Alex, you have definitely kept my interest in Pauper high for the last couple of years. Your articles keep making me try to invent variables of your decks, and are the main reason I keep coming back to PureMTGO. I think you're one of the main reasons Pauper is still an active format (Of course there are other influential Pauper/PDC players - but you're in top 3 in my opinion because you share your enthuiasm with the rest of us :)
Keep up the good work.
Mr Moto aka Morten
As an aside, wouldn't it be great if you could choose to always stop at opponents EOT even if you have hit F6? This is one area where the bad GUI is forcing bad play decisions.
That's a very nice combo and in fact my next article about Tempest block will contain many other nice combos; some are really very interesting and worthy to build a deck around.
Teaser: What happens if you happen to have a Humility AND an Orim's Prayer on table?
An equilibrium is an equluibrium. It need not be optimal. I think I did a pretty damn good job of explaining the three types of equilibria of Bayesian games in the simplest terms possible. But when you are discussing game theory (real game theory, not the stuff Flores or Sullivan like to call game theory but isn't) the vocabulary comes with the territory. I'm not going to remove it, ever. At some point, other people with similar technical training are gong to come along, and they are gong to need the original proofs to extend my work to other situations.
As for nuance, that passed through myself and three editors. I am not going to spend five hours making sure that every word in every article is correct. There will be mistakes. That's not ideal, but I have learned to live with it. I think the rest of you can too.
In any case, I am much more concerned about getting the math right, and that is how it should be.
Anyone who suggests that they have never been even the slightest bit influenced by an opponent making a sub-par play in years worth of gaming and have made the correct decision based on nothing more than cold logic 100% of the time is flat-out lying. We come to snap conclusions on a regular basis. While the purest goal of competitive gaming is to condition yourself to make calculated decisions in order to prove your strategic and intellectual superiority, we are also creatures of habit. We're equally blessed and cursed with the ability (real or perceived) to analyze large data sets and draw conclusions from a very small sample. This is the behavior discussed in Blink. While it is often unwise to extrapolate in order to reach our decisions, it is also a behavior that has spared many lives during the course of our evolution as a species.
That being said, I am usually in favor of the most efficient action (Waiting for their EOT), but there are certainly opportunities that can occasionally be exploited by exhibiting a deviant behavior.
Long story short, I can see the merits of both decisions, and anyone not willing to admit that one of the choices carries at least some intrinsic value is being a little closed-minded.
It's hard to take you seriously when you drop a ton of unnecessary vocabulary words in your blurb, but don't seem to know what they mean, like "nuisance" rather than "nuance". And is "equilibrium" supposed to be "optimal", or what? Drop the pretentiousness, and the vocabulary you don't seem to have, and just rap with us, man. I get the impression you are trying to be someone other than who you are, but nothing is more attractive than being genuine.
You may think I'm being a nitpicking, anonymous internet douche, but that stuff's very distracting.
3-4 blue medallion
4 black medallion
4 manakin
2-3 altar of dementia(or goblin bombardment)
4 sift
4 corpse dance
3 anarchist
4 time warp
1-2 scroll rack
land (all black/blue; maybe 1 red source)
Get an altar, dance up anarchist for time warp; sac, repeat.
Average about t5-6 win.(well, THEY get about 5 turns, you get a lot more)
Don't be afraid to 'stutter start', blow an extra warp or dance early.
I may be missing a card above; but the important stuff is there. Obv propaganda
or bottle gnome are good stallers.
I appreciate the free content, but if you'd ever like to get paid for your content or attract a wider audience, you really need a proof reader.
There are many typos and you seem to not understand the difference between "there" vs. "their" and
"your" vs. "you're"
Those are things worth mastering if you're going to write.
methinks goblains was more defining than MBCu, as I never found that the deck dominated to the same level as goblins or affinity, although it has been good and solid for a loong time, unlike many control options
I've been playing a version of the RG beats/burn (my own brew) deck in quees for a while, which has been decent. It has some decent incremental card advantage from firebolts, low land count, granger gruul mage, but it haasnt quite been able to break the "ok" mark. Weak 2-drops (I've played mongrel and mire boa in all variants, and river boa, tin-street houligan, etc. in others), a vulnerability to control decks with legitimate stage 3s (teachings, mbcu), and an all-too often awkward manabase make it just a little too weak.
