Is it that they can't play that particular deck or that they can't play any deck that has gone undefeated during the next 4 weeks? As Mihahitlor mentioned, people already play various decks. I don't think it will be too hard for someone to set up a 5 deck rotation.
I see the same thing going on here that I saw in the 5-Color community a few years ago. It's next to impossible to have a format/tournament that is both casual and competitive at the same time while keeping your player base happy. The small number of people that play this tournament only magnifies the issue.
Block constructed is usually very budget-friendly, but this time around the must-answer mythics and the shocklands skew the overall price up. I think your best bet at a budget option would be something like Selesnya, which traditionally uses only Armada Wurms and Trostanis as mythics.
I don't think such rule will make a big difference, since all top players already play various decks, it will maybe just spread those decks slightly more evenly between events.
But regardless, I see no reason to oppose the ruling.
The "ban this" conversation is somehow moot once we see that power comboes aren't being a factor. We can look at both the Watch List and the undefeated decklists of the last events.
You know which ones are the cards whose banning would really change the meta significantly? The ones I banned for the Vantar and Slug's Grudge Match. The most played nonlands noncreatures: Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt, Brainstorm, Oblivion Ring, Path to Exile, Punishing Fire, Honor of the Pure, Green Sun's Zenith, Counterspell, and Wrath of God. These are the ones that make the format repetitive, not the 4 instances of Bridge from Below in 40 events, or Sneak Attack that nobody even bothered to play since when it was unbanned.
But banning them would be ridiculous. We might well start playing a different online game at that point.
Ah, it didn't even occur to me that we have 20 life here, while Commander 1v1 is still 40. That's probably the main game-changer.
Thanks for pointing out the differences! Just keep in mind in future articles that the likely majority of your readers will know Commander and they'll be inclined to use it as a starting point to understand 100CS.
Standard tribal is a toxic environment indeed. Then again, rookie players (due to WotC's overall marketing strategy) do love Standard, so that might be a way to attract them?
You know that it might also be a contributing factor to why players UNLIKE yourself (and myself for that matter) do show up instead? Just saying, the overall attendance of this event hasn't changed much in two years. And it's a general rule of life: you will never able to make everyone happy, no matter how hard you try (it's like the first law of thermodynamics for social constructs).
This said, I'd love for more rookie players to join the tribal fun, and the idea of this being the country club of Tribal Spikes doesn't appeal to me too much. There will be some initiatives from some of the top players themselves to explain to the rookies how to beat them, but some goodwill on both parts will be needed. Also, I'd understand if people just wanted to come here and play their decks, not trying to beat an established system with counter-strategies they might just not like to play. Except last year we would need a whole different set of counter-strategies, so things do change in a way or another.
Thanks for the positive feedback. =)
I was worried that the format may have been forgotten already.
Regarding Commander vs 100c Singleton,
there are a couple of differences from
-deckbuilding restrictions (I run birthing pod and goblin welder in the deck)
-to the life total (affects the strategies you can deploy, cards you can play and speed of the format)
-the banned list
-and the presence of the commander which is card advantage and a source of consistency and another angle of attack. (changes the valuation of basic strategies and card choices very greatly depending on the decks)
The easiest way to port over would be just to try out the deck and feel for yourself its weaknesses to the format and replace the clunky cards with cards that allow you to fill the gaps in the strategy.
(For example, I wouldn't really advise using mindslaver unless you know your opponent's deck is control. So that slot could be a cheap removal instead to keep you in the game.)
Commander is similar in deck design but quite different in its pace and strategy.
Cube is actually an easier place to learn of the 100c Singleton format in retrospect but I can't be sure because I can only see from one direction in this case or rather I make decks knowing already what is important in each archetype from vigorous testing in the past.
Ok, since I see some of the commenters here came up on their own with ideas I was toying with in my mind for a while, I'll go out and say it.
Yes, mandatory rule to change your deck every week is a way. But no, you can't force every player to do that. The issue isn't what the player who lost every match was playing. After all, they weren't an issue for you, other player, since you did beat them. The issue comes from the TOP PLAYERS. The rule has to affect them only.
