I always say that V3 looks like it came through a wormhole from 1998, but somehow endearingly. :) Truth is, I don't care that much, it's just ridiculous that something from the major game company in the world looks that out-of-date. But if fixing this means we're going the Microsoft route and getting a lot of stupid, useless flourishes (like the freaking customizable deck containers - for freaking digital cards!), then I take 1998 all the way.
If the argument that porting a deck that can win t2-t3 is fair then what is the point of a banned list at all? it's just a combo format without hate, either allow all the other combos or ban the oppressive ones. comparing a combo deck that gets to run a far greater amount of resiliency and tutoring to goblins getting a strong draw is the stupidest straw-man I've heard in years and only the truly stupid would make that error.
Yeah, my academically-sanctioned second language is French. But I always had a knack for written languages, I was the best of my entire school in Latin and never really studied all the grammar rules. I'm just really good at picking up constructs and deduce meanings and so. But I'm essentially tone deaf, so that doesn't work with spoken languages unfortunately. :)
Interesting look at the nuts and bolts. I think it's certainly something to ponder, even though it might a factor many good deckbuilders inherently "get" without thinking about it. Thinking about a statistical threshold in regards to why it works is helpful.
Yep you're the culprit who said no the first time I asked you about this but I am glad you've changed your mind. Rex would be good too, tentatively since he is clearly also interested in talking about the format. You all should contact me in client for a confab.
I suspect a lot of things we take for granted in the V3 client are going to be sorely missed unless WOTC takes heed of numerous complaints about their lack. As much as people liked kicking the dead horse of "V3 failed!" it wasn't a failure in the aggregate.
Also to the people who keep saying things like "the game looks like it was programmed by 5 year olds" or "it looks like it was programmed 15 years ago" boohoo! It has been functional despite a huge increase in users for the time that it has been live.
We are a critical bunch, us MTG players. I expect we will hate v4 no matter what. I know I do. I want to like it and it IS functional more or less but it seems like it is, as you say a sidegrade. That is why it is so crucial we get the word out and people speak up on what they like/don't like and most importantly on things that do not work or functionality that is missing.
No, most of the times, Rex sends me the video links to his features literally minutes before I submit the articles, so it happens I don't even watch them (aside from some test runs) until after the article is published. I actually like it better this way: he's free to say whatever he wants, I'm not influenced by him in my own editorial sections.
I'm not the one that should feel better, he is: obvious Balefire deck is obvious. :)
I love Karmic Guide, but she's too high in the curve here for what she would do (which would be bringing back early guys I don't entirely care about, and locking me with a echo cost I wouldn't want to pay.) By the time I hit CMC5, that's Balefire time. Plus, she's mono-white, and I want more red than white guys to trigger the Balefire damage. The only monowhite guys are vastly superior board control effects.
Wow, so many alluring Standard decks here! (Your "monthly or more" schedule is resulting in an overflow of good stuff.) I should start playing Standard more consistently in this era.
Did you consider RexDart for your podcast? If I'm the guy with "bad accent" (more like non-existent, that's because all my English was picked up along the way by reading/translating, I never properly studied it, so I don't actually know how to pronounce a lot of the words I use!), I may give it a try, if you don't mind some awkwardness. My listening skills greatly improved in the last few years. I'd need some test run, though, it might not be worth the effort if I can't actually express myself coherently enough to have meaningful thoughts on the topics at hand.
Speaking of which, from now on I'll be quoting you saying "Breaking the format is easy. ANY idiot can do it. Don't be that idiot" during the opening speech of the Commander PRE I run (which so far has been pretty balanced, with some nice semi-casual decks reaching the final round, but the one time a Helm of Obedience combo managed to win, there were a lot of frowning faces.) An interesting thing I noticed running that event, and that didn't actually occur to me before and I'm not seeing mentioned that much, is that 3-man Commander and 4-man Commander are very different beasts, almost playing like entirely different games (as 1v1 Commander very obviously is.) For starters, 3-man tables are often lightning fast, 4-man tables are sometimes endless, since they start way more cautiously and end up carrying all the players into late game. And those combo strategies like the Helm are very hard to pull off in 4-man, very easy in 3-man.