BTW diggin the punk tunes; I'm kindof out of it atm. To anyone in the pauper community, i say get a Protest The Hero album, but thats very random.
Lastly a shout-out to you for supporting and writing about the pauper community throughout the year, you've boosted it alot.
yes because that one man malcolm gladwell was so intelligent even he knows what information i decide to focus on in a magic match...if i do make assumptions i dont do it consciously, the only thing im worried about is what i can do to win.
As much as you like to think that you treat everyone as a "good" player, the truth is that you do make quick judgment calls about people's skill level and this will affect the way you play in one form or another. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a good book about it, called "Blink".
I'd have to go digging further for Rath-block stuff; it was one of the formats for the '98 world championships but sadly most of the reports from that championship seem to be offline. The one general genre of deck that seems to be missing from this list is non-combo (i.e., Selden-style toolbox, non-Living Death) RecSur decks, including the 'Flagpole' style non-Awakening Survival Tradewind decks (Tradewind Rider/Wall of Blossoms/Spike Feeder/etc).
Along similar lines, it should be pointed out that while Price's mono-R deck initially defined the format, it defined specifically TE-only block constructed. As soon as Stronghold was released the deck no longer had the reach to beat the green and U/G control decks, and Exodus put the final nail in the coffin; AFAIK virtually no one was playing aggro by season's end and the format was entirely defined by its control and board-control decks with the occasional small splash of combo.
It is unfortunate, for sure, that two of the key cards in the format are north of $30; I'd love to put together a solid Survival deck for old time's sake but I'm a bit loath to drop almost $150 on four cards, let alone another $10+ each on Recurring Nightmares.
In my opinion it is better to just be consistent as to when you crack the terramorphic. Intentionally making bad plays may just lead to bad performance.
Whether you are good or bad, crack it at their eot that way if you suck as a player at least they they will think you are good lol!
While I don't know how strong a signal cracking Expanse early is, I know that I - partially consciously, but mostly unconsciously - modify my assumptions pretty heavily based on my opinion of my opponent's skill level. (The strongest contributing factor is probably what round it is; in the finals, I tend to assume my opponent is a fairly strong player.) While it's impossible to measure exactly the effects of my evaluation on my results, I do notice myself making different decisions. If I believe my opponent to be skillful, I tend to assume that erratic or apparently questionable plays are indicative of tricks or schemey plans, while I'd probably dismiss identical plays as simple errors or sloppiness if I think the player is weaker.
This suggests that, at least against me, misrepresenting your play skill is at least slightly advantageous, since it causes me to make incorrect assumptions about what's going on. However, in many cases it's possible to fool me into believing that you're less experienced without damaging your position in the game even slightly; the easiest way is to convince me that you're unfamiliar with the interface or the rules. (Someone unfamiliar with the MTGO interface could be a total shark who's just new to the program, but there's enough of a correlation between being unfamiliar with MTGO and being a weaker player to fool me.) For example, if you take a moment to advance through phases when you don't have any options, or ask me how to undo tapping your lands or about an interaction between two cards on the board, I'm likely to mentally file you into the "bad player" box, without you having to give me any information or actually make a play error. (This only goes so far; if it's the finals of an 8-4, it's too late to convince me you suck by asking if Vampire Hexmage's ability can kill a Summoner's Bane token.)
Though I understand the criticisms of the article, I still would like to give William props for analyzing this in a truly rigorous fashion. It's refreshing to see math applied to problems like this, rather than just intuitively thinking it through. As someone in college planning on taking Game Theory soon, it's nice to see it at work in something I enjoy.
