[Off-Topic] Community Chat Thread

[duducrash]

Pioneer is really fun imho. Standard isn't as bad as it was in the past. For a while simic based midrange was all it could be done. Explorer is pioneer lite and its like the one competitive format im playing right now and highly enjoying.

What im playing now - Standard mono blue tempo with 4 rates
Explorer - BG Midrange. My take on the rock I guess.
Modern - yeah. It sucks right now
Pauper - pauper rocks

[Dunadain]

I don't think legacy is that bad, lots of delver, but if every format is gonna have a top dog, I'd rather it be an "honest" tempo deck.

Don't get me wrong, getting smeared because you kept a two lander and your opponent had a waste land get's really old after the tenth or so time, but at least every deck has game against delver, not good game but game.

Heck, I'm an avid Doomsday player, which has a famously bad matchup against delver (I realize Sheoldred, the Apocalypse has been helping that matchup a lot, but it's still not pretty), and I just don't think the format is that bad.

Having said all that, I wouldn't mind seeing Expressive Iteration getting the axe.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

@TheGildedGoose That may be simultaneously the laziest and most nonsensical dodge I've ever read. WotC makes Magic ergo WotC problems are Magic's problems, forever and always inextricably entwined. They aren't channeling some alien creative force from another dimension. The choices that WotC and subsequently Hasbro have made regarding reprints, pushing powercreep, and bans have all impacted the health of competitive constructed formats. Hence my point: in the current state of Magic, most constructed formats ain't so great right now. I'm not arguing they should be failing, merely acknowledging that they are. EDH wouldn't be so popular if people hadn't flocked to it away from other formats. EDH certainly wouldn't be the unwieldy starting point for many of today's players if Standard was doing its job properly.

[TheGildedGoose]

@TheGildedGoose That may be simultaneously the laziest and most nonsensical dodge I've ever read. WotC makes Magic ergo WotC problems are Magic's problems, forever and always inextricably entwined. They aren't channeling some alien creative force from another dimension. The choices that WotC and subsequently Hasbro have made regarding reprints, pushing powercreep, and bans have all impacted the health of competitive constructed formats. Hence my point: in the current state of Magic, most constructed formats ain't so great right now. I'm not arguing they should be failing, merely acknowledging that they are. EDH wouldn't be so popular if people hadn't flocked to it away from other formats. EDH certainly wouldn't be the unwieldy starting point for many of today's players if Standard was doing its job properly.

I'm not interested in arguing semantics with someone who isn't even the person I responded to in the first place. Poor format management and card design are legitimate criticisms, and if that's the argument Dirk is making, then fine, we can have a conversation about that. But that isn't my read of "all constructed competitive formats are stupid" at all.

[5colorsrainbow]

. EDH wouldn't be so popular if people hadn't flocked to it away from other formats. EDH certainly wouldn't be the unwieldy starting point for many of today's players if Standard was doing its job properly.

I know quite a few people who used to play standard a lot who don't touch commander. I don't think the failing of standard is any indication EDH considering how different the two formats are.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

@TheGildedGoose That may be simultaneously the laziest and most nonsensical dodge I've ever read. WotC makes Magic ergo WotC problems are Magic's problems, forever and always inextricably entwined. They aren't channeling some alien creative force from another dimension. The choices that WotC and subsequently Hasbro have made regarding reprints, pushing powercreep, and bans have all impacted the health of competitive constructed formats. Hence my point: in the current state of Magic, most constructed formats ain't so great right now. I'm not arguing they should be failing, merely acknowledging that they are. EDH wouldn't be so popular if people hadn't flocked to it away from other formats. EDH certainly wouldn't be the unwieldy starting point for many of today's players if Standard was doing its job properly.

I'm not interested in arguing semantics with someone who isn't even the person I responded to in the first place. Poor format management and card design are legitimate criticisms, and if that's the argument Dirk is making, then fine, we can have a conversation about that. But that isn't my read of "all constructed competitive formats are stupid" at all.

Then by all means, enlighten me. So far it seems like you just wanna level criticism without actually articulating it.

Or hey, wait 6ish hours and let Dirk wipe the thread with you if you don't want to debate me. I just wanted a good time but it seems you're no fun today.

[TheGildedGoose]

Then by all means, enlighten me. So far it seems like you just wanna level criticism without actually articulating it.

Or hey, wait 6ish hours and let Dirk wipe the thread with you if you don't want to debate me. I just wanted a good time but it seems you're no fun today.

What "debate" lol, what is even happening right now? I just wanted clarification on what he meant, because it's not a good criticism at all, and in good faith I assumed he had a more nuanced take that I was interested in hearing. Obviously, WotC doesn't do a great job at managing formats or balancing things during card design, but those aren't problems exclusive to constructed competitive formats.

[Dunharrow]

@TheAmericanSpirit is feisty today! Or grumpy. Not sure.

Constructed formats are still very highly played so I am not really sure why you are so critical of them. They aren't for you? That's fine.
The only constructed format I would consider is Standard because it is slow enough that I can brew a weird deck and have fun with it.

