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?
Related Articles:
Your Fish Deck Sucks
“Deckbuilding” is a very misleading term for what actually happens before a constructed game of Magic. It is natural to think of the choice of sixty cards to play with become a creative act that allows the player to express some inner part of himself, which is what the name “deckbuilding” implies. When you remove the context of Magic being a battle between powerful wizards aligned with various colors of magic or whatever, “deckbuilding” is nothing more than making sixty choices. If a player wants to give himself the best chance of winning the game, he must make those choices as well as possible, and deckbuilding should cease to be an ego-driven activity.
One of the early selling points of Magic for many people is that they get to express creativity while deckbuilding. Mark Rosewater’s “Johnny” psychographic thrives on this- those players get to show off their creativity by building neat decks and impressing their friends when something cool happens. Part of this is effect is that early in people’s Magical development, they have limited card access, so many more ideas are fresh and new to them than are fresh and new to a seasoned player who might know what 80% of printed cards do by name. Given that, it’s understandable that you might think of a deck as being “My friend Rob’s elf deck.”
Competitive players should move past that. Decks are just collections of cards; no one owns them. I don’t even think of a deck as a pile of sixty physical cards; I see it as one member of a set of possible choices that you make when you begin a game of Magic. Your deck isn’t an expression of you; it’s just another choice you are making as part of the game. Looking at it this way, I think that the word “build” that we use for the act of making a deck choice is misleading. You didn’t “build” your deck any more than you “made” the steak that your waitress at Outback brings you. You simply made a choice. Wizards makes all the cards you get to work with; you and everyone else in the tournament just decided which 60 of them to play.
Because of this, I think of decks as being “found,” not “built.” If you always play good decks in constructed, it’s not becuase you are good at “making” decks- it’s because you are good at knowing where to look to find the best strategy in a format. Deckbuilding isn’t about making cards do things, it’s about finding the best thing that all the available cards can do. Gabriel Nassif and Zvi Moshowitz have always had a kind of detached attitude about their decks; they don’t try to show off with what their deck does, but they do wonder why you didn’t find something better to do when you made yours. Then they will beat you, because they found the best thing that can be done with all the available cards. Zvi in particular displayed an almost childlike sense of exploration in his constructed articles. He never tried to sell himself as a virtuoso, but he was always exploring and could always defend the choices he made with explanations that had to do with the merits of the cards, not what he wanted to accomplish with them.
I’m going to go even further and say that thinking of decks as being “built” or “created” is actively bad. If you aren’t the one who made the deck in question, you might start to think about decks as being immutable objects that should never change. I can think of many times I’ve given someone a list, and then a week later my deck will be five cards different and that person will be in shock that I changed cards. When the deck was handed down to them by a higher power, the idea of changing cards in said deck became blasphemous. I’m also guilty of this myself, but no matter who does it, it’s stupid and dangerous. You’ll get stuck with a suboptimal deck because you don’t bother to think about changing card choices for yourself.
If you make decks, investing your own identity in cards and decks you make will distort your thinking about them. If you get personally invested in a deck that you “built”, you won’t want to let go of it if it turns out to be bad. Bad players often have pet decks because of what they think is fun. Good players tend to have pet decks because they built them, feel clever about having built them, and don’t want to let go. “Building” an “innovative new deck” that turns out to be horrible and trying to defend it becuase it is yours puts you on exactly the same level as the guy at the comic shop who plays the same elf deck for years in multiplayer games becuase he “likes elves”. This kind of thinking is a very good example of playing Magic for a bad reason- you’re putting the rush you get from feeling clever above winning. Would you rather feel clever than win?
The past two paragraphs are why I become unhappy when Mike Flores exercises his odd habit of acting as if individual people own cards and ideas in constructed. For example, in a recent article about extended he was discussing a dredge deck when he mentioned that you could play “Pat Chapin’s Tireless Tribes” in one version of the deck. This is a strange statement to me for a few reasons. First, before Chapin wrote anything about a dredge deck that contained Tireless Tribes, dredge decks containing Tireless Tribes were infesting Magic Online events. This was not a Chapin original idea. Furthermore, it’s completely obvious that Tireless Tribe belongs in a straight dredge deck. You want to dredge as soon as possible, and Careful Study, Putrid Imp, and Tireless Tribe are the best ways to get dredge cards into your graveyard for turn two. You would be foolish to not play all twelve of them. Tireless Tribe isn’t good because Pat Chapin endorses it, it’s just obviously correct and it shouldn’t take Pat Chapin to convince you of that. Why would we bring Pat Chapin into this?
Another example of Flores’ intimations at idea ownership is when he gives pet names to decks, like calling a green-white beast deck in extended “Haterator” and referring to it as that ever since then even when the name never caught on. What happens if we change one of the cards in the deck to make the deck better? Is it still “Haterator”? Is it still Mike Flores’ deck, or is it now your deck? Is any of this even important at all? The fact that you think of the deck as a Mike Flores creation could make you less likely to change cards if something is wrong. I actually don’t trust Flores decks to be very good, because it’s obvious that he loves every deck he builds, and that can make someone unlikely to change suboptimal cards aggressively enough or abandon ship entirely if there is no hope. This is exactly the opposite of the way I want the person who builds my deck to think, and thinking this way will block you from improving your constructed deck choosing.
