When I was growing up, the Internet wasn't such a huge thing, or at least not as dominating of life and the mainstream as it has become. AOL was at its prime during middle school, so chatting over that was big, but school still didn't allow you to use Internet sources for papers or research. I actually wasn't allowed to do that until late in high school and in college. These days kids are much more net literate and savvy as they are indoctrinated into the idea and the culture of it much earlier in life.
So what does this have to do with Magic? Well, like most things, Magic has been greatly affected by the rise of the Internet. The ability to have information about all of the latest deck lists, competitive results, and news just a click away has changed a lot of things. And I won't even go into Magic Online.
A couple of years ago I was having a conversation with my friends Dre and Kanvaly. Dre and I originally started playing Magic in the early days around the release of sets like Fallen Empires or Ice Age. Dre eventually quit (more or less), and I played off-and-on a lot until recently when I've become much more serious about the whole thing. Kanvaly didn't really start playing until I restarted for the last time in college, when I endeavored to get my friends to play as well.
Dre and I were reminiscing about how things used to be, how every deck we made was organic and developed from our own concepts, or concepts we had seen other players use. None of it was at all influenced by looking up deck lists on the Internet (or “net-decking” as Magic players term it). At the time we spoke of net-decking with a certain amount of disdain as well, like it was almost cheating in terms of deck construction.
Kanvaly didn't understand why we looked down on it so much. He saw the whole thing in terms of a meta-game, which is actually probably an easier way to look at this. In our days of yore, the meta-game was who you knew. So your deck didn't have to be any better than those of the people you played against on a regular basis (like your classmates in the case of Dre and I). Nowadays, with deck lists easily available on the Internet, the meta-game is essentially the entire world.
So how does this tie into casual Magic? Well, I would say that net-decking is not an appropriate way to attempt to build a casual deck for anybody (not just competitive players).
I net-deck all the time when it comes to competitive Magic. I would actually not feel comfortable playing a deck in a tournament that did not already have at least one Top 8 placement in a major event. I'm not an innovator. I know this about myself. And when it comes to competition, all I am trying to be is the best pilot in the room, not the most creative one.
But casual Magic is all about innovation. It's about looking at the cards you have (or could easily acquire I suppose) and seeing what sort of crazy deck you can make from them. Like I said in my previous post, the goal for a casual deck should be to do something fun, funky, and fresh, not to deliver a beatdown concocted by another player.
Net-decking takes away innovation, and while it's great to be able to share ideas with the community at large and to debate the theories of Magic and deck construction, you tend to speed up the learning curve. Taking ideas from players takes away the fun exploratory element of Magic, the part where you learn for yourself how good or bad a card is. It also leads to deck optimization, which, like I said last time, defeats the point of casual (in my opinion).
So, my message to you, if you want to make a fun casual deck, stay away from the Internet. Just make something with the cards you have, and see where you can take it. Don't go looking for how someone else did it, or how they made it better. Figure it out for yourself, and just have fun messing around with it.
Upcoming: Casual Magic, Part 4: The Final Installment...Duhn duhn duuuuhhhhnnnnn!
Check us out at: sites.google.com/site/teamdamageonthestack
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Casual Magic, Part 2: Deck Construction
My friend and co-author Conta recently unveiled an amazing casual deck that I think fully captures the idea of what “casual” should be. It's called “The Harry Potter Deck”, and its card choices are based thematically around Voldemort and his army of Death Eaters. Endrek Sahr represents the dark lord himself, while Orzhov Guildmages represent the Death Eaters, Hypnotic Specters represent the Dementors, a series of artifacts represent the Horcruxes, and so on. Even if you don't play Magic or know what each of these cards is, I think you can appreciate that all of the card choices correspond to something from the popular wizard novels.
In my opinion, Conta's approach to deck construction with this deck is what casual is all about. Putting a limiting factor on what cards you are able to use is a good way to keep the deck's power-level low, and using a theme is one of the better ways to do this. It's hard to do this by saying you won't use certain “powerful cards” because that is really too vague. If instead you try to stick hard and fast to some sort of thematic rule, you'll end up having to play cards that aren't very good but likely have a deck that will be a lot of fun (which I think is the whole point of casual play).
