Have any of you tried the site www.googlism.com? It’s a blast. You really get some funny lines. Basically you can input a person, place, time or thing, and it will return a bunch of sentences that begin with that person, place, time, or thing from websites from a Google search. Here are some results:
jeff cunningham is a player like no other when it comes to provoking passion from crew fans
jeff cunningham is getting pressure from the jamaican soccer federation to play in the english first division
jeff cunningham is questionable because of a groin strain
kai budde is looking directly at you
kai budde is very close to pass andré konstanczer
*I can’t put the other nice one for Kai I found here, but by all means, look for yourself*
anton jonsson is really disappointed with suntail hawk
adam chambers is chased by leicester city’s muzzy izzet
adam chambers is the hotest boy alive crystal charping
adam chambers is as real as the streets
As you can see, these results range from hilarious, to incoherent, to frighteningly accurate. I think the best use of event coverage is out of context googlisms. Though it is truly hilarious when a name matches a name from another genre. Anyway, this is what boredom at work gets you.
PTQs are such a grind. Before I got on the train, I lived for them. I would be up until 2am the night before with anticipation, and then wake up before my alarm to start the three-hour drive to wherever.
That fire has been extinguished. I blame the gravy train. The irony of professional Magic is that it is far more difficult to win a PTQ than fall off the gravy train once you are on it. It seems to me the only way to fall off is to skip events. It happened to me. Forgive me if I have whined about this in earlier articles, but skipping Worlds in Berlin was just brutal.
I suppose I could whine about it some more, but where would that get us? You’d learn nothing and start to read these pessimistic, self-loathing, self-deprecating lines as if they came from the brain of Tim Aten, and the last thing I want is the sort of contradicting pity Tim is constantly fishing for. Though that style has garnered a vastly larger readership than my style, and I Top 8’d WORLDS*.
So where does that leave me? I am back with the rest of you, in the trenches, slugging it out with wannabes and has-beens, each of them secretly snickering at my fall from grace, each one excited to prove I am not all I am cracked up to be.
The absolute best way to prove that in the current Limited environment? Umezawa’s Jitte. This card is by far and away the best Limited card ever printed. Nothing else is remotely close. Empyrial Armor, Cursed Scroll, Masticore, Phyrexian Processor, Lin Sivvi, Power Matrix, Aboshan, Visara, Pristine Angel, Meloku, Kumano. None of these cards can even hold a candle to the Jitte.
I want to preface this section (and the third section) by expressing my esteem for R&D. I think that the job they are doing with Magic is amazing and that any company should be proud to have the sort of product that R&D continually produces.
However…
Now I am usually not one to complain about card power-levels in Limited. Sure a single card can win you the game, but it’s rare and there are always answers. So why am I so steamed about the Jitte? Why am I about to say…
They should ban Umezawa’s Jitte in Limited.
Limited wasn’t really a format until Mirage was released. It was the first set that was genuinely concerned with booster draft. Well in this block there came a card that would become the bar by which all other Limited bombs are measured. Empyrial Armor. I heard a rumor, and I don’t really know if there was any truth to it at all, that this card was being considered for banning in booster draft. It certainly makes sense. It was warping the format as much as anything banned in Constructed had ever warped a card. People would force White, and regardless of how their draft went they would open Empyrial Armor and they’d be all set.
I understand the Jitte is different. It’s a rare, and it doesn’t unbalance the colors, but I still think that there are some major issues here:
Once Jitte is on the table, the game is more or less unwinable. If you don’t have one of the few answers to Jitte, you aren’t going to beat it. It would require a level of bad luck almost unheard of for the Jitte player to lose unless they were so far behind nothing could be done.
There are so few answers to it. There are hard answers like Hearth Kami, Wear Away and Terashi’s Grasp, but they aren’t very powerful on their own. There are soft answers to it, like Split-Tail Miko, Eight-and-a-Half-Tails, and in some rare instances Kitsune Healer, but as you can see all of these answers lie in a few colors. There is no way Blue or Black can realistically deal with the card, and it is difficult at best for the other colors.**
It is in no way skill testing. The only skill it really tests is the ability to know that it is a good card despite the fact that the picture sucks. I can’t tell you how many games I have played in which the board was clogged and I had a Jitte. I couldn’t figure out the best play, so I just equipped the Jitte to my most expendable guy, attacked and went on to win the game. Every time I did this I knew my play wasn’t optimal, but it just didn’t matter. Once you have Jitte in play, it doesn’t matter at all how well or poorly you play.
It outclasses almost every other bomb. The only bomb that can defeat a Jitte in a heads up battle is 8.5 Tails. Kumano, Kokusho, Keiga, Meloku, Hikari, Ink-Eyes, Final Judgment, all of these cards can’t really beat Jitte in head to head battle. I once cast Kumano on turn 5, Kokusho on turn 6 at 15 life and got demolished by Jitte. I had no shot at any point in this game.
It is no fun at all to play against. I had a Jitte in my league deck on Magic: Online. I didn’t get it until week 2 but in the last three weeks I would cast a Jitte game one and on several occasions my opponent would concede the match. This sounds to me like behavior that went on with Affinity in Constructed.
Who does it hurt? The banning of this card would hurt no one. It isn’t like Wizards has a policy against making completely unplayable rares. There are tons of rares that even the worst of players wouldn’t consider putting in a deck. Look at Cranial Extraction. That card has a lot of value in Constructed, but I wouldn’t look at it twice in Limited. Even if they banned it in Constructed it isn’t like none of us have opened a Pale Moon. If they banned the card, and I cracked my second pack and there were a Jitte in it, I’d roll my eyes, and probably make some not-so-witty comment about how insane it would have been if I could have taken the Jitte. Meanwhile, I’d play the Waxmane Baku and be happy about it. I can’t imagine banning a card in Limited would hurt its value any, so dealers and collectors aren’t getting hurt. Even rare-drafters won’t get hurt and I hate rare-drafters!
