Subject: Has the Dojo changed Magic?
Date: Sun, 03 May 1998 09:36:46 -0600
From: crnicoloff@aol.com

I saw three messages on usenet today about the impact of the Dojo on the game
of Magic.  I really thought about all the points people made, but they seemed
to point in the same direction.  There are a lot of enemies of the Magic Dojo.

Why is this?  The Dojo is a service, a place where everything that is already
being said and posted is collected together for everyone to read.  Frank
doesn't make much, if any, money running the site.  He does it for fun.  He
did it before anyone else.  There are some imitation sites springing up, but
their fan loyalty is close to zero, so they have exactly that much impact on
Magic.

A lot of the arguments against the Dojo focus on "scrubs" with powerful decks
in their hands.  People are mad that guys who suck are beating guys who rule,
to put it not-so-mildly.  Yet, scrubs with powerful decks have always been
winning tournaments.

Other arguments criticize the unfairness of deck attribution, where decks of
similar natures have evolved independently in separate areas.  Yet only one
guy or a handful of guys get their names attached to it.  Fair?  Probably not.
 The very nature of a cardset dictates that such decks will evolve, most
likely at the hands of hundreds of people.  Yet, we've always been willing to
attribute an influential new deck type to the most visible guy playing it
first.

We did these awful things long before the Dojo.

"Scrubs" with powerful decks plowed through many of the US Regionals last
year... you remember.  The summer of 5cg.  We all had privileged access to a
metagame deck that destroyed the dominant blue field.

Before the Dojo came to be such a major source of decklists, players had to
know somebody who knew somebody.  Maybe even know SOMEBODY.  Decks slowly
filtered down from the genius deckbuilders to the rest of the field.  If you
made an amazing new deck, everyone wouldn't have it for at least a few weeks.
 Also, as a consequence, the play in a certain area would stagnate over a long
period of time.  Those "in the know" knew to play 5cg because a) it was too
new to be widespread and b) many areas had stagnated into "big blue" over a
period of weeks, even months.  You could argue that this favors talent, and in
a way it does.  But it favors _already established_ talent.

What do I mean?  It favors cliques and playtest groups and those guys lucky
enough to have jumped on the PT before it got next to impossible to qualify
regularly.  You know, those guys who KNOW SOMEBODY.  Unless we're lucky, very
few of us get to know SOMEBODY well enough to get a steady filtering of new
decks down to us.  We're smart, we're talented, we could be good... but we
have no "team", no playtest group, and no input.

People have always been posting tournament reports, but before the Dojo,
posting a report was mostly for "scrubs" and the newer, less-favored Pros
trying to make some sort of name for themselves.  Now, even the hot-shots
post, which is ironic.  I haven't found many Pros who don't complain that the
Dojo is ruining Magic.  I've found even fewer who wouldn't jump at the chance
to have their articles on the front page regularly.  Even those who proclaim
the Dojo is killing them make weekly contributions to their own death.

What was really terrible for Magic before the Dojo was that a player could
design a deck with a pre-sideboard of disgusting color-hosers (hello, 5cg) and
rock everyone with it.  I can't even imagine doing that now, since I haven't
seen my local area dominated by anything in particular.  The scene changes on
a weekly basis.  It used to change every few months.  What's hot this week is
ousted by the next amazing metagame deck that will rule for exactly one week
before *it* gets creamed by something else.  Which was better for Magic?
Standard sideboards or rock-paper-scissors?  Depends on who you ask.

Deck attribution has always been unfair.  I can recall way back at *my*
beginnings of Magic that certain decks sometimes made people famous.  Who can
forget that Hovi loves Stasis?  Who remembers that he didn't build it?  You
see my point.  And this was WAY before the Dojo.  Necropotence decks have been
around for years.  Who innovated the idea that drawing 20 extra cards was a
good thing?  I don't know, but we have Lauerpotence and Hackerpotence and
BottleNecro and loads of other decks where just a handful of cards in the
original Necro were changed.  You probably made the same changes, too.

What's the problem now?  Tons more players, each evolving along similar
themes.  They send in their tournament reports and voila! 300 people write
angry letters to everyone who will listen declaring they had that deck two
months before the spoiler list came out because a friend of a friend is a
playtester and he knew about the card before anyone.  The quest for fame is
grand and noble, eh?

The big difference is that now, thankfully, the attributions are far more
fluid.  When everything was passed via usenet and word-of-mouth, names stuck
to decks permanently.  Now 100,000 people will see the correction or
counter-argument if it's smack on the Dojo's front page.

There were lots of other, smaller, complaints, mostly focusing on the
predictability of decks and fields.  I ask you...

Isn't it better to walk prepared into a predictable field?
Isn't it better to know how your game strategy as early as turn 1?

What's the complaint here, guys?  I see so many complaints from people who
think it sucks that when they play a Hermit Druid, everyone knows what they're
playing.  Whose fault is that?  Should you blame the guy who posted a
tournament report about it, for not accepting your humongous bribe to keep the
deck secret?  Should you blame Frank for posting material from the public
domain, for thinking that this other guy's tournament report was kinda cool
and deserved some attention?  Who are you going to blame?  You're the one who
went to a tournament with a deck everyone saw on the Dojo.

Here's my solution to your problems - design something new and unusual.  Check
the Dojo to see if anyone else designed it before you.  Play it at your
tournament.  Don't send in a report.  Bribe all the spectators during the top
8 to not send in a report.  Bribe all your opponents to not send in a report.
Move to different states frequently.

That's the only way to keep a deck innovative and secret.

- Cathy