CS article thread in-depth analysis

[Demonic Attorney]

A Critique of “A Closer Look at Control Slaver”[/i]


Control Slaver. Easily considered one of the most prominent Vintage deck archetypes in 2005. Steve Menendian. Likewise regarded as one of Vintage’s most prominent writers. Put them together and what do you get? Reading the feedback in this thread, one would expect an authoritative work that would guide Slaver players’ deck building and play strategies for months to come. Unfortunately, the article I read fell short of this level of excellence. Perhaps my expectations were too high before reading Smmenen’s latest masterpiece, but I found several flaws in his article that I could not overlook. Hence, I hope to improve the quality of the dialogue on Slaver, and to motivate all Vintage writers to produce even better quality work by posting this brief critique.

First, I’d like to address the introduction to A Closer Look at Control Slaver. For the first five paragraphs, Smmenen provides his readers with a meandering discussion of the history of Drain decks in Vintage. After concluding this trip down memory lane, Smmenen then introduces his thesis, “In this article, I'm going to take a look at the most successful Mana Drain deck and attempt to resolve some of the more interesting debates and controversies surrounding it.” (Steve Menendian, A Closer Look at Control Slaver p.1) After reading his thesis, I was left wondering exactly why the previous five paragraphs of text were included. They were not ultimately relevant to the points Smmenen’s article addressed and served only to delay the introduction of the points on which his article actually focused.

From here, Smmenen begins his comparison of Goth Slaver vs. Control Slaver. He first referenced Rich Shay’s Training Wheels article in which Shay said that his CS build that did not include the Intuition/AK engine was “faster and more agile.” (Menendian, 3) Smmenen decides when Shay said this, “The core of his argument… is that he thinks that Intuition/AK costs more than its worth.” Ibid. While I wouldn’t disagree with this contention, I am nevertheless forced to quibble with the amount of support Smmenen has given to justify the leap in logic he has made. Shay’s assertion that a deck without the AK engine is faster cannot be tautologically converted to a statement that the AK engine costs more than it’s worth. Perhaps the AK engine bestows a different set of benefits on the Goth Slaver players that compensate for the loss of agility. Maybe the additional card drawing power alone justifies the trade-off in speed. While I don’t think Shay would take this position, it’s important to explicitly include this step in the deduction process from Shay’s statement that a deck without AK is more agile to Smmenen’s conclusion that the crux of Shay’s position is that the cost of AK outweighs its benefits.

A more glaring shortcoming emerges immediately after this point. Smmenen identifies the core of the Slaver deck as Mana Drain, Force of Will, Brainstorm, Ancestral Recall, and Time Walk. Conspicuously absent from this set of core cards are Goblin Welder, Thirst for Knowledge, and Mindslaver—the cards which had always seemed to me to be the fundamental engine of every Slaver deck since the German prototype. If Brainstorm, Mana Drain, Ancestral, and Time Walk were all banned tomorrow, I firmly believe Slaver would still be a viable, if weaker, deck. If Force of Will joined them on the banned list, the basic Slaver engine would continue to function, even if Slaver as a deck concept became more susceptible to an early blitz from combo. Thus, I have trouble understanding why Smmenen identified those cards as the “core” of Slaver. He expands the cards he identifies as “essentials” a bit with a second list of key cards, but this too excludes Mindslaver. I’m at a loss as to how a Slaver deck could function as a Slaver deck without Mindslaver. It seems fairly essential to me.

Smmenen goes on to state that Shay’s argument that AK is inferior in Slaver “is rooted in a practical tournament reality that greater flexibility tends to win matches.” (Menendian, 4) Curiously absent from this declaration is any sort of citation to anything Shay has actually said to this effect. Whether or not this was the basis for Shay’s position against the inclusion of AK in the Slaver deck, the fact that Smmenen merely imputed this position to Shay without any sort of citation to support himself smacks of a lackadaisical attitude on his part. It’s a bit much to ask your reader to accept a declaration about the beliefs of a third party on faith alone. Smmenen expounds upon this position by stating that he disagrees “with Rich’s statement that his deck is faster. He can’t just Brainstorm immediately…[h]is timing has to be fairly precise or he will be overpowered.” Ibid. This does not strike me as adequate support for a point that has been the center of a great deal of controversy. The fact that Brainstorm needs to be played with some degree of circumspection hardly supports a sweeping statement that CS is not faster than Goth Slaver. Smmenen then departs from this cursory attempt to support his claim that CS is not the faster deck and abruptly shifts to a discussion of sideboarding strategy. This vein of discussion appears to have little to do with his original argument that CS is not intrinsically faster and serves to disorient a reader who might expect a better organizational strategy from the founder of Team Meandeck.

It is after this disjointed discussion of speed and flexibility that the weakest point in Smmenen’s article emerges. Prefacing his discussion of the adaptability of Goth Slaver by a cryptic statement of the necessity for Goth Slaver players to “think outside the box” when sideboarding or tuning their deck to fit a specific metagame, whatever points Smmenen may have had are hopelessly lost in a miasma of obtuse metaphors and yet more brazenly undersupported claims. He begins by saying, “AK Slaver has too many cards, but Control Slaver has too few.” (Menendian, 5) I find this interesting, since the last time I checked, both decks ran 60 cards. He then builds upon this point by declaring that “you can trade off some essential cards in AK Slaver to get metagame flexibility while Control Slaver can't. Control Slaver is trading up while Goth Slaver is trading down in a sense.” Ibid. I’m left wondering how these statements can be logically consistent, given that Goth Slaver is “trading up” by relinquishing essential cards and CS is “trading down” by boarding out nonessential cards. Perhaps Smmenen needs to revisit the criteria he uses to determine what cards are in fact “essential.” However, the most egregious flaw in this paragraph is doubtlessly when Smmenen attempts to sneak a conclusory statement by the reader that almost completely fails to account for months of dialogue and controversy. Claiming that “Goth Slaver is still in a better position by trading down than Control Slaver is by trading up…because Goth Slaver is a more objectively powerful deck,” Smmenen tries to present as a given the answer to a question over which months of debate have raged. Ibid. He does support himself by stating that “Intuition has insane synergy in the deck and AK is, in my experience and as powerful as Thirst is, a more powerful draw engine than Thirst. Intuition AK has no limit but mana.” Ibid. Unfortunately Smmenen is limiting his comparison of two decks to a comparison of two draw engines, failing to account for other important differences between them, such as Skeletal Scrying, Mystical Tutor, or Tinker as well as the number of Welders. Smmenen says that “Thirst can be conditional and requires timing,” however can’t the same be said for virtually any other card in Vintage? Ibid. In order to help you, your cards need to be played intelligently. I don’t regard this as an intrinsic limitation on the power level of the cards themselves.

The next paragraph is not much better. Opening with the statement that "the only cards that are sacred are the cards I listed above,” it excludes Tinker, Yawgmoth’s Will, Mindslaver, and Library of Alexandria from the list of “sacred” cards. (Menendian, 6) I’m confident there are many experienced Slaver players who would vehemently disagree with the proposition that these cards are not in fact sacred. I’m certainly one of them. Instead of supporting such a controversial assertion, Smmenen only goes on to claim that “Nine times out of ten you will be playing with 4 Welders and nine times out of ten you will be playing with four Thirst… there are not as many sacred cows as you might be inclined to believe.” Ibid. This is likewise another controversial statement that is completely bereft of any supporting premises or arguments. I can’t accept ideas this radical on the author’s declaration alone, and I would like to think most readers are similarly inclined.

From here, the content of the essay improves considerably, but unfortunately the organization still leaves something to be desired. Smmenen begins a discussion of “[Goth Slaver] generally,” yet immediately focuses on the inclusion of Deep Analysis and its interaction with AK, especially in the opponent’s deck in the mirror. This seems fairly specific for a “general” discussion of Goth Slaver. Furthermore, Smmenen again abruptly switches gears and begins to talk to about whether or not “all objectively equal weaknesses are in fact equal [sic].” Ibid. Notwithstanding the opaque nature of this statement itself, the transition to this segment of the discussion from a focus on Deep Analysis is nonexistent, again disorienting the reader. From here, the focus of the essay wanders back to sideboarding, where Smmenen states that “thinking outside the box, I might be inclined to try some radical approaches, like siding out three Welders, siding in Yawgmoth's Will and 4-5 Red Elemental Blasts.” (Menendian, 7) The wisdom of such a sideboarding plan is debatable at best, and it again seems like it would take more to persuade the average reader to entertain the idea of boarding out 75% of the deck’s central engine (Welder) and running its most powerful card (Yawgmoth’s Will) in the sideboard than a conclusory statement about “thinking outside the box.”

Smmenen’s second discussion of the merits of black in Goth Slaver is significantly more solid than his comparison of CS and Goth Slaver, in my opinion. However, there remain a few junctures at which I believe it could be improved. The first of these appears relatively soon into the discussion, where Smmenen asserts “appears to be two possible starting points: First, that there is an objectively correct answer [to the question of whether to run black in Goth Slaver]. And that answer is "yes" or "no." [sic] Or, Second, that there is no correct answer, and that it depends upon the metagame.” Ibid. These seem to me to be conclusions, rather than starting points. It struck me as odd that Smmenen saw the answers to the question he poses as his thesis in the second segment of his article as a place to start, and not a place to conclude.

In any event, Smmenen continues by posing the question “What Black are we including?” This seems like a fine place to start and could have served to introduce a wonderful opening, were it not for the fact that he immediately wandered away from any attempt to answer this question and instead focused on the number of Welders in a Goth Slaver deck including black for the remainder of the paragraph.

Afterwards, Smmenen asserted that “Rich Shay's Control Slaver has consistently used Duress, Demonic Tutor, and Yawgmoth's Will.” (Menendian, 8) While I can’t blame him here for being a little off the mark, I feel compelled to correct Smmenen for the sake of the record. Duress is rarely included in CS and only finds its way into the main deck if a metagame heavy in combo or control is expected. Since that is increasingly rare these days, Duress is not consistently used in CS. Again, this is hardly Smmenen’s fault—he can’t be expected to keep up with the monthly changes to a deck he doesn’t play that’s entered into tournaments in a different part of the country, but I just wanted to ensure no one comes away from this thread thinking Duress is a part of the standard CS build. It isn’t.

Shortly afterwards, Smmenen begins a truly well-written discussion of role of Yawgmoth’s Will in Goth Slaver as the lone consideration in favor of including black. His remark that “the question [of whether to run black] basically becomes a proxy for whether to run Yawgmoth's Will or not [in Goth Slaver]” was particularly well put.  Ibid. My only criticism of his first introductory paragraphs addresses his conclusion that “I think the answer is that the deck should run Yawgmoth's Will, but that upon the clearest showing and the highest burden, you can overcome that presumption.”  Ibid. I won’t argue with this idea, though I don’t necessarily agree, but I merely want to point out that Smmenen’s choice of diction here is obtuse and awkward. His conclusion would have been better-phrased if he had said something like “In the presence of compelling circumstances, you can justify the exclusion of Yawgmoth’s Will from Goth Slaver despite the initial presumption to the contrary” instead.

Smmenen then does an admirable job of summarizing the reasons why a Goth Slaver player would want to include Yawgmoth’s Will in their deck. His analysis is succinct yet thorough, and is generally well-written. However, his summary of the reasons against the inclusion of Yawgmoth’s Will includes a major flaw. Smmenen contends that Will “is a win "more" card. I.e. the deck's primary game plan simply doesn't need Yawgmoth's Will because once you have the key components in place, Yawgmoth's Will is an empty formality.” (Menendian, 9). I strongly disagree. In Slaver, Will is a win condition, in and of itself. It is a reliable backup plan in case the main strategy of aligning the main components of the deck is stymied by removal, countermagic, or hate cards. Yawgmoth’s Will truly shines in situations wherein the opponent has successfully interfered with your initial game plan of Welder plus Slaver, or you’re just not drawing an essential component of this win condition no matter how many draw spells you play. Under these circumstances, Yawgmoth’s Will can and virtually always does serve to catapult you into a position of control and insurmountable card advantage, allowing you snatch victory from what would otherwise be the jaws of likely defeat. Perceived in this way, Yawgmoth’s Will is not merely strong. It is not just powerful. It is not only valuable. It’s priceless in terms of what it offers to a Slaver player whose main game plan is failing. Seen when a Slaver player is already winning, YawgWill can be reasonably construed as a “win-more” card. But, Slaver players will not always be in a winning position, and will sometimes need something major to change who has the advantage. It is in this situation that YawgWill’s true power becomes apparent.