Re: the Beta, I'm preparing an article where I show videos of me deckbuilding with both versions. As I wrote in the past, I build more than I play (and I'm not the only one, someone else said the same around here recently.) The V3 gives me deckbuilding tools that I'm beginning to think not every player knows about, since most of the people I talk with are actually surprised to hear about them (due to the current client being still mostly a mysterious object with no clear or unified instruction manual.) If I already have 60 cards in my mind, I can assemble them (with the purpose of endlessly tweak them afterwards of course, but you need a base for that) in a couple minutes or so, without using any search or filter activations. In fact, you should NEVER use the search function in the editor if you aren't doing actual research, but even in that case, you better use Gatherer instead, since it's faster and more accurate and versatile.
Now, none of the above is possible with the beta, where the same deck would require 10 times that time for me to assemble in the editor. I want for more players to know that, so that they can ask for those functions to be ported into the V4. I couldn't call an "upgrade" something that forces me to spend 10 times the time I'm using now to do the same exact thing.
I've been messing around with a RUwb build that is pretty fun and reasonably powerful if you'd like to grab some juff games some time.
I'd welcome some tinkering input.
I thought you worked with Rex on his deck techs at least enough to know where it is going before you insert it. :)
If it makes you feel better my own private analysis of your deck was pretty much as you wrote about it here. I figured Reckoner was a roadblock/beater. Guardian seems like pure tech vs most tribal decks even those that go multiple colors. The rest are pretty much what I'd expect for naya spirits except I dont recall seeing any Karmic Guides which imho are the white spirit you want most.
Wow, Chris, you really didn't get my deck's battleplan, do you? :)
And yet, you were dancing around it during all the analysis, like with the fact that pretty much every card in the deck is used to control the board and survive as longer as possible: the Muse stops the attacks (so do both Intimidation Bolt and Aurelia's Fury: it's its second ability what's relevant here), the Guardian blocks almost everything, Tamanoa is a turn-3 2/4 barrier with a bonus, the 3 off-tribe creatures are also there because of their ability to slow down aggro (why should I want to build a Boros Reckoner combo deck with Spirits?) But you failed to see the pattern and the combo, not noticing I chose almost uniquely multicolored cards. Why so? Why are all those unusual BOROS cards there, rather than their monocolored alternative options? What's the purpose of those very odd Glitterfangs? (They were a full playset in the original version of the deck, but it's a combo piece that does next to nothing on its own.)
As for Ghost-Lit Raider, that was the fruit of a long and painstaking research on Spirits: find me a 2-drop or 3-drop Boros Spirit that doubles as creature removal, both on the battlefield and outside of it (and 4 damage is something none of my damage spells can't deal), I'll be glad to replace that thing. But you know, in most of the games I was happy to see it, drop it on the board, and watch the opponent panicky remove it because "tap to do 2 damage" is actually a blast against most aggro decks.
Thank you for the comments so far guys! :D I forgot to make a plug for Hammybot this time but this is something we need to pay attention to. Hamtastic meant a lot to this site and to many of us and it is only meet that we show this as tribute in the form of buying cards or simply leaving credit on Hammybot. This is mostly a matter of getting more sold so that MTGOTraders can cut Tami & Bruce a check. So time is of the essence.
In re Elves: Grap I did forget those two when brewing though I have no real love for the Sage. Warcaller could just end games after Biomancer. (As Keya and AJ mentioned.) Thanks for thinking about it. :D
In re Commander: Rex, Linvala is universally hated because she shuts down not just the combo players but many answers to combo that come in the form of creatures. I wouldn't recommend playing her unless you expect to be the ArchNemesis for the session. But I agree with your point about the combo players wasting time. This is mainly why I posted Menery's quote. Also, it is really important to recognize when someone is following the contract by preventing something broken as opposed just being a griefer/spoiler. I suppose telling the difference takes experience and time.
In re Dryads: I tend to lean a bit more towards the control end of the RPS spectrum, so I ignored some of the more aggro choices in favor of running sweepers and doing it the way I did. I appreciate your analysis.