Our friend and teammate Kanvaly took one look through “The Harry Potter Deck” and started to question the card choices. Why don't you run Card X instead of Card Y? It's strictly better. Basically, he was unimpressed with the power-level and wanted the deck to have better cards regardless of what this meant to the integrity of the theme (though to be fair, he has never read Harry Potter).
This is where I think casual starts to go wrong. If you begin to optimize a deck, the power-level begins to rise, and this is where the imbalances start to set in. The deck enters this area of limbo where it's more of a jank competitive deck and not really a casual deck.
Now, some of you might be asking, why should I have to limit my casual deck's power? Well personally I don't think it's a whole lot of fun to play against highly tuned decks when I'm trying to play a game for fun. I'd rather see my opponent play a bunch of bad cards, not because I want to beat him (since I'll be doing the exact same thing) but because we'll both have a good laugh about seeing them being played and trying to make our game-plans work by using them.
However, I should also note that trying to limit your deck's power-level is really a practice only competitive players would need to think about. If you don't know that much about the game, you're probably already making bad decks because you don't know any better or don't have enough cards to do any better. I know when I was starting out I sure didn't.
Anyway, the bottom line is that in my humble opinion, if you want to play casual Magic, make a deck that's fun for everyone. Make a deck that wins off some improbably hard combo to pull off, or uses only a really bad creature type for its critters, or just does stupid things that don't really win the game but are funny. If everyone can have a good laugh watching you play the deck, then I think you've created a casual gem.
Upcoming: Casual Magic, Part 3: The Internet Invasion
Check us out at: sites.google.com/site/teamdamageonthestack
In my opinion, Conta's approach to deck construction with this deck is what casual is all about. Putting a limiting factor on what cards you are able to use is a good way to keep the deck's power-level low, and using a theme is one of the better ways to do this. It's hard to do this by saying you won't use certain “powerful cards” because that is really too vague. If instead you try to stick hard and fast to some sort of thematic rule, you'll end up having to play cards that aren't very good but likely have a deck that will be a lot of fun (which I think is the whole point of casual play).
Our friend and teammate Kanvaly took one look through “The Harry Potter Deck” and started to question the card choices. Why don't you run Card X instead of Card Y? It's strictly better. Basically, he was unimpressed with the power-level and wanted the deck to have better cards regardless of what this meant to the integrity of the theme (though to be fair, he has never read Harry Potter).
This is where I think casual starts to go wrong. If you begin to optimize a deck, the power-level begins to rise, and this is where the imbalances start to set in. The deck enters this area of limbo where it's more of a jank competitive deck and not really a casual deck.
Now, some of you might be asking, why should I have to limit my casual deck's power? Well personally I don't think it's a whole lot of fun to play against highly tuned decks when I'm trying to play a game for fun. I'd rather see my opponent play a bunch of bad cards, not because I want to beat him (since I'll be doing the exact same thing) but because we'll both have a good laugh about seeing them being played and trying to make our game-plans work by using them.
However, I should also note that trying to limit your deck's power-level is really a practice only competitive players would need to think about. If you don't know that much about the game, you're probably already making bad decks because you don't know any better or don't have enough cards to do any better. I know when I was starting out I sure didn't.
Anyway, the bottom line is that in my humble opinion, if you want to play casual Magic, make a deck that's fun for everyone. Make a deck that wins off some improbably hard combo to pull off, or uses only a really bad creature type for its critters, or just does stupid things that don't really win the game but are funny. If everyone can have a good laugh watching you play the deck, then I think you've created a casual gem.
Upcoming: Casual Magic, Part 3: The Internet Invasion
Check us out at: sites.google.com/site/teamdamageonthestack
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Casual Magic, Part 1: What the hell does that mean?
