The Firestorm Principle An Introduction to Interactive Investment Mike Flores What do Firestorm, Opposition, and Rishadan Port have in common? Certainly they are all powerful cards that have won major tournaments... Rookie Randy Buehler burned the letters "CMU" onto the Pro Tour at the first PT-Chicago with Firestorm Lauerpotence. Years before his recent PT-Los Angeles and New Orleans Masters victories, Neutral Ground's Dr. Michael Pustilnik took home the GP-Memphis title with the Opposition-powered Squirrel Prison. Rishadan Port has flustered its way to innumerable first place finishes, the most significant of which are probably back-to-back appearances in the Standard decks of World Champions Jon Finkel and Tom Van de Logt. Sure, these are all great cards that have contributed to winning the big game... but then again, so are Disenchant, Impulse, and Ramosian Sergeant. What cards like Firestorm, Opposition, and Rishadan Port also have in common are that they take an interactive look at Investment. While a basic introduction to Investment might contrast using either Impulse or Vampiric Tutor in Mike Long's PT-Paris deck to fetch Cadaverous Bloom (Impulse replaces itself with the Cadaverous Bloom whereas Vampiric Tutor represents the Investment of a single card to do essentially the same thing), cards like the ones we are focusing on today all serve as catalysts for a very special set of card interactions, often trading one deck's less useful cards for the "real cards" of the opponent. Originally, Firestorm was overlooked. Once you got past the isolated bad rulings and player assumptions at Prereleases, where some thought they could draw Firestorm in their opening hands and then target the opponent multple times for a turn-1 kill, the card revealed itself to be a pure loss of card advantage. To kill even a tiny Quirion Ranger or Birds of Paradise, you had to use the Firestorm as well as another card. With options like Incinerate available for red removal, Firestorm did not seem efficient for the increasingly popular Sligh decks. Come Randy's Chicago, the second major event to showcase the Extended format, Firestorm sped to the forefront. Erik Lauer had discovered that, in combination with the incomparable card-drawing power of Necropotence, Firestorm was among the most efficient removal spells available. The reason is that naked card economy was not really an issue for the winning Necropotence design. Necropotence itself was so powerful that the deck could be designed with particular cards that individually gave up card advantage so long as they gave back justifiable tempo or mana, resources that were often more immediately necessary to the deck. The extraordinarily tuned Lauerpotence deck could give up a card here or there to a Lake of the Dead or Firestorm because it got so much more in return. The 4-5 mana per turn that the Lake of the Dead generated translated into 4-5 life points via Drain Life, which in turn led to 4-5 more cards via Necropotence; the initial loss of one swamp was therefore negligible so long as Necropotence was in play. Similarly, the one card invested in a Firestorm was irrelevant especially against small creature decks; because Firestorm was so cheap, and because the Lauerpotence deck was usually so far ahead in terms of raw card count, the fact that it cost only one mana - and used only a single spell "slot" to deal with multiple opposing threats - made Firestorm worthwhile, so long as Necropotence was there to make up for that initial card investment. Lauerpotence (PT Chicago 1997 Champion) - Randy Buehler Main Deck Sideboard 2 Bad River 4 Badlands 3 Gemstone Mine 3 Lake of the Dead 4 Scrubland 8 Swamp 1 Ihsan's Shade 4 Knight of Stromgald 4 Order of the Ebon Hand 4 Demonic Consultation 4 Drain Life 4 Hymn to Tourach 4 Necropotence 2 Firestorm 2 Incinerate 4 Lightning Bolt 3 Disenchant Taken a step more specifically, Firestorm's inclusion in Necropotence builds was especially appropriate because of the emphasis on both life points and available mana in that archetype. If you consider the fact that every point of life that a player saves translates into a card, it is sometimes worthwhile to invest more than one card against a threat that would deal two or more damage to a Necropotence player. Secondly, because Necropotence as a card-drawing engine is best taken advantage of with an ample mana supply; the fact that Firestorm cost only one mana allowed the Necropotence player to use more mana per turn, casting out additional threats he had just drawn, and freeing up his hand to spend more life points to draw more cards. Lastly, and for our purposes most importantly, Firestorm helped to translate Necropotence over-draws (relatively common turns where Randy went over seven cards), especially in terms of redundant land or other non-threats, into trades with the opponent's "real" cards. Randy later became a sort of proto-Maher "King of Extended" when he added that