I played Reid Duke in a fun match (not competitive) at GP and he did the same routine he does during a pro match. Watch him in a tournament and he looks fully away when shuffling, shuffles his opponents deck and looks completely the opposite direction and was very clearly conscious of any glancing or shuffling benefit he might get. It's awesome to know that he and many other pros perfectly show how to respect the game and act properly.
That's the same thing I do and I picked it up from players like him and LSV. If you aren't trying to cheat you feel really bad about any potential unfair information much less doing any ridiculous shuffling techniques.
Reminder that it's perfectly fine to call a judge and just ask if they can watch your opponent while they shuffle. This usually scares the cheating right out of them.
In reality, that's as close as saying "I think my opponent is cheating" so, don't bother with the veiled attempt at subterfuge, just tell the judge "I think my opponent is cheating".
Simply being a judge doesn't make them a paragon of fairness and justice. The certification interviews aren't really conducted by trained psychologists who could identify these things, it's easy to just pretend to be a normal person.
For real if this guy needs to set their top 10 cards to win a game they must be one of the worst magic players in existence. crazy part is he could have gotten away with cheating one back breaking sideboard card into his hand and he does this.
Just so people have an idea of how many shuffles needed to sufficiently randomize a deck, the standard 52 card deck used for games like Poker needs 7 riffle shuffles to be considered sufficiently randomized (mashing is effectively the same for sleeved cards). For a 60 card Magic deck, you should do around 7-8, and a 100 card deck should be around 8-9. If done well, after these amounts of shuffles, there shouldn't be any clumping from the previous game. A couple more than these can technically make things more random, but it's not really noticeable.
@lietz13 exactly, no one is riffle shuffling a commander deck and most people wouldn't dream of doing that to their mtg cards in general. I would like to know how random the typical mtg shuffles their decks. It especially gets more apparent in commander where you tend to ramp out a lot more lands and I do have serious doubts about the ability to thoroughly shuffle a pile of 20+ lands from the bottom of a deck to a random distribution throughout the deck.
@@Thunderkeg I've got big enough hands to mash shuffle a 100 card deck well. I can even riffle shuffle 2 playing card decks for Canasta (108 cards; jokers included), though it is a little stiff. If you are shuffling well, then your cards are getting split into lots of groups of 1-3 cards each time, so that group of 20+ you are worried about turns into roughly half as many groups of 1-3 cards separated by similar groups of other cards from your deck, and they quickly get separated further and further from there. If you are having trouble mashing 100 cards, an alternative method I can suggest is splitting the entire deck into 2-3 piles (they don't need to be equal amounts), and shuffling those 2-3 times each. Then, take roughly half off of each of them and put them on piles they didn't come from (for example, half of pile 1 goes to pile 2, half of pile 2 goes to pile 3, half of pile 3 goes to pile 1; this is to imitate the separation of cards that would normally happen), and then shuffling the newly made piles 2-3 times. Repeat this process 1-2 more times, then shuffle them all together 1-2 times. It's not perfect, and it will take a little longer, but it is far easier to manage and will randomize things reasonably well.
@@mikepower8999 In order to shuffle the cards well, card shuffling machines end up being kind of rough and can damage the cards. It's fine for playing cards since they are cheaply replaceable, but not so good for collectible cards that can end up being quite expensive.
For clarity's sake, Randomization will approach uniform distribution as instances of randomization increase, but any given instance is not guaranteed to be uniform.
@@ProtagonistOfficial Because more clarity is always good, in that case how many times you shuffle your deck during a tournament will be all of your instances, and your starting hand every game is a single instance, so if you count the distribution/mana correlation from every hand in the tournament, it will be balanced, but not necessarily every hand
@@xaropevic7918 because even more clarity is better, the hand isn't the single instance, it's the deck after a true randomization. The hand is just the cards you see first. So in reality in a 9 round tournament, with no mulligans and each match goes to 3 rounds you get 27 instances.
At the last pre release I went to I remember having to tell someone they couldn't mana weave between games and they're responce was "why I don't want to draw to many lands or not enough" and while I understood why they did it still unfortunately not allowed.
This is something I do by accident. I often sort and look through my deck (I *LOVE* MTG art) if I end up getting stuck with a bye round, So my lands get clumped and sorted.
in between games I just pick up all the cards from my play field and graveyard into one pile, then I take all my lands in another pile, and I mash shuffle them together. then I take that stack and mash shuffle it into the rest of my library and then continue shuffling as normal. Would you consider that cheating? I'm trying to understand where people draw the line here because I don't care if people mana weave as long as they sufficiently shuffle their deck afterward.
@@xerowolf4242 if you shuffle your deck enough it doesn't matter if you mana weave, the cards should be randomized. So you're either doing an action which has no benefit or only benefits you if you semi-cheat by not shuffling properly
most music shuffle algorithms aren't actually random, like if the same song comes up twice in a row humans don't think that's random so most shuffle algorithms are tuned to be what humans think is random rather than being truly random
I'm gonna say one thing: I don't think pile shuffling is cheating. Pretty much any form of shuffling is going to 'break up clumps'. Furthermore, pile shuffling and then normal shuffling is going to ensure better randomness than on their own. Mashing, meanwhile, usually leaves a lot of patterns It's probably less obvious in MtG, but in Yugioh it's VERY blatantly obvious when the people who only mash would open up with the same combo. And finally, it's gonna take like..a minute and a half total across the entire game. No big.
I was a out to say this. While at the REL level, pile shuffling alone isn't sufficient and often can't be used in the middle of a game, you can do it at least once a game. So start with a pile, go to mash, hand the deck over for cut and shuffle, draw your 7.
It's not cheating. If your deck is random, a pile shuffle is just as likely to create clumps as break them up. If it's not, then pile shuffling (probably) breaks up the nonrandom bits prior to a standard shuffle.
A lot of people put cards on top when they fetch and then pretend to shuffle while keeping the top unchanged. Very common cheat, and that's why you should always cut or even shuffle after someone fetches
My best Spotify "randomizer" incident wasn't 2 songs by the same artist, but rather in a 1200+ song listing I got Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love followed immediately by Weird Al's Addicted to Spuds.
I think that the audio waves are compared to each other to try to match for flow, I don't know if thats how it works or not but it's not actually really random, there is programming and a method to what the order of playback becomes.
@@jeffe2267 those that would include duplicates would be closer to true random then? There's something philosophically valuable here. Why does random mean as much as it does for humans?
@@hamsandwich6685 - a programmer friend explained it to me a long time ago that there was no such thing as "random" to a computer. It's always based on some current value deep in the system or something like that.
@@DerekScottBland in computers, true random does not exist. With the human mind, I am confident something closer to true randomness is more possible. Though it can be argued, that on sub conscience levels, the mind may still be applying subtle patterns.
Can we just mention the playmat on the right? He's just casually reminding every opponent at all times that they can just concede and get it over with. That's such a chad move.
I once talked to a guy who said it should be okay to mana weave and then shuffle afterwards so that he wouldn't be cheating. I explained to him that shuffling afterwards so as to not count as cheating would randomize the deck and undo his attempt to avoid mana flood or mana drought. But that dude just couldn't get it.
The thing is that is wrong, while yes if you truly shuffle it perfectly that's right, no one is changing the placement of every card in the deck order relative to it's neighbors, when you shuffle a deck and let's say you split the deck at a random points like you should and place them in the middle, if you picked up your lands and at the end of the game and put them in the deck together without shuffling your other played cards in, that means your Goin to have clumps of lands and cards you played last game together you can change the likelihood of it by shuffling well and being random, but people aren't good at random, if someone picks a random number or shuffles a deck randomly they have a tendency to do it the same way, and that means why you shuffle a deck 4 times your using a similar pattern and that will affect the randomized order of cards
When i was a child i was playing in a super low stakes game at my lgs. My oponent started to mana weave the shit out of his deck, like 1 Land - 2 Cards - 1 Land - repeat. Than he didnt shuffle if but gave it to me for cutting. So i looked him in the eyes and cut his deck 1 Card on this pile - 2 Cards on this pile - 1 card on this pile. He didnt draw any lands this game and was fuming, didnt even feel bad about it.
The number of people who think Manaweaving isn't cheating is huge and confusing. In smaller cardgames I've played it's even been the people in charge of tournament rules. They're always baffled when confronted.
@@Locohappy if I can mash shuffle your deck a few times afterwards and you feel bad and feel the negative benefit, then you probably know internally that you are in fact cheating
Used to go to a local place that would try to enforce a rule that you could only do a simple cut on your opponents deck to try to save time, they eventually lost their ability to hold DCI sanctioned tournaments due to their absolute refusal to comply with the rules. Same place would always try to enforce their own custom ban list in sanctioned play, often banning cards that weren't even meta purely because one particular player won with it the week previously, or because it was countering the local net-deck meta. It really sucked, especially since it was essentially the only option locally to play in tournaments at the time, the other local place never had enough people to have tournaments and the owner would routinely fill a roster with accounts she had made using her family members names so she could fake having enough players to continue receiving promo materials which she would keep.
I always remember a little anecdote I heard one time (sadly can't remember exactly where): If your conventional shuffling after you pile shuffled or manawove is sufficient to randomise your deck, then said manaweaving accomplishes nothing except wasting time. & if you're not sufficiently randomising your deck afterwards then you're cheating. Though on the subject of shuffle cheating we did have a player at our fnm who many suspected of doing this. What we suspected was that they were moving cards around during sideboarding time to get as even of a distribution as possible of everything, & then shuffling in such a way as to minimally disrupt this distribution. This survived being cut, because whatever chunk of deck they started with was pretty much the same as any other chunk of deck. Unsurprisingly they usually enjoyed very smooth draws & a lot of victories. Now, no-one ever tried to go after them.... it's the lgs & nobody wants drama in the community. Plus, not the easiest thing to prove; and no-one who suspected it could actually prove it. So what some of us did was upgrade him from "cut at fnm" to "always shuffle". (Gotta admit; the vast majority of opponents at fnm... just cutting the deck is enough for that level of play (for me at least)) Anyway, his win % dropped precipitously after we started shuffling his deck on the regular. Funny that. Moral of the story: always cut your opponents deck. If you're playing anything higher than fnm (or you expect shenanigans) always shuffle it.
'If your conventional shuffling after you pile shuffled or manawove is sufficient to randomise your deck, then said manaweaving accomplishes nothing except wasting time. & if you're not sufficiently randomising your deck afterwards then you're cheating.' The same could be said of not manaweaving, it's just your 'cheating' would be disadvantaging yourself most of the time (deck dependent). I'm sure some people could give examples of fringe mtg decks were picking up the lands and nonlands and just slapping them on top of the deck and shuffling would actually bring an advantage for a particular deck gameplan.
We had a player, (that i lived with), that had 1 card in a longer sleeve than the rest. in a format where some cards were restricted. Day of a big tourney, we swapped two of his cards while he slept. The long sleeve was on a swamp instead. 0/2 drop.
Great Video just one thing, as Judges we do not call it Pile 'Shuffle' we call it Pile Counting, because as you mentioned this is not truly randomizing.
I always wondered how random/non-random a deck would be after a facedown pile shuffle… I’m not trying to discredit that it’s not a proper shuffle, but just more curious about the actual numbers behind it.
@@acclratorthe problem is, there’s nothing random about it. With a mash or riffle, which card goes next is left to chance, similar to rolling a die or flipping a coin (unless you intentionally perform a perfect Faro shuffle, which would also be cheating) Pile “shuffling” is deterministic. There’s a specific number of piles, and each card gets placed in a specific pile based on where it was in the previous ordering. Cheaters literally use this determinism to stack their decks ahead of time
I am a teacher and amateur magician, and I like to teach my students tricks. This guy looks like when one of my 8 year old students tries their first card control a minute after I showed them lmao
Interesting take on pile shuffling. I always thought of it as basically a more rote version of mash shuffling. It does break up clumps, but if you're doing that along with packet shuffling then it should be fine if you do it enough. If you scoop, there will be usually huge clumps of lands/creatures, and packet shuffling leaves the clumps in, which isn't random either. You need both (or just doing either of them a bunch of times).
Cheaters can be such goobers. I remember watching a match at a FNM during Zendikar standard between Mono Black and UW Control. This was back when everyone was playing Baneslayer in their deck as a finisher. The Mono B player gets stomped G 1 and me and a few others watch him badly sneak a card from outside the game to his hand for G2. G2 rolls around, the UW player taps out for a Baneslayer and the guy brings in his big smoking gun that he cheated into his hand, Halo Hunter. A 2BBB Demon that ETBs Destroy target angel. He windmill slams it down to only realize that Baneslayer has Prot from Demons, rendering his cheat completely pointless. The look on the guys face when he realized this was priceless. He loses G2 and proceeds to never come back to the LGS for FNM.
I like shuffling all the cards from the previous game first, then do the mix with the rest of the deck. Mentally, it lets me believe the lands won't all be stuck together for next time. Minimum time to get around the hangup. I also can't get over how much those sleeved cards being pile 'shuffled' look like cheese slices.
I pretty much only play at local card shop events, and I never cut my opponents deck simply to speed up play. It lets me stay focused on what I am doing as this usually is a limited format of a set I am not overly familiar with. The stakes are so low, that playing more magic without running into the time limit is a bigger priority to me.
