Subject: FW: Limited vs. Constructed
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 07:40:21 -0500
From: "Mike Donovan" dono2@pceinc.com
To: "'webmaster@classicdojo.org'" webmaster@classicdojo.org

Frank,

I've been reading the new thread on limited vs. constructed, and I thought I'd add my own opinions to that post. One person who commented described 3 skills, which he called "innovation," "tuning," and "playing." I have a similar system, but I consider play skill to be equally important in all formats. I have another skill to add, and I tend to break up constructed formats into 2 classes: Type II and/or Block Constructed and Extended, Type 1.5 and Type I. In my opinion, play skill is equally important in all all constructed and limited formats, but different skills exert dominance in each format. My opinion of the dominant skills are listed below:

Creativity is what I see as the dominant skill in Extended, Type 1.5, and Type 1 (although there are so many broken cards in Type I, that matches in which both players have the power 9 are usually determined by "luck of the draw"). Since Type 1.5 is almost dead, Extended gets the main focus here. Extended is my favorite constructed format, because you have so many deck design options. Tuning is MUCH less important in Type II and Constructed Block formats, because someone will come up with the innovations and post them. I come up with a lot of the Type II combos, myself, but I really don't care about "deck fame," so I don't bother to post them. Type II and Block Constructed tend to constrict creativity so much that some good innovator ALWAYS finds the good combos. Because of this, fine tuning is much more important in Type II than in Extended. In Extended, having "real" dual lands also makes it easier to construct 4-5 color decks without any fear of mana problems. Not having to worry about mana removes another restriction to your creativity. As a result, Extended has a much more "infinite" pool of decks to draw from than Type II. Let me give you all one prime example of why fine tuning is much less important in Extended than in Type II.

Last December, during the Extended Pro Qualifier season for PT LA '98, Mike Dove was in town over Christmas. We discussed Extended quite a bit, and we examined the GP-San Fran decks, and we were wondering why the person with the top 8 Vineyard deck was playing blue with Counterspells and Man-O-War. Man-O-War just gives someone something to sink the Vineyard mana into, and Counterspells require you to hold back land for counter-purposes. We decided that Eladamri's Vineyard was much more suited for play in a "proactive" control deck, rather than a reactive one. We also decided that 2 cards in particular were much better than any other cards with the Vineyard: Cursed Scroll and Stormbind. After Mike left and went back to LA, the first weekend in January, I threw together a red/black/green Vineyard deck and I played it in a PTQ in Memphis. I had designed this deck in about 5-10 minutes and I had played it for maybe 1-2 hours. It's creature base consisted of Ernham Djinns, Wildfire Emissaries, Jolreal's Centaurs, Sedge Trolls, and a couple each of Nekrataal and Uktabi Orangutan. I made the top 4 with this deck out of 114 people, missing an invitation by one game. In the semi-finals against Leonard Richardson's Sligh deck, my 2 Vineyards, Ernham, and Cursed Scroll shut him down, but I drew no Vineyards in game #2 or game #3, and he came back and beat me. The next weekend, I played the same deck in Indianapolis, and I only went 3-3 with it. After Indy, I decided to remove the black and add some white in it's place. I had found that the deck crushed Sligh if it got a Vineyard out, so I added 2 Enlightened Tutors, which could also get Cursed Scrolls and Stormbinds. I added Swords in place of Nekrataals and Edicts, and I replaced the Creeping Molds with Disenchants. Furthermore, I added one basic plains, along with 2 Tithes, which helped me against Blood Moon. I had no good substitution for the 2 Sedge Trolls, so I got a little crazy and I played 2 Walking Walls, instead. Without playtesting the new version of the deck for a SINGLE game, I finished in the top 4 in Ft. Wayne (out of about 85 people) and top 8 in Iowa City (in a VERY tough field of about 120, in which about a dozen people were already qualified). The last weekend I played a PTQ, I went 2-2 in Indianapolis, because the "pairings gods" matched me up against Stompy decks in rounds 3 and 4, and there were probably only about a half dozen Stompy decks in the entire field of 150 or so. BTW, my deck won approximately 65-70% of it's matches against PT Jank-Style decks. Jank didn't pack enough Auras and Disenchants to shut it down.

