I was going to finish my series on revisiting classical theory articles this week, but Paris happened, and the results made me very angry at myself. So I did some self-examination and decided to write this article, as much for me as for other deck-builders out there. Paris made me angry because I missed Stoneforge Mystic in Caw-Go, a development I should have seen.

Two classic problems of mine in card evaluation reared their ugly heads again, and I'm sure they're ones that other people have as well. The reason why people like Conley Woods are such good deck-builders is because their card evaluation is so good. So what happened? Pigeonholing and play styles happened.

Pigeonholing is a form of shortcutting all Magic players use. We, as players, classify spells all over the place in order to make our lives easier. This is particularly evident in limited, where we apply labels like "removal" or "bomb" to help us evaluate cards on the fly. Deck-building necessitates a similar system, since the individual synergies within a deck can easily change the power level of cards. Take Soul Sisters, for example, which utilizes two cards that are normally a bit underpowered—Soul Warden and Soul's Attendant—to great effect.

However, there is a danger in using this sort of classification (which is basically pigeonholing). It comes from the fact that cards don't exist in a vacuum, and thus their valuation changes as environments shift, both in terms of new metagames and new cards. Dark Depths and Sovereigns of Lost Alara are excellent examples of this principle in action, but it recently happened to Stoneforge Mystic as well.

Most people, myself included, probably would have told you Stoneforge Mystic was not a great control card before the release of Mirrodin Besieged. Even though there was a control deck that ran creatures that could be equipped effectively (Caw-Go), the actual equipment wasn't that great, so there wasn't a really good reason for Stoneforge Mystic to see play in control. Sword of Body and Mind was decent, but that was basically it. Because Stoneforge Mystic was printed in Worldwake, it's been "not a control card" for a while now, and thus, complacency with reevaluation can set in, which is what happened to me.

Stoneforge Mystic is a good example of a card that gets stronger every time a new set is released. It gets new tools to fetch, and thus must be reevaluated constantly. Other examples of this type of card include Ranger of Eos, Green Sun's Zenith, Survival of the Fittest/Fauna Shaman, and Enlightened Tutor. These are by no means the only examples, but it is part of due diligence as a deck-builder to keep these types of cards in mind when you look for new decks and interactions. Powerful cards like this require constant vigilance, as their applications can change at a moment's notice.

The other thing that happened is that my natural play style came into play. Because I've been playing less Standard and more Legacy and Cube recently, I defaulted to what I know and my own natural habits, something that I'm sure has happened to every Magic player at some point in time. This led to my missing one application of the other critical piece of the puzzle: Sword of Feast and Famine.

Sword of Feast and Famine is not the kind of card that is attractive to me. I recognize the utility of a card like this in a number of situations, but it isn't the type of card that screams to be played (at least in my head). This is because my natural play style doesn't suit Sword of Feast and Famine. I like two kinds of decks: decks that are powerful, fast, and consistent, and decks that are able to reduce the opponent's ability to interact with me profitably to zero. Thus, my natural play style suits fast combo; good, fast aggro decks; and heavy control or prison. Sword of Feast and Famine really doesn't go in any of these decks.

What it does do is provide a Blue deck the ability to cast threats, then defend them with counter magic, which is a tried-and-true strategy. Squadron Hawk is an excellent delivery vehicle for the Sword, and Stoneforge Mystic carries equipment too. That means eight cheap creatures that are very capable of supporting threats like Gideon Jura or Baneslayer Angel, not to mention things like Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Sword of Feast and Famine acts as a tempo-enabler in this respect.

It really is a fairly obvious application, but I missed it because my natural tendencies had colored my perceptions of cards and the format as a whole, largely because of my inactivity playing Standard (Legacy has been much more interesting to me recently).

This tension is at the core of deck-building and a battle anybody, myself included, has to get better at winning to improve as a deck-builder. Decks are entities in and of themselves, and need to be looked at that way. Coloring your card selection with your own personal ideas of strengths and weaknesses of cards will, many times, lead to worse decks. Success as a deck-builder comes to those who are capable of combining seventy-five cards that work together as a well-oiled machine. This requires the ability to consider and weigh all options, unfettered by natural inclinations, which tend to be problematic. I have encountered this problem many times in my time playing Magic, and it has come up many times in deck-building; I'm sure it will come up again.

Fighting your own natural preconceptions is a struggle, but it's one that every player has to undergo. The two most popular preexisting inclinations—play styles and pigeonholes—come up the most often. So how do you combat these preconceptions?

I give you Sun Tzu:

It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.

In order to better your ability as a deck-builder, you have to learn to overcome your preconceptions. In order to do that, you have to know your own preconceptions; or, in the words of Sun Tzu, you must "know your enemy." Here, we are in a weird position where our enemy is ourselves, and thus knowing our enemy means knowing ourselves.

If you learn how you play the game, you can catch yourself if you begin to fall into your established patterns, hopefully before it costs you a lot. This form of self-correction is one of the strengths of the best players. They're able to look objectively at the situation and come up with the most optimal action or card to fill the hole. This is important, because if you don't look at things objectively, you'll miss things.

As a counterpoint, I feel like one of the times when I "got it right" was States a couple years ago after Lorwyn rotated. Everyone knew Jund was going to be top dog and was gunning for it. I knew that in order to beat Jund, you had to be able to cast Cruel Ultimatum and Esper Charm, as these two cards were absolutely critical to a control deck's ability to combat Jund. This necessitated a four-color mana base, which was obviously difficult to come by with only Shards lands, M10 lands, and fetch lands. The mana base was slightly unstable, but it worked well enough.

Now, this goes contrary to my own personal ideology. One of my biggest pet peeves in Magic is mana bases. I have a tendency to not only play extra lands (often as a sixty-first card), but also to tweak existing mana bases so that they are more resilient to disruption. This is particularly evident in Legacy, where many of my deck lists will bend over backward to make Wasteland recursion not a problem. Just as an example, at one point, I was playing a four-color Survival Rock build that had ten basics in it, which is absurd by Legacy standards for a four-color list.

So why did I choose to play a deck that had a suspect mana base? I did so because I believed it was the right call. Its matchups were reasonable across the board (except for Spread 'Em, of course), and I felt like it gave me the best chance to perform well at the event. My faith was rewarded, and I went 5-2, losing one round to Spread 'Em and one round to my own mana base (not unexpected). Knowing when to set aside your own personal ideas about Magic is critical to performing well.

No one is perfect. Neither you, nor me, nor LSV, nor Brad Nelson is able to completely remove themselves from the game. The human element is intertwined into Magic, and it is one of the reasons the game is so interesting. However, the best players understand that the game has its own mechanisms, and coloring your evaluation of those mechanisms with your own personal inclinations and preconceptions often leads to suboptimal Magic in one way or another.

Learning to control your own inclinations and preconceptions is a constant struggle that all Magic players face. In order to succeed at tournament Magic, you will have to venture outside your comfort zone, and knowing when you should do this is crucial. The first step in that is to identify and acknowledge what your comfort zone is; after that, it's just keeping an eye out and trying to identify the right time to step outside it.

Chingsung Chang

Conelead most everywhere and on MTGO

Khan32k5 at gmail dot com