Last week, I talked about Explore and how it is the central effect you are trying to achieve from your support spells when you play them defensively. Now I want to talk about the other side of the coin—offensive play with these same types of spells. I want to talk about a card that represents the effect you are looking for:

So, is Stone Rain important, and how does it apply to decks that aren’t necessarily seeking to kill opponents in the first four turns of the game? To understand that, you have to understand what the control player is trying to do (which is why understanding Explore is necessary first).

The control player just wants to make land-drops because that’s the primary means by which he develops his board. That’s his main goal. This allows him to cast his spells defensively while developing his hand to produce future offensive threats. You—the proactive player—have to combat this. In effect, what you are doing is one of the following things:

• Deny your opponent the ability to cast spells
• Restrict the effectiveness of your opponent’s spells
• Present threats that have to be dealt with in a different manner (a unique angle of attack)
• Kill your opponent faster

What’s the core concept behind these ideas? Well, to see that, we have to step back a little bit and think about our goals for the game as a whole. As a Magic player, what is your goal? It isn’t actually to force through 20 damage or to mill all the cards out of your opponent’s library or to assemble a certain combination of cards that will win you the game . . . as much as you might think that is what to do.

Ultimately, your goal is to create a non-interactive game state.

So, what is a non-interactive game state? A non-interactive game state is a state in which your opponent is incapable of accomplishing anything relevant. This means one of two things—either he is incapable of accomplishing anything at all or nothing he can accomplish helps him. Fundamentally, this is what you are trying for—if you are in this situation, you have pretty much guaranteed yourself a victory.

Why are you trying for a non-interactive game state? The reason is simply that this is always the best position for you to be in. Consider a situation in which your opponent literally draws nothing but basic lands the entire game. Is it possible for you to lose? The answer is truly, “No.” From a strictly winning-the-game standpoint, nothing is better. There’s a reasonable chance neither player would have fun, but that isn’t our concern. Our concern is with our own strategic and tactical position, and that position is strongest when our opponent is unable to provide resistance.

This is among the fundamental tensions in Magic. As a game, Magic is fun when both players are able to interact with one another. It’s fun when decisions are being made. However, the game fundamentally pushes players to strive for a position in which his opponent is unable to make this sort of play. This is the design paradox of Magic: You must interact to create a non-interactive game state.

So ultimately, our goal is to reduce our opponent’s ability to resist whatever it is we are doing. However, if we are playing proactively, we have a specific plan we are trying to accomplish. This puts us at a disadvantage. Why? Because our opponent has the same goal of reducing our ability to resist, only we have a predictable development pattern due to our proactive plan. Because our deck is actually seeking to accomplish a specific goal, it is also vulnerable to more specific lines of disruption, which our opponent will be able to divine simply by knowing our goal.

Think about these examples:

• If a mono-red player plays a Mountain on turn one and passes, he probably doesn’t have a 1-drop, and he definitely doesn’t have Stromkirk Noble.
• If a G/W tokens player plays a Razorverge Thicket on turn one and passes, he doesn’t have a 1-drop
• If a W/U Delver player plays turn-one Island into Ponder, he doesn’t have a Delver.

Now let me ask you a question:

• If an Esper control player goes turn one Seachrome Coast, turn two Darkslick Shores, can you eliminate any of the following: Mana Leak, Doom Blade, Go for the Throat?

Because of the existence of proactive game plans for decks like mono-red, G/W tokens, W/U Delver, Wolf-Run Ramp, Pod, and so on, you can eliminate lines of play simply by considering what your opponent is doing. You can’t do this for a deck with a fundamentally reactive game plan.

So, how, as a proactive player, do you reduce the ability of a reactive player to interact? The only way is to attack his ability to cast spells, and the four ways to do that are the four that I listed above.

Looking at Stone Rain – Resource Denial

Let’s look at the first two methods of playing spells proactively—attacking your opponent’s spells. The most fundamental avenue of doing this is to deny your opponent the ability to cast his spells. This is why Stone Rain is the most basic representation of this. So, how do you stop your opponent from casting spells?

Well, let me ask you, What do you need to cast a spell?

The answer:

• The actual card
• The ability to pay the cost (typically mana)
• The ability to put the spell on the stack (turn timing, spell restrictions, etc.)

