So how long before we hear a litany of wailing in regards to the prices of Tarmo and the barrier to entry into Modern or any other format? Now that FOW is down to the third most expensive card on the market, where are all the eternal players? How can all these players pump that much money into Goyf, but 4x FOW is too much for a whole format? I think we can safely put that false attribution to rest.
Fun stuff. For the Memnarch deck, how do you convince people that you aren't playing a MEMNARCH DECK, but that you're playing just a fun Memnarch deck? There are a lot of negative connotations to that guy. A lot of the Memnarch decks I've seen in the past have been pretty brutal, often moving toward some sort of infinite mana/I steal everything shennanigans. But yours seems about as fair as it can get.
For Szadek, how often are you running into people packing legendary Eldrazi? Just curious, but it seems like a problem. I assume the back up plan is equipment based beatdown?
The Sachi deck just looks like a ton of fun. With the high creature concentration though, Slate of Ancestry might be able to help you out late game.
This article made for some very good reading. I sat out this season of Standard Pauper to a) take a breather, and b) wait for all ten guilds to be released. But it does look like White Weenie is going to be the biggest problem in that season, too. Perhaps an update to this article is an order once all the Gatecrash cards are spoiled.
Also, I would be griping about the lack of a video in this article, but if people head over to your blog like they ask they'll find some pretty interesting Standard Pauper videos not found here :-) Keep up the good work!
I've read your decklists since forever, but looking at your video gave me a much better idea of the metagames of various formats. Would it be possible to include three or more decks for each format? I think when you get to a high competitive level, it's more about the luck of the draw than the power of the deck.
4 pack swiss paid out 5-3-1-0 not 4-3-1-0. A 3-0 would "undo" a poor 1-2 performance. Let's not misremember how awesome those queues were.
Regarding extra cards showing up in your collection, you can check to see if they are really there by trying to mark them tradable. You can only mark tradable up to the number of cards you really own (wouldn't it be sweet if you could sell stuff you don't have?) Rebooting is wise if you've got a large inventory to look through but if you're only thinking about selling a couple cards a quick test of how many you can trade is faster.
Holy cow, look at those standard prices! I have to assume Lily is moving because of Modern Jund, but Geist saw a huge boost from that Bant hexproof auras deck (which is properly called "Blouses" in legacy, though the name hasn't caught on in standard or modern yet.)
And seeing that legacy price chart, I'm having this enormous temptation right now to sell my Goyfs, wait two weeks and buy Force of Wills, then re-buy Goyfs later in the year. It would be the smart money play, but all the legacy decks I like to play use the Goyfs so I'd have to find something else to do for 5-6 months before MM.
Calling that modern deck "Team America Control" is kind of confusing, since Team America is a BUG legacy tempo deck. The legacy deck got its name, based on who tells the story, either for "bombing lands" (it originally had Stifle, Wasteland and Sinkhole), or as a joke name given to it by European legacy players who were making fun of American legacy players for not playing tempo decks. The phrase American Control being connected to a deck that actually IS red, white and blue is FAR too literal to be a good eternal deck name, as it fails to adequately confuse standard players ;-)
"Where are those Chalices of the Void when you need them?"
Sadly they were all in my Angel Stompy deck being knocked out of the tournament by Dream Halls, the only combo deck they DON'T disrupt. Matchups, matchups, matchups. Wouldn't have been able to play all 4 rounds anyhow, so the Angels will be back someday for another shot and a full tournament, especially since I completed my set of alternate art Exalted Angels last week!
FWIW, I think the "high price of winning" is significantly higher right now due to Modern season being in full swing. Vendilion Cliques aren't usually $38 and sold out, and Noble Hierarchs aren't usually $14. Heck, I got Hierarchs for $5-6 each even during the frenzy after Modern was announced, and they already saw legacy play by then. Dark Confidant, now $25, was only $12 max last year, even during last year's modern season when he was (just as now) a 4-of in the best deck. After modern season, these prices will be much lower. Heck, after a month of people drafting Modern Masters 24/7, some of these $600 decks will probably be worth half that at best. I should probably sell some of this modern stuff off and move my digital collection's value somewhere else, but I play with most of the money cards I own on a regular basis, and without a reserved list I'm not really sure what I trust as "safe" to move the money into unless I just want to sell out and sit on some tix.
