I'm not a particularly good player. I do make a small effort to play correctly and minimize sloppiness and mistakes though. A lot of the time in casual games, you WILL see a much lower level of play. I have no problem with designing your own deck and it turning out badly, average, or awesome. That's MTG! I do have a problem with people who leave huge holes in their decks (0 interaction to their own detriment), play badly, and then complain about whatever beat them.
The "stupid" things I talked about were the approach and mindset that a lot of people come to mtg (especially casual) with, not stupid people. Thank you for reading the whole article though, instead of stopping and raging, as some might do when given this to read.
"I like winning with the pool that has been given to us, so I don't really mind if you dislike what I'm playing"
I view EDH as the "what is casual" format. Players are building casual decks against a ban list. That is like creating a deck for a no eldrazi, no ld, no discard, no mill, and no counterspells table. House rules are fine but your deck shouldn't be dictated by them. I'd play every single card you can to win because EDH is now about winning rather than how masterfully you end up winning.
My wording here was poor. I live in Michigan and here we give IQ tests, but only as part of the initial investigation and because federal law requires it. In order to reach a special needs classification now, not only does one need a low IQ score, but they also need to have a whole barrage of tests done as well, as you stated. When we draw up education plans, we base IEP's on the other tests that were given and not so much on the IQ. I, personally, do not spend much time focusing on IQ scores. I am much more interested in functionality scores. For instance, it it much more important for me to know the reading and math capabilities of a student than what his/her IQ is.
Well actually, Paul, I had someone ask me the same question. If it wasn't Rosewater that wrote this, I think I would still be as offended. I think my gf summed it up best. She said that my dislike of Rosewater was interfering with the actual point that the test was bad. So she is right in that respect. I think I got a little too much into my disagreements with MaRo which took away from the point of the article. I tossed in the part about IQ tests because I was positive someone would bring it up in the comments so I was attempting to get around that argument before it presented. It doesn't have a whole lot to do with the article and I didn't really want to get into my whole beef with them. But you are right, and I pointed that out in the article, IQ tests do offer level of reliability, but reliability doesn't make them correct.
Sorry to hear about your low score. See I think this proves the level of the test, because I have seen your custom work and you are pretty dang good. ;-)
The trouble with statistical analyses of testing results is they can be shaped according to whatever the tester wishes to prove thus invalidating them. (Btw I can't believe Microsoft does not know the plural of analysis. Pretty shocking eh?) I am sure reading that book will not improve our understanding of this problem except maybe in specific cases.
Just as a warning, watch out for Reading and Understanding Multivariate Statistics. It has nothing to do with testing, but it really helps understand they dynamics of how testing scores are averaged and analyzed. That book is NOT friendly to readers. lol
My other reply is much snarkier and I apologize (but I'm not deleting it, odd huh?).
Yes the casual experience is made better when both players are striving to improve, and if that was the intention of your article, then i feel you could have communicated it better. Maybe you could send them a link to Puremtgo or MTGOAcademy where they might learn a bit about how to improve the play experience for everyone.
Just not this article, it comes across as an incoherent rant... sorry, but that's just how I see it.
"Part of this though is that casual is often an excuse for bad."
Pretty much everything I read after that infuriated me.
"I don't mean this in a cruel way, but a high amount of casual players are playing badly."
You totally failed to not seem cruel.
"While the last is true I think, I would like to talk about some of the "stupid" (to my eyes) things about EDH and casual players in general"
I think I could pick a sentence at random in this article and find a gross generalization about the intelligence and skill of your fellow Magic players. Some of us aren't as good at this game as you are. Some of us aren't great deck designers (but we still like to try). Some of us are limited by budget concerns. Some of us have what we feel are legitimate concerns about the power level of the cards that Wizards have provided us.
Or maybe we're just "stupid".
Yeah, it makes things much easier if the rest of us are just "stupid" doesn't it...
