*** 1995 World Championship Results ***
Scott Burke
1995 World Champion: Alexander Blumke, Switzerland
2nd place: Marc Hernandez, France
Tie for 3rd/4th place: Mark Justice, USA
Henry Stern, USA
Tie for 5th-8th place: Ivan Curina, Italy
Andrea Redi, Italy
Henri Schildt, Finland
Mu Luen Wang, Austra
And the team competition was dominated by the USA, which won by a significant
margin, while the Finnish team narrowly squeaked by the Australian team to
take second place:
World Champion Team: USA 57 pts.
2nd place: Finland 51.75 pts.
3rd place: Australia 51 pts.
4th place: France 50.25 pts.
5th place: Switzerland 49 pts.
6th place: Canada 48 pts.
Tie for 7th-9th place: Austria & UK/Ireland & Italy 46.5 pts.
Tie for 10th/11th place: Netherlands & Zak Dolan* 45 pts.
* Note: Zak played as his own country, and not as part of the US Team.
I'll write up more later, but in brief, the decks were as follows:
Blumke: Black/White "Discard" deck with a splash of Blue
Hernandez: White/Artifact "Control" deck with a splash of Red
Justice: Red/Artifact "Burn" deck with big creatures
Stern: Red/Green "Vise Age" deck with direct damage and creatures
Curina: Green creature deck with a splash of White
Redi: Red "Burn" deck with direct damage and a few creatures
Schildt: Red/White "Burn" deck with direct damage
Wang: Green/Red/White land destruction, creatures, and direct damage
As in the US Nationals, no Blue players made the finals, although several were
very close. And unlike the US Nationals, at the World Championship, the
players voted not to allow deck changes between the Semifinal round on
Saturday and the Finals on Sunday, which probably prevented a surprise Blue
deck or two from appearing in the Finals. (Mark Justice told me he was ready
to ambush with a Merfolk deck in the Finals. It certainly could have done
well against the decks which were played in the Finals.)
After two days of Swiss competition (Sealed Deck and Type 2), the cutoff to
make the final eight was a score of 57, or a record of 19-11 through 30 games.
Two players (Stern and Wang) went 21-9, four players (Justice, Hernandez,
Curina, and Shildt) went 20-10, while there was a five-way tie at 19-11
between Blumke, Redi, Shandley (Australia), Feldmann (Switzerland), and Abbott
(UK/Ireland). In the evening playoff, Blumke and Redi advanced to complete
the final eight, and the rest is history. The other two US team members came
very close: Peter Leiher finished at 18-12, missing the playoff by a single
game, while Mike Long finished at 17-13, missing by two games.
And Mark Justice wins again in the style category, first by using the Johtull
Worm to win the US Nationals, and then by using Elkin Bottles at the World
Championship--the Elkin Bottle was voted by InQuest magazine as the "worst"
Ice Age rare. Funny, Mark had three of them in his deck...
Scott
...................................................................
Scott Burke . Engineering Manager . Phone (503) 757-8416
sc...@sparcom.com . Sparcom Corporation . Fax (503) 753-7821
Banana6000
With all the variety in Magic, I'm afraid that 4E and IA have really
watered down the other colors in favor of red. Oh well, guess I'll be
original like everyone else and build an all direct damage deck with
Ghostly Flames and 4 Vices to round it out.
We could always change the name from "tournament" to "cheeseament".
Rich
######################################################################
# Richard Harvey "We are the music-makers; #
# AOL: Banana6000 We are the dreamers of the dream." #
# banan...@aol.com -- Willy Wonka #
######################################################################
Scott Burke
Banana6000 <banan...@aol.com> wrote:
>Sad to see that over half the winning decks were burn/direct damage decks.
> With all the variety in Magic, I'm afraid that 4E and IA have really
>watered down the other colors in favor of red. Oh well, guess I'll be
>original like everyone else and build an all direct damage deck with
>Ghostly Flames and 4 Vices to round it out.
>
>We could always change the name from "tournament" to "cheeseament".
>
>Rich
There's a bit more information you don't know yet, since nobody's posted it.
The most popular deck type among the 71 semifinalists was... blue/white!
Several of the players who missed the cut by a single game at the end were
in fact blue/white decks.
It's a bit simplistic to say that 4E and IA have watered down the other
colors; not hardly. Mark Chalice, Henry Stern, and I have been playtesting
an anti-red deck based on a key card: Energy Storm. We just didn't have
enough time to tune it before Worlds, and Henry played Vice Age instead.
If there's ever been a card which basically crushes red decks, it's Energy
Storm, and it's from Ice Age.
Oh, by the way, there were NO Ghostly Flames in those burn decks.
Scott.
Bruce G Strang
Banana6000 <banan...@aol.com> wrote:
>Sad to see that over half the winning decks were burn/direct damage decks.
> With all the variety in Magic, I'm afraid that 4E and IA have really
>watered down the other colors in favor of red. Oh well, guess I'll be
>original like everyone else and build an all direct damage deck with
>Ghostly Flames and 4 Vices to round it out.
>
>We could always change the name from "tournament" to "cheeseament".
>
>Rich
That's O.K. Not to take everything away from the above players (they
survived through a large numbers of games) but the "World Championship"
should have a disclaimer printed with it; many, perhaps most, of the best
players of magic weren't there.
The Canadian Championships were held in Toronto, Ontario. I live in a
city 30 miles away connected by a freeway. The best dozen players here (in
either Type I or Type II) all planned to attend. Then, a few weeks
before the Tournament, WOTC forced the organizers to change the
'Championship' to a Type II. None of that dozen went to compete in an
inferior tournament environment to what we can get every weekend at home.
Who wants to play in a dumbed down tournament that is supposed to select
the best. Oooh, I guees we shouldn't have let the Bulls win NBA
Championships; they had two 'spoilers' in Jordan and Pippen - gosh that's
unfair (insert dripping scorn here).
Although I have infinite respect for WOTC as creators of the game, let's
face facts. Type II makes for boring tournaments, but it is a great
marketing device. Get all those players out there who crave the glory of
getting written up in the Duelist to have to buy cards out of every new
expansion. It's bad for the play of the game, but great for marketing.
Oh well, fortunately, around here there are enough people that we can
make our own tournaments and ignore the convocation altogether.
GBS
David Bedno
-That's O.K. Not to take everything away from the above players (they
-survived through a large numbers of games) but the "World Championship"
-should have a disclaimer printed with it; many, perhaps most, of the best
-players of magic weren't there.
-
-The Canadian Championships were held in Toronto, Ontario. I live in a
-city 30 miles away connected by a freeway. The best dozen players here (in
-either Type I or Type II) all planned to attend. Then, a few weeks
-before the Tournament, WOTC forced the organizers to change the
-'Championship' to a Type II. None of that dozen went to compete in an
-inferior tournament environment to what we can get every weekend at home.
-Who wants to play in a dumbed down tournament that is supposed to select
-the best.
Personall, I do. But in the SF Bay area there are no sanctioned Type II
tournaments; they're all Type I. I don't have the speed cards necessary
to win Type I, and I don't feel like buying or trading away my best
cards just to get them. I like the wider range you can get with Type II.
If you can't win in Type II, you're not the best player. Personally, I
think the best kind of tournament would be one where each player got one
of each card currently in print, as much land as they needed, 1 hour to
trade, and then you go from there. *That* would be the best combo of
trade skills, deck construction skills and play skills. But I don't
think we'll see that anytime soon.
Oh well.
--
David Bedno | a .signature
drs...@crl.com | should be no more than four lines
<URL: http://klinzhai.iuma.com/~drseuss/> | I'll use only three
Scott Burke
Sorry, but it doesn't work that way in the real world. Michael Johnson
doesn't have to say: "I'm the Gold Medalist, oh, except for all the possibly
better sprinters who decided not to attend the Olympics." C'mon, the 1995
World Championship was the best the world had to offer for this year. In
1996, I'm sure there will be more tournaments, a better rating system, and
an even higher quality of play, just as 1995 demonstrated better competition
than 1994. Pointing out that there should be a disclaimer is, IMHO, simply
sour grapes for whatever reason. Save your energy and focus on 1996; don't
dampen the achievements of anybody in 1995.
>The Canadian Championships were held in Toronto, Ontario. I live in a
>city 30 miles away connected by a freeway. The best dozen players here (in
>either Type I or Type II) all planned to attend. Then, a few weeks
>before the Tournament, WOTC forced the organizers to change the
>'Championship' to a Type II. None of that dozen went to compete in an
>inferior tournament environment to what we can get every weekend at home.
>Who wants to play in a dumbed down tournament that is supposed to select
>the best. Oooh, I guees we shouldn't have let the Bulls win NBA
>Championships; they had two 'spoilers' in Jordan and Pippen - gosh that's
>unfair (insert dripping scorn here).
Flame on:
Sounds to me like you just don't know how to play anything but your tuned
Type 1 deck. I'm sorry the world didn't cater to you this year. Maybe if
you were an all-around player, you'd be able to demonstrate to us dumb
Type 2 players how to make a good Type 2 deck and us stupid Sealed Deck
players how to tune a sealed deck and win with that too.
Holy moly, but this was an arrogant thing to say. Instead, let's force the
12- and 14-year-old players from foreign countries to spend $1,000 so they
can buy the cards they need to be competitive at a world level in Type 1.
Yes, most of the World competitors had Type 1 decks with them, but some of
them have invested every penny they own into that set of Moxes in order to
balance the spoiler advantage.
Flame off.
>Although I have infinite respect for WOTC as creators of the game, let's
>face facts. Type II makes for boring tournaments, but it is a great
>marketing device. Get all those players out there who crave the glory of
>getting written up in the Duelist to have to buy cards out of every new
>expansion. It's bad for the play of the game, but great for marketing.
Whoops, flame back on again.
I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous.
Were you there? Do you honestly think the Type 2 tournament at the World
Championship was boring? If so, why? Did you notice that of the eight
Finalist decks, there was no clear favorite type of deck? If you include
the decks that missed the finals cutoff by a single game, there were
examples of nearly all Type 2 deck constructions, including blue/white
control decks, white weenie decks with various twists, millstone decks,
and more. Oh, but I guess it's "boring" to have the top 16 players all
playing noticeably different kinds of decks, with no one type being dominant.
I guess it's more exciting to play with a tried and true Type 1 deck, and
comb through a new expansion set to find maybe 1 card to add to your deck,
as opposed to having to design a radically new strategy every six months
to maintain your standing and abilities in the Type 2 environment. Your
comments are reactionary, resistant to change, and overwhelmingly arrogant.
And then to smear the players as glory hounds wanting to get written up in
the Duelist is absurd.
Flame off.
>Oh well, fortunately, around here there are enough people that we can
>make our own tournaments and ignore the convocation altogether.
Thank goodness. That means I won't have to meet you in convocation play
someday.
I'm sorry to be so nasty, but this message is just out of line. There were
71 valiant competitors at the World Championship, and good sportsmanship
all around. Alexander Blumke came from 4th place on the Swiss team to beat
the French National Champion and the US National Champion. Both Marc and Mark
happen to have top-flight Type 1 decks as well, but they have demonstrated
that they can excel in Type 2 and Sealed Deck as well. To smear their
achievements as "boring" and "bad for the play of the game" is profane.
Your disagreement with WotC's policies and practices is completely independent
of the skill and quality of the competitors. I fully agree that WotC didn't
run things in the best manner this year, but I'm also willing to point out
that this year was a significant improvement over last year, and I expect
next year will be even better. You seem to expect it all to happen instantly,
and while that's a fine viewpoint, it's kind of unrealistic for such a complex
situation. The Duelists' Convocation is undergoing a complete overhaul as
we speak: Steve Bishop is no longer the director, the events staff is being
reorganized, and new positions are being filled. Have some patience, make a
positive contribution to the process, and then applaud those who perform
best under whatever rules and tournament types come about.
Sean Chen
Banana6000 <banan...@aol.com> wrote:
>Sad to see that over half the winning decks were burn/direct damage decks.
> With all the variety in Magic, I'm afraid that 4E and IA have really
>watered down the other colors in favor of red. Oh well, guess I'll be
>original like everyone else and build an all direct damage deck with
>Ghostly Flames and 4 Vices to round it out.
You'll be surprised. There are many ways in IA and 4E too hose these sorts
of decks. In mind are CoP:Red, Energy Storm, Justice, Deflection, Reverse
Damage. Well you get the idea. What I'm really surprised about is that not
a single blue/white or blue/anything deck qualified.
A question for Scott. What was the format of the Swiss? Was it play two
games a round or play three games a round or play best out of three a round...
In the finals was it a swiss? Or was it another double elimination.
What system matters because sideboards become much more important under
certain tournament systerms ...
>We could always change the name from "tournament" to "cheeseament".
Think what you will, but the reality is much more complicated.
Sean
--
Sean Chen
sc...@CSUA.berkeley.edu
Eric Oster
[snipped flamage which I generally agree with]
I _was_ there!
Seeing this quality of players, and this many different types of decks
really helped me out (a beginner). I don't feel that I can compete (and
have a chance at winning) a type one tourney yet, so I have to try my
skill at the type two tourneys, where I feel the playing field is more
level. However, most people there are still better players than me, but
I don't have to put my decks up against lotus/mox/timetwister/ancestral
decks. (The very first tourney I went to I played one of these in the
first round. Lost Two games in a row of course. Single eliminination.
Bummer. :( ) Now I'm in this newsgroup trying to pick up some strategic
advice. My decks still lose, but I'm getting better. :)
Eric Oster (eko...@u.washington.edu)
--
Eric Oster (eko...@u.washington.edu)
Scott Burke
Sean Chen <sc...@soda.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
>
>A question for Scott. What was the format of the Swiss? Was it play two
>games a round or play three games a round or play best out of three a round...
>In the finals was it a swiss? Or was it another double elimination.
>
>What system matters because sideboards become much more important under
>certain tournament systerms ...
Yes, they were aware of the differences. Origins qualifiers were run
as two-game matches due to time constraints, although the Semis were run as
"up to 3" matches. For World, the two days of qualifying was all "up to 3"
matches with 3 points for a win, 1 point for a tie, and NO points for
unfinished games. I didn't witness a single game that got called on time,
although the final game between Justice and Lebas (France) in the Type 2
qualifiers was completed with about 20 seconds to spare (Justice won). Nor
do I think there were any tie games at all. However, the tie-breaker
round among the five players for the last two spots Saturday night was
run as kind of a round-robin play two games system.
The Finals was single-elimination best 3 out of 5 duels. Arguably, that
made the sideboard too important, but in practice, it was irrelevant,
because each match that went more than 3 games would have been won by
the same person if it had been stopped at 3 games.
John Garrett
> In article <406eqn$2...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
> Banana6000 <banan...@aol.com> wrote:
> >Sad to see that over half the winning decks were burn/direct damage decks.
> > With all the variety in Magic, I'm afraid that 4E and IA have really
> >watered down the other colors in favor of red. Oh well, guess I'll be
> >original like everyone else and build an all direct damage deck with
> >Ghostly Flames and 4 Vices to round it out.
> >
> >We could always change the name from "tournament" to "cheeseament".
> >
> >Rich
>
> It's a bit simplistic to say that 4E and IA have watered down the other
> colors; not hardly. Mark Chalice, Henry Stern, and I have been playtesting
> an anti-red deck based on a key card: Energy Storm. We just didn't have
> enough time to tune it before Worlds, and Henry played Vice Age instead.
> If there's ever been a card which basically crushes red decks, it's Energy
> Storm, and it's from Ice Age.
I came across an 'Energy Storm' / Land tax white (hint of blue for REB's) and
a hint of red for option of direct damage in a type II tourney and a Red/Green
deck of mine took an exit from the tourney.
It wasn't what I would have considered to be a finely tuned deck (owner admitted
to only having built it 2 weeks before), but it gave food for thought. I now
have 'Energy Storm' on my trade list as a 'want' ! I believe the potential of
IA has not yet been totally exhausted and with Chronicles some new and exciting
deck ideas will appear.
The good thing about Energy Storm is that the really focused 'Burn' decks have
too many direct damage cards, the idea of having redundant cards in a deck is
frightening. I will be creating a white/blue and white/green ES deck on my
forthcoming summer vac. and look forward to the opportunity to try them out
sometime !
--
John Garrett
Chuck Cochems
heart why they weren't.
It was because of Ice Age, and it's exciting cards.
Ice Age has brought power to Type II, the likes of whuich has never been
seen before..
I will be sad to see it go from Type II..
Without Ice Age, the tournament would have been BORING.....
Everyone knows the worst Ice Age card is Essence Flare. The only real
use of it is to kill the creature you cast it on, and there are better ways
to do that. If you want your own creatures boosted, use Unstable
Mutation, which boosts toughness. You can stack up UMs to good effect.
Not so with Essence Flares.. Use it on a weenie and it dies REAL fast.
Use it on a power creature, and it's "so what?"
--
zap...@camelot.bradley.edu
"I owe you nothing so I will send you straight away with a rocket to the moon!"
-- Culture Beat --
Kris Kontos
>should have a disclaimer printed with it; many, perhaps most, of the best
>players of magic weren't there.
>city 30 miles away connected by a freeway. The best dozen players here (in
>either Type I or Type II) all planned to attend. Then, a few weeks
>before the Tournament, WOTC forced the organizers to change the
>'Championship' to a Type II. None of that dozen went to compete in an
>inferior tournament environment to what we can get every weekend at home.
>Who wants to play in a dumbed down tournament that is supposed to select
>the best. Oooh, I guees we shouldn't have let the Bulls win NBA
>Championships; they had two 'spoilers' in Jordan and Pippen - gosh that's
>unfair (insert dripping scorn here).
>face facts. Type II makes for boring tournaments, but it is a great
>marketing device. Get all those players out there who crave the glory of
>getting written up in the Duelist to have to buy cards out of every new
>expansion. It's bad for the play of the game, but great for marketing.
>
>make our own tournaments and ignore the convocation altogether.
>
I agree completely. Type I is the only version played in our
tournaments, and mox/lotus decks do not win hands down every week.
The notion of ignoring the convocation altogether is becoming
more and more popular. We are in the process of integrating
Ice Age into our type-I tourneys, and coming up with our
own lists of banned and restricted cards. Given the incredible
selection of cards now available, the convocation should ask themselves
if anything other than a type-I tournament is necessary at all. Ice
Age is certainly an excellent equalizer, given all the new combinations
now available.
Just my humble opinion
TKK
Alexander Shearer
: if anything other than a type-I tournament is necessary at all. Ice
: Age is certainly an excellent equalizer, given all the new combinations
: now available.
B.S.
IMHO, of course.
: Just my humble opinion
: TKK
Ditto,
Alex Shearer
ga...@netcom.com
(Who has yet to see IA win a Type I where someone had a full spoiler
suite available to oppose it...)
Alex Kallend
Kris Kontos <kon...@theophilus.Eng.Sun.COM> wrote:
>>survived through a large numbers of games) but the "World Championship"
>>should have a disclaimer printed with it; many, perhaps most, of the best
>>players of magic weren't there.
being in the US (Chicago) out regional play was about 3 states away, in
pennsylvania. no one I know in chicago went to it. It's just too far. (A
few of us went to the Ice Age sealed Deck in Canada, and that was closer)
Then there is Nationals, which I guess I could go look up where it was,
but again no one I know from Chicago went there. I go to regular
tournamnets of both type around chicago, and talk to a lot of the better
players regularly.
Of course then these European countries have 3 or 4 natinal championships
in a smaller amount of space. The casual player in Belgium, England, etc.
can get to whereever in the country they decide to hold their championships.
I don't doubt that those players from those countries are the best their
countries had to offer. The countries are small enough for everyone who
wants to compete to be able to. (I used to live in the UK, I know this one)
The scheme of only having X people from any countries really punishes
those who live in the larger (geographically) countries like U.S., Canada...
Perhaps, if the DC were interested in more competition, They'd abandon
country borders in favor of sort of a geographical region based
championship series. It just seems unfair that in some countries you can
take a 2/3 hour train trip to go to your national championships, whereas
in other countries (with more magic players) you can't even get to the
regional tournament without a 13/14 hour trip.
Alex
Bruce G Strang
>>That's O.K. Not to take everything away from the above players (they
>>survived through a large numbers of games) but the "World Championship"
>>should have a disclaimer printed with it; many, perhaps most, of the best
>>players of magic weren't there.
>
>Sorry, but it doesn't work that way in the real world. Michael Johnson
>doesn't have to say: "I'm the Gold Medalist, oh, except for all the possibly
>better sprinters who decided not to attend the Olympics." C'mon, the 1995
>World Championship was the best the world had to offer for this year. In
>1996, I'm sure there will be more tournaments, a better rating system, and
>an even higher quality of play, just as 1995 demonstrated better competition
>than 1994. Pointing out that there should be a disclaimer is, IMHO, simply
>sour grapes for whatever reason. Save your energy and focus on 1996; don't
>dampen the achievements of anybody in 1995.
>
I actually agree with much of anything Scott had to say.
First, who's Michael Johnson anyway?
Second, the Olympics would be treated with ridicule if the Committe said
to Donovan Bailey, Bruny Surin, Linford Christie, and the American team
that they could not attend because they were too good. After all, it
would not be fair to Scott. I especially like the manner in which Scott
is able to attribute my motives here, despite the fact he has no idea of
what he's talking about.
Third, I believe that to win that tournament was an achievement. The
winner should take pride in his achievement. But for anyone to suggest
that because this group of players necessarily represents the best Magic
has to offer is simply fallacious. They may be the best, but who knows,
because many of the best players no doubt chose not to take part in a
ridiculous process.
>>The Canadian Championships were held in Toronto, Ontario. I live in a
>>city 30 miles away connected by a freeway. The best dozen players here (in
>>either Type I or Type II) all planned to attend. Then, a few weeks
>>before the Tournament, WOTC forced the organizers to change the
>>'Championship' to a Type II. None of that dozen went to compete in an
>>inferior tournament environment to what we can get every weekend at home.
>>Who wants to play in a dumbed down tournament that is supposed to select
>>the best. Oooh, I guees we shouldn't have let the Bulls win NBA
>>Championships; they had two 'spoilers' in Jordan and Pippen - gosh that's
>>unfair (insert dripping scorn here).
>
>Flame on:
>
>Sounds to me like you just don't know how to play anything but your tuned
>Type 1 deck. I'm sorry the world didn't cater to you this year. Maybe if
>you were an all-around player, you'd be able to demonstrate to us dumb
>Type 2 players how to make a good Type 2 deck and us stupid Sealed Deck
>players how to tune a sealed deck and win with that too.
>
>Holy moly, but this was an arrogant thing to say. Instead, let's force the
>12- and 14-year-old players from foreign countries to spend $1,000 so they
>can buy the cards they need to be competitive at a world level in Type 1.
>Yes, most of the World competitors had Type 1 decks with them, but some of
>them have invested every penny they own into that set of Moxes in order to
>balance the spoiler advantage.
>
>Flame off.
This passage is one of the silliest I've read in a long while. Most of my
first year students would not make the elementary errors of logic that
Scott has made here.
First, I currently have 14 decks made. One has spoilers. I just finished
redesigning my tournament deck entirely; I changed out a majority of
cards. Most of my play doesn't involve my tourny deck at all. I play for
ante, and I've played Type II tournaments. I merely think that they are
an extremely limited, and, frankly, boring play environment. Even victory
doesn't matter because the game environment is just so dull.
[As an aside, I didn't respond to Mr. Bedno's earlier post, but I don't
understand how he could possibly say that Type II offers a wider range of
play than does Type I. Simply put, it does not.
Second, I have no desire whatsoever (and never implied that I did) to
teach Scott anything about the play of Type II or Sealed deck
tournaments. For Scott to suggest that I had is downright silly.
Third, I have never suggested and do not believe that 12 to 14 year olds
should go out and buy moxen and a Lotus. Scott is merely having
difficulties reading what I've said. I think it would be silly for a 14
year old who's not independently wealthy to buy Moxen. I do think, however,
that there would be relatively easy ways for WOTC to fix the Type I
environment so that everyone could compete, and the discussion of the
issue continues here and on .misc. The problem is that WOTC
has a financial interest in convincing all those 12 to 14 year olds (and
everyone else, of course) to buy more cards. The company designed,
therefore, the Type II system, telling people that it is 'fair' (it's
not, of course; I could list a dozen inequities if I wanted to do so).
That fact that it builds in obsolence and makes people to buy new cards
continually had to have been the furthest thing from WOTC's mind [insert
sarcasm here].
In short, Scott's attempt at a flame entirely misses its mark, as it
consists of mis-readings of what I did say, combined with his creation out
of whole cloth things that I did not say so that he could criticize
things I hadn't said.
>>Although I have infinite respect for WOTC as creators of the game, let's
>>face facts. Type II makes for boring tournaments, but it is a great
>>marketing device. Get all those players out there who crave the glory of
>>getting written up in the Duelist to have to buy cards out of every new
>>expansion. It's bad for the play of the game, but great for marketing.
>
>Whoops, flame back on again.
>
>I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous.
>
>Were you there? Do you honestly think the Type 2 tournament at the World
>Championship was boring? If so, why? Did you notice that of the eight
>Finalist decks, there was no clear favorite type of deck? If you include
>the decks that missed the finals cutoff by a single game, there were
>examples of nearly all Type 2 deck constructions, including blue/white
>control decks, white weenie decks with various twists, millstone decks,
>and more. Oh, but I guess it's "boring" to have the top 16 players all
>playing noticeably different kinds of decks, with no one type being dominant.
>
>I guess it's more exciting to play with a tried and true Type 1 deck, and
>comb through a new expansion set to find maybe 1 card to add to your deck,
>as opposed to having to design a radically new strategy every six months
>to maintain your standing and abilities in the Type 2 environment. Your
>comments are reactionary, resistant to change, and overwhelmingly arrogant.
>
>And then to smear the players as glory hounds wanting to get written up in
>the Duelist is absurd.
>
>Flame off.
I wonder when Scott plans to learn to read. I mean, he gets the letters
and everything, but his comprehension level is low.
First, yippee!!! There were three (I might even grant you four) types of
decks that were succesful. My what a wide variety [insert dripping scorn
here]. At the last Type I tourney that I attended there were more than a
dozen types of decks among the final 16 or 32 players. Type II makes for
a narrow range of decks; I don't see haow anyone who knows both
environments could dispute that statement. I find the play boring, as do
many others around here (and, from the sounds heard on the usenet, there
are lots of others who feel the same way). So sue me (us).
Second, as I mentioned before, you are entirely wrong about what I like
to play and how I use my decks. That's what happens when you make false
assumptions on little or no data. I thought engineers were supposed to
know stuff like that.
Third, if you read what I wrote, I said WOTC used the desire of little
kids who think they could be world champs (I hope one is someday) to sell
more and more and more cards. If you find that offensive, well so be it.
Your mis-reading of what I did say is just silly.
>>Oh well, fortunately, around here there are enough people that we can
>>make our own tournaments and ignore the convocation altogether.
>
>Thank goodness. That means I won't have to meet you in convocation play
>someday.
