I'm not asking for anything to be taken out of Tribal Wars as a whole. I'm just saying it is pointless marking an event as 'Pure' and having its schtick be 'No offtribe creatures' and then allowing offtribe creatures so long as they're tokens.
We continue to differ on definitions. I'm not going to say 'No, you're defining it wrong', because that's just quibbling over minutiae. In terms of links, I was thinking on a card by card basis, not a blanket free pass just because one ontribe card mentions a token type. So, Master of the Wild Hunt, being a human, would be fine in a human deck, complete with the wolf tokens it generates. Sound the call, being a card which produces wolf tokens but has no other tribal connection or association, would be absolutely fine most weeks, except for Pure which restricts offtribe creatures, for exactly the same reason that Tundra Wolves would not be allowed in the deck.
If we're going to have pure as 'Your tribe only', then let's really have it as 'Your tribe only'. Every other week, every other event, then sure, spam tokens to your heart's content, break Primeval bounty backwards both ways for fun and profit, and generate 1024 Marit Lage tokens at once. But let's not have an event which restricts your creature selection to a given tribe and then break that restriction. Keep Pure Pure. That's all I ask.
That actually ticked me off. They are demons (shapechangers) in Hindi culture/myth who look a little bit like Were Tigers (not Tigers mind you, but Therianthropes of Tigers>) Give me my Demon Shapechangers dammit!! None of this "cat demon" crap.
"tokens which are not part of a tribe, related to a tribe or tied to a tribe"
Well, this looks like a pretty large definition. For instance, cards like Master of the Wild Hunt establish that Wolf is tied to Human. They are the hunting hounds in fantasy wilderness-based cultures.
Beast is as generic a moniker as it gets, and the tribe is directly tied to Human and Elf, and can be seen as what many tribes would have as either minions or "cousins" (of all things that are "a beast by any other name", like Kavu or Lhurgoyf).
Spirit is tied to everything, because one of the many faces of the Spirit tribe is being ghosts of the departed (especially the white Spirits), and any tribe should be allowed to summon the souls of their dead ones. In fact, this is referenced mechanically and flavor-wise multiple times across the game. There shouldn't be actually anything problematic with a Human deck using Spectral Procession, because several Humans are tied to Spirits and able to create/summon them. Why shouldn't their deck as a whole do the same? (We purified it because of meta-relevance in WW builds, not exactly for thematic reasons).
And look at the Spawn tokens from Spawning Pit: they are specifically designed to feel as "generic thing someone create as a servitor". They're not tied to anything particular, therefore to everything in general.
If you keep going with this approach, the only "un-tied" token generators would mostly be Bitterblossom (since Faerie aren't really tied to anything but themselves, at least officially), cards that create Elf tokens (same as above), and cards that create unusual tokens like Squid.
I don't think there's a need to go and demonize any of them (Bitterblossom is the only strong one, and it rarely shows up. We can easily say that cards with the Tribal type are banned in Pure except for their tribes).
I'm mostly opposed to anything going in this direction, because I see the goal of deckbuilding in Tribal Wars as twofold: 1. Make the deck work, 2. Make the deck interesting. And if I'm arbitrarily deprived of, say, using Primeval Bounty anywhere but in Beast decks, I wouldn't be able to make it work, and I will have a tool less to make things interesting, so I would find myself one step closer to boredom and blandness. (I would say that is also a matter of avoiding both unnecessary complexity in an already overcomplicated meta, and an unnecessary demanding implementation, but these reasons, that very much exist, are less important to me).
From a purely avaricious standpoint, I would advise people to set aside an unopened box and/or fat pack of Khans. Why? Fetchlands! Unopened product with fetchlands will appreciate over time and in a couple of years or so I believe you can make some money this way.
Look at prices for unopened Zendikar product. (Unopened Innistrad is pretty good, too.)
Congratulations, both of you, and I was hoping Andy was recording :). Regarding the Nature's Claims in my dredge list, those last 4 slots are pretty flexible, you don't really need more deredgers, so it just makes sense to front-load some of your answers, it mostly just makes sideboarding easier, although I have used them to break up a vault key, or get rid of the odd maindeck hate cards. Since you ideally only ever have the top 9 cards of your deck in your hand, you can't always count on a misstep. I've seen chalice in that spot, which might be good, but I'm not sure how much value there is in disrupting your opponent when you're planning to win on turn 2-3 anyway...
