This is nonsense. Of the four decks I've recently tested against Eldrazi, all but one had a nonzero number of relevant decisions in a typical game, regardless of which deck won. This is true of basically any deck that plays with creatures, and to suggest otherwise just makes you look foolish.Originally Posted by iatee
1,000x yes. Can I subscribe to your newsletter? For reals.
A book about the dark side of Legacy: "Magic: The Addiction" // Conversations with Magic players: "Humans of Magic"
Sure. I will call it "Dice's delroius diatribes".
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
At the moment there's basically a parallel going in with real-Stax in vintage:
http://www.eternalcentral.com/why-mi...are-necessary/
Competitive players started playing vintage in earnest due to VSL/MTGO. The format's flaws - to them at least - became more apparent when they realize how many Stax games aren't real magic games and give them no ability to leverage their skill.
'Community' vintage players accept the high variance decks/games as part of the format, aren't as bitter when they lose non-games, and don't expect to have reliably high win percentages the same way pros do. They care more about getting to play as many cards as possible - part of the reason vintage even exists - than they do about having a format that lets the better player leverage their skill. I think in vintage at least, pros are fighting a losing battle. The format will always have ridiculously high variance due to the restricted list and power cards.
Eldrazi follows the same pattern - community-legacy players love new decks, a chaotic meta and even want unbans not new bans. But a tier 1 Chalice Stompy deck ultimately just cranks up the variance in a tournament. The situation isn't as bad, there's no Workshop and the format is not at an equilibrium yet. Once it gets there and people have lost to the unbeatable Eldrazi hands enough, I think a lot of people are gonna start getting weary of the deck. (I imagine Storm players already are, but nobody is gonna take pity on Storm players for losing on t1.)
But the thing that I'm trying to get across is that there isn't a 'right answer' here. Whether you prefer a Wild West format where anything goes, players can play their favorite cards and anyone has a greater chance at winning or a more tailored format that gives you more of an ability to outplay your opponent is just a question of taste.
Your whole post made a lot of sense and I really appreciate it. The bolded part just seems to be what most of us need to accept. There isn't necessarily a 'right' or a 'wrong' here. There is a lot of personal preference. What each of us wants from the format greatly affects how we feel changes / non-changes.
So yeah, all of this very quickly devolves into people (myself included) getting up on their soapbox and yelling things as they pertain to their personal preferences. I've never seen it so clearly though. That there are basically two camps. It's not that simple for sure... I, for one, am not a pro, but I definitely fall closer to that camp than being a casual player.
I think it would be interesting to know where most Legacy players fall on the Casual<--------------->Pro scale. Like, when SCG were running Legacy every Sunday and most of the time there was a very clear blue bias in the meta, was that because the majority of people willing to travel to and pay to enter a large Legacy event are Pros/Spikes? Or just netdeckers?
And, I mean, is playing blue actually better than not playing blue? If by "better" we are talking about optimizing your chance of winning a tournament? One of the very best Legacy (and indeed magic) players I've met is Thomas Enevoldsen who won GP Strasbourg with Death and Taxes. I've seen him dabble with Miracles on a few occasions but he always came back to D&T and man was he a surgeon with that deck.
I'm trying, with this example, to deconstruct the notion that playing blue is by definition better from a Pro/Spike vantage point and if all the pros were playing Legacy they'd play blue over non-blue. I mean a majority of them might, but that might just indicate that if you don't want to dedicate yourself to hours and hours and HOURS of testing a specific deck but rather want to just rely on your overall "magic skills" then maybe blue decks are more forgiving because the cantrips let you leverage your skill during games to dig yourself toward the specific answers needed in a given situation. But that doesn't mean that if the same pro wanted to really emerse him/herself into Legacy that the correct choice for them might not be Lands, D&T, Elves, Maverick or something else non-blue.
