No, really, how do you play a game in < 1 hour?

[Nihilistiskism]

My friend and I have played something like 10 or 11 games, now, and NOT ONE of them has gone less than 1.5 hours.

Common misconceptions debunked:

1) In but two of our games we were both very familiar with our decks
2) We don't spend 10% of our time looking for a specific token (they are laid out very meticulously prior to gameplay)
3) We don't spend 10% of our time looking through the glossary/index/rulebook

I'm talking about two grown, reasonably intelligent people sitting down and playing the game, to our best ability, with as little down-time between actions as still allows us to think about our moves.

How is it that others can play a game in < 1 hour? HOW?!?!?

-nihil

[Shad0w]

My friend and I have played something like 10 or 11 games, now, and NOT ONE of them has gone less than 1.5 hours.

Common misconceptions debunked:

1) In but two of our games we were both very familiar with our decks
2) We don't spend 10% of our time looking for a specific token (they are laid out very meticulously prior to gameplay)
3) We don't spend 10% of our time looking through the glossary/index/rulebook

I'm talking about two grown, reasonably intelligent people sitting down and playing the game, to our best ability, with as little down-time between actions as still allows us to think about our moves.

How is it that others can play a game in < 1 hour? HOW?!?!?

-nihil

I do not see how you can take over 90 minutes unless somebody in the match turtles. Our average play test game is 40-90 minutes.

When we are practicing for tourney play we use the tourney rules that are currently in development.
For example
Match is best of 1
We set the play clock at 75 min (most games are 40-50 minutes)
Once time expires you finish the current round of actions.
If time expires before the reset stage but after all actions are used the match is over.
If at this point no mage has fallen then you look for the mage with the least damage on them.

These are some of the tourney rules we have been working on. Once you get used to this matches tend to take less time. Just like in any game the more control heavy a build is the more it will drag a game on. Also another thing I would say is each player should have a copy of the game so you can build fully fleshed out spell books.

[Koz]

I know you tend to favor the Priestess Nihil, so possibly that is the issue?  I think games with the Priestess will tend to go longer on average due to the nature of her playstyle.  I played a game recently where I was a super aggressive Beastmaster vs. the Wizard and the game went less than an hour (45-50 min).  It was probably 6 or 7 turns.  So it's certainly possible, but without knowing the specific mages and builds that you've been playing it's hard to say for certain.

[Nihilistiskism]

My friend and I have played something like 10 or 11 games, now, and NOT ONE of them has gone less than 1.5 hours.

Common misconceptions debunked:

1) In but two of our games we were both very familiar with our decks
2) We don't spend 10% of our time looking for a specific token (they are laid out very meticulously prior to gameplay)
3) We don't spend 10% of our time looking through the glossary/index/rulebook

I'm talking about two grown, reasonably intelligent people sitting down and playing the game, to our best ability, with as little down-time between actions as still allows us to think about our moves.

How is it that others can play a game in < 1 hour? HOW?!?!?

-nihil

I do not see how you can take over 90 minutes unless somebody in the match turtles. Our average play test game is 40-90 minutes. When we are practicing for tourney play we use the tourney rules that are currently in development.
For example
Match is best of 1
We set the play clock at 75 min (most games are 40-50 minutes)
Once time expires you finish the current round of actions.
If time expires before the reset stage but after all actions are used the match is over.
If at this point no mage has fallen then you look for the mage with the least damage on them.

These are some of the tourney rules we have been working on. Once you get used to this matches tend to take less time. Just like in any game the more control heavy a build is the more it will drag a game on. Also another thing I would say is each player should have a copy of the game so you can build fully fleshed out spell books.

While I appreciate the insight into the development of tournament rules, I also, excuse me, didn't really see an answer to my question in that. Your response was more red herring than answer. I asked how you manage a game in less than an hour and you came back with the response of "I don't understand how you have this problem," which isn't an answer, so much as a deflection. I don't want to be combative with you, I just would like some more insight.

The discussion about the formulation of rules for Organized Play was a red herring. The comment about one or the other player turtling was a disguised straw man. I would like your pardon to request a little more detailed description of a few things:

How are you playing the game, in general? How are you spending the time in your games? How are you constructing your spellbooks to allow for both offense and defense?

Following the rabbit hole...

