Thanks for the comments. You're absolutely right about Hellrider. I simply didn't have one before the tourney and didn't feel like plopping down for one. It's absolutely the right call for the deck. Cackler is interesting and I had not thought about it. It honestly might be correct to play both. I'll have to give them a shot. The trade on 100CS is always that changing one card doesn't REALLY affect the deck too much due to raw statistics, but if you continually up the level little by little over time you start to see big effect. It's just hard to know when a single card improves a deck significantly.
Super, super minor point, but isn't Rakdos Cackler just a better tattermunge? idk how relevant the +1 toughness is, but it seems likely that it's a better choice even just because you aren't forced to suicide it if you don't want to. I also can't help but feel that hellrider deserves a slot, even over hero potentially. If your opponent's board is empty, they attack for exactly the same amount but Hellrider's ability to go straight to the dome seems more likely to be relevant than pushing one-power blockers aside, although I admit I don't know the format at all. Hellrider also gets around fog effects if that's ever relevant.
The group is always there, quite independent of my involvement these days, though I do like to show up and try a new brew now and again. In the classic event a few Sundays ago I managed to abuse Forbid with exile into darkness in basically a monoblue control build to take the win. Getting hatching plans, abjure and perilous research to work was pretty satisfying. I really like the monogreen deck mihahitlor and Cathomas are often running, atm we have a pretty powerful suite of monogreen cards legal in the classic event, Dungrove elder, Rancor, Strangleroot Geist, Garruk 1.0 ect. Its certainly been the most consistently well performing lately though next rotation it will lose a lot i think. On fridays theres the standard event and on Saturdays the rotating block format as well (kamigawa atm).
Gisela is a new inclusion, but when I played her last week she was an allstar. I can see her being a lightning rod but she wards off attacks very well while she's on the board, since any attack against you would only deal half damage while other opponents would take double. That, plus a propaganda or similar card on the field, and that should be enough deterrent for opponents to attack someone else.
I run 10 mana ramp cards, not including land tax and trinket mage to fetch sol ring. Even with all that, the deck is still pretty slow to win, but it's supposed to be. Non-aggression is exactly the key to being successful. The early game is all about ramp, setting up defense to deter attack, and of course preventing someone else from running away with the game. You should be the least desirable target at the table in the early game. Then when the time is right, you put down your win conditions and bury your opponents in card advantage while they struggle to even attack you.
I'll take notes next time I write a deck tech, or pony up and make it on MTGO to record a game. Thanks for the advice.
I like the sound of Hakim. It's that or Karador right now.
I agree that Nivmagus' power level is very high and I think if it had been printed during Scars Block it would have had some very serious applications in Standard. Sadly, I don't think the support is there in Standard but I'm sure he could be a deck in Heirloom.
I've missed playing Heirloom and really need to take part in a PRE sometime soon.
I built this deck the other day trying to make an Heirloom version. In my set review of RTR I gave Nivmagus Elemental 5/5 for power level since he just looked so absurd offhand. He's like an agressive version of Psychatog. It's not hard to see the potential of the card. (My heirloom version has the Clouts of the Dominus as well, before I saw this list), nice to see it making some waves in Modern.
Really? Ok. Regular tribal it is. Variation towards unadulterated purity? Hmmm. How's this? 30 cards max (freeform), no off-tribe members, no sideboards, regular banned lists.
In all honesty, time to get this right is probably the wisest course, especially with, say, the legacy banned list vs the commander banned list. Restricting humans but not wizards?
What is he doing with them? Where does he get them from? Does he keep them in pairs? Is he storing them for winter? Is he part of a mob of squirrels that sell eyeballs in an underground black market to fund their murderous plans? SO MANY QUESTIONS!!!
That's actually a really good point. I never thought of that. Doesn't seem like too bad a plan! Though I suppose the strategies aren't exactly compatible, in that if you use all your Pacts to pump Nivmagus you won't have the Hive Mind win. I like your thinking, might have to give that a go sometime.