A couple of years ago I attempted to create a summer Magic league with some friends of mine. All of the involved players would compete against each other over the course of the summer playing a certain number of scheduled matches, and then their win-loss record would determine their seeding in a playoff, much like a normal sports season. I decided that the format would be casual constructed, my thinking being that I could finally take all of those casual decks I had built over the years and put them into a semi-competitive atmosphere where I could see how they would do against other decks of a similar caliber. Unfortunately this was a misconception on my part.
We determined that the card legality for the league would be Legacy, meaning that all but the most broken cards in the game could be used, which allowed me and some of my other friends who had been playing a long time to use our old cards. I thought everyone would bring in other decks they had just built with cards they already owned or had accumulated over time. But I was wrong. While I brought my highly touted white/black Pestilence deck and my other friends brought their big creature beat-down and old-school red sligh decks, our friends who were newer to the game brought the latest major Standard legal tournament decks: Izzetron, Locus Post Control, Blinking Snake, just to name a couple. Needless to say, they pretty much destroyed the rest of us, and we were forced to order cards and rework our decks to make them stronger in order to even compete.
And this, I think, is one of the biggest problems with “Casual Magic”. There's no real definition of what is and isn't a casual deck. Usually people will say it is a deck that “isn't good enough to be played in any competitive format.” But that's incredibly vague and still leads to massive discrepancies in power-levels between decks. For instance, a deck that is streamlined and runs 4 copies of every pertinent creature but just happens to be a little too slow to compete in the current meta-game, will still destroy a deck that is made up of 1-ofs from someone's collection.
This also is not everyone's working definition of casual. A friend of mine plays a deck that runs 4 Necropotence and 4 Ivory Tower both of which are restricted in Vintage, the most lenient of any competitive format (restricted means that you can only have 1 copy of the card in your deck as opposed to the usual 4). His argument is that since the deck is “casual” it doesn't need to abide by any format regulations; it's just for fun.
In the case of our league, this particular example was not an issue since we determined all decks had to be Legacy legal, but the decks still ran the gamut from current Standard competitors, to former Standard competitors, to modified pre-constructed decks, to homebrews, and things thrown together randomly from people's collections. I think it was fortunate that I didn't have to play against someone's competitive Legacy deck stacked full of Force of Will.
For various reasons the league ended up not working out, but I did walk away with some new knowledge. It became abundantly clear to me that no one involved had a shared concept of what “casual play” meant and that each of us was approaching it from a different perspective. And though there's nothing wrong with this, it can be very frustrating playing a game where the power-levels between decks are so very unbalanced.
Today, even years later, we still don't have a shared concept of what it means. I get in arguments with my friends about what it means to play casually, what sort of decks constitute casual decks, and what sort of mental approach is acceptable for a casual game.
Since there aren't any major tournament events any of us at Team DOTS are going to be competing in soon, I thought I would take the next few posts to write (or rant) on this subject. I warn you, these posts are born from the utter frustration I've felt over the years in trying to come to some sort of acceptable definition of the term “casual” that is satisfying to everyone, so at times they may come off as a bit harsh. But I wanted to state now, before I really begin, that I am not trying to tell you (whoever you are) how to play your casual games or that whatever concept you have of “Casual Magic” is wrong. I am simply conveying my opinions and ideas, which I have accumulated over some years of play and across many experiences. If these posts help you in any way to shape a working definition of “casual” between you and your Magical friends, I think that's great. If not, then I hope you're at least entertained.
Upcoming: Casual Magic, Part 2 -- Deck Construction
Check us out at: https://sites.google.com/site/teamdamageonthestack
We determined that the card legality for the league would be Legacy, meaning that all but the most broken cards in the game could be used, which allowed me and some of my other friends who had been playing a long time to use our old cards. I thought everyone would bring in other decks they had just built with cards they already owned or had accumulated over time. But I was wrong. While I brought my highly touted white/black Pestilence deck and my other friends brought their big creature beat-down and old-school red sligh decks, our friends who were newer to the game brought the latest major Standard legal tournament decks: Izzetron, Locus Post Control, Blinking Snake, just to name a couple. Needless to say, they pretty much destroyed the rest of us, and we were forced to order cards and rework our decks to make them stronger in order to even compete.
