What's wrong with that? "My opponent played their 7-drop" I find to be a perfectly acceptable reason to lose a magic game.
That's a really, I don't know, trite, way to describe the game of magic. I suppose you think that anyone who lets their opponent get to 7 mana just deserves to lose? Well consider that we were both at 7 mana. The difference was that Bloodcranker had two incredibly good 6/7 mana spells in their deck, and he drew them both. And played them both. And I am quite sure that I had good answers to them (I may have had a board sweeper that I never drew, I can't recall for sure) but I didn't draw mine.
That's kind of the way magic goes and why it's so frustrating: every deck can play well if the draw is ordered to allow the deck's strategy to work, and can look like garbage if it doesn't. And it's frustrating to play against a deck that just happens to draw exactly the answers it needs when it needs it, while you do not, even though you have them.
And yeah, sometimes games go long and 7 mana spells come into play. Not sure why you think that nobody should be frustrated except by games that only get to 6 lands on the board for either player.
I think you should cultivate the instincts you have for the game, because you made some choices that I personally am absolutely never brave enough to make (I would never play mono color because like others said I am sure that there would be a good amount of C and D filler in there), but these are exactly the kind of shrewd choices that actually seem to pay off a good deal of the time. I find myself too scared to go out on a limb and constantly feel like I have to always pack the best cards that I can into my deck, which often times is a misshapen mess because of it. You seem to be the opposite, having no preconceptions about how a deck should look (mono colored in Khans block is really almost unheard of!) and yet having success because your natural instinct for the game seems good.
At the same time, take the advice of others in this thread, because they know what they're talking about!
As an example, I was soundly beaten by a red/blue deck in a sealed pool round the other night. Now how do you take a sealed KTK-FRF pool, where so many cards are triple colored, or spread across colors that you don't have easy access to, and make a dual colored deck out of a sealed pool, I will never know. But I was soundly beaten by it. It was just a couple of vanilla beaters (Summit Prowler featured heavily) and tons of cantrip instants. I know it helped alot that I drew 4 creatures and 10 lands in game 2, but still, I could not keep more than one creature on the board at a time in either game and I just got soundly beaten by a deck that I personally would never, ever have the guts to build or play. It sounds like you're the kind of person who would build that deck, so don't blunt your natural instincts.
Bji, just for the record I didn't mean to start anything by asking about your MTGO user name, but I accept and appreciate the apology (I was the guy playing Silumgar + Ojutai if you remember going against someone with both those cards - and I'd probably be in about as good a mood as you were if I were in the situation). The reason I even asked is because it did make me a little uncomfortable but, like some people here have said, we all get upset over the game sometimes. And just for the record of other posters in this thread, bji said absolutely nothing personally insulting or berating.
I do kind of remember that match. Anyway I have no doubt that I whined like a baby and I sincerely apologize again especially now that I realize that it made you uncomfortable. This has been a very cathartic discussion for me. I'll sincerely try to keep a more level perspective in future matches.
Yes. And apologies if we played a game and I complained. I do that to let off steam, and sometimes I have alot of steam. Especially if we were playing last Thursday, I had a binge play day (playing phantom sealed from about 10:00 am until about midnight) and when I do that the frustration kind of builds up over the day until my last couple of matches I am in a downright foul mood.
2. One person wins or loses because the other person got stuck on 3 or 4 lands for the entire game and the other didn't. (this is approximately 30% of games)
This is the easiest one to do the math on as you can just calculate the percentage of games that one deck draw 0-4 lands in 10 turns while the other draws 6-9 lands. That outcome is worst case scenario as it completely ignores any influence the players have on it such as mulligans. Even then the chance of this happening is actually only about 5%. Of course this is a ridiculous over simplification of what actually matters, such as the order in which things are drawn, the manacurves of the respective decks, draw spells, etc. (Side note, there's about an 80% chance of drawing 6-9 lands over 10 turns with 18 lands in a 40 card deck, so almost 2/3 of the time manascrew/flood should statistically not matter, though once again order of drawing and curve matter tremendously here as well.)
All your other points suffer from similar generalisations and statistical misconceptions based on perception. Random chance is a large part of the game, but in a much more complicated manner than you're putting forward here. Though I sympathise with the fact that everything can feel out of your control 70+% of the time.
