For a while, I played an awful lot of Dominion. I think at my peak I was ~7th on isotropic, which is probably a fairly considerable accomplishment. As of today there are 7,900 players showing up on the isotropic leaderboard, and yesterday the site saw 15,000 games of Dominion played. I made my way up the leaderboard playing two-player games using completely random cardpools.
Dominion is an amazing game because of the huge variety of cardpools which you can be presented with. Because it was impossible to prepare for every possible situation, my edge against other players (and I think this is true of most of the successful players) came from having a strong ability to quickly parse which cards were relevant and which were not. Some of this came from understanding of specific cards - if there is Ambassador you should start double Ambassador and at that point the game is already basically over, for example. Some of it comes from a more general understanding of the game, though, and that's what I want to try to impart with this post.
I won't bother going over any basic rules or concepts, I'm just going to throw the pedal to the metal and hit you in the face with game theory.
At high levels, a game of Dominion is usually over before the first player's turn one buy. There are occasional tactical situations which can come up later in the game, but it is not overwhelmingly difficult to advance to a level where you are hitting all of these near-perfectly. Your turn one and turn two buys are often much harder to determine correctly, and much more impactful on the game, than the correct order of your 15-action card string on turn seven.
On turn one you have to decide whether you play low or high. A low strategy seeks to end the game as quickly as possible. The most rudimentary example is Smithy + Gold. You simply start with Smithy + Silver, then look to add another two copies of Smithy while upgrading the treasure in your deck, buying Provinces whenever you hit $8 on a turn.
Once you have worked out the lowest strategy, whatever it might be, you need to work out if the highest strategy beats it. The highest strategy seeks to delay the end of the game as much as possible, and gives up chances to buy victory points early to create an overwhelming deck infrastructure and quickly overtake a low opponent in the game's closing turns. Games in which the low and high strategy are approximately equal and players choose contrasting options can be the most exciting games of Dominion.
The high strategy is generally harder to identify than the low, but there are some obvious starting points. The high strategy wants to be able to draw its entire deck every turn, is there a way to do that? It wants to be able to close a large VP gap in the final turns, so it wants to see alternate VP cards like Nobles, Goons, Monuments, and Gardens in the card pool. It wants its opponent to struggle to end the game on his own, so it absolutely does not want to see a card like Remodel.
The most common mistake I think people trying to understand low and high strategies make is assuming that if the low strategy buys four Provinces it wins. This can be the case, but very very often there are ways to avoid it as the high strategy. In fact, if the low strategy plans to win by having Provinces run out you may want to just not buy a single Province yourself, which will give you an extra five or six turns to load up on alternate VPs and catch up. One of the largest advantages of the high strategy is that it is generally very easy for it to end the game the second that it is ahead, while the low strategy, often stuck with one buy per turn, is stuck trying to buy all the Provinces.
Here's the beautiful trick to Dominion. When you sit down to play a game you look at the low strategy and the high strategy, work out which beats which, and then play the one that wins. The game is actually, almost always, that simple. Midrange strategies tend to lose both to the low strategies and to the high ones. The basic skill and key to success is learning to first identify the two possible gameplans, and then correctly evaluate which wins.
Showing posts with label Theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theory. Show all posts
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012
$0.99: River Nuts or Nothing Math
My first theory vid, covering the ins and outs of this basic theory spot to start to build towards more complex calculations, is now available on my ppv page.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Monday, March 19, 2012
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
NLHE Crash Course Pt 1
I offer private coaching at $100/hr, with prices negotiable to accommodate for lower stakes players. Get in touch via Twitter, a comment, w/e if you're interested!
(I'm 931243732 on Stars, by the way).
Monday, March 5, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Theory: Hidden Games and What They Tell Us
Here's a thought experiment for you. Imagine a game. It can be a sport, card game, if you're imaginative enough you could even imagine doing homework or advancing in the business world as a modeled game. Now, for whatever you're imagining, imagine how a perfect robot with 100% comprehension of the game would play in order to maximize its chances to win.
If you are like me you are not actually stopping to think right now, and I want you to, so I am going to include a couple of pictures to break up the text and try to make your brain think!
The reason that I find this so fascinating is that when you look at games at the highest level with the toughest players they are often so different as to become different games. Take Scrabble as an obvious example. A beginning scrabble player is going to spend all their time and energy trying to find the best words. The entire game is "make words worth lots of points". For quite a while progress is going to be down this path, learning that you can make words like "QI" and "ZA" to take advantage of the high-scoring letters, learning all the two-letter words to help with making long words down the sides of other words to score extra points, etc.
If you have two computers play Scrabble against each other the process of discovering every possible word that they can play takes less than a second, but the game is far far from over. When you set two computers against each other in such a way (or two extremely talented Scrabble-playing humans) the game stops being about playing the best word right now and the massive massive strategical element of the game shines through. Scrabble turns out to actually be almost impossibly tactically and strategically complex. If you have access to every available word for your turn you are still going to get outplayed by a better player over and over again, because there is so much more that you need to know to play the game excellently.
