The way I used the term in the article, luck is this:
-Your opponent has 3 (Yawgmoth's will)s in his/her deck he/she has a 10% chance to draw one. You know your opponent's ODDS, you don't know what LUCK will be.
-Your playing (Fiery Gambit). Your odds of getting a complete 3 heads in a row are 12.5%. You know the ODDS before you play the card, you don't know what your LUCK will be.
(Caps for emphasis, not trying to be a jerk)
So in the terms I outlined in the article (which can be argued, some of the terms simply come down to semantics) you can harness the ODDS to make the right play, LUCK is everything you can't control. Just like the example I showed; where you had to pick negate or doom blade. You harnessed the ODDS to pick negate, you have 75% chance to win, LUCK will determine what happens from there.
I'm sorry if I didn't make my stance clearer in the article.
i dont agree with the deffinition of luck. i can 100% predict that if my opponent gets lucky and top decks a yawgmoth's will, then i lose. that was crystal clear and i knew it would happen.
a better deffinition and one ive used is , Luck: an intersection of preparedness and oppurtunity. you cant control luck, its a random act of chaos or anti order, however you can attempt to harness luck. although i could see how that argument would be construed as skill.
In a perfect world it would be every week, but life is tough and were one 2 different continents in 3 different timezones, so as for now its up in the air.
These cards are not directly applicable in the current meta -- I agree. This was the reason I chose them. Over time, metas continually shift and evolve. The purpose of this analysis, and future ones I plan to develop, is to analyze other cards not being played so that when metas change, people will be made more aware of their options and how to select cards for decks.
If the meta shifts back towards aggro and MUC, train of thought becomes an excellent addition. Of course, train of thought in MUC is bad because you don't want to tap out, but vs MUC it either draws you the cards to win or they discard their hand. Either way, you're happy.
When white weenies and gobbies started dying out, there was a large number of decks being played -- many with moderate success. Many of these rogue decks had good ideas but never got developed because they were subpar or someone overlooked a card or two that could have saved them. Hopefully articles like these and exposures to good cards that are not being played can help when future metas exist.
The roundabout point here is to avoid looking at the card exclusively in its current context, but instead try to be aware of the card as the metagame changes.
These cards shown may be fine in certain periods, but right now none of them are fast enough to stop the problem decks, being esper storm, u/r ramp, goblins and affinity, if you put train of thought to the same test of what decks it is good against as guardian, what would it come out as positive against? Maybe MBC or MUC or other slow control decks without a real clock, but against any of the aggro decks, it seems awful.
I would say mostly there are some very minor (trivial in fact) sound problems but otherwise it was technically fine. (That interrupt in the middle was a little odd but understandable.)
Also you might want to script it a bit to keep the flow going (talking points for each talker).
Other than that it sounded like what I expected and was at times interesting. I think one thing about classic is, not everyone knows the full history of the format so perhaps some more of that in the typed part would be good.
As far as guests go, well the obvious ones are Mike Linton and everyone else who is a regular contributor at CQ. Also maybe a few of the consistent top-8ers of the premier events who aren't in the clan.
Yo guys, we TRULY appreciate the positive feedback.
I was hoping some of you could shed some light on exactly how you would like for us to improve the podcast. What are some of the things you would like to see implemented? Would you like for us to delve deeper into decklists and debate inclusions/exclusions? What about results? Would you like to see special "Classic Guests"?
I think you and Cocheese handled the issue much better in the comments than in the article.
Misrepresenting luck is somewhat of a pet peeve of mine so that might explain why I wanted to point it out. So many people choose to blame their losses on luck and claim their victories are due to skill. It's something that is both annoying and a self-defeating habit.
"Luck – the antithesis to skill, Luck is any action that can not be foreseen with 100% accuracy by players"
This is a really horrible definition. Luck and skill are not polar opposites. They are more like X and Y coordinates. There are games that are high in luck AND skill, just like there are games that are mostly luck based or mostly skill based. Skill is determined by the complexity of the game, not by the presence or lack of a luck factor. Luck certainly isn't inclusive of everything that a player can't predict with 100% certainty. Bluffing and calling bluffs is not luck, it's making an educated guess based on the available data.
