What is interesting about this is that these divisions show up almost exclusively because of two things: 1) prize structure; and 2) geography.
NBA stars don't show up at your YMCA because the prizes suck and because they don't live near by, same with grand masters at your chess club, and poker players at your church game.
Online, there is no geography. To make an analogy, while its unlikely that Saito, Chapin, LSV, and other pros are going to join TNMO queues, or swiss consistently, many experienced players will.
By way of analogy, if you play FNM in Michigan, you likely will play a few good players from your area, but it is unfathomable that you will play any good players from California, or even from a different area of Michigan a few hours away. Contrast this with online, where there that is the norm.
The only way players are divided online is by prize structure. In general a tournament with less expected value will have worse players than a tournament with more expected value. However, even the tournaments with the least expected value are attracting players from all over the world. So your $5 entry tournament at the local card shop might not attract your local pros, so you end up with a local tourney with not much competition. That same $5 entry tournament online would likely be filled with pro-wannabes from around the globe.
MTGO could divide its players and provide a non-hostile environment for casual players by incentivising the better players and making it not worth their while to shark the low expected value tournaments. The only way I see how to do that would be by using ratings so that you can only join a queue based on your rating and then you make the 1900+ rating queues just give extra packs.
Of course, you have to solve the smurfing problem somehow some how.
There is a big difference between TNMO and a MOCS event. Even if you give people similar decks.
Magic is just different now. A majority of the people who play tournaments play competitively. In the olden days of paper magic, causal players palyed tournaments, because that was the only way to get their magic fix. Nowadays that is far from true.
The lowest form of casual magic is free for all and multiplayer. If you want to emphasize "casual" in the old original sense of the word, then focus on those formats.
I am very excited about Thursday Night Magic and I have nothing but praise for WotC for doing it. There are certain details that could have been done better from my perspective. However I have no doubt that most of my suggestions have been concidered already and most likely rejected for valid reasons. I still think it's useful to express those ideas to at least give some feedback as to what actual players are thinking if not to actually make changes. I don't believe that constructive well-meaning criticism constitutes bashing WotC.
Does this mean that 4 booster sealed is going to be a part of FNM?
I don't want this to be a beat WOTC down yet again for another sub par decision bandwagon but their judgment with regards to making players happy seems a bit flawed. As I said I don't want this to be a bash WOTC rant. (So I erased the next two paragraphs.)
The big downside to TNMO is that like anything done online, magic technology spreads upward. No one is going to play jank decks when they are facing netdecks every round. You might see some rogue tech but for the most part the known solutions to type 2 will remain known and no one is going to participate with sub par technology if the win is just x cards away.
This to me means that those casual players who stayed away from MODO because of the cost will continue to stay away and those who do join will just go along with the herd. So no, TNMO is not for me any more than FNM is. (I have no FNM outlet nearby and I don't own paper cards.)
Oh and also I don't think WOTC can sanction TNMO to be fringe format since the stated idea is to prepare people for Offline magic on friday. The best you can hope for is low cost/low prize drafts and those already exist.
I would like to second the motion for sideboards. Without sideboards it's incredibly difficult to make a deck that has a chance against all types of decks, and certain matches feel like rock-paper-scissors.
I really dislike the whole debate about what answers to play. Do I play a deck that has answers to Moat/ghostly prison effects or graveyard recursion or discard or burn. How many answers do I want to include in the deck? At which point do I just start using counterspells as an answer to everything?
I think sideboards would actually increase creativity as you don't have to limit your maindeck choices to cards that answer everything.
Yes, it does seem a bit strange that they would use hype the casual nature of the event and then use standard/type 2.
Surely some of the other constructed formats would lead to more casual results. Standard Singleton, 100 Singleton, Pauper, Core Set Constructed, and Tribal would all be better choices. This is because there is less incentive for pros to spend the time to break those formats because there isn't an endless supply of tournaments with significant prizes for those formats.
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Good point on Crystal Ball, it works great with tutelage, like Dark Confidant and Sensei's Divining Top.
Sign in Blood is necessary to consistently draw tutelage or Kalastria Highborns. Late game it becomes a bit worse, but you should have enough lifeswing cards to correct the lifeloss. Basilisk collar is great in this deck. Most creatures have a role in your deck ( hex kills walkers, gatekeeper kills shrouds ) but the collar makes them a threat, especially on first-strikers.
It didn't even occur to me to try it, which is strange because last week when I heard about this I was intrigued. But then I guess what happened is the discussion about whether it would be casual or not occurred and I remembered I hate type 2.
