Archetype of Whoa

For the new player, choosing a deck can be a daunting task. 

This post is intended to serve as a guidepost of sorts, by giving a broad overview of the major deck types. There are five major archetypes in Magic. They’ll probably be familiar to anyone who’s played another CCG, or any of a number of other strategy based games. We’ll talk about what they look like in the game of Magic, and which colors are most generally associated with them. 

The five deck archetypes are Aggro, Control, Midrange, Tempo, and Combo. For the most part, the names are pretty self-explanatory. But let’s go over them, and talk about how they function. 

Aggro is, obviously, aggressive. The primary color for Aggro is Red - in fact there's a long tradition of mono-Red Aggro throughout Magic's history. White and Green can also be paired with Red, and sometimes Black. The original Sligh deck (precursor to Burn and RDW - Red Deck Wins) was basically built on the theory of efficient mana use, and also the idea I had heard of called the “Rule of 7” (although I can’t find a reference for that now). The idea being that you only had to resolve 7 spells like Lightning Bolt to win the game (3x7= Yer Dead!) 

With this type of deck, your one and only goal is to end the game as quickly as possible. This typically involves some combination of aggressively costed creatures, and direct damage spells - hence the predilection for Red, because that's the color of Direct Damage. Aggro tends to have the weakest individual cards, so it relies on doing as much damage as possible in the fewest turns, and for the least amount of mana. 

Aggro's biggest weakness is stalling out near the end. There are times where you've gotten your opponent down to their last few life points, but can't quite close out the game. Your creatures are now out-matched on the Battlefield, and your hand is empty. Red and White especially, don't have good ways to draw more cards. Additionally, it's important that each of your cards is focused on doing damage quickly, so draw spells can actually prevent you from getting enough damage done in a timely fashion. 

Aggro is also probably the highest variance archetype. There are times where you're just going to mise wins and there's nothing your opponent can do about it - You're going to feel totally unstoppable. (mise is basically an unexpected event -  MiseTings (so named for the expression) defined a mise as "something unusually great or unexpected" or the act of obtaining such.). There's other times where you're going to run up against something that gives a player Hexproof, or a Life Gain deck, and you're going to feel like there's nothing you can do to win, even if you were to draw your entire deck. 

The one constant with Aggro is that you're definitely going to have time to go grab food between rounds, because your matches will be over before most people have finished shuffling. 

Control is the next archetype we'll talk about. Again, the name is pretty self-explanatory. Your goal it to completely control the pace of the game, keeping it slow until you can resolve one or two threats which are so dominating and hard to remove that your opponent has no chance to win. Control is primarily a Blue strategy, but is very often paired with White and Black, because both of those colors are the most capable at dealing with permanents after they've hit the Battlefield. 

The keyword for Control is patience. There's a reason control strategies often are nicknamed “Draw-Go”. Control decks are highly reactive, as a rule. The only pro-active components tend to be hand disruption (like Duress) and card draw/filtering. Card advantage is a major component of Control decks, so taking a peek at my post about Card Advantage might be helpful.

Control’s major weakness is Aggro. You only have so many counterspells, and they tend to be less mana-efficient than direct damage spells, and cheap creatures, so it's not unusual to find yourself overwhelmed. Although there are “catch up” cards like Settle the Wreckage and Fumigate. 

Of the major archetypes, Control is probably the most skill-intensive. Facing down a Control deck, it's easy to feel like they're able to effortlessly answer every threat you produce. In truth, knowing what to counter, and when, takes a lot of learning and experience, and a solid comprehension of not only the meta-format, but what your opponent is trying to do. You need to not only understand how your deck works, but how each of your opponent's decks work. 

Midrange is, quite obviously, somewhere in between Control and Aggro. It has elements of each. Midrange is most typically Black and Green at its core, and is often paired with one of the other colors. BUG (Sultai), BGR (Jund), and WBG (Junk or Abzan) are a trio of decks that share a common core, and have been staples of the non-rotating formats for decades. 

In Midrange, you're not as fast as Aggro, although you can have some very quick starts, and you're not as slow as Control. Midrange revolves around a combination of hand disruption (like Duress) and permanent removal (like Assassin's Trophy) to try and disrupt your opponent's strategies, and get to a mid game point - often around turns 4-6, where you can stick a very resilient, and hopefully evasive threat, like Carnage Tyrant. 

