User:Faceless Wanderer

Faceless Wanderer is a very restless individual, always on the move both mentally and physically. He has a rebelious streak and a provokative way of doing things mostly because he tries to use Evolution as a tool for improvement everywhere he can, even in his privatelife.

Evolution, along with simulations play a big role in his life and mtg is something that can be squeezed in between those two factors.

The life of faceless wanderer

Faceless wanderer wants you to understand him, so to make that possible he will go into details about his life.

When he get's some time to write in.

Faceless Wanderer's ongoing projects

Faceless wanderer always have many projects going on, and usually no time in which to work on them. Despite the lack of time he tries to do it all at the same time, often resulting in vague semi-projects to be worked on some day.

Anti-power campaign

Faceless wanderer is convinced that tournament valid decks can be buildt by commoncards alone, and still be able to beat mtg environments as Vintage and Legacy. This campaign is where Faceless Wanderer is currently focussing his energy, but it is worked on simultaniously with his simulations, because he uses Mana Curve to enforce the concept. Faceless Wanderer is also working heavily on a deep analysis of the processes involved in tournaments. (which he means are very flawed). He has 8 of the power 9, but never uses them. He simply have them to prevent another person from owning them. He prefers to use skills instead of money and wants to turn Building on a Budget into a solid strategy/philosophy for any Scrub.

Project Silhana:

This is an updated version (V.5.0) of the "silhana deck", an all common deck designed to take out the top decks at legacy. It is able to compete very well against goblin, faerie stompy, and most rogue decks.

• 11 island
• 11 forest

• 4 Sigil of Sleep
• 2 Flying Men
• 4 Looter Il-Kor
• 2 Ninja of the Deep Hours
• 4 Mistblade Nishobi
• 3 Neurok spy

• 4 Treetop Scout
• 2 Scryb Sprite
• 4 Silhana Ledgewalker
• 2 Mire Boa
• 4 Nullmage Advocate
• 3 Treetop Rangers

Saving the world

Faceless Wanderer does want to save the world, and even have some plans for how to do that, but given the current design of those plans, and his luck, the world is better of if it continues as it allways have.

Simulations

Faceless Wanderer is always working on a lot of different simulations. He uses a C64-Emulator since he only ever learned to program on a C64. He has finnished creating a manalyzer (That tests how fast a manacurve using ability-less creatures & lands can kill a Goldfish) and a simulator that creates and register manacurves by use of evolution(By use of this he has collected more than 300 manacurves that kills turn 5 in about 7000 games out of 10.000. He is also finetuning a simulator that creates manacurves using both permanents and non-permanents. He is currently working on a manalyzer able to test decks with 1-3 colors in it (not counting artisfacts), as well as a program that will use evolution to create 3 colored manacurves.

"Trolling" on the Salwiki

Faceless Wanderers main strength is an extensive understanding and knowledge on Magic Theory, which is troubling some of his pages that may be considered VERY theoretical. He does his best to give them equal focus, but those presently surviving deletion will be worked on (slowly, but) steadily. For a thrill see the corpse of wickeddarkman, Faceless Wanderers former page: User talk:Wickeddarkman

Ranking: as of 1st of june 2007

Magic Composite (as of 2007-06-04) 1517 rating 18 matches 3 events

 164065  All 63206  Europe 671  Denmark  

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Constructed (as of 2007-06-04) 1522 rating 8 matches 1 events

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Eternal (as of 2007-06-04) 1458 rating 65 matches 12 events

 21643  All 11267  Europe 242  Denmark  

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Limited (as of 2007-06-04) 1513 rating 10 matches 2 events

 119825  All 47529  Europe 557  Denmark  
For invitations and/or byes (as of 2006-09-04)  

1513 rating 10 matches 2 events

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Pro Points Lifetime (as of 2007-06-04) 0 points 8 matches 1 events

 3687  All 1628  Europe 49  Denmark

Evolution in magic

Magic the gathering is subject to evolution!

Evolution will always occur when three simple things are present.

• The subjects of evolution must be able to be reproduced, either by itself or outside forces!
• The reproduction of those subjects must be able to deviate from the original! (Being able to mutate...)
• The subjects must be in competition with other similare subjects! (also called a fitness criteria or natural selection as in Darwinism)

Psychological impact:

Even though magic is a game, it is able to influence players into thinking in certain patterns regarding the game. Most people do not realise it but such thought-patterns are also subject to evolution. The way that human knowledge about almost any aspect of magic is spread is controlled by how Memeticism in magic works. The game can spread into endless directions because human concepts are generally fluent and often changes. For a deeper understanding of the psychological impact read some of the Philosophical Aspects.

Physical evolution:

Take a look at the card Chaos Orb and dance of Many Ask yourself exactly what may be used as a token! (A coin?, a waterballoon?, your pet hamster?) The game has an impact on the real world, different cards have their own way of influencing us. It may be a game, but it alters the way that people think, and interact. The patterns emerging from these interactions are also changeable by evolutionary forces.

Physical things affect the game, and in return the game shapes the world for better and for worse.

Aspects affected by evolution:

everything which can be placed within the three rules of evolution may become an aspect listed here, but it would be practical to list only the most important aspects of the game.

