Subject: War College/Effect of swiss tournaments on deck selection Date: Fri, 9 Jan 1998 23:20:18 -0000 From: "Robert D Cooper" To: One point that I would like to bring up in the aggro/defense debate is the fact that a majority of the tournaments run nowadays, are run in a swiss format, 4-7 rounds, with a imposed time limit. I believe that the fact that most tournaments are swiss, has begun to shape the face of the decks today. It is not the format itself, but rather the timelimit imposed on each round. A great majority of the draws I witnessed in the beginning days of the swiss format, were due to long, drawn out matches, between great defensive decks, as opposed to both players going down to 0 life, which seems to happen more frequently in todays competion. Gradually people realized that, draws just don't cut it they are not as bad as a loss, but in the highly competetive environment, if a person is serious on winning the tourney, they need to count on wins. Then people began realizing that in order not to draw they need fast decks to get under the time limit. One the the first major deck types to emerge was the Weissman stlye deck, with supreme defense, and 2-5 paths of victory. This deck was, and still is, a great deck... but, it would have trouble in the swiss format, because great defense decks tend to eat up alot of time. So people end up shying away, and turning towards the Sligh/Stompy/Necro/etc. type decks that have the speed to win in the time given. Even the defensive decks that emerged, had some fast offense or set up, like the turbo stasis, or big blue. Both of these decks can set up fast, and mount a superb offense(in the case of big blue). Comments?