FrankenBlade

I was reminiscing today with Greg Hatch about what we call Dr. Frankenstein's Caw Blade. Greg shows up at a Costa Mesa Women's Club ptq with no deck and is resigned to not play. I walk in 10 minutes before the start of the event, and after 5 minutes of convincing, Greg is going to use my cards to try to build a CawBlade deck. Now I didn't have the deck, I just had 2 longboxes of modern playables. Greg and I go through it. We pull out 3 baneslayers, 4 mana leak, some snapcasters, some paths, a sword or two, 4 squadron hawk, some colonnades and mutavaults, 2 cryptics I think I had, a beta disenchant, a heavily played remand, might have been a vendilion clique, 3 wrath of God emerge. So Greg finds his 26 land, his 34 spells, and 15 cards looking like they might be in a sideboard (some relics, 2 meddling mages, that sort of thing). Our 5 minutes are up so Greg is sleeving and registering the deck face up in front of his round 1 opponent. Opponent is just looking at this thing, likely thinking "ok he's got 2 cryptics, 1 maindeck wrath, 2 main baneslayers, 4 leak 1 remand, a disenchant, 1 of each sword...." It must have been as confusing as it was insane to try to play around, like this guy was probably 5% less likely to be able to win the match having seen FrankenBlade spread out before him. Greg beats him and several others. In the last round or the round before last Greg loses playing for top8. A tragic Frankenstein's Monster ending for the FrankenBlade deck, but its memory lives on. I'll never forget walking over and seeing an opponent get completely blown out by a Wrath of God when Greg had a sword in play and a disenchant in the bin. Greg was laughing about the serendipity of it all; his opponent was less amused and really really confused.

Are we playing Brainstorm correctly? (A rules issue)

I'm playing in a Legacy tournament. My opponent has 6 cards in his hand to start his turn, and during his upkeep he decides to first cycle a Lonely Sandbar, and then to cast Brainstorm. He draws one for cycling, and then he draws 3 from Brainstorm, puts 2 back, then shuffles his hand around thinking about what to do next.

He decides to cast Bituminous Blast on my creature, and his cascade reveals the card Sylvan Library, which he casts.

We move on to his draw step, where Sylvan Library triggers, allowing my opponent to put back on top of his library any card that he has drawn this turn.

QUESTION 1: How can I obtain any level of satisfaction that the card he puts back is indeed one of the ones he drew this turn (for Question 1 purposes, assume neither of us realized this was a possibility when Brainstorm resolved)?

QUESTION 2: Next game, he casts Brainstorm during his upkeep, can I request that he openly track which cards he's drawn this turn? If not, why not?

QUESTON 3: A different opponent cast Brainstorm during a non-upkeep phase. Can I ask her to openly track which cards she's drawn this turn? If not, why not?

QUESTION 4: A different opponent draws his card for the turn. Can I ask him to track which cards he's drawn this turn when he, say, plays a land?

 

My argument for perhaps answering Question 3 in the affirmative is as follows: If "which cards are fresh," so to speak, is something I might need to know about, I should be entitled to track it so I know I am not being cheated. If I am entitled to track it in some contexts, nothing in the rules provides guidelines for differentiating those contexts from all others in which I might want to track the same information.

 

The rules handle a similar issue regarding Morphs by explicitly addressing the problem in the comp. rules.

"707.6. If you control multiple face-down spells or face-down permanents, you must ensure at all times that your face-down spells and permanents can be easily differentiated from each other. This includes, but is not limited to, knowing the order spells were cast, the order that face-down permanents entered the battlefield, which creature attacked last turn, and any other differences between face-down spells or permanents. Common methods for distinguishing between face-down objects include using counters or dice to mark the different objects, or clearly placing those objects in order on the table."

 

In a similar vein, all cards that search the library for a specific card type require that card to be revealed in order to avoid a "just trust me" result.

Rather than rely on a player's honor or a judge's presence, players are required to track openly what otherwise would be hidden information, where that information is necessary to maintaining a clear understanding of the gamestate. Why isn't there a similar rule for cards drawn, given that not allowing it to be tracked can lead a situation where I just have to trust my opponent?

Trace the Mistake Back...Now, Keep Going

 

When the spoiler bannings (Wafo-Tapa, Matignon, and cohorts banned for leaking the spoiler) were announced, a detail emerged that was glossed over by Wizards.

Why the hell were some players given confidential information that they could use to gain a competitive advantage in Magic tournaments?

Well, we kind of got the "why;" it was explained that the spoiler was given to aid Matignon in hyping the new set in his publication. There is no way disclosing the whole set is necessary. Why can't Matignon just talk about a preview card or two, or a mechanic? If an NDA is entered into with an author of preview articles, must it be a Pro Club member? The answer to these questions is that the benefit of providing this information to pro players couldn't possibly have justified undermining basic principles and expectations of fairness in competitive play.

