I am unreal giddy right now:
13 – Lybaert, Marijn [BEL] – $5000 – 8
This kid is seriously amazing. I know that the only things that have appeared in my articles more than flagrant Marijn namedrops are overlong awkwardly-constructed grammatically-incorrect sentences, but still. If there were such things as fantasy Magic brackets, mine would feature a giant illustration of Marijn wailing on the entire Magic community with a massive, animal-bone club as the nation of Japan skulks sullenly in the background waiting for the racket to stop. His face would rest squarely in the center of the page, the trophy atop his head pressing his hair into increasingly grander emo-curls that dangle perilously over his irises, and the rest of the names in the bracket would be obscured by unintelligible clusters of letters reminiscent of the ones he strings together like spilt Alphabet Soup in every single one of his e-mails:
“jOwa! Blah Blah Blah your decks are terrible, GRTZ!*”
“Marijn. What the hell does GRTZ mean?”
“Well, it’s like ‘greetings’. But it’s at the end of an e-mail, so you can’t say ‘greetings,’ because you’re not greeting them. It’s the same idea, though, right? So you just shorten it. I came up with the idea myself.**”
Ah. Euros these days. I swear.
I wish I could ride the wave of his success Nikki Hilton-style and cement my name in the annals of Magic history by virtue of sheer association, but sadly he didn’t play anything even remotely resembling my deck. Frown. At least I can say his Tim Aten name, Marvin the Bear. The same cannot be true of M-a-r-i-j-n L-y-b-a-e-r-t. Damn English.
Not you, Craig.
For reference, here’s the list I sent out to my (insanely small, three person) playtest group the Wednesday before Yokohama:
3 Void
4 Stupor
4 Damnation
4 Foriysian Totem
4 Bogardan Hellkite
4 Aeon Chronicler
4 Prismatic Lens
3 Tendrils of Corruption
4 Sudden Death
3 Molten Slagheap
1 Dreadship Reef
1 Island
2 Mountain
4 Terramorphic Expanse
2 Urza’s Factory
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
11 Swamp
Sideboard
4 Sulfur Elemental
2 Sengir Nosferatu
1 Enslave
1 Void
3 Pull from Eternity
1 Plains
3 Curse of the Cabal
No one said they were playing it, though.
Creatures (8)
Lands (26)
Spells (28)
Sideboard
Oh.
I never actually gave my list to Frank explicitly, so I have no idea if his idea was derivative of mine or not, but still. Giddy. It’s actually impossible to document how much better Plague Sliver is than Sengir Nosferatu, and how bad Curse of the Cabal is compared to Detritivore (probably). But I’m glad that, at least on the surface, my Block testing wasn’t for naught.
Honestly, though, the real reason I’m giddy is because, for the first time since early January, I actually have the proper amount of time to devote to my articles due to school being out and my newspaper job coming to an end. I left the Flyer – which I loved – to start my biodiesel company, but hopefully the reduction in words-per-week I have to churn out will eliminate sentences like:
“It’s difficult to gauge when to deploy an Avenger, for example, and there’s always this psychological rock-paper-scissors that comes about when resolving a Void to try and determine what you’re most scared of in the opponent’s hand versus what you need to immediately take off the board.”
I sure hope a couple of y’all understood that, because I definitely don’t. It’s like Craig was paying us for every unneeded clause and dangling adverb we could muster, and I was bound and determined to get a bonus.
I do want to address a couple of “this-column”-related issues, though, before I move on.
When I volunteered to start writing a weekly, I did so knowing that there would be some sacrifices I’d have to make. There was a period shortly after my Daily Series on Coldsnap Limited, and again after my November article about the role of luck, where I was regularly receiving offers from StarCityGames.com major competitors and was extremely confident in my ability to write about Magic. I don’t think anyone will disagree with me that the stylistic quality of my articles has dropped since then. I personally feel that I’m writing strategy as well as I ever have, but my readership has been steadily declining since the Tenacious Tron article, and it’s obvious that I’m doing something wrong.
Putting an amount of time and effort up to par with my old standards will go a long way to solving this problem, but I want to hear from y’all: what am I doing right, and what could I improve? I feel that my best pieces of writing are the CAL piece, the Daily Series I did on Standard last April, the “Avoiding Idiocy” bit that I alluded to earlier, the Tenacious Tron article, and Chatter: One More Shot. If the majority of you don’t agree with this assessment, let me know what sort of piece you prefer! If what I think is good is the complete opposite of what people actually want to read, I need to take that into consideration as quickly as I can.
