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Thread: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

  1. #41
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    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    Quote Originally Posted by Reeplcheep View Post
    Some questions about how we handle mistakes:

    Replacing banned cards with basics may lead to the deck no longer beating any of the target decks. Simple option: in that case they get 0 season points. Fun solution: replace banned cards with black lotus if a mana producer and Retrofitter foundry otherwise instead of a basic.

    There is also the question if people incorrectly calculate the matchup vs the target deck. One of my drafts for this round actually was DD instead of WW before I caught it.
    These are good questions.

    Just randomly replacing the banned card with a basic could indeed run into your deck not beating the sample deck anymore.
    Perhaps we could replace a mana card with a basic and a non-mana card with an always legal Memnite.
    If the deck still can't beat the sample deck, I think there's no other solution than to lose all games in the round (or win, in this case).

    If we go for random results, that might improve the score for the player in question, so I'd definitely be against that.

    And what to do when a player sends in a deck that doesn't WW against the sample deck... yeah there's no real solution there that I can think of.
    This season will require us to play a bit sharper than usual, and I don't see a good and fair way to mitigate mistakes here.

    But those are just my thoughts. And I'm not in charge anymore.
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  2. #42

    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    Oh man, it's a good thing I decided to read through the first post carefully. I actually thought I had read through the whole thing, so I'm not even sure why I looked at it again, but I totally thought I could just play Veldt + Helix Pinnacle + Lotus Petal. I thought this round would be kind of silly. I understand much better now why this deck was chosen.

    In looking for a slow clock, I found a completely different deck that also has GT 202, which unfortunately doesn't work cause it only goes WL against the base deck.

    For illegal entries, I think the easiest thing is just not to count them. The format is complicated enough, and I don't think adding extra complications is good, even if they're behind the scenes, so to speak. It would also be really sad for the legal entries that metagame successfully against what people are submitting but randomly lose points to unintentional submissions.

    Lastly, I assume that you're assuming that the top three decks of each round will all be banned, which is certainly likely but not guaranteed. With a couple draws and a very even distribution of points, it's possible for no one to score >3. I guess you probably would have just sought concensus after it happened and I'm sure no one would argue with still banning the top 3 decks, but we might write it into the rules.

    Also also, Channel + Lich's Mirror is quite the combo!
    Last edited by silkster; 08-04-2022 at 04:40 PM.

  3. #43

    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    Adding a memnite is the same as 0 points IMO so the only reason to do it is if two or more decks are illegal.

  4. #44
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    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    Quote Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit View Post
    Adding a memnite is the same as 0 points IMO so the only reason to do it is if two or more decks are illegal.
    From round 5 onwards, I see Memnite becoming not that terrible anymore.
    But we can also just decide on zero points for an illegal deck instead. That's easier for sure.
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  5. #45
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    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    Quote Originally Posted by Asthereal View Post
    From round 5 onwards, I see Memnite becoming not that terrible anymore.
    But we can also just decide on zero points for an illegal deck instead. That's easier for sure.
    My vote would be that illegal entries just don't count - we don't score them at all. That's the cleanest answer that works for the whole season no matter what.

  6. #46

    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    I was thinking a little about how random effects work this season, and also about how we do our write-ups. I think the easiest way to handle everything is for players to trade decks, and then matches okay out normally and you're now trying to win. So WW is good and gives 6 points, and it's clear how random effects work. This isn't a big deal, but I'm really excited for this season and am eager to discuss anything about it except for the super awesome tech that I'm saving for later in the season.

    I wonder if we should submit our decks after our name and with our goldfish turn all in one line to make copy paste as easy as possible. Like:

    Silkster: Forest, Forest, Forest, Leatherback Baloth, GT: 8

    As far as illegal submissions go, I'm still on the dq side, mostly for simplicity. I do think that writing out how your deck beats the target deck will go a long way to catching illegal entries. I haven't gotten as far as writing out my submission, but in brainstorming, I've gotten really excited about two decks whose illegality I caught while trying to explain the lines in detail.

  7. #47
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    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    Zero points seems OK.

