Kuma's remark about integrating the tribal members into the combo, or at least not having them be totally irrelevant, reminded me that I was going to bring up the bafflement both Ranth and I share at Doomsday coming off the ban list. Doomsday makes literally every creature in your deck irrelevant. The only Doomsday piles I even know of which use a creature in them are exclusively Type 1 legal piles with Labratory Maniac (those rely on Ancestral Recall being in the pile) and Shelldock Isle piles with Emrakul. The "I Win" piles everyone plays run off LED and IGG loops and win with storm. Now I'm not aware of anybody having actually played Doomsday in this event, but if anything deserved to be on that ban list just for the crime of rendering one's entire tribe irrelevant, that would be it.
When certain cards were unbanned, was it never contemplated to unban any of the *creatures*? The original article discussing the whole ban list implied strongly that Progenitus was considered for unbanning, and I for one would love to have a legitimate Natural Order target in the format. If anything, Progenitus would at least require creature removal to diversify a little. Swords to Plowshares shouldn't be able to hit literally every fattie in the format the way it does now, we should have access to some legitimate threats that require edicts or wraths to handle them.
How is Aluren winning on turn 1? Or turn 2, for that matter. The version we had here just ran Noble Hierarchs as accelerators, and it needs to get to 4 mana with an Imperial Recruiter in hand to start the endgame (and you can have an answer to that at that point). I admit, it does it in an awfully consistent way, but if that's off-putting, it's for a different reason.
And again, Aluren is not even a thing around here. Never been. I can give you the complete list of all players that faced Aluren in these 2 years. They are 11 (of which 3 couples):
1. Mr. Slippery 39 — April 9, 2011, Event 14 — against Ayanam1
2. milegyenanevem — April 9, 2011, Event 14 — against Ayanam1
3. DirtyDuck — April 9, 2011, Event 14 — against Ayanam1
4. sadams252 — April 9, 2011, Event 14 — against Ayanam1
5. gbagyt — January 21, 2011, Event 55: Invitational — against Ayanam1
6. AJ_Impy & Winter.Wolf — March 24, 2012, Event 64: 2HG — against DirtyDuck & SBena
7. GWN & TrevaWhateva — March 24, 2012, Event 64: 2HG — against DirtyDuck & SBena
8. Jeketerri & VictorBike — March 24, 2012, Event 64: 2HG — against DirtyDuck & SBena
So, congratulations on being one of only 11 people who actually saw Aluren on the other side of the table? :)
(By the way, Jeketerri & VictorBike are the only ones who actually won their match against it, using Goblins and Kithkins.)
I'd be happy drafting ME5 if it was actually fun and had good cards. More often than not they put a handful of chase rares in these sets and the rest is pure utter garbage. Even cheaper uncommons and commons that could have benefited from a reprint get shuttled off to make space for unplayable collection chaff and .10 rares.
It dosent have to be chock full of high value rares but that also dosent mean we should have to play Yotian Soldier.format. I like the idea of introducing the P9 into mtgo in a powered cube like version of ME5. And i don't feel that they have to be 2-300 each as online values for non redeemable sets will always have a value inconsistent with paper.
But if you're winning on turn 1, you're barely in this meta, as it's been demonstrated. So it's not something you can generalize on, it's an anomaly, statistically irrelevant.
So, not sure if this would be an idea everyone could get on board with. But what if you lock the invitational into a 32 player event. Q1 would add 8 people. For Q2 it would again add top 8 with the caveat that qualifications can file down. For example. Lets say NATO wins q1 and makes 8th place in q2. His invitation would roll down to 9th.
If you're winning on turn 1, then the contents of your tribe can't really be described as carefully chosen, since most of them will be utterly irrelevant to the passage of the game. At best, you could use, say, the spirit guides as additional lotus petals.
THANKS A LOT JUSTSIN
Thats by far the best introduction/guideline/tutorial to MTGO i've found during the last days.
I'm new to MTGO and at the moment i'm just reading and viewing everything i can find.
And you sure know, there is a lot out there.
However, i wanted to say thank you for your detailed and very accurate articles.
Good work.
Myself, and probably all to come will highly appreciate it.
All the best.
Estiriat
Firstly, I mess up with the instants my opponent can cast. There was a point in the game he had to main phrase Cunning Wish in order to get to use it. I could also force my opponent to discard by not interacting against a hand with counter magic. I was hoping to get to draw into Dark Confidant or something but it didn't turn out as I would have wanted it.
Generally, a deck with permanents has more of an advantage taking turns than a deck with just spells and I was the one controlling the flow of the game with the tap untaps since I can play to maximize my turns and my opponent cannot. (Didn't really show in that game)
You can try sitting on the other side where it can get pretty uncomfortable and daunting when you cannot control the flow of the game.
