If you don't know the name Dan Paskins... Wow, you're really missing out in that case. And I'm sorry. Dan - Dan as a deck designer, anyway; I've only met him once in person - is a heck of a Magician. A man to walk the planes with, as it were. A heck of a deck designer: the Red Deck designer. Dan first appeared on the international stage with a second-place finish at the 1999 UK National Championship, topping up on Viashino Cutthroat. He was the co-creator of the original Red Deck Wins sub-archetype! Paskins lost only to - you guessed it - teammate Mark Wraith in that original Red Deck Wins mirror.

Dan became kind of Magic's Red Deck folk hero. His content was good, and almost painfully insightful. But it was also kind of extreme and sometimes silly. Dan made up the game "All Elves Must Die!" and fundamentally contrarian; kind of famously crushed his 2004 National Qualifier with this deck, "Sitting Dead" Red:

Sitting Dead Red | 2004 Standard | Dan Paskins

• Creatures (28)
• 1 Sparksmith
• 3 Clickslither
• 4 Goblin Piledriver
• 4 Goblin Sharpshooter
• 4 Goblin Sledder
• 4 Goblin Warchief
• 4 Siege Gang Commander
• 4 Skirk Prospector

• Instants (4)
• 4 Shrapnel Blast

• Artifacts (8)
• 4 Skullclamp
• 4 Chrome Mox

• Lands (20)
• 12 Mountain
• 4 Great Furnace
• 4 Blinkmoth Nexus

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Shatter
• 3 Sparksmith
• 2 Electrostatic Bolt
• 2 Furnace Dragon
• 4 Molten Rain

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Sitting Dead Red, and the next deck we'll talk about from the same season, exemplify the deck design concept of killing your darlings. Dan took a claymore-like swipe at the 2004 Standard metagame, deciding he only really cared about defeating two decks: Ravager Affinity and Goblin Bidding. Everything else, he and his brain trust decided, was bad. So why bother trying?

In so doing he killed the darling of the then-Goblins namesake card: He removed Patriarch's Bidding.

Without getting bogged down into too many details, you can just believe me that Patriarch's Bidding was a powerful card in the Goblins deck. With Skirk Prospector you could put most of all of your Goblins into the graveyard while netting Red mana; then bring them all back with the Bidding. Over the course of your many sacrifices you could get lots and lots of triggers from Goblin Sharpshooter or put many two-damage holes in the opponent with Siege-Gang Commander activations via all that extra mana. Patriarch's Bidding took a linear creature deck and transformed it into a kind of burning combo engine.

But removing Patriarch's Bidding created three heads up advantages:

1. First, Patriarch's Bidding is symmetrical, meaning it affects both players equally and simultaneously. The opponent would be the only one casting it (or ever in a position to cast it) but Dan also played four copies of all the key material - Skirk Prospector, Goblin Sharpshooter, and Siege-Gang Commander - so he could shenanigans right back at the opponent without having to tap five mana or use a slot in his deck, or...
2. Gunk up his mana! Instead of playing Black-producing lands, Paskins got to play a ton of basic Mountains... And Blinkmoth Nexus and Great Furnace. Not only were his regular mana taps far less painful (Bidding players had to resort to City of Brass given the Standard mana bases at the time), the artifact lands actually gave his deck a new dimension:
3. Reach! Those artifact (or sometimes-artifact) lands sitting [dead?] alongside the broken Skullclamp gave Paskins enough overlap to "splash" Shrapnel Blast. Shrapnel Blast before this point had only really been played in Affiinity decks. Who else had enough fuel? But that overlap catalyzed more and more compacted design innovations. Chrome Mox to get faster (and add Shrapnel Blast fuel). Clickslither to trample over... Everything. Few players had room for Clickslither because they were using the high part of their mana curves for Patriarch's Bidding. A universe where Electrostatic Bolt was the default creature removal spell (as it killed all of Goblin Piledriver, Goblin Warchief, and opposite number Arcbound Ravager) was pointless against the generally too huge / often-trampling Insect.

So, Dan produced a second amazing Red Deck by killing the darling of Patriarch's Bidding.

But maybe this deck went further?

GO ANAN DECK | Tsuyoshi Fujita

• Creatures (29)
• 3 Clickslither
• 3 Goblin Goon
• 3 Skirk Prospector
• 4 Goblin Sharpshooter
• 4 Goblin Sledder
• 4 Goblin Warchief
• 4 Siege-Gang Commander
• 4 Sparksmith

• Instants (8)
• 4 Electrostatic Bolt
• 4 Oxidize

• Lands (23)
• 4 Forest
• 12 Mountain
• 3 City of Brass
• 4 Wooded Foothills

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Naturalize
• 4 Skullclamp
• 4 Starstorm
• 3 Viridian Shaman

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I'm a big fan of Dan Paskins, especially as the progenitor of Red Deck Wins. But our modern conception of Red Deck Wins starting at Pro Tour Columbus comes from Fujita. Fujita invented fetch lands into shock lands... He was kind of the original Boros beatdown mage.

Locally to our narrative, this great deck designer and Hall of Famer was actually the inventor of Goblin Bidding; having won Grand Prix Bangkok with it in 2003!

So, when he, personally, eschewed Patriarch's Bidding and played the above Red-Green Goblins deck at Japan Nationals in 2004... Tsuyoshi's departure with GO ANAN DECK hit even more home than Dan's.

