Welcome to Type 1.

"So you are playing or drawing," Cyril asked.

"Playing, of course," came the expected reply.

I chuckle as I look at my hand. I drop Black Lotus, some random Mox I can't remember (Mox Pearl, if I was to venture a guess), and Mishra's Workshop. Tap the Workshop and sacrifice the Lotus, then drop Sol Ring, and tap it for two more mana. Play Karn, Silver Golem, Chalice of the Void for zero, then finally a Sphere of Resistance. Cyril snickers, then puts the cards he drew back on his library and shuffles up.

This is what Type 1 seems to be reduced to these days: the opponent doesn't even get to play at all. I am not talking about a deck like Long.dec (R.I.P. for now, until Stephen Menendian figures out a way to circumvent the recent restrictions... and no, Elvish Spirit Guide is not the complete solution... it produces only one mana, it doesn't count towards the Storm magical number, it cannot be recurred with Yawgmoth's Will...). No, I wasn't playing Long. I was playing Stax (for those of you that don't know what that is, look at Arthur Tindemans' MUD deck, and add Blue for a few various tricks, and put every Draw-7 you can possibly fit in the deck).

(Yes, I am aware that I just mentioned there is a deck in Type 1 that doesn't use Blue at all, and another that uses it for the few tricks it deems necessary, such as Tinker and Ancestral Recall.)

Stax and MUD operate on simple principles. They drop a lot of mana fast (using the very broken lands that produce more than one mana, the triple threat mainly coming from Mishra's Workshop and City of Traitors, alongside the less used, but no less menacing Ancient Tomb), and then lock the game down. The two main lock elements come in the form of Sphere of Resistance (the bane of mana curves), and Tangle Wire, probably the least symmetrical"symmetrical effect card" in existence. I remember back when Icy Manipulator was a good card, since you could tap any permanent for four plus one mana. Tangle Wire taps four permanents, for only three mana. If you consider Icy Manipulator good, then Tangle Wire is downright broken. With Mirrodin, Chalice of the Void has brought yet another scary lock element, able to nullify entire decks (see my other article about how it can hurt Hulk, still a very strong deck today).

Anyhow, long story short, a deck that is supposed to slow the game down to a boring crawl, managed to win a game on turn 1. Maybe because it can drop a win condition and then bring two frightening lock elements in tow? Let's see... Cyril couldn't play any of his mana accelerators, everything would cost one more (he could only get out of the lock on turn 3 or 4 normally, with Rack and Ruin or some other artifact kill card), and I had six glorious mana for whatever cards I will draw next. This was not the most broken opening all day.

Welcome to Type 1.

Steve Menendian wrote an article about the Ten Principles of Type 1, found at http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=5227. This is a fundamentally important article, and even if the environment changes, they will still hold true. I did an analysis whether these principles are still relevant, and sure enough, minus one or two minor points, they still are.

Anyhow, here's the point-form list, in case you are too lazy to scroll through Steve's article:

Principle #1: Every deck uses Black Lotus and at least one Mox.

Principle #2: Fetchlands have fundamentally changed Type One.

Principle #3 (and perhaps the most important): Force of Will is the Glue that holds Type One together.

Principle #4: Unless you are planning on winning in the first few turns, you must have a way to deal with Library of Alexandria.

Principle #5: Swords to Plowshares is the Best Targeted Removal Spell ever printed.

Principle #6: Blood Moon is Vintage's Best Hoser.

Principle #7: Red Elemental Blast is the Best Sideboard Card ever printed.

Principle #8: For the most part, Spells with a casting cost of four or more are unplayable unless they are Blue, Artifact, or have an Alternate Casting Cost.

Principle #9: Hybrid Strategies are currently the most successful in Type One.

Principle #10: Scour through the card pool. Find the technology to beat your local metagame. It's worth it.

These ten commandments (why didn't he call them that?) hold true. [I think he was afraid of being given the nickname"Moses," as he is particularly attached to"Smennycakes." - Knut, who has been wrong before] The only one whose relevance has diminished is #4, since the Library is too slow these days in most decks. When the game is decided on turn 1 or turn 2, having the Library as a single play is utterly useless (if you play Library, draw a card, then play out your hand, then the Library managed to only replace itself, since you won't be able to use its drawing ability until you are back to seven cards in your hand).

Which one of those principles is the key one? Which one is the most important one?

