There IS an mtg.com article or I wouldn't have bothered asking for decklists in the first place. It will be up Thursday, and what's taking so long is that both Legacy and Vintage had to be rewritten from coverage into article format and uh... have you SEEN the stuff we've been posting lately?  There's no reason to post it all at one time - we wanted to spread out the goodies a bit and this got trumped by the new Lotus

I for one would be ashamed if I were Dave Feinstein... oh wait, that's not what I meant to say - sometimes things like that just pop out.

To be fair, this fuckup was entirely mine and I take full responsibility for it.  Arend didn't ask for his list to be withheld, I simply went to lunch with the decklists on the floor after having put in a 15 hour day the day before with the intent of typing up the decklists when I came back.  The maid thought they were trash, pitched em, and that was that.  I'm actually more annoyed that I lost the Top 8 Profiles than the decklists, since those are easily recreatable, but bad things very occasionally happen (like... once) in a career that thus far spans four years of traveling to do coverage.

I'm normally as strong an advocate as you can get about freedom of information post-tournaments, having laughed in the face of more than a couple people who asked us to keep decklists secret after SCGs past.  However, Arend did his duty by submitting his decklist and isn't required to do anything beyond that, especially after an idiot like me has a screwup like this. End of story.

--TK

Thanks a bunch, guys.  Note to self: steal Nick's phone.

Due to an unfortunate incident with an overzealous hotel maid, my stack of Vintage World Championship decklists has disappeared.  If any of you know one of the Top 8 members or can communicate with them, please ask them to come here and post their decklist or e-mail it to me at mixedknuts@gmail.com ASAP so I can finish the Feature Article writeup for this event.

Thank you for the help,
Ted Knutson

Just an FYI, my blog for the World Cup is at http://footballknuts.blogspot.com/ and there's also a syndicated LJ feed for you Livejournal users to subscribe to at http://syndicated.livejournal.com/footballknuts/profile .  I'd love to get more comments from football-mad Magic players, so stop by whenever and tell your friends about it too.

--TK

Look folks - in spite of the fact that Methu seems a bit donkish about all of this, and in spite of the fact that THIS QUOTE "Yes we have tons of articles by Zvi, Flores, and Ellis" makes it looks like they are stealing content from somewhere and reposting it to their private forums (because I'm quite certain that you don't have permission to reprint any of that info from the original websites or the authors - nice "principled stand" you are taking) - it is ENTIRELY his prerogative to not type up decklists.  Typing lists is a pain in the ass, and I'm sure the community values the service you have previously given, in spite of the fact that you are no longer choosing to do so.

As for Pip's info, we went Premium because it was necessary to do so.  (This is where I wave the little flag and say "Hi, you might not have noticed, but we're a business.") In spite of all of our years of community service where we provided thousands upon thousands of free articles to Magic players, there finally came a point where we needed to add a subscription model to our website to continue improving, and that's exactly what we have done.  SCG added Premium and improved and will continue doing so.  BUT, our transition to Premium deprived you of some important content that you felt you contributed to.  I'm sorry for that.

The thing that is galling to me about all of this is that you keep speaking of altruism and how all of this metagame info is community information on one hand, and yet you keep crying "I won't be exploited!  I have to look out for myself!" on the other.

Sorry slick, but it doesn't work both ways.  

Your decklists ARE valuable to the community and they ARE available for the community to use when posted here on TMD and I'm sure kudos are avilable for such things.  However, when you do that, they are also available to be tallied and posted into a Premium article on SCG.com where people who consider SCG valuable enough have subscribed, and can thus read the article.   So there's your choice - give the community and SCG subscribers a nice boon, or don't.  

Or I guess you could go a third route and charge for your decklist typing services, thus creating Methusalahn Premium...

--TK

Additionally, if YOU are interested in taking the time to tally up the stats and do the analysis for all the decklists that Pip does and post them on TMD every month, feel free.   There's nothing stopping you from doing your own non-Premium analysis of public information, but as Necro said, if I or anyone else was writing Stanton's articles for any other format (and it happens), that information would be Premium.

To me this is totally a non-issue, especially since we provide links to the locations of the decklists, thus giving whatever site posts them free advertising from the biggest independent Magic website in existence.  If Pip + the rest of the Premium writers + the coverage + Flores/Zvi/Ellis + Yawgatog's work aren't enough to get you to join Premium, so be it...  Feel free to spend the 30-40 hours a year it will take you to tally Pip's monthly info alone and publish the info here - I'm sure plenty of TMDers will rejoice.