As for collection management, I don't even know that a "D" is quite the right grade. I am tempted to say F+ or Inc, because it still fails in key areas and its as if they didn't bother to finish what they started. It is a major irk to me because as I said last week I too have a large collection. I recently went through the very samething you did (I accumulated a lot of duplicates for the last year or so even though I don't do limited anymore, just because of Commander packs etc.) Tedious does not begin to describe the torture in handling a large collection.
Even my Beta account with its merely 4k+ or so cards is a bit unruly. I haven't experienced as much lag as you talk about (though to make life fun/interesting after I commented here on not getting any lag last week, I crashed out whilst building a deck.)
One tiny thing that nags me a lot is that they don't count individual cards any more. So the total # of cards in each account has to be estimated by #s of 4x, 3x etc. Really annoyed that they took out the individual counting mechanism. Tiny because it doesn't matter but it is a good at a glance way to tell how things are progressing, a long with filters for Mythics, Rares etc.
Sorry to hear about Bailey: the loss of a family member is always hard.
I think that if the Zendikar fetches are in this block, they will be in the 3rd set. The theme is time travel, set 2 has the time stuff, and set 3 is the now changed present. Whatever Sarkhan did to get the dragons back has shifted clan alliances and set 3 is a large set with enemy fetches instead of allied.
I'd also say it's just as likely that they will hold them until return to Zendikar, which is starting to feel like it's going to be the first 2 set block given all the recent foreshadowing.
Yup, with at least two members known so far. These snake people differ from the Orochi of Kamigawa by having the lower torso of a snake, which makes them less snakelike than the four-armed, two-legged Kamigawans. They also differ from the snake coiled oracle, which has much the same hominid torso/snake tail configuration.
My two cents for whatever it is worth is that spirit of the game doesn't exist, because getting two people to agree straight down the line on it is next impossible. There just isn't one spirit of the rules, game, or environment. There are as many different spirits of the game as there are players.
I for one think that the tokens being legal makes sense the spell doesn't have a creature type. Lingering souls is not a spirit sorcery, tribal spells do exist and they are a more gray area that I am personally unsure of in the rules currently but I would think they would not be legal.
I actually wrote up the war report and thought I had already sent it off because sometimes I am not the sharpest knife in the knife thing. As a side note I realized afterward that I got the mull to 3 and win achievement in game 2 of round 3.
I have no problem whatsoever with a member of a tribe that creates tokens offtribe being legal. Different argument entirely, I'm entirely fine with all that. Every single example you give, I have no problem with at all. Absolutely. It's all good.
We are in complete agreement on:
- Emeria Angel in Angel decks
- Skeletal Vampire in Vampire decks
- Teysa, Orzhov Scion in Human or Advisor decks
- Master of the Wild Hunt in Human or Shaman decks
- Endrek Sahr in Human or Wizard decks
- Geist-Honered Monk in Human or Monk decks
- Knight-Captain of Eos in Human or Knight decks
- Avenger of Zendikar in Elemental decks
- Master of Waves in Merfolk or Wizard decks
We both are fine with them being in the format, always and forever.
Okay.
What I don't like is cards *which are not part of a tribe, related to a tribe or tied to a tribe*, which produce tokens *which are not part of a tribe, related to a tribe or tied to a tribe*, put in decks in the one week out of every five which disallows creatures *which are not part of a tribe, related to a tribe or tied to a tribe*.
I didn't mean to hurl hypocrisy accusations against anyone, let alone you. I was just defining what constitutes a hypocritical attitude. It's a fact of life. None of us is really free from it, it's a human flaw. I suffer from it, occasionally. "Do as I say, not as I do", you know? (If anything, ego-driven is heavier. But also true of the human mind).
Criticisms are certainly useful in general. I probably should have written, "non-constructive criticisms said in the wrong tone". Chances are those criticisms more often come from someone who's losing the game, anyway. I think being sore losers is what generate the vast majority of problems with Magic players, no?
I also forgot to say in the other (too long) post: apologies absolutely not needed.
There's not a token rule for Pure events. Tokens are part of the game just like instants, sorceries, lands. Tribal Wars is not an aesthetic contest. Magic is far from aesthetically consistent, flavor-wise. It's a game where a tree can wear boots, a worm can brandish swords. Where you kill a Lightning Elemental with a Lightning Bolt. Worrying about these things is like worrying about the verisimilitude of chess pieces. Many lands and spells have clear allegiances (some of them even have watermarks proving it), and yet we don't worry about them being used n the "wrong" tribe.
