Hi folks,

I'm RT and I'm from Washington DC.  I'm re-introducing myself because I want to dive back into the Vintage community.  I joined TMD back in 2004 and was a full member for a period of time, but I served in the military for six years and went away from the game.  I recently got out and am without an occupation until graduate school next fall, and I've enjoyed filling my time playing cards.  The few tournaments I've played recently have been Legacy, but I sure miss playing Dredge in Vintage, which I'm told is quite strong now.  So I'm excited to dip back into the power pool.

I've enjoyed playing aggro and combo decks in Vintage: I've played Food Chain Goblins, TPS, Intuition Tendrils, RG Beats, and Dredge.  I still remember my very first big tournament at Pastimes in Chicago, where I somehow beat Doug Linn and reacted like an 8 year old with a sno-cone.  Then I got crushed the next two rounds by karma and Phyrexian Dreadnought.  I'm grateful for those kind of memories and the people in the community; that's what drew me back here to TMD. 

Greetings, RT

@GiN1247: I'll be in Champaign next fall and I'll be looking for a good Vintage and Legacy scene in Illinois.  If there isn't one, we'll certainly have to lean on some local shops to get it going.

moving to bolling soon on SE side, wondering about action in the area

Cannot travel to events/too far to travel.  It seems like the community of vintage players splinters a bit more at each glance with only a couple hotbeds of activity instead of being spread across the country.  I don't see that buying necessary materials to play is a priority at this time either. 

Conversely, perhaps the format might experience a bit of awakening in some time if, according to the seller posting above, card prices have declined and it becomes more affordable for new players to enter the fold.

This is the kind of thinking that is completely circumventive of the issue.  I do not see an objective argument on this issue yet.  This announcement happened under three weeks ago and there is already an moral uproar.  You may hem and haw all you want, but you do not have any one piece of objective evidence to support your argument for changing the restricted cards.  Do not count your individual tests, because you know there is no chance of having that being admissable in your argument. 

You seem to be in a rush to fix something that you don't even know is broken-- or if it is even broken.  It takes time and results to know whether a government's legislation is erroneous; this announcement does not contain many different facets, so it should not be treated extraordinarily differently.

As someone who took this route, I can offer some advice against looking at poker to "solve all of your monetary problems": don't plan on it doing so.  I should not say much more but direct you to various poker forums where others have chronicled the change.  While I was successful for several months playing cards as a secondary source of income, I quickly burned out and do not look forward to sitting at a poker table again for a long time.  So I would caution you against taking that route unless you feel you are mentally prepared for it.

I would assume that you did not purchase Magic cards with the main intent of selling them later for profit, so I do not think selling all of your cards is going to be the decision you'll be happy with in the long run.  Of course, if you're sure that you're never going to play again, and you have an easy means to move your collection, don't be afraid to do so.  A good part of our game is that there always seems to be a market for your cards.

I should also say that you are incorrect in saying that poker requires a smaller monetary investment.  The residual costs alone are going to rival Magic, and that isn't even considering your own bankroll, training products and related costs.

That has absolutely nothing to do with what I said.  For every player who plays Type 1 only, how many constructed and limited players are you going to find?  I'm not sure, but the ratio would probably be 1:very big.

I cannot believe how monumentally shortsighted this comment is.  If you really think that this announcement is to move a nominal amount of players into another format solely for profit, then you need to rethink yourself.  The pool of regular Type 1 players that do not ever buy new product is likely very small compared to other similar demographics.  Like, single digit % small.  The player base of Type 1 is not large enough to force a game-changing marketing decision by WOTC.

This is completely ridiculous, in reference to those of you who think this is the worst thing that ever happened in the universe.  So you have to actually think about what's going to happen next.  It has been a while since I was a regular in Magic, but I believe that this happens in other formats.  It is called "change".  Perhaps you should give up your complacency for once and try to think up a new deck yourself, instead of waiting for the next Stephen Menendian article to tell you which one you should be playing.  Stop crying and innovate something yourself.

To clarify this last query, when playing Cabal Therapy from the graveyard with River Kelpie being sacrificed, the stack from top to bottom reads:

Persist trigger
Cabal Therapy

The Cabal Therapy would always be at the bottom of the stack because you play it and put it on the stack first. 


Since the River Kelpie is not in play at the time the spell's costs are completed, the second trigger will not enter the stack.

In my opinion this card has the same role as Cephalid Sage, both in theory and practice.  I feel that it functions a bit like Strip Mine used to: it has a similar function, but it makes your decisions a bit more difficult.

Good afternoon,

I have been away from Magic for about 18 months.  If this material has been presented elsewhere, please direct me there.