Now, I respect a LOT the current group of top players. They are nice guys, always play fair, make interesting choices even within a Spike mindset. And changing strategy and tribe quite frequently isn't beneath them (romellos, for one, is a frequent competitor for the Hamtastic Award). That's why I'm confident in proposing what I'm going to propose.
So, here's the thing which, if not firmly opposed, we'll start enforcing starting next week (Event 98, November 17): The current Top 8 Players (All-Time and current year, i.e. the ones who are getting top seed in the next invitational) will not be allowed to register again an undefeated deck for 4 events. Meaning that every time a deck ends undefeated (we'll start looking back 1 month), it's marked next to their names, and a count of 4 is established: they'll need to register 4 other decks before getting back to it. That means both tribe AND combo/specific archetype if applicable (to prevent, say, going Walldrazi with Wall, then with Plant the following week. Or Dream Halls with whatever tribe).
The rule includes me, but well, that's hardly a concern in my case. It doesn't include Top 9-16 because they need to defend their position, especially in this period of the year, and try to enter Top 8 (and if they get there, they'll automatically be affected by the Top 8 rule).
Also: changing the Hamtastic Award to 5 tribes in a row is feasible. I'll talk with SBena to see how this will change the prize, but it'll likely be more than 1 tix anyway. It'll cause challenges between players hitting 5 at the same time, but we can handle them as side events.
I feel nearly exactly the same as everything in this post. The fun in this format to me is brewing something different, and I've never played the same deck twice. I also understand that not everyone wants to do that, and everyone comes for fun in different ways. I don't think I really play enough right now to have enough of a frame of reference to suggest anything should be banned or unbanned.
On another note, that Dredge deck looks fantastic, and is exactly the kind of thing that draws me to the format.
I'm feeling you on the rant. I've play MTGO since the beginning of MTGO. I love Magic. I love playing Paper Magic with friends, with things like the Commander decks. I love being able to draft online, any time of the day or night. I show my support of the game by spending a good bit of money on it on it. Like Rick, I love MTGO in spite of the horrible software.
Here's what really gets to me: Given the fact that at any time there are hundreds of people drafting and playing paid events (many of which probably blow my spending habits out of the water), they must see the online version of the game as having huge profit potential. Certainly they realize that the steaming pile they call software is a bigger barrier to entry than anything else - I know a lot of military guys who are ready to drop a couple grand and get into MTGO as soon as the software isn't such crap. They spend years developing the new client, incorporating a lot of feedback apparently, and it still pretty much sucks. Why can't they just get a "real game design team" to make a solid product? I'm not angry, I'm just depressed about it.
Sad to see the TNMO coverage go, but I 100% agree. They stomped out my interested in TNMO; it's straight up a terrible deal when you can play a daily event for one ticket more.
Enough ranting from me. I really enjoyed the article. I like Domingo's idea about a graph charting the "big number," if it's not too much trouble. That'd be neat to see like... once a quarter or something?
Keep up the good work. I got online to read this even though I had surgery earlier today, haha. :-)
The decklists available on the Magic Online website did not "solve" formats. If anything, people read way too much into them. All they tell you is what won and nothing about what lost. For a long time, players assumed that Jund was really good because it kept winning tournaments. In reality, the deck was just way more popular than anything else. Its win percentage was remarkably average.
What makes formats stale is the cost of constructing decks. Players cannot make fluid metagame shifts without investing heavily in new cards. This incentivizes players to choose a deck at the start of the format and stick with it until the end. If players cannot flexibly respond to the format, your format is going to look old very quickly.
I like the idea of restricting what you play based on what you've played before. BUT. I don't think it is a wise or fair idea to make it mandatory (If you want attendance that is). There are people as Rex points out that don't have the time/inclination/collection to diversify their lists for every week. I do think this would be a nice little voluntary reward thing to strive for instead of a 1 off achievement to allow anyone who manages the feat to get a ticket. Maybe make it a little easier to achieve too: 5 different tribes on 5 consecutive (not counting ones where you don't participate at all) weeks gets a ticket. Unfortunately Im not sure if there is a budget for this.
