A brief writer's note: I took a sabbatical these last few weeks in order to think about the various holes that people poked in my Theory of Options. Well, that - and real life snuck up behind me with a pitch fork and beat me senseless. I doubt anyone missed me, but just in case someone did, I'm sorry. Won't happen again, I hope.

Alright, that takes care of explaining my Caribbean adven - I mean, leave of absence - so let's get on to the real heart of this article: The Theory of Options. I received quite a bit of email response on that little puppy, as well as several responses that were posted on Starcitygames.com. Apparently, I wasn't as clear in that article as I should have been, and people have been giving me lip about my little mistakes. But now, after careful thinking, I believe I've come up with answers to all those nagging questions that I didn't answer in my last article.

First off, there was one question that my friend Daniel Crane mentioned in his response to me (it can be found here at StarCity - but why bother, since the quote is below?). In it, he stated the following:

"Now, let's take it a step further. What if one of the cards in your opponent's library is a Living Death or Yawgmoth's Will/Agenda? Those cards open up a great number of options, giving him a huge Option Advantage. If we say that your opponent's playing with Living Death, then your use of Millstone to put creatures in the graveyard isn't necessarily good. You'll be getting massive Future Option Advantage, but as soon as your opponent casts Living Death, his Current and Turn-Based Options fly through the roof."

First of all I'd like to point out that in the Theory Of Option Advantage, the cards in graveyard don't count as options at all. Daniel's reply wasn't implying that the graveyard should count as options... But just to make sure we're all reading on the same page, I thought I'd point that out. Cards in graveyard don't matter, because on a normal basis they can't be effected by cards in play. With that understood, cards like Yawgmoth's Agenda/Will that manipulate the graveyard and turn it into an extension of the hand. For the period in which these cards' abilities are in effect, they can be considered to add Current Options to your hand. Think of it as drawing cards that you'll have to put back if you don't use them. Daniel states that these open up a huge number of options to the player using them - which is the truth, as long as the opponent has stuff in his graveyard to use.

Let's set aside Millstone for the time being* and look at Living Death. While thinking about how to classify this card, I realized that I never really classified Instants and Sorceries in terms of options. This is actually a very hard subject because Instants and Sorceries are Current Options until they are used, and they go to the graveyard immediately after resolution. After careful thought. I decided that Instants and Sorceries represent no options outside of the hand, but are instead traded in order to gain or nullify options. In other words a player trades an Instant or Sorcery (say, Wrath of God) to achieve an advantage of some kind (it destroys all creatures in play, hopefully getting rid of a hefty amount of options on the opponent's side). Because of the way they are traded in order to create an effect, I call these Tradable-Current Options. In the case of Living Death, you trade the Living Death to nullify all the options represented by your opponent's creatures (in plain English, you kill them all) and at the same time it creates Turn-Based Options (by bringing creatures in the graveyard back to play). Keep in mind that cards in the graveyard don't count as any type of option at all, and that all cards that take things out of the Graveyard can be considered to "create" the option of the card that's being put into play/hand for the purposes of Options.

In the next paragraph, Daniel goes on to talk about what happens when another player plays a Wrath of God after his opponent casts Living Death. Daniel believes that this is trading one Current Option for another - but again, this isn't accurate. The Living Death created options for one's opponent, just as if they had played them from hand. A Wrath of God destroys all these creatures and leaves the opponent without the options those creatures represent. Technically, the opponent would then be in the same position that he was in before the Living Death - but in actuality, he's worse off since he undoubtedly just lost a massive number of options and will have to topdeck another Living Death to win.

Daniel also hits on another point that many other people mentioned as well: Daniel states that Total options are too difficult to calculate. Frankly, I agree with the opinion that as I defined it the average player would never be able to calculate Total Option Advantage fast enough to actually do some good. I've developed an easier method to calculate Total Option Advantage that should be useful to just about everyone.

