How Abstract Can I Reasonably Get?

So this is going to be a bit of a stretch, we're gonna talk about basketball. Specifically, the debate about who the best NBA basketball player ever is (or was). I promise I will try to tie it all together with actual important things at the end, I do not promise that you'll understand or that it'll even make that much sense.

One of the things you hear a lot about if you listen to sports radio or read Reddit threads in sports subreddits are arguments about which player is the best player of all time in that sport. In the NBA, which is the sports league I follow the closest, the most widely accepted theory is that Michael Jordan is the best player ever. However it's not set in stone, and people's valuation is changing all the time, not only because new players are performing at a high level, but because we are learning more about the game and what attributes most closely align with success.

Basketball is an interesting game with an interesting history. In its beginning, just like in any game, players and coaches just simply weren't that good. The best players were the ones who had obvious physical traits that stood out above everyone else. Wilt Chamberlain was not only the tallest and biggest player of early basketball, he was also supremely athletic for his size and was completely dominant. He's another player in the argument for best ever. However, he was often beaten out, on the court and in forum posts, by Bill Russell, a player who was not quite as physically gifted but also pretty damn gifted and played his role very well on better teams than Chamberlain.Soon after the Chamberlain/Russell years, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the NBA's next best player ever argument player came into prominence. He was probably the best player of the 1970s, and he holds the record for most lifetime points scored by a player.

However, in the 1980s, the NBA made a huge rule change and allowed for the 3-point shot. This led to a pretty significant change in the way teams played, since outside shooting was valued higher than inside shots close to the basket. It took a long time for teams to relearn their strategies and account for this change, which is still ongoing today and a topic of much debate. The 80s were dominated by two players - Larry Bird and Magic Johnson - who unlike the best players of the 60s and 70s, were not huge players that used size and strength to dominate inside close to the basket. They were players who were known for their savvy passing, acute knowledge of the game and creativity, and their effectiveness at playing multiple roles for the same team. The game had opened up much more, allowing more strategies to be effective than "pass to the biggest dude."

The 1990s were all about Michael Jordan. Jordan was different than Bird or Magic, since he was not as well-rounded of a player, but his scoring abilities were just off the chart. He was the best player on the team that won 6 of the 10 championships of the '90s, despite only being in the league for 8 of them, and was the highest scoring player almost every year.

Since the turn of the century, the NBA has had a resurgence of really awesome players. Kobe Bryant was the best of the 2000s, but since 2010 it's been all LeBron James. Kobe played a game that was extremely similar to Jordan's, not in just having a similar skill set, but similar tendencies (for better or worse). LeBron is more of a combination between Jordan and Magic Johnson's style back from the 80s, what he lacks in shooting ability (not that you would consider him 'bad') he makes up for in passing and being a facilitator for his teammates. LeBron's teams have made it to the NBA Finals each year for the past 8 years, and smart money has them making their 9th this year.

The argument lately has been this: Has LeBron James passed Michael Jordan as the best player of all time? There's so much to unpack here.

One, is that simply, it's impossible to just consider Michael Jordan's skills and say "Would LeBron's team be better or worse if LeBron left the team and Jordan was subbed in." There are so many variables. LeBron plays a different position, he also is expected to do different things within the team, outside of his position, and to make it more difficult, he played 20 years ago against completely different teams employing completely different strategies. The same is true the other way around, would LeBron continue to have success on Michael Jordan's teams of the 90s? Impossible to tell. But, we can guess.

Additionally, how sure are we that Jordan is the best player ever in the first place? We have to run through these same steps for each player. He played in a much different time than Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell, back when Jordan's skills would have been less useful (not bad, still probably very good, buy maybe less useful). Chamberlain's scoring statistics in particular are insanely gaudy, more impressive even than Jordan's from the 90s, and Russell has 11 championship rings, 5 more than Jordan, so they both certainly have arguments.

