What I want to know is what does that question teach? I answered wrong on the first question, but correctly on the second question. Does this teach that if there are illegal targets/targets aren't there, that a spell or ability is countered?
I think most people see Clockwork Hydra as this:
Whenever Clockwork Hydra attacks or blocks, remove a +1/+1 counter from it.
If you do, Clockwork Hydra deals 1 damage to target creature or player.
The card very much reads like the removing of a counter is a cost, not part of the resolution. It's tricky wording and not very intuitive, but once I read it as one paragraph and visualized it, it was easy to understand the ruling.
Fwiw: I understood Clockwork Hydra when I first started with Sorin's Thirst then moved up to Clockwork Hydra as opposed to starting with Clockwork Hydra then moving down. I imagine you start out with the "tougher" question to gauge ability/knowledge, then move down to the easier question to actually teach what needs to be learned. (at least I hope so)
The problem with that metaphor is that changing a program (especially one over 10 years old) is a lot harder than changing out cards in a deck, and it certainly isn't just a case of spending money. In addition, when Wizards did this there wasn't anything like it (especially the business model--MMOs were very new, and microtransactions didn't exist yet, or even DLC).
The other part is that MTGO has a very aggressive release schedule, especially with all the stuff they're working on they can't talk about. They said they started working on the new mana system around when Khans came out in the real world--that puts it at right after V4 was made the only client. Imagine what would happen if Wizards said Oath wasn't coming out for another month so they could do the mana system "right" (instead of being hacked together like it probably is)--everyone would be furious! In fact we don't have to imagine it, as the mess that is Magic Duels is providing a look into that possible future. Or what if Shadows Over Innistrad had no new mechanics or concepts, but instead was a remix of stuff that had already been done to save on programming new cards so they could refactor the codebase? Or even worse, MTGO could take the Duels route and not program the "hard" cards. I know some of the stuff Wizards does hurts my brain (such as the Archetypes they talked about as the counterpoint to Bonds of Mortality--refactor the way you give abilities!), but they're being asked to perform miracles and only performing a couple instead of the hundreds asked of them.
Read the card again.
IF you attack, remove a counter.
IF you removed a counter, target a creature or player.
So you don't even get to the target part unless you removed a counter.
That's what the card says. If I'm wrong, fine. But I need a better explanation that justifies contradicting what the card (and Oracle) actually says.
I think that the ability chooses a target when it goes on the stack, which causes the knight to die. This means that there is no legal target when the ability tries to resolve (the remove a counter, deal 1 damage), causing the entire ability to fizzle, meaning that no counter gets removed because the counter removal is part of the ability that fizzled due to having no targets...I think =)
Clockwork Hydra says that you remove the counter. IF you remove the counter, then you target something. It doesn't say anything about, "Target something first, then remove the counter."
Your explanation just confuses me more because it conflicts with the wording on the card itself.
Imagine a nerdy Magic player named Joe Shmo. Joe Shmo shows up at FNM with a five color deck running nothing but basic lands. His creatures are stuff like Grizzly Bears, Gray Ogres, Fugitive Wizards, and Squires. He has stuff like Shock and Twiddle in the deck. Joe Shmo sits down and plays against good players who have the best decks available. But Joe Shmo beats them all! He goes 4-0 and wins the tournament.
After it's over, people tell him that he could improve the deck by focusing on two colors, running better creatures and spells. After all, Tarmogoyf and Lightning Bolt are much better than Grizzly Bears and Shocks, right?
But Joe Shmo says, "I don't need to change anything. I know what I'm doing. It works, right? It's good enough as is."
That's WOTC in a nutshell. Things are going good even though MTGO is basically a Gray Ogre. They see no need to fix things too much as long as it works and they rake in that money. You can make all the recommendations you want, but the general response (if you even get one) is, "We know what we're doing."
One of these days someone is gonna sit down across the table from WOTC and all those Grizzly Bears and Gray Ogres ain't gonna save them from a beatdown.
No, you never remove a counter. The Hydra has a triggered ability. The ability goes on the stack, the Knight is sacrificed and the triggered ability is countered. that means that you do not perform any part of the ability's resolution - no damage, and do not remove the counter.
Not the greatest example of wording an ability, but that'swhy it's an advanced question.
This is what I don't get about the Hydra/Knight problem: If you attack with the hydra you remove a counter. Then it says if you do, you deal 1 damage to a target player or creature. So, if the target is invalid, you put the counter back on? That makes no sense. Target or no target, you declared the hydra as an attacker and the cards says, "Whenever Clockwork Hydra attacks or blocks, remove a +1/+1 counter from it."
