Peasant Tournament - Round 2 Pairings & Match Times

Flaxative on video you were wondering if heavy armors and counterspells was sideboard effect - the answer to both is yes. My generic build is more balanced to feel my opponent, so chances are small to win with it, but I tried to specialize with sideboarding and win the next two games if possible (and lucky of course). This strategy worked with ElShafto and fortune helped me in the first game as well, so there was no need for the third. On the first game my play was really risky at the beginning but too defensive at the end - at least we had some fun and thrills though. I don't think ElShafto could play any better though considering my cards. It was all down to draws and rolls. But that Obliterating Spark was a surprise and I really got lucky with 3 hp armor roll.

 

You do realise the format favor 3 wizards like crazy, with the limited item pool ? Have a look at the team compositions! If not for a side board and this done a bit more competitively, I would believe every dam game would be 3 wizards or anything build to counter wizards!
I know it might suck to sometimes feels like you got countered. Also if 3 wizards went full on counter spell also you could have easily made 111 wizard almost usless!

 

I've watched all the tourney vids and like to just comment on the turning point in Game #2 TheShadowTitan vs. Scared Little Girl. It was a tough loss for SLG having controlled most of the game down to the last minute. My curious question is: What did SLG sideboard in after Game 1 ? From my POV, Game 2 was a case of the 3DCs not running enuff damage and the 1/1/1 were just rotating to exhaust the WoWs out. Basically, ShadowTitan outlasted until SLG got her bad hands... Game 3 was just a case of broken concentration.

Without seeing sideboard list, I fail to understand the claimed sideboard deficiency on com/unc items for pure wizards/3DCs... =)

 

This is the same strategy that I, and I'm assuming many others, used for this tournament. Have a balanced "recon team" to see what the opponent is playing, then try to build a counter for that. I basically built an anti-warrior deck and anti-wizard deck, and started the game with a mixture of the two.

Wizards have the same limited item pool as everyone else. Peasant control wizards are nothing like the real thing because you lack many of your best cards and have much less traits. Not only are you less versatile, you are also more prone to bad draws. I have never fought a Peasant match where my control wizards dominated the way regular MP control wizards do. The idea that wizards somehow dominate in Peasant format is simply not true.

Yes, if I had 3 anti-wizard wizards, I could easily shut down the enemy wizard. But aren't you forgetting something? Like.. I don't know.. the two other enemy characters! If I go full anti-wizard, enemy Priest and Warrior will walk over me. The more anti-wizard items I take, the weaker my build gets against non-wizards. When both start taking Counterspells, it's the 1/1/1 team that benefits the most.

Related to this, I don't think it's the job of events like this to balance the game. That is the job of the game developers. If we have special rules that seriously affect deckbuilding, those special rules should not clearly benefit some specific class or group. Some groups having a disadvantage because of the rules should not be seen as "working as intended" imo.

Like I pointed out earlier, with the current sideboard rules you can change more than half of the cards that your team uses. I think that this is against the whole idea of sideboarding and the main reason why 1/1/1 have a big advantage in this current format. Instead of changing items, we should look at it as changing cards. For example each character could change maximum of 9 cards (weapon/staff + item, or 3 items). This would mean that you could change exactly 25% of your cards, which would make much more sense.

This was just three quick MP matches, not a ten hour chess tournament I didn't really lose concentration or make any moves by mistake in the last match. After seeing the map, I knew I was going to lose unless I did something drastic. I tried to bluff and went to cap the victory square, hoping that my opponent would think it was a trap of some sort and not attack (or maybe have a terrible draw). That would have given me a victory point and maybe the next draw would have saved me. My plan failed of course and after that first wizard went down, it was clear that I had lost, so I just made a couple of moves and then resigned. Had my plan worked, I might have been able to survive a bit longer but I don't see how I could have won.

I used the same exact deck in games 1 and 2. I could have changed my staff to have more encumber but that wouldn't have made much difference. What I really needed was a way to deal with those Counterspells that I knew was coming, but there are no items like that in CH Peasant. I took the encumber staff for game 3 as a desperate final move, which of course resulted in me not drawing any WoW's when the warrior rushed in (not that those WoW's could have saved me).[/quote]

You don't even need to see the sideboard because with wizards it's always spells, and they always get owned by Counterspell. My main point is that multiple games with a sideboard remove the only disadvantage of Counterspell, making it the ultimate Peasant sideboard card against wizard teams.

