Post game reports for this tournament have been out for some time, so I'm sure those of you who have read the standings know that Jund decks rocked the house, and now it's the deck that everyone is trying to beat. As such I won't blather on about that, but instead talk about some of the things we learned as a group.
Personally I learned two things from this tournament, one from direct experience and one from talking to players.
The first is that White Weenie is not very good anymore. For those of you who don't know Magic, White Weenie is what I would describe as a sub-archetype. As I detailed two posts ago, there are the grand archetypes of aggro, combo, control, and mid-range. Beneath those are these sub-archetypes, basically much more specific ways to construct your deck.
White Weenie decks are a type of aggro deck known for swarming the opposition and making its creatures bigger through the use of (well, since it's still baseball season) steroid-like-spells known as “pumps”. While the individual creatures are not very scary, when a lot of them start running around, things get wild.
In the previous meta-game White Weenie decks were awesome (hell, I played one for two years), and everyone who enjoys them was very excited by the advent of Soldiers becoming a prevalent creature type in the newest sets. Unfortunately they are just not good enough to stand up to Jund.
The second lesson I learned, from talking to several players at the event, is that I definitely do not want to play Jund. Yes, it is the best deck in format, but the mirror match (when two players with the same deck face each other) sounds like a clash of idiot-savants, not any type of skill or mental struggle. The game basically comes down to who can play better spells either first or more often. As far as I'm concerned, that's a whole lot of yawn.
Our team also learned something useful for all of you fans of the new Vampire deck.
Teammate Raja was playing a match with his build of Bella-Swan-Beatdown and had a copy of Vampire Nocturnus on the board (or the battlefield as they call it now). When the card is in play, you reveal the top card of your library (deck) and depending on what it is, your creatures get bonuses.
Now playing with the top card of your library revealed is very unusual, and it led Raja to make an unusual mistake. Instead of drawing the flipped over card and flipping over the next card in his library, he drew two cards. In major tournaments, this is an immediate game loss. Raja was so flabbergasted by his mistake, that he couldn't gather himself in time to argue with the judge about why he had drawn the two cards.
So, all of you Twilight lovers out there, remember that when you have a Nocturnus in play. You'll want to draw two cards because it's weird to have the top card of your deck flipped up...but don't do it.
And the last lesson our team learned is really more for all of you new players out there. I think everyone has this misconception that high level tournaments are populated with only good players running only the best decks. Certainly that is true of events that are so high you have to qualify for them or be invited (like a Pro Tour or Worlds), but most other events allow any player to compete. And, as Kyle learned for the first time, bad players will bring bad decks, and somehow they will still beat you.
Luck and chance are big factors in Magic, so even if you are a much better player with a much better deck, you can easily lose to a total newb who has no idea what he's doing. A singular match or even event is not necessarily a good indication of how good a player is or how good a deck is. It's over the course of many events that it is revealed how good a player really is.
Anyway, with all of these lessons under our collective belt (new for some, old for others), we return to New York City where we will be continuing to compete in local events and hone our skills for whatever the next big tournament is.
Upcoming: New York, the Local Scene
Check us out at: http://sites.google.com/site/teamdamageonthestack
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
The Philly 5K
Author's Note:I realize that this tournament has already taken place, but to maintain the tone of the blog and for the sake of storytelling, I have decided to keep it in present tense. Just go with me.
We arrive in Philadelphia at around 9am only a few blocks from the Pennsylvania Convention Center where the tournament is being held, and after getting some directions from the locals, make our way quickly towards it. The sun has risen, and it looks to be a pretty gray day, which is just as well since we will be spending almost all of it indoors. All of us are tired after having not slept the night before, though some show it more than others. Most of us haven't sufficiently tested our decks either, but we're all excited and feel that we have a shot of at least breaking into the Top 16, which would net us some prize money.
For those of you who have never been there, the Pennsylvania Convention Center is massive, a departure from the BO filled basements I'm used to inhabiting. The Star City Games event has its own wing, and there is actually a video game tournament going on elsewhere at the same time. So much nerd.
At around 10am (maybe closer to 10:30) we are seated so that the judges can collect our deck lists. These lists will be used later to make sure that all of the players have the correct number of cards in their decks (60 minimum), don't have more than four copies of any given card (other than basic lands), and aren't using cards that are not allowed in the Standard format. You would be surprised at how many times these rules end up being violated.
