A Compleat History of the Magic: the Gathering Metagame, Chapter 15: We Didn't Start the Fires; or: Opposition Research
Last time, I dedicated a whole chapter entirely to one card. This time I'll be looking at the actual deck to beat of 2001.
While Fact or Fiction's printing did enable blue control decks to continue being a factor in Standard, the real standout card of Invasion was an unassuming uncommon.
Fires of Yavimaya seems a bit underpowered at first glance – you spend a whole card doing what doesn't seem like very much. In reality, it was a powerful accelerant to a fast aggro strategy.
There were many variants of this Fires deck, but they are all built around a single premise: going fast.
Fires of Yavimaya is not really an inherently powerful card. A very similar card, Invigorating Hot Spring, was printed recently and it has no relevance to Constructed at all. But in the context of Masques/Invasion Standard, Fires was exceptionally well positioned.
First, there's the access to both Llanowar Elves and Birds of Paradise. Being able to run 8 one-mana creatures that tap for mana allowed for decks that could consistently 'skip a beat' on their mana curves, jumping straight from one to three. Fires of Yavimaya was a turn-two play more often than not.
While a typical aggro deck wants to play efficient one- and two-mana creatures to attack with, this style of 'stompy' deck would spend the first turn or two setting up and then make a huge swing. Blastoderm with haste on turn three is an enormous beating – this is a creature that normally isn't supposed to start attacking until turn five. A subtlety here is that a Blastoderm with haste can attack four times before fading away, instead of three – that, in turn, means that it's lethal all by itself if left unchecked.
"Make your opponent play your game" is a universal truism in strategy in every field, and Blastoderm is successful in doing exactly that. The only way to interact with Blastoderm is to play your own creatures and block it; it simply ignores removal. And if you do deign to play your own creatures and block, well – Blastoderm is big enough to warp combat around itself.
Against other creature decks, Flametongue Kavu is a huge beating that completely reshapes the board state. The more power a creature has the more it benefits from haste. Fires of Yavimaya represented a huge amount of damage over the course of a game, and because it let your creatures attack ahead of schedule, that damage was very hard to stop. And then, on top of that, Fires would then turn into a combat trick to push through the last couple points of damage or win a crucial creature combat.
Fires' other BFF is Saproling Burst, which is a hugely better card if you have Fires in play. A normal Saproling Burst makes 3 4/4 creatures, which turn into 3/3 creatures before they get to attack for 9 a turn later. With Fires, you can attack with the 4/4s immediately for 12. Essentially, it's like Fires created 14 extra points of damage in exchange for one card.
Few cards have been as perfectly suited to their environment as Fires of Yavimaya.
Elsewhere in Magic
- The other big deck to beat used one of Magic's most classically annoying cards, Opposition in conjunction with either an army of cheap blue creatures ('Merfolk Opposition') or a bunch of token-making cards ('Saproling Opposition') to lock the opponent out of the game with the help of Static Orb. Token-making has gotten steadily more common over the years, as it allows colors without access to pure card drawing to obtain card advantage by making multiple creatures with one card. Unsurprisingly, Opposition has not been reprinted since.
Next Week
We finally make it out of 2001 and on to Odyssey block, Magic's first expansion focused on the graveyard.