@@omegaxtrigun It's mostly about keeping my attention on what I am doing with my deck that I have literally built minutes before when they search their library as part of a chain of actions. I am more concerned with not missing my ability triggers or otherwise goofing up how my deck is supposed to work than with whether someone is cheating in a virtually zero stakes event.
This is why I shuffle with the cardbacks up and always ask for my deck to be cut even in casual commander so it hopefully settles worries people might have. Cheating in magic (and in general) just feels ass to do and do to people. Terrible draws make for stories just as much as "Oh yeah I had the perfect hand bro" which you know isn't cool because you cheated for it so its not cool.
I dunno I think pile shuffling at least once is important. It's not true randomization, but breaking up your previous games clumps is vital. If you know "oh this clump of cards has xyz in it" that's information you shouldn't have.
@@PleasantKenobiyes it does a mash shuffle can still have cards next to each other because of air pressure making it not random.adding a pile makes sure those cards can only be next to each other by pure chance.
@@chronicstoner1work 100% I started non-uniformly pile shuffling before mash shuffling exactly because I noticed there'd be 3ish card clumps that were in the exact order they were in last game, I do get it's annoying though and usually doesn't make a difference in-game so I'll just separate any combo cards while scooping up my board to save on the time pile shuffling would take
I totally get why people don’t do this, but I bridge shuffle my cards. It means my cards are always face down and out of my sight and it is a very good way to properly randomize my cards, and if you do it correctly you don’t damage your cards either. Naturally, when I cut my opponent’s deck I don’t bridge shuffle theirs because I know some people hate that, but I do a good two or three mash shuffles and call it good. Fun story I like to tell, I played in a somewhat casual legacy event in New Jersey. I had a deck that I had spent WAY too much money on that was just a pet deck for me, UB Landstill. I had judge promo FoWs, foil worldwake Jace the Mjnd Sculptors, foil Onslaught Polluted Deltas signed by Rob Alexander, the works. At the time (2018) the deck was probably $16,000. No one at the store I played at really knew me because I wasn’t a regular, so when I started bridge shuffling the deck, I had people all over the store just cringing like it was causing them physical pain. It was great.
to riffle shuffle/bridge shuffle without causing damage to the cards actually takes skill. A skill which most people don't have. So I understand why people hate seeing it/having it done to their deck. They just don't realize that it can be perfectly fine if done correctly and gently.
@@xerowolf4242 Oh absolutely, it took a lot of practice to do it. It was especially difficult learning how to do it with sleeves without splitting them.
Completely agree with the sentiment, but as a newbie player who is often playing casually and a few times in a row, I generally find myself doing a similar move: out of habit, scooping up all my lands on the board into a pile, scooping up the cards on the battlefield and chucking my hand on top, then cards go on land, and back onto the deck. Then I tend to deal a random number of piles, shuffle random pairs of piles together until I can begin mashing two stacks. Shuffle a few times, offer a cut and then proceed. On the one hand I’m intentionally breaking up a lump of cards, but I suppose the main difference between that and the spoken example of pile counting is probably that im trying to lose the signal of my previous hand and board state rather than trying to even things out or create a new signal. Anyway, interesting video as always!
If you de-clump cards while searching your deck for a card THEN shuffling is still cheating? The deck gets randomized by the shuffle and your opponent cuts is more than enough randomization isn't it? Small edit: I usually play Yu-Gi-Oh where I've seen it often happen.
Yes. Because if the shuffling is truly random, then the decoupling was time wasting. If the declump had an effect, its cheating because its not truly random.
@@PleasantKenobi Did a bit more searching, it's perfectly legal to do in Yu-Gi-Oh. There's still the randomization of shuffling and the cut so it's not cheating.
The Logical Rule of Mana Weaving : If Mana Weaving is making your draws better, you're not shuffling properly or enough. *Nobody* should see the contents of any deck in the process of shuffling. Preferably, always shuffle the opponent's deck. At minimum, cut the deck. Anyone that gets upset at you for it shouldn't be trusted. If they randomized properly, it should affect nothing. I believe it is minimum 7 shuffles to properly randomize a deck. Accept no less. As an aside : If you need to prove a point to someone mana weaving, 3 pile count their deck. Anyone doing 2 spells, 1 land weaving will get 2 neat piles of spells and 1 pile of land stacked like a sandwich. They are guaranteed to get 7 spells or 7 lands. I've gotten more than one person to quit weaving doing this.
" If you need to prove a point to someone mana weaving, 3 pile count their deck. Anyone doing 2 spells, 1 land weaving will get 2 neat piles of spells and 1 pile of land stacked like a sandwich. They are guaranteed to get 7 spells or 7 lands. I've gotten more than one person to quit weaving doing this." Please do not do this, just call a judge. Doing this and proceeding into the game is Manipulation of Game Materials and makes you a cheater as well. If you suspect someone is cheating, don't try to counter their cheating. Just call a Judge and explain what you observed.
@@hamsandwich6685 I've seen at least one paper (from the 90's, admittedly) suggesting that 7 shuffles is about the minimum needed for close to proper randomization based on mathematic principles, I don't think it's all down to magician practices.
That’s why I mash shuffle, pile shuffle in a weird and random order and NOT in equal piles, then mash shuffle THOSE piles into each other and finally a full mash shuffle of the entire deck. I find that this method, though time consuming, works the best. Idk if I’d do it at a tournament unless the rounds over and I’m prepping for the next round but I digress
I didn't even know people do pile shuffling in a non-random order and with equal piles. Doing it randomly breaks up the clumps from previous rounds just as well and also actually randomises your cards. Tbh, I have a hard time figuring out what the right way to shuffle is between games in a best of 3 and hope every time that it is sufficient while not waisting too much time.
Friendly reminder about randomization! Though exceptionally unlikely, there is a non-zero chance that, after you do a full, proper shuffle, every single one of your lands will be clumped together at the bottom of your deck.
Hey Kenobi! Great content as always. I recon it would be good for you to explain for new people WHY weaving isn't innocuous so people don't see it as a nitpick, when its actually about fair play. I think new people see weaving as not an advantage but a way to have a smoother experience without appreciating that weaving is advantageous to some archetypes more than others and it effects deck building criteria and the power of cards. If a certain count of land were assumed in every opening and draw there after, every meta in every format would be very different. The new unbanning with preordain and inclusion of the LOTR land cyclers is a great example of what happens to a deck and meta when your opening land count and land draws there after is effected. Thanks again for the content.
I am curious how people can "see this as not an advantage but a way to have a smoother experience". How can it not be an advantage if you ensure smoother draws? It all just sounds like cognitive dissonance to me.
One time at GP, OP called judge on me cheating. I random pile shuffle (placing cards in random piles instead of just clockwise or whatever), and count quietly 1-6 10 times to make sure I have 60 card deck. OP thought it was fishy and called judge … “he’s cheating I don’t know how but he’s shuffling weird” =_______= the kicker, his shuffle on my deck was extremely long and suspicious but couldn’t find any problem, but I always cut the deck of of precaution. Later, happened to see him at top table nearby. His OP Minds Desire for 10+ and bricked, and standing behind I can clearly see he is cheating. Quietly called judge to walk over and observe, G3 his OP Mind’s Desired for 5 and bricked, but had enough off the free spell to get mana to play a second MD for 9 and bricked again. Judge walked over and DQ’d Villain. Great feeling! Guy must’ve spent hours practicing to perform it to a point where I was looking for it and couldn’t spot it when sitting opposite him.
I remember one GP I was at I was watching the feature match area. one of the players was a previous opponent of mine, so was checking the game out. it was after sideboarding and I noticed that the player was accidently not changing his bottom card while shuffling. I'm pretty sure it was accidental because he was never looking down and talking to the opponent and the deck faced away from him, but one of the judges watching noticed too. I saw the judge stare watching his shuffling until he moved the bottom card in the last few shuffles. pretty sure he nearly got called for that.
Mana weaving: Recent new players only learned MTG from Commander teaches bad habits, like this. My LGS had to crack down on it. Issuing game warnings and etc.
When I was a new player, I remember guys at my shop telling me mana weaving was legal and fair. Imagine having to cheat to beat a new player to feel good about yourself
They said that because it IS legal. As long as the deck is sufficiently shuffled afterwards they're welcome to do anything including stacking a perfect hand at the top of the deck. Some people do it just out of superstition/luck/whatever. Some people whine so much about this and it's just an excuse people use to protect their egos when they lose. Everyone loses and that's fine but try to get something out of it to improve. You get the final shuffles and cuts of your opponents deck. ALWAYS shuffle/cut your opponents deck after every game and search. Always. If you're losing it's not because of mana weaving. It's a combination of luck, skill, matchup, and deck construction. The sooner people stop complaining and start working on areas they can improve on the sooner they'll start winning more.
There should be mandatory rule: if one person shuffles, the other person cuts the deck. No exceptions. This way you could greatly diminish stacking-the-deck cheaters
First time I've heard that pile shuffling without looking at your cards is cheating. Pretty much everyone against whom I have played has done this for at least a couple decades.
It is against the rules as it isn't considered to be sufficient randomisation, you are allowed to do it if you then shuffle regularly afterwards. This means that the "shuffling" part of pile shuffling is irrelevant, it really is only done to count your cards
@@phaeste Oh yeah, definitely cards shuffled afterwards, I must have missed that part if mentioned. I was under impression that pile shuffling followed by additional deck shuffling was considered cheating.
Pile shuffling isn’t a shuffle. Its a repeated non random pattern. So hypothetically, if you know the order of your entire deck before, you should be able to decipher the order after a pile shuffle. Nothing is random about placing one card at a time into pre determined piles
@@damiend.7392 The only other thing to watch out for is that pile 'shuffling' too often is considered slow play. I think the limit is once per game. I'm not certain though.
I've also never heard this considered cheating, nearly half the players I've faced either casually at home or at LGS pile shuffle and I've never seen anyone complain about it. I don't personally find it very effecient but I don't have a problem with it either, and I certainly wouldn't call it cheating especially if I'm just going to shuffle and cut my opponents deck immediately after anyway.
Pile shuffling to break up suspected clumps from previous games kind of implies that you are already aware that your deck is stacked in a way that could more reliably produce certain cards in succession. I kinda feel like it's valid as long as you shuffle afterwards, I think being terrible at shuffling is a big contributor to clumps.
Clumps are a natural part of sufficient randomisation. If you need to "shuffle properly" after pile counting your deck, then pile counting admittedly didn't do enough, right?
@@PleasantKenobi not mana clumps, clumps of typically around 3 cards that are in the same order they were in the previous game (either in play or in the graveyard). It's worse depending on the sleeves or the lack thereof
I’ve got a friend who manaweaves before shuffling every time. I try and explain to him that it doesn’t matter if he’s shuffling afterwards and letting his opponent ahuffle and cut but he doesn’t care. I mean, I don’t care about it because I get to shuffle it and I know it’s not stacked but it still grinds my gears that he won’t accept that he doesn’t need to manaweave.
I think this does matter. here's why. I used to mana weave before shuffling every time and back then, I would get mana screwed like 80% of the time. Always a mix of flooded and dry. But since I've stopped, I only get mana screwed about 20%-30% now. If by any chance your friend is constantly getting mana screwed as well, show him this comment and maybe he'll stop. It worked for me.
I wouldn't want to play with that guy, ngl. I'm fine with it prior or inbetween casual games, and only if it's infrequent. But I wouldn't put up with that shit mid-game. But I mean, if he doesn't care, guy shouldn't be surprised if eventually no-one wants to play with him eventually.
I just pile shuffle because I'm bad at mashing, so I do a quick pile first. But I also only play commander, where the 100 card double sleeved deck is a pain in the ass to manipulate.
I make a point for people who mana weave against me when they present cuts i simply just undo it. they learn to stop that real quick. ive had people call judges over to get themselves dqued after complaining bout the way i cut edit: it is also pretty common at prereleases so look out
@@possiblemonkey8915 most decks are around 1/3rd mana sources so a true mana weave is 2 spells and 1 land repeated. To "undo" this you pile shuffle creating 3 piles, 2 of those piles will be all or mostly spells and 1 pile will be all or mostly mana sources. Once you put those 3 piles together they will have either all mana sources or none. It's a reverse cheat and is actually still a cheat so I would only do this if its someone who is doing these things in a casual setting because otherwise you should call a judge/owner to report the cheating.
@@xwlfx315x Why is it a cheat? if we assume the opponent shuffled his deck you can cut it whatever way you want and it will still be randomized, as long as you don't look at the carts there is no problem.
My philosophy around Mana Weaving and Pile Shuffling (in a casual setting) has been that those are fine if you start with them, but you need to be doing regular shuffling without looking at the contents of your deck after to effectively make sure that you do not have any idea what the order of your deck is. I think this video does a good job explaining why that is probably too lenient, because that guy could have made the argument that he was doing that.
The fact that this was a Judge of any kind is disgusting. I'd say he should be ashamed, but clearly he wasn't above cheating at FNM, so I doubt he would.