Two different versions of helmline is nice over the last several DE's but for the most part combo has been terrible including some dismal performances in the league.
As you know BaldEagle, I have a special place in my heart for that combo. If i had more time I would definately build something up around that shell. Helmline is a good place to start forsure!
There are bad plays and illegal plays. The two are not at all the same thing. If a player makes a mistake, the judges job is to hold his or her tongue and do nothing. Judges, outside of maybe FNM, are not there to teach players how to get better, but to stop rules infractions.
Actually, the judges sitting at the table in SCG events are not really there as judges. They are there to relay information to coverage - things like life total changes, what card was named with Pithing Needle or Slaughter Games, etc. They are typing that information into a chat window, and reading the questions coverage asks them. They only watch the games about half the time.
More importantly, the most common infraction is a missed trigger. Missed triggers are only called when they are detrimental. If a player misses a beneficial trigger - e.g. forgot to gain life, etc. - then the penalty is not getting the life. The judge is supposed to say and do NOTHING in that case, unless the opponent points it out. If the judge did point it out, then the player would be less likely to miss it again, and that seems a lot like coaching. Whether you agree or not, the rules say judges do not point out missed triggers.
As for bad play in the late rounds - people get tired, or may be playing at a level you don't expect. Yes, Finkel didn't block at the Pro Tour, but not blocking was the right play. Kibler could have had 3 Galvanic Blasts, but Finkel was playing around Inferno Titan. Odds of Kibler holding Titan was far greater than 4 Blasts.
Paul said, "I guess there are judges who let sloppy play slide but I can't imagine that happening at the highest level all the time without comment."
Check out the video sometime during a Star City tournament. Supposedly top-tier players make a lot of
sloppy mistakes and there are no judges rushing in to correct it. You'd be surprised by some of the stuff
these guys do and get away with. Not necessarily cheating so much as it is just not playing correctly.
It's funny when you read viewer comments and they all seem to say variations of the same thing: "I can't believe no one caught that!"
I was with CK for a while until I discovered they continually beat people up in the multiplayer room then bragged about how people would quit on them. It's like, hello! Of course if you get turn 3 Emrakul or Blightsteel, no one will play with you.
Also, as an aside...can it be the only way to get people involved in tournaments these days is to offer competitive prizes? Are the majority of magic players so selfish and short-sighted that they can't see beyond the pettiness of card pricing and speculation? Whatever happened to using the game as a way to blow off steam?
The winner for the final Dark Wars: A Legacy of Evil qualifier was slayerjensen4.
The Championship game, for 75 Tickets, happens on 1/30/13 at 6PM Pacific. Here are your qualifier winners: Bigwilly5555, Super_Secret_Tech, leprchan, SekKuar Deathkeeper, NecrOmniPotenz, slayerjensen04.
An event is conducted known as PLAYER RUN EVENT .the selection method of team is defined. There is full information of the day, date, time when the matches held among various selected teams. Interested candidate can take part and became a part of selected team.
Should you wish to play on line then this online gambling gives you a lot of the most beneficial gambling games that you have been seeking.
The problem is probably more of a cost/benefit problem. Programming the client to holistically handle all "infinite" (actually they are deterministically large) combos isn't worth the very tiny % of games that would be affected by it. that being said, there *was* a change in the client made to handle some combos which would crash the game (grindstone combo with a shuffle effect in the graveyard).
Also, let's please do away with the notion that those decks, such as Bomberman and Worldgorger Dragon, can't be played online. A human can run through these combo a sufficient number of times in the time allotted in a match to win said match without anything more than a little patience. I personally played a WOTC member the other night who was playing dragon, and made him roll through the combo because he had no win condition except what he had in hand, and he did so. Took him only a couple of minutes. I've done the same thing numerous times. Having something be more involved online than offline doesn't make it impossible, or even impractical for that matter, nor doesn't it make it "two different versions of the game". You don't seem to mind that shuffling takes nanoseconds online but wastes minutes in real life games.
The *only* combo I see as being unrealistic online is a life-based combo, where you give yourself so much life it's impossible for the opponent to beat you in the time allotted by running your life down to 0, becasue that is the one place where you are comboing out to a stall, as opposed to a win.