And, are we sure that LeBron is even the current player whose argument is the most valid here? The obvious answer here is yes, since if you've been a basketball fan the last 14 years, you know he's been completely dominant, but there are some others who are playing currently who have a shot of eclipsing some of the all-time greats. James Harden and Steph Curry are a couple of players who are really bringing us into the next step in evolution of the game, where teams aggressively attempt 3 point shots and try and be as efficient as possible. It's too early to say that either of them are arguably the best player ever, like you can with LeBron, but it's not too far away.

So in the end, we have to make a judgement for ourselves. Of course, there's nothing riding on your decision, and watching basketball is purely for entertainment, so it's just a huge fandom-wide 60-year-long though experiment. It's okay if your opinion is different than someone else's, but we're doing it wrong if we aren't critically thinking.

Magic time: A long time ago, I was discussing a deck with a friend, a Jund midrange deck for Innistrad Block Constructed. We were discussing the merits of removing the red mana from the deck, and I was against it. I mentioned that "you're going to win more with Huntmaster in your deck than with Bloodline Keeper." That comment was met harshly. Magic cards do not exist in a vacuum, and it's impossible to say unequivocally that one card is better than another. They not only have different roles within their decks, but the format they are in is constantly in flux and the opponents and decks they play and cards within those decks are anyone's guess. Huntmaster of the Fells may look like a better card, and might be more popular, but it doesn't mean that Bloodline Keeper isn't good, or potentially even better given the right set of circumstances.

Here's the thing: at the end of the day, it's up to the player to just make their best guess. You playtest, you theorycraft, you think about all the matchups you expect to see and how often, and then you make a decision. You have to think critically, and despite that it's impossible to know what the correct answer is, there is actually a correct answer. This is especially true in midrange decks, where the strength of the deck comes from individually strong cards. Bill Russell, Michael Jordan, and LeBron James might not mesh the best on a basketball court, but in a midrange deck in Magic, they'd be amazing, since any one of them is capable of taking over the game, just like Tarmogoyf, Dark Confidant, and Scavenging Ooze are all awesome despite Jund not being built with them exactly in mind.

Rudy Gay is a current NBA player who plays a similar style to Michael Jordan. He's way, way worse, but still pretty good. Flinthoof Boar is an awesome Magic card, but we don't play it in Modern Jund when Tarmogoyf is legal, just like you wouldn't want Rudy Gay on your team when you can play Michael Jordan. We have to think critically and make good card choices for our decks.

Anyways, this is why I think this argument is important, and maybe if basketball isn't really your thing, then how about Modern. What's the best card in the format? And why? And what would have to change to make the second best card become the best card? And what cards that are coming out soon have the potential to shake things up on the list of best cards? We have to participate in these thought experiments because we don't have infinite testing time to figure it out for sure, so we take our experience and make our best guess. Trust your intuition, be welcome to being proven wrong, and don't disregard anyone else's ideas until you've truly considered them.

As for my own opinions (as we completely dive into basketball nerdland): I'd say LeBron James is actually the best ever, but it's closer to me than it might be to some LeBron fans. Jordan was such an exceptional shooter that his inability or unwillingness to facilitate for anyone else was mitigated by his isolation game. I think that people also overlook just how fast Jordan was. He got a ton of transition buckets that others wouldn't, and he was able to get open all the time because people couldn't keep up with him. All that being said, LeBron isn't only able to play all five positions on offense and defense, he's usually the best player on the court at those five positions. He has no weaknesses, he just has a couple of attributes that he's not legendary in. LeBron James is truly Tarmogoyf. He's always the smartest player on the court. He's like soccer legend Messi if Messi was built like a rhinocerous. Maybe a Siege Rhino? I would rank the top 10 players ever as follows:

1) LeBron James
2) Michael Jordan
3) Wilt Chamberlain
4) Bill Russell
5) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
6) Larry Bird
7) Kobe Bryant
8) Magic Johnson
9) Tim Duncan
10) Shaquille O'Neal

I think in three years, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant are both on this list, and James Harden has a real shot at it too. Ben Simmons in 15 years? Certainly possible, but that's a long ways away.

