It doesn't really matter how good your deck is

Omega Red

Ok now I've just lost six straight matches. Three against wolf and three against persistent nightmare. In all of them the same thing happened over and over again, I keep drawing the same supports and spells but no creatures or creature removals. All this while the AI burns me fast with its blatantly OP match bonus. This is a very frustrating experience and I decided I won't be playing any more Avacyn at all. Losing is one thing, these nodes are supposed to be hard, but at this point I feel like I'm just throwing dice and hoping for a double six. If the outcome of the game is going to come to that, I would rather play Texas hold em. Much more fun and less frustrating.

Rootbreaker

Omega Red wrote:

Ok now I've just lost six straight matches. Three against wolf and three against persistent nightmare. In all of them the same thing happened over and over again, I keep drawing the same supports and spells but no creatures or creature removals. All this while the AI burns me fast with its blatantly OP match bonus. This is a very frustrating experience and I decided I won't be playing any more Avacyn at all. Losing is one thing, these nodes are supposed to be hard, but at this point I feel like I'm just throwing dice and hoping for a double six. If the outcome of the game is going to come to that, I would rather play Texas hold em. Much more fun and less frustrating.

What are you playing? I'm undefeated with this deck against wolf, and cutting reclaiming vines for harbinger of tides vs nightmare.

Fertile Thicket
Nissa's Pilgrimage
Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
Prism Array
Zendikar Resurgent

Turn to Frog
Crush of Tentacles
Day's Undoing
Reclaiming Vines

Herald of the Pantheon

Morphis

In the current meta I think the game is balanced like this:
-60% skill + deckbuilding(including collection strength)
-40% luck

That is the average value. Meaning you should always win ai without big variance if you play very well and have a good deck.
Anyways luck factor can go up to double that value basically, deciding in itself if you win or lose.
There is no good gem match, no good deck, no good anything that will help you. You will lose.

This is how the game is right now.
Every time I end up top in events I thank god I managed to cause I feel it's luck that mostly gave me a chance.

On the many rounds that cover an event it is not that unlikely some tinykitty situation will happen decided only by luck.
It comes down to that:
- it does not happen you perfect score
- it does happen you don't perfect score.

Out of many competitors good enough at playing someone will get lucky enough and get the perfect score.

This is not to say skill(the 60%) does not count. It does.
I managed to get out of bad situations cause I played/deckbuilt well.
In the very bad situations it won't help you though.

This is something that has gone worse with the power creep of SoI.
Before SoI the absolutely crazy cascades were already possible but would put less threatening stuff on board.
Meaning you had more time to draw an answer to stabilize.
Now a bad cascade can easily put a 5 or 4 round clock on you(meaning you get the answer or lose in 5 a 4 rounds).

This can happen on the very first rounds too, cause unlike paper magic there is no incremental mana or loyalty gain.
First round you can gain as much mana and loyalty as 20th round.

Omega Red

Rootbreaker wrote:

Omega Red wrote:

Ok now I've just lost six straight matches. Three against wolf and three against persistent nightmare. In all of them the same thing happened over and over again, I keep drawing the same supports and spells but no creatures or creature removals. All this while the AI burns me fast with its blatantly OP match bonus. This is a very frustrating experience and I decided I won't be playing any more Avacyn at all. Losing is one thing, these nodes are supposed to be hard, but at this point I feel like I'm just throwing dice and hoping for a double six. If the outcome of the game is going to come to that, I would rather play Texas hold em. Much more fun and less frustrating.

What are you playing? I'm undefeated with this deck against wolf, and cutting reclaiming vines for harbinger of tides vs nightmare.

Fertile Thicket
Nissa's Pilgrimage
Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
Prism Array
Zendikar Resurgent

Turn to Frog
Crush of Tentacles
Day's Undoing
Reclaiming Vines

Herald of the Pantheon

What this deck does is flooding the board with your colour and fetching as many cards as possible. This is why you don't see a problem, because you run a certain brand of OP cheese designed to reduce the two single aspects affected by randomness: board configuration and card-draws. But as someone else mentioned earlier in this thread, you are beating the RNG, not the opposite deck. Next time they run this event try beating the nodes with only one of those mythics in your deck and you tell me if you still score undefeated.

