I used to say that the inclusion of more sets in an environment tilted the balance towards control decks. The more cards you can play with, the more of those game wreckers you can have in your deck, right? That was the theory.

Boy do I feel sheepish. That's so Old School.

Anyone with half a brain these days knows that with just four expansions in an environment, you can build a deck that kills your opponent with a land bethat kills your opponent with a land before they can Armageddon.

So no worries. Armageddon used to be broken. Now it is not.

Anything with a casting cost of four is far too slow to actually play with unless it's the final piece of a combo. I'm donating my Armageddons to the Antique Magic Player Museum in Renton. I'll send along my Wraths, my Icies and my Moats, too.

So what will WotC think when they get an envelope full of the old-timer power cards along with my disgusted "I give up"?

They will think, "Let's make another 2 counterspell in the next set."

Manuel Bevand, Raphael Levy and their mutual friend Jean-Baptiste Mathieu represented Team Legion in the French Team Cup. The rules of the French Cup dictated that the team could only play with four copies of any single card among all their decks.

So naturally, the team built two turn three kill combo decks with their pool of cards. Raphael played RandomTurnThreeCombo.dec. JB played RandomTurnThreeCombo.dec but with different cards. Manuel didn't know what to play.

He said to me at one point that he had considered playing mono red, but decided against it, but decided against it. He said that after taking many test draws, he had determined that the mono red couldn't win before turn four.

And then he said, "That's too slow." (Let that sentiment sink in for a second.)

So he played Hatred. His reason? Hatred could sometimes win by turn three. All the other decks in the environment won on turn three. His only chance was to go first and Dark Ritual Hatred.

The French Cup was heavily attended. Manuel said there were around 100 teams. Almost every single team played an Academy Deck.

That's a lot of $20 rares in one room!

For the first time in Magic history, it looks like 10 minute chess clocks would be viable. Hell, every deck but mono red would have time to spare. Does anyone else think this is ridiculous?

Now here's the part where I reveal my antiqueness, if I haven't made it apparent already. I remember when Wrath of God used to be a good card. Shocking, eh?

Now it's practically not even worth having in your rare binder. Tapping out on turn four to cast a spell that costs 2 is either suicide or worthless. Suicide if yourrthless. Suicide if your opponent casts Ball Lightning next turn. Worthless if you're playing against one of an increasing number of decks based entirely around recursive combos and little to no creatures.

Another piece of ancient wisdom from the Old School: Combo decks are unreliable because they require three to four cards to be in play at the same time.

Pass me my aluminum walker! The new students of Magic are turning around and laughing in the face of such "wisdom". Four card combos are easy as pie.

Since when are they easy as pie? Since the point in time starting with the dominance of mono red. Right after Necro Summer 1996.

As far as I can tell, the original "sligh" was a Necro hoser deck. It was about half as powerful as it would be during the reign of Visions. It had cards in it that WotC considered too "undercosted". Cards like Lightning Bolt and Brass Man. (Never mind that those cards were later replaced by Fireblast and Jackal Pup and Mogg Fanatic!)

Then something went terribly wrong. Despite mono red's really junky creatures, Visions turned the heat up by giving the deck a potent weapon against every conceivable deck type: Fireblast. I guess WotC thought that the 4 casting cost of Fireblast made it balanced.

I don't think I know a single person who ever actually paid mana for that spell. If they did, they followed it up with three more free Fireblasts.

So suddenly it was really dangerous to tap out. It was hardest on control decks, who had only late game threats and therefore had to dodge Fireblast death for twelve or so turns with only countermagic between them and the rotisserie. It really didn't help that countermagic cost mana and Fireblast didn't.

Then Alliances rotated out, taking with it two of the last three remaining decent counterspells in Type 2 that cost or less: Arcane Denial and Force of Will. Thus began the era of three and four casting cost counterspells and situational countermagic. Memory Lapse? Good sometimes. Disrupt? Power Sink? Mana Leak? Force Spike? All good sometimes, none good all the time.

So blue took many steps back. All its countermagic became either expensive or easily evaded. All of red's threats became deadly and super-cheap. Instead of Wrathing away turn 1 Brass Men, a typical blue/white control decke/white control deck in the style of Weissman now frantically Impulsed for ways to deal with a turn 1 Cursed Scroll.

Blue/white control decks got buried for a long time by mono red. When they would finally surface again, they would be mono blue. Desperate control players shifted the base of their decks from utility spells to great gluts of countermagic just to survive the first few turns. Control shifted away from rationed skill to "counter everything!"

Mono red was the "clock". It goldfished at 4-6 turns. If your deck could not win or gain control of the game by the turn 5 mark, you had to work at it until it could - or abandon it. Wrath of God and Nevinyrral's Disk could no longer contain red. If red had card advantage, it won. If it had card disadvantage, it funneled that into a Cursed Scroll and won anyway. If you tapped low to cast anything, you lost to celerity creatures and burn. If you didn't cast anything, you lost to hordes of cheap weenies.

Unless you won the game on turn 3.

Red's primary problem is obvious. It has mucho death and no disruption. Any combo deck that can kill before red deals the final hammering can twiddle itself in peace for four turns without worrying.

Up from mindless fast creature death came combo fast kill death, the only viable solution within the pa solution within the parameters of four turns. We couldn't beat them because we got pathetic disruption. So we had to join them.

One of the cardinal rules of countermagic is that countermagic should not cost more than the spells it is expected to disrupt. Why wasn't Force Spike good before? Because we had good counterspells like Force of Will and before that, Mana Drain. We're forced to use these poor excuses for countermagic because Dismiss and Rewind are too damned expensive.

So where has all this led us? It has led us to the land of a game that has no end-game, nor middle-game. It is a game of four turns. It is a game of limited options. It is a game about drawing your fast kill faster.

Will the future bring us another turn of the screw, a deck that wins even faster even more consistently, setting us a new benchmark to test our decks against?

God, I hope not.