These are extremes nobody wants to go, and I don't understand why you're so worked up about them. You're talking about not allowing:
- Emeria Angel in Angel decks
- Skeletal Vampire in Vampire decks
- Teysa, Orzhov Scion in Human or Advisor decks
- Master of the Wild Hunt in Human or Shaman decks
- Endrek Sahr in Human or Wizard decks
- Geist-Honered Monk in Human or Monk decks
- Knight-Captain of Eos in Human or Knight decks
- Avenger of Zendikar in Elemental decks
- Master of Waves in Merfolk or Wizard decks
...and dozens of others (which, ironically, would be allowed in their token's tribe as auxiliaries). The game WANTS you to make connections between tribes. It's not "impure" to allow them, because they're hardwired in those tribes' very DNA.
As for the spells, they're just magical effects. The tribal base is one thing. But the tokens that something creates aren't neither part of nor extraneous to the tribe, because it's just what the non-tribal part of the deck does. Summoning a magical wolf is not different than conjuring a magical fire. And, as I already noted, most of the tokens are strictly defined by the color pie. Green magic creates beasts or wolves. White magic creates spirits. And so on. It's not like you have the choice to create whatever. Elementalists are wizard (like Master of Waves) that create elementals. It's what they do. If you negate that, you negate the sense itself of why a card was made that way.
I'll never allow a format that works this way. Because:
1. It loses part of the flavor of the game.
2. It doesn't solve any problem, it's just something you personally don't like. But I, for one, do like very much that there are well-defined friendships and alliances and the idea that a magic user/mystical type is able to summon lesser servants that fight alongside it. An angel surrounded by doves? A vampire surrounded by bats? Yes, please!
3. It would be terribly unpopular.
4. It would limit the creativity, pushing more players towards the Goblin Way.
5. It would be annoyingly hard to implement.
I'm sorry, I don't believe in this vision. In fact, I abhor it.
To convince me that point 3 is not true, find 20 people that would be happy to have a format where you can't create tokens of type different than your tribe (which in 90% of the case means you can't create tokens unless you play 3 or 4 specific tribes).
Tossing around pejoratives like hypocrisy really serves no one. Unless the point is to be offensive. I can understand that as you clearly seemed to feel attacked. However, you aren't serving your argument that way.
I agree with your general position which is why I don't like the bans. At all. But if people want to play in a contrived manner with assurances that they won't face xyz broken.stuff I am cool with that too. I just may not participate. (Probably wont anyway as I have said elsewhere, the time frame isn't for me.)
Can't help having the people who play Goblins/Bolts because to some that IS the point of the game. The challenge is finding ways to overcome that simplistic approach without failing to your own complexity issues. That's always been my downfall. I found I had a lot more success with singleton/doubleton strategies because I understand how that game plays out, much better than the 16 bolts 20 gobs (or whatever build people use that provides compact utility.) Or maybe I just got luckier in my match ups. Who knows/Cares?
As for serenity, that is an unlikely occurrence when it comes to a competitive spirit in a weekly sometimes ego-driven conflict. But I wish you and everyone the best of luck with that. And I agree people should speak up if they are feeling pushed past their limits by others behaviors.
I am of the mind that criticism has value. It is trying to quash such that leads to stultification. It is not true that all criticism is equal. And if I were in your shoes I would ask, nay demand, that if it is given at all, it been given civilly and with positive spin.
And as I said before I apologize if my off-the-cuff commentary offended. It shouldn't have imho as it wasn't meant as a knock but combined with what AJ said and your penchant for being a bit fiery...lets just say I'd be happier if you acknowledged my intent here and accepted it rather than go off on a tangential response.
I think everything is okay. We have to stop trying to force our personal vision on other people. Everyone can do what they please, it's a freaking game most of us (all of us?) play to have some fun, maybe forget for half a hour the troubles we all have in our lives this side of the screen.
If one wants to only make decks in a certain way, more power to them. If one wants to only make decks where every card starts with the same letter, that's great. I'd celebrate that guy. Provided they won't start saying that this is the way everyone should play.
Everyone can only serve their own version of the "spirit of the game", because nobody can possibly know what it is. Even "reasonable" is subjective. That Eldrazi you mention is the finisher of a ramp deck. The ramp tribe is what made possible for the Eldrazi to exist. It's not the Eldrazi that made the ramp tribe win; it's the ramp tribe that made the Eldrazi win. They could have used a fireball, instead. The Eldrazi, in that moment, is just a (sometimes strictly worse) Banefire. You can easily switch it for that, but you can't switch the tribe under the Eldrazi's feet for a non-ramp tribe. The hypocrisy, to me, is that Banefire wouldn't be seen as "wrong", yet the Eldrazi is. More so, many planeswalkers are able to win the game on their own. If we take this logic to its extreme, then planeswalkers should be banned/shunned in Tribal Wars because they are almost never "tribal".