The first of two final points I want to touch on concerns the role of Yawgmoth’s Will in the combo matchup. Smmenen claims that “Will actually gives you another chance to race Combo.” (Menendian, 10) I find this strange since he had earlier correctly stated that YawgWill isn’t amazing in the very early game, and against combo that’s usually all there is unless you’re winning anyway, notwithstanding the anecdote in which a Slaver player lived four turns against one of the better combo builds in Vintage, and drew and resolved two intutions with help from timely drain mana.

Finally, Smmenen argues in favor of including Yawgmoth’s Will by saying it accelerates the goldfishing speed of Goth Slaver. While I certainly won’t disagree, I merely want to point out that if Meandeck Tendrils has taught us anything, it’s that goldfishing with a deck tells us very little about its actual potential. Thus, I’m not sure this point is worth including especially given how many other powerful arguments are available to support the inclusion of Yawgmoth’s Will.

Smmenen completes his article in fine form, illustrating other scenarios in which Yawgmoth’s Will would be invaluable. However, he omits any in-depth discussion of what circumstances would justify cutting it, and why. I was curious as to what these circumstances would be. Finally, Smmenen wraps up by saying that “You can win without [Yawgmoth’s Will] to be sure, but I wouldn't want to leave home without [it].” (Menendian, 14) Neither would I; it seems we agree on the important stuff after all.

Until next article,
Demonic Attorney

[Smmenen]

I'll deal with your comments paragraph by paragraph:

Paragraph One

A Critique of “A Closer Look at Control Slaver”[/i]


Control Slaver. Easily considered one of the most prominent Vintage deck archetypes in 2005. Steve Menendian. Likewise regarded as one of Vintage’s most prominent writers. Put them together and what do you get? Reading the feedback in this thread, one would expect an authoritative work that would guide Slaver players’ deck building and play strategies for months to come. Unfortunately, the article I read fell short of this level of excellence. Perhaps my expectations were too high before reading Smmenen’s latest masterpiece, but I found several flaws in his article that I could not overlook. Hence, I hope to improve the quality of the dialogue on Slaver, and to motivate all Vintage writers to produce even better quality work by posting this brief critique.

The sarcasm is unnecessary becuase the article was not intended to be a primer or a masterpiece.  I was simply putting my views out there and the reasoning supporting them on two particular issues.  I did not spend much time on organization preferring instead to focus on content.  The reason is that the organization was self-evident as the article hinged on resolving two distinct issues.  I agree we can increase the quality of the dialogue.

First of all, I don't think the sarcasm or biting remarks were particularly necessary.  The points you made could have been done in a similar manner to the manner in which I wrote the article: somewhat loose and casual - focusing instead on the content.  Admittedly, I could have done a few more clarity edits.  This is evident from the responses I'm about to craft to your points.  

Second, since we agreed on most issues, why even waste time analyzing the whole piece.  It doesn't add to the dialogue to critique what I said about yawg Will if you agree that Yawg Will is necessary (as I do).  Moreover, it distracts from the real issues that need to be explored.  Your critique leaves the development of that real dialogue rather lacking.  We are barely any further than we were when I wrote the article.  A sad state of affairs when you consider the time and effort spent crafting your reply and my rebuttal.  


Paragraph Two [/size]

First, I’d like to address the introduction to A Closer Look at Control Slaver. For the first five paragraphs, Smmenen provides his readers with a meandering discussion of the history of Drain decks in Vintage. After concluding this trip down memory lane, Smmenen then introduces his thesis, “In this article, I'm going to take a look at the most successful Mana Drain deck and attempt to resolve some of the more interesting debates and controversies surrounding it.” (Steve Menendian, A Closer Look at Control Slaver p.1) After reading his thesis, I was left wondering exactly why the previous five paragraphs of text were included. They were not ultimately relevant to the points Smmenen’s article addressed and served only to delay the introduction of the points on which his article actually focused.

Two reasons why that was included.  First, I intended to write more about Mana Drain decks in general.  I was going to include a section on Tog v. Control Slaver and Shoals in Mana Drain decks.  However, as that was discarded to focus the article, I kept that section in because it dovetailed with the discussion/analysis on Yawgmoth's Will and gave the article a nice bookend feel.  I'm sorry you didn't see that.  Hopefully by the end you did.


Paragraph Three

From here, Smmenen begins his comparison of Goth Slaver vs. Control Slaver. He first referenced Rich Shay’s Training Wheels article in which Shay said that his CS build that did not include the Intuition/AK engine was “faster and more agile.” (Menendian, 3) Smmenen decides when Shay said this, “The core of his argument… is that he thinks that Intuition/AK costs more than its worth.” Ibid. While I wouldn’t disagree with this contention, I am nevertheless forced to quibble with the amount of support Smmenen has given to justify the leap in logic he has made. Shay’s assertion that a deck without the AK engine is faster cannot be tautologically converted to a statement that the AK engine costs more than it’s worth. Perhaps the AK engine bestows a different set of benefits on the Goth Slaver players that compensate for the loss of agility. Maybe the additional card drawing power alone justifies the trade-off in speed. While I don’t think Shay would take this position, it’s important to explicitly include this step in the deduction process from Shay’s statement that a deck without AK is more agile to Smmenen’s conclusion that the crux of Shay’s position is that the cost of AK outweighs its benefits.

The problem identified by you here was simply an example of a lack of perfect clarity in my drafting.  Not at all uncommon in my writing at times.  However, you correctly deduced what I was getting at with your sentence "Perhaps...." (which I have bolded).  You say "I don't think that Shay Slaver would take that position."  That, Chris, is the whole debate.  That is what this entire analysis hinges on and the only issue worth debating in this entire thread.  I spend the rest of the article suggesting that it might.  So why conclude that it would not when it should be relatively clear that that is the task of that part of the article?



Paragraph Four

A more glaring shortcoming emerges immediately after this point. Smmenen identifies the core of the Slaver deck as Mana Drain, Force of Will, Brainstorm, Ancestral Recall, and Time Walk. Conspicuously absent from this set of core cards are Goblin Welder, Thirst for Knowledge, and Mindslaver—the cards which had always seemed to me to be the fundamental engine of every Slaver deck since the German prototype. If Brainstorm, Mana Drain, Ancestral, and Time Walk were all banned tomorrow, I firmly believe Slaver would still be a viable, if weaker, deck. If Force of Will joined them on the banned list, the basic Slaver engine would continue to function, even if Slaver as a deck concept became more susceptible to an early blitz from combo. Thus, I have trouble understanding why Smmenen identified those cards as the “core” of Slaver. He expands the cards he identifies as “essentials” a bit with a second list of key cards, but this too excludes Mindslaver. I’m at a loss as to how a Slaver deck could function as a Slaver deck without Mindslaver. It seems fairly essential to me.

This is a bit of miniutae that isn't really worth discussion becuase I could well be wrong.  I was taking thet approach that the starting point for any blue based control deck, given the card pool, is those blue cards.  I.e. it would be absurd to play a deck like this with only 3 mana Drains or 2 Force of Wills.  But, given how I set it up, you may be right.  The point I was setting up is more important that whether I was correct in the specifics in this circumstance.


Paragraph Five

Smmenen goes on to state that Shay’s argument that AK is inferior in Slaver “is rooted in a practical tournament reality that greater flexibility tends to win matches.” (Menendian, 4) Curiously absent from this declaration is any sort of citation to anything Shay has actually said to this effect. Whether or not this was the basis for Shay’s position against the inclusion of AK in the Slaver deck, the fact that Smmenen merely imputed this position to Shay without any sort of citation to support himself smacks of a lackadaisical attitude on his part. It’s a bit much to ask your reader to accept a declaration about the beliefs of a third party on faith alone. Smmenen expounds upon this position by stating that he disagrees “with Rich’s statement that his deck is faster. He can’t just Brainstorm immediately…[h]is timing has to be fairly precise or he will be overpowered.” Ibid. This does not strike me as adequate support for a point that has been the center of a great deal of controversy. The fact that Brainstorm needs to be played with some degree of circumspection hardly supports a sweeping statement that CS is not faster than Goth Slaver. Smmenen then departs from this cursory attempt to support his claim that CS is not the faster deck and abruptly shifts to a discussion of sideboarding strategy. This vein of discussion appears to have little to do with his original argument that CS is not intrinsically faster and serves to disorient a reader who might expect a better organizational strategy from the founder of Team Meandeck.

Ouch.  So my organizational structure sucks and I shift from point to point without rhyme or rythm.  That doesn't mean my points aren't valid and you take almost no pains to actually refute them.  

Let me deal with the two points seperately:
1) Control Slaver is faster.  Anyone goldfishing can discover that this is blatently false in a matter of minutes.  The example of Biller that I put forward in the article explains why.  While it is true that the Biller example doesn't prove either way - I don't feel the burden to prove either way because it is incredibly obvious which is faster.  The Biller example is simply an anecdote to support the claim in a way that one may not have seen, but it isn't a necessary condition to buying the claim that Goth Slaver is faster.  Goth Slaver IS faster.  Having more draw and less slow cards by necessity makes you a faster deck.  Comparing Richs old deck: he had Blood Moons, Duress (I don't know specifically what he has now - Scrying?) necessarily makes you slower than Intuitions/Ak.   That you dispute it makes me question your experience with Goth Slaver (although not your rhetorical skills, which appear to remain firmly intact).

That is the easiest claim to dispose of though.

2) The notion that the claim that Shay is saying that greater flexibility wins tournaments.  This is not really in dispute.   What you are saying obscures that fact.  Greater flexibility DOES win tournaments becuase you only need to win a match.  The actual way in which tournament matches play out suggests that flexible design with key metagame bombs like Blood Moon or (the once metagame option Plat Angel) can win matches.  But one couldn't say that Blood Moon or whatever metagame card you include is actually an objectively best deck.  Those cards that are included are done so because of the metagame.  This claim also comes from my several personal discussions with Rich on the matter.  One particularly interesting discussion is on my theory of play mistakes.  It's actually NOT that much to ask the reader to beleive.  It is directly related to his claim that his deck is more agile and also evidenced by his preference for metagame cards.  In fact, I would turn around your own critique on you.  It is a bit much to suggest that such an obvious statement (given what we know) should be viewed skeptically.

Paragraph Six

It is after this disjointed discussion of speed and flexibility that the weakest point in Smmenen’s article emerges. Prefacing his discussion of the adaptability of Goth Slaver by a cryptic statement of the necessity for Goth Slaver players to “think outside the box” when sideboarding or tuning their deck to fit a specific metagame, whatever points Smmenen may have had are hopelessly lost in a miasma of obtuse metaphors and yet more brazenly undersupported claims. He begins by saying, “AK Slaver has too many cards, but Control Slaver has too few.” (Menendian, 5) I find this interesting, since the last time I checked, both decks ran 60 cards. He then builds upon this point by declaring that “you can trade off some essential cards in AK Slaver to get metagame flexibility while Control Slaver can't. Control Slaver is trading up while Goth Slaver is trading down in a sense.” Ibid. I’m left wondering how these statements can be logically consistent, given that Goth Slaver is “trading up” by relinquishing essential cards and CS is “trading down” by boarding out nonessential cards. Perhaps Smmenen needs to revisit the criteria he uses to determine what cards are in fact “essential.” However, the most egregious flaw in this paragraph is doubtlessly when Smmenen attempts to sneak a conclusory statement by the reader that almost completely fails to account for months of dialogue and controversy. Claiming that “Goth Slaver is still in a better position by trading down than Control Slaver is by trading up…because Goth Slaver is a more objectively powerful deck,” Smmenen tries to present as a given the answer to a question over which months of debate have raged. Ibid. He does support himself by stating that “Intuition has insane synergy in the deck and AK is, in my experience and as powerful as Thirst is, a more powerful draw engine than Thirst. Intuition AK has no limit but mana.” Ibid. Unfortunately Smmenen is limiting his comparison of two decks to a comparison of two draw engines, failing to account for other important differences between them, such as Skeletal Scrying, Mystical Tutor, or Tinker as well as the number of Welders. Smmenen says that “Thirst can be conditional and requires timing,” however can’t the same be said for virtually any other card in Vintage? Ibid. In order to help you, your cards need to be played intelligently. I don’t regard this as an intrinsic limitation on the power level of the cards themselves.

Frankly, I think you just failed to understand the whole argument.  You can criticize my "trade up and trade down" point for not being sufficiently clear or artfully phrased, but do you honestly not understand it?  I'll explain my point anew after quoting the next paragraph since the two are linked:

The next paragraph is not much better. Opening with the statement that "the only cards that are sacred are the cards I listed above,” it excludes Tinker, Yawgmoth’s Will, Mindslaver, and Library of Alexandria from the list of “sacred” cards. (Menendian, 6) I’m confident there are many experienced Slaver players who would vehemently disagree with the proposition that these cards are not in fact sacred. I’m certainly one of them. Instead of supporting such a controversial assertion, Smmenen only goes on to claim that “Nine times out of ten you will be playing with 4 Welders and nine times out of ten you will be playing with four Thirst… there are not as many sacred cows as you might be inclined to believe.” Ibid. This is likewise another controversial statement that is completely bereft of any supporting premises or arguments. I can’t accept ideas this radical on the author’s declaration alone, and I would like to think most readers are similarly inclined.

