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DirkGently
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Post by DirkGently » 1 year ago

Just to make this clear at the start, while this post was inspired by something @onering said in the political vs manipulative thread, I just think it's an interesting and worthwhile question to contemplate in the abstract. I'm guessing he doesn't want to engage on the topic since he didn't in that thread, and that's totally fine.

I'll state the conundrum as I see it:

1) DirkGently (not me, another DirkGently, you don't know him) wins a greater-than-average number of games
2) A large part of his advantage (for sake of argument) is that he makes political deals with other players that benefit him (as well as whoever is making the deal with him, usually)
3) If his opponents collectively agreed never to make deals with him, he would be unable to exercise that advantage and would win less often
4) If he wins less often, his opponents will collectively win more often, and so each individual opponent will win more often
5) Therefore, his opponents should collectively agree not to make deals with him in order to win more often

This fits somewhat into a similar structure as the classic prisoner's dilemma, except substitute getting out of jail earlier with winning more frequently, and ratting out the other person with making a deal with DirkGently.

Based on this logic, the conclusion is that nobody should take deals from DirkGently.

There's a few quibbles I have, though I do find the argument somewhat compelling still. But here are my attempts to chip away at the edifice.

As regards point 1, I don't think it's relevant. Even if DirkGently was only winning 10% of games, and would win 5% without dealmaking, it would still be to his opponents collective benefit to deny him the advantage of dealmaking. On a practical level, they would probably be less likely to engage in some kind of collective action to hurt someone who's already doing badly, but mathematically it would still be the "correct" choice if you believe the rest of the points.

However I think the biggest fault is with point 4. Within a single game I think it's clearly untrue. For example, in a game where P1 is on the brink of winning, if DirkGently has a way to stop him but requires some sort of deal to do it (i.e. "I'll cast this board wipe, but P2 has to agree not to attack me for lethal with their indestructible creatures on their next turn") then it's obviously worth taking that deal within the context of that game. Imbalances in the board state are exactly the space that dealmaking takes advantage of. But if we're talking about his opponents collectively agreeing from the start of the game not to take any deals - no matter how tempting - from him, then things get more interesting. Yes, the board wipe deal is clearly a good deal, but if you've already made another deal that supersedes it, then that's no longer an option.

To that idea I have two main responses, though neither completely dismantles it. The first response is that, for example with my Phelddagrif deck, I think in a lot of cases it DOES increase some opponents' winrate even across many games. Phelddagrif, strategically-speaking, is happy to boost up other decks to enable them to kill his more powerful enemies. For example, empowering a cat tribal deck to kill a combo Zada, Hedron Grinder. Without Phelddagrif present, that matchup could just be blowout after blowout in favor of Zada. With Phelddagrif to neutralize Zada in part by making deals with cat tribal - cat tribal doesn't have a good chance against Phelddagrif after Zada is dead, but it probably has a better chance that it did versus Zada. So cat tribal has no motivation to take a "no dealmaking" agreement at the start of the game, even though Zada surely wants them to do so.

The second response is that unlike the prisoner's dilemma, the "bad choice" isn't just an abstract choice - it's another player, who has agency. Yes, if the opponents agree to do something that harms one player in order to benefit themselves, they might win more often, but that same thing could be done back to them. An even more obvious example is this one:

1) Three players working together can certainly kill a single player
2) Each player is more likely to win a 3p game than a 4p game
3) Therefore, in order to win more often, three players should agree to eliminate one player right from the start of the game

The obvious problem arises - if the group is willing to make a collective pact to kill someone, there's nothing to prevent them doing the same thing back to you. We can say "well, obviously kill whoever is winning the most often", but there's going to be a point in the game where that person is certainly NOT the most likely to win the game, if everyone is trying to kill them.

And that's where I think I end up - yes, going after the most powerful player is a good move at the start of the game, but eventually the circumstances of the game are going to dictate that they're no longer the target, latent threat notwithstanding. If you're still attacking someone because they win a lot, while ignoring someone else who's setting up a combo right now, you're making a mistake. Making a mutual "kill them/don't make deals with them no matter what" is a blunt instrument when the better solution is more nuanced. Pay them more attention, scrutinize their deals more closely, target them when the situation is at relative parity, or perhaps even if they appear slightly behind. That's the way to get the best results.

Thoughts?
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Treamayne
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Post by Treamayne » 1 year ago

Interesting hypothesis. . .
From the perspective of a player that prefers threat assessment and altruism (with a possible return of same) over overt deals:
DirkGently wrote:
1 year ago
I'll state the conundrum as I see it:

1) DirkGently (not me, another DirkGently, you don't know him) wins a greater-than-average number of games
2) A large part of his advantage (for sake of argument) is that he makes political deals with other players that benefit him (as well as whoever is making the deal with him, usually)
-a) this only seems to consider immediate short-term advantage - but not the long-term advantage accumulated over multiple deals with one or more opponents
3) If his opponents collectively agreed never to make deals with him, he would be unable to exercise that advantage and would may win less often
-a) DG still has agency, so there is no guarantee that such a deal would decrease his win-rate
4) If he wins less often, his opponents will may collectively win more often, and so each individual opponent will win more often
-a) While the sum of percentage amongst the rest of the table may increase, that does not guarantee the winrate for any given player in that group would also increase; so for that individual the deal isn't necessarily a good thing - it's trading one threat for a different threat
5) Therefore, his opponents should collectively agree not to make deals with him in order to win more often
-a) see above - the only player(s) that would benefit from such a deal are the ones that increase their personal win-rate (not the collective DG-Opponent win-rate)
Edited based on where the logic does not seem sound to me:
This also comes down to is winning important, or is having fun and enjoying a game important. For players that emphasize the former, your logic (mostly) holds; but for players that emphasize the latter the logic fails to hold because increasing personal or collective win-rate isn't a (primary) goal.
Based on this logic, the conclusion is that nobody should take deals from DirkGently.
That logic holds regardless of game or circumstances. . .
As regards point 1, I don't think it's relevant. Even if DirkGently was only winning 10% of games, and would win 5% without dealmaking, it would still be to his opponents collective benefit to deny him the advantage of dealmaking. On a practical level, they would probably be less likely to engage in some kind of collective action to hurt someone who's already doing badly, but mathematically it would still be the "correct" choice if you believe the rest of the points.
This depends on the player's definition of "correct choice." If the player thinks the correct choice is always "win as much as possible," your math holds.
However, if the player's definition of "correct choice" is an equitable distribution of victory - then further deals against another player also below the equitable percentage of wins is clearly the "wrong choice." That's like the person who always targets the weakest player early because they agree with your "knock one player out early because 33% chance > 25% chance" theory. Which circles back to competitive mindset vs casual mindset.
For example, in a game where P1 is on the brink of winning, if DirkGently has a way to stop him but requires some sort of deal to do it (i.e. "I'll cast this board wipe, but P2 has to agree not to attack me for lethal with their indestructible creatures on their next turn") then it's obviously worth taking that deal within the context of that game.
I'm not sure this example is accurate. If P1 is on the brink of winning; then DG needs to cast the board wipe to not lose; regardless of P2's intentions with their indestructible creature(s) post-wipe. Obviously DG wants assurance that the attack will swing toward the player that was about to win, but the only options are:
- Lose now
- Wipe and have a chance of not losing
P2 may want the wipe to also not lose, but the deal isn't necessary since DG has to wipe or lose (deal or no deal)
Pay them more attention, scrutinize their deals more closely, target them when the situation is at relative parity, or perhaps even if they appear slightly behind. That's the way to get the best results.
In other words, Threat Assessment (possibly with a political skew - not just what's a threat now, but what will be a threat left unchecked - especially in the hands of a manipulator political player)
3) Therefore, in order to win more often, three players should agree to eliminate one player DirkGently (the one we haven't met, obviously) right from the start of the game
FTFY
Thoughts?
I try not to do so, they often hurt
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Post by TheAmericanSpirit » 1 year ago

So there's this guy named Hayes who pops through my LGS on occasion. Hayes is very good at Magic, well beyond the high water mark of the average player I know. He's a good enough No matter the game state, no matter the decks, Hayes must die. If he doesn't, he will win out of nowhere with Hollywood style and theatrics. He's done it more times than I can count. I can't beat him in a 1v1, can barely best the guy if I comvince the other players that he's the ultimate threat. The man doesn't make deals, he doesn't play combos, the dude is just that good.

