Kara great effort and thanks for stealing my thunder! I kid, but I was considering doing an article like this. I am not entirely sure the beta is where I think it should be but this was a pretty clear guide for those who haven't played around with it yet.
@Kara: if you click on the TRADE tab, there is a drop down buddy list that has the complete name of your buddied friends/bots, not the cut off name in the opening screen.
Great Article! Glad to see you return to the old style of writing these. :D I watched the game you reported and it was really very interesting despite Z's defection.
I'd say that the Monogreen strategy of choice will remain Stompy for a while, but any strategy that seeks to play more big green guys will be splashing. I'm actually beginning to think of a post-Gatecrash Cipher Hexproof deck, probably BUGproof. Play hexproof dudes and cipher stuff onto them, especially the "target player loses 3 life" one, as it ends games quickly, and play good removal.
Since the format will be slowing down overall (t2 and t3 kills probably won't be that common since the bannings went specifically for them), I feel like this is the chance for 3-color decks to flourish, especially once all the Gates are available. I'm looking forward to the new brews.
As for LD, I'm going to be packing plenty of it for now. It's just going to be too good now. When manabases get greedy (I'm looking at you Post, Delver, Auras, and pretty much every other deck), LD starts to get reeeeeally attractive to run.
I gave up on using the new client after trying to look through my collection and build a deck. I have over 15,000 cards and it was a complete disaster. My real-life collection is better organized and easier to navigate than my online one now...and that is saying quite a bit.
Excellent pauper points - with MUC's selfish mana base, and post's dependant one...LD may indeed be a viable strategy. I'd not go BIG GREEN, since it auto losses to stompy and hex - but some brew must be out there. I agree as well, get rid of all storm, the fissure storm style is by far the most broken/should be next to go.
The Closet isn't a bad card, but it needs some very specific deck building to be good. You need at least 30 (probably closer to 35) creatures for the Closet to have targets. Even then, without a bunch of "enters the battlefield" guys it just gives one of your dudes pseudo-vigilance. I could see it used in a Bant blink deck for sure. I've also seen it used in Zirilan decks to pretty good results. I wouldn't recommend it in this deck because the creature count isn't high enough, and there aren't enough ETB guys (I count 6).
Jarad and Lord of Extinction together can finish games. Malignus and Kokusho are also fun targets for his ability.
I'm starting to wonder why no one plays Conjurer's Closet if they have Acidic Slime, Eternal Witness, etc etc in their deck. Seems like the interaction could be good.
I've been in the closed beta since about a year ago this time. It has improved leaps and bounds since then, but is still lacking in so many areas. They are putting so much emphasis on developing the game play, but they seem to be forgetting that half the game is collecting and deck building. As a result, the majority of the performance issues are in the collection, deck building, and trading scenes. The darn thing is so buggy, too, that it will randomly crash on you without fail approximately every hour. I keep having to remind myself, "it's still in beta... it's still in beta... it's still in beta... "
EDIT: Question for the poster... What size and resolution is your monitor? Thanks. :)
It does take a LOT longer to build a deck, and the rewards aren't necessarily what you might come to expect.
Here's one of the ways around it. If you have a big collection and come across a card that you want to use later, but don't want to use right now, you can put it in one of your wish lists (and rename the wish list whatever you like). Then, instead of scrolling through ten thousand cards/images, you'll have what you want right there.
Conversely, though...the days of people building 1300 card decks will probably be over with version 4. I'm not sure if they can do an overhaul on the decklist building, if one is even practicable. In general, the client is built for standard and tends to function marginally less well in multiplayer formats.
Yeah, I'm not looking forward to this change, even though it is inevitable. You're little run down of Commander stuff just makes deck building and game play look awful. I gotta be honest, I'm fine with Version 3 right now, but that's probably just because it's familiar. Oh well.
The new client terrifies me. When they axe the old, despite its problems, I fear the change. This is one time in my life I've felt conservative. Your article is in-depth and helps me navigate the beta better.
Turntimber Ranger and Xenograft is pretty nice. I've been playing Turntimber with Artificial Evolution ever since Zendikar was released. It's a little cheaper and doesn't leave you vulnerable to enchantment removal.
FYI, Boros Reckoner is up to 13 in paper. Not sure if he'll follow that online.
The biggest factor for me in the prerelease was respecting the curve. You need to curve out at 4. You want a lot of 2 and 3 drops. Gruul is going to bloodrush you constantly, which means you always need board presence. You can only get away with a higher curve if you pulled a ton of removal.
In my opinion, Boros is the the best guild to play with. They have the most bombs and you can splash very easily. Dimir and Simic require other guilds to work, unless you draw their mythics.
