I am writing this article on my day off. I took today off from work to relax and get ready for an annual tradition of my circle of friends. Every year, we get together one Saturday and go rafting on the Delaware river on the New York – Pennsylvania border. This tradition started when we were all working at the same summer camp. It was also the year that most of my friends got fired on the next to last day of camp. Thus, the trip came to be known as the Firing Squad Rafting Trip. It has evolved from a single day of rafting into a night of camping, where those lovely 21 and older American activities can occur without fear of recourse of the law.
Why start an article on Magic with a tale about a bunch of 20-somethings drinking on a river? It is more about ascribing a negative aura to something that is actually a good thing. This trip is forever known as the Firing Squad Trip, memorializing a day when many of my friends lost their summer job, but it is something we look forward to every summer as a way to catch up, enjoy an adult beverage, and get our row on. In the past weeks, I have undergone a similar change in Pauper, with the help of the previously mentioned Greg Weiss- I have embraced my inner Spike. Spike is one of those words that many people treat as taboo, as if doing everything in your power to win is a bad thing. This is not the case, it just means I have different goals than you; different goals than I used to have.
Ask me what originally attracted me to Pauper. The answer was the ability to be competitive on my own terms, and one of my terms was cost effective. I enjoyed being able to win in a format where I did not have to spend my entire budget on the staples (I was playing a lot of Prismatic at the time, and even back then it was high priced). I also enjoyed the fact that most of the decks I built were competitive- I won my first even with a simple Red deck and I was hooked. For almost a year I was able to help shape a metagame just by what I was playing and writing about. This is an incredibly seductive thing, as it filled me with a sense of power and ownership about the format. Of course, PDC developed into Pauper, but I did not evolve. I still wanted to win, of course, but I still wanted to win on my terms, not the terms of the format. I wanted to define the format, not let my play and decks be defined by its rules.
Can you believe how incredibly arrogant I was? Okay, I still am pretty arrogant.
I was not the only one though. Ask any veteran of PDC about nick#####; I forget the sequence, but the mere mention of nick number is enough make people have nightmares. His rules of engagement including the following: no netdecking. Whatsoever. Nick took this to such a degree that it appeared that he ran actively bad cards and cards that had no place in the deck he was running, just to be different and therefore “win” at his game. He did not like posting his decklists (a requirement for those who made PDC elimination rounds) because he did not want to be the source of a netdeck. To him, being original was a goal, but it was not the goal of everyone. To him, we were all losers, and he was the real winner.
Yet, we were playing in tournaments, and the real winner was the person who won. He was arrogant, he ascribed his rules to us, and we never agreed to those rules. And although I was not as vocal as he was about his disdain, there have been times when I called people “notorious netdeckers” and felt as if I was better than them for making my own decks in the format. In order to grow as a player, I have to shirk this idea.
I am not trying to denounce people who enjoy being original: I love originality in deck design. But unless your originality is tried and tested and is better than the field, are you really playing by the rules of the format, or your own rules for personal satisfaction?
I got luck in the third Premier Event. I was working on a deck that to this day, am happy to have run. I predicted a field heavy in MBC and as a counter ran a “rogue” Blightning Husk deck. At that moment, it was the right call. I remember being happy that I was doing well in a tournament with a rogue deck. This was the wrong way to frame my experience. I should have been happy to have played the right deck for the day and caught the field unprepared. This is a subtle difference but a change I need to make if I want to take that next step towards being competitive, towards being a Spike. Again, there is nothing wrong with not being a Spike, but it does not sync up with my current goals of winning at Magic.
So what does this mean? Currently, it means that many of my brews are taking a back seat. I have to learn how to win. I have to learn what makes this format tick once more and understand it from the inside out. So I'm going back to my roots, so to speak, and working not on making my own decks good, but rather making the decks out there better.