Walls don't even have any real wincon if we exclude weak oddities like Vent Sentinel (which isn't even in tribe) or Rolling Stones. So what, a Wall player should feel bad having built a deck that actually does something? Or feel good if the finisher is a burn spell or some big money planeswalker rather than, I don't know, Force of Nature? Or Wall shouldn't be played at all? I really fail to see the issue here.
Especially because it's all terribly misguided. These are all non-issues because they only speak to a certain way to conceive the format philosophically, not to the actual meat and potato of the events. The decks that actually win week in week out and twist the formats are all absolutely pristine builds like that Elemental deck up there. They're also very unimaginative, if you ask me. I defend the right to be unimaginative if one feels like that, but the moment the guy who tries to do something different gets attacked because of some alleged flaw that's even almost entirely imaginary, you just push everyone into playing some variant of 20 Goblins 20 Lightning Bolts 20 lands. Which is everyone's right to do, but it's certainly more worrying, if we fear we risk to succumb to boredom, than it is playing with an off-tribe finisher, let alone playing with a generic card that happens to generate the wrong (?) thing of creature.
I don't want to hear anything that sounds like unfair criticisms ever. But if one really has to, at least let's have it at the random Tarmogoyf, not at builds that have actually some thought behind them. (And even the poor Tarmo should be mostly excused, if you think at how hard is to play them in their own tribe). (It's not a terrible tribe, it's just not what you want to play often).
For the rest, Grindstone/Painter and Helm/Line are different in that one stems from a tribe, the other doesn't. So if one wants to avoid wincons not inherent in the tribe, they would be better off using the former, not the latter.
I established I won't use the mentioned (and very old) rules to protect myself, so I'm bound to only apply them to proven cases of actual, documented issues. So no worries there. It's just something maybe people don't report too much; but they should, because it's important everyone knows their serenity is very much valued around here.
I urge reconsidering the token rule for Pure events. Failing that, change the ethos of the event. What's the point of restricting people from adding in creatures outside their tribe and then formalising a loophole to allow them to add in creatures from outside their tribe? I get the impression this particular rule was created in anger ('to avoid debates that I honestly find annoying and sterile'.) Given the swords issue is now resolved, why not put it to the player base?
You are, however, absolutely correct on bullying. I am the guilty party in this particular instance, and you would not be out of line in holding me to a stricter standard of conduct if you see fit to do so with regards the incident in question.
Since I was inadvertently party to you losing your cool let me repeat what I said in the match: I liked your deck. I don't see anything wrong with bending the "spirit" of the game in order to make your deck viable. Without that ability many poorer tribes would go unnoticed. I hate it when its something like plants into Eldrazi. That does not seem like a reasonable use of your tribe. But at the same time it IS legit. And we should expect no less from the plant/wall player.
Imho if Grindstone/Painter is OK, then Helm/Line etc is OK. Either combos are cool for all or they aren't. Winning with the tribe is a joke I hope. The spirit of the tribe is one thing. Having to be an aggro player just to satisfy it is another. Lets hope you misunderstood that line of thinking. *shudder*
My apologies if my comments were out of line. I visit when I am not playing because I am a fan of the event, not to disrupt it. I do think people expressing their genuine opinions about the format in general is no malicious act but I can see how it would be upsetting if you felt like you were being framed as the bad guy. You are not the bad guy so don't even go there when people make commentary. As for making use of the official rules, that seems entirely unnecessary. Those are in place to stop people from bullying others not to stifle all input without discretion.
Also I think it is entirely appropriate to say "hey fellas, take it elsewhere" or even "shut the heck up please, trying to playing a game here." Anyone should be able to say those things and have them respected. That isn't about obeying a rule so much as just etiquette. If some aren't willing to be civil then you can bring in the rules book and slap them about.
Thanks again for being the host. Not a job I wanted to do and I am grateful you do it so that the events still happen.
I look at it the other way around: Modern wasn't really a complete format until now. It was sort of a preview of what it should be. Now we can start playing the Modern format as the Gods intended.
It was intentional. :D
I'm not asking for anything to be taken out of Tribal Wars as a whole. I'm just saying it is pointless marking an event as 'Pure' and having its schtick be 'No offtribe creatures' and then allowing offtribe creatures so long as they're tokens.