So sometimes, you just have to kill the local Dirk, whether it's GTO or not. When they're so much better than the rest of the table, the only choice is to destroy them while you can still eke out an advantage of some kind.
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Post by onering » 1 year ago

Sometimes you have to realize when a player should be considered the archenemy by default, until someone else (via game state or deck choice) usurps that role.

I think, Dirk, that you get caught up on a basic (flawed) premise that ganging up on any one player is mathematically the correct move. You've notes several times that taking a player out is always correct, because your win percentage increases, yet I suspect you only actually believe that in athe abstract, as you regularly talk about "saving" weaker players or helping them out to gain allies. Clearly, taking out the strongest player is going to increase your chances at winning, perhaps dramatically, but taking out a weak player may actually decrease your chance of winning, and perhaps even ensure that you lose, for numerous reasons that I don't care to write an essay on right now.

Likewise, the table ganging up on the 10 percent winrate player to reduce their wins to 5 is so different from ganging up on the 50 percent winrate player as to be a laughable comparison. Against the 10 percent winrate player, the player with the highest winrate is assuredly part of the group ganging up, and is likely to see the highest increase in winrate from the arrangement, while when a 50 percent winrate player is ganged up on they are the highest winrate player at the table and so the new winrate distribution is more likely to be equitable.

This might not be true, for instance the group might include a 40 percent winrate player and they'll suck up most of the difference (although in such a situation the 50 percent win rate player would be best served by directing their resources against the strongest player, so it could actually work out that the two superpowers wear each other out regularly enough that the weaker players have more breathing room to get their wins). The remaining table is more likely to be close in skill to each other when the targeted player has a huge winrate than when the target player has a paltry one, and in the cases where the latter is equitable each individual player would be better served by utilizing the weak player as an ally against whoever the strongest player is.

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Post by DirkGently » 1 year ago

Treamayne wrote:
1 year ago
2) A large part of his advantage (for sake of argument) is that he makes political deals with other players that benefit him (as well as whoever is making the deal with him, usually)
-a) this only seems to consider immediate short-term advantage - but not the long-term advantage accumulated over multiple deals with one or more opponents
I'm not sure what you mean here. Yes, from the perspective of the opponent, while the deal I'm currently offering them is beneficial to them, future deals I might make with other opponents won't be. So what? Accepting or refusing the current deal doesn't - barring an anti-deal deal with the other players - prevent DirkGently from making those future deals. So declining the current deal just means you're in even worse shape since you still have the disadvantage of the future deals where you aren't involved, and no advantage with this deal in the short-term either.
3) If his opponents collectively agreed never to make deals with him, he would be unable to exercise that advantage and would may win less often
-a) DG still has agency, so there is no guarantee that such a deal would decrease his win-rate
I guess DG could get better at the game, but that would be true regardless of whether or not he's able to make deals. Denying him an option does give him less power. The only way that wouldn't be true is if you think dealmaking is a pointless option, like denying him the option to run Break Open in his deck - technically limits him, but not in a way that matters. And I think that's clearly not the circumstance when we're talking about dealmaking, which can plainly be a strong tool.
4) If he wins less often, his opponents will may collectively win more often, and so each individual opponent will win more often
-a) While the sum of percentage amongst the rest of the table may increase, that does not guarantee the winrate for any given player in that group would also increase; so for that individual the deal isn't necessarily a good thing - it's trading one threat for a different threat

5) Therefore, his opponents should collectively agree not to make deals with him in order to win more often
-a) see above - the only player(s) that would benefit from such a deal are the ones that increase their personal win-rate (not the collective DG-Opponent win-rate)
I agree with this.
This also comes down to is winning important, or is having fun and enjoying a game important. For players that emphasize the former, your logic (mostly) holds; but for players that emphasize the latter the logic fails to hold because increasing personal or collective win-rate isn't a (primary) goal.
We're talking about game theory, of course we're talking about winrate as the goal. The whole conversation is within the context of winrate.
Based on this logic, the conclusion is that nobody should take deals from DirkGently.
That logic holds regardless of game or circumstances. . .
I'm assuming this is a joke? Either that or I'm going to have a difficult time splitting a cab with you...
This depends on the player's definition of "correct choice." If the player thinks the correct choice is always "win as much as possible," your math holds.
However, if the player's definition of "correct choice" is an equitable distribution of victory - then further deals against another player also below the equitable percentage of wins is clearly the "wrong choice."
And if someone's goal is eating as many cards as possible then the correct choice is using a blender.

I don't see any point to talking about someone's theoretical goals - people could have any random goal. But the objective of the game is to win, so within the context of game theory we're talking about how to maximize your personal winrate.
That's like the person who always targets the weakest player early because they agree with your "knock one player out early because 33% chance > 25% chance" theory. Which circles back to competitive mindset vs casual mindset.
I don't think that has to do with competitive vs casual - I think that's just something that some players do when they misunderstand how probabilities work. Sure, you could say everyone has an equal chance to win before anyone plays a card (though that would be ignoring skill and deck strength), but once cards his the playmat those numbers are going to move around. Most likely, the weak player didn't have a 25% winrate to relinquish. Someone who spends resources focusing on the weakest player is probably going to get killed by someone they ignored, who wasn't a weak player.
For example, in a game where P1 is on the brink of winning, if DirkGently has a way to stop him but requires some sort of deal to do it (i.e. "I'll cast this board wipe, but P2 has to agree not to attack me for lethal with their indestructible creatures on their next turn") then it's obviously worth taking that deal within the context of that game.
I'm not sure this example is accurate. If P1 is on the brink of winning; then DG needs to cast the board wipe to not lose; regardless of P2's intentions with their indestructible creature(s) post-wipe. Obviously DG wants assurance that the attack will swing toward the player that was about to win, but the only options are:
- Lose now
- Wipe and have a chance of not losing
P2 may want the wipe to also not lose, but the deal isn't necessary since DG has to wipe or lose (deal or no deal)
If I'm in DG's shoes (if you can imagine such a thing) and the guy to my left is refusing to make that deal, I have to assume it's because they intend to kill me. If they weren't intending to kill me, they lose literally nothing by doing it. So at that point, I'm saying "well, then I'm already dead either way, so I'm not going to bother casting the board wipe."

To play devil's advocate, I guess you could imagine a situation where P2 isn't planning to attack DG for lethal, but if they topdeck craterhoof then they will - so they might not want to take the deal even though they most likely don't intend to kill DG. But honestly, if I'm in that situation, unless they make it part of the deal (i.e. you won't attack me for lethal unless you're killing everyone else too), I'm still going to play hardball. You have to be willing to walk away. Put the ball back in their court. If they're willing to throw their chance to win in order to avoid making a deal, then I'm willing to throw my (considerably lower) chance to win in order to attempt to force a deal.
TheAmericanSpirit wrote:
1 year ago
So there's this guy named Hayes who pops through my LGS on occasion. Hayes is very good at Magic, well beyond the high water mark of the average player I know. He's a good enough No matter the game state, no matter the decks, Hayes must die. If he doesn't, he will win out of nowhere with Hollywood style and theatrics. He's done it more times than I can count. I can't beat him in a 1v1, can barely best the guy if I comvince the other players that he's the ultimate threat. The man doesn't make deals, he doesn't play combos, the dude is just that good.

