Breaking the Rules

Brian Kibler

Magic is a game built on rules. You draw one card per turn. You may play one land per turn, and you may use these lands to pay the mana cost to play the cards you draw. During your next turn, your lands and other permanents untap and you may use them again. Richard Garfield envisioned Magic as a game based on these and other rules with cards that break them, providing nearly limitless potential for players to explore unique card interactions in their quest to find "the perfect deck." In the years since the inception of tournament Magic, it has become more and more clear that while there perhaps may be no such thing as "the perfect deck," in every environment there are decks that outperform the rest of the field. These "Decks to Beat" are those that most effectively exploit the cards in the format that break the fundamental rules of Magic.

Sometimes, the ways in which cards break the rules are obvious. Ancestral Recall, for example, quite obviously breaks the rule that a player draws one card per turn. Fastbond blatantly breaks the rule of a player being allowed to play only one land per turn. Each of these cards was deemed too powerful due to the extent to which it broke these rules and for the low cost in mana it required to do so, and because of this both of them were not only taken out of print, but restricted in Vintage play. Successful decks in any format must identify which cards are the best at breaking the important rules for the lowest cost, and these cards may not be so evident as Ancestral Recall and Fastbond.

The root of all evil in Extended?

In the old Extended environment, two of the cards that were deemed culprits of this rule-breaking were Dark Ritual and Mana Vault. While they do not specifically break the rules per se, they simulate part of the effect of Fastbond by allowing a player to cast spells with higher casting costs in the early turns of the game. This breaks the equilibrium maintained by the rule that restricts each player to putting one land into play per turn, as it gives one player access to much more powerful spells long before his or her opponent. The implications of this could be seen particularly in the dominant fast-mana fueled Trix deck, which had the ability to play Necropotence on the first turn with Dark Ritual, before the opponent had an opportunity to put even a single land into play. In the face of this dominance, both Dark Ritual and Mana Vault got the axe, as they were banned from Extended play.

Even now, however, many players claim that the teeth of the Trix deck have scarcely been dulled. This may be true, as while losing its fast mana certainly reduced the deck's sheer power, Trix is still a deck composed of cards that break the rules. The backbone of the deck, which has remained universally consistent in nearly all iterations that have placed highly in Extended tournaments this season, consists of the cards Necropotence, Mox Diamond, Demonic Consultation, and Force of Will. These cards each break a fundamental rule of the game of Magic, and it's unsurprising to find them in such high concentration in the most successful Extended deck this season.

The rule-breaking power of Necropotence is fairly straightforward. It allows its user to exchange life for cards, and at an equal rate of one for one, without paying any mana beyond the initial investment of BBB. I will not insult the reader's intelligence by explaining how this is a tremendously powerful ability, but merely point out that this ability shatters the rule of drawing one card per turn, and does so at a cost that is scarcely prohibitive, particularly in a deck containing Illusions of Grandeur. Mox Diamond is similarly obvious, as it provides fast mana much in the way Dark Ritual and Mana Vault did for the original incarnation of Trix. It does not individually provide as dramatic a boost, and requires the discard of a land card as part of its cost, but it makes up for this by being both a multicolored and reusable source of mana, giving its user both the initial boost early as well as a stable mana base in the mid to late game.

Demonic Consultation is perhaps the least obvious rulebreaker of the lot, and yet perhaps one of the most important. Demonic Consultation and all similar search effects, including the Mirage Tutors (Vampiric, Enlightened, and Mystical) and Survival of the Fittest, break the fundamental rule that Magic is a card game, and the cards that you are able to play are restricted to those you draw. Tutor effects break this rule by allowing a player access to cards other than those afforded him or her by the luck of the draw. Of all the tutor effects, Demonic Consultation is perhaps the most powerful, as it allows a player to search for any card, and it does this job at a cost of only one black mana and removing some number of cards from the game. While these removed cards can occasionally be fatal (such as the event that a player loses all of his or her combo pieces), this is rare enough that Demonic Consultation gets top billing over the far safer yet far less efficient Vampiric Tutor.

This leaves us with Force of Will. This may be the most controversial card in Extended at this time, and there is very good reason for this. Force of Will breaks the fundamental rule of the game that a player must pay the mana cost of the spells he or she casts. All of the Alliances "Pitch Spells" as well as the Masques block alternative casting cost cards break the rules of the game in this way, and the ones with the most powerful effects and the least detrimental costs are the ones that shape environments. This can be seen in Extended with Force of Will, which is perhaps the defining card of the current format, showing up in Trix, Pandeburst, CounterSliver, TS, Oath, TurboLand, 5cControl, Stasis, and likely more. In most of these decks, Force of Will is used as a tool to get other rule breaking cards into play and to protect them, further compounding the situation for an opponent without such resources.