If you answered the question with a concrete value, you are wrong. It was a trick question. The way I should have phrased it, is the following: what are the most important aspects of Type 1? The answer is simple: your mana base. Then comes card advantage and tempo, although the two are very closely related (think energy and matter in physics).

Aspect #1: The Mana Base
If you look at cards from a strictly monetary point of view, you can see that the most expensive parts of a deck produce mana. I don't need to reiterate the value of the accursed Black Lotus, or the five Moxen (let's not kid ourselves here, there are only five of them), but if you look past it, stuff like Mishra's Workshop is getting ridiculous as well, and dual lands can run you upwards to $20 even for the Revised versions. If they cost this much money, they must be good, no?

It becomes obvious that any deck lives and dies by the mana base. No matter how strong the spell is in your hand, you cannot cast it if you don't have the mana for it. There might be those that will tell me,"Duh!" but it might not be that obvious to most players, even some very talented ones, unless they play something like Stax, which truly messes with the mana in ways never before thought possible. Here's a few tautologies:

Aspect #1.1: Every deck with control elements (almost) runs 4 Wastelands and 1 Strip Mine
These two lands are among the most powerful cards in the game of Magic, and for the same reason Duress is. Normally, one for one trades isn't something a control deck wants to do, unless it truly needs it (I argued Steve's Principle #5 until I was Blue in the face, and I think I was wrong to diminish the relevance, even though Swords to Plowshares only really has two big targets left in Worldgorger Dragon and Karn, Silver Golem. It is still the best targeted removal, and it will forever be, unless Wizards gets hit by more than just a bus). Wastelands and Strip Mine might not be card-advantage or decrease quantity, but it decreases quality.

Anyhow, it holds that if the mana base is the most important part of the deck, then something that attacks it directly is very strong indeed. While Armageddon is obviously the most powerful land destruction card (it destroys all. How the heck can you beat that?), it is unusable in a control deck, since you will lose your lands as well. Furthermore, it's four mana, which is a lot.

The two"strip mine" lands are almost unstoppable unless you play with Stifle and Teferi's Response (which are sideboard standards right now, but slowly working themselves into main decks), but even then, the risk is worth it. Teferi's Response is dangerous, since the card drawing will put you in a hole, since your opponent gains two cards for only two mana:

+1 (Land doesn't die)
+2 (Draws two cards)
-1 (cast Teferi's Response)

I won't count the fact that theoretically he is up three cards (since you lost your land), as that would have happened anyhow. For Stifle, it is one-for-one.

That, and speed of use (you just tap and sacrifice it, no extra costs) are good, but the best part is also the fact that you can target opponent's most important land (at any time you wish). Of course, almost all land destruction spells are targeted, but remember that this one is cheap and un-counterable. Since a lot of decks are very finely tuned (especially combo decks), destroying even one land of a specific color can result in a difficult road ahead.

Aspect #1.2: The presence of Blood Moon, Back to Basics and Wastelands gave new importance to basic lands
I was playing Arend (specialk on www.themanadrain.com), and his Keeper/Ophidian deck that carried no Black or Green. That seemed odd, until I played a Blood Moon, and he didn't seem phased at all (we had more Mountains in play than any Sligh deck, ever!). His deck had at least four Islands, and a single Plains, for the all-important Swords to Plowshares and his win condition, Decree of Justice. If you look at many of Oscar Tan's versions of Keeper, none of them run any basic lands, and we now understand his famous crusade to get Back to Basics restricted. This could be a way around it.

No opponent runs Wastelands for any reason other than to mess up your lands. If you don't give them any targets, or at least try to minimize them, that will make them weaker. Since their only other ability is to produce a single colorless mana, you can see the dilemma their controller now has. They can just waste one of your less important non-basic lands immediately, or they can wait for a better one to come along. None of these choices give him any advantage (the second one is hugely in your favor, even in a deck like MUD which contains less than half a dozen colored spells, since he could rather have a Mishra's Workshop or something like that). At best, your opponent can hope for parity by using Wasteland turn 1.

Fetchlands solidify your deck (Steve's Principle #2), since they are immune to Wastelands and the Back to Basics (baring some really bizarre procedure), and they can get the all important one or two basic lands, which happen to be in your deck. Not only that, but they also fix the quality of your mana, especially with dual lands (each Fetchland can get up to seven dual lands, which is great).

