A Brief Lesson in Terminology

Okay yeah, so I lied. I decided to forgo writing about the Philadelphia 5K immediately. My reasoning (and this will be the closest I get to making a mission statement) is that I would like people outside of the Magic community, as well as those who are familiar and initimate with its workings, to read these articles. Call me hopeful. Call me naïve. Call me Ishmael. But it's the direction I'm choosing to take with this, so all of you who are well versed in the terms of the game, please just bare with me a bit.

Now our lesson of the day for you Magic newbies out there: basic deck archetypes. A minimal understanding of these concepts will go a long way when I describe (in the next post) what sort of decks our team were playing at the tournament. Every player will agree that there are at least three major deck types: aggro, combo, and control.

“Aggro” or “aggressive” decks are designed to beat an opponent by dealing him lethal damage very quickly (many can accomplish this in about four-turns of play if left unchecked). Aggro decks (supposedly) have a favorable match up against control decks but fold to combo.

“Combo” decks try to beat the opponent with a combination of two or more cards and an infinite number of style points for pulling it off. If a combo decks plays all of the cards it needs for its winning combination (“goes off” in Magic parlance), aggro will lose because it has no way to stop it. Control decks on the other hand are designed for just this occasion.

“Control” decks use counter-magic, which is just what is sounds like, and other controlling elements to make sure that they are the ones wearing the pants throughout the course of the game. I personally believe that a good control build will always be the best deck in format. Control decks have answers to both combo and aggro decks and generally run enough “draw card” spells to get to them. The reason aggo decks are said to have a good match up against them is that control decks generally don't do anything until turn four. As such, aggro decks can sometimes out race them, but if the control deck stabilizes it's all over.

Though all players will agree on these three archetypes, there is a fourth called “mid-range” that sometimes gets mentioned. Mid-range decks tend to get lumped together with aggro because the game-plan is pretty much the same. The main difference is that mid-range is focused on playing lumbering obesities that punch you really hard, while aggro is more focused on speed, dexterity, and getting things over and done with quickly before the husband comes home. I consider mid-range a separate archetype from aggro because it plays very differently and tends to have great match ups against aggro decks while having a much harder time with control.

How your aggro, control, or combo deck works will depend on what colors you as a deck builder choose to play. I'm not going to delve into the color wheel right now because that's a topic many people have gone over and one that takes a lot of time to talk about.

Finally, the last thing I wanted to talk about was the term “meta-game”. Magic isn't like poker in that the cards players have available to them constantly change (about four times a year now). This means that the decks players can build change as well. A good constructed player will be aware of the meta, knowing what decks his opponents are likely to play and having answers to all of them, either in the main deck or the sideboard (a set of exactly 15 cards that can be swapped in to enhance the deck). The choices players make in deck building, from what base archetype they want to use to which individual cards they decide to play, are based on the meta-game.

One of the reasons the Philly 5K is such a big event (other than it's $2000 first place prize) is that it's the first major tournament since a new set of cards came in, which means there aren't any deck lists anywhere, i.e. there is no meta-game. The decks we run at this event could shape the future meta if we do well, but we are also entering the tournament blind.


Upcoming: The Philly 5K (for real this time)

Check us out at: http://sites.google.com/site/teamdamageonthestack/