[Ulka]

Guys and gals, chill. At this point there are multiple offenders here and If needed I will infract back but this is your one time warning to knock it off. If the discussion becomes unhelpful or harmful to users, we will infract and lock the thread down. this place is meant to be a light discussion place and meant for off-topic discussions so please if debates on WOTC policies and such, please make a new thread for it.

Ulka

[DirkGently]

@TheGildedGoose I have risen from my coffin! Prepare for battle! (jk)

So first some obligatory nuance: All of this is purely my opinion and has no basis in empirics. If someone enjoys any competitive constructed format, don't let my opinion stop them from having fun.

But my opinion is that competitive constructed formats, in current year, betray the spirit of a deckbuilding game. Metadata is so easily available that the entire format is solved almost immediately. The allure of the deckbuilding game - why I play magic instead of poker - is the opportunity to experiment, to tinker, to try and fail and learn.

And competitive constructed formats have essentially eliminated that aspect of the game. A new player can have a top-tier deck in hand before they even know the basic rules. There's no exploration to be done, no hidden treasures to be discovered, little room for creative thinking. The way you get good at competitive constructed is simple: pay a bunch of money for the best deck, then play it so many times that you sandblast any roughness off your play patterns. If that's fun for people, then great, but it's not what brought me to magic. I loved the allure of dusting off some ancient unknown card and finding strength in it, of building a strategy that no one had seen before. That's why I play commander and limited, because those still allow for that sort of creativity and exploration. Competitive constructed doesn't, and never will again.

The way constructed gets talked about is a clear example of the way these formats function: you can say "I play tron" and everyone knows nearly the exact decklist you have. Customizability is barely relevant. You aren't building a deck of 60 cards with near-infinite permutations, you're picking a deck from a lineup of (depending on the format) a few to a few dozen decks.

I remember learning that initially Garfield hadn't imposed any card limit on the original constructed format, assuming that no one would end up with a deck of 30 black lotuses and ancestral recalls simply because it would be too much effort to track them down. I love that naivete. I think its spirit lives on, to some extent, in casual constructed formats like commander, but of course the reality in competitive constructed is that no cost or impediment will prevent people from minmaxing their decks. With online marketplaces, the only impediment is money. I don't think this is something linked to wotc or bad handling of any particular format - though they've certainly made mistakes - but inherent to any competitive constructed format so long as communication is as powerful as it is (and I don't see that changing barring the apocalypse). Competitive constructed + the internet + millions of players = immediately solved formats. I think if you'd told Garfield, when he was first designing magic, that everyone would be playing a tiny number of the possible decks, that the vast majority of cards would be irrelevant, and that money would be the only real impediment to competitive viability, he would have wept.

Arena has made things significantly worse, both in terms of constructed but also limited. Limited formats are very well explored very quickly, and the data available just as fast. Limited has natural defenses against mindless copying of decklists, of course - you're only offered so many good cards, signals must be read, context can change the strength of a card in a way that constructed can't allow, since you have access to any context you want in constructed. But still, the overall strength of cards is known very quickly, the dominant archetypes are known very quickly, anyone can grind a hundred games before the set is officially released, and I really dislike all of it. I want the waters of limited to be as opaque as possible, so I can be surprised at every unexpected treasure I find, but online discourse (and worse, apps that interface with arena directly) do their best to make the format as clear as possible. I remember when the format felt like it was evolving over its duration, as new strategies became popular and others fell out of favor, but now all that has been condensed into a week on arena. Personally I avoid that information, because I'd rather discover it myself. At an LGS level, that's a viable option. But my interest in playing competitively, at Grand Prixs Magicfests has dropped fairly precipitously. Knowing that all my opponents have been grinding hundreds of arena drafts kills my interest in competition. I'll compete skill vs skill with anyone, but I don't want to compete time vs time. I don't want limited to become something I have to do compulsively to keep up. So I'll remain the terror of my LGS and nothing more.

Anyway, tl:dr, competitive constructed might be fun for people, but I don't think that-which-it-inevitably-must-become captures the spirit or the appeal of a deckbuilding game, at least as far as I'm concerned.

@5colorsrainbow I think what @TheAmericanSpirit was saying is that, in "the olden days", standard was the default onboarding format for new players. And it was a great onboarding format! Not too many cards, everything is written in current magic-ese, you can usually build a decent deck without spending too much money, it guarantees wotc keeps making money thanks to rotation, etc. And if you hate rotation, hey, no problem, when it happens you can just pivot to extended or commander or 60-card-casual. The issue, I think is that (1) a lot of people don't enjoy the competitive environment (2) the competitive environment got more and more and more streamlined (see above whinging) (3) commander is a really fun format that has a lot of appeal. So more and more new players quickly quit standard for commander, which got a bigger and bigger profile, and so increasingly new players didn't get into standard at all, and just onboarded directly to commander. And commander, for all its virtues, is not a good onboarding format. It's way too complex for new players, there's lots of old weird cards, there's lots of social rules that aren't immediately apparent, and most importantly, it doesn't make wotc enough money. Or it didn't, until they decided it was better to lean into it and start vomiting commander products like it's discount day at the ipecac factory, producing shinier and shinier versions of every card, and disgracing the game with cross promotion.