Midrange's biggest weakness is itself. You're trying to be a Jack of all Trades, doing a little bit of everything well, but not excelling in any one area the way that Control and Aggro do. It's a balancing act, and, again, demands a thorough understanding of what your opponent is trying to accomplish. 

These are the most common deck types you'll encounter, and the Standard format, which is what we have in Arena, can often become a rock/paper/scissors situation between these three deck types. With Control beating Mirage, Midrange beating Aggro, and Aggro beating Control. 

The next deck I'm going to talk about is Tempo. Honestly, it took me a while to understand the difference between Tempo and Midrange, or Tempo and Aggro. Tempo is most typically a Blue/Red type of deck. It can be paired with Green and Black, and can also be Blue/White. 

The idea is to manage the pace of the game, keeping your opponent off balance just enough to allow you to complete your game plan in a pace that suits you. Sometimes this involves sticking a solid threat early in the game, and then just protecting it while it closes out the game. U/R, Temur (URG) and Sultai (UGB) Delver operate this way in Legacy. The current Izzet Drakes decks are a type of tempo deck, pairing counterspells early, with powerful threats later on. 

Tempo decks will take full advantage of temporary removal effects, like bouncing creatures (returning them to their owner's hand) and “frost” effects (tapping them and having them not untap right away) - whereas Control decks look to permanently answer threats. Remand is a classic Tempo card. It counters a spell, but puts the countered spell back in its owner's hand. So you're taking your opponent off their desired pace, and gaining card advantage, but you haven't permanently answered the threat of the card which you countered. 

And finally we come to Combo. The whakiest archetype of them all. They do exactly what the name implies, look to combine the effects of various cards - typically not printed in the same Standard environment - to do utterly broken things like gaining infinite life, or creating infinite hasty creatures. Combo decks can be literally any color in Magic. 

Combo decks are uncommon in Standard formats, although in 2017 Felidar Guardian was banned in Standard because it created a combo of infinite hasty creatures with the Planeswalker Saheeli Rai. A combo which was missed in R&D’s play testing, and would have easily been fixed with a small wording change to the Guardian. 

Combo decks are often the least interactive of any deck type. Often they don’t give a crap about what their opponent is doing, and just try to get to their combo pieces as fast as possible. Playing combo is all about knowing what your deck is doing, and maybe about what bits are worth fighting for through counterspells - depending on the format.

Thanks for popping by my little blog. Hopefully you found this interesting, and maybe informative. As always, constructive comments are welcome, and you can often find me hanging out over in the MTG Arena Players Facebook group. 

The Smokey Stack

Knowing the Stack is fundamental to leveling up your Magic play. 

The better you understand how it works, the more you’ll see opportunities to take advantage of it, and be able to avoid traps and pitfalls. This involves understanding the general timing system of the game, and steps and phases as well, so we’ll touch on those here. Let’s start with a little history. 

Back in the day, Magic didn’t use the Stack. Instead it used “batching” as a means of tracking spell casting. The batch was defined for the Fourth Edition as:

"A series of non-interrupt fast effects that build on one another as players respond to each other's spells. Batches are resolved by first-in, last-out for all effects. Any damage done to creatures or players isn't applied until the end of the batch, but creatures that are destroyed through means other than damage are sent to the graveyard immediately and regeneration and/or death effects are checked when this occurs.” 
(https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Batch) 

“Hold on,” I hear you saying. “What in tarnation an ‘Interrupt’?” Well, back in the day, there was another spell type called “Interrupt”. It was “faster” than an Instant. You could respond to Instants with Interrupts, but you could only respond to Interrupts with other Interrupts. Counterspells were always Interrupts. It’s a superfluous card type which was removed with the Sixth Edition rules overhaul, along with Batching and a whole bunch of other stuff. Recreating the feel of Interrupts was the inspiration for the “Split Second” mechanic in Time Spiral block. 

It was a clunky system, with odd restrictions and the really bizarre part is that all the damage was saved until the end of the batch resolving. Effectively, what this meant was that you couldn’t respond to someone trying to pump their creature with a burn spell to kill it. But more on that in a moment. 

So after the Sixth Edition rules changes, batching was left behind, and we moved to the Stack. It’s a much cleaner way to handle spell casting, and it’s as simple as “Last in, FIrst out”. Objects are placed on the Stack in basically one of three ways - a Spell is cast, or an Ability either triggers or is activated. There are a number of actions, known as “special actions” which do not use the stack. Relevant to Arena, these primarily are Playing Lands, and activating Mana abilities (most typically done by tapping Lands). 

