yeah id assume its just logistics/money. its not like scg is sitting there thinking 'yeah screw all those west coasters!'. i figure they just bit off more than they could chew a few or so years ago because they were expecting more growth. tournaments not necessarily every week, prioritize locations with a historically higher turnout (this is why texas is included), the move to the prize wall structure instead of cash payouts in side events, etc. they gotta keep themselves profitable after all.
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not a very apt comparison. for one the amulet deck isnt an archetype. its one deck that retooled after the banning. blue moon (control) existed in its own right while twin was around (mainly the shackles version), and is now just a generic label for any UR deck that shares a commonly played subset of cards (snap/bolt/remand/cryptic/blood moon). UR kiki and breach moon just happen to sit under that umbrella.
i only point this out because its disingenuous to have those decks share the success of UR thing and UR pyro variants.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
ah yes, i come from a long and proud line of blue mages. the purity of my blood and lineage cannot be questioned. we are taught from a young age to employ deceit and cunning, and i spent many an hour training in techniques to obfuscate my actions, manipulate rules to my advantage, and of course how to hide my colonnades.
I wrote each time it is a Form/style of cheating for ME...my personal feeling and i wrote too it was legal if we look at the rules and the reason why some UW players called is because i See this especially vs them and after hearing in my store 2 others happened(again vs. UW) so i took this example. Maybe it is wrong this feeling, but maybe it is a mentality of some blue players like we say here each time blue mages will never be happy (maybe wrong too). Blue is the color of mindtricks
i mean id be upset if i lost the way you did too, and believe me ive done way worse things in my years of playing.
ideally high level tournament magic would be more standardized, only allowing certain versions of cards, require more precise and uniform board/card management. however its just impractical on so many levels.
who knows, maybe your opponent was being sketchy as hell; i wasnt there. the point is that if you were playing tight, whatever he was trying to do would have been irrelevant.
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I suppose most people on this forum are not aware of the "real" cheating that was rampant in high-level magic ten or more years ago. How these real cheats were defending themselves as only using every available venue to win and, critically for this thread, were using the same argument that is was the duty of their opponent to be more vigilant.
I believe 100% the OP that some people will using foreign language, alternate art cards to confuse their opponent. When talking about lands that are often pile up together, yes, that's one avenue to gain an advantage. I find it despicable that people here won't even acknowledge that it's an issue that can be taken advantage on. I find it bad that you're all engaging in victim blaming.
Could he have been more vigilant? Is the rule-lawyer argument that it's entirely the player responsibility to track the opponent's board? yes. So what? Should magic be the equivalent of a game of memory? This is especially true in a tournament setting. I just read yesterday an old article by Cedric Phillips who admitted constantly chatting with his opponent to distract them. Is talking cheating? Strictly, no. But Cedric was using it to increase the mental fatigue to get an edge. Having to read and constantly ask about foreign cards and alt-art is also increasing the mental burden. It adds up during multiple rounds.
Just piling on and ignoring the issue while taking the moral high ground that the OP is an feeble minded whiner is not productive.
i agree that attacks against him as a player arent warranted. however he launched the discussion by making 2 outrageous claims: that a mixture of foreign cards is cheating, and that UW players specifically engage in this activity more than other people.
magic IS a game of memory (among many other things). accurately tracking the game state is an acquired skill. being forced to treat man lands differently by announcing them is silly for the same reason wizards stopped asking players to remind opponents of their own beneficial triggers.
take this a step further. what if a player misrecognizes the opponents lands, and doesnt realize his opponent has the mana to cast some spell. oh darn, guess we have to update the rules to make his opponent need to announce his possible color configurations. cast a discard spell and forget what cards youve seen? welp, gotta update the rules again so the opponent has to give a reminder of what cards have been revealed. pesky on board combat tricks? no sir, cant have that, those need to be actively announced at the start of combat.
how is allowing your opponents to make mistakes rules lawyering?
at some point this UW player put the colonnade into play tapped, at which point you either werent paying attention and miss it; or you took note of it and then forgot. how is that anything but a misplay?
