Mid-range

A while back I saw a discussion about whether the Historic Sultai Uro deck should be called a "midrange" deck or a "control" deck. I've thought and read about it a lot since then, and I think a lot of new players' definition of "midrange" is quite different from what it originally meant (through no fault of their own).

I. Why the confusion?

A. In Hearthstone: aggro, midrange, and control are simply a description of your mana curve. They are precisely the same as saying smol medium large. This is a bastardization of more nuanced terms from MtG that date back years before Hearthstone existed. Many players and streamers have gone back and forth between the two games, spreading the misconception that those definitions should be applied to MtG.

B. The terms "aggro," "midrange," and "control" were coined to describe Constructed decks where every card is chosen intentionally to achieve one precisely defined goal. While we can use these terms to roughly describe Limited decks where we make do with happens to be in our packs, we may begin to forget how exactly these terms are defined.

C. Overlap.

i. Not every deck fits perfectly into only one archetype.

ii. If you play a strong enchantment, your opponent needs a disenchant, regardless of what they're playing. Playing a disenchant doesn't mean they are playing control. Similarly, if you play a bunch of creatures, and your opponent doesn't have a bunch of creatures, they need a Wrath effect to stop themselves from dying. Your opponent casting Wrath of God does not mean they are playing control. If your deck basically folds to that card, it feels bad - it feels you just "lost to a control deck" - and it doesn't super matter what your opponent does afterwards to actually kill you. But for the purpose of classifying decks into archetypes, there are multiple different strategies that might choose to play a Wrath effect.

II. Goals, not mana costs

A. The three original archetypes. An archetype is best defined by its objective in the game. Aggro's goal is to quickly reduce the opponent's life total to zero. Combo's goal is to win with their combo (but combo players may need to play discard/counterspells/removal so that they live long enough and so their combo actually resolves). Control's goal is to stop every threat the opponent plays and achieve a board state where every action the opponent can take is futile. Nothing they can draw matters - the game is effectively over even though their life total is 20 and there is nothing on the board. Actually winning the game is a triviality to be addressed at some point after the opponent loses their will to play the game any longer.

B. Midrange. The goal of midrange decks is to land a powerful, big creature (a "fatty" to use the somewhat dated term), and leverage its raw strength to win the game. You can't sit around doing nothing for multiple turns until you play your fatty, though, so you play whatever best enables this fatty strategy, just like combo. This can include: ramp, discard, removal (including wraths), and counterspells.

So to understand the Historic Sultai deck, let's start from the premise of "I want to win the game by landing the fatties Uro, Nissa, and/or Doom Whisperer" (It is rude to refer to the lovely Nissa as a "fatty" but in terms of stats you can think of her as a 3/3 that if unanswered becomes a 6/6 then a 9/9 then a 12/12 and makes extra mana every turn btw).

What else should we add to our fatty deck to make it so our fatties can successfully take over the game? Firstly, we don't want to die before we cast our fatties. Fatal Push is great for slowing down aggro, as is Eliminate which doubles as removal for the problematic Narset. Maybe even a couple Extinction Events / Languish in a creature heavy meta. Now Growth Spiral is good for helping ramp out our fatties a turn early (Uro itself also does this and also gains life so we don't die wtf). And Thoughtsieze is a cheap way to interact with our opponent, clearing counterspells or preempting threats, which puts itself in the graveyard for escaping Uro. Throw in like 30 lands and you've got yourself a deck which can play a disruptive early game followed up by slapping down 9+ points of power in a single turn. That is midrange.