Pattern Recognition #95 - Slow Grow, Part 1
Features Opinion Pattern Recognition
berryjon
3 January 2019
1295 views
3 January 2019
1295 views
Hello everyone! Welcome back to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.net's longest running article series about the bric and brac of Magic: The Gathering, card design, game history and theory as well as being my own personal soap box for when I want to go on and on about things that interest me. Who am I? Well, I am berryjon, self professed Old Fogey and yes, I've been playing this game for longer than some of you have been alive. I've earned that title.
This week is going to start my post-mortem on my first Commander League. Now, I've played Commander, and I've done leagues before, but I have to remember that not everyone out there has done either, so it will be a nice start to explain what I'm talking about.
Local Game Store, Strange Ideas ran from November to the middle of December, a Slow Grow Commander League. Which I participated in because I work like five minutes walk from their location. And because I wanted to. ;)
So, a League is a larger, multi-week tournament format. In this case, we played three games a week for six weeks, with points being awarded based on placement during each game as well as special conditions met during play. For the record, here is the list:
+4/+3/+2/+1 for 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Place at each table. If there are less than four people at the table, then drop the last placing points. No punishment for being short on players!
+1 for being the first player to deal combat damage to another player.
+1 for dealing lethal Commander Damage.
+1 for casting your Commander 4 or more times. +2 if your Commander is a Planeswalker (because you can't get the previous bonus point).
+1 for Saving another player. Defined as preventing another player from leaving the game due to the actions of a third party.
-1 for attacking the player in Last Place (once per table).
-1 for killing all remaining (2+) players on the same turn.
-1 for not casting your Commander.
-1 for winning the game due to an Infinite Combo.
-4 for being an asshole. Yes. This is a serious line.
Between rounds in a week, only the table positioning mattered, but for prizing each week and for the final victory total, all points were tallied.
You will quickly see where I wind up as you go through my week-by-week talks.
Anyway, as for the Slow Grow, this is actually a neat format where each player starts with a single Preconstructed Commander product. There was some debate about restricting it to the ones published this year, but it was decided that it was too restrictive so the door was thrown open to any Commander precon. After each week, you were allowed to change up to five cards in your deck, for a total of 25 cards changed going into the last week. The only exception to this is if you were the "lucky" person to choose a Precon with a banned card in it. In that case, you would change it out for week 1, but would only be given 4 substitutions on the second week to compensate.
Going into this, I seriously considering playing Teferi, Temporal Archmage, the 2014 mono-blue Commander Precon starring my favourite Planeswalker. Now, I've had a lot of fun with this precon, taking it up against custom built decks and giving a great accounting of myself. Heck, one of my favourite plays was to kick Rite of Replication on an opponents' Auriok Champion, then watching as my opponents panicked in the face of a deck running massive life gain!
Still lost to a Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder deck, but it was a close thing for him.
No, rather I instead chose to play as Lord Windgrace, and his 2018 Commander Precon. I went with this because it was still a fresh purchase and I had the precon still unbroken-down. Which, as of the time of this writing, is no longer the case. In addition, I felt that playing the most recent precon would be a good way to help any new Commander players who were jumping in feet first to the deep end. Turned out to not be needed, but it was the thought that counted. Also, Lord Windgrace was an awesome character, and I wanted to do him justice.
WEEK 0
Now, I'm not a complete fool. The week before the League started, I brought the Lord Windgrace to the regular Commander night, and made it abundantly clear what I was doing. I was stress-testing the precon against more tuned decks to get a preview of any practical issues ahead of time. I didn't take too many notes of this, as I was looking for impressions, not detailed analysis.
GAME 1 started off with the thing that would haunt me across the first couple of weeks, and even bit me in the ass all the way through to the end of the League.
For a Lands Matter deck, the Lands sucked. Seriously. I was mana screwed that first game, enough so that after the first opponent got taken out, a relative newbie to Commander, I was ignored by the two other players while I whittled away my turns waiting for mana and playing a side game of Commander with my spare Zo-Zu the Punisher deck against the guy who got blasted out of the game.
I also won this game, not because I finally gained board state, but because the other two guys literally forgot about me long enough for my life total to be the highest at the end of the round.
So yeah, the mana base needed to be redone, but I was willing to wait for a couple more games before deciding on how to go about doing it. I mean, one bad game isn't indicative of the whole deck, right?
