There's a massive difference between play style and unreliable deck building. Building a crazy mana base without a pile of dual and tri-lands is not a play style, it's a lack of understanding of how a mana base should be built so that your deck doesn't beat you regularly. That sort of mana base shouldn't work out, but luck is involved and it worked out in 2 out of 3 games against me -- that's my gripe. I'm the unlucky guy who was on the losing end of my opponent's combo of greedy deck design and good luck. I beat him in a laugher in game 2 when his mana fell apart.
I have to remind myself that I might beat him 7 out of 10 matches, but we only get to play one.
And yes, at this point in the history of Magic, considering the resources freely available, someone building some greedy, horrible mana base is not really trying to be good. They're basically goofing around. That's fine, they're entitled to it, but putting in the effort to hone strategy is supposed to pay off.
To be fair, putting in the effort to hone strategy does pay off. The slow up trend moving from, say, a 59% win rate to a 62% win rate is easily masked by match-to-match noise.
I have to remind myself that I might beat him 7 out of 10 matches, but we only get to play one.
And yes, at this point in the history of Magic, considering the resources freely available, someone building some greedy, horrible mana base is not really trying to be good. They're basically goofing around. That's fine, they're entitled to it, but putting in the effort to hone strategy is supposed to pay off.
You just said it yourself. Your deck will win 7 out of 10 matches. So your "putting in the effort to hone strategy" does pay off. It just doesn't win you every match, nor should it.
Ugh, just played a Zendikar flashback draft and the jerk played Hedron Crab on turn 1 then and 3x Harrow and 2x Treasure Hunt. Getting milled sucks. Getting milled by a guy who played an 0/2 and an 0/4 sucks way worse.
Hey, what is bad with mill? It was a completely valid strategy, either the Crab and landfall, or multiple Halimar Excavator and Allies later in the block.
Heck, I won a good number of games in GTC drafts on the back on Dimir/Simic decks with multiple Paranoid Delusions and Grisly Spectacles....because nobody expected that.
It is just an alternative way of winning, just like drafting infect in Scars Limited. Does losing to infect suck?
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You just said it yourself. Your deck will win 7 out of 10 matches. So your "putting in the effort to hone strategy" does pay off. It just doesn't win you every match, nor should it.
Aaaand that's why we vent? When we wind up on the wrong side of luck.
Ugh, just played a Zendikar flashback draft and the jerk played Hedron Crab on turn 1 then and 3x Harrow and 2x Treasure Hunt. Getting milled sucks. Getting milled by a guy who played an 0/2 and an 0/4 sucks way worse.
Hey, what is bad with mill? It was a completely valid strategy, either the Crab and landfall, or multiple Halimar Excavator and Allies later in the block.
Heck, I won a good number of games in GTC drafts on the back on Dimir/Simic decks with multiple Paranoid Delusions and Grisly Spectacles....because nobody expected that.
It is just an alternative way of winning, just like drafting infect in Scars Limited. Does losing to infect suck?
I like mill. Both of my EDH decks are based around mill. It sucks getting milled.
I hate dragonscale general... go away stop beating me. it dunked me at the pre release and then I single handedly kicked my arse tonight. Comes down before there is the removal to kill it.
I have to remind myself that I might beat him 7 out of 10 matches, but we only get to play one.
And yes, at this point in the history of Magic, considering the resources freely available, someone building some greedy, horrible mana base is not really trying to be good. They're basically goofing around. That's fine, they're entitled to it, but putting in the effort to hone strategy is supposed to pay off.
I think a big part of the issue with playing online is that it becomes essentially impossible to determine if your opponents are good or bad at the game. Postmortem discussion is more or less discouraged, and people are able to draft so often that both A. They can attain a level of competency, and B. You'll catch them in drafts that "got away" much more often.
