Unfair decks typically use one or more cards in ways that it clearly were not meant to be used when those cards were printed.
I am quoting a post I found on mtgsalvation here.
Quote from optimis344 (LINK HERE)
Fair decks play inside the box, even if the power level is high, while unfair decks do their best to ignore the rules. Normally an Unfair deck tries to mix cards together to accomplish something more than the cards individual mana cost.
A deck like Jund is a fair deck. It draws it's card. It taps some mana. It kills something or plays a threat. It's power level his high, but it does things inside the box of "What Magic is". Even a card like Bloodbraid Elf doesn't seem unfair, because while you get a free card, it's random and low costing.
And Unfair deck tries to skirt the rules of Magic and win on a different axis. Something like Hypergenesis. You blink and your opponent has 3 tapped lands and 45 mana worth of guys on the field. It's has done it's job and broken the "I pay 3 mana, I get a 3 mana effect" rule. Now the effect is symmetrical, but if your opponent isn't set up to take advantage, you have even pushed even further ahead on mana.
A fair deck needs to/an unfair decks usually:
1) A fair deck usually have true curves / an unfair deck usually cheats on casting costs or other elements.
2) A fair deck usually uses combat step / An unfair deck uses weird card interactions and/or casting multiple spells per turn and/or winning explosively in one round.
Unfair decks typically don't care for the combat step. Some times, they use weird card interactions to win via those cards.
Example: Ad Nauseam is never going to use the combat step but will use the namesake card, that mixed with Simian Spirit Guide, Angel's Grace and Lightning Storm will kill you out of nowhere in one turn.
Humans is always going to use the combat step, fair and square, to kill you.
Vintage shops make you not being able to cast your spells some times. That's highly unfair also.
3) A fair deck interacts with their opponent via a typical interaction of magic / an unfair deck usually ignores the opponent
Fair decks, like Jund look to make you discard cards, remove your creatures, then attack you to death.
Unfair decks many times play solitaire magic and do not seek to interact on a 1-on-1 axis with you.
For example, Ensnaring Bridge prevents you from being able to attack and the Bridge decks typically mill you or kill you slowly.
There are lots of things in between though.
I dont believe it to be the case, and thats the problem with trying to define something like "fair." FOr example, a card like Apex of Power isnt really doing fair things in the traditional sense. An EDH deck that has this thing and is casting it will probably win on the spot, and people will probably tell you that its an "unfair deck."
Richard Garfield even foresaw the idea that cards printed right now will make future cards broken, and vice versa, and he embraced it. He wanted the creativity. We cannot assume the intentions of certain interactions. Just because Ad Nausem was printed within a certain set doesnt mean the designers didnt intend it to be in a OTK combo deck or not. I mean Prosperous Bloom was a standard legal deck. So I think intentonality should be thrown out.
"Unair" should be used colloquially to describe combo decks that have the potential to OTK or put a ton of power on the battlefield much higher than the normal "mana-to-power-ratio" of a normal creature card.
"Degenerate" is the same as "unfair."
"Linear" means that the deck is usually more concerned about their own plan rather than opponents. Sideboards usually deal with hate cards rather than using hate cards.
"Uninteractive" is the same as "Linear"
I think the key it that these terms are used colloquially and if we do attempt to rigidly define them, it will probably be futile
This just doesn't seem right. One of the current top decks in the Modern format ,5C humans is an example of a deck with a linear game plan of beating down with creatures while packing a fair amount of interaction.
Bant/UW Spirits is another example of a deck with a linear, aggressive game plan packing multiple elements of disruption.
Guys please opinions on japanese cards. Lost a 3/3 creature against Japan celestial colonade. This guy played all creatures and spells in english cards, but some cards in his manabase was japanese. I dont registrated this really ( my brain say its all fine and all english to me lets attack his empty board)...and i am sure it is a Kind of legal cheating. It is not ok, but i know legal. I Hate such people. I never forget colonade normally, but with this Tricks it can happen one time in 3 years and such people take advantage of this
If I am a customer spending premium amount of dollars, I expect a premium service. Jund falls into the category of a premium deck costing more dollars than a majority of the rest of the format. I'm not getting the desired performance ratio per dollars spent out of the Jund deck because WOTC decided to make the format more diverse.