Yes, that's probably a good thing, isn't it.
>
>I'm sorry to be so nasty, but this message is just out of line. There were
>71 valiant competitors at the World Championship, and good sportsmanship
>all around. Alexander Blumke came from 4th place on the Swiss team to beat
>the French National Champion and the US National Champion. Both Marc and Mark
>happen to have top-flight Type 1 decks as well, but they have demonstrated
>that they can excel in Type 2 and Sealed Deck as well. To smear their
>achievements as "boring" and "bad for the play of the game" is profane.
>
>Your disagreement with WotC's policies and practices is completely independent
>of the skill and quality of the competitors. I fully agree that WotC didn't
>run things in the best manner this year, but I'm also willing to point out
>that this year was a significant improvement over last year, and I expect
>next year will be even better. You seem to expect it all to happen instantly,
>and while that's a fine viewpoint, it's kind of unrealistic for such a complex
>situation. The Duelists' Convocation is undergoing a complete overhaul as
>we speak: Steve Bishop is no longer the director, the events staff is being
>reorganized, and new positions are being filled. Have some patience, make a
>positive contribution to the process, and then applaud those who perform
>best under whatever rules and tournament types come about.
>
>
>Scott.
>
>...................................................................
>Scott Burke . Engineering Manager . Phone (503) 757-8416
>sc...@sparcom.com . Sparcom Corporation . Fax (503) 753-7821
>
Well, once again, Scott's off in his own little world. I have not said
that Alexander Blumke should not be proud of his achievement; he should
be proud. I have, however, said that we have no idea whether or not he is
the best that Magic has to offer. WOTC prevented us from determining that
this year. As to WOTC's performance this past year, it stunk. As always,
the cards are great. I thank Richard Garfield for a game that's given me
many hours of good play. WOTC's duelist convocation is a great marketing
tool but an awful way to promote the high quality play of the game.
WOTC's marketing has left a lot to be desired, and is alienating store
owners and players alike who can't get product.
As to hopes for the future of the Convocation, I have none. I would be
happy to be proven wrong, but I think it will not happen. WOTC's
financial interest in making cards obsolete is too great to overcome. I
would be glad to take part in a realistic process to reform the
Convocation, but I don't expect to be asked (especially if Scott has any
say in the matter). As to Scott's belief that the Convocation improved
this, I flatly disagree; it stunk.
Cheers,
GBS
P.S. Scott, I suggest that you go look up the words reactionary and
profane in the dictionary; you don't appear to know what either of them
means.
Peter J Cho
just my two cents (entire quoted posts of both bruce and scott on bottom
for reference)...
I find what both say rather interesting, although both seem to be
muddling each other's points.
I seem to sense that Bruce believes that the world Championships are
misleading in name. That the world champion isn't really the world
champion, because there are better players out there who choose
not to participate.
I feel that those who choose not to participate basically relinguished
there right to claim to be the best. they were not forced out from
competition, theyy choose not to. which I think falls under Scott
Burke's point. We realize that olympic athlete with the gold metal has
reached the pinnacle of his career. we do not diminish it by saying
that there are better athletes out there who decided not to show up. If
there were better athletes out there, they relinguished any right to be
better by not participating. Likewise, magic players entered the forum
knowing whoever wins, will be considered the best. There achievement
should not be diminished just because several players choose not to...
they relinguished any right to claim to be the best.
Currently, the way the DC is organized, provides a format to decide who
is best. whoever wins receives the press. there is no other format which
decides the world champion.I realize bruce has problems with this because
DC has decided to use Type II and sealed deck which brings me to my
thoughts below.
how should the world champion be defined? WotC has used type II
and sealed deck, which are fine outlets of expression. Especially
sealed deck as that truly tests a players skills. also, type II is not an
inferior envirnoment. It is merely a different environment. Just because
you're a good type I player, it does not translate into a good type II
player. In our tournies here, type I play is dominated by about 5
different people (it used to be more, but the people who have sold oops,
no longer can compete in type I tournies - deck designs are still great,
but the oops seem to provide the extra advantage). The people who
dominate have access to most or all the restricted OOPS (moxen, loti,
etc). Yet in type II, different people win every week. There is no clear
core of repeat winners. Sometimes the deck designs are redundant
(standard weenie, discard), but quite a few creative decks make it and
win. these people are excellent players and have the right to be
considered great palyers, but can't compete in type I cause of the OOP
problem. so the question is, are these people now considered ineligible
as great players as they don't have access to OOP cards to win at type I?
I 'd say not.
Thwe world champion should be considered the player who can excel in all
envirnoments. The type II and sealed deck envirnoments are currently the
best level playing field. It takes about a grand to make a great type I
deck. For about $20 - $100 dollars you can make a great type II deck
(through trading etc). it's not really an on-going cost if you're willing
to trade. Very few people I know have the resources to make type I decks.
although type II and sealed may not be the best level playing field, it's
the best we have now.
type I simply isn't the arena to decide who's the
best, it simply alienates too many people (people in foreign countires,
younger players, newer players, etc). these people will never have a
chance to draft in a "jordan" (lotus) or "bird" (moxen) as these cards will
never be reprinted.
on a side note, I can easily imagine people saying that whoever won a
type I world championship simply won because they had access to OOPS. and
that cause of OOPS, it wasn't really a test of player's skill. but as I
said beofre, this idea is simply a tangent, but might serve as a foil to
consider the differences between type I and II.
also this issue should not be confused with financial motives. which are
being used to cloud player's skill. type II is being used not as a means
for wotc to sell expansions (good expansions would still sell no matter
the tourney format... plenty of oop owner's gobble up ice age), but a way
for all players to have realistic access to cards. I'd like to think
that the 12-14 year old kid now says, "hey, I might have a shot at
winning the world championship" instead of "hey, I'll never own a lotus
or a mox, why should I even bother?"
thanks for reading
-peter
ps for those curious, I no longer own a lotus (used to) but still own all
five moxes, a timewalk, ancestral recall, and lots of other very
competitive major oops. I play type I every once in awhile (and usually
make it pretty far unless I play one of the decks that makes it to the
semis or finals in the first round) and I have won type I tournies. I kinda
stopped cause decks designs were getting boring... and have adjusted to
type II (which for me was actually harder... hey this deck could use this
<CARD>... hey it's type I legal only... damn). type II is kinda fun here
and kinda laid back. One day i plan to use star trek backs on my cards in
sleeves and will demonic consulation myself for the enterprise :) and I
have to admit, I've never won a type II tourney...
Owen Reynolds
>reached the pinnacle of his career. we do not diminish it by saying
>that there are better athletes out there who decided not to show up. If
>there were better athletes out there, they relinguished any right to be
>better by not participating.
The problem with this entire analogy is that Magic playing has
nothing to do with the Olympics. In the Olympics, people go looking for
serious runners and pay for them to go. You can be pretty sure that
there isn't some kid in Brooklyn who can pole vault higher than the
Olympic record, as well.
The achievement of an Olympian is that they trained hard for years
to be physically and mentally prepared. Playing the card game Magic
takes nothing near than sort of commitment and it's an insult to Olympians
to compare them to Magic players. I'm reminded of a short feature about
someone training for the "distance spitting" Olympic event. Imagine Bob
getting up early every day, practicing tapping land, casting counterspells,
being drilled by his coach on the contents of his hand.
You can be pretty much assured than the World Champion Magic Player
could enter any local type I or II tournament and more-than-likely lose.
It's simply absurd saying the World Champion is in any way "the best"
in a game dominated by various forms of luck (shuffle, seeding, deck
choice, etc... .)
>Likewise, magic players entered the forum
>knowing whoever wins, will be considered the best. There achievement
>should not be diminished just because several players choose not to...
Hundreds or thousands of very talented Magic players who I'd fully
expect to have as good a chance of winning as anyone else choose not to
spend large amounts of time and money to try and win an honor that isn't
regarded as being very important.
Gold medalists are remembered forever and can make lots of money
doing advertisements.
>how should the world champion be defined?
The world champion should be defined as the person who, on a good
day, can reliably beat anyone else. The world champion sprinter, weight-
lifter, rower, shot-putter and wrestler can all do this.
No Magic player can do this, ergo the "World Champion Magic Player"
is a silly concept. People with all sorts of hobbies, esp. non-
competitive ones, have been arranging to meet others with similar hobbies
in groups for hundreds of years. I wouldn't expect Magic to be any
exception. But, they don't go around claiming that the music-boxes at
the official music box convention are the best in the world, since
anyone who didn't bring their music box "forwent the opportunity to
be the best."
Jeff Sternal
g902...@mcmail.cis.McMaster.CA (Bruce G Strang) wrote:
*This passage is one of the silliest I've read in a long while. Most of my
*first year students would not make the elementary errors of logic that
*Scott has made here.
*Scott is merely having difficulties reading what I've said.
*I wonder when Scott plans to learn to read. I mean, he gets the letters
*and everything, but his comprehension level is low.
*Well, once again, Scott's off in his own little world.
*Cheers,
*GBS
Ad Hominem? You should read Aristotle's Rhetoric - you need to boost your
ethos.
Gilles Dignard
ths...@iitmax.acc.iit.edu writes:
>take a 2/3 hour train trip to go to your national championships, whereas
>in other countries (with more magic players) you can't even get to the
>regional tournament without a 13/14 hour trip.
>
Of course, this is only a 11/42 hour difference (15 minute, 43 seconds).
;-)
---------------------- Gilles Dignard - gdig...@tranquility.com
#### /\ #### Tranquility Base Software Inc.
#### ]\/\ /\/[ ####
#### \ \ / / #### Those who are too smart to engage in
#### /--------\ #### politics are punished by being governed
#### ][ #### by those who are dumber.
---------------------- -- Plato
Skarecrow
Owen Reynolds <reyn...@cs.iastate.edu> wrote:
>>We realize that olympic athlete with the gold metal has
>>reached the pinnacle of his career. we do not diminish it by saying
>>that there are better athletes out there who decided not to show up. If
>>there were better athletes out there, they relinguished any right to be
>>better by not participating.
>
>nothing to do with the Olympics. In the Olympics, people go looking for
>serious runners and pay for them to go. You can be pretty sure that
>there isn't some kid in Brooklyn who can pole vault higher than the
>Olympic record, as well.
> The achievement of an Olympian is that they trained hard for years
>to be physically and mentally prepared. Playing the card game Magic
>takes nothing near than sort of commitment and it's an insult to Olympians
>to compare them to Magic players. I'm reminded of a short feature about
>someone training for the "distance spitting" Olympic event. Imagine Bob
>getting up early every day, practicing tapping land, casting counterspells,
>being drilled by his coach on the contents of his hand.
>
> You can be pretty much assured than the World Champion Magic Player
>could enter any local type I or II tournament and more-than-likely lose.
>It's simply absurd saying the World Champion is in any way "the best"
>in a game dominated by various forms of luck (shuffle, seeding, deck
>choice, etc... .)
>
>>knowing whoever wins, will be considered the best. There achievement
>>should not be diminished just because several players choose not to...
>
>expect to have as good a chance of winning as anyone else choose not to
>spend large amounts of time and money to try and win an honor that isn't
>regarded as being very important.
> Gold medalists are remembered forever and can make lots of money
>doing advertisements.
>
>
>day, can reliably beat anyone else. The world champion sprinter, weight-
>lifter, rower, shot-putter and wrestler can all do this.
> No Magic player can do this, ergo the "World Champion Magic Player"
>is a silly concept. People with all sorts of hobbies, esp. non-
>competitive ones, have been arranging to meet others with similar hobbies
>in groups for hundreds of years. I wouldn't expect Magic to be any
>exception. But, they don't go around claiming that the music-boxes at
>the official music box convention are the best in the world, since
>anyone who didn't bring their music box "forwent the opportunity to
>be the best."
you bring up some very interesting and valid points, and i agree with you
that there is a good chance that the world champion might be beaten by
the local hot-shot. however, while there is luck involved in magic, it's
influences are reduced in tournaments by having best x out of y matches,
along with haveing concepts like loser's brackets. also, any magic player
who's played for awhile has learned ways to reduce luck's infulences. if
i need a disenchant _right now_, i'm much more likely to get it if
instead of just having 1 in my deck, i have 4, along with a tutor or a
regroth, ect. plus, if you want to compare magic to chess (which is a
valid comparison considering that magic is the second most popular
stratigic game in history behind chess), i would make the argument that
the world's champion chess player has a chance of being beaten by the
local hot-shot, but it's slim. some people simply excell at something,
and i have both met and played a couple of people who simply excell at
magic across this self same internet, and it's served to humble me when i
got too full of myself.
and in final response, you won't know if that kid in brooklyn can beat
the world champion unless you go looking for him and watch him jump.
hope i sounded vaguely within sensible. ;)
Skarecrow
Banana6000 <banan...@aol.com> wrote:
>Sad to see that over half the winning decks were burn/direct damage decks.
> With all the variety in Magic, I'm afraid that 4E and IA have really
>watered down the other colors in favor of red. Oh well, guess I'll be
>original like everyone else and build an all direct damage deck with
>Ghostly Flames and 4 Vices to round it out.
>
>We could always change the name from "tournament" to "cheeseament".
>
>Rich
># Richard Harvey "We are the music-makers; #
># AOL: Banana6000 We are the dreamers of the dream." #
># banan...@aol.com -- Willy Wonka #
>######################################################################
well, considering i wasn't there, and know nothing about the decks, this
is my argument. anyone can make a deck with mountains, fireballs, and
disintigrates. this deck will die in the first round of a tournament. a
bit more experience player will find some defense and fast mana. these
people will be shut down in the 3rd or 4th round. the truely excelent
players will find a way to shut down the cards that would have shut thier
direct damage decks down. the fact remains that direct damage, while
annoying, is still one of the best ways to kill someone. as a matter of
fact, i am more impressed with someone who energy taps thier shivan, then
taps some mana vaults, burnt offering's the same shivan, and drops a
forked 12 pt fireball than the person who just attacks round after round
with the shivan. you would be too. if someone kills me on round 3, i am
first angry, then impressed. channel fireball cheese and all. i take it
as a personal challange to stop thier direct damage decks. it's a thing
called good sportsmanship. it's good for you to have, even if your
opponent doesn't.
Jim Dougan
: Championships; they had two 'spoilers' in Jordan and Pippen - gosh that's
: unfair (insert dripping scorn here).
Scott says this is a bad example.....but actually its a good example for
a different reason. There are a lot of non-Bulls fans who frankly found
the Jordan years to be *BORING* Ever watch the 4th quarter of a Bulls game?
Gee...some variety there...Jordon shoots....Jordan shoots....Jordan shoots....
just plain bland, boring, basketball. Sure, he does it with enough flair
that people are entertained....but the play is downright uninteresting.
And the fall of the Bulls after Jordan left makes it pretty obvious that
they were not a good team at all. Just a bucnh of bums supported by a
great player.
The comparison to Type I is obvious. Play land...play mox...play lotus...
play big stuff fast. It may be exciting if you are one of the Type I
elite....but there ain't a whole lot of variety. To the rest of us, its a
bunch of kids showing off their expensive toys.
People always say that
you can win without the spoilers. I challenge any of the Type I elite to
take the spoilers out of there decks and retain their lofty status.
Better yet...lets have a Type I tourney allowing proxy cards. Would the
type I elite retain their lofty positions? I doubt it. There are a lot of
very good players who simply don't have the cards.
Pouting because the Worlds were not organized the way you want simply shows
how out of touch you are.
-- Jim
P.S. I also thionk there are great players who can play both types of
system. I started a thread a while back honoring Mark Justice for his
accomplishments because of his ability to dominate both Type I and Type II
events in the same weekend. THAT is the sign of a great player. We really
don't need crybabies who refuse to play because tehy don't get their way.
If they were really that good, they would have done what Mark did -
demonstrated their ability to dominate both events.
Brian T. Tickler
>regroth, ect. plus, if you want to compare magic to chess (which is a
>valid comparison considering that magic is the second most popular
>stratigic game in history behind chess), i would make the argument that
>the world's champion chess player has a chance of being beaten by the
>local hot-shot, but it's slim. some people simply excell at something,
>and i have both met and played a couple of people who simply excell at
>magic across this self same internet, and it's served to humble me when
> i got too full of myself.
>
>and in final response, you won't know if that kid in brooklyn can beat
>the world champion unless you go looking for him and watch him jump.
>
>hope i sounded vaguely within sensible. ;)
>
In spite of Magic's popularity, it's not a good comparison. There is no
luck involved in Chess at all, so if a local beats the world champ once,
you can bet he's not going to do it 3 out of 5 (and if he does, it would
be due to superior opening preparation), whereas a Magic player could
always have string of good/bad luck and win 4 out of 5 against a clearly
superior player/deck.
--
Brian T. Tickler E-Mail: tic...@netcom.com
Enter Your Name Here
(Skarecrow) wrote:
> In article <reynolds....@stimpy.cs.iastate.edu>,
> Owen Reynolds <reyn...@cs.iastate.edu> wrote:
*** lots o stuff deleted ***
> you bring up some very interesting and valid points, and i agree with you
> that there is a good chance that the world champion might be beaten by
> the local hot-shot. however, while there is luck involved in magic, it's
> influences are reduced in tournaments by having best x out of y matches,
Considering that the minimum deck size is 60 cards, 3, 5 or even 7 sample
draws are not statistically significant.
> regroth, ect. plus, if you want to compare magic to chess (which is a
> valid comparison considering that magic is the second most popular
> stratigic game in history behind chess), i would make the argument that
> the world's champion chess player has a chance of being beaten by the
> local hot-shot, but it's slim. some people simply excell at something,
No way. No snot nosed local chess player will beat Kasparov.
There is NO element of chance in chess. It starts EXACTLY the same
wat EVERY single time. EVERY move can be anticipated. EVERY move can
be planned. There is NOTHING resembling mana fuck or good draws or bad
draws or clutch draws.
Sit the world champ with any one of thousands of local champs, give
the world champ a shitty starting hand and give the local champ a good
one and the local champ will trounce the world champ every time.
Let's face it. With 7 cards in your hand, and the cards that you can
play restricted by mana, there just are not that many possible plays.
For the most part, there is one good play and a couple of dumb plays.
Sometimes there are two good plays and in really rare cases maybe three
good plays and you have to choose one based, not on skill, but on chance.
A Magic World Championship means something. After all, these people are
clearly good players and certainly dedicated players. But it just isn't
anything near a chess, track & field or any other world championship.
Sam
Harry Colquhoun
>First, I currently have 14 decks made. One has spoilers. I just finished
>redesigning my tournament deck entirely; I changed out a majority of
>cards. Most of my play doesn't involve my tourny deck at all. I play for
>ante, and I've played Type II tournaments. I merely think that they are
>an extremely limited, and, frankly, boring play environment. Even victory
>doesn't matter because the game environment is just so dull.
>
Well, after reading this bit 'o pathetic logic, I feel it necessary to
jump into this nice little arguement.
I'm not sure how the above poster would define dull, but I'm sure it
isn't using everyone else's definition. If type II is dull, then type I
is downright dreary. How exciting is it to see first turn kills?!? To
watch the same decks over and over and over, each card being worth more
than the other. Fact is, type I decks are barely changing. I haven't seen
a refreshing new deck for a LONG time. How anyone can take a great amount
of pleasure from a type I victory is beyond me.
In the past I have participated in Type I's with OOP filled decks that
should have been insured, but not anymore. Type I is more of a contest
to see who has the most money.
>Third, I have never suggested and do not believe that 12 to 14 year olds
>should go out and buy moxen and a Lotus. Scott is merely having
>difficulties reading what I've said. I think it would be silly for a 14
>year old who's not independently wealthy to buy Moxen. I do think, however,
>that there would be relatively easy ways for WOTC to fix the Type I
>environment so that everyone could compete, and the discussion of the
>issue continues here and on .misc. The problem is that WOTC
>has a financial interest in convincing all those 12 to 14 year olds (and
>everyone else, of course) to buy more cards. The company designed,
>therefore, the Type II system, telling people that it is 'fair' (it's
>not, of course; I could list a dozen inequities if I wanted to do so).
>That fact that it builds in obsolence and makes people to buy new cards
>continually had to have been the furthest thing from WOTC's mind [insert
>sarcasm here].
>
Well...letsee...either they buy lotus and moxen and etc, or they buy
several boosters here and there. Hmmm...draw your own conclusions. In
the ideal world, everyone would compete in Type III, but failing that
I must say that type II is: 1.) most even playing field, 2.) easiest
to get into, 3.) requires better playing skills and deck building skills,
and 4.) cheapest.
Harry.
Bruce G Strang
Et tu? In British Civil Service parlance, you can play the ball, play the
man - or both. I did both. Scott mis-read and misinterpreted my comments
and arguments, and used them to make an inaccurate, self-confessed flame
of my article. You selectively removed the arguments that I put forward
(thus showing a serious breach of, if nothing else, academic ethics). I
also notice that you didn't refer at all to the arguments that I put
forward. In short, your little screed is (gasp) an ad hominum attack.
Still, if it suits you to think that my ethos needs boosting, and that
this thought gives you feelings of moral superiority (an assumption on
my part, but I think it's implicit in what you've said) then so be it. I
shall continue my practice of heeping scorn on people who make ridiculous
assertions and flawed arguments; they deserve little better. That
statement is especially true of Scott, as he trumpets a professional
career in his tag, but seemingly can do little more when arguing but make
ad hominem attacks based on straw man assumptions. Oh well, on the net,
that's likely business as usual.
Cheers,
GBS
Michael Benveniste
us...@host.uci.edu says...
>. . .
>No way. No snot nosed local chess player will beat Kasparov.
>There is NO element of chance in chess. It starts EXACTLY the same
>wat EVERY single time. EVERY move can be anticipated. EVERY move can
>be planned. There is NOTHING resembling mana fuck or good draws or bad
>draws or clutch draws.
>Sit the world champ with any one of thousands of local champs, give
>the world champ a shitty starting hand and give the local champ a good
>one and the local champ will trounce the world champ every time.
>Let's face it. With 7 cards in your hand, and the cards that you can
>play restricted by mana, there just are not that many possible plays.
>For the most part, there is one good play and a couple of dumb plays.
>Sometimes there are two good plays and in really rare cases maybe three
>good plays and you have to choose one based, not on skill, but on
chance.
>A Magic World Championship means something. After all, these people are
>clearly good players and certainly dedicated players. But it just isn't
>anything near a chess, track & field or any other world championship.
While I'd argue that there is luck in chess as well (you find yourself
playing against a prepared variation,) a better example might be
backgammon. You _can_ win a game of backgammon due to lucky die rolls,
and to a neophyte backgammon player the game appears to be dominated by
luck. Once you've gotten your head handed to you by an expert player (in
exchange for the contents of your wallet) you quickly learn otherwise.
If you wish to reduce the effect of luck on magic tournaments, the way
to do it is to avoid single elimination tournaments in favor of a
modified swiss or partial round robin system, and keep the playoff
round small (perhaps just one final showdown).
Bruce G Strang
Harry Colquhoun <hc...@supernet.ab.ca> wrote:
>In article <40alut$e...@mcmail.CIS.McMaster.CA>, g902...@mcmail.cis.McMaster.CA (Bruce G Strang) says:
>
>>First, I currently have 14 decks made. One has spoilers. I just finished
>>redesigning my tournament deck entirely; I changed out a majority of
>>cards. Most of my play doesn't involve my tourny deck at all. I play for
>>ante, and I've played Type II tournaments. I merely think that they are
>>an extremely limited, and, frankly, boring play environment. Even victory
>>doesn't matter because the game environment is just so dull.
>>
>jump into this nice little arguement.
It's what I think. In this case it is not a question of logical or not
logical. It may be irrational, but I think not. I merely find that Type
II isn't especially challenging. So sue me.
>
>I'm not sure how the above poster would define dull, but I'm sure it
>isn't using everyone else's definition. If type II is dull, then type I
>is downright dreary. How exciting is it to see first turn kills?!? To
>watch the same decks over and over and over, each card being worth more
>than the other. Fact is, type I decks are barely changing. I haven't seen
>a refreshing new deck for a LONG time. How anyone can take a great amount
>of pleasure from a type I victory is beyond me.
Actually, do you know that in hundreds of very high quality Type I games
I've *never*, not once, seen a first turn kill. Nor do I see a lot of
really fast kills either. Generally, most games between good decks take
time, as neither gets a too significant advantage. Unlike in Type II,
Type I decks are capable of handling so much more and are capable of
coming back from a lousy draw. At least, that has been my experience.
Interestingly, my fastest kill ever came in a type II tournament, with a
second turn, channel, Disintegrate, Orcish Lumberjack combo.
More importantly, Type I offers a far, far greater variety of decks than
does type II. In the so-called 'World Championships', I'm being gracious
in allowing that there were four deck types that competed to the last 16.
I've seen Type I's ( in New York State, mind you, and with people from all
over the Eastern Seaboard, lest you think we Canadians are provincial)
where roughly a dozen deck types were competitive. Type II play is just
so limiting. How many variations are there on Mind Twist decks, Red/Green
Decks, Blue/White Decks? The answer is, not very many. I'll grant you
that Type II games might be tense. Parity, however, does not necessarily
imply skill. In my view, which, I'll grant, may not agree with yours, I
find the options available in Type II extremely limiting. Finally, around
here, people change their Tourney decks all the time. If Type I play is
so stagnant where you play, why don't you get out and see some innivative
play sometime?
>
>In the past I have participated in Type I's with OOP filled decks that
>should have been insured, but not anymore. Type I is more of a contest
>to see who has the most money.
>
This statement is complete and utter nonsense. There are a couple of
chaps that I play against who each have roughly ten times the value of a
collection than I have. I regularly beat them, as I make better decks.
Likewise, I've lost to decks that are far cheaper than mine. Your
statement is absolutely unsupportable. That being said, there is of
course an advantage in having certain cards that are very valuable. When
I can, I use them, as I know how to do so and I have them, and they make
my deck a little bit better.
>
>>Third, I have never suggested and do not believe that 12 to 14 year olds
>>should go out and buy moxen and a Lotus. Scott is merely having
>>difficulties reading what I've said. I think it would be silly for a 14
>>year old who's not independently wealthy to buy Moxen. I do think, however,
>>that there would be relatively easy ways for WOTC to fix the Type I
>>environment so that everyone could compete, and the discussion of the
>>issue continues here and on .misc. The problem is that WOTC
>>has a financial interest in convincing all those 12 to 14 year olds (and
>>everyone else, of course) to buy more cards. The company designed,
>>therefore, the Type II system, telling people that it is 'fair' (it's
>>not, of course; I could list a dozen inequities if I wanted to do so).
>>That fact that it builds in obsolence and makes people to buy new cards
>>continually had to have been the furthest thing from WOTC's mind [insert
>>sarcasm here].
>>
>Well...letsee...either they buy lotus and moxen and etc, or they buy
>several boosters here and there. Hmmm...draw your own conclusions. In
>the ideal world, everyone would compete in Type III, but failing that
>I must say that type II is: 1.) most even playing field, 2.) easiest
>to get into, 3.) requires better playing skills and deck building skills,
>and 4.) cheapest.