I'm going to forgo nitpicking you and attmept to recraft the argument I was making.  Since that is really what matters: which side is right on this matter.  Goth Slaver is an objectively stronger deck in vacuum.  It is faster and more robust.  The question is: is the AK/Intuition slots worth it?  Most of the arguments have hinged on the notion that there are better things to do with those slots.  My argument is that you CAN acheive ALL the things you want to achieve with Control Slaver WITH Goth Slaver.  The difference is that it requires working within a tighter frame.   Most of what I was doing in these paragraphs is trying to demonstrate how one might do that.  

What I am saying and what the Waterbury results bear out, is that you can get all the agility and flexibility from intelligent design.  The deck is not so tight that the player the calibre of Rich Shay could not play Intuition/AK and still get all the agility and flexibility he wants.  The examples I provided were merely possible ways to approach the deck to acheive that end.

I'll leave your responses to the Yawg Will stuff out becuase you were generally complementary.  However, I would LOVE to see you critique Rich's article "Training Wheels" with the same level of scrutiny that you gave mine becuase I found it completely unpersuasive and rather short for what he was trying to do.  It is worth noting that my article was completely finished and "in the can" before his article went up.  My quotes were from his mana drain posts, not his article on SCG.  

The key question, and let's not let it be obscured, is whether to run Intuition/AK.  I'd like to focus on that question and I'll begin with your reply to my recrafted argument.

In other words, given that this was an article for a magic site, your criticism almost entirely focused on form, organization, clarity and presentation and was extremely lacking in actually rebutting the points I made.  Without exception you didn't delve away from the words I used into actually presenting some substantive counterargumentation of your own.  I welcome it.

[Demonic Attorney]

Steve,

It seemed as though you took my critique rather personally.  I just want to establish here that it was not meant to be a personal attack on you at all.  While I plan to post a more in-depth response to your answers sometime tomorrow, I'd just like to underscore the reasons behind what I did.  

By and large, I wrote the critique in the hopes of encouraging you, and all other Vintage writers, to make the extra effort to "edit for clarity" as I believe you put it.  It makes an article more accessible to the average reader, and more pleasant to read through for everybody.

There are many, many Vintage writers whose writing style is excessively verbose, aggrandized, and somewhat daunting to the average reader, and often intentionally so.  Vintage writers go out of their way to use obscure diction just to sound intelligent, and they distort their points by attempting to present them as if Michael Foucalt or Jacques Derrida had written them.  This isn't necessary.  My critique was itself a caricature of this writing style to provide an extreme example of some of the problems with this style of writing.  While I did disagree with some of your points, when I did differ with you, I did so explicitly and tried to provide reasons for doing so.  Oftentimes I agreed with what you said, but thought the manner in which you said it could have been refined.  So, please try to keep those two different reasons for criticism separate when reacting to my critique.

I'd like to conclude by again reiterating that I hope my critique inspires all Vintage writers to make their writing more accessible, and to make the extra effort to present their ideas in the clearest fashion possible.  Content is the most important consideration in writing, but aesthetic counts for something, too.

[Demonic Attorney]

And now, my full response.

I did not spend much time on organization preferring instead to focus on content. The reason is that the organization was self-evident as the article hinged on resolving two distinct issues. I agree we can increase the quality of the dialogue.

This is precisely the main issue.  I had few quarrels with the content of your article, and those I had I will get to in due course.  For the most part, I thought the manner in which your views were presented did them a disservice.  I found the article to be excessively verbose, at times disorganized, and occasionally opaque in terms of diction.  Writing style is an important consideration when evaluating the quality of dialogue, just as content is.  Taking the extra few minutes to have someone else review your work for clarity or even just editing it yourself to make sure it's accessible to your readership is an important step in the writing process and should not be overlooked.  To do so is to place unnecessary barriers between your audience and your argument by forcing them to navigate flawed writing.

First of all, I don't think the sarcasm or biting remarks were particularly necessary. The points you made could have been done in a similar manner to the manner in which I wrote the article: somewhat loose and casual - focusing instead on the content. Admittedly, I could have done a few more clarity edits. This is evident from the responses I'm about to craft to your points.

Second, since we agreed on most issues, why even waste time analyzing the whole piece. It doesn't add to the dialogue to critique what I said about yawg Will if you agree that Yawg Will is necessary (as I do). Moreover, it distracts from the real issues that need to be explored. Your critique leaves the development of that real dialogue rather lacking. We are barely any further than we were when I wrote the article. A sad state of affairs when you consider the time and effort spent crafting your reply and my rebuttal.

Again, I regret that my critique came off as a personal attack; it was not intended to be interpreted that way.  However, I'm forced to disagree with your portrayal of the style in which you wrote your article.  I would hardly consider a 14 page essay on Control Slaver that includes a dialectic historical analysis of Mana Drain decks loose or casual.  Also, I must again emphasize that the need for clarity edits is the major reason behind my critique.  Published work should be refined as much as possible in order to make the content readily accessible to your audience.  After seeing so many Vintage writers fail to do this, I decided to make my thoughts on this point known, in the hopes that they will in the future.

Two reasons why that was included. First, I intended to write more about Mana Drain decks in general. I was going to include a section on Tog v. Control Slaver and Shoals in Mana Drain decks. However, as that was discarded to focus the article, I kept that section in because it dovetailed with the discussion/analysis on Yawgmoth's Will and gave the article a nice bookend feel. I'm sorry you didn't see that. Hopefully by the end you did.

So essentially what you're saying in the first half of your response is that the historical discussion of Drain decks was originally intended to introduce an aspect of your piece that isn't even there.  I'll again refer to my argument that Vintage writers need to take more time to refine their work at this point.  

The second half of your response is a bit stronger.  However, I'd like to emphasize a few things.  First, the only place in which your drawn-out discussion of the history of Drain decks was even remotely related to your discussion of YawgWill were when you said, "This is what I was talking about in the introduction when I was talking about hybridization. Yawgmoth's Will accelerated him out of certain doom"  (Mendenian, 11) and also possibly when you gave the mirror match example on page 13.  Please note that this is over 10 full pages after you introduced a history of Drain decks and in the interim you had engaged in all manner of other discussions.  The last thing in the forefront of your readers' minds at this point is a five paragraph discussion 10+ pages ago that until now had nothing to do with anything you had said.  Second, I don't really think placing the fact that Drain mana helps to fuel YawgWill in a historical context is really necessary.  The two places where you assert that Drain mana helps YawgWill are just as persuasive without the historical background.  Thus, your entire piece could have been tightened by getting rid of the first five paragraphs that served to delay the introduction of your thesis and were not really necessary.

The problem identified by you here was simply an example of a lack of perfect clarity in my drafting. Not at all uncommon in my writing at times. However, you correctly deduced what I was getting at with your sentence "Perhaps...." (which I have bolded). You say "I don't think that Shay Slaver would take that position." That, Chris, is the whole debate. That is what this entire analysis hinges on and the only issue worth debating in this entire thread. I spend the rest of the article suggesting that it might. So why conclude that it would not when it should be relatively clear that that is the task of that part of the article?

Again, the need for clarity is the main point.  Beyond this, I don't think you fully apprehend why I included the segment of my critique that you bolded.  The fact that AK might bestow other benefits that compensate for its speed is precisely the reason you can't declare that someone else thinks that it "costs more than it's worth" merely because they think it slows the deck down.  They might think that AK brings other benefits that compensate for the cost of speed.  You are right, this is the whole debate.  And that's precisely why you can't unilaterally assign a third party a side in this debate without properly citing something they've said to support yourself.  Again, this segment of my critique had much less to do with what you said but rather the manner in which you said it.

I'll skip your response to paragraph four here, since it seems we're in agreement about why what I wrote at this point was necessary.

Ouch. So my organizational structure sucks and I shift from point to point without rhyme or rythm. That doesn't mean my points aren't valid and you take almost no pains to actually refute them.

Well first of all, I was a bit more tactful than this.  Second, I wouldn't go so far as to put my criticisms quite as harshly as you've rephrased them because your piece wasn't that bad.  However you again seem to conflate criticism of your arguments with criticism of your writing style.  These are two separate issues and I tried to keep them overtly separate by introducing points of difference with respect to your content in explicit terms.  Again, the manner in which content is presented can either help or hinder how effectively it is conveyed.  Thus, stylistic considerations themselves warrant special attention.

I'm going to save the issues on which we actually differ for the second part of my response, so I will return to your two-part answer addressing the speed of Goth Slaver vs. CS shortly.

Frankly, I think you just failed to understand the whole argument. You can criticize my "trade up and trade down" point for not being sufficiently clear or artfully phrased, but do you honestly not understand it? I'll explain my point anew after quoting the next paragraph since the two are linked:

I'm going to forgo nitpicking you and attmept to recraft the argument I was making. Since that is really what matters: which side is right on this matter. Goth Slaver is an objectively stronger deck in vacuum. It is faster and more robust. The question is: is the AK/Intuition slots worth it? Most of the arguments have hinged on the notion that there are better things to do with those slots. My argument is that you CAN acheive ALL the things you want to achieve with Control Slaver WITH Goth Slaver. The difference is that it requires working within a tighter frame. Most of what I was doing in these paragraphs is trying to demonstrate how one might do that.

What I am saying and what the Waterbury results bear out, is that you can get all the agility and flexibility from intelligent design. The deck is not so tight that the player the calibre of Rich Shay could not play Intuition/AK and still get all the agility and flexibility he wants. The examples I provided were merely possible ways to approach the deck to acheive that end.

Here's the problem.  What you have just said is all well and good.  The difficulty emerges when I review what you said in your article and can find absolutely no basis for taking away what you said in your post from what you said in your article.  I'll readily admit it.  I had no idea what the hell you were talking about when you spoke of "trading up" and "trading down" in the respective Slaver decks.  However, I consider myself a reasonably intelligent man and a competent Vintage player; therefore, if I can't understand what you're saying, that's a problem with the manner in which you chose to say it, and not with my reading skills.  Again, this goes more to a stylistic critique than a point of disagreement on content.

In other words, given that this was an article for a magic site, your criticism almost entirely focused on form, organization, clarity and presentation and was extremely lacking in actually rebutting the points I made. Without exception you didn't delve away from the words I used into actually presenting some substantive counterargumentation of your own. I welcome it.

Again, you seem to have missed the major point of my critique.  I wrote it precisely BECAUSE Vintage writers on the whole seem to be writing to impress themselves with their own vocabularies first, and to communicate their ideas effectively second.  This is unacceptable writing in my opinion.  Many articles written for SCG would be laughed out of a high school newspaper office if they had some of the stylistic problems that routinely appear in Vintage articles.  Thus, I wrote my critique on behalf of the Vintage community in the hopes of inspiring better-quality writing from high-profile authors such as yourself.  And given the intensity of your response, I'd like to think I've at least touched a nerve that will make you and anyone else who reads this thread think about this experience before handing in their article.  If that's all that comes of this, it will be enough for me.


Now, to address our specific points of difference, few as they may be.  I'd like to first reiterate a few issues on which we disagreed that you seem to have glossed over or perhaps just missed in your response.  They are:

Opening with the statement that "the only cards that are sacred are the cards I listed above,” it excludes Tinker, Yawgmoth’s Will, Mindslaver, and Library of Alexandria from the list of “sacred” cards. (Menendian, 6) I’m confident there are many experienced Slaver players who would vehemently disagree with the proposition that these cards are not in fact sacred. I’m certainly one of them... I can’t accept ideas this radical on the author’s declaration alone, and I would like to think most readers are similarly inclined.

Your response dealt mostly with how Goth Slaver is faster/as flexible as CS, which I'll get to in a minute.  Right now, I'd like to reiterate how vehemently I disagree with your assertion that the above cards are not "sacred" in a Slaver build.  I would never, ever, ever attend a tournament without running Tinker, Library, Will, or Mindslaver in my Slaver deck.  I'll assume for the moment you just forgot about Mindslaver when listing the "sacred" cards, since the notion of a Slaver deck without Mindslaver is just  silly.  With respect to the other three cards, they by themselves have won me countless matches.  On their own, they are enough to ensure victory in virtually any game in which something does not go horribly wrong.  Thus, they are in my opinion worthy of inclusion among the "sacred" cards.