When I was perhaps twelve or thirteen I pile shuffled between games at an FNM. I didn't know any better. My opponent, seeing exactly how I pile shuffled and that I didn't do any other sort of shuffling, proceeded to "cut" my deck by re-pile shuffling my deck, essentially reverting it to the exact order my deck was in after the end of the previous game. Needless to say I mulliganed. Over ten years later, I'm a level 1 judge, and I know now that my opponent wasn't allowed to do that either, but I will tell you this- I never pile shuffled again.
Your pile shuffling rant is understandable but I think slightly overstated. Mash shuffling such that your deck is not sufficiently randomized is cheating. The real question is in the real world, does pile shuffling followed by mash shuffling lead to a more random deck distribution on average than an average mash shuffle. I believe 7 perfect mash shuffles creates a randomized deck, but people aren't perfect. Also, cards sticking together due to static friction is fairly common, even a poorly performed pile shuffle prevents this possibility from occuring. As you mentioned counting your deck to ensure nothing is missing / you cut the correct amount of cards post sideboard is for sure warranted. Finally, a player can take as much time as they want shuffling within the rules, not every action during your shuffling time needs to contribute to your shuffle. Using your time to meditate/think are perfectly valid uses of time, and cutting those actions to appease your opponent is not helping you play at your best. If tournament run time is impacted at large by the action players take, then rules can be modified accordingly. - one time pile shuffler into mash dude
@@its_chris2323 I never said as much as you want. I said as much as you want "within the rules." I'm not sure why you would mischaracterize my comment given that I'm referring to the same sentence you quoted (which you omitted the ending of).
@@ProtagonistOfficial you literally said it "Finally, a player can take as much time as they want shuffling....." Your within rules catch all doesn't save your argument. You are implying that you can take as much time as you would like. Honestly it's whatever, just be reasonable. Don't play/sideboard slow after beating a control deck just to get the win. After only completing one game. Be fair.
@@TK4K411 I mean, the "within the rules" part of the sentence you ignored seems like a quite important distinction. So it does kind of save their argument, because they never argued merely "as much time as they want", they argued "as much time as they want *within the rules.* " You are literally arguing against a point they never made.
@@TK4K411 I will assume you are arguing in good faith. "within the rules" means within the rules of the tournament you are playing in. Sometimes this means 5 minutes if I remember correctly and sometimes this is left up to judge discretion and the time limit is left up to the interpretation of "a reasonable amount of time". "Within the rules" is a qualifier on the phrase "as much as you want." If I say you can go whereever you want within my house, it does not mean you can go outside of my house. Hopefully I helped clarify any misunderstandings.
12:00 about the pile shuffling, according to tournament rules; it is acceptable as the first and only the first shuffle for a game and it is allowed precisley to count the deck.
Quick question: what is the best way to quickly shuffle up the cards you played last game into your deck for next game? Often after shuffling I will end up in a patch of my deck that is near identical to the cards I had in play last game. Obviously this means I'm not shuffling well enough, so what can I do differently to make sure my cards are truly randomized? Usually, I will mash-shuffle 5-10 times. I have been avoiding riffling for draft because I know it can damage cards if done improperly, but it's a non-option for commander games, so there has to be a better way.
For commander games, if your hands are too small to handle your entire deck at once, properly mash shuffle two halves of your deck A & B (50 cards each). Once you shuffled 7-8 times, each of them should be random with their content. Now divide each of your two A & B piles in two, and shuffle A1 pile with B1 (into a pile C), and A2 pile with B2 (into a pile D), 7-8 times each. You now have two new 50 cards piles with fully randomized content, as in there is no way for you to know where any card is located. Then you just need to put pile C on top of pile D and you're good to go.
It should take 7-10 riffle shuffles to randomize an EDH deck, and mashing is mostly the same as riffle shuffling. If you're doing 5, then yeah you just need to shuffle more. If you are shuffling enough, it's possible that the identical patches are just the result of random chance (obvious depends on what the patches are, how long they are and if you're in a singleton format).
@@stoephil I have relatively large hands, but a double-sleeved deck is difficult even for me. The shuffle you described is indeed very effective but also very long, I am looking for something that can be done in less than 30 seconds
@@Aegisworn I'll up it to a minimum 10 times then I guess. Sucks that everytime I fetch a land it extends the game by 30 seconds or more of just waiting, but that's just the way it goes
I pile shuffle to count but then I properly shuffle just to make sure it's shuffle shuffled. Pile to redistribute then the actual to shuffle. so Its almost impossible to get the same cards in a row
If that last part was true, you have cheated. Part of randomisation is the ability to get two of the same thing in a row. Pile counting is not shuffling. It wasted time. Cut that part out and shuffle properly.
@@PleasantKenobi yeah that's not cheating bro. "if the last part was true". what... where I admit to a standard shuffle after the pile. so to you shuffling is just cheating? pile shuffling is most definitely a shuffle, just not a true shuffle. with your logic paying 2 white mana to play a 1 white, 1 colourless creature card is cheating.
Listen to yourself. Try to understand why this is silly. "Not a true shuffle" - ok, so why the hell are you doing it as part of your shuffle? If it doesn't shuffle well enough on its own, it's insufficient randomisation- which if you are doing so to get an advantage (evenly distributed lands and spells) is cheating. If you instead use a real shuffle to undo this, you are wasting everybody's time. Stop with the pile crap. It's not a shuffle. It's a counting method.
@@PleasantKenobi because the game has these cards called auras. Most players will put them under / over a card it's attached too and sometimes it's on an opponents card... It lets you avoid cheating by counting your cards so you know you have a legal deck and, that you haven't lost any while giving the bonus of truly randomising the cards when used with a standard shuffle. I hope that helps.
I pileshuffel to unclumb my deck. But not often and immidiately after i do a very chaotic fast shuffle and insist my opponant cuts the deck. Chaotic as in multiple shuffles techniques in no particular order. I have no clue where stuff in my deck is at that point and if my opponant doesnt believe me they can cut as wild as they feel like.
I have a guy that shuffle cheats at our locals in casual commander games. Me and my friend usually see this and the dude opens the same few combo pieces every single time he plays with us. We don't directly call him out on it because It's funny that he stacks his deck and still somehow ends up last every single time.
yeah we had a guy who would just like draw extra cards all game if he had nothing he really wanted to do coming up. and i mean like a comical amount like would end his turn with 2 cards in hand and at the start would have like 6 or 7 and think we didnt notice (we eventually brought it up and then stopped playing with him when he wouldnt stop)
I will die on this hill, the logic to this is circular, either shuffling works or it doesn't. At the end of a match if I scoop all my lands together and then grab my graveyard all together which usually doesn't contain many land and then grab what is on the battlefield if there is anything, you claim that this is the correct way, but you are assuring clumps are going in, which again, by what everyone is saying, isn't random. Then as normal you shuffle your deck, but the act of shuffling is what is randomizing those clumps, and when people do this they tend to shuffle longer to do so. But if I dont grab those clumps and I lay my land out and put the cards i played randomly on those lands and then shuffle for 2 or 3 minutes or sometimes more then that is considered manaweaving, but just like grabbing clumps you are putting cards into your library that are not randomized, either way shuffling is going randomize your deck, if it didnt what would be the point of shuffling, either shuffling works or it doesnt, either way you are putting cards back that arent truly randomized so thats why we shuffle. Now, if you didnt shuffle after this or shuffle very little only then should it be considered manaweaving. The whole point of shuffling is to randomize so it wouldnt matter how the cards went back in to the deck. I have been doing the end of the game pile shuffle since 2001 and trust me when I say this, i get mana flooded or screwed just as much as what is considered the correct way. I kept track of my opening hands and how evenly distributed they were for mana or multiples of what would be considered the good cards of the deck and I used both methods while shuffling 2 to 3 minutes every time and from my sample size of over a hundred games each i found it was all still random. Maybe my sample size wasnt large enough. The reason I put so much effort into this is someone tried to use this to DQ me when he lost a game three, and I was sick of people calling me a cheater for doing something that shuffling will correct, because thats why we shuffle.
Which is why as the opponent you should ALWAYS shuffle/cut your opponent's deck, even when playing for fun or casual games to keep people from taking advantage and manipulating their deck every game.
This whole video is valid, except the pile shuffling imo, if properly done with mash shuffling the equation would go as follows, random + a pattern + random = random
@@PleasantKenobi a thirty second pile shuffle shouldn’t cause a draw with two pro active decks, or even one of the two being pro active, some people do things to be superstitious and not to just waste time. I love your content and still will just saying :)
Anything above a friendly game with no stakes, I am absolutely cutting my opponent's deck at minimum. For bigger tournaments, I'm shuffling their deck. Just a good habit. It's not rude, it's part of the rules, don't feel bad about doing it.
I'm an edh player. I used to pile shuffle after deck construction or having particularly bad mulligans, and always followed with at least some method of rifle shuffling. Currently what I do is split the deck into thrids and alterate pairs for each rifle shuffle a few times, then rifle shuffle once or twice the whole deck. I don't play much anymore to have practice shuffling the big deck fully sleeved, so I find this way faster and easier without having to be as concerned with damaging sleeves. I don't know how exactly it mathematically compares to other methods of shuffle for randomization, which I recall finding an actual study whre they determined that ~6-10 rifle shuffles were necessary to achieve depending on deck size.
7:28 When it comes to competitive play, I learned to go into it with this mentality. - Don't trust any opponent. - Don't trust a judge will find/catch any cheating. - Pay attention to every stage and interaction of play. Considering the number of Intermediate/Pro players that have come out of the wood work as cheaters, we should all be vigilante of each other. Even with people we are close to, all it takes is one moment where something is done incorrectly, and whether by intention or not, the game has been changed unfairly. Keep the cheater's DQ'd, and ensure the honest players are consistent and accountable.
Bro pile shuffling isnt cheating lol if you use an odd number of piles and pile shiffle more than once then the piles will naturally randomize due to the amount of uneven piles (i usually do 7 piles for edh or 5 piles for 60 card) ive never heard anyone refer to pile shuffling as cheating but i can see why with this particular case because he was clearly manaweaving before hand and he is using an even number of piles that 60 divides into
Well thank you, Vince! You learned me something today. I'm apparently a dirty cheater! I do the stack shuffle method sometimes, usually after I've played a handful of games in a row where I got mana fucked. I'd have never thought of it as a cheat before you explained it, but it does make sense. Generally the only other time I do this is at the end of a long gaming session and I do more steps than simply deal out four piles and stack them. I'll deal out 4-5 piles, randomly selecting a pile to deal onto, then mash each pile, then mash each pile together one by one until all the dealt piles as together. It's a lot of steps and probably completely pointless because of all the mashing I'm doing anyway, but in my mind it helps break those clumps from previous games and is ready to be mashed before the next game.
A pile shuffle at the beginning of a match to verify deck size, riffled at least five times before presenting for cut. End of game, cards that were drawn are loosely arranged to evenly space lands/nonlands. This is solely to appease minor OCD, and is gently mashed into the remaining deck before sideboarding. After sideboarding, count sideboard to verify deck size, then back to the 5x+ riffling as the cycle begins anew.
I always pile shuffle my deck once each time I take it out to play. It is to "count" (even though I have had moments where I had one too many or too few), but mainly to be sure cards aren't sticking to each other. But you are right, it is not randomizing anything indeed. It is not shuffling actually.
While i can understand point that pile shuffling before proper shuffling takes a little bit more time, I tend to do that before match once. 1. Because it helps counting cards after recent match, when i could sideboard something and not always remember to take it out 2. Because i am always uncertain that sole shuffling will randomize deck perfectly (that one can be viewed as unreasonable - i understand) 3.And because sometimes 2-3 cards get stuck together by static or something and i would like to minimize that risk if possible. I tend to not do that between games though and never know where my lands or spells are before I think saying that is waste of everyones time is a little over the top. I tend to play reasonably fast and had termination maybe few times and always for another reason anyway. If someone wants to stall, there are more efficient ways i think.
Random is random, cards sticking together can be random. The point is that YOU or anyone else doesn't know if they are, or they AREN'T. If you feel or know that everything is evenly distributed aka "not stuck together", it is not random. There is no perfect random. Random will be random. You shouldn't know. That is random. But counting your cards is a different than shuffling your deck. Please do what you need to make sure you have the right number of cards in your deck and sideboard. making piles can be fast way to count your cards but people fall into the trap thinking it is good form of shuffling. It is not.
"Not stuck together" what i mean is LITERALLY stuck together, not like land next to land or whatever, but just one card stick to another. It is not random or not - it's just annoying and i want to prevent that, and pile shuffling can prevent that better than mashing. And i also don't recommend piling INSTEAD of proper shuffling. Just as something extra to prevent some annoying situations before shuffling deck 10+ times.
@@kathic6402 It is if you shuffle well enough to fully randomize (by the definition of what randomization is), but a lot of people don't shuffle well enough.
I only play ygo in paper at the moment but I do it just to make sure I sided correctly, cause I am shit at keeping track of my maindeck and sidedeck cards.
I believe it takes something like 7 to fully randomize when pile shuffling and you need to choose a number of piles that is appropriate for the number of cards in the deck. For example, 7 piles is also a good number for 60 card decks, because it's the first number that has a remainder (you'll get 6 piles of 8 cards and 1 pile with 9). Most of the time this is a waste, but I tend to do it at home or before I start playing with anyone and then do a mash shuffle between games. There's a few techniques to go really fast with pile shuffling but they are kind of hard and not worth it and can make people think you're cheating
I always knew it as "Seeding". Pretty much only did it after assembling a deck, or possibly pre-tourney. Always blind shuffled and presented for cut during the match. Would that still be considered not okay?
