I have nothing against the critique or comments. That is fine.
It just seemed like you let your a fellow writer walk outside with his fly down. You knew it was down, but you let him go out in public. As soon as he got out in public, you announced that it was down.
We have the writer's forum to give feedback to each other. Hopefully, the feedback is given before the article goes out. Not after.
It kinda struck me in a sense as quasi-unprofessional.
Maybe this will better explain it. Mark Rosewater writes an article about Magic. He has Richard Garfield read it over and doesn't say anything. Mark then publishes online. As soon of the article comes out, Richard responds in the forums and elaborates how Mark did a bad job. How do you think Mark would feel? Not to mention, it makes the company look bad.
It is the same in other professions. Doctors don't take residents out in public and broadcast how the resident totally botched up a patients surgery. They don't do that. They take the resident to somewhere private and point out his/her mistakes and discuss them.
To be fair, I am sure you just didn't get a chance to read the article before it went up and your heart is in the right place. Kudos to you for actually giving feedback. It doesn't happen enough.
With that said, I just think as a fellow writer, I shouldn't critque another writer publically. I feel like it makes us seem less professional, but that is just me.
While the writing and information in this article was fine, I must admit that it's hard for me to believe that your readerbase honestly wanted to hear about Merfolk again. That is, you've now officially written about Merfolk more than I've written about Faeries in the past, which is a pretty daunting accomplishment. I know that I'm personally not thrilled about writing so many articles about the same deck, and I can't imagine you are either. Had you not included the Legacy list, I'd have been pretty put off by this as a whole. I understand that you're a very large proponent of the deck (much like Adrian Sullivan), but I think there's a lot more to talk about in Standard besides Merfolk (although this article comes at a pretty coincidental time, what with Merfolk winning two PTQs and a Nationals last week).
In any case, I guess it's just a nitpick from one writer to another. Looking back, I wrote about Faeries too much, and I don't want you to be known as "the Merfolk guy" rather than "that guy who has good ideas" or something like that. As I said before, the article was as well-written as they usually are, but I thought I'd offer my insight on the issue that was personally bothering me.
Trying not to step on anyone's toes here, but I thought this was a little tacky. If you had a problem with the article, I "feel" it would have been more appropriate to do so in the writer's forum or with a personal message.
Regarding the article, I would have to slightly disagree with you on the fact that it describes solely Red. I saw the article as more of a Red-White, or Blue-Red...
Red-White because I don't believe Red can do acts of kindness without White. I see Red as a "angry" color only - like Demolish or Pillage. Perhaps you can give me an example of a Mono-Red card that involves an act of Kindness?
Blue-Red because while Passion is powerful, without some brain behind it, it's pathetic anger and tantrum like a crybaby. I think Invoke the Firemind describes what I mean quite well.
Before responding, I looked Maro's old red article. I laughed when I saw the title because it was the same as mine. I just wrote the article.
Anyway, I somewhat agree with your counterpoints. Red isn't necessarily the color of kindness, but would be the color that drives people to be passionate about helping others. It is just the way I look at it.
Back to Maro's original article, Wizards did have Romeo and Juliet as idealistic characters. Love drove them. You asked for me to pick a card to showcase red's kindness. I don't think there is one. Realistically, how do you make I love you cards? Anger cards are simply just much easier to make.
Then again, the article was more about people, not cards.
This thread is for the discussion of my latest article, Off Topic: Deciphering Draft. We would be grateful if you would let us know what you think, but please keep your comments on topic.
And when you compared counterspells to DDT, you seemed to imply they have a certain target in mind and the fact that they are used against any threat is a failure of design. Is that correct or am I reading too deeply into the metaphor?
Basically, Counterspells stop almost everything. DDT kills everything and then some.
Don't mind the late reply. Just living without internet is all.
I really liked the article but one thing I was surprised you didn't bring up was Damping Matrix. Isn't that exactly the kind of persistent ability prevention you are talking about?
Other Notables Suppresion field, Brown Ouphe and Bind. Those cards and Damping Matrix are the kind of cards I am looking for, sorta, but something with a little more gusto. None of these cards really stop trigger abilities. Unless you are playing blue, whenever somebody plays a Bogordan Hellkite or Cloudgoat Ranger you just have to sit there and take it.
Good article, the comparison between DDT and counterpells is quite apt. Actually, most of the metaphor is apt.