Aspect #1.3: Mana costs should only contain one colored mana in the casting cost in a multi-color deck
Let me start with a contradiction: Blue cards can break that rule, since most decks that contain Blue have that as a main color. Look at Carl Winter's deck, or look at Oscar Tan's deck (in his Control Player's Bible). Count the number of lands that aren't Island-based (minus Library and Wastelands/Strip Mine). The number is zero. Blue can get away with running cards with more than one color casting cost: Mana Drain, or Counterspell in budget deck, Force of Will (although that's an exception to an exception), and the Morphling.

Mono-colored decks actually do like to have spells with more than one colored mana, since sometimes they have a converted mana cost of one less (something like BB instead of 2B), but even then, the necessary inclusion of the Wastelands can dilute it enough that BBB spells have to be truly broken in order to be used (all examples given are for Black, but it obviously works for any other color).

Multi-color decks can, and often do get more than one colored mana for a certain spell, but that makes them far more vulnerable to mana destruction, which, as I mentioned, is running rampant. There is nothing worse than sitting there with dead cards in your hand because some yahoo has screwed up your mana.

Now, what do you think happens to gold cards? How many of those do you see running around? Psychatog and Meddling Mage are two great cards, and Oscar once used Dromar's Charm for some reason, but other than that... none I can remember at the moment. [Artifact Mutation sees use as a frequent sideboard card. - Knut] This is for the same reason. It has more than one colored mana in the casting cost, and is far more likely to be a dead card. Now you understand why sometimes, Wastelands are a great tempo boost and card advantage tool?

Aspect #1.4: Mishra's Workshop decreases the casting cost of your cards by 2 mana
It becomes almost humorous right now that there are exceptions to the exception to the exception (or something like that), but Stax is the prime example (along with TnT) as to why this Aspect can get so broken: Mishra's Workshop. I really like this card and I will personally go on a rampage if they dare restrict it again just because of a few know-nothing"know-it-alls" whine too much.

Memory Jar is a truly powerful card: you draw seven cards. Furthermore, you can draw them again next turn, if you have the all-too-common Goblin Welder on the table. It costs five mana. Karn, Silver Golem, is a one turn victory condition in a lot of games, as well as Mox-control and a great anti-aggro wall. It costs five mana. Mind's Eye is a bomb. It too costs 5 mana. Smokestack is one of the strongest control elements available, able to break you out of any lock. It is four mana. This all is playable because the Workshop decreases casting cost of everything by two.

With that in mind, let me restate that last paragraph. Memory Jar, Mind's Eye and Karn are three mana. Smokestack is two mana, Tangle Wire and Metalworker are one mana. Do I need to draw you a map? This is broken. Type 1 is becoming a race to get the most broken play first. Some don't like it. I think it is the charm of the environment.

Aspect #1.5: Sphere of Resistance is the most powerful Mana Denial spell yet
This one is a flaming-target Aspect, but I believe it is true. I explained in Aspect #1.1 why Wastelands are crucial in decreasing the mana quality of your opponent. Sphere of Resistance decreases the mana quantity of your opponent, making it almost impossible to recover. Of course, you (as the Stax player) planned for all this, so you will be less affected by it, even though it's a symmetrical effect. You also have the Workshops, which make life a lot easier.

What does Sphere of Resistance accomplish, and why is quantity better than quality? Well, as it has been said over and over again that the mana curve of Type 1 decks is finely tuned and crucial to the success. Hell, I said it two pages ago. So what better way exists to damage the mana curve, than to utterly throw off any mathematical calculation your opponent did during all of their testing? Again, we must go back to Oscar. He said that you must maximize your plays if you want to be effective. Well, this just screwed with that as well.

Remember the small excerpt from the game at the beginning of this article? What was the most painful part of my play? The Karn was the kill condition, and it would probably go all the way. The Chalice prevented Cyril from playing any moxen, but the Sphere utterly negated any plays he had for the next few turns. Playing a spell one turn late, as we know, is a bad thing. That's exactly what the Sphere does, and it does it well. In Stax, this becomes your umbrella to develop your game, knowing that you have an insurmountable mana advantage, primarily due to Aspect #1.4, but also to the rest of your deck.

Okay, done with the sub-aspects for mana. I could, of course, go on, but I think at this point, the discourse would be strictly academic. The only other point that I wanted to reference here was Tolarian Academy, but I decided it's not important enough to be a full aspect.

The Academy is one of those lands that's truly circumstantial, having a few serious drawbacks, (the primary one being its inability to produce any mana by itself). However, any land that, with a simple tap, can generate untold amounts of mana (some would say infinite), is good. It's great, it's broken, and when it shows up, it needs to be dealt with in some way. Sounds a lot like Steve's Principle #4...