It will, but the number of Legacy players running infect is a lot lower, and many of them already have the card. The price should continue to crash for a while, then drift back up a few months from now. The future price will probably top out at a buck or two, nowhere near the old highs.
Thanks for your suggestion. I made this article because I had already discussed this stuff with friends. But it's different to actually write something down and ask people to comment so I can respond and rewrite a few parts. Also English is not my first language so sometimes I'm probably not transmiting my ideas as well as I want because of that.
However this article actually has several comments discussing the topics which is something I don't often see here. That was one of the goals of the article and that I achieved.
However I feel I failed on something: people are mostly commenting on the diversity of the format and that wasn't the main point. I think the format isn't as diverse as people claim it to be but it's also not the problem I have with it. Mainly it's the lack of skill involved in playing.
Yes, auras is beatable, it just requires certain cards that aren't very good against anything else (there's Liliana which is also very good against control but it's double black so not suited for most decks). It was skill choosing that deck for that GP when no one was prepared for it.
I never put pictures without also spelling the name of the cards with a MTGO Traders link on them (and yes, sometimes I also put a link on the pictures, because I'm just obsessive that way).
The reason for using (pic=) is to allow the server to link in mtgotraders.com urls to the cards. It is true that the collection of images on the server is haphazardly done and someone should fix this but otherwise the functionality works.
If you aren't going to do that at least you end up either not putting links to the cards in or doing them by hand which can be a real pain in a large article.
There is always a temptation to lead with the emotionally charged argument and go for swaying people with your forcefully stated opinions but that is less useful in an article where you are trying to make a case for why standard sucks right now to a bunch of logically minded intellectuals.
I think you were FAR more articulate in defense of your premise in the comments than you were in the article itself and I think that is something you need to work on. After you write it out and format it and all have some trusted associates read it and comment on it for you in private. And then see if you can improve it before finally submitting it for publication.
As far as auras go...well it is very beatable, and match ups wise those who did well with it needed some good amount of luck to get in to the top 8. Skill was also involved I am sure but it is the kind of deck that thrives on luck/top deck mode with very swingy plays. This should sound familiar since it describes tons of decks that have done well in the format for decades past.
I have been doing that, but it freezes that way sometimes. Trading from the buddy list doesn't really do that. Not sure why.
Kara great effort and thanks for stealing my thunder! I kid, but I was considering doing an article like this. I am not entirely sure the beta is where I think it should be but this was a pretty clear guide for those who haven't played around with it yet.
@Kara: if you click on the TRADE tab, there is a drop down buddy list that has the complete name of your buddied friends/bots, not the cut off name in the opening screen.
Great Article! Glad to see you return to the old style of writing these. :D I watched the game you reported and it was really very interesting despite Z's defection.
The nastiest interaction with closet is using steal effects to take and keep creatures.
Yeah, it really makes you use the filters quite a bit, instead of scrolling down and putting stuff in like before. I'm not sure which is better.
I'd say that the Monogreen strategy of choice will remain Stompy for a while, but any strategy that seeks to play more big green guys will be splashing. I'm actually beginning to think of a post-Gatecrash Cipher Hexproof deck, probably BUGproof. Play hexproof dudes and cipher stuff onto them, especially the "target player loses 3 life" one, as it ends games quickly, and play good removal.
Since the format will be slowing down overall (t2 and t3 kills probably won't be that common since the bannings went specifically for them), I feel like this is the chance for 3-color decks to flourish, especially once all the Gates are available. I'm looking forward to the new brews.
As for LD, I'm going to be packing plenty of it for now. It's just going to be too good now. When manabases get greedy (I'm looking at you Post, Delver, Auras, and pretty much every other deck), LD starts to get reeeeeally attractive to run.
I gave up on using the new client after trying to look through my collection and build a deck. I have over 15,000 cards and it was a complete disaster. My real-life collection is better organized and easier to navigate than my online one now...and that is saying quite a bit.
Excellent pauper points - with MUC's selfish mana base, and post's dependant one...LD may indeed be a viable strategy. I'd not go BIG GREEN, since it auto losses to stompy and hex - but some brew must be out there. I agree as well, get rid of all storm, the fissure storm style is by far the most broken/should be next to go.
The Closet isn't a bad card, but it needs some very specific deck building to be good. You need at least 30 (probably closer to 35) creatures for the Closet to have targets. Even then, without a bunch of "enters the battlefield" guys it just gives one of your dudes pseudo-vigilance. I could see it used in a Bant blink deck for sure. I've also seen it used in Zirilan decks to pretty good results. I wouldn't recommend it in this deck because the creature count isn't high enough, and there aren't enough ETB guys (I count 6).
Jarad and Lord of Extinction together can finish games. Malignus and Kokusho are also fun targets for his ability.
