ML3 basic Playdeck brainstorming

[nove]

Thanks stassy (and CirothUngol) for having the initiative of starting the daunting task of organizing all the community decks

The "dividing things into folders" idea is probably useful for now, at least for the purposes of organizing/figuring the decks out; though, yeah... unless someone eventually figures a way of having multiple PlayDeck folders working (if needed, with .bat files), we will probably have to "ditch" the folders and encode the deck type into the deck name (like we more or less already have... e.g. EDH decks start with the string "EDH") for the purposes of playing.

It would probably be good to start a thread in the "Decks" subforum (possibly "pinned") such as "Submit your decks here!", where people would be able to submit zip/rar files with decks under one of the available categories (e.g. Challenge-Winning decks, EDH decks, Tribal decks, Vanguard Avatar decks, Competitive Legacy decks, Competitive Vintage decks, Casual decks, Singleton decks, etc.). These could then be parsed for errors/banned cards and introduced into the "community pool". It could also be useful to take the time and explain the constraints of each one of those "deck formats" (including B/R cards list).

Speaking of which... stassy, which criteria did you apply for selecting the "Tribal" decks?

[stassy]

I was more thinking about a wiki like system like Ciroth suggested, where anyone can post a deck and others could make their default Playdeck folder on their own.

I just finished sorting Orion79 ones and I am struggling on sorting my OWN decks (god bless the Deckstats.net website creator), I doubt I can keep on updating manually the whole pack, so having something else that could automtically sort ML would be a godsent.

Currently by Tribal I sort anything that use exclusively the same type of creature by race like gobby, pussy, dwagon. . .anything else is going to the theme folder like knight, oath, combo.

[nove]

Cool. Makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.

By the way, there are some of Jatill's decks in the Tribal folder that don't really fit the "Tribal" thing (would be more within the "Theme" class you mentioned). I was trying to start now organizing the Tribal folder and giving all decks descriptive, standard names (e.g. Tribal Sliver Bant 1, Tribal Goblin Red 2, Tribal Faerie Dimir 1, etc.) and descriptions; do you think that would be ok?

[nove]

Here's an example of the first tribal decks I sorted (just to see if people agree with the organization): h t t p : / / w w w .filedropper. c o m/playdecktribal16022013 (remove spaces)

[Dave]

I like the idea about a 'readonly' Playdeck-folder.
The Playdeck-folder could contain any number of subdir's like Tribal, EDH, MyPlayDeck, World ChampionDecks,etc.
Fill a listbox or db with all decks in those subdir's.
Add some filters/search mechanics to the listbox/db
Then you could select any of those decks and hit the button 'import' and fill the folder Playdeck with a copy of the selected decks.
No rearranging decks anymore. Except for your new ones....

The problem with CirothUngol's suggestion to use the description line in a deck:
How can someone add his own info (pe. 'I like this deck', or 'too slow') without losing it, when you import all decks from this forum. (I don't want to search which new decks there are. I want them all!)
Possible solution : Make a textfile with in it: 'Name deck' and 'User-info' ?

would this be possible in PDA ,CirothUngol? If not, maybe i can help in a way

[stassy]

Ah, I forgot to sort jatill decks so thanks for remind me about it.

Changing filename might generate more duplicate decks if several of us are working on the Playdeck folder, unless Ciroth can also add another option in the PDA to compare the content of decks, however it will make sorting easier for sure.

nove, can you tell what decks you modified or could you upload the last Playdeck version I posted with your modifications?

Dave> That would be the best thing indeed, a subprogram to help you sort deck files if a wiki is not possible *eye at Ciroth*
Though I don't like the fact of messing with files properties (which will make any antivirus program jump in), the read only list is the only workaround that came to my mind to preserve the root of the Playdeck folder for a non advanced PC user.

[nove]

Hm... you're right. So... maybe I should stop renaming decks from now on (at least until we have this all more-or-less sorted out)?

From the decks you posted, I didn't modify anything outside the "Tribal" folder. I just took the non-Tribal decks that were in that folder (jatill's) and put them in a folder called "nonTribal", then added my own (and my friend's) tribal decks to the "Tribal" folder and then renamed all the decks within that folder so they have standard, consistent names. The only changes performed to decks were to make them all Legacy-legal (i.e. remove Ancestral Recalls, Moxes and other fun but unfair stuff).

Your Playdeck folder with these modifications is here (remove spaces between letters):
w w w . filedropper . c o m /playdeck18-02-2013

Regarding detection of duplicates... it shouldn't be too hard. You just have to convert all the decks to some "canonical form" and hash them (MD5 or SHA1 is good enough), so you would get a number that is only equal for equal decks. A good way of normalizing decks (i.e. putting them in a canonical form) is just to remove all the comment lines, remove all the Card IDs, and just leave the card names and number of copies per card; then you just need to sort the lines alphabetically and you're done. It would be cool to find a way of storing the calculated "Deck ID" in the .dck file itself (so you don't have to recalculate it every single time), but... yeah... I guess we already have problems getting all the information we need stored in the .dck files as it is

EDIT: to be honest, I actually started doing the renaming thing precisely so it's easier to find duplicates (example: I find what seems like a Goblin Tribal deck... with my naming scheme, I can quickly go through all the few Goblin decks, since they are alphabetically ordered, and check if it's a duplicate or not... contrast that with the current situation, where decks often have cryptic names... I'd have to go through all the decks in the Tribal folder, just to figure out which ones are of the Goblin-type)

[Dave]

Made a program PlayDeckOrganizer http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=9658. I think it would help speed up your efforts.

