Tom LaPille - he's at it again

[makochman]

http://twitter.com/#!/TomLapilleMagic


Legacy and Vintage contain several decks that "aren't Magic". How much of that is healthy? How good should those decks be? "aren't Magic" means that the game is about something unrecognizable, like dredge or storm or no one casting spells forever or something. My bar for "real Magic" is pretty low- both players playing lands and tapping them to cast spells for four or more turns is plenty.

If you're still upset about MM being banned... just imagine Tom LaPille being in charge.

This was in the SCG newsletter, so I understand even they found it redonkulous.

[Richard Cheese]

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/04_04/SilverFireR_304x337.jpg
Bracing for shitstorm...

[Koby]

I hereby declare the formation of the Player's Convention International, aka PCI. The first order of business:

Vintage and Legacy B&R lists
1. Tom LaPille - BANNED

[Gheizen64]

So he's gonna do what? Ban jewelry in Vintage? Vintage will have combo decks that win consistently T3 no matter what, unless you ban all the jewelry.
Legacy ? Lol ? You just banned misstep and then you whine that the format is too fast? I am missing something here?
T4 is also the speed of Zoo, combo being slower than aggro would just mean combo IS aggro (and then aggro become midrange, think Big Zoo>Sligh Zoo>Control>Big Zoo). The only problem Aggro has with combo is that sideboard options for it against combo are garbage while the opposite isn't true (unless you play heavy blue). But Combo have to be faster than aggro just to exist, else it wouldn't. Maybe instead of whining print some goddamn good stack-interaction cards outside of blue, ***lord.

[Octopusman]

It will always be Wotc's game first and ours second.

That doesn't mean it's "right". I would argue he's a bad designer solely based on the fact that they consider one pile of 60(75) cards to be more offensive than another when they both contain legal cards.
They should embrace the interactions that players come up with unless it's totally degenerate.

If they didn't think of people storming out for a lethal tendrils when they made the card it just puts a spotlight on their ineptitude.

Let us play the damn game in my opinion and/or playtest your shitty designs better.

[Nihil Credo]

Tom LaPille and Sheldon Menery - Separated at birth?

[Julian23]

PVDDR Paulo Vitor
@TomLaPilleMagic to me, all of those are more Magic than transform cards :) (except maybe Dredge)

:-)

[Koby]

PVDDR Paulo Vitor
@TomLaPilleMagic to me, all of those are more Magic than transform cards :) (except maybe Dredge)

QFT, repeated for emphasis.

[KevinTrudeau]

Not nearly the worst thing to ever come out of his mouth (the Great Sable Stag comment and implying that running Overgrown Battlement would make mono-green infect in Standard better because "it's a combo deck, and combo decks need defense and mana" were pretty egregious). I actually agree with him to an extent- Dredge and Storm are two archetypes that base themselves upon unintended design, and wouldn't fall under what I would define as the true essence of Magic (although, few Constructed formats have ever fallen under that category).

Doesn't this picture just make you angry?:

http://www.tomlapille.com/wp-content/themes/thesis_18/custom/rotator/TomLaPilleFace.jpg

[bakofried]

RAGE
Just play a fairer deck, Tom. Don't fuck with the format.

[CoryWM]

At least he plays legacy. He played in an unsanctioned legacy event last Sunday. In fact he played dredge. He also did not make top 8 with a very low turn out due to a date change. Only 17 players were playing for duals etc.

[TsumiBand]

I love Eternal Magic, but I kind of have a hard time disagreeing with him, at least conceptually.

For starters, I've always been a terrible aggro player. Mind you, when I was gainfully employed and way more active in the local scene than I am now, I would build the right combo deck and show up to a tournament and make people realize why I wasn't wasting my fucking time playing Standard like they were. That was like, two layoffs ago. I show up to play, and I'll win with ANT; I just prefer doing it with shit like Angel Stompy. Shrug.

So I mean I *get it*, like if I were TLP and I went to a tourney and went, "Oh maaaan, I can't believe that this 3 color Vampire deck lost to the likes of FUCKING BELCHER", I'd be pissed about it too. It's one of those "country folk in the big city" or "city folk in the big country" stories, or some shit. I know what kind of Magic I *like*, but I also know what kind of Magic actually happens. Maybe that's why I like playing Deadguy. Eh.

[nedleeds]

When you are making sets where the best 3 creatures are blue you need to look in the mirror, drop your pants, and kick yourself in the man bag.

[IsThisACatInAHat?]

http://twitter.com/#!/TomLapilleMagic Legacy and Vintage contain several decks that "aren't Magic". How much of that is healthy? How good should those decks be? "aren't Magic" means that the game is about something unrecognizable, like dredge or storm or no one casting spells forever or something. My bar for "real Magic" is pretty low- both players playing lands and tapping them to cast spells for four or more turns is plenty.

Then you shouldn't have banned Mental Misstep, champ. 4+ turns of a skill-determined outcome may have been unpopular, but at least it was interactive "Magic".

[DragoFireheart]

Solution: unban mental misstep.

[Lancer]

So he's gonna do what? Ban jewelry in Vintage? Vintage will have combo decks that win consistently T3 no matter what, unless you ban all the jewelry.
Legacy ? Lol ? You just banned misstep and then you whine that the format is too fast? I am missing something here?
T4 is also the speed of Zoo, combo being slower than aggro would just mean combo IS aggro (and then aggro become midrange, think Big Zoo>Sligh Zoo>Control>Big Zoo). The only problem Aggro has with combo is that sideboard options for it against combo are garbage while the opposite isn't true (unless you play heavy blue). But Combo have to be faster than aggro just to exist, else it wouldn't. Maybe instead of whining print some goddamn good stack-interaction cards outside of blue, ***lord.


Holy Snap Dragon!!! I cannot deal with these dumbasses controlling the format... We need to get DCI and Wizards of the Coast out of the same bed!

[UnderwaterGuy]

I hate that guy.

Is being arrogant a job requirement at wizards? Moron doesn't even know how to play the game well :frown:.

[CorpT]

I generally think WotC does a very good job with the game. With the major exception of LaPille. He's just completely out of touch and clueless. He should not be allowed to speak in public because he continuously embarrasses himself and, by proxy, WotC.

[SpikeyMikey]

I generally think WotC does a very good job with the game. With the major exception of LaPille. He's just completely out of touch and clueless. He should not be allowed to speak in public because he continuously embarrasses himself and, by proxy, WotC.

Really? I'm surprised. I would think that a Legacy afficianado would be disappointed with Wizards as a whole these days. They've had this mindset that they want to focus on nerfing counterspells into near unplayability and murder the shit out of combo whenever they find it. I much prefer the old Wizards of the Coast. Wizards pre-Onslaught, really. Odyssey was a fine set, Invasions was my favorite set ever, Masques and Urzas had some issues but had very playable T2 formats, Tempest was tits, I mean, the old sets had good flavor. Not flavor insofar as "this fits into our shitty, hackneyed novels" but flavor in terms of cool concepts. I mean yeah, Humility may be an absolute rules nightmare, but it's just a cool card, good name, Foglio art, it's where it's at.

And while I was never on the boat with the '6ED rules will kill the game' crowd, I kind of feel that way about the M10 rules changes. I mean, it was a strict dumbing down of the rules. You took a lot of creatures that were interesting with combat damage on the stack and made them uninteresting. You took a lot of cool tricks with distributing partial damage among several creatures and killed them. Basically, you removed a lot of peoples' ability to maximize the utility of their cards. You removed a lot of skill from the game. Not to improve other aspects of the game, but just to make it more marketable to people that would otherwise be too stupid to play. Call me an elitist intellectual, but I kind of enjoy playing against intelligent opponents.

All in all, I think LaPille is pretty much in line with the rest of the Wizards staff. Rosewater has always been an idiot. Don't get me wrong, I still think LaPille should be sent to Guantanamo for questioning, but it's the whole company these days, not just 1 man. They're not being embarassed by proxy, they're being embarassed by their own inability to think.


Also, I'm not buying the "storm combo was an unintended side effect" bullshit. If storm combo was unforseen, they wouldn't have banned Mind's Desire in Extended well before we even had a full spoiler. They knew full well that the storm cards were too expensive (manawise) to see play outside of combo with only the narrowest of exceptions (Wing Shards).

[Goaswerfraiejen]

Aha. Ahahaha. Ahahahahaha! What a joke.

[Zamussels]

Well I agree that dredge is horrible and am not quite sure why the deck was allowed to exist for so long...

[bakofried]

I don't mind seeing Dredge every now and again. Keeps you on your toes, man.

[Fossil4182]

I think one of the biggest mistakes Tom makes is the assumption that the hypothetical world of Magic he envisions is still going to over by turn two or three. Even if the game does not literally end before turn four, the decision making and relevant cards drawn in the first few turns will usually dictate who wins. If this is really his opinion and not some ploy (see below) its also demonstrates a very narrow view of the game and would make Magic a linear game. Part of the appeal of this game is being able to identify interactions among cards in order to win. If his post is a reaction to the recent SCG results, its shortsighted. It seemed almost intuitive that combo would make an usually large comeback for the first tournament without Mental Misstep. Decks will adjust with more hate and the world will go on.

I'd also point out that the world he's envisioning is what Modern is supposed to be. A possible explanation for the quote is Tom attempting to persuade potential eternal players to choose a format that's not Vintage or Legacy... However, looking past the inflammatory and unclear intent of his Tweet, it would seem that the healthiest eternal scene would be one in which each of the three formats has a distinct characteristics that define them. Have all three formats operate with guidelines about how fast the format can been seems very limiting.

[tsabo_tavoc]

When you are making sets where the best 3 creatures are blue you need to look in the mirror, drop your pants, and kick yourself in the man bag.

+1.

The best Rare, the best Uncommon, and the best Common are blue.

[sclabman]

Genie comes out of a lamp during your recent acid trip and allows you to kill 3 people, with no repercussions, for the betterment of the planet.

Definitely:
1. Oprah Winfrey
2. Paula Deen
3. Tom LaPille

[Goin Aggro]

Tom LaPille:

http://solutionproblem.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/cant-tell-if-trolling.jpg

[sco0ter]

What's wrong with his statement?

I fully agree with him.

"like dredge or storm or no one casting spells forever or something."
"I played Dredge at an unsanctioned tournament yesterday and did not have fun."

I mean those decks are probably the most non-interactive, most un-fun decks.

[Gocho]

Fun is something personal. You can think that Dredge is un-fun and I can keep years playing Dredge because I think that is the funnier deck in all the meta.

DCI and Wizards must give choices to the players, but don't choose for them.

[Fuzzy]

Well, I agree with him - Storm and Dredge <> Magic.

But I'm really fine with this.

[Lancer]

What's wrong with his statement?

I fully agree with him.

"like dredge or storm or no one casting spells forever or something."
"I played Dredge at an unsanctioned tournament yesterday and did not have fun."

I mean those decks are probably the most non-interactive, most un-fun decks.

Because Mental Misstep put those decks into check, it didnt kill the those decks it just make it little risky to play in a tournament. Players seemed to panic more about the card then needed and wizards quickly reacted without thinking. Now they are starting to think about thier mistake. [saddly I dont see how DCI/Wizards can unban Mental Misstep since they quickly ban the freaking card at the first place]

As I said and many others has said, banning Mental Misstep will not make Goblins come back as it did after Survival.



@SpikeyMikey:

I do agree Storm was not a mistake! I also believe Urzas was made with the intent to bring the old players back into standard.

[Grollub]

What's wrong with his statement?

I fully agree with him.

"like dredge or storm or no one casting spells forever or something."
"I played Dredge at an unsanctioned tournament yesterday and did not have fun."

I mean those decks are probably the most non-interactive, most un-fun decks.
I actually sort of agree too (especially on dredge, as it's simply not Magic) - but on the other hands in regards to strictly tournament play I think they are fine, they keep decks honest and forces sideboard slots.
- In a tournament I'd always pick the deck I feel gives me the greatest shot at winning, regardless of how "fun" it might be to play against or with.

Balancing for casual and tournament at the same time seems like a nearly impossible task.



Really? I'm surprised. I would think that a Legacy afficianado would be disappointed with Wizards as a whole these days. They've had this mindset that they want to focus on nerfing counterspells into near unplayability and murder the shit out of combo whenever they find it. I much prefer the old Wizards of the Coast. Wizards pre-Onslaught, really. Odyssey was a fine set, Invasions was my favorite set ever, Masques and Urzas had some issues but had very playable T2 formats, Tempest was tits, I mean, the old sets had good flavor. Not flavor insofar as "this fits into our shitty, hackneyed novels" but flavor in terms of cool concepts. I mean yeah, Humility may be an absolute rules nightmare, but it's just a cool card, good name, Foglio art, it's where it's at.

Totally agree (tho my point of no return goes back to Urza). Better flavour and design; deck archetypes of all types were all viable during this "golden era" and cards only got banned if they were over the top insane bonkers in the respective formats.

Mirage/Tempest, Tempest/Urza or Tempest block will forever be my favorite formats.

[Lemnear]

LaPille does mention 3 decks, not 2 imo.

Dredge, Storm and Prison.

I can agree that a deck that relies on a uncounterable source (Bazaar) and triggers (narco, Bridge, ghast) is very annoying to play and play against. I can also to some minor degree understand that Lodestone, chalice, go is an unbeatable (FoW aside but the gamestate is even worse than T1 Trinisphere) and stupid play. If you look at all the redundance in workshop decks this is a common scenario of lacking interaction playing against shops. Why Storm is considered unfair is a riddle for me. If a player can play 10 spells uninterrupted in One turn (with all the Cards and mana requires to do so) he deserves to win the game

It's more rewarding and challenging than any other way to win so calling it "unfun" in general is nothing more than trolling because you've sat too often on the other side of the table. Storm isn't Play one card and win.

[Pippin]

"There's apparently a gentlemen's agreement of not playing dredge. Otherwise the ultra powerful zombies would beat everything, just like I did at a 10 man unsanctioned tournament. We even tested it at Magic Online Casual room and beat everything, so we decided to act. All dredge cards are hereby banned. Long live the elves!"

- Tom LaPille

[Mr. Safety]

Magic is magic...the whole point of the mechanics of magic is to break the rules. The cards that are the most powerful and/or fun are always the ones that break the traditional rules. That's essentially how wizards creates new mechanics: find a way to break the rules. Am I totally wrong here? Does Tom Lapille not understand this fundamental aspect of magic, not only in design/development but also in practical play terms? What an asshat.

With that said, it is becoming increasingly more obvious that Wizards wants to make everyone that plays magic to play at a casual level. Look at all the effort they went through to push the new Commander sets, the From-the-Vault sets, basically all of the promo stuff they've been pushing over the past few years. They don't want competitive magic; they want us all to be little pink bunnies trading rainbows in the meadow of Everyone-Has-Fun-And-Everyone-Wins Land.

I may be way off, but it certainly feels like WotC is trying to neuter the game into what they see as it's 'ideal state'. Yes, we understand that some cards need to be banned in order to create a balanced environment. BUT, the brief moment in time when something absolutely AWESOME comes about (Hulk-Flash anyone?) is one of the most exciting times in the game. Something unpredictable and amazing reinforced why we all think this game is great.

Tom Lapille, please stop trying to squash what makes magic fun. By trying to make it more fun or accessable (in your eyes) you're actually encouraging cancerous growth.

[nayon]

Yet another gem from Mr. LaPille: "For what it's worth, I enjoy untap-my-lands blue storm decks way more than Dark Ritual black storm decks."

Is this guy trolling or is he thick?

[UnsungHero]

This thread needs more great stable stag.

Dredge decks are awesome. Its the obscurity of the deck that makes it challenging and unique. I for one welcome a army of 2/2 zombies over tapping 3 mana and playing a great sable stag. Suck it La Pille.

[SpikeyMikey]

Yet another gem from Mr. LaPille: "For what it's worth, I enjoy untap-my-lands blue storm decks way more than Dark Ritual black storm decks."

Is this guy trolling or is he thick?

He's just an idiot. It's not trolling.

[joemauer]

Well that explains why we see colorless graveyard hate printed every few sets.

[Goaswerfraiejen]

What's wrong with his statement?

I fully agree with him.

"like dredge or storm or no one casting spells forever or something."
"I played Dredge at an unsanctioned tournament yesterday and did not have fun."

I mean those decks are probably the most non-interactive, most un-fun decks.


I enjoy playing against dredge, since there's a minimum of interaction. I hate playing against storm combo and Countertop. But they're still "Magic". You can't just arbitrarily say a bunch of decks 'aren't Magic', especially when they or their archetypes have had as long and storied a history as dredge, storm, and prison decks have had. You also can't just ignore format lines like that. It's ridiculous: they're all composed of Magic cards, after all, and a lot of discrete cards that otherwise would see no play. It's perfectly 'Magic'. Whether or not they're much fun to pilot or play against is a different issue altogether, and should not be conflated with the legitimacy of those decks.


But what's REALLY wrong with his series of tweets is that Mental Misstep slowed the format down, thereby achieving what his tweets wanted--except that it was banned. And there's the real irony.

[wcm8]

Magic is magic...the whole point of the mechanics of magic is to break the rules

I agree. If you look at the cards that get played, they all do something inherently broken or 'above the curve' for their mana cost.

-Tarmogoyf gets played over Leatherback Baloth because a 2cmc 4/5 > 3cmc 4/5.
-Even if Mind Twist were unbanned, Hymn to Tourach would still be better due to its mana-cost-to-effect ratio.
-Natural Order was a relatively fair card before the printing of Progenitus.
-Reanimator gets Iona (or some other game-winning creature) into play with a simple 1 or 2 mana spell.

