I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Since creatures are far and away the most common way to reduce your opponent to zero, being able to block, remove, and protect creatures is a major source of interaction in the game. And interactions are where most of the fun is. I don't get super excited when a creature connects with my opponent unblocked if I did nothing but play it and turn it sideways, but I feel victorious when I can one-up my opponent in an exchange of spells over a contentious creature.
I champion nothing and everything. Play what you want, I will play what I want. Very simple and hard to misconstrue.
Edit: Missed the hypocrite comment the first time around. That comment is worthy of a laugh or two since the format I mostly play is a creature based format and imho creatures rock. I guess I figured everyone else knew that too.
One of the disadvantages of the random nature of the opponents you get in the casual room is that you may run into griefers who are purposefully trying to make you miserable, or you may just be running into players with a very different definition of casual from you. In either case, the solution is simple. Just concede and move on to the next match. While it's impossible to reach a general concensus on what's casual and what's not, everyone has the ability to concede at will, and thus in many ways its not necessary to achieve a general defintion of what casual is. In addition, there is no good reason for people to get worked up when their opponent concedes. It's just an indication they either were sure they were going to lose, or didn't appreciate your deck style (or had something to take care of in the real world). Either way, you move on. In MTGO, it's nearly effortless to go from one game to the next. Condeding is a great solution to griefers and deck mismatches.
Welcome to the community. It's always a pleasure to read drafting articles. My thoughts after reading it:
1) Wild Griffin is nothing to try to cut white over. It's much, much worse than Stormfront Pegasus, which in my opinion IS a card to cut white off for.
With that said, there's no other clear first pick in the pack. Gargoyle Sentinel is probably the "safe" pick as it slides into most decks that you end up drafting. Terramorphic Expanse is always welcome, but you don't want to take it P1P1. Baloth is fine and big and the +4 life on him is often relevant. But I hate green in this format and avoid it like the plague. I'm always happy to ship good green in P1P1. Sign in Blood is fine but it's another card you're not all that happy to get with P1P1.
2) I laughed when you asked your readers if your M1G1 hand was a keeper. It's not even remotely debatable to me. It's almost perfect. Two lands, a cheap draw spell, a couple of critters and removal. Sign me up. You might as well have asked if you should keep a 2x Titan, 3x lands, Cultivate, Doom Blade hand. All joking aside, I do like it when readers are presented with questionable starting hands. It's a very large component for successful drafting.
3) I liked how you summed up your picks after the first 2 packs. It's a good visual refresher for your reader. That's not done all that often in draft articles that I've noticed.
4) A suggestion would be for you to give your readers some indication of how successful you are at drafting. I'm not necessarily saying you should reveal your limited rating (although I'd welcome that), but without saying anything at all along those lines, we have no idea if you're a 1200-rated player or a 2000-rated player.
But that's exactly my point: fun is dealing 20 damage with creatures for me. Are you going to stop me? Not being able to attack with my creatures is unfun for me, so why do you run removal? I feel like I'm having to champion for creatures here since you seem to defend every other kind of cards from disruption EXCEPT creatures. That seems awfully hypocritical.
For white weenie, look at the gray column labeled WW. Then by rows you can see WW's win-loss record against each opponent. If you read by rows, you will not see how WW performs against Rogue decks.
I tried to make it simpler by not having the table be read by rows for some info and by columns for other info - guess I didn't succeed.
Does it matter when it takes place? If it took place turn 3 would it matter? Force of Will replaces Mana Leak for the same example. Don't get sidetracked by worrying about the specifics. The point is valid at any time: If you shuffle up a deck to play the game you are in it. Frankly if your deck doesn't do well vs certain cards that is only your problem not your opponent's. (Unless they choose to make it theirs by offering you a restart which many people do on a 3-4x mulligan.) Saying that the Force of Will or Mana Leak or what have you is causing you to not have 'fun' is just wrong.
(By the way if my op plays Stone Rain on turn two I tend to worry less not more.)
IMHO Pumping your fist is rather pointless even when you have won a hard victory. Sort of a man-card thing if you know what I mean. Just as that in your face sort of bravado people display online is just silly. It is a game where you play to win. I generally give my opponents as much sympathy as I think they will tolerate and allow in such situations. I hate being land screwed but if it happens, it isn't my opponent's fault. I don't care how many armageddons or stone rains etc they ran. Land destruction can seem like a cheap way to win when your op is already having land troubles but it is like any form of denial, not only valid but smart when it means you win.