If we lived in permanent-2009 world, where commander was a fringe format and standard was the main event, I think most of that stuff wouldn't have happened, and we wouldn't live in the current hellscape with which we reside. But who knows.

@Dunadain At least where I'm at, constructed formats are absolutely dwarfed by commander popularity. It's hard to find an FNM limited event that reliably gets 8 people anywhere, whereas commander nights are filled to bursting everywhere. And I think most constructed competitive formats are doing even worse than limited, although I'm going off secondhand information from people who play those formats.

@TheAmericanSpirit Actually, to the best of my knowledge, the winrate for players in limited is MORE skewed than constructed (at a competitive level). Yes, everyone starts on an even playing field, but building a good limited deck takes skill whereas building a good constructed deck takes google, so there's another layer for Finkel to gain an advantage. So an average scrub is less likely to beat him at limited than constructed (assuming they're not restricted by budget, obviously a scrub with a precon isn't going to beat Finkel with a tier-1 deck, but beyond FNM it's kind of assumed that you aren't building for budget).

[Dunadain]

@Dunadain At least where I'm at, constructed formats are absolutely dwarfed by commander popularity. It's hard to find an FNM limited event that reliably gets 8 people anywhere, whereas commander nights are filled to bursting everywhere. And I think most constructed competitive formats are doing even worse than limited, although I'm going off secondhand information from people who play those formats.

Laughs in mtgo

But yeah, I've got similar gripes with wizards at the moment, though I could never imagine becoming a strictly casual player, edh is the majority of my games, but sometimes, I want to play a game where all that matters is winning, and you can't do that in EDH, I realize cEDH is a thing, but it doesn't really work.

[DirkGently]

@Dunadain That's part of what I like about limited. I don't commit to it 100% (because, as mentioned, that requires grinding arena and looking at metadata and both of those things are boring and take the magic out of it for me) but when I'm playing, I'm playing to win.

I do play commander to win too, but ofc I limit myself in the deck construction phase and try to match group power levels. But once I'm in the game I always try to make the optimal play.

[Dunadain]

@Dunadain That's part of what I like about limited. I don't commit to it 100% (because, as mentioned, that requires grinding arena and looking at metadata and both of those things are boring and take the magic out of it for me) but when I'm playing, I'm playing to win.

I do play commander to win too, but ofc I limit myself in the deck construction phase and try to match group power levels. But once I'm in the game I always try to make the optimal play.

I mostly try to win, but playing a truly competitive game of edh is a nightmare, I don't mean I make misplays to make people feel better, I mean I crack a fetch and end my turn while I'm searching if it's unlikely to matter, I don't sweat about the resolution of triggers most of the time. and I certainly would NEVER priority bully my opponents. When I play I also play with the expectation that, when someone casts a spell it resolves, and if someone wants to counter it, they have to jump in, and while the table's usually pretty flexible about rewinding, there come's a point where we say "too late, pay more attention if you want to counter spells"

These things DO matter, I feel like the better I get at the game, the more I notice them, the more I want to wait a few seconds before countering a spell in hopes that someone else will chime in first, the more I want to hold off cracking my fetches "just in case"

Since we are playing casual, however, when I get too into it, I shrug my shoulders and just accept that I'm playing suboptimally, and that's ok because this is a casual format.

All of this is also why I can't stand cEDH.

[DirkGently]

@Dunadain fair, I also don't sweat super tiny advantages like fetch activation (although tbf, waiting could mean you get Stifled so it could work out either way in terms of waiting vs not waiting being better). I do, and allow, a lot of shortcuts to speed things along. I will get technical when it's a critical moment - i.e. if we're in lethal combat and there's some mixture of buffs/removal/etc happening, then we're going to play by the strict rules in terms of priority. For example, on your near-lethal swing if you pass priority to me after blockers (thinking I'll use removal and you can buff another creature for lethal), and then it turns out I don't have removal...too bad so sad, you don't get to change your mind.

I'm guessing when you say "priority bully" you mean things like "you're technically supposed to be the first person to react, but you hold off hoping someone else will react and only reacting when they don't do anything" then I definitely don't do that intentionally (though ofc some people will leap out of their seats to counterspell something...depending on the situation I might say "hold up, I have priority first and I would choose to counter it" or I might just let them counter it if I'm feeling lazy). I do think there are some neat interactions, though, like passing priority on a game-winning spell, and if it gets to the last person before it resolves and they don't have an answer, saying "hold up, just do (some random thing) so I get priority back." I don't USUALLY try to go that deep, but if it's a particularly intense game I might. Haven't had a lot of those recently, though.

