How many/ and what type of cards needed to run Force of will

[Cire]

I understand that force of will is really good, like really really good, but lately I've been questioning what cards are needed to run it. ( i know there was a thread like this before, or there had to be one, but i couldn't find it in the first two pages and putting force in the search is just stupid) I've heard the usual maxim that 16 blue cards including force of will are need to run force of will, but in reality this is too low a number. My first question i will ask is what is the comfortable number of blue cards including force that are needed to run force. Since there might be an argument to what comfortable is, i will define it as that you will always have another blue card in your hand to pitch force.

Now here comes my other problem, sometimes I'm not just comfortable in throwing certain cards under the force. For example brainstorm, first of all i play brainstorms early in a game or at least before force (this is all not taking into account games against combo), and technically the more storms i play the less cards i can pitch to force. Should brainstorm be considered a "pitch able" blue card in terms of force considering you play them earlier? also like brainstorm there are certain cards, for example win cons that happen to be blue, that i regret pitching to a force. Now im never so upset that i wouldn't pitch to the force because that force usually saves my life, but im just trying to say are there certain cards that shouldn't be considered pitch-able during deck design for the amount of blue cards needed to run force?

So far I'm thinking win-cons shouldn't be calculated as pitch-able during deck design (not to say that during a game you can't pitch them) and i consider cantrips like brainstorm as only 1/2 of a cards since you usually play them early in a game and they only become pitch-able mid and late game?

Anyway what are your opinions?

[Bardo]

17 is the bare minimum of (total) number of blue cards to support Force of Will; though I always shoot for 19-20, since at 17 it's not uncommon to have nothing to pitch. It seems that way anyway.

As for what you can pitch, it depends on the deck. Playing Vintage Psychatog, way back when, you could pitch one of your 3-4 Togs and still win the game just fine. Obviously if you're relying on one Morphling to win you the game (i.e. you're playing a bad deck), I wouldn't pitch that and probably wouldn't count my sole win condition as a blue card for FoW. But any deck running an extremely low number of blue win conditions is going to be running a lot more than 17-18 blue cards.

Apart from advice, the absolute best thing you can do is test, test, test.

Edit - Oh, and pitching a FoW to another FoW is a perfectly fine play most of the time. Pitching a Brainstorm to FoW is indeed a little more painful, but if that's what you have to do...

[Osse]

Everytime I play Force of Will, I pitch another Force of Will in my hand, this might have something to do with the deck, but whenever I'm considering pitching, much like discarding EOT, I'm looking for the weakest card. The second Force of Will is that card.

Brainstorm is probably the best card in the format. Pitching that to Force is usually a mistake, as whatever you're getting off the brainstorm is going to be way better. I think if you're in the position where you're pitching WinCons you're either losing, or can risk it.

I think alot of these questions have to do with how you play a certain deck/style. I know early on in my career I was pitching Brainstorm and everything but the Force to Force, and I'd lose more often because of it.

Another example of this is when to use Brainstorm, which people don't seem to understand yet. They seemingly waste their brainstorms or sit on them for too long. See what Brainstorm can do for you when it's used as much more than a generic draw spell or -even worse- a cantrip.

[Cire]

I often pitch Force to force, well as often as when they're both in my hand.

So far from what being told is that pitching brainstorm to Force is usually a bad play (unless its absolutely necessary such as countering a must counter). So how should brainstorm be calculated into that 17 card minimum?

On the Win cons, as you said pitching win-cons to force usually means your losing or is a bad play (unless you have other win con's in your hand, or could win anyway such as vintage tog, but how often can a legacy deck pitch a win con and then go on to win the game as easily as vintage tog?) basically one more question would be. How many win cons (or blue-cons) do you need to run for those win cons to be included in that 17 card minimum?

[Bardo]

This is all rather vague, you really need a list to dissect this in greater detail. But if we must, the MUC builds du jour typically run 3 cards that can actually win the game. Typically, 1x Morphling, 1x Meloku, 1x Rainbow Efreet. But any deck winning on strictly blue win conditions (and just 2-4 of them) is rarely going to have a dangerously low number of blue cards to support Force. But if we had some theoretical deck that ran exactly three blue win conditions and couldn't otherwise win a game short of decking, I would count them toward my blue spell count, provided the rest of the deck was awesome and let me win if one of my blue win cards was RFG from Force in testing.

This is why, as Sean McKowan (sp) remarked, it's a good thing that R&D made Tarmogoyf green, so that we don't accidentally pitch our Goyfs to Force. :)

Anyway, this discussions are pretty empty with a context (i.e. a list), other than "run at least 17 blue cards for Force." And "don't be afraid to pitch a FoW to another FoW."