First things first, though; let's deal with exactly how to calculate the total number of options a player has (if you wanted to total it simply according to the cards). It seems like I didn't mention that cards in library count as one - and ONLY one - option in my original article, which is why several people assumed I placed just as much importance on it as I did on Turn-Based Options. Not so though; unlike Turn-Based Options, Future Options can only count as one option. The reasoning behind this is that a card has no effect on the game while it's in the library. Cards in the library are options that one will be able to take eventually, but the card has to leave the library in order to be used. Until a card does become a Current Option, though, it has practically no bearing on the game except being a card in library. That's cards in library only count as one option for the purpose of the total number of options a player has during a game.

By the same token, cards just sitting in your hand only count as one option, because the only action you can take with them is to cast them. A card in hand only gives you the option of casting it; it doesn't do anything for you until it leaves your hand. This is why Instants and Sorceries can considered Tradable-Current Options (and only count as one option) in most cases. Modal cards are the exception, though, since they count as several spells in one.

So how do your figure your graveyard in if you want to know the total number of options you have at any point? As I stated before, the graveyard doesn't count as any type of option at all, due to the fact that it can only be used if manipulated. In the case of graveyard manipulation, then cards in the graveyard become one of the preexisting forms of options. A card like Animate Dead puts a creature from graveyard into play and turns a card that's already been used into Turn-Based Options. Cards like Yawgmoth's Agenda/Will turn the graveyard into an extension of a player's hand, and make everything in the graveyard a Current Option.

Another clarification that I would like to make is in regards to Current Options: I have realized that for all intents and purposes, there are two kinds of Current Options. The first kind is effective Current Options; these are those Current Options that can actually be played during the current turn. If a card costs too much to be played on the current turn, then it is what I like to call a Non-Entity Current Option. As turns go by, more and more Current Options lose non-entity status (assuming land is played regularly). Since I have revised my definition of Total Option Advantage this isn't truly important, but for all of those people out there who need to have a theory describe everything possible, that should fill in a hole in my theory that was presented by those cards.

One last clarification I'd like to make is that Turn-Based Options are the only option type (other than Modal Current Options) that can count as more than one option during the course of a game. This is because Turn-Based Options are the only option types that allow more than one ability on any given card and that stick around for more than the time it takes them to resolve. Turn-Based Options also can be targeted with enhancement spells and effects, which makes them count as another option. This is why creatures count as three options in addition to any abilities they possess: They can attack, they can block, and they can be targeted. Enchantments and Artifacts also count as an additional option in addition to the options they're abilities represent.

Speaking of calculating Total Option Advantage, the old version of my theory is still very tough stuff to do quickly. When I originally conceived the idea of Total Option Advantage, I envisioned something that would take a player a total of about ten seconds to calculate. I though it would be a system where all a player has to do is glance at the board. and it would be obvious who has Total Option Advantage. Unfortunately, not even I can calculate Total Option Advantage quickly using the way I defined it last article.

Fortunately, I have a fix for that little problem, too; first of all, the very definition of Total Option Advantage must be changed. Originally, whoever had the greatest sum of options had Total Option Advantage. As many people pointed out, though, that just didn't work very well. Not only is it unwieldy to try to calculate, it also focuses only on cards in play and neglects such important things as board control and life totals. Therefore, I propose both a new definition of, and a new way to calculate, Total Option Advantage.

First off, it was never my intention to state that all forms of options are created equal. Since its very impractical (and probably impossible) to accurately give each type of option an exact numerical weight, it looks like we're going to have to find a new way to calculate who's got the Total Option Advantage. But before we get to that, here's a revised definition: Total Option Advantage is an advantage in the number of viable actions available at a given instant in a game. Be sure to keep the term "viable" in mind, since it's important; in this instance, "viable" means actions that can be taken without losing. For instance, tapping twenty land and ending the phase isn't a viable option. On the surface, the new definition is the same as the old one - except it no longer requires that you actually count out anything.

Puzzled? Perplexed? Think someone spiked my coffee this morning? Maybe they did, but bear with me.

Calculating Total Option Advantage under this new system isn't hard, but it does have several factors that have to be looked at. The first such factor is board control. For those who have never heard the term before, "board control" is a techy term given to controlling the game with an iron fist. The player with board control is the one who is "winning" a game, because he is somehow determining how the game is being played.

