So in a discussion with a friend about the various sort of players involved in this here past time of ours, I was trying to refer to an article or blog post I've read some time back about how a Magic player evolves. It was centered loosely around a player's understanding of the background mechanics - from starting in aggro and the frustration that people normally have with Control and Land Destruction when they're pitted against it for the first time, to later on getting a more and more refined understanding of the "clock" that determines the pacing of the game.
It was a good, insightful article that helped me figure out some of my own theories and approaches. And I absolutely cannot, for the life of me, remember the author, the title, whether it was a site article or blog post or forum entry, or even relevant and unique key terms to Google it with!
I'm hoping the collective memory of MTGS'll prove better than my own and help me track it down. Please?
not to sound offensive to anyone but, i have a mentally disabled cousin who recently stopped playing yu-gi-oh and gotten into magic. he is quite good, but only because he has the best of the best cards provided to him thanks to his immense supply of cha-ching. He is impossible to bluff because he isnt even aware that i am. i might as well be playing a computer with really good cards
And no offense to you in turn, but why would you even bother bluffing him if he's mentally disabled? Bluffing is itself a meta-tactic based on how well-developed your theory of mind of your opponent is, and where you think his logical blind spots might be.
You're probably playing suboptimally - or with a suboptimal deck - if you're trying to bluff him out. Not to mention that "mentally disabled" is a generalized phrase for a wide spectrum of cognitive disfunctions - many of which don't actually make you bad at Magic.
All the talk's been about Standard so far. Which is fine. Standard's where cards tend to see their most play anyhow.
But imagine this guy in Modern and Legacy (forget about Extended - unless they're doing a severe retweaking, which'll negatively impact Modern, the format might as well be dead). Storm decks get one more piece of redundancy, control decks get a vital pressure card (and a way to +4 their counter suite)... aggro kinda loses out, but only by absence.
Better get a four-of. Snapcaster's going to have an interesting impact.
...it comes out a turn earlier than Phyrexian Arena, can be splashed with ease, and can be used to push in damage as needed. It is uniquely versatile in the two-mana slot.
Why is this even slightly controversial?
Also, LOLOLOLOL at blocking Confidant with a Memnite. Bob only attacks when Bob feels like it. Bob's digging up some artifact hate just for you, though.
...if you really think that a game between Scott-Vargas and Chapin would be almost entirely determined by luck, then you haven't actually paid attention to their relative capabilities.
You also lack an explanation for why the top-tier pros have such consistent placements in major tournaments too. Not to mention the luck nullification that is inherent in a best-of-three, multi-round Swiss system combined with a best-of-five elimination system further combined with the lenient in-game mechanics of mulliganing, card maximums, turn order decisions, etc.
Is there a stochastic element to the game? Well, yes. Part of the game's appeal is its non-deterministic sequences and outcomes. But you're a damn fool if you think that the skill ceiling is so low that a roll of the dice can just as accurately predict a GP/PT outcome as anything else. A damn fool, and empirically provable to be wrong.
Now, if your claim was merely "the game gets more random once you're past the breakers," then you might have some valid points to make. Because it would be quite true. Especially back in Nationals, where a CawBlade vs CawBlade matchup was nearly inevitable, a missed land drop can trump foresight and clarity of play, even in a best-out-of-five matchup. (edit: though, even then, note that Preordain and Ponder's greatest advantage in a Caw v Caw match can be said to explicitly be to neutralize any potential mana issues through the crucial midgame. [further edits: if I recall LSV's assessment correctly, the true skill in CawBlade is in how much foresight you have when playing Preordain - do you shove the land back under the deck for the immediate play? Or store up for a later engagement? THAT requires a measure of risk assessment that's two parts instinct, one part wild guessing, and ten parts forward thinking.])
But for the tournament as a whole? For any large tournament? Oh, you'll see a split between the nameless grinders and the actual contenders. It'll be a certain looseness of play on part of the former, and a certain amount of foresight on part of the latter. It'll be how far ahead you can calculate the match's progress, how accurate your summation of the metagame was, how intricately you pieced together your deck, and how familiar you are with the various fringe interactions that can sustain just that little bit of marginal advantage in your favor.