If you present a sufficiently randomised deck, you are fine. But if you are going to sufficiently randomise it, there is no need to "seed" your deck since if the deck is randomised properly after, you just wasted time seeding it.
My justification for pile shuffling is to break up literal clumps - cards that are stuck together by static or slightly grubby sleeves. After that, mashing randomises it.
Yeah, if I only mash shuffle I know I’m likely to run into a clump of lands or something that didn’t get separated after my last game. I go with pile shuffle plus a quick mash every time.
I sometimes pile shuffle as mentioned at 12:44 mainly because even after 8 years I am still really bad at shuffling and I have neurological issues that mean I often am slower or drop cards.
I had a friend show me that after "Shuffling" their deck, one or two draws in they were able to "guess" the next cards drawn with about 95% accuracy. I was like "...So you're stacking the deck?" and he was like "No, no! You saw me shuffle, it's randomized!" and it's like bruh, if you know what's coming, that's not randomization. Did he expect me to be impressed? I used to play with this guy. He legitimately tried to convince me that it's all down to deck construction reducing variables, what a fuckin pro
Hot take, if you manaweave intending to "evenly distribute" lands in your deck and still mash shuffle you are still a cheater because the intent. You are just bad at it.
A few years ago I learned the truth behind mana weaving and before then didn't see the harm but quickly learned how it was not fair play. To which I've not played paper magic in a few years now, so seeing that dude blatantly cheating while "shuffling" is why in any organized play I've always did a cut and only would "tap" the opponents if I was playing casual games when my opponent would be interacting with me during the shuffle so I knew they weren't cheating. But seeing this video helped me learn the basis of pile shuffling as a huge no no when I've never really thought about it in the sense that truly randomizing the deck is crucial to getting a true game. And anyone who was a judge and thinks they'd suddenly be trusted, those are the players I trust the least when their time as a judge only helps them know the subtle cheats to give them an edge.
For commander I do pile to move the 20 lands from the last game then I make sure I randomize it later. It makes me feel like I won’t get land screwed again even though I am undoing the work 😂
I only do it when it’s a brand new commander deck I have never played before, and it is sorted by lands then mana curve. I will pile shuffle to break things up and then mash afterwards. I do genuinely struggle shuffling 100 cards though, I always end up dropping one. I often resort to mashing with the cards clearly visible to my opponents, probably giving away some info of what’s in my deck, but it’s commander so I don’t really care. I have lost more games than I’ve won, so I don’t think I’m cheating that hard.
How do you feel about "weaving" aka equally distributing lands from match one BEFORE shuffling it up normally? Sometimes I do that out of superstition that the "same" chunks get mash shuffled around in a big blob.
As long as you sufficiently randomize afterwards it's not technically cheating but if your are randomizing your deck enough why do it in the first place.
Idk when this started but i think one day when we were tapping or cutting in our casual table (we cut or tap just because its fun and usually someone does something silly we all trust each other) i deceided to cut only the top 3 cards of their deck and jokingly said "ay lets see how good those were" so we revealed the cards and had a giggle , and now thats a staple cut for us is to take only the top couple look at them and put em on bottom. Really added a lot to our groups in terms of getting everyone in a fun mood
One small detail I find interesting at the start is how he sideboards. He appears to have laid out the cards he wants to sideboard in, then laid out each card he is sideboarding out next to them, so that he and presumably his opponent and any judges or other observers can easily see that he is removing and adding the same number of cards, ensuring that he still has a 60 card deck.
As a yugioh player, my side deck is the same number of cards every time, and a smaller number than my main deck obviously. So I just make sure to count the side deck one final time before im doing siding.
In nearly all circumstances, mana weaving should be avoided. The only time I would say it's acceptable is in a casual setting where you discuss it with your playgroup and everyone has agreed that mana weaving is allowed at that specific table. That of course applies to any rule, but I can see it being a house rule people want to adopt for fun, and I do think there's room for that in the game, just not in official rulesets.
I’ve played magic for many years, and I’ve never had anyone complain, but I don’t go to big events. How I generally shuffle is 2-3 non lands (depending on the deck), one land, then repeat, then I riffle or mash (not looking at the front of the cards or stacking, obviously) about 7-8 times. Have I been cheating this whole time? It seems like if I don’t do that the entire deck is just going to be huge clumps of the cards from the last game, right? That also doesn’t seem random.
Bro, I used to regularly play MTG with two 40+ year olds who have been playing since before Ice Age and THEY still manaweave. Not everyone has basic common sense and two braincells to rub together.
Before someone tells me I shouldn't have played with them because they cheated: 1. They were really bad at magic. They had 0 plays against control mill and I legitimately almost made both these grown men cry because they couldn't play magic how they wanted, on multiple occasions. 2. One of them ate lead paint growing up. The other has degenerative MS and just needed a homie. Fuck yalls opinions on it. 3. They had really good cards but didn't know how to use them properly. With their lack of skill and the benefit of having a good deck, our matches were often rather equal given I make the most out of crappy cards or cards I just happen to like. It wasn't all that much of an issue honestly, and it never even crossed my mind to bring it up. I just thought 'oh cool, these guys are idiots' and just played the game anyway.
That's a person who earns my special cut, which is cutting the deck into multiple, random sized piles and reassembling them based on whatever order I whim while staring my opponent directly in the eye. I've had to do it to one person in my life and it got my point across the first time. On the topic of pile shuffling: I do it to make sure I do a true randomize at least once. Admittedly, mine's a little different, as I mass shuffle each pile back in (6 piles, shuffle one, add pile, shuffle, repeat). Since I generally don't run out my deck, the randomness in the remainder helps alleviate the fact I don't have the time to riffle-strip 7 times each time I shuffle (which technically is only the minimum for a 52-card deck, but better than what a lot of people in this game do).
The only time I've ever pile shuffled is when I finish building my deck during a limited event to count and make sure I have 40 cards. In constructed I play Yorion (in Pioneer) and after making sure the deck list is 80 cards before heading to an event, after side boarding to make sure I have to 80 cards I just count my sideboard cards to make sure I have the 14 in the sideboard + Yorion in the companion zone. I don't really get why people count main decks in constructed when as long as you had 60 (or 80 in my case) cards when you started the event then you should just be able to count your sideboard to know that you made the equal number of changes or added extra cards and then having a smaller sideboard.
When the card game Bridge first became available on computers, many avid Bridge players were noticing way more opening hands that resulted in a bridge. They thought something must be wrong with the program, but it was actually that they were just never shuffling their cards enough.
I think the reason mana weaving and pile shuffling is so prevalent in casual games is because of personal play groups. I have a personal commander playgroup, and we mana weave our decks and then shuffle a few times. While that does defeat the purpose of mana weaving slightly, it’s still something we do to try and make sure that we not only keep things fair for everyone, but also don’t end up with dud hands or games. This is important because we are a commander playgroup who tries to play with precons and low-mid tier decks, and a dud hand or game means we just effectively sit around for 2-4 hours doing absolutely nothing or next to nothing. With our busy schedules, that 2-4 hours of nothing is an absolute killer of our motivation and mood when playing, because it simply is just not fun. So we mana weave or stack shuffle, and that is just how our group is. I assume that’s the same for most casual personal playgroups. The issue that needs to be addressed instead is just knowing what situation is appropriate or inappropriate for that kind of shuffling.
I was taught to mana weave or distribute into piles before shuffling normally by my high school physics teacher. Then, someone said I was wasting time because random means random. Setting up anything beforehand is pointless if you shuffle properly afterwards. It was a huge fucking OH DUH moment and I realized how stupid I was.
i understand the issues of pile shuffling, but would there be an issue with 'mushing' as is done in casino poker? basically you just take a pile of cards, swill it around in a giant mess, then stack it back together, followed by appropriate riffle and mash shuffling.
Why to cheat this way.... shame shame shame... A) Although there is a trust, I would say ALWAYS let opponent cut 2 - 3 piles and re-assemble them at any order B) Maybe better to call 3rd person to supervise your table at the shuffle part. Edit: Classic is no big deal to shuffle as a pile of 40 which is mostly fine for your hands but as we move to commander we got 99 + 1 so this brings me to a question, it is ok to do 3 cuts, (ABC) shuffle them each, reassemble them let say C A B, do new cuts, let say A and B, shuffle each reassemble B and A and after that do the opponent cut and reassemble, or this will be still a shady way, as someone new to physical version of MTG I would like to not learn a bad habbit
Decades ago I played with someone that would intentionally and surreptitiously gleek on their opponent's cards. This would cause them to be ever so slightly wet in spots and make them stick together. One of the reasons I developed a habit of pile shuffling in addition to mashing/riffling was because cards that are stuck together with his spit are generally going to stick together more through riffles/mashing. Since mostly my lands are going to be what got wet, this would cause excessive land clumps and a lot of bad draws.
The first playgroup I ran with taught me how to play. I played for probably a year before realizing weaving wasn't legal. In fact the players I played with disturbed all 60 cards in a predetermined order and then lightly shuffled. Kinda like their own rule 0. I realized in the middle of a match with a stranger at my local gamestore that they were playing by different rules and felt pretty gross about it. (Not that they minded, it was all casual). It could have been worse though, as I did get into competitive shortly after. Interesting though, is the meta and match ups playing thia way were actually really thoughtful and fun, but the games are more repetitive and match ups are more quickly "solved".
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I played Reid Duke in a fun match (not competitive) at GP and he did the same routine he does during a pro match. Watch him in a tournament and he looks fully away when shuffling, shuffles his opponents deck and looks completely the opposite direction and was very clearly conscious of any glancing or shuffling benefit he might get. It's awesome to know that he and many other pros perfectly show how to respect the game and act properly.
That's the same thing I do and I picked it up from players like him and LSV. If you aren't trying to cheat you feel really bad about any potential unfair information much less doing any ridiculous shuffling techniques.
Yeah, he did a little video on how to shuffle up properly where he goes through every step in detail
That's how I was taught at my LGS. One of the Judges used Reid as an example
I taught myself to shuffle without looking because of watching reid do that on camera in tournament
That's real competitive drive. It's not about winning, It's about knowing that he won because he was the best. Reid is such a fucking GOAT.
This is why you cut and shuffle a deck. If they don't present the deck to you for cuts you get a judge if they refuse to let you cut the deck
I think cutting needs to be required, but there have been opponent shuffle cheats in the past where they’ve stacked lands or bad cards to the top
Called a judge on a certain pro and hall of famer for damaging my cards with a riffle shuffle... just be careful
Your opponent can shuffle cheat upon cutting too.
You're also allowed to full shuffle your opponent
Always cut your opponent. I prefer to shuffle as a cut, which is 100% legal.
Shuffle cheating is as old as card games themselves, but this is the most blatant example I've seen. He's practically shuffling the deck face up.
I KNOW RIGHT? SO BLATANTLY CHEATING, IM EMBARRASSED!
at this point, can they not just get a card shuffling tech at these events?
@mikepower8999 i am not sure about newer card shufflere, but old machines tends to damage cards little by little, and is not great with sleeves.
Reminder that it's perfectly fine to call a judge and just ask if they can watch your opponent while they shuffle. This usually scares the cheating right out of them.
Cut the deck three times just to be sure
@@joelhaggis5054 rules as written states that when offered a cut, you can fully shuffel their deck.
It's probably better to quietly ask someone to watch them. Don't be overt, make sure they get caught.
In reality, that's as close as saying "I think my opponent is cheating" so, don't bother with the veiled attempt at subterfuge, just tell the judge "I think my opponent is cheating".
Just shuffle their deck
At higher levels IT IS REQUIRED
The fact that this person is an L2 judge and still did this is appalling.
yep should have called him out harder for that reason and he should never be allowed to be a judge for any event ever again.
Simply being a judge doesn't make them a paragon of fairness and justice. The certification interviews aren't really conducted by trained psychologists who could identify these things, it's easy to just pretend to be a normal person.
That is the most egregious cheating I have ever, ever witnessed. Who even shuffles face up and manipulates cards individually while doing so?
For real if this guy needs to set their top 10 cards to win a game they must be one of the worst magic players in existence. crazy part is he could have gotten away with cheating one back breaking sideboard card into his hand and he does this.
Its the most insanely bad and obvious cheating I have ever seen.
Just so people have an idea of how many shuffles needed to sufficiently randomize a deck, the standard 52 card deck used for games like Poker needs 7 riffle shuffles to be considered sufficiently randomized (mashing is effectively the same for sleeved cards). For a 60 card Magic deck, you should do around 7-8, and a 100 card deck should be around 8-9. If done well, after these amounts of shuffles, there shouldn't be any clumping from the previous game. A couple more than these can technically make things more random, but it's not really noticeable.
the "If done well" is the part that ruins me
@lietz13 exactly, no one is riffle shuffling a commander deck and most people wouldn't dream of doing that to their mtg cards in general. I would like to know how random the typical mtg shuffles their decks. It especially gets more apparent in commander where you tend to ramp out a lot more lands and I do have serious doubts about the ability to thoroughly shuffle a pile of 20+ lands from the bottom of a deck to a random distribution throughout the deck.
