Hey olaw, your articles have been amazing in helping me see the modern format's more competitive decks. I had to fight two Boros decks and your article gave me the edge against them. Thanks for posting these articles and I hope you continue this series.
I think countermagic is criminally underplayed in tribal wars among the control decks. The control decks are playing sometimes as many as 8 board sweepers to prey on the linear aggro decks, and many of the aggro deck pilots are compounding the problem by failing to play anything (like Armageddon) that might seriously punish those decks for relying so heavily on tapping out turn 4. But when you slip a little combo into the metagame, the control decks with counterspells are supposed to be doing the work of keeping combo in check, but those decks aren't picking up the slack.
I just looked at DirtyDuck's Kor combo decklist that won again this week, and you know what ISN'T in it? ANY hand disruption or countermagic. Not a Thoughtseize, Cabal Therapy, or Dispel to be seen in that list. There's no room for all that stuff, which real Cephalid Breakfast plays. And he only has a single Dread Return. That whole combo folds to one counterspell. He has a good backup plan to be sure, SFM/Batterskull does good work, but at that point he's playing what is considered "fair magic" in the legacy world. His entire strategy is based around the fact that he knows most of the field every week is aggro decks that won't manage to kill him before he combos out, and a couple of control decks with no counterspells. The meta needs to adjust to start fighting these combo decks.
I do believe that Belcher, because it's turn 1 and there will never be many FoW in the event, is too good to just "adjust" the metagame to fight. I also think a dedicated dredge strategy would be too good because you can't effectively fight it without dedicated yard hate. But in general I think the control players could be doing more to help keep combo down. If they just refuse to play countermagic so they can keep crushing aggro with their 8 sweepers, it's no surprise combo comes in and stomps face.
I'm about a week behind in posting this, but thanks for featuring my Warrior deck. I've played it twice now and it went 2-1 both times. It's a fun deck to play and wasn't very tough to put together.
Interesting commentary, not that I agree with all your predictions on how good these cards will be. I see some interesting applications for cards you panned and some of the cards you praise seem a little meh to me. (Not many, I think you mostly got this right.) However I am mostly coming from the standard/modern perspective on what can be innovated and less from the tribal legacy point of view of how these cards fit.
One thing in particular: the ring cycle stand pretty well on their own for one purpose. They are absolutely lethal in stall builds. Any control deck that can use their color on a creature while stalling the opponent will love their slow build up.
In fact the red one + slumbering dragon = fun times.
I think Prized Elephant is reasonable in elephants because you are not always going to want the other guys in that slot (aside from Hierarch). Granted elephants don't USUALLY need help trampling lesser beings but meh, what can we do?
Anyway yes I do love Trading Post and think it is one of the better cards in the set along with Disciple and Sublime the beating. Thragtusk makes a distant fourth for me and the big dragon isn't even interesting to me.
You have to be careful with these evaluations, because you are thinking of Legacy here, not Legacy Tribal Wars. The metas of the two formats can't be more different. Essentially, "you can stop this by counter magic" within Tribal Wars means something akin to "only one tier-3 archetype can stop this". There's almost no counter magic in the format, and definitely no Force of Will (for a lot of reasons, not the least being that it's not a sanctioned competitive format, so it doesn't attract players with money collections). We have seen how much of an impact Cavern of Souls had on the format (that is, none at all, even less that I was expecting, it's been barely played). This means we have to be extra careful with turn-1 and turn-2 endgame combos.
Anyway, I'll elaborate on this on my next article.
Enjoy the videos, thanks for covering Pauper! One thing - last game of match 1, you could have cast Capsize your Chittering Rats and locked him out instead of playing Duress. I think playing the Duress made you forget that you could play a land that turn :).
Regarding Helm of Obedience, I think it's at least possible that having Helm of the Void combo available in the format might be a good thing to the extent that it creates a very real possibility of a deck having to face Leyline of the Void in an event. Graveyard strategies are very popular, and with the lack of sideboards they can easily run amok. While most of them can be fought without dedicated yard hate, there are, as we know, some very all-in dredge decks that are possible and quite difficult to interact with, and having Leyline played could help discourage that. Helm of the Void combo can at least be interacted with much easier than dredge can, through counterspells at least. Helm of the Void is capable of winning quickly, but the version I'm familiar with in regular legacy relies on Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors and perhaps Dark Ritual as its fast mana and can't usually win as fast as Charbelcher can. Whereas the only hope against Charbelcher on the draw is Force of Will, there are plenty of commonly played counterspells that will be online in time to fight Helm.