Carddesign:(Unconfirmed Speculation)

Some concepts just have a rigth feeling about them and appeals to many people. R&D is probably tasked to find as many of these appealing concepts as possible (Perhaps this is reflected in their newest work on increasing the amount of slivers?) Once an idea has been put on a physical card and distributed to the playing field R&D will be able to see the impact of their work. They use processes that are almost directly reflecting evolution. Their creation of the Timeshifted cards Planar Chaos (set) were nothing but certain cards with an added mutation (change in color). The information flow from players is able to impact on where R&D will focus their future work, if a new concept becomes populare/unpopulare they will be able to make changes in what they have already prepaired for years ahead in time. This process may be damaging to a few card concepts that players initially dislike because of a Bandwagon effect but in general cards will gain an increased complexity that will improve on the game. Another aspect of carddesigning has been rumors about the increase of "solution" cards within each released set. If a card causes trouble in the metagame it will either get banned or cards will be released in the next set that seems to dampen the effect of that card. However such actions may be in vain because of the processes of evolution at work in the Metagame.

Deckbuilding (contains speculation):

Deckbuilding is one area in magic where evolution seems to have stopped. During early stages of magic many independent sources were working on different recepies on how to build a perfect deck. But because magic has become such a competetive game strategies on deckbuilding has de-evolved and people have generally fallen to the use of net-decking or establishing their own costummade methods of deckbuilding that cannot be shared with others because parts of that construction is tuned in on the individual and his/her thougthprocesses. From an evolutionary point of view evolution still takes progress in both situations. When netdecking occurs their users sometimes add a few personal cards to the mix, and during tournaments these small changes may be the difference between winning and losing. The best changes survives to be net-decked again and the process restarts tuning the deck for each generation into something more and more complex. People knows that the deck is winning. Why bother figuring out why! Just as long as it keeps on winning! The rogue deck evolution is far more obscure. A huge amount of magicplayers focus on the interaction between new and old cards, and sometimes someone get lucky and create a new decktype that manages to win. Because it is a winning deck and unknown it immediatelly gains focus by the main netdecking community. The ammount of players starting to play the deck adding individual touches will speed the evolution of the deck at an extreme rate, and suddenly before the non netdecking population learns about it a new decktype has evolved.

Metagame (Contains speculation):

The metagame is naturally one of the places in magic that sees evolution the most. It is influenced by many factors which combined leads to a very harsh environment for any new decktype, but since evolution works best in a stressed environment new decktypes evolve explosively once they have a breakthrough! The many factors involved in the metagame have their own effect on evolution.

Availability:

Not all cards are as available as others. Some because of the rarity system, others because of playability and a few cards has an overall aura that makes some people collect them in massive amounts. The spread of a certain decktype depends on how difficult it is to collect all parts of the deck. There are two strategies available Join them or beat them. If all cards are easy to get most people will join the groups using the deck, and it will evolve faster. If the cards are hard to get only a few people will be playing with it and the deck evolves at a very slow rate. The speed of evolution depends on the amount of mutations within a deck. If many people play a deck there is a higher chance of someone to discover a new usefull variant of the deck. This means that if parts of the deck are easy to replace in various areas the deck is highly mutable and evolution within that deck will be even faster than the ordinary deck. The Card Impact of each card in a deck is the defining variable of how fast a deck may evolve. Generally it can be said that the fewer cards in the deck that form it's purpose the higher it's mutation rate will be. Sometimes a single playset may even act like a single deck where the rest of the cards have just been added to increase the use of that card. Umezawa's Jitte is currently in such a position and has lead to several decktypes alone.

Lokal variety:

The availability affects the lokal variety of decks. Players playing in a gamestore usually have the necessary cards (Professional decks)(depending on their economical situation!) while players mostly playing at home often play with casual decks. It is unknown just how much availability affects this segregation and if it has caused the rift that seems to be growing between Pro and casual players. The main detail to fokus on is that no matter where people play, these area's have different cardpools/deckpools and the popularity of certain decktypes may flourish in some countries while other countries prefer another type of magic. There is also the aspect of the human genepool to consider, and the reasons of why certain decks are prefered by specific countries may be linked to their overall genetic braindesign.

Network information:

Personal networks or the internet are sources of information that affects what kind of decks a person migth start building. Once a person experiences a certain decktype the person is likelly to attempt to build something similar or build/refine a deck so it may resist the newly experienced deck. The processes involved in this can be learned in Memeticism in magic but the effect of learning new deck concepts is clashing together in a million minds, and sometimes some of these minds have the ability to refine the concept of a certain deck and bring it to an evolutionary jump making it populare enough to become a known decktype. On a basic level the fate of a given deck/card becomes the sum of all good or bad experiences learned by all players as a whole. However lokal variety may deviate and in some play area's a deck may have some sort of legendary status (this especially happens in small playgroups consisting of players who know each other well). One thing that affects the network between players is when the concepts/abilities of a card gains to public focus. Mtg information sources will always focus on what players deem as important even though that kind of focus often leads to a Bandwagon effect.

Evolved human behavior: How have magic impacted humans? What kind of actions may evolve from this?

Combinations: How does one strategy become favored over another?

card-death: Litterally becomming compost! how will this affect the game?

Combined Philosophical and physical evolution:

Some aspects cannot be held alone, but is a mix of the two areas.