[stassy]

Adding job/classes to Tribal (soldier, wizard, etc...), however, deck that will exclusively use one type of creature card and its mechanism will go to Themed for the moment (such as deck centered on Atog), I currently consider tribal deck those centered around many creatures under the same race/class.
Re-added 3 decks which were missing from the last renaming (bear, goblin burn and jelves)
Renamed On The Wings of Angels and Devils.dck
Removed a few dupes
Switched Modern/Extended decks to Themed decks as they change at every expansion release

When all decks will be sorted, I guess we will start renaming them, there is no point anymore in keeping decks sorting by name creator since you can add a name reference in the deck description.
A big chunk of tribal decks got sorted and some of the dreaded affinity decks.
1k decks sorted, now only 1500 decks to go :p

[nove]

Nice great job.

I'm just afraid it might be hard to merge changes if several people are sorting the Playdecks simultaneously.

(Btw... some of the "Zoo" decks in Tribal are probably not considered tribal decks, since they use all sorts of races/classes/creature types).

I think I'll start sorting what's inside the "Theme" folder then... "Fog", "Milling", "Discard", etc.

EDIT: Also, I think there should be some sort of "Challenge Beaters" folder, to put decks which are obviously made/tailored to beat certain challenges (often you can figure it out either by looking at the name and/or the content of the decks).

EDIT2: I've started to organize decks within the "Theme" category, according to all the different possible themes. Stassy, can you see if you agree with this type of organization within the "Themed" folder? download link: w w w .filedropper. c o m /playdeck19-02-2013v2

[nove]

Might as well post a description of the themes (in case it's not obvious):

AffinityArtifacts - Mostly affinity and artifact-heavy decks;
AuraTogEnchantress - Decks based on the use of many auras, Auratog and/or Enchantresses;
Burn - Probably red and probably packing a lot of burn;
Curses - Decks based on the use of curses;
Delver - Decks based on the use of Delver of Secrets;
Discard - Decks based around discard effects;
DredgeHermit - Decks based on the use of cards with Dredge and/or Hermit Druid;
Fish - Decks usually based on small blue creatures, using bounce effects and counterspells to disrupt opponent's tempo;
Fog - Decks based around Fog and similar cards (Moment's Peace, Holy Day, Darkness), often using milling/card depletion as winning strategy;
GroGoyf - Decks like "Miracle Gro", that exploit Quirion Dryad and/or Tarmogoyf (among others), along with cheap spells to make them big very fast;
Honden - Decks based on the use of the Hondens of Kamigawa;
KikiJiki - Decks based on the use of Kiki-Jiki (often infinite combo decks);
LandDestruction - Decks based on land disruption/destruction;
LifeGain - Decks based on life gain strategies;
Milling - Decks based on using milling effects to deplete opponent's library;
Oath - Decks based on Oath of Druids;
PodVat - Decks that attempt to abuse Birthing Pod and/or Mimic Vat;
PoisonInfect - Decks based on Infect creatures and otherwise giving opponent poison counters;
Proliferate - Decks that attempt to exploit the Proliferate mechanic;
Ramp - Mana ramp decks (usually green or green-based, but not necessarily);
ReanimatorRecursion - Decks based on creature reanimation and/or recursion;
SneakAttack - Combo decks that exploit Sneak Attack;
StaxStasisLock - Lock decks that use either Stasis or stuff like Smokestacks, Trinisphere, Winter Orb;
Stompy - Green decks with cheap big creatures, classically using cards like Rogue Elephant and Harvest Wurm;
Tokens - Decks based on token generation or stuff like the Populate mechanic;
Vise - Decks based on Black Vise and making sure opponent draws many cards and keeps them unplayed;
Zoo - Usually multicolored decks based on small, efficient creatures, along with cheap removal and utility spells.

I'm sure there are still more themes (or different ways of classifying the decks). I just took the "low-hanging fruit", so... feel free to criticize or add to it.

[stassy]

(Btw... some of the "Zoo" decks in Tribal are probably not considered tribal decks, since they use all sorts of races/classes/creature types).

Ah right, I must have though of something else when I moved them, missed the Themed folder

EDIT: Also, I think there should be some sort of "Challenge Beaters" folder, to put decks which are obviously made/tailored to beat certain challenges (often you can figure it out either by looking at the name and/or the content of the decks).

There is already a folder called Challenge in the Degenerated folder, I put the Challenge winner in but there are some others missing still in the root folder (I think each of them has the name of the challenge like Thatisbig)

About the Theme parts, you nailed everything I could think of, there might be others sub category but I think there are too few of them to be classified (that must also mean we need a "non-classified" or "unclassified" or "test-justforlaugh-wtf" folder).
There is also the case on double or more themed deck like Goblin Burn : must it be put under Burn or Goblin or both folder?

Anyway as we don't have yet a wiki/svn area for update, we will give turn on who update, it should be ok since we are not a lot on it (so that mean it's your time )

[Dave]

If you are modifying the description too, don't be shy with adding multiple keywords. I'm planning to change the PlayDeckOrganizer so you can search for multiple keywords. pe. 'Dredge green' or something like that.

[nove]

I'm not sure if I'll be able to come here in the next few days, so here is my progress so far: w w w . filedropper . c o m /playdeck20-02-2013

I tried to mostly keep organizing the Themed decks and start figuring out which ones belong to the "Challenge" folder.

[stassy]

Alright then, I will work on the Orion79 themed folder.
We could also add non mtg themed folder like:
Combo that contain every cards combo synergy that doesn't fit in popular combo folder (like Blood Artist, Torpor Orb and so on...) and which number is not enough for a folder on their own
Color with decks that use color protection or color shift
Effect with decks using only specific ability (flying, X-deck, ABC deck...)