Doesn't answer the question. All this sort of attitude does is put a derogatory name for people who dislike certain aspects of a game. It doesn't actually explain why they find those things unfun.
That's why people don't tend to like playing against these kinds of cards. They don't find them fun. There seems to be something about them that is generally less enjoyable than other strategies.
People will rage all the time on MTGO. EDH: Turn 1 Duress and before resolution, they would respond "No Thanks" and concede..... Or after 2-3 counters, would just be like "way to play magic" or something like that....
A lot people have this self entitlement that they can play whatever they want, whenever they want, with absolutely no consequences or worries. It's not like I'm going to sit there while you assemble your combo or beat me down with favourite fatties. I'm not trying to come off sounding rude, but it's true. You cast a creature or anything, there is a good chance it will never go through or die somehow. In D&D your character dies, in chess in you lose the queen, and in monopoly you get screwed over by the banker, just deal with it.
For these players it's perfectly fine to regurgitate their hand in the first few turns and have lethal before you even get a change to play anything. Oh good, I could play a game while I boil a pot of water for my Kraft Dinner. They also just assume you magically have a T4 wrath that is going to turn the game completely around in your favour, like Day of Judgment has the added effect of "X player loses the game." Once you start countering, wrathing, removal their stuff it suddenly becomes this passive aggressive nonsense, "hey, I'm here to actually play magic."
Some people just want to smash their dump trucks together in the sandbox. For a subset of those people, the dump trucks are creatures. For others, the dump trucks are Force of Will, Daze, Spell Pierce, and REB.
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These days, some wizards are finding they have a little too much deck left at the end of their $$$.
MTG finance guy- follow me on Twitter@RichArschmann or RichardArschmann on Reddit
I like to play pox and even when I play at a legacy tournament, I have had people annoyed or even a few times mad. What you don't like having one land and no hand and a enchantment called Nether Void in play. That's what my deck does.
My friend that I play the most with gets upset with removal. He runs Gruul monsters in Standard. I run Jund. Well...Jund has removal, so I'm going to use it. Yes I just Bile Blighted your BTE's. No I'm not sorry. If I didn't, they would just start punching me in the face.
If you are going to run aggro, include more aggro spells than your opponent has removal. If you're not doing that then don't complain about it.
Its because there just not very fun to play against they're uninteractive and make it so you can't play a very interesting game of magic, but I still love to play them.
These things are the very definition of interactive; what they're doing interacts with what you're doing.
It's one-sided "interactive"; you get to interact with them while they sit there and watch you play with both your deck and their deck.
Good games of Magic feel interactive on both sides of the table; both you and your opponent are able to make meaningful strategic choices. If a player's only choice is "Do I cast a spell and watch it get countered, or should I just sit here instead?", it's not going to be a fun game, no matter how "interactive" the other player feels it is.
An emblem that reads "0: Counter target spell" is also interactive, but no one's going to argue that leads to a fun game.
It's important to remember that good games of Magic involve both players feeling like they're able to meaningfully operate during the game. Lots of Control advocates dismiss other players as "whiners", but try to put yourself in their shoes. I'm not saying you can't play Control, or that you shouldn't play Control; I'm saying that you have to understand the reality that locking a player out of the game while you whittle them down with a 3/2 flyer over seven turns just isn't going to strike your opponents as a good time, even if they did get to cast seven kill spells that got countered in the meantime.
That is a good guide. I have read it a few times.
That could certainly be the reason. Self-imposed rules about what is fun and what is not even though the "unfun" part is still fine and meant to be a part of the game.
I don't believe "Hey, I don't feel that games I'm literally unable to play are fun" is a self-imposed rule. That's victim-blaming. It's totally possible for a strategy to be inherently too strong and dominate. From the article itself, they point out that if throwing endlessly was the best way to win, everyone would be doing it - and they're right - but no self-respecting game programmer would work to preserve gameplay that amounts to "Only throw, ever".
Similarly, from the article, they rightly point out that tournament players have strategies and counterstrategies that exist in flux - but that's how the game is designed. Fully-powered Draw-Go is simply too inherently strong to be a part of the game. Even Aggro-Control strategies like Delver or Caw-Go are a little outside of the normal flux. Remember, Caw-Go Control was so strong it took over tournament Magic and nearly killed Standard - it was the equivalent to a fighting game where the only worthwhile move is throwing, and there's no counter-strategy to it.
