A wide receiver runs his route only to find the quarterback has released the ball a bit above target. Instead of just letting the ball fly over his head and take the incompletion or worse, a possible interception, he summons up all of his ability and seems to fly up to catch the ball. Only to be nearly snapped in half by linebacker. Still he made the play and the crowd loves him for that moment.

A volleyball team has performed as it should and set up their best hitter for a kill. She hits it past the blockers and down on the back row. One player though does not let the ball just drop. She stretches across the floor ignoring all pain and possible injury to slide here hand under the ball which puts it just 4 feet up in the air. Which is just enough time for another member of the team to scramble over and get the ball into play. And though she expended herself on the previous play the first player gets up and prepares to do it again as the opposing team readies for another try.

The center-fielder see the ball start to move to his left before he even hears it come off the bat. He immediately starts to back pedal and then run to the fence. As he gets close to the fence he looks over his shoulder to see the ball reaching for the penultimate home-run. "Not today," he says to that little white gremlin as he speeds up and launches himself to make the catch. After his body collides with the rather unforgiving wall he looks into his hand and smiles.

We’ve all seen it. The mystical, logic defying, and awe inspiring moment where all the world seems to stop and just one person seems to owns it all. Most of these moments occur in sports. But they can happen is all parts of society. The rest of us just don’t get replays on ESPN.

The main thing all of these moments have in common is what I call 'the Sell Out.' Most people think of this phrase negatively. We assume it to mean someone has "bought" us. But I look at it as a positive. I define 'the Sell Out' as when you have holistically devoted yourself to something and all other needs or distractions aren't allowed to exist in your mind.

In Magic the Gathering we have these moments. Especially the "Johnny" type of players. We sit and wait until we have that certain mix of cards. The elusive "combo." Then we finally get to play them and pray that the right mix will lead us to the win. This is the reward and downfall of combo type decks. We love to see that moment when we call tap everything and stretch our hand to its max potential and hopefully find the win.

But the metaphorical linebacker that is aggro will find us vulnerable in the middle of the field, or the never forgiving wall that is control will be there to punish us if we don’t come down with the prize, and our opposing volleyball team that works together like an opposing combo deck will just reload and combo out again if we can’t disrupt their play somehow.

This is the problem with selling out in Magic. The risks often outweigh the potential reward. Yet I still play combo more than any other deck type. The "I once cast a fireball THIS BIG" big fish story is too tempting. The Sportscenter for MTG plays is always on in my head.

Yet there is another way to sell out that many younger players do. It's the selling out to a key word mechanic. Almost every expansion has some keyword or mechanic that makes you want to build around it. Some keywords have no buzz about them until someone gets smart and figures out the possibilities. Others fall in the middle as good but not great. Yet we all try to find some way to abuse them. The success of keywords like Affinity, Dredge, Flashback, and Threshold all draw us into a new keyword hoping to be the great designer who breaks it.

I can't tell you how many times I have had a student build the latest and coolest "Exalted" deck last year. I personally went down the Persist pathway during the summer of Fae. These endeavors just don't pan out very often and most of the time it's our fault. We like to really use a mechanic and we overuse it more and more often. We may find ourselves using some underpowered or over-costed card just because it has some mechanic on it. While the reality is we already have plenty of cards with that mechanic in our deck.

A student of mine came in and asked me to help his mana base with the following deck list.

[deck align="center"]3 Bala Ged Thief

3 Hagra Diabolist

3 Kabira Evangel

4 Kazandu Blademaster

4 Nimana Sell-Sword

4 Ondu Cleric

4 Oran-Reif Survivalist

3 Turntimber Ranger

4 Path to Exile

4 Doomblade

3 Harrow

21 Lands[/deck]

Looking this list over a few things jumped out at me. First he wanted a full set of Marsh Flats and Verdant Catacombs. Second he could easily run some tri-lands since he is lacking in 1 drops. But even with that I handed the deck back and told him to reconsider this list. "But look at the Synergy!" he responded. "It so cool. If I get this guy on the field it’s like free spells or free pumps all game long."