Personally -- and I suspect for most people -- losing to someone who's clearly much better than I am at the game doesn't feel anywhere near as bad as losing to someone who isn't very good, or worse: someone who thinks they're very good, but plays sub-optimally or don't understand certain concepts or etc. I've never felt especially aggrieved (with a few exceptions) in real life play not only because it's much harder to get seriously angry at a real human person over nonsense than a screen, but because it's much easier to determine the general skill level of my opponents.
This becomes especially true when you play against somebody who clearly knows what they're doing, but has a greedy manabase, or is running the all-in dopey aggro deck on 15 lands, or is scraping by on not enough playables. In person, if your opponent with one of these decks is playing well, or you happen to know that they tend to draft well because you've seen them in the LCS before, I know that I tend to assume much more often that this player is making the best of a draft gone awry, or they're trying something out, or they've decided that sacrificing consistency for power was their best route in this event given the circumstances. However, online, without the obvious benefit of the doubt, it becomes much easier (and much more likely, I would imagine, but still) to simply lump all these players into the same Bad Drafter category. Thus, the need for a Venting thread at all!
Excellent points. It would be fascinating to have some sort of system where you could guess your opponent's rating after the match and compare that to reality. I feel like I can peg the bad players and the experts most of the time (with the area in between being a lot murkier) but who knows.
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. It's pretty easy to guess when an opponent is very good or very bad, and to adjust your expectations accordingly -- you're unlikely to beat the very good player or lose to the very bad player without extremely lucky or unlucky circumstances, so losing in both cases is less brutal. It's that murky middle section -- which, [in]conveniently, is where a lot of the Levine trench players fall -- that accounts for so much frustration.
Excellent points. It would be fascinating to have some sort of system where you could guess your opponent's rating after the match and compare that to reality. I feel like I can peg the bad players and the experts most of the time (with the area in between being a lot murkier) but who knows.
Well online you can. You just check your rating before and after a match.
This is the very essence of being a good sport. At the end of the Superbowl, did you see the Seahawks players shouting at the Patriots players "THE ODDS OF THAT PASS BEING INTERCEPTED WERE INCREDIBLY SMALL, WE'RE REALLY THE BETTER TEAM!" No, because sportsmanship.
There are pretty obvious differences. For one thing, everyone who walks into a Superbowl game is a clear winner regardless of the outcome. They got paid to play there, rather than paying to play. They can console themselves with their massive paychecks and fame. Can a guy who spent $13 (yes, it's a small amount of money) and opened nothing of value during drafting console himself with anything of the sort if he loses due to luck and walks away empty handed as a result?
1) Huh, interesting to see Phyrre argue my perspective (about bad luck/feeling lousy not excusing being a sore loser).
2) Jermo, with that position I question if you've ever played any sport in any kind of competitive setting ever? How it feels when you lose has nothing to do with how much money you make. These are highly competitive people who love the game and dedicated countless thousands of hours of their lives practicing to hone a skill and try to improve their game. The amount of time and effort put in (plus media & fans) puts a lot of pressure on winning, regardless of the paycheque. I wouldn't so easily dismiss the frustration and disparagement they feel after a tough loss, as though it's somehow minor compared to your gut-wrenching emotional trauma of losing a card game online. Just because they take it with grace and smile at the cameras, showing composure and strength, doesn't make their loss any less hard to take. On the contrary, it should serve as an example of how to act like a mature adult and lose with grace.
3) It looks like this thread has amassed a fair bit of negativity. IMO that validates my original concern. But if people are finding the venting helpful, so be it.
Lost my win-and-in at GP Liverpool to a guy hitting his lone secret plans on turn two games two and three. Not particularly shocking but I could so easily have made it.
Excellent points. It would be fascinating to have some sort of system where you could guess your opponent's rating after the match and compare that to reality. I feel like I can peg the bad players and the experts most of the time (with the area in between being a lot murkier) but who knows.
Go to http://www.mtgontario.com/calculator.php and type in your before rating and your guess, and see if the after is close to what actually happened. Whenever I bother checking I'm accurate, but I only check like 20% of the time.
