Piloting Difficulty

[HPB_Eggo]

All right. This is going to seem like a really odd thread, I'm sure, but if you'll bear with me, it might actually be somewhat interesting, even if the usefulness I'm hoping for doesn't come along.

I have a pair of related questions for all of you:

1) In your opinion, what makes a deck difficult to pilot?

2) Of decks that are actually capable of performing well, which would you consider the most difficult to pilot?

To answer my own questions, it would be my belief, misguided thought it may be, that flexibility is the main component in determining how difficult a deck is to pilot. More choices allow for more opportunities to play poorly which, in turn, makes the deck more difficult to pilot. I'm sure there are a few other concerns, but that one seems to me to be the most important.

As for the most difficult deck to pilot currently? I honestly have no idea. Enchantress and the various builds of ANT are both fairly difficult to play properly. Ichorid, with which I admittedly have absolutely no experience, also seems like it would be difficult to pilot, at least during the second and third games. Beyond that, I'm not really sure, which is part of the reason I decided to post this.

[DalkonCledwin]

I would have to agree that most combo decks can be extremely difficult to play, but as for why, it probably has to do with the fact that they tend to be easy to stop with the appropriate hate cards, not to mention the fact that some combo decks randomly lose to themselves. It has next to nothing to do with how flexible combo decks are, because in reality when compared to decks like merfolk or zoo, combo decks really aren't all that flexible.

[MMogg]

Sure, I'll give it a whirl, but I'm sure others are far more qualified than me.

1) Decks are difficult to pilot when the desired outcome is not transparent. e.g.s follow in answer to next question.

2) Strom based combo decks (other than Belcher) and Ichorid. Decks like ANT require not only foresight, but also, as you suggested, a lot of options. If you're playing the Doomsday version you have even more options than the regular AdN/IGG package. Which do you go for and how to accumulate enough mana and storm count? Those questions need to be thought out before you even "go off"; hence, it isn't transparent.

Not to dredge up the recent argument (pun shamefully intended), but Ichorid is very difficult to pilot in that it runs contrary to most normal approaches to a game of Magic. You can give someone familiar with Magic a Zoo deck and he/she can pilot it well enough, but you give them Dredge and they would wonder wtf is this? Also, as many know, you have to know how to play through hate and also know how to proactively pilot it with Cabal Therapy (you need to know the match-ups and what to name). A lot of decks you can say the same thing, but I think Dredge has a lot of different aspects compounded to make it hard to pilot.

[alderon666]

1) One other aspect is how forgiving the deck is. If you fetch the wrong land with Zoo or forget the order of your cards in CounterTop, you may set yourself back a little bit. If you make a mulligan/sideboard mistake on Dredge or a wrong decision on a Doosmday pile... congratulations, you just lost the game. That definetly is one aspect of it.

2) Probably NLS. The deck can do so much with Doomsday and Burning Wish it's not even funny. Between all those choices and all different hates you can be hit by, believe me you'll have a lot of chances to fuck up.

[dahcmai]

1. Any time your deck forces you to plan out at least two or three turns in advance or you flop and lose and decks that are all reactionary. Several decks do this. Storm of course, but Countertop needs to plan it's turns out. You can't just plop down cards that you have the mana for. You have to judge what your opponent might do and what you can do to stop that if it happens.

2. NLS - Definitely. I play Storm most of the time and even I have a hard time occasionally picking what I want to do in a turn. It's tricky to guess what the opponent is going to do and think a couple turns in advance over and over. It's fairly taxing and I have typically not played it in any large tournament that might go on all night since being tired and playing that deck do not mix.

Runner up would be Moat control or Countertop decks. They are so reactionary to whatever the opponent does, you have to virtually know their decklist to crush them outright.

[freakish777]

Usually any deck with Manamorphose or Street Wraith is going to be difficult to pilot. Most people just aren't good enough at math to go "this has a 17% chance of being a card I need it to be this turn, a 35% chance next turn, and a 60% chance the turn after that. I'm playing against an unknown opponent, so if they're playing blue they have a 39%ish percent chance of having FoW, but if they're playing black and are on the draw and I pass the turn they could have Thoughtseize instead" etc. Street Wraith is obv less of a problem, but Manamorphose can be a big problem when deciding when to cast it if you have to cast it off of Rite of Flame or some other ritual.