"Day of Judgment?" I asked.

He said he wouldn’t over extend. But how could you not? The more Allies the merrier the Victory party. And basically no Ally can win on his/her own. He sold out for Allies. It’s a Catch 22. If you play a lot of allies then you get a lot of cool plays but if you play a lot of allies you really expose yourself to removal and you have little room in your deck for your own removal.

Here’s the thing about Selling Out. The better the team the more likely a player is to make the uber plays I mentioned earlier. The Storm mechanic is a prime example. In order to play TEPS back in the day you really had to sell out for it. But the reward for your extension was a solid list of victories. No athlete is slamming his body against the outfield wall if his team is not winning and looks to be hopeless. Allies themselves are not the championship team to sell out for right now.

So we continued our conversation about the deck for a while and he began to see my point. We decided to drop a color from the deck and add other cards to help facilitate our band of friends. Sure we would still be trying to accumulate the Allies but now we would have plays other than just Ally after Ally.

If we were to drop Green the allies kept would be:

[deck align="center"]3 Bala Ged Thief

3 Hagra Diabolist

3 Kabira Evangel

4 Kazandu Blademaster

4 Nimana Sell-Sword

4 Ondu Cleric[/deck]

That’s still 21 allies in the deck. Assuming consistent land drops we are able to drop a new friend on the field on every turn from 2 until almost 7 on the average. The previous list would put us much deeper in the game before our hand would be out of Allies but I feel making it to turn 6 or 7 would be sufficient. Meanwhile we clear up a lot of card slots for protection and removal and that will support our army much better. I would look to add the following.

[deck align="center"]4 Path to Exile

4 Doomblade

4 Duress

4 Oblivion Ring[/deck]

That would leave us with 23 land slots that would leave us with a land drop for each of the first 5 turns in most games. 5cc is the top of our curve so we should be able to consistently play each of our cards when the time is right.

[deck align="center"]4 Marsh Flats

4 Arcane Sanctum

4 Terramorphic Expanse

7 Plains

4 Swamp[/deck]

I feel this deck still holds to his Allies theme and does make the commitment level required without doing the all out sell out that dooms many decks. The only real question in my mind is the Kabira Evangel. I really think Wizards should have given this card Flash for it to be playable. Or maybe take away the end of turn part of the text. I honestly find it sub-playable but I wanted to stay with the original list just with those two colors.

If we went with Black and Green as our core colors we would start with the following crew:

[deck align="center"]3 Bala Ged Thief

3 Hagra Diabolist

4 Nimana Sell-Sword

4 Oran-Rief Survivalist

3 Turntimber Ranger[/deck]

This set of 17 makes our commitment to Allies significantly less but still very doable. I would focus my supporting cards into the discard, removal for black and the mana acceleration / fixing for green. If you wanted more allies they could fit in here as well though I think Stonework Puma would be the best choice unless you anticipate a lot of fliers then Tajuru Archers should be slipped in.

[deck align="center"]4 Duress

4 Tendrils of Corruption

4 Rampant Growth

4 Harrow

4 Doom Blade

2 Consume Spirit[/deck]

Our 21 land would roll with:

[deck align="center"]4 Verdant Catacombs

4 Terramorphic Expanse

4 Savage Lands

5 Swamp

4 Forest[/deck]

The Black Green list would be playable as well but doesn’t sell out quite as hard. Though I feel our early game strength dipped a little with the change from Blademaster to Survivalist. To compensate, the mid-game Turntimber is superior to the mix of life gain and protection that white gave us. We also can add the late game table flipper with Consume Spirit.

These are the tamed downed decks we came up with. Both do commit to the Ally theme but neither is overpopulated with the theme.

What do you think? Would love to hear from you in the comments.

There's the bell. Time for Lunch.