>
>Harry.
I have little doubt that, after a few years of forced obsolescence, the
no longer little kid will have spent more than enough money on Type II to
have acquired a complete set of Moxen and a Lotus. The difference is only
in how long it will take you to spend the money, and how you do it. For
example, if someone is playing a Type II red/green deck, then they might
find Timberline ridges useful. These cards are not much cheaper, well,
given the short supply, not at all cheaper, around here than were the old
multi-lands. Wheresas one could buy or trade for the old multilands once,
now one will have to so the next time WOTC decides to make these ones
obsolete and to print new ones. You'll see.
Type II may be the nost even playing field, but, as I mentioned before,
parity does not necessarily imply quality. Instead, Type II emphasizes
the luck of the draw. For but one example, look at the so-called 'World
Championship' games. Mind Twist decided every victory for the champion.
In Type I, Mind Twist is important, and often will determine victory. But
if it's done to me, I just might have a Wheel or a Twister or an Ancestrl
Recall coming up. Or, of course, I might not. If you noticed, the play at
this vaunted tournament, even allowing for the flattening of the Swiss
format, was entirely within the bounds of normal probability distibution.
You may have made things somehow more 'even', but you've done so at a
tremendous cost to the high quality play of the game.
I've heard many times that the "play of the game," and, by extension, the
players, in Type II are somehow better. My experience is quite different.
Very few Type II decks could compete at a Type I tournament; nor should
we expect them to, as WOTC has deliberately made them inferior. Why does
this make the play better? It doesn't. Furthermore, most of the good Type
I players around here also tend to the best Type II players in any event.
They tend to have more experience, and more experience in a wider and
very competitive environment. Intuitively, one would expect nothing
else.
While your experiences may differ from mine, I don't think your arguments
really hold much water. Sorry, but there it is.
Cheers,
GBS
Bruce G Strang
Jim Dougan <jdo...@titan.iwu.edu> wrote:
>Oooh, I guees we shouldn't have let the Bulls win NBA
>: Championships; they had two 'spoilers' in Jordan and Pippen - gosh that's
>: unfair (insert dripping scorn here).
>
>
>Scott says this is a bad example.....but actually its a good example for
>a different reason. There are a lot of non-Bulls fans who frankly found
>the Jordan years to be *BORING* Ever watch the 4th quarter of a Bulls game?
>Gee...some variety there...Jordon shoots....Jordan shoots....Jordan shoots....
>just plain bland, boring, basketball. Sure, he does it with enough flair
>that people are entertained....but the play is downright uninteresting.
>And the fall of the Bulls after Jordan left makes it pretty obvious that
>they were not a good team at all. Just a bucnh of bums supported by a
>great player.
Now who's being a crybaby? I thought for a moment that I'd actually manage
to get through an entire post without someone resorting to this crutch
for their own inadequacy, but you disappointed me (see below).Though I'm
not a Bulls fan, I think that you are pretty darned ignorant about the
nature of sports if you think your statement is true. Jordan did not win
a championship until he had players at least decent enough to help him
enough to win. If you find excellence boring, then I guess it explains
why you like type II. :)
>
>The comparison to Type I is obvious. Play land...play mox...play lotus...
>play big stuff fast. It may be exciting if you are one of the Type I
>elite....but there ain't a whole lot of variety. To the rest of us, its a
>bunch of kids showing off their expensive toys.
This statement is pretty darned ridiculous. First, I get no fast mana in
the initial draw in half the games I play with my tournaey (and my
tournament deck represents only a small percentage of my play). Second,
if you really think that all decks that use Moxen are the same, well, I
can only suggest that you actually watch (and observe, rather than just
whinge about things) a Type I tournament. Of the top of my head I could
come up with more than a dozen deck types, all of which use Moxen, and
some, though not, of course all, the other spoilers. For example, I
recently redid my tourney deck design, changing out some 2/3 of the
cards. In the previous design, I didn't use Timetwister, as it didn't fit
the deck. In the new one, it is important for the design. If you really
think all Type I games are the same, then you simply do not know what you
are talking about.
>People always say that
>you can win without the spoilers. I challenge any of the Type I elite to
>take the spoilers out of there decks and retain their lofty status.
Actually, there is no need to issue such a challenge. People who play
good decks when they use spoilers tend to make good decks when they don't
(incidently, I've seen lots of players who have all the spoilers who make
bad decks, and lose). They tend to have more experience, they have a
wider knowledge of the game from playing in a more wide open environment.
Around here, in any event, the guys with the spoilers seem to win all
the tournaments, whether Type I, Type II, or any modification. Once more,
why don't you try to present a real argument instead of making silly,
safe challenges.
>
>Better yet...lets have a Type I tourney allowing proxy cards. Would the
>type I elite retain their lofty positions? I doubt it. There are a lot of
>very good players who simply don't have the cards.
Why I shouls allow you something for free when I had to struggle for
hundreds of hours of trading to achieve it, I do not know. If your not
willing to do what is necessary to acquire the cards, then don't. But
some whining about those who do. Although, I suspect that if we did, then
I suspect that things wouldn't change much; simply put, you likely don't
have the experience necessary to be able to deal with this environment.
>
>Pouting because the Worlds were not organized the way you want simply shows
>how out of touch you are.
>
>-- Jim
>
>P.S. I also thionk there are great players who can play both types of
>system. I started a thread a while back honoring Mark Justice for his
>accomplishments because of his ability to dominate both Type I and Type II
>events in the same weekend. THAT is the sign of a great player. We really
>don't need crybabies who refuse to play because tehy don't get their way.
>If they were really that good, they would have done what Mark did -
>demonstrated their ability to dominate both events.
>
I'm not pouting, I'm merely stating that the "World Championships" were
determined through a level of play where most of the decks could not
compete at the highest level of play. If that annoys you, then that's too
bad. It is also a logical flaw necessarily to relate a player's ability to
his desire to attend. Mark Justice, of course, represents precisely
what I am talking
about; he's likely a good player and a good deck designer, period. It
doesn't matter to him (he apparently has more toleration for boredom than
I have) in which environment he plays. In my experience, most Type I
players (who are good in that environment) are the same way in any
environment of Magic play. And just so we don't hear the usual
nonsensical response, no, I don't think that I would have won had I been
there.
Once again, I'd like to see some interesting arguments that would counter
mine, but instead we get silly little rants such as this one.
Cheers,
GBS
Ryan John Cousineau
>you bring up some very interesting and valid points, and i agree with you
>that there is a good chance that the world champion might be beaten by
>the local hot-shot. however, while there is luck involved in magic, it's
>influences are reduced in tournaments by having best x out of y matches,
>along with haveing concepts like loser's brackets. also, any magic player
>who's played for awhile has learned ways to reduce luck's infulences. if
>i need a disenchant _right now_, i'm much more likely to get it if
>instead of just having 1 in my deck, i have 4, along with a tutor or a
>regroth, ect. plus, if you want to compare magic to chess (which is a
>valid comparison considering that magic is the second most popular
>stratigic game in history behind chess), i would make the argument that
>the world's champion chess player has a chance of being beaten by the
>local hot-shot, but it's slim. some people simply excell at something,
>and i have both met and played a couple of people who simply excell at
>magic across this self same internet, and it's served to humble me when i
>got too full of myself.
>and in final response, you won't know if that kid in brooklyn can beat
>the world champion unless you go looking for him and watch him jump.
>hope i sounded vaguely within sensible. ;)
Until you started talking about chess :). The best chess players in the
world never get beaten by inferior players in tourney play. That's not
quite true, but it's arbitrarily close to true. Kasparov probably could
only get a challenging game from a couple of hundred players in the
world. At most.
OTOH, I bet I could take one game in ten from a really serious Magic
player, something which I am not (yet). Probably more.
A better analogy for MtG is probably Bridge. Or Scrabble. With the
exception of the preconstructed deck concept (which doesn't happen in
Bridge or Scrabble), the games have similar elements of luck and
strategy. They also have similar qualities of sponsorship. It's possible
to compete in the world championship Scrabble tourney, but you'd better
expect to pay your own way there.
It comes down to this: this is the second year that we've had a world
championship. It's new! It's still in its infancy! give it time! WotC,
for all their money, can't (or won't) put in the kind of cash to make MtG
a professionally paying proposition, unlike equally frivolous pursuits like
billiards, golf, baseball, and naval aviation. This is unlikely to change
in the near future.
Don't sweat it. We can still have a world's champion, as sanctioned by
the biggest MtG tourney organizer: the Duellist's Convocation. After all,
MtG is a competitive game with a clear winner in most cases.
It's true that there are various skills involved with the different
aspects of the game, and even Richard Garfield has said that the duels
tend to become a sidelight to the trading and construction. I think the
current tourney format is a reasonable compromise of spontaneous and
preconstructed deck talent, in the equalized playing field of Type II
(millions of children in Africa, China, and American ghettos will never
have enough money to play even Type II competitively. But at least now
millions of middle-class kids will be free to compete in the highest
echelons of MtG competition without having to fork out for a Mox, Lotus,
or Timewalk. Conversely, some players may not be able to play without
all their cards. We must be sensitive to their pain, and compassionate in
this dark era in which they must play moxless. Now, back to the less
sarcastic monologue).
Type II isn't perfect. Many complain about limited strategy, with or
without reason. But the environment is well known, the game is definitely
MtG, and nobody has any real reason to complain about card access. That
sounds pretty fair to me.
As for the randomness of MtG in general, that's true. As I pointed out
above, MtG is far more random than chess. But so is Scrabble, and there
are still Scrabble players of greater and lesser ability. Now imagine a
Scrabble game in which there were about 1000 tiles, of which about
400-600 will be legally acceptable in the next world tourney, and you can
choose which tiles your bag has in it. With each of these changes,
Scrabble would be less a game of luck and more a game of strategic
preparation combined with smart use of resources in the game itself.
Then, for fun, you could play with random or pre-set tile sets for
another kind of challenge. Hmm. Sounds like a pretty fair analogy to the
current world championship format.
the current DC championship isn't perfect. But it's pretty good, and it
seems to work. I don't think anybody got to the current tourney without
being a very good player, and I'm sure that in a lot of important
categories, the assembled players were the world's best. Good luck to
all, and maybe next year circumstances will be such that there will be
even more people striving for the DC's top honor, and fewer complaining
about the quality of the competition.
--
Ryan Cousineau, rcou...@sfu.ca '82 Yamaha Vision 550
(Currently buying a Yamaha FZR400)
This message is sponsored by Wired Cola.
Wired Cola: It's CyberMorphic!
Jim Dougan
: for their own inadequacy, but you disappointed me (see below).Though I'm
: not a Bulls fan, I think that you are pretty darned ignorant about the
: nature of sports if you think your statement is true. Jordan did not win
: a championship until he had players at least decent enough to help him
: enough to win. If you find excellence boring, then I guess it explains
: why you like type II. :)
Actually, I am not a tourney player. I don't have the time or experience to
develop my skills to that level, and there are not enough local tournements
for me to hone my skills. Hey...I would love to play the tourney circuit,
but that ain't happening any time soon. If I did decide to play at that level,
I could afford the spoilers and I think I would probably do fairly well. I
would win my fair share. But I am not being a crybaby because...hey...I can't
play that circuit anyway.
But, regardless of my tournement experience, one thing stands out again and
again in your posts: Poor sportsmanship! That is why I jumped into this
thread. The sheer arrogance, bad manners. and poor sportsmanship to criticize
a world champion when you didn't even have the guts to play just blows me
away. I have been involved in competitive sports for many years, and one
thing which has been drilled into my head again and again and again is that
you win and lose graciously. You didn't even play, but the same principle
applies...you are not losing graciously.
Flame me all you like....but frankly you just come off as a poor sport, again
and again and again.
-- Jim
P.S. - Perhaps this is why I detest Jordan as well (and a lot of the younger
NBA stars for that matter) - what an arrogant bunch of poor sports.
Bruce G Strang
Jim Dougan <jdo...@titan.iwu.edu> wrote:
>: Now who's being a crybaby? I thought for a moment that I'd actually manage
>: for their own inadequacy, but you disappointed me (see below).Though I'm
>: not a Bulls fan, I think that you are pretty darned ignorant about the
>: nature of sports if you think your statement is true. Jordan did not win
>: a championship until he had players at least decent enough to help him
>: enough to win. If you find excellence boring, then I guess it explains
>: why you like type II. :)
>
>develop my skills to that level, and there are not enough local tournements
>for me to hone my skills. Hey...I would love to play the tourney circuit,
>but that ain't happening any time soon. If I did decide to play at that level,
>I could afford the spoilers and I think I would probably do fairly well. I
>would win my fair share. But I am not being a crybaby because...hey...I can't
>play that circuit anyway.
>
>But, regardless of my tournement experience, one thing stands out again and
>again in your posts: Poor sportsmanship! That is why I jumped into this
>thread. The sheer arrogance, bad manners. and poor sportsmanship to criticize
>a world champion when you didn't even have the guts to play just blows me
>away. I have been involved in competitive sports for many years, and one
>thing which has been drilled into my head again and again and again is that
>you win and lose graciously. You didn't even play, but the same principle
>applies...you are not losing graciously.
>
>Flame me all you like....but frankly you just come off as a poor sport, again
>and again and again.
>
>-- Jim
>
>P.S. - Perhaps this is why I detest Jordan as well (and a lot of the younger
>NBA stars for that matter) - what an arrogant bunch of poor sports.
>
never heard of *noblesse oblige*.
If you want to talk about *poor sportsmanship*, which you seem to define
widely, then I suggest you consider your own post. You know me only
through a handful of posts. You, however, given the almost omnipotent
power of your sentience, can decide that I didn't compete only because I
lacked the guts to play. Well, simply put, you are wrong. I didn't play
because I was annoyed that WOTC forced the organizers to change from a
Type I format for the Canadian Championship to a Type II, at
firguratively the last minute, despite all the pre-tournament publicity.
Quite literally, people drove hours to play in the Championships and were
told they couldn't play in that tournament, but what could the organizers
do? I didn't play because I disliked the emphasis on Type II, a style of
play which I find less than stimulating. I don't mind playing for a few
hours in that environment, but a marathon over several days held no
appeal for me. These reasons have nothing to do with guts. For you to
decide that it did shows poor judgement and considerable arrogance on
your part.
As to my sportsmanship or lack of it, I sometimes get frustrated by
losing, but I think it's fair to say that I congratulate the victor and
take the loss, if not always with the best of grace, like a man. Unlike
many people, I actually find losing refreshing on occasion, as it shows
where I have to improve my own designs or play. During play, I often
congratulate people for especially good moves or for the quality of their
deck. More importantly, I think, I've seen many people my age and with my
experience in the game treat little kids as if they were something
unpleasant picked up on the bottom of a shoe on a hot summer day. I
don't. I remember my days as a newbie in the game, when I needed help to
learn it and to understand what was going on. Even if I suspect that they
don't have any of the big cards that I need in trade, I'll gladly spend
hours trading with them, because it's important to treat them with
respect, even if I don't need them to get cards. And, lest you think I
enjoy ripping people off, I can't count the number of times that I've
added cards to a trade that the other person thought fair, merely because
I felt it unconscionable to take advantage of someone's lack of knowledge
of the game. I say these things not because I want a hero cookie, but
instead to show that there is just a little bit of evidence that you
haven't considered in your determination that I'm a poor sport.
What you've done is to mistake vigour in debate for poor sportsmanship.
People have flamed me, making ridiculous statements and unwarranted
accusations. I responded strongly. Where their words were ridiculous, I
ridiculed them. Where they used flames, I responded with less directly
offensive language but pointed out, not always kindly, that they were
being silly. To the rare post that was thoughtful and didn't use overtly
offensive language, I've been unfailingly polite and conducted discourse
on a high level. If that approach offends you, well, that's too darn bad.
So, if it suits you to think of me as arrogant and a poor sport, go
ahead. I've developed little respect for what you've had to say, so it
doesn't bother me as to what you think (I've responded only to counter
your unfounded notions). I think, however, that you should look to your
own behaviour before you disparage that of others, as your contribution
to this discussion has been supremely arrogant, has not dealt with
substance, and has instead focussed on personalities. I think if you look
as objectively as is possible at your own posts, you would find that you
failed to meet your own standards; very little of what you had to say is
gracious.
GBS
David Paris
passed around in this conversation.
The fact that not everyone was able (or made the effort) to attend
what was the officially sanctioned 'world championship' event does not
detract from the accomplishments of those who did. Sure, I wish I had
the time/loose cash to travel to regionals & such and did not. My
tournament skills are certainly substantial and demonstrated, yet I don't
begrudge those who did go, of their victory because of this. If I want
said title, I guess I'll have to make the effort to try for it next year.
If you want it, then I suggest you make the effort as well.
The goal behind tournament play is to test the skill of the
competitors. I would say Magic skills fall into three basic categories:
Trading, Deck Construction, and Play.
The actual cards used to test this is completely irrelevant. What
is relevant is that every competitor should have as close to as even of
starting position as possible and advance by skill alone. It is here that
type 1 play severely falls down, as it is prohibitively expensive to have
the very best card selection available at all times. Type 2 tends to be
a better compromise since the card costs are more reachable to most people.
Type 3 suffers from unequal starting position, due to the random nature
of card distribution.
Complaining that you can't have world championship play without the
most powerful cards available is hogwash. We are not trying to determine
the world champion card. You can find that in .marketplace any day of the
week by a price factor of about 2-1 over its leading competitor. We are
only interested in the skill of the players, something which can be measured
just fine w/out any particular card or cards being used.
Jim Dougan
: If you want to talk about *poor sportsmanship*, which you seem to define
: through a handful of posts. You, however, given the almost omnipotent
: power of your sentience, can decide that I didn't compete only because I
: lacked the guts to play.
<much defense of personal character and sportsmanship deleted>
You know, you are correct here. I don't know a thing about you outside of a
few messages I have read here. I formed a quick opinion. Perhaps it is
incorrect. I honestly apologize if I have mislabeled you.
Consider, for a moment, why I might have reached such a snap judgement.
Your first post in this thread opens:
The "World Championship" should have a disclaimer printed with it; Many,
perhaps most, of the best players of magic weren't there.
You go on to state that about a dozen of your friends chose not to go....
the implication being that amongst this dozen are, in fact, some of the
best players in the world (excuse me if you didn't mean to imply this - but
I have read it over several times and this is the implication I come up with
every time).
Now, why would I call this arrogant and unsportsmanlike? Well, first you
have sought to discredit those who competed in the tourney (despite your
weak disclaimer that you are not trying to takeanything away from them).
Then, you go on to claim, without evidence, that you represent a group
of the best players in the world. Hell, for all we know, you would not
have even made the Canadian Team. Maybe you would have gone down in the
first round <and maybe not>. But, since you chose not to compete, you
really have no right to claim that you probably would have won. This is
what I call arrogant and unsportsmanlike and, frankly, when someone makes
taht kind of first impression, it is hard to lose.
So...perhaps you are a good sport. I revise my statement. You made an
unsportsmanlike and arrogant claim in your post.
Now...to help turn this away from a flame war and into something positive,
here are a couple of ideas:
Richard Garfield in the latest Dualist suggests that there be a Type I
North American Championship. Not the World, since much of the world has
never had access to spoilers. Would this satisfy you?
A better idea (in my opinion) is to have a Type I World Championship and a
Type II World Championship - much like weight classes in boxing. Frankly,
I don't see why WOTC didn't do this this year - unless perhaps they tought
Type II would be considered the "lesser" form. Interestingly, if they had
done this, it looks like Mark Justice would have been the US champ in both
Type I and Type II - as I have said before this is a true sigh of great
player.
Lets calm it down a bit - and get some comments on the above suggestions as
a solution.
-- Jim
Edward Chen
>I have little doubt that, after a few years of forced obsolescence, the
>no longer little kid will have spent more than enough money on Type II to
>have acquired a complete set of Moxen and a Lotus. The difference is only
>in how long it will take you to spend the money, and how you do it. For
>example, if someone is playing a Type II red/green deck, then they might
>find Timberline ridges useful. These cards are not much cheaper, well,
>given the short supply, not at all cheaper, around here than were the old
>multi-lands. Wheresas one could buy or trade for the old multilands once,
>now one will have to so the next time WOTC decides to make these ones
>obsolete and to print new ones. You'll see.
Moxen and Lotus do not make a deck. I could spend $500 to acquire them but
then I'm left with only a lotus and 5 moxes. My $500 would be spent much
more reasonably on unlimited print run cards (ie. 4E) I could at least then
create a r/g deck or a Verduran Enchantress deck or a blue/white permission.
I can play the game of magic. I couldn't do that with just Moxen and a Lotus.
Now I go to your said Type I tournament. I will invariably lose to a Type I
version of my deck. I switch to a different Type II deck which through
test playing is as effective as my other deck but is stronger against the
Type I version of my other deck. I go to a new tournament. I lose again
to a Type I version of my new deck. I realize that I can't compete unless
I go out and spend *another* $500 dollars for a Timewalk,Lotus and Moxen
for my blue/white permission. I simply don't have have access to the card
base older players do unless I spend large sums of money to catch up.
As for having to buy new expansions to stay competitive...Don't you have to
buy new expansions just like I do to stay competitive? We are exactly the
same when it comes to new expansions. Neither of us has the new cards. Or
are you saying that in Type I new expansions have almost no effect? That
you don't buy new expansions because your Type I deck never changes. All
you do is cycle around to some new deck which also uses Type I cards. I
can cycle to a new deck too but I don't have the Type I cards. I could
go out and buy or trade for them I suppose but as Sparky put it once. Why
would anyone pay $200 for a Lotus. I probably wouldn't even get a real one.
I could trade up to a Lotus but you don't see too many people willing to
take my 6 common sets for their Lotus. I could trade my rares and uncommons
but then I'm left with the same problem as above which is I have nothing left
to go with my pricey cards. I could rip off little kids but somehow there
seems to be something wrong with that.
>I've heard many times that the "play of the game," and, by extension, the
>players, in Type II are somehow better. My experience is quite different.
>Very few Type II decks could compete at a Type I tournament; nor should
>we expect them to, as WOTC has deliberately made them inferior. Why does
>this make the play better? It doesn't. Furthermore, most of the good Type
>I players around here also tend to the best Type II players in any event.
>They tend to have more experience, and more experience in a wider and
>very competitive environment. Intuitively, one would expect nothing
>else.
Why is this intuitive? Anyone with Type I cards knows that it's Type II
cards which form the basis of your deck but it's the Type I cards which
make them overpowering. Type I players tend to be the best at Type II
tournaments because they have Type II cards. I, however, have Type II
cards but can't compete at the Type I level without spending a lot of money
or trading away the basis of the deck I would be creating.
>While your experiences may differ from mine, I don't think your arguments
>really hold much water. Sorry, but there it is.
Maybe yours don't either.
>Cheers,
>GBS
-Edward
ec...@pegasus.rutgers.edu
Michael Bahr
Bruce G Strang <g902...@mcmail.cis.McMaster.CA> wrote:
>In article <40lbe8$6...@night.hal.com>, David Paris <pa...@hal.COM> wrote:
>> I have to admit, I am pretty disgusted with a couple ideas being
>> passed around in this conversation.
>> If you want it, then I suggest you make the effort as well.
>>
>mis-represents most of what has gone on in the thread, and doesn't have
>the courtesy to quote anything at all. I've said, several times, that I
>believe that the people who did well at the Championships should take
>pride in their achievement. I have, however, questioned WOTC's wisdom of
>having the so-called world championship decided by decks that wouldn't
>win any of a dozen different tournaments held in a dozen different cities
>in several different countries on the same day. Doesn't that strike you
>as strange? That doesn't take anything away from the shills of the
>players that were there, it merely questions WOTC's use of a needlessly
>restrictive play environment to determine a world champion. Your post is
It's said, and not entirely inaccurately, that the very best at
anything will make do with less. I think there's a certain element of
that in the theory behind Type II and Sealed Deck... the idea that rather
than winning because of the cards John Q. Player has, that John makes
whatever cards he _does_ have win _for_ him.
There's merit to this. Our local Magic guru will purposefully
construct decks with the most outlandishly useless cards, whether they be
our castoffs or cards that are just generally thought bad, and win with
them against tournament decks. Now I'm all for theme decks and I _love_
it when I find a way to get a good use out of a card everyone seems to
think is useless, but this guy does it _all the time_ with _all sorts of
cards_. It's a matter of degree, and I'd call it real Magic skill. He has
to be good at deck construction, play tactics, _and_ the metagame in
order to succeed within those self-imposed restrictions. In this case,
I'd say that fellow has the most skill at Magic out of anyone I've played
(granted, I haven't played Mark Justice or Zak Dolan...), much more so
than another friend of mine who has Arabian spoilers and Mox jewels and
can't manage to do too well at all. I think _that_ fellow will win more
when it dawns on him that 300 card decks just don't cut it.
I agree with a lot of the points you made about Type II depending
too much on luck, etc. though. While I still think Sealed-Deck and Type
II are the better "champion testers", I enjoy Type I play myself as I
love using weird cards from The Dark and Antiquities that people didn't
even realize existed, or that they forgot about as soon as they filled
their binders with them and moved on. I think if there were to be a Type
I tournament where the OOP spoilers were readily available.. say, by
using the MTG computer game, that it might work better.
- + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + -
Mike Bahr / gar...@indirect.com / Rush Forever! Lee, Lifeson & Peart rule!
Belle * Ariel * Jasmine * Pocahontas * Elionwy
If only they came as good in real life as they come in animation...
- + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + -
Bruce G Strang
Jim Dougan <jdo...@titan.iwu.edu> wrote:
>Bruce G Strang (g902...@mcmail.cis.McMaster.CA) wrote:
>: If you want to talk about *poor sportsmanship*, which you seem to define
>: widely, then I suggest you consider your own post. You know me only
>: through a handful of posts. You, however, given the almost omnipotent
>: power of your sentience, can decide that I didn't compete only because I
>: lacked the guts to play.
>
><much defense of personal character and sportsmanship deleted>
>
>You know, you are correct here. I don't know a thing about you outside of a
>few messages I have read here. I formed a quick opinion. Perhaps it is
>incorrect. I honestly apologize if I have mislabeled you.
>
>Consider, for a moment, why I might have reached such a snap judgement.
>Your first post in this thread opens:
>
> The "World Championship" should have a disclaimer printed with it; Many,
> perhaps most, of the best players of magic weren't there.
>
>You go on to state that about a dozen of your friends chose not to go....
>the implication being that amongst this dozen are, in fact, some of the
>best players in the world (excuse me if you didn't mean to imply this - but
>I have read it over several times and this is the implication I come up with
>every time).
Well, that's not what I meant. I was using these players as an example.
Most of the best players around here didn't compete. I would not be
surprised that that kind of decision was repeated elsewhere (and I know
from some posts that it was, at least in a few cases). I have never
stated that I think I'm the best player in the world, and, in fact have
stated the contrary in this thread. I can only assume that you chose to
ignore that. So, I'll repeat it once more, I think it highly unlikely
that I would have won a Type I tournament, whether it was the Canadian
championships or the worlds.
