First impressions (without playtesting or anything of the like) are that this card is fantastic and will be a boon for a pet deck I've been fostering for a while.

Like many, I believe it will have a MAJOR impact on the metagame, but I don't think it is obnoxious like Trinisphere was because although Turn 1 Workshop + Trini was pretty broken against most any deck you can imagine, there are many decks which can shrug off Extirpate.  Although many of these decks are not viable right now, like straight aggro, etc., they may become viable once Extirpate shakes up the metagame.  I see this as a good thing.  Maybe even blue will be bumped off its perch as undisputed king of T1.

Is nice.

If your opponent gets a first turn lotus that often I'd say they might be cheating.

This basically summarizes my first post above (and of course I agree with it).

It's the same reason that copyright laws both a) Exist and b) Are time-limited.

It's good for the "format"/society that way.

I think we can all agree that, simply from the standpoint of the tournament-playing T1 Magic Community (ignoring issues of individual rights), the following are true:

A)  The more diversity in decklists, the better
B)  The more (good) players, the better

More information available to the Magic community in the form of decklists and deck analysis would support point (A).  However, forcing people to divulge home-grown tech in the form of mandatory decklists, while immediately forcing any innovations "into the open" (thereby supporting (A)) would also probably discourage some players' incentive for innovation, namely competitive advantage (thereby detracting from (A)) and may also piss off some people or keep them away from the smaller tourneys, leading to decreased tournament attendance and undermining (B).

I see a couple of problems with the lines of reasoning presented here to support mandatory decklists:

1)  It seems something of a tacit assumption, among some in this thread at least, that if decklists are not published NO information will be available about the "secret" decks.  However, through the mere fact that they are played in a public tournament, those who played against them or spectated the match will be able to see at least some (and through time, all or almost all) of the cards and strategies the deck employs.  I.e., even without published decklists the deck will pretty quickly be analyzed and recreated, to a significant extent.  Now, this DOES promote format growth (point (A)) and it could be argued you would have to be completely lazy to ask people to hand their hard work in deck innovation to you on a silver platter when you could get (most of) it through a little leg-work and analysis.  I think Draven had a good analogy with the NFL football playbook.  Teams can see an opponent's plays and get a good idea of the playbook and analyze the team's strategy, so teams will get to see basically how their opponents' offense/defense is run.  But they don't get to see actual verbatim contents of the playbook.  I don't hear about NFL teams complaining that this is "stifling innovation" or such nonsense.

2)  It seems like people are basically taking one of two extreme positions on this thread:

i)  You should (almost) never be allowed to withhold your decklist.
ii)  You should (almost) always be allowed to withhold your decklist.

But it's the fallacy of the excluded middle to think that these are the only options.  There is a middle ground which is probably correct.  You have to balance competing forces which would work to stifle innovation and diversity in the metagame.  On the one hand:  If no decklist innovations become public knowledge, the metagame will stifle.  On the other hand, if people are forced to reveal too much, too soon, the incentive to innovate will be reduced and therefore less will occur.  I think a good middle ground would quite possibly be that decklist publication isn't mandatory at small events but is at large ones (Gencom, Starcity, etc.).

But I really feel that, since as stated above decklist information will naturally be revealed through playing against the "secret" decks, we will already have grist for format-changing innovation without forced decklist publication.

-VJ

Thanks.

Pardon my ignorance, but what is "The SS"?

I appreciate all the constructive comments people have made here.

I'm still unsure of how many basics (2-4) I'll be running in near-term tourneys.  It will be interesting to see how the metagame/perceptions have shifted on the issue.

But I do hope not to play against Stax all day. 

So...  the idea here is that the 1 basic island can be fetched for so that you can be ensured of being able to Brainstorm in spite of nonbasic hate?

Could you clarify this?  I didn't understand what you were getting at.


By "at any time", do you mean like a fast deck (like Long?) which doesn't need to set up its mana base through multiple turns? 

As a rough estimate, would playing 5 fetches plus 2 basics in a slow(ish) controlling deck be enough basic-age against Fish or Stax?


  Good point.  There's nothing like the internet to start huge trends.

Hi,

I'm trying to get into competitive T1 Magic after taking something of a hiatus from MtG tournaments.  I've read TMD off-and-on for years though, and the old Beyond Dominia before that.  Anyways, enough about me.

I remember sometime while BD was still in existence there was a mono-U deck that ran 4 FoF, 4 Morphling, and relevantly for my subject here, 4 Back-to-Basics.  This card's existence, in addition to the traditional non-basic hosers like Blood Moon, Wasteland, and Dwarven Miner, pushed multicolor decks like Keeper to add a few basic islands (a strategy made viable by the Onslaught fetches).

Well, time passed, FoF was restricted, etc., and it seemed that the non-basic hosers declined in popularity (even Wasteland), while from what I've seen (as of about a year ago when I was looking at T1 decklists more actively) most decks still play at least a couple basic lands.