It wasn't meant to be statistically accurate. And the "stuck on 3 or 4 lands" case was kind of meant to cover all cases of mana screw, such as mulling to 6 with 2 lands in hand and a hand that looks like it will work if it can just get that third land, then drawing three non-lands in a row. That happens too. Along with a huge number of permutations of games in which similar but not exactly the same circumstances conspire to make for a non-interactive, fairly pointless game.
Maybe it's just an emotional argument, but it really does feel like less than 50% of games are played without the outcome being significantly if not entirely affected by these factors. I suppose I should start gathering real evidence from my own games. It's hard to know exactly what happened to my opponent but some aspects of their game can be clear; if they only play 3 lands all game, they probably never draw any more, because holding a land in hand there is pointles. However, if they play 6 lands and have two cards in hand at the end of game, they could be lands, but I'll never know.
Maybe I'll start just writing down when I and my opponent make our land drops each game and the outcome of the game and see what I can find out over a large number of samples.
Well I should have known better than to brag about luck in the bragging thread. Because since then it's been nothing but the most frustrating magic possible. Over and over again I get my opponent down to under 10 life and have superior board position, only to start drawing hugely land-heavy and losing because in the end my opponent drew 2 or three more spells compared to my 2 or 3 more land.
Just so you know, these are the games of Magic that you can play:
1. One person wins or loses because the other mulligans to 4 or 5. Game is basically over before it even began. (this is approximately 10% of games)
2. One person wins or loses because the other person got stuck on 3 or 4 lands for the entire game and the other didn't. (this is approximately 30% of games)
3. One person wins or loses because while both people had reasonable draws up to a point, at a critical part of the game one of the players drew an unusually large number of lands (say, 4 in a row, or 5 out of 6 draws), and could not keep up with the player actually drawing spells. (this is approximately 30% of games)
4. All of the remaining games, in which there is back and forth, good play, reasonable draws, etc, and the game is actually decided by more than just land screw or flood. (this is the remaining 30% of games)
Do you think I am exaggerating? Try to keep track sometimes. Don't just track your own losses to games of category 1 - 3 above, track the percentage of time you win because your opponent had the bad end of 1 - 3 above. I am fairly certain that you will find that 70% of games are pointless. Each time I fire up a queue I somehow expect things to be different, but it never, ever is, whether I win by it or lose by it. It's just a coin flip of who will screw or flood. That's it.
The only real answer to this guy is a 5 toughness blocker.
That's not really a complete answer to him though. He doesn't even have to attack to put the game greatly in his owner's favor:
- He is an excellent blocker, powerful enough to kill more than half the creatures in most people's decks while being indestructible on demand.
- He turns the opponents' removal into bounce, which takes most of the bite away from those important spells
- He can bounce and recur cards with comes-into-play efffects like, most notably, Aven Surveyor
He has other minor benefits as well, such as making manifest better, because he can return any manifested instants/sorceries to hand.
I've been lucky enough to pull him on occasion, and his strength as an attacker has never been the largest part of why he helped me to win games. And I'm pretty sure I won every game in which I managed to play him ...
Five lands on the board, along with three creatures, and generally feeling pretty good about things.
I proceed to draw three lands in a row while my opponent brings his board presence up to parity with mine and then exceeds it. Finally the only card left in my hand is a Grave Strength and it feels like the right time to use it.
Grave Strength away three spells, two of which are creatures, and turn my Abzan Kin-Guard into a 5/5 lifelink. That went pretty well. Keep in mind that I'd just drawn three lands in a row and now have nothing left in hand.
Unfortunately a turn later my opponent bounces my Kin-Guard. And I proceed to draw 4 more lands, and die because my opponent only drew 6 lands in the game and I drew 12 (remember that 6 is the magic number, if you draw exactly 6 lands in magic you'll win like 90% of your games. This is my theory.)
So I drew 3 lands, then Grave Strength'd away 3 non-lands, then drew 4 more lands. My god the bad luck, it is so brutal and infuriating.