format's North American Championship to his resume, running a Land Tax/Scroll Rack white weenie deck designed by CMU and affiliate Eric Taylor. Again Firestorm was a mana-efficient choice for the Land Tax-powered engine. Because Land Tax operated only when the opponent had more land in play than did Randy, the fact that Firestorm cost only one mana was particularly strong: Randy would generate a ton of card advantage via over-drawing, and rather than playing out the lands he found (which would potentially negate next turn's Tax drawing), he could use them with Firestorm to further his Land Tax's control of the board by wiping out opposing threats. Tax/Rack WW (North American Extended Champion) - Randy Buehler Main Deck Sideboard 1 Kjeldoran Outpost 8 Plains 4 Plateau 1 Savannah 4 Wasteland 2 Gorilla Shaman 4 Savannah Lions 4 Soltari Priest 4 White Knight 4 Mox Diamond 3 Scroll Rack 2 Firestorm 4 Lightning Bolt 3 Disenchant 4 Land Tax 4 Swords to Plowshares 4 Tithe Though Firestorm had some use in later beatdown and graveyard manipulation decks, including some base r-w PT Jank decks and the sideboard of Dave Price's U.S. Nationals Deadguy Red deck, its glory days really seemed to be when operating side-by-side with Necropotence or Land Tax. While still helpful in terms of both emptying the hand and tempo advantage (Firestorm was still only one mana in these decks, and had no strict upper limit in terms of damage potential), Cursed Scroll (notably a card banned from Rath Cycle Constructed) as a card advantage engine was both slower and less devastating than the cards that got banned from the higher-powered Extended format. I can't offhand recall Firestorm's effective use at all without an additional card advantage engine backing it up, even if that engine were along the lines of Living Death in Five-color Kastle (recouping discarded creatures) or Verdant Force in Godzilla (trade one threat temporarily to get a house of them in a minute or two). Opposition is a little bit trickier in terms of interactive Investment card counts. A lot of players don't like to see card economy interactions on the board, and only tend to count trades that end up with someone's card or cards hitting the graveyard. If you think about it in practical terms, though, the point of a Blastoderm is to quick-drop the opponent on turn-3 or 4 as an undercosted 5/5 for 2 ManaGreen ManaGreen Mana. He's really big and burly, and his job is to attack three times (or if you got the Fires draw, four lethal times). It doesn't matter, therefore, if the opponent trades one Wrath of God for that Blastoderm or just puts one Glacial Wall in front of it. The Blastoderm's job is to hit the opponent in the face, and if there is a Glacial Wall in the way, he isn't getting his job done. He's more-or-less as neutralized right there on the board as he would be if the opponent had spent a Counterspell or removal card on him. Opposition is to interactions on the board what Firestorm is to more traditional exchanges. As we stated above, one of the things that made Firestorm a worthwhile answer was that, while it gave up one more card than the number of questions it addressed, it would typically be coupled with a powerful card-drawing engine like Land Tax or Necropotence... the Firestorm player could "afford" that one card loss. Similarly, when Opposition made its best splash during the Urza's Block Constructed season, it had incredible synergy with accompanying green cards. Squirrel Prison (GP Memphis Champion) - Dr. Michael Pustilnik Main Deck Sideboard 2 Faerie Conclave 11 Forest 8 Island 4 Treetop Village 1 Masticore 3 Morphling 4 Deranged Hermit 2 Heart Warden 4 Priest of Titania 1 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary 4 Yavimaya Elder 4 Yavimaya Granger 1 Annul 4 Opposition 2 Power Sink 1 Stroke of Genius 1 Sunder 3 Treachery Yes, yes, yes. Stroke of Genius generates card advantage. Yavimaya Elder generates card advantage. Morphling (as if it didn't do enough already) makes Opposition downright silly. But the real all star of this deck is Deranged Hermit. While all those cards we mentioned (and more) help to buoy an initial one card Investment in Opposition, Deranged Hermit is the card that makes it a real game-breaker. Every time Deranged Hermit hit play, it didn't "just" give Mikey P a "NINE/NINE MONSTER," it gave him five Icy Manipulators. It allowed him to take these 1/1 (sometimes 2/2) non-card token creatures and pit them against the most powerful threats the opponent could have in play. You would see squirrels tapping animated Attunements, squirrels tapping the enormous Palinchron, squirrels tapping out the opponent's mana, making it quite difficult for him to get back in the game. Like Firestorm, Opposition let Mikey P use his mana producers (here Heart Wardens instead of excess lands) to trade off with his opponent's business spells. Again, like Firestorm, it was largely an exterior card advantage engine that made