"Once I had four pump Knights on the table I concluded that my only chance to win the game was to swarm him. I would lose a Knight each time I attacked, but I figured I might be able to get through with enough damage for a miracle to occur. I was not optimistic about this plan, but it was the only way I could imagine winning the game so I tried it."

"On my first attack three Knights got through (one at 3/1) reducing him to 11. I also played a Scrubland that turn just to make sure he was going to remember to Mine it at the end of my turn. I had no long term prospects in this game, in my opinion, so the Scrubland wasn't doing me any good in my hand. My hope was that he would untap before remembering to Mine the scrubland, then Mine it on his turn, thus tapping the Miner and removing it as a potential chump-blocker. I wish I could claim credit for attempting to delude him into a false sense of security, because that is apparently what happened. He became convinced that the Miner was giving him complete control of the game (and he was right).

"Next turn I attacked him with three Knights, and two of them got through for 5 damage ... reducing him to 6. Meanwhile the Frenetic flies over and hits me for 2 more. He still chooses to keep the Wildfire back for blocking. I think I'm at 10 or so at this point. If he had a Fireball he could just kill me. If he had a Lightning Bolt then he could almost kill me. My next turn rolls around and I send in my two Knights. He blocks one with the Wildfire and lets the other one hit him, dropping him to 4. I could have pumped and dropped him to 3, but I didn't. Mentally, I was resigned to losing this game and moving on to Game Five... I was also trying to figure out what to take out of my deck in order to get another Lightning Bolt or two back in so I wouldn't lose to Dwarven Miner again.

"I figured I would go through the motions of trying to Lake-Drain him for 4, he'd counter, then he could kill me with his Wildfire. So, I tap a Swamp for , play the Lake and sacrifice the Swamp, tap the other Swamp for , then tap the Lake of the Dead and sacrifice that Swamp for . That's , which I sink into a four-point Drain Life.

"David says 'That works?' with a surprised tone of voice. I say something like, 'You're kidding... You don't have a Counterspell?' He stammers a bit and I begin to realize that my miracle came through and I just won Pro Tour Chicago!"

-Randy Buehler, 1997

Paul: If he finds an Incendiary Flow, that will be the game.

Marshall: He could just kill him right here...

Paul: Right. Incendiary Flow? Is it a Flow?

Marshall: Let's see what he's got...

[Assorted "it is an Incendiary Flow!" and "Yam Wing Chun just topdecked" excitedly talking all over one another. Crazy cheers you can hear from the audience over the broadcast.]

Paul: You can't attack! YOU CAN'T ATTACK! He has only two cards in hand! Is he in his combat step?

Marshall: Oh no.

Paul: That cost him the game!

Marshall: He's not allowed to attack with Hazoret, and if he's already moved in to his combat step it will be too late to deploy one of the two sorceries in his hand.

Pro Tour Hour of Devastation coverage, 2017

Two Pro Tour Top 8s.

Two Hall of Famers.

Two decades apart.

One of them - Randy Buehler - desperately behind, already having given up on the game and thinking about how he might sideboard for the next... Wins the first Pro Tour he ever sleeves up for, knocking back the inaugural domino of a literally Magic: The Gathering-defining career.

In the second, Yam Wing Chun - who topdecks exactly the card he needs to win the match, with the victory on the table - commits probably the most famous blunder in Pro Tour Top 8 history. Rather than casting his soon-to-be-lethal burn spells, Chun moves to combat with two [sorcery speed] cards in hand, rendering him unable to attack with what should be a lethal God:

The beneficiary? Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa; already a PT Champion, adding what can only be considered an unnecessary feather to cap a Hall of Fame career (but, I suppose, many welcome thousands of dollars).

These are two of the most famous and pivotal moments in Pro Tour history.

Why?

Because Randy wasn't supposed to win that game. He made a series of desperate plays when locked out on the battlefield. He grabbed victory from the jaws of defeat.

Paulo wasn't supposed to win his, either. But Chun - on whom The Dealer glowed with that Incendiary Flow topdeck - more importantly wasn't supposed to lose. He gave away the win (and possibly the Pro Tour itself; as PV went ahead and did take his Finals match). This became a more viral Top 8 moment than Olivier Ruel's Force Spike as a result.

Both games are legendary because neither was supposed to happen.

They spawn - or glom onto - the most obvious aphorisms masquerading as timeless wisdom. Like:

"Play to your outs," say the poker players, pointing at Randy's Black burn spell: Drain Life, improbably resolved.