Suckerpunching people out of the tournament is in some ways part of the strategy: The year I won it, I was facing Romellos in the second round, but I was fortunate that one of my best deck options had Magus of the Moon/Price of Progress. Romellos is a truly amazing player and will beat me seven or eight times out of ten, but most of his winning decks that year had exceedingly greedy mana bases.
You bested Scion fairly and earned your place as a Horseman. The number one player has never won that year's invitational, and no-one has retained the title, which to my mind is a large part of its charm. It's a special event, the regular season winner gets their recognition as well, but it adds an excellent coda to the Tribal season, a real showcase event.
Certainly. I agree that there is a huge amount of luck involved in winning Invitational, I would say even more than going 4-0 in a regular event.
Even if you are 70% likely to win vs an average top 16 opponent (which nobody is), you are only going to win the event one times in four.
The luck aspect is just unavoidable in Magic in the short run. You can only reduce it somewhat. Double elimination would do that to some extent, but the chance would still have the biggest impact on who the winner would be (meaning, no player, no matter how good, would have 50%+ chance of winning the event).
That being said, I like the Invitational. For me it has some "specialness" to it that other events don't have, and winning it means something (despite realizing on a rational level that it was mostly luck). Bigger prizes also contribute to that exciting feeling of a special event, so I don't like the idea of simply giving them to the season leaders. That would be quite boring imo.
(And the season leaderboard is not immune to not sufficiently reflecting the quality of the players. If you are an average player and you play in all the events you are going to end very high. So it's a factor of both your attendance and skill. The best stat for determining the best players would be percentage of wins over the long run. And even that would have some problems (eg., the player who wins the most is not necessarily "the best", but maybe just plays the best decks in a tribal meta, while a stronger player might play worse decks, because he finds boring playing few top decks again and again).
Although the storm mechanics has been hampered by some bannings, might the new surge mechanic reignite the strategy? I've played a typical burn deck in Standard Pauper using surge (Goblin Freerunner, Boulder Salvo) to impressive ends. Am unnsure if it might work for enabling more storm mechanics. Any thoughts?
Fair enough. But because of your down-vote (thanks for the reply) and the lack of comments elsewhere, it seems probable that the present champs format will continue.
It's just that I was hoping to help the champs have some improved meaning in my eyes. While the prize increase means people will take it a bit more seriously than other weeks, I have a hard time believing that it is truly representative of who is the best player - some years it may work out, others no. As one example, though I was able to suckerpunch scionofjustice out of the tournament (along with a couple of bad draws of his), I still feel he is a much stronger player than I overall and this event failed in bearing witness to that. I'd rather just give all the yearly prize rewards to the regular season from now on - it feels vastly more worthy. This champs event feels remarkably like just-another-Saturday where someone happens to get more lucky than others on a given week. This is not a slight towards mihahitlor who is certainly among the worthy, but even his title could have been derailed perhaps with different pairings or different draws.
No worries about the sideboard faux pas. It catches a lot of beginners to the format. Imho Kor has the strongest mono white team available outside of Angels. And team Elemental fields an interesting Monowhite Team too if you are willing to do a bit more deck design. AJ and I and of course the Dairies of the Apocalypse (which chronicles much of the current era of Tribal Wars building) are all pretty decent sources for getting started in Tribal and Lord Erman and Flippers Giraffe also wrote a bunch of articles on the topic.
Is it bad that the article didn't make me want to play Pauper (though I still should probably try that, now that the best deck isn't A Million Clicks: The Game), but instead brew with Goblin Dark Dwellers+split cards? Granted, I wasn't using Boom/Bust, but instead Breaking/Entering--the idea being to chain a bunch of GDD+Entering, end with a big threat, and just win, but it's been clunky so far :(
What I want to know is what does that question teach? I answered wrong on the first question, but correctly on the second question. Does this teach that if there are illegal targets/targets aren't there, that a spell or ability is countered?
I think most people see Clockwork Hydra as this:
Whenever Clockwork Hydra attacks or blocks, remove a +1/+1 counter from it.
If you do, Clockwork Hydra deals 1 damage to target creature or player.
The card very much reads like the removing of a counter is a cost, not part of the resolution. It's tricky wording and not very intuitive, but once I read it as one paragraph and visualized it, it was easy to understand the ruling.
