Going Long, Getting More

Before we begin this week, I’d like to drop a little pop quiz on you guys. Now now, don’t look so glum-there was no need to study for this, you won’t be graded, and it has to do with Magic, so I know for a fact you’re more than equipped to handle a simple question:

In regards to Commander, which is the better card [card]Life From The Loam[/card] or [card]Grim Discovery[/card]?

Take your time and think about it before finally making your decision-By the end, this strange little experiment will make much more sense. And be sure to remember your answer. Now, without further delay, let’s begin.

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I’ve said for weeks that Commander is a format where your wildest (MTG) dreams can come true. That it is the only format left where you can equip a flying pink Hippo with a war hammer and club someone to death just as easily as you can draw out your entire deck, create a million goblin tokens, and [card]Grapeshot[/card] someone to death in a single turn. This part of what I’ve slothfully been attempting to teach you is true-no idea is too crazy. Nothing is unviable. Even if your idea has already been tried, beaten and forgotten; you’ve the freedom to attempt it, and others, again. This is what makes the format enjoyable, attractive, and fun. Something low in supply elsewhere. I’m here to say that if you think just jamming a few cards into sleeves and calling it a day makes a deck “viable”, I’m not going to dispute that.

After all, a million monkeys jamming their fingers at a keyboard can eventually create a Shakespearean work. It stands to reason that, by this same logic, a deck without any synergy or forethought will win somehow at some point. Every deck list and pilot already has the tools necessary to succeed from the moment they sit down. What prevents people from reaching that goal consistently-and subsequently, the part of my lessons I’ve neglected as well-is a simple skill that is often laid to disuse as players become caught in their own wanderlust: Understanding card value, and roles.

The average Commander list features anywhere from thirty five to forty lands, with a one to three card margin either way depending on curve, the nature of the list, and mana rocks used. This leaves you fifty-something to sixty slots left to fill in, which diminishes again as you add the usual suspects (SDT, Crucible, respective tutors, [card]Sol Ring[/card]) and absolutely-positively-freaking-necessary cards (Combo pieces). To make things even more claustrophobic, most people will typically reach for familiar cards until they’ve fine-tuned their build, with often sub-optimal and non-synergistic results. The last ten or so slots are usually a compromise between pilot patience, the level of competitive intent, and the desire to have the list finished. This is the fancy, long-winded way of saying it isn’t until much later that people considering using cards with high innate value and/or conditional value, and even by this point may fail to see a difference between the two.

Cards with an innate value always do something noteworthy and amazing, though don’t necessarily add synergy. These kinds of cards almost always impact the game in some fashion and often with staggering results. The closest examples would be [card]Insurrection[/card] and similar theft effects, which can turn the game completely around in your favor. They’re dense enough in worth to consider over almost anything else in the field, and rarely come with any real setbacks. Often though, while these cards excel in doing one or two things exceedingly well, they simply can’t do it all, and are yet another slot taken away from the potential places you have left. These are the types of cards that will fade from use, only to be included later as performance appears at a hitch.

Cards with conditional value aren’t perfect by themselves, but may combo well with something else in the deck, or add synergy and consistency where there was none before. A great example would be Charms, like [card]Evolution Charm[/card] and others-how effective they are is directly proportional to how synergistic they are with your strategy. [card]Evolution Charm[/card] can just as easily grab a land as it can return a dredge enabler to your hand, or make a [card]Terra Stomper[/card] fly. How useful any of those options are depends entirely upon what it is you’re trying to accomplish overall. Will ramping put you in a position to win quickly? If you flip your deck like a waffle, will the benefits outweigh smacking someone with a flying baddie? While these questions are fairly typical, none of them need to be answered with a definite “yes”, which is what makes conditional value cards so spectacular-just being able to accomplish one of these options at the right time could warrant an inclusion over three other cards competing for the same slot.

While there’s enough distinction between the terms for even the most Luddite player to understand the difference, in practice this isn’t always as easy as it appears. Even the most experienced players can’t always look at a card and intuitively know why it’s superior over X Mythic, or Y Rare, and so on. To properly determine innate or conditional value (or any value, really), you’ve got to devote a few hours of play testing to the deck, or at the least, play the card in enough situations to properly understand it’s role in your pending success. Let’s take both of the examples from our quiz and put them in perspective:

[card]Life from the Loam[/card]

-Appears to have high innate value as it fuels popular strategies and cards

-Will rarely be a dead card, and can be freely pitched

-Value can arguably only go up

[card]Grim Discovery[/card]:

-Appears to have high conditional value. Not nearly as wide of application as above.

