Because your victory is now the default, the options for your opponent are very limited. If you have a big army, they need to play a card that can deal with lots of creatures at once.
Or they could play several powerful direct damage spells and fry you in the two turns they have remaining. For decks with such cards this falls under the “How do I win?” reasoning you suggest for the players likely to lose. Rather than take out a couple of your creatures and delay the inevitable loss for a couple of extra turns they may calculate that if they pick up exactly the right two cards and you don’t happen to have one particular defensive card they will be able to finish you next turn. It may be a long shot but it is better than the inevitable somewhat slower defeat.
If you have nothing to lose, consider desperate high risk options. If you are in a comfortable position consolidate and avoid risk.
If you have nothing to lose, consider desperate high risk options. If you are in a comfortable position consolidate and avoid risk.
I have, in fact, seen this given as investment advice. If you are going to go broke in a big way, take risks; this is the time to play the lottery, you probably won’t win, but you might and by this point you have nothing to lose. If you have plenty of wealth, and aren’t playing for the thrills, this is when you play safe, no more need to take significant risks at this point.
Sure, this behavior seems “insane” if you assume the maximand of states is something like “the general welfare”, but that is simply a bad assumption.
One can label a collective process “insane” without so labeling any or all of the self interested actors participating therein. While many of the individuals involved may be acting more or less rationally the outcome is a clear instance of “People Are Crazy, The World Is Mad”.
If you are going to go broke in a big way, take risks; this is the time to play the lottery, you probably won’t win, but you might and by this point you have nothing to lose.
That strategy successfully killed a number of large banks, Barings being a classic example.
It may very well have been game-theoretic rational for the individual rogue trader to just keep gambling once things got sufficiently bad, although his co-workers would certainly have wanted him to stop long before then.
Hm. I would disagree—you only ask “how do I lose” when you’re close to winning and winning is a “stable” state (like going on a fun vacation), and you only ask “how do I win” when you’re close to losing and losing is a known stable state (like having to call a tow truck to pull you out of a muddy canyon). When you’re in situations without a convenient “floor” (or ceiling) to stand on, then you stick with the middle question, which is “what will put me ahead?”
Or they could play a combination of cards which locks you into an infinite draw and discard cycle, decking you in a single turn.
Not that it particularly affects the message of the article, but I was under the impression that Magic has evolved away from decks that focus on using lots of creatures to deplete all the other player’s life points being viable, unless you have some mechanism for playing them very early into the game when they have hardly any mana.
Modern-day Magic sets are actually very creature focussed. The Vintage format (which lets you play cards from any set) is something of another matter, but it’s also not very popular (mainly due to cost).
ShardPhoenix is correct: The R&D team for Magic has explicitly upheld a design philosophy that favors using lots of creatures to win, in contrast to the older style of winning with few to no creatures.
It’s been a few years since I followed the game, but it seemed to me like it was gradually moving further and further away from creature focus since I was first introduced to it in elementary school.
tl;dr: The game was dominated by spells from 1995-2003, so the philosophical change began ~8 years ago in 2004.
I believe Ice Age [1995] marks the beginning of the “spells win” era—but I’m not familiar with what sort of tournament scene existed before that point. This peaked with the Urza’s Saga block in 1998, largely considered the single most unbalanced set ever printed. Mirrodin [2003] was meant to be a return to creatures, and almost succeeded. Unfortunately, a small number of severely broken cards warped the format in to something that was still focused almost entirely around combo decks.
I believe Kamigawa [2004] marks the first block that wasn’t dominated by combo/spell strategies, and actually valued creatures, although “Magic 2010” [2009] was probably the first block that truly captured the new “creatures win” focus of the game—from then on, it’s pretty much indisputable that the focus of the game had changed.
Or they could play several powerful direct damage spells and fry you in the two turns they have remaining. For decks with such cards this falls under the “How do I win?” reasoning you suggest for the players likely to lose. Rather than take out a couple of your creatures and delay the inevitable loss for a couple of extra turns they may calculate that if they pick up exactly the right two cards and you don’t happen to have one particular defensive card they will be able to finish you next turn. It may be a long shot but it is better than the inevitable somewhat slower defeat.
If you have nothing to lose, consider desperate high risk options. If you are in a comfortable position consolidate and avoid risk.
I have, in fact, seen this given as investment advice. If you are going to go broke in a big way, take risks; this is the time to play the lottery, you probably won’t win, but you might and by this point you have nothing to lose. If you have plenty of wealth, and aren’t playing for the thrills, this is when you play safe, no more need to take significant risks at this point.
Absolutely. This also applies if you have an insane government that will bail you out if your risky investment doesn’t pay off.
Is this hackable on a personal level?
Sure, this behavior seems “insane” if you assume the maximand of states is something like “the general welfare”, but that is simply a bad assumption.
One can label a collective process “insane” without so labeling any or all of the self interested actors participating therein. While many of the individuals involved may be acting more or less rationally the outcome is a clear instance of “People Are Crazy, The World Is Mad”.
That strategy successfully killed a number of large banks, Barings being a classic example.
It may very well have been game-theoretic rational for the individual rogue trader to just keep gambling once things got sufficiently bad, although his co-workers would certainly have wanted him to stop long before then.
Hm. I would disagree—you only ask “how do I lose” when you’re close to winning and winning is a “stable” state (like going on a fun vacation), and you only ask “how do I win” when you’re close to losing and losing is a known stable state (like having to call a tow truck to pull you out of a muddy canyon). When you’re in situations without a convenient “floor” (or ceiling) to stand on, then you stick with the middle question, which is “what will put me ahead?”
I’ve edited something like this into the post.
Or play a congregate, and delay their death by a couple turns, buying them more time. I hated that card when I played MTG.
Or they could play a combination of cards which locks you into an infinite draw and discard cycle, decking you in a single turn.
Not that it particularly affects the message of the article, but I was under the impression that Magic has evolved away from decks that focus on using lots of creatures to deplete all the other player’s life points being viable, unless you have some mechanism for playing them very early into the game when they have hardly any mana.
Modern-day Magic sets are actually very creature focussed. The Vintage format (which lets you play cards from any set) is something of another matter, but it’s also not very popular (mainly due to cost).
ShardPhoenix is correct: The R&D team for Magic has explicitly upheld a design philosophy that favors using lots of creatures to win, in contrast to the older style of winning with few to no creatures.
How old is this older style?
It’s been a few years since I followed the game, but it seemed to me like it was gradually moving further and further away from creature focus since I was first introduced to it in elementary school.
tl;dr: The game was dominated by spells from 1995-2003, so the philosophical change began ~8 years ago in 2004.
I believe Ice Age [1995] marks the beginning of the “spells win” era—but I’m not familiar with what sort of tournament scene existed before that point. This peaked with the Urza’s Saga block in 1998, largely considered the single most unbalanced set ever printed. Mirrodin [2003] was meant to be a return to creatures, and almost succeeded. Unfortunately, a small number of severely broken cards warped the format in to something that was still focused almost entirely around combo decks.
I believe Kamigawa [2004] marks the first block that wasn’t dominated by combo/spell strategies, and actually valued creatures, although “Magic 2010” [2009] was probably the first block that truly captured the new “creatures win” focus of the game—from then on, it’s pretty much indisputable that the focus of the game had changed.