Designing a game that can lead to infinite combos is different than letting infinite combos being handled the way they're handled in paper. You give your players the chance to perform an action infinite times. You don't tell them what to do with this option once it's achieved. You can let the players decide how to handle it by themselves, using both strategy and common sense. Of course infinite is beyond the realm of human experience, so it's just a way to say "pick your number, then execute it."
Wizard wrote the rules letting handle infinite combos the way they are in paper tournaments because, as I said, there's convenience in that. It's quick and clean.
At the same time, Wizard didn't allow MTGO to handle infinite combos the same way. Maybe I'm wrong here, but I'm convinced this is deliberate, not just a limit of the client. I never read about future plans to change this in the beta, for instance.
This is proof that the game called Magic: The Gathering, in its two different versions, handles infinite combos in two very different ways. Maybe both of them are what they are only because of constraints, limits of the environments, and convenience. Given the chance, I just like to think that the MTGO way is the "right way" that MTG can't afford, and not vice versa. Because the MTGO way is, all in all, a better solution design-wise.
But that is not how Magic is played. Wizards did create a game which allows for infinite combos. They printed cards like Intruder Alarm, Staff of Domination, Power Artifact, etc., etc., etc. knowing full well that these cards would be used to create infinite combos.
Then Wizards specifically wrote, into the rules of the game, procedures to handle such combos. Procedure that specifically say that players can state "I do this 1 million times," and it is assumed to have happened 1 million times.
You said that, if you designed the game, you would do it differently. True for me, too - I would definitely change things. That's irrelevant: Wizards designed the game, not you or me.
But please note that the whole point of my article wasn't that infinite or not isn't better or worse - just different. I'm not making choices - I'm just point at differences, as they actually exist.
I don't think i was ever afraid of chatting in the rooms but I usually use chat to ask for players for a game i have joined. I have never written anything that makes the Orc gave warning except when I was new asking for people to trade with.
I have seen the enter the infinite card and i think it would be a great combo with omniscience. Are there any card that can make these two cards worked into a good combo?
So how long before we hear a litany of wailing in regards to the prices of Tarmo and the barrier to entry into Modern or any other format? Now that FOW is down to the third most expensive card on the market, where are all the eternal players? How can all these players pump that much money into Goyf, but 4x FOW is too much for a whole format? I think we can safely put that false attribution to rest.
Click here. Hit CTRL-F. Type "Malum". :)
Repeat here. :)
is there any way to see what tribes are banned for each player in round 3?
I'll just have to change that next league :)
Fun stuff. For the Memnarch deck, how do you convince people that you aren't playing a MEMNARCH DECK, but that you're playing just a fun Memnarch deck? There are a lot of negative connotations to that guy. A lot of the Memnarch decks I've seen in the past have been pretty brutal, often moving toward some sort of infinite mana/I steal everything shennanigans. But yours seems about as fair as it can get.
For Szadek, how often are you running into people packing legendary Eldrazi? Just curious, but it seems like a problem. I assume the back up plan is equipment based beatdown?
The Sachi deck just looks like a ton of fun. With the high creature concentration though, Slate of Ancestry might be able to help you out late game.
This article made for some very good reading. I sat out this season of Standard Pauper to a) take a breather, and b) wait for all ten guilds to be released. But it does look like White Weenie is going to be the biggest problem in that season, too. Perhaps an update to this article is an order once all the Gatecrash cards are spoiled.
Also, I would be griping about the lack of a video in this article, but if people head over to your blog like they ask they'll find some pretty interesting Standard Pauper videos not found here :-) Keep up the good work!
I've read your decklists since forever, but looking at your video gave me a much better idea of the metagames of various formats. Would it be possible to include three or more decks for each format? I think when you get to a high competitive level, it's more about the luck of the draw than the power of the deck.
4 pack swiss paid out 5-3-1-0 not 4-3-1-0. A 3-0 would "undo" a poor 1-2 performance. Let's not misremember how awesome those queues were.
Regarding extra cards showing up in your collection, you can check to see if they are really there by trying to mark them tradable. You can only mark tradable up to the number of cards you really own (wouldn't it be sweet if you could sell stuff you don't have?) Rebooting is wise if you've got a large inventory to look through but if you're only thinking about selling a couple cards a quick test of how many you can trade is faster.