Now, imagine if despite running that deck you never drawed a single turn to frog or crush of tentacles, it was like that for me. Now of course, I don't have the cards to put together that cheese, so my game is more exposed to the RNG. Your deck only proves my point: you need to run a deck full of card-fetching cards because you cannot trust the AI to do it for you in a reasonable fashion.

Rootbreaker

Omega Red wrote:

What this deck does is flooding the board with your colour and fetching as many cards as possible. This is why you don't see a problem, because you run a certain brand of OP cheese designed to reduce the two single aspects affected by randomness: board configuration and card-draws. But as someone else mentioned earlier in this thread, you are beating the RNG, not the opposite deck. Next time they run this event try beating the nodes with only one of those mythics in your deck and you tell me if you still score undefeated.

Now, imagine if despite running that deck you never drawed a single turn to frog or crush of tentacles, it was like that for me. Now of course, I don't have the cards to put together that cheese, so my game is more exposed to the RNG. Your deck only proves my point: you need to run a deck full of card-fetching cards because you cannot trust the AI to do it for you in a reasonable fashion.

What you call my "not trusting the AI," I call increasing reliability. This is a card game after all. Even if it only has 10 unique cards per deck, you still want to minimize bad luck.

I'm not denying that I have several excellent mythic rare cards in my deck.

My argument has been that it does in fact matter how good your deck is, the opposite of the title of this thread.

I'm glad you're finally agreeing with me that deck strength matters, even if you're equating strength with cheese. I don't want to play with fewer of those mythics, because that would make my deck worse, which would likely lower my win percentage.

And yes, if you don't have a good enough deck, maybe because you don't have access to the best cards, you won't win 100% of your games. If you could win 100% of your games regardless of your deck strength, then you would have been right that deck strength didn't matter.

Omega Red

Rootbreaker wrote:

Omega Red wrote:

What this deck does is flooding the board with your colour and fetching as many cards as possible. This is why you don't see a problem, because you run a certain brand of OP cheese designed to reduce the two single aspects affected by randomness: board configuration and card-draws. But as someone else mentioned earlier in this thread, you are beating the RNG, not the opposite deck. Next time they run this event try beating the nodes with only one of those mythics in your deck and you tell me if you still score undefeated.

Now, imagine if despite running that deck you never drawed a single turn to frog or crush of tentacles, it was like that for me. Now of course, I don't have the cards to put together that cheese, so my game is more exposed to the RNG. Your deck only proves my point: you need to run a deck full of card-fetching cards because you cannot trust the AI to do it for you in a reasonable fashion.

What you call my "not trusting the AI," I call increasing reliability. This is a card game after all. Even if it only has 10 unique cards per deck, you still want to minimize bad luck.

I'm not denying that I have several excellent mythic rare cards in my deck.

My argument has been that it does in fact matter how good your deck is, the opposite of the title of this thread.

I'm glad you're finally agreeing with me that deck strength matters, even if you're equating strength with cheese. I don't want to play with fewer of those mythics, because that would make my deck worse, which would likely lower my win percentage.

And yes, if you don't have a good enough deck, maybe because you don't have access to the best cards, you won't win 100% of your games. If you could win 100% of your games regardless of your deck strength, then you would have been right that deck strength didn't matter.

I think you're missing the central point of this thread which is that even your deck is eventually going to lose because of bad card draws. It might happen once every 99 games but it will happen, and if it happens in a particularly critical game you'll get very pissed because you had the cards, you had the deck and yet the game still denied you. For you it's not a problem because it doesn't happen that often but for most of players and most of decks in most of situations it happens way more often than it should.

