[Theory] Active vs. Reactive

[MTGFan]

LOL, hardly.  

I didn't say that you couldn't come up with a distinction.  I just said that such a distinction isn't useful.  Repeatedly I said:

Show me one example where this distinction helps more than another, more useful frame.  Put another way, try to show me an example, and I will show you how another, more useful frame is actually better.

My very first post referring to these terms proves it:

4) Terms like: "power," "offensive," "defensive," or even "proactive" and "reactive" are not helpful.  In fact, these terms, upon close inspection, have no clear meaning.  They are misleading and reflect a way of knowing that does not reflect the reality of Vintage or Magic, but reflect the way we've come to understand Magic.  

Your stance, from the beginning, was that identifying the roles of cards in the game is useless, and that instead cards should be judged solely by their ability to contribute to victories. In this way, your model for judging cards only focuses on their final efficacy instead of the elements which lead to that stage.

After multiple failed attempts to provide an actually defensible distinction, including a completely wrong model of causality, you finally provided a definition of a distinction that is real, except that it's completely meaningless, because it's the Exact Same Thing as "disruptive."  Therefore, your whole attempt to provide useful terminology is a failure.    You've defined disruptive.   No one will ever use your terminology to describe disruption (except maybe CowWithHat) .   Looks like I was right all along.  Your terms are not helpful and they are misleading.  

At no point in the past did you acknowledge this dichotomy. You've only conceded its existence since the posting of this thread, and then retroactively claimed to have, all along, established the exact same theory under different terms. Your revisionist view of what transpired is insulting, and frankly, shocking.

Also, I summarized your attempt in my article last week.  

I'm sorry, but I don't feel like throwing away money on your "articles" when I can learn everything contained in them just by playing the game and reading forum posts. Honestly, the few articles of yours that I've read do nothing but state the obvious in ostentatious and overly verbose language. You say alot, but it's usually alot of nothing.

[MTGFan]

Here's where I think your logic falls apart.

Player 1: Yawgmoth's Will (Active)
Player 2: Counter (Reactive)
Player 1: Counter.  Now, is this counter active or reactive.  It didn't stop your opponent, as much as it did help you.  Which was what Steve was getting at.  Stopping your opponent and helping yourself are the same thing. 

A coutner that stops another counter is still reactive. Its existence in the chain of casuality that leads to match victory is dependent upon another element under the opponent's employ. Should be pretty easy to understand, really.

also, say I have vault/key in hand, and a tinker.  I play tinker to bait a counter.  Is this active or reactive.  Tinker is most definitly a business spell, but here, I'm using it for the sole purpose of taking away your counter.

It's still active - your strategy may be reactive in nature, but the spell itself is fundamentally active. If it doesn't draw a counter, it plays the active role of letting you grab your robot. If it does draw a counter, it merely remains an active spell that didn't resolve.

Here's my 3rd and final example.

Duress.

Is duress active, because all I am doing is taking cards from your hand, or is it reactive, because you need to have cards for me to duress away?
And what about a turn 1 duress, where your goal is to weaken your opponent, vs a duress to find a counter.

Duress is like Trinisphere - a reactive card (it depends on something in your opponent's hand to have any purpose in the game), but proactive in nature, in that it plays a reactive role in anticipation of an entity under your opponent's control. Again, should be pretty easy for anyone to understand.

By this logic, the manner in which you play a card determines whether or not it is active or reactive.  In which case, defining whether or not a card is active or reactive is ultimatly useless.  I'm done wasting my time here

Take the Trinisphere example:

IF YOUR OPPONENT HAS NO <3cc CARDS IN HIS DECK IT IS 100% USELESS.

Think about this, please. That means that Trinisphere, in order for it not to be a COMPLETE BLANK, depends on the existence of certain types of cards in your opponent's deck. It's not about how you play it - there is only one way to play Trinisphere, and that is to cast mana and put it into play.

[Gandalf_The_White_1]

You do realize that words can have more specific meanings, and different meanings in general, in different contexts, right?

And I did specify that Trinisphere and Duress are variations of reactive cards that can be claimed to be "proactive".

What you seem to have failed to have noticed is that the definition I quoted shows why your terminology is misleading.  You definition of "active" is very different from how we normally use the word and how we conceive of its meaning (this should be obvious when you label reactive cards 'proactive,' which is a common antonymn); this includes the "magic" context, where cards that are labeled "reactive" are usually instants.  So, why define misleading terminology that does not reflect common usage and conception of the term, especially when, as others have pointed out, the terminology itself seems to be useless (in that it adds nothing to our understanding of the game).  All this terminology would succeed in doing if adopted would be to confuse people.

Take the Trinisphere example:

IF YOUR OPPONENT HAS NO <3cc CARDS IN HIS DECK IT IS 100% USELESS.

Thanks for pointing this out; I am sure that no one realized this.

No one is disputing the fact that cards act based on their interactions with other cards--this is a card game; that is to be expected.  In fact, EVERY card's usefulness depends on its relationship with other cards, even cards which you have labeled "active."  Since context affects every card anyway, what is the purpose of your artificial distinction?

I actually find it difficult to believe that you are not trolling.