Where is the line between Brackets 2 and 3?

[3drinks]

You can suggest what you see rhystic perform as in your table much as Dockside Extortionist was just a Wily Goblin in my experiences (and I cut it's underwhelming ass for that reason, in fact it was only at it's best against me until I tweaked the way I brewed). And I'm happy it's not a problem for you. What you cannot do is ascertain "this card isn't a problem at all because it's not a problem for me". That's the most tone deaf out of touch nonsense take that signals to anyone attempting to have a conversation with you to just...exit and not bother.

What I, and mox, are saying (well at least me, I'm certainly not going to speak for another) is, there is certainly fair use cases for Rhystic Study. And when those stars align then the card is in fact pretty mediocre. But that's not what I see. That's not what the majority of games involving rhystic (or Mystic Remora) look like. What I see is lil Johnny Cardboard that slams their craw wurm|4ed into it and hands the rhystic player free cards every turn, every spell, because they don't want to wait. "It's okay, it's just one draw" (it's never okay). The rhystic player will then win because they see significantly more cards than anyone else, i.e. I and the rest of the table lose because that one unrelated player didn't want to wait. Arguing "it's fine at the level B2 is sold at" isn't a relevant metric because it's not a B2 card; it is a game changer, and as such it's only playable at B3 and beyond - which is precisely the point at which the card velocity becomes an issue by your own admission; higher level play where it's sometimes correct to play through it and not pay the 1.

Yeah, you can table talk. Players also don't have to listen. Often they won't because they're so up their own ass with what they want to do or will do the opposite just to spite you. That's not a fair or even real avenue. "Hey guys, let me use my Recurring Nightmare or Prophet of Kruphix in my deck, it's just me, it'll be okay" same energy.

[onering]

Back off Three, I haven't insulted you, don't insult me.

I can respect your take (if not your misrepresentation of my own), but it's not what Mox was saying.

It seems like you and me are arguing different things. I'm arguing that people should handle it and identifying player choices as the problem, you are arguing that in practice many people misplay and that's enough to make the card itself a problem. Mox is more arguing that those aren't actually misplays, and trying to justify it by pulling ridiculous numbers out that counter his own argument.

My argument isn't that it can't be a problem, it's that the problem is the players, not the card. And I'm not saying it's just not a problem because it's not a problem for me, I'm clearly not the only person who has figured out how to handle it and get the table to cooperate. I do that %$#% on MTGO, btw, not an established playgroup. Indeed, I argued the opposite that my experience is the only one, as Mox was acting like HIS experience was the only one. We've had different experiences, duh. My argument is that my experience, and others, proves that the card CAN be handled, and SHOULDN'T be a problem at mid power tables, thus when it is it is the fault of the table. You, yes you, are the one that's assuming your experience is representative of what typically happens. I'm not going to ignore that its two players, you and Mox, that are pretty open about eschewing politics, who are the most vocal about having a problem with the card, while more politically astute players don't find it to be a problem.

Also, telling me it's a game changer is a non starter for me because I think the GC list is a stupid innovation that has contributed to the problem of the brackets. I don't take issue with you saying it, I'm just letting you know that's not an argument I'm ever going to find convincing. I'm also on the record that the Brackets suck, and don't actually communicate the most important aspects well or match games well, particularly power level. I know you disagree, and I don't expect you to change your opinion there, but that's a big reason why this thread exists in the first place. It's why the line between bracket 2 and 3 are blurred, because plenty of Bracket 2 decks are very tuned and easily body mediocre bracket 3 decks because having 3 GCs somewhere in the deck is not much of a real difference.

[Moxnix]

No my very first argument was literally that it does not matter as in practice it plays out that way so it was irrelevant if it was player error or not. Then i expanded on the idea saying that often in any edh game not just in CEDH as you gave examples of a players best line could be to feed study and you didn't even engage with he idea and acted like no that's never the case which is in fact a wild take lol. I'm not even sure why your so attached to this one saying I've noticed rhystic draws to many cards is like saying water is wet i didn't even say it should be banned lol. Its not just my experience have you ever heard anyone speak about the card its literally everyone against you on this one so more like its just your experience defending it against everyone else. I'm not even sure you have an argument if the argument is if i get the whole table to collude with me the card might be ok that only speaks to its raw power. I dont have issues against it i win when i cast it and i recognize the bad play patterns it brings because it is in fact your best line to feed it all the time and even when its not people do all the time and the fact that one ring thinks the correct line is everyone teams them so its fine doesnt really hold much water to me. Lines are bad for us as mtgo players as that only guarantees ever single deck is sitting on that line. Doesnt matter your restriction if its budget they will only use the most viable cedh budget build you can make if its gcs they will find the exact best one and min max so yea for us they do suck they guaranteed people would play all tiers like CEDH but there is a GC list and its on it and that means its only really in b4 play or you lost a one ring to play it so i dont think it needs banned. That being said i see precons with rhystic win entire games and it does not really matter if that's them misplaying or not and if you expect some noob with a precon and a few games played to be able to play like vets with thousands of play reps let alone correctly asses rhsytics power your nuts lol

[yeti1069]

I'm not sure how this discussion on the line between Brackets 2 and 3 got sidetracked onto Rhystic Study, which, as a GC, isn't suitable for B2 at all.

