Post by ThatDamnPipsqueak on Oct 28, 2018 0:41:38 GMT
Continuing in my series of pieces on card evaluation trends that frustrate me, I want to talk about two boogeymen, one old school, one new school. This piece is more specifically about card evaluation, and less about design, but I'd like to think that the theory involved still will prove useful to some people. Today, we're gonna talk about combos and synergies, with two case studies, and how that should influence your assessment of cards.
For a bit of context, ever since the rise of Death's Shadow, I've noticed a trend in custom magic design circles: People have gotten far more scared of printing cards with life payment or life loss as a drawback. Not too long ago, I saw a custom card, which was a 3 mana artifact with three abilities: "0: Discard a card; 0: You lose 1 life; 0: Sacrifice a creature". People said that it would break Death's Shadow decks in half. This, in my opinion, is just the new version of another classic occurrence in custom magic, where 0 mana cards that do literally nothing are praised as "This might be playable in Storm." I'm going to be examining these two common refrains, and explain why they're wrong.
For those of you who haven't been following Modern (or Legacy, now that the deck has also arrived there), Death's Shadow is the titular card in a tempo deck, which tends to be R/B/X (Grixis Death Shadow was the most popular until recently). Death's Shadow encourages you to reduce your life total, and in exchange provides you with a very efficiently costed beater. In order to enable DS, the deck runs Thoughtseize, Street Wraiths, shocks, and fetches, as well as Dismember as a 1 or 2 of. Thoughtseize puts in work, when paired with Inquisition of Kozilek, allowing them to both disrupt combo decks, as well as shred people's removal suites, allowing the relatively threat light tempo deck to kill people before they recover.
There are two main things to note from Death's Shadow. Firstly, the payoff isn't an instant win. You get a very efficiently stated creature for the cost (at 10 life, a 3/3 vanilla for 1 is probably modern playable, and at 7 life, a 6/6 for 1 is kinda insane), but Death's Shadow has no built in evasion and dies to every removal under the sun. It also can't one hit KO an opponent, has no enter the battlefield value, and no haste. You are playing a creature, and then killing your opponent over the course of 2 to 4 turns. Secondly, all the cards played are already modern playable. Thoughtseize is one of the most played modern cards. Street Wraith grows your Goyf and turn on Delerium while allowing you to run effectively a 56 card deck. Dismember is 1 mana removal that kills basically everything. And shocks and fetches are the best mana base modern has to offer. All Death's Shadow needs to do is fetch-shocklands out more than other decks (oh no, playing on curve, what a horrible inconvenience) and suddenly it gets a great beater in exchange.
The strength of Death's Shadow is that you get to play a bunch of cards you'd want to play anyway for a very good payoff. So when we evaluate cards in the context of it, we have to ask a question: If we don't draw our Death's Shadow, is this a card we want to draw? If the answer is no, then a card is unlikely to be good in the deck. But unlikely isn't the same thing as "this card is definitely bad", which brings us to our next question. If we assemble this two card combo, how much does that increase our chances of winning by? In the case of the 3 mana artifact that us to go to 1 life at any point, the answer is probably not by much. Remember, Death's Shadow isn't a combo deck, and the payoff reflects that. If we are at 1 life, our threat still takes 2 hits to kill our opponent, while we are sitting there, vulnerable to any burn, any haste creature, any manland that was played prior, and any boardstate wider than 1 creature.
Death's Shadow isn't in the market for something that allows it to pay life for no reason. The deck takes advantage of getting to pay life more than other decks, but ultimately it'll only run cards that are at least vaguely reasonable in other shells. So, design your life paying effects away, just keep in mind that Necropotence is broken in more decks than this one.
The other case study we're going to look at is Storm. Storm is a mechanic that has been around for over 15 years now (that's right, Storm is a high schooler), and the combo deck that uses the mechanic has been around since Extended at that time. Of course, it has changed significantly over the years, but Modern, Legacy, and Vintage all have Storm decks (Modern is UR Storm, Legacy has two good variants and two bad ones but is generally Grixis , Vintage is UB), and they operate under similar principles. When a Storm deck goes off, it casts several ritual spells, building up a large amount of mana, then proceeds to cast cantrips and tutors to find a win condition, which it then casts and copies for each spell it has played that turn. Legacy/Vintage storm only need a Storm count of 10 for lethal, whereas Modern needs a Storm count of 15-20. Storm decks are full of cheap cantrips, tutors, mana rituals, and a few cards with Storm.
