From: dgray@merle.acns.nwu.edu (Daniel M Gray) Subject: Re: Origens Report- Magic Revitalised !? Part 1 (long) Date: 10 Jul 96 01:55:40 GMT Brick@ccmailer.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de (Daniel Brickwell) writes: >Hi, >back to the, hopefully, last leg of my report. >Nationals >------------ >The rest of trhe final 4: >3) Dennis Bentley Necro B/R, beat Zila Jason in a 2:1 Heartbreaker, by a >stripmine, vise, stripmine, stripmine, Black Knight, Black Knight winin the >deciding 3rd game. (Like I said, a spoiler remains a spoiler even if it >seemingly runs contrary to strategy. He also made me lose 10 bucks to Henry >because one Necro did make it to the final 4, but it was the only >non-standard necro of the bunch. Thereby proving my arguement that the >opponent knowing your deck is too big a disadvantage to overcome.) Jason, who stormed through the Swiss rounds(he was the only 6-0 player) got cheesed by the Strip Mine in that last game, pure and simple. I didn't get to watch it, as I was judging the Baxter/Leiher match at the next table, but I hear it wasn't pleasant. >4) Michael Long playing Turbostasis won in the probably closest match against >Travis Thomas'es W/G Titanias Song Deck. It's 1:1. Micheal has the Lock down, >but Travis has still some lands untapped, and Micheal is low on life (2 or >so) and cannot use any of the non-island lands for the stasis. Travis has an >Titanias Song out which stopped the Zuran Orb before it was cast and i Think >the Ivory Tower was used to block a Felwar before the lock came down. Travis >Armageddons successfully. Next Round is the last round before he runs out >of cards. He can attack with his Sol Grail though. Michael draws an Island >and i think a force of Will and plays his Feldon's Cane! Travis tries to >sword the cane, but the swords is Force of willed. The cane blocks the sol >grail and Travis runs out of cards. Michael is at one life (Force of Will). This was not a nice match. It went on forever, there was a huge argument in the middle, resulting in warnings for both Thomas(for unsportsmanlike conduct for calling Long names) and Long(for "talking too fast," and not slowing down enough to let his opponent do something). An interesting ending, but by the time it ended(3:55am) I was so tired and so sick of Long(who had been a significant pain in the butt to the judging staff all day long), I no longer really cared to see the end. > >btw Turbostasis I heard the deck was developed by the a Finnish named Tommi >Hovi and further refined by Tapani Utrianen. Derek Rank introduced it to the >others and 4 decided to play i at the nationals (with quite some success I >might add.) I heard it was developed by several European players as well. I got the impression they were Scandanavian, but don't recall hearing any names. Derek Rank would be the guy to ask. >Magic Revitalised !? - My insights >----------------------------------- >1) Necro- Dead?? >Even though Necro made a very poor showing for the quality and the quantity >of the players playing it, it is far from dead, with Dystopia, Contagion and >perhaps Phantasmal Fiend it has gained very strong cards. Then why were the >Nationals no Necrofest? Nationals really was sort of a Necrofest. Bethmo and Jeff Lin counted 44 black decks(40 of which were Necro or Necro variants) out of the 122 players. 5 of the top 16 decks were Necro(although two, Bentley's & Justice's, were variants). Most of the standard Necrodecks just didn't do well, mostly because everyone was expecting them(there were at least 25 decks I would classify as "anti-Necro," that didn't do very well against anything else. Rick Latham's R/G fast creature/burn deck, which made the top 16, was probably the most successful of these). Conversely, NOBODY(virtually nobody) excepted the TurboStasis or Baxter's deck, which explains why they did so well(and, of course, the fact they were played by some truly great players-- Baxter, Place, Dove, and Long[despite a somewhat annoying personality] are truly among the best). >In my opinion the disadvantage of the oponent knowing your deck as well as >you can translate into a loss of win percentage. Say Necro has a win >percentage of 60 percent against all decks except Necro, while the next best >deck has a win percentage of 55 percent, except against itself and runs 50 >percent against necro. Then every good player will play Necro because of the >5 percent. As soon as every good player starts playing necro though, you lose >lets say 8 percent because everyone knows your deck, plus you only run 50 >percent against the other necros, which can make up 50 percent of the field. >Your new winpercentage is then about 51 percent. The other deck with the then >52.5 win (55% against all decks 50% against necro) percentage is now >surperior. >Does this little math game mean that necro is weaker? No, Necro is still as >strong as it ever was (even stronger with Dystopia, shudder). It is just >losing the metagame. >How Necro lost proved to me, sadly, that the problem is far from over. This sounds like a plausible theory to me. >2) The Organization- direction of the Pro-Tour >I liked the format, know that's