>Now, why would I call this arrogant and unsportsmanlike? Well, first you
>have sought to discredit those who competed in the tourney (despite your
>weak disclaimer that you are not trying to takeanything away from them).
>Then, you go on to claim, without evidence, that you represent a group
>of the best players in the world. Hell, for all we know, you would not
>have even made the Canadian Team. Maybe you would have gone down in the
>first round <and maybe not>. But, since you chose not to compete, you
>really have no right to claim that you probably would have won. This is
>what I call arrogant and unsportsmanlike and, frankly, when someone makes
>taht kind of first impression, it is hard to lose.
Well, I think you should get it by now that your assumptions were wrong.
I have not claimed that I probably would have won nor that I am one of
the best players in the world.
>
>So...perhaps you are a good sport. I revise my statement. You made an
>unsportsmanlike and arrogant claim in your post.
In your opinion, and, even though you state that your opinion might be
wrong, you reiterate it here.
>
>Now...to help turn this away from a flame war and into something positive,
>here are a couple of ideas:
>
>Richard Garfield in the latest Dualist suggests that there be a Type I
>North American Championship. Not the World, since much of the world has
>never had access to spoilers. Would this satisfy you?
Yes, it would, as I've already stated in this post.
>
>A better idea (in my opinion) is to have a Type I World Championship and a
>Type II World Championship - much like weight classes in boxing. Frankly,
>I don't see why WOTC didn't do this this year - unless perhaps they tought
>Type II would be considered the "lesser" form. Interestingly, if they had
>done this, it looks like Mark Justice would have been the US champ in both
>Type I and Type II - as I have said before this is a true sigh of great
>player.
>
I don't consider Type II a "lesser" form; it is different. I merely find
it strange that WOTC has declared people World Champions when we all know
that they would be soundly defeated in any of a dozen tournaments hels in
a dozen towns in several countries. If WOTC had allowed both tournaments
to proceed, then I would not have made my original post, nor would I say
that one tournament was superior or inferior to the other. What annoyed
me, and many others, is that WOTC prevented players from using a huge
part of the set of Magic cards, in a needlessly restrictive and
high-handed approach to a problem. Had they not done so, then there
wouldn't be a need for this thread.
>Lets calm it down a bit - and get some comments on the above suggestions as
>a solution.
>
>-- Jim
>
I'd gladly calm it down; I'm more interested in a real discussion than in
flames. I'm disappointed to note, however, that much of your article
still deals with personalities and with personal attacks. In the
interests of not rekindling an even bigger bonfire I won't respond in
kind. Suffice it to say that I still disagree strongly with your
characterization of my words and actions. If, however, it gives you some
kind of pleasure to call me arrogant, so be it. We've already dealt with
the idea of Type I and Type II championships in Peter Cho's post, and
that is where this thread might be of some use. I hope, but don't really
expect, that WOTC is listening.
Cheers,
GBS
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Bruce G Strang
> I have to admit, I am pretty disgusted with a couple ideas being
> passed around in this conversation.
>
> what was the officially sanctioned 'world championship' event does not
> detract from the accomplishments of those who did. Sure, I wish I had
> the time/loose cash to travel to regionals & such and did not. My
> tournament skills are certainly substantial and demonstrated, yet I don't
> begrudge those who did go, of their victory because of this. If I want
> said title, I guess I'll have to make the effort to try for it next year.
>
It's hard to know how to deal with a post such as this one. It
mis-represents most of what has gone on in the thread, and doesn't have
the courtesy to quote anything at all. I've said, several times, that I
believe that the people who did well at the Championships should take
pride in their achievement. I have, however, questioned WOTC's wisdom of
having the so-called world championship decided by decks that wouldn't
win any of a dozen different tournaments held in a dozen different cities
in several different countries on the same day. Doesn't that strike you
as strange? That doesn't take anything away from the shills of the
players that were there, it merely questions WOTC's use of a needlessly
restrictive play environment to determine a world champion. Your post is
> The goal behind tournament play is to test the skill of the
> competitors. I would say Magic skills fall into three basic categories:
> Trading, Deck Construction, and Play.
If that's the way you define Magic, then I think you've left some things
out, and I don't understand why you would think Type II is the best. It
is harder to trade for cards for Type I play than for Type II play. It is
harder to build Type I decks than Type II decks (at least, that's been my
experience, and it is certain that there are a lot more choices to make
in Type I). I've played Type I in tournaments, though most of my play is
with spoilerless and virtually OOP-less fun decks, for ante. To my mind,
there is no question that Type I play demands far more decision-making
during the game, and is, therefore, harder to play. While your
experiences may differ, it seems to me clear that Type I would best meet
*your* criteria for choosing a 'skillful' champion.
>
> The actual cards used to test this is completely irrelevant. What
> is relevant is that every competitor should have as close to as even of
> starting position as possible and advance by skill alone. It is here that
> type 1 play severely falls down, as it is prohibitively expensive to have
> the very best card selection available at all times. Type 2 tends to be
> a better compromise since the card costs are more reachable to most people.
> Type 3 suffers from unequal starting position, due to the random nature
> of card distribution.
You left out a very important criteria that everyone knows is important in
competitive Magic - luck - particularly in single knockout tournaments,
which, I believe, determined many of the regional champions. Type II,
with its emphasis on trying to 'even the playing field,' serves to
emphasize luck even more. Furthermore, parity does not necessarily imply
quality. It might, but it doesn't always. I think the luck factor has
been shown to be particularly strong in some of the other threads that
are discussing the championships; one of the posters showed that the
competition had not a single deck that deviated substantially from the
norm, even allowing for the modified Swiss system. This increased
emphasis on luck would seem to me to be another contraindication to your
belief that skill should decide the championship.
> Complaining that you can't have world championship play without the
> most powerful cards available is hogwash. We are not trying to determine
> the world champion card. You can find that in .marketplace any day of the
> week by a price factor of about 2-1 over its leading competitor. We are
> only interested in the skill of the players, something which can be measured
> just fine w/out any particular card or cards being used.
>
If you think that having one particular card is the only determining
factor in Type I play, then you don't have the faintest bloody idea what
you are talking about. It is impossible, at the very least, to remove the
factor of luck from the game (and it would be very boring if someone did
it), so the game will never be decided purely on skill. The problem here
is not that WOTC decided to have a Type II championship, that's fine, but
that they prohibited people from determining a Type I championship, when
Type I is supposedly an event that the Convocation should be sanctioning.
Your post ignores most of what's gone on here, and mis-represents what it
didn't ignore. Next time, try to be a little more positive, please?
GBS
Johannes Fassbinder
[...]
>
> regroth, ect. plus, if you want to compare magic to chess (which is a
> valid comparison considering that magic is the second most popular
> stratigic game in history behind chess),
Sorry, but this is ridiculous. Chess is less popular in history than
Go in the first place, which is existent for 3000 years and more, and
games like Backgammon, Bridge, and Checkers, are even today known by
so many more people than Magic: The Gathering, let alone in history.
> i would make the argument that
> the world's champion chess player has a chance of being beaten by the
> local hot-shot, but it's slim.
No way. The World Champion Chess player once played eight local
hot-shots from Hamburg (the 1st League team where the German chess
league is one of the strongest in the world) _simultaneously_ and drew
two games while winning six.
There is a slim chance that I can beat the Backgammon World Champion
in a single game as there is a grain of luck involved. By the same
token, I see a slim chance that I beat the Woirld Champion of M:tG in
a single game. There is no way for me beating the Chess Champion.
> some people simply excell at something,
> and i have both met and played a couple of people who simply excell at
> magic across this self same internet, and it's served to humble me when i
> got too full of myself.
>
Where can you see peaople playing Magic over the 'net?
> and in final response, you won't know if that kid in brooklyn can beat
> the world champion unless you go looking for him and watch him jump.
>
> hope i sounded vaguely within sensible. ;)
>
Sorry, but I must say that the remark about Magic being the second
most popular game in history sort of disqualified yourself.
--
Johannes Faßbinder | /|Z ___
med.Stat.,Inf.&Dokum.| , _/ |,\/,-/ Periscop faan is
Jahnstr.3,D-07740 Jena| )=======#==(=x ) wie wennze fliechs
i...@imsid.uni-jena.de | '0 ' `-'
Travis Knoll
question:
"Is Type 1 inherently more stable (less random) than Type 2?"
On the surface it might appear so, because there is typically a cadre of
Type 1 players from whom a small subset take the top spots a most local
tourneys. I wonder, though, if that isn't in part because no new blood is
able to compete because of the $ to enter...
Basically, if you have a nearly fixed group of players, then you would
expect that a few would come to dominate, while the rest would just
come to accept that fact.
If you have much larger and more diverse group, you might expect that
the "Kings of the Hill" would not stay on top for long, and the pool
of "top" players would be much more fluid...
Thus, I am not at all certain that it is fair to claim that because
Type 1s are dominated by a handful of local players, they are inherently
more stable (less subject to luck) than Type 2.
It has been claimed that Type 1 decks have "greater flexability" and can
recover from a poor draw. I beg to differ. They also have "greater
offense" so can press a small advantage much more quickly than a Type 2
could. Consider the first round Juzam(or other big creature). This isn't
_that_ uncommon in Type 1. So if you start without an answer, you may not
really get much chance to recover. In type 2, the more typical strong
opening is a first round Hypnotic. While this is a problem if you can't
deal with it right away, you really do get a few rounds without throwing
this into a runaway...
Just my .02, and a question to elevate this (yeah, right) out of name-
calling and back to discussion, which sounds very noble, doesn't it? :)
Travis
Scott Burke
>I'm not pouting, I'm merely stating that the "World Championships" were
>determined through a level of play where most of the decks could not
>compete at the highest level of play.
I don't think there's really any conclusions we'll reach over this subject.
You define the highest level of play to be that which includes all the
cards (Type 1). Others define the highest level of play to be that which is
accessible to the highest number of people (Type 2). Which is right? I
don't think it really matters. I'm sure WotC will continue to support
multiple types of tournaments to cater to the variety of interests of the
players. Which one (or which combination of them) they select to define
the "World Championship" in a given year is at their discretion. I do hope
they'll do better next year.
>Mark Justice, of course, represents precisely what I am talking
>about; he's likely a good player and a good deck designer, period. It
>doesn't matter to him (he apparently has more toleration for boredom than
>I have) in which environment he plays. In my experience, most Type I
>players (who are good in that environment) are the same way in any
>environment of Magic play.
Well, let me point something out which is relevant: Mark Justice, Henry Stern,
Mario Robaina, Mark Chalice, Brian Pugnier, Frank Gilson, Bo Bell, Joel Unger,
and I all think Type 2 happens to be pretty interesting. Many of this group
have sold off their Type 1 cards and focus exclusively on Type 2. (If you
don't recognize the names, they're all West Coast and most were in the Top 25
for last year, which was entirely Type 1 performance in the convocation
tournaments.)
My point is that a lot of top players think Type 2 is very interesting, and
none of us feel in any way jilted that the World Championship was Type 2. We
think it's a fine idea that more people can play in Type 2; some of us still
enjoy Type 1 as well, but we're willing to concede that it's too expensive
to play in that environment. So we don't push the agenda that Type 1 should
be the only true test of Magic playing skill.
We, along with the national champions and teams of 21 countries, happen to
find Type 2 pretty interesting. That's fine if your local gaming group doesn't
like it--don't participate. If you're mad at WotC for changing the tournament
rules on you at the Canadian Nationals, don't take that out on those of us who
are actively trying to improve the tournament structure and giving feedback:
write them a letter.
Scott Burke
Bruce G Strang <g902...@mcmail.cis.McMaster.CA> wrote:
>
>competitive Magic - luck - particularly in single knockout tournaments,
>which, I believe, determined many of the regional champions. Type II,
>with its emphasis on trying to 'even the playing field,' serves to
>emphasize luck even more. Furthermore, parity does not necessarily imply
>quality. It might, but it doesn't always. I think the luck factor has
>been shown to be particularly strong in some of the other threads that
>are discussing the championships; one of the posters showed that the
>competition had not a single deck that deviated substantially from the
>norm, even allowing for the modified Swiss system. This increased
>emphasis on luck would seem to me to be another contraindication to your
>belief that skill should decide the championship.
Umm, I think that the phrase 'even the playing field' is generally used to
mean the downplaying of factors outside the control of the players: to wit,
money and luck. Let's compare the tournament types:
MONEY LUCK
Type 1 Lots required for OOPs Many restricted cards
Type 2 Not much required at all Few restricted cards
Sealed Deck Least of all required Random cards given
Oops, before I get started, let me clarify my assumptions here, so that
(hopefully) this makes sense.
1. Leveling the playing field is good, because it encourages competition
regardless of external factors, such as income, and focuses on the
factors we're trying to test, such as skill and deck construction.
2. A restricted card is a powerful card, and can be a game-winner. For
that reason, whoever gets the restricted card first (such as a Mind
Twist) is luckier than their opponent.
Type 1 is not a level playing field, because most players can't afford it.
Not that they don't want to, or that they're not trying hard enough and
devoting every waking moment to trading for the cards and wheedling money
from their parents or their employers, but simply, that some can't afford
it. Having the OOPs is not an indication of playing skill. Further, I'm
not sure that the correlation between having the OOPs and playing skill
would be very high, but that would be an interesting calculation to perform.
I've certainly seen plenty of lousy players with a Lotus on the table.
Type 2 is clearly a flatter playing field insofar as money is concerned.
More people can participate, and the more people, the more skill.
As for Type 2 being "luckier," I think the reverse is true. I'm still not
happy with David Low's numbers, but I haven't had the time to think them
through and find a flaw (if there is in fact one). I was at Nationals and
at World, and frankly, some of those players were absolutely terrible at
building sealed decks, and equally frankly, some of those Type 2 decks they
had sucked. If David has proved that the results mean nothing, well, then
I feel we have some kind of contradiction, because I saw evidence that some
of the players were better than others, and some of the decks were most
certainly stronger. But I don't want to get into that too much here.
The thing that bugs me about the key powerful cards is that THEY represent
the bulk of the luck factor among roughly equal players and deck builders.
When two top Type 1 players meet, the Mind Twist often determines the
outcome: the bulk of my losses in Type 1 now occur due to that single card.
But the same thing doesn't happen in Type 2: I lose for a variety of reasons.
And I think what underlies that isn't more luck: it's that in Type 2, there
are not certain stagnant dominant cards and strategies. If there are, by
the time they're found, the Type 2 environment will have moved on.
I made the argument in another post that Mind Twist determined the outcome of
the World Championship, and that it should therefore be banned from Type 2
play. Well, there's of course no way I can tell whether Blumke would have won
the games he did without the Mind Twist. My point was that the card really
*cemented* his victory in each case, moving games from balanced positions to
hugely favorable positions for Blumke. I think that's a prime example of
too much luck. Not an unbalanced playing field--Justice had Mind Twist in
his deck too--but just plain too much luck. I believe the entire restricted
list represents cards which have left the domain of fair play and entered the
domain of too much luck, but that's just one perspective. The powerful OOP
cards certainly have done a lot to make this game intriguing. But Blumke's
use of Mind Twist has *nothing* to do with Type 2 vs. Type 1: the same
problem happens in Type 1.
Basically, I don't think there's a significant difference in this hypothetical
"luck factor" between Type 1 and Type 2. There's a huge luck factor in the
Sealed Deck rules, but we're not really discussing those here. Bruce, what's
your case for Type 2 being luckier? The Swiss tournament system is also
independent of Type 1 vs. Type 2, and that's what David Low was analyzing.
His results might hold for Type 1 as well, if it were run in a big Swiss
system. And what's your case for parity not implying quality in Type 2?
Please state your case so we can discuss it. :-) I'm in favor of Type 2
and very much against Sealed Deck because I think Type 2 has a pretty level
playing field and Sealed Deck clearly doesn't.
Let's convert this thread (or one branch of it) to a discussion of what the
problems are with Type 2. Is it just that you're fond of the Type 1 cards
and don't like to play without them? From an overall perspective, there
aren't that many cards which you can't use in Type 2: you can use 800+ and
you can't use about 300 or so. There are plenty of decks you can make with
those 800, and what's nice about them is that they don't all share a core
set of cards like Moxes, Lotus, Time Walk, Demonic Tutor, etc., etc. That
makes for *more* variety, not less, don't you think?
Scott Burke
Ryan John Cousineau <rcou...@newsserver.sfu.ca> wrote:
>
>OTOH, I bet I could take one game in ten from a really serious Magic
>player, something which I am not (yet). Probably more.
Your argument is generally true: Magic has more luck than Chess. But I
disagree that a top-flight Type 1 player would lose 10% of the time to
any player, unless they are also a top-flight player. To clarify that,
first let me say that _matches_ are what's important, not duels, because
tournaments are invariably best 2 of 3 duels. It's always possible to
lose a single duel to horrendous bad luck, but the best Type 1 players I
know will lose a full match to an average or poor player maybe 1 in 50
matches, and it is invariably due to the Mind Twist. That's how I
basically lose all my games these days: somebody lays out an early Mind
Twist and has a counterspell (or two!) to back it up. That, or they
have the ol' Channel + Fireball + Red Elemental Blast combination (that
was last tournament, but only cost me a single duel: not the match).
As you say, there are only a handful of people in the world who can give
Kasparov a game; I think the same goes in National Type 1 play. Not that
we'll ever get all the good people together, but you can at least make
a rough approximation of the situation with local play. In a local
100-player tournament, unless a strong player drives in from out of town,
I already know who the dangerous competition is. I hear the same story
from friends in Los Angeles, Texas, and Florida: the winners of Type 1
tournaments are invariably repeat winners. It's pretty rare that a dark
horse comes in and wins a large Type 1 tournament, and if they do, it
just means they came from another region to play and nobody knew them.
Anyway, not to belabor the point, but the very best Type 1 players very
rarely lose matches, and then, mostly to each other.
Scott Burke
>Since I can't resist a "good" discussion, I thought I would ask a little
>question:
>
>"Is Type 1 inherently more stable (less random) than Type 2?"
>
>On the surface it might appear so, because there is typically a cadre of
>Type 1 players from whom a small subset take the top spots a most local
>tourneys. I wonder, though, if that isn't in part because no new blood is
>able to compete because of the $ to enter...
Careful here.
I think Type 1 is more stabler, and the same group of players wins it over
and over again, because those players have reached a fixed point in
evolution in the Type 1 environment: they have the best decks in their
region, and there is nobody who can beat them.
What I saw happening all last year when I was accumulating points for the
Top 25 was clone decks--people couldn't beat me, so they copied my deck
design. Mostly, it didn't work, because they never knew the exact count
of my deck, and they didn't know the sideboard. But it sure made the
tournaments a bit rougher. Now, when I travelled outside my region, I ran
into the same thing elsewhere, and sometimes hit better decks than mine,
generally in areas with stronger local competition.
But there's plenty of new blood coming in to Type 1. It's just that it takes
a while for a new player to come up to speed and come up with a deck that's
competitive at the top levels of play. It's not that the $$ bar new
competition, it's that Type 1 is a stagnant card environment, and once you
get an extremely good deck design and learn how to play well enough, you can
be very hard to beat. A new player can come in and move up to that point
as well, but it's a slow process, it does take money for the OOPs, and it
takes a LOT of skill to outplay a 2-year veteran of this game who is
entrenched at the top of the local Type 1 heap.
>If you have much larger and more diverse group, you might expect that
>the "Kings of the Hill" would not stay on top for long, and the pool
>of "top" players would be much more fluid...
It's not the number of people, I don't think, but the card set. Type 1 has
an effectively fixed card set, so the decks and players have evolved to the
point where they won't change much anymore. Type 2 has more players, but
the key is that the card set is constantly changing.
>Thus, I am not at all certain that it is fair to claim that because
>Type 1s are dominated by a handful of local players, they are inherently
>more stable (less subject to luck) than Type 2.
I agree: that's not the claim that should be made. I don't know which I
consider luckier: Type 1 or Type 2. I don't think it's clear.
>It has been claimed that Type 1 decks have "greater flexability" and can
>recover from a poor draw. I beg to differ. They also have "greater
>offense" so can press a small advantage much more quickly than a Type 2
>could. Consider the first round Juzam(or other big creature). This isn't
>_that_ uncommon in Type 1. So if you start without an answer, you may not
>really get much chance to recover.
That's true, but you have picked a misleading example. The first-turn Juzam
(typically Dark Ritual + Mox + Swamp + Juzam) is an example of inefficient
deck design. Over the long run, investing that much into a single creature
on turn 1 is going to lose against better decks. Yes, it will win in a
spectacular fashion against most opponents, but the plain fact is if your
opponent doesn't have any way to deal with a creature in the first 4 turns--
the first 12 cards--then you probably had them dead to rights anyways.
When I can take out your first-turn Juzam with a single Plains and Swords
to Plowshares, it should strike you that there's something wrong with the
strategy.
David J Low
>
>We, along with the national champions and teams of 21 countries, happen to
>find Type 2 pretty interesting.
Which doesn't mean that they prefer it, of course :-) I personally
don't mind - I'll play under whatever rules someone wants to organise a
tourney under - but it's worth being a bit careful with sweeping
statements like the one quoted above.
One assumes that if a certain player *didn't* find Type II "pretty
interesting", then they would quite possibly not compete. Hence, the
selection of national teams is obviously going to be made up of people
who find Type II fun :-) Biased sampling gives a biased result...
Regards,
David (who still wants a good Type I.5 ruleset, so that he can
use Fire Sprites....or any of a few hundred non-Type II
legal cards which are pretty well balanced.)
--
| David J. Low dl...@physics.adelaide.edu.au Oooo. |
| ( ) |
| WWW: http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/~dlow/dlow.html ) / |
| "I'd rather be lost in the Darkness than blinded by the Light" (_/ |
David J Low
>been shown to be particularly strong in some of the other threads that
>are discussing the championships; one of the posters showed that the
>competition had not a single deck that deviated substantially from the
>norm, even allowing for the modified Swiss system.
A word of caution here: the statistics posted were on the *total*
overall performance, including both sealed deck and constructed deck.
The two scores of 21-9, and arguably the four of 20-10, were significant.
The five scores of 19-11 were borderline.
However, not having access to the constructed deck scores, it's impossible
to comment on the significance or otherwise of the deck construction;
even if one did have them, 15 games is a bit low for meaningful
numbers.
Regards,
David.
Rod Ho
Ok, After reading the last 20 posts of this thread it has become a
slinging match between a few people rather than what actually happened
at the World Championship.
All i can really say is Shut the Fark up! You may say i'm childish
but hey, i probably am, but you guys are as childish as i am.
I dont care what the chicago Bulls are doing, or whats happening
in the Olympics, I'm more interested in what actually happened at
the world championships and a more in depth view into the deck designs
that did go well.
Sure i realise that type I and type II both have relatively good aspects
in tournament play, but what you must realise is that the spoilers
are expensive. I'm not complaining because i have owned most of them
at one time or another. And they did cost alot. But price is no object
sometimes, You have to realise that the championship was a WORLD
Championship, and that some of the other countries in the tournament have
only a limited amount of spoilers circulating, even if you have big bucks
the spoilers are still hard to get.
Type II was WoTC choice of tournament play for the World Championships, so
be it.
I'll admit, there probably were a lot of good players that didn't play there
but then hey, there were a lot of good players there as well.
As for the rest of responses to this thread, how bout some more info on the
World Tournament?!?! If you guys wanna flame each other, send each other
email or start a new thread! If you wanna flame me, do so, i dont really
give a fark, just post something informative about the tournament.
No matter how eloquent your flames get, they're still flames.
Just my thoughts.
Rod
Gro...@jolt.mpx.com.au
Ses...@zipper.zip.com.au
Bruce G Strang
served. I'm not "taking out my anger on WOTC" on you. Let's be a little
more accurate, and not let this thread devolve into its earlier nature.
GBS
Bruce G Strang
Coast. I'm sure that I would find Type I boring if things here were as
you say they are for you.
They are, however, far different here. There is no single person who
dominates play; several people, some dozen to twenty, are capable of
winning any particular tournament. There are lots and lots of different
deck types, and people still on occasion change decks dramatically. I
don't know exactly why there is such a difference. Maybe the play here is
either less mature or more mature somehow than on the West Coast. Maybe
it stagnated at one point and has broken free, or maybe it will shake out
and stagnate. I suspect, though I have little proof, that it is much more
closely related to the fact that the game culture around here sees
sideboards as wrong-headed, and, somehow, pretty damaging to the play of
the game. It seems to me that that rule (almost universally used around
here) serves to keep the game much fresher. As no deck can prepare to
face every eventuality, it encourages more daring design. I've only been
playing for a year, and don't know why it turned out like this, but those
are my experiences.
[On an aside, I've never really understood why anyone created the concept
of sideboards in the first place; I mean, if I'm playing someone for
ante, and he pulls out his cards after the first game and substitutes in
all his particular deck hosers, then I'm going to walk away from the
table.]
Now, what bothers me most about WOTC's policies this year is that they
prevented a lot of people from figuring out what the problem is with Type
I. If it is stagnation, then they may have prevented us from breaking
that stagnation. Let me explain.
If, as you say, on the West Coast there are no new successful ideas, and
that certain decks win all the time, then that could mean a couple of
things. It could be that you've reached the ultimate in deck design, and
there's just nowhere to go from where you are. Or, it is also possible
that you folks might just use some new ideas. I'm not there, so I can't
say for sure. It might be that if people from here played people from
there, that you'd you'd thrash us and show that your deck designs are
superior, and need not change. It might be that we'd have some rude
shocks for you, that in our still-Darwinian environment we've hit on some
striking evolutions. I don't assert that either of these points is
necessarily correct, we just don't know.
Still, it would have been useful to find out. I would gladly lose if it
meant that I was learning about the game; losing should be instructive.
It may also be that at some point I'll grow bored with Type I, and that
I'll think that Type I has exhausted its possibilities, but I'm certainly
not there yet. Your experiences simply don't ring true to me here, and I
find it hard to believe that there are decks as proof to the vicissitudes
of fate as you claim (which is not to say that it's not true).
Still, it's useful to know what your, and, apparently, WOTC's, thinking on
the subject is. I would have to suggest, however, that that set of
circumstances is hardly universal; if WOTC is setting policy according
only to what is happening on the West Coast, then I think you should
realize that that is likely one of the reasons that the Convocation
membership is not as large as you'd like.
In any event, there are some thoughts on your post. I'm trying to get out
of this discussion, as I need to work on other things, so I hope it
provides some food for thought.
Regards,
GBS
Z Infinity
tournament using a type II deck, which I have done twice now. I've
recently been able to acquire the restricted cards to enhance the deck as
into a Type I deck. Cards such as the Lotus, Mox Jet, and the Chaos Orb,
not to mention Demonic Tutor and Maze of Ith, but the satisfaction of
winning the Type I tournaments isn't as great anymore.
Z
Trevor Barrie
>I'm not pouting, I'm merely stating that the "World Championships" were
>determined through a level of play where most of the decks could not
>compete at the highest level of play.