To this end, I have been playing two decks mostly over the past week. First is a stock Storm list. This is step one in making me a better player. I hate combo. I have never been a strong combo player, and yet have on occasion assumed to know how the deck ticks, despite rarely playing it. This is a recipe for disaster. The devil, as they say, is in the details, and knowing exactly what makes Storm tick rather than approximating it will make me a better player. Will I play Storm in a PE? Probably not, since I feel that the deck is prone to fizzling out, and I do not like that aspect of the deck. Rather, I am using this to better inform my play against Storm and potential deck building in a meta where Storm is relevant and dominant.
The other deck I have been working on is Mono-Black Control. I love this deck, and have been playing it on and off for almost as long as I have been playing PDC and Pauper. I think the deck has a lot of potential and is highly adaptable to a wide array of metagames. I have put it down recently, as I was not a fan of the Chittering Rats builds, but I have come around.
First, everything here should be taken with a grain of salt, since I feel the deck will change once Doom Blade and Sign in Blood come online, as both warrant consideration (the latter warrants immediate inclusion). But still, this discussion is important to understand what it takes for me to move on as a player.
My initial build eschewed some number of Chittering Rats and other cards for Mind Stones. This is a two fold mistake, and both are linked to my lack of ability as a player.
First, the Stones are a fine card, but they do nothing. As Greg explained to me, I was far too concerned with hitting all my drops on a curve and that is why I liked Stone. And he was right. I was far too concerned with hitting my drops on the optimal turn according to their mana cost, not according to their utility. The ability to Tendrils one turn earlier mattered occasionally, but not enough to warrant inclusion. I eventually cut these cards for Barren Moor as they essentially do the same things: they provide mana and Cycle late.
This change also forced me to play like a true control deck. In the past I would play MBC as some sort of midrange aggressive deck, trying to gain an advantage with my creatures attacking before finishing the opponent off with a Corrupt. Mind Stone fits into this strategy, but that is not how this deck is supposed to work. MBC currently wants to block and survive long enough until one of the game enders comes on line and, well, ends the game. Removing this crutch of beating down has forced me to become a better control player.
Chittering Rats is a card I have long been critical of. I felt that it did not do enough, as it stalled your opponent, rather than advancing your own. However, this is a fallacy. Rats advances your plan by stalling the opponent, again, until your game enders can end the game. My problem was that I was ascribing my own inability to play Rats at an optimal time to them being a a bad card. Once I learned how to play the card properly, it became immeasurably better. Rather than just running it out, I had to time it to the exact point where, if I were my opponent, I would least like to have Rats cast against me.
Read that again.
It is so subtle, so obvious, and so elegant that I am ashamed that I never thought of such an axiom. Again, this is something that Greg has helped me understand. Since learning this, I have cast Chittering for value and see why it is such a fantastic card. And of course, it helps me play as a pure control deck.
Back to my life- I am something of a gym rat. I go in the morning, before work, to get my blood flowing and focus for the day. Lately, I have been plateauing, and have decided to use a mantra to help me move past this: WHAT: Work Harder and Think. The same can be applied to how I am approaching Pauper the same way. I am going to be work harder and think, rather than think first, and then work hard on a deck that, well, runs Steel of the Godhead and Ninja of the Deep Hours.
Keep slingin' commons-
-Alex
16 Comments
I your analysis of what makes winning players in any format win: knowing the format and all the decks inside and out.
I too have began on my process in Classic using a similar strategy. Not just as a deck builder, but also a net-decker, playing more than one deck will gain you so much valuable knowledge on how certain matchups play. You can predict your opponent's draws and make a read on their cards simply because you are aware of how the deck operates, which cards they have played, and how they responded to your cards.
One example of this has been Classic Zoo vs Aggro Loam. I had The Fear in this matchup because I wasn't sure I'd be able to survive until turn 4 to not lose. So I embarked on building the Zoo deck, playing it, and learning its in's and out's. This gained my the knowledge to know how much burn it draws, how often you draw lands, and which threats are played in which order. Then, using this knowledge I crafted my specific Loam vs. Zoo matchup. Attack the mana base, lock them out with Chalice, and destroy threats as they appear.
Another very valuable skill to be gained is knowing what decks you will face when you play. If you can easily expect say 20% of all the decks you play in a tournament to be MBC, then you can tailor your deck and sideboard to account for this matchup.