 

ok, understood. From my POV, I was seeing lava everywhere that didn't hit and a low hp warrior that got away. Pretty much the same thing in game 2. Which led me to think that perhaps your deck was thin on damage or smthg else was happening. Shrugs...

ok, I understand what you mean. Flax was spot on in comparing Counterspell against Mtg's Relic of Progenitus or Tormod's Crypt or Flusterstorm or Flashfires etc. Basically that there are cards that act as hard counters against some builds. The design issue here is that Jon and co. would have to open up a new attack type for wizard cards as we only have Magic, Melee and Projectile atm. Otherwise, Counterspell would become sideboard mainstay.

And I took a quick look at the wiki, is Smoke Bomb/Wall Of Illusion on a banlist ? These were cards I'd have rated as possible anti-wiz for wiz control.

 

Most cards with smoke bomb take a major power token. At least with my wizard, I'd rather have had that power token for cards that include WoW.

But you're right, at least for my build I should have used smoke at least in my sideboard as a wizard counter.

 

Ofc peasant control wizards are nothing like the original thing. No one said they were m8. But the point is as I made was. with the item pool available favors 3 darwf wizard teams a lot more than other combos(At least for our current meta understand). This is the reason why there were a post with 3 control wizards with peasant items from just shops dominating even normal match making. Also this is evident by the amount of 3 wizard combos present as fat as I thought.

For the 2nd point that was just an observation from your 2nd game. From what I saw that game his warrior did nothing whole game. I don't think his warrior even hit you once. Just that they absorbed soo many hits went back healed and came back, all the while his wizard slowly whittled down you. Anyway I was just pointing pointing out my opinion which is also might be subjective.

 

Yes, the deck is definitely thin on damage. Regular control wizards have more damage cards and SPR which takes away the ability to flee from lava, which ultimately translates into damage. I did drew some nice damage right before the last round but I also drew Fright so it didn't help much

I wish there were more staffs with melee damage and blocks. Those would help with the sideboard disadvantage. Unfortunately the only semi-good ones we have are not common or uncommon, plus I think they cost major tokens.

We are allowed to use common and uncommon items, and therefore any cards that those items have. All items of other rarity are banned.

Wall of Illusion is a bit weak imo since it lasts only one round. It's still awesome in some situations though. Smoke Bomb is much better and great when combined with heavy hitting close range melee characters. I think that Smoke Bomb is another good example of a card that becomes much more powerful than it should be because of the sideboard rule.

Have you actually played Peasant control wizards? I think you might be forming your opinion based on something you read on the forums. If you play Peasant wizards you will see that they do not have a big advantage like their non-Peasant big brother. They deal much less damage and are much less versatile.

And whether or not they have an advantage is not even relevant. The point is that I don't think event rules should try to balance the game because that is the job of game developers. Priest dominate meta? Lets have an event where Priests suck. Vibrant Pain dominates? Lets have an event where Vibrant Pain is banned. I don't think it should be like that. Limitations should affect all classes equally.

The warrior hit me at least twice and it hit hard. Letting the warrior hit me (and especially that one specific wizard) was the biggest mistake I made during that game and it most likely cost me the game. I could have walked away but I wanted the first go during the next round so I just stood there and took the stabbing, which I assumed wasn't going to be too bad. Had I known he was going to deal that much damage, I wouldn't have stood there like an idiot.

 

Lots of interesting thoughts. There are definitely items with smoke bomb that could be run competitively. Also, there is a staff with dancing cut and counterspell. I'm on my phone and don't want to respond super thoroughly to everything so I'll just make a list.

