Generally I measure skill based on how many decisions you usually make during a game. The more decisions you have to make and the more lines of play you have, the more complex a deck is.
Affinity has some very interesting decisions: how and when do you use Ravager ? Am I sacking it ? am I saving it for later ? do I go all in ? And there’s the tension with plating.
Dredge is actually more complex than people think - first what op hand you keep is something very difficult - do you keep a 1 lander ? do you keep multiple lands but no green mana ? Then there are many decisions: do you dredge trol for maximum speed, or loam for value ? am I overcomitting to the board, or do I try to go for a big conflagrate ? And of course there is the sequencing for maximum value, and postboard the game becomes even more complex because you need to play around many things (anger, rip, relic, etc). Btw, I love zombie loam.
The problem with burn is that all spells do the same thing and the plan is always the same, which leaves for very little decisions. Sure, there are some, but most of the time they are obvious.
It is worth noting that I’m referring to modern Burn, not legacy. And yes, at the highest level of play there’s always more things to learn
Pertho
6640
Emmanuelb was doing good and then saying silly shit. Burn spells may all deal damage, but you have a combination of instants, sorceries, casting costs and then playing the hands with creatures properly.
Saying what you said is how you scrub out with burn.
BR3N7
6641
Seriously! Is this thread really debating fun/complexity level of decks now? You realize this is 100% subjective and no way to back your point as everyone thinks differently right?
Burn to me is boring and linear but to some people they make it there only way to play magic. They want to sling lightning bolt every match win or lose and thats what matters to them, that is there enjoyment of Magic and what makes them to enjoy the game. And I can go on about every Modern/Legacy deck but in the end there will be another person who sees it the exact opposite way I do.
**Magic deck choice especially in Modern/Legacy is about falling in LOVE not like and not caring what everyone else thinks about your deck choice or its position in the meta. This has been my Achilles heel so far personally as I try to force the marriage of a top tier deck say like a Storm in Legacy and in the end I just end up cheating on the bitch cause I am not really in love with it and try to force that mentality in my brain I must play top tier which is wrong and losing proposition. Same goes for Fighting games and what makes like SF5 pure ass, if you don’t play top tier you will lose a lot more which you have to accept for playing Zangief etc but your wins will be more satisfying and you did you. I can tell the difference in the last little over a month in regards to my outlook on Magic. I have played WAY more lately cause I found a deck I highly enjoy in Legacy and am having fun with it and that only keeps growing match by match win or lose. When I tried to force other decks I felt like it was a punishment to test things. In Modern I found this a lot easier to figure out. I liked Affinity mainly cause it brought me back to 2003 but in the end I love playing decks like Prison as it comes natural.
**
Naeras
6642
Yeah, this is all personal preference. A friend of mine thinks Mtg is boring unless he’s piloting super-durdly blue control decks, in which case he’ll gleefully giggle like a little kid throughout the entire match. Another friend of mine plays burn and only burn. Another friend of mine loves goblins/red aggro in general. Another is a sworn GBx-midrange-player in every format. Another refuses to play anything that doesn’t have heavy graveyard-interactions. I mostly prefer decks that focus on disrupting my opponent. etc etc
All of these rely on different mindsets. Who’s to say what’s boring or not here?
This is literally the least of the problems I have with that game, for all its gameplay issues it’s at least fairly balanced.
ETEP1
6643
Hey, guys. Hope everybody is doing well. Trying to read up on this forum again so if this was talked about in depth I apologize. I haven’t had the chance to go play Magic in possibly a year. I still love the game, though. I have some thoughts on Modern and how to “save” the format. Feel free to leave your thoughts and interpretations.
[list]
[] Have set rotations: I read that card shops in japan were splitting modern up into A and B formats, setting a cutoff at M15 to create “frontier”. I don’t think this is a bad idea but it still fails to address the issue people have with Modern (stale) by creating a smaller Modern 2.0, that will grow over time and take the shape of Modern 1.0, leaving the community where it started with the original Modern format. The thrill of “Frontier” will last for a moment and then disappear once the frontier format is broken. Instead, I think WOTC should look to mix and match sets to create Modern Seasons. Doing this will create infinite combinations of Modern Metas – keeping the format fresh and exciting. If a block fails, its ok! It isn’t permanent.
[] Set rotations could help card price: This theory is based off supply and demand which has proven true in bannings, un-bannings, set rotations, etc. With constantly changing Modern Seasons cards would become easier to acquire as they rotate out. Of course, cards would also become more expensive based off of speculation (we see this in standard all the time with new set spoilers). But the new combination of sets could cause for certain cards to have their time to shine where they would normally fail in a typical modern format.
[/list]
I have a preference for grindy decks. I’ll play anything* but the satisfaction I get from slowly amassing an advantage through incremental 2-for-1 trading and drawing an extra card here and there is 10x what I get from winning through killing someone before turn 5 or getting infinite advantage from a sweeper or draw-X spell.
- Not 100% true. I hate playing with or against blue-based tempo decks.
On Modern: I don’t think it needs rotations. I think it needs better curating. WotC had the right idea with the frequent bannings and unbannings to shake up the meta. Their mistake was to make the process opaque. Players should have access to watch-list info so they don’t spend $1000 on Twin only to have it get banned out of existence a month later.
ETEP1
6645
Before pod and twin both got banned I knew a handful of people looking to jump to modern. They made the jump, invested in the decks, and definitely regretted it when WOTC made the ban a few weeks later.
I’m just going to go ahead and repost this, because it seems relevant again:
Spoiler
- The main target is to make the distribution of archetypes and colors as equitable as possible.