A quick note on terminology. If it’s your turn, then you’re the “Active Player”. Everyone else is the “Non-active player”. In Arena, this will always just be your single opponent. 

Whenever a spell or ability is placed on the Stack, each opponent has an opportunity to respond to that before that spell or ability resolves. Actually, we probably need to get our Priorities straight here. 

The way timing works is through a system of “Priority”. When you’re the AP (Active Player), you receive priority first in any given step or phase (steps are a subset of phases). When it's your turn, you'll get priority at the beginning of your main phase. If you put a stop in your upkeep, you'll get priority there as well. Technically, there's both the Upkeep step and the Draw step where you get priority, but Arena kind of mashes both of those into a single step. 

There's basically two “speeds” for putting objects on the Stack. Sorcery speed and Instant speed. What Sorcery speed means, in pedantic rules terms, is 1. On your turn (so you're the active player), 2. During one of your main phases, 3. With nothing else on the Stack. This is when you can play lands, activate Planeswalker Loyalty abilities, cast Creature, Artifact, Enchantment, and of course, Sorcery cards. 

Instant speed means that you can do it anytime you have priority. This can be on either player's turn, with an empty stack or not. *Most* activated abilities of permanents can be done at Instant speed, unless otherwise stated. As noted before, tapping Lands for mana doesn't use the stack and may be done at any time, and activating Planeswalker Loyalty abilities can only be done at Sorcery speed. This is a rules restriction that's attached to those abilities. This is also true for the “Equip” ability on Equipment artifacts. 

Triggered abilities are a bit of a special case. If you see the words “When”, “Whenever” or “At” in a text box, you're dealing with a triggered ability. Anytime the condition specified in the rules text are met, that ability will go on the stack as soon as priority is checked. 

So how can you take full advantage of the Stack? Primarily it's by knowing when you can and can't respond to various actions.

For example, say that your opponent is attacking with their Adanto Vanguard. You block, and they activate the Vanguard's ability in an effort to save it. That ability goes on the stack, but in the moment after the activation and before the resolution, that Vanguard is not yet indestructible. Before the ability resolves, you will gain priority, and can cast a spell like Shock to try to kill the Vanguard. Now your Shock will be on the stack. But the Vanguard's not dead yet. After you put your spell on the stack, your opponent will again receive priority before it resolves. They can again activate the Vanguard to try to save it.

*Edit* A quick note here which should be included, Lifelink and Deathtouch do NOT use the stack. They happen as Damage happens, and are applied before Priority is checked. So if you're at 3 life, and you're being attacked by a pair of 3 power creatures, but your only blocker is a 1/1 with Lifelink, you will live at 1 life after combat done. 

This type of scenario is probably the most common way you'll be able to take advantage of understanding the Stack - whether it's with an activated ability, or by your opponent casting a pump spell to buff their creature. It's why the defending player will always have an advantage in combat, because the active player will have to initiate  the action, and you'll always have an opportunity to respond. 

In this way, priority is passed back and forth until each player passes without taking an action. At that point, the spells and abilities will start resolving, one at a time, Last in, First out. And after each one resolves, each player will again have priority to put new objects on the stack. 

Arena defaults to a “quick play” type of mode, where you're automatically passing priority if you can take no actions. If you want, you can put stops on your opponent's turn, or switch to “full control” (by hitting the Ctrl key), in which case you'll have to manually pass priority each and every time. It's more cumbersome to play that way, but it will maximize your opportunities to take actions. 

The Stack is nothing mysterious. It's an elegant and clean way to handle in-game timing. 

Thanks for taking the time to visit my blog. I hope some of you find this helpful. Feel free to post any questions or corrections. You can frequently find me hanging out in the MTG Arena Players group on Facebook. 

RNGeesus!

This is going to be a controversial statement, but here it is - 

There is nothing wrong with the Arena RNG Shuffler. 

Well, that’s not quite a fair statement. More precisely, there is currently no solid evidence to justify believing that there is a problem. Peoples’ anecdotal experiences aren’t sufficient. Nevertheless, complaints and controversy over how Arena deals out cards abound. From unnatural levels of Mana Flood and Mana Screw, to rigged draws and rigged games, to the program turning on you when you’ve won “too much”. People are claiming everything from the Shuffler being broken to outright, intentional tampering of the program by Wizards. 

