On Legacy Deck Names [Archive]

Dragonslayer_90

01-12-2014, 11:58 PM

So after Team America (BUG Delver if people don't know the deck by it's quirky name) was in the finals I posted a status expressing how glad I was that Team America was in the finals of SCG Orlando. I never anticipated that calling BUG Delver its community name Team America would have got me into a heated argument about the function of deck names and why having obscure confusing deck names is dumb. A big part of this argument has its source in this article Kibler wrote: http://bmkgaming.com/whats-in-a-name/. I'm not going to post any parts of the conversation for privacy reasons, but I'll just some up the general positions.

My position that I was arguing for in sum was that there's nothing wrong with the legacy community having it's own quirks since SCG are the ones making the format more presentable when it's in the spotlight. In other words, I'm not an elitist asshole for calling BUG Delver Team America in casual conversation and if someone around doesn't know what that means I'd be more than happy to explain it to them assuming they are willing to learn something new since they aren't familiar with a name known by regular players of the format.

The other position: The barrier for legacy is already high due to card prices. Having confusing names that don't help people identify something about the deck is only makes legacy more inaccessible to outsiders than it should be and is idiotic, elitist etc. That fact that someone doesn't know what X-Name refers to Y-Deck is bad based on the name alone is bad because it's rather exclusionary.

I would like the community's input on this since I didn't know this was such a big issue. Just curious to know what segments of the legacy community itself thinks.

TsumiBand

01-13-2014, 12:09 AM

But but but didn't we just do this? http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?27169-Article-A-Rose-by-Any-Other-Name-by-Nightmare/

...
When you write software, you try and name functions for what they actually do -- things like addNewPlayerToGame() or deletePornFromExternalDevice() or whatever - so now I don't need to dig through the code to see what it does unless it breaks, right? It tells me what it does in the name. A function named iLoveMyDog() or fnorptifyEachGirbitz() tells me nothing about what's under the hood, and I don't think I'm alone in saying so but god damn I hate reading other people's code, so that kind of thing just sucks. Deck names can be treated with similar scrutiny, I think.

It should be like a well-written newspaper article. The first paragraph should summarize the article in plain language. The rest of the article can get into the nitty-gritty, but that first paragraph should ideally just tell me what I need to know, such that I don't have to "read the whole paper" every morning -- I just see the first paragraph and decide whether it's germane to my interests, and either way I know that Something Happened Somewhere. "Cubs Win World Series Against Miami." "Seventeen Dead In Beirut Suicide Bombing." "Local Area Man Fellated By Alligator… oh, I might want to read that one."
...

^^^^ That was the thing I said about that thing you just said.

twndomn

01-13-2014, 12:19 AM

While we are at it, I would like to argue that names in real life, i.e. Mike, Tina...etc, the names don't tell us the ethnicity, the eye color, the skin color of a person, totally non-descriptive.

Back to Magic, when we mention Bant, RUG... etc, the colors are described at the least. It's time for the taxonomy of Magic to be as organized as the competition of Magic. Rename Tin-Fin to graveyard storm. Rename Maverick to GSZ creature beatdown. Thank you.

Dragonslayer_90

01-13-2014, 02:13 AM

But but but didn't we just do this? http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?27169-Article-A-Rose-by-Any-Other-Name-by-Nightmare/

^^^^ That was the thing I said about that thing you just said.

Thanks for posting the link TsumiBand. I often get chuckles at what you post :tongue: In all seriousness though I understand the other side's point, but I just can't help but I feel that people like Kibler just like to take pot shots at people like the legacy community every now and then. It really just pisses me off to no end.

thecrav

01-13-2014, 02:45 AM

[QUOTE=twndomn;781371]Back to Magic, when we mention Bant, RUG... etc, the colors are described at the least./QUOTE]

The entire argument over deck names requires drawing a line in the sand of sort. Where this line is drawn is completely arbitrary. It could be argued that Bant and RUG are uninviting as well. "Bant" requires that you were around during Shards and "RUG" requires that you know that blue is U and that mono-green carpet of flowers isn't a thing.

Even if you go with only colors, you end up with this strange amalgam of decks. A few months ago there were 6 "Jund" decks in the top 8 of an SCG open. They were all completely different decks, but they all got called "jund"

barcode

01-13-2014, 07:28 AM

Seems like people just want something to complain about. Learn the specialized vocabulary of the subculture and move on with life.

Grand Superior

01-13-2014, 07:44 AM

crow_mw

01-13-2014, 08:56 AM

Also for new players the unique names are more alluring than 'Bug tempo', 'Bug control', 'Bug combo'. While it is easy to go overboard with everyone trying to name their variation of archetype, for the sake of fame, unique names put some magic into Magic.

Bed Decks Palyer

01-13-2014, 01:08 PM

Bug control always reminds me of a pretty bad deck a frined of mine played ten years ago. It sporte Brood of Cockroaches and he called the bug "cockroachee".

TsumiBand

01-13-2014, 02:37 PM

Thanks for posting the link TsumiBand. I often get chuckles at what you post :tongue: In all seriousness though I understand the other side's point, but I just can't help but I feel that people like Kibler just like to take pot shots at people like the legacy community every now and then. It really just pisses me off to no end.

