Author’s note: I usually write financial articles because I’m not a good constructed player. That doesn’t mean I’m a bad deckbuilder or that I’m bad at critical thinking; it just means that I make bad decisions when I actually play. I hope to write thought-provoking pieces on cards and Magic theory. You may not agree with my conclusions, but at least try to follow the chain of thought and interact with it. Otherwise, the entire field of Magic writing will devolve into drunken rants (Mike Flores) or half-finished decklists that get called “articles” (too many “writers” to count).

There are a few phrases that Magic players throw around that always make me smile. Here are some of them:

“A five-drop that doesn’t win the game is unplayable in Legacy.”
“Any card that gives your opponent a choice is a bad card.”
“Twenty lands is too risky.”

But here’s the one I’ll focus on today:

“That’s a dead card after turn three. Don’t play it.”

Most recently, I saw this argument being made against [card]Chalice of the Void[/card] on the message boards of a major Magic: the Gathering website. And since people on the internet are never wrong, the hive-mind fell right in line with the original poster’s conclusion: [card]Chalice of the Void[/card] is too risky to play in Legacy because it is a “dead draw” after turn three.

Please understand that I have no love affair with [card]Chalice of the Void[/card]. I’ve never bought one or sleeved one up, so I don’t need to swoop in to defend its reputation or protect the value of my own personal [card]Chalice of the Void[/card] stash. There may be good reasons to play it and good reasons to ignore it, but to label it a “bad card” because it’s “dead” after turn three is NOT enough of a reason.

It’s time for a better discussion of what a “dead card” or “dead draw” is.

Right this minute, pros and amateurs are talking about their decks and they are evaluating which cards should be included and which cards are inconsistent, inefficient, and just plain terrible. Sadly, some great cards will be thrown out of consideration because some idiot parroted the “dead card” maxim and stupidly applied it to a good card. It happens all the time and it suppresses good creativity. Don’t let it happen to you.

What is a “dead card?”

Even the whole language of a dead card is based on narrow, hypothetical situations! A dead card is any card that you draw off the top of your deck in the mid-to-late game that doesn’t impact the board state in a significant way. We’ve all been there: we’re playing burn and we need any creature or any burn spell to finish off our opponent, but we draw the single copy of [card]Smash to Smithereens[/card] that we sideboarded in instead. Or this one: we’re playing Sneak and Show against Dredge and we’ll lose to an army of bridge tokens and [card]Ichorid[/card] unless we draw our other combo piece, but we draw [card]Lotus Petal[/card] instead. After it happens a few hundred times, our brain starts to throw a tantrum like Pavlov’s dogs.

The first connection it makes is this: when I draw this card late, I soon lose the game.
The second connection follows: If I never draw this card late, I won’t lose the game.

Of course, the only way to ensure that you won’t draw that card late is to cut the card entirely or reduce the numbers you’re playing in order to drop the risk of seeing it late. Our brains are very good at both avoiding pain and rewarding pleasure and they often trick us into irrationally reducing risk, even in Magic: the Gathering. Unfortunately, our brains are also overly dramatic and they over-react when they convince us that all dead cards are bad cards.

Just for fun, we could make a list of cards we don’t want to draw dead after turn five:

– [card]Black Lotus[/card]
– Moxes (or Moxen, depending on your spell-checker)
– Most soft counterspells ([card]Daze[/card], [card]Mana Leak[/card], [card]Spell Pierce[/card])
– Most mana accelerators ([card]Mox Diamond[/card], [card]Elvish Spirit Guide[/card], [card]Dark Ritual[/card], etc.)
– Most reactionary hate cards ([card]Blood Moon[/card], [card]Pithing Needle[/card], [card]Chalice of the Void[/card])
– Leylines

Lands can even be dead cards! I hope the point is clear: just because something is worse after turn five doesn’t mean it’s a bad card. This is one of the most basic, yet often overlooked, premises of Magic: the Gathering. When you build a deck, you make trade-offs. If you build a fast deck with low mana costs, your spells aren’t as powerful. If you build a control deck with high costs, you might lose before you can windmill-slam your Titan. If you play a combo deck, you risk mulliganing into oblivion every match. How much risk can you handle? Can you put your balls on the table with [card]Goblin Guide[/card] and [card]Lightning Bolt[/card]? If so, you understand that the same card can be incredible early and terrible late. Combo players often hold a whole grip of things like [card]Hive Mind[/card] and [card]Pact of the Titan[/card] while they die, but nobody ever accuses those cards of being “dead,” even though that’s exactly what they are when they fail to impact the board.

The discussion of dead cards is usually unhelpful. No cards are truly dead all the time (even Leeches). The better question is: at what point does this particular card start or stop being useful in the game?

We can break this down into four categories:

1) Some cards remain very popular with pro players even though there’s only a tiny window of usefulness. [card]Daze[/card], for example, declines dramatically after turn three. [card]Goblin Lackey[/card] and [card]Birds of Paradise[/card] also follow the same decrease in impact.
2) Other cards, like [card]Price of Progress[/card], [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card], and [card]Tombstalker[/card] get better, more versatile, and more efficient with every turn that you hold them.
3) A third category of cards are always good regardless of when you draw them, like [card]Stoneforge Mystic[/card], [card]Tarmogoyf[/card], and [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card].
4) Finally, there’s a beautiful set of rule-breakers: the cards that are good and efficient enough for early casting, yet grow and flourish on their own to become serious threats. [card]Delver of Secrets[/card], [card]Nimble Mongoose[/card], and [card]Kird Ape[/card].

It shouldn’t be a surprise that players have finally (in the last year) decided to smash all of the good cards from the 4th category into one deck (Blue Zoo). You have incredibly efficient threats that come down on turn one, grow on their own, and provide a quick clock while you disrupt your opponent’s removal and combo pieces.