On the other hand, enjoying the game for its interactions is great and I am into that but at the end of the day you are the only one responsible for you and I am the only one responsible for me. If you are unhappy do something about it. Same with me. If I am unhappy the onus is on me to change it. I will not shirk that responsibility to place blame on those I interact with just because the interaction wasn't to my liking. (Assuming they didn't actively seek to make it bad.)
Now if your game is setup with criteria and the other player(s) do not cooperate with that criteria then you have a legitimate gripe. This is why the ORCs repeat the mantra about leaving notes in games. Because everyone plays at their own level. There are people who will not join any game with a note on it but that is fine too. Much better than joining knowing that you are not going to be following the rules.
Boot up the Mtgo client. Go to the deck editor, click on the 'stats' button, then select 'legality'. Scroll down on the second chart, and it will list which cards and sets are currently banned in each format.
Vampiric tutor is on that list for Tribal Classic, as are all restricted cards.
Currently, Gush and Frantic Search show up on the Legacy list. This is not an oversight: The format change announcement reported that Tribal Classic will follow all banned list changes for Legacy. Gush and Frantic Search were unbanned on the same day, the announcement is still on the Dailymtg website.
I think the Stone Rain/Mana Leak example you give doesn’t work because it’s taking place on turn 5. It’s the turn 2 on the play Stone Rains that we need to worry about.
Magic is a competitive game, so I advocate keeping it competitive. Wins are hollow if your opponent was never in the game. It’s the same reason I don’t pump my fist in victory when my opponent’s stuck on two lands for 6 turns.
I think the Stone Rain/Mana Leak example you give doesn’t work because it’s taking place on turn 5. It’s the turn 2 on the play Stone Rains that we need to worry about.
Magic is a competitive game, so I advocate keeping it competitive. Wins are hollow if your opponent was never in the game. It’s the same reason I don’t pump my fist in victory when my opponent’s stuck on two lands for 6 turns.
Did you read my post? I said that Vampiric Tutor was *not* banned in Classic Tribal Wars. In fact it was the only format where a 4-of Vampiric Tutor was legal. See http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Resources.aspx?x=magic/rules/tribal (as of today; that page will be updated soon).
An unsolicited kindness only works as such if you don't expect gratitude for it. Otherwise it is attempted quid pro quo with no guarantees. From your perspective you are being a benefactor but from theirs you are just doing something natural. They don't know unless you specifically tell them beforehand that you are doing this to benefit them. As far as it being unenjoyable, well you are nicer than myself. I don't often join games that I think will be outright unpleasant or boring. Sometimes that means I don't play at all.
I was rollin' Dredge. Sadly got roflstomped, but had fun none-the-less. I don't think I played you, but I did play two fish decks. Funny how the only games I won against Fish were the ones where they got graveyard hate out XD.
'Able' is relative too I suppose. Unless you mean resolve instead of play. I cast a fireball, you respond with a redirection spell. I played my spell. It didn't resolve how I wanted it to but that is the game of magic. You cast stone rain on a land and in response I sac it to harrow at which point you mana leak my harrow. We have interacted. That IS the game of magic. Even if it is not the 'friendly' game YOU envisioned where your play dominates and you get an advantage. (I am saying Magic is inherently an unfriendly (re: adversarial)game. You can make it socially friendly but in the end there is a loser or more and usually a winner. How you feel about that can be anything from happy to sad to neutral but that isn't really relevant to the outcome.)
I think what I am getting at here is that while various parts of the game may not be fun to different people the whole game should be. Otherwise why bother? We enjoy different aspects of the game but the fact that you are frustrated has nothing to do with my choices. It has to do with your choices and your failure to adjust to the current meta game.
And I empathize completely with that having been there many many times. I often lament that when I bring my super easy fun decks all I see are the cookie cutter and tightly tuned control decks. When I bring MY somewhat serious decks all I see are the bad decks and oddities that I wish I had thought of myself.
Now in regards to the meta: Some may say "But casual players should not need to pay attention to any meta game. That's for game geeks and spikes to mull over." And there we part ways entirely. It is never wrong to be smart about your hobbies. You might not find analysis to be fun and just want to get to the nitty gritty of flopping and shuffling cardboard but the fact is the smarter you are about the game the more you will enjoy the interactions. So you might not want to deal with x, y and z aspects of the game but they exist. Denying them does not make them go away.