All I know is different players play differently. Some like to crack a terramorphic expanse on their turn when they play. Some like to wait. I have never noticed any variable in skill level that can be assumed from this one play. Something I do notice about "bad" vs "good" players is how they use their main phases which i feel is much more important than when they crack a fetch.
Example: If my opponent plays a creature on his first main phase that doesn't have impact on his combat phase(e.g. Kicked Goblin Bushwhacker, they guy in alara that pumps your team) then I start to assume that they may be less skilled. Normally I have always found it a better strategy to leave the main phase alone unless playing a land or a card that effects combat.
The route I'm going with this is that, of course I can understand why someone could try to infer someone's play-skill based on when they crack fetchlands or try to bluff their own play-skill by this. However I feel this is a highly flawed way to show what kind of player you are. Ive played in tournaments and have been bitten by the "This player is bad, I can play loose" feeling.
Any player with an serious tournament goals or aspirations is not going to adjust their play style based on a small sign like cracking a fetchland. If so then they deserve to lose.
I'm not sure that you can infer anything about a player by the timing of an expanse.
In my opinion there are only a few great players, and they are the ones who come up with answers to questions like "when is the best time to trigger an expanse?"
There are more bad players than great players, and they don't really care about timing.
The biggest group of all are the players (like me) who are neither great nor bad, and we all study hard to pick up the best practice provided by the great players. Ask your average player why it's best to trigger an expanse at your EOT and they'll tell you because they're copying great players, and haven't neccessarily worked through the process in their own minds to find out why it's true. We do this a lot to save having to think, e.g. always mulligan a 1 lander.
Alex, you have definitely kept my interest in Pauper high for the last couple of years. Your articles keep making me try to invent variables of your decks, and are the main reason I keep coming back to PureMTGO. I think you're one of the main reasons Pauper is still an active format (Of course there are other influential Pauper/PDC players - but you're in top 3 in my opinion because you share your enthuiasm with the rest of us :)
Keep up the good work.
Mr Moto aka Morten
As an aside, wouldn't it be great if you could choose to always stop at opponents EOT even if you have hit F6? This is one area where the bad GUI is forcing bad play decisions.
Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek should have been in the top 3 combos, in my opinion.
That's a very nice combo and in fact my next article about Tempest block will contain many other nice combos; some are really very interesting and worthy to build a deck around.
Teaser: What happens if you happen to have a Humility AND an Orim's Prayer on table?
LE
An equilibrium is an equluibrium. It need not be optimal. I think I did a pretty damn good job of explaining the three types of equilibria of Bayesian games in the simplest terms possible. But when you are discussing game theory (real game theory, not the stuff Flores or Sullivan like to call game theory but isn't) the vocabulary comes with the territory. I'm not going to remove it, ever. At some point, other people with similar technical training are gong to come along, and they are gong to need the original proofs to extend my work to other situations.
As for nuance, that passed through myself and three editors. I am not going to spend five hours making sure that every word in every article is correct. There will be mistakes. That's not ideal, but I have learned to live with it. I think the rest of you can too.
In any case, I am much more concerned about getting the math right, and that is how it should be.
Anyone who suggests that they have never been even the slightest bit influenced by an opponent making a sub-par play in years worth of gaming and have made the correct decision based on nothing more than cold logic 100% of the time is flat-out lying. We come to snap conclusions on a regular basis. While the purest goal of competitive gaming is to condition yourself to make calculated decisions in order to prove your strategic and intellectual superiority, we are also creatures of habit. We're equally blessed and cursed with the ability (real or perceived) to analyze large data sets and draw conclusions from a very small sample. This is the behavior discussed in Blink. While it is often unwise to extrapolate in order to reach our decisions, it is also a behavior that has spared many lives during the course of our evolution as a species.
That being said, I am usually in favor of the most efficient action (Waiting for their EOT), but there are certainly opportunities that can occasionally be exploited by exhibiting a deviant behavior.
