Jamie Was Right About Everything: Part 3 Mike Flores The previous products of the Wakefield School that we've looked at have been built with specific design guidelines in full effect. Studying The Brothers Very Grimm , we got our first taste of 26 land in a 62-card deck; with three Nevinyrral's Disks and varied spot removal cards working alongside the enormous Necrosavant; we saw the prototypical study in Wakefield design: fatties and flexible elimination. Phoenix-Haups, that grandfather of every Ponza Rotta Red victory, echoed these Wakefield principles... Again sporting 26 land and 62 cards, Phoenix-Haups gave us a triple Jokulhaups backup plan, as Incinerate and Shock cleared a path for every offensive animal from Jackal Pup to Wildfire Emissary. These are the principles that Jamie announced over and over again: Run tons of elimination. Reset the board; clear all the permanents from play. Answer your opponent's threats and make him respect your own big threats. Play 26 land in your 62 card deck. If these are the tenets of the Wakefield School, then why is it that Jamie's most lasting contribution doesn't fit any of the rules? Secret Force Main Deck Sideboard 3 Gaea's Cradle 16 Forests 3 Wastelands 3 Elvish Lyrists 4 Fyndhorn Elves 4 Llanowar Elves 4 Spike Feeder 2 Spike Weaver 3 Uktabi Orangutan 3 Verdant Force 4 Wall of Roots 4 Creeping Mold 4 Natural Order 3 Overrun To look at the deck without foreknowledge of Jamie's love of green, his legend, or legacy, Secret Force doesn't really look like a product that Vermont's favored son would have built. Though one color, the version of Secret Force he used to qualify for PT-New York 1999 seems almost oddly... conventional. It is only 60 cards, and plays considerably fewer than 26 lands.* It lacks the "Wakefield reset", that Nevinyrral's Disk or Jokulhaups (or Wrath of God, Armageddon, or Wildfire in some decks we have not studied) that Jamie used to sweep the board. Secret Force can't kill even a single creature, except via combat. If we look a bit closer at the deck, though, it becomes possible to see where Jamie was going with each individual card choice, and why some elements of the Wakefield School seem to be ignored or changed. The first conflict seems to be in terms of mana ratio. While Jamie consistently played 26 land, Secret Force has only 22, and three of those lands do not necessarily generate mana on the first turn. However, where The Brothers Very Grimm had "only" Dark Ritual for mana acceleration, Secret Force runs three to four times that boost. Besides the obvious turn-1 plays of Fyndhorn Elves and Llanowar Elves, Secret Force also has Wall of Roots to speed it to the midgame, and Natural Order - which can be cast as early as the third turn - is a mana boost itself, giving the deck access to the unusually costly Verdant Force at a relatively inexpensive 2 ManaGreen ManaGreen Mana. While Secret Force is, on its face, unable to take out creatures (the most common targets of Wakefield spot elimination spells), it nevertheless boasts Uktabi Orangutan and Creeping Mold. Uktabi Orangutan often finds himself suited to Cursed Scroll patrol, acting as a card advantage-generating answer to artifacts. If Uktabi Orangutan plays Nekrataal in Secret Force, then Elvish Lyrist is the deck's analogue to Carrionette. An early-drop 1/1 with the ability to destroy enchantments, Elvish Lyrist can disrupt enchantment-based combination decks like Fruity Pebbles, or remove the now-defunct Survival of the Fittest (one of the best cards in Extended against Secret Force) from play. Jamie also considered Creeping Mold one of the best green cards ever. Not only does it deal with everything from Sylvan Library to Phyrexian Colossus, but Creeping Mold is never a "dead" card: at worst it deals with an opponent's land. As a corollary to that application, this versatile spell is also capable of serving as a green disruptive element; especially in concert with the twelve mana creatures of the Secret Force deck, Creeping Mold can be used early to exacerbate a land-light draw, or remove an opponent's access to one color of mana in a polychromatic deck. Besides the obvious artifact/enchantment removal capabilities of green, Secret Force uses its heavy Spike component as a sort of faux removal suite. When even a lone Spike Feeder tussles with Sligh's creatures, it invariably takes one of them off the board. Should it also be headed for the graveyard, the four life that the Spike Feeder provides will also absorb the next two Shocks of the opponent, or even one costly Fireblast. Similarly, a Spike Weaver can dominate the board against Stompy or Sliver opponents while Secret Force sets up its own expensive and powerful spells. Just one can negate an entire opposing army for