I wouldn't call this beatdown. I would call it ramp. Anyhow, I think the list is poor. There are good lists on PDC forums under monogreen post. Tinderwall is worse than vine trellis. Crop rotation is nuts in every matchup and should be a four of. Fierce Empath is one of the cards that makes the deck work and should be in the list as at least a three of. Nineteen lands is low. Twenty is the minimum (I run 22). Jungle weaver is nice as a tutor target vs flyers with fierce empath. If you like the idea behind this deck and want to see more competitive lists, check the PDC thread.
Exactly what cocheese said, the whole point of the article was to show that we should improve our play in all ways that we can. When we do make the right plays you can overcome bad luck sometimes, as I said in the article....
"Often the best players will seem to be the luckiest, because they give themselves the most outs to win a game by making the right plays earlier. Play to your outs and play to win!"
And what we do doesn't effect our luck in the terms I defined, it just increases our odds. If you have a 99% chance to win a game and you lose you had great odds and were unlucky, that is how I see it anyways :D. Luck plays a factor in every game we play, increasing your skill value and deck building values are how you can overcome a lesser luck value in my opinion.
In regards to your comment about "glossing over luck"; I think that is somewhat the point of this article. Cracking fetches, trading, and mulligans are all skill effected also, and, sometimes, moreso in the sphere of skill.
1. Fetchlands - How many lands are in my deck, how many have I drawn, what are my percentage increases of waiting to draw a land vs fetching, how will this effect my future draws for this game to ensure the best possible cards.
2. Trading - Knowing your odds of getting another critter to stick vs knowing your opp's deck type and whether they intend to rush you with further critters, etc.
3. Mulligans - By far, at least for my game, tends to be the most skill intensive decision. Need to determine if this is the best draw for you, if it meets your expectation for this deck or you know it can do better...games 2 and 3 especially, do you need to get to the cards that will stop your opp or do you need to get your cards so opp can't stop you?
Granted each decision you make will have some definition of luck, it is an inherently random game, forcing luck at each card draw (at least the first 7 there are ways to manipulate the rest). But more to the point your skill will have some determination of your luck, and this article correctly points the reader to focusing on skill to better enable your "luck".
Want to emphasize again that I enjoyed the article, and content providied. However, I did want to try and make clear that the UUL and TSE qeues are at least as difficult, and likely more difficult than the other qeues, and one should not enter them expecting to win much (for awhile, at least). There are a couple factors that make these qeues more difficult. First, with the older sets, there are often fewer playables, and if you indulge in too much raredrafting you can easily get a deck that just plain sucks. The main offset for this in UUL are the cycling cards, which you can use as filler, but many people are on to this trick. As a reality check, Urza's saga is known by many old hands as a relatively miserable set to draft, in part because of the heavy dominance by black.
The lack of swiss qeues also makes these more difficult for someone trying to break in. Swiss gives a higher overall payout that 4-3-2-2, and also gives you much more "game" seeing how other decks work. If you keep getting knocked out first round in a 4-3-2-2 qeue, it is going to take you a long time to catch up to others who have been playing this set for a long time.
Another factor is that these qeues are not heavily populated and fire rarely. Unless you have the luxury of extra time, it may be difficult to join one of these qeues when the opportunity arises for a draft. Rather, these qeues are better for someone who has a whole afternoon free to draft, and can play other queues or just generally wait around until a UUL qeue finally fires.
Finally, if the cards in these sets were worth that much, people would just buy the packs and crack them open and make a profit. Supply and demand rules make sure that opened packs are always worth a little less than you paid for them. In order to have any chance of going infinite with these sets, you must be able to reliably win at least a couple packs every draft. My point is that it can be harder to do this in a UUL draft than it is in a SOM draft, for the reasons I've cited above.
This all bums me out, to be honest. I played 20 or so UUU and UUL drafts (at least) and what I found was that the longer I played, the tougher the competition got, relative to other qeues. I really like some of these old cards, and wish it was easier to collect them, but given the high "shark level" in these qeues, and their low rate of fire, they are some of the more difficult queus to work with on MTGO.
While you are right that a lot of us in the classic-based set drafts are experienced and know our pick orders, the same can generally said about every draft queue. The point of this article is to show not only that one can go infinite, but also describe some of the best ways to make this happen, and playing and winning (with a timely rare draft here and there) in the classic queues is likely the best way to do this.