In re Kiki: I've run into that deck myself Levi. If someone is of the attitude "because I can" that translates to me as "I don't care what anyone else is doing, and I don't care how they feel about this." Which is a clear denial of the contract. So all bets are off with such an individual.
I agree 100% about needing a two-hour limited format. I play limited to have a little fun and work towards completing my collection. These days I play in some release events and then nothing (until the next release?). I now spend my money on singles for my collection after the prices bottom out. I'm sure I spend less money building my collection this way, but its not as fun.
My first paper EDH deck was built basically to show off my foil angel collection, and I quickly learned I had to run Linvala as the general just to stop everyone else from doing gross broken plays and try and have a fair game. But, like the reaction Paul was talking about when he plays a Strip Mine and they complain that he has an answer to thier special land, I would get no end of hate from the players with the broken recursive combo decks when I ran Linvala. They seemed to act like making them play fair was inherently un-fair.
To the combo players: If you want me to keep playing with your group, I'm going to obviously try to stop you from doing those shenanigans you love. When you have that spergy little 10 minute turn making 50 tokens and drawing 50 cards and moving things all over between the yard and the battlefield and whatever, I'm sitting there bored out of my mind while you announce every single game action in smug self-satisfaction and never take your eyes off the board. Heck, even the other combo guys aren't watching or caring, they're all just "waiting their own turn to speak" as they say. I realize you think that's fun, but fun for me is hitting you in the face with shiny Angels carrying shiny swords, so don't blame me for trying to keep things under control. Hell at least the Kiki-combo guy can win on the spot and isn't wasting my dang time.
Thanks for the mention with the Zombie deck :) I like the Simic Elves deck a lot too. I wonder if either Joraga Warcller or Gyre sage would work with them getting bonuses from +1/+1 counters?
Regarding your Commander thoughts, I recently played against someone who's deck was geared around getting out some variation of the Kiki-Jiki/Pestermite combo out, with Splinter Twin, Zealous Conscripts, the Blue Exarch included for redundancy. He searched it up on turn 5 or so, and I called him out on it. His response was that there are times when he needs to combo out early to beat other combo players. When I pointed out that there didn't appear to be any combo players at the table (I was playing Jor Kadeen), he then said that people need to play more interactive decks, and that the combo is easy to disrupt. I was able to stop him the first time with a well timed Path to Exile, but couldn't stop him the second time. My argument to him was "why play this?" And his final response was essentially "because I can."
So "fun" means different things to different people. I think you generally have to have a thick skin if you aren't interested in breaking the format, or else you aren't gonna have much fun at all.
As for the Beta... I tried it when it was first available, then ran away screaming. Unfortunately I know the time is coming to get back on it, but I'm dreading it. I just need to man up and get used to it I guess.
Regarding your tribal wars Naya Dryad list, I would likely consider going a bit more aggro with it and running Dryad Sophisticate (nonbasic landwalk), maybe in place of the guildmage or the Elder in some numbers. And with a GSZ build, it may be worth a single copy of Heartwood Dryad, to block Soltari and Dauthi creatures which are both popular in endangered week events in the Apocalypse PRE. Of course, that version of the deck probably wouldn't really want so many sweepers, so maybe that makes it a different deck entirely.
If you went with a Loam plan in that deck, the Dryad spellshapers from Masques block might be a consideration. I had a G/B Dryad deck that used Loam, the spellshapers, and some Vengevine action to grind out opponents, was so-so, but pretty decent for Dryads.
I've also tried and tried and tried to make a Miracle-Gro version of Dryad tribal work, but even now that I own FoW it just doesn't work right without Gush.
You know, I actually did start off with a build similar to what you're talking about. I had Subversion, Polluted Bonds, Lobber Crew, Heartless Hidetsugu, Breath of Malfego, Kumano, Blood Tithe, Exsanguinate, Pulse Tracker, Xathrid Demon, Earthquake, and a bunch of other cards like that. But I found that the deck was wildly inconsistent. Like, extremely so. Enough that I knew that I had to work pretty hard to make it presentable.