Fwiw: I understood Clockwork Hydra when I first started with Sorin's Thirst then moved up to Clockwork Hydra as opposed to starting with Clockwork Hydra then moving down. I imagine you start out with the "tougher" question to gauge ability/knowledge, then move down to the easier question to actually teach what needs to be learned. (at least I hope so)
The problem with that metaphor is that changing a program (especially one over 10 years old) is a lot harder than changing out cards in a deck, and it certainly isn't just a case of spending money. In addition, when Wizards did this there wasn't anything like it (especially the business model--MMOs were very new, and microtransactions didn't exist yet, or even DLC).
The other part is that MTGO has a very aggressive release schedule, especially with all the stuff they're working on they can't talk about. They said they started working on the new mana system around when Khans came out in the real world--that puts it at right after V4 was made the only client. Imagine what would happen if Wizards said Oath wasn't coming out for another month so they could do the mana system "right" (instead of being hacked together like it probably is)--everyone would be furious! In fact we don't have to imagine it, as the mess that is Magic Duels is providing a look into that possible future. Or what if Shadows Over Innistrad had no new mechanics or concepts, but instead was a remix of stuff that had already been done to save on programming new cards so they could refactor the codebase? Or even worse, MTGO could take the Duels route and not program the "hard" cards. I know some of the stuff Wizards does hurts my brain (such as the Archetypes they talked about as the counterpoint to Bonds of Mortality--refactor the way you give abilities!), but they're being asked to perform miracles and only performing a couple instead of the hundreds asked of them.
The ruling is unintuitive but it means that even though you would ordinarily do the first action you can't because its second part is illegal.
Read the card again.
IF you attack, remove a counter.
IF you removed a counter, target a creature or player.
So you don't even get to the target part unless you removed a counter.
That's what the card says. If I'm wrong, fine. But I need a better explanation that justifies contradicting what the card (and Oracle) actually says.
I think that the ability chooses a target when it goes on the stack, which causes the knight to die. This means that there is no legal target when the ability tries to resolve (the remove a counter, deal 1 damage), causing the entire ability to fizzle, meaning that no counter gets removed because the counter removal is part of the ability that fizzled due to having no targets...I think =)
Clockwork Hydra says that you remove the counter. IF you remove the counter, then you target something. It doesn't say anything about, "Target something first, then remove the counter."
Your explanation just confuses me more because it conflicts with the wording on the card itself.
Imagine a nerdy Magic player named Joe Shmo. Joe Shmo shows up at FNM with a five color deck running nothing but basic lands. His creatures are stuff like Grizzly Bears, Gray Ogres, Fugitive Wizards, and Squires. He has stuff like Shock and Twiddle in the deck. Joe Shmo sits down and plays against good players who have the best decks available. But Joe Shmo beats them all! He goes 4-0 and wins the tournament.
After it's over, people tell him that he could improve the deck by focusing on two colors, running better creatures and spells. After all, Tarmogoyf and Lightning Bolt are much better than Grizzly Bears and Shocks, right?
But Joe Shmo says, "I don't need to change anything. I know what I'm doing. It works, right? It's good enough as is."
That's WOTC in a nutshell. Things are going good even though MTGO is basically a Gray Ogre. They see no need to fix things too much as long as it works and they rake in that money. You can make all the recommendations you want, but the general response (if you even get one) is, "We know what we're doing."
One of these days someone is gonna sit down across the table from WOTC and all those Grizzly Bears and Gray Ogres ain't gonna save them from a beatdown.
No, you never remove a counter. The Hydra has a triggered ability. The ability goes on the stack, the Knight is sacrificed and the triggered ability is countered. that means that you do not perform any part of the ability's resolution - no damage, and do not remove the counter.
Not the greatest example of wording an ability, but that'swhy it's an advanced question.
This is what I don't get about the Hydra/Knight problem: If you attack with the hydra you remove a counter. Then it says if you do, you deal 1 damage to a target player or creature. So, if the target is invalid, you put the counter back on? That makes no sense. Target or no target, you declared the hydra as an attacker and the cards says, "Whenever Clockwork Hydra attacks or blocks, remove a +1/+1 counter from it."
Heeeey......any chance you can fill in to host 100cs tomorrow? ML will have his Internet set up by Feb 13th.
thanks I will have to try that
Good one.
I am not yet ready to become a judge.
I would like to say that I suggested the phantom pro tour constructed format in December in an article on this website.
