Article -- Mark Rosewater's take on the metagame

[Rakso]

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=3217

Quote But MaRo added a little twist to his reply: "...we do try to create cards that shake up the environment. Whether or not this has an impact on a larger format depends a lot on what mechanics the new ones are competing with. Odyssey block, for example, explored some new turf and, as such, has created ripples throughout all the formats. The emphasis on the graveyard had substantial impact on Extended. In turn, an Extended deck (Miracle Gro) from the latest Extended season has gone on to have a huge influence on Type 1..."

[Burntgerbil]

whaaaa ? how ? where is this gro-heavy metagame ? point it out to me ! It looks like all those long nights drafting in the FFL have warped his brain into cottage cheese.

[Nevyn]

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=sideboard/wir/20020624

There is Oscar's explanation. I especially love the gush quote. I'm a big Gush proponent but that's just ridiculous. I will avoid mocking Pat Chapin, however, as he utterly wrecked me (and his team mine) at a team PTQ last weekend. It was embarassing. I'm sure that he just still has a ridiculously high T1 rating and so they take his word on the format like gospel. If so, he may be a pipeline for us to get problem cards restricted in the future (and avoid the one year wait).

[Burntgerbil]

what about that soulgouger orgg/mirror/rod of ruin deck ? thats the only thing stopping worldgorger from being dominant

[rings from corona]

don't forget sneak attack, so you can do it all in one turn!

[The Blob]

Pat's Vintage rating is only 1848.  Pretty decent, but by no means astronomical.  Maybe this goofy metagame has something to do with the fact he playtests with EDT......

[Fishhead]

I got a chance to playtest Chapin Gro last week; a couple matches against Keeper variants and a couple more matches versus random Tier2 decks.

Observations.  

1) Keeper with Abyss is not a great matchup.  Abyss is bad news, but Wasteland might be even worse.  The mana base is so fragile and Mana Leak at 2CC is highly suspect.  (I used an older BD version of the deck.  I notice Mana Leak is gone now, good riddance).
2) How can you play with only 9 land!?  All I want is a land, a Saphirre or a Land Grant, but I still end up mulliganing.  As mentioned, Wasteland is bad, double Wasteland is crushing.
3) Random Goblin Welder deck wrecks Chapin Gro with Smokestack.  Few permanents = bad times v. Smokestack.  Misdirection is dead weight, Welder comes out before Mana Leak is online.  Hope for FoW or a very fast Dryad.  Fortunately, this isnt a likely matchup; but its really bad.
4) Random Survival deck poses difficult problems.  Relying on having lots of counters is very bad against mega-recursion.  Counter Survival or die.  Not a likely matchup again, but how can you "dominate" T1 if you cant beat peoples "fun deck"?
5) 8 creatures is not a lot.  You cannot count on drawing an early Dryad; you cannot count on getting 3 mana to cast Ophidian quickly either.  
6) Gush cant save a lone land.  Oh, the times I wished I could Gush up my lone Tropical in response to a Wasteland.  Argh!  If I have 2 land on the board, I dont need to Gush defensively as much.  Its when I only have one that I need to save it.  If only Daze worked on Wasteland.

Anyway, I'm sure Pat plays this deck a lot better than I did in my first outing with it, and I also like the look of the new version better; more 1CC search seems good instead of 2 CC situational counters.  But still!

[Milton]

Should we be a little more critical of Pat then we are being?  I know he didn't say that he was the best Type I player in the world, but Wizards basically did.  His rating isn't that good and he isn't really known in our community as a high caliber Type I mind.

But, everyone seems to be saying "he is beyond harsh criticism because he is a great player".  Well, he can be a great player and have no clue about Type 1, right?  This notion that Illusionary Mask is holding Type 1 together is absolute nonsence.  If anything is holding Type I together it's the restriction of Fact or Fiction and a well balanced metagame.

Also, Pat is doing his part to propegate the myth that Type I is all about combo.  I'm sorry, folks, but combo doesn't usually beat control.  It rarley does after sideboarding.  And his deck is awful!

There is some good that could come from this.  Maybe more people will take up Type I if they think that Grow (or whatever the hell Pat's deck is) is unbeatable.

Anyway, where is the outrage by the Type I community?  If Long or Finkel would have made such a statement as "Gush is better than Ancestral because it can't be Misdirected" we would be sending stern e-mails and posting harsh articles.  Rakso really handled this with kid gloves when he should have used a chainsaw to tear these myths apart.  

And, Weismann, as good as he was, is no longer the beacon of wisdom for the Type I community.  That's not to say he doesn't deserve respect, he just shouldn't be listend to for advice on the game anymore (to be fair he doesn't really give advice anymore, but we sure do solicit advice from Weismann via Rakso, which we should stop doing).  Weismann doesn't stay current.  Christ, he still runs a Mirror Universe in his sideboard.  If a scrub posted Weismann's keeper deck on this site he would get torn apart for playing a crappy deck.  If Weismann's deck lost to Pat's 80% of the time it's because his deck needs some serious work.  And, if his deck beat Pat's after sideboarding 90% of the time, imagine what a well tuned deck would do!

In short, we should really go after Pat and his comments about Type I and we should go after Wizards for publishing those statements on their Website.  Would Wizards ever quote a Type I player who talked about how prohibitively expencive Type II had gotten on their web site?  No way in hell.  But they publish all kinds of garbage about Type I.

Anyway, Rakso, your article was well written, but you should have really torn those bastards apart.

[Rakso]

Milton: Looking at my article, there's one very good reason why I didn't bash Chapin personally.

