Subject: Re: Windfall and Academy banned Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 15:02:09 PST From: Chris Warren To: MTG-STRATEGY-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM "Frank Pelletier (Trinity)" wrote: >1) Stop propagating rumors about the Academy's so-called "total >domination" of the field. It's just not true. The Academy lost more >States than Sligh, it even lost a "sure-win" state, Colorado >(birthplace of the Academy, if we are to believe the Council of >Masters). True. But there's more than one way to define "total domination." Imagine WotC comes out with a chase rare in Urza's Legacy. There's ... oh, 300 in print in the world. The card reads like this: ObscenelyBrokenRareCard 0 Artifact OBRC may not be countered when it is being cast 0: Search your library for OBRC and put it into play. Use this ability only if OBRC is in your library and if you have a forest in play and your opponent does not control an Orcish Conscript. So, 75 people in the world make a deck with 56 forests and 4 OBRCs. Some don't feel like playing it, or playing states, or aren't in the US or whatever. It wins 5 states, since a bunch of people play Orcish Nosepickers when it's in the field. Is this a dominant deck? Yes, this is obviously an extreme example, but the point I'm getting at is, you have to look at more than just "how many states did this deck win." You try to answer "if every player had access to all the cards and good information, how many would it win." Think about Pro Tour rome. The PT is about as you're coming to this, and a plain old academy deck won it all -- not even the somewhat surprising HT version. They knew it was coming and couldn't stop it. to go back to my example, the deck also has us playing Orcish Conscripts. Not exactly, but it's limiting the decks -- not that can do well, but that can actually WIN. >"Wishing for a first turn Elvish lyrist because I'm dead on turn 2?". >Please, I know the anti-Academy movement had good arguments, but so >did the Inquisition, and we all know how extreme both might have >been. The Academy does NOT always go off on turn 3. True. A goldfish number is something like 60% on turn 3. That's what I got with my testing at least. Now, say I decide to play mono-G. I go first. If I don't get that turn 1 lyrist/scav, I have a 20% chance of auto-lose, going to 60% if I can't get one down by turn 2. Am I going to mulligan a hand with neither? YES! >It sometimes stalls. Sometimes, you gotta mulligan down to 5 cards. >It was a strong deck, don't get me wrong. It was the strongest deck >out there. But Magic needs a "strongest" deck (well, needed, >anyways). Why? Side question: should type two have decks that can turn 3 kill > 50%? >2) Adequate counter-measures were being found. Meltdown was one of >the earliest (of course, you needed to splash some red in). Arcane >Lab fulfilled one of the basic lock requirements for a >CounterPhoenix, as well as stopping the Academy cold (until he played >Capsize, which you could easily counter). DrawGo had tons of >counters, and could handle the Academy easily (add the disks, and he >could cripple an Academy). Counterphoenix was a good matchup for academy with both countermagic for disruption, the red sb cards, and a natural fit for the Arcane Lab. As for Draw-go: no. Draw-go is on the good side of matchups for TU, somewhere around the WW spectrum. Ask the real serious TU players what they're scared of. Phoenix. Sligh. You won't hear Draw-go in there. Unless of course they're maindecking Arcane Labs, yadda yadda. >Sligh had pure speed, so did Hatred. Sligh had speed AND access to the red hosers. Hatred is no faster than TU, and its speed was less consistent (i.e., no ritual means you can't hate until turn 5, which is too late 85% if you're going first). >Yes, I think the Academy could beat all those decks. But it wasn't a >"one-sided" affair. The DCI overeacted, pulled the trigger too Of course, good decks can always hope for a good draw and beat it. It's an "any given day" argument. But I think the thing that really pushed the button was the PT. At the PT, in theory and pretty much in practice, people play whatever they think is best, regardless of the cards. And when everyone had the cards AND knew it was coming, it was still VERY hard to stop TU. There's one other point: the fact that the Academy, AS A CARD, is unbalanced from a design standpoint. >early. One of the barometers were the States, and we all saw how >inconclusive that was (Ban Elf-burn! :) ). The other was PT Rome. I Ahh, foo. Elf-burn was small. Sligh was big, and general consensus is that Sligh was so big BECAUSE of academy, because it stood up to it well. And where was the other deck that looked SO good, Recurring Whale? Nowhere. It loses to academy. Counterphoenix? Plays well, won a few. Draw-go? Not so good, won 1 or something. Green creatures? What're those? White weenie? ditto. The deck, whether it WON all the time or not put too much influence on the field. >agree that inside another, more open environment, the Academy >transforms into the A-bomb... and that's a problem. But who plays T1 PT Rome was extended, not T1. >anyways? :) T2 could handle the Academy, in a variety of ways. Some cards in T2 could. But the T2 environment, without stuff like moxen and force of will and abeyance just isn't ready to deal with turn 2 and 3 kills. There's the proble,. >I still think the DCI panicked. I still think many people grossly >overestimate the Academy's power. I still think people did not want I feel, and I have the support of some VERY good players in this, that the better players are, and have been, MUCH more worried about TU than mediocre players. Very good players worry about beating very good versions played by very good players. And GOOD TU played by a skilled opponent is really, really devestating. Mediocre players worrry about beating mediocre versions of TU played by mediocre players. And they do. And leave the tournament at 4-2 or 5-2, without seeing what's happening at the top. You play to your level. You have to see beyond it though to see the real reasons for the ban. >to see the environment rocked too much, so they massively asked for a >ban. The times the Academy won (many times, I agree), it was so >impressive that many people forgot the number of times the Academy >lost (Happened to me a lot. One player beat me 2-3 with some sort of >CounterSligh, and still marveled at the way I beat him on turn 3 >once). You may have some of a point that the wins are very impressive and it can be disconcerting. But I don't think the ban was just called for by a massive change of environment. Remember when Tempest came in and Scroll was "discovered" a little later? Almost nobody demanded scroll get banned in T2. It was a huge change. Winter Orbs VANISHED from decktypes, everyone got colorless removal and damage from a 1cc artifact. But we knew that it was just a shift of priorities. Some decks went up, some came down, some shifted modes, everything adjusted. In Tempest-only (later Rath cycle) there was a call for a ban on the card though, for good reason -- it dominated deck construction much like TU was doing to T2. >You needed to play an Academy to understand that it wasn't "all >that". >Unfortunatly, it was hard to build, so people, I think, never even >saw how vulnerable (and how great) the deck was. And that's sad. I get the idea you didn't play it for an awful long time. I've been playing variations on the mom/vault/card draw deck since june, including essentially modern TU since the otwell uproar made me update it. I tweaked the thing to the limits and tested vs everything, and took it to states. I know how vulnerable it was. And it needed to be removed. Kudos to DCI. --Chris ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com