Think about the uproar from Control players when Cavern of Souls was spoiled; was it that people couldn't believe that Wizards would break their "self-imposed rule" about counterspells always being able to function, or that they could recognize that the anti-counter strategy was too strong?
Control can exist in the game, but Control decks that cast nothing but counterspells and bounce spells, while presenting no threat that the opponent can attempt to nullify until it's too late, just can't be a part of the Standard game, and no amount of calling people "scrubs" is going to change that. You're arguing with a fundamental rule of game design.
That's an excellent article (and though it was written about fighting games, it does translate over to MtG very well), but I always took issue with one assumption of the article - that all players involved are playing for the same reason. Most players who play semi-seriously consider anything to be fair game. But not everyone plays to win at any cost - some people play to have fun, try new things, mess around, win with style. Whatever. They tend to have ideas about what's "cheap" and should be allowed. Unlike Sirlin, I don't think this is wrong at all. It's not an attitude you bring to tournaments, but nobody should tell you that the way you play your game is "wrong".
The problem is when two people with different ideas of what's "fair" play. If one person thinks everything is fair, and another thinks discard or counter is cheap, there's gonna have to be some sort of meeting of the minds there, or you're gonna have a bad time.
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Whiny creature heavy scrub players that can't see past their own world are annoying for sure. That shivan dragon is cool and everything but you gotta pack answers to your opponent trying to oppress you dude. It's your fault for being unable to outsmart the control player and sneak a threat past them. Just as bad though, are spoiled control players that can't see past their own world and dismiss creature based decks as brainlessly turning cards sideways. It's your fault that you can't give your opponent combat decisions to consider when their uncounterable hexproof creatures hit the field because the only opposition you have for them are your win cons or your snapcaster mages.
Its because there just not very fun to play against they're uninteractive and make it so you can't play a very interesting game of magic, but I still love to play them.
These things are the very definition of interactive; what they're doing interacts with what you're doing.
It's one-sided "interactive"; you get to interact with them while they sit there and watch you play with both your deck and their deck.
Good games of Magic feel interactive on both sides of the table; both you and your opponent are able to make meaningful strategic choices. If a player's only choice is "Do I cast a spell and watch it get countered, or should I just sit here instead?", it's not going to be a fun game, no matter how "interactive" the other player feels it is.
An emblem that reads "0: Counter target spell" is also interactive, but no one's going to argue that leads to a fun game.
It's important to remember that good games of Magic involve both players feeling like they're able to meaningfully operate during the game. Lots of Control advocates dismiss other players as "whiners", but try to put yourself in their shoes. I'm not saying you can't play Control, or that you shouldn't play Control; I'm saying that you have to understand the reality that locking a player out of the game while you whittle them down with a 3/2 flyer over seven turns just isn't going to strike your opponents as a good time, even if they did get to cast seven kill spells that got countered in the meantime.
The question is: WHO has the responsibility to interact? All decks want to minimize the effect of the other deck while pushing through their own strategy. Yes, counters/discard do this by preventing their opponents from resolving key spells. However, let's not pretend that control decks are the only guilty party. Combo decks attempt to make their opponents cards not matter by going off before other decks can win with their own plan. Aggro decks try to outspeed the other decks by dropping threats before they can gain control of the game. Midrange decks attempt to invalidate weaker creatures in other decks.
Yes, counterspells and discard DO attempt to stop other decks from functioning as normal. However, let's not just blindly pretend that players playing creature decks are eagerly encouraging their opponents to execute their strategies exactly as planned.
The problem is that people think that creature on creature matchups should be the norm. Why? WHY do creatures bashing against each other have to be the norm? There are MANY strategies in mtg, but the stereotypical discard/counterspell hater does not accept that. Unlike any other "type" of player who acknowledges various other types of decks, they believe that THEIR strategy is how magic should work. The funny part is that those creature based decks traditionally have a GOOD matchup against control based strategies.
This deck is special to be honest.
Of course, as on older player, I am used to discard, counter magic and removal. Eternal formats are my formats of choice and prison archetypes are my passion (Mulfatto Workshop, Lands etc). I get bored when formats degenerate into creature smash fests. Usually what keeps players out of older formats aside from cost is the idea that the gameplay is too abrupt.
