Primer guideline discussion thread
TappedOut forum
Posted on June 18, 2014, 11:42 a.m. by Epochalyptik
Last Update: 24 June, 01:00 EST
Those of you who have been following recent discussions in this forum may be aware that TappedOut may soon host primers.
This thread will contain the official discussion on what should and should not be included in these primers, and will serve as the basis for a template if we decide on a way to host said primers.
To discuss where these primers will be located, how they will be handled, and any other non-content concerns, please post in this thread.
We should begin by developing a uniform structure for our primers. That way, we can ensure that they do the job they're supposed to do.
Basic requirements
Primers should be
- specific to the archetype or strategy, not a decklist. The official primers will not be based around a single user's decklist, although users are welcome to write unofficial primers in the description fields of their own decks.
- detailed enough to convey exactly what the main theories, decisions, and goals are.
- flexible enough to provide examples of essential or significant cards, alternatives, or ideas without committing to specific card counts. Again, these are not decklist-specific primers.
Basic structure
I'm thinking the basic structure will look something like this:
- Introduction
- Name of the deck/archetype
- Format
- Key features
- General goals
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
- May include history
- Construction
- Philosophy
- Key characteristics or qualities
- Essential cards (examples)
- Supporting cards (examples)
- Optional cards (examples)
- Sideboarding (examples)
- Gameplay
- Philosophy
- Function or use of certain cards, combos, etc.
- Game 1
- Sideboarding
Numbers indicate required section names. Bullet points indicate suggested information.
Basic organization
- The trinity: Aggro, Combo, and Control are the three most fundamental archetypes. Almost all other archetypes can be categorized into one of these three groups. Oddball archetypes needn't be forced into one of these categories, though.
- Suggested implementation: Static pages (I can write and publish these)
- Archetype: Archetypes are collections of similar decks that are unified by their basic principles. Objects in this category would be more specific than trinity archetypes, but still general enough to apply to many decks/shells. Examples: Attrition, Storm, Weenies, Tokens, Dredge, Infect
- Suggested implementation: Static pages
- Deck types: Deck types are the intermediary between larger archetypes and individual decks. They account for variations in the archetypes. Examples: Manaless Dredge, Cruel Control, Pump Infect
- Suggested implementation: Folders (to be maintained on an official site account)
- Shells: Shells are the actual decklists themselves, but stripped down to serve as fundamental guides rather than examples of fully-built decks.
- Suggested implementation: Decklists (to be maintained either on an official site account or by individual users)
For ease of organization, please use the terms trinity, archetype, deck type, and shell as defined above. They will help us organize the necessary elements of this project and avoid confusion.
As you can see, I want these primers held to a high standard. These are going to be great tools for the community, and they may also draw in new users. We'll develop a template to make this easier for people, but I want uniformity and quality across the board.
Important: The above information will be updated as this thread develops. Check this post for the most current, consolidated snapshot of the discussion.
This is awesome! Thanks yeaGO! It is nice to have these features for folders - for all kinds of purposes.
I did some testing and the linking to a folder works as well as the description. I noticed that it handles decks marked private in interesting ways: If all decks in a folder are marked private, the folder is also private. If at least one deck in a folder is not private, the folder is not private and shows only the non-private deck on the page with all the deck folders, but on the folder description page, it shows both the private and non-private decks.
I think this could work for making primers pretty well. People still might want to organize a "Primer Committee" to agree on formatting issues and things and divvy up the official writing of primers. It takes a lot of knowledge, experience, time and work to do that well! But regardless of what is done with primers, the folders are much cooler now!
June 22, 2014 5:38 p.m.
yeaGO - I've finished my Storm primer and put it here. There isn't a place to comment on the folder so either put any comments here or on my wall.
June 23, 2014 2:21 a.m.
Is there a reason when I try to create a folder nothing happens?
If I click 'Save' or 'Save and Continue' the browser doesn't even attempt to do anything at all and if I go back to 'MTG Deck Folders' my new folder isn't in there either.
June 23, 2014 9:37 a.m.
yeaGO - I really like this update. Whilst it might not end up being the main place for primers - it's still great.
June 23, 2014 10:13 a.m.
At the top of my page, I click the folder icon that houses my decklists, friends, also there are buttons that say 'folders,' 'binder,' 'acquire,' and 'inventory.'
