Though this blog offers the average Spike a bit of the Spikish sustenance he so desperately craves, the average article is designed to give a more unique perspective on the game.
In the end, the savage forces of Jund were quelled by the deck built specifically to beat them back. Surprisingly absent were the big American names of Magic as it was Austria vs. Portugal in the final match. It was a World’s concluded with an anticlimactic Anti-Jund crushing of Jund between two players who were, before that moment, known to only the innermost sanctum of MTG pro players.
Competitive Magic and I have had a rocky relationship. If you’ve spent any time reading the articles in the Gathering Magic archive, you’ll know that this blog has never been a super-spike-destroy-all-opposition-keeping-up-with-the-latest-decklist type of medium. To me, competitive Magic is at once excruciatingly appealing and also hopelessly irrelevant. While many of us have technically played magic for a decade or more, if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll probably agree that your complete understanding of the game didn’t congeal until much more recently. So for me, this most recent World’s was the first that I could have watched and 1) known every card on the table; 2) understood and anticipated the meta and 3) felt as though I could have built/piloted either deck in the championship round without incident. Unfortunately, this new-found perspective didn’t better my opinion of competitive MTG, in fact, it reaffirmed my worst fears Magic as an emulous sport.
Chess' ranking system can easily determine who is undisputedly "the best".
The object of any “World Championship” is supposedly to determine whom the best player in the world is. Many games are very good at figuring this out. Chess is dominated by undisputed masters who are almost never beaten by someone with a lower rank. Bobby Fischer used to set up 25 games with 25 unique players and win all of the matches. Competitive Magic is nothing like chess. Magic is much more akin to Baseball. Baseball has a season of 162 three-hour games and it’s “World Championship” consists of seven games spread out over more than two weeks. If any team wins more than 65% of these games they are considered “the best in the world”. Like baseball, Magic consists of a very long “season” and pro players earn their way into a world championship series through a point system based on wins. Unlike baseball though, players with a lot of pro games under their belt are given “byes” for sometimes 50% of any given event they attend. Attend enough of these events and even players with only a moderate amount of skill will invariably win 40% of the time and end up earning enough “pro points” to make it to World’s. Competitive Magic is based more on attendance than anything else. And unfortunately for most of us, traveling to Japan, South America and Europe all in one season just isn’t an option. Imagine if baseball teams could “skip” games and your team wasn’t able to make it to all of their matches while the Yankees always played a complete season. Which team do you think would have the wins necessary to make it to the playoffs?
The paper, rock, scissors phenomenon is in full effect both in WoW and MTG.
Competitive Magic is also comparable to World of Warcraft in the sense that you’re all given the same opportunity to use the same game pieces. Anyone can get to level 60 and get the same set of Epic armor. Likewise, everyone has access to a Jund deck or an Anti-Jund deck and those who have made it to world’s can probably pilot the deck almost as well as the next guy at worlds. Many different “builds” emerge but it becomes quite clear which one (or hopefully two) builds are the best. Once a deck has dominated for long enough, an “anti-deck” emerges. Usually this deck is weak against most other builds but utterly dominates “the deck of the day”, in this case- Jund. It’s similar to the age old fantasy equation- (Warrior > Mage, Mage > Rogue, Rogue >Warrior). In the end you simply roll the deck of the day, or the antidote to the deck of the day, cross your fingers and hope you play the right opponents. If everyone is rolling the same decks, and most of these people aren’t making glaring “mistakes” at the world’s level the only variable left to play itself out is luck.
My point? Magic is a game in which you will never know, nor will there ever be a “best player in the world”. While Magic is very good about separating good players from poor ones. It has never been very good at separating the merely good from the truly great. When the runner-up at worlds is playing, card for card, the same Jund deck you’ve rolled with for the past six months, your perspective on competitive Magic shifts. You think to yourself- “I could both build, and play that deck just as well as he probably did.” My point isn’t that I am some sort of Magic God (though the more I think about it…). It’s simply that an MTG blogger from Seattle, WA could have gone to worlds and gotten second place with a dime-a-dozen Jund deck, a tiny bit of luck and a plane ticket. I don’t know about you but that notion cheapens the idea of a Magic the Gathering “World Championship” just a tad. When I watch Ichiro Suzuki play baseball, I never think to myself “heck, I could do just as well…” But as I watched the MTG world championship, live at 7:30AM PST last weekend, I did. While I respect the winner’s ability to “analyze the meta” it didn’t take a genius to anticipate Jund as the dominant deck of the day and subsequently, play anti-Jund.
