Planeswalking for Dummies

Features

Jay

19 September 2013

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Welcome!

Welcome, to the first installment in a hopefully long and successful ongoing series: “Planeswalking for Dummies”

In these articles, we’ll be exploring some elements of Magic that can confuse or mislead players. And it isn’t just for new or returning players: I’ve more than once had to explain to veteran players why Sensei's Divining Top is as good as it is. This is my first article for TappedOut, so any (constructive) feedback you guys can offer me will benefit both myself and the readers.

Without further adieu, let’s begin the first Planeswalker’s Guide: Resources and How to Spend them-

Mutual Pain: An Eye for a Torso

In Magic, you rely on resources. No matter what you’re doing, you have to pay for it somehow; even a Memnite will be taking up a slot in the deck. The most obvious of these resources is your mana. This is what you learn right when you start playing magic. The more mana you put in, the bigger the result you get out (for the most part). However, there are many other ways to pay for your actions. These include discarding cards, sacrificing creatures, paying life, and countless other currencies. But no matter what you’re giving, you have to lose a little to gain a little. Let’s start with the clearest alternate payment.

Paying Life

This is the concept that most new players have the greatest difficulty grasping. They view life only as the holy land, that which must be preserved at all costs to win the game. What they don’t do is view their life as a resource that can be used to accelerate your game by reducing other costs. Remember: The only life point that matters is your last. Here are a few examples, explained:

Dark Confidant- This is the big one. Players often only look at his ability as a potential Shock or worse every turn for a small advantage over your adversary. What most will ignore is not only the fact that you can potentially hit lands (as well as keep a low curve) to take less damage, and when you consider the fact that many competitive games only last for about 6 turns on average it’s an even greater boon. If you play him on turn 2 and he sticks, that’s only 4 opportunities for you to get any pain from him. Unlike life points, 4 cards is a huge difference. That’s 1/15th of your entire deck. The tempo boost you get from the constant stream of cards is enough to easily push you through your opponents.

But why not just run Dark Tutelage, and pay $50 less and one extra mana? Simple. Not only is one extra mana a huge difference in competitive play (as we saw with the above turn count), but the fact that it’s an enchantment is a huge disadvantage. It is harder to remove, but that makes it harder for you too: if you’re at 4 life, you might just want Bob to die to conserve yourself a bit longer. But even more than that, a 2/1 body is a powerful offensive force. Let’s say you take, on average, 2 damage a turn from Bob. Well, if he hits your opponent for 2 every turn as well, the only difference is you got a free card.

Bitterblossom- This card is a personal favorite of mine (partially due to its exquisite art, as well), but for a long time when I was starting to play the game I had no idea why it was banned in Modern. What’s 1 creature a turn, anyway? A Thraben Doomsayer can do that for free. Well, in this case it’s also widely due to the creatures themselves. A 1/1 Black Flying Faerie Rogue has 3 major advantages. Flying allows them to be evasive beaters that can hold swords and such while also blocking opposing flyers. Faeries have one of the most powerful tempo builds available, becoming simply ludicrous with constant buffs for Spellstutter Sprite. Plus it’s a rogue, too, for those decks. Being a black creature also provides a bit of a defense from some removal spells. Did I mention these guys are free?

Let’s look at the difference in life loss between you and your opponent with this card down. If you play Bitterblossom on turn 2, and the game goes until turn 6, you’re looking at taking 4 damage yourself and dealing a total of 10 to your opponent. And that’s assuming that the Faeries stay 1/1s. And if you have to use one of them to chump an opposing creature, that’s still hardly a loss on your part.

Thoughtseize- The eternally-beloved and recently-reprinted, Thoughtseize. This card is notorious for its pricetag (Thank you Theros), because it’s simply the best controlled discard spell. Ever. Many players don’t like the fact that it could cause serious damage on a T1 play (Fetch, Shock, Thoughtseize leaves you at 15. Less if you follow up with Surgical Extraction). However, paying to life could potentially cripple an opponent’s entire hand, or even their game if you get a wincon. Sometimes somebody will keep a hand just because of one card. Well, if they start without that card they might be sitting on 4 lands and an aura. Paying 2 life now could spare you being dealt 10 later.