Aspect #2: Card Advantage (Quantity) and Tempo (Quality)
This topic is a can of worms, and then some. There's been some (read: a lot) of talk lately in the Type 1 community about card advantage, and a couple of very vicious barbed fights between Oscar Tan and Sarnia's own Geordie Tait. Much was said, much was done, and in the end, I think we all ended up very confused about everything. Can I shed light into this? I doubt I am good enough. Can I try? I don't think it is indicated, at least not directly head-on. But, there's a topic that wasn't very often mentioned, and it's directly parallel to card quality. However, let's first start with small talk about quantity.

Aspect #2.1: Card Quantity
When you start the game, parity is achieved. You both start with seven cards, and no advantage goes to either player, at least until the die is thrown. When you place down your first land (or zero casting cost permanent, probably a Mox), the number of cards in your hand decreases by one, and the number of permanents in play increases by one. You both still have seven cards total. The element of surprise is gone, since your opponent now knows one of your cards, so you are at a slight disadvantage, but that's not a big concern.

Of course, that doesn't tell the whole story, but for now, all we care about is quantity. What happens when a card leaves your hand for the board? It becomes useful, and can generate card advantage in other ways. Let's say we cast a random creature, Trained Armodon (a 3/3 for three mana, just about even). Nothing has changed as far as card advantage goes, since our hand is -1 and our board is +1, and thus even. Next turn, the Armodon attacks, and the opponent's life goes from twenty to seventeen. This is the equivalent of casting a Lightning Bolt directly at the opponent. Essentially, the Armodon attacking just gave you +1 card advantage. Of course the example is puerile, since you don't just cast a Lightning Bolt at your opponent at the first opportunity you get unless you are playing mono-burn, but you get the idea.

A card in hand is only useful if you actually get to play it. Otherwise it's dead. The Armodon is alive and well, and generating a Lightning Bolt every turn it gets to attack.

This becomes a bit confusing here, since many have claimed that life is an irrelevant resource unless you lose your last one, at which point, it's just about the most relevant one there is (think the King in chess). This claim has gone uncontested since 1994 (Brian Weissman), but now, ten years later, the situation isn't quite so simple. All it took to make me realize that is a game against a local player (young, but pretty skilled, but for the life of me, I can't remember his name). I was playing Iso-Tog (think Hulk, with Isochron Scepters), and he was playing a strange version of Sligh (with Bosium Strips and severe land destruction, as well as Isochron Scepters for Lightning Bolt and the like).

Both in game one and game two, I was at exactly one life for at least six turns each, from a combination of land destruction and several Ball Lightnings thrown at me when I had no Fire / Ice in hand. This is a very harrowing experience, knowing that anything can kill you. I managed to imprint a Mana Drain on the Scepter, which normally is a good move, but with no cards in hand, I couldn't just randomly counter any given spell. Any mana burn would result in certain death. Here, at this point, being at one life made the Isochron and Mana Drain a two card disadvantage. The same goes for all the fetchlands I managed to draw, which were essentially dead, as well as a Force of Will, which I would have to hard-cast.

The problem, of course, started earlier, when I was at plenty of life, and didn't mind my life going down, since I could still be alive afterwards. If I would have saved enough mana and countered the Ball Lightning, which reduced me from, say fourteen to eight, the situation might have been avoided. Anyhow, the point is, don't believe everything you are told. Let's not even get into Yawgmoth's Bargain, where every life you lose externally is one less card.

So we can see how card quantity can be dependent on life (hopefully removing the antiquated notion how life is a static line unless you lose the last one... it becomes more of a parabolic curve as you go down, meaning that the more life you lose, the more important it becomes), and how card quantity is more than just cards in hand plus cards in play. Drawing cards is one of the most important abilities in Type 1, and, as many have correctly stated it, the player that draws more cards than the other will most likely win the game. Of course, you can very well die having seven cards in hand the whole game because you can't draw anything to stop the rampaging creature your opponent played... Sometimes, card advantage with no card quality is worthless.