I wouldn't be too concerned about the results of this first Thursday night Magic. It took place the day after Release events for Magic 2011 opened.
My guess is that a large part of the casual and semi-competitive players are currently more interested in drafting and sealed deck tournaments with new cards than trying to buy those new expensive cards for constructed tournaments such as last night's Thursday night magic.
After a couple of weeks I'm guessing that Thursday Night Magic will still be somewhat competitive but slightly less competitive than Daily Events or Premiere events. I don't think we can get away from the tier 1 decks, but tier 2 decks will still have a reasonable chance, especially when many of the tier 1 decks are going to be piloted by non-pros.
You should absolutely NOT feel bad about choosing, or having fun with, a "net" deck. The only sense in which there's anything wrong with that is that it's an environment-crafting failure on Wizards part IF they were expecting something else. (And that's not a given, I say "if".)
When Known Quantity Tier 1 decks are welcome and rewarded it would be highly unfair to blame players for using them. Although we can still root for the Stompy rogues like your friend. ;)
A discussion after the last pauper event between Ranth, AJ, Winter.Wolf, and myself once again got into the topic of sideboards. So, as the discussion went, one thing we all considered was running the next special event for Tribal Apocalypse as a sideboards allowed event.
"I really do not see this as a negative."
It's a negative if their intention was to introduce new players to tournament play in a casual atmosphere. If any tournament is basically a Spike only environment, then TNM will be a failure.
Okay, I played UW control at TNM last night. BUT! I'm justifying it so as not to feel bad!
1) It's I legitimately have "fun" playing. Why should I sacrifice my own fun for other people?
2) My FNM's were anything BUT casual. Legacy night? You bet your ass every other person will have 4x FoW
3) I felt no reason to believe other people would think differently, and so decided to come prepared. Turns out, I played again UW mirror round 1, Mono White Control round 2, and UW mirror round 3, so, I made the right choice.
I lost round 3 playing a "net deck", and my buddy went 3-0 playing budget Mono Green Stompy. IMO, that's spelling success for TNM in my book.
Only in Magic land... in just about every other sport or hobby I can think of it's possible to find a tournament for either beginners, or people with less natural talent etc. I don't have to worry about an NBA star showing up at my YMCA. The chess club at school was devoid of russian grand masters. In general, high stakes poker players don't show up at our church festivals.
I love the idea of playing a deck whose main intent is to scout the meta game. I am just coming back to MTG after a very long layoff, and this idea definately resonates with me, thanks.
I just built an MBA deck last night that runs 4 Tutelage and all 3 drops or below. It was fun to play, but I am hoping to find a build that can really compete. I will try a variation of your Kozilek deck.
My input would be that running Tutelage and Sign is to much suicide. Also, while I haven't tried it yet, I am thinking Crystal Ball/Tutealge would be nasty. Maybe to slow though? Also the Crystal Ball supports the Lich, though not on turn 3.
I like to play whatever, but I enjoy mono Black the most.
I just realized I forgot to talk about Vent Sentinel in the cornerstones section. I wouldn't be snapping these guys up too aggressively, but they can make decent finishers that will come late in the deck just because you will usually be running some other defenders as well. This does not mean you should be picking up bad defenders like Ogre Sentry aggressively because you are playing a "vent sentinel deck" -- you aren't. You are playing a control deck that is going to slowly burn your opponent out with 2-3 damage a turn from vent sentinel. Of course if you have other finishers then the sentinel is unnecessary.
I tried to tell people. There is no chance these will be "casual" in the sense that you are not going to see tier 4 and tier 5 decks. Even at my local FNM I do not see people running relentless rats decks. I really do not see this as a negative.
Well I do play UW as well, but more in the mill idea (as said in last LE's article)
Your version of this deck has inspired me much for the evolution of my own deck. And though i don't play Sun Titan, your template has been of great help.
I did encouter a LOT of Sun Titan decks lately, but i must confess that i've never lost to any yet cause I play graveyard hate and thus the Titan's ability becomes suboptimal. I even won once by milling with a Titan and a 9/9 indesctrutile level up white guy (can't remember the name) on the other side. Must have been tough for that opponent. The consistency and ability to survive you brought to my deck even allowed me to win after beeing attacked by a hardcasted Emrakul ! So, thanks again, great article and nice deck building.
I don't own any JMS, but 4 Jace Beleren, and I play one Crystal Ball that i've always been glad to play. I owe it many victories.
