Play Magic With Tom LaPille

Lorwyn is a set that emphasizes creatures, and specifically creature types. It is arguably the hardest that Wizards has ever pushed creatures as a theme. As a result, these cards in general are going to force you to choose your creature type to stand by if you want to be competitive. Onslaught Block was the first time Wizards did this, but they didn’t quite do it right because the only tribe to break through in constructed was goblins, and it was only a tier two deck by the end of block season thanks to the overwhelming natural strength of the cards not aligned with creature types that came in Scourge. It appears that Wizards worked very hard to not make the same mistake this time. I hope you like swinging with guys, because you may not have another choice.

The cards in this set are by and large not very subtle. Unlike Time Spiral block, which just gave us a ton of interesting and good cards and told us to have fun with them, this block is going to tell you exactly what you should do with the cards in it. Some people will love this, and some will feel that their decks are being built for them. I think Magic loses a lot when it’s too easy to see what to do with the cards we have, but I trust that there are enough sexy-looking but bad strategies to trap people who don’t mind having fun at the cost of winning less. Time will tell if this is the case.

White has three tribes going on inside of it. The kithkin are a swarm deck that has a ton of little creatures. There are a lot of obvious cards here, so just take them all and you’ll probably come out with something reasonable. The merfolk in Lorwyn are a giant Rube Goldberg machine that just wants to tap and untap a lot- I wish I were kidding, but I’m not- so I suggest letting them do that if you want them to do good work for you. Finally, white has giants, but the nature of giants means that they are all large, awkward, and slow, so at this point I don’t think we’ll be seeing any “giant decks” even in block constructed. This may change if Morningtide gives us small, cost-efficient and against-flavor giants. Wizards chose not to give us a green-white kithkin-aligned land, which indicates to me that they believe that it’s the best of the two-color tribes.

I’m only going to talk about cards that I think are worth talking about for constructed. If I miss something, yell at me in the comments.

Ajani Goldmane - 2WW
Planeswalker - Ajani (Rare)
+1: You gain 2 life
-1: Put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control. Those creatures gain vigilance until end of turn.
-6: Put a white Avatar creature token into play with “This creature’s power and toughness are each equal to your life total.”
4

The designs of the planeswalkers are very odd to me. It appears to me that each of them was carefully designed to make every kind of player happy, which makes them feel awkward. Take Ajani. Ajani likes life. He’ll give more of it it to you, and he’ll even make you a Serra Avatar if you give him a back massage and a bubble bath. Casual players love life, so this is a fine design. However, good players don’t like life (just ask Gerry Thompson or Tim Aten), so we get a random non-life ability to keep the card reasonable for someone who knows that life isn’t important. The question becomes how worthwhile having a semi-permanent Marshalling Cry every turn is. Ajani is obviously a limited bomb, but it remains to be seen in constructed how often big creature stalls happen. This card will probably be reasonable in block constructed given that half of the sets in that format will push you to play tons of creatures, but the permanent bonus to your creatures could maybe push this into standard. Just don’t have any illusions about ever wanting to activate the other two abilities.

Austere Command - 4WW
Sorcery (Rare)
Choose two - Destroy all enchantments; or destroy all artifacts; or destroy all creatures with converted mana cost 3 or less; or destroy all creatures with converted mana cost 4 or greater.

This card is beautiful. Wizards is contractually obligated to put a Wrath of God variant in each block, but this is the creature block, so we can’t just kill all creatures. That would be no fun. Instead, we let the creatures pick who gets God’s wrath. Those who come with giants will choose three or less, people who brought kithkin will choose four or greater, and the people who don’t care about climbing on the footholds that Wizards gives us will just kill everything while we are playing some kind of control deck that turns out to be the best deck in the block format despite Wizards’ best efforts. All kidding aside, this is a very smartly designed card. It’s splashy, skill-rewarding, and doesn’t force you to not play creatures to play it. It also costs two mana too much, so it will likely not be worth playing outside of block constructed. However, Akroma’s Vengeance made the transition out of Onslaught block constructed, so I wouldn’t be shocked if this card did too.

