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Sullivan Library – Overcoming the 4-1 Dogma in Numbers

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Perceived wisdom tells us that if a card is super-duper-good, it requires four slots in your deck. It also tells us that if you’re planning on the long game, a singleton copy of a game-breaker is also the way to go. Thus, if we have a deck packed with two- and three-of copies, aren’t we simply being wishy-washy, and diluting our chances at success? Adrian sets us on the right path, and also debunks the old chestnut that 60 cards is best…

Writing about Magic is a very interesting thing. A lot of times a fantastic

article idea will pop into your head, and there are a lot of things that can

happen to keep it from reaching the “printed” page. Maybe you’ll be scooped

(damn you, Richard Feldman!). Maybe your information will become largely

irrelevant due to the rotation of sets or a new development on the tech

front (oh, how often this has happened to a deck of mine). Perhaps you’ll

be convinced to not write an article for tech concerns of your own (not

wanting to say something because it might impact your own success at

tournaments, or the success of your friends). And sometimes, articles just

don’t want to be written. At least that’s how it is for me, sometimes.

Still, though, I keep a little notebook for article ideas. Sometimes it has

the skeleton of an article, sometimes just the concept itself (I never wrote

it, but my article about “How the Japanese Were Right!” was really good.

Seriously. But, it would have been…), and sometimes thoughts about recent

articles that simply need a response. Once you actually get into the

writing swing, some really good articles can end up on the back burner just

because there is something that is going on right now that needs

your attention, especially when a particular new set comes out, or a deck

list needs to be written about.

Two weeks ago, I mentioned how I disagreed with a number of writers about

some things that are going on in Time Spiral Block, and that I’d be going

into it in more detail “next week”. Well, I’d forgotten that Tenth Edition

was on its way out, and so Ben Bleiweiss’s comments about the set were

already in the pipe, pushing me back a bit. Then, the other day, I read Patrick

Chapin’s article on a deck he’s terming ICE (Innovator Control), but

what seemed to me a clear Baron descendent. I was going to call him up to

talk to him about some suggestions for the deck, but he beat me to the punch

and called me. We spent a long time talking about various ideas for the

deck, but we ended up on a tangent about numbers that got me thinking about

my old notebook full of article snippets, ideas, and skeletons.

It all started something like this:

“Come on, Adrian, some of those numbers of yours in decks are highly

suspect!”

“Really? I’d be willing to defend very nearly every ‘strangely’ numbered

decklist that I’ve played for at least the last six or seven years.”

“Didn’t you have some decklist with three Avalanche Riders and two Demolish?

I mean, really, what is that? You’re just kind of in love with strange

numbers aren’t you? Admit it!”

“First of all, I’ve never played a tournament deck with Demolish. But, tell

me, Patrick — are you one of those one / four dogmatists?”

“Oh, gosh no!”

The Dogma of the One/Four Crowd

There are a large number of important people in the Magic community

that have proclaimed with booming voices of the superiority of decks that

are built with the magic numbers of “One/Four”. That is to say, they

advocate that the best decks are ones that have primarily four copies of a

spell or one copy of a spell. The most visible proponent of this philosophy

has got to be Randy Buehler, who can be heard making this proclamation from

time to time in the video coverage of the Pro Tour.

The basic rationale for this is pretty simple. The best cards in your deck

are very clearly cards that you should have four copies of, in general.

Single copies of cards generally serve one of two purposes. Either they are

cards there to be tutored, or they are cards that you’ll eventually run into

if you go into an especially long game.

A classic example of a nearly picture perfect One/Four deck can be found in

Buehler’s own “Buehler Blue”, a deck that he piloted to a 6-0 record in

Standard at Worlds in 1999.

4 Powder Keg
3 Masticore

4 Counterspell
4 Dismiss
4 Forbid
4 Mana Leak
1 Miscalculation
4 Treachery
4 Whispers of the Muse

4 Faerie Conclave
16 Island
4 Stalking Stones
4 Wasteland

Decklists that run “strange” numbers (two or three) are usually viewed with

extreme suspicion, especially as the two/three counts in a deck rise. It’s

not that there aren’t occasions, they’ll say, that two or three of a card is

correct, it’s just that the best decks will have few to none of those counts

in a deck. This deck, for example, has only one card breaking the rule, the

Masticore. There are some small exceptions they’ll make to the rule

(usually on card counts of six or more — more on that later), but I’m sure

that the sentiment has been parroted enough by this point, that regardless

of who may or may not be the biggest advocates of this theory, you’re quite

likely to have heard the concept mentioned.

