Five With Flores

Just a quick fake-update corolla-RE: to yesterday’s Five by Flores (which talked about my five favorite Star City articles last year penned by YT)…

Dictating the Field of Battle

I said Spencer’s forum post was my favorite but I actually forgot about this one, which actually touched what passes for my soul:

oldbsturgeon
i just want to say that this article was very inspiring to me for maybe a very strange reason.
i work as a therapist in substance abuse and i sometimes have clients that have codependency issues with another person.
today we were discussing this persons relationship and how the other person is currently dictating the field of battle and that the client is agreeing to her strategy and will continue to stay with her. by eliminating interaction, such as dredge’s strategy, she can focus on her goal of bettering herself, and when her partner trys to interact in will not matter and she will ultimately lose. either her partner must accept the new terms or will fall further trying to pursue her faulty goals.
thanks mike

I was reminded of this because of an email this morning (which has transformed itself into a Star City forum post also) by Anthony LaCassa, or Ath0919 here and on Star City.

Anth0919
Mike,

So I just read this article and all I have to say is holy crap!

I feel kind of stupid for being blown away by the article, since it’s pretty much based on simple math and I’m an accountant. I guess this is something I feel that I should have been able to realize on my own without having it explained. That being said, I’ve just begun venturing into competitive Magic over the past few months.

Thanks for this article… it’s the best I’ve read regarding theory on choosing a deck.

(Anthony’s was RE: The Basic Test of Metagaming Competence)

Which just goes to show: It’s not just for teenie weenie kids any more. Grown ups with jobs love michaelj too!

yes Yes YES
I will go over the deck that prompted young Zack Hall to proclaim “you should go into sales” to me yesterday. Maybe later today depending on Lost, Top Chef, etc.

LOVE
MIKE

I was reading Star City Games this week and until I saw a poll for most popular articles by some author or other, I totally forgot they had end-of-the-year awards.

What do you think the chances are that this two-time Writer of the Year gets a nod now that he is no longer in the weeklies? Winky-wink.

Anyway, I decided go go over my eight or so months at Star City in 2008 and pluck my favorite articles. I am pretty sure they are all non-Premium now for those of you who don’t have that service.

Dictating the Field of Battle

michaelj sez:
This article is superbly written. Ego, yes; but still a fact. That is, it is a good read and would have been the kind of article I would have liked to have read had I not written it (actually I liked re-reading it, so I guess it has nothing to do with whether or not I had written it). This article features Dune battle strategy, lightsaber duels, basically everything awesome including passably awesome Magic strategy.

My favorite forum post:

SRmogg
Just wanted to say that as of now this is currently my favorite magic article ever. Like, it was pretty unreal. I’ve read every enderverse novel many times, and I also really like Kurt Vonnegut. I alreayd knew most the startegic content, but if someone didn’t and was looking for a new way to attack a wide open format with many powerful linears like extended, it’s pretty excellent. 

[Had to get a shout out to my man Spencer!] 

Never Settle

michaelj sez:
Just a fair number of good ideas in this one, including getting the pat on the head from Pat, actually learning something while I was working on it, and answering a request by Adam Prosak. Just a pretty good article. I had actually forgotten doing the Wrath of God math; at the time (”that” time, actually) I was playing at my absolute best (this was right before Charleston and my States win)… I think combined with my The Touch tee shirt, GerryT’s mulligan advice, and remembering to do the math when I am pressed with a difficult decision, I will probably knock off a Honolulu PTQ win in one try. On that note…

My favorite forum post:

qwertius 
this article helped me a great deal. 

I see myself as a talented player that never reached his potential for several reasons. Flores points to several directions I should look upon to improve.

Modeling Grand Prix Excellence

michaelj sez:
I had just come back from meeting millionaire copywriter Dr. Harlan Kilstein the first time, and I had inadvertently invented a sub-array of NLP theory, and was all excited about learning how to do modeling correctly. I actually want to do more modeling exercises in my writing in the future (in fact I have been thinking of creating a mulligans model inspired by GerryT’s post in The Hidden Value of MTGO Ringers; I don’t know if you noticed but I am pretty excited about that one. Just a great contribution to the site by Gerry). Also this one has a maddening amount of hand-written sections from The Confusion as well as the best opening page of any novel: madness and goodness both.

My favorite forum post:

Anselm
And then there’s Thomas Pynchon, who does (almost) everything Stephenson does, but better.

[Actually this is like my least favorite forum post of all time. Ravitz and I went out and bought Gravity's Rainbow after this forum post and it's been close to a year and neither of us has finished it yet.]

The Basic Test of Metagaming Competence

michaelj sez:
I actually forgot that I wrote this one. This was both one of the best articles I ever published and not as good as it should have been (I had been keeping it under my hat for about three years to be honest, and didn’t get to flesh out everything I wanted to in one article… It was meant to be a video series). This article lays out the advanced rock-paper-scissors theory I use (or more aptly, “used” when I was really good at that kind of thing during Kamigawa- and Ravnica-era Standard formats) to pick the right deck consistently. Certainly my favorite of the five, and a short list contender for Article of the Year (provided anyone remembers I wrote it… Like I said I didn’t).

My favorite forum post:

ThePChapin
Flores! I knew you still had it in you! 
This article hit home with me like no other article since that fateful “How to win a PTQ” last year…” 
Grand Slam. Not close.

A Case for Scissors, and Building the Anti-Deck

michaelj sez:
“What’s a girl to do?”

My favorite forum post:

center425
Man I love the people flaming the advice on sideboards. Honestly, I bet everyone one of you played cards that were awful in your bad matchups for no reason.

So I hope you like reading or re-reading some of 2008’s best stuff, from me, on Star City. Hopefully I will continue to be able to produce passably awesome content now and forever. Hopefully.

LOVE
MIKE

PS In case you haven’t noticed (and I think I mentioned it roughly DI times in this article, you should read GerryT’s comment in The Hidden Value of MTGO Ringers. Like right now!).

PPS Follow me on Twitter. Please! I want to feel loved.

You Make the Play returns with a mirror match dilemma from this past weekend’s Star City Games $5,000 tournament in Philadelphia, PA.

The situation:
You are 4-1 or thereabouts in the Star City Games $5,000 tournament in Philadelphia last week. Your deck in this one is Blightning Beatdown… So is your opponent’s.

That opponent is Zack Hall, who has a Grand Prix Top 4 this year and is probably better than you.

That said, you got Game One at least in part because Zack shipped to Paris on the play; he had a lot of Flame Javelins to your Bitterblossom, but you got there with the card advantage.

So it’s game two. Having read Why Dave Price Goes Second, Zack opted to draw.

This strategy has served him pretty solidly this game and he is currently ahead. It’s Zack’s turn five and this is the situation:

He plays super duper deck namesake Blightning with three or four more cards in hand. Wow that is a lot of cards.

Zack’s board is a 2/2 Figure of Destiny and four lands (no Ghitu Encampment).

Your board is:

Ghitu Encampment,
Mountain,
Reflecting Pool, and
Auntie’s Hovel.

Your hand is (of which you will have to pitch two cards) is: Demigod of Revenge, Flame Javelin, Flame Javelin.

You missed your last land drop. You have sided out three Bitterblossoms for three Lash Outs this game.

Okay geniuses-in-training! Make the play. What do you pitch and why? More importantly (and it’s kind of the same question)… What do you keep?

LOVE
MIKE