Keep the videos coming. I would rather see what is going on than to read about it! a couple of things though.
1.Close the match chat window and adjust your game settings so the big card on the left side is smaller. That should give us a bigger playing to view when you record.
2. Change the sideboard view to cards instead of text. Again, seeing is better than reading.
Instigator gang reminded me of old school boros! Was fun to watch!
I figured it would be nice to get all the information into an article. Judging from the number of views the article has had in a sort space of time it seems like there was a bigger demand for that than I thought.
Honestly many casual players never even venture into the TP room. They are happy to play at a level that isn't even up to FNM standards. I think there is a large enough niche for that sort of deck that this writer doesn't need to be expanding into more competitive arenas until he feels ready to do so. At the rate he is going with adding $5 a week to his collection it may be a while before this series hits the TP room. (Whatever the format.)
That said perhaps you are feeling the dearth of good articles on Standard at the moment and that lack might be because at the current time many competitive players feel the format has been solved. Give it a couple months and that will change and I expect we will see many more decks and articles.
Yeah, I thought it was a bit weird having the Sphinx be called Azorius and felt Rosewater might have misspoken, unless Isperia has changed it's name. Well Isperia certainly has grown if that's the case! I think that's a nice way of doing it, half new leaders and half old ones (or Champions in this case).
He's been doing ISD block decks so far which, while technically "standard" legal decks as well don't really count.
And I realise he's not trying to build something that will win a PTQ, but even something that feels reasonably competitive in the tourney practice room without any money cards or at least a good dual mana base is really tough (speaking from experience).
Whoops, you caught a few issues. Fire the copy editor! (ummm, that'd be me. doh.)
The first Goblins in that sentence should be Tokens.
Windbrisk Heights is the card that I meant. Just misremembered the name. Usually I catch these screw ups when the link doesn't work, but in this case I picked a name that's associated with an actual card.
As for Ranger's Path, you are right, Hunting Wilds and Skyshroud Claim are better. However I chose to use Explosive Vegetation as my comparison card simply because I see it played much more often. Probably because it came in last year's Commander decks.
I do recall once someone not seeing that these were Commander based reviews and being really confused. Was pretty funny actually. As for making comments about Standard playability, I really have no basis for making those statements. I haven't played a game of Standard in over a year. I mean, I never thought Emrakul would have seen Standard play but it did. So I have no idea if Boundless Realms is a horrible Standard card or not. I'd rather not make those assumptions.
Your best option would probably be WB tokens, although your mana base will be awful without isolated chapels (it's bad enough with them). Try a version with no one drops (doomed traveller is highly overrated), the usual token package (gather, lingering, midnight, intangible, honor) along with blood artist (perfect tech against DoJ and good in creature matchups generally) and a bit of removal (o-ring, tragic slip, go for the throat/doom blade). you'll want some sort of finisher, the non-budget one is hero of the bladehold, budget options would include angel of jubilation, the somewhat slow and generally underwhelming thraban doomslayer or (moving to the messy 5-CMC range) geist-honoured monk. You could also consider shrine of the loyal legions, but I generally find it too slow. Idk if you'd be able to afford vault of the archangel, but 1-2 are great.
For other super budget standard options you could also look to infect, although you'd really want M13 to be legal so you can include rancor, or possibly a budget (and probably bad) UR pike delver. Gl with it either way, it's REALLY tough to build an even halfway competitive ultra-budget standard deck.
Well done. Nice that somebody went through the effort to "transcribe" this and get it out to everybody. It is so much easier to refer to than a video. Furthermore, although some people have tried to do something similar, yours seems like the best to me, since it is simple, yet comprehensive. Great job.
Nice to see things presented like this! That said, there was a point of confusion from the panel that has since been clarified: Rosewater confirmed that the sphinx guildmaster of the Azorius guild *is* Isperia in RTR, but that fact apparently wasn't properly communicated. So, half of the guild leaders in Return had cards in the original Ravnica, even if they weren't necessarily the leaders at that time.
pack1/pick 1. i agree that it basically only the angel and peel, i prefer peel as blue is by far the best color in avr.
pick 2. banishing stroke or crippling, are both on par with angel.
pick 3. the 3 cards you mentioned none are worth picking at this point. crippling chill and mad prophet are both better cards. the equip is too slow, the artifact and the zealous you can get back later.
pick 4 ok blue is really open, take the chill now. reflection is ok, but really only good in very slow decks.
pick 7 that rare never gets used as it is extremely slow here mad prophet is best
pick 9 truimph is never useful it just never works at all i have tried it 27 times and drawn 0 cards off it. moving into green is a very bad idea where blue was infinitly open to you, i understand why you did it but i still think it was a mistake.
pack 2/pick 1. well you got lucky as you opened 1 of the only reasons to ever be green, take it and try to get better green cards as you have none playable minus the one you just got
pick 2. defang is never useable, take the shieldmate and hop to figure out a way to coexcist 3 colors
pick 3. well done, vanisment was considered but you made correct pick, archangel never w
pick 5. gateguards is fine here.
pick 7 black was open but its too late
pick 8 neither card matters as neither is playable
pack 3 pick 1 sage is ok, its useable atleast
pick 2 get passed the nuts and be happy
pick 5 i think, guide was better.
pick 7 do not take vorseclaw you should not be playing the first one even. you took correctly
the restoration angel saved you from having a terrible deck, i wonder why you never jumped into the blue train? it would have given you better options then green for sure.
how would i go about setting up to use that streaming device or another free device? i want to start streaming my drafts as no offense to you but allot of people are getting a one-sided view on avr. In my eyes it is the Best draft format besides cube. the most fun and most deep. i find the set to be just overall a great set and a nice come back from the failure known as new phyrexia. facebook me at mike lints (look for Jeff hardy) also look for Vincent vitrosoo mtg (picture of lone revenant) that way i can set up my stream and start to give a actual player veiw of drafts.