Avian Changeling - 2W
Creature - Shapeshifter (Common)
Flying, changeling
2/2

These cards are beautiful designs. In limited, they give you a real shot at having two or even more tribes actually work in a deck. They may not be elegant looking, but they will play very well. In constructed, we aren’t held back by pedestrian concerns like card access and having to play stuff like this to fill out the theme means you’re not trying hard enough, you are using two tribes when you probably shouldn’t, or you’re building something like a casual elephant deck that needs a better mana curve. Don’t play this card if you can help it, but if you do I guess I could understand.

Burrenton Forge-Tender - W
Creature - Kithkin Wizard (Uncommon)
Protection from red
Sacrifice Burrenton Forge-Tender: Prevent all damage a red source of your choice would deal this turn.
1/1

This guy is quiet, stands in the corner at parties, and doesn’t do a whole lot when you talk to him. He’s good friends with this next card though, so you’ll probably see him around for the next year if you want this guy on your team:

Cenn’s Heir - 1W
Creature - Kithkin Soldier (Common)
Whenever Cenn’s Heir attacks, it gets +1/+1 until end of turn for each other attacking Kithkin.
1/1

This is the first of many unsubtle cards in the set. The message here is that if you want to play kithkin, you are going to play a lot of kithkin. You won’t be able to put many spells in your deck, and you are also going to have to do a little reaching with cards like our awkward and awkwardly-named friend the Burrenton Forge-Tender. If the kithkin entourage has to contain too many bad cards, you might end up with an inconsistent deck that has to draw an Heir or a Wizened Cenn to keep going. This problem is likely to solve itself with Morningtide, at which point we’ll have a real contender.

Entangling Trap - 1W
Enchantment (Uncommon)
Whenever you clash, tap target creature an opponent controls. If you win, that creature doesn’t untap during its controller’s next untap step. (This ability triggers after the clash ends.)

It is extremely unlikely that you can build a deck around clash. Also, this card assumes the opponent will play creatures. If you can build a deck around clash and all of your opponents play creatures, then have we got a card for you! I expect someone to make this work in block constructed but for it to not be very good.

Galepowder Mage - 3W
Creature - Kithkin Wizard (Rare)
Flying
Whenever Galepowder Mage attacks, remove another target creature from the game. Return that card to play under its owner’s control at end of turn.
3/3

The fair thing to do with this card is to use it as the top end of a kithkin deck to remove blockers. This probably isn’t worth doing. Thankfully, we have unfair things to do, all of which involve removing our own creature for fun and profit. Momentary Blink and this card will be good friends for a year or so.

Goldmeadow Dodger - W
Creature - Kithkin Rogue (Common)
Goldmeadow Dodger can’t be blocked by creatures with power 4 or greater.
1/1

This is another terrible kithkin card you may be forced into playing. Moving on….

Goldmeadow Harrier - W
Creature - Kithkin Soldier (Common)
{W}, {T}: Tap target creature.
1/1

This is more like it. You might not think this is a constructed card, but this will probably be one of two default kithkin one-drops since it’s essentially a removal spell that also happens to attack, and in the worst case being a 1/1 kithkin is oddly worth an awful lot more than a card and one mana in this world thanks to Wizened Cenn, Cenn’s Heir, and Militia’s Pride. The other default one-drop is….

Goldmeadow Stalwart - W
Creature - Kithkin Soldier (Uncommon)
As an additional cost to play Goldmeadow Stalwart, reveal a Kithkin card from your hand or pay {3}.
2/2

…Isamaru, hound of Kithkin. You will happily play four of this in your kithkin deck, and it will be useless everywhere else. Hooray for linear block themes!

Hoofprints of the Stag - 1W
Tribal Enchantment - Elemental (Rare)
Whenever you draw a card, you may put a hoofprint counter on Hoofprints of the Stag.
{2}{W}, Remove four hoofprint counters from Hoofprints of the Stag: Put a 4/4 white Elemental creature token with flying into play. Play this ability only during your turn.

