MTG Salvation

Quote from IxidorVersionTwo

I tried calling some people out once or twice on exactly this. When every single person in a Game-Day thread says they won, I start to get suspicions. Either everyone who didn't get first is somehow ashamed or doesn't feel the need to report, or something's fishy. Someone replied saying something along the lines of "people who talk online about Magic are more involved in the game, and etc." which is fair, but... c'mon. I finished in the top 8 out of 30 people, so I already felt good enough about myself that I didn't feel the need to lie and say I got first. I admitted several mistakes I made through the tournament as well.

I do this in other threads as well. If anyone is familiar with the Living End primer in Modern (and the old thread on it) - I'm very up front about every aspect of the deck. I wasn't ashamed when I built so much hype around the deck and went 4-3 at the first Modern PTQ of the season... it happens. I want to encourage discussion on how to make and play decks better - rather than 1) write them off and not "embarass" myself and/or 2) lie on the internet.

Let's face it: a lot of us are CCMP's - casual competitive magic players. We play FNM's, we play PTQ's, we play Grand Prix's, and spend countless hours playing with friends or grinding on MTGO. Thing is, we're not all pro's and can't play 9 consecutive rounds of flawless Magic. We have to discuss what we did wrong, what is and isn't the right line of play - we are bound to make mistakes. As a community, I would hope that if I made a mistake, someone would offer some helpful criticism for me, rather than write me off because I made a mistake.

It's ridiculous how the internet is full of people who always top 8 or get first place. I certainly know all the tournaments and FNM's I go to the same guy doesn't first everytime.

Precisely. There are a ton of CCMPs, which is fine, but in my opinion, that is not what the Competitive forum is about. The Competitive forum is for people who drive to GPs, Opens, and PTQs, or at least intend to. I day 2'd GP Baltimore (Delver Standard) with ease (Came into day 2 at X-1, finished one match outside the money.) and did poorly GP AC. (3-3 in matches I played) The following week I went 4-0 with the same deck, and the week after went 2-2, again with the same deck. It's just the "1st U/G Elves (me)" posts that astonish me. The FNM top 8 thread could be a great resource for metagame analysis, similar to the DEs posted on Wizards' website. But because we have so many people who want us to know that they're the next Kai Budde, that gets sullied.

EDIT:

Quote from malthrin

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by selection bias.

In other words, people just don't post their results when they don't do well. No conspiracy necessary.

But that's not the issue. These are all quotes from that thread (without usernames:

I won with my jund midrange

I won last week with Epic Experiment. The two weeks prior to that were B/R zombies, once by me and once by someone else.

Last week i won with jund zombies. I didn't play the week before that thanks to midterms. The week before tha I won with zombies again and the week before that uw humans won.

For about a month now my Junk Tokens list has taken it home. The rest of the top four includes U/W Flash, Junk Midrange, and Bant Control. Occasionally a B/R Aggro list'll show up in the top 4 since there are like 5 players at my shop who run it but none of our best players do and they've sideboarded to deal with it.

I'll stop there. But these posts are all on the same page. The last one is the worst example if for no other reason that it includes other lists. My qualm with the last one, and the only reason I included it is: You've won with the same deck for a month straight? And nobody's taken to sideboarding something new against you? No parasalene? No Curse of Death's Hold? If the same guy won my FNM every week for a month with a deck as easy to hate out as tokens, you can bet I'd give him a couple of extra sideboard slots.

MODS: if this thread is seen as inappropriate, feel free to lock it down, delete it, whatever.

Standard Competetive forum members, we've all done our share of boasting on the internet, our share of fabricating. Exaggeration, if you will. But I think things have come to a head.

I was reading the FNM results thread and found that a lot of people are placing very well. For those among us who regularly place well, kudos! But I'm a competent player from a very competitive area (central MD, Baltimore area) and I would say that despite having a number of decent finishes at larger (GP, SCG Opens, PTQ) and smaller (FNM, IQ) events I certainly don't finish in the top 8 every week, and the last time I played an FNM without dropping a game was back in post-banning caw-blade standard when I played Birthing Pod and had a turn 2 pod almost every single game.

This isn't limited to the FNM results thread for certain, as I've played lots of lists of various decks (Ghost Pants, Esper Control, RDW, Jund) where people claim some card is bonkers and they've tested it and it's great, but my experience is absolutely horrible. To me, that means they haven't done sufficient testing and it's just a pet card. It's fine to have pet cards (mine is Geist of Saint Traft. I'm not the guy who won the grinder in London with RDW + Geist, but I admire whoever that is) but they should not be put forth with falsified testing results, as I've seen in this forum.