Any deck with a silver bullet tutor package will be difficult to play, as you can often get the wrong card, or play your tutor at the wrong time (losing tempo).

Personally, I couldn't pilot The Epic Storm before AdN was printed to save my life. Belcher (the list I ran had Spoils of the Vault) and Iggy Pop were far easier to play for me, but they aren't exactly great decks to play anymore.

[stacker]

Decks like Elfball, Ichorid, and Enchantress are very linear combo decks. There's a lot of triggers that you have to be constantly aware of, but once you get past the initial learning curve then the deck plays on autopilot, since you play whatever the deck gives you. Yes, Enchantress has some tutor decisions, but for the most part it's pretty linear.

Decks like ANT/NLS/TES are a goddamn decision tree.

[cjva]

1) In your opinion, what makes a deck difficult to pilot?

Options and the need to think ahead. Many timing decisions. All these things makes a deck difficult to pilot, but also reward the person who manage to understand their deck, their match ups and the interactions of the game.

2) Of decks that are actually capable of performing well, which would you consider the most difficult to pilot?

ANT i guess is the hardest, and as people have said before in the thread, include Doomsday and your up for a hard time to master your deck.

If we are going to consider decks that i believe could perform well, but doesn't i would also like to include solidarity amongst the hard to pilot decks. The problem with solidarity ain't the combo part of the deck. But it's a very unforgiving deck that interacts with anything in the game except split second. Giving you more options that most other decks, the possibility to combo off at instant speed also put you in a bit of slack on timing your combo. Sometimes its best to combo during your own turn, or 1-2 turns before its needed. Many players miss this. Some players also consider solidarity to be just a regular combo deck, when in fact its not, much the same way as dredge has another take on the game, solidarity takes some aspects of the game to its extreme.

I truly believe that all combo decks are hard to pilot. Including Belcher and other pretty straight forward combos. The different decisions might be more hidden, but they are there.

With all that said, i think its a flawed discussion to compare decks and make a statement of one being more difficult then the other. In some situations all decks are difficult to master, and that includes different aggro strategies and different control strategies.

[Piceli89]

Apart from the obvious Storm Combo issue, lately I've found that the Tempo Decks, too, are incredibly hard to master, especially considering the timing when you should tap out, or remain mana open, and so on. Canadian threshold is incredibly difficult to bring to a good result nowadays, in my opinion, since every creature is bigger than theirs (well, except Tribal) and they have to carefully dilute their resources since they do not make any board-card advantage.
UW tempo is also very hard to master at a proper level. Sometimes it may happen that you manage to win despites some evident mistakes, but I find the contrary to happen way more frequently.

A deck I think pretty auto-pilots itself is Pro Bant, instead. Just because it packs all the good cards that make the job alone against any form of deck. Aggro? Countertop, Rhox, and most of all the Exalted trigger which makes it easy to recover the race, Goyf. Combo? Countertop. Control? Well,maybe here it's a bit harder, but surely 4 Disenchants on a stick help.
Aggro-control? Ups, I save my counterspells for a dumb 4-cc green sorcery that gives you 2 turns, good luck.
Just stare at how the metagame is awful in Spain from the top8 videos: half the matches are decided from a resolved Natural Order.

[General_Norris]

1) In your opinion, what makes a deck difficult to pilot?

Lack of forgiveness
Lack of creatures
Lack of draw
Lack of bombs
Importance of mulligans
Matchups that rely on passive defenses in the deck itself instead of "answers"

And something very important:

How easy is to know why you falied. Losing because a single card or because you tapped when you shouldn't is easier understood than "I lost because I played an extra Ghostly Prison 10 turns ago" or something similar.

Lack of creatures make you more prone to misplays leading to an alpha strike, lack of draw makes overextending a very important issue and makes keeping hands harder. This overlaps with mulligans because a deck without a draw mechanism will need good mulligan skills. A glass cannon deck will require a lot of mulliganing skills because it will not draw as many cards as a slower deck.

Having bombs is a form of forgiveness, specially against bad matchups and bad draws. It also reduces the importance of overextending.

