[ARTICLE] How to Magma Jet like a Pro
Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2013 10:08 pm
How to Get the Most from Magma Jet in Your Red Deck
While Theros has generated a great deal of excitement as the collective tries to explore all of the opportunities that the new cards bring, my thoughts have turned to an old red mage favourite - Magma Jet.
For {1}{R}, Magma Jet deals two damage to target creature or player, then lets you scry 2. In this article we are going to consider both when you want the card in your deck and how to get the most value out of it. Let’s break down the card into its two components:
• Shock is slightly underpowered at {R}, but if the metagame calls for it (there are a plethora of valuable targets) or if there are enough synergies in your deck (such as with Ash Zealot, Chandra’s Phoenix or Young Pyromancer) then Shock can be a very playable. Costing a full {1} more than Shock, Magma Jet will need
to be at least as well positioned as Shock at both removing creatures and interactiving favourably with your own to be worthy of consideration; and
• the value of Scry 2 is difficult to quantify, ranging from “do absolutely nothing” to “place two dead draws on the bottom of my deck”. This filtering can be powerful in an aggro deck, where you need maximum impact from every draw step. Every instance of Scry lets you see more cards, increasing the chance of finding the right combination of cards to find a win.
Should Magma Jet be in your Red Deck?
There is a lag effect between making the Scry, and actually seeing the benefit. This lag might be effectively zero (the end of turn Magma Jet) to more than two full turns away (even if you bottom two cards, it may take longer than that before you can make use of your new spells) – so getting full value from each Magma Jet involves both making correct Scry decisions and having enough time for those decisions to benefit you.
[i:
3n8jsiu7]Time[/i] is why Turtenwald and Duke eschewed Magma Jet in their hyper-aggressive Red Deck Wins (RDW) variant from the start of the season. Their RDW was designed to exaggerate the number of turn four and five goldfish wins possible, and Magma Jet fits very poorly into that strategy. Magma Jet only does as much damage as Shock, for twice the cost. When your deck’s success is predicated on quickly establishing a board presence and instigating a race, you want your interactive removal to be as cheap as possible, allowing you to remove a blocker while adding another creature to the board to increase your clock. Shock is much better for this than Magma Jet. While they did opt for a more expensive burn spell, the choice was Lightning Strike, which imoprtantly does an extra point of damage, allowing it to remove a greater range of blockers (or opponents – red mages aren’t usually picky). Their deck typically won or lost in four to six turns, which is often not long enough to see the full value out
of the Scry half of Magma Jet. They elected for the more efficient or powerful alternatives. Magma Jet wouldn’t help their deck if it finds a Burning Tree Emissary (BTE) on turn six – this deck wants the BTE in the opening hand. In contrast, the longer the expected game, the greater the number of instances where a specific card, or combination of cards will allow you to win through an increasingly hostile board state. The Devotion Red variant likes to run Magma Jet to allow it to find additional copies of Fanatic of Mogis to win through stalled board states – this is an example of where the ability to filter your deck is at its strongest.
The ability to filter through your deck is at its weakest when all of the cards in your deck are fungible (for example, in the Turtenwald-Duke list where most of the cards are just variations on “2 power dork”) and at its strongest when you are trying to assemble a specific combination of cards either in your hand or in play. The more that your red deck can play like a
combo deck, the more valuable Magma Jet will be. Instead of just acting as an overpriced Shock, Magma Jet will now be assisting both elements of your game plan:
• removing a blocker or dealing damage to your opponent; and
• helping to assemble a specific combination of cards that answer the board state questions posed by your opponent. Sometimes you already have the answers in hand and you just need the mana to see them cast in a timely fashion.
Even more in post-sideboard games, there is a premium placed on drawing your high impact, sometimes game winning cards. For example, in the Mono Red vs. Mono Black Control matchup, a timely Act of Treason can turn a board position dominated by an early Desecration Demon into a win. Whereas Shock would typically have few to no targets (you would typically want to board it out), having the Scry 2 tacked on for a single mana can be a game-winning effect, perhaps letting you find the winning card as much as a full two turns earlier (before it is too late!). The
most important consideration with any filtering effect is knowing what you’re looking for. The primary consideration is finding cards that lead to winning outcomes. You need to look for cards that will see you on the path to victory, which can (and should) mean calculating a few turns ahead. An extra creature might help you pressure your control opponent for a shorter game, but if they have the Supreme Verdict, you’ll feel silly. It might be better to look for more burn spells to keep rebuying your Chandra’s Phoenix. Once you know what cards you need to win, you can make more effective Scry decisions. My general rule is that if I cannot see a card improving my position to a winning one, then I need to put that card to the bottom and look for a card that will.