Personally, I like the interactions from creature combat, burn and pump spells. Draw Go just sounds like the most boring deck in the history of anything: how do I bluff you into loosing a creature to an unexpected necrobite or trick you into exploding from a Runeflare Trap + drawtrigger combo if you've got one threat in your deck and I can't play things?
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Personally, I like the interactions from creature combat, burn and pump spells. Draw Go just sounds like the most boring deck in the history of anything: how do I bluff you into loosing a creature to an unexpected necrobite or trick you into exploding from a Runeflare Trap + drawtrigger combo if you've got one threat in your deck and I can't play things?
I like this post. This is a really good view from the creature side.
If I were on the other side of the spectrum I'd say Hackworth is not playing smart magic because he's not interacting with my disruption spells with his disruption spells he's "just mindlessly turning his creatures sideways". I would not be seeing things from his point of view because I would be approaching this with a closed mind and a totally contrasting deck.
Because people think that "Responding to your actions" means "Preventing you from playing the game" they don't want you to really do much, just sit there, so they can have fun.
STATISTICS.
All of these "Let's eliminate bad cards" crusades are simply ignorant. And when they start to devolve into "WotC is conspiring to give us crappy cards," they just become embarrassing. MATH is conspiring to give you crappy cards.
Because a lot of players are just bad and don't know how to play against control or prison style decks and instead of learning to become better they whine and Wizards, sadly, caters to them.
No strategy is unbeatable, but people are too lazy to learn how to play against different match ups. I really do not understand why people get so pissy about a spell countering their creature when removal does the same thing, yet most are fine with that.
Because those people dont actually want to play Magic. They want to play some other simpler game that only involves creatures fighting each other.
Interesting. I always thought that draw-go players would be happier playing Solitaire than magic: they want to make sure their opponent is unable to play anything at all, rendering them unimportant to the game.
Editing in...
I like the Sirlin article, but in that series, he specifically makes the distinction that playing to WIN is a narrow focus. It's doing only what gives you the best chance to win, not playing for enjoyment or to experiment. While I advocate playing to win in tournaments, the "play to win" mentality isn't any fun to play, and it isn't fun to play against. It comes down to what you want out of a game. If you're sitting at the kitchen table, annihilating all comers with a dedicated Legacy deck that wins T0 every time, your playgroup isn't having fun. When playtesting, when playing in tournaments, play to win. When playing casual, "playing to win" (as Sirlin defined it) results in less fun and enjoyment for everyone involved.
As for those specific strategies? They're unfun to play against because, as I mentioned above, they eliminate the other player. Threat-light decks that are packed with disruption are meant to remove options from the other player, leaving them with no meaningful choices. It cuts them out of the game, and people play because they enjoy playing, not sitting there and deciding which meaningless land drop they're going to put down while they wait for the inevitable. People don't like this style of play being called "uninteractive," but there's no other word that describes a game where one person has all their choices stripped away and sits, unable to do anything meaningful.
Cards are game pieces, and should be treated as such, easily replaceable.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
Because those people dont actually want to play Magic. They want to play some other simpler game that only involves creatures fighting each other.
Interesting. I always thought that draw-go players would be happier playing Solitaire than magic: they want to make sure their opponent is unable to play anything at all, rendering them unimportant to the game.
Editing in...
I like the Sirlin article, but in that series, he specifically makes the distinction that playing to WIN is a narrow focus. It's doing only what gives you the best chance to win, not playing for enjoyment or to experiment. While I advocate playing to win in tournaments, the "play to win" mentality isn't any fun to play, and it isn't fun to play against. It comes down to what you want out of a game. If you're sitting at the kitchen table, annihilating all comers with a dedicated Legacy deck that wins T0 every time, your playgroup isn't having fun. When playtesting, when playing in tournaments, play to win. When playing casual, "playing to win" (as Sirlin defined it) results in less fun and enjoyment for everyone involved.
As for those specific strategies? They're unfun to play against because, as I mentioned above, they eliminate the other player. Threat-light decks that are packed with disruption are meant to remove options from the other player, leaving them with no meaningful choices. It cuts them out of the game, and people play because they enjoy playing, not sitting there and deciding which meaningless land drop they're going to put down while they wait for the inevitable. People don't like this style of play being called "uninteractive," but there's no other word that describes a game where one person has all their choices stripped away and sits, unable to do anything meaningful.
No, control players don't want to solitaire, their decks don't function that way. What they want, is for you to pack answers of your own.