This just doesn't seem right. One of the current top decks in the Modern format ,5C humans is an example of a deck with a linear game plan of beating down with creatures while packing a fair amount of interaction.
Bant/UW Spirits is another example of a deck with a linear, aggressive game plan packing multiple elements of disruption.
What would be un-linear then? UW control wins through Colonnade and/or Baneslayer beats, yet its super concerned with what the opponent is doing. Same can be said with Humans.
See thats why I would say its so hard to define rigidly and why it should remain more of colloquial terms. Its why I'm against having "interactivity" as any sort of measuring stick, especially when it comes to opinions on the health of a format
Re: creature/combat as interaction
I'm comfortable saying that idSurge is wrong when he says that combat isn't interaction, but he's not wrong in suggesting that a deck like Bogles is necessarily less interactive than a creature deck like Humans. Thankfully, the interactivity grading scale I once proposed would more than account for this. Bogles would get a few points for their creatures being able to block, but the deck overall would get very few points relative to other decks because most cards aren't interactive. This would shift Bogles to the non-interactive side of the spectrum after all points got tallied. Obviously, this doesn't deal with fair vs. unfair, but it addresses the issue idSurge was bringing up.
Re: fairness
I think we're onto something when we talk about decks cheating on things, particularly printed mana costs, cards drawn, or number of spells played in a turn. But this is hard to operationalize. One idea is to assess the difference between the turn of the game and the max number of playable spells a deck can play on that turn. Or the diffference between the turn of a game and the highest CMC permanent (or sum of permanent CMCs) in play. This would capture something like Storm playing 20 spells on T3 or Tron having a 7 mana Karn in play on T3. I'm not certain what the math would look like to calculate this, but it's probably where I would start. Maybe something like:
1. How much CMC can a deck have on board by a given turn?
2. How many cards can a deck draw by a given turn?
3. How many spells can a deck cast by a given turn?
In regards to "benchmarks for unfairness" I think it's important to clarify that you should consider "cards you have access to" over "cards drawn." The entire Dredge mechanic (most pointedly displayed in Modern Dredge) allows you to have access to multiple times the number of "cards seen" per turn over just simply taking a drawstep. Think of the games where, on turn 2, the Dredge player has flipped over a quarter of his deck and/or has placed 2-5 creatures onto the battlefield for no mana.
In regards to "benchmarks for unfairness" I think it's important to clarify that you should consider "cards you have access to" over "cards drawn." The entire Dredge mechanic (most pointedly displayed in Modern Dredge) allows you to have access to multiple times the number of "cards seen" per turn over just simply taking a drawstep. Think of the games where, on turn 2, the Dredge player has flipped over a quarter of his deck and/or has placed 2-5 creatures onto the battlefield for no mana.
So anything playing off the GY, even decks as described on SCG last weekend as 'GY Adjacent' would be unfair? I can certainly see it on sliding scale in that regard.
I had a game just now (2-0 against Dredge) that was hilarious in how it played out in game 1. He played a Wooded Foothills, and did nothing for 3 turns. Discarding to hand size, and dredging, had me at 12 on Turn 5. They cast nothing, and had 8 Cards in the GY. Its a very weird axis with Creeping Chill.
An important caveat to the fair vs. unfair discussion is that a deck itself could be fair, but contain cards that are unfair. KTK's example of Llanowar Elves in Standard Golgari is an example of this. The Golgari deck is playing a fair game of Magic, but Llanowar Elves does jump them ahead a turn on their mana development. In Modern, there is GDS as an example. It's a fair deck, looking to interact and eventually win through combat, but the creatures the deck plays are unfair. You're getting way more stats than what you're paying for with Angler and Shadow. For UW Control, it's also a fair deck, but Terminus is an unfair card.