This is my question : with onyl 2 Titans and 2 Elspeth in your deck, have you been in much trouble if facing any graveyard hate ? and heavy denial ? If ever ?...
I was planning on joining a few constructed tnm queus, so I decided to watch a few replays before i did. Every single match was 2 netdecks. I didnt see anything but rdw, planeswalker based control decks, and uw counter jace control. I had been under the impression that it was supposed to be casual, but since every deck i saw was a card for card netdeck, I guess I was wrong. So if it is not supposed to be casual decks then what is the point of tnm?
I liked that lifegain deck, it seemed in the spirit of TNM. I think you could have had an opportunity to win game 2 in round 1 if you would've played it a bit different. Maybe you should have kept the Kargan back when you were at 8 life to prevent him from bringing you down to 2. Did you miscount the math at the end? That was tough though, 1 mana short of using the Ember Hauler to deal him lethal. I liked how in game 3 you leveled up the Kargan 4 times and left one mana open to bluff even though you didn't have a burst lightning or lightning bolt in hand. Oh well, 2 tickets for a few hours isn't bad at all. I'm looking forward to the 4 deck sealed next week, seems like it will be interesting.
Always enjoy the video coverage, and I appreciate the work for such an incredibly fast turnaround.
Crazy unlucky pairing round 1. G2 of course you DID get a leyline, just not in your opening hand. Once drawing that I think I would have played defense more since your cards still work and his don't - at least until he could find an o-ring for the leyline.
G3 I would have attacked your 4/4 into his wall. Your choices there were to leave 1 mana up and bluff a bolt so he might not have blocked, or leave 3 mana up and actually kill the wall with Volcanic Fallout. Either way, nothing lost by attacking. You might even have pulled the Purge from him early and thus saved yourself a turn of leveling.
Match two I would have mulled the 2nd hand. You can't have a slow start against Jund. Given that hand I also would have used up the fetches early to thin.
Lastly, those price charts look suspiciously like last week's, and the Avenger graph isn't playing nice.
What is interesting about this is that these divisions show up almost exclusively because of two things: 1) prize structure; and 2) geography.
NBA stars don't show up at your YMCA because the prizes suck and because they don't live near by, same with grand masters at your chess club, and poker players at your church game.
Online, there is no geography. To make an analogy, while its unlikely that Saito, Chapin, LSV, and other pros are going to join TNMO queues, or swiss consistently, many experienced players will.
By way of analogy, if you play FNM in Michigan, you likely will play a few good players from your area, but it is unfathomable that you will play any good players from California, or even from a different area of Michigan a few hours away. Contrast this with online, where there that is the norm.
The only way players are divided online is by prize structure. In general a tournament with less expected value will have worse players than a tournament with more expected value. However, even the tournaments with the least expected value are attracting players from all over the world. So your $5 entry tournament at the local card shop might not attract your local pros, so you end up with a local tourney with not much competition. That same $5 entry tournament online would likely be filled with pro-wannabes from around the globe.
MTGO could divide its players and provide a non-hostile environment for casual players by incentivising the better players and making it not worth their while to shark the low expected value tournaments. The only way I see how to do that would be by using ratings so that you can only join a queue based on your rating and then you make the 1900+ rating queues just give extra packs.
Of course, you have to solve the smurfing problem somehow some how.
There is a big difference between TNMO and a MOCS event. Even if you give people similar decks.
Magic is just different now. A majority of the people who play tournaments play competitively. In the olden days of paper magic, causal players palyed tournaments, because that was the only way to get their magic fix. Nowadays that is far from true.
The lowest form of casual magic is free for all and multiplayer. If you want to emphasize "casual" in the old original sense of the word, then focus on those formats.
I am very excited about Thursday Night Magic and I have nothing but praise for WotC for doing it. There are certain details that could have been done better from my perspective. However I have no doubt that most of my suggestions have been concidered already and most likely rejected for valid reasons. I still think it's useful to express those ideas to at least give some feedback as to what actual players are thinking if not to actually make changes. I don't believe that constructive well-meaning criticism constitutes bashing WotC.
Does this mean that 4 booster sealed is going to be a part of FNM?
I don't want this to be a beat WOTC down yet again for another sub par decision bandwagon but their judgment with regards to making players happy seems a bit flawed. As I said I don't want this to be a bash WOTC rant. (So I erased the next two paragraphs.)
The big downside to TNMO is that like anything done online, magic technology spreads upward. No one is going to play jank decks when they are facing netdecks every round. You might see some rogue tech but for the most part the known solutions to type 2 will remain known and no one is going to participate with sub par technology if the win is just x cards away.