"Never lose focus," chides anyone and everyone to anyone and everyone; for we've all lost games to blunders and momentary slips... If not under the hot Sunday lights. They shake their collective heads at burn spells Incendiary Flow and Collective Defiance that weren't cast in time.

The Magical Christmas Land games become the teachable moments.

Sure: Winning when you're not "supposed" to is exciting... But these Holy Pikula stories are interesting primarily because they are infrequent and unexpected.

Rather:

When was the last time someone talked to you about winning a game you're supposed to win?

What's the plan, Stan?

Chun drew the Incendiary Flow.

Presumably - and looking at PV's life total - he knew that that was one of his ways to win the race at hand.

What was Chun supposed to do next?

Get the Flow and/or the other burn spell in his hand out of his hand would be point A. Attacking for 5 point B. Completing the 11-life turn point C.

A or C could be interchanged. A and C executed upon pre-combat! All he had to do was anything but B first.

That is the essence of strategy.

Strategy - in Magic, at least - is mostly about taking actions in a particular order.

But everywhere:

It starts with having a plan.

What I really wanted to talk about today was this:

This two-mana enchantment has been a Staple and favorite for longer than even I have been playing competitive Magic: The Gathering. For Deckade, my friends dredged up one of my earliest articles, which was about playing Circle of Protection: Red to defend myself from my own Orcish Artillery!

Mondo combo, right?

Various versions of the Weissman Deck were all about assembling a series of interlocking artifacts and enchantments to close out the game. Empty the opponent's hand with Mind Twist, Amnesia, or Disrupting Scepter. Only then deploy a mostly-safe Serra Angel. Really and truly slam the door shut with Blood Moon and Circle of Protection: Red. Now they really can't do anything, even if The Dealer graces them and denies you relevant topdecks.

In today's Premodern, Circle of Protection: Red has found spots in multiple sideboards. It's not "the best" sideboard card, especially in many creature decks. It can mostly protect you but leave your various Nantuko Shades and Hypnotic Specters open for Lightning Bolts and Incinerates that have no other good targets. The opponent can play the Suppression game and find a way to win, in part because you haven't got one.

For purposes of this article, I'm mostly interested in talking about Circle of Protection: Red in the context of a deck like this:

PSS5 LandStill | Premodern | Tom Metelsky

• Instants (22)
• 1 Absorb
• 1 Forbid
• 2 Disenchant
• 3 Fact or Fiction
• 3 Mana Leak
• 4 Counterspell
• 4 Impulse
• 4 Swords to Plowshares

• Sorceries (5)
• 2 Wrath of God
• 3 Decree of Justice

• Enchantments (5)
• 1 Humility
• 1 Seal of Cleansing
• 3 Standstill

• Artifacts (2)
• 2 Phyrexian Furnace

• Lands (26)
• 4 Plains
• 5 Island
• 2 Dust Bowl
• 3 Coastal Tower
• 4 Adarkar Wastes
• 4 Flooded Strand
• 4 Mishra's Factory

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Annul
• 1 Circle of Protection: Red
• 1 Wrath of God
• 4 Meddling Mage
• 2 Blue Elemental Blast
• 1 Seal of Cleansing
• 1 Hydroblast
• 1 Arcane Laboratory
• 1 Chain of Vapor

Buy This Deck Export text format

... against any number of conventional Red Decks.

The above version of LandStill is a hodgepodge of Tom Metelsky technology with bits of Brian Selden and Lan D. Ho grafted on. Selden basically shaved off most of Tom's main-deck excesses to start Phyrexian Furnace; and Lan added mirror-breakers and some kind of differently specialized lockdown in the form of Arcane Laboratory.

Arcane Lab is obviously good against any sort of Storm finisher (including off-label Brain Freeze sideboards), but can also gain percentage in surprising situations. You can't very well Stifle the trigger on a Phyrexian Dreadnought with an Arcane Laboratory in play; and it doesn't matter how many cards a Fluctuator player draws if they can't lace together Songs of the Damned and Drain Life one after the other.

The reason I wanted to write about specifically Circle of Protection: Red is because I keep seeing it come up, over and over, and almost no one plays either side of the table correctly. Either side!

