[Article] The Cutting Room Floor: Group Therapy

[Michael Keller]

New article (http://jupitergames.info/articles/2012/52501/the-cutting-room-floor-group-therapy) dedicated to the intricacies of playing Cabal Therapy.

[Amon Amarth]

Cabal Therapy is a favorite card of mine so it goes without saying I like this article quite a bit. I like how you boil it down to two short paragraphs, explaining why it's good. It makes it much easier to grok, then go on and list specific examples complete with dream-crushing dbags. The mental checklist will probably help a lot of people out since you can go down the list of cards that you don't want to see and name the worst one if you have no idea what your opponent has in their hand. Good stuff.

[Michael Keller]

Cabal Therapy is a favorite card of mine so it goes without saying I like this article quite a bit. I like how you boil it down to two short paragraphs, explaining why it's good. It makes it much easier to grok, then go on and list specific examples complete with dream-crushing dbags. The mental checklist will probably help a lot of people out since you can go down the list of cards that you don't want to see and name the worst one if you have no idea what your opponent has in their hand. Good stuff.

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Cabal Therapy is a very difficult card to play and certainly requires attention to detail. I think creating a checklist for certain match-ups and familiarizing yourself with some of the more notoriously bad cards against your deck certainly will help you in your decision making when casting Therapy.

[Tammit67]

Very good article

[Michael Keller]

Very good article

Thanks!

[TsumiBand]

Cabal Therapy is great. I've always simply read it to mean, "Target player does not have a spell in hand that wrecks you." It may not always hit unless your information is good, but I've seldom felt bad about game two blind playing Therapy and naming someCardThatEndsTheGame, and not seeing it in their hand.

Why do you think the player towards the end kept so many Snapcasters in hand with Therapy on the stack after a Brainstorm?

[Michael Keller]

Cabal Therapy is great. I've always simply read it to mean, "Target player does not have a spell in hand that wrecks you." It may not always hit unless your information is good, but I've seldom felt bad about game two blind playing Therapy and naming someCardThatEndsTheGame, and not seeing it in their hand.

Why do you think the player towards the end kept so many Snapcasters in hand with Therapy on the stack after a Brainstorm?

I'm not so sure. He may have done it to tilt me in the event I missed, because me seeing that in his mind would have been a really nasty miss. For whatever reason, he kept three of them in his hand when it would have been perfectly fine to stow away one or even two. It's conceivable he didn't expect me to name "Snapcaster Mage" of all cards, but he was wrong.

Against LED Dredge, Surgical Extraction can be very annoying, but you can play around it. Because I was on LED Dredge, he probably figured I would have named a hate card. But Snapcaster is the card that gives it true value in that match-up and I wanted to erase that possibility and cripple his Force of Will(s) in the process by extracting blue cards from his grip.

I can't say for certain why he did that except for blatant stupidity or a move to put me on tilt. Either way, I read him like a book.

[[sic]]

Writing an article about Cabal Therapy requires tons of experience with the card, and that Sir you have. I like that you mentioned how the card can be better than pointed discard, touching on Gitaxian Probe is just icing on the cake, we know that aside from dredge, Tendrils decks get to abuse this card also. Great read.

[Julian23]

It's funny how often naming Snapcaster Mage after the opponent Brainstormed in response to Therapy pays off. Only until I read your article I realized how often I came across this situation.

[.dk]

I don't usually comment on article threads, but this one was great. I do love picking up my therapies from time to time, so I really appreciated reading your thought processes in the examples you gave and contrasting those with what my own decision making would have been.

Also - well written overall, although i found the paragraph starting with "just kidding" to be a little awkward/forced given the flow of the rest of the article.

Anyway, thanks for the article, and i'm definitely enjoying your column thus far. Keep it up!

[Zombie]

Good articles, especially now that they're advocating playing some Actual Magic (tm, new official description for decks that are not Dredge). The one thing you really need is those missing chapter headers to break the train of thought into coherent chunks and give the articles more structure.

[Michael Keller]

I don't usually comment on article threads, but this one was great. I do love picking up my therapies from time to time, so I really appreciated reading your thought processes in the examples you gave and contrasting those with what my own decision making would have been.

Also - well written overall, although i found the paragraph starting with "just kidding" to be a little awkward/forced given the flow of the rest of the article.

Anyway, thanks for the article, and i'm definitely enjoying your column thus far. Keep it up!

Glad you all liked it.

I can see how that is a bit confusing. The way it is published makes it a little difficult to understand because of the photo placement in the article. But these are good ideas.

Thanks!