It can be argued that your deck "is good" under the context of the current meta. But if the meta is simply to create an infinite loop of mana ramp and card-fetching then you'll have to agree that the game needs adjustments. What's the point of colour combinations, aggro, tempo, control, etc strategies and card mechanics if at the end it all boils down at your ability to flood the board with your colours and fetch as many cards as possible?

Does this kind of thing happen in paper Magic? Can a player go fetching and unlimited number of cards and lands until he overruns the opposition?

Plastic

Omega Red wrote:

Does this kind of thing happen in paper Magic? Can a player go fetching and unlimited number of cards and lands until he overruns the opposition?

No it doesn't happen in paper because paper is a slightly different game. While you won't be fetching unlimited things and flooding the board in paper, it's still possible to get off a few cards in a row that will overwhelm your opponent.

I'm pretty sure people playing paper will lose even if they have the cards and have the deck.

madwren

Plastic wrote:

Omega Red wrote:

Does this kind of thing happen in paper Magic? Can a player go fetching and unlimited number of cards and lands until he overruns the opposition?

No it doesn't happen in paper because paper is a slightly different game. While you won't be fetching unlimited things and flooding the board in paper, it's still possible to get off a few cards in a row that will overwhelm your opponent. .

With all due respect, this is untrue. In the history of MTG, there have been numerous decks predicated on generating tremendous card advantage, whether by drawing more cards, playing more cards, or both.

Rootbreaker

Omega Red wrote:

Rootbreaker wrote:

Omega Red wrote:

What this deck does is flooding the board with your colour and fetching as many cards as possible. This is why you don't see a problem, because you run a certain brand of OP cheese designed to reduce the two single aspects affected by randomness: board configuration and card-draws. But as someone else mentioned earlier in this thread, you are beating the RNG, not the opposite deck. Next time they run this event try beating the nodes with only one of those mythics in your deck and you tell me if you still score undefeated.

Now, imagine if despite running that deck you never drawed a single turn to frog or crush of tentacles, it was like that for me. Now of course, I don't have the cards to put together that cheese, so my game is more exposed to the RNG. Your deck only proves my point: you need to run a deck full of card-fetching cards because you cannot trust the AI to do it for you in a reasonable fashion.

What you call my "not trusting the AI," I call increasing reliability. This is a card game after all. Even if it only has 10 unique cards per deck, you still want to minimize bad luck.

I'm not denying that I have several excellent mythic rare cards in my deck.

My argument has been that it does in fact matter how good your deck is, the opposite of the title of this thread.

I'm glad you're finally agreeing with me that deck strength matters, even if you're equating strength with cheese. I don't want to play with fewer of those mythics, because that would make my deck worse, which would likely lower my win percentage.

And yes, if you don't have a good enough deck, maybe because you don't have access to the best cards, you won't win 100% of your games. If you could win 100% of your games regardless of your deck strength, then you would have been right that deck strength didn't matter.

I think you're missing the central point of this thread which is that even your deck is eventually going to lose because of bad card draws. It might happen once every 99 games but it will happen, and if it happens in a particularly critical game you'll get very pissed because you had the cards, you had the deck and yet the game still denied you. For you it's not a problem because it doesn't happen that often but for most of players and most of decks in most of situations it happens way more often than it should.

It can be argued that your deck "is good" under the context of the current meta. But if the meta is simply to create an infinite loop of mana ramp and card-fetching then you'll have to agree that the game needs adjustments. What's the point of colour combinations, aggro, tempo, control, etc strategies and card mechanics if at the end it all boils down at your ability to flood the board with your colours and fetch as many cards as possible?

Does this kind of thing happen in paper Magic? Can a player go fetching and unlimited number of cards and lands until he overruns the opposition?

Sure, my deck will lose occasionally, but that's not a bug or a problem. That's a feature. You can't have a competition where everyone wins all their games. Your goal isn't to win 100% of your games, it's to win as many as possible. Every game in an individual event is critical, but I usually don't get pissed when I lose a game in an event unless I lost it because I misplayed. If the best players won 100% of their games, the top of every event would be a ton of people at the max score, and 1-5th would be determined solely by who managed to play their games first as the event started and ended.

