Newark's C&J's T1 Tourney Report

[Zherbus]

Well as harsh as I may have sounded, would you have preferred sugar coating?

Thank you for agreeing with me about your last approach gone bad. Sure, I appreciate tournament reports, and yeah I think thats the best route you have to go with to promote this deck.

Settled gripe #1: No more win percentages. Good.

Quote "First admit that your deck, good or bad, looks like a pile of shit"
Sure.  My deck looks like a pile of shit.  You however, choose to ignore an important caveat to that, which was succintly summed up by Fishhead in a different thread.  "So did the original Sligh."

Sligh was first seen after doing well in a Necro metagame...in a major tournament.Brassman looked like ass, but that placement did not.

My point, and Ill say this as politely as possible this time so not as to ruffle your feathers, is that often times you can tell a deck is crap from the look of it. Dont deny this, you cant seriously look at every crappy looking deck and start right in on theories. As bad as that is that people pre-judge, its true. When you want to sell (promote) you have to realize what someone will see right off the bat.

Agree or not?

Quote "Admit that if deck was so easy to beat in a master players hand, Type 1's universal metagame would be different."
It is different, outside your world.  A variety of type 1 metagames around the world (such as the German metagame, or where I play) exhibit this "different" metagame which seems so foreign to you.

I play in a very random metagame. Control one minute, aggro the next, a mix soon after, then back to control. What I was saying is that when we, on themanadrain, discuss an aggro deck for, example, we like to make sure it has a way of not dying to the abyss. If Keeper wasnt that good of a deck, why wouldn't aggro do better in general?

Quote "No matter how much you advertise this deck, no matter how many friggin essays you write about this deck, no matter how many reports you write...your credibility is always going to be questioned.
Seriously, your long winded posts are almost a complete waste of time. Noone, but your circle of friends, is buying into it."
In recent memory, I've written two tournament reports which could be considered as objects of your objection.  Or are you referring to things previous to these reports?  In that case, learn to let go.  If you regard the tournament reports as a waste of time, simply declare tournament reports outlawed from this site and be done with it.  And really, I appreciate your concern for being worried about how I spend my time, but if you don't really care, as you've said, then just leave me alone.  I'm perfectly fine with you remaining unconvinced that the deck is good.

There is nothing wrong with your reports. Nothing at all. In those posts I've made on this thread, I had a point to all this; To have you retrace your steps. Do I want you to stop posting reports? Hell no. Do I want you to stop championing this deck? No. I just feel you need to come down to earth and say, "Listen guys, Im doing well with the deck. I know it looks like a total pile of randomness, but its not. Its also not the best deck ever, but its good. Best of all it makes for a healthier metagame than a Keeper dominated one."

Quote "It could be that you play against shitty keeper players. (likely)"
This is where my comment about ignoring an entire region's metagame comes in.  Are you willing to say that all the keeper players in the SF bay area are shitty?  How would you justify such a statement?

"It could be that some mystical force prevents anyone else from doing good with this deck, outside of yourself. (likely as well)"
Hmm... I don't know.  Most people would call that being good with the deck.  How come when that happens with keeper players, they've "mastered the deck", but with me, it's "a mystical force"?

"It could be a string a good luck. (less likely, but the possibility is still there)"  
I would calculate the probability of having my record by luck for you, but it would be a waste of time.  I estimate that probability, however, to be in the order of 1 in 2^50.

"It could be an actual decent deck. (The day this deck redefines type 1...)"
When the impossibilities are eliminated, the remaining possibility, no matter how improbable...

From what I've heard, and maybe I have been misinformed, but other don't do as well with this deck as you do. I have no idea how good the keeper players are there but Ill assume decent. I also gathered that this was, in large, tested online in appr.

The rest within the above quote is based off your win percentages rant. We decided not to talk about that, right? I'll stand by those statements the day you make those win percentages again.

Quote "My point is, it seems as if you are trying to carve a place for you in the 'Legendary Contributers of Vintage' and all your doing is getting laughed at by about 80% of the players. "
Speak for yourself, and let the 80% speak for themselves as well.  Spare the silent majority of your own prejudices.  Also note that this is another one of the many instances in your post which could be construed as an unnecessary insult.

