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Type One Basics: Testing and Preparation

We all do it, or at least should. We think about what decks we’ll have to face, how we will defeat them, and how to shore up any weaknesses we might have against certain matchups. JP Meyer recently likened Type One to the PTQ scene. What does this mean to those of us who want to be playing next week’s deck? It means we have to do the usual preparation: test matchups, shore up weaknesses, and evaluate the environment. In addition to this, we also have to create the next “deck to beat”. Today I’m going to explain how I helped create an entirely new archetype out of an old Type One staple and turn it into one of the most powerful decks in the environment.

We all do it, or at least should. We think about what decks we’ll have to face, how we will defeat them, and how to shore up any weaknesses we might have against certain matchups. JP Meyer likened Type One to the PTQ scene.


“For a while, in Type One it seemed that since the format continues year-round there were often times great opportunities to work on a deck, keep it secret, and then unleash it on an unsuspecting tournament. Now, with (in some locations) nearly weekly tournies it seems to me like Type One is becoming more like a PTQ-style environment rather than like a PT-style format where you only need to prepare for one big event. When constructed PTQ seasons roll around, it usually seems like the most common way for a deck to win is for it to be ‘next week’s deck’.”


What does this mean to those of us who want to be playing next week’s deck? It means we have to do the usual preparation: test matchups, shore up weaknesses, and evaluate the environment. In addition to this, we also have to create the next “deck to beat”. Does it always require a new archetype? No, but it does require a fair amount of innovation, accurate prediction, and a heavy element of testing.


I’m going to use the development of the modern version of 4cControl (Project: Germbus) as an example to illustrate how idea’s, trend estimations, and testing has developed a deck that hasn’t performed solidly in over a year into a serious contender today and a dominant archetype over the summer.


Choosing Development Partners

First, I want to share a bit of history about my development team for Germbus. As many of you probably know, I own TheManaDrain.com, so I have access to a lot of great Type One minds to bounce ideas off of at my disposal. However, these great minds are the people I want to beat not clue-in to my newer tactics. Also, I belong to the most hated, but pretty damned successful (those two words always go together) team in Vintage, Team Mean Deck.


I posted on our private forums about this newer idea I had for developing 4cControl. I had been developing 4cControl for a long time, constantly evolving the deck to compete in new environments. However, Mean Deck as a whole isn’t too interested in 4cControl for a few reasons. Some of my teammates think it’s too much of a 50% deck, while others think it auto-loses to too much. At the time of my post, my efforts were severely overshadowed by Workshop Slaver, Tog, and U/G Madness.


Carl Winter has always been my partner in crime when creating new 4cControl lists, but in 2004 he’s been largely absent from posting, developing, and discussion about decks. He’s there on AIM to shoot lists at and every so often, he’ll launch one at me, but he for the most part he’s not doing much here. Matthieu Durand, TheManaDrain Administrator Toad, was really the only other one on Mean Deck playing with the ideas I had.


Enter my IRC friend and Morphling.de slave, Stefan Iwasienko, a.k.a. Womprax. Womprax belongs to the German team CAB (Creatures Are Bad). He and I are always comparing lists, which often differ as much as is expected since he plays in Germany and I play in the North East U.S. Among his teammates were Kim Kluck (original Mana Drain-based Slaver creator) and Carsten Kotter, both are consistent Dulmen top 8 performers. Apparently they had also been working on some builds. One thing leads to another and I decided to work outside the scope of my team and a Mean Deck/CAB collaboration was born. On the core development team was Team CAB members Stefan Iwasienko, Kim Kluck, and Carsten Kotter and Mean Deck members Matthieu Durand and myself.


Stefan had shown me a 4cControl build (he always puts his decks on a website to link people to them) that featured Thirst for Knowledge as its supplementary card draw. Also, they had been using Exalted Angels and Decree of Justice as the main win conditions previously. That trend had already carried over to the U.S. and I had just come of fresh from the Dual Lotus in Connecticut using the morphing little vixens. Thirst allowed them to draw and dig a bit deeper than was allowed in a typical 4cControl deck. My idea was a little different…


“One night, a few days after the Dual Lotus tournament in Hartford, CT, I had thought about adding more draw to Keeper. I do that every so often and AK simply doesn’t work, Gush is better as a sideboard card, and Read the Runes was horrible. I thought about the life-gain that Exalted Angel offered and said to myself ‘why not just 4 Scrying’. I posted the list on Mean Deck and no one else was really nearly as excited about it as I was.