This pattern of finding those cards that break the most important rules of Magic reaches far beyond the Extended format. In the current Standard format, Rebels, Skies, and aggressive green decks (including Fires and The Red Zone) have been dominating tournament play, and one of the most important factors contributing to this dominance is the cards each of these decks use to break the rules. While the current Standard format does not have the obvious culprits that have shown up in the past, it is still useful to identify which cards give these decks the edge over their competition.

This officer breaks all the rules

The cards that the Rebel deck uses that fit this mold are the rebel cards themselves, and specifically those rebels with the ability to search. Ramosian Sergeant and her superior, Lin Sivvi, have reared ugly heads before, in Pro Tour New York 99, where Rebel decks all but dominated the format, leading to the banning of Lin Sivvi from Masques Block Constructed. The rebel search mechanic breaks a number of Magic's fundamental rules in conjunction with one another, and does so at a cost of only the initial searcher investment and mana spent each turn. This mechanic both allows the player access to cards he or she has not drawn, in its ability to search for specific rebel cards, and, in a way, breaks the rule of a player drawing only one card per turn, as the searching ability puts these cards directly into play. The combination of these mechanics also breaks the rule that a player must play cards from his or her hand, which gives an opponent the opportunity to counter them. The rebel engine circumvents all of these rules at once, and for a nominal cost, thus creating one of the most powerful decks in the Standard format.

Blue Skies, which has drastically increased in popularity since Jay Elarar's Top 8 finish in Chicago, abuses the power of the alternative casting cost cards from Masques block. Thwart, Foil, and Daze all break the rules that require a player to pay the mana costs for his or her spells, allowing a Skies deck to mount a powerful offense, tapping out every turn, while remaining fully capable of countering the opponent's threats or attempts to stop the deck's army of fliers. The costs of these cards are sometimes steep, but often negligible, and the advantage that they provide in tempo generally far outweighs their drawbacks. Similarly, the ability to play the powerful Submerge in the sideboard gives the deck a tremendous advantage against creature decks with a heavy Forest count, as it allows the Skies deck another tool react to the opponent's threats without paying mana, thus retaining the ability to play threats of its own.

The best card in Standard?

The big story of Chicago, though, was neither Skies nor Rebels, but Fires. Despite being heavily metagamed against due to their success in State Championships across the country, G/R creature decks dominated the top tables of the tournament, securing five of the Top 8 spots. What was key to their success? Llanowar Elves and Birds of Paradise. At the bargain cost of one green mana, these creatures simulate the effect of an additional land, and playing one on the first turn is almost the equivalent of being able to put two lands into play. This allows the G/R player to summon large creatures and play powerful spells before he or she would otherwise be able to do so. Sound familiar? In the case of The Red Zone, Elves and Birds are even better than lands, as they are able to survive an Armageddon, breaking the symmetry this card is intended to create by destroying all lands. In the Fires decks, this fast mana combines well with the actual card Fires of Yavimaya, which breaks the rule of "summoning sickness" that states that creatures may not attack or use abilities that require them to tap the turn they come into play. While in previous formats this effect would not have been an impressive one (shown by Fervor's lack of play in top decks), the current Standard format has fewer exceedingly powerful control measures than those of the past, giving way to the rise of creature decks as the norm. In an environment of creature combat, your entire team having haste is a tremendous benefit. Additionality, Fires of Yavimaya breaks the rules of Fading, allowing both Blastoderm and, particularly, Saproling Burst to be far more effective than they would be otherwise. These interactions between the rules various cards create and break are important to note - Randy Buehler told me in Chicago that during playtesting, R&D never actually tested Saproling Burst and Fires of Yavimaya in the same deck.

As you can see, identifying the cards that break the most important rules in any format is key to building the best deck. Look back at successful decks of the past, and you will certainly notice this pattern. Cards like Tinker, Oath of Druids, Necropotence, Survival of the Fittest, Recurring Nightmare, Time Spiral, Yawgmoth's Will, Gaea's Cradle, Replenish, and more feature prominently among the generally accepted "best decks" of any format you will find. Seek to understand what rules these and other cards break, and look for similarities in the cards of whatever format for which you're attempting to design a deck, and you will be well on your way to success.