The current structure that you describe penalizes swarm decks and slow decks (i.e. priestess), and on the priestess front, it penalizes her, specifically, by merit of the tiebreaker, which does not take into account the DIFFERENCE between health and damage...only damage. The Priestess has an inbuilt ability that raises her life total, which, by the current definitions of the tiebreaker, is completely ignored, as time could be called when she has 40 life, and 2 damage, but her opponent has 36 life, and one damage. Clearly the Priestess is "winning" but under the parameters described, she would lose.

All that said:

@Koz: I think your comment is not applicable. If Organized Play is supposed to be a reflection of the game, then it should not, by the definition of its parameters, penalize certain mages for doing what they do best.

-nihil

[Shad0w]

My friend and I have played something like 10 or 11 games, now, and NOT ONE of them has gone less than 1.5 hours.

Common misconceptions debunked:

1) In but two of our games we were both very familiar with our decks
2) We don't spend 10% of our time looking for a specific token (they are laid out very meticulously prior to gameplay)
3) We don't spend 10% of our time looking through the glossary/index/rulebook

I'm talking about two grown, reasonably intelligent people sitting down and playing the game, to our best ability, with as little down-time between actions as still allows us to think about our moves.

How is it that others can play a game in < 1 hour? HOW?!?!?

-nihil

I do not see how you can take over 90 minutes unless somebody in the match turtles. Our average play test game is 40-90 minutes. When we are practicing for tourney play we use the tourney rules that are currently in development.
For example
Match is best of 1
We set the play clock at 75 min (most games are 40-50 minutes)
Once time expires you finish the current round of actions.
If time expires before the reset stage but after all actions are used the match is over.
If at this point no mage has fallen then you look for the mage with the least damage on them.

These are some of the tourney rules we have been working on. Once you get used to this matches tend to take less time. Just like in any game the more control heavy a build is the more it will drag a game on. Also another thing I would say is each player should have a copy of the game so you can build fully fleshed out spell books.

While I appreciate the insight into the development of tournament rules, I also, excuse me, didn't really see an answer to my question in that. Your response was more red herring than answer. I asked how you manage a game in less than an hour and you came back with the response of "I don't understand how you have this problem," which isn't an answer, so much as a deflection. I don't want to be combative with you, I just would like some more insight.

The discussion about the formulation of rules for Organized Play was a red herring. The comment about one or the other player turtling was a disguised straw man. I would like your pardon to request a little more detailed description of a few things:

How are you playing the game, in general? How are you spending the time in your games? How are you constructing your spellbooks to allow for both offense and defense?

Following the rabbit hole...

The current structure that you describe penalizes swarm decks and slow decks (i.e. priestess), and on the priestess front, it penalizes her, specifically, by merit of the tiebreaker, which does not take into account the DIFFERENCE between health and damage...only damage. The Priestess has an inbuilt ability that raises her life total, which, by the current definitions of the tiebreaker, is completely ignored, as time could be called when she has 40 life, and 2 damage, but her opponent has 36 life, and one damage. Clearly the Priestess is "winning" but under the parameters described, she would lose.

All that said:

@Koz: I think your comment is not applicable. If Organized Play is supposed to be a reflection of the game, then it should not, by the definition of its parameters, penalize certain mages for doing what they do best.

-nihil

I am glad you realized the partial answer and the deflection most people would have missed it. To respond directly to what you stated - We are working on other tie breakers. For example highest remaining life total, but this only favors one current mage so it was not voted on as a first level tie breaker.

The current structure that you describe penalizes swarm decks and slow decks (i.e. priestess), and on the priestess front, it penalizes her, specifically, by merit of the tiebreaker, which does not take into account the DIFFERENCE between health and damage...only damage.

If you plan your end of match correctly the priestess should have almost no damage on her. A few minutes before the end of round summon 2-3 grey angels.

On the last actions of the game heal yourself with the angels first if they are going to die, if not save the angles for your late actions and cast your heal spells first. if you get even average rolls you should have nearly no damage on you. when played correctly i have seen her go form 5 away from dead to full health.

Now on to the swarm decks with your games goes past turn 10 you should lose. Swarm tactics are not designed to go into the late game. They are built for quick damage from several creatures. A good swarm build should be able to recover from 2 zone kill spells. When I play swarm I try to never go more than 5 nonmage creatures on my side.

