99 Problems: Moneyball

Posted on August 21, 2018

(Thinking to myself) This is your first article on the site in six years, you need to make a good first re-impression. You gotta be hip with the kids and speak their language. So just do that, and they'll love you.

Hello there... General Kenobi.

(Thinking to myself) No, stop it. Try again.

Hello th... Hello.

I wrote this whole big piece about reintroducing myself and about my history with Commander. Then I came to the realization:

You don't care.

It would be more cheeky than useful and no one likes those things anyway. I'm not looking to be Matthew Berry. I went into this whole philosophy about how Commander decks were extensions of ourselves. I still believe in it. But if you were going to play Commander against someone for the first time, you wouldn't want their life story before you started playing, right?

My name is Robby Rothe Jr., though you might know me as MTG Color Pie. I used to (but still kinda) update a blog called "I've Got 99 Problems but a General Ain't One" about EDH, which is now called Commander. I used to write for this site six years ago and it's great to be back writing for Gathering Magic.

Wait.

It's called what now?

(Cut to credit sequence. Music - Make Your Own Kind of Music by Mama Cass)

Moneyball was a 2011 movie directed by Bennett Miller (Capote, Foxcatcher) and written by Steven Zaillian (Schindler's List, Gangs of New York) and Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, A Few Good Men, The West Wing). It stars Brad Pitt as Oakland Athletics' General Manager Billy Beane and highlights his search to compete against the other baseball teams in the league with one of the smallest budgets. To do this, he enlists Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) as they enact a philosophy known as Moneyball. The movie also stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright, and Chris Pratt. The movie was based on the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game and based on a true story.

This is one of the best baseball movies ever, and this is coming from a fan of the Seattle Mariners, a rival of the team this story is based upon. The philosophy that Moneyball revolves around is: Can you win without following the same path as everyone else?

BILLY BEANE

If we try to play like the Yankees in here [pointing to the scouting group], we will lose to the Yankees out there (pointing to the field).

GRADY FUSON (Head Scout)

Boy, that sounds like fortune cookie wisdom to me, Billy.

BILLY BEANE

No, that's just logic.

Everybody wants to win, and for the most part everyone does it the same way in Commander: Damage, Milling, Poison, Alt win condition. Applying the Moneyball philosophy to Commander is not about trying to find a new way to win, instead focusing on how to win.

PETER GRANT

Your goal shouldn't be to buy players, your goal should be to buy wins. And in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs.

The basic philosophy breaks down like this: everyone is focused on one way of thinking and they have been for years. What if you find market inequality where everyone under values a talent or aspect and you exploit it? In Baseball, the goal is to score more runs than the other player. You can either score more than them or prevent them from scoring runs. We see this philosophy in Magic as well in the classic aggro vs. control dynamic.

Baseball scouts and office personal were focused on batting average (hits a player had divided by the number of times they came up to bat) and home runs. It was how everyone did it and it worked, so why change it?

Here's what everyone was undervaluing: the ability to get on base. It didn't matter how someone got on base. Whether it was through a hit or a walk, you're going to score more runs if you have people who are put in positions to score. You have to get on base to score, so the thinking was to try and find players who got on base.

PETER GRANT

Using the stats the way we read them, we'll find value in players that no one else can see. People are overlooked for a variety of biased reasons and perceived flaws. Age, appearance, personality. Bill James and mathematics cut straight through that.

Three things to note:

Even though it seemed they were the underdog team that never won, they also had three of the best pitchers in the game at that time. So this strategy can and should be supplemental.

The other half of the Moneyball philosophy is to prevent runs from scoring, but for this example we'll just use scoring runs.

They're dealing with a closed group of individual people; the Magic analog of this would be Cube drafting. For Commander, multiple people can have the same cards in different decks (think of everyone's favorite, Sol Ring).

So how does that apply to the Commander format? Simple: Find the established gameplay patterns and do something different.

We'll take one of my favorite Commanders, Brion Stoutarm, and see what we can do.

Brion Stoutarm is known for his Fling ability. If you look at edhrec.com at the Signature Cards for Brion, a pattern emerges:

Captivating Crew

Serra Avatar

Zealous Conscripts

Malignus

Adarkar Valkyrie

Grab the Reins

Hamletback Goliath

Mimic Vat

Conquering Manticore

Feldon of the Third Path

Gift of Immortality

Archon of Justice

Molten Primordial

Act of Treason

So 42% of the top cards that see play in Brion are about stealing your opponents creatures to Fling them back in their face. And I get that. There's nothing more satisfying than taking your opponent's big creature and killing it while also dealing damage to the owner and gaining life.

Wait, gaining life?