Different formats have a different feel. If you want to enjoy MtG as someone like LaPille thinks it should be played, I think limited/draft is where you want to be focusing your attention. Every constructed format is going to build decks with the intention of breaking the game.

Also, from a flavor point of view, I think decks like Dredge, Storm, and Workshops are incredibly flavorful. You have the necromancer from a foreign land using bizarre forms of magic to summon a horde of the undead; you have a Lich-wizard using fantastic artifacts and blue/black magic to conjure up a lethal storm; you have the artificer who uses 'anti-magical' relics to defeat the more 'mundane' type of mages.

It's a bit more interesting that beating each other over the head with vanilla creatures and the occasional removal spell, don't you think?

[hjalte]

the whole point of the mechanics of magic is to break the rules.
This!

I really enjoy playing against many different strategies, including what some people might not call Magic (dredge). The fun part about Magic, and especially Legacy, is the sheer number of cards available, which enables such a vast amount of interactions between new and old cards. The whole challenge of playing Magic is, in my view, winning against all these strategies. It is of course intellectually chalenging, but that is the whole point. If we can't have that in Magic, I'll play Go or Chess instead.

[Admiral_Arzar]

http://www.top10dir.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Head-desk-1.jpg

Seriously, I'm not sure I can handle any more of Tom Lapille's wisdom. The internet might just explode from the singularity of stupidity that emanates from anything he posts.

[RogueMTG]

I agree. If you look at the cards that get played, they all do something inherently broken or 'above the curve' for their mana cost.

-Tarmogoyf gets played over Leatherback Baloth because a 2cmc 4/5 > 3cmc 4/5.
-Even if Mind Twist were unbanned, Hymn to Tourach would still be better due to its mana-cost-to-effect ratio.
-Natural Order was a relatively fair card before the printing of Progenitus.
-Reanimator gets Iona (or some other game-winning creature) into play with a simple 1 or 2 mana spell.

Different formats have a different feel. If you want to enjoy MtG as someone like LaPille thinks it should be played, I think limited/draft is where you want to be focusing your attention. Every constructed format is going to build decks with the intention of breaking the game.

Also, from a flavor point of view, I think decks like Dredge, Storm, and Workshops are incredibly flavorful. You have the necromancer from a foreign land using bizarre forms of magic to summon a horde of the undead; you have a Lich-wizard using fantastic artifacts and blue/black magic to conjure up a lethal storm; you have the artificer who uses 'anti-magical' relics to defeat the more 'mundane' type of mages.

It's a bit more interesting that beating each other over the head with vanilla creatures and the occasional removal spell, don't you think?

This!

[DragoFireheart]

It's a bit more interesting that beating each other over the head with vanilla creatures and the occasional removal spell, don't you think?

-Aggro beats control due to too many threats.
- Control beats combo due to having enough answers to stop the combo players combo.
-Combo beats aggro due to being faster.

This is balance through variety. Wizards supported this view:

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/academy/22

There are also subtypes, but the basic three are combo, control, and aggro.

Modern is a demonstration of what WotC currently wants magic to look like. Frankly, we are seeing why their vision won't work. Variety ensures balance. Trying to force everyone to play a certain play style (play dudes, turn sides, cast Doom Blade) is why Modern is unbalanced. For such a style to work, you must lose variety (quantity of cards in fact) for such an idea to work. Otherwise, you get what we had pre-modern bannings of cards like Ponder and Preordain. If they want to maintain balance of Modern, they must either do one of two things:

A- Print all future cards in mind of how they will unbalance Modern.

B- Ban cards deemed too powerful in Modern.

The only way for their vision to work is if they literally destroy Magic the Gathering. As the years go on, more powerful combos will be made and will be used to break Modern, resulting in WoTC to either make bland cards (ruining Standard as well) or to make a ever growing ban list for Modern (which I suspect will one day be larger than Vintages banned list). Meanwhile, Legacy will likely be fine for the most part as it has enough variety of decks to ensure that a new deck coming out can easily be kept in check.

Variety = balance.

[GGoober]

You know what's more uninteractive than Dredge?

Lapille's brain.

In all seriousness, maybe he needs to play with dredge against dredge-hate. Fighting through a turn 0 Leyline and a couple of Crypts is perhaps more un-interactive for the dredge player than him winning game 1.

[sco0ter]

From a design or deck development point of view those degenerate decks are usually the most interesting ones. It's probably the most fun and most challenging to _develop_ broken decks or strategies.
BUT from a player's point of view some decks are just plain boring to play (against).
I think that's what Tom wants to say. And he is right.

Playing these kind of decks, must feel like playing against a goldfish.
And playing against those decks is boring as hell. Whenever I play against Dredge or Storm online, I think "why I am actually wasting my time here?"

[Wereodile]

This!

I really enjoy playing against many different strategies, including what some people might not call Magic (dredge). The fun part about Magic, and especially Legacy, is the sheer number of cards available, which enables such a vast amount of interactions between new and old cards. The whole challenge of playing Magic is, in my view, winning against all these strategies. It is of course intellectually chalenging, but that is the whole point. If we can't have that in Magic, I'll play Go or Chess instead.

I fully agree!

I am not going to pout just because I lost to Dredge or Storm, you adapt and come back stronger. Knowing the meta is as much a part of the game as building decks.

[Aggro_zombies]

Guys, I think we're all forgetting here that dredge and storm can't beat a Great Sable Stag.

Problem solved.

[GGoober]

Just be careful, Tom seems to be a guy who could chance upon this thread and get a nerdrage and perma-ban this format, because you know, it's the only format left that is actually fun/diverse/interactive. Too bad too many n00bs want to get into this format and then QQ about banning everything.

[nayon]

LaPille retweets MTGComedian: "I was about to write a joke about storm, but I just got Tendrils'd for 22 before I could type the first word."

[Zombie]

because you know, it's the only format left that is actually fun/diverse/interactive.

Pauper exists. It's not as widely played as Legacy, but the MTGO format is defined, diverse and fast. It's the last one that feels like what Magic used to feel like, probably because mana is an actual gameplay concern, not a wallet one, and game-changing cards are rare. You really have to work to turn tempo around.

[GGoober]

Wow, lol, that guy is SO bitter it's not even funny.

I actually fully support pauper (I have 4 decks built myself), but no one plays it at my region. Pauper is actually much more diverse and deck-building/meta-game planning than Legacy (at the moment, thanks to SCG circuits making people just play flavor decks of the week.)

[Zombie]

Not really bitter at Magic, I'm comfortable with Pauper and Highlander. It's a pity the other formats are boring or too expensive but not terribly bothersome.

You want bitterness, you look at videogames. The whole industry is going to hell and is blissfully unwaware of it. I'm lucky I still have my cardboard crack ^^

What Pauper decks do you play, btw?

[UnderwaterGuy]

Pauper is definitely one of the top 3 formats, I'll agree with that. It's biggest problem is similar to Legacy's, it is hard to find people that play it. If it starts to get more popular in paper magic I'd be really happy. I play UR Post which is a fun deck and the meta is diverse enough, even with its own cute Dredge-like deck that runs Golgari Brownscale :D.

[Wereodile]

I actually fully support pauper (I have 4 decks built myself), but no one plays it at my region. Pauper is actually much more diverse and deck-building/meta-game planning than Legacy (at the moment, thanks to SCG circuits making people just play flavor decks of the week.)

I Love Pauper as well (I also have 4 decks built) but it's hard to convince my friends to play as they don't get to use all of their expensive toys.

Back on topic I do like the back and forth style of play or "Proper Magic" as LaPille would call it but the game is built around 10,000+ unique pieces and with that comes almost endless possibilities. Sometimes those interactions end up being Dredge or Storm but hey that's the nature of the beast and people like LaPille should be applauding the players who never cease innovating and moving the game forward.

[TheCramp]

I think we have to dial it back to one of Toms assertions. Saying "Such and such is not magic," demands that we define magic. Which he does, "playing lands and playing spells, no sitting back and not doing anything for turns." Ok fine. Lets look at the examples: Dredge; plays lands, Plays spells, In the early turns. Right off the bat, the definition has fallen apart. As much as a spike as I am, I still like to think of magic as a wizard dual. To wizards locked in combat. As long as the game still resembles that I can get with it. Even in a tournament setting I like this. You meet, fight, someone wins, you think about how your leveraging your abilities, adjust your approach (sideboard) and fly back into the fray. Dredge is some fucking oddball swamp necromancer launching a zombie assault out of the muck, sometimes sacrificing sky-bound squids and little imps to unearth some long dead Ent (woodfall primus) from the mire who fills in your moat for the zombies to swarm over. Awesome.

I can get behind that. I think if some effort was made in getting people to understand the games in these terms, we might have an easier time including people into the format. When the format warps around a card, or a strategy, by all means manage it with bannings. But to come at it saying an entire approach that compels many players, and brings them into the game and into this format, is somehow bad... Well that concerns me.

What I don't want to see is Magic become World of Warcraft, where is you find some interesting interaction within the game, you may very well be punished for it. For example, currently people progressing in heroic Fireland's that play enhancement shaman figured out that Caster Gear- stuff with Intelligence, rather than Agility as Blizzard Had intended for enhancement Shaman, is better for their characters. Blizz had not intended this, but the theory crafters and curious among the players figured this out. All the more cool because Shaman have long stood behind other classes in the same rolls in the game. Blizz can just be like, that's not what we intended, and bamn, hotfix, doesn't work that way anymore. Now that's fine they have their reasons.

Wizards, however, have been billing Magic as a first person thinker (for the Xbox game) and say that legacy is where you can play all your old cards. I like that. But to say that we, the players, when we explore the bizarre interactions of cards they print, are doing something bad. I take exception to that. I really don't want wizards to mediate my engagement with their game in that way.

[SpikeyMikey]

-
Modern is a demonstration of what WotC [B]currently wants magic to look like. Frankly, we are seeing why their vision won't work.

I agree that Modern doesn't work. I disagree as to the why.

It's not that they don't have balance (although they don't) between the 3 pillars. Legacy has no balance between pillars either; the bulk of any tournament and the bulk of the decks that perform well are some flavor of aggro control. Whether it's Merfolk or Bant or Rock or any other deck, you're probably playing, from a strategy point of view, the same thing. A little disruption, a little removal, some efficient creatures and some way to generate incremental advantage in the midgame. The disruption varies, from Force to Wasteland to Thoughtseize. The removal varies from Dismember to Swords to Vindicate. The creatures vary from Lord of Atlantis to Tarmogoyf to Knight of the Reliquary. The incremental advantage varies from Standstill/Silvergill to Stoneforge to Dark Confidant. But the decks are very formulaic in their actual strategy.

The reason that Modern is the clusterfuck that it is is because of Wizards obsession with turning creatures sideways. They don't have good balance between spells, creatures and non-creature permanents. Not in terms of power level, anyway. Without good counterspells and without broad hosers to keep extremely narrow strategies in check, the format is going to bounce from 1 combo deck to another until they've banned enough things to turn it into Zoo mirrors. Because Wizards has been printing creatures and creature-related cards that are leagues ahead of what they're printing in categories like countermagic or land destruction or hosers, they've created a format that is incapable of being reactive; the only legitimate strategies are basically all-in because the tools do not exist to sufficiently interfere with your opponents game to go long. The threats are so much stronger than the answers that the only answers worth playing are the ones you use to guard your threats.

I would also like to point out that this can't all be planted on Tom's shoulders. The players are to blame too. Jimmy Casual wants to go to Friday Night Magic and play his Craw Giant.dec. We all wanted to when we first started. You want to put that Lure on that Craw Giant and swing and laugh as it decimates your opponent's board. Damn that asshole with his Counterspell or his Icy Manipulator! Damn the Ice Storm or Sinkhole that kept you from getting to Craw Giant mana. If your opponent couldn't play these cards, this Craw Giant thing would kick ass! So you bitch. And you bitch some more. That's not FUN, you say, that's not MAGIC.

And let's be honest. No one likes getting locked out of the game. No one likes losing a game they were never in. It doesn't matter whether it's because your opponent is playing an LD deck or a prison deck or a 20+ counterspell control deck or just because you got mana screwed. It's not fun. It sucks. But those LD tools, those prison tools, those counter tools need to exist because even if Counterspell and Icy Manipulator and Ice Storm and Sinkhole are banned, your Craw Giant deck still sucks. But what people are playing instead is Dark Ritual into Black Vise or Channel into Fireball.

And that's why Magic is the way it is. That's why Standard sucks and is driving people by droves into Legacy, where sure, there are decks that you can't interact with, but it's real Magic, not this red zone Pokemon game that Wizards is trying to shove down your throats now. That's why Extended was so bad they were forced to revise it's size multiple times to try and make it playable and then finally replace it with another format entirely. That's why the Modern experiment is failing. Because the players got what they wanted. They got a format where 6 mana creatures are where it's at. They got a format where the offensive tools far outstrip the defensive ones. And Craw Giant.dec still sucks. Because there's always something more broken to play, but it's never a "fun" deck.




The only way for their vision to work is if they literally destroy Magic the Gathering. As the years go on, more powerful combos will be made and will be used to break Modern, resulting in WoTC to either make bland cards (ruining Standard as well) or to make a ever growing ban list for Modern (which I suspect will one day be larger than Vintages banned list). Meanwhile, Legacy will likely be fine for the most part as it has enough variety of decks to ensure that a new deck coming out can easily be kept in check.

Variety = balance.

Nitpicking a little, but the Vintage banned list is incredibly short. Ante cards + physical dexterity cards. The Vintage restricted list is long.



From a design or deck development point of view those degenerate decks are usually the most interesting ones. It's probably the most fun and most challenging to _develop_ broken decks or strategies.
BUT from a player's point of view some decks are just plain boring to play (against).
I think that's what Tom wants to say. And he is right.

Playing these kind of decks, must feel like playing against a goldfish.
And playing against those decks is boring as hell. Whenever I play against Dredge or Storm online, I think "why I am actually wasting my time here?"

If you're a bad player, then those decks are boring to play against. I don't particularly *like* playing against storm or dredge, but I would be lying if I said those weren't the most tense, high stakes games I play. The whole game is distilled into a few turns and a mistake by either player can spell instant doom. I can't think of a time I've played against storm and felt bored. Even when they're going off, I'm looking to see if they fuck up or if there's an opportunity for me to make some last-ditch effort to fuck it up for them.

If you feel like you're wasting your time, that's because you're just autopiloting your deck instead of looking at maximizing the advancement of your goals with every play or because you're playing a deck that's so bad it has no hope of ever winning. But I've 2-0'd dredge decks and lands decks and storm decks while piloting things that should have no business even stealing a game.

[Wereodile]

Dredge is some fucking oddball swamp necromancer launching a zombie assault out of the muck, sometimes sacrificing sky-bound squids and little imps to unearth some long dead Ent (woodfall primus) from the mire who fills in your moat for the zombies to swarm over. Awesome.

That was awesome, You are the mayor of flavor town.

[GGoober]

I used to hate playing dredge and against Dredge (I still do). But when you really stand back, one cannot stop but be amazed at how the game mechanics created a monster that is Dredge. It's a scary yet beautiful thing. I'm always in awe when I read the first articles when Vintage manaless Dredge was being developed. I was just speechless that deck-building could take an entire new level.

It's sad that the people involved with designing and balancing the game don't find such beauty in the product they created. What I really love about MTG and the game is that at any point you think the game is dead and stagnating, the developers do something to create entirely new mechanics that revitalize the game, and the community/gamers experiment and put new ideas out to test. What Tom is bitching about goes very against what I find most attractive in this game. The guy either needs to grow up a little or learn to know that the game isn't just for him and his kins, but rather, for the entire community that plays the game.

[nayon]

I used to hate playing dredge and against Dredge (I still do). But when you really stand back, one cannot stop but be amazed at how the game mechanics created a monster that is Dredge. It's a scary yet beautiful thing. I'm always in awe when I read the first articles when Vintage manaless Dredge was being developed. I was just speechless that deck-building could take an entire new level.

It's sad that the people involved with designing and balancing the game don't find such beauty in the product they created. What I really love about MTG and the game is that at any point you think the game is dead and stagnating, the developers do something to create entirely new mechanics that revitalize the game, and the community/gamers experiment and put new ideas out to test. What Tom is bitching about goes very against what I find most attractive in this game. The guy either needs to grow up a little or learn to know that the game isn't just for him and his kins, but rather, for the entire community that plays the game.

WOTC's policy is "attract as many newcomers as possible to make as much $ as possible", so they want to keep the game simple and approachable. It's a very flawed strategy imo, putting potential customers over the community.

[GGoober]

Except Legacy does nothing to hurt the newcomers. Most newcomers are staggering into limited/standard than Legacy. I don't think WotC is implementing that policy as you're saying because Legacy/Vintage would have been long gone. In fact, recent sets have only shown that WotC is always constantly giving us powerful eternal staples and they have done a good job in managing the banlist.

I would hope that WotC's main policy isn't to 'attract as many newcomers as possible to make as much $ as possible', because if that does happen, I'm sure many of us will be leaving the game. MTG at this point is nowhere like the music industry, where you have pop singers getting a good package and gaining popularity because the general music audience is 'uneducated' musically, although people like Tom makes me wonder if we're ever heading to that doomed path.