I'm not laughing and the 'Silent Majority' wasnt so Silent when I had to close 2 threads due to flaming. I also declared myself not caring about whether this deck does well or not, because I dont see them here, I dont see them in the few games I play online, and until its something Ill see on a regular basis Im not going to budge.

Youve heard of stacker2 right? I completely ignored it since that wasnt what I saw until a guy locally started running it. Now I make sure I am prepared, otherwise it is a waste of my time.

Quote "Perhaps you tried a different approach, but that may be too late."
My approach currently is to write tournament reports.  Do you find this approach so abominable?  Should I place "tournament reports" in the same category as "percentages", under "things hated by themanadrain for no good reason"?

Well by new approach, I meant things like making some sort of statement to attempt to make it more acceptable to the masses. Do something like you already did in this thread and admit that your initial launch of the deck was flawed. Try to fix this, and more people will take it seriously.

Quote By the way, would you care to comment on the tournament report?  I went 3-0-2 against some very tough competition, you know.  I hear that kind of thing usually counts as evidence that a deck is good.

It was a well written report and yes you did in some tough competition. Good for you, keep posting results like that and see what happens I guess. Itll be a slow transition of general attitude  is what Im saying, and you know why.

As far as temperments, BOTH sides are guilty of getting emotional, and you know it.

SO...In summary:

Win percentages were a BAD idea. (check)

The deck looks bad and to capture someones interest/attention, you should at least address this.

The deck has a bad taste in peoples mouth and you should figure out something to fix that to accelerate your decks popularity.

Tournament Reports are good. Evidence is good. (check)

Leaving personal emotions out is good.

I was trying to help you and sounded too harsh, I apologize.

[Fishhead]

Whew, OK, I guess everything is back to normal.  Group hug.  

Quote From what I've heard, and maybe I have been misinformed, but other don't do as well with this deck as you do. I have no idea how good the keeper players are there but Ill assume decent. I also gathered that this was, in large, tested online in appr.

Just to clear two things up :

1) The deck is generally not played on Apprentice; as NaClhv says its a big pain in the butt to play Tax/Rack on a computer.   The deck is tested in "real" play every Friday at FNM.  Because Berkeley is casual, proxying is allowed/encouraged and therefore the "power" level is probably higher than an average metagame.  Most major archetypes are there, and several experimental rogue decks as well.  On the downside, there is no sideboarding because its a casual environment.  (Though I expect the Wishes to have an effect on that.)  Lately people have also been playing sanctioned games at C&Js in Newark, which is where these latest reports come from.

2) TimW also posted a report winning with the deck last week.  Its not just Naclhv who is winning with it.

I mention these things, not in the spirit of nitpickiness (since we're all feeling better after the group-hug , but because whoever told you it was tested on Appr was incorrect.  I personally wouldnt rely on Appr testing; the quality of opponents is too variable for it to be your sole source of playtest.

[cooberp]

Nachlv--
My email is rosenhec@fas.harvard.edu and my aim name is cooberp.  But I absolutely do reserve the right to post results from our games, and you can do the same.  I would feel no need to rip on your deck or anything if I come out substantially on top, I would just want to say, phew, Magic is played by the same rules we always thought it was, and be done with it.

[kirdape3]

Boo!  CRY HAVOC, AND LET'S SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR.

Kidding.

Seriously, I DID try this deck out.  After a couple of games to get the most basic feel for the deck, I started testing it against OSE, a deck with a similar aim (aggro-control) and much more focus.  The playtesting results were as follows.

ABM - 2
OSE - 18

Ouch.  Both of those wins were by double Meddling Mage lock (The Abyss and Powder Keg) and then Enforcer flying over for the win.  The rest of the time Tax/Rack didn't bother me because the ability of ABM to stop what I wanted to do was limited and their men didn't stand up to the defenses presented by OSE.

If you want to keep playing a deck with similar styles of play, please try either U/G/w Gro or OSE, since both decks have similar characteristics to ABM and more efficient means of accomplishing the same tasks.\n\n

[NaClhv]

Zherbus:  Apology accepted.  I think both sides needed to air out some things after all the flaming from the first posts.  There was a lot of things that I had already said, or wanted to say, which never got mentioned because the posts got closed, and you had to wait until now to get it all out.  For example, I know that my deck looks like a pile.  In fact, half of the people who supported ABM back then started their posts with "Now, the decklist might look like a pile, but...".  I was going to explain the card choices more & stuff, but I never got to it.  All in all, I'm glad that you brought up these things, so that I could respond to them without starting another thread.

