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AngryPheldagrif
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« on: July 01, 2004, 02:46:52 am » |
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I'm mainly writing this article as a guide to help those who strive to understand how the format evolves. There's a lot of new and returning players who wonder why nobody likes their new control deck or why Sligh is no longer good, so I hope this helps.[/b]
Looking at the history of Type 1, from the earliest days of The Deck, to our modern, diverse field, one notices a broad variety of decks in all shapes and sizes. Trying to fit them into various categories, we find that three rough groups appear: combo, control, and aggro. Nowadays decks blur those lines, with aggro-control decks like Fish and control-combos like Slaver.
To put these decks into the perspective of three distinct groupings you must look for the essense of the deck. Fish is indeed aggro-control, but at it's heart it is control, and that is where I would group it. Why control? Simple. Despite it's aggresive elements, Fish attempts to gain board control through the use of hosers, countermagic, and spot removal. Sure it puts out fast threats such as Cloud of Faeries and Grim Lavamancer, but even these serve as much to keep your opponent off-balance than to win. Much of these are dual-purpose, such as Spiketail Hatchling, Voidmage Prodigy, and Grim Lavamancer. The distinction between control and aggro can be drawn where you use your Grim Lavamancer to blow up a Goblin Welder or Xantid Swarm, instead of shooting for the dome. Despite it's aggressiveness, the heart of the deck is really in controlling your opponent, then finishing them off.
Enough about types of decks, though, this is an article about evolution. Dictionary.com defines evolution as "A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form." Evolution in Type 1 is the process in which old decks change into newer, better, and different forms. The 'what' here is fairly obvious, but the 'how' and the 'why' of Type 1 evolution are very important.
The 'why' part is simple. Type 1 evolves because without evolution it would become stagnant and uninteresting, and people would lose interest and the format would die. The recent upsurge in interest through a growing number of tournaments across the Midwest and elsewhere is linked directly to the diverse and somewhat balanced metagame Type 1 is currently enjoying.
The 'how' part is the complex angle. Comparing the new Germbus to 1996 Keeeper, there are a lot of changes. Not just the replacement of old with new, but whole shifts in style and cardchoice. What makes the new style work better than the old style? The answer is that it doesn't, it only works better against the current set of decks. Now a lot of you would probably say that the new Keeeper is a ton better than the old, and this is true to an extent. With new sets released at a regular pace, good cards are bound to come along and thus the viable card pool expands. The cards available now are just better than what was available 8 years ago. I like to think of this as Type 1 'inflation'. The quality of the overall cardpool goes up gradually over time. Control decks also increase in quality over time. This still doesn't explain the strategy shifts. To find them, and the real key to Type 1 evolution, we must look at the true heart of Type 1, combo.
If control grows at a steady pace, then combo grows by leaps and bounds. Control is, and always will be control. Control changes to improve. The cards might be different, but Germbus and 4cControl are still Keeeper just like 1996 The Deck was Keeeper. In combo, however, evolution comes with entirely new decktypes. The innovation is in the rehashing of old cards with new ones in new ways. When was the last time you saw Neo Channel-Fireball win a tournament? Even if they still keep the basic frame of restricted brokenness, no one can deny that the combos of old and the combos of new are just completely different. This ties into control's evolution.
The old magic saying is that aggro beats control, control beats combo, and combo beats aggro. Now you can't win tournaments by beating 1/3 of the decks out there, so you have to evolve. Since control is fated to beat combo by this logic, the only way combo can win is by becoming aggressive enough in first and second turn kills so as to prevent control from controlling and winning. Control fights this by becoming even more controlling. Force of Will is a huge key to this. Force gives control a weapon effective against virtually anything that can be cast anytime. Without Force there would be nothing to stop combo from winning in the first 1 or 2 turns, and combo would dominate. (This lead to the need to restrict Mind's Desire, since it gets around Force, leaving control helpless.) Force of Will in effect buys control a turn or two to get ready for combo's next onslaught, wherein lies the key. After the opening onslaught gets countered, combo goes to its secondary functions and shifts from sheer brokenness to specialized brokenness. This is the point where plain old counters don't cut it any more.
Control's evolution hinges around this pivotal point with the need for solutions. Once it passes this point it is free to use its card advantage and disruption to gain control of the game and win. When Forces and Mana Drains don't cut it, the innovations of control take over. These change may seem small and insignificant, but they show over time. Probably the biggest and most radical example of this is the inclusion of Cunning Wish and the sideboarding of the bullets. Against earlier combo, simply running a lot of silver bullets and tutors was enough. You just Mystical/Vampiric/etc. Tutor end of turn, and your opponent loses just as soon as your next draw step roles around. The blazing speed of modern combo doesn't give you this necessity anymore. In order to take turns 3 and 4, you need specific cards and you need them immediately. If you have to wait another draw for that Disenchant or Fire/Ice, you're going to lose. But the Wishes let you have what you need faster, as well as allowing you to fill up the extra spaces in your maindeck with general card drawing and broad answers. The sideboard has become more and more marginalized, as control is no longer satisfied with taking games 2 and 3 with brutal sideboard hosers. But enough of my rambling. The point is, control evolves to keep pace with combo.
There's still one critical piece missing, though. Where's aggro? Even back just a year or 2, we had Ankh-Sligh winning tournaments, but now its just disappeared. The closest we get now is FCG, and that is rarely thought of as Tier 1. The current problem with aggro lies in how aggro evolves. There's very little room for innovation, as aggro depends on redundancy and solidity to win. Aggro improves by replacing old cards with new ones. Specific cards become outdated and are replaced with slightly better ones, but rarely does anything radical happen. Because of this, aggro's ability to win is hinged on the other decks getting worse or at least not improving. In the past, Wizards has kept down the hottest decks with restrictions, and so up to a few years ago aggro was viable since the field lacked brokenness. As the new decks started appearing and balancing each other out, the overall power level went through the roof. Since a ton of different decks came out quickly, there was very little that was so dominant that it warranted death by restriction. Aggro's snail-pace evolution simply cannot keep pace with todays modern decks and it hopes that eventually Wizards will flatten the format, leaving aggro to once again rise to the top.
To summerize my blathering pile on nonsense, magic's evolution is simple. Combo evolves radically new ideas, control evolves new innovations to deal with the new combos, and aggro evolves slowly, winning only when the format is at a low. As long as this cycle of threats and solutions continues, Type 1 will continue to grow in leaps and bounds. There will always be another Gro-A-Tog or Long.dec, but eventually either control will adapt or in an emergency the DCI will step in.
I truly think that in another 8 years people will be toying with combo decks that we can only dream about, while Zherbus teaches his children all about his newest Keeeper tech.
Peace out and good night.
-The AngryPheldagrif
PS: If any of the powers that be think that this is good or bad enough to warrant some other forum then by all means move it!
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