So far, WotC has continued to show that they care about collectors, their older players, the eternal players, as well as newcomers learning the game (great work with Duels of the Planeswalkers etc). It's just people like Tom and others, who are just single-minded in their views of the game, failing to appreciate the long history and creativity/dynamics of the game, ironically it is some of these people working at WotC who are the ones who fail to appreciate the game.

[Rune]

Fun is something personal. You can think that Dredge is un-fun and I can keep years playing Dredge because I think that is the funnier deck in all the meta.

DCI and Wizards must give choices to the players, but don't choose for them.

I agree, the banning decisions shouldn't lie with some deranged ginger, it should be the players' choice. Fortunately, it seems to be the way things are working now. The ban on Mystical Tutor felt like it was decided by very few people, if not just one person (Tom LaPille). No one really expected this ban, and although it turned out to be a fine decision, the reasoning behind it was still pretty retarded. It didn't feel like it was the people's decision, but just LaPille's vision of Legacy being forced through. I think this is what really pissed a lot of people off, not the ban itself.

However, I have to give credit to the DCI nowadays, because it seems like they pay close attention to the players, and they are even willing to unban potentially broken cards. Modern is a perfect example of why WotC (LaPille?) shouldn't be left with all the decision, because the laughably large banlist has turned that format into a complete trainwreck.

[TsumiBand]

If they'd man up and print a Type 2 which could handle a reprinting of Force of Will, Modern's banned list could quit looking like shit. I don't know how Wizards has managed to forget that, when decent control decks prevent combo from working, more aggro decks can be played. They like turning dudes sideways so much, they should reprint Force of Will.

Another reason I can't say I agree with TLP, but I can't say I completely disagree either, is that the oldest Eternal formats are chock full of Things That Never Should Have Been Printed. Think about it; knowing what we know of theories like tempo, card advantage, abstractions like "who's the beatdown?", etc etc... Imagine all those concepts being solidified like 20 years ago, and then they go and print Alpha. You really think things like Dark Ritual and Ancestral Recall would show up in their present forms? No fucking way. In a way, I can't disagree with Tom LaPille, because when you get right down to it the most important cards in the Eternal formats are the *mistakes*.

So of course when you compare m11 Standard to Legacy you get people going "whoamg how is this Magic?" It's really far removed from that concept of Magic. That doesn't have to be a bad thing, and again I cite my earlier post - there's a difference between "the Magic I love to play the most" and "the Magic I have to play if I'm trying to win", and I can reconcile that in myself. Apparently TLP can't. Sucks to be him. I wish he doesn't try to crap on it for everyone else.

[Mr. Safety]

Dredge, Affinity, Cascade combo, Hulk-Flash, CounterTop, Painter/Grinder, Stifle-Naught, ANT, TES, Cephalid Breakfast...that's the short list of combos that break the game and make it awesome.

Imagine a world where those decks couldn't exist...man, what a fucking boring game. The unavoidable serendipity of the game brings in more customers than printing cool creatures. I remember liking magic, and then learning about tournament decks and strategies, and then becoming full-blown addicted. If WotC wants to make money, keep pushing the limits and make stuff that could potentially be broken. People stand up and pay attention when something great happens.

[menace13]

I have played against and talked to Tom on MODO a lot. The guy is a fine player and he likes to play the occasional broken decks. I've seen him play a combo deck in a Classic Player Run Event and played against him with assortments of Legacy decks too. He isn't this evil insane ginger man everyone makes him out to seem. He's actually pretty nice and a cool guy to talk to. He may say some crazy things time to time, but who doesn't.

[RogueMTG]

I have played against and talked to Tom on MODO a lot. The guy is a fine player and he likes to play the occasional broken decks. I've seen him play a combo deck in a Classic Player Run Event and played against him with assortments of Legacy decks too. He isn't this evil insane ginger man everyone makes him out to seem. He's actually pretty nice and a cool guy to talk to. He may say some crazy things time to time, but who doesn't.

Saying crazy things around your buddies is one thing. Saying them when you're in positions of power and influence, where your work is concerned and your company's customers are affected is a whole 'nother ball game.

In most jobs pulling shit like that will get you fired for misrepresenting the company. PR department needs to lock down this guys twitter.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

-Aggro beats control due to too many threats.
- Control beats combo due to having enough answers to stop the combo players combo.
-Combo beats aggro due to being faster.

This is not true. This has never been true. Please stop saying it.


Tom LaPille and Sheldon Menery - Separated at birth?

In fairness, LaPille wants to actually ban things. Sheldon would just write petulantly about what a bunch of fun-wreckers people playing Vengevival are.

[UnderwaterGuy]

This is not true. This has never been true. Please stop saying it.

What exactly do you mean here? What he said is pretty much the definition of the three archetypes.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

What exactly do you mean here? What he said is pretty much the definition of the three archetypes.

Which is an anachronistic and hopelessly wrong-headed theory from the very early days of Magic, whose only modern function is to be regurgitated in an attempt to murder intelligent discussion of the game.

[UnderwaterGuy]

Alright then, don't answer the question Mr. Angry Pants.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

To be more precise, the archetype triangle theory.

a) Fails to take into account the actual variety and nuance of archetypes.

b) Oversimplifies what contributes to a deck having a good matchup, to the point of uselessness, and

c) Doesn't hold up to a cross-examination with reality and observed results.

[hjalte]

For one, Control usually has a hard time beating combo. Aggro-Control is better at doing that.

[Koby]

For one, Control usually has a hard time beating combo. Aggro-Control is better at doing that.

Another, Maverick having a positive matchup against Hive Mind (when Maverick could at best be described as mid-range Aggro).

[TsumiBand]

I think it's probably still fair to say that a given strategy has a higher rate of success against other strategies in the classic rock-paper-scissors model of Magic, though. A deck which employs purely aggro strategies can only race a deck which is combo oriented; an element of control, applied correctly to the right 60 cards, can dick the combo strategy enough to prevent their intended function long enough to let you aggro them out.

I mean we could get into vagaries of perceived deck archetypes, I remember years back there being some giant discussion (either it was here or at TMD, I don't recall) about whether the simple act of adding Lightning Bolt to an otherwise creature-heavy deck instantly gave the deck "control elements" thus turning it into a bonafide "aggro-control" deck, which really is just a useless argument without the context of the player you're sitting across from. Which is why questions like "Who's the Beatdown?" is more valuable in the end, rather than worrying about whether or not your 4-color pile is actually combo-prison or combo-control. Who cares, just try to make the right play.

In any event, I have to agree with this sentiment:


Saying crazy things around your buddies is one thing. Saying them when you're in positions of power and influence, where your work is concerned and your company's customers are affected is a whole 'nother ball game.

If LaPille is just speaking off the cuff as a representative of the game, he might want to quit employing a 'ready-fire-aim' strategy.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I mean we could get into vagaries of perceived deck archetypes

As it happens, that is one of the purposes of this forum.

Much like modern chemists do not discuss the four elements of fire, earth, air and water.

[SpikeyMikey]

As it happens, that is one of the purposes of this forum.

Much like modern chemists do not discuss the four elements of fire, earth, air and water.

Tsumi's right though. I always considered the original San Diego Zoo to be a counterless aggro control deck. Definitely more aggro than control, but it could do a fair job of playing lockdown with burn as flexible removal (plus Swords of course), especially with Fire/Ice on a stick. But part of that is playstyle. A lot of people played Watchwolf over Goblin Legionnaire and/or cut stick, which definitely pushed it more to the aggro end. And long before the idea of tap-out control had a name, I played a number of configurations of B/G/x decks in T1 that I would've considered control decks.

It's difficult to quantify something as aggro, control or combo. We use the terms but they're not actually defined terms. It's like the term "truth" in philosophy. It's understand, generally, what someone means when they say true/truth, but trying to come up with a definition that doesn't break down somewhere is impossible. Or close enough to impossible that no one has ever done it anyway.

And in a lot of cases, where a deck falls on the line is more a function of the pilot's preferred playstyle than it is the deck itself.

[Oiolosse]

And while I was never on the boat with the '6ED rules will kill the game' crowd, I kind of feel that way about the M10 rules changes. I mean, it was a strict dumbing down of the rules. You took a lot of creatures that were interesting with combat damage on the stack and made them uninteresting. You took a lot of cool tricks with distributing partial damage among several creatures and killed them. Basically, you removed a lot of peoples' ability to maximize the utility of their cards. You removed a lot of skill from the game. Not to improve other aspects of the game, but just to make it more marketable to people that would otherwise be too stupid to play. Call me an elitist intellectual, but I kind of enjoy playing against intelligent opponents.

Putted good.

I was in shock when I heard about the damage/stack change. And to find out that they did it to make it easier!! I want it harder, certainly not easier.

[Aggro_zombies]

I don't get the "stack damage removal dumbed down the game" argument.

With damage on the stack, 99.99% of the time the correct play is to stack damage and then sac your duder for profit, regardless of the game state or matchup. The 0.01% of the time where that isn't the correct play simply serve as reinforcement for the fact that, in the vast, overwhelming majority of cases, it is correct to stack and then sacrifice.

Without stacking combat damage, you actually have to make decisions about whether it is better to eliminate their guy or cash in yours for profit. This is especially apparent in Limited where creature combat occurs all the time and therefore these decisions are pretty routine.

In short, we went from a universally correct way of doing things to having nuance. The only advantage for combat damage stacking was the ability to pull a fast one on someone who didn't know how those rules worked, which I guess is why people see it as "dumbing down".

The ability to split damage at will almost never mattered except in bizarro corner-case scenarios where you could make yourself look clever with a Pyroclasm.

EDIT: Sorry to get off-topic, but QQing about the M10 changes is just meh. They were nowhere near as wrenching as the 6E changes and have been fine over the long run.

[DragoFireheart]

This is not true. This has never been true. Please stop saying it.


Too simple?

We have the following decks:

A
B
C
V
X

A beats V and X and loses to B and loses extremely hard to C.
C beats B and A but loses to V and X.
V ties with X and beats B and C but loses to A.

etc.

It's more complicated than what I posted, but the point is still true: different archtypes of decks beat other decks. With variety we ensure balance since no one deck is a Paper to every Rock.

[Amon Amarth]

I think that the "uninteractive" decks like Dredge, Storm or whatever are crucial to Legacy's identity. Decks like those really add to the flavor of the format. I like turning guy's sideways but I also like doing other things than that like, you know, casting silly strong spells or no spells at all in some cases.

I don't agree with most thing LaPille has said but I don't think that all the blame should fall on him. Honestly, it's WotC's current design/development philosophy. I think they are doing a pretty damn good job on most front's. However, in formats like Modern that have terrible control cards Combo is going to run roughshod over everyone. It's not hard when everyone gets to run as many colors as you want but we don't want you to be able to punish people for doing that i.e Wasteland, PoP, etc. Mana Leak is as good as your counterspells get. And it doesn't help that all your decent control cards are banned. There just aren't the checks that are required for a format that large to exist. Old Extended (with duals) was a reasonably balanced format. The hosers they print these days are shit with the notable exception of GY hate, look at M12. Celestial Purge? That's fine for Standard but it's not up to snuff anywhere else. Arg. I'm rambling now. I'm done.

[Koby]

I don't agree with most thing LaPille has said but I don't think that all the blame should fall on him.

I don't agree with this. He is the Lead Developer for R&D, where Aaron is the Lead Designer. Both are the figure-heads of their respective teams, and together are responsible for the careful and calculated moves that evolve Magic throughout the years. Tom's team is responsible for not only testing formats, but also anticipating the effect of cards in the formats via FFL, such as Jace TMS & SFM on Standard, the ubiquity of MM in Legacy and how it made playing aggro nearly impossible, and other big blunders over the last few years. It's the Design team's responsibility for making the best(est) cards in recent sets Blue. It is their task to balance the power level within all the colors, but as we keep seeing year after year they chose Blue over non-Blue. But I digress...

R&D, and their respective leadership (Aaron Forsythe and Tom LaPille) have an active duty to make sure that the new cards in new sets are balanced within all formats. The lack of playtesting on Development's part is a failure of Tom LaPille's team.

So now that he's nerdraging that the game he's been actively balancing has degenerated into "non-Magic" games is his fault alone. Whether you think this for Legacy or not, that his perception is such is troubling considering the piss poor task his team has done to address those issues over the last several years. How many cards and special releases (think EDH pre-cons) have the teams had to balance both Dredge and Storm, which aren't exactly new decks in Legacy by any stretch, and have air-balled completely?

I echo the sentiments that MM was a good attempt, but it was too good at what it did, and subsequently neutered Aggro and Combo.

[dr.philgood]

My problem with TLP calling out dredge for not being "magic" is that Wizards gave us both Bridge from below and Narcomoeba in the same set. They can't claim that the interaction was a unintentional or untested when they gift wrapped the deck and hand delivered it legacy.
I mean i would be fine with them axing dredge, its not really a fun deck to play with or against IMO. But that's my personal opinion, i am not a employee of Hasbro or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates.
Prison, storm, and resource denial decks on the other hand are pretty essential imo.
In Vintage in particular, if you got rid of Dredge, Storm and Shops decks what the #@*! else would there be? A field of blue Vault/key decks. Oh and fish, can't forget the fish.
And in legacy the storm decks are fairly fragile, and haven't put up strong numbers major tournaments, at least not with any consistency. Dredge is easy to hate, but whatever i really don't want to defend dredge enough people are doing that already.
And the most recently successful incarnation of prison in legacy was Dragon stompy enough said.
Just because TLP don't like them doesn't make them not interesting of fun to many players..... i'm sure there are many combo players that wish control would just go curl up and die.

[(nameless one)]

I was actually quite sad that Scars of Mirrodin block didn't turn out to be a blunder like Mirrodin block or Urza block.

Though back to the topic, I think the Dredge/Storm of today is like Prison/Stasis back in the day. It's essentially like 'not Magic' in a way that if you're playing against it, you are essentially watching someone play themselves. TLP should be glad that Dredge/Storm isn't as painful to watch and play against as Prison/Stasis.

[Whit3 Ghost]

For what it's worth, I enjoy untap-my-lands blue storm decks way more than Dark Ritual black storm decks.
Did he not play the format any of the times when High Tide was good?

[Humphrey]

all the decisions that were made by wizards in the last 2 years bringing me pretty close to sell all my cards. Im pretty sure, they have no ideas about the game at all. I dont want to list all the stupid things they did and have been discussed here anyways, but when theyre starting to mess with legacy like theyre doing with modern im gone, thats for sure.

[UnderwaterGuy]

I don't agree with this. He is the Lead Developer for R&D, where Aaron is the Lead Designer. Both are the figure-heads of their respective teams, and together are responsible for the careful and calculated moves that evolve Magic throughout the years. Tom's team is responsible for not only testing formats, but also anticipating the effect of cards in the formats via FFL, such as Jace TMS & SFM on Standard, the ubiquity of MM in Legacy and how it made playing aggro nearly impossible, and other big blunders over the last few years. It's the Design team's responsibility for making the best(est) cards in recent sets Blue. It is their task to balance the power level within all the colors, but as we keep seeing year after year they chose Blue over non-Blue. But I digress...

R&D, and their respective leadership (Aaron Forsythe and Tom LaPille) have an active duty to make sure that the new cards in new sets are balanced within all formats. The lack of playtesting on Development's part is a failure of Tom LaPille's team.


I think the problem stems from Tom LaPille and the others in development just not being good enough at magic. The inability to see what SFM+Batterskull would be, the idea that mono green infect is a competitive standard deck, and that Great Sable Stag is a card is unacceptable and shows they don't have deckbuilding skills as good as good players do.

[Bardo]

Moved to Community.

[joemauer]

So somebody pointed out that Wizards gave us dredge, anybody know if Tom Lapille was responsible for that?

Also, colorless graveyard hate printed by block:
Lorwynn: First block after dredge was created, no colorless graveyard hate that I can recall.

Shards of Alara: Relic of Prog., cantrip'd crypt with a reusable graveyard picker.

Zendikar: Bojuka Bog, near uncounterable crypt which can be fetched with knight of rel. from the previous block. Ravenous Trap, can't dredge too much or this instant speed crypt will get you.

Scars of Mir.: Nihil Spellbomb, another tormod's crypt this time with a conditional cantrip attached. Surgical Extraction, it wasn't fair that only black had 10+ outs to dredge, obviously extirpate needed to be colorless.

Innastrand: TBA.

[Bardo]

So somebody pointed out that Wizards gave us dredge, anybody know if Tom Lapille was responsible for that?

Nah -- LaPille didn't start at Wotc until late 2008. Ravnica block was three years prior and Future Sight was 2007.

[joemauer]

Aaaahh, so Tom came at about the time Mythic rares popped up?

Also, he arrived while I was getting out of standard. Hmm.

[UnderwaterGuy]

So somebody pointed out that Wizards gave us dredge, anybody know if Tom Lapille was responsible for that?

Also, colorless graveyard hate printed by block:
Lorwynn: First block after dredge was created, no colorless graveyard hate that I can recall.

Shards of Alara: Relic of Prog., cantrip'd crypt with a reusable graveyard picker.

Zendikar: Bojuka Bog, near uncounterable crypt which can be fetched with knight of rel. from the previous block. Ravenous Trap, can't dredge too much or this instant speed crypt will get you.

Scars of Mir.: Nihil Spellbomb, another tormod's crypt this time with a conditional cantrip attached. Surgical Extraction, it wasn't fair that only black had 10+ outs to dredge, obviously extirpate needed to be colorless.