There are some decks that are far more versatile than usually thought thanks to passive answers inside the deck design itself. The best case of such a deck is Tooth and Nail. It had more threats than the opponent had counterspells and a lot of mana but you had less draw and your mana was finite. Lots of matchups could be evened by knowing when to play your threats and when to store some of them. Similarly you could fight land destruction quite well for such a reliant deck if you had loads of experience.

It's a bit like MUC against Stax. For bad players Stax wins, for very very good players MUC has a very important edge, IMHO.


2) Of decks that are actually capable of performing well, which would you consider the most difficult to pilot?

Probably Stax is one of the hardest because it has everything I mentioned before except "lack of bombs". Belcher is very difficult to play on the long run because you may play it slightly worse than you should and that hurts you in a tournament, preventing you from reaching to the Top8.

Both are difficult decks to learn because why you lost is not evident.


flexibility is the main component in determining how difficult a deck is to pilot. More choices allow for more opportunities to play poorly which, in turn, makes the deck more difficult to pilot. I'm sure there are a few other concerns, but that one seems to me to be the most important.

Given my answers, I agree.

[(nameless one)]

Any decks developed by the Elgin brothers are hard to pilot. Like what I said before, they're like a couple of Russian manufacturers. They make such finely tuned machines that no one seem to know how to pilot.

[General_Norris]

Any decks developed by the Elgin brothers are hard to pilot. Like what I said before, they're like a couple of Russian manufacturers. They make such finely tuned machines that no one seem to know how to pilot.

What ddecks did they make?

[(nameless one)]

What ddecks did they make?

I believe that Enchantress was developed by SpatulaoftheAges...

InfamousBearAssassin developed Quinn and Trainwreck to name a few. Basically, most non-blue pure control deck was been through their hands.

Also, I think Nourishing Lich is really hard to pilot. As good as it is claimed to be, even the best players out there cant seem to pull a win out of that pile's behind. It must be really hard to pilot.

[Skeggi]

I believe that Enchantress was developed by SpatulaoftheAges...
I thought Zach Tartell did, but then again, can you say one guy invented a deck which is so obvious (we used to run an Enchantress deck back in 1996 with Verduran Enchantress and Femeref Enchantress, but I don't believe I can claim that I 'invented' it)? It's like appointing 1 person for inventing Merfolk. But yeah, I believe both Zach and Spat contributed alot to the deck's development.

[(nameless one)]

I thought Zach Tartell did, but then again, can you say one guy invented a deck which is so obvious (we used to run an Enchantress deck back in 1996 with Verduran Enchantress and Femeref Enchantress, but I don't believe I can claim that I 'invented' it)? It's like appointing 1 person for inventing Merfolk. But yeah, I believe both Zach and Spat contributed alot to the deck's development.

I should have give Zach some credit too, but yes, both of them developed the modern Legacy Enchantress build.

Also, Isnt Finn the mastermind behind the modern Legacy Merfolk list? I am pretty sure that he is. He had that prototype list when Lorwyn 1st saw print. So far, the modern Merfolk still follows its principle.

[Skeggi]

Yes, Finn was one of the first people who had early succes with the deck. But he certainly wasn't the only one in the world trying to build Merfolk for Legacy.

[Nightmare]

I thought Zach Tartell did, but then again, can you say one guy invented a deck which is so obvious (we used to run an Enchantress deck back in 1996 with Verduran Enchantress and Femeref Enchantress, but I don't believe I can claim that I 'invented' it)? It's like appointing 1 person for inventing Merfolk. But yeah, I believe both Zach and Spat contributed alot to the deck's development.

Not to take any credit from Zach, but really he just played Spat's list and top 8'd three events in a row. After that, people started paying attention to the deck again, and he gave a lot of advice. The interesting thing is that those were pretty much his first three Legacy tournaments, and we handed him the deck to play at them. Spat is really the godfather of the modern Enchantress list - he was playing it prior to the Legacy split, and I remember playing him at Big Arse 2, far before Zach learned how to play Magic.

That said, he has done a lot of development on it, although he doesn't even really play Legacy anymore.