My deck doesn't infinte loop. It generates a lot of mana and draws a lot of cards. I would say the equivalent of my deck is a ramp deck. These type of decks play lots of cards that generate extra mana, and some big expensive cards to win the game. You could call it a control deck too, since it runs more mana, card draw, and removal than aggro decks usually do. My koth deck for quick battle has significantly more creatures and less card draw and mana generation so you could call it an aggro deck.

Before the season's past nerf, you could build a deck where season's past was your only spell card, and with low enough cost of cards in your deck, once you started going off, your deck would literally never stop playing cards unless you told it to, something that the AI would never do. If I had ever run up against this deck, I would have to quit the game. You could make an arbitrarily large Ulvenwald Hydra in one turn. THAT was an infinite loop.

In paper magic, no one wins anywhere close to as many games as you can in MTGPQ. Even the best players in paper have around 70% win rates. Games lost because of bad luck are much more common. People play combo decks and ramp decks in paper magic from time to time, but they don't typically dominate the metagame in most formats.

Killyah

With all due respect, this is untrue. In the history of MTG, there have been numerous decks predicated on generating tremendous card advantage, whether by drawing more cards, playing more cards, or both.

Quite right, my old Cadaverous Bloom deck would do exactly that. 3 to 5 turns of doing absolutely nothing except playing lands. Then 5 minutes of me playing a combo that drew most of my library while my opponent walked off and did something more fun than watch me win.

Plastic

Killyah wrote:

With all due respect, this is untrue. In the history of MTG, there have been numerous decks predicated on generating tremendous card advantage, whether by drawing more cards, playing more cards, or both.

Quite right, my old Cadaverous Bloom deck would do exactly that. 3 to 5 turns of doing absolutely nothing except playing lands. Then 5 minutes of me playing a combo that drew most of my library while my opponent walked off and did something more fun than watch me win.

Is it happening in paper as easily and frequently as it does in PQ?

MaxMagic420

Plastic wrote:

Killyah wrote:

With all due respect, this is untrue. In the history of MTG, there have been numerous decks predicated on generating tremendous card advantage, whether by drawing more cards, playing more cards, or both.

Quite right, my old Cadaverous Bloom deck would do exactly that. 3 to 5 turns of doing absolutely nothing except playing lands. Then 5 minutes of me playing a combo that drew most of my library while my opponent walked off and did something more fun than watch me win.

Is it happening in paper as easily and frequently as it does in PQ?

Not so much nowadays, due to the block format and sealed play being the majority of competitive MTG, but when I was playing pro around the urzas saga block, in extended or especially type 1, seeing somebody win by forcing the opponent to draw their entire library or by drawing most of their own library was pretty much par for the course. Seeing that bloom deck in any variation was pretty much as described above. Those who were playing during the mirage block will remember when visions hit and all of a sudden everybody was playing bloom or something designed to beat bloom. I played a demon bloom in a PTQ and placed third. So yes, it happens.

madwren

Plastic wrote:

Killyah wrote:

With all due respect, this is untrue. In the history of MTG, there have been numerous decks predicated on generating tremendous card advantage, whether by drawing more cards, playing more cards, or both.

Quite right, my old Cadaverous Bloom deck would do exactly that. 3 to 5 turns of doing absolutely nothing except playing lands. Then 5 minutes of me playing a combo that drew most of my library while my opponent walked off and did something more fun than watch me win.

Is it happening in paper as easily and frequently as it does in PQ?

I don't play anymore--and haven't for nearly a decade--but a quick Google search for recent card bans shows this happening as recently as last year.

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles ... -what-now/

The article comments on the ban of Summer Bloom and Splinter Twin, and the says Bloom had frequent 2-turn kills.

Another fine article would be this one on the (historically) most dominant decks of all time, though not all of them are combo oriented.