@@Thunderkeg I've got big enough hands to mash shuffle a 100 card deck well. I can even riffle shuffle 2 playing card decks for Canasta (108 cards; jokers included), though it is a little stiff.
If you are shuffling well, then your cards are getting split into lots of groups of 1-3 cards each time, so that group of 20+ you are worried about turns into roughly half as many groups of 1-3 cards separated by similar groups of other cards from your deck, and they quickly get separated further and further from there.
If you are having trouble mashing 100 cards, an alternative method I can suggest is splitting the entire deck into 2-3 piles (they don't need to be equal amounts), and shuffling those 2-3 times each.
Then, take roughly half off of each of them and put them on piles they didn't come from (for example, half of pile 1 goes to pile 2, half of pile 2 goes to pile 3, half of pile 3 goes to pile 1; this is to imitate the separation of cards that would normally happen), and then shuffling the newly made piles 2-3 times. Repeat this process 1-2 more times, then shuffle them all together 1-2 times. It's not perfect, and it will take a little longer, but it is far easier to manage and will randomize things reasonably well.
at this point, can they not just get a card shuffling tech at these events?
@@mikepower8999 In order to shuffle the cards well, card shuffling machines end up being kind of rough and can damage the cards. It's fine for playing cards since they are cheaply replaceable, but not so good for collectible cards that can end up being quite expensive.
What is funny is that if the other player cuts their deck it would make all of that cheating worthless.
This is game 2 of a casual event, the opponent probably declined to cut in the first game and let him know that cheating in the 2nd was ok.
He drew before even asking if his opponent wanted to cut. 😂 got what he deserved
It should be in the rules that you are required to cut
@@thanhavictus I believe in the rules you have to offer your deck to be cut by your opponent, which didn't look like that happened here.
@@thanhavictus The rules give the players the option to completely shuffle the opponents decks as long as they don't take an excessive amount of time.
"Randomized does not mean uniformly distributed."
For clarity's sake, Randomization will approach uniform distribution as instances of randomization increase, but any given instance is not guaranteed to be uniform.
Did I just get actually-ed?
@@ProtagonistOfficial Because more clarity is always good, in that case how many times you shuffle your deck during a tournament will be all of your instances, and your starting hand every game is a single instance, so if you count the distribution/mana correlation from every hand in the tournament, it will be balanced, but not necessarily every hand
@@xaropevic7918 because even more clarity is better, the hand isn't the single instance, it's the deck after a true randomization. The hand is just the cards you see first. So in reality in a 9 round tournament, with no mulligans and each match goes to 3 rounds you get 27 instances.
@@ProtagonistOfficialsuppose I stack my deck by mana weaving. When I shuffle, the deck will trend away from uniformity.
Bro HOW does he look so bad at it. Like, if I ever wanted to cheat, I'd at least make damn sure that I'm good at it before doing it ON CAMERA.
Yea, it's funny I am not angry about how badly he is cheating than him actually cheating.
At the last pre release I went to I remember having to tell someone they couldn't mana weave between games and they're responce was "why I don't want to draw to many lands or not enough" and while I understood why they did it still unfortunately not allowed.
This is something I do by accident. I often sort and look through my deck (I *LOVE* MTG art) if I end up getting stuck with a bye round, So my lands get clumped and sorted.
in between games I just pick up all the cards from my play field and graveyard into one pile, then I take all my lands in another pile, and I mash shuffle them together. then I take that stack and mash shuffle it into the rest of my library and then continue shuffling as normal. Would you consider that cheating? I'm trying to understand where people draw the line here because I don't care if people mana weave as long as they sufficiently shuffle their deck afterward.
@@xerowolf4242 if you shuffle your deck enough it doesn't matter if you mana weave, the cards should be randomized. So you're either doing an action which has no benefit or only benefits you if you semi-cheat by not shuffling properly
@@Thechosenchicken But it makes some people feel better. if you do a 'perfect mana weave' and then shuffle, you may shuffle your mana into clumps.
Tell them to shuffle their used cards when picking them up at the end of a game.
most music shuffle algorithms aren't actually random, like if the same song comes up twice in a row humans don't think that's random so most shuffle algorithms are tuned to be what humans think is random rather than being truly random
Of course. When your music is on shuffle you generally don’t want to hear the same song until the whole playlist has looped through.
I'm gonna say one thing: I don't think pile shuffling is cheating. Pretty much any form of shuffling is going to 'break up clumps'. Furthermore, pile shuffling and then normal shuffling is going to ensure better randomness than on their own. Mashing, meanwhile, usually leaves a lot of patterns It's probably less obvious in MtG, but in Yugioh it's VERY blatantly obvious when the people who only mash would open up with the same combo.
And finally, it's gonna take like..a minute and a half total across the entire game. No big.
I was a out to say this. While at the REL level, pile shuffling alone isn't sufficient and often can't be used in the middle of a game, you can do it at least once a game. So start with a pile, go to mash, hand the deck over for cut and shuffle, draw your 7.
It's not cheating. If your deck is random, a pile shuffle is just as likely to create clumps as break them up. If it's not, then pile shuffling (probably) breaks up the nonrandom bits prior to a standard shuffle.
A lot of people put cards on top when they fetch and then pretend to shuffle while keeping the top unchanged. Very common cheat, and that's why you should always cut or even shuffle after someone fetches
My best Spotify "randomizer" incident wasn't 2 songs by the same artist, but rather in a 1200+ song listing I got Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love followed immediately by Weird Al's Addicted to Spuds.
i once had a 1000+ song playlist on shuffle and repeat all finish and start over on the same song. i've never recovered
I think that the audio waves are compared to each other to try to match for flow, I don't know if thats how it works or not but it's not actually really random, there is programming and a method to what the order of playback becomes.
@@jeffe2267 those that would include duplicates would be closer to true random then?
There's something philosophically valuable here.
Why does random mean as much as it does for humans?
@@hamsandwich6685 - a programmer friend explained it to me a long time ago that there was no such thing as "random" to a computer. It's always based on some current value deep in the system or something like that.
@@DerekScottBland in computers, true random does not exist.
With the human mind, I am confident something closer to true randomness is more possible.
Though it can be argued, that on sub conscience levels, the mind may still be applying subtle patterns.
Can we just mention the playmat on the right? He's just casually reminding every opponent at all times that they can just concede and get it over with. That's such a chad move.
I once talked to a guy who said it should be okay to mana weave and then shuffle afterwards so that he wouldn't be cheating. I explained to him that shuffling afterwards so as to not count as cheating would randomize the deck and undo his attempt to avoid mana flood or mana drought. But that dude just couldn't get it.
The thing is that is wrong, while yes if you truly shuffle it perfectly that's right, no one is changing the placement of every card in the deck order relative to it's neighbors, when you shuffle a deck and let's say you split the deck at a random points like you should and place them in the middle, if you picked up your lands and at the end of the game and put them in the deck together without shuffling your other played cards in, that means your Goin to have clumps of lands and cards you played last game together you can change the likelihood of it by shuffling well and being random, but people aren't good at random, if someone picks a random number or shuffles a deck randomly they have a tendency to do it the same way, and that means why you shuffle a deck 4 times your using a similar pattern and that will affect the randomized order of cards
I have that conversation enough that i dont play mtg any more. The decks i tend to play need time. Not some RDW player taking 20 mins to shuffle.
That’s hilarious, this is my local lgs. I need to head in to talk to the guys about this.
So what did they say?
@@johnsmith-dn8kvmost likely nothing since he's most likely lying for internet clout
When i was a child i was playing in a super low stakes game at my lgs. My oponent started to mana weave the shit out of his deck, like 1 Land - 2 Cards - 1 Land - repeat. Than he didnt shuffle if but gave it to me for cutting. So i looked him in the eyes and cut his deck 1 Card on this pile - 2 Cards on this pile - 1 card on this pile. He didnt draw any lands this game and was fuming, didnt even feel bad about it.
The number of people who think Manaweaving isn't cheating is huge and confusing. In smaller cardgames I've played it's even been the people in charge of tournament rules. They're always baffled when confronted.
Yea, just do it at home when you put your deck together and no one cares.
@@Locohappy if I can mash shuffle your deck a few times afterwards and you feel bad and feel the negative benefit, then you probably know internally that you are in fact cheating
well most of them think that weaving and then shuffling is fine. but the problem is that if you believe that helps, you aren't shuffling well.
Used to go to a local place that would try to enforce a rule that you could only do a simple cut on your opponents deck to try to save time, they eventually lost their ability to hold DCI sanctioned tournaments due to their absolute refusal to comply with the rules. Same place would always try to enforce their own custom ban list in sanctioned play, often banning cards that weren't even meta purely because one particular player won with it the week previously, or because it was countering the local net-deck meta. It really sucked, especially since it was essentially the only option locally to play in tournaments at the time, the other local place never had enough people to have tournaments and the owner would routinely fill a roster with accounts she had made using her family members names so she could fake having enough players to continue receiving promo materials which she would keep.
Is it still cheating if you proper shuffle afterwards? Because most times after a game, my lands are clumped together
I always remember a little anecdote I heard one time (sadly can't remember exactly where):
If your conventional shuffling after you pile shuffled or manawove is sufficient to randomise your deck, then said manaweaving accomplishes nothing except wasting time. & if you're not sufficiently randomising your deck afterwards then you're cheating.
Though on the subject of shuffle cheating we did have a player at our fnm who many suspected of doing this. What we suspected was that they were moving cards around during sideboarding time to get as even of a distribution as possible of everything, & then shuffling in such a way as to minimally disrupt this distribution. This survived being cut, because whatever chunk of deck they started with was pretty much the same as any other chunk of deck.
Unsurprisingly they usually enjoyed very smooth draws & a lot of victories.
Now, no-one ever tried to go after them.... it's the lgs & nobody wants drama in the community. Plus, not the easiest thing to prove; and no-one who suspected it could actually prove it.
So what some of us did was upgrade him from "cut at fnm" to "always shuffle". (Gotta admit; the vast majority of opponents at fnm... just cutting the deck is enough for that level of play (for me at least))
Anyway, his win % dropped precipitously after we started shuffling his deck on the regular. Funny that.
Moral of the story: always cut your opponents deck. If you're playing anything higher than fnm (or you expect shenanigans) always shuffle it.
'If your conventional shuffling after you pile shuffled or manawove is sufficient to randomise your deck, then said manaweaving accomplishes nothing except wasting time. & if you're not sufficiently randomising your deck afterwards then you're cheating.'
The same could be said of not manaweaving, it's just your 'cheating' would be disadvantaging yourself most of the time (deck dependent). I'm sure some people could give examples of fringe mtg decks were picking up the lands and nonlands and just slapping them on top of the deck and shuffling would actually bring an advantage for a particular deck gameplan.
We had a player, (that i lived with), that had 1 card in a longer sleeve than the rest. in a format where some cards were restricted. Day of a big tourney, we swapped two of his cards while he slept. The long sleeve was on a swamp instead. 0/2 drop.
Great Video just one thing, as Judges we do not call it Pile 'Shuffle' we call it Pile Counting, because as you mentioned this is not truly randomizing.
That's a great point! Thank you! Will include that in the inevitable follow up.
You give it 7 riffles after you do piles. It's just peace of mind
I always wondered how random/non-random a deck would be after a facedown pile shuffle… I’m not trying to discredit that it’s not a proper shuffle, but just more curious about the actual numbers behind it.
@@acclratorthe problem is, there’s nothing random about it. With a mash or riffle, which card goes next is left to chance, similar to rolling a die or flipping a coin (unless you intentionally perform a perfect Faro shuffle, which would also be cheating)
Pile “shuffling” is deterministic. There’s a specific number of piles, and each card gets placed in a specific pile based on where it was in the previous ordering. Cheaters literally use this determinism to stack their decks ahead of time
I am a teacher and amateur magician, and I like to teach my students tricks. This guy looks like when one of my 8 year old students tries their first card control a minute after I showed them lmao
Interesting take on pile shuffling. I always thought of it as basically a more rote version of mash shuffling. It does break up clumps, but if you're doing that along with packet shuffling then it should be fine if you do it enough. If you scoop, there will be usually huge clumps of lands/creatures, and packet shuffling leaves the clumps in, which isn't random either. You need both (or just doing either of them a bunch of times).
Cheaters can be such goobers. I remember watching a match at a FNM during Zendikar standard between Mono Black and UW Control. This was back when everyone was playing Baneslayer in their deck as a finisher. The Mono B player gets stomped G 1 and me and a few others watch him badly sneak a card from outside the game to his hand for G2. G2 rolls around, the UW player taps out for a Baneslayer and the guy brings in his big smoking gun that he cheated into his hand, Halo Hunter. A 2BBB Demon that ETBs Destroy target angel. He windmill slams it down to only realize that Baneslayer has Prot from Demons, rendering his cheat completely pointless. The look on the guys face when he realized this was priceless. He loses G2 and proceeds to never come back to the LGS for FNM.
Vince didn't even need to say anything, holy shit that was some blatant stacking there.
This was at my LGS and Im hearing about it from this video. Shows how much I pay attention to non commander things lol.
