[Everyday Eternal Episode 19] : A Noble Undertaking - Carsten Kotter, Greg Mitchell

[Teveshszat]

Hello,

something like control decks with Shahrazad in the sideboards could be a little opressive.

Best regards Teveshszat

[afb0032]

Very true. Hence why I don't play storm anymore lol

It is somewhat masochistic to want to play the deck for 10+ hours in a day for a tournament.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

It was a lot of fun to be on the show, so thanks for having me. I'm also happy a lot of you seem to enjoy me being on - so thanks :)

You guys are taking stuff out of context. When your deck has 3 Snapcasters and plenty of removals, why not SB in More removals to abuse Snapcasters? Counterbalance is good against RUG because it can counter Bolts with consistency, but BUG has no such thing. BUG's win condition is solely creature Beatdown with occasional Liliana ultimates. Hence, since we have to take out something, taking out Abrupt Decay/Golgari Charm targets does make sense.

Now, if you don't run 3 Snapcasters like Ein, then..., does it make sense to go with that SB plan? You might want to take the opposite approach, which is to overload enchantments with all the CB and RiP to overwhelm enchantment hate.

Therefore, it's really built dependent. Can't really just make an assessment like the one you guys did in the podcast.

Let me preface this by saying that, while I'm reasonably sure I'm simply correct in my assessment, I might be wrong and those among you who board out CB likely have actually played more games in the matchups than I have. My reasoning however is based on both my experiences with AD matchups (in which CB has been consistently amazing for me pre- and postboard) and straight up sound logic, which is why I feel comfortable publicly stating my point of view, even quite forcefully.

I think Snapcaster Mage and RIP have no bearing on if you should board out CB or if you want to board in every piece of removal you have. The answer to the latter is "yes you do" for the rather obvious reason that you will win if they can't kill you. As to the former, I also think you want to always keep CBs against any form of Delver deck.
As for how to make room, I'd much rather draw Counterbalances than most of my other countermagic in those matchups (Flusterstorm/Pierce to defend my mana base against Stifle early game aside - and even of those I wouldn't want more than 2-3 because they become so bad later on) and the powerlevel of the card is just too high against low curve decks. I also believe that one big reason CB is boarded out often is simply a misunderstanding on what the card does.
If you see it as a way to lock the opponent out of the game and straight up win, Decay clearly makes it pointless as it is likely to die at some point, ruining your lock. The thing is, you don't need any damn lock to win. If CB is online for three turns and then trades for Decay, it has already been insane and probably just straight up won you the game even if something else is going to deliver the actual killing blow. CB isn't meant to be a lock, it's another great tool to buy time and also your only cheap threat that actually forces them to react to you instead of the other way around. Boarding out Counterbalance because they have Decay is like Canadian boarding out Delvers against Jund because they have Punishing Fire.

Let's look at the scenarios CB creates:

a)They can't kill it yet and don't have (relevant) countermagic for it in hand. Congratz, if you have Top they don't get to play spells any more until they topdeck Decay. If you don't you will hit at random reasonably often, especially against all their one-drops, creating free CA and often forcing them into awkward lines of play.

b) They don't have Decay but can counter it. They basically have to due to the threat of simply not being able to do anything until they draw removal. This is fine, you either traded 1 for 1 - if softcounters were still effective - or they had to blow a FoW that now can't stop Terminus, Jace or Entreat.

c) They have the Decay/Charm. If it's charm, they actually have to worry that you can counter that with CB so b) applies to a certain point, especially if you have SDT or Brainstorm available. Even if it's Decay, though, you simply traded 1:1 in both mana and cards. Given that that's all I'm hoping to do all game because it means I will eventually peel and resolve Entreat, that's fine with me.

As you can see, the worst case scenario with CB is completely fine and in the best case it wins the game straight up. It also forces my opponent to spend mana on cards that aren't actually trying to get me closer to 0, which is exactly what I want to happen. That is not the description of a card I would ever board out in the matchup.
The worst thing about boarding out CBs however is that the argument that you blank their Decays is just utterly wrong against any remotely capable player. Decay is always live against Miracles as long as you don't board out SDT and if you do that we have a much more fundamental problem. If you don't present another relevant target, they will end up with multiple Decays at some point (or they might just figure out what your plan is anyway). At that point they'll feel comfortable (or should be, if they know what they're doing) to just "kill" your SDT in response to a Fetchland or when you need to flip it to miracle something. I'd much rather have them blow up CBs before that can happen or have them holding back because I already showed them I have "more important" targets. In all honesty, it might be the correct line for them anyway to just try to blow up Top at every opportunity and ignore the threat of CB. Getting rid of Top is that good.

