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Main » Articles » The Problem with Power Creep

The Problem with Power Creep

Chingsung Chang
Posted on January 4, 2011
 Reddit

I'm sure many of you are familiar with the term "power creep." Magic has been undergoing a steady "power creep" ever since the release of Ravnica. I feel like it's been good for Magic as a whole for a variety of reasons, but it has one major disadvantage – it's killing Standard.

Power creep has been great for kitchen table Magic and Eternal formats. As creatures and spells have gotten more powerful, the playable range of cards for Eternal formats has been greatly expanded. Go look at any top Legacy deck list and you will see a huge portion of the cards come from the "after Ravnica" sets. Sure, the staples are earlier – Brainstorm, Force of Will, dual lands, Onslaught fetches, etc – however, a large number of role players, especially creatures, are newer cards.

This is because Wizards has been pushing the power level of creatures in general, and mid-range creatures in particular. Three, four, and five drops have gotten much stronger over the past few years. As a whole, this has strengthened the game, but it has had a negative impact on the balance of Standard for one major reason – the disappearance of aggro.

It's not that aggro decks are not played, but that they're not winning. Their match-ups are bad across the board and they don't have the sideboard tools to deal with what opposing decks bring in. Cards like Kor Firewalker, Baneslayer Angel, and Wurmcoil Engine, while great for mid-range decks, are simply too effective against traditional aggressive strategies.

Why is this a problem for formats, in particular, Standard (although it's showing up to some degree in Extended)? The answer is simple – balance. Flores divided a game of Magic into three Stages. Most mid-range and control decks interact in Stage 2 and Stage 3. This is exactly the areas where power creep pushes. Stage 2 and Stage 3 spells have gotten stronger, when they were already stronger than their Stage 1 counterparts. The problem is that the power level of Stage 2 and 3 cards have reached a point where Stage 1 cards are no longer good enough.

The best formats contain methods of interacting viably in all three stages. Legacy is such an awesome format because interactions begin immediately. Aggro decks come blazing out of the gate, combo decks set up and go off, control decks begin to jockey for position, even prison decks begin interacting with the game state immediately. Force of Will is such a lynchpin of the format because it allows the slower, blue-based control decks to interact with the stack in those critical first two turns.

The problem is that the combination of mid-range creatures and removal have gotten so powerful that it's difficult for any aggressive strategy to overcome the hill they have to climb. Spells like Path to Exile, Doom Blade, Condemn, Lightning Bolt, and Pyroclasm are now complimented by the likes of Baneslayer Angel, Gideon Jura, Kitchen Finks, Bloodbraid Elf, and Sprouting Thrinax. The hill is getting too big, which makes Stage 1 strategies effectively disappear.

What about other ways of interacting in Stage 1? Unfortunately, that isn't really possible. There are only two types of decks that interact in Stage 1 – aggro and fast combo. Wizards has made its stance on fast combo clear, essentially leaving only aggro decks to interact in those first few turns of the game. Since the hill is getting too big for aggro decks, Stage 1 interactions are just disappearing, leaving inbred formats that revolve around specific, overpowered cards. Jace, Bitterblossom, and Bloodbraid Elf are three glaring examples of what the lack of a Stage 1 presence does to formats.

But how does a Stage 1 presence help against these? The answer is simple – a clock. Stage 1 decks are designed to win, and win quickly. They don't have a long game, and thus are not really equipped to battle in Stage 2, and definitely not equipped to do any sort of damage in Stage 3. What they do provide is a clock that prevents other decks from dilly-dallying, spending too much time "setting up."

Stage 1 decks, because they are so brutally efficient and quick, force interaction. When they are a relevant part of the format they force opponents to play defensive spells that interact with the board in those early turns. By forcing decks to have the capability of being active in the first few turns the exert natural counter-pressure to the dominance of individual cards, because they can simply kill you before you set up. This "clock" is very important to the health of formats.

Why is this clock so important? Because it removes inbred metagames. Inbred metagames devolve into a system of trumps. You bring your trump and I try to bring a bigger trump. For example, you bring Bloodbraid Elf, I bring Cruel Ultimatum. The methodology for beating powerful cards is, in general, to play more powerful cards. At some point this circles back around to tempo as a strategy, but that occurs in Stage 2, and not Stage 1. This means that strict library manipulation like Preordain goes up in value, because it's important to hit your "big" spells in order to fight your opponent's big spells.

Stage 1 decks approach this problem from a different perspective. They try to beat you before you can set up, essentially relying on you not having it. The optimal strategy for stage 1 decks is often to lose to certain cards when they are played at the optimal moment. Cards like Circle of Protection: Red and Kor Firewalker should often be ignored during deck construction, because they are going to beat you anyway when they come down early.

Why is this approach important to have on a design level? The answer is simple – tension. This is the element that makes Magic formats interesting, and it has its roots in a very simple concept – every card choice must have an associated cost and benefit. This has to be true for the obvious (running at least 1 land is probably wise), as well as the excruciating (do I run the fourth Spell Pierce or the first Deprive).

Stage 1 interactions put pressure on two types of spells – ramp and library manipulation. These cards are frequently cheap cards that are played early, but do not affect the board. Ramp spells obviously seek to develop mana and allow for bigger spells to be cast, and library manipulation sets up the next few draws for the player. Both of these spells have one weakness in common – time. They are effectively time investments. Spend some time now (your current turn), and hopefully recover it later by being able to either cast spells faster (ramp) or have better draw quality (library manipulation).

Stage 1 decks are the only decks that pressure time in a genuine fashion. By forcing interaction they will often not give the opposing player the time to play these spells, and thus gives them a real cost. But time pressure can also work against big spell decks as well. Big spell decks often need time to set up and find their big spells, and by giving them less time to do so you create a stress that the deck has to respond to.