I think there's still a good amount of passive enablers in here (Psychosis Crawler, Chandra, Crypt Ghast (an all star), Shepherd of Rot, Magmatic Force, Viashino Heretic, Bloodgift Demon (as you pointed out), Leechridden Swamp), plus damage cards that don't require attackinig that are useful (Acidic Soil, Rakdos Charm, Flame Rift, Slagstorm), that I felt pretty good with everything.
The demon theme sounds fun, but I already did a demon tribal deck a while back (Sol'kanar, I think). Bloodspeaker probably deserves a spot in here. I'd love to see your list though.
Bramblewood Paragon gives trample to any guy you have with a +1/+1 counter on it, so is a nice fit with the many counters floating about Ravnica these days.
Speaking of those counters, surprised no discussion of Simic Manipulator. Pretty nuts with various counter shenanigans, and works very well with old Graft cards too.
Like the article, it's a nice way to quickly scan for ideas that could be developed further. Good work.
I always say that V3 looks like it came through a wormhole from 1998, but somehow endearingly. :) Truth is, I don't care that much, it's just ridiculous that something from the major game company in the world looks that out-of-date. But if fixing this means we're going the Microsoft route and getting a lot of stupid, useless flourishes (like the freaking customizable deck containers - for freaking digital cards!), then I take 1998 all the way.
If the argument that porting a deck that can win t2-t3 is fair then what is the point of a banned list at all? it's just a combo format without hate, either allow all the other combos or ban the oppressive ones. comparing a combo deck that gets to run a far greater amount of resiliency and tutoring to goblins getting a strong draw is the stupidest straw-man I've heard in years and only the truly stupid would make that error.
Yeah, my academically-sanctioned second language is French. But I always had a knack for written languages, I was the best of my entire school in Latin and never really studied all the grammar rules. I'm just really good at picking up constructs and deduce meanings and so. But I'm essentially tone deaf, so that doesn't work with spoken languages unfortunately. :)
Interesting look at the nuts and bolts. I think it's certainly something to ponder, even though it might a factor many good deckbuilders inherently "get" without thinking about it. Thinking about a statistical threshold in regards to why it works is helpful.
You've never studied English formally? I'm amazed, your English from your writings is more fluent than several of my countrymen can manage! Kudos.
But I wasn't in the client. :O
And 2hg is always an option.
Also now you won't have to ask if I read the article yet. :D
Yep you're the culprit who said no the first time I asked you about this but I am glad you've changed your mind. Rex would be good too, tentatively since he is clearly also interested in talking about the format. You all should contact me in client for a confab.
I suspect a lot of things we take for granted in the V3 client are going to be sorely missed unless WOTC takes heed of numerous complaints about their lack. As much as people liked kicking the dead horse of "V3 failed!" it wasn't a failure in the aggregate.
Also to the people who keep saying things like "the game looks like it was programmed by 5 year olds" or "it looks like it was programmed 15 years ago" boohoo! It has been functional despite a huge increase in users for the time that it has been live.
We are a critical bunch, us MTG players. I expect we will hate v4 no matter what. I know I do. I want to like it and it IS functional more or less but it seems like it is, as you say a sidegrade. That is why it is so crucial we get the word out and people speak up on what they like/don't like and most importantly on things that do not work or functionality that is missing.
Sure sure though I warn you I hate losing :p Seriously though just talk to me in client.
No, most of the times, Rex sends me the video links to his features literally minutes before I submit the articles, so it happens I don't even watch them (aside from some test runs) until after the article is published. I actually like it better this way: he's free to say whatever he wants, I'm not influenced by him in my own editorial sections.
I'm not the one that should feel better, he is: obvious Balefire deck is obvious. :)
I love Karmic Guide, but she's too high in the curve here for what she would do (which would be bringing back early guys I don't entirely care about, and locking me with a echo cost I wouldn't want to pay.) By the time I hit CMC5, that's Balefire time. Plus, she's mono-white, and I want more red than white guys to trigger the Balefire damage. The only monowhite guys are vastly superior board control effects.
Wow, so many alluring Standard decks here! (Your "monthly or more" schedule is resulting in an overflow of good stuff.) I should start playing Standard more consistently in this era.