[twndomn]

Let me preface this by saying that, while I'm reasonably sure I'm simply correct in my assessment, I might be wrong and those among you who board out CB likely have actually played more games in the matchups than I have. My reasoning however is based on both my experiences with AD matchups (in which CB has been consistently amazing for me pre- and postboard) and straight up sound logic, which is why I feel comfortable publicly stating my point of view, even quite forcefully.

First of all, among all the SCG writers, allow me to offer some constructive criticisms, you are one of the lazier ones. Your articles are mostly paddings, the essence of your article is about One paragraph long, the rest is pointing out the obvious. There're other Legacy writers who can do better but they don't write for SCG. I suggest hipsterofthecoast.

Second, you did not Top 8 at GP Paris with Miracles. Einherjer did. Here's what he said about your assessment:

Even though I disagree with what you say about Miracles - great and enjoyable episode once again :)
Greetings

Listened to the podcast now. Obviously I disagree strongly with everything they say about Miracles, seems like I couldn't convince everybody. But that's how it goes. I made my point, not going to explain it over and over and over again.

Greetings

He has more credibility than you, period.

Yes, nobody is going to explain it over and over again.

[sdematt]

Second, you did not Top 8 at GP Paris with Miracles. Einherjer did

.

Sure, but just because someone Top 8's a tournament doesn't mean someone else's experience is invalidated. Winning a tournament is a combination of skill and luck.

He has more credibility than you, period.

That's a bit harsh. We're all entitled to our opinions.

-Matt

[ESG]

First of all, among all the SCG writers, allow me to offer some constructive criticisms, you are one of the lazier ones. Your articles are mostly paddings, the essence of your article is about One paragraph long, the rest is pointing out the obvious. There're other Legacy writers who can do better but they don't write for SCG. I suggest hipsterofthecoast.

This isn't constructive criticism, twndomn; it's just criticism. Carsten, I hope you can ignore this guy. You were generous in explaining your reasoning and trying to create a dialogue, and you got in return a flame. Pretty lousy.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

First of all, among all the SCG writers, allow me to offer some constructive criticisms, you are one of the lazier ones. Your articles are mostly paddings, the essence of your article is about One paragraph long, the rest is pointing out the obvious. There're other Legacy writers who can do better but they don't write for SCG. I suggest hipsterofthecoast.

Let me offer some constructive criticism, too. Constructive criticism implies that it helps the person to do a better job at whatever the subject of the criticism is. For example, if you, oh, I don't know, offer feedback on a writer's work, constructive criticism needs to clearly point out the flaws with said work in such a way that it helps eliminate them. Blanket statements, non-specific comparisons and name-calling do not in fact constitute constructive criticism. There're other mtgthesource members that can do better. I suggest checking out comments in some of my article threads for inspiration.

Also, while I always welcome feedback and am sad to hear you don't enjoy my articles, I'm not sure what my writing style has to do with the correct SBing strategy for Miracles. I get the impression that you either take my criticism of Einherjer's SBing strategy as a personal attack on you (for whatever reason) or that I've in some way managed to really piss you off for a while now, though I actually have no idea who you are so I'm not sure how I'd have done that.

Second, you did not Top 8 at GP Paris with Miracles. Einherjer did. Here's what he said about your assessment:

He has more credibility than you, period.

I won't argue his experience and success with the archetype and if both of us had just said "that's the way to do it" without any justification, his superior credibility would obviously be enough to win him the argument. However, that isn't the case, both of us present reason-backed arguments, meaning the argumentation and logic behind both of our points of view is actually more important than who we are.
That's the case because even tournament winning lists and tournament winners are in fact often wrong, being human and all. Just look at Timo Schünemann's Burning ANT list he won GP Ghent with. Many players with significantly less "credibility" said Burning Wish was bad in ANT and lo and behold almost everybody - including Timo - has gotten rid of them by now. Just because you are good with something doesn't mean you're always right.

Yes, nobody is going to explain it over and over again.

