Doom blade and Cancel. What do these spells have in common? If you said "They're Instants." You'd be correct. You'd also be fortuitously naïve about how I set analogies up.

Naïve? I can hear the groans of anger (and key clacks of angry electronic letters) already but bear with me as I have a very clear point today: what you know about 'proactive' and 'reactive' as Magic concepts may well be incomplete or, worse, being incorrectly applied.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here so let me back up a bit: the idea of cards and strategies, including entire deck concepts, being proactive and/or reactive is not a new concept to Magic. The oldest source I could find, which isn't to say that there isn't an even older source out there, is from an article written in December 1995, almost 15 years ago. Here is an exact quote from the article:

[easybox]My basic philosophy in most of my decks is not only that the best defense is a good offense, but that multiple threats should be employed to force your opponent to play your game.That is the key, I believe to winning tournament magic. There are generally two types of decks, reactive, and proactive. If I'm playing a reactive deck, I will basically adopt a more defensive strategy, reacting to what my opponent does, and trying to prevent it or minimize its impact. The best example of a reactive deck is the Weissman deck, which stops offensive decks until it can lock the game. A proactive deck is generally offensive. It forces an opponent to react to your threats, to become reactive. If you're playing a proactive deck and force another offensive deck to respond to your threats (double bolt a juzam [djinn], toss [cards] to get under vise, etc...) then you're halfway to your goal, you've disrupted your opponents game plan.[/easybox]

Warren was, apparently at the time, a very sharp player hailing from MIT who was being quoted by the article's author. If you know of or remember Warren please do us a service and fill us in on the details – I couldn't find anything about this player.

Looking elsewhere we can see similarly structured way of defining proactive and reactive. During Sorcery Week (Slow and Steady) Mark Rosewater dropped more specific (in regards to sorceries, obviously) definitions:

[easybox]To understand the strength of sorceries, you have to understand the world of all instants. So let's imagine that world. The strength of instants lies in their flexibility. Because they could be used at essentially any time, you hold on to them until that need arises. For reactive spells, you wait until the thing you need to react to happens. For proactive spells, you tend to play them at the end of your opponent's turn. This is the most efficient time because it lessens your vulnerability of being tapped out.[/easybox]

I could continue to find more definitions, reiterating the same concepts but I believe we can summarize the definitions as follows:

Proactive: threats and implied threats that force your opponent to make decisions in response (generally, reactively) to your position; to push forward and actively attempt to work at winning the game via directed measures (i.e. combat with creatures and damage effects, milling, resource denial and destruction) as the primary modus operandus

Reactive: utilizing spells and effects to neutralize or mitigate an opponent's proactive measures (generally, threats); to respond directly to, and employ effects that require response to, the opponent's actions

(Almost) Everything You Know is Wrong (Maybe)

Of course if my article ended here many of you would happily clamor over the fact that I said absolutely nothing new, unique, or interesting (summarizing primary research rarely is any of those). So let me move forward a bit more and drop a tantalizing tagline: the context that these terms are defined within isn't broad enough to encompass all of Magic.

The context these definitions exist under is dueling, particularly when the environment is a well-defined metagame. In other words when virtually every data point (down to individual card counts in decks) is a known it becomes reasonably clear to classify everything into Reactive/Proactive buckets (as Mike Flores is known to do). This is why these terms have been passed through Magic vernacular for years: most writing and discussion (on the Internet at least) occurs around engaged tournament and competitive play. I'm not suggesting that this context is wrong, merely that it's not the complete picture of Magic (though it certainly feels that way on some forums).

In a duel, Cancel is a reactive spell for the same reason Counterspell is the defining reactive spell: you are reacting to whatever your opponent is playing. You cannot play Cancel without having a spell already cast to target and if you're running Cancel in your deck (sideboard or main 60) you've brought it onboard as an answer.

True counterspells (i.e. Cancel and Counterspell) are general answers – they stop just about anything. Some answers are more specific, like Doom Blade for creatures, Naturalize for artifacts and enchantments, Path to Exile for indestructible creatures, or Oblivion Ring for Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. Answers (a discussion for another day) aren't exclusively reactive but the removal spells we often consider generally are.