Did you consider RexDart for your podcast? If I'm the guy with "bad accent" (more like non-existent, that's because all my English was picked up along the way by reading/translating, I never properly studied it, so I don't actually know how to pronounce a lot of the words I use!), I may give it a try, if you don't mind some awkwardness. My listening skills greatly improved in the last few years. I'd need some test run, though, it might not be worth the effort if I can't actually express myself coherently enough to have meaningful thoughts on the topics at hand.
Speaking of which, from now on I'll be quoting you saying "Breaking the format is easy. ANY idiot can do it. Don't be that idiot" during the opening speech of the Commander PRE I run (which so far has been pretty balanced, with some nice semi-casual decks reaching the final round, but the one time a Helm of Obedience combo managed to win, there were a lot of frowning faces.) An interesting thing I noticed running that event, and that didn't actually occur to me before and I'm not seeing mentioned that much, is that 3-man Commander and 4-man Commander are very different beasts, almost playing like entirely different games (as 1v1 Commander very obviously is.) For starters, 3-man tables are often lightning fast, 4-man tables are sometimes endless, since they start way more cautiously and end up carrying all the players into late game. And those combo strategies like the Helm are very hard to pull off in 4-man, very easy in 3-man.
Re: the Beta, I'm preparing an article where I show videos of me deckbuilding with both versions. As I wrote in the past, I build more than I play (and I'm not the only one, someone else said the same around here recently.) The V3 gives me deckbuilding tools that I'm beginning to think not every player knows about, since most of the people I talk with are actually surprised to hear about them (due to the current client being still mostly a mysterious object with no clear or unified instruction manual.) If I already have 60 cards in my mind, I can assemble them (with the purpose of endlessly tweak them afterwards of course, but you need a base for that) in a couple minutes or so, without using any search or filter activations. In fact, you should NEVER use the search function in the editor if you aren't doing actual research, but even in that case, you better use Gatherer instead, since it's faster and more accurate and versatile.
Now, none of the above is possible with the beta, where the same deck would require 10 times that time for me to assemble in the editor. I want for more players to know that, so that they can ask for those functions to be ported into the V4. I couldn't call an "upgrade" something that forces me to spend 10 times the time I'm using now to do the same exact thing.
I've been messing around with a RUwb build that is pretty fun and reasonably powerful if you'd like to grab some juff games some time.
I'd welcome some tinkering input.
Eternal Trolling! lol.
I thought you worked with Rex on his deck techs at least enough to know where it is going before you insert it. :)
If it makes you feel better my own private analysis of your deck was pretty much as you wrote about it here. I figured Reckoner was a roadblock/beater. Guardian seems like pure tech vs most tribal decks even those that go multiple colors. The rest are pretty much what I'd expect for naya spirits except I dont recall seeing any Karmic Guides which imho are the white spirit you want most.
Wow, Chris, you really didn't get my deck's battleplan, do you? :)
And yet, you were dancing around it during all the analysis, like with the fact that pretty much every card in the deck is used to control the board and survive as longer as possible: the Muse stops the attacks (so do both Intimidation Bolt and Aurelia's Fury: it's its second ability what's relevant here), the Guardian blocks almost everything, Tamanoa is a turn-3 2/4 barrier with a bonus, the 3 off-tribe creatures are also there because of their ability to slow down aggro (why should I want to build a Boros Reckoner combo deck with Spirits?) But you failed to see the pattern and the combo, not noticing I chose almost uniquely multicolored cards. Why so? Why are all those unusual BOROS cards there, rather than their monocolored alternative options? What's the purpose of those very odd Glitterfangs? (They were a full playset in the original version of the deck, but it's a combo piece that does next to nothing on its own.)
As for Ghost-Lit Raider, that was the fruit of a long and painstaking research on Spirits: find me a 2-drop or 3-drop Boros Spirit that doubles as creature removal, both on the battlefield and outside of it (and 4 damage is something none of my damage spells can't deal), I'll be glad to replace that thing. But you know, in most of the games I was happy to see it, drop it on the board, and watch the opponent panicky remove it because "tap to do 2 damage" is actually a blast against most aggro decks.
as Volker noted: online Modern PTQs are not over. There are 4 MTGO PTQs still on 3/9, 3/10, 3/15, and 3/17.