Both of these skills are indispensible to a winning Spike.
Knowing the field isn't just for pure spikes. Also the term netdeck has stigma attached to it that it shouldn't. Mainly because in some formats netdecks are really the top tier and no one wants to face top tier when it means an auto loss. Also people like having a reputation for original deck building. (That's a very Johnny POV I think.) I am guilty of Anti-netdeck sentiment to some extent but I think it is obvious that if you seriously intend to test for a particular format you at least must be very familiar with the decks in that format. All of them. If someone introduces tech that affects the format...you need to know about it and whether it hurts your ideas or helps them.
Anyway my 2.5 cents is know your enemy, and know yourself. Even if you are the most rogue builder ever you need to acknowledge and accommodate the field or be prepared to lose.
I've found that pauper is the perfect environment for developing my magic skills. To be able to afford to build just about any netdeck and playtest it, dissect it and work out what makes it tick is priceless.
As an example I worked on white weenie for a whole month. WW is a deck that previously held no appeal to me, I was only interested in red burn and fast results. WW was at that time one of the decks to beat though, and I needed to understand how to build it and play it well so that I could play against it better. Eventually I stopped playing WW like it was sligh without burn, and once I'd done that I found I liked the WW mindset after all. I've pretty much discarded any prejudice I had to any unfamiliar deck now, and I have a more positive view of netdecking.
It also helps that people like yourself and many of the PDC crowd want to share knowlege and so raise the average level of skill in the format.
Good article, thanks.
Good article. However one odd thing, you mention a "good" time to play chittering. As an MBC player I'm curious when you think the time is correct, as I feel the only time chittering isn't at its max effect is when 1) the opponent has a terramorphic expanse or other shuffler in play that he clearly intends to use at my EOT 2) the opponent has no cards in hand 3) the player is clearly going to counterspell it. I can't think of any other scenerio where I wouldn't gleefully cast the dude, he reeks of awesome in MBC's gameplan.
I'll elaborate, since it was a conversation with me that prompted Alex to write about Chittering Rats. They are indeed a difficult card to evaluate because their effectiveness depends on hidden information that you may never find out in the course of a game.
I noticed that, when facing off against MBC (with or without blue), the value of the opponent's Chittering Rats seemed to vary greatly based on the skill of the MBC pilot. Against weak players, Rats were rarely more than an annoyance, yet against good players, the Rats often felt like a nail in my coffin. From this non-scientific observation, I concluded that the good players must be doing something differently.
The simplest way to explain how to play Chittering Rats effectively is exactly what Alex said: cast them when they will hurt the most. This goes beyond the examples you gave (when opponent has no cards in hand, or an Expanse in play). What you want to avoid are situations where the opponent already has a scripted, proactive play for his next turn. In those cases, Chittering Rats will not actually provide any disruption or tempo gain. For example, let's say your opponent has 4 cards in hand: 2 lands and 2 spells. His next turn is very likely to be the same as if you had not cast Chittering Rats.
On the other hand, Chittering Rats is absolutely brutal if the opponent still has cards in hand but is lacking a specific resource. Typically that means he is either 1) out of creatures; 2) out of land and bottlenecked with spells such that he can only cast one per turn; 3) waiting defenselessly for a combo part or sideboard card; or 4) uninterested in committing to the board because of Crypt Rats or lack of counterspell backup against your removal cards.
It's your job as the MBC player to read the opponent and determine if now is the right time to Chitter, or if you're better off making a different play and sandbagging the Rats for later when it will hurt more. Of course, sometimes you just play it turn 3 because it will trade with another creature, and sometimes you can't afford to wait because the opponent will have no cards at next opportunity.
Excluding cases where shuffle effects are involved (and there are plenty of pauper decks that do not have shuffle effects), you don't actually "gain" much if anything by playing the Rats when it "hurts more". Imagine the time when Rats "hurts" is turn 5 (imagine that is when he misses his needed 5th land drop). If you played Rats turn 3, when turn 5 arrives the player will still be hurting, because he only gets the card (in this case the land) the following turn anyway, or one turn later than otherwise.