I like shuffling all the cards from the previous game first, then do the mix with the rest of the deck. Mentally, it lets me believe the lands won't all be stuck together for next time. Minimum time to get around the hangup.
I also can't get over how much those sleeved cards being pile 'shuffled' look like cheese slices.
That's because they were cheese slices. Look closer.
@@PleasantKenobi i went back and looked....:(
Never trust someone who doesn’t cut your deck
I pretty much only play at local card shop events, and I never cut my opponents deck simply to speed up play. It lets me stay focused on what I am doing as this usually is a limited format of a set I am not overly familiar with. The stakes are so low, that playing more magic without running into the time limit is a bigger priority to me.
I just don't want to touch their cards...
Locally I try randomize whether I cut or not so it’s impossible to expect
@@grantharriman284 You should at least cut the deck. It takes literally two seconds. I sincerely doubt that's putting that much strain on the clock.
@@omegaxtrigun It's mostly about keeping my attention on what I am doing with my deck that I have literally built minutes before when they search their library as part of a chain of actions. I am more concerned with not missing my ability triggers or otherwise goofing up how my deck is supposed to work than with whether someone is cheating in a virtually zero stakes event.
This is why I shuffle with the cardbacks up and always ask for my deck to be cut even in casual commander so it hopefully settles worries people might have. Cheating in magic (and in general) just feels ass to do and do to people. Terrible draws make for stories just as much as "Oh yeah I had the perfect hand bro" which you know isn't cool because you cheated for it so its not cool.
I dunno I think pile shuffling at least once is important. It's not true randomization, but breaking up your previous games clumps is vital. If you know "oh this clump of cards has xyz in it" that's information you shouldn't have.
But it literally doesn't do anything that a mash shuffle doesn't undo.
If it did, it would be cheating.
If it doesn't, it would be time wasting.
@@PleasantKenobiyes it does a mash shuffle can still have cards next to each other because of air pressure making it not random.adding a pile makes sure those cards can only be next to each other by pure chance.
@@chronicstoner1work 100% I started non-uniformly pile shuffling before mash shuffling exactly because I noticed there'd be 3ish card clumps that were in the exact order they were in last game, I do get it's annoying though and usually doesn't make a difference in-game so I'll just separate any combo cards while scooping up my board to save on the time pile shuffling would take
I totally get why people don’t do this, but I bridge shuffle my cards. It means my cards are always face down and out of my sight and it is a very good way to properly randomize my cards, and if you do it correctly you don’t damage your cards either. Naturally, when I cut my opponent’s deck I don’t bridge shuffle theirs because I know some people hate that, but I do a good two or three mash shuffles and call it good.
Fun story I like to tell, I played in a somewhat casual legacy event in New Jersey. I had a deck that I had spent WAY too much money on that was just a pet deck for me, UB Landstill. I had judge promo FoWs, foil worldwake Jace the Mjnd Sculptors, foil Onslaught Polluted Deltas signed by Rob Alexander, the works. At the time (2018) the deck was probably $16,000. No one at the store I played at really knew me because I wasn’t a regular, so when I started bridge shuffling the deck, I had people all over the store just cringing like it was causing them physical pain. It was great.
You sir are a monster and I applaud you.
to riffle shuffle/bridge shuffle without causing damage to the cards actually takes skill. A skill which most people don't have. So I understand why people hate seeing it/having it done to their deck. They just don't realize that it can be perfectly fine if done correctly and gently.
@@xerowolf4242 Oh absolutely, it took a lot of practice to do it. It was especially difficult learning how to do it with sleeves without splitting them.
My goodness, he is just not caring about who sees what he is doing.
Completely agree with the sentiment, but as a newbie player who is often playing casually and a few times in a row, I generally find myself doing a similar move: out of habit, scooping up all my lands on the board into a pile, scooping up the cards on the battlefield and chucking my hand on top, then cards go on land, and back onto the deck. Then I tend to deal a random number of piles, shuffle random pairs of piles together until I can begin mashing two stacks. Shuffle a few times, offer a cut and then proceed. On the one hand I’m intentionally breaking up a lump of cards, but I suppose the main difference between that and the spoken example of pile counting is probably that im trying to lose the signal of my previous hand and board state rather than trying to even things out or create a new signal. Anyway, interesting video as always!
If you de-clump cards while searching your deck for a card THEN shuffling is still cheating? The deck gets randomized by the shuffle and your opponent cuts is more than enough randomization isn't it? Small edit: I usually play Yu-Gi-Oh where I've seen it often happen.
Yes. Because if the shuffling is truly random, then the decoupling was time wasting.
If the declump had an effect, its cheating because its not truly random.
@@PleasantKenobi Did a bit more searching, it's perfectly legal to do in Yu-Gi-Oh. There's still the randomization of shuffling and the cut so it's not cheating.
The Logical Rule of Mana Weaving : If Mana Weaving is making your draws better, you're not shuffling properly or enough.
*Nobody* should see the contents of any deck in the process of shuffling.
Preferably, always shuffle the opponent's deck. At minimum, cut the deck. Anyone that gets upset at you for it shouldn't be trusted. If they randomized properly, it should affect nothing.
I believe it is minimum 7 shuffles to properly randomize a deck. Accept no less.
As an aside : If you need to prove a point to someone mana weaving, 3 pile count their deck. Anyone doing 2 spells, 1 land weaving will get 2 neat piles of spells and 1 pile of land stacked like a sandwich. They are guaranteed to get 7 spells or 7 lands. I've gotten more than one person to quit weaving doing this.
The rule of minimum 7 shuffles to achieve proper randomization is from the profession of prestidigitation.
It's a magician's code type of thing
" If you need to prove a point to someone mana weaving, 3 pile count their deck. Anyone doing 2 spells, 1 land weaving will get 2 neat piles of spells and 1 pile of land stacked like a sandwich. They are guaranteed to get 7 spells or 7 lands. I've gotten more than one person to quit weaving doing this."
Please do not do this, just call a judge. Doing this and proceeding into the game is Manipulation of Game Materials and makes you a cheater as well.
If you suspect someone is cheating, don't try to counter their cheating. Just call a Judge and explain what you observed.
@@hamsandwich6685 I've seen at least one paper (from the 90's, admittedly) suggesting that 7 shuffles is about the minimum needed for close to proper randomization based on mathematic principles, I don't think it's all down to magician practices.
@@drpibisback7680 fair enough.
Seems likely they knew that as well and why it became the industry standard.
People keep forgetting the "7 shuffles" thing is for **perfect** shuffles, and for a 52 card deck.
That’s why I mash shuffle, pile shuffle in a weird and random order and NOT in equal piles, then mash shuffle THOSE piles into each other and finally a full mash shuffle of the entire deck. I find that this method, though time consuming, works the best. Idk if I’d do it at a tournament unless the rounds over and I’m prepping for the next round but I digress
I didn't even know people do pile shuffling in a non-random order and with equal piles. Doing it randomly breaks up the clumps from previous rounds just as well and also actually randomises your cards. Tbh, I have a hard time figuring out what the right way to shuffle is between games in a best of 3 and hope every time that it is sufficient while not waisting too much time.
Friendly reminder about randomization! Though exceptionally unlikely, there is a non-zero chance that, after you do a full, proper shuffle, every single one of your lands will be clumped together at the bottom of your deck.
Hey Kenobi! Great content as always. I recon it would be good for you to explain for new people WHY weaving isn't innocuous so people don't see it as a nitpick, when its actually about fair play. I think new people see weaving as not an advantage but a way to have a smoother experience without appreciating that weaving is advantageous to some archetypes more than others and it effects deck building criteria and the power of cards. If a certain count of land were assumed in every opening and draw there after, every meta in every format would be very different. The new unbanning with preordain and inclusion of the LOTR land cyclers is a great example of what happens to a deck and meta when your opening land count and land draws there after is effected. Thanks again for the content.
I am curious how people can "see this as not an advantage but a way to have a smoother experience". How can it not be an advantage if you ensure smoother draws? It all just sounds like cognitive dissonance to me.
One time at GP, OP called judge on me cheating. I random pile shuffle (placing cards in random piles instead of just clockwise or whatever), and count quietly 1-6 10 times to make sure I have 60 card deck. OP thought it was fishy and called judge … “he’s cheating I don’t know how but he’s shuffling weird” =_______= the kicker, his shuffle on my deck was extremely long and suspicious but couldn’t find any problem, but I always cut the deck of of precaution. Later, happened to see him at top table nearby. His OP Minds Desire for 10+ and bricked, and standing behind I can clearly see he is cheating. Quietly called judge to walk over and observe, G3 his OP Mind’s Desired for 5 and bricked, but had enough off the free spell to get mana to play a second MD for 9 and bricked again. Judge walked over and DQ’d Villain. Great feeling! Guy must’ve spent hours practicing to perform it to a point where I was looking for it and couldn’t spot it when sitting opposite him.
I remember one GP I was at I was watching the feature match area. one of the players was a previous opponent of mine, so was checking the game out. it was after sideboarding and I noticed that the player was accidently not changing his bottom card while shuffling. I'm pretty sure it was accidental because he was never looking down and talking to the opponent and the deck faced away from him, but one of the judges watching noticed too. I saw the judge stare watching his shuffling until he moved the bottom card in the last few shuffles. pretty sure he nearly got called for that.
Mana weaving:
Recent new players only learned MTG from Commander teaches bad habits, like this. My LGS had to crack down on it. Issuing game warnings and etc.
When I was a new player, I remember guys at my shop telling me mana weaving was legal and fair. Imagine having to cheat to beat a new player to feel good about yourself
This happened to me. Wondered why I kept losing every time
They said that because it IS legal. As long as the deck is sufficiently shuffled afterwards they're welcome to do anything including stacking a perfect hand at the top of the deck. Some people do it just out of superstition/luck/whatever.
Some people whine so much about this and it's just an excuse people use to protect their egos when they lose. Everyone loses and that's fine but try to get something out of it to improve. You get the final shuffles and cuts of your opponents deck. ALWAYS shuffle/cut your opponents deck after every game and search. Always. If you're losing it's not because of mana weaving. It's a combination of luck, skill, matchup, and deck construction. The sooner people stop complaining and start working on areas they can improve on the sooner they'll start winning more.
There should be mandatory rule: if one person shuffles, the other person cuts the deck. No exceptions. This way you could greatly diminish stacking-the-deck cheaters
First time I've heard that pile shuffling without looking at your cards is cheating. Pretty much everyone against whom I have played has done this for at least a couple decades.
It is against the rules as it isn't considered to be sufficient randomisation, you are allowed to do it if you then shuffle regularly afterwards. This means that the "shuffling" part of pile shuffling is irrelevant, it really is only done to count your cards
@@phaeste Oh yeah, definitely cards shuffled afterwards, I must have missed that part if mentioned. I was under impression that pile shuffling followed by additional deck shuffling was considered cheating.
Pile shuffling isn’t a shuffle. Its a repeated non random pattern. So hypothetically, if you know the order of your entire deck before, you should be able to decipher the order after a pile shuffle. Nothing is random about placing one card at a time into pre determined piles
@@damiend.7392 The only other thing to watch out for is that pile 'shuffling' too often is considered slow play.
I think the limit is once per game. I'm not certain though.
I've also never heard this considered cheating, nearly half the players I've faced either casually at home or at LGS pile shuffle and I've never seen anyone complain about it. I don't personally find it very effecient but I don't have a problem with it either, and I certainly wouldn't call it cheating especially if I'm just going to shuffle and cut my opponents deck immediately after anyway.
Pile shuffling to break up suspected clumps from previous games kind of implies that you are already aware that your deck is stacked in a way that could more reliably produce certain cards in succession. I kinda feel like it's valid as long as you shuffle afterwards, I think being terrible at shuffling is a big contributor to clumps.
Clumps are a natural part of sufficient randomisation.
If you need to "shuffle properly" after pile counting your deck, then pile counting admittedly didn't do enough, right?
@@PleasantKenobibro.... Natural. You said it yourself. They literally described unnatural clumps.
@@PleasantKenobi not mana clumps, clumps of typically around 3 cards that are in the same order they were in the previous game (either in play or in the graveyard). It's worse depending on the sleeves or the lack thereof
I’ve got a friend who manaweaves before shuffling every time. I try and explain to him that it doesn’t matter if he’s shuffling afterwards and letting his opponent ahuffle and cut but he doesn’t care. I mean, I don’t care about it because I get to shuffle it and I know it’s not stacked but it still grinds my gears that he won’t accept that he doesn’t need to manaweave.
I think this does matter. here's why. I used to mana weave before shuffling every time and back then, I would get mana screwed like 80% of the time. Always a mix of flooded and dry. But since I've stopped, I only get mana screwed about 20%-30% now. If by any chance your friend is constantly getting mana screwed as well, show him this comment and maybe he'll stop. It worked for me.
I wouldn't want to play with that guy, ngl. I'm fine with it prior or inbetween casual games, and only if it's infrequent. But I wouldn't put up with that shit mid-game.
But I mean, if he doesn't care, guy shouldn't be surprised if eventually no-one wants to play with him eventually.
I just pile shuffle because I'm bad at mashing, so I do a quick pile first. But I also only play commander, where the 100 card double sleeved deck is a pain in the ass to manipulate.