It’s a shame that it is complete superstition.

Clearly the best deck at a tournament isn’t always the one that wins it. At

the Pro Tour, there have been many, many times when people have argued that

the best deck isn’t the one that gets the trophy at the end of the weekend,

but some other deck, for whatever reason. Whether the winning deck is the

best deck at an event like a Pro Tour is always something that

people could argue about. It can even be argued that the winning deck at

the Pro Tour could have been built better. But, these days, it simply can’t

be said that the winning deck at a Pro Tour is actually bad. I

invite players to try to find a bad deck winning a Pro Tour from any time

after, say, Mike Long’s Paris win. I’m not saying that a winning deck

couldn’t have been somehow better. I’m just saying you can’t find a list

that is actually bad, on its face.

Let’s check out some recent winners:

Antoine Ruel, LA ’05: 6 non-4/1 spell counts (incidentally, beating Moreno’s

6 non-4/1 spell counts and 61 cards)
Gadiel Szleifer, Philly ’05: 4 non-4/1 spell counts
Pierre Canali, Columbus ’05: a more modest 3 non-4/1 spell counts
Mark Herberholz, Honolulu ’06: another 3 non-4/1 spell counts
Katsuhiro Mori, Japanese Nationals ’06: 8 non-4/1 spell counts
Paul Cheon, US Nationals ’06: 7 non-4/1 spell counts

Or, for real fun, check out the recent Top 8

of Pro-Tour: Yokohama 2007. Winner Wafo-Tapa runs 7, and what about the

rest of them? 6, 2, 6, 5, 1, 5, and 5 non-4/1 spell counts. Clearly,

players playing the most successful decks at the event used a wide variety

of spell counts in their lists, likely because there are a wide variety of

spell counts that are appropriate.

Can we put the 4/1 myth to rest? Can we just call it dead? Can we? I hope

so.

How to go about thinking about numbers…

As Patrick and I got talking about dogmatic number counts, I defended his

earlier accusation about wacko numbers. The thing is, there is

something suspicious about 2s and 3s. And there is a reason that they are

suspicious numbers.

First, though, let’s look at the number counts of cards in decks, from most

common, to least common.

The most common “correct” number of card copies in a deck is…

Zero.

As Patrick and I got going on card counts, he piped up and corrected us.

“Zero is the most common correct number because most of the time, a card

simply doesn’t belong in your deck.” Assuming you are playing, for example,

the smallest currently played format, there are only 752 cards in

the format (Time Spiral Block). Chances are you are playing zero copies of

most of the cards in the block. Chances are even greater in a format like

Vintage (8845 unique, legal cards). This may seem incredibly obvious, but

it is important to point out that it is likely that the correct number of

copies of a card in your deck is probably zero. This means that for a card

to have a home in your deck, the burden of proof is on

it. I’ll say it again, the burden of proof is on it.

This feature is also readily apparent as you work on a deck, particularly

when a new set comes out. You try out the new card in the deck that you

think is the correct card, and what you generally do is choose a card that

already exists in the deck, change the card count from 4 to 0, and check out

the new card. Often, the new card simply won’t work, and you don’t go from

4 to 3 to 2 to 1 to 0. Usually, you just drop the new card entirely.

The next most common “correct” number of card copies in a deck is…

Four.

Again, this may seem obvious, but it really bears stating. If a card is

really, really good, and it has proven itself to be useful, it is really

likely that you’ll probably be playing four of them. Oh, there are plenty

of reasons that you might cut down a card’s count (more on that in a bit),

but you’ll find it incredibly uncommon to see staples of a deck played in

counts less than 4.

It’s simple, really. If it is a staple to our deck, we want to

draw it. We’re only allowed 4 copies, and so that’s where we’ll stop. In

other games, sometimes there is no maximum limit of cards that are allowed

in a deck. Often you’ll find incredibly strange numbers of the cards that

you really want to draw — seven in a fifty card deck, 19 in a sixty card

deck. A card like Relentless Rats is a great example of how clearly we take

for granted our 4s. In my old Wizards

of the Coast column, I published a pair of Relentless Rats decks, but I

honestly don’t know if either of them had the right number of Rats. Were 24

copies correct? 25? With enough experience in those other games or with a

Relentless Rats deck, it can become possible to hone a decklist to the

appropriate 12 or 14 or 17 or whatever number count that you might need, but

generally in Magic, we have it easy. Our number is 4.

