Luck vs. Skill
Doc Coyote
Robert S. Hahn wrote:
> The fact is, Magic is a game of skill. The Finkeltron all but
> dispelled the myth that it's all about luck and matchup.
> Luck and matchup doesn't result in the stellar performance
> of Finkeltron.
Let's go back a few years, back when there were cards in the
environment which were broken by (nearly) anyone's standards
-- Library of Alexandria, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, Mana
Drain, Timetwister, Mind Twist, Black Lotus, all the Moxen.
Such an environment was heavy on luck. Face it -- if I dropped
a handful of jewelry and Mind Twist you for 5 on the first turn,
you would almost certainly lose. Not because I was a better
player, but because I was lucky. This was a Bad Thing. At this
point in time, it would not be out of place to say that Magic
was more a game of luck than skill.
No one reasonable is going to dispute the fact that luck was
the deciding factor in too many games and matches at that
time -- luck could, and did, beat skill regularly.
And yet, there were players back then who won consistently
_anyway_. (Brian Weissman and Zak Dolan come immediately
to my mind.) Even though the environment was _undeniably_
too heavily influenced by luck, there still existed players of a
high enough caliber to overcome it.
And that is my point. Finkel being a highly skilled, successful
player says nothing about the environment being too luck-based
or not too luck-based -- it just says that Finkel is a highly skilled,
successful player.
-Doc Coyote
drco...@sirius.com
r...@wolfenet.com
> environment which were broken by (nearly) anyone's standards
> -- Library of Alexandria, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, Mana
> Drain, Timetwister, Mind Twist, Black Lotus, all the Moxen.
>
> Such an environment was heavy on luck. Face it -- if I dropped
> a handful of jewelry and Mind Twist you for 5 on the first turn,
> you would almost certainly lose. Not because I was a better
> player, but because I was lucky. This was a Bad Thing. At this
> point in time, it would not be out of place to say that Magic
> was more a game of luck than skill.
firstturn: Swamp + Ritual = Carnophage + Slayer
secondturn: Swamp. Attack. Culling of the Weak which ever you dont
block = Hatred for 18. Game.
but that is not likely, and so dont flame me for those hypothetical
scenarios. i have never seen that happen, though it must have
sometimes... but i am actually in agreement with "Doc Coyte" here.
this also ties into the Dojo Effect, as it is named by many a hating
Magic player who wants to build his own deck...
My point here is that there is still a great deal of skill in the Magic
world... somebody like Beenie Smith who has skill builds something
tech like DDT and wins some tournies with it. as people begin to copy
it, they also spin off his idea, branching in different directions... i
recently say an excelent Nightmare deck that had not a single Survival,
it was Blue Black and it did quite well!
and when the latest version of the now 5color Nightmare deck wins big
time tournaments, more people copy it, but they too adjust it to the
megagame.
you see, when a deck makes it big time, it looses its punch right
there. because then everybody will know exactly how to stop it, and
what to expect from it...
so the skilled player will adjust the deck so that it is not so
mainstream.. and those adjustments that are the best fitted to the new
enviorment are the next to make it bigtime. and when they do, they too
must change...
and the point of all this is that a skilled player will not allow the
deck to become stale. an un skilled Dojo player will copy the latest
version and play it. and anyone who also reads newgroups or Dojo will
know what to do.
when Oath of Rouges made it big, i went to a local tourny expecting
it. i was ready. when i did get matched up vs a Druids deck, which
looked like a card-for-card copy of the Nations champ.
i creamed it. with my halfass red blue deck.. which at the time
contained 3 Memory Lapses because i was short one Counterspell and 2
Forbid. and had 2 Lightning blast and a Deadshot (yes a Deadshot!)
because i still needed to scrounge up the 2 Shocks and an Incinerate.
and with all this lame stuff, i beat the Oath with all the right rares
because i knew what to do. now if he had put in some tech.. if he had
droped a shard phoenix or something, that would have screwed me up!
there was true skill in the design of Oath, but not in the copy. the
guy knew how to play it, but not how to change it so it would better fit
the scene...
that is what skill is about.. there will always be luck... in draws
and in match ups. the first is why there is muligan, and the second is
why there is sideboard.
so stop complaining about the lack of skill, and go take advantage of
it by know exactly what to do! or go make some tech of your own! then
you have skill too!
joel
Talvin69
>My point here is that there is still a great deal of skill in the Magic
>world... somebody like Beenie Smith who has skill builds something
>tech like DDT and wins some tournies with it. as people begin to copy
>it, they also spin off his idea, branching in different directions... i
>recently say an excelent Nightmare deck that had not a single Survival,
>it was Blue Black and it did quite well!
