We're all still searching for that "killer deck".

In my last article, I revealed the decklist of our amazing rogue extended deck: a blue/green Oath of Druids deck that The Legion called Oath of Whatever. Maybe you didn't think it was amazing. That's okay. Sometimes I get strange attachments to decks. I have a particular weakness for rogue decks designed for small metagames. I fall in love with them and call them amazing.

As is Natural Dojo Law, a goodly number of brave souls thought it was a "killer deck" and decided to try it. I call them brave half out of truth and half out of sarcasm. Truthfully, a lot of people played the Oath deck with almost no preparation. So they were brave to even try. Sarcastically, it isn't exactly very brave to try a new deck after it has had some success. My hat is off to anyone who tried a deck before it became widely known.

Thus equipped with a decklist, many of these players went to a PTQ. A lot of them got different results than they expected. They did horribly.

So their first impulse was to do what, quite naturally, the followers of the "killer deck" school of Magic do when they fail. They blamed the deck. They sent me disappointed e-mail to complain about the deck's lack of performance!

I could do very little to help them. Their circumstances and environments were so different than mine. It seemed to me when I played the deck thaI played the deck that I always had the right tools to beat the decks I needed to beat.

Speaking of decks to beat, does anyone else remember when the Dojo was a site dedicated to archived tournament reports? A dedicated player had to really search to find those rare gems. Now we have top 8 decklists from hundreds of PTQs, cross-referenced and indexed by category and region. It reminds me of the punchline of a "Dilbert" cartoon: "Never has so little been measured so much."

All of these miraculous decklists come stamped, sealed, and delivered with the full power of insidious myth:

This is an amazing deck.

And at the top, in superfine microprint, the text we all ignore:

This is the random person who used this deck.

This seems to be missing the whole damn point.

I know guys who change from deck to deck every PTQ, searching for that magical mix of art-printed cardboard that will take them to the Pro Tour like a passenger an airplane. There's no real method to this madness, just random theoretical guesses and always the fuel for the fire: this idea that if they just find the right deck this time, they won't have to have any playing skill at all.

I remember that almost two years ago, somt almost two years ago, some pros would keep their playing skills sharp by bringing out sealed decks versus anyone's Type 2 deck. What was really alarming was how often they would win.

In that situation, there was no doubt: these pros were playing their decks. Their success was up to them. The deck was not playing itself. The deck did not come in a prepackaged box with a decklist and a chart detailing the average win percentages versus the dominant archetypes.

Brian Weissman was still playing The Deck long after most Type 1 players figured it was past its prime. His reasoning was that even though the deck itself might be archaic, and the cards in it outclassed, he could still win with it. Why could Brian still win? Because he knew his deck well. He didn't buy the hype that Magic is all about the deck you play.

Time and again, aspiring pros would sneer at him and spit out the same tired lines they learned from all their teenage aspiring-pro buddies. "That deck sucks!" "You'll lose to Zoo." "You'll lose to Necro."

And Brian would dutifully hand them a beating.

In this context, it's not hard to see why I find such purely theoretical arguments ridiculous. Sure, two Hymns and a pSure, two Hymns and a pump knight could wreck the day of an average player. An average player has built his copy of "The Deck" only because he heard it won a few tournaments. He thinks this magical "winningness" quality is going to transfer to him when he makes his first riffle shuffle and cuts.

This rising young player would then play. And lose. Because he doesn't understand the deck he holds in his hand. He taps out to counter a Hymn and has to swallow a Dark Ritualed Necropotence. He gets capped for his Fireballs and Mirror and forgets to win with the Braingeyser. He falls to any of a thousand scenarios of theoretically good play (sometimes you really do Disenchant a Necro) that just don't measure up to the actual situation.

And his "killer deck" will dissapoint him.

It seems like every night, I'm sitting on IRC and some ridiculous theoretical argument is raging. You know, the arguments that often involve fantasy matchups with perfect draws as proof of one deck's superiority over another. The most popular one recently has been Pox versus High Tide. Which deck wins?

Pox kills his hand and his land. But he has Disrupt. Your Duress wrecks Disrupt. He can still draw a Time Spiral. These arguments can last for hours, with each side championing the deck they're partial to, certain th partial to, certain that it can win the debate.

Theoretical arguments are good for one purpose: deckbuilding. They help you choose which cards and how many to stick into a prototype deck before you playtest the match.

Theory is not an adequate replacement for experience when choosing a deck to play at the PTQ tomorrow. You will be sorely disappointed if this is your approach.

Does Pox beat High Tide? The answer is YES and NO.

If everyone in your area is playing Dato's Tide deck from PT Rome, then don't let the theoretical arguments fool you. You have a great chance of beating High Tide with Pox. You have a great chance of beating it to a bloody pulp.

If everyone is playing a Tide deck like Eric Taylor's, Pox should be prepared for a tough fight.

So just do a little research, play a few games, iron out the weak spots. Pick your favorite deck and ignore the theorists and nay-sayers. I can't say enough good things about oversideboarding against the decks you fear the most. If you're good, and a little lucky, your opponent's mistakes will propel you into the top 8, whether you are playing the best deck in the format or the second best. And above all...

Be faithful to your deck.

St Stick with it! When I announced I was going to play Oath of Druids at a PTQ, a lot of my fellow Americans advised me against it. "You'll lose to Pox!" A valid concern for the United States metagame.

But I wasn't playing in the US, I was playing in France! Nobody played Pox there, and I knew it. In the PTQ I played, High Tide was (and still is) generally considered to be the best deck in all of Extended. At least for people who like to play Magic with their goldfish.

In my case, I had devoted too much time to testing and tuning the Oath deck - several months! I could switch at the last minute to a deck I hardly knew at all because everyone else said it was the "killer deck"... or I could play the deck I knew and adjust it. Never underestimate the power of the Surprise Factor. It's often why rogue decks succeed.

Even if the environment is against you, it's okay to play what you like. Consider your time spent playing the deck as an investment. Don't give up your investment every week for the next get rich quick scheme. Don't sell out at the last minute to the latest guaranteed "killer deck".

That time you invested is eventually going to win you matches that everyone else thinks you should lose. You'll beat decks you should never beat in a million years. You'll haveon years. You'll have an edge over all the other players who are playing a brand new "killer deck".

Many players are misleading themselves, poisoning their minds with too much theory and not enough hard experience. They're scouring the "Decks to Beat" and the top 8 decklists the night before a PTQ, and by the time the sun comes up they have a deck that they're sure will be a winner, why it beats mono red and jank and countersliver and it won in Chicago and...

We all too easily forget, when we're done doing the averages and adding the percentages, that those numbers aren't a deck's performance. They're the measure of a player's performance. With that deck.

The player is the most important factor in the player + deck equation.

Not vice-versa.