Im not for the mandatory part but making it voluntary might incentivize some of our recurring players to try different things.
I don't want anyone to think I was starting a "ban something" conversation, because that isn't even remotely my intent. Also, my comments were primarily focused on the endangered/underdog format. I don't want anybody to think I was trying to be too critical, I actually think the current braintrust for the PRE has done alot of good things this year. I was openly skeptical of both the singleton event and the achievement system, but both have been successes. Unfortunately, a lot of the achievements were accomplished with the same two strategies of 1) milling one's entire library then returning whatever fulfills the condition, or B) resolving Dream Halls; in either case, the actual method of winning is arbitrary once you set it up; but beyond that there were certainly some novel deck types we saw as a result of these new incentives.
I've spent dozens of hours brewing decks for this format. That's no exaggeration. It just hits all my sweet spots, from Vorthos to Spike to Johnny, and is a great deckbuilding environment. I want to win, but I play something different nearly every week (I've played the same deck only twice.) I still have a dozen fully built decks that I wouldn't be ashamed to take to the PRE that I haven't played yet in the event. I want to use the event to experience building with, and playing with, a variety of cards and strategies from throughout the history of magic, including the many years I was absent from the game.
But not everybody wants to reinvent the wheel every week. Playing something different each week requires a lot of time, and in most cases money, that I could hardly expect everyone to devote to a niche format. (Although it is a nice way to incidentally build a real legacy collection!) So some people come and play a deck that they are comfortable playing, that they know wins, take their 3 dollars in winnings and call it a day. I don't really fault them for that.
A tournament that draws 10-20 players weekly probably can't just layer more restrictions upon itself at the risk of alienating new players with Byzantine rules. I am kind of hoping that the metagame adjusts to hate out the top decks, but that's been slow in coming.
Anyhow, I think that a lot of great ideas came to fruition this year to spice up the event, and alot of people are working to enrich the format, so I don't want to sound like a Debby Downer. Looking forward to seeing how the Commander event goes next month.
Perhaps it would be worth trying each summer, when you have two blocks and two core sets to work with. In the current standard (five sets total) it seems like it'd be Innistrad block constructed and friends.
I agree with your comments about "Standard Tribal". It's restricted to some major tribes (and lesser tribal pool), but still we can try to play it once or twice in a year. This is just a small thought for the special event section. I believe it can be good to play without legacy staples sometimes.
And for the regular games, we may consider the "Biodiversity 10 creature" restriction for more innovative options.
Standard tribal isn't really worth it: You massively cut down on potential options, and we've just had a block with major tribal themes (human, werewolf, wolf, vampire, zombie, spirit, angel, demon) which would have better tools than other choices.
I think we can add Biodiversity as a mandatory rule to Tribal games like the current Biodiversity 10 creature option for the regular games. This way we can prevent the repetitive deck case.
And also we can include "Standard Tribal Constructed" concept as a special event to the schedule.
These are just my humble opinions. In the end, it's all up to Kumagoro's decision about whether do we need any change or what will be the improvements.
Which is a contributing factor to why players such as myself (and a few others I could name but wont) don't bother to show up much anymore. It isn't that we stopped loving TWL but stopped loving the apocalypse with its twisty rules and repetitive decks.
Oh as pointed there are always exceptions and thanks AJ for being one but unfortunately that isn't really enough for us.
However I don't think there is a fix as Ive said before. You can ban cards you can change the rules but there will always been ways to find the path of least resistance. I think the only way to change it is to play with fire. (Fighting fire with fire so to speak.)
Is it that they can't play that particular deck or that they can't play any deck that has gone undefeated during the next 4 weeks? As Mihahitlor mentioned, people already play various decks. I don't think it will be too hard for someone to set up a 5 deck rotation.
I see the same thing going on here that I saw in the 5-Color community a few years ago. It's next to impossible to have a format/tournament that is both casual and competitive at the same time while keeping your player base happy. The small number of people that play this tournament only magnifies the issue.