Yeah, it's definitely kind of picayune. If you're in the scene then it doesn't matter what Death and Taxes is called -- call it White Weenie Prison, Karakas Control, doesn't matter, it's potentially all the same deck.

I like to err on the side of rookies, I guess. Maybe I'm exceptionally thick, but when I first started playing was Invasion-Odyssey Standard and people kept having conversations about "FTK". Oh man, this FTK is just tearing up this and this and this, etc etc… and for whatever reason, no one would just tell me what FTK was. I asked, and no one said anything. It took I think almost until Invasion rotated out of Standard and I saw the practice applied to other cards like FoF and StP and whatnot, that I suddenly realized it was Flametongue fucking Kavu.

There's a thread in the Rules board on this site right now about a hypothetical situation where a player says "Fish" as their creature type for Cavern of Souls, which the other player asks him to repeat. "Fish." "…Fish?" "Yeah, Fish." The player then tries to play Cursecatcher, and the opponent objects - "That isn't a Fish." Now the expectation is that the other player infer that, oh of COURSE the opponent meant Merfolk, because the deck was always called Fish. In my opinion, there are several problems with that assumption:

- 'Fish' is a legal creature type, so it can be named for Cavern of Souls and will make your Electric Eels and Shamblesharks castable and uncounterable. There are legal interactions for that creature type, so why would I assume Merfolk? Because it's "clearly the only deck worth mentioning"?
- 'Fish' is also a deck, or arguably, an archetype. When players go back-and-forth like that, are they saying "Do you mean Fish as in Merfolk?" or "Do you mean Fish as in, the archetype Fish, and secretly you're playing Fish/r, in which case I need to ask if you meant Faeries or Humans or Wizards or…" The word is overloaded when it's out of context - in the context of a card that prompts you to choose a creature type, it would be inappropriate to mention the archetype or deck name.

One could go on and on about people saying what they mean and meaning what they say. I don't want to cross-contaminate this thread with that one, but it seemed like a relevant comparison or at least there's a common thread in the two conversations - the words we use matter.

Now of course, I do know that Maverick is Green-White aggro-control, I know that ANT is Ad Nauseum Tendrils -- shit man, I even know that Tight Sight is secretly Balancing Tings, which is secretly The Solution minus Goblin Trenches*. None of that means anything to someone who didn't experience the narrative at the time. How many players here were around when 'The Deck' was a thing? Who here remembers the secrecy of that decklist - you could not merely ask someone for their version of "The Deck", because it was all at once this guarded piece of technology that also happened to be associated with the decklist that was based on the rudiments of deck construction theory - concepts like tempo, card advantage, etc.

No wonder I've been playing so much EDH lately. It's typically very self-describing. Your deck is generally described by your commander, save the random 5-color combo lists that play Karona to be a format troll.

I mean really, even though I can get pretty vocal about this stuff, I don't think it's the biggest deal in the world. Magic players refer to their own creations as 'homebrews' and 'pet decks' for a reason - time, care, effort, money, and thought went into their construction, and if they work then it's a bit like Doc Brown's "IT WOOOOOORKS" in the middle of Back to the Future. To that end, I totally get it. "I made something! It's out there! People are using it all the time to steal wins! Therefore, I shall call this deck… Klepto-Bismol! Just so I can hear people using that phrase in earnest! I've trolled your PTQ - and your vernacular!! Ahahahahahahaaaaa"

FTW

01-13-2014, 02:51 PM

Should all naming be precise and functional (like function-naming in code) or should the community allow and encourage depth, stories, in-jokes, history, nostalgia, cultural references, homages to players, etc. as well?

Like code, Magic would certainly be simpler to follow if all the language around it was purely functional. But as a tradeoff it would also start to sound more monotonous, repetitive, and, well code-like. What about the human component? Throughout all Magic history, the people and stories have really mattered to a good chunk of the player base. Books about Magic characters have sold extensively, pet decks arise with creative names, some cards are actually designed as tributes to world champion players, the community follows the blogs and articles of their favorite Magic players and their trials and tribulations, etc. For better or worse, these have long been big parts of the game.

Is it really the names that create barrier to entry, or is it the deeper truth that Legacy is simply a wider format with a huge cardpool and many more established deck archetypes? Are players intimidated by the names, or is it really by how many different archetypes and strategies exist that they have to prepare for, interactions with cards they have never heard of, and so on?

Magic is full of jargon. Bestow, Infect, Flying, etc. You have to learn the terms to play the game. A Standard player switching to Legacy is going to be opened up to a bigger cardpool and may have to learn about mechanics they've never heard of. What's Threshold, Storm, Flanking, Echo, Fading, or god forbid Banding?? There's some new jargon already. What about learning about the new key cards like "Force of Will", "Tendrils of Agony", "Wasteland", "Karakas", "Blood Moon", "Show and Tell", etc. There's more jargon. And each new term involves learning the associated rules and interactions with the format. What about learning common slang like "fetchlands", "storm combo", "revised duals", "Vial aggro", "pitch spells", "turn 0 win", etc? Yet more terms to learn. Even with functional decknames, there's still plenty of non-intuitive jargon for Standard players to pick up.