Edit: There's this misconception among people that dislike control, that they have no options to deal with the answers control has. This is completely false, and it doesn't mean that you have to play control as well, you can go with a balance between the two, or play such a threat density that they cannot stop you. To want the other player to do nothing to stop you, is simply childish.
STATISTICS.
All of these "Let's eliminate bad cards" crusades are simply ignorant. And when they start to devolve into "WotC is conspiring to give us crappy cards," they just become embarrassing. MATH is conspiring to give you crappy cards.
No, control players don't want to solitaire, their decks don't function that way. What they want, is for you to pack answers of your own.
Control decks WANT you to pack answers? I remember a huge outcry over a certain land that let you answer counter-heavy decks....
What control decks want is to find their wincon, and at the same time invalidate any threats and answers the opponent might have. They want to play their deck and prevent the opponent from playing theirs.
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Cards are game pieces, and should be treated as such, easily replaceable.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
I like the Sirlin article, but in that series, he specifically makes the distinction that playing to WIN is a narrow focus. It's doing only what gives you the best chance to win, not playing for enjoyment or to experiment. While I advocate playing to win in tournaments, the "play to win" mentality isn't any fun to play, and it isn't fun to play against. It comes down to what you want out of a game. If you're sitting at the kitchen table, annihilating all comers with a dedicated Legacy deck that wins T0 every time, your playgroup isn't having fun. When playtesting, when playing in tournaments, play to win. When playing casual, "playing to win" (as Sirlin defined it) results in less fun and enjoyment for everyone involved.
Even a cursory read of the article will reveal that this is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of what sirlin is saying.
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"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
People like to be able to play the game if everything you play is countered and every good card is stripped from your hand and the carrds you do get out are killed you dont really get to do much and some people probably everyone would find this very much to be boring
"There are also those who play games for something known as “fun.” That subject will not be covered here. I believe there is a great deal more of this “fun” to be had while playing to win than while only playing casually, but there is no use in entering that debate now. This “fun” is a subjective thing, hard to pin down, but winning is not. That’s what we have on our side: winning is clear and absolute. When you are playing to win, you have a perfectly clear goal and an objective measure of your progress. Is the master chef really the best in his field? Who can say without bias? The situation is different for the competitive gamer: either he can consistently defeat all of his opponents—or he cannot."
Sirlin makes it clear early on that he is talking about competitive, often cutthroat play, and that having fun, or other people having fun, simply isn't a factor in what his guide was meant to do: teach people what it takes to win in a competitive environment. It's a great guide, but the focus is explicitly on winning in a competitive, zero-sum game. Tournament magic fits the criteria, but casual, kitchen-table magic isn't the place to apply the guide unless you're playing exclusively with like-minded individuals.
Then again, if this is the style you and your opponents prefer, by all means do it. There's a lot to be said for games where you and your opponent both know that you're playing serious, tournament-quality decks and are both trying to win. just remember that not everyone enjoys that, or enjoys every game being that.
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Cards are game pieces, and should be treated as such, easily replaceable.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
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That's why people don't tend to like playing against these kinds of cards. They don't find them fun. There seems to be something about them that is generally less enjoyable than other strategies.
Look at my massive 7 mana spell that I finally got to play. 2 mana removal, 3 mana counter, please put it in the graveyard NOW!!!
It's just not a good balance and it makes removal/counter overpowered.
It seems to me like Wizards wants to push people towards mythic rare planeswalkers for their win cons.
If Doom Blade gets reprinted I'm going to play Bx decks for a whole year
But that is the thing. If those cards didnt exist every one would be playing Green Ramp decks because more mana=more powerful spells.
That's what sweepers like Drown in Sorrow and Anger of the Gods are for. Kill those dorks.
There is only going to be one good removal spell and that will be Hero's Downfall. Cards like Gild will be the next tier.
They will still give blue counters but at 3 mana they aren't really that scary. Syncopate is really strong and needs to go.
I buy HP and Damaged cards!
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For these players it's perfectly fine to regurgitate their hand in the first few turns and have lethal before you even get a change to play anything. Oh good, I could play a game while I boil a pot of water for my Kraft Dinner. They also just assume you magically have a T4 wrath that is going to turn the game completely around in your favour, like Day of Judgment has the added effect of "X player loses the game." Once you start countering, wrathing, removal their stuff it suddenly becomes this passive aggressive nonsense, "hey, I'm here to actually play magic."