I guess it’s best to let y’all know where I’m coming from: what my goals are when I sit down to write something, and what I myself like to read in a Magic article.
It used to be that my two greatest emphases were 1) being entertaining and 2) communicating something unique and noteworthy with every piece. As I mentioned before, when taking on a daily I knew I’d have to sacrifice something, and I made the decision to sacrifice a lot of stylistic adornments in favor of continuing to try and help people play better Magic. This is because when I sit down to read something someone else wrote about Magic, I’m doing so to add to my knowledge base. If I wanted to have a verbal sparring bout with a regent of repartee, I’d be watching witty British television. I therefore get irritated when I get through an entire article that doesn’t say anything I don’t already know. Of course, the best writers are astoundingly entertaining and strategically valuable, but that doesn’t happen often. To put it in perspective, the “My Fires” series contained some of my favorite articles of all time.
This entire thought process rests on the assumption, of course, that y’all think I’m actually saying something of strategic value more often than not. If you don’t, I 1) need to re-evaluate my assumptions about what people do and do not know about a format, 2) clear up my language to ensure that any lack of clarity isn’t simply due to awkward sentence construction, and 3) take suggestions.
So: ship me e-mails! I want to thank all of you who regularly send me positive comments, but this invitation is for the people who think I’m doing everything wrong. Help me out!
I mentioned “One More Shot” earlier, and I can’t allude to it without tackling Those Couple Of Paragraphs.
I’m going to go ahead and excerpt the entire section that people seem to be having a problem with, because for those of you who are unaware of the whole debacle I want to see what you think—and for those of you that are, I’m betting that several of you haven’t even read the actual lines themselves.
I win the match after that, and get paired against everyone’s favorite pint-size Vietnamese crusader, Tuan Nguyen. Mr. Nguyen is famous for 1) being of similar size, stature, and demeanor to a “Jawa” from Star Wars, 2) opening Goblin Sharpshooter and at least one other huge Red rare bomb coincidentally and exclusively via the luck of the draw in three consecutive Onslaught Sealed Decks, and 3) refusing a prize split in the finals of a PTQ for London against Jack Cooke in the days before plane tickets, beating Jack due to bad draws, and then revealing that he had no intentions of going to Pro Tour: London at all. Jack, meanwhile, was going to be in London at that point in time anyway.
In other words, Tuan received fewer prizes than he would have received with a concession, and cakked Jack out of a Pro Tour for no reason. It was actually strictly worse for both players.
Those of you who paid attention in your English classes have surely picked up on the oh-so-subtle foreshadowing.
I was 4-1-1 and a lock with a concession. Tuan was 4-2 and mathematically eliminated from contention. While I would of course never explicitly offer a prize split in exchange for a concession, I would always reciprocate (and have always reciprocated) the generosity of people who concede to me. If someone’s scooping me into the Top 8, they’re going to get my prizes, because I couldn’t possibly care less about booster packs. I don’t expect the same treatment when I scoop to people myself, but that’s just how I roll. Obviously Tuan doesn’t scoop, bashes me in two games due to awful draws (and a potential misplay on the final turn of the second game that I’m pretty sure was correct but may not have been if he was running Putrefy – a detail I ought to have known), and ekes Alex Kim into 8th place because I didn’t make it. Kim obviously goes on to win the PTQ due to facing no real opposition, the highlight being a Scepter-Chant deck that would have lost to Kim’s mulligan to four despite a turn 2 Scepter on Chant if Alex hadn’t been on FBT and end-stepped a Gaea’s Might for no reason whatsoever because he was frustrated at his mulligan.
To recap:
Tuan received fewer prizes than he would have received with a concession, and cakked me out of a Pro Tour (potentially) for no reason. It was actually strictly worse for both players.
Now, Billy Moreno put forward a very good and convincing argument that a player can never be criticized for choosing to play out a game, since after all we ostensibly come to tournaments to “Play Magic.” However, a person can be criticized for acting irrationally. When an action you take results in a worse outcome for all parties involved, including yourself, and no tangible benefits emerge whatsoever, it can safely be considered “irrational.” At least my stalling hard-locked Tog opponent was still in contention for Top 8.
Which is why I’m going out of my way at every event I ever attend to ensure that Mr. Nguyen doesn’t receive a single favor from anybody. He’s free to call my bluff and see what happens.