The very next day, I had gotten a message from Womprax showing me his newest Keeper build. It had
Thirst for Knowledge in it – I didn’t say anything about it since I wanted my ‘4 Scrying plan’ to be confined to just my Team. The very next day, I loaded up the same page because I wanted to look at his sideboard since that’s what I still had left to work with. I noticed he had gone to 4 Scrying as well!



Combined with the lack of testing/advice support from Mean Deck, and that Smmenen was hesitant about adding more people to Mean Deck, I decided to just work with Womprax and Carsten directly.



Here is what I’ve come up with after talking to Womprax, combined with some initial testing results (all pre-board):



//Worse Than Keeper – GermBus ZherbMans

4
Flooded Strand

3 Tundra

2 City of Brass

2 Underground Sea

2 Volcanic Island

4 Wasteland

1 Island (Maybe 3rd Sea)

1
Strip Mine

1 Library of Alexandria



1
Sol Ring

1 Black Lotus

1 Mox Jet

1 Mox Sapphire

1 Mox Ruby

1 Mox Pearl



4
Force of Will

4 Mana Drain

4 Brainstorm

2 Cunning Wish



1
Ancestral Recall

1 Fact or Fiction

4 Skeletal Scrying



1
Demonic Tutor

1 Mystical Tutor

1 Yawgmoth’s Will

1 Mind Twist

1 Time Walk



2
Swords to Plowshares

1 Fire / Ice

1 Balance



2
Gorilla Shaman

3 Exalted Angel



Sideboard

3 Red Elemental Blast

2 Disenchant

2 Rack and Ruin

2 Flametongue Kavu

2 (Hammer Mage?)

1 Gush

1 Vampiric Tutor

1 Blue Elemental Blast

1 Swords to Plowshares”


For your reference, the name* “Germbus Zherbmans” was my way of illustrating that a deck that was a collaboration between the Germans and myself. Looking back on this list, and knowing how many changes I’ve gone through as the months wore on, it’s astounding how full circle I eventually came as the metagame had its weekly shifts.


Predicting the field

During this period, the field was dominated by Workshop Slaver, Control Slaver, and Tog was still a top contender. To see what sorts of decks you’ll have to face you really need to do your homework. There is the obvious research comes from reading tournament reports and looking at tournament top 8’s. Doing this will not only show you what decks are placing, but reports will show you geographic trends with the environment.


The obvious aside, you should always read what people write about. Whenever Stephen Menendian or JP Meyer write an article about a deck, it never fails to show up in twice the numbers that it did before. Also, reading threads give a pornographic level of intimacy with what some people play. The interesting thing about Type One is that it will always have people posting their lists in an attempt to get either help or credibility from the Type One community.


Once we had our gauntlet established, you can go to work on deck tweaking and testing.


Innovating

When I know what decks I need to beat, I begin to work out which cards are bombs in the field. Stefan’s mind works the same way. Remember that two brands of Slaver were popular at the time of these innovations. Also, in Germany the Goblin Charbelcher deck had gained immense popularity. As a result, Womprax knew that one card that would really work over these decks was Null Rod.


Here is an early IRC conversation between Stefan and myself about adding Null Rod to the sideboard:


“[12:21] <Wompatoad> <DECK LINK> <- what would you cut to add 2 Null Rod

[12:25] <Wompatoad> ever thought about sideboard
Opportunity? 😉

[12:26] <Zherbus> I’d just go for Gush

[12:26] <Zherbus> 90% of the time it goes for Gush or Vamp.

[12:27] <Wompatoad> I think I’ll go: -1 Gorilla Shaman -, 1Blastminer +2 Null Rod

[12:28] <Zherbus> that’s what i was thinking

[12:28] <Zherbus> or the random
Meltdown in your sideboard

[12:28] <Wompatoad> now i only have to find my Null Rods 😉

[12:29] <Wompatoad> now you should have a really good matchup against slavery, slaver, belcher, draw 7, madness, random aggro

[12:29] <Wompatoad> Tog isn’t easy.. but much better now

[12:29] <Zherbus> hehe

[12:29] <Zherbus> I dunno, Tog should be ALOT easier now

[12:30] <Wompatoad> <3 outdrawing Tog”


This is ultimately where our lists would split apart from each other due to metagame considerations. Belcher was not present at all in New England and following the local trends, it wasn’t expected to make waves anytime in the near future. Also, Workshop Slaver was famous for doing a turn 1 Chalice of the Void for two, which is a very solid play against 4cControl as it shuts off Mana Drains, Fire / Ice, Balance, Demonic Tutor, and Time Walk, but it would hit sideboard cards like Disenchant and, if I decided to run them, Null Rod too. This, is in addition to Null Rod ruining my own artifact acceleration… Needless to say, I dropped that idea for my own build.