Nope. The Tribal Apocalypse ball is NOT in my hands in any way, shape, or form. I was just asked to "guest host" what would have been event #100 had I continued on.
And apparently I got thrown a can of worms for old times' sake! :) That's what I get for being a gadfly. :)
Nivmagus seems to play nicely with all the 0 mana pacts. I wonder if it might be an option in a hivemind deck. Maybe sideboard it in to give the deck a secondary attack. Though it just might gum up the works. I agree that infect is probably the better turn two kill deck, but the artwork on nivmagus is too awesome not to play it. How can anyone hope to defeat Ironman. :)
I agree that ROE was mythic-loaded, and a total lottery for Gideon or Vengevine, much like AVR and DKA were real pack lotteries recently. I felt that ZEN gave pretty decent box value because of the fetchlands at rare -- but you could have made a fair argument for Lotus Cobra, and Vengevine for that matter, to be rare instead of mythic. RTR has been great for box value, since most of the value is at rare, both the lands and some popular multicolor cycles of spells. When a set has a lot of value at rare, that tends to decrease the price of mythics (because overall box value tends to hover around the price of an actual box or below, given supply/demand.)
I agree that ZEN block art was a little all over the place, and they didn't consistently build on their themes, though with an "adventure world" I suppose there could be lots of different styles. INN block was the first set since returning to the game that had art I actually liked. I could not stand Scars block art at all, there were a few nice pieces but the overall look was just not appealing to me. Since art is very subjective, I assume some people did like it, and it probably did a good job conveying what Corrupted Mirrodin was about, I just didn't like it aesthetically.
Re box buying: I buy boxes at launch for a reasonable discount from my LGS owner, so that I'm paying about $2.50/pack US dollars. The number of rares or mythics "worth opening", i.e. worth over $2.50 to somebody in trade, is pretty high at launch. During those first few weeks, you can trade the cards you won't be using at their most inflated price, you avoid having to pay inflated retail or trade value yourself for the rares you need for decks, and you never have to worry ever again for the next 20 years about whether you have X uncommon for a last minute deck build. If you're at a store where you have alot of standard players without the money to buy boxes, they get used to you having stuff for trade on the first weekend and you can trade real easily. I would rather be the person with the in-demand stuff, not the one desperately scrambling and paying too much for it, when a new set is released. That said, if you don't get a discount, or you buy later in a set's life cycle, none of this applies and I agree it's a bad idea. Maybe playing Standard within two months of a set's release is just a losing proposition overall, since if you waited until now you'd be able to just buy a tier 1 deck's singles now that you know what the metagame is, rather than trying to cover too many bases at once early on.
Hey Kuma, I thought from what Blippy was saying that you weren't involved in planning it at all anymore, which is why I repeated stuff I'd already said to you in email.
It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to delay Commander tribal until we know we can get it right, with minimal confusion and a highly-publicized banlist well in advance, and get some of the format kinks worked out. It has the possibility of being overtaken with too much complexity. And I still think if we publicized this broadly with more lead-in time that we could use this as outreach to recruit EDH players (who already have big Vorthos tendencies) to the tribal wars format. But then again, even if you like that idea, maybe having a trial run of it first wouldn't be so bad either.
It's all up to the braintrust/Blippy on this, obviously, I'm just spitballing here, and will reserve any other comments until the article goes up this week if it needs to be discussed any further.
Thanks Paul! Unfortunately I just don't have the time to consistently write anymore. But I figure I can eventually get through these Overviews since I can do a few cards at a time and spread it out (this article was done over a period of about 3 months).
Thanks for the comments. You're absolutely right about Hellrider. I simply didn't have one before the tourney and didn't feel like plopping down for one. It's absolutely the right call for the deck. Cackler is interesting and I had not thought about it. It honestly might be correct to play both. I'll have to give them a shot. The trade on 100CS is always that changing one card doesn't REALLY affect the deck too much due to raw statistics, but if you continually up the level little by little over time you start to see big effect. It's just hard to know when a single card improves a deck significantly.
Nice article and grats on the showing.