But here’s the point: pick up your Legacy deck right now, list out all the cards, and then write down the range of turns in which you would want to draw that card. My pet deck right now is U/R Delver, so it would look something like this:

[card]Delver of Secrets[/card]: turns 1-3
[card]Goblin Guide[/card]: turns 1-3
[card]Grim Lavamancer[/card]: turns 3-10
[card]Snapcaster Mage[/card]: turns 4-10

[card]Lightning Bolt[/card]: anytime
[card]Chain Lightning[/card]: anytime
[card]Price of Progress[/card]: turns 3-10
[card]Thunderous Wrath[/card]: turns 3-10
[card]Daze[/card]: turns 1-3
[card]Spell Pierce[/card]: turns 2-5
[card]Counterspell[/card]: turns 3-10
[card]Force of Will[/card]: anytime
[card]Brainstorm[/card]: anytime
[card]Ponder[/card]: anytime

Just by looking at my average range of numbers, I know that I probably need to win the game by turn five or turn six. I have very little that gets better in the late game. The ranges get dramatically smaller in a Legacy Burn deck (you want to shoot yourself if the game goes past turn six) or dramatically larger in a BUG control deck (you spend your first three turns just trying not to die).

Here’s another deck: Justin Geary’s top 8 U/W Stoneblade deck from the most recent SCG Open.

3 [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card]: turns 3-10
4 [card]Stoneforge Mystic[/card]: turns 2-10
1 [card]Vendilion Clique[/card]: turns 3-10

1 [card]Batterskull[/card]: (will get fetched by Stoneforge)
2 [card]Umezawa’s Jitte[/card]: turns 2-10 (or will get fetched)

4 [card]Brainstorm[/card]: anytime
4 [card]Swords to Plowshares[/card]: anytime
2 [card]Ponder[/card]: anytime
2 [card]Inquisition of Kozilek[/card]: turns 1-4
2 [card]Thoughtseize[/card]: turns 1-4
1 [card]Vindicate[/card]: turns 3-10
4 [card]Lingering Souls[/card]: turns 3-10
3 [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card]: turns 4-10
1 [card]Counterspell[/card]: turns 2-10
1 [card]Intuition[/card]: turns 3-10
3 [card]Force of Will[/card]: anytime

As you can see, Geary’s deck gets better with age (I’ve capped the turns at 10, but those cards would still be good if the game went longer). His cards are designed to survive an early rush through discard/removal/[card]Lingering Souls[/card], and then control the mid-game with Jace/[card]Vindicate[/card]/Stoneforge. From a range standpoint, this deck has a great shot against the overall field and can survive aggro and combo pretty well. It would be irritating to draw your discard spells in the late game, but they’re worth it for the chance to eliminate a combo piece on turn one.

Is it any surprise, then, that [card]Brainstorm[/card] and [card]Ponder[/card] are 2 of the best 15 Magic cards? Why were there 24 copies of [card]Brainstorm[/card] in the most recent Top 8 (the other two decks weren’t blue)? [card]Brainstorm[/card] lets you cheat your ranges for one mana. Are you holding a [card]Spell Pierce[/card] on turn eight? [card]Brainstorm[/card] it away and find something that’s good right now. Do you need to find your [card]Birds of Paradise[/card] on turn two? [card]Brainstorm[/card] for it! Other “range cheaters” are [card]Green Sun’s Zenith[/card] (gets a more relevant creature with every turn that passes), [card]Sensei’s Divining Top[/card] (draw only the best cards for the current game-state), and [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] (re-uses progressively larger spells that you’ve already cast).

I have a theory about the Legacy metagame, and it’s based on the ranges I’m using. I think aggro decks are getting slower. They decided to add disruption instead of gas and it’s costing them a whole turn. That’s ok because combo decks are also a turn slower, because they also pack insane amounts of protection and disruption. That’s why we live in the world of tempo midrange decks. Controlling turns four, five, and six is all that matters in Legacy right now. The aggro players could put a stop to it (because Goblins, Zoo, and Burn can consistently kill on turn four), but they are too afraid of combo. Because of this, aggro players keep diluting their damage-dealers to add disruption, not fully realizing that they could kill the desire to play combo if they weren’t so scared of it. Sometimes players will realize this and Burn will win a tournament, but nobody pays much attention because that guy must be a beginner who doesn’t know that real Legacy players don’t play Mountains.

But this is a conversation about dead cards, remember?

If it’s not obvious by now, it should be: usually, the best cards in your deck are the most “dead” after their ideal range has passed.

They’re the cards that make your deck good, but then you turn on them later and hate them for ruining your match. You, O’ Great Deckbuilder, are the fickle one. You are a middle-school girl who loves [card]Goblin Guide[/card] in the morning but breaks up with him after lunch. You hide behind the [card]Spell Pierce[/card] blanket in your youth, but you’re annoyed when you see it after you graduate. Get over yourself! You make choices and then you live with those choices. If you want to play aggro, then play the best, fastest, scariest, insane version of aggro. Don’t dilute your threats with the “dead card” excuse.

If you do it right, your hands will shake and your brain will tell you that every card your opponent holds is the correct combo piece. You are completely powerless against combo because you built your deck for speed, not for comfort. If you do it right, it’s scary and you might draw dead. But more often than not, you’ll be able to say these words while you cast your lethal [card]Lightning Bolt[/card]:

“Your whole hand was kinda dead, wasn’t it?”

But you’re not going to take this advice, are you? Because you’re afraid. And so am I; which is why I’ll probably sleeve up U/R Delver instead of playing Burn at the next Legacy Open.

Sigh…