And even deck names that SEEM descriptive can be full of jargon: Junk Midrange, Gruul Aggro, Dega Midrange, Esper Control, Red Deck Wins, UWR Superfriends, etc. What's "Junk"? Is it intuitive that it refers to GWB? It doesn't follow a standard naming convention of taking the Shard or Volver name. It comes from a reference from Magic's history. What about guilds like Gruul? It's not necessarily intuitive to a Standard player that "Gruul" just means RG, even if not using any specific "Gruul" cards from Ravnica blocks. "Dega" is a reference to cards from over a decade ago. "Esper" may mean nothing to a player who started playing in 2011. Even if he knows the shard, he may wonder why the name refers to a WUB control deck with no Esper mechanics and barely any artifacts. "Red Deck Wins" is used all the time as a "generic name" but doesn't at all describe the strategy. Even seeing "BUG Tempo" may be confusing to a Standard player. What the flying fish is "Tempo"? Tempo has more dominance in Legacy than any other format and is inherently going to be a new concept and strategy to most non-Legacy players. You can't avoid that.

So what's the real issue here? Is seeing "Team America" or "Tin Fins" or "The Mighty Quinn" REALLY too much of a barrier for new players in the format? Is deckname jargon somehow more prohibitive than all that other Legacy jargon?

Or is it the bigger truth that Legacy just has a long history of viable archetypes using a wide range of cards, much wider than Standard or Modern and with many more viable strategies than Vintage. As such there is just always going to be a bit more to learn than with other formats. Whether that's learning deck names or learning key cards or learning the meta and matchups or learning sideboarding strategies against different mechanics, there is simply just a lot more to learn. Maybe it's the whole package that is daunting, not the decknames?

So why should that mean we can't keep coming up with rich, creative names and stories to accompany new decks?

UnderwaterGuy

01-13-2014, 03:27 PM

That article just showed that kibler was salty about having to learn something new. He's not a legacy player (at least he wasn't at the time) so he blamed others instead of accepting that he had a lot to learn about a different subset of the mtg game.

Every game or community will have its own jargon. Denying that is simple ignorance. I don't think it would be possible to fight against new decks having new names and established names will stick.

Dice_Box

01-13-2014, 03:43 PM

It's funny, because as I read that article, I am ticking off why each deck is named what it is while at the same time as he is bitching that no one knows. Entertainment right there.

twndomn

01-13-2014, 03:48 PM

I personally still use Canadian Threshold and Team America as names both because that's what I grew up knowing the decks as and because quite frankly "RUG Delver" and "BUG Delver" sound stupid. All it takes is one explanation and then you're up to speed. Calling the quirky deck names exclusionary is a pretty shallow argument IMO, and it's doubly ridiculous to try to make it a barrier to entry for the format.

Look who's being ignorant? Just because you have your personal nostalgia, why should the entire community suffer because of you? Thank you for being subjective on calling other name as stupid, as if your naming is any superior. Beauty is on the eye of beholder, your can leave your ignorance at your own home, no place on Internet needs that.

That article just showed that kibler was salty about having to learn something new. He's not a legacy player (at least he wasn't at the time) so he blamed others instead of accepting that he had a lot to learn about a different subset of the mtg game.

Every game or community will have its own jargon. Denying that is simple ignorance. I don't think it would be possible to fight against new decks having new names and established names will stick.

Yeah, but how did the new deck get that name to Be Established at the first place? Just because a random ridiculous guy decided that the art of a particular card reminds him personally something obscure, the entire community has to call that deck Tin-fin. That is the establishment you refer to. This is not being salty, this is about eliminating unnecessarily nomenclature when there is no organized manner to come up with a convention.

Why do we name a hurricane Katrina? Does the hurricane form in a woman of shape Katrina? There's a convention going into the naming of each hurricane, typhoon, star, and comet, why can't Magic have one?

UnderwaterGuy

01-13-2014, 03:57 PM

It's funny, because as I read that article, I am ticking off why each deck is named what it is while at the same time as he is bitching that no one knows. Entertainment right there.

This is exactly how I felt. He's going on and on about how these names' origins are unknowable while a lot of us are completely familiar with them.

Look who's being ignorant? Just because you have your personal nostalgia, why should the entire community suffer because of you? Thank you for being subjective on calling other name as stupid, as if your naming is any superior. Beauty is on the eye of beholder, your can leave your ignorance at your own home, no place on Internet needs that.

Yeah, but how did the new deck get that name to Be Established at the first place? Just because a random ridiculous guy decided that the art of a particular card reminds him personally something obscure, the entire community has to call that deck Tin-fin. That is the establishment you refer to. This is not being salty, this is about eliminating unnecessarily nomenclature when there is no organized manner to come up with a convention.

Why do we name a hurricane Katrina? Does the hurricane form in a woman of shape Katrina? There's a convention going into the naming of each hurricane, typhoon, star, and comet, why can't Magic have one?

There is an explanation to Tin Fins' name though. It's a reference to a shark movie from the Sealab show (and it has nothing to do with card art). People that make decks often name them and those names stick sometimes. They made the decks in a lot of cases, I don't understand why you would think they don't have a right to attempt to name what they developed. Unique names for decks only adds to the community and provides background and occasionally funny stories for magic players to share. It's a human thing, even if you deny it you'll never be able to prevent names/nicknames from growing out of the players of this game. We've had nicknames for cards and decks for the entire life of the mtg.