The issue I have when playing commander and mass land destruction (and to a lesser extent, mana denial) comes up is that it turns an interactive game suddenly not interactive in the least. It's simply not worth my time to "play" since usually it would take forever to mount a comeback if it's even possible.
I find the large annihilator creatures and mass discard effects are much more situational, but again if they turn a game from fun to dull, I just scoop and move on. I do think that Emurakul doesn't belong in the format, but that's because I think it is undercosted in commander (extra turn, huge beater, and kill six of your opponents permanents for 15? Yes, please!)
Very interesting article. I agree that the disk isn't really that bad, it's just a pain when it comes back over and over.
I think players that are interested in the social contract should put "please abide by social contract" or something similar in the game description. If enough players start doing that maybe we will have some sort of critical mass of players.
But if we can get to the point where everyone strives to improve even when just having fun, then even casual magic will be in a better place. Tournament magic's fun can be lessened by many of the same things that make casual a "meh" experience at times: whining, complaining about card costs from an opponents deck, and raging.
MMogg I understand you completely. There are also a few other formats I would love to try but as you say; so many things to do and yet so little time :(.
U/R Tron is such a good deck and I want to play it sometime too. But my version would be "Some Unknown Block (most probably TSP or TE (because of buyback obviously)) / ZEN (*cough*bigjace*cough*) / 9th Ed.".
JustSin I think you're doing great so far in season three. Just remember; all we do is to gather points so that we get an invite to the big season finale. Finishing the season on top of everyone is surely a big achievement but all that matters is that final tournament. Just look at what Flippers did in season one. He barely got the invite but then came and won the title!
So gather as many points as you can during the season, get your invite and then be at your best in the season finale tournament.
That's a really good deck. In your (or anyone's experience if you want to chime in) how many infect decks do you see in sealed? Suppose you see 2 in draft just about every time. Do you typically see 1 or zero in sealed? When you see them are they more or less effective?
My guess is you might see one, but when you do, it will likely be a good one.
thx for the comments, I built that control deck with the entire purpose of running 4x undermine and 4x absorb, just seemed like fun and honestly with all those dual lands I never ran into color issues, but yes I will agree it was a horrific rd 1 match, I was surprised after that start the deck took me so far, it was one of my fav decks so far and I'd def rework some of it, the pillory main deck seemed to be weak, I sided it out most games
and my tooth deck also did horrible, which was quite unfortunate, like you said vs. you I didn't get any spell off, quite frustrating
though I am surprised that there was a week where we didn't end up playing each other lol, didn't miss much I think that was the week I ran RG madness aggro and it failed miserably
oddly I've been putting together an article where I was going to cover each deck I played for BYOS, though seems you beat me to it by breaking it into parts lol its also become harder to run a different deck each week on no money lol
@StealthBadger: I was actually having this convo with JiggyWiggy the other day, it seems in a majority of games the decks that were not former std decks perform better then those from stds past, example would be I tried playing TarmoBlink in last season's finals and got owned hard by everything I played against
I always like the look of this event, but it's not at a convenient time for me. To be honest, I'd probably use it as an excuse to build and play old standard decks, rather than build something new (just because of time constraints). I would dearly love to play U/R tron again though...
Your articles/coverage always makes me want to try playing the format. I'm always finding myself caught up in your enthusiasm. =) So many formats, so little time. =(
Love the look of that Cascade --> Restore Balance deck. Looks like fun.
To be honest, I'm watching you and your deck's progress since the beginning of the season. This past weekend (week 5) I was so sure that you were going to win but I saw that it didn't happen. Ah well, there's always next week.
Actually we recently tried that on an absent player and discovered that /eject does not work in commander for some reason. It is coded to work only with 2hg/3hg games.
I'm not a particularly good player. I do make a small effort to play correctly and minimize sloppiness and mistakes though. A lot of the time in casual games, you WILL see a much lower level of play. I have no problem with designing your own deck and it turning out badly, average, or awesome. That's MTG! I do have a problem with people who leave huge holes in their decks (0 interaction to their own detriment), play badly, and then complain about whatever beat them.
