M13: No punt.
AVR: No punt (Bonfire doesn't count. It's swingy but not that good.)
DKA: No punt.
INN: Delver a tad too good, but not really a punt.
NPH: Batterskull.
You must not play Legacy. Mental Misstep is the biggest mistake they've made there in years. Someone should have caught that.
Seems like they do a good job according to me. No, they don't always find the best deck but since INN there have been no dominating deck. Delver has been a good deck, but it has never been the only reasonable choice.
You must also not play competitive magic. UW Delver was the only reasonable choice in Standard for many months. Only recently has it dropped off.
Forget the fact that they're testing Burning Vengeance...how can they possibly a think a 2/2 creature with no ability to protect itself is an answer to an enchantment that can kill it with every activation?
True, I don't play Legacy. MM was made to shake up the Legacy metagame and that was successful, but it was too successful. Players wanted the old Legacy back so Wizards banned MM.
That's not even close. Tom LaPille doesn't understand competitive Magic. Period. He thought MM would help non-Blue decks against Blue decks. In the end, he just made Blue more powerful because everyone ran MM. And yet he is still working at WotC making Magic. It is this level of not understanding competitive magic that is most troubling. Playing BV decks in FFL is more evidence of that.
Forget the fact that they're testing Burning Vengeance...how can they possibly a think a 2/2 creature with no ability to protect itself is an answer to an enchantment that can kill it with every activation?
Tom LaPille also suggested Great Sable Stag as a good answer to Blue when discussing Mental Misstep in Legacy. He doesn't understand how Magic is actually played and so doesn't see the problem with creating/using bad answers. Just like his long list of other bad answers: Tunnel Ingus, Leonin Arbiter, Phyrexian Revoker, Vampire Hexmage, and Despise.
Tunnel Ingus and Leonin Arbiter were meant to stop Valakut. They didn't. Revoker, Hexmage and Despise were made to stop Jace. They didn't. Ash Zealot was meant to stop Burning Vengeance (:rolleyes:), it won't.
so why not hire more people that are great deck builders and players?
they could have their dedicated ffl and have a special day where they invite other employees to test, maybe offer a bonus to the group who comes up with the most busted deck.
When did it become ok for someone to do a difficult job poorly because it is difficult?
If the job is impossible, replace it with something that isn't. The current solution of doing a poor job because it is difficult and recommended changes based on the poor job is not working.
I would also argue that most of those people testing decks are wasting their time. They're never going to design a good deck from scratch. They're going to spend their time testing Burning Vengeance against Frites. Oh wait...
But they have to test them, or else they are failing at their job. The only card that slipped under the radar this season was Delver. One single card was under evaluated, for what ever reason, which is pretty good. Then development ****ed up and gave Snapcaster flash, and probably some other poor decisions were made. I blame development more than FFL, because they change everything, invalidating most, if not all, of FFL's efforts. After development start working on it, they don't have much time to test everything, as some cards are changed days before they hand it off to the printers.
Everyone knows that good luck and good game are such insincere terms that any man who does not connect his right hook with the offender's jaw on the very utterance of such a phrase is no man I would consider as such.
And you're the world's greatest deckbuilder? We could put 12 of you in a room for 195 hours and you'd find every powerful deck?
The fact is that its physically impossible to for WotC to find everything. They'd have to employ tens of thousands of playtesters who do nothing but playtest different MtG decks. And even then, they'd be behind because even if they had 1 tester for every competitive player, in terms of total global MtG players, they'd still be outnumbered 24 to 1.
Seriously, if you want to criticise them, come up with a better solution. You say they should replace it with something better - well if you want to criticise them for doing a job they're clearly good enough to get employed to do, then man up and come up with something better.
corpt wouldn't need to find/create all the powerful decks, he would only need to find the powerful interactions to do a better job than the ffl.
Prove the are doing a poor job. Because to me it looks like they are doing a good job overall, but have made a few poor mistakes.
Going to use the standard US military response to this. If you don't have a solution to the problem come up with one or just zip it, we don't non-constructive criticism. Especially when it's coming from someone who only view into the process is tweets and little blurbs from articles.
How much time did they spend testing this? Is their something in RTR(while not likely it's possible) that makes BV a real deck? Were they test BV just for the hell of it? Have you played standard with RTR, if not how do you know what good decks are going to look like?
Edit: It also doesn't say anywhere in the article that Ash Zealot is being printed because they thought BV and Frites was going to be to powerful. But that the cards purpose is to be a Maindeckable hate bear.
It's pretty clear that this card is good against Snapcaster Mage, but that's not the real reason we made the card. We had several decks in our Future Future League that made heavy use of the graveyard for flashback spells. We had Burning Vengeance decks with Forbidden Alchemy and such, and we also had Frites-like decks with Unburial Rites, Faithless Looting, and Tracker's Instincts.
they seriously think that those junk decks are so good or might be so good that they are printing hate for them. also the bear is not good against snapcaster mage because it can never make a fair trade with it because snapcaster mage is card advantage on a body. corp does have a simple and practical solution to the problem, hire talented deck builders for the ffl.