The next most common “correct” number of card copies in a deck is…

It depends, and often largely on the format that we’re talking about.

Clearly, in a format like Vintage, 1 is the next most common number, simply

because of the number of restricted cards. Here, again, we’re butting up

against a card limit. Typically, Magic’s card limit is 4, but in Vintage we

have the extra card limit of 1 to contend with. Singleton and Highlander

are also 1s, but that is a nature of the rules of that format.

But in other formats, 1 is the most common number when there are a

sufficient number of good tutors for the existence of “silver bullets” to be

appropriate. Silver bullets, for those of you not in the know are those

cards that might not advance the specific strategy of your deck, but will

tend to destroy a strategy that you might face. If there are enough good

tutors, 1s can easily be fetched to tear apart an opposing deck, but

sometimes you don’t even need there to be a sufficient number of tutors. In

my old article “Building

Singleton Psychatog” I found that using even the typical Psychatog

decks, I could expect to find any individual card that existed in the deck

before turn 6.

1s can also be common in format where we know that the format is largely

going to go long. Let’s look at Paul Rietzl’s Grand Prix Anaheim Top 8

Psychatog list:

4 Psychatog
4 Brainstorm
4 Counterspell
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Force Spike
3 Cunning Wish
3 Smother
3 Mana Leak
2 Intuition
2 Daze
1 Upheaval
2 Fact or Fiction
12 Island
3 Swamp
1 Lonely Sandbar
4 Polluted Delta
4 Underground River

Paul knows that his deck is going to go to a long game, and in that long

game he can essentially count on finding that Upheaval at some

point. He might not need the Upheaval to win, but if he does, he’ll get

there in the late, late game.

3s and 2s are far more complicated than 1s. There are plenty of reasons

that you’ll need more than a singleton but you can’t pack a full set.

One of the most easily understood reason to drop to a 3 is because of the

existence of Wishes. You can’t Wish for a card that is still in your deck,

so if you’re going to be able to get the maximum use of a Wishable good

card, dropping one to put it in your board is going to be a necessity.

The most common reason that you’d run 3s and 2s, though, is to manipulate

the odds that you’ll draw a card. Essentially, you’re trying to help fix

the timing of when you draw a card. If there is a card in your deck that

you never want to see in your opening hand, running 4 of them is

probably a mistake. Different people place different weight on exactly what

time you’ll be seeing a card, on average, depending on the counts, but it is

generally held that a 3-of is a card that you’re hoping to see early, but

not in your opening hand, and a 2-of is a card you want to see at some point

in every game, but not early. Both of those phrases (“early” and “at some

point”) are both pretty vague, but the essence of them generally holds true.

A very common reason to play the 3s and 2s is to break the rule of 4. This

has been covered many times before, but in essence, it is a way to run 5 or

6 or 7 copies of a card, simply by running some other version of the same

cards. A Volcanic Hammer might not be an Incinerate, but it is often close

enough that you can “count” them as the same card. Buehler’s single

Miscalculation in his deck is essentially a 5th Mana Leak, or at least as

close as he could get to one.

Probably the next most common reason to end up running less is the

imposition of other “card limits”, and fulfills other needs that your deck

has. Pretend, for example, that you’ve determined that your mana curve is

such that you ought to be running 18 to 19 1-drops. Assuming that this is

correct, for whatever reason, you’re going to have a situation where it is

simply impossible to run 4 counts on all of your one-drop creatures. You’re

going to have to make a decision about which creatures are simply the best

and run 4-ofs of those creatures, while whichever creature is your “worst”

will get the cut ever so slightly, and be dropped to a 3 or 2, depending.

This is one of those examples where the 4/1 purists get tetchy. They know

that this is a reality in deckbuilding, and would argue that this is the

perfect example of where deckbuilders go wrong. A list that should have a

4/2 split is played as a 3/3 split instead, creating two non-4 card counts

instead of one. This kind of split is clearly the result of imprecise

deckbuilding, they’ll say, and the thing is, often, they are right.

But they aren’t necessarily right.

Sometimes what you aren’t simply bound by one need, but you’re bound by

multiple needs. Let’s go back to that argument that Patrick Chapin put to

me, that my count of 3 Avalanche Riders and 2 Lay Waste had to be a clear

example of sloppy deckbuilding. Clearly if one was better, it should have

been a 4/1 split.