The "stupid" things I talked about were the approach and mindset that a lot of people come to mtg (especially casual) with, not stupid people. Thank you for reading the whole article though, instead of stopping and raging, as some might do when given this to read.
"I like winning with the pool that has been given to us, so I don't really mind if you dislike what I'm playing"
I view EDH as the "what is casual" format. Players are building casual decks against a ban list. That is like creating a deck for a no eldrazi, no ld, no discard, no mill, and no counterspells table. House rules are fine but your deck shouldn't be dictated by them. I'd play every single card you can to win because EDH is now about winning rather than how masterfully you end up winning.
My wording here was poor. I live in Michigan and here we give IQ tests, but only as part of the initial investigation and because federal law requires it. In order to reach a special needs classification now, not only does one need a low IQ score, but they also need to have a whole barrage of tests done as well, as you stated. When we draw up education plans, we base IEP's on the other tests that were given and not so much on the IQ. I, personally, do not spend much time focusing on IQ scores. I am much more interested in functionality scores. For instance, it it much more important for me to know the reading and math capabilities of a student than what his/her IQ is.
no sandals of abdallah yet?
Well actually, Paul, I had someone ask me the same question. If it wasn't Rosewater that wrote this, I think I would still be as offended. I think my gf summed it up best. She said that my dislike of Rosewater was interfering with the actual point that the test was bad. So she is right in that respect. I think I got a little too much into my disagreements with MaRo which took away from the point of the article. I tossed in the part about IQ tests because I was positive someone would bring it up in the comments so I was attempting to get around that argument before it presented. It doesn't have a whole lot to do with the article and I didn't really want to get into my whole beef with them. But you are right, and I pointed that out in the article, IQ tests do offer level of reliability, but reliability doesn't make them correct.
Sorry to hear about your low score. See I think this proves the level of the test, because I have seen your custom work and you are pretty dang good. ;-)
The trouble with statistical analyses of testing results is they can be shaped according to whatever the tester wishes to prove thus invalidating them. (Btw I can't believe Microsoft does not know the plural of analysis. Pretty shocking eh?) I am sure reading that book will not improve our understanding of this problem except maybe in specific cases.
Just as a warning, watch out for Reading and Understanding Multivariate Statistics. It has nothing to do with testing, but it really helps understand they dynamics of how testing scores are averaged and analyzed. That book is NOT friendly to readers. lol
Your snarkier comment was more my feeling but this is more mature and more spot on. Well said. Glad you didn't delete the other one though. :p
Read Walkerdog's insulting article to see why this won't work, sadly.
My other reply is much snarkier and I apologize (but I'm not deleting it, odd huh?).
Yes the casual experience is made better when both players are striving to improve, and if that was the intention of your article, then i feel you could have communicated it better. Maybe you could send them a link to Puremtgo or MTGOAcademy where they might learn a bit about how to improve the play experience for everyone.
Just not this article, it comes across as an incoherent rant... sorry, but that's just how I see it.
"Part of this though is that casual is often an excuse for bad."
Pretty much everything I read after that infuriated me.
"I don't mean this in a cruel way, but a high amount of casual players are playing badly."
You totally failed to not seem cruel.
"While the last is true I think, I would like to talk about some of the "stupid" (to my eyes) things about EDH and casual players in general"
I think I could pick a sentence at random in this article and find a gross generalization about the intelligence and skill of your fellow Magic players. Some of us aren't as good at this game as you are. Some of us aren't great deck designers (but we still like to try). Some of us are limited by budget concerns. Some of us have what we feel are legitimate concerns about the power level of the cards that Wizards have provided us.
Or maybe we're just "stupid".
Yeah, it makes things much easier if the rest of us are just "stupid" doesn't it...
The issue I have when playing commander and mass land destruction (and to a lesser extent, mana denial) comes up is that it turns an interactive game suddenly not interactive in the least. It's simply not worth my time to "play" since usually it would take forever to mount a comeback if it's even possible.