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc ... _Time.html

High Tide is a perfect example of a "you twiddle your thumbs while the High Tide player wins" deck.

Regardless, this type of play is endemic to paper Magic. It isn't an exception.

madwren

MaxMagic420 wrote:

Plastic wrote:

Killyah wrote:

With all due respect, this is untrue. In the history of MTG, there have been numerous decks predicated on generating tremendous card advantage, whether by drawing more cards, playing more cards, or both.

Quite right, my old Cadaverous Bloom deck would do exactly that. 3 to 5 turns of doing absolutely nothing except playing lands. Then 5 minutes of me playing a combo that drew most of my library while my opponent walked off and did something more fun than watch me win.

Is it happening in paper as easily and frequently as it does in PQ?

Not so much nowadays, due to the block format and sealed play being the majority of competitive MTG, but when I was playing pro around the urzas saga block, in extended or especially type 1, seeing somebody win by forcing the opponent to draw their entire library or by drawing most of their own library was pretty much par for the course. Seeing that bloom deck in any variation was pretty much as described above. Those who were playing during the mirage block will remember when visions hit and all of a sudden everybody was playing bloom or something designed to beat bloom. I played a demon bloom in a PTQ and placed third. So yes, it happens.

An excellent point, by the way. The broken combos largely seem limited to the Modern format, where the sheer size of the card pool means more potential for broken card combinations. It's far easier to regulate block and sealed play, where you're dealing with much more controlled power levels.

This is why I've advocated for Puzzle Quest to have alternate formats, like Block and Pauper, which could help mitigate some of the problems people complain about.

majincob

Omega Red wrote:

... you run a certain brand of OP cheese designed to reduce the two single aspects affected by randomness: board configuration and card-draws. ...

You know, I quite like cheese. Both the food and the ridiculously good card kind. That's why I play. Then everyone wants to take away my delicious, delicious cheese. That makes me sad. But! I know there will always be more cheese to find and enjoy, so I am happy.

In memory of my once beloved, Mizzium Meddler. I know things changed between us, but we will always have the memories.

venomAA

Even in present day paper magic most decks will include card drawing/fixing/tutoring if available on the block. It might not be as overwhelming as old days but it happens on most winner decks. Most of us can remember the tutor on a stick for equipment in white that costed 1w and fetched for swords. The deck would relay heavily on the equip and ride for the win using the tutor.
Same happens here. You can't hope to be lucky and draw your answers as expected just cause RNG can screw you up. You must try to beat the randomness just like in real life. That's what winner decks do. They are resilient and reliable.
For example, I valor ajani over nahiri in events cause I know that I have at least one removal incorporated to my PW. Since most decks are still creature based in PvP events this makes ajani a better decision for the meta. It resilient and reliable.
For avancyn, kiora and nissa are better options cause of the ability to survive long games. Both can inundate the board with their colors and both have great creatures. Plus access to life gain if needed.
It has nothing to do with the game code, its the own nature of card games and the meta that causes this.
Koth in on the other side of the spectrum is great in quick battles.

Ohboy

Are we seriously having a discussion here on whether

A) ramp and card draw should exist for a mtg game

losing a game due to mana screw/dud draws is unfair

Venom has it right. That's where deck building comes in. You're not guaranteed a removal spell just because you put 2 in a deck.

It's all about a balance of probabilities. You alone decide how much you want to risk being vulnerable to certain situations.

blacklotus

Omega Red wrote:

Rootbreaker wrote:

Omega Red wrote:

What this deck does is flooding the board with your colour and fetching as many cards as possible. This is why you don't see a problem, because you run a certain brand of OP cheese designed to reduce the two single aspects affected by randomness: board configuration and card-draws. But as someone else mentioned earlier in this thread, you are beating the RNG, not the opposite deck. Next time they run this event try beating the nodes with only one of those mythics in your deck and you tell me if you still score undefeated.