[baghdadbob]

Cabal Therapy is the most cool looking foil card ever printed. Hands down.

[baghdadbob]

Also Hollywood you spend way too much time changing your avatar. Just saying.

[Michael Keller]

Cabal Therapy is the most cool looking foil card ever printed. Hands down.

It's definitely up there.

I don't know, I tend to lean towards foil time-shifted Tormod's Crypts. Those are pretty hot.

[Koby]

Good article and topic too.

Just a suggestion on formatting: Make a title if you're going to talk about a card that's shown as an image. It doesn't flow well without knowing you're referencing another card (Gitaxian Probe in this case) and cryptically referring to it.

[Michael Keller]

Good article and topic too.

Just a suggestion on formatting: Make a title if you're going to talk about a card that's shown as an image. It doesn't flow well without knowing you're referencing another card (Gitaxian Probe in this case) and cryptically referring to it.

Thanks. Glad you liked it.

In regards to formatting: I think including an image is a better way to guide the article towards various talking points. Generally speaking, wherever there are images a discussion about that card follows. It may be a little redundant including the title of the card and the image of a card simultaneously, as the image really speaks for itself.

On the flip side of things, I like the idea though of creating breaks in an article to bridge a discussion; it creates some fluidity. Some of that is an aesthetic issue that Jupiter edits once it's out of my hands.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Scroll to bottom and see story about guy rage quitting after having 3 Snapcasters therapy'd away.

I like the article.

[bruizar]

I liked the article. Therapy is one of the best cards in eternally you are a competent player. In vintage, i used to be able to snipe restricted cards pretty reliably. I think the guy with the snapcasters stocked up on the card to reduce the chance of you naming other cards. If he had 1 Snapcaster, and 2 other spells, you would have a higher chance to hit, but it would be less of. Blow out. I guess he just didn't think you were able to guess snapcter Mage in this case.

Next week an even harder card o play? Meddling Mage?

Excuse iOS typos

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Sweet one, enjoyed it quite a bit. The one thing I'd like to echo is that card names appearing next to the images to break up the text would make the reading experience better - no need to parse the pics and the text at the same time :p (using the date/location of where the plays took place as titles to structure the article already did wonders for the first half).

In the first example, I'd have named Turnabout with Therapy, reasoning thus: The only thing I care about here is him winning on turn 3. He needs three pieces to do that: High Tide, an untap-effect and Time Spiral. Given that Spiral and Tide are his "big business" pieces, those are what he's likely to hide with Brainstorm if he knows what he's doing (giving him the benefit of the doubt here, the last thing he should keep is Tide, exactly because of how you reasoned out calling it - it's the one piece he absolutely can't do without), making it most likely for him to still have the untap-effect in hand so I should name either Candelabra or Turnabout. Assuming he would play a Candelabra on turn one if he doesn't have a valid t1 cantrip aka not Brainstorm (nor the Flusterstorm, ruled out because he let Therapy resolve), Turnabout is what should most likely be stuck in his hand.

I also like the way you presented the game against High Tide better than the other two (sweet Snapcaster hit, btw :p). By revealing the situation while talking about your reasoning, it becomes harder to try and think about what I'd name before seeing what decision you arrived at and the ensuing results.

I generally really enjoy your articles, keep up the good work.

[Michael Keller]

Thank you for all of your advice, gentlemen. I appreciate it and I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I'll apply the change in my next piece and we'll see how it goes.

[Shawon]

This article and Caleb Durward's article on Therapy (http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/legacy-weapon-therapy-session/) should be added to the 'Legacy Resources' Sticky thread.

Earlier this year, I was wondering why no one had ever written a primer on Cabal Therapy that applied to Legacy. It's arguably Black's most skill-intensive card in Legacy. I am a big fan of card-primer articles and I hope that more writers join the wave and provide their own perspectives on some of Legacy's skill-intensive cards (Surgical Extraction, Wasteland even).

Very good work, Hollywood.

[Michael Keller]

This article and Caleb Durward's article on Therapy (http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/legacy-weapon-therapy-session/) should be added to the 'Legacy Resources' Sticky thread.

Earlier this year, I was wondering why no one had ever written a primer on Cabal Therapy that applied to Legacy. It's arguably Black's most skill-intensive card in Legacy. I am a big fan of card-primer articles and I hope that more writers join the wave and provide their own perspectives on some of Legacy's skill-intensive cards (Surgical Extraction, Wasteland even).

Very good work, Hollywood.

Thanks.

Cabal Therapy definitely is incredibly skill-intensive and requires a mastery of the format it's played in to be successful. Very true.