M13: No punt.
AVR: No punt (Bonfire doesn't count. It's swingy but not that good.)
DKA: No punt.
INN: Delver a tad too good, but not really a punt.
NPH: Batterskull.
Seems like they do a good job according to me. No, they don't always find the best deck but since INN there have been no dominating deck. Delver has been a good deck, but it has never been the only reasonable choice.
mental misstep was a huge mistake. for one, it was played as a 4 of in every legacy deck. any experienced legacy player knows that turns 1-3 are important as is the 1cc slot in the curve. two, blue decks, arguably the strongest decks, could make the most of the card by having the option to not pay life, pitch to force of will or shuffling it away with brainstorm.
the card bonfire would normally be fine, but wizards shaped the environment to be creature based. by trying to take down u/w delver down a notch by not reprinting mana leak and printing cavern of souls, they took down control as we know it, also not fatty based decks are being played since delver could easily bounce them.
delver is a punt, its a multiformat all star. how could the ffl league miss these interactions?
delver + cheap library manipulation
snapcaster + free spells/cheap library manipulation
all of the above in the same deck
jace + squadron hawk
squadron hawk + swords
stoneforge mystic + swords
all of the above in the same deck
primeval titan + valakut
splinter twin + deceiver exarch
splinter twin should have been easy, you just pull out any creature with a come into play ability from the sets it would be legal with and check to see if it enchantment + creature interaction is much stronger than intended.
same thing with primeval titan. just pull out any non basic land and look at it side by side with the titan and ask your is this too strong.
edit: i'm not asking for the ffl guys to put together pros bloom combo, just to find the 1 on 1 card iterations.
Tom LaPille doesn't understand competitive Magic. Period.
Having just talked with Tom last night regarding his article I'd like to step in and say you really don't have the clarity on this issue you think you do. As retorted above, just because you have access to the public information everyone else does doesn't entitle you to the level of confidence you appear to have about Tom's rapport with the community or his understanding of Magic. I watched him sit down and play through many games of standard, modern and legacy last night with anybody that wanted to join in. Tom is very interested in Magic and the current metagame of these formats.
Perhaps you should just send WOTC a resume and tell them why you're better at Magic than one of their employees instead of complaining here, where nobody really has any authority on the matter.
Tom transfered to smooth out things over at D&D, finished those projects rapidly and came back to fill the position left by Zac Hill's sudden defection.
they seriously think that those junk decks are so good or might be so good that they are printing hate for them. also the bear is not good against snapcaster mage because it can never make a fair trade with it because snapcaster mage is card advantage on a body. corp does have a simple and practical solution to the problem, hire talented deck builders for the ffl.
First off it doesn't say those decks are good. Secondly if you don't think Gravecrawlers, Frites and decks with SCM are going to be part of the meta... :rolleyes:. Third the card is supposed to be a maindeckable card for aggressive red decks that has some extra value vs Graveyard based strats, not a card that singlehandly takes over those MU's you would know this if you actually read the article and not the part Corpt sniped and made blatantly false statements about. For example it explains how they thought Tunnel Ignus and Leonin Arbitor weren't good enough to maindeck and didn't fit the roll the card was supposed too. So they beefed up the non-hate stats of this card and gave it haste/first strike.
Ash Zealot is a really sweet card IMO. Chalk this one up to a win form a design prospective.
"I have no idea what it's like not to be a straight white male, and the experiences of others are irrelevant." -Conservative Motto
Calling someone a Commie is flaming and must be stopped, but turning the word Conservative into a loaded pejorative and using it over and over again is perfectly acceptable.
Having just talked with Tom last night regarding his article I'd like to step in and say you really don't have the clarity on this issue you think you do.
Much of our Future Future League testing is somewhat casual. We like to see every card in our sets in play, and only playing with decks honed to a devastating edge would keep us from trying cards we weren't sure what to do with yet. However, after a set has been legal to play in the Future Future League for a while, we have seen most of the cards, and the set has started to settle down into its final form. That means it's time to start tuning decks and playing with sideboards.
That's what Tom does in FFL. That's not competitive. I don't think you or he understands what competitive Magic is all about.
That Jund deck is beyond terrible. Basically unplayable and most people had a better Jund deck 10 minutes after looking at full spoilers.
Tom transfered to smooth out things over at D&D, finished those projects rapidly and came back to fill the position left by Zac Hill's sudden defection.
Take a look at the thread of people celebrating Tom leaving MTG. It is lengthy. I don't believe that he was transferred to help D&D. I believe that he was transferred because he was hurting MTG. It is frightening that he is back.
That Jund deck is beyond terrible. Basically unplayable and most people had a better Jund deck 10 minutes after looking at full spoilers.