- it is not the job of the devs to balance community formats.
- sideboards are a tried and true way to make a meta healthier. This is not really up for debate. For any card that might seem too good in the board, there are likely many that are too good period, because the game doors not have exquisite balance. Two of the big offenders are winds of war and toughness.
- just because a card is too good, that doesn't mean it should be banned. I did not jump to ban runestone when initial playtest data suggested that 3dc would rule peasant. Similarly I am not eager to ban items with counterspell just because it performed well once. We need to be patient, critical; we need to look at a lot of data and also ask how the fun of the game is being affected.
- 3dc is definitely viable in peasant. SLG's experience may hinge on bad luck, bad match ups, bad maps, bad timers, bad deck building, bad play, or any number of other factors. We can't draw conclusions about the archetype from this one report.
- pearwood staff might be a trap.
- no matter what I say, I will probably be accused of seeking poetic justice for 3dc, so I'd like to remind people that I'm one of the few people who enjoys playing against 3dc. That said, most people hate it (much like playing against permission decks in magic) and I don't think it needs protection. While I think it is cool, if the end result of the natural progression of the meta somehow leaves it unplayable, that is OK. Not every imaginable build needs to be viable. Pure melee wizards for instance-we can imagine it but it sucks. We could make rules to make it viable (e.g. "only wizards can equip items with melee attacks") but that isn't our job. The two things that are my job as the guy in charge of peasant are to curate a ban list that keeps things fun and varied and to encourage more people to play. Right now there is no ban list. Earlier people wanted me to ban runestones. If side boarding weakens 3dc to the point where runestones don't need to be banned, then everyone profits: 3dc gets to play at a reasonable power level without losing its key item, while there are still checks and balances to keep it from running rampant. That to me seems ideal.

Anyway I've said a lot of things, and honestly it feels a bit like the people reading this thread who "get" sideboards will continue agreeing with me while those who don't will continue disagreeing heh. You can't make everyone happy all the time, I guess, you can only try to show your reasoning.

 

Sorry, one more thing.

This is a totally new format. We don't know what is good or bad in it. The tournament rules are not part of the format, nor an attempt to balance perceived issues in the format. The rules are just good rules for competitive play. What is good or bad will emerge as people play. Maybe some build people assumed were viable will be bad. Maybe some that people thought were weak will be fine. I'm sure that sideboarding benefits some builds more than others. That is fine, that is expected. It is also normal and expected that some cards be better sideboard cards then others. Many unplayable cards are fine in the board. I repeat that this is all new and we have to see where it goes. No one is out to get any build. My comments about balancing 3dc were based on things stexe and stormyknight have shown, not on my own desires to Nerf 3dc. Anyway we will watch and we will wait. Sideboards are good and peasant is good and I look forward to the growth of both.

 

i dont have sideboard and i agree with you flax

 

I think this 'test run' exposes a few things for consideration. Unlike Mtg formats (ProTour/FNM/THG/draft etc.), Card Hunter tourneys do not
a) have to be community run
b) require you to get air tickets/sponsor to fly to a location for a Grand Prix

I'm all for having variable tourney formats that rotate with each pvp map cycle. An icon in MP lobby where a simple click to join and the server checks for deck legitness would be so AWESOME. Having said that, Pro-Tour wasn't built in a day. We need more consistent 'test runs' before committing to code, methinks... Gah, I'm digressing... we need a post tourney in-depth feedback thread.

Damn, I think the wiki needs more work to support tourney formats...

 

Any update on when the third matches will be? You might want to put a link in the original post and comment on this when you do. That way we don't have to hunt it down.

 

Yes, of course. That's how I did this round and it's how I'll do every round
Sorry it's taking me a bit, making some tricky decisions.

 

My point was that if you as an organizer decide that control wizards are evil, and rules that put control wizards (or any wizard team in this case) at a disadvantage are somehow needed, then you are basically balancing the game based on your own personal views on how the game should be. You can of course do that, I'm just saying that I don't think it's fair in a community event like this one, especially since I don't think control wizards in Peasant format are as powerful as some people make it sound. For example while I did win my first match against TheShadowTitan (before the sideboard), we fought earlier with the same exact builds and I lost, even though I had a big map advantage. I think our builds are fairly even, with mine maybe being a bit less versatile. The imbalance kicks in after the sideboard, because my opponent can take Counterspells and I don't have an answer to that because my wizards cannot go melee. Like I've said a million times, this is not a case of me lacking sideboard skills, it's a question of Card Hunter simply not having items that I could use to defend those Counterspells and Smoke Bombs.

Nobody is debating that. I am not opposed to the idea of sideboards. I think they are fun and great for competitive gaming, and I've used them many times in other games. I am opposed to how sideboards are designed for this particular event, because they enable you change half of your cards which is not how sideboards are done in any other game or event I've ever been a part of. Instead of small adaptations, you can even rebuild whole characters. The current sideboard does not ruin this event nor am I asking for it to be changed immediately. I am just posting feedback because I think it would improve the next event.