In general, though, commander games are long enough and there are enough people that trying super hard all the time is annoying, and usually kind of a waste of time when it's so easy for the whole situation to change on a dime. So I play relatively fast-and-loose unless we're at a critical juncture and then I'll get more technical. LGS limited I tend to play fairly technically (depending on my opponent), and competitive-REL limited I play very technically all the time (though I haven't done a big tourney since I got to NZ really).

[Dunadain]

@Dunadain fair, I also don't sweat super tiny advantages like fetch activation (although tbf, waiting could mean you get Stifled so it could work out either way in terms of waiting vs not waiting being better).

Yeah, and in legacy I don't mind weighing potential stifle vs. potential wasteland and taking my lumps if I guess wrong. In EDH though, the games are long enough already and I'll make the play that keeps the game moving the most.

I won't belabor the point though since it sounds like we agree.

I'll take a moment to define priority bullying however. Easiet to explain with an example:

Player A casts Thassa's Oracle with 0 cards in library.
Player B, who is next in priority, has a counterspell, but passes priority anyways.
Player C passes
Player D also has nothing, but Player B cuts in at this point and tells him to tap a land for mana to force another round of priority (I know this sounds weird since mana abilities do not use the stack, but they do cause a change in the game state which forces another round of priority). Player D does so.

I already feel like this is kind of scummy and VERY annoying, wasting peoples times to see if someone else has a counterspell first. But it gets worse:

Player B passes priority AGAIN
Player C passes
Player D is forced to tap another land for mana

This cycle repeats until Player D is out of untapped lands, then the process repeats except Player C is forced to start tapping lands until he is out of untapped lands.

Finally, Player B actually casts Counterspell, Thassa's Oracle is countered and Player A passes the turn. Now, Player B gets to take his turn with Players C and D tapped out, of course, this might not matter since if they did have some interaction they would have used it against Player A, but some interaction doesn't line up against some threats, (for example, spot removal wouldn't be any good against Thassa's Oracle, but player B might play something that player C or D would have loved to kill).

Currently, the cEDH community is pushing for a rules change that would prevent mana abilities from forcing another round of priority, but that doesn't really solve the problem, adding mana to your mana pool is the most common example people use, but the concept applies to any action that would use the stack player B would no longer be able to force you to tap out, but he could force you to sac your entire board if you have a Goblin Bombardment out. he could force you to waste your removal spell that you were saving, Heck, if he really wanted to play as optimally as possible (and that's what competitive means) he would even be forcing players C and D to crack all their fetches before actually countering the spell.

The example everyone uses above also is a scenario where it's a literal game-winning spell on the stack, but there's no reason not to do the same thing when you have a Mental Misstep and the opponent before you casts Sol Ring (though, you obviously have less leverage, so while you could probably still make someone crack a fetch, if you try to make them sac their board to a Goblin Bombardment, they'll just say no and the Sol Ring will resolve).

I noticed this interaction awhile ago (i didn't know mana abilities caused another round of priority, but I found myself in a position where I could have forced an opponent to self sabotage themselves, and realized similar situations come up quite often), but never used it because it's not very in keeping with the spirit of EDH, recently the startegy has become well known in cEDH and that's where its gotten its name (and the clamoring for a rules change though, again, that only stops one form of priority bullying).

This strategy is simply a byproduct of how the priority system works in a multiplayer game in magic, it seems to me that it's impossible to solve, and because of that, multiplayer magic can never be truly competitive (unless your willing to just accept priority bullying as part of the game), and, therefore, I'll never play my multiplayer games 100% competitively.

[WizardMN]

I'll take a moment to define priority bullying however. Easiet to explain with an example:

Player A casts Thassa's Oracle with 0 cards in library.
Player B, who is next in priority, has a counterspell, but passes priority anyways.
Player C passes
Player D also has nothing, but Player B cuts in at this point and tells him to tap a land for mana to force another round of priority (I know this sounds weird since mana abilities do not use the stack, but they do cause a change in the game state which forces another round of priority). Player D does so.

I already feel like this is kind of scummy and VERY annoying, wasting peoples times to see if someone else has a counterspell first. But it gets worse:

Player B passes priority AGAIN
Player C passes
Player D is forced to tap another land for mana

First, I do agree that this behavior is annoying at the very least. However, the way you have described isn't how it happens. I am sure that is how people play it, but the rules don't allow for it to work that way.

Generally speaking, when a spell or ability resolves, the Active Player (Player A in this case) gets priority again and a new round of priority starts again with them. They pass and then players B, C, and D get a chance to act again. Most people understand this and things are fine.

However, with mana abilities (likely because they don't use the stack) it works slightly differently. Instead of the mana ability resolving and Player A getting priority again, Player *D* gets priority right afterwards. There is indeed another round of priority as you said, and Player A, B, and C get to act as they see fit. However, if Player A, B, and C do decide to pass, Player D does not get to act again because they already passed priority when they had it immediately after their mana ability resolved. Thus, while the process can certainly make them tap down a single land (which can sometimes be enough) this isn't going to be enough to cause Player D to tap all their lands simply because the rules won't allow it. At least, not without another player taking an action in there somewhere which means Player B can't keep passing and expecting Player D to keep tapping lands because they simply won't get the opportunity to do so. The object on top of the stack will resolve once Players A, B, and C all pass priority again after the mana ability resolves.