Finally, something that’s interesting on its own. The first thing to realize is that this card is actually blue, despite the white mana cost and border. No one who isn’t drawing cards in unnatural ways will get anywhere near utilizing this card’s full potential, but a Jace Beleren or suspended Aeon Chronicler will let us get an Air Elemental every other turn, which starts to be impressive. Multiple copies of this card are even scarier; imagine casting Careful Consideration and then pooping out two Air Elementals. We will see this card in constructed if there is a deck that can get 1W early and naturally draws extra cards.

Judge of Currents - 1W
Creature - Merfolk Wizard (Common)
Whenever a Merfolk you control becomes tapped you may gain 1 life.
1/1

This is our introduction to the merfolk. Given what the rest of the merfolk do, this has a lot of potential to gain a serious amount of life. A second one will put you into the stratosphere if your merfolk engine is going.

Knight of Meadowgrain - WW
Creature - Kithkin Knight (Uncommon)
First strike
Lifelink
2/2

Another card that will go in your kithkin deck. I hate saying that again, but I have to leave the cards that are good. This one has legs in standard too, but it’s really just another solid bear. Critical mass of these guys will almost always give us a reasonable deck, as we have seen from Kamigawa block and Tempest block, and we certainly have critical mass here. This card could also be promoted to core sets.

Militia’s Pride - 1W
Tribal Enchantment - Kithkin (Rare)
Whenever a nontoken creature you control attacks, you may pay {W}. If you do, put a 1/1 white Kithkin Soldier creature token into play tapped and attacking.

This didn’t look impressive to me on first glance, but when I found out that this was rare I snapped to attention. Wizards doesn’t want you to have this very often in limited, so they meant this to be a constructed card. Because of that, I think it’s safe to start every kithkin deck you make with four of this card. Actually, we probably already have something like 28 cards to start the kithkin deck with. Another one of them is next!

Mirror Entity - 2W
Creature - Shapeshifter (Rare)
Changeling (This card is every creature type at all times)
{X}: Creatures you control become X/X and gain all creature types until end of turn.
1/1

Lorwyn already wants us to have a ton of creatures in play, so now we get to make them all huge. This card is going to be a block constructed superstar, since it is every creature type and you’re already going to have a ton of little creatures out. It’s also randomly a shapeshifter, so it goes in your merfolk and kithkin decks. It probably won’t do much outside of block when the creature type bonus isn’t important and when you can’t get away with playing excessive amounts of creatures so easily.

Neck Snap - 3W
Instant (Common)
Destroy target attacking or blocking creature.

I don’t have anything particularly enlightening to say about this, but I love cards like this that give white ways to kill things at strange times. This is a great and simple limited card that could easily be promoted to a core set. Well designed.

Oblivion Ring - 2W
Enchantment (Common)
When Oblivion Ring comes into play, remove another target nonland permanent from the game.
When Oblivion Ring leaves play, return the removed card to play under its owner’s control.

Now we’re talking! In my cube, we play Chaos Orb as an untargeted Vindicate. I don’t think I have ever passed Chaos Orb, and this comes really close to that functionality. The fact that it is a common almost surprises me because of how powerful that is. We will see this card in standard. The interesting question is how often people will be able to surprise you with instant speed enchantment removal. I suspect that in constructed that will not often come up, so this card is safe before sideboarding almost always and still most of the time afterward.

Summon the School - 3W
Tribal Sorcery - Merfolk (Uncommon)
Put two 1/1 blue Merfolk Wizard creature tokens into play.
Tap four untapped Merfolk you control: Return Summon the School from your graveyard to your hand.

If there is a good Merfolk deck, this is probably in it. The obvious decks in this format are very easy to build, and this was deliberate on Wizards’ part. Hopefully some non-obvious ones will turn out to be awesome too. I wouldn’t want my competition to have it too easy.