I'd imagine that since we are all here in the competitive section, that we are here to get better. So let's all get better together and build a stronger competitive community on MTGS, cut out the nonsense. If you haven't tested something, don't post about it. If you're dismissing something out of theory, don't claim to have tested it, and if you didn't top 8 FNM, don't tell us you did. However, it seems that a lot of semi-competitive people have made their way here, and from my understanding of what this subforum was supposed to be, have no reason to be here. That's not to say that brewing should be discouraged at all, merely to say that when someone tells you that your U/G hexproof deck is worse that Bant Hexproof and you have no empirical data to back up why yours is better, you should not be posting in competitive.

Also, the pseudo-budget decks are insane. If you're running a two color big mana deck which excludes Thragtusk, it's probably not because Boros Reckoner is a big presence in the format, it's probably because you don't have an extra $60 to shell out for Thragtusks. That's fine, and I totally respect that. I didn't play Chrome Mox in my U/G madness decks back in the day because I couldn't afford them. But the competitive forum is not the place for your budget brews.

Thanks for listening.

EDIT2: Thanks for the suggestion, Sasky, it works. Also, thanks to Koopa for updating it anyway!

@Iso: FWIW, I love FTQs, PCQs, and all sorts of interesting games. If an FTQ were to be accepting sign ups soon, I probably wouldn't sign up. Most of the players who are active right now are already in 2-3 games. I know it's not my place to tell you how to do your job, but I personally would wait until a couple of games are over.

A blue deck is running COUNTERSPELLS!?! How DARE he!?!

Turning down the sarcasm a notch, it sounds like you lost fair and square.

Your options:

1. Do nothing. Sorry to be cliche, but this format should not be 100% about winning all the time. "Someone has a stronger deck than me" is not the end of the world.. next time the third player may have a disenchant effect too!

2. If you feel that the blue control matchup is particularly weak, or that the Azami deck is dominating the metagame, you can update your deck to combat that. Some people already offered some very nice suggestions, (I assume you were using the Wort deck in your signature.) Here are some more recommendations:

Spellbane Centaur
Insist
Jaya Ballard, Task Mage

3. Rage loudly and build 5 color Hermit Druid to win turn 3 every time until your honor is avanged!

Oh sorry, I guess you only have two healthy options.

Quote from Azrael

I don't think the League is a good place for cults and double mafias, let alone chimes.

Keep it simple, especially if you're trying to arrive at a standard scoring rubric.

I like fun wrinkles, but we're trying to arrive at something that is consistently fair, well-balanced, and doesn't contain any nasty surprises or discrepancies in difficulty. If you're fundamentally changing the nature of the scum team or their win conditions in certain games, it's not possible to have a consistent standard of difficulty for the town and scum.

Cosign

1. Thragtusk
2. Thragtusk
3. Thragtusk
4. Thragtusk
5. Thragtusk

By the way, guys, we were finally able to do something I know you guys have wanted a long time:

From this day forwards, nested quotes are automatically on for Mafia.

Quote from KittyCupCake

Quote from Guardman

Mini: Any game with 13 or less players.
Normal: Any game with 14 to 17 players.
Grande: Any game with 18 or more players.

I think I like Guardman's original suggestion best. Thanks for the link, DRey.

Maybe running 2-2-1? And then letting the people who are currently signed up for Normals and Specialties decide if they want to be on the Normal or Grande list?

atlseal's player-cap based on previous games run is also a good idea.

Rejoice.

@pinkfloyd: I'm against people wanting the Council to be a bunch of babysitters.

Pheldagriff.

You read that correctly.

I hate this card. I hate it with every fiber of my being. Were I to write the word "HATE" on grains of sand, the largest desert in the world composed of such sand couldn't contain all the rage I have for that card.
I want to take every copy and burn them. Then take the ashes and spread them into the darkest part of space.
Then I want to perfect time travel, and go to the point of history in which whatever asinine designer thought creating this travesty was a good idea. I want to meet them, and slap them in the face as hard as I can while wearing a Hippo suit with wings. So they're too traumatized to dare create the card, effectively blanking Pheldagriff from history.

Then I want to travel to hell, and fight Pheldagriff's physical manifestation in one-on-one hand-to-hand combat. When I rip out it's still-beating heart and take a bite, it's blood trailing down my chin as I let out a primal growl, only then will I know peace.