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SpikeyMikey
08-13-2011, 07:20 PM
Gentlemen -

I know that everyone is excited about the new format. And I know that there's this shiny (relatively) empty forum to post in. But one of the things that makes me proud to post at the Source is the quality of the posts here. And while this is not a DtB/LMF or Established forum, I'm seeing a lot of posts that read:


"Hey, this is my idea for a deck. I have never actually played a game of Modern or done any research on the format, but I think this would make a good place to start because [insert poorly reasoned statement here]. This list is not tuned or tested and I haven't even counted it to make sure it's 75 cards, but I would like someone else to play with it and fix it for me."


We're better than that guys. The forum will still be here tomorrow after you've done some bare minimum testing to make sure that your deck isn't a pile of dogshit. Don't start a thread that's just going to die an ignoble death in the next 24 hours because you had temporary diarhea of the fingers. Pro tip: if you can't put a sideboard together for the deck, don't post it. You need to know what your deck is weak to before you start trying to improve it. Adding Firespouts when you already curbstomp Zoo is dumb, but if you don't know that you already beat Zoo, you may just try it. Then you look like an asshole.

As a corollary, there are several existing forums and results from 1 tournament that can be used as research. So when you say "I think Modern will look like 'x' because cards 'y' and 'z' are just killer", if you haven't spent 15 minutes researching to make sure that cards y and z actually impact the format, you look like an asshole. Tarmogoyf is not the best card in this format. If I read you saying that it is, I immediately ignore anything further that you've written because you obviously haven't done your homework. If you say that Hive Mind is the best card in the format, well then I may disagree with you, but at least I'll know that you know your shit and that your opinion is to be respected.

Also, you can't just port your favorite deck from Standard/Legacy/previous Extended/whatever. The format operates differently. While there are occasionally successful ports from one format to another, these are done by people who understand both formats and see an opportunity for a single strategy to function well against the field in both. Just as Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors are not good enough replacements for Mishra's Workshop (and Thorn isn't good at all) to make MUD function in Legacy, your whatever deck is not going to function in Modern. While there are parallel decks in the format, they are not straight ports. If you just swap in Lightning Helix for Chain Lightning from your Legacy Zoo and play it in Modern, you will be playing a suboptimal Zoo deck. If you do this, anyone that knows the format will look at you and think you're an asshole.

In conclusion, -snip- Seriously, no ad hominem or attacking other members.
-4eak

Thanks,

Mike

Sims
08-13-2011, 07:48 PM
It's cool, despite the fact that a lot of this feels directed at me, I'll do my best to reply here without going over the top.

Mike,
I was posting from work where I had no access to my cards, MWS, or any of that noise. Perhaps it is silly of me to be trying to port TNN from old Kamigawa standard, but it would also be folly of me to just not try. I wanted to get a thread posted while I had some notes scratched down and the ideas were fresh in my mind before I lost them to hours of work and EDH that happened after the fact. I haven't played any Modern since the announcement and the revised banned list, and as my Hypergenesis deck is no longer valid, I wanted to branch into a different archtype than combo. I have read your reply to the TNN thread and, respectfully, I disagree that TNN isn't a reasonable win condition. But I'll save that discussion for the actual thread.

In summary, before you go off pontificating and sounding like a lot of us old time adepts when 1.5 and Vintage split, please check yourself. The attitude in this post is coming off as "I'm an early adopter, I played this after it was announced for community cup, I know more than you, your decks are all shit." Perhaps this is true, perhaps it isn't, but please refrain from asserting that everyone is just an idiot.

I do respect your opinion and I would like to work at this format, please don't take this the wrong way, but you're kinda coming off as an ass.

with respect,
Sims.

4eak
08-13-2011, 08:32 PM
I am all in favor of quality posting. I think you forget how little experience and empirical evidence there is for this format, and that should inform how you perceive the brainstorming which is going on in any number of Modern forums (including this one).

I'm sure you have more experience than most playing with something close to what is now the Modern format. I doubt you have any more experience playing with this exact banlist (which changes the format enough that whatever appearance of a metagame there was before is now going to be somewhat different). Even you are playing and brainstorming in Modern from an analogue.

In such a brand-new format, I think we have to accept that everyone is forced to work with analogues (some better than others). As such, we should encourage brainstorming. Now, I prefer testing, but there is a real limit to what testing is going to do at this very moment. We don't even have a known gauntlet. The fact is: Almost no one will have (what others are willing to call) an optimal decklist. That's fine. That's what happens in new formats. Nobody knows what the metagame really looks like -- we are making guesses (some making more educated guesses than others).

Further, what "research" there is to be had even from the older Modern format is quite small and not significant enough to mean anything (other than telling us about perceptions). You do realize that even hundreds of tournaments don't necessarily tell us anything about what decks are the best, so why should a handful of Modern tournaments mean much of anything?

Instead of writing this (no offense) pretentious-looking letter, I think you would do better to stick to responding to threads which you have an educated (by analogy, of course) opinion on.



peace,
4eak

SpikeyMikey
08-13-2011, 10:46 PM
Sims: This wasn't directed at you or anyone in particular. And I was trying to be funny which is why I went over the top with stuff like the "and then you look like an asshole" bit. It was just supposed to be a joke. I do want to see people do a little research, skim a few thread titles to see if they can find someone tgat's already done the work but I also realize that like 4eak said, it's not necessarily directly relevant. I apologize that it didn't translate to the internet well.