As for your comment about fodder, we all have to start somewhere. I don't know if TRG is in the same boat as I am, but I spent the good part of 2 years in the 1500-1700 range learning the basics of how to draft. Towards the end of a set, I'd usually get my pick orders down and start winning a lot more, but then the sets would rotate and I'd have to learn all over again. It was only after 100+ drafts that I learned how to draft ANY set, and started to pick up how to draft specific sets a lot quicker (and my rating went up accordingly).
While you are correct that the TSE and MVW queues are full of players who know what they are doing, it is mostly because we have done a lot of these events. That shouldn't necessarily discourage you, but instead should motivate you to learn the best strategies for any given format.
I think you're glossing over luck way too quickly. Everything we do effects our chances of getting lucky or unlucky. Cracking Fetchlands at the right time, knowing when to trade creatures, mulligan decisions are all decisions that effect how "lucky" we can get in the future.
Good players get more lucky draws than bad players because they make the plays that give them more possible lucky draws.
The moment you start blindly associating wins and losses with dumb luck, is the moment you stop the process of improving your game.
One more comment, relating specifically to UUL drafting, or other "non-type 2" formats like TSE or Masters Editions. In my experience, the majority of the players in these formats have the format (and card values) down cold. Most relatively new players play with the cards they have seen in the stores and are familiar with, and stick with the current main format (these days SOM). Those who play the older formats are typically players who have been playing for a long time, have some nostalgia associated with the cards, and in many cases have heavily focused on drafting these older sets. A lot of anecdotes have been presented about having people passing you $$ cards. Yes, this happens, but in my experience, it's the exception, not the rule.
This is not to say that these are not valuable qeues to play in, if you have the patience to wait for one to fire. They are valuable in part because many players do not get involved with these sets at all. I remember back when ratings were posted, I saw very few players with ratings below 1700 playing these sets. The ratings aren't visible anymore, but you don't see many people playing garbage in these qeues, and unless you are content to just raredraft and trust your luck, you will lose a lot to more experienced players unless you are willing to invest a lot of tiem and money becoming proficient with these sets. Based on the number of times regularganster has played, it sounds like you can expect to have him as an opponent or rightward drafter with relative frequency! If not him, it will be someone with similar skill and focus a fair amount of the time.
A very cynical part of me wonders if this series is being published simply to recruit more fodder for these experienced drafters to tear apart.
Thank you for the reply, when I say there is no luck in chess, I am referring to the general sphere of the game. Of course we could take the line further and look at different branches that are "luck influenced".
Maybe your opponent was born with a higher "IQ" than you, you had no influence on this, we could consider that luck. It all comes down to semantics. Yes, your previous experiences will influence your brain and how it functions in any chess match; but the real point here is that in the match itself, nothing random will happen. (It is of note however that even computers have yet to fully solve chess, though in essence we know it is a solvable game, it is just very intense mathematically)
But yes, it is true, environmental influences can be construed as luck, though I would not lump them into the actual game.
In regards to the piece I was aiming for brevity. However, I think you are right, and I should have expanded on some of the points. I just didn't want the article to bog down. I will take a harder look for mistakes and homonyms.
I've said this before and I will keep saying it. There IS luck in chess. It may not be on the order of randomness found in card games but it is there. It is hidden and subtle and mainly in the heads of the players. Every factor not related to actual logic is a luck factor in chess. (Did you get up in a good mood? Eat breakfast? Have an argument?) Emotional state plays a big role in how on tilt you are likely to be. And it is truly an ugly thing to watch a chess player who is normally competent go on tilt because they suddenly "just don't see it" (Which refers to their chess intuition.)
I think the same factors which make chess emotional for many players make magic emotional in the same way. Competitive spirit vs frustration factor. How important is playing to win vs just playing in the moment? Winning of course is the main goal for most players with the exceptional few who seek some nirvana in the game state itself. Playing in the moment means attempting to achieve a kind of Zen moment where everything has importance and you make no mistakes because you see everything there is to see. Magic is tough to achieve that moment in because the luck factor plays a much more obvious role so more preparation is required. It is not enough to be confident and ready. You must also be to separate your self from your game and seek the best possible outcomes from every situation. Easier said than done.