I guess I was not the only player out there that wanted to play in a budget standard format. As you mentioned due to conflicting schedule with work I had to find new hosts for the events and both cathomas and mihahitlor stepped up and have been doing a great job.
Why did you keep skipping your turn / taking two turns in a row in game 2? I can kind of see the value because if you draw into something good, you've got a second turn to pull ahead, but he's getting the same advantage. I'm not sure I get the reasoning. It's not like you have a combo deck where you just win with an extra turn (except for with Blightsteel).
Pretty much all the high-money cards online keep their value, to a large degree. Sure there are fluctuations and sure some cards drop, but most do not. I've been playing online for a LONG time and have paid pretty close attention to the cards to hold onto. Those cards do not often change. Take a look at the top cards in value on this very article going years back. The charts look pretty similar. The only way for a card to plummet is for a reprint. Yes, all cards run that risk. That's the entire point of my first post. Everyone talks about how it would be good for the game for the prices of these cards to drop. I completely disagree. In paper land, if some of those cards had never been extremely valuable, I highly doubt the world of CCGs remains viable for two decades. There's a reason they're called, you know, collectible card games.
Even if FOW or other huge cards get reprinted at mythic, the number in the system will skyrocket. Even if it's a MED set, people WILL draft that a ton just to snag the cards they know are valuable. If FOW had been in even two MEDs, we'd have a vastly different price on it. That seems pretty straightforward.
1. I certainly could have a great collection if every card is worth a penny. But everyone would have the same collection. What's the problem with that? If every person has access to every possible deck, then the diversity of formats will be stifled even more than it is now (mainly standard). I'm definitely NOT a collector first and player second. But I do want value to my cards.
2. Wizards will not change the price of packs if all cards are worth a penny. So if you want to draft, you're out of luck. If you want to play sealed, you're out of luck.
I'm not speculator. I just realize the inherent value of the value of cards. It is good for the game and I'm constantly shocked when people can't see why.
Well, you can see it this way all the time, then. You play linear aggro? Good job at finding the very first way to break the format.
And this IS Legacy. With a limitation built in. I guess that's just the great divide in how (for instance) you and I are looking at the format. Legacy decks are at home here. They are the decks you should use, but you'll have to struggle a bit more than within no-limitation Legacy. Which is what makes Tribal Wars way more playable and fun, of course.
Standard tokens is a really nice deck and I've played a lot. As you've found, blood artist turns out to be a fantastic addition to it and I much prefer the versions with it than the ones without. I'm almost tempted to put in a killing wave to give the deck even more reach, but usually if you have enough creatures on the board to make that relevant you're winning anyway.
My problem with it is its shaky mana base, which can be really annoying sometimes because you need lots of white but the deck can really splutter without drawing black for removal, flashback and blood artist and its terrible late game. It's such a bad deck once in topdeck mode. It's also really inconsistent. When you curve out the right mix of mana, token generators and anthems it's perfect. But then you end up with the hands full of anthems and no tokens, or tokens and no anthems, or bad mana and just lose quickly because you don't have much of a way to come back (I actually like a couple of main deck timely's for this reason, it's one of the few ways the deck has to turn a bad board situation around instantly).
Finally, I'm still not convinced that the 1-drop creatures are actually necessary, although if I was running them I think I'd run 4xCop because it's such a good card early, but so bad late so you want to maximise your chances of having it in your opening hand. And that list seems crazy for not running the full quota of anthems, not sure why you wouldn't play 4x intangible - it's such a beating.
You do raise a fair point, in that perception is tied to knowledge. If you see something you've never heard of before, you are amazed. If you see something you've never witnessed personally before, you are intrigued. If you see something you personally have seen often, in a number of variations, it doesn't have the protection of the novelty factor to avoid being unpleasant to go through.
Tribal as a format is very, very easy to break with literal dozens of legal combos that have unique, fast, hard to stop angles of attack. To my mind there is no joy to be had in walking that ground or seeing it be walked upon: We know that this ends the game there and then, and can't be sideboarded against, for any given value of 'this'. The trick is not to break it in that manner, not to build a 'plug in 20 dorks for utility to aid the wincon' shell around a deck known to excel in a less restrictive format with the same card pool. When the tribe itself is an irrelevance, we have a problem.
Haha yeah i know I have been crushed a time or two by reprints, the most memorable being picking up 3 Meddling Mages near his peak only to have him come back in AVR :(
Kuma's remark about integrating the tribal members into the combo, or at least not having them be totally irrelevant, reminded me that I was going to bring up the bafflement both Ranth and I share at Doomsday coming off the ban list. Doomsday makes literally every creature in your deck irrelevant. The only Doomsday piles I even know of which use a creature in them are exclusively Type 1 legal piles with Labratory Maniac (those rely on Ancestral Recall being in the pile) and Shelldock Isle piles with Emrakul. The "I Win" piles everyone plays run off LED and IGG loops and win with storm. Now I'm not aware of anybody having actually played Doomsday in this event, but if anything deserved to be on that ban list just for the crime of rendering one's entire tribe irrelevant, that would be it.