Sharing the Pain

Many cards will have negative effects directly dealt to both players. The best way to understand why equal damage will hurt them more is just to realize this: you control it. You don’t have to do it. You can set it up. By making sure that you need the resources less than them, it’ll hurt you less even though it’s technically the same punishment.

Wasteland/Strip Mine/Tectonic Edge- There are a good handful of cards that work like this. You lose a land, they lose a land. Many people don’t initially realize how good these cards are because they don’t like the idea of missing a land drop. You have to consider the fact you are in control. You lose a land drop, they lose a Celestial Colonnade, Kessig Wolf Run, etc and miss their own land drop. Not to mention running these in a deck that curves out at 2, 3 or 4 means you can take the loss of land. If your opponent’s control deck needs 6 to play their wincon, then you can keep moving naturally while they stumble over lack of lands.

Liliana of the Veil- Obviously, the second and third abilities aren’t relevant (ults rarely are), but the first is. The fact that you can choose whether or not you want to activate the ability is one of the main strengths: if you really, really need to hold onto that card you can. However, having a deck full of cards that are at home in the yard (see: Lingering Souls, DredgeVine) then you get extra value. If your opponent doesn’t have much graveyard recursion, then what you make them ditch can be gone for good. If your opponent is unwise, they could discard the wrong card and foil their whole plan by themselves.

Aside from the fact that you can be tailored to love your graveyard more than your opponent, you can also choose to accept the pain to soft-lock the game. If you have board advantage, then you can simply accept the loss of a few cards to keep both you and your opponent on empty hands until they reach an immediate answer. Sitting and pinging them with Deathrite Shaman while you watch them lose counterspells and draw lands is a sadistic and cruel way to end the game: cruel and efficient. (NOTE: This is also mildly relevant with a personal favorite Standard card, Sire Of Insanity. Just deal with the empty hand better than they do.)

Wrath of God/Damnation/Supreme Verdict- Wraths. In honesty I wouldn’t have expected to see these here, but it was requested by a few newer players to explain why these are good- after all, you lose your creatures, too. The most common answer to why these work is to run them in decks with little-to-no creatures, making them essentially powerful kill-spells. They can also be used by making your own creatures invulnerable to the wraths by using things like indestructibility. However, wiping creatures isn’t the only way to use wraths.

Cards like Armageddon, Evacuation, and more are all different types of boardwipes. The most important thing is to make sure you need the things being destroyed less than your opponent. If you already have a good board presence, you probably won’t need your lands as much as a control player waiting to strike. If you’re control, you could probably do with having a full hand much better than your adversaries.

Paying it Forward

Many cards use abilities to accelerate yourself but, instead of paying with your own resources, give your opponents some extra. These can often be very confusing cards, and are generally less common than some of the others. However, many of them have very high value. In some decks, they can be even better than using your own resources.

Path to Exile/Swords to Plowshares- These spells are both very widely used, and it’s often debated which is the stronger. However, not many players will question whether they’re good at all. The reason they’re used is because they have ludicrously low prices for what they do: instant speed removal is highly valued. Exile is the best place for them to go (except tucking, in rare cases). They cost only 1 mana, making it very easy to leave enough land to protect yourself in your opponent’s turn. All of these come at one price: either acceleration for their landbase, or extra life into their reserves.

Fortunately, you can often dodge out on these payments in one way or another. With PtE, some decks won’t even run basic lands. This means you get a free exile spell that’s absurdly strong. Using StP, many creatures that are used in the competitive formats will only have about 1-3 power, barely paying for their lands’ damages. A similar spell to StP is Condemn, which can be used for similar reasons but is mostly seen in EDH because it tucks.

Dream Fracture- I’ll admit, this card doesn’t see a lot of play. If anything, it’s a budget Cryptic Command *list*. However, that’s not to say the card doesn’t have value. Being able to hardcounter a spell and draw a card is worth letting them draw a card. Look at it this way: there’s not much change in card advantage, but their spell is gone. If you’re playing control and your opponent isn’t, you can make a big difference by getting one extra card.