Super, super minor point, but isn't Rakdos Cackler just a better tattermunge? idk how relevant the +1 toughness is, but it seems likely that it's a better choice even just because you aren't forced to suicide it if you don't want to. I also can't help but feel that hellrider deserves a slot, even over hero potentially. If your opponent's board is empty, they attack for exactly the same amount but Hellrider's ability to go straight to the dome seems more likely to be relevant than pushing one-power blockers aside, although I admit I don't know the format at all. Hellrider also gets around fog effects if that's ever relevant.
The group is always there, quite independent of my involvement these days, though I do like to show up and try a new brew now and again. In the classic event a few Sundays ago I managed to abuse Forbid with exile into darkness in basically a monoblue control build to take the win. Getting hatching plans, abjure and perilous research to work was pretty satisfying. I really like the monogreen deck mihahitlor and Cathomas are often running, atm we have a pretty powerful suite of monogreen cards legal in the classic event, Dungrove elder, Rancor, Strangleroot Geist, Garruk 1.0 ect. Its certainly been the most consistently well performing lately though next rotation it will lose a lot i think. On fridays theres the standard event and on Saturdays the rotating block format as well (kamigawa atm).
Gisela is a new inclusion, but when I played her last week she was an allstar. I can see her being a lightning rod but she wards off attacks very well while she's on the board, since any attack against you would only deal half damage while other opponents would take double. That, plus a propaganda or similar card on the field, and that should be enough deterrent for opponents to attack someone else.
I guess it would be better to have a visual of the curve and stuff:
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/donate-wheeee-1/
I run 10 mana ramp cards, not including land tax and trinket mage to fetch sol ring. Even with all that, the deck is still pretty slow to win, but it's supposed to be. Non-aggression is exactly the key to being successful. The early game is all about ramp, setting up defense to deter attack, and of course preventing someone else from running away with the game. You should be the least desirable target at the table in the early game. Then when the time is right, you put down your win conditions and bury your opponents in card advantage while they struggle to even attack you.
I'll take notes next time I write a deck tech, or pony up and make it on MTGO to record a game. Thanks for the advice.
I like the sound of Hakim. It's that or Karador right now.
I agree that Nivmagus' power level is very high and I think if it had been printed during Scars Block it would have had some very serious applications in Standard. Sadly, I don't think the support is there in Standard but I'm sure he could be a deck in Heirloom.
I've missed playing Heirloom and really need to take part in a PRE sometime soon.
I'd like to see 30-card tried at some point as a special, though.
I like no offtribe members, but 30-card deck is asking for trouble. I'd do the former, not the latter.
I built this deck the other day trying to make an Heirloom version. In my set review of RTR I gave Nivmagus Elemental 5/5 for power level since he just looked so absurd offhand. He's like an agressive version of Psychatog. It's not hard to see the potential of the card. (My heirloom version has the Clouts of the Dominus as well, before I saw this list), nice to see it making some waves in Modern.
That's not nailed down, merely something that popped into my head. I'll let y'all know at the slugfest this weekend.
AFTER I discuss it w/Kuma.
Mill was my first thought. Metagaming against mill was my second thought. I've built a couple decks for the format, it could be interesting.
Right I thought of that after I posted. Same thing though right? Easily solved format.
Mill is probably the best strategy (if we can play cards beside creatures).
30 cards max = aggro only...
Really? Ok. Regular tribal it is. Variation towards unadulterated purity? Hmmm. How's this? 30 cards max (freeform), no off-tribe members, no sideboards, regular banned lists.
Calling it: just do a regular tribal with whatever variation towards "unadulterated purity" you might want to apply.
On my part, I'll just try to re-awake Nemesis and Ayanam1 from their sleep, to show these new kids what 2011 was about.
In all honesty, time to get this right is probably the wisest course, especially with, say, the legacy banned list vs the commander banned list. Restricting humans but not wizards?
This deck makes me all kinds of excited. I want to build this now. I love the idea here.
What is he doing with them? Where does he get them from? Does he keep them in pairs? Is he storing them for winter? Is he part of a mob of squirrels that sell eyeballs in an underground black market to fund their murderous plans? SO MANY QUESTIONS!!!