Take a look at the thread of people celebrating Tom leaving MTG. It is lengthy. I don't believe that he was transferred to help D&D. I believe that he was transferred because he was hurting MTG. It is frightening that he is back.
That deck went from bad to worse when I realized that deck has tons of ramp to get to ... 4 mana. He was even considering getting more ramp. It seems like he did pick up BBE's power but that deck seems to be trying to use the least important part of BBE (Being an Elf).
The FFL doesn't test every card combination for standard viability. They cannot possibly test for that. Tom LaPille wrote:
It is not realistic to expect that all 145 cards in Worldwake will become Standard tournament staples, so in order to get the full picture of a Magic set, we often build decks with other purposes. Perhaps we have one specific question we want to answer, or maybe a mechanic or a pair of cards randomly struck us as interesting enough to build a deck around. No matter what the purpose of a deck, however, playing it against other people's FFL decks teaches us something about the cards that are on their way toward release.
The purpose is to understand every single card in a set. If there's a strategy that needs an answer, or a card that needs a change, they hope to find it and provide. In their comparatively minuscule man-hours, they can't learn everything. They'll miss strategies once in a while, because they have to test every single card.
This may come as a surprise to you, but WotC only cares about competitive Magic when it impacts sales. Jace 2.0 and Stoneforge were banned in standard because those two cards were causing fewer people to spend money on the game. (FFL missed how powerful Stoneforge was with the new Swords, and they never had a chance to playtest Jace 2.0.) Hasbro is a business. They exist to make money for themselves and their shareholders. As long as more people are spending money on Magic this year than last, they just don't care.
That said, unless you've managed to see all the cards in RTR and play extensively, you cannot possibly know if BV or Frites are powerful decks. All you can know is that they are not powerful now, with Mirrodin 2.0 still shaping the metagame. No one on the planet has nay clue which strategies will shape the new Standard except the FFL. The argument "Burning Vengeance sucks!" is true now, no one is refuting that. But the BV deck of the FFL wasn't playing with Mirrodin cards. They were playing with sets that will be standard-legal when RTR drops.
No matter how much you despise Tom LaPille, you weren't there, you haven't played with the cards, so you don't know what decks will be playable next Standard season.
You get right down to it, I think the playtesters at Wizards have done a decent job. They can't forsee every possible situation, and that really gets bad when things spread across multiple sets. They did not forsee the Stoneforge Mystic/Scars of Mirrodin Swords interaction, or they would probably have put a bigger gap there, to keep the swords out of Standard a bit longer.
But, honestly, do you think that GREAT deck builders would actually make GREAT designers? Probably not. Because I think that the deck builders would play to their strengths.
Johnny Combo Player would find his way into making three card combos that would lock the game, Timmy would push for a resurgence of Elves, and Spike would want it all to be great for grinders, and all in all, it would end up with EVEN MORE decks looking just like the top tier decks in tournaments, because it would all be designed that way!
I belive any hope at balance between casual, constructed and limited would be GONE if the top pros were all invited to Wizards to work.
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Currently playing:
Standard: WBRG Aggro-Reanimator Humans GRBW
Modern: UR Twinning RU G Venus Fly Trap G U Artifacts Aggro U
Going to use the standard US military response to this. If you don't have a solution to the problem come up with one or just zip it, we don't non-constructive criticism. Especially when it's coming from someone who only view into the process is tweets and little blurbs from articles.
The only thing worse than non-constructive criticism is non-constructive support. "Zip it"? Seriously...based on what?
You seem to think these blurbs and tweets don't mean anything, but they do. CorpT's message is very clear: the job of the FFL should be to identify the strongest interactions between cards in order to prevent making these interactions degenerate once new cards are printed that have applications with each other. The less inclined you are towards playing with that philosophy in mind, the more you're likely to miss.
It's not even about playing "competitive". It's about understanding how if you're not careful when it comes to card interaction (something more easily seen for those that play competitive), such oversight can narrow design space. Some of the cards in Return to Ravnica are a perfect example, with cards designed towards answering Snapcaster.
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Modern
Dredge, Evo-Chord, U/G Faeries, Living End, Something New
They freely admit that they do zero testing for legacy. They do most of their testing in block, sealed, standard and draft.
And you, he, or whoever else you care to nominate is infallible and would therefore never miss a card or interaction from a pool of twelve and a half thousand possibles?
Seriously. WotC have screwed up twice since Mirrodin - Standard CaWBlade having TMS, SFM & Swords at the same time, and Mental Misstep in legacy. Sure, they missed hexdepths, but that didn't become truely oppressive until it was linked to another deck strategy, and even then, it was beatable. I never saw extended thopter depths as any worse for the meta than delver is now.
you don't need to be perfect to do a better job than the current ffl, you just need to realize that jace, the mind sculptor by itself too strong, or that stonefore mystic plus 3 different swords, covering all 5 colors, with 2 of the swords being good would lead dumb stuff, especially if they jammed jace into the same decks.