Anyways, hopefully there was enough Magic content in this basketball blog post to make it worth your while, and even if you couldn't follow along with all the physical-sports mumbo jumbo, hopefully you could still understand the lesson behind it. Thanks for reading, and keep checking in as I transition from 7 foot tall people back to 3.5 inch tall cardboard.

Believing in Yourself, And Other Jund Mirror Details

So, as you might know by now, I like me a Jund deck. I've been playing it almost exclusively for as long as Modern has existed. It's had its ups and downs. Beginning when it was the best deck in the format (in my humble opinion), to when it was way too good, to some years of mediocrity, even being thought of as unplayable, and now, for the first time in a long time, it's back at the forefront of the format. It's been quite a journey, and it isn't likely to stop any time soon.

I've even played Jund whenever I got the chance in other formats as well, most notably Standard, with good ol' Bloodbraid into Sprouting Thrinax from the old days, and Farseek into Thragtusk in the less old days. I even tried to attack the Pack Rat/Sphinx's Revelation format with discard, cheap removal, and medium size creatures, and it kinda worked. You won't catch me casting a lot of Brainstorms in Legacy, I'm more likely going to be Thoughtseizing and Tarmogoyfing. I don't always play red, black, and green, but it's definitely a strategy I gravitate towards, which I think is a good way to structure your game.

Since Bloodbraid Elf returned to the format, there's been quite a bit of digital ink spilled about how to build and play the deck as of late. As we are wont to do as Magic players, I gobble up pretty much every article written about my favorite deck.

Usually I really take to heart the things I read, and getting new perspectives is always awesome for something you've been working on for so long and are continuing to work on. Getting someone else's opinion makes you re-examine your own, and re-examination of the truths you hold is important, not just in Magic, but in life. Are the reasons you thought A plus B equal C still true? New data might make you rethink certain things, which of course both ask and answer more questions, ad infinitum.

I bring this up because I read an article yesterday by a very successful Magic pro, Joel Larsson, over on ChannelFireball. It was on my favorite subject, the Jund Mirror Match. He's a former Pro Tour champion, has an additional Top 8, multiple Grand Prix Top 8s, and I looked all of this information up on his Wikipedia article, because homey has his own Wikipedia article, which is probably the biggest accomplishment of them all. Plus, he's Swedish Kibler. I don't need to tell you that, as far as success in Magic, he's got a lot more than you or me.

I couldn't help walking away from the article thinking to myself that, for the most part, he was wrong.

What's really cool about Magic, and it's been this way for a long time now, is that lots of the best and most famous players in the world write articles every week describing their though processes and share their expertise with all the rest of us. It's fantastic. Magic is such a deep game that they can give away their secrets without damaging their place in the game's royalty. Joel let everyone in on his findings for one of the most important facets of the Modern format today, which is, when you think about it, really really cool.

What Joel says is that, contrary to what a lot of people have believed for years, taking out your Inquisitions and Thoughtseizes after sideboard is not the best way to win the mirror. His thinking is that the cards in your sideboard, most notably Fulminator Mage (if you play it), don't do enough work in the mirror match to warrant taking out discard spells to help you navigate the early turns. The late game downside of the point-discard isn't enough to warrant their exclusion, since they help you avoid being buried by early game Dark Confidants and Planeswalkers. In fact, Joel says to leave in the Inquisition of Kozileks, since the Thoughtseizes are the worse of the discard spells due to the life loss.

Now, since the beginning of time, it's always been the rule of the Jund mirror match that you board out your discard spells. In fact, when an opponent opens on Inquisition of Kozilek for game two of a Jund mirror, I am ecstatic. When the entirety of the format was Jund on Jund on Jund, taking out the discard was a crucial trick of the mirror that the successful midrange players knew about and took to the top tables. Joel's mirror match plan throw a huge wrench in that plan.

So the question becomes: Do I stick with my gut, or do I accept this new opinion as truth? Well, let's take a look.

