The Coiling Oracle is absolutely going to get whacked by any creature removal, but you've already gotten the benefit by that point.
A more traditional UG aggro build could throw in Shorecrasher Mimic and Jhessian Infiltrator, but I kind of like the idea of making targeted removal completely useless.
Early Saturday morning, at 12:42 a.m. local time, a rumble coursed through the ground, waking the neighborhood. Chandeliers swung. Windows rattled. Babies cried. Dogs barked. Car alarms went off.
Of course, the next day the whole neighborhood was abuzz, talking about an earthquake having taken place. Now I realize that it wasn't an earthquake at all; it was the seismic reverberation of your sheer, unmitigated awesomeness radiating outward from ground zero.
Of course, it could have been far worse. Just wondering, but how do you prevent the infinite mass of your unfathomably vast awesomeness from crushing in on itself and causing the entire universe to collapse into a hypermassive black hole?
Thanks for the hyperbole, Dr. Shades. I avoided disaster by only earthquaking for 1.
@hjerk: that's a great point. I was mostly thinking about statistics from the deckbuilding perspective, but it's absolutely relevant from a mulligan perspective as well.
I think you could use draft as a unique example in deciding card choices and forcing opponents into card choices they would not normally make. Something along these lines, but it needs to be fleshed out.
Thanks everyone for the feedback. Let's see how much of it I can respond to:
where can I find Patrick Chapin's book? A google and amazon search for his name didn't come up with anything immediately?
StuckPixel: yeah, we're planning on doing 1 hour lecture, 1 hour "lab" to play and build. We're actually using our extra cards to put together a bunch of starter decks based on a lot of archetypes for them to begin. Over the course, they build a deck, and the final for the class is actually to build and present the deck they have. But that's a great point, to have them reflect on their starting deck list compared to their final list. Thanks.
Horseshoe_hermit: I think it'd be rare to find someone who has a professional knowledge of all of these topics. I myself am probably going to only seriously pursue AI as a field, but I still consider myself competent at all these things mentioned. At least, I'm certain I can talk for an hour at an introductory level about them.
And game theory absolutely applies. One interesting example I came up with for the prisoner's dilemma is the star format (where you fight the 2 people across from you and ally with the person next to you). Let's say you and your friend have a common enemy (call him Bob) playing a combo/control deck. Do you attack that enemy first, or another? If you both attack Bob, then you can kill him quickly and move on. If only one of you attacks him, then the person who focused on their other opponent benefits the most and can win immediately. If neither of you attack him, Bob'll beat both of you hard in an almost unwinnable position. So what's the dominant strategy here (what strategy is the best regardless of the choice others make?) If your partner attacks, you should not attack because then you can work on your other enemy. If your partner doesn't attack, then you shouldn't attack because your partner will end up beating you. So if both people use this reasoning, they both won't attack and will be in a worse state than if they both did attack.
It doesn't work perfectly, because in Magic, players play sequentially, not simultaneously. And there are other hangups, but I'm not too worried; in principle, game theory absolutely applies to games as well. For more proof, I wrote about minimax in a post here, which is also game theory
Bankai - Yeah, I think draft should be really interesting with signaling and forcing and all that. You have to figure out what you're telling other drafters, what you think they'll read, and how they'll respond, and that can actually be somewhat formalized with epistemic logic, where agents have different relationships about what they know.
And thanks for all the literature, everyone. THere's a lot to go through, but I'm certain there are gems in there.
Is this class focused on the mechanics and theory of Magic, or is it a class that teaches stats/game theory/etc using Magic as an example? In other words, is learning about Magic the primary goal of the class? Either way, the articles on magicthegathering.com and starcitygames.com would be a good starting point and Pat Chapin's new book might be useful as well.
The official goal of the class is survey a bunch of academic topics and show that they can actually be useful and fun in the right context. Understanding the mechanics of Magic is necessary to do that, and we'll talk some about Magic-specific theory, like card advantage and tempo. As interesting as that stuff is, though, it's a much harder sell to the people looking over our shoulders to make sure that we're not messing around.
We're both students here at Stanford, so that's where we'll be teaching it as well.
Based on a crazy idea from last summer, a good friend and I submitted an application to teach a student-initiated course here at college, and we actually got approved to teach it in the fall. Neither of us are experts in the fields we're discussing, and neither of us play professionally either, so I was hoping to get some feedback and help as we developed the class.
Right now, the class is based around introducing another interesting academic field that happens to be tied into magic. This ranges from statistics to epistemic logic to game theory to AI. We're strongly vested in making this class legit, but at the same time maintaining the fun sprit that anything centered around magic should have.
So I guess there are 4 general forms my request can take:
1) We have a syllabus put together which you can see here. I'd be interested to hear if it sounds interesting and if there are any gaping holes.
2) I'm actually keeping a blog here as I come up with course material and to comment on things that I see are interesting. Hopefully, it'll be good as both an insight into the class and as a magic blog on its own. Comments on posts there would also be great.