Surge of Thoughtweft - 1W
Tribal Instant - Kithkin (Common)
Creatures you control get +1/+1 until end of turn.
If you control a Kithkin, draw a card.

This needs to be tried in any kithkin deck, but I think there isn’t going to be a lot of room for spells in such a deck. This may be a kithkin spell, but it doesn’t interact with Cenn’s Heir, Wizened Cenn, and Militia’s Pride which are the real reasons to go kithkin right now.

Thoughtweft Trio - 2WW
Creature - Kithkin Soldier (Rare)
First strike, vigilance
Champion a Kithkin (When this comes into play, sacrifice it unless you remove another Kithkin you control from the game. When this leaves play, that card returns to play.)
Thoughtweft Trio can block any number of creatures.
5/5

This thing is large and in charge. The only real question is if you can support four of them in a dedicated kithkin deck. I think it’s probably worth it if you can, because this thing is a monster. This is probably one of the best champion cards because the kithkin that you are championing are much more cheap and disposable creatures of the other tribes. There are a whole lot of very inexpensive kithkin that aren’t particularly impressive on their own that you will be playing. I expect that a correctly built kithkin deck in block has something like twenty-four creatures that cost two or less, so this card will always have a friend you don’t mind having him piggyback.

Veteran of the Depths - 3W
Creature - Merfolk Soldier (Uncommon)
Whenever Veteran of the Depths becomes tapped, you may put a +1/+1 counter on it.
2/2

Oddly, this card is almost reasonable without being part of a merfolk Rube Goldberg machine. It hits for three and then four without any help, which gets impressive in a reasonable amount of time. With a little help from its friends, this guy will be able to get large really fast. This is an important part of the merfolk deck, if that deck is good.

Wispmare - 2W
Creature - Elemental (Common)
Flying
When Wispmare comes into play, destroy target enchantment.
Evoke {W}
1/3

I predict that while playing block constructed, you will at some point put this in your sideboard with a heavy sigh and it will be correct even though it looks terrible.

Wizened Cenn - WW
Creature - Kithkin Cleric (Uncommon)
Other Kithkin creatures you control get +1/+1.
2/2

This is a four-of in your kithkin deck. It might look something like this:

4 Goldmeadow Harrier
4 Goldmeadow Stalwart
3 Goldmeadow Dodger
4 Wizened Cenn
4 Cenn’s Heir
4 Knight of Meadowgrain
4 Mirror Entity
4 Thoughtweft Trio
4 Militia’s Pride
2 Ajani Goldmane
23 Plains

I hope it’s really not that easy to do in practice.

Lorwyn mainly gives us cards that are good with other Lorwyn cards. In white, we have seen a very obvious kithkin deck and a few pieces of the merfolk machine. I omitted almost all of the giant cards because they don’t seem good. If we try to transport these cards outside of Lorwyn, we end up with a small set of reasonable cards that includes Knight of Meadowgrain, Oblivion Ring, Austere Command, and maybe Ajani Goldmane. I don’t begrudge Wizards for making the choices that they made when building this set, since it is quite obviously going to play amazingly well with itself. I only wish that they had included more cards that had legs elsewhere.

Many Magic players are not very good at actually playing spells. I do not mean that they have bad strategic understanding; I mean that they have a very poor grasp on the actual game mechanics behind playing a spell. This article will walk you step-by-step through the process of playing a spell correctly, and will discuss why not doing it correctly can lead to bad things.

Consider the following card.

Meddling Shrapnel Decree Elemental
1WWUR
Hypothetical Creature – Elemental
1/1
As an additional cost to play Meddling Shrapnel Decree Elemental, sacrifice an artifact.
As Meddling Shrapnel Decree Elemental comes into play, name a card. The named card can’t be played.
When Meddling Shrapnel Decree Elemental comes into play, you may pay X. If you do, put X 1/1 white soldier tokens into play.
When Meddling Shrapnel Decree Elemental comes into play, it deals five damage to target creature or player.