This conversation is kind of off-topic, however. So let's put that over in the Mish-Mash forum or what have you, and get this one back on track.

[Ch@os]

ANT, Storm etc. are hardly luck based, i find that ITF is hard to play or something similar.

[mchainmail]

No love for lands???

[Dilettante]

Time makes some decks more difficult to pilot.

When I first played IGGy Pop variants, it was fairly easy to play, since many of the decisions were automatic. You had passive hate (Leyline of the Void) that just had to be dropped before you go off, and you counted to 8 or 6 mana depending on if you had a Lion's Eye Diamond. Dredge, Dreadnaught, and Merfolk were not present on the scene and I just had to tangle against Threshold (1/2), Goblins (1/4), and then the small percentage of everything else.

Way back when, at that brief window of time when Cold Snap was out and people thought Counterbalance was a cute enchantment for a sideboard, it was very easy to play Bryant's TES. It wasn't that much scaling of thought to use that deck instead, merely opening more options, since there was so little hate in existence in the metas I was playing in. The few things I had to factor in was dancing around Force of Will/Daze, Tormod's Crypt and the occasional Stifle while trying to hold back merciless laughter at the more than occasional player playing a Pithing Needle and saying, "Okay... so what's your target?". Eventually, Dragon Stompy made it difficult to play the deck since so many players ran it due to the low cost of the base cards (NOT ANYMORE!), so I took a break and played Faerie Stompy largely for a while as a meta beater.

Now that variants are seen everywhere now, I have to start dealing with Firespout, Sadistic Sacrament, Gaddock Teeg, Mindbreak Trap and now everyone and their mother and their stepfather's second uncle's milkman's therapist packs Krosan Grip. At least using Duress again is making my life slightly easier in terms of predicting hands. But it's definitely harder to pilot a Storm deck now with all the added cards to the pool and broader variety of decks you have to factor in. It's not the mechanics of the deck itself that makes it difficult, so much as who you face it against.

P.S. I think Enchantress is a more difficult deck to pilot in terms of raw decision making.

[jrsthethird]

No love for lands???

Of course not.

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

Enchantress and other decks that rely on lock elements are mainly difficult insofar as you have to gauge your opponent's deck and opening to get a feel for what their clock will be. In particular, figuring out when to go for a Confinement lock can be difficult.

[morgan_coke]

I'd say Slide is a pretty tough deck to pilot correctly.

I've been keeping it alive as about 2-3% of the online meta (by tournament wins, classicquarter has a nice graph on the subject) pretty much by myself, since no one else can ever seem to play the deck properly/do well with it. So I feel comfortable saying that its a tough deck to play.

But more broadly I'd say play difficulty has to do with how big the decision trees on any particular play get and how opponent dependent your deck is. Decks that gameplan more around having repeated, successful interactions with the opponent are, in general, more difficult to play than decks which largely gameplan around interacting with themselves, simply due to the fact that you can predict interactions with your own deck and what you'll do in response to them, but your opponent, by his very nature is both harder to predict/control and more likely to do things directly intended to disrupt your control over them.

I also think playing in more zones simultaneously makes a deck more difficult to play because it again involves more decision trees and more variables.

[2nd_lawl]

Really There are different types of difficulty, and different players are better or worse at dealing with each type.

1) Technical Play: Decks that have complex technical play require a good understanding of the rules, and sharp focus to prevent blunders.
Examples: Dredge, Lands, Stax.

2) Mathematics: Decks that require players to do (sometimes complex) math on the fly.
Examples: Ant, Solidarity

3) Tutoring: Decks that play a "toolbox" style often have very very large decision trees which require a detailed understanding of the game state to navigate.
Examples: Enchantress, Lands(depending on the version), That Counterbalance deck with enlightened tutor that AJ sacher played.

4) "Defensive" Counterspells and discard: Decks that use counterspells as a defensive measure (as opposed to protecting a game ending threat such as Natural order or reanimate) are difficult because they require significant foresight and understanding about when to "pull the trigger" or wait for a more significant threat, furthermore when facing each other these decks often require planning to navigate counter-wars, leverage small advantages, and set up advantageous hands or boards. This type of difficulty is often the hardest to pinpoint, as it is hard to track your loss back to a spell you should have countered 7 turns before you died.
Examples: Landstill, Various other flavors of blue control decks.