So, in order to stop our opponent from casting spells, we have to attack one of these three things. The third is not really something we can actively attempt to deal with, so that leaves the other two. The primary way to attack the ability to pay the cost is obviously land destruction. That isn’t very relevant in Standard because Wizards has apparently decided land destruction is evil. That essentially leaves attacking the actual card. How do we do that?

Well, if we can’t stop our opponent from putting the spell on the stack (land destruction), the only other reasonable bottleneck is to stop the spell from resolving (counterspells). This is honestly a huge reason that blue-based aggro has been so successful recently. Counterspells are now the only viable way of interacting with a player’s ability to cast spells.

The main design problem with recent Standard formats has been the lack of ability to interact proactively with defensive spells outside of counterspells—specifically Mana Leak. If you look at basic patterns of successful aggro decks, they do one of three things:

1. Kill the opponent before he can realistically set up
2. Establish a board presence and hinder the opponent’s attempts to chip away at it until the aggro player’s board kills him
3. Present alternative lines of attack to rely on after the opponent has dealt with the initial rush

Option 1 results when you have a deck like Affinity or the various Tolarian Academy decks. If the rest of the format is not fast enough to stop the fastest proactive strategy, the proactive strategy is broken. This is obviously bad.

Option 2 is the option that relies on being able to attack our opponent’s ability to cast spells. In the past, both Stone Rain and Mana Leak/Counterspell were viable ways of doing this. Now, because Wizards has decided to remove Stone Rain from the format, we are left with just Mana Leak. Essentially, by not having relevant land destruction in the format, Wizards is limiting the primary application of land destruction, which is allowing proactive decks, specifically aggressive ones, to interact with defensively oriented, reactive decks on major, proper, ground.

This results in a situation in which most proactive decks have very little means of interacting with reactive decks in a meaningful way (e.g. Township Tokens), which results in the more powerful defensive spells (Elesh Norn, Snapcaster Mage, Day of Judgment, Mana Leak) controlling the format. When you have no way of actively hindering your opponent’s development, you have to work around what he is trying to do to stop you, and that is never a position a proactive deck—especially an aggressive one—wants to be in. This is Option 3, but it is, realistically, the weaker of the two viable options.

Hindering Your Opponent’s Game Plan

The basic principle of hindering your opponent’s game plan can be traced back to active and passive denial. As I said earlier, you can deny your opponent the opportunity to cast spells or you can make those spells ineffective. This is about making your opponent’s spells ineffective. If you hinder his answers, while your opponent will be able to use them, they will be ineffective, and you can probably break through.

So, how do we hinder what our opponent is trying to do while maintaining an active stance? Well, there really are only two ways of hindering your opponent’s game plan: actively countering what he is trying to do or giving yourself a way to reduce the effectiveness of his counters. Let’s take a look at examples of each of these principles in action. We’ll begin with actively countering what your opponent is trying to do.

Why do you think this card has seen so much play in a variety of formats?

The answer is that Thrun avoids the vast majority of your opponent’s defensive measures. Regeneration allows it to avoid Day of Judgment, hexproof allows it to avoid spot removal like Doom Blade, Path to Exile, and Oblivion Ring, while the can’t-be-countered clause allows it to avoid counterspells like Mana Leak. All of these common defensive methods are ineffective against Thrun, thus he serves as an active counter to the vast majority of the methods opposing decks use to deal with other, common threats. Thrun is an example of active denial because its own strengths actively counter what the opponent is trying to do, and these strengths are the reason it is being used—even if it doesn’t otherwise fit into a deck’s primary plan.

But what about mitigating the effectiveness of your opponent’s answers? Well, take a look at this card:

Chandra's Phoenix still allows your opponent to answer it in all the traditional ways, but its recursion ability reduces the effectiveness of those answers. Sure, you can Doom Blade or Mana Leak a Phoenix, but it’s just going to come back for more. Chandra's Phoenix is an example of passive denial. It’s a reasonable card anyway, which fits what you are trying to do, but it’s a card that also happens to be able to effectively mitigate the usefulness of popular answers.

So why, with cards like this in the format, have various blue-based Delver of Secrets decks been the most successful aggressive strategies?

Because fundamentally hindering your opponent’s game plan like this is a second-level solution. The first-level solution—and the one that is stronger—is denying your opponent the ability to cast his answer in the first place.