Invigorate- This card alone broke an entire deck type. Its mana cost is overpriced, and paying its alternate cost only makes a net difference of 1 damage… Well, if you hit their life total. If you’re playing Infect, then it’s a free way to get halfway to the kill. Even outside of infect it can be a deadly combat trick, blocking their ace with a chump that suddenly erupts for no mana and turning a game’s tide more than a 4-life gap would have.

Exchange Rate

With all the things you can do with these alternate resources, it’s only fitting that there are ways to exchange one for another. These cards are most commonly used for Combo decks, because they can allow you to funnel your resources all in one direction. Others are general enough to be cross-format staples that are used in everything.

Shocklands/Fetchlands/Painlands- I’m going to start out by saying this: I am not going to go in depth with the lands. A later article will be based solely around lands. But for the most parts, these lands can be simply used as a way to turn life into mana flexibility. Shocklands (Sacred Foundry, Godless Shrine, etc.) can allow you to have extremely flexible mana early in the game at the expense of a few life points. Fetchlands (Arid Mesa, Marsh Flats) allow you to pay life to thin your deck, shuffle it (this will be important in a later article), and fix your mana with Shocklands and anything else with the basic land subtypes with just 1 life’s deficit. Painlands Battlefield Forge, Caves of Koilos), while not as prevalent as other types of lands, allow you to pay-as-you go for getting varied colored mana.

Channel- On a similar note to the lands, Channel directly converts life into mana. 1-to-1 ratios for these exchanges are often the most powerful, especially when they don’t put any upper limit on the uses. This card created one of the most notoriously powerful moves in the game’s history: Channel-Fireball. This is a classic example of the exchange between in-game currencies being unbalanced and downright overpowered.

Street Wraith/Necropotence/Phyrexian Arena- These are all ways of converting life points into card advantage. The aforementioned Dark Confidant can also fit here, but we went over him. The basic concept is to pay life in order to dig deeper into the deck, often allowing one to find combo pieces or otherwise important cards. In the case of Street Wraith, you don’t even have to invest any mana, however it’s a one-time use unlike the others.

Specifically Necropotence was so powerful in its time that it led to the “Black Summer,” a time when Black was cruelly dominant (similar to Caw Blade in its time). Being able to directly change life to cards at a 1-to-1 ratio can allow you to exchange all of your life into cards. In moderation these abilities are powerful, but with limitless access like Necropotence provides, there is simply no stopping the ridiculous advantage you gain.

Lion's Eye Diamond/Elvish Spirit Guide/Simian Spirit Guide- These cards are all considered very powerful, and are cornerstones to many decks. They allow you to lose card advantage to gain mana. The Spirit-Guides can start T1 combos off with a little boost, but you also start the game down 1 (or more) cards. Lion's Eye Diamond is this on an entirely different scale. In some cases, you barely lose anything. Sometimes you might have to part with a few cards: in some decks, such as UG Madness, you want those cards gone anyway, and thus creating huge advantage. Combined with cantrips like Manamorphose, players can use these types of cards to dig and dig until they hit their key card, or start their combo in decks like TES and ANT.

Conclusion

Well, I certainly hope you enjoyed the first installment of Planeswalking for Dummies! Whether you just wanted to know about the usefulness of a specific card or you wanted to learn about the entire array of resources available to you (shucks, maybe you just needed something to read), hopefully I’ve helped you better understand the value of many cards that could otherwise seem overrated or downright bad.

Be sure to leave any thoughts on the article in general or even specifics, I’m always looking to improve. If you ever need me for anything at all, just leave a note on my wall and I’ll help.

Tune in next week for Planeswalking for Dummies: Tempo and Card Advantage!
Good luck and happy tapping. –Jay

(Disclaimer: I am aware that there are a billion examples for the topics in this article. I can only use so many. If it’s very important, tell me and I’ll mention it next time.)