Over the few weeks we prepared for our respective tournaments, we tested Engineered Explosives, various creature configurations (0-2 Decree, 2-4 Angels, 0-2 Gorilla Shaman), and Damping Matrix until we reached this build as our general consensus of what a model list should look like.


//GermBus ZherbMans as posted on TheManaDrain.com on 04/25/04

4 Flooded Strand

3 Tundra

3 Underground Sea

2 City of Brass

2 Volcanic Island

4 Wasteland

1 Strip Mine

1 Library of Alexandria



1 Sol Ring

1 Black Lotus

1 Mox Jet

1 Mox Sapphire

1 Mox Ruby

1 Mox Pearl



4 Force of Will

4 Mana Drain

4 Brainstorm

3 Cunning Wish



1 Ancestral Recall

1 Fact or Fiction

3 Skeletal Scrying



1 Demonic Tutor

1 Mystical Tutor

1 Yawgmoth’s Will

1 Mind Twist

1 Time Walk



2 Swords to Plowshares

1 Fire / Ice

1 Balance



2 Gorilla Shaman

3 Exalted Angel



Sideboard

3 Red Elemental Blast

3 Flametongue Kavu

2 Rack and Ruin

1 Damping Matrix

1 Disenchant

1 Gush

1 Vampiric Tutor

1 Swords to Plowshares

1 Skeletal Scrying

1 Blue Elemental Blast


Testing

Now that we had a model list, we went hard to work on testing. In order to get relevant testing in, we had to take the gauntlet that we had assembled and make sure we left no stone unturned. I would like to point out that testing in Vintage can get very exhaustive with so many viable archetypes available. The key to preliminary testing is to isolate what decks are recognized as the upper tier and to work on those matches first. It’s far more useful to know how your deck does against Control Slaver than it is to know how it does against Masknought.


Our gauntlet at the time headlined these decks:


Workshop Slaver

Control Slaver

Tog

Draw7

U/G Madness


Once we were happy with these results, we would turn our attention to less prevalent decks like Landstill and Dragon. You have to prioritize your testing because frankly, if you lose 85% of your games to something obscure, it’s going to do nothing but distract you from tweaking your deck to beat a real threat. For this article, I’ll use U/G Madness as a matchup we learned the ins and outs of.


Team Mean Deck teammates Justin (Saucemaster) and Christian (Zhalfirin) had tested the 4-Scrying version of 4cControl against U/G Madness and Belcher. They had reported disappointing results (which ultimately lead to some slight tweaks in the maindeck). Apparently, 4cControl did horrible against both matches. Here is my initial response:


“This is a surprise, honestly. I appreciate you testing this because I haven’t gotten to this matchup yet with my deck. 5 out of 6 is pretty convincing, but I noticed that no post-sb testing has been done, which a lot of matchups can hinge on. The major questions this testing poses to me are:



1) Is U/G Madness going to make it to New England?



2) Are 1 or 2 less scryings going to affect a 5 out of 6 matchup?



The answer to #1 is most likely, though out of a 35-40 person tournament I would be surprised to see any more than 2. This means it becomes a ‘rely on the SB matchup’. This 4-Scrying version is more tuned to the New England metagame, moreso like an answer deck – much like U/G looks to be the same thing for Ohio.



The answer to #2 is – not likely. I think a stronger manabase (currently the Germans and I are running a better manabase with 4 Tundra, no Islands, and 2 CoB) will make a difference though. Rootwalla’s wouldn’t be a primary STP target because a resolved Angel should take care of them, but Mongrels do scare me.



Going back to the 4 Scrying issue, some of us are currently tinkering with running 3 plus <insert draw spell we are trying here> over 4. That alone will have a minimal effect, but it might be enough.”


I was a little more than shocked. Both of my teammates involved in testing are certainly more than competent, but I really think that 4cControl should be doing better since Plowing Wild Mongrel should do a number on the deck. The problem there is that with 4 Wild Mongrels and 4 Aquamoeba, there were too many for just 2 Swords to Plowshares, and it was easy to get a madness outlet out before Cunning Wish could dig for a Plow.


