They`ve all been saying very unkind things about me:
http://www.starcityccg.com/index2.shtml
*sob*
This was my reply - gave the CPA a bit of a plug on the way.
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Well I seem to have struck a nerve by my attack on Invasion, but I`d like to make a bit of a rejoinder to those who have replied to my original article.
Let`s start at the start, Deane Beman wrote:
“What the release of the Masques block - and now the addition of Invasion - has done is to ensure that there will be a wide variety of competitive decktypes. Instead of preparing to face only a handful of archetypes, you may now need to prepare for just about anything!”
I don`t think that you can say Masques Block has encouraged diversity of decktypes because hasn`t the whole trend of MBC tournaments been for people to complain about how there are only a couple of good decks? Rebels and Waters were always popular and the G/B and Cowardice decks were occasionally strong as the metagame shifted around but other archetypes appeared only fleetingly. Compare this to the UBC season twelve months ago, where there were Bargain decks, Suicide decks, Con-Troll decks, SquirrelPrison decks, Stompy decks, Pattern Of Rebirth decks...the list goes on. Prior to that the TSE constructed saw decks as diverse as Horsecraft, Living Death, Counterphoenix, Hatred, Sligh, TradeAwaken, White Weenie, and Curious George.
It is my opinion that the dearth of creative decktypes in MBC is a direct result of the fact that very few cards in MBC are strong enough to make a deck succesful, and we have to bear in mind that the MBC season was only as popular as it was because Port and Lin Sivvi were banned, thus removing the whole of Tier One from MBC - naturally there will be more decktypes on Tier Two so the field diversified a little.
Extrapolating from this I see a forthcoming Type-II season where a very small number of decks will emerge, each loyal and dependent upon one of the few powerful cards left in the environment, most of which come from either 6th Edition (Geddon, Wrath, Hammer, Crusade, Counterspell) or Nemesis (Tide, Wave, Burst). I don`t doubt that this will be a format that sees players success determined in a large part by play skill, but I don`t see that as necessarily a good thing as it can only come at the cost of deckbuilding ability. No matter how hard you try with Invasion card you will not be able to build a deck that has a significant advantage over your opponent`s deck.
As to the question of having to face a variety of decks I disagree entirely because I think that many people are wrong about the way in which they consider an environment to have a variety of decks. Consider this analogy;
There are two cafe`s on a single street, the first cafe is a simple cafe with no real bells or whistles. If you went to that cafe for a drink you would be able to choose from Orange Juice, Apple Juice, Banana Milkshake, Hot Chocolate, Pepsi, Tango, Sprite, Tea or a simple cup of Coffee. Just a couple of doors down the road is a Coffee Republic, if you went there for a drink they have straight Coffee, Decaf, Latte, Cappucino, Mocha, wierd brands of coffee bean from strange countries - every sort of coffee under the sun - they also serve Orange Juice, but that`s freshly squeezed and really expensive.
Which cafe serves the widest ‘variety’ of drinks?
Tempest and Urza`s Block provided cards that were powerful to support a range of decktypes that could be as fast as Hatred or Stompy or as slow as Draw Go and Counterphoenix. Masques and Invasion block support any number of midgame
decks, but is that really more variety? I think it is not, and that quite the contrary to Deane`s comment I can now predict what my opponent will do more accurately when deckbuilding - I can predict that I won`t have to defend myself before the fourth turn Wrath Of God because I know he can`t get me below about 8 life by then. Nor will I have to worry about him sitting back and only tapping out when he finally draws his Morphling, because I know that the truly slow blue decks are no longer viable without Nevinyrral`s Disk, Masticore, Treachery or Powder Keg. I also know he won`t be trying to lock my mana down quickly with Opposition, nor need I worry about a deck trying to abuse vast sums of artifact mana.
