Metagame

I would like a to raise a point that has been frustrating me quite alot about CMC lately and that is the lack of any metagame.

For those who dont play other CCGs, a metagame is essentially what decks are being played and therefore how decks are constructed to beat the decks that are being played.

I\'ll use magic the gathering to explain better. Recently the mirrodin expansion was released, in the mirrodin expansion artifacts are the strongest cards.With many decks using these strong artifacts, people started using large amounts of artifact removal in their decks. This in turn lead to less use of the overpowered artifacts.

Now back in good old CMC we dont see this. I\'m going to use my once beloved ooze as a prime example. When the non attack losing ooze existed an arguement was had about it\'s strengths. I made many points about its weaknesses but was essentially fobbed off with the excuse that not every deck can use the weakness. So the inevitable happened and ooze was nerfed. Now, in a card based CCG, the metagame would have kicked in, people would have started using more magic staffs, kelar towers etc and ooze would have lost popularity and faded to obscurity until ooze stoppers were no longer being used. Even then ooze would likely have just been a curiousity.

While some nerfs are clearly needed such as the severe drop in shadehawks original prime power, I believe the CMC community is far too nerf happy. So I put this to the community as a whole:

If you dont like a card, figure out how to beat it, dont nerf it

Haha. Metagame in CMC. Funny.
Ok, that might\'ve been a tad offensive. The \'metagame\' to a CMC player is far less significant as it is to, say, a MtG T2.0 player. There are no expansions that aren\'t allowed in your decks, so something that used to work still does work.

There is, in CMC, also no need for a metagame. We have, as opposed to printed card games, the ability to change something that has already been distributed and is being used, with not nearly the effort it would take to do this in a real card game.

I understand there is at least a little bit of metagame, but you must also understand that you can\'t leave a constantly growing game to metagame for balancing out card\'s strengths and weaknesses. Your Ooze example only works for MtG because it\'s a game where said Ooze technically doesn\'t exist after the release of four more expansions.

note: where I said MtG before, any other real card game name can be used instead.

I disagree moonfish, metagame is just as important in type 1 MTG where all cards (except those restricted/banned) can be used. Like I said, nerfing is a solution in a game where banning and restricting are not possible however, what I am saying is that nerfing should only be a last step. As the game grows so will the counters for an overpowered card. IIRC ooze was nerfed before principalities came out and now that it is out we have more cards that can stop it. That said though, there are less then I thought.

my main point is that I would like people to think about a card for a while before trying to get it nerfed. A real metagame that goes beyond \"put effect D in\" would probably go a long way to inspiring deck variety.

Going beyond \'that\' will bring us back to what X-O pointed out a while back. It went something like:
\"Oh god he played card X and I don\'t have card Y in my hand, so now I lose!!\"

The card base for CMC is too big to have a more advanced metagame than it has now.

If you want metagame, look at the old school kelar/bird/hound decks >.>

Also, unlike in magic, there is not much in the way of archetypes in CMC. There\'s decking, (solution - put more cards in deck) beatsticks, and tri-color rush, plus shotgun and maybe a few others. None of those are particularly focused or anything. Compare that to, say, blue control in magic. White weenie tends to beat a blue control deck. I would argue that the reason that there\'s no real metagame in CMC is not that the card pool is too large, but because it\'s small and fairly shallow. CMC has a ton of vanilla or near-vanilla creatures, and few cards have a very complex ability. Ideally, yes, there would be a tendency to look for ways to beat, say a golem deck, rather than cries to nerf stone and winged golem. However, CMC has a limited search space compared to magic. There\'s literally only so many options.

Another reason that a metagame doesn\'t develop is that many decks and tactics are simply frowned upon by the community until they sort of go away by themselves. Like Burrower-undizzier.

I do beleive that a meta-game may eventually develop, but the reason that there isn\'t one is not primarily because people aren\'t trying to beat currently dominant decks, but because there aren\'t really well-defined currently dominating decks.

Why are there fewer strong archetypes? First, CMC has very little distinction between its colors. Virtually every deck has cards from all three, which makes rather little difference, since there\'s not much that one color can do that the others cant\'. Second, CMC seems to actually encourage squishing non-related stratagies together. No one would build a serious magic deck and say, \"It\'s primarily an enchantress deck, but I threw in some burn and a few counterspells.\" However, if someone said \"It\'s primarily a decking deck, but I threw in a few golems and Lasers.\" in CMC, I wouldn\'t blink. Heck, that deck would probably do rather well. I could get into more about why I think there aren\'t really many well-defined archetypes in CMC later, but for now I think it\'s good enough to say that it\'s the reason that there\'s no real metagame.