Since Bloodbraid Elf was unbanned, do the discard spells get better or worse in the mirror? For one, you can take a Bloodbraid Elf with a Thoughtseize, which is pretty crucial. The average converted mana cost of the deck also has gone up, so it's more likely your opponent has a valid Inquisition or Thoughtseize target, since they won't be able to deploy all their spells as fast as before. As for reasons why it might be worse, you have a new card advantage source in Bloodbraid Elf that can catch you up on cards or act as an additional removal spell for a Dark Confidant before it spirals out of control. Additionally, the deck gets more aggressive with Bloodbraid Elf in the mix, which means your life total is less safe, mitigating the power of Dark Confidant. So, to me that seems like the unanswered Bob scenario is less dangerous than it was in the pre-Bloodbraid days. Additionally, Bloodbraid herself makes having discard spells in the deck post-board even worse, since in those times when you are really hoping for a good cascade, you are more likely to blank on an Inquisition when your opponent is empty-handed. Even when they're not empty handed, you still cascaded into a 1-mana spell, which is as bad of a cascade as you can have.

I want to stress that none of what I'm writing is an indictment of Joel Larsson, his ability, or even of his article or his strategy. Magic is a vast ocean of different opinions, and extremely rarely are there going to be hard and fast rules that you absolutely need to follow. People are always going to have different play styles, different valuations for cards and decks and archetypes, and just different goals in general, and Magic is a big enough game that you can tune the philosophies you follow to yourself and be successful. Also, having an extra opinion in your arsenal of data points should always be welcome, and the reason for that is this: you never have to follow the advice you receive.

If you're a notorious Burn player in all formats and Jon Finkel writes an article about how you should board Monastery Swiftspear out in the mirror match, that might shake up your foundations of the way you thought the matchup works, maybe even how Magic works. Think about it, but don't be convinced too easily. You are an expert, too. You've gotta believe in yourself, since at the end of the day, your experiences and the knowledge you've gained over time are just as worthy as anyone else's. If you feel like the author is wrong, note what they said, but don't follow their advice. If you feel convinced, then change your methods. If you are somewhere in between, then practice what they said and come to your own solid conclusion.

Joel Larsson is a super-duper pro, Pro Tour Champ, and incredibly handsome, so it's a tough sell to make to myself to not follow his advice. But I've just gotta remember, I've had a bunch of experience and Top-whatevers and won money playing and winning Jund mirrors, and they even used to call me Vermont Kibler (no they didn't), so my opinions are also pretty valid when it comes to this subject. I'm sure that you can find a subject in Magic, be it a format or matchup or deck or even a single card, where you can feel the same way.

I think that one thing that helps drive this home is when, once in a while, pro players on Twitter will have an argument about a decklist or a sideboard plan or something. Recently, some of the world's best were having at each other about whether or not to sideboard out Rogue Refiner in the Temur Energy mirror (which seems patently insane to me, but okay). The two sides of the argument were filled by thousands of pro points and tons of credibilty, and they could not convince each other of changing their ways, so they each decided that they were gonna do what they wanted to. Almost no opinion is a hard and fast rule in Magic, even at the very highest level of the game. It's part of what makes it great.

So remember that moving forward, as I'm sure you'll run into the same situation I found myself in after I read Joel's article. It's good to re-think your stances, it's good to get a smattering of differing opinions, but remember that the person shuffling up and casting the spells is going to be you in the end, and that your opinion is always going to be the most important. And board out your damn discard spells.

Thanks for reading!

Damping Sphere Quick Notes

Straight off the presses of the leaked Dominaria documents comes a totally sick new sideboard card that punishes the bullshit in Modern.

This mockup comes from the good folks at MythicSpoiler. Pretty obvious card, but kinda a lot to unpack here.

First: Hoses Tron. Better than Blood Moon against Tron because it comes down a turn earlier and doesn't screw up your own lands. Better than Fulminator because it can come down a turn earlier, beating them on the draw, and they can't just beat it with redundant Tron pieces. It's not strictly better, since it is vulnerable to artifact hate, but Jund runs discard spells so we're at least a little protected there.

I like the design of this card a lot for how it attacks Tron. Similarly to Blood Sun, it beats half of the big mana deck problems, but doesn't do anything to the other half, since Valakut is fine under this. It also hoses Amulet, which is nice.

