The reason I didn't get into 4CM modern is that I simply do not have the time or energy to dedicate to two separate mini Magic games. That is probably true of other players as well.

That's nonsense and you know it. 3CM was never in MG after all in here.
And still the 2nd thread was pretty active when the first closed, because it was a new thread. Which kinda proves my earlier point.

@Jack: Would you have problems with a compromise involving editing the magic the gathering general description to allow for magic the gathering posting games? Just curious, not actually proposing this.

@Scarlet: If you started with the assumption that putting 3cm into posting games actually does destroy its activity, would you support moving it back to 3cm? It is only a hypothetical, i am aware that you do not remotely believe that the location of 3cm is the cause for its decrease in activity.

No.

I was not here when it started, but I was told that 3cm was originally made in general, then you forced it to go to PbP. I don't have the exact timeline, though, but I know that both Aaargh and Jim have expressed that they think it belongs in General so I can't imagine why it wouldn't have been made there.

also, for a rather unambiguous sample, let's look at the CCG. a reasonable measure of activity is how long it takes to run through a page. so let's look at the first and last dates on the last 10 pages.

243: August 22nd-August 25th (3 days)
244: August 25th-August 27th (2 days)
245: August 27th-September 2nd (6 days)
246: September 4th-September 8th (4 days)
247: September 8th-Semptember 14th (6 days)
248: September 15th-September 17th (2 days)
249: September 17th-October 6th (19 days)
250: October 7th-October 14th (7 days)
251: October 14th-October 26th (12 days)
252: October 26th-Present (86 days and counting)

the announcement that the thread was moving was made on November 1st. that announcement is still on the most recent page.

actually, let's look at that. given that pages are 20 posts each, we can do a pretty good average speed analysis before and after the move. using this same data sample, we can go from August 22nd to November 1st, which is 71 days. in that time we had 184 posts, or on average about 2.6 per day, with the page cycling ever 6.8 days. then, after the move and to today, there have been 80 days and 15 posts. that's less than one post every five days. this is an insanely clear demarcation line leaving no possible alternate explanation. I don't know how you can possibly look at that data and argue that the location did not kill the card chain game, and given that it clearly did that, I don't know how you can argue that similar problems wouldn't affect other games like 3cm.

the last round on the 1st thread had 6 entries. the first round on the 2nd thread had 9 entries. that's a whole 3 players it gained. note that the first round of the first thread had 13 entries, higher than either number, or really any player base we've seen in any round since to my knowledge. 3cm has been dying since the beginning, and the new thread effect was a small blip on that downward decline.

If it happened, it was within a matter of days and would be no different from them moving a "let's discuss netflix recommendations" thread over to the off topic room from Magic General.

The mods have always said it should be where it is right now. People just think it should be in Magic General because the old forum didn't have as many sections as we do and that was the place it ended up on the mothership because of this.

so when Rush joined the forum, it took him, an avid 3cmer, months to realize we had it. this is because it was not in a place he looked. being in General, even for a couple days, is a huge advertising boost, and likely accounts for the relatively high number of entrants in that first round.

if that's what you think we've been arguing then please just go away.

I'm okay with 3CM being moved back into Magic General at this point because I would rather have people posting even if it's slightly off topic. It's still related to Magic anyway. Let's give it a go in General because if the thread dies, it wasn't meant to be anyway. I don't know if 3cm would be better off with a fresh start or moving the thread over. But let's be flexible and try different things.

Razor didn't you boycott the game and urge others to do so in the hopes of it dying,so you could say see i told you so? or was it just to boycott it cuz of it's location?

He said he wasn't going to play it until it got moved at some point.

Close enough lol

What is your stake in all this, Jack? What do you gain?

I am sorry, the site went to 503 error heck before I could finish:





























I do not know if they spread the word or not.

After that, it's about 10 pages that are completely unintelligible to someone of my skill level with like 3 posts at the end about starting a new round.


To be blunt, it's hard to penetrate the thread for someone who doesn't know the format. There's quite the barrier to entry here, and there seem to be quite a few other reasons that the thread is having trouble as well. Some of them being the fact that at least one person has quit out of protest with the direct intent that the thread would die and so far out of all the suggestions made the only one that is still being discussed at length on the public forum is this thread.



Where the **** is this primer I keep hearing about?

I stopped playing because it wasn't fun with such a small player base. I announced it in the hopes that others who were hanging on because it was there but would rather see it have actual participation would do the same, because our tenacity was giving Scarlet the ability to facetiously claim that there was activity despite a clear lack of new players.

Well, one problem with that self-fulfilling prophecy is:



There are a few others, but deciding to kill 3cm so you can get it moved to magic general is .... well that implies some other things could have been done there.

