Post by SwartDawgMillionaire on Aug 9, 2014 21:54:02 GMT -6
Here is an article written a long time ago.
I'm going to try to put an updated spin on it. This took like twelve pages in my notebook when I wrote it out longhand, so sorry if it gets into the TL;DR category.
Mike Flores notes that an Invested card differs from one in hand because it's an immediate -1 to hand size. Using this argument, he postulates that Whispers of the Muse with Buyback is superior to Jayemdae Tome in terms of drawing cards because the Whispers player never goes down that initial -1 to hand size in order to get the card drawing engine started.
There are several problems to this theory, which I'd like to investigate. To begin thought, it's useful to know why we talk about card advantage (or card economy) to begin with.
Investment gets bandied about pretty frequently in Magic. Generally, it's a term used to describe card economy. A card is invested when a player has to wait a while to see a return on his or her play. Frequently, we see Jayemdae Tome v. Whispers of the Muse with Buyback used as an example of Invested v. NonInvested cards. The Tome is Invested - that is, one player must tap mana (4) to play it, and then in a turn's worth of activations, the Tome will replace its value in the player's hand. It takes a second turn's worth of activations to generate a +1 net in hand since before casting the Tome. To contrast, Whispers of the Muse with Buyback generates immediate card advantage (+1) after one use and another subsequent card afterward.
On the surface, this seems to be an accurate summary of the difference between an invested and noninvested card. And, to wit, the noninvested card appears to come out ahead here. Each subsequent use of Whispers will net you +1 card, this is true.
Investment seen from a card economy standpoint alone though is simplistic, sometimes even dangerously so. Jayemdae Tome in play might be in a safer place than Whispers of the Muse in hand. Against an opponent who can interfere with cards in hand, Whispers of the Muse might only get a use or two before a discard spell rips it out of your hand and the game. Against such a (likely Black) opponent, the Tome is safe in play - s/he can't kill an artifact in play with the removal available in his/her color. Whispers of the Muse will always be at risk to a top-decked discard spell or counterspell after which it could be rendered useless, whereas the Jayemdae Tome just keeps on drawing.
The real issue with Investment as described by Flores is that it ignores another very real and important commodity of the game: tempo.
Card advantage (or economy, modernly) matters. But, along with that and life, your phases matter, too. For the player with Jayemdae Tome, his/her mana will quickly become more available. It costs an initial investment of a card and mana (and phase), but by the time that Jayemdae Tome catches Whispers in terms of cards drawn, the Tome play will be spending two less mana overall for the cards. That is, when Whispers give 2 new cards, it will have cost a total of 12 mana. When Jayemdae Tome gives a total of 2 new cards, it will have cost 12 mana.
Clearly, a 3/3 for 2G is nice. It's on curve, in fact a little ahead in terms of power/toughness. A 3/3 that draws a card when it comes into play is better, simply because it allows you to develop further options while negating options from your opponent (you get cards, your opponent will likely lose some life through attacks). When we talk about card economy, we mean "anything that nets you more than an even exchange with your opponent." A creature that warrants a bad double block from your opponent is card advantage. Divination is card advantage (1 card become 2 cards). Additionally, Reckless Spite (destroy 2 creature for 5 life and 1BB) is card advantage because it neuters 2 onboard threats from you opponent. There other exchanges present in there, but we'll get to that later.
This stuff is pretty elementary, but it's necessary for the question of "why do I care about card economy?" By drawing more cards that your opponent, you increase your access to a resource (cards) or decrease your opponent's access to that resource. In either case, you positively influence available play options, leading toward the eventual goal of denying your opponent the option to continue to play the game. Here, cards in hand are positive because they imply an increase in potential options. Whispers of the Muse in hand or not does not imply further options. In the scenario of Jayemdae Tome in play, or Whispers of the Muse in hand, neither are better or worse that the other in terms of card advantage. Claiming that JT is (-1) card advantage is only a valid point if the Tome is neutralized before you can use it to draw a card. Because Whispers of the Muse in hand does not affect spells on the stack, permanents in play, or cards in your opponent's hand, it is not usable card advantage to have it in hand. In fact, it brings your hand one card closer to having to discard, which is relevant in the equation of card drawing.