It's really frustrating to see such oversights come to light only after a non-disclosure agreement was breached. I lost to Wafo-Tapa in Worlds (where I finished a win away from drawing into Top 8 in the final round), but I was outraged before I even remembered that fact. My friends and I fly around the world and try hard to prepare for these tournaments in the limited time we have with the new set. We show up to compete on a fair playing field. That's one of the things I love about the game, and it is an obvious pillar of tournament play.

The biggest mistake made was not Matignon sharing the list with his friends. It wasn't those friends sharing the list with the world. It was Wizards of the Coast providing an undisclosed competitive advantage to certain competitors.

Momir Basic against Tim Aten, for AJ

AJ and others have gotten on my case for never updating my blog. I got to thinking, what do other people who are too lazy to write something creative do? And then it came to me, VIDEO!

Why MUD is Bad: Angles of Attack

People really got worked up in this thread about Chapin “bashing” shops.
http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=41010.0

I agree with Chapin’s assessment of MUD/Workshop decks being “bad decks,” but not for the reasons he gives in his article.

MUD is weak, but not because it isn’t as powerful as the other decks. I think MUD is just as powerful as the other decks in Vintage. Unmolested, it will win the game very often, and it is redundant enough to easily survive mild forms of disruption like a Force of Will from the opponent or a Nature’s Claim turn 2. If people didn’t play hate cards like Tygon and Hurkyl’s, MUD would be the best deck. By the way, make no mistake that these are hate cards, if Workshop is restricted, people won’t play these cards. (Chapin says you run into hate “incidentally” because artifacts are popular, but the cards like nature’s claim aren’t what really gets you, it’s the Trygons and Hurkyl’s that are out there which really hurt).

What makes MUD weak is that it only attacks on one level, or angle of attack. That is to say that MUD puts a bunch of artifacts out, and something that stops a bunch of artifacts is going to be good against it, no matter which particular cards the MUD player has chosen to play. I would group things into “angles of attack” not by what they are, but by how they are stopped. Thoughtseize and Spell Pierce aren’t really the same angle of attack, but they might be in a context in which Chalice of the Void for 1 was a common defense to your deck. As with anything else, our definitions need to be flexible a bit, but we can still gain from the concept of “angles of attack.”

“Lots of artifacts quickly” is MUD’s only angle of attack. This is a particular kind of weakness, one of many potential types of weakness. That is to say, I’m not suggesting that decks be “measured” by the number of angles of attack they present. In fact there is often a tradeoff between “# of angles of attack” and “redundancy/consistency.” If we add Jaces to our Shop decks, we increase angles of attack (we now can win with our Planeswalker strategy) but at what cost? The answer is “a cost too great to bear.” The Shop deck will need to change it mana significantly to support Jace, or even a much easier backup plan like Tarmogoyf. Once we are playing Jace or Goyf, the whole concept of putting a Sphere of resistance into play is less enticing.

Thus, I’m also not necessarily suggesting that MUD players have built their deck incorrectly. It may be that their best chance to win with Shops is to choose 1 angle of attack (artifact lock pieces) and go all-out.

Here’s an important thing to keep in mind: a deck with only one or two angles of attack needs one or both of these conditions to be true:
1) people are unprepared to defend themselves against that attack and/or
2) your deck is so strong along that angle of attack that even prepared opponents will not fare that well against you.

If you play a deck with 1 angle of attack, and people expect that attack, and have the tools to fight back, you are fucked. I messaged Ochoa and others about my desire to put Trygon into my blue decks months ago. Others felt the same way (Pikula and perhaps Ochoa, independently, before I sent the message). There was a tool out there so strong at defending blue decks against Shops, that once Shops were feared (MUD decks were doing very well in several places), all it took was that fear instilled in someone who knew how to “solve the problem.” The weakness of the Shop decks was demonstrated at GenCon this year.

Say what you want about Shop decks in the abstract. The fact remains, a good player who wants to beat you will beat you, regardless of who you are. The same can’t be said of Tezz or TPS. You can’t take a reasonable deck (i.e. a deck that maintains percentages against the rest of the field) and just add 5 cards and all of sudden dominate Tezz or TPS. Furthermore, lets say you find that 3 Remora 2 Mindbreak trap in your blue deck really does make you crush TPS, TPS will have a much easier time adapting to the hate than MUD will have against Trygon, for example. TPS might already incidentally be prepared with some transformational Trygon+Bitterblossom/Goyf board plan (Like I’ve used in Ad Nauseum in the past). The blue decks are more flexible, and have access to additional lines of attack whenever they need them.

This is why I didn’t advocate playing Shops at GenCon, even though I respect the Shop deck generally. All I need to know to determine whether I want to avoid playing Shops is this: “Are people expecting a lot of Shop decks to show up?” If yes, I’m not playing Shops. If no, we turn to a host of other questions. But for GenCon, the one question would have sufficed.