ML3 basic Playdeck brainstorming

[Zeek]

I suppose you could tailor decks to the AI's style. The AI actually COULD play affinity if Ravanger were removed so that they don't recklessly sacrifice every artifact to end up with an 8/8 with no field/hand left and dead to a single Disenchant or Diabolic Edict. Once it becomes Frogmite/Myr Enforcer/Cranial Plating aggro, then the AI runs the deck fine.

The AI also doesn't play heavy or light land amounts deck consistently because they don't mulligan. If you hand them an 18-20 land weenie deck that survives on 2-3 land, they will keep manaless hands.

[stassy]

Also I would add that the AI really need a good hand to be able to play a good multicolor autopilot deck (like BGR Jund or Lifebringers Deck).
As you said the AI don't mulligan so in multicolor deck if the crucial land is not there at the beginning of the game it's already a round loss.

As a replacement card, for example Leyline of Sanctity, do you suggest to replace it with Witchbane Orb?

[nove]

Uhm... sorry about the Tabernacle decks (they're probably my fault), but you have to take into account that some of those degenerate decks were made just for the purpose of beating some (almost impossible ) challenges.

I agree it would be cool to compile a decent list of "standard" decks to include in the Manalink 3.0 distribution. I wouldn't mind curating the "casual tribal" group of decks

[stassy]

Hidden Cards.dck
removed since it's a list of all planned cards but never released by Micropose. Those not coded yet will probably never be since they sux so much.

Banding Deck.dck
removed since I couldn't find a replacement for Cooperation which is the core card of this deck

Killdraw2.dck
LAND.dck
LANDtest.dck
LAND2.dck
LAND3.dck
LD.dck
removed as test deck

Leyline of Sanctity
replaced by Witchbane Orb

EpicDredge.dck
original deck found, Kry Shield replaced by Bridge from Below

Legacy_Cognis_BG09.dck
original deck found, Crumbling Ashes replaced by Creakwood Liege

240sxforever-EDH-GBW control.dck
original deck found, Votary of the Conclave replaced by whatever was the original card

legacy_aww_BattleOfWits.dck
original deck found, Votary of the Conclave replaced by whatever was the original card

Stompy.dck
Seems to be Jungle Lion was in the card pool since 2008/2009 at least so maybe it was forgotten at the 2k limit break.
replaced by Mtenda Lion

Tempered Steel Japan Nationa.dck
Modified to Tempered Steel JP 2010.dck to shorten the name

Added some decks of my own pool card which are for most of them conversion of tappedout.net website. They are popular decks from their respective block (which start from ISD to RTR) and some are theme deck for fun (like Bearforce One.dck )