3) If you know of any particularly good resources or articles where I can find very rigorous writing and analysis of Magic, I'd love to hear about that. I'm banking very much on what the community has already done to keep this class going.
4) If you have any tips or comments about what you think a course like this should be, that'd be great to here as well. Whether that's about how to teach new players or some other topic you think would be interesting, that would be great, too.
Thanks, and hopefully, we'll get some interesting content for the class that we'll be able to pass back onto you guys when this is all done.
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Breeding Pool
4 Yavimaya Coast
4 Forest
4 Island
4 Silhana Ledgewalker
4 Troll Ascetic
4 Coiling Oracle
4 Favor of the Overbeing
4 Moldervine Cloak
4 Might of Old Krosa
4 Snakeform
4 Voidslime
4 Echoing Truth
The Coiling Oracle is absolutely going to get whacked by any creature removal, but you've already gotten the benefit by that point.
A more traditional UG aggro build could throw in Shorecrasher Mimic and Jhessian Infiltrator, but I kind of like the idea of making targeted removal completely useless.
Thanks for the hyperbole, Dr. Shades. I avoided disaster by only earthquaking for 1.
@hjerk: that's a great point. I was mostly thinking about statistics from the deckbuilding perspective, but it's absolutely relevant from a mulligan perspective as well.
Thanks everyone for the feedback. Let's see how much of it I can respond to:
where can I find Patrick Chapin's book? A google and amazon search for his name didn't come up with anything immediately?
StuckPixel: yeah, we're planning on doing 1 hour lecture, 1 hour "lab" to play and build. We're actually using our extra cards to put together a bunch of starter decks based on a lot of archetypes for them to begin. Over the course, they build a deck, and the final for the class is actually to build and present the deck they have. But that's a great point, to have them reflect on their starting deck list compared to their final list. Thanks.
Horseshoe_hermit: I think it'd be rare to find someone who has a professional knowledge of all of these topics. I myself am probably going to only seriously pursue AI as a field, but I still consider myself competent at all these things mentioned. At least, I'm certain I can talk for an hour at an introductory level about them.
And game theory absolutely applies. One interesting example I came up with for the prisoner's dilemma is the star format (where you fight the 2 people across from you and ally with the person next to you). Let's say you and your friend have a common enemy (call him Bob) playing a combo/control deck. Do you attack that enemy first, or another? If you both attack Bob, then you can kill him quickly and move on. If only one of you attacks him, then the person who focused on their other opponent benefits the most and can win immediately. If neither of you attack him, Bob'll beat both of you hard in an almost unwinnable position. So what's the dominant strategy here (what strategy is the best regardless of the choice others make?) If your partner attacks, you should not attack because then you can work on your other enemy. If your partner doesn't attack, then you shouldn't attack because your partner will end up beating you. So if both people use this reasoning, they both won't attack and will be in a worse state than if they both did attack.
It doesn't work perfectly, because in Magic, players play sequentially, not simultaneously. And there are other hangups, but I'm not too worried; in principle, game theory absolutely applies to games as well. For more proof, I wrote about minimax in a post here, which is also game theory
Bankai - Yeah, I think draft should be really interesting with signaling and forcing and all that. You have to figure out what you're telling other drafters, what you think they'll read, and how they'll respond, and that can actually be somewhat formalized with epistemic logic, where agents have different relationships about what they know.
And thanks for all the literature, everyone. THere's a lot to go through, but I'm certain there are gems in there.
The official goal of the class is survey a bunch of academic topics and show that they can actually be useful and fun in the right context. Understanding the mechanics of Magic is necessary to do that, and we'll talk some about Magic-specific theory, like card advantage and tempo. As interesting as that stuff is, though, it's a much harder sell to the people looking over our shoulders to make sure that we're not messing around.
We're both students here at Stanford, so that's where we'll be teaching it as well.
Right now, the class is based around introducing another interesting academic field that happens to be tied into magic. This ranges from statistics to epistemic logic to game theory to AI. We're strongly vested in making this class legit, but at the same time maintaining the fun sprit that anything centered around magic should have.
So I guess there are 4 general forms my request can take:
1) We have a syllabus put together which you can see here. I'd be interested to hear if it sounds interesting and if there are any gaping holes.
2) I'm actually keeping a blog here as I come up with course material and to comment on things that I see are interesting. Hopefully, it'll be good as both an insight into the class and as a magic blog on its own. Comments on posts there would also be great.
3) If you know of any particularly good resources or articles where I can find very rigorous writing and analysis of Magic, I'd love to hear about that. I'm banking very much on what the community has already done to keep this class going.
4) If you have any tips or comments about what you think a course like this should be, that'd be great to here as well. Whether that's about how to teach new players or some other topic you think would be interesting, that would be great, too.
Thanks, and hopefully, we'll get some interesting content for the class that we'll be able to pass back onto you guys when this is all done.