Everything I have said here holds for other types as well, but for some reason, the Type 1 community tends to forget certain things, especially in the age of a three Mana Drain, two Force of Will, one Stifle hand. The Armodon is still digging forward, taking away life. Which leads us to the next point:

Aspect #2.2: Card Quality
This topic becomes difficult to judge or even analyze, since the amount of cards available is so vast, and a surprising amount get played. If you look at a basic example of higher quality, look at Lightning Bolt and Shock. Both are one-mana instants, both do damage to players or creatures, but the first one does three damage, whilst the second one only does two. This is a trivial and very clear-cut example of a superior card. However, obviously, you can't start comparing other cards to each other. I mean, how do you compare Hymn to Tourach to Nekrataal?

Card quality is very dependent on the situation. Sometimes, even the most powerful cards in the game can be dead. Think of how useful Yawgmoth's Will (arguably the most powerful card in the game) is when a Tormod's Crypt is in play, or you only have two mana in play, and none in the graveyard. The same goes for Ancestral Recall under Chains of Mephistopheles, and Black Lotus and Moxen with a Null Rod in play. Card Quality is often closely related to the concept of Virtual Card Advantage that Geordie and Oscar fought over.

The problem I face with articles, is that I cannot just sit down and write the whole thing and submit it (I write for more than just Magic). I first formulate the ideas and the point of the article, then I start writing it... but I get about halfway through, and then I realize mistakes in judgment, or how something just isn't true. Sometimes, I manage to learn something new and the article progresses with the new idea to a happy conclusion. Sometimes, I get stuck, and I think this is one of those spots. I started writing this at about the same time as those two guys were fighting, and that was a few weeks back.

I can't even compete with the vast theories put forth in the past three weeks or so. The whole T.H.E.F.U.C.C thing Oscar invented is just too complex and too self-sufficient to even make a dent in it: +1, -1, -0.5, tokens, dead cards, and now there's even a W.H.A.T.H.E.F.U.C.C... at this point I decided that it's probably not worth my headaches to try to waltz through all this. Instead, I will actually focus on a very important part of card quality and quantity, one that wasn't so well documented: Symmetrical cards and their effects.

Aspect #2.2.1: Breaking symmetrical cards is one of the most powerful card advantage techniques
These two obviously go hand in hand. Symmetrical cards have been part of Magic since the days of Alpha, but were once discarded as having too random an effect to be useful. However, if you look at them, they are incredibly strong. Wrath of God kills all creatures and Armageddon destroys all lands, while Balance is part Wrath of God, part Armageddon, and part Mind Twist. You just cannot get anything more powerful than that.

However, people were wary of using such cards, since the symmetry would affect them as well. A Wrath of God would kill everything in play, and the field would be even. The first idea to break this was to simply play the mana curve. In White, for example, the answer was to let the opponent play some random small creatures on turns 1 through 3, then play a Wrath of God on turn 4, and then finally a Serra Angel on turn 5, and ride that to victory, since the card swing would be pretty good (usually 2:1 or 3:1, and maybe even more).

However, this was still a bit clunky, and still, at some point you might have to kill your own creatures, and it might still not be worth it. Then people tried to find cards that would circumvent the problem, and in this particular example, animated lands and Jade Statue-type artifacts would be great. Mishra's Factory and the Kjeldoran Outpost Soldier tokens were the foundation a great army that was unaffected by the symmetrical Wrath effect.

Armageddon was a bit more difficult, as destroying all lands was a bit more of a complex problem to solve, but people figured it out soon enough as well, especially since, unlike with creatures, most players will over-extend with land. Mana creatures was part of the solution (a-la Llanowar Elves), or just drop a large quantity of small casting cost creatures, do some damage, then Armageddon away all lands so the player with larger creatures couldn't destroy yours or cast his. Anyhow, this same reasoning went for Balance and Pox and several other cards, that I would label targeted symmetrical effects.

Aspect #2.2.2: Nevinyrral's Disk and Powder Keg are powerful and targeted symmetric destruction
I don't mean that you can pick and choose what you destroy (unlike the new Oblivion Stone), but they certainly were used as such, and they deserve their own explanation. The two primary colors that managed to fit this into their central strategy were Blue and Black.

Black has traditionally had an easy time with creatures. The Protection from Black creatures were rather painful, since there was nothing in Black's arsenal at that point that could deal with them. Even including stuff like Phyrexian War Beast (the mana curve smoother before the Phyrexian Negator) wasn't enough. These were often sub-standard creatures (three power for three mana isn't exactly stellar), and thus a better solution was needed. In addition to this was the arch-nemesis of Black: enchantments. The color had absolutely no way to deal with them (minus Dystopia, which is an expensive stretch). Artifacts were a bit less of a problem, since there were some cards that could kill them, but they could still be problematic.