Does anyone know when and why Temporal Mastery shot up to about 14 tix? When AVR was released I could swear I got it for a couple tix each at most.
Block constructed is usually very budget-friendly, but this time around the must-answer mythics and the shocklands skew the overall price up. I think your best bet at a budget option would be something like Selesnya, which traditionally uses only Armada Wurms and Trostanis as mythics.
And of course, thanks for the compliments! :)
Just focusing on the top standings is a very good solution to my mind! New players already have to handle a lot of special rules ;-)
I don't think such rule will make a big difference, since all top players already play various decks, it will maybe just spread those decks slightly more evenly between events.
But regardless, I see no reason to oppose the ruling.
What can I say. I love this idea and it will boost the fun and creativity factors.
4-0 a Classic Daily event with 3x survival of the fittest.
Prize - 100 TIX.
Host - dupondt.
The "ban this" conversation is somehow moot once we see that power comboes aren't being a factor. We can look at both the Watch List and the undefeated decklists of the last events.
You know which ones are the cards whose banning would really change the meta significantly? The ones I banned for the Vantar and Slug's Grudge Match. The most played nonlands noncreatures: Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt, Brainstorm, Oblivion Ring, Path to Exile, Punishing Fire, Honor of the Pure, Green Sun's Zenith, Counterspell, and Wrath of God. These are the ones that make the format repetitive, not the 4 instances of Bridge from Below in 40 events, or Sneak Attack that nobody even bothered to play since when it was unbanned.
But banning them would be ridiculous. We might well start playing a different online game at that point.
Ah, it didn't even occur to me that we have 20 life here, while Commander 1v1 is still 40. That's probably the main game-changer.
Thanks for pointing out the differences! Just keep in mind in future articles that the likely majority of your readers will know Commander and they'll be inclined to use it as a starting point to understand 100CS.
As one of the 2012 top 8 players, I endorse and approve this idea.
Standard tribal is a toxic environment indeed. Then again, rookie players (due to WotC's overall marketing strategy) do love Standard, so that might be a way to attract them?
You know that it might also be a contributing factor to why players UNLIKE yourself (and myself for that matter) do show up instead? Just saying, the overall attendance of this event hasn't changed much in two years. And it's a general rule of life: you will never able to make everyone happy, no matter how hard you try (it's like the first law of thermodynamics for social constructs).
This said, I'd love for more rookie players to join the tribal fun, and the idea of this being the country club of Tribal Spikes doesn't appeal to me too much. There will be some initiatives from some of the top players themselves to explain to the rookies how to beat them, but some goodwill on both parts will be needed. Also, I'd understand if people just wanted to come here and play their decks, not trying to beat an established system with counter-strategies they might just not like to play. Except last year we would need a whole different set of counter-strategies, so things do change in a way or another.
By the way, what do you mean with "twisty rules"?
Thanks for the positive feedback. =)
I was worried that the format may have been forgotten already.
Regarding Commander vs 100c Singleton,
there are a couple of differences from
-deckbuilding restrictions (I run birthing pod and goblin welder in the deck)
-to the life total (affects the strategies you can deploy, cards you can play and speed of the format)
-the banned list
-and the presence of the commander which is card advantage and a source of consistency and another angle of attack. (changes the valuation of basic strategies and card choices very greatly depending on the decks)
The easiest way to port over would be just to try out the deck and feel for yourself its weaknesses to the format and replace the clunky cards with cards that allow you to fill the gaps in the strategy.
(For example, I wouldn't really advise using mindslaver unless you know your opponent's deck is control. So that slot could be a cheap removal instead to keep you in the game.)
Commander is similar in deck design but quite different in its pace and strategy.
Cube is actually an easier place to learn of the 100c Singleton format in retrospect but I can't be sure because I can only see from one direction in this case or rather I make decks knowing already what is important in each archetype from vigorous testing in the past.
Ok, since I see some of the commenters here came up on their own with ideas I was toying with in my mind for a while, I'll go out and say it.