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If you are going to run aggro, include more aggro spells than your opponent has removal. If you're not doing that then don't complain about it.
It's one-sided "interactive"; you get to interact with them while they sit there and watch you play with both your deck and their deck.
Good games of Magic feel interactive on both sides of the table; both you and your opponent are able to make meaningful strategic choices. If a player's only choice is "Do I cast a spell and watch it get countered, or should I just sit here instead?", it's not going to be a fun game, no matter how "interactive" the other player feels it is.
An emblem that reads "0: Counter target spell" is also interactive, but no one's going to argue that leads to a fun game.
It's important to remember that good games of Magic involve both players feeling like they're able to meaningfully operate during the game. Lots of Control advocates dismiss other players as "whiners", but try to put yourself in their shoes. I'm not saying you can't play Control, or that you shouldn't play Control; I'm saying that you have to understand the reality that locking a player out of the game while you whittle them down with a 3/2 flyer over seven turns just isn't going to strike your opponents as a good time, even if they did get to cast seven kill spells that got countered in the meantime.
I don't believe "Hey, I don't feel that games I'm literally unable to play are fun" is a self-imposed rule. That's victim-blaming. It's totally possible for a strategy to be inherently too strong and dominate. From the article itself, they point out that if throwing endlessly was the best way to win, everyone would be doing it - and they're right - but no self-respecting game programmer would work to preserve gameplay that amounts to "Only throw, ever".
Similarly, from the article, they rightly point out that tournament players have strategies and counterstrategies that exist in flux - but that's how the game is designed. Fully-powered Draw-Go is simply too inherently strong to be a part of the game. Even Aggro-Control strategies like Delver or Caw-Go are a little outside of the normal flux. Remember, Caw-Go Control was so strong it took over tournament Magic and nearly killed Standard - it was the equivalent to a fighting game where the only worthwhile move is throwing, and there's no counter-strategy to it.
Think about the uproar from Control players when Cavern of Souls was spoiled; was it that people couldn't believe that Wizards would break their "self-imposed rule" about counterspells always being able to function, or that they could recognize that the anti-counter strategy was too strong?
Control can exist in the game, but Control decks that cast nothing but counterspells and bounce spells, while presenting no threat that the opponent can attempt to nullify until it's too late, just can't be a part of the Standard game, and no amount of calling people "scrubs" is going to change that. You're arguing with a fundamental rule of game design.
That's an excellent article (and though it was written about fighting games, it does translate over to MtG very well), but I always took issue with one assumption of the article - that all players involved are playing for the same reason. Most players who play semi-seriously consider anything to be fair game. But not everyone plays to win at any cost - some people play to have fun, try new things, mess around, win with style. Whatever. They tend to have ideas about what's "cheap" and should be allowed. Unlike Sirlin, I don't think this is wrong at all. It's not an attitude you bring to tournaments, but nobody should tell you that the way you play your game is "wrong".
The problem is when two people with different ideas of what's "fair" play. If one person thinks everything is fair, and another thinks discard or counter is cheap, there's gonna have to be some sort of meeting of the minds there, or you're gonna have a bad time.
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The question is: WHO has the responsibility to interact? All decks want to minimize the effect of the other deck while pushing through their own strategy. Yes, counters/discard do this by preventing their opponents from resolving key spells. However, let's not pretend that control decks are the only guilty party. Combo decks attempt to make their opponents cards not matter by going off before other decks can win with their own plan. Aggro decks try to outspeed the other decks by dropping threats before they can gain control of the game. Midrange decks attempt to invalidate weaker creatures in other decks.
Yes, counterspells and discard DO attempt to stop other decks from functioning as normal. However, let's not just blindly pretend that players playing creature decks are eagerly encouraging their opponents to execute their strategies exactly as planned.
The problem is that people think that creature on creature matchups should be the norm. Why? WHY do creatures bashing against each other have to be the norm? There are MANY strategies in mtg, but the stereotypical discard/counterspell hater does not accept that. Unlike any other "type" of player who acknowledges various other types of decks, they believe that THEIR strategy is how magic should work. The funny part is that those creature based decks traditionally have a GOOD matchup against control based strategies.
CMU Draw-Go back in Mirage-5th-Tempest Standard got pretty close to being able to counter every spell.
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This deck is special to be honest.
