I have seen a huge increase of players organizing their lands in the front of all other permanents (see Paulo). This seems to be happening on camera (PTDGM and SCG) and in my local shop. I know they do this to put their opponents on tilt and it works. I have to spend more time trying to analyze my opponents board state since it's a layout I don't see often.
I remember PV saying in an article once that the reason he plays his lands on top are because that's just the way he's always played. He's not trying to mess with his opponents, and I imagine most people who do it aren't trying to either.
Change the mulligan rule, at least for limited. Losing a card each time is too high of a cost, and many players have gotten so used to it they don't care anymore, when they should.
I always take cards worth more than $5 no matter what my deck looks like. It just makes no sense to pass money cards when you're playing to win prizes of no more than 7-8 packs for 1st place. If you expect people to pass cards worth $10 or more because they're not in those colors, you're kidding yourself.
Perhaps, it did not, in your mind, but, it certainly did, in my mind.
Indeed it seems that the above sentence would be more readable, and even more correctly written, with no commas at all.
This reminds me of the SATs, where in the reading section of the test they would have you choose the most correctly written version of a sentence, and usually the more wordy ones or the ones with more commas were the wrong answers.
That's why you shouldn't narrate. One of my pet peeves is a player who deems it necessary to explain every card they play, like I'm a new player. If your opponent doesn't know what a card does, they should either ask you if they can read it, ask you what it does, or they don't care (their loss). If you weren't actually trying to confuse him by saying "soulbond haste", and you really weren't soulbonding the two, then you were doing something unnecessary.
That said, you didn't do anything against the rules and he didn't deserve for you to give him the win.
At my LGS, we do 6 rounds of Swiss and no top 8. Do you know how bad it sucks not to have top 8? If I make it in at 5-1, I can still win 1st place. Instead, I get 5th place because there are 2 other 5-1s and 2 5-0-1s. In a top 8, even a 4-2 can possibly make it in and win the whole thing. Do you feel that he shouldn't have a chance because he's 4-2?
We don't do top 8 because the Swiss ends at 12:30 am, so I can't really argue, considering I don't want to be there till 3. I wish there was more time, somehow.
My argument is not for just skipping the top 8, but instead playing more swiss rounds in place of it. You'd get your shot at 1st in either case. I'm curious if your LGS played "enough" rounds for the number of players you had.
What about the guy who won 1st in your tournament? Would he have liked a top 8 playoff? What if that was you? Also, how many times have you just barely missed the top 8? The dreaded 9th place? Wouldn't you like a shot to get back into the top 8 prizes? Someone who is 4-2 after 6 rounds can potentially win the tournament with 3 more swiss rounds too.
If time constraints and player fatigue are the only reasons everything has a top 8 playoff, then that's fine, if it's a 1-day event. But it's not like it would never be feasible, and top 8's aren't always that much faster than 3 swiss rounds would be.
Here's what you do. Write to WotC and tell them you want more rounds of swiss, no top 8 playoffs and see what they say and/or do.
But I wouldn't hold my breath.
Personally, I think it's a bad idea and would hate the change if they ever made it.
Thankfully, I'm pretty sure I can bet my life savings that they never will do away with the playoff system even if someday it might get modified.
I'm not in any way going to push for it and I know many players wouldn't like it (at least not at first). I will just believe straight swiss is a better way until someone can convince me that top 8 playoffs are the best way to run a magic tournament for the purposes of a tournament (determining who is the best player or who played best that day). I also just wanted to get some other opinions on it.
So you're just going to ignore all the other reasons. Okay. Whatever.
Didn't mean to ignore you. It is similar to sports, but playoffs are exciting to spectators and are money-makers. Also, there are a lot more games played in sports, like baseball with 162 games in the regular season. Having so many games means a spot in the playoffs is much more "deserved". In Magic if you lose 1 match legitimately and 1 match to mana screw, you have to pray your tiebreaks are good and you might not make the top 8 even if you played better than some who did.
I just feel that more swiss rounds gives more of a chance for the good players to rise back up in the standings while giving the players who got lucky or aren't as good a chance to go back down, thus making the final tournament results more skill-based.
Also, adding a few rounds of swiss would force those out of the running to play meaningless games. The ones would couldn't make the top 8, or had no chance of finishing with the best record, would simply drop out anyway leaving only the top 8 playing or not many more than.
And if they don't drop, it just makes an already long day that much longer.
The final rounds aren't meaningless if it means winning your last few matches wins you more money. If you're in say, 14th place with 3 rounds left, wouldn't you play the last few rounds to try and win one of the bigger prizes, like say, the top 8? Even someone around 80th place would probably want to keep playing to get some top 64 money. The aim would not be the making the top 8 cut, but rather to place as highly as possible.
Because if you end up starting the tournament by an unlucky game and go 0-1, you can fight your way back into the Top X, then in the Top X keep on winning and show you deserve the crown. In your proposal, anyone who gets a fluke loss is immediately eliminated for everything and might as well drop.