Best in the World? Nah. One of the best? Most definitely.
While the pro tour isn’t a great way to find the best player in the world, it is good at determining the best decks in the world, for the time. But I could have saved everyone the effort and fanfare by handing you the Jund / Anti-Jund decklists three months ago. The Pro Circuit is also an effective engine for seeing cards that might otherwise never see play. Would Goblin Ruinblaster be as popular as it is without Jund? Great Sable Stag? Celestial Purge? A playset of each card can be found in the winning deck this year. Many of the innovations we all take for granted were debuted and honed on the Pro circuit stage. But today, MTGO coupled with other online communities like this one beat them to the punch. A highly visible competitive Magic scene gives us something to aspire to, to follow as players and to speculate about as commentators. Hell, would this article even exist if it hadn’t been for Worlds? It’s a great marketing tool and it gives Kelly Reid over at Quiet Speculation a reason to buy 35 copies of Emeria Angel when a Top 16 deck stumbles upon a random combo. (much love Kelly)
Unlike many other games, there will never again be a godlike figure in Magic the Gathering, winning every game he or she plays. The Pro Tour consists of the best players in the world but on any given Sunday, any one of them could be the Champion. Congratulations André Coimbra. You are one of the best in the world.
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I followed Pro Magic closely years ago but have fallen away from it. Just trying to figure out if your article has taken someone like Kai Budde into account. At the time I believed what you said in this article about Magic – but then there was Kai. It seemed he made top 8 in nearly every single event. Was it just unreal luck? Or has something changed about Magic in the ensuing years.
-mh
The Competition has gotten much stronger as the game has picked up more over the years, and pays out more.
One point I wish I would have had time to expound upon is the fact that the internet has played a KEY role in shaping Pro Magic. It used to be that players could innovate and bring a sneaky build to a Grand Prix for the win. Today, whatever idea you have has probably already been tried, playtested, and dismissed by the entire online community. It isn’t just a handful of Pro players shaping Magic today. ANYONE can make a deck online and start a tidal wave of usage for a card like Goblin Ruinblaster. It used to be we could pinpoint the card’s first real use but today.. who knows which online player decided to play Jund? The online community is a huge, if not THE force in tournament level game breaking these days. I wont try and speak for what went on in Budde’s time (10 years ago) But I can say that today, and really only recently (the last 4-5 years) the internet has taken the reigns from the average “Pro” player.
Really good article. However, the level cap in WoW is 80 now
.
I am one of the best players in the world.
This article is a thinly veiled attempt at bigging yourself up Reiny. You could not have made the top 8 at worlds. You can do better. The internet existed 10 years ago. Budde’s meta was shaped by the internet as well.
There are some good points about the structuring of magic tourneys and Jund’s degenerate nature in there, though.
I knew I should have made the veil a bit thicker!
Seriously though, of course the internet existed 10 years ago but was it the all-dominating MTG force that it is now? Even if it were (which I would argue that it most certainly was not), the game changes with each set that is released. If we’re in a stage where it’s tough to pin down “The Deck” then I think certain people can shine through innovation. Lately though, as in, the last 3-4 years- Its been “The Deck” vs “The Anti-Deck” in almost every event. My explaination for this is- “The MTG Internet Community has gotten stronger” There are exceptions to this rule of course and Im not saying it isnt possible to outsmart the meta.. but on the whole, that is how it goes down at Pro events.
http://wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/66
^I thought this article featured some good descriptions of net decking in 1998.