The relevant rules are:

SPOILER

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117.3b. The active player receives priority after a spell or ability (other than a mana ability) resolves.

405.6c. Mana abilities resolve immediately. If a mana ability both produces mana and has another effect, the mana is produced and the other effect happens immediately. If a player had priority before a mana ability was activated, that player gets priority after it resolves. (See rule 605, "Mana Abilities.")

117.4. If all players pass in succession (that is, if all players pass without taking any actions in between passing), the spell or ability on top of the stack resolves or, if the stack is empty, the phase or step ends.

[DirkGently]

@Dunadain Interesting, I didn't know that about mana tapping. That's bizarre. Good to know, though, thanks for the information.

Personally, I'd tap a land the first time, and tell them "if you don't counter it at this point, I'm just going to let it resolve and it's your stupid funeral." They lose if it doesn't get countered same as me, so promising that they'll lose by passing priority is creating a game of chicken where you're both at an equal power level, instead of one where the other person has all the control.

When you're backed into a corner, sometimes the only way out is convincing everyone else you're crazy enough to flip the table. Which tbf is basically the same tactic Putin is using lol.

@WizardMN huh, thanks for the clarification. I guess I'm never too old to learn lol.

edit: Good thing Jon didn't bet me on whether mana abilities refresh priority lol, I would have lost my hundred lol.

[Venedrex]

As far as talk regarding competitive magic goes, I feel I have something to contribute as, although I've never played in a tournament (ok well maybe technically on arena but it was unclear) I have grinded the ladder numerous times and had some fun trying to work my way closer to #1 in the Mythic ranks.

First, some backstory. I was introduced to MTG by a friend, and my very first games were EDH, and my friend/brother-in-law built me a Meren of Clan Nel Toth to play with it. I'm actually updating that now. But I digress. Eventually, I downloaded Arena, and started playing Standard. I played Standard on arena starting in the days when Dominaria was the new kid on the block until about when Eldraine finally rotated. I've played Temur Reclamation, Jeskai Control, Esper Control (are you seeing a pattern here, yes I know I'm a filthy control player), Temur Adventures, Izzet Drakes, Esper Hero, etc etc. What I'm belaboring to say is, I'd like to think I can give a pretty well backed up view on Standard as a format, at least what it has been in the past years.

Oh my goodness, am I going to bring another game into this post. Somebody stop me this is becoming an essay. Oh well. I also have played Dota 2 quite a bit. Ya'll may know Dota 2's reputation. An incredibly competitive and toxic environment. We make LoL look like Cocomelon, and that's not a brag it's an admission of guilt. Now, I know this seems like a really weird rabbit trail but hang with me.

Most of the year, we Dota players are reforming jerks who try our best not to flip off the handle, and we grind and try to just focus on the game instead of on screaming at each other. But, and this is what I'm trying to get at, when The International comes around, you get to see our community the way it's supposed to be. We recoginze the outstanding talent of the players who have sacrificed and trained and given their all to compete at a level we can just barely comprehend.

When TI comes around, every dota player rises to the occasion because the tournament reminds us all of why we fell in love with the game in the first place, and why it's one of the greatest games of all time. The simple fact that at the highest levels we can see what the game was supposed to be, a masterful demonstration of five individuals putting aside their differences to work together as a cohesive unit and utilize brilliant tactics to take down another team doing the exact same thing. I guess it's a little bit like that quote from Moneyball: "How can you not be romantic about baseball."

See, for every hundreds of stupid pub games we play in the trenches of low MMR, where we rage at each other and fail to win because we're dumb and making silly mistakes and yelling at each other, there's one perfect game we play every once in a blue moon where you and four other random individuals mesh and form a unit and read each others minds as you demolish your enemies.

But the inspiration to keep going and trying to find a game like that, for me anyway, comes from seeing the best of the best put on absolutely showstopper performances at the biggest tournament, with it all on the line.

Tying this into MTG, I know competitive magic has had it's share of struggles over the years.
I know Arena sometimes brings out the worst in us. I know Standard has had lots of terrible metas, and things have been rough with Wotc's management of things,
like when they reinvent the pro tour for the five hundredth time.

However, I believe that there is value for everyone in witnessing the game they love pushed to it's absolute limits by players who have put in the time and did the work to become legends. I think Commander is the best format in Magic, mostly because it is a casual and fun format. But I don't think that we should be so quick to cast blanket judgment on all competitive formats. To me, it's Yin and Yang. You take one away and you hurt the balance of the game as a whole. I think Magic has endured as a game because there are some many different ways to play, for people of all different preferences. Just my two cents.