Jumping the gun there. I made the mistake that, since I had trouble finding them on the Wizards website...
I feel foolish for not including heartless hidetsugu
Elixir of Immortality
Sol Ring
Staff of Nin
Basilisk Collar
Lightning Greaves
Sword of Fire and Ice
Whispersilk Cloak
Duplicant
Psychosis Crawler
Solemn Simulacrum
Stuffy Doll
Wurmcoil Engine
Mountain
Swamp
Blood Speaker
Bloodgift Demon
Charmbreaker Devils
Furyborn Hellkite
Hellhole Rats
Hoard-Smelter Dragon
Lightning Reaver
Murderous Redcap
Prodigal Pyromancer
Rakdos Ragemutt
Royal Assassin
Sangromancer
Shriekmaw
Soulcage Fiend
Vampire Nighthawk
Vulshok Sorcerer
Wei Night Raiders
Magistrate's Veto
Painful Quandary
Polluted Bonds
Enslave
Relic Bane
Curse of Bloodletting
Brute Force
Char
Lightning Bolt
Murder
Rakdos Charm
Terminate
Thunderbolt
Thunderous Wrath
Akoum Refuge
Auntie's Hovel
Bojuka Bog
Buried Ruin
Command Tower
Dragonskull Summit
Graven Cairns
Haunted Fengraf
Lavaclaw Reaches
Maze of Ith
Rakdos Carnarium
Reliquary Tower
Shadowblood Ridge
Tainted Peak
Vesuva
Rakdos Guildgate
Blood Crypt
Kaervek the Merciless
Nefarox, Overlord of Grixis
Ob Nixilis, the Fallen
Seizan, Perverter of Truth
Tahngarth, Talruum Hero
Urabrask the Hidden
Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Shivan Gorge
Shizo, Death's Storehouse
Chandra Nalaar
Liliana Vess
Banefire
Blightning
Demonic Tutor
Dreadbore
Heat Shimmer
Imperial Seal
Incendiary Command
Red Sun's Zenith
Rivals' Duel
Sign in Blood
Skull Rend
Thank you for the comments so far guys! :D I forgot to make a plug for Hammybot this time but this is something we need to pay attention to. Hamtastic meant a lot to this site and to many of us and it is only meet that we show this as tribute in the form of buying cards or simply leaving credit on Hammybot. This is mostly a matter of getting more sold so that MTGOTraders can cut Tami & Bruce a check. So time is of the essence.
In re Elves: Grap I did forget those two when brewing though I have no real love for the Sage. Warcaller could just end games after Biomancer. (As Keya and AJ mentioned.) Thanks for thinking about it. :D
In re Commander: Rex, Linvala is universally hated because she shuts down not just the combo players but many answers to combo that come in the form of creatures. I wouldn't recommend playing her unless you expect to be the ArchNemesis for the session. But I agree with your point about the combo players wasting time. This is mainly why I posted Menery's quote. Also, it is really important to recognize when someone is following the contract by preventing something broken as opposed just being a griefer/spoiler. I suppose telling the difference takes experience and time.
In re Dryads: I tend to lean a bit more towards the control end of the RPS spectrum, so I ignored some of the more aggro choices in favor of running sweepers and doing it the way I did. I appreciate your analysis.
In re Kiki: I've run into that deck myself Levi. If someone is of the attitude "because I can" that translates to me as "I don't care what anyone else is doing, and I don't care how they feel about this." Which is a clear denial of the contract. So all bets are off with such an individual.
I agree 100% about needing a two-hour limited format. I play limited to have a little fun and work towards completing my collection. These days I play in some release events and then nothing (until the next release?). I now spend my money on singles for my collection after the prices bottom out. I'm sure I spend less money building my collection this way, but its not as fun.
My first paper EDH deck was built basically to show off my foil angel collection, and I quickly learned I had to run Linvala as the general just to stop everyone else from doing gross broken plays and try and have a fair game. But, like the reaction Paul was talking about when he plays a Strip Mine and they complain that he has an answer to thier special land, I would get no end of hate from the players with the broken recursive combo decks when I ran Linvala. They seemed to act like making them play fair was inherently un-fair.
