Fans,

Enjoy this great Deck Tech from Pro Tour: San Diego 2010 with Zvi!

When I was at the Prerelease this past weekend a lot people were wondering if Ruin Ghost was good enough to play in Limited. After a weekend of fooling around with him in a couple of different draft decks I am convinced — and now wondering if he is good enough in Constructed. What doesn’t the Ruin Ghost do?

Here is one of the decks I drafted over the weekend which had the Ruin Ghost working overtime — with an able assist from the Pilgrim’s Eye (aka Civic Way-flier).

2 Mysteries of the Deep
1 Aether Tradewinds

2 Pilgrim’s Eye
1 Stonework Puma

1 Bajuka Brigand
1 Caustic Crawler
1 Gatekeeper of Malakir
1 Urge to Feed
1 Marsh Casualties

1 Apex Hawk
1 Arrow Volley Trap
1 Fledgling Griffin
2 Hada Freeblade
1 Journey to Nowhere
1 Kor Hookmaster
1 Kor Skyfisher
1 Marsh Threader
1 Ruin Ghost
1 Talus Paladin

1 Island
2 Sejiri Steppe
1 Marsh Flats
7 Swamps
7 Plains

I ended up in love with this deck despite what could appear to be some awkward mana. The Pilgrim’s Eye was amazing for fixing the colors and keeping the mana flowing — it also conveniently blocks and trades with pesky one toughness creatures (Yes, Surrekar Marauders, I am looking at you!) The real star was the Ruin Ghost who was essentially Isochron Scepter imprinting Hindering Light thanks to the two copies of Sejiri Steppes. Any of the spell lands from the new set — or the ones from the Zendikar — can become a real problem with Ruin Ghost on the table.

In an earlier draft — and the first time I tried out the Ghost — I got him going with Khalni Garden and Emeria Angel, in an otherwise uninspiring deck, to spawn soldiers in an unending army of fliers and chumpblockers each turn. I had one match with the deck listed above where my opponent was waiting until my turn to aim a removal spell at my Talus Paladin. When I played the Sejiri Steppe he responded with Hideous End but since he could not respond to me playing the land I was able to use Ruin Ghost in response to his Hideous End. The Steppe blinked in and out play and in some sort of time travel conundrum was able to give the Ally protection from black before its ability from when it was originally played had resolved.

It felt like playing with Mother of Runes. Yes it required two cards to get the same effect but Mother of Runes is not exactly an option in Standard right now. I could see those two cards being played in a White Weenie deck that also features Kor Firewalker (aka Bearclaw) against a Jund player. They basically have to aim some fire at your Ruin Ghost or they are never going to be able to Pulse that pesky Firewalker.

One of the unexpected abilities of the Ghost in this deck was to filter my mana. I was able to turn WBB into BBB for a kicked Gatekeeper on more that one occasion and used it to get to BB for an unkicked — but board sweeping — Marsh Casualties in another. Instant speed landfall was the most exciting and my Mysteries of the Deep were good for three cards at the end of an opponent’s turn at instant speed in multiple games.

I posted something about my affections for Ruin Ghost on Twitter and Facebook and thanks to a suggestion from Kevin An I am now looking to play with the Ghost in Elder Dragon Highlander where it can do some pretty spicy things with Thawing Glaciers. Thawing Glaciers does not have to return to your hand if you exile it and an ostensibly new card comes into play. Things get even saucier when you add Amulet of Vigor into the pot. You play the Glaciers and untap it, tap it to go fetch a land which comes into play and untaps, then you use that mana to activate the Ghost and exile the Thawing Glaciers, which then comes into play untapped and ready to go again. If there was only a way to untap the Ghost…

If Tectonic Edge becomes a staple in the new format then you could see the Ghost as some kind of countermeasure. It also can protect activated man-lands from having unfortunate accidents. I don’t know if it will become a Constructed staple but I know I will be trying it out in a bunch of different decks.

Based on the comments on the podcasts and tweets I have seen, it looks like people are really missing the point of this Unified Theory thing. The goal of this post is to try and crystalize the ideas from our (myself, mike j, and others) discussions (both recorded and not) to the best of my abilities.

For as long as I have played Magic, there has always been language to try and quantify the events and outcomes of a game. This is understandable since the hobby of Magic is, in many ways, a science. All sciences require an established language through which discovery and collaboration can occur. In Magic, the most commonly used unit (up until now, at least) is “the Card.” It is very easy to describe some events using the Card e.g. playing spells that draw you cards and/or make your opponent discard cards. Most game events that literally involve cards work great. Attempts to describe more nuanced events in the language of Cards has always been tricky. If I attack you for 1, is that worth a Card? Is it worth a fraction of a Card? What fraction is it worth? How many Cards is it a Stone Rain worth on turn 2? What about turn 12? How many Cards is Dredge 6 worth?

The problem with the Card, as a unit, is that it does not have an easily applicable size (or even a well defined size, for that matter). It is too large of a unit to describe many of the events that take place over the course of a game.