Why is the second-level solution weaker? The answer lies in card selection. In order to implement a second-level solution, you are changing your deck from its otherwise ideal form to bring in an answer. In many situations, you are playing a card you otherwise have minimal use for because it happens to be good against the cards you are facing. What you are doing is diluting the threat base of your deck to compensate for the answers you are facing.

Why do you think almost every single proactive matchup becomes better for the control deck after sideboarding?

Answers are fundamentally more flexible than threats..

This brings us back to Delver of Secrets and Mana Leak. Mana Leak and its brothers are the only remaining first-level solution to Day of Judgment, Timely Reinforcements, Doom Blade, Go for the Throat, and other answers of a similar nature. What Mana Leak allows the Delver deck to do is alter its game plan in a minimal manner while keeping its strongest card selection. Delver doesn’t have to board out a card that is objectively strong against a goldfish for a slightly weaker card because its opponent is doing something. Delver can afford to bring in stronger cards based on what the opponent is doing.

• If you are running Wolf-Run Ramp, Delver can turn Mana Leak into Flashfreeze—a strict upgrade.
• If you are running Esper control, Delver can turn its Vapor Snags and Gut Shots into Negates and Dissipates.

Because Delver is implementing a first level-solution (stopping your spell instead of working around it), Delver operates from a position of strength. It doesn’t have to alter its game plan at all based on what you are doing. In fact, because it is the proactive deck, Delver is the one dictating the terms of the fight. This is where the proactive deck wants to be.

Think about it this way. If you are playing Thrun and Chandra's Phoenix, you have already conceded that your opponent is going to play a lot of Doom Blades, Timely Reinforcements, and Day of Judgments against you. He is going to kill or otherwise nullify your threats, and Thrun or Chandra's Phoenix is your way of dealing with that eventuality.

But Delver concedes nothing. Delver says, “Sure, you are going to draw Mana Leak, Doom Blade, Timely Reinforcements, and Day of Judgment against me, but that doesn’t mean those spells are going to do anything. Maybe I’ll just counter them—maybe I’ll use Delver to bait your Day of Judgment so I can play a Geist of Saint Traft. Who knows? I do.”

This is the difference between a first-level solution and a second-level solution. If you implement a second-level solution, you are giving up ground before the game even starts, and from a strategic standpoint, there is no good reason to do this. Thus, if at all possible, you should always implement a first-level solution—it puts you in a better position to win the game.

Changing Your Attacking Line

Changing your attacking line, otherwise known as presenting alternative threats, is the last resort for dealing with defensive spells. Once again, this is because it is fundamentally diluting your game plan. By forcing yourself to attack from a different angle, you may blunt your opponent’s defensive spells, but you also blunt your own ability to accomplish your proactive game plan.

The archetypical example of this is Dredge. Dredge is a deck with a very strong, proactive game plan. However, it is extremely vulnerable to cards such as Leyline of the Void, Relic of Progenitus, and Tormod's Crypt. When these cards come in out of the sideboard, the Dredge deck is forced to make a decision about how to deal with them. There are essentially two options. Dredge can choose to sidestep the graveyard hate by boarding in a beatdown plan, or Dredge can choose to combat the graveyard hate directly with various cards that destroy these hateful permanents.

So, what happens in Game 2 with Dredge? Dredge is automatically a less powerful strategy because it has diluted its own game plan with answers such as Ancient Grudge or alternative beatdown plans such as with Tarmogoyf. While it is still a powerful strategy, Dredge is always weaker Games 2 and 3.

Changing your attacking line is a lot like Dredge boarding in a beatdown plan. Sure, it works, but in every situation, it is also going to dilute your deck and make it less powerful because your deck is worse at executing whatever fundamental game plan you built it to do.

Conclusion

Playing support spells offensively runs straight into the ultimate paradox of Magic: You interact to create a non-interactive game state. The reason for this is that any proactive game plan functions best when your opponent is a goldfish. Thus, strategically, the best course of action is to reduce your opponent to a goldfish, but that can only be done through interaction.

There are a number of ways to go about this, but the strongest way is simply to attack your opponent’s ability to cast spells, nullifying them before they are cast or while they are on the stack. Sure, there are workarounds, but they are generally less effective. Thus, when playing your support spells, while there may be other uses for them, remember that nothing is better than this:

Chingsung Chang

Conelead most everywhere and on MTGO

Khan32k5 at gmail dot com