> and when the latest version of the now 5color Nightmare deck wins big
>time tournaments, more people copy it, but they too adjust it to the
>megagame.
> you see, when a deck makes it big time, it looses its punch right
>there. because then everybody will know exactly how to stop it, and
>what to expect from it...
> so the skilled player will adjust the deck so that it is not so
>mainstream.. and those adjustments that are the best fitted to the new
>enviorment are the next to make it bigtime. and when they do, they too
>must change...
>
>
ok, as nice of a guy as Bennie is, I'm getting sick of people who don't know
better canonizing him for his development of DDT, which they view as the
pre-cursor to the Survival/Recur/Death decks which performed extremely well at
worlds.
The basic timeline is - 5/98 Darwin Kastle builds 5cKastle a 5 color green base
living death deck with intuitions, fallen angel, maro, death, wall of draw, and
peaches. A half dozen people play it in New England regionals, with 3 making
top 8.
About the Same time team Clean in So. Cal. develops a similar deck entitles
"Peaches" which they clean up the southwest regionals with.
In the meat grinder at nationals Darwin qualifies using basically the same deck
he used at regionals, losing intuitions and other stuff for Survival of the
Fittest and Hermit druids.
Also in the MEat Grinders David Williams plays Recurring Nightmare/Survival
with no deaths, but nekretaals, wall of blossoms and other 187s.
Sometime around Nationals Bennie develops DDT, a deck similar to 5cKastle but
(initially atleast) using Oath of Ghouls instead of Deaths. He crushes his
local metagame and tweaks, and people here love the deck
At worlds half of southern california plays Recurring Nightmare/survival tech
as do some other well informed players and a whole slew of these decks make top
8. Most feature 2 living deaths with alan comer's deck not containing any.
Ok,. based on that i owuld say that the Archetype basically goes back to
Darwin's regionals deck, and possibly back even further to PT LA where death
made it's first appearance in a big tournament, however at LA the decks were
B/U or B/U/W, with none featurign the 5cG construction of the later decks and
thus i don't know about how solid the connection is. However it should be
noted that as far back as the last week of February i recall discussing Rath
cycle death with Tom Guevin and he mentioned to me that he had a 4 color
version using harrows and muscle slivers along with the usual tradewinds,
gnomes, etc which were used then. I believe Tom ended up not playing it,
instead opting for U/B/w with cloudchasers and jank. His not using his green
tech makes me tack this on as an afternote as opposed to part of the evolution
of the deck.
Corrections and addenda are welcome, especially from Bennie as my knowledge of
DDT is rather vague as I didn't read the NG that heavily at the beginning of
this summer.
T.J. Xenos
"If God Came down on Christmas Day
I know exactly what he'd say
He'd say Oi to the punks! and Oi to the skins!
But Oi to the world! and everybody wins"
The Vandals- "Oi to the World"
bens...@series2000.com
talv...@aol.comREMOVE (Talvin69) wrote:
> ok, as nice of a guy as Bennie is, I'm getting sick of people who don't know
> better canonizing him for his development of DDT, which they view as the
> pre-cursor to the Survival/Recur/Death decks which performed extremely well at
> worlds.
Yeah, I found it interesting after DDT hit the net, people
starting referring to other Living Death decks as DDT, when
DDT was considerably different, relying much more on Oath of
Ghouls than Living Death or Recurring Nightmare. I think
most folks just looked at the decks' similarities and
figured they were all variants on the same deck without
really looking at the differences. I didn't bother
to correct anybody back then because I didn't want to
seem petty splitting hairs. Anyone who truly cares
about playing the decks will know the difference.
> The basic timeline is - 5/98 Darwin Kastle builds 5cKastle a 5 color green
base
> living death deck with intuitions, fallen angel, maro, death, wall of draw,
and
> peaches. A half dozen people play it in New England regionals, with 3 making
> top 8.
>
> About the Same time team Clean in So. Cal. develops a similar deck entitles
> "Peaches" which they clean up the southwest regionals with.
>
> In the meat grinder at nationals Darwin qualifies using basically the same
deck
> he used at regionals, losing intuitions and other stuff for Survival of the
> Fittest and Hermit druids.