I’m not a numbers guy. There’s plenty of people out there who can go deep on the technical end and explain how these systems work, and how the raw data has shown that it’s functioning well within the margins of where it should be. One of them can be found here: https://blog.mtgatracker.com/debunking-the-evil-shuffler 

I want to talk in this post about what the community is actually experiencing - because it’s absolutely true that there’s an experience behind the complaints. It’s important to understand how we process and interpret these events. 

There’s three major components in play here. First, digital hand generation feels different than playing IRL. Second, many people don’t have a good grasp of what “true” randomness is. Third, We have cognitive biases affecting our perceptions of just how often certain events occur. 

I'm using quotes around “true” randomness here because I understand that even a computer isn't “truly” random. They use seed numbers and complex equations to produce practically random results. But that's another topic entirely. For the sake of what Arena's doing, and for this post, it's random. 

I’ve been playing digital Magic for many years on MTGO (Magic: the Gathering Online). When you transition from Paper Magic to Digital Magic, one of the things you’re bound to notice is that the drawing an opening hand intuitively “feels” different, although it can be hard to quantify exactly how (more on this below). We move through much of the world on feel and intuition, and even more so with something as complex as Magic. If you ask Pros about plays they made, they might not always be able to explain why they made the play that they did, other than it “felt” correct. It's just too much to process all at a higher cognitive level. 

Part of why it feels different I’ll address below, but part of it is certainly due to the absence of the physical act of shuffling. It’s a repetitive motion which we associate with the game, and with drawing an opening hand. So when we start the game without that physical sensation, or the “feeling” of having shuffled it's noticed. There's also something to be said for the idea, justified or not, that you have some control over what kind of opening hand you're getting. Like “If I only shuffle well enough, I'll have a decent hand” and “I must have gotten screwed because I didn't shuffle well enough.” As a rule, we don't like ceding control. And handing control over to a cold, unthinking, uncaring machine? Well, there’s entire Sci-Fi sagas written about that. 

Random numbers and distributions are tricky things. Look at the two images below. 

Which one is more random? Most people will intuitively think that it's the one on the right where fewer dots are clumped together. However, “true” randomness doesn't work this way. With actual randomness, things like clumping and strands are to be expected. So when we're drawing cards, we should expect there to be some number of occurrences of clumping of Lands and clumping of Spells, and even clumping of events of Screw and Flood. What we're often thinking of, when we’re randomizing a deck, is actually “even distribution”, and not actual randomization. 

As a side note, what Wizards’ considers “sufficiently randomized” in regards to tournament policy, is only that neither player can have an idea of where any give card, or set of cards is located in the deck. It's got nothing to do with actual randomization or distribution of the cards. 

Manual shuffling of cards does not really randomize them in a machine sense of the concept. We inevitably start with cards which are arranged into piles of lands and spells, and probably higher-costed, or highly-situational cards in our hands. When we do shuffle, we invariably will “clump” cards as we're doing it. 

You might think this is an argument for “pile shuffling” or “mana weaving” (ordering the deck with an even distribution of  lands and spells) before shuffling, but it's not. Pile shuffling isn't actual randomization, since you're controlling where each card is put, and so violates Wizards’ tournament policy. And if you're finding that your draws are better after mana weaving, then you're not shuffling sufficiently after having done so, because thorough shuffling should produce random distribution regardless of the starting position of any given card.Because of the inherent differences between random machine distribution and physically shuffling cards, we're invariably going to see a difference in the hands which are drawn. 

“But Dan,“ I hear you saying, “I got mana screwed like 7 games in a row, right after I went on a winning streak. It happens every time! And every time I mulligan because I'm land heavy, I always end up with another land heavy hand. The system is rigged!” Here we come to what's probably going to be the most controversial part of this whole post. Understanding and embracing our own fallibility.

Our own personal, anecdotal experiences cannot be used as data for analyzing the functionality of Arena's card randomization process. There are a variety of cognitive processing quirks and biases which impact our perception of the frequency of these events. 

First among these is our strong talent for pattern recognition. When there is an event, or object that is significant in some way, we're more likely to be aware of future instances of events or objects. This is often experienced when buying a car. We will suddenly start noticing examples of that model of car all over the place. It's not because there's suddenly more of the, only that our awareness of the existing examples has changed. There is really only so much information we can process, so there's much that's pushed off as background “noise” in our awareness centers. 