Citadel Siege is a blowout whenever it hits the field, but that's not my venting story.
My opponent is at 3 and I'm at 7. He has a Citadel Siege, two face-down morphs, and a 2/3 Alabaster Kirin. My board consists of a Mardu Ascendancy and a Kheru Bloodsucker. He pumps his Kirin to a 4/5 and alpha-strikes. I cast Take Up Arms and block the two morphs with two tokens and go down to 3. On my turn I draw a land to add to the two in my hand and scoop.
The venting comes when I realize I could have won that game. He alpha-strikes, I play the Take Up Arms, and block with 1 token and go down to 1. On my turn, draw the land, sac the Ascendancy to make my tokens 1/4 and pay 2B twice to sac the two remaining tokens and kill him.
You could say that I made the right play with the information I had available since he could have flipped up the unblocked morph to reveal something with 1 additional power. I was dead on his next combat step anyway so I should've taken the risk and let one go through. I find out after the game that his two morphs are Monastery Flocks. Hindsight is 20/20.
TheArchitect, do you actually think you misplayed? (i'm actually not sure; i'm wondering about this). is it likely that you could have drawn a card to help you win before your opponent's next (lethal) combat step? that is, topdecking something to help you win on the spot sounds more likely than a morph you let through not killing you (ie it only having 0-2 power)?
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Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul "no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
TheArchitect, do you actually think you misplayed? (i'm actually not sure; i'm wondering about this). is it likely that you could have drawn a card to help you win before your opponent's next (lethal) combat step? that is, topdecking something to help you win on the spot sounds more likely than a morph you let through not killing you (ie it only having 0-2 power)?
If your opponent is winning the long game (and Citadel Seige and Alabaster Kirin indicates that they are) then you should 'play to win', which means trying to end the game in a short time. If I had seen the 'double drain' play I would have gone for it. The question is, is the probability that your opponent's unblocked morph has a power greater then two, vs the probability you would draw something to win on your next turn? How many outs did you have?
Note that 'playing to win' is the opposite of how you (I) normally want to play, which is 'playing not to lose'.
TheArchitect, do you actually think you misplayed? (i'm actually not sure; i'm wondering about this). is it likely that you could have drawn a card to help you win before your opponent's next (lethal) combat step? that is, topdecking something to help you win on the spot sounds more likely than a morph you let through not killing you (ie it only having 0-2 power)?
I had a few outs left in the deck: Crater's Claws, Mardu Heart-Piercer, and Ankle Shanker. I don't think I misplayed (I did end up drawing a land), but I definitely had an opportunity to win the game with cards I had on the field without having to rely on the draw.
The venting comes when I realize I could have won that game. He alpha-strikes, I play the Take Up Arms, and block with 1 token and go down to 1. On my turn, draw the land, sac the Ascendancy to make my tokens 1/4 and pay 2B twice to sac the two remaining tokens and kill him.
In fact you still could have won after that blocking decision, by attacking with the Bloodsucker to get a Goblin token from the Ascendancy.
wow, i didn't even see that. that's a lot of non-commons with lots of extra abilities and interaction. i imagine it takes a lot of experience to see these things when under pressure.
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Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul "no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
I just lost round one of a draft to turn 1 Warden of the First Tree two games in a row. His deck had literally 0 other cards that I had anything to worry about. I failed to draw an answer to him both games.
Aggressively picked jeskai life-gain lands, ends up being stuck on 2 blue mana while having 4 blue-white lands in the deck, 2 blue-red lands as well. Literally drew my only two islands in the deck.
Aggressively picked jeskai life-gain lands, ends up being stuck on 2 blue mana while having 4 blue-white lands in the deck, 2 blue-red lands as well. Literally drew my only two islands in the deck.
Eh.
What was your master plan to win with just 2 lands (of any color combination)...?
Aggressively picked jeskai life-gain lands, ends up being stuck on 2 blue mana while having 4 blue-white lands in the deck, 2 blue-red lands as well. Literally drew my only two islands in the deck.