I don't need an explanation. I've read his article (enjoyed it quite a bit, too) and I easily followed his reasoning. I just don't agree with it and find the logic behind that SBing strategy unconvincing. If his argument for it had been evidence based (something like "I've played hundreds of postboard games with both configurations, my win percentage was X % higher when boarding out CB"), I would suspect that my logic is faulty somewhere and try to get his SB plan to work for me.

However his argument is just as much based on reasoning as mine is. He wants to make their Decays and Charms dead cards postboard and decides to sacrifice the higher powered cards Counterbalance and Rest in Peace - higher powered compared to Disenchant (1-2 targets), Counterspell and Flusterstorm (often dead past turn 4-5) to make this possible. There are a couple of problems with that logic, however. From a macro perspective proactive threats (CB/RIP) are generally better than narrow answers and Brainstorm means creating dead cards in reasonably small numbers isn't actually that effective in Legacy. From a tactical, game per game perspective there is also the problem that good BUG players will/should often use their Decays to "kill" Top - the decks best card - when they can anyway, making them in no way dead, just situational. Even the Golgari Charms still have marginal utitlity against Supreme Verdict and the Snapcasters - not that that makes the card worth having for them.
You could literally do word substitution in that part of the article (BUG -> Jund, Counterbalance -> Delver of Secrets and Abrupt Decay and Golgari Charm -> Punishing Fire and Lightning Bolt) and get a similarly reasonable sounding argument for boarding out Delver in RUG against Jund. Only with that one, it's so obviously terrible that nobody would ever fall for it. Note: I'm not trying to suggest that Einherjer's plan is even remotely close to as useless as that one. Just making the inherent weakness of "hey they can answer my thing, I should board it out" more evident with an overdrawn example.

Somewhat unrelatedly, I'm unconvinced that having Charms and Decays both in their deck against CB postboard is actually correct for the BUG player no matter if the Miracles player keeps CB or not as Charm is a risky answer to CB anyway (it can, you know, get countered by the CB) and you can easily end up drawing too many removal spells when you bring in so many of them. It isn't like they're winning the long game even if we don't have Counterbalance. There's a reason people regularly boarded only 3 Krosan Grip even way back when CB was at the heart of the format.

@Matt and ESG: Thanks :)

[nedleeds]

This isn't constructive criticism, twndomn; it's just criticism. Carsten, I hope you can ignore this guy. You were generous in explaining your reasoning and trying to create a dialogue, and you got in return a flame. Pretty lousy.

He can in fact, the ignore feature can make the whole experience of the message board much more streamlined and pleasant. You are only subjected to reading the person when they are quoted which isn't nearly as bad.

[SirTylerGalt]

First of all, among all the SCG writers, allow me to offer some constructive criticisms, you are one of the lazier ones. Your articles are mostly paddings, the essence of your article is about One paragraph long, the rest is pointing out the obvious. There're other Legacy writers who can do better but they don't write for SCG. I suggest hipsterofthecoast.

Second, you did not Top 8 at GP Paris with Miracles. Einherjer did. Here's what he said about your assessment:

He has more credibility than you, period.

Since we entered Ad Hominem territory already, I'll just link to one of my favorite moments on The Source. To better understand twndomn and how Miracles old-timers view him, please read Piceli89's post and the 4 following posts: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post723415

Carsten, don't listen to this troll. He's been trolling the Miracles thread for years. If he wanted to argue against your opinion, he shouldn't be an asshole about it and use logical fallacies, and actually try to debate your argument.




About the banned cards tournaments, look at what (nameless one) found in the Japanese tournament results thread:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post810099

[nedleeds]

That's an awesome find. Here I thought ninjas and bukkake were the only interesting things to come from Japan.

Edit: the Channel / Lich's Mirror deck is brilliant.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Since we entered Ad Hominem territory already, I'll just link to one of my favorite moments on The Source. To better understand twndomn and how Miracles old-timers view him, please read Piceli89's post and the 4 following posts: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post723415

Carsten, don't listen to this troll. He's been trolling the Miracles thread for years. If he wanted to argue against your opinion, he shouldn't be an asshole about it and use logical fallacies, and actually try to debate your argument.




About the banned cards tournaments, look at what (nameless one) found in the Japanese tournament results thread:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post810099

That exchange was sweet. Especially like Matt's gif :)

The japanese tournament is a great find, I guess I'll have to try to get something informal like that going here again. Seems so sweet.