Innastrand: TBA.

Don't forget Tormod's Crypt was in Time Spiral with the core Future Sight dredge cards.

[CorpT]

I think the problem stems from Tom LaPille and the others in development just not being good enough at magic. The inability to see what SFM+Batterskull would be, the idea that mono green infect is a competitive standard deck, and that Great Sable Stag is a card is unacceptable and shows they don't have deckbuilding skills as good as good players do.

This. Combined with the fact that TLP is terrible at communicating makes for a very poor lead of anything. FFL missing Deciever Exarch/Splinter Twin is just shameful. After they had Pestermite/Kikki-Jiki and Pestermite/Twin already. That type of miss requires action.

[the Thin White Duke]

This. Combined with the fact that TLP is terrible at communicating makes for a very poor lead of anything. FFL missing Deciever Exarch/Splinter Twin is just shameful. After they had Pestermite/Kikki-Jiki and Pestermite/Twin already. That type of miss requires action.

I think the action should be getting rid of the FFL. It makes me a little uneasy knowing that Wizards plans so far in advance to avoid "mistakes". I think things revert to the good ol' days of emergency bannings. On one hand bannings might indicate poor planning/design, but the way the game is these days I'd rather see some balls to the wall design like Tempest/Urza's blocks.

[Bardo]

I don't agree with this. He is the Lead Developer for R&D, where Aaron is the Lead Designer.

Forsythe is the Director of R&D and Bill Rose is VP. Both LaPille and Rosewater work for Forsythe who reports to Bill Rose. If there's "blame" to be assigned for R&D's "mistakes," it's with Bill Rose and Aaron Forsythe (in that order), not LaPille. Jeez, get your corporate hierarchy right. ;)

Development is not one guy, it's a team of dudes, so calling out LaPille singularly is pretty misinformed here.

Overall, this seems like an insanely difficult game to develop and I think they're doing it as good as can be expected: focusing on the money-making side of the thing (block, standard, draft) and banning anything that's too nutty in the deeper formats.

[Aggro_zombies]

Forsythe is the Director of R&D and Bill Rose is VP. Both LaPille and Rosewater work for Forsythe who reports to Bill Rose. If there's "blame" to be assigned for R&D's "mistakes," it's with Bill Rose and Aaron Forsythe (in that order), not LaPille. Jeez, get your corporate hierarchy right. ;)

Development is not one guy, it's a team of dudes, so calling out LaPille singularly is pretty misinformed here.

Overall, this seems like an insanely difficult game to develop and I think they're doing it as good as can be expected: focus on the money-making side of your business (block, standard, draft) and ban anything that's too nutty in the larger formats.
Actually, we can nitpick further: Rosewater is the Head Designer, because "Lead Designer/Developer" varies based on set. I don't know if there is a Head Developer.

Regardless of anything derpy LaPille might say, what's relevant are the bans (or lack thereof) that come out of it. Clearly, storm and dredge are not decks that just cropped up yesterday; they've been in the format for ages and R&D would have to be flat-out brain dead to not know that. However, it's arguable that the only "non-interactive"/"not-real-Magic" card banned so far in Legacy has been Mystical Tutor, and that was more of an enabler than anything. The strategies that wanted it continue to exist in its absence.

[Bardo]

Doesn't the banning process in involve more than just the folks in R&D (i.e., the mythical "DCI," which includes people in R&D, Organized Play, and maybe another division or two, including external people)?

[Leftconsin]

I've never known the banning process to be transparent. Or all that translucent for that matter.

[CorpT]

I've never known the banning process to be transparent. Or all that translucent for that matter.

I hear it involves testing in MODO practice rooms.

[Aggro_zombies]

Doesn't the banning process in involve more than just the folks in R&D (i.e., the mythical "DCI," which includes people in R&D, Organized Play, and maybe another division or two, including external people)?
I think it involves a blindfolded dude and a dartboard.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Too simple?

We have the following decks:

A
B
C
V
X

A beats V and X and loses to B and loses extremely hard to C.
C beats B and A but loses to V and X.
V ties with X and beats B and C but loses to A.

etc.

It's more complicated than what I posted, but the point is still true: different archtypes of decks beat other decks. With variety we ensure balance since no one deck is a Paper to every Rock.

It's not true. Archetypes don't beat decks. Decks beat decks. And they do so based on the cards they contain. Archetypes are only vaguely useful as a classification scheme, but nothing more than that.

[phonics]

Personally I am concerned with the fact that he is willing to make the claim that something is or isn't magic. I think of magic as a whole to be more of a (game)engine than a game. The only rules that decide what is magic and what isn't are the rules of the game. These simply create the framework of how a game is played(starting life, turn steps, combat, spell speed ect), anyone that done in these parameters is magic. Like many have already said, what makes magic fun is the approaches different people take to try and win.

In recent sets, it seems like they are reducing magic to casting creatures and answers to creatures. There are relatively few playable cards that 'do other stuff', it seems like these cards are relegated to the crappy mythic that costs 10 million mana spot, for fear that they will change standard into crazy storm/dredge town. Transform, multi kicker, landfall, and level up felt incredibly underdeveloped because they were afraid to try something, which then just makes them unplayable cards (except for a few). I thought the most interesting concept recently was valakut, which technically wasn't even a landfall card.

The other day I was thinking about how we are in the golden age of fatties. Prior to conflux, it was pretty much just darksteel colossus, but now we are prog, inkwell, terastodon, eldrazi, iona, blightsteel all in 4-5 sets (not even getting into just how powerful creatures have been in the past couple blocks). Its a lot harder to think of notable unique spells that were printed in the same time. Jace, preordain, spell pierce, hive mind, green suns zenith are the only main ones I can think of off the top of my head. Just look at the dtb section, all the decks are comprised of creatures from newer sets, spells from older sets.

[caiomarcos]

all the decks are comprised of creatures from newer sets, spells from older sets.

It's been like that in legacy since around Ravnica. Since before that wizards is clearly pushing for a creature centered game so it's not surprising to see one of them saying that non-creature based decks are not magic. Very sad.

[Amon Amarth]

Forsythe is the Director of R&D and Bill Rose is VP. Both LaPille and Rosewater work for Forsythe who reports to Bill Rose. If there's "blame" to be assigned for R&D's "mistakes," it's with Bill Rose and Aaron Forsythe (in that order), not LaPille. Jeez, get your corporate hierarchy right. ;)

Development is not one guy, it's a team of dudes, so calling out LaPille singularly is pretty misinformed here.

Overall, this seems like an insanely difficult game to develop and I think they're doing it as good as can be expected: focusing on the money-making side of the thing (block, standard, draft) and banning anything that's too nutty in the deeper formats.

They've specifically said that don't test for Legacy so in that respect you could say they are doing pretty good. :P

I agree Bardo; Magic has so many moving pieces it's impossible to try and predict the metagame with the introduction of any new cards or strategies.

[nedleeds]

+1.

The best Rare, the best Uncommon, and the best Common are blue.

Richard Garfield made sinkhole a common, and that is what Magic is all about (?).

[Dxfiler]

Personally I thought he moved through the ranks way too quickly and I think he tries too hard to push the envelope, much like Rosewater... which is prob why he moved up the ladder so quickly :tongue:

They don't seem to have their pulse on older formats at all right now. Seems like they just invite up some pros before they do a b&r announcement and that's their main voices.

The modern bannings are just ridiculous with little consistency. Half the cards on there I think wouldn't be on there if they just unbanned Mental Misstep.

I still think banning mental misstep was a mistake in legacy as well, but it's a little early to be certain. If they want more interactivity, shouldn't you allow the #1 card that disrupts non-interactive decks to be legal?

And transform cards... don't get me started. This isn't duel masters. I run 20-30 person drafts every week at my store and every single Inni draft we've done (a bunch already), there are new players (good) just completely lost when they see checklist cards (not so good :p). I patiently explain transform cards and checklists every single draft, but every time I do, I know somewhere Lapille is laughing maniacally.

Anyway he's right on this one particular issue, Dredge isn't how Magic is supposed to be... but you can say the same about any non-interactive deck that breeds upon giant card pools in older formats.

The problem with how they approach legacy is that Blue is just going to be the best color no matter what you do, because that's how they designed blue cards for years. By Rosewater's own admission, the color pie was out of whack for a long time and that caused alot of blue control decks to be just better than everything else.

They banned Mental Misstep in the hope that non-blue decks could be more competitive... so now they empowered have a bunch of non-interactive decks or near non-interactive decks. Again, too early to tell, but already with a SCG in the bag you had a top 8 with 2 reanimator, 2 tendrils and 2 merfolk. Not exactly the sea of mid-range and aggro they were looking for, is it?

You can't just make blue not the best color in older formats. You might as well just ban the color at that point. If you try to balance the pie in Vintage/Legacy when they spent years just making blue better than everything else, then you're basically going to kill those older formats.

It's not like people don't want to play Legacy even though they know going in Blue is just the best color. They will stop playing if you make non-interactive decks the best deck.

Quit while you're behind, Tom.

- Dave

[ubernostrum]

I guess I'm weird, because I don't see anything he said that's really out of line.

From a business perspective, WotC (and by extension the people who work for WotC) will like things that get people excited to play Magic, and dislike things that turn people off. And, well, "mulligan until I hit a piece of hate, hope that it sticks and that I get a second turn" is something that turns off many more people than it excites.

In Legacy, fast (mostly-)non-interactive combo decks exist, yes. And they can exist there, and probably always will exist there, just as they can and probably always will exist in Vintage. Those formats work because they have Force of Will and very high barrier to entry; FoW keeps some of the worst excesses in check, and the barrier to entry means people really only get into the eternal formats when they're strongly committed to the game and past the point of being turned off the game by watching someone play solitaire for ten minutes before delivering the kill.

Of course, Modern is a different story. It doesn't have Force, and is apparently meant to be the "eternal" format anyone can get into (and might become that format if a few key cards ever see reprints). This means there's the possibility of fast non-interactive combo that won't be held back by free countermagic, plus the possibility that players who aren't that strongly committed to the game would try it and get turned off hard by opponents pulling off turn-2 storm kills.

That's why Modern has the "be safe and nuke it from orbit" ban list; that's why WotC's frequently stated that one of the guiding philosophies of the ban list is slowing down combo by a couple turns to let other archetypes have a chance.

And yes, people -- even smart people who have influential positions -- are occasionally going to complain about certain types of decks. That's always been the case, and probably always will be the case. If you like those decks, this doesn't mean those people are stupid or that they're not as good at Magic as you are, just that they have a different opinion than you do.

[DragoFireheart]

It's not true. Archetypes don't beat decks. Decks beat decks. And they do so based on the cards they contain. Archetypes are only vaguely useful as a classification scheme, but nothing more than that.

- Semantics.

[jandax]

^"mulligan until I hit a piece of hate, hope that it sticks and that I get a second turn"

It's this distillation of the Eternal formats that what irks so many people about him. Hell, anyone who [doesn't like] Legacy or Vintage often cites examples of losing on turn two, and how no one likes to do that. Know what else really sucks? The Top player forcing a draw because of time when all you had was one more turn to get the win. The Burn deck that knocks you out of Top 8 contention. Thoughtseize into Hymn into Hymn.

I know those weren't your words, but they're the words of people who don't have a firm grasp on the subjects of which they openly speak.

They should unban Mystical Tutor and Mental Misstep. Now both are gone because it's easier to whine than build a sick deck.

[ubernostrum]

It's this distillation of the Eternal formats that what irks so many people about him. Hell, anyone who [doesn't like] Legacy or Vintage often cites examples of losing on turn two, and how no one likes to do that. Know what else really sucks? The Top player forcing a draw because of time when all you had was one more turn to get the win. The Burn deck that knocks you out of Top 8 contention. Thoughtseize into Hymn into Hymn.

I know those weren't your words, but they're the words of people who don't have a firm grasp on the subjects of which they openly speak.

Personally I'd draw a distinction between annoying decks in Legacy.

On the one hand, there are decks that are incredibly annoying to play against, but where you at least feel like you had a chance to do stuff before they locked the game down and started playing solitaire. Enchantress, Lands and most Top-based control strategies call into this category.

On the other hand, there are decks that reach the "one player doing stuff for ten minutes at a time" phase so quickly that you feel like you were never in the game to begin with. That's where Dredge, storm combo and a few others end up.

Of the two, the latter are more dangerous to a newcomer's perspective, because you can easily walk away feeling like there was literally nothing you could have done, short of playing the same style of deck and going off a turn earlier than he did.

(Also, I've been involved in Magic long enough to remember when a lot of these cards were legal in Type II, as we used to call it. Urza block was the one that drove me to quit the first time around, for largely this reason; I cut my teeth playing classic Erhnamgeddon, survived the Black Summer, and then promptly got fed up with the endless stream of dumb combo. So I can at least say I've held this position consistently for a decade)


They should unban Mystical Tutor and Mental Misstep. Now both are gone because it's easier to whine than build a sick deck.

I think both are better off banned; Mystical makes combo just a bit too fast and consistent, and Misstep holds down combo but also makes everything else a bit too homogeneous.

[TheArchitect]

If I didn't want to play with, and against, combo decks that can potentially win on turn 1 or 2 I wouldn't be playing Legacy. Its that simple. If you want to play the same 3 aggro decks against eachother for 10 rounds go play standard. Modern seems relatively combo free now if that's more your thing.

[Admiral_Arzar]

If I didn't want to play with, and against, combo decks that can potentially win on turn 1 or 2 I wouldn't be playing Legacy. Its that simple. If you want to play the same 3 aggro decks against eachother for 10 rounds go play standard. Modern seems relatively combo free now if that's more your thing.

QFT.

This is my response to anyone who whines about combo in ETERNAL formats. If you don't like fast combo and powerful U/x decks, you shouldn't be in this format, as they are pillars here.

[majikal]

I don't mind the occasional combo deck. However, I don't think that combo should ever be the defacto best strategy. Ironically, I think we have reached this point because of the banning of Mystical Tutor splintering combo into a thousand different decks instead of just a couple of streamlined onese, and the printing of Vengevine forcing a ban on SotF. Two things they did to try and push creature-centric formats only caused combo decks to explode in this one.

I think the best solution would be to unban Mystical Tutor and Survival of the Fittest (because Survival decks actually were one of the things keeping Mystical Tutor decks in check alongside CBTop), and ban Vengevine. Oozes will still be around, but they're pretty easy to disrupt, especially now that everyone gets a free Extirpate.

[Bardo]

Personally I am concerned with the fact that he is willing to make the claim that something is or isn't magic. I think of magic as a whole to be more of a (game)engine than a game. The only rules that decide what is magic and what isn't are the rules of the game. These simply create the framework of how a game is played(starting life, turn steps, combat, spell speed ect), anyone that done in these parameters is magic. Like many have already said, what makes magic fun is the approaches different people take to try and win.

I'm not defending the guy and don't want to appear as a WotC apologist, though I'm happy to appear as a voice of reason here.

I get where LaPille's coming from on Dredge. Imagine it's your job to make the game “fun” for the most amount of people. While you can create cards that cater to certain subsets of your customer base, you ultimately need be sort of utilitarian about how the game gets created and keep your primary customer happy, which are not hard-core spikes, they’re the kitchen table players that are as interested in having a good time with friends, rather than simply winning. It’s a testament to the greatness of the game that it can be played in so many different ways by different types of people, but after all, it’s a card game. The reason games exist is to have a fun time, a distraction from the annoying demands of life.

If that’s your filter when you sit down to play a game of Magic (i.e., you’re on staff to make it “fun”) it’s reasonable to have some assumptions on how the game “should” be played. Remember too that LaPille had twittered that just after returning from a local tournament where he played Dredge.

Having played against storm and Dredge many times, it’s really a different kind of game. If you know what you’re doing and have a tuned list, these games are more like solitaire than an interactive two-player game. I remember playing against High Tide for the first time (a Grand Prix Trial for GP Philly in 2005). I was playing U/W fish and remember being bored watching my opponent fap off with his cards. It looked kinda fun on his end, a puzzle of sorts, but not exactly an engaging gaming experience.

Same is true with Dredge. I hate playing against it, not because I’ll usually lose to it, just based on how uninteresting it is to sit on the other side of the table. Game 1 is usually a rout, then the hate comes in. If I get lucky and find my hate, I win; if I don’t, you win. Yippee. If you want to play Dredge and storm, go right ahead. They printed those cards, you’ve acquired them, have fun (or whatever) the way to you want to. It’s your right. But I wouldn’t slight the guy for having an opinion on how the game “should” be played.


Aaaahh, so Tom came at about the time Mythic rares popped up?

Also, he arrived while I was getting out of standard. Hmm.

That was far more likely a directive from marketing / brand, rather than R&D.

[Di]

I think the best solution would be to unban Mystical Tutor and Survival of the Fittest (because Survival decks actually were one of the things keeping Mystical Tutor decks in check alongside CBTop), and ban Vengevine. Oozes will still be around, but they're pretty easy to disrupt, especially now that everyone gets a free Extirpate.

This doesn't exactly make sense seeing how Vengevine Survival didn't exist until after Mystical Tutor was banned, and Survival wasn't exactly an upper-tier strategy before Vengevine lists showed up.

[SpikeyMikey]

I'm not defending the guy and don't want to appear as a WotC apologist, though I'm happy to appear as a voice of reason here.

I get where LaPille's coming from on Dredge. Imagine it's your job to make the game “fun” for the most amount of people.

