T1 fundamentals

[Androstanolone]

With this thread I'm hoping to generate some discussion of general T1 fundamentals, particularly on what a T1 deck "has" to do to be "good".  I'd rather stay away from abstract theory or specific deck discussion, and instead focus on broad fundamentals.  I think that, by not analyzing specific cards but instead using thought, insight, common sense, and basic understanding many of us can uncover some things we "knew" but hadn't quite thought about.  

I'll start off, these are fairly self-evident, but I'm sure there are some more creative and inightful people who can refine these.  Basically, a top, competitive T1 deck has to either:

Quickly impact the board, by quick I mean in the first two turns.  It should, in some way, present a board situation which an opponent simply cannot ignore.  If it cannot do this consistently in the first two turns, then it must be able to do the next thing consistently.  

It must slow down, disrupt, or preferably completely prevent the opponent from implementing their strategy in the first two turns.  This is quite obvious in an array of card choices also.  

Third, all decks must possess the capacity to kill the opponent.  

A quick note about "impacting the board".  Combo, though it doesn't really create a threatening board position, nevertheless forces the opponent to focus on stopping the combo rather than winning.  This falls under the same grouping.  

I realize most people probably know this, but it's a good way to quickly evaluate a new deck before and during testing.  It's good to ask, how often can I stop my opponent from doing anything productive turn 1 and 2?  How often can I impact the board strongly enough to force my opponent to react to me and divert their attention away, in the first 2 turns?  Also, how often can I win before turn 3?  

If anyone else has any ideas on T1 deck fundamentals, feel free to post here.  If this is just a dead topic, I apologize, it's my first topic and I wanted to make something other than just another deck discussion.



- Androstan

[Tha Gunslinga]

The way I see it, in competitive Type 1, a deck must, at bare minimum, either win by turn 3, or have enough control elements (FoW, Duress, Wasteland, Mana Drain, Stifle, Root Maze, Mox Monkey, etc) to prevent the opponent's deck from winning that fast.  To be honest, it's almost turn 2, but that can be a little ridiculous.

[Ric_Flair]

I think this is an interesting topic, a little blurry and unfocused, but interesting.  I have been thinking about these issues too.  Here is what I have come to see as basic in the format:

Principle 1:  Exploiting Power

In order for your deck to be a top tier deck it must have Power.  There is no way to get around this.  Power is the key to making control deck incredible and allowing aggro and combo to explode.  

But having Power is not enough.  Some decks like Fish can use Power in obviously good ways, 3 cards is never a bad thing, but in order for your deck to play in the rarified air of the top tier decks it needs not just Power, but ways to exploit Power.  When explaining why some pitchers are better than others, Bill James, cited geometrically superior combinations of abilities.  Pedro Martinez has a good fastball, a good breaking pitch, and a good off speed pitch.  In fact he is probably in the top 10 in each of these pitches.  But what makes Martinez so much better than other pitchers is that all three of these skills are combined in one person and combined in a way that makes them exceptionally dangerous.  A great fastball is worth so much, as is a great off speed pitch, but put the two together and the combination is vastly superior than the sum of the parts.  A similar thing happens in decks with Power and the Power-exploiting cards.  Keeper's backbone is basically Power.  It uses, abuses, and reuses Power in a way that exponentially increases their impact on the game.  So if Principle 1a is Power is necessary, Principle 1b is Power must be fully exploited to make a deck optimally powerful.  Here are a list of cards that make Power that much better:

Every Deck:
Demonic Tutor
Yawgmoth's Will
Sol Ring
Mystical Tutor

Control:
Force of Will (allows Power to be cast without fear of counter)
Mana Drain (Syphon's mana into Power)

Prison/Workshop:
Goblin Welder
Mana Crypt
Fat Artifact Creatures
Trinisphere (cast it with Power to prevent opponent from using his)
Sphere of Resistance (see Trinisphere)
Chalice of the Void (see Trinisphere and add hosing bigger spells thanks to Moxen and Lotus)

Combo:
Mana Crypt
Tendrils of Agony
Mind's Desire
Chromatic Sphere
Draw 7s
Illusionary Mask

These cards are just a few of the Power exploiting cards in Magic.  The overly long list in the combo section indicates why this deck will be a perennial issue for Magic.  Power helps combo the most.