I go into 'folders,' and then click 'edit folders' and then what I described above happens at the next screen.
June 23, 2014 10:16 a.m.
Oh, okay. Edit the individual folders from now on. I'm removing that screen. Follup discussion on my wall please as its a distraction to this convo =)
June 23, 2014 10:21 a.m.
Commented on your wall @yeaGO, just whenever you can get to it, I'd like some assistance. :D
June 23, 2014 11:18 a.m.
I didn't read the whole thread, so excuse me if this is irrelevant, bit what if clicking on hub tags on decks took you to the corresponding primer instead of a list of decks with that hub? So if I see a deck tagged "UWR Control" clicking would take me to the UWR primer. Just a thought.
Also, I'm in to help write some of these.
June 23, 2014 4:03 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #11
Bumping so my important followup post gets pushed to the next page.
June 24, 2014 12:58 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #12
Pay attention to this post
I've been out of the discussion since page 2. Let's address the most pressing concerns.
@Joking101, 2:18
I do agree that basic hierarchy would definitely help organization and navigation, but it's a lot of work to write all of the content at each level of a hierarchy, and the task grows exponentially with each level you add. The problem is that I actually agree with you about how much separation is necessary. Because the game is relatively open, there are a lot of possibilities, and a lot of decks/archetypes/what-have-you to be documented. Of course, this will be a very long, ongoing process. However, we can start with the design of the hierarchy itself.
I'm thinking something like this.
- The trinity: Aggro, Combo, and Control are the three most fundamental archetypes. Almost all other archetypes can be categorized into one of these three groups. Oddball archetypes needn't be forced into one of these categories, though.
- Suggested implementation: Static pages (I can write and publish these)
- Archetype: Archetypes are collections of similar decks that are unified by their basic principles. Objects in this category would be more specific than trinity archetypes, but still general enough to apply to many decks/shells. Examples: Attrition, Storm, Weenies, Tokens, Dredge, Infect
- Suggested implementation: Static pages
- Deck types: Deck types are the intermediary between larger archetypes and individual decks. They account for variations in the archetypes. Examples: Manaless Dredge, Cruel Control, Pump Infect
- Suggested implementation: Folders (to be maintained on an official site account)
- Shells: Shells are the actual decklists themselves, but stripped down to serve as fundamental guides rather than examples of fully-built decks.
- Suggested implementation: Decklists (to be maintained either on an official site account or by individual users)
- Mainboard: Necessary cards
- Maybeboard: Optional cards
- Sideboard: Sideboard cards (may expand past 15 cards; options should be listed as 1-ofs with exact reasoning, applications, and effective counts explained in the primer itself)
For ease of organization, please use the terms trinity, archetype, deck type, and shell as defined above. They will help us organize the necessary elements of this project and avoid confusion.
@Scytec, 3:2
Although originality is one of the driving forces in this game, I'm not concerned with preserving originality here. I'm concerned with offering a trustworthy resource to the Magic community. A primer is meant to be a description of an existing, tried-and-tested deck. It's meant to leverage results and theory together to make a solid case for why something works and how. The fact of the matter is that certain cards are necessary in certain decks. Archetypes are defined by these cards.
I'll reiterate one of my earlier points, though. If we end up using decklists as primers, we should make sure that we format them like so:
On Commander:
We should either avoid Commander at first or decide now how to handle it. Commander is an extremely open format with many, many possible archetypes and variations let alone individual decklists. It would be monstrously complicated to write primers for all of these archetypes, especially because color variation is more flexible in Commander than in other formats. We certainly don't need to do a primer for Commander cards themselves (as opposed to archetypes) because many commanders lend themselves to multiple archetypes, and documenting all of them would take months if not years.
I vote we kick Commander to the bottom of the to-do list for the time being.
@Jp3ngu1nb0y, 3:19
Perhaps we could have an option to link primers or archetype primers on the hub pages, but I think it would be in our best interests to maintain the hubs' current functionality.
It will also be a long while before we're even close to having primers for all of the hubs.
June 24, 2014 12:58 a.m.
smash10101 says... #13
So let's say I want to start writing a primer. Do we have a template to use? It would be nice to have a 'add primer' page with all the fields to put stuff in, but I know at least I could work with a simple HTML template.