5)Unusual/Unorthodox Play Style: These are decks that take players who arent used to them outside the "comfort zone" and are difficult to just pick up and play well. Dredge is the easy example, but any deck that whats to interact at an unconventional level has some aspect of this.
Examples: Dredge, Belcher, Lands.

There are obviously even more types of difficulty, but these tend to be the biggest hurdles for players. Then again, players punt all the time with every deck(seriously, just watch the 5k coverage) so it is possible that the "difficulty" of playing most decks is fairly comparable.

[Forbiddian]

Hard Decks to Play:

Decks that don't play regular magic have much higher learning curves. When you play a deck like Zoo, even though the decision between turn 2 Nacatl or Qasali Pridemage might be a difficult choice with a lot of complex factors at work, you can draw on years and years of experience with Magic to make the right call.

I spent most of my competitive time playing Control Decks, so balancing card advantage, tempo, board advantage, etc. is really second-nature and I find decks like It's The Fear and Ugb Landstill to be a pretty easy flight.


A combo deck is harder for me to pilot, but there are also players who have more experience with that and little experience with control who think the opposite.





@ Enchantress Discussion: I was also playing Enchantress before the Vintage/Legacy split. I actually stole the deck idea from the Vintage version (which ran four colors stretching Black for Duress and Blue for Ancestral Recall and Timewalk, but other than that ran all the good stuff). I remember playing a GWB (for Duress) version to a lot of success in Norcal, mainly because half the format scooped to Argothian + Worship, which was unbelievably easy to set up and guaranteed me two or three wins each week against the milieu of Goblins players.

The Vintage player who made the deck should get the credit, though. It had all the elements of even the modern Legacy versions except for the Solitary Confinement lock.

[Captain Hammer]

Since it seems like the answer to the original question is now pretty well settled. I have another question...

Which decks of the competitive/viable decks in the format are the EASIEST decks to play?

Would something like B/U Reanimator qualify as easy to play? Pox? Merfolk? Fairie/Dragon Stompy? Zoo? Geddon Stax? Team America? Eva Green?

[Genericcactus]

Survival Variants can be quite difficult to play as well. They implement a toolbox, so you have that decision tree, plus they have entirely different game-plans depending on whether their namesake card is in play. There's also quite a bit of math and planning, especially when dealing with Rofellos.

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

@ Enchantress Discussion: I was also playing Enchantress before the Vintage/Legacy split. I actually stole the deck idea from the Vintage version (which ran four colors stretching Black for Duress and Blue for Ancestral Recall and Timewalk, but other than that ran all the good stuff). I remember playing a GWB (for Duress) version to a lot of success in Norcal, mainly because half the format scooped to Argothian + Worship, which was unbelievably easy to set up and guaranteed me two or three wins each week against the milieu of Goblins players.

The Vintage player who made the deck should get the credit, though. It had all the elements of even the modern Legacy versions except for the Solitary Confinement lock.

That deck ran Words of Wind and Cloud of Faeries, Sacred Mesa for the kill, no Elephant Grass, no Confinement, terrible cards like Worship, and was totally different in strategy. It was the old Enchantress list from Urza's block with new cards just smashed in, without actually considering their impact on the strategy of the deck.

Solitary Confinement alone changed Enchantress similarly to how Counterbalance changed "Threshold". You can't really consider it the same deck.

[Smmenen]

I don't think that ANT is particularly difficult compared to other archetypes. It's certainly miles and miles easier to play than Vintage storm decks. I think that decks are only difficult to play to the extent that players are unfamiliar with them. every deck has a learning curve.

[TheCramp]

My experience has always been that if a zoo player, for example, knows the line of play that CB is going to take to beat their clock, they can modify their play to make that less effective, and change the dynamic of the outcome. If they have a similar relationship to dredge, landstill, CB, ANT, etc. They are going to do well overtime. Simple decks begin to approach the complexity of these other decks when you consider the metagame.

Decks that are complex in themselves sometimes have similar plan against a wide variety of opponents. (ANT and Dredge for example.) Whereas a simple deck may have a very complicated set of plans for each of those different opponents.

