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Metagames on the Macroscale

Sparked by the recent controversy over  the definition of “aggro-control” I have been thinking carefully about which types of decks are good, when they are good(and for how long) and why.  I wanted to compare archetypes apart from their individual cards and across time to see if I could find patterns or even be able to predict what types of decks might be promising in a new format.  I started by considering recent formats and trying to develop and describe a hypothesis that could account for what I saw.  It was clear to me that there was a substantive difference between the decks that were dominating the metagame for extended periods of time and those that seemed in to be the fastest or highest power.  The goal of this article is twofold: firstly I want to help readers better organize their thinking when deciding what cards, decks, and strategies to pursue in a given metagame.  Secondly I want to begin build up a knowledge base and glossary from which Magic players can draw upon generally to communicate with one another more clearly.

If we just speak of just standard for a moment, over the past 4 years we have seen the metagame dominated in turn by Faeries, Jund, Cawblade, and now Delver. Three of these are what is commonly called aggro-control decks, and the 4th, Jund is often called a “Midrange” deck (although I would argue Jund actually shares important similarities with Faeries et al. Chiefly the ability to close the game quickly).  In “the dark” we might predict that the fastest or “most powerful”(which is usually another way of saying fastest) decks would do the best over a long season, but that hasn’t been the case.

Players I respect have provided wildly different explanations for this phenomenon.  Some claim that Aggro-Control is just the best strategy in magic fundamentally, others make the reverse claim: that the cards make the decks and nothing more: that Faeries was the best because of [card]Bitterblossom[/card], and Jund was the best because of [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card], etc. Of course on some level this must be true, but does it adequately account for the patterns we see over time?

What we need is a framework to think about different decks across formats that is both more accurate(in the sense that we wont have to worry so much about “classifying” decks) and more general than the current model which I believe does as much harm as good for furthering our understanding of how the metagame works.  In an attempt to get around the big mess of competing ideas and controversy about what “aggro-control”, “combo” etc. are, I’m going to mostly discard those terms and focus on something more tangible.  Since systems of classifications are only useful if everyone agrees on them, the model should be uncontroversial, and easy to understand.  It should also be clear what decks fit where.  We will start with the simplest possible model (a binary one) and see if it can teach us anything before we try and complicate things or add additional classifications.

Introducing The Constraint Model:

In this model, decks are either Constraint-Setting or Constraint-threading. What do we mean by a Constraint-setting and a Constraint-threading deck?  Defining these terms properly is and understanding them fully is crucial to our ability to look for patterns. Let me mention before I start that these observations may be somewhat obvious to seasoned competitive magic players. However, it is important I think for the degree of rigor I seek, for me to lay out and carefully define everything before I get into the explanations of why metagames behave the way they do.

A Constraint-setting or Non-Interactive deck is one that sets the initial speed of the format. Usually these are combo or linear aggro decks. The constraint setting deck can often kill extraordinarily quickly with its best draws.  The essential feature of these decks is that they set a constraint on the format: you must be able to interact meaningfully with them by turn X or you lose.  Examples of these types of decks are Tempered Steel(zendikar-scars & current standard), Affinity(pre & post-banning modern, various extended), storm combo(legacy, modern, old extended), Vampires(zendikar-scars standard) and Blazing Shaoal-Infect(pre-banning modern).

“Ramp decks” are also Constraint setting, but they don’t exist in every format and they set a different type of speed: the speed in which they win despite interaction.  Examples of these are Valakut(zendikar-scars standard) and Cloudpost(pre-banning modern).  These decks have the essential feature that they force the other decks in the format to be able to win quickly in addition to interaction(a constraint which traditional control decks often cannot manage, but more on this later).  The common feature of all these decks is that they seek to avoid interaction.  Cards in a constraint-setting decks often do one thing very well, or do little apart from enable a specific powerful synergy. Typical cards would be [card]Ornithopter[/card], [card]Rite of Flame[/card], [card]Primeval Titan[/card], and [card]Lava Spike[/card].

As formats evolve, Constraint-setting decks are often forced to interact, which weakens them by making the slower, less consistent or both.  Think of how a classically non-interactive deck like dredge is forced to try and interact with hate cards.  By filling the deck with answers to graveyard hate, the deck becomes worse even when the opponent hasn’t drawn their hate card.  This effect  is a serious problem and has led to deckbuilders trying to skirt the problem with things like transformative sideboards.

A Constraint-threading or Interactive deck is one that seeks to navigate the constraints of the format and win by generating interaction advantage.  Constraint-threading decks can be non-linear aggro like zoo(various formats), Midrange like Jund(alara-zendikar Standard), aggro-control like Faeries(lorwyn-alara standard, extended) and Caw-Blade(zendikar-scars standard) or Traditional Control like 5CC(lorwyn-alara standard) and U/W Control (alara-zendikar standard).  The essential feature of these decks is that they seek to interact and be interacted with, and they choose cards that generate some kind of advantage(generally cards or tempo) from this interaction. Cards in constraint-threading decks tend to be powerful on their own, or answer opposing threats for some sort of value. Typical cards would be [card]Qasali Pridemage[/card], [card]Swords to Plowshares[/card], [card]Mana Leak[/card], most Planeswalkers.

But Wait! Don’t Constraint-threading decks set their own kind of constraints on the format also? Don’t people play [card]Gut Shot[/card] to combat delver? They do, and this is what keeps the meta moving forward week to week. All games of magic are interactive at some level, the difference between the two categories is what the decks are trying to do. In general Constraint-threading decks are harder to fight against than constraint-setting(because they are more granular, and rely more on card power than synergy), which means the metagame moves slower to adapt to them. Sometimes they are so hard to fight that they require tailor-made hate cards([card]Volcanic Fallout[/card], [card]Great Sable Stag[/card], [card]Obstinate Baloth[/card]) or bannings(this is a new phenomenon, and pre-caw blade constraint-settings decks were almost never banned, more on this later).

