Subject: Re: Top reasons that the Dojo is killing Magic. Date: 5 May 1998 19:00:12 -0400 From: denelsbe@cs.unc.edu (Kevin Denelsbeck) Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.misc In article <6im8dv$3v5m$1@newssvr04-int.news.prodigy.com>, Nicol Bolas wrote: >Kevin Denelsbeck wrote in message <6ilpqv$ohv$1@capefear.cs.unc.edu>... >>I admire it as a pie-in-the-sky wish, but it's simply unrealistic to >>hope that people would only use Dojo decks to playtest against. >> >>Of course, why should people playtest against these decks if, in your >>world, they'd never have to face them in a tournament? > >Seeing a few of them is one thing, and seeing more CREATIVE variants (read: >more than 2 or so cards) is another. However, exact copies of the decks >played by mindless zombies is, IMO, bad. It's even worse when the decks are >played by people who do not fully understand all aspects of the deck, and >newbies who are getting their claim to fame off of the hard work of serious >deck builders. Don't tell me you've never seen a semi-newbie with at best >limited playing skill and little to no deck building skill winning or >placing high in tournaments that, by right, he should be getting cremated >in. You know the reason that this player is doing so well is that he is >merely playing a Dojo deck. Following pre-set directions is easy. His own >skills are doing little for him. And this is good how? Well, I've seen semi-newbies do well in reasonably small tournaments, but so what? Winning even a small tournament is a great thrill for many of us, and if someone does it with a Dojo deck that they play imperfectly, I don't consider it that big a sin. At the risk of sounding patronizing, it's like letting your kid beat you at . Small tournaments are not much fun if PT-level players show up, since the PT-level players usually dominate without much trouble, even against the poor slobs playing Dojo decks. Playing a Dojo deck is kinda like a 17-year-old borrowing his Dad's Porsche for an afternoon; he probably won't be able to make the car perform the way it's supposed to, but it's fun nonetheless, and he'll certainly blow away his buddies driving their Moms' Tercels. (Apologies for sexist example with implied moving violations.) I have certainly never seen a Dojotronic newbie win a tournament of any size or importance. Skill will almost always "out". And if it isn't mere skill that beats the Dojotronical, then certainly a well-prepared sideboard will (and does). As for people not learning from playing Dojo decks, there are very few decks which are SO simplistic that they don't require thought and judgment. Even Sligh is usually considered a control deck. SRB players may win the first game but are usually completely hosed by even average sideboarding. And while *any* deck can be played thoughtlessly, I think most players actually learn and adjust their play as they gain experience with a deck. This experience is especially valuable when done with proven decks, since it is very eye-opening to see how good decks work. I was amazed at the control I had the first time I played a Sligh variant. I messed with one a bit (putting in silliness like Hurr Jackals) and took it to a small tourney, where I rolled over everyone. (I had one guy Spell Blast the Jackal simply because he was near death and didn't want to get killed by it.) Playing that deck taught me a lot about how to play with (and against) creature decks. Same thing with TurboStasis. After seeing reports on the newsgroups, I built one and took it to the local hobby store for casual play in multiplayer. It was a blast! I learned as I went and simply countered anything that would kill Stasis or the Howling Mines. I ran everybody out of cards, and everybody wanted to play it again. That taught me a lot about deck focus, as well as a few things about bookkeeping :->. >>If I'm reading you right, once a deck is posted to the Dojo it should never >>be copied for tournament use. > >Not blindly, no. If you're going to enter a tournament, you should at least >do so using your own skills, and not leech off of other players' hard work. >I know this is idealistic, but it's the way I believe it should be. Then you would probably disagree with the following assertion: most Magic players are good at either deckbuilding or playing, but not both. This seems to be borne out by the evidence. Good deckbuilding, besides requiring an intuition that many of us lack (and are perhaps trying to cultivate by collating results in places like the Dojo), also requires a dedication to testing and retesting that may simply be beyond the free time of most of us. Why reinvent the wheel (and do a poor job of it, in all likelihood)? Having said all that, I will state that I never carry a copied deck to a tournament; I usually make something that has definite influences but is different enough that no one would call it a copy. I usually make some mistakes. (Toss in an untested card at the last second, that sort of thing.) It's a personal thing for me; I like the idea of beating someone with a deck that I know is mostly mine. But I appreciate that some people simply can't build good decks, and I don't feel like they should be excluded from the Magic tournament scene for this defect. Forcing them to play Sealed or Booster draft is usually torture enough for them; to exclude them from Constructed seems a bit elitist. >>Therefore, if it shows up, the Dojo deck's player would probably need to >defend his/her deck as >>"independently developed" or somesuch. > >As I've stated before, the Dojo has taken away what little incentive there >is left to originality in deck building. The non-dojo decks don't do as >well, as the dojo decks have been repeatedly and thoroughly playtested, and >if your new deck is good enough, and was thought of by someone else who >posted it 2 hours before your variant was first played, you are now forever >branded as a copier of his/her deck, though the work was also done by you. Well, two things are being mixed up here. First, every Dojo deck started out as a non-Dojo deck, and it seems like every major tournament has a "surprise" deck that came out of the blue to dominate the metagame and the field. So there's room for new decks and they certainly can succeed, and