Kibler was being salty in that article. He wouldn't post stuff like that about standard or modern because he's already familiar with those formats but in legacy he had a lot of new information to absorb.

Dice_Box

01-13-2014, 04:05 PM

Yeah, but how did the new deck get that name to Be Established at the first place? Just because a random ridiculous guy decided that the art of a particular card reminds him personally something obscure, the entire community has to call that deck Tin-fin. That is the establishment you refer to. This is not being salty, this is about eliminating unnecessarily nomenclature when there is no organized manner to come up with a convention.

Why do we name a hurricane Katrina? Does the hurricane form in a woman of shape Katrina? There's a convention going into the naming of each hurricane, typhoon, star, and comet, why can't Magic have one?

Ever gone rock climbing? There is a community around it, we all have this kind of group rule. If your the first one to figure a way up a cliff freehand, you get to name it. Magic is more or less the same. You make a deck, its your personal baby now. You get to name it. I really do not see why that is in any way an issue.

Technics

01-13-2014, 05:58 PM

When I say Affinity what deck do you think of? Does it actually have affinity cards in it anymore? NO! But the name is something that everybody know and understands. Nobody tried to go and change the name to Artifact Aggro. The same can be said for Canadian Thresh. Although not a Thresh Deck, everyone still knows what the deck list is (in fact Canadian Thresh is about ~10 cards off the lists from 3 years ago!). Having a deck name outline what the deck is/does makes just as much sense 3 years down the line as any crazy name. Eventually you will be calling the same “decks” new names as key cards are replaced/changed. Having a none specific name allows the deck to evolve and keep a consistent name, rather than changing it every 2 months when new cards are added/cut.

Dragonslayer_90

01-13-2014, 06:15 PM

Look who's being ignorant? Just because you have your personal nostalgia, why should the entire community suffer because of you? Thank you for being subjective on calling other name as stupid, as if your naming is any superior. Beauty is on the eye of beholder, your can leave your ignorance at your own home, no place on Internet needs that.

The people who primarily "suffer" from the nonsensical deck names prevalent in legacy are people who are unfamiliar with the format and attempting to take a crack at it, not so much the community at large. Yes, I can understand how all these quirky names just cause more obfuscation for new comers, but I think this just comes with the nature of the beast that is legacy, a format steeped in a grassroots tradition containing a vast slew archetypes. Re-read what FTW said if you don't get what I'm saying.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, but how did the new deck get that name to Be Established at the first place? Just because a random ridiculous guy decided that the art of a particular card reminds him personally something obscure, the entire community has to call that deck Tin-fin. That is the establishment you refer to. This is not being salty, this is about eliminating unnecessarily nomenclature when there is no organized manner to come up with a convention.

Why do we name a hurricane Katrina? Does the hurricane form in a woman of shape Katrina? There's a convention going into the naming of each hurricane, typhoon, star, and comet, why can't Magic have one?

Because the creation of conventions of deck naming in the legacy community itself is not governed by some formal entity like a group of scientists or whoever named Hurricane Katrina Katrina. MtG decks are cultural products, not natural disasters. Therefore they sometimes come with a stamp put on by it by the original creators of said deck (like how Dan Signornini calls BUG Delver Team America). Plus, it's not the legacy community's job to provide more functional names when SCG and Wizards are their to do it for us when the format is being covered. The standardized naming conventions that Kibler attacks the legacy community for not having already exists, just not within the legacy community itself (example SCG calling Team America BUG Delver during their coverage yesterday).

Personally I wonder if Kibler is butthurt and actually just hates legacy because Maverick is mostly dead and he has no GWx Midrange deck to fall on as his weapon of choice in a format full of people playing their pet decks. I think he should take a cue from the Everyday Eternal group because I know one of them runs a pretty cool and good Junk Midrange deck (can't remember who atm though).

Finn

01-13-2014, 07:00 PM

Legacy deck names stick around forever. There have been plenty of not-particularly-descriptive deck names in Standard. The in-crowd named, played, and promptly forgot about them next season. There was not this ever-changing group who were not around for the beginning. That is the only difference whatsoever. Anyone complaining about names is a butthole with no sense of history.

UnderwaterGuy

01-13-2014, 08:46 PM

When I say Affinity what deck do you think of? Does it actually have affinity cards in it anymore? NO! But the name is something that everybody know and understands. Nobody tried to go and change the name to Artifact Aggro.

That actually has happened. I think I watched some wotc-casted tournament a few months ago and they kept listing an affinity decklist as "robots" and the commentators even called it robots when the game was going on. I have never heard the deck called that before or since.

Dragonslayer_90

01-13-2014, 09:09 PM

That actually has happened. I think I watched some wotc-casted tournament a few months ago and they kept listing an affinity decklist as "robots" and the commentators even called it robots when the game was going on. I have never heard the deck called that before or since.