Detaching yourself and your ego from your “deckbuilding” will increase your ability to see clearly the merits and flaws of the decks that you work on, because having to change or abandon a deck will no longer be a personal failure. Just keep trying to make the best sixty first decisions of the game that you possibly can, and things will work out best for you in the long run.
Related Articles:
Why Do You Play Magic?
So you’re playing extended, legacy, or vintage. We all know those formats are broken and silly, but you figured out exactly how to attack the specific way that the format is broken. You have the perfect mix of disruptive cards and little obnoxious creatures, and you’re going to use it to beat all the broken decks on your way to glory and prizes.
I understand what you’re thinking. You’re not the first one. Let me show you a few people who have done this before:
Nicolas Labarre- Fish
Pro Tour Rome 1998, 2nd place
Extended
4 Manta Riders
4 Merfolk Trader
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Man’o'war
4 Suq’Ata Firewalker
3 Waterspout Djinn
4 Force of Will
2 Force Spike
4 Counterspell
2 Curiosity
3 Nevinyrral’s Disk
4 Wasteland
18 Island
Sideboard
2 Phyrexian Furnace
2 Bottle Gnomes
2 Force Spike
2 Disrupt
4 Hydroblast
2 Serrated Arrows
1 Nevinyrral’s Disk
Nicolas Lebarre played this deck in a field of High Tide, Academy, and Recurring Nightmare/Great Whale combo decks, among others. While everyone else was trying to win on turn three or four with degenerate combo decks, Nicolas’s turn four might bring a Waterspout Djinn. Decks like this gave “fish” decks their original name, since they contained actual merfolk. Between Wasteland and counterspells, though, this deck could give Academy decks fits. Speaking of Academy decks, let’s look at what won that tournament:
Tommi Hovi- Academy
Pro Tour Rome 1998 Champion
Extended
4 Volcanic Island
4 Tundra
4 Tolarian Academy
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Brass
4 Mana Vault
4 Mox Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
3 Voltaic Key
2 Scroll Rack
4 Stroke of Genius
4 Time Spiral
4 Windfall
3 Mind over Matter
3 Intuition
3 Abeyance
3 Power Sink
Sideboard
4 Wasteland
4 Chill
4 Gorilla Shaman
2 Red Elemental Blast
1 Arcane Denial
This is an Academy deck. It uses mana-producing artifacts with Tolarian Academy to produce a ton of mana, and then do silly things. Time Spiral, Windfall, and Stroke of Genius show you more cards, with Time Spiral giving you more mana as well by untapping Academy. The deck ends the game by getting out a Mind over Matter and using it to untap Academy repeatedly, generating a ton of mana, and then casting Stroke of Genius to deck the opponent. This version of the deck consistently won on turn three if it was not disrupted.
After nine years of evolution, modern fish decks look more like this:
Max Tietze- Fish
Grand Prix Columbus 2007, 4th place
Legacy
4 Meddling Mage
4 Dark Confidant
3 Jotun Grunt
3 Mother of Runes
2 Serra Avenger
4 Serum Visions
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Duress
2 Umezawa’s Jitte
3 Stifle
3 Daze
4 Tundra
2 Underground Sea
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 Scrubland
1 Island
1 Plains
Sideboard
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Engineered Plague
3 Vindicate
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Duress
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
The merfolk are gone, and in their place we have actually efficient small creatures., but the disruption-based small creature attack is intact.
Public enemy number one at that tournament was Hulk Flash:
Steve Sadin
Grand Prix Columbus 2007 Champion
Legacy
4 Dark Confidant
4 Protean Hulk
1 Carrion Feeder
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Body Snatcher
1 Karmic Guide
4 Brainstorm
4 Mystical Tutor
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Counterbalance
4 Flash
1 Massacre
1 Echoing Truth
4 Chrome Mox
3 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
3 Island
1 Swamp
1 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
Sideboard
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Quirion Dryad
3 Massacre
1 Reverent Silence
3 Swords to Plowshares
This is the Flash deck. To win, cast Flash. As part of its resolution, put Protean Hulk into play and then into the graveyard. Search through your deck for Karmic Guide and Carrion Feeder, and return Hulk to play with Karmic Guide’s ability. Sacrifice Hulk to Carrion Feeder, and search out the Kiki-Jiki. Activate Kiki-Jiki targeting Karmic Guide, then sacrifice Kiki-Jiki to the feeder. When the copy of Karmic Guide comes into play, return Kiki to play. You just gained a 2/2 hasty token. Repeat until you have infinite tokens, then attack. We can do all of this unopposed becuase we have Dazes and Force of Wills. Most lists played Duress as well, but I picked the tournament-winning list because, well, it won.