I agree with Joyd on the fact that a metagame in CMC is rather implausible because of the small card base, but I also submit that a metagame is implausible simply because of the lack of variety. In addition to the colors being rather similar in respects to what they are capable of (although I still think that a Forbidden Knowledge [4D spell to draw two cards] would be awesome) the fact remains that there are only 3 colors.

While Chill and Perish are obvious color hosers from Magic, no player in their right mind would include them in a serious deck as anything other than sideboard cards. Seventeen mana that wipes an essentially monocolor player out of the water in CMC, however, doesn\'t seem so bad. In an environment where Golems run rampant, I include a Crushing Rule as a staple of my \'Dopplegangers and Doom\' black deck.

The point of all this is that, while metagame can slightly affect this environment, CMC is vitally different to many printed collectible card games in both ways mentioned before and in ways that have not yet been mentioned. Because of this discrepancy in variety between print games an CMC, it isn\'t even really logical to compare the effects of metagame here to those in, say, Magic.

My personal two cents on the issue is that the rise of the metagame will only bring forth a mentality that cripples objective numerical analysis of card strengths.

The phrase \"If you find a card overpowered, find a way to deal with it\"

Rapidly becomes \"If you can\'t beat a card, your deck must suck.\" or \"You\'re not creative enough to beat the card.\"

Then any attempts to have a justified nerf gets thrown at it: \"You just obviously can\'t deal with it like the decks we play.\"

Which rapidly leads to an unquestioned tacit: \"Some cards should just be better than others.\"

Rather than a question of \"After seriously considering the card and all of it\'s aspects, is this card really right in it\'s mana/range cost/weakness balance?\"

Developing an attitude that it is the player\'s responsibility to balance out the game rather than the game itself starting out balanced is a notion I find rather weary.

Remember when all of a sudden everyone was using Winged Golem decks? And then a week later everyone was using Soulsphere decks?
I didn\'t think it was that exciting, personally.

I don\'t mean to offend, bane, but you come off like you\'re just sore about ooze being nerfed. Sure, it\'s not the unstoppable powerhouse it used to be, but it\'s hardly a bad card.

~> Leander.

Heh, soulsphere. I haven\'t seen that one in a while. Man, I love that card.

As an ex-MtG player, I\'m not so sure about the whole \'metagame\' thing, but it sounds to ME like \'metagame\' is another way to say \"Okay, ridiculously overpowered card that can\'t be changed now has to be beaten by everyone\'s decks...\" essentially forcing constant deck evolution...and thereby ALSO continually providing profit for companies like WotC. Metagame is responsible for the MtG/collectible card game economy.

CMC is fundamentally different in that THAT NEVER NEEDS TO HAPPEN. Anything overpowered CAN be fixed. Oozes, as I recall, needed a fix. Hell, counterspell from magic needed a fix, so they released a bunch of different versions and then banned the original or something like that. I feel like despite having similiar basis, CMC is different enough from a paper CCG that such things as a metagame aren\'t really neccessary.

In regards to metagame in MtG...I have two threads in which I play MtG on this forum. Check \'em out...ridiculously old cards against mostly new cards. I don\'t do half bad, and those decks haven\'t been altered in like...crap, I dunno, whenever Mirage/Alliance came out.

Metagame works! If everyone uses one sort of deck THERE IS A SORT OF DECK THAT CAN BEAT IT MOST OF THE TIME. I challenge you to build a deck and give me a decklist and I can\'t beat it in best of 10 on one of my first 3 decks.
thanks.
-Coron

Actually, I think a metagame isn\'t possible in this CCG because it\'s still in Alpha, right? I mean CMC is hardly complete, there are less than 550 cards.

Although, I agree a metagame would be good, face it, Nerfing is how it goes when a game is still in fetal stage. We\'re mainly playing during the time where most cards get their flaws ironed out to make the game smoother.

Although, I doubt it will be soon, eventually, this will be a full-fledged game, but now, it\'s just alpha version or something similar. Metagame will come when a greater player base will be found.
Eventually, this could grow up to become a \"membership\" game but one thing would be sure, without us, the first generation players, that time will happen in a much shorter time than we could expect an alpha version to grow...

obviously, that last paragraph was a bit influenced by my \"illusions of grandeur\" but still, this game isn\'t complete yet, that\'s why we nerf rather than \"meta-gaming\".