You get right down to it, I think the playtesters at Wizards have done a decent job. They can't forsee every possible situation, and that really gets bad when things spread across multiple sets. They did not forsee the Stoneforge Mystic/Scars of Mirrodin Swords interaction, or they would probably have put a bigger gap there, to keep the swords out of Standard a bit longer.
But, honestly, do you think that GREAT deck builders would actually make GREAT designers? Probably not. Because I think that the deck builders would play to their strengths.
Johnny Combo Player would find his way into making three card combos that would lock the game, Timmy would push for a resurgence of Elves, and Spike would want it all to be great for grinders, and all in all, it would end up with EVEN MORE decks looking just like the top tier decks in tournaments, because it would all be designed that way!
I belive any hope at balance between casual, constructed and limited would be GONE if the top pros were all invited to Wizards to work.
let the great designers design, let the great deck builders build, let the great players play then have all these guys test since with the more people they have testing, the easier it will be to spot the obviously strong interactions.
The FFL doesn't test every card combination for standard viability. They cannot possibly test for that. Tom LaPille wrote:
The purpose is to understand every single card in a set. If there's a strategy that needs an answer, or a card that needs a change, they hope to find it and provide. In their comparatively minuscule man-hours, they can't learn everything. They'll miss strategies once in a while, because they have to test every single card.
they don't even need to test hundreds of man hours to find a lot of the problem cards. they should already have a visual database with card filters. so for example with looking at the yet to be printed stoneforge mystic, they could pull up all equipment that would be legal with it, then pull up all equipment they plan on designing and spend 10 minutes checking if its too strong. same deal with primeval titan and non basics, splinter twin and come into play effects.
checking for problems gets even easier when you turn on a filter that hides basic creatures with basic abilities such as flying, trample, haste that just turn sideways.
To find interactions like the one between Deceiver Exarch and Splinter Twin you don't even need people. Go to the Software department that is responsible for MtG Online, let them write a simple script and there you have it. It can't be too hard for a script to uncover infinite two card combos.
You don't understand programming I take it, that would actually be absurdly hard compared to just doing it. Not impossible, sure, but nothing close to a "simple script".
Many mistakes are cards the FFL never really gets to play with because of last minute changes. Not their faults. I could understand the complaints about Deciever Exarch and Splinter Twin, but why complain about that this standard? The FFL did a good enough job I'd say. They missed Delver of Secrets. Delver was a horribly analyzed card even by pros and the hivemind, not to mention it was changed at the last minute. On top of it all, Delver isn't dominant or oppressive. It's really good, but every standard format for the rest of time will have a best deck.
they don't even need to test hundreds of man hours to find a lot of the problem cards. they should already have a visual database with card filters. so for example with looking at the yet to be printed stoneforge mystic, they could pull up all equipment that would be legal with it, then pull up all equipment they plan on designing and spend 10 minutes checking if its too strong. same deal with primeval titan and non basics, splinter twin and come into play effects.
checking for problems gets even easier when you turn on a filter that hides basic creatures with basic abilities such as flying, trample, haste that just turn sideways.
They admitted they knew stoneforge+batterskull was too far. Seems to me they are trying to jam flavor, splashy cards, and mechanics into every set, but the game is so mature they are having a hard time balancing those things with the need for formats that aren't broken.
So instead of toning down things to keep standard viable they say **** it and print cards like batterskull anyway.
Its hard for a small group of people to figure out what standard will look like. You have a problem when their greed makes them print cards they know will be broken.
I'd like to see them ease up on the mechanics and overall flashiness. Instead they could just design solid sets, but I doubt that will happen. They are making more money than ever. Just ignore the fact that 5 years from now the kids won't know 5 casting costs creatures exist.
Thank God Lapille is away from D&D team. DDN has enough writers who can't develop rapport with the community by not understanding how people want to play the game, they don't need another one.
But he really isn't a problem in current MTG, nor is it the FFL that is the problem. The problem is adding or changing cards dramatically while late in development. The FFL can't test those cards and to me most of the big mistakes in MTG have come from late changes like this. Goyf, Delver, JTMS, Faeries, etc.
Don't attack FFL, attack them doing stupid things too late in development for them to test.
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You've got a rat in your walls, and cheese won't solve anything.
it's worth remembering that this game is designed for all walks of players - casual and competitive alike.
casual and competitive magic want different things. some cards are casual powerhouses and won't make even the slightest ripple in competitive magic. some are the other way round.
a group of 12 (or thereabouts?) people tasked with balancing the game will sometimes miss stuff, especially when they are balancing effectively several games in microcosm, within the grand game that is magic.
also remember that what they are doing isn't exactly dictating a metagame... just testing out the designs in the card-pool and seeing if there's something broken. the guy who wrote the OP seems to think that all the millions of players are just following some kind of cookie-cutter metagame that the developers of MTG wrote for them months ago... in truth, the millions of players are simply testing the card-pool to a much greater level of detail.
surely this is fairly obvious? i'm inclined to think the OP might be trolling to some extent.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
I think Tom threw that stuff in to make people think this wasn't transparent Snapcaster hate. Wizards hates Snapcaster and wants Snapcaser decks to be a LOT worse.