In fact, you'll find that most fair Modern decks are doing something that's unfair. They couldn't hang in Modern if they didn't. The poster child for this was the Twin deck. It was a fair UR tempo shell with an unfair combo finish that forced people to use their mana inefficiently. Unfair elements add a lot of power to a deck, but sometimes make them vulnerable to specific hate. For instance, Affinity gains a lot of power with their artifact synergies, but they're vulnerable to artifact hate. Dredge gains a lot of power with their graveyard synergies, but is vulnerable to graveyard hate. The fair decks construct themselves to have a bit of unfairness, but not so much as to open themselves up to these kinds of vulnerabilities. For instance, you could bring in graveyard hate against BG Rock to hose Tarmogoyf and Scooze, but then they can just kill you with a huge Tireless Tracker. You can try to hose Terminus with a Meddling Mage or Gaddock Teeg, but they can just find a Path to deal with that and keep going.
As for the creature combat debate, guys, combat is not interaction. That's not degrading it, it's just a separate entity entirely. We don't call Zoo an interactive deck because it can block with its creatures. It's uninteractive, but it engages on the board through creature combat. They're two different things.
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How do you define a "fair" deck? I find that few people in this thread or in Modern generally can even agree on this definition. The closest functional definition I've seen comes from David Ernenwein's old "Fair Deck" article (http://modernnexus.com/beginners-guide-fair-decks/), in which he describes it as: "My definition of fair is playing by the rules of Magic: one land drop and one card per turn, pay the mana cost of your spells, etc." This isn't a bad definition, but like David says in his own article, it has some shortcomings. For instance, as he himself notes, we often see memes like "Magic as Garfield intended" thrown around. But that refers to the man who deliberately put Black Lotus, Moxes, Dark Ritual, and other nonsense in the first set. This suggests to me that fair Magic can't just be about the "one land/mana" paradigm, as there are plenty of eminently fair decks that try to get ahead on mana. The classic example would just be fair midrange decks running Llanowar Elves for a boost; that card's inclusion hardly makes a deck like Standard's Golgari Midrange "unfair."
How to define a fair deck is not easy. The use of mana acceleration is taken a bit further by Ponza. If things go right, I could cast a Stormbreath Dragon or a Titan on turn 3.. is that fair or unfair? Over the years, I've seen people say Affinity casting multiple creatures turn 1 is unfair, and people at Stompy thread say "Aspect of Hydra can be an unfair card as it can be 5 to 6 damage for just one G" --- but then even if done, those things are not really enough to beat some decks in Modern, because opponents are doing even more broken things like Storming for a lethal grapeshot turn 3 or turn 4.
Personally, I think a good example of a fair deck is Zoo - creatures usually stay dead when killed, has to cast creatures one by one. And an example of an unfair deck is Dredge - many creatures are free and keep coming back, they also have free "lightning helix".
I have always, and will always enforce that the term "unfair" must be regarded within the basic resources of the game. Fair plays within the basic resources. The prime example is Jund. You draw a card per turn, you gain one mana per turn, and you attrition people out based on choices in both deck building and within the game. The most unfair card within the entire deck is definitely Bloodbraid Elf. Which is immensely laughable since the day it was banned because you knew cards like Deathrite Shaman were "more fair" and still legal. (Yet this dives into the whole argument of being fair and whether it's overpowered or not)
Cards like Mox Opal, and Simian Spirit Guide absolutely fall into the unfair category. They break the basic resource system of Mana.
Creatures such as Baral and Goblin Electromancer are also unfair. They just have a lower power level overall compared to the other two.
Mana is generally the prime example of how cards, decks and strategies can be considered unfair. Necropotence is really one of the few card draw engines that I've seen that is directly unfair. Most other card advantage scenarios over Magic's history had to deal with reduced costs, alternate costs, or just plain broken Dark Ritual variants.
