Re: My love and hate affair with MTG

The original post is here :
http://xcvx.wordpress.com/2008/05/07/my-love-and-hate-affair-with-mtg/

I just got a comment, more of a flame in my opinion. I could have rejected the comment but everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Here is his comment.

I will now respond to every argument of this nonsense, mainly because I hate to see such a good game ruined by someone who obviously quit at the ”I’ma n00b and i’m tired of getting owned so instead of admitting other people are better than me i quit” stage.

1) keeping up with standart: you don,t sound like a tournament player. you sound like a timmy, a guy who plays for FUN. why bother with standart? your gaming group won,t play you because your deck isn’t standart? get some real friends, then. I often play a guy who still has his old kamigawa block deck(3 years ago) and I don,t complain.

2) individual card market: the average cost of a deck is around 70 dollars. with that, you get a decent budget deck. If you,re playing against pro players who spend 400-500 dollars on their decks, ask them to lend you a deck, or a playset of rare cards. hell, these players are often awesome and help you improve your existing decks a tenfold with your available(and theirs) common/uncommon card pool. don,t wanna buy boostera? l2draft.

3) Imbalance: in rare occasions, R&D makes mistakes. if they see a card becomes too imbalanced and ruins the format, they ban or restrict it. research «ravager affinity» on google for the most b0rken deck in existence. cards that hate black(as stated in your example) are sideboard tech, or ”hate”. the answer to this is finding black cards that hate white and putting them in a 15 card pile beside your deck. this is called sideboarding(because i assume you are not aware of the practice). when you face that hating deck, swap some white hate(swapping a black knight is awesome against White Weenie). every color in magic has cards hating other cards. they print those cards mainly for tournament play. in Casual, color hating depends on your metagame. more often than not, it’s a liability.

4)first turn win/combos: first turn wins are rare and tend not to happen twice. in the current standart, the best win possible is a turn three win, and even then, with a shoddy combo no one plays because it’s easy to disrupt. there are multiple card that hate on combo decks, too. Extirpate, Jester’s cap, Etc. usually, if a deck wins turn one, it’s not your fault. and even then, some turn one plays are not as desperate as they seemed. a reanimator deck i play against once got an Akroma Angel of Wrath on turn one.(Swamp+Dark Ritual+Entomb+Animate dead). and you know what? I had an untapped island and an Unsummon in my hand. he was the one to concede. Luck is and always was a part of MTG. even the strictest and zaniest control decks can die to a lucky draw. that’s why we play the game. you never know when the tables will turn.

if you could not reach these conclusion by yourself, then I recommend you really do stop playing MTG. Stop being a sore loser and actually LEARN how to play. that, or you could just go back to playing Hello Kitty Island Adventure.

-Hyuga, magic player since onslaught block

 

That’s it. Time for me to dissect and clarify.

I will now respond to every argument of this nonsense, mainly because I hate to see such a good game ruined by someone who obviously quit at the ”I’ma n00b and i’m tired of getting owned so instead of admitting other people are better than me i quit” stage.

It is a good game I did not say it was not. You’re calling me a noob? Call me what you want. Name calling is childish, the fact that you throw an “insult” at someone you don’t know proves how immature you are. I got owned? Well you can’t win without losing, and if you never lose you never truely win. Heck, I once won the first prize (multiple winners) during the Invasion block pre-release tourney many years ago. On top of that I participated in a full fledged tournament using a pure blue none rare deck. I failed to gain enough wins to continue on – I only won 4 matches that day, but it was exhilarating. I bested 1-2 yavimaya fires decks and some other blue decks. The funniest thing that happened during gameplay was against a blue player who used a spell (I forgot the name) to search my deck for any creature and put it into play under his control. It was obvious how frustrated he got seeing all my creatures were very basic, he settled for a stinging barrier – which i “confiscated” back the very next turn. Maybe perhaps you may be right about the part saying I never admitted other people were better than me. That was because I thought I did not need to actually say it because no matter where you are or what you do – there will always be someone better. If it makes you “happy” then I shall now provide it in the following statement.

There are many talented people who have skills that far exceed mine, I respect them for their expertise.

Done.

1) keeping up with standart: you don,t sound like a tournament player. you sound like a timmy, a guy who plays for FUN. why bother with standart? your gaming group won,t play you because your deck isn’t standart? get some real friends, then. I often play a guy who still has his old kamigawa block deck(3 years ago) and I don,t complain.

I don’t sound like a tournament guy? Read what I wrote before this. I could get some “real friends” to play with, only it takes too much time and effort to travel to meet these new friends. If you’re playing with a guy who used kamigawa block, I used to play with someone who was from pre-fifth generation era. Heck, I started on 6 ed. Actually I don’t really see anything to argue about on this note. You are blessed to have a group of friends who play with you, either that or you actually are willing to spend resources to meet them. I am not. I would need to travel half an hour to an hour by car to get to a popular mtg gathering spot. Frankly it’s too much of a hassle. A hobby is something that I do in my free time to enjoy. I have other hobbies besides mtg, such as gaming which is much more convenient for me.