[DirkGently]

@Venedrex Take your kumbaya and shove it [redacted]

Kidding, kidding (obviously, I hope). But I do think (as someone who only played enough MOBA to decide he never wanted to play one again) that there's some pretty big differences between Magic and a MOBA that shape the relationship that the pro scene has with the casual scene.

MOBAs are designed, from the ground up, to be competitive esports. In a way, they share more with something like basketball than magic, imo. I don't know much about basketball either, though, so how about I compare to Starcraft, which I know at least slightly more about.

Starcraft proficiency can be broken into two layers of skill: technical proficiency and strategic thinking, aka micro and macro. Micro, while minor breakthroughs are occasionally made, is mostly simply about having high, well-utilized APM. Everyone basically knows how to do it well in theory, but actually doing it is very difficult and there's no real skill cap. How you improve at micro is primarily repetition, getting better and faster as you get more and more familiar with the game. Macro is more about larger decision making, and has a lot more room for creativity and innovation. Where do you focus on the tech tree, how many bases do you build and when, etc. Getting better at macro requires more imagination, seeing what other people are doing and iterating on it, even sitting down and thinking things out, away from the game entirely. I'm pretty sure these two layers of skills also apply to MOBAs, or at least they could be conceptualized in this way.

As a starcraft player, everything within the game that you strive to do can be contained within those two categories. You want to play faster and more proficiently. You also want to think about outside-the-box solutions and catch your opponents off-guard with a clever strategy. There's nothing else to be achieved in the game. When you see a pro player, they're doing both of those things at an unparalleled level, and it's inspirational and impressive to watch.

While you could break magic play into those categories to some extent, I think the more logical division is between deck building and deck playing, with building being analogous to macro and playing being analogous to micro. And like micro in Starcraft, getting good at playing is mostly about reps. Given enough time, just about anyone can get very good at playing a deck by playing it a lot and paying attention to the results. Maybe not pro-tour good, but very good. Some people get the best, and those are pros. Fine and well. However, unlike starcraft where macro proficiency requires a creative and strategic mind, building a competitive deck requires...an internet connection. So a pro playing the equivalent of "amazing macro" is something that requires no skill at all. It's not impressive, it's not inspirational. Plenty of garbage players are playing the exact same deck.

Of course, someone does create those top-tier decks. Some of those people may even be pros. And that's an impressive feat. But finding the best deck isn't worth a damn thing in terms of pro-level recognition. Within a nanosecond of your deck achieving any results anywhere, thousands of people will build the exact same deck and have the exact same advantage. Deckbuilding skill is worth next-to-nothing in terms of the pro scene (outside of limited, because limited is the only good competitive format). Even if you resist the current and brew your own decks, any success you find is worthless the moment you have it.

So to me, pro magic is like pro starcraft with only micro. It's impressive, I guess, but it's not that interesting. If the pro scene was everyone playing amazing innovative brews, that would be awesome, but it's not, and it can't be. "Innovations" tend to be "oh wow, he's running 2 of this card instead of 3" or "oh wow, he's got something unusual in his sideboard". Maybe that excites people committed to those formats, but it doesn't do much for me.

I know there are build options in MOBAs, so they're not completely bereft of exploratory potential. But it's pretty limited. The handful of times my ex cajoled me into playing HotS, I recall there were like 8 points where you got 2 upgrades to choose from. That's 256 possible combinations per hero, and maybe a hundred heroes or so. 25,600 possible builds. Neat. There are roughly the same number of unique cards in magic. So the number of possible 60-card vintage decks is roughly 25,000^60 (sorry Battle of Wits players). "More than the stars in the sky" or "more than the grains of sand on all the world's beaches" doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. If you were choosing any 3 atoms from the observable universe, there would be fewer combinations of 3 atoms than there are unique magic decks. And that vast and unimaginable sea of possibility is reduced to a puddle for competitive constructed.

Me, I want to sail on that sea. I want to see what unique and strange monsters might exist beneath the waves. That's what brought me to magic. There is no meta for standard, no matter how "good", that would make me want to play it. It's simply not possible. As long as there are best decks - and there always will be - people are going to play and homogenize around those decks. And a deckbuilding game without any deckbuilding is, in my considered opinion. stupid.

[Venedrex]

@Venedrex Take your kumbaya and shove it [redacted]

Kidding, kidding (obviously, I hope). But I do think (as someone who only played enough MOBA to decide he never wanted to play one again) that there's some pretty big differences between Magic and a MOBA that shape the relationship that the pro scene has with the casual scene.

MOBAs are designed, from the ground up, to be competitive esports. In a way, they share more with something like basketball than magic, imo. I don't know much about basketball either, though, so how about I compare to Starcraft, which I know at least slightly more about.