So, where does this leave the players closer to the 'casual' end of the spectrum? The players that might not want to just netdeck and play what everyone else is playing but wants there to be room to brew etc? Why do they get frustrated by the majority at a tournament they attend is playing blue? Is it just that it gets repetitive?
This is honest and not biased at all. Non-games from non-blue decks against fast combo lists never existed guys. Please , come here and use those blue tinted googles, it's alright
If we go by the number of non-games happening in Eternal thanks to "unbeatable hands", we would have to ban a shitton of stuff.
E.g. one of my recent games vs Infect turned out like this:
T1: Land, Glistener Elf
My T1: Land, removal spell, gets forced
T2: Land, Invigorate, Berserk, dead
As frustrating as it is, non-games are part of the format - and to some people, there's an appeal to crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.
Eldrazi isn't a problem - good counterplay exists and if you keep track of the current MTGO meta, it's already losing ground (currently back to 10.2% total, was 13+% before) due Shardless coming back in force, people playings more Lands or other decks that do well vs. Eldrazi. In the end, it will just become another deck as part of the metagame cycle. I also don't see a reason why Storm players should be entitled to be THE Tier 1 combo deck in the meta all the time.
People also tend to forget that playing a Chalice deck comes at the opportunity cost to build your deck around it. If you can't deal with variance, go play Chess.
You have not been reading this thread, as I:
a. Am primarily not a blue player
b. Think that T1 games are an overall bad thing for competitive play in the format, regardless of whether they're Belcher t1s, Storm t1s or Eldrazi t1 Chalices.
This is an argument on the same level as 'America love it or leave it'. If you love variance so much, why don't you play the card game 'War', which is 100% variance? Everyone who plays Magic accepts that there is variance built into the game, and what we're arguing about is what direction we want the format to go in, not whether we want to play Chess or War. It is ultimately a question of taste.
The non-blue decks that are reliably t1 fall into two categories:
- They actually have *even more* consistency than a Brainstorm deck, with insane card draw (Elves) and/or pure tutors (Lands) and their only real drawback for not being blue is that they can't play Force of Will.
- Meta decks tailored to punish people for playing blue (Aggro Loam, D+T, Eldrazi).
Non-blue decks that don't do one of those two things are always invited to the party and get to hang out and even win some games, but if someone's really trying to win a tournament they should never seriously consider them.
I am mostly bowing out of this thread, so that way if I have to mod it it does not look like I am going ham on a conversation I started, but I do have a question. This is not a trick question I really am intersted in the answers.
What is the difference in interaction between Eldrazi and something like Lands, who seeks to strip you of your ability to play, DnT which does much the same, Miracles whose game plan is this very thing, Painter whom seeks to take all your lands off you in one fell swoop or something like MUD or Goblin Stompy?
I do not actually know myself what the issue is with this one deck trying to lock you out when I (biased maybe) think Lands just does a better job. I think that everything Eldrazi does when it comes to control, Lands was doing first. Painter before that. I get that this is a different way of doing it, but how much interaction do you really get from a deck with 6-8 moons and the intent to land one before you get a turn? Then they have a bunch of effects that blow up anything they like for a single mana.
My original reaction might seem overblown, but as a Shops player I am really happy this deck is here now. Not fun or not fun, whatever, it is fun for me. Something, something, something, whole world burn. That said, I have been playing decks that do exactly this for years. I own Goblin/Dragon Stompy, MUD, Painter and Lands. I do not understand where the issue lies other than this deck is more popular than those listed but this method of play to me is nothing new. Why does Eldrazi get the wrap for being unfun when Counter Top, Bloodmoon, Wasteland Loam and 3Ball are all as painful to sit across from?
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
It's because Eldrazi has a higher meta penetration than those decks, Chalice is extremely efficient at shutting down blue decks, and people here like blue decks and meaningless blather about what requires more "skill" and "interaction." The vast majority of powerful strategies in Legacy are "unfun" to play against, that's just the way of it when you have a format full of busted cards and interactions. If you want a format where there's no turn one blowouts and every game is slow and interactive, set up a league where everyone is required to play Shardless BUG.