We continue to differ on definitions. I'm not going to say 'No, you're defining it wrong', because that's just quibbling over minutiae. In terms of links, I was thinking on a card by card basis, not a blanket free pass just because one ontribe card mentions a token type. So, Master of the Wild Hunt, being a human, would be fine in a human deck, complete with the wolf tokens it generates. Sound the call, being a card which produces wolf tokens but has no other tribal connection or association, would be absolutely fine most weeks, except for Pure which restricts offtribe creatures, for exactly the same reason that Tundra Wolves would not be allowed in the deck.
If we're going to have pure as 'Your tribe only', then let's really have it as 'Your tribe only'. Every other week, every other event, then sure, spam tokens to your heart's content, break Primeval bounty backwards both ways for fun and profit, and generate 1024 Marit Lage tokens at once. But let's not have an event which restricts your creature selection to a given tribe and then break that restriction. Keep Pure Pure. That's all I ask.
That actually ticked me off. They are demons (shapechangers) in Hindi culture/myth who look a little bit like Were Tigers (not Tigers mind you, but Therianthropes of Tigers>) Give me my Demon Shapechangers dammit!! None of this "cat demon" crap.
"tokens which are not part of a tribe, related to a tribe or tied to a tribe"
Well, this looks like a pretty large definition. For instance, cards like Master of the Wild Hunt establish that Wolf is tied to Human. They are the hunting hounds in fantasy wilderness-based cultures.
Beast is as generic a moniker as it gets, and the tribe is directly tied to Human and Elf, and can be seen as what many tribes would have as either minions or "cousins" (of all things that are "a beast by any other name", like Kavu or Lhurgoyf).
Spirit is tied to everything, because one of the many faces of the Spirit tribe is being ghosts of the departed (especially the white Spirits), and any tribe should be allowed to summon the souls of their dead ones. In fact, this is referenced mechanically and flavor-wise multiple times across the game. There shouldn't be actually anything problematic with a Human deck using Spectral Procession, because several Humans are tied to Spirits and able to create/summon them. Why shouldn't their deck as a whole do the same? (We purified it because of meta-relevance in WW builds, not exactly for thematic reasons).
And look at the Spawn tokens from Spawning Pit: they are specifically designed to feel as "generic thing someone create as a servitor". They're not tied to anything particular, therefore to everything in general.
If you keep going with this approach, the only "un-tied" token generators would mostly be Bitterblossom (since Faerie aren't really tied to anything but themselves, at least officially), cards that create Elf tokens (same as above), and cards that create unusual tokens like Squid.
I don't think there's a need to go and demonize any of them (Bitterblossom is the only strong one, and it rarely shows up. We can easily say that cards with the Tribal type are banned in Pure except for their tribes).
I'm mostly opposed to anything going in this direction, because I see the goal of deckbuilding in Tribal Wars as twofold: 1. Make the deck work, 2. Make the deck interesting. And if I'm arbitrarily deprived of, say, using Primeval Bounty anywhere but in Beast decks, I wouldn't be able to make it work, and I will have a tool less to make things interesting, so I would find myself one step closer to boredom and blandness. (I would say that is also a matter of avoiding both unnecessary complexity in an already overcomplicated meta, and an unnecessary demanding implementation, but these reasons, that very much exist, are less important to me).
Congratz on the 2nd place. Sadly I only top8ed but it's funny that both our articles on the same tournament were posted on the same day here.
Congratulations, 2nd place is a hell of an accomplishment! I think LSV got 18th place.
Tarn and the other four Zen fetches dropped because they can be reasonably substituted with the fetches that will be in KTk.
Sy!
From a purely avaricious standpoint, I would advise people to set aside an unopened box and/or fat pack of Khans. Why? Fetchlands! Unopened product with fetchlands will appreciate over time and in a couple of years or so I believe you can make some money this way.
Look at prices for unopened Zendikar product. (Unopened Innistrad is pretty good, too.)
Congratulations, both of you, and I was hoping Andy was recording :). Regarding the Nature's Claims in my dredge list, those last 4 slots are pretty flexible, you don't really need more deredgers, so it just makes sense to front-load some of your answers, it mostly just makes sideboarding easier, although I have used them to break up a vault key, or get rid of the odd maindeck hate cards. Since you ideally only ever have the top 9 cards of your deck in your hand, you can't always count on a misstep. I've seen chalice in that spot, which might be good, but I'm not sure how much value there is in disrupting your opponent when you're planning to win on turn 2-3 anyway...
Sadly on the past few days, the Vintage DEs have not fired (at least the ones I tried playing).