After I told Mike Dove of my first success in Memphis, he put a red/green/black version together and he kept tweaking it, by adding Stupor for a little discard. Mike ended up making the top 8 in 2 out of 3 PTQs he played in. While neither of us qualified with a version of the deck, we had designed a deck that was very capable of qualifying, and we made 2 top 4 showings and additional top 8 showings out of 8 qualifiers. Neither of us did much playtesting, either.

Tuning and diligence is the main skill needed in Type II. There are enough Zvi's out there to put their ideas on the DOJO that ideas for powerful decks get out very fast in Type II. I often come up with a lot of Type II decks that are "not quite good enough to win," but it takes a lot of tweaking and fine tuning to "push them over the top." In Type II and block constructed, the smaller card pool results in the "top decks" being discovered relatively quickly. I find the limitations of Type II and especially Block Constructed formats to almost "smother" my creative process. I much prefer the freedom of Extended in regards to deck construction. As a result, I rarely play much Type II or Block constructed except in preparation for and during fairly major events, like Regionals and Pro Tour Qualifiers.

The skill that I believe is the most important in Limited formats is "improvization." I define this as the ability to "work with what you get" as in Sealed Deck, or to "know what to draft" in draft. Many top constructed players struggle in this area, as many top limited players struggle in the areas of creativity and tuning.

Overall, I'd rate my playing skill as solid, and my creativity and improvization abilities as exceptional, but my tuning abilities as poor to fair. On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd rate myself as follows, when it comes to these abilities:

Play Skill:           8
Creative Skills:      9
Tuning Skills:        4
Improvization Skills: 9

I believe that each "sub-format" of Magic requires varying degrees of skill. Saying that "limited" requires less skill than constructed is a very ignorant statement. I agree that Sealed Deck is more luck oriented than constructed, but Booster Draft and Rochester Draft require every bit as much skill as constructed. Anyway, below, I'll list all the formats, in my order of preference of play and what skills I believe are the dominant ones required for each. Play skill is assumed to be an equal prerequisite of all formats.

