Why bury the lede?

1. You Will Win If You Draw Lands and Spells
2. A Mulligan on the Part of the Opponent Implies Insufficient Resources
3. Drawing Your Sideboard Cards Specifically Improves Your Likelihood to Win Specific Games

One of the things I hated about the Pro Tour (Players Tour?) right before it disappeared was open deck lists. It was kind of offensive to me, as a player who had largely made his reputation doing something that was both good and unexpected over and over that I would have to give up the one edge that I legitimately still had.

There have been multiple reasons cited for the change, but the most pervasive seems to be a deliberate negation of the edge that established players have over newcomers, interlopers, or those who are simply bad at making friends (or, I suppose, networking teams). I was once interviewed about a time that I got a benefit from team scouting; and the best - or at least most memorable example - was from one of those tournaments where I was the only person in the room playing a weirdo Mike Flores deck.

I was also, to be honest, an interloper. I had traveled to Utah to play in a Regional Pro Tour Qualifier after winning in a home grown NYC LGS; but was, for the weekend at least, adopted into the family of Jazz fans. Aaron Muranaka and Jack Stanton extended their network and I got a Top 8 scout.

My opponent would be on Esper Dragons.

That day started with a 0-1 start that shook me to my bones. I had traveled two time zones to lose the opener to Red Aggro. Which was, on one hand, not surprising: The Red Deck was one of the two most popular decks in the metagame, so should have been quite expected. It was losing to Red that bothered me. I had played literally hundreds of games with my deck, and felt, coincidentally, that in addition to being one of the two most common decks, it was one of my two best matchups.

I had this reality-questioning shudder about how I was wasting my family's money, like I was stealing future college tuition from Bella and Clark on a frivolous trip to Utah, before battling back to beat Red Decks in the second and third rounds.

Anyway, I reversed my early luck and was to enter Top 8 as the first seed. It was a four-slot qualifier, so being on the play in the one and only elimination match I'd be playing was great to begin with.

And then I got the scout: Esper Dragons

Yes!

The other most popular deck in the format. On the play I was pretty sure I could never lose.

The interviewer asked, if I was never going to lose anyway; how much edge did I really get finding out it would be Esper Dragons?

I just felt better. At ease. I knew the matchp backward and forward; was pretty sure he would make at least one critical mistake on account of non-familiarity with my cards (he made more than one); and I could proceed completely stress-free. I'm sure you've heard about a weight being lifted off of one's shoulders, and this was a pretty good example for me. Among other things, I would be able to keep almost any hand with both lands and spells, regardless of which ones they were.

Which brings us to our first assumption that is costing you games:

1. You Will Win If You Draw Lands and Spells

This is the implicit assumption of almost everyone who complains of losing to either mana screw or mana flood.

Justice, it is implied, is served whenever you win. Losing is a result of non-justice; either in the form of bad luck on your part (manascrew) or unusually good luck on the part of your opponent (they topdecked you). Because in an orderly universe you are supposed to win.

This process, on its face, probably seems ridiculous to read. But at the same time, I assume (there goes another assumption) that you've either had similar thoughts; or at least overheard someone with similar thoughts elsewhere on the tournament floor.

On a practical basis, I'd break this assumption down into two pieces. Shifting your thought process toward them is likely to increase the number of games you win.

First is my favorite drum to beat in 2022: Which is that you are always racing. While it is not always the case that you could have won one turn more quickly, it is always the case that you can't get topdecked if you deny the opponent a draw step by killing them first. Instead of lamenting a topdeck, you can just try to win faster, or at the very least, think about the potential topdecks that will beat you, and consider your sadly non-lethal resource deployment in a way that might mitigate the impending injustice of a topdeck.

Right this second, Innistrad: Midnight Hunt is the Quick Draft format on Magic: The Gathering Arena. MID is one of my favorite formats, and probably coincidentally only, one where I've achieved Mythic Top 100 multiple times. Still, I've lost absolutely stupid games - often on the table - by one point. The kind where you play perfectly for 10 turns with your back against the wall... But then fail on the last, critical turn; or you mis-count either the opponent's life total or your mana (or both) by a single point.

Having lands and spells is not even the prerequisite to winning every game; but it certainly makes it easier. The broad assumption that getting both in a reasonable distribution means you should win is likely to blind you to your own potential to blunder and the prospect that your opponent might just outplay you!