GAME 2
My notes for this game consist solely of myself with a little Skull for a life total, and a running total for everyone else. Being wiped off the board by a Master of Cruelties that was promptly Ninjitsu'd out for someone who could do actual combat damage before I could even get my first creature into play was annoying. Good thing I brought something else to do for an hour. And I resolved to look into the creature situation after the mana one.
WEEK 1
Alright! Fresh week, properly shuffled deck to mitigate Mana Screw, and an upbeat attitude!
The first thing I noticed was that about half of the twenty or so participants were running 2018 Precons. Woo! There were also two other Lord Windgrace decks, and I made the joke that we should all go to the same table at some point. So I laid down my 10 dollars and got ready to rumble.
GAME 1
My opponents in this game were Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist, Saskia the Unyielding, and Tuvasa the Sunlit.
No offense to you, Mr. Saskia the Unyielding, I played you many times over the course of the League, but she has Haste and Vigilance. Attack with her!
And once again, Mana Screw hit me hard, with a developing hand full of green cards that would let me get more mana if I only had a source of to work with! It's what saved me from being knocked out first as people took pity on me. And I resolved to do something about the damned mana base. I did, however, get to cast Lord Windgrace and start doing something when I got whacked by the Tuvasa player for over 30 damage from a creature with Protection from Creatures and that was that.
GAME 2
This was all 2018! All four decks were represented here, and there was some joking accusations that the tournament judge organized the table in that manner. He denied it, pointing out how many people were running the same decks, so it was a possible occurrence. Then we got to playing.
For once, the mana base wasn't against me, and I was able to hold my own thanks to a certain degree of token generation, and the Aminatou, the Fateshifter and the Saheeli, the Gifted decks doing a lot of work. Our table's Estrid, the Masked deck went down first despite the best efforts of its player under the Artificer's onslaught. The round went to time, and on the last turn of the game - mine - I cast Lavalanche on said Artificer to bring them down from having the most life to tied with me at last place. Just a little spite, you know. And hey, that meant being tied for second!
Another thing I had started to notice about this deck was that I had good options for blowing up the board. However, because of my precarious board state in the first place, I couldn't all that reliably bounce back after taking out everything. Which meant that I really needed to add "Come back from a Board Wipe" to my list of things to do with this deck once I was done with all my other problems.
GAME 3
So, you know that joke I made about having all three Lord Windgrace decks at the same table?
Well, it turns out we were all here. However, in the interest of being different, one of the players had decided to run with Thantis, the Warweaver as their Commander instead. And the fourth player was a very irate Tournament Organizer (and Store Manager), who was the Tuvasa the Sunlit player from the first game.
He... uh... he wiped me out first. Because Thantis, the Warweaver forced people to attack. And he didn't like my prediction coming true. He's still a nice guy though! Honestly! You know, in case he ever actually reads this and thinks otherwise. (insert shifty eyes here)
After I was, once again, the target of Mana Screw, which I noticed, seemed to affect everyone running the deck now that I got to see the others in action. The other Lord Windgrace went down second as he wasn't able to build a creature base that could deal with Tuvasa the Sunlit, and Thantis, the Warweaver came in second place on the game because his Commander was a creature, and a great blocker.
So, leaving the first weak, I had 6 points under my belt for coming in 3rd, 2nd and 4th and nothing else special. I had a plan going into next week, and next week, things were going to improve!
Join me next time when I finish off my Custom Card Critique, then get back to my post-mortem on this League. Spoilers? The plan works. But doesn't.
Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!
carlmoores says... #3
Question: Besides the Slow Grow aspect, how did the actual format (scoring system) work for you? It's almost identitcal to the one used on Star City Games Youtube show Commander Vs. and I've been thinking of suggesting it to my playgroup as giving us some structure and would also maybe bring some friendly competition to the game (while de-incentivizing degerneracy)
January 6, 2019 7:29 p.m.
The points system is solid, but not spectacular. You're right about it being pretty general, but that's the point. It is designed to not really limit players' options outside of the Asshole rule.
January 6, 2019 7:47 p.m.
Overall, I think these are a terrible set of point rules, for a number of reasons. Specifically, I think these rules work to (a) "limit players' options" in deckbuilding by disproportionately favouring certain styles of plays, as well as (b) encouraging players to make decisions they would not normally make if they were just trying to play Magic.