No, Reinhart is pretty much right. Yes, the players at Worlds were probably almost all great players, but they’re probably not great deck builders. And since deck building innovation is supposed to be a big part of your grasp of the game… Let me put it this way. It’s like when you play a video game but use cheat codes to get all the best weapons and make yourself invincible. You didn’t actually accomplish anything, you just did the same thing anybody else could have done.
Dr. Ian Malcom put it best: “I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re using here: it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility… for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you’re selling it.”
I’m not dissagreeing with the guy throwing around Jurassic Park quotes!!!
I love that movie….
I love your reply
I don’t really think the world championships prove much, this game just depends so much on luck. You can never really be “great” in a game that depends this much on randomness.
Phil Ivey would like to have a word with you. And Phil Hellmuth would like to have quite a few.
Phil Hellmuth’s Wikipedia sounds more like a WWE wrestling stage than anything else
If you roll a 20 sided die enough times, once in a while you’ll see the same number come up two or three times in a row. It’s the same handful of players that even really have access to the pro tours.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Hellmuth
There are big names in games of chance, but I contend that they are big names only because they attend each and every event, get byes to the final rounds and “make less mistakes” than some of the other “merely good” players. Does that make them the best in the world? Not really, It just means they attend every tournament and are AMONG the best. I agree that there are 1 or 200 GREAT poker players out there and 1 or 200 GREAT magic players. But “best in the world”? Not for longer than a season or three and even then their Jund deck could be anti-Junded at any time
See, now that is something I don’t understand. If it comes down to ‘The Deck’ and ‘The Anti-Deck’ enough times wouldn’t they decide to change their decks? In my play group, and I bet in yours too, someone will build a deck that is damn good, so we others build or modify our decks to beat the new deck and then someone else will build a deck that beats both and so on.
If Anti-Jund is really weak against everything except Jund, then it sounds too specialized and isn’t the best deck. Is it Jund is just too powerful this season or has it been like this for the past few years? Is it impossible to build a deck that can beat Jund without becoming Anti-Jund? Is it because of the gold-heavy multicolored-focused Alara block? Will Zendikar and the block after Zendikar (which hopefully will be stressed mono or duel color decks like Zendikar) make a difference once Alara is rotated out?
…..I just realized I wrote a a whole string of questions. Odd.
If you look closely at the Anti-Jund decks competition he got off pretty easy. Something like Jund-Jund-mirror-Jund-mirror-Jund.
My guess is if he played white/tokens or Turbo-Mill he would have lost. But he didn’t. Thats part of the point of the article.
a bunch of my friends made hypergenesis decks so I make a giant beat stick permanent shroud deck xD I beat’em all
I drop my angel of wrath
I drop my mind control(i play no blue lands)
xD
I agree, I think if you had two players with identical decks I doubt either of them would win that much more than the other as long as they were both good enough to understand the game well. It’s all about who has the money/time/access ere.
They can talk to us when either wins the World Series of Poker again. Ever.
Hussain Bolt is not losing to some dude from Alaska who is ‘pretty good’. The Phils did because poker isn’t only skill. It just isnt.
Phil Hellmuth is an arrogant douchebag. That’s all.
The structure of the meta-game is one of the reasons I haven’t even attempted to get into Pro magic. When I play at FNM, I know that I will see the meta-game moving in full motion, and I anticipate it. For the Jund match-up alone I run Thornling. However, at FNM I see a slew of unique homebrews that I feel I just wouldn’t see should I try to take my deck to the PTQ, or should I come out on top at the PTQ (highly unlikely), at State. When my friends ramble on about the best decks in the Meta-Game I can honestly say that it bores the hell out of me. Jund is boring, 5CC was boring, even BBW was boring, all because a majority of spikes are playing them. I guess what bugs me about competitive magic is that the 100% spikes lack creativity when it comes to deckbuilding, at least in my eyes.
I don’t think that’s fair to say someone lacks creativity because they show up to a tourney with a proven winning deck. Best believe I’m bringing Jund to a tourney, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a special place in my heart for thallids.