Remember that Magic is essentially a game of resource management. You have a resource (mana), which allows you to buy game progress (spells, permanents in play). Per Pat Chapin, that progress works to maintain a single goal: the ability to continue playing the game. And when you break resources down further, mana is governed by several things. First of all is deck construction, which will be really hard to discuss in this vacuous analogy, but does matter (what if both Whispers and Jayemdae Tome draw Shrapnel Blast? What if Whispers draws One with Nothing? Who has card advantage?). We'll leave that one out for now. Mostly what impacts mana is cards drawn (some of which are lands), lands played (which produce mana, obviously), and untap phases.
Here, neither of the cards in question are lands or generate mana, so they can count as neutral in terms of tempo. Having Whispers in hand gives you no more benefit than Jayemdae Tome in play, with regard to your available mana.
Both can draw you cards, which can be lands, which will generate you available mana. But there is a disparity in mana availability.
For a long time, we have agreed that a turn is most easily explained as and governed by the ability to draw one card (draw step), and play one land (part of the main phase). This is at best a rudimentary explanation. In truth, both of these things enable other portions of the turn. It's hard to alpha strike someone if you never enter an attack phase (for which you need attackers, for which you need to cast spells, for which cards and land drops... etc.). So drawing cards and playing lands are very important parts of a turn, but they are only part of the definition.
How does this pertain to Investment? When you are using Whispers/Buyback, you are investing not only mana, but entire turns to draw more cards. Your attack phase cannot be utilitzed because you don't have available mana to cast the attackers. So, if you want to use the cards you have generated from Whispers, you must stop investing the 5U each turn to cast it. Contrast this with Jayemdae Tome and its cost. It can feasibly come online a turn sooner (turn 5 after a turn 4 investment), so by the time Whispers of the Muse happens (turn six), the net card advantage is +/-0. From there, the player who invests less mana each turn (JT player) will be able to play more of his/her spells due to the ability to better utilize the phases of the turn (due to available mana, blah blah).
This does oversimplify a bit, mostly by ignoring game state. Yes, the Whispers player can't progress the game because s/he is trying to Invest 5U each turn to cast an end step Whispers of the Muse. But this player also gets additional main phases on the front end. The JT player invests the mana made available from untapping (and thereby curtailing the remainder of the turn's phases) on turn 4 and each subsequent turn reduces the availability of untapped mana by 4 (presuming he wants to continue to draw extra cards that is - in reality both players could stop using the engines whenever they need to), while the Whispers player could use that phase to play a creature big enough to create a favorable board state, and then use the Whispers w/BB engine to protect it (ostensibly drawing and threatening permission the rest of the game). In that case, the Investment of the turns' 4 and 5 main phases matter, leaving the JT player behind. Over time though, the JT player makes a better return on Investment.
A fair question at this point is: "So what?" I'm getting to that. ON one level, it's worth noting that the right card for the right format exists, and Investment is an important factor to consider, but perhaps not in its current paradigm. Understand this: Magic is more than card advantage, tempo or life points in a vacuum, and a better understanding of Investment theory will assist in that interpretation of the game. Investing a card in play is no different that one in hand if neither are vulnerable to removal. We must also consider what other commodities we exchange in order to enable our spells (life, cards, mana, but also phases of a turn).
Each turn phase has a contextual value, and not all phases of all turns have the same - or even comparable - value. Is the attack phase of turn one the same as the attack phase of turn five? Probably not. Is your first draw step as important or more or less than your second? What phases do you spend to cast your spells? What damage do you lose out on by waiting to cast Whispers of the Muse instead of a 6 drop creature?
Don't take this posting as an argument for or against Whispers of the Muse or Jayemdae Tome. Really, both have been outclassed as draw engines by this point. They're just fodder for conversations. My main focus here is to illustrate that resources go beyond cards and card advantage. Phase are commodities, too, and can be more dear than other. Tempo can be invested as much as cards can.