- The secondary target is to make the list of unique played cards and archetypes as large as it can be.
- WotC will divide the year into “format evaluation periods”. Each period can be 3 months, six months or 12 months.
- WotC will always introduce change at the end of each evaluation period, regardless of format health. The change will be as small as possible, but the longer the evaluation period the more changes need to be made.
- At the start of each evaluation period, all stats and watchlists relating to the previous period are published to the player base, along with the changes for the current period.
- As the current period progresses, stats of all colors and archetypes that are used in tournaments are gathered.
- Colors and archetypes that have more than their fair share of the pie get put into a ban-watchlist.
- Colors and archetypes that have less than their fair share of the pie get put into a help-watchlist.
- As the current period ends, WotC compares stats of the current period with the previous one. If the stats got worse, all changes from the previous period are rolled back.
6.1 In the event of a roll-back, WotC tries to improve the format based on the previous period’s stats again.
6.2 If the stats got better, WotC tries to improve the format based on the current period’s stats.
6.3 Cards from the ban-watchlist may get the axe. Cards useful to the help-watchlist may be unbanned. The help-watchlist will also be taken into account when designing new cards for upcoming sets.
- Go back to step 1.
Basically I want to make the bans/unbans both frequent and predictable. The main complaints I hear about bannings are that “players spend money on cards they think will be playable for a long time, that get banned” and “the community should be given time to solve format problems without bans”.
With the above system, no one will buy a card on the ban-watchlist with the expectation of playing it for years. The community also has a clearly defined time-frame with which to prove that the problem cards can be solved without bans. If you can’t beat it in one evaluation period, then you can’t beat it period. The format stays fresh, stale archetypes have the highest chance of being toned down, underplayed archetypes get help.
It should be trivial for a player to go to a web site from WotC and see that a card from <archetype x> will definitely get banned, and it’ll be either <card a>, <card b> or <card c>. The same player would also be able to see that <archetype x> is not winning, but players keep running it. This indicates that the player base “wants that archetype to be good” so WotC will be unbanning or printing new cards to help it soon. No one would be able to complain that “WotC should have given the community a chance to figure out how to beat <archetype y>”.
ETEP1
6647
I’m sure it could work. Now implementing it…hmmmm
Let’s see:
- play creatures first. always.
- play instants on your opponent’s turn
- be mana eficient
But you can enlighten me on the complex decisions you have to make here.
Also, you can debate the complexity of a deck, and I think it is an interesting topic. And no, nobody tried to debate the “fun” factor. Oh, did I forget to mention that when I said “burn is crazy boring” it was just my own personal, higly subjective oppinion ? My apology.
BR3N7
6649
Burn is complex as it has decisions to make as early as turn 1 that can easily make or break the entire match. Its level of sequencing is at the higher end of skill and knowledge actually. Format/match-up knowledge is more important with a deck like Burn than most decks as you need to know what worried about more when you are very linear.
The deck is scrubby in the fact that is redundant and a monkey can win by just playing 7 spells but there is a reason you don’t see burn winning as much as it should because most people are not experts. There will be matches where they had to set up a low % line that not only few will see but can actually accomplish. This is why its has the stigmata is does as its cheap and lots of BAD players pilot it.
And a lot of the bad players don’t know how to sideboard properly as well.
I think its easier to pilot in Modern than say Legacy where you really need to know the format.
I guess you can debate anything all you want, I just see no real reason personally when you can’t validate one party or the other.
As a burn player the first thing you do every turn is count all your damage in hand and in board. This number informs your gameplan and not doing it is a great way to end the tournament with a 3-4 or similar record.
As for playing creatures first, for a format as fast as Modern, you typically need to do some math as early as turn 2 to confirm whether Eidolon will help you or your opponent more. If it helps your opponent more you need to figure out if you can trick him into killing it. Even in the mid-game you need to do some forecasting to figure out if you play instants then a top-decked Eidolon to save life, or if you play Eidolon first to be flexible. Finally there are awkward games where the opponent is mana-screwed and you may or may not want to attack with Goblin Guide. Also you need to remember every card revealed by Goblin Guide and use this in your calculations.
You also need to play around countermagic or protection spells. It happens a lot that you notice the opponent may have Spell Pierce on turn 2, and you could play around it by leaving mana up, but if you leave 2 mana up every turn you will slow down too much. The Infect match-up is very tricky unless you draw Grim Lavamancer or Spellskite, in which case it becomes slightly better.
And that’s just game 1, which is light-years simpler than sideboarded games. Beating sideboard cards is what separates the good Burn players from the master Burn players. Just figuring out how to sideboard for maximum impact without diluting your deck is a huge challenge.
Pertho
6651
I’ve always said that the most stressful decks to play, and coincidentally ones i tend to do well with, are red aggro decks. They have very little room for error a lot of the times.
I like oldschool slow poke Decks that have both Shared Fate and Stasis with Isochron Scepter shenanigans
I mostly just limit myself to standard but I like decks that build engines, high synergy stuff that has multiple win cons. Token sacrifice like aristocrats with Ormendhal as a backup for instance. I also like red/blue decks that get crazy efficient use of spells with stuff like prowess.
You should build an artifact-based Commander deck. Not combo like Sharuum, but something rube-goldberg-centric with Clock of Omens and all sorts of activated abilities. Maybe Breya, or Glissa the Traitor. Sydri or Karn should also work.
Prized Amalgam is a sweet engine in standard. Unfortunatelly it loses pretty badly to Gb delirium
OH wow. Glissa is back!!!