I do believe that if you aren't having fun you should work to make it fun again or decide to not do it at all. After all why waste time being miserable? This is why I stopped playing tournament magic regularly. It was a grueling, unsatisfying, unhappy experience for me. Endlessly matched against either better players who crushed me easily with their pt deck tech or beginners who should have been on the sidelines getting lessons and instead were being crushed by my bad rogue brews.
White Weenie is 0 wins, 2 losses against slivers and 2 wins, 5 losses against UW/UWR.
Read the results by columns with the opponents specified in the rows. middleman's table had a mixture of results by row but overall results by column - I tried to reconfigure it to make it easier to read. I tried to clarify this with the example above the tables.
From time to time standard pauper goes into a stale uninteresting state, now being one of those times. Players advertising for standard pauper in the casual room are 95% likely to be play testing for a pre using one of those stale uninteresting decks (made up figures which reflect my perception of truth). If I decide to join then I am almost certain of having no fun at all, and so I see myself as being the benefactor in these situations. I am making a conscious choice to make someone else happy with little expectation of anything in return, although that is exactly how some of my best friendships on mtgo have started.
I have publicly offered to help playtest for my clan members, so to back that up I always keep up to date decklists handy for all pauper formats, even the ones I don't especially enjoy. So when I see someone has been waiting for a standard pauper opponent for more than a few minutes then I'll often decide to be helpful (and no, I never use this as an excuse to promote my clan).
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Since creatures are far and away the most common way to reduce your opponent to zero, being able to block, remove, and protect creatures is a major source of interaction in the game. And interactions are where most of the fun is. I don't get super excited when a creature connects with my opponent unblocked if I did nothing but play it and turn it sideways, but I feel victorious when I can one-up my opponent in an exchange of spells over a contentious creature.
I champion nothing and everything. Play what you want, I will play what I want. Very simple and hard to misconstrue.
Edit: Missed the hypocrite comment the first time around. That comment is worthy of a laugh or two since the format I mostly play is a creature based format and imho creatures rock. I guess I figured everyone else knew that too.
Good point and well put. I have often said the same thing in the channel when I hear the whining about quitters/griefers/bad decks/etc.
One of the disadvantages of the random nature of the opponents you get in the casual room is that you may run into griefers who are purposefully trying to make you miserable, or you may just be running into players with a very different definition of casual from you. In either case, the solution is simple. Just concede and move on to the next match. While it's impossible to reach a general concensus on what's casual and what's not, everyone has the ability to concede at will, and thus in many ways its not necessary to achieve a general defintion of what casual is. In addition, there is no good reason for people to get worked up when their opponent concedes. It's just an indication they either were sure they were going to lose, or didn't appreciate your deck style (or had something to take care of in the real world). Either way, you move on. In MTGO, it's nearly effortless to go from one game to the next. Condeding is a great solution to griefers and deck mismatches.
I was still in my thirties back then. :/
Also, thanks for making me feel old by mentioning that it's been 14 years since Alliances. FML
Welcome to the community. It's always a pleasure to read drafting articles. My thoughts after reading it:
1) Wild Griffin is nothing to try to cut white over. It's much, much worse than Stormfront Pegasus, which in my opinion IS a card to cut white off for.
With that said, there's no other clear first pick in the pack. Gargoyle Sentinel is probably the "safe" pick as it slides into most decks that you end up drafting. Terramorphic Expanse is always welcome, but you don't want to take it P1P1. Baloth is fine and big and the +4 life on him is often relevant. But I hate green in this format and avoid it like the plague. I'm always happy to ship good green in P1P1. Sign in Blood is fine but it's another card you're not all that happy to get with P1P1.
2) I laughed when you asked your readers if your M1G1 hand was a keeper. It's not even remotely debatable to me. It's almost perfect. Two lands, a cheap draw spell, a couple of critters and removal. Sign me up. You might as well have asked if you should keep a 2x Titan, 3x lands, Cultivate, Doom Blade hand. All joking aside, I do like it when readers are presented with questionable starting hands. It's a very large component for successful drafting.
3) I liked how you summed up your picks after the first 2 packs. It's a good visual refresher for your reader. That's not done all that often in draft articles that I've noticed.