That's still not as functional as calling affinity artifact aggro. "Robots" in particular I think started getting applied to affinity when modern affinity started being a thing. Not as quirky as something like Tin Fins, but still requires one to know something about MtG like how the Robots in affinity is just a colloquial term to characterize how affinity is an artifact creature heavy deck.

Finn

01-13-2014, 09:36 PM

There was a joke that Myr and artifact creatures in general were essentially robots when Mirrodin was the new block. And the artifacts went from rusty brown to sleek silver at that time. Hence, robots.

TsumiBand

01-13-2014, 10:25 PM

To be clear, even though I rambled at length, I genuinely don't think anyone should stop naming decks. Call it whatever the fuck you like. I just understand why someone would make an argument against, is all.

When I say Affinity what deck do you think of? Does it actually have affinity cards in it anymore? NO! But the name is something that everybody know and understands. Nobody tried to go and change the name to Artifact Aggro. The same can be said for Canadian Thresh. Although not a Thresh Deck, everyone still knows what the deck list is (in fact Canadian Thresh is about ~10 cards off the lists from 3 years ago!). Having a deck name outline what the deck is/does makes just as much sense 3 years down the line as any crazy name. Eventually you will be calling the same “decks” new names as key cards are replaced/changed. Having a none specific name allows the deck to evolve and keep a consistent name, rather than changing it every 2 months when new cards are added/cut.

It's sort of the "Old Boat" argument, I suppose - if you start replacing boards on a boat when they wear old, at some point you've replaced 100% of the boards on the ship. So, when did it stop being the same ship?

Yes, there is a continuity to be mindful of as well. I guess I don't see anything wrong with stopping to poke your head up once in a while and seeing if the same labels still apply.

Let's see if I remember my MtG history without leaning on Google. The example in jest I gave earlier with "The Solution" -- actually IIRC, The Solution was the deck *before* it was called Goblin Trenches. The difference being, 4 or less bad cards came out for 4 or less Goblin Trenches. That's the Fucking Short Version of the story, but it's more or less what happened; The Solution was supposed to solve the format by being draw spells, counters, Wraths, more counters... but poor little Lightning Angel just wasn't a solid enough wincon on her own. Someone somewhere (maybe Zvi, shit I dunno) noticed Goblin Trenches; Trenches quickly came in over whatever was the worst card in the deck, and suddenly "The Solution" was now "Trenches". So the door has swung both ways, really -- changing one card can transform the deck's identity, whereas removing every card with Threshold on the text box doesn't preclude the deck from being called "Canadian Thresh".

It's just funny, is all.

FTW

01-14-2014, 10:32 PM

whereas removing every card with Threshold on the text box doesn't preclude the deck from being called "Canadian Thresh".

It's just funny, is all.

Nimble Mongoose says "hay! I know y'all are all crushin on blue 3/xs these days but come on"

TsumiBand

01-14-2014, 11:31 PM

Nimble Mongoose says "hay! I know y'all are all crushin on blue 3/xs these days but come on"

Yeah yeah yeah w/e w/e w/e Mystic Enforcer or gtfo

Mewens

01-15-2014, 04:24 PM

To be fair, it's really hard to care about target Nimble Mongoose.

TheInfamousBearAssassin

01-15-2014, 05:29 PM

Deck names matter. They provide a tool that allows for efficient communication of a lot of information. If you tell someone you’re playing RUG Delver in Legacy, you managed to compress a lot of information into very few words. If you tell someone you’re playing Esper Control in Standard, they can immediately get a pretty solid picture of your deck as long as they have a reasonable handle on the format.

This paragraph contains several things that are true but more that is stupid.

Names are a tool for communicating information- but not in the way Kibler thinks. What, after all, function do the names "Brian Kibler" or for instance, oh, "France," or maybe, "Magic: The Gathering" serve? They certainly don't give us much to go with if we come in blind. But these are all names that everyone is presumably fine with. No one is lobbying to change the name of "France" to "Land of smelly-cheese eaters," or Magic: The Gathering to, "Collectible card game where you develop mana over turns to summon monsters while pretending to be a wizard," or Brian Kibler to, "Somewhat runty famous Magic player with lots of opinions and big teeth."

We can understand that a name is distinct from a description, and in fact if we think about it that makes sense. Someone else, after all, might disagree with my assessment that Mr. Kibler has big teeth, but we can all agree on calling him Brian Kibler despite this disagreement. Or someone might only play TES and not understand what these "creature" things are, but they still understand the game of Magic.

So, then, we can surmise; names exist as a way to clearly distinguish a potential subject in language. In fact let us go a step further, and say that their being of no value as a descriptor is actually a positive indicator of a good name. We in fact run into all sorts of problems when we try to add value to names. People who are fine with calling Brian Kibler Brian Kibler might not be if he were to change his name to Best Magic Player Ever. If we look at where names cause problems, as in Macedonia/FYROM or Republic of China/Taiwan for instance, it's because there's a disagreement over to what a name refers. So too we see in Magic deck names; RUG Delver, for instance, could refer to two decks, at least, RUG Tempo, which utilizes Stifle as part of a mana denial package, and RUG Counterbalance Delver. The only reason we presume it is not the latter is because that deck has fallen out of favor in the past year or two, but if both decks were popular we would run into confusion. If you say "Esper Control," because the words there can refer to so many different decks, you have to then specify in what format, and probably ultimately some of your key cards (for that matter, "Esper" only works as a descriptor if the other person is familiar with the Alara shards.)