Of course, as on older player, I am used to discard, counter magic and removal. Eternal formats are my formats of choice and prison archetypes are my passion (Mulfatto Workshop, Lands etc). I get bored when formats degenerate into creature smash fests. Usually what keeps players out of older formats aside from cost is the idea that the gameplay is too abrupt.
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I like this post. This is a really good view from the creature side.
If I were on the other side of the spectrum I'd say Hackworth is not playing smart magic because he's not interacting with my disruption spells with his disruption spells he's "just mindlessly turning his creatures sideways". I would not be seeing things from his point of view because I would be approaching this with a closed mind and a totally contrasting deck.
No strategy is unbeatable, but people are too lazy to learn how to play against different match ups. I really do not understand why people get so pissy about a spell countering their creature when removal does the same thing, yet most are fine with that.
Interesting. I always thought that draw-go players would be happier playing Solitaire than magic: they want to make sure their opponent is unable to play anything at all, rendering them unimportant to the game.
Editing in...
I like the Sirlin article, but in that series, he specifically makes the distinction that playing to WIN is a narrow focus. It's doing only what gives you the best chance to win, not playing for enjoyment or to experiment. While I advocate playing to win in tournaments, the "play to win" mentality isn't any fun to play, and it isn't fun to play against. It comes down to what you want out of a game. If you're sitting at the kitchen table, annihilating all comers with a dedicated Legacy deck that wins T0 every time, your playgroup isn't having fun. When playtesting, when playing in tournaments, play to win. When playing casual, "playing to win" (as Sirlin defined it) results in less fun and enjoyment for everyone involved.
As for those specific strategies? They're unfun to play against because, as I mentioned above, they eliminate the other player. Threat-light decks that are packed with disruption are meant to remove options from the other player, leaving them with no meaningful choices. It cuts them out of the game, and people play because they enjoy playing, not sitting there and deciding which meaningless land drop they're going to put down while they wait for the inevitable. People don't like this style of play being called "uninteractive," but there's no other word that describes a game where one person has all their choices stripped away and sits, unable to do anything meaningful.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
No, control players don't want to solitaire, their decks don't function that way. What they want, is for you to pack answers of your own.
Edit: There's this misconception among people that dislike control, that they have no options to deal with the answers control has. This is completely false, and it doesn't mean that you have to play control as well, you can go with a balance between the two, or play such a threat density that they cannot stop you. To want the other player to do nothing to stop you, is simply childish.
Control decks WANT you to pack answers? I remember a huge outcry over a certain land that let you answer counter-heavy decks....
What control decks want is to find their wincon, and at the same time invalidate any threats and answers the opponent might have. They want to play their deck and prevent the opponent from playing theirs.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
Even a cursory read of the article will reveal that this is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of what sirlin is saying.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
BWTeysa, Orzhov Scion Combo
GUEzuri, Claw of progress Morph
GUBSidisi, Brood tyrant
RWGisela, Blade of Goldnight Random red white cards i dont use.dec
GBLoam Pox
Modern
UBFaeries
GBWGoyfless Abzan
On Squirrels
On Risen Executioner
I've read the entire thing. Several times, and not just the one article on scrubs. Check out the REST of what he says, starting with http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/love-of-the-game-not-playing-to-win.html
From the beginner's Guide (Chapter 2):
"There are also those who play games for something known as “fun.” That subject will not be covered here. I believe there is a great deal more of this “fun” to be had while playing to win than while only playing casually, but there is no use in entering that debate now. This “fun” is a subjective thing, hard to pin down, but winning is not. That’s what we have on our side: winning is clear and absolute. When you are playing to win, you have a perfectly clear goal and an objective measure of your progress. Is the master chef really the best in his field? Who can say without bias? The situation is different for the competitive gamer: either he can consistently defeat all of his opponents—or he cannot."
Sirlin makes it clear early on that he is talking about competitive, often cutthroat play, and that having fun, or other people having fun, simply isn't a factor in what his guide was meant to do: teach people what it takes to win in a competitive environment. It's a great guide, but the focus is explicitly on winning in a competitive, zero-sum game. Tournament magic fits the criteria, but casual, kitchen-table magic isn't the place to apply the guide unless you're playing exclusively with like-minded individuals.
Then again, if this is the style you and your opponents prefer, by all means do it. There's a lot to be said for games where you and your opponent both know that you're playing serious, tournament-quality decks and are both trying to win. just remember that not everyone enjoys that, or enjoys every game being that.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.