BTW, I found the primer. It's on page 2 of Magic General and has been 2 and a half months since it has seen a single post. Granted the entire primer thing is stupid and shouldn't be a thing, but it's a stupid thing they said you could do and no one has bothered to post in it more than 3 times. It sounds like the move to Magic General, again, is all your eggs in one basket.

I don't know how your recruiting from other sites has gone other than the snippets I've posted, because I can't tell that stuff, but not much public stuff has been said about it. You aren't recruiting from this site either.

IN addition, I've been trying to read the 3cm thread and it's gotten really dense already. Isn't this a little complex just to assume people in Magic General will go "ooh squirrel" and sign up?

Basically, IS the plan just to move it to Magic General and that's suddenly going to save the thing?

yes, I could've kept at an activity I didn't enjoy just for the possibility that maybe, somewhere down the road, it might pick up and actually be fun again in ways I was unaware were about to happen, but considering that nothing seems to have come of that anyway, I don't see how it's relevant.

Hi, everybody. I'm the guy who currently runs 3CM, and I finally decided I have some things worth posting in this thread.

First off, the primer is here. It's in Magic General, but it's buried on the second page because the idea of posting there once a week to say "hey, don't forget 3CM exists" frankly feels silly. It's also linked near the top of the actual 3CM thread, in case someone somehow ends up there without already knowing what 3CM is.

Now, the real reason I came to post here is to say that I am starting a new season, hopefully this weekend. So if you're looking for data about the effects of starting a new thread, just wait and watch for a couple of weeks, and you'll have it, for better or for worse.

Um....... after spending most of the last two hours trying to figure out how to do this game and how to join, I have decided the barrier to entry for people who have not played this before is high enough that I am hopelessly confused at this point in time. Thus, I have an honest suggestion here.

Make it two or three separate threads.

1) Vanilla 3CM
2) Alternate Formats
3) Possibly a thread for questions and in-depth information

You guys may be used to it, but bluntly put I need to play multiple games of vanilla 3CM in a row before I would ever even consider trying the alternate formats, just so I could get the hang of the game. Yet, when I go there right now, I'm stuck looking at the format voting poll for Round 43? No offense, but that's a little scary right there.

3) A thread to post and get some questions answered. Some extension of the primer so that people can learn a little bit of your meta, why some cards are currently banned, why cards were banned in the past, and basically just ask any questions they might have about 3CM in general. Basically, something to look at before jumping in what, at this point in time, looks like a pretty **** intimidating shark tank here.

Nobody replied to this and kept on having the fight as thought there was a fight to be fought:



Huzzah! Thanks, Slobad!




Huzzah #2! I assume my trophy is at the engravers as we speak?

Just wanted to make sure you saw the above quote, so you know to launch the new season in General.




It is a high barrier to entry, just like one's first GP (which I used a flimsy excuse to back out of last fall) or one's first FNM or pre-release. Everything looks scarier before you try it the first time. Hell, I've only just overcome my trepidation about joining the MTGS big league, that makes this board's game look positively house league. I was among those who floated the concept of a reset in the round 20s but at the time, it was a concern that the disruption could be more destructive than the fresh start. While we'll never know if it really would have been, we do know that status quo didn't work. Still unclear if a reboot at that time would have actually thrived.



It may sound strange, but in fact alt rounds are more new-player-friendly than vanilla. In vanilla, there's a whole lot of tacit knowledge in the loooong-existing meta that only slightly changes with the banlist. There will be a distinct advantage to the players who know all the expected threats because they've seen it all before. An interesting alt round rule puts players on a more level footing because they're all working with an unknown meta. When I was a fledgling at these games I had far more success with alt rounds than vanilla because of this - at alt, I might bring a viable deck they never saw coming. In vanilla, if a deck was truly viable, odds are they've seen a flavor of it before, unless it involves a brand-new just-released card.



I agree that an info and discussion thread would be of value. A few people (myself included) have tried writing more detailed primers but never actually reached a publishable state - there's an inherent problem that there's actually so much information one could present, one reaches the point where the wall of text becomes oppressive before the point at which the writer is satisfied that there are no glaring omissions.

When things go live this weekend I will try to have a summary of why the 'usual suspects' are initially banned (CJ, send me your planned initial banlist so I can do some prework on this; I expect it'll be pretty close to the current alt banlist?). As for later bans though - in the most recent season, the banlist mutated simply because top and bottom finishers were allowed to choose new bans and unbans as part of the keeping the meta from being entirely static - but there was no 'reasoning' provided that would make sense to new players any more than "That card was in a top deck once, it was banned because a low finisher had to choose a card from that deck to ban, and nobody's gotten around to using their unban privilege on it yet".

This is all very constructive, and I look forward to fielding any further questions about the format. After all, by the time this upcoming season launches, I will be the reigning champion.