fac­tor of know­ing exactly what is going into your oppo­nents hand is a lit­tle to your advan­tage. But with all of that we basi­cally have a 6 dam­age gives 1 free card to your oppo­nent (on the average).

Some spells have card cost built directly into them. That is where play­ing the spell auto­mat­i­cally makes you lose cards and there­fore cre­ate card dis­ad­van­tage. Magma Rift has an ETP of 3 and deals 5 dam­age to a crea­ture which is decent but not awe­some. How­ever as an addi­tional cost to play Magma Rift you have to sac­ri­fice a land. This is inher­ent card dis­ad­van­tage. The real twist is the fact that by play­ing the Rift you have inher­ently added 1 to all of your other cards ETP. When you fac­tor this in we can really have issues. If you play Magma Rift you bet­ter be pretty sure the rest of your deck can han­dle less mana for the rest of the game.

When con­sid­er­ing cards that sac in Zendikar I imme­di­ately think of Har­row as well. Har­row does require the same land sac­ri­fice but actu­ally returns you two back. In terms of card count it is a wash. –2 cards to get +2 lands. How­ever, the real ben­e­fit of Har­row is the fact that all ETP’s are –1 as long as they are greater than 3. Or a sum greater than 3. For exam­ple play­ing 2 dif­fer­ent spells with an ETP of 3 on the same turn. This can hap­pen on turn 5 post-Harrow. So really Har­row is a made for mana hun­gry decks with high ETP’s.

Life costs has become less and less fre­quent in our game. Yawgmoth’s Bar­gain was so Uber bro­ken that Wiz­ards has become really gun shy when print­ing cards that cost life vol­un­tar­ily. In Zendikar we do have a cou­ple of exam­ples. Vam­pire Lac­er­a­tor is basi­cally Gob­lin Guide’s life equiv­a­lent only it doesn’t have haste and the life loss is almost a guar­an­tee when­ever you would want to play him. This just goes in as another piece of evi­dence that Wiz­ards wants us to think that cards are worth more than life. Remem­ber ear­lier we gave up 1 card for 6 dam­age. The Lac­er­a­tor gives up 3 life for the same 6 dam­age. I really think they should have given the Lac­er­a­tor Intim­i­date to keep it more bal­anced since you have to make the pay­ment before you even get to attack.

One of my favorite cards right now is Blood Seeker. It is just the oppo­site of the Lac­er­a­tor. It is just a 1/1 with an ETP of 2 which is way late except that it causes your oppo­nent to lose life at every crea­ture drop. That can be quite the rid­dle in the crea­ture biased for­mat like sealed. The card that I would like to see is a 1/1 for 2 that makes your oppo­nent pay 1 extra mana for each crea­ture invest­ment. That would a study in con­trol­ling ETP for sure. Prob­a­bly too far on the “not fun” scale since see­ing one fol­lowed by a sec­ond from your oppo­nent would be sick.

There is one more cost that we need to keep in mind as we build our deck. This is one that we prob­a­bly have the least con­trol over. That cost is the Mana Waste. The Mana Waste hap­pens in almost every game ever played and it hap­pens even more in Sealed. At its sim­plest def­i­n­i­tion Mana Waste is when we have Mana avail­able but just are unable to use it. For an exam­ple I have just played my 3 land and in my hand I am look­ing at Arma­ment Mas­ter, Kazandu Blade­mas­ter, Kor Out­fit­ter, Day of Judg­ment, and Car­a­van Hurda. You’ve essen­tially wasted a mana. Through no direct fault of your own you have no option but to leave a land untapped and have noth­ing to spend it on.

That’s the ben­e­fit of cards like Crypt Rip­per. With the Rip­per in play we never have mana waste. Just hav­ing it open means that my Rip­per can be big­ger at my dis­cre­tion. Even if there is no need to pump it there is always that poten­tial. Just sit­ting with two black avail­able basi­cally makes the Rip­per un-Bolt-able. Be care­ful though pump­ing is a com­mit­ment and you shouldn’t do it until you have to. The other day on of my stu­dents see­ing no block­ers and with 3 black open pumped and then attacked. In response her oppo­nent cast Burst Light­ning. The Light­ning resolves first and killed the Rip­per thereby wast­ing the mana any­way. How should she have played it? (Answer in the comments)

Notice I said no direct fault of your own causes mana waste but indi­rectly we can facil­i­tate the white sce­nario I used ear­lier. If this was your hand in draft I would guess that you felt a mono-white Kor focused build would be good. Maybe you got a cou­ple of good equip­ments as well and you are hop­ing to exploit that angle. But if you look at a Kor focused deck chances are you have way too many 2 drops to fit a nor­mal mana curve. When this hap­pens you force some of your ETP of 2 cards to become ETP of 3. This is why it is so impor­tant to look at your curve before you make your final decision.

What I do is curve my cards before I color sort. That’s right first thing. After rip­ping open my packs (though I do miss the open­ing of a box) I stack all cards by their ETP. Then I pull out my bombs and finally color sort. Now when I look at my col­ors I can already see the poten­tial curve with­out much effort. Then I let that curve or lack thereof to help me decide which way to build.

And lastly it is impor­tant to note that some cards have a lot more influ­ence than we may think. The prob­lem is most of us only con­sider the “now” of a card and not it’s long term impact. My favorite card that exem­pli­fies this is Sign in Blood. To the novice it’s life loss is just to high. “I can’t play that it takes 10% of my life.” To most of the com­mu­nity it’s 2 cards for 1. “That extra card will help insure that I win even though I have less life right now.” To me it’s a Turn mod­i­fier. “Play­ing this gives me more cards and there­fore more con­sis­tent plays for the rest of the game but it will effec­tively bypass my turn 2.” In con­structed that isn’t so bad since I can design my deck accord­ingly but in lim­ited it can be a game changer that you don’t even notice until turn 5 or 6 and every­thing that your oppo­nent plays seems to be one notch bet­ter than your plays.

Class time is run­ning out again and still we have only talked about cost. Next class I’ll start break­ing down crea­tures and com­par­ing their ETP to their ben­e­fits. So head on out of here, it’s Sloppy Joe day.

Class dis­missed.

Dan is a High School Teacher who does everything he can to squeeze Magic into his schedule. Between being a Father, Husband, and Coach it’s pretty hard. Articles by Dan focus on tips and lessons for beginners that he has learned while teaching his students how to play their best. As a player Dan has a propensity to go Crazy For Combos so occasionally these articles happen as well.

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