Grand Unified Theory - Philosophy of Fire

Michael Flores has struck a powerful blow recently for Magic theory, and I think it would be valuable to examine what he’s trying to say. The blow in question is an article he wrote called The Philosophy of Fire, and it’s vintage Flores. While the decks and strategies mentioned here predate the writing of what we decided to call the Grand Unified Theory, and many of them helped contribute to its development, these ideas can be viewed as an expansion of where I left off at the end of part five of that series. The topic at that point was a long term battle between a burn deck and a control deck trying to stop that burn over the long term, as an example of how to apply the relationships between resources. However, this was an abstracted basic model that has no direct modern application. There is far more you can do looking at life as a resource and trading it for others. Magic is all about trade-offs.

The Philosophy of Fire is all about changing the value of resources. Read Flores’ article first, it’s a great read. I want to take a closer look at the idea itself from the point of view of the larger GUT, and see more about the numbers that make it play out. I think it is best to start with a statement Flores makes: Shock is the baseline burn spell.

There are two reasons to play burn spells. Reason one is to kill creatures, reason two is to go to the head. From the point of view of advantage theory these are very different actions. When you burn a creature, you’re attempting to trade cards in hand (or another resource if the burn is not from a spell) in exchange for creatures, which translate into your opponents’ cards. Most of the time your real goal is to prevent a loss of tempo or create an advantage there, because your burn costs less than your opponents’ creature. These days, burn is very useful both for tempo and as a form of lineup by taking out key creatures. The biggest targets are Disciple of the Vault, Goblin Warchief and Goblin Sharpshooter. These are space bunnies. Space bunnies must die!1

Burn to the face is completely different, because now you’re trading your cards and mana for their life total. Most of the time, going to the face is a bad deal because your opponent will shrug it off and you’ll be down a card. Life is the resource that only matters when you’re about to run out of it, and taking your opponent down from 20 to 15 tends to be worth very little. Even very efficient burn spells to the face are horrible outside the right context. However, every point of burn makes every future point of burn more valuable unless other considerations get in the way, and that’s where The Philosophy of Fire comes in. By playing a critical mass of burn, you hope to make your burn valuable.

Shock is considered by Wizards R&D to be the baseline one mana burn spell; this much is certainly true. If you pay one mana what you get is two damage. If you only get one damage from a card like Spark Spray, you get something in return. In that case, it is cycling. If you get more than two damage under the right circumstances, such as you do with Electrostatic Bolt, you have to make a sacrifice. In this case, the card cannot go to the head. It is very hard to create interesting one mana burn spells, because cutting down to one damage cripples them and offering three damage makes them broken. Lightning Bolt was simply far out of line, and would be much farther out of line now. Back then it didn’t have enough friends to be as broken as it would be today.

For two mana you can get three real damage but just barely. Volcanic Hammer is the baseline here, but in most block situations your burn will end up being much worse. The reason for this is again that it is hard to give useful abilities to three damage burn spells, or even just instant status, without making them too powerful or imposing some ugly restriction – although in the two minutes I just spend searching for counterexamples I came up with a few ideas and added two to my future card file. I also noticed that it had such a spell already thanks to one of the set’s mechanics. You can also get a lot of extra damage in the right situation, in particular with Shrapnel Blast.

From there the effects get bigger, and the equation starts to become trading mana and a card for damage rather than the card being the primary consideration. I would be happy to write an endless series of gigantic articles on how Magic cards are costed and developed and looking at them at the micro level like that but I don’t want to bore everyone to tears so I’ll stop here. If you want to see such content, let the editors know! The important point here is that Shock is the baseline for a one mana spell but it is at the very bottom of the mana spectrum where its mana cost is trivial compared to the card. If your deck is all Shocks you run out of cards fast, the same way that decks in old wild formats did when they ran nothing but Lightning Bolts – expect that their opponents were far more likely to die before it happened because you needed seven to kill instead of ten.

Shock is not a card designed to go to the head, and neither are any of the variants on Shock that have come out. The only exception is Firebolt, and that is because its total mana cost is six so you’re able to get a decent total amount of burn out of it. Shock is good because for one mana you get to remove a problematic creature and you have the option to go to the head. Options are highly valuable. With Electrostatic Bolt, often its value is zero because your opponent will have nothing killable or nothing worth killing. Being able to do two damage to your opponent in those situations, or being able to go to the face late when two damage may have become valuable, goes a long way towards letting you put Shock into your deck. Life has variable value, so the option is worthy even if you rarely use it. However, Shock is a very bad spell for going to the face.

If your plan centers around sending Shock effects to the face it’s not a very good plan. You need ten of them to win you the game that way, and that’s ten cards that you’re not using for anything else. Even in the perfect scenario, you’ll need to draw first and win on turn six, which won’t win many games. Shock is far better at clearing a path or stopping your opponents’ attack while you use heavier burn spells, and then occasionally going to the face later. The other thing Shock is good at is mana efficiency. If you can plan your other spells such that you have no spare mana, then Shock becomes a fine burn spell again because cards are no longer your limiting factor.