I've played Magic for over a decade now. The first pack I ever bought was from Revised, but that was just to sell cards to kids at school. I didn't start playing until Urza's Legacy. I started going to tournaments during Prophecy (I was in boot camp in the middle there for a while). And I didn't actually play well until around Apocalypse. But I started playing a dozen years ago. And for a while there, I was incredibly involved in the game. I used to judge FNM's at a WotC store in San Diego (back when they still had them). I wrote bad articles on Brainburst and Starcity (for the love of god, please don't go looking for them). I organized local tournaments, played Type II religiously (and later Type I just as religiously) and bought more product than I probably should have.

Today, I don't judge. I don't write articles. I don't give a fuck about local tournaments and I don't play any Magic whatsoever except for MWS and occasionally Cockatrice. I certainly don't buy product.

I don't get involved in physical Magic for two reasons. One, the prices are ridiculous. There's this mindset everyone else has of what is an acceptable price to play this game and it's very different from mine. If I'm paying more than $20 for a card, it had goddamn well better have the word "Mox" at the start of its name. I bought a deck last December and went to a couple of SCG Opens over the course of this year, before having a friend sell it off for me. I cringed at the prices I had to pay on these cards. I could pay for a WoW account for the next decade for the cost of that 1 deck. Two, modern Magic sucks.

I don't like dredge or storm. I play dredge every now and again when I get the itch. Same with Tendrils. But neither one is my favorite. I play them only when I get irritated at the stupid untuned bullshit I end up facing on MWS. It's my way of trying to force people to play real decks, not convoluted 5 card bullshit combos with a million ways to interact with the red zone and no way to interact with the stack. And that's what Wizards has been all about for the last half-dozen years. It's all about interacting with the red zone. And usually not at instant speed.

And that's the thing. It's not that dredge is any more or less interactive, in the objective, than Goblins. If your deck is centered around interacting with the play zone, then no, you can't interact well with dredge. But if your deck is centered around interacting with the stack, you can't interact well with Goblins. The only reason that one is considered interactive and the other is considered uninteractive is because we're *used* to interacting with the play zone. And people are stubbornly sticking to that.

Even when Vengevival was legal and dominating, people flat out refused to main graveyard hate. It's good against almost every fucking deck in the format, but they wouldn't main it. And then complained, when they lost, that Survival was impossible to interact with because their opponent can use it before they could destroy it. Fuck destroying it. Just Extirpate the Vengevines. Problem solved. Congratulations, your opponent has a terrible U/G Madness deck that wouldn't have been viable in 2006, let alone 2011. Why is Extirpate a horrible card to have to main and Swords to Plowshares is the second motherfucking coming of Christ? Because one has a longer history?

But in order to market to the mewling masses of morons, they push this Starter version of the game, this fucking Portal version of the game. No good instants. Make all draw sorcery speed. No good unconditional counters. Make everything about board interactions, not stack interactions. And players like myself, players who have been there and been loyal all along, we get pushed aside. Fuck us, because there's more money to be made marketing the game as Candy Land than there is marketing it as Chess. When they talked about the transform cards, they said they felt it was a good idea because it worked in a game they had that was marketed at small childern in Japan. That's their vision for you. For us. To get us to play Magic-flavored Pokemon. Magic-flavored Yu-gi-Oh.

To whoever said on the last page that the combat damage on the stack change didn't simplify things, here's the problem. You're right. It was almost always the correct play to put damage on the stack and then use the ability. But a number of cards were designed and their power level based around that. Those cards became useless with the change. The biggest thing, however, has nothing to do with the cards themselves and whether it's a correct play to use an ability pre-damage on the stack or post-damage on the stack (hi, Morphling!). The biggest thing is how it changed the game as a whole. It furthered the shift in advantage from defensive strategies to offensive strategies. While in theory, sacrificing a creature or using an ability could be done on the offensive (block my Legionnaire? I'll throw it at you), it was generally used while blocking. It's not that it simplified the act of using an ability, it's that it simplified the ENTIRE GAME. It simplified deck construction, it simplified aggressive strategies. It pushed the game towards all-in strategies and weakened reactive strategies, removing a lot of the thought process from the game as a whole.

Because the tools to play reactively that are being printed today are so much weaker, comparatively, than the ones printed 10 years ago, the game is devolving into more "all-in" strategies and then narrow counter-strategies. In a format like T2, this means fast aggro and decks full of walls to stop fast aggro with ridiculous fatties (because that appeals to the mewling morons). And it sucks and people don't like playing it, but it works. It balances, somewhat. Get a little bit of a wider format, however, and you realize that there are too many all-in strategies for the narrow counter-strategies to work. You can build a deck that beats Zoo with a bunch of lifegain and walls and some fat ridiculous creatures, but you lose to anything that operates outside of the red zone. And since stack control has been pushed out, intentionally, by Wizards, there's nothing to keep those decks in check.

Standard sucks. Extended is worse. There's no question there, no debate. Those formats are bad. That's why Legacy is so popular. People don't want to play that half-Magic. They want the real thing. Are there people out there that like it, people like TLP? Sure. There are also people who swear by diet sodas, but the rest of us just figure they're fucking insane and move on. But if one of those guys worked for Pepsi and was tweeting about how they hate sugary sodas and how they wish Mountain Dew had never been released, people would get a little pissed about it.

[TsumiBand]

I don't get the "stack damage removal dumbed down the game" argument.

With damage on the stack, 99.99% of the time the correct play is to stack damage and then sac your duder for profit, regardless of the game state or matchup. The 0.01% of the time where that isn't the correct play simply serve as reinforcement for the fact that, in the vast, overwhelming majority of cases, it is correct to stack and then sacrifice.

Without stacking combat damage, you actually have to make decisions about whether it is better to eliminate their guy or cash in yours for profit. This is especially apparent in Limited where creature combat occurs all the time and therefore these decisions are pretty routine.

In short, we went from a universally correct way of doing things to having nuance. The only advantage for combat damage stacking was the ability to pull a fast one on someone who didn't know how those rules worked, which I guess is why people see it as "dumbing down".

The ability to split damage at will almost never mattered except in bizarro corner-case scenarios where you could make yourself look clever with a Pyroclasm.

EDIT: Sorry to get off-topic, but QQing about the M10 changes is just meh. They were nowhere near as wrenching as the 6E changes and have been fine over the long run.

Eh, in my view they just traded weirdness for weirdness. As a newb I can understand not getting why you can sacrifice Mogg Fanatic before damage is dealt and still have him deal his damage. However they hardly traded simplicity for simplicity; deathtouch operates under its own definition of "lethal damage" which lets you assign the same weird combat damage, and blocking order is just as "wtf" as sac'ing a critter with damage on the stack; why do I, as an attacker, get to assign the order in which YOUR creatures block? And why should I be required to assign creatures with damage prevention/regeneration any damage at all? If you've got 3 1/1s and I attack with a 3/4, and you Giant Growth the first guy in the blocking order, I can't just kill the other 1/1s - you forced me to 0-for-1 myself. I can't make that work for me at all. There's plenty of plays lost and played gained by changing the rules.

[Bardo]

The first pack I ever bought was from Revised,

Me too. Well, it was a starter of Revised and a couple of packs of Fallen Empires. (I quit playing from Mirage to Mirrodin, due to most of my friends drifting away / selling out of it).


But in order to market to the mewling masses of morons, they push this Starter version of the game, this fucking Portal version of the game. No good instants. Make all draw sorcery speed. No good unconditional counters. Make everything about board interactions, not stack interactions. And players like myself, players who have been there and been loyal all along, we get pushed aside.

You have to admit though, the art on the lands is awesome. :)

And here I go as a WotC apologist again, ugh. Portal was for newbs -- a simplified version of the game that first time players could get into and not get too lost in the minutae of the rules. Back then, the Core Set wasn't built as it is today, with newcomers in mind. And can you blame WotC for that? They need new players to make up for losses due to attrition, which inevitably happens to most people who start playing the game. So, I don't fault them for their simpler sets, since they're not designed and sold with longtime players in mind.

Portal, which wasn't made for you, was on the shelves in 1997; Tempest was the "expert" set on the shelf along with it.

Otherwise, I'm not disagreeing with you, just moving the conversation forward.

[majikal]

This doesn't exactly make sense seeing how Vengevine Survival didn't exist until after Mystical Tutor was banned, and Survival wasn't exactly an upper-tier strategy before Vengevine lists showed up.
Retainer Survival decks had an extremely favorable matchup against Mystical Tutor decks even before Vengevine was printed. The only problem is that they lost horribly to Goblins, which kept them out of the spotlight for the most part. It was, however, an integral part of the metagame that helped keep MT decks from dominating.

[SpikeyMikey]

Yeah. I actually have the 6th Ed. intro decks in that little plastic bag of cards that was hidden away. I have no problem with Portal or Starter in terms of what they were meant to do. But to push the entire game that way, that's where it frustrates me. I don't want to play Starter. I like a complex, thought provoking game. Granted, stupid games are better for me since I'm not very good at thinking quickly under pressure, but I like the challenge of an involved game.

I happen to think the core sets were more newbie friendly back then; there were a lot of mechanics they wouldn't put in the core sets because they felt they'd be too difficult for new players. I mean, talking like 5th/6th/7th here. A/B/U/R obviously had a number of difficult cards (hello mono artifacts) and 4th was still early enough that they hadn't come up with a cohesive vision for the game yet.

The art on the lands is awesome. The art in general is good. I mean, I love me some Foglio, but there was a lot of bad art back then. I'm looking at you, Stasis.

Back to the challenge thing. That's why I quit playing WoW. I was in a top 50 US guild. And I remember back during Burning Crusade, we beat our head in against the wall night after night wiping on M'uru. A lot of people wouldn't find that fun. But I loved it. I loved pushing myself to the very limits of what I was capable of. Pushing to the limits and then finding those limits stretching. Then Blizzard realized that they had a customer base that had stretched to 11 million people and that most of those people were mouthbreathers. They declared that they'd never make another raid instance as hard as Sunwell Plateau again. Wrath of the Lich King came out and within 8 days, we'd cleared all the content the new expansion had to offer. It took 2 more weeks before we downed 3 drake Sartherion. It was another week before I quit playing entirely.

That's what I feel is happening with Magic. Wizards is making the game easy mode because there's more money to be gathered from the idiots than from the intelligent people. If it weren't for Legacy, I wouldn't be involved in the game at all. I mean, I play some Modern here and there, but that format is never going to be what I want it to be. Wizards is too inept to manage it properly. And I wouldn't have been in the game to even know Modern came out if Legacy wasn't still a pretty solid format.

But I know that eventually, with the power creep, Legacy is going to look like Modern eventually. Reactive strategies will be almost impossible to build and will have to be narrow in scope where they're possible.

But to get back on topic, LaPille is dumb. That's really what 90% of this thread boils down to. We might as well rename it "LaPilleisms" and stick it next to a thread about W. They're on the same level, intellectually. Both are (or were, in George's case) in positions to do lasting damage to things we all love. Both have some vocal defenders claiming that the person in question isn't an idiot, just misunderstood or misinterpreted. And the world would be better served if both were wrapped in chains and tossed overboard above the Marianas Trench.

[Aggro_zombies]

Just wanted to chime in here and say that I started the game with Portal.

And more red zone interactions have led to better Limited formats, I feel.

EDIT: Also, reactive strategies are already pretty bad in Legacy. MMS was the closest true control decks have been to viable in a while and that card got banned. Now, if you want "reactive," you're going to have to play some sort of tempo-oriented blue deck or try to grind out incremental advantage every round with some sort of ponderous midrange blue control monstrosity.

[ESG]

If that’s your filter when you sit down to play a game of Magic (i.e., you’re on staff to make it “fun”) it’s reasonable to have some assumptions on how the game “should” be played. Remember too that LaPille had twittered that just after returning from a local tournament where he played Dredge.

Some more background on that tourney: Tom played in a larger tourney there a few weeks before. He played U/W Stoneforge and lost to some kid playing Manaless Dredge. The kid kept missing his triggers and missed an opportunity to Therapy away Batterskull and was playing very slowly. And he beat Tom, and Tom was visibly frustrated and attempted to give the kid some pointers. At the tournament (71 players, as I recall), most of the room was running a playset of Mental Missteps, and many people were not happy about Misstep and how it had shifted the format, and they communicated that loudly to Tom.

Post-Misstep, Tom came to play again, only this time he brought Dredge. This event was a lot smaller (17 people). I don't know his pairings, but he did not make the cut to Top 8. I don't know how much to read into Tom's statement as to something being "not Magic." Is this a prelude to a banning conversation? Is it an informal watch? I've read that he does not like playing Dredge, and I've seen him upset in losing to a kid playing Dredge. He is obviously in a position of influence. I feel that if the card says Magic on it, we're playing Magic. Some people love playing prison decks. Some people love playing straight aggro decks. Some people love playing decks built around the graveyard. Let the people play what they want to play. It's WOTC's prerogative to print mechanics they find enjoyable, and they gave us Storm and Dredge, so to each his own. It would be tragic to go into an eternal format and try to "correct" things based on an impression that Storm or Dredge weren't Magic.

[Wirrsturm]

I thought his latest article was interesting in illustrating what his vision for magic is.

Specifically:


We want Magic to be as fun to play as possible. This card is a sorcery because we have found that strongly board-affecting instants with flashback hiding in the graveyard are likely to cause feel-bad moments from forgotten cards. Magic has enough to remember without asking players to keep track of many things in the graveyard at all times, so we made as many of the flashback cards as we could into sorceries instead.

Essentially fun =/= having to remember what spells your opponent's have played in the past and adjusting to play around them -_-

[Koby]

Essentially fun =/= having to remember what spells your opponent's have played in the past and adjusting to play around them -_-

You mean, not paying attention to public knowledge. This is starting to become criminally dumbed down.

[Tammit67]

I don't enjoy playing my video games on easy (Ocarina of Time: Master Quest is amazing by the way), I don't play ice hockey because it is relaxing, and I don't find a game tailored to children nearly as fun.

You know what is fun? Possibilities and depth. You might make the game more appealing in the short run with making it simplistic as fuck, but you kill the replay value of it. Why would I continue to play tic tac toe?

[Aggro_zombies]

The number of people in this thread who apparently have never seen a new player is kind of appalling.

Tom and MaRo and all of R&D design sets with market research data in mind. People who want more complexity and depth are not a large enough segment of the market to support the game. Furthermore, high levels of complexity and depth act as a barrier to entry; the higher they are, the less inclined new players are to try to learn the game. You may say, "Well, screw the new players." To that, I would argue that (a) the economy is heading back into recession but it is Wizards' job to continue to convince people to part with their money and (b) there are plenty of card games over the years that imploded and aren't played anymore. You're probably the kind of person who looks at buying cards as an investment; who much will that investment be worth when the last Magic set was released years ago and no one plays anymore except a few die-hard local groups?

Flashback cards do have feel-bad moments associated with them. There are plenty of situations where less experienced players will forget about flashback cards their opponent has played. If the flashback cost is much higher than the actual cost, it will be several turns before the card is relevant again, and a lot can happen in several turns that can cause new players to forget. Furthermore, it's not always correct to flashback a spell as soon as you can, adding to the potential delay between the first and second casting. A less experienced player who gets snared by a flashback card he forgot about, or an on-board trick he hasn't noticed, feels bad. It feels like he's been cheated. If the opponent wins because of it, it feels like a cheap victory. Too many of those moments and you lose less experienced players before they learn to take all these things into consideration. That's why that complexity has been toned down.

If you want straight strategy, learn to play chess already.

[Nihil Credo]

It's probably worth pointing out that Lorwyn Limited was heavy on precisely the same kind of complexity that cheap flashback instants would have brought (i.e. a ton of potential on-board interactions to keep track of) and yet not only was it fairly unpopular with the crowd at large, but as far as I know it hasn't become a cult classic with the cerebral Spikes either.

Not all complexity is created equal. Cards like Fact or Fiction or Survival of the Fittest/Fauna Shaman belong to the "good" kind of complexity, which gives you a huge array of potential choices and it's rarely obvious which one of many is the best. Stuff like the trillion activated abilities of Lorwyn Limited, or the cheap flashback bounce which Generalissimo LaPille mocked up, are the "bad" kind of complexity which is just mental busywork with no real decision involved, since as long as you keep track of them their implications are very straightforward; it's an aspect of the game where the Shandalar AI would outperform LSV or PVDDR, and that's hardly interesting even, no, especially to Spikes.

[DragoFireheart]

If WotC wants to cater to "casual" players, then let them do it through Modern and Standard. Leave Legacy/Vintage alone for people who want to play nearly all of the cards and don't mind having to have complex interactions, good or bad. Piss off the Legacy and Vintage players and you can watch some of the more expensive cards crash in price.

[SpikeyMikey]

The number of people in this thread who apparently have never seen a new player is kind of appalling.

The game grew and thrived when it was more complicated. There are more than enough people willing to overcome the difficulties associated with learning the game to keep it going. Things like All Hallow's Eve and Storm Cauldron didn't kill the game; I'm pretty sure we could handle flashbacks at instant speed. Everyone in this thread *was* a new player at some point. And I would hazard a guess that everyone in this thread has brought at least 1 or 2 people into the game. Frankly, and you can call me an elitist prick all day long if you want, I don't want to play against your average mouthbreather. I want to play against intelligent opponents. I would like every game that I play to be against an LSV, a Maher, a Chapin. If you're too stupid or too uninterested to learn the game as it was 10 years ago, I don't want you playing the game.