I was correct though, they hadn’t tested games 2 and 3. This is a very important part of testing that a lot of people just plain ignore. I can’t stress enough that you play 50% to 66% of your games post-sideboard. I decided that it would be a priority to test the games in a tournament format (that is, best 2 out of 3 with sideboards after game 1).


Here is my testing results posted on the Mean Deck forums and the Germbus email list:


Toad played with my list against U/G Madness and won like 1 out of 5 games pre-boarded. Through discussion, we decided that without making a huge change to the maindeck, you aren’t going to fix game 1 without screwing over your other matches. My theory was that you’d do just fine after sideboarding.



Playing against Womprax:



Game 1

He plays
Tropical Island, Go.



He casts Ancestral, but I
Force of Will it pitching Fact or Fiction. I play a Wasteland.



He drops another land and a Mongrel. He has 4 cards in hand, 2 lands, and the Mongrel. I have 3 cards, 1 land.



I draw, drop a
Tundra, tap both lands to Balance (You mentioned that Balance is bad here, and I tend to agree. I wanted to basically use it as a plow before he got too rockin’ with his discarding self) He loses the Mongrel (YAY) but discards a Rootwalla to make it even. I’ll take a Rootwalla over a Mongrel any day.



The rest of the game gets bad. I draw no more removal or things that get removal. The last 6 turns of the game were land, land,
Mana Drain, Force of Will, Mana Drain, Library of Alexandria. The Rootwalla just ate me alive the whole time.



0-1 – I did ok, but I am still pretty convinced this matchup will always start with a loss… or from all compiled testing data 90% of the time.



Game 2

I start out with a fetch.



He plays a trop and a mox, then mongrel. I let it resolve, then plow it EOT.



I play a dual.



He tries another dude, which I just Drain and then I scrye for 3. I draw into FTK.



He plays a rootwalla, then I blast it with FTK. (Gets fuzzy after this point)



He tries a null rod (I got a sol ring out at some point) and I FoW that.



I plow another dude, and swing a lot for the win.



1-1



Game 3

He plays Land, Sapphire, Moeba (I think).


I play Sapphire, Brainstorm, Dual, Jet, Plow.



He Ancestrals and plays (hardcast) rootwalla. I got nothing.



I
Brainstorm again, and get a Decree.



He gets a B2B on me with
Circular Logic backup.



I draw, play a land and am forced to kill his Moeba. (1 land, 2 moxen untapped)



He tries another, and I drain it. I play a lotus, a land, cycle for 4 dudes leaving 2 mana open.



He swings with Rootwalla, then plays another B2B – I’m doing ok on life, so I just eat it.



I draw FTK, tap the 2 untapped lands and kill the rootwalla and swing for 4. He draws, then plays a hardcast
Wonder.



I plow the Wonder, swing for 8.



He gets some land.



I swing for 8. I play a Morph dude, but had only 1 White.



2-1



My thoughts : Short of really good draws on Germbus’ behalf, or bad draws on U/G Madness – Keeper will just get rolled game 1. Game 2 and 3 they bring in B2B, but I think just getting the proper amount of removal swings the matchup. FTK really hurts them as long as you keep Mongrel off the board. Moeba is a secondary major threat, but only because it’s a madness outlet.


Basically, that one testing session explained the entire matchup to me and it was just as I suspected. It’s important to share testing data and how games played out with the people that are helping you develop, because it not only holds more weight than “Madness owns Keeper, play Tog instead,” it also lets them get inside the games to see what is happening.


We also did quick and dirties when we didn’t record exactly what happened in each game. My example comes from playing against a local friend with whatever decks he happened to have on him.


I tested 1 game against Landstill, Slaver, and a weird-ass B/U Phyrexian Negator/Juggernaut deck.



1 Landstill – I crushed Landstill, but that’s to be expected.


Honestly, there wasn’t much to say here. Landstill isn’t an incredibly hard deck to play against and it’s a rarity that I actually lost to it. I know this breaks my rule of worrying about important matchups first, but it’s what the guy pulled out, so that’s what I played against.



2 Slaver – I kept
Goblin Welder off the board, drew a total of 9 cards off of 2 Scryings, and proceeded to kill them with Angel while he took 3 from Mana Crypt a few times.


I really wish I had more notes than I did here, especially since this was in my “upper tier to beat” level of testing. Fortunately I tested against this enough to be able to report more to my team on it prior, but every bit of detail helps. I just didn’t have the resources handy to keep track of plays (yes, a pen and a piece of paper were unavailable!)



