Great show as always! Just a quick word on the Nivmagus builds. I can't of course speak for the Vintage guy but very very often I do not play the deck as a combo deck. When you play Oath, combo, Helmline or other blue decks that don't rely on many creatures to win you just nible away on them with your small Nivmagus/Delver/Snapcaster and play your draw-go with just one threat on the board. The Nivmagus only grows when you draw dead cards against them or when you lose (part of) a counter war. With the 4 Gush, Brainstorms and Snapcasters you often have the fuel to keep your hand full of counters. In the endgame you can try to combo out to end the game a turn of two earlier but I only do it if they have significantly fewer cards/options than me.
When playing Shops you focus on keeping them off spheres but if a Lodestone slips through your flipped delvers or a Nivmagus that have eaten one spell can trade with them. A Nivmagus that have eaten two spells (maybe 1 CMC spells cast even if there's a Chalice set for 1) can play defense all day long until you get a flipped Delver online.
I play the combo game against Affinity game one and pray that the Stony Silence and Steel Sabotage will save me game 2-3. A medium/big Nivmagus can put them on the defense if you can keep them off Genesis Chamber and you have a Stony Silence online. The Rest in Peace stop their Arcbound Ravagers and Skullclamps but you have to watch out not to side out to many cards that will give you no way to finish the game. Disruption alone cant win you the game
Dedicated creature games are tough and you need to consider if and when to go combo. Usually you need to grow your Nivmagus a little so they cant have any favorable attacks while you try to play the Delver game with counter backup.
I won 3 matches in Ham on Wry II and lost 4 - mainly due to being rusty and not having a fine tuned deck due to the lack of games in the tournament practice room. But I had a blast playing it! It is surprisingly fun to play and involves so much decision making and you see a ton of cards during the games.
I have to say that I agree with Adam here. I understand where Cotton is coming from with these articles - both the card updates and his lists. But to me they just come off as something that's better left as message board material rather than as actual articles that someone is getting compensated for.
My commentary isn't over the top. I apologized for being negative, but guess what? Not all commentary has to be positive. Sometimes, even if its hard to hear, you have to receive negative criticism.
No I don't understand Cotton's humor. I am not suggesting that every article needs to be a masterpece or that everyone needs to put in the effort I do, but when I look at an article on a website, I expect it to be an article, not a handful of sentances of "updated card" humor that look like Cotton took five minutes on a public bus to write out.
I never said someone kicked my puppy or stole the jam from my donut, so I didn't come into this article in a negative headspace. I am also not capitalizing words when addressing you Paul. Tone can be conveyed through comments, and you are obviously pissy that I found something that you find funny to not be so. Moreover I felt the artcle was a wate of my time, and no offense to the author, I felt I should share my honest and forthright feelings about it. It's funny to me that he didn't respond to it all angrily, only you did.
So now I know not to read Cotton's articles. That's all.
If you want to talk about articles that don't do "it" for me, we're talking your articles. I don't care abotu your visits to parents or your back hurting. If I wantecd to find out person info from you I'd engage you in convo. If I want to read a Magic article about Magic, I got to pureMTGO.com to read articles. I never commented on your articles expressing my disapproval before, but since you attacked me all with your snippypants on, there it is.
Note to the editor: please be careful when making changes that you do not accidentally create grammatical errors. I am refering to the description for Truce.
I agree, multiqueuing is a big factor there. The deck has actually had a pretty steep decline in the last week, commensurate with an increase in esper control. And pure R versions are also becoming less common, many are following Josh Utter Leyton's light-splash boros version. The meta is still very much in flux, it'll be interesting to see where it all pans out.
The deck is actually really, really strong against esper control and if esper continues its rise on MTGO as I've been seeing over the past few days, and Rx blitz continues its decline, then I might have to revise my recommendation in future weeks :). It could honestly be a contender for "best pure control deck in the format" a-la nephalia drownyard esper in standard. Good vs slower strategies, horrible vs aggro.
I find the most interesting part of the lists being the shocklands. 4 of the top 5 are the white ones, so clearly white is the most important role player in the meta it would seem.