For the builds I play
Warlock burst damage - Hellfire Lash 3x Mage Wand 3x with Battle Fury max Sectarus x3 direct attack spells all max copies (mostly fire), rev magic max, negate max, jinx max, rev attack max

Wizard direct damage - direct attack spells all max copies (mostly wind), rev magic max, negate max, jinx max, Hugin, Wal of thorns max, force push max, rev attack max, Max poison gasabout 20 points of spell i cant talk about

My Force Master build only use 2-3 creatures - the better stuff you use the better stuff I get. She is basically a tank with heavy control.

The point of the top builds is to let your opponent play as little as possible and remove most of the interaction. When they cant interact its hard to fight back.

My warlord build is a swarm overrun run build that forces people to over commit then I summon huge stuff. after the opponent book is mostly spent. (it is a basically the same as one of my beast master builds)

My wizard mana drain build takes about 50-75 minutes to kill. It is very slow and gets people to over spend till then can barley even cast.

Of the current school spells I have seen Holy is the school I play the least of. When playing mtg I almost never play white unless it is one of the strongest colors in the format.

Over 85% of the time before we finish a reset I already know what spells I need for the next round and how many are left in my book.

The one thing you have to remember is I personally own 3 copies of the base game plus our team has another 4 copies not including the playtest cards. All our spell books we use when testing are the best builds we can make from all the cards we have on hand. Also if I run out of copies we proxy up anything we need extras of for testing. The only time we do not not play using a clock is when stress testing a spell book theory.

I could go on more about builds I play or I have tested but the last time Bryan asked me I had 16 pages of notes.

[Hedge]

Sectarus x3

What is this card?

Also Shadow,

If you are playing with cards we don't have that really isn't an Answer either, is it. well an obtainable answer.




Hedge

[Shad0w]

Sectarus x3

What is this card?

Also Shadow,

If you are playing with cards we don't have that really isn't an Answer either, is it. well an obtainable answer.




Hedge

That is something we talked about In this thread. It is the best answer that I am aloud to give. Sorry for being vague but out of the cards playtesters see only about 75% of the cards made the core set. The card I talked about is a warlock only weapon. that offers a new line of play :evil: . it is near impossible to describe the line of play without giving away the info about the card, I wish I could say more.

[Koz]

@Koz: I think your comment is not applicable. If Organized Play is supposed to be a reflection of the game, then it should not, by the definition of its parameters, penalize certain mages for doing what they do best.

-nihil

Your original post said nothing about Organized Play or the parameters therein.  You asked how people are playing in less than one hour.  I suggested that perhaps your choice of playing Priestess might be causing your games to go longer than others who are not playing the Priestess.  It's a completely valid point.  Logically speaking, if you tend to play a mage that is known for slower play, then you are probably in for longer games than if you play a mage that is known for being more aggressive.  How this affects the Priestess in Organized Play is a completely separate issue from your original question.  

Since you are fond of logical fallacies, what you have done here is known as shifting the goal posts.  

[Nihilistiskism]

@Koz: I think your comment is not applicable. If Organized Play is supposed to be a reflection of the game, then it should not, by the definition of its parameters, penalize certain mages for doing what they do best.

-nihil

Your original post said nothing about Organized Play or the parameters therein.  You asked how people are playing in less than one hour.  I suggested that perhaps your choice of playing Priestess might be causing your games to go longer than others who are not playing the Priestess.  It's a completely valid point.  Logically speaking, if you tend to play a mage that is known for slower play, then you are probably in for longer games than if you play a mage that is known for being more aggressive.  How this affects the Priestess in Organized Play is a completely separate issue from your original question.  

Since you are fond of logical fallacies, what you have done here is known as shifting the goal posts.  

You are misrepresenting, or misinterpreting, my position, Koz. My intent to dictate this thread toward the nature of Organized Play was implied, as otherwise there would be no presented grounds for the initial query or interest. If you feel I didn't represent my original intent sufficiently, then I believe that it is you who is guilty of the logical fallacy of "missing the point" since others who responded immediately knew the purpose of the thread, i.e. Shadow's response was entirely dictated toward Organized Play. ;-)

And, yes, there are, apparently, at least two intertwined subjects at point of discussion in this thread. I will break down what I feel is being discussed, at this point:

1) The Rules for Organized Play:

Shadow gave us a look at what the rules for Organized Play are expected to look like. In my response to Shadow I took a moment to point out a few potential flaws in the tiebreaker system. That is all.