I don't know... should we have more graveyard hate in the same Standard? I don't think its enough yet. Maybe Modern needs more grave hate its not like the past few blocks have had enough cards that have outright hated the grave.
I don't know... should we have more graveyard hate in the same Standard? I don't think its enough yet. Maybe Modern needs more grave hate its not like the past few blocks have had enough cards that have outright hated the grave.
They're trying to print GY hate that can be maindecked. Modern standard is so fast and so unforgiving that most GY hate is too slow and worthless to be brought in if all it does is hose the GY. Cards like Dryad Militant and Ash Zealot are an attempt to create maindeck answers to Snapcaster Mage.
So many misconceptions in this thread...claims like "They didnt catch on that JTMS was too good", no, duh, that's because it got a last-minute alteration. It's 12 men. Testing a few hours per day, meaning that even in the time they have in a YEAR, they won't get the time that all the hivemind of an internet has in a DAY. Who is to say they didn't prevent much, much bigger disasters then the annoyances we've had to come to fruition? Suppose we had this card in testing:
Increasing Flame 1R
Instant
Increasing Flame does 3 damage to target creature or player.
Increasing Flame does 3 damage to any two target creatures or players, or 6 damage to target creature or player, when it is cast from the graveyard
Flashback 2RR
A card like that COULD (not saying it was, but COULD) have existed in the FFL. Or perhaps Increasing Ambition was priced lower mana-wise then it is now. Such things would've definitely made Burning Vengeance a top tier deck to work with. In such case, they'd make note of it, things get altered and answers get printed. We don't see what made them think like this, but we DO see the final end product.
And that's the problem when all you see is the finalized (not 100% perfect) end product and not the trajectory towards said end product.
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My Commander decks:
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
So many misconceptions in this thread...claims like "They didnt catch on that JTMS was too good", no, duh, that's because it got a last-minute alteration. It's 12 men. Testing a few hours per day, meaning that even in the time they have in a YEAR, they won't get the time that all the hivemind of an internet has in a DAY.
then a few things need to happen here:
1. there needs to be greater communication between the ffl and the people making the last minute alterations.
2. there needs to be more people participating in the ffl for longer periods of time.
because i'm so sick of having 1-2 cards that get changed or missed come out and make standard completely warp around them. things that pretty much change the entire spectrum of standard to basically be if you're not playing this deck you're going to lose.
then we get sets that bogged down with things trying to hose these cards, that don't always work, or create larger problems. so now you've got these cards that get changed at the last minute, that don't get tested, that warp the environment, and more cards that stand to warp the environment a completely different way in order to hose the cards that first warped it... and at the end of the day you wonder what purpose the ffl even has if cards can be changed at the last minute without any testing, because thats money that could be spent somewhere else.
so either the ffl needs to change, or development needs to change.
And for that to happen, more people would have to be hired, more hours will be put into things, ergo, prices will go up, and we'll all have something else to complain about. WOTC can't win.
I'm not saying the FFL is perfect, mind you. But I'm saying that they are likely to catch about 100 times the mistakes that actually get through. They can't get them all, mistakes happen, and sometimes the percieved mistake really isn't a mistake given that some stuff IS actually designed to be good. But when something is good, people often go "OMG BONKERS BAN" before taking their time to think things through.
In the end, we have a decently balanced format (This is coming from someone who used to play Yugioh and thus was used to "Play this overpriced trash or you'll get trashed") right now and the nerfs that are coming out might not fully hit their intended targets - they still are formidable-to-decent cards in their own rights and will as such have a certain impact.
WOTC does what it can, but even if you put the entire company together, they don't get anywhere close to the amount of testing done that we, the internet hivemind, do. Even if you made the FFL a 24-hours-a-day machine with 50 people in it, their collective hours-a-year still wouldn't topple the collective playtesting hours of everyone here in a week.
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My Commander decks:
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
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You must not play Legacy. Mental Misstep is the biggest mistake they've made there in years. Someone should have caught that.
You must also not play competitive magic. UW Delver was the only reasonable choice in Standard for many months. Only recently has it dropped off.
That's not even close. Tom LaPille doesn't understand competitive Magic. Period. He thought MM would help non-Blue decks against Blue decks. In the end, he just made Blue more powerful because everyone ran MM. And yet he is still working at WotC making Magic. It is this level of not understanding competitive magic that is most troubling. Playing BV decks in FFL is more evidence of that.
