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by Erin Feeney
Rumblings about DCI: Are they justified? While completing a 20 person grand melee recently, in a city near where I live, I was suprised at the one word that people seemed to have ingrained into their heads about the game of Magic: cheap. "Oh, control magic, that's so cheap!" "Man, you are so cheap. I can't believe you play CoPs!" Who decides what is TOO cheap? Mr. (godlike) Richard Garfield? Perhaps Tom Wylie and his rules cronies? No, its the Duelists Convocation. They are the people who get rid of cards that they decide are not appropriate in tourney play. Here's the thick and the thin of why they get rid of all our favorite cards. It would seem as though the folks at DCI have no idea what they are doing at first glance. One might get the idea of a midget throwing darts at wall of Magic cards, and the ones that get hit are banned or restricted. This is not so, and as a matter of fact, there are several compelling reasons for cards being changed around. First of all, lets all think back to the time when DCI was still a small organization that basically held WoTC's hand all the time. DCI was created first and foremost in response to all the players who wanted organized tournaments. They first limited card frequencies down to 4 after GenCon a couple years back. The person who won the tournament was playing around 20 berserks. Not a bad idea to limit those cards. So now DCI finds itself under fire for trying to limit all of the cards that we all know and love, regardless of the fact that we don't even have to play T2. I don't know about you, but when they got rid of vises, I was jumping for joy. Visualize a flat field. It is DCI's job to keep it flat, no matter what. This way, no color or type of deck gains an advantage. Every so often, a prarie dog will pop through the surface. The DCI bulldozer has to flatten it. All they want to do is to prevent T2 from becoming a style of play where there are cards that are worth so much that players aren't able to function. Okay, enough obscure analogies. Lets take a look at some math that the folks at the Duelist's Convocation did. Even before the first tournament, even before DCI was formed, the playtesters knew that some cards had the potential for abuse. Okay, limit those to four. But what if there are still cards that are just too powerful? Restriction. How does that affect the draw? Let's take a look at a hasty table.
As you can see in the table, once you restrict a card, there is a severe decline in chance of getting it. Even by turn six, there is little chance (18%) that you'll even see the card. Not bad, but we left out an important aspect: card drawing/manipulation. I hate to use a buzzword, but with the light on card advantage, a fairly resourceful person would be able to easily increase the percentage of getting that restricted card. So DCI began to ban. They really don't like it when everyone has a deck that will fit into a neat little category. I'm sure that someone was irked when in every deck, strip mines began to show up. How exciting is it when you're playing some kid who's playing a deck that you can classify in a matter of turns? In conclusion, DCI wants variety. How many successful black decks last summer operated without Necropotence? What kind of person playing white wouldn't play land tax? And what about strip mines? I played four. DCI isn't some sort of faceless corporate entity that wants to hurt you, but a organization that dedicateds itself towards keeping an interesting, diverse playing field.
Erin Feeney
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