Power 9 Pro – Magic The Gathering Accessories – Tournament Discussion – Deck Analysis

As Lauren Lee (@Mulldrifting) said recently in her article over at Mananation (@Mananation), there are two ways of improving your Magic playing skills. You can practice playing, or you can learn by parsing related knowledge and information from others. Her article focuses on how to parse the information and why you should do so. I will show you one valuable channel for locating that information and how to get considerable mileage out of it. That information channel is the Magic community on Twitter.

Twitter is a hot social media tool that should be grabbing your attention as a Magic player. If you seek innovation in deck building, Twitter has it. If you seek to read articles before anyone else, Twitter has them. If you want to have access to the thoughts of the Magic Community’s best and brightest, you need to get on Twitter.

The Twitter Magic community is very diverse and you will find all manner of personalities and perspectives amongst them. Wizards of the Coast employees, Pro Tour Champions, deck building innovators, PTQ grinders, community content producers, site managers, and folks interested in every niche format in a long running continuous chat about the game we all love. At the end of this article and throughout I will list some of the folks I follow and why you should follow them as well. The username for a Twitter account is denoted with ‘@’ followed by the username, and each will link to that user’s timeline. First, an overview of how Twitter works from a Magic player’s perspective.

Twitter is really a tool of discovery for the Magic player. Part of the point behind Twitter is that in revealing small quips about what is on one’s mind, those around that one will learn new things about the one and start discussion about things that may never have come up otherwise. In the Magic community, each person you’ll want to follow will usually have magic on the mind more often than anything else.  This is one of the reasons it is so good at spreading spoilers, new decks and deck tech, articles, and announcements from the Magic community. Yes, occasionally Mike Flores (@fivewithflores) and Conley Woods(@Conley81) or Brian David-Marshall (@Top8Games) will have a debate over the merits of a particular basketball team’s performance, and occasionally someone will mention that their pancakes didn’t turn out very well this morning, but these types of things come up in the conversation of a crowded game store as well, so if you aren’t particularly interested, just glaze over it to the next Magic related topic.

Twitter serves as a kind of news aggregate for the Magic community, as many magic related websites post links to their articles in tweets and many players at various levels will report any interesting developments at the various tournaments that they attend. Professional oriented sites and various entities from WotC also post Twitter updates direct from the floor of major tournaments, providing you with the benefits of boots on the ground without driving or flying to wherever the hotspot is at the moment.

Managing your Twitter account is a fairly simple affair as you can use your Twitter homepage quite directly and easily. If you are more tech savvy and on the go, you can use on of any number of mobile applications to keep tabs from SMS text to the more popular TweetDeck. I have a iGoogle homepage customized with a Twitter gadget built into it, and use Echofon on my Ipod Touch. My point is that it is easy to use both simply and with multiple access points and features.

Now that we have the overview out of the way, let’s get down to specifics. First, if you like spoiler season, Twitter is a delight because not only will you have WotC employees like Mark Rosewater (@maro254), Kenneth Nagle (@NorrYtt), Mike Turian (@mturian) Tom LaPille (@tomlapille) and Aaron Forsythe (@mtgaaron) dropping hints and spoiling cards at any given moment, and not only because all the spoiler tracking sites and bloggers will post any new spoilers they come across, but also because you can get instant evaluations from players at all different levels of play. In fact, not only do these various players give feedback on new cards, rotated or new formats and new sets in their entirety, but also on new tech as it comes up.

What this means is that when something is on the bleeding edge of Magic tech, you’ll be amongst the first to know about it. To give an example, I was following Pro Tour Austin on Twitter when Evan Erwin (@misterorange) mentioned that he was witnessing a breakout performance by a deck running the new card, at the time, Punishing Fire. Quickly a discussion broke out on Twitter evaluating this new tech that seemed to come out of nowhere. That’s when Kelly Reid (@kellyreid) of Quiet Speculation made the call to ‘Buy Grove of the Burnwillows‘. After a quick analysis of his logic and the situation, I followed his advice. Within an hour or two a Grove of the Burnwillows could not be found for less than five dollars, and within a day after Brian Kibler (@bmkibler) won Pro Tour Austin, the price for Groves had reached strange new heights. I had my playset, which I did not have previously, and sold two additional playsets I had ordered on Ebay for twenty-four dollars each. That’s a three-fold increase over the under two dollars a card price I bought them for, and I had the latest tech to play with myself.