For those of you who don’t know, based on this seemingly-innocuous set of paragraphs I have been accused of everything from being a virulent racist, to possessing an enormous sense of entitlement, to offering bribes, to engaging in slander, to everything else under the sun. I will confess that even at this particular juncture, looking back at something I wrote two months ago, I still don’t see what the big deal is. Nevertheless, I’ll go ahead and isolate the particular sections that seem to have set people aflame.
Mr. Nguyen is famous for 1) being of similar size, stature, and demeanor to a “Jawa” from Star Wars.
This is apparently “slanderous,” despite the fact that the statement has no relevant truth-value by which to gauge its accuracy. Maybe it’s because I’m from the South, but when I see someone wanting to engage in a personal attack against someone else, they do things like call them an *sshole and tell them to come outside and fight. They certainly do not hurl facetious insults about “size, stature, and demeanor” against one another. “I bite my thumb at thee, sir!”
Which is why I’m going out of my way at every event I ever attend to ensure that Mr. Nguyen doesn’t receive a single favor from anybody. He’s free to call my bluff and see what happens
This may be what got everybody. Personally, it makes perfect sense to me that if you actively “come to play,” and never ID with anybody for any reason, then by the same token nobody ought to ID with you for any reason. If you think they should, you are guilty of a tremendous sense of – gasp – entitlement***. This is what I meant when I said “I don’t want this guy to receive a single favor from anybody.” I obviously don’t mean “favor” in the sense of, “I hope nobody jumpstarts his car” for him or whatever. That was mentioned nowhere in the course of the entire discussion. Similarly, by “he’s free to call my bluff and see what happens,” I quite clearly mean, “he’s free to ask a favor from a friend of mine and see if they give it to him.” This is not in any way ambiguous, and again, I don’t see why any rational person would have a problem with my letting people know that Tuan wouldn’t reciprocate the favor.
Notice that nowhere do I mention anything about concessions being morally right or wrong. I don’t have the information at hand to prove that argument either way, so like a rational person I abstain from making a claim about it. I simply want people to behave in a manner that’s consistent with the responsibilities they levy upon themselves by their decisions.
If you disagree with me, of course that’s fine! I know there are many people out there who think that all intentional draws are the devil. That viewpoint is not inconsistent with anything I said in the above excerpt. You can take issue with the fact that I look at tournaments from an economic – and by that I mean “game theory economics-related” not “pecuniary” – standpoint, but that hardly has to do with anything I wrote in this instance. If you want to know why I think the way I do, please, write to me in person! Moreover, if you think you’re correct and have a good argument as to why, I’d love to hear it. I’m certainly not correct all of the time, and I’m not going to stick my fingers in my ears and cry “Neener Neener Neener!” to opposing opinions!
Finally, I’ve been accused of being arrogant, of being condescending, of acting like I always know what I’m talking about. I can only respond to that by urging you to talk to me in person, or talk to the people who know me and get their opinions on that. I would certainly ask you not to discount what I’m writing about based on my tone of voice.
The fact is that while I never intentionally try and sound like an *sshole, I am sure I belabor certain points to excess. Part of this is, invariably, that I’ll think there’s some particularly difficult concept I need to elucidate when in reality my readers understand it perfectly. Moreover, there will be times when I’m flat wrong – and I’m not opposed to anyone telling me so. But if I’m confident enough to write it down on a page and show it off to several thousand people every week, I’m confident enough to stand by my conclusions. Sometimes, and I know this can get irritating if done to excess, this necessitates an extremely academic tone of voice. I like to be as precise as I can, and because of that (in strategic sections, anyway) I’ve got to hammer things down in absolute terms.
Man. I take pride in going on for days without saying anything, but that was six whole pages. You can put it on my tab.
…
So the question on everybody’s mind is, “What happened to White Weenie in Time Spiral?” That’s certainly the question on my mind, because when I penned my article on Tuesday I boldly made the prediction that it would dominate the tournament – and this was before the PE Top 8 with eight White Weenie decks. What was the deal?
In short, I would argue – not much.
If you ask me, the deck is still insane. Craig Jones is right that in the current metagame you absolutely have to cut Javelineers, but all the principles that made the deck good last week still stand. I think its lack of success at the Pro Tour was a combination of 1) not all that many people playing it, comparatively speaking, 2) Blood Knights, Wildfire Emissaries, and Sulfur Elementals, and 3) the average skill level of the players piloting non-WW decks being much higher than the average skill level of the players piloting WW decks. Karsten more or less said this yesterday, and in the PTQ season you can anticipate factors 2 and 3 easing up greatly. I will talk, though, about the Red deck, since it seemed more or less that it was under a lot of players’ radar.