In fact the only real drawback I can see is that it sets a precedent they may not want to set. The card would have to be emergency banned to really help the environment. I don’t see that happening. As it stands now it will only be in Limited about another six months or so. What I am guessing is happening over at Wizards is that they don’t want to ban a card in Limited because the next time they print an acceptable rare like Meloku, they will get tons of e-mails and articles about banning it.
I would be truly shocked if they didn’t ban Jitte in Block Constructed after the PT. Bannings in Constructed are a lot more productive. While it is a bigger problem in block since every player has the option of using four in their deck, it isn’t as impactful on a specific game. It is easier to play the cards that can defeat it. Since anyone can play four, it becomes a foil to itself since it is Legendary. You know it is coming so you can main deck the answers.
You can’t effectively do this in Limited. You can’t just main deck a Terashi’s Grasp because you might face a Jitte. The fact that Jitte is rare almost makes it more of a problem, since you aren’t getting enough value by planning for it, yet you have no shot of winning any game in which it is cast and not dealt with.
I am not a big fan of most cries for banning. In fact, I once swore to myself I’d never do it. Add to that the fact that this will likely not produce the desired result and you may ask yourselves why I am wasting my time. Well let’s just say that sometimes the battle is more important than the victory.
I realize that in this particular case Jitte was a mistake. There is no way R&D could have possibly known what they were doing to Limited or Constructed. The main point here is to try to at east open the door on bannings in Limited.
I completely understand that mistakes happen. You can’t fault someone or a group for making a mistake. What you can fault them for is not correcting it. This Jitte problem is correctable. Come on DCI. Show some balls and go correct it.
GP: Detroit
I had plane tickets to leave Albany, NY at 7:15 pm on Friday April 22. At 4pm I cancelled my flight. All that was drawing me there were people I wanted to hang out with that I was going to see in two weeks time in Philadelphia. I am burnt out on traveling and I am burnt out on tournament Magic. My first PTQ was 5th Edition/Visions limited. My first tournament was right after Revised (3rd Edition) came out. My first booster pack was Antiquities. I need a break.
I did, however want to comment on the Top 8. I’ll start with the good stuff. This is the first Top 8 I can ever remember where there wasn’t a single member who hadn’t Top 8’d a GP or PT before. That’s an impressive stat. I’m not completely sure it is true, but I am almost positive it is true for GPs. The Top 8 was jam-packed with friends of mine, and won by my closest friend in the bunch. It’s at a minimum arguable that the 8 best players in the tournament made Top 8 (though I would be one arguing against it). An American won, which is far from a guarantee these days.
Now for the bad stuff… If I hear one more person call this the best Top 8 in GP history I might kill them. During Kibler’s run of like 20 GP Top 8’s in a row, the Top 8’s were so staggering it was absurd. In most of these Top 8’s Osyp, the best player in Detroit’s Top 8 [Better than Remie? – Knut], wouldn’t have been one of the top 3 players. Huey, Kibler, Rubin, and Maher were all consistently making Top 8’s back then and those four with any other four would beat Detroit’s Top 8 in an 8 on 8 battle.
This was the best Top 8 in a long time, I can’t deny that, but calling it the best ever is just a slap in the face to the history of Magic. I suppose if you want to call it the best for its field, you’d have an argument, but I just have trouble with people who are seriously involved in the game not respecting its history.
The Invitational
I’m not overly pleased with the field. However, since it is always likened to the All-Star Game, I suppose voting is the best way to do it. I don’t like the group votes at all. I’d say one of the five most deserving people in Magic is not invited to the Invitational. It is the most egregious oversight I can recall. Anton Jonsson deserves to be there more than a good number of players currently on the list. While Terry Soh did deserve to go more than Pierre Canali, for R&D to put him there over Anton is sickening. I don’t want to take anything away from Terry, but R&D had the chance to right a major wrong here. Anton has been playing forever and it’s just in the past two years has hit his stride. His stride is so much better than anyone else’s in the game besides Nassif, it wasn’t even a difficult call. Terry Soh got bad beat in the Rookie ballot, but basically what R&D decided was that it was better to bad beat Anton instead of Terry. This was a terrible call. Anton has done so much for the game. He keeps battling even though his friends, one by one, stop playing. He is sportsmanlike, he writes articles, and he has been with the game for years.
I also blame Osyp for this. At Pro Tour: Atlanta he went on an advertising spree for Sam Gomersall. Again, Sam is a fine player and I get along with him, but come on. Anton was by far and away the best player on that ballot, and as good as Sam is, I don’t think I’d ever be afraid to face him in a “side draft.” (*wink wink, nudge nudge*) Anton, on the other hand, while I would draft against him, I wouldn’t be thrilled about it.
While I’m at it, shame on all of you. There were plenty of opportunities for you to step in and vote for Anton, and you didn’t seize it, now he can’t play.
I like to write these stream of consciousness articles every once in a while. The forums don’t really let me express myself the way I want to. Plus it gives me a chance to have an article go up that isn’t premium.
I hope you all enjoyed, and I hope to hear from you on these issues in the forums!
KK
[email protected]
HardKnox04 on AIM
Hankyu on mtgo
Late4Dinner… please, I’m never late for dinner.
* I don’t really have anything to expand on here, people just seem to like footnotes.
** Footnotes really don’t serve a practical purpose, they are there to indulge the writer more often than not. It would be far easier to include the text in the body.