1. Booster Draft: To me, booster draft is by far the most enjoyable Magic format to play in. A lot of skill is required in drafting, deck construction, and play. I'd rate it as one of the most skilled formats of Magic. Improvization skills reign supreme in draft.
2. Extended: To me, Extended is the ideal constructed format. Having "real dual lands" and a wide open card pool is what makes Extended fun for me. Because of the "wide open" nature of Extended, meta-gaming is somewhat less critical than having a well-rounded, solid deck. You have to beat a wide variety of decks in Extended to win, than you do in Type II or block constructed. Creative skills are more important in Extended than tuning skills, although tuning skills help. Creative deck builders like me who hate to playtest have a much better chance to do well in Extended than in Type II. Extended is a highly-skilled format in my opinon.
3. Rochester Draft: I like Rochester Draft for the same reasons I like booster draft, but I don't like the added element of skill that Rochester requires over booster draft. People with photographic memories have an unfair advantage in Rochester over us "normal" people who don't. I'm lucky to remember what I draft, much less everyone else at the table. To me, having a photographic memory should not be part of the skill of playing Magic. In fact, for Rochester to be fair, I believe that everyone should get a copy of the list of cards drafted by everyone else in the draft. This would eliminate the advantage that people with the "ancillary" skill of photographic memories have over "normal" players. Because having a photographic memory is an asset in Rochester, I believe Rochester to require more skill overall than any other form of Magic.
4. Type 1.5: Although Type 1.5 is basically dead now, I'd enjoy if I ever got chances to play it. Unfortunately, the time demanded by Extended, Type II, and draft formats have squeezed Type 1.5 out of my schedule. It's another excellent format, though, like Extended.
5. Sealed Deck: I enjoy Sealed Deck, but I believe that far too much luck is involved in it. If "special 90-card sealed decks" of relatively equal strength were packaged for tournaments, I'd like Sealed much better as a competitive format. I see the card pool a person gets in a Sealed Deck tournament as about a 20-30% luck factor. The fact that you almost always have to play 3-colors in Sealed adds another 10% luck, in my opinion. You can build the most conservative Sealed Deck possible out of your card pool and still get color-screwed. I believe that Sealed Deck does require a lot of skill, but a "luck handicap" of +/- 30-40% is also included in Sealed, in it's current state. My opinion is that Booster Draft should be the format for all Limited PTQs so the "luck factor" is reduced. A good player usually does win Sealed Deck qualifiers, but it's very difficult for excellent players with bad decks or bad draws to beat good players with excellent decks and/or draws. Booster Draft isn't nearly as "judge intensive" as Rochester Draft is, so it could be run relatively smoothly in qualifiers. Maybe a good system to make sure top-skilled players qualify for the Pro Tour would be to run all Limited Qualifiers as Booster Draft, with the finals being Rochester Draft.
6. Type 1 would still be relatively enjoyable for me to play if it weren't dead. With all the broken Type 1 cards now, Type 1 does have a lot of luck involved on who draws the best broken card. For instance, if someone goes first drops a Library of Alexandria and a couple of Moxes and then Timetwisters, he has a HUGE card advantage. Whoever gets Library of Alexandria and Ancestral Recall on the draw also has a big advantage. Type 1 is a great fun format, and creative skills are more necessary than tuning skills, but WOTC has successfully "killed" it, except in a few places. As a result, Type 1 has also been squeezed out of my play schedule.
7. I find Type II to be a "tolerable" format to play. Tuning and dedication are a requirement in Type II, and because that is my "weak area" and the part of the game that I enjoy the least, Type II is often on the "back burner" of my play schedule. Type II only takes the "top spot" in my playing time in preparation for Regionals and events of that nature. One of the reasons that I don't like Type II as much as more "wide open" constructed formats is that meta-gaming is critical in Type II. The ability to "guess the metagame" and tune your deck to make it through the field is VERY important in Type II. The skills necessary to be a top player in Type II take more time to implement than those necessary to do well in "wide open" constructed formats and limited formats. Since I work full time and consider Magic a "serious hobby," rather than a full time job, I spend more effort on limited formats than Type II. To me, Type II DOES take a lot of skill, but there is also about a 10-15% luck factor involved that I refer to as "the pairings gods." It is nearly impossible to build a Type II that consistently beats everything, and most decks do have a nemesis. As a result, it's best to play Type II decks who's "nemesis" decks aren't very popular.
8. I absolutely HATE ALL block constructed formats, because they're like Type II with additional "deck construction claustrophobia." I feel "boxed in" trying to come up with a good block constructed deck. I like to have more resources in the legal card pool. The "secrets" in these formats get out VERY quickly, and tournaments turn into "paper/scissors/rock" style match-ups. The metagame is far too important in these formats. I ONLY play these formats in qualifiers. I really wish that constructed PTQs would be Type II rather than block formats. Block formats are fine for "one-shot" events like a Pro Tour, but having to suffer through a full 2-month PTQ season of them is sheer torture.

So, to summarize, the following events are the ones you'd be most likely to play against me at:

1. Pro Tour Qualifiers or Regionals, whatever the format.
2. Booster Draft or Sealed Deck side tournaments at PTQs or at local tourneys.
3. Pro Tours and/or Nationals, in the rare cases that I qualify. Thus far, the major events I've played in are: PT NY#1, PT Atlanta, Type I Side PT @ PT Dallas, PT LA '97, US Invitational '97, and PT Mainz. Yes, there is a strong limited bias in this pattern.
4. Type II, when there's no limited to play in or nothing better to do.
5. Extended, because there are so few of them, outside of PTQs.

My belief is that ALL formats of tournament Magic require a lot of play skill. Some formats are more luck-based than others, but to say that "limited" is more luck-based than constructed is a very uneducated statement. Sealed Deck IS the most luck-based format in all of Magic, but Rochester Draft and Booster Draft are among the most skilled. If you get a bad sealed deck, you're unlucky, but if you draft a bad deck, the only person you have to blame is yourself.

Now that I've bored everyone with this extremely long article, I'll welcome all comments, suggestions, flames, criticisms, and/or praise anyone wants to offer.

Mike Donovan
(Occasional) Phasing Magic Pro (Limited - In, Constructed - Out)
Certified Pro Tour Scrub, but at least I've BEEN there. LOL