Take the following case: two players have creatures with the exact same power and toughness. If Player A has five more creatures than Player B, then Player A has board control, because Player B is forced to play defensively in order to survive. By having more creatures Player A dictates what Player B can and can't do (unless Player B is feeling suicidal). Player B can't make an all-out attack at Player A, because Player A has more creatures and will be able to potentially block and trade with Player B. In this instance, Player A will be able to counterattack and, since Player B can't block, he will probably face the death of the trampling horde. Even if for some reason he doesn't, then Player A will still be able to attack virtually unopposed on subsequent turns and Player B will be hard-pressed to survive for long. The only way Player B can win is to find someway to get around Player A's extra creatures or kill them off. Unless he can, Player B had better hope Player A screws up - because he's not going to win otherwise.

The reason you look at board control instead of strictly at Turn-Based Options is that a player can have more options, but still be losing the game. For instance, a Rebels player has five more creatures than a U/W player, and they both have the exact same amount of land. The Rebel player definitely has more options, but he's still losing the game. You see, our wily U/W player (who has fewer Turn-Based Options) is smacking the Rebel dude for two a turn with love from Blinding Angel and forcing him to skip his attack phase. If the Rebel player manages to find a way to stop the Blinding Angel (searching out a Ramosian Sky Marshall, for example), then board control swings the other way... But if our Rebel player doesn't come up with an answer to Blinding Angel, then it's game over.

That's an issue I have with my own theory - because when I was formulating it I didn't explain situations where a player can have more options without actually having more cards out than an opponent. I've since realized that it's possible to have options simply by being in certain situations. The board control example I gave above is an excellent demonstration of this. The U/W player has board control and is winning the game, yet on the surface she has fewer options than the Rebel player. In truth, though, she actually does have more options than her unfortunate little opponent, because by having board control she is denying him several options including, in this case, the option of employing the attack phase which is his one condition. Having board control doesn't generate options, but it does strip the player who doesn't possess it of a large number of options. That is why it is so important. Board control is not a direct form of option, but it does dictate the number of options a player has by forcing them into either a winning or losing position. A player without board control has fewer options than his opponent, because he can't do certain things for fear of not winning. A player with fewer creatures can't attack his opponent with everything without risking the game. By the same token, a blue control players without board control can't tap out during their main phase to cast something unless it's a gamebreaking card. The Blue players just can't risk their opponents casting a particularly nasty spell while they're tapped out. Players without board control are forced to be conservative and defensive in order to turn the game around and take control; otherwise they'll lose the game.

Board control is the easiest way to determine who has the most options in a game. A horde of Jackal Pups doesn't do much good when there's a Masticore on the table and ten untapped lands to back him. Turn-Based Options are the most important type to take into consideration when trying to see who has the most viable options.

One thing to keep in mind when determining board control is the clock factor (this also figures into Total Option Advantage). Clocks are any card that gives a player a set number of turns to either deal with the threat posed by the card or die. Example of clocks include anything with a power and toughness and the lack of the word "wall" written on the card. Obviously, a player under a five-turn clock has fewer options than their opponent, since they have only a limited number of turns before they lose the game. After all, the dead tell no tales and have NO options - and therefore, players under a clock have to find a solution within a limited number of turns or they will no longer have any options at all. The clock mechanic fits in nicely with the idea of life as viewed in terms of options: high life means more options than low life. The reason this fits into board control is simply that even if a player appears to have board control, if he is on a clock and can't kill his opponent or nullify the clock before he losses, then he doesn't really dictate what's happening in the game and doesn't loses board control. This is what happens when a player is locked down by Blinding Angel or Teferi's Moat as well as when a ground horde can't outrace a few evasion creatures. An example would be a duel between G/W and Skies. The Skies player has one life, three Rishadan Airships, and some islands; the G/W player has twenty life, some random land, and a River Boa. The Skies player would have board control, but he's under a one-turn clock so it doesn't matter.

Another important thing to consider with board control is tempo, or the natural flow of a player's deck. All decks are designed to play out in a certain way, and it is this tempo that affects how many options each player has at any given time. A player with good tempo will quickly get out enough mana to be able to use all options in his/her hand; however, a player with bad tempo will be stuck in a position of not enough mana to supply their spells or in a position where their only responses must be reactive. The tempo itself isn't a form of option and can't be calculated for the number of options it represents, but it does affect the number of options available to a player. Essentially, when checking tempo the only thing that matters is that neither players has had their tempo disrupted by discard, missed land drops, etc. A player whose tempo has been disrupted for any reason whatsoever has a disadvantage over a player whose tempo has not been disrupted at all - because the player with the good-tempoed deck will be running as it was originally designed.