Counterspells, as the flagship of the reactive camp, can be use in different ways. Consider when two control decks face off – what happens? Like a game of chess it becomes of battle of specific and planned proactive measures designed to trick out and defeat the reactive measures built into each deck. When would one deck try to resolve a threat? When it believes its reactive measures can be used to protect its proactive stance. Switching from defense to offense is a measured and calculated move.

The legendary "counter wars" that have begun over one deck trying to push a threat out are memorable moments in Magic: the minds of two sharp mages engaging in a high-level exchange. Each player engaging in the war is making calculations each step, looking to see if they have hit the loss point. The player who has switched to being proactive is no longer merely reacting to the opponent but proactively pushing with reactive spells. The intent is not "I'll stop what my opponent plans to do." but becomes more "My opponent won't stop what I'm trying to do." That mentality is the proactive mentality driving Sligh-style aggro decks.

The bridge over the reactive/proactive bridge isn't far, or unique to a case-by-case basis. To reference Mark Rosewater again, this time previewing the Ravnica guilds (specifically, Orzhov):

[easybox]Both mono-white and mono-black have control decks that grind everything to a halt. The first is more reactive and the second more proactive. Is there a way to combine those two strategies? Can a control deck be both reactive and proactive? Why yes, it can. It's known as a bleeder deck. The idea behind a bleeder deck is the deck brings the game to a halt and then slowly picks away at the opponent. The name comes from the fact that the deck doesn't win quickly but does so by slowly bleeding the opponent to death.[/easybox]

The classical resource denial decks, employing the likes of Balance and Sinkhole, have made an everlasting impact on the game. The same reason we no longer see two-mana land destruction spells is the same reason we no longer see double blue as the baseline counterspell – it forces decks to be built under much more strict guidelines to become competitively successful. A tool like Balance is best used reactively to punish an opponent who overextended. Sinkhole is proactive resource attack. Together they form a dynamic range of potential interaction – reactive and proactive.

But Sinkhole isn't just proactive resource denial – it can be used as removal for lands. Doom Blade, and virtually all removal spells, are often considered reactive: you hold them until you need to make the decision to play them, whether it's to prevent an effect from occurring (nuking a Noble Hierarch or Dark Confidant) or to stymie an offense (tagging a Tarmogoyf or Baneslayer Angel).

However it's not the whole story – removal can be used proactively as well. Consider venerable inheritors of the original Sligh plan: Red Beck Wins, Suicide Black, and the like all use removal to allow their little angry men to continue to apply pressure. Extending the concept further, consider the removal heavy versions of Jund: by cascading into removal they get free shots at taking out blockers or, in Lightning Bolt's case, applying further pressure to the opponent's life total. Removal can be used and held in the reactive sense but the adapted inclusion skews the dynamic decided proactive.

"But you can't play removal without an opponent's creature!" Indeed, this is true. But RDW and Jund function on the offense. They're just playing the goldfish if the opponent isn't dropping speed bumps. Just because a deck can be piloted in a controlling manner doesn't mean it's a pure control deck or should even be piloted that way. "Who's the Beatdown?" by Mike Flores ripped this perspective open years ago.

While the contextual relationship of reactive and proactive can vary in duels it's often fairly consistent – consistent decks in a consistent metagame are the usual go-to players seek out. But that's only part of the player population. The other chunk play a very different and varied assortment of Magic. What does a Counterspell do in an Elder Dragon Highlander deck? How does Doom Blade look in a free-for-all multilayer game? What does it mean to be reactive when you're no longer the only one reacting?

It means the rules, and perspectives, have changed. The context of a "control deck" is quite different in EDH – with minimal redundancy of the important pieces and a reliance on tutors to provide exacting consistency, control takes more of a lockdown and resource denial approach than anything resembling Counters+One_Win_Con.dec. Counterspells move from being a reactive approach to stopping an opponent's plan to more of a proactive tool to keep an opponent under the heel and off their balance.