Next game the same opponent looked to have flooded but it was exactly what he needed to play Villainous Wealth for 9. Managed to steal my Mastery of the Unseen and proceeded to manifest three creatures in a row with it and flip them for ridiculous amounts of life gain. Despite all of that I had him at 7 and would have won the next turn (assuming he didn't luck into another manifested creature) but ran out of cards.
Of course, I went on to win my next round handily and the final round I won due to similar bad luck for my opponent, who was color screwed the last game when I had a nuts draw.
It's still fun in a weird way to draft cards and play them but I am under no illusions that this game is anything more than a coin flip 90% of the time.
Lost to Dromoka, the Eternal. Oh big deal, you might say. It's one of the best cards in the set.
Let me clarify. I lost to a Dromoka that someone was PASSED. After opening Temur War Shaman.
Now I realize this is a zero-sum game and I'm equally likely to sit next to the guy who either a) opened Dromoka and a foil rare/mythic that was worth too much to not take or one of the few that are better first picks or b) didn't particularly care for a 5/5 Dragon for 5 mana. For the sake of humanity, I pray it was the former. But when you're in the finals with your deck of mostly commons and no bombs and you've been grinding it out, it's really frustrating to hear about how your opponent got passed one of the best cards in the set in Pack 1.
You act like having bombs not having bombs is more than marginally relevant to who wins or doesn't. Draw order is much more important than anything else. If you have 2 more bombs than someone else you still only have a small chance of drawing them (1/20 per draw) and the non-bomb-holder has plenty of chances for common removal to take care of the bomb.
I've had the most ridiculous bomb laden decks fall flat due to mana screw and/or drawing cards in just the most unhelpful order possible. I've had decks with no bombs at all go all the way on the back of awesome draws. I'm pretty sure this is how it is for everyone.
It's all draw order, which is completely luck. This game is mostly luck when deck power is mostly the same and play skill is mostly the same, which it is online.
I still really like Write into Being although not as much as I thought I would when the set was spoiled. I'm continually amazed at how rarely manifest hits anything interesting on my side or the other side of the table. Manifest does do it more reliably but in my initial evaluation of the card I forgot that only maybe 1/3 of the creatures in your deck are better manifested than hard casted. This doesn't really help or hurt Write into Being because you can just put those back on top with it but it does mean that the whole 'surprise flip' thing that I thought Write into Being would enable so often turns out to be not as much of a thing.
I do really like that this card allows you to make the best use of the top two cards of your deck early in the game. Plenty of times I have manifested the land and chosen to draw the creature, and plenty of times, sent something to the bottom because I needed land or didn't need land. I think this card is just about as good as a scry 2 effect, which is really nice, and it always produces something better than a vanilla 2/2 for 2 (the "something better" may just be the ability to bluff, but it's always something). Rarely you get that blowout flip opportunity, but it's nice when it happens.
Oh, certainly, I agree the card is good. I just mean that, provided you're not in too much trouble to begin with, it is often possible to limit your opponent's Channel to "respectable" rather than "devastating". And if you're ahead, depending on the board state, you can sometimes even sacrifice some tempo to force them into using Channel as suboptimal removal. But modest limitations like that don't mean it isn't very good.
Yeah sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you didn't think it was a good card. It was more a general statement about the card, more in clarification of my own original evaluation of the card as "too expensive" than about your evaluation. Your description of how to play around it just caught my eye as the kind of thing that I really want my opponents to be doing to handle one card that I might or might not have in my hand.
Yeah, it's important to remember that even if they kill your best creature with their six-mana spell, that's fair. I think that playing around Channel Harm, much like playing around Public Execution, is mostly a matter of avoiding the full blowout and accepting that they'll get to kill something with it. And unlike Public Execution, there may be cases with Channel Harm where you can still apply pressure without exposing your best creature to removal, though you're in pretty good shape if you have that luxury and taking that sort of line is probably too conservative unless you know they have it.
Any card that is going to force my opponent into these kinds of contortions is a good card. I was unenthusiastic about it when it was spoiled because of its cost but after having thought about it some more, the chances that it's going to cause blowouts is just too high to rate it anything less than a solid B. Yeah 6 mana is alot to keep up but keeping 5 up to threaten unmorph is pretty common anyway.
Channel Harm being an uncommon means that this is going to be one of the more annoying and frequent ways to get blown out, I expect.