What tiles does your opponent hold? You need to calculate what her best moves on the next turn are likely to be, and work out if scoring fewer points yourself is worth it to hinder her ability to score points next turn. You can theoretically gather an awful lot of information towards what tiles your opponent could have, in much the same way that you can gather information about what might be in your opponent's hand in Magic - how long did she take to play her last turn, how many tiles did she use, did she miss any obvious possibilities (say, playing "TILE" in one place when if she had an "S" she could've played "TILES" in another, much better place), what tiles are already on the board or on your rack, etc.
What possibilities will you have next turn? If your opponent is likely to play a word which opens up high-scoring opportunities perhaps you should hold letters like "S", "T", and "E" this turn so that you will have a better chance of having a long word available next turn, or perhaps you should hold letters like "Z" and "Q" because next turn there will be a higher chance of placing them on a Triple Letter tile.
The list of variables goes on for a long long time and, in Scrabble, little effort seems to have been put into developing algorithms to address those further variables. It's easy to program a computer to quickly see two different possibilities which will score it 50 points, but very very difficult to program it to understand which of those would be better for it to play.
I think Scrabble is an example of a game which is hidden by entry-barrier. That is to say, if all people had spent two years learning to recognize word possibilities on a Scrabble board, I think the way the game was played and understood would be unrecognizable to how it is approached right now. Many other games are hidden in such a way, as are many processes in the everyday world. Understanding of games in politics - political campaigns, passing legislation, etc. - is often hindered by a lack of knowledge of how such things work, what the exact goal is, who the politicians involved are and what their motivations are. Investment is heavily underdeveloped (in my opinion) because so much of it depends simply on having enough money to start investing, which is usually either unattainable or so difficult that it takes up too much time to dedicate much energy to actually understanding investment.
Next let's talk about Chess. Chess is a game which is certainly hidden by entry-barrier. I am a terrible chess player, and there are lines that even I know up to move 20. That is to say, against certain moves by my opponents, I know the (well, a. There are often multiple possible responses) theoretically correct response move, and in some games my opponent and I trade theoretically correct moves for 20 moves before either of us actually thinks for himself. The reason that I find Chess particularly interesting is that even with the entry-barrier out of the way playing Chess is still very very very difficult. In Scrabble a slight oversight could give your opponent an extra few points. In Chess failing to see one move which could be played ten moves from now could instantly end the game in your opponent's favor. In yesterday's action at the Tata Steel supertournament, which features fourteen of the best players in the world, David Navara fell from a technically winning position to an almost losing one by missing one such seemingly innocuous move that was only two moves away.
The game of chess, I would argue, is hidden by complexity, or perhaps hidden by lack of confidence. This seems odd to say, because the point of the game, as with many other games, is that it is elegantly complex. That is what makes it a compelling game. What I am trying to say more specifically is that, were two extremely powerful computers to play each other (or even two of the world's current best players) they would quite rarely fail to see something which would allow the game to suddenly swing from winning to losing in one move. However, even for those two extremely powerful players, the lack of clarity in many positions is going to drive the game. It isn't possible to check every variation for every move, and so a potentially weaker move which contains less chance of failure will often be the one chosen.
Perfectly played chess would be impossibly beautiful, but even the best players in the world are forced to admit their imperfection with "safe" decisions, and face their imperfection against unsound attacks. The game becomes about preparing perfectly for the opening, studying rigorously for the end game, and doing as well as you can in the middle game. The most exciting games are ones in which a player studies a new move which, while not the best move, may not have been extensively prepared for by their opponent, leading to dangerous improvisational play in which one player backs their preparation at home against their opponent's ability to exploit a theoretically incorrect move.
When the best computers play there are no such crutches, and the game becomes purely about positional understanding and, well, Chess. A perfect computer will never play a weaker move just because it has calculated that it can't be extremely bad for it - it will play the strongest move and leverage any advantage it has as quickly and savagely as possible. And it will never shy away from a piece sacrifice or a dangerous tactical line because it finds the consequences unclear - it will play that move because its heuristics say it is best and trust itself to survive the explosions that follow. Basically, Chess is a game where playing the best move is often so difficult and risky to understand that it is not worth it to try, and players settle for moves which they think are simply "good enough".
The real-world "game" which strikes me as most hidden by lack of confidence or complexity is dating. The stakes are high, the rules complex, and consequences impossible to fully understand. I don't mean to say that relationships are simply a game, or that they are anything like a game, really. My point, rather, is that relationships often fail to reach their fullest, most beautiful potential, simply because the two (or more) people involved often settle into a rut of safety. How many relationships do you think suffer compared to their most ideal form because they follow basic norms instead of being the best they could possibly be at every moment? I feel that all must. It could be that one person is afraid of embarrassing themselves dancing and so the couple never tries to dance when they could have enjoyed dancing greatly if they had only given it a chance, or it could be something much more serious. Perhaps a relationship could be enhanced by open-status but neither person is willing to risk dealing with the emotions that will follow if they attempt to do so.
The last game I want to talk about is Poker. Poker is so misunderstood that people often call it gambling instead of calling it a game, or argue that it is a "game of chance" instead of a "game of skill". This is because Poker is a game which is hidden by variance. If I went to play at a casino for a few hours I might play 200 hands. If I look at any random collection of 200 hands from my Poker career the results could be just about anything. Maybe I win $200, maybe I lose $4,000. If I look at a large sample of hands though my Poker career (and that of other winning cash-game players) looks like this:
That Poker is so hidden by variance is actually a main reason that it can be so profitable. If players knew from the second they sat down at a table that they were going to lose $200 they would probably just choose not to sit down, but when players are expected to lose $200 they not only have no way to calculate that fact for sure, but there's also a chance they'll win money instead, so it can still be fun for them, and they sit down at the table, and on average they lose $200, some of which ends up in the pockets of people who are using Poker to make a living.