Pierre DuPont makes a good point - I am certainly only criticising Invasion for it`s impact on competitive Magic and in my defence I offer the fact that I never claimed otherwise. But at the same time I am not out of touch with the ‘casual’ players as I am one of the most active members of the Casual Player`s Alliance (http://www.magic-singles.com/cpa) and I was very interested by how mixed the response of my fellow CPA members was. This is also elevent to what Jim Grimmett wrote:
“Dave gives his opinion that Invasion is a bad set. I disagree and, what's more important (just so we don't degenerate into a writer war) EVERY SINGLE PERSON I spoke to about Invasion at the prerelease disagreed. They all loved the set.”
Below are some of the comments made on the CPA message boards, I have to emphasise that not far from everybody disliked Invasion and if anything they came out about 60-40 in favour of it, but this is from a group of people who have previously greeted sets with nothing but general acclaim and individual gripes about potentially broken cards:
“It's balanced and boring. Zzzzz *yawn*”
-Darsh
“People so desperately want to believe that WOTC actually made a good set. Ya know what? Prophecy was fairly good. Invasion concentrates too much on the late game. Unless your deck has extremely fast mana, you don't need more than 4 big fatties in a deck.”
-Multani
“No one ever broke Living Death. You never saw a tournament completely dominated by Living Death ... or Tradewind Rider, or Wrath of God, or Phyrexian Plaguelord, or Shard Phoenix, or a ton of other "fun, powerful" cards. They may have made a good deck around them, but they weren't broken like Academy, Tide in general, Rec/Sur (maybe), MoMa, Time Spiral, Bargain and Replenish (for a time). There is a distinction. We want good, non-broken cards. We don't want broken cards and we don't want chaff (Invasion). You say R&D has given us what we want, but they haven't. That's the problem.
By the way, who says big creatures are necessarily ‘fun’? When was the last time you saw Scaled Wurm called ‘fun’?”
-Apollo
“Well, I like multicolor, but not this much multicolor. I like the set pretty much overall, except for one thing; There are very few new interesting cards. Just official and non reprints of old cards. The only new mechanics are kicker, pile, and Can`t Be Countered.
I dont like that, I like new and interesting things.
I think the Invasion set could have picked up the pace a little, with a little faster cards and perhaps more creature oriented.
Anyway, I like the set, its 'ok'. Its playable, and looks fun.”
-Foundation Of Rancor
“There are virtually no good new ideas (sideways cards... sigh). This is the closest I have ever come to feeling that they have run out of ideas for Magic. They seem to want to turn Magic into little kid Magic. Play a huge creature and hit them until they play a bigger one. Then you play a bigger one. No strategy at all.
Reminds me of another game...
Well, not really. At least Magic still has spells. But they are all of the HUGE category, too. Games where nothing happens until the 5th turn when the 4/4's start coming out!
And then the occasional 12 mana spell! Do these sound good to you? They sound incredibly boring to me.”
-Apollo
What I`m trying to say by showing these quotes is that I don`t think my view on Invasion is one that is mine alone. When I wrote my article I did so after discussing the potential for the set with upwards of thirty people from casual players at the CPA to other players I know from the tournament circuit, many of whom have experienced top-level Magic play. Zvi has begun his review of Invasion with the blue cards and so far his general opinion seems to be something along the lines of ‘God, I hope Type-II doesn`t get so bad that you`d actually want to use this’, which is precisely my own viewpoint.
But after all that it is also worth remembering that there was a very good reason why I named my column ‘My Side Of The Argument’ - and I guess we`ll just have to wait a month or so to find out whose argument the Invasion will prove to be the correct one.
And I`ll leave you with one final thought - there are many people who applaud Invasion because they think it will return Type-II to some sort of ‘golden age’, usually one epitomised by decks like ErnhamGeddon and CounterPost. I ask them, and you; was ErnhamGeddon really any more pleasant to play against than Living Death? Was CounterPost really more interesting than Accelerated Blue?
Peace,
David Sutcliffe
d_sutcliffe@hotmail.com
TEAM CAND!MAN
http://members.tripod.co.uk/candiman/index.htm
[Edited by Gizmo on September 26th, 2000 at 01:42 PM]