How do you test?

[sean1i0]

Hi, my name is Sean.  It's been a long time since I've posted on TMD.  As I've said in my other two posts that I've made since I've started writing here again I am just getting back in Vintage after a hiatus stretching back to when Gush, Merchant Scroll, Flash, Braintstorm, and Ponder were restricted.  I have been using these forums to re-familiarize myself with the format and to give myself a launching pad for what to put together and test.  That is where this post comes in to play.  In the time that I've been away (and indeed one of the factors that drove me to step away from the format for a while) the group of people with whom I used to test out Vintage have either moved away, moved away from Vintage (or Magic all together), or are just too busy with life in general to care about keeping up their skills as players.  I have one or two people in the area who are good players and who will test Vintage.  Besides that I am out of luck it seems.  There are nearly no tournaments in the area (I live in Southern Louisiana about a half hour north of New Orleans and my friend and I have just decided that we will have to travel to some tournaments in the next year.) and so even just practice against unknown opponents is very limited.  I am wondering how other people in the community solve similar issues.  Is MWS or Apprentice the best avenue?  I know that there are a *lot* of terrible players on there and am concerned with playing against people who will make me a better magic player, not a worse one.  Still maybe that is the thing to do.  Does anyone have any comments or suggestions?  Thanks!

[Mr. Fantastic]

As far as I know, no one really uses Apprentice anymore (not that I'm putting Apprentice down; in fact I loved the simplicity of that application, it's just that MWS does so much more).

I guess your best bet would be to find games on MWS and just take them with a grain of salt if your opponents are inexperienced/not very good.  Whenever I find someone who knows what they are doing I ask them for their IM information and add them to my friends list.  You should probably do the same. 

[honestabe]

If your looking for serious testing, MWS is not the place, as you're going to find a LOT of shit there.  For some reason legacy and "casual" players seem to LOVE joining games that say "Vintage Tier 1"  If you're looking to have fun or kill time, play via MWS, if you're looking for legit testing, make sure you arrange a MWS game with someone you KNOW doens't suck.

[sean1i0]

Well, that makes a lot of sense!  Thanks for the replies so far, guys.  I guess I'll have to upload the newest version of MWS then, since that seems to be the program of choice now.

[Modred]

mws

[emidln]

MWS with people I trust. Randoms on mws have a definitely random quality.