--Knut

This particular incident  was very frustrating for me as well.  For starters I had no idea that the guy didn't speak English, and it was clear that he didn't understand we were doing coverage, and he was more than a little snippy about our requests over the course of the day, including when we simply wanted him to report the the Feature Match area.  

All we wanted at the time mentioned was to take a picture of the Helm of Awakening deck with a board full of permanents and simply moved a Future Sight to get a better picture - the problems listed were caused by the language issues and nothing more.  

This is also the type of thing that NEVER happens at a GP or PT because people are used to being covered - I suspect as time goes on it will stop happening at Power 9's as well.

Klep: We go as fast as we can in getting stuff up.  Round 1 finished around 12:15 and we have to work from there, tracking down interesting stories, etc.   It takes time to get the lay of the land and since the coverage staff will be absolutely slammed after round 3-4 until the tournament is done, it makes more sense to pursue and research a series of stories early, hence delaying the coverage post timing by a bit.  Hopefully having Pairings and Standings will help you feel more "there".

As for Pairings and Standings, we know that we are lacking them and should have that corrected for Chicago.  The whole staff is aware of the hole in the coverage that is created by that issue and has been for some time.

Also, while I am more interested in including Feature Match coverage for SCG events than Wizards is, we will still only tend to feature cool decks or great  player matchups in the future because most people would actually rather read other types of articles, and even if they SAY that's not true, they prove otherwise with their hits


--TK

The coverage for Syracuse is here:
http://www.starcitygames.com/coverage.php?Event=SCGPP92005-05

I'm looking for constructive feedback from those of you who are able to read it - what did you like, what did you not like, what do you want more of, etc?  This is your coverage and we tend to be pretty receptive to feedback, even if you don't see us publicly acknowledging it, so useful feedback could possibly change what we focus on for future events.

A few notes though:
1) No, we're not adding Video coverage.
2) Yes, we're still keeping coverage premium.  There's a LOT of good material in this weekend's coverage including deck tech from JP on two hot new decks, a complete metagame breakdown, and the hot hotness of the two-headed Finals.  If you don't believe _me_ though, ask around and see what the Premium members who do not write for our site think.

For those of you who don't have premium and choose not to buy, all this will still be free three months from now.

Thanks,
Ted Knutson
Managing Editor, StarCityGames.com

P.S. Kudos to everyone new I met this weekend.  Cuse had a lot of swell new people who introduced themselves and I was very happy to make their acquaintances.

This is the e-mail that Oscar DIDN'T quote, which explains why I told him I wouldn't publish his article in the first place.

Oscar,

I'm not printing this because it's simply you simply stirring shit.  Using Ben as the lodestone around which you base your own Vintage set review is silly anyway (why no mention of JP's CHK review (or anyone else who is more qualified) in your own?), but this goes too far. I can see this quickly degenerating into people going into your archives and flogging you for every time you've been too pessimistic in your own reviews and completely missed a format-changing card for Keeper alone (Was Decree of Justice in your Scourge set review?  How about Exalted Angel in Onslaught? You at least nailed Psychatog on the head as one of the best creatures ever in your Odyssey set review, right?  Right?). Everyone knows that Geordie missed Wake and the Wishes, Elliot Fertik missed Oath of Druids, and Bleiweiss was completely wrong about Artificer's Intuition.

 

The horse is dead, let it lie.

--Knut

That IS the Living Death he was working on, but the top layer of the card is the only one that is foiled.  He learned his lesson after doing the Balance, because foils crease instead of bend, and from there foreward asked for regular cards with only one foil for the final layer.  This picture is actually slightly better than the final product picture, so that's why I used it.

Also, Wizards did NOT provide all the cards for these.  The DCI cards were provided, but the others were coughed up by the people who wanted them done.  Aaron Forsythe got Sylvan Scrying made, and Paul Sottosanti will have to wait until his next trip to Nagoya in January to pick up his Pristine Angel.

--Knut

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=8051

Soooo sick.  Not sure how you'd work them into your game play, but maybe you just keep your box of 3-D cards next to you at the table and put the right case into play at the right time.  It's like proxies, but SO MUCH BETTER.