4) A suggestion would be for you to give your readers some indication of how successful you are at drafting. I'm not necessarily saying you should reveal your limited rating (although I'd welcome that), but without saying anything at all along those lines, we have no idea if you're a 1200-rated player or a 2000-rated player.
Good luck in the future.
But that's exactly my point: fun is dealing 20 damage with creatures for me. Are you going to stop me? Not being able to attack with my creatures is unfun for me, so why do you run removal? I feel like I'm having to champion for creatures here since you seem to defend every other kind of cards from disruption EXCEPT creatures. That seems awfully hypocritical.
I think the confusion comes from yesterday's announcement which unrestricted Gush and Frantic search in Vintage. It did not unban them in Legacy.
Announcement Date: September 20, 2010
Effective Date: October 1, 2010
Vintage
Frantic Search is no longer restricted.
Gush is no longer restricted.
Zendikar Block Constructed, Standard, Extended, Legacy
No changes
Changes to Magic Online–only formats are now announced monthly in the Magic Online Community Group blog.
For the complete list of all banned and restricted cards by format, click here.
For an explanation of the B&R changes from R&D member Erik Lauer, click here.
You are reading by rows not columns.
For white weenie, look at the gray column labeled WW. Then by rows you can see WW's win-loss record against each opponent. If you read by rows, you will not see how WW performs against Rogue decks.
I tried to make it simpler by not having the table be read by rows for some info and by columns for other info - guess I didn't succeed.
Does it matter when it takes place? If it took place turn 3 would it matter? Force of Will replaces Mana Leak for the same example. Don't get sidetracked by worrying about the specifics. The point is valid at any time: If you shuffle up a deck to play the game you are in it. Frankly if your deck doesn't do well vs certain cards that is only your problem not your opponent's. (Unless they choose to make it theirs by offering you a restart which many people do on a 3-4x mulligan.) Saying that the Force of Will or Mana Leak or what have you is causing you to not have 'fun' is just wrong.
(By the way if my op plays Stone Rain on turn two I tend to worry less not more.)
IMHO Pumping your fist is rather pointless even when you have won a hard victory. Sort of a man-card thing if you know what I mean. Just as that in your face sort of bravado people display online is just silly. It is a game where you play to win. I generally give my opponents as much sympathy as I think they will tolerate and allow in such situations. I hate being land screwed but if it happens, it isn't my opponent's fault. I don't care how many armageddons or stone rains etc they ran. Land destruction can seem like a cheap way to win when your op is already having land troubles but it is like any form of denial, not only valid but smart when it means you win.
On the other hand, enjoying the game for its interactions is great and I am into that but at the end of the day you are the only one responsible for you and I am the only one responsible for me. If you are unhappy do something about it. Same with me. If I am unhappy the onus is on me to change it. I will not shirk that responsibility to place blame on those I interact with just because the interaction wasn't to my liking. (Assuming they didn't actively seek to make it bad.)
Now if your game is setup with criteria and the other player(s) do not cooperate with that criteria then you have a legitimate gripe. This is why the ORCs repeat the mantra about leaving notes in games. Because everyone plays at their own level. There are people who will not join any game with a note on it but that is fine too. Much better than joining knowing that you are not going to be following the rules.
Boot up the Mtgo client. Go to the deck editor, click on the 'stats' button, then select 'legality'. Scroll down on the second chart, and it will list which cards and sets are currently banned in each format.
Vampiric tutor is on that list for Tribal Classic, as are all restricted cards.
Currently, Gush and Frantic Search show up on the Legacy list. This is not an oversight: The format change announcement reported that Tribal Classic will follow all banned list changes for Legacy. Gush and Frantic Search were unbanned on the same day, the announcement is still on the Dailymtg website.
Cool. Thanks for the link.
Paul is correct. That list is not the same as the in game banned list which includes Vampiric Tutor and has for a long time.
Except that you are mistaken.
I think the Stone Rain/Mana Leak example you give doesn’t work because it’s taking place on turn 5. It’s the turn 2 on the play Stone Rains that we need to worry about.
Magic is a competitive game, so I advocate keeping it competitive. Wins are hollow if your opponent was never in the game. It’s the same reason I don’t pump my fist in victory when my opponent’s stuck on two lands for 6 turns.
