For those of you living under a muggle rock these days, there is a bit of a debate growing about deck classification. If you are trying to improve your game, knowing your plan is ridiculously important, for those of you who question why deck classification even matters.
Over the whole argument, one thing that stands out to me is that everyone seems to be ignoring one of Adrian Sullivan's most important points. In their haste to mark their own stamp on Magic theory, several writers are forgetting the point of theory in the first place.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find Adrian's tweet to quote directly, but he said, approximately, "What you are doing when you choose to classify Delver as Aggro is not theory, it's empiricism." In the writer's mind, Delver is Aggro, because what he calls Aggro, is actually something else entirely. That's empirical thought, and the danger is that empiricism cannot be taught. Theory succeeds only because it is codified terms with defined parameters that can be passed on.
When you have a public platform such as a webpage or article series, it is crucial that you do not fall into the trap of attempting to communicate your empirical thoughts. While your strategy may be sound, it will fail for someone who does not properly integrate your "theory" with existing theory. And they have practically no way of knowing whether or not they need to do so.
Magic continues to evolve, and there is a need to update the fundamental theories we use to operate our strategies. But that update needs to come in terms of logical interpretations that expand or extend the current model, not reconfigure it completely.
That is the tip of the day.
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