[Article] Defeating Neo

[Eldariel]

An article (series) on beating Team America. (http://www.mtgsalvation.com/949-defeating-neo.html)

Weird choice of a deck and an odd approach to it given that Team America is a metagame deck specifically geared to prey on low mana fetch/dual decks such as Threshold and itself, and thus has clear weaknesses.

Anyways, read away.

[Ebinsugewa]

I can't even read this after like four paragraphs of awful sentence structure and a lack of coherency.

[rockout]

Can you keep us posted on the follow up articles since I hardly ever read MTGsalvation unless I'm trying to get early full spoilers.

[yankeedave]

I felt like Team America was very badly piloted and that there were some silly play errors that, with a more solid knowledge of the deck, could have been easily avoided. For example, when he Snuffed Out the opponents Shackled Tarmogoyf when he had one of his own and a Tombstalker, I felt he should have allowed him to keep this 'Goyf, and continued to beat with the Tombstalker, as he may have found an answer to the other Shackles in the meantime.

Also, the writer could have kept a better description of turns, as at one point he says that his opponent Shackles his Tombstalker, but also gives the impression that is was out early, so how did his opponent have time to get to 8 Islands.

I feel this deck is strong, if you have the right meta, and I agree that it does have a lot of weaknesses, but after my own testing, I will mostly go back to Eva Green!

[DalkonCledwin]

I felt like Team America was very badly piloted and that there were some silly play errors that, with a more solid knowledge of the deck, could have been easily avoided. For example, when he Snuffed Out the opponents Shackled Tarmogoyf when he had one of his own and a Tombstalker, I felt he should have allowed him to keep this 'Goyf, and continued to beat with the Tombstalker, as he may have found an answer to the other Shackles in the meantime.

Also, the writer could have kept a better description of turns, as at one point he says that his opponent Shackles his Tombstalker, but also gives the impression that is was out early, so how did his opponent have time to get to 8 Islands.

**Author here**

First off, I would like to apologize for my shabby sentence structure. I am not a very good writter, but I do try as best as I can. So I do apologize for that, and hope that it doesn't detract too much from the article.

Sorry, but since when do you need 8 Islands to shackle a Tombstalker? Vedalken Shackles reads: "Gain control of target creature with power less than or equal to the number of Islands you control" Not "Gain control of target creature with a converted mana cost less than or equal to the number of islands you control" In otherwords, you only need FIVE islands to take control of a Tombstalker.

As for the play errors, I have a fairly limited pool of people with whom to test with. I tried to test with the best player I can think of... however even that is not full proof. I myself am not the best control player, and admit that the destroying of the shackled goyf was a mistake (I admit as much in the article itself). I am going to try to make sure the follow up articles are played out a little better than the games in this article were... so please try to hold in there. This is after all my first attempt at an article, and I am trying as best as I can to make it as good as I can.

[yankeedave]

My apologies, I completely got that wrong, I did think it was CMC.

I wish you luck with your future articles.

[URABAHN]

Yup, big disappointment. The piece reeks of either bias or incompetence, I'm not sure which. The author's feelings regarding Team America aren't a secret and makes me feel like the testing was biased. That, on top of some major play errors make me completely disregard this article as having absolutely no merit. I think 5 game samples are woefully inadequate as a sample size, because anyone who's tested 10 Pre/10 Post will tell you the first 4-6 can be awfully deceiving.

[DalkonCledwin]

Yup, big disappointment. The piece reeks of either bias or incompetence, I'm not sure which. The author's feelings regarding Team America aren't a secret and makes me feel like the testing was biased. That, on top of some major play errors make me completely disregard this article as having absolutely no merit. I think 5 game samples are woefully inadequate as a sample size, because anyone who's tested 10 Pre/10 Post will tell you the first 4-6 can be awfully deceiving.

the sample size of 5 games was for the most part to keep the article at a manageable size... if I had done 20 games for each match up, each individual match up would have to have had its own individual article... and that is something I am not particularly inclined to do.

This article is not meant to be taken as canon, it is meant to lead people into ideas for them to do their own testing against Team America, if they like one of the decks, then they should test it against Team America themselves, probably doing more than 20 games both pre and post board. Then decide for themselves if the deck is still worth the time to play against a meta where Team America is present.

[T is for TOOL]

My biggest problem with the article is that it presents Team America as though it were the deck to beat in the format. A better approach would have been to use a diverse Legacy gauntlet to try and objectively evaluate the true strength of the deck. Instead the gauntlet chosen was specifically decks that 'should have the best chance of defeating Team America,' - as though that is the most important factor to consider when choosing a deck for a Legacy tournament.

Presenting a deck and only testing its bad matchups will invariably make the deck appear weak, especially to an audience of players that are new to Legacy.

[Nihil Credo]

My biggest problem with the article is that it presents Team America as though it were the deck to beat in the format. A better approach would have been to use a diverse Legacy gauntlet to try and objectively evaluate the true strength of the deck. Instead the gauntlet chosen was specifically decks that 'should have the best chance of defeating Team America,' - as though that is the most important factor to consider when choosing a deck for a Legacy tournament.