By contrast, if a deck like Death and Taxes were called Mono White Hatebear Weenie, or something like that, you couldn't include the green splash from the BoM tournament, which you can if you have a more individualized name. There may still be a discussion of whether that deck is really D&T or what defines D&T as a deck, but there is more freedom to discuss that organically in terms of the deck's goals and methods, rather than based on an arbitrarily narrow descriptor. So too we see with Team America, a name that has stuck around- unlike RUG Thresh which became RUG Delver- as different cards have been printed that have altered its strategy and replaced others. Remember that when Team America first saw play it ran Stifle + Sinkhole and there was no Deathrite Shaman, no Delver, no Abrupt Decay, no True Name Nemesis.

So, yes, I am afraid I must respectfully disagree with slightly runty white Magic playing guy with big teeth.

HammafistRoob

01-15-2014, 06:03 PM

Technics

01-15-2014, 06:17 PM

Thank you IBA. VERY well put.

joven

01-15-2014, 07:17 PM

I think there is nothing wrong with having quirky deck type names but there should be a (central) place where one can look them up and get a (short) description or at least a bunch of good example deck lists. A wiki would be better than just a forum where you have to browse through most of a thread with 90+ pages.
It is not always easy to describe the whole deck in its name so you have to start using code names.
Btw "BUG Delver" doesn't say much except the colors and that there is a playset of Delvers in it (which are basically in almost every deck at the moment) and "Team America" has been more than just "BUG Delver" in the past, I guess. Same goes for "Canadian Thresh" over "RUG Delver". "Canadian Thresh" was there long before WotC spit out Delver.

Where do those quirky names actually come from? From the "inventor" of the deck or from the community or what?

HammafistRoob

01-15-2014, 07:33 PM

Most of the names come from the decks creator(s), but in some cases it's more community based.

This forum does have a search function and most threads have pretty good primers with a little background description on things like where the deck got its name.

Richard Cheese

01-16-2014, 10:52 AM

Learn to love it, bitches.
http://img.youtube.com/vi/RnoZimnLqyY/hqdefault.jpg

Pinder

01-16-2014, 01:55 PM

So too we see with Team America, a name that has stuck around- unlike RUG Thresh which became RUG Delver- as different cards have been printed that have altered its strategy and replaced others. Remember that when Team America first saw play it ran Stifle + Sinkhole and there was no Deathrite Shaman, no Delver, no Abrupt Decay, no True Name Nemesis.

Ironically, every time I saw "BUG Delver" in this thread I was confused; it wasn't until someone mentioned that it's another name for Team America that I understood what they were talking about.

I have a lot of firsthand experience with reactions to non-descriptive/personal decknames, actually. I think there are a lot of Legacy vets even who never wanted to call my sliver brew "Meathooks", opting instead to refer to it as "Countersliver" despite the fact that it operated differently from Countersliver in the past (much more tempo, less control), didn't splash black, and was originally designed specifically as a metagame foil to Vial Goblins. For me personally, it always made me happy to see a deck I helped design and refine put up numbers with the name I gave it, but beyond that I never really cared one way or the other whether people said "Meathooks" or "UWg Countersliver" or "UWg Tempo Slivers" or whatever.

TheInfamousBearAssassin

01-16-2014, 02:17 PM

No, it's bullshit and it's always been bullshit. You know how you can tell? This asshole has the honest-to-fucking-God-brass-balls to then list Caw Blade as a good example because I guess you can "figure it out."

Hey news flash, Dan Brown, people don't stay up late into the night cracking musty tomes to decipher the hidden riddles behind names. I didn't uncover the lost Library of Alexandria to find the etymological root of "Brian Kibler" back to the Old Prussian for, "One whose teeth jut most prominently." If I need to know something I fucking Google it. Not a goddamn deck on that list you couldn't learn about if you had the technological know how and patience of a fucking nine year old.

Including fucking Caw Blade. Caw Blade! I had no fucking idea what that deck did the first time I heard the name- it certainly didn't occur to me, "Oh, let's see, caw is a sound a bird makes and blades are like swords so- I've got it! It's a deck built around Jace and Batterskull!"

If I had sat down like Edward Nygma was holding the fucking deposit at Ft. Knox ransom, I probably would've assumed, "Oh, bird, like Birds of Paradise, and blade like sword- they're talking about those bad R/G aggro decks that ran Birds of Paradise into turn 2 Sword of Fire and Ice that were everywhere after Affinity got banhammered."

Thanks for the clue, fuckhead.

It's all just projection. When Kibler or the assholes at SCG bitch about Legacy players being exclusive with their deck names it's all just horse shit, they mean it makes them feel ignorant to not understand the Legacy metagame so rather than fucking inform themselves they want other people to stop using discrete names and only bland descriptions so they can be part of the conversation without doing any work. If Brian Kibler demanded that physicists start calling neutrinos "really fast moving non-interactive very tiny things" and historians refer to Napoleon as "short angry French guy that conquered places," his assholery would be obvious, right?

