Wednesday, November 30, 2011

GPSD: Swept under the table.

So were all done talking about worlds right, right? No seriously I can't put this off much longer.

If you ever gone to any large event for limited, whether it be like a ptq or a gp, you have to fill out a listing for your pool. And not just your pool but someone else's pool, the process is much faster, and it's supposed to prevent cheating...SUPPOSED TO. The process for those of you who don't know goes as followed, seating goes up and 1000+ unshowered fat guys dry hump stickly looking men as the try to quickly tape paper to poorly supported banners of awful cards no one plays. The cows find their seats and are given the product, in this case 6 packs. The cattle is supervised by the head judge to ensure everything is recorded and accounted for, all the while the largest of cows, like Cedric Philips get to yammer on some muffled nonsense unscathed like the tournament floor is his local movie theater, because hey he's Cedric Philips he's fucking special right? After that's settled the mouth breathers exchange lists and start shouting at fanboy judges to get their "not opponents" in trouble for things that they are suppose to correct themselves, like their inability to keep everything in alphabetical order, marking 6-7 slots incorrectly, and the brain damage, well some things obviously can't be corrected. Sip up that coffee porky because counting is obviously hard and you need to know how to start at 20 and go backwards 3 or 4 times until you go home and do whatever it is you do when I don't have to look at you. Anyways...after it's checked for the SECOND time, players begin playing oh please let this be my deck as they are instructed to exchange pools multiple times like Catholics shaking hands on sunday mass, I'd rather touch the homeless people there over a mass majority of you *coughajcough*. Once you have your pool you yourself then check and report anything that might of been missed by bessy and his inbred cousin sitting across from him and deck construction begins.

Now that we got that outta the way, I have a question for the class. What happens when something is discovered incorrectly later on in the day? Well according to the poor girl sitting next to me round 3 it meant a game loss. What if it was something more severe though, like having a 7th pack in your pool. And lets say it went unnoticed until after round 7, and this individual was x-1, and not once considered "hey I seem to have a lot of rares". Let me tell you what happened...absolutely nothing, nothing was done. Sure the pool was "corrected", an equivalent to the contents of one booster was removed and then given back to the player to rebuild. 6 players that day lost their chance at day 2 because of this, zero punishment, 0, none, nada, it was deemed that he just didn't know. He got away with it because he was just to dumb to count, the DCI has apparently adopted no child left behind during a Grand Prix.

I'm sure the Judge's position can be argued but it still doesn't change the fact that 6 people who took time, money, and energy to compete were all cheated because all 4 people that directly handled this pool couldn't count. And what's to prevent someone for deliberately adding extra cards during registration, to cause these sort of problems, because it looks to me like I could get away with something like that if I really wanted to.

Sometimes I wonder where my tax money really goes.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

M12 10/15 mythics confirmed

I assume that every magic writer is already working on a similar piece. Being that NPH reviews aren't as "new" as they are trying to be sold off as, and having to explain why competitive magic players scoop is only going to agitate the general populous of honorable self righteous casuals. Who generally believe it's better to not play Jace than win.

Back in March we got to take a look at the promo cards that were going to be bundled with the upcoming duels of the planeswalker game.

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/678

With no other information, and rotation being so far away, it could easily of been argued that the Titans weren't going to be reprinted...

Anyways, GameSpot released this trailer today.

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/puzzle/magic-the-gathering---duels-of-the-planeswalkers-2012/video/6314180

If coming from Gideon's perspective wasn't enough, re watch 1:50 again. You'll notice the 5 planeswalkers rumored to be in M12, which is, and most importantly, also advertised along side the game. This would in fact confirm that the titans are most likely in m12. Why give promos that new players, duels of the planewalkers target audience, can't use once they decide to make the jump into the TCG?

Of course this still doesn't actually verify that we will see the ROE, or Sorin's ZEN version. Jace TMS, has already been confirmed, by Foresythe, that it is not in M12.

Without official confirmation we do get into speculation, and I'm sure that the community will have a huge spectrum of it as this week progresses. Many have argued that Gideon's design is to complex to be part of the core set. While this may be true, WotC could be breaking new grounds, trying to free the core set from being so basic. M10 and M11 had selling points that made them far more successful than their predecessors, but if 10 of the 15 mythics are reprints than whats going to be the new hype?



Here's hoping otherwise.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Another survival post.

Is it safe yet? The only person still wishing happy new years is my boss, and I imagine he will follow his awful habit to continue to do so all the way through the end of March. It's 2011, and we got past the first of "one's days" that have excited many of today's binary aroused generation. I was wrong about survival, suffering zero loss as I only have one to my name, still groan as more articles have been written trying to innovate a format that is no more than a regurgitated carbon copy of post ban mystic tutor era. There are a plethora of topics to cover, and I loathe the clipping many torture the community with as their editors demand a criteria of minimum word count. I'm not entirely sure if it's grammatically correct to quote yourself in any fashion but I still find this to hold merit.

"The philosophy that banned sotf is one that can be used against any legacy card. Can't wait for dual lands to be banned."

I don't necessarily believe that come March everyone's underground seas are going to be worthless but lets look closer into this.

Strait from the mothership:
"In recent months, Survival of the Fittest decks have been outperforming other decks in Legacy. This has caused the competitive format to become significantly less diverse. This has reached a point where the DCI concluded that it is appropriate to ban a card.

Survival is a card that gives the decks a lot of resilience to potential answer cards. Some combination decks fail when they draw cards intended as answers to opponents' decks instead of cards that are part of their winning combination. However, with Survival of the Fittest on the battlefield, a drawn Qasali Pridemage can be replaced with any other creature in the deck for one mana."

This isn't that far fetched:
In recent years, Underground sea decks have been outperforming other decks in Legacy. This has caused the competitive format to become significantly less diverse. This has reached a point where the DCI concluded that it is appropriate to ban a card.

Underground Sea is a card that gives the decks a lot of resilience to potential answer cards. Some combination decks fail when they draw cards intended as answers to opponents' decks instead of cards that are part of their winning combination. However, with Underground Sea on the battlefield, a drawn fetchland can cost you the game vs stifle, and on the same note, lacking multiple hand fodder will put you in a poor position versus thoughtseize.

A few dozen legacy staples can fit this premise.

From mystical to now survival, the card I would next foresee to be targeted by the ever whining community would be enlighten tutor, assuming that countertop gains some head weigh in the coming months. Although twitter suggests a resurgence of reanimator, an underground sea deck...just saying.

And speaking of whining, which is the real basis behind this heavily customer dictated r&d, the kind of attention this had gained was but a mere fraction of what planeswalker control, Jund, or faeries had ever received. Standard is the format that new players are first introduced to before the pursue the eternal formats, and a majority of what the casual crowd supports due to their lack of spending, so going over legacy with a fine tooth comb trying to fine tune it and completely ignoring standard is...for lack of a better word...ass backwards.