That's a really, I don't know, trite, way to describe the game of magic. I suppose you think that anyone who lets their opponent get to 7 mana just deserves to lose? Well consider that we were both at 7 mana. The difference was that Bloodcranker had two incredibly good 6/7 mana spells in their deck, and he drew them both. And played them both. And I am quite sure that I had good answers to them (I may have had a board sweeper that I never drew, I can't recall for sure) but I didn't draw mine.
That's kind of the way magic goes and why it's so frustrating: every deck can play well if the draw is ordered to allow the deck's strategy to work, and can look like garbage if it doesn't. And it's frustrating to play against a deck that just happens to draw exactly the answers it needs when it needs it, while you do not, even though you have them.
And yeah, sometimes games go long and 7 mana spells come into play. Not sure why you think that nobody should be frustrated except by games that only get to 6 lands on the board for either player.
It could have been worse. He could have had both Silumgar and Ojutai and gotten the draws to play them both.
What broken shuffler algorithm?
At the same time, take the advice of others in this thread, because they know what they're talking about!
As an example, I was soundly beaten by a red/blue deck in a sealed pool round the other night. Now how do you take a sealed KTK-FRF pool, where so many cards are triple colored, or spread across colors that you don't have easy access to, and make a dual colored deck out of a sealed pool, I will never know. But I was soundly beaten by it. It was just a couple of vanilla beaters (Summit Prowler featured heavily) and tons of cantrip instants. I know it helped alot that I drew 4 creatures and 10 lands in game 2, but still, I could not keep more than one creature on the board at a time in either game and I just got soundly beaten by a deck that I personally would never, ever have the guts to build or play. It sounds like you're the kind of person who would build that deck, so don't blunt your natural instincts.
I do kind of remember that match. Anyway I have no doubt that I whined like a baby and I sincerely apologize again especially now that I realize that it made you uncomfortable. This has been a very cathartic discussion for me. I'll sincerely try to keep a more level perspective in future matches.
Yes. And apologies if we played a game and I complained. I do that to let off steam, and sometimes I have alot of steam. Especially if we were playing last Thursday, I had a binge play day (playing phantom sealed from about 10:00 am until about midnight) and when I do that the frustration kind of builds up over the day until my last couple of matches I am in a downright foul mood.
Here's something that I'm pretty sure is not nonsense: if you don't like venting, you should not read the venting thread.
It wasn't meant to be statistically accurate. And the "stuck on 3 or 4 lands" case was kind of meant to cover all cases of mana screw, such as mulling to 6 with 2 lands in hand and a hand that looks like it will work if it can just get that third land, then drawing three non-lands in a row. That happens too. Along with a huge number of permutations of games in which similar but not exactly the same circumstances conspire to make for a non-interactive, fairly pointless game.
Maybe it's just an emotional argument, but it really does feel like less than 50% of games are played without the outcome being significantly if not entirely affected by these factors. I suppose I should start gathering real evidence from my own games. It's hard to know exactly what happened to my opponent but some aspects of their game can be clear; if they only play 3 lands all game, they probably never draw any more, because holding a land in hand there is pointles. However, if they play 6 lands and have two cards in hand at the end of game, they could be lands, but I'll never know.
Maybe I'll start just writing down when I and my opponent make our land drops each game and the outcome of the game and see what I can find out over a large number of samples.
Just so you know, these are the games of Magic that you can play:
1. One person wins or loses because the other mulligans to 4 or 5. Game is basically over before it even began. (this is approximately 10% of games)
2. One person wins or loses because the other person got stuck on 3 or 4 lands for the entire game and the other didn't. (this is approximately 30% of games)
3. One person wins or loses because while both people had reasonable draws up to a point, at a critical part of the game one of the players drew an unusually large number of lands (say, 4 in a row, or 5 out of 6 draws), and could not keep up with the player actually drawing spells. (this is approximately 30% of games)
4. All of the remaining games, in which there is back and forth, good play, reasonable draws, etc, and the game is actually decided by more than just land screw or flood. (this is the remaining 30% of games)
Do you think I am exaggerating? Try to keep track sometimes. Don't just track your own losses to games of category 1 - 3 above, track the percentage of time you win because your opponent had the bad end of 1 - 3 above. I am fairly certain that you will find that 70% of games are pointless. Each time I fire up a queue I somehow expect things to be different, but it never, ever is, whether I win by it or lose by it. It's just a coin flip of who will screw or flood. That's it.