It is certainly an interesting dynamic to have the Guilds represented in different sets, meaning the power level of certain colours may well fluctuate.
They will definitely have to have some good colour-fixing. Signets and bounce lands would work nicely in that role, as they did in the original Ravnica, but they might be looking to do something new this time out. We'll have to see.
Nice article!
It is nice to have fresh news from the coming set (at least for someone like me who doesn't spend time tracking rumors)
I really like having sets "unbalanced", meaning some colors are/will be strong for couple of months before other colors rise.
In my memory Ravnica was really nice for sealed deck, as every combination of 3, 4 and even 5 colors was possible.
I really hope that sort of dual lands and signets will be (re)printed, this allows easily any colors combination for constructed format, fun or competitive...
He didn't "impulse buy", in fact he didn't buy anything. This is just a research project, as far as I know he's just tracking the values, and his "buys" are like Grade 10 Economics projects where you "Buy" stocks from the newspaper.
The purpose was to show other authors and commentors that making money by buying and selling is extremely hard. If you go back in the columns, you'll find lots of people telling us how "easy" it is to make money buying cheap cards and showing when they go up.
All of the purchases were made at the advice of these so-called experts, to test how smart they were.
Great job, thank you for doing this each time. I like that your point of view is so Commander-based that probably your average Standard player would read these evaluations and wonder if you're insane. :) I still think you sometimes should say stuff like, "This is going to be DA BOMB in Standard, but here's why it's just meh in Commander" (or vice versa, "This will see zero play in Standard, but it'll be awesome for us").
Nitpicks:
"Goblins aren't typically a route that you go with goblin deck"
I assume something went wrong with this sentence. :)
"Odric, Master Tactician. (...) And don't forget Windswept Heath!"
You lost me here. What's the link between Windswept Heath and the Tactician? Or was that supposed to be another card name?
"Ranger's Path"
You say a superior version of Explosive Vegetation, I say an inferior version of Hunting Wilds (or even Skyshroud Claim, for that matter).
If by mere chance you mean I stumbled on it by chance (had I not gotten enough QPs I wouldn't have known about this), I agree. But I didn't leave things to chance. I sold mine for a price and bought for a lower price. Even if the bot doesn't buy anymore I can very likely sell to another bot for a bit cheaper and it shouldn't be hard to at least break even, if all else fails.
I don't usually buy stuff in hopes it will increase because I mostly spend my time actually playing but this proved a very good opportunity.
And that's exactly how you do it (see also my post right above): by mere chance, but being smart enough, and a quick-thinker enough, and knowledgeable enough, to exploit the one chance you stumble upon. There's not a "system" to it.
great to have the lore in there, much appreciated
im a little more wary of the pick a guild concept because if they are out of balance everyone will just pick the one and can create a mess
Keep the videos coming. I would rather see what is going on than to read about it! a couple of things though.
1.Close the match chat window and adjust your game settings so the big card on the left side is smaller. That should give us a bigger playing to view when you record.
2. Change the sideboard view to cards instead of text. Again, seeing is better than reading.
Instigator gang reminded me of old school boros! Was fun to watch!
Thanks a lot. Really appreciate it.
I figured it would be nice to get all the information into an article. Judging from the number of views the article has had in a sort space of time it seems like there was a bigger demand for that than I thought.
Honestly many casual players never even venture into the TP room. They are happy to play at a level that isn't even up to FNM standards. I think there is a large enough niche for that sort of deck that this writer doesn't need to be expanding into more competitive arenas until he feels ready to do so. At the rate he is going with adding $5 a week to his collection it may be a while before this series hits the TP room. (Whatever the format.)
That said perhaps you are feeling the dearth of good articles on Standard at the moment and that lack might be because at the current time many competitive players feel the format has been solved. Give it a couple months and that will change and I expect we will see many more decks and articles.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the article!
Yeah, I thought it was a bit weird having the Sphinx be called Azorius and felt Rosewater might have misspoken, unless Isperia has changed it's name. Well Isperia certainly has grown if that's the case! I think that's a nice way of doing it, half new leaders and half old ones (or Champions in this case).
He's been doing ISD block decks so far which, while technically "standard" legal decks as well don't really count.
And I realise he's not trying to build something that will win a PTQ, but even something that feels reasonably competitive in the tourney practice room without any money cards or at least a good dual mana base is really tough (speaking from experience).
Whoops, you caught a few issues. Fire the copy editor