Primeval Titan is a weird case scenario I can't put my finger on. I believe the card to be fair on face value, yet it pivots unfair strategies.
I have always, and will always enforce that the term "unfair" must be regarded within the basic resources of the game. Fair plays within the basic resources. The prime example is Jund. You draw a card per turn, you gain one mana per turn, and you attrition people out based on choices in both deck building and within the game. The most unfair card within the entire deck is definitely Bloodbraid Elf. Which is immensely laughable since the day it was banned because you knew cards like Deathrite Shaman were "more fair" and still legal. (Yet this dives into the whole argument of being fair and whether it's overpowered or not)
Cards like Mox Opal, and Simian Spirit Guide absolutely fall into the unfair category. They break the basic resource system of Mana.
Creatures such as Baral and Goblin Electromancer are also unfair. They just have a lower power level overall compared to the other two.
Mana is generally the prime example of how cards, decks and strategies can be considered unfair. Necropotence is really one of the few card draw engines that I've seen that is directly unfair. Most other card advantage scenarios over Magic's history had to deal with reduced costs, alternate costs, or just plain broken Dark Ritual variants.
Primeval Titan is a weird case scenario I can't put my finger on. I believe the card to be fair on face value, yet it pivots unfair strategies.
By your definition of 1 resource 1 card per turn Primeval Titan is an unfair card. Just like Divination is an unfair card as you get more than one card per turn.
Again, I emphasize that we should not be trying to define things in a dichotomy of fair or unfair. It's a spectrum. Something like Llanowar Elves would contribute a small number of unfair points to Golgari Midrange decks in Standard, but the overall deck would still have very few such points. In Modern, UW Control would earn some points for Terminus cheating on cost, but the majority of cards neither cheat on mana nor cost nor cards. Similarly, if we're talking interaction, Zoo would get some points for being able to block and remove creatures, but it would still be further towards "non-interactive" on a spectrum than something like GDS.
Reading the last pages (which, I'll add, are WAY more engaging than some of the usual content), I see a lot of posters focusing on whether a deck is fair or unfair in a binary distinction. We won't get anywhere this way. But if we focus on a spectrum, I think we can make headway.
Here's another entry point: looking at top Modern decks, what decks would you consider fair vs unfair? Maybe can identify them to help reverse engineer our definitions.
Spirits, Merfolk, Reliquary decks, Lantern, RW Prison, Death and Taxes, Amulet Titan, Grixis Whir, Hardened Scales, Blue Moon, Blue Tron, Mardu Pyromancer, Death Shadow decks.
Here's a question for everyone, are prison decks and/or prison lock pieces fair or unfair? The only deck I had to really pause on when I came to it on the MTGGoldfish page was Grixis Whir Prison. It's not doing something like cheating on mana or accelerating their mana development besides a playset of Opals, but they're also not playing a conventional game. Instead of trying to eventually kill you in combat, they're trying to prevent you from playing Magic, and then eventually winning by milling you 4 with Ipnu Rivulet every turn. Does preventing your opponent from playing the game at all make it unfair?
And I agree with KTK that decks are on a continuum from unfair to fair, some being more or less fair than others. I don't think that means you can't call a deck fair or unfair in general, though. For instance, everyone agrees that Jund is a fair deck despite BBE being an unfair card in the deck. The same goes for UW and Terminus. They play a fair game plan, despite having some unfair elements to supplement the power of what they're doing. On the other hand, we have decks like Dredge and Hollow One, who are trying to cheat a bunch of creatures onto the battlefield without paying mana for them, which is clearly an inherently unfair strategy.
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Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
Miracle mechanic is "Fair"? Cascade is fair?? LOL.
CoCo, Aether Vial, Blood Moon are fair? Haha, yeah, I agree there's a spectrum of Fair vs Unfair in Modern, and compared to KCI, those are all much closer to "Fair," but no "Good" deck in Modern is ACTUALLY 100% Fair, IMO.