Holy cow, look at those standard prices! I have to assume Lily is moving because of Modern Jund, but Geist saw a huge boost from that Bant hexproof auras deck (which is properly called "Blouses" in legacy, though the name hasn't caught on in standard or modern yet.)
And seeing that legacy price chart, I'm having this enormous temptation right now to sell my Goyfs, wait two weeks and buy Force of Wills, then re-buy Goyfs later in the year. It would be the smart money play, but all the legacy decks I like to play use the Goyfs so I'd have to find something else to do for 5-6 months before MM.
Calling that modern deck "Team America Control" is kind of confusing, since Team America is a BUG legacy tempo deck. The legacy deck got its name, based on who tells the story, either for "bombing lands" (it originally had Stifle, Wasteland and Sinkhole), or as a joke name given to it by European legacy players who were making fun of American legacy players for not playing tempo decks. The phrase American Control being connected to a deck that actually IS red, white and blue is FAR too literal to be a good eternal deck name, as it fails to adequately confuse standard players ;-)
"Where are those Chalices of the Void when you need them?"
Sadly they were all in my Angel Stompy deck being knocked out of the tournament by Dream Halls, the only combo deck they DON'T disrupt. Matchups, matchups, matchups. Wouldn't have been able to play all 4 rounds anyhow, so the Angels will be back someday for another shot and a full tournament, especially since I completed my set of alternate art Exalted Angels last week!
FWIW, I think the "high price of winning" is significantly higher right now due to Modern season being in full swing. Vendilion Cliques aren't usually $38 and sold out, and Noble Hierarchs aren't usually $14. Heck, I got Hierarchs for $5-6 each even during the frenzy after Modern was announced, and they already saw legacy play by then. Dark Confidant, now $25, was only $12 max last year, even during last year's modern season when he was (just as now) a 4-of in the best deck. After modern season, these prices will be much lower. Heck, after a month of people drafting Modern Masters 24/7, some of these $600 decks will probably be worth half that at best. I should probably sell some of this modern stuff off and move my digital collection's value somewhere else, but I play with most of the money cards I own on a regular basis, and without a reserved list I'm not really sure what I trust as "safe" to move the money into unless I just want to sell out and sit on some tix.
Blarg. Apparently I submitted the survey twice.
Two different versions of helmline is nice over the last several DE's but for the most part combo has been terrible including some dismal performances in the league.
As you know BaldEagle, I have a special place in my heart for that combo. If i had more time I would definately build something up around that shell. Helmline is a good place to start forsure!
... I might be playing a version of your list next Classic League. It's really good.
"There's like no ridiculous combo decks doing anything right now" I see how it is.....
There are bad plays and illegal plays. The two are not at all the same thing. If a player makes a mistake, the judges job is to hold his or her tongue and do nothing. Judges, outside of maybe FNM, are not there to teach players how to get better, but to stop rules infractions.
Actually, the judges sitting at the table in SCG events are not really there as judges. They are there to relay information to coverage - things like life total changes, what card was named with Pithing Needle or Slaughter Games, etc. They are typing that information into a chat window, and reading the questions coverage asks them. They only watch the games about half the time.
More importantly, the most common infraction is a missed trigger. Missed triggers are only called when they are detrimental. If a player misses a beneficial trigger - e.g. forgot to gain life, etc. - then the penalty is not getting the life. The judge is supposed to say and do NOTHING in that case, unless the opponent points it out. If the judge did point it out, then the player would be less likely to miss it again, and that seems a lot like coaching. Whether you agree or not, the rules say judges do not point out missed triggers.
As for bad play in the late rounds - people get tired, or may be playing at a level you don't expect. Yes, Finkel didn't block at the Pro Tour, but not blocking was the right play. Kibler could have had 3 Galvanic Blasts, but Finkel was playing around Inferno Titan. Odds of Kibler holding Titan was far greater than 4 Blasts.
Paul said, "I guess there are judges who let sloppy play slide but I can't imagine that happening at the highest level all the time without comment."
Check out the video sometime during a Star City tournament. Supposedly top-tier players make a lot of
sloppy mistakes and there are no judges rushing in to correct it. You'd be surprised by some of the stuff
these guys do and get away with. Not necessarily cheating so much as it is just not playing correctly.
It's funny when you read viewer comments and they all seem to say variations of the same thing: "I can't believe no one caught that!"