So indeed, Rats is brutal when the player is lacking a resource. But the brutality is not dependent on when the Rats hits - even if it hits before the opponent is lacking the resource, it will be effective with rare exceptions. And that is part of why Chittering is so good.
Ivo.
"It has evolved from a single day of rafting into a night of camping, where those lovely 21 and older American activities can occur without fear of recourse of the law."
Details please!
Intriguing insights I've also notice the same thing regarding playing Mulldrifter to some extent. Do I Evoke him, or play him seems to depend on the player, and deck I'm facing but there seems to be times it's far better to Evoke then to play him.
so, about that netdecking... can we see some lists? =)
There was a point in my life when I had oodles of personal time, where I could scour through cards and card combinations to try to make my original deck idea. A rogue against the scourge of net-decks. That time has way since past, and I usually found out that what I was working on was already being worked on by someone else at the same time.
Now, I try to get my money's (time's?) worth out of playing, so I study net-decks and tinker with those. Someone else has already done the work for me and I can try to pilot the exact same, or slightly tweaked, deck and see where it goes. I put my dreams of grandeur behind me in order to make the most of my limited time by playing instead of coming up with the next big thing.
Also, going through lists of net-decks usually gives you plenty of info on meta and optimal builds, even if you didn't come up with the idea yourself.
In a tournament: yes. Every deck has its subtleties (even straight aggro) which means the best player will normally win a mirror match-up. Netdecking in tournaments is a perfectly legal way of winning, and hence acceptable. In a casual, round-the-kitchen-table match the emphasis is more on fun and making people think "that's cool" then winning (who keeps score of total wins anyway?) Hence people who netdeck are perverting the "format" if they hamper decks which do something cool and aren't being original.
"I put my dreams of granduer behind me in order to make the most of my limited time by playing instead of coming up with the next big thing."
Honestly, I think this is a "phase" that many Magic players go through. After the novelty of the game wears off, the game becomes more of a competition than a place for innovation or an arena in which you can experience something.
Or, in other words, it's my opinion that some players start as "Spikes", while other players tend to gravitate to being "Spikes" as they become more jaded with a game that they've played a long time. That leaves a majority of the "Johnnies" and "Timmies" to be relatively newer players that have the ability (and time?) to bring fresh ideas to the table.
To each their own, but I'll probably keep resisting the pull to be a Spike and stay my good ole' Johnny self for a nice long while.
Fantastic comment, and one that I think is dead on accurate.
The most difficult thing I've ever had to do in Magic was to stop being a Spike. I'm back to a spike again now, but I did make the transition back for the time I wanted to and focused on just having fun in all aspects of Magic instead of focusing on the win at all costs.
Seriously, very very very hard to stop being a Spike once you're a Spike.
I don't agree with this. In Pauper, I am a total Spike- it's my competitive outlet.
However, in Tribal, Commander, and other formats, I try to have fun and build other decks. It's just how I am wired I suppose.
-Alex
I think it depends a lot on the person if they can separate this kind of things easily or not (this is not a dig at anyone that doesn't have this ability - I'm just saying I believe it depends on the person).
When I play in any sanctioned events, I believe I am a "Spike". I have my preferences, but due to limited time I actively choose to play sanctioned only when my preference matches something that is viable - but when I make that choice, I act like a "Spike" (i.e. I don't try to force my preferences to be viable when they are not).
If I were a "full-time" dedicated player I shouldn't and couldn't have strong preferences - I would need to play what deck was best for each event. As I don't have time for "full-time" dedication, having such preferences ends up working to save me time (and won't affect my competitiveness negatively, as long as I'm aware of this and am realistic about the competitiveness of the preferred decks in a format - styles which I am usually familiar on how to play, so I can also gain time by the existing familiarity).
This does not stop me from enjoying decks with interesting, non-competitive synergies in casual play (what usually stops me from enjoying casual play are griefers, but that is a known problem).
I am so laughing at the Nick### comments, i remember those Rants well...
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