Scry allows you to improve the sequence of your draws and thus your plays and to find the winning lines. The better your understanding of the varying worth of your cards in differing board states and your knowledge of what the defining elements of a
matchup are, the better informed your decisions will be when making the Scry. This can range from the simple “Rakdos Cackler would do absolutely nothing in this board state, so easy bottom” to “I really need a creature to put some pressure on now. There isn’t one in my top two, but there is a Mutavault – is that good enough or should I bottom it and dig a card deeper?”. There aren’t always easy answers, but both experience and familiarity with your deck will improve your decision making. You should get in the habit of taking as much time as you can to consider the alternatives. Here are some thoughts on the different Scry 2 decisions:
Scenario One: Leave Both on Top
Sometimes you would have drawn the cards you need you need anyway. Doesn’t mean you cannot give this outcome no thought however. You should still take a moment to consider in what order it is best to draw these two cards. Usually, this is predicated on what other cards are in your hand, what the board state is and
what you predict your opponent will do in their next few turns.
For example, if faced with the choice between drawing a creature and a burn spell, you might prefer to draw the creature if the burn spell would be a second copy of one that you already have in hand as having the creature may create broader lines of play. You may wish to deploy the creature on your next turn, then draw the burn spell the turn after to remove a blocker and allow the creature to attack. Alternatively, the burn spell may sequence better with your current hand, improving your mana efficiency and allowing you to more quickly effect your plays. So take a moment to consider what options changing the draw order will give you and whether or not there is greater potential for advantage in one selection.
Finally, it is worth being mindful that many decks are maindecking hand disruption, so delaying a critical spell for a turn might prevent it from being stripped from your hand – I have delayed drawing the lethal Act of Treason for
a turn, so that my opponent could not sequence Thoughtseize into Desecration Demon, stripping away my game winning spell. Instead, Thoughtseize took something else, and my next draw brought the game-winner.
Scenario Two: Keep One, Bottom One
This situation is usually quite easy if you correctly understand what you’re looking to do over the next few turns. Maybe the lethal burn spell or haste creature is right there, so you can keep that card and put the other to the bottom, looking for the land to cast your winner. Just keep in mind that you need to keep cards that will advance your position to a winning one, and that you should only keep “just in case” cards if you are already well ahead.
Scenario Three: Bottom Two
In contrast two Scenario One, I would strongly urge you to think again before immediately putting two cards to the bottom. While these cards might not seem to be immediately winning, perhaps it is possible that they are likely winning
and with some consideration, it is possible to sequence your plays in such a way as to win. Maybe you were looking for that lethal Lightning Strike, but a pair of humble Firedrinker Satyr that can be sacrificed to the Desecration Demon impeding your board will suffice to get you there for the final points of damage. So while the Lightning Strike would be a guaranteed win, the pair of Satyr are likely winning often enough that you should keep them and try to win that way – this is because even if you bottom them both, the chance of drawing the necessary Lightning Strike is still extremely low, so it is better to make the best of what you have. It is really only when you must find a single, specific card or when the two cards do truly nothing (for example, truly excess lands do nothing for your red deck, but don’t bottom your third and fourth land because everything in your hand costs one and two but your deck runs Stormbreath Dragon) that you should put both to the bottom.
Some Final Ideas to
remember:
• Magma Jet’s playability is heavily dependent on whether or not a simple Shock is well positioned in the format. If you wouldn’t play a Shock in your deck, you should think twice before playing Magma Jet, as by itself, deal 2 to an opponent and scry 2 is not very powerful. Having other interactions in your deck that benefit from casting a spell help to compensate here; and
• in addition to the obvious end of turn Magma Jet, you can also cast Magma Jet in your own upkeep to fix your draw. If you know you’re going to cast Magma Jet anyway, this is often the best time to cast as it gives you maximum influence over your next few turns. Sometimes you really need to find a specific card (or just a land) and this is a good way to go about it.
Magma Jet won’t suit the plan of every red decl. Getting the most out of your Magma Jet requires a lot of consideration, but if you take the time to really think about the decision you will win more games, even if it just means that you’re top
decking more wins (you did just bottom two blanks!). Be sure to take that extra moment to consider your options before pointing another card at your opponent.
