[SCROLL DOWN TO READ THE ARTICLE!]

Become a StarCityGames.com Premium Member and receive exclusive access to top-level strategies, new decklists and entertaining reports from many of the best players and writers that the game has to offer! This includes "The Innovator" & Worlds finalist Patrick Chapin, 2010 Player of the Year Brad Nelson, Classic Theorist Mike Flores, Hall of Famer Brian Kibler, GP and SCG Invitational Champion Gerry Thompson, StarCityGames.com Director of Sales Ben Bleiweiss ...and many, many more!

PLUS! StarCityGames.com Premium members now have an EXCLUSIVE WEEKLY NEWSLETTER sent just to them with the latest tech, exclusive content and exclusive deals along with unprecedented access into America's largest Magic: the Gathering sales database, and can view lists of StarCityGames.com's top-selling items - broken down by category, format legality, and rarity - in real time! When it comes to trading, increased knowledge equals increased profits - and increased knowledge is just one click away for our Premium members!

A StarCityGames.com Premium Membership gives you exclusive access to the best Magic: the Gathering content available and is an amazing bargain for just pennies a day! When you're ready to start getting more out of this game, click here to join StarCityGames.com Premium today!

If you are a valid StarCityGames.com Premium member and still cannot view the article, please consult this FAQ.

I don't know what it is, but decklists, metagames, and breaking formats just isn't my cup of tea right now. In fact, I usually make it a point to click on every article to get a feel for what my peers are doing, but lately all that seems to inspire them is uninspiring Faerie frontiers coupled with tournament reports. Entertaining, but if I see one more deck sporting Secluded Glen, Bitterblossom, and Spellstutter Sprite I'm going to go postal at the next GP.

Faeries for Standard!

Faeries for Extended!

Faeries for Legacy, Vintage, your next PTQ or FNM! Learn how to counter spells and play a marginal clock of a 1/1 flock. It's pretty hard to be entertained when the best deck is so universally good!

It's true that Faeries have become the apex archetype of our Magical kingdom. It's been that way for awhile, but at this point it’s about as fun to talk about Faerie innovations as it is a stubbed swollen toe or a recently contracted STD.

It just feels like everyone is talking about the same decks over and over, and I'm getting bored of it, which has sent me into a slow Magical depression that I feel is affecting my play.

I went 2-2 at FNM last week, lost in Top 4 the week before, and 0-2 the previous week. In fact, my FNM results have been particularly poor this entire year, with only a few wins ten weeks deep in 2009 season. Everyone has pretty much hated my Tezzeret deck out of existence; having to battle against Fracturing Dust, Austere Command, main deck Naturalize and Smash to Smithereens, along with a hearty dose of Aura of Silence* has been troublesome to say the least.

I still feel like it’s the best deck in the format, so I'm planning on sitting on it until Seattle, where I plan on winning the whole thing with zero creatures main deck and a bunch of Planeswalkers. I'm pretty sure that’s the secret to success in this format, and while other Planeswalker decks are nice with their Garruk, Liliana, or Elspeth, I have no doubt that Tezzeret is the apex of the possible Planeswalker plots. Barring of course I don't get paired against any of the aforementioned hosers.

Which brings up a good question...

How do you know when your deck has reached its apex?

We've all been there with our decks sprawled out separated in neat piles in front of us on the hotel room floor, bed, or game table ten minutes before the tournament. Scrambling last minute for any insight that might fall from the sky to change a specific matchup we foresee as troublesome.

As if those last minute changes are going to be any better than the changes we made at 3am before we went to bed, only to wake up at 6am to drive an obscene distance to make the 9-10 registration. Clearly we think logically within the realm of our game, but sometimes we have a hard time applying that same logic to the decisions we make outside the game, about the game.

Last minute deck audibles certainly aren't anything new, especially on the GP/PT scene, where it’s probably more prevalent than at the PTQ stage as there is an abundance of cards to borrow/trade/buy. There is also obviously much more on the line at a GP/PT than a PTQ. Many more hearts are more deeply emotionally (and financially!) invested at the outcome of the bigger tournaments, so naturally there will be more scrambling and scouting to attain a higher finish, which results in more drastic metagame shifts.

I'm pretty sure that a fair number of the Elves players didn't travel to PT: Berlin with that tribe on their mind. I remember knowing of the deck, but of very few people that were touting it around as the deck of choice for the tournament. But lo and behold, LSV and GerryT were testing some mono Green combo deck in the lobby, and the secret was out.