Eh.
What was your master plan to win with just 2 lands (of any color combination)...?
It was a really good Jeskai deck but with all the fixing I needed for blue in general ( i was "splashing" blue, basically).
So getting mana screwed on two lands, of the exact same color, and not even any of the 6 color fixing lands i got was disgusting.
I think that Phyrre56 was saying "you deserved to lose because you kept a 2 lander". But he'll have to confirm that.
If you were splashing Blue, why did you need 8 sources?! If 6 Blue dual-lands aren't getting you there, that's not a splash. That's a main color. And then why did you keep the 2 Island hand if it had no action and you only had your splash color? And then one step further -- we all get mana screwed sometimes, and I really doubt if you missed several land drops ("stuck" on 2 Islands) that it would have been much better had you started with Tranquil Cove and Swiftwater Cliffs. You'd still just get overwhelmed by the mana screw instead of the color screw so why do you only seem upset about the latter?
I'm NOT saying you deserved to lose. I'm just struggling to understand what exactly happened.
To be fair, putting in the effort to hone strategy does pay off. The slow up trend moving from, say, a 59% win rate to a 62% win rate is easily masked by match-to-match noise.
You just said it yourself. Your deck will win 7 out of 10 matches. So your "putting in the effort to hone strategy" does pay off. It just doesn't win you every match, nor should it.
Hey, what is bad with mill? It was a completely valid strategy, either the Crab and landfall, or multiple Halimar Excavator and Allies later in the block.
Heck, I won a good number of games in GTC drafts on the back on Dimir/Simic decks with multiple Paranoid Delusions and Grisly Spectacles....because nobody expected that.
It is just an alternative way of winning, just like drafting infect in Scars Limited. Does losing to infect suck?
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
Aaaand that's why we vent? When we wind up on the wrong side of luck.
I like mill. Both of my EDH decks are based around mill. It sucks getting milled.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
I think a big part of the issue with playing online is that it becomes essentially impossible to determine if your opponents are good or bad at the game. Postmortem discussion is more or less discouraged, and people are able to draft so often that both A. They can attain a level of competency, and B. You'll catch them in drafts that "got away" much more often.
Personally -- and I suspect for most people -- losing to someone who's clearly much better than I am at the game doesn't feel anywhere near as bad as losing to someone who isn't very good, or worse: someone who thinks they're very good, but plays sub-optimally or don't understand certain concepts or etc. I've never felt especially aggrieved (with a few exceptions) in real life play not only because it's much harder to get seriously angry at a real human person over nonsense than a screen, but because it's much easier to determine the general skill level of my opponents.
This becomes especially true when you play against somebody who clearly knows what they're doing, but has a greedy manabase, or is running the all-in dopey aggro deck on 15 lands, or is scraping by on not enough playables. In person, if your opponent with one of these decks is playing well, or you happen to know that they tend to draft well because you've seen them in the LCS before, I know that I tend to assume much more often that this player is making the best of a draft gone awry, or they're trying something out, or they've decided that sacrificing consistency for power was their best route in this event given the circumstances. However, online, without the obvious benefit of the doubt, it becomes much easier (and much more likely, I would imagine, but still) to simply lump all these players into the same Bad Drafter category. Thus, the need for a Venting thread at all!
Well online you can. You just check your rating before and after a match.
1) Huh, interesting to see Phyrre argue my perspective (about bad luck/feeling lousy not excusing being a sore loser).
2) Jermo, with that position I question if you've ever played any sport in any kind of competitive setting ever? How it feels when you lose has nothing to do with how much money you make. These are highly competitive people who love the game and dedicated countless thousands of hours of their lives practicing to hone a skill and try to improve their game. The amount of time and effort put in (plus media & fans) puts a lot of pressure on winning, regardless of the paycheque. I wouldn't so easily dismiss the frustration and disparagement they feel after a tough loss, as though it's somehow minor compared to your gut-wrenching emotional trauma of losing a card game online. Just because they take it with grace and smile at the cameras, showing composure and strength, doesn't make their loss any less hard to take. On the contrary, it should serve as an example of how to act like a mature adult and lose with grace.