I think what we are talking about with the Unified Theory is a new way of measuring game events. This is not a new theory, because its not changing anything about the game yet. The rules and tactics stay the same. What changes is the way we look at them. Thomas Kuhn wrote a book about this called the Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Read it!). What we have on our hands right now is a paradigm shift in magic.

What this Mana “theory” provides us with is a metric for measuring game events in a way that is magnitudes more precise than was available previously. Its not different from Card Advantage, its just more precise. It is an improvement, and over time it should completely replace the previous paradigm. Our job is to convince the community that what we have is better than the existing paradigm/standard of measurement.

What makes the Mana Theory a “Unified Theory” is that we can account for many many more game events, if not all game events, with much greater precision. The unit of Mana (not going to get into the “different colors of mana have different values” discussion here) is sufficiently small that, possibly, we can describe all game events with this system. What makes it the Unified theory is not that it replaces Tempo, Card Advantage, the Philosophy of Fire, or any other theory… It just gives us a better common language for discussion.

I want to take a moment here to say that I don’t blame anyone for missing the point based on the Victory Bacon podcast. None of this was explicitly said, and it was at best loosely implied by a few passing remarks. We spent most of the podcast focusing one application of the theory (Card evaluation), and not the theory itself. I think that card evaluation discussions are the easiest way to illustrate the value of the new system, but not the most valuable use of it.

On that note, the discussion of card values on twitter I think is distracting from the magnitude of this system, to the point where it has become confused with the theory itself. Essentially, it is not important to come to a consensus about what a card is absolutely worth. The game of Magic is dynamic and subject to many different frames of reference. As we have said, card value change based on format and game state. Basically, everyone is right when they say “Card A is worth X mana,” so its not really something to be wasting too much time on outside of a framed theory discussion.

So while card values change, what isn’t changing is the way we are measuring it. Thats the take-away here.

Assuming the new paradigm takes hold, there are two tasks at hand:

1. Apply the new system to what we already know. (This is what we are doing now)
2. Develop new theories that could not/did not exist under previous systems (easier said than done)

Hopefully this has been a bit easier to follow than the Podcast. As you can probably tell, we don’t script anything or even necessarily go into the process with a plan for what we are going to talk about. Usually that isn’t an issue (except when BDM and Flores go off on Basketball), but sometimes the big ideas get lost in the noise. As usual, I invite discussion in the comments (or @ me or mike on Twitter).

~WillPoP

Check out the second part of our four card preview:

Canopy Cover Preview Card

Mike Flores and BDM will be podcasting soon about them all.

Check out the first of four Worldwake Preview Cards:

Join The Ranks Preview Card

Mike Flores and BDM will be podcasting soon about them all.

I am not so sure how “cool” this is — as was promised by Matt Wang in a previous post — but I did manage to wrangle Limited Information author and Top8Magician Steve Sadin to do a draft walkthrough with me just before Christmas. Steve and I did a couple of these way back when and they were always fun.  I remember a podcasting session where we forced blue-red Storm in Time Spiral block. Using the fancy-pants technology of RareDraft.com we were able to visually record all the draft picks and you can hear our discussion about the picks in the first installment. We also talk about how the draft played out in the second installment.

I have been drafting a lot of MonoWhite or nearly MonoWhite in triple Zendikar and this draft played out pretty much according to that plan. Here is the draft:

Here is where we discuss the draft in two parts:

Sadin Draft Walkthrough Part 1

Sadin Draft Walkthrough Part 2

Finally, here is the deck that we built:

1 Kabira Crossroads
1 Kor Aeronaut
1 Journey to Nowhere
1 Bold Defense
2 Kor Skyfisher
2 Steppe Lynx
2 Kor Cartographer
2 Kor Hookmaster
13 Plains
1 Kazandu Blademaster
1 Brave the Elements
1 Stonework Puma
1 Explorer’s Scope
1 Celestial Mantle
1 Devout Lightcaster
1 Kor Outfitter
1 Burst Lightning
4 Mountain
1 Kor Duelist
2 Nimbus Wings

This is essentially a test post to play around with the Rare Draft player that Daniel Too (of TCGBuddy fame) has been beta testing. This is an 8-4 draft I did on Christmas morning. I ended up with a midnight mass of Hedron Crabs and a couple of — fittingly given the name of the draft player — rares to pull it all together.

If this works I will be able to even more draft recaps without having to send you over to my Google site to see them. (I know it is a little cut off on the right but hopefully that will get worked out down the stretch of “getting out of beta”)

Here is the deck I ended up playing and going 3-0 with. The Archive Trap has become my most drafted rare on MTGO and it won me most of my games following a turn two Crab. I also got to kick Rite of Replication on an Umara Raptor for the win in one game which was … you know… awesome.

Crabs for Christmas

1 Shepherd of the Lost
1 Pitfall Trap
1 Rite of Replication
2 Umara Raptor
4 Hedron Crab
1 Sky Ruin Drake
1 Archive Trap
2 Makindi Shieldmate
1 Gomazoa
2 Æther Figment
2 Kor Skyfisher
1 Whiplash Trap
1 Living Tsunami
1 Paralyzing Grasp
1 Into the Roil
1 Kabira Crossroads
1 Sejiri Refuge
9 Island
7 Plains