Miracle mechanic is "Fair"? Cascade is fair?? LOL.
CoCo, Aether Vial, Blood Moon are fair? Haha, yeah, I agree there's a spectrum of Fair vs Unfair in Modern, and compared to KCI, those are all much closer to "Fair," but no "Good" deck in Modern is ACTUALLY 100% Fair, IMO.
I don't think good decks in any non-rotating format are fair. Legacy certainly doesn't have any. Even Standard has a bunch of unfair ones or decks with unfair cards (Izzet Phoenix, Golgari Midrange, Burn, etc.). I don't know why this is a relevant observation about Modern. I feel like people say this like it's some hidden and deep insight about Modern's secret flaw, when it's just such an obvious observation about basically all Constructed decks in all contemporary formats. If you want to play 100% fair decks, play Limited, not Constructed, and definitely not a non-rotating format.
Yeah I think most of our lists would be close, in terms what is or is not 'fair' as far as Modern is concerned, maybe it does boil down to cards.
Is Blood Moon Fair? Its symmetrical after all. Is it fair on Turn 3? But not turn 2 or (god forbid) Turn 1?
Is Collected Company fair?
I mean it really does come down to a gut check on a lot of these. Certain things that operate on a non-normal axis (Dredge, Tron) are pretty hard for me to call fair.
Casting half a dozen artifacts or enchantments as a 'prison' is a different than normal axis, but most of the time those cards are not being 'cheated' out.
Yeah I think most of our lists would be close, in terms what is or is not 'fair' as far as Modern is concerned, maybe it does boil down to cards.
Is Blood Moon Fair? Its symmetrical after all. Is it fair on Turn 3? But not turn 2 or (god forbid) Turn 1?
Is Collected Company fair?
I mean it really does come down to a gut check on a lot of these. Certain things that operate on a non-normal axis (Dredge, Tron) are pretty hard for me to call fair.
Casting half a dozen artifacts or enchantments as a 'prison' is a different than normal axis, but most of the time those cards are not being 'cheated' out.
I know I certainly didn't think Chalice of the Void was fair when there was one on 1 and another on 2 by turn 3 against my Bogles. When I was running Jeskai, it was a mild annoyance because I already had UUU1 in hand or in play and Cryptic Command in hand.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
I think the ramp argument would be that paying mana for ramp is okay. Tron is free ramp. When a single land can produce more than one mana, that's when you have to think "okay this might be a problem." That's what happened with the artifact lands in both standard and extended that now drives me nuts when people suggest they be unbanned by saying "robots doesn't even play affinity spells!"
Shrine of the forsaken gods helps by having a minimum lands requirement because there's diminishing marginal returns. The gap from seven to eight mana is less than the gap from one to two or three to four.
[quote from="BlueTronFTW »" url="/forums/the-game/modern/799362-the-state-of-modern-thread-b-r-01-10-2018?comment=713"]
I agree. But this is the actual opposite to what @Wraith and @ktk said before. They basically said that even if you use Birds or paradise to ramp, it's unfair(for that matter, they exactly said using Llanowar elves as a ramp in Standard is an unfair element). I think the standard elves paradigm can be assigned into a fair play, as you use mana to play it and can be removed.
Have not read all the previous posts, so did not see those. Anyway, surprised that ramping with Birds of Paradise is considered an unfair strategy.
1. Casting a mana dork for mana acceleration takes the entire first turn, they are not "free" like mox opal or eldrazi temple.
2. If the dork is bolted or pushed it can lead to mana screw.
3. Having many mana dorks can lead to explosive starts, but they are also dead draws mid-late game.
4. It takes effort to find the right number that is comfortable for the deck. I started with 4 sprawl, 4 elf, 0 birds... then a week later 4 sprawl 4 elf 1 bird... and a few more weeks later.. currently 4 sprawl, 4 arbor elf, and 2 birds which I now feel is correct with the Ponza build I'm using. In Affinity you put 4 opal into the deck, and that's it.