MTG not a game for intellectuals? Heh. Please. If you actually believe this, you've clearly forgotten what it was like to have an objective, outsider's perspective of it - or haven't had the opportunity to teach it to somebody new to the game. That bewilderment on their face? It's from being told to climb a daunting mountain of complexities and nuances from the phases and steps of play alone, much less handling the Stack. Just because familiarity has bred contempt in you doesn't mean that the game doesn't have an objectively steep learning curve - and is challenging, even to pros, to keep track of all of the nuances and possibilities that can arise even between two aggro decks.
And if you think there aren't some natural talents in the game, then you didn't pay attention to Philly either. Three years not taking the game seriously, and Finkel grabs 15th place, just because he wanted to do his grandpa proud. And in '08, coming out of a four-year retirement to win Kuala Lumpur. You think luck accounts for this? You think luck accounts for his ungodly record from '98 to '04?
It's not that Dismember makes creatures bad. It's that playing a creature that requires you to build the deck around him while Dismember is around... is bad.
Masticore requires a very specific build to optimize, making him the weak point in any strategy. In an environment with so many high-quality killspells, it is better to think modular, not integrated.
I like the common simply for being an elegant little vanilla that fully reflects the dominance death has over the plane of Innistrad. This is the face of wildlife upon its lands - dead, corrupt, rotten, and everywhere.
Eurgh. I can't say I like it. It's too subpar as a plain old creature to be worked around in Constructed - OR Limited. You're all assuming that a 4/2 for 4 with its huge blob of text isn't going to be blocked each and every time. You REALLY need to work to muscle this card into the red.
Is the reward high? Maybe. But that two toughness really makes it hard to play.
But it isn't a color bleed for a rather strong aggro piece. It's an effect that has always been shared in some form or variant by red and its allied colors - hell, let's tack it from that angle: because Black and Green both have pump spells, with Black edging towards conditional or costlier pumps, we can claim that growing damage over time, in general, has always been a red-hued effect by virtue of where the colors are explicitly related.
Yes, I realize that white also "pumps," but it tends to be creature-reliant multiplicative effects, where other creatures "aid" other creatures, rather than an effects-based "selfish" effect. Green has examples of both, Red tends to only pump itself (unless it's Goblins, but Goblins, by flavor, are a synergistic all-in tribe, and don't last very long to universal -x/-x effects), and Black sacrifices others for similar. That, at least, has been fairly steadfast throughout the history of the game.
*Edited my post above with a more detailed explanation.*
Black "vampirism" is "when a creature dies, if it was dealt damage by this this turn, put a +1/+1 counter on this". OR it's lifelink. This effect feels red because red has dealt with +1/+1 counters to a limited extent before, and encourages attacking (which, incidentally, seems to be shifting into blue's pie, if you remember the siren a couple core sets back.) But it's no more red than the scaab is blue. In fact, it's arguably less red. And for a color pair as indistinct as RG, it really can't afford to bleed or they will lose all distinction whatsoever!
The overall vampire effect is to trade "life" for "power." Wizards' used variants outside of strictly creature-for-pump.
And are we really bickering about color pies in a post-Ravnica, post-Alara world? There Has Been Drift. In fact, there has been SERIOUS drift from even when I started playing, and Mirrodn v1.0 was not that long ago in the grand scheme of things.
The game changes, and you adapt accordingly. Now Red gets permanent bonuses for being hyperaggressive. Play more Wraths.
Lucky REALLY doesn't go far enough to explain why the same names appear over and over in GP and PT top 8s. Don't forget that the Swiss rounds and multiple games per round are there to very explicitly dampen out the role that luck plays in doing well during competitive Magic.
The fact is, Scott-Vargas, Budde, Finkel, et al will occasionally play - and win - with aggro because they feel that the deckbuilding synergies and board influence available only to aggro decks trumps the card-by-card skirmishes of control. And because there isn't a combo deck in that current metagame that outraces the aggro clock.
