The Sincerest Form of Flattery
I wrote recently about how I like A9. One of the reasons (other than it saves me a dollar a month or something infinitesimal) is that it can search Wikipedia as well as the Web... and blogs too! On a lark last week I A9'd myself [and several variations of my name] (you know, how you would normally waste time by "Googling" yourself) and I put on the blog filter. I can sum the experience of delving into the private diaries of people whom I have never met as nothing short of voyeuristically sublime. I learned a lot, actually (i.e. someone I previously casually "liked" is now dead to me), but the thing that really got me was finding a secret alcove hidden in the shadowy underbrush at Yahoo... Mike Long's mtginsider boards!
Apparently "the Insiders" (as they call themselves) sit around in the Magic Online Tournament Practice room and watch all my games and attempt to compile my deck lists over nights and nights of casual games. You can't make this stuff up. At one point they cleverly sent someone to play Traumatize and Cranial Extraction on me so that they could get a better look at the main deck configuration for reporting back on their 'boards.
The maindeck is missing final count on a number of cards right now. As this list was composed over three nights, changes may have been made. I have seen Arashi and Seed Spark in game 1 but I am certain there are extra Sparks in the board. I have seen 2 Plains in a game 2, but only one in game 1. I am quite confident there are only 2 Vitu-Ghazi, as both showed up in the graveyard during the mill game (44 cards in grave, 1 in library, 2-3 in hand at the end). Due to Cranial Extraction, I know there are 4 Devouring Light, Lightning Helix, Godo, Yosei, and Jitte.
Figuring out the sideboard is obviously very difficult. I never saw a Loxodon or Hokori in a game 1 but I have seen three of each in games 2 and 3 (I suspect 4 each in the board). Scour is obviously asideboard card but I do not believe it has been there long.
Really, you can't make this stuff up.
I kind of remember that deck but at that point in my life I was exploring so many decks so often the details were hazy until I looked at what this user compiled.
5+ Forest
1+ Plains
1+ Mountain
4 Boros Garrison
4 Temple Garden
4 Tendo Ice Bridge
2 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Wood Elves
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
3+ Sensei's Divining Top
4 Godo, Bandit Warlord
4 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Lightning Helix
4 Yosei, the Morning Star
4 Devouring Light
2+ Sunforger
1+ Seed Spark
1+ Arashi, the Sky Asunder
Sideboard:
3+ Loxodon Hierarch
3+ Hokori, Dust Drinker
1+ Scour
? Seed Spark
? Plains
I remember some game against McKenna where he criticized my playing the Karoos (Boros Garrisons)... and I bashed him (obv). In hindsight, some half a year later, I am actually just shocked at how smart I am (or at least was). [I am going to now conclude this paragraph by talking about how smart I am which might make you roll your eyes but it's my journal and I can do that if I want to.] It was only the beginning of January, with Ravnica only tournament legal for ~two months, I had already figured out how to use Karoos for double off-color splashing (this deck is base-Green but runs Sunforger and Lightning Helix)... The insane thing is that it's now May and most people still haven't picked that up for Constructed.
I spent some time poking around their message boards and apparently Mike's customers have become a bit disillusioned of late, which I suppose is not surprising. What is surprising, though, is how horrendous their playtesting techniques are. I assumed that for how much these players are paying Mike for his services they would have some advanced look at methodology, but actually their playtesting practices and selection criteria are among the worst I've ever seen documented, echoing the in-bred and truly gigantic Pro Tour team flops of the late 1990s... I guess if people knew any better, they wouldn't be paying him, though.
--m
Apparently "the Insiders" (as they call themselves) sit around in the Magic Online Tournament Practice room and watch all my games and attempt to compile my deck lists over nights and nights of casual games. You can't make this stuff up. At one point they cleverly sent someone to play Traumatize and Cranial Extraction on me so that they could get a better look at the main deck configuration for reporting back on their 'boards.
The maindeck is missing final count on a number of cards right now. As this list was composed over three nights, changes may have been made. I have seen Arashi and Seed Spark in game 1 but I am certain there are extra Sparks in the board. I have seen 2 Plains in a game 2, but only one in game 1. I am quite confident there are only 2 Vitu-Ghazi, as both showed up in the graveyard during the mill game (44 cards in grave, 1 in library, 2-3 in hand at the end). Due to Cranial Extraction, I know there are 4 Devouring Light, Lightning Helix, Godo, Yosei, and Jitte.
Figuring out the sideboard is obviously very difficult. I never saw a Loxodon or Hokori in a game 1 but I have seen three of each in games 2 and 3 (I suspect 4 each in the board). Scour is obviously asideboard card but I do not believe it has been there long.
Really, you can't make this stuff up.
I kind of remember that deck but at that point in my life I was exploring so many decks so often the details were hazy until I looked at what this user compiled.
5+ Forest
1+ Plains
1+ Mountain
4 Boros Garrison
4 Temple Garden
4 Tendo Ice Bridge
2 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Wood Elves
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
3+ Sensei's Divining Top
4 Godo, Bandit Warlord
4 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Lightning Helix
4 Yosei, the Morning Star
4 Devouring Light
2+ Sunforger
1+ Seed Spark
1+ Arashi, the Sky Asunder
Sideboard:
3+ Loxodon Hierarch
3+ Hokori, Dust Drinker
1+ Scour
? Seed Spark
? Plains
I remember some game against McKenna where he criticized my playing the Karoos (Boros Garrisons)... and I bashed him (obv). In hindsight, some half a year later, I am actually just shocked at how smart I am (or at least was). [I am going to now conclude this paragraph by talking about how smart I am which might make you roll your eyes but it's my journal and I can do that if I want to.] It was only the beginning of January, with Ravnica only tournament legal for ~two months, I had already figured out how to use Karoos for double off-color splashing (this deck is base-Green but runs Sunforger and Lightning Helix)... The insane thing is that it's now May and most people still haven't picked that up for Constructed.
I spent some time poking around their message boards and apparently Mike's customers have become a bit disillusioned of late, which I suppose is not surprising. What is surprising, though, is how horrendous their playtesting techniques are. I assumed that for how much these players are paying Mike for his services they would have some advanced look at methodology, but actually their playtesting practices and selection criteria are among the worst I've ever seen documented, echoing the in-bred and truly gigantic Pro Tour team flops of the late 1990s... I guess if people knew any better, they wouldn't be paying him, though.
--m