I’ll tell you what I told Patrick. In the deck in question (Ponza, for Pro

Tour New York ’99 — tied for Top 8, but no cigar…), I had 4 Wildfire, and I

had determined that I needed more land destruction based on the metagame

that I expected. All of the playtesting that I had done to that point

suggested that I would need 5 more dedicated LD spells. On the other hand,

I also had another requirement to fulfill. I was creature light,

and needed a few more men. While playtesting made it seem very clear to me

that the Lay Waste was the better card, I still needed more men than I was

running, and so the Avalanche Riders pushed the creature count up to the 10

that I felt that I needed. In retrospect, after the event, I think that I

should have only had 9 creatures, and the proper count should have

been 2/3 instead of 3/2, but it still remains that the 3/2 split occurred in

a fight between conflicting card space and multiple needs.

Our space in decks is a resource that we don’t want to push too terribly.

There are only so many cards that we can reasonably fit into a deck before

we begin to water it down. This kind of squeezing can sometimes happen

simply because you have to accommodate a necessary amount of land. For most

decks, for example, twenty lands are insufficient. Twenty-four might also

be insufficient, but regardless, unless you’re running some multiple of four

for your lands, you will have to squeeze out a spell, and probably

a good spell, to accommodate your lands. The same can be true of nearly any

very specific resource, whether it be creature kill, creatures, spells in a

specific spot on the curve, or land. Proper playtesting can general find

the sweet spot for any of these things, but it isn’t necessarily set in

stone. The choice to include a particular card might decrease or increase

your needs in other areas, simply by its interaction with the rest of the

cards in your deck.

Card Count Analysis, at work…

Take the example of Buehler’s deck from Grand Prix: Lisbon, “The Forbidden

Phoenix”.

4 Shard Phoenix
4 Intuition
4 Mana Leak
4 Counterspell
4 Forbid
2 Dismiss
4 Shock
1 Mogg Fanatic
3 Capsize
1 Scroll Rack
1 Caldera Lake
4 Reflecting Pool
10 Mountain
14 Island

Let’s look at the non-4s.

2 Dismiss
1 Mogg Fanatic
3 Capsize
1 Scroll Rack
1 Caldera Lake

Obviously, Dismiss is one of those cards that Randy did not want to see in

his opening hand. It’s inclusion, though, does allow him to up his

counterspell count to a whopping 14. While personally, I’ve always believed

Dismiss to be a pile of garbage, Randy clearly disagrees (note the 4 Dismiss

in Buehler Blue).

The sole Mogg Fanatic is clearly a 5th Shock. Interestingly, though, it is

also a 5th creature. While certainly not analogous to Shard Phoenix in how

it performs, it does represent a creature that can block and attack. It is

absolutely possible that the correct Shock count is 5, but it is also

possible that the split might have been better as a 3/2 split,

depending on the value of a 6th creature. My gut expects that 4/1 here is

completely correct, but it might not be.

3 Capsize exemplifies perfectly another card that Randy doesn’t want to see

in his opening hand, but it also is a card that he does want to start using

quickly, so that he can “throw away” a Capsize by not buying it back without

worrying. If his deck were such that it needed to Boomerang early, it would

definitely be a 4, and if it never really expected to toss away a Capsize

without buying it back, it would probably be a 2.

The 1 Scroll Rack represents both a pseudo-5th Intuition (they aren’t

perfect enough analogs), but also a very late game means to survive if the

fear of decking is a real possibility. In a deck like this, it is

incredibly possible that your opponent will be able to hold you off via any

number of means so that you could be in a position to be decked. 1 Scroll

Rack ensures that you have insurance against that possibility.

1 Caldera Lake. Caldera Lake sucks. It’s a bad card. You probably don’t

want to draw it. But by the same token, this is a deck that might regularly

want access to UUUU, UUUUUU, RRR, RRRR, or RRRUUU. With very few options,

the 1 Caldera Lake helps get a U and R count of 19 and 15, respectively.

A rational examination of a decklist should be able to puzzle out why

numbers are what they are listed as. Many times, there will be a deck, even

a good deck, that has really terrible numbers. Or maybe they are only

seemingly terrible. Puzzling out which is which often requires an insight

into why the particular numbers were chosen. Take this decklist, from the

same Worlds that Randy Buehler took Buehler Blue.

Jakub Slemr, 6-0 in Standard at Worlds 1999

1 Bottle Gnomes
3 Cursed Scroll
4 Powder Keg
2 Ticking Gnomes

2 Corpse Dance
4 Dark Ritual
4 Diabolic Edict
4 Duress
1 Phyrexian Negator
3 Phyrexian Plaguelord
1 Rapid Decay
3 Ravenous Rats
2 Stupor
1 Vampiric Tutor
3 Yawgmoth’s Will

2 Spawning Pool
15 Swamp
1 Volrath’s Stronghold
4 Wasteland

I have no idea about a lot of those numbers, and I designed the deck.