I understand that this card would never be printed as is because it isn’t flavorful and is comically confusing. I made it up because it covers everything tricky that I can think of. I am going to use it to show you the precisely correct order of actions for playing a spell and the immediate aftermath. As we walk through this together I will discuss the potential consequences of not doing it properly. Let’s pretend that our lands can produce 6WWUR altogether, and that our only artifact in play is a Sapphire Medallion.

Step 1: Announce the spell

We place our Meddling Shrapnel Decree Elemental card on the table and say the card’s name.

At this point our opponent can tell us that what we are doing is illegal before we give him any extra information. Perhaps we have attempted to cast a spell during our opponent’s end step while he controls a Teferi, or there is a Meddling Mage in play that named our spell. Either way, we will not have to tell our opponent what lands we wanted to tap or what we intended to target.

Step Two: Declare Targets

Our creature spell doesn’t target, so we don’t do anything.

I include this for completeness. If our spell targeted, we would declare targets before paying costs. Once again, this gives our opponent a chance to tell us that our spell is illegal before we give him more information. If a spell cannot be played legally, it simply returns to your hand, so doing nothing else before this makes it very unlikely for something bad to happen to us. For example, if we announce a Terror when the only creature in play is our opponent’s creature with protection from black but we didn’t tap any mana for it, it will just return to your hand painlessly.

Step Three: Lock in and pay costs

We note that the Sapphire Medallion reduces the total cost of our spell by one since it is blue, and lock in the cost at WWUR. We tap WWUR and then sacrifice the Sapphire Medallion.

The game allows you to play mana abilities like those on Llanowar Elves or Chromatic Sphere during the pay costs step, so we should under no circumstances have mana in our mana pool before we actually announce a spell. Doing this can tip off our opponents to what we have in our hand or lead to unpleasant mistakes. For example, you might tap the mana for two spells, play and resolve one of them, and discover that you have the wrong colors of mana left over for the second spell and be forced to burn.

The locking in of mana costs is another important rules detail. This can allow you to play spells in situations that you might not have thought you could. For example, suppose your only permanents in play are Vault of Whispers, Great Furnace, and Chromatic Sphere. You can announce Thoughtcast, lock in the mana cost of 1U, then use the Chromatic Sphere to make the blue mana.

Now that we have announced the spell, declared no targets, and paid costs, the spell goes on the stack. We pass priority. Note that we have not named a card, declared a target for our five damage, or tapped mana to make soldiers. These things don’t happen until our Meddling Shrapnel Decree Elemental comes into play, which has yet to happen. We want to avoid doing these things early because we don’t want our opponent to know anything about our intentions.

When our opponent passes priority, our creature finally enters play and we have things to do. The first thing we do is name a card, since this happens “as” it enters play. We have been careful not to name a card before now because we didn’t want him to know how to respond. For example, someone who announces “Meddling Shrapnel Decree Elemental on Cancel.” before giving the opponent a chance to respond will probably get his spell Canceled if his opponent has one. However, if he had waited, his opponent would have no window to cast the Cancel until it was too late to stop the naming. Similarly, if we told our opponent before the Elemental came into play that we planned on sending the five damage at a creature that he really cared about, he might Cancel it, but if we wait until the Elemental has entered play, there is nothing he can do to stop the trigger going on the stack targeting that creature.

Now that the Elemental has entered play, we have two triggered effects to place onto the stack. We can do this in either order we choose, since we control both of them. The ability that we place onto the stack first will resolve after the one we put on second, since the second ability will be the top of the stack. We must also choose targets for triggered abilities at the time that they go on the stack. We choose to put the five damage ability on the stack targeting our opponent, and then the token making ability on top of that.

When the token making ability resolves, we tap the 6 mana that we can make with the rest of our lands, and put six soldier tokens into play. Note that we did not tap any mana before the ability resolved. This is really important. Until the ability actually resolves, we don’t know if we’ll get the chance to pay that mana; we might get it Trickbinded or Voidmage Hushered. Multiple times in Onslaught block constructed events, I saw many a poor soul tap huge amounts of mana and then cycle Decree of Justice. Their opponents would happily respond “So you have 16 mana floating, right? Stifle the creature-making trigger, and now you burn for 16.” We don’t want this to happen to us, so we don’t tap the mana before the ability resolves.