Board position means significantly more in a multiplayer game as it influences both your posture and literal resources in comparison to an almost always greater total posed by your opponents, but also implies what your deck is up to and how your opponents perceive your position to be. Politicking and discussion aften go hand-in-hand with perceived board positions, and Anthony Alongi dug into dissecting these boards via animalistic classifications. Rattlesnake or gorilla, spider or cockroach, each cards has a different classification that makes more relevant sense in the chaotic world of waiting through multiple opponents turns.

So what type of cards are Counterspell and Doom Blade? These are best grouped together as spider cards since they lack the reusable durability of a cockroach, and certainly aren't the dominating presence of a gorilla. There's an argument for rattlesnake but unless Isochron Scepter and untapping effects are involved it's a little lean. The fact is that in multiplayer games you much pick and choose where your single target answers are applied. Setting the trap for an opponent to lose significant position or be denied a desired resource by a well placed counter or removal spell is the very definition of being spidery.

As Anthony elaborated, these spider cards become much more powerful as the number of players is reduced to, ultimately, just two players now dueling. By that point, a reactive control strategy becomes truly viable – leading up to that point requires significant proactive efforts. The duality in purpose, reactive and proactive, becomes much clearer when a card gets to move across the entire spectrum from one to the other.

The Sky is Falling

So where are we now? Are spells proactive or reactive, some of each, or something altogether different? Let's take a quick look at some dictionary definitions:

Proactive: taking action and making changes before they need to be made, rather than waiting until problems develop

Reactive: tending to react to events and situations rather than initiating or instigating them

When you encounter Magic terminology for the first time it's often easy to understand only once the context of the given term is explained. "Blowout" can be a completely one-sided game… or a burst vehicle tire. "Sick beats" can be a description of how the blowout happened… or a description of the positive nature of specific musical rhythms. "Mana screw" can be the lack of specific colors, or any at all of mana, or… nothing else. That one's pretty exclusive to Magic.

My real point here is that proactive and reactive carry significant meaning outside the game that, oddly enough, depends upon the context it's used in to infer the intended meaning. Having "one true" definition is extremely useful for a variety of purposes but it's impossible to compete with the nature of language itself.

I once said that Counterspell is proactive and Doom Blade is reactive. I didn't provide the context of multiplayer specifically but it was implied via the context of taking about EDH. I caught several responses that can best be summed up as "This guy has no idea what he's talking about." Despite others pointing out the obvious that countering a spell in multiplayer is by literal definition proactive ("taking action… rather than waiting until problems develop") compared to waiting until attacks are declared before unleashing removal is literally reactive ("react to events… rather than initiating") the argument was the same: Counterspell is reactive, period, end of story.

And that's part of what makes Magic so interesting for me: we're both right. Counterspell can only be used as a response to another spell. It can't exist in a vacuum alone and certainly doesn't mitigate a bad board position, as the thousands of control players who took the bad end of a fast beatdown can attest. But the mechanical function of being used in response does not dictate the application or effect. Is countering an opposing player's Uril, the Miststalker the same as countering an opponent's turn four, tap out three lands Kodama's Reach? Are these proactive or reactive purposes?

Is it proactive because you're denying the opponent access to more mana? Or is it reactive because of the Steppe Lynx sitting ready and untapped? Does the presence of a landfall critter change the context of the situation? Is stopping Uril purely disruptive to an opponent's plan? Or is it to prevent a stable, protected blocker from coming online? I believe the answers aren't so clear as I'm a secret fan of mana denial as it generally work so much better in the long run as I don't have to find an answer for multiple threats – I like to simply stop the ability for threats to exist at all (and yes, I'd play Stax or Pox if I played Legacy).

So continue to use proactive and reactive to be defined by "dropping and posturing threats" and "reacting to your opponent" respectively, just mind the context and gamestate you happen to be looking at so you're conveying what you really mean… which can be completely opposite of what you're actually saying.