Shuffle 50 and 50, then mash those two together, then again.
I make a point for people who mana weave against me when they present cuts i simply just undo it. they learn to stop that real quick. ive had people call judges over to get themselves dqued after complaining bout the way i cut
edit: it is also pretty common at prereleases so look out
How do you un do it
@@possiblemonkey8915 most decks are around 1/3rd mana sources so a true mana weave is 2 spells and 1 land repeated. To "undo" this you pile shuffle creating 3 piles, 2 of those piles will be all or mostly spells and 1 pile will be all or mostly mana sources. Once you put those 3 piles together they will have either all mana sources or none. It's a reverse cheat and is actually still a cheat so I would only do this if its someone who is doing these things in a casual setting because otherwise you should call a judge/owner to report the cheating.
@@xwlfx315x Why is it a cheat? if we assume the opponent shuffled his deck you can cut it whatever way you want and it will still be randomized, as long as you don't look at the carts there is no problem.
My philosophy around Mana Weaving and Pile Shuffling (in a casual setting) has been that those are fine if you start with them, but you need to be doing regular shuffling without looking at the contents of your deck after to effectively make sure that you do not have any idea what the order of your deck is. I think this video does a good job explaining why that is probably too lenient, because that guy could have made the argument that he was doing that.
The fact that this was a Judge of any kind is disgusting. I'd say he should be ashamed, but clearly he wasn't above cheating at FNM, so I doubt he would.
When I was perhaps twelve or thirteen I pile shuffled between games at an FNM. I didn't know any better. My opponent, seeing exactly how I pile shuffled and that I didn't do any other sort of shuffling, proceeded to "cut" my deck by re-pile shuffling my deck, essentially reverting it to the exact order my deck was in after the end of the previous game. Needless to say I mulliganed. Over ten years later, I'm a level 1 judge, and I know now that my opponent wasn't allowed to do that either, but I will tell you this- I never pile shuffled again.
Your pile shuffling rant is understandable but I think slightly overstated. Mash shuffling such that your deck is not sufficiently randomized is cheating. The real question is in the real world, does pile shuffling followed by mash shuffling lead to a more random deck distribution on average than an average mash shuffle. I believe 7 perfect mash shuffles creates a randomized deck, but people aren't perfect. Also, cards sticking together due to static friction is fairly common, even a poorly performed pile shuffle prevents this possibility from occuring. As you mentioned counting your deck to ensure nothing is missing / you cut the correct amount of cards post sideboard is for sure warranted. Finally, a player can take as much time as they want shuffling within the rules, not every action during your shuffling time needs to contribute to your shuffle. Using your time to meditate/think are perfectly valid uses of time, and cutting those actions to appease your opponent is not helping you play at your best. If tournament run time is impacted at large by the action players take, then rules can be modified accordingly.
- one time pile shuffler into mash dude
In a non-casual setting, you definitely cannot take as much time as you would like shuffling. You may take a reasonable amount of time.
@@its_chris2323 I never said as much as you want. I said as much as you want "within the rules." I'm not sure why you would mischaracterize my comment given that I'm referring to the same sentence you quoted (which you omitted the ending of).
@@ProtagonistOfficial you literally said it "Finally, a player can take as much time as they want shuffling....." Your within rules catch all doesn't save your argument. You are implying that you can take as much time as you would like. Honestly it's whatever, just be reasonable. Don't play/sideboard slow after beating a control deck just to get the win. After only completing one game. Be fair.
@@TK4K411 I mean, the "within the rules" part of the sentence you ignored seems like a quite important distinction. So it does kind of save their argument, because they never argued merely "as much time as they want", they argued "as much time as they want *within the rules.* "
You are literally arguing against a point they never made.
@@TK4K411 I will assume you are arguing in good faith. "within the rules" means within the rules of the tournament you are playing in. Sometimes this means 5 minutes if I remember correctly and sometimes this is left up to judge discretion and the time limit is left up to the interpretation of "a reasonable amount of time". "Within the rules" is a qualifier on the phrase "as much as you want." If I say you can go whereever you want within my house, it does not mean you can go outside of my house. Hopefully I helped clarify any misunderstandings.
12:00 about the pile shuffling, according to tournament rules; it is acceptable as the first and only the first shuffle for a game and it is allowed precisley to count the deck.
Quick question: what is the best way to quickly shuffle up the cards you played last game into your deck for next game? Often after shuffling I will end up in a patch of my deck that is near identical to the cards I had in play last game. Obviously this means I'm not shuffling well enough, so what can I do differently to make sure my cards are truly randomized? Usually, I will mash-shuffle 5-10 times. I have been avoiding riffling for draft because I know it can damage cards if done improperly, but it's a non-option for commander games, so there has to be a better way.
For commander games, if your hands are too small to handle your entire deck at once, properly mash shuffle two halves of your deck A & B (50 cards each). Once you shuffled 7-8 times, each of them should be random with their content. Now divide each of your two A & B piles in two, and shuffle A1 pile with B1 (into a pile C), and A2 pile with B2 (into a pile D), 7-8 times each. You now have two new 50 cards piles with fully randomized content, as in there is no way for you to know where any card is located. Then you just need to put pile C on top of pile D and you're good to go.
It should take 7-10 riffle shuffles to randomize an EDH deck, and mashing is mostly the same as riffle shuffling. If you're doing 5, then yeah you just need to shuffle more. If you are shuffling enough, it's possible that the identical patches are just the result of random chance (obvious depends on what the patches are, how long they are and if you're in a singleton format).
@@stoephil I have relatively large hands, but a double-sleeved deck is difficult even for me. The shuffle you described is indeed very effective but also very long, I am looking for something that can be done in less than 30 seconds
@@Aegisworn I'll up it to a minimum 10 times then I guess. Sucks that everytime I fetch a land it extends the game by 30 seconds or more of just waiting, but that's just the way it goes
I pile shuffle to count but then I properly shuffle just to make sure it's shuffle shuffled. Pile to redistribute then the actual to shuffle. so Its almost impossible to get the same cards in a row
If that last part was true, you have cheated.
Part of randomisation is the ability to get two of the same thing in a row.
Pile counting is not shuffling. It wasted time. Cut that part out and shuffle properly.
@@PleasantKenobi yeah that's not cheating bro.
"if the last part was true". what... where I admit to a standard shuffle after the pile. so to you shuffling is just cheating?
pile shuffling is most definitely a shuffle, just not a true shuffle.
with your logic paying 2 white mana to play a 1 white, 1 colourless creature card is cheating.
@@PleasantKenobigood thing you're not a judge because if you actually were you would have allowed many people to cheat because it 'saves time'
Listen to yourself. Try to understand why this is silly.
"Not a true shuffle" - ok, so why the hell are you doing it as part of your shuffle?
If it doesn't shuffle well enough on its own, it's insufficient randomisation- which if you are doing so to get an advantage (evenly distributed lands and spells) is cheating.
If you instead use a real shuffle to undo this, you are wasting everybody's time.
Stop with the pile crap. It's not a shuffle. It's a counting method.
@@PleasantKenobi because the game has these cards called auras.
Most players will put them under / over a card it's attached too and sometimes it's on an opponents card... It lets you avoid cheating by counting your cards so you know you have a legal deck and, that you haven't lost any while giving the bonus of truly randomising the cards when used with a standard shuffle.
I hope that helps.
I thought the Yu-Gi-Oh stream cheater was bad. But this was way too casual. Almost like he was just begging to get caught.
I pileshuffel to unclumb my deck. But not often and immidiately after i do a very chaotic fast shuffle and insist my opponant cuts the deck. Chaotic as in multiple shuffles techniques in no particular order.
I have no clue where stuff in my deck is at that point and if my opponant doesnt believe me they can cut as wild as they feel like.
"I use pile'shuffle' to cheat"
I have a guy that shuffle cheats at our locals in casual commander games. Me and my friend usually see this and the dude opens the same few combo pieces every single time he plays with us. We don't directly call him out on it because It's funny that he stacks his deck and still somehow ends up last every single time.
yeah we had a guy who would just like draw extra cards all game if he had nothing he really wanted to do coming up. and i mean like a comical amount like would end his turn with 2 cards in hand and at the start would have like 6 or 7 and think we didnt notice (we eventually brought it up and then stopped playing with him when he wouldnt stop)
I will die on this hill, the logic to this is circular, either shuffling works or it doesn't. At the end of a match if I scoop all my lands together and then grab my graveyard all together which usually doesn't contain many land and then grab what is on the battlefield if there is anything, you claim that this is the correct way, but you are assuring clumps are going in, which again, by what everyone is saying, isn't random. Then as normal you shuffle your deck, but the act of shuffling is what is randomizing those clumps, and when people do this they tend to shuffle longer to do so.
But if I dont grab those clumps and I lay my land out and put the cards i played randomly on those lands and then shuffle for 2 or 3 minutes or sometimes more then that is considered manaweaving, but just like grabbing clumps you are putting cards into your library that are not randomized, either way shuffling is going randomize your deck, if it didnt what would be the point of shuffling, either shuffling works or it doesnt, either way you are putting cards back that arent truly randomized so thats why we shuffle. Now, if you didnt shuffle after this or shuffle very little only then should it be considered manaweaving. The whole point of shuffling is to randomize so it wouldnt matter how the cards went back in to the deck.
I have been doing the end of the game pile shuffle since 2001 and trust me when I say this, i get mana flooded or screwed just as much as what is considered the correct way. I kept track of my opening hands and how evenly distributed they were for mana or multiples of what would be considered the good cards of the deck and I used both methods while shuffling 2 to 3 minutes every time and from my sample size of over a hundred games each i found it was all still random. Maybe my sample size wasnt large enough. The reason I put so much effort into this is someone tried to use this to DQ me when he lost a game three, and I was sick of people calling me a cheater for doing something that shuffling will correct, because thats why we shuffle.
Exactly. This means the pile "shuffling" is simply wasting time.
Which is why as the opponent you should ALWAYS shuffle/cut your opponent's deck, even when playing for fun or casual games to keep people from taking advantage and manipulating their deck every game.
This whole video is valid, except the pile shuffling imo, if properly done with mash shuffling the equation would go as follows, random + a pattern + random = random
If you randomise, the pattern isn't necessary. You are wasting your time.
@@PleasantKenobi a thirty second pile shuffle shouldn’t cause a draw with two pro active decks, or even one of the two being pro active, some people do things to be superstitious and not to just waste time. I love your content and still will just saying :)
Anything above a friendly game with no stakes, I am absolutely cutting my opponent's deck at minimum. For bigger tournaments, I'm shuffling their deck. Just a good habit. It's not rude, it's part of the rules, don't feel bad about doing it.
I'm an edh player. I used to pile shuffle after deck construction or having particularly bad mulligans, and always followed with at least some method of rifle shuffling.
Currently what I do is split the deck into thrids and alterate pairs for each rifle shuffle a few times, then rifle shuffle once or twice the whole deck.
I don't play much anymore to have practice shuffling the big deck fully sleeved, so I find this way faster and easier without having to be as concerned with damaging sleeves. I don't know how exactly it mathematically compares to other methods of shuffle for randomization, which I recall finding an actual study whre they determined that ~6-10 rifle shuffles were necessary to achieve depending on deck size.
7:28 When it comes to competitive play, I learned to go into it with this mentality.
- Don't trust any opponent.
- Don't trust a judge will find/catch any cheating.
- Pay attention to every stage and interaction of play.
Considering the number of Intermediate/Pro players that have come out of the wood work as cheaters, we should all be vigilante of each other. Even with people we are close to, all it takes is one moment where something is done incorrectly, and whether by intention or not, the game has been changed unfairly.
Keep the cheater's DQ'd, and ensure the honest players are consistent and accountable.
Bro pile shuffling isnt cheating lol if you use an odd number of piles and pile shiffle more than once then the piles will naturally randomize due to the amount of uneven piles (i usually do 7 piles for edh or 5 piles for 60 card) ive never heard anyone refer to pile shuffling as cheating but i can see why with this particular case because he was clearly manaweaving before hand and he is using an even number of piles that 60 divides into
Well thank you, Vince! You learned me something today. I'm apparently a dirty cheater! I do the stack shuffle method sometimes, usually after I've played a handful of games in a row where I got mana fucked. I'd have never thought of it as a cheat before you explained it, but it does make sense. Generally the only other time I do this is at the end of a long gaming session and I do more steps than simply deal out four piles and stack them. I'll deal out 4-5 piles, randomly selecting a pile to deal onto, then mash each pile, then mash each pile together one by one until all the dealt piles as together. It's a lot of steps and probably completely pointless because of all the mashing I'm doing anyway, but in my mind it helps break those clumps from previous games and is ready to be mashed before the next game.
A pile shuffle at the beginning of a match to verify deck size, riffled at least five times before presenting for cut.
End of game, cards that were drawn are loosely arranged to evenly space lands/nonlands. This is solely to appease minor OCD, and is gently mashed into the remaining deck before sideboarding.
After sideboarding, count sideboard to verify deck size, then back to the 5x+ riffling as the cycle begins anew.
I always pile shuffle my deck once each time I take it out to play. It is to "count" (even though I have had moments where I had one too many or too few), but mainly to be sure cards aren't sticking to each other. But you are right, it is not randomizing anything indeed. It is not shuffling actually.