2) The Different Play Styles for Mages:

My original query didn't really touch on this; this was more derivative and addressed in my response to Shadow. I feel that, as written, the time limit proposed for Organized Play penalizes certain archetypes and spellbook concepts. I don't necessarily call that a flaw in design, but I do think it's worth mentioning, and deserving of further consideration. Blitz Tactics shouldn't be the only way to win in a tournament setting. If a spellbook exists that shuts them down and can win in the long haul, I think that is valid, and shouldn't be dismissed by the way a tournament rules are structured.

Anything beyond these two points are unimportant to me, for the purposes of this discussion thread.

@Shadow: Thank you for the more well-rounded address. My new question to you is this:

Designers/Playtesters often fall into the trap of "I know best because I'm a designer/playtester." Indulge me for a moment to point to a few things you said with which I disagree on principle.

If you plan your end of match correctly the priestess should have almost no damage on her. A few minutes before the end of round summon 2-3 grey angels.

1) Is your contention that, in order to be competitive on a tournament level, a Priestess deck, by mandate of design, must include 2-3 grey angels? If this is your argument, then you are being assumptive by forcing a foregone conclusion that you are correct in this argument, i.e. an appeal to authority.

OR

2) Is your contention that the only way to plan your game "correctly" is by execution of proponent X? If this is your argument then, again, you are only appealing to authority, and not addressing the argument in fact.

In either case, the fact that you are design and/or playtest doesn't actually make you an authority on what is the "right" or "correct" way to build spellbook, plan a turn, or play a game. I'm sure you're good at what you do, but stating "X is true because I say so, and I'm an authority" doesn't actually address the points being made. A simple substitution shows that;

Pope Benedict XVI states that abortion is evil. Since Pope Benedict XVI is an authority on good vs. evil, then abortion must be evil.

This substitution begs the question (is Pope Benedict XVI an authority on good vs. evil, also, what is good, what is evil), and appeals to authority (assumes he is, and uses it to solidify the argument). It is by definition, therefore, hooey.

Now on to the swarm decks with your games goes past turn 10 you should lose.

See above. Begs the question, appeal to authority. Why "should" I lose? Because I didn't build my deck the same way you would build a deck? Because you say so? Those are just, again, appeals to your authority on the matter, and don't establish an argument.

I'm not digging on you for playing host to your opinions...I simply would like a constructed argument in support of said opinions. I'm not forcing a disagreement. I'm only trying to understand the logic that goes into these decisions, and to understand the logic behind your statements, thus far. I'm not trying to frustrate or be combative, de facto.

-nihil

[Koz]

@Koz: I think your comment is not applicable. If Organized Play is supposed to be a reflection of the game, then it should not, by the definition of its parameters, penalize certain mages for doing what they do best.

-nihil

Your original post said nothing about Organized Play or the parameters therein.  You asked how people are playing in less than one hour.  I suggested that perhaps your choice of playing Priestess might be causing your games to go longer than others who are not playing the Priestess.  It's a completely valid point.  Logically speaking, if you tend to play a mage that is known for slower play, then you are probably in for longer games than if you play a mage that is known for being more aggressive.  How this affects the Priestess in Organized Play is a completely separate issue from your original question.  

Since you are fond of logical fallacies, what you have done here is known as shifting the goal posts.  

You are misrepresenting, or misinterpreting, my position, Koz. My intent to dictate this thread toward the nature of Organized Play was implied, as otherwise there would be no presented grounds for the initial query or interest. If you feel I didn't represent my original intent sufficiently, then I believe that it is you who is guilty of the logical fallacy of "missing the point" since others who responded immediately knew the purpose of the thread, i.e. Shadow's response was entirely dictated toward Organized Play. ;-)

No presented grounds?  The "presented grounds" for the initial query seemed to be that people claim that they are playing games in less than one hour, which then prompted you to ask "how".  Do not accuse me of missing the point, when your supposed point is nowhere to be found in the OP.  Just sayin'.

You are also being overly harsh on Shadow.  Nowhere do I see him claiming to be an authority on all things Organized Play.  Saying that it's "implied" in his mention of playtesting, is stretching.  You seem to be basing a lot of your argument on things that are "implied".  

Saying that Shadow is "implying" that he's an authority simply by mentioning his playtest experience is non-sequitur.    He was simply using real world examples based on his personal experience, which comes from him being a playtester.  He never claimed to be an authority.  It's YOU who are bringing in the accusations of authority..  Nowhere does he say that he is right based on this supposed authority either (a necessary component of an appeal to authority).  He was merely stating that, in his experiences, he has noted certain things to be true most of the time.  When he uses the word "should" it shows that he acknowledges there can be extenuating circumstances which can cause these things to not be true on individual occasions.  

