Why is it that everyone hates Meandeck?

[CrazyCarl]

I'm just curious.  It seems that everything our team has done within the past year has been blasted and criticized(not constructively I mean).

I see no hating on Team Shortbus, Hadley, The Fringe, Team "insert city here".  So what's up?

[Kowal]

I think the number one thing people dislike is that you guys add "Meandeck" to the beginning of everything you play, even if it's only a couple cards different.  Having to see the name over and over and over and over and over could really gets on one's nerves.

But then, I myself kinda stopped caring a couple months ago, so this is all speculation.

[Triple_S]

I know most of the guys on short bus like Mean deck since you guys push us to better results and better decks.  Maybe they are upset that you don't have amazing parties like we have at the Abyss?

[Smmenen]

I think the number one thing people dislike is that you guys add "Meandeck" to the beginning of everything you play, even if it's only a couple cards different.  Having to see the name over and over and over and over and over could really gets on one's nerves.

If other people developed decks than us, you wouldn't see it over and over and over and over again.  

I think Kevin said it best.  People hate us becuase we are the Yankees.

[Machinus]

All team bias aside, Meandeck has a lot of talent. They build strong decks and they make high finishes. What other reason do you need to justify animosity than success?

[rvs]

Do you people actually care Carl? As long as you win, why bother trying to win the popularity contest? It will never happen anyway

I can imagine people reasoning that minor changes and then calling it meandeck is annoying, but personally, I don't care...

[Azhrei]

Heh, you should have seen when the Paragons first hit the scene.

People don't like it when they have their own mediocrity shoved in their faces. Meandeck is the team doing that now. Eventually it'll be someone else.

[Saucemaster]

All the "Meandeck" tag indicates is that a deck is our team's build of a deck.  It's the deck we're running.  In itself it doesn't indicate whether the change is minor or major.  It just says, "this is what the deck looked like after Meandeck finished tweaking it".  If they're bad changes, our name is stuck on it forever; if they're good, then you know where it came from.  We could just as easily go without the tag in the case of something like -1 Island, +1 Fetch.  But when the changes are substantive, I don't see why our name shouldn't be added.  Note that the number of cards changed doesn't necessarily indicate how much the deck itself has changed.  I think hi_val once pointed out that "all" Zherbus/Toad/CAB changed in 4cC was to add three Scrying and settle on Angel for the kill at a time when people were splitting between Angel and Decree.  Just a few slots, but it made a tremendous difference in the way the deck played and it drove further development of the deck once that was introduced.  It was a fully new version of the deck.

Take, for example, the Doomsday build that thorme posted.  It actually uses the same kill as ours, and it's based around Doomsday, but the Shortbus list ended up quite different than ours, which will be obvious whenever JP's article goes up.  In that case it makes alot of sense to refer to Shortbus Doomsday and Meandeck Doomsday when discussing the builds, because there are salient differences that will need to be compared and discussed.

I guess I'm curious as to which "Meandeck" tags people take issue with.  "Meandeck Oath" seems uncontroversial to me--sure other people were working on the deck, but that was undoubtedly our build, which we broke and which we introduced in a tournament.  It was developed starting from the time we first saw the spoiler until we played it at SCG2.  What constitutes "Meandeck" Oath will probably change, however, as our build reacts to the metagame.  We'll most likely keep the tag as a way to track our development of the deck.  On the other hand, I'd probably agree that if we'd taken PhantomTapeWorm's Gay/R build and subbed a Shivan Reef for a fetchland to help guard against Stifle, we'd be a) stupid, and b) wrong to call it "Meandeck Fish".  So in all seriousness, which deck tags do people dislike?

Sadly, afaik our parties are definitely inferior to Shortbus parties.  Before we went to SCG2, I don't think any of us had ever seen Steve with a gun.

[Kowal]

Love the parties.

I was thinking more about when people threw a hissy over Meandeck (workshop) Slaver when Smmenen added brainstorm a few months back.

Meandeck Oath, I think, is something extremely reasonable.  I doubt anybody else had seriously considered the creature base you guys ran, which in my opinion is the most important part of the deck.

[TracerBullet]

I think the number one thing people dislike is that you guys add "Meandeck" to the beginning of everything you play, even if it's only a couple cards different.  Having to see the name over and over and over and over and over could really gets on one's nerves.

If other people developed decks than us, you wouldn't see it over and over and over and over again.  

I think Kevin said it best.  People hate us becuase we are the Yankees.

Steve, forgive me, but it's exactly this attitude that is so immensely frustrating for many people.

For quite a while, Shorties were the better team in terms of tournement victories/representation, difference being they didn't always say "ShortBus this" or "If you read what I wrote in X article, you'd see the solution to the universe".  There is an immense ego that is presented with everything you do/say, you (Steve) being chief in that cause.