Thanks for the comment!
That's actually a really good point. I never thought of that. Doesn't seem like too bad a plan! Though I suppose the strategies aren't exactly compatible, in that if you use all your Pacts to pump Nivmagus you won't have the Hive Mind win. I like your thinking, might have to give that a go sometime.
Also agreed that the art on Nivmagus is sweet! :)
Nope. The Tribal Apocalypse ball is NOT in my hands in any way, shape, or form. I was just asked to "guest host" what would have been event #100 had I continued on.
And apparently I got thrown a can of worms for old times' sake! :) That's what I get for being a gadfly. :)
Your call. I'm just driving your bus.
Nivmagus seems to play nicely with all the 0 mana pacts. I wonder if it might be an option in a hivemind deck. Maybe sideboard it in to give the deck a secondary attack. Though it just might gum up the works. I agree that infect is probably the better turn two kill deck, but the artwork on nivmagus is too awesome not to play it. How can anyone hope to defeat Ironman. :)
I agree that ROE was mythic-loaded, and a total lottery for Gideon or Vengevine, much like AVR and DKA were real pack lotteries recently. I felt that ZEN gave pretty decent box value because of the fetchlands at rare -- but you could have made a fair argument for Lotus Cobra, and Vengevine for that matter, to be rare instead of mythic. RTR has been great for box value, since most of the value is at rare, both the lands and some popular multicolor cycles of spells. When a set has a lot of value at rare, that tends to decrease the price of mythics (because overall box value tends to hover around the price of an actual box or below, given supply/demand.)
I agree that ZEN block art was a little all over the place, and they didn't consistently build on their themes, though with an "adventure world" I suppose there could be lots of different styles. INN block was the first set since returning to the game that had art I actually liked. I could not stand Scars block art at all, there were a few nice pieces but the overall look was just not appealing to me. Since art is very subjective, I assume some people did like it, and it probably did a good job conveying what Corrupted Mirrodin was about, I just didn't like it aesthetically.
Re box buying: I buy boxes at launch for a reasonable discount from my LGS owner, so that I'm paying about $2.50/pack US dollars. The number of rares or mythics "worth opening", i.e. worth over $2.50 to somebody in trade, is pretty high at launch. During those first few weeks, you can trade the cards you won't be using at their most inflated price, you avoid having to pay inflated retail or trade value yourself for the rares you need for decks, and you never have to worry ever again for the next 20 years about whether you have X uncommon for a last minute deck build. If you're at a store where you have alot of standard players without the money to buy boxes, they get used to you having stuff for trade on the first weekend and you can trade real easily. I would rather be the person with the in-demand stuff, not the one desperately scrambling and paying too much for it, when a new set is released. That said, if you don't get a discount, or you buy later in a set's life cycle, none of this applies and I agree it's a bad idea. Maybe playing Standard within two months of a set's release is just a losing proposition overall, since if you waited until now you'd be able to just buy a tier 1 deck's singles now that you know what the metagame is, rather than trying to cover too many bases at once early on.
Hey Kuma, I thought from what Blippy was saying that you weren't involved in planning it at all anymore, which is why I repeated stuff I'd already said to you in email.
It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to delay Commander tribal until we know we can get it right, with minimal confusion and a highly-publicized banlist well in advance, and get some of the format kinks worked out. It has the possibility of being overtaken with too much complexity. And I still think if we publicized this broadly with more lead-in time that we could use this as outreach to recruit EDH players (who already have big Vorthos tendencies) to the tribal wars format. But then again, even if you like that idea, maybe having a trial run of it first wouldn't be so bad either.
It's all up to the braintrust/Blippy on this, obviously, I'm just spitballing here, and will reserve any other comments until the article goes up this week if it needs to be discussed any further.
Thanks Paul! Unfortunately I just don't have the time to consistently write anymore. But I figure I can eventually get through these Overviews since I can do a few cards at a time and spread it out (this article was done over a period of about 3 months).