I'll go through each rule I find problematic individually:
First player to deal combat damage: This disproportionately favours players who have inexpensive creatures; as well as is extremely luck-based. After all, if you go first, second, third, or fourth, and happen to have a hasty creature, you're going to have someone who has no blockers. The fourth player is at a huge disadvantage, as it is possible for a player
This rule also encourages decisions which would otherwise be a bad idea in a regular game. This is going to encourage players to drop early attackers/blockers, when they might otherwise be setting up their board with ramp or playing other cards.
Lethal Commander Damage: This serves to encourage a specific style of play--Voltron--and thus creates a relative disadvantage for other playstyles.
Casting Commander Multiple Times: This serves to encourage risky and otherwise silly uses of your commander for the sake of obtaining this point. Further, it disproportionately benefits commanders with low casting costs, as well as commanders in Green, where Ramp is more readily available.
Saving Another Player: This seems a bit nebulous and undefined, but I am sure it's a lot easier to detect in practice. Again, I'm not overly fond of a rule that benefits sub-optimal play.
Attacking a Player in Last Place: I presume this rule means "the player with the least health at the table?" If so, that's an extremely bad rule. Health, like anything else in Magic, is a resource. A player in Black could easily have the lowest health, but could have the strongest board/card advantage/etc. which they traded their life for. This rule gives them additional armour, and forces players to lose points in order to deal with the biggest threat at the table.
Killing multiple players at once: Contrary to your statement that the rules are :designed to not really limit players' options", it's pretty clear this rule was explicitly designed to limit one's ability to play combo or other explosive decks.
Not casting your commander: Again, this is a rule that encourages suboptimal play. Further, this rule again benefits players playing low-costed commanders. I also find it a bit amusing that Derevi, Empyrial Tactician can be played multiple times in a game, and still be penalized under a strict reading of this rule.
The one thing I like about this rule? So many other rules seek to punish combo players. It is nice that they have the option to swiftly combo off and vindictively make other players suffer as well.
No Infinite Combos: Again, this serves to limit deckbuilding.
Saying these rules are not designed to limit players' options is a falsehood--they either directly punish deckbuilding options, or relatively make other options vastly superior, making it rather silly to choose an inferior option.
I find this particularly unnecessary given the need to start with the same pool of decks, all of which are generally commensurate in power level.
January 8, 2019 10:44 a.m.
cdkime: Having, you know, actually played with these rules, allow me to address with your concerns in order.
Dealing Combat Damage is, yes, a bonus for moving quickly, but in practice, it didn't really happen until turn 3 on average. I mean, on week four, I got it when I had a Scute Mob in my opening hand, but no one went out and aimed for this. It was a bonus of opportunity.
Lethal Commander Damage: Never happened. In 18 rounds, 3-4 tables each round, it never happened. Once again, it's a bonus, not a goal.
Casting Commander Multiple Times: This is a straight up Gimmick point that, from what I was told, was added because in a previous league, someone was desperate enough to pay for their Commander that many times, and was given an ad-hoc reward for their persistence which was later codified. It happened a couple times with some of the cheaper Commanders, but I never saw it at my table. Usually the game was over by the third casting.
Saving Another Player is definitely a social aspect. Are you keeping another player in the game? Have a point! And no, keeping a player in the game by not attacking their empty board with your horde of creatures didn't count. But casting Fog in response to when you as Player A is a bystander to when Player B tries to swamp Player C would count. It too is a point that was never handed out during the League.
Attacking Last Place: No, not life total. League Point Total. And it was only applied if that person was attacked first at the table. It encourages backing off from the player who is having a rough league in general. Or new players who are still learning the ropes of Commander and thus trend toward the bottom of the standings.
Killing Everyone at Once: This is a lesser version of the "Don't be an ass" rule that you had no problems with. It's meant to discourage players from waiting for one big blowout turn to show off how awesome their modified decks are. Now, it can be waived at the discretion of the table. The example cited was a player who once, seeing everyone stabilized, cast Earthquake for lethal on the entire board. That person didn't get penalized because they didn't win, they just ended the stalemate of a game.
Not Casting your Commander: Did your Commander enter the battlefield? No? Lose a point, sorry. Yes. I got hit with this a couple times over the League.