Question about game theory/deck selection

This is an extension of a thread that I found from approx. two years ago.  You can read the original here.  I would like to try to explain two thoughts that I have on the game of Magic: the role of statistics in finding a "best deck", and how Magic players may have a general misunderstanding of the term variance.

I shall try to keep this narrative somewhat abbreviated because I'm guessing there are some of you already considering perusing other topics.

Some of you may know about games theory, and think it isn't terribly relevant to the process of competition.  It is my belief that without a firm understanding of how the process of games theory works, you are putting yourself at a marked disadvantage.  In this exercise, I would like to take an article written by Bryce Paradis and Doug Zare and apply the corresponding material to the above topics.

Much of the material that I found in the old thread consisted of trying to figure out how to analyze a given meta and determine how to find the best dominant strategy.  To me, this seemed like an effort to figure out which deck had the most (in terms of raw #) favorable matchups against the field.  This looks like a good strategy from the outset of the problem, because most of the time your analysis of a field may be, "well, it looks like this deck is played more than that deck, so playing the deck that does well against it is best." 

To properly understand this article, you must know the definition of some specific terms:




The question to you: What is the effect of treating the process of deck selection as "yourself vs. the field"?

This may sound redundant because it seems like you do this already, but I guess that many of you are not employing this strategy.  In this sense, you have not chosen a dominant strategy but rather an exploitive strategy.  Those of you reading the article may ask, "well, isn't an exploitive strategy good?"  I am not convinced that an exploitive strategy is the best strategy all of the time. 

I would like opinion on what strategy people believe is optimal in a given tournament when recognizing the meta.  While an exploitive strategy may function as the best strategy when there is an abundance of a specific deck/group of decks, it wouldn't be a GTO strategy when the meta is either balanced or unknown.  Also, my question is if there are any decks that in a balanced meta, might affect a proper GTO strategy. 

This quote from Bryce's article makes a lot of sense to me:

"Even though a GTO strategy may have less EV than an exploitive strategy, understanding what the GTO strategy is and being able to identify how our opponents’ strategy deviates from it can help you to better exploit your opponents. Further, an understanding of GTO strategy allows you to create balanced strategies which are difficult to exploit. These strategies can be used as a defense against tough opponents looking for an exploitive edge."

I intended to include examples of how you might identify non-GTO strategies in your opponent's, but I am not familiar with many methods of doing so outside of holdem.  I'm wondering if because of the nature of the game, if more of this strategy configuration is done in the deckbuilding process than the actual game-state operation.  I would like to guess that one example might be preparing your deck to shore up a difficult matchup while diluting the strategy against a prominent deck you may be evenly matched with.  Since your opponent will often not choose the correct counter-strategy to your strategy, you might argue that such a rift exists when you're not playing the GTO deck in the first place.

This particular analysis seems like much more of a grey area when considering the game of Magic.  I believe by understanding how changes in our deck affect our overall EV against a given field, we can become better equipped to select the best deck (i.e. dominant strategy) and give ourselves the best chance of winning the tournament.  In this encompassing analysis, you might question "well, haven't you taken into account all of the die rolls, bad hands and play mistakes?"  In my opinion, this analysis should be contained in the initial EV calculation.  You should be figuring the value of going first vs. going second, finding the probability of drawing an unplayable hand, and quantitively taking into account play mistakes (you might be able to figure these final two features as your expected "variance") before you finally begin to calculate your EV versus a specific deck.

I would also like to hear some opinions on the subject of variance.  I feel that the variance a deck has in terms of consistancy should be noted whenever deck selection occurs.  Obviously in most cases, you do not want to choose a high-variance deck for a long tournament.  I am interested to hear the thoughts on variance in small versus large tournaments.  It has occurred to me over time that most people do not adjust their deck choices based on tournament size (other than they may choose new, experimental decks when fields are small and decks they know well when fields are large). What experiences have you had with this phenomenon?

Hopefully this subject will spark some interesting and stimulating debate.  I do not intend to introduce this material as new and innovative, but perhaps as something you do not think about often but still holds an important role.

If there are tournaments being held as far north as Dallas-Fort Worth, I am interested.  I live in the Oklahoma City area but I am not willing to drive to Austin or San Antonio unless it is a large event.

As an aside to nip this in the bud before this thread switches to this topic, I would encourage you to utilize the search function to find the numerous discussions about this matter that have taken place in the past. 