Undeniably true, but I completely fail to see the relevance...
**************************************************************************
Trevor Barrie tba...@peinet.pe.ca "It's a great big universe,
87 Kennedy Drive and we're all really puny;
West Royalty, PEI we're just tiny little specks
C1E 1X7 CANADA (902) 628-6845 about the size of Mickey Rooney."
**************************************************************************
Rob Watkins
>But I know that in the Northwest and in California, the top Type 1 decks are
>pretty much fixed. Rarely does Joel get beaten in central California. Mario
>wins a lot of tournaments in L.A. Ryan wins in his area. I win up here.
>For the most part, we play the same decks, and in the finals, we meet the
>same decks.
The contingent from L.A. that came up to the Silicon Valley/San Francisco
area for the biggest tournament to date here were all eliminated by the
round of 8. And heck, that was a double elimination tournament, so they
all lost twice by then.
>Why is that? Because the play environment is not evolving any
>more.
Bleah. The play environment changes every time a new expansion comes out,
Chronicles excepted since that isn't really new. I have at least one
card from each of the expansions in my Type I deck. Different strategies
need to be addressed and mulled over with the advent of each new expansion.
>Among the "old guard," the decks stay the same.
I disagree. I'm not sure I've ever seen one of the "old guard" from this
area run the exact same deck for two tournaments in succession. The
deck concepts may be similar for quite some time, but the type I decks
are being constantly tinkered. When Moat and The Abyss and other creature
hosers appeared in Legends, I dramatically altered my deck. That is just
one example, I do not wish to imply that that is the only time my overall
deck concept changed.
>To us, the new and dynamic environment is Type 2, where it's not so clear
>what the dominant strategies are.
Key word is dynamic. I haven't participated in Type 2 yet because of the
massive amount of time it takes to completely retool ones deck as cards
become obsolete. Yes, it is an interesting environment. But it is a huge
time sink both in acquiring the cards necessary and designing completely new
decks every 2 months or so. I do not have that time.
>The problem I see with Type 1 is that there's no longer any incentive to
>improve your deck, once you can win consistently with it.
Ouch. How you manage to consistently win is beyond me. If you stand
still, *someone* should pass you by.
>If your local playing group spends its time designing and playing new Type 1
>decks, well, you just happen to be spending your energy doing what we're
>doing in Type 2.
Indeed. The number of wholesale deck changes don't happen as often. It is
much easier to adapt for type I play by acquiring the cards needed out of
a particular expansion.
>I agree with Richard Garfield: Type 1 is stagnant (although the level of
>play among the best is exceptional) and Type 2 is alive.
"stagnant" is an ugly word. I believe that "stable" fits the bill much
better. The decks for Type I are much more complex than the Type 2 decks,
at least from what I have seen. I would tend to believe that the vast
majority of the mental processes devoted to type 2 would be in the deck
design. With the incredible card pool associated with type 1, the play
of the game is much more interesting.
>Sealed Deck is currently fun, but an abomination as far as fair tournaments
>goes; hopefully, it will be fixed!
Sealed Deck is quite interesting. I'd be happy playing Type 1 and Sealed
Deck in the World Championships. The skills and time you put into those
two don't evaporate whenever a new expansion comes out. Cards that go
obsolete.. decks that go obsolete.. the time investment is huge! That
is my only gripe against type 2.
Rob
Trevor Barrie
>I don't consider Type II a "lesser" form; it is different. I merely find
>it strange that WOTC has declared people World Champions when we all know
>that they would be soundly defeated in any of a dozen tournaments hels in
>a dozen towns in several countries.
How exactly do we "know" this?
David J Low
> MONEY LUCK
>Type 2 Not much required at all Few restricted cards
Type II doesn't have a large startup cost, but does (can) have a large
continuation cost.
>As for Type 2 being "luckier," I think the reverse is true. I'm still not
>happy with David Low's numbers, but I haven't had the time to think them
>through and find a flaw (if there is in fact one). I was at Nationals and
>at World, and frankly, some of those players were absolutely terrible at
>building sealed decks, and equally frankly, some of those Type 2 decks they
>had sucked. If David has proved that the results mean nothing, well, then
>I feel we have some kind of contradiction, because I saw evidence that some
>of the players were better than others, and some of the decks were most
>certainly stronger. But I don't want to get into that too much here.
Just to reiterate - I *didn't* post anything on constructed deck alone,
just the total result. There were at least two, probably six, and
maybe as many as eleven "significant" results from the 71 (?) total
entrants.
The closeness, OTOH, could mean one of two things: luck dominated, or
that the top people were very even. I subscribe to the latter view.
Ah, the trouble with statistics - anyone can take the numbers, and find
a way to support their own case :-(
>I believe the entire restricted
>list represents cards which have left the domain of fair play and entered the
>domain of too much luck, but that's just one perspective.
Agreed wholeheartedly. There is some "evening out" in Type I because
of the sheer number of restricted "spoilers", but that doesn't
necessarily make it good. I liken it to a variety of duels: Type I
uses nukes (shoot first and win!), Type II uses handguns (good shot
should win, but if he gets unlucky...), and Type III uses machetes
with the participants blindfolded :-)
Chance Harris
: sc...@fix.oneworld.com (Scott Burke) writes:
:But I know that in the Northwest and in California, the top Type 1 decks are
:pretty much fixed. Rarely does Joel get beaten in central California. Mario
:wins a lot of tournaments in L.A. Ryan wins in his area. I win up here.
:For the most part, we play the same decks, and in the finals, we meet the
:same decks.
.
.
:To us, the new and dynamic environment is Type 2, where it's not so clear
:what the dominant strategies are.
.
.
:The problem I see with Type 1 is that there's no longer any incentive to
:improve your deck, once you can win consistently with it.
So what are in these "God Decks" ? (and I don't mean to be snide, I really
want to know)
I doubt you want to tell us exactly what is in them, but just a general
idea of what cards are used (besides the obvoius Mox/Lotus/Tutor/Time* stuff).
I've gathered from reading here that on the West coast RWU is the name of the
game game, and throw in some Jayedmae Tome's. So what is it besides the
spoilers ? I'll guess - Disenchant, StP, Lightning Bolt, Serndibs, Serras,
Couple of Stone Rains ? Is this close? I play something like this sometimes
(and I'm not trying to claim its as good or well-tuned as yours ..),
and I almost always get my ass kicked by land destruction. Does your sideboard
take care of this?
OTOH, if you really think Type I play in your area is stagnant, and you
have the "Best Deck Possible" (tm), why don't you post it?
Then either (1) you will find out that it is not the best deck possible,
because people will be able to beat it, and you will have to respond to
their changes and Type I won't be stagnant any more or (2) the best any body
will be able to do is copy yours [which sounds like whats happening slowly
any way], and then [slowly] everybody will admit that Type I is a "solved problem"
and nobody will bitch about Type II any more :)
------------------------------------------------
Chance Harris
Motorola Emerging Computing Operations
cha...@coyote.sps.mot.com
#include<std_disclaimer.h>
Steve Unruh
yeah!
if you got this super mongo deck that can't be beat then why not post
it and let us take a look. how would you fare playing against an
exact copy of your deck? would whoever goes first win? or would
it be a matter of skill?
--
This article is Copyrighted, 1995, by Steven L. Unruh, who hereby explicitly
withholds permission of transmission from Microsoft Corporation. By
transmitting this article, Microsoft Corporation agrees to pay
Steven L. Unruh ten million United States dollars (US$10,000,000), due N30.
Bruce G Strang
Trevor Barrie <tba...@peinet.pe.ca> wrote:
>In article <40ml0t$c...@mcmail.CIS.McMaster.CA>, g902...@mcmail.cis.McMaster.CA (Bruce G Strang) says:
>
>>it strange that WOTC has declared people World Champions when we all know
>>that they would be soundly defeated in any of a dozen tournaments hels in
>>a dozen towns in several countries.
>
>
>**************************************************************************
>Trevor Barrie tba...@peinet.pe.ca "It's a great big universe,
Well, we've heard over and over and over (ad nauseum) that Type II decks
can't compete against Type I decks. Nor should we expect them to do so.
WOTC has tried its best to remove any card that would give the Type II
player a realistic chance. That we 'know' that the Type II decks at the
worlds wouldn't compete well in local Type I tournaments is, I admit,
something of an assumption on my part, but it ain't exactly a great leap
of imagination. This statement is not to denigrate the skill of the
players at the worlds, it is to say that Type II is mightily restricted.
GBS
Rob Watkins
>Morgan Schweers (m...@netcom.com) wrote:
>: I think there are other Bay Area players who are online,
>: don't feel the same way, and have built versions of it. Any of them
>: care to share the contents of the deck?
I'll try to modify the contents listed below to the best of my knowledge.
>I've played against them, gotten beaten by them, made them, modified
>them, then left them (in search of something to BEAT 'it').
I've beat them. I've never bothered trying them... I think my concept
works better. :)
>BLUE: 4 Counterspell, 4 Mana Drain, Timetwister, Ancestral Recall,
>Braingeyser, Time Walk, Recall (13)
>WHITE: 4 Disenchant, 4 Swords to Plowshares, 2 Serra Angel (10)
>BLACK: Demonic Tutor, Mind Twist (2)
>RED: 3 Blood Moon (3)
>ARTIFACT (non-mana): Chaos Orb, Ivory Tower, 2 Disrupting Sceptres, 2
>Jayemdae Tome (6)
>TOTAL (non-mana): 34
>MANA ARTIFACTS: 4 Moxes (no Emerald), Sol Ring, Black Lotus (6)
>MANA LAND: Library of Alex, 4 City of Brass, 4 Tundra, 2 Underground
>Sea, 2 Volcanic Island, 4 Island, 3 Plains (20)
>TOTAL: 60 cards
>Sideboard: 2 Divine Offering, 2 Red Elem Blasts, 1 Zuran Orb, 4 CoP:
>Red, 1 Balance, 1 Maze of Ith, 1 Tormod's Crypt, 3 Moat
Take out two blood moons. There is the Dust to Dust spell that takes
two target artifacts out of the game in there somewhere too. There is
also an unknown number of strips mines.
>: Well, nobody's bitching about Type II around here. Everybody
>: feels that it's a MUCH more interesting and dynamic playfield than
>: Type I,
I don't think so. I think people play it because WotC and the DC
forced it down their throats due to the structure of the Championships.
>: The problem is that the top players in the area aren't building decks to
>: beat it, they're building decks which are very SIMILAR to it, so the entire
>: area ends up in this constant and sad rut.
Bleah. My deck doesn't even have white in it. Of course, Brian's comment
was "Rob, that's the best deck I ever seen that doesn't have white in it!" :)
>: So, Type I is dying around here, as everybody seems to believe
>: that this blue/white thing is the pinnacle of creation, and the top
>: players don't try or encourage others to try to beat it. Sad, isn't
>: it?
Say what? Personally, I think Jon Saso's Land Equilibrium deck is much
better than the blue/white decks. Ray Knowles' deck is better too, and
that doesn't have Disrupting Sceptre. The problem with the design is
that it can't do much about something that is killing them that is
backed up by minimal countermagic. Yes, I've lost games to that deck.
I've never lost a match (best of 3) against one though.
The biggest problem is that the deck doesn't have much reliency against
a poor draw. If you get a creature down and they can't get an StP off,
they die. If you get an underworld dreams out, then they die slowly or
quickly depending on their drawing decisions while under the dreams.
If you get a vice out, they can end up wiggling around trying to get
countermagic out of their hand. The Disrupting Sceptre can run into
a Psychic Purge. And if Jon gets his Land Equilibrium out, say goodnight...
Rob
Bay Area Type I Player
Frederick Scott
>In article <40rb24$b...@bud.peinet.pe.ca>,
>Trevor Barrie <tba...@peinet.pe.ca> wrote:
>>In article <40ml0t$c...@mcmail.CIS.McMaster.CA>,
>>g902...@mcmail.cis.McMaster.CA (Bruce G Strang) says:
>>
>>>I don't consider Type II a "lesser" form; it is different. I merely find
>>>it strange that WOTC has declared people World Champions when we all know
>>>that they would be soundly defeated in any of a dozen tournaments hels in
>>>a dozen towns in several countries.
>>
>>How exactly do we "know" this?
>
>Well, we've heard over and over and over (ad nauseum) that Type II decks
>can't compete against Type I decks. Nor should we expect them to do so.
>WOTC has tried its best to remove any card that would give the Type II
>player a realistic chance. That we 'know' that the Type II decks at the
>worlds wouldn't compete well in local Type I tournaments is, I admit,
>something of an assumption on my part, but it ain't exactly a great leap
>of imagination. This statement is not to denigrate the skill of the
>players at the worlds, it is to say that Type II is mightily restricted.
Oh, YOU meant that the World Champions would be soundly defeated USING THEIR
TYPE II decks in a Type I tournament. Well, of course, but I'm a little
confused here...actually, I'm a _lot_ confused here. I think we all are.
What in hell could possibly be your point? This is demonstrably and
obviously a silly matter to bring up. We thought you were making some sort
of argument about the skill level of the person who won the National
Championship vs. those who win Type I tournaments regularly (for all we know,
he's one of them, by they way). Turns out, you're just trying to impress us
with the point that he (probably) couldn't take the deck he used in the Type
II round and win against good Type I players in a Type I tournament. Well,
whoop-de-do!!! Neither could you or anyone else. Big deal. (sheesh...)
Fred
do...@netcom.com
: Greetings,
: Some time ago sun...@bga.com (Steve Unruh) happily mumbled:
: >In article <40tfpi$r...@newsgate.sps.mot.com>,
: >Chance Harris <cha...@ae.sps.mot.com> wrote:
: >>
: >>So what are in these "God Decks" ? (and I don't mean to be snide, I really
: >>want to know)
[quite accurate stuff about Bay Area Magic scene, including the fact that
many of the best just aren't on the 'Net]
: >>OTOH, if you really think Type I play in your area is stagnant, and you
: >>have the "Best Deck Possible" (tm), why don't you post it?
: I wish I could. I've refused to build one of them, on the basis
: that I believe in my OWN deck designs, rather than just copying what's
: successful. I think there are other Bay Area players who are online,
: don't feel the same way, and have built versions of it. Any of them
: care to share the contents of the deck?
I've played against them, gotten beaten by them, made them, modified
them, then left them (in search of something to BEAT 'it'). My version
was weaker than the strongest since I didn't have access to power cards
at the time. Here is what I would venture the decks look like with all
spoilers:
BLUE: 4 Counterspell, 4 Mana Drain, Timetwister, Ancestral Recall,
Braingeyser, Time Walk, Recall (13)
WHITE: 4 Disenchant, 4 Swords to Plowshares, 2 Serra Angel (10)
BLACK: Demonic Tutor, Mind Twist (2)
RED: 3 Blood Moon (3)
ARTIFACT (non-mana): Chaos Orb, Ivory Tower, 2 Disrupting Sceptres, 2
Jayemdae Tome (6)
TOTAL (non-mana): 34
MANA ARTIFACTS: 4 Moxes (no Emerald), Sol Ring, Black Lotus (6)
MANA LAND: Library of Alex, 4 City of Brass, 4 Tundra, 2 Underground
Sea, 2 Volcanic Island, 4 Island, 3 Plains (20)
TOTAL: 60 cards
Sideboard: 2 Divine Offering, 2 Red Elem Blasts, 1 Zuran Orb, 4 CoP:
Red, 1 Balance, 1 Maze of Ith, 1 Tormod's Crypt, 3 Moat
My weak version had Fellwar Stones for Moxen, Control Magics for Chaos Orb
and Lotus, two more Serras and one or two Mahamoti for the Blood Moon.
: >>Then either (1) you will find out that it is not the best deck possible,
: >>because people will be able to beat it, and you will have to respond to
: Welll... People will be able to beat it because of a lot of
: reasons. It's a deck that takes a lot of skill to play. Honestly, I
: don't think some random gunslinger is going to come up with a way to
: beat it and be able to test it without playing against people who live
: and breathe that deck. It takes the efforts of top players, SERIOUS
: players who grok the game a lot more than I do yet, to beat it, AND
: win against all the other decks in a tournament. I'll get there,
: though.
This deck has a couple weaknesses. I ended up beating one at a Type I
tourney without any moxes or lotus (since then I have acquired 3 moxen
and a ancestral, VERY big help). Typically if two of these decks face
off, NO ONE will cast anything for the first 3 or 4 turns (except for
Moxen/Loti). This is because of MANA DRAIN. If you tap out to cast
something and get drained, you can be SURE you'll get hit with a mind
twist or your opponent will play a 'book' (Jayemdae Tome). Since they're
playing a defensive deck anyway, they wait till your discard phase and
draw a card with mana. It's sickening how effective it is sometimes.
Swords to Plowshares are devastating as well since this deck LIVES for
Timetwister and Feldon's Cane (it fits in the sideboard somewhere, take
out another card, probably CoP: Red, but 3 are IN for sure). Those StoPs
and counterspells come back but your lost creatures don't. The 'lock'
here is an angel on the table and two counterspells to back her up.
That's it. 5 turns and you're dead with nothing on the table.
The key to beating them is hand denial with countermagic, hand denial for
defense, and countermagic to make it WORK. You need anti-artifact stuff
for those Tome and Sceptres. After two or three turns they've already
done their damage. Speed is also a major factor, but you can't banzai
them. If you ever tap out, you'll be meat in a second. It's essential to
have many artifacts since you'll need some fodder to keep YOUR disrupting
sceptres in play. (hrm, there ought to be one, maybe two strip mines in
for land as well...)
The deck I beat this one with had 4 Hymns, 4 Spectres, 4 Counterspells, 4
Mana Drains, 2 Mahamoti, Dakkon, Braingeyser, 2 Tomes, 2 Sceptres, 3
Disenchant, 3 StoP, Feldon's Cane, Tutor, Twist, 4 Fellwar Stones,
Library, and many assorted land, including 3 strip mines. The sideboard
had 1 disenchant, 1 StoP, Underworld Dreams, Balance, Tormod's Crypt,
Maze of Ith, 3 Flash Counters, 3 BEBs, 2 Control Magic, and a Copy Artifact.
Since then I've dropped all 4 Counterspells in favor of some more
offensive type things, which I won't go into at this time. :) The key
again here is SMART offense. Flying offense as well. Your best
opportunity to attack is when they leave their typical, two blue
untapped. Play a strip mine, strip an island, declare a null attack
phase, then cast Hymn to Tourach. If you hit any card drawing spells,
countermagic, disenchant or StoP you've hit a gold mine.
: >>their changes and Type I won't be stagnant any more or (2) the best any body
: >>will be able to do is copy yours [which sounds like whats happening slowly
: >>any way], and then [slowly] everybody will admit that Type I is a "solved
: >>problem" and nobody will bitch about Type II any more :)
: Well, nobody's bitching about Type II around here. Everybody
: feels that it's a MUCH more interesting and dynamic playfield than
: Type I,
Not everybody. :) Some people with the best ideas don't get as much
credit as they deserve here. There are a couple nuts in Santa Cruz who
are masters of strategy, though they don't hit the Bay scene often enough
to make their ideas come to fruition in tournament play. There are also
many people who don't have access to the spoilers here either. It's a
bit different in the Bay though since there are TONS of power cards out
there, it's just that they're either locked up in a shop or down in
someone's basement as an investment (I know one guy who has 17 nr mint UL
moxen sitting around right now, and that's just one guy!). Even though
it may cost more to live here, people SURE know how to spend money.
: since it's possible (though still not VERY likely) for an
: upstart to be able to take a tournament or so from the local clique of
: top players.
This is true, and I'm sorry to see it happening. I think the downfall of
Type I _tournaments_ has to do with prizes. It takes more than a Mox to
bring attention to a tourney. Twice in a row, there were turnouts of
less than SIXTEEN with an $8.00 entry fee for such a Type I Mox
tournament in Hayward, CA. So few people in fact, the store proprietor
had to change the prize before the tourney started or he would have lost
too much money. :(
: >yeah!
: >
: >if you got this super mongo deck that can't be beat then why not post
: >it and let us take a look. how would you fare playing against an
: >exact copy of your deck? would whoever goes first win? or would
: >it be a matter of skill?
: It's a matter of skill. There's very few people who can beat
: Brian at his own deck. (I think I saw it happen once, unfortunately
: in a major and important tournament.) The deck takes a serious amount
: of skill and familiarity to play, and to play against. The problem is
: that the top players in the area aren't building decks to beat it,
: they're building decks which are very SIMILAR to it, so the entire
: area ends up in this constant and sad rut.
East Bay and Santa Cruz are where the action is. ;)
: So, Type I is dying around here, as everybody seems to believe
: that this blue/white thing is the pinnacle of creation, and the top
: players don't try or encourage others to try to beat it. Sad, isn't
: it?
It's sad and pathetic if you ask me. Not only do many players tout the
virtues of a deck that wasn't their idea, some even think it's cool to
drop names, like Zak Dolan. BLEH. (No offense meant to ZD, never met
him, but I have met some groupies who were constantly saying 'my friend
zak dolan and his elder dragon collection'. It gets tiresome fast.)
: Type I isn't a solved problem, it's just that each region has
: it's own current solution. The lack of a Type I national championship
: makes it tough to test which of the Type I regional decks is the best,
: now that some real time has been spent analyzing the game.
: -- Morgan Schweers
I totally agree. I hope when the colleges are back in session that new
ideas come back from across the country and shake things up some more,
not to mention have a few more high-caliber tournaments since everyone has
been pre-occupied with regions/nationals/worlds and other big cons.
Look for BadgerCon 2.0 coming to Berkeley in October!
dolor
jde...@ipswichcity.qld.gov.au
: In article <40iodf$3...@mcmail.cis.mcmaster.ca>,: >
: >More importantly, Type I offers a far, far greater variety of decks than
: >does type II. In the so-called 'World Championships', I'm being gracious
: Let me rebut: Type 2 is not so drab as you think, and Type 1 is more stagnant
: than you have seen. (In my opinion, of course, but I'll try to stick to
: some facts and personal experience.)
: up new ideas for their own decks. Among the "old guard," the decks stay the
: same. I might playtest for a weekend and change 1 card in my Type 1 deck.
: When Ice Age came out, guess how many cards I added to my Type 1 deck? 1!
: The Zuran Orb! And I'm not even sure it really belongs. Guess how many
: cards from The Dark and Fallen Empires combined I have in my deck? 1!
: The Maze of Ith!
How minimal would the changes be to the average type-I deck with each
expansion if the spoilers were removed from consideration? That is to say,
would the successful decks still remain stagnant if the 12-15 card set of
spoilers used repateatedly were banned outright? Would there be no new
successful designs? I am not concerned here about the merits of type "1.5"
as sole tourney format; but rather, discussion of the likely deck
stagnancy in such a format. There would be significantly less reason to
add colours because of 1-3 restricted cards in each, for example, and more
extended theme focus due to the increased space. There is still the issue
of how to deal with expensive OOPs that will still pop up in use, like the
Juzam, but the question is, can we make a tournament variation with an
"acceptably" level playing field, with very nearly all the cards
accessible? I do like the rapidly swinging environment in type-II, but,
in particular with IA, I think type-I deck tech is certainly not all over
and done with - but, as Scott pointed out, there is typically very little
room, and limited variation, in multicolour utility designs made that way
to use a spoiler set. Also to pick up on Richard's excellent article,
this sort of thing, and the point system (with more work), and others
need to be considered as more, not replacement, tourney formats.
--
-Justin Dennis
jde...@gil.ipswichcity.qld.gov.au
Morgan Schweers
Some time ago sun...@bga.com (Steve Unruh) happily mumbled:
>In article <40tfpi$r...@newsgate.sps.mot.com>,
>Chance Harris <cha...@ae.sps.mot.com> wrote:
>>
>>So what are in these "God Decks" ? (and I don't mean to be snide, I really
>>want to know)
Well, in this area the deck which wins every Type I tournament is
Blue/White permission/destruction, built from the ground up to withstand
just about anything. It's also played by the best players. As has been
said before, in the Bay Area, Type I is in a serious rut. The decks
aren't the pinnacle of deck achievement, but they ARE solid, and they
are extremely difficult for anyone NOT in the coterie of top players
to build a deck to both win up TO the top level, *AND* win the top level.
I'm still trying, and someday I may be able to break in, but I'm
*NOT* a top level player yet, and there's a very serious glass ceiling
in the Bay Area, which if you can get PAST it, you can do well, but
I'm still beating against it...
>>I doubt you want to tell us exactly what is in them, but just a general
>>idea of what cards are used (besides the obvoius Mox/Lotus/Tutor/Time*
>>stuff). I've gathered from reading here that on the West coast RWU is the
>>name of the game, and throw in some Jayedmae Tome's. So what is it besides
>>the spoilers ? I'll guess - Disenchant, StP, Lightning Bolt, Serndibs,
>>Serra's, Couple of Stone Rains ? Is this close? I play something like this
>>sometimes (and I'm not trying to claim its as good or well-tuned as
>>yours...), and I almost always get my ass kicked by land destruction. Does
>>your sideboard take care of this?
The top players in the Bay Area are not on the net. Strange as it
sounds, they just aren't, for the most part. In regards to land
destruction, that's one interesting note about the top deck here. It
was built by a person (Brian Weissman) who (as he told me) had built
what was basically the pinnacle of land destruction, and won handily
with it constantly. So this new deck he built (the blue/white
monstrosity on which too many people 'round here base their decks) was
designed to withstand IT handily. And it does. Honestly, the best
solution to land destruction is to have more land. 27 land in decks
is common around here.
As for what the deck is, well, it's not Serendibs, or Stone Rains.
It's rarely Lightning Bolts, but sometimes. It's usually only two
Serras. (That's right, *TWO*. I imagine this has changed, since Ice
Age, but I bet not by much.) And everything in the world that you
could play to shut down your opponent, basically. Intelligently.
Intelligent countermagic is the key to the deck, and in fact that's
what Brian called it when I first played him. It locks you, then
locks you *HARD*. It's a slow deck, but it'll slow any other deck
down. It wins through card advantage and severe permission. Direct
damage is basically unheard of in that deck, except to eliminate
creatures. No, it's nothing like what you described. It's tuned to
damn near perfection, and playtested throughout the Bay Area. (One
game store crowd evidently thought, after it and copies of it winning
every top slot for several weeks in a row, that it was a deck designed
by a UCLA computer to be the 'perfect' deck, which was probably aided
by Brian's pretty mechanical playing of the deck. He's so used to it
now, that it's nearly second nature to him.)
>>OTOH, if you really think Type I play in your area is stagnant, and you
>>have the "Best Deck Possible" (tm), why don't you post it?
I wish I could. I've refused to build one of them, on the basis
that I believe in my OWN deck designs, rather than just copying what's
successful. I think there are other Bay Area players who are online,
don't feel the same way, and have built versions of it. Any of them
care to share the contents of the deck?