A Very Gravey Situation.dck
Anthems.dck
Anti WhiteGain.dck
Art of Blood.dck
Auriok Neuriok.dck
Black Green Mimic Vat.dck
Blackness.dck
Blood of The Damned.dck
Broken Branches.dck
BUG Zombies.dck
BW Tokens.dck
Chalice of Lifegain.dck
Curse You.dck
DKA Turbo Fog.dck
Elf Slagwurm.dck
Elves Believe it.dck
Equip to kill.dck
Feed the Peasants.dck
Goblin boom.dck
Golem BG.dck
Grand Illusion.dck
Human Legion.dck
Hunted Orb.dck
Jungle Lure.dck
Knights of the World Slayer.dck
Leonin Army.dck
Life for Death.dck
Mage Blade Avacyn.dck
Mage-Blade.dck
Megatron.dck
Miracles Mono Green.dck
Mono Blue Delver.dck
Old Country Buffet.dck
One Mana Fun.dck
Ooze Buffer.dck
Ooze Tribal.dck
Phyrexian Renaissance.dck
Power of Bounce.dck
Predator Ooze.dck
RB Tainted Scamp.dck
Red Wither.dck
Reinventing Kuldotha.dck
Restoration Hardware.dck
Sapping Souls.dck
Shere Khan Aggro Naya Token.dck
Silverheart Stompy.dck
Spiteful Act.dck
Splicing Insanity.dck
Stuffy Creepy.dck
Suck my Orbs.dck
Tamiyo Turbofog.dck
Tibalt Turbofog.dck
Tree of Dream.dck
Trolling Wild Defiance.dck
Try not to blink.dck
Uber Cheap Vamps.dck
Undying.dck
Venser Closet.dck
Venser Control.dck
Willis FNM.dck
Without Great Suffering.dck
Worldslayers Unite.dck
Zombie Vengeance.dck
Big-Ass Wipes.dck
Challenge MoM 2.dck
Hydra Act.dck
T2 Anti Lifegain.dck
Azorius Advance.dck
LuxCannon.dck
RTR Counters Everywhere.dck
RTR Crystal Weenies.dck
RTR Here come the flood.dck
RTR Jace Nin.dck
RTR Rakdos Wins.dck
RTR Selesnya Beatstick.dck
RTR Slimes Everywhere.dck
RTR Super Smashing Bros.dck
RTR Trostani Junk.dck
Shrieking Discard.dck
Acid Rain.dck
Angelic Might Avacyn.dck
BearForce One.dck
Bound by Strength Avacyn.dck
BW Morbid Experiment.dck
Challenge Gimme.dck
Challenge Land Ho.dck
Curse of Undying.dck
Death Encroach Avacyn.dck
Defender Bender Modern.dck
Dream Engineer.dck
Eldrazi Gods.dck
Fiery Dawn Avacyn.dck
Forged Victory Extended.dck
Ghost and Stuff.dck
Gifts Ungiven.dck
Goblin Burn.dck
Grixis Planeswalkers.dck
Hope for Miracle.dck
Humanity Vengeance Avacyn.dck
Infinistrad.dck
Mono-black lifegain M13.dck
Mystical Teaching Modern.dck
New Phyrexia Saxx.dck
Planeswalker fun.dck
Project Melira.dck
RW Phyrexia Legacy.dck
Slaughterhouse Avacyn.dck
Solitary Fiends Avacyn.dck
There can be only one.dck
Unique Turbofog.dck
White Weenie Kamigawa.dck
Zombie Empire Planechase.dck
Zombie Hunt Extended.dck
Turbofog Modern ISD.dck


Well, the list is now clean of error and complete as of TSv2, let's start sorting now

[CirothUngol]

Wow!
Thanx for scanning\cleaning\correcting the PlayDecks, and for all of the new PlayDecks, too!

I'm unsure why those few PlayDecks are still coming up as Invalid, I'll try to figure that one out later.
As for UnCoded Cards, I think substitution is fine... I've just been to lazy\busy to do it myself.

Man, I can't wait to get home and try a Gauntlet using only the New PlayDecks (well... the first 256 of them, anyway). Thanx again for all the conversions, perhaps I should NetDeck more often. ^_^

I'll look again at the Invalid PlayDecks issue, but I'll post cleaned copies of them here so you can use them. Can you provide a copy of your PDAnalyser.ini file so I could see if it's part of the problem?

P.S. Kudos on changing the Thread Topic as well... it would seem that we kinda got off subject.

[stassy]

There are a good side and a bad side of those decks which seems to be they are used for competitive local tournaments but not national ones, the good one is they make the best use of the content of their respective block, with nice combo/synergy and when converting them I learned a lot about the new mechanism at every block release (starting from ISD mind you).
I put the name of their creator so you can track them in tappedout.net and read a complete analysis of their decks.

The bad thing is...the AI is completely lost with them, especially the latest block RTR, which gameplay involving small effect hybrid combo and is imho too complicated for a basic AI to handle. You can test them with the RTR series in the Playdeck folder provided.

About the invalid, I think the "import Manalink" way worked against the "refresh convert playdeck folder", because PDA was able to check and validate the decks I mentioned, thank you for your consideration though, I will know what to do next time I do a massive update.

What I will do 1st with those decks if no one else want to add their own is analyze the current Playdeck and sort them by type (which I suppose define them, I may be wrong so correct me if I don't sort in the appropriate category).