Tom LaPille also suggested Great Sable Stag as a good answer to Blue when discussing Mental Misstep in Legacy. He doesn't understand how Magic is actually played and so doesn't see the problem with creating/using bad answers. Just like his long list of other bad answers: Tunnel Ingus, Leonin Arbiter, Phyrexian Revoker, Vampire Hexmage, and Despise.
Tunnel Ingus and Leonin Arbiter were meant to stop Valakut. They didn't. Revoker, Hexmage and Despise were made to stop Jace. They didn't. Ash Zealot was meant to stop Burning Vengeance (:rolleyes:), it won't.
That's what the FFL is.
But they have to test them, or else they are failing at their job. The only card that slipped under the radar this season was Delver. One single card was under evaluated, for what ever reason, which is pretty good. Then development ****ed up and gave Snapcaster flash, and probably some other poor decisions were made. I blame development more than FFL, because they change everything, invalidating most, if not all, of FFL's efforts. After development start working on it, they don't have much time to test everything, as some cards are changed days before they hand it off to the printers.
- To my youngest sister when she was 6.
corpt wouldn't need to find/create all the powerful decks, he would only need to find the powerful interactions to do a better job than the ffl.
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/212
they seriously think that those junk decks are so good or might be so good that they are printing hate for them. also the bear is not good against snapcaster mage because it can never make a fair trade with it because snapcaster mage is card advantage on a body. corp does have a simple and practical solution to the problem, hire talented deck builders for the ffl.
mental misstep was a huge mistake. for one, it was played as a 4 of in every legacy deck. any experienced legacy player knows that turns 1-3 are important as is the 1cc slot in the curve. two, blue decks, arguably the strongest decks, could make the most of the card by having the option to not pay life, pitch to force of will or shuffling it away with brainstorm.
the card bonfire would normally be fine, but wizards shaped the environment to be creature based. by trying to take down u/w delver down a notch by not reprinting mana leak and printing cavern of souls, they took down control as we know it, also not fatty based decks are being played since delver could easily bounce them.
delver is a punt, its a multiformat all star. how could the ffl league miss these interactions?
delver + cheap library manipulation
snapcaster + free spells/cheap library manipulation
all of the above in the same deck
jace + squadron hawk
squadron hawk + swords
stoneforge mystic + swords
all of the above in the same deck
primeval titan + valakut
splinter twin + deceiver exarch
splinter twin should have been easy, you just pull out any creature with a come into play ability from the sets it would be legal with and check to see if it enchantment + creature interaction is much stronger than intended.
same thing with primeval titan. just pull out any non basic land and look at it side by side with the titan and ask your is this too strong.
edit: i'm not asking for the ffl guys to put together pros bloom combo, just to find the 1 on 1 card iterations.
…( `\(o),,_/` ¯ : o : : : o `-, …. Beyond the hard times from now
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Having just talked with Tom last night regarding his article I'd like to step in and say you really don't have the clarity on this issue you think you do. As retorted above, just because you have access to the public information everyone else does doesn't entitle you to the level of confidence you appear to have about Tom's rapport with the community or his understanding of Magic. I watched him sit down and play through many games of standard, modern and legacy last night with anybody that wanted to join in. Tom is very interested in Magic and the current metagame of these formats.
Perhaps you should just send WOTC a resume and tell them why you're better at Magic than one of their employees instead of complaining here, where nobody really has any authority on the matter.
Tom transfered to smooth out things over at D&D, finished those projects rapidly and came back to fill the position left by Zac Hill's sudden defection.
First off it doesn't say those decks are good. Secondly if you don't think Gravecrawlers, Frites and decks with SCM are going to be part of the meta... :rolleyes:. Third the card is supposed to be a maindeckable card for aggressive red decks that has some extra value vs Graveyard based strats, not a card that singlehandly takes over those MU's you would know this if you actually read the article and not the part Corpt sniped and made blatantly false statements about. For example it explains how they thought Tunnel Ignus and Leonin Arbitor weren't good enough to maindeck and didn't fit the roll the card was supposed too. So they beefed up the non-hate stats of this card and gave it haste/first strike.
Ash Zealot is a really sweet card IMO. Chalk this one up to a win form a design prospective.
Flame infraction. - Blinking Spirit
Calling someone a Commie is flaming and must be stopped, but turning the word Conservative into a loaded pejorative and using it over and over again is perfectly acceptable.
That's what Tom does in FFL. That's not competitive. I don't think you or he understands what competitive Magic is all about.
This is his Jund deck.
1 Mountain
4 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
4 Rootbound Crag
4 Savage Lands
1 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
24 lands
2 Birds of Paradise
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nissa's Chosen
18 creatures
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Nissa Revane
18 other spells
4 Duress
1 Garruk Wildspeaker
3 Great Sable Stag
3 Pyroclasm
4 Terminate
That Jund deck is beyond terrible. Basically unplayable and most people had a better Jund deck 10 minutes after looking at full spoilers.