Unfortunately, hiding results due to variance also makes Poker hugely misunderstood. One thing that variance does is damage the way that the game is played; people make bad plays over and over again because they have no way of actually knowing that they are bad.
Whether Poker is played perfectly or not (or even well or not) is not a crucial point for humanity, but the stakes in the real world in situations hidden by variance can be much much much higher. What if instead of a hand of Poker, game theory was being applied to a war? Misunderstanding the actual consequences of actions because you are basing your understanding of them on past results which were in fact unlikely could cost countless lives. On a smaller scale, what if you have massive potential that you are not realizing because you've misread results of your actions? Maybe the girl you were meant to marry was busy the two times you called her and you thought she wasn't interested and never spoke with her again, or maybe you had a bad experience traveling to Fiji and because of it you don't travel much anymore. Humans are massively predisposed towards linking results to their actions causally and strictly, and they give far too great a weight to negative results compared to positive results in most situations. When our brains were evolving, way back when we were hunter-gatherers, a bad outcome could easily mean being eaten by a tiger, while a good outcome only meant eating for a day. In modern society we can much more easily afford to fail and don't have to suffer such absurdly heavy consequences if we do, so we should be willing to take greater risks.
As you go about your life, keep in mind that you are imperfect, and that, for whatever you are doing, even the best person in the world would be imperfect. Try to keep in mind how that might hold you back, and do your best to understand how you can maximize your potential and enjoyment of the world. Games are great fun, but life is always the most important thing, and if you're not applying what you learn from games and about game playing to your life in general you're missing out on a great source of inspiration, intuition, and wisdom.
If you are like me you are not actually stopping to think right now, and I want you to, so I am going to include a couple of pictures to break up the text and try to make your brain think!
The reason that I find this so fascinating is that when you look at games at the highest level with the toughest players they are often so different as to become different games. Take Scrabble as an obvious example. A beginning scrabble player is going to spend all their time and energy trying to find the best words. The entire game is "make words worth lots of points". For quite a while progress is going to be down this path, learning that you can make words like "QI" and "ZA" to take advantage of the high-scoring letters, learning all the two-letter words to help with making long words down the sides of other words to score extra points, etc.
If you have two computers play Scrabble against each other the process of discovering every possible word that they can play takes less than a second, but the game is far far from over. When you set two computers against each other in such a way (or two extremely talented Scrabble-playing humans) the game stops being about playing the best word right now and the massive massive strategical element of the game shines through. Scrabble turns out to actually be almost impossibly tactically and strategically complex. If you have access to every available word for your turn you are still going to get outplayed by a better player over and over again, because there is so much more that you need to know to play the game excellently.
What tiles does your opponent hold? You need to calculate what her best moves on the next turn are likely to be, and work out if scoring fewer points yourself is worth it to hinder her ability to score points next turn. You can theoretically gather an awful lot of information towards what tiles your opponent could have, in much the same way that you can gather information about what might be in your opponent's hand in Magic - how long did she take to play her last turn, how many tiles did she use, did she miss any obvious possibilities (say, playing "TILE" in one place when if she had an "S" she could've played "TILES" in another, much better place), what tiles are already on the board or on your rack, etc.
What possibilities will you have next turn? If your opponent is likely to play a word which opens up high-scoring opportunities perhaps you should hold letters like "S", "T", and "E" this turn so that you will have a better chance of having a long word available next turn, or perhaps you should hold letters like "Z" and "Q" because next turn there will be a higher chance of placing them on a Triple Letter tile.
The list of variables goes on for a long long time and, in Scrabble, little effort seems to have been put into developing algorithms to address those further variables. It's easy to program a computer to quickly see two different possibilities which will score it 50 points, but very very difficult to program it to understand which of those would be better for it to play.
I think Scrabble is an example of a game which is hidden by entry-barrier. That is to say, if all people had spent two years learning to recognize word possibilities on a Scrabble board, I think the way the game was played and understood would be unrecognizable to how it is approached right now. Many other games are hidden in such a way, as are many processes in the everyday world. Understanding of games in politics - political campaigns, passing legislation, etc. - is often hindered by a lack of knowledge of how such things work, what the exact goal is, who the politicians involved are and what their motivations are. Investment is heavily underdeveloped (in my opinion) because so much of it depends simply on having enough money to start investing, which is usually either unattainable or so difficult that it takes up too much time to dedicate much energy to actually understanding investment.
Next let's talk about Chess. Chess is a game which is certainly hidden by entry-barrier. I am a terrible chess player, and there are lines that even I know up to move 20. That is to say, against certain moves by my opponents, I know the (well, a. There are often multiple possible responses) theoretically correct response move, and in some games my opponent and I trade theoretically correct moves for 20 moves before either of us actually thinks for himself. The reason that I find Chess particularly interesting is that even with the entry-barrier out of the way playing Chess is still very very very difficult. In Scrabble a slight oversight could give your opponent an extra few points. In Chess failing to see one move which could be played ten moves from now could instantly end the game in your opponent's favor. In yesterday's action at the Tata Steel supertournament, which features fourteen of the best players in the world, David Navara fell from a technically winning position to an almost losing one by missing one such seemingly innocuous move that was only two moves away.