When certain cards were unbanned, was it never contemplated to unban any of the *creatures*? The original article discussing the whole ban list implied strongly that Progenitus was considered for unbanning, and I for one would love to have a legitimate Natural Order target in the format. If anything, Progenitus would at least require creature removal to diversify a little. Swords to Plowshares shouldn't be able to hit literally every fattie in the format the way it does now, we should have access to some legitimate threats that require edicts or wraths to handle them.
How is Aluren winning on turn 1? Or turn 2, for that matter. The version we had here just ran Noble Hierarchs as accelerators, and it needs to get to 4 mana with an Imperial Recruiter in hand to start the endgame (and you can have an answer to that at that point). I admit, it does it in an awfully consistent way, but if that's off-putting, it's for a different reason.
And again, Aluren is not even a thing around here. Never been. I can give you the complete list of all players that faced Aluren in these 2 years. They are 11 (of which 3 couples):
1. Mr. Slippery 39 — April 9, 2011, Event 14 — against Ayanam1
2. milegyenanevem — April 9, 2011, Event 14 — against Ayanam1
3. DirtyDuck — April 9, 2011, Event 14 — against Ayanam1
4. sadams252 — April 9, 2011, Event 14 — against Ayanam1
5. gbagyt — January 21, 2011, Event 55: Invitational — against Ayanam1
6. AJ_Impy & Winter.Wolf — March 24, 2012, Event 64: 2HG — against DirtyDuck & SBena
7. GWN & TrevaWhateva — March 24, 2012, Event 64: 2HG — against DirtyDuck & SBena
8. Jeketerri & VictorBike — March 24, 2012, Event 64: 2HG — against DirtyDuck & SBena
So, congratulations on being one of only 11 people who actually saw Aluren on the other side of the table? :)
(By the way, Jeketerri & VictorBike are the only ones who actually won their match against it, using Goblins and Kithkins.)
I'd be happy drafting ME5 if it was actually fun and had good cards. More often than not they put a handful of chase rares in these sets and the rest is pure utter garbage. Even cheaper uncommons and commons that could have benefited from a reprint get shuttled off to make space for unplayable collection chaff and .10 rares.
It dosent have to be chock full of high value rares but that also dosent mean we should have to play Yotian Soldier.format. I like the idea of introducing the P9 into mtgo in a powered cube like version of ME5. And i don't feel that they have to be 2-300 each as online values for non redeemable sets will always have a value inconsistent with paper.
But if you're winning on turn 1, you're barely in this meta, as it's been demonstrated. So it's not something you can generalize on, it's an anomaly, statistically irrelevant.
Sbena_Bot has pledged 10 Tickets Bot Credit. This will be distributed 5-3-1-1.
So, not sure if this would be an idea everyone could get on board with. But what if you lock the invitational into a 32 player event. Q1 would add 8 people. For Q2 it would again add top 8 with the caveat that qualifications can file down. For example. Lets say NATO wins q1 and makes 8th place in q2. His invitation would roll down to 9th.
Exquisite Blood would be a great add to this deck to combo with Blood Artist. Just my $0.02. :)
If you're winning on turn 1, then the contents of your tribe can't really be described as carefully chosen, since most of them will be utterly irrelevant to the passage of the game. At best, you could use, say, the spirit guides as additional lotus petals.
glad it could be helpful :)
THANKS A LOT JUSTSIN
Thats by far the best introduction/guideline/tutorial to MTGO i've found during the last days.
I'm new to MTGO and at the moment i'm just reading and viewing everything i can find.
And you sure know, there is a lot out there.
However, i wanted to say thank you for your detailed and very accurate articles.
Good work.
Myself, and probably all to come will highly appreciate it.
All the best.
Estiriat
Firstly, I mess up with the instants my opponent can cast. There was a point in the game he had to main phrase Cunning Wish in order to get to use it. I could also force my opponent to discard by not interacting against a hand with counter magic. I was hoping to get to draw into Dark Confidant or something but it didn't turn out as I would have wanted it.
Generally, a deck with permanents has more of an advantage taking turns than a deck with just spells and I was the one controlling the flow of the game with the tap untaps since I can play to maximize my turns and my opponent cannot. (Didn't really show in that game)
You can try sitting on the other side where it can get pretty uncomfortable and daunting when you cannot control the flow of the game.
