Most writers have a file of articles and article ideas – stuff they’ve put off, or haven’t got quite right, or that they really want to write about when they get time. I was cleaning out that folder and pulled together – hey, who am I kidding? It’s a pile of unrelated topics, including my PT LA, MTGO rants and problems, poker, broken cards and other random topics. Enjoy.
Since this will not be on premium (lord, I hope not – especially not this one) I figured I should show all you non-premium readers how most premium articles (other than those by Flores) tend to start – with a couple paragraphs on poker. The MTG stuff comes further on. Those in the know just scroll.
It is a lot of years ago, on the shores of Lake Michigan, back before settlement. It’s about 95 degrees and massively humid, but the lake is cold – high fifties at best. Matt, Heidi and I are sitting playing poker, with our lawn chairs and the table literally in the lake. Our feet ache and our heads bake, but the combination makes the heat bearable. (This is before our house had AC.)
We played five card draw for hours. Old style poker – opening hand of five cards, jacks or better to open, draw up to three more, etc. We were kids, and played for chips. No money involved.
In five hours, we played a lot of hands. Do you know how often I had openers? Zero. Zilch. Nada. Even after the draw, in all those games, I could never get better than a pair of tens – in eight cards. Even when I dealt.
Matt and Heidi thought it was the funniest thing ever. Ever.
Anyway, that’s why you will never read more from me on poker. My luck is terrible, and because of that episode, I never play cards for money.
Which means – back to Magic.
I’m playing most of my Magic online – where I have few cards, a limited budget and very little time. That means I spend my precious online time playing, not trying to trade or trolling the auction room and eBay. My online card collection sucks. Which makes me sympathetic to Chris Romeo article on ultra-rares. I don’t necessarily agree about the existence of ultra-rares (Ben Bleiwiess says no, and he opens enough boosters to know), but I can sympathize.
Personally, I think it comes down to human nature – humans are very good at pattern recognition. We evolved that way. Back in the jungle, apes that could spot the leopard ran away – those that could not got eaten. Even spotting a leopard when it was just a leopard-like shape was a survival advantage – if you are going to err on the side of not being dead. As a result of that history, we humans frequently spot patterns that are not there. That accounts for everything from thinking you recognize a stranger to déjà vu episodes to kids seeing monsters instead of clothes hanging on a hook.
I know I see patterns in the rares I open – mainly because I am fixated on getting the chase rare for Constructed. I remember the chase cards I don’t get far better than the ones I do. The same is true for the trash rares I got in their place. For example, I remember Odyssey was: 2 Call of the Herd, 14 Mud Hole. And Mirrodin: 1 Chrome Mox, 16 Lumingrid Augurs.
I hate opening packs, in draft, sealed or whatever. I never can get openers. Heck, I can’t get a pair of deuces.
I played a lot of Mirrodin online. I wanted those cards. I have almost 50 Mirrodin rares from draft and sealed. Here’s the list. Remember that I am primarily a Constructed player.
3 of: Copperhoof Vorrac, Broodstar
2 of: Confusion in the Ranks, Lumengrid Augur, Quicksilver Elemental, Living Hive, Blinkmoth Urn, Gilded Lotus, Mesmeric Orb, Mind’s Eye, Scythe of the Wretched, Sword of Kaldra, Spellweaver Helix, Tower of Eons
Other big hits: Luminous Angel, Fatespinner, Vulshok Battlemaster, Liars Pendulum, Lightning Coils, Nightmare Lash, Quicksilver Fountain, Sculpting Steel, the rest of the Towers
Playable rares (all singles): Leonin Abunas, Arc Slogger, Damping Matrix, Jinxed Choker, Triskelion.
No Tooth, no Mox, no Troll Ascetic, no O-Stone, no Solemn Sim, no (yadayadayada)
At the very least, I hoped all the sealed would at least give me playsets of commons and uncommons. After 50 or so packs, I have tons of spare commons and overstocks of some uncommons. But all the overstocks are bad, and the shortfalls good. For example:
More than four: Goblin Dirigible, Icy, Serum Tank, Trolls of Tel-Jilad, Barter in Blood.
One or less: Ornithopter, Slith Firewalker, Shrapnel Blast, Viridian Shaman, Isochron Scepter, Scrabbling Claws. I could not even get a playset of the common artifact lands – although…
Okay – enough. The point is that I remembered all the dreck I pulled, against all the good stuff I wanted. Sure, I know that I would need to open about 150 Mirrodin packs to be able to expect playsets of all the uncommons, and that after opening about fifty, I should expect to have one or two of most cards – and random selection would mean I will have four of some and none of others. It’s just that, being human, I see patterns – and I don’t like them. I am not an optimist.
I can sure sympathize with Chris – I, too, hate opening bad cards. Maybe the Magic Gods hate me, too.
I also hate One with Nothing. I hated Maro’s defense of One with Nothing. I hate opening One with Nothing in draft. Wizards, we get plenty of bad cards – you don’t need to print extras, just to show us how bad they are. Sometimes the cards that you design to be unplayably bad turn out to be too good (e.g. the restricted Lion’s Eye Diamond.) Other times they turn out to actually be unplayable. Either way, we don’t want them.
After all, anyone can design unplayable cards. I can do it:
MISE!
Artifact
If you own ~this~, you win the Game. Match. Tournament.
This ability exists when the card is any zone, including the “not-in-the-game-but-in-my-pocket-instead” zone.
“It was in Unstuck, but we were short a rare in Guildpact, so we said ‘WTF.'” – Maro
The difference is that I am not foolish enough to let my bad cards get anywhere near R&D.
