Magic Theory: Threat Diversity

(This is part of my ongoing series about Magic Theory in Old School.)

For the first post in this series, I want to discuss Threat Diversity. It's one of the highest level concepts in deck building, but the one I've spent the most time thinking about. Perhaps I'll organize the series from the top down, instead of from the bottom up.

Threat Diversity, or Why Disenchant is So Good

There are no wrong threats, only wrong answers - David Price

When I first began reading strategy articles in the late 90s, this was the common wisdom. The following 20 years of the game has only seen creatures get even better, new threat types like Planeswalker, and the answers struggling to keep up. It's so ingrained in my understanding of the game that I assumed it was always true. I'd see deck lists from the early years of the game and laugh at the perceived narrow answers the decks would play, and in such quantities! Almost every deck has 4x Disenchant, how were they ever winning?

 Since getting into Old School Magic, I've seen there is more to it than the famous David Price quote. I've come to realize that the quote was so important because of the timing of it. As Magic moved out of the early dark ages of deck building and the creatures slowly began to get better, the quote came at the perfect time to shift the thinking of the masses. That doesn't mean they were wrong before, the game was just different.

What is a threat?

In general, a threat presents an opportunity to gain a recurring advantage. Spells with one time effects are threatening but not threats, because once they've resolved they stop producing the advantage effect. Only if the spell is going to win the game on the spot can it be considered a threat. For the most part, in 93/94 threats are permanents. Creatures generate a recurring advantage by being able to attack the opponent or activate abilities. Artifacts like Black Vice, The Rack, and Jayemdae Tome provide more advantage the longer they stay in play. Enchantments like Sylvan Library and Land Tax are threats against many decks. Even Lands can be threats with the existence of Mishra's Factory and Library of Alexandria.

It's not important to clearly classify a card as a threat or not, at least when playing the game. Game play is more focused on how threatening an opposing threat is, while deck building is more concerned with which threats you expect to face. Pendelhaven can be a very big threat or completely irrelevant during a game, but if it is hard for your deck to beat you need to consider it as a threat when building your deck.

What is an answer?

Answers are defined by their ability to neutralize a threat. Some answers neutralize the threats as they are being cast, like Counterspell. Some answers remove creatures from play, like Terror. Some answers remove other threat types, Shatter for artifacts, Stone Rain for lands, etc. Also, in the David Price sense, they have no value if there are no threats to neutralize.

Some answers can neutralize different threats as the game progresses. In this way, creatures can be answers by preventing opponent attacks. A White Knight can hold back an army of goblins early on, or a larger threat like Juzam Djinn later in the game. Icy Manipulator and Maze of Ith both neutralize the most threatening attacker. 

Answer like Moat or Shatterstorm can deal with multiple threats at once. As the answers get better at neutralizing multiple cards from the opposing deck, they can be considered threats. The Abyss can completely blank an opposing creature strategy, so the creature deck sees it as a threat and requires its own answer to it. Blood Moon can prevent multicolored decks from being able to play spells at all, and thus requires an answer. Perhaps this means the best way to define a threat is something that requires an answer, but this could be a chicken and egg scenario. Are the commonly played answers common because of the commonly played threats, or vice versa? Eventually it reaches a sort of equilibrium where there isn't anything left to be discovered.

What are the threats and answers like in 93/94?

The answers available in Old School are still some of the best answers ever printed. Counterspell can stop any non-land threat in the format. Swords to Plowshares stops every creature without protection. Disenchant stops almost every non-creature threat, as well as some creatures. These represent what I call the Holy Trinity of Answers. Chaos Orb deals with all permanents.

insert image of venn diagram

Creatures are very weak, especially when compared to the available removal. No creatures generate any value upon entering the battlefield, and only a few do anything upon death. The best commonly played creatures are either very efficient, very cheap, or dodge the commonly played answers. A creature with 4 toughness dodges Lightning Bolt. A creature with Protection from White dodges Swords to Plowshares. Cheap creatures can get onto the battlefield before countermagic is available. Protection from Black avoids The Abyss, and Flying avoids Moat. 

The non-creature threats are much more reasonable. Many of these represent the few ways to gain card advantage in the format. Disrupting Scepter and Jayemdae Tome provide it in the most pure forms. Cards that can generate the recurring card advantage can run away with the game if left unanswered. The most common threat that can do this is the Library of Alexandria. Library is a very strong threat because it avoids the Holy Trinity of Answers.

How can you use this in deck building?

When choosing threats for you deck, think about how they line up against common answers. If your deck is already strong against one of the common answers, add threats that line up better against the others. Alternatively, try to overload the few copies of the correct answer the opponent has. If they only have 4 Swords to Plowshares and 4 Lightning Bolts, you can try to play only creatures with 4 toughness to effectively cut their removal options in half. Or only play creatures with Protection from White. This is usually easier said than done because of the limited card pool.

Playing non-creature threats is very appealing, but it's also worth thinking about turning on opposing Disenchants. Because the non-creature threats are so much better than the creature threats, Disenchant sees more play than even Swords to Plowshares. If you choose to play some non-creature threats, try to play more than the number of answers you think your opponent has.It can look like playing a few Disrupting Scepter in your deck can add a separate dimension, but if its your only Shatter target, maybe its better to leave them out.

Here are two lists I've built recently to try to minimize effectiveness of the opponents Disenchants (also, I love Merfolk):

Building a deck to turn off opposing creature removal is much easier, though also kind of unexciting at this point. The Deck is great, and you already know this.

Trying to make a deck that avoids both Disenchant and Swords to Plowshares is a much bigger challenge. Spell-based combo is basically limited to just Channel-Fireball, and with Channel restricted it probably isn't consistent enough to build an entire deck around (though it can add an extra dimension to other decks very effectively). Other options to ignore the white answers would be to build a straight Burn deck, or a Counter Burn deck to use Counterspell to protect your few threats from the white answers.

If you are building a controlling deck, its hard to go wrong with the full 12 Holy Trinity cards. When you branch out into other colors instead of UW, think about the Venn Diagram for which answers overlap on possible threat types.

So Much Depth

I've always enjoyed the challenge of building new decks that can beat the best decks of the format. Old School has been very enjoyable for that so far. Come back next time when I talk about Threat Density and why I think Strip Mine should be restricted!