Subject: [ISSUE] How the Good Things go Wrong. Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 16:29:30 -0500 (EST) From: Dane Woodall To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com How the Good Things go Wrong. I'd like to start off by saying that I can't remember Magic ever being as disturbing as it is now. True, things are not at their best in the community, but there is more behind the what troubles the game than certain various cards that were made. For the most part, and from what I can tell, the majority of the people who play Magic are concerned with Type II first and foremost. WotC apparently has pretty much given up on any format beyond Extended, and most of the major constructed tournaments lately are of the Standard format. Having said this, whatever WotC decides to put into the environment has a tremendous effect on the overall status of the game. However, this time they decided to step out on a limb. I remember hearing people complain that Type II was very predictable, and they were longing for the days of Type II style decks again. I'm not sure as to whether this was considered when constructing Urza's Saga, but there are little to not other logical reasons behind several new cards. And mostly everyone knows what they are: Stroke of Genius, Time Spiral, and Tolarian Academy. Reprinting Brainguyser and Timetwister was one thing, it kind of made everything a lot more interesting. But the Academy is a whole different story. As many of you well know, the popular "Deep Blue" deck that has developed from these cards has more or less caused a panic in the Standard environment. While before, sideboards were left to dealing with certain decks in the metagame, now entire decks are being developed partially to handle one key aspect of the metagame, the Academy decks. It reminds me a lot about the frenzy over Necro, and how anti-necro came about because of it. That was one thing, and it did indeed pass as viable decks that could beat Necro came about. But the problem with this comparison, is that there really is no single viable concept for disrupting Academy decks. There are various cards that can help slow it down, but the better academy decks usually have a way around it, have a way to directly handle it, or can simply outrace whatever possible elements of disruption are thrown at it. For as far back as I can remember, the color blue was key for control decks. And control decks were inherently slow. Never can I remember a truly aggressive blue deck, yet here we have one. If you look at it, the Academy itself is very impacting on the current Standard environment, much less the Extended environment. Both T1.5 and Classic are heavily affected by this, but I have the feeling that WotC isn't that worried about the future of these "dead" formats. Leading me to one point. The DCI is at a crossroads right now, and if they decide to restrict or ban the Academy, they will be doing a great favor to the environment. Not only will it hinder the Academy decks to the point that they aren't too fast to handle, but it will allow for more creativity when it comes to other decks. But right now, practically every good deck must have some maindeck way to disrupt some aspect of the Academy's combo, in an attempt to catch up in the race. This doesn't make for a lot of variety when it comes to the metagame. But, enough about that. I myself am becoming not only tired of hearing endless tales of distress, resulting from poor showing at the hands of an Academy deck, but tired of writing about it. Although I don't have much of a choice, because my impulsive need to write often conflicts with such hard hitting issues as this. Now, moving onwards.. Be it beyond me to try and analyze the state of tournaments worldwide, but from the events that I have attended, and those I have read about, there is another problem outside of the game itself that should concern us all. The problem is that of the organization and judging of said events. Now, I'm not denying that the more important events, and a lot of the lesser events have been run very well, I simply want to point out the increasing about of error in which some tournaments are being run as of late. I have personally, only been affected once in the past month by bad rulings, wrong decisions, or foulplay that caused some sort of negative impact on my performance. I've lost matches because of various things, I've been given warnings, and even disqualified. I among many other that did bear witness, agree that I was in the right about many of my oppositions to these events. But here is the problem. No matter how right you are, no mater how badly you are beaing wronged or cheated, the judges have the final say in things. And if they say you are wrong, then there is little to nothing you can do that will matter. Normally, this wouldn't be such a bad thing, but with the apparent increase in ignorant judges and misinformed organizers, the failures to rule properly or make correct decisions is declining everywhere. I'm not sure what to attribute this to, but from all that I can tell, it has only been a problem in the past few months. I think this is something that WotC should be looking into, if they aren't already, because when a judge fails to rule correctly and causes a good player some misfortune, the balance of tournament play begins to fall apart. And if it continues down the same road, tournaments could end up coming down to who gets screwed less, to put it bluntly. Enough negatively and drab forcasts for now, because I realized something today. Beyond the paranoia around the Academy decks, there is a ray of hope for the Standard environment. Right now, new deck types are coming out of the woodwork, and more and more are proving to be tournament worthy. In my playtesting group, there are nearly 12 different decks that have a good place in the environment. All of them being tuned, and few of them have maindeck solutions directly related to a certain deck archetype. There are just a lot of good, competitive decks. This does make me feel better, because I hope to have a lot of variety to look forward to in upcoming Standard tournaments. I'll put this to a quick end before I really start to babble. Hasta folks, Dane Woodall dpw8549@garnet.acns.fsu.edu Aiming to never again play a Dojo deck.