You really need an editor, though. Descent instead of decent, insufficiently instead of sufficiently, syphon instead of siphon, Mighty instead of Monty, Lowryn, pleuthora, etc. And that's not even counting the places where I wasn't sure what was meant, the places with plain bad grammar, and the places with word choices that seem to fit the context of the sentence poorly. None of this is bad writing, as such, but it is a sign of insufficient editing.
Yeah, I should probably be catching most of the mistakes mentioned. They are my mistakes. To be honest, after spending quite a few hours on an article while my poor Magic cards get negected, I eventually have to say "good enough." We do have editors. They are also volunteers. They get paid the same zip amount for me for their services and generous time.
Hopefully, as I gain some experience, I can avoid some of these embarrasments in the future.
This thread is for the discussion of my latest article, Off Topic: Magicology. We would be grateful if you would let us know what you think, but please keep your comments on topic.
can you tell me what ToG and FoF stand for? i have no clue what it is and the little mystery of it is bugging me a bit. thanks in advance.
also i really liked this article and it had some great tips. now i hardly ever have these specific problems but i might be able to give some tips to my friends and make my own system to stop some of my own errors.
ToG = typically any deck playing good old Mr. Teeth, Psychatog.
I've used the stick a dice on top of your library trick but never considered the others. I see benefit in it, so I'll start using them or something similar. Any more process tricks?
Even though I have a few more, I encourage anyone to find what works for them. It can be detrimental when a process leaves no room for creativity or personal preferences. People are great at innovating if given the chance.
I do suggest riffling through your hand frequently. It can give the illusion to your opponent you have some gas in hand and it prevents you from missing cards. You know, those times when you had a counterspell but it was tucked behind another card.
good read, although it should be mentioned that the point about drawing on your play mat is an incredibly gray area, and the example of writing out the phases would be considered outside notes.
It would be considered outside notes. The mat is used casually to help newer players. Having the phases out there in plain english help people like my wife who only plays occasionally.
QFT. Apart from that, it was a good article, although the segment at the end seemed a little irrelevant and a bit long-winded when you were just basically saying "What I have said up to this point has applications in real life...".
True, but I wanted to include it for historical purposes where some of this was coming from. Basically, FYI.
This thread is for the discussion of my latest article, Off Topic: Systematically Improving your Game. We would be grateful if you would let us know what you think, but please keep your comments on topic.
I'm curious about that peanut butter potatoes thing...
Simple, you make mashed potatoes and throw in some peanut butter instead of something like sour cream. I do suggest throwing in some plain old butter as it enhances the taste of the peanut butter. You have to be careful because a little PB goes a long way. It goes well with very meaty items like steaks, burgers and so forth, preferably beef or lamb. Fish, not so much.
This thread is for the discussion of my latest article, Off Topic: What's Tempo Have to Do With It?. We would be grateful if you would let us know what you think, but please keep your comments on topic.
I just want to take a minute to touch on a couple of things. I do really think a website is possible. I dabbled a little bit in trying to create my own. It was a rude awakening to say the least. My IT abilities are less than stellar. To make it happen, it would require a couple of computer gurus willing to spare their time for such a project. If somebody was willing, I would be more than happy to work on such a project (hint, hint). But, until I get a few volunteers, the idea will go nowhere. As with anything, it merely takes a few people with enough passion, vision and determination to make it happen.
Meetup.com is a great idea. However, I found two players on the site for my area. Not exactly promising when I know there are over 30 competitive players and 40ish causal players in my area. Again, clubs aren’t just about hooking up, its about creating a community.
For all those people holding their breath that Wizards will take on the task upon themselves, don’t hold your breath too long. It wouldn’t surprise me if it hasn’t already been suggested to them at one time or another.
Lastly, I won’t bother pestering anybody at mtgsalvation.com until I see some headway. If they offered, I wouldn’t shy away from the help. The reality is that many of the great volunteers at mtgsalvation.com already have their hands full at keeping this a great site to visit.
A tie between Utopia Tree and Urza's Rage . They were the first rares that I opened from the booster packs my wife gave while in the hospital. It doesn't hurt they have some great artwork. They will always have a soft spot in my heart.
It just seemed like you let your a fellow writer walk outside with his fly down. You knew it was down, but you let him go out in public. As soon as he got out in public, you announced that it was down.
We have the writer's forum to give feedback to each other. Hopefully, the feedback is given before the article goes out. Not after.
It kinda struck me in a sense as quasi-unprofessional.