Interesting article. I have always wondered how I would do if I could put the time in to play at the pro level. To me, a pro player, is able to stay on top of every meta moment and play magic daily. So time coupled with the cost of acquiring every card is what separates the pros from the rest of us.
I’m getting ready for states this week and putting the time in to know the field has taken a lot of… well, time. But I know if I want to show well I need to know as much as I can about each deck. But winning any old event isn’t as easy as just showing up. You suppose that pros can just hop around the country and win win win. As we know competing in an 8 round event and staying focused is incredibly difficult. Being able to sustain that kind of focus for days at a time is a huge skill that the pros have. How many hours of magic in a row did the two worlds finalists have to play to get there?
I think the disconnect is similar to that of choosing leaders in politics. The people who win in politics have certain “skills” such as the abuility to raise money, smooth speech, a competitive nature and a cunning. But are these the attributes we would ask for by name in a leader? Probably not.
Same with Pro Magic. As norm listed the requisets to being a “great” are – the ability to afford the cards you need, the ability to travel all over the world at any time, the ability to analyze the meta and the ability to fight your ADD tendencies and play Magic 72 hours straight. But do any of those things really equal “Best Magic Player on the Planet?” Not really. Of course skill is in there somewhere but as I argued in the article. Skill can only get you so far and you’ll never be able to take that Jund deck past Anti-Jund no matter what your level is. Skill is just one of several factors in creating Magic’s Elite.
The only thing interesting about Pro Magic is the Limited format. If you are looking for the best Magic Players you start there. Standard Constructed tournaments are kind of pointless. They only prove what the internet has known for weeks or even months.
The fact that so much time and money is at stake nowadays, makes it less likely you will see anything but the top tier decks being played.
Anybody remember Invitationals. That was a tournament very specifically designed to keep players guessing. That was the only championship I cared about because they kept changing the rules. The first day was a regular tournament. Every following day there was a variation on the play that severely limited the player’s control of the game (such as your deck had to have one card that began with every letter of the alphabet or you had to pick from a pool of fan designed decks to play). The guys who won those were always the champions to me. Too bad they don’t do it anymore.
Man, I’m out sick for one day and the message boards go nuts.
I agree with your assessment that Pro Tour players aren’t the “best” players in the world. There’s obviously different levels of MtG understanding and knowledge but I wouldn’t put that big of a gap between Pro Players and the guy who consistently places 1st at your local shop. And I honestly wasn’t very impressed with the Finals decks. I think both decks would get smashed by aggressive aggro like Aldrazi Green or even White Tokens. The Pro Tour meta must be confined to deck types with the chance to win it all (Outside of that very nice 5-1 Vampires deck I saw). Be careful taking out those Stags for Master of the Wild Hunt. Jund is a slow starter as it is and slowing it down further seems like a bad idea in my local meta. I was impressed with Japanese Jund types running Rampant Growth or Borderland Ranger as a mana fixer. My point of all of this is dont expect the Finals decks to perform well in your meta. I know for certain they would not do well in mine.
I respectfully disagree that any Joe who has figured out to build jund and understands the deck can win the pro tour. Just as at your local shop or kitchen table there are players that are better players so too for the pro tour. Just as Bolt might be able to sprint the best you have players that draft better or play extended better.
Also you will find during the course of a season you will find players always around the top. If you read most of the top players recounts of the pro tours they have played on where they did not finish in first the reports are filled with descriptions of how they or their opponents made mistakes.
Any magic tournament no matter what the title just determines who was best for that tournament. But titles are awarded based upon that place and time. It is like the Olympics there are heats and trials within the Olympics and events that lead up to it but you are only an Olympic champion if you win that event. There are plenty of sports where the best player in the world does not win every event they enter that are not considered pure luck sports like golf.
Thank you for the interesting content I like your willingness to challenge the status quo.
I don’t think he meant any player could win, but rather, any good player could do it (people who know when it’s best to mulligan and how to leave the proper mana untapped for a bluff). The point is that innovative deck building is no longer a factor in tournaments; which should be one of the fundamental qualities of a MTG champion.