Moreover, when an event has a strong emotional component to it, like losing a game to poor draws, especially if it's one you feel you “should” have won, then we are much more aware of the instances when the screw or flood happens again. Those stay with us, while all the many games where we didn't get flooded or screwed just fall away into background noise. They aren't notable, so they aren't noted and our memories fill up with examples of when things went poorly for us. 

Once we have the idea that the shuffler might be broken or rigged, then we can fall prey to Confirmation Bias. This is the phenomenon which is the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions, and discredit information that does not support their views. Now the “hits” register even more highly, and the “misses” (all the games where things went well) are not at all entered into the calculation. It's an unfortunate reinforcing cycle, and one that we're all susceptible to. 

So, I’m sorry, but no one’s anecdotal account of how they’ve been abused by the shuffler has any analytic, or statistical value. And the plural of “anecdote” isn’t “data”. It doesn’t matter how many people chime in with similar stories. At most, that might give us reason to investigate, but it’s not valid data by which to form a conclusion. 

There’s one final point I want to touch on. 

The almost conspiracy theory level belief that Wizards is intentionally screwing people over with the shuffler. Like they’ve rigged the program to intentionally hammer you some number of times. And when I’ve asked why, the only response I get is some version of “To squeeze more money out of the players.” 

HOW? Seriously, how? How does ensuring that players are punished for doing well make your players want to do anything but quit the game? That makes absolutely no sense at all. Wizards has spent the past 25 years operating on the proven premise that “If you print it, they will buy it”. Proven not only in Paper, but on MTGO. And it’s not insignificant that the Pros grind and test on MTGO. It’s clear that Wizards can make all the money they want without messing with the shuffler. 

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Whether you agree or disagree, I'd love to hear from you, and you can also find me on the MTG Arena Players Facebook group, where I share moderator duties. 

Comprehending Keywords

Here’s a link to the Magic: the Gathering Comprehensive Rules. https://magic.wizards.com/en/game-info/gameplay/rules-and-formats/rules 

In PDF form, it’s 231 pages long, and getting longer with every new set released. That’s a lot to read (and I have). It’s an overwhelmingly large body of text for the new player, and much of it is not necessary to know - certainly not for Arena (you really don’t need to know how Banding an Phasing work). So where to start for the new Magic junkie - er, “player” to familiarize themselves with the rules? 

A good place to start is by learning all of the “Evergreen” keywords and understanding how they work. I actually discovered there’s a good bit more of them than I realized when I started to write this article. So I’m going to group them between “Game Actions” and “Creature Abilities” My source for this list is here https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Evergreen. This article includes links to the comprehensive rules for each of them. The “Game Actions” list contains words like “Cast” and “Counter”. Most of these are self explanatory, but I think a few of them are worth touching on. 

Game Actions

Cast/Play - It’s important to understand that you “Play” Lands, but “Playing” a Spell means Casting it. So if a Spell or Ability instructs you to “Play” a card, that means Lands or Spells, but if it instructs you to “Cast” a card, that’s only spells. 

Sacrifice - You can only Sacrifice a permanent that you control. But if you can take control of one of your Opponent’s creatures (with In Bolas’s Clutches, for example), you then control it and can sacrifice it. 

Search - If you are searching for a card with some specific properties, like “Search for a Creature” or “Search for a Black card”, then you can choose to not find a card which matches those properties, even if there’s one in your deck. This is often known as “Fail to Find”. 

Counters - +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters eliminate each other. So if your creature has two +1/+1 counters on it, and your opponent places a -1/-1 counter on it, then it’s left with just a single +1/+1 counter. 

Abilities 

Deathtouch - Any damage dealt by a Creature with Deathtouch is considered to be lethal. It’s important to understand that Deathtouch and Lifelink work in a similar way. Both of them occur as damage is being done, before State Based Actions are checked, or anyone gets Priority. They’re not triggered abilities. 

Defender - Creatures with Defender can’t attack. Pretty self explanatory. When Magic was originally released, the “Can’t Attack” restriction was linked to the creature subtype “Wall”. However, during one of the major revisions, they decided that they didn’t want rules text to be linked to creature types, so they created the keyword “Defender”. This also allowed them to open up design space, and put the keyword on creatures other than Walls. 

(why is Wall of Ice a Green card?)

First strike/Double strike - Understanding how these two abilities work is important. There are actually two separate Damage steps during the Combat Phase. However, for the most part, the First Strike Damage Step is “hidden”. Both creatures with First Strike and Double Strike do damage in the First Strike Damage Step. Creatures with Double Strike will then go on to do damage in the normal Combat Damage Step. This applies to both Attacking and Blocking Creatures. 