Principle 2: Hating Land

Two lands, Mishra's Workshop and Bazaar of Baghdad have become the pillars of the format like no other unrestricted card, including Mana Drain.  They both fuel incredibly explosive decks.  Using these cards once is really hard to combat, especially if the use is early in the game.  Multiple early uses of either land is almost certain victory.  As such every deck MUST have a way to deal with these lands.  This is one of the reasons Strip Mine was one of the most common cards in Vintage, based on Dr. Sylvan's count.  This also explains the popularity of Wastelands.  In short decks need a way to deal with the two uber lands as well as other non-basics.  The Strip lands are the most effective way to do this and thus they form the basis of principle 2.

Principle 3:  Fetches make all things possible

It has been said a hundred times before and probably will be said a hundred times again, but the fact is, fetchlands have revolutionized Vintage.  They have made ridiculous things possible, like STABLE mana bases in 4 color control decks, consistent splashes based exclusively on 3 appropriate dual lands, and perhaps most important to control decks, a good draw engine when combined with Brainstorm.  Fetches and the rise of multi-colored decks is what made possible the explosion in innovation last year.  Mono-color decks either better be brutal hate machines or they are not going to win.  Fetches have even made it possible to "splash" basic lands in 4 color decks as a way to protect against non-basic hate.  The rise in fetches has also led to the rise in "fetch-hate" like Ankh and the more powerful Stifle.  Fetches are so ubiquitous that Stifle is essential an LD spell.  

Principle 4:  The pace of innovation has increased

No longer can Vintage players leave for a year, come back, pick up the same deck and do well.  Two factors have increased the pace of innovation.  First, the competitive Vintage community thanks to TMD has become more active and vocal.  Steve's innovations this year alone were greater than the sum of innovations in previous years.  Discoveries like Virtual Madness, by Ill Dawg and Hyperion, and cards like Bazaar and Root Maze all indicate that the community is looking more carefully at old cards in an attempt to gain a competitive advantage.  Second, Wizards is designing cards for the format.  With the printing of fetches, Chalice, Scepter, and Trinisphere it is clear that Vintage is no longer neglected.  Knowing the power level of the format, Wizards HAS to make bombs in order for them to see play in Vintage.  As such we can probably expect at least 1 bomb per set from now on.  This alone makes year old decklists obsolete.  

Principle 5:  The Year of Aggro

It is WAY too early to tell, but the first month and a half of 2004 has been tremendously surprising.  In the metagame reports from numerous players, control was supposed to dominate, but Madness, Oshawa Stompy, GPR, and the rebirth of TnT have made those predictions seem silly.  Still there is a lot of time left and the third and usually most impactful set in what has already proven to be an amazing Vintage Block has yet to be released.  The rise in aggro is due to the exploitation of three resources:  old overlooked cards (Root Maze, Bazaar), broken mechanics (MADNESS), and the power of the uber lands.  The murder of Long also helped aggro decks reassert themselves.  Virtual Madness, based on the tournament numbers, is certainly a top flight deck.  In short, aggro cannot be discounted.  

Some of these principles are old lessons that are being strengthened by innovation, see Principle 1 and the rise of Storm Combo decks, while others are genuinely new to the format, see Principle 4.  Whatever the effects, innovation is the heart of Vintage now.  Everyone assumes Power as the basis for any deck, otherwise don't bother.  Given this foundation tournament standings have consistently proven that he or she that innovates WINS.  And this is a good thing for Magic and Vintage.

[DavidHernandez]

It must slow down, disrupt, or preferably completely prevent the opponent from implementing their strategy in the first two turns. This is quite obvious in an array of card choices also.

Third, all decks must possess the capacity to kill the opponent.

I am probably nit-picking here, since you may have meant what i am about to say.  If not, then i dont entirely agree with you on these points because Old School "The Deck" strategy used to ignore what the opponent's strategy was.  It was all about building your defense while the opponent exhausted their resources, and then, when the opponent was helpless, kill them with Serra Angel.

Newer decks have a similar disregard for the opponent, as in the case of Long.dec, where the idea is to combo off on turn one or two.  At that point it doesnt really matter what the opponent is playing.  You might consider this "slow down, disrupt, or prevent", which may be right, but i think that it's more involved than that.  Some decks simply don't care what the opponent is planning.

As for the capacity to "kill", that is a term that means different things to different people.  If you mean "reduce your opponent to zero life", then i disagree.  You could deck them.  That doesnt technically kill them--it makes them lose the game because they dont have the ability to obey a rule of the game.  I think using the term "win condition" might be more appropriate.  That is, every deck must have some kind of way to win, but not necessarily "kill".

