[Article] Italy and Kneejerk Criticism

[Dr. Sylvan]

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=7897

[Jacob Orlove]

The problem with the analysis here is that you neglect the rest of the metagame. Italy has a lot of Fish players too, but they tend to be unpowered and newer, not as skilled players (obviously not true for all, but I'm speaking generally). Lots of Fish and aggro decks that don't make top 8 still affect which decks will T8.

You can't analyze an entire metagame based on what makes top 8--you have to look at what gets played, too.

With that said, nice article, and the Italian metagame does deserve a lot more respect than it sometimes gets.

[Zherbus]

Hopefully, my rebuttal will be up on StarCityGames soon... like tomorrow.

[JACO]

BigPhilStanton (BPS),
I thought this was your best article yet; great job.

I agree with the vast majority of your article, except one minor thing:

The other major thing [Europeans] are accused of is playing bad decks. I'll admit some rather odd creations have appeared in Europe, but if you look around on TMD you'll find North America producing things like B/W Aggro-Control in a Lotus tourney T8 in Maine (31 players). Even in the SCG Power Nine tournament, the long-derided Landstill made Top 8, as did a Stacker variant. From Italy, these decks would be mocked as further evidence of ineptitude, but in America, they're politely disregarded as anomalies or praised for inventiveness.

Frankly, the mocking goes both ways. Many (not all) Americans 'mock,' or have discounted decks like RUG Madness and TPS for quite some time, even though they are extremely competitive. I have tested both Draw7 and David Beduzzi's black/blue TPS, and can't for the life of me find how people could possibly consider Draw7 to be nearly as good. Sure there are a lot of broken spells in both, but TPS just seems flat out better to me in testing than Draw7. They do indeed play a slightly different game, as you noted here:

When I was looking over a ton of TPS lists recently, I realized that they're not playing the same game as Draw7. They're decklists are actually much more combo-control than hard combo.

Draw7 has the ability to go more broken about 1 in 10 games, but TPS is just flat out more consistent. It attempts to get to a gamestate where it just resolves a single game-altering spell, rather than a series of them.

I doubt that GenCon will look like an Italian Top 8, but I would be surprised if their ideas didn't have an influence.

I think this sentence will be far more accurate than most people would like to admit. The truth is, the lines between these continentally divided metagames are blurring more and more every month, and the reason is because the best decks are rising to the top, no matter the country. Whether enough of those decks are played in every tournament is another matter altogether, which should be addressed another time. Sure it sucks to have your Smokestack or Mindslaver Mana Drained into a Cunning Wish for Artifact Mutation, but that doesn't mean you can discount a whole deck because of game swings like that.

There are far more decks capable and deserving of Top 8 appearances than most people will give credit for. Trinistax variants, 4CC, GayR/Fish, TnT variants, Slaver builds, TPS, Madness variants, Dragon, and a couple of other decks are all capable of consistently putting up lots of Top 8 performances, provided people play them. The variant part, or metagaming of these decks is what will push them over the top, and is why you will consistently see them in Top 8's. Just as with constructed Pro Tours or Grand Prixs, those slight 3-8 card differences in decks for metagaming is what makes or breaks performances and Top 8 appearances.

[rvs]

Just a small reminder pip: The italians have never played an actual original deck (or so you failed to mention it). They take an existing good deck (often european ofcourse. Or at least canadian :p), and make it worse.

[Zherbus]

My rebuttal article.

[Dozer]

(mirrored my reply to the article on the SCG forums)

I like how Zherbus' article puts a clear emphasis on local metagaming, which also illustrates that there just is no global metagame (yet). There might be a global set of "best decks", though, that is reflected in SCG's Decks to Beat, but to speak of a metagame would be like huffing on a mirror - no lasting effect, but breath wasted.

However, what I don't entirely agree with is the way of classifying the decks. The problem is that this classification tends to make for instant dismissals of certain decks and strategies. For example, if we see a Salvager.dec wining a tournament, the automatic reaction is "whoa, must have been bad decks there". In the case of Salvager.dec, this is likely correct, and it also is in most other cases. Based on your own playtesting and experiences, certain outcomes can be immediately recognized as the result of a sub-optimal turnout/metagame/power supply and the like.

The thing is that once in a while, something is putting up good results in an acceptable tournament environment (i.e. powered or proxies). This must not be overlooked. The Italian TPS builds that Phil brought back to our attention are such a case. Even if the environment was not as competitive as the high-end tournaments (Dülmen, Waterbury, SCG), the ideas might hold true.

Ideas that do not mirror one's own preferences or metagames are very likely to not be evaluated. That leads to little to no global connection, even though the data is available. Most Type 1 players tend to stick to their guns (I do so, too), which makes metagames less diverse and less fluid than they could be.

Dozer

[MaxxMatt]

I waited a bit on replying to Dr. Sylvan’s article, to read Zherbus's rebuttal first.

I'm with Zherbus that every player should pay more attention to his own metagame and his own field instead of netdecking and playing the wrong deck in the wrong tourney.

But that response tells me NOTHING about what Dr. Sylvan tried to explain in his article.

Among all the Americans or the Europeans, no one metagame should automatically be considered better than all others.

I'm fighting every day with my teammates when I show to them innovations from other countries.
I'm fighting every day trying to explain to every member of TMD that our tourneys are ALWAYS extremely competitive.