[Cire]

fine point taken on the win-condition topic but what about my question of how brainstorms should be used in the Fow blue card count? And if you need a list take for example the typical UGb threshold list


4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
1 Island
3 Wasteland

4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant

4 Force of Will
4 Daze
3 Spell Snare
3 Smother
1 Ghastly Demise
2 Engineered Explosives

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Stifle
2 Extirpate

how many blue cards for Fow does it have? do the brainstorms count? if they do for how much? same goes for ponder ect...

[Bardo]

how many blue cards for Fow does it have? do the brainstorms count? if they do for how much? same goes for ponder ect...

Well, you have 22 blue cards, which is more than enough for Force. I would certainly count Brainstorm as part of the Force-pitchable candidates, since you have the Ponders and Top which are functionally similar. Brainstorm isn't going to be the first card you'd pitch to Force, if you had the choice, but it's not the end of the world if it happens.

[FoolofaTook]

The rule of thumb on counters used to be to only counter the things that would likely kill you. That's how you preserved a finite number of counters against what were likely to be a larger number of threats in the typical deck such that when something came up that you had to counter you had that counter in hand. It also made your removal, which you were fairly likely to draw into even though it was a relatively low number of cards compared to the counters, fully valuable in the matchup. Countering a Hypnotic Specter only to draw into Swords to Plowshares and then lose it and your premature win con to Mind Twist is the best way I can explain that interaction.

The problem with Force of Will, in my opinion, is that it is a really expensive option to play in other than an immediately game-threatening situation. Given that Legacy decks have a strong tendency to play incremental threats that then build to a combinational crescendo (as an example Sensei's Divining Top followed by Counterbalance) it's very hard to spend that Force of Will appropriately early on unless you believe the game state will be irretrievably set against you by a particular play. Chucking a Brainstorm to Force of Will to stop a turn 1 Hypnotic Specter is a good example of the traps that Force of Will can lead too. That Hyppie really is not going to kill you most of the time, although the Haunting Echoes that follows on turn 4 or 5 really will. Try holding onto that Force of Will without removal in your hand though. You'll chuck it and the Brainstorm to stop the Hyppie 90% of the time and the game state will turn incrementally against you. Now if your deck is built with not enough responses to that turn 1 Hyppie then you may be forced to use two strong cards to stop it, but that's a deck construction flaw that Force of Will is both feeding off of and enabling.

[raharu]

Is it really the end of the world if you pitch a Brainstorm in something like Landstill or something else like it, i.e. dedicated control?

[FoolofaTook]

Is it really the end of the world if you pitch a Brainstorm in something like Landstill or something else like it, i.e. dedicated control?

It's a 2 for 1 that includes one of the most powerful cards in the format on your side as well as one of your counters. You'd better have the calculus right on the threat you are countering or you've given something pretty substantial away.

[raharu]

I'm not so sure. It's only marginably better to pitch Ponder to Fow than Brainstorm, and in Landstill I'd rather not pitch a Standstill/ Counterbalance... Inasmuch, if given the choice between CB/ Still and Brainstorm, what would you chose?

[Bardo]

if given the choice between CB/ Still and Brainstorm, what would you chose?

Totally depends on too many things to answer (board state, cards in hand, life total, number of cards in opponent's hand, what you expect they're holding, the match-up, etc.), you know?


The rule of thumb on counters used to be to only counter the things that would likely kill you.

Better rule of thumb: "use your cards to give you the best chance of winning the game, not 'not losing.'" Like if you're beating your opponent bloody with a Tarmogoyf, and your opponent tries to StP it, it's totally fine to FoW, pitching x, to keep the beats coming and win, if that's the right play.


It's a 2 for 1 that includes one of the most powerful cards in the format on your side as well as one of your counters.

Not so quick there. Sure, FoW is 2-for-1 on cards (usually), but it's also like a Power Sink, since your opponent is spending some or all of their available mana, where you're not.

One of the frequent in-game questions I often ask, when I need to Force and have Brainstorm as my only blue card in hand and the mana to cast BStorm: should I gamble it? I know I have 1 blue card, I also know that I might have 0 after BStorm resolves. Again, it's highly contextual (what you've drawn, what's in your deck, etc.) and comes down to risk vs. rewards. Usually a cause for pause, for me.

[FoolofaTook]

I'm not so sure. It's only marginably better to pitch Ponder to Fow than Brainstorm, and in Landstill I'd rather not pitch a Standstill/ Counterbalance... Inasmuch, if given the choice between CB/ Still and Brainstorm, what would you chose?

How often does a turn 1 play against you cost you the game? 7% of the time? Maybe your deck is much stronger in the first 7 or 8 turns in the other 93% of the games if you don't have to make the FoW pitch decision at all because you don't have it in the deck?