    It would be hard to come up with a fair solution otherwise. Memnite may work to replace 1 banned card. But what if there are no banned cards and the deck just doesn't beat the target deck? What if 4xMemnite can't beat the target deck? What if Memnite gets banned from another winning deck? It gets complicated. Hopefully having to calculate the Goldfish Turn and beating the target deck should help prevent illegal submissions.

  8. #48

    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    It occurred to me today that through seasons of deviant legacy, pauper, peasant, creatures only, and even creatureless, GoblinSmashmaster was always able to smash with goblins. But this backbuild season will be a serious challenge to that streak, at least as far as I can foresee.

  9. #49

    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    @Asthereal @alphastryk

    I was thinking about the spreadsheet that I would use around the new year for Season 14, and I noticed that Round 14 of the previous spreadsheet was broken. I wanted to understand why it was broken and after opening a dozen tabs to search "google sheets vlookup", "google sheets indirect", I realized that it was because mtgthesource had gone down that week and some people held a short discussion of this on the sheet. Unfortunately, they held that discussion in the wrong column! So the smart part of the sheet that tried to understand how many players were in that round (so that it would know which column holds the round scores) got confused. It thought that each entry was another player, so it looked 4 columns later, but instead of round scores it found card number 4.

    I still don't perfectly understand the need for all the quotes in part of the formula that says "'"&R$1&"'!$B$2:$Z$19", but I did discover that I could instead use R$1&"!"&"$B$2:$Z$19". If anyone knows how the first bolded string works, I'm very curious.

  10. #50

    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    Quote Originally Posted by silkster View Post
    @Asthereal @alphastryk

    I was thinking about the spreadsheet that I would use around the new year for Season 14, and I noticed that Round 14 of the previous spreadsheet was broken. I wanted to understand why it was broken and after opening a dozen tabs to search "google sheets vlookup", "google sheets indirect", I realized that it was because mtgthesource had gone down that week and some people held a short discussion of this on the sheet. Unfortunately, they held that discussion in the wrong column! So the smart part of the sheet that tried to understand how many players were in that round (so that it would know which column holds the round scores) got confused. It thought that each entry was another player, so it looked 4 columns later, but instead of round scores it found card number 4.

    I still don't perfectly understand the need for all the quotes in part of the formula that says "'"&R$1&"'!$B$2:$Z$19", but I did discover that I could instead use R$1&"!"&"$B$2:$Z$19". If anyone knows how the first bolded string works, I'm very curious.
    Code:
    "'"&R$1&"'!$B$2:$Z$19"
    Code:
    R$1&"!"&"$B$2:$Z$19"
    The first formula puts a single quote around the value in R1 but you should post the whole formula (in a code block) if you want real answers. And a link to the sheet.
    So the result the first is: 'R1'!B2:Z19
    and the second is R1!B2:Z19

  11. #51
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    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    Quote Originally Posted by silkster View Post
    I was thinking a little about how random effects work this season, and also about how we do our write-ups. I think the easiest way to handle everything is for players to trade decks, and then matches okay out normally and you're now trying to win. So WW is good and gives 6 points, and it's clear how random effects work. This isn't a big deal, but I'm really excited for this season and am eager to discuss anything about it except for the super awesome tech that I'm saving for later in the season.

    I wonder if we should submit our decks after our name and with our goldfish turn all in one line to make copy paste as easy as possible. Like:

    Silkster: Forest, Forest, Forest, Leatherback Baloth, GT: 8
    both good ideas, and added to the initial post.


    Quote Originally Posted by Asthereal View Post
    To be fair, if I wanted, I could just spend a full night analysing the meta and tweaking my deck, and open the round a day later.
    In later seasons I didn't really play to my full strength, but that was more because of other things in life taking up time.

    But it's a disadvantage to a point, as you can't use a great idea that comes up right before the deadline. That happened to me a few times.
    I definitely could see the first half of it: ideas come, and no way to change my submission, while I used the message to Asthereal to change decks a few times before.