It is the decks that are complex in both of these cases that are real doozies. Look at Jerry T's success with Vaults in standard lately. It is a perfect example of this situation.

[chokin]

Since it seems like the answer to the original question is now pretty well settled. I have another question...

Which decks of the competitive/viable decks in the format are the EASIEST decks to play?

Would something like B/U Reanimator qualify as easy to play? Pox? Merfolk? Fairie/Dragon Stompy? Zoo? Geddon Stax? Team America? Eva Green?

I think Zoo is fairly simple for most people to pick up. There are still obviously a lot of choices to make, but it really boils down to "should I play this over that" and "how am I going to get my guys through the field". I've seen players play the deck in a balls to the walls fashion and I've also seen players contemplate every move.

I also think the blue based tempo decks (UW Tempo, Tempo Thresh, Team America, etc) are difficult to pilot correctly. Tempo Thresh feels pretty natural to me, but there are still some match-ups that are unforgiving when you make mistakes, so you have to be pretty careful sometimes. Merfolk might be able to be tossed into this section too.

Stax, Stompy and Pox are pretty much about getting your lock pieces in play. I have pretty much sworn off these decks just because I've been mana flooded or mana starved too many times.

Ichorid is fun, but you just have to pay a lot of attention or it could cost you the game. I once got a bye against someone piloting Ichorid because he didn't know what he was doing. Forgot to dredge, forgot to bring Ichorids out, etc.

[Oiolosse]

Magic isn't hard enough to warrant a deck incomprehensible. Given a reasonable amount of time and a group of challenging opponents any deck can be learned easily. I think what is harder is understanding every other deck. Knowing how to play your deck in a vacuum is one thing but knowing how to play it against your metagame, which is always in flux, is another.

[HPB_Eggo]

I would have to say that the easiest deck to play is probably Goblins. Considering the curve and the fact that, at most points in the game, you do have a strictly 'best' play to make, the only real question with the deck is when to overextend for the win.

Zoo and Merfolk would probably be next, at least among the most competitive decks. Zoo needs to know when to use their burn, Merfolk needs to know when to use their counters. Merfolk is more difficult to play for the sole reason that it runs Standstill, and that knowing what to counter is more difficult than knowing what and when to burn.


As to the original question, I definitely overlooked Enchantress and Survival as difficult to play, mostly because they are what I play most of the time so they don't sit at the top of the list when I think of things that are difficult to play correctly. Leastways, not anymore.

[Maveric78f]

The difficulty does not come from learning the Doomsday stacks.

The difficulty is not to understand the rules.

They are just "learning".

The difficulty is to properly choose the right game plan is a concrete situation. For ANT, it's to understand when to start the big turn. For Zoo, it's to understand when to overextend for speed or to keep fuel in hand. For Threshold it's to know if you'd better play counterbalance or tarmogoyf turn 2 or wait 1 more turn to be daze proof. And so on...

Easy decks are decks that have barely a single game plan and Zoo is quite close to that.

Difficult decks are decks that have a lot of game plans, such as CB-thresh.

[Forbiddian]

That deck ran Words of Wind and Cloud of Faeries, Sacred Mesa for the kill, no Elephant Grass, no Confinement, terrible cards like Worship, and was totally different in strategy. It was the old Enchantress list from Urza's block with new cards just smashed in, without actually considering their impact on the strategy of the deck.

Solitary Confinement alone changed Enchantress similarly to how Counterbalance changed "Threshold". You can't really consider it the same deck.

The Vintage deck I'm talking about did not run Words of Wind/Cloud of Faeries, that was I think an old extended deck. The blue splash was really just for Ancestral Recall (just because). The guy I'm talking about actually had figured out to run a deck with a bunch of cheap enchantments to draw a lot of cards and dig to lockout mechanisms.

You mention Elephant Grass specifically, which is just not necessary in Vintage (whereas cards like Duress are). I'll note that when I ported over the deck, I was running Elephant Grass, though it was pretty obvious.