After handing in the deck lists we are reseated to be paired with our first round opponents. This basically involves everyone trying to crowd around lists posted on bulletin boards at the front of the room where the players names are listed next to their assigned table number. Once we're all seated, it's time to start!By the end of the first round, of the seven players who make up our team (either officially or honorarily) four are 1-0 and three are 0-1, which isn't a terrible start. But after the fourth round things have started to take a turn for the worst. Only one of our players has a winning record at 3-1, two are at 2-2 with only an outside shot at getting into the Top 16 if they can win the rest of their matches, and four players who have dropped from the tournament altogether.
I ended up going 1-3 and dropping after the fourth round, not wanting to play out the remaining five rounds with a deck that I have come to feel is simply inferior. There are a bunch of side events going on, but I don't enter any of them right away because the other guys want to see how well they do first. I have assurances from Kyle (who is 2-2) that if he loses in this round he will drop and draft with me. But at the end of the fourth round he and Kanvaly are both 3-2, and Conta is 4-1.
I enter a side draft on my own to kill time while those three play out their final four rounds. Our other teammates, Matt, Raja, and Joe Shi, all decide to head back to New York.
After all nine rounds are played out, Kanvaly and Kyle end up going 6-3 (not at all a bad showing, since this was Kyle's first major event and Kanvaly's second), and Conta ends up 4-5. My drafting goes about as well as my Standard play did, and I end up being eliminated in the first round. Sad-cat iz sad.
Since the main event is over, and all of the side events cease with the onset of the Top 8 final rounds, we decide to go grab some dinner. We find a nice Philly Cheesesteak place and are able to enjoy a little bit of the city's culture before returning to the Chinatown Bus Terminal next to the Convention Center.
The terminal is just about one of the sketchiest places I've ever seen. The bathrooms are trashed with graffiti covering every inch of the walls; the main room is a painful white; and there are blue Christmas lights over the windows that flash continuously in a seizure inducing manner. The bus wasn't much better, being more cramped than the megabus we took down to Philly, and squeaking annoyingly, which prevent at least Kyle from sleeping.
We get back to the city exhausted and somewhat let down from a long day without any tangible reward. But more often than not, that's how Magic goes. What separates us from many other scrubs, is that in the next couple of days we will be studying the lists that did make the Top 16 and proxying copies of them to test against, getting ready for the next major event, whenever that may be.
Upcoming: The Philly 5K Post-Game
Check us out at: http://sites.google.com/site/teamdamageonthestack
Thursday, October 15, 2009
A Brief Lesson in Terminology
Okay yeah, so I lied. I decided to forgo writing about the Philadelphia 5K immediately. My reasoning (and this will be the closest I get to making a mission statement) is that I would like people outside of the Magic community, as well as those who are familiar and initimate with its workings, to read these articles. Call me hopeful. Call me naïve. Call me Ishmael. But it's the direction I'm choosing to take with this, so all of you who are well versed in the terms of the game, please just bare with me a bit.
Now our lesson of the day for you Magic newbies out there: basic deck archetypes. A minimal understanding of these concepts will go a long way when I describe (in the next post) what sort of decks our team were playing at the tournament. Every player will agree that there are at least three major deck types: aggro, combo, and control.
“Aggro” or “aggressive” decks are designed to beat an opponent by dealing him lethal damage very quickly (many can accomplish this in about four-turns of play if left unchecked). Aggro decks (supposedly) have a favorable match up against control decks but fold to combo.
“Combo” decks try to beat the opponent with a combination of two or more cards and an infinite number of style points for pulling it off. If a combo decks plays all of the cards it needs for its winning combination (“goes off” in Magic parlance), aggro will lose because it has no way to stop it. Control decks on the other hand are designed for just this occasion.
“Control” decks use counter-magic, which is just what is sounds like, and other controlling elements to make sure that they are the ones wearing the pants throughout the course of the game. I personally believe that a good control build will always be the best deck in format. Control decks have answers to both combo and aggro decks and generally run enough “draw card” spells to get to them. The reason aggo decks are said to have a good match up against them is that control decks generally don't do anything until turn four. As such, aggro decks can sometimes out race them, but if the control deck stabilizes it's all over.