When Tom and I started playing Circle, we had as many as two copies of Enlightened Tutor to help find it... So it was almost as if we had three Circles. Now that Tom has cut Enlightened Tutor to accommodate (the admittedly deck-shrinking) Phyrexian Furnace there really is only one copy. We didn't add a second because a second has severely diminishing returns. Instead, we play a lot of cheap instants at : Blue Elemental Blasts or Hydroblasts, which can help buy time; sometimes trade gloriously against the three cards of a Fireblast; or even Chain of Vapor, which can help against a first-turn Goblin Lackey.

But let's assume as the LandStill player you're like Yam Wing Chun and his Incendiary Flow. Meaning, you drew the card you needed before the game has officially ended.

So now what?

What's the plan, Stan?

First, it is almost certainly right for the opposing Red Deck - depending on what turn it is and how many cards and resources are available - to throw everything they reasonably can at you in response. That includes blowing Fireblasts and Lava Darts to the detriment of their basic Mountains RIGHT NOW. Once the Circle resolves, they're not going to be able to.

For most LandStill players operating perfectly, the game is going to go long enough that the Red Deck can re-establish some semblance of a mana base before it's actually all over.

Both players also have to be cognizant of the LandStill's life total. It's no longer about getting to zero. 2-4 life might be enough for a Red Deck win. You can neither Counterspell nor Circle away the damage from a Barbarian Ring. Most Red Decks play two copies, and Will Hirst's most recent build runs three. That means six is the new zero if we go to libraries.

Will we go to libraries?

LandStill had better hope not! As the Standstill / Impulse / Fact or Fiction side of the table, LandStill is very likely to deck out before the Red Deck unless some very odd things have happened (i.e. Red got to draw from one or more Standstills).

Meaning: LandStill has to find a way to win before decking. Let's assume is "supposed" to win; this article should help you figure out how from your dominant position.

Easy Mode: Two-and-a-Half Ways You Always Win

There are two-and-a-half ways LandStill wins either immediately or very soon after deploying a Circle of Protection: Red. If you're a Red Deck mage reading this, note that only one of these is an actual way to win and you just have to be brave (or at least not unlucky). I'd tend not to concede to "just" a Circle and argue you should make the deck beat you. It's not that they can't... But more that the LandStill player might not know how because of the expectation that you just concede to Circle.

Nevertheless, they are the most frequent ways LandStill wins from the Circle.

1. Red Deck immediately concedes - With basically no ways to penetrate the Circle, the Red Deck player just throws in the towel after reading the text of the ancient White enchantment. Some Red Decks play a Winter Orb or a couple of Flaring Pains to beat Circle of Protection: Red, but many have no direct answer to this seemingly ultimate answer. Again, as a Red Deck you don't actually have to concede! The Azorious opponent will often have no possible clue how to navigate top position.
2. The Red Deck already has Sulfuric Vortex in play - This can absolutely stink. Sulfuric Vortex is in many ways one of the Red Deck's best cards... but not against Circle of Protection: Red. While it is a recurring source of damage that won't ever bite it to Swords to Plowshares, the Vortex becomes a clock for the opponent. They can easily trade one mana for two damage; and poor Red will go down in ten turns or less.
3. Red plays a few turns, and then concedes - This is a variation of #1, above; but kind of different. Players who concede immediately are often in the idealized Randy Buehler seat (you know, before he actually won). "I'm probably not going to win this one, but I want to make sure I have the tools to take the next one." Players here knock it around for a few turns before succumbing to frustration. Again, Red Decks: You don't have to concede. It's not that you're not behind... You're desperately behind! But your opponent often doesn't know how to actually take the game. In fact, it is likely that most will give you a stupid opening that can help you win like the opposite of some stupid game where you died to your own Sulfuric Vortex.

Regular Mode: You Win These Games Fair and Square

Just get a second hate piece in play.

Remember how I said Tom and I don't run a second Circle? Many mages play a Warmth or Chill, which does add to the Circle's presence on the battlefield. Chill makes it really difficult for the opponent to overwhelm your mana (we'll talk about why this is more in the math section).

Warmth is a nice complement so long as there is no Sulfuric Vortex in play. And again, will tend to win the games Sulfuric Vortex and Circle of Protection: Red are both in play.

