General The Constructed thread

CML

CML

Contributor
why is he selling out for no money? is it a BAD IDEA?? ... "it's unclear"

now everyone watch this

 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I dunno, I mean, Magic is a hobby, let people enjoy talking themselves into the merits of their bad decks right? Then let the Pro Tour show what's actually worthwhile.

I know scrubs are scrubs, but their existence doesn't have any particularly negative impact on me. Just beat them and move on with life. I am not actually aware of any unneeded nerfs or bannings ever happening as a result of scrub-level play, and the cream will rise to the top anyways. The great thing about competition is that you can ignore all those dumb arguments and just show what's effective.

I've often argued that the reason most cube designs are so awful is that there is no evolutionary mechanism to force them to improve. If your decks is awful / sub-optimal / whatever, it will lose or somebody else will come along and make it better. If your cube is riddled with awful design faults, all I can try to do try and change it is make arguments. But thankfully I never have to play said cubes.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
i don't disagree, but there's little incentive to play MTG in terms of money or (the real objection to this and all other nerd things) poo-na-nay, both the game itself and the broader experience paint us as pretty irrational

woo is pretty good at MTG
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
CML said:
why is he selling out for no money? is it a BAD IDEA?? ... "it's unclear"

now everyone watch this

Click to expand...

I'm sure there's a crack here about libertarianism to be made, but do you ever consider that you focus way too much on the profitability of Magic as a hobby? I don't really understand the crusade. Maybe people weight attention / fame / liberty above the financial expected value, maybe their personal utility is tied to other metrics. And what's so bad about other people living their lives suboptimally anyways?
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Like, what's the end game here? If everybody is like "you're right CML, there's not much money in playing Magic 'professionally'", do you "win"? I just don't know why the "there's no money in Magic" schtick has to be hammered so hard all the time.

 
anotak

anotak

Jason Waddell said:
I dunno, I mean, Magic is a hobby, let people enjoy talking themselves into the merits of their bad decks right? Then let the Pro Tour show what's actually worthwhile.

I know scrubs are scrubs, but their existence doesn't have any particularly negative impact on me. Just beat them and move on with life. I am not actually aware of any unneeded nerfs or bannings ever happening as a result of scrub-level play, and the cream will rise to the top anyways. The great thing about competition is that you can ignore all those dumb arguments and just show what's effective.

I've often argued that the reason most cube designs are so awful is that there is no evolutionary mechanism to force them to improve. If your decks is awful / sub-optimal / whatever, it will lose or somebody else will come along and make it better. If your cube is riddled with awful design faults, all I can try to do try and change it is make arguments. But thankfully I never have to play said cubes.
Click to expand...
i think its fine if people like a bad deck if they either know or can accept its a bad deck and aren't in it to improve. not everyone sees competitive games as something that should be played 100% or not at all, and i get that.

i don't think it is fine to be someone that new players look up to for advice and then post garbage as if its a real thing especially in the hopes of making money CML mad about non-money. this is my biggest peeve about it. people go on these sites trying to get better and then get told stuff that's just plain wrong

not an mtg example, but sentinel in mvc3 version is a good example of something getting nerfed because of bad play. deathstroke in injustice is another example. both got nerfed not even just once despite not deserve nerfing in the first place.

i dont feel have enough actual experience with constructed magic to make actual comments about validity of bannings. i've heard things like this about the banning of kird ape but that happened way before i played. i'm sure the gigantic modern banlist isn't free of such offenders.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I don't know if the Modern analogs really can be made as arguments. Wizards bans to achieve a desired metagame, and from that perspective I don't know that a banning can be considered to be "valid" or "invalid". I guess if you had some measurable metric like "format diversity", one could argue that inclusion of certain cards on the banned list would not decrease said metric.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
Jason Waddell said:
I don't know if the Modern analogs really can be made as arguments. Wizards bans to achieve a desired metagame, and from that perspective I don't know that a banning can be considered to be "valid" or "invalid". I guess if you had some measurable metric like "format diversity", one could argue that inclusion of certain cards on the banned list would not decrease said metric.
Click to expand...