Long story short, I can see the merits of both decisions, and anyone not willing to admit that one of the choices carries at least some intrinsic value is being a little closed-minded.
-David
It's hard to take you seriously when you drop a ton of unnecessary vocabulary words in your blurb, but don't seem to know what they mean, like "nuisance" rather than "nuance". And is "equilibrium" supposed to be "optimal", or what? Drop the pretentiousness, and the vocabulary you don't seem to have, and just rap with us, man. I get the impression you are trying to be someone other than who you are, but nothing is more attractive than being genuine.
You may think I'm being a nitpicking, anonymous internet douche, but that stuff's very distracting.
That I edit things and fix stuff like that, sometimes though, the editing program does not save my changes or reverts to the submitted form first.
3-4 blue medallion
4 black medallion
4 manakin
2-3 altar of dementia(or goblin bombardment)
4 sift
4 corpse dance
3 anarchist
4 time warp
1-2 scroll rack
land (all black/blue; maybe 1 red source)
Get an altar, dance up anarchist for time warp; sac, repeat.
Average about t5-6 win.(well, THEY get about 5 turns, you get a lot more)
Don't be afraid to 'stutter start', blow an extra warp or dance early.
I may be missing a card above; but the important stuff is there. Obv propaganda
or bottle gnome are good stallers.
I appreciate the free content, but if you'd ever like to get paid for your content or attract a wider audience, you really need a proof reader.
There are many typos and you seem to not understand the difference between "there" vs. "their" and
"your" vs. "you're"
Those are things worth mastering if you're going to write.
methinks goblains was more defining than MBCu, as I never found that the deck dominated to the same level as goblins or affinity, although it has been good and solid for a loong time, unlike many control options
I've been playing a version of the RG beats/burn (my own brew) deck in quees for a while, which has been decent. It has some decent incremental card advantage from firebolts, low land count, granger gruul mage, but it haasnt quite been able to break the "ok" mark. Weak 2-drops (I've played mongrel and mire boa in all variants, and river boa, tin-street houligan, etc. in others), a vulnerability to control decks with legitimate stage 3s (teachings, mbcu), and an all-too often awkward manabase make it just a little too weak.
BTW diggin the punk tunes; I'm kindof out of it atm. To anyone in the pauper community, i say get a Protest The Hero album, but thats very random.
Lastly a shout-out to you for supporting and writing about the pauper community throughout the year, you've boosted it alot.
yes because that one man malcolm gladwell was so intelligent even he knows what information i decide to focus on in a magic match...if i do make assumptions i dont do it consciously, the only thing im worried about is what i can do to win.
As much as you like to think that you treat everyone as a "good" player, the truth is that you do make quick judgment calls about people's skill level and this will affect the way you play in one form or another. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a good book about it, called "Blink".
If you're 'good opponents' start playing loose because they think you suck, they really weren't all that good to begin with.
Props on the correct usage of 'loose'
says you, i havent heard of the bands, but i listened to a couple...they are probably better than your music
I spoke about this exact same issue on my blog yesterday.
good article, but you have awful musical taste :S
wow how great, after 2 articles on puremtgo I now know when to crack terramorphic expanse.
Oh wait, no I don't.
I'd have to go digging further for Rath-block stuff; it was one of the formats for the '98 world championships but sadly most of the reports from that championship seem to be offline. The one general genre of deck that seems to be missing from this list is non-combo (i.e., Selden-style toolbox, non-Living Death) RecSur decks, including the 'Flagpole' style non-Awakening Survival Tradewind decks (Tradewind Rider/Wall of Blossoms/Spike Feeder/etc).
Along similar lines, it should be pointed out that while Price's mono-R deck initially defined the format, it defined specifically TE-only block constructed. As soon as Stronghold was released the deck no longer had the reach to beat the green and U/G control decks, and Exodus put the final nail in the coffin; AFAIK virtually no one was playing aggro by season's end and the format was entirely defined by its control and board-control decks with the occasional small splash of combo.