That's why deck construction matters so much. Not just constructing your own decks but understanding the interactions between your cards and your opponent's potential cards. Understanding how the metagame you are about to enter is shaped means you can construct your decks with knowledge and foresight. Which are key towards achieving your goals of getting the best possible outcomes from each game. Even a few cards changed in a list can make a huge difference between possibly having the correct answer at the right time and not having it.
The other thing that keeps tilt at bay besides proper preparation is attitude. Which comes from imho having fun. If you find playing highly competitive high stakes games too stressful you are going to tilt as soon as things don't go your way. On the other hand if you enjoy this kind of situation you may find yourself becoming sharper and more focused as you miss your draws getting lands instead of cards or vice versa. I have experienced both though usually I am more tilt prone than zen.
My one major criticism of this article is that you did not take the ideas very far. You could easily have written another 3-4 paragraphs for each section and covered things in far greater detail giving your personal experiences to strengthen each of the points. Oh and next time, double check for homonyms.
I know that Green and Red control are possible, but I doubt you are going to run into them very often. I just tried to hit the common archetypes you would run into online. Feel free to give it a shot though. It's tough without the tools the other colors have but it looks like Paul has already tried something out.
The way I used the term in the article, luck is this:
-Your opponent has 3 (Yawgmoth's will)s in his/her deck he/she has a 10% chance to draw one. You know your opponent's ODDS, you don't know what LUCK will be.
-Your playing (Fiery Gambit). Your odds of getting a complete 3 heads in a row are 12.5%. You know the ODDS before you play the card, you don't know what your LUCK will be.
(Caps for emphasis, not trying to be a jerk)
So in the terms I outlined in the article (which can be argued, some of the terms simply come down to semantics) you can harness the ODDS to make the right play, LUCK is everything you can't control. Just like the example I showed; where you had to pick negate or doom blade. You harnessed the ODDS to pick negate, you have 75% chance to win, LUCK will determine what happens from there.
I'm sorry if I didn't make my stance clearer in the article.
Thanks for the comment!
i dont agree with the deffinition of luck. i can 100% predict that if my opponent gets lucky and top decks a yawgmoth's will, then i lose. that was crystal clear and i knew it would happen.
a better deffinition and one ive used is , Luck: an intersection of preparedness and oppurtunity. you cant control luck, its a random act of chaos or anti order, however you can attempt to harness luck. although i could see how that argument would be construed as skill.
In a perfect world it would be every week, but life is tough and were one 2 different continents in 3 different timezones, so as for now its up in the air.
This is exactly the kind of podcast we needed here guys. Thanks so much for your effort. Do you have any plans going forward as to it's frequency?
These cards are not directly applicable in the current meta -- I agree. This was the reason I chose them. Over time, metas continually shift and evolve. The purpose of this analysis, and future ones I plan to develop, is to analyze other cards not being played so that when metas change, people will be made more aware of their options and how to select cards for decks.
If the meta shifts back towards aggro and MUC, train of thought becomes an excellent addition. Of course, train of thought in MUC is bad because you don't want to tap out, but vs MUC it either draws you the cards to win or they discard their hand. Either way, you're happy.
When white weenies and gobbies started dying out, there was a large number of decks being played -- many with moderate success. Many of these rogue decks had good ideas but never got developed because they were subpar or someone overlooked a card or two that could have saved them. Hopefully articles like these and exposures to good cards that are not being played can help when future metas exist.
The roundabout point here is to avoid looking at the card exclusively in its current context, but instead try to be aware of the card as the metagame changes.
These cards shown may be fine in certain periods, but right now none of them are fast enough to stop the problem decks, being esper storm, u/r ramp, goblins and affinity, if you put train of thought to the same test of what decks it is good against as guardian, what would it come out as positive against? Maybe MBC or MUC or other slow control decks without a real clock, but against any of the aggro decks, it seems awful.
I would say mostly there are some very minor (trivial in fact) sound problems but otherwise it was technically fine. (That interrupt in the middle was a little odd but understandable.)
Also you might want to script it a bit to keep the flow going (talking points for each talker).
Other than that it sounded like what I expected and was at times interesting. I think one thing about classic is, not everyone knows the full history of the format so perhaps some more of that in the typed part would be good.