So sometimes, you just have to kill the local Dirk, whether it's GTO or not. When they're so much better than the rest of the table, the only choice is to destroy them while you can still eke out an advantage of some kind.
I know you're exaggerating for effect but this kind of talk bothers me. Magic players aren't literally magic.

I often have games, especially against Jon, where he'll hit me even when I'm playing the jankiest deck imaginable with nothing on board and no cards in hand, and other players are building up enormously threatening boards, because he thinks I'm going to pull a rabbit out of a hat somehow. Skill has its limits.

I mean fine, sometimes I then topdeck Insurrection and win anyway, but ANYBODY could have done that.
onering wrote:
1 year ago
Sometimes you have to realize when a player should be considered the archenemy by default, until someone else (via game state or deck choice) usurps that role.

I think, Dirk, that you get caught up on a basic (flawed) premise that ganging up on any one player is mathematically the correct move. You've notes several times that taking a player out is always correct, because your win percentage increases, yet I suspect you only actually believe that in athe abstract, as you regularly talk about "saving" weaker players or helping them out to gain allies. Clearly, taking out the strongest player is going to increase your chances at winning, perhaps dramatically, but taking out a weak player may actually decrease your chance of winning, and perhaps even ensure that you lose, for numerous reasons that I don't care to write an essay on right now.
I agree with all this. But the scenario I'm imagining is that everyone makes a pact before the game starts, and the winrates get more complex. Before the game starts (ignoring deck strength and player skill) everyone does have an equal chance to win.

Granted, if you take into account the decks and players, that obviously won't be the case (Phelddagrif probably has a better chance to win a 4p than a 3p, and a 3p then a 2p), but if you're sitting down with a "normal" deck and don't know the other players or decks, you'd have to assume equal odds for anyone.
Likewise, the table ganging up on the 10 percent winrate player to reduce their wins to 5 is so different from ganging up on the 50 percent winrate player as to be a laughable comparison. Against the 10 percent winrate player, the player with the highest winrate is assuredly part of the group ganging up, and is likely to see the highest increase in winrate from the arrangement, while when a 50 percent winrate player is ganged up on they are the highest winrate player at the table and so the new winrate distribution is more likely to be equitable.
Definitely agree in the context of a game in-progress. Within the context of pre-game dealmaking I think it could be roughly equitable though. Like imagine there are 3 identical strong decks played by players of similar skill and 1 weaker deck. If the three stronger decks agree to kill the weaker deck, before any board state is established, you'd have to assume that the winrate gains are equitable, no?
This might not be true, for instance the group might include a 40 percent winrate player and they'll suck up most of the difference (although in such a situation the 50 percent win rate player would be best served by directing their resources against the strongest player, so it could actually work out that the two superpowers wear each other out regularly enough that the weaker players have more breathing room to get their wins). The remaining table is more likely to be close in skill to each other when the targeted player has a huge winrate than when the target player has a paltry one, and in the cases where the latter is equitable each individual player would be better served by utilizing the weak player as an ally against whoever the strongest player is.
I'm in 100% agreement that this is how the game should play out in the absence of pre-game deals. But I interpreted the original line of thought - "why don't all your opponents agree not to make deals with you" - as involving some kind of a pre-game agreement. Once the game has commenced, if I'm in a bad situation along with someone else, then absent an established agreement I don't see why they wouldn't want to make/take deals with me - sorry, I mean with DG. ;)
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Flux Decks
Gollum - Lobelia - Minthara - Plargg2 - Solphim - Otharri - Graaz - Ratchet - Soundwave - Slicer - Gale - Rootha - Kagemaro - Blorpityblorpboop - Kayla - SliverQueen - Ivy - Falco - Gluntch - Charlatan/Wilson - Garth - Kros - Anthousa - Shigeki - Light-Paws - Lukka - Sefris - Ebondeath - Rokiric - Garth - Nixilis - Grist - Mavinda - Kumano - Nezahal - Mavinda - Plargg - Plargg - Extus - Plargg - Oracle - Kardur - Halvar - Tergrid - Egon - Cosima - Halana+Livio - Jeska+Falthis+Obosh - Yeva - Akiri+Zirda - Lady Sun - Nahiri - Korlash - Overlord+Zirda - Chisei - Athreos2 - Akim - Cazur+Ukkima - Otrimi - Otrimi - Kalamax - Ayli+Lurrus - Clamilton - Gonti - Heliod2 - Ayula - Thassa2 - Gallia - Purphoros2 - Rankle - Uro - Rayami - Gargos - Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa - Ashling1 - Angus - Arcum - Talrand - Chainer - Higure - Kumano - Scion - Teferi1 - Uyo - Sisters
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Post by pokken » 1 year ago

DirkGently wrote:
1 year ago
A large part of his advantage (for sake of argument) is that he makes political deals with other players that benefit him (as well as whoever is making the deal with him, usually)
I suspect that playing correctly is a bigger part of your advantage than advertised.

I win a more than expected number of my games and I almost never make deals.

(expounding)
The point here is that, refusing to make deals with you isn't going to reduce your win rate enough to matter; people have to either:

1) collectively target you
2) learn to play better

My opinion is that, in general, people should do #2 as opposed to trying to make up for being bad by being antisocial. Magic is a fairly high skill game, but commander is not so high skill that you can't get to a baseline competency that somehow eludes most people.

My hypothesis for why people are so horrible is that they just aren't trying to play better. It takes a little bit of deliberate practice.

I am fairly sure that this is the case because people spend so much more time thinking about what cards that could be in their deck that could have fixed their problem than what choices they made that were bad. The number of times I see players analyzing their actions after games, e.g. "Oh, I should have held my removal back on turn 2 when I blew up your signet" vs. going "if only I had drawn X, I would have won," is basically...always.

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Post by TheAmericanSpirit » 1 year ago

DirkGently wrote:I know you're exaggerating for effect but this kind of talk bothers me. Magic players aren't literally magic.

I often have games, especially against Jon, where he'll hit me even when I'm playing the jankiest deck imaginable with nothing on board and no cards in hand, and other players are building up enormously threatening boards, because he thinks I'm going to pull a rabbit out of a hat somehow. Skill has its limits.

I mean fine, sometimes I then topdeck Insurrection and win anyway, but ANYBODY could have done that.
I'm only exaggerating a little. Hayes is really good at Magic, plays a real tight game and has a bonafide poker face too. I estimate my win% in games involving him is <5%. Thing is, I figure I can beat most other players. My win% is pretty deece. But the few times I beat Hayes, it was because the table beat Hayes, and I then won those games after he was removed. I can only see that as evidence of the necessity of killing the guy first in order to have a decent chance myself.

I'm also a petty little %$#%, so I'm not against the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction either. If I was losing >60% of my games to one particular player, I may be more interested in seeing them lose than winning myself. I'm not totally sure on that though, it hasn't come up yet. Hayes only appears when and where he wills it, and even when he's around, thankfully he sometimes just obliterates other pods instead and I am spared.