Rather than Warmth or Chill, Tom might add Arcane Laboratory to his Circle. This is a kind of non-intuitive card for a damage-based matchup where you can lose to both creatures and the top of the opponent's deck. But think about it:

1. The opponent probably won't be able to "get you" with Flaring Pain. You can one-for-one Flaring Pain (even as a flashback spell) because there is literally no pressure on your Counterspell count under a Lab.
2. Your opponent will never be able to go critical mass with burn spells: They can only cast one per turn, making your mana good.
3. Similarly, it will be difficult for the opponent to overwhelm your mana with creatures, as they can only play one creature per turn. So, at some point you can trade one card for multiple cards with little fear of eating 100 burn spells in return. If you have as few as 2-3 open mana, you can cast a Wrath of God with essentially no fear.

What You Need to Know: The Math

1. The easiest way to survive, i.e. keep playing, i.e. "not lose" immediately is to assume that every card in your opponent's hand is a burn spell. If you have one mana for every card in their hand - assuming none of those cards is a Flaring Pain - you're mostly good.
2. You're mostly good. This is where the Red Deck players can start to get an edge from information. As the beatdown, what you will want to do is play out most of your offensive creatures. Jackal Pup and Mogg Fanatic each become Rishadan Port. Attacking with a Grim Lavamancer isn't that exciting, but up to a point, you can conceivably start overwhelming the opponent's mana. A Red Deck can safely play three creatures; and is theoretically at an advantage at four creatures if even one of them is a Mogg Fanatic. At five or more creatures it becomes mana-profitable for the player to cast Wrath of God; again, depending on how many Mogg Fanatics we're talking about.
3. Every Seal of Fire is great for the Red Deck. They can move a card from their hand to becoming an eventual hard-to-counter game-ender or at least Rishadan Port.
4. The Red Deck's goal is to get to a point where they have more burn cards in hand + copies of Seal of Fire in play + attacking creatures than you have open mana. Over the course of the game this can take a while, but it's highly achievable for the beatdown. Remember, as the player you're largely a slave to the top of your deck and have to keep hitting land drops. The Red Deck's bad draws are either lands (which they'll tend to play so they can try to overwhelm you with burn) or Ball Lightnings. Yeah, Ball Lightnings are pretty bad against a Circle of Protection: Red.
5. As you start to accumulate too many cards in hand, consider trading a Hydroblast for a creature in play or even Seal of Fire. This is a good thing to think about when you're at about six cards in hand, but have spare mana. A Blast on Seal of Fire might seem stupid, but you can just tap one and solve its two damage when they respond by sending it at your face. Trading straight up for a creature is the same - mana wise - as tapping for a Circle activation. This is true whether it's a Blast or a Swords to Plowshares. The important thing to understand here is that for the most part, Circle of Protection: Red is a source of card advantage so long as you have mana; and trading a one mana card now is like banking a mana on a future turn, which can prevent a critical mass of violent, potentially game ending, burn.
6. Remember: Red doesn't need to bring you to zero. 2-4 or even 6 might be game if they can go to libraries.

Tactics: Be Mindful of These

1. Cursed Scroll is a very real way for the opponent to kill you. And by "kill you" I mean get you low enough that Barbarian Ring can finish the job. A lot of Red Decks consider Cursed Scroll "too slow" for the matchup, but in my experience it ends up being one of the most reliable sources of damage. So Counter it or destroy it with Seal of Cleansing or Disenchant as soon as it makes sense!
2. Flooded Strand is The Enemy. Sadly the best dual land is terrible when you're trying to win off of a Circle of Protection: Red. You have to take damage to start using it, and its ability to find mana actually goes on the stack. In some cases a careful Red Deck will kill you in response to a Flooded Strand activation. My recommendation is to break Flooded Strand as quickly as possible so that you can control when it happens (i.e. you don't want to be doing it when you're under pressure and desperate for a mana with single digits of life total).
3. If you can ever trade a Dust Bowl activation for a Barbarian Ring profitably, you should do so. Sometimes you have a ton of spare mana while the opponent is rebuilding and the Ring gets tapped for some reason. That Ring is death to you at two life; so best to remove it from being a factor! This doesn't come up very often because a Dust Bowl activation will typically require you to have far more than four open mana, whereas a Barbarian Ring with one open Mountain is going to get its money. But if you can? Do.
4. Land your Absorb. In my experience, will tend to win most games that the Absorb resolves for three life, even games where it does not draw the big bad Circle. That three life is absolutely insane if you have the Circle in play, as it is the equivalent not just of one-and-a-half additional cards; but banking two or more mana against a critical mass burn turn.

The Upper-Limit of Mischief

How bad can a Red Deck conceivably make the game?