Quote Ric_Flair:

Fetches make all things possible

This is a more critical point than many players realize.  Entire deck concepts can be created now with disruption (aimed at Fetch Lands) in mind:

5 Strip effects.
4 Stifle's.

or aimed at the Spells that will stop you from winning:

4 Duress.

Those 13 cards offer huge tempo advantage.  Every time you gain tempo, it's like getting a time walk (there was an article once that stated that 'everything was a time walk', and i think it's true to a great extent).  

For example, if you deny a player the use of a fetch land by playing Stifle, they lose one life, lose one land drop, lose a shuffle effect, and lose a card.  Hitting an opponent with a Duress, a Strip Effect, and Stifle in the first 3 or 4 turns can be game-ending.

Building a strategy that revolves around gaining tempo and denying your opponent resources may seem obvious, but is (imo) a cornerstone of winning in competitive Magic.

--Dave.

[np]

Put simply, a T1 deck must be either blazingly fast or able to compete against decks that are blazingly fast.

Budget-aggro is usually on the weaker side of blazingly fast, having nothing but mana curve, efficiency and, well, speed. They are very easily hated out (barring budget-Madness). They do have a lot in the being-able-to-compete category. Practically all of them (at least in a powered metagame) have a way to get rid of nonbasic lands and Mox's. This should be regarded as a control component, since it's used to slow the opponent down. From this perspective, no deck is purely aggro.

Long and old-school Academy would be the blazingly fast category. Winning turn 1 or 2 eighty or ninety percent does count as blazingly fast and it's fast enough to circumvent control-spells most of the time. Combo decks like that are easily hated, but can duck under the hate. Also, like aggro, they use control elements to bring the combo through. (Combo fills the slots that aggro would fill with pure damage and a minimum of utility with disruption, draw/search and combo pieces.)

Control tries to control the game. Often it's said that control decks are slow, compared to the other archetypes. That, of cours, is bullshit. Control takes its sweet time to win, sure, but it has to be able to control the game as soon as or preferably sooner than a good opponent can win it. That's pretty fast. The best way to duck under control's counter-shield is to not rely on single cards that can be eliminated easily and to generate card-advantage (be it virtual advantage).

As I hinted at before, no deck is purely aggro, combo, or control. A pure control deck would have no win condition. A pure aggro deck would be most easily killed by combo (imagine Sligh without Mox-hate against a full-powered Dragon or whatever). Pure combo would be very vulnerable to any kind of utility.
(Note that all those descriptions are only valid in an environment where balance is artificially maintained by following the b/r-lists.)
All this means that a good T1 deck mustn't follow the idealistic pictures of damage efficiency. Just consider Dragon without Xantids, FoW and Duress. Or see the exmple above (the one with Sligh without Mox Monkeys.)

All this means that not only are the three major deck superypes just descriptive words, but also that the metagame says a lot about whether your deck is good. (No, the other way round. Wait ... I just spilled all of my left-over Amaretto over my bed, my William Gibson book and my mobile phone. Cursed alcohol ...) A deck can be pretty bad, and still thrive in a certain metagame. This means that net-decking is generally a bad idea. You'll just have to go and see what you can do by yourself. (Nothing prevents you from sighting other decks on the net as inspiration or reference, of course.)
What I'm trying to say is that the only thing you need to know how the cards in your deck act together (all of them). You don't need a deck-guide, you need a knowledge of the T1 cardpool, what's efficient and effective and what tricks you can pull off with what combined with what. Once your deck is ready, it will most probably fit one of the descriptions: aggro, combo, and control, which doesn't mean they are anything mor than just that, descriptions.
You will find (or have found) that's it's not that easy, though, partly because of the metagame, partly because of all the math.

Another term I often use is consistency. This is very important. Long wasn't only able to pull off fast kills, it also did it regurarly. Dragon can also win on turn one, but does so way less often.
Consistency means that if you win, you're not lucky, but what you expected to happen happened. Sligh desn't die because you draw no combo-piece. Draw (and search) is there to smooth out consistency, and pays off only if the card you get is a silver bulllet or (meaning the same thing) a combo-piece you need (or disruption to protect it).

As a summary: what you need is not to know, how a certain deck type is constructed, but how it is supposed to play. This includes consistency, speed, efficiency, hate cards, and the metagame. Also card tricks, matchups, etc.


Sorry if this seems a bit confused and/or incoherent. After all, I didn't sleep all night and also I'm drunk, but I just can't sleep, I'm listening to The Chips' Rubber Biscuit over and over again and have nothing else to do except wait for the Magic Corner to open.
Questions and corrections would be appreciated. Hell, yeah, even flames. I like flames. I'm good at flaming back.

[twn_domn]

Discussed and written long time ago:

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=5227