I'm going to try to put an updated spin on it. This took like twelve pages in my notebook when I wrote it out longhand, so sorry if it gets into the TL;DR category.
Mike Flores notes that an Invested card differs from one in hand because it's an immediate -1 to hand size. Using this argument, he postulates that Whispers of the Muse with Buyback is superior to Jayemdae Tome in terms of drawing cards because the Whispers player never goes down that initial -1 to hand size in order to get the card drawing engine started.
There are several problems to this theory, which I'd like to investigate. To begin thought, it's useful to know why we talk about card advantage (or card economy) to begin with.
Investment gets bandied about pretty frequently in Magic. Generally, it's a term used to describe card economy. A card is invested when a player has to wait a while to see a return on his or her play. Frequently, we see Jayemdae Tome v. Whispers of the Muse with Buyback used as an example of Invested v. NonInvested cards. The Tome is Invested - that is, one player must tap mana (4) to play it, and then in a turn's worth of activations, the Tome will replace its value in the player's hand. It takes a second turn's worth of activations to generate a +1 net in hand since before casting the Tome. To contrast, Whispers of the Muse with Buyback generates immediate card advantage (+1) after one use and another subsequent card afterward.
On the surface, this seems to be an accurate summary of the difference between an invested and noninvested card. And, to wit, the noninvested card appears to come out ahead here. Each subsequent use of Whispers will net you +1 card, this is true.
Investment seen from a card economy standpoint alone though is simplistic, sometimes even dangerously so. Jayemdae Tome in play might be in a safer place than Whispers of the Muse in hand. Against an opponent who can interfere with cards in hand, Whispers of the Muse might only get a use or two before a discard spell rips it out of your hand and the game. Against such a (likely Black) opponent, the Tome is safe in play - s/he can't kill an artifact in play with the removal available in his/her color. Whispers of the Muse will always be at risk to a top-decked discard spell or counterspell after which it could be rendered useless, whereas the Jayemdae Tome just keeps on drawing.
The real issue with Investment as described by Flores is that it ignores another very real and important commodity of the game: tempo.
Card advantage (or economy, modernly) matters. But, along with that and life, your phases matter, too. For the player with Jayemdae Tome, his/her mana will quickly become more available. It costs an initial investment of a card and mana (and phase), but by the time that Jayemdae Tome catches Whispers in terms of cards drawn, the Tome play will be spending two less mana overall for the cards. That is, when Whispers give 2 new cards, it will have cost a total of 12 mana. When Jayemdae Tome gives a total of 2 new cards, it will have cost 12 mana.
Clearly, a 3/3 for 2G is nice. It's on curve, in fact a little ahead in terms of power/toughness. A 3/3 that draws a card when it comes into play is better, simply because it allows you to develop further options while negating options from your opponent (you get cards, your opponent will likely lose some life through attacks). When we talk about card economy, we mean "anything that nets you more than an even exchange with your opponent." A creature that warrants a bad double block from your opponent is card advantage. Divination is card advantage (1 card become 2 cards). Additionally, Reckless Spite (destroy 2 creature for 5 life and 1BB) is card advantage because it neuters 2 onboard threats from you opponent. There other exchanges present in there, but we'll get to that later.
This stuff is pretty elementary, but it's necessary for the question of "why do I care about card economy?" By drawing more cards that your opponent, you increase your access to a resource (cards) or decrease your opponent's access to that resource. In either case, you positively influence available play options, leading toward the eventual goal of denying your opponent the option to continue to play the game. Here, cards in hand are positive because they imply an increase in potential options. Whispers of the Muse in hand or not does not imply further options. In the scenario of Jayemdae Tome in play, or Whispers of the Muse in hand, neither are better or worse that the other in terms of card advantage. Claiming that JT is (-1) card advantage is only a valid point if the Tome is neutralized before you can use it to draw a card. Because Whispers of the Muse in hand does not affect spells on the stack, permanents in play, or cards in your opponent's hand, it is not usable card advantage to have it in hand. In fact, it brings your hand one card closer to having to discard, which is relevant in the equation of card drawing.