The thumbnail expression is exactly the same as mine watching this... "shuffle"
While i can understand point that pile shuffling before proper shuffling takes a little bit more time, I tend to do that before match once.
1. Because it helps counting cards after recent match, when i could sideboard something and not always remember to take it out
2. Because i am always uncertain that sole shuffling will randomize deck perfectly (that one can be viewed as unreasonable - i understand)
3.And because sometimes 2-3 cards get stuck together by static or something and i would like to minimize that risk if possible.
I tend to not do that between games though and never know where my lands or spells are before
I think saying that is waste of everyones time is a little over the top. I tend to play reasonably fast and had termination maybe few times and always for another reason anyway. If someone wants to stall, there are more efficient ways i think.
Random is random, cards sticking together can be random. The point is that YOU or anyone else doesn't know if they are, or they AREN'T. If you feel or know that everything is evenly distributed aka "not stuck together", it is not random. There is no perfect random. Random will be random. You shouldn't know. That is random.
But counting your cards is a different than shuffling your deck. Please do what you need to make sure you have the right number of cards in your deck and sideboard. making piles can be fast way to count your cards but people fall into the trap thinking it is good form of shuffling. It is not.
"Not stuck together" what i mean is LITERALLY stuck together, not like land next to land or whatever, but just one card stick to another. It is not random or not - it's just annoying and i want to prevent that, and pile shuffling can prevent that better than mashing.
And i also don't recommend piling INSTEAD of proper shuffling. Just as something extra to prevent some annoying situations before shuffling deck 10+ times.
Drawing 7 before your opponent is even done shuffling is absolutely unhinged behavior.
It's good to spread the word about wasting time for pile shuffling before the mash. Minor pet peeve of mine.
I am skeptical of his assertion that pile shuffle followed by mash shuffle is the same result as mash shuffling alone.
@@kathic6402 It is if you shuffle well enough to fully randomize (by the definition of what randomization is), but a lot of people don't shuffle well enough.
I only play ygo in paper at the moment but I do it just to make sure I sided correctly, cause I am shit at keeping track of my maindeck and sidedeck cards.
@@tambutt9822 my feelings exactly. I don't think most people, myself included, are good at mash shuffling
I believe it takes something like 7 to fully randomize when pile shuffling and you need to choose a number of piles that is appropriate for the number of cards in the deck. For example, 7 piles is also a good number for 60 card decks, because it's the first number that has a remainder (you'll get 6 piles of 8 cards and 1 pile with 9).
Most of the time this is a waste, but I tend to do it at home or before I start playing with anyone and then do a mash shuffle between games.
There's a few techniques to go really fast with pile shuffling but they are kind of hard and not worth it and can make people think you're cheating
I always knew it as "Seeding". Pretty much only did it after assembling a deck, or possibly pre-tourney. Always blind shuffled and presented for cut during the match. Would that still be considered not okay?
If you present a sufficiently randomised deck, you are fine. But if you are going to sufficiently randomise it, there is no need to "seed" your deck since if the deck is randomised properly after, you just wasted time seeding it.
My justification for pile shuffling is to break up literal clumps - cards that are stuck together by static or slightly grubby sleeves. After that, mashing randomises it.
Yeah, that first match of the day occasionally has a couple clingers.
Yeah, if I only mash shuffle I know I’m likely to run into a clump of lands or something that didn’t get separated after my last game. I go with pile shuffle plus a quick mash every time.
I sometimes pile shuffle as mentioned at 12:44 mainly because even after 8 years I am still really bad at shuffling and I have neurological issues that mean I often am slower or drop cards.
I had a friend show me that after "Shuffling" their deck, one or two draws in they were able to "guess" the next cards drawn with about 95% accuracy. I was like "...So you're stacking the deck?" and he was like "No, no! You saw me shuffle, it's randomized!" and it's like bruh, if you know what's coming, that's not randomization. Did he expect me to be impressed? I used to play with this guy. He legitimately tried to convince me that it's all down to deck construction reducing variables, what a fuckin pro
I mean, that's probably true if you're just running 15 copies of your 4 best cards. Work smarter not harder
@@4Asphalt4 Yeah, running a Limited Tribal deck usually means you pump the deck full of multiple copies of a win condition.
If you're pile shuffling and you've finished putting them in to piles, just mash the piles together instead of picking up each pile.
Most of us do a standard shuffle after to make sure it's as random as possible. This guy seems to think that's cheating tho.
Hot take, if you manaweave intending to "evenly distribute" lands in your deck and still mash shuffle you are still a cheater because the intent. You are just bad at it.
A few years ago I learned the truth behind mana weaving and before then didn't see the harm but quickly learned how it was not fair play. To which I've not played paper magic in a few years now, so seeing that dude blatantly cheating while "shuffling" is why in any organized play I've always did a cut and only would "tap" the opponents if I was playing casual games when my opponent would be interacting with me during the shuffle so I knew they weren't cheating. But seeing this video helped me learn the basis of pile shuffling as a huge no no when I've never really thought about it in the sense that truly randomizing the deck is crucial to getting a true game. And anyone who was a judge and thinks they'd suddenly be trusted, those are the players I trust the least when their time as a judge only helps them know the subtle cheats to give them an edge.
For commander I do pile to move the 20 lands from the last game then I make sure I randomize it later. It makes me feel like I won’t get land screwed again even though I am undoing the work 😂
I only do it when it’s a brand new commander deck I have never played before, and it is sorted by lands then mana curve. I will pile shuffle to break things up and then mash afterwards. I do genuinely struggle shuffling 100 cards though, I always end up dropping one. I often resort to mashing with the cards clearly visible to my opponents, probably giving away some info of what’s in my deck, but it’s commander so I don’t really care. I have lost more games than I’ve won, so I don’t think I’m cheating that hard.
How do you feel about "weaving" aka equally distributing lands from match one BEFORE shuffling it up normally?
Sometimes I do that out of superstition that the "same" chunks get mash shuffled around in a big blob.
As long as you sufficiently randomize afterwards it's not technically cheating but if your are randomizing your deck enough why do it in the first place.
@@unixtreme superstition basically
Its cheating
It's honestly sadder that they were so bad at cheating, than actually cheating
That was so sad and pathetic lmaoooo
Idk when this started but i think one day when we were tapping or cutting in our casual table (we cut or tap just because its fun and usually someone does something silly we all trust each other) i deceided to cut only the top 3 cards of their deck and jokingly said "ay lets see how good those were" so we revealed the cards and had a giggle , and now thats a staple cut for us is to take only the top couple look at them and put em on bottom. Really added a lot to our groups in terms of getting everyone in a fun mood
I went to a game local tournament and had someone complain about my cut of their deck. I put the top 5-10 cards on the bottom.
A cut can be just the top card on the bottom. If they want to cry about it then they shouldn't play.
How the hell did their opponent not notice this??
One small detail I find interesting at the start is how he sideboards. He appears to have laid out the cards he wants to sideboard in, then laid out each card he is sideboarding out next to them, so that he and presumably his opponent and any judges or other observers can easily see that he is removing and adding the same number of cards, ensuring that he still has a 60 card deck.
As a yugioh player, my side deck is the same number of cards every time, and a smaller number than my main deck obviously. So I just make sure to count the side deck one final time before im doing siding.
He's not even trying to hide it. Dude is literally stopping mid shuffle and looking at cards lol
In nearly all circumstances, mana weaving should be avoided. The only time I would say it's acceptable is in a casual setting where you discuss it with your playgroup and everyone has agreed that mana weaving is allowed at that specific table. That of course applies to any rule, but I can see it being a house rule people want to adopt for fun, and I do think there's room for that in the game, just not in official rulesets.
I’ve played magic for many years, and I’ve never had anyone complain, but I don’t go to big events. How I generally shuffle is 2-3 non lands (depending on the deck), one land, then repeat, then I riffle or mash (not looking at the front of the cards or stacking, obviously) about 7-8 times. Have I been cheating this whole time? It seems like if I don’t do that the entire deck is just going to be huge clumps of the cards from the last game, right? That also doesn’t seem random.
Bro, I used to regularly play MTG with two 40+ year olds who have been playing since before Ice Age and THEY still manaweave.
Not everyone has basic common sense and two braincells to rub together.
Before someone tells me I shouldn't have played with them because they cheated:
1. They were really bad at magic. They had 0 plays against control mill and I legitimately almost made both these grown men cry because they couldn't play magic how they wanted, on multiple occasions.
2. One of them ate lead paint growing up. The other has degenerative MS and just needed a homie. Fuck yalls opinions on it.
3. They had really good cards but didn't know how to use them properly. With their lack of skill and the benefit of having a good deck, our matches were often rather equal given I make the most out of crappy cards or cards I just happen to like.
It wasn't all that much of an issue honestly, and it never even crossed my mind to bring it up. I just thought 'oh cool, these guys are idiots' and just played the game anyway.
That's a person who earns my special cut, which is cutting the deck into multiple, random sized piles and reassembling them based on whatever order I whim while staring my opponent directly in the eye. I've had to do it to one person in my life and it got my point across the first time.
On the topic of pile shuffling: I do it to make sure I do a true randomize at least once. Admittedly, mine's a little different, as I mass shuffle each pile back in (6 piles, shuffle one, add pile, shuffle, repeat). Since I generally don't run out my deck, the randomness in the remainder helps alleviate the fact I don't have the time to riffle-strip 7 times each time I shuffle (which technically is only the minimum for a 52-card deck, but better than what a lot of people in this game do).
The only time I've ever pile shuffled is when I finish building my deck during a limited event to count and make sure I have 40 cards. In constructed I play Yorion (in Pioneer) and after making sure the deck list is 80 cards before heading to an event, after side boarding to make sure I have to 80 cards I just count my sideboard cards to make sure I have the 14 in the sideboard + Yorion in the companion zone. I don't really get why people count main decks in constructed when as long as you had 60 (or 80 in my case) cards when you started the event then you should just be able to count your sideboard to know that you made the equal number of changes or added extra cards and then having a smaller sideboard.
When the card game Bridge first became available on computers, many avid Bridge players were noticing way more opening hands that resulted in a bridge. They thought something must be wrong with the program, but it was actually that they were just never shuffling their cards enough.
I think the reason mana weaving and pile shuffling is so prevalent in casual games is because of personal play groups.
I have a personal commander playgroup, and we mana weave our decks and then shuffle a few times. While that does defeat the purpose of mana weaving slightly, it’s still something we do to try and make sure that we not only keep things fair for everyone, but also don’t end up with dud hands or games. This is important because we are a commander playgroup who tries to play with precons and low-mid tier decks, and a dud hand or game means we just effectively sit around for 2-4 hours doing absolutely nothing or next to nothing. With our busy schedules, that 2-4 hours of nothing is an absolute killer of our motivation and mood when playing, because it simply is just not fun. So we mana weave or stack shuffle, and that is just how our group is. I assume that’s the same for most casual personal playgroups. The issue that needs to be addressed instead is just knowing what situation is appropriate or inappropriate for that kind of shuffling.
I was taught to mana weave or distribute into piles before shuffling normally by my high school physics teacher. Then, someone said I was wasting time because random means random. Setting up anything beforehand is pointless if you shuffle properly afterwards. It was a huge fucking OH DUH moment and I realized how stupid I was.
well it could have been worse ; it could have taken you until now to figure it out when reading a youtube comment...:)
i understand the issues of pile shuffling, but would there be an issue with 'mushing' as is done in casino poker? basically you just take a pile of cards, swill it around in a giant mess, then stack it back together, followed by appropriate riffle and mash shuffling.
Why to cheat this way.... shame shame shame...
A) Although there is a trust, I would say ALWAYS let opponent cut 2 - 3 piles and re-assemble them at any order
B) Maybe better to call 3rd person to supervise your table at the shuffle part.
Edit:
Classic is no big deal to shuffle as a pile of 40 which is mostly fine for your hands but as we move to commander we got 99 + 1 so this brings me to a question,
it is ok to do 3 cuts, (ABC) shuffle them each, reassemble them let say C A B, do new cuts, let say A and B, shuffle each reassemble B and A and after that do the opponent cut and reassemble, or this will be still a shady way, as someone new to physical version of MTG I would like to not learn a bad habbit
Decades ago I played with someone that would intentionally and surreptitiously gleek on their opponent's cards. This would cause them to be ever so slightly wet in spots and make them stick together. One of the reasons I developed a habit of pile shuffling in addition to mashing/riffling was because cards that are stuck together with his spit are generally going to stick together more through riffles/mashing. Since mostly my lands are going to be what got wet, this would cause excessive land clumps and a lot of bad draws.
🤮
The first playgroup I ran with taught me how to play. I played for probably a year before realizing weaving wasn't legal. In fact the players I played with disturbed all 60 cards in a predetermined order and then lightly shuffled. Kinda like their own rule 0.
I realized in the middle of a match with a stranger at my local gamestore that they were playing by different rules and felt pretty gross about it. (Not that they minded, it was all casual). It could have been worse though, as I did get into competitive shortly after.
Interesting though, is the meta and match ups playing thia way were actually really thoughtful and fun, but the games are more repetitive and match ups are more quickly "solved".