But I'll bite, and point out that, while I don't necessarily consider Rhystic to be a busted card, I will also point out that it isn't simply a matter of having everyone pay their taxes to keep the card draw in check. Rhystic is a modal card, that gives opponents the choice between feeding you cards or being subjected to a one-sided Sphere of Resistance. If you can work around that while still moving your plan forward, great, but not everyone can on any given turn, and most decks can't afford to sacrifice their tempo that much turn after turn, especially when Rhystic comes down on, or ahead of curve.

It gets ridiculous when players are dumb about it, opting to never pay the tax, and make zero adjustment to their plays to limit feeding into it, but how many players in B3 are in a position to continue making plays on turns 3, 4, 5 without feeding Rhystic?

[onering]

It's not about always paying, it's about ensuring it doesn't start drawing 3+ cards a turn. The table just has to keep it manageable. And that's easier at lower power levels where tempo just isn't as important. When games go longer, CA becomes more important and the value of paying the 1 goes up. At higher power levels, CA becomes less valuable vis a vis tempo and hitting all your plays on curve and using 100% of available mana is not only more important, you are also more likely to actually be able to do it. Even if, at a four player table, only one player pays the 1 on those crucial early turns while the other 2 cast on curve, that keeps Study drawing only a manageable amount of cards rather than crushing the table in CA. At mid and lower power levels, your also more likely to have a play available that enables you to pay the 1 that doesn't set you back all that much compared to a play that uses all your mana. Ok those turns at higher power levels, you are more likely to be double casting and thus it's much harder to pay the 1.

Without other tax effects, the Rhystic being modal gives you significant flexibility to play around it. You have plays where you need to cast something and can't pay the 1, so you let them draw the card. Then you have plays where paying the 1 is trivial because you can't use all your mana otherwise. Then you have plays where you'd prefer to use all your mana, but you have options that don't require you to do so, and whether you pay the 1 needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis. I think too many people see Rhystic, don't know how to evaluate it and then just try to race it when that isn't viable and then point and say "see, look how many cards it draws, it's busted!", not realizing that if they just made better decisions and were less greedy about their plays the Rhystic player wouldn't have gotten an overwhelming amount of cards. Some of that is noob stuff, and that's where table talk and explaining how the table can beat Rhystic, is important. And that's not just about paying the 1, it's about reassuring people that it's absolutely not an all or nothing approach, so that even though they should pay the 1 as often as possible they need to relax and keep in mind that the Rhystic player drawing 1 or 2 cards a turn is fine.

[Moxnix]

So you're saying at a low power table with slower curves because it only draws 2 cards a board cycle and not 3 if people play around it it's just fine and doesn't win the game lol. Also yes I evaluate cards on what they actually do in games not what they could have done and did not that makes no sense. However even in your example this is exactly the pattern I see. Precons with 1-2 swaps rhystic draws 2-3 a turn for 4 turns that guys drawn twice as many cards from his deck as anyone else he wins. Your weird tangent about teaching people how to play thier own lines is laughable. If I asses feeding them cards so you all have to fight it out because im in last that's likely my best line. If I can't afford tempo loss I'm not paying and most important you don't have any nuance of turn order game flow anything if I think you have a combo kill and there is a rhystic on the board I will spam spells JUST to feed it so they can force if will your counter if its causal same maybe they just looking for swapped to plow. Like it's got bad play patterns at all levels and your assessment that people should all pay more often is in fact wrong they pay when they should and feed when they should and the rhystic sucks value either way and the guy who controls one has a higher chance of winning in any bracket any power. I don't even know what your arguing about tho no one wants it banned I don't think rhystic is a bad card is a take many people can swallow when again every time we see it it has the same effect it draws many cards and wins. The bad patterns are really easy to see and obvious as to why it's ffa this cards cracked in ffa as it was deranged for 1:1. Should have seen the last time I played a casual 6 pod and the guy playing first dropped a rhystic it gets worse with more players too. Mtgo might be team 4 only but at my LGs lot of casual 5 pods and it's even worse there

[onering]

Yeah, Mox, I'm not going to engage with your same points over and over. I'm not sure why you are still so confused as to think I'm basing my stance on hypotheticals rather than what I've actually seen. I've said repeatedly that our experiences differ and that I think more people should have my experience because it's not hard to replicate and it results in better outcomes. You keep saying "Rhystic wins people the game because people feed it, I feel it because I think that is my best shot" with zero self awareness that your actions seem to be the cause, and that maybe you shouldn't kingmaker the Rhystic player. To be fair to you, you exaggerate to a ridiculous degree and I have zero belief that whoever plays Rhystic wins 80% of the time at your tables. Without such a lopsided and on its face ridiculous assertion, your arguments are more realistic. Id wager that you not paying the 1 really just increases their win probability from something like 30% to something like 35-40% depending on whether others follow your lead and whether you just spam them cards or they only draw a few extra off you. Still significant, but that's a more realistic range and could actually justify you prioritizing hitting perfect tempo over denying them the draw.