If you want to play at even a tenth of their level, don't specialize. Play aggro, play control, play combo. Get consistent results with all three. Then you understand better what makes the opponent's deck tick - and how to make it stop ticking.
It's not a green OR red ability. It's a black ability - vampirism.
The reason why it's in red is because they've shifted the bloodthirsty, feral vampire archetype to the color, as opposed to the more insidious and collected black vampire, and needs something to reflect this. The fact that it encourages that you attack every turn - a VERY red meta-effect - is a nice bonus to the flavor.
Blazes are almost never run in RDW. Not even Blazes with flashback.
I would LIKE there to be another RDW - I have a playset of Gameday Stormblood Berserkers that are hoping for another day in the ring - but Berserkers and Nobles, alone, don't make for a great deck. The loss of Lightning Bolt hurts. The loss of Goblin Guide hurts a LOT. The loss of fetchlands for Grim Lavamancer, Searing Blaze, etc etc... well, Zendikar was very, very kind to the red mage.
We need to see what Innistrad brings - in FULL - and even then we might have to wait as far as Dark Ascension to truly have an idea as to whether or not RDW is viable.
Now, midrange U/R aggro...
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It was a good, insightful article that helped me figure out some of my own theories and approaches. And I absolutely cannot, for the life of me, remember the author, the title, whether it was a site article or blog post or forum entry, or even relevant and unique key terms to Google it with!
I'm hoping the collective memory of MTGS'll prove better than my own and help me track it down. Please?
Was kinda awesome.
And no offense to you in turn, but why would you even bother bluffing him if he's mentally disabled? Bluffing is itself a meta-tactic based on how well-developed your theory of mind of your opponent is, and where you think his logical blind spots might be.
You're probably playing suboptimally - or with a suboptimal deck - if you're trying to bluff him out. Not to mention that "mentally disabled" is a generalized phrase for a wide spectrum of cognitive disfunctions - many of which don't actually make you bad at Magic.
But imagine this guy in Modern and Legacy (forget about Extended - unless they're doing a severe retweaking, which'll negatively impact Modern, the format might as well be dead). Storm decks get one more piece of redundancy, control decks get a vital pressure card (and a way to +4 their counter suite)... aggro kinda loses out, but only by absence.
Better get a four-of. Snapcaster's going to have an interesting impact.
Why is this even slightly controversial?
Also, LOLOLOLOL at blocking Confidant with a Memnite. Bob only attacks when Bob feels like it. Bob's digging up some artifact hate just for you, though.
...if you really think that a game between Scott-Vargas and Chapin would be almost entirely determined by luck, then you haven't actually paid attention to their relative capabilities.
You also lack an explanation for why the top-tier pros have such consistent placements in major tournaments too. Not to mention the luck nullification that is inherent in a best-of-three, multi-round Swiss system combined with a best-of-five elimination system further combined with the lenient in-game mechanics of mulliganing, card maximums, turn order decisions, etc.
Is there a stochastic element to the game? Well, yes. Part of the game's appeal is its non-deterministic sequences and outcomes. But you're a damn fool if you think that the skill ceiling is so low that a roll of the dice can just as accurately predict a GP/PT outcome as anything else. A damn fool, and empirically provable to be wrong.
Now, if your claim was merely "the game gets more random once you're past the breakers," then you might have some valid points to make. Because it would be quite true. Especially back in Nationals, where a CawBlade vs CawBlade matchup was nearly inevitable, a missed land drop can trump foresight and clarity of play, even in a best-out-of-five matchup. (edit: though, even then, note that Preordain and Ponder's greatest advantage in a Caw v Caw match can be said to explicitly be to neutralize any potential mana issues through the crucial midgame. [further edits: if I recall LSV's assessment correctly, the true skill in CawBlade is in how much foresight you have when playing Preordain - do you shove the land back under the deck for the immediate play? Or store up for a later engagement? THAT requires a measure of risk assessment that's two parts instinct, one part wild guessing, and ten parts forward thinking.])