The only way 1 early loss would eliminate you from contention for 1st is if someone goes X-0 all the way through the tournament, beating you in the late stages of the tournament in the process.
It works both ways anyway. I know people hate losing their "win-and-in" round, the last round of the swiss, to miss out on top 8. But if the rest of the tournament were swiss, someone who is 7-2 and in 9th place after 9 rounds can conceivably go 3-0 in the final 3 rounds and get 2nd place, and nobody would think they didn't deserve it.
I've never seen or heard this questioned by anyone. Why does every competitive tournament have to have a top 8 playoff? Why can't they just add 2-3 more swiss rounds (or whatever # of rounds are needed to determine a clear winner)? Is it just because of tradition, or is there some other reason?
In my opinion, top 8's are a little worse at determining who performed best at a given tournament than adding a few more swiss rounds would be. I'm sure LSV would've liked it that way at PT San Diego in 2010.
Forgive me if the reason is very obvious and I'm just super dumb, and thanks in advance for your answers.
I almost always take cards worth about $3 or more in IRL drafts. I also take cards I can sell for $1 or more over cards that will only marginally help me win the draft, like a sideboard card or redundant creature. I would pass something like angel of jubilation (about $2) when I'm not in white, in favor of something worthless but good that I can play, like death wind. I like to challenge myself to maximize my value by rare drafting and winning the draft. It makes the draft more fun for me if I do win.
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I remember PV saying in an article once that the reason he plays his lands on top are because that's just the way he's always played. He's not trying to mess with his opponents, and I imagine most people who do it aren't trying to either.
Indeed it seems that the above sentence would be more readable, and even more correctly written, with no commas at all.
This reminds me of the SATs, where in the reading section of the test they would have you choose the most correctly written version of a sentence, and usually the more wordy ones or the ones with more commas were the wrong answers.
That said, you didn't do anything against the rules and he didn't deserve for you to give him the win.
My argument is not for just skipping the top 8, but instead playing more swiss rounds in place of it. You'd get your shot at 1st in either case. I'm curious if your LGS played "enough" rounds for the number of players you had.
What about the guy who won 1st in your tournament? Would he have liked a top 8 playoff? What if that was you? Also, how many times have you just barely missed the top 8? The dreaded 9th place? Wouldn't you like a shot to get back into the top 8 prizes? Someone who is 4-2 after 6 rounds can potentially win the tournament with 3 more swiss rounds too.
If time constraints and player fatigue are the only reasons everything has a top 8 playoff, then that's fine, if it's a 1-day event. But it's not like it would never be feasible, and top 8's aren't always that much faster than 3 swiss rounds would be.
I'm not in any way going to push for it and I know many players wouldn't like it (at least not at first). I will just believe straight swiss is a better way until someone can convince me that top 8 playoffs are the best way to run a magic tournament for the purposes of a tournament (determining who is the best player or who played best that day). I also just wanted to get some other opinions on it.
Didn't mean to ignore you. It is similar to sports, but playoffs are exciting to spectators and are money-makers. Also, there are a lot more games played in sports, like baseball with 162 games in the regular season. Having so many games means a spot in the playoffs is much more "deserved". In Magic if you lose 1 match legitimately and 1 match to mana screw, you have to pray your tiebreaks are good and you might not make the top 8 even if you played better than some who did.
I just feel that more swiss rounds gives more of a chance for the good players to rise back up in the standings while giving the players who got lucky or aren't as good a chance to go back down, thus making the final tournament results more skill-based.
The final rounds aren't meaningless if it means winning your last few matches wins you more money. If you're in say, 14th place with 3 rounds left, wouldn't you play the last few rounds to try and win one of the bigger prizes, like say, the top 8? Even someone around 80th place would probably want to keep playing to get some top 64 money. The aim would not be the making the top 8 cut, but rather to place as highly as possible.
The only way 1 early loss would eliminate you from contention for 1st is if someone goes X-0 all the way through the tournament, beating you in the late stages of the tournament in the process.
It works both ways anyway. I know people hate losing their "win-and-in" round, the last round of the swiss, to miss out on top 8. But if the rest of the tournament were swiss, someone who is 7-2 and in 9th place after 9 rounds can conceivably go 3-0 in the final 3 rounds and get 2nd place, and nobody would think they didn't deserve it.
I've never seen or heard this questioned by anyone. Why does every competitive tournament have to have a top 8 playoff? Why can't they just add 2-3 more swiss rounds (or whatever # of rounds are needed to determine a clear winner)? Is it just because of tradition, or is there some other reason?
In my opinion, top 8's are a little worse at determining who performed best at a given tournament than adding a few more swiss rounds would be. I'm sure LSV would've liked it that way at PT San Diego in 2010.
Forgive me if the reason is very obvious and I'm just super dumb, and thanks in advance for your answers.