>>Then either (1) you will find out that it is not the best deck possible,
>>because people will be able to beat it, and you will have to respond to
Welll... People will be able to beat it because of a lot of
reasons. It's a deck that takes a lot of skill to play. Honestly, I
don't think some random gunslinger is going to come up with a way to
beat it and be able to test it without playing against people who live
and breathe that deck. It takes the efforts of top players, SERIOUS
players who grok the game a lot more than I do yet, to beat it, AND
win against all the other decks in a tournament. I'll get there,
though.
>>their changes and Type I won't be stagnant any more or (2) the best any body
>>will be able to do is copy yours [which sounds like whats happening slowly
>>any way], and then [slowly] everybody will admit that Type I is a "solved
>>problem" and nobody will bitch about Type II any more :)
Well, nobody's bitching about Type II around here. Everybody
feels that it's a MUCH more interesting and dynamic playfield than
Type I, since it's possible (though still not VERY likely) for an
upstart to be able to take a tournament or so from the local clique of
top players.
>yeah!
>
>if you got this super mongo deck that can't be beat then why not post
>it and let us take a look. how would you fare playing against an
>exact copy of your deck? would whoever goes first win? or would
>it be a matter of skill?
It's a matter of skill. There's very few people who can beat
Brian at his own deck. (I think I saw it happen once, unfortunately
in a major and important tournament.) The deck takes a serious amount
of skill and familiarity to play, and to play against. The problem is
that the top players in the area aren't building decks to beat it,
they're building decks which are very SIMILAR to it, so the entire
area ends up in this constant and sad rut.
So, Type I is dying around here, as everybody seems to believe
that this blue/white thing is the pinnacle of creation, and the top
players don't try or encourage others to try to beat it. Sad, isn't
it? Type I isn't a solved problem, it's just that each region has
it's own current solution. The lack of a Type I national championship
makes it tough to test which of the Type I regional decks is the best,
now that some real time has been spent analyzing the game.
-- Morgan Schweers
--
Morgan Schweers | New Chrome Grass! Finger m...@netcom.com for my PGP key |
Live fast, die \ B1 S4 a b g j++! k l? p r- s t+ u v- w+ x y- z, approx.__/
old, and leave a smouldering pile of metal as a corpse... It's never enough,
until your heart stops beating, the deeper you get, the sweeter the pain...
Rob Watkins
>>Bleah. My deck doesn't even have white in it. Of course, Brian's comment
>>was "Rob, that's the best deck I ever seen that doesn't have white in it!" :)
> *chuckle* Innaresting. I'd love to see it.
Soon. If I do not write an article about it, then I'll put it up here.
Zak has a copy of it while he was considering on using it as part of
the deck designs he is providing to one of those deck catalogue programs.
I don't think he is going to use it though. He plans on using Brian's
and Ray's deck designs though.
>I wasn't really aware that Jon was that good a player until the big Legends
>tournament.
I begrudge a lot of respect to Jon. He is a thoughtful and skilled player
in both deck design and play. He is also on the net, but I don't know
if he reads news.
>Ray is just Ray, which is to say an exceptional player and deck builder,
>as far as I can tell, though his deck is heavily blue/white also as I recall.
Ray's acquired the nickname "The Machine". :) Yes, his deck is blue white,
but he generally goes with 8 creatures. The last time I saw it (at the big
Legends tournament), it had 4 Juggernauts and 4 Phantasmal Forces. Ray's
basic concept is to get a creature on the table, protect it, and kill you
with it. He does that with the StP, counters, and zillions of ways to
draw more cards.
>Basically, that sort of original deck design is simply not being done OFTEN
>around here. The decks stagnate easily, which is in a way symptomatic of
>Type I. Agree?
Nope. But then again, I traffic with the entire Bay Area, not just the
South Bay. You won't see Andrew Finch or Fred Scott running that deck,
for example. Well, maybe you will, but they certainly don't run the
same deck over and over again.
> Would you at least agree that Type I *IS* dying out around
>here? How often do you get pickup Type I games...?
I don't have enough information at hand. I have less time at my disposal
and have only been frequenting tournaments with the large prizes. I
probably play pickup Type I games roughly every other day. Try
Wrinkle in Time on Monday nights. You'll find Type I action there.
> For folks in other areas, the core of what I'm arguing here is
>that the LACK of communication from top players to players who are
>second and maybe third rung is a STAGNATING factor.
Hrmmm.. that is food for thought. I don't follow such beliefs myself.
A good percentage of my pick-up time goes to playing people who have
come up with another Type I design and want to try it out against
whatever type I monstrosity I have thrown together at the time. We
play a few games and then brainstorm about what the interaction between
the decks resulted in, possible improvements, or wholesale changes.
>Basically the hard part is building an all-around deck which is strong
>enough to not only take on the majority of the other players, *BUT* beat
>the likely four to five blue/white decks you'll run into in a tournament.
Would coming in the top two of that Legends tournament count? Jon was
number two and beat a few of those blue/white decks on the way. I matched
up against a fair number of them myself. I don't think I lost a game
to one of them, except in the aborted match with Ray Knowles.
> (No offense meant, Rob, but I have a horrible memory for faces/
>names, and in fact just barely recently learned Brian's last name. So
>while I don't recall you too well, if you're one of the local players,
>I don't recall your deck at all. *wry grin*)
I don't appear too often anymore. I gave up on Brian Chew's tournaments
due to the entirely too small amount of time allocated for each round.
The last time I was in a tournament was the Legends tournament down
at John's. If you stuck around until near the end, you may remember me.
I won that tournament.
> Anyway, back to the subject for a bit of the World Championship,
>can anybody confirm that the DC *LOST* 800 of Ray Knowles convocation
>points?!?!
Beats me. Many of the tournaments around here didn't count diddly
squat toward DC points. I didn't get anything for a year and a half
or so because DC lost my membership application.
>p.s. Where the heck did Sparky!! and Wylie vanish off to?
Heh, Wylie'd certainly remember me. I won something like three tournaments
in a row before he headed off to Seattle. He was judging pretty much all
of the Bay area tournaments of note before he left. As to where they are
of late, my guess would be GenCon. :)
Rob
Trevor Barrie
>>>I merely find it strange that WOTC has declared people World Champions
>>>when we all know that they would be soundly defeated in any of a dozen
>>>tournaments hels in a dozen towns in several countries.
>>
>>How exactly do we "know" this?
>
>That we 'know' that the Type II decks at the
>worlds wouldn't compete well in local Type I tournaments is, I admit,
>something of an assumption on my part, but it ain't exactly a great leap
>of imagination.
Well, no, but that ain't what you said. You said that those PLAYERS
would be soundly defeated, not those DECKS.
>This statement is not to denigrate the skill of the
>players at the worlds, it is to say that Type II is mightily restricted.
True, but as I asked in another post, what's your point?
**************************************************************************
Trevor Barrie tba...@peinet.pe.ca "It's a great big universe,
Scott Burke
Rob Watkins <rob...@calvin.usc.edu> wrote:
>
>Bleah. My deck doesn't even have white in it. Of course, Brian's comment
>
>>: So, Type I is dying around here, as everybody seems to believe
>>: that this blue/white thing is the pinnacle of creation, and the top
>>: players don't try or encourage others to try to beat it. Sad, isn't
>>: it?
We've lost a subtle point I made earlier: the stagnation is only regional in
scope. I don't personally think blue/white is the answer, but I do know
that I've seen some very strong blue/white decks (specifically, Joel Unger,
who I think is from Santa Barbara).
Up here, the dominant deck has been black/blue/white, but I'm trying out
some of Mario's ideas, and I think his has a little bit more potential,
and it is another of those decks which doesn't include white. In Seattle,
Bruce Swiney has been winning consistently with a red/green/blue deck,
although he constantly faces Juzam/Nether Void decks, but he's tweaked his
deck with Unsummons for the local environment. (I wouldn't use Unsummons
in a National tournament.)
Anyway, my point was that we have some local maximums in the evolutionary
scale of Type 1. Until a national competition system for Type 1 comes into
being, we're all going to be stuck in our local winning ruts. I went to
Origins and came back with a couple of deck designs for Type 1 which I
think are competitive to what I'd been playing, and so I've gone back to
the drawing board for Type 1. But that only happened because of broader
exposure. Does this make sense?
In France, Marc Hernandez's deck (which is the top Type 1 deck) is based
around Blood Moon, Juzam Djinn, Juggernaut, and Nether Void. Anybody out
there winning consistently with that in the U.S.?
Morgan Schweers
Well, this is going to be a bit localized, but I'm leaving it as a
post because others might be interested in the info and the comments
on the metagame at least as it's played locally. I'd VERY much
appreciate comments, suggestions, advice... From the mail I got from
some of my last comments, I'll prepend this: *I* don't think that the
Blue/White deck is the Final Word in decks. I think it's very good,
and I think that beating it without substantially duplicating it is
going to be one of the hardest deck design jobs in Magic I've ever
undertaken. I also think it, and my Type II deck competition, is
going to teach me a *HELL* of a lot about the game in the long run.
Some time ago rob...@calvin.usc.edu (Rob Watkins) said:
>do...@netcom.com writes:
>>I've played against them, gotten beaten by them, made them, modified
>>them, then left them (in search of something to BEAT 'it').
>
>I've beat them. I've never bothered trying them... I think my concept
>works better. :)
Well, I've personally never beat them, but I only spent one
evening playing against one with a dumb direct damage deck long before
I learned what I know now about the metagame. I could probably do
better now, and I'm planning on giving it a shot soon, just to see how
my concepts do.
>>BLUE: 4 Counterspell, 4 Mana Drain, Timetwister, Ancestral Recall,
>>Braingeyser, Time Walk, Recall (13)
>>WHITE: 4 Disenchant, 4 Swords to Plowshares, 2 Serra Angel (10)
>>BLACK: Demonic Tutor, Mind Twist (2)
>>RED: 3 Blood Moon (3)
>>ARTIFACT (non-mana): Chaos Orb, Ivory Tower, 2 Disrupting Sceptres, 2
>>Jayemdae Tome (6)
>>TOTAL (non-mana): 34
>
>>MANA ARTIFACTS: 4 Moxes (no Emerald), Sol Ring, Black Lotus (6)
>>MANA LAND: Library of Alex, 4 City of Brass, 4 Tundra, 2 Underground
>>Sea, 2 Volcanic Island, 4 Island, 3 Plains (20)
>
>>TOTAL: 60 cards
>
>>Sideboard: 2 Divine Offering, 2 Red Elem Blasts, 1 Zuran Orb, 4 CoP:
>>Red, 1 Balance, 1 Maze of Ith, 1 Tormod's Crypt, 3 Moat
>
>Take out two blood moons. There is the Dust to Dust spell that takes
>two target artifacts out of the game in there somewhere too. There is
>also an unknown number of strips mines.
Don't forget CoP: Artifacts, at least when I faced it it was in
the Sideboard. (Works nicely against the Vise.) I don't think there
were Blood Moons in Brian's version of the deck. His deck was VERY
heavily multilanded, with only a few non-multilands for Blood Moon
protection. I believe he had lightning bolts or some anti-creature
facility instead. Oh, and the land balance is way off, I think. It's
like 24-26 land, as I recall, and just a touch more than 60 cards.
Strip mines were definitely part of it, though.
>>: Well, nobody's bitching about Type II around here. Everybody
>>: feels that it's a MUCH more interesting and dynamic playfield than
>>: Type I,
>
>I don't think so. I think people play it because WotC and the DC
>forced it down their throats due to the structure of the Championships.
I disagree, but that's again locally. A lot of the people
building Type II decks aren't even members of the Convocation, so it
doesn't matter that much. Spending time in Johns Comics most Tuesdays
and Thursdays, *EVERYBODY* is building Type II decks. Mainly because
there IS a 'stock' group of people winning the Type I tournaments and
in Type II there's at least a chance. (Admittedly, the players to
beat are for the most part the same, but the decks are more
approachable.)
Many of the people at Johns are talking about Type II being more
interesting than Type I, more variation still in the decks, more
people willing to play it, etc... It's extremely possible that the
advent of Type II as well as the preponderance of blue/white decks
both contributed to the downslide of Type I in the area.
>>: The problem is that the top players in the area aren't building decks to
>>: beat it, they're building decks which are very SIMILAR to it, so the entire
>>: area ends up in this constant and sad rut.
>
>Bleah. My deck doesn't even have white in it. Of course, Brian's comment
>was "Rob, that's the best deck I ever seen that doesn't have white in it!" :)
*chuckle* Innaresting. I'd love to see it. Anyway, you ARE right
in that there is a variety of decks, but nearly everyone HAS a copy of
the blue/white monstrosity, and a lot of them play it. NOW, I *WILL*
make a side note here. I should point out that blue/white as a RULE
appears to be generally more popular here than many other regions, and
that's not JUST Brian's deck. In fact the top decks in virtually
every tournament I've been to are majorly blue/white slowdown, with a
subcontext of something else as almost a personalizing note.
>>: So, Type I is dying around here, as everybody seems to believe
>>: that this blue/white thing is the pinnacle of creation, and the top
>>: players don't try or encourage others to try to beat it. Sad, isn't
>>: it?
>
>Say what? Personally, I think Jon Saso's Land Equilibrium deck is much
>better than the blue/white decks. Ray Knowles' deck is better too, and
>that doesn't have Disrupting Sceptre. The problem with the design is
>that it can't do much about something that is killing them that is
>backed up by minimal countermagic. Yes, I've lost games to that deck.
>I've never lost a match (best of 3) against one though.
Oh, I definitely agree! My friend was blown out of the water by
Jon's Land Equilibrium deck, and I watched it later, and was
thoroughly impressed! Excellent deck, and easily one of the most
original I've seen in the area since the Serra/Moat thing. I wasn't
really aware that Jon was that good a player until the big Legends
tournament. Ray is just Ray, which is to say an exceptional player
and deck builder, as far as I can tell, though his deck is heavily
blue/white also as I recall. Basically, that sort of original deck
design is simply not being done OFTEN around here. The decks stagnate
easily, which is in a way symptomatic of Type I. Agree?
Also, was Jon encouraged to build that by the other top players,
or did he manage the conceptual breakthrough on his own? I'd bet on
his own, which is excellent for him, definitely, but is also
symptomatic of the local top players *NOT* working to help new (but
good) players get over a few of the conceptual humps that it takes to
get into the top levels of play.
Would you at least agree that Type I *IS* dying out around
here? How often do you get pickup Type I games...? Perhaps at
A Place To Play (which I haven't gone to yet), or something
similar things are different, but people seem excited about the
Type II tournaments, and that and 'bubble' is all folks play for
the most part at Johns.
For folks in other areas, the core of what I'm arguing here is
that the LACK of communication from top players to players who are
second and maybe third rung is a STAGNATING factor. If you're not
helping players get into your range of quality play, you're
encouraging your own decks to not need to evolve to face changing
power structures. I don't mean teaching people that a given card is
powerful, I mean teaching them how to DECIDE that cards are useful and
in what decks. There's an entire level to this game that has nearly
nothing to do with what actual cards exist. That is the level that
seperates the lower rung players from the consistant winners.
Before anyone decides that that sounds a bit strange, let me
emphasize that I am *NOT* a top rung player yet, and I've only
recently (with the help of some very friendly net people) begun
to understand some of this stuff. And as I pick it up, I realize
how much there is to learn in this metagame.
>The biggest problem is that the deck doesn't have much reliency against
>a poor draw. If you get a creature down and they can't get an StP off,
>they die. If you get an underworld dreams out, then they die slowly or
>quickly depending on their drawing decisions while under the dreams.
>If you get a vice out, they can end up wiggling around trying to get
>countermagic out of their hand. The Disrupting Sceptre can run into
>a Psychic Purge. And if Jon gets his Land Equilibrium out, say goodnight...
Eh... Somewhat. Underworld dreams is a lucky-draw card against
them. No Disenchant, and they suffer, yeah. Black Vise is also
Disenchant bait. (I've always wanted to try my Juzam's/Juggernauts/
Land Destruction/Vise/Nether Void deck against one of the blue/white
decks. I imagine it'd lose, but it'd be interesting.) Psychic Purge
is a *MUST* have against the Sceptre, yes. Basically the hard part is
building an all-around deck which is strong enough to not only take on
the majority of the other players, *BUT* beat the likely four to five
blue/white decks you'll run into in a tournament. That's my goal, I
admit. I want to win a local tournament, preferably with some of the
big players there. Yeah, it's pride, hubris, whatever, but I'm tired
of being a third or fourth rank player. I won't play with anyone
else's deck, dammit, it's gotta be my own construction.
Anyway, watching the finals of a tournament out here is REALLY
strange. It's this complete waiting game. Type I games in *FINALS*
have come down to losing by running out of cards sometimes! The
preponderance of slow decks makes for very odd play.
>Rob
>Bay Area Type I Player
Honestly, I should probably clarify a bit... I do apologize to
all the top Bay Area Type I players who AREN'T playing a copy of
Brian's deck. It's just that that IS the deck which seems to be
occupying the top slots in every tournament, and altogether too many
people are playing it now, making it very clearly the deck to beat or
the deck to play. It gets annoying to play the same deck, basically,
for three rounds of a tournament in a row. *wry chuckle*
In fact, each of what I can recall as the top players in every
Type I tournament are playing notably different decks. But, the
blue/white type of deck is massively overrepresented in those decks.
Also, outside of this area, the deck that the vast majority of people
hear about FROM this area is the blue/white/Serra/Moat deck. If folks
heard about Jon's Land Equilibrium deck, I'd be glad, since that's a
cool deck design. If everybody started playing it, I'd be just as
annoyed as I am at the Serra/Moat deck. Variety is one of the top
reasons I play this game. When the last rounds of a tournament are
*ALL* similar decks (not the SAME, but the same generality, severe
slowdown and lock decks) and look remarkably similar, I call that a
rut. That's what I *REALLY* want to break, at least in some way.
(No offense meant, Rob, but I have a horrible memory for faces/
names, and in fact just barely recently learned Brian's last name. So
while I don't recall you too well, if you're one of the local players,
I don't recall your deck at all. *wry grin*)
To go back to STRATEGY for a moment, I'd love to hear from folks
in other areas. HAS the blue/white tendency appeared and been shot
down? How's Type I play in other areas...? More varied is almost a
given, but do the same people win the tournaments over and over again?
How dynamic are the decks in any given area. Scott Burke has mentioned
a few times that a player or so tends to dominate in any given area.
Is that always true? Is it just that there tends to be one or two
REALLY hot players, and nobody else, even with help and study, can't
pick up the rest of the game well enough to compete? Or is it that
there's only a few people who CARE enough to learn to play and build
smart...?
I don't get out of this area often enough, so any experiences from
outside the Bay Area are very welcome.
Anyway, back to the subject for a bit of the World Championship,
can anybody confirm that the DC *LOST* 800 of Ray Knowles convocation
points?!?! I've heard tell that basically he should have been in the
top 25, and close to #1 in the country, but that his points were just
plain lost. Is anyone either with the DC or familiar with his name
able to confirm/deny this with authority?
-- Morgan Schweers
p.s. Where the heck did Sparky!! and Wylie vanish off to?
Rob Watkins
>We've lost a subtle point I made earlier: the stagnation is only regional in
>scope.
I do not subscribe to the theory that there is stagnation in Type I play
in regional competition. Some of the underlying concepts may be construed
as stagnant, such as getting superior resources at your disposal relative
to your opponent, but I don't feel that there is any particular super deck
that can sit on its laurels.
I find Type I play exceptionally stimulating with its incredible variety
of cards available. I'd rather see the "spoilers" reprinted around the
world so everyone has them at thier disposal instead of playing in
an environment where my cards become obsolete and useless after a few
months.
Rob
Adam Maysonet
deck. I made it once, played it, won a tourney with it, but then took
it apart. Good deck, but there are many different deck designs here,
and one of my pet peeves is for type I tourneys here, I make a new
deck every week. Regardless, I still win all the tournies here, buts
its fun with variety that actually works and wins. People in Florida
tend to use red, discard, LD. There are only a handful of top notch
players down here, being myself, Al Sousa, and Rob Brannon. We win all
the tournaments down here, and use distinctively different decks.
Rob has been using a black/red juzam/LD/discard/rack deck for quite
some time, modifying the colors from time to time. He has blue in it
right now for the spoilers only, but is planning on tossing in some
white for the famous STP and disenchant. It just demolishes the
opponent, stripping him or her of land, cards, and doing fast damage.
Al has a nasty blue/white/green/black artifact deck, consisting of
permission, winter orbs, and creatures such as mishras, triskeleons,
and serendib efreets. Its very fast, and definately versitile.
I use many different decks. My most famous deck was coined the MRB,
standing for the Maysonet Rack Balance deck. It was originally
red/green/white, using bazaars, libraries of leng, racks, balances,
mishras, direct damage, sylvan libraries, with nothing costing over 2
mana in the deck, and being able to shoot thru my deck to find the
cards I need. I later changed the green to blue, added in serendibs,
atogs, and blue spoilers. This deck was able to take out anything, was
extremely finely tuned (I had this balance deck a week or two after AQ
first came out). It was consistantly able to beat the serra/moat deck
(I gave copies to various people, and they reported its success). But
alas, the deck is gone now, with only 1 balance being allowed.
Nowadays, I use the "Concede or Bleed" deck, a green/blue/white/black
deck that kills opponents via Jesters Caps. It just nullifies
basically all decks I've come across, recycles itself to use the caps
over and over again, etc. My other main deck is a red/blue/black
"Trollie" deck, based on the deck I won regionals with. Sedge trolls,
serendibs, mishras, DD, permission, Nev Disks, along with a few other
spells makes this deck a victor among competiton.
I truly wish there was more competition here in the SE, but we are
anything but stagnant here, with quite a few unique and working
designs floating around.
Adam Maysonet
Aladeptus
SE Regional Champion
Garry Handelman
: do...@netcom.com writes:
: >Morgan Schweers (m...@netcom.com) wrote:
: I've beat them. I've never bothered trying them... I think my concept
: works better. :)
I have demonstrated with scientific certainty that my concept
works better;). Seriously, though, I have..
: >BLUE: 4 Counterspell, 4 Mana Drain, Timetwister, Ancestral Recall,
: >Braingeyser, Time Walk, Recall (13)
: >WHITE: 4 Disenchant, 4 Swords to Plowshares, 2 Serra Angel (10)
: >BLACK: Demonic Tutor, Mind Twist (2)
: >RED: 3 Blood Moon (3)
: >ARTIFACT (non-mana): Chaos Orb, Ivory Tower, 2 Disrupting Sceptres, 2
: >Jayemdae Tome (6)
: >TOTAL (non-mana): 34
: >MANA ARTIFACTS: 4 Moxes (no Emerald), Sol Ring, Black Lotus (6)
: >MANA LAND: Library of Alex, 4 City of Brass, 4 Tundra, 2 Underground
: >Sea, 2 Volcanic Island, 4 Island, 3 Plains (20)
: >TOTAL: 60 cards
: >Sideboard: 2 Divine Offering, 2 Red Elem Blasts, 1 Zuran Orb, 4 CoP:
: >Red, 1 Balance, 1 Maze of Ith, 1 Tormod's Crypt, 3 Moat
No wrath of god? Come on! This deck _needs_ the wrath. Blood
moons?!?!?!? If you had mana birds, I could maybe see blood moon in the
blue/white defense deck, but other than that......
: Take out two blood moons. There is the Dust to Dust spell that takes
: two target artifacts out of the game in there somewhere too. There is
: also an unknown number of strips mines.
And wrath of god in most versions.
: >: Well, nobody's bitching about Type II around here. Everybody
: >: feels that it's a MUCH more interesting and dynamic playfield than
: >: Type I,
: I don't think so. I think people play it because WotC and the DC
: forced it down their throats due to the structure of the Championships.
I DON'T! I'm a bay area player, allthough I must admit that I
haven't been playing that much recently, i've started to get bored.....
in any case, I much prefer type II to type I.
: >: The problem is that the top players in the area aren't building decks to
: >: beat it, they're building decks which are very SIMILAR to it, so the entire
: >: area ends up in this constant and sad rut.
_I_ live in the bay area and _regularly_ beat up that blue/white
deck, I have a deck that is designed to do only two things-
beat it
beat land destruction
and all other concerns are out the door. As a matter of fact,
Dolor, I recall a tournament, that was just after the Generic decks
thread of yours died down, which the two finalists were Ritaxis and a
direct damage deck (direct damage boy won, but I don't want to get into it).
: Bleah. My deck doesn't even have white in it. Of course, Brian's comment
: was "Rob, that's the best deck I ever seen that doesn't have white in it!" :)
My deck has disenchants, does that count?
: Say what? Personally, I think Jon Saso's Land Equilibrium deck is much
: better than the blue/white decks. Ray Knowles' deck is better too, and
: that doesn't have Disrupting Sceptre. The problem with the design is
: that it can't do much about something that is killing them that is
: backed up by minimal countermagic. Yes, I've lost games to that deck.
: I've never lost a match (best of 3) against one though.
Neither have I. With something as minimal as four mana drains and
four red blasts the only card I _ever_ felt actually threatened by was
moat, because I didn't have quite enough countermagic to stoit and all
the wraths, so I included disenchants and now it's not a problem....
: The biggest problem is that the deck doesn't have much reliency against
: a poor draw. If you get a creature down and they can't get an StP off,
: they die. If you get an underworld dreams out, then they die slowly or
: quickly depending on their drawing decisions while under the dreams.
: If you get a vice out, they can end up wiggling around trying to get
: countermagic out of their hand. The Disrupting Sceptre can run into
: a Psychic Purge. And if Jon gets his Land Equilibrium out, say goodnight...
The biggest problem is that not doing anything is stupid! The
fact is, if you get more creatures in your opening draw than they get
creature stoppers, they die. Bleach.
Ach! Hans, run! It's gha...@Uclink.berkeley.edu
Garry Handelman
: In article <40utvh$v...@calvin.usc.edu>,
: Rob Watkins <rob...@calvin.usc.edu> wrote:
: >
: >Bleah. My deck doesn't even have white in it. Of course, Brian's comment
: >
: >>: So, Type I is dying around here, as everybody seems to believe
: >>: that this blue/white thing is the pinnacle of creation, and the top
: >>: players don't try or encourage others to try to beat it. Sad, isn't
: >>: it?
: We've lost a subtle point I made earlier: the stagnation is only regional in
: scope. I don't personally think blue/white is the answer, but I do know
: that I've seen some very strong blue/white decks (specifically, Joel Unger,
: who I think is from Santa Barbara).
The stagnation isn't regional in scope. I live here and I don't
play blue/white. There is no stagnation. There was the longest time when
everyone thought that no one was ever going to build a deck that wasn't
land destruction + direct damage again. That didn't last long. Jeez. And
the balance craze. And of course the mind twist craze was a problem, but
WOTC fixed that.
: Up here, the dominant deck has been black/blue/white, but I'm trying out
: some of Mario's ideas, and I think his has a little bit more potential,
: and it is another of those decks which doesn't include white. In Seattle,
: Bruce Swiney has been winning consistently with a red/green/blue deck,
: although he constantly faces Juzam/Nether Void decks, but he's tweaked his
: deck with Unsummons for the local environment. (I wouldn't use Unsummons
: in a National tournament.)