It seems that the ones with this argument are those who predominantly play other formats.  I'm not sure what the actual demographic is, but I have never played any other format (than Type One and Legacy).  Perhaps those players who are native to other formats are afraid that their Eternal investments are not going to help them in their sanctioned tournament quests.  I would think that those who have a moral problem acquiring Type One cards have a more pressing problem than having trouble finding where those cards are.  To answer playkenny's last question, in my opinion the problem our format has is that new players are either:

-native to other formats, and have a problem with Type One cards interfering with their costs for other formats
-new players that are not familiar with the many nuances of Magic, let alone Type One

Perhaps this squeeze is part of what sets the bar high as far as entry into this format goes.  Or maybe it is because the play of a game of Type One is a bit different than how they first learned to play the game.  Those who misunderstand how the shape of the game changes, but still keeps the same rules and cards, would be less likely to understand how Type One works and would be intimidated by the changes they must accept.  The slower game of Standard might resemble those initial casual bouts into the game better than a match of our format.

I recall that when I played last about 18 months ago, I enjoyed playing in most events that I went to.  In hindsight, I have probably been one of the least sporting opponents at most tournaments, but I haven't had a problem getting along with any of my opponents head-to-head.  Perhaps some people have attached a negative stigma to Type One players since I stopped playing, but I cannot see how this would happen without someone's direct effort.  Nearly all of the players at events I have attended have been cordial and socially approchable. 

I don't have anything extra to add to the primary discussion other than I never found it difficult to enter the Type One arena on a budget.  I believe that the issue of "type one is cheaper than standard" has been discussed in the past and thus I have nothing new to bring that has not already been said.

I am interested in attending this event.  If anyone else from the OKC area wants to go on Saturday, please let me know.

Figured I would redo this post since I don't know what happened to the last one and interest in Magic is growing.

Name=Ryan Thomas
Age=19
Location=Oklahoma City, OK

Strongly grew interest in the game around Mirrodin time.  Became interested in playing new formats but settled on Type 1 since I couldn't ask for money to buy new cards.  The people I played with had a nice collection they were willing to share.  Lived in northern IL at this time.

Began to attend tournaments in the Midwest.  Never really made a splash but I did get second at some donkament in Iowa and earned four Force of Wills.  I thought this was a big deal for me at the time.  Have played with some of type 1's most talented opponents.

Joined USAF in sept 06, now stationed in OKC.  I enjoy it a lot, there are a lot of things to do in Oklahoma.  I have not found a tournament venue.  If anyone knows of any, please let me know.

Have switched mainly to playing poker.  Looking to get interested in magic again.  I have a lot of good ideas and concepts to bring to the table, always up for a chat on MSN or whatever.  I look forward to meeting new faces and greeting old hands here again.

This was supposed to be a thread hijack of LotusHead but whatever

Has there been a program in the past year or so that's created the ability to replay matches?  For those of you who are poker players you may be familiar with PokerXFactor.com's tournament replayer that replays each hand of a tournament according to the hand history put in. 

Even if this is not possible; perhaps in making a "tournament report", one could replay a game or match or several matches or whatever through something like Magic Workstation.  Use something like Camtasia stuido editor and record it.  Perhaps even going through it with a voice recording and comment on what situations you found most interesting. 

This would certainly make a more interesting tournament report.  I don't see too many problems with this other than you'd have to register Magic Workstation to get out of mirror match mode.  Of course it would take too long and too much effort to record every game, but an interesting game/match would probably be worth it.  Even if it's not a tournament, just a heads-up game between two players and you want commentary on it or something.  Seems like it would point out a lot of glaring inconsistancies in someone's gameplay.

Been trolling the tournament report forum now for a couple years and nearly all tournament reports including mine have traditionally been very dry to say the least, even those with some pictures of the action.  As a free shot to those who post these dull tournament reports, please put more effort into them, especially if you won.  More people read these things if there's something interesting to read about, not just how you donked your merry way through by the skin of your teeth or whatever.

Apologies if this has been touched on before but it seems like an interesting turn.  Perhaps i'm just spewing I don't know.  If anyone's interested in this perhaps I'll give it a try first.

I've settled into a new place in Oklahoma City, and as of yet, I'm unfamiliar with the area.  I've been looking to get back into playing some cards, and I'm wondering if players in the area can recommend a place to play, or players to play with.  Any input would be appreciated.

In this admonishment, are you implying that the decisions required by these cards are too unwieldly to make over the course of a tournament, or that you don't think the community is prepared to make these decisions in an in-game setting, or that you are unable to make the correct determinations when the time comes?

Perhaps you find that you are intelligent enough to make the correct decisions with these skill-intensive cards; if so, do you feel that the former version of the deck is stronger in your hands while armed with these skill-maximizing cards such as Unmask and Strip Mine?

It has been a while since I've been here, but I thought unproductive comments like this one were under our maturity levels.  I suppose things slip through the cracks.