The recent rise and fall of BR Vampires is a great example of this. BR Vampires is not a good deck. The reason it performed well for such a short period of time was that the format was vastly under-prepared for any sort of aggressive strategy, so Vampires latched onto the hole and had success at a few tournaments. It went away extremely quickly as well because it's very easy for the format to handle the strategy, and the other major decks only needed to make subtle adjustments to solve the problem.

This is the entire story of aggro in modern formats. It only appears when formats are hugely under-prepared for it, and thus doesn't really exert any sort of stress on the format. The clock is broken. Decks don't have to expend energy to be prepared for aggro decks. The natural spells they would play to battle in Stage 2 and Stage 3 already make them strong against Stage 1 strategies. The power creep has essentially pushed aggro decks off of the map.

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Goblin Maniac

Creature - Goblin Berserker

Whenever Goblin Maniac is dealt damage, it deals that much damage to you.

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As proof of this I'm running a little experiment. I've constructed a hypothetical Deadguy Red deck that is probably stronger than anything Wizards would assume is good for the health of Standard. There is one "made-up" card. Here are the deck list and the fictional card.

"Experimental Mono-red"

"The opposition - RUG (Michael Jacob)"

Changes:

Sideboard: -1 Tumble Magnet, +1 Pyroclasm

"UB Control (Matignon)"

Changes

None

"UW Control (Aintrazi)"

Changes

Maindeck: -1 Spell Pierce, -1 Jace Beleren, -2 Plains, +1 Deprive, +1 Baneslayer Angel, +2 Kabira Crossroads

"Valakut (Gerry Thompson)"

Changes

Maindeck: -1 Explore, +1 Pyroclasm

Sideboard: -1 Pyroclasm, +1 Obstinate Baloth

As you can see I have made extremely minor changes to the stock lists. In the case of Aintrazi's list (which is 4 cards different), three of the four cards are changes I would make anyway from my own personal experience with UW Control. I believe Kabira Crossroads to be superior to Plains in many situations, and I like 1 or 2 Deprive maindeck regardless (the logical spell to cut seemed to be a single Spell Pierce). Thus the only adjustment I made for this experiment was -1 Jace Beleren, +1 Baneslayer Angel.

I predict that my hypothetical mono-red deck will not really do any sort of damage to this gauntlet. While it will have some success game 1, I don't see that success carrying over to disparate match-win percentages. I will test games pre and post-sideboarded (10 games each) to showcase this.

Now I'll go through the match-ups individually and tell you what I see before I run the experiment.

RUG versus Mono-red

This is exactly the type of deck Mono-red is designed to stomp. RUG plays a bunch of spells that do nothing in the early game – Preordain, Explore, Spreading Seas – alongside a bunch of four and six drops. Mono-red should have no trouble dispatching RUG pre-board.

Post-sideboard RUG brings in Pyroclasm, which is pretty much the stone cold nuts against mono-red (other stuff comes in too, but it will impact the match-up far less than Pyroclasm). Mono-red will bring in some tempo-oriented cards, but as a whole RUG's sideboard will be much more effective. It gets to remove some of the do-nothing spells also, which raises its defensive profile early in the game. I expect RUG to have a small advantage post-sideboard, as Inferno Titan is essentially unbeatable.

Predictions

  • Pre-board: 2-8 (maybe even 1-9)

  • Post-board: 6-4

UW Control versus Mono-red

UW Control will stomp mono-red. The combination of Wall of Omens, removal, and Baneslayer Angel will simply be too much for the mono-red deck to overcome. UW will lose to Mono-red's most explosive draws when they are backed by Fireblast, but I can't see it losing under conditions less ideal than that.

After sideboarding the situation will remain much the same, as UW gets to overload on cards that are good against mono-red. The land destruction package will prove annoying (UW will have to be more careful keeping land-light hands), but as a whole I don't think it will make much of a difference.

Predictions

  • Pre-board: 7-3

  • Post-board: 7-3

UB Control versus Mono-red

I foresee a huge swing in this match-up. Grave Titan is a very effective defensive spell, but UB has no way of recovering lost life (like Baneslayer), so it will have to be very careful protecting its life total in the early game. Game 1 this will be extremely difficult, but games 2 and three it will be much easier since UB will overload on removal. Disfigure in particular will be extremely important in this match-up.

Mono-red's land destruction will prove to be effective in this match-up, but the sheer quantity of cheap removal is going to overwhelm the deck, and Mono-red's burn will be taxed quite a bit more post-board. This will prove to be to the aggro deck's detriment, and UB will have a significant advantage post-board, making up for its losing pre-board status.

Predictions

  • Pre-board: 2-8

  • Post-board: 7-3

Valakut versus Mono-red

Mono-red is supposed to have the advantage here, but there is one wrench in that – Pyroclasm. Pyroclasm is worth two or three games just by itself; it's just that good in this match-up. The maindeck Pyroclasms will go a long way toward making this a favorable match-up for Valakut.

Valakut will bring in Obstinate Baloth and Lightning Bolt, supplementing its existing suite of big creatures and the namesake card. Mono-red has no real way of dealing with Baloth, and will be hard-pressed to overcome the dual threat of Baloth + Pyroclasm post-board. Pre-board should be competitive, but post-board will be a slaughter.

Predictions

  • Pre-board: 4-6

  • Post-board: 7-3

As you can see from my predictions, Mono-red does not really have any sort of advantage against this field, which is designed for a format without an aggro deck. The natural pressures of our current Stage 2/Stage 3 oriented format have pre-prepared existing decks for a typical Stage 1 strategy.

Next week – the results

Chingsung Chang

Conelead most everywhere and on MTGO

Khan32k5@gmail.com

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