So far what we have have :
- Original/revamp Shandalar deck (will need to be sure which kind we have)
- Manalink decks "shipped" with the ISO version ("optimized" for the games rules and not current standard rules so lots of T1 broken decks like Explosion.dck or Blue Death.dck)
- T1 to T2+ decks created during the 1st days of ML2 which include deck created by our fellow ML fanatics (Orion79, Evil_Clone, jatill...). Orion79's ones has made 3 kind of decks : by block, by theme and by Duel vs expansion and they all finish with xxxDeck.dck
- Championship decks, famous decks of world tournament winner, I think I noticed some but will need more digging to sort them
- Manalink Tournament decks : Most of them can be found in the Tournament section of our forum, unfortunately some of them are lost due to closed download provider. Also they use various gameplay due to the tournament rules (EDH, Rotisserie, Handicap...) so they might not be fit to classic Duel mode
- Special gameplay deck : EDH decks have their named labelled with...EDH , it's also the same for Avatar and one Planechase deck...that remind me that I forgot to remove Random singleton Constructed.dck and Random Singleton GY.dck since they are obsolete
- And the rest are mainly classic theme, combo decks with some anti-frustration decks created to counter some various type of deck (yes I am talking to you life decks )

I will try to sort them as soon as I finish to rank G*tecr*sh coded cards

[CirothUngol]

There are a good side and a bad side of those decks...

Good or Bad, I'm just happy to have some new blood to spill! ^_^

About the invalid, I think the "import Manalink" way worked against the "refresh convert playdeck folder"...

Cool, I'm glad it works the same for you as it does for me.

What I will do 1st with those decks...

That sounds great. Good, solid categories that are sure to "even out" the PlayDeck pool a great deal.
Especially the Championship Tournament Decks, those'll be fun. I'm hoping we can find the entire line-up of the final 8~12 decks for each year (I seem to remember seeing them posted somewhere... but that was a long time ago). If you'd like (and you haven't already), I could try to locate such a listing and help to produce those PlayDecks.

Thanx for posting your PDAnalyser.ini file.
Might I suggest that you increase the size of headerMax(1) (the max length of Header Line #1, which is the PlayDeck Name) from the Default of 28 to something larger (like 128). This will prevent imported PlayDecks with long, descriptive names (like many of the Tournament Decks in my Import PlayDeck archive) from overwriting each other during ReBuild, and although DeckBuilder will still truncate the PlayDeck Name to 28 characters, Manalink 3.0 will display, load, and use PlayDecks with longer names. This allows better and more descriptive Deck Names... but it might disallow the use of the DeckBuilder to edit them. I believe the max limit in Windoze is 256 characters for combined Drive:\Path\FileName.ext
...and since the PDAnalyser edits Header Line #1 to match the PlayDeck FileName, you can re-name any of the PlayDecks by simply editing the FileName before you run them through PDAnalyser.

Also, here's an archive I produced a few years ago that contains all of the untouched Microprose OEM PlayDecks in all of their revisions (MtG, SotA, and DotP), just in case it might help.

[CirothUngol]

I was doing some general searching on the Net for Pro-Tour and Theme DeckLists and found a rather lucrative source right HERE... that's in this forum... in our own backyard.

Well, isn't that convenient. ^_^

It would seem that our good pal BogWraith has pre-assembled the pre-constructed Theme Decks in the importable .mwDeck format, so those are practically done, the rest of the newer ones can be snagged from Wikipedia and NetDecked.
That topic also contains the ProTour DeckLists for 2007-2011 in the same MWS format. I'll try to find DeckLists for all of the others on WotC's site and NetDeck those in as well... I believe 1995 was the first year?

I'm bashing around ideas for the DeckMod.exe... how it should appear, how the contents should be sorted, what options should be available, and how it should accomplish its task. Let's see:

For appearance, I think it's best to go back to basics... JustBASIC, that is. The management of anything similar to a DataBase in WinNT Script is ridiculously difficult. Besides, using BASIC will give us better control options like windows, checkboxes, etc.
So, it's appearance will be similar to the PlayDeck Analyser.

On sorting contents; I'm a big fan of history, and therefore of chronological order. Any PlayDecks that have a date associated with them (Pro-Tour, PreConstructed, etc.) should be sortable by date. PreConstructed decks should be sortable by Cycle\Expansion. Full alphabetical should also be an option. I've already written sorting routines for JustBasic, so these shouldn't be difficult to implement.

For Options, I think using checkboxes to add\remove by current sort selection will be good. Select your sorting options, and a group of labeled checkboxes appear. Check the ones you want and un-check the ones you don't, then hit a GO button and it adds\removes the selected\un-selected groups. Maybe add a "Remove Unselected" setting to allow the option to ignore unselected Groups instead. Include a check for altered PlayDecks and it would be essentially non-destructive, as it would only remove PlayDecks that were already contained in it's DataBase.