These sorts of things happen on occasion, thanks to floor reports via twitter from the various Pros and content providers who work Magic’s big tournaments. What happens more often is that you will have good players discussing new decks and strategies, WotC policies, and Tournament experiences. You will also be amongst the first to know when a new article is posted on an number of reputable and popular sites like Power9pro (@power9pro), Mananation, Star City Games (@starcitygames), Channel Fireball (@ChannelFireball), The Starkington Post (@Starkpo), and many of the excellent independent Magic community bloggers like AffinityforIslands (@AffinityForBlue), MTG Color Pie (@mtgcolorpie), and Gathering Magic (@GatheringMagic), amongst others mentioned above.

Think you are ready for some Twitter information flow? Here is a listing of some interesting folks I follow, and I’ll break them down into groups for you so you can get started. (If you aren’t listed here and I follow you, I’m sorry but there is a need to limit the lists.)This will by no means be exhaustive, and I suggest looking for your local players as well once you are comfortable. If you don’t find them, get them to read this article and see what they are missing.

Wizards of the Coasts Employees and Official Support

Mark Rosewater (@maro254)

Kenneth Nagle (@NorrYtt)

Mike Turian (@mturian)

Tom LaPille (@tomlapille)

Aaron Forsythe (@mtgaaron)

Elaine Chase (@ElaineChase)

Magic Pro Tour Floor Reports (@MagicProTour)

Daily MTG Web Team (@DailyMTG)

DCI Judges (@DCIJudges)

Pro Tour Players

Brian Kibler (@bmkibler)

Conley Woods (@Conley81)

Patrick Chapin (@thepchapin)

Adam Styborski (@the_stybs)

Luis Scott-Vargas (@LuisScottVargas)

Zvi Mowshowitz (@TheZvi)

Sites and Bloggers

Power9Pro (@power9pro)

Star City Games (@starcitygames)

Mananation (@Mananation)

Channel Fireball (@ChannelFireball)

MTG Salvation (@mtgsalvation)

Bill Stark, The Starkington Post (@Starkpo)

Evan Erwin, The Magic Show (@misterorange)

MTG Color Pie (@mtgcolorpie)

Lauren  Lee, Mananation, Quiet Speculation, Mulldrifting (@Mulldrifting)

Kelly Reid, The Dragon’s Den, Mananation, Quiet Speculation (@kellyreid)

Johnathan Medina, MTG Metagame (@mtgmetagame)

Russell Tassicker, Gwafa’s Bazaar (@rtassicker)

Neale Wrongwaygoback (@wrongwaygoback)

EDH Central (@edhcentral)

Podcasts, Article Aggregates, Video coverage

MTGFeeds, Article Aggregate (@MTGFeeds)

MTGBattlefield, Article Aggregate (@MtgBattlefield)

Alex, Deck Construct Podcast (@DeckConstruct)

Yo! MTG Taps!, Podcast (@YoMTGTaps)

DrawGo Radio, Podcast (@drawgoradio)

MTGRadio, Podcast (@mtgradio)

MTGCast, Podcast Aggregate (@mtgcast)

Good Games Live, Live Event Coverage (@GGSLive)

Interesting Community Personalities

Rivnix Izzet, Goblin Planeswalker (@Rivnix)

Don Wiggins (@TheSundry)

Alaric Stein (@PlatypusJedi)

David Campano (@dcampa93)

Riki Hayashi, DCI Judge (@Riskypedia)

Dr. Jeebus, formerly of MTGSalvation forums fame (@dr_jeebus)

Chris McNutt (@Fatecreatr)

Jonathan Richmond, The Thieving Magpie guy (@norbert88)

Rob Davis (@ArtosKincaid)

Dylan Lerch (@dtlerch)

Greg Haenig, Urzassedatives of MTG Salvation’s Rumor Mill (@uselessend)

As you can see just by the size of this brief list that the Magic community on Twitter is alive and thriving, just waiting for you to join and gain the benefits of all the knowledge and discussion that it generates and shares. And as always, you can follow me as well, @RobJelf. If you join up to Twitter after reading this, send me a tweet and let me know.

P.S. Here is a link to a Twitter list with all the account above in one timeline.

If you have ever been to a decently large constructed Magic tournament, where you have to register your deck, you have been asked the question in no uncertain terms.

What's in a name? That which we call Jund by any other name would play as sweet.

It’s right there. For some this is a trivial question, as someone has told them what to write there, but for others, deck builders, it is a momentous occasion. The line can read more like “If you should attain glory on this fine day, what would be the name of the weapon you have forged and wielded to your victory?” Besides, the act of naming is a fairly infrequent event in most people’s lives. The typical individual will name nothing more than their pets, children, and a few paltry academic papers. If you are an artist or author by profession or hobby, then perhaps you have more opportunity to name, but there are so few whom would have such a privilege and responsibility. Most of the time, things already have names by the time we become aware of them.