Additionally, I don't think some players are magic, but I never forget a worthy opponent and I definitely never forget a player who makes me, with 15 years of experience of playing this silly game, feel like an amateur with sheer span of the skill gap between us. People like you and Hayes are more dangerous with draft chaff than the average player with a 75% deck and should be scrutinized as such barring extreme circumstances. How many times do you have to see James Bond or MacGyver or Whoever foil a perfectly good master plan with chewing gum and half a toothpick before you just decide to kill him in the first act?!
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Post by DirkGently » 1 year ago

pokken wrote:
1 year ago
I suspect that playing correctly is a bigger part of your advantage than advertised.
Oh for sure, but we're talking about a different DirkGently, remember? ;) That was why I added "for sake of argument" - in reality my winrate is probably only a few percentage points lower without the ability to make deals. It's definitely an icing-on-the-cake sort of skill. That's also why I made the somewhat more straightforward conundrum of the collaborative murder agreement, since that applies to anyone who isn't engaging in an absurd degree of pubstomping.

Anyway I agree with everything you said, especially that last bit. If I had a nickel for every time Jon complained about how incredibly bad his luck is because he didn't draw (some sort of function which only a couple cards in his deck have) I'd be rich, whereas he makes unimaginably awful targeting decisions even when he knows they're terrible. Last game I had Scholar of New Horizons out (playing the precon) with no counters except the one on him, plenty of land, and the scholar doesn't have summoning sickness...and Jon uses Witness Protection on it just so he can swing a 6/5 into me after I tap it in response. I was at ~40 life. And he did this even after everyone at the table told him it was a bad decision and he agreed it probably was too. Some people just don't want to learn.

@TheAmericanSpirit What kinds of decks is he playing? What kinds of decks is the rest of the table playing?
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Post by TheAmericanSpirit » 1 year ago

@DirkGently it's a LGS environment, so I can only really account for what I play and what I distinctly remember Hayes playing. Hayes (to my knowledge) had at one point or another: Zacama, Primal Calamity, Neheb, the Eternal, Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma, and most recently Jetmir, Nexus of Revels. I've played all sorts of crap, half of which you can find floating around the site. Though as Pokken mentions, the cards are not really the factor at play. Hayes is better than me by a country mile and better than Johnny Rando by a few dozen leagues. Closing the skill gap in real time is not a possibility, therefore the existential threat he represents must not be ignored.
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Post by DirkGently » 1 year ago

@TheAmericanSpirit I'm mostly curious about how he goes about winning - a precon-tier deck, for example, is going to have a lot fewer bursty ways to win the game that a well-designed 75% deck might. I typically build my low-power decks to intentionally avoid any bursty wincons because it's a relatively easy way to win the game, whereas trying to win with a bunch of rando french vanillas from the latest set is...difficult.

When I think of Zacama, I think of combo wincons, though you said he isn't doing combos. Neheb is typically pretty bursty. Goreclaw, I don't think of being very bursty, and Jetmir I don't have experience with though I could see it going either way. But that's just my intuition it from the commanders. Anyway, I think a skilled player using decks with bursty win conditions is definitely the sort of thing you'd be making a mistake to ever turn your back on, but I don't think I'd apply nearly as much scrutiny to that same skilled person playing a deck that lacks efficient ways to close out the game.

BTW I clearly had no idea how long a league was. 5.5km? So that means 20,000 leagues under the sea was more than 100,000 km under the sea? At that point you're most of the way back out the other side of the planet...
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Post by Treamayne » 1 year ago

I'm assuming this is a joke?
Yes, it was meant as humor-by-hyperbole as an indication that though your post was mostly self-referential(ish) my responses were not meant to be personal.
DirkGently wrote:
1 year ago
So that means 20,000 leagues under the sea was more than 100,000 km under the sea? At that point you're most of the way back out the other side of the planet...
Close. . .
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The title refers to the distance traveled under the various seas: 20,000 metric leagues (80,000 km, over 40,000 nautical miles), nearly twice the circumference of the Earth.

Where:
The French lieue — at different times — existed in several variants, namely 10,000, 12,000, 13,200 and 14,400 French feet, about 3.25 to 4.68 km (2.02 to 2.91 miles). It was used along with the metric system for a while, but is long discontinued.

A metric lieue was used in France from 1812 to 1840, with 1 metric lieue being exactly 4,000 m, or 4 km (about 2.5 mi). It is this unit that is referenced in both the title and the body text of Jules Verne's novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870).

Derived from an ancient Celtic unit and adopted by the Romans as the leuga, the league became a common unit of measurement throughout western Europe. It may have originally represented, roughly, the distance a person could walk in an hour.

The league was used in Ancient Rome, defined as 1½ Roman miles (7,500 Roman feet, modern 2.2 km or 1.4 miles). The origin is the leuga Gallica (also: leuca Callica), the league of Gaul.

English-speaking world
On land, the league is most commonly defined as three miles (4.83km), though the length of a mile could vary from place to place and depending on the era. At sea, a league is three nautical miles (3.452 miles; 5.556 kilometres). English usage also included many of the other leagues
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Post by 3drinks » 1 year ago

Man, F politics. Politics, deals, and kingmaking exist solely for low skill players to attempt to use leverage to "outskill" players with numbers and social arbitrage. Beat me with your deck, and your strategic play, don't beat me because you're better at leveraging social interactions and manipulating players into behaving the way you want them to behave. Smh, real B mode tactics. Might as well claim you're great because you can win coin flips. *raises flame shield*

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Post by Dunadain » 1 year ago

3drinks wrote:
1 year ago
Man, F politics. Politics, deals, and kingmaking exist solely for low skill players to attempt to use leverage to "outskill" players with numbers and social arbitrage. Beat me with your deck, and your strategic play, don't beat me because you're better at leveraging social interactions and manipulating players into behaving the way you want them to behave. Smh, real B mode tactics. Might as well claim you're great because you can win coin flips. *raises flame shield*

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I spoke a bit about this on the previous thread, but I kinda agree. I mean, all things within reason, but I don't really make deals when I play. Heck, I rarely SPEAK when I play and I still have a monstrous win-rate.

This might sound strange coming from an avid member of the Phelddagrif thread, but Phelddagrif doesn't win by making deals, Phelddagrif wins by maintaining a low threat-level, while simultaneously being a pain to kill. He's like a porcupine.

Politics are very important in EDH, especially casual edh, but the majority of politics is threat assessment and managing your own threat profile. I honestly don't think deals are all that important to winning a game. I think a lot of players, however, when they talk about politics, they are thinking explicitly about deal making.

Edit: I realize this is a bit off-topic. My issue with the original question is that I find the scenario unbelievable, if someone is winning consistently, it's not because of their ability to make deals. If deals ARE making him win almost every game, then I'd have to conclude the entire table is accepting idiotic deals. In which case I guess my answer would be don't make any deals, since you aren't capable of evaluating a deal (or, you know, learn how to make good deals instead).
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Post by DirkGently » 1 year ago

@3drinks Personally I consider "politics" to be a fairly widely-encompassing term for any strategic decision that involves taking into account your opponents' reactions within the game. Dealmaking is just one facet of that. Things that @Dunadain mentioned, like managing your own threat profile, are within the boundaries of politics. If it's something you can do in a multiplayer game, that doesn't have application in a 1v1 game, it's probably politics.

Kingmaking isn't really a facet of politics, although I guess it depends how you define it. Some degree of kingmaking will always happen by necessity within a multiplayer game. If you're playing an aggro kaalia deck, and kill 2 players before being stopped and ultimately defeated by a third player, then you likely "kingmade" them - who knows if they could have beaten the other two players without your "help", especially if you're killing them in priority order (which is generally correct). Except when you're extremely far ahead, most moves that hurt a single opponent - attacking them, destroying their stuff, etc - is typically beneficial for the other players in the game, so helping your opponents isn't really avoidable unless you play no interaction and your only way to win kills everyone at once. And even then, you're still potentially "kingmaking" because someone might be forced to use their interaction against you, and then not have it later to stop someone else, leading to that person winning. So I don't see any obvious place to draw a line between inevitable assistance to other players, and the nefarious "kingmaking" people talk about, except if someone is literally playing with the intention to give another player the win. Which I wouldn't really consider politics because it's not really a strategic decision. You're playing to lose at that point, so strategy doesn't even really mean anything anymore.