not strong enough I loved the idea of playing >in the IA/AL format, I only wished you could have adapted decks after the >first day. I think they were trying to avoid good metagame guesses like those Justice and Henry Stern pulled off at '95 Nationals in both the PT and Nationals. >I _hated_ the air conditioning and I must say that you should look into how >you process players deck lists, so that disqualifications or forfits do not >happen again. All of us who were stuck in that gigantic room for most of the weekend hated the damn air conditioning. Most of the judges, including myself, spent about 55 hours in there between Wednesday night and when Nationals finally ended at 4 am Sunday morning. The players who played in both spent a long time in there as well. I must say the player's should pay more attention to what they're doing when they write down their lists. The rules specifically state that it is the player's responsibility to ensure that he or she has not only a legal deck, but records it on the sheet properly. Random deck and sideboard checks, as well as the complete mandatory deck checks done on the top 16 Nationals decks, are the judges' BEST defense against serious cheating. The guy who got DQ'd going into the round of 16 not only had only 59 cards in his deck, but he only RECORDED 59 cards in his deck. That's totally unacceptable. Two other top 16 players(Rick Latham & Pete Leiher) were forced to forfeit a game as they had recorded their decks incorrectly(Latham changed the number of Forests on his sheet from 9 to 8, but then failed to remove the 9th FOrest from the deck. Leiher wrote down "4 Hymn to Tourach" twice instead of "4 Hymn to Tourach" and "4 Hypnotic Specter" on his sheet). All professional sports, from chess to NFL football, has rules that are specific and inviolable. You break the rules, even unintentionally, you pay the price. >When will Europe get it's Pro Tour? How about Berlin??? :) There will be a '96-'97 PT stop in Europe, specifically Paris in April, 1997. Dates and location TBA. >Seriously you should atleast hold more qualifiers in Europe and pay airfare >for anyone who qualifies if you want to call it DC_I_. I heard the second >place in Antwerpen qualified, but did not get airfare and so could not >attend. I agree. Probably the only European players most Americans have ever heard of are Bertrand Lestree, and now, Olle Rade. I met and talked to several European players, many of whom were quite good, and several others who admitted to me they learned a lot at Origins and hoped it would improve their games. One fellow, Gary Campbell of Scotland, even managed to pull two Moxes in his deck for the Beta Bonus Challenge. >3) The poor showing of PCL. >Sorry guys, but you have to admit you did almost as bad as I did, and that's >saying something. In my opinion you had the same problem necro did, you were >playing the same deck, that alone may have cost you some win percentage >because other people had heard what you were playing. I guess that a another >reason may have been that yopu tested mostly gainst each other reinforcing >group beliefs. From what I heard both Baxter's Titanias Song deck and the >Turbostasis Deck ideas came from cooperation between different playing groups >even nationalities. (This is ofcourse a not so subtle plot to get you guys to >post more on the net. ;) The PCL PT3 deck(aka "BugBind") was a good solid deck, I think; they just didn't do very well(although Mario & Frank both made it to the second day). BugBind probably wasn't THE best PT3 deck, but I liked it. In Nationals, they did fairly well. Justice made top 16, Chalice started off virtually unbeatable going like 8-1 games and 4-0 matches in the first four rounds, but then ran into Jason Zila in the fifth round and also lost in the sixth(Chalice finished 18th overall). Mario just had bad luck, and, as is typical for him, had to play his teamates(If I remember correctly, he had to play Frank in PT3 and Preston in Nationals). Frank did alright. Preston wasn't playing Necro, and while his creature-heavy green deck has kicked butt in tourney before, Nationals just wasn't his day. Many of the good decks came from cooperation(TurboStasis was borrowed and modified from some Europeans by Derek Rank, and he introduced it to Long, PLace, and Dove, and they all built a solid version of it that worked). I don't know about cooperation on Baxter's deck(George'll have to answer that one), but I didn't see another deck like it in the tourney. Dan Gray >Well that's all for now. Comments are as always welcome. >Friendly Greetings, >Daniel >Ceterum censeo Orbem Zurensem esse interdicendum. >(And otherwise I think that the Zuran Orb should be banned.) >PS: A little story about the Orb from Mark Chalice. PT 3 Mark has Stormbind >out and about 12 life. The opponent has Necro out, 7 life. Mark stormbinds >him for six and empties his hand. Necro Player can draw no more cards. >Consults for the Zuran Orb. Plays it draws two cards. Next round Mark binds >him. The necro player puts down a land and a creature. Draws two cards. Mark >binds him again. The necro player attacks lays a land and a creature etc. >Mark loses.