Regarding how others are doing with the deck:  Those people around me who have seen the deck being played and picked it up are having success with it.  Others just take the decklist and start playing with it, with the expected dismal results, as exemplified by Kirdape3 above me.  I recommend against just picking up the deck and trying it.  This is also a new aspect of the different approach to promote the deck;  It used to be that I said "play it, and you'll see that it's good".  However, after talking to some people, I realized that ABM is not a trivial deck to play.  I guess that's something that you can fail to realize when you're the deck designer:  I know why a certain card is in the deck, I put it there.  But others might not.  Apparently I completely ignored this fact, and assumed that playing the deck would come as naturally to other people as it does to me.

So, for that reason, I no longer encourage people to "just pick it up and try it".  I believe that this is a difficult deck to play, and this is another reason that I'm focusing my efforts on tournament reports; they can show how the deck is SUPPOSE to be played.  If someone wants to try the deck, then they should take some time to explore the myriads of interactions in the deck, and be prepared to spend some time learning how the deck works.

In Kirdape3's example above, you can see that he made mistakes in what to name with the meddling mages.  If he won with mystic enforcers, why were the abyss and powder keg being named?  Aren't these the two cards which can be safely ignored by a mystic enforcer?  It would have made more sense to name morphling, for example, which could actually stop the assult by mystic enforcer.

Or, if a meddling mage names mana drain, then the OSE deck could be attacked on two levels-  it still has to deal with the enforcer, but now the control aspect of the matchup is also under threat, since each deck is pretty even on counterspells now.

Also, I find it hard to believe that in the 20 games against OSE, back to basics never contributed to winning a game.

Anyway, remember that the deck is not trivial to play.  Learning how to play it properly will be very rewarding, however.

[cooberp]

I'm getting a weird sense of deja vu for the Doomsday brouhaha...

[Matt The Great]

I don't suppose that this could herald the arrival of the aggro decks that require as much skill and experience to play as control? You, know, what much of the type one community has been looking for?

Personally, I remain unconvinced, but admit the possibility. Myself, I've been quietly championing a B/g deck built off Suicide, but with more staying power. And I will say this - an uncomfortable feeling has come over me that some (what fraction, I cannot say) of my wins with the deck stem from the surprise value.

Also, I feel qualified to say that being the designer of a deck ABSOLUTELY impacts how well one does with it. I honestly can't imagine anyone else doing as well with my deck - ask Zvi about old-extended TurboLand. I KNOW whether to Demonic Tutor for Spiritmonger or Pernicious Deed, and I can't give any explanation why other than intuition. Someone find me that old Mindripper article (Scott Johns', I think) about right-brained Magic play, it's still the best thing I've ever read on the subject.

A final note: I think what probably turns people off the most to your deck is the 2/2/2/2 creature configuration. People are used to redundancy and consistency, and (good idea or no) when you don't give them that, it's a pretty big red flag.

[Fishhead]

Quote Also, I find it hard to believe that in the 20 games against OSE, back to basics never contributed to winning a game.

I had a similar reaction.  ABM plays two maindeck BtB and 4 FoW; just by blind luck you should catch OSE with its pants down every now and then.  

And this is just a sidelight to the main plan of getting the Tax/Rack combo going and Ancestral'ing yourself every turn; its not like BtB is the only strategy or even the main one.  

Quote I don't suppose that this could herald the arrival of the aggro decks that require as much skill and experience to play as control?

Also, if you played the old Tax/Rack decks in Extended, I dont think that the play of this deck will be a mystery to you.  Play Tax.  Play Rack.  Draw zillions of cards.  Rack your hand of a zillion cards to look at the next zillion cards from your deck until you find the answer/threat you are looking for.  (This partly explains the odd 2/2/2/2 creature configuration; when you are looking at 20 cards every turn you dont want to have a 4/4/4/4 configuration unless you are using the creatures for beatdown.  Here they are mostly utility creatures to solve specific problems.)