>
> Also in the MEat Grinders David Williams plays Recurring Nightmare/Survival
> with no deaths, but nekretaals, wall of blossoms and other 187s.
Yup, most definitely DDT benefited from these precursor
excursions into graveyard tech. I'll say all day that the
Kastle deck was instrumental to fleshing out DDT to a
more competitive deck.
>
> Sometime around Nationals Bennie develops DDT, a deck similar to 5cKastle but
> (initially atleast) using Oath of Ghouls instead of Deaths. He crushes his
> local metagame and tweaks, and people here love the deck
>
> At worlds half of southern california plays Recurring Nightmare/survival tech
> as do some other well informed players and a whole slew of these decks make
top
> 8. Most feature 2 living deaths with alan comer's deck not containing any.
>
> Ok,. based on that i owuld say that the Archetype basically goes back to
> Darwin's regionals deck, and possibly back even further to PT LA where death
> made it's first appearance in a big tournament, however at LA the decks were
> B/U or B/U/W, with none featurign the 5cG construction of the later decks and
> thus i don't know about how solid the connection is. However it should be
> noted that as far back as the last week of February i recall discussing Rath
> cycle death with Tom Guevin and he mentioned to me that he had a 4 color
> version using harrows and muscle slivers along with the usual tradewinds,
> gnomes, etc which were used then. I believe Tom ended up not playing it,
> instead opting for U/B/w with cloudchasers and jank. His not using his green
> tech makes me tack this on as an afternote as opposed to part of the evolution
> of the deck.
>
> Corrections and addenda are welcome, especially from Bennie as my knowledge of
> DDT is rather vague as I didn't read the NG that heavily at the beginning of
> this summer.
Interestingly enough, the seeds of DDT started out as an
early version of Jamie's Secret Force (can you believe it?).
I had been loosely collaborating with Jamie on trying to
build a viable mono-green deck and the closest I came on
my own was a green cantrip deck similar to the Naturepotence
deck that came out around the same time.
Then, Jamie sent me a decklisting of Secret Force...
and I fell in love with Verdant Force. I just loved
getting that fat bastard into play turn 3 and applying
the fat loving. It was great... until people started
stacking the Perishes in their sideboard again. Ouch!
Around the same time, Pat, a friend of mine who is
one of the owners of the game shop I play in, was
working on a mono-black Living Death deck that used
Buried Alives to prime the graveyard. The deck
was revolutionary in my mind by it's use of "reverse
thawing," or, using less lands in the deck due to
the increase in land percentage latter in the game
after casting one or two Buried Alives. At one point
he was running 16 lands and routinely *casting*
Living Deaths and Spirit of the Night. I really
liked his deck.
As we played each other with our pet decks, he
commented that I should figure out a way to marry
Green and Black, playing on each colors' strengths
to offset the others' weaknesses-- black to offset
creature removal problems, and green to handle
enchantments, artifacts and such, and to churn
out the fat. I did not see that it would work
until Exodus came out.
And Recurring Nightmare leaped out at me. It seemed
a perfect match for Verdant beatdown, as Verdant
could usually produce at least one token to sac to
bring himself back with Nightmare if your opponant
found a way to deal with the Force. What a great
card! It wasn't until a little later that I realized
it's strength as being immune to disenchant.
So I built Secret Force with black splashed in it
for Nightmares. Survival of the Fittest gradually
replaced the Natural Orders and Lures of Prey as
it became apparent that throwing the Force to the
graveyard for Recurring was more practical. It
was at this point that I realized how good
Survival was as a "reverse thawing" effect.
I experimented with different black cards to
try and take advantage of the graveyard. At
some point I threw in 2 Oath of Ghouls I had
picked up cheap from someone, and once I had
one in play, I was floored by the card
advantage it gave me.
DDT was born.
Around this time, the Kastle deck was all
the rage on the net, and some of the people
at the shop starting comparing my deck to it.
I was determined to differentiate mine by
focusing on Oath of Ghouls as the backbone,
rather than Living Death. For one thing,
there was still plenty of blue counter decks
running around my shop and Living Death was
just too darn easy to counter. On the other
hand, Sligh and black weenie were also
popular with fast attacks and creature control.