Enter Nevinyrral's Disk.

This symmetrical card destroyed anything other than land, including the creatures that Black managed to put on the table. However, it would also destroy exactly what Black couldn't do by itself. Even at card disadvantage (say you had three ground creatures, and the opponent had a Moat), this was a good thing (chalk one up for virtual card advantage theory), since officially, your cards were dead.

Powder Keg also saw some play in Black control, but the shining moment came when it was inserted into Blue. Blue, unlike Black, had limited ways to deal with creatures, and permanents in play in general. However, unlike enchantments and artifacts, there were creatures with the low casting-cost/high power formula, which were a nightmare for Blue. A first turn Jackal Pup, followed by a turn 2 Jackal Pup and Mogg Fanatic (hypothetically), could, and often did spell doom. Force of Will was in no way fast enough, or reliable enough to stop this, and by the time the Blue player ramped up to five mana for a Morphling, the game would be sealed. Even then, tapping out meant the Red player could finish the Blue player off with little difficulty.

Enter Powder Keg.

This card often had a devastating effect, especially against aggro, since, as we know, the mana curve needs to be very smooth indeed, and the one and two mana positions were chock full. Even after three or four turns, this thing could veritably net gigantic card advantage.

Aspect #2.2.3: Stax and MUD lock artifacts
There are generally five cards that can be included in this heading: Sphere of Resistance, Tangle Wire, Smokestack, Winter Orb, and Chalice of the Void. All these cards are symmetrical, insanely powerful, and abused to the fullest extent of their capability.

Tangle Wire and Smokestack are a favorite example, given the stack. While this doesn't really decrease card quantity, it truly affects tempo. Since you can stack them any way you wish (being the controller), on the opponents turn, you can have the Smokestack resolve first, and then the Tangle Wire. That way you get X (counters on Smokestack) + Y (counters on Tangle Wire) card and tempo advantage. On your turn, stack them the other way around, and you get only max (X, Y) card and tempo disadvantage. Work with enough numbers, and you can see the strength of this.

This"synergy" is not the only reason the cards are good. Individually, Tangle Wire taps ten of your opponent's permanents, and only six of yours (remove a counter before having the effect resolve), including the Tangle Wire itself half those times (so, in essence, ten of his, only three of yours). Smokestack is a bit more symmetrical, since without some other trick, you lose the same amount.

There are two such tricks that come to mind. First, Goblin Welder can switch the Smokestack out before your upkeep (at the opponent's end of turn), and thus you don't have to sacrifice anything (which sometimes can be rather large). Second, against a deck that manages to overwhelm you, such as Oshawa Stompy (designed by Ray Mitchell, Razor on www.themanadrain.com, from a suburb of Toronto called Oshawa), Smokestack can play a nasty trick. If you can count properly, you can have a Smokestack in play with four or so counters, and no other permanents, while your opponent has several in play. You will have to lose the lone permanent you have next turn, but the disadvantage for your opponent is often a hard climb up. This difficulty is offset for the Workshop player, with the large amount of mana sources and card advantage the deck has.

Winter Orb is outdated, and only the most dedicated MUD players run it. However, given the massive amount of artifact mana in the deck, as well as the Mishra's Workshops, Winter Orb remains a lot more one-sided than you might think.

Chalice of the Void is very symmetric, and yet can absolutely ruin a deck if played correctly. (Examples like Hulk, Oshawa Stompy, and several aggro decks come to mind immediately, but you can use your imagination to think of several others). Few decks have any casting cost slots with nothing (especially zero - three), so no deck is completely immune. Diversifying the casting cost is often not a good idea, as it needs to ramp (there are more one mana spells than two, which has more than three), so Chalice can be very effective.

Finally, Sphere of Resistance is the beast I described in my previous article and in the first part of this article. Suffice it to say, it wreaks havoc on decks that rely on playing several spells in one turn, but in a deck with such a large mana base (both quantity and lack of need of quality), it often becomes one-sided.

Aspect #2.2.4: Draw-7 spells
Currently, You can name the following good Draw-7 spells: Timetwister, Wheel of Fortune, Memory Jar, and Windfall. Then comes Time Spiral, Winds of Change, and Diminishing Returns, three cards that are mostly used in combo decks, since the last two are disadvantageous, and the first one costs too much mana for most decks. Anyhow, Draw-7's are incredibly symmetric (I am getting sick of the word, but Microsoft Word has no thesaurus suggestions for it) in nature, but as we all know, this is not the case when you actually cast them.

