Gifts Ungiven

This seems to be my week to disagree with Anthony Palmerio. In addition to his normal episode of The Proffessors for the week, Anthony put together a Theory in Practice episode discussing Magic highlight videos, with the premise that they are "the greatest way to watch Magic games."

So yeah, I disagree.

I understand where Anthony is coming from when he says "I don't like to sit there watching ten minutes of shuffling, ten minutes of game play, and ten minutes of thinking," but I think there's an issue with the idea that highlight videos let you "see what happened in the game, and why."

Trying to actually understand a Magic match from a highlight video is a lot like trying to recreate the flow of a baseball game from a highlight reel, or understand how poker is played by watching the highly edited television coverage of poker. You're going to come away thinking that baseball is all about hits that are or aren't fielded properly, and that poker is about people going all-in all the time.

That whole "ten minutes of thinking" part of the game is, well, part of the game. If we're looking at it from a learning perspective, you will understand a lot more about the "why" portion of "what happened and why" if you watch the entire game play out. The idea that "important things weren't happening" in the rather slow Dreadstill versus Team America match at Worlds 2008 just shows that the viewer isn't following the dynamic of the match.

I do realize some people just kind of zone out during any game that slows down. I'm with Randy Buehler here, though - I like watching two control players try to decide when to act, when to break a (perhaps literal) standstill, and so forth. To me, this is not downtime - it's the part of the match that is very interesting, far more so than someone just swinging with a bunch of creatures.

One of my favorite top eights of all time is Worlds 2005, focusing on the quarters and semis in particular. I've actually stripped the audio portion out of this event and have it on my iPod (that's five hours of listening right there for the semis and quarters, by the way); I even have the semis on two CDs in my car music collection.

I do think it helps if you don't just try to sit and watch the matches with literally nothing else going on. As I'm always doing something else when I watch a movie or television program anyway, this isn't exactly a big problem for me.

Don't get me wrong - I do love a highlight reel, and the ChannelFireball crew did a brilliant job with their highlight coverage of the recent 5K top 32. I've also made my own highlight clip, featuring my absolute favorite PT match moment:

I just think that it's good to recall that highlight videos are just what they say on the tin. They're fun and excellent narrative experiences, but probably bad learning tools.

Here's Anthony's video:

Posted by parakkum at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've noticed that the MTGSalvation forums are among the most active out there. Conveniently, they also display how many users are on any given forum at the moment, giving us a snapshot into what topics are drawing the most interest. Right now, the number of users actively viewing each forum tallies like so:

Standard - 254
Extended - 24
Legacy - 43
Vintage - 9
Block - 9

Interesting, but about what I would expect. There are other venues for dedicated Vintage players, and Extended, while being my favorite format, tends to go in bursts around PTQ seasons, whereas interest in Legacy is perennial. I don't know if I was expecting Standard to win by an order of magnitude, or for Block to be as weak as it is, but there you go.

Posted by parakkum at 01:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week's In Development is up, and it's all about the philosophical underpinnings of last week's Stoneforge Mystic Junk deck.

I also touch on how we can tune a Junk deck between power and resilience, and how to play a resilience-oriented game.

Click here to read the article.

You can also follow me at parakkum on twitter.

Posted by parakkum at 09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With the release of more pictures and other teasers for Rise of the Eldrazi, I was suddenly struck this evening by a bit of correlative nostalgia.

The Zendikar to Eldrazi transition reminds me of Earthdawn.

Earthdawn is a fantasy roleplaying game originally published by FASA, the folks who brought you Battletech (which spawned the Mechwarrior games) and Shadowrun. The Earthdawn property is currently licensed by Redbrick Limited, and you can see their Earthdawn product line by clicking here.

The concepts behind Earthdawn and Rise both clearly plug into the Greek titan myth (click here to learn more about those guys), and the general idea of "older, scarier things that are coming back."

In Rise, the Eldrazi are coming back, and it's bad news for everyone.

An Eldrazi - clearly bad news

In Earthdawn, Magic moves in multi-thousand-year cycles. When it's surging high, things go terribly wrong, and big, old-time magical creatures known as Horrors come out and wreck the world. The setup for the Earthdawn game is that when times were bad, people bricked themselves into great underground cities, some of which survived...and now that magic is on the downswing again, adventurers are out exploring the world, delving into cities that didn't make it, and fighting the occasional Horror.

An Earthdawn Horror - you will lose some party members on this one

Given that Zendikar is the "adventure gaming" block, it's not surprising that it would have some overlap with any fantasy adventure RPG. That said, I always loved the Earthdawn setting as one of real action and adventure, and it's nice that Zendikar, Worldwake, and Rise are pinging that same spot in my mind.

Posted by parakkum at 07:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A few days ago, Aaron Forsythe suggested the possibility of Legacy PTQs via twitter, following the massive turnout at GP Madrid 2010. The general responses that I saw ranged from "Yes" through "Yes, if you reprint dual lands." Brian Kibler and I asked the same question, which boils down to:

"Sure, attendance at GP Madrid was huge, but how many people there actually had viable Legacy decks?"