There’s a couple of subtle interactions to be aware of here.

First, if the Blocking Creature dies from the First Strike Damage of a Creature with Double Strike, then damage will not be done in the normal Damage Step. If the Attacking Creature has Lifelink, then no life will be gained in the normal Combat Damage Step. However, if the Attacking creature has Trample, then any Trample Damage will still occur during the normal Combat Damage Step. 

Second, If a Creature with Double Strike somehow loses that ability between the First Strike Damage Step, and the normal Combat Damage Step, then it will not do damage in the normal Combat Damage Step. Go figure. 

Fight - Fight simply means that some number of creatures (as specified by the card, typically two) each do damage to the other equal to their power. Lifelink and Deathtouch apply here, however First Strike and Double Strike do not. Those only apply to Combat Damage. 

Flash - Cards with Flash may be played anytime you could play an Instant. They’re “fast” abilities. This would probably be a good spot to talk about spell timing. 

Most spells, like Creatures, Planeswalkers, Enchantments, Artifacts, and Sorceries can only be cast at “Sorcery speed”. Also Lands can only be played at Sorcery speed. What this means in game terms is on your turn, when you have Priority, during one of your Main Phases, with an empty Stack (no other Spells or Abilities waiting to resolve). 

Instants and Spells with Flash can be played when you have Priority, on either player’s turn, on an empty Stack, or with other Spells and Abilities waiting to resolve. In Arena it’s easy to know when you have Priority, because the Gold bar under your Avatar will be lit. 

Flying - This is probably the most intuitive of all the keywords. If you fly, only flyers can block you. Makes sense. For some reason, in Alpha, they made Giant Spider able to block fliers, and ever since, spiders and a few other Green creatures have been able to block fliers (now keyworded as “Reach”). Fun bit of trivia, Giant Spider was the last card to survive from Alpha through all the Core Sets until 2012. 

Haste - Creatures with Haste can attack or use abilities requiring the “Tap” symbol the turn they enter the Battlefield. Creatures having to wait a turn after they enter is informally known as “Summoning Sickness”. Early in Magic’s history, Creature spells were actually “Summon” spells. 

An important distinction to be made here, is the fact when an ability uses the actual word “Tap” instead of the Tap Symbol, then Summoning Sickness doesn’t apply. 

Hexproof - Creatures with Hexproof can’t be the target of Spells or Abilities your opponent controls. “Target” is the important word here. If it doesn’t say “Target” then Hexproof doesn’t apply. “Sweepers” such as Cleansing Nova will still kill Hexproof creatures. There’s also some variations on this, such as “Hexproof from Black”. So that creature is only protected from Black spells, or Abilities from Black permanents. 

(yeah, I know I used it already, but it's SUCH a fun card! It does ALL the Things!)

Indestructible - Lethal Damage and Spells and Abilities which say “Destroy” won’t cause these permanents to be put in the Graveyard. Note that reducing an Indestructible Creature’s Toughness to 0 or less will still kill it. 

Lifelink - Whenever something with Lifelink deals any kind damage, you gain that much life. As with Deathtouch, this happens as the damage is done, and is not a triggered Ability. It’s important to know that during combat, if the creature blocking or being blocked by a creature with Lifelink is removed before the Combat Damage Step, then no life will be gained. 

Menace - Can only be blocked by two or more creatures. Pretty straight forward. Menace has replaced various forms of Evasion, especially on Black and Red creatures. Originally it was “Fear” (can only be blocked by Black or Artifact creatures). That later became “Intimidate”, which was basically Fear, but available to all the colors. They’ve settled on Menace being the most useful form of this type of evasion. 

Reach - Spiders be eatin’ birds, I guess. Reach Creatures can block flyers, but they don’t have flying. Yeah, it’s weird. Mostly seen in Green, which has the fewest number of flyers of all the colors. As in basically none, except for a few Dragons and Insects. 

Scry (N)- Again, one most of us will be familiar with right away. Look at the top (N) cards of your Library, and put any number of them either back on top, or on the bottom in any order. You get to do this every time you Mulligan. 

Just as a quick aside, whenever an ability can have different values, but those values are set in the rules text on the card, such as Scry, then in the rules it's represented by (N). When it's a variable that a player can choose, or is set by some condition of the game - such as Banefire, or Vigorspore Wurm, then it's represented by X. 