First of all, everybody draws to seven cards. Which means if your opponent has five cards in hand, and you have three, then you just gained +2 card advantage. Of course, the cards are random, so you might have made the opponent discard five useless cards and draw seven nails in the coffin for you, all the while you drew nothing of value (surely a rare occurrence), but generally, two things will hold.

One, you did gain card advantage, however much that can possibly help. Two, you can control, to a degree, what you discard. It is highly doubtful that you would discard cards you could have played (since every card you play not only improves your board position, but it nets you +1 card advantage off the Draw-7 in the long run), so you essentially should have discarded a useless hand for a chance at getting a good seven new cards.

The four main ones have different uses. Memory Jar is a Stax/MUD dream, since it's a very one-sided Draw-7. With the help of Goblin Welders and Metalworkers, you can use it every turn, and generally cast everything in your hand. Timetwister has seen a vast decline in play from its glory days as a card used to counter the hand discard that was running rampant. Now, it generally sees use as a graveyard cleaner (for both you and your opponent, for the former to get your good cards back, and for the latter to simply slow down graveyard combo decks (a-la Dragon). Wheel of Fortune and Windfall are obviously good in a deck that can play a lot of permanents fast.

Aspect #2.2.5: Trinisphere is the new craze
MrFurious, of the StarCityGames forums, comes with this little gem, when talking about the Trinisphere:"I think this finally spells the end of Mishra's Workshop being a 4-of. Restriction time. Just think of how many matches can end on turn 1 with Mishra's Workshop and EITHER Chalice of the Void OR Sphere of Resistance OR Trinisphere. Red stands no chance, combo stands no chance, and control is severely crippled."

I seem to remember this statement every single time a good card comes out. It has to be restricted. What the hell (heck?) is going on with you people? Let's analyze each part of the last sentence.

-Trinisphere makes Red (aggro) decks stand no chance
This is actually very true. So was Chalice of the Void, so was Moat, so was, heck, even Barbed Foliage. Red still seemed to do okay. Now, it is true that Mishra's Workshop can play this turn 1, thereby truly abusing the card (but then again, everything else in the deck can be played on turn 1, so why this is suddenly such a big surprise is beyond me). The real question is whether this isn't truly a win-more kind of card in Workshop decks, and whether Red is still viable if Workshop decks are removed. These are the new questions that need to be answered if the original question is to be a factor.

Me, I don't think so. Workshop decks were fine against Red to begin with. Tangle Wire was a monster that murdered Goblins and most rush-strategies, and Sphere of Resistance wreaked enough havoc as it was. There were few zero mana spells in Red decks (Lotus and Mox Ruby), and the one mana spells cost three now, instead of two. That is the only difference, and it's not worth restricting Workshop because of it. Yes, it's an extra nail, but no, it's not new.

Now for the rest of the aggro: TnT, Mask, and Oshawa Stompy. TnT will just laugh, since it can possibly use Trinisphere as well. Mask will lose some combo pieces, but Mask will cost just one extra, so it's not exactly a horrible expense. Oshawa Stompy's low casting cost pieces are useless against Workshop decks anyhow, with the exception of the Basking Rootwalla.

-Trinisphere makes combo decks stand no chance
If this were the be-all, end-all of it, I would be happy. Straight"I win" combo decks are not exactly what I would consider fun. They are over-powered, over-represented, and often played by people with no idea or plan on how to play them other than what they read on the Internet. To them, I say"Good riddance to bad rubbish."

To the dedicated and competent combo players, this is often not a problem. Take Dragon, for example. I (a very incompetent combo player, see previous paragraph) made a powerless version of Dragon, which, more often than not, won against Black Nether Void, even with a Nether Void down on the table. Yes, combo decks like Long.dec and the like are hurt by it, but they lost their edge with the last round of (unwarranted, in my opinion) restrictions. Dragon, Trix, and several other decks, rely on higher-casting cost cards to begin with, so I don't think the Trinisphere will cause that much of a problem. It will make counterspells more costly, that is true, but with cards like Donate that are already abused in the mix, why cry about it?

Sphere of Resistance, I think, is far more dangerous against non-Mind's Desire type combo decks. Especially since they work in multiples.

-Trinisphere severely cripples control decks
This is difficult to assume, and you have to combine more factors than you would like. First, let me run something in my simulation program (essentially running a million tries of an opening hand), to see what are the chances that you have a Trinisphere in your opening hand with enough mana to cast it.