That's not really a complete answer to him though. He doesn't even have to attack to put the game greatly in his owner's favor:
- He is an excellent blocker, powerful enough to kill more than half the creatures in most people's decks while being indestructible on demand.
- He turns the opponents' removal into bounce, which takes most of the bite away from those important spells
- He can bounce and recur cards with comes-into-play efffects like, most notably, Aven Surveyor
He has other minor benefits as well, such as making manifest better, because he can return any manifested instants/sorceries to hand.
I've been lucky enough to pull him on occasion, and his strength as an attacker has never been the largest part of why he helped me to win games. And I'm pretty sure I won every game in which I managed to play him ...
Five lands on the board, along with three creatures, and generally feeling pretty good about things.
I proceed to draw three lands in a row while my opponent brings his board presence up to parity with mine and then exceeds it. Finally the only card left in my hand is a Grave Strength and it feels like the right time to use it.
Grave Strength away three spells, two of which are creatures, and turn my Abzan Kin-Guard into a 5/5 lifelink. That went pretty well. Keep in mind that I'd just drawn three lands in a row and now have nothing left in hand.
Unfortunately a turn later my opponent bounces my Kin-Guard. And I proceed to draw 4 more lands, and die because my opponent only drew 6 lands in the game and I drew 12 (remember that 6 is the magic number, if you draw exactly 6 lands in magic you'll win like 90% of your games. This is my theory.)
So I drew 3 lands, then Grave Strength'd away 3 non-lands, then drew 4 more lands. My god the bad luck, it is so brutal and infuriating.
Next game the same opponent looked to have flooded but it was exactly what he needed to play Villainous Wealth for 9. Managed to steal my Mastery of the Unseen and proceeded to manifest three creatures in a row with it and flip them for ridiculous amounts of life gain. Despite all of that I had him at 7 and would have won the next turn (assuming he didn't luck into another manifested creature) but ran out of cards.
Of course, I went on to win my next round handily and the final round I won due to similar bad luck for my opponent, who was color screwed the last game when I had a nuts draw.
It's still fun in a weird way to draft cards and play them but I am under no illusions that this game is anything more than a coin flip 90% of the time.
You act like having bombs not having bombs is more than marginally relevant to who wins or doesn't. Draw order is much more important than anything else. If you have 2 more bombs than someone else you still only have a small chance of drawing them (1/20 per draw) and the non-bomb-holder has plenty of chances for common removal to take care of the bomb.
I've had the most ridiculous bomb laden decks fall flat due to mana screw and/or drawing cards in just the most unhelpful order possible. I've had decks with no bombs at all go all the way on the back of awesome draws. I'm pretty sure this is how it is for everyone.
It's all draw order, which is completely luck. This game is mostly luck when deck power is mostly the same and play skill is mostly the same, which it is online.
I do really like that this card allows you to make the best use of the top two cards of your deck early in the game. Plenty of times I have manifested the land and chosen to draw the creature, and plenty of times, sent something to the bottom because I needed land or didn't need land. I think this card is just about as good as a scry 2 effect, which is really nice, and it always produces something better than a vanilla 2/2 for 2 (the "something better" may just be the ability to bluff, but it's always something). Rarely you get that blowout flip opportunity, but it's nice when it happens.
Yeah sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you didn't think it was a good card. It was more a general statement about the card, more in clarification of my own original evaluation of the card as "too expensive" than about your evaluation. Your description of how to play around it just caught my eye as the kind of thing that I really want my opponents to be doing to handle one card that I might or might not have in my hand.
Any card that is going to force my opponent into these kinds of contortions is a good card. I was unenthusiastic about it when it was spoiled because of its cost but after having thought about it some more, the chances that it's going to cause blowouts is just too high to rate it anything less than a solid B. Yeah 6 mana is alot to keep up but keeping 5 up to threaten unmorph is pretty common anyway.
Channel Harm being an uncommon means that this is going to be one of the more annoying and frequent ways to get blown out, I expect.