Maybe this will better explain it. Mark Rosewater writes an article about Magic. He has Richard Garfield read it over and doesn't say anything. Mark then publishes online. As soon of the article comes out, Richard responds in the forums and elaborates how Mark did a bad job. How do you think Mark would feel? Not to mention, it makes the company look bad.
It is the same in other professions. Doctors don't take residents out in public and broadcast how the resident totally botched up a patients surgery. They don't do that. They take the resident to somewhere private and point out his/her mistakes and discuss them.
To be fair, I am sure you just didn't get a chance to read the article before it went up and your heart is in the right place. Kudos to you for actually giving feedback. It doesn't happen enough.
With that said, I just think as a fellow writer, I shouldn't critque another writer publically. I feel like it makes us seem less professional, but that is just me.
Trying not to step on anyone's toes here, but I thought this was a little tacky. If you had a problem with the article, I "feel" it would have been more appropriate to do so in the writer's forum or with a personal message.
Before responding, I looked Maro's old red article. I laughed when I saw the title because it was the same as mine. I just wrote the article.
Anyway, I somewhat agree with your counterpoints. Red isn't necessarily the color of kindness, but would be the color that drives people to be passionate about helping others. It is just the way I look at it.
Back to Maro's original article, Wizards did have Romeo and Juliet as idealistic characters. Love drove them. You asked for me to pick a card to showcase red's kindness. I don't think there is one. Realistically, how do you make I love you cards? Anger cards are simply just much easier to make.
Then again, the article was more about people, not cards.
As long as the article educates the general public and causes the DCI to make a formal change, then this article has served its purpose.
squeak
Basically, Counterspells stop almost everything. DDT kills everything and then some.
Don't mind the late reply. Just living without internet is all.
Other Notables Suppresion field, Brown Ouphe and Bind. Those cards and Damping Matrix are the kind of cards I am looking for, sorta, but something with a little more gusto. None of these cards really stop trigger abilities. Unless you are playing blue, whenever somebody plays a Bogordan Hellkite or Cloudgoat Ranger you just have to sit there and take it.
I am thoroughly ashamed.
Yeah, I should probably be catching most of the mistakes mentioned. They are my mistakes. To be honest, after spending quite a few hours on an article while my poor Magic cards get negected, I eventually have to say "good enough." We do have editors. They are also volunteers. They get paid the same zip amount for me for their services and generous time.
Hopefully, as I gain some experience, I can avoid some of these embarrasments in the future.
ToG = typically any deck playing good old Mr. Teeth, Psychatog.
FoF = Fact or Fiction
Even though I have a few more, I encourage anyone to find what works for them. It can be detrimental when a process leaves no room for creativity or personal preferences. People are great at innovating if given the chance.
I do suggest riffling through your hand frequently. It can give the illusion to your opponent you have some gas in hand and it prevents you from missing cards. You know, those times when you had a counterspell but it was tucked behind another card.
It would be considered outside notes. The mat is used casually to help newer players. Having the phases out there in plain english help people like my wife who only plays occasionally.
True, but I wanted to include it for historical purposes where some of this was coming from. Basically, FYI.
None of what I said should ever replace practice. Just offering some tools for those like me who constantly miss land drops.
Simple, you make mashed potatoes and throw in some peanut butter instead of something like sour cream. I do suggest throwing in some plain old butter as it enhances the taste of the peanut butter. You have to be careful because a little PB goes a long way. It goes well with very meaty items like steaks, burgers and so forth, preferably beef or lamb. Fish, not so much.
Bon appetite
I just want to take a minute to touch on a couple of things. I do really think a website is possible. I dabbled a little bit in trying to create my own. It was a rude awakening to say the least. My IT abilities are less than stellar. To make it happen, it would require a couple of computer gurus willing to spare their time for such a project. If somebody was willing, I would be more than happy to work on such a project (hint, hint). But, until I get a few volunteers, the idea will go nowhere. As with anything, it merely takes a few people with enough passion, vision and determination to make it happen.
Meetup.com is a great idea. However, I found two players on the site for my area. Not exactly promising when I know there are over 30 competitive players and 40ish causal players in my area. Again, clubs aren’t just about hooking up, its about creating a community.
For all those people holding their breath that Wizards will take on the task upon themselves, don’t hold your breath too long. It wouldn’t surprise me if it hasn’t already been suggested to them at one time or another.
Lastly, I won’t bother pestering anybody at mtgsalvation.com until I see some headway. If they offered, I wouldn’t shy away from the help. The reality is that many of the great volunteers at mtgsalvation.com already have their hands full at keeping this a great site to visit.