Suggestion 2b
http://puremtgo.com/articles/answer-search-problem
So either WotC is listening to feedback, or it is a lucky coincidence.
Now if only I could get an answer on some of my other suggestions.
For Soltari Deck: Phyrexian Splicer
Suckerpunching people out of the tournament is in some ways part of the strategy: The year I won it, I was facing Romellos in the second round, but I was fortunate that one of my best deck options had Magus of the Moon/Price of Progress. Romellos is a truly amazing player and will beat me seven or eight times out of ten, but most of his winning decks that year had exceedingly greedy mana bases.
You bested Scion fairly and earned your place as a Horseman. The number one player has never won that year's invitational, and no-one has retained the title, which to my mind is a large part of its charm. It's a special event, the regular season winner gets their recognition as well, but it adds an excellent coda to the Tribal season, a real showcase event.
Certainly. I agree that there is a huge amount of luck involved in winning Invitational, I would say even more than going 4-0 in a regular event.
Even if you are 70% likely to win vs an average top 16 opponent (which nobody is), you are only going to win the event one times in four.
The luck aspect is just unavoidable in Magic in the short run. You can only reduce it somewhat. Double elimination would do that to some extent, but the chance would still have the biggest impact on who the winner would be (meaning, no player, no matter how good, would have 50%+ chance of winning the event).
That being said, I like the Invitational. For me it has some "specialness" to it that other events don't have, and winning it means something (despite realizing on a rational level that it was mostly luck). Bigger prizes also contribute to that exciting feeling of a special event, so I don't like the idea of simply giving them to the season leaders. That would be quite boring imo.
(And the season leaderboard is not immune to not sufficiently reflecting the quality of the players. If you are an average player and you play in all the events you are going to end very high. So it's a factor of both your attendance and skill. The best stat for determining the best players would be percentage of wins over the long run. And even that would have some problems (eg., the player who wins the most is not necessarily "the best", but maybe just plays the best decks in a tribal meta, while a stronger player might play worse decks, because he finds boring playing few top decks again and again).
Although the storm mechanics has been hampered by some bannings, might the new surge mechanic reignite the strategy? I've played a typical burn deck in Standard Pauper using surge (Goblin Freerunner, Boulder Salvo) to impressive ends. Am unnsure if it might work for enabling more storm mechanics. Any thoughts?
Ha nope it was just a brain malfunction on my end :) I am getting older and having 2 kids does that to me :)
Fair enough. But because of your down-vote (thanks for the reply) and the lack of comments elsewhere, it seems probable that the present champs format will continue.
It's just that I was hoping to help the champs have some improved meaning in my eyes. While the prize increase means people will take it a bit more seriously than other weeks, I have a hard time believing that it is truly representative of who is the best player - some years it may work out, others no. As one example, though I was able to suckerpunch scionofjustice out of the tournament (along with a couple of bad draws of his), I still feel he is a much stronger player than I overall and this event failed in bearing witness to that. I'd rather just give all the yearly prize rewards to the regular season from now on - it feels vastly more worthy. This champs event feels remarkably like just-another-Saturday where someone happens to get more lucky than others on a given week. This is not a slight towards mihahitlor who is certainly among the worthy, but even his title could have been derailed perhaps with different pairings or different draws.
Yeah I thought the sideboard section sounded strange, but was not sure if there had been a change since the filter came off the client.
Thanks Paul, I appreciate then input. I will have to do some digging.
No worries about the sideboard faux pas. It catches a lot of beginners to the format. Imho Kor has the strongest mono white team available outside of Angels. And team Elemental fields an interesting Monowhite Team too if you are willing to do a bit more deck design. AJ and I and of course the Dairies of the Apocalypse (which chronicles much of the current era of Tribal Wars building) are all pretty decent sources for getting started in Tribal and Lord Erman and Flippers Giraffe also wrote a bunch of articles on the topic.
Right after I finished, I realized that there was no sideboarding. Forgive my ignorance :) see I really do need help!
no not at all, dark dwellers and boom bust (and I guess other split cards) are so far my jam in modern.
Is it bad that the article didn't make me want to play Pauper (though I still should probably try that, now that the best deck isn't A Million Clicks: The Game), but instead brew with Goblin Dark Dwellers+split cards? Granted, I wasn't using Boom/Bust, but instead Breaking/Entering--the idea being to chain a bunch of GDD+Entering, end with a big threat, and just win, but it's been clunky so far :(