Against a Landstill opponent who has a Mishra's on the ground and who spends turn 2 dropping an Island and putting out Standstill are you better off using FoW (-1 net cards) to stop the Standstill (+2 net cards) if you are tossing Brainstorm (even, but with a 3 card dig)? What about if that Brainstorm is going to turn into a net +2 in 5 turns when you can put two lands back on top and use a fetchland to reshuffle?

I guess there is more validity to Force of Will in a slower control mirror and against very fast combo than in most matchups, however there is less validity against decks that just run a succession of cheap undercosted threats out there. Against those kinds of decks a simple Counterspell, which is a universal hard no on a 1 for 1 basis has to be better, even given the UU cost. How many decks that are running Force of Will and enough blue to counter it will have trouble getting UU down by turn 2 or 3?

[FoolofaTook]

Better rule of thumb: "use your cards to give you the best chance of winning the game, not 'not losing.'" Like if you're beating your opponent bloody with a Tarmogoyf, and your opponent tries to StP it, it's totally fine to FoW, pitching x, to keep the beats coming and win, if that's the right play.

How often do you have Force of Will in your hand and not know if it's the right play or not?

In your example: how often do you stop the StP at the end of your turn and then watch your opponent combo out for the win in their turn?

Under the rule of thumb that largely applied in the old single meta you'd let your opponent have the StP, take the life gain and never lose to the potential combo the following turn. That's just how it worked out. Spending the FoW +1 to protect the Goyf (equivalent of) would be like over-extending resources on the board and hoping your opponent did not have the sweeper, only worse, since you never lose to a sweeper you just wind up with an incrementally worse board position.



Not so quick there. Sure, FoW is 2-for-1 on cards (usually), but it's also like a Power Sink, since your opponent is spending some or all of their available mana, where you're not.

A Power Sink is not an unconditional no, so it really does not apply as a comparison to Force of Will in my opinion. It is a 1 for 1, however it is not a hard counter, since there are ways to get around it, even when tapped out.

[raharu]

Such as force?

[FoolofaTook]

Such as force?

Or Simian Spirit Guide or Elvish Spirit Guide or Daze. Probably several other options also.

Don't get me wrong. Force of Will is not a weak card by any means but I just wonder if it's as strong as we really think it is given the fact that there are numerous mechanics (Storm, Split-Second, uncounterability) that void most or all of it's effect, and the vast majority of the threats in the format are disproportional to it's play cost and thus can be superior plays even when countered by it.

[Cire]

first i want to thank foolofatook for continuing this debate, you bring about many of the same questions I've begun to ask.



One of the frequent in-game questions I often ask, when I need to Force and have Brainstorm as my only blue card in hand and the mana to cast BStorm: should I gamble it? I know I have 1 blue card, I also know that I might have 0 after BStorm resolves. Again, it's highly contextual (what you've drawn, what's in your deck, etc.) and comes down to risk vs. rewards. Usually a cause for pause, for me.

Then would it make more sense not to count Bstorms for the 17 card minimum when constructing decks? or at least count them less than a full blue card? the reason i say this is because situations like the one above would still happen but would happen much less if decks were designed without using Bstorms towards the blue card count.

[from Cairo]

One of the frequent in-game questions I often ask, when I need to Force and have Brainstorm as my only blue card in hand and the mana to cast BStorm: should I gamble it? I know I have 1 blue card, I also know that I might have 0 after BStorm resolves. Again, it's highly contextual (what you've drawn, what's in your deck, etc.) and comes down to risk vs. rewards. Usually a cause for pause, for me.

I think the key word here is need. If you need to FoW the spell and Brainstorm is you're only blue pitch, it's clearly safest to pitch it. There is always the possibility that you'd have drawn into 3 land or something and thus would have punted the game.

Obviously there is a mathematical way that if you know how many blue cards you run and know how many blue cards are left in the deck out of how many cards are remaining that you can calculate the probability of drawing one in the next three. But if it's not a 100% chance and you again need to counter the card in question I would always pitch the Brainstorm.

[Cire]

lets say that hypothetically your on the play put down an island and have 4 non-blue cards in hand and a force and Bstorm and on your opponents turn you want to counter a spell and play Bstorm. You have to draw a blue spell in those next 3 cards. Now i know this isn't the real statistical way of doing things but theres 53 cards left so you roughly need 1/3 of those cards to be blue in order to draw into a blue card of Bstorm, which comes out to be 17.6 now including that force and Bstorm to begin with you end up with 19.6 rounded to 20 blue cards needed to run both Bstorm and Force in a deck. Does this sound about the correct number of blue cards to run?