lastly, just like assuming mtgthewary is a bad player is incorrect. you know what else is also incorrect? assuming that anyone playing a few foreign or alt art cards is doing so with some malicious or underhanded intent.
victim blaming? ah yes i forgot he was a victim of a member of the nefarious UW control cabal who supposedly go out of their way to hide their colonnades. /rollseyes
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
an activated manland and dryad arbor arent the same thing. arbor is a creature all of the time.
also, as it has been repeatedly pointed out, the onus is on you to keep track of your opponents lands; just like you are supposed to keep track of their graveyard. its open information you can ask your opponent for at any time, and unless they deny you then there isnt an issue. different people have different methods for organizing their own board state.
you got goosed by an on board trick. move on.
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imo mox opal will forever be on the watch list, merely because its a piece of fast mana and its power level is an outlier in the format for the decks that can use it. is it explicitly crossing any lines and worthy of a ban? probably not, at least right now.
tbh though its one of those cards that i wouldnt bat an eyelash for if it got the axe. if it was facilitating some grindhouse artifact deck thats one thing, but all we see it do for the most part is facilitate early kills. being the centerpiece for those infrequent turn 2/3 nut draws that no deck has a chance against.
none of the decks that are playing it though are dominating meta percentages or in win rate (afaik). for me that stonewalls most arguments to get rid of it.
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thatd be my guess. rip is like backdoor sidedoor hate against growbots. i think boarding in a single copy is probably correct. however bant spirits isnt exactly throwing a bunch of terminates around, and the creature suite doesnt always lend itself to kill opposing creatures through blocks. just bringing in the stonys and flying over as best you can seems like an alright strat.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
yeah that is a pretty good summary of it. hearthstone was meant to appeal to the casual gamer. the fact that it exploded onto the esports scene was more a byproduct of the game being so absurdly popular, and its accessibility lent itself well to gamers of any stripe to pick it up; and eventually stream it. at the end of the day though the gameplay, and the excitement it elicits, pales in comparison to games involving aspects such as action, teamwork, feats of mental/physical dexterity, and so on. no amount of eye candy makes up for it being a turn based card game.
im sure wizards has plans for, and hopes for, the game to be similarly successful; though on a smaller scale (lets be real hasbro/wizards is an ant compared to activision/blizzard in the gaming sector). however as pistallion points out, esports is more aligned with a marketing campaign than anything else. also its noteworthy to recognize the difference between esports and streaming.
i dont think wizards is going to push to merge arena and mtgo, at least not any time in the near future. sure there is some overlap, but both being digital doesnt preclude the fact that the products are very different; with different goals, target demographics, and strengths/weaknesses. mtgo is a direct port of the paper magic experience, while arena isnt. at this point mtgo requires minimal upkeep, while transforming arena into something that could meet the needs of those playing mtgo would take a huge amount of resources. sure there will be some cannibalization between the two platforms, but as long as there is a net increase in the population of those playing 'digital magic' in any form i dont think wizards will care.
granted this is all conjecture/speculation. who knows maybe wizards feels backed into a corner with their string of relative failures and will take drastic measures.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
fair enough. i guess it depends on the person then. for some, like yourself, the constant reminder is the issue.
a silver lining though is that with more frequent announcements maybe wotc will be more liberal with their decisions, because the shorter span to the next one means they can more readily act if they dont like what they are seeing. that and less time for a card to ingrain itself into the format means less backlash if they have to revert anything. wishful thinking i know, but.../shrug
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if anything, more per year should diffuse hype/expectations, while offering more mobility in their decisions. just consider the other end of the spectrum. if there were only a couple per year people would expect them to be major occasions, and thus be even more disappointed if their personal expectations arent met.