three turns or more, often allowing Jamie to strike back at will. Besides the obvious card advantage and virtual card advantage afforded by these specific Spikes, that they are Spikes is also an important advantage for Secret Force. Because their +1/+1 counters can be moved from creature to creature, Secret Force has won many games by creating problematic permanent combinations, such as troublesome attacks and blocks, potentially turning walls into creature killers, or pulling Elvish Lyrists out of Firestorm range. A practiced Secret Force player can turn his creatures - the bread and butter of the deck - into spot elimination, forcing both interaction and play mistakes from opponent. Ostensibly mundane game elements like lifegain baffle burn players and force additional combination attempts from Illusions of Grandeur/Donate decks. Persistent "fog" tricks from Spike Weaver heavily disrupt single-minded offenses from monoblack or Stompy attack decks. Even while simply playing creatures and light elimination with no burn or hand destruction plan, the mark of the Wakefield school is on Secret Force: the opponent must always take Jamie's cards into consideration: playing non-interactively is not a realistic possibility. Natural Order is the card that ties Secret Force together. Not simply going for the super-cool turn-three Verdant Force, Natural Order can fetch Spike Feeder after Spike Feeder against burn, the decisive Spike Weaver against beatdown, or an Elvish Lyrist or Uktabi Orangutan to keep the deck in the game against the opponent's best permanents. Secret Force doesn't have to play overt creature elimination spells, as it has an equally effective negation plan in pitting the opponent's threats against its own versatile, even superior, creature base. Why Shock or Terror a Jackal Pup when a Wall of Roots will contain it just the same, and also generate mana? A Spike Feeder counters that Pup three times over. Against aggressive decks, even simple 1-for-1 trades with early-drop Elves will buy Secret Force enough time to set up its own powerful mid-game. Additionally, we've mentioned that unlike other Wakefield creations, it lacks a spell like Jokulhaups or Nevinyrral's Disk to reset a board. Enter Overrun. Though slower than single-minded attack decks, Secret Force still seeks to win games through a creature-based assault; Overrun is synergistic with that plan. Crossing Secret Force's explosive mana capabilities with its ability to generate token creatures, Overrun fills the "reset" slot not by clearing the board, but ending the game. To again borrow from Seth Burn, "Remember, you don't need to deal with their threats if they can't deal with yours first." At the same time, the lack of true dedicated creature removal, as well as the reliance on expensive mid- to late-game breakers like Verdant Force and Overrun, leaves Secret Force vulnerable to more mana-efficient utility strategies. While its extremely powerful creatures can thwart single-minded beatdown (or beatdown running smaller attackers), and its specialty creatures and Spike Feeders create difficulty for control, mid-range decks with more mana-efficient answers have been the perennial foil of the deck. Tradewind Rider counters the power of Natural Order (especially with regards to Verdant Force) without the investment in even a single spell. Swords to Plowshares, while not quite as devastating, nonetheless makes the multiple-card investment or high mana cost of a Verdant Force seem unwise. As we've briefly mentioned before, Jamie really disliked cards like Treachery, which not only generated a particularly impressive effect against Secret Force's fatty investment, but did so at a terrible price for his deck. Particularly good against monored beatdown, Secret Force has always been capable of doing well if "given the right pairings". Because of the removal of Survival of the Fittest from Extended, Secret Force's worst opponent - a faster, polychromatic, version of itself, with essentially more options - has been banished from competition. The removal of fast mana like Dark Ritual and Mana Vault, coupled with the loss of drawing engines like Necropotence and Replenish, have caused non-interactive combination decks to be simultaneously disempowered in that format. Essentially, the wedge of potential opponents against which Secret Force "has a good pairing," has been widened, making it a more sound choice in Extended than when Jamie won a PTQ some years ago, or even in its original Standard debut in the summer of 1998. Though 1998 seems a lifetime away, the tag team of Natural Order and Verdant Force took a long time to come to the forefront for a couple of reasons. "THE BEST FATTY EVER PRINTED" was not always the best, even in Jamie's