The second is a broken assumption that your spells are any good anyway. Remember, you are always racing. But that doesn't necessarily mean you are trying in the abstract to get to the finish line at the greatest possible speed. Being the most intricate game of all time, Magic has a number of waypoints and mini-conversions; and in some sense making the opponent get there more slowly can be even better than getting there faster yourself.

In some sense every interactive game of Magic is about one deck obtaining the resources it needs to take its big turn before the opponent can. That can mean winning the game, but it can also mean putting itself into enough of a lead that a wide variety of the opponent's cards start ceasing to have text.

Imagine a first-turn Voldaren Epicure.

What do you do about that, exactly?

There are a lot of different things that an Epicure can mean - and they vary from format to format. In fact, we'll look at an Explorer deck later in this article that uses a fair Epicure to do an unfair thing.

In Standard, though, my bias is to kill the thing immediately if I can. Killing a Voldaren Epicure one-for-one is generally quite bad. You're trading one card for about half of the Epicure's value. They keep a Blood token, which is about half a card in value; and the Epicure already did a point of damage, which is half a card on The Philosophy of Fire scale. The opponent can follow up with an Oni-Cult Anvil and you're not going to like that very much.

Given the fact that the Epicure has a lot of potentially more dangerous friends on follow up turns - everything from the poorly named Tenacious Underdog to the ubiquitous Bloodtithe Harvester - why kill it?

Simple.

They might Ob Nixilis you!

Epicure into Ob is one of the worst things that can happen to any non-combo deck in Standard. Combo decks can often kind of ignore it, but a double Sulfuric Vortex that is actually gaining them life is going to be a problem if you care about the race. You might not be able to completely cut off Ob; but you can pre-empt a mini race.

Remember: You are always racing to something. Either that, or the game is over. If you don't know what that is, no amount of lands and spells is going to save you.

2. A Mulligan on the Part of the Opponent Implies Insufficient Resources

Admit it: You pump the fist every time they ship to Paris or London.

I do!

Flint Espil beat me on four cards at the Premodern Championships but I still do a mini-celebration every time some nameless Arena opponent goes to six.

This is a horrendous habit.

Did I mention Flint beat me on four?

Part of the reason I hate this assumption is that it exacerbates the first one. My lands and spells will be just fine this overlapping set of awful assumptions tells us: After all, they're probably going to be stuck on two or something.

In competitive Explorer, for instance, mulligans to six are extremely common. Sure, sometimes the opponent doesn't have lands and spells; but more often, I've found, they're just looking for Parhelion II.

Mardu Greasefang | Explorer | MTG Arena Zone

• Creatures (14)
• 2 Stitcher's Supplier
• 4 Bloodtithe Harvester
• 4 Greasefang, Okiba Boss
• 4 Voldaren Epicure

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord

• Instants (9)
• 1 Lightning Axe
• 2 Cathartic Pyre
• 2 Fatal Push
• 4 Deadly Dispute

• Sorceries (4)
• 2 Can't Stay Away
• 2 Thoughtseize

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki

• Artifacts (5)
• 1 Skysovereign, Consul Flagship
• 4 Parhellion II

• Lands (23)
• 1 Mountain
• 1 Swamp
• 1 Brightclimb Pathway // Grimclimb Pathway
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Takenuma, Abandoned Mire
• 2 Godless Shrine
• 4 Blood Crypt
• 4 Blightstep Pathway // Searstep Pathway
• 4 Concealed Courtyard
• 4 Inspiring Vantage

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Graveyard Trespasser // Graveyard Glutton
• 2 Fatal Push
• 1 Duress
• 2 Thoughtseize
• 3 Go Blank
• 3 Portable Hole

Buy This Deck Export text format Export Arena format

Regular lands and spells is unlikely to beat many of the Mardu Greasefang's keep-able hands. They really just want to find a Parhelion II and a way to dump it. In Standard, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki is great because it usually trades for two cards. Chapter One is good but not backbreaking; still, it's good enough that you can't let the opponent Ophidian you for a free Treasure every turn. Chapter Three is slow two different ways, but unbeatable if left unchecked. Between these two chapters, most players have to spend two cards. That's great in its way and also great in the sense that if they don't, you're going to get them even worse than a delayed blast Stupor.

In Explorer, though, it's Chapter Two that does the damage. You not only get to dig (for either Greasefang, Okiba Boss or Parhelion II)... But discarding Parhelion II is actually the fix. The next part is nigh academic. They play Greasefang. If you don't do something on the quick, it's likely going to be over. Not over in the sense that the game ends... But you're taking a ton on the chin and they're deploying double Serra Angels.