He NEVER SAID he was the best Type I player in the world and didn't exactly go out of his way to tell the world that Illusionary Mask is the only thing that is keeping Type I sane.

It was Rosewater who did all that, remember?

Pat never said a thing except during dinner with Rosewater one night.

[Rakso]

And to be fair, I asked Pat to explain his theories. Imagine asking a guy for his opinion in a very casual manner (wasn't even thinking article at the time), then TAing him.

It'd be really sick; the guy isn't Inquest.

(Pat not Rosewater.)

I hope this is clear and this isn't "he's a good player so he's beyond criticism."

Imagine if I asked you about something then printed your email with a page of nasty notes attached.

[Milton]

Wizards published Pat's ideas on their web site.  His ideas are crap.  Wizards deserves some harsh criticism for publishing those ideas on their web site and proclaiming Pat the king of Type I.

Also, I think we can criticize Pat because his ideas were published on their site!  They wouldn't have published what he said without his permission.  I'm sure Pat believes what he said, so call him on it!

Quote
Imagine if I asked you about something then printed your email with a page of nasty notes attached.

If you asked me something about Type 2 (a format that I know nothing about) and I made statements that alienated the entire Type 2 community, I would expect the Type 2 community to go after me!  

I know you aren't trying to piss anyone off, but I think you can really go after Wizards and Pat in this case.  With his comments, and the way Wizards published them, it's put up or shut up for Pat, as far as I'm concerned.

Rakso, you have put yourself into a position where you can speak for the majority of the Type I community, and you can write with a humor and clarity that escapes most of us.  You have gained an incredible respect with your writings over the past year and your voice commands serious attention.  With that reputation and respect comes a responsibility to tell these people that they are full of crap and should stick to Extended.  

The way you went after Inquest was brilliant.  I think Wizards, and Pat, deserve the same!

[Zherbus]

Yes. Again, Milton, I agree with you 100%.

Rakso, as much as we play type 1...as many websites as we post on...as many articles the rest of us have up on starcity...YOU are the one they read. YOU are the only one people seem to hear.

Maybe instead of ME writing Rosewater, you should?

[Amuraivel]

NEWS FLASH Mark Rosewater will Discuss Type 1 next week...

Join me next week when I talk about Type 1. (No really, I'm not kidding.)

Until then, may your favorite color come out on top in the next cycle.

Mark Rosewater

You can view the article in which this appeared:
Mark Rosewater will discuss Type 1...


I read MaRose's comments before it was posted in this forum was posted..I was having a tough time with the idea that  threshhold was making ripples, and the whole Grow as a force in T1.  

To be honest I am a bad keeper player, but I cannot recall in all my games online everbeing beat by anything with a major green component.  This indicates to me that Grow is not a major force, but well maybe people are hoarding their Grow tech for that next T1 tourney... (Except a Turbo Land deck with Squirrel Nest...which well, after I saw it once I knew what cards to counter, I won the second game.)

I would hope that he at least gives people a clear picture of what T1 is.  People at my Magic Club here in Bern,CH think that T1 just a bunch of people playing with the resticted list.  I was suprised myself that the format is not as broken and evil as its reputation would have you believe.  I have had quite a few games where the outcome was uncertain for a very long time.  It is not all Moxen, Lotus, MindTwist, or Fireball Channel, or Lotus, Ball Lightening, Taiga, Mox, Mox, BloodLust, Berserk...etc.  It is quite enjoyable, there is a huge range of cards to play with, one sees new things all the time.  The format doesn't change like Block does, it simply evolves and matures.  It doesn't necessarily get more broken either-is Fire/Ice a broken card, or Teferi's Response, or even the Wishes.

 In Block it is easier to say what the best deck is, but in T1 there is just a Tiere which puts the decks in a loose hierarchy.  When most of the field is playing the same deck, one needs to either exploit the weakness, or ask oneself what is wrong.  T1 has a 5000 card repetoire to exploit a field playing the same deck; this is not necessarily the case in Block, the R&D has gotten better at balancing something so tricky.  But Block finds an optimum, and T1 hasn't found it yet (I like my Keeper alot, but well...Swamp Duress, Wastland Ritual Hymn...)

I just hope he uses the opportunity to:
a. Get people interested in the format and take away the myth of Brokenness and Cost
b. Paint a fair picture of what it is the top decks, what matches look like.
c. Direct people to this site....


---Amuraivel

[Nevyn]

He is much more likely to

a) address the multitude of emails he got in better (but no more satisfying) detail.

b) give some background on the whole Chapin-Grow thing.

c) Explain that Wizards is doing 'the best that it can' and try to give examples of recently created cards seeing use.

Don't expect a 'we'll do better' article because they won't. Also don't expect much strategic content. He is basically just going to put a typical PR spin on the issue of support for type 1.

[Amuraivel]

I have to admit, I read all MaRose's articles on MTG.com.

And that makes me agree with Nevyn..It most likely will be the typical PR spin which plagues his writing.  It is a bad habit of current American culture, especially American corporate culture.  (I have this bad habit as well, but at least I recognize it:))

I do not expect a strategy session from the man.  I just expect a few intelligent comments.  If he were just to pick up the primers, and hang out on Apprentice for a few hours...he could already give decent picture ofT1.

---Amuraivel

[Rakso]

Quote (Milton @ June 25 2002,15:46)

Quote ...a responsibility to tell these people that they are full of crap and should stick to Extended.

Again, Pat just talks to anyone (in private) who asks him... he never wrote anything or implied he was the Type I God. Rosewater did all that.

But I can't tell Rosewater to fuck off and stick to Extended. He already admitted he doesn't know jack shit about designing sets so as not to ruin Extended.