--Knut

Recently, Bleiweiss managed to unapologetically piss off the entire Type I community. He said their decks were unoriginal. He told them they were bad players. He called them whiny elitists, and he showed no remorse for his actions. What could he possibly have been thinking and what is he going to say next? If you are a Type I player (or just someone who really dislikes Ben Bleiweiss), then this is the article for you!"

Now my only request here is that you guys reply mostly on the forums on SCG.

--Knut

"Sucking at professional poker (Huey, Finkel)."

Tony, if you make as much on a yearly basis at any point in your Legal career as these two make supposedly sucking at poker, you will be a very very rich man.  A few years ago I made what I considered to be a lot of money, and I know for a fact that just the bankroll for either one of these guys is twice that sum.

Not that the rest of your points weren't somewhat legit, but there are hefty tradeoffs between leaving in the real world and working in the gaming industry.

I don't wholeheartedly support Bleiweiss's views on Type I, but no matter how bad you think his article is (and there's a lot that he's said that was right), this thread is competing for the title of "dumbest ever," and I run a website FULL of dumb forum threads, so I see them all the time.  Congrats.

--Knut

Sorry Pipster, but I disagree.  I think you'll find that 5D will have an impact across the board in Constructed formats.  I don't think you'll see 10% of the cards showing up in your monthly stats, but I don't think 5% would be too much of a stretch.

There are certain cards that scare the hell out of me right now, but that's not a bad thing, because if there's one thing I really love, it's a great combo deck.

--Knut

Hey Jay PEA,

Do you Type Uno folks actually know how to playtest?  Like, not YOU, per se, but the general populace?  Maybe they need articles lika dis one, so that you can get useful results?  I dunno what j00 guys 'no, my man, I'm just sayin'...

--Knut, slummin

In general, nope! -jpmeyer

Also, Knut, thanks for the link! -Pip[/color]

The problem here is that you run into a situation where you start wiggling on all sorts of cards.  Magic is filled with conditionals, and stats aren't a big fan of conditionals when working with large, varied swathes of data.  I'm confortable with the idea that Force/Foil/Thwart/Gush/Misdirection all cost 0 for the most part because the conditions for those cards are almost always met, but when you start bringing things like Exalted Angel and Siege-Gang into the mix I get a bit uncomfortable.  

If the Angel costs "3" to cast, then she technically costs 7 to make useful, so is her casting cost 3 with an Echo of 2WW, or is it just 4WW?  Siege-Gang most certainly costs 3RR when there's no Goblin Lackey around, and that's a condition that is met less frequently.  Do all artifacts start costing 2 mana less in decks that run Workshop?  Did all artifacts in an unbanned Tinker environment technically cost 2U?

Obviously some of these examples are more out there than others, but every one of them is contextual and could legitimately be applied in certain situations.  I mention this because most of the time, leaving the numbers "clean" and getting into the dirty stuff in the analysis is the best way to go.

--Knut

It's kinda funny to me that Pip did a doubletake over Vial because of what Vial does.  This is Type I, right?  The place where control decks with good counterspells are everywhere, and even combo decks run Force of Will?  If I'm a deck that plays creatures with a very small curve and I want to make sure that they make it through my opponent's countermagic, particularly if my creatures are going to be a problem for them once they resolve, Aether Vial seems like a very good choice.  Yes, of course it's rather dumb to use it if you are playing kids that cost 4-7, but if you are playing a Ravager Affinity list, or your curve of creatures sits mostly at 2-4, it could definitely be problematic for your opponent to deal with.  Besides, who doesn't love making creatures at Instant speed?

Obviously it's metagame dependent, and may be nothing more than a sideboard card, but it's at least worth consideration if you are playing an aggro deck in a heavy control environment.

--Knut

I should have geussed from the articles... but Phil's last statement may solidify him as the biggest geek evar.

Btw, write soon Karl.  The Marxists on thge site miss you.

--Knut

Most of this article deals with metagaming in general, and I included a section about Type I that I'd like some feedback on.

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=6886

"To me, Type I is utterly fascinating from a metagame standpoint because the format is so far behind the rest of the game itself. Before everyone gets up in arms, let me clarify what I mean, and you'll realize I'm not being derogatory. First of all, Type I is the only known format where you still see the words "Decklist withheld by request" from Top 8 results. Every other format seems to operate under the rules that, if you make the Top 8, your deck becomes public knowledge, but not Type I. I don't completely understand why this is the case, but it segues to my next point nicely."

Thanks,
Knut