As for the RDW on MTGO, it seems very likely it is a multi-queueing. I've experience several times where deciding on dropping a foundry street denizen turn 1 game 1 taking 3 minutes. I've watched block videos where a similar thing happens. It just all screams multiqueueing.
I wonder if the problem with Ruination is that it isn't symmetrical. I'm just curious because I'm outlining a deck that may have some land destruction elements (shhh, Adamaro, don't tell anyone) and wondering just how far I can push it. Or if it's just Keldon Firebombers and Storm Cauldron. I dunno, I guess I might just have to play it and find out.
Yeah, I noticed that when Slobad was out people would just aim their targeted artifact removal elsewhere. That's a huge win and you don't even need to use his ability.
Strata Scythe could be good. There's a lot of dorky utility creatures that wouldn't mind swinging for 10 damage.
Ruination was the last card to be changed before the current build. It's very good but I had a game where people reacted very negatively to it when it randomly wiped out a player, so I took it out. I used LD in 3 games and each time it was met with drops. I guess I was unlucky though because my most recent game with a new test deck, there was a super cutthroat Sharuum deck that smashed the table with Acid Rain and no one reacted poorly to it.
I'm not a fan of the current banlist. It seems very arbitrary and inconsistent to me. But then again it's probably not worth worrying about.
Slobad is actually pretty sweet. I used him in a budget Godo deck a while back and was always happy to see him. Being able to save stuff from being destroyed usually means that people would rather target other stuff than watch their spell fizzle. He's just a great deterrent and should be considered in any artifact heavy deck that has Red in it.
Did you think about Strata Scythe? Can make Slobad (or any other creature) hit a lot harder, especially late game.
I noticed in Game 1 you played Ruination, but it's not in your deck tech or deck list? I assume this may have been an earlier version and it got taken out? What led to that change? Also, I've been noticing a lot more of Obliterate and similar effects (mass land destruction) online, and most people aren't automatically dropping. What was your experience with this?
The original Power 8 being banned is a whole can of worms by itself. Players go nuts over this issue.
Your videos of the finals are out of order! The final game is labeled as Game 1. It was a very exciting match but I found out the ending after one game :(
To be fair, this draft is 10 days old. I did it the first day of the Prerelease, so I didn't have much to go by. If I were to do it again, picks would be very different (like, I would never 1st pick Vorel now).
I can see the implications behind your picks but just wanted to point out that you were passed the sickest UBRw deck and completely dismissed it. UBR could have been just find but the white splash would have put you over the top. But like you pointed out, your first take on it and don't have it figured out. Again, just my opinion. Best of luck on future drafts.
This was a good article EXCEPT for the wedge names chosen...they really threw me out of concentrating on the content, and I had to keep going back to the top of each section to remind myself which guilds were in it, because the names are wholly non-evocative of the combinations.
Grixis, Esper, et al, I immediately know...and I was on a long-break during the Alara block. They were just entrenched well enough (and official) AND mostly unique enough that they embed themselves in new players.
The Commander stuff...I've never played Commander (only been back since RTR) so they were completely non-helpful for identification.
As for the others...when I'm talking about a wedge deck, and someone says something like "RBW? Oh, you mean Dega." I just can't help but picture them as Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, and I usually have to just frown, shake my head at them, and find someone else to talk to...because man, this card game is nerdy enough, taking something that was referenced on THREE cards each, from what, 12 years ago and insisting that's the proper name for a given color combination? Seriously...
It's just simple, RUG and BUG are easy to say, America pisses people off because lots of countries use red, white, and blue, but it's easy to remember. RWB hardly rolls off the tongue, and Borzhov is fun to say, but I'd never expect it to become common koine, and Junk is one of those ones I had to research to figure out, but it really just works...
Or any coordinating conjunction.
It needs an "and" in between the first clause and the second.
I believe that the grammar in description of truce is fine.
Great show as always! Just a quick word on the Nivmagus builds. I can't of course speak for the Vintage guy but very very often I do not play the deck as a combo deck. When you play Oath, combo, Helmline or other blue decks that don't rely on many creatures to win you just nible away on them with your small Nivmagus/Delver/Snapcaster and play your draw-go with just one threat on the board. The Nivmagus only grows when you draw dead cards against them or when you lose (part of) a counter war. With the 4 Gush, Brainstorms and Snapcasters you often have the fuel to keep your hand full of counters. In the endgame you can try to combo out to end the game a turn of two earlier but I only do it if they have significantly fewer cards/options than me.