But what happens if, after taking a look at board control and taking the clock factor and tempo into account, both players are even? At this point, it becomes time to take Current Options into account. A player with a larger hand has a greater chance of affecting a game than a player with a small hand. If a player has no hand, then they can't produce new Turn-Based Options, can they? Even without board control, when facing someone with no cards in hand, a player with several cards in hand will normally be able to retake board control simply because they can cast creatures to reinforce those in play - or use Instants and Sorceries to nullify threats in play. Since the other player has no Current Options, he can't drop anything new to replace the losses that will be incurred after removal is leveled on his dudes and being forced to block attackers.

If both players are even in the Current Options area, then it's time to take a direct look at life totals. Essentially, the reasoning behind this is that if neither player has board control, or an advantage in cards in hand, then the one with the most life is going to have the most options, simply because it will take them longer to die than the other player. Life factors into board control, but at that point it's unnecessary to look at exactly how much life a player has. The reason life totals comes so low is because it's an expendable commodity until you have about five or six of it left. Most players will have the same number of options at eight life as they do at twenty, simply because one's life total only matters if it's down to about four or five. Still, if everything else is equal, life totals are a good indicator of Total Option Advantage.

If, for some reason, after all of the above both players are still even, then it's time to look at Future Options. Future Options follow the same vein as Current Options, except they aren't as important. The only reason Future options apply at all in calculating Total Option Advantage is because without them, there can be no Current Options. Once Future Options are depleted, even if a player finds a way to not draw a card each turn, he/she will lose because of the condition stated in the above paragraph - namely, the player can no longer pump fresh creatures into the fight or continue nullifying threats. Without being able to replace losses or remove opposing threats, a player will be overrun by an opponent who can do these things or one who is in a similar position (has no Future/Current Options) but who has board control. At that point, it would be almost impossible for the first player to break that board control without fresh options. For the purposes of calculating Total Option Advantage, the exact number of Future Options isn't important, because most games are won or lost before a situation would present itself where the number of cards in library is actually important. The only thing that really matters is the presence of Future Options, since without them a player will be decked. If, for some reason, both players are dead even at this point, then AND ONLY THEN should libraries be counted.

To summarize and consolidate the above, a player with Total Option Advantage is the one who can take the most actions at any given time without losing the game. In order to calculate who has Total Option Advantage, one determines which player has board control while taking into account clocks and tempo. Board control is important, because generally the player with it is the one who can safely take the most actions, and therefore has Total Option Advantage. If both players are tied for board control and neither is on a clock it becomes a question of Current Options, life totals, then finally Future Options.

Time to change tracks a little now. The final major point that was raised by many was the application of the Theory of Options beyond Total Option Advantage. Originally, I didn't have the slightest clue how this theory could be used by deckbuilders - but, as often happens, I stumbled on one while thinking of something completely different.. Simply put, if one were to lay out every card in one's deck and total up the number of options presented there, one would have a numerical representation of just how many actions are available to any particular deck. Daniel Crane actually hit on this the best while trying to calculate Total Option Advantage under the old method. In his article (which can be found here) he goes through and calculates the exact number of options in a G/W Blastogeddon deck. Of course, he did make a few errors, such as forgetting the extra ability of both River Boa and Noble Panther, but he does a good job anyway. So why does this matter? Simple: Decks with greater total numbers of options are generally more flexible than those with fewer options.