I think the aim of the article was more to answer "I want to beat Team America. What should I do?". Which, even though TA isn't top dog, is not an inappropriate question to pose either: for example, Team America won the biggest tournament of the year here in Italy, and I've been chatting with a few players who all expect the deck to be picked up en masse as a result of that (since that's what happened in previous years) and want to metagame against it. I suspect other places might have a similar concern.

[Bryant Cook]

My biggest problem with the article is that it presents Team America as though it were the deck to beat in the format. A better approach would have been to use a diverse Legacy gauntlet to try and objectively evaluate the true strength of the deck. Instead the gauntlet chosen was specifically decks that 'should have the best chance of defeating Team America,' - as though that is the most important factor to consider when choosing a deck for a Legacy tournament.

Presenting a deck and only testing its bad matchups will invariably make the deck appear weak, especially to an audience of players that are new to Legacy.

Agreed. Why not turn the tables and instead of putting Team America there, put TES in that situation. Every deck you posted is a **bye**, it's just as misleading. Making one deck seem terrible, then another look unbeatable.

[jazzykat]

I think the aim of the article was more to answer "I want to beat Team America. What should I do?". Which, even though TA isn't top dog, is not an inappropriate question to pose either: for example, Team America won the biggest tournament of the year here in Italy, and I've been chatting with a few players who all expect the deck to be picked up en masse as a result of that (since that's what happened in previous years) and want to metagame against it. I suspect other places might have a similar concern.

+1.


In addition, I think you should keep writing and work on sentence structure, grammar, etc. The only way to get better is to keep doing it. Thanks for the insight!

[DalkonCledwin]

Thanks Jazzykat & Nihil, I appreciate the words on why I choose to do the article, as well as the bode of confidence. So I will do my best to present a better article for the next one :laugh:

[Dark_Shakuras]

Nice job. From what i read, I don't think Golf Slight got mana screwed, as much as Team America did what it was supposed to, and killed all your lands. It also seems the larger threats it runs did their job, and were just to big to handle.

Good artical, and I hope to see you keep writing in the future. Although not the best written, it was readable, and you got your point across.

[Happy Gilmore]

The fact that you only played 5 games is besides the point. Who the hell was the pilot for team america anyway? Those playes were aweful, and the article may be been useful for someone playing either of the decks being tested if an adequate amount of games were played with enough knowlege to play them well, but they were not. I've also read your responses in the thread regarding this deck and you are so so biased I can't take anything you say seriously.

As said before, testing against only a deck's bad matchups is completely useless (and from the quality of play) I am not convinced that the matchups are as bad as I'm lead to believe in the article.


Why am I flustered? You are making an ass out of the people who take this format seriously and misleading those who don't. Franky it is insulting.

[DalkonCledwin]

in case anyone is interested, I have decided for the next article to include the 15 games for each of the previous articles decks that I should have played... though I am only going to give the resulting numbers of wins verses losses in that article. Additionally for the featured matches in that article I plan to play 20 games for each of the decks, but only discuss the 5 that seem most interesting, I will however list the resulting numbers of wins verses losses for each of the game totals... So I do plan to play more games for the following articles than I did for the previous article.

As for me being biased, yes, I admit, I do have a dislike for Team America... but that dislike is based solely on the decks design. Part of the reason I wanted to do this article, was to see if the games could prove me wrong, that the deck is actually better than I think it is. I am trying to approach the games in as unbiased a manner as possible, even if I do not like the deck itself... hence why I am willing to play Team America in at least one of the printed articles match ups, and plan to play it myself for all further match ups in the article, even though I do not think that I am particularly the best player for the job, I think the deck is simple enough in what it attempts to accomplish, that I should be capable of playing the deck relatively well, especially if I do 45 more games prior to getting to the main event of the next article itself.

[TheDarkshineKnight]

the sample size of 5 games was for the most part to keep the article at a manageable size... if I had done 20 games for each match up, each individual match up would have to have had its own individual article... and that is something I am not particularly inclined to do.

Then your results mean jack shit, since you're just half-assing your testing. If you're not willing to do as a good a job as humanly possible to obtain the best possible results, you might as well not do it all.

[b4r0n]

If you're not willing to do as a good a job as humanly possible to obtain the best possible results, you might as well not do it all.

Seriously? Not only is that unnecessarily harsh, but it's completely absurd. Those would be unrealistic expectations for ANY writer, let alone an unpaid, semi-anonymous person writing about Magic on the internet. Come on.

With that said, I didn't like the article at all. It was painful to read, the quality of play was lacking, and the entire premise seemed biased against Team America. But on the bright side, the next article can only be better, right?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

What others said. It seemed like pointless axe-grinding against a good deck for not being unbeatable, which no one has claimed that it was, and poorly written at that.

Off-topic MTGSalvation forum bashing deleted. Knock it off.
-TOOL