I wouldn't use unsummons in a nether void deck, period. I'd
use... I dunno, something else. You _can_ stop juzams with land
destruction, I've done it. Paralyze works well, but not well enough.....
: Anyway, my point was that we have some local maximums in the evolutionary
: scale of Type 1. Until a national competition system for Type 1 comes into
: being, we're all going to be stuck in our local winning ruts. I went to
: Origins and came back with a couple of deck designs for Type 1 which I
: think are competitive to what I'd been playing, and so I've gone back to
: the drawing board for Type 1. But that only happened because of broader
: exposure. Does this make sense?
: In France, Marc Hernandez's deck (which is the top Type 1 deck) is based
: around Blood Moon, Juzam Djinn, Juggernaut, and Nether Void. Anybody out
: there winning consistently with that in the U.S.?
Ritaxis and I both play Juzam decks backed up with, of all the
accursed things, permission which we detest but which is the best
defense, we've found, against other permission decks. I was putting
together a nether void deck which was working O.K., but then I started
playing type II instead (I can't believe I agree with Dolor, but type II
is better), so I scrapped it. I'll start playing it again after homelands
probably.
Garry Handelman
: [bleah, bleah, bleah]
: Some time ago rob...@calvin.usc.edu (Rob Watkins) said:
: >do...@netcom.com writes:
: >>I've played against them, gotten beaten by them, made them, modified
: >>them, then left them (in search of something to BEAT 'it').
: >
: >I've beat them. I've never bothered trying them... I think my concept
: >works better. :)
: Well, I've personally never beat them, but I only spent one
: evening playing against one with a dumb direct damage deck long before
: I learned what I know now about the metagame. I could probably do
: better now, and I'm planning on giving it a shot soon, just to see how
: my concepts do.
: [blue/white deck discussion deleted]
: >>: Well, nobody's bitching about Type II around here. Everybody
: >>: feels that it's a MUCH more interesting and dynamic playfield than
: >>: Type I,
: >
: >I don't think so. I think people play it because WotC and the DC
: >forced it down their throats due to the structure of the Championships.
: I disagree, but that's again locally. A lot of the people
: building Type II decks aren't even members of the Convocation, so it
: doesn't matter that much. Spending time in Johns Comics most Tuesdays
: and Thursdays, *EVERYBODY* is building Type II decks. Mainly because
: there IS a 'stock' group of people winning the Type I tournaments and
: in Type II there's at least a chance. (Admittedly, the players to
: beat are for the most part the same, but the decks are more
: approachable.)
And I've seen some incredibly skilled newbies playing type II. I
rate people as more important than cards, and the game is more fun at the
type II level, allthough it can be just as cut throat, and really I don't
see any reason to play type I where there are only about, what, 20
competitive type I players in the whole bay area? More than that, but in
a general type I tournament, of the it averages round about 70 people,
less than a third are "first tier". In a type II tournament the same
size, half or possibly more will qualify for the "first tier" (first tier
meaning-
access to any cards you could want for your deck, and at least a good
skill level).
: Many of the people at Johns are talking about Type II being more
: interesting than Type I, more variation still in the decks, more
: people willing to play it, etc... It's extremely possible that the
: advent of Type II as well as the preponderance of blue/white decks
: both contributed to the downslide of Type I in the area.
Yeah, blue/white decks are boring.
: *chuckle* Innaresting. I'd love to see it. Anyway, you ARE right
: in that there is a variety of decks, but nearly everyone HAS a copy of
: the blue/white monstrosity, and a lot of them play it. NOW, I *WILL*
: make a side note here. I should point out that blue/white as a RULE
: appears to be generally more popular here than many other regions, and
: that's not JUST Brian's deck. In fact the top decks in virtually
: every tournament I've been to are majorly blue/white slowdown, with a
: subcontext of something else as almost a personalizing note.
Yes, I know, but recall that even a round robin tournament is
more than half luck. And numbers. If of the 20 "first tier" players 15 are
playing blue/white decks, and all the first tier decks are equal, which
is more or less the case, I mean I've got a 56.5% (exactly, that is out
of 400 games, yes) against this particular blue/white deck, than 75% of
the time the blue/white deck will end up on top. It feeds off itself,
becuase then of the other 5, two will switch over to blue/white which
makes it worse......
: tournament. Ray is just Ray, which is to say an exceptional player
: and deck builder, as far as I can tell, though his deck is heavily
: blue/white also as I recall. Basically, that sort of original deck
: design is simply not being done OFTEN around here. The decks stagnate
: easily, which is in a way symptomatic of Type I. Agree?
Ray promises to play something else, and Ritaxis hates him because he
won't let him stack his deck in creative fashions which are actually
legal. Does anyone (like, say, Ray) no what he's going to play now? He
wouldn't tell me. I've
been seeing a lot of people who play blue/white complaining that everyone
plays blue/white..... and maybe this is a good sign and they'll switch to
something else. I'm certainly tired of playing them.
: Would you at least agree that Type I *IS* dying out around
: here? How often do you get pickup Type I games...? Perhaps at
: A Place To Play (which I haven't gone to yet), or something
: similar things are different, but people seem excited about the
: Type II tournaments, and that and 'bubble' is all folks play for
: the most part at Johns.
I haven't played a type I game since I brought this blue/red joke
deck to a type I tournament (and placed fourth;)). I'm gonna go play type
II. Death to type I.
: [ple to save type I deleted]
I don't want to play type I. I don't want the lower skilled
players to play type I. I want to sell my cards and play type II.
: Eh... Somewhat. Underworld dreams is a lucky-draw card against
: them. No Disenchant, and they suffer, yeah. Black Vise is also
: Disenchant bait. (I've always wanted to try my Juzam's/Juggernauts/
: Land Destruction/Vise/Nether Void deck against one of the blue/white
: decks. I imagine it'd lose, but it'd be interesting.) Psychic Purge
: is a *MUST* have against the Sceptre, yes. Basically the hard part is
: building an all-around deck which is strong enough to not only take on
: the majority of the other players, *BUT* beat the likely four to five
: blue/white decks you'll run into in a tournament. That's my goal, I
: admit. I want to win a local tournament, preferably with some of the
: big players there. Yeah, it's pride, hubris, whatever, but I'm tired
: of being a third or fourth rank player. I won't play with anyone
: else's deck, dammit, it's gotta be my own construction.
Oh, well, I have one that is both strong and beats up blue/white
decks, but everyone has allready seen it and I'm pretty certain that the
blue/white players are going to find a way to prep against it
eventually... there are so damn many of them.
: Anyway, watching the finals of a tournament out here is REALLY
: strange. It's this complete waiting game. Type I games in *FINALS*
: have come down to losing by running out of cards sometimes! The
: preponderance of slow decks makes for very odd play.
All the fast deck players have shifted over to type II, because
speed has an easier time there, and we're lazy.
: Honestly, I should probably clarify a bit... I do apologize to
: all the top Bay Area Type I players who AREN'T playing a copy of
: Brian's deck. It's just that that IS the deck which seems to be
: occupying the top slots in every tournament, and altogether too many
: people are playing it now, making it very clearly the deck to beat or
: the deck to play. It gets annoying to play the same deck, basically,
: for three rounds of a tournament in a row. *wry chuckle*
Oh! Here's a metamagic skill item for you-
the deck to beat is _never_ the deck to play, because everyone
else will prep for it. That's the anti-stagnant force in magic
tournaments. The popular deck design is artificially disadvantaged.
: In fact, each of what I can recall as the top players in every
: Type I tournament are playing notably different decks. But, the
: blue/white type of deck is massively overrepresented in those decks.
: Also, outside of this area, the deck that the vast majority of people
: hear about FROM this area is the blue/white/Serra/Moat deck. If folks
: heard about Jon's Land Equilibrium deck, I'd be glad, since that's a
: cool deck design. If everybody started playing it, I'd be just as
: annoyed as I am at the Serra/Moat deck. Variety is one of the top
: reasons I play this game. When the last rounds of a tournament are
: *ALL* similar decks (not the SAME, but the same generality, severe
: slowdown and lock decks) and look remarkably similar, I call that a
: rut. That's what I *REALLY* want to break, at least in some way.
Just wait. It'll break on it's own. I do think that the people
who cling to type I are more inclined to blue/white for some reason.
: To go back to STRATEGY for a moment, I'd love to hear from folks
: in other areas. HAS the blue/white tendency appeared and been shot
: down? How's Type I play in other areas...? More varied is almost a
: given, but do the same people win the tournaments over and over again?
: How dynamic are the decks in any given area. Scott Burke has mentioned
: a few times that a player or so tends to dominate in any given area.
: Is that always true? Is it just that there tends to be one or two
: REALLY hot players, and nobody else, even with help and study, can't
: pick up the rest of the game well enough to compete? Or is it that
: there's only a few people who CARE enough to learn to play and build
: smart...?
Well, back in the olden time, the bay area was the locale for the
best magic players in the world;), of course that was before foreign
language cards....
: I don't get out of this area often enough, so any experiences from
: outside the Bay Area are very welcome.
San Jose is bay area, right?
: p.s. Where the heck did Sparky!! and Wylie vanish off to?
Off with Newt Gingrich alias "richard garfield" planning
world overthrow.
Ach! Hans, run! It's gha...@uclink.berkeley.edu
Robert Hahn
[Some stuff about the blue/white Bay Area deck deleted]
I just wanted to throw my $.02 into this discussion, as it is one I've had
numerous times with my friends here on the East Coast. I played a guy who
goes to Cal Berkeley (if I'm not mistaken -- and if you're reading this,
and I'm off, let me know) who played what was basically the deck you
described.
In the first game of the first match, I did all right with my B/W/U
Juzam/Hymn concept. Then it quickly went down from there because of the 3
Blood Moons.
Since then, I've been doing a good deal of talking with some friends who
are top players in the East (John Kim is probably one of the best Magic
players in New York right now) and doing a good deal of thinking.
I have been forced to conclude that blue/white is a powerful combination,
and not likely to be replaced at the top of the food chain for a while.
Blue is just necessary for the power cards and for countermagic -- I
haven't seen too many tournament decks win without any countermagic at all,
and none ever without the power blues. White is just too good a suite with
Disenchant, StP, and Balance.
: To go back to STRATEGY for a moment, I'd love to hear from folks
: in other areas. HAS the blue/white tendency appeared and been shot
: down? How's Type I play in other areas...? More varied is almost a
: given, but do the same people win the tournaments over and over again?
: How dynamic are the decks in any given area. Scott Burke has mentioned
: a few times that a player or so tends to dominate in any given area.
: Is that always true? Is it just that there tends to be one or two
: REALLY hot players, and nobody else, even with help and study, can't
: pick up the rest of the game well enough to compete? Or is it that
: there's only a few people who CARE enough to learn to play and build
: smart...?
The latest version of John Kim's deck is just so thoroughly nasty that it
frightens me. It's concept is brilliant, and VERY VERY difficult to beat.
First, let me describe the deck, then the ideas behind it.
It's a R/B/W/U whose components are something like the following:
Jewels & flowers
2 City of Brass
multilands to taste
power blues
Demonic Tutor
Balance
2 The Abyss
1 Jalum Tome
1 Chaos Orb
4 Lightning Bolts
4 Fireball
4 Mana Drain
4 Counterspell
2-4 Disenchant
2-4 StP
2 Serra Angel
4 Mishra's Factories
3 Strip Mine
3 Jade Statues
1 Rasputin Dreamweaver
The idea behind it is to reduce dependence on colored mana. That is, most
decks have at least one, and often two, primary colors. Most top-level
tournament decks play with a lot of multilands because they want the 2 blue
for countermagic, but also the 2 black for Juzams or 2 white for Angels,
etc. Blood Moon, a feature of the Bay Area deck, screwed my B/W/U
Juzam/Hymn/Counter deck because of my reliance on multilands and other
types of lands. It would be TOTALLY pointless against this deck, which I
call "Big Nasty", because the Jade Statues couldn't really care less what
color was being used and because it has enough direct damage to win even in
the event of a Blood Moon (plus the mox/lotus-powered Disenchant, even
assuming that the Blood Moon is allowed to go off).
This deck will kill a slow blue/white rather fast. A first turn Mishra
being powered off of mox gems and pumped by the second turn Mishra can do a
lot of damage before it's taken care of somehow. A Jade Statue can stop a
Juzam, but so could the StP. And the three Strip Mines will wreak havoc on
the blue mage at crucial moments. Also, two or three Lightning Bolts will
bring you down to 12 or 9, unless you want to burn a counterspell on them
-- but if you do, can you stop the Serra?
If you are daring enough to cast something large (say a Serra or a
Jayemdae), you can almost bet a mox that you'll be looking at a rather
large fireball the next turn (Mana Drain, then boom).
Play a creature-based deck? Ernham/Juzam or weenie horde? Say hello to
the Abyss. There are only three non-artifact critters in this deck. No
big loss.
Rasputin should NEVER be underestimated. The ability to pull 7 mana off is
just vicious. I've seen John throw down Rasputin, then a Jade Statue and a
6 point fireball on the same turn. And Rasputin is a 4/1 which gives him
plenty of offensive ability.
One other thing about the deck -- most of its spells cost two or fewer
mana, and each and every card is useful and dangerous in and of itself.
Combinations should be eschewed, as they increase risk of bad draws/card
denial.
I think it's a beautiful concept. The deck has no weaknesses that I could
discern, and in the hands of an experienced player, I can't really imagine
it losing to a different type of deck. It deals well with creature decks.
It deals well with heavy artifact decks. It deals fairly well with discard
decks because it will counter the hymns and disenchant the racks. It deals
well with counterspell decks because it never needs to cast ANYTHING to
win: Mishra's Factories can kill you in several turns if you just sit and
play defense. It can put the hammer down well: I've lost twice to this
deck in the finals of a local tournament because I just could not stop the
7-point fireball (I had to counterspell a Serra Angel the turn before) with
one more turn needed to kill John. You don't get that one more turn.
The Bay Area deck can be overwhelmed with weenie hordes or fast critters.
This deck provides Mishra's as weenies and could bring on the heavy hitters
in four turns. And it can direct fire you as well.
It is little affected by balance, by Abyss, by land destruction (it packs
27 land), by Blood Moon, etc. I just can't imagine what could kill it
consistently, and can't imagine what Big Nasty could not kill consistently.
It's flexible, it's fast, and it's devastatingly dangerous. To me, that's
the sign of a truly awesome deck. I encourage you to try it out.
-rsh, ex-Magic junkie
--
"The law helps those who help themselves, generally Robert S. Hahn
aids the vigilant, but rarely the sleeping, and ha...@panix.com
never the acquiescent." rsh...@is.nyu.edu
-Prentice, C.J. NYU School of Law
Michael Bregoli (Southwick/Tolland RHS 97)
In a previous article, gha...@uclink.berkeley.edu (Garry Handelman) says:
> Ritaxis and I both play Juzam decks backed up with, of all the
>accursed things, permission which we detest but which is the best
>defense, we've found, against other permission decks. I was putting
What? Ditch the Hymn to Tourachs?
>together a nether void deck which was working O.K., but then I started
>playing type II instead (I can't believe I agree with Dolor, but type II
>is better), so I scrapped it. I'll start playing it again after homelands
>probably.
Type II really is more interesting then Type I .. although I don't
think it would be were it not for Chronicles and Ice Age, those sets really
make Type II a fun enviroment..
--
-Mike Bregoli "The teacher stands in front of the class
But the lesson plan he can't recall
The students eyes don't percieve the lies
Bouncing off every f***ing wall..." (Rage)
Adam Maysonet
>In article <410th9$3...@news.gate.net>, le...@gate.net (Adam Maysonet) wrote:
>*snip*
>> tend to use red, discard, LD. There are only a handful of top notch
>> players down here, being myself, Al Sousa, and Rob Brannon. We win all
>> the tournaments down here, and use distinctively different decks.
>*snip, descriptions of decks*
>> I truly wish there was more competition here in the SE, but we are
>> anything but stagnant here, with quite a few unique and working
>> designs floating around.
>These two statements seem inherently contradictory, especially after you
>consider the fact that the 2 of the top three have decks stable enough to
>be described and NAMED.
>We're not stagnant; it's just I win all the time.
>I wonder what your opinion would be if someone else won all the time . . .
>Sam
Since I know myself best, I was able to list more decks when talking
about myself. I named Rob's and Al's best decks, but thats not all
they play. I believe you can have "prefered" decks and not stagnant.
Like I said, I make a new deck every week. The other 2 don't do this
as often as I, but they do change decks.
What my point was (and probably blurred and confusing due to the fact
I had call waiting on and was trying to finish the message before I
was cut off :) was that besides us 3, there is no one else that seems
to pose much of a challenge. It is only so interesting worrying about
the same 2 people, rather than a darkhorse arriving on the scene and
causing all sorts of chaos.
If someone else won all the time, I wouldn't consider it as stagnant,
in my viewpoint, because I would be striving to get to that level
where I could beat that person. I guess you have a point here, as its
MY viewpoint that its stagnant, but to the other players, they have
trouble against eachother well enough, and against the top 3 here. Its
just the majority of players here aren't into the "meta" of magic, and
don't have a great grasp on what really works and more importantly,
why.
Enter Your Name Here
Michael Bregoli (Southwick/Tolland RHS 97)
In a previous article, gha...@uclink.berkeley.edu (Garry Handelman) says:
>: Type II really is more interesting then Type I .. although I don't
>: think it would be were it not for Chronicles and Ice Age, those sets really
>: make Type II a fun enviroment..
>
> Well, yeah, if there weren't any cards type II would suck.
I guess I mean that Type II is more fun w/ IA and CH then Dark.. =)
Mark Green
mh...@mcfi.org "Michael Benveniste" writes:
> In article <user-11089...@dialin33564.slip.nts.uci.edu>,
> us...@host.uci.edu says...
> >. . .
> >No way. No snot nosed local chess player will beat Kasparov.
>
> >There is NO element of chance in chess. It starts EXACTLY the same
> >wat EVERY single time. EVERY move can be anticipated. EVERY move can
> >be planned. There is NOTHING resembling mana fuck or good draws or bad
> >draws or clutch draws.
>
> If you wish to reduce the effect of luck on magic tournaments, the way
> to do it is to avoid single elimination tournaments in favor of a
> modified swiss or partial round robin system, and keep the playoff
> round small (perhaps just one final showdown).
>
Or, perhaps, play Duplicate Magic.. :) Make two identical copies of
each deck, even down to card order. Eliminate all shuffling and ban
all cards that require a library to be reshuffled. Players form teams
of two. Each team gets one copy of each of the deck, and each player plays
against somebody using the other deck, while their partner plays against
somebody using the exact same deck and card draws as the original player
(ie, A has a copy of deck 1, and plays vs. B, who has deck 2. Meanwhile,
A's partner has deck 2 and is playing against B's partner who has deck 1.)
At the end of the game, the winner scores points equal to the life score
he/she has; the loser loses points equal to the life score the opponent has.
Then, to get the overall score, add together the two values scored by the
team.
The point is, whatever any player does, their partner's opponent will
have the resources and potential to do exactly the same thing. And if they
do, and they win by exactly the same methods, the only result will be a net
score of 0, for both teams. Say a mountain->lotus->channel->fireball opportunity
comes out in early turns.. if both players take it, both winners score 1
(since they burnt all their life in the channel), both losers score -1, but
since both winners are paired with a loser, net gain is 0. Better find a
more creative method..
Of course, there is some argument that says that if people play sensibly,
the net score will ALWAYS wind up being 0. If so.. it says something about
Magic as a game.. (I'm not sure I agree.)
Mg
--
Mark Green
g902...@mcmail.cis.McMaster.CA "Bruce G Strang" writes:
> In article <40go2e$1...@tibalt.supernet.ab.ca>,
> Harry Colquhoun <hc...@supernet.ab.ca> wrote:
> >In article <40alut$e...@mcmail.CIS.McMaster.CA>, g
> 902...@mcmail.cis.McMaster.CA (Bruce G Strang) says:
> >
> >In the past I have participated in Type I's with OOP filled decks that
> >should have been insured, but not anymore. Type I is more of a contest
> >to see who has the most money.
> I have little doubt that, after a few years of forced obsolescence, the
> no longer little kid will have spent more than enough money on Type II to
> have acquired a complete set of Moxen and a Lotus. The difference is only
Erm, que? How on earth can you ever acquire a Mox or Lotus by spending
money on Type 2 cards? I've seen people locally trade high double figure
numbers of rares, including revised deleted ones, for Berserks. If you
traded your whole collection, you might *JUST* get a Mox. Never a Lotus.
And let's face it.. in inter-set trade terms, 4E, FE and IA are relatively
worthless with the exception of a few sought-after rares.
> I've heard many times that the "play of the game," and, by extension, the
> players, in Type II are somehow better. My experience is quite different.
> Very few Type II decks could compete at a Type I tournament; nor should
> we expect them to, as WOTC has deliberately made them inferior. Why does
> this make the play better? It doesn't. Furthermore, most of the good Type
This does rather seem to be a backtrack on your earlier (deleted)
argument where you said that Type I games were based on skill rather than
money. Yet a Type 2 player could technically be just as skilled as a
type 1 player (ok, type 1 players tend in general to have been playing
longer and be better players, but it's possible).. and that player's type
2 deck would still be (quote) "inferior".. due to the lack of expensive cards.
Mg
--
Garry Handelman
: In a previous article, gha...@uclink.berkeley.edu (Garry Handelman) says:
: > Ritaxis and I both play Juzam decks backed up with, of all the
: >accursed things, permission which we detest but which is the best
: >defense, we've found, against other permission decks. I was putting
: What? Ditch the Hymn to Tourachs?
No, hymns as well;). And eight spectres.
: >together a nether void deck which was working O.K., but then I started
: >playing type II instead (I can't believe I agree with Dolor, but type II
: >is better), so I scrapped it. I'll start playing it again after homelands
: >probably.
: Type II really is more interesting then Type I .. although I don't
: think it would be were it not for Chronicles and Ice Age, those sets really
: make Type II a fun enviroment..
Well, yeah, if there weren't any cards type II would suck.
David Paris
> It's hard to know how to deal with a post such as this one. It
> mis-represents most of what has gone on in the thread, and doesn't have
> the courtesy to quote anything at all. I've said, several times, that I
> believe that the people who did well at the Championships should take
> pride in their achievement. I have, however, questioned WOTC's wisdom of
> having the so-called world championship decided by decks that wouldn't
> win any of a dozen different tournaments held in a dozen different cities
> in several different countries on the same day. Doesn't that strike you
> as strange? That doesn't take anything away from the shills of the
> players that were there, it merely questions WOTC's use of a needlessly
> restrictive play environment to determine a world champion. Your post is
> not on target here.
All right.. here's your post. I'll take a moment and respond
to it...
Let's start at point one. You claim that because a given deck
cannot compete in type I play it is invalid for determining 'world
champion' status. Already you have made some pretty gross assumptions
about what exactly is being tested. I would contend that the cards
involved are completely irrelevant as long as all players are equally
endowed, and there are at least enough different types of cards to
allow the players to make choices substantially different enough to
demonstrate individual skills. The fact that a given deck used in
the world championship cannot compete in a type I game is comparion
apples and oranges. This deck should not be able to compete in type
I, it should simply be able to compete in type II, where it was intended.
If the player using it was playing in type I, then I'm sure they'd use
a type I deck to do so.
[ snip from my prior post ]
] The goal behind tournament play is to test the skill of the
] competitors. I would say Magic skills fall into three basic categories:
] Trading, Deck Construction, and Play
> If that's the way you define Magic, then I think you've left some things
> out, and I don't understand why you would think Type II is the best. It
> is harder to trade for cards for Type I play than for Type II play. It is
> harder to build Type I decks than Type II decks (at least, that's been my
> experience, and it is certain that there are a lot more choices to make
> in Type I). I've played Type I in tournaments, though most of my play is
> with spoilerless and virtually OOP-less fun decks, for ante. To my mind,
> there is no question that Type I play demands far more decision-making
> during the game, and is, therefore, harder to play. While your
> experiences may differ, it seems to me clear that Type I would best meet
> *your* criteria for choosing a 'skillful' champion.
I really have to laugh here. "It is harder to trade for cards for
Type I play than for Type II play." This isn't trading, this is simply
a question of resources. No, if I have a spare $2,000 or so to blow on
MtG, it is not at all difficult to trade for Type I. If I don't, then
it becomes staggeringly difficult. When I discuss the skill of trading,
once again, I am discussing a test where individual players should begin
with similar resources, and then whoever can progress most effectively
from there should be rewarded. Neither Type I nor Type II measures
this effectively, but unfortunatley Type III is fatally flawed here as
well, as I believe we can all see that not all boosters were created
equally.
> You left out a very important criteria that everyone knows is important in
> competitive Magic - luck - particularly in single knockout tournaments,
> which, I believe, determined many of the regional champions. Type II,
> with its emphasis on trying to 'even the playing field,' serves to
> emphasize luck even more. Furthermore, parity does not necessarily imply
> quality. It might, but it doesn't always. I think the luck factor has
> been shown to be particularly strong in some of the other threads that
> are discussing the championships; one of the posters showed that the
> competition had not a single deck that deviated substantially from the
> norm, even allowing for the modified Swiss system. This increased
> emphasis on luck would seem to me to be another contraindication to your
> belief that skill should decide the championship.
I don't believe either Type I nor Type II make any mention of
whether or not to use a Swiss system. I certainly didn't make any mention
of its preference or lack thereof. You have wandered off on a side
tangent completely on your own accord. No, I very much want to minimize
the impact of 'luck' on tournament play. After all, luck is not going
to be a good determinant of who is best at MtG. If we wanted to use
that, then everyone should simply place their names on a single list and
we can draw a random number and whoever it selects is obviously the
world champion lucky person.
> If you think that having one particular card is the only determining
> factor in Type I play, then you don't have the faintest bloody idea what
> you are talking about. It is impossible, at the very least, to remove the
> factor of luck from the game (and it would be very boring if someone did
> it), so the game will never be decided purely on skill. The problem here
> is not that WOTC decided to have a Type II championship, that's fine, but
> that they prohibited people from determining a Type I championship, when
> Type I is supposedly an event that the Convocation should be sanctioning.
No, I have never said any single card is the only determining
factory. I really wish you'd pay more attention here. Why should Type
I be the event the Convocation should be busy sanctioning? I would
contend that WotC has made many mistakes in the past with its card
creation (individual cards being overly efficient, poorly worded, etc)
and I believe WotC and the Convocation both agree with me (hence the
reason we have cards removed from RV, banned/restricted lists, etc).
These cards are far more prevelant (in fact, over-represented) in
Type I play, and much less so in Type II. I would say this, coupled
with the fact that Type I is vastly more difficult to gain the resources
to effectively compete in, causes Type I to be a vastly less desirable
means of determining world champion status.
> Your post ignores most of what's gone on here, and mis-represents what it
> didn't ignore. Next time, try to be a little more positive, please?
> GBS
Well, I have now included _your_ post in its entirety to represent
itself. As for being 'positive' you'll have to give me something to
be more positive about.