Perfectly played chess would be impossibly beautiful, but even the best players in the world are forced to admit their imperfection with "safe" decisions, and face their imperfection against unsound attacks. The game becomes about preparing perfectly for the opening, studying rigorously for the end game, and doing as well as you can in the middle game. The most exciting games are ones in which a player studies a new move which, while not the best move, may not have been extensively prepared for by their opponent, leading to dangerous improvisational play in which one player backs their preparation at home against their opponent's ability to exploit a theoretically incorrect move.
When the best computers play there are no such crutches, and the game becomes purely about positional understanding and, well, Chess. A perfect computer will never play a weaker move just because it has calculated that it can't be extremely bad for it - it will play the strongest move and leverage any advantage it has as quickly and savagely as possible. And it will never shy away from a piece sacrifice or a dangerous tactical line because it finds the consequences unclear - it will play that move because its heuristics say it is best and trust itself to survive the explosions that follow. Basically, Chess is a game where playing the best move is often so difficult and risky to understand that it is not worth it to try, and players settle for moves which they think are simply "good enough".
The real-world "game" which strikes me as most hidden by lack of confidence or complexity is dating. The stakes are high, the rules complex, and consequences impossible to fully understand. I don't mean to say that relationships are simply a game, or that they are anything like a game, really. My point, rather, is that relationships often fail to reach their fullest, most beautiful potential, simply because the two (or more) people involved often settle into a rut of safety. How many relationships do you think suffer compared to their most ideal form because they follow basic norms instead of being the best they could possibly be at every moment? I feel that all must. It could be that one person is afraid of embarrassing themselves dancing and so the couple never tries to dance when they could have enjoyed dancing greatly if they had only given it a chance, or it could be something much more serious. Perhaps a relationship could be enhanced by open-status but neither person is willing to risk dealing with the emotions that will follow if they attempt to do so.
The last game I want to talk about is Poker. Poker is so misunderstood that people often call it gambling instead of calling it a game, or argue that it is a "game of chance" instead of a "game of skill". This is because Poker is a game which is hidden by variance. If I went to play at a casino for a few hours I might play 200 hands. If I look at any random collection of 200 hands from my Poker career the results could be just about anything. Maybe I win $200, maybe I lose $4,000. If I look at a large sample of hands though my Poker career (and that of other winning cash-game players) looks like this:
That Poker is so hidden by variance is actually a main reason that it can be so profitable. If players knew from the second they sat down at a table that they were going to lose $200 they would probably just choose not to sit down, but when players are expected to lose $200 they not only have no way to calculate that fact for sure, but there's also a chance they'll win money instead, so it can still be fun for them, and they sit down at the table, and on average they lose $200, some of which ends up in the pockets of people who are using Poker to make a living.
Unfortunately, hiding results due to variance also makes Poker hugely misunderstood. One thing that variance does is damage the way that the game is played; people make bad plays over and over again because they have no way of actually knowing that they are bad.
Whether Poker is played perfectly or not (or even well or not) is not a crucial point for humanity, but the stakes in the real world in situations hidden by variance can be much much much higher. What if instead of a hand of Poker, game theory was being applied to a war? Misunderstanding the actual consequences of actions because you are basing your understanding of them on past results which were in fact unlikely could cost countless lives. On a smaller scale, what if you have massive potential that you are not realizing because you've misread results of your actions? Maybe the girl you were meant to marry was busy the two times you called her and you thought she wasn't interested and never spoke with her again, or maybe you had a bad experience traveling to Fiji and because of it you don't travel much anymore. Humans are massively predisposed towards linking results to their actions causally and strictly, and they give far too great a weight to negative results compared to positive results in most situations. When our brains were evolving, way back when we were hunter-gatherers, a bad outcome could easily mean being eaten by a tiger, while a good outcome only meant eating for a day. In modern society we can much more easily afford to fail and don't have to suffer such absurdly heavy consequences if we do, so we should be willing to take greater risks.
As you go about your life, keep in mind that you are imperfect, and that, for whatever you are doing, even the best person in the world would be imperfect. Try to keep in mind how that might hold you back, and do your best to understand how you can maximize your potential and enjoyment of the world. Games are great fun, but life is always the most important thing, and if you're not applying what you learn from games and about game playing to your life in general you're missing out on a great source of inspiration, intuition, and wisdom.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Theory: Burning Vengeance
Since Innistrad “Block” Constructed became a thing I’ve recorded 35 MODO matches (six dailies and a premier event) piloting Burning Vengeance with a 77% winrate. You can see them all at my blog (hey guys that is here!). That includes 2-1 against monored, 1-0 against RW (not a great matchup, but the deck is a relatively recent one), 3-2 against GW, 3-2 against GBR, and 3-3 against URg “venganceless vengeance”, which has gone completely out of style, and a 16-0 record against other decks including a somewhat respectable 100% winrate over the course of nine mirror matches.
I have various things to say, and now I am going to say them. By typing. How novel. I am grumpy, deal with it.