As for collection management, I don't even know that a "D" is quite the right grade. I am tempted to say F+ or Inc, because it still fails in key areas and its as if they didn't bother to finish what they started. It is a major irk to me because as I said last week I too have a large collection. I recently went through the very samething you did (I accumulated a lot of duplicates for the last year or so even though I don't do limited anymore, just because of Commander packs etc.) Tedious does not begin to describe the torture in handling a large collection.
Even my Beta account with its merely 4k+ or so cards is a bit unruly. I haven't experienced as much lag as you talk about (though to make life fun/interesting after I commented here on not getting any lag last week, I crashed out whilst building a deck.)
One tiny thing that nags me a lot is that they don't count individual cards any more. So the total # of cards in each account has to be estimated by #s of 4x, 3x etc. Really annoyed that they took out the individual counting mechanism. Tiny because it doesn't matter but it is a good at a glance way to tell how things are progressing, a long with filters for Mythics, Rares etc.
Sorry to hear about Bailey: the loss of a family member is always hard.
I think that if the Zendikar fetches are in this block, they will be in the 3rd set. The theme is time travel, set 2 has the time stuff, and set 3 is the now changed present. Whatever Sarkhan did to get the dragons back has shifted clan alliances and set 3 is a large set with enemy fetches instead of allied.
I'd also say it's just as likely that they will hold them until return to Zendikar, which is starting to feel like it's going to be the first 2 set block given all the recent foreshadowing.
If Zendikar economics repeat itself, fetches will be going for 2-3 tickets each. I can't wait!
Yup, with at least two members known so far. These snake people differ from the Orochi of Kamigawa by having the lower torso of a snake, which makes them less snakelike than the four-armed, two-legged Kamigawans. They also differ from the snake coiled oracle, which has much the same hominid torso/snake tail configuration.
At least the Rakshasa are cat demons. :D
So now we are getting a Naga tribe on KoT?
My two cents for whatever it is worth is that spirit of the game doesn't exist, because getting two people to agree straight down the line on it is next impossible. There just isn't one spirit of the rules, game, or environment. There are as many different spirits of the game as there are players.
I for one think that the tokens being legal makes sense the spell doesn't have a creature type. Lingering souls is not a spirit sorcery, tribal spells do exist and they are a more gray area that I am personally unsure of in the rules currently but I would think they would not be legal.
I actually wrote up the war report and thought I had already sent it off because sometimes I am not the sharpest knife in the knife thing. As a side note I realized afterward that I got the mull to 3 and win achievement in game 2 of round 3.
I have no problem whatsoever with a member of a tribe that creates tokens offtribe being legal. Different argument entirely, I'm entirely fine with all that. Every single example you give, I have no problem with at all. Absolutely. It's all good.
We are in complete agreement on:
- Emeria Angel in Angel decks
- Skeletal Vampire in Vampire decks
- Teysa, Orzhov Scion in Human or Advisor decks
- Master of the Wild Hunt in Human or Shaman decks
- Endrek Sahr in Human or Wizard decks
- Geist-Honered Monk in Human or Monk decks
- Knight-Captain of Eos in Human or Knight decks
- Avenger of Zendikar in Elemental decks
- Master of Waves in Merfolk or Wizard decks
We both are fine with them being in the format, always and forever.
Okay.
What I don't like is cards *which are not part of a tribe, related to a tribe or tied to a tribe*, which produce tokens *which are not part of a tribe, related to a tribe or tied to a tribe*, put in decks in the one week out of every five which disallows creatures *which are not part of a tribe, related to a tribe or tied to a tribe*.
That's it.
I didn't mean to hurl hypocrisy accusations against anyone, let alone you. I was just defining what constitutes a hypocritical attitude. It's a fact of life. None of us is really free from it, it's a human flaw. I suffer from it, occasionally. "Do as I say, not as I do", you know? (If anything, ego-driven is heavier. But also true of the human mind).
Criticisms are certainly useful in general. I probably should have written, "non-constructive criticisms said in the wrong tone". Chances are those criticisms more often come from someone who's losing the game, anyway. I think being sore losers is what generate the vast majority of problems with Magic players, no?
I also forgot to say in the other (too long) post: apologies absolutely not needed.
There's not a token rule for Pure events. Tokens are part of the game just like instants, sorceries, lands. Tribal Wars is not an aesthetic contest. Magic is far from aesthetically consistent, flavor-wise. It's a game where a tree can wear boots, a worm can brandish swords. Where you kill a Lightning Elemental with a Lightning Bolt. Worrying about these things is like worrying about the verisimilitude of chess pieces. Many lands and spells have clear allegiances (some of them even have watermarks proving it), and yet we don't worry about them being used n the "wrong" tribe.