One of the biggest problems with trying to implement The Philosophy of Fire is finding enough of those heavier burn spells that are efficient and the right size for the amount of time you’ll be given. The key is having a few very powerful spells that make up for the average size of your others, and then having enough solid cards to complete the mix. It is safe to model your plan of attack with solid cards like Volcanic Hammer if you have the stars like Pulse of the Forge. Pulse of the Forge is a perfect card for this type of deck, efficient on one casting and giving you the chance to get multiple oversize shots from a single card. With enough mana, you can potentially implement your entire game plan with that card alone. I did that a lot of times in playtesting for Kobe.

With that in mind, let’s look at a historical example of the principle in action:

This example was used by Flores. There isn’t a ton of burn in this deck, and it is forced to play with eight Shocks of various types to clear a path for its early attack. That is the true goal of those cards in this build, with the option to go to the head later as per usual. Flametongue Kavu might not seem like it fits, but it is so good at either clearing a path or just buying time or sometimes even giving you control by removing a creature and then trading off that it would be crazy not to play it. If your opponent’s control is in doubt, that’s more time for you to draw and cast your burn. This deck does espouse the Philosophy of Fire to a certain extent, but it is far from a pure model because this deck makes a very serious effort to do the bulk of its damage on the attack. This deck is unlikely to deal sixteen to twenty direct damage unless its opponent drops the ball.

The most important thing about this deck is playing a number of ways to do far more than two damage with one card. Urza’s Rage is a solid three damage, but Skizzik is five on its first attack and Ghitu Fire can do that much by the last turn. The last turn is exactly when it is to be cast, unless it is used early as a removal spell. Meanwhile, this deck has the tools to fight the good fight, prolonging it even if it is destined to lose it most of the time. The biggest decision a deck like this has to make is how much to put into the early fight for free damage and how much to concentrate on its endgame and burn. Most successful versions are hybrids that combine early drops with fast damage.

Even with good burn spells, it is very hard to assemble enough damage in time. You need to win on turns four and five to keep pace in a pure race, and that’s hard. Your advantage by dodging the battle over card advantage is to try and blank your opponent’s cards. If you have no creatures, then any removal spells they have don’t matter, and the same follows for artifacts or enchantments, but that’s not all. If you’re not trying to fight a war over the board or over card advantage, then any spell designed to help gain that advantage doesn’t matter either unless it hits your hand. Drawing cards still helps you win, but the point is often to get ahead after a series of card trades. If there are no trades, those spells no longer make sense. Your opponent is just wasting space and time.

The pure direct damage approach depends on getting enough blanking to compensate for the strategy’s inherent weakness. Your opponent will be creating continuous effects, you get one shots, so without compensation you are in deep trouble. The ideal is to combine that with one drops, because they tend to do their fair share of quick damage and then serve as a distraction, especially during sideboarding. Any cards beyond what your opponent needs to deal with those cards will still be blanked. This strategy requires you to get a faster start than your opponents, because your plan is to empty your hand for the win before they can use their cards over several turns. Now look at what a modern red deck has to do in terms of speed.

That was his initial version, and for now I’m going to look at it because the splash damage on artifacts is a different discussion. I think the term is better if you name the victim and then if necessary say why it happened then to say splash damage on Oxidize. Oxidize isn’t taking any damage, thank you very much. In many cases it’s still Naturalize for some odd reason. But that’s just a question of terminology. The important thing here is to realize that while this deck can launch haste attacks and has a few worthy burn spells, in particular Shrapnel Blast and Pulse of the Forge, the rest of the deck offers neither quick attacks or the option to go to the head for the extra damage you need. You’re not taking enough advantage of the increased value of your opponents’ life total, and you’re not getting off to a fast start. Instead, you’re trying to stabilize and then win with one shot effects. That’s not a good plan.

If anything, this deck is an attempt to kill off your opponents’ attack with mass removal and win with large men. There are names for such decks, like Big Red, but they don’t really subscribe to The Philosophy of Fire. Adrian Sullivan playing with Landslides was doing it for real: I never felt like he could do thirty damage to me or take control, just that he often managed to finish me off. Looking at Flores’ pet deck, which he rejected after realizing what it was, I see a deck that will often do thirty or forty damage if it has to and hardly blink.

There’s a difference between Big Red, which is the deck type that won Kobe, and a true Fire deck. A Fire deck looks like a bunch of horrendously bad cards because that’s what it is. The reason the cards can win is that they work together to invalidate your opponents’ strategy and increase each others’ value. Most burn decks are actually just straightforward removal decks that become burn decks against creatureless opponents. Fire decks are only viable with the right cards, and right now those cards aren’t out there in Standard, but they could exist in Extended (or Vintage) and it is an idea whose time will surely return at some point.

1. This comes from a video game title I once read in a magazine of that name.

• Zvi Mowshowitz