Lord of the Chalice
Stompy Discord: https://discord.gg/6cesvkz
This. The only real difference is that there are enough Chalice decks now that you can't just proclaim "bad beats" when you get paired up against one and lose because your deck curves out at 1.15 and runs a manabase that is absolutely not feasible if you only see one card per turn.
I think the biggest thing is the deep seeded emotional understanding that the right play is the right play regardless of outcomes. The ability to make a decision 5 straight times, lose 5 times because of it, and still make it the 6th time if it's the right play. - Jon Finkel
"Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings."
OK, we are using the same definition. You are just completely wrong then. Variance and luck are not just a good thing for the format, they are among the defining features about what makes Magic one of the best games ever created. You can choose to disagree with me, but then you disagree with:
Bobby Fisher, who publicly lamented that chess was a "solvable" game which could be somewhat memorized to victory. He even proposed a number of solutions to this issue, the most popular of which was simply randomizing the first and eighth ranks to inhibit standard openings.
Mark Rosewater, who notes something similar but in regards to Magic. Among the ideas is the fact that one's ability to respond to random events makes them a better player. " http://dtwtranscripts.blogspot.com/2...andomness.html
Richard Garfield too: He notes that most people who think they understand games feel that games can be either highly luck-based or highly skill-based, and that these are mutually exclusive. This is demonstrably not true as simply observing the fact that there is such thing as poker champions. He goes into much more detail, but it is a long watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av5Hf7uOu-o
There is a lot here, so I want to tie this neatly back into my central point that the presence of Eldrazi is a strong plus for Legacy because it diminishes the cantrip cartel. The cantrip cartel effectively reduces variance so that the player can exert a greater level of control over the outcome of the game. DnT punishes players for trying this. I know that you understand that very well. Now Eldrazi does this also - in a more direct fashion, and with much less skill required. But the effect on the metagame is quite similar. Fewer players playing cantrips to victory means more players playing something else.
Now then, your assertion that players will not react to the entrance of a powerful tier one deck shutting out their deck is flatly silly. This phenomenon is exactly what shapes the meta in the first place. It is the cantrip engine nabbing some extra games due to its ability to command information and diminish variance that makes it so popular in the first place. Only now, there is a price you pay for that privilege. Yes, that is the tension. Vintage has cards that simply win you the game when they resolve, no matter the deck. So you just have to play those, consequences be damned. There is no such dilemma in Legacy. So your comparison is extremely weak.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
Miracles/Lands/D+T all attempt to lock an opponent out on some level, but it's never turn 1, and their opponent generally has some ability to fight the lock along the way. Do I FoW Counterbalance or Top or neither? Do I use my Wasteland on Lands' Port or wait for something else? Bolt Thalia now or Brainstorm into more lands?
All of these decks are also difficult to play, both with and against and even once they have lock pieces down. Rishadan Port in Lands and D+T requires knowing an opponent's deck and what mana they need. Miracles is probably the most decision-dense deck in any format, and even if you luck into a quick Counter-top lock, you have to make decisions based on an opponent's curve/sequencing.
T1 Chalice doesn't generally give someone many decisions, it just happens, or it doesn't happen. Yolo.
Ease of use I do not think is really an argument I am going to accept. A deck does what a deck does and you should always plan to face a competent pilot. If you don't so be it, but do not bet on that. I also do not accept that a deck being "Easy" has anything to do with what it does. Fish is a rather "Easy" deck but I am not going to belittle someone seeking to play it. It also, just to point out, plays Chalice and backs it up with a counter suite.
Painter can still win on turn one in the same way, in fact it is built to do just that. As can MUD and other Stompy shells. Also Lands can and I have won on the first turn, dropping an opening hand and Wasting the mana on the table away. That is not a pipe dream, it not only happens but it is my plan. I will control you then combo, not combo and then if that fails try and control you.