Though all players will agree on these three archetypes, there is a fourth called “mid-range” that sometimes gets mentioned. Mid-range decks tend to get lumped together with aggro because the game-plan is pretty much the same. The main difference is that mid-range is focused on playing lumbering obesities that punch you really hard, while aggro is more focused on speed, dexterity, and getting things over and done with quickly before the husband comes home. I consider mid-range a separate archetype from aggro because it plays very differently and tends to have great match ups against aggro decks while having a much harder time with control.
How your aggro, control, or combo deck works will depend on what colors you as a deck builder choose to play. I'm not going to delve into the color wheel right now because that's a topic many people have gone over and one that takes a lot of time to talk about.
Finally, the last thing I wanted to talk about was the term “meta-game”. Magic isn't like poker in that the cards players have available to them constantly change (about four times a year now). This means that the decks players can build change as well. A good constructed player will be aware of the meta, knowing what decks his opponents are likely to play and having answers to all of them, either in the main deck or the sideboard (a set of exactly 15 cards that can be swapped in to enhance the deck). The choices players make in deck building, from what base archetype they want to use to which individual cards they decide to play, are based on the meta-game.
One of the reasons the Philly 5K is such a big event (other than it's $2000 first place prize) is that it's the first major tournament since a new set of cards came in, which means there aren't any deck lists anywhere, i.e. there is no meta-game. The decks we run at this event could shape the future meta if we do well, but we are also entering the tournament blind.
Upcoming: The Philly 5K (for real this time)
Check us out at: http://sites.google.com/site/teamdamageonthestack/
Now our lesson of the day for you Magic newbies out there: basic deck archetypes. A minimal understanding of these concepts will go a long way when I describe (in the next post) what sort of decks our team were playing at the tournament. Every player will agree that there are at least three major deck types: aggro, combo, and control.
“Aggro” or “aggressive” decks are designed to beat an opponent by dealing him lethal damage very quickly (many can accomplish this in about four-turns of play if left unchecked). Aggro decks (supposedly) have a favorable match up against control decks but fold to combo.
“Combo” decks try to beat the opponent with a combination of two or more cards and an infinite number of style points for pulling it off. If a combo decks plays all of the cards it needs for its winning combination (“goes off” in Magic parlance), aggro will lose because it has no way to stop it. Control decks on the other hand are designed for just this occasion.
“Control” decks use counter-magic, which is just what is sounds like, and other controlling elements to make sure that they are the ones wearing the pants throughout the course of the game. I personally believe that a good control build will always be the best deck in format. Control decks have answers to both combo and aggro decks and generally run enough “draw card” spells to get to them. The reason aggo decks are said to have a good match up against them is that control decks generally don't do anything until turn four. As such, aggro decks can sometimes out race them, but if the control deck stabilizes it's all over.
Though all players will agree on these three archetypes, there is a fourth called “mid-range” that sometimes gets mentioned. Mid-range decks tend to get lumped together with aggro because the game-plan is pretty much the same. The main difference is that mid-range is focused on playing lumbering obesities that punch you really hard, while aggro is more focused on speed, dexterity, and getting things over and done with quickly before the husband comes home. I consider mid-range a separate archetype from aggro because it plays very differently and tends to have great match ups against aggro decks while having a much harder time with control.
How your aggro, control, or combo deck works will depend on what colors you as a deck builder choose to play. I'm not going to delve into the color wheel right now because that's a topic many people have gone over and one that takes a lot of time to talk about.
Finally, the last thing I wanted to talk about was the term “meta-game”. Magic isn't like poker in that the cards players have available to them constantly change (about four times a year now). This means that the decks players can build change as well. A good constructed player will be aware of the meta, knowing what decks his opponents are likely to play and having answers to all of them, either in the main deck or the sideboard (a set of exactly 15 cards that can be swapped in to enhance the deck). The choices players make in deck building, from what base archetype they want to use to which individual cards they decide to play, are based on the meta-game.
One of the reasons the Philly 5K is such a big event (other than it's $2000 first place prize) is that it's the first major tournament since a new set of cards came in, which means there aren't any deck lists anywhere, i.e. there is no meta-game. The decks we run at this event could shape the future meta if we do well, but we are also entering the tournament blind.