First, it is embarrassing to humanity that after a year of getting beaten up by Squadron Hawk people didn’t instantly realize that Doomed Traveler was a gigantic bomb. I am among those people.
Now, Burning Vengeance. I am going to specifically address people who play this deck horribly, and people who play against this deck horribly. I am one of those people, but I do it a little less horribly than most. You may or may not be one of those people. If you aren’t it is probably because you are not trying.
The first thing to realize about Burning Vengeance is that it’s counterburn. It is not Burning Vengeance. Burning Vengeance is a card which deals two damage to things sometimes, counterburn is an archetype that has been pillaging villages by exploiting tiny amounts of marginal card advantage since approximately 1046 CE. All the card Burning Vengeance does is give the deck great inevitability and another good source of advantage.
This means a few things. The first thing it means is that if you are playing an aggro deck and putting Naturalize effects in your deck you are literally taking aggressive threats out of your aggro deck in order to try to play control against counterburn. Nice. Special exception for Silverchase Fox of course, what a giant hero.
If you are UG graveyard and you are putting Naturalize effects in your deck you’re not looking so hot either. Burning Vengeance does not do a great job of killing 14/14 creatures or millions of spiders. Congratulations on burning a draw step to defend your Avacyn’s Pilgrim from T4 onwards though. Oh it died to Geistflame.
The only deck that can convincingly play Naturalize effects against Burning Vengeance is Burning Vengeance. This is because Burning Vengeance is the only deck in this format that has any chance at all of outperforming Burning Vengeance in a late game. I would say it has a 50-50 shot.
In fact, the fact that both players have four Snapcasters and infinity card draw and tap out every turn means that with a couple of Naturalizes in the deck Burning Vengeance never ever stays on the table. This means you should board out your Burning Vengeances in the mirror. It does not mean you should board in Witchbane Orb, oh my god what are you thinking.
A second thing this means is that Burning Vengeance, which is actually counterburn, can kill you however the fuck it wants. It is the ultimate greifer deck. If I want I can board in Runic Repetition, Memory’s Journey, and Lost in the Mist, and counter every spell you cast until you deck yourself with your draw step. I can hit you ten times with a Snapcaster Mage. If you gain 120 life with Gnaw to the Bone I can hit you sixty times with a Snapcaster Mage. I can play one copy of Garruk and deal 90 damage to you with it in ten turns. Ninety. For four mana. I can deck you with Nephalia Drownyard while watching the Colbert Report.
If you are playing Burning Vengeance and you do not have diverse win conditions available to your deck you are sort of missing the point. Drownyard is almost free, Garruk is a straight up improvement, Memory’s Journey/Runic Repetition is almost never actually better than Memory’s Journey x2 but it is way cuter and everybody likes cute things.
If you are playing against Burning Vengeance and you are boarding in Witchbane Orbs and Naturalizes with no way to actually keep up in the lategame that you are attempting to set up by bringing in those cards you do not deserve the second half of this conditional. Enjoy losing games of Magic with your groundbreaking strategy.
I used to think Devil’s Play was really good too. It’s not. Take them out of your deck and enjoy winning more.
Yes, I managed to win that game anyway, then I put good cards in my deck.
Good cards in Burning Vengeance are cards which perform well for their manacost, because, being counterburn, the entire deck is about leveraging mana every turn to create and nurture a marginal advantage which eventually becomes absolutely insurmountable. These cards include Geistflame (x4) and Silent Departure (x4). They do not include Devil’s Play (x1???????? x0?... yeah, that).
Hit every land drop. Tap out to hit your land drop. Let your opponent hit you to one life instead of casting Blasphemous Act to hit your land drop. Eventually you will become a lot better at Magic and be able to correctly identify spots where it is not correct to cast Desperate Ravings frantically trying to play that precious precious land. Also take Blasphemous Act out of your deck.
This is counterburn, you trade 0.9 for 1 with all their threats. If Blasphemous Act costs less than eight you are losing. Probably you are losing because your deck is full of Blasphemous Acts and Devil’s Plays. The one time you want Blasphemous Act is when they have Geist-Honored Monk. Rolling Temblor is passable, but pretty bad too.
Don’t put Geist of Saint Traft in your deck. As Burning Vengeance or against it. Most of the times I see it getting boarded in as “tech” it’s into a manabase which casts it turn nine on average and the person boarding it in took out all their creature removal so it trades with a Snapcaster Mage. Don’t board in Geist and leave in your creature removal either, by the way.
Common Misconceptions:
“Burning Vengeance is the most fragile deck in the format” (boards in Naturalize and Witchbane Orb)
- No.
- I cast Garruk and you die.
“All you have to do is get out of Devil’s Play range”
- No.
- I cast Garruk and you die.
“Purify the Grave is good against you”
- It would be if you were not white red aggro. Like, maybe if you could put cards in your yard, or draw multiple cards per turn.
- “It removes two of your cards from your graveyard!”
- Uh… it removes one of your cards from your hand.
- “You cannot flashback cards so you OW MY FACE ONE HUNDRED WOOOOOLVES”.