This to me means that those casual players who stayed away from MODO because of the cost will continue to stay away and those who do join will just go along with the herd. So no, TNMO is not for me any more than FNM is. (I have no FNM outlet nearby and I don't own paper cards.)
Oh and also I don't think WOTC can sanction TNMO to be fringe format since the stated idea is to prepare people for Offline magic on friday. The best you can hope for is low cost/low prize drafts and those already exist.
I would like to second the motion for sideboards. Without sideboards it's incredibly difficult to make a deck that has a chance against all types of decks, and certain matches feel like rock-paper-scissors.
I really dislike the whole debate about what answers to play. Do I play a deck that has answers to Moat/ghostly prison effects or graveyard recursion or discard or burn. How many answers do I want to include in the deck? At which point do I just start using counterspells as an answer to everything?
I think sideboards would actually increase creativity as you don't have to limit your maindeck choices to cards that answer everything.
Yes, it does seem a bit strange that they would use hype the casual nature of the event and then use standard/type 2.
Surely some of the other constructed formats would lead to more casual results. Standard Singleton, 100 Singleton, Pauper, Core Set Constructed, and Tribal would all be better choices. This is because there is less incentive for pros to spend the time to break those formats because there isn't an endless supply of tournaments with significant prizes for those formats.
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Good point on Crystal Ball, it works great with tutelage, like Dark Confidant and Sensei's Divining Top.
Sign in Blood is necessary to consistently draw tutelage or Kalastria Highborns. Late game it becomes a bit worse, but you should have enough lifeswing cards to correct the lifeloss. Basilisk collar is great in this deck. Most creatures have a role in your deck ( hex kills walkers, gatekeeper kills shrouds ) but the collar makes them a threat, especially on first-strikers.
TY for testing
It didn't even occur to me to try it, which is strange because last week when I heard about this I was intrigued. But then I guess what happened is the discussion about whether it would be casual or not occurred and I remembered I hate type 2.
I dont think SBs should really be needed. You should just bring what you got with the 60 and see what happens.
I wouldn't be too concerned about the results of this first Thursday night Magic. It took place the day after Release events for Magic 2011 opened.
My guess is that a large part of the casual and semi-competitive players are currently more interested in drafting and sealed deck tournaments with new cards than trying to buy those new expensive cards for constructed tournaments such as last night's Thursday night magic.
After a couple of weeks I'm guessing that Thursday Night Magic will still be somewhat competitive but slightly less competitive than Daily Events or Premiere events. I don't think we can get away from the tier 1 decks, but tier 2 decks will still have a reasonable chance, especially when many of the tier 1 decks are going to be piloted by non-pros.
@Westane (and anyone else),
You should absolutely NOT feel bad about choosing, or having fun with, a "net" deck. The only sense in which there's anything wrong with that is that it's an environment-crafting failure on Wizards part IF they were expecting something else. (And that's not a given, I say "if".)
When Known Quantity Tier 1 decks are welcome and rewarded it would be highly unfair to blame players for using them. Although we can still root for the Stompy rogues like your friend. ;)
A discussion after the last pauper event between Ranth, AJ, Winter.Wolf, and myself once again got into the topic of sideboards. So, as the discussion went, one thing we all considered was running the next special event for Tribal Apocalypse as a sideboards allowed event.
I hope there are more results like your friends Westane.
"I really do not see this as a negative."
It's a negative if their intention was to introduce new players to tournament play in a casual atmosphere. If any tournament is basically a Spike only environment, then TNM will be a failure.
/shameface
Okay, I played UW control at TNM last night. BUT! I'm justifying it so as not to feel bad!
1) It's I legitimately have "fun" playing. Why should I sacrifice my own fun for other people?
2) My FNM's were anything BUT casual. Legacy night? You bet your ass every other person will have 4x FoW
3) I felt no reason to believe other people would think differently, and so decided to come prepared. Turns out, I played again UW mirror round 1, Mono White Control round 2, and UW mirror round 3, so, I made the right choice.
I lost round 3 playing a "net deck", and my buddy went 3-0 playing budget Mono Green Stompy. IMO, that's spelling success for TNM in my book.
"Right, casual tournament is almost an oxymoron."
Only in Magic land... in just about every other sport or hobby I can think of it's possible to find a tournament for either beginners, or people with less natural talent etc. I don't have to worry about an NBA star showing up at my YMCA. The chess club at school was devoid of russian grand masters. In general, high stakes poker players don't show up at our church festivals.