1 Bottle Gnome? Is the Bottle Gnome really a bullet? And if it is a

bullet, where are the Tutors? Oh, I see. There is one Vampiric

Tutor.

The problem here is that this decklist, which did incredibly well for the

people who played it, was modified rather haphazardly. At some point a

decision must have been made that the deck needed to have some more

versatility, and so the Vampiric Tutor was added in (one copy?!), with a few

bullets. This was accomplished by cutting a number of cards. One of the

best cards in the deck was replaced in an attempt to “cheat a 5” by making a

3/2 split of Rats/Stupor. It all looks very “gut” to me.

Here is the original list, complete with the extra land that somehow got the

axe:

Corrupter Black — Adrian Sullivan, World 1999 era Standard

2 Bottle Gnomes
3 Cursed Scroll
4 Powder Keg
2 Ticking Gnomes

3 Corpse Dance
4 Dark Ritual
4 Diabolic Edict
4 Duress
3 Phyrexian Plaguelord
4 Ravenous Rats
4 Yawgmoth’s Will

2 Spawning Pool
15 Swamp
1 Volrath’s Stronghold
4 Wasteland
1 Phyrexian Tower

Let’s analyze this, as we did Buehler, looking at the non-4s.

2 Bottle Gnomes
2 Ticking Gnomes
3 Cursed Scroll
3 Corpse Dance
3 Phyrexian Plaguelord
2 Spawning Pool
1 Volrath’s Stronghold
1 Phyrexian Tower

Let’s knock out the easy stuff first.

Land. The deck tested at needing about 23 Land + 4 Rituals. Phyrexian

Tower was good enough to run as a card, but its Legendary status knocked it

out of contention for a second copy, on the off chance that you screw

yourself by double-drawing it. Volrath’s Stronghold was certainly powerful

enough to consider playing a second copy, and the deck might have cut into

its spells to fit it, but it simply wasn’t so good as to lose a spell. The

2 Spawning Pool provided for a reasonable special land without significantly

cutting into the speed of the deck by coming into play tapped. 3,

occasionally, made the deck chug too slowly.

The 3s. Each of Corpse Dance, Phyrexian Plaguelord, and Cursed Scroll were

simply cards that you didn’t want to have in your opening hands in most

matchups. You did want to be able to count on getting to them quickly, but

certainly not in your opening hand.

That leaves the Gnomes. Here we have the classic example of semi-analogs.

Each of the Gnomes fulfills a similarly role in conjunction with a Corpse

Dance, effectively becoming a real problem when unanswered. But the deck

definitely needs the life gain element of the Bottle Gnome/Corpse

Dance. Clearly, it has to have at least two there. On the other hand, the

deck also needs to be able to put pressure on the opponent, and perhaps kill

more creatures. There are the Edicts, Kegs, and Scrolls (11 cards), but a

little more could help. More importantly, the deck kills pretty slowly if

all it has to go with are the 3 Plaguelord, 3 Scroll, 2 Pit, and Battle

Gnomes (or Bottle Gnomes, if you prefer). A creature of a reasonable size

has to be included, and yet, we still want to have synergy with Corpse

Dance. Ticking Gnome is not a particularly exciting card, but it does fit

the bill, by significantly increasing the potential of your clock, being a

reasonable un-Corrupt-able creature, and having synergy with the Corpse

Dance. You don’t really want to draw lots of Ticking Gnomes in general

(that pesky Echo), but with the Tick and Battle Gnomes, you have a

sufficient number of creatures to help hold the fort in the early game.

I always cringe when I think about what the Mogg Squad did with the deck

(especially cutting a land — amusing that they complained about mana counts

at that tourney), but I’m still pleased that the essence of the deck was

able to help catapult two of those players into the Top 8 of that Worlds.

The thing about bad numbers is that a deck can still be pretty good even if

the numbers are off.

The Biggest Numbers Issue of Them All: 60/61

You should never have a 61-card deck. Never. It’s bad. Really, really

bad. It is only the result of a lack of discipline. Or so goes the

traditional wisdom.

In general, I agree with them. But it isn’t completely so rigid.