3) It looks like this thread has amassed a fair bit of negativity. IMO that validates my original concern. But if people are finding the venting helpful, so be it.
Bummer man.
Go to http://www.mtgontario.com/calculator.php and type in your before rating and your guess, and see if the after is close to what actually happened. Whenever I bother checking I'm accurate, but I only check like 20% of the time.
My opponent is at 3 and I'm at 7. He has a Citadel Siege, two face-down morphs, and a 2/3 Alabaster Kirin. My board consists of a Mardu Ascendancy and a Kheru Bloodsucker. He pumps his Kirin to a 4/5 and alpha-strikes. I cast Take Up Arms and block the two morphs with two tokens and go down to 3. On my turn I draw a land to add to the two in my hand and scoop.
The venting comes when I realize I could have won that game. He alpha-strikes, I play the Take Up Arms, and block with 1 token and go down to 1. On my turn, draw the land, sac the Ascendancy to make my tokens 1/4 and pay 2B twice to sac the two remaining tokens and kill him.
You could say that I made the right play with the information I had available since he could have flipped up the unblocked morph to reveal something with 1 additional power. I was dead on his next combat step anyway so I should've taken the risk and let one go through. I find out after the game that his two morphs are Monastery Flocks. Hindsight is 20/20.
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-Decks-
Commander:
GWR Rith, the Awakener RWG
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Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul
"no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin
He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
If your opponent is winning the long game (and Citadel Seige and Alabaster Kirin indicates that they are) then you should 'play to win', which means trying to end the game in a short time. If I had seen the 'double drain' play I would have gone for it. The question is, is the probability that your opponent's unblocked morph has a power greater then two, vs the probability you would draw something to win on your next turn? How many outs did you have?
Note that 'playing to win' is the opposite of how you (I) normally want to play, which is 'playing not to lose'.
I had a few outs left in the deck: Crater's Claws, Mardu Heart-Piercer, and Ankle Shanker. I don't think I misplayed (I did end up drawing a land), but I definitely had an opportunity to win the game with cards I had on the field without having to rely on the draw.
Signature courtesy of Rivenor and Miraculous Recovery
EDH Altered Cards by Galspanic (Seriously, this guy's awesome.)
My Pauper Cube
Tapped-Out Simulator
My Trade Thread
-Decks-
Commander:
GWR Rith, the Awakener RWG
U Kami of the Crescent Moon U (Flagship Deck)
BW Teysa, Orzhov Scion WB
Under Construction:
UBR Crosis, the Purger RBU
Cube:
WUBRGX Pauper XGRBUW
In fact you still could have won after that blocking decision, by attacking with the Bloodsucker to get a Goblin token from the Ascendancy.
Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul
"no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin
He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
Eh.
What was your master plan to win with just 2 lands (of any color combination)...?
It was a really good Jeskai deck but with all the fixing I needed for blue in general ( i was "splashing" blue, basically).
So getting mana screwed on two lands, of the exact same color, and not even any of the 6 color fixing lands i got was disgusting.
I think that Phyrre56 was saying "you deserved to lose because you kept a 2 lander". But he'll have to confirm that.
If you were splashing Blue, why did you need 8 sources?! If 6 Blue dual-lands aren't getting you there, that's not a splash. That's a main color. And then why did you keep the 2 Island hand if it had no action and you only had your splash color? And then one step further -- we all get mana screwed sometimes, and I really doubt if you missed several land drops ("stuck" on 2 Islands) that it would have been much better had you started with Tranquil Cove and Swiftwater Cliffs. You'd still just get overwhelmed by the mana screw instead of the color screw so why do you only seem upset about the latter?
I'm NOT saying you deserved to lose. I'm just struggling to understand what exactly happened.