Take a look at the thread of people celebrating Tom leaving MTG. It is lengthy. I don't believe that he was transferred to help D&D. I believe that he was transferred because he was hurting MTG. It is frightening that he is back.
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That deck went from bad to worse when I realized that deck has tons of ramp to get to ... 4 mana. He was even considering getting more ramp. It seems like he did pick up BBE's power but that deck seems to be trying to use the least important part of BBE (Being an Elf).
Get off it.
The FFL doesn't test every card combination for standard viability. They cannot possibly test for that. Tom LaPille wrote:
The purpose is to understand every single card in a set. If there's a strategy that needs an answer, or a card that needs a change, they hope to find it and provide. In their comparatively minuscule man-hours, they can't learn everything. They'll miss strategies once in a while, because they have to test every single card.
This may come as a surprise to you, but WotC only cares about competitive Magic when it impacts sales. Jace 2.0 and Stoneforge were banned in standard because those two cards were causing fewer people to spend money on the game. (FFL missed how powerful Stoneforge was with the new Swords, and they never had a chance to playtest Jace 2.0.) Hasbro is a business. They exist to make money for themselves and their shareholders. As long as more people are spending money on Magic this year than last, they just don't care.
That said, unless you've managed to see all the cards in RTR and play extensively, you cannot possibly know if BV or Frites are powerful decks. All you can know is that they are not powerful now, with Mirrodin 2.0 still shaping the metagame. No one on the planet has nay clue which strategies will shape the new Standard except the FFL. The argument "Burning Vengeance sucks!" is true now, no one is refuting that. But the BV deck of the FFL wasn't playing with Mirrodin cards. They were playing with sets that will be standard-legal when RTR drops.
No matter how much you despise Tom LaPille, you weren't there, you haven't played with the cards, so you don't know what decks will be playable next Standard season.
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But, honestly, do you think that GREAT deck builders would actually make GREAT designers? Probably not. Because I think that the deck builders would play to their strengths.
Johnny Combo Player would find his way into making three card combos that would lock the game, Timmy would push for a resurgence of Elves, and Spike would want it all to be great for grinders, and all in all, it would end up with EVEN MORE decks looking just like the top tier decks in tournaments, because it would all be designed that way!
I belive any hope at balance between casual, constructed and limited would be GONE if the top pros were all invited to Wizards to work.
Standard:
WBRG Aggro-Reanimator Humans GRBW
Modern:
UR Twinning RU
G Venus Fly Trap G
U Artifacts Aggro U
Legacy:
B Reanimator B
WU Stoneblade UW
EDH
WBGGhave, Guru of SporesGBW
URGRiku of the Two ReflectionsGRU
WUBRGScion of the Ur-DragonGRBUW
Casual
Far too many to list
The only thing worse than non-constructive criticism is non-constructive support. "Zip it"? Seriously...based on what?
You seem to think these blurbs and tweets don't mean anything, but they do. CorpT's message is very clear: the job of the FFL should be to identify the strongest interactions between cards in order to prevent making these interactions degenerate once new cards are printed that have applications with each other. The less inclined you are towards playing with that philosophy in mind, the more you're likely to miss.
It's not even about playing "competitive". It's about understanding how if you're not careful when it comes to card interaction (something more easily seen for those that play competitive), such oversight can narrow design space. Some of the cards in Return to Ravnica are a perfect example, with cards designed towards answering Snapcaster.
Modern
Dredge, Evo-Chord, U/G Faeries, Living End, Something New
I'm aware of the amount of whine going on in this forum.
If WOTC believed him to be hurting MTG, why would they bring him back?
you don't need to be perfect to do a better job than the current ffl, you just need to realize that jace, the mind sculptor by itself too strong, or that stonefore mystic plus 3 different swords, covering all 5 colors, with 2 of the swords being good would lead dumb stuff, especially if they jammed jace into the same decks.
let the great designers design, let the great deck builders build, let the great players play then have all these guys test since with the more people they have testing, the easier it will be to spot the obviously strong interactions.
they don't even need to test hundreds of man hours to find a lot of the problem cards. they should already have a visual database with card filters. so for example with looking at the yet to be printed stoneforge mystic, they could pull up all equipment that would be legal with it, then pull up all equipment they plan on designing and spend 10 minutes checking if its too strong. same deal with primeval titan and non basics, splinter twin and come into play effects.
checking for problems gets even easier when you turn on a filter that hides basic creatures with basic abilities such as flying, trample, haste that just turn sideways.
…( `\(o),,_/` ¯ : o : : : o `-, …. Beyond the hard times from now
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You don't understand programming I take it, that would actually be absurdly hard compared to just doing it. Not impossible, sure, but nothing close to a "simple script".