No Infinite Combos: You do know that Commander as a format defaults to Combo as the "proper" way to play the game, right? I did a whole article about this. You also know what ICs do? They stop the game as players take excessively long turns, or keep repeating turns. The player with the Saheeli deck got hit with this when he took a twenty minute turn because of all the moving parts in his deck. Because ICs are "I'm playing the Game, and You're Not" and it becomes a race to see who goes off first.
In motion, and practice, the points system is self-regulating, and can be adjusted on the fly by the consent of the table. It's not what you make it out to be.
January 8, 2019 11:41 a.m.
I find some of your "never awarded" points rather surprising. I am curious, was this league mostly casual, non-spike players? I do not mean that question derisively, it just seems that there is a lot of room to abuse these rules, and purposefully design your deck so it might not win every pod, but it will still receive points as if it did.
To provide an example, my immediate thought upon reading these rules was to spend a considerable number of substitutions on Fog effects. After all, if you use three Fog effects in a single game, even if you are the pod's loser, you've still come out with the same number of points as the winner. With a little bit of effort, you can durdle around until you are in second place, netting you more points than the pod's winner. That does not seem all that healthy from a tournament stance.
With regards to combos, rules punishing combos are probably the most commonly proposed ones I see whenever someone on this site asks "how do I structure tournament points." Simply put, these rules are selfish and unfair--you're basically saying "you are not allowed to play the game the way you enjoy because I don't like the way you play. You either will play my way, or you can suffer."
If you want to make combos harder, you can implement a league-specific banlist. Things like Paradox Engine, which enable a good deal of combo decks, might be prohibited. This allows players to still build and play infinite combos if they enjoy them, while also slowing down the combo-player, giving other archetypes some options.
With regards to time, we have Rule 702 allowing shortcuts and Rule 104.3a allowing players to concede. By all means, punish players who either (a) unreasonably withhold the allowance of shortcuts after a combo has been demonstrated to work and (b) players who refuse to concede the game, despite the fact it is demonstrated the combo will end the game and no player has the ability to stop the combo.
Then you are at least punishing the players who are slowing down the game or making it last indefinitely, not the person who legitimately deserves the win (unless they're the one unreasonably withholding the shortcut).
Perhaps it is the attorney in me, but the number of times you implied "the rules were arbitrary and could change on the fly" was extremely concerning. Rules are an important part of the game, and if they change mid-game, that's going to mean players designed their decks with incomplete information, resulting in sub-optimal choices they might regret.
One could always change the league rules in the next iteration, but the rules should be sacrosanct from start to finish of any given tournament.
Which, brings me to the Asshole Rule, which I inadvertently left off on my first post. This is an arbitrary rule, that allows the tournament overseer far too much leeway in application. Without set guidelines, this provides the overseer to effectively punish whatever persons or playstyles they find distasteful, based upon personal whims.
January 8, 2019 3:41 p.m.
carlmoores says... #8
The points are only awarded once a game. For example if you saved two people by playing Fog, even if you saved them both at the same time, you only get one point and don't get additional points for additional saves.
Reading your comments you seem to have missed the entire point of the scoring system, which is to foster a casual environment, welcome and introduce new players into the game and discourage spike/ competitive play.
January 8, 2019 10:53 p.m.
carlmoores: from a pure textual reading of the rules, as written, saving another player would count multiple times per game. When reading rules, you have to look at the pure text of the rule, as well as how similar rules are written. In the present case, the rule does not say it only occurs once per game, whereas other rules in the same category specifically make a distinction as to how often the event can occur. On its face, the rules, as written in the post, clearly set forth that saving another player gives points each time the event occurs.
The primary issue I have is that these rules are, on their face “designed to . . . really limit players' options” by cutting out one of the three primary archetypes (combo, control, aggro).
You say this rule is designed to foster a casual environment or new players? Obviously that is the intent - but it is clearly not the neat way to do so, as it is far too broad a restriction.
There are plenty of janky, fun infinite combos that players might like to use in a casual setting - these rules punish casual infinite combos as much as they do cEDH combos.
Further, assuming new players are all aggro-focused, and do not want to play combo is incredibly misguided. Contrary to helping new players, these rules are saying “the playstyle you are interested in trying is not welcome here.”
Far from not understanding the purpose of the rules, I have already suggested a vastly superior method of maintaining a casual environment, without alienating an entire playstyle. This is why banlists exist - to ensure all players can play the way they want to, in a fair setting.
KALE434 says... #1
Strange Ideas eh?
January 4, 2019 5:44 p.m.