It is true that [some cards] look much better when viewed on an objective, stand-alone kind of scale ... This view completely overlooks one of the most fundamentally important concepts of deck design: Card synergy. (Which is a topic for another article as well.)
--Gianpaolo"GP" Baglione

Now, normally I'm not one to write an article specifically in response to another one, but something about that statement really set the gears in my mind churning. Plus, he literally asked for a separate article about synergy...

There are several ways to create a concept for a Magic deck. The two most popular are to build a deck around a single card (Aluren, Astral Slide) and to build around a general strategy (traditional Sligh, blue Draw-go). They both have their advantages; one has brokenness but is less consistent, and the other is slightly less capable of degenerate draws but more reliable overall.

But what if you can do both?

Synergy decks are halfway between combo decks and"general good stuff" decks. All the cards are useful on their own, but when you put them together they become better. Simply put, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Some examples are Domain from IBC, or mono-black from Torment... But the best examples by far are the various Madness decks of the past year.

The cool thing about synergy decks is that you get to play with cards that, when examined independently, are slightly below the norm. Compare Allied Strategies to Fact or Fiction. In the 'average' deck, both will net you two or three cards - but one is a mana cheaper and instant-speed. Is there really a choice in a non-domain deck? Similarly, compare Sonic Seizure to Shock - one of them makes you discard an extra card at random, and all you get is one measly extra damage. Who on earth plays with that crap?

For those of you don't know what I'm getting at, the answer is synergy. When you're already running all five basic lands, suddenly Strategies becomes downright solid instead of so-so.

"Synergy is all well and good, Jeff," you might say."But I already know all about it. When are you going to stop talking about last year's decks and give me some tech?"

All right; I'll finally start talking about U/G madness in Extended. Most of the deck has already been talked about by people who make more money than me. Our good friend GP was kind enough to focus on how to adopt the deck from Block to Extended: He even talked quite a bit about the synergy of the deck, clamoring about how madness turns a disadvantage into an advantage (duh). Yet somehow this incredibly important point slipped his mind when he recommended removing Roar of the Wurm from the deck. The short response to this is: he's wrong. The long response is: he's wrong because Roar of the Wurm functions as a pseudo-madness spell that enhances the performance of the discard effects already present in the deck.

That's quite a mouthful, so I'll try to explain it by means of example.

Let's look at Careful Study. My friend Ben thinks that Careful Study doesn't belong in the deck, claiming that unless you have a Basking Rootwalla, it provides card disadvantage, which is"bad." I retorted that you don't really need to have an actual madness card; all you need is a card that performs best when in the graveyard, and you have probably at least seven more of those (Wonder, Roar of the Wurm, and maybe Genesis). These"pseudo-madness" cards are what give the deck its extra edge. That makes nine or eleven cards that allow you to achieve card parity with the Careful Study - which is close to automatic on turn 1, especially having drawn two extra. And if you go Careful Study, Basking Rootwalla, Roar of the Wurm, then you've gained a form of card advantage. It's technically parity (because you probably would end up pitching the Roar of the Wurm to an Aquamoeba later anyway), but it's an"opportunity cost" form of advantage - because if you didn't have the Roar of the Wurm, you'd have to pitch an extra land and it would be gone forever.

I'm going to borrow GP's example of Foil, which he rightly claims is very close to being insanely broken in the deck. But why is it so broken? Because you have cards that you want to discard. You replace the downside of pitching a card with the upside of playing a creature at instant speed. The same nine or so cards mentioned above for Careful Study are augmented by the four Arrogant Wurms, for thirteen"discard-worthy" cards. But remember that you're going to discard multiple cards in a game, so you want as many of these cards as possible. Furthermore, sometimes you don't have an Arrogant Wurm, or - more importantly - you didn't leave 3 mana open and you need to cast the Foil, but you don't want to pitch the Arrogant Wurm without casting it. After all, the whole point of Foil is that it's free - if you are holding open three mana to cast an Arrogant Wurm, then why not just hold open four and hard-cast the Foil? The presence of pseudo-madness cards like Wonder and Roar of the Wurm allow you to ACC your Foil at a smaller card disadvantage.

Let's take a look at Wild Mongrel. Here are a couple examples straight from playtesting that provide excellent examples of the synergy I'm talking about. This same friend Ben is currently working on a tempo-based extended deck that runs several aggressive two-drops. For some reason, he thought Wild Mongrel was underperforming, so he tried replacing it with another creature. We then played a few games of his deck vs. Sligh, and I absolutely crushed him. He swapped back to include the Mongrel, and the matchup was much more even - every time he laid a Wild Mongrel, we would both empty our hands fighting over whether it would live or die. The game would degenerate into a topdecking war - which Sligh would generally win because it runs an overall higher threat/land ratio, and fetch lands to boot.

The point here is that Wild Mongrel's discard ability is capable of single-handedly turning around a matchup, even if the deck in question has no madness.

We then tested my U/G madness deck versus the same Sligh deck, this time in his hands. A similar war over Wild Mongrel ensued, and it seemed that the matchups were nearly identical. In one game, we were both sitting on empty boards and nearly empty hands, I knocked my deck and triumphantly slammed down the land I drew: Land number four. Ben was a bit confused as to why I would celebrate drawing a land... Then he looked to my yard. I played the Roar of the Wurm I had earlier pitched to mongrel, and proceeded to trounce him.

Our friend GP provides no less than seventeen alternative cards, most of which are playable and some of which are objectively much better than Roar of the Wurm. But that's the key point: Objectively. We need to examine how replacing Roar of the Wurm with a more versatile card - for the sake of example, let's say it's Fact or Fiction - affects the synergy of the deck. Go ahead and re-read the preceding examples of pseudo-madness cards in the deck. Now imagine if, instead of discarding Roar of the Wurms, which are good in the graveyard, you had been pitching Fact or Fictions - which are completely worthless in the graveyard. The problem with GP's reasoning is that he's examining Roar of the Wurm as a card that says"if you have a discard outlet in play, you can pay 3G to get a 6/6 token." But that's not what Roar of the Wurm says. What it really says is"discard this card at a critical juncture in the game, either to save a Wild Mongrel from certain death or as a result of Studying too Carefully. Then, at your convenience, you can pay 3G and you get a 6/6 token."

Bottom line: Roar of the Wurm is better than most of the alternatives because there are often situations when you need to discard a card, and Roar of the Wurm is a card that can be pitched without incurring card disadvantage. While it's certainly at its best in the Sligh matchup, that doesn't mean it sucks against other decks such as Rock. Re-read the paragraph on Foil to see why.

Are you still going to sideboard it out against Rock? Quite possibly. But I think that the general versatility, and more importantly, the synergy it adds to the deck, make Roar of the Wurm worthy of the main.

And even if you disagree with me, what did this article cost you? Nothing. So even if all you get out of this is a better understanding of synergy in Magic deck building, you still go something for nothing. And that's a pretty good deal.

Jeff Hegedus
"I'm not famous enough to have a 10-line signature."