$45 bonfire is crazy! That card is so hot, it's funny looking at some of the speculation from back in the day about the card eg. the starcitygames article which pegs it as a $10 card, along with Tibalt! The other card I can't believe atm is gut shot, it's incredible that an UNCOMMON with only 2 months left in standard is trading at almost 5tix. If you have a stash of those you're laughing atm.
If anyone's interested in doing some short term speculation, watch out for quirion dryad. It's selling out all over the place and realistically is worth at least 0.8 tix maybe more, with people experimenting with a phyrexian-heavy UG delver build (got featured on the mothership and went 4-0 in a daily recently). Hinterland harbor is also one of the few M13 duals that's got any value atm, I'm guessing on the back of that deck.
That opens different search windows depending on where you are in the page, I assume - sometimes the "find and replace" query (which I didn't even think about using), and sometimes the Chrome "search in page" window, which is what I was using.
Anyway, it appears I was just being dense, because even the latter DOES find Bitterblossom if you properly click on the up and down arrows. Probably I was always placed ahead of the name and had to click on "search up", or something (still stupid the fact that it reports "0 of 0" if you don't do that, leading to think there's none). On my defense, I only use Chrome for these sheets, Opera instantly finds me anything anywhere by just typing the relevant characters in a small window that's always there.
Then Chrome is very bad at finding stuff in those sheets, because it still doesn't give me any result for "bitter". :)
How do you interrogate the sheet? Of course looking at a list of 2123 cards to see if the one you're looking for is there isn't viable.
While we're at it, I'd like for you to do what you've just done (number of copies by player with deck and date, possibly even result) for the cards in the watch list. Currently just Goblin Charbelcher and Helm of Obedience, with attention on possible showings of Sneak Attack, Doomsday, and Grindstone. Can you do that?
"I was looking at vantar6697's statistics in the Popularity Survey, that don't show any Bitterblossom as of Week 77."
Huh? I have it recorded as #345 with 14 copies played during the tracked period.
Digging deeper into the source data for the popularity list I can also tell you that the first recorded playing of Bitterblossom in 2012 was done by apaulogy with 4 copies in a Faerie deck on 1/14/2012 then Ayanam1 played 4 in a Human Deck and RexDart played 4 in a Faerie deck in week 59 (2/18/2012), then next week Ayanam1 played 2 more copies in a Spirit deck.
For anyone interested, I have provided a (fairly) comprehensive list of all the decks in Classic. I'm missing a few decks, but this should be a great start for anyone looking to jump back into Classic for this tournament.
I sent you a response on Twitter that should answer some of your questions. But I'd be happy to send you the raw data once I get back from my family reunion next week, as I'm away from my home computer where I keep that data.
also agree with a mix of video/writing if possible, but if time limits you (and I know it oft does for most people) I'd say writing over videos... little tired of articles that are just videos
These articles are really unique, and I think your approach is a great way of gaining more insight into how Magic works. Thank you.
I wrote a small blog entry (simongoertzen.tumblr.com) on your play/draw statistics, with essentially the same question as floopthepig: did you count all games instead of only the first of each match? If yes, your sample is biased.
I think a mix is best for coverage. I often miss nuance of play from either a straight write up or a straight video. As someone who is really new to the competitive scene, write ups capture what you as a player are hoping to accomplish, but videos give a better feel for the opponent most of the time.
I'm torn your deck choice. If I play, which I'm leaning towards, it'll be some version of affinity. As such, I'd like to see what a better pilot does with the deck. The ambivalence comes from the shame of being shown up.
When you counted the play/draw numbers, did you include all games of a match? The loser of game 1 chooses in game 2 and is probably more likely than even to lose game 2 as well. This would explain in part why having the choice seems bad.
I agree completely! You can just add a little line at the end of each article, and link to them, and hopefully people will read them and get the message out.
Hey guys, great podcast this week. Thanks for considering me for your initial "Community Spotlight". I agree with your short list of people to spotlight next, but I'll add Montolio, Calavera, FishyFellow. I know we're missing some great people, but it just goes to show that this new segment should have some legs.
So far the turnout for the League has been great and the donations are ROLLING in.
I think the Sphere deck suits you best from what little I know of your style. I thought about joining this myself but as my decks are still wips I think I will sit it out till next year. Maybe by then I'll have decks capable of toeing against the big guns.
I am of the reading sort so I prefer write ups to video coverage but if you can do both that is probably better.
Hey olaw, your articles have been amazing in helping me see the modern format's more competitive decks. I had to fight two Boros decks and your article gave me the edge against them. Thanks for posting these articles and I hope you continue this series.