3 B/U Aggro thing – Turn 1
Trinisphere set me back, since I couldn’t get too much mana. I had a Balance but he had 1 Swamp, a Juggernaut, and 4 artifacts in play. I got an Angel out, he got a Negator out. We beat on each other and then he consulted for time walk and with 10 cards left in his deck and no permanents but the Negator itself – he won. I’ve played against that deck probably a dozen times and Trinisphere + low mana caught up to me.


This B/U deck is a perfect example of when to blow off some testing losses. I’ve beaten the deck a dozen times before, but even if I hadn’t, this deck wasn’t about to start making waves in any tournament that I’d attend.


Applying lessons from testing and more refining from tournament experience


After I was done my testing and had become satisfied with my list, I played it in a tournament using this configuration:


//GermBus ZherbMans as posted on TheManaDrain.com on 04/25/04

4 Flooded Strand

3 Tundra

3 Underground Sea

2 City of Brass

2 Volcanic Island

4 Wasteland

1 Strip Mine

1 Library of Alexandria



1 Sol Ring

1 Black Lotus

1 Mox Jet

1 Mox Sapphire

1 Mox Ruby

1 Mox Pearl



4 Force of Will

4 Mana Drain

4 Brainstorm

3 Cunning Wish



1 Ancestral Recall

1 Fact or Fiction

3 Skeletal Scrying



1 Demonic Tutor

1 Mystical Tutor

1 Yawgmoth’s Will

1 Mind Twist

1 Time Walk



2 Swords to Plowshares

1 Fire / Ice

1 Balance



1 Decree of Justice

1 Gorilla Shaman

2 Exalted Angel



Sideboard

3 Red Elemental Blast

3 Flametongue Kavu

2 Rack and Ruin

1 Damping Matrix

1 Disenchant

1 Gush

1 Vampiric Tutor

1 Swords to Plowshares

1 Skeletal Scrying

1 Blue Elemental Blast


In short, I beat Fish round 1 (1-0-0), beat Control Slaver round 2 (2-0-0), intentionally drew with the mirror round 3 (2-0-1), lost to the most random Workshop thing round 4 (2-1-1… I was getting a migraine*), then won round 5 against Suicide (3-1-1), then the next the migraine was too much to bear and I just conceded and went home, fighting back vomit, took medicine, and went to sleep. I didn’t really have a bad day with my deck, the last round I gave up was Fish and had I been aware of the world outside of my nausea, headache, and dizziness, I think I could have done better. Excuses, excuses…


The next time the tournament had rolled around, I had changed my list back to something closely resembling my earliest list:


//GermBus ZherbMans

4 Flooded Strand

3 Tundra

3 Underground Sea

2 City of Brass

2 Volcanic Island

4 Wasteland

1 Strip Mine

1 Library of Alexandria



1 Sol Ring

1 Black Lotus

1 Mox Jet

1 Mox Sapphire

1 Mox Ruby

1 Mox Pearl



4 Force of Will

4 Mana Drain

4 Brainstorm

3 Cunning Wish



1 Ancestral Recall

1 Fact or Fiction

4 Skeletal Scrying



1 Demonic Tutor

1 Mystical Tutor

1 Yawgmoth’s Will

1 Mind Twist

1 Time Walk



2 Swords to Plowshares

1 Fire / Ice

1 Balance



1 Gorilla Shaman

2 Exalted Angel

1 Decree of Justice



Sideboard

3 Red Elemental Blast

3 Flametogue Kavu

2 Rack and Ruin

2 Crucible of Worlds

1 Disenchant

1 Vampiric Tutor

1 Swords to Plowshares

1 Blue Elemental Blast

1 Gush


The major difference this time around was that Crucible of Worlds was now legal. Crucible of Worlds is an entirely different article on its own. As a matter of fact, there’s already been a fistful of them written. The fact was that Crucible was just too good in some matchups to ignore. Note that from this point on, I have always brought migraine medication to tournaments as my secret tech, in fact it saved me twice already.


Here are the highlights of that day:


Round 1 – nataz with Gay/R.


Game 1 – I forget how I won, but I do remember landing an Angel and swinging a lot with it.


Game 2 – I side in Crucible of Worlds and get it out turn 2… around turn 5 I draw my first Wasteland and blow all his mana up. (1-0-0)


Round 3 – Kent with Crucible Stax.


First, lemme just say TriniStax with CoW is just BADASS! It’s really potent.


Game 1 – He gets turn 1 Workshop->Trinisphere, followed up with 2 Wastelands. Strong!