And this, I think, is one of the biggest problems with “Casual Magic”. There's no real definition of what is and isn't a casual deck. Usually people will say it is a deck that “isn't good enough to be played in any competitive format.” But that's incredibly vague and still leads to massive discrepancies in power-levels between decks. For instance, a deck that is streamlined and runs 4 copies of every pertinent creature but just happens to be a little too slow to compete in the current meta-game, will still destroy a deck that is made up of 1-ofs from someone's collection.
This also is not everyone's working definition of casual. A friend of mine plays a deck that runs 4 Necropotence and 4 Ivory Tower both of which are restricted in Vintage, the most lenient of any competitive format (restricted means that you can only have 1 copy of the card in your deck as opposed to the usual 4). His argument is that since the deck is “casual” it doesn't need to abide by any format regulations; it's just for fun.
In the case of our league, this particular example was not an issue since we determined all decks had to be Legacy legal, but the decks still ran the gamut from current Standard competitors, to former Standard competitors, to modified pre-constructed decks, to homebrews, and things thrown together randomly from people's collections. I think it was fortunate that I didn't have to play against someone's competitive Legacy deck stacked full of Force of Will.
For various reasons the league ended up not working out, but I did walk away with some new knowledge. It became abundantly clear to me that no one involved had a shared concept of what “casual play” meant and that each of us was approaching it from a different perspective. And though there's nothing wrong with this, it can be very frustrating playing a game where the power-levels between decks are so very unbalanced.
Today, even years later, we still don't have a shared concept of what it means. I get in arguments with my friends about what it means to play casually, what sort of decks constitute casual decks, and what sort of mental approach is acceptable for a casual game.
Since there aren't any major tournament events any of us at Team DOTS are going to be competing in soon, I thought I would take the next few posts to write (or rant) on this subject. I warn you, these posts are born from the utter frustration I've felt over the years in trying to come to some sort of acceptable definition of the term “casual” that is satisfying to everyone, so at times they may come off as a bit harsh. But I wanted to state now, before I really begin, that I am not trying to tell you (whoever you are) how to play your casual games or that whatever concept you have of “Casual Magic” is wrong. I am simply conveying my opinions and ideas, which I have accumulated over some years of play and across many experiences. If these posts help you in any way to shape a working definition of “casual” between you and your Magical friends, I think that's great. If not, then I hope you're at least entertained.
Upcoming: Casual Magic, Part 2 -- Deck Construction
Check us out at: https://sites.google.com/site/teamdamageonthestack
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
The Competitive Magic Season
First of all, Happy New Year! I know it's a bit late, but I haven't written in awhile. Truth be told, the holiday season and other real life happenings sort of knocked the wind out of Team DOTS, at least in terms of attending any tournaments. Last Friday was actually the first time I even attended a local event since before Christmas.
Furthermore, we don't really have plans to attend any major tournaments until February, or at least I don't, so I figured I would take this time to lay down some knowledge on our readers here about the competitive season cycle for tournament Magic. This can get a little bit complicated, especially if you're a non-player, so just bear with me.
The first thing I'm going to explain are formats. There are two basic types of formats: Constructed and Limited. Constructed has five sub-categories or formats (Block, Standard, Extended, Legacy, and Vintage) while Limited has two (Sealed and Draft). The basic difference between the two is that in Constructed players are required to provide their own decks that they have already built, whereas in Limited players are provided with packs of cards that they build their deck out of.
The Constructed sub-categories basically determine which cards you are allowed to put into your deck, while the Limited sub-categories determine how you go about acquiring cards to build your deck. I'm not going to go into detail about Limited right now, as Constructed is more my field of interested, and in major Limited events players are generally required to be proficient in both Sealed and Draft, where Constructed events limit themselves to one sub-category per tournament.