Bear with me a little longer. Let's say for the sake of argument that you want to calculate the total number of options that your deck has. To do this, you must look at your deck in terms of Turn-Based Options. First count up the number of Turn-Based Options each permanent in your deck represents and add this total up (remember that each permanent counts as one option for the purpose of targeting and additional options for each ability it has). After that, there's a little problem. Since Instants and Sorceries can't be Turn-Based Options, they have to be taken into account a little differently. For the purposes of calculating the total number of options in a deck, Instants and Sorceries count as one option for every type of permanent they can potentially nullify or enhance. For instance, Desert Twister gives four options, since it can destroy any type of permanent (if you count Enchant creatures as enchantments; if you don't, it's five). (Shouldn't this theory definitively state whether an enchant creature card counts as one or not? -- The Ferrett) Cards like Accumulated Knowledge are one option under this system, even though they allow you to draw multiple cards. Cards that put out tokens, pump creatures, or give life work the same way as Accumulated Knowledge: one option for every different type of action they allow you to take. Cards that can be used to directly damage an opponent also gain an option for that (for example, Lightning Bolt counts as two options, since it can either hit a creature or burn a player). Cards with multiple targets count as an option for each target they hit, and Modal cards count as one option for each mode.

The only true difficulty in these calculations comes when playing with a "reset button" or counter magic. "Reset buttons" like Obliterate, and more restricted "resets" like Wrath of God, are difficult to give a numerical number of options to because they can hit any number of creatures or other permanent types. In the case of these types of cards, simply count them as one option, since most of the time it's better to err on the side of caution, and one is the least number of permanents that any of these global "resets" will destroy. Another way to deal with these cards is to assign them an arbitrary number of options, or to even regard them as x during calculations. Of course, in the latter instance, that makes calculating hard stuff.

Countermagic is a bit easier to deal with than "resets." These should simply be regarded as one option for every spell type they counter. In the case of the good old-fashioned Counterspell, it counts as a whooping six options since it can nullify any of the six classifications of spells. However, this flexibility comes at a price. I'm not sure how to factor in the fact that countermagic can only be used at certain times yet, but I'm still trying to figure that out.

All right, enough theoretical jank; here's a real-world example of the total number of options in a deck. I'm sure everyone is familiar with Zvi Fires by now. Here is its total number of options:

Zvi Fires

5 Mountain- 2 each
10 Forest- 2 each
4 Karplusan Forest- 4 each
4 Rishadan Port- 3 each
2 Dust Bowl- 3 each
4 Birds of Paradise- 4 each
4 Llanowar Elves- 4 each
4 Chimeric Idol- 4 each (being able to become a creature and all the creature powers that come with it are options, too!)
4 Fires of Yavimaya- 3 each
4 Blastoderm- 2 each (minus one option because you can't target them. This ability also takes away an opponent's options, though.)
4 Saproling Burst- 7 options (one for each counter. Creature abilities are not factored in, since the number of Saprolings is variable)
4 Assault/Battery- 2 each
3 Jade Leech- 3 each
3 Two-headed Dragon- 5 each (since he counts as two blockers. His ability was only counted once, even though it's variable.)
1 Earthquake- 1 option

Total: 193 options

Compare that to Daniel's G/W deck, which has 182 options. Out of the two, you can see that Zvi's deck has more to do than Daniel's does. Daniel pack more utility than Zvi, but he doesn't have nearly as many things to do each turn as Zvi does. This high number of options is probably one of the reasons Fires is so good. It has plenty of Turn-Based Creature Options and backs it up with Tradable-Current Options that take out creatures. That's not to say that Daniel's deck is worse than Zvi's (Daniel's deck is a topdecking machine), but it certainly doesn't have as much to do each turn as Zvi's does, which is probably an indication that Zvi's deck is more potent.

Comparing options like that is time-consuming, yes. But it does give players a basis for seeing how flexible a deck is and how much it can do. Decks that are more aggressive tend to have fewer options than more controlling decks.

Well, that's about all for this week. Keep in mind that everything I've presented here is an evolving theory. Anyone who wants to voice any questions, comments, concerns, or who just wants to voice a suggestion please feel free to e-mail me at Cymagus913@aol.com. Hate mail is, of course, always welcome. Debate is good for the soul.

-Israel Marques, II
- Member team AWWAJALOOM (the Ferrett actually does send out a membership card and handouts - it's sweet stuff!)

I'd like to give special thanks to Albert Sadoine, Oscar Rakso, Phil Deneka, Jon Blevins, Wayne Alward, and Daniel Crane for all the valid points you all raised. Hopefully this article fixed most of the issues you had with me theory.

* - Actually I'm working on a separate article for this troublemaker.