In a utopian world, we would almost certainly be building decks that were

exactly 60 cards. Doing so increases the chances of drawing a particular

card in our deck, which, since it has won its home in our deck, is a card

that we theoretically want to see. Each card over 60 reduces our chances or

drawing any individual card that we ought to want to have in our deck.

So why on earth would it ever be reasonable to have a 61 card deck? Isn’t

it just foolishness?

There are a couple of reasons why building your deck as a 61-card deck might

be correct, but essentially, they all boil down to the fact that it isn’t a

perfect world, and sometimes you have to make concessions.

Let’s examine a hypothetical combo deck. Assume, for the sake of argument,

that you’ve come to the conclusion that the deck absolutely requires 26 mana

sources to function properly.

Unbeatable Combo Deck
4 Combo piece A
4 Combo piece B
4 Combo piece C
4 Tutor A
4 Tutor B
4 Brainstorm
4 Duress
4 Force of Will
1 “Necessary” Answer A
1 “Necessary” Answer B
5 “Fast” Mana
22 “Normal” Mana

In this theoretical combo deck, we’re going to also assume that everyone and

their brother, sister, step-child, and family dog knows about it. As a

result, numerous cards have been introduced to the metagame that necessitate

two “bullets” to be able to hope to go off versus resistance. Okay, fine,

fine, fine.

But this deck is 61 cards. Something has to be cut, but what?

Over a large amount of time, perhaps the best card to cut could be

discovered, but you’re uncertain which one it is, despite all of the testing

that you, and perhaps even a team, are doing. You test and test and test,

and you know that the deck is very powerful, but what on earth do you cut?

One friend suggests only 3 Force of Will are necessary. Another suggests

that 4 Fast Mana will do it. Another that a land can be cut, another that

perhaps a Tutor. The problem is that the impact on card density in your

deck in reducing a single one of these cards to make a 60-card deck is far

greater than the impact on card density by having a 61-card deck.

Let’s examine that card density.

4 Copies/61 Cards – 6.557% density — 4 Copies/60 Cards – 6.667% density
3 Copies/61 Card – 4.918% density — 3 Copies/60 Cards – 5.000% density
2 Copies/61 Card – 3.279% density — 2 Copies/60 Cards – 3.333% density
1 Copies/61 Card – 1.639% density — 1 Copies/60 Cards – 1.667% density

So, if we move from 4 copies of a card in our 60 card deck (6.667% of our

deck is that card) and we end up with a 61 card deck, our deck is only

6.557% that card — or 98.3% as full of the card as it used to be, but if we

go to 3 copies of that particular card, we’re reducing that to 5%

of the deck, a reduction of 75%.

Let’s look at how that works:

4/60 => 4/61 or 3/60 = 98.3% or 75%
3/60 => 3/61 or 2/60 = 98.4% or 66.7%
2/60 => 2/61 or 1/60 = 98.4% or 50%
1/60 => 1/61 or 0/60 = 98.4% or 0%

The 61-card deck reduces every card in your decks chance of showing

up to only about 98.4% of what it used to be, but reducing the

wrong card in your deck can have a devastating impact on

the deck. It is even possible, in an incredibly tight deck, that 61 could

theoretically be correct. (Though I will say that this is probably

incredibly unlikely, and I can think of no deck that I would argue that this

has been true for, historically).

The amount of playtesting that it takes to figure out which of the cards is

the correct one to drop can sometimes be too much. Sometimes the actual bar

is quite low (Billy Moreno’s deck from the Top 8 of Pro Tour, in retrospect,

could easily have a card dropped, though many would argue which is correct),

but it still might not be a bar that could be cleared by the resources of

the player and deckbuilder. I’m going to guess that Moreno didn’t have the

time to drop the correct card, but could have, with more resources.

In some cases, the bar is very, very high. If you’ve ever agonized about

what card is the card that you should cut from a deck, and eventually just

cut one, the impact is probably far greater than you realize. It’s probably

far more effective to continue playtesting the deck as a 61-card deck until

experience with the deck (and with the metagame) makes it clear that a

particular card is the one that needs to go. That said, it is almost

certainly much more correct to play with 61 cards than to cut the

wrong card in some error in judgment.

I hope that this article has given you a good sense in how to think about

interpreting deck numbers, and hopefully will help you when you’re honing

your decks. Obviously, given enough time, you could theoretically figure

out what the perfect numbers for a deck are for a given tournament, but

sometimes you don’t have that time, and you have to wing it. With any luck,

this will help you to better determine what your counts should be.

Adrian Sullivan