This is your Moneyball moment. Brion's other ability is lifelink, so while he's throwing your opponent's creatures back in their face, you're also gaining life. That's something I feel most players don't pay attention to and is thus "weakness" you can exploit. Looking back at the EDHRec page, there are very few cards people use that care about gaining life:

Cradle of Vitality

Angelic Accord

Well of Lost Dreams

Aetherflux Reservoir

Phyrexian Processor

Evra, Halcyon Witness

Some of these fit with the theme and some are just there (I like Phyrexian Processor in my Trostani, Selesnya's Voice deck because of the Populate and the fact that I can gain that life back easier and abuse it with other token generating effects, but I can see why it's here). Angelic Accord gives Brion more Angels to toss since he gains four life after tossing said Angels. Well of Lost Dreams allows you to draw cards sorely needed in . But I want to point out a little friend of mine that's so underrated in this deck:

This is one of the best political cards in the deck if you play it right. If you want to run Brion with the ability to steal creatures for throwing, you shouldn't be putting +1/+1 counters on your own creatures, but on your opponents. It can be done at any time and it counts for each life you gain. Someone going in for an attack on an opponent? Reward them with more +1/+1 counters, then steal their creature and fling it at another player's face to gain more life and distribute more +1/+1 counters.

You can gain life through other means besides Brion's ability. Perhaps Beacon of Immortality? Double your life total (which counts as gaining life), put the +1/+1 counters on a creature, steal it, and fling to double your life total again. Plus, with the right cards (Grab the Reins), you can do it all at instant speed.

My build of Brion doesn't steal other creatures (Captivating Crew is just so good to pass up). I bring them back from the dead. Adarkar Valkyrie and Feldon of the Third Path are the go-tos for reanimation, but cards like Peace of Mind that put creatures into the graveyard are useful as well. Not to mention the incidental lifegain. Searing Meditation triggers can ping down other players' life totals or pick off small creatures. This is especially potent if you have a Soul Warden or Suture Priest on the battlefield when someone makes their 1/1 tokens and you have the spare mana. Fun times.

If everyone is expecting you to steal their creatures, as most Brion decks do, you can go big on your own creatures and not worry about theirs. If I see a Brion that's not mine, I know that they will want to take my large creatures, so I won't cast them. You're able to keep large threats off the battlefield while still pursuing your plan. I usually worry more about facing the Elf decks or the smaller token decks. That's why I put threats in my deck, so I don't have to worry what how my opponents are playing.

Brion Stoutarm is hardly the only strategy in Commander with inequality you can take advantage of. There are cards and strategies within your deck you can take advantage of, and there are the strategies within your playgroup. If you can spot the weaknesses in your playgroup, that's something you can build your deck to exploit. The biggest hole in peoples' strategies tends to be enchantments, though that may all change with the Commander 2018 Bant deck. Many decks don't run much enchantment hate, so you tend to keep enchantments around for much longer than creatures/artifacts. That's what makes enchantments so powerful.

Truth be told, you might already do this. In Magic, it's called metagaming.

Metagaming isn't bad and it should be something you're already doing. Looking at something most players are not paying attention to provides an opportunity for exploitation. Your deck shouldn't be static, only to be updated with the release of new cards. It should be something that's constantly evolving. My Rafiq deck has gone from a "deal damage to an opponent trigger" deck to a Voltron style deck over a period of a few years. I found out what players weren't focusing on and used that to my advantage.

Next time you sit down, make mental notes about how everyone in your playgroup is playing.

Is this an elaborate ruse to tell you to think differently and explore your options? Sure, you could say that. To some of you, this might be old hat, but this could be the first time for others. Look back at Moneyball's impact: It took baseball over 100 years to look differently at how players were evaluated.

All you have to do to apply the Moneyball method in Commander is be vigilant for underexplored avenues and exploit them. See what your playgroup's meta is ignoring, and do that; or, build your list in a way that people won't expect.

It's that simple.

JOHN HENRY (Owner of the Boston Red Sox)

I mean, anybody who's not tearing their team down right now and rebuilding it using your model, they're dinosaurs. They'll be sitting on their ass on the sofa in October, watching the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.

Two years after this movie took place, the Boston Red Sox ended the curse of the Bambino and won their first championship since 1918. Fun fact: the actor who played John Henry in the movie was the adult Smalls in The Sandlot, in which the character had a special connection to the Great Bambino. How can you not be romantic about baseball?

Join me next week when I talk about my 33 Commander decks and a project I've been working on for a good number of years now. And, since we're in the empty space between Commander 2018 and Guilds of Ravnica, I'll give some top five lists about C18.

Top Five New Commanders (That hold my interest, not just powerful):