The most important thing to realize:
To beat Burning Vengeance you simply don’t let it get to the lategame. This means you absolutely do not put Naturalize in your deck. Why would you want to take it to the lategame. Wr aggro preboard is the most fearsome matchup for Burning Vengeance, although it improves dramatically postboard because they make their deck much worse. Deal damage with creatures, then burn once they stabilize. Simple. All the other matchups are between 60 and 99% in Burning Vengeance’s favor (I don’t want to say UG is 100% in Burning Vengeance’s favor because it seems unrealistic but it actually is, so).
The next important thing to realize:
Burning Vengeance is very very hard to play correctly. If you’re not willing to think really hard and be extremely wrong a lot and fight correctly for tiny tiny advantages you are going to lose a lot to yourself. Not to yourself as in to your deck, to yourself as in to yourself. The person piloting the deck. If you want to have the highest possible winrate in this format get really good at magic, play counterburn (you barely even need to put Burning Vengeance in the deck, to be honest), and don’t get paired against Wr very often.
P.S. Wr is still 40%+ for you if you play well. Good luck!
P.P.S.
4 Hinterland Harbor
4 Sulfur Falls
4 Silent Departure
1 Woodland Cemetery
1 Nephalia Drownyard
7 Mountain
5 Island
4 Shimmering Grotto
2 Think Twice
2 Think Twice
2 Rolling Temblor
1 Garruk Relentless
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Desperate Ravings
1 Harvest Pyre
4 Geistflame
2 Forbidden Alchemy
4 Burning Vengeance
4 Dissipate
Sideboard
1 Olivia Voldaren
3 Memory's Journey
1 Witchbane Orb
2 Garruk Relentless
1 Rolling Temblor
2 Blasphemous Act
3 Tree of Redemption
2 Naturalize
P.P.P.S. Don’t put Olivia main; half of the deck is blanking their creature removal.
P.P.P.P.S. I'm not going to add an entire sideboarding guide, but basically you want to lose Alchemy and Dissipate against fast decks in favor of removal. Against GW you want Olivia and against Wr you want Tree (and maaaaaybe Witchbane Orb, it might not be right at all). Against control decks you usually want to drop Geistflame before Silent Departure (even against UG, since you board into 3 Rolling Temblors to kill their mana dorks), and you want to bring in Garruk, Memory's Journey if they use their graveyard a ton, and Olivia if they cannot kill her. Naturalize comes in x2 for the mirror and x1 for decks which are going to board in Witchbane Orb and Nevermore unless you're okay with just killing them with Snapcasters and Garruk, which is fine too.
I have various things to say, and now I am going to say them. By typing. How novel. I am grumpy, deal with it.
First, it is embarrassing to humanity that after a year of getting beaten up by Squadron Hawk people didn’t instantly realize that Doomed Traveler was a gigantic bomb. I am among those people.
Now, Burning Vengeance. I am going to specifically address people who play this deck horribly, and people who play against this deck horribly. I am one of those people, but I do it a little less horribly than most. You may or may not be one of those people. If you aren’t it is probably because you are not trying.
The first thing to realize about Burning Vengeance is that it’s counterburn. It is not Burning Vengeance. Burning Vengeance is a card which deals two damage to things sometimes, counterburn is an archetype that has been pillaging villages by exploiting tiny amounts of marginal card advantage since approximately 1046 CE. All the card Burning Vengeance does is give the deck great inevitability and another good source of advantage.
This means a few things. The first thing it means is that if you are playing an aggro deck and putting Naturalize effects in your deck you are literally taking aggressive threats out of your aggro deck in order to try to play control against counterburn. Nice. Special exception for Silverchase Fox of course, what a giant hero.
If you are UG graveyard and you are putting Naturalize effects in your deck you’re not looking so hot either. Burning Vengeance does not do a great job of killing 14/14 creatures or millions of spiders. Congratulations on burning a draw step to defend your Avacyn’s Pilgrim from T4 onwards though. Oh it died to Geistflame.
The only deck that can convincingly play Naturalize effects against Burning Vengeance is Burning Vengeance. This is because Burning Vengeance is the only deck in this format that has any chance at all of outperforming Burning Vengeance in a late game. I would say it has a 50-50 shot.
In fact, the fact that both players have four Snapcasters and infinity card draw and tap out every turn means that with a couple of Naturalizes in the deck Burning Vengeance never ever stays on the table. This means you should board out your Burning Vengeances in the mirror. It does not mean you should board in Witchbane Orb, oh my god what are you thinking.
A second thing this means is that Burning Vengeance, which is actually counterburn, can kill you however the fuck it wants. It is the ultimate greifer deck. If I want I can board in Runic Repetition, Memory’s Journey, and Lost in the Mist, and counter every spell you cast until you deck yourself with your draw step. I can hit you ten times with a Snapcaster Mage. If you gain 120 life with Gnaw to the Bone I can hit you sixty times with a Snapcaster Mage. I can play one copy of Garruk and deal 90 damage to you with it in ten turns. Ninety. For four mana. I can deck you with Nephalia Drownyard while watching the Colbert Report.
If you are playing Burning Vengeance and you do not have diverse win conditions available to your deck you are sort of missing the point. Drownyard is almost free, Garruk is a straight up improvement, Memory’s Journey/Runic Repetition is almost never actually better than Memory’s Journey x2 but it is way cuter and everybody likes cute things.