With 1 Trinisphere, being able to cast it is = 7%
With 1 Trinisphere, not being able to cast it is = 4%

With 2 Trinispheres, being able to cast it is = 13%
With 2 Trinispheres, not being able to cast it is = 8%

With 3 Trinispheres, being able to cast it is = 19%
With 3 Trinispheres, not being able to cast it is = 12%

With 4 Trinispheres, being able to cast it is = 24%
With 4 Trinispheres, not being able to cast it is = 15%

The first means you have the Trinisphere and three or more mana, the second one means that you have the Trinisphere and don't have the three or more mana. This assumes that the Workshop deck has four Workshops, five Moxen, one Black Lotus, one Sol Ring, one Mana Vault, one Grim Monolith one Mana Crypt, and fourteen generic land that produce only one mana.

24% is not a number that's earth shattering, and this assumes that the Workshop player goes first (which is about 50% on average). This also assumes that there are four Trinispheres, which is not going to be always true (most players put in only three). Stephen Menendian claimed that Long.dec could win some ridiculous amount of games on turn 1 or 2 (75%, correct me if I am wrong). If even that wasn't restriction worthy in some minds, then this is definitely not.

Now, as I said, increased delays in this article provided us with another nice paragraph by Avi Flamholz:

"While at first Trinisphere may seem to be another tool for artifact prison, another sign on the road to Mishra's Workshop's imminent restriction, I do not think it is so. Under the current wording Trinisphere does not do anything spectacular in multiples, nor does it interact positively (for the prison player) with Sphere of Resistance. For a deck that is focused on locking out an opponent, it seems like playing both Sphere of Resistance and Trinisphere would be senseless. Since Sphere of Resistance affects all spells and is not dead in multiples, it is probably the better choice. Since the two do not interact and extra Trinispheres are dead draws, I do not think that Trinisphere will see significant play in artifact prison decks."

This is well put. Running four of these things is suicide, since drawing dead cards against a control deck (truly giving them Time Walks) is not something you want to do. So they will limit it to three (two is useless, really), and even then, the problem is that you actually need to cast them. The key part of MrFurious argument was the Either-Or, but that only truly becomes a factor if you can cast more than one during a turn (the increase in chance of drawing and casting a lock component first turn is minimal). Calculating that, and the need for at least five mana on turn 1 is insipid.

Anyhow, control decks should fear the Sphere of Resistance probably as much as the Trinisphere, if either card actually hits the table. Sphere of Resistance can be put down with only two mana, which happens a lot more often (around 32%), especially since four-of the card are required. Trinisphere is vastly superior against Force of Will though, and that is a key selling point, sort-of completing the triangle of Force of Will being a good weapon against combo, and now being stopped by a new contestant.

Against Mana Drain, Sphere of Resistance is a lot better, since you cast big spells with the spare mana anyhow, and the Trinisphere will not hinder that much. In the end, Cunning Wish still costs only three mana, and so does Rack and Ruin. Both artifacts have the same effect on most of the other Wish-able artifact destruction, although the new Oxidize will suffer somewhat.

Done!
There was so much more that I want to say, since this is nowhere near complete. But it's gigantic already, and most of you are probably contemplating suicide or most likely homicide by now. Darksteel is about to come to the Toronto shelves soon, and it doesn't exactly rock the casbah (cash-bar). There are a few cards in it that are interesting, and probably fun to play in draft, but nothing outstanding. Green got some interesting crap, and there are some really strong and cool artifacts... Juggernaut is back, and it looks like a gigantic shredder, albeit cool... and the new Pox (Death Cloud) will make people scratch a few heads. Eater of Days is a neat creature, and it might see play in Mask decks, although a lot of times, ramping up to four mana for a three-turn clock isn't exactly mind-blowing in a combo deck (and it's not the Phyrexian Dreadnoughts that are dollar intensive, it's the Illusionary Masks).

Darksteel Colossus is a good Tinker target in some Stax decks (it's a hell of a kill condition), and Oath of Druids is probably going to be happy about it (although Serra Avatar and the Scourge Dragon enchantments work just as well, or with some of the Judgment Incarnations). Sundering Titan has a dual targeted Armageddon effect, in addition to being a 7/10. Heck, even that seems to be a bargain now.

Until next time...

-Razvan Trufasiu
Razvan on www.themanadrain.com (everywhere else too)
Toronto, Canada