Which format is played during competitive Magic play is determined by the release cycle of sets. These days there are sets released in October, February, April, and July each year. The Limited season runs from October until January. From January until April is Extended season. And April until roughly mid-summer is Standard season. This means that most major tournaments that fall within those time frames will be of the assigned format. I think I should note that most 5K tournaments are either Standard or Legacy format regardless of what the competitive season is.
I'm not going to go into great detail about what sort of cards are allowed in each Constructed format, but Extended allows players access to a lot more cards than Standard does. This means that the meta-games in each format are very different. For instance, Jund, the most powerful deck in Standard, is not a viable deck in Extended because there are more cards available and thus more decks that can stop it.
It is now Extended season, and we of Team DOTS are starting to consider what decks we would like to play in that format and beginning to test with them. Starting in February there are several Pro-Tour Qualifiers (or PTQs as we call them) in nearby cities. The Pro-Tour is the most prestigious of Magic competitions, though not necessarily the best paying, and players are required to have invitations to them, which are obtained by playing in PTQs or by being a strong enough player that you are simply invited to attend.
Team DOTS is hoping to place a member into at least the Top 8 of a PTQ in the coming months, and I will certainly let you know if we achieve that goal. In the meantime, since there likely won't be any tournaments to report, I'll be trying to give all of you lovely readers a better feel of just how this game works.
Upcoming: TBA! [being a.) a breakdown of Competitive Vs. Casual Magic, b.) an analysis of my new Standard deck, or c.) an analysis of Extended testing and the meta]
Check us out at: https://sites.google.com/site/teamdamageonthestack
Furthermore, we don't really have plans to attend any major tournaments until February, or at least I don't, so I figured I would take this time to lay down some knowledge on our readers here about the competitive season cycle for tournament Magic. This can get a little bit complicated, especially if you're a non-player, so just bear with me.
The first thing I'm going to explain are formats. There are two basic types of formats: Constructed and Limited. Constructed has five sub-categories or formats (Block, Standard, Extended, Legacy, and Vintage) while Limited has two (Sealed and Draft). The basic difference between the two is that in Constructed players are required to provide their own decks that they have already built, whereas in Limited players are provided with packs of cards that they build their deck out of.
The Constructed sub-categories basically determine which cards you are allowed to put into your deck, while the Limited sub-categories determine how you go about acquiring cards to build your deck. I'm not going to go into detail about Limited right now, as Constructed is more my field of interested, and in major Limited events players are generally required to be proficient in both Sealed and Draft, where Constructed events limit themselves to one sub-category per tournament.
Which format is played during competitive Magic play is determined by the release cycle of sets. These days there are sets released in October, February, April, and July each year. The Limited season runs from October until January. From January until April is Extended season. And April until roughly mid-summer is Standard season. This means that most major tournaments that fall within those time frames will be of the assigned format. I think I should note that most 5K tournaments are either Standard or Legacy format regardless of what the competitive season is.
I'm not going to go into great detail about what sort of cards are allowed in each Constructed format, but Extended allows players access to a lot more cards than Standard does. This means that the meta-games in each format are very different. For instance, Jund, the most powerful deck in Standard, is not a viable deck in Extended because there are more cards available and thus more decks that can stop it.
It is now Extended season, and we of Team DOTS are starting to consider what decks we would like to play in that format and beginning to test with them. Starting in February there are several Pro-Tour Qualifiers (or PTQs as we call them) in nearby cities. The Pro-Tour is the most prestigious of Magic competitions, though not necessarily the best paying, and players are required to have invitations to them, which are obtained by playing in PTQs or by being a strong enough player that you are simply invited to attend.
Team DOTS is hoping to place a member into at least the Top 8 of a PTQ in the coming months, and I will certainly let you know if we achieve that goal. In the meantime, since there likely won't be any tournaments to report, I'll be trying to give all of you lovely readers a better feel of just how this game works.
Upcoming: TBA! [being a.) a breakdown of Competitive Vs. Casual Magic, b.) an analysis of my new Standard deck, or c.) an analysis of Extended testing and the meta]
Check us out at: https://sites.google.com/site/teamdamageonthestack
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