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using a digital platform to reach a larger playerbase, and making gameplay more fluid and visually appealing isnt the same as 'esports'. sure it lends itself to being more attractive to watch in the event that it gets popular enough, but it isnt the point. its like saying blizzard designed hearthstone for esports, which makes zero sense. they simply made it as a more approachable game, capitalizing on one of their most profitable franchises (warcraft), that offered low investment/high replayability gameplay to the masses.
wizards wants to replicate and leverage that. first as being profitable in its own right (buying gems), but as a stepping stone to their other products. the fast pace and visual appeal is a part of that.
regardless, that is getting off-topic. if we are looking at how arena affects modern, particularly if the format is in jeopardy. i dont think it is. yes wizards will have to address the rotation problem in arena, and its even plausible they create a format specifically to do that. however it is questionable whether they even expect that format to translate to paper; the same way that arena-standard hasnt been the same as regular standard.
a more broad question is what the divergence in digital and paper magic means for the game in general. im not sure there is a clear answer for that.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
or, and i know this might seem radical, they expect people to actually play the game; especially a demographic of players not already entrenched in the mtg franchise that they are desperately trying to reach.
edit: also, aazadan brought it up, but the barrier to adding a format like modern to arena is the logistics of adding such a large card pool. not only would it require extensive testing with their new rules engine, arena also employs custom graphics for many cards/interactions.
that said, wizards was quick to point out how flexible the new rules engine is supposed to be. particularly highlighting the ability to fluidly add new cards. granted there is a difference between adding a new set and adding a decade worth of sets.
that is probably true for most matchup evaluations one way or another. mostly because people are notoriously bad (myself included) at evaluating their own skill level and the skill level of their opponents.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
humans is just the perceived best deck, and it isnt so by a significant margin. it just happens to check a lot of boxes that people are looking for. proactive, has play to it, rolls over stumbling opponents, is 'fair' so people can feel smug about themselves, and doesnt get hosed by many things.
that said, you just have to ask yourself if there are good reasons to play decks within the 'top tier' (however you define it) that isn't humans. the answer is a resounding yes.
if action is ever taken against humans by wotc, it will be because humans got a new card and pulls away from the pack, or it will be under false pretenses to shake up the format. in the here and now though, nothing 'too good' is going on.
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UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)i only point this out because its disingenuous to have those decks share the success of UR thing and UR pyro variants.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)ah yes, i come from a long and proud line of blue mages. the purity of my blood and lineage cannot be questioned. we are taught from a young age to employ deceit and cunning, and i spent many an hour training in techniques to obfuscate my actions, manipulate rules to my advantage, and of course how to hide my colonnades.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)i mean id be upset if i lost the way you did too, and believe me ive done way worse things in my years of playing.
ideally high level tournament magic would be more standardized, only allowing certain versions of cards, require more precise and uniform board/card management. however its just impractical on so many levels.
who knows, maybe your opponent was being sketchy as hell; i wasnt there. the point is that if you were playing tight, whatever he was trying to do would have been irrelevant.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)i agree that attacks against him as a player arent warranted. however he launched the discussion by making 2 outrageous claims: that a mixture of foreign cards is cheating, and that UW players specifically engage in this activity more than other people.
magic IS a game of memory (among many other things). accurately tracking the game state is an acquired skill. being forced to treat man lands differently by announcing them is silly for the same reason wizards stopped asking players to remind opponents of their own beneficial triggers.
take this a step further. what if a player misrecognizes the opponents lands, and doesnt realize his opponent has the mana to cast some spell. oh darn, guess we have to update the rules to make his opponent need to announce his possible color configurations. cast a discard spell and forget what cards youve seen? welp, gotta update the rules again so the opponent has to give a reminder of what cards have been revealed. pesky on board combat tricks? no sir, cant have that, those need to be actively announced at the start of combat.
how is allowing your opponents to make mistakes rules lawyering?
at some point this UW player put the colonnade into play tapped, at which point you either werent paying attention and miss it; or you took note of it and then forgot. how is that anything but a misplay?
lastly, just like assuming mtgthewary is a bad player is incorrect. you know what else is also incorrect? assuming that anyone playing a few foreign or alt art cards is doing so with some malicious or underhanded intent.