You know what MTGO needs? A trace-route zapper. Remember the old Cyberpunk RPG, where net runners could trigger a defensive program that would backtrack them and burn their brains out? Screw up, and zap!
MTGO needs that. Maybe not lethal, but good and unpleasant. With a big, bright Zap Him! icon.
7:49 BetterNUsucka: what a nOOb play.
7:49 BetterNUsucka: that is so gay.
7:49 BetterNUsucka has been zapped.
or
5:19 Judge n Bailiff plays Island
5:20: MultiplayerGod has left the game.
5:25 MultiplayerGod has been zapped.
Of course, this would be abused. The same rude a$$holes that shout random insult and disconnect as soon as they start to lose will push the zap button themselves. It would probably be more like:
10:14 PrimeSnot has joined the game.
10:14 judge n bailiff has joined the game.
10:14 judge n bailiff says “hi, gl, have fun.”
10:14 judge n bailiff has been zapped.
10:14 judge n bailiff has been zapped.
10:14 judge n bailiff has been zapped.
10:14 judge n bailiff has been zapped.
10:14 judge n bailiff has been zapped.
10:15 PrimeSnot says “thx, i am”
10:15 judge n bailiff has been zapped.
10:15 judge n bailiff has been zapped.
10:15 judge n bailiff has been zapped.
10:15 judge n bailiff has been zapped.
Okay, it’s probably a bad idea. But, man…
ZAP!
You know what MTGO really needs? FNM. Seriously, it needs a less competitive place to play Constructed matches in a “tournament” format. Same with draft. Friday Night Magic is a multi-round format that is aimed at people just getting into Magic. It’s biggest advantage is that it is not Single Elimination. You get to keep playing, even when you draft a steaming pile or get crushed round one by a netdeck.
Right now, MTGO has only a couple options for playing Constructed decks, and only one for drafts (although you can draft three different sets.) Let’s talk about Constructed first, then draft.
The casual room is marginal, at best. I can generally get a game, but it isn’t really practice. Many of the decks really are casual, which is fun but doesn’t teach me much. Other decks are tier one, and I get crushed. I have little chance to play against the semi-tuned, semi-competitive decks that mirror what I can build with the cards I have. Another common annoyance is that opponents drop from the game way before it ends, especially if they are losing. The Casual Room is great for Rainbow Stairwell games, but not great for tourney practice.
The tournament practice room is a better place to practice, but it is still not a real tournament. You can often get people to play matches, but not with the intensity of a real tourney. Even in this room, players often drop from games if they are losing, or even if they think they will win easily. The fact that nothing is on the line means that there is no penalty for doing this. A real tourney requires you to play the games out – and play sideboarded – against both good and bad matchups.
MTGO’s next option is single elimination 8 man tourneys. These are common, but single elimination is a huge disincentive. I do not want to pay 5 tix for two games of Magic, which is what happens if I face a Tier One deck in the first round while piloting my collection of whatever cards I can find. It is also a very tough, expensive way to build and tune a deck. You almost have to take netdecks into these events. You cannot test homebrews sufficiently in 8 man events, unless you are made of money. (The best MTGO option is to test with a clan or team – something the new players are generally not going to be able to do.)
The final Constructed option is premier events, which are at least Swiss format, not single elimination, but are way too long. I can’t devote that many hours at a time to MTGO, but others can. These also have a significant cost to enter – 6 tix – but they are still the most cost effective option for getting serious opponents on MTGO. It’s a shame it costs about 1 tix per match.
So far, with my limited collection, I have not played any Constructed events, just lots of random stuff in the casual play: tournament practice room. If Wizards puts up an FNM-style format, I would be all over that. I know others have suggested a swiss-only tournament structure where the payout is one pack per match won. No one wins a lot of packs, which may help limit the players with netdecks and lots of rares, but has enough prize support to draw players.
At least, that’s what I expect. I know I would play in that. And it should not hurt Wizards’s revenues much – I mean, I am not paying to play any Constructed right now: players like me are pure gain.
The same thing is true of draft, only more so.
Right now, all drafts are single elimination. That is fine for serious, experience drafters. However, the casual drafter walks in knowing that it is probably going to cost him two tix and three packs to enter, and that he will be lucky to get three games before he is out. That means that he pretty much has to be happy with rare drafting.
At the local stores I play at, and the events I have attended, we very rarely get any single elimination drafts to fire. Even at events like States, Regionals and PTQs, over the last couple years, we get one (rarely two) single-elimination drafts every other event or so. In the same period, we routinely got thirty to fifty people showing up to draft at FNM. The difference – at FNM, anyone playing got to play all three rounds of the draft.
I hate drafting on MTGO, because I hate single elimination formats. I still draft on occasion, because I generally win packs, but I don’t like it. If Wizards were to add a swiss draft queue – even one that had the same payout based on the standings at the end of the Swiss, I would draft a lot more.
Here’s another topic that needs discussing. Look at these two quotes:
It’s a competition for god’s sake. Magic was designed with winning in mind, and if you doubt that, ask yourself why you keep score. – Gary Wise
I think I managed to get the combo off once in ten games, but that’s basically all I wanted. It worked, I’m happy. – (name removed to protect the innocent.)
That about sums up the great Magic divide – the casual versus competitive pla…
ZAP!
Okay, maybe we don’t need to revisit that debate.
Not much left worth saying. I had a blast in LA, and I went undefeated the whole weekend. (I was a judge, so duh.) Good times, good food, good people – and if you really want more details, you really should get a life.
Gotta leave now.
5:17 judge n bailiff has left the game.
5:18 judge n bailiff has been zapped.