I find the large annihilator creatures and mass discard effects are much more situational, but again if they turn a game from fun to dull, I just scoop and move on. I do think that Emurakul doesn't belong in the format, but that's because I think it is undercosted in commander (extra turn, huge beater, and kill six of your opponents permanents for 15? Yes, please!)
Very interesting article. I agree that the disk isn't really that bad, it's just a pain when it comes back over and over.
I think players that are interested in the social contract should put "please abide by social contract" or something similar in the game description. If enough players start doing that maybe we will have some sort of critical mass of players.
But if we can get to the point where everyone strives to improve even when just having fun, then even casual magic will be in a better place. Tournament magic's fun can be lessened by many of the same things that make casual a "meh" experience at times: whining, complaining about card costs from an opponents deck, and raging.
MMogg I understand you completely. There are also a few other formats I would love to try but as you say; so many things to do and yet so little time :(.
U/R Tron is such a good deck and I want to play it sometime too. But my version would be "Some Unknown Block (most probably TSP or TE (because of buyback obviously)) / ZEN (*cough*bigjace*cough*) / 9th Ed.".
JustSin I think you're doing great so far in season three. Just remember; all we do is to gather points so that we get an invite to the big season finale. Finishing the season on top of everyone is surely a big achievement but all that matters is that final tournament. Just look at what Flippers did in season one. He barely got the invite but then came and won the title!
So gather as many points as you can during the season, get your invite and then be at your best in the season finale tournament.
LE
That's a really good deck. In your (or anyone's experience if you want to chime in) how many infect decks do you see in sealed? Suppose you see 2 in draft just about every time. Do you typically see 1 or zero in sealed? When you see them are they more or less effective?
My guess is you might see one, but when you do, it will likely be a good one.
thx for the comments, I built that control deck with the entire purpose of running 4x undermine and 4x absorb, just seemed like fun and honestly with all those dual lands I never ran into color issues, but yes I will agree it was a horrific rd 1 match, I was surprised after that start the deck took me so far, it was one of my fav decks so far and I'd def rework some of it, the pillory main deck seemed to be weak, I sided it out most games
and my tooth deck also did horrible, which was quite unfortunate, like you said vs. you I didn't get any spell off, quite frustrating
though I am surprised that there was a week where we didn't end up playing each other lol, didn't miss much I think that was the week I ran RG madness aggro and it failed miserably
oddly I've been putting together an article where I was going to cover each deck I played for BYOS, though seems you beat me to it by breaking it into parts lol its also become harder to run a different deck each week on no money lol
@StealthBadger: I was actually having this convo with JiggyWiggy the other day, it seems in a majority of games the decks that were not former std decks perform better then those from stds past, example would be I tried playing TarmoBlink in last season's finals and got owned hard by everything I played against
I always like the look of this event, but it's not at a convenient time for me. To be honest, I'd probably use it as an excuse to build and play old standard decks, rather than build something new (just because of time constraints). I would dearly love to play U/R tron again though...
Your articles/coverage always makes me want to try playing the format. I'm always finding myself caught up in your enthusiasm. =) So many formats, so little time. =(
Love the look of that Cascade --> Restore Balance deck. Looks like fun.
Ranth's deck was too fast for mine. Also I think I didn't draw any dojs & that was the nail in the coffin.
As you say, there's always next week.
See you online.
Well the message we received was we needed the player's partner to agree for it to work (One player had died already.)
I have seen it work in the last month or so. It is case sensitive for some reason.
To be honest, I'm watching you and your deck's progress since the beginning of the season. This past weekend (week 5) I was so sure that you were going to win but I saw that it didn't happen. Ah well, there's always next week.
LE
Actually we recently tried that on an absent player and discovered that /eject does not work in commander for some reason. It is coded to work only with 2hg/3hg games.
I'd like to suggest an alternative to quitting. If all other players are in agreement then you can /eject that player.