Politics is absolutely a skill, and a integral part of strategic play within a multiplayer environment. It doesn't exist within 1v1 magic, and imo it's a big part of what makes commander special. If you really hate politics, I'd say that commander is not a good format for you, or at least not multiplayer commander.

Dealmaking, while it's only one facet of politics, is very much a strategic maneuver imo. As I've said in previous posts, I consider dealmaking to essentially be a synthetic manipulation of in-game cause an effect. For example, if you attack a player for lethal who has an untapped Nevinyrral's Disk, you understand that the result of that attack will be the disk getting blown, and any intelligent person will factor that reality into their decision-making. If you're considering attacking for lethal against someone with a Phelddagrif and they say "if you don't attack me, I'll give you 5 hippos" then it's basically the same thing - you understand that X is going to happen if you do Y - the only difference is that it's synthetic insofar as the result doesn't naturally follow from the action.

That said, it seems like maybe the type of politics you have dislike is more along the lines of what I'll call "the politics of conversation". For example, if someone says "pweeeeeaaaaase don't attack me?" - nothing has changed on the board, there hasn't been any change in future cause/effect relationships, no one has become aware of some threat they missed before, etc - but nonetheless, that act of saying something that made no difference to the board state has possibly changed a player's actions - maybe by making them not attack "to be nice" or maybe by making them attack "because you're being annoying". Another subtler example would be that, with Phelddagrif, I've noticed that people tend to attack/target me more if I play the deck in a careful, focused manner - spending a lot of time thinking about my moves, not making any jokes, etc - whereas if I act nonchalant, crack jokes, talk amiably, etc I tend to attract a lot less attention. I agree that this is a fairly stupid part of the game. A move is a move. However, unfortunately, it is going to effect people's decision-making. Mine included.

I don't spend much time talking about that part of politics, if indeed it can be considered politics, because 1) it's kind of stupid and 2) it's impossible to describe accurately enough to properly dissect and 3) people's reactions are going to vary so much that it's impossible to draw any firm conclusions without some sort of doctorate-level psychology study.

But don't just lump all of politics into that bucket and dismiss it. There are many aspects to politics and they're worth being aware of to refine your play. Some aspects, like deal-making, can be opted out of. But many aspects of politics are happening to you, and by you, all the time, whether you know it or not.

@Dunadain I think the power of dealmaking can, theoretically, be quite significant. That said, it can be a bit of an obnoxious drag on the game to be making deals every other phase, so it's something I also do quite rarely (typically 0-1 times per game) and thus doesn't have a large impact on my winrate. In an ideal world I think you can effectively divorce deal-making from any of the aforementioned "politics of conversation" and simply describe the synthetic cause/effect and let your opponent do what they will.

Of course in practice, whether we like it or not, the politics of conversation (see above) will always play a role, even without literally talking. How you hold yourself, how much you furrow your brow - as humans, we're going to notice these things and they will factor into our threat assessment to some degree, even if it's a tiny degree. If you don't follow, imagine someone who keeps looking at their hand, tapping on the mana costs, counting their lands, and furrowing their brow. They haven't made any actual game moves, but I know personally I'd be assuming they're planning some big play, possibly a combo, and I'd be giving them more scrutiny then I would if they were just picking their nose. Despite no words being uttered.

I did try to establish a more clear-cut version of the conundrum with the "kill him first" pact in the second example. Cutting someone off of dealmaking is a much less drastic maneuver so the consequences are less obvious, but I think the overall premise remains basically the same.

Threat assessment/management is crucial because it's basically unavoidable. Any game will have those aspects of politics, whereas dealmaking isn't mandatory and many people opt-out, and many who opt-in only do so when they're about to lose. That said, as dealmaking is practically limitless in its permutations and frequency, its power is theoretically quite high. I would bet that truly "optimal" dealmaking would warp the game into complete nonsense where every move is accompanied by a dozen tiny bargains. Of course in reality this will never happen because anyone attempting to do this would have their head put through a window, but it's interesting to contemplate.
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Post by TheAmericanSpirit » 1 year ago

3drinks wrote:
1 year ago
Man, F politics. Politics, deals, and kingmaking exist solely for low skill players to attempt to use leverage to "outskill" players with numbers and social arbitrage. Beat me with your deck, and your strategic play, don't beat me because you're better at leveraging social interactions and manipulating players into behaving the way you want them to behave. Smh, real B mode tactics. Might as well claim you're great because you can win coin flips. *raises flame shield*

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Ah yes, the classic "Everyone-is-wrong-but-me" 3drinks approach. For real though: we've done this song and dance before. How persuasive exactly do you think spewing invective is?

Man, I don't think multiplayer is your problem. Your apparent lack of communication skills might be though. Never before have I seen someone try so hard to wear "I'm Antisocial and Can't Perform Threat Assessment in Games with More Than 2 Players" as some badge of honor, but hey, every day's a school day.
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Post by 3drinks » 1 year ago

TheAmericanSpirit wrote:
1 year ago
Ah yes, the classic "Everyone-is-wrong-but-me" 3drinks approach. For real though: we've done this song and dance before. How persuasive exactly do you think spewing invective is?

Man, I don't think multiplayer is your problem. Your apparent lack of communication skills might be though. Never before have I seen someone try so hard to wear "I'm Antisocial and Can't Perform Threat Assessment in Games with More Than 2 Players" as some badge of honor, but hey, every day's a school day.
My threat assessment is fine. Prioritize players with islands, because if you don't, players with islands will win. Pretty cut-and-dry and it's what Magic has historically shown the past ~30 years. Everyone wants to play U, so you cut them off at the knees with Carpet of Flowers, Scald, Citadel of Pain, and Choke to allow you the margin to push ahead of their busted U cards. Until players start diversifying the colours they play, leveraging these hosers toward the skew of colour dominance will remain a viable strategy.

Taking the tempting offer is never going to work out for you better than the player that cast the spell in the first place. That's the same deal with taking these [hypothetical] table deals as presented in the thesis statement at the start of this thread. Such deals are presented in such a way to sound like they're in your best interest. That's the point. They clearly aren't though, because no one is deliberately making a deal that benefits someone else more than themselves. That's like taking out a HELOC to go invest in the market - no, you wouldn't do that, of course you wouldn't leverage your residence for a hot stock tip, that's dumb. Same energy.

Could I have expressed my thoughts in a more diplomatic way originally? Sure, I guess. I'm working on that, slowly. That's my Autism getting the better of me. No that's not an excuse, but at least I'm taking steps to better learn about myself and why I react the way I do. Thanks for calling me out though, I suppose I did deserve that.

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Post by 3drinks » 1 year ago

DirkGently wrote:
1 year ago
@3drinks Personally I consider "politics" to be a fairly widely-encompassing term for any strategic decision that involves taking into account your opponents' reactions within the game. Dealmaking is just one facet of that. Things that @Dunadain mentioned, like managing your own threat profile, are within the boundaries of politics. If it's something you can do in a multiplayer game, that doesn't have application in a 1v1 game, it's probably politics.