Otherwise, yeah, you don't know what I'm arguing but that's not for lack of clarity on my part, and I've given up on you getting it. You get to a place where you just can't even see what other people are trying to say, and I've learned that its futile to argue at that point.

[Moxnix]

I dont exaggerate at all and never said rhystic wins 80% of tables where did that come form your bum? However if my assessment is if i pass i will not win this game and if i go for combo i might win but i likely feed that guy 10+ cards and lose to a free counter that's exactly what I'm doing as its been evaluated as my best line. In the exact same way we used to tutor trade secrets if we were in last place when it was legal when your so far behinfd your likely to lose you cant afford to slow down . The player who feeds it is the one who would have lost not feeding it what's hard to understand about this 4-6 players only one wins kingmaking one player is fine as long as I think it increases my personal win chances and that's the issue with this card its poorly designed for FFA and gets worse the more people who play its actual quite fine in 3 players commander and sucks in 1:1 but play with 8 and i would be the most broken card you can run its not rocket science the card gets better for each player at the table not only because it gets mroe action but the more players you add the less players win and the lower the expected win rate of any given player is thus your more and more incentivized to feed it the more players exist in the game.

In the context of a bracket 3 precon like noobfest game imagine one player opens ring signet one opens mana dork and turn 2 study and your playing last holding a cultivate with 0 ramp and nothing else that cost 3 or less your evaluation is what pass on the only play you've had all game when already behind to deny the card? What about next turn when he is still behind and nowhere near wining and he assessment of the board is well everyone else is in action he should play the less good 4 drop that doesnt make sense in the game state or his setup 5 drop that feeds a second card? Like its not rocket science this is how the card works and if its CEDH and I'm on storm im drawing them 20 cards if i think its my window so its more exaggerated in that meta but the patterns the same. 20 cards now in cedh is not much differnt than 10 cards across 4 turns in a precon level game they both have the same effect of winning the game.

Your fixation on random number values and your own personal experience completely misses the point in fact i dont even know what point your even trying to make what's your one line conclusion "rhystic is bad" like what are you even attempting to tell us here if its that i can manipulate weaker players into playing the lines i want so i win more i already knew i could do that.

[onering]

If what you take from my argument is "Rhystic is bad", you have serious and insurmountable problems with reading comprehension that I am not qualified to remedy. My argument is that Rhystic is very good but not busted. See, this is where I lose any hope of having a productive conversation with you, you've demonstrated a total inability to engage with the points I make and just repeat your assertions into the wind. Btw, I got the 80% number from your post about feeding the Rhystic player to knock their win chance up past 80% if it increases your chances by 5%. You started pulling numbers "out of your bum" that are completely meaningless, and somehow you haven't picked up on the fact that I'm dismissing your ability to quantity your feels despite me saying that's what I'm doing.

[Moxnix]

Yea but you said and i quote since its right there "you exaggerate to a ridiculous degree and I have zero belief that whoever plays Rhystic wins 80% of the time at your tables. " show me where did i say anyone wins 80% of the time with a rhystic on the table? That's right nowhere you took a number with zero context used in a hypothetical example and then applied it in a differnt way to a differnt idea are you just really dense or what?
" My argument is that Rhystic is very good but not busted" - Ok and what does this mean why should i care and what does it have to do with bracket 3 the banlist or i dont know anything at all? what is "busted" in this context like that's a nothing statement does busted cant mean "strong enough to be a gc" as you already went on a crash out about how you dont want to engage with that. So I'm still at a complete loss as to what your even trying to communicate the single most charitable read i can give it is "sometimes noobs feed it more than they have to so its wins a little more than it should" which i already knew and as I've said since the start and yes many times since that is not relevant what is relevant is the actual play pattern of the games you dont pretend the noobs playing will properly asses how to play into a rhystic. Also as given by many examples and the experience of others its is in fact OFTEN your best line to feed this card i find the you choosing not to engage and even deny something that's so "duh" to me I'm kind of just confused i honestly still have zero idea what your trying to get across maybe that's my mistake you didn't really have any deeper meaning and i was searching for what was not there.