Trample - Any Damage from an Attacking Creature more than what’s lethal to a Blocking Creature is carried over to the defending player. Remember, this only applies to Attacking creatures. A few things of note here - If your attacking Creature has Deathtouch, 1 point of damage is lethal. If the blocking creature is removed from Combat before damage, then all the damage Tramples over. You must assign at least Lethal damage to the first Blocking creature, but you may choose to assign all the combat damage to the first blocking creature, and have nothing Trample over (although I don’t know why you would). *EDIT* If there are multiple blockers, there may be situations where you would not want to deal damage to any blocking creatures beyond the first. For example, if the second creature had Lifelink. 

Vigilance - Creatures with Vigilance don’t tap to attack. Super handy when you have a creature with a Tap ability on it, or to be able to attack and block. 

Well, that’s it for now. A quick review of the Evergreen Keywords. I tried to think of the most common questions and misunderstandings about how all of these work. 

Card Advantage - Sorry, I couldn't think of a clever title for this one.

There's been some discussion about whether or not Vraska represents Card Advantage. The entire concept of Card Advantage is both nuanced, and not well understood. I'm no expert, but here's my thoughts. Feel free to agree or politely tell me I'm full of shit. It's all good :) 

On it's most superficial level, Card Advantage is simply spending one card to get two cards. A card like Divination is the cleanest example of something like this. You cast Divination (-1 card) and then you draw two cards (+2 cards), so your net gain is 1 card. This is also applicable to cards like Mind Rot in the opposite direction. You cast Mind Rot (-1 card), and your opponent discards two cards (-2 cards), so you're seeing a net advantage over your opponent of 1 card. 

Another aspect of this type of Card Advantage is spending one card to remove two of your opponent's permanents, because the "Card" in Card Advantage isn't just referring to the cards in your Hand. This is why Creature Auras have always been problematic, because they carry with them a significant, inherent risk of Card Disadvantage. 

There's also the concept of "Virtual" Card Advantage. One example of this is getting more than a card's worth of value from a single card. For example, a card like Call the Cavalry creates two 2/2 Knights. Well a 2/2 creature is "worth" a card. Which is to say, if you had a single card that created a single 2/2 creature ("Bear" is slang for this, btw, for those of you new to the game), you might play that. So Call of the Cavalry is Virtual Card Advantage, because its effect is more valuable than the baseline of one card.

Gradations on this are also a factor. If you're netting some percentage of a card's worth of value, then it's a form of Card Advantage. For example, Attended Knight is a great example of this. It's a 2/2 that creates a 1/1 when it ETBs. Well, a 1/1 creature is not typically worth an entire card by itself, but adding another body to the board has some value, so it's worth some percentage of a card. Scry and Surveil are also in this category, of being worth some portion of a card. Neither is quite as good as just drawing another card, but they're frequently close in value because they're helping to net you a relevant spell, instead of an extra Land or irrelevant spell.

Exchanging resources for cards is another form of Virtual Card Advantage. This is the concept of replacing an unnecessary, or unneeded resource to draw another card. This is what makes Cycling such an excellent workhorse of a mechanic. It's why the Guild Lockets are actually playable, even if they're not particularly good. This is also part of where Vraska can generate Card Advantage, as you can trade away a Land you don't need for life and card draw. 

Lastly, there's an axiom in Magic that the person who casts the most spells is generally going to win. There's some truth to that and it shows up a couple of different ways. 

One way is Aggro strategies. If you're accelerating the pace of the game, you're reducing the number of turns, and therefore Draw steps your opponent has, thereby limiting the number of cards they have access to. You're generating Virtual Card Advantage through speed, because your opponent is drawing fewer cards than you are.

Another, and again, this is relevant to Vraska, just digging deeper into your Library generates card advantage, even if you're not netting an actual card in the process. This is why cards like Ponder and Preordain are so powerful. Enough so that they're both banned in Modern. You're still exchanging one card for one card (card parity), but you're just drawing more cards, so you have more access to what's in your library, and more access to the spells you'll need to win the game. Running 4 Opts, or 4 Cycling Lands is almost like running a 56 card deck. On the surface, these are both Card Parity (one for one), but they both generate Virtual Advantage by giving you access to more cards, and the increased probability of drawing a relevant spell. 

 


One last note, some of what I say above applies to the concepts of card selection or filtering, and deck manipulation, but I don't think that they're completely separate in how they work and effect the game.