5. The more mana dorks in a deck, the less actual threats can be put into the deck.
I think there are enough disadvantages that using BoP is actually fair.
I dont believe it to be the case, and thats the problem with trying to define something like "fair." FOr example, a card like Apex of Power isnt really doing fair things in the traditional sense. An EDH deck that has this thing and is casting it will probably win on the spot, and people will probably tell you that its an "unfair deck."
Richard Garfield even foresaw the idea that cards printed right now will make future cards broken, and vice versa, and he embraced it. He wanted the creativity. We cannot assume the intentions of certain interactions. Just because Ad Nausem was printed within a certain set doesnt mean the designers didnt intend it to be in a OTK combo deck or not. I mean Prosperous Bloom was a standard legal deck. So I think intentonality should be thrown out.
"Unair" should be used colloquially to describe combo decks that have the potential to OTK or put a ton of power on the battlefield much higher than the normal "mana-to-power-ratio" of a normal creature card.
"Degenerate" is the same as "unfair."
"Linear" means that the deck is usually more concerned about their own plan rather than opponents. Sideboards usually deal with hate cards rather than using hate cards.
"Uninteractive" is the same as "Linear"
I think the key it that these terms are used colloquially and if we do attempt to rigidly define them, it will probably be futile
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
This just doesn't seem right. One of the current top decks in the Modern format ,5C humans is an example of a deck with a linear game plan of beating down with creatures while packing a fair amount of interaction.
Bant/UW Spirits is another example of a deck with a linear, aggressive game plan packing multiple elements of disruption.
What would be un-linear then? UW control wins through Colonnade and/or Baneslayer beats, yet its super concerned with what the opponent is doing. Same can be said with Humans.
See thats why I would say its so hard to define rigidly and why it should remain more of colloquial terms. Its why I'm against having "interactivity" as any sort of measuring stick, especially when it comes to opinions on the health of a format
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
I'm comfortable saying that idSurge is wrong when he says that combat isn't interaction, but he's not wrong in suggesting that a deck like Bogles is necessarily less interactive than a creature deck like Humans. Thankfully, the interactivity grading scale I once proposed would more than account for this. Bogles would get a few points for their creatures being able to block, but the deck overall would get very few points relative to other decks because most cards aren't interactive. This would shift Bogles to the non-interactive side of the spectrum after all points got tallied. Obviously, this doesn't deal with fair vs. unfair, but it addresses the issue idSurge was bringing up.
Re: fairness
I think we're onto something when we talk about decks cheating on things, particularly printed mana costs, cards drawn, or number of spells played in a turn. But this is hard to operationalize. One idea is to assess the difference between the turn of the game and the max number of playable spells a deck can play on that turn. Or the diffference between the turn of a game and the highest CMC permanent (or sum of permanent CMCs) in play. This would capture something like Storm playing 20 spells on T3 or Tron having a 7 mana Karn in play on T3. I'm not certain what the math would look like to calculate this, but it's probably where I would start. Maybe something like:
1. How much CMC can a deck have on board by a given turn?
2. How many cards can a deck draw by a given turn?
3. How many spells can a deck cast by a given turn?
So anything playing off the GY, even decks as described on SCG last weekend as 'GY Adjacent' would be unfair? I can certainly see it on sliding scale in that regard.
I had a game just now (2-0 against Dredge) that was hilarious in how it played out in game 1. He played a Wooded Foothills, and did nothing for 3 turns. Discarding to hand size, and dredging, had me at 12 on Turn 5. They cast nothing, and had 8 Cards in the GY. Its a very weird axis with Creeping Chill.