But for the tournament as a whole? For any large tournament? Oh, you'll see a split between the nameless grinders and the actual contenders. It'll be a certain looseness of play on part of the former, and a certain amount of foresight on part of the latter. It'll be how far ahead you can calculate the match's progress, how accurate your summation of the metagame was, how intricately you pieced together your deck, and how familiar you are with the various fringe interactions that can sustain just that little bit of marginal advantage in your favor.
MTG not a game for intellectuals? Heh. Please. If you actually believe this, you've clearly forgotten what it was like to have an objective, outsider's perspective of it - or haven't had the opportunity to teach it to somebody new to the game. That bewilderment on their face? It's from being told to climb a daunting mountain of complexities and nuances from the phases and steps of play alone, much less handling the Stack. Just because familiarity has bred contempt in you doesn't mean that the game doesn't have an objectively steep learning curve - and is challenging, even to pros, to keep track of all of the nuances and possibilities that can arise even between two aggro decks.
And if you think there aren't some natural talents in the game, then you didn't pay attention to Philly either. Three years not taking the game seriously, and Finkel grabs 15th place, just because he wanted to do his grandpa proud. And in '08, coming out of a four-year retirement to win Kuala Lumpur. You think luck accounts for this? You think luck accounts for his ungodly record from '98 to '04?
You haven't seen him play.
Masticore requires a very specific build to optimize, making him the weak point in any strategy. In an environment with so many high-quality killspells, it is better to think modular, not integrated.
Basically, sideboard material for R/x decks, assuming a metagame with at least one major deck that spits out a lot of creatures at once.
Looking at you, Tempered Steel.
Is the reward high? Maybe. But that two toughness really makes it hard to play.
Yes, I realize that white also "pumps," but it tends to be creature-reliant multiplicative effects, where other creatures "aid" other creatures, rather than an effects-based "selfish" effect. Green has examples of both, Red tends to only pump itself (unless it's Goblins, but Goblins, by flavor, are a synergistic all-in tribe, and don't last very long to universal -x/-x effects), and Black sacrifices others for similar. That, at least, has been fairly steadfast throughout the history of the game.
That is not always true.
The overall vampire effect is to trade "life" for "power." Wizards' used variants outside of strictly creature-for-pump.
And are we really bickering about color pies in a post-Ravnica, post-Alara world? There Has Been Drift. In fact, there has been SERIOUS drift from even when I started playing, and Mirrodn v1.0 was not that long ago in the grand scheme of things.
The game changes, and you adapt accordingly. Now Red gets permanent bonuses for being hyperaggressive. Play more Wraths.
The fact is, Scott-Vargas, Budde, Finkel, et al will occasionally play - and win - with aggro because they feel that the deckbuilding synergies and board influence available only to aggro decks trumps the card-by-card skirmishes of control. And because there isn't a combo deck in that current metagame that outraces the aggro clock.
If you want to play at even a tenth of their level, don't specialize. Play aggro, play control, play combo. Get consistent results with all three. Then you understand better what makes the opponent's deck tick - and how to make it stop ticking.
The reason why it's in red is because they've shifted the bloodthirsty, feral vampire archetype to the color, as opposed to the more insidious and collected black vampire, and needs something to reflect this. The fact that it encourages that you attack every turn - a VERY red meta-effect - is a nice bonus to the flavor.
I would LIKE there to be another RDW - I have a playset of Gameday Stormblood Berserkers that are hoping for another day in the ring - but Berserkers and Nobles, alone, don't make for a great deck. The loss of Lightning Bolt hurts. The loss of Goblin Guide hurts a LOT. The loss of fetchlands for Grim Lavamancer, Searing Blaze, etc etc... well, Zendikar was very, very kind to the red mage.
We need to see what Innistrad brings - in FULL - and even then we might have to wait as far as Dark Ascension to truly have an idea as to whether or not RDW is viable.
Now, midrange U/R aggro...