MTG Combo: Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit + Kitchen Finks + Viscera Seer

ChiefBell on "Fair" decks?

8 years ago

Fair isn't about the length of the game or interaction it's about the fundamental rules of the game such as playing one land per turn, generating 1 mana per land, no cards causing infinite loops, winning through straightforward combat damage, and that kind of thing.

So fair decks like Tokens, like Control, like Jund don't kind of break any action or mana economy they just play the game at its most basic level. Their lands generate one mana. They play one land per turn. Their cards do what's printed on the card and no more or no less etc.

Then you have slightly unfair decks like Infect (Infect might actually be totally unfair not slightly unfair) or Merfolk that might break some aspect of the action economy or invoke some synergy that's not totally unfair but bordering on it. These decks might for example accelerate ungodly quickly with AEther Vial or essentially set your life total to 10 instead of 20. They might exploit internal synergies such as multiple lords like Lord of Atlantis to become more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts or synergies like Spreading Seas with islandwalk. Tron is also considered somewhat unfair because it follows the normal 1 land per turn restriction but it looks for a combo that allows each of its lands to generate 2/3 mana. These kinds of decks sit at the boundary being fair and unfair because they play normal, everyday games of magic for the most part but also have some axiom which they exploit for a larger advantage, be that explosiveness or mana generation etc.

Then you have totally unfair decks like Storm or Abzan Company etc that just win through loops and some kind of exploit interaction. See Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit + Kitchen Finks + Viscera Seer . The kinds of decks thats entire purpose is to win the game through some interaction that bypasses the normal assumptions of the game.

But you can have interactive unfair decks. And you can have noninteractive fair decks. A thopter foundry deck that was highly interactive would border on almost unfair because it's looking to win with Sword of the Meek + Thopter Foundry . It's a very slow but still infinite combo that generates an advantage thats more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts but for most of the game the deck just plays everyday 1-for-1 control deck type magic. A Zoo deck that has no interaction is probably fair, and so is Hatebears which /kind of/ interacts but in a roundabout way. These decks are just everyday, straightforward creature decks and do nothing in terms undue explosiveness, mana generation or use or weird win conditions but they also barely run any removal.

For more information see here

Note that it's not very helpful to sort decks into Fair and Unfair. No one can definitively decide what the terms even mean so it's much more useful to just talk about Interactive/Reactive and Non-Interactive/Proactive.