Second, you mentioned at one point that circumstances exist that would warrant cutting YawgWill from Slaver in order to adapt to the expected meta.  This position is further bourne out by your suggestion that YawgWill should be boarded in going into game 2 in the Slaver mirror, implying it was in the board to begin with.  The only circumstance I would ever cut Yawgmoth's Will under is if it was banned.  That's it.  If every single one of my opponents were packing Tormod's Crypt, I'd still run Will in the hopes of pulling it off even just once, because it would mean almost certain victory.  While I originally phrased this point of disagreement as a stylistic criticism, I want to emphasize how strongly you and I differ on this point.

Now, let's get to the subject you've been itching to address throughout your response.  Goth Slaver is objective more powerful than CS, and Goth Slaver goldfishes faster than CS.  These two points seem related, so I'll address them together.

First, I want to point out how difficult it would be for me to accept your proposition that Goth Slaver is objectively more powerful even if I had never picked up either version of Slaver but only read your article.  All the support you gave for your contention that CS was not faster than Goth Slaver was your remark about the timing of Brainstorm.  There are many readers out there who aren't familiar with either Slaver archetype and if they approach writing with the same degree of healthy skepticism as I do, they will not be convinced one deck is conclusively faster than the other simply because of the timing with which Brainstorm can be played.  Whether or not we agree on this point, your article would not convince me to accept this position.  You need a more in-depth analysis here and stronger arguments to support yourself.

Second, your argument about Goth Slaver goldfishing faster.  I'm not going to reach the truth or falsity of this argument because it's not necessary.  This entire point is moot, and let me tell you why.  You should not be goldfishing in competitive tournament play.  Every deck is able to disrupt you, or put pressure on you and even slightest degree of either of these considerations destroys any applicability that golfishing would have on a deck's tournament performance.  

Second, even if you ARE goldfishing a deck in tournament play, that means you've already won.  If you can utilize every facet of your deck's engine with total impunity while completely ignoring your opponent, you have won the game.  It doesn't matter how quickly or slowly you manage to win; a win is a win regardless.  Therefore, golfishing seems to have very little relevance to tournament performance in my mind.

You make a good point about the merits of goldfishing.  It does indeed allow a player to become more familiar with the intricacies of a deck.  I would go so far as to say that goldfishing should always be phase 1 of testing a new deck because without it, you're going into competitive play without a fundamental understanding of your deck's potential.  The problem is, things will never happen the way they do in goldfishing in a tournament.  

The utility of goldfishing stops when you need to take your opponent into consideration, and this is necessary in virtually every tournament game you play in which your opponent doesn't mulligan to 4 with no lands in hand in which you've won anyway regardless of your deck's speed.  What a deck can do in a vacuum is irrelevant to its competitive potential, because in a tournament, it will never function even comparably to how it can function while goldfishing.  A while ago, I built a type I ProsBloom deck that averaged a turn 2-3 kill while goldfishing  quite reliably.  That never saw the light of day, though.  Why?  Because it would roll over and die to even one well-time disruption spell, and it had no way to protect itself from disruption.  Again, the point here is how fundamentally limited goldfishing performance can be as an indicator of a deck's competitive potential.  Therefore, I'm unconvinced Goth Slaver is objectively more powerful just because of how it performs without an opponent.     Note I don't necessary agree or disagree-- I'm merely unconvinced by the arguments thus far.

I believe that's everything.  I trust you'll waste no time in letting me know if there was anything I missed.

[Smmenen]

And now, my full response.

I did not spend much time on organization preferring instead to focus on content. The reason is that the organization was self-evident as the article hinged on resolving two distinct issues. I agree we can increase the quality of the dialogue.

This is precisely the main issue.  I had few quarrels with the content of your article, and those I had I will get to in due course.  For the most part, I thought the manner in which your views were presented did them a disservice.  I found the article to be excessively verbose, at times disorganized, and occasionally opaque in terms of diction.  Writing style is an important consideration when evaluating the quality of dialogue, just as content is.  Taking the extra few minutes to have someone else review your work for clarity or even just editing it yourself to make sure it's accessible to your readership is an important step in the writing process and should not be overlooked.  To do so is to place unnecessary barriers between your audience and your argument by forcing them to navigate flawed writing.

True, but it makes me wonder why  you chose this piece in particular?  I spend varying amounts of time on my pieces.  Some pieces which are designed to persuasive I do take pains to edit for clarity and rhetoric.  However, in information pieces, such as this, I often will write up like a long post on the mana drain and do one or two edits for organization and spelling.  

There is nothing about my article that was particularly deserving of your critique as opposed to any other vintage article or article I've written.   I'm left guessing at your motives in this particular instance.  

First of all, I don't think the sarcasm or biting remarks were particularly necessary. The points you made could have been done in a similar manner to the manner in which I wrote the article: somewhat loose and casual - focusing instead on the content. Admittedly, I could have done a few more clarity edits. This is evident from the responses I'm about to craft to your points.

Second, since we agreed on most issues, why even waste time analyzing the whole piece. It doesn't add to the dialogue to critique what I said about yawg Will if you agree that Yawg Will is necessary (as I do). Moreover, it distracts from the real issues that need to be explored. Your critique leaves the development of that real dialogue rather lacking. We are barely any further than we were when I wrote the article. A sad state of affairs when you consider the time and effort spent crafting your reply and my rebuttal.

Again, I regret that my critique came off as a personal attack; it was not intended to be interpreted that way.  However, I'm forced to disagree with your portrayal of the style in which you wrote your article.  I would hardly consider a 14 page essay on Control Slaver that includes a dialectic historical analysis of Mana Drain decks loose or casual.  Also, I must again emphasize that the need for clarity edits is the major reason behind my critique.  Published work should be refined as much as possible in order to make the content readily accessible to your audience.  After seeing so many Vintage writers fail to do this, I decided to make my thoughts on this point known, in the hopes that they will in the future.

This article is quite loose and was intended to be much more casual than most of the articles I have written for SCG.  If you don't consider it as such, that is simply what you perceive and has no bearing in fact, in this instance.  At least as it regards my intent.  

I admit it has made me think more carefully about how I will approach articles.  But I can also tell you that I just write - I don't take pains to do anything in particular besides: 1) be persuasive and 2) get my point accross.   As far as whether the inclusion of a dialectical analysis makes it more serious - I only spent a couple of paragraphs laying out what I've said many times before.  

Two reasons why that was included. First, I intended to write more about Mana Drain decks in general. I was going to include a section on Tog v. Control Slaver and Shoals in Mana Drain decks. However, as that was discarded to focus the article, I kept that section in because it dovetailed with the discussion/analysis on Yawgmoth's Will and gave the article a nice bookend feel. I'm sorry you didn't see that. Hopefully by the end you did.

So essentially what you're saying in the first half of your response is that the historical discussion of Drain decks was originally intended to introduce an aspect of your piece that isn't even there.  I'll again refer to my argument that Vintage writers need to take more time to refine their work at this point.  

That's what I said - but the only reason it seems to me that you would even say what you said in the paragraph above is to, once again, elevate form over substance.  My second sentence makes it quite clear the reasons I kept it in.   Formal critiques often leave the impression that the substance was wrong - even if it was dead on.  That's why I have a problem with your continuing critique of form in your second response even after I thought we had mutually agreed to address solely the substance.  Unfortunately, you spend only a few paragraphs getting to the meat of the debate in your second response.

The second half of your response is a bit stronger.  However, I'd like to emphasize a few things.  First, the only place in which your drawn-out discussion of the history of Drain decks was even remotely related to your discussion of YawgWill were when you said, "This is what I was talking about in the introduction when I was talking about hybridization. Yawgmoth's Will accelerated him out of certain doom"  (Mendenian, 11) and also possibly when you gave the mirror match example on page 13.

You did this quite a bit in your first response and at that point I felt it best to let it lie so that we could really get to the heart of the matter.  But you persist.  What you say here is nothing less than a blatent distortion.  Your comment says "First, the only place in which your draw-out discussion of the history of drain decks was even remotely related to your discussion of yawg will was when you said, "This is what I was talking about in the introduction when I was talking about Hybridization."   What you do is narrow the focus on a particular point, remove it from its context and then demonstrate why it doesn't make sense to make the claim I made.  That's a plain distortion.   The entire argument for the inclusion of Yawg Will is that it is a combo mechanism and that is why it should be included.  You can outcombo combo and winning now is better than winning later and all that good stuff.  Pointing to a particular sentence misses the point I was illustrating and the reason why the dialectic of mana drain decks was kept in.  

  Please note that this is over 10 full pages after you introduced a history of Drain decks and in the interim you had engaged in all manner of other discussions.  The last thing in the forefront of your readers' minds at this point is a five paragraph discussion 10+ pages ago that until now had nothing to do with anything you had said.

While it is true that they may not remember the precise words I used, it will certain reinforce the argumetns I later make and make them seem more true.  Authors often do that - they'll try to set up some ideas which they want the reader to accept and then draw out some points later on that are more beleivable given the earlier discussion.  Ideally, you get the reader to come to the conclusions you do before they reach your conclusion.  That way your whole argument seems far more persuasive.  When I write I don't want the reader to just be a passive observer - I expect active reading.  Particularly when I use in-game examples.   Writers do this all the time and it isn't a wasted effort.  I'm sure you can find many examples if you thought about it.  

 Second, I don't really think placing the fact that Drain mana helps to fuel YawgWill in a historical context is really necessary.  

Again, you have such a narrow focus that you are missing a bigger point.  How often in trying to make a point do you just say what is "really necessary"?  Was this whole discussion up to this point in the post "really necessary"?  No, but you included it for rhetorical effect (to a certain extent) and apparently to once again elevate form over substance.  What is really necessary is often jsut the beginning of the argument.  Persuasion begins by trying to identify as many points that support your argument as you can possibly conceive.  Of course it wasn't "really  neceessary."  But it had a legitimate purpose - it aided the persuasiveness of the whole point that Yawgmth's Will needs to be included.  And it did so in a non-obtrusive way given the other points I made supporting that conclusion.  In addition, it served as a useful introduction and in that dual role, fit well.   In summary here, asking if something is "really necessary" isn't a good question to ask of a persuasive argument.  You should include every viable argument you can think of so long as you think its reasonable.

The two places where you assert that Drain mana helps YawgWill are just as persuasive without the historical background.  

Why I appreciated the kidn words, but I'm going to have to disagree.  It is not "just" as persuasive.  It may only be slightly more - but it is more persuasive with it.  

Thus, your entire piece could have been tightened by getting rid of the first five paragraphs that served to delay the introduction of your thesis and were not really necessary.

Again, you harp on whether something is "really necessary" and jsut repeat what you've already said.  I'm not even convinced that it wasn't "really necessary."  But even if it wasn't "really necesssary," it aided the argument I was making and thus served a purpose.

The problem identified by you here was simply an example of a lack of perfect clarity in my drafting. Not at all uncommon in my writing at times. However, you correctly deduced what I was getting at with your sentence "Perhaps...." (which I have bolded). You say "I don't think that Shay Slaver would take that position." That, Chris, is the whole debate. That is what this entire analysis hinges on and the only issue worth debating in this entire thread. I spend the rest of the article suggesting that it might. So why conclude that it would not when it should be relatively clear that that is the task of that part of the article?

Again, the need for clarity is the main point.

If that was your main point, then why did you even say "Shay’s assertion that a deck without the AK engine is faster cannot be tautologically converted to a statement that the AK engine costs more than it’s worth" if  the only purpose was "a need for clarity."  You could have done that by saying "the reader is forced to draw the inference which I easily deduced" without actually going so far as to say that I tried to "tautologically convert" one statement into another (which I didn't, as you figured out).     Next time, just say: you should have included the explicit point and moved on.  It would have saved both of us the trouble of having to say that now.

 Beyond this, I don't think you fully apprehend why I included the segment of my critique that you bolded.  The fact that AK might bestow other benefits that compensate for its speed is precisely the reason you can't declare that someone else thinks that it "costs more than it's worth" merely because they think it slows the deck down.  

That's not at all why I'm saying that someone might say "it costs more than its worth." In fact, you've got it all  backwards.  I'm saying that the AK engine is faster becuase it ends the game faster.  It causes your deck to reach a fundamental turn sooner.  The fact that you assumed I was aying that the AK engine is slower raises doubts, again, as to my clarity, but also your comprehension here.   Moreover, the reasons that I said someone might think that AK "costs more than its worth" is because, as I explained in the article, it costs 6-7 slots that could argubly be spent with cards more likely to win you the game (flexibility notion again).  I understood your point, but I'm disagreeing with the notion that, in this particular instance, your critique that I didn't have enough support to justify that point becuase I made a tautological conversion."  I may not have sufficiently supported my points (although I think that I did), I'm just saying that this particular example you are choosing to make your point fails.