Kingmaking isn't really a facet of politics, although I guess it depends how you define it. Some degree of kingmaking will always happen by necessity within a multiplayer game. If you're playing an aggro kaalia deck, and kill 2 players before being stopped and ultimately defeated by a third player, then you likely "kingmade" them - who knows if they could have beaten the other two players without your "help", especially if you're killing them in priority order (which is generally correct). Except when you're extremely far ahead, most moves that hurt a single opponent - attacking them, destroying their stuff, etc - is typically beneficial for the other players in the game, so helping your opponents isn't really avoidable unless you play no interaction and your only way to win kills everyone at once. And even then, you're still potentially "kingmaking" because someone might be forced to use their interaction against you, and then not have it later to stop someone else, leading to that person winning. So I don't see any obvious place to draw a line between inevitable assistance to other players, and the nefarious "kingmaking" people talk about, except if someone is literally playing with the intention to give another player the win. Which I wouldn't really consider politics because it's not really a strategic decision. You're playing to lose at that point, so strategy doesn't even really mean anything anymore.

Politics is absolutely a skill, and a integral part of strategic play within a multiplayer environment. It doesn't exist within 1v1 magic, and imo it's a big part of what makes commander special. If you really hate politics, I'd say that commander is not a good format for you, or at least not multiplayer commander.

Dealmaking, while it's only one facet of politics, is very much a strategic maneuver imo. As I've said in previous posts, I consider dealmaking to essentially be a synthetic manipulation of in-game cause an effect. For example, if you attack a player for lethal who has an untapped Nevinyrral's Disk, you understand that the result of that attack will be the disk getting blown, and any intelligent person will factor that reality into their decision-making. If you're considering attacking for lethal against someone with a Phelddagrif and they say "if you don't attack me, I'll give you 5 hippos" then it's basically the same thing - you understand that X is going to happen if you do Y - the only difference is that it's synthetic insofar as the result doesn't naturally follow from the action.

That said, it seems like maybe the type of politics you have dislike is more along the lines of what I'll call "the politics of conversation". For example, if someone says "pweeeeeaaaaase don't attack me?" - nothing has changed on the board, there hasn't been any change in future cause/effect relationships, no one has become aware of some threat they missed before, etc - but nonetheless, that act of saying something that made no difference to the board state has possibly changed a player's actions - maybe by making them not attack "to be nice" or maybe by making them attack "because you're being annoying". Another subtler example would be that, with Phelddagrif, I've noticed that people tend to attack/target me more if I play the deck in a careful, focused manner - spending a lot of time thinking about my moves, not making any jokes, etc - whereas if I act nonchalant, crack jokes, talk amiably, etc I tend to attract a lot less attention. I agree that this is a fairly stupid part of the game. A move is a move. However, unfortunately, it is going to effect people's decision-making. Mine included.

I don't spend much time talking about that part of politics, if indeed it can be considered politics, because 1) it's kind of stupid and 2) it's impossible to describe accurately enough to properly dissect and 3) people's reactions are going to vary so much that it's impossible to draw any firm conclusions without some sort of doctorate-level psychology study.

But don't just lump all of politics into that bucket and dismiss it. There are many aspects to politics and they're worth being aware of to refine your play. Some aspects, like deal-making, can be opted out of. But many aspects of politics are happening to you, and by you, all the time, whether you know it or not.
This is fair. I suppose I'm most used to politics as people slamming Rites of Flourishing with no follow up "because they're helping", rolling dice to determine who to attack, players that turtle up behind the "impenetrable fortress" because they "don't want to get involved", and players that use Consecrated Sphinx and Thousand-Year Storm to turn games into nongames. There is a chronic misappropriation of threat assessment happening, and commander players are as notoriously bad at it as they are at card evaluation, in 90% of cases.

Even if I'm not on Kaalia, so let's get away from that because I understand what she does to the game pre-turn 0. You see the Gut/Iron Throne setup across the table and your initial knee jerk is "they're attacking so they're the threat" - average commander player, despite the more well seasoned commander player knowing attacking doesn't make you a threat, it's a means to an end, an enabler of sorts for [device]. Rather, it's to your best interest to evaluate what they're doing and why, and as long as it's not affecting your game plan, then why even get involved? Save your resources. The Purple Hippo clearly doesn't do that, because it wants to mettle in the game and become the centrepiece, despite the pilot claiming they're not trying to take the attention, because their actions speak louder than the words. That forces, in this case me, the honest attacker deck to shift my focus to the Purple Hippo, because it's now disrupting my game plan. Despite my game plan being just to apply pressure and keep other decks honest - can't just dump 8 life into your sylvan every turn when you're staring down 4-8 damage from menace tokens, after all. (Ignoring the fact that I may have U hosers in the deck, since they're not out, it's not really reasonable to expect they're just going to materialize out of thin air, after all).

So, I think what I'm trying to say, is as covert as you attempt to spin the Purple Hippo deck, it's actually very overt in it's presence. That's not political, that's a dictatorship. If you want to build a truly political deck, you should be using something more like a republic, not communist. Because, I think any semi-experienced player can agree that group hug is exactly as political as group slug. Which is not at all - it's a combo deck that masquerades as a ramp deck. And that's a very dishonest way to present the deck, which is built to prey on players that haven't learned to make the distinction yet.

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Post by TheAmericanSpirit » 1 year ago

@3drinks Diplomacy is always appreciated. Good faith engagement with the topic would be even better.

Anyway, we're clearly on different planets here so I'm not gonna bother trying to bridge that chasm. Dirk may have the energy to go line-by-line and point out all the ways your black/white perception of politiking is truly, deeply, amazingly distorted, but I just got off work and I wanna rest.

Enjoy your weekend, my friend.
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Post by Dunadain » 1 year ago

DirkGently wrote:
1 year ago

@Dunadain I think the power of dealmaking can, theoretically, be quite significant. That said, it can be a bit of an obnoxious drag on the game to be making deals every other phase, so it's something I also do quite rarely (typically 0-1 times per game) and thus doesn't have a large impact on my winrate. In an ideal world I think you can effectively divorce deal-making from any of the aforementioned "politics of conversation" and simply describe the synthetic cause/effect and let your opponent do what they will.
The thread's gotten pretty hostile so I'll dip, but yeah, I pretty much agree with everything you said, I'm not sure I explained my views on deal making and how they fit into politics as a whole very well, but tbh, I'm not sure I know how to explain it.

And as my Dad would always say: "if you can't explain something simply, you probably don't really understand it" so this might be an area of growth for me as a magic player XD.
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Post by DirkGently » 1 year ago

@3drinks @TheAmericanSpirit Alright, I'll have a go.
3drinks wrote:
1 year ago
My threat assessment is fine. Prioritize players with islands, because if you don't, players with islands will win. Pretty cut-and-dry and it's what Magic has historically shown the past ~30 years. Everyone wants to play U, so you cut them off at the knees with Carpet of Flowers, Scald, Citadel of Pain, and Choke to allow you the margin to push ahead of their busted U cards. Until players start diversifying the colours they play, leveraging these hosers toward the skew of colour dominance will remain a viable strategy.
Not sure how serious you're being here. While there are some very strong older blue cards, modern magic is relatively balanced. But regardless of what cards exist within the pool, I assume you're being facetious - a Korvold deck should probably attract a lot more scrutiny at the start of the game than, say, a Hama Pashar, Ruin Seeker, despite the lack of blue in the former. And ofc once the game is properly underway threat assessment will always be changing. Maybe the Korvold deck is stuck on 2 land and the Hama deck is somehow triggering dugeons three times per turn.