Deck builders have the above experiences with their vast and varied brews regularly. The decks are simultaneously like pets, children, and theses. The deck builder is artists, scientist, and author. There is a responsibility to name a deck well, as if you or your trusting compatriots do well in a significant tourney, the world will want to know, “What was that person playing?” They will want to know what configuration of cards are in your deck list, sure, but the first thing they look for is the name. By what do you call the deck, and what gives it such a name? To answer this, let’s look first at what functions a name can serve and also some names that already typify those particular functions.

The first function of a name is brevity. Imagine how painful the descriptions and dialogue of the MTG community would be if every time  a match was described it begins with “Well, he had four Putrid Leech, four Bloodbraid Elf, four Sprouting Thrinax, four…” eventually reaching a ‘versus’ and beginning all over again with another long list. What would be a twenty minute verbal description of what two deck met in a round can be brought down to merely a second. “The Semi-final is ‘Jund‘ versus ‘Boss Naya‘”. This isn’t as accurate as listing all the cards, but is a whole lot more practical.

Secondly, a name must be in some way relatable to the deck that typifies it, but this can be done many ways. The most important factor is that it is adopted for use by the Magic Community. If someone creates a deck and names it “Train Wreck”, but no one ever cares to know what that means, what cards are in it, or to call it by such a name when referring to the deck, then it doesn’t really get named “Train Wreck”. Maybe it is named “UBR Discard” instead because that became the name the group decided to call it. If I say “SphinxFire”, nobody will know that I’m referring to UWR Control, which I built essentially over a month before LSV popularized his build by performing well at a major event.

Some of the ways that we describe a deck using a name can vary. Sometimes we can simply refer to the colors of mana most used, sometimes using naming conventions WotC has given us as a shortcut. If the word ‘Naya’ appears in a deck, we know it plays Red, Green, and White, as those are the colors of mana associated with that shard in the Shards of Alara setting. Likewise, the word ‘Boros’ tells us that a deck uses Red and White. These naming conventions have caught on due to deck archetypes that have been played repeatedly using these colors and the associated strategies. However, color combination names don’t always work. Green and White dominated decks aren’t called Selesnya because not only does it sound like the name of a Russian rock band, but also because it is a mouthful and no Green and White decks featured prominently during the time period that this would have popularized.

Another naming option is to use a namesake, such as the deck’s creator. We have seen this recently with ‘Boss Naya’, which contains the color word to give you a basic description of the deck, but also contains the nickname of the decks creator, Tom “The Boss” Ross to tell you that this is his variant. This type of convention was also used in the name ‘Rubin Zoo’. This type of name allows people to find fairly specific deck lists for an archetype that may have many variants.

Perhaps you would rather just describe what the deck does or how it wins games. Names like ‘UW Control’, ‘Mono-Red Burn’ and ‘GW Aggro’ describe quiet acutely the color of the deck and the basic strategy.  Sometimes though, a deck will have an important interaction that the deck revolves around, using the key cards as namesakes, and describing what the deck does at the same time. ‘Dark Depths/Thopter’ and ‘Hypergenesis’ are examples of this type of naming, though this can be extended to mechanics that are key as well, such as ‘Affinity’ and ‘Dredge’. The point is to tell you in the name what the deck is going to try to accomplish.

My favorite is when a deck has an off-the-wall name that you actually think about for a moment to see how it relates to the list of cards to which it is associated. ‘The Hulk Gets Crabs’ and ‘Ruel Gets Crabs‘ are two recent and humorous examples. Assuming you know things like Ruel refers to Ranger of Eos, the deck tells you that card A gets card B and that’s a really good thing, and due to creative play on the names of the cards, you have a humorous and memorable name to boot.

There is occasionally a deck name that will be essentially useless if it wasn’t for the fact that it is tightly associated to the deck list, because the name is like a person’s name, essentially a pseudo-unique and undescriptive tag or identifier. ‘KarstenBot BabyKiller’, for example, has no meaning to me, other than that it is related to a certain configuration of cards.

I, personally, give my deck names some thought when I become happy with a brew and deem it worthy of naming. I also keep a mental note of things that I think should be deck names simply for awesomeness and am occasionally inspired to try and make a deck worthy of the name I have thought up. After reading about Rise of the Eldrazi’s monsters, I’ve got one particular deck I’m hoping to create and name in a particularly witty way, but for now I will keep the name to myself, so as not to spoil the fun of a finished product.

I know that this did not offer a solution to what naming convention should be used in naming a deck, but I hope that I have laid out the issue for discussion and look forward to revisiting the issue based on some feedback from my readers. Should we collapse these diverse naming practices into a stricter and subsequently more efficient nomenclature, or should we be free to name our creations however we like, provided everyone can know what we are talking about? Let’s hash-it out in the comments below and on Twitter. Hit me up @RobJelf.