Pinder

01-16-2014, 03:20 PM

Oh, I'm not saying Kibler is right - I'm not sure how you gathered that from my post. I honestly didn't even read his article. I just don't care one way or the other if people want to refer to a deck by a descriptive name or a discreet, arbitrary one.

It just seems dumb to have a horse in this race at all because a race about the names of collections of pretendy-fun-time wizard cards seems dumb to me.

Like, if you see a deckname you don't recognize, look it up. It works for both types of decknames.

TheInfamousBearAssassin

01-16-2014, 03:38 PM

Michael Keller

01-16-2014, 03:56 PM

^GG thread.

On a more serious note, I think Kibler is possibly the worst player in the Hall of Fame. It could be my bias towards him considering he's a condescending, asshole, cry baby, but it's just my opinion so take it for what it's worth.

I think the idea of a Magic: the Gathering Hall of Fame is already laughably ludicrous as it is, but that's a whole different topic all together.

And SCG's lackey-grinders - or SCGs in general - don't have a say in our format, god dammit. There's no false sense of entitlement here, folks; you name the deck something decent and it sticks, cool. If not, oh well.

Pinder

01-16-2014, 04:02 PM

The point is that people who insist on not using the names of Legacy decks don't apply that to the format they play regularly, they just get personally disgruntled at not getting references to the Legacy metagame and act butthurt like there's some objective basis for their rage.

Right.

What are we arguing about, again? It seems like we agree.

Feaor

01-16-2014, 04:10 PM

I mean I did look it up. That's my point. I didn't know what Caw Blade was, so I looked it up.

The point is that people who insist on not using the names of Legacy decks don't apply that to the format they play regularly, they just get personally disgruntled at not getting references to the Legacy metagame and act butthurt like there's some objective basis for their rage.

I was also amused by his assertion that Caw Go and Caw Blade are good names because they "provide provide information about the contents of the deck while not falling into the trap of using a generic color combination descriptor." I had to actually watch the deck tech to put together that it was a deck based around Squadron Hawk and JtMS. Its not blatantly obvious that Caw = Squadron Hawks unless you have some A Priori knowledge so the name is equally as obtuse as any other random deck name that's not something like RUG Delver. He's been guilty of bad deck names numerous times, another one that springs to mind is Bladebreaker, which only tells you its a deck designed to beat Caw-Blade (again requiring A Priori knowledge) but it says nothing about the deck being R/G Midrange. So in my opinion he is a massive hypocrite, he's designed plenty of decks with obtuse or semi-obtuse names so why do those get a pass but things like Tin Fins and Solidarity are bad?

HammafistRoob

01-16-2014, 04:22 PM

If he ever actually played a Legacy tournament or two he might actually learn something, or if he just spent an hour or so doing some research he'd be fine. But no, he'd rather spend upwards of two hours raging out through an article that actually got premium coverage (? I don't really remember).

This tells me that he tried to play some Legacy, got absolutely curb stomped by real magic players, and threw a temper tantrum.

*Golf Clap*

HammafistRoob

01-16-2014, 04:43 PM

Okay I dug it up and it wasn't a premium article, I'm nubb.

Anyways, I found the thread with Nightmare's article that was a response to Kibler. Just don't waste your time reading the wall of text on the last page of the thread, it's extremely hard to follow and is basically a bunch of nothing. Koby's reply to it made me lol though.
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?27169-Article-A-Rose-by-Any-Other-Name-by-Nightmare

Dragonslayer_90

01-16-2014, 05:33 PM

Guys, lets not forget that Kibler is not only a hall of fame pro, but also a GAME DESIGNER. Therefore, he's right about anything involving magic, EVEN ABOUT FORMATS HE BARELY PLAYS.

But seriously, though I didn't doubt it, it's comforting to know that I'm not the only one who doesn't think of Kibler as some infallible God of magic and actually sees how he has stick up his a** a lot of the time.

Illusions

01-17-2014, 09:11 AM

Like Tinkerbell, Kibler thrives on attention, and likes to stir up drama to keep people talking; the unfortunate thing is that many of the issues he raises aren't really problems worth talking about, or are significantly biased by his own slanted view of the game (in fact, slanted at an angle of 90 degrees to his opponent, with a helping of bitching about combo and control). I respect his ability as a player, but I'm not particularly compelled by his ideas, which is why I'm thankful he's off making another game, and not designing magic.

Personally, I like the way names are in legacy, because it adds a personal twist to the decks, courtesy of the deck's designers. Not only that, but it helps make the lists more defined, unlike in modern where people routinely confuse decks like UWR control and UWR midrange, because they lack the necessary understanding to distinguish between the two. Canadian thresh is a very defined deck, as is pretty much any deck that goes by a well-known name. It's also a heck of a lot more interesting than calling every other deck jund midrange, bug midrange, bug tempo, etc. Those kinds of names don't actually capture the nuance and uniqueness of the deck, especially where you have multiple decks within a particular set of colours.

Dice_Box

01-17-2014, 09:23 AM

Then goblins should be called Team Soviet Union: show up with hordes of red infantry, first throw 'em under enemy tanks, then win with a immense wave.
If I'd be playing Goblins, I'd stand up from my chair for the alphastrike and scream "Uraaah!"