An interesting take on this topic can be found on the free side of SCG. Rich Hagon talking to three pro’s discus playing the best deck search for “PV, Gaudenis, and Sam” in this article.
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/18355.html
I would disagree about innovative deck-building being dead in the current magic. Conley Woods routinely has innovative decks that preform well against the field. Also just recently at PT Austin I doubt that most people would have been able to predict that a Punishing Fire Baneslayer Angel deck would have come out on top.
I believe that it is also true that most people that think they can mulligan correctly and bluff well might be surprised when they compete at a higher level. One aspect of how well you bluff is who you are bluffing.
One or two people out of hundreds does not make a good case for innovative deck building in tournaments. When half the players are playing one deck and most of the other half is playing two other decks then there innovation is not a factor. All it means is that 10% or more players will be running Magical Christmas Land at their FNM tournaments.
As for the mulligan/bluff example, you missed the point. I was just pointing out two of the hundreds of little intricacies that separate the quality of a great Magic player from a good one.
Side note: About half of you Star City Games guys are too smug for your own good.
One other Side note: Love you Ferret and Evan.
“As norm listed the requisets to being a “great” are – the ability to afford the cards you need, the ability to travel all over the world at any time, the ability to analyze the meta and the ability to fight your ADD tendencies and play Magic 72 hours straight. But do any of those things really equal “Best Magic Player on the Planet?” Not really.”
Best thing ever written on this website.
Keep it up!
Hear hear!!! Could not agree more.
I don’t like that singles competitive magic is pretty much a team sport either. One guy builds he deck and another runs it. Sure even if there wee rules against this people would still do it but at least I and most of you actually build the decks we run. And I kindof got overzealous saying the decks would get smashed in my local meta bcause they are strong decks. I just dislike Master of the Wild Hunt over Great Stable Stag, Goblin Ruinblaster, Mind Rot, Borderland Ranger that much.
I am sorry but I am willing to bet that almost nobody out of all the posters here will ever win a pro tour despite their claims on how easy it is to drive these tops decks
Amen Willyfield, but it’s human nature to try and teardown those who succeed to make our own short comings not so short.
You are wrong. First of all, Magic is a mixture of both luck AND skill. Wizards is able to dictate how big of a factor each is in the various formats. Here’s something that decreases skill:
Auto-add cards like Black Lotus or Tarmogoyf. These cards decrease skill because they fulfill a role that is unsurpassed in what they do, and that role is widely needed. Tarmogoyf is unsurpassed in efficiency, where Thresh used to run Werebear, a potential 3/3 for 2, now they run Tarmogoyf. Thus, Tarmogoyf removes the strategic element for that slot because it is so efficient. But, there are two types of skill, deckbuilding and playing. Deck building includes sideboarding and thinking toward the innovative end of things, but most importantly, deck building includes catering your deck toward the metagame. I’ve seen many netdecks fail, and that’s because the player did a weak job of modifying it to suit their local metagame. I’ve seen players come up with hugely innovative ideas in the eternal formats, but admit that they aren’t good at piloting the deck. Furthermore, there will always be rogue decks, even in the eternal formats, which win, despite the odds. This is clear evidence of deckbuilding skill. I’ve seen ANT players arguing over if Doomsday is good or bad for the deck, and one player explained that it is a very skill intensive card. Some players think it is bad because they cannot correctly pilot it. Another example is Vintage’s Bazaar. Trading card disadvantage for new cards? You could spend an entire article talking about the skill involved in the decisions of Gifts Ungiven and the Bazaar in Vintage. Thus, skill exists.
My point is, there IS a best player in all of Magic because of the skill in the game. It is difficult to distinguish, but it is there.
werebear turns into a 4/4 not a 3/3…just thought i would let ya know
Hi, with the abundance of crappy blogs around it’s great to see that there are still some filled with great information! Is there any way I can be alerted when you make a new post? thank you!
Yep, our RSS feed is here: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/GatheringMagic-AMagicTheGatheringForumAndBlog
You can have it email you every time a new post comes!