Remember that Magic is essentially a game of resource management. You have a resource (mana), which allows you to buy game progress (spells, permanents in play). Per Pat Chapin, that progress works to maintain a single goal: the ability to continue playing the game. And when you break resources down further, mana is governed by several things. First of all is deck construction, which will be really hard to discuss in this vacuous analogy, but does matter (what if both Whispers and Jayemdae Tome draw Shrapnel Blast? What if Whispers draws One with Nothing? Who has card advantage?). We'll leave that one out for now. Mostly what impacts mana is cards drawn (some of which are lands), lands played (which produce mana, obviously), and untap phases.
Here, neither of the cards in question are lands or generate mana, so they can count as neutral in terms of tempo. Having Whispers in hand gives you no more benefit than Jayemdae Tome in play, with regard to your available mana.
Both can draw you cards, which can be lands, which will generate you available mana. But there is a disparity in mana availability.
For a long time, we have agreed that a turn is most easily explained as and governed by the ability to draw one card (draw step), and play one land (part of the main phase). This is at best a rudimentary explanation. In truth, both of these things enable other portions of the turn. It's hard to alpha strike someone if you never enter an attack phase (for which you need attackers, for which you need to cast spells, for which cards and land drops... etc.). So drawing cards and playing lands are very important parts of a turn, but they are only part of the definition.
How does this pertain to Investment? When you are using Whispers/Buyback, you are investing not only mana, but entire turns to draw more cards. Your attack phase cannot be utilitzed because you don't have available mana to cast the attackers. So, if you want to use the cards you have generated from Whispers, you must stop investing the 5U each turn to cast it. Contrast this with Jayemdae Tome and its cost. It can feasibly come online a turn sooner (turn 5 after a turn 4 investment), so by the time Whispers of the Muse happens (turn six), the net card advantage is +/-0. From there, the player who invests less mana each turn (JT player) will be able to play more of his/her spells due to the ability to better utilize the phases of the turn (due to available mana, blah blah).
This does oversimplify a bit, mostly by ignoring game state. Yes, the Whispers player can't progress the game because s/he is trying to Invest 5U each turn to cast an end step Whispers of the Muse. But this player also gets additional main phases on the front end. The JT player invests the mana made available from untapping (and thereby curtailing the remainder of the turn's phases) on turn 4 and each subsequent turn reduces the availability of untapped mana by 4 (presuming he wants to continue to draw extra cards that is - in reality both players could stop using the engines whenever they need to), while the Whispers player could use that phase to play a creature big enough to create a favorable board state, and then use the Whispers w/BB engine to protect it (ostensibly drawing and threatening permission the rest of the game). In that case, the Investment of the turns' 4 and 5 main phases matter, leaving the JT player behind. Over time though, the JT player makes a better return on Investment.
A fair question at this point is: "So what?" I'm getting to that. ON one level, it's worth noting that the right card for the right format exists, and Investment is an important factor to consider, but perhaps not in its current paradigm. Understand this: Magic is more than card advantage, tempo or life points in a vacuum, and a better understanding of Investment theory will assist in that interpretation of the game. Investing a card in play is no different that one in hand if neither are vulnerable to removal. We must also consider what other commodities we exchange in order to enable our spells (life, cards, mana, but also phases of a turn).
Each turn phase has a contextual value, and not all phases of all turns have the same - or even comparable - value. Is the attack phase of turn one the same as the attack phase of turn five? Probably not. Is your first draw step as important or more or less than your second? What phases do you spend to cast your spells? What damage do you lose out on by waiting to cast Whispers of the Muse instead of a 6 drop creature?
Don't take this posting as an argument for or against Whispers of the Muse or Jayemdae Tome. Really, both have been outclassed as draw engines by this point. They're just fodder for conversations. My main focus here is to illustrate that resources go beyond cards and card advantage. Phase are commodities, too, and can be more dear than other. Tempo can be invested as much as cards can.