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By: CZML, Cassie Mulholland-London
Oct 20 2014 12:00pm
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 Hello, and welcome back to The Perfect Game. This week is the big one, folks.

 

Before I start, go re-read my previous article, “The Perfect Game: Two Modern Theories.” I'll wait.

 

Back? Good. Let's get started.

 

In my last article, I summarized the two most prominent Theories of Everything in Magic: Mana Theory and Option Theory. Of the two, I definitely prefer Option Theory, but they both have merits and flaws. My theory takes elements from both Option Theory and Mana Theory and develops a new facet that neither of them really explores: relevance. Thus, I have named my theory “Relevance Theory.”

 

The thing I like about Option Theory is that it's extremely applicable. It ties together the three pillars of Magic theory very neatly and it's easy to use it to improve your game; just focus on the best way to get more options or (more often) deny your opponent options. It gives you a lens through which to analyze your technical decisions.

 

The thing I like about Mana Theory is that it more directly addresses how relevant the size of your effects are. It's of a more mechanical theory, as opposed to Option Theory which is more on the general strategic side of things. This would hypothetically make it more applicable, except that the difference between a card's actual mana cost and adjusted mana cost is difficult for a lot of newer players to understand and has a lot of exceptions. Mana Theory is also bad at describing when to hold a spell and when to cast it.

 

Basically, Option Theory and Mana Theory try to do the same thing but from different directions. One focuses on the external framework for decision-making, while the other tries to use the results of those decisions to create a metric from which to analyze them. The issue with the second approach—Mana Theory's approach—is that it makes finding the optimal line exponentially more difficult with imperfect information during the game. So I'm going to focus on building a more external framework with Relevance Theory.

 

Relevance Theory involves a lot of factors (most of which have been at the very least introduced to you in the first two articles of this series), but if I had to boil it down to a single sentence, it would be this:

 

The player who, over the course of the game, maintains the most significant relevant resource advantage is the player who will win the game.

 

To understand how this works, you first need two definitions: that of a “relevant resource advantage” and that of “significance” as I use the term.

 

For our purposes, a relevant resource advantage is any advantage in a resource that is relevant to the game. But wait, isn't that all of them? Well, not exactly. If you think about it for a moment, you'll realize that life totals aren't usually relevant in control and combo mirrors. Cards in hand aren't relevant in blitz aggro mirrors unless the decks are interactive enough to eventually stabilize or get into a board stall. So certain resources are more relevant in each matchup than others, and although each may be relevant at one time or another, there are often one or two that are more relevant than the others. Also, some resources may be relevant to one side but not the other. For example, in the UW Control vs Burn matchup of the RTR-THS Standard season, there were only four truly relevant resources after sideboarding: the UW player's life total, the Burn player's access to relevant cards (card advantage, because spells almost always turned into direct damage), the UW player's mana (as far as casting counterspells and Sphinx's Revelation were concerned) and the Burn player's mana (as far as casting multiple burn spells or attacking with Mutavaults were concerned). Sure, early on in the game the Burn player's board presence might matter, and late in the game the Burn player's life total might be relevant for a short flicker of time, but overall those were the four resources that mattered.

 

You'll notice that I didn't list UW's cards available as a relevant resource, even though if you've played the matchup from either side you'll notice that in game one UW's access to relevant effects is tremendously important because they have fewer ways to gain life and counter spells than they'd like. The reason for this is that, while the resource is tremendously relevant game one, it loses a lot of relevance in post-sideboard games where the UW player has something like 10 counterspells and access to multiple lifegain effects. After sideboarding, barring extreme cases of flooding out, the UW player will practically always have access to relevant effects because of their card draw spells like Quicken, Divination, Jace, and Sphinx's Revelation.

 

Knowing which resources are relevant in each matchup is key to winning a big tournament, and you should have some idea of how the relevant resources shift around at each stage of the game depending on the deck you are playing against. For example, in both the pre-sideboard and post-sideboard games with Abzan Midrange versus Mono-Red Aggro, both of our board presences and both of our relative access to mana are the most important resources. If I do a good enough job at managing our respective board presences, then I can pull ahead and cement a winning advantage right there. If I can't hold back the board presence onslaught, my life total becomes relevant, and because Red has access to haste creatures, pump spells, and burn, their access to cards becomes relevant as well. If this happens, I'm not in the best of shape, although the game is still winnable.

