Gamazson wrote: ↑3 years ago
I'm glad I am not only one. What is super frustrating is that I am locked out of all channels. I can't even submit another deck to be checked. I wonder if that has something to do with the payment thing.
It's not related to the payment. Everyone is limited to 1 deck per weekend. Even with that they get thousands and thousands of deck submissions a weekend and there is an extremely finite number of mods.
RxPhantom wrote: ↑3 years ago
I was considering getting a webcam to set this up, but these people sound insufferable. Assigning power levels to decks is tricky anyway, but to do it just by looking at deck lists is a shoddy, haphazard way to go about it. A few months ago, TCC had a video that, in short, proposed having discussions about the kind of game experience you want to have and not numerical power levels. We've been doing that at my LGS ever since and it's worked out pretty well. I'm not sure if it's feasible to do implement something like that on PlayEDH, but almost anything sounds better than the 'system' they have now. Yuck.
They're not insufferable, there's just a finite number of them and they're way overworked. The Upper/Mid/Lower/Battlecruiser ranking system is ok. It gets you in the ballpark, then you should probably have the pre-game discussion that you mentioned anyway. I've definitely had some pubstomp awful games, but I've had a fair amount of fun enjoyable ones too.
Gamazson wrote: ↑3 years ago
I haven't played a game with it yet, but spell table at least was easy to setup software side. Position your phone or webcam to see your playmat is the tricky bit.
This bit is really easy for sure. Part of the reason I got into spelltable.
toctheyounger wrote: ↑3 years ago
I just find the idea of someone else poring over my decks, even briefly, and judging them with nary a semblance of how they work to be pretty abhorrent. I get why they'd do it but do it right or find a better system. Like above, lumping all tribal in as low power seems actually really antiquated. Theres a lot of tribal synergy around these days and most tribes have myriad options to make a successful and powerful build. Ultimately my Varina build is tribal but its also at the stronger end of tribal so I'd probably whop most lobbies without trying.
I guess ultimately I'd probably suck it up and take it to get some game play in but at the same time - stay in your lane, you don't know my deck. Like it just seems outside of the scope of determining power level to be critiquing someone else's deck.
I fairly certain they get a lot of lists that are just objectively bad. Hence they made some guidelines to help those people. There's no way that they know I've probably played magic twice as long as them and aren't just some random scrub. My lists often look like an utter pile of trash, but that's because I love making trash cards shine in the extremely niche situations that they're broken in. I don't find their judgement abhorrent I just find it hilariously off base.
Rumpy5897 wrote: ↑3 years ago
One, assuming their power levels are indicative of actual power distribution, the format has nontrivially crept up in the casual space. I always perceived my higher-end decks as part of the "casual terror" pubstomp tier, so capable of going up against pretty much all non-cEDH stuff. And here I am, with a diagnosis that my most powerful deck according to their grading would fall right in the middle of their scale.
...
The article/ramble would then go on to ramble on why this format power creep might be occurring, and then examine the upsides/downsides of consciously running lower power builds that go against the grain. If any of ya'll have thoughts on the matter, feel free to chip in
I feel like there's been significant powercreep switching from my LGS to PlayEDH. I've played against some decks in Low that are just really really bad decks. I've also played against
Dargo, the Shipwrecker +
Phyrexian Altar hyper streamlined combo. I've lost to a fair few
Thassa's Oracles. It's frequently pretty all over the place.
I'm a pretty decent fan of PlayEDH even though I came down hard on their deck checks. I think they provide a great service while everyone is in lockdown mode. It's almost certainly worse than just playing with friends or at an LGS though. Some people don't have that option right now though and PlayEDH is a passable substitute.