Many mistakes are cards the FFL never really gets to play with because of last minute changes. Not their faults. I could understand the complaints about Deciever Exarch and Splinter Twin, but why complain about that this standard? The FFL did a good enough job I'd say. They missed Delver of Secrets. Delver was a horribly analyzed card even by pros and the hivemind, not to mention it was changed at the last minute. On top of it all, Delver isn't dominant or oppressive. It's really good, but every standard format for the rest of time will have a best deck.
They admitted they knew stoneforge+batterskull was too far. Seems to me they are trying to jam flavor, splashy cards, and mechanics into every set, but the game is so mature they are having a hard time balancing those things with the need for formats that aren't broken.
So instead of toning down things to keep standard viable they say **** it and print cards like batterskull anyway.
Its hard for a small group of people to figure out what standard will look like. You have a problem when their greed makes them print cards they know will be broken.
I'd like to see them ease up on the mechanics and overall flashiness. Instead they could just design solid sets, but I doubt that will happen. They are making more money than ever. Just ignore the fact that 5 years from now the kids won't know 5 casting costs creatures exist.
But he really isn't a problem in current MTG, nor is it the FFL that is the problem. The problem is adding or changing cards dramatically while late in development. The FFL can't test those cards and to me most of the big mistakes in MTG have come from late changes like this. Goyf, Delver, JTMS, Faeries, etc.
Don't attack FFL, attack them doing stupid things too late in development for them to test.
casual and competitive magic want different things. some cards are casual powerhouses and won't make even the slightest ripple in competitive magic. some are the other way round.
a group of 12 (or thereabouts?) people tasked with balancing the game will sometimes miss stuff, especially when they are balancing effectively several games in microcosm, within the grand game that is magic.
also remember that what they are doing isn't exactly dictating a metagame... just testing out the designs in the card-pool and seeing if there's something broken. the guy who wrote the OP seems to think that all the millions of players are just following some kind of cookie-cutter metagame that the developers of MTG wrote for them months ago... in truth, the millions of players are simply testing the card-pool to a much greater level of detail.
surely this is fairly obvious? i'm inclined to think the OP might be trolling to some extent.
I don't know... should we have more graveyard hate in the same Standard? I don't think its enough yet. Maybe Modern needs more grave hate its not like the past few blocks have had enough cards that have outright hated the grave.
They're trying to print GY hate that can be maindecked. Modern standard is so fast and so unforgiving that most GY hate is too slow and worthless to be brought in if all it does is hose the GY. Cards like Dryad Militant and Ash Zealot are an attempt to create maindeck answers to Snapcaster Mage.
Increasing Flame 1R
Instant
Increasing Flame does 3 damage to target creature or player.
Increasing Flame does 3 damage to any two target creatures or players, or 6 damage to target creature or player, when it is cast from the graveyard
Flashback 2RR
A card like that COULD (not saying it was, but COULD) have existed in the FFL. Or perhaps Increasing Ambition was priced lower mana-wise then it is now. Such things would've definitely made Burning Vengeance a top tier deck to work with. In such case, they'd make note of it, things get altered and answers get printed. We don't see what made them think like this, but we DO see the final end product.
And that's the problem when all you see is the finalized (not 100% perfect) end product and not the trajectory towards said end product.
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
then a few things need to happen here:
1. there needs to be greater communication between the ffl and the people making the last minute alterations.
2. there needs to be more people participating in the ffl for longer periods of time.
because i'm so sick of having 1-2 cards that get changed or missed come out and make standard completely warp around them. things that pretty much change the entire spectrum of standard to basically be if you're not playing this deck you're going to lose.
then we get sets that bogged down with things trying to hose these cards, that don't always work, or create larger problems. so now you've got these cards that get changed at the last minute, that don't get tested, that warp the environment, and more cards that stand to warp the environment a completely different way in order to hose the cards that first warped it... and at the end of the day you wonder what purpose the ffl even has if cards can be changed at the last minute without any testing, because thats money that could be spent somewhere else.
so either the ffl needs to change, or development needs to change.
I'm not saying the FFL is perfect, mind you. But I'm saying that they are likely to catch about 100 times the mistakes that actually get through. They can't get them all, mistakes happen, and sometimes the percieved mistake really isn't a mistake given that some stuff IS actually designed to be good. But when something is good, people often go "OMG BONKERS BAN" before taking their time to think things through.
In the end, we have a decently balanced format (This is coming from someone who used to play Yugioh and thus was used to "Play this overpriced trash or you'll get trashed") right now and the nerfs that are coming out might not fully hit their intended targets - they still are formidable-to-decent cards in their own rights and will as such have a certain impact.
WOTC does what it can, but even if you put the entire company together, they don't get anywhere close to the amount of testing done that we, the internet hivemind, do. Even if you made the FFL a 24-hours-a-day machine with 50 people in it, their collective hours-a-year still wouldn't topple the collective playtesting hours of everyone here in a week.
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.