victim blaming? ah yes i forgot he was a victim of a member of the nefarious UW control cabal who supposedly go out of their way to hide their colonnades. /rollseyes
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)also, as it has been repeatedly pointed out, the onus is on you to keep track of your opponents lands; just like you are supposed to keep track of their graveyard. its open information you can ask your opponent for at any time, and unless they deny you then there isnt an issue. different people have different methods for organizing their own board state.
you got goosed by an on board trick. move on.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)'just' mana. black lotus is just mana!
imo mox opal will forever be on the watch list, merely because its a piece of fast mana and its power level is an outlier in the format for the decks that can use it. is it explicitly crossing any lines and worthy of a ban? probably not, at least right now.
tbh though its one of those cards that i wouldnt bat an eyelash for if it got the axe. if it was facilitating some grindhouse artifact deck thats one thing, but all we see it do for the most part is facilitate early kills. being the centerpiece for those infrequent turn 2/3 nut draws that no deck has a chance against.
none of the decks that are playing it though are dominating meta percentages or in win rate (afaik). for me that stonewalls most arguments to get rid of it.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)yeah that is a pretty good summary of it. hearthstone was meant to appeal to the casual gamer. the fact that it exploded onto the esports scene was more a byproduct of the game being so absurdly popular, and its accessibility lent itself well to gamers of any stripe to pick it up; and eventually stream it. at the end of the day though the gameplay, and the excitement it elicits, pales in comparison to games involving aspects such as action, teamwork, feats of mental/physical dexterity, and so on. no amount of eye candy makes up for it being a turn based card game.
im sure wizards has plans for, and hopes for, the game to be similarly successful; though on a smaller scale (lets be real hasbro/wizards is an ant compared to activision/blizzard in the gaming sector). however as pistallion points out, esports is more aligned with a marketing campaign than anything else. also its noteworthy to recognize the difference between esports and streaming.
i dont think wizards is going to push to merge arena and mtgo, at least not any time in the near future. sure there is some overlap, but both being digital doesnt preclude the fact that the products are very different; with different goals, target demographics, and strengths/weaknesses. mtgo is a direct port of the paper magic experience, while arena isnt. at this point mtgo requires minimal upkeep, while transforming arena into something that could meet the needs of those playing mtgo would take a huge amount of resources. sure there will be some cannibalization between the two platforms, but as long as there is a net increase in the population of those playing 'digital magic' in any form i dont think wizards will care.
granted this is all conjecture/speculation. who knows maybe wizards feels backed into a corner with their string of relative failures and will take drastic measures.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)a silver lining though is that with more frequent announcements maybe wotc will be more liberal with their decisions, because the shorter span to the next one means they can more readily act if they dont like what they are seeing. that and less time for a card to ingrain itself into the format means less backlash if they have to revert anything. wishful thinking i know, but.../shrug
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)wizards wants to replicate and leverage that. first as being profitable in its own right (buying gems), but as a stepping stone to their other products. the fast pace and visual appeal is a part of that.
regardless, that is getting off-topic. if we are looking at how arena affects modern, particularly if the format is in jeopardy. i dont think it is. yes wizards will have to address the rotation problem in arena, and its even plausible they create a format specifically to do that. however it is questionable whether they even expect that format to translate to paper; the same way that arena-standard hasnt been the same as regular standard.
a more broad question is what the divergence in digital and paper magic means for the game in general. im not sure there is a clear answer for that.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)edit: also, aazadan brought it up, but the barrier to adding a format like modern to arena is the logistics of adding such a large card pool. not only would it require extensive testing with their new rules engine, arena also employs custom graphics for many cards/interactions.
that said, wizards was quick to point out how flexible the new rules engine is supposed to be. particularly highlighting the ability to fluidly add new cards. granted there is a difference between adding a new set and adding a decade worth of sets.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)that said, you just have to ask yourself if there are good reasons to play decks within the 'top tier' (however you define it) that isn't humans. the answer is a resounding yes.
if action is ever taken against humans by wotc, it will be because humans got a new card and pulls away from the pack, or it will be under false pretenses to shake up the format. in the here and now though, nothing 'too good' is going on.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)