[Anusien]

Only use Force of Will pitching the Brainstorm if the card you're stopping is worth it. I will gladly pitch a Brainstorm to stop a Counterbalance or something; that's why I run 4 of them. Whether you count Brainstorm, like the single Morphling, depends on your deck and how badly you need it.

[Cire]

i understand that pitching the BStorm to stop something important is a perfectly valid and suggested move. But for example i'm just trying to understand if a blue base like

4 Force of will
4 Brainstorm
4 CB
4 Daze
1 Morphling (Only win con)

is acceptable. Obviously as previously discussed 17 is the minimum to run Force of will, and sole win-cons shouldn't be included in the count so that above blue base can run force but shouldn't.

Now lets saw you add in a number of other win conditions into that deck. Is that blue base still unable to support force correctly? i am arguing that again while it can support the force it shouldn't because situations where discarding that Bstorm would appear to often. Again not to say that you can't discard the Bstorm to stop an important spell, only that with that blue base there will often arise the situation where you debate pitching Bstorm to force for any potential counter. This blue base would force you to only use force to counter those must counter spells, you will no longer have the luxury to counter any spell.

[Lego]

It's really hard to pick a number as an absolute in questions like this, because it depends so much upon Force's roll in your deck, and how the rest of the deck runs. For instance, if you're only ever going to want to cast Force of Will once, 16 is probably a fine number. But if you're going to be wanting to Force a couple of things each game, then you're going to want more.

In the end, Bardo said it best: test, test, test.

[Anusien]

The numbers I've heard are 13-14 to cast it once and 16-17 to support it.

[Bardo]

How often do you have Force of Will in your hand and not know if it's the right play or not?

It definitely comes up fairly regularly. When you're playing decks with 8-10 counters, you can't counter everything, so a lot of in game decisions (whether it be with FoW or otherwise) are, "Can I live with that?" Obviously, if I'm playing Thresh and I have the chance to counter CBalance, I'll do it. But what if I land an Enforcer with my opponent at 12 life and my opponent StPs it and I have Force. Should I Force and try to win the game in two turns? What if the StP is bait and I might lose my board to Damnation (or whatever)? So, yes, I think any kind of decision -- other than extremely obvious (e.g. "If I don't counter that I will lose") decisions, it's not so black and white.


how often do you stop the StP at the end of your turn and then watch your opponent combo out for the win in their turn?

What combo deck runs StP? Anyway, my point above illustrates that when you're working with a lot of unknown information, you need to weigh risks and rewards and those are not always easy decisions.

Note that we're largely in agreement.


A Power Sink is not an unconditional no, so it really does not apply as a comparison to Force of Will in my opinion. It is a 1 for 1, however it is not a hard counter, since there are ways to get around it, even when tapped out.

You totally missed my point. Power Sink was an analogy; in that FoW is not strictly 2-for-1, since you're ignoring the fact that your opponent is spending some or all of their available mana and you're not, so you almost always net some tempo.


Then would it make more sense not to count Bstorms for the 17 card minimum when constructing decks?

I would split the difference and just try to shoot for 19 or so blue cards for FoW, so you'll have to make the decision to pitch BStorm less.


4 Force of will
4 Brainstorm
4 CB
4 Daze
1 Morphling (Only win con)

is acceptable. Obviously as previously discussed 17 is the minimum to run Force of will, and sole win-cons shouldn't be included in the count so that above blue base can run force but shouldn't.

Now lets saw you add in a number of other win conditions into that deck. Is that blue base still unable to support force correctly?

I still think 17 is low, though -- in your example -- you do have those spare CBs and Dazes which are only going to be Force fodder as the game wears on, so maybe.

[zulander]

lots of them/ blue good ones.

[nastynate]

i understand that pitching the BStorm to stop something important is a perfectly valid and suggested move. But for example i'm just trying to understand if a blue base like

4 Force of will
4 Brainstorm
4 CB
4 Daze
1 Morphling (Only win con)

is acceptable. Obviously as previously discussed 17 is the minimum to run Force of will, and sole win-cons shouldn't be included in the count so that above blue base can run force but shouldn't.

If that's the total number of blue cards you're packing in a control deck (which I assume the list above is), then it's not enough for FoW. Control decks don't usually win in the first 4 turns, and you're likely to want to cast multiple FoW if you draw into them. The deck above shouldn't cut FoW, however, it should add more blue cards. I personally like to have 22 blue cards (minimum) in a FoW packing control deck.

Things change slightly if you're running a combo deck, which tends to use FoW to force it's combo through (essentially in a combo deck, FoW serves an entirely different purpose). In a combo deck, I'm ballsy enough to run as few as 18 blue cards, but when I've run fewer than that I've gotten screwed.

Obviously your mileage may vary, but that been my experience.