I alluded to the archetype in my article a few weeks back, but I don’t think I ever actually mentioned a decklist. For simplicity’s sake I’ll just use Marijn’s deck, which I think was a superior choice for the Pro Tour than Levy’s, but not necessarily for the PTQ season.
Creatures (25)
- 4 Greater Gargadon
- 2 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
- 4 Magus of the Scroll
- 3 Mogg War Marshal
- 4 Blood Knight
- 4 Keldon Marauders
- 4 Sulfur Elemental
Lands (24)
- 1 Pendelhaven
- 19 Mountain
- 4 Desert
Spells (11)
Sideboard
Again, I wish I had something to do with the design of this deck, but alas, we can’t all be Rhett Butler. What I want to do is take this through the five principles I outlined last week, and see if it holds up to my theories about “what makes a good deck in TSP Constructed.” If it does, then decks like this prove to be an excellent creative exercise for what a player can do when he figures out certain rules about a format. Create lists that follow those rules, and you’ll succeed.
Can the deck deal with Damnation?
In this case, the answer is clearly a resounding, “yes!” Marauders does all of its damage before Damnation hits, War Marshal leaves behind a guy, Sulfur Elemental comes out at instant speed ready to get in his beats before Big Dammy Damns can even catch up with his lightning-quick reflexes, and Good Ol’ Gargs looms ominously in the rafters just waiting for a good chance to strike.
If that wasn’t enough, you’ve got 4 Disintegrates to shore up the deal. Out of the board, Avalanche Riders are positively insane, hitting for hasty damage and stopping Damnation from being cast in the first place.
Can the deck punish investment strategies?
The deck is real fast, that is for sure. More importantly, Jaya, Magus of the Scroll, and Rift Bolt / Disintegrate insure that the deck can deal massive lump sums of damage. The second an investment player fails to stem the bleeding in favor of his big set-up spell, he can be hit for a giant Disintegrate, have a horde of guys plopped in his face, or (even more dangerously) be at such a precarious life total that he’ll end up losing anyway. Also, Avalanche Riders help tremendously in this regard yet again.
Does the deck take advantage of its own turn 1 plays, and can it deal with the turn 1 plays of other decks?
Magus of the Scroll qualifies as one of those one-drops that taps to deal damage, and therefore I don’t mind playing it. Unlike the Gold Medallist**** he doesn’t pack it to Sulfur Elemental, and he can win a game by himself. Gargadon, meanwhile, is probably the best thing possible to do on turn 1, and Rift Bolt / Dead-Gone can be played on that turn depending on the situation. Sure, you’re not going to want to run the delayed Spark Elemental very often, but in certain matchups it’s plain correct to do so.
Can the deck overcome the format’s countermagic by playing several threats in one turn, and / or can it deal with countermagic in general?
The deck’s seven Split Second spells (post-board) go a long way to neutering the effectiveness of Cancel mana, particularly when Word of Seizing can do just about anything in concert with Gargadonsies. Lest we forget, though, Gargadon himself is an insanely powerful deterrent to counterspells, because if someone gets greedy they might find themselves on the wrong end of nine damage. It can also set up turns like “Magus? Doesn’t resolve? Sweet, Jaya” that present “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situations to the control player for very little mana. Finally, as has been said many times, there’s always the Disintegrate for eight.
Can this deck deal effectively with the abundance of strong, evasive White creatures?
It’d be easy to say, “Of course! Sulfur Elemental and Blood Knight,” but it’s worth noting that it can still easily kill Serra Avenger with any of ten cards, and that Gone is quite good at getting rid of pesky Griffin Guides. Sure, if a GG gets on a Priest without a Sulfur Elemental coming down first, this deck is in some trouble. At the same time, though, it’s more than capable of racing right back – and anyway, there are Serrated Arrows out of the board.
…
This has been long. I apologize for the long-windedness, but I had a lot to say (a.k.a. I really enjoy the sound of my own voice and my clicking keys).
See y’all next week.
Zac
* More or less an actual quote.
** An actual quote.
*** Everybody’s favorite buzzword, now, apparently – even though Chapin wrote about it in January, I ripped it from him shamelessly in February, and now everyone’s slinging the word like “mise” in 2001.
**** Obv, and yes, I lost whatever cool points I might have had for this one.