Now, imagine if despite running that deck you never drawed a single turn to frog or crush of tentacles, it was like that for me. Now of course, I don't have the cards to put together that cheese, so my game is more exposed to the RNG. Your deck only proves my point: you need to run a deck full of card-fetching cards because you cannot trust the AI to do it for you in a reasonable fashion.

What you call my "not trusting the AI," I call increasing reliability. This is a card game after all. Even if it only has 10 unique cards per deck, you still want to minimize bad luck.

I'm not denying that I have several excellent mythic rare cards in my deck.

My argument has been that it does in fact matter how good your deck is, the opposite of the title of this thread.

I'm glad you're finally agreeing with me that deck strength matters, even if you're equating strength with cheese. I don't want to play with fewer of those mythics, because that would make my deck worse, which would likely lower my win percentage.

And yes, if you don't have a good enough deck, maybe because you don't have access to the best cards, you won't win 100% of your games. If you could win 100% of your games regardless of your deck strength, then you would have been right that deck strength didn't matter.

I think you're missing the central point of this thread which is that even your deck is eventually going to lose because of bad card draws. It might happen once every 99 games but it will happen, and if it happens in a particularly critical game you'll get very pissed because you had the cards, you had the deck and yet the game still denied you. For you it's not a problem because it doesn't happen that often but for most of players and most of decks in most of situations it happens way more often than it should.

It can be argued that your deck "is good" under the context of the current meta. But if the meta is simply to create an infinite loop of mana ramp and card-fetching then you'll have to agree that the game needs adjustments. What's the point of colour combinations, aggro, tempo, control, etc strategies and card mechanics if at the end it all boils down at your ability to flood the board with your colours and fetch as many cards as possible?

Does this kind of thing happen in paper Magic? Can a player go fetching and unlimited number of cards and lands until he overruns the opposition?

I used to run a paper mtg deck that gives me unlimited turns from turn 1.

Omega Red

Ohboy wrote:

Are we seriously having a discussion here on whether

A) ramp and card draw should exist for a mtg game

losing a game due to mana screw/dud draws is unfair

Venom has it right. That's where deck building comes in. You're not guaranteed a removal spell just because you put 2 in a deck.

It's all about a balance of probabilities. You alone decide how much you want to risk being vulnerable to certain situations.

I don't think I ever used words as "unfair" or questioned whether ramp or card draw should exist or not. But the thing is, in a game where any given gem-match can give you anything from 2 mana to 20+ via a RNG, the meta becomes all about gaming the RNG and not the cards themselves. It's like throwing a dice and depending the number you get that's how many lands you get to play. In that scenario the meta becomes gaming the dice, not the actual cards in your deck, as much as possible.

Now, I understand that this is an independent game with its own rules, gameplay and mechanics where randomness exists and is a big factor, but sometimes I wish the RNG wasn't given that much weight in the outcome of games. That's all I'm saying here.

Omega Red

One positive note to bring is that this thread has at least served to bring some really good points and information about Magic's history and lore and how they translate to this game. Thanks to the posters that have made those contributions, it has been very useful.

At the end I have concluded that I'm getting too cute with my deckbuilding. I tend to "optimize" my decks in ways that ultimately don't play to the better strenghts of my planeswalkers. Case in point, Nahiri. I would "optimize" my deck by placing only three or at most four creature cards. I do this because the max you can have in the battlefield is three and you don't need anymore. Now, given the game we have currently, this usually translates in having only one creature (maybe two if lucky) on the battlefield, not making the most of Nahiri's buff. So, I've concluded that I would rather have a hand full of creatures I can't play because battlefied is full than a hand full of spells or supports I can't play because battlefield is empty. It baffles me to load my Nahiri deck with five or even six creatures but that's the game we have right now.

Also, given how most of game modes rely on fast, quick-paced matches, I have decided that bulding two five card decks makes more sense because at the end of the day that's the number of cards you'll end up using in most of games. It's somewhat less optimal but ultimately more reliable.