I was with CK for a while until I discovered they continually beat people up in the multiplayer room then bragged about how people would quit on them. It's like, hello! Of course if you get turn 3 Emrakul or Blightsteel, no one will play with you.
Also, as an aside...can it be the only way to get people involved in tournaments these days is to offer competitive prizes? Are the majority of magic players so selfish and short-sighted that they can't see beyond the pettiness of card pricing and speculation? Whatever happened to using the game as a way to blow off steam?
The winner for the final Dark Wars: A Legacy of Evil qualifier was slayerjensen4.
The Championship game, for 75 Tickets, happens on 1/30/13 at 6PM Pacific. Here are your qualifier winners: Bigwilly5555, Super_Secret_Tech, leprchan, SekKuar Deathkeeper, NecrOmniPotenz, slayerjensen04.
An event is conducted known as PLAYER RUN EVENT .the selection method of team is defined. There is full information of the day, date, time when the matches held among various selected teams. Interested candidate can take part and became a part of selected team.
The problem is probably more of a cost/benefit problem. Programming the client to holistically handle all "infinite" (actually they are deterministically large) combos isn't worth the very tiny % of games that would be affected by it. that being said, there *was* a change in the client made to handle some combos which would crash the game (grindstone combo with a shuffle effect in the graveyard).
Also, let's please do away with the notion that those decks, such as Bomberman and Worldgorger Dragon, can't be played online. A human can run through these combo a sufficient number of times in the time allotted in a match to win said match without anything more than a little patience. I personally played a WOTC member the other night who was playing dragon, and made him roll through the combo because he had no win condition except what he had in hand, and he did so. Took him only a couple of minutes. I've done the same thing numerous times. Having something be more involved online than offline doesn't make it impossible, or even impractical for that matter, nor doesn't it make it "two different versions of the game". You don't seem to mind that shuffling takes nanoseconds online but wastes minutes in real life games.
The *only* combo I see as being unrealistic online is a life-based combo, where you give yourself so much life it's impossible for the opponent to beat you in the time allotted by running your life down to 0, becasue that is the one place where you are comboing out to a stall, as opposed to a win.
Designing a game that can lead to infinite combos is different than letting infinite combos being handled the way they're handled in paper. You give your players the chance to perform an action infinite times. You don't tell them what to do with this option once it's achieved. You can let the players decide how to handle it by themselves, using both strategy and common sense. Of course infinite is beyond the realm of human experience, so it's just a way to say "pick your number, then execute it."
Wizard wrote the rules letting handle infinite combos the way they are in paper tournaments because, as I said, there's convenience in that. It's quick and clean.
At the same time, Wizard didn't allow MTGO to handle infinite combos the same way. Maybe I'm wrong here, but I'm convinced this is deliberate, not just a limit of the client. I never read about future plans to change this in the beta, for instance.
This is proof that the game called Magic: The Gathering, in its two different versions, handles infinite combos in two very different ways. Maybe both of them are what they are only because of constraints, limits of the environments, and convenience. Given the chance, I just like to think that the MTGO way is the "right way" that MTG can't afford, and not vice versa. Because the MTGO way is, all in all, a better solution design-wise.
But that is not how Magic is played. Wizards did create a game which allows for infinite combos. They printed cards like Intruder Alarm, Staff of Domination, Power Artifact, etc., etc., etc. knowing full well that these cards would be used to create infinite combos.
Then Wizards specifically wrote, into the rules of the game, procedures to handle such combos. Procedure that specifically say that players can state "I do this 1 million times," and it is assumed to have happened 1 million times.
You said that, if you designed the game, you would do it differently. True for me, too - I would definitely change things. That's irrelevant: Wizards designed the game, not you or me.
But please note that the whole point of my article wasn't that infinite or not isn't better or worse - just different. I'm not making choices - I'm just point at differences, as they actually exist.
I imagine in standard the way to break it is with Laboratory Maniac and cantrips/draw (Looting comes to mind.)
I don't think i was ever afraid of chatting in the rooms but I usually use chat to ask for players for a game i have joined. I have never written anything that makes the Orc gave warning except when I was new asking for people to trade with.
I have seen the enter the infinite card and i think it would be a great combo with omniscience. Are there any card that can make these two cards worked into a good combo?