    Otherwise, on illegal entries, I see that there is a strong consensus for 0 points rather than a replacement system. So be it, and I removed the replacement from the initial post.
    I would still propose that if I see a small change that could make the deck legal, I would do so (eg. badlands submitted but banned, it is replaced with a fastland; or replacing a land that EtB tapped to one that doesn't if that accelerate the deck enough to beat the target deck). Asthereal has done that when there were obvious misspelling.



    Edit: and on the excel spreadsheet: I am sure I might be able to figure it out, but there seem to be a lot of more able users here, and in my experience delegating is often a good option.
    Is there any volunteer to take care of the sheet?
    Last edited by dte; 08-08-2022 at 11:10 AM.

  12. #52

    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    I created a google sheet for the season here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

    The code I was referencing earlier is the code used in the Table sheet of the google sheet above (which I copied from the previous season).

    You can see the code there, or here:
    Code:
    =IFERROR(ROUND(VLOOKUP($B2; INDIRECT("'"&E$1&"'!$B$2:$Z$19"); COUNTUNIQUE(INDIRECT("'"&E$1&"'!$B$2:$B$19"))+4;FALSE);1); 0)

  13. #53
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    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    Quote Originally Posted by silkster View Post
    I created a google sheet for the season here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

    The code I was referencing earlier is the code used in the Table sheet of the google sheet above (which I copied from the previous season).

    You can see the code there, or here:
    Code:
    =IFERROR(ROUND(VLOOKUP($B2; INDIRECT("'"&E$1&"'!$B$2:$Z$19"); COUNTUNIQUE(INDIRECT("'"&E$1&"'!$B$2:$B$19"))+4;FALSE);1); 0)
    There's a lot to unpack there, the part I added and fully understand is the
    Code:
    IFERROR(<existing expression>; 0)
    piece which says "if the lookup failed inside <existing expression>, meaning the username we're looking for did not participate this round, instead of showing an error put a value of 0 for their score.

  14. #54

    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    Quote Originally Posted by alphastryk View Post
    There's a lot to unpack there, the part I added and fully understand is the
    Code:
    IFERROR(<existing expression>; 0)
    piece which says "if the lookup failed inside <existing expression>, meaning the username we're looking for did not participate this round, instead of showing an error put a value of 0 for their score.
    I looked up IFERROR, VLOOKUP, INDIRECT, and COUNTUNIQUE, and I'm good with all of those. The only thing that's tripping me up is the string manipulation part. It might be because I can't figure out what single quotation marks do.

  15. #55

    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    I added a Fake entrant and fixed your sheet. If you like it, you should be able to drag the formatting

  16. #56

    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    Quote Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit View Post
    I added a Fake entrant and fixed your sheet. If you like it, you should be able to drag the formatting
    I see that you manually changed the reference under Round 1 to read column 13 of Round 1. The code that was already there was fine when the Round 1 sheet is filled out. It counts the number of entrants, then adds 4, and indexes there (4 because Round Score is the 4th non-match score column, name being the first, total being second, a grey blank being the third, and round score being the fourth).

  17. #57

    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    When in doubt, hard code it out

  18. #58
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    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    Thanks for the help, guys. I didn't create the code in the spreadsheets and understand almost nothing about it.

    It worked, and I was happy with it, but I had no idea what happened when it broke.
    Good to know it was because of our remarks underneath the table.
    To solve this, perhaps we should add a bit in the bannings tab, to the right. There's plenty of space there, and no code to interfere with.
    I've added a column in the sheet for season 12 as an example. We could also add a full tab, but we already have a lot of tabs, so I think this is better.
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  19. #59
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    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    Thank you very much for the help!
    I hope I won't mess it up when I add columns and entries, but I tried to tinker and it seems to work :)

    I added a few columns, as we are already 11 and missing a few regulars (silkster, maxx!, GoblinSmashmaster (illegal entry), Phasmoid, and maybe H and Wrath of Pie). And still a week to go!

  20. #60
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    Re: 4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

    Quote Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit View Post
    When in doubt, hard code it out
    As a senior software developer, this hurt to read

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