I’m probably going to lose a lot of readers with this one but that’s okay. Quite honestly, the fewer wing nuts reading my stuff, the better. Yes, a major rant is coming so hang onto your horses folks. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
I made the mistake of attending Magic the Gathering forums … something I didn’t do during my first 18 years of playing this game. I can see that it was the best thing for my sanity … something that’s all but gone now.
It amazes me at some of the misinformed nonsense that I see posted at forums. I won’t mention any names in particular. But if you’ve been attending these forums yourself, you know which ones they are. And it’s not the fault of the forum owners and administrators, though personally I would ban most of these people for life.
There just isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t read something like this.
“Counterspells are bad for the game.”
Or …
“Combo is dumb and shouldn’t be allowed.”
The number of times I have had to face-palm during the course of a day have made me wonder if I should just go back in my cave and ignore these idiots.
Or maybe I should try to educate them.
This is my attempt at the latter, ill advised as it probably is. Most people, when they have their minds made up, don’t change them … for anything. But what the heck, I’ll give this a shot.
Okay, so you don’t like control or combo. Great. Maybe you don’t even like aggro. I’ve seen posts on forums talking about how dumb this game has gotten because it’s all about turning creatures sideways. It’s hard to argue that when it comes to Standard, which is why I thank God for the eternal formats.
Regardless of what your stance is on control, combo or even aggro, this is why we need all three archetypes for this game to remain the quality game that it is.
You can thank rock, paper, scissors for that.
If you’re not familiar with this …
- Rock breaks scissors
- Scissors cuts paper
- Paper covers rock
In the Magic the Gathering universe …
- Aggro is rock
- Control is scissors
- Combo is paper
Why does this work?
Let’s take rock (aggro) and scissors (control).
Control is slow. It takes a long time to stabilize board position. It tries to do this via early counter magic and/or disruption, such as board wipes until it can drop its big win condition. The problem is, aggro is too fast for it. By the time control stabilizes, control is almost dead and it doesn’t take too long to finish it off. So generally speaking, aggro beats control.
However, aggro is not without its nemesis, which is combo (paper).
See, as fast as aggro is, combo can be even faster. While aggro is building up its army trying to bring combo down to 0 life, combo just needs to find a few pieces to “go off” and end the game before aggro can do those last few points of damage. A very fast combo deck can easily beat an aggro deck because aggro has no real way to stop it.
Ah, but that’s where control comes in.
See, control (scissors) cuts up combo (paper) because all control has to do is play a well placed counterspell and combo’s plans go up in flames. In fact, it is extremely difficult for a combo deck to beat a control deck.
So because Magic the Gathering has this built in checks and balances, no one archetype has an advantage overall. This makes for a rich and rewarding experience.
But what happens if we, say, remove control by taking away all counterspells? Well, combo then has nothing to worry about because all that’s left is aggro. When that happens, eventually, all the aggro players stop playing aggro and all we see are combo mirror matches all day long looking to see who can “go off” first. This makes for very non interactive Magic and a bad game.
Same thing with combo. If we totally remove it from the equation, which is what has happened in current standard, all you have left is aggro and control. And aggro is seriously winning this war. You hear many players complaining that Magic has turned into “turning dudes sideways.” In many ways, that’s what it is.
Surprisingly, control is putting up some decent numbers in this current standard, but aggro decks are still the dominant ones.
If you took away aggro, all that you’d end up with is control versus control because nobody would play combo. There would be no way to win.
So you see, we need all three basic archetypes for a healthy environment. In the eternal formats, we have all archetypes represented and, because of this, we have a healthy format in Vintage (though pretty much dead because of card availability), Legacy (dying slowly because of the same problem but not as severe) and Modern, which is probably the best format of the three. All three archetypes are viable and cost to enter isn’t off the charts.
Standard is slowly becoming the format of creature combat. It has taken that turn because it appeals to the new player and that’s where the money is for WotC. But that’s another subject for another time.
For now, please understand that in order for this game to remain the rich game that it is, doing away with one archetype is a bad idea, which is why when I hear people say things like “I hate counterspells” I want to smack them over the head.
Magic the Gathering didn’t last close to 20 years because it contained aspects that the new and uninformed player thinks are “unfun.” The game has lasted this long BECAUSE of those aspects. And hopefully, WotC will come to its senses and realize that if this game is going to survive another 20 years, it can’t turn into rock/scissors, rock/paper or paper/scissors.
You need it all to make Magic what it is.
To YOUR Magic the Gathering Enjoyment,
Steven “Land Boy” Wagenheim
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