I don't think anyone has said anything about banning Counterspell. I know I haven't. I haven't even thought about how it should be fixed because we are still at the denial stage where everything is apparently working as intended. If the problem ever gets acknowledged, then maybe we could start thinking about a fix. But if I had to suggest something right now, I think that drastically reducing the size of the sideboard would help a lot. I would also like to see a rule where each character has a limit on how many items can be changed, so that you cannot use your whole sideboard on one character and rebuild it into something completely different. That is how sideboards are supposed to work.

We can easily draw conclusion without playing a single match. I'm am repeating myself here but here we go. BM designed Counterspell so that it's highly situational. It can be awesome in some situations like against full wizard teams, but useless against full warrior teams. It's this situational nature that is basically the cost of using that powerful card. Risk and reward, you know? But with a sideboard that risk goes away, which basically changes the balance of the card and makes it too powerful when fighting wizards. Like I said, this is not something we need to test a 1000 times in order to fully understand it. It's very simple and logical when you really think about it. Now this itself might not be the end of the world, but when combined with the 10 item sideboard and limitless item swaps per character, it becomes an unfair situation for wizard teams.

First of all, where are the stats that say "most people hate it"? That is simply not true based on what I've seen.

People don't hate builds. What people hate is losing. If 3DC was a weak build, everyone would just love to fight it. "Yay, a free win!". But since 3DC (the regular one) is very strong, people don't like to play against it because chances are they will lose. This is just human nature. Sure they can try to explain in detail why they hate the build (cards, lame strategy, copycat, bla bla), but in reality it's the losing part that is the real problem. If we had some other popular build that was equally powerful, many people would not like to fight that either for the same exact reasons. But I think this is going off-topic because 3DC in Peasant is nothing like the real thing, and should therefore not be punished for what its bigger brother is doing.

Secondy, nobody is asking for "protection" here. I am simply trying to point out how the sideboard gives a big advantage to balanced teams over wizards teams. If this advantage exists, like I'm 99% sure it does, then the rules are flawed and need fixing, unless the goal is to nerf wizards.

It's pretty far from ideal to me.

While banning individual items seems to me like playing a developer (which I am totally against unless you ban powerful items from all classes), I would actually prefer if Runestone was banned if that also meant that sideboard was somehow fixed. In a situation like that, while people who played wizards couldn't take full advantage of traits, they could at least put up a good fight after the first match.

I find it borderline insulting for someone to suggest that I don't "get" sideboards. Sideboards are a very simple concept and I've had a lot of experience with them in tournaments similar to this one. Like I've said before, I am not opposed to the idea of sideboards, only the how it's done here.

At first we had a crazy unlimited sideboard which was luckily changed to 10 items after the discussion here. Problem is that the number 10 was just an arbitrary number that you quickly came up, and it's not based on math or anything like that. You said later that it's "slightly higher percentage than MtG's 25% sideboard" which was a major miscalculation and I posted the real numbers, which tell us that if we want the 25% chance, the sideboard switch should be limited to a maximum of 9 cards (not items) per character. Are we just going to ignore these numbers?

*Sigh*.. I am not talking about nerfing a build, I'm talking about nerfing full wizard teams. There is a big difference. Unless MB chances the fact that Wizards are forced to use tons of spells, they will always be at a disadvantage with a crazy 10 item sideboard. That is just common sense.

You said, and I quote: "checks and balances to keep it from running rampant". That is basically admitting that wizards suffer a disadvantage in this tournament, but it's ok because we have two people saying it's ok? I don't know if that could be seen as "out to get", but it looks pretty close to me. If all builds were truly equal, there wouldn't be any checks and balances, right? How about in the future we have the tournament first, and then see if certain builds are indeed overpowered, instead of going with random assumptions and hearsay.

Well, we could all just repeat that mantra over and over again, but I think it's better to look at things critically and discuss about the rules openly if we want to improve this event.

Looking at how things have been going so far, we can see that out of a total of 16 tournament matches, only 8 have actually happened. The other 8 where forfeits where one or even both participants never even showed up. This is not a case of "peasant is good", it's a serious problem that should be discussed about in order to fix it. Why are people not showing up? Is there a better way to make the matches happen? Why are people who have not showed up twice, still part of the tournament? I think that those are the questions we should be asking before round 3 even starts.

Sideboard situation is of course not a big deal for this particular event, but it could be if the problem is not acknowledged and nothing is done to fix it, which according to what I'm reading, seems to be the current plan.