Finally, our second triggered ability resolves and our opponent takes five damage.

I bring this topic up because I think it’s very important. I can’t count the amount of times that my opponents have given me pretty big advantages by doing this stuff wrong. For example, in an extended tournament I was playing Psychatog against a Rock deck. I played first, and played Island and Underground River on my first two turns. On my opponent’s second turn, he laid a swamp and said “Cabal Therapy naming Counterspell.” I responded by Brainstorming, to which my opponent responded “God, you people ALWAYS have it!” That told me that I was safe to just put my two Counterspells on top of my deck and then show him my hand, since he didn’t seem to think he could name anything else.

When it comes to arcane rules knowledge, Magic Online is one of the best ways to learn. It doesn’t let you take any shortcuts and graphically shows you what is happening with triggers and timing. In order to learn the rules for playing a spell, I suggest that you turn on the “Allow me to announce spells without the proper mana” checkbox in the game options. Then, everything will happen in the order I laid out above, which is the order you should do things in real life too. Just click on a card when you want to play it, pick a target if you have to, and then tap mana.

Playing spells properly won’t give you an edge per se in tournament Magic, but it will keep you from giving away free advantages. If you don’t do it correctly now, it only takes a small change in habits to keep you safe. It is very awkward when people lose games they should win due to rules mistakes like the Decree of Justice one I mentioned earlier, and you don’t want that to happen to you.

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Zac Hill’s recent article “Polarity” elegantly puts into words a concept that I have been using without a name for years. Thinking in terms of poles allows you to find the most powerful ways to implement each strategy in a format, and then use that knowledge to make a deck choice. However, he falls into a trap that commonly ensnares Magic players, and that is the desire to be clever. Instead of telling us to occupy a pole, he wants us to try to knock them all down without being on a pole ourselves. I think this conclusion is bizarre. If we know what the poles of a format are, those are the best strategies, and doing anything other than choosing a pole to align ourselves with makes little sense.

Zac defines “poles” in these two sentences:

Broadly defined, the poles are the reasonable strategic extremes you can take to a tournament and still expect to win. They are composed of either the fastest, most blisteringly quick decks in the format, or the control decks most frequently able to seize the initiative and convert it into a win.

This is beautifully stated. I think it’s a little bit vague in that “strategic extremes” is not a term with immediately obvious meaning. I might have said that poles are the most extreme implementations of each available strategy that are viable, but we’re saying the same thing. Essentially, thinking about poles is thinking about the best ways to do each thing that can be done in a format.

Immediately after these beautiful two sentences, he lets me down with this:

Assuming there aren’t any specific cards - and this is a big assumption - that give your hypothetical deck a problem, you should be able to beat the field if you also have a good matchup against those two poles.

Zac has succumbed to the desire for clever. We have identified what are ostensibly the best ways to do each thing you can do, so to him the natural thing to do is to try to beat all the best strategies. Why in the world would we care about that when we could just play one of the best strategies? Once we know what the best implementation of each strategy in a format are, we would be foolish to not just pick one of those implementations and use it.

I love occupying poles in constructed because it makes my job as a deckbuilder and player much easier. Since a pole is the most extreme implementation of a strategy, placing myself at a pole means that I will never encounter an opponent who is better at doing what I want to do than I am. This is very, very, very powerful. In general, playing against someone whose deck has the same strategy as you but is better at doing it than your deck is means you are going to lose. In Invasion-Odyssey-Seventh Edition standard, Psychatog and Mono-Black were two control decks you could play. Both were built to go to the long game, and have ways to convert lots of mana and time into overwhelming advantages. However, Mono-Black could almost never beat Psychatog decks in game one because Psychatog was just better at doing that. Mono-Black had no way to deal with Upheaval, didn’t draw cards as well, was loaded with redundant removal spells that did nothing, and had no counterspells. Psychatog was the pole; mono-black was close, but not quite there. In current extended, TEPS is a turn four combo deck, and dredge is a turn three combo deck. Neither deck interacts with the other, and when they play, TEPS is going to lose more often than not becuase it’s just plain slower. Dredge is the pole; TEPS is close, but not quite. Sitting on a pole will keep this from happening to you, and let you do it to other people.