When playing Shops you focus on keeping them off spheres but if a Lodestone slips through your flipped delvers or a Nivmagus that have eaten one spell can trade with them. A Nivmagus that have eaten two spells (maybe 1 CMC spells cast even if there's a Chalice set for 1) can play defense all day long until you get a flipped Delver online.
I play the combo game against Affinity game one and pray that the Stony Silence and Steel Sabotage will save me game 2-3. A medium/big Nivmagus can put them on the defense if you can keep them off Genesis Chamber and you have a Stony Silence online. The Rest in Peace stop their Arcbound Ravagers and Skullclamps but you have to watch out not to side out to many cards that will give you no way to finish the game. Disruption alone cant win you the game
Dedicated creature games are tough and you need to consider if and when to go combo. Usually you need to grow your Nivmagus a little so they cant have any favorable attacks while you try to play the Delver game with counter backup.
I won 3 matches in Ham on Wry II and lost 4 - mainly due to being rusty and not having a fine tuned deck due to the lack of games in the tournament practice room. But I had a blast playing it! It is surprisingly fun to play and involves so much decision making and you see a ton of cards during the games.
You are so right about Derelor! I love that old thrull. I actually had him in a Type I deck that won a tournament. Good times.
Also, I was playing a Commander game the other day when someone played Wall of Kelp. I was truly shocked.
I have to say that I agree with Adam here. I understand where Cotton is coming from with these articles - both the card updates and his lists. But to me they just come off as something that's better left as message board material rather than as actual articles that someone is getting compensated for.
My commentary isn't over the top. I apologized for being negative, but guess what? Not all commentary has to be positive. Sometimes, even if its hard to hear, you have to receive negative criticism.
No I don't understand Cotton's humor. I am not suggesting that every article needs to be a masterpece or that everyone needs to put in the effort I do, but when I look at an article on a website, I expect it to be an article, not a handful of sentances of "updated card" humor that look like Cotton took five minutes on a public bus to write out.
I never said someone kicked my puppy or stole the jam from my donut, so I didn't come into this article in a negative headspace. I am also not capitalizing words when addressing you Paul. Tone can be conveyed through comments, and you are obviously pissy that I found something that you find funny to not be so. Moreover I felt the artcle was a wate of my time, and no offense to the author, I felt I should share my honest and forthright feelings about it. It's funny to me that he didn't respond to it all angrily, only you did.
So now I know not to read Cotton's articles. That's all.
If you want to talk about articles that don't do "it" for me, we're talking your articles. I don't care abotu your visits to parents or your back hurting. If I wantecd to find out person info from you I'd engage you in convo. If I want to read a Magic article about Magic, I got to pureMTGO.com to read articles. I never commented on your articles expressing my disapproval before, but since you attacked me all with your snippypants on, there it is.
Note to the editor: please be careful when making changes that you do not accidentally create grammatical errors. I am refering to the description for Truce.
Always an entertaining read. But believe me, Didgeridoo is plenty powerful as is.
I agree, multiqueuing is a big factor there. The deck has actually had a pretty steep decline in the last week, commensurate with an increase in esper control. And pure R versions are also becoming less common, many are following Josh Utter Leyton's light-splash boros version. The meta is still very much in flux, it'll be interesting to see where it all pans out.
The deck is actually really, really strong against esper control and if esper continues its rise on MTGO as I've been seeing over the past few days, and Rx blitz continues its decline, then I might have to revise my recommendation in future weeks :). It could honestly be a contender for "best pure control deck in the format" a-la nephalia drownyard esper in standard. Good vs slower strategies, horrible vs aggro.
I find the most interesting part of the lists being the shocklands. 4 of the top 5 are the white ones, so clearly white is the most important role player in the meta it would seem.