Yes, mandatory rule to change your deck every week is a way. But no, you can't force every player to do that. The issue isn't what the player who lost every match was playing. After all, they weren't an issue for you, other player, since you did beat them. The issue comes from the TOP PLAYERS. The rule has to affect them only.
Now, I respect a LOT the current group of top players. They are nice guys, always play fair, make interesting choices even within a Spike mindset. And changing strategy and tribe quite frequently isn't beneath them (romellos, for one, is a frequent competitor for the Hamtastic Award). That's why I'm confident in proposing what I'm going to propose.
So, here's the thing which, if not firmly opposed, we'll start enforcing starting next week (Event 98, November 17): The current Top 8 Players (All-Time and current year, i.e. the ones who are getting top seed in the next invitational) will not be allowed to register again an undefeated deck for 4 events. Meaning that every time a deck ends undefeated (we'll start looking back 1 month), it's marked next to their names, and a count of 4 is established: they'll need to register 4 other decks before getting back to it. That means both tribe AND combo/specific archetype if applicable (to prevent, say, going Walldrazi with Wall, then with Plant the following week. Or Dream Halls with whatever tribe).
The rule includes me, but well, that's hardly a concern in my case. It doesn't include Top 9-16 because they need to defend their position, especially in this period of the year, and try to enter Top 8 (and if they get there, they'll automatically be affected by the Top 8 rule).
Also: changing the Hamtastic Award to 5 tribes in a row is feasible. I'll talk with SBena to see how this will change the prize, but it'll likely be more than 1 tix anyway. It'll cause challenges between players hitting 5 at the same time, but we can handle them as side events.
I feel nearly exactly the same as everything in this post. The fun in this format to me is brewing something different, and I've never played the same deck twice. I also understand that not everyone wants to do that, and everyone comes for fun in different ways. I don't think I really play enough right now to have enough of a frame of reference to suggest anything should be banned or unbanned.
On another note, that Dredge deck looks fantastic, and is exactly the kind of thing that draws me to the format.
I'm feeling you on the rant. I've play MTGO since the beginning of MTGO. I love Magic. I love playing Paper Magic with friends, with things like the Commander decks. I love being able to draft online, any time of the day or night. I show my support of the game by spending a good bit of money on it on it. Like Rick, I love MTGO in spite of the horrible software.
Here's what really gets to me: Given the fact that at any time there are hundreds of people drafting and playing paid events (many of which probably blow my spending habits out of the water), they must see the online version of the game as having huge profit potential. Certainly they realize that the steaming pile they call software is a bigger barrier to entry than anything else - I know a lot of military guys who are ready to drop a couple grand and get into MTGO as soon as the software isn't such crap. They spend years developing the new client, incorporating a lot of feedback apparently, and it still pretty much sucks. Why can't they just get a "real game design team" to make a solid product? I'm not angry, I'm just depressed about it.
Sad to see the TNMO coverage go, but I 100% agree. They stomped out my interested in TNMO; it's straight up a terrible deal when you can play a daily event for one ticket more.
Enough ranting from me. I really enjoyed the article. I like Domingo's idea about a graph charting the "big number," if it's not too much trouble. That'd be neat to see like... once a quarter or something?
Keep up the good work. I got online to read this even though I had surgery earlier today, haha. :-)
The decklists available on the Magic Online website did not "solve" formats. If anything, people read way too much into them. All they tell you is what won and nothing about what lost. For a long time, players assumed that Jund was really good because it kept winning tournaments. In reality, the deck was just way more popular than anything else. Its win percentage was remarkably average.
What makes formats stale is the cost of constructing decks. Players cannot make fluid metagame shifts without investing heavily in new cards. This incentivizes players to choose a deck at the start of the format and stick with it until the end. If players cannot flexibly respond to the format, your format is going to look old very quickly.
I like the idea of restricting what you play based on what you've played before. BUT. I don't think it is a wise or fair idea to make it mandatory (If you want attendance that is). There are people as Rex points out that don't have the time/inclination/collection to diversify their lists for every week. I do think this would be a nice little voluntary reward thing to strive for instead of a 1 off achievement to allow anyone who manages the feat to get a ticket. Maybe make it a little easier to achieve too: 5 different tribes on 5 consecutive (not counting ones where you don't participate at all) weeks gets a ticket. Unfortunately Im not sure if there is a budget for this.