To the combo players: If you want me to keep playing with your group, I'm going to obviously try to stop you from doing those shenanigans you love. When you have that spergy little 10 minute turn making 50 tokens and drawing 50 cards and moving things all over between the yard and the battlefield and whatever, I'm sitting there bored out of my mind while you announce every single game action in smug self-satisfaction and never take your eyes off the board. Heck, even the other combo guys aren't watching or caring, they're all just "waiting their own turn to speak" as they say. I realize you think that's fun, but fun for me is hitting you in the face with shiny Angels carrying shiny swords, so don't blame me for trying to keep things under control. Hell at least the Kiki-combo guy can win on the spot and isn't wasting my dang time.
Thanks for the mention with the Zombie deck :) I like the Simic Elves deck a lot too. I wonder if either Joraga Warcller or Gyre sage would work with them getting bonuses from +1/+1 counters?
Regarding your Commander thoughts, I recently played against someone who's deck was geared around getting out some variation of the Kiki-Jiki/Pestermite combo out, with Splinter Twin, Zealous Conscripts, the Blue Exarch included for redundancy. He searched it up on turn 5 or so, and I called him out on it. His response was that there are times when he needs to combo out early to beat other combo players. When I pointed out that there didn't appear to be any combo players at the table (I was playing Jor Kadeen), he then said that people need to play more interactive decks, and that the combo is easy to disrupt. I was able to stop him the first time with a well timed Path to Exile, but couldn't stop him the second time. My argument to him was "why play this?" And his final response was essentially "because I can."
So "fun" means different things to different people. I think you generally have to have a thick skin if you aren't interested in breaking the format, or else you aren't gonna have much fun at all.
As for the Beta... I tried it when it was first available, then ran away screaming. Unfortunately I know the time is coming to get back on it, but I'm dreading it. I just need to man up and get used to it I guess.
Anyways, good stuff man. I love your articles.
Regarding your tribal wars Naya Dryad list, I would likely consider going a bit more aggro with it and running Dryad Sophisticate (nonbasic landwalk), maybe in place of the guildmage or the Elder in some numbers. And with a GSZ build, it may be worth a single copy of Heartwood Dryad, to block Soltari and Dauthi creatures which are both popular in endangered week events in the Apocalypse PRE. Of course, that version of the deck probably wouldn't really want so many sweepers, so maybe that makes it a different deck entirely.
If you went with a Loam plan in that deck, the Dryad spellshapers from Masques block might be a consideration. I had a G/B Dryad deck that used Loam, the spellshapers, and some Vengevine action to grind out opponents, was so-so, but pretty decent for Dryads.
I've also tried and tried and tried to make a Miracle-Gro version of Dryad tribal work, but even now that I own FoW it just doesn't work right without Gush.
You know, I actually did start off with a build similar to what you're talking about. I had Subversion, Polluted Bonds, Lobber Crew, Heartless Hidetsugu, Breath of Malfego, Kumano, Blood Tithe, Exsanguinate, Pulse Tracker, Xathrid Demon, Earthquake, and a bunch of other cards like that. But I found that the deck was wildly inconsistent. Like, extremely so. Enough that I knew that I had to work pretty hard to make it presentable.
I think there's still a good amount of passive enablers in here (Psychosis Crawler, Chandra, Crypt Ghast (an all star), Shepherd of Rot, Magmatic Force, Viashino Heretic, Bloodgift Demon (as you pointed out), Leechridden Swamp), plus damage cards that don't require attackinig that are useful (Acidic Soil, Rakdos Charm, Flame Rift, Slagstorm), that I felt pretty good with everything.
The demon theme sounds fun, but I already did a demon tribal deck a while back (Sol'kanar, I think). Bloodspeaker probably deserves a spot in here. I'd love to see your list though.
Thanks for the props man.
Bramblewood Paragon gives trample to any guy you have with a +1/+1 counter on it, so is a nice fit with the many counters floating about Ravnica these days.
Speaking of those counters, surprised no discussion of Simic Manipulator. Pretty nuts with various counter shenanigans, and works very well with old Graft cards too.
Like the article, it's a nice way to quickly scan for ideas that could be developed further. Good work.