Second: Hoses Storm. I don't think it's worth bringing this in for anything other than Storm just for the second half of the text box. However, Storm really takes a hit from this, since not only do they kinda sorta have to respect your fair game of creature removal, discard, and good threats, but now there is a lock piece they have to worry about that they just cannot win through. It adds another element to what they have to do to win, find a Wipe Away or Echoing Truth, then bounce this thing and have enough gas to go off the next turn before dying to your Goyfs.

Damping Sphere is pretty surgical in its design to hit just those two decks. I can't imagine that bringing this in to fight Snapcaster Mage or something is worthwhile, similarly to Grafdigger's Cage just to Ambush Viperize their Thiagos. And it's cool that it's just an artifact, which pretty much any deck can deal with if they're ready.

What this does, though, is completely redesign how we are going to build our sideboards. For instance, here's the sideboard of my current Jund deck:

2 Crumble to Dust
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Blightning
2 Shadow Guildmage
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Duress
1 Jund Charm
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Thragtusk
1 Obstinate Baloth

So a little off the beaten path, sure, but it covers a whole swath of Modern decks pretty well. Now, since we have Damping Sphere, we not only get to upgrade Crumble to Dust, we get to use it against Storm, and maybe the Storm cards get reallocated elsewhere, and of course when we do that, we can shake up some more things to improve more matchups overall.

Start by taking out 1 Duress and 2 Crumble to Dust for 3 Damping Sphere. Storm and Tron matchups are starting to look real good, maybe we don't need this Jund Charm or one of these Ancient Grudges anymore, let's cut those and add 2 Back to Nature because Bogles pisses me off. Now all of a sudden, not only did our Tron and Storm matchups get an upgrade, but so did our Bogles matchups.
This is the power of overlapping sideboard cards. If Grafdigger's Cage beats Dredge 80% of the time and Collected Company 60% of the time, it's probably better to play 2 Grafdigger's cage than 1 Leyline of the Void and one, uh, I dunno, Perish or something. You increase the odds of drawing your bomb sideboard cards, and you also increase the number of decks you are packing heat for.

Of course, you also have to worry about what cards are in your maindeck that you want to take out. You might need to board out a lot of cards in matchups that make your removal dead, like Control decks, Bogles, or Tron. These broad range cards help make up for that, too, which is why I like something like Blightning. It looks pretty out of place, but its versatility lends itself to a lot of matchups, even if it isn't a knockout blow like some of the other cards here. But, I bet if I really take a hard look at my 60 and the format as a whole, I can come up with something even better.

Anyways, thanks for reading, just wanted to get the ol' Damping Sphere on everyone's radar. I might write a whole post at some point explaining my Jund sideboard theories. Keep an eye out for that, in the meantime, here's what I would have for a sideboard starting as soon as Dominaria is released:

3 Damping Sphere
2 Fracturing Gust
1 Shadow Guildmage
1 Grim Lavamancer
2 Obstinate Baloth
1 Huntmaster of the Fells
2 Blightning
1 Thoughtseize
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Bontu's Last Reckoning

Legacy Open and Looking Forward

This weekend was the Legacy Open in Worcester. Legacy is not my best format. I've played in Legacy in tournaments something like six or seven times in my life. I've been working on the same list for most of those tournaments, basically just a deck that's got Dark Confidant, Tarmogoyf, and Deathrite Shaman along with whatever else. I won't spell out the list I played, but basically it was Green/Black midrange with a little white for Stoneforge Mystic and Swords to Plowshares. I also added a small Green Sun's Zenith package to try and speed up the deck a little bit.

One of the advantages I try to exploit with this deck, or this style of deck, is its ability to use basic lands and not get roasted by Delver's mana denial plans. We have a pretty strong late game with Bobs and Goyfs and Stoneforges if we can get there.

I went 5-4 in the Open. My losses coming to Czech Control with Punishing Fire, Lands, Grixis Delver, and Turbo Depths. The loss to the Czech deck was not surprising to me, and Lands I think is a fine matchup but you can lose easily to their fast starts, and Turbo Depths just had two god draws. The Grixis loss was a little disconcerting to me though, and I lost a lot to it in the light amount of testing I did before the tournament as well.