Storm is a weird deck if you aren't familiar with it, and it is hard to determine what it struggles with at a glance. Some people assume that it has trouble building up a lethal storm count, and thus base their card evaluations off of that. In reality, Storm's struggles vary from game to game, but usually the problem is one of the following: insufficient mana, lack of answers for hate, can't find the wincon, or insufficient cards (which is more of a cause one of the other three problems than a problem on its own). If a storm deck can go off, it is rare that it can only go off a little. It's basically never a question of 1 storm count (and thus 1 or 2 life) away from lethal, but more often there's a question of 1 mana, or 1 tutor, from lethal.
A card building Storm count isn't a reason to run it on its own, and a cantrip that doesn't set up future draws is drastically less useful for Storm than one that does. Gitaxian Probe provided information about what your opponent had in hand, and allowed you to play around disruption better. Manamorphose is a ritual if you have Baral or Electromancer out, and can allow you to convert red mana into blue mana (which is sometimes essential). Beyond these two, Storm isn't running Street Wraith, which is the next 0 mana cantrip option on the table. Obviously since Street Wraith doesn't provide Storm count, this is a little bit more iffy, but should illustrate the point that Storm generally cares about its 56 through 60th best cards more than it cares about a more compact deck.
So, stepping back for a moment, I hope this has illustrated why cards are good or aren't good in both Storm and Death's Shadow, but this piece isn't just about those decks. In general, I want to make a larger point about why decks run specific cards. The biggest thing that you can learn, when trying to improve as a magic player, is that those synergies that you loved as a casual player, in reality, suck. This isn't an absolute truth, but as a general rule: If you are running two individually weak cards in your deck, they should be way above the power curve when put together. Synergies of good cards can make decks very powerful (see Death's Shadow), but synergies of bad cards don't have that potential. Unless, of course, it is a combo deck.
The larger lesson here is that the more pieces a synergy engine has (A+B+C+D+....) and the weaker those cards are individually, the weaker the deck is. You don't get to see your entire deck in a game of magic, so if you draw one card, but not the other, you lose a large percentage chance of winning. You're fighting with an anchor around your neck. Don't do that to yourself, play good cards, or at least have a damn good reason to play weak ones.
What does this have to do with card evaluation, you might ask? Well, when you look at a card, the first step is to evaluate it on its own. How good is it there? Then, evaluate it with another card. Do these play well together? If the answer to the last one is yes, ask yourself what the impact is. In conjunction, do they win the game? If a card is bad on its own, but wins the game in a two card combo, then it's probably a good card (Well, assuming the other piece is a reasonable card in your deck). But if it is bad on its own, and doesn't win the game on the spot, you might be better off just running a good card in its place. Cards should synergize with the overall gameplan of the deck, not with a single other card in the deck.
For a bit of context, ever since the rise of Death's Shadow, I've noticed a trend in custom magic design circles: People have gotten far more scared of printing cards with life payment or life loss as a drawback. Not too long ago, I saw a custom card, which was a 3 mana artifact with three abilities: "0: Discard a card; 0: You lose 1 life; 0: Sacrifice a creature". People said that it would break Death's Shadow decks in half. This, in my opinion, is just the new version of another classic occurrence in custom magic, where 0 mana cards that do literally nothing are praised as "This might be playable in Storm." I'm going to be examining these two common refrains, and explain why they're wrong.
For those of you who haven't been following Modern (or Legacy, now that the deck has also arrived there), Death's Shadow is the titular card in a tempo deck, which tends to be R/B/X (Grixis Death Shadow was the most popular until recently). Death's Shadow encourages you to reduce your life total, and in exchange provides you with a very efficiently costed beater. In order to enable DS, the deck runs Thoughtseize, Street Wraiths, shocks, and fetches, as well as Dismember as a 1 or 2 of. Thoughtseize puts in work, when paired with Inquisition of Kozilek, allowing them to both disrupt combo decks, as well as shred people's removal suites, allowing the relatively threat light tempo deck to kill people before they recover.
There are two main things to note from Death's Shadow. Firstly, the payoff isn't an instant win. You get a very efficiently stated creature for the cost (at 10 life, a 3/3 vanilla for 1 is probably modern playable, and at 7 life, a 6/6 for 1 is kinda insane), but Death's Shadow has no built in evasion and dies to every removal under the sun. It also can't one hit KO an opponent, has no enter the battlefield value, and no haste. You are playing a creature, and then killing your opponent over the course of 2 to 4 turns. Secondly, all the cards played are already modern playable. Thoughtseize is one of the most played modern cards. Street Wraith grows your Goyf and turn on Delerium while allowing you to run effectively a 56 card deck. Dismember is 1 mana removal that kills basically everything. And shocks and fetches are the best mana base modern has to offer. All Death's Shadow needs to do is fetch-shocklands out more than other decks (oh no, playing on curve, what a horrible inconvenience) and suddenly it gets a great beater in exchange.