Hahahahaha. Next event I go to that I take goblins too, I am so calling them that.

Vastros

01-18-2014, 12:00 PM

Delverblade/UWR Tempo needs to be refered to forever as Star Spangled Slaughter. WHY ARE WE NOT FUNDING THIS???!?!?!?

Worldslayer

01-18-2014, 12:51 PM

If I recall correctly, Brian DeMars basically whined about the same thing in a vintage article not too long ago.

In retaliation, the next six months saw about seven distinct archetypes all pilot listed as "red deck wins". Bomberman still is. The unfortunate bit is that Scg doesn't allow you to do the same thing in terms of deck names, but generally I encourage the behavior. It's a ridiculous, irrelevant argument to begin with, and if they want to act like children about it I'm more than willing to step into the sand box.

Reanimator is now called "Altered Beast". Discuss.

EpicLevelCommoner

01-18-2014, 01:24 PM

I wonder if calling BUG Nic Fit "Cuban Nic Fit" would catch on ...

(nameless one)

01-18-2014, 03:21 PM

Delverblade/UWR Tempo needs to be refered to forever as Star Spangled Slaughter. WHY ARE WE NOT FUNDING THIS???!?!?!?

I am pretty sure this particular deck is called such way back in Apocalypse era.

Over the top creature backed with removal and some permission protection.

As for Reanimator, I am damn sure decades back, Entomb-Reanimator strategies are called Benzo.dec.

TheInfamousBearAssassin

01-18-2014, 03:23 PM

Reanimator is now called "Altered Beast". Discuss.

I like it. If someone asks we can claim that originally the best reanimate target was Sisters of Stone Death.

Lt. Quattro

01-18-2014, 03:35 PM

Richard Cheese

01-18-2014, 07:06 PM

Reanimator is now called "Altered Beast". Discuss.

RISE FROM YOUR GRAVES
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xmT2WT1Orlc/TNj8mxF4AoI/AAAAAAAAASQ/Q6ELxCB94GQ/s320/alteredbeast.gif

frenchy-man

01-19-2014, 03:23 AM

This paragraph contains several things that are true but more that is stupid.

Names are a tool for communicating information- but not in the way Kibler thinks. What, after all, function do the names "Brian Kibler" or for instance, oh, "France," or maybe, "Magic: The Gathering" serve? They certainly don't give us much to go with if we come in blind. But these are all names that everyone is presumably fine with. No one is lobbying to change the name of "France" to "Land of smelly-cheese eaters," or Magic: The Gathering to, "Collectible card game where you develop mana over turns to summon monsters while pretending to be a wizard," or Brian Kibler to, "Somewhat runty famous Magic player with lots of opinions and big teeth."

We can understand that a name is distinct from a description, and in fact if we think about it that makes sense. Someone else, after all, might disagree with my assessment that Mr. Kibler has big teeth, but we can all agree on calling him Brian Kibler despite this disagreement. Or someone might only play TES and not understand what these "creature" things are, but they still understand the game of Magic.

So, then, we can surmise; names exist as a way to clearly distinguish a potential subject in language. In fact let us go a step further, and say that their being of no value as a descriptor is actually a positive indicator of a good name. We in fact run into all sorts of problems when we try to add value to names. People who are fine with calling Brian Kibler Brian Kibler might not be if he were to change his name to Best Magic Player Ever. If we look at where names cause problems, as in Macedonia/FYROM or Republic of China/Taiwan for instance, it's because there's a disagreement over to what a name refers. So too we see in Magic deck names; RUG Delver, for instance, could refer to two decks, at least, RUG Tempo, which utilizes Stifle as part of a mana denial package, and RUG Counterbalance Delver. The only reason we presume it is not the latter is because that deck has fallen out of favor in the past year or two, but if both decks were popular we would run into confusion. If you say "Esper Control," because the words there can refer to so many different decks, you have to then specify in what format, and probably ultimately some of your key cards (for that matter, "Esper" only works as a descriptor if the other person is familiar with the Alara shards.)

By contrast, if a deck like Death and Taxes were called Mono White Hatebear Weenie, or something like that, you couldn't include the green splash from the BoM tournament, which you can if you have a more individualized name. There may still be a discussion of whether that deck is really D&T or what defines D&T as a deck, but there is more freedom to discuss that organically in terms of the deck's goals and methods, rather than based on an arbitrarily narrow descriptor. So too we see with Team America, a name that has stuck around- unlike RUG Thresh which became RUG Delver- as different cards have been printed that have altered its strategy and replaced others. Remember that when Team America first saw play it ran Stifle + Sinkhole and there was no Deathrite Shaman, no Delver, no Abrupt Decay, no True Name Nemesis.

So, yes, I am afraid I must respectfully disagree with slightly runty white Magic playing guy with big teeth.

You discredit yourself each time you make a post. And more than being uninteresting and false, you should prevent yourself from judging others. You should travel abroad and you would notice that your reputation is far worse than being "cheese eaters".
By the way, I have been playing canadian thresh from the werebear days until now. It's strategy never changed, has never been altered.

Anyway, we all are netdecking decks that some guys one day invented. They gave a name to their creations and it is only respect to preserv those deck names.