 

The concepts of a relevant resource and a significant advantage are tied together. I define a significant advantage as any advantage that causes your opponent's highest-EV play to shift because of that advantage. For example, if I'm playing UW Control against Burn and I'm at 20 life, my highest EV play is to let a Magma Jet resolve so I can use my Dissolve to counter a Boros Charm or a Stoke the Flames. However, if I'm at 2 life, I'm force to spend my Dissolve on the smaller burn spell. Now, even if I gain one or two points of life (say with a Nyx-Fleece Ram or a small Revelation), I am still dead to a Stoke or a Charm. Likewise, if I'm playing the same deck in a control mirror and I'm down on mana, I may have to let my opponent resolve a Sphinx's Revelation on my end step so that I have mana up to counter an Aetherling if my opponent plays one when they untap.

 

Those of you more acquainted with Magic theory and game theory in general may notice that I have just described a process known as snowballing. Imagine rolling a snowball down a hill. It starts relatively small, but picks up more and more material as it rolls, and it has become a veritable boulder of snow by the time it gets to the bottom of the hill. This is how significant, relevant resource advantages work in Magic. It's the same for a lot of other games as well. In chess, one of the major advantages to being ahead a piece is that you can use that piece to win more of your opponent's material (usually pawns). In no-limit poker, having a larger stack lets you lean on your opponent and often win more and more of their chips. So another way to define a significant advantage is an advantage that snowballs.

 

By default, any resource a player has a significant advantage in becomes a relevant resource, even if it isn't usually relevant in the matchup. Playing BW Midrange against UW Control last season, I got to points where I had done so much damage to myself with Thoughtseize, Sign in Blood, and Underworld Connections in my attempt to pull ahead on cards that my opponent's board presence—3 Elspeth tokens or a couple (Mutavaults) for example—would become incredibly relevant given my low life total.

 

Something that differentiates a great player from a merely good one is the ability to shift which resources are relevant. Noticing that the BW player is killing themselves with their own spells and sneaking in a few extra Mutavault hits or tapping out for an Elspeth, Sun's Champion even though you know it's going to get hit with a Hero's Downfall can be the difference between losing the card advantage battle and winning the damage war. Tom Martell showcased this excellently in one of his games against Eric Froehlich in the Top 8 of Pro Tour Gatecrash. Martell was on the first version of The Aristocrats, while Froehlich was on Naya Aggro. Their lists played a full set of the same 3-drop: Boros Reckoner. Martell, however, had a trump sitting in his sideboard: Blasphemous Act. Act could combine with Reckoner to dish out massive amounts of damage without even having to get into combat. In the fifth game of their match, Martell mulliganed to 5 cards and played a few early creatures, but Froehlich kept up with a Mortars on Martell's Skirsdag High Priest and a Reckoner of his own to match Martell's. Neither player's life total was under a tremendous amount of pressure, but Martell had a Blasphemous Act in his opening hand, which gave him the ability to deal 13 damage to Froehlich's life total practically out of nowhere. The problem arrived, however, in the form of an Aurelia, the Warleader hitting the table for Froehlich, allowing him to attack twice with all of his creatures. Life totals were starting to become relevant from Froehlich's point of view, but unbeknownst to him they had been relevant for Martell from the very beginning of the game. But even though Martell now had two Reckoners, Froehlich had one of his own, and because Froehlich's trigger would resolve first, if the Aurelia-fueled attack dropped Martell below 14 life (as it was sure to do), Martell couldn't cast Act without killing himself. But being the excellent player that he is, Martell was able to completely ignore board presence, focusing on two things only: being able to deal Froehlich 4 next turn (taking him to 13) and getting rid of Froehlich's Reckoner. Because of the Act and the foresight Martell had, he was able to shift the most relevant resource and kill Froehlich practically out of nowhere. It was truly a masterfully played game, and one of the most illustrative I have ever watched.

Take a look. The game starts at 58:25. 

Thanks for reading! That may have been my longest article for this site thus far. I hope you got something from this overview of Relevance Theory, but don't worry if you feel like I haven't covered everything; this is just the beginning. My next article goes into more details about how to develop a significant advantage in relevant resources and discusses how to actually convert those advantages into a game win.

 

Casper Mulholland

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