I've been the victim of many such a circumstance. At GP: Charlotte I had an Ichorid deck very similar to Mike Krumb's winning build in front of me the night before, but I wanted to play with freaking Phantom Centaur and Armadillo Cloak, and I didn't trust a deck that played from its graveyard instead of its hand. In the back of my mind I knew this wasn't the best the deck that could be built too, which is a big stipulation for me when deciding potential tournament contenders. Even Krumb's deck looked unsightly compared to modern Ichorid advancements. I also didn't finish too hot, as my three loses on day 1 were Kyle Goodman, Gerard Fabiano, and Billy Moreno. I beat the crap out of Ervin Tormos and his mono Red deck with that Armadillo-equip Centaur. I swear that was the apex version of Green Chalice of the Void beatdown for that tournament.

Some might believe that the apex of a deck is reached when...

– You have the perfect mana in adequate proportions to guarantee stability
– You know the purpose and placement of every card you've assigned to its given task
– The metagame is in just the right place for that type of deck to succeed
– The mana to spell ratio is just right to enable the luxury** to rely on play skill most games
– The sideboard is in line to stay strong in strong matchups, while having the versatility to turn around unfavorable ones

To me, and I'm sure I'm not alone, these are the basic fundamentals of the deck you decide to play, and a basic five-point step to run through whenever constructing a deck, or even deciding amongst potential piles.

Mana is easy to perfect… it’s a simple math problem of calculating total mana symbols of each type of colored card and dividing it among your number of mana sources to determine the ratio. From there you plug in nonbasic lands until you reach or exceed the needed number. In current Standard and Extended, this is a very easy process. Vivid lands count as all five, while filter lands look to solve any deceiving spell like Cryptic Command or Cloudthresher.

Knowing the purpose and placement of every card you've assigned is another extremely important, yet severely underrated, trend. This goes to all the people who played early Faerie brews and couldn't figure out how to get around the Mono Red matchup with Bitterblossom in play and Mistbind Clique in hand. It's those type of interactions that far too many people learn as they go, rather than making a conscious and fully informed decision beforehand.

One way to really dig deep into the deck you’re piloting (or considering for takeoff) is to type out every card in the deck. Make a list of every possible positive or negative interaction and its affect on the game. For some, this is a mental list, but there is no substitute for jotting it down in Word or on a notepad. Keeping these records is another useful tool that I don't feel many Magicians use. If you’re truly trying to make a leap in your game play and deck building, there is no reason to go about it lazily. As I mentioned last week, these little steps are what build success outside of Magic, which is a much more realistic goal than living the dream and winning a PT, National Championship, or Invitational.

The metagame you play in is the most influential factor on how well your deck of choice will perform, assuming you have the other four points covered to some degree. It's the reason RG Freshmaker could only survive in the Affinity Block metagame, and why Zvi's infamous U/W The Answer deck was able to prosper in Machine Head and Fires formats.

Your deck can really only be as successful as the decks that surround you, since their success makes them much more predictable, making them more susceptible prey. Knowing the decks around you is equally important to knowing every card in your deck. For instance, if they're playing Extended Bant with an Island up, you can assume Stifle or Spell Snare, so sacrificing a fetch land to play Tarmogoyf is going to enable either card in their hand. Instead, playing a Thoughtseize or Raven's Crime might be more beneficial despite common Magic logic suggesting you lead with a threat to maximize damage.

This is another pretty easy step to rectify by studying before a tournament. It'll take some paper and a pen, or a well-stocked printer, but getting the lists of the Top 5 to 10 decks and reading over them a few times before you play will keep the interactions and important cards at the front of your thoughts, which gives you a huge edge in preparation. Playing a match that’s fresh in your mind is much easier than wasting precious time on the clock trying to remember their main kill conditions, or what card they could recover with if they drew it.

Mana to Spell ratio has always been a hot topic of discussion. What prompted those Mono Black Cabal Coffers decks to run 29 lands?! Or those Mirari’s Wake decks sporting a surplus of 31 on some occasions. What makes modern Faeries adjust so frequently between 24-26 lands? These are all questions you should aim at the deck builders, but my guess is that they felt the need for more land or the need to cut a few.

It's nothing scientific or etched in stone. Some people just want to have more land, or squeeze in a random one-of for that stupid one-of Island they draw on turn 2 every game. It's awesome to be able to play a bunch of lands that can convert into spells, like Kithkin with their Windbrisk Heights, Rustic Clachan, and Mutavault, but not every deck has that luxury, and the total amount of land in a deck will always be at the whim of the one whistling.