Tsuyoshi's darlings were on the ground, a bloody pile of 2-drops. Dan went far by identifying he only wanted to fight two decks strategically; Fujita went even further. Well, if we're only going to think about two fights - both of them putting powerful creatures on the battlefield - how often does a Goblin Piledriver ever get through? FUJITA CUT GOBLIN PILEDRIVER! Until you start to wrap your head around how good his "why" was; that might smell like cutting Wild Mongel or Arcbound Ravager from their respective twos.

Piledriver just never got through. It was only 1/2 naturally, so it wasn't any good on defense. Anyway, it was meat to Electrostatic Bolt. If Clickslither was too big to 'Bolt... Goblin Goon REALLY was.

He used that space to add Oxidize to his main deck. Oxidize wasn't only good agaisnt Affinity. People like Dan were already moving toward Chrome Mox and Blinkmoth Nexus in their Goblins lists. It was almost like Tsuyoshi was angling toward his own game of "Ha Had, Dead Elf" by destroying the mana supplements of an opposing Goblins deck.

At that point he killed the most heartbreaking of all darlings: Skullclamp itself. I mean, it makes sense. People - people like Tsuyoshi - were at the point that they were adding Oxidize to the main deck of linear aggro decks. Skullclamp was going to be as dead as a first-turn Llanowar Elves.

Amazing.

There are multiple philosophies and schools of thought that can be summed up as (or at least ultimately agree to the concept that) all meaning is a result of difference. "Pat" and "bat" interchange a single letter but represent, respectively, my Hall of Famer podcast partner versus what a billionaire in Gotham City dresses up as to scare criminals at night.

It's difference itself that creates meaning in deck-building; and specifically the difference of darlings-killing that moves good decks to great.

I think my broad concept, personally, of Dominaria United Standard probably came from that one interview; maybe that one sentence in that one interview. Roman had won his second RCQ before I had even cashed in a single Liliana of the Veil wildcard.

So, I thought of Grixis and Esper as kind of one deck, broadly. But not only is that an intellectual disservice to myself... It's just not accurate.

Roman is right in that they're good decks primarily because they have access to a greater breadth of good cards. All the Black decks have access to a base of absolute table-snappers. Invoke Despair is more-or-less the best thing you can resolve. Sheoldred, the Apocalypse is the best creature. But on top of those? It's kind of obvious that if you add additional colors [to Black] you get access to even more good cards. And when those also-technically-Black cards are Raffine, Scheming Seer or Bloodtithe Harvester... They can be substantial upgrades.

So, what does this have to do with darlings-killing in 2022?

First of all, Grixis and Esper are very different decks. Esper can slam powerful cards... But it often operates as a beatdown deck. Raffine enables fast and high leverage hammer-blows; and even its top end cards like The Wandering Emperor end up screwing up combat for the opponent. Despite controlling elements, Esper closes aggressively; and it uses its Blue cards (including Obscura Interceptor sometimes) to sap the opponent's mana or muddy their interplay. At the end of the day, the deck fights - not unlike my very good (but not quite-Nathan-great) Mono-Black Beatdown deck - and is subject to the same kind of combat tactics and strategic setups. The fights between Tenacious Underdog and Graveyard Trespasser // Graveyard Glutton are a good example.

Nathan's deck is a darlings-killing grinding control nightmare that would make Stephen King proud.

I mean I cut Duress. Cute; very good contextually; but not defining like Nathan's actual World Championships-winning build.

The deck cut Tenacious Underdog. It cut - maybe more importantly - Graveyard Trespasser. Just think for a moment about the "kill the Underdog / follow up with Trespasser" line... But substitute Corpse Appraiser. I mean I like gaining one life more than most; but I'm not going to confuse that with drawing a card. With selection. The difference shifting from White to Red is stunning. That... That is almost too simplistic a conclusion. In Grixis, you remove a good card - a very, very good card in Graveyard Trespasser - to enable something truly great along the same play pattern line.

Ironically Grixis plays the same kind of "take out the Skullclamp" game against a sea of expected Oxidizes... By adding artifacts. Most other black decks - Esper and for sure Mono-Black - utilize Tenacious Underdog. I maintain the Underdog is a poorly named card because its win rate has always seemed preternatural to me. But if everyone is on Underdog (like "everyone" was on Skullclamp) and everyone has an anti-Underdog plan (Graveyard Trespasser, or in the Grixis case Corpse Appraiser) then cutting that card also cuts off a line for expected value for everyone else. And weirdly (alongside Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki) you often get this cool pile of Blood tokens by the end of the game. They can be useful not only in the traditional sense of getting big enough to gun down an opposing Dragon, Angel, or Titan... But the Blood Tokens can prove a frustrating source of Sheoldred synergy at the point that you have a little breathing room... And a bunch of open land.

Again, difference. This is a capability that Mono-Black just doesn't have. Despite being a fellow three-color deck, it's a backbreaking capability that Esper doesn't, either.

I don't know if I'm communicating this very well, at least if you haven't spent a lot of time trying to build your own decks. But for me, like when I posted that - again very good - Mono-Black deck, the first thing that I did was lay out all the cards I wanted to play. My burn "theme" was going to start with Okiba Reckoner Raid on one and end on four copies of Invoke Despair at the top. But in the middle it never at any point occurred to me not to play four copies each of Tenacious Underdog and four copies of Graveyard Trespasser. Locking in so many slots before the first test draw is inherently limiting, even when the darlings are so good (or at least so egocentrically darling).

Exceeding those limits? Conceptually? That's the stuff of the World Champion.

LOVE

MIKE