The strength of Death's Shadow is that you get to play a bunch of cards you'd want to play anyway for a very good payoff. So when we evaluate cards in the context of it, we have to ask a question: If we don't draw our Death's Shadow, is this a card we want to draw? If the answer is no, then a card is unlikely to be good in the deck. But unlikely isn't the same thing as "this card is definitely bad", which brings us to our next question. If we assemble this two card combo, how much does that increase our chances of winning by? In the case of the 3 mana artifact that us to go to 1 life at any point, the answer is probably not by much. Remember, Death's Shadow isn't a combo deck, and the payoff reflects that. If we are at 1 life, our threat still takes 2 hits to kill our opponent, while we are sitting there, vulnerable to any burn, any haste creature, any manland that was played prior, and any boardstate wider than 1 creature.
Death's Shadow isn't in the market for something that allows it to pay life for no reason. The deck takes advantage of getting to pay life more than other decks, but ultimately it'll only run cards that are at least vaguely reasonable in other shells. So, design your life paying effects away, just keep in mind that Necropotence is broken in more decks than this one.
The other case study we're going to look at is Storm. Storm is a mechanic that has been around for over 15 years now (that's right, Storm is a high schooler), and the combo deck that uses the mechanic has been around since Extended at that time. Of course, it has changed significantly over the years, but Modern, Legacy, and Vintage all have Storm decks (Modern is UR Storm, Legacy has two good variants and two bad ones but is generally Grixis , Vintage is UB), and they operate under similar principles. When a Storm deck goes off, it casts several ritual spells, building up a large amount of mana, then proceeds to cast cantrips and tutors to find a win condition, which it then casts and copies for each spell it has played that turn. Legacy/Vintage storm only need a Storm count of 10 for lethal, whereas Modern needs a Storm count of 15-20. Storm decks are full of cheap cantrips, tutors, mana rituals, and a few cards with Storm.
Storm is a weird deck if you aren't familiar with it, and it is hard to determine what it struggles with at a glance. Some people assume that it has trouble building up a lethal storm count, and thus base their card evaluations off of that. In reality, Storm's struggles vary from game to game, but usually the problem is one of the following: insufficient mana, lack of answers for hate, can't find the wincon, or insufficient cards (which is more of a cause one of the other three problems than a problem on its own). If a storm deck can go off, it is rare that it can only go off a little. It's basically never a question of 1 storm count (and thus 1 or 2 life) away from lethal, but more often there's a question of 1 mana, or 1 tutor, from lethal.
A card building Storm count isn't a reason to run it on its own, and a cantrip that doesn't set up future draws is drastically less useful for Storm than one that does. Gitaxian Probe provided information about what your opponent had in hand, and allowed you to play around disruption better. Manamorphose is a ritual if you have Baral or Electromancer out, and can allow you to convert red mana into blue mana (which is sometimes essential). Beyond these two, Storm isn't running Street Wraith, which is the next 0 mana cantrip option on the table. Obviously since Street Wraith doesn't provide Storm count, this is a little bit more iffy, but should illustrate the point that Storm generally cares about its 56 through 60th best cards more than it cares about a more compact deck.
So, stepping back for a moment, I hope this has illustrated why cards are good or aren't good in both Storm and Death's Shadow, but this piece isn't just about those decks. In general, I want to make a larger point about why decks run specific cards. The biggest thing that you can learn, when trying to improve as a magic player, is that those synergies that you loved as a casual player, in reality, suck. This isn't an absolute truth, but as a general rule: If you are running two individually weak cards in your deck, they should be way above the power curve when put together. Synergies of good cards can make decks very powerful (see Death's Shadow), but synergies of bad cards don't have that potential. Unless, of course, it is a combo deck.
The larger lesson here is that the more pieces a synergy engine has (A+B+C+D+....) and the weaker those cards are individually, the weaker the deck is. You don't get to see your entire deck in a game of magic, so if you draw one card, but not the other, you lose a large percentage chance of winning. You're fighting with an anchor around your neck. Don't do that to yourself, play good cards, or at least have a damn good reason to play weak ones.
What does this have to do with card evaluation, you might ask? Well, when you look at a card, the first step is to evaluate it on its own. How good is it there? Then, evaluate it with another card. Do these play well together? If the answer to the last one is yes, ask yourself what the impact is. In conjunction, do they win the game? If a card is bad on its own, but wins the game in a two card combo, then it's probably a good card (Well, assuming the other piece is a reasonable card in your deck). But if it is bad on its own, and doesn't win the game on the spot, you might be better off just running a good card in its place. Cards should synergize with the overall gameplan of the deck, not with a single other card in the deck.
: You lose 1 life.