Nobody in the history of the game has mastered it immediately. It takes a year or two of play to really get up to speed. It's a highly complex game. That high level of complexity is, as someone mentioned previously, what gives it replay value. The problem is that Wizards has left the niche market of "selling to smart people looking for a strategy game" and entered the market of "selling to the largest market we can find". Since that larger market is idiots, that's what we're getting. A game designed for small children and idiots. I'm pretty sure Tom's not a child so...


Flashback cards do have feel-bad moments associated with them. There are plenty of situations where less experienced players will forget about flashback cards their opponent has played.

That's their own damn fault. I've played Memory and Go Fish with my 4 year old niece. Apparently she's smarter and/or has a better memory than the less-experienced players you've got in mind.


If you want straight strategy, learn to play chess already.

I play chess, thank you. If you want a game where paying attention to what has happened previously is unimportant, learn to play Chutes and Ladders already. Or, if you want to stick to card games, play War.

I know we haven't always agreed in the past, Aggro, but usually I can find something to respect in your opinions. But what you're saying here is ridiculous. Magic, as it was originally conceived and designed, was a deep game of intellectual strategy with a high level of replayability because of the element of randomness involved. You're arguing that it should be nerfed because someone that's too stupid to play the game might feel stupid if they do something stupid. That sounds perfectly acceptable to me. When I make a stupid mistake, I kick myself for it. I don't blame it on the game. "Man, I'm so retarded for missing that trigger; it's totally Magic the Gathering's fault!"

It's like the people who argue against valedictorians in HS's because it might make everyone who isn't the top student feel bad. Not everyone can be the best. Not everyone can be good. Half the people who play are going to be worse than average. At every Pro Tour, every Worlds, every whatever, there have been people that went 0-X. It's the nature of a zero sum game that for every win there is a loss.

[nayon]

The number of people in this thread who apparently have never seen a new player is kind of appalling.

Tom and MaRo and all of R&D design sets with market research data in mind. People who want more complexity and depth are not a large enough segment of the market to support the game. Furthermore, high levels of complexity and depth act as a barrier to entry; the higher they are, the less inclined new players are to try to learn the game. You may say, "Well, screw the new players." To that, I would argue that (a) the economy is heading back into recession but it is Wizards' job to continue to convince people to part with their money and (b) there are plenty of card games over the years that imploded and aren't played anymore. You're probably the kind of person who looks at buying cards as an investment; who much will that investment be worth when the last Magic set was released years ago and no one plays anymore except a few die-hard local groups?

Flashback cards do have feel-bad moments associated with them. There are plenty of situations where less experienced players will forget about flashback cards their opponent has played. If the flashback cost is much higher than the actual cost, it will be several turns before the card is relevant again, and a lot can happen in several turns that can cause new players to forget. Furthermore, it's not always correct to flashback a spell as soon as you can, adding to the potential delay between the first and second casting. A less experienced player who gets snared by a flashback card he forgot about, or an on-board trick he hasn't noticed, feels bad. It feels like he's been cheated. If the opponent wins because of it, it feels like a cheap victory. Too many of those moments and you lose less experienced players before they learn to take all these things into consideration. That's why that complexity has been toned down.

If you want straight strategy, learn to play chess already.

I don't care about new players? Even if Magic died right now, we'd still have Legacy and we'd still play it whenever we want. Also, new players are more likely to whine about Legacy due to their lack of understanding of the format.

We don't want straight strategy, no one said that, but there's a difference between playing the game on autopilot versus actually having to think about the game.

[Admiral_Arzar]

The game grew and thrived when it was more complicated. There are more than enough people willing to overcome the difficulties associated with learning the game to keep it going. Things like All Hallow's Eve and Storm Cauldron didn't kill the game; I'm pretty sure we could handle flashbacks at instant speed. Everyone in this thread *was* a new player at some point. And I would hazard a guess that everyone in this thread has brought at least 1 or 2 people into the game. Frankly, and you can call me an elitist prick all day long if you want, I don't want to play against your average mouthbreather. I want to play against intelligent opponents. I would like every game that I play to be against an LSV, a Maher, a Chapin. If you're too stupid or too uninterested to learn the game as it was 10 years ago, I don't want you playing the game.

Nobody in the history of the game has mastered it immediately. It takes a year or two of play to really get up to speed. It's a highly complex game. That high level of complexity is, as someone mentioned previously, what gives it replay value. The problem is that Wizards has left the niche market of "selling to smart people looking for a strategy game" and entered the market of "selling to the largest market we can find". Since that larger market is idiots, that's what we're getting. A game designed for small children and idiots. I'm pretty sure Tom's not a child so...



That's their own damn fault. I've played Memory and Go Fish with my 4 year old niece. Apparently she's smarter and/or has a better memory than the less-experienced players you've got in mind.



I play chess, thank you. If you want a game where paying attention to what has happened previously is unimportant, learn to play Chutes and Ladders already. Or, if you want to stick to card games, play War.

I know we haven't always agreed in the past, Aggro, but usually I can find something to respect in your opinions. But what you're saying here is ridiculous. Magic, as it was originally conceived and designed, was a deep game of intellectual strategy with a high level of replayability because of the element of randomness involved. You're arguing that it should be nerfed because someone that's too stupid to play the game might feel stupid if they do something stupid. That sounds perfectly acceptable to me. When I make a stupid mistake, I kick myself for it. I don't blame it on the game. "Man, I'm so retarded for missing that trigger; it's totally Magic the Gathering's fault!"

It's like the people who argue against valedictorians in HS's because it might make everyone who isn't the top student feel bad. Not everyone can be the best. Not everyone can be good. Half the people who play are going to be worse than average. At every Pro Tour, every Worlds, every whatever, there have been people that went 0-X. It's the nature of a zero sum game that for every win there is a loss.

Agreed on all points. I don't understand how they can actually assign validity to completely dumbing down the game when it was growing in an unprecedented way anyways (while also maintaining the old-guard fanbase). On a related note, I also don't understand the pervasive belief that new players find *insert x strategy here* unfun (which has been driving their design for years now, and has also driven me away from all the rotating formats). Perhaps this is because - in order to teach me the game - friends handed me a deck full of counterspells and bounce rather than big dumb dudes. Maybe that's how we should teach people how to play the game - start them off with something awesome...

[trivial_matters]

I moslty agree with Aggro_Zombies. Wizards is a profit-driven company. Their goal is to get more people to buy more of their products. If sacrificing a part of the game's complexity might help accomplish that, then you can bet that's what they'll do.

[(nameless one)]

If WotC wants to cater to "casual" players, then let them do it through Modern and Standard. Leave Legacy/Vintage alone for people who want to play nearly all of the cards and don't mind having to have complex interactions, good or bad. Piss off the Legacy and Vintage players and you can watch some of the more expensive cards crash in price.

The problem with that is WotC doesn't really lose anything from that.

Sure the price of Force of Will just tanked, who cares. Its not like theyre coming from packs now.

[DragoFireheart]

I moslty agree with Aggro_Zombies. Wizards is a profit-driven company. Their goal is to get more people to buy more of their products. If sacrificing a part of the game's complexity might help accomplish that, then you can bet that's what they'll do.

Profits driven != product sacrifice. Thinking like that is what led to the current recession/housing bubble.

[DragoFireheart]

The problem with that is WotC doesn't really lose anything from that.

Sure the price of Force of Will just tanked, who cares. Its not like theyre coming from packs now.

- Now they piss off the secondary market and they wonder what other dumb shit WoTC will do. Stores will lose faith in WotC and buy less products from them. People that had stocks invested in them will pull out

[GGoober]

Really drago?

The game seems to be only thriving better now. Also, WotC has actually helped the stores out by eliminating the bigger pre-releases. It's a really nice feeling that our LGS has achieved an all-time high attendance at the pre-release after the changes. I think game stores don't care about eternal staples and playability but they do care about making money, which is what WotC has helped them recently.

[nayon]

- Now they piss off the secondary market and they wonder what other dumb shit WoTC will do. Stores will lose faith in WotC and buy less products from them. People that had stocks invested in them will pull out

Oooor not, everyone will keep buying like zombies anyway since most people play standard/limited anyway. Think about it like this: Eternal players don't provide much revenue for Hasbro, whereas Standard and Limited sells crazy amounts of product. They care way less about losing you as a customer, as long as they kid a few new kids to draft a bit or something.

[Aggro_zombies]

I'm still not sure why more complexity = a better game.

For starters, established players seem to forget that Magic, even Core Set Magic, is still a frighteningly complex game relative to what most people are used to playing. Aside from the myriad different types of cards that do different things, cards that stay in play and require mental space to remember because they generate effects that may not directly impact the board state (say, Subversion), and the whole "timing and the stack" thing, the game has a shitload of complexity for your average player.

Now, I realize that most of the people crying in this thread about dumbing down the game are arguing that Wizards should abandon mewling rabble and cater solely to them, but that is not good for the long-term health of the game. Learning Magic is already a daunting task; if we turn it into a sort of ritualistic trial-by-fire for a new player as a kind of stand-in for figuring out how smart and driven they are, how many new players can we reasonably expect to get as a fraction of how many we're getting now (hint: this fraction is less than one)? There are already any number of games that were popular or popular-ish at one point in time that are now dead, like VS System or the Star Wars TCGs. Magic can also be an expensive hobby, depending on how you play it, and the economy is moribund and teetering on the brink of either Recession: the Sequel or Great Depression: the Sequel, depending on how things play out in the next few months. If Wizards wants to remain in business (and, by extension, organize tournaments wherein you can show how clever you are for correctly navigating ridiculous decision trees), they need to continue to persuade people to part with their money during a time where low job security and poor economic prospects would dictate those people do the opposite. Making the game incomprehensibly complicated is not going to do that.

And, to be honest, I agree with Nihil here that smothering something in complexity does not make it better. You can have a relatively simple game that still has meaningful decision trees, and complex games wherein most of the complexity is of the bookkeeping variety and successfully remembering and taking into account all of it rewards you only a small fraction of the time. I realize that some people play because they want a rich game experience, but some people also play because they want to beat each other up with giant monsters, and if the latter are spending the money then their opinions are more valid to set design than someone who plays MWS and Cockatrice.

[nayon]

Ok, then let's make a new format called "Starter Magic" where spells and abilities can only be activated during your own main phase. Those who don't want complexity can play that format. And those who want complexity can play Magic cards the way they were printed.

[Hopo]

Ok, then let's make a new format called "Starter Magic" where spells and abilities can only be activated during your own main phase.

That thing already existed and was called Portal. It was so dumb that nobody played it.

[Picc]

That thing already existed and was called Portal. It was so dumb that nobody played it.

Large part of that might have been that the cards weren't tournament legal and included weird differences like little swords and shields by the attack/defense numbers. If your going to make an intro product/set adding differences and making it illegal in most venues isn't a good way to make people want to keep playing. They will either just learn on the real game or not bother. IMO the deck builders toolkit is a much better way to go.

[DragoFireheart]

I'm still not sure why more complexity = a better game.

.

- I do agree with this point. Complexity != better game.

Also, for those disregarding my point about the secondary market, if WoTC truly didn't care about them, they would have never kept the Reserved list for this long.

[Draener]

Heh, that's funny Mike. I also played WoW in a high end raiding guild, and was very actively involved in pvp. I became frustrated with WoW for similar reasons, such as when you reached the pinnacle of competitiveness in pvp, it really comes down to grinding out the minuscule stat advantage which took an absurdly large amount of play time to achieve.

Similarly, I feel that reactive strategies in magic are also being pushed out. As time goes on, the diversity of the broken decks will continue to increase, making it more and more difficult to answer these decks with a sideboard of 15 max. This is true of control decks, and will be even more true of aggro decks, as most of them simply don't have any efficient answers to the common broken decks. Combo decks have the advantage in that there are only a few cards that directly interact with them, and can build a sideboard to address those limited amounts of cards. Combo's sideboard can be super tuned to beat exactly what beats them, while everyone else sideboard simply is not large enough to answer the diversity of broken decks.

I don't believe that this is the direction that wizards should take legacy, and why printing a powerful answer card that was available to anyone who want it was a step in the right direction. Perhaps the implementation of mental misstep was flawed, but the concept was not.

[Tammit67]

- I do agree with this point. Complexity != better game.


Complexity gives a game the chance to have depth and staying power. The best games are ones that have as few rules as possible, are easy to learn, but hard to master because they also have a hidden sense of complications that arise. Chess is an example of this, as well as Quorridor. You have the objective, how pieces are allowed to be played and you can pick the game up in an hour, even if you aren't good.

Magic, however has a ton of 'pieces' through it's card pool, and invariably has to have that many more rules to govern them. Making things simple here is very difficult, and I think the core sets do a fine job of that. We have already committed to complexity through the inherent nature of the game pieces, so what we need to do is allow our pieces to not be so one dimensional. You reward the better player this way.

[Koby]

- I do agree with this point. Complexity != better game.



CounterTop
CounterBlade

Seems a bit like a mixed message :)

[Aggro_zombies]

Ok, then let's make a new format called "Starter Magic" where spells and abilities can only be activated during your own main phase. Those who don't want complexity can play that format. And those who want complexity can play Magic cards the way they were printed.
Right, because clearly the way to deal with the complexity issue is to spin Magic off into two games, "Hurf Durf: the Derpening," and "Right and Proper Gentleman's Olde Game of Magicks," where there are no creatures and all the cards are blue, have flash, and have, "As an additional cost to play this spell, draw three cards, then put two cards from your hand on top of your library in any order."

[Koby]

Right, because clearly the way to deal with the complexity issue is to spin Magic off into two games, "Hurf Durf: the Derpening," and "Right and Proper Gentleman's Olde Game of Magicks," where there are no creatures and all the cards are blue, have flash, and have, "As an additional cost to play this spell, draw three cards, then put two cards from your hand on top of your library in any order."

I think you just described Standard and Vintage there.

[Bardo]

On a related note, I also don't understand the pervasive belief that new players find *insert x strategy here* unfun (which has been driving their design for years now, and has also driven me away from all the rotating formats).

If it's coming from WotC staff, it's because they have a ton of market data that they don't share with the public. So when they say, "<enough> players hate land destruction" or "hate having their 7 mana creature countered for UU," I believe them. I mean, if WotC relied on the typical user of this site to keep them in the black, I don't there would have been a 4th edition printing.


- Now they piss off the secondary market and they wonder what other dumb shit WoTC will do. Stores will lose faith in WotC and buy less products from them. People that had stocks invested in them will pull out

What exactly is your argument?

And as usual, I agree with Aggro Zombie's points. He's saying what I'd like to say, but, you know, better.

[joemauer]

Eh, I think(and most Legacy players I believe) that complexity=more fun. Elsewise, we would be defending standard a little more on this thread.

The eternal formats, with their complexity and unfair turn one kills, are a reminder of what magic used to be. It is why people graduate from standard to Legacy, not too often the other way around. The complexity is what keeps people playing these older formats.

However, complexity is not very good for the newbies. Standard and Draft are great to bring new people. At the same time though making the game into Magic : the Yugio is driving older players out of Standard. There should be a balance which I think was reached in Ravinca block.

Also, Draener was right about Mental Misstep, the implemention was off, but had good intentions.

[Draener]

You guys are seriously underestimating the complexity of standard. In fact, cawblade with Jace and mystic was quite possibly the most difficult deck I have ever played. The sheer number of decisions that had a substantial impact on the game was mind blowing.

[Koby]

You guys are seriously underestimating the complexity of standard. In fact, cawblade with Jace and mystic was quite possibly the most difficult deck I have ever played. The sheer number of decisions that had a substantial impact on the game was mind blowing.

Which is why Jace and SFM got banned...

[SpikeyMikey]

If it's coming from WotC staff, it's because they have a ton of market data that they don't share with the public. So when they say, "<enough> players hate land destruction" or "hate having their 7 mana creature countered for UU," I believe them. I mean, if WotC relied on the typical user of this site to keep them in the black, I don't there would have been a 4th edition printing.

If it were as simple as say, the color of your car, it would be one thing. You could say "annual sales of Sourcemobile GT in blue average 6,000 and annual sales of Sourcemobile GT in yellow average 7200". Then you know that you need to produce automobiles in roughly that ratio.

However, because of the insane complexity of the game, with it's unfathomable number of potential interactions, you can't look at the percentage of affirmative respondants to "do you dislike having your land destroyed?" and base your future designs around that. It's a meaningless question. Who *does* like having their land destroyed? But the question is, do you like having your land destroyed more or less than you like being incapable of building a midrange deck because there is no solution to Valakut besides "race it" or "have counters for Primeval Titan"? That's not the kind of question that they ask and it's not the kind of question that Average Joe Mouthbreather is really equipped to answer. I don't think 90+% of the people on the Source have a firm grasp of macro-strategy and I think this site is the goddamn Rolls Royce of the world's Magical forums.

What people say they want and what will actually make them happy are two entirely different things. And frankly, despite TLP's protests today to the contrary ("We're professional game designers..."), Wizards doesn't have the first fucking clue how to give people what they want. If they did, Extended wouldn't be such a clusterfuck. Modern would've been right the first time, instead of having 3 different ban lists in less than a year and *still* being an unmitigated disaster. Standard wouldn't be so dominated by a single strategy that multiple major tournaments consecutively feature 32 copies of the same win condition in the T8.