Here's the deck that was supposedly copied from your list:
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=7632

The difference between that and the list I was running is (that had at least 50 cards in common with the Vintage deck): I was running a combination of Words of Worship and Worship instead of Solitary Confinement. Also, some cards weren't printed yet and moving around. I was also running 3 Replenish, which I think got banned, and I was running 4 MD copies of Duress, which was more or less a necessary evil because Mana Drain was still running around and getting Drained into a Disk sucked.

There are a few other differences, but honestly since 2002-2003, people were playing the exact same strategy and it wasn't too much of a leap just to figure out to go -4 crap lockout cards, +4 Solitary Confinement. Credit should also go to the guy who designed the other 56-57 slots and the strategy of the deck way back in 2002-2003.

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

That's just Zach's list. What in God's name are you talking about?

Also, there was nothing "obvious" about Elephant Grass. No one knew that card existed. Likewise, no one knew that Solitary Confinement existed. The fact that you could effectively "win" by dropping a Confinement, rather than having to actually win, changed the deck dramatically. Sadly, a lot of people are choosing to revert to the old Parfait-ish strategy, but regardless, Solitaire was a revolutionary shift in the arch-type.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Every idea has been done. Credit ought to go to those that make it work. Playing a shitty version of a deck that eventually became good isn't a bragging point. If you were playing a bad Enchantress list in Long-era Vintage without Confinement or Grass, the proper response is not "Good show!", but, "Why?"

Anyone who works in the field of designing their own decks is going to encounter this problem, unfortunately. I can't think of a single deck to come out of Northern Virginia that people didn't pull the same argument with. When Ian MacInnes and the Hatfields created Threshold, everyone said, "Well big deal, it's just Miracle Gro but less shitty." When Gearhart came up with Solidarity, everyone said, "Big deal. It's just old High Tide but capable of winning games." When Red Death came out it was just sui with red. Even with my stupid decks people would bitch about how their friend used Cabal Coffers and Staff of Domination in some deck back in the day.

But that's not how life works. The Wright brothers aren't remembered for coming up with the idea of a flying machine; they were thousands of years too late for that. They are remembered for getting it off the fucking ground.

[General_Norris]

But that's not how life works. The Wright brothers aren't remembered for coming up with the idea of a flying machine; they were thousands of years too late for that. They are remembered for getting it off the fucking ground.

Check this Wikipedia article about Gustave Whitehead. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Whitehead

[Jon Stewart]

IBA, that post of yours implies that Enchantress was a shitty deck in 2002 and uber competitive now.

I would argue the opposite. Enchantress was a solid tier two deck back in 2002, and remains a solid tier two deck now.

So indeed those who built and played the 2002 version of the deck do deserve credit for getting the deck off the ground.

Just as I think those vintage players who back in 2002 built Bird Shit and made that into a competitive deck that won tourneys did indeed get their idea off the ground, and deserve credit originating the concept that evolved into legacy threshold and now Bant.

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

You think the deck playing Sacred Mesa and Worship was competitive in Vintage? That's complete and total bullshit. Enchantress has NEVER been competitive in Vintage.

What "2002 version" do you think was competitive?

[edgewalker]

I think the debate comes down to who was more vocal about their deck choices rather than who was successful with it. People who hide their, "super secret tech" often get shafted when it comes to getting recognized. Whereas someone who publishes their ideas on boards will have their name associated with decks rather than the individual who wins with the deck and doesn't write reports or post ideas. The problem of this, is that almost anything before what 2003? falls under this catagory. Most people didn't post on message boards and a lot of competitive magic was done is secluded metagames (Think dark ages vs. nation-states) I mean it's the same with science. If you invent cold fusion but don't publish you're fucked when someone else invents it. (Read Merton and possibly Kuhn)

On topic. I think after playing old school fish back in the day, tempo decks are real tough because your game plan is dependent on what your opponents game plan is. You can't 2 for 1 someone if they don't set you up for it. Likewise, you can't use daze as a timewalk if they don't let you. As a tempo deck, you're almost the most reactive deck in the game...

[Rico Suave]

You think the deck playing Sacred Mesa and Worship was competitive in Vintage? That's complete and total bullshit. Enchantress has NEVER been competitive in Vintage.

What "2002 version" do you think was competitive?