Spirits
In fact, you'll find that most fair Modern decks are doing something that's unfair. They couldn't hang in Modern if they didn't. The poster child for this was the Twin deck. It was a fair UR tempo shell with an unfair combo finish that forced people to use their mana inefficiently. Unfair elements add a lot of power to a deck, but sometimes make them vulnerable to specific hate. For instance, Affinity gains a lot of power with their artifact synergies, but they're vulnerable to artifact hate. Dredge gains a lot of power with their graveyard synergies, but is vulnerable to graveyard hate. The fair decks construct themselves to have a bit of unfairness, but not so much as to open themselves up to these kinds of vulnerabilities. For instance, you could bring in graveyard hate against BG Rock to hose Tarmogoyf and Scooze, but then they can just kill you with a huge Tireless Tracker. You can try to hose Terminus with a Meddling Mage or Gaddock Teeg, but they can just find a Path to deal with that and keep going.
As for the creature combat debate, guys, combat is not interaction. That's not degrading it, it's just a separate entity entirely. We don't call Zoo an interactive deck because it can block with its creatures. It's uninteractive, but it engages on the board through creature combat. They're two different things.
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
How to define a fair deck is not easy. The use of mana acceleration is taken a bit further by Ponza. If things go right, I could cast a Stormbreath Dragon or a Titan on turn 3.. is that fair or unfair? Over the years, I've seen people say Affinity casting multiple creatures turn 1 is unfair, and people at Stompy thread say "Aspect of Hydra can be an unfair card as it can be 5 to 6 damage for just one G" --- but then even if done, those things are not really enough to beat some decks in Modern, because opponents are doing even more broken things like Storming for a lethal grapeshot turn 3 or turn 4.
Personally, I think a good example of a fair deck is Zoo - creatures usually stay dead when killed, has to cast creatures one by one. And an example of an unfair deck is Dredge - many creatures are free and keep coming back, they also have free "lightning helix".
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Cards like Mox Opal, and Simian Spirit Guide absolutely fall into the unfair category. They break the basic resource system of Mana.
Creatures such as Baral and Goblin Electromancer are also unfair. They just have a lower power level overall compared to the other two.
Mana is generally the prime example of how cards, decks and strategies can be considered unfair. Necropotence is really one of the few card draw engines that I've seen that is directly unfair. Most other card advantage scenarios over Magic's history had to deal with reduced costs, alternate costs, or just plain broken Dark Ritual variants.
Primeval Titan is a weird case scenario I can't put my finger on. I believe the card to be fair on face value, yet it pivots unfair strategies.
Ramp inherently is towards the unfair side.
Spirits
By your definition of 1 resource 1 card per turn Primeval Titan is an unfair card. Just like Divination is an unfair card as you get more than one card per turn.
Reading the last pages (which, I'll add, are WAY more engaging than some of the usual content), I see a lot of posters focusing on whether a deck is fair or unfair in a binary distinction. We won't get anywhere this way. But if we focus on a spectrum, I think we can make headway.
Here's another entry point: looking at top Modern decks, what decks would you consider fair vs unfair? Maybe can identify them to help reverse engineer our definitions.
Hollow One unfair.
Tron unfair
Storm unfair
Kci unfair
Humans fair
Burn fair
UWx fair
Jund fair
Junk fair
Did I forget any major ones?
Spirits
Spirits, Merfolk, Reliquary decks, Lantern, RW Prison, Death and Taxes, Amulet Titan, Grixis Whir, Hardened Scales, Blue Moon, Blue Tron, Mardu Pyromancer, Death Shadow decks.
Knightfall - Fair...ish?