I think countermagic is criminally underplayed in tribal wars among the control decks. The control decks are playing sometimes as many as 8 board sweepers to prey on the linear aggro decks, and many of the aggro deck pilots are compounding the problem by failing to play anything (like Armageddon) that might seriously punish those decks for relying so heavily on tapping out turn 4. But when you slip a little combo into the metagame, the control decks with counterspells are supposed to be doing the work of keeping combo in check, but those decks aren't picking up the slack.
I just looked at DirtyDuck's Kor combo decklist that won again this week, and you know what ISN'T in it? ANY hand disruption or countermagic. Not a Thoughtseize, Cabal Therapy, or Dispel to be seen in that list. There's no room for all that stuff, which real Cephalid Breakfast plays. And he only has a single Dread Return. That whole combo folds to one counterspell. He has a good backup plan to be sure, SFM/Batterskull does good work, but at that point he's playing what is considered "fair magic" in the legacy world. His entire strategy is based around the fact that he knows most of the field every week is aggro decks that won't manage to kill him before he combos out, and a couple of control decks with no counterspells. The meta needs to adjust to start fighting these combo decks.
I do believe that Belcher, because it's turn 1 and there will never be many FoW in the event, is too good to just "adjust" the metagame to fight. I also think a dedicated dredge strategy would be too good because you can't effectively fight it without dedicated yard hate. But in general I think the control players could be doing more to help keep combo down. If they just refuse to play countermagic so they can keep crushing aggro with their 8 sweepers, it's no surprise combo comes in and stomps face.
I'm about a week behind in posting this, but thanks for featuring my Warrior deck. I've played it twice now and it went 2-1 both times. It's a fun deck to play and wasn't very tough to put together.
Interesting commentary, not that I agree with all your predictions on how good these cards will be. I see some interesting applications for cards you panned and some of the cards you praise seem a little meh to me. (Not many, I think you mostly got this right.) However I am mostly coming from the standard/modern perspective on what can be innovated and less from the tribal legacy point of view of how these cards fit.
One thing in particular: the ring cycle stand pretty well on their own for one purpose. They are absolutely lethal in stall builds. Any control deck that can use their color on a creature while stalling the opponent will love their slow build up.
In fact the red one + slumbering dragon = fun times.
I think Prized Elephant is reasonable in elephants because you are not always going to want the other guys in that slot (aside from Hierarch). Granted elephants don't USUALLY need help trampling lesser beings but meh, what can we do?
Anyway yes I do love Trading Post and think it is one of the better cards in the set along with Disciple and Sublime the beating. Thragtusk makes a distant fourth for me and the big dragon isn't even interesting to me.
You have to be careful with these evaluations, because you are thinking of Legacy here, not Legacy Tribal Wars. The metas of the two formats can't be more different. Essentially, "you can stop this by counter magic" within Tribal Wars means something akin to "only one tier-3 archetype can stop this". There's almost no counter magic in the format, and definitely no Force of Will (for a lot of reasons, not the least being that it's not a sanctioned competitive format, so it doesn't attract players with money collections). We have seen how much of an impact Cavern of Souls had on the format (that is, none at all, even less that I was expecting, it's been barely played). This means we have to be extra careful with turn-1 and turn-2 endgame combos.
Anyway, I'll elaborate on this on my next article.
oops, that makes more sense then.
Hinterland Harbor isn't in M13 but Innestrad.
Enjoy the videos, thanks for covering Pauper! One thing - last game of match 1, you could have cast Capsize your Chittering Rats and locked him out instead of playing Duress. I think playing the Duress made you forget that you could play a land that turn :).
Regarding Helm of Obedience, I think it's at least possible that having Helm of the Void combo available in the format might be a good thing to the extent that it creates a very real possibility of a deck having to face Leyline of the Void in an event. Graveyard strategies are very popular, and with the lack of sideboards they can easily run amok. While most of them can be fought without dedicated yard hate, there are, as we know, some very all-in dredge decks that are possible and quite difficult to interact with, and having Leyline played could help discourage that. Helm of the Void combo can at least be interacted with much easier than dredge can, through counterspells at least. Helm of the Void is capable of winning quickly, but the version I'm familiar with in regular legacy relies on Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors and perhaps Dark Ritual as its fast mana and can't usually win as fast as Charbelcher can. Whereas the only hope against Charbelcher on the draw is Force of Will, there are plenty of commonly played counterspells that will be online in time to fight Helm.