An appeal to authority takes the form of "person X is an authority on this subject, and they say Y.  Therefore Y is true."  You even used an example of this form of argumentation in the whole Pope vs. abortion scenario (and it was presented correctly).  Shadow's statements do not take this form however as he uses the word "should" a lot.  The word "should" does not appear in an appeal to authority, because "should", by the definition of the word, does not indicate "is".  An appeal to authority says that something "is" true based on person Y's words, not that, based on things a person may have personally seen, something "should" be true.

As an example, I watch a lot of MMA.  If I were to say "Jon Jones should crush Chael Sonnen when they fight next year as long as Jon doesn't make any significant mistakes," I am not committing an appeal to authority.  I am not claiming to be an authority firstly, and I'm not claiming that something "is" true based on any "implied" authority.  I'm saying that, based on what I have seen, then my claim "should" be true.  That's all Shadow did.  If you want to debate him on whether or not his experiences are valid in a larger tournament setting, then do that, but your claim that he is committing an appeal to authority in order to simply dismiss his arguments altogether falls flat on its face.

Honestly though, all of this is really detracting from your OP (which is apparently all about Organized Play...who knew?).

[Akirias]

Or, and I only say this because it makes sense to me, you could drop the arguement and actually do a tournament style playtest with a few people. Put together multiple spell lists that conform to different styles of play. Then play the games out in a tournament style to see how they hold up. Also follow the afore mentioned tournament rules that MW have already stated will be their rules for play at tournaments. Gain some experience doing this. One thing that is mandatory is that your "should" get players who prefer different play styles. That way they will play unbiasedly both consciously and unconsciously. Then return to these very forums and reread the posts so that you will have your own personal experience into the matter of tournament style play. Or just keep discussing it. Personnally I would do the first.

"This is my own personal insight into the matter." "This is my own personal opinion into the matter." "I do not claim to be any type of authority."

[Shad0w]

Nihilistiskism

Swam builds because of how they work by the nature of the build will run out of answers in a longer game.
An average build of a spell book will will have between 45-70 cards. Your average swarm build is 22-25 creatures. Swarms creatures tend to be on the weaker side and need support  cards to make then threats. If during a swarm a player summon 6 attackers most players will have played 3-4 enchants. 2-3 equips and 1-3 mana gen cards. and most likely 3-4 incantations. At the bare minimum this is about 15 cards buy about your 7-8 round. If my bored gets destroyed I have to keep applying pressure on the other mage so I must keep summoning. I will run out of threats before they run out of AOE spells or cards like chain lightning. even though creature are technically more efficient. One well timed spell can set the swarm play back 3-5 rounds. Because of this the other player can get 1-2 large threats down and pick off 70% of what is summoned before it gets to act. The type of play style lends itself to very quick damage but does have the flaw of needing way more time to recover from well played mass kill. If as the defender I can set you back even 2 rounds this give me the time to get a creature down the swarm will have trouble dealing with.
The theory of the swarm is the snowball effect each creature has lower damage but the amount of damage you can put out builds very very quickly.

If you plan your end of match correctly the priestess should have almost no damage on her. A few minutes before the end of round summon 2-3 grey angels.

Grey angels are a threat creature that has a heal ability built in. So if the end of match swings toward the other player flavor you can kill them off to heal. If the end of match is in your favor you keep attacking with them. Grey angels is knowm as a modal card because it offers more than one line of play. So yes with what is currently available include 2-3 grey angels in a competitive build currently no other creature offers as much versatility for lines of play as it currently.

[Shad0w]

Or, and I only say this because it makes sense to me, you could drop the arguement and actually do a tournament style playtest with a few people. Put together multiple spell lists that conform to different styles of play. Then play the games out in a tournament style to see how they hold up. Also follow the afore mentioned tournament rules that MW have already stated will be their rules for play at tournaments. Gain some experience doing this. One thing that is mandatory is that your "should" get players who prefer different play styles. That way they will play unbiasedly both consciously and unconsciously. Then return to these very forums and reread the posts so that you will have your own personal experience into the matter of tournament style play. Or just keep discussing it. Personnally I would do the first.