If you are playing against Burning Vengeance and you are boarding in Witchbane Orbs and Naturalizes with no way to actually keep up in the lategame that you are attempting to set up by bringing in those cards you do not deserve the second half of this conditional. Enjoy losing games of Magic with your groundbreaking strategy.
I used to think Devil’s Play was really good too. It’s not. Take them out of your deck and enjoy winning more.
Yes, I managed to win that game anyway, then I put good cards in my deck.
Good cards in Burning Vengeance are cards which perform well for their manacost, because, being counterburn, the entire deck is about leveraging mana every turn to create and nurture a marginal advantage which eventually becomes absolutely insurmountable. These cards include Geistflame (x4) and Silent Departure (x4). They do not include Devil’s Play (x1???????? x0?... yeah, that).
Hit every land drop. Tap out to hit your land drop. Let your opponent hit you to one life instead of casting Blasphemous Act to hit your land drop. Eventually you will become a lot better at Magic and be able to correctly identify spots where it is not correct to cast Desperate Ravings frantically trying to play that precious precious land. Also take Blasphemous Act out of your deck.
This is counterburn, you trade 0.9 for 1 with all their threats. If Blasphemous Act costs less than eight you are losing. Probably you are losing because your deck is full of Blasphemous Acts and Devil’s Plays. The one time you want Blasphemous Act is when they have Geist-Honored Monk. Rolling Temblor is passable, but pretty bad too.
Don’t put Geist of Saint Traft in your deck. As Burning Vengeance or against it. Most of the times I see it getting boarded in as “tech” it’s into a manabase which casts it turn nine on average and the person boarding it in took out all their creature removal so it trades with a Snapcaster Mage. Don’t board in Geist and leave in your creature removal either, by the way.
Common Misconceptions:
“Burning Vengeance is the most fragile deck in the format” (boards in Naturalize and Witchbane Orb)
- No.
- I cast Garruk and you die.
“All you have to do is get out of Devil’s Play range”
- No.
- I cast Garruk and you die.
“Purify the Grave is good against you”
- It would be if you were not white red aggro. Like, maybe if you could put cards in your yard, or draw multiple cards per turn.
- “It removes two of your cards from your graveyard!”
- Uh… it removes one of your cards from your hand.
- “You cannot flashback cards so you OW MY FACE ONE HUNDRED WOOOOOLVES”.
The most important thing to realize:
To beat Burning Vengeance you simply don’t let it get to the lategame. This means you absolutely do not put Naturalize in your deck. Why would you want to take it to the lategame. Wr aggro preboard is the most fearsome matchup for Burning Vengeance, although it improves dramatically postboard because they make their deck much worse. Deal damage with creatures, then burn once they stabilize. Simple. All the other matchups are between 60 and 99% in Burning Vengeance’s favor (I don’t want to say UG is 100% in Burning Vengeance’s favor because it seems unrealistic but it actually is, so).
The next important thing to realize:
Burning Vengeance is very very hard to play correctly. If you’re not willing to think really hard and be extremely wrong a lot and fight correctly for tiny tiny advantages you are going to lose a lot to yourself. Not to yourself as in to your deck, to yourself as in to yourself. The person piloting the deck. If you want to have the highest possible winrate in this format get really good at magic, play counterburn (you barely even need to put Burning Vengeance in the deck, to be honest), and don’t get paired against Wr very often.
P.S. Wr is still 40%+ for you if you play well. Good luck!
P.P.S.
4 Hinterland Harbor
4 Sulfur Falls
4 Silent Departure
1 Woodland Cemetery
1 Nephalia Drownyard
7 Mountain
5 Island
4 Shimmering Grotto
2 Think Twice
2 Think Twice
2 Rolling Temblor
1 Garruk Relentless
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Desperate Ravings
1 Harvest Pyre
4 Geistflame
2 Forbidden Alchemy
4 Burning Vengeance
4 Dissipate
Sideboard
1 Olivia Voldaren
3 Memory's Journey
1 Witchbane Orb
2 Garruk Relentless
1 Rolling Temblor
2 Blasphemous Act
3 Tree of Redemption
2 Naturalize
P.P.P.S. Don’t put Olivia main; half of the deck is blanking their creature removal.
P.P.P.P.S. I'm not going to add an entire sideboarding guide, but basically you want to lose Alchemy and Dissipate against fast decks in favor of removal. Against GW you want Olivia and against Wr you want Tree (and maaaaaybe Witchbane Orb, it might not be right at all). Against control decks you usually want to drop Geistflame before Silent Departure (even against UG, since you board into 3 Rolling Temblors to kill their mana dorks), and you want to bring in Garruk, Memory's Journey if they use their graveyard a ton, and Olivia if they cannot kill her. Naturalize comes in x2 for the mirror and x1 for decks which are going to board in Witchbane Orb and Nevermore unless you're okay with just killing them with Snapcasters and Garruk, which is fine too.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Extracurricular: Constructed EV Graphs
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Theory: Delver of Secrets
The top chart shows the probability that [card]Delver of Secrets[/card] will have flipped each turn assuming you play it turn one in Limited given a certain number of instants/sorceries in your deck shown in the bar at top. The second chart shows the expected damage it will do with that many instants/sorceries as compared to [card]Moon Heron[/card]. In actuality [card]Delver of Secrets[/card] outperforms [card]Moon Heron[/card] in a few other ways - it costs U rather than 3U, can attack as a 1/1 or block as a 1/1, is human for interactions with Equipment and [card]Moonmist[/card] (though [card]Moonmist[/card] can be a downside as well with the flipped side still being human), and occasionally has a looter-esque interaction with [card]Deranged Assistant[/card]. On the other hand if [card]Delver of Secrets[/card] doesn't get played on turn one it will not perform as favorably.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Theory: ISD Creatures by the Numbers
When a graph represents playability this is a rating I have given to the card between zero and one to represent its value in limited. My ratings are heavily influenced by those of channelfireball.com, but differ in many ways to represent my personal evaluation of the format after ten drafts. I've included a few of my own conclusions from this analysis below the graphs.
