I have no need of fools who can imagine "enough".

Greed is an interesting concept in Magic. It's useful to determine when something is greedy, but it's useless to do so without considering whether the alternatives are greedier. Before I delve deeper, let's go ahead and define greed to mitigate any confusion. Webster's defines it as:

a selfish desire to have more of something (especially money)

Being "selfish" doesn't really mean anything in terms of a game of Magic, so I would substitute taking unnecessary risks as a working definition for greed as it pertains to Magic. That is, actions that ignore probability in favor of "gut feelings" or just general laziness are greedy when winning games is the desired end of those actions.

Greed in Mulligans

When Magic players talk about greed, we most commonly refer to the nature of mulligan decisions. It can be greedy to ship an average seven in search of an exceptional six--off the top of my head, straight mulliganing any hand without Force of Will against combo decks is expecting a lot from most decks--or it could be greedy to keep a hand with no way to interact with opposing game plans nor ways to dig for interactive elements.

Let's take a look at a sample hand from my pre-Magic 2015 Red Devotion deck:

On the draw in game one, after considering mulligaining for a minute, I kept this hand. My opponent Thoughtseized me on turn one and was irate that I would keep this. I would agree that the decision was close, and it's easy to see that some things had to go right for me to win that game, but I believe that this hand is perfectly defensible.

If I draw a Mountain or Sacred Foundry on my first turn or find one after scrying for my second turn, I officially have access to two one-mana Terminates and two RR two-drops, which are more or less "enablers" for devotion strategies.

Not only that, but, if the lands keep rolling, I have Boros Reckoner, who ranges from very good to absurd, and Fanatic of Mogis--the entire reason to even play my deck. I have a 15/53 plus 15/51 shot at making my deck do exactly what it's built to do, in addition to shots at more Temples or a Guildgate to possibly do everything that I want to do a turn or so slower.

Basically, if I hit my 15-outer and I lose, then I realistically shouldn't bother playing this deck in the first place. Bear in mind that I would probably mulligan this hand if the one land were a Guildgate or a basic Mountain, and would more strongly consider mulling it if the land were a Sacred Foundry--at which point the question would be if having definite access to double Chained to the Rocks is as relevant as scrying before I need to draw a land.

The counterpoint to all this is that the hand is a double-mulligain if I never hit a Mountain and functionally a mulligain to zero if I never hit a non-Nykthos land. Those cons are pretty strong.

Fortunately for the list of positives, we have a strong rebuttal. That is, the average six card hand that comes out of the gates stronger than this hand not only involves mulligaining into a good ratio of lands to spells, but also this mulligain expects the spells drawn to be very good. A six card hand with two-three lands and a couple two-drops could easily just lose to removal spells, or a six card hand with lands and some removal spells could easily run out of gas. Take this hand for example:

Now imagine your opponent casting a Desecration Demon or a Master of Waves. This hand has enough lands to immediately cast all of its spells, but it's cold to a wider variety of plays without top-decking a more narrow selection of cards. That is, digging for Chained to the Rocks is more ambitious than digging for lands.

Was my keep greedy? Certainly. Was the alternative better? Ambitiously.

When mulliganing, always consider what you're mulliganing into, not just what you're mulling away.

At the Vintage tournament in North Saint Paul this weekend, I kept this six card hand on the play in the Keeper mirror:

Keeping this hand means saying "go" on turn one, or cracking the Lotus to try to A-Call into a land. Not an ideal start. However, a mulligan to five is going to likely be a Black Lotus shy of an early Jace, and probably won't have as many ways to interact with the opponent. I definitely needed to get lucky to win with this hand, but it also takes an exceptional five card hand to mirror the potential that this hand has to come together.

Greed in Manabases

Manabases are an aspect of deck building that I believe is criminally under-valued. By extension, the concept of greed in manabases is under-explored. Modern manabases are generally based off of decklists that have ratios of color generating lands that allow players to cast their spells on time most of the time, as well as millions of games putting the statistics behind deck building to the test.

Greedy manabases are those that deviate from these statistics and samples in either direction--towards playing too few color generators or too many multi-color lands with opportunity costs.