Oath of Ghouls seemed to be the perfect answer
to both problems; cheap to cast, a bargain to
use (free!) and usually easy to make sure you're
the only one benefitting. While Oath of Ghouls
didn't provide the game swinging effect that
a successful Living Death can, it can gradually
provide amazing card advantage that can survive
the rush decks as well as keep on the pressure
for counterdecks. And, at least initially,
no one seemed to view the Oath as that big of
a threat card to waste counters or disenchants
on ;)
About that time I undertook the Guerilla Tech
experiment, trying to kick start .strategy
into talking about strategy again. I thought
that throwing my new creation into the public
domain would help its development and be
a great way to kick off G-Tech. Both proved
true and helped feed each other's success.
G-Tech helped with DDT's fine tuning. Kastle-
like elements like 187s, Fallen Angel, and
Living Death creeped in. What was really
interesting about this type of deck, however,
was how easy it was to adapt it to your own
play environment. People took the basic DDT
"engine" (Survival + Oath of Ghouls, with
Recurring Nightmares as backup) and tweaked
it to their own preferences. And though I
didn't see many tournament reports where
people were winning with DDT, it seemed
popular enough on .strategy as well as
people who'd send me emails asking for
deck listings and strategy tips.
Everybody who played it, almost to a person,
lauded the deck as fun to play, as well as
winning more often than losing.
And that's what a deck *should* be. It's
a deck I'm proud to have my name attached
to. And I've really enjoyed all the help
and suggestions given towards developing
the deck, and enjoyed all the feedback
from the folks who've played it.
Thanks everybody!
Bennie Smith
Guerilla Tech Mage
P.S. To head off any newcomers who'll
ask "What does DDT stand for?"
------Dancing Dead Things
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Talvin69
In article <6vedl0$ek1$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, bens...@series2000.com writes:
Bennie! :)
>
>In article <19981005160125...@ngol08.aol.com>,
> talv...@aol.comREMOVE (Talvin69) wrote:
>> ok, as nice of a guy as Bennie is, I'm getting sick of people who don't
>know
>> better canonizing him for his development of DDT, which they view as the
>> pre-cursor to the Survival/Recur/Death decks which performed extremely well
>at
>> worlds.
>
>Yeah, I found it interesting after DDT hit the net, people
>starting referring to other Living Death decks as DDT, when
>DDT was considerably different, relying much more on Oath of
>Ghouls than Living Death or Recurring Nightmare. I think
>most folks just looked at the decks' similarities and
>figured they were all variants on the same deck without
>really looking at the differences. I didn't bother
>to correct anybody back then because I didn't want to
>seem petty splitting hairs. Anyone who truly cares
>about playing the decks will know the difference.
getting angry but this was finally the straw that broke may back. I liked your
deck because you were trying to use OoG which was a neat thing back then. And
you created this whole G-Tech thing which lets me find half of the worthwhile
posts without looking :-) As for poeple knowing the difference i keep seeing
people from usenet refer to any Recur/Survival deck as DDT and it just isn't
true. Admittedly if i didn't know Darwin i probably wouldn't care as much
about him gettin credit.
>
>> The basic timeline is - 5/98 Darwin Kastle builds 5cKastle a 5 color green
>base
>> living death deck with intuitions, fallen angel, maro, death, wall of draw,
>and
>> peaches. A half dozen people play it in New England regionals, with 3
>making
>> top 8.
>>
>> About the Same time team Clean in So. Cal. develops a similar deck entitles
>> "Peaches" which they clean up the southwest regionals with.
>>
>> In the meat grinder at nationals Darwin qualifies using basically the same
>deck
>> he used at regionals, losing intuitions and other stuff for Survival of the
>> Fittest and Hermit druids.
>>
>> Also in the MEat Grinders David Williams plays Recurring Nightmare/Survival
>> with no deaths, but nekretaals, wall of blossoms and other 187s.
>
>Yup, most definitely DDT benefited from these precursor
>excursions into graveyard tech. I'll say all day that the
>Kastle deck was instrumental to fleshing out DDT to a
>more competitive deck.
>Then, Jamie sent me a decklisting of Secret Force...
>and I fell in love with Verdant Force. I just loved
>getting that fat bastard into play turn 3 and applying
>the fat loving. It was great... until people started
>stacking the Perishes in their sideboard again. Ouch!
>
>Around the same time, Pat, a friend of mine who is
>one of the owners of the game shop I play in, was
>working on a mono-black Living Death deck that used
>Buried Alives to prime the graveyard. The deck
>was revolutionary in my mind by it's use of "reverse
>thawing," or, using less lands in the deck due to
>the increase in land percentage latter in the game
>after casting one or two Buried Alives. At one point
>he was running 16 lands and routinely *casting*
>Living Deaths and Spirit of the Night. I really
>liked his deck.
