Magic the Gathering

Theory

Magic the Classroom: The Curve

By Dan Eckstein ⋅ February 10, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

Hello and wel­come back to our class. For those who missed our pre­vi­ous arti­cle I am a high school teacher who opens his room up for stu­dents to play Magic after school. We will some­times play true Tier 1 or 1.5 decks but mostly it is just casual play. Right now it’s still just me writ­ing for you but soon stu­dents will be writ­ing as well.

What I would like to talk about today is a con­cept that I try to show my stu­dents after they have a grasp of the Rule of Nine. Like the Rule of Nine, today’s con­cept is a “lead a horse to water” con­cept. I can show it to you now but I can’t really force you to use it. And in the case of some decks “their just not thirsty.”

The con­cept is a Mana Curve. The Curve is rather sim­ple to under­stand but since it’s so basic many writ­ers have extrap­o­lated their own def­i­n­i­tion only serv­ing to con­fuse their readers.

I first learned about the Mana Curve when I read a piece writ­ten about how to build a “Sligh” deck. In today’s Magic world the word “Sligh” is rarely (if ever) used.

I don’t claim to be a Magic his­to­rian but I would argue that the Sligh deck was prob­a­bly the first deck design that was built with the Curve as a foun­da­tion. What Sligh did that was unique is it didn’t build with a card or a spe­cific deck style in mind. Instead it built with con­verted mana cost (CC) as a foun­da­tion. The first thing the deck builder, Paul Sligh, did was fig­ure out how many cards of each CC he wanted. The num­ber was fig­ured by mea­sur­ing the prob­a­bil­ity of hav­ing the desired CC in hand vs. hav­ing enough land to play the card. The math involved is rather immense and will require a future arti­cle on its own to be based on it. I do teach Math after all.

To elab­o­rate a lit­tle I could build a deck with 56 cards that are 1 CC and 4 land but I prob­a­bly wouldn’t get to play much since the chance of draw a land is pretty small. I could also put together a deck with 56 land and 4 of my favorite 1 CC. But then the chances of get­ting the card are also weak. The ideal would be too able to play a land and some spell every turn. Then hope­fully that card has enough of an effect on that turn that I come out on top. I have never known any­one who was able to build a curve that so per­fect that it con­sis­tently curved all the way through every CC. Mostly you just want to focus on 3 or 4 turns.

Sligh built with a focus on turns 1, 2, and 3. With such a low CC curve Sligh was able to go past the Rule of Nine and actu­ally develop with 10 cards as a base (some­times even 11, yikes). Sligh decks will leave out many “power” cards of the day to instead focus on smooth­ness of play. The fact they could con­sis­tently play all 40 non land cards made Sligh a force. For the edu­ca­tional pur­poses of this arti­cle we’ll stay in Red and use 20 moun­tains as our start­ing point.

Turn 1: Of our 10 cards at least 3 of them should be 1 drops (cards that have 1CC). That way we can be assured that we have a fairly high prob­a­bil­ity of have a play on turn 1. Please note that this is the Sligh plan we’re build­ing from. You can build a deck with no 1CC spells and still have a good deck. Just not as fast as Sligh but prob­a­bly with more pow­er­ful cards. More mana means more power as a gen­eral rule. I per­son­ally build around 2 CC, 3 CC, and 4 CC more often than any­thing else.

Strong Poten­tial cards in this slot are:

• Fig­ure of Des­tiny — Actu­ally gives us a 3CC and a 6CC play for our curve as well.
• Flame Jab – Sligh some­times just runs out of cards before it can win. The Retrace abil­ity lets us con­vert extra land into damage.
• Magma Spray – Shock that deals with Per­sist types.
• Mogg Fanatic – A crea­ture that can do its dam­age via com­bat and burn.
• Rag­ing Gob­lin – Haste should never be underestimated.
• Shard Vol­ley – 3 dam­age for 1CC may be worth the draw back.
• Shock – A clas­sic. Magma Spray is bet­ter though and I don’t see using both.
• Spark Ele­men­tal – Can Burn alone do the job?
• Tarfire – Shock again?
• Tat­ter­munge Maniac – The extra point of mus­cle may be worth the forced action of attack­ing every turn. Late game this is weak but who needs a late game plan? Not Sligh!