As far as guests go, well the obvious ones are Mike Linton and everyone else who is a regular contributor at CQ. Also maybe a few of the consistent top-8ers of the premier events who aren't in the clan.
Yo guys, we TRULY appreciate the positive feedback.
I was hoping some of you could shed some light on exactly how you would like for us to improve the podcast. What are some of the things you would like to see implemented? Would you like for us to delve deeper into decklists and debate inclusions/exclusions? What about results? Would you like to see special "Classic Guests"?
<3
I think you and Cocheese handled the issue much better in the comments than in the article.
Misrepresenting luck is somewhat of a pet peeve of mine so that might explain why I wanted to point it out. So many people choose to blame their losses on luck and claim their victories are due to skill. It's something that is both annoying and a self-defeating habit.
"Luck – the antithesis to skill, Luck is any action that can not be foreseen with 100% accuracy by players"
This is a really horrible definition. Luck and skill are not polar opposites. They are more like X and Y coordinates. There are games that are high in luck AND skill, just like there are games that are mostly luck based or mostly skill based. Skill is determined by the complexity of the game, not by the presence or lack of a luck factor. Luck certainly isn't inclusive of everything that a player can't predict with 100% certainty. Bluffing and calling bluffs is not luck, it's making an educated guess based on the available data.
I wouldn't call this beatdown. I would call it ramp. Anyhow, I think the list is poor. There are good lists on PDC forums under monogreen post. Tinderwall is worse than vine trellis. Crop rotation is nuts in every matchup and should be a four of. Fierce Empath is one of the cards that makes the deck work and should be in the list as at least a three of. Nineteen lands is low. Twenty is the minimum (I run 22). Jungle weaver is nice as a tutor target vs flyers with fierce empath. If you like the idea behind this deck and want to see more competitive lists, check the PDC thread.
Exactly what cocheese said, the whole point of the article was to show that we should improve our play in all ways that we can. When we do make the right plays you can overcome bad luck sometimes, as I said in the article....
"Often the best players will seem to be the luckiest, because they give themselves the most outs to win a game by making the right plays earlier. Play to your outs and play to win!"
And what we do doesn't effect our luck in the terms I defined, it just increases our odds. If you have a 99% chance to win a game and you lose you had great odds and were unlucky, that is how I see it anyways :D. Luck plays a factor in every game we play, increasing your skill value and deck building values are how you can overcome a lesser luck value in my opinion.
Thanks for the feedback!
We just had an MVW sealed and now it's MVW nixtix/nixpax week. So if you want some LED's, queue up!
In regards to your comment about "glossing over luck"; I think that is somewhat the point of this article. Cracking fetches, trading, and mulligans are all skill effected also, and, sometimes, moreso in the sphere of skill.
1. Fetchlands - How many lands are in my deck, how many have I drawn, what are my percentage increases of waiting to draw a land vs fetching, how will this effect my future draws for this game to ensure the best possible cards.
2. Trading - Knowing your odds of getting another critter to stick vs knowing your opp's deck type and whether they intend to rush you with further critters, etc.
3. Mulligans - By far, at least for my game, tends to be the most skill intensive decision. Need to determine if this is the best draw for you, if it meets your expectation for this deck or you know it can do better...games 2 and 3 especially, do you need to get to the cards that will stop your opp or do you need to get your cards so opp can't stop you?
Granted each decision you make will have some definition of luck, it is an inherently random game, forcing luck at each card draw (at least the first 7 there are ways to manipulate the rest). But more to the point your skill will have some determination of your luck, and this article correctly points the reader to focusing on skill to better enable your "luck".
Want to emphasize again that I enjoyed the article, and content providied. However, I did want to try and make clear that the UUL and TSE qeues are at least as difficult, and likely more difficult than the other qeues, and one should not enter them expecting to win much (for awhile, at least). There are a couple factors that make these qeues more difficult. First, with the older sets, there are often fewer playables, and if you indulge in too much raredrafting you can easily get a deck that just plain sucks. The main offset for this in UUL are the cycling cards, which you can use as filler, but many people are on to this trick. As a reality check, Urza's saga is known by many old hands as a relatively miserable set to draft, in part because of the heavy dominance by black.