2) individual card market: the average cost of a deck is around 70 dollars. with that, you get a decent budget deck. If you,re playing against pro players who spend 400-500 dollars on their decks, ask them to lend you a deck, or a playset of rare cards. hell, these players are often awesome and help you improve your existing decks a tenfold with your available(and theirs) common/uncommon card pool. don,t wanna buy boostera? l2draft.

Your point is? I’m not really sure, but I’ve beaten good decks before (in tournaments and amongst friends) using makeshift decks with no rares. I could use rares but I wanted to challenge myself. Drafting? Learnt and did it. Many years ago. My point is mtg is an expensive hobby, you are just helping me prove my point. Players are awesome and helpful – I agree with that.

3) Imbalance: in rare occasions, R&D makes mistakes. if they see a card becomes too imbalanced and ruins the format, they ban or restrict it. research «ravager affinity» on google for the most b0rken deck in existence. cards that hate black(as stated in your example) are sideboard tech, or ”hate”. the answer to this is finding black cards that hate white and putting them in a 15 card pile beside your deck. this is called sideboarding(because i assume you are not aware of the practice). when you face that hating deck, swap some white hate(swapping a black knight is awesome against White Weenie). every color in magic has cards hating other cards. they print those cards mainly for tournament play. in Casual, color hating depends on your metagame. more often than not, it’s a liability.

I am well aware of side boarding, I have been to tournaments before. You assume too much, which makes much of an ass out of “u” to me. I find the concept of people having to swap out cards to anti-each other in between rounds as ridiculous. Might as well have each player reveal their deck and sideboard before their match and have them go all out at each other after they have sideboarded necessarily. I will admit, I’m too lazy to sideboard. In fact the tourney I participated in, I used no sideboard. I naturally lost matches courtesy of boils. I won’t be a sore loser and say I lost because of that. I knew the risks of not sideboarding and using an all blue deck and I lost. I also lost to control decks. I have never stared at any player in spite nor have I hated their gamestyle. Whenever I finish a game regardless of outcome, I will shake the opponents hand if they are willing. GG. Good game. I just dislike the fact that some cards are better than others. Simple example is elven archer vs sabretooth tiger (might be the wrong name), both have first strike and are 2/1. Elvish archer costs cheaper to play. First strike and creatures having high power with low life is red’s specialty if I’m not mistaken. Elvish archer outperforms  sabretooth tiger in many ways, it even can benefit from lords and tribal effects. A question I would pose is, why are there so many “lousy” cards available in mtg? I know some cards that appear lousy can actually shine with the right combination of cards/situation but seriously there are a lot of lousy cards. I used the word “hate” with the intention of writing in a way that non-mtg players would understand. The concept is simple. “Hating” cards perform what they do best but that is all they can do, as you have mentioned they can be a liability, which is why there is such a thing called sideboarding. I just don’t like the concept of “hating” cards, which normally forces the need of sideboarding.

4)first turn win/combos: first turn wins are rare and tend not to happen twice. in the current standart, the best win possible is a turn three win, and even then, with a shoddy combo no one plays because it’s easy to disrupt. there are multiple card that hate on combo decks, too. Extirpate, Jester’s cap, Etc. usually, if a deck wins turn one, it’s not your fault. and even then, some turn one plays are not as desperate as they seemed. a reanimator deck i play against once got an Akroma Angel of Wrath on turn one.(Swamp+Dark Ritual+Entomb+Animate dead). and you know what? I had an untapped island and an Unsummon in my hand. he was the one to concede. Luck is and always was a part of MTG. even the strictest and zaniest control decks can die to a lucky draw. that’s why we play the game. you never know when the tables will turn.

I know that mtg is a game of skill and luck, but once too much luck is involved, I rather push my mtg cards that are worth a small fortune to the side and play blackjack insted.

if you could not reach these conclusion by yourself, then I recommend you really do stop playing MTG. Stop being a sore loser and actually LEARN how to play. that, or you could just go back to playing Hello Kitty Island Adventure.

I know all the things you have mentioned long before I even stopped playing. You do not need to recommend me anything. I was simply stating the reason why I stopped playing, in the end I ended up being called a “noob” and a “sore loser” by some random quick to assume and quick to insult bloke online. 

I should have wrote this as my blogpost instead :

MTG is a nice game which I enjoyed playing, however I find it difficult to allocate time and effort to fuel this hobby of mine. In addition to that as time passed I lost my interest for the game, instead I found myself interested in other things. Thus, I have stopped playing mtg.

The fact is I didn’t write that, and now I am defending my point of views. You have your views. Your points are valid. I respect that. However I don’t respect you for your immature namecalling and childish assumptions.  You asked me to LEARN how to play? I’ve already done that. What can I suggest for you? LEARN how to spell please. You assume I play Hello Kitty, hah. I laugh at you. 

Sigh. I sigh because I actually replied to the comment when I could have just let it slide. At least it makes a good blog post.