Feel free to download the spreadsheet which contains my ratings and the graphs pictured here. If you wish to change the ratings of the cards to reflect your own opinions the graphs will update automatically as you do so.
My thoughts:
Feel free to download the spreadsheet which contains my ratings and the graphs pictured here. If you wish to change the ratings of the cards to reflect your own opinions the graphs will update automatically as you do so.
For power/toughness of double-faced cards I simply approximated effect by averaging the sides. For [card]Lumberknot[/card] I think I just said it was a 3/3.
My thoughts:
1) Wow, Black creatures really suck.
2) Red and Blue often feel like a natural pairing in draft, but drafting them together will leave you dangerously short of two-drops. Other than make me not want to draft UR this makes me do two things. Firstly, this makes me value [card]Deranged Assistant[/card] and [card]Stitcher's Apprentice[/card] even higher than I was before. Secondly, it makes me less excited about cards like [card]Harvest Pyre[/card] and [card]Brimstone Volley[/card] in this color combination, as they fail to help your curve and I feel will often need to be directed at a two drop after already taking a swing or two from it.
3) I guess mostly it looks like I don't want to draft UR.
4) Green and White come out of the gates smashing face, and Green has an impressive late-game as well. I've found Green to be a very solid pairing with Blue, and the graphs support this hypothesis as the Green and Blue complement each other, each filling out weak spots in the others' curve. I've also found Blue and White to work well together in a more aggressive role; again this makes sense looking at the graphs. Green and White put together will also complement each other very well, you have a choice between drafting a very aggressive low-curve deck, and drafting a full curve filling in Green's 3-slot with White cards and repairing White's top-end with Green cards.
5) [card]Gallows Warden[/card] seems like he will almost never have a deck I want to put him in. As far as what each color wants Blue and White would be well-served if they got to do a little switcheroo and White got [card]Battleground Geist[/card] instead to complement its beaters and first strike spirit.
6) There is really close to no support for a [card]Bloodcrazed Neonate[/card] deck. This makes me sad. Maybe if you get insane depth in Green or White you could pair it with a little Red and play a slith or two. The problem is that almost all of the quality creatures in red are so expensive.
7) The graphs should've stopped at six on the x-axis. My thoughts probably should have stopped at six too.
Overall I think the most sensible archetypes based on creature-support in the format are GW aggro, GR midrange, GU control, and WU aggro. Also, while I don't have a whole lot of desire to be playing Black cards here, it should be noted that the color's mediocre creatures actually fill a fairly good curve on their own, and as such if it's open mono-Black may be the easiest monocolored deck to build a good curve for while drafting.
2) Red and Blue often feel like a natural pairing in draft, but drafting them together will leave you dangerously short of two-drops. Other than make me not want to draft UR this makes me do two things. Firstly, this makes me value [card]Deranged Assistant[/card] and [card]Stitcher's Apprentice[/card] even higher than I was before. Secondly, it makes me less excited about cards like [card]Harvest Pyre[/card] and [card]Brimstone Volley[/card] in this color combination, as they fail to help your curve and I feel will often need to be directed at a two drop after already taking a swing or two from it.
3) I guess mostly it looks like I don't want to draft UR.
4) Green and White come out of the gates smashing face, and Green has an impressive late-game as well. I've found Green to be a very solid pairing with Blue, and the graphs support this hypothesis as the Green and Blue complement each other, each filling out weak spots in the others' curve. I've also found Blue and White to work well together in a more aggressive role; again this makes sense looking at the graphs. Green and White put together will also complement each other very well, you have a choice between drafting a very aggressive low-curve deck, and drafting a full curve filling in Green's 3-slot with White cards and repairing White's top-end with Green cards.
5) [card]Gallows Warden[/card] seems like he will almost never have a deck I want to put him in. As far as what each color wants Blue and White would be well-served if they got to do a little switcheroo and White got [card]Battleground Geist[/card] instead to complement its beaters and first strike spirit.
6) There is really close to no support for a [card]Bloodcrazed Neonate[/card] deck. This makes me sad. Maybe if you get insane depth in Green or White you could pair it with a little Red and play a slith or two. The problem is that almost all of the quality creatures in red are so expensive.
7) The graphs should've stopped at six on the x-axis. My thoughts probably should have stopped at six too.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Theory: Draft Analysis Teaser
Headed to bed, but wanted to drop some spreadsheet beauty on you guys. Still a work in progress. This is all generated from a list of cards in the set that I made and the draft output from Magic: Online.
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