They might think that AK brings other benefits that compensate for the cost of speed.  You are right, this is the whole debate.  And that's precisely why you can't unilaterally assign a third party a side in this debate without properly citing something they've said to support yourself.

To be frank, I find this point kind of absurd.  If I had not responded it may have had its intended rhetorical effect.  Rich has said as much to me in person.  But even if he hadn't, I need almost no justification whatsoever in assigning the quote "AK engine costs more than its worth" - or a more precise phraseology - "AK engine's benefits do not outweigh its costs" to Rich.  Why?  The title of his article says it best" Training Wheels."  Moreover, it is self-evident.  It only requires that we say: Rich wants to play the best deck he can.  Any time you decide whether to include a card or not you are making a cost/benefit decision.  If he felt that AK engine had more benefits than costs, it is self-evident, unless y ou don't agree that he wants to play the best deck he can, that he would be playing it.  This is merely another instance of you trying to pin me on a particular statement, but once you widen the focus, your critique becomes absurd.

 Again, this segment of my critique had much less to do with what you said but rather the manner in which you said it.

Then why did you even waste time making poor critiques of my logic if you care mostly about the manner?  You know what you could have done that would have been much more helpful?  Not mention the logic at all and just proceed to describe in a private message that I could have edited my article to make it more clear and done half as much work and I promise you, i would have gotten the point.  It was not the model of clarity, but I could have said that from the beginning.  

Ouch. So my organizational structure sucks and I shift from point to point without rhyme or rythm. That doesn't mean my points aren't valid and you take almost no pains to actually refute them.

Well first of all, I was a bit more tactful than this.  Second, I wouldn't go so far as to put my criticisms quite as harshly as you've rephrased them because your piece wasn't that bad.  However you again seem to conflate criticism of your arguments with criticism of your writing style.  These are two separate issues and I tried to keep them overtly separate by introducing points of difference with respect to your content in explicit terms.  
[/quote]

You have done just that, but you have also included quite a bit of logical criticism or criticism in terms of how I justify my arguments that isn't warranted.  I will grant you that I had major clarity issues in this article - but if you had wanted to comment upon that alone, you could have done so in an equally effective manner.  Moreover, the reason you targeted this article seems at least in some marginal way related to the subject matter.  

I'm going to save the issues on which we actually differ for the second part of my response, so I will return to your two-part answer addressing the speed of Goth Slaver vs. CS shortly.

Frankly, I think you just failed to understand the whole argument. You can criticize my "trade up and trade down" point for not being sufficiently clear or artfully phrased, but do you honestly not understand it? I'll explain my point anew after quoting the next paragraph since the two are linked:

I'm going to forgo nitpicking you and attmept to recraft the argument I was making. Since that is really what matters: which side is right on this matter. Goth Slaver is an objectively stronger deck in vacuum. It is faster and more robust. The question is: is the AK/Intuition slots worth it? Most of the arguments have hinged on the notion that there are better things to do with those slots. My argument is that you CAN acheive ALL the things you want to achieve with Control Slaver WITH Goth Slaver. The difference is that it requires working within a tighter frame. Most of what I was doing in these paragraphs is trying to demonstrate how one might do that.

What I am saying and what the Waterbury results bear out, is that you can get all the agility and flexibility from intelligent design. The deck is not so tight that the player the calibre of Rich Shay could not play Intuition/AK and still get all the agility and flexibility he wants. The examples I provided were merely possible ways to approach the deck to acheive that end.

Here's the problem.  What you have just said is all well and good.  The difficulty emerges when I review what you said in your article and can find absolutely no basis for taking away what you said in your post from what you said in your article.  I'll readily admit it.  I had no idea what the hell you were talking about when you spoke of "trading up" and "trading down" in the respective Slaver decks.  However, I consider myself a reasonably intelligent man and a competent Vintage player; therefore, if I can't understand what you're saying, that's a problem with the manner in which you chose to say it, and not with my reading skills.  Again, this goes more to a stylistic critique than a point of disagreement on content.

You know what, I don't beleive you here that you "have no idea" what I meant by "trading up and trading down".  I'll buy that you didn't when you first read it.  I think that if you read what I was saying several times more, consider what else I've said in this thread - that you could get what I was saying without too much trouble.  In fact, I think you could probably articulate that point quite well.  

In other words, given that this was an article for a magic site, your criticism almost entirely focused on form, organization, clarity and presentation and was extremely lacking in actually rebutting the points I made. Without exception you didn't delve away from the words I used into actually presenting some substantive counterargumentation of your own. I welcome it.

Again, you seem to have missed the major point of my critique.  I wrote it precisely BECAUSE Vintage writers on the whole seem to be writing to impress themselves with their own vocabularies first, and to communicate their ideas effectively second.  This is unacceptable writing in my opinion.

Well that's simply not true.  I am not a model of clarity, but I never choose the big word for the simpler when the two words have the same meaning and empahsis when I review my actual choice of words.   If I write to impress anyone of anything, it's my a) persuasiveness on what most people consider controversial view points (although I don't think this is one of them) and b) to demonstrate cool things with game examples.  

  Many articles written for SCG would be laughed out of a high school newspaper office if they had some of the stylistic problems that routinely appear in Vintage articles.  

Possibly - but I think you will find that stylistic problems are accross the board problems.  I also don't write articles like I write a paper.  I pay much more attention to the style in papers than articles unless there is particular reason to do so.  Frankly, it takes long enough to write articles of reasonable quality.   Even with bonuses, I don't get paid enough to divert that much of my time to editing.   You know how long it takes to write those Matchup Analysis articles I wrote?  You have to record the games: 4-5 hours.  You have to read through the games and analyze them to a greater degree of detail to organize the piece: 1-4 hours.  I then have to cut and paste the games I've chosen and format them to make my point and to be clear: 2-3 hours.  Then I have to write the article around it: 2-4 hours.  Then I read it over and edit: another hour.           This article probably took me 5-6 hours to write even though I didn't put all the edits into it that I wanted.  Maybe I take too long to write articles.  Maybe I could have done more.    That's one reason my early articles came out about once every two months: ARticle on GroATog, ARticle on Stax, 10 Priciples of Type One, articles on Long, etc.  But you know what, I'd rather have that content out there- even flawed.  I can't simply justify continuing to edit - even with the pay increases I 've gotten over the years.  Frankly, my pay increases justify why I'm writing at the frequency I'm attempting to do.  Notice aside from an article for MTG.com I had no articles whatsoever up in the whole month of Dec and Jan?  That's why most people don't write and why I have so much respect for people who consistently put out awesome output.  If I didn't love this format so much, it simply wouldn't be worth it for me to write what I write even if I was making $200 an article given the amount of time I have to put into it.  

Thus, I wrote my critique on behalf of the Vintage community in the hopes of inspiring better-quality writing from high-profile authors such as yourself.  And given the intensity of your response, I'd like to think I've at least touched a nerve that will make you and anyone else who reads this thread think about this experience before handing in their article.  If that's all that comes of this, it will be enough for me.

I think you have succeeded admirably.  I am crafting an article on Trinsphere right now and you have made me rethink what I'm going to say.  And more particularly, how I say it.

Now, to address our specific points of difference, few as they may be.  I'd like to first reiterate a few issues on which we disagreed that you seem to have glossed over or perhaps just missed in your response.  They are:

Opening with the statement that "the only cards that are sacred are the cards I listed above,” it excludes Tinker, Yawgmoth’s Will, Mindslaver, and Library of Alexandria from the list of “sacred” cards. (Menendian, 6) I’m confident there are many experienced Slaver players who would vehemently disagree with the proposition that these cards are not in fact sacred. I’m certainly one of them... I can’t accept ideas this radical on the author’s declaration alone, and I would like to think most readers are similarly inclined.

Almost all of those were editorial mistakes.  here is what I said were essential:


4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
2 Intuition
3 Goblin Welder
4 Accumulated Knowledge
3 Thirst for Knowledge

Now obviously I would add:
Yawg Will and Mindslaver to that list.  Not listing them was an editorial mistake.

As for LOA: I do not think that it is absolutely essential (although I woudl likely play with it).  LOA is bombtastic, however, there are many circumstances in which it is just not needed.   Goth Slaver is a much faster deck and I could see people not playing with it given the metagame they expect.  It is uncuttable from Control Slaver though.  As for Tinker, it will seem absurd, but in Goth Slaver I can actually justify not including it.  That is not to say that I wouldn't run it, I would, but here is how it runs:

Goth Slaver is a yawg Will deck.  Everything you are trying to do is to find, play, protect, and maximize Yawg Will.  That is your singular goal.  Everything else is bait.  Mid summer as I was tuning this deck from what the Swedes gave us, I found that in most of my testing I would rather have Intution number 4 than Tinker.  Why?  Because Tinker up Slaver/platz/pent is simply not better than drawing 3-4 cards.  If I tinker up slaver but don't have Welder, I get one slave and spend resource into the Tinker which I don't get to recoup if the slave sucks.  If I tinker up Platz, it is a 5 turn clock and too slow.  I've invested my resources into it when I'd rather have played INtuition to find Aks.  That was last summer.  I claerly think that is wrong in todays environment.  You will notice that although Rich has been running Platinum Angel for over a year, most decks did not include Platz until the rise of Oath.  Tinker for Platz is so good against the Combo/oath metagame that it is stupid not to run it.  But it is not the sacred cow in the summer that it is now in GOTH slaver.  You invest resources for a plan that is by and large inferior to drawing cards to find and play yawg will.

Your response dealt mostly with how Goth Slaver is faster/as flexible as CS, which I'll get to in a minute.  Right now, I'd like to reiterate how vehemently I disagree with your assertion that the above cards are not "sacred" in a Slaver build.  I would never, ever, ever attend a tournament without running Tinker, Library, Will, or Mindslaver in my Slaver deck.  I'll assume for the moment you just forgot about Mindslaver when listing the "sacred" cards, since the notion of a Slaver deck without Mindslaver is just  silly.  With respect to the other three cards, they by themselves have won me countless matches.  On their own, they are enough to ensure victory in virtually any game in which something does not go horribly wrong.  Thus, they are in my opinion worthy of inclusion among the "sacred" cards.

Deck design does not hinge upon whether a card has won you countless games.  Deck design is far more intricate than that.  You could have Abyss in yoru deck and have it win you 100 games in 30 tournaments, but Moat may have won you more.  As always, it is a matter of determining whether another card is better overall.  Most of the cards we consider for T1 decks are fucking awesome.  It isn't a matter of whether these cards are good.  Obviously Thirst is insane.  But the reason I listed three thirsts is becuase if push came to shove, I'd rather have INtuition number 2 or Platz or any card that is trying to fight its way into the deck that I consider MORE "essential" than those cards.  It is a matter of degree.  And this is all the more important with Goth Slaver.  You may not fullly understand this exercise becuase of your limited experience with Goth, but Goth is an extremely tight build.  Cutting Thirst 4 or Welder 4 is something you can do if it will give you an even more broken card.  In fact, I cut the 4th Welder when I was planning on playing it at SCG Chicago and my team followed suit.  That would seem like sacrilege except htat it worked.  Moreover, with Goth Slaver, Intution AK is better becuase you see more cards more quickly.  That isn't to say that you won't run Thirst 4 - but if it came down to Intution 3 or Thirst 3, I would think long and hard and probablyo cut the third Thirst.  The cards I listed as essential are the non mana sources which you can under no circumstances cut from the deck - not even if there is something that is just ridiculous to include - you have to cut something else to make room for it.  

Second, you mentioned at one point that circumstances exist that would warrant cutting YawgWill from Slaver in order to adapt to the expected meta.  This position is further bourne out by your suggestion that YawgWill should be boarded in going into game 2 in the Slaver mirror, implying it was in the board to begin with.  

I'm not sure where you got this idea but its wrong.  I never said that Yawg WIll should be in the board under any circumstances.  The circumstances that would warrant yawg will are beyond my congnizance, and I didn't mean to give the impression that I think you could play without it.  In fact, the effort I invested in describing how awesome it is should bear that out.  

Now, let's get to the subject you've been itching to address throughout your response.  Goth Slaver is objective more powerful than CS, and Goth Slaver goldfishes faster than CS.  These two points seem related, so I'll address them together.

First, I want to point out how difficult it would be for me to accept your proposition that Goth Slaver is objectively more powerful even if I had never picked up either version of Slaver but only read your article.  All the support you gave for your contention that CS was not faster than Goth Slaver was your remark about the timing of Brainstorm.  There are many readers out there who aren't familiar with either Slaver archetype and if they approach writing with the same degree of healthy skepticism as I do, they will not be convinced one deck is conclusively faster than the other simply because of the timing with which Brainstorm can be played.  