As for the RDW on MTGO, it seems very likely it is a multi-queueing. I've experience several times where deciding on dropping a foundry street denizen turn 1 game 1 taking 3 minutes. I've watched block videos where a similar thing happens. It just all screams multiqueueing.
I know you advise against Maze's End, but it makes me giddy that it went so far in an event of this magnitude.
I wonder if the problem with Ruination is that it isn't symmetrical. I'm just curious because I'm outlining a deck that may have some land destruction elements (shhh, Adamaro, don't tell anyone) and wondering just how far I can push it. Or if it's just Keldon Firebombers and Storm Cauldron. I dunno, I guess I might just have to play it and find out.
I agree, he's super cool. Him and Mycosynth Lattice is absurd.
Yeah, I noticed that when Slobad was out people would just aim their targeted artifact removal elsewhere. That's a huge win and you don't even need to use his ability.
Strata Scythe could be good. There's a lot of dorky utility creatures that wouldn't mind swinging for 10 damage.
Ruination was the last card to be changed before the current build. It's very good but I had a game where people reacted very negatively to it when it randomly wiped out a player, so I took it out. I used LD in 3 games and each time it was met with drops. I guess I was unlucky though because my most recent game with a new test deck, there was a super cutthroat Sharuum deck that smashed the table with Acid Rain and no one reacted poorly to it.
I'm not a fan of the current banlist. It seems very arbitrary and inconsistent to me. But then again it's probably not worth worrying about.
This deck looks pretty sweet. I'm thinking that it might be funny to stick in a Hellkite Tyrant in and win off of him.
Slobad is actually pretty sweet. I used him in a budget Godo deck a while back and was always happy to see him. Being able to save stuff from being destroyed usually means that people would rather target other stuff than watch their spell fizzle. He's just a great deterrent and should be considered in any artifact heavy deck that has Red in it.
Did you think about Strata Scythe? Can make Slobad (or any other creature) hit a lot harder, especially late game.
I noticed in Game 1 you played Ruination, but it's not in your deck tech or deck list? I assume this may have been an earlier version and it got taken out? What led to that change? Also, I've been noticing a lot more of Obliterate and similar effects (mass land destruction) online, and most people aren't automatically dropping. What was your experience with this?
The original Power 8 being banned is a whole can of worms by itself. Players go nuts over this issue.
Your videos of the finals are out of order! The final game is labeled as Game 1. It was a very exciting match but I found out the ending after one game :(
Those ain't Slivers! Period. WotC can all 'em what they like, but those things are not Slivers.
Dragon's Maze is the set....Maze's End is the card...
To be fair, this draft is 10 days old. I did it the first day of the Prerelease, so I didn't have much to go by. If I were to do it again, picks would be very different (like, I would never 1st pick Vorel now).
I can see the implications behind your picks but just wanted to point out that you were passed the sickest UBRw deck and completely dismissed it. UBR could have been just find but the white splash would have put you over the top. But like you pointed out, your first take on it and don't have it figured out. Again, just my opinion. Best of luck on future drafts.
This was a good article EXCEPT for the wedge names chosen...they really threw me out of concentrating on the content, and I had to keep going back to the top of each section to remind myself which guilds were in it, because the names are wholly non-evocative of the combinations.
Grixis, Esper, et al, I immediately know...and I was on a long-break during the Alara block. They were just entrenched well enough (and official) AND mostly unique enough that they embed themselves in new players.
The Commander stuff...I've never played Commander (only been back since RTR) so they were completely non-helpful for identification.
As for the others...when I'm talking about a wedge deck, and someone says something like "RBW? Oh, you mean Dega." I just can't help but picture them as Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, and I usually have to just frown, shake my head at them, and find someone else to talk to...because man, this card game is nerdy enough, taking something that was referenced on THREE cards each, from what, 12 years ago and insisting that's the proper name for a given color combination? Seriously...
It's just simple, RUG and BUG are easy to say, America pisses people off because lots of countries use red, white, and blue, but it's easy to remember. RWB hardly rolls off the tongue, and Borzhov is fun to say, but I'd never expect it to become common koine, and Junk is one of those ones I had to research to figure out, but it really just works...
But all jokes aside I think my last few cards would be pretty good in the current meta