imrai said:
If you think Red Deck Wins (or aggro in general) doesn't require thought to win, you are not fit to comment on the subject to be honest. Some of the smartest players that have ever touched those intricately inked pieces of card stock have been aggro players playing good decks and they have lost tournaments with those decks because against a control deck, you can make one mistake and be down 3, 4, even 5 cards if you aren't spot on with your reads to the point of basically knowing what's in their hand without seeing it.
Control has spells that stall the game, wipe the board, regain card advantage, and stabilize from a losing position. Aggro has to invest resources to the board (usually spending its card advantage and life total as the main resources) and has few to zero ways to regain these in most cases (which is why decks like legacy Aggro Loam that actually do have 'virtual' card advantage engines are so powerful, but very few of those exist). In other words, one wrong move by even the smartest aggro player can spell disaster. Put all your dudes on the board and just turn them sideways mindlessly? You're going to get rekt.
tl;dr; you're looking at everything you're talking about from the wrong context; the tripping article, magic, etc;
Also, look up manaless dredge, storm, legacy ravager affinity, ad nauseum tendrils, if you want to see decks that are consistent to the point of competitive legacy viability with between zero and 16 lands.
After reading your post, you and I are on completely different subjects (other than the whole "It's Magic"), so let's start over here.
First, my "you don't have to think too hard to win" is more related to a drafting or sealed format (which is 40 cards, forgot to mention that, and also luck-based, since you could be sitting next to a draft idiot or pull 6 genius sealed packs) which means if you have actual red-deck wins (especially if it was Dark Ascension, Hellrider so good), then you could put stuff down, turn it sideways, and win games, because that deck was fairly solid (red/green deck wins too). It can (but not often) relate to perfect hands in standard with an aggressive deck (1 drop 2 drop 3 drop 4 drop 3 lands, or something like that), especially if your opponent doesn't do anything but play a land for the first two or three turns [yeah they're holding counter or burn or destroy in blue/red/black, but if they're dropping green lands...], since the only "cheap" board wipes in those formats (as of now) are 4 mana and sorceries [and Anger of the Gods] (Alchemist's Refuge brings it up to 6 mana, which is not helpful against aggressive decks really, and that was in Avacyn Restored, not the current block). There are times where when each player plays their hand perfectly, one will be destroyed, because they should've taken a mulligan or got unlucky draws - it happens.
My "you need like 20-24 land" was for Standard, in the current format (and I guess in the Innistrad/RtR block - not sure how Mirrodin/Innistrad worked). If you can send me a Standard deck list that is strong, wins a lot of events/FNM/whatever (it's strong in practice too), and runs 13-15 land, by all means, but I'm seriously doubting you'll find it. There just aren't enough other good mana producers in the format that mean you can run so little land (mono-green ramp MIGHT pull it off I suppose, but I don't think that's the greatest strategy - as you pointed out for aggressive decks, a single board wipe and it's very difficult to come back).
I run a Standard Deck Maze's End (and not Turbo Fog, that deck is kind of silly and not very strong), so I definitely know about thinking about how to win games, and that most games can't be breezed through. I don't run aggressive decks (usually) because I don't think they're usually the best bet in formats with the kinds of control options that are out there, but I will say that Standard Aggressive Decks do take a lot of thought, both in building them and in deciding how to allocate precious removal spells (they usually have a few, but they are there), and I imagine Legacy aggressive decks are very difficult to run, because of how much awareness of all the cards that exist are to know what an opponent will do.
I've seen low-land decks before, but again, only in Legacy, which I wasn't aware TOGOpuff was referencing. My mistake, and I apologize.
If you're still thinking I have no right to talk about MtG, we can probably discuss this in a private thread, since this thread is about a guy whining that tripping isn't an in-game mechanic, not a discussion of the game of Magic. I will say that I politely disagree in the context of Standard and Limited formats (but I would not presume to know enough about Legacy or Modern to discuss those formats in depth, since I do not attempt to play in either of them). The remark "sometimes without much thought" again was referencing Standard/Limited when your opponent keeps a bad hand or you simply hold all the answers at all the right times, which I have seen before [and also implies you also often need to think things through].
I will say that I think my context of the article was accurate, or else I'd like further clarification of what I'm missing - he's trying to say that random chance makes a game good, and that competitive video games are bad - I don't think he's considered how this would act in other games (tripping into an infinite in UMvC 3) or that people want the game to be competitive (I agree that his examples are rather laughable), where they can control their character with a large amount of efficiency and pit mind against mind, character against character, without allowing for someone to win because the opponent tripped into KO moves 3/4 times while one did not, meaning the opponent had to set up the 2/3 KOs they did achieve.
I find his solution about altering trip rate amusing, because it would give both sides what they wanted, but I don't think the side that wants random tripping is very large.