My question to you all:  Is this really necessary in today's metagame?  Without a widespread use of cards like Bloodmoon or BtB even in sideboards, can we get away with running all nonbasics and thereby solidifying off-colors (or even adding a tertiary)?  If not, what do you think is a good number of basics to run in a 3-5 color deck (hopefully the answer to this question isn't too dependent on the type of deck)?

Thanks,
VJ

I agree with some of the comments that question the viability of the Shahrazad + Champion kill.  Losing life to the Shahrazad isn't a threat when you have no pressure in the deck to speak of.

However, I really tlike the Leyline + Gains interaction.  It looks like it's worth investigating, but again I think you should retool your kill.

Man, that brings back bittersweet memories...  I owned the mighty Amiga500 back in highschool.  Technically and pricewise it was lightyears ahead of anything else on the market, but Commodore just couldn't get their marketing together or something, so it languished and died.   

The thing had some amazing games too (Shadow of the Beast series, Turrican, Speedball, Drakkhen, ... *sigh*).

AtogLord,

Great, I just checked maps.yahoo and West Lafayette is only 3 hrs away.  Any tourneys in your area?

-VJ

Heh, so do they have any kind of regular schedule for the T1/1.5 tourneys?  I'd love to play but don't care for the thought of driving 3+ hrs to find out they decided not to run it that day.   

Does Full Moon have T1 or T1.5?  I checked out the website but it didn't mention anything like that.

Thanks Godder, I'll check these out.   

Firstly, I apologize if this is in the wrong forum.  I can't post in T1.5 Tournament or Magic Community due to my lowly member status.  Mod's, please move this where you see fit.

I just moved to Elkhart, IN (near South Bend) and am looking for any regular or semi-regular T1 or T1.5 tournaments within driving distance (i.e. in the immediately surrounding states).

Any info is appreciated.

-VJ

Marton's remark about only buying one piece of power at a time on E-bay is sound advice, otherwise you're risking too much in one transaction.  This is how I got all my power cards (P9, drains, BB duals, 'shops, etc.) and I never had a problem with these.  I've bought over $3000 worth of cards on E-bay in the past 6 years and was only ripped off 3 times during that period for around $150 worth.  That's acceptable to me (around 95% "success" rate).  One of those 3 times was with someone who's feedback was pretty unestablished but it was for a low-dollar item so I threw caution to the wind.  The other 2 times were just bad luck; one of them the guy had good, solid feedback and apparently just decided at the time I was buying the 4 foil STP's from him that he was "closing up shop" and skipped town.

Anyways, a couple quick points about using E-bay:

1)  Know the difference between "good" feedback and "solid" feedback.  % positive feedbacks can be very misleading as it's quite easy to build up a large # of positive's by buying 1-cent book auctions and other low-dollar items.  Look at the actual items won in the guy's feedback.  Also look for someone repeatedly auctioning the same item as a giveaway that he's scamming.

2)  When buying large item like power, contact the seller well ahead of time to see whether he's willing to any safety measures you would require such as using escrow, etc.  If paying by CC or Paypal with a CC, let the seller know that you expect to receive the card a certain number of days after payment, otherwise you will cancel the payment without exception.  Word this very strongly (but politely; no sense in pissing off honest people).

3)  If an item catches your eye but the seller has low/bad feedback compared to yours, ask if they would be willing to send first.  If not, hey, no skin off your back, just move on.

4)  Buying from big dealers (those in the 1000+ feedback range) is usually safe for at least getting your cards, but I've had a number of times when dealing with these heavies where the stated card condition was "exaggerated" to say the least.  As in, a NM card with creases.  So, if card condition is of secondary importance to you, these guys are usually pretty good.  Otherwise, ask for clarification about card condition ahead of time.

-VJ

Thanks guys, I'll check it out.

Hello All,

This may seem like an unusual request, but does anyone know whether the old Beyond Dominia website was archived before it went down?

-VJ

Interesting.  I imagine that the particular decks/cards in an environment, those that lend themselves to very quick "swingy" plays, would increase the significance of playing first.  I.e., Workshop + Crucible + Trinisphere.  In much slower environments the effect would be diminished and for this reason the results from the Extended study would be less relevant to T1.

Let me preface this by saying that I am just getting back into T1 and Magic in general after a 1.5 year hiatus and so don't have much recent play experience, which limits my ability to begin this discussion with much data of my own.  I am aware of the rule for not making "vacuous" posts here, and I apologize if this qualifies, but I think this is an important issue I haven't seen discussed here lately that others may be able to flesh out.

In my recent testing against the Workshop-based decks that run Trinisphere and/or Crucible, I have discovered that playing first makes a huge swing in my win percentages.  This is due to getting a chance to play out Moxen before the 'Sphere drops, or being able to play a threat or discenchant effect for the Crucible before it gets active with Wasteland recursion.

In general, what is the effect of playing first on the chances for winning in today's Type 1?  Is it a hugely signficant factor in most/all or some particular matchups, or is the effect usually not so dramatic (i.e., still present but only around maybe 10-20 percent swing in the matchup percentages)?