-Much more valuable in the late game

-Value can grossly depreciate depending on application

Placed side by side, [card]Life from The Loam[/card] seems the obvious consideration. Yet, there are many, many things that [card]Grim Discovery[/card] can accomplish in one fell swoop that it’s green rival can’t no matter how many times you cast it ( I hear creatures win EDH games, and getting a chance to replay them is a big deal). However, [card]Life From The Loam[/card] can draw extra value out of certain cards that [card]Grim Discovery[/card] doesn’t have sufficient reach for; like [card]Worm Harvest[/card]. While any given player is far more likely to reach for Loam first due to it’s innate worth, neglecting the conditional worth of Grim without suitable testing isn’t proper brewing technique. The sheer size of the format allows us more than enough freedom to stray away from our comfort zones (read: innate value cards) without being penalized for trying alternatives (conditional values), and in doing so often makes our plays more varied, and thus prepares us to handle a more diverse meta.

The proper answer to the quiz is “neither”-Sorry, guys. I really didn’t mean to trick you.

I bring this up because I’ve been stumbling around with my own brews lately, and have been caught in a slump where I’m constantly recycling the same lists with a different general and a few new slots (and if you were to guess this is why I’ve not featured a deck list lately, you’d be correct). Constantly reaching for innate value cards has stagnated my ability to improve my own designs, blinding me to the potential that certain cards might bring to the table. The [card]Vhati il-Dal[/card] list I brought you a few weeks ago seemed to perform admirably enough, but I started noticing how it caught hitches in performance due to clunky hands and non-streamlined creature base. I had fallen in love with [card]Birthing Pod[/card] (which many players say is almost better than [card]Survival of the Fittest[/card]/[card]Fauna Shaman[/card]. Almost) and was too busy thinking of ways to abuse it to notice “free” cycling cards, like [card]Edge of Autumn[/card], and how they would trigger my necessary Dredge cards far quicker. Thus enabling me to pop off with a combo sooner than my original design (or my opponents) intended. When falling in love with “awesome” cards impacts your brewing ability and play, it’s time to wipe the slate anew and start over.

[card]Birthing Pod[/card] has high innate value, but I had assumed it’s role was far more vital to my success than it actually was. There was nothing it could accomplish that [card]Greater Good[/card] couldn’t do, and often better. Did it still deserve a slot, even after I realized what it was doing to me? In any other G/X style deck that has access to a sufficient toolbox to back it up, I would undoubtedly say “yes”, but within the context of what I was trying to accomplish, Pod had less innate value than I had previously assumed, and was soon dropped in favor of other suitable candidates. It’s value didn’t drop, but it’s role in the deck was no longer warranted, and so I’m still confident in saying it’s a high innately valued piece of cardboard. This is something I only came to realize after hours of play testing and putting the deck through the ringers (which is probably another reason my friends wanted me to drop it so quick).

I understand that devoting a ton of time to testing a deck in a casual format isn’t a reality for some of you, and that reaching for those headlining rares is the easy way out. But before you do that, take five minutes to look over your list and think. Talk to your friends about what you’re doing, use Gatherer until your fingers bleed, and devote even a few minutes towards thinking about your deck. If the innate value pick still appears to be the proper solution, by all means put it to use. Don’t forget that you’ve literally dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of possible alternatives ready, willing, and capable at your disposal in the process as well, as noticing even one quirky common can save you a ton of grief now, or in other brews.

Before we wrap things up here, I’d like to poll you lovely neckbeards about what you might want to read about for next time here at Troll Aesthetics. Are you interested in what I’ve been tinkering with, format theory, or the philosophy of what drives EDH? Do you want to hear riveting tales of terror from my kitchen table, or perhaps just glance over some drunken quotes from my recent games? I had thought about devoting the next five weeks to what each individual color brings to the game, but that style of article has been handled by far more talented men (and women) than I far too many times. I’m open to any and all suggestions. You can reach me in the comment section here, or email me at Jack@mtgcast.com. You can also find me on twitter under the handle @jacklacroix, or pelt me with questions at my blog, The Bitter, Better Man (so not safe for work it hurts)