June 24, 2014 3:10 a.m.
@ Epochalyptik I think this layered approach is brilliant. Take one of my favorites, Stasis, for example.
- Trinity level: Stasis fits in Control but shouldn't be conceived as Control itself.
- Archetype level: Stasis as an Archetype goes way back and includes a wide variety of Deck Types that differ from each other in significant and historically important ways. This would be a difficult primer to write at this level without a whole lot of experience, research, and awareness of the history of MTG.
- At the Deck Type Level, anyone who has been running a Stasis deck for a while, could make an interesting contrabution. However, they would be writing about something more specific than the Archetype itself. They might be describing Stasis Lock, Stasis Midrange, Stasis Control, Stasis Old School, or something else entirely. They may have an interesting contribution to make, but it would be less authoritative. Nonetheless, other players might really want to read their work if they are considering running Stasis so it would be a shame to deny them the right to make such an interesting contribution that others might learn from.
- At the Shell level, we would have anyone's specfic Stasis deck. I have seen a Ral Stasis deck floating around that looks pretty interesting. If that deck itself were the subject of a primer, then it might be considered a shell. A Shell level primer might be a little similar to just a regular Tappedout decklist with a very detailed and well written description. It would be helpful to the tappedout community if primer decklists like this would be searchable and distinguishable from decklists that do not have such detailed descriptions.
The only point where I might disagree with what you have suggested here is concerning hubs. It seems to me that tappedout's hub structure could be a unique asset that would provide additional utility for using primers that other sites couldn't easily match.
Let's say, for example, that someone was considering trying out Dredge. If they could search tappedout's decklists for any and all decklists that had the Dredge hub and the Primer hub, then sort them by votes, they would probably be happy to find all the different ideas about it, learning about it at many different levels to help them learn what they might want to try. The Archetype level might be hard to jump into for some people without getting some feel for Deck Types first. Some people might want to start general and then go specific. Others might want to start specific and then broaden out in generality as they consider tweaking / adapting a particular decklist to what they might want to try.
I think that this layered structure is a great idea, but I also think that we are missing an amazing opportunity by not making use of the existing hub structure here on tappedout.
June 24, 2014 8:15 a.m.
If there are a lot of primers out there (which there very well could be), then finding a way to search for them (by other keywords as well) and sort them by scores or dates might be useful.
If Primer is added as a hub, then this should be easy to do without any other adjustments or work. Let's say someone wanted to find and compare Dredge Primers. They could go to Advanced Search under the Deck Builder and include the Dredge and Primer hubs in their search.
Undoubtedly, there will be varying quality in the results. They should be able to sort by score and save themselves some time, only reading those respected by the Tappedout community as shown by their score. Or, alternatively, they may want to be a Dredge expert and routinely search for any new Primers about the subject by sorting by Date. Another use for this would be identifying potential authors of Primers at higher levels by seeing the quality of their work at lower levels.
Maybe, in order to maintain control and quality, it would be better to enable a Primer hub after the more authoritative levels are secured - just to make sure that the whole process doesn't explode out of control, taking on a life of its own, ignoring the refined opinions of the most proven and knowledgeable experts in this community, and threatening legitimacy.
June 24, 2014 9:46 a.m.
I would argue the trinity would be a quadratic and that it is aggro, control, combo and midrange.
While I get midrange is ramp-aggro. It's popular usage suggests it's a deck archetype though.
From Patrick Chapin's book, Next Level Deck Building, he breaks it down like this:
There are four basic types of strategies in Magic:
- Aggro
- Midrange
- Control
- Combo
Each of these basic strategies is further divided into four major archetypes.
Aggro
- Red Aggro
- Linear Aggro
- Swarm
- Fish/Suicide Black
Midrange
- Rock/Junk
- True Midrange
- Non-Blue Control
- Aggro-Control
Control
- Tap-Out
- Draw-Go
- Lock
- Combo-Control
Combo
- Big Spell
- Traditional Combo
- Storm
- Lava Spike
I'm not saying this is the be all, end all, but it is a good structure to follow for 'trinity' and archetype.
yeaGO says... #1
post it as a folder and link?
June 22, 2014 3:34 p.m.