In some weird universes, the opponent was as much of an assumptive donkey as you and kept perfectly good lands and spells instead of an envelope-pushing creature combo; you still have to beat Chapters One and Three of Fable of the Mirror-Breaker.

So, if a mulligan doesn't necessarily imply a lack of resources, how should we proceed?

The first question is to imagine why the opponent might be declaring a mulligan. Use your informed imagination to come up with something other than "I bet he has all lands".

In the Greasefang deck there are lots of ways to discard Parhelion II... Not just Fable of the Mirror-Breaker but the Blood on Voldaren Epicure and Bloodtithe Harvester; or the additional cost of Lightning Axe. You have to watch yourself in terms of what rabbit hole you're about to inhabit: Straight resource denial - discard like Duress and Thoughtseize - can be very good both when the opponent is declaring a mulligan in response to a lack of resources and when they're looking for a specific component to a powerful hand. But you have to make sure you're not doing their job for them.

In other formats, a question around pure deck speed might arise. Imagine you're a combo deck that is going to win on turn four in the abstract. The aggressive opponent mulligans into a card to slow you down, like we saw in Slow Playing the Beatdown. If you know the opponent is moving in a particular direction strategically in sideboard games, you might consider going along with them.

A spell like Counterspell is not usually what you want against fast beatdown in abstract. But if the opponent is slowing down their own game plan in order to accommodate disruption, it might become attractive as disruption for their disruption as it were.

3. Drawing Your Sideboard Cards Specifically Improves Your Likelihood to Win Specific Games

Of course you want to draw your sideboard cards! Sideboard cards are like four times as good as main deck cards when you do them right. Even that statement is chock full of some sometimes-wrong assumptions.

First off, your sideboard cards sometimes don't even make your deck better. I can't tell you how many times I beat someone with a first turn Ramosian Sergeant and then sided out my entire Rebel chain knowing the opponent would lean into Rebel Informer and other highly strategy-specific answers.

In those cases, drawing a sideboard card is just a salient betrayal of your deck's core strategy; and maybe for a dead card.

But even in less extreme examples, we tend to overvalue hands that include sideboard cards. We wanted to draw them, right? We drew them! Keep! I'm not going to elaborate much on that but keep it in mind.

A bigger issue is that the opponent can be just as clever in sideboarding as you; and if you sideboard along the wrong vector, you might play directly into their sideboarding strategy. The best examples I can think of are the cards Sacred Ground and Defense Grid.

First: Sacred Ground

I am 100% sure I missed a qualification back in 2004 because I listened to Seth Burn, who accused me of having The Fear. Seth convinced me to cut my Sacred Grounds... I proceeded to lose to a Goblins deck late in the Swiss who had sided in Flashfires. I probably should have played Sacred Ground.

This card is an option today in Premodern, but is probably not a card you should consider playing. Essentially there are board control decks that can do a lot of things well, but can't say "Nope" to an Armageddon. Sacred Ground becomes an option.

Only...

Those same board control decks tend to be full of other artifacts and enchantments. Astral Slide, Lightning Rift, Humility, and more. The implication is that any opposing White deck (as Armageddon is a White card) will 1) have access to Disenchant and Seal of Cleansing, and 2) that every copy they have in their seventy-five is going to be in in any game you would side in Sacred Ground.

Meaning: Sacred Ground is going to be dead before they cast Armageddon. They almost certainly have more Disenchant effects than you have Sacred Grounds. The other artifacts and enchantments might very well end up moot once all your lands disappear.

Defense Grid has been adopted by a wide swath of decks, almost from the moment it was printed. It was a card that I considered for my Premodern Replenish sideboard, but rejected in favor of some more meaningful format innovation.

The problem is the same as Sacred Ground in a non-Blue control deck. If you side in Defense Grid in a deck whose action is almost all enchantments... You can kind of assume it will die! What good was that?

It's not that drawing a Disenchant effect out isn't productive... It's that you were probably going to lose without Defense Grid; so, an extra one-for-one is unlikely to save you given the paradigm of losing without Defense Grid.

For my specific solution, I brought in a ton of Abeyance, Thawing Glaciers, Counterspell, and even a Mana Short. Abeyance and Mana Short do a lot of the job of a Defense Grid without exposing themselves to the kinds of cards you predict the opponent will be bringing in, for their own part.

LOVE

MIKE