potentially anyone can make them. The Dojo is, as I said before, a crude barometer for what your surprise deck will have to deal with. For example, I have a deck right now which I think will give Sligh, Donais u5c, Flagpole 5cg, and TurboZvi a hard time -- which is great -- but Team En-kor/Two Pints and Trap decks will eat it for lunch. I expect that any of the above (and their variations) will show up at Regionals, and I'm grateful that the Dojo is there to publicize these decks and reveal what their weaknesses are. The second thing is the problem with attribution that you keep returning to. Is this really a major issue? I mean, "Sligh" is perhaps the canonical example of a misnamed deck ("Schneider" would be much more appropriate -- and avoid the confusion with "Sleight-Knight" and other such decks) and I haven't read that Jay Schneider is particularly upset about it. Sligh is certainly a much more successful deck archetype than some of the controversies and name-calling brewing on the newsgroups now. My feelings are that this is an insurmountable problem and that the Dojo is effectively "neutral" with respect to it. >And this is what the Dojo should be used for---to prepare for the metagame, >not to copy from it. I've stated that it's idealistic to want people not to >play Dojo decks, which is why I don't. However, I'm realistic enough to >know that most other people do, so the Dojo can be used as the reference it >should be to prepare for it. (Granted, I lose more often than I win, but >I'd rather try and fail than be a winning zombie. I'm not a glory hound.) I'm in agreement with you here. I guess you've been beaten by Dojo decks a few times? Not meant to be snide, but given that you like to make your own decks, and that you're certainly aware of the Dojo and know a Dojo deck when you see it, it sounds like (reading between the lines) that you've still been beaten by them even when you expected them. If so, I'm not sure what to say. Last year, when Extended first got going and before Tempest appeared, I made up a silly Enduring Renewal deck for a local Extended tournament. It had tons of removal so I could survive long enough to set up one of the infinite combos, and I won a few times on turn 4 or turn 5. But my sideboard was horrible, and my mana choices also needed some work. i got beaten by both white weenie and SRB; I got down a COP:Red vs. SRB, but he answered with Blood Moon on one turn and then Anarchy the next. I had just drawn an Arcane Denial but couldn't cast it because I had no source of blue mana. That was purely my fault. I should've expected both decktypes and sideboarded appropriately, but I didn't, and I lost as a result. I had no one to blame but myself, and I knew it. It was still fun to play, but I knew I could've done better. >>I wonder what the meta-metagame at Regionals will be -- what kind of >>deck would you make to beat a deck meant to beat red? Tough question! > >Well, around here, people use the pro-red creatures (chickens and priests, >along w/blacksmiths), along with bottle gnomes or null rods. Dread of >night usually handles most of the pro red stuff, null rods handle the >gnomes. That Two Pints deck is something else. I'm tempted to muss with that a bit for Regionals. >>The same should go if a poor player shows up at a tourney with a Dojo >>deck. If you consider yourself a good player at all, you should >>probably defeat him/her. If you lose, it had better be to a tragically >>bad draw, because the Dojo has been there for you to find, make, and >>playtest against this person's deck. > >Yes, but let's face it. If you're faced by a conscript, a scroll, and 2 >flunkies by turn 3 for example, you've probably lost, no matter how good >your hand is. Nonsense! :-> Your Wall of Blossoms will handle somebody, your Uktabi Orangutan just took out the Cursed Scroll and is eying the Conscripts, and you have an Earthquake as backup. Not a problem :->. >>Similarly, while my Magic skills are pretty good, I have gotten waxed >>the few times I've played PT-level players. I wish I'd won, but I >>missed tricks that these players knew and they also made some good >>guesses about the contents of my fairly-original deck. That's the way >>it goes. > >And how do you get the experience to sucessfully compete with these players? >By copying dojo decks, or learning for yourself by getting repeatedly >trashed by them? If you want the accelerated solution, you join a good playgroup. Otherwise, you play as much as you can, perhaps over the net if you have access. The best way to get better at playing in tournaments is probably to play in tournaments, though. >I didn't get past round 1 of any tournament for the first 6 months or so of >tournament play. Why? lack of experience. I expected this, and actually, >I liked it that way. I didn't want to win by sheer luck. I could learn >from their superior skills, and integrate them into my own playing and deck >building skills. That's how they developed, and after 4 years, I'm proud to >have achieved the level of mediocre. :-) The point is, How do you develop >these skills by copying dojo decks? If you play a Dojo deck well, then you already have the skills whose loss you're lamenting. If you don't play it well, you should get beat by superior players who are aware of the metagame and are just waiting for pigeons like you to enter the tournament. Frustrated, you realize that you were outplayed and resolve to get better. You allocate more time to playtesting, perhaps joining a group, and you start to learn little tricks. Then one day you have an idea for a deck and build a rough version of it. It sucks, except that about 10% of the time it does what it's supposed to do and everybody's impressed for five minutes. You spot the weaknesses and start fixing them, and your winning percentage starts to go up. Then a tournament comes up one day and you think, what-the-hay, I'll try out this deck I've been working on and am completely comfortable with. And you win the tournament. Kevin -- Kev @ UNC & Hope College _|_ "Every social war is a battle between the very denelsbeATcsDOTuncDOTedu | few on both sides who care and who fire their www.cs.unc.edu/~denelsbe | shots across a crowd of spectators.' GO HEELS! /"\ -- Murray Kempton, on flame wars? (1955)