Now, how to do all of this.
I propose using a Sub-Folder structure to contain the PlayDeck DataBase. Grouping and Sorting options will be directed by the Sub-Folder names, and sorting will be limited to the contents of a single folder. Each Sub-Folder can contain multiple sorting options by using a legal separating character, one that isn't normally used in FileNames (maybe ~?). So, if the main DataBase folder \Pre-Constructed\ contained the following Sub-Folders:

\Tempest~Tempest~1997\
\Tempest~Stronghold~1998\
\Tempest~Exodus~1998\
\Urza~Urza's Saga~1998\
\Urza~Urza'a Legacy~1999\
\Urza~Urza's Destiny~1999\
\Masques~Mercadian Masques~1999\
\Masques~Nemesis~2000\
\Masques~Prophecy~2000\
etc....

...then those folders will be sortable by the 1st~2nd~3rd[~nth] field, and folders will be Group or Individually selectable. I'm still working out the kinks in my head before I try to put anything definitive down in code.
This also brings forth another question:

I've now spent the last 10 minutes staring at the screen because I've just realized that if I'm to allow Users to update this DataBase (which is my intention, by allowing a "Drop-In and Refresh" sorta structure), then I'm gonna hafta add an automatic recursive option to the PDAnalyser.
Maybe I should just make this "DeckMod" an option on PDAnalyser?
Perhaps allow a method of running just the DeckMod DataBase, so you're not forced to enter PDAnayser if you don't want to?
...hmm, food for thought.

Anyway, I'm phishing the Net for the remaining Pro-Tour and Pre-Constructed decks, and I'll post them when\if I can find them all (those'll be fun). As always, any thoughts about how to structure\sort\select from the PlayDeck DataBase or about the appearance of the user interface are more than welcome.

[porphyre]

Eek. Subdirectories? How about adding a legality check to PDA? Dump the data into the Description field of each .dck file. Then users could filter the play decks based on legality per format.

[CirothUngol]

Eek. Subdirectories?

...I didn't realize they were that scary. ^_^

I like the idea of using the Description field to identify the PlayDecks (max of 398 characters). We could just tack the necessary KeyWord onto the beginning\end of any current descriptions, if needed. It would require a more distinct method of identifying the flags (just in case the current description already contains KeyWords), but it would remove the burden of description from the Folder\FileNames and it would make the PlayDecks searchable in PDAnalyser's current routines... maybe even allow recursive searching for those who may want to use sub-folders.
I like it.

How about adding a legality check to PDA?

Interesting.
PDAnalyser already uses Banned\Restricted CardLists, but that would require the auto-generation of huge lists... and it'd be kinda slow. I could instead pull in more info from the DAT\CSV to identify the cards by Expansion, and then automate the addition of Block\Expansion info to the descriptions.

However... for Vintage, Legacy, etc. a Banned\Restricted CardList is still the way to go.

Edit:
Oh, and I've fixed the issue with PDAnalyser not allowing DeckNames of longer that 28 characters when importing from NetDeck. I implemented the solution, but forgot to insert the variables (duh).
I'll post a v0.4c update containing this one fix when I post the Pre-Constructed and World Champion PlayDecks.

[stassy]

Be careful of special char for directory name, some OS language don't like much ~

[CirothUngol]

Well, Manalink only runs in WinXP\Vista\7\8, so ~ would probably be ok... but I think I'm leaning towards placing all needed sort flags into the PlayDeck Comments. There's 398 characters of space (more than enough) and nobody ever uses it all. Besides, it alleviates the need for scanning\processing an entire directory tree and would allow the PDAnalyser to do the operation with its current search routines.

I've completed the World Champion and PreConstructed PlayDecks.
Big Thanx to BogWraith for assembling the first 90% of this set in .mwDeck format; I used Wikipedia and WotC as the main sources for everything else. Unfortunately, out of the 452 PlayDecks (138 WC + 314 PC), only 98 of them are ready to use... all of the others contain UnCoded cards.
Well, at least now they're current, up-to-date, collected, sorted, re-named, and converted to PlayDeck.dck format. I'm certain that future updates will yield better results. Please let me know if you find any of the missing World Champion decks, or if you know of any PreConstructed decks not listed on Wikipedia.