This is the first time this tournament happens and it's natural that there will be tons of issues because it's impossible to predict everything that will happen. Instead of pretending everything is perfect, why not have open discussions about the rules and slowly start to design the rules for the next event? Or is that going to be a one-man (or inner circle) process where the community is basically left out? I'm fine with either way but I'd like to know if me posting feedback is pointless or not.

If feedback is wanted, is it possible to get a dedicated topic for Peasant feedback so that we can talk about these issues, post new ideas, and maybe even have polls about the rule changes?

 

Not what I am doing.

You’re right. I made assumptions of desire based on the things you said about it.

The risk is not worth the reward in a sideboardless format, IMO, so Counterspell is only a sideboard card in my book. The devs might not have designed it as a “sideboard card” if they weren’t thinking about sideboards, but given that Garfield and Elias were working with them it’s extremely likely that they designed Counterspell as [the kind of hate card that, in MtG, would have been explicitly designed for the sideboard].

Fair, permission doesn’t feel like permission when it loses, so maybe people only hate losing to permission. But there are builds people mind losing against less. This is based on anecdotal data, for sure. But people disproportionately dislike losing against some things (like Whirlwind and, in my experience, 3DC).

I think that’s probably a false dichotomy. There could be other reasons—like not caring whether or not wizards get nerfed, and wanting to see what actually happens to the meta.

I don’t know what “playing a developer” means, but obviously if you’re banning something it’s because you’re trying to fix an imbalance or a gameplay problem. Nerfing evenly across the board would rarely fix a balance issue.

I’m sorry. Many of your comments criticizing the things that the sideboards enable to me sound exactly like things I’ve heard people say when praising sideboards, so to me it definitely looks like there’s some kind of disconnect. That’s where I was coming from, as opposed to coming from a place where I’m fundamentally right and you’re fundamentally wrong or something. I appreciate that you understand sideboards and have worked with them in the past, but my understanding of them seems to be different from yours, based on the gap in our expectations for them.

My “major miscalculation” was based on 10 nonweapon items, which would be a total of 30 cards/108, just over 25%. Not counting weapons was indeed an oversight when I gave that figure. “10 items” however, while arbitrary (any number would have been arbitrary), was not totally random. It’s one of the easiest numbers for people to keep in mind and work with, it hit the right % when dealing with nonweapon items, and it’s conceptually simple—simpler to say “X items” than “X cards,” because if we say “X cards” suddenly we’re asking the contestants to do arithmetic to determine what combination of weapon and nonweapon items they can have in the board. A card-based sideboard would be better for guaranteeing that sideboards are X% of a player’s deck, but I think it’d make the sideboard process way too complicated. Players will be looking for ways to swap items with similar cards on them while changing fewer than 3 cards (e.g. Citrine Amulet for Malachite Orb), and suddenly sideboards would balloon.

Another reason to go with an item-based approach, and to make it fairly loose, is the token system. The token system is fairly restrictive, and if I want to board in, say, a minor token robe to replace my Robe of Lightness then I need to be able to board out a minor token arcane item, for instance.

There will be a difference once there is a full wizard build that isn’t 3DC. Until then, distinction is splitting hairs IMHO.

You’re quoting my comments out of their context, which was public pressure. People wanted me to do something because they perceived a problem. If that thing is a problem, and it can be fixed without me doing anything, yay. That is what I was saying. I don’t know that it’s a problem and I don’t know if it’s being overcorrected for. I am not out to get anything or anyone

That is… precisely what is happening?

You make it sound like all I’m doing is praising myself. I’ve been making rule changes and incorporating feedback this entire time. I’ve been acknowledging the flaws in the test run and discussing ways to improve in the future. I’ve opened topics for discussing rules changes. I made a poll about timers and kibitzing. I have asked for community input and I have received community input and I am using community input. So maybe, rather than this being an issue of me not wanting to make things better, it’s an issue of me not believing that the problem you want fixed needs fixing. And maybe that is a tempocontextual disbelief, and maybe I’ll see that you’re right once we’ve had more matches. But I think it’s honestly a little mean to suggest that just because I (and others) disagree with you regarding this issue, I’m against looking for ways to improve the tournament.

I’ve been asking those questions.