When it comes to Standard deck building, you'll more commonly hear about people playing too many dual lands. The opportunity costs of Temples, Shocklands and Painlands can swing races by entire turns, so making sure that you have enough basics to play the occasional land untapped will obviously swing a non-zero number of games in your favor.

In Modern, most of the dual lands played are Fetches and Shocklands, which have similar costs. Additionally, the Modern card pool starts being wide enough where non-basic land hate shows up in force. Tectonic Edge and Blood Moon make people think twice about how many basics to put in their decks.

In sum, in Standard and Modern, you don't want to be caught with too few basics.

In Legacy, there are even more hazards for nonbasic lands. Price of Progress, Blood Moon and Back to Basics all rear their head from time to time, and Wasteland is the ubiquitous killer of consistent manabases.

And that brings me to the reason I've decided to write on the topic of Greed.

People play too many basics in Legacy. Losing to hosers sucks. Losing because your manabase doesn't allow you to cast your spells is worse.

I imagine that a great deal of players would disagree with my assertion, and I fully understand that it needs explaining. I'll start here:

Wasteland hits every land in this deck. This deck generally wants to hit a minimum of three unmolested land drops.

Even still, this deck is very strong in Legacy. A large reason for this is that when your opponent doesn't have non-basic land hate, the original dual lands have no drawback.

If nobody played Wasteland/PoP/BtB/Blood Moon, then there wouldn't really be non-budgetary reasons not to jam a whole bunch of duals.

Of course, in this particular deck, Deathrite Shaman and a high volume of lands make Wasteland less of a problem, but the real reason that this deck survives in a Wastland infested world is that the greediness of the manabase allows the deck to play extremely powerful spells. Delver decks often run as few as fourteen color producing lands and they can often just ignore Wasteland as well.

And really, the way many players ought to approach Wasteland is that they should hope they can ignore it. The thing about Wasteland is that as soon as you play a single non-basic it's on. Fetching a basic as your first land is fine if you can follow it up with more basics and fill out your colors--often by way of additional fetchlands. Alternatively, fetching a basic and then playing a dual can make a single Wasteland knock you off of two colors, and it will always knock you off of half of your mana.

I've seen many examples of greedy basics in Legacy, but the one that stands out to me as most heinous is the second Plains in Miracles.

Now, there are spells that cost double-white in this deck. That is definitely a fair point. Alternatively, there are tons of blue mana symbols, too.

Further, the double-white spells are all generally cast with a minimum of four lands in play in a Counterbalance shell that usually wants to sit on a fetchland or two anyhow--meaning that fetching up a Tundra to cast any of the double-white cards is usually an option.

Sequencing your lands as Island into Island into Plains into Plains will definitely make you Wasteland proof, but good luck backing up your Counterbalance with a Spell Pierce in a timely manner or leaving up Brainstorm to counter a spell on your opponent's next turn.

The second Plains has non-zero upside, but I don't see it as being justifiable over the fourth Tundra. Against Blood Moon you'll need to raw-dog the Plains anyway, and against Price of Progress it's only one slot in your deck. And Counterbalance is absurd against Burn anyway.

This is, of course, just one example, but the underlying point is that playing more basics than you need is going to make your mana weaker in the games where you draw the extra basics over any duals that you may not be playing.

Another example of greed in manabases comes from the decklist that I posted last week.

Why do I need five Islands? Rather, why do I need five Islands when I admit that Tarmogoyf is a problem?

I'm already playing a grip of fetchlands, so it's pretty easy to throw 2-3 Tundra into the deck and a few Swords to Plowshares somewhere in the 75.

Does this make me weaker to Wasteland? Sure. But I was already somewhat vulnerable. And if I fetch for a Tundra to cast a Swords to Plowshares and the Tundra gets wasted after the fact, it already did its job.

This deck has a weakness and has more than enough basics to beat Wasteland. The addition of another color can address its weakness.

Playing this many basics is just plain greedy.

~

Greed is a coin with two sides. Even when things are bad, that doesn't mean  the alternatives aren't worse. There are always other options, and sometimes greed is good.

Thanks for reading.

-Ryan Overturf
@RyanOverdrive on Twitter