That almost felt too obvious to bother writing out, but I can't tell how seriously you take this "blue bad" meme.
Taking the tempting offer is never going to work out for you better than the player that cast the spell in the first place. That's the same deal with taking these [hypothetical] table deals as presented in the thesis statement at the start of this thread. Such deals are presented in such a way to sound like they're in your best interest. That's the point. They clearly aren't though, because no one is deliberately making a deal that benefits someone else more than themselves. That's like taking out a HELOC to go invest in the market - no, you wouldn't do that, of course you wouldn't leverage your residence for a hot stock tip, that's dumb. Same energy.
If you're talking about tempting offer the mechanic, I think it depends. I've definitely had times where I took the tempting offer off Tempt with Discovery, either because they're so far behind that I don't see them gaining an additional land as an issue, or because I'm pretty sure they're just running basics/fixing lands, and I'm tutoring up a Gaea's Cradle.

As far as dealmaking in general, as I think I've elaborated countless times by now, within a multiplayer game it is extremely possible for a deal to benefit all participants. But just to break it down one more time, in a very simple case:

It's turn 3. You are P1. You and P3 have the largest creatures on the board - yours a 5/5, his a 4/4. Based on the board state right now, you estimate that P3 is your biggest threat, but it's still very early and hard to really say much for sure. P2 and P4 have no creatures on board. You really want to attack, as your creature has a combat damage trigger.

P3 makes the offer "you don't attack me and I won't attack you this turn cycle."

Okay, so that's the offer - P3 has created an artificial cause/effect. Normally, you attacking P2 wouldn't have much bearing on P3s attacks - you'd expect that P3 would attack you as you're currently his biggest threat and vis versa. But, because of this deal, now you know that attacking P2 and P4 will have the consequence that P3 won't attack you this turn.

So what do you lose? If you take the deal, you lose the ability to attack P3, which otherwise would be your best choice - but only barely, since it's really too soon to be confident in threat assessment. What you gain is an additional 4 life, assuming that he plans to attack you otherwise. In that circumstance, I think it's very reasonable to assume that an additional 4 life is more likely to make the difference between winning and losing than being able to act on a slight preference to attack one player over another this turn. So I would definitely take that deal, and I would say both P1 and P3 have benefitted from that deal.

Magic is a zero-sum game - somebody has to lose if P1 and P3 are both gaining. And the answer is that P2 and P4 lose out because of the deal. They get attacked, when based on normal threat assessment, they wouldn't have. As this example illustrates, getting cut out of deals is bad for your winrate, and so it follows that never making/taking deals can be bad for your winrate. So if you want to win, I'd keep an open mind about it.

If that example isn't clear enough, please tell me where you're not following, because I feel like I've repeated myself a lot on this concept and you keep saying the same things.
3drinks wrote:
1 year ago
This is fair. I suppose I'm most used to politics as people slamming Rites of Flourishing with no follow up "because they're helping", rolling dice to determine who to attack, players that turtle up behind the "impenetrable fortress" because they "don't want to get involved", and players that use Consecrated Sphinx and Thousand-Year Storm to turn games into nongames. There is a chronic misappropriation of threat assessment happening, and commander players are as notoriously bad at it as they are at card evaluation, in 90% of cases.
I agree with most of that except that I'm not sure what con sphinx and 1000ys have to do with politics? I mean I don't like them very much as cards, but they don't see very political, they're mostly just big threats that draw deserved attention.

Anyway, the rest of that stuff, I think many players think of as "politics", but that's only because they don't really know what they're talking about. Any reasonably savvy player understands that a symmetrical benefit isn't good for them unless they think they can leverage it better than the other players. But, y'know, commander players mostly fall below the line of "reasonably savvy". This is yet another reason why people need to go play standard/limited/whatever for a while before getting into commander imo, but I digress.
Even if I'm not on Kaalia, so let's get away from that because I understand what she does to the game pre-turn 0. You see the Gut/Iron Throne setup across the table and your initial knee jerk is "they're attacking so they're the threat" - average commander player, despite the more well seasoned commander player knowing attacking doesn't make you a threat, it's a means to an end, an enabler of sorts for [device]. Rather, it's to your best interest to evaluate what they're doing and why, and as long as it's not affecting your game plan, then why even get involved? Save your resources.
Sure. A lot of people over-assess aggro decks while letting combo/control build strength. Though ofc if you're attacking someone hard enough, eventually that will effect their game plan. Can't have much of a plan if you're dead. So you have to expect some pushback.
The Purple Hippo clearly doesn't do that, because it wants to mettle in the game and become the centrepiece, despite the pilot claiming they're not trying to take the attention, because their actions speak louder than the words.
Huh? I've had plenty of Phelddagrif games where I basically do nothing for the first 10 turns while other people smash it out. As long as nobody is threatening to badly hurt me in some way, or unless I think someone is becoming powerful enough that they could become impossible to stop, I generally don't react very much. My goal is usually to keep the game balanced with as little intervention as possible. If I throw out a lot of removal or tokens or whatever, then I will become a bigger focal point of the game and I'm more likely to be targeted, which I very much don't want.
That forces, in this case me, the honest attacker deck to shift my focus to the Purple Hippo, because it's now disrupting my game plan. Despite my game plan being just to apply pressure and keep other decks honest - can't just dump 8 life into your sylvan every turn when you're staring down 4-8 damage from menace tokens, after all. (Ignoring the fact that I may have U hosers in the deck, since they're not out, it's not really reasonable to expect they're just going to materialize out of thin air, after all).
I have no idea what you're talking about. In a lot of cases, I'm quite happy to let an aggro deck kill other players while I twiddle my thumbs. So long as I'm confident I can get them back under control for the 1v1, I'm happy for them to make the table smaller.

Of course, it's probably a good idea to go after Phelddagrif at some point, unless you think you can win the 1v1. But you can't exactly get upset at someone removing your creatures when you're smacking them into their face, can you?
So, I think what I'm trying to say, is as covert as you attempt to spin the Purple Hippo deck, it's actually very overt in it's presence. That's not political, that's a dictatorship. If you want to build a truly political deck, you should be using something more like a republic, not communist. Because, I think any semi-experienced player can agree that group hug is exactly as political as group slug. Which is not at all - it's a combo deck that masquerades as a ramp deck. And that's a very dishonest way to present the deck, which is built to prey on players that haven't learned to make the distinction yet.
I think your political analogy got a bit lost in the weeds because I have no idea what you mean by "republic" or "communist" in relation to a deck. My Phelddagrif deck is very explicitly not group hug, as I've also elaborated dozens of times. I think the only card that can even give an opponent resources is Phelddagrif itself. And there are plenty of games where I never use his abilities to benefit opponents.

Group hug is as political as group slug...eh, debatable, group hug doesn't NECESSARILY make itself an eminent problem, whereas Purphoros, God of the Forge will require attention from anyone who's starting to get low on life...but I kiiiiiind of agree? In the sense that everyone gaining or everyose losing is ultimately still symmetrical and so doesn't change the balance of power in a vacuum.

As far as group hug being "a combo deck that masquerades as a ramp deck" I have no clue what you're talking about. Group hug decks can have combos, they can have ramp, they can have neither, they can have both...I see no relationship whatsoever. And I have no idea what you mean about their presentation being "dishonest". I think most group hug players I've played against are inexperienced players who don't understand that you can't benefit everyone at the same time - not conniving tricksters trying to misrepresent their strategy.

More importantly, I have no idea what group hug has to do with this discussion. Group hug is only political in the same way that smiling is political - it might make your opponents squishy human brains like you more, but in terms of proper threat assessment it's meaningless. And it has even less to do with the original topic of the thread. I think we both agree that group hug is annoying and usually relies on a bad understanding of the game. I think we can move on.
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Post by 3drinks » 1 year ago

I never should have entered this thread, should have just kept my mouth shut and kept scrolling. I'm just gonna bow out of this thread before I alienate any more of the board.