Enjoy.
Vidgame528
whining about DC's Time Vault decision. You're both just complaining
because you spent $10,000 on nothing. All of this crap about it destroying
the play of the game in whatever way just masks the true reason of your
complaints.
Personally, I've always hated how the kids of some Perot-level
billionaire can begin playing Magic by buying 10 starter packs and every
single OOP card - and then put their cards down randomly, accidentally
mana-burn themselves with Lotuses, let the opponent's Disk or Mirror
Universe just sit there, and do tons of suicide assaults, and still win
every time because of their deck. And a beginner who has a lot of natural
talent but wasn't playing when the OOPs were in print, or a veteran who
doesn't buy or trade that often, gets crushed. This is where all of the
arguments of whether spoilers make games more exciting are irrelevant.
As for those arguments, I don't see why more cheap cards makes things
exciting. To me, the excitement level of a game - any game - is based on
how much skill and mental work is required, not how long things take. A
game that's basically a race to be the first to pull a cheap shot is just
plain repetitive.
I also noticed that some people's arguments for Type I included the
claim that the best Type II decks couldn't beat the best Type I deck. My
reply is, what does that have to do with the discussion?
-------------------------------------------------------------
__ _
\\/ || D
-
Mario Robaina
> Personally, I see a similarity between Type II haters and and people
>whining about DC's Time Vault decision. You're both just complaining
>because you spent $10,000 on nothing. All of this crap about it destroying
>the play of the game in whatever way just masks the true reason of your
>complaints.
This is an incredibly obnoxious generalization. I dislike Type II
because it is way to narrow in focus. Although I have all the spoilers,
I would gladly accept a Type 1.5 in which they were all banned. What I
do want to be able to use are Multilands, Kird Apes, Fastbonds,
Shatterstorms, Dust to Dust, Spiritual Sanctuaries, etc. There are no
longer any good all around decks. This is sad to see. The days of a
really well rounded deck that can stand up fairly well against any
opponent are gone from Type II.
> Personally, I've always hated how the kids of some Perot-level
>billionaire can begin playing Magic by buying 10 starter packs and every
>single OOP card - and then put their cards down randomly, accidentally
>mana-burn themselves with Lotuses, let the opponent's Disk or Mirror
>Universe just sit there, and do tons of suicide assaults, and still win
>every time because of their deck. And a beginner who has a lot of natural
>talent but wasn't playing when the OOPs were in print, or a veteran who
>doesn't buy or trade that often, gets crushed. This is where all of the
>arguments of whether spoilers make games more exciting are irrelevant.
I am sorry this is just not the case. I have plenty of friends who have
sold off all their Type I cards, but play in TYpe I tournies with their
typr II decks. And guess what? When they play some chump who bought the
big cards and doesn't know how to use them, they win. A lot of them make
it to the quarters and semis.
> As for those arguments, I don't see why more cheap cards makes things
>exciting. To me, the excitement level of a game - any game - is based on
>how much skill and mental work is required, not how long things take. A
>game that's basically a race to be the first to pull a cheap shot is just
>plain repetitive.
> I also noticed that some people's arguments for Type I included the
>claim that the best Type II decks couldn't beat the best Type I deck. My
>reply is, what does that have to do with the discussion?
>-------------------------------------------------------------
>__ _
>\\/ || D
> -
--
Later,
Trevor Barrie
>I intended it to read that the decks that they were playing would be
>defeated, but I was writing many pages on this thread at that time,
>and my language on this particular post might not have been the
>clearest. Suffice it to say, however, that my over-all tone of the
>thread has been to say, repeatedly, that I am not attacking
>the players who were there,
I realize this; that's why, when I saw you apparently state that those
players could never win a local Type I tournament, I felt compelled to
call you on the seeming contradiction.
>So, I wish people would stop
>mis-representing what I tried to say (I'm not necessarily saying, Mr.
>Barrie, that you're the problem here, but look at that ridiculous attempt
>at a flame in message 41211, which I'm going to avoid answering as it is
>so off the wall).
What flame was that? As I understand it, message numbers are local,
indicating the order in which the messages were received by a particular
news server; only somebody else at McMaster's could know what you meant
by "41211".
>There's been a debate here as to what the 'highest level of competition'
>actually *is* in the Magic world; some think Type 2 represents it. I
>think Type I represents the 'highest level of competition.' The above
>statement was an indicator of why I believe that Type I is 'a higher level
>of competition.'
Do you mean the fact that Type II decks would generally (almost always)
be beaten in Type I competition? If so, I would point out, that, by
the same logic, doing away with "Convocation rules" entirely and playing
by the standard rules (40-cards minimum, no other construction limits)
would result in an even _higher_ level of competition. Would this then
be a better method of determining the World champion?
>Finally, if I might be permitted a slight criticism, Mr. Barrie, some of
>the problem here, I think, is that your original question removed a
>single statement from a long text; some of the mis-understanding comes
>from the loss of context. It's now a distorted picture of the earlier
>post that's been created in some minds, which is not necessarily the best
>thing for the course of the debate.
(You know, damned if I can figure out why, but I find it really
disturbing to be constantly referred to as "Mister":))
At any rate, I removed a single-statement because that was the
statement to which I was responding. Over-quoting is one of the
big no-nos of net.iquette.
(BTW, should we strip .strategy from the Newsgroups: line of this
thread? It doesn't really seem to relate...)
Michael J Mast
: sc...@fix.oneworld.com (Scott Burke) writes:
: >We've lost a subtle point I made earlier: the stagnation is only regional in
: >scope.
: I do not subscribe to the theory that there is stagnation in Type I play
: in regional competition. Some of the underlying concepts may be construed
: as stagnant, such as getting superior resources at your disposal relative
: to your opponent, but I don't feel that there is any particular super deck
: that can sit on its laurels.
: I find Type I play exceptionally stimulating with its incredible variety
: of cards available. I'd rather see the "spoilers" reprinted around the
: world so everyone has them at thier disposal instead of playing in
: an environment where my cards become obsolete and useless after a few
: months.
: Rob
? Why on earth would you want the spoilers reprinted??? There is a
reason that they are called "spoilers", you know--they are _far_ more
powerful than other cards out there. I think that type I is boring
because of the spoilers--all decks have 15+ cards that are the same, and
this limits the number of actual cards that are played, (and probably
makes even more cards obsolete...IMO).
Wouldn't you rather have a new tournament type that bans the spoilers,
but lets you use anything else? This would, by far, be the best and
most interesting type (also IMO).
Just me,
Mike Mast
Michael J Mast
: In article <808834...@antelope.demon.co.uk>,
: Mark Green <Ma...@antelope.demon.co.uk> wrote:
: >In article <40iodf$3...@mcmail.CIS.McMaster.CA>
: > g902...@mcmail.cis.McMaster.CA "Bruce G Strang" writes:
: >
: >> In article <40go2e$1...@tibalt.supernet.ab.ca>,
: >> Harry Colquhoun <hc...@supernet.ab.ca> wrote:
: >> >In article <40alut$e...@mcmail.CIS.McMaster.CA>, g
: >> I have little doubt that, after a few years of forced obsolescence, the
: >> have acquired a complete set of Moxen and a Lotus. The difference is only
: >
: > Erm, que? How on earth can you ever acquire a Mox or Lotus by spending
: >money on Type 2 cards? I've seen people locally trade high double figure
: >numbers of rares, including revised deleted ones, for Berserks. If you
: >traded your whole collection, you might *JUST* get a Mox. Never a Lotus.
: >And let's face it.. in inter-set trade terms, 4E, FE and IA are relatively
: >worthless with the exception of a few sought-after rares.
: You didn't read what I wrote. I said that I can easily see the figurative
: 'little kid' spending hundreds of dollars purchasing every new expansion
: or rotation (roughly four per year, though this year it was five). Each
: old expansion would go out of the rotation after some six months. At
: current net prices, Moxen and a Lotus would also run a few hundred
: dollars. Locally, a friend bought a Lotus for $73.00 (U.S. equivalent,
: and bought it in my presence). I bought an even better condition lotus
: for about $118.00. In any event, it doesn't take too many packs of
: boosters of too many expansions to reach into the hundreds of dollars.
: You've rather badly mis-interpreted what I wrote.
You have forgotten to take into account one *minor* detail...
Even *if* a person had enough money to buy all of the type I cards, that
is no guarentee that he/she would be able to *find* them. There just
aren't enough Moxen, Time foo, etc. out there for all of the players
who would like to play type I. Would you be happy with a "type 1.5" (hate
the name) tournament for the World Championship? So that a player (like my
little brother) who doesn't have the Lotus and Mox and stuff, but has gotten
other things like Chains of Meph., Tawnos' Coffin, Word of Command, and
Island of Wak-Wak would be able to compete, and have a chance for it
without the necessity of having a Time Walk and Black lotus to have a
chance to win. (He'd even give up his Chaos Orb to play in a tourney like
this)
: My argument was that Type I games were decided more on skill than were
: Type II games, and I've provided a detailed description of why I think
: that statement is true. You're free to disagree, of course. Type I decks,
: naturally, tend to be quite a bit more expensive than Type II decks.
: There are still quite massive differences in the use of expensive cards
: among Type I players, which is where the skill comes in to the equation.
: Yes, a Type II player might also be equivalent in some over-all standard
: of skill to a Type I player and see his deck lose because he didn't have
: the cards. I don't recall saying otherwise.
So are we testing for skill + spoilers or just skill?
: Actually, though, the Type II deck might win. For example, I've
: seen lots of stuff here about the 'elite' U/W decks of the Bay area. I
: played a virtually Type II legal deck (it had Kird Apes) against a close
: version of the U/W deck, and won about 35% of the games. If I'd had a few
: more cards it would have been a little better. The key here was that there
: were no sideboards allowed; in sideboard tournament, then the Type II
: deck would have little chance.
: In any event, I'm not sure what your point was intended to convey, since
: you seem to be contradicting a point that I've not in fact made.
: GBS
Just me,
Mike Mast
Enter Your Name Here
> In article <40i9i6$c...@sundog.tiac.net>
> mh...@mcfi.org "Michael Benveniste" writes:
>
> > In article <user-11089...@dialin33564.slip.nts.uci.edu>,
> > us...@host.uci.edu says...
> > >. . .
> > >No way. No snot nosed local chess player will beat Kasparov.
> >
> > >There is NO element of chance in chess. It starts EXACTLY the same
> > >wat EVERY single time. EVERY move can be anticipated. EVERY move can
> > >be planned. There is NOTHING resembling mana fuck or good draws or bad
> > >draws or clutch draws.
> >
> > If you wish to reduce the effect of luck on magic tournaments, the way
> > to do it is to avoid single elimination tournaments in favor of a
> > modified swiss or partial round robin system, and keep the playoff
> > round small (perhaps just one final showdown).
> >
> Or, perhaps, play Duplicate Magic.. :) Make two identical copies of
> each deck, even down to card order. Eliminate all shuffling and ban
> all cards that require a library to be reshuffled. Players form teams
*more description deleted*
Although I appreciate this effort, I don't think it would be a good game.
Let's face it, Magic is not Chess and never will be Chess. And as far as
I'm concerned, I'm glad it's not Chess. And I'm glad Craps is not Chess
and that NFL Football is not Chess.
Without the element of chance in building a deck, shuffling it, drawing
cards each turn, Magic would be a rather dull game. As I have stated
before, despite the fact that there are over a 1000 different cards in the
whole set, with any given hand and in any given situation, there really
aren't all that many decisions. Up to 1/2 the cards in your hand might be
unuseable (because of mana, lack of target, etc.), and 1/2 of the ones
left are just dumb decisions.
Basically, there's a right decision and several wrong decisions.
Sometimes there might be 2 or 3 possible right decisions and then chance
comes into play again. Your opponent has 1 Mountain and 1 Swamp untapped;
do you play Ancestral Recall risking a REB, or do you play Regrowth,
risking a Dark Ritual/Deathgrip activation. Since you don't know what
your opponent is holding, it's a coin flip.
But this is unusual. Most turns are like: Opponent's Mammoth is pounding
you; you're holding Disenchant, Giant Spider, Forest, Mana Vault. Duh . .
. what do you do?
Sam
Garry Handelman
: On Wed, 23 Aug 1995, Vijay Gill wrote:
: > This deck as you posted is quite strong, but I do believe it can be
: > hosed by a fast critter deck with white and energy storm would hose it
: > something fierce. If you have the exact listing w/ sideboard of this
: > deck, I would love to play test this out against a new deck I am
: > working on which should pretty much hose this and the serra/moat
: > decks so popular in the bay area.
: >
: > thanks
: > vijay
: I'll try. I don't know if I have everything, but I do know the basics.
: Black Lotus
: 5 Moxen
: Sol Ring
: 2 City of Brass
: 4 Tundra
: 4 Volcanic Island
: 2 Underground Sea
: 3 Plateau
: 1 Scrubland
: 4 Mishra's Factory
: 2 Strip Mine
: Time Walk
: Ancestral Recall
: Timetwister
: Demonic Tutor
: Balance
: 2 The Abyss
: 1 Jalum Tome
Interesting selection.
: 1 Chaos Orb
: 1 Zuran Orb
: 4 Lightning Bolts
: 2 Fireball
: 4 Mana Drain
: 2 Counterspell
: 2 Disenchant
: 2 StP
: 2 Serra Angel
Um.... won't the abyss kill these? I mean, you only have 3
abyssable creatures, which makes what abyssable creatures you have dead meat.
: 2 Jade Statues
: 1 Rasputin Dreamweaver
: I think that's the deck. The Sideboard are 4 BEB and 4 REB, 2
: Disenchant, 2 StP, 1 Forcefield, 1 Icy Manipulator, 1 Earthquake, I
: think. Well, let me know what the vulnerability is.
You are indeed vulnerable to white weenie. Even more so, you are
vulnerable to "the deck" (i.e. blue/white
annoy-your-opponent-to-madness), because against them, your defesnive
cards are useless. Of course, you have red elemental blasts in your
sideboard to replace them... here's an interesting thought. Everyone plays
blue, at least
a little for the spoilers. And don't anybody pop up with the type II
opponents, because let's assume we aren't incompetent ten year olds.
Anyway, this being the case, you might want the red blasts in your main
deck body.
Regradless, in order to improve your turbo weenie resistance, I
think you want to dump the angels and rasputin in favor of-
Four wraths
two more abyss
tada! If this doesn't do it, consider pyroclasm. If you have four
pyroblasts in your sideboard, you can replace all the wraths, and all the
abysses, with "applicable" cards when facing white/blue annoyance opponents.
Dan Tiefa
>Since I know myself best, I was able to list more decks when talking
>about myself. I named Rob's and Al's best decks, but thats not all
>they play. I believe you can have "prefered" decks and not stagnant.
>Like I said, I make a new deck every week. The other 2 don't do this
>as often as I, but they do change decks.
I know what you mean. Here in the SW, there are only about 4 people
who ever actually pose a challenge. I originally used a 5-color deck
that just rolled right through anything except a blood moon. I mean
ANYTHING. Eventually I gave up trying to get around blood moons
while keeping all the speed, and ever since I have changed around as
often as you.
>What my point was (and probably blurred and confusing due to the fact
>I had call waiting on and was trying to finish the message before I
>was cut off :) was that besides us 3, there is no one else that seems
>to pose much of a challenge. It is only so interesting worrying about
>the same 2 people, rather than a darkhorse arriving on the scene and
>causing all sorts of chaos.
If I move out there, your prayers just might be answered.
>If someone else won all the time, I wouldn't consider it as stagnant,
>in my viewpoint, because I would be striving to get to that level
>where I could beat that person. I guess you have a point here, as its
>MY viewpoint that its stagnant, but to the other players, they have
>trouble against eachother well enough, and against the top 3 here. Its
>just the majority of players here aren't into the "meta" of magic, and
>don't have a great grasp on what really works and more importantly,
>why.
>
Maybe I'll move to Florida just to annoy you.
:)
Bruce G Strang
I haven't quoted your message here, as I don't think it is necessary for
the brief response I have.
First, I referred to you as Mr. Barrie because it seems kind of impolite
to assume the right to use your first name without honoric; I sometimes
use first names only, such as 'Dennis,' to imply disrespect, but I guess
I'm not very consistent. :) In any event, there was no disrespect
intended; sorry it seemed creapy.
Second, sorry about referring to a post by number. There's little loss,
however, as the post in question was a crap-headed flame, and not worth
the band-width.
Third, the paragraph about Type I, Type II, and the bad old days of 40
cards of whatever kind you like isn't quite as strong as I think you
appear to believe. The difference is that virtually everyone agreed that
the old system, before banning and restricting, was broken. I mean, when
you have to determine the loser in a match by the first person to fail to
win a game on their first turn, the whole game is broken. Despite some
people's belief, there is no unanimity on whether or not Type I is
broken. Even if Type I *is* broken, which I don't think is the case, then
there are great many ways that Wizards could fix it short of going to the
current Type II, which, to my mind, has a lot of problems. In short, the
cases are not necessarily parallel, as you imply.
Cheers,
GBS
Bruce G Strang
I'm sorry that I'm not quoting your whole post, but the server here won't
post unless there's more new text than old, and it gets difficult and
time consuming to deal with this thread; if I misrepresent anything, then
I apologize in advance.
I'm not necessarily unhappy that they had a Type II World Championship. I
am annoyed that they didn't, at that point in time, have a comparable
Type I championship. Even more annoying, WOTC forced the organizing
committee of the Canadian Championships to change from Type I to Type II
at the figurative last minute. Some kind of Type 1.5 would be alright, I
suppose, but I personally would rather see the Type II change to 1.5
rather than Type I. Again, I think Type I is fine; it needs to be tweeked
to allow people such as your little brother to play on a more even keel.
Card availability is, I'm sure, a problem. I personally don't think it
takes thousands of dollars to make a deck. I mean, I started when The
Dark came out, and I've spent, at present, about $750 (U.S. equivalent)
on the game. In the fall, I'll hold an auction (the taxman awaits in
spring) to draw down the over-all value of the money I have tied up in
the game, and I won't be selling my so-called spoilers. I built my
collection through hundreds and thousands of trades. If I can do it, then
I assume almost anyone can. It does, however, take time.
In any event, this is enough of a ramble. I hope that I addressed some of
the points that you raised.
Cheers,
GBS
Trevor Barrie
>Third, the paragraph about Type I, Type II, and the bad old days of 40
>cards of whatever kind you like isn't quite as strong as I think you
>appear to believe. The difference is that virtually everyone agreed that
>the old system, before banning and restricting, was broken. Despite some
>people's belief, there is no unanimity on whether or not Type I is
>broken.
It's not literally unaninimous, of course, but I think one could make
a farily strong case that "virtually everyone" agrees that Type I is
broken. In fact, you're the first person I've seen argue the point.
Whether it's better or worse than Type II is another matter entirely,
of course.
Erhnam Djinn
->In article <41o9fr$j...@mcmail.CIS.McMaster.CA>,
-g902...@mcmail.cis.McMaster.CA (Bruce G Strang) says:
->
->>Third, the paragraph about Type I, Type II, and the bad old days of
-40
->>cards of whatever kind you like isn't quite as strong as I think you
->>appear to believe. The difference is that virtually everyone agreed
-that
->>the old system, before banning and restricting, was broken. Despite
-some
->>people's belief, there is no unanimity on whether or not Type I is
->>broken.
->
->It's not literally unaninimous, of course, but I think one could make
->a farily strong case that "virtually everyone" agrees that Type I is
->broken. In fact, you're the first person I've seen argue the point.
->Whether it's better or worse than Type II is another matter entirely,
->of course.
How is it broken? I find the type 1 system perfect!
Please respond via E-Mail
-Ernie
"Thats just my opinion, I could be wrong."-Dennis Miller
Trevor Barrie
>How is it broken? I find the type 1 system perfect!
Any system that allows broken cards is itself broken. Since broken
cards are pretty much the defining factor of Type I, that makes it
broken in the extreme.
Ryan Stubblefield
Type 1 is broken, because it is no longer a total test of skill between
two players, as I assume it was designed as. Type 1 is a game of
restricted cards, and even more, a game of Mind Twists (and to a lesser
extent, that cheat of a card channel). It is not the best player with the
best deck that wins all the time, it is the guy that mindtwisted the most
that wins. All those other restricted cards (Ancestral, Demonic Tutor,
Timewalk, LoA, etc...) are great, and what they normally do is get you to your
mindtwist faster. I've said this a few times before and so have other
players, but I'll say it again, just to make a point. I feel that if
Mindtwist was banned, I would almost never loose. At least %90 of my
losses can be attributed to that one card. There is nothing in all of
magic that is as unfair as Mindtwist. Well, channel is also unfair, but
it's power and flexibility are much less than that of mindtwist. I would
really like to see Mindtwist banned from tournament play, I think it would
really even out the playing field and make the game alot more fair, and
more fun to play.
--
Ryan Stubblefield | "A voiceless song in an ageless light
vor...@terminus.com | Sings at the coming dawn."
Lompoc, California | -- Loreena McKennitt
S.W. Spisak
Hey, in the bad old days, people didn't have more than a couple of any
given rare card! You own a Shivan? YOU are a God! was the attitude of
the time. I'm the local card guru and back in those days I did not have
a load of moxen and loti. (I did love Ancestral Recall though)
The DEGENERATE decks, that led us (at McMaster Unversity) make our OWN
tournament limts (2 of a sorcery and 4 of an instant) was after a
20-land 40-lightning bolt deck won our tournament undefeated.
Its funny, back then decks COULD have been much more degenerate, but
WEREN'T, simply thru lack of card availability and what-not.
I can't even REMEMBER an early land-destruction deck... they just didn't
build 'em. You put in your best creatures, all the COP's, some cool
enchantments (like WARDS!) and played!
Heck, no one used lightning bolts (until that deck won) because you could
do more damage with a fireball... and decks were slow (since you only had
your BIGGEST creatures in it), so you have time to get 9 or 10 land down
and REALLY hammer home that fireball (which you only owned 3 of, anyways).
I tell you, it REALLY takes the fun out of trading when you own
everything... back then, trading was what made the game fun. Now with
all the stupid SCRYE slaves out there, trading is dull.
Steve
PS: Get 'em Bruce!!
The Corinthian
Ryan Stubblefield <vor...@terminus.terminus.com> wrote:
>>How is it broken? I find the type 1 system perfect!
>
>Type 1 is broken, because it is no longer a total test of skill between
>two players, as I assume it was designed as. Type 1 is a game of
>restricted cards, and even more, a game of Mind Twists (and to a lesser
>extent, that cheat of a card channel). It is not the best player with the
>best deck that wins all the time, it is the guy that mindtwisted the most
>that wins. All those other restricted cards (Ancestral, Demonic Tutor,
>Timewalk, LoA, etc...) are great, and what they normally do is get you to your
>mindtwist faster.
If you're using MT and Channel as a measurement of how broken a tourney
system is, then from my experiences, Type II is way more broken than
Type I. Around here, MT/Channel is in maybe 20% of the Type I decks
but it is in at least 75% of the Type II tourney decks.
I agree that MT/Channel are too powerful and dominate Type II play but
until WotC removes them from 5E, we just have to put up with them.
They do not, however, dominate Type I play. Not even close.
>I've said this a few times before and so have other
>players, but I'll say it again, just to make a point. I feel that if
>Mindtwist was banned, I would almost never loose. At least %90 of my
>losses can be attributed to that one card.
I find it hard to believe that anybody is that good.
Enter Your Name Here
u860...@muss.cis.McMaster.CA (S.W. Spisak) wrote:
> Someone was talking about the "bad old days of 40 card decks).
*lots of stuff deleted*
> I tell you, it REALLY takes the fun out of trading when you own
> everything... back then, trading was what made the game fun. Now with
> all the stupid SCRYE slaves out there, trading is dull.
>
> Steve
>
> PS: Get 'em Bruce!!
That's why my friends and I have taken up playing A LOT of sealed deck and
other games which SEVERELY restrict the environment. Drafts, auctions,
reverse auctions, etc.
A lot of you might have forgotten by now, but Hill Giant is just HUGE! My
god, he eats all those bears, ogres, etc.
Pegesus is almost a game winner and having just 1 fireball is having the
hand of god on your side!
Sam
Peter M White
>That's why my friends and I have taken up playing A LOT of sealed deck and
>other games which SEVERELY restrict the environment. Drafts, auctions,
>reverse auctions, etc.
>A lot of you might have forgotten by now, but Hill Giant is just HUGE! My
>god, he eats all those bears, ogres, etc.
>Pegesus is almost a game winner and having just 1 fireball is having the
>hand of god on your side!
Well, if someone pulls out something totally awe inspiring like a Phantom
Monster, the Stone Giant can really save your butt, if the ammo holds
out.
--Peter
p-w...@uiuc.edu
Gangster of Boats
: > I tell you, it REALLY takes the fun out of trading when you own
: > all the stupid SCRYE slaves out there, trading is dull.
: other games which SEVERELY restrict the environment. Drafts, auctions,
: reverse auctions, etc.
Yeah! So have I. I love the auction style, as it tends
to make things even out rather than a straight sealed deck,
where someone might get a good amount of direct damage
or some big flyers.
In fact, we're starting one tonight where it is a mix of
straight sealed deck and auction. You get the normal sealed
deck starter/packs and then we're auctioning off half
a box.
: A lot of you might have forgotten by now, but Hill Giant is just HUGE! My
: god, he eats all those bears, ogres, etc.
Yup. And even Iron Claw Orcs have value.
: Pegesus is almost a game winner and having just 1 fireball is having the
: hand of god on your side!
ANY flyer is a boon. Having four or five makes you a strong
force. Direct damage oftens wins long games.
: Sam
--
- JJ
su...@wam.umd.edu
R Bracey
: In article <41o9fr$j...@mcmail.CIS.McMaster.CA>, g902...@mcmail.cis.McMaster.CA (Bruce G Strang) says:
: >Third, the paragraph about Type I, Type II, and the bad old days of 40
: >cards of whatever kind you like isn't quite as strong as I think you
: >appear to believe. The difference is that virtually everyone agreed that
: >the old system, before banning and restricting, was broken. Despite some
: >people's belief, there is no unanimity on whether or not Type I is
: >broken.
: It's not literally unaninimous, of course, but I think one could make
: a farily strong case that "virtually everyone" agrees that Type I is
: broken. In fact, you're the first person I've seen argue the point.
: Whether it's better or worse than Type II is another matter entirely,
: of course.
: **************************************************************************
: Trevor Barrie tba...@peinet.pe.ca "It's a great big universe,
Actualy you couldnt. If you have never heard anyone suggest type I is not
broken you havent read enough posts, that was the entire point of setting up
a players convocation. I myself play with a large group of people and know
only one person who strongly supports Type II (not because he thinks type I
is broken but because he feels Type II players arre of a lower standard and
this gives begginers a fair chance).
Robert
P.S None of us own Moxes,Lotus or timecards. I do not believe in proxies,
and though I have no Arabian Nights,no Antiquities, and only a few legends
barely half my collection is legitimate in Type II.