eyes. Having gone through a series of errata, the Verdant Force at one point generated 1/1 creatures for both players on each upkeep, making it a costly and, largely irrelevant, threat. The original Cabal Rogue Natural Order deck (courtesy of John Shuler) in fact ran the considerably inferior Crash of Rhinos! Even when Jamie rediscoverd the card and added Verdant Force the next summer, the Standard environment was not quite ready for a monogreen invasion. While Secret Force performed admirably against the monored beatdown decks that Dave Price's then-recent, and repeated, successes made popular, it had to contend with a format where Man o' War was popular, and where Survival of the Fittest had been put on the map . While Secret Force's gains over the next few years were made only by degrees, it was a series of shifts by the rest of the constructed environment that made it viable in the long run. A wave of combination decks in Extended, from Tolarian Academy, to High Tide, to Illusions of Grandeur/Donate, neutered the once mighty Survival of the Fittest decks. All of a sudden, a huge disincentive had been put into play for Secret Force's greatest enemy. Meanwhile, players scrambled with aggro-control Sliver strategies or pure race plans on the shoulders of Jackal Pup and Fireblast. Because Slivers had problems with Secret Force's Spikes and sideboarded Chokes, and monored had a terrible time with the deck in general, Jamie's pet suddenly had a window to win, despite the fact that combination decks seemed to rule Extended. Always ready with a stack of Chokes and Root Cages, an annoying Elvish Lyrist or Spike Feeder buying another turn, Jamie showed us that the monogreen utility deck that could spontaneously "Tinker" for a 7/7 Kjeldoran Outpost was a real contender in even the game's widest serious format. Since its inception some summers ago, Secret Force has enjoyed a decline in Tradewind Riders, a loss of no key cards via banning, and has even become the Extended deck to play for some of Magic's most beloved pro players. At the 2001 World Championships, a tongue-in-cheek interpretation of "Secret Dragon" largely bought Brian Kibler his berth to the Magic Invitational, while at the same tournament, a brilliant day by unstoppable Potato Mike Turian gave Secret Force its biggest accomplishment to date: a Top 8 finish at Magic's biggest event. Secret Dragon - Brian Kibler Main Deck Sideboard 6 Forest 4 Gaea's Cradle 4 Savannah 4 Taiga 4 Wasteland 4 Masticore 1 Rith, the Awakener 4 Priest of Titania 4 Quirion Ranger 1 Spike Weaver 2 Verdant Force 4 Wall of Roots 1 Woodripper 4 Birds of Paradise 1 Gargantuan Gorilla 4 Llanowar Elves 4 Natural Order 4 Armadillo Cloak I think Jamie would be proud. I call this the finale of the series not because we have exhausted the topic of Wakefield strategy (he was, after all, among the most prolific Magic writers both online and in print form for some years; there is much left to say), but because I think that we have most of the tools necessary at this point to reinterpret the Wakefield principles for the brand new Standard format. I know Jamie, who played the three mana Steel Golem in a heavy creature deck, would celebrate the opportunity to cast Call of the Herd, and the same player, whose most famous deck used creatures for creature kill, would enjoy the fact that Beast Attack makes that strategy more accessible than ever. If he could ever get over her white kicker cost, Jamie would slam down Desolation Angel, knowing the game to be over, and would down a swig of Fosters after tapping the 2 ManaGreen ManaGreen ManaGreen Mana for Odyssey's rediscovered green equivalent, Overrun. I think that most of all, were he still with us, Jamie would approve of both Creeping Mold and Wildfire in Seventh Edition. While we often try to pigeonhole him as a formula designer (though I think the differences brought up in Secret Force versus earlier decks debunks this somewhat), Jamie was always aware of the best cards in the format. He would realize that three is the magic number in Standard, that if Shadowmage Infiltrator and Call of the Herd are the creatures to beat, then Shock in the elimination slot might not necessarily get the job done. Would he have decided to cast red spells, Jamie would play Urza's Rage in his deck, I'm sure, as well as four copies of Flametongue Kavu. Yes, Jamie would smash his opponents at States with a 4/2 Nekrataal for 4 mana, along with other fat threats. Enjoy smashing your own opponents with huge animals... you've had a good teacher. *Rumor has it that Jamie's then-Cabal Rogue teammate Mike Donais called for a moratorium on the posting of 62 card decks, requesting that all intended-to-be-26/62 builds be submitted to the list as 60 cards with 25 lands.