Verbal warning to you, too. The rules go to the trouble of saying "If you are not a moderator, don't try to police the boards for rules violations." for a reason. If you see a problematic post, report it, and we'll deal with it. Complaining in the thread or vigilante moderating is at best spam, and at worst leads to flame wars and destroyed threads.
-Jacob

Do you believe that the decision trees Bazaar forces you into makes this deck more difficult to play?  Or do the advantages in card parity make up for a misread here and there?

Does not Duress serve you the same function?  At the same cost, you get the same information, except that Duress plays a different role because you may hinder a developing gameplan with it.  When playing this card, you have allowed the deck to develop to some extent.  The opponent should be better prepared to deal with your threat. 

The reason this card does not work as well as Duress (comparing the two in a vacuum) is because the decision tree has less paths when Duress is played.  When Extirpate is played, you will have developed your deck enough to be prepared if the deck removes a path to win.  I felt this comparison needed to be made because you parallelled the two cards' roles.

Good jorb.  It's important to talk about the experience as well as the gameplay because the gameplay isn't even half of your tournament day

I would like to see the event itenerary from this, "World Championship of Freehand Circle Drawing".

If you are claiming that 'skilled' players are going to lose to 'less skilled' players that are piloting this Ichorid deck, are you also saying that skill in terms of gameplay is now defunct?  The common consensus seems to be saying that even though excellence in gameplay decision-making is required in games 2 and 3, the game is still largely dependant on how the deck is designed to run.  So, since the game is being decided for us by the cards that we see from the library, has the decision-making process ebbed to the point where the game really is decided what we draw?  I hesitate to say that this new Ichorid deck's gameplay is by "autopilot"; there certainly must be important decisions to be made in the game that change the end turnout, that require gameplay knowledge and conditioning. 

It seems that the current valuable skill is indeed learning to select the correct deck, and how to tailor it to have a better chance against prospective opponents.  The work has been done for us by the creators in this case, exceeding the problems that were troublesome to traditional budget aggro decks: the new deck plays relevant disruption which does not impede the deck's natural progression towards the end of the game, and its gameplan is solid and difficult to disrupt.  The gap that exists between this deck and success seems to be of that which the deck's creators have not done for us; this is the "metagaming" and streamlining we must do for ourselves.  Whether this gap is crossed remains to be seen, but to me, this revives an older adage about most of the budget aggro decks that was heard: that, "the deck is only good in the hands of a good player."

The way this new Ichorid deck is designed seems to tell me that the designers have not only sought to create a deck that is difficult to "hate", but to create a deck that reduces the amount of decisions made in a game in the most strategic way possible.  Perhaps this particular achievement was a mistake, but coincidentally, perhaps this event is also a stumbling block in its course of reaching the height of dominance: that the deck cannot continue to be an adequate "autopilot" deck without radically changing the gameplan.  Perhaps also, this is doubly why you are claiming that this Ichorid deck is approximate for Type One in the first place: the double-whammy of monetary expense and ease of play will attract new, exciting players to the fold.

I am not challenging, but rather asking for clarification and expounding upon the statements you have made.

I also played Goblins, and dropped with two losses after Round 5.  Unfortunately, I was unprepared to face Umezawa's Jitte, and was beat by it in the second and third games in the final two matches.  Both of the losses were to black and white aggro decks.  I enjoyed the day for the most part and was happy to meet some new people, and also greet a few old friends. 

Except for my fourth round opponent, all of the people I played seemed very under-confident with their play.  Perhaps I noticed because I've been away from tournament play for a period of time, but I'm not sure how these people plan on winning their matches with a negative attitude.  In my opinion, the mental game is more than half of the battle.  Perhaps this should be addressed in a separate issue, however.

Well, I'm supposed to graduate and PCS from Mississippi to Oklahoma during this time, so I'll have a couple free weeks.  Here's hoping one of the free weekends is this one.

Angels with Dirty Faces -- Sum 41


I'm not sure I've ever found a correlation between play styles and music genres.  If listening to a certain band can change your tempo, however, more power to you.

On a related note (although this is quite a longshot), are there any persons that are currently stationed at Keesler AFB that are into the game?  I've seen a couple here and there, but at first glance they don't look like much more than casual players.  I'm not sure how much time I'll have to get away from the base, so someone local would be appreciated.

I'm stationed in Biloxi, MS until late May, and I'm wondering if there are any local card shops or players in the area.  I've got a lot of down time on the weekends, and would really appreciate someone to play with until I get back to Northern IL.  Anyone familiar with the area? 

This includes Gulfport, Mobile, and as far away as New Orleans or Jackson, MS.

I'm still on leave when this tournament will happen, so perhaps I'll come and play cards.  I haven't played in quite some time, so it'd be fun.