Agility is a concept I rarely hear discussed in Magic, but it's something I feel many decks right now are lacking, at least in Standard. The dictionary defines agility as the ability to act quickly and lightly. I'd go on to add that agility is defined as a lack of encumbrance, and an ability to prolong decisions with little ill effect. Startup businesses are told to be agile. Athletes want to be agile. Why shouldn't your decks be the same way?

Let's take a moment to apply the definition of agility to Magic the Gathering. In the most literal sense, instants and things with Flash are agile because they allow you to delay your reaction until absolutely necessary. The most classic example is in a control deck. Let's say it's your main phase on turn 3, the board is empty, and you have three choices. If all three of your spells are instants, then the decision can be postponed until the best choice becomes clear. If it is the end of your opponent's turn and you hold a Cancel, Esper Charm and Path to Exile, you can decide with all currently knowable information, which to use.

If, on the other hand, your choices are sorcery-speed removal such as Oblivion Ring and a slow draw spell like Divination, you are not able to gain much information before taking action. While you could leave up mana to cast Cancel, if they do not cast a spell worth countering, you have wasted mana and a turn. That's bad. Thus, by having agile spells, you are able to make the most flexible decision possible. If your opponent casts a creature, you have the choice to Cancel it, Path it, or just leave it be. Your third option, casting Esper Charm, now gives you a tremendous amount of options and velocity within the game. This is the crux of why instant draw spells are so much superior to sorceries.

By making sure that you can react quickly and flexibly, you ensure that you never under or overreact. To clarify, over-reacting is akin to a player at 20 life casting a Day of Judgment to kill a solitary Borderland Ranger. Under-reacting would be allowing a Goblin Guide to beat on you unmolested while you kept your removal for potential "bigger threats".

Rise of the Eldrazi has a few very agile cards in the set. Vengevine is a great example of an agile card that's not an instant. Haste is also a form of agility, since it forces your opponent to react more quickly than he or she may be able. Slowing down your opponent is often as good as being innately faster. The basic relationship remains the same because you are still able to react more effectively than they are. This is one of the reasons Jund is so powerful. It's removal suite is agile, and at least one of its creatures has Haste.

Here are some agile cards in Standard right now, some more traditional than others. This is not meant to be a deck list, but it seems like a lot of very quick, powerful cards would work together well in a control deck that was just fixated on agility. The idea is pure theory at this point, but some control players might want to toy around with these cards.

Consuming Vapors - Makes your opponent less agile by constraining their upcoming plays. Has excellent synergy with Consume the Meek. In control strategies, it is slow, efficient, and keeps you out of the critical life points.

Consume the Meek - Instant speed board wipe hasn't been this powerful since Rout was around. Proper timing and footwork will ensure that you get max value out of this card. It's not a Wrath of God, so don't pretend like it is. Use it to clear the chaff of the board so you can Consuming Vapors something worthwhile.

Esper Charm - It does almost everything you need to do in a control deck and at instant speed, except kill creatures. Luckily for you, we have Smother, Smother-All and Path to Exile to do that.

Mysteries of the Deep - Treat this like a Mind Spring at instant speed, not another copy of Esper Charm. Drawing 3 at the end of the opposing turn is really powerful, and not many decks have managed to do that in recent times. Remember, if you can leave up mana to react to everything, you can make more good decisions more often.

Path to Exile - As long as your deck is structured to answer what they ramp into, this is one of the most agile cards ever printed, alongside Swords to Plowshares and Force of Will. Just remember that the drawback is very real, and will sometimes cause bigger problems than it solves.

Cancel - If you have 3 mana, they don't have a spell. This can be complemented by use of the more narrow counterspells, which are a different sort of agile. Costing less is a form of agility, which is why Path and FoW are so amazing. Cancel gets a lot more impressive when the opportunity cost of leaving up mana goes away. If they don't cast anything, you can still just kill a creature, draw some cards, or Hymn them out.

Man-Lands - They do precisely what you need them to do almost all of the time. It's odd to see an ETB Tapped land on a list of agile cards, but the fact is that they enable your spells and allow you to fine-tune your threat density without sacrificing much agility. Giving control decks mana fixing and a finisher on one card would have been the dream in early Draw-Go decks. What's changed since then?

The format is young, and a lot of new strategies are being tested out. Many people think in terms of tempo, card advantage, mana curves, and linear strategies, but next time you sit down to brew a list, consider the concept of agility. Just putting the cards in the above list together does not, sadly, work. Trust me, I tried. The makings for a more agile control deck exist. It's not all about Mind Stones and X spells anymore. It's just a shame that we've no creatures with Flash any more!