--edit--
Part of my point here is that I dont think of it as an aggro deck.  If I were just drawing dorky creatures like Whirlpool Warrior one at a time and hoping to beat someone down with them ... well, thats not much of a plan.  The plan is to draw lots and lots of cards with Tax/Rack and overwhelm your opponent with card-advantage.  Much more like traditional control in that way; though I think one of its strengths compared to Parfait is that it has more potential to go aggro early if needed.  That, and the fact that it runs that $&#! BtB card.  

[kirdape3]

Back to Basics and the Scroll Rack are the cards that most caught my attention and counters.  I let the guy Tax all day long - it doesn't really DO anything besides thin the deck.  However, letting him draw 2 billion and 3 cards off the combo would be silly and probably contributes to Keeper's downfall... they're too busy annoying the creatures rather than countering the two cards that break them.

OSE also had the advantage of tossing down Factories backed by Teferi's Response plus counters plus Morphling plus... and winning with those.  Enforcer didn't often matter because Morphling just goes to a 0/7 and then turns around and smashes.  Plays like the triple Time Walk you had at the tournament help that, but if you're counting on stuff like that then God help you because I can't.

I DO believe that U/W/G control is viable, but not in the form you present.  However, if you want to keep this idea, try out Nantuko Monastery.  A 4/4 first-striking guy is really useful against aggro decks.

[NaClhv]

Fishhead:  Thanks for explaining the 2-ofs in the deck.  You pretty much hit it on the head.  That's another thing that I wanted to explain when i first presented the deck, but couldn't because of the flames and the thread closing.

Matt the Great:  As Fishhead pointed out, this is not an aggro deck.  It's aggro-control, with more emphasis on control than on aggro.

Kirdape3:

A while back, I wrote something comparing the amount of countermagic that Keeper has (which is pretty much the same as OSE) with the amount of must-counters in Mind.  (One of my long-winded essays)  Unfortunately, I think it has been lost with the thread, but I can summarize the conclusion for you.

OSE has 10 counters.

Mind has 4 counters.
Mind also has the following must-counters, if your plan is to let land tax resolve.
2 back to basics
2 whirlpool warrior
1 trade routes
3 scroll rack
4+2+2+1+3=12 > 10.  Therefore OSE cannot keep up with the must-counter spells of Mind.

This is not including the two meddling mages, which are also very high-priority counters, since if they name mana drain, the counter-ability of both decks are on par.  If we include the meddling mages, then the number of counters to must-counters becomes 10 to 14.

At this point, many people will start to lose focus, and say things like, "Oh yeah?  But OSE also has its own must-counters, like mind twist and ancestral recall!".  My response is that for the most part, Mind has those spells as well.  In fact, many of those cards are actually better in Mind than they are in OSE or keeper.  So bringing them into the analysis favors Mind even more.

Also, you say that

Quote I DO believe that U/W/G control is viable, but not in the form you present.  

Would you care to define "Viable"?  I was thinking that having a net record of 10-1-2 in sanctioned tournaments would mean that a deck is viable. (and the single loss came from a mirror match)  But perhaps I'm wrong about that.  If that record doesn't quality a deck as being "viable", would you care to enlighten me on what exactly "viable" means?

[kirdape3]

It isn't the amount of threats.  It's the inability for you to say 'NO' as well as most other decks can.  Sure, you can try to overwhelm a counterwall in the manner that you would need in order to win.  However, you have to defend yourself as well as them... your 'pressure' really isn't threatening against a deck with Mishra's Factories, Powder Keg, The Abyss, Mind Twist, Morphling, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, etc.  You seem to try to win on sheer 'I have broken cards' factor, not 'My deck itself is broken besides my cards'.

What I'm trying to say is that your counters are often too weak against any deck with the ability to mount pressure of it's own.  At least that's what I found out during my own testing.  You can't defend yourself against threats AND present your own threats.

As for viable, I meant a deck that can place these results in a tournament where we can verify the quality (think the German tournament or Neutral Ground; although both are indicative of inbred metagames the power level is high and the quality of players moreso).  There is another deck that we ridicule for results in a bad field; check out the Juzam Control deck from Green Knight.  There were almost 50 people at that tournament, too, but a deck that looks an awful lot like OSE that made into the top 4 with Juzam Djinns instead of Morphlings.  We had a pair of similar conversations with him in the same manner of this one, and he still hasn't changed.  I would LOVE the ability to play him in reality, because I bet while he'd be a fun and engaging opponent (much as he is on this mill), I'd win.