Game 2 – I stole a win with Angel I think, I really need to start taking notes…


Game 3 – Tangle Wire slows me down, he then gets a recurring CoW/Wasteland thing, then Bloodmoon hits. Ouch. (2-1-0)


Round 4 – Aaron playing 7/10.


Game 1 – I’m in his base, killing all his d00ds. Scrying feeds my hand pretty nicely. I land Angel and win.


Game 2 – I get Angel flipped over for some missionary and start in on his life total while he whittles at me with a Shaman. He Tinkers out a Sundering Titan. Poop. He hits me for 8 a turn, while I hit him for 4 but heal 4 as well. I get him to 5 life, while I’m at 8. If I swing, hes still at 1 and I wont be able to block Titan. Bleh.


Game 3 – Again, I kill his dudes and sneak an Angel under his radar. I played Skeletal twice, each for 3. He’s unable to answer it for 5 turns. (3-1-0)


Game 1 – I Twist his hand away, and throw down an Angel soon after.


Game 2 – Oh man, so hot. So like, I had 2 duals, a Pearl, a Jet, and a Sol Ring. He’s got a Welder, 4 Lands, and just Tinkered for Titan, which kills both my duals. HOWEVER, I’ve been holding Balance. He has no cards in hand, btw. So I untap, Balance and now he’s got no perms or hand. I have no lands or hand, but plenty of artifact mana. I rebound quickly from there and win.


I enter the top 8 at 4-1-1, then beat the guy I ID’d with in round 6 (with 7/10 Split) in the top 8. I then beat another 7/10 deck in the top 4.


Finals – U/G Madness


I ALWAYS lose game 1 vs Madness, but usually win the sb’d games. FTK’s and removal are really good here, and usually carry me through games 2 and 3.


Game 1 – I lose as expected. There’s just too much coming at me and I don’t get the removal/uber-Angel I need.


Game 2 – I’m way ahead on the mana thing…


…he Ancestrals and drops a Rod and a B2B. Ouch. I plow two guys, but the dudes are pouring out of his hand now.


The Top8 was


1 Gay/R

1 4cC played by the best looking guy ever.

1 7/10

1 CoW Stax

1 7/10

1 Belcher

1 UG Madness

1 Ninja Mask


I showed the finals that I lost to illustrate how important game one’s are. I would estimate that despite me having the upper hand post-board, that with UG Madness having game 1 locked down that I stand no more than a 40% chance of beating it in a round. You might ask, “Zherbus, why would you say that if you lose game 1, but typically win games 2 and 3. That sounds like 66% to me.”


Well, first game 1 is more of an auto-win for them than game 2 and 3 are an auto-win for me. Also, in Type One, things are different. We have so many powerful game-swinging spells in the format that even in matchups where you should be the favorite, you can never be too comfortable in your wins. In every format you have mana-screw and mana-flood, but in Vintage, you have to avoid losing to more than that when luck isn’t on your side. I’ve won just as many matches where I started with Mox, Mox, Walk, Land, Ancestral, Angel, and Lotus as I’ve lost to Mishra’s Workshop, Trinisphere, Crucible of Worlds, Wasteland, and Wasteland. Game 1 sets the stage, if they have a near-auto win for it, they only need to go broken in one more game and it does happen.


Reaping the Rewards

Finally, deck development can earn you more than just solid finishes. I also feel a sense of accomplishment when I see someone using our lists to place high all over the world. This summer, 4cControl was at its peak in performance. It was definitely rewarding to know I had a hand in the success of others.


According to DrSylvan’s stats (over 50 players):


Percentage of t8 appearances:

Mar 9.7%, Apr 9.7%, May 14.6%, Jun 19.6%, July 9.7%, August 7.5%


And my stats (30-49 players)

Jul 20.8%, Aug 17.5%, Sep 12.5%


It’s dropping off now, but it had its time for sure. I remember seeing one European Top 8 list that started with the entire top 4 filled with 4cControl. It made me feel than I accomplished more than just earning myself some decent performances. It doesn’t always have to be about you, you know.


Until next time,

Steve O'Connell

A.K.A. Zherbus

Owner/Administrator of TheManaDrain.com

Zherbus at themanadrain.com


* For the record, I generally try to use cute names like “Germbus” and project names when we’re development. I’m more of a fan of using plain names like 4cControl over confusing ones like Germbus and Keeper. When the Type One community was much smaller and everyone was more open about development, you could get away with cute names like Girls Gone Wild, Old School Expulsion, and Holy Tommy Gun.