I guess I was not the only player out there that wanted to play in a budget standard format. As you mentioned due to conflicting schedule with work I had to find new hosts for the events and both cathomas and mihahitlor stepped up and have been doing a great job.
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Why did you keep skipping your turn / taking two turns in a row in game 2? I can kind of see the value because if you draw into something good, you've got a second turn to pull ahead, but he's getting the same advantage. I'm not sure I get the reasoning. It's not like you have a combo deck where you just win with an extra turn (except for with Blightsteel).
Pretty much all the high-money cards online keep their value, to a large degree. Sure there are fluctuations and sure some cards drop, but most do not. I've been playing online for a LONG time and have paid pretty close attention to the cards to hold onto. Those cards do not often change. Take a look at the top cards in value on this very article going years back. The charts look pretty similar. The only way for a card to plummet is for a reprint. Yes, all cards run that risk. That's the entire point of my first post. Everyone talks about how it would be good for the game for the prices of these cards to drop. I completely disagree. In paper land, if some of those cards had never been extremely valuable, I highly doubt the world of CCGs remains viable for two decades. There's a reason they're called, you know, collectible card games.
Even if FOW or other huge cards get reprinted at mythic, the number in the system will skyrocket. Even if it's a MED set, people WILL draft that a ton just to snag the cards they know are valuable. If FOW had been in even two MEDs, we'd have a vastly different price on it. That seems pretty straightforward.
Two problems with your scenario:
1. I certainly could have a great collection if every card is worth a penny. But everyone would have the same collection. What's the problem with that? If every person has access to every possible deck, then the diversity of formats will be stifled even more than it is now (mainly standard). I'm definitely NOT a collector first and player second. But I do want value to my cards.
2. Wizards will not change the price of packs if all cards are worth a penny. So if you want to draft, you're out of luck. If you want to play sealed, you're out of luck.
I'm not speculator. I just realize the inherent value of the value of cards. It is good for the game and I'm constantly shocked when people can't see why.
This is a more eloquent way of saying why I find Aluren to be off-putting.
Duplicate
Well, you can see it this way all the time, then. You play linear aggro? Good job at finding the very first way to break the format.
And this IS Legacy. With a limitation built in. I guess that's just the great divide in how (for instance) you and I are looking at the format. Legacy decks are at home here. They are the decks you should use, but you'll have to struggle a bit more than within no-limitation Legacy. Which is what makes Tribal Wars way more playable and fun, of course.
The best decks of that kind don't have the tribe as an irrelevance, though, but as the carefully chosen enabler of the chosen strategy.
Standard tokens is a really nice deck and I've played a lot. As you've found, blood artist turns out to be a fantastic addition to it and I much prefer the versions with it than the ones without. I'm almost tempted to put in a killing wave to give the deck even more reach, but usually if you have enough creatures on the board to make that relevant you're winning anyway.
My problem with it is its shaky mana base, which can be really annoying sometimes because you need lots of white but the deck can really splutter without drawing black for removal, flashback and blood artist and its terrible late game. It's such a bad deck once in topdeck mode. It's also really inconsistent. When you curve out the right mix of mana, token generators and anthems it's perfect. But then you end up with the hands full of anthems and no tokens, or tokens and no anthems, or bad mana and just lose quickly because you don't have much of a way to come back (I actually like a couple of main deck timely's for this reason, it's one of the few ways the deck has to turn a bad board situation around instantly).
Finally, I'm still not convinced that the 1-drop creatures are actually necessary, although if I was running them I think I'd run 4xCop because it's such a good card early, but so bad late so you want to maximise your chances of having it in your opening hand. And that list seems crazy for not running the full quota of anthems, not sure why you wouldn't play 4x intangible - it's such a beating.
ARB not AVR.. Whoops.
Alara Reborn? But yeah the big price dropper will be ancient tomb and maze of ith. I expect Tomb to stay around its current price.
You do raise a fair point, in that perception is tied to knowledge. If you see something you've never heard of before, you are amazed. If you see something you've never witnessed personally before, you are intrigued. If you see something you personally have seen often, in a number of variations, it doesn't have the protection of the novelty factor to avoid being unpleasant to go through.
Tribal as a format is very, very easy to break with literal dozens of legal combos that have unique, fast, hard to stop angles of attack. To my mind there is no joy to be had in walking that ground or seeing it be walked upon: We know that this ends the game there and then, and can't be sideboarded against, for any given value of 'this'. The trick is not to break it in that manner, not to build a 'plug in 20 dorks for utility to aid the wincon' shell around a deck known to excel in a less restrictive format with the same card pool. When the tribe itself is an irrelevance, we have a problem.
Haha yeah i know I have been crushed a time or two by reprints, the most memorable being picking up 3 Meddling Mages near his peak only to have him come back in AVR :(
I think I'll *Tinker* around with it :)