Hello and welcome back to In General. In this series we talk about a vast array of topics relating, sometimes only loosely, to the game of Magic. Last week we discussed Advantage and several key measurements you can use to decide who has the advantage in a given game or matchup. That article can be found: Here! Today we will conclude our discussion of advantage in MtG by discussing two of the more complex theories: Interaction advantage and Mana Sum Theory.
Interaction Advantage:
Interaction is a word that gets tossed around quite a bit in coverage. Simply put, interaction is the name for using your cards to negate, nullify, circumvent, or overcome your opponents cards. Duress-ing your opponent's hand? Interactive. Countering an opposing spell? Interactive. Blocking and incoming attacker? Interactive. Interaction is the capability of your cards to do something meaningful about the opponent's cards. The person with more cards that can FAVORABLY interact with their opponent has the interaction advantage. To illustrate, let's talk about two examples:
Have you ever played a match where you went to side boarding and thought...'I have nothing good to bring in'? Even worse, have you been in the situation where you have so many dead cards to take out that you just don't have enough good cards to replace them? This is a telltale sign that you are at an interaction disadvantage.
Second scenario: Generic Burn deck vs. Generic Combo deck (think Modern Twin vs Mono Red Burn). These archetypal match-ups tend to play out as pure race scenarios. Because neither player has any ability to interact with the other, they are forced to simply win faster in order to win at all.
A simply way to quantify interaction advantage is to take each card in your deck, multiply the number of copies of that card by the number of cards that it interacts favorably against in your opponent's deck. If you sum up these values for all cards in a player's deck you will have what I call the Interaction Index, or I^2 value. The theoretical maximum is 3600 and the minimum is, of course, 0. The higher the number the more interactive your deck is.
There are some problems with using interaction as an advantage metric though. As I pointed out above, you can build purely non-interactive decks in MtG. Some are very strong in fact. These decks have an I^2 of close to zero, but are still very good. E.g. ANT in Legacy. Secondly, interaction is a highly reactive strategy element. There are many formats where simply having a strong proactive game plan is superior to trying to disrupt your opponent's strategy. E.g. Triple Theros Draft or Cube. Lastly, consider the nature of interactive cards, i.e. removal, counterspells, and disruption. They each only work at specific times. Thoughtseize won't interact with a Creature that is already in play. Having the broadest possible answers, and a good mix of different kinds of answers, is necessary to having a strong interactive deck, but that isn't any guarantee of victory.
Mana Sum Theory:
So far, most of the advantage metrics I have discussed break down when you try to use them on 'unfair' decks. Combo decks tend to use resources in an unconventional way; combining cards to generate more than the sum of their parts. Most combo decks though, still utilize the core mechanic of the game: using mana to cast spells. Finally we have a theory that can successfully measure advantage even among decks that aren't trying to win in the same way.
The mana sum is a measurement of how much mana you SPEND throughout the game. Not just how many lands you get into play, but how much mana actually gets used to DO SOMETHING. The idea that drives this theory is that most cards are balanced using their mana cost; meaning that each unit of mana has some value in the context of the game. It is a measurement of the power to produce effects. With no mana, or nothing to spend your mana on, you cannot affect the game state. This conclusively explains both flood and screw, which are difficult corner cases for other theories to evaluate.
Mana sum theory also elegantly accesses the idea of mana efficiency. Using ALL your mana on every turn is a very easy way to get ahead in a game. Think of an aggro deck's 'god draw'. It is hard to beat a deck that curves out perfectly because they are constantly doing the most they can to affect the board on every turn.
To evaluate who has the advantage in mana sum you simply need to add up all the mana that you have spent in the game and compare it to your opponents. You will be surprised how often the player who spends the most, wins the most.
And now, one final note. Despite the fact that mana sum theory is our most robust, most developed advantage theory, it still has a few problems, but they are somewhat niche. Free spells and effects that don't require mana (like tap abilities) are definitely useful in the game, but do not add to your mana sum. This can mislead you into thinking that your deck isn't doing as much as it really is. Also, Dredge. The perennial boogie man of the Legacy format, and Magic in general, Dredge wins easily by spending little or sometimes no mana. The mechanics of this deck are so unconventional that we really don't have a good way to describe it.
There is not a grand unified theory of advantage in Magic, but there is an abundance of good indicators you can use to assess who is ahead. I hope that this article has helped you learn about a few new ones so that you may grow in your ability to analyze the game. As always, leave any comments or questions below. I'll see you again next Sunday when we begin coverage of Conspiracy!
-GG
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