It is unfortunate, for sure, that two of the key cards in the format are north of $30; I'd love to put together a solid Survival deck for old time's sake but I'm a bit loath to drop almost $150 on four cards, let alone another $10+ each on Recurring Nightmares.
I've always gone with the following thought processes:
It's better to ask forgiveness than permission (oh wait that's off topic).
Seriously,
Prior preparation prevents piss poor performance (6 P's)
and
Perfect practice provides perfect results
In my opinion it is better to just be consistent as to when you crack the terramorphic. Intentionally making bad plays may just lead to bad performance.
Whether you are good or bad, crack it at their eot that way if you suck as a player at least they they will think you are good lol!
While I don't know how strong a signal cracking Expanse early is, I know that I - partially consciously, but mostly unconsciously - modify my assumptions pretty heavily based on my opinion of my opponent's skill level. (The strongest contributing factor is probably what round it is; in the finals, I tend to assume my opponent is a fairly strong player.) While it's impossible to measure exactly the effects of my evaluation on my results, I do notice myself making different decisions. If I believe my opponent to be skillful, I tend to assume that erratic or apparently questionable plays are indicative of tricks or schemey plans, while I'd probably dismiss identical plays as simple errors or sloppiness if I think the player is weaker.
This suggests that, at least against me, misrepresenting your play skill is at least slightly advantageous, since it causes me to make incorrect assumptions about what's going on. However, in many cases it's possible to fool me into believing that you're less experienced without damaging your position in the game even slightly; the easiest way is to convince me that you're unfamiliar with the interface or the rules. (Someone unfamiliar with the MTGO interface could be a total shark who's just new to the program, but there's enough of a correlation between being unfamiliar with MTGO and being a weaker player to fool me.) For example, if you take a moment to advance through phases when you don't have any options, or ask me how to undo tapping your lands or about an interaction between two cards on the board, I'm likely to mentally file you into the "bad player" box, without you having to give me any information or actually make a play error. (This only goes so far; if it's the finals of an 8-4, it's too late to convince me you suck by asking if Vampire Hexmage's ability can kill a Summoner's Bane token.)
Though I understand the criticisms of the article, I still would like to give William props for analyzing this in a truly rigorous fashion. It's refreshing to see math applied to problems like this, rather than just intuitively thinking it through. As someone in college planning on taking Game Theory soon, it's nice to see it at work in something I enjoy.
All I know is different players play differently. Some like to crack a terramorphic expanse on their turn when they play. Some like to wait. I have never noticed any variable in skill level that can be assumed from this one play. Something I do notice about "bad" vs "good" players is how they use their main phases which i feel is much more important than when they crack a fetch.
Example: If my opponent plays a creature on his first main phase that doesn't have impact on his combat phase(e.g. Kicked Goblin Bushwhacker, they guy in alara that pumps your team) then I start to assume that they may be less skilled. Normally I have always found it a better strategy to leave the main phase alone unless playing a land or a card that effects combat.
The route I'm going with this is that, of course I can understand why someone could try to infer someone's play-skill based on when they crack fetchlands or try to bluff their own play-skill by this. However I feel this is a highly flawed way to show what kind of player you are. Ive played in tournaments and have been bitten by the "This player is bad, I can play loose" feeling.
Any player with an serious tournament goals or aspirations is not going to adjust their play style based on a small sign like cracking a fetchland. If so then they deserve to lose.
I'm not sure that you can infer anything about a player by the timing of an expanse.
In my opinion there are only a few great players, and they are the ones who come up with answers to questions like "when is the best time to trigger an expanse?"
There are more bad players than great players, and they don't really care about timing.
The biggest group of all are the players (like me) who are neither great nor bad, and we all study hard to pick up the best practice provided by the great players. Ask your average player why it's best to trigger an expanse at your EOT and they'll tell you because they're copying great players, and haven't neccessarily worked through the process in their own minds to find out why it's true. We do this a lot to save having to think, e.g. always mulligan a 1 lander.