What do the two fish decks decks have in common? They’re aimed squarely at the obvious most powerful strategies in their respective tournaments. Nicolas’s counters and Wastelands are a strong plan against Academy, and look at the hate Max has for Flash- Leyline of the Void means that Protean Hulk won’t trigger during Flash, and he has Meddling Mage, Duress, Daze, and Force of Will. A well-timed Swords to Plowshares might even stop a Flash deck that didn’t have a Benevolent Bodyguard to search up to protect Karmic Guide with. Mother of Runes could stop a Flash deck’s one bounce spell from getting rid of a Meddling Mage. This is all nice. You’re going to feel smart when you get that Academy player with the Curiosity, Wasteland, Force of Will draw, or you beat the Flash opponent with your early Duress and Daze-backed Meddling Mage.
The second thing that they have in common is that they are wildly underpowered compared to the decks they are aimed at. The same turn that Labarre’s deck is playing a 4/4 for 4 with a drawback, the Academy deck is killing you or already has killed you. The legacy fish deck gets a slightly disruptive grizzly bear for the same amount of mana that it costs the flash deck to win the game. To win a game in these matchups, the fish decks have to do a delicate dance to shut off the combination decks’ ways to win. The combination decks just need the fish deck to misstep once, and that’s the game.
The third thing that fish decks have in common is that they look absolutely abysmal when you take them out of the context of the decks they are aimed at. Let’s take a trip in time back to Pro Tour Rome. Although that tournament had all kinds of brokenness available to it, at least half the field was playing “fair” decks- say, something like this:
Erno Ekebom
Pro Tour Rome 1998, 13th place
Extended
4 Jackal Pup
4 Mogg Fanatic
2 Goblin Patrol
2 Gorilla Shaman
4 Ball Lightning
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Shock
4 Incinerate
4 Fireblast
2 Hammer of Bogardan
4 Cursed Scroll
4 Wasteland
18 Mountain
Sideboard
4 Pyroblast
4 Bottle Gnomes
3 Red Elemental Blast
2 Price of Progress
2 Furnace of Rath
This deck is for all intents and purposes “fair.” It’s going to kill you on turn four or five, which is pretty slow for Rome. This deck’s point is obvious- it’s coming at your face with red cards as fast as it can. So what happens when LaBarre and Hovi get paired against this guy? Hovi is going to simply outrace him. Academy was, after all, the best deck. LaBarre, however, is going to get mauled. He has some Suq’Ata Firewalkers, and past that his creatures are all jokes compared to Ekebom’s burn. These two decks actually fought each other in Rome, with a resounding 2-0 victory to the red deck.
Here’s an example of a fair deck from Columbus:
Owen Turtenwald
Grand Prix Columbus 2007, 2nd place
Legacy
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port
4 Mountain
3 Taiga
2 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Goblin Lackey
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Gempalm Incinerator
4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Ringleader
2 Tin Street Hooligan
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
4 Aether Vial
Sideboard
4 Pyrokinesis
4 Tormod’s Crypt
2 Krosan Grip
2 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Goblin King
1 Tranquil Domain
I may be pushing the envelope about what is “fair” here, but this is about as non-distorted as it got in Columbus. If you are playing Flash, you’re pretty much golden. Goblins has a few ways to steal games from you, but in general the Flash deck is way faster than they are and not much can change that. The fish deck, though, is going to have a rough time against goblins. Four Swords to Plowshares and three Jittes with only five creatures bigger than 2/2’s are not going to cut it against a synergistic set of 33 goblins. Mother of Runes is nice, but the Goblin deck has 4 Fanatics and 4 Gempalms to get it with as soon as it taps.
In both cases, the fish deck’s cards are wildly underpowered and stupid looking as soon as you take them up against a deck that isn’t going broken, and most fish decks in history have this problem. LaBarre did well at Rome becuase he played against eleven Time Spiral-based combo decks in the swiss, going 10-0 against them. He was 1-2-1 against other decks. I don’t have a way of knowing Max’s road to the top eight in Columbus, but I have to assume that he played against a lot of Flash.
The reason your fish deck probably sucks is that you probably packed it full of cards that are terrible in a vacuum. You’re going to beat the best decks, but in a wide open environment there are going to be a ton of players who show up with decks that are terrible for one reason or another. They might be pet decks that their players will never let die, they might be distorted due to card access limitations, or your opponent might just be terrible and not know that their deck sucks. If you don’t play a deck that is powerful enough in a vacuum, those guys are going to beat you. When all of your opponent’s cards are indistinct and equally important, Meddling Mage changes from a pinpoint weapon to a Grizzly Bear, and Force of Will changes from a free way to stop their most important card to a self-inflicted Hymn to Taurach. I don’t want to play Grizzly Bear when I could be playing Flash.
I believe that the allure of fish decks for a lot of players is that they see the obvious best strategy, and leap to the conclusion that they should try to beat it. When the “best strategy” offers you consistent turn two and three kills or something similarly ridiculous, that conclusion isn’t a logical leap- it’s more like a leap off of a cliff onto sharp rocks that are being battered by high waves. The logical thing to do is to just play the obvious best strategy that wins on turn two or three.
I’m not above that. Why should you be?