[Article] Grand Prix Madrid Nearly Killed Me...

[Aggro_zombies]

Wherein Stephen Menendian spends 50% of the first half of the article bashing on Max McCall, and the second half exhaustively categorizing the decks from GP Madrid (complete with Top 64 lists!). (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/19314_So_Many_Insane_Plays_Grand_Prix_Madrid_Nearly_Killed_Me_and_I_Wasnt_Even_There.html)

EDIT: Fixed that for ya, Steve.

[mchainmail]

To be fair, the bashing was still semi-constructive. Although I don't think it's a winnable argument from either side.

[jrsthethird]

6 people played a deck named Crabs? WTF? I can't stop laughing at this....

[stacker]

can someone post the top64 lists on pastebin or link it to those of us without premium?

[Aggro_zombies]

can someone post the top64 lists on pastebin or link it to those of us without premium?
That will probably be up to Menendian. It was he that went to all that effort to get them for us, after all.

[DrJones]

can someone post the top64 lists on pastebin or link it to those of us without premium?I can do it, if you can wait 90 days. I think that's the kind of content I would expect from a premium article, so I don't have too much hopes of smmenem posting it here.

[stacker]

I got the decklists from others who were more helpful. I appreciate Smmenem's work to type up the decklists, but decklists should not be premium content.

[Shawn]

I can do it, if you can wait 90 days. I think that's the kind of content I would expect from a premium article, so I don't have too much hopes of smmenem posting it here.

They've changed it so the articles are available after a month has passed.

[cjva]

Well, somehow he should be payed for doing this massive work. And this article is one of the biggest reason why a SCG-premium account is worth it.

[Smmenen]

This took me an unbelievable amount of time to compile! It was definitely NOT worth it, in terms of my time commitment, since other articles and things suffered. I hope folks enjoy this! Really!

As for the premium issue, the article will be free after 30 days, but premium is really, really cheap, and totally worth it. It's $5 for a month. That's the price of a meal at McDonalds. As for the deckilists that I typed up; I will be happy to allow them to be copied here (along with a link to the article for credit) as soon as this article is free. Until then, please respect the premium fee given all of the unbelievable work I put into getting the decklists and typing them up.

And also, I promise the first half of this article is NOT Max McCall bashing :)

[cjva]

This took me an unbelievable amount of time to compile! It was definitely NOT worth it, in terms of my time commitment, since other articles and things suffered. I hope folks enjoy this! Really!

As for the premium issue, the article will be free after 30 days, but premium is really, really cheap, and totally worth it. It's $5 for a month. That's the price of a meal at McDonalds. As for the deckilists that I typed up; I will be happy to allow them to be copied here (along with a link to the article for credit) as soon as this article is free. Until then, please respect the premium fee given all of the unbelievable work I put into getting the decklists and typing them up.

And also, I promise the first half of this article is NOT Max McCall bashing :)

Well, this was probably your best article this year. If you do these kind of massive work in the future, I think you should negotiate with SCG and get some more $$ for your effort. I have many times considered to stop paying for premium and the only thing keeping me as a premium user are the few articles of this magnitude that comes once in a while.

[DrJones]

This article becomes free tomorrow, I heard.

[Smmenen]

Yes, this article is now free! Enjoy!

[4eak]

It is always a pleasant surprise to read about philosophers in a magic article. To be fair, I find Immanuel Kant to be more far more relevant than Newton (or the Scientific revolution) to reconciliation attempts (including what you termed 'fusion' and 'synthesis') of Rationalism and Empiricism.

I'm disappointed that the article brushes away some of the claims of the 'anti-empiricist wing' (a poor slur) without even having enough empirical evidence to do so (which does not bode well for one who obviously has chosen a side on the epistemological spectrum). In my view, we lack the empirical evidence to honestly make many such claims. We have to admit that we are often ill-equipped to make strong empirical statements (here is an example (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?15820-61-or-more-cards-in-toolbox-decks&p=409226&viewfull=1#post409226)) on even the simplest of debates. This is a very complex issue, well suited for systems theory, and it would have been wiser to claim ignorance of the answer or at least a more reasonable chance of error (authors and scientists often make larger and more impressive claims than they should). The article did not answer the skeptics who, even from an empirical perspective, have every right to remain skeptical of current "results driven" deductions.




peace,
4eak

[DrJones]

Heh, I feel alone at the bottom of the list with my false cure deck. It performs a lot better than what the numbers might make one believe, but the low number of appearances has the syndrome of "not flipping the coin enough times to be statistically significant". One could also argue that because my deck was not relevant the decks I faced were not prepared against it, so I guess it's fair. :P

Great article, I liked it very much!

Also, sent you a pm.

EDIT: Is there a chance to know if among the outliers of the tournament that were skipped was a cool idea for a deck? I know for sure that there was a turbo-fog build, but I don't know about the others. I think the cruel bargain combo deck might be Spanish Inquisition, the fastest combo deck in the format and also too inconsistent to be of any use in a tournament so big. The tournament size and the short rounds affected some archtypes more than others.