Turn 2: (A 2CC or two 1CCs) – With 20 lands in our deck we should con­sis­tently hit two lands in our open­ing 8 or 9 cards. There­fore we want to be equally assured of hav­ing a choice at the 2CC slot. Here is where some real tough choices have to be made. While you build­ing think of your local Metagame.

• Ash­ling the Pil­grim — Early this card may be a lit­tle weaker than opti­mal but like Fig­ure of Des­tiny it gives us some options to use our mana for later.
• Dragon Fod­der — Two 1/1’s for two can be bet­ter than a 2/2 in some situations.
• Guerilla Tac­tics — Basi­cally it’s Shock for 2CC. If fac­ing a lot of dis­card it becomes a dou­ble Shock for free.
• Hellspark Ele­men­tal – Like it’s cousin the Spark Ele­men­tal our only ques­tion is can burn alone get us there? Doing it two times through Unearth may help our cause though.
• Hurly Burly – Hate those lit­tle pesky Fae? Use­less against a ground based enemy though since most of our pos­si­ble so far will die as well.
• Incin­er­ate — 3 dam­age for 2 is a good bal­ance. The non-regeneration clause can come into play as well.
• Lash Out – 3 for 2 again. It’s a lit­tle weaker since it’s just tar­gets crea­tures. We can’t plan to win the clash very often.
• Stigma Lasher – In many games this is just going to be a 2/2 Crea­ture for 2CC. One of the weak spots that any red deck has is an oppo­nent with life gain­ing capa­bil­i­ties. At least this may help avoid that.
• Vex­ing Shusher – Another 2/2 for 2CC. Aver­age stats at best but the abil­ity to snub a Con­trol Mage is always sat­is­fy­ing. Remem­ber that you can pay the 1 after you oppo­nent has coun­tered the spell.

Turn 3: Now we back off the gas a lit­tle. Since 20 lands doesn’t always hit 3 land drops and even when it does play­ing a 1CC and a 2CC on the same turn isn’t nec­es­sar­ily a bad thing. There­fore we will choose 2 cards from the following.

• Ashen­moor Gouger — You can’t get much more aggres­sive than this guy. And if we built the 1 and 2’s right he should have plenty of leverage.
• Blood­rock Cyclops — Pretty much a softer Gouger.
• Bog­gart Ram Gang – If you don’t have lever­age at the third turn the Haste fac­tor can give it to you.
• Coun­try­side Crusher – Just like Flame Jab above this card can help us past mul­ti­ple dead draws when we are inevitably top decked.
• Ever­last­ing Tor­ment – Han­dles two of our biggest issues, life gain and pre­ven­tion. Side­board card though.
• Flame Javelin – 4 dam­age to any tar­get for 3 mana is good.
• Hell’s Thun­der – Hellspark Ele­men­tal only big­ger and tougher.
• Punc­ture Blast – 3 dam­age for 3 is aver­age but good enough to be listed.
• Resound­ing Thun­der – Basi­cally the same as Punc­ture Blast.
• Seis­mic Assault – One of the orig­i­nal ways to take care of extra land draws in the midgame. If we were to build with just the cards listed this on the table would make every Moun­tain after 3 a free Shock.
• Tau­rean Mauler – 2/2 for 3 is under our Power/ Tough­ness level but it can cer­tainly grow to be much more.
• Threaten – Fun Trick.

Turn 4 and Beyond – This is where your deck becomes yours. If you’ve been keep­ing track and hope­fully you have you should have selected 8 card slots by now. Three 1CC cards, three 2CC, and 2 3CC. The remain­ing two slots can be any­thing you wish. I’ve seen peo­ple slip in more low cost cards, game end­ing type spells, Huge crea­tures, and just keep up the basic for­mula with 1 slot at the 4CC and 1 at the 5CC.

Here is what the class picked.

1CC – Fig­ure of Des­tiny, Mogg Fanatic, Magma Spray

2CC – Ash­ling the Pil­grim, Hellspark Ele­men­tal, Incin­er­ate

3CC – Ashen­moor Gouger, Flame Javelin

Eckstein’s Choices – Bog­gart Ram Gang, Spite­ful Visions.

20 Moun­tain

I’ll try to expand on The Curve in a future Arti­cle. The are many sce­nar­ios to build within and cer­tain cards that let you (and some­times force you) to have a hic­cup in your Curve.

There’s the Bell. Got to Go.

[Editor’s Sug­ges­tion for fur­ther read­ing: Famous Red Decks in Magic His­tory by Alex Shvartsman]

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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