The fact that people are running full-tilt towards Legacy, this boom of Legacy's popularity, has as much or more to do with how much the rotating formats SUCK because of piss-poor design and implementation than it has to do with Legacy's "fun-ness". I don't find modern Legacy to be any more fun than I found Masques/Invasions T2. In fact, I still play MM/Inv with my old roomate sometimes. Because despite the fact that Wizards is doing everything that their marketing research tells them that people find fun, the sets they're making aren't fun.

The fact of the matter is that people don't have the first clue what the hell they want out of life. If they did, you wouldn't have to date and/or marry dozens of people before you found the right one. You'd get it right the first time. But while I've always been most attracted to blondes, I always have the best sex with brunettes. Why? Because apparently the little voice that says that blondes are better is dead wrong.

I said it a few pages ago. It's not all Tom's fault. I'd still like to shoot his testicles off, but he's not the only one that's fucked up the party. It's the players too. They're incapable of looking at underlying factors, seeing only the surface. They see that their Lure/Craw Giant deck gets rocked by Counterspell and Spell Blast and they think that Lure would be great if only Counterspell wasn't around. They don't realize that Channel is still an infinitely better green spell.

It's Wizards job, if they're trying to make a game that's fun for everyone, to interpret the results of the marketing research. But they'd have to be asking the right questions, and since nobody finds the rotating formats fun, they're obviously not. And frankly, I doubt if Tom "Great Sable Stag" LaPille has any clue about macro-strategy either. He probably figures that people play the decks they do just to make him look bad. It's a giant conspiracy. I mean, if mono-green infect dominated the FFL, the only explanation for it not having made a peep in Standard is that there is a 'gentleman's agreement' to avoid playing such a dominating deck. Truly, however, Glistener Elf should be banned, if we're going on raw power level alone.

[Aggro_zombies]

Because despite the fact that Wizards is doing everything that their marketing research tells them that people find fun, the sets they're making aren't fun.
And yet Innistrad is projected to be the best-selling set of all time.

Huh.

I think what you're saying here is that the sets Wizards is making aren't fun for you. But you play Magic on MWS and Cockatrice and don't buy cards anymore. Wizards' sales data and market research data are clearly telling them they're doing things right: Zendikar sold like hotcakes, the Innistrad prerelease broke previous attendance records, and the game currently has the largest following of any point in its history. Most players don't think in terms of optimization and macro strategy and game balance. Most players think in terms of, "It sucks when I have this sweet Titan in my hand that I'm eager to cast but then my opponent Stone Rains me, Acidic Slimes me, and then Molten Rains me and I sit here frustrated because I wanted to do something cool but now I'm dying to a 2/2 because I'm not drawing any more lands." Or, "I have this totally awesome combo that I want to show off that starts with Tooth and Nail and results in me winning with Near-Death Experience but then my opponent counters all my spells and does nothing but mill me with a Merfolk Mesmerist and I sit here frustrated because my chance to show off was totally blown by this guy who's doing nothing."

Yeah, you can argue that those people are idiots and should build better decks, blah blah blah, people who aren't Spikes must be mouthbreathers, etc. But you know what? You have admitted you don't buy cards anymore. You have admitted that you play only online on free programs that rip off a company's IP and don't compensate it for that. Your opinion on set design doesn't matter because you are not contributing to the discussion in any way that Wizards considers meaningful: set sales and market feedback. So why should they listen? People are showing up and handing them cash for their game despite how stupid it is to spend money on purely discretionary things in a bad economy.

And if that's not a sign of success, what is?

[Richard Cheese]

@Mikey - You should really stop using the term Mouthbreathers. It's starting to make you sound like a pompous ass.

[Bardo]

I don't find modern Legacy to be any more fun than I found Masques/Invasions T2.

And again, beaten to it by A_Z...

It goes without that fun is subjective. One person's fun is another's misery, boredom, or aggravation. But you only need to look at their sales and prerelease attendence, in the midst of this rotten economy, and see that WotC is being successful and selling an entertainment product that is presumably enjoyable.


They're incapable of looking at underlying factors, seeing only the surface. They see that their Lure/Craw Giant deck gets rocked by Counterspell and Spell Blast and they think that Lure would be great if only Counterspell wasn't around. They don't realize that Channel is still an infinitely better green spell.

I think we were all there at one point.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

- Semantics.

Are you actually under the impression that "archetype" and "deck" mean the same thing?

[ESG]

Most players don't think in terms of optimization and macro strategy and game balance. Most players think in terms of, "It sucks when I have this sweet Titan in my hand that I'm eager to cast but then my opponent Stone Rains me, Acidic Slimes me, and then Molten Rains me and I sit here frustrated because I wanted to do something cool but now I'm dying to a 2/2 because I'm not drawing any more lands." Or, "I have this totally awesome combo that I want to show off that starts with Tooth and Nail and results in me winning with Near-Death Experience but then my opponent counters all my spells and does nothing but mill me with a Merfolk Mesmerist and I sit here frustrated because my chance to show off was totally blown by this guy who's doing nothing."

Casual players will usually get crushed by competitive players, regardless of strategy. If you make land destruction unplayable, then the better players will claim an edge a different way. Bending over backward to support the casual player at the expense of the competitive player would be a terrible way to operate. Magic didn't start out simple. It doesn't need to be simple. Casual players can use whatever cards they want, and if they're playing on the kitchen table, they may even have house rules against land destruction or counterspells or whatever.

[Koby]

Casual players will usually get crushed by competitive players, regardless of strategy. If you make land destruction unplayable, then the better players will claim an edge a different way. Bending over backward to support the casual player at the expense of the competitive player would be a terrible way to operate. Magic didn't start out simple. It doesn't need to be simple. Casual players can use whatever cards they want, and if they're playing on the kitchen table, they may even have house rules against land destruction or counterspells or whatever.

Moreover, the #1 marketing strategy for MTG has been the Pro Tour - the idea that anyone could play at the top tier professional level. Are we to believe that year after year R&D is designing cards for the Casual crowd or for the PT crowd? I don't think it's polarized to either, but it's very easy to spot cards that belong in either camp. The big point of contention that I have with Tom LaPille stating his abhorrence of Dredge and Storm is that is a design of the PT camp based on cards designed for casual appeal. For instance, taken in a vacuum Bridge from Below seems to be an odd card. Same too with Steamflogger Boss. Is R&D going to go ahead and ban the latter too when Contraptions become too overpowered within the constructs of the game?

[SpikeyMikey]

And yet Innistrad is projected to be the best-selling set of all time.

Huh.


Black Lotus sells for more today than it did in 2003, so the format must be more popular now than it was then, right?

Here's the evidence I'm looking at. Extended was so bad off, they had to create a new format in the hopes of replacing it because nobody would play it if it weren't a PT format. During Extended season, people play more Extended than they do Legacy, but that doesn't mean it's a more popular format. There is more than 1 factor driving what formats people play.



Yeah, you can argue that those people are idiots and should build better decks, blah blah blah, people who aren't Spikes must be mouthbreathers, etc. But you know what? You have admitted you don't buy cards anymore. You have admitted that you play only online on free programs that rip off a company's IP and don't compensate it for that. Your opinion on set design doesn't matter because you are not contributing to the discussion in any way that Wizards considers meaningful: set sales and market feedback. So why should they listen? People are showing up and handing them cash for their game despite how stupid it is to spend money on purely discretionary things in a bad economy.

Aggro, did you read about *why* I don't buy cards anymore? I'm not contributing to sales in part because I don't approve of their set design. Or anything about the company really.


I don't care if casual players play casually. I've got some friends that play kitchen table Magic. Wouldn't want to play competitive decks if you gave them listings. They *enjoy* their wonky interactions and turn 12 6 card combos. And I'm happy for them. When I play with them, I tone it down, build something similar and play big multiplayer games. But removing the elements that seem most unfair to guys like that from competitive play doesn't make competitive play any closer to kitchen table Magic. The turn 12 combos still aren't competitive. The difference is that by shifting the advantage from the more defensive decks to the more offensive decks and by cutting out tools that were necessary for game balance in favor of what is supposed to be fun, they're creating environments that actually *aren't* fun. For me or for the kitchen table crowd.

When I say mouthbreathers, I'm not talking about the kitchen table crowd. What I'm saying is, if the ruling body of Chess decided to change the way the knight moved because it's current pattern was too difficult for some people to grasp, I would say they're trying to open the game up to mouthbreathers. It has nothing to do with whether or not you want to play a game a few times a year with your kid or whether you're trying to become a grand master. If you're not smart enough to intellectually grasp the mechanics of the game, GTFO. I'm not trying to say I want casual players forced out of Magic. That's ludicrous.

And Richard, I appreciate the thought, but if I were try to avoid using any phraseology that offended people, I just wouldn't write at all. No matter what I say, someone is going to think I'm a dick. I don't really care. If I sound pompous it's because I'm confident that my opinions are usually largely correct.


Wizards' sales data and market research data are clearly telling them they're doing things right: Zendikar sold like hotcakes, the Innistrad prerelease broke previous attendance records, and the game currently has the largest following of any point in its history.

The game is growing on inertia. And make no mistake, right now, it's a bubble. Eventually, it will either be deflated or it will pop hard. I'm not going to tryn and explain why I think that in a forum post, but I firmly believe that to be the case. Anyway, there have been plenty of bad sets before and the game still grew, even through those periods that people agree upon as bad. I've heard plenty of stories of people getting out during Urzas because it was such a bad time in Type II. I got in during Urzas. There is always an influx of people, and the bigger Magic gets, the bigger the word of mouth advertising campaign gets. The reason Star Trek or VS or any other card game died is because none of them were ever as popular as Magic the Gathering. You have to be vastly superior to an existing product if you want to be able to capture their market share and surpass them. It's the same thing with D&D or any other iconic game. There are plenty of D&D clones out there, many with better gaming systems. But since D&D is more widely played and recognized, if you want to play an RPG, D&D is the easiest one to find games for. So whether the changes made to the D&D system are good or bad, D&D continues to grow through each edition. Inertially.



Most players don't think in terms of optimization and macro strategy and game balance. Most players think in terms of, "It sucks when I have this sweet Titan in my hand that I'm eager to cast but then my opponent Stone Rains me, Acidic Slimes me, and then Molten Rains me and I sit here frustrated because I wanted to do something cool but now I'm dying to a 2/2 because I'm not drawing any more lands." Or, "I have this totally awesome combo that I want to show off that starts with Tooth and Nail and results in me winning with Near-Death Experience but then my opponent counters all my spells and does nothing but mill me with a Merfolk Mesmerist and I sit here frustrated because my chance to show off was totally blown by this guy who's doing nothing."

Again, my point is that Wizards job, if they want to improve the game, is to move beyond what most players are thinking they want and getting to what players *actually* want. That is, cool effects on tournament worthy cards. If Warp World were somehow costed to be a playable constructed card, Timmys the world over would rejoice. But removing Counterspell from Standard doesn't make Warp World playable. It just makes Titans playable. But Timmy doesn't like getting blown out by Primeval Titan either.

Good set design, QUALITY set design, would incorporate things that keep the kitchen table crowd happy without completely fucking the tournament scene. I mean, let's be honest, the tournament players are going to continue to play either way. If the next set released was a remake of Homelands, Gerry Thompson would still be at every motherfucking SCG Open, because he makes money doing it. But ideally, you could make tournament formats that people want to play, instead of tournament formats that people play only because they can't make money playing EDH.

[DragoFireheart]

Seems a bit like a mixed message :)

A game shouldn't be complex for the sake of being complex.

[nayon]

Because more packs sold = the game is better. If we apply that same mentality, Justin Bieber is the best artist ever.

[DragoFireheart]

Are you actually under the impression that "archetype" and "deck" mean the same thing?

- Does it really matter? These boards will frequently refer to a deck to also being an archtype (Counterbalance archtype for example). Again, it's an argument of semantics over a point that isn't worth pointing out and you have clearly gone off track about the point I was making.

Variety ensures balance. Time and time again when we see a few certain decks dominating the format, they snuff out the rest of the other decks. The variety of decks and how much balance there is in are format are directly proportional to each other. See Vengevial, CawBlade (Standard), Raffinity (Standard), No RuG w/ Mental Misstep, etc.

[Comrade]

- Does it really matter? These boards will frequently refer to a deck to also being an archtype (Counterbalance archtype for example). Again, it's an argument of semantics over a point that isn't worth pointing out and you have clearly gone off track about the point I was making.

Yes. It does really matter. It actually invalidates your entire argument. Also, people refer to the bible and then claim that the Noah's ark flood actually happened. That doesn't actually make it true. If you can't see how flawed your line of thinking really is, then after a few responses to you, it becomes too frustrating to continue to even acknowledge your existence.

[Comrade]

And yet Innistrad is projected to be the best-selling set of all time.

Huh.

I think what you're saying here is that the sets Wizards is making aren't fun for you. But you play Magic on MWS and Cockatrice and don't buy cards anymore. Wizards' sales data and market research data are clearly telling them they're doing things right: Zendikar sold like hotcakes, the Innistrad prerelease broke previous attendance records, and the game currently has the largest following of any point in its history. Most players don't think in terms of optimization and macro strategy and game balance. Most players think in terms of, "It sucks when I have this sweet Titan in my hand that I'm eager to cast but then my opponent Stone Rains me, Acidic Slimes me, and then Molten Rains me and I sit here frustrated because I wanted to do something cool but now I'm dying to a 2/2 because I'm not drawing any more lands." Or, "I have this totally awesome combo that I want to show off that starts with Tooth and Nail and results in me winning with Near-Death Experience but then my opponent counters all my spells and does nothing but mill me with a Merfolk Mesmerist and I sit here frustrated because my chance to show off was totally blown by this guy who's doing nothing."

Yeah, you can argue that those people are idiots and should build better decks, blah blah blah, people who aren't Spikes must be mouthbreathers, etc. But you know what? You have admitted you don't buy cards anymore. You have admitted that you play only online on free programs that rip off a company's IP and don't compensate it for that. Your opinion on set design doesn't matter because you are not contributing to the discussion in any way that Wizards considers meaningful: set sales and market feedback. So why should they listen? People are showing up and handing them cash for their game despite how stupid it is to spend money on purely discretionary things in a bad economy.

And if that's not a sign of success, what is?

Projected to be? Sure. Well let me know when it actually is. Also, then sales directly correlate to the amount of "funness" something has? Zendikar may have sold like hotcakes because it was packed with new fetch lands and the first round of boosters had random duals and other power cards hidden in them. Innistrad may be selling well because of the horror theme, which is someting that's pretty popular right now.

If Wizards continues to cater to the lowest common denominator set after set and block after block, then the game itself will start to suffer as it has begun to do so already. It may take years or even a decade before the effects are felt from them doing that. But just because the changes are not drastically painful, instead being a slower dumbing down process, it's not as easily noticed or considered to be as bad.

Does anyone remember when sets had a multitude of good $5-$10 rares all through them? Instead of one money mythic, a money rare, a money uncommon, and a money common? One of the reasons I stopped buying packs was that chance of pulling a card decent in something other than standard was next to nil, and even then it still wasn't worth what I paid for the pack itself. I hated having a trade binder full of cards that were only useful to or wanted by bad players, as they never had anything I wanted in return in trade. It's like I was giving Wizards money and receiving absolutely nothing in return.

So anyways, new customers can hand Wizards cash all day, and sure that makes Wziards a success to Hasbro in the times of a failing ecomony. But what will be the long term cost to the game itself?

[Malchar]

Because more packs sold = the game is better. If we apply that same mentality, Justin Bieber is the best artist ever.

I don't like Bieber any more than the next guy, but saying something is the "best" is always going to be a subjective measure. However, money talks, and whoever sells the most, is the most successful, which is about as close to the "best" as any objective measure. Justin Bieber might not be revolutionizing music, but at the end of the day, he's hella rich. Keep in mind that the game ends forever if Wizards goes out of business, so you can't really blame them for caring about selling packs.

[TsumiBand]

The Bieber comparison is flawed; this is more like saying, "Hey every guitar owner/player, I know that for years the high-end of advanced technique has been stuff like sweep-picking and two-handed tapping and artificial harmonics, but we really find that in order to really keep the common man interested in music we've gotta ask you fuckers to keep it down and try not to play anything more advanced than More Than Words. Nothing personal, it's just we think people have always preferred Extreme to Meshuggah."

Look, Kitchen Table Magic is unique among formats, in that it always moderates itself and its rules are arbitrary. It does not matter what the chase rares of the format actually do or say; if enough guys vote against it (or it meets some other capricious requirement like its dollar amount/rarity is too damn high), you can't bring it over anymore. If we imagine a set where the chase rare is somehow Wooly Thoctar - just imagine what the rest of that set looks like to make Wooly Thoctar a 20$ rare, ugh - and it's dominating Standard, kitchen tables around the world will just ban it on principle. Or on no principle at all; it's arbitrary like that. Moderating the high-end just lowers the ceiling of what the game could become, and will never achieve that unattainable goal of putting the casual guys on the same relative power level as the tourney folks. It just won't happen that way.

[TsumiBand]

The Bieber comparison is flawed; this is more like saying, "Hey every guitar owner/player, I know that for years the high-end of advanced technique has been stuff like sweep-picking and two-handed tapping and artificial harmonics, but we really find that in order to really keep the common man interested in music we've gotta ask you fuckers to keep it down and try not to play anything more advanced than More Than Words. Nothing personal, it's just we think people have always preferred Extreme to Meshuggah."

