From: csivils@blkbox.com (Craig Sivils) Subject: Re: Sealed or Type 2? Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 15:49:43 GMT "Jamie C. Wakefield" wrote: [ALL SNIPPED] The game is changing due to the net. I'll have to admit that. But I don't think you are looking deep enough. Tstasis took a couple months before it was popular in Houston, 5cmg took a week at best. This is in part because the Houston players are becomming more net educated. The ability to recognize and play a good deck is one of the stages in the magic maturity cycle. It's one that most of us go through. When getting ready for the tournament last weekend, team Big'uns tried to build decks that would crush 5cmg, big blue, counter burn, mono-red and weenies of all types. These were the "hot" decks on the net, and they were represented in force. Up until the night before the entire team were playing red/white decks (two of us got stupid and switched, the other was 6th seed in the break). We did our homework, and for those of us that stuck with it... it payed off. People are going to share decks, the only question is: Will they be shared among the general public or among an elite few? I personally would perfer to have all the information out on the table and let the people who do their homework come out on top. I think the ability to play the meta-game is becomming every bit as important as the ability to make decks/play decks. Lets look at post-july and see what we can see. Prison - This deck gets the scrub award. It WAS a solid deck, but that was a completely different environment. I can't count the number of people complaining "it's going to be back and EVERYONE's going to have to play it...." For the prison to survive in the new environment it would have to be completely redesigned. Scrubs don't redesign decks. Build to beat it, don't play it. If you do play it, it better be Uw not Wu. GreenWeenie - The dark horse that no one see's comming. The addition of Spectral bears along with the WL weenies make for one viscious weenie rush. This would be another excellent example of a deck you best be ready for even if you don't play it. This is where you can "do your homework". 5cmg - This deck takes a huge hit july 1st, the people who wrote the deck up originally even say so. But this won't mean people stop playing it. Still need to build to face this one. White weenie - This may be a "fad" deck for the next 4 months. The swords to plowshares, the encore performance. Tithe is stronger than land tax in a pure ww deck, the ever popular maro-skin. Red Blaster - Anarchy and pyroclsim. Expect to see sligh as well. A lot of this is just plain common sense and taking the time to look at what the cards say. You combine that with the "popular" cards and what the "net" says. You make your guess and you take your chances. I'd much rather go down knowing I had the clues to see it comming instead of knowing that the scrub that beat me just did so (and would continue to do so) because they have the "elite" connection and I don't. The magic dojo understands all of this to an incredible level. Frank listed the current "hot" tournament decks, but the title was.... The decks to beat. As far as loosing because someone read your tournament report, that's rough. One way to help would be to keep changing your deck/sideboard enough to throw people off. Another way is to just go silent a bit before big tournaments (I don't like it, but I've had to start to doing this type thing myself). But there's no reason not to at least post decks when your done with them, or to post a report of the big event you were building up for. I post many of my decks as I retire them. I wish others would do the same. Craig