Lantern, RW Prison, Taxes, Fair
Amulet Unfair
Whir (if the Prison) Fair
Affinity and G-Affinity Unfair
Blue Moon Unfair (Thing/Moon/Breach)
Blue Tron Unfair
Mardu Pyro, Fair
Shadow Unfair
Spirits
Humans - fair
Jund - fair
Tron - unfair
Burn - fair
Spirits - fair
UW Control - fair
Jeskai - fair
Storm - unfair
Hollow One - unfair
Amulet Titan - unfair
Hardened Scales - unfair
Grixis Death's Shadow - fair
Mardu Pyro - fair
Blue Moon - fair
Infect - unfair
Ad Nauseam - unfair
KCI - unfair
Bogles - unfair
Here's a question for everyone, are prison decks and/or prison lock pieces fair or unfair? The only deck I had to really pause on when I came to it on the MTGGoldfish page was Grixis Whir Prison. It's not doing something like cheating on mana or accelerating their mana development besides a playset of Opals, but they're also not playing a conventional game. Instead of trying to eventually kill you in combat, they're trying to prevent you from playing Magic, and then eventually winning by milling you 4 with Ipnu Rivulet every turn. Does preventing your opponent from playing the game at all make it unfair?
And I agree with KTK that decks are on a continuum from unfair to fair, some being more or less fair than others. I don't think that means you can't call a deck fair or unfair in general, though. For instance, everyone agrees that Jund is a fair deck despite BBE being an unfair card in the deck. The same goes for UW and Terminus. They play a fair game plan, despite having some unfair elements to supplement the power of what they're doing. On the other hand, we have decks like Dredge and Hollow One, who are trying to cheat a bunch of creatures onto the battlefield without paying mana for them, which is clearly an inherently unfair strategy.
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
CoCo, Aether Vial, Blood Moon are fair? Haha, yeah, I agree there's a spectrum of Fair vs Unfair in Modern, and compared to KCI, those are all much closer to "Fair," but no "Good" deck in Modern is ACTUALLY 100% Fair, IMO.
There is no 'fair' 100% Modern deck for sure.
I struggle in finding anything unfair about Prison decks, most are simply slow to assemble. The only one that is 'unfair' would be Mono Red with SSG?
Spirits
I don't think good decks in any non-rotating format are fair. Legacy certainly doesn't have any. Even Standard has a bunch of unfair ones or decks with unfair cards (Izzet Phoenix, Golgari Midrange, Burn, etc.). I don't know why this is a relevant observation about Modern. I feel like people say this like it's some hidden and deep insight about Modern's secret flaw, when it's just such an obvious observation about basically all Constructed decks in all contemporary formats. If you want to play 100% fair decks, play Limited, not Constructed, and definitely not a non-rotating format.
Is Blood Moon Fair? Its symmetrical after all. Is it fair on Turn 3? But not turn 2 or (god forbid) Turn 1?
Is Collected Company fair?
I mean it really does come down to a gut check on a lot of these. Certain things that operate on a non-normal axis (Dredge, Tron) are pretty hard for me to call fair.
Casting half a dozen artifacts or enchantments as a 'prison' is a different than normal axis, but most of the time those cards are not being 'cheated' out.
Spirits
Chalice of the Void is a free, repeatable counterspell? God forbid there are multiples at different CMC.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)Shrine of the forsaken gods helps by having a minimum lands requirement because there's diminishing marginal returns. The gap from seven to eight mana is less than the gap from one to two or three to four.
Have not read all the previous posts, so did not see those. Anyway, surprised that ramping with Birds of Paradise is considered an unfair strategy.
1. Casting a mana dork for mana acceleration takes the entire first turn, they are not "free" like mox opal or eldrazi temple.
2. If the dork is bolted or pushed it can lead to mana screw.
3. Having many mana dorks can lead to explosive starts, but they are also dead draws mid-late game.
4. It takes effort to find the right number that is comfortable for the deck. I started with 4 sprawl, 4 elf, 0 birds... then a week later 4 sprawl 4 elf 1 bird... and a few more weeks later.. currently 4 sprawl, 4 arbor elf, and 2 birds which I now feel is correct with the Ponza build I'm using. In Affinity you put 4 opal into the deck, and that's it.
5. The more mana dorks in a deck, the less actual threats can be put into the deck.
I think there are enough disadvantages that using BoP is actually fair.
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