I've thought about this for awhile, and there really is no discoverable difference between 23 and 24 lands (24 to 25, 25 to 26, etc.), other than 24 lets you sleep a little easier at night, and might encourage you to keep that two-land hand with those five gorgeous three- and four-drops.

James Wise, the buddy who built the Beast deck, constantly runs fewer lands than mathematically correct. He constantly runs fewer sources of the most important spells in his deck, and I never ask him to skew from his 61 card mindset. But he is also one of the most consistent winners I know. He's always in contention for the final rounds of whatever tournament he plays. Why is this? Why does he choose to cut down to 18 land in a deck with only four Birds of Paradise and a host of three and four drops? Why does he choose to boggle up the mulligan math by throwing in an extra card or two over sixty?

It's because he’s confident in his decision, which is the route to the root of reaching the apex of any deck. It's all about confidence.

There are those tournaments once in awhile where you feel prepared, but when you get there and start playing you realize how awful a card is, and how it doesn't fit into your deck’s scheme in the slightest. You agonize over drawing it every game 1, and promptly board it out every game, but agonizing over it does no one any good except the opponent. You can cut it up, place it in a generic brown bag, light it on fire, and place it on Old Man Phillips’s door step after the tournament, but in the meantime it’s a part of your team, and there’s no telling what its future holds for the duration of the tournament. That flaming pile of cardboard could very well come up unexpectedly to surprise and confuse the opponent.

Sideboarding, on the other hand, is a completely different language to that of the main deck, and really an art form that has yet to be seriously analyzed to its apex, but it all comes down to confidence again. Truth is, sideboarded games will take up the majority of played games at any Magic tournament. This is a fact that most Magicians can't/don't really fathom. Those fifteen are so important, yet everyone spends so much damn time staring blankly at their main decks to assure perfection.

Perfection comes in 75, not 60, a bomb that blew my brain like a blueberry blunt.

Sideboards come in many different styles. There’s the kind that look to cement a few matchups while not worrying about the bad ones that can't be fixed. There are sideboards that focus entirely on one specific matchup because they are decent against everything else. There are sideboards that look to include as many hosers like Gaddock Teeg and Kataki, which look to win entire matchups by themselves. Then there are the transformational sideboards, which most commonly occur when a deck is susceptible to several popular sideboard cards, which look to offset the opponent’s anti-tactics by implementing a different strategy.

Sideboards are aimed to enhance and enforce whatever tactic you choose to sleeve in your sixty. The innovation comes in deciding how to use the sideboard and correcting the main deck to be compatible with the sideboard. It's nice that you have eleven cards opposite Affinity, but what the hell are you going to take out that doesn't water your combo deck down?

One trend I thought would be more prevalent is land in sideboards. I love land; everybody in the know loves land. And it’s not entirely obvious that the number of land you need in different matchups is in fact different. Having an extra Faerie Conclave or two in the sideboard for the Five-Color Control matchup doesn't seem like a bad idea, but then space becomes an issue. And a lot of people have trouble taking out “business” spells for the cards needed to cast them consistently.

I'm not saying any which way is correct, but that knowing these tidbits helps our overall understanding of the game.

Once those five steps are in order, the only thing stopping a deck from reaching its apex is the confidence of the pilot, because the apex can never be reached unless the pilot is ready to reach for it. There are very few tournaments in which the winner doesn't think he deserved to win. There might have been an upset, an untimely game loss, or a complete shutdown of mana or many mulligans, but the person who wins never thinks he doesn't deserve to win a tournament deep down.

Having those five steps in order is all elementary, but being confident in them is the true challenge. It’s tough staying confident in the mana/spell ratio when you’re drawing off the top in a critical match. The key is being confident in the sideboarding decisions you’re making, knowing the metagame around you is perfect for your archetype, and knowing you will outplay all your opponents before you even draw your opening hand.

That’s the only thing the people that make consistent GP/PT Top 8s have got down better than the rest of us. They've been there before, and they know how important it is to exude confidence in every land they tap and every spell they cast.

Do as they do, not as they say.

Err..?

Thanks for reading!

Kyle

...

* Yeah, I didn't know it was legal either. Makes the Mind Stones super awkward.
** It really is a luxury to play a non-hindered game of Magic. Although in the grand scheme of things, nearly every game will have its interferences. Both players stumble at one point or another, it just feels that sometimes it’s about getting less screwed than the opponent. Especially if both players aren't very likely to make mistakes.