The lack of swiss qeues also makes these more difficult for someone trying to break in. Swiss gives a higher overall payout that 4-3-2-2, and also gives you much more "game" seeing how other decks work. If you keep getting knocked out first round in a 4-3-2-2 qeue, it is going to take you a long time to catch up to others who have been playing this set for a long time.
Another factor is that these qeues are not heavily populated and fire rarely. Unless you have the luxury of extra time, it may be difficult to join one of these qeues when the opportunity arises for a draft. Rather, these qeues are better for someone who has a whole afternoon free to draft, and can play other queues or just generally wait around until a UUL qeue finally fires.
Finally, if the cards in these sets were worth that much, people would just buy the packs and crack them open and make a profit. Supply and demand rules make sure that opened packs are always worth a little less than you paid for them. In order to have any chance of going infinite with these sets, you must be able to reliably win at least a couple packs every draft. My point is that it can be harder to do this in a UUL draft than it is in a SOM draft, for the reasons I've cited above.
This all bums me out, to be honest. I played 20 or so UUU and UUL drafts (at least) and what I found was that the longer I played, the tougher the competition got, relative to other qeues. I really like some of these old cards, and wish it was easier to collect them, but given the high "shark level" in these qeues, and their low rate of fire, they are some of the more difficult queus to work with on MTGO.
Thanks
While you are right that a lot of us in the classic-based set drafts are experienced and know our pick orders, the same can generally said about every draft queue. The point of this article is to show not only that one can go infinite, but also describe some of the best ways to make this happen, and playing and winning (with a timely rare draft here and there) in the classic queues is likely the best way to do this.
As for your comment about fodder, we all have to start somewhere. I don't know if TRG is in the same boat as I am, but I spent the good part of 2 years in the 1500-1700 range learning the basics of how to draft. Towards the end of a set, I'd usually get my pick orders down and start winning a lot more, but then the sets would rotate and I'd have to learn all over again. It was only after 100+ drafts that I learned how to draft ANY set, and started to pick up how to draft specific sets a lot quicker (and my rating went up accordingly).
While you are correct that the TSE and MVW queues are full of players who know what they are doing, it is mostly because we have done a lot of these events. That shouldn't necessarily discourage you, but instead should motivate you to learn the best strategies for any given format.
I think you're glossing over luck way too quickly. Everything we do effects our chances of getting lucky or unlucky. Cracking Fetchlands at the right time, knowing when to trade creatures, mulligan decisions are all decisions that effect how "lucky" we can get in the future.
Good players get more lucky draws than bad players because they make the plays that give them more possible lucky draws.
The moment you start blindly associating wins and losses with dumb luck, is the moment you stop the process of improving your game.
In my experience there's no such thing as luck.
One more comment, relating specifically to UUL drafting, or other "non-type 2" formats like TSE or Masters Editions. In my experience, the majority of the players in these formats have the format (and card values) down cold. Most relatively new players play with the cards they have seen in the stores and are familiar with, and stick with the current main format (these days SOM). Those who play the older formats are typically players who have been playing for a long time, have some nostalgia associated with the cards, and in many cases have heavily focused on drafting these older sets. A lot of anecdotes have been presented about having people passing you $$ cards. Yes, this happens, but in my experience, it's the exception, not the rule.
This is not to say that these are not valuable qeues to play in, if you have the patience to wait for one to fire. They are valuable in part because many players do not get involved with these sets at all. I remember back when ratings were posted, I saw very few players with ratings below 1700 playing these sets. The ratings aren't visible anymore, but you don't see many people playing garbage in these qeues, and unless you are content to just raredraft and trust your luck, you will lose a lot to more experienced players unless you are willing to invest a lot of tiem and money becoming proficient with these sets. Based on the number of times regularganster has played, it sounds like you can expect to have him as an opponent or rightward drafter with relative frequency! If not him, it will be someone with similar skill and focus a fair amount of the time.
A very cynical part of me wonders if this series is being published simply to recruit more fodder for these experienced drafters to tear apart.
Hey guys,
Really loved the podcast.
It is nice to see classic stuff on PUREMTGO again. Outside of Whiffy's recent Lunchbox it has been quite sometime.
Keep up the good work and will be looking for the 2'nd episode.