Look, Kitchen Table Magic is unique among formats, in that it always moderates itself and its rules are arbitrary. It does not matter what the chase rares of the format actually do or say; if enough guys vote against it (or it meets some other capricious requirement like its dollar amount/rarity is too damn high), you can't bring it over anymore. If we imagine a set where the chase rare is somehow Wooly Thoctar - just imagine what the rest of that set looks like to make Wooly Thoctar a 20$ rare, ugh - and it's dominating Standard, kitchen tables around the world will just ban it on principle. Or on no principle at all; it's arbitrary like that. Moderating the high-end just lowers the ceiling of what the game could become, and will never achieve that unattainable goal of putting the casual guys on the same relative power level as the tourney folks. It just won't happen that way.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

- Does it really matter? These boards will frequently refer to a deck to also being an archtype (Counterbalance archtype for example). Again, it's an argument of semantics over a point that isn't worth pointing out and you have clearly gone off track about the point I was making.

This is equivocation, "archetype" as shorthand for a range of related decks is different from "archetype" as it's used to describe a deck's role in terms of control/threat elements.


Variety ensures balance. Time and time again when we see a few certain decks dominating the format, they snuff out the rest of the other decks. The variety of decks and how much balance there is in are format are directly proportional to each other. See Vengevial, CawBlade (Standard), Raffinity (Standard), No RuG w/ Mental Misstep, etc.

If other decks weren't snuft out, the few decks wouldn't be dominating, so this is rather begging the question. You're defining balance as variety, so obviously from that perspective variety also creates balance.

I don't disagree that the format should be varied, but that's simply because people prefer it that way; it makes the metagame more fun to have a certain amount of variety.

[oldbsturgeon]

The Bieber comparison is flawed; this is more like saying, "Hey every guitar owner/player, I know that for years the high-end of advanced technique has been stuff like sweep-picking and two-handed tapping and artificial harmonics, but we really find that in order to really keep the common man interested in music we've gotta ask you fuckers to keep it down and try not to play anything more advanced than More Than Words. Nothing personal, it's just we think people have always preferred Extreme to Meshuggah."

There is certainly truth to this to some degree. If you are aware of early american music, the reason certain types of jazz developed were because the players were tired of playing the swing dance music that just seemed all the same and were quite boring.
Tony Bennett has sold the majority of his albums doing pop songs, as Columbia, the signer at the time, wouldn't let him record jazz type things.
Then there is Bobby Darin, whose biggest hit was "splish splash'' and not his sinatra like songs such as ''beyond the sea''
It's perfectly reasonable but maybe not acceptable to some extent, for a company's primary focus to sell the most of something they can.

I live in a fairly small area, so should know all the players around. Well I know all the players that come to the stores, play tournaments etc., but through the years have met a LOT of people even right here that play, but just not in the way I am used to.
If I add those people up, it actually kind of outnumbers the tournament players by a good bit. For instance the closest place that sold cards to me before they closed, were extremely casual with no actual desire to be more than that.
Why would they as they were having fun.
The changes are best for "the game" just not "our game"

[Draener]

You're defining balance as variety, so obviously from that perspective variety also creates balance.


Just wanted to point out that this is a propositional fallacy, specifically 'Affirming the consequent'. If A then B does not necessarily mean If B then A.

A = Variety
B = Balance

[Nelis]

You guys are seriously underestimating the complexity of standard. In fact, cawblade with Jace and mystic was quite possibly the most difficult deck I have ever played. The sheer number of decisions that had a substantial impact on the game was mind blowing.


Which is why Jace and SFM got banned...

I'm not sure if you're actually being sarcastic here but Jace and SFM were banned because the Caw Blade decks were overrepresented in top 8s and another reason was that it was too hard to get rid of Jace with the hate available.

Personally I find standard just about as complex as Legacy. The reason why I prefer Legacy a bit more over standard is that I have more time to get to learn my deck. And the fact that the metagame usually doesn't shift that quickly makes it easier for me to know what to do against my opponent's deck in legacy.

[Cire]

Just wanted to point out that this is a propositional fallacy, specifically 'Affirming the consequent'. If A then B does not necessarily mean If B then A.

A = Variety
B = Balance

He was saying that if balance then variety --> No variety then no balance... which would mean you would still aim for some variety to achieve balance.

[joemauer]

Personally I find standard just about as complex as Legacy.
Really?!?!

[Koby]

I'm not sure if you're actually being sarcastic here but Jace and SFM were banned because the Caw Blade decks were overrepresented in top 8s and another reason was that it was too hard to get rid of Jace with the hate available.

Personally I find standard just about as complex as Legacy. The reason why I prefer Legacy a bit more over standard is that I have more time to get to learn my deck. And the fact that the metagame usually doesn't shift that quickly makes it easier for me to know what to do against my opponent's deck in legacy.

I was being sarcastic. It doesn't make sense that the cause of SFM/Jace being banned was that it as too complex, but rather overpowered and over-represented. However, one of the few times Standard has a deck that's complex as Legacy decks it gets banned, and the resultant is dumbing down of strategy. Bannings in Standard always leave shock-waves that are felt for months after, due to the vacuum of powerful cards and everyone's memory of the bad state. It also highlights the disconnect between Players and R&D, that the latter didn't anticipate the cards being so good that it would be the only deck capable of winning in the metagame.

[Koby]

He was saying that if balance then variety --> No variety then no balance... which would mean you would still aim for some variety to achieve balance.

While that statement is true, I doubt it's that simple to boil down the metagame to variety/balance terms. During last Winter 2010 with Vengival there were arguably more decks present, yet the metagame was unbalanced (leaning on Survival).

[SpikeyMikey]

But in order for a metagame to be balanced, there have to be at least 3 decks, i.e. there must be some level of variety. A single deck cannot, by definition be a balanced metagame. Balance implies multiple items. A deck could be balanced within itself (part aggro/part combo/part control or whatever) but a field cannot be balanced with a single deck. If the field consists of 2 decks, again, it cannot be balanced, not because of the definition of balance but simply because in a game this complex, it is so difficult as to be impossible to have 2 perfectly balanced decks. 50/50 matchups are very few and far between and if a field consisted of only 2 tier 1 decks, one of those would have access to better hate than the other, rendering the format imbalanced in a short time.

So 3 decks (the classic Rock/Paper/Scissors) is the fewest decks a format can have and be substantially balanced. There can be more than 3 decks, but there cannot be less than 3. From this, we have no choice to conclude that, at least to some extent, balance is dependant on variety. So defining a healthy metagame as a varied metagame is not a stretch; variety may not be the only thing that influences metagame health, but it is certainly a major factor.

[TsumiBand]

I hesitate to get all "chicken vs. egg" when it comes to diversity and balance, but I'm more certain that diversity is something that is predicated by balance.

Just look at Vintage, where every deck is Blue and runs anywhere from 30 - 50 of the same cards as the person across the table, while still being considered a different deck. Diversity, as measured by relative card power in relation to the others, is clearly skewed towards the Bluest cards. While decks maybe be in balance to each other, the diversity between decklists is not necessarily at a premium. In fact if you don't run some amount of Power 9, you're decidedly at a significant disadvantage. I would submit that the raw power of Power 9 and Blue cards fundamentally unbalances Vintage in regard to its cardpool and forces most players to compete using largely similar decklists, which is not a sign of diversity at all.

In Legacy, this problem is not nearly as rampant; in this format, the last great bastion of Brainstorm, the most prolific Blue deck in the format doesn't even run it. Decklists have clear separation from each other; even decks which share colors needn't share any other cards beyond their manabase (Deadguy vs Death and Taxes, for a simple example; they probably overlap with Vials and removal spells but the large portion of both decks is so different). I would further submit that this is a direct result of a more thoughtful approach to the format's banned list; by moderating the power level of cards which overly define the format, we managed to achieve a wider "can-play" cardpool than any other format in the game. The relative power level between playable cards is much closer to each other, across rarities and colors, than Vintage. Ergo; balance begets diversity.

[Richard Cheese]

I hesitate to get all "chicken vs. egg" when it comes to diversity and balance, but I'm more certain that diversity is something that is predicated by balance.

Just look at Vintage, where every deck is Blue and runs anywhere from 30 - 50 of the same cards as the person across the table, while still being considered a different deck. Diversity, as measured by relative card power in relation to the others, is clearly skewed towards the Bluest cards. While decks maybe be in balance to each other, the diversity between decklists is not necessarily at a premium. In fact if you don't run some amount of Power 9, you're decidedly at a significant disadvantage. I would submit that the raw power of Power 9 and Blue cards fundamentally unbalances Vintage in regard to its cardpool and forces most players to compete using largely similar decklists, which is not a sign of diversity at all.

In Legacy, this problem is not nearly as rampant; in this format, the last great bastion of Brainstorm, the most prolific Blue deck in the format doesn't even run it. Decklists have clear separation from each other; even decks which share colors needn't share any other cards beyond their manabase (Deadguy vs Death and Taxes, for a simple example; they probably overlap with Vials and removal spells but the large portion of both decks is so different). I would further submit that this is a direct result of a more thoughtful approach to the format's banned list; by moderating the power level of cards which overly define the format, we managed to achieve a wider "can-play" cardpool than any other format in the game. The relative power level between playable cards is much closer to each other, across rarities and colors, than Vintage. Ergo; balance begets diversity.


Prepare yourself for a bunch of angry vintage players!

[DragoFireheart]

Prepare yourself for a bunch of angry vintage players!

I don't think anyone cares too much about players from a format that has degenerated into MUD and anti-mud decks.

[TsumiBand]

Prepare yourself for a bunch of angry vintage players!

INORITE

When Tier 2 hate decks like 'Null Rod Zoo' still run as many Moxen + Black Lotus as they can, *because it's better to destroy your own mana acceleration just to hope you cancel theirs out with a fucking Null Rod that will get Drained anyway*, I mean at some point you have to admit that the rug smells like cat piss even though you can't smell it anymore.

[Comrade]

Do any of you actually play vintage, or are you just talking right out your ass like most people on this forum do about the format?


:cool:

[honestabe]

Do any of you actually play vintage, or are you just talking right out your ass like most people on this forum do about the format?


:cool:

As a vintage player, it appears to be the latter

[DragoFireheart]

Do any of you actually play vintage, or are you just talking right out your ass like most people on this forum do about the format?


:cool:

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/metagame.php?format=Vintage&fecha=2011-10

Look at the previous months. Mud, mud and mud! Once or twice something else got closer, but mostly that lovely shit color mud.

[honestabe]

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/metagame.php?format=Vintage&fecha=2011-10

Look at the previous months. Mud, mud and mud! Once or twice something else got closer, but mostly that lovely shit color mud.

This also lists Drain Tendrils and Painter as major decks. I'm surprised Meandeck Gifts and Cerebral Assasin aren't on their either...lol

[Gocho]

This is the October meta. Only 16 Tops.
You must see the September meta to get a better look of the format. But yes, MUD is Tier1.

[TsumiBand]

I think the more relevant issue - or at least the one I was hoping to impart - is that in Vintage, when you're building a deck, if it isn't "as fully Powered as is logical", you're doing it weird. While the power of the format as a whole is (arbitrarily) much higher than Legacy, the potential for that power to expressed as a function of non-overlapping decklists is much smaller.

Why do you think people piss and moan so much about cards like Force and Tarmogoyf? The closer this format comes to each color having singularities in their cardpool, the closer we get to homogenized decklists that don't have nearly the kind of variance that they do today.

Lightning edit - no, I don't want FoW or Goyf banned :P it's just an example!

[Nelis]

Really?!?!

Yeah, I feel no difference in complexity when I play standard or legacy. I still have a hard time making the right plays in both formats. Its not that I feel more lost in legacy when faced with a tough decision than in standard or the other way around. It could have something to do with my magic skills, I'd be lying if I said I'm a very good player', maybe its just a matter of having a certain 'skill level' I cant see beyond so it feels the same to me.

[Humphrey]

To me Standard is like a demo-version of Magic lol. Its sooo bad

[Admiral_Arzar]

To me Standard is like a demo-version of Magic lol. Its sooo bad

My favorite description of standard:


Hurf Durf: the Derpening

I lol'd for a while when I read about some player (don't remember who) saying that Standard Caw-Blade was the most intricate and difficult deck he had ever played. Some people just need some STORM in their diet, I guess.

[Koby]

Yeah, I feel no difference in complexity when I play standard or legacy. I still have a hard time making the right plays in both formats. Its not that I feel more lost in legacy when faced with a tough decision than in standard or the other way around. It could have something to do with my magic skills, I'd be lying if I said I'm a very good player', maybe its just a matter of having a certain 'skill level' I cant see beyond so it feels the same to me.

I partially agree with this. However, a format as deep as Legacy has better opportunities to tailor a deck towards a particular play-style moreso than Standard. This is the primary difference why many think that Standard is boring.

[majikal]

I actually took a dive into Standard this past weekend, and it was a pretty deep and complex format. Sure, there are a lot of dumb red decks that are anathema to complexity, but playing Pod opened up so many different lines of play that it felt quite similar to playing a Legacy deck. In particular, the current Standard environment is extremely unforgiving of play errors.

[DragoFireheart]

I lol'd for a while when I read about some player (don't remember who) saying that Standard Caw-Blade was the most intricate and difficult deck he had ever played. Some people just need some STORM in their diet, I guess.

Storm decks like TES and High Tide are easily the most complex decks in magc. It's pretty easy to screw up a play and auto-lose from making one mistake.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Storm decks like TES and High Tide is easily the most complex decks in magc. It's pretty easy to screw up a play and auto-lose from making one mistake.

Trust me, I know :P. I punted two matches at my local with High Tide this weekend by making plays that weren't obviously play mistakes, but only became really apparent in hindsight.

[DragoFireheart]

Trust me, I know :P. I punted two matches at my local with High Tide this weekend by making plays that weren't obviously play mistakes, but only became really apparent in hindsight.

- I have a friend that plays his Storm deck (which is trys to use to beat my CounterBlade deck with, lmao) and it's amazing watching him do all of the hoops that need to be done for playing storm. Should I keep this hand and draw into what I need? Can I go off regardless of FoW? Do I have enough mana? What card do I get with Burning Wish?

[AriLax]

I lol'd for a while when I read about some player (don't remember who) saying that Standard Caw-Blade was the most intricate and difficult deck he had ever played. Some people just need some STORM in their diet, I guess.

As a expert on one and a reasonable source on the other, the difficultly level of both was fairly high. In fact, the Caw mirror pre-NPH is on the same level as Storm vs. Landstill in terms of skill, if not harder because you often didn't have a definite game plan to execute. Every so often you have the pre-Rise Jund mirror where it literally was count the cascade spells, highest count is 90% to win, but is Belcher vs. Zoo any better?

Legacy will tend on the skill intensive side because of Brainstorm and Force of Will lowering mana and card restraints in lines of play, but that doesn't mean that every Standard matchup is two monkeys flinging feces. Playing aggressive decks in Standard is significantly harder than in Legacy as you often have to play suboptimal cards against decks with stronger sources of absolute CA then can be played in Legacy, making value leverage much more important than "I'm going to get you to 7 then Bolt Fireblast you, K?"

[Admiral_Arzar]

Legacy will tend on the skill intensive side because of Brainstorm and Force of Will lowering mana and card restraints in lines of play, but that doesn't mean that every Standard matchup is two monkeys flinging feces. Playing aggressive decks in Standard is significantly harder than in Legacy as you often have to play suboptimal cards against decks with stronger sources of absolute CA then can be played in Legacy, making value leverage much more important than "I'm going to get you to 7 then Bolt Fireblast you, K?"

Agreed on this part. I did play a considerable amount of standard a couple seasons ago - and while the decks obviously take some playskill, I've found Legacy tends to be more complex and skill-testing in most cases. That doesn't mean I haven't had some interesting decisions to make in standard, even playing such "dumb" decks as mono-red.

[honestabe]

I'm pretty sure that Storm trying to beat Countertop is the most skill intensive matchup ever. (for the storm player, obviously). Not only is it technically a nightmare, but you also have to factor in all the psycological aspects...Man, I really miss grinding Ad Naus against CounterBant...

[Richard Cheese]

Right, because clearly the way to deal with the complexity issue is to spin Magic off into two games, "Hurf Durf: the Derpening," and "Right and Proper Gentleman's Olde Game of Magicks," where there are no creatures and all the cards are blue, have flash, and have, "As an additional cost to play this spell, draw three cards, then put two cards from your hand on top of your library in any order."

How the hell did I miss this? Am I the only person that isn't ashamed to admit that I'd probably play "Hurf Durf: the Derpening"?

[DragoFireheart]

I'm pretty sure that Storm trying to beat Countertop is the most skill intensive matchup ever. (for the storm player, obviously). Not only is it technically a nightmare, but you also have to factor in all the psycological aspects...Man, I really miss grinding Ad Naus against CounterBant...

- Don't worry, CBT still sees play.

[Mr. Safety]

From AriLax


Playing aggressive decks in Standard is significantly harder than in Legacy as you often have to play suboptimal cards against decks with stronger sources of absolute CA then can be played in Legacy, making value leverage much more important than "I'm going to get you to 7 then Bolt Fireblast you, K?"

I can't be the only person that thinks this is a smart line. The only minor variance I would have would be that it doesn't matter what format you are playing, sometimes suboptimal cards are a necessity in order to leverage value. Look at Unearth and what it's doing with Snapcaster Mage. Unearth is nothing special, pretty horrible actually compared to the other reanimation spells. But it gains whole different dimension of value given Snapcaster Mage.