Subject: Publishing decklists. Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 23:46:24 +0100 From: "pksme" To: CC: Whether or not your the Ian Meagher I know from Dublin, I have just gotta reply to this. I disagree with Dorian, when he says that publishing deck lists are ruining the game as a whole. They do. Having the decklists published, espcailly for successful decks, not only makes the good decks available for anyone to play, (poviding they have the cards of course), but because the decks are widly available to anyone with internet access, the whole "metagame" part of deck creation would not exist. Hugely untrue. If the decklists were not available from the dojo, then the local metagame would consist of what various players who would generally copy decks see winning the week before, or they believe will win from what little testing they do themselves. The metagame is much more varied due to the Dojo effect, as any player anywhere can see all the decks that are winning from around the world, and choose one at random, making it far more difficult to judge what other people willl be playing. It also weeds out the poorer players. Ok, anyone can pick up a SRB and play it well, but a more complicated deck like U5Donais or ProsBloom, requires a much higher level of play. The weaker players are only reinforced by the existance of a location where they can take decks and copy them card for card. Yes, anyone can pick up a SRB deck, and odds are that even a beginning player can play that deck to a sufficient level to be able to beat a better player due to good draws or a bad pairing. For example, if that poorer player did not have access to a printed decklist, whats to say that he wouldnt find something like Furnace spirit or Pallimud to be a strong card in the deck? Obviously these are cards that are slightly sub-optimal, but if we did not have the dojo as a source to tell us this, who says that a player wouldnt be using these cards, therefore increasing the chances of you beating them in a matchup, purely from being a better deck builder. Basically, the poorer players are harder to beat no matter what you are playing or how complicated it is, especially in an environment where a deck such as sligh is one of the easiest to play, has a large number of common cards and can win consistently against all opposition. For example if I take the U5Donais to a tournament and met Mike Donais, playing the exact same deck, who would win? Mike Donais would, (at least I expect him to), because not only is he the creator of the deck, but he is also by far the better player. Assuming you are a decent enough player, and have tested the deck properly, knowing the ins and outs of it, then I would expect the player with the better draws to win. Having the deck lists widely available is a good thing in my opinion, as it gives everybody the chance that many to play "the deck that won the Atlanta Protour" and find out some of the extra little quirks and tricks that make Pro-tour players better than us average scrubs, thus bettering our own game. The pro players win because of a greater network of good players working together, and because they are prepared to put in 40+ hours of testing a week in order to win. They also know the rules better than the average players, and have played their relative decks hundreds of times, knowing what they expect to draw, and how they deal with every possible threat. IN addition they have more accurate information about the metagame, and know how to deal with it. This is why they win more consistently than your average player. I think that it's a selfish idea for some people to ban deck listings altogether, while they might be able to create excellent decks that do very well in tournament, there are many more that fail miserably to make a deck that preforms consistantly in tournament play. And such is part of the game. If there are people that can build and play decks and win consistenty, why should they not be considered better players than those who who copy decks and can win providing they get good draws? Dave Kearney