at the risk of going further down the rabbit-hole and harping on it even more than usual, which i agree is already too much, i'd argue that the lack of money in mtg "affects all of us, man," as the entire culture would be different if pros did exist; arguably the game itself would be better, too; and it annoys me when people pretend there isn't a problem, or that the problem doesn't matter, both of which woo is guilty of, while whining about people saying "negative shit" as a defense mechanism of an untenable worldview

the endgame is that the reality of wizards changes, or that, more realistically, everyone stops being delusional about the reality of it. in the meantime i enjoy pointing out hypocrisies and cultural flaws, it's much more fun than pretending they don't exist, though of course there is always the danger of descending to their level, which the word 'grok' captures nicely
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
I'm convinced there's some absurd deck in here, help me find it:

VzAUDvj.png
 
anotak

anotak

so next week my local magic meetup is doing a small proxied alternate standard format. we chose by just going in order and each naming a set and we have

large sets:
innistrad
modern masters

core sets:
m11
portal 3 kingdoms

small sets:
mirrodin besieged
alara reborn
judgement
torment

i chose torment out of these. the lands seem pretty terrible (5 tainteds, 10 checklands, city of brass, 5 vivids, terramorphic and thats it). so either you need to be 2 colors or have everything CIPT. i chose first.. if i had known vivids were in i'd probably have chosen tempest or shadowmoor to get reflecting pool in

i need to brew for this, so far i've come up w/
monoblack - cabal coffers liliana of the veil grave titan massacre wurm sign in blood imperial seal
wolf run ramp - goyf and titan and sword and wolf run. gets crushed by monoblack
wildfire - burning of xinye and destructive force are in but theres no manarocks so this seems like a red herring unless i can somehow squeeze this into wolf run ramp maybe???
unburial gifts - mana seems too shitty unless you run all vivids. gets crushed by monoblack
storm - there's manamorphose grapeshot burning wish empty the warrens past in flames lotus bloom pyromancer's swath. this seems to have slight advantage over monoblack presideboard i guess but the cabal therapys and duresses hurt it pretty bad. also ethersworn canonist and other stuff is in
4c land destruction - rancid earth stone rain acidic slime bramblecrush vivid lands + all the cascade spells. this deck makes monoblack into a joke but it doesn't seem like actually good against any of the others
white weenies - aether vial ravages of war squadron hawks some efficient dudes + a sword or two.
delver - preordain lightning bolt path to exile mana leak snapcaster mage. gets surprisingly crushed by monoblack so far in my testing
kiki-jiki - both it and pestermite and imperial recruiter are in but despite this the deck seems bad fighting the other decks i tested
5c control/midrange - not sure about this but it seems possible with all vivids. i don't want to get blood moon[c/]'d out though lol
monored seems bad but it has
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
You can recreate most of the Speculation Storm deck from Extended a few years back. The idea is to Quiet Speculation for Lava Darts, then go Swath -> flashback Darts -> Grapeshot; you can also Speculation for Deep Analysis against discard/control, and Innistrad gives you Past in Flames (!).

Something like:

4 Lotus Bloom
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Manamorphose

3 Quiet Speculation
4 Lava Dart
2 Deep Analysis
1 Past in Flames

4 Pyromancer's Swath
3 Grapeshot

4 Burning Wish
4 Ponder

SB:
1 Quiet Speculation
2 Deep Analysis
1 Empty
1 Grapeshot
1 Past in Flames

Echoing Truth/Peer through Depths/Pact of Negation are there too, and you probably want an Empty or two MD.
 
anotak

anotak

the bad bug deck i've been playing pretty much since deathrite got spoiled is no longer legal so i guess i might try something actually good

or i could just play fae
i liked extended fae but this environment is different and i can't put a jitte on my counterspells in this format
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
So just ignore mana dorks and 3-drops and go Nacatl + Kird Ape and laugh at anybody playing Pyroclasm? Or play Pyroclasm yourself?
 
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