Right, casual tournament is almost an oxymoron. By definition casual players don't do tournaments*.
*ok casual players do prerelease and release tournaments for the purpose of getting promos and picking up a few Johnny cards for their pet decks.
I love the idea of playing a deck whose main intent is to scout the meta game. I am just coming back to MTG after a very long layoff, and this idea definately resonates with me, thanks.
I just built an MBA deck last night that runs 4 Tutelage and all 3 drops or below. It was fun to play, but I am hoping to find a build that can really compete. I will try a variation of your Kozilek deck.
My input would be that running Tutelage and Sign is to much suicide. Also, while I haven't tried it yet, I am thinking Crystal Ball/Tutealge would be nasty. Maybe to slow though? Also the Crystal Ball supports the Lich, though not on turn 3.
I like to play whatever, but I enjoy mono Black the most.
I just realized I forgot to talk about Vent Sentinel in the cornerstones section. I wouldn't be snapping these guys up too aggressively, but they can make decent finishers that will come late in the deck just because you will usually be running some other defenders as well. This does not mean you should be picking up bad defenders like Ogre Sentry aggressively because you are playing a "vent sentinel deck" -- you aren't. You are playing a control deck that is going to slowly burn your opponent out with 2-3 damage a turn from vent sentinel. Of course if you have other finishers then the sentinel is unnecessary.
I tried to tell people. There is no chance these will be "casual" in the sense that you are not going to see tier 4 and tier 5 decks. Even at my local FNM I do not see people running relentless rats decks. I really do not see this as a negative.
"Oh there's a big surprise! That's an incredible - I think I'm going to have a heart attack and die of not surprise! "
Well I do play UW as well, but more in the mill idea (as said in last LE's article)
Your version of this deck has inspired me much for the evolution of my own deck. And though i don't play Sun Titan, your template has been of great help.
I did encouter a LOT of Sun Titan decks lately, but i must confess that i've never lost to any yet cause I play graveyard hate and thus the Titan's ability becomes suboptimal. I even won once by milling with a Titan and a 9/9 indesctrutile level up white guy (can't remember the name) on the other side. Must have been tough for that opponent. The consistency and ability to survive you brought to my deck even allowed me to win after beeing attacked by a hardcasted Emrakul ! So, thanks again, great article and nice deck building.
I don't own any JMS, but 4 Jace Beleren, and I play one Crystal Ball that i've always been glad to play. I owe it many victories.
This is my question : with onyl 2 Titans and 2 Elspeth in your deck, have you been in much trouble if facing any graveyard hate ? and heavy denial ? If ever ?...
Thanks !
David
I was planning on joining a few constructed tnm queus, so I decided to watch a few replays before i did. Every single match was 2 netdecks. I didnt see anything but rdw, planeswalker based control decks, and uw counter jace control. I had been under the impression that it was supposed to be casual, but since every deck i saw was a card for card netdeck, I guess I was wrong. So if it is not supposed to be casual decks then what is the point of tnm?
I liked that lifegain deck, it seemed in the spirit of TNM. I think you could have had an opportunity to win game 2 in round 1 if you would've played it a bit different. Maybe you should have kept the Kargan back when you were at 8 life to prevent him from bringing you down to 2. Did you miscount the math at the end? That was tough though, 1 mana short of using the Ember Hauler to deal him lethal. I liked how in game 3 you leveled up the Kargan 4 times and left one mana open to bluff even though you didn't have a burst lightning or lightning bolt in hand. Oh well, 2 tickets for a few hours isn't bad at all. I'm looking forward to the 4 deck sealed next week, seems like it will be interesting.
Always enjoy the video coverage, and I appreciate the work for such an incredibly fast turnaround.
Crazy unlucky pairing round 1. G2 of course you DID get a leyline, just not in your opening hand. Once drawing that I think I would have played defense more since your cards still work and his don't - at least until he could find an o-ring for the leyline.
G3 I would have attacked your 4/4 into his wall. Your choices there were to leave 1 mana up and bluff a bolt so he might not have blocked, or leave 3 mana up and actually kill the wall with Volcanic Fallout. Either way, nothing lost by attacking. You might even have pulled the Purge from him early and thus saved yourself a turn of leveling.
Match two I would have mulled the 2nd hand. You can't have a slow start against Jund. Given that hand I also would have used up the fetches early to thin.
Lastly, those price charts look suspiciously like last week's, and the Avenger graph isn't playing nice.