I think the Stone Rain/Mana Leak example you give doesn’t work because it’s taking place on turn 5. It’s the turn 2 on the play Stone Rains that we need to worry about.
Magic is a competitive game, so I advocate keeping it competitive. Wins are hollow if your opponent was never in the game. It’s the same reason I don’t pump my fist in victory when my opponent’s stuck on two lands for 6 turns.
strange, I've never heard someone say, "what's your loss/win ratio" always the other way round...kinda confusing
Did you read my post? I said that Vampiric Tutor was *not* banned in Classic Tribal Wars. In fact it was the only format where a 4-of Vampiric Tutor was legal. See http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Resources.aspx?x=magic/rules/tribal (as of today; that page will be updated soon).
--T.
Thanks Paul. =)
An unsolicited kindness only works as such if you don't expect gratitude for it. Otherwise it is attempted quid pro quo with no guarantees. From your perspective you are being a benefactor but from theirs you are just doing something natural. They don't know unless you specifically tell them beforehand that you are doing this to benefit them. As far as it being unenjoyable, well you are nicer than myself. I don't often join games that I think will be outright unpleasant or boring. Sometimes that means I don't play at all.
I was rollin' Dredge. Sadly got roflstomped, but had fun none-the-less. I don't think I played you, but I did play two fish decks. Funny how the only games I won against Fish were the ones where they got graveyard hate out XD.
'Able' is relative too I suppose. Unless you mean resolve instead of play. I cast a fireball, you respond with a redirection spell. I played my spell. It didn't resolve how I wanted it to but that is the game of magic. You cast stone rain on a land and in response I sac it to harrow at which point you mana leak my harrow. We have interacted. That IS the game of magic. Even if it is not the 'friendly' game YOU envisioned where your play dominates and you get an advantage. (I am saying Magic is inherently an unfriendly (re: adversarial)game. You can make it socially friendly but in the end there is a loser or more and usually a winner. How you feel about that can be anything from happy to sad to neutral but that isn't really relevant to the outcome.)
I think what I am getting at here is that while various parts of the game may not be fun to different people the whole game should be. Otherwise why bother? We enjoy different aspects of the game but the fact that you are frustrated has nothing to do with my choices. It has to do with your choices and your failure to adjust to the current meta game.
And I empathize completely with that having been there many many times. I often lament that when I bring my super easy fun decks all I see are the cookie cutter and tightly tuned control decks. When I bring MY somewhat serious decks all I see are the bad decks and oddities that I wish I had thought of myself.
Now in regards to the meta: Some may say "But casual players should not need to pay attention to any meta game. That's for game geeks and spikes to mull over." And there we part ways entirely. It is never wrong to be smart about your hobbies. You might not find analysis to be fun and just want to get to the nitty gritty of flopping and shuffling cardboard but the fact is the smarter you are about the game the more you will enjoy the interactions. So you might not want to deal with x, y and z aspects of the game but they exist. Denying them does not make them go away.
I do believe that if you aren't having fun you should work to make it fun again or decide to not do it at all. After all why waste time being miserable? This is why I stopped playing tournament magic regularly. It was a grueling, unsatisfying, unhappy experience for me. Endlessly matched against either better players who crushed me easily with their pt deck tech or beginners who should have been on the sidelines getting lessons and instead were being crushed by my bad rogue brews.
White Weenie is 0 wins, 2 losses against slivers and 2 wins, 5 losses against UW/UWR.
Read the results by columns with the opponents specified in the rows. middleman's table had a mixture of results by row but overall results by column - I tried to reconfigure it to make it easier to read. I tried to clarify this with the example above the tables.
From time to time standard pauper goes into a stale uninteresting state, now being one of those times. Players advertising for standard pauper in the casual room are 95% likely to be play testing for a pre using one of those stale uninteresting decks (made up figures which reflect my perception of truth). If I decide to join then I am almost certain of having no fun at all, and so I see myself as being the benefactor in these situations. I am making a conscious choice to make someone else happy with little expectation of anything in return, although that is exactly how some of my best friendships on mtgo have started.
I have publicly offered to help playtest for my clan members, so to back that up I always keep up to date decklists handy for all pauper formats, even the ones I don't especially enjoy. So when I see someone has been waiting for a standard pauper opponent for more than a few minutes then I'll often decide to be helpful (and no, I never use this as an excuse to promote my clan).