I hope they would not be relying on that simple point.  I think an observation of the decklists should bear out which is more powerful and nothing else.   It should be quite obvious that more draw is generally better.  Moreover, given the synergy that Intuition has in the deck, it is almost absurd to say that Goth is not objectively more powerful.  When I first saw the early, weird Goth designs from the Swedes I was floored.  If I showed you a Tog list as a regular list with Intuition AK and 3 Deep Analysis versus a tog list with the Intuition Ak engine and 3 Fact or Fiction, I think most reasonable poeple would say that the Fact version is more broken.  Why? It has two draw engines.  Control decks are almost always built around a particular draw engine.  The most busted draw engines were restricted: Fact, Gush, etc.  Many remain: Scrying, AK, Thirst, Standstill.  Stroke and Gyser are now unrestricted but don't see any play.  The more broken draw the better is an axiom we can generally agree with even if we accept it has some logical limit.  Common sense is something we use in magic all the time to evaluate cards.  To say that you can't tell that Goth slaver is at least plausibly more objectively powerful just by looking at the lists raises questions about your, or anyone else's, ability to evaluate lists and cards.  

Whether or not we agree on this point, your article would not convince me to accept this position.  You need a more in-depth analysis here and stronger arguments to support yourself.

Possibly.  But you know what?  Most people dno't read articles waiting to be convinced of every obvious point.  Perhaps the fact that I have to argue in favor of yawg will belies that point - but some things are too obvious for words.   Is Ancestral Recall good?  YES.  Certainly you could ask me to prove it to you by showing in game examples or how it creates insane card advantage, but it would be a waste of time.  To say that Goth Slaver is an objectively superior deck should not require that I PROVE it to you by the same token.  You might counter? Well, Rich Shay doens't think so.  I would say, it is very difficult to argue that Goth Slaver isn't more objectively broken.  But even if you don't agree with that point, then it is subsumed under the larger question: Is the benefit of AK worth the cost?  Becuase you migth say: no it isn't.  And that really is the sum total of it.  You don't even need to reach the whole question of whether one is objectively superior or not.  I think that accepting that AK engine is a very good engine to run makes it easier to come out the way I did, but its not strictly necessary.  I could argue the other way - which is what I did; that the flexibility you want to acheive with Control Slaver can be had with Goth Slaver - it just takes more work.  

Second, your argument about Goth Slaver goldfishing faster.  I'm not going to reach the truth or falsity of this argument because it's not necessary.  This entire point is moot, and let me tell you why.  You should not be goldfishing in competitive tournament play.  Every deck is able to disrupt you, or put pressure on you and even slightest degree of either of these considerations destroys any applicability that golfishing would have on a deck's tournament performance.  

I went to great pains to describe why the goldfish matters in order to defelct this point which I anticipated you would raise.  Having performed well in Vintage tournaments I am well aware of the point you are making.  But the point is not moot.  First of all, it is funny that you can say it is moot and then later contradict yourself by saying that goldfishing for design has merit.  That is a direct contradiction.  Goldfishing is never moot becuase it helps identify, as I said, intra-deck synergies that should be considered in weighing final design questions int he cost/benefit analysis.  It is not determinative, as I said, but it helps.  All information helps.   I talked with Rich about this and the problem is that you simply can't goldfish with Control Slaver - it doesn' t make any sense to do so.  BUT, you CAN With Goth slaver.  You can play out the whole game in solitare in a way that you can't with Control Slaver becuase the decks, in some ways, are so different.  

In addition, you are assuming that just becuse I"m goldfishing I'm assumiing no pressure or disruption.  That's not true.  I make different assumptions every time I goldfish to see how things might play out if they had card X or whatever.  You are drawing far too many inferences from the notion that I goldfish Goth Slaver and not recognizing that Goldfishing has value and is not entirely moot.    Its simply wrong to say that goldfishing is moot unless you assume that I'm doing nothing but playing solitare.  I consider: what would happen if my opponent had this or that all the time when Goldfishing.   And even if you are making those assumptions, goldfishing provides a different sort of information that should be weighted appropriately in making design desicions.   So you are wrong on this count.  

Second, even if you ARE goldfishing a deck in tournament play, that means you've already won.  If you can utilize every facet of your deck's engine with total impunity while completely ignoring your opponent, you have won the game.  

Nowhere in my argumentation do I rely on the notion that I am goldfishing a deck in tournament play.  The claim that Goth Slaver is faster is true not only of tournament play but also the goldfish.  This is just a crass distortion of what I was saying.

[quote[

It doesn't matter how quickly or slowly you manage to win; a win is a win regardless.  Therefore, golfishing seems to have very little relevance to tournament performance in my mind.

[/quote]
The whole argument about yawg Will belies this point.  Speed is relevant.  Speed is a measure that has many purposes.  Faster decks can slow down and in doing so leverage their speed to trade for power.  In other words, you can slow down a fast deck and often leverage that speed into a more powerful play next turn.   With meandecck tendrils, the goldfish rate is mostly turn one, but if you slow it down, you can make your hand more resilient to their countermagic on turn two becuase you can then over power them with too many threats.  The same principle applies here.  The faster your goldfish the more inherent burst of power you have that can be leveraged into a more dominant midgame position.  

You make a good point about the merits of goldfishing.  It does indeed allow a player to become more familiar with the intricacies of a deck.  I would go so far as to say that goldfishing should always be phase 1 of testing a new deck because without it, you're going into competitive play without a fundamental understanding of your deck's potential.  The problem is, things will never happen the way they do in goldfishing in a tournament.  

Again, you harp on and on about the points I made about goldfishing without realizing the relevance to the larger point I was making.  I find it hard to beleive that you think I am goldfishing a deck just for tournament play, first, becuase I never said that.  And second, becuase I would hope the in game examples in my article demonstrate the opposite.  That you spend so much time on this point when you really have no real force here suggests its mostly rhetorical and not substantive.  

The utility of goldfishing stops when you need to take your opponent into consideration, and this is necessary in virtually every tournament game you play in which your opponent doesn't mulligan to 4 with no lands in hand in which you've won anyway regardless of your deck's speed.  What a deck can do in a vacuum is irrelevant to its competitive potential, because in a tournament, it will never function even comparably to how it can function while goldfishing.  

Obviously you will not goldfish in a tournament.  But your conclusion that ithere is no utility to it is simply false  and severely so.
I'm not going to repeat every point I've made, but I'll summarize them.  Goldfishing suggests inherent power which can be leveraged to gain a more commanding position in actual tournametn play.  Moreover, it helps design by identifying and maximizing deck synergies that ARE relevant to tournament play becuase they aid in the decision making process about which cards to play.  

A while ago, I built a type I ProsBloom deck that averaged a turn 2-3 kill while goldfishing  quite reliably.  That never saw the light of day, though.  Why?  Because it would roll over and die to even one well-time disruption spell, and it had no way to protect itself from disruption.  Again, the point here is how fundamentally limited goldfishing performance can be as an indicator of a deck's competitive potential.  

That example isn't even analogous.  Goth Slaver uses cards like Drain and FOW and doesn't die to disruption.  Your example might be more correct with regards to Meandeck Tendrils, but its still flawed horribly.  I'm going off on an unrelated point here, but you can't say that just because a deck can't protect itself from disruption its not viable.  It depends upon how much disruption you expect and whether you can play percentages.  If your opponents will disrupt you sufficiently to kill you less than you will kill them overall, then you have a potentially viable deck.  You need to compare that overall match percentage against what you might otherwise play.  It simply does not follow that goldfishing is irrellevant becuase you die to disruption - other facts must be considered.

Finally, yes, Goldfishing is only of limited relevance to how a deck will perform.  But you again are distorting by claiming that the only purpose for goldfishing is to see how WELL it will perform in tournament.  That is simply wrong.  We goldfish for many purposes the end of which is performance.  And goldfishing certainly does It enables you to maximize your design synergies at a certain point in design.  Goldfishin Goth Slaver will show you that the deck is very powerful.   It is an indicator.  Is it limited?  CERTAINLY!  I would never take a deck to a tournament just on how I goldfished with it.  I beleive testing is the key to success in magic.  THat is the most important thing bar none.  But goldfishing tells us things that we should not ignore and it has relevance and an impact.  It may be of "limited relevance" as you say, but relelvant nonetheless - one more factor to be weighed among many.  One more bit of data - one more piece of information to put into the larger puzzle.  

I believe that's everything.  I trust you'll waste no time in letting me know if there was anything I missed.

That is most definately not everything.   The question is this: Does AK/Intuition give you more of a benefit than it costs?  The answer is yes.  You have yet to refute that point or even BEGIN the analysis to that question.

I was hoping that you would bear on it - but the vast majority of your post was wasted on clarity or whether I sufficiently justified ancillary points.  You failed to address the only important question in a meaningful way.  The thesis of my article is that even if you don't agree that AK/Intuition is worth the cost, then you should consider redesigning your deck to get the benefit you want with AK/Intuition - becuase I beleive it can be done.

I'm asking you to argue why you think, in concrete terms, AK/Intuition is NOT worth the benefit.  Becuase that is the only relevant question in this whole thread.  It's dissapointing that I had to wade through all of this when you didn't address it at all.

[Demonic Attorney]

It seems you're still having a bit of difficulty keeping my criticisms of your writing style and my disagreements with your points separate.  Many of your latest responses seem to come from this perspective.  I'll address them indidivually as I go through your points discretely, but please keep in mind that simply because I think the manner in which you said something could have been improved, I do not necessarily disagree with your point.  Now, to begin.

True, but it makes me wonder why you chose this piece in particular? I spend varying amounts of time on my pieces. Some pieces which are designed to persuasive I do take pains to edit for clarity and rhetoric. However, in information pieces, such as this, I often will write up like a long post on the mana drain and do one or two edits for organization and spelling.

There is nothing about my article that was particularly deserving of your critique as opposed to any other vintage article or article I've written. I'm left guessing at your motives in this particular instance.

My motives as far as selecting this particular piece are quite simply this.  I lead a very busy life and don't often have time to read Magic articles and engage in protracted debates about them on the internet.  This week is my week off from school and with zero money and all the time in the world, I thought I would try my hand in this arena.  I selected your article merely by chance; it happened to come out at a point in time when I was free to read and respond to it.  If you'll pardon the bravado, I chose to "make an example" of this particular article, since it included the same flaws I've consistently noticed in other Vintage writers' work.  Was it deserving of this treatment?  I think I had solid ground on which to base my critique, and that's enough for me.  Perhaps other articles would have been "more" deserving relatively speaking, but I'm not inclined to scour the SCG archives looking for the best candidate.  Furthermore, since your article had just been released, I thought my critique would have greater impact since it addressed a more contemporaneous publication.

This article is quite loose and was intended to be much more casual than most of the articles I have written for SCG. If you don't consider it as such, that is simply what you perceive and has no bearing in fact, in this instance. At least as it regards my intent.

Perhaps this might not have occurred to you, but everything I've written thus far has been simply what I perceive.  If it has no bearing, I'm curious as to why you've chosen to spend this amount of time engaging me.  Additionally, good intentions do not salvage a final product.  James Joyce could have fully intended for Finnegan's Wake to have been crystal clear and fully accessible to high school students; this does not change the  fact that what he actually wrote does not necessarily line up perfectly with that intention.  Likewise, your article, even if the product of the best of intentions, unfortunately did not strike me as "loose" or "casual."  Just my perception, I know, but since I've been sharing my perceptions in this thread for the past 2 days, I figure I'll run with it.

I admit it has made me think more carefully about how I will approach articles. But I can also tell you that I just write - I don't take pains to do anything in particular besides: 1) be persuasive and 2) get my point accross. As far as whether the inclusion of a dialectical analysis makes it more serious - I only spent a couple of paragraphs laying out what I've said many times before.

Well, then my purpose in writing my critique has been accomplished, regardless of whatever else transpires here.  Although in the future I suggest you take a few more pains to ensure that your writing is clear to avoid reactions like this if not for the sake of your readership.

hat's what I said - but the only reason it seems to me that you would even say what you said in the paragraph above is to, once again, elevate form over substance. My second sentence makes it quite clear the reasons I kept it in. Formal critiques often leave the impression that the substance was wrong - even if it was dead on. That's why I have a problem with your continuing critique of form in your second response even after I thought we had mutually agreed to address solely the substance. Unfortunately, you spend only a few paragraphs getting to the meat of the debate in your second response.