Upcoming: The Philly 5K (for real this time)
Check us out at: http://sites.google.com/site/teamdamageonthestack/
Monday, October 12, 2009
We Are Team D.O.T.S.
The city is quiet, its streets nearly empty, as I glide through it silently in the back seat of a cab. Winter is just around the corner, and so at 6am the sun still hasn't risen. I haven't been up this early for as long as I can remember, and if I was it was probably because I had just finished the night, not begun the day. Yet here I am, 6am on a Saturday, heading downtown to Penn Station to catch a 6:50 bus to Philadelphia. The occasion? Star City Games' 5K, the first major Standard event after the Zendikar rotation. For those of you not in the know, that would be a Magic tournament. I can hear the snickers already...
Whenever I tell people that Magic is the only thing that has gotten me up prior to 11am on a weekend for the last three years, the typical reaction is a laugh full of pity or a derisive chuckle followed by a catch-all “wow” or “you're such a nerd” or “you're ridiculous” or even all three. I don't really expect people to understand, which is more often why I don't talk about my hobby than shame or embarrassment, and to be honest I'm not entirely sure that I fully understand why I play the game. It's an enormous drain on time, money, energy, mental stability, social standing, and for what? It's not like anyone can make a living off playing Magic, or become famous through it, or bedazzle women with knowledge of its mechanics. It's not one of those hobbies that can eventually pay dividends for you like eating hotdogs or wrestling alligators.
So when people ask me how I can put up with waking up at the ass-crack of dawn to be voluntarily stuck in a room populated mostly by dudes for a 10 hour tournament that doesn't have any scheduled breaks only to scrub out with some unlucky draws against a bad player running a janky deck after having play-tested and perfected my build for weeks, I tell them the only thing I can. I love the game.
And I am not the only one.
Team Damage On The Stack (a.k.a. Team D.O.T.S.) is a group of players from New York City looking to take the Magic scene by storm. We all have different skills, experiences, and goals in regards to Magic. Some of us have been playing competitively for years and have already ranked in major events (including yours truly), while others have just started down that road. But one thing that we most definitely share is our love for the game.
It is this love that has us congregated under the looming silhouette of Madison Square Garden in the pre-dawn darkness waiting for our bus to whisk us away to the magical ghetto-land of Philadelphia with its promises of no-fame, no-glory, little-money, and several hours of grinding play which will most certainly leave us mentally drained and emotionally strained. The funny thing is, we're all actually looking forward to it.
Upcoming: The Philly 5K
Whenever I tell people that Magic is the only thing that has gotten me up prior to 11am on a weekend for the last three years, the typical reaction is a laugh full of pity or a derisive chuckle followed by a catch-all “wow” or “you're such a nerd” or “you're ridiculous” or even all three. I don't really expect people to understand, which is more often why I don't talk about my hobby than shame or embarrassment, and to be honest I'm not entirely sure that I fully understand why I play the game. It's an enormous drain on time, money, energy, mental stability, social standing, and for what? It's not like anyone can make a living off playing Magic, or become famous through it, or bedazzle women with knowledge of its mechanics. It's not one of those hobbies that can eventually pay dividends for you like eating hotdogs or wrestling alligators.
So when people ask me how I can put up with waking up at the ass-crack of dawn to be voluntarily stuck in a room populated mostly by dudes for a 10 hour tournament that doesn't have any scheduled breaks only to scrub out with some unlucky draws against a bad player running a janky deck after having play-tested and perfected my build for weeks, I tell them the only thing I can. I love the game.
And I am not the only one.
Team Damage On The Stack (a.k.a. Team D.O.T.S.) is a group of players from New York City looking to take the Magic scene by storm. We all have different skills, experiences, and goals in regards to Magic. Some of us have been playing competitively for years and have already ranked in major events (including yours truly), while others have just started down that road. But one thing that we most definitely share is our love for the game.
It is this love that has us congregated under the looming silhouette of Madison Square Garden in the pre-dawn darkness waiting for our bus to whisk us away to the magical ghetto-land of Philadelphia with its promises of no-fame, no-glory, little-money, and several hours of grinding play which will most certainly leave us mentally drained and emotionally strained. The funny thing is, we're all actually looking forward to it.
Upcoming: The Philly 5K
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