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.
In regards to Legacy:Originally Posted by Lysandros
But but but didn't we just do this? http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...-by-Nightmare/
^^^^ That was the thing I said about that thing you just said.
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.
Thanks for posting the link TsumiBand. I often get chuckles at what you postIn 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.
In regards to Legacy:
[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"
Seems like people just want something to complain about. Learn the specialized vocabulary of the subculture and move on with life.
♀
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.
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.
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".
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.Thanks for posting the link TsumiBand. I often get chuckles at what you post
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"
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?
Last edited by FTW; 01-13-2014 at 06:49 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.
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.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
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?
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.
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.
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.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
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.
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]
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).
In regards to Legacy:
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.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
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.
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