Starcraft proficiency can be broken into two layers of skill: technical proficiency and strategic thinking, aka micro and macro. Micro, while minor breakthroughs are occasionally made, is mostly simply about having high, well-utilized APM. Everyone basically knows how to do it well in theory, but actually doing it is very difficult and there's no real skill cap. How you improve at micro is primarily repetition, getting better and faster as you get more and more familiar with the game. Macro is more about larger decision making, and has a lot more room for creativity and innovation. Where do you focus on the tech tree, how many bases do you build and when, etc. Getting better at macro requires more imagination, seeing what other people are doing and iterating on it, even sitting down and thinking things out, away from the game entirely. I'm pretty sure these two layers of skills also apply to MOBAs, or at least they could be conceptualized in this way.

As a starcraft player, everything within the game that you strive to do can be contained within those two categories. You want to play faster and more proficiently. You also want to think about outside-the-box solutions and catch your opponents off-guard with a clever strategy. There's nothing else to be achieved in the game. When you see a pro player, they're doing both of those things at an unparalleled level, and it's inspirational and impressive to watch.

While you could break magic play into those categories to some extent, I think the more logical division is between deck building and deck playing, with building being analogous to macro and playing being analogous to micro. And like micro in Starcraft, getting good at playing is mostly about reps. Given enough time, just about anyone can get very good at playing a deck by playing it a lot and paying attention to the results. Maybe not pro-tour good, but very good. Some people get the best, and those are pros. Fine and well. However, unlike starcraft where macro proficiency requires a creative and strategic mind, building a competitive deck requires...an internet connection. So a pro playing the equivalent of "amazing macro" is something that requires no skill at all. It's not impressive, it's not inspirational. Plenty of garbage players are playing the exact same deck.

Of course, someone does create those top-tier decks. Some of those people may even be pros. And that's an impressive feat. But finding the best deck isn't worth a damn thing in terms of pro-level recognition. Within a nanosecond of your deck achieving any results anywhere, thousands of people will build the exact same deck and have the exact same advantage. Deckbuilding skill is worth next-to-nothing in terms of the pro scene (outside of limited, because limited is the only good competitive format). Even if you resist the current and brew your own decks, any success you find is worthless the moment you have it.

So to me, pro magic is like pro starcraft with only micro. It's impressive, I guess, but it's not that interesting. If the pro scene was everyone playing amazing innovative brews, that would be awesome, but it's not, and it can't be. "Innovations" tend to be "oh wow, he's running 2 of this card instead of 3" or "oh wow, he's got something unusual in his sideboard". Maybe that excites people committed to those formats, but it doesn't do much for me.

I know there are build options in MOBAs, so they're not completely bereft of exploratory potential. But it's pretty limited. The handful of times my ex cajoled me into playing HotS, I recall there were like 8 points where you got 2 upgrades to choose from. That's 256 possible combinations per hero, and maybe a hundred heroes or so. 25,600 possible builds. Neat. There are roughly the same number of unique cards in magic. So the number of possible 60-card vintage decks is roughly 25,000^60 (sorry Battle of Wits players). "More than the stars in the sky" or "more than the grains of sand on all the world's beaches" doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. If you were choosing any 3 atoms from the observable universe, there would be fewer combinations of 3 atoms than there are unique magic decks. And that vast and unimaginable sea of possibility is reduced to a puddle for competitive constructed.

Me, I want to sail on that sea. I want to see what unique and strange monsters might exist beneath the waves. That's what brought me to magic. There is no meta for standard, no matter how "good", that would make me want to play it. It's simply not possible. As long as there are best decks - and there always will be - people are going to play and homogenize around those decks. And a deckbuilding game without any deckbuilding is, in my considered opinion. stupid.

That's a totally valid point, one my favorite aspects of MTG is definitely deckbuilding and making decks that express how I like to play the game. I agree that just playing the best deck aspect of competitive magic is boring in that sense. My favorite part of competitive magic is learning the lines of play and quirks that I didn't know about at first, and I love seeing how the pros play the decks at the highest level.

Because although I might be using the same deck as Seth Manfield, when I watch him play games, I immediately realize just how badly I've been playing his deck, and that in turn drives to not only realize the right way to play the deck, but more importantly, to try and figure out why that's the right way to play the deck, so that I can be even better at the game as a whole thanks to that understanding. Sometimes I see things that blow my mind.

For instance, would I ever thoughtseize myself? Maybe. But it makes a lot of sense when you have an Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath in the bin and I need two cards to escape. Or watching Kristof Prinz using Expansion // Explosion in a way I never dreamed of doing, almost blowing out Riku Kumagai by setting him up for a two-for one, only for Riku to see through it by being even more of a genius.

So I'm cool to agree with you on the boringness of deckbuilding for comp games. But to me, it was never about the deck when playing comp, but the pilot. When you play non-competitively, the main focus is working on tweaking the deck and strategy of my deck. Whereas, in competitive magic I feel like the work is being done on the player, as I get refined, and I make cuts to my thought process, and add strategies and tricks to my repertoire. Yet, this is all just my random thoughts on the internet, I mean I'm not gonna argue with anyone who disagrees. Maybe this is a load of baloney. Who knows? Just what little old me thinks.