These are extremes nobody wants to go, and I don't understand why you're so worked up about them. You're talking about not allowing:
- Emeria Angel in Angel decks
- Skeletal Vampire in Vampire decks
- Teysa, Orzhov Scion in Human or Advisor decks
- Master of the Wild Hunt in Human or Shaman decks
- Endrek Sahr in Human or Wizard decks
- Geist-Honered Monk in Human or Monk decks
- Knight-Captain of Eos in Human or Knight decks
- Avenger of Zendikar in Elemental decks
- Master of Waves in Merfolk or Wizard decks
...and dozens of others (which, ironically, would be allowed in their token's tribe as auxiliaries). The game WANTS you to make connections between tribes. It's not "impure" to allow them, because they're hardwired in those tribes' very DNA.
As for the spells, they're just magical effects. The tribal base is one thing. But the tokens that something creates aren't neither part of nor extraneous to the tribe, because it's just what the non-tribal part of the deck does. Summoning a magical wolf is not different than conjuring a magical fire. And, as I already noted, most of the tokens are strictly defined by the color pie. Green magic creates beasts or wolves. White magic creates spirits. And so on. It's not like you have the choice to create whatever. Elementalists are wizard (like Master of Waves) that create elementals. It's what they do. If you negate that, you negate the sense itself of why a card was made that way.
I'll never allow a format that works this way. Because:
1. It loses part of the flavor of the game.
2. It doesn't solve any problem, it's just something you personally don't like. But I, for one, do like very much that there are well-defined friendships and alliances and the idea that a magic user/mystical type is able to summon lesser servants that fight alongside it. An angel surrounded by doves? A vampire surrounded by bats? Yes, please!
3. It would be terribly unpopular.
4. It would limit the creativity, pushing more players towards the Goblin Way.
5. It would be annoyingly hard to implement.
I'm sorry, I don't believe in this vision. In fact, I abhor it.
To convince me that point 3 is not true, find 20 people that would be happy to have a format where you can't create tokens of type different than your tribe (which in 90% of the case means you can't create tokens unless you play 3 or 4 specific tribes).
Tossing around pejoratives like hypocrisy really serves no one. Unless the point is to be offensive. I can understand that as you clearly seemed to feel attacked. However, you aren't serving your argument that way.
I agree with your general position which is why I don't like the bans. At all. But if people want to play in a contrived manner with assurances that they won't face xyz broken.stuff I am cool with that too. I just may not participate. (Probably wont anyway as I have said elsewhere, the time frame isn't for me.)
Can't help having the people who play Goblins/Bolts because to some that IS the point of the game. The challenge is finding ways to overcome that simplistic approach without failing to your own complexity issues. That's always been my downfall. I found I had a lot more success with singleton/doubleton strategies because I understand how that game plays out, much better than the 16 bolts 20 gobs (or whatever build people use that provides compact utility.) Or maybe I just got luckier in my match ups. Who knows/Cares?
As for serenity, that is an unlikely occurrence when it comes to a competitive spirit in a weekly sometimes ego-driven conflict. But I wish you and everyone the best of luck with that. And I agree people should speak up if they are feeling pushed past their limits by others behaviors.
I am of the mind that criticism has value. It is trying to quash such that leads to stultification. It is not true that all criticism is equal. And if I were in your shoes I would ask, nay demand, that if it is given at all, it been given civilly and with positive spin.
And as I said before I apologize if my off-the-cuff commentary offended. It shouldn't have imho as it wasn't meant as a knock but combined with what AJ said and your penchant for being a bit fiery...lets just say I'd be happier if you acknowledged my intent here and accepted it rather than go off on a tangential response.
I think everything is okay. We have to stop trying to force our personal vision on other people. Everyone can do what they please, it's a freaking game most of us (all of us?) play to have some fun, maybe forget for half a hour the troubles we all have in our lives this side of the screen.
If one wants to only make decks in a certain way, more power to them. If one wants to only make decks where every card starts with the same letter, that's great. I'd celebrate that guy. Provided they won't start saying that this is the way everyone should play.