And yet bane, you argue that the metagame takes care of things in magic in the same post that you mention banned and restricted cards. This shows that even WotC find some cards are overpowered. And yet if we complain, suddently we are not smart enough to beat whatever you throw at us.

And yes, there is a metagame in CMC. Since clash came out everyone has to put in effect D in their deck. Since expedition came out everyone has to put in locations. Since wizard and others came out everyone has to have direct creature damage cards in their deck.

And you know what? I hate it. In a 30 card deck I need to devote 6 cards to 2 of each of the above. Purely defensively. And on average I\'ll draw one by turn 10? 15? How many turns will the cane be out locking me down? Or a burrower I have to shoot? How much damage will I take from wizard before I can shoot him down? Should I devote 9 cards instead? (almost a third of the deck?)

There is so much variety in CMC that you have to be able to counter everything. And things change depending at what time you play, since there are different crowds of people.

Yes, \"He played card X and I haven\'t drawn card Y\". And yet when we complain about X, someone always says \"but there\'s Y!\". And now you are saying every deck has to contain every Y out there? No thanks. Just make sure there are no \"I win\" cards, please.

So far the best solution seems to be:
- Don\'t play with people who use overpowered cards.
- Be a gentleman and don\'t put overpowered cards in your deck.

Works for me. My playing has been a lot less frustrating since I started doing that. That\'s a lot of the metagame here too.

The even closest thing I have seen to a \"metagame\" is just the fact that there are deck trends. I\'m relatively new but I\'ve heard about the Dragoon decks and I\'ve seen the Golem decks and the Soulsphere decks. (Recently I\'ve seen a lot of Miasma Factory.) As mentioned before, time and time again... I do not think a strong metagame is actually present in a game of this size and ease to change, although I do believe there is some present as shown by trends and staples such as Effect D. As far as I can see, a few coding changes by Webrunner can easily change any unforeseen problems that may arise with cards (for instance Ooze nerfing). In Magic, the card must be either banned or restricted and WotC is reluctant to do so unless absolutely necessary.

It still annoys me that in Magic, the card Skullclamp, which became practically a deck staple in any deck, was banned because it \"altered the metagame\" too much. Their reasoning was that if you didn\'t run Skullclamp or didn\'t target skullclamp, then your deck just couldn\'t compete.

I haven\'t been playing Magic since Alpha or anything, and in general I spend a lot more time studying the game than actually playing it. Many cards in the early Magic sets seem comically good or bad today. And Magic can gets away with more niche cards because there are more other cards you can use with them. Lastly, there are a lot of Magic players for whom there is a lot at stake that their deck be as good as possible. That simply isn\'t the case for CMC.

Another culprit is CMC\'s small pool of players in general, and even smaller pool of very talented players.

just my two cents, I think building a deck designed to be good against another type of deck is no fun, decks should be fairly versatile, it adds to the challenge of building, and now I leave the balance forums again! Oh yes, one more thought:

bane2571 Wrote:I believe the CMC community is far too nerf happy.

He\'s right.

The last nerf I remember was... undizzier costs being upped to 2 mana?

Miasma getting upped to 1D Maintenance?

Grah. My memory sucks.

I think it\'s nearly impossible to competitively play a CMC deck that does not contain:
1) decent damage-dealing creatures for winning,
2) some method of countering 1, meaning some kind of semi-permanent lockdown, be it by bigger faster creatures (beatdown decks with undizziers, etc) or effect-related means (Miasma factory, Slime Valley, Swords, etc)
3) some method of countering each kind of 2, meaning some of each of effect/location/creature destruction.
4) some method of countering 3, typically by overwhelming the minimal counters with additional creatures/effects. How many times have I destroyed a Miasma Factory or Stone Golem just to have another take its place?

That IS the metagame, basically.

CMC has a metagame, but it\'s not too effective, especially since you rarely know what deck your opponent\'s playing, and \"sideboarding\" accordingly is usually a hassle. However, nerfing should be selective, because people enjoy playing with powerful cards, not a collection of weak ones.

Maybe we should establish formats...

If I have a card, and you have a card, I find it hard to argue that your card should be arbitrarily more powerful.

If say, every card was equally powerful (as in, quasibalanced and powerful) CmC games would be preety short in the end-game as you\'d get scenarios of \"Oh dear. He played Card X, but I don\'t have counter Y in my hand right at this moment. I guess I lose.\"

If say, every card was equally weak (as in, quasibalanced and normal) CmC games I think would be longer drawn out with actual strategy and choices that have to be made in the middle of the match.