Of course, I still try to improve my game in regular magic as well, but I focus more on doing so when playing competitively. Again, I think Commander is the best format, and I think Standard has been, well, pretty crumby for a long time. But I would be remiss to forget my fond memories of playing it without saying my piece on why I enjoyed it personally.

There are definitely lots of drawbacks to competitive magic, but I think there are benefits as well, and that's just how I feel, but I can understand you're point of view as well. And what you said about never wanting to play Standard, that's completely valid, I think that's what's so great about Magic, you never have to play Standard, and I don't want to seem like I'm trying to convince you that it's good or you should play it. My favorite format was Historic, but it fell to the darkness *cough, alchemy* a long time ago.

One competitive format I'm not touching is Legacy. I'm sorry but I need my kidney. Also, Modern seemed somewhat interesting (if still prohibitively expensive) before it became Modern Horizons Block Constructed.

[DirkGently]

@Venedrex I've listened to limited resources for a long time, since before LSV was the co-host. I've seen LSV play on stream, I've heard him talk about his thought process a lot. And honestly...he may be one of the best magic players, but he's just a guy. Outside of tournaments he's heavily prepped for, I don't think he plays at a level that's so different from what plenty of other people play at. Things like the thoughtseize play might seem totally crazy and unexpected when you're a spectator, but I'd bet that wasn't the first time that came up. Decent chance he got the idea from somewhere else (not that it would be surprising to come up with it himself, coin flip really). If you play a deck enough times those things are going to come up, and you can easily watch other people stream to improve at playing the deck without even playing it. Imo, once you've got a decent play skill, the most important factor is simply the time you put in.

A friend of mine made it to the pro tour a couple times. When we played, we were pretty evenly matched, but I think I beat him more often than not. When we did competitive tournaments together I generally did better than him. The main difference was that he was willing to get on a plane every few weeks to follow GPs. More than anything else, the difference between a good player and a pro player is, imo, simply a matter of time commitment. He cared enough to invest the time - I didn't. So it goes.

So I don't get that much thrill from watching the pros. I see an olympic high jumper catapult themselves into the air and I think "yeah, no way I could ever do that". Same for starcraft pros clicking so quickly I can't even follow what they're doing. I see a magic pro make a good play, I think "if I spent hundreds of hours grinding that deck on arena, I'm sure I could play it roughly as well - but I don't want to, because it's just not very fun." I mean, granted, I've probably spent 10,000 hours (20 years, 50 weeks a year, 10 hours a week sounds about right) playing/building/thinking about magic, whereas I spent one miserable middle school afternoon failing to jump over a pole, but still.

[Venedrex]

@Venedrex I've listened to limited resources for a long time, since before LSV was the co-host. I've seen LSV play on stream, I've heard him talk about his thought process a lot. And honestly...he may be one of the best magic players, but he's just a guy. Outside of tournaments he's heavily prepped for, I don't think he plays at a level that's so different from what plenty of other people play at. Things like the thoughtseize play might seem totally crazy and unexpected when you're a spectator, but I'd bet that wasn't the first time that came up. Decent chance he got the idea from somewhere else (not that it would be surprising to come up with it himself, coin flip really). If you play a deck enough times those things are going to come up, and you can easily watch other people stream to improve at playing the deck without even playing it. Imo, once you've got a decent play skill, the most important factor is simply the time you put in.

A friend of mine made it to the pro tour a couple times. When we played, we were pretty evenly matched, but I think I beat him more often than not. When we did competitive tournaments together I generally did better than him. The main difference was that he was willing to get on a plane every few weeks to follow GPs. More than anything else, the difference between a good player and a pro player is, imo, simply a matter of time commitment. He cared enough to invest the time - I didn't. So it goes.

So I don't get that much thrill from watching the pros. I see an olympic high jumper catapult themselves into the air and I think "yeah, no way I could ever do that". Same for starcraft pros clicking so quickly I can't even follow what they're doing. I see a magic pro make a good play, I think "if I spent hundreds of hours grinding that deck on arena, I'm sure I could play it roughly as well - but I don't want to, because it's just not very fun." I mean, granted, I've probably spent 10,000 hours (20 years, 50 weeks a year, 10 hours a week sounds about right) playing/building/thinking about magic, whereas I spent one miserable middle school afternoon failing to jump over a pole, but still.

That's fair.

[DirkGently]

@TheGildedGoose Where you at, my dude? I thought we were gonna have a debate about the value of constructed?

[plushpenguin]

I'm so used to seeing people copy my signature deck that I have multiple locals doing it.

Anyway, formats have been getting solved too quickly since RTR. This process has only accelerated.

[TheGildedGoose]

@TheGildedGoose Where you at, my dude? I thought we were gonna have a debate about the value of constructed?

I mean, there's really nothing to debate. You clarified your position and dispelled my concerns. I'm inclined to agree about metadata and formats getting stale for deckbuilding, which is the main reason I don't play competitively anymore (the others being time and money, of course). Really, the only thing I took umbrage with was what I perceived to be an uncharacteristically lazy argument from you.