I'm starting to wonder why no one plays Conjurer's Closet if they have Acidic Slime, Eternal Witness, etc etc in their deck. Seems like the interaction could be good.
I have a 17 inch screen. My resolution is set to 1600 x 900.
Also, I played for three hours straight last night, no crash. I haven't yet had to close other programs to free up virtual memory on my laptop.
I've been in the closed beta since about a year ago this time. It has improved leaps and bounds since then, but is still lacking in so many areas. They are putting so much emphasis on developing the game play, but they seem to be forgetting that half the game is collecting and deck building. As a result, the majority of the performance issues are in the collection, deck building, and trading scenes. The darn thing is so buggy, too, that it will randomly crash on you without fail approximately every hour. I keep having to remind myself, "it's still in beta... it's still in beta... it's still in beta... "
EDIT: Question for the poster... What size and resolution is your monitor? Thanks. :)
Great work as always!
It does take a LOT longer to build a deck, and the rewards aren't necessarily what you might come to expect.
Here's one of the ways around it. If you have a big collection and come across a card that you want to use later, but don't want to use right now, you can put it in one of your wish lists (and rename the wish list whatever you like). Then, instead of scrolling through ten thousand cards/images, you'll have what you want right there.
Conversely, though...the days of people building 1300 card decks will probably be over with version 4. I'm not sure if they can do an overhaul on the decklist building, if one is even practicable. In general, the client is built for standard and tends to function marginally less well in multiplayer formats.
Yeah, I'm not looking forward to this change, even though it is inevitable. You're little run down of Commander stuff just makes deck building and game play look awful. I gotta be honest, I'm fine with Version 3 right now, but that's probably just because it's familiar. Oh well.
The new client terrifies me. When they axe the old, despite its problems, I fear the change. This is one time in my life I've felt conservative. Your article is in-depth and helps me navigate the beta better.
Turntimber Ranger and Xenograft is pretty nice. I've been playing Turntimber with Artificial Evolution ever since Zendikar was released. It's a little cheaper and doesn't leave you vulnerable to enchantment removal.
Oh snark. I missed that bit. :P
FYI, Boros Reckoner is up to 13 in paper. Not sure if he'll follow that online.
The biggest factor for me in the prerelease was respecting the curve. You need to curve out at 4. You want a lot of 2 and 3 drops. Gruul is going to bloodrush you constantly, which means you always need board presence. You can only get away with a higher curve if you pulled a ton of removal.
In my opinion, Boros is the the best guild to play with. They have the most bombs and you can splash very easily. Dimir and Simic require other guilds to work, unless you draw their mythics.
It will, but the number of Legacy players running infect is a lot lower, and many of them already have the card. The price should continue to crash for a while, then drift back up a few months from now. The future price will probably top out at a buck or two, nowhere near the old highs.
Thanks for your suggestion. I made this article because I had already discussed this stuff with friends. But it's different to actually write something down and ask people to comment so I can respond and rewrite a few parts. Also English is not my first language so sometimes I'm probably not transmiting my ideas as well as I want because of that.
However this article actually has several comments discussing the topics which is something I don't often see here. That was one of the goals of the article and that I achieved.
However I feel I failed on something: people are mostly commenting on the diversity of the format and that wasn't the main point. I think the format isn't as diverse as people claim it to be but it's also not the problem I have with it. Mainly it's the lack of skill involved in playing.
Yes, auras is beatable, it just requires certain cards that aren't very good against anything else (there's Liliana which is also very good against control but it's double black so not suited for most decks). It was skill choosing that deck for that GP when no one was prepared for it.
I never put pictures without also spelling the name of the cards with a MTGO Traders link on them (and yes, sometimes I also put a link on the pictures, because I'm just obsessive that way).
The reason for using (pic=) is to allow the server to link in mtgotraders.com urls to the cards. It is true that the collection of images on the server is haphazardly done and someone should fix this but otherwise the functionality works.
If you aren't going to do that at least you end up either not putting links to the cards in or doing them by hand which can be a real pain in a large article.
There is always a temptation to lead with the emotionally charged argument and go for swaying people with your forcefully stated opinions but that is less useful in an article where you are trying to make a case for why standard sucks right now to a bunch of logically minded intellectuals.
I think you were FAR more articulate in defense of your premise in the comments than you were in the article itself and I think that is something you need to work on. After you write it out and format it and all have some trusted associates read it and comment on it for you in private. And then see if you can improve it before finally submitting it for publication.
As far as auras go...well it is very beatable, and match ups wise those who did well with it needed some good amount of luck to get in to the top 8. Skill was also involved I am sure but it is the kind of deck that thrives on luck/top deck mode with very swingy plays. This should sound familiar since it describes tons of decks that have done well in the format for decades past.