More generally, how many people are actually viable in general going into a Legacy event?

Lino Burgold's writeup of GP Madrid touches on the experience of playing through earlier-round opponents. I say 'earlier' as Lino still had his three byes, so these are people who have one way or another made it undefeated to rounds four and beyond. Consider:

The funny thing about Legacy players I noticed, is that they are a lot more casual than the usual player I expect to meet at a PTQ or even at the weekly draft I do at home. This means they are a lot more narrow-minded about the game in general. They often don’t read your cards, don’t understand your cards, or don’t care about what you are really doing… In fact, in the twelve rounds I played, not a single opponent actually used my Dream Halls even once…sure, most of the time they couldn’t, but often, even if they could, they just didn’t. I understand Legacy is a lot more complex considering all those old and weird cards in the format, but if you are playing the format, you might as well be prepared?

Here's what Dream Halls does, if you don't know.

...and...

In my first round, I played against a woman piloting 2-land Goblin Charbelcher (maybe even zero land Goblin Charbelcher). Besides completely fizzling to a Force of Will because she played her cards in the wrong order and wanting to respond to my counter with a Chrome Mox (???), she also failed to play Pyroblast after I resolved my Dream Halls…It didn’t matter anymore at that point.

The quality of Lino's early round opponents suggests that he may have run into the consequences of people who had access to Legacy cards plowing through people with insufficient access. I'd really like to see a broader listing of decks from round one. How many people were making do with weaker cards and, as a consequence, never had a chance at winning the tournament on deck strength alone?

Legacy GPs and other big events are pretty cool, even if I'm not currently a big Legacy player. However, having Legacy as the gateway into the Pro Tour feels ugly, and likely to turn people off from the game -- at least as long as the mana bases are so cost prohibitive.

Posted by parakkum at 07:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just turned off the latest episode of The Proffessors a few minutes in after Anthony complained about the Jund matchup being "random" and flashed Bituminous Blast and Bloodbraid on the screen. While I appreciate Anthony's production quality, this is one more in a chain of people complaining about Jund on the basis of it being basically braindead to play.

I think it's the Bituminous Blast that just did it for me this time. Here's PT San Diego champion Simon Gortzen's Jund list:

Notice the absence of Bituminous Blast anywhere in that list. Indeed, Simon's main deck is relatively "removal light," running just Bolts and Pulses, where other Jund lists run Terminates and Bituminous Blasts as well. Gortzen also chose to run twenty-seven lands and two copies of Rampant Growth, putting the emphasis on smooth mana progression.

I'm not really surprised by that choice.

As Mike Flores pointed out, Gortzen also made sound strategic choices with how he played his cards, keeping his Blightnings in hand to use as planeswalker removal rather than just autopiloting them out on turn three. You'll notice this in playing against Jund players as well. When your opponent just runs on autopilot, it's easy to beat them.

The idea that Jund plays itself, or is just "random," fundamentally misunderstands how the deck works. In playing against Jund, you should take a page from Nassim Taleb and assume that their Bloodbraids will hit the "worst case" for you. Likewise, in playing Jund, you should assume that your Bloodbraids are likely to be blanks, and plan accordingly.

The complaints about Jund now sound a lot like the complaints during Pro Tour Honolulu about cascade generally. I actually enjoy playing with and against Jund, and I think Simon Gortzen made a tremendous update to the deck and played quite cleverly.

I understand that players get a little bored when there seem to be "only a few" viable deck types in Standard. This is in one sense a product of the size of the card pools. There are just a handful of reasonable decks in Block, more in Standard, many more in Extended, and tremendously more in Legacy. However, it's also a confluence of other factors such as the fact that not everyone feels like designing and testing a deck, so reasonably stable designs are going to see a lot of play from people who just want to play.

I'd also suggest that the perception that there are just a few dominant decks relies on a very shallow review of the decks, as I alluded to above. Gortzen's Jund is a significant update on pre-Worldwake Jund. Indeed, it relies critically on new cards from Worldwake, and does not just "autopilot" on the prior Jund plan. As someone who pretty reliably plays novel or semi-novel deck designs, I have a great deal of appreciation for players who can tweak or significantly update a known archetype to deal with a shifting metagame or to accommodate a new set.

It's only "Jund wins again" if you're not paying attention. If you're so inclined, go back to the Pro Tour San Diego coverage and compare the top Standard lists to all the others. There are differences there, and they're interesting and fun.

Posted by parakkum at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Video coverage of the ChannelFireball February 5K is up. Here's my match in the top 16 against Tristan Shaun Gregson (of Magic TV fame) playing Boss Naya:

For the record, I didn't have to die that turn in game two. As I mentioned in my column earlier this week, I literally miscounted my mana and, having done so, made the "aggressive" play that made no sense. Ah, well. It was midnight.

I think these videos turned out quite well. Head over to the ChannelFireball YouTube channel to see videos of several matches from the top 32, including the finals, all with quality narration by Eric Levine.

Posted by parakkum at 12:06 AM | Permalink