Wow, All Cards Constructed is currently ahead! I am pleasantly surprised.
To win games you need to have a good deck, play it well and have a little luck.
I'd agree with these 3 basic factors. However, do you think each of these factors should be weighted equally? Or do some of the factors have a greater impact on performance than others? I'd argue that an excellent player with a crappy deck is still going to lose more often to a mediocre player with an excellent deck.
Clearly nothing can be done about the luck thing, but I believe it takes skill to get the other two right. The second won't depend on the format, but probably is helped by knowing your deck inside and out.
Well, the "luck thing" is less of a factor in certain formats than others. Obviously luck has a greater impact in Sealed.
Luck helps to do well in Sealed, but to do consistently well requires skill. It requires more creativity as the metagame is not well defined. You cannot just copy someone else's deck that's posted here, but instead you have to take what you've got and make it work. This requires more "skill" in each of my two categories (as you have to make your deck and work out how to play it).
Well, yes and no. In certain ways, the metagame is
very well defined, in that the card pool is very limited for all players involved. As soon as your opponent starts the game, you can have a pretty good idea about what their general strategy is going to be, what its weaknesses are, what cards they are likely to have, and what cards they are not likely to have, all because of the very limited meta of the sealed format. This doesn't necessarily make you a skilled player, it just makes you extremely familiar and experienced with a particular sealed format. Someone that has played a bunch of Sealed Leagues will probably excel at that format, because after a while they know which starter is the best one to pick each series, which strategies tend to work more effectively, and how best to evolve and change their deck as each series changes. That's because most of that sealed meta-game is going to be the same each time, and the variables involved (aside from luck) are all pretty limited. You mentioned that, in sealed, you can't just copy someone's deck... but essentially you
can and you
do, in the form of whatever starter deck you pick to start the league with. Sure, this gets altered a bit by random cards added to the mix, but it's still largely the same deck, the same strategy.
I know the most common answer is probably Sealed. But after thinking for a while I decided to choose All Cards Constructed.
Yay!
I asked myself: Why is sealed so popular? One of the major answers is that it puts everyone on an even playing field, where anyone has a chance to excel.
IMO the biggest reason it is so popular, is because it has a prize payout 300% bigger than other types of leagues.
My main drive is to point out that if, in fact, both Sealed and All Cards equalize all players on the same playing field, why is Sealed more popular?? I strongly submit that it is because it limits even the most skilled players to almost the exact same card pool as everyone else.
Assuming I'm a player that does not have a lot of skill in the game, I will get my butt kicked in All Cards...HOWEVER Sealed looks a lot more attractive to me, because I know for a fact that the big-hitters (who are meticulous players and very skilled), are stuck with the same pile of cards as me, and are not able to benefit from their deck-building skill (which is a major factor in balancing the overall skill of a player).
lol. That's an interesting take on the issue! But dmaz, what about Legion's argument that any player (even one with crappy deck-building skill) can just copy a deck that was designed by one of those meticulous players with lots of deck-building skill?
Based on this, I think it is clear that All Cards leagues require the most amount skill to perform well in. Not only do you need to have skill in-game, but you also MUST have skill in constructing your deck based on all of the options available.
I do agree in the sense that, IMO, an All Cards Constructed format has many many more factors to consider when trying to build an effective strategy. But, then again, Legion has a point in that someone can just copy a great deck they found on the internet.
I think of two types of skill: deckbuilding (pre-game, including meta) and play (in-game).
That's true. I think those are indeed two very different skill sets, and not always related to each other. I think one issue to be considered is that, especially with a dead game, innovation in deck building is by nature going to become more and more limited. The ways in which these decks can be put together effectively is, by nature, finite. Thus, in theory, eventually we have a situation where all the most effective deck strategies have already been thought of, and anyone who wants a good deck can just copy one.
GEMP sealed formats are pretty limited in play skill, because one plays so many games with a limited card pool. Playing Straggler bomb or Sauron swarm is not that complex. Honestly, most of the work gets done in choosing the best starter for each format, and then hoping for a bomb rare. I find Expanded more challenging to play because there are so many cards and strategies to remember and work against.
I tend to agree. Sealed is its own meta, but it is by nature a pretty limited one. If you have experience in the format, you just get to know which starter is best to pick each time, which strategies work most effectively. The only real surprises come in the form of the random "bomb rares," which, as you pointed out, are determined by luck.
While deckbuilding is more important in larger card formats, like Expanded and Movie, it's more important than I thought in GEMP sealed. But overall, I would put Expanded as the most skillful format, which is an All Cards format.