I'm at a loss as to where you would have gotten this idea.  I repeated at least three times in my last response that form, separate from content, is an important consideration in writing.  I don't recall ever saying that I intended to abandon this segment of the discussion, since it was the main reason I decided to compose my critique in the first place.  Let me emphasize once again that a criticism of form does not translate into a criticism of substance and should not be taken as such unless prefaced by an explicit indication that it was so intended.  Otherwise, you risk your response becoming a straw man.
 

Your comment says "First, the only place in which your draw-out discussion of the history of drain decks was even remotely related to your discussion of yawg will was when you said, "This is what I was talking about in the introduction when I was talking about Hybridization." What you do is narrow the focus on a particular point, remove it from its context and then demonstrate why it doesn't make sense to make the claim I made. That's a plain distortion. The entire argument for the inclusion of Yawg Will is that it is a combo mechanism and that is why it should be included. You can outcombo combo and winning now is better than winning later and all that good stuff. Pointing to a particular sentence misses the point I was illustrating and the reason why the dialectic of mana drain decks was kept in.  

I'm afraid I'm not sure I agree.  I cited this sentence because it marked the beginning of the segment of your article in which your prior discussion of the history of Drain decks was relevant.  If you can find an earlier point in your article where your historical analysis was needed to support or contextualize a claim you made, feel free to point it out to me.  Otherwise, I'm afraid my original remarks must stand; you delayed introducing your thesis for a meandering historical analysis that didn't become even remotely relevant until 10 pages later.

While it is true that they may not remember the precise words I used, it will certain reinforce the argumetns I later make and make them seem more true. Authors often do that - they'll try to set up some ideas which they want the reader to accept and then draw out some points later on that are more beleivable given the earlier discussion. Ideally, you get the reader to come to the conclusions you do before they reach your conclusion.  That way your whole argument seems far more persuasive.

Steve, let's back up here for a second.  What you are saying is that an argument that mana drain mana helps decks to combo off needs historical support in order to be presuasive.  Think about that.  Does that really ring true to you?  Do you honestly believe a historical analysis of Drain decks was required to lend credibility to the assertion that access to more mana helps a deck to play more spells?  With your talk of "obvious points", I would think that this would qualify as one of them and  
thus not require additional support that interferes with the introduction of your thesis.

When I write I don't want the reader to just be a passive observer - I expect active reading. Particularly when I use in-game examples. Writers do this all the time and it isn't a wasted effort. I'm sure you can find many examples if you thought about it.

I think there are better ways to command a reader's attention than disorganized writing.

Again, you have such a narrow focus that you are missing a bigger point. How often in trying to make a point do you just say what is "really necessary"? Was this whole discussion up to this point in the post "really necessary"? No, but you included it for rhetorical effect (to a certain extent) and apparently to once again elevate form over substance. What is really necessary is often jsut the beginning of the argument. Persuasion begins by trying to identify as many points that support your argument as you can possibly conceive.

No.  Quite frankly I'm shocked to hear this out of a third year law student.  The most persuasive arguments are limited to the most salient points; including absolutely everything that has even tangential relevance is simply a way of diluting your stronger arguments and frustrating your reader.  Ergo, your article would have been much better off if you excluded your historical discussion.  You have better points that would have leapt to the forefront of the reader's mind all the more readily.

Of course it wasn't "really neceessary." But it had a legitimate purpose - it aided the persuasiveness of the whole point that Yawgmth's Will needs to be included. And it did so in a non-obtrusive way given the other points I made supporting that conclusion. In addition, it served as a useful introduction and in that dual role, fit well. In summary here, asking if something is "really necessary" isn't a good question to ask of a persuasive argument. You should include every viable argument you can think of so long as you think its reasonable.

Steve, how many legal briefs have you written?  I'm sure you're familiar with the exercise of cutting down and refining your arguments to include only the strongest points.  I realize a Magic article is not a legal brief, but I believe this process of refinement can be universally applied.  As I said before, an argument that addresses only the central issues will ultimately be more persuasive to the average reader than one that dilutes its strongest features by attempting to cram absolutely every point in, no matter how relevant.  Readers will be much more persuaded by a succinct discussion of only the strongest points than they would be by a protracted, pedantic lecture including every single tangential issue a writer can link to the subject at hand.  This is just common sense, and a lesson I'm sure you're familiar with after years of legal education.

Why I appreciated the kidn words, but I'm going to have to disagree [sic]. It is not "just" as persuasive. It may only be slightly more - but it is more persuasive with it.

Again, you harp on whether something is "really necessary" and jsut repeat what you've already said. I'm not even convinced that it wasn't "really necessary." But even if it wasn't "really necesssary," it aided the argument I was making and thus served a purpose.

I disagree.  Your stronger points in favor of YawgWill included in the latter half of your essay are as strong as they would be if you hadn't opened your article 10 pages earlier with a 5 paragraph discussion of something that had no immediate relevance.  Your entire article is less persuasive because you've diluted your stronger arguments by including weaker, tangential ones that interrupt the flow of your ideas.

If that was your main point, then why did you even say "Shay’s assertion that a deck without the AK engine is faster cannot be tautologically converted to a statement that the AK engine costs more than it’s worth" if the only purpose was "a need for clarity." You could have done that by saying "the reader is forced to draw the inference which I easily deduced" without actually going so far as to say that I tried to "tautologically convert" one statement into another (which I didn't, as you figured out). Next time, just say: you should have included the explicit point and moved on. It would have saved both of us the trouble of having to say that now.

While we're on the subject of clarity, that's something that's conspicuously absent from this segment of your response.  I have no idea what you're trying to say here.  Let me try to get us back on track by reiterating my point that you were responding to.  You originally said in your article that Shay thought the AK engine "cost more than it was worth."  My problem with this is that you included no citation to anything Shay said to this effect.  Instead, you referenced a statement he made wherein he said CS was "faster and more agile."  Saying that CS is faster and more agile does not translate into claiming the AK engine's costs outweigh its benefits.  Thus, you could have done a better job supporting your claim by finding a more appropriate citation.  That's all.

That's not at all why I'm saying that someone might say "it costs more than its worth." In fact, you've got it all backwards. I'm saying that the AK engine is faster becuase it ends the game faster. It causes your deck to reach a fundamental turn sooner. The fact that you assumed I was aying that the AK engine is slower raises doubts, again, as to my clarity, but also your comprehension here. Moreover, the reasons that I said someone might think that AK "costs more than its worth" is because, as I explained in the article, it costs 6-7 slots that could argubly be spent with cards more likely to win you the game (flexibility notion again). I understood your point, but I'm disagreeing with the notion that, in this particular instance, your critique that I didn't have enough support to justify that point becuase I made a tautological conversion." I may not have sufficiently supported my points (although I think that I did), I'm just saying that this particular example you are choosing to make your point fails.  

Well, I hope my previous response clarifies what I meant here.  However, now that you mention it, I also disagree with your contention that AK allows a Slaver deck to reach a fundamental turn sooner.  My experience with Goth Slaver has shown the opposite to be true.  While testing Goth Slaver, both me and my tesating partner inevitably lost to the opposing CS build while sitting there with a hand containing AK's, wishing they were something that paid quicker dividends.  I realize now that the list we were using is not the latest one.  However, all I can go on is my own experience.  If you've since changed the deck such that this situation no longer arises, I will recant this portion of my argument.  But for now, I can't see how AK makes a Slaver deck faster when testing has proven the opposite.

To be frank, I find this point kind of absurd. If I had not responded it may have had its intended rhetorical effect. Rich has said as much to me in person. But even if he hadn't, I need almost no justification whatsoever in assigning the quote "AK engine costs more than its worth" - or a more precise phraseology - "AK engine's benefits do not outweigh its costs" to Rich. Why? The title of his article says it best" Training Wheels." Moreover, it is self-evident. It only requires that we say: Rich wants to play the best deck he can. Any time you decide whether to include a card or not you are making a cost/benefit decision. If he felt that AK engine had more benefits than costs, it is self-evident, unless y ou don't agree that he wants to play the best deck he can, that he would be playing it. This is merely another instance of you trying to pin me on a particular statement, but once you widen the focus, your critique becomes absurd.

Ah.  Now we get to it.  This seems like a more direct response to what I actually intended that segment of my critique to address.  Is it obvious that Shay thinks poorly of the Intuition/AK engine?  For those who know him or read his article, yes.  For those who stumbled upon your article on SCG without knowing much about Shay, or you, or Slaver, or Vintage, perhaps not so much.  Since we're on the subject of widening the scope, I believe that is what you should be doing with respect to your target audience.  Don't assume everyone reading your article is familiar with Shay's opinions of Intuition/AK.  Even though most of your readership probably is, you're doing a disservice to the minority that isn't.  Good writing assumes the least about the knowledge of the intended audience.  That way, it's accessible to the greatest number of potential readers.

Then why did you even waste time making poor critiques of my logic if you care mostly about the manner? You know what you could have done that would have been much more helpful? Not mention the logic at all and just proceed to describe in a private message that I could have edited my article to make it more clear and done half as much work and I promise you, i would have gotten the point. It was not the model of clarity, but I could have said that from the beginning.

I'm sure it would have been better from your perspective if I had sent this to you in a PM so you could discard it all out of hand and persist in your belief that your writing is above par, but I posted it here to compel a response from you.  Furthermore, I would hardly call my critique of your logic "poor."  Perhaps you'd care to explain why this is.  Moreover, the supporting logic for a proposition is intimately related to its form.  I can agree with a conclusion, but disagree with the quality of logic supporting it, and the manner in which the conclusion was conveyed.  Both of the latter considerations are not points of disagreement with the content of the conclusion itself, but rather criticisms of its form.  I trust after this long and this many repetitions, you can appreciate the distinction.

You have done just that, but you have also included quite a bit of logical criticism or criticism in terms of how I justify my arguments that isn't warranted. I will grant you that I had major clarity issues in this article - but if you had wanted to comment upon that alone, you could have done so in an equally effective manner. Moreover, the reason you targeted this article seems at least in some marginal way related to the subject matter.  

I have already addressed why I chose this article.  I have also already established where a critique of logic falls on the continuum between form and content/substance.  Thus, I don't think anything more needs to be said here.

You know what, I don't beleive you here that you "have no idea" what I meant by "trading up and trading down". I'll buy that you didn't when you first read it. I think that if you read what I was saying several times more, consider what else I've said in this thread - that you could get what I was saying without too much trouble. In fact, I think you could probably articulate that point quite well.

Trust me Steve, I'm not lying to you.  I spend hours a day sifting through inscrutable judicial opinions, peer review of legal briefs, and editing consultation on friends' essays.  I am quite experienced in trying to get at the meaning behind a garbled message.  I was not able to do that with this segment of your article.  Could I maybe have managed if I read through that part "several times more?"  Perhaps, though I did spend a decent amount of time making sure I wasn't missing anything before I wrote this section off as difficult to understand.  Regardless, that is not your reader's job.  Good writing should not require your reader to sit there for 10 minutes scratching their head, attempting to fathom the meaning behind an obtuse metaphor and/or awkward diction.  Because so much of my focus dealt with the quality of the writing, my point here seemed particularly necessary.  

Well that's simply not true. I am not a model of clarity, but I never choose the big word for the simpler when the two words have the same meaning and empahsis when I review my actual choice of words. If I write to impress anyone of anything, it's my a) persuasiveness on what most people consider controversial view points (although I don't think this is one of them) and b) to demonstrate cool things with game examples.

While it was not my intention to impute this flawed style of writing exclusively to you, I can understand how you might see it that way.  So let me take a moment to clarify.  Many Vintage writers, not exclusively you, go way out of their way to make themselves sound "smart" in their writing.  As a result, many Vintage writers distort their own arguments.  Did you?  I can't speak to your intentions, though I have my doubts about why exactly you went through so much trouble to include a discussion of "dialectic" history-- a concept popularized by an obscure philosopher.  However, you've already said that you had other reasons for including this part of your discussion and I'm of course not going to stand here and try to call you a liar.  In any event, my point that most Vintage writers need to tone down the intellectual chest-thumping in their articles remains, even if it didn't apply perfectly in your particular scenario.

You know how long it takes to write those Matchup Analysis articles I wrote? You have to record the games: 4-5 hours. You have to read through the games and analyze them to a greater degree of detail to organize the piece: 1-4 hours. I then have to cut and paste the games I've chosen and format them to make my point and to be clear: 2-3 hours. Then I have to write the article around it: 2-4 hours. Then I read it over and edit: another hour. This article probably took me 5-6 hours to write even though I didn't put all the edits into it that I wanted. Maybe I take too long to write articles. Maybe I could have done more. That's one reason my early articles came out about once every two months: ARticle on GroATog, ARticle on Stax, 10 Priciples of Type One, articles on Long, etc. But you know what, I'd rather have that content out there- even flawed. I can't simply justify continuing to edit - even with the pay increases I 've gotten over the years. Frankly, my pay increases justify why I'm writing at the frequency I'm attempting to do.