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Post by DirkGently » 1 year ago

3drinks wrote:
1 year ago
I never should have entered this thread, should have just kept my mouth shut and kept scrolling. I'm just gonna bow out of this thread before I alienate any more of the board.
C'mon, we've had almost exactly this same conversation several times now, and I'd like to avoid rehashing it again. I spent an hour trying to make my argument as clear as possible, please don't just peace out and then say the exact same stuff in a few months. Let's figure this out.

Forget everything else and let's just focus on the question of whether dealmaking can be beneficial. I think I laid out a fairly clear and realistic example of where it is beneficial to all parties involved in the deal. Is there something you think doesn't make sense with my example? Do you need clarification about something? Help me out here.
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Post by TheAmericanSpirit » 1 year ago

Sorry for ruining the thread, Dirk. I get too hot sometimes and it makes me stupid. It's not a constructive impulse to follow.

Sorry for flaming you, 3drinks. You and I are birds of a feather; rhetoric becomes a blade in our mouths when we get emotional. You're not the only one with %$#% to work on, just so you don't feel alone in the endless hell of self-betterment.
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Post by 3drinks » 1 year ago

Okay.
As this example illustrates, getting cut out of deals is bad for your winrate, and so it follows that never making/taking deals can be bad for your winrate. So if you want to win, I'd keep an open mind about it.
It's called coercion. "Making deals" is just the positive spin way to say you're collaborating with another to use them while it's convenient to do so to eliminate people you don't like seeing at the table. Call a spade a spade, that's really what you're doing with this table talk nonsense. It's always two guys that may or may not have walked in the LGS together and decided either silently in game, or outside the game, that they'd cover the other and ensure one of them won. That's what politics are, at least that's the politics I've seen. And I'm always on the outside of it, hence building in such a way as to not rely on anyone else's so-called deals, to be self-sufficient. Players don't make deals unless they can leverage them better than the one receiving them do. That's just the reality of it. So, no, when I see a deal happening, it's like this. How do you set the table?

Forks to the left. Knives in the back.

It's only a matter of time before they stab you, or you stab them. Because the deal maker isn't looking out for you, they're only looking out for #1.

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Post by DirkGently » 1 year ago

3drinks wrote:
1 year ago
It's called coercion.
I don't think it's very productive to argue too much over word choice, but coercion means "the practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats." I sure hope nobody is threatening physical violence against someone while playing magic.

If you mean attacking them within the game is a threat/violence, it's easy to create an example that doesn't: say P1 playing Phelddagrif has cast Fact or Fiction. They give it to P2 to split, but tell them that they'll let them draw 3 cards off Phelddagrif if they give a 5-0 split. In this case there's no threat and both players are receiving a positive benefit (though I was under the impression we both agree that positive and negatives results are ultimately just two sides of the same coin - changing winrate).
"Making deals" is just the positive spin way to say you're collaborating with another to use them while it's convenient to do so to eliminate people you don't like seeing at the table.
I'll agree with the first half of that I guess, but most deals don't involve outright eliminating anyone. People can make deals for any reason imaginable.

I've certainly made deals in order to eliminate a player who we both considered to be a major threat - i.e. an agreement to both attack a combo player, something I would think (?) that you'd be in agreement with. That's a decision completely based on the game situation, though, not a personal animosity towards that person. Of course someone could use dealmaking to enact their personal vendettas, but getting angry about all dealmaking because of that is like getting angry at water after someone drowned your cat. The medium isn't at fault - the person misusing it is.

Sorry for the terrible metaphor but it's early and I didn't get enough sleep.
Call a spade a spade, that's really what you're doing with this table talk nonsense. It's always two guys that may or may not have walked in the LGS together and decided either silently in game, or outside the game, that they'd cover the other and ensure one of them won. That's what politics are, at least that's the politics I've seen.
Let's try to stay focused on the theory here, and not a bad experience you might have had. Personally I would not consider someone collaborate outside of the game to achieve a mutual victory to be proper politics, or proper dealmaking. So let's just consider those situations as being outside of what we're talking about. When I say dealmaking, I'm talking strictly about deals made within the game, which both players agree to on the basis that they feel it will improve their chance to win the game.
And I'm always on the outside of it, hence building in such a way as to not rely on anyone else's so-called deals, to be self-sufficient.
Something like Phelddagrif does provide an easy way to make deals, but literally any deck can make them. Take the example I gave in the previous post - all those players needed to make that deal was some beefy creatures. Which I understand you're a fan of.
Players don't make deals unless they can leverage them better than the one receiving them do. That's just the reality of it. So, no, when I see a deal happening, it's like this.
If I told you that I frequently accept deals, as well as make them, would that surprise you? I've also made plenty of deals where the other person benefitted more than I did - intentionally. It's actually fairly easy to create that situation if the other participant is far behind. If, before the deal, my expected chances to win are 30% and theirs are 5%, and afterwards my chances are 35% and theirs are 15%, and I'm happy to make that deal even though they benefitted significantly more from it.
How do you set the table?

Forks to the left. Knives in the back.
Lol, did you come up with that? It's clever.
It's only a matter of time before they stab you, or you stab them. Because the deal maker isn't looking out for you, they're only looking out for #1.
I never advocate broad, generic "let's team up" sorts of "deals". A deal should go exactly as far as the letter of the agreement, and no further. In the original example, the non-attacking agreement doesn't imply anything about where attacks will go on the next turn cycle, or anything about where removal can be pointed, or anything else. The only thing it applies to is the attacks of those players on that particular turn. Both players should be aware of this and make their decision based on it. If they get attacked on the turn after the deal expires, they shouldn't feel betrayed. Deals aren't friendships.

Of course in any FFA game, unless they're eliminated by someone else, any players who previously made deals will ultimately have to kill each other. I should hope that, when engaging in the deal, the players involved are cognizant of this fact. But just because someone will eventually want to eliminate me, doesn't mean that our interests can't align in a beneficial way right now. In 1v1, of course, our interests can never align, which is why dealmaking cannot exist in 1v1.

Again, let's stay focused on the theory and not on bad personal experiences. Dealmaking is just a tool, with no inherent moral value, positive or negative. In the example I gave with two players making a 1-turn agreement not to attack each other, can you not see how that would be mutually beneficial to both players?
Perm Decks
Phelddagrif - Kaervek - Golos - Zirilan

Flux Decks
Gollum - Lobelia - Minthara - Plargg2 - Solphim - Otharri - Graaz - Ratchet - Soundwave - Slicer - Gale - Rootha - Kagemaro - Blorpityblorpboop - Kayla - SliverQueen - Ivy - Falco - Gluntch - Charlatan/Wilson - Garth - Kros - Anthousa - Shigeki - Light-Paws - Lukka - Sefris - Ebondeath - Rokiric - Garth - Nixilis - Grist - Mavinda - Kumano - Nezahal - Mavinda - Plargg - Plargg - Extus - Plargg - Oracle - Kardur - Halvar - Tergrid - Egon - Cosima - Halana+Livio - Jeska+Falthis+Obosh - Yeva - Akiri+Zirda - Lady Sun - Nahiri - Korlash - Overlord+Zirda - Chisei - Athreos2 - Akim - Cazur+Ukkima - Otrimi - Otrimi - Kalamax - Ayli+Lurrus - Clamilton - Gonti - Heliod2 - Ayula - Thassa2 - Gallia - Purphoros2 - Rankle - Uro - Rayami - Gargos - Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa - Ashling1 - Angus - Arcum - Talrand - Chainer - Higure - Kumano - Scion - Teferi1 - Uyo - Sisters
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote
Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena
Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6

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