From: EMulligan7 Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 19:44:08 EST To: fkusumot@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Offensive/Defensive Disruption For the War Collge: First of all I would like to say how barely it seems we have scratched the surface of strategy in Magic- It is said that chess (othello too) takes a lifetime to master, and the various moves and tactics and strategies of Magic are much deeper than those two combined; Magic has only existed for 4 years. Perhaps we'll all have mastered Magic by the time we're, God willing, sitting around a table in a retirement home throwing $40 lighting bolts and beating down with $50 kird apes. My point is is that we still have a long ways to go and what better way to start out than with the basis of all military strategy, The Art of War. Enough with the babble, on with the strategy. I believe that the middle ground is an unnessecary way of explaining decks that use cards which can be used for either offensive or defensive purposes. A good example is the humble man-o-war. In an offensive deck, it is used to remove a potential blocker for a turn, letting much needed damage through. In a defensive deck, the man-o-war can be used to slow down the offense, buying much needed time, similar to an ivory tower (not as cool though). Either way it is disrupting your opponents resources. This goes back to the three limitations on a game of magic-one card per turn, one land per turn, and twenty life. In order to achieve what Robert Hahn called a positional advantage over your opponent, you need to improve your resources over your opponent. The way to do this I will call disruption. Affecting the life resource does not disrupt your opponent until they go to zero (barring cards like Necro) which is why I say that a ball lightning is useless unless your opponent is at 6. That is why control has an advantage over aggro-in pure resource ratio terms, control gets 3 free ball lightnings and a kindle over the aggro player. This leads back (sorta) to disruption. An offensive deck needs to disrupt the opponent's defenses, while a defensive deck needs to disrupt an opponent's offenses. That is why not all control decks need stp and forces and all aggro decks need ball lightning and fireblast. If decks that use those cards are extremes, than an extreme middle path deck would use all those cards (color restrictions aside). That would not make for an effective deck. Most other good cards can be used both offensively and defensively, but only effectively according to the deck it's in. Erhniegeddon was a very dirsuptive offensive deck, sure geddon can be used in a prison deck, but in this deck it is used to disrupt the opponent's defense by way of the one land per turn rule. Necro was a very disruptive defensive deck, using hymn, strip, and disk to control the environment and disrupt the opponent by breaking the one card per turn rule with necro. It doesn't matter how soon you start attacking with a control deck, it is the fact that you wait for control first. Casting a turn 2 knight instead of a Hymn is a big mistake. Weissman's The Deck can theoretically start attacking on turn three, it doesn't have to wait until the game is completely sealed. Offensive decks can use hymn (1.x buried alive, for an example), but with a different purpose. Look at what each deck would like to snag-Necro would love to grab ball lightnings, and could care less about grabbing stps because (besides the pro:white factor) the early lost creatures can be made up for later with massive card drawing. Buried Alive would love to grab stps as those will disrupt its offense very easily, but two ball lightnings could easily go by unblocked as long as you don't die from it. When building a deck you must therefore chose offense or defense, choose how you are going to achieve that, and then chose coresponding disruptive cards. An example is disenchant in a burn deck- you are not using it to defensively destroy your opponent's warbeast, you are hopefully using it to offensively destroy your opponent's cop:red, knocking down your opponent's walls with a catapult, if you will. I am not quite feeling up to drawing the full set of conclusions from what I have said, so any responses would be appreciated. Remember, a strategy can only be as good as the cards it uses. Thanks for your time, Eric Mulligan