THE SAME OFFER GOES FOR YOU.

[timw]

Kirdape :

It's interesting that you say that Mind relies on broken cards, rather than having a broken deck. I would say that Keeper or OSE are more guilty of that than Mind. Consider : Keeper isn't really about synergy. It's really just packing the most efficient counter magic and silver bullets into a deck that you can, along with tutoring. What's a combo in Keeper? Morphling plus Abyss? Mana Drain plus a spell? Really, if Mind doesn't have synergy, Keeper doesn't either.

But I sort of think that Mind has better synergy than Keeper. It has a permanent draw engine based on Tax + Rack, either of which is useful on it's own, but utterly broken when both are present. It has a mostly basic land base plus land tax. It has mostly mana efficient spells that let it run a tight mana curve. Zuran Orb, which keeper has to run, is usually a dead card against control, but it's a key card in any matchup for Mind, since it lets you sack lands to activate land tax.

Anyway, NaClhv is right in that challenges usually just lead to bluster and bad feelings. However, I'll be happy to take a mox off anyone. So I have an unlimited mox pearl here that I'll ante against anyone who wants to play a standard OSE or Keeper build, and you can find me friday nights at Games of Berkeley. This is a standing offer. Not trying to rile anyone up, just putting my cards where my mouth is. If a Mox is too much ante, I'll put up a couple dual lands if anyone prefers.

[psyduck]

Quote (kirdape3 @ Aug. 09 2002,18:24)What I'm trying to say is that your counters are often too weak against any deck with the ability to mount pressure of it's own.  At least that's what I found out during my own testing.  You can't defend yourself against threats AND present your own threats.

As for viable, I meant a deck that can place these results in a tournament where we can verify the quality (think the German tournament or Neutral Ground; although both are indicative of inbred metagames the power level is high and the quality of players moreso).  There is another deck that we ridicule for results in a bad field; check out the Juzam Control deck from Green Knight.  There were almost 50 people at that tournament, too, but a deck that looks an awful lot like OSE that made into the top 4 with Juzam Djinns instead of Morphlings.  We had a pair of similar conversations with him in the same manner of this one, and he still hasn't changed.  I would LOVE the ability to play him in reality, because I bet while he'd be a fun and engaging opponent (much as he is on this mill), I'd win.

THE SAME OFFER GOES FOR YOU.

Post the OSE/keeper, ante for mox, and play.
In nor Cal:

Games of Berkeley
2010 Shattuck Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94704
Phone: 510-540-7822


I will also be playing down in LA from time to time, just IM me.

[Zherbus]

Ok, you can stop guys. its pointless and empty.

Kirdape lives in OHIO and I seriously doubt hes going to be making a trip to California and play you.

[Fishhead]

Quote Anyway, NaClhv is right in that challenges usually just lead to bluster and bad feelings.

This I am not sure about.  

As Zherbus (obliquely) points out there are a lot of worthwhile opponents who wont be able to make it to Berkeley to play in person.  (For Zherb - I dont think that TimW was challenging Kirdape to fly out and try to win the Mox!)

I think choosing to play a few serious players is a different strategy than shotgunning challenges into the community. Admittedly, we didnt learn a whole lot from the last round of random online challenges and shouldn't bother with that again.  

But, I dont see any drawback to playing matches online against "known" players.  And I do see a drawback in appearing to duck playing these same players.

[kirdape3]

Firstoff, I don't have a Mox.  (All the test games were proxied with them).  Also, my permanent address is in Gasport, NY, about an hour NE of Buffalo.  It's INCREDIBLY expensive to fly out there, and I have college to consider.

Don't think that I'm not willing to challenge you guys.  I don't have Apprentice on this computer and it's ass anyways due to insufficient randomization.  Try me out say August 24th or so; I'll most certainly be able to play.  If you win more than half the time against OSE, I'll publicly retract everything I've said against the deck.  Without a lot of money wasted in airfare, that's the best you'd get out of any of us... a public apology.