The Grinch that Stole Mike’s Rating
michaelj | November 18, 2008 | 6:13 pmBDM recently accused me of being the Greenest one of all.
Certainly I am envious of… everyone. I have stunk at Magic since basically my win at the 2006 New York State Championship, with only one individual Top 8 (a Standard Regionals) since.
Is it because of being too Green?
Here is a list of my last 20 individual Constructed tournaments, conveniently the 20 since my win over Greg Poverelli with This Girl.
According to this — or my last 20 individual Constructed tournaments anyway — I am Green 80% of the time and down 199 rating points.
Green: 80%
Not Green: 20%
Green: -249
Not Green: +50
Is it that simple? Is Green the pits?
… Maybe?
In these 20 tournaments, my biggest delta was at States two weeks ago, +52 rating points, with a Jund Mana Ramp deck.
My biggest loser was also with Jund colors, -50 at an Extended PTQ last winter.
Both Green.
I don’t know what that means because rating is so relative; my best finish out of the bunch — Top 8 and an inch from qualification — was with Mishra, a mere +20 delta.
Not Green.
So… Firestarter:
1) Am I the Greenest one of all?
2) Am I the pits or is Green the pits?
3) How do I turn this around and establish myself once again as a Top 25 rated player?
Go start fires!
LOVE
MIKE
PS Update - I forgot that alleged B/U Control Time Spiral PTQ I actually splashed Green for the Green six drop Dragaon and the Battlemage… So 80/20 Green, and -249/+50 are the updated stats. Oh my!
You know, the same thing happens to me when I try and play blue cards. Back in TSP Standard, I had been consistently doing well with nonblue decks like Elves and RDW, then for some reason I decided to play Lark at regionals and thus starting a string of poor finishes with decks containing islands.
So I went back to playing forests and mountains and swamps and have since rebounded.
You are teh greenest of them all.
neither of you are the pits. both are win. too much win in one place is a bad thing: teh universe can’t handle it. to determine this, we’d have to look at every game broken down into a few questions: (prime) did mike play optimally? (1st tier) If he did, did his deck support him? (2) if it did, why did everything still not work? (2) if it didn’t, then it may be that green is teh pits, or there may be modifiers like bad luck. (1) if he didn’t, did he pull a good deck down? (you get the rest) personally, i don’t think mike is the pits, nor green. i think it may be that in the sum of all things, sh*t happened, and that’s what kept him back. i wouldn’t know though.
be more like lsv? can’t be TOO bad. :-p *waits for lsv to post*
Jamie is the greenest of them all
Green is the pits.
JosephM is fooling himself if he thinks his post is going to provoke a response from LSV.
Reece is fooling himself if he reallly thinks that JosephM REALLY thinks that he could make LSV post here. lol.
Play the mountains
I think more in terms of style than color. My preferences for decks run from pure aggro to pure control, and I’ve done well with decks of all types over the years (except combo, unless Zevatog counts). Green can go in any direction - from Trinity green which was essentially a mana-denial control deck to current extended Elves, a combo deck, to more traditional aggro Elves. The trick isn’t to diversify your color palette, but to figure out exactly what you want to do with a deck and then decide how best to accomplish that. If that means your deck has to have green, play green. It’s been a long time since basic Forest was the worst card in Magic. Even Plains isn’t doing too bad these days.
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