Even more frightening to me is the prospect of not even being close to a pole. I know plenty of players who love rock decks, and would have you believe that those decks are awesome because they can are so versatile that they can do anything. I think this is comically inaccurate, and that decks that try to do everything end up being terrible at doing everything they try to do. Against a control or combination deck, the rock deck has to take the beatdown role and try to attack it with creatures and disruptive spells, but it probably doesn’t have enough aggressive creatures in it to be a legitimate threat. Against an aggressive deck, a rock deck must take the control role with removal spells and defensive creatures. Getting a deck to do both of those things well is impossible, and if the rock deck happens to draw too many disruptive cards against an aggressive deck or too many removal cards against a long game deck, there’s almost nothing it can do to win.

The problem with wanting to be clever in deck design and selection is that it will take you away from poles. Zac talks about the deck that he and Richard Feldman played at Grand Prix Columbus as being an example of the application of pole theory, but I think it’s a perfect example of its mis-application. Have a look:

Richard Feldman (Report)
Grand Prix Columbus 2007
Legacy

4 Llanowar Elves
2 Fyndhorn Elves
2 Elves of Deep Shadow
4 Mesmeric Fiend
4 Skyshroud Poacher
4 Masticore
3 Deranged Hermit

4 Leyline of the Void
4 Duress
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Umezawa’s Jitte

4 Ancient Tomb
4 Bayou
4 Mishra’s Factory
2 Overgrown Tomb
4 Polluted Delta
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Pendelhaven

This is painstakingly aimed at beating Flash and Fish (see Your Fish Deck Sucks for lists), but it doesn’t do anything particularly well. When Rich played against decks other than those, like Landstill or Goblins, he just doesn’t have the raw power that playing Flash or Fish would have given him. He’s not on a pole. He’s also not close to a pole, which allows him to beat the poles, but by being really far from a pole he has sacrificed a lot of power against other decks that aren’t on poles. Of course, I made the same mistake at Columbus; I played Goblins, using almost exactly the same logic to justify the choice. I did really bad. Rich did well, but what does he tell us happened to Zac Hill, who also played the deck?

Zac’s Glass Cannon shattered as he faced Goblins and Landstill early on, putting him in a miserable bracket that ended his tournament quickly.

Put differently, he lost to other decks that weren’t on the poles because he didn’t have the raw power that the poles would have given him.

The most common objection to this idea that I see is that you shouldn’t occupy a pole because everyone will see the poles and try to knock them down. I would argue that a pole that can be easily knocked down by hate cards is not legitimately a pole. In Vintage, Bazaar-based dredge is absurdly powerful, but I would hesitate to give it official pole status because it simply cannot beat a hate card backed up by a counterspell or two in sideboarded games. No player who seriously wants to win a vintage tournament will play Bazaar dredge, so it can’t be a pole. True poles are strong enough to stand tall even through dedicated hate. Ravager Affinity in Mirrodin block was far and away the best deck and had tons of hate pointed at it constantly, but it still dominated every high-profile block tournament and won at least half of the qualifiers that season. If that’s not a pole, I don’t know what is.

Identifying poles in a format is a very useful thing to do, and I think that it’s a great place to start when attacking a fresh constructed format. Once you identify them, the logical thing to do is to find your favorite pole and hold onto it for dear life. Trying to be clever by beating poles with something esoteric will only draw you away from what you already concluded are the best strategies in the format. Why put in all the work to find them if you aren’t going to play one of them?

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