This is what I'd imagine:

• 4 Grim Lavamancer
• 4 Urza's Bauble
• 4 Seal of Fire
• 7 cards in hand

It's inconvenient for you to cast Wrath of God because you pay four for four Grim Lavamancers, and they respond by activating all four, essentially costing you eight mana. So, you're in a Cold War where they don't cast any more creatures but they do hassle you for four mana every turn.

So at some point at the end of your turn they activate all four Grim Lavamancers; that's 4 mana. They do so, in part, by sacrificing all four of their Urza's Baubles.

Over one turn cycle they can force about 24 mana utilization if their Baubles are perfect.

• 8 from Grim Lavamancers (EOT + attacking or whatever on their own 10
• 8 from cards in hand (7 burn cards sandbagged + 1 draw step)
• 4 from Urza's Bauble draws
• 4 from Seals in play

This may seem preposterous, but remember that the deck, especially if it doesn't have a plan to win the game, is inevitably going to give the Red Deck the time to set up close to a perfect kill.

So, when you think "that's never going to happen" don't think about assembling these cards via the five-turn tempo lens of a contemporary game of Standard; but rather a weird sub-game where your Azorius opponent will give you literally forty draws to sculpt your game. If they're going for it? They can probably put a battlefield like that together.

To be fair, you will but rarely see Urza's Bauble and Seal of Fire in the same build of Premodern Sligh; but it's not unheard of. Almost every Red Deck setup is going to be less daunting than "I have to have twenty-four open mana when I play only twenty-2 mana producing lands" ... But understand that, given time - and more importantly a lack of a strategy to win on your part - good old basic Mountain can potentially overwhelm even double digit lands without a specific source of anti-Circle hate.

How Do You Actually Win?

There is no doubt that tends to be in good shape in most games where Circle of Protection: Red resolves. But I hope you can see from the discussion so far that the Red Deck has all kinds of opportunities to take it, even without direct answers to the Circle.

If is long on spells and short on mana, the Red Deck can just play to overwhelm.

I've certainly lost games where the opponent got me with a long string of low probability Cursed Scroll activations. Circle of Protection: Colorless this is not.

But how do you win?

First, assume everything is going right.

If everything is not going right for you to begin with, you aren't going to win anyway. You need mana to operate your Circle to stay alive. You need even more mana to turn the corner.

Usually, you're going to want to clear the way with a Wrath of God. Wrath of God is profitable at five or more creatures, but you can often find a spot where resources are just really out of whack. You might not have an ideal spot, but you have double digit life and the opponent will have to use three cards just to get one burn spell through. This can often be a good spot to sweep the board because most opponents just won't trade four cards for three damage or whatever.

Usually, you're going to want to win with Decree of Justice. Mishra's Factory is a dubious win condition against cards like Seal of Fire; and you need your lands to operate your Circle anyway.

Wait until you can make a big enough Decree that it will be a real tax on your opponent's resources. Every 1/1 Soldier trades with a Mogg Fanatic and trumps a Jackal Pup, remember. Grim Lavamancer is weirdly annoying against Decree of Justice, but it really depends on how much of a mana imbalance you have.

In many games, will have a lot more mana than Burn. Burn might have only 11 mana producing lands, 2-3 of which are Barbarian Rings; so depending on how a game goes, LandStill might be able to make a Decree of Justice for four or more Soldiers while keeping enough mana open to plausibly defend itself against a decent number of cards in hand. Azorius can have 22 mana-producing lands in play, so it is not inconceivable to make double-digit Soldiers while leaving up a mana for every card in the Burn deck's hand.

The big issues here are mostly around how many copies of Decree of Justice are available. Some versions of LandStill only play two copies; and might not have all their copies in against Mono-Red in a sideboarded game anyway. Sometimes you need to cycle early to hit land drops or just survive.

But remember: You need a way to win!

In some cases the opponent can use all their burn cards to kill your Soldiers. This might seem super duper card advantageous to you... But you might not be able to close out the game before decking. You need a way to win!

The weirder way to win is to deck the opponent with Standstill.

You have to be mindful of how many cards each player has; then play deliberately to cast Standstill and break Standstill (often with another Standstill), and so on. Just know that the opponent can respond with instants, so this isn't a super reliable way to do it. But it's in the range! And again, you do need a way to win.

That way is PROBABLY going to be a decent-sized Decree when you have a surplus of resources; but impatience has gotten as many players on both sides of the table in this matchup as 1/1 Soldiers ever have.

LOVE

MIKE