Montolio
Thank you for the reply, when I say there is no luck in chess, I am referring to the general sphere of the game. Of course we could take the line further and look at different branches that are "luck influenced".
Maybe your opponent was born with a higher "IQ" than you, you had no influence on this, we could consider that luck. It all comes down to semantics. Yes, your previous experiences will influence your brain and how it functions in any chess match; but the real point here is that in the match itself, nothing random will happen. (It is of note however that even computers have yet to fully solve chess, though in essence we know it is a solvable game, it is just very intense mathematically)
But yes, it is true, environmental influences can be construed as luck, though I would not lump them into the actual game.
In regards to the piece I was aiming for brevity. However, I think you are right, and I should have expanded on some of the points. I just didn't want the article to bog down. I will take a harder look for mistakes and homonyms.
Thanks a ton!
I've said this before and I will keep saying it. There IS luck in chess. It may not be on the order of randomness found in card games but it is there. It is hidden and subtle and mainly in the heads of the players. Every factor not related to actual logic is a luck factor in chess. (Did you get up in a good mood? Eat breakfast? Have an argument?) Emotional state plays a big role in how on tilt you are likely to be. And it is truly an ugly thing to watch a chess player who is normally competent go on tilt because they suddenly "just don't see it" (Which refers to their chess intuition.)
I think the same factors which make chess emotional for many players make magic emotional in the same way. Competitive spirit vs frustration factor. How important is playing to win vs just playing in the moment? Winning of course is the main goal for most players with the exceptional few who seek some nirvana in the game state itself. Playing in the moment means attempting to achieve a kind of Zen moment where everything has importance and you make no mistakes because you see everything there is to see. Magic is tough to achieve that moment in because the luck factor plays a much more obvious role so more preparation is required. It is not enough to be confident and ready. You must also be to separate your self from your game and seek the best possible outcomes from every situation. Easier said than done.
That's why deck construction matters so much. Not just constructing your own decks but understanding the interactions between your cards and your opponent's potential cards. Understanding how the metagame you are about to enter is shaped means you can construct your decks with knowledge and foresight. Which are key towards achieving your goals of getting the best possible outcomes from each game. Even a few cards changed in a list can make a huge difference between possibly having the correct answer at the right time and not having it.
The other thing that keeps tilt at bay besides proper preparation is attitude. Which comes from imho having fun. If you find playing highly competitive high stakes games too stressful you are going to tilt as soon as things don't go your way. On the other hand if you enjoy this kind of situation you may find yourself becoming sharper and more focused as you miss your draws getting lands instead of cards or vice versa. I have experienced both though usually I am more tilt prone than zen.
My one major criticism of this article is that you did not take the ideas very far. You could easily have written another 3-4 paragraphs for each section and covered things in far greater detail giving your personal experiences to strengthen each of the points. Oh and next time, double check for homonyms.
2 decks and three promos and war bond tokens - Three promos are bitterblossom, Vendilion Clique and Wall of Omens. Decks below.
Infect and Defile
2 Phyrexian Vatmother
4 Foresee
2 Mana Leak
2 Consuming Vapors
7 Swamp
1 Doom Blade
1 Hand of the Praetors
4 Jwar Isle Refuge
10 Island
3 Preordain
4 Corrupted Conscience
4 Plague Myr
2 Contagion Clasp
2 Deprive
2 Smother
4 Corpse Cur
4 Necropede
2 Drowned Catacomb Sideboard
3 Flashfreeze
1 Doom Blade
3 Deathmark
4 Negate
2 Smother
2 Go for the Throat
Into the Breach
4 Ornithopter
1 Contested War Zone
21 Mountain
2 Panic Spellbomb
2 Darksteel Axe
2 Devastating Summons
1 Iron Myr
2 Galvanic Blast
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Memnite
2 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Goblin Wardriver
4 Signal Pest
4 Kuldotha Rebirth
1 Spikeshot Elder
2 Goblin Guide
hey im at work and the link for the beta news is blocked. Can someone post a summary of what it says.
Thanks
G MAN
I know that Green and Red control are possible, but I doubt you are going to run into them very often. I just tried to hit the common archetypes you would run into online. Feel free to give it a shot though. It's tough without the tools the other colors have but it looks like Paul has already tried something out.