So where does that leave the constraint-setters? Are they just good in the first week of the format and then bad as soon as it gets figured out? No, (although Non-interactive decks are often very good in a new metagame since they are more powerful and players don’t yet have a handle on how to fight them) as the metagame flowers into more interactivity the Threading decks become more concerned with navigating each-others constraints. In fact it is this very quality of the metagame that allows the Setting decks to periodically reemerge and over-perform. The obvious recent example of this is team CFB’s tempered steel deck from Worlds.

These traits leave us with a familiar pattern: Interactive decks Dominating for long periods of time, punctuated by “good weeks” for Non-Interactive decks.  Also when formats rotate there is a period of time when Non-Interactive decks tend to do well while the interactive decks try and figure out how to navigate the new constraints.  I would argue that this pattern typifies basically every “healthy” metagame.  If non-interactive decks are dominating, bannings wont be far behind(WOTC R&D behavior is “coded” into the system).  If a particular Interactive deck is so dominant that non-interactive decks fail to emerge and have “good weeks” then the metagame is likely unhealthy, as was the case with caw blade.  Healthy formats tend towards complexity: they start out with a simple set of constraints, but as interactive decks try and navigate around one another card configurations becomes increasingly complex.  This is a bit of speculation but if formats remained the same for long enough we might see a (multivariate)cyclical pattern emerge, or possibly bounded complexity.  In reality new cards are printed often enough that what “really” happens remains kind of an open question(but one that I think is fascinating to think about).

Introducing Scalar Metagames:

The last concept I’m going to introduce is called Scalar Metagames, which is the idea that we as players can adapt to what is going on in a format at different scales.  This is the larger framework for understanding how the constraint model fits into real world situations.  Simply put: As players of the metagame we have several “moves” available to us: we can change cards, change decks, or change when we play.  Each one of these “moves” corresponds to a different scale of thinking:

Card Interaction: Microscale (these are the individual card choices and the particulars of their interaction within the game)  This Level of thinking is very familiar to us, and is typified by the week to week tweaks we might make to a deck to combat what is popular.  When you cut the Thruns from your Pod deck because you expect a bunch of [card]Phantasmal Image[/card]s, you are Microscale Metagaming.  Increasing or reducing the number of [card]Gut Shot[/card]s in your Delver deck is the same thing.  It is this kind short-term tweaking that allows interactive decks to consistently win over many iterations of a format.  It is also this same tweaking that creates the inefficiencies for non-interactive decks to exploit.

One of the skills that I think is important for this kind of thinking is to not think about matchups in a static way, but as fluid and changing.  As the configuration of an interactive deck changes over time to react to what is going on around it, the ability to combat the non-Interactive decks changes.  A good way to imagine this is that every deck is a hole in the ground, and you have only enough dirt to fill some of them. When you move some dirt over to a new hole, you have to take it from a hole that was already filled.  As you might imagine the “best deck” has the most dirt to fill the most holes, but the “best deck for a tournament” might have less dirt, but has the dirt in exactly the right holes.  When we begin think like that it signifies a shift that we have broadened our scale and are now discussing the…

Predicted Metagame: Medium-scale (this is what we normally think of when we hear the word “metagame” basically it is the decks that our opponents will be playing in a given tournament) This is the level where we might decide to switch decks because the matchup with another deck is unsalvagable at the microscale with just card changes.  This level of thinking is also where things like your networking skills come into play, simply asking friends what decks they like or don’t like for a particular tournament is a valuable tool.  Social networking, MTGO results and scouring decklists are all going to inform our decisions.  One pitfall is to assume that everybody is putting as much thought into what they are playing as you.  At the PTQ or GP level, people often just play whatever won the last large tournament or whatever reasonable deck is affordable so don’t get too ahead of yourself.  There is a wealth of articles and information out there about how to operate effectively at this scale, use it!

Metagame Patterns over time: Macroscale (The level on which the Constraint Model operates, telling us when we should expect certain types of decks to be good)  By thinking on this level we can best direct our limited resources(testing time, card-purchasing ability) to the types of decks that are most likely to bear fruit.  For example when testing for a brand new format(like after a large set standard rotation) the starting point should be the non-interactive decks as dictated by the Constraint Model.  That isn’t to say that you should discard information from the lower levels, in fact the ultimate goal is to synthesize the information we get from all three levels to make better decisions, not to “master” any individual level.  Remember that the constraint model is predicated on a certain type of behavior on the part of WOTC R&D: that they like interactive decks, that they ban cards when non-interactive decks dominate, etc.  I think it is likely that the current “regime” is here to stay in the foreseeable future so don’t worry too much about this.

Bringing it all Home:

Hopefully this has given you a bit of framework to organize your thoughts.  Some of what has been laid out are things that seasoned players were likely already doing intuitively, and in bringing them to the fore we can better understand and manipulate these concepts.  Tweaking your assumptions about how metagames operate is an easy way to select better decks, especially in the rapidly moving standard format.  This kind of formalized thinking is one of my strengths as a player, and I’m excited to share what I have learned through reflection and experience.

-Max Brown

If you want to contact me to discuss these concepts(or something else) you can do so at
second.lawl@gmail.com
2nd_lawl on MTGO
mono_brown on Twitter

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