The only thing that I can do (because I can't fly over the ocean every week with my team and play against you) is to write about us more frequently and with as much detail as I can.

I was sadly surprised, especially after ALL the work that I did during these months to read these lines:


   

While I cannot possibly prove that Europe is or was [choose a card of your choice] light due to the lack of factual data, you also cannot prove that Europe is [choose a card of your choice]heavy. In the court of Zherbus, your argument is not permissible.

   


Talking about this aspect of the issue, I sadly ask to you Steve and all the other readers:

:shock: :shock: :shock:
"Do you trust in what I have been writing every week?"
:shock: :shock: :shock:

If you trust in what you read, I don't know where the difficulties are in correctly evaluating the metagame of these well-documented tourneys.

I WEEKLY add COMPLETE breakdown with the most appropriate decks' NAMES in it, NOT to waste my time but to show you all exactly how good/bad our metagame is. All the names that I wrote always consist on  the exact deck that you expect after that reading.

If I wrote "4C-HulkSmash" or "MW-Slavery", I'm sure that you know what cards each deck had in it (ignoring minor “techs�).

If you want A REAL count of the [choose a card of your choice][/b] simply count the deck names and do the needed math.

I'm really sad reading that one of the most eminent and respected member of our community does not trust what he reads only because he wasn't physically here to testify what I reported.


We’ve been to tournaments in the “different� European metagames (Italian, French, Spanish, German) and to our eyes they didn't seem so different.

I noticed that THE PLAYERS THEMSELVES are at different levels, NOT the decks played.

We have some great players, France has some great players, Germany has some great players, Spain the same.
All of them go on the Internet and read both the European's and the American's Magic sites. IMHO, the spread of similar decks is predictable and beautiful at the same time.

I happily read about Eastman, Dante and Methuselahn and their attempts to "give a test" to the decks that usually Win here but that are completely different from yours.

If you exclude some unpowered decks (present in every part of the world, excluding Unlimited-Proxy-Environments ), WHY not ALWAYS give a chance to our new/old ideas/decks? Why does the evidence of multiple good results give you NO confidence on our work?

The intentions of Dr Sylvan are good.
I worked hard to collect data and agree with his feelings about our decks and tourneys.

I can understand that I will probably not play a single game in my entire life against an American player at a tourney in America, but because of my hope to develop a truly “global� metagame (like all the other formats have), I'm really sad that after more than 1 year of hard work, I read comments like "European play bad decks".

...Especially because Europeans play the same decks that Americans usually play BUT with the needed changes that our metagame imposes on us.

This leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth...




@To All the readers@

How can I say to Morefling that he is "really wrong", without being banned from TMD?

"really wrong" = &%£%%@#









@Jacob.

The problem with the analysis here is that you neglect the rest of the metagame. Italy has a lot of Fish players too, but they tend to be unpowered and newer, not as skilled players (obviously not true for all, but I'm speaking generally). Lots of Fish and aggro decks that don't make top 8 still affect which decks will T8.

   

Jacob, changed the Italic part of the quote according to my next lines.

Read at my report of Dulmen.
A WTF top8d. He lost to one deck that he was sure to beat: TPS.
Valerio Pisoni won 2-0 against him. If you read the report of that WTF-player on morphling.de and or TMD, you can see that he didn't realize WHY he lost. He lost because his predictions were wrong, not because he didn't draw blue cards.

That was just an example.

But if you expand it to the "fish argument", you can easily read through it, that maybe, while Dr. Sylvan write incomplete or impossible conclusions made only on top8s (paralogisms), maybe Americans are over-valuing Fish.

A side note for a complete comphrension. Our players knew, tested and played fish and its variants a little after PTW proposed his first list, BEFORE he won his first huge event two years ago. It isn't a new deck for us. It is constantly in our gauntlet, but ... it loses to fat aggro ( RG-beatz, Madness and TNT) and against our TPS. A good control player can have an edge against it simply by knowing the opponents maindeck and strategies.

IMHO, these are the reasons why I think that you all are over-valuing fish. It is a strong deck when not so many players are prepared to face it.

On the other hand, Hulk, TPS and some good aggro, are still powerful decks, even if they’re not the “fad of the moment� in America.



New Jacob's line.

Lots of Fish and aggro decks that don't make top 8 still affect which decks will T8.

Exactly.

Some players in America, sees Aggro and some partially powered decks as BAD decks. It isn't inherently true. There are a lot of good decks among which you considered "bad".

I'll promise to you all to write/sent/fax/copy every single list you need to watch with your eyes that is out of top8, but that you need to know to BE SURE that we are playing against good decks.

On the other hand, because of their presence, some of our top tiers MUST change the maindeck according to them. I can't understimate a deck only because it SEEMS bad or it isn't a Tier1.

Magic the Gathering's goal is to win.
And if I change 2 or 3 cards to a Tier1 deck, I'll not ruin the entire deck
Retrospectively these changes let me win.







MAxxMAtt




PS. Thanks to Jacob for his corrections to my English.

[Zherbus]

MaxxMatt, I'm having a hard time sifting through your post.

I'll say two quick things:

1) I wasn't singling out Italy even though Dr Sylvan was specifically talking about them.

2) Your meta-breakdown, though really nice, still doesn't give any sort of card count that I'm looking for... it just provides more speculation. I know that sort of thing is hard to come by, and maybe Italy is a bathhouse for Wastelands, but again - I was talking about more than just Italy.