"This is my own personal insight into the matter." "This is my own personal opinion into the matter." "I do not claim to be any type of authority."

I would agree that the only way to know how your build plays in tourney style is to try it. When we test my team plays both tourney style and non tourney style. over 80% of the time I play for fun is tourney style. The reason behind that is the experience working under a clock with well defined rules. Is very different than playing a game for fun. Some player will find it is not for them. On the other hand it is how I thrive. I love the extra pressure it provides.

With this being said even if the clock was not on we "normally" finish within 50-75 minutes because we have become use to playing under the constraints of a time based format. We got used to knowing what we need to do and play each round before the end of the reset, due to this most of our planing stages are less then 1 minute. often times our planning stages are less than 20 seconds. The counter side to this is we know that defensive books will slow a match down. One thing we tried was priestess control mirror match. At the 210 minute mark we called it because we both had less then 5 damage combined and each over 50 max health.

[Nihilistiskism]

Stuff

Do you enjoy antagonizing me, Koz? I'm not going to debate the finer points of defining logical fallacies with you; we are going to disagree on structure and form, and this certainly isn't the place for that debate. If you want to start something with me do it in private.

As for being overly-harsh on Shadow, I am willing to concede that I am certainly pressing him for defenses for his statements, but unless I'm mistaken, Shadow is a Moderator on this site, and I doubt if he felt I was being "harsh" or inappropriate he would wait for another party to jump to his defense. As it stands, each time I've requested something "more" from Shadow, he has responded by giving that "more," and, to Shadow, I say "thank you."

@Shadow:

Here's my fear for Organized Play:

As you have described the proposed system, I believe it overly-favors rush and blitz strategies. The alternative, then, to a rush/blitz strategy is a turtling strategy that "waits it out" and presses the "heal" near the end of the time limit. It is, then, an arms race, of sorts, where the rush/blitz deck must be directed ever-more toward meta against the heal (i.e. dropping nullify or jinx on the opposing player in the final round), or ever-more directed toward the primary strategy of destruction in attempt to out-blitz the turtle. Where the turtle must either be ever-more directed toward countering the meta against the heal or ever-more reactive/defensive in nature. To me, this puts too much weight on the final round (or two) of a match, as that clock clicks down in the final minutes.

I'm not sure there's a way to solve this, however. It seems to be inherent to the design of the game that blitz tactics will be the predominant strategy for victory in an organized play setting. I'm trying to wrap my head around it, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that it's just easier for the blitz decks to "stop the heal" than it is for the turtle decks to stop the blitz. Hopefully future sets and expansions see a deviation from this, and allow OP to flourish with a few more options, but with this setup, with the cards we have, currently, I don't see it going any other way.

-nihil

[Shad0w]

Stuff

Do you enjoy antagonizing me, Koz? I'm not going to debate the finer points of defining logical fallacies with you; we are going to disagree on structure and form, and this certainly isn't the place for that debate. If you want to start something with me do it in private.

As for being overly-harsh on Shadow, I am willing to concede that I am certainly pressing him for defenses for his statements, but unless I'm mistaken, Shadow is a Moderator on this site, and I doubt if he felt I was being "harsh" or inappropriate he would wait for another party to jump to his defense. As it stands, each time I've requested something "more" from Shadow, he has responded by giving that "more," and, to Shadow, I say "thank you."

@Shadow:

Here's my fear for Organized Play:

As you have described the proposed system, I believe it overly-favors rush and blitz strategies. The alternative, then, to a rush/blitz strategy is a turtling strategy that "waits it out" and presses the "heal" near the end of the time limit. It is, then, an arms race, of sorts, where the rush/blitz deck must be directed ever-more toward meta against the heal (i.e. dropping nullify or jinx on the opposing player in the final round), or ever-more directed toward the primary strategy of destruction in attempt to out-blitz the turtle. Where the turtle must either be ever-more directed toward countering the meta against the heal or ever-more reactive/defensive in nature. To me, this puts too much weight on the final round (or two) of a match, as that clock clicks down in the final minutes.

I'm not sure there's a way to solve this, however. It seems to be inherent to the design of the game that blitz tactics will be the predominant strategy for victory in an organized play setting. I'm trying to wrap my head around it, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that it's just easier for the blitz decks to "stop the heal" than it is for the turtle decks to stop the blitz. Hopefully future sets and expansions see a deviation from this, and allow OP to flourish with a few more options, but with this setup, with the cards we have, currently, I don't see it going any other way.