Im not for the mandatory part but making it voluntary might incentivize some of our recurring players to try different things.
I don't want anyone to think I was starting a "ban something" conversation, because that isn't even remotely my intent. Also, my comments were primarily focused on the endangered/underdog format. I don't want anybody to think I was trying to be too critical, I actually think the current braintrust for the PRE has done alot of good things this year. I was openly skeptical of both the singleton event and the achievement system, but both have been successes. Unfortunately, a lot of the achievements were accomplished with the same two strategies of 1) milling one's entire library then returning whatever fulfills the condition, or B) resolving Dream Halls; in either case, the actual method of winning is arbitrary once you set it up; but beyond that there were certainly some novel deck types we saw as a result of these new incentives.
I've spent dozens of hours brewing decks for this format. That's no exaggeration. It just hits all my sweet spots, from Vorthos to Spike to Johnny, and is a great deckbuilding environment. I want to win, but I play something different nearly every week (I've played the same deck only twice.) I still have a dozen fully built decks that I wouldn't be ashamed to take to the PRE that I haven't played yet in the event. I want to use the event to experience building with, and playing with, a variety of cards and strategies from throughout the history of magic, including the many years I was absent from the game.
But not everybody wants to reinvent the wheel every week. Playing something different each week requires a lot of time, and in most cases money, that I could hardly expect everyone to devote to a niche format. (Although it is a nice way to incidentally build a real legacy collection!) So some people come and play a deck that they are comfortable playing, that they know wins, take their 3 dollars in winnings and call it a day. I don't really fault them for that.
A tournament that draws 10-20 players weekly probably can't just layer more restrictions upon itself at the risk of alienating new players with Byzantine rules. I am kind of hoping that the metagame adjusts to hate out the top decks, but that's been slow in coming.
Anyhow, I think that a lot of great ideas came to fruition this year to spice up the event, and alot of people are working to enrich the format, so I don't want to sound like a Debby Downer. Looking forward to seeing how the Commander event goes next month.
Perhaps it would be worth trying each summer, when you have two blocks and two core sets to work with. In the current standard (five sets total) it seems like it'd be Innistrad block constructed and friends.
I agree with your comments about "Standard Tribal". It's restricted to some major tribes (and lesser tribal pool), but still we can try to play it once or twice in a year. This is just a small thought for the special event section. I believe it can be good to play without legacy staples sometimes.
And for the regular games, we may consider the "Biodiversity 10 creature" restriction for more innovative options.
Standard tribal isn't really worth it: You massively cut down on potential options, and we've just had a block with major tribal themes (human, werewolf, wolf, vampire, zombie, spirit, angel, demon) which would have better tools than other choices.
I think we can add Biodiversity as a mandatory rule to Tribal games like the current Biodiversity 10 creature option for the regular games. This way we can prevent the repetitive deck case.
And also we can include "Standard Tribal Constructed" concept as a special event to the schedule.
These are just my humble opinions. In the end, it's all up to Kumagoro's decision about whether do we need any change or what will be the improvements.
You missed The Magic: the Gathering Interactive Encyclopaedia, which neatly spanned the gap between Shandalar and MTGO.
http://uk.ign.com/games/magic-the-gathering-interactive-encyclopedia/pc-...
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=magic/mtgie/downloads
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/arcana/240
Which is a contributing factor to why players such as myself (and a few others I could name but wont) don't bother to show up much anymore. It isn't that we stopped loving TWL but stopped loving the apocalypse with its twisty rules and repetitive decks.
Oh as pointed there are always exceptions and thanks AJ for being one but unfortunately that isn't really enough for us.
However I don't think there is a fix as Ive said before. You can ban cards you can change the rules but there will always been ways to find the path of least resistance. I think the only way to change it is to play with fire. (Fighting fire with fire so to speak.)