I think that moving forward, I am going to cut the white splash. I think it's unnecessary. Basic lands are so powerful and the Legacy card pool is so vast that there are lots of answers to any problem you might be having in any color. I am losing more to my mana than I am winning because Stoneforge and Swords to Plowshares are such upgrades over whatever else I'd play if I stayed in two colors. Legacy is a strange place. People are trying to exploit your decks' inconsistencies, even the intrinsic inconsistencies of Magic's rules, and making your deck more consistent makes it more powerful, in this weird opposite day way as opposed to the other formats of Magic.

At my next Legacy event, I think I'll play something like this:

4 Dark Confidant
4 Deathrite Shaman
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Scavenging Ooze
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Tireless Tracker

2 Fatal Push
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Dismember
3 Liliana of the Veil
4 Thoughtseize
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Hymn to Tourach
3 Green Sun's Zenith

4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Marsh Flats
1 Polluted Delta
4 Swamp
2 Forest
2 Bayou
1 Scrubland
4 Wasteland
3 Windswept Heath

Sideboard
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Phyrexian Arena
2 Bitterblossom
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Golgari Charm
2 Gerrard's Verdict
1 Toxic Deluge

Not exactly sure about the sideboard of course, but I think this is where I'd want to be at my next tournament. The white sideboard options are pretty good, but the deck is set up so you never need white mana against decks that have Wasteland, Stifle, or Blood Moon.

The next day I wasn't feeling great, so I didn't play in the Modern Classic. Instead I played in a much more casual Modern Challenge with my untuned Bloodbraid Jund deck. I loved it. I played two matches that were against fringe decks to start off the day that were pretty easy. I then played against a Jund mirror, which is a delight. Bitterblossom stole the show. I ID'd the last round.

Despite talking about how much I thought Dark Confidant was better in the post-Bloodbraid Elf world, I'm back on the Bitterblossom plan. I just keep looking at these Grixis lists and thinking "There's no way I can beat that" and playing Jund mirrors where I Bolt and Push and Kolaghan's Command three Dark Confidants and win with a horde of Faeries. They simply cannot beat it.

My sideboard is a mess. I really dislike Fulminator Mage in Jund sideboards, it just doesn't mesh with the strategy. But that leaves a gaping hole in the board and makes the board look completely different than most lists I've seen online, most notably Reid's from the MOCS. I'm still in love with Blightning, since it get so good with Bloodbraid Elf.

4 Tarmogoyf
4 Bloodbraid Elf
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Tireless Tracker

3 Bitterblossom
4 Liliana of the Veil
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Fatal Push
2 Dreadbore
3 Kolaghan's Command
3 Thoughtseize
3 Inquisition of Kozilek

4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
2 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Mountain
3 Raging Ravine
3 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blooming Marsh

Sideboard
2 Crumble to Dust
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Blightning
2 Shadow Guildmage
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Duress
1 Jund Charm
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Thragtusk
1 Obstinate Baloth

If they had never printed Verdant Catacombs I'd probably have taken up competitive Mario Kart by now.

The 1-of lifegain fatties are all on a probationary research period. Ideally, they are all good against the Jace decks, Burn, and the mirror. Obstinate Baloth is amazing in the mirror, great against Burn, but poor against UW control. Huntmaster is solid but not amazing against everything. Kitchen Finks is at its best against Burn but only okay against Control and the mirror, and double green on turn 3 can be tricky. Thragtusk is... optimistic. Am I really crazy enough to register 4 Huntmaster of the Fells in my sideboard?

Blood Moon might be a thing again. If Red/Green Eldrazi continues to do well, and Bogles continues to be annoying and vulnerable to it, then maybe I should throw it back in the deck.

Anyways, I'm gonna stop writing before I fall into some existential Huntmaster of the Fells spiral and they find me ten years from now running through the Northwest Territories on all fours. Until next time.