-nihil

Since you played Walord CCG you will understand the mentality of a tourney player verses somebody playing in the league just to play. You are correct in saying that that matches will boil down to a meta games arms race. When a prize is on the line regardless of what the prize is some people will play for blood. Mark Rosewater one of the lead people on the WoTC staff did a breakdown of the different types of gamer mentalities most of what he talks about can be applied regardless of the game.  I myself am a Spike player I know this and have come to accept it.  The only time I play for fun is when we have no prize on the line.

Jeff Cunningham did an break down back in 2007 of Aggro, Combo, and Control and the hybrid forms of each archetype. In playtesting one of my goals is to try to maintain that any of these are viable on a tourney level. The main issue is that I can only work with the cards I am presented. When I look at the future of MW from what I have currently seen I am hoping I can get the Force master to fit into the combo control slot that is currently missing from the metagame profile.

WoW TCG is a great example of this in the entire history of the game. From a tourney standpoint over 80% of the winning decks have been rush. Because these build know that they can not win the long game they attempt to kill long before you are setup to defend yourself from the onslaught of raw damage. A majority of players tend towards these build for several reasons.

1 If your are ever 10 minutes late to a match you lose. This is to say that in the 50 minute time you have to play your match , if your ever hungry you must finish the match go eat and get back before you are DQd for being late. This happens with any game that is played under a clock in a tourney format. In order to keep the event moving in a timely manner it has to be enforced. The last time I saw a company not enforce the time rules was bandi. The 4th round of a 10am event was not starting till almost 5pm . In most average game this would have been rounds 7-9.

2 Another reason that WoW player tend to flavor aggro is the pure power of the lower cost creatures. I have seen rush WoW build attacking for 15-18 on turn 3. Most characters in that game only have 25-35 health. They just simply do the job faster. I could go on about this but I am just making a quick point.

I love playing control in MTG one of my favorite time ever was during the Cawblade days. I like the deck so much I had 2 different builds of it premade. The deck was made to make you opponent feel like they were never a threat. Almost as if they never had a chance in the first place. This deck was so powerful that it won over 87% of the top 8 spots for nearly 5 months. The ripple affect of this was that from one game day to the next MTG lost 85% of attendance.  Aggro simply could not compete and to build the one copy of the deck was about 1800 usd so it was not feasible for the majority of player to even consider making it. All that was left was to simply stop playing. The reason I enjoyed it so much was when two player who knew the deck in and out played it was some of the most thought provoking matches I have ever played. even one simple mistake could cost you the entire match.

When Bryan asked us to playtest he wanted to know what each of us was good at. So we gave a full break down of our core test team and about 4 other players who frequent the store. Then Bryan asked me to go over every card and look for any kind of overpowerd interaction and report them to him. One thing I found that got removed was a was to make 12 3d attacks on turn 3 - we quickly reworded the cards involved.  The reason Byan wanted me on the team was to keep these things for making the final version of the game.

This is getting way off topic and I understand that. I just felt the need for you to understand the mentality of some players when it come to prizes. I know I am not alone in this. When a "Timmy" plays against me more often than not a game will be very one sided if neither of us gets very lucky. I remember the "Ascension - Road to Gen Con" One of the matches I played was 176 to 32. I was taking 5-7minute turns because I wanted to drive my score up as much as possible. I was annoyed when she quit on me because I was going to break 200 on my next turn. 10 minutes in I knew she could not keep up. People playing for prizes tend to forget that games are played for fun I have done this on numerous occasions myself. Even when I am playing against a newer player when I prize is on the line its hard for me to hold back.

Way back in march of this year I sat down at a con with about 10 playesters and I was already talking about the meta of mage wars. I was told by one of the that they do not see the point of looking at meta for a game that is not out yet. A few months later Origins came along and after a few of the tourneys I would sit up with players and talk about what they thought the meta will be in the early days of mage wars. I could tell these were "spikes and johnny" type players. to us it was about the competing and winning.  I can only hope that by this time next year that each archetype is well represented and is competitive. This will allow the meta to fully develop and should lead to far less stagnation then you would find in your average card game. The fact that we are even getting into such an in depth meta analysis tells me that as long as the play testers and designers can keep the balance of the game intact the MW meta will be some of the most healthy I have seen in my 25+ years of gaming.