A brief example- Look at the "Articles to read before posting" thread.  Notice that only one person has posted an article they wrote.

That's not to say you're stupid, or even that those articles don't actually belong in that thread.  If somebody else had thought those articles should have been in the thread, somebody else should have posted them.  I know I certainly wouldn't be able to judge if any of my own articles (from different fields- I don't write much Magic) were ready to be in the pantheon of "must-reads".

Please, please please please, don't take this as a flame.  I have the utmost respect for you as a player, deckbuilder, and since GenCon, as a person.  I just think this is the reason that you guys find yourself on the less popular end of the Shortbus-Meandeck debate.

[CrazyCarl]

I'd like to add...

Which would you rather hear?

Eon Blue Apocolypse

A Beautiful Mind

Hulk Smash

Keeper

Old School Expulsion(Talk about an "in" joke...)

Stacker

Real Dark Keeper

Trinity

Xerox

Or a name that actually relates to what the deck does(like Meandeck Oath) with the team that developed the list they used attatched to it?

I know I don't miss the days of Keeper

[Windfall]

This seems like a decent place to post some thoughts that have been in my mind as of late.

I have always played Magic alone.  I have never had a team, never been invited to join any teams, and probably never will be invited to join any major teams.  And I guess I'm okay with that.

There are two groups of people here that play Magic.  There are those like Meandeck that somehow have tons of money and time and can just play Magic all day and sit around reading spoiler lists to gather amazing tech, etc.  And then there are those of us who have real lives and have to deal with bullshit every day.  Those of us who wait on tables, sell furniture, answer phones, drive trucks, whatever.  Then there's also school to take into consideration.  On top of that there are girls.  Honestly, I have no idea how Meandeck has the time and energy to test as much as they do; they like Magic more than others I guess.

The point is, that when a team tests all day every day, they will undoubtebly be good at the game.  Being good and knowning you're good is fine with me, but it does get annoying when those that are good consistantly post about how they're the only ones making decks, the only ones winning, and the only one's doing anything for this game at all.  You don't see me posting about how I'm amazing because I won with Control Slaver using ridiculous cards.  Rather, I just keep the satisfaction to myself and ignore everyone that says "oh, you were just lucky."

So, to Meandeck members that think everyone hates them - I think you guys are a lot of fun to hang out with and I would love to see more of you, but I have a real life and I have my own problems.  I don't waste time or energy getting upset at "Meandeck (insert deck name here)" titles.  I couldn't care less.  If I were part of your team, I'd happily join you in deck discussion, etc.  The same goes for any team.  I guess Tracer Bullet said it best above.  Nobody doubts you're good, but you don't have to keep throwing it in everyone's faces.  Just take your wins, enjoy them, and shut up.  You know inside it's the product of hard work and you deserve it.

     ~Mark B.

[Matt]

Because you guys don't have tact or grace. You fight for every scrap of credit you can possibly accrue, even when you have the least need to do so.

You're not so much the Yankees as robber barons - JP Morgan, Smmemen Rockefeller.

You don't celebrate, you flaunt. And you don't seem to understand the difference.


Not all of you do this (your team's so big there's probably not ANYTHING you could ALL be said to do), but the ones who aren't guilty of this are the quietest ones.

[Jebus]

Bah, I love all you guys.

If you're ever feeling down, just remember that Jebus loves you.

[Dr. Sylvan]

Wait a minute, there are people that don't like Meandeck? I, in all seriousness, thought that was mostly a running joke, with a lot of the fun being poked at Steve M. because he is just SO vocal that you can't help but disagree sometimes (witness my own big squabble over post-tournament decklist secrecy) or find some part of the aggrandizement campaign overblown. I am surprised to discover that my "running joke" assumption is not accurate. Perhaps I am less filled with Magic-related angst than the average forum member.

I guess people who invest a lot of time into Type One and feel underrecognized for it (I think this describes many or most non-Short Bus teams) might be a little miffed at the overwhelming attention our little corner of the internet gives to one single team. (This, of course, being because a majority of all Type One article content comes from that team.) But other than that, what's the big deal? Meandeckers, like most other TMDers, are good people. <3, don't h8!

[Azhrei]

I'd like to add...

Which would you rather hear?

Eon Blue Apocolypse

A Beautiful Mind

Hulk Smash

Keeper

Old School Expulsion(Talk about an "in" joke...)

Stacker

Real Dark Keeper

Trinity

Xerox

Or a name that actually relates to what the deck does(like Meandeck Oath) with the team that developed the list they used attatched to it?

I know I don't miss the days of Keeper

And yet, people remember Hulk, Keeper, OSE, BBS, Stacker 2, and even A Beautiful Mind years later. It's all about style.