Zemanjaski.
While Theros has generated a great deal of excitement as the collective tries to explore all of the opportunities that the new cards bring, my thoughts have turned to an old red mage favourite - Magma Jet.
For {1}{R}, Magma Jet deals two damage to target creature or player, then lets you scry 2. In this article we are going to consider both when you want the card in your deck and how to get the most value out of it. Let’s break down the card into its two components:
• Shock is slightly underpowered at {R}, but if the metagame calls for it (there are a plethora of valuable targets) or if there are enough synergies in your deck (such as with Ash Zealot, Chandra’s Phoenix or Young Pyromancer) then Shock can be a very playable. Costing a full {1} more than Shock, Magma Jet will need
to be at least as well positioned as Shock at both removing creatures and interactiving favourably with your own to be worthy of consideration; and
• the value of Scry 2 is difficult to quantify, ranging from “do absolutely nothing” to “place two dead draws on the bottom of my deck”. This filtering can be powerful in an aggro deck, where you need maximum impact from every draw step. Every instance of Scry lets you see more cards, increasing the chance of finding the right combination of cards to find a win.
Should Magma Jet be in your Red Deck?
There is a lag effect between making the Scry, and actually seeing the benefit. This lag might be effectively zero (the end of turn Magma Jet) to more than two full turns away (even if you bottom two cards, it may take longer than that before you can make use of your new spells) – so getting full value from each Magma Jet involves both making correct Scry decisions and having enough time for those decisions to benefit you.
[i:
3n8jsiu7]Time[/i] is why Turtenwald and Duke eschewed Magma Jet in their hyper-aggressive Red Deck Wins (RDW) variant from the start of the season. Their RDW was designed to exaggerate the number of turn four and five goldfish wins possible, and Magma Jet fits very poorly into that strategy. Magma Jet only does as much damage as Shock, for twice the cost. When your deck’s success is predicated on quickly establishing a board presence and instigating a race, you want your interactive removal to be as cheap as possible, allowing you to remove a blocker while adding another creature to the board to increase your clock. Shock is much better for this than Magma Jet. While they did opt for a more expensive burn spell, the choice was Lightning Strike, which imoprtantly does an extra point of damage, allowing it to remove a greater range of blockers (or opponents – red mages aren’t usually picky). Their deck typically won or lost in four to six turns, which is often not long enough to see the full value out
of the Scry half of Magma Jet. They elected for the more efficient or powerful alternatives. Magma Jet wouldn’t help their deck if it finds a Burning Tree Emissary (BTE) on turn six – this deck wants the BTE in the opening hand. In contrast, the longer the expected game, the greater the number of instances where a specific card, or combination of cards will allow you to win through an increasingly hostile board state. The Devotion Red variant likes to run Magma Jet to allow it to find additional copies of Fanatic of Mogis to win through stalled board states – this is an example of where the ability to filter your deck is at its strongest.
The ability to filter through your deck is at its weakest when all of the cards in your deck are fungible (for example, in the Turtenwald-Duke list where most of the cards are just variations on “2 power dork”) and at its strongest when you are trying to assemble a specific combination of cards either in your hand or in play. The more that your red deck can play like a
combo deck, the more valuable Magma Jet will be. Instead of just acting as an overpriced Shock, Magma Jet will now be assisting both elements of your game plan:
• removing a blocker or dealing damage to your opponent; and
• helping to assemble a specific combination of cards that answer the board state questions posed by your opponent. Sometimes you already have the answers in hand and you just need the mana to see them cast in a timely fashion.
Even more in post-sideboard games, there is a premium placed on drawing your high impact, sometimes game winning cards. For example, in the Mono Red vs. Mono Black Control matchup, a timely Act of Treason can turn a board position dominated by an early Desecration Demon into a win. Whereas Shock would typically have few to no targets (you would typically want to board it out), having the Scry 2 tacked on for a single mana can be a game-winning effect, perhaps letting you find the winning card as much as a full two turns earlier (before it is too late!). The
most important consideration with any filtering effect is knowing what you’re looking for. The primary consideration is finding cards that lead to winning outcomes. You need to look for cards that will see you on the path to victory, which can (and should) mean calculating a few turns ahead. An extra creature might help you pressure your control opponent for a shorter game, but if they have the Supreme Verdict, you’ll feel silly. It might be better to look for more burn spells to keep rebuying your Chandra’s Phoenix. Once you know what cards you need to win, you can make more effective Scry decisions. My general rule is that if I cannot see a card improving my position to a winning one, then I need to put that card to the bottom and look for a card that will.