This version:

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=11801.0


Every idea has been done. Credit ought to go to those that make it work. Playing a shitty version of a deck that eventually became good isn't a bragging point. If you were playing a bad Enchantress list in Long-era Vintage without Confinement or Grass, the proper response is not "Good show!", but, "Why?"

Enchantress was pretty solid in the 2001-2002 era, where it was able to compete against blue-based control with unrestricted FoF. FoF getting restricted made Enchantress much better for a period of time. You see, combo decks at the time were still pretty unhealthy due to mana base restrictions, poor enablers, and a pretty poor selection of "combo" kills. The decks were pretty unstable for the most part and had to jump through an inordinate number of hoops to get a win.

Combo didn't start to pick up until Judgement - Onslaught period, where Judgement gave Worldgorger Dragon combos and also gave Cabal Therapy to make Rector Trix good. This was early 2003. At the time these decks were getting the Onslaught fetchlands, which really improved those decks, and even control decks were making use of 4 Brainstorm and fetchlands to just overshadow anything Enchantress could possibly do to keep up.

Gush was unrestricted during this period too. In case you're unfamiliar, Gush decks in T1 can abuse Quirion Dryad, but if they draw Fastbond they just go nuts chaining Gush into Gush. It was the first legitimate aggro-control-combo deck. Fetchlands really made the deck tick because of its otherwise unstable mana base.

Tendrils was printed in mid 2003. Long decks had a nice run until the end of 2003, but once LED/B.Wish/C.Mox were gone we had Mirrodin and the rise of Control Slaver (control/combo) that would forever make Enchantress bad in T1 because now even the control decks have a combo win.

So, when someone says "I played Enchantress in 2002" that's fine. 2003? No.



Just as I think those vintage players who back in 2002 built Bird Shit and made that into a competitive deck that won tourneys did indeed get their idea off the ground, and deserve credit originating the concept that evolved into legacy threshold and now Bant.

I'm not really sure Bird Shit evolved into Legacy threshold. Bird Shit was sort of its own variant of the aggro-control archetype.

There were tons of people playing Threshold type aggro-control decks in Legacy, but that had a lot more to do with the concept that people thought the deck was still great even without Gush. It took what, 4-5 years and large scale Legacy tournaments to realize that Threshold w/o Gush doesn't cut it? =p

[Sanguine Voyeur]

I always thought the Kamigawa block/standard deck "Picture of a Lizard" was pretty hard to play. I can't find any reference to it with some quick Googling, but it used Petals of Insight, Psychic Puppetry, and Heartbeat of Spring.

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

This version:

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=11801.0


Wow, seriously?

That deck has almost nothing in common with any Enchantress list anyone has been successful with in the past 7 years.

[Rico Suave]

Wow, seriously?

That deck has almost nothing in common with any Enchantress list anyone has been successful with in the past 7 years.

The deck has everything in common with modern Enchantress lists.

1) Enchantress for draw
2) Sterling Grove, with silver bullets
3) Enchantments that insure survival
4) Eventual win after drawing lots of cards

Certain cards hadn't been printed at the time, but so what? It still works the same way today. It's just got different options and it is tailored to beat a different metagame.

And even if you don't agree with that, what is certain is that your statement is downright wrong:

"You think the deck playing Sacred Mesa and Worship was competitive in Vintage? That's complete and total bullshit. Enchantress has NEVER been competitive in Vintage.

What "2002 version" do you think was competitive?"

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

I guess I assumed we were talking about post-Onslaught, since comparing how the deck worked with 4 Enchantresses vs. 8 is pretty disingenuous.

What you posted is a Parfait list with 4 Argothian Enchantresses. What Solitaire is is a combo-control deck that uses Solitary Confinement to lock the game down. Even the lists running cards like Moat have the tutor package as a backup to the main plan. If you actually think those two decks are similar in anything but some minor superficial sense, you're simply wrong and don't understand the deck.

[dahcmai]

I don't think that ANT is particularly difficult compared to other archetypes. It's certainly miles and miles easier to play than Vintage storm decks. I think that decks are only difficult to play to the extent that players are unfamiliar with them. every deck has a learning curve.



That's funny, I always found the Vintage versions easier than the Legacy ones. Must be just me then.