[jpmeyer]

This is probably because I'm used to netdecking because of playing Standard/Block, but I tend not to connect deck names in "Team/individual Deck" format as being created by that team/person.  I just see it as that person/team's version.

[Vegeta2711]

People hate Meandeck, because somehow you've managed to make Azhrei's ego look rather small by comparision to a select few of you. Which is just astounding.

[Machinus]

JP:

That kind of thinking is expected, really. Orchard + Oath is a considerably obvious combination. Welder + TfK isn't very hard to figure out either. The cards that define decks are the less general choices. Obvious ones would be Oath kill conditions, or choosing between Titan or Slaver. Less obvious ones are things like duress in hulk, blood moon in slaver, or whatever selections that a particular "version" of a deck makes, AND the reasons behind those choices. If your deck will win more tournaments in your area if you add misdirections or something, and someone else has already done that, you aren't 'copying' their version of the deck. In a sense, it is stupid to netdeck because someone else isn't going to be able to tell what is a good deck in your environment better than you can. But the "version" system is really the best way to go about describing decks, since when confronted with ridiculously good cards like Welder, there IS more than one successful archetype.

[Hi-Val]

It's frustrating when you put four weeks of work into a deck, tune it, do extremely well with it in a tournament and then have people tell you that it is inferior or unoriginal. It seems rude because you're offering people your list, how you came up with it, the matchups, the playstyle, and then they throw it back at you. I think it's trendy to hate on Meandeck right now because we just came off a major tournament victory and we have all the writers and some of the most vocal posters in T1 on our team. When you try to help out the community by writing articles and explaining what you did and it gets disrespected, of course it's natural (not right, but natural) to get an attitude, for a variety of reasons.

The critical thing is that ANYONE can have our success. Don't give me a bullshit line about how we have all the time in the world to look at spoilers and we don't have to worry about jobs or girls. That's an ignorant and stupid argument and has no basis on reality. Steve is in LAW SCHOOL and still manages to piss off over 100 people a week and make up new decks. Kevin is married and has an intensive job but is still able to play cards. Jacob's beard alone requires 40 hours of maintenence a week. Yet we all manage to do this and you can too. Instead of sitting around and waiting for the Waaaaambulance to come and saying that you have other issues isntead of magic, you can budget time and get better at the game. If you seriously can't devote time to innovating in T1, don't bitch when other people do it for you. But I want to stress that anyone can do what we do.

If someone creates a deck (and yes, even a 2-card difference can change a deck drastically) and does well with it, they can call it whatever the damn they want, hopefully something with clarity that describes what kind of deck it is. I'd love to hear some of your ideas for alternate names for our Oath build that are shorter than "Akroma and Spirit of the Night Oath" that accurately describes what it does or instead instantly lets you know what the poster is talking about.

Finally, is it meandeck that you don't like or certain members of it? Do you dislike Ted Dickinson (or know who he is?) or Jason Stinnett, The Mountain Man? Do you not like me? Or do you dislike people on the team and can conveniently channel this in a more publicly acceptable form by attacking an artificial entity and not a person?

[kirdape3]

You know, instead of wasting time bitching, you could do what we do, which is revel in our infinite superiority over the rest of time and space.

Back to the matter at hand.

Dooge is right.  It's not terribly hard to get good at building decks - which is right now the easiest way to win tournaments.  Some teams are generally respectable about it, some teams are downright terrible at it (although the Cerebral Assassin deck is pretty good, that's like the first time I've seen anything even remotely effective come out of Hadley), and most people whine about it.  That's the only really effective edge that Meandeck has over the rest of the field right now - I personally am not that strong of a player and I've seen some of the silliest mistakes in the history of mankind from my teammates.

What Meandeck has that the rest of the format does not have is no preconceived notions about what is good and what isn't good.  Sure, we make judgment calls (no decks with 'Mountain, Chain Lightning the head, go' has ever penetrated the larger segment that isn't Carl's playtesting group), but if there's something sufficiently powerful that's circulating around (or that we think up) we WILL test it as sufficiently as our real lives entail.

Short version:  Meandeck is good because we use our knowledge of the format and it's subtleties to select viable strategies to attack the format, which we then refine into decks.  EVERYONE CAN DO THIS.  We're just wondering how long it'll take someone else to do it besides the good men of Shortbus.

[Eastman]

Because when Carl asks a simple question like 'why does the community dislike meandeck', meandeckers think its an invitation to blah blah blah about how they're great (see above)



Because they're the only guys who are in no position to answer carl's question, but they're still chiming in with self-serving responses.

[Vegeta2711]

EDIT: Hi-Val deleted his post. So this one makes no sense anymore. Just ignore it and listen to the 'Wahhhhh, pity me' below.