In theory we could have an Expanded Sealed League. Might be interesting to do sometime.
Now, if we had Fellowship Block Sealed, the most challenging format ever, my answers would be different ... .
That's an interesting statement. I generally find Fellowship Block to be one of the most limited constructed formats, but perhaps it's a lot different in Sealed form? Please elaborate.
dmaz: But have you considered the metagaming and the matchup pairing aspects, both of which are having HUGE impact in Constructed?
I dunno, I think these aspects have an even greater impact in Sealed, with its more limited playing field. Some starter decks are simply not well-balanced against other starter decks.
If I am running telepathy and am paired against any skirmish based shadow, I obliterate it. If I face junk like Easterling Guards and Lieutenants chance is I lose badly unless I draw Sam and Narya early.
But you know that stuff is out there, you know those are all possible things you might face, and you can adjust your deck strategy accordingly. Sealed, with its more limited meta, means you don't have to worry about so many different factors.
Not to mention that on Gemp you can scout your league opponents, see what they play and adjust your deck accordingly - like if you see that there are multiple people with stupid swarm online or in the current serie, you can put 4 Curse Their Foul Feet and have a really easy ride to site 9.
Or you can start Derufin or switch to a LR/wounding deck if you know they are on corsairs.
You know, I'm glad you mentioned that feature, because I really think it should be eliminated. You're not allowed to scout tournament games, I don't think players should be allowed to scout league games either. League games are the closest thing we have to what tournaments were like IRL, and it was certainly poor form to go around and spy on what your potential opponents were playing in the tournament.
You cant really do such things in Sealed and you dont have such overwhelming matchup advantage there.
I completely disagree. There are some pretty big matchup advantages in Sealed, and a player who isn't familiar with the meta of a particular Sealed format, is likely to pick the "wrong" starters and put themselves at a severe disadvantage.
At most you open 1-2 bomb rares like Grima CC, which you dont see in half of your games
Those 1-2 "bomb rares" can totally make the difference in a game. I know I won several of my own Sealed games because I happened to get a
Constantly Threatening. I know I lost a game because of Grima, and I lost another game because someone got a
Hides. In my experience, those randoms are often what tip the scale one way or the other.
(compare it to the "start LR, 3x CTFF, 3x SAD, 2x GST package" against Sauron Grind), and when you do, they don't always have the effect that choosing an anti-corsair deck vs corsairs has.
I don't do Movie much, so I don't feel qualified to comment on how balanced a format it is, or how much skill is required to excel at it. But I know I see a lot of variation in Expanded, and even to this day occasionally see an effective strategy that I've never seen before. dmaz's
Fool of a Took! deck is a great example of new innovation that is very effective. To me, the amount of variation in a format is a pretty good indicator of how much skill is required to excel at it. Because if there's a lot of variation, that means there are a lot of factors to consider in terms of building your deck, in terms of strategy, in terms of playing against an opponent. That is simply not the case with a Sealed meta.
People are mostly on equal footing in Sealed, forcing you to rely only on your deckbuilding (with limited cardpool) and play skills. I've won multiple All Cards and My Cards leagues, yet I only Top 4-ed 2 Sealeds so far. I've found that Sealed needs extra concentration and effort to do well consistently (like Legion said), because you don't really have all the tools you have in Constructed.
I'd say what you've just stated is actually evidence to the contrary: You are a skilled player, and consistently do well in All Cards and My Cards leagues, yet you've only done well in two Sealed leagues. This doesn't mean that skill is a greater factor in Sealed. On the contrary, it may mean that your skill is being mitigated by
other factors in Sealed, such as luck.
While in theory and in vacuum All Cards should indeed be above My Cards, in reality through the numerous leagues I've played on Gemp (pretty much every single league pre-Shadows since I joined) I have found things on the site to be a little different. I have found the MyCards competition to be much more cruel, as the people there spend extra time playing in all the Dailys and Leagues they can, scouting and observing other players and studying and discussing decklists and strategy, while All Cards leagues attract bunch of Casual folks every time, coming out of the woodwork with their Dwarven NTAD/Sauron Irresistible Shadow discard. Such thing very rarely happens in MyCards, because people who invest significantly more of their time on Gemp know better and most of the casual folks are not interested in collecting.
I think you're making some big assumptions about the personalities of the players who are playing in each format. I don't think there's any way you could possibly know this about them. This is a "gut feeling" you're having.
Topic: Which league format requires the most skill to perform well in, and why? (Read 6068 times)