Just for background, I am a sports fan. Pre-releases and releases on Saturday are the worst because they pull me away from watching LSU because WIZARDS HATES COLLEGE FOOTBALL! They're based in Seattle where UW is at and the huskies have sucked in football for years! Enjoy those Apple Cups being trounced by WSU! It is written in the history of Magic, too. Richard Garfield obviously was an IVY LEAGUE UPENN SNOB! He IS NOT Penn State!
Sports writing is just terrible. Some poor english major or blogger who just eats tons of chicken wings watching the game and needs an audience for his insane ranting (Hi, me!) toils away at crafting perfect storylines leading up to games only to have it completely knocked aside when guys like BILL CALLAHAN decide to trash entire gameplans and sabotage super bowls for league MVPs and my fantasy QB/Crush RICH GANNON! (wait...where am I?)
Post game wrap ups either fall into 1 of 2 categories: The original sappy storyline was validated by the play of one guy because GAME OUTCOMES ARE NOT TEAM EFFORTS or the original storyline was obviously not the real story of the game it was some complete unknown steals the spotlight when the original storyline driven protagonist of the work of fiction that is a game preview turned out to be a dirty fraud who made a prognosticator look bad for hitching his fantasy wagon to the wrong guy.
The entire point of this is that people like to have things explained to them like we were a primitive tribe gathering around the campfire to hear fishermen's tales. We want to see trees for forests. Magic meta-game and deck analysis tends to work the same way. To grab audiences we need stories with plot about a card game that features a randomized 60 card deck. It sucks because it hinders advancement of statistical analysis of deck design. Crafting stories takes a backseat to objective analysis.
Case in point: My analysis of Delver. Delver lost Ponder, and people see the tree of Ponder and proclaim the deck was ruined. It was ruined when it lost the majority of its spells and the air of Gitaxian probe. Ponder only guaranteed a flip of Delver by turn 3 if you drew the card. Decks are not created around 1 card, theyre created arund the effects of the card and how much of that effect does the deck in order to construct a viable gameplan.
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