Scry allows you to improve the sequence of your draws and thus your plays and to find the winning lines. The better your understanding of the varying worth of your cards in differing board states and your knowledge of what the defining elements of a
matchup are, the better informed your decisions will be when making the Scry. This can range from the simple “Rakdos Cackler would do absolutely nothing in this board state, so easy bottom” to “I really need a creature to put some pressure on now. There isn’t one in my top two, but there is a Mutavault – is that good enough or should I bottom it and dig a card deeper?”. There aren’t always easy answers, but both experience and familiarity with your deck will improve your decision making. You should get in the habit of taking as much time as you can to consider the alternatives. Here are some thoughts on the different Scry 2 decisions:
Scenario One: Leave Both on Top
Sometimes you would have drawn the cards you need you need anyway. Doesn’t mean you cannot give this outcome no thought however. You should still take a moment to consider in what order it is best to draw these two cards. Usually, this is predicated on what other cards are in your hand, what the board state is and
what you predict your opponent will do in their next few turns.
For example, if faced with the choice between drawing a creature and a burn spell, you might prefer to draw the creature if the burn spell would be a second copy of one that you already have in hand as having the creature may create broader lines of play. You may wish to deploy the creature on your next turn, then draw the burn spell the turn after to remove a blocker and allow the creature to attack. Alternatively, the burn spell may sequence better with your current hand, improving your mana efficiency and allowing you to more quickly effect your plays. So take a moment to consider what options changing the draw order will give you and whether or not there is greater potential for advantage in one selection.
Finally, it is worth being mindful that many decks are maindecking hand disruption, so delaying a critical spell for a turn might prevent it from being stripped from your hand – I have delayed drawing the lethal Act of Treason for
a turn, so that my opponent could not sequence Thoughtseize into Desecration Demon, stripping away my game winning spell. Instead, Thoughtseize took something else, and my next draw brought the game-winner.
Scenario Two: Keep One, Bottom One
This situation is usually quite easy if you correctly understand what you’re looking to do over the next few turns. Maybe the lethal burn spell or haste creature is right there, so you can keep that card and put the other to the bottom, looking for the land to cast your winner. Just keep in mind that you need to keep cards that will advance your position to a winning one, and that you should only keep “just in case” cards if you are already well ahead.
Scenario Three: Bottom Two
In contrast two Scenario One, I would strongly urge you to think again before immediately putting two cards to the bottom. While these cards might not seem to be immediately winning, perhaps it is possible that they are likely winning
and with some consideration, it is possible to sequence your plays in such a way as to win. Maybe you were looking for that lethal Lightning Strike, but a pair of humble Firedrinker Satyr that can be sacrificed to the Desecration Demon impeding your board will suffice to get you there for the final points of damage. So while the Lightning Strike would be a guaranteed win, the pair of Satyr are likely winning often enough that you should keep them and try to win that way – this is because even if you bottom them both, the chance of drawing the necessary Lightning Strike is still extremely low, so it is better to make the best of what you have. It is really only when you must find a single, specific card or when the two cards do truly nothing (for example, truly excess lands do nothing for your red deck, but don’t bottom your third and fourth land because everything in your hand costs one and two but your deck runs Stormbreath Dragon) that you should put both to the bottom.
Some Final Ideas to
remember:
• Magma Jet’s playability is heavily dependent on whether or not a simple Shock is well positioned in the format. If you wouldn’t play a Shock in your deck, you should think twice before playing Magma Jet, as by itself, deal 2 to an opponent and scry 2 is not very powerful. Having other interactions in your deck that benefit from casting a spell help to compensate here; and
• in addition to the obvious end of turn Magma Jet, you can also cast Magma Jet in your own upkeep to fix your draw. If you know you’re going to cast Magma Jet anyway, this is often the best time to cast as it gives you maximum influence over your next few turns. Sometimes you really need to find a specific card (or just a land) and this is a good way to go about it.
Magma Jet won’t suit the plan of every red decl. Getting the most out of your Magma Jet requires a lot of consideration, but if you take the time to really think about the decision you will win more games, even if it just means that you’re top
decking more wins (you did just bottom two blanks!). Be sure to take that extra moment to consider your options before pointing another card at your opponent.
Zemanjaski.