[Hi-Val]

You know, I'm not really fond of Hi-Val to tell you the truth. He hasn't T8ed in what seems like years and he thinks he's a lot funnier than he really is. His only redeemable attribute is drawing on cards, but I think he tries to push that so people look past his bad playskill. But as a Magic player, he's pretty worthless and he should probably stick to casual formats like 5-color. I definitely wonder why a team like Meandeck would recruit and keep him. Are his card modifications really THAT good? I don't think so.

EDIT: Have you seen how he dresses? Damn poser. I really don't like him. It hurts me to say that, but it's true. AND he thinks that AIDS is God's curse on Africa.

[Saucemaster]

Well, whatever you think of that Hi-Val--and I don't think much--he's a damn saint compared to that Saucemaster.  He comes out of obscurity just to attack PhantomTapeWorm, "trashtalks" like some pussy liberal-arts intellectual, gets owned, then crawls back into his hole until he lucksacks his way into the top 8 at SCG II.  WHERE, by the way, his obvious metrosexuality was on full display.  "Oooh look at me, I look like I just got made over on Queer Eye."  Now he's all full of himself and posting in random threads like anyone WANTED to hear what he had to say in the first place.  And now he probably thinks his overdeveloped sense of irony makes him funny, or cool, when really he's just covering for the fact that he can't take the heat.  What a giant douche.

Plus, I saw him make a Jew eat a hot dog.  And he calls all Vietnamese men "Charlie".

[Smmenen]

You two ain't got shit on me.  

I'm such an asshole I've been called a "walking debate."  I insult everyone who dares question my authority and my clearly superior knowledge of Type One.  

Smmenen writes on a personal website that is full of pussy liberal bullshit - he is at the least, borderline socialist.    

Smmenen is such a rude mother fucker.  He doesn't even have the tact to keep his trap shut when he's won a debate.   Every win and his ego balloons.  Not to mention that he playtests every waking moment of his life becuase he lives off the interest of his trust fund.

Outside of magic, he's a real fucking elitist scum.  If a homeless person asks for change, he asks for a quarter for a pop.   One time, a homeless person was sleeping in the OSU Student Union and he told the guy to go home and take a bath becuase he smelled like dog piss.  

I also saw Smmenen spit on an arab.  

What a fucking asshole.

[Jacob Orlove]

Pfft. That's nothing compared to Jacob Orlove. He must spend every minute of his life in front of a computer; he's clearly a total loser with no life. And don't get me started on the whole moderator power trip he's constantly on. He's clearly "compensating" for something. It's even worse in IRC. Oh, and he totally stabbed Shortbus in the back and gave their tech to Meandeck.

Jacob is so awful, he once almost lost to a frenchie. But then his opponent scooped,  which apparently happens all the time--he clearly can't win a tournament that isn't totally rigged. It's people like him who give type one a bad name!

[Gandalf_The_White_1]

I think it's because your name says you're mean .

Seriously, however, the point about being resented for being sucessful makes sense.  As for the name thing, however, I think that's just plain stupid.  Who cares if X version of [insert random deck] is labeled Meandeck[insert random deck].  If people hate you for this reason then, at the risk of flaming, I must say that they are either really touchy, insane, or lacking in intelligence.

I personally see no good reason to have anything against you guys.  You're all great posters on this site and make important contributions to the evolution of our format.

Edit: Wow 2 more while I posted this.  If this shit continues someone should move the thread to humour .

[TracerBullet]

I must say this is pretty spectacular.  This has to be the only time in the history of TMD that somebody has said "Please, tell me what's wrong with me" and then responded to their own question with "There's nothing wrong with me!"


I hope it's just that Carl didn't/doesn't understand why and was looking for a real answer to a real question.  That's a respectable endevour.  If this was started with any other motive, it'd cause me to lose a great deal of respect for all involved.


edit- wow, that thread took a huge turn of tone while I was reading something while writing this.  Stupid people who post things while I'm not looking!

[Phantom Tape Worm]

He comes out of obscurity just to attack PhantomTapeWorm, "trashtalks" like some pussy liberal-arts intellectual, gets owned, then crawls back into his hole until he lucksacks his way into the top 8 at SCG II.  WHERE, by the way, his obvious metrosexuality was on full display.  "Oooh look at me, I look like I just got made over on Queer Eye."  

For those of you who were not there I can attest that Saucemaster is perhaps the most stylin magic player I have ever seen.

Jeans from express with just a bit of flare at the bottoms; ultra hip square toed shoes and button down striped shirt (the kind you wear untucked) from banana republic; a very hot black long coat that came down to the knees; and a pair of opaque black shades to just set the whole thing off.

When I saw him walk in I was convinced that the man had decided to scrap the event and go out clubbing instead.  


I'm totally jealous, he's got more fashion sense than I do.  That's just another one of the many reasons to hate meandeck.