Interestingly, 2 of the decks contain Swallowing Plague, a card from Champions of Kamigawa that isn't currently listed in the Manalink CSV at all. It must've gotten skipped over... I feel another CardID shift comin'. ^_^

This archive contains both the Pre and Post processed collections, as well as the PDAnalyser .log for the second pass (still very messy).

[porphyre]

I didn't realize they were that scary. ^_^

I like the idea of using the Description field to identify the PlayDecks (max of 398 characters). We could just tack the necessary KeyWord onto the beginning\end of any current descriptions, if needed. It would require a more distinct method of identifying the flags (just in case the current description already contains KeyWords), but it would remove the burden of description from the Folder\FileNames and it would make the PlayDecks searchable in PDAnalyser's current routines... maybe even allow recursive searching for those who may want to use sub-folders.
I like it.

How about adding a legality check to PDA?

Interesting.
PDAnalyser already uses Banned\Restricted CardLists, but that would require the auto-generation of huge lists... and it'd be kinda slow. I could instead pull in more info from the DAT\CSV to identify the cards by Expansion, and then automate the addition of Block\Expansion info to the descriptions.

However... for Vintage, Legacy, etc. a Banned\Restricted CardList is still the way to go.

Multiple directories are unwieldy. If you edit a deck to sub something in or out and inadvertently change formats, you'd have to physically move a file somewhere to keep the app accurate.

Screw keywords. Bit masks were designed for this. Allows you to precisely define what formats a particular deck is valid for. Considering the number of formats, though, it may need separating into two masks... one for the fixed formats Vintage/Legacy/Extended/Modern/Standard/EDH, etc. and another for Blocks. Since bitmasks are math based anyway filtering or sorting is a snap: Give me all decks w/ format < 16. You get all Modern decks. Ok, give me all decks w/ format < 8. You get all Extended legal decks. Etc. Of course, the UI would make the mask friendly.

Identify cards by the expansion and you can sort through it pretty quick: "Look a Black Lotus! This deck ain't Modern legal." "Look 5 Lightning Bolts! This deck ain't legal for anything." Processing should be decently quick.

You'll need BR lists for blocks and EDH too.

[CirothUngol]

Multiple directories are unwieldy.

Agreed, but it does make sorting\finding\editing more human friendly.

Screw keywords. Bit masks...

PlayDecks are standard texfiles, and I'm thinking of placing info inside the Comments area. That means it needs to be text, no?
...and again, there's that "Human Readable" thing. I'm unsure if I could legally place info inside the file, but outside the viewable text area. It would be best to keep them editable in DeckBuilder, etc.

Since the legality of cards is mutable in Legacy, Vintage, Standard, etc., I'll just scan PlayDeck contents instead of using a marker of some kind. Even Block Constructed is easy to scan for (as you mentioned), so I'll gathering expansion info when I read the DAT\CSV and look into implementing a simple and expandable method of selecting which Blocks\Expansions to keep\reject.

The necessity of retaining additional info on a "per deck" basis for the purposes of matching\sorting is still debatable. As always, thanks for contributing to the debate. ^_^

[stassy]

We could also make a read-only playdeck and user can still make their own version in his main Playdeck folder. This brainstorming is only to filter a bit more the massive list we currently have for Ciroth ML archive though I am for archiving any valid ML deck, whatever faithful or degenerated they are.

For the Shandalar playdeck, do you want to keep only one version or all versions? I am implying that also for others type of decks, if we have to make duplicate decks in order to follow the folder order (eg. a tribal deck that AI play well, shall we have one copy in AI-play-well folder and one copy in tribal deck folder?)

Removed decks since they are just test from existing deck
Jund Avatar2.dck
Jund Avatar.dck
Tip2.dck

Renamed Avatar Momir.dck to Momir.dck since it's the Momir gameplay deck and not the Vanguard Avatar

Started the sorting using folders, sorry guys but I have to do that 1st, and it will create lot of folders before moving the "best" decks back to the root folder.
So far we have:
Manalink Tournament
Degenerate which hold : Challenge winner decks, EDH decks, Tribal decks, Vanguard Avatar decks and misc others gameplay decks which don't have their own folder since there are so few of them.

Next big step is sorting Orion79 decks and Block decks.