Perhaps I'm starting to see the reason behind the cut corners in editing.  I was paid $0 to write this critique.  I did it because I enjoy writing, I enjoy debate, and I enjoyed performing this public service i.e. encouraging Vintage writers to take the small amount of trouble necessary to improve their writing.  When I was in college, I was paid $0 to write Op/Ed columns for the paper.  I did it because I liked writing.  If I make law review, I will be paid $0 for that, too.  My writing is good because I see it as an end in itself, something done for its own sake.  If the only reason you're writing articles is to get paid...well, maybe the reasons why you aren't putting in your best effort are a little more apparent in that light.  But, this is exactly why I wrote my critique.  Your article could have been better.  Much better.  But you didn't put in the effort.  A lot of Vintage writers publish articles like this.  Heck, why bother?  Most people are just going to smile and nod anyway.  So, I decided to post some compelling criticisms in the hopes of inspiring Vintage writers like yourself to go the extra mile next time.  If you can't find the time to edit yourself, ask a friend to read through your work once for clarity.  I don't think that's too much.

I think you have succeeded admirably. I am crafting an article on Trinsphere right now and you have made me rethink what I'm going to say. And more particularly, how I say it.

Well, then I'm happy.  We can stop this exchange anytime you're comfortable with leaving off.


At this point, our focus turns from stylistic criticism to points of disagreement.  I'll address these individually.

1.  Library of Alexandria.  Is it essential?  Depends in what sense you're using the term.  Is it essential to the deck's engine?  No.  The deck can function just fine without it.  However, is it essential to the best performance possible for the deck?  Now I'd have to say yes.  So, perhaps a better term isn't "essential" but rather "indispensable."  Nevertheless, either adjective entitles a card to consideration as "sacred" in my opinion.  Let me explain why I think this by analogizing the function of Library to the function of YawgWill in CS.  As I mentioned before, Will is an alternate win condition in and of itself in CS.  Initial slaving game plan didn't work?  No problem.  Demonic Tutor for Will, pop lotus, cast will, go crazy.  gg.  It allows you to win games your initial game plan wouldn't have given to you.  In much the same way, Library could do this for you in Goth Slaver.  Suppose you're on the draw and you've got a hand full of high cost artifacts, welder, 1 mana producing land, and a library and you know your opponent isn't playing strips or combo.  All of a sudden, this hand isn't so bad.  Library by itself will give you all the draws you need, and accelerate you into extra mana, as well as allow you to discard your high-cost artifacts "naturally" to be welded in by the Welder, without even needing TFK.  Thus, Library can serve as a separate win mechanism, just as Will can in CS.  Therefore, I'd consider it indispensable and sacred.  However, I don't consider myself an authority on Goth Slaver.  This is just the result of my limited testing experience.

2. Tinker.  I suppose a lot of my argument in favor of LoA would apply here, too.  Tinker can just come out of nowhere and win you games your initial game plan wouldn't have.  Suppose you and your opponent are in topdeck mode and you've got a bunch of idle artifacts and neither of you have any threats.  Topdecking AK might help you pull ahead in the race, but throwing Tinker for Sundering Titan or Mindslaver could just blow the game wide open.  I suppose a necessary corollary here is that Tinker is only as good as the big artifacts you're running.  The "classic" build of CS ran into this problem when all it had were Mindslaver, Platinum Angel, and Pentavus.  None of these are a guaranteed win off an early Tinker.  However, subsequent testing revealed Titan to fit this bill nicely, so he was added.  Perhaps you might want to try this out in Goth Slaver?  Maybe your opinion of Tinker might change if it could pay bigger dividends for you as an early play or timely draw.

3.  Yawgmoth's Will.  Let me remind you where I got my idea that you endorsed having YawgWill in the sideboard.  

"Game Two is probably something that has to be determined by testing, but again, thinking outside the box, I might be inclined to try some radical approaches, like siding out three Welders, siding in Yawgmoth's Will and 4-5 Red Elemental Blasts.[/i] Such a plan assumes that you gain control and Yawgmoth's Will ensures the survival, in that assumption, of your lone welder."

 (Menendian, 7)

I included the entire paragraph so as not to foster any more allegations of taking your remarks out of context.  I emphasized the section that included a reference to a plan you advocated in which Yawgmoth's Will was in fact in the sideboard.  I included a citation so you can find this sentence in your article more easily.  I hope this refreshes your memory.

4.  The power level of Goth Slaver relative to CS.

It should be quite obvious that more draw is generally better. Moreover, given the synergy that Intuition has in the deck, it is almost absurd to say that Goth is not objectively more powerful...If I showed you a Tog list as a regular list with Intuition AK and 3 Deep Analysis versus a tog list with the Intuition Ak engine and 3 Fact or Fiction, I think most reasonable poeple would say that the Fact version is more broken. Why? It has two draw engines.

Now, let me first quote myself from my original critique:  

Unfortunately Smmenen is limiting his comparison of two decks to a comparison of two draw engines, failing to account for other important differences between them.

If you had said Goth Slaver's draw engine was more powerful, I might have bought that.  But to say a DECK is more powerful is just such a broad, sweeping statement that I can't accept it based on an analysis of the decks' draw engines, as important as they are to the decks' respective performances.  Moreover, your analogy to Tog decks doesn't quite fit because the draw engine is so intricately tied to what the deck DOES.  The deck uses the cards it draws not to play spells but as a means in and of themselves to pump Tog and kill their opponent.  The same can't be said for CS.  I realize this could be said Intution in Goth Slaver, but now we're comparing apples and oranges.  CS is in part a control deck.  You've characterized Goth Slaver ad nauseum as a combo deck.  You can't really compare the two then, since CS invests so much of its resources not in "going off" but in interacting with the opponent and obtaining an advantage to use against the opponent to allow itself to maneuver into a devastating play.  Since the decks have different strategies and go in different directions, it's difficult to say which deck is objectively more powerful since their game plans and objectives are so radically different.

5.  Goldfishing Goth Slaver.  

First of all, it is funny that you can say it is moot and then later contradict yourself by saying that goldfishing for design has merit.

You're committing the fallacy of amphibolee here.  I was talking about the value of goldfishing in two very different senses.  Goldfishing has merit in that it allows a player to know how to play the deck and become familiar with what cards do what.  That is fine.  But what goldfishing does NOT do is tell a player how a deck will perform against an opponent who either interfering with the deck's game plan or putting pressure on the player that they need to account for.  In this scenario, goldfishing is moot.  Note the difference.

You are drawing far too many inferences from the notion that I goldfish Goth Slaver and not recognizing that Goldfishing has value and is not entirely moot. Its simply wrong to say that goldfishing is moot unless you assume that I'm doing nothing but playing solitare. I consider: what would happen if my opponent had this or that all the time when Goldfishing. And even if you are making those assumptions, goldfishing provides a different sort of information that should be weighted appropriately in making design desicions. So you are wrong on this count.

I find this argument unconvincing for one main reason.  If the process of "anticipating interference" in goldfishing made goldfishing an appropriate gauge of a deck's competitive potential, Meandeck Tendrils would not have performed so poorly at Waterbury.  I again am not going to pretend to read your mind and call you a liar and say that you aren't actually trying to account for potential interference from an opponent.  All I can go on are the results of this sort of testing, and from what I've seen, it's not enough.  Meandeck originally contended that SX had a 70% turn 1 kill ratio and could win through Force of Will.  Yet at Waterbury, 9% of the SX decks entered made it to the top 16.  Thus, it seems fair to conclude there was a fairly significant discrepancy between your testing results and the decks' tournament performance.

Nowhere in my argumentation do I rely on the notion that I am goldfishing a deck in tournament play. The claim that Goth Slaver is faster is true not only of tournament play but also the goldfish. This is just a crass distortion of what I was saying...Again, you harp on and on about the points I made about goldfishing without realizing the relevance to the larger point I was making. I find it hard to beleive that you think I am goldfishing a deck just for tournament play, first, becuase I never said that. And second, becuase I would hope the in game examples in my article demonstrate the opposite. That you spend so much time on this point when you really have no real force here suggests its mostly rhetorical and not substantive.

I was merely including my point there to emphasize how goldfishing and tournament play can differ, and therefore how a deck's performance in one setting won't necessarily coincide with its performance in the other.  Also, check your word choice on "crass"; I'm not sure it's the appropriate term there.

Goldfishin Goth Slaver will show you that the deck is very powerful. It is an indicator. Is it limited? CERTAINLY! I would never take a deck to a tournament just on how I goldfished with it. I beleive testing is the key to success in magic. THat is the most important thing bar none. But goldfishing tells us things that we should not ignore and it has relevance and an impact. It may be of "limited relevance" as you say, but relelvant nonetheless - one more factor to be weighed among many. One more bit of data - one more piece of information to put into the larger puzzle.

And after all this, we get to the precise point on which we differ.  I am not saying your testing results are worthless.  I am not saying you are wrong including them.  I am merely saying because golfishing is a limited (I would go so far as to say severely limited) indicator of a deck's tournament potential, an assertion that a deck is more "powerful" than another deck needs more support than goldfishing results and an analysis of the decks' draw engines, especially in light of how differently the decks work.  Apples and oranges, I believe I said.

I'm asking you to argue why you think, in concrete terms, AK/Intuition is NOT worth the benefit. Becuase that is the only relevant question in this whole thread. It's dissapointing that I had to wade through all of this when you didn't address it at all.

Steve, I'm disappointed by this remark.  If you think the merits of Intution/AK were the only relevation question in this thread, then the entire reason for my critique is lost on you.  I have said it several times, but let me reiterate once more.  I wrote my critique because I thought the quality of the writing most Vintage articles can be vastly improved.  I picked yours as an example and posted a summary of the places in which I believed you fell short.  The point of all this is not that I necessarily think your ideas are wrong, but rather that I firmly believe they could be conveyed better.  While I did disagree with some ideas, those points of disagreement were incidental.  Please do not take such a procrustean attitude with my critique.  People can accept your ideas, or even just refrain from disagreeing with them, and still criticize the manner in which you articulated these ideas.  That is the main point of my critique.  Whether or not I agree with the inclusion of AK, Deep Analysis, or Mountain Goat is entirely beside this point.

It's late.  I'm tired.  I probably missed a few points you made.  I'm sure you'll remind me right away if I missed any of your especially strong arguments, though.  Just rest assured in the meantime that I'm not trying to duck them.   It seems as though we're close to agreeing on my stylisitc criticisms of your article; therefore in the interest of time and the sanity of the readers, I request that you limit any other comments you have on my stylistic criticisms to general remarks as opposed to an in-depth point-by-point analysis.  Unless of course you feel strongly that there is more that absolutely needs to be said there.  That way, we can narrow the focus of the discussion to the points of disagreement.

[Demonic Attorney]

I'd just like to go on record here and say how much I love the fact that the entire debate was deemed off-topic six posts into the discussion.  A very logical juncture at which to make that decision, indeed.  Furthermore, since the entire thread was discussing an article and not just an idea, I'm having even more trouble understanding how this could be construed as off-topic.  Last I checked, the entire exchange dealt with the article that was the subject of the thread.  

Moreover, I'm absolutely thrilled with the fact that the moderator in question dumped the entire debate off the thread, saying that critique of form is not as important as critique of content.  Leaving aside for the moment the fact that I argued ad nauseum in posts that this isn't true and that it should take more than a conclusory statement to invalidate that position, anyone reading this thread will probably notice there were segments of the discussion that address content as well as form.  If the problem was with the emphasis on form, why move the whole thing and not leave the discussion of the content?  Good show, JP.

[Dante]

It was moved off because it ended up with a 17-page (counted by the number of times I had to hit page down) from Steve in which the first 10 pages was nothing but the "style of the article", whether something was "just" persuasive or "slightly more" pusuasive, and general logic critiques about broadness and focus.

Basically, the whole point of the discussion, which should have been about Control slaver vs Goth slaver got sidetracked by arguing about logic and semantics and it was detracting from the thread.  If you had just summarized your points (like you did at the end of the article - i.e. your disagreement with steve comparing decks based on comparing draw engines, etc), it would have been coherent to follow.

Basically, in this case, while debate over form and logic did have relevance to the article, it still detracted from what should have been the core discussion, which is why I asked the mods to consider editing that thread.  They obviously agreed since here it is.  If you want to PM me or make a separate thread about it, go ahead since I don't want this to detract from your debate with Steve.