$45 bonfire is crazy! That card is so hot, it's funny looking at some of the speculation from back in the day about the card eg. the starcitygames article which pegs it as a $10 card, along with Tibalt! The other card I can't believe atm is gut shot, it's incredible that an UNCOMMON with only 2 months left in standard is trading at almost 5tix. If you have a stash of those you're laughing atm.
If anyone's interested in doing some short term speculation, watch out for quirion dryad. It's selling out all over the place and realistically is worth at least 0.8 tix maybe more, with people experimenting with a phyrexian-heavy UG delver build (got featured on the mothership and went 4-0 in a daily recently). Hinterland harbor is also one of the few M13 duals that's got any value atm, I'm guessing on the back of that deck.
Just so no one gets confused, the voting stage of the CCC for this year is closed. I hope everyone got their votes in.
That opens different search windows depending on where you are in the page, I assume - sometimes the "find and replace" query (which I didn't even think about using), and sometimes the Chrome "search in page" window, which is what I was using.
Anyway, it appears I was just being dense, because even the latter DOES find Bitterblossom if you properly click on the up and down arrows. Probably I was always placed ahead of the name and had to click on "search up", or something (still stupid the fact that it reports "0 of 0" if you don't do that, leading to think there's none). On my defense, I only use Chrome for these sheets, Opera instantly finds me anything anywhere by just typing the relevant characters in a small window that's always there.
Control F doesn't work?
Then Chrome is very bad at finding stuff in those sheets, because it still doesn't give me any result for "bitter". :)
How do you interrogate the sheet? Of course looking at a list of 2123 cards to see if the one you're looking for is there isn't viable.
While we're at it, I'd like for you to do what you've just done (number of copies by player with deck and date, possibly even result) for the cards in the watch list. Currently just Goblin Charbelcher and Helm of Obedience, with attention on possible showings of Sneak Attack, Doomsday, and Grindstone. Can you do that?
"I was looking at vantar6697's statistics in the Popularity Survey, that don't show any Bitterblossom as of Week 77."
Huh? I have it recorded as #345 with 14 copies played during the tracked period.
Digging deeper into the source data for the popularity list I can also tell you that the first recorded playing of Bitterblossom in 2012 was done by apaulogy with 4 copies in a Faerie deck on 1/14/2012 then Ayanam1 played 4 in a Human Deck and RexDart played 4 in a Faerie deck in week 59 (2/18/2012), then next week Ayanam1 played 2 more copies in a Spirit deck.
great stuff man was looking for something like that if I get time to join in!
For anyone interested, I have provided a (fairly) comprehensive list of all the decks in Classic. I'm missing a few decks, but this should be a great start for anyone looking to jump back into Classic for this tournament.
http://www.mtgoacademy.com/unlocking-the-vault-30-upping-the-ante/
I sent you a response on Twitter that should answer some of your questions. But I'd be happy to send you the raw data once I get back from my family reunion next week, as I'm away from my home computer where I keep that data.
i'd say door number 3, lot of choices there
also agree with a mix of video/writing if possible, but if time limits you (and I know it oft does for most people) I'd say writing over videos... little tired of articles that are just videos
These articles are really unique, and I think your approach is a great way of gaining more insight into how Magic works. Thank you.
I wrote a small blog entry (simongoertzen.tumblr.com) on your play/draw statistics, with essentially the same question as floopthepig: did you count all games instead of only the first of each match? If yes, your sample is biased.
I think a mix is best for coverage. I often miss nuance of play from either a straight write up or a straight video. As someone who is really new to the competitive scene, write ups capture what you as a player are hoping to accomplish, but videos give a better feel for the opponent most of the time.
I'm torn your deck choice. If I play, which I'm leaning towards, it'll be some version of affinity. As such, I'd like to see what a better pilot does with the deck. The ambivalence comes from the shame of being shown up.
When you counted the play/draw numbers, did you include all games of a match? The loser of game 1 chooses in game 2 and is probably more likely than even to lose game 2 as well. This would explain in part why having the choice seems bad.
I agree completely! You can just add a little line at the end of each article, and link to them, and hopefully people will read them and get the message out.
Hey guys, great podcast this week. Thanks for considering me for your initial "Community Spotlight". I agree with your short list of people to spotlight next, but I'll add Montolio, Calavera, FishyFellow. I know we're missing some great people, but it just goes to show that this new segment should have some legs.
So far the turnout for the League has been great and the donations are ROLLING in.
I think the Sphere deck suits you best from what little I know of your style. I thought about joining this myself but as my decks are still wips I think I will sit it out till next year. Maybe by then I'll have decks capable of toeing against the big guns.
I am of the reading sort so I prefer write ups to video coverage but if you can do both that is probably better.