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Jan 31, 2011 -- 6:51PM, capitan_estaban wrote:

From the contest rules Keyword Tribal...
          All deck submissions are to be judged based on their presumed performance in a multiplayer game.

I think that it is unfortunate that you decided to rank the decks based upon how "fun" they are, since the judging criteria instructed you to do otherwise. It personally doesn't make any difference to me. In actuality, your rankings caused me to take 2nd place instead of 3rd (Minus_Prime would have taken that spot if you hadn't submitted your rankings. Also, Fonthiel/ArtVenn flip-flopped, the other change is that your rank was reduced from 4th to 6th). What I enjoy most is seeing the reasoning why people ranked decks they way they did. As Minus_Prime said, it would have been nice to know why you thought certain decks were more fun than others. I don't begrudge you not doing this, I realize it is a lot of work.

If I may, I might be able to shed some light on this situation (as BrinaWolf08 mentioned, she's a part of my playgroup and my favorite Padawan).

Just as people play for different reasons, they construct (and in this case) rank decks from vastly different perspectives.  This not merely includes the more spikish attempts to win games, but the opportunities to make the biggest splash in the game (which I would count as a Timmy tendency).  The ranking rules did indeed stipulate that submissions were to be judged based on their presumed performance in a multiplayer game, but I didn't specify exactly what was meant by performance, leaving each contestant free to interperate each submission based off of where they fell on this Spike/Timmy spectrum (and, if we go for other player archetypes, we can expand this into a multi-dimensional matrix of sorts).

From the extended period of time that I've played with BrinaWolf08, I know that she attempts to make as big of a splash in games as she can.  She's an even bigger Wrath fanatic than I am, for one.  Her favorite deck to play is a White/Black control deck based off of Leyline of the Void , which honestly has one of the biggest impacts on a game that I've ever seen (screwing over a surprisingly numerous array of strategies, from obvious regeneration, to graveyard triggers like Modular or Necroskitter or even my beloved Eternal Dragon / Body Double , etc...).  Just this weekend (at the Mirrodin Besieged prerelease) she acquired a playset of Magus of the Moon for how much they stand to screw some people over (I will fully admit that I'll be the hardest hit, probably followed by ArtVenn for as much as he uses Artifact lands that aren't Great Furnace ).  She, in essence, doesn't focus so much on winning a particular game as much as she focusses on preventing other people from succeeding at their strategies (as a result of this, she has the second-highest win percentage in our playgroup).

Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

I am of the belief that by stating that she was ranking decks according to what she believed was fun, she was really ranking decks according to how much they could, in essence, stymie other players' game plans or push through with something big and menacing.

When it comes down to it, I believe that she interprated the ranking guidelines' emphasis on deck performance differently than most other contestants, which in my view is perfectly acceptable.  It wasn't so much about winning as it was about having the most meaningful impact during the course of the game as possible.

It's kind of like my Rakdos Stax submission to the Pauper contest; it lacked a lot of the finishing power that other decks had (and was thus facing an uphill battle as far as winning went), but excited my inner Timmy with how many things I was blowing up and how drastically my presence was affecting how everybody's decks performed.  I will guiltily admit that when you posted your testing results, Capian_Estaban, I was less concerned with whether or not I was winning or gaining comparative board position on everybody else as much as how many things I was blowing up (literally laughing everytime my deck cast Innocent Blood or Tremble or something similar).  The more sacrifice triggers that stacked on top of each other, the better.



I'm sorry if that reply was a little long-winded or difficult to follow, I just saw a clear miscommunication that I fealt that I could clear up.



Fonthiel, no worries.  While it is highly encourage to submit your deck ranking in the contest (being, after all, a community-judged contest) there are safeguards put into place to make sure that missing rankings won't be too much of a roadbump in putting a final ranking together.  And even if you're afraid of being the outlier, don't worry about it: this contest was made for fun and that's what it should be.  Hell, in our last contest (Beastmaster) everybody was essentially an outlier since nobody seemed to have much of a concensus about anything when it came to how the decks would perform against one another.  Also, please feel free to submit to this week's contest, Bl00m Tribal.  We're always happy to have another perspective in deck building!