Basically he was playing a 14 variaiton? (god, anyone remember that deck? I
don't think it ever won, not aorund here at least)
Yeah, the Oaths were a really cool variation, also since at this time people
had yet to begin using force spike in Draw/Go (a few surfaced at the Euro
Championships, however, they only used 2 or so, Buehler's deck at world's is
what brought Force Spike back to the environmnet in a big way) so the oath was
uncounterable if you went firts
>
>About that time I undertook the Guerilla Tech
>experiment, trying to kick start .strategy
>into talking about strategy again. I thought
>that throwing my new creation into the public
>domain would help its development and be
>a great way to kick off G-Tech. Both proved
>true and helped feed each other's success.
G-Tech rules :)
>
>G-Tech helped with DDT's fine tuning. Kastle-
>like elements like 187s, Fallen Angel, and
>Living Death creeped in. What was really
>interesting about this type of deck, however,
>was how easy it was to adapt it to your own
>play environment. People took the basic DDT
>"engine" (Survival + Oath of Ghouls, with
>Recurring Nightmares as backup) and tweaked
>it to their own preferences. And though I
>didn't see many tournament reports where
>people were winning with DDT, it seemed
>popular enough on .strategy as well as
>people who'd send me emails asking for
>deck listings and strategy tips.
In general Recur/Survival is a very fun deck to play but incredibly annoying to
play against and incredibly boring to play on apprentice either with or
against.
>
>Everybody who played it, almost to a person,
>lauded the deck as fun to play, as well as
>winning more often than losing.
heh, see above :X
>
>And that's what a deck *should* be. It's
>a deck I'm proud to have my name attached
>to. And I've really enjoyed all the help
>and suggestions given towards developing
>the deck, and enjoyed all the feedback
>from the folks who've played it.
>
>Thanks everybody!
>
>Bennie Smith
>Guerilla Tech Mage
Thank you very much for fleshing out my article Bennie. You filled the NG in
on the vagaries I either missed, or just plain couldn't remember, from all the
discussion a few months back
>
>P.S. To head off any newcomers who'll
>ask "What does DDT stand for?"
>------Dancing Dead Things
>
>-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
>http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
>
>
Jamie
For those interested - this is the second version Bennie sent me.
There's nothing in this email offensive or confidential - so I doubt bennie
will mind me posting it to the group.
This was sent to me on July sixth.
This is the period when Bennie was making a Black Green version that keyed
off of Secret Force, but he wanted to save it from dying after natural order
left the block. Hence - recuring nightmare.
Begin Bennie Smith Note -
+++++++++++++++++++++
Did some more playtesting with Natural Death, this
time with Living Deaths actually *in* the deck.
Another adjustment was running 4 basic swamps
in it, and I added 3 Harrows to get them. Works
like a charm, the only thing it seems to have problems
with is control decks-- absolutely destroys most
other creature-based decks, though I haven't yet
faced a heavy bouncey deck with it.
What's kinda cool is the Harrows and Survival of
the Fittest have a real nice "thinning" effect on the
deck. One time I *had* to top-deck a Living
Death to not die, and there it was. Whoo-hoo!
Here's how it looks right now:
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Wall of Blossoms
4 Spike Feeder
4 Uktabi Orangutan
4 Verdant Force
4 Recurring Nightmare
3 Creeping Mold
3 Harrow
2 Natural Order
2 Survival of the Fittest
2 Living Death
4 Swamp
3 Pine Barrens
17 Forest
+++++++++++++
end bennie smith note. -
later
Jamie c. Wakefield
King of the fatties
bens...@series2000.com
"Jamie" <the...@sover.net> wrote:
>
>
> For those interested - this is the second version Bennie sent me.
>
> There's nothing in this email offensive or confidential - so I doubt bennie
> will mind me posting it to the group.
Nope. Not at all ;)
>
> This was sent to me on July sixth.
>
> This is the period when Bennie was making a Black Green version that keyed
> off of Secret Force, but he wanted to save it from dying after natural order
> left the block. Hence - recuring nightmare.
>
> Begin Bennie Smith Note -
>
> +++++++++++++++++++++
> Did some more playtesting with Natural Death, this
Natural Death!! Ha ha, I had forgotten I
had called it that. Thanks for the trip
down memory lane, Jamie!
Bennie Smith
Guerilla Tech Mage
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------