T1 Chalice might not give a lot of choices but neither does T1 Wasteland Loam, Bloodmoon, 3 Ball, Island-Delver-Daze, Top with FoW and CB in hand or storm count 6 into Empty the Warrens.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
Yes, I believe this all happened during his crazy bearded Nazi years. Chess may one day be a fully solvable game by computers yet in 2016 there clearly is a most-skilled chess player in the world. One day will someone memorize 'solved chess'? Probably not until we reach the cyborg age. (Incidentally, even Fischerrandom chess would be a solvable game, just a much larger one.)
I will pass on responding to Mark Rosewater, I believe he has also entered his crazy years where he spends his days writing dialogues where the colors talk to each other.
This really isn't that complicated. Poker is very high variance in a small set of games and low variance in a larger set of games. Playing one hand 1 vs 1 vs the best Poker player in the world and I will have a fairly decent shot at winning. Playing 10,000 hands, there's no doubt I'm out of money.
The same is true with Magic, though there are two important nuances:
- Due to time limitations, tournament matchups are best out of 3, so small sample sets are actually the norm.
- Match ups matter a lot. If I were to play 10,000 games with Jon Finkel, and I was 12 Post, he was Miracles, I still like my chances.
Here's where I think our core disagreement is. I don't think that Eldrazi makes it any less correct to play cantrip decks (other than possibly Storm). They remain the best decks post-Eldrazi - maybe they'll get tweaked a little and squeeze in a few one-mana-but-not spells like Dismember and Murderous Cut and have slightly different sideboards. But they remain the best decks, Brainstorm remains the best card - now they just get to randomly step on a landmine once in a while. Price of doing business. A little less magic is played.
Welcome to vintage light, enjoy your stay.
I really don't get why you're railing so hard about a deck that 1-in-10 play. You're not even likely to face it at a local on a given day. You'll face it, on average, Once in a large tournament (8ish rounds.) The DTB section shows that the field is diverse, and probably as diverse as it's ever been in the last 3 years that I've been in the format.
It's making decks like Junk good because it's generally got 50-50ish MUs except for Storm and other early combos. The idea we could have a non-blue midrange deck back in the fold is intriguing IMO, and as a pet deck it certainly pleases me. If a Storm player has to fold now and then because they normally get an easy win on decks like Junk that's called balance. Eldrazi has not only entered as a DTB, but it's making other DTBs occur by proximity. Storm will see some good play because it'll pick on Shardless/Junk who pick on Eldrazi who all have even to favorable MUs against Miracles and Delver who generally do alright against storm.
The idea that counterbalance locks, being stormed out when you're a Midrange deck (mav, shardless, junk, etc..), and similar aren't "non-games" and that we've increased "non-games" is purely a self-serving argument. People like myself have been brewing in the doldrums to figure out how to do well in the non-blue side of things (not all the time, but sometimes) and it's an uphill battle. I welcome the obnoxiousness of chalice because cards like Ponder are sure awesome; but are they worth the risk? Time will tell.
Here is the part of your argument I don't get. If Eldrazi is very popular, and you know your deck loses to them, why is that deck still the correct deck to play?
A rock-paper-scissors environment might look 'balanced' but is actually super swingy as your tournament life just depends on whether you get paired vs a string of rock or paper. This was a issue for modern recently until Eldrazi ate it - Tron destroyed midrange decks, lost badly to combo, Infect destroyed removal-light decks, lost badly to removal-heavy decks etc. Pros hated it because they have a much lower win % in that kind of format. Casual players love it. I got my deck and I'm gonna win some games regardless.
Because it's not *very* popular, it's just popular enough to throw a wrench into the format. If it's only 1/10 games, you probably shouldn't sell your foil Brainstorms, you should just suck it up and admire them while your opponent tries to decide whether or not to cast T2 Thought Knot Seer (hint: yes).
It might become *very* popular post-ban in Modern. The price of City of Traitors is probably going to correlate with the number of people who want Eldrazi bans.
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