the Investment worthwhile. In Standard today, we don't have a card like Deranged Hermit, or the subsequently-used Spontaneous Generation, to turn Opposition into half a dozen Icy Manipulators; that is to say, we don't have a single card advantage spell that interacts with it in such a way that Opposition enhances (qualitatively) its raw card quantity. Instead, a popular way to recoup the Investment in Opposition is to play with Static Orb. While on its face, Static Orb looks like just another spell dedicated to the board, its interaction with Opposition makes both together more economical, simultaneously forming a sort of soft-lock. Because the opponent, under Static Orb, only gets to untap two permanents per turn, the number of creatures dedicated to maintaining Opposition Investment is very much reduced. Rather than needing "as many relevant permanents as he's got", only "two, maybe three" creatures are required to allow Opposition to single-handedly control the board. Furthermore, when combined with the ability to tap one's own Static Orb in order to have complete access to permanents (in particular Icy Manipulator-proxy creatures), the combination has proved effective for Worlds runner-up Alex Borteh and others. Multiple premiere event champion and German Juggernaut Kai Budde took a deck of this style to the 2001 Magic Invitational: b-u OppOrb (2001 Magic Invitational Champion) - Kai Budde Main Deck Sideboard 9 Island 4 Salt Marsh 5 Swamp 4 Underground River 4 Nightscape Familiar 4 Merfolk Looter 2 Thieving Magpie 4 Shadowmage Infiltrator 3 Vodalian Zombie 3 Static Orb 4 Duress 3 Counterspell 3 Memory Lapse 4 Opposition 4 Sleight of Hand We all know that Rishadan Port was adopted relatively quickly, and that it became perhaps the defining rare of Mercadian Masques. When that set first appeared, though, it was unclear how good the Port was. At first pigeonholed into mana control decks or pure beatdown decks, it took a while for Rishadan Port to start re-shaping Standard. And though it made polychromatic decks in Standard (and certainly at the Mercadian Masques/Nemesis PT-New York) difficult to play for some time, even today, Rishadan Port has difficulty competing with Wasteland in Extended. Hindsight teaches us that Rishadan Port was one of the primary ways to contain Parallax Replenish in the spring of 2000. We know that control decks, and even some Replenish decks, adopted it, if only to tap down the other guy's Ports for a turn. Why then was there ever any reluctance to run four Ports? Why did Forsythe's original Angry Hermit - itself an Avalanche Riders/Plow Under mana control deck - not start four copies from the beginning? While colored mana may have been a concern, I think the fundamental reluctance came down to the same old objection to Firestorm some four years ago... Sure, you get to contain any one land you want with Rishadan Port, but you have to tap two lands to do it. I am not going to go into every successful deck throughout history that has made good use of Rishadan Port, or even mention the fact that frustrated control players started running everything from Tsabo's Web to Teferi's Response in order to get around it. Port's dominance of Constructed formats past and further past are near enough in memory that this is not necessary. In terms of its place in interactive Investment, though, I think the best explanation is from Zvi Mowshowitz's "My Fires" analysis, where he explains how his Chicago aggro deck could get away with running over 50% mana sources: "There's no other mana acceleration that can compare to [Birds of Paradise and Llanowar Elves]. Going first with one of them often yields a simply gigantic advantage. The problem is the deck has a little too much mana because of these cards, but Rishadan Port and Dust Bowl fix that." Oftentimes drawing excess lands in the mid-game is a big problem for an aggressive deck facing a control opponent. While Rishadan Port doesn't totally negate the problems with drawing more mana than is useful, it does mitigate them; like our previous examples of Firestorm and Opposition, it also allows a Rishadan Port player some measure of flexibility in using non-threat cards (excess mana sources, for instance) to target specific cards of the opponent. Qualitatively speaking, the dedication of an additional mana source is negligible, while the specific land tapped on the opponent's side is not. Even when the "two cards being used to control one card" economy is actually made relevant, the colored mana being denied to the opponent may be more so. While Rishadan Port taps a specific land of the opponent, the additional Investment in one mana source by one player may be simultaneously counterbalanced by the negation of many of that player's options, yielding virtual card advantage. That is, Rishadan Port ceases to be simply "two cards for one" when it taps a second blue source, preemptively countering every Counterspell in the opponent's hand.