Everyone can only serve their own version of the "spirit of the game", because nobody can possibly know what it is. Even "reasonable" is subjective. That Eldrazi you mention is the finisher of a ramp deck. The ramp tribe is what made possible for the Eldrazi to exist. It's not the Eldrazi that made the ramp tribe win; it's the ramp tribe that made the Eldrazi win. They could have used a fireball, instead. The Eldrazi, in that moment, is just a (sometimes strictly worse) Banefire. You can easily switch it for that, but you can't switch the tribe under the Eldrazi's feet for a non-ramp tribe. The hypocrisy, to me, is that Banefire wouldn't be seen as "wrong", yet the Eldrazi is. More so, many planeswalkers are able to win the game on their own. If we take this logic to its extreme, then planeswalkers should be banned/shunned in Tribal Wars because they are almost never "tribal".
Walls don't even have any real wincon if we exclude weak oddities like Vent Sentinel (which isn't even in tribe) or Rolling Stones. So what, a Wall player should feel bad having built a deck that actually does something? Or feel good if the finisher is a burn spell or some big money planeswalker rather than, I don't know, Force of Nature? Or Wall shouldn't be played at all? I really fail to see the issue here.
Especially because it's all terribly misguided. These are all non-issues because they only speak to a certain way to conceive the format philosophically, not to the actual meat and potato of the events. The decks that actually win week in week out and twist the formats are all absolutely pristine builds like that Elemental deck up there. They're also very unimaginative, if you ask me. I defend the right to be unimaginative if one feels like that, but the moment the guy who tries to do something different gets attacked because of some alleged flaw that's even almost entirely imaginary, you just push everyone into playing some variant of 20 Goblins 20 Lightning Bolts 20 lands. Which is everyone's right to do, but it's certainly more worrying, if we fear we risk to succumb to boredom, than it is playing with an off-tribe finisher, let alone playing with a generic card that happens to generate the wrong (?) thing of creature.
I don't want to hear anything that sounds like unfair criticisms ever. But if one really has to, at least let's have it at the random Tarmogoyf, not at builds that have actually some thought behind them. (And even the poor Tarmo should be mostly excused, if you think at how hard is to play them in their own tribe). (It's not a terrible tribe, it's just not what you want to play often).
For the rest, Grindstone/Painter and Helm/Line are different in that one stems from a tribe, the other doesn't. So if one wants to avoid wincons not inherent in the tribe, they would be better off using the former, not the latter.
I established I won't use the mentioned (and very old) rules to protect myself, so I'm bound to only apply them to proven cases of actual, documented issues. So no worries there. It's just something maybe people don't report too much; but they should, because it's important everyone knows their serenity is very much valued around here.
I urge reconsidering the token rule for Pure events. Failing that, change the ethos of the event. What's the point of restricting people from adding in creatures outside their tribe and then formalising a loophole to allow them to add in creatures from outside their tribe? I get the impression this particular rule was created in anger ('to avoid debates that I honestly find annoying and sterile'.) Given the swords issue is now resolved, why not put it to the player base?
You are, however, absolutely correct on bullying. I am the guilty party in this particular instance, and you would not be out of line in holding me to a stricter standard of conduct if you see fit to do so with regards the incident in question.
Since I was inadvertently party to you losing your cool let me repeat what I said in the match: I liked your deck. I don't see anything wrong with bending the "spirit" of the game in order to make your deck viable. Without that ability many poorer tribes would go unnoticed. I hate it when its something like plants into Eldrazi. That does not seem like a reasonable use of your tribe. But at the same time it IS legit. And we should expect no less from the plant/wall player.
Imho if Grindstone/Painter is OK, then Helm/Line etc is OK. Either combos are cool for all or they aren't. Winning with the tribe is a joke I hope. The spirit of the tribe is one thing. Having to be an aggro player just to satisfy it is another. Lets hope you misunderstood that line of thinking. *shudder*
My apologies if my comments were out of line. I visit when I am not playing because I am a fan of the event, not to disrupt it. I do think people expressing their genuine opinions about the format in general is no malicious act but I can see how it would be upsetting if you felt like you were being framed as the bad guy. You are not the bad guy so don't even go there when people make commentary. As for making use of the official rules, that seems entirely unnecessary. Those are in place to stop people from bullying others not to stifle all input without discretion.
Also I think it is entirely appropriate to say "hey fellas, take it elsewhere" or even "shut the heck up please, trying to playing a game here." Anyone should be able to say those things and have them respected. That isn't about obeying a rule so much as just etiquette. If some aren't willing to be civil then you can bring in the rules book and slap them about.
Thanks again for being the host. Not a job I wanted to do and I am grateful you do it so that the events still happen.
I look at it the other way around: Modern wasn't really a complete format until now. It was sort of a preview of what it should be. Now we can start playing the Modern format as the Gods intended.