1) The answer to the first, I think, boils down to lack of accountability. An entry fee would fix this.
2) Probably! You and others have made suggestions and I am currently thinking about how best to implement one or more of those suggestions.
3) Only one person has forfeited twice, and he actually showed up to one of his matches but couldn’t log in lol. There is functionally little difference between keeping him in the tournament and kicking him out, assuming that he will miss all his matches, but there’s always the chance that some Card Hunter will get played so I don’t know.

No one is pretending that everything is perfect. We are having an open discussion. There is no inner circle, though obviously the TD of a given event has the ability (and need) to make judgment calls. Your feedback isn’t pointless. There is a dedicated topic for feedback. http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/peasant-tournament-rules-discussion.4860/

The “mantra” isn’t so much that as it is a reminder of our premise. It’s good to return to premises when bogged down in a debate, it can clear perspective and bring people back to the same table.

Shifting Gears Slightly

I’m going to try to outline my understanding of your sideboarding complaint.

1) Some cards are too good in the sideboard against some builds.
2) Because sideboards can be fairly large, it is too easy to bring those cards in.
3) If sideboards were super constrictive, this would be less of an issue.

Is this correct?

By the way, either I missed it, or you never responded to my contention that Counterspell is, at statistically improbable best, a 6x 2-for-1 in a 1/1/1 build that compares neutrally to many maindeckable 2-for-1s in 3DC (Winds of War, Toughness, etc.). I mention this because I am not ready to grant you #1. Something to think about some more.


As always I appreciate your thorough dedication to feedback, SLG. I hope that you keep it up, despite what you may take away from this particular debate.

 

Round 3 pairings are up.

Please read the instructions in the linked thread and check your inboxes.

 

Those posts were a bit tl;dr for me, but my take away is this:

3DC isn't hated because it wins. It is hated because it wins due to removing control and forcing inaction -- that means the opponent has cards to use but can not use them which is frustrating. It is a similar problem to WW/WWE and FS (and other cards too). Both of which undermine a large part of the game (line of sight, movement, and positioning).

The 10 minute time limit isn't that problematic with 3DC. The only problem I see is if you're the first player then you have to waste time reading your cards and formulating a strategy while the enemy has a chance to study their cards while your timer ticks. That's more a problem with the game design and not the tournament.

Sideboards can be problematic for any "single strategy build" and not just 3DC. Counterspell stops 3DC... but wouldn't a fully Parry deck stop a 3 Warrior team? Or a full Purge deck stop a Imp Nimbus deck? Relying on a single thing is always going to be shutdown by sideboards, it isn't *just* a problem with 3DC. That's the point of a sideboard: to counter a single gimmick-based strategy.

 

I read this whole thread except for a couple of the long ones at the end.
Extra opinions were asked for:

I think sideboards add to the tactical and strategic depth of a game such as this, and are a Good Thing.
I have no opinion on sideboard size in the current tournament due to my inexperience in this format.

My main point is about Counterspells in sideboards: I don't think they're so numerous, and destructive to wizards per se that having a sideboard is breaking the viability of a whole class. Running 1 or 2 wizards instead with a different aim (to control elements of the game, as opposed to total opponent shutdown) is something we're trying to encourage the MP metagame to head towards, because 3DC is often unfun to play against. If this sideboarding of counterspells is meaning you should just play fewer wizards, with a different emphasis, surely that is healthy and what we are going for in other domains?!
People also don't run 3 warriors / 3 priests much because of a lack of tactical options. Getting closer to balance, by rendering powerful strategies as good but not dominant, is a desirable goal. I currently think this is fine, and it should encourage fewer people to run dwarf wizard control. And then, when fewer run it, perhaps sideboards will be less packed with counterspells so it becomes a viable _part_ of the meta again, rather than dominating it. Perhaps the sideboard size could be reduced slightly if this crystallises as a problem, but there should be an ideal sideboard size where enough counters can be brought in to *balance* the builds, so 3DC is neither an auto-win or an auto-lose, and is played a moderate amount as opposed to being a dominant strategy. Sideboard size tweaking should solve this whole issue.

Thanks for reading.

 

If you know the rules, and you think 3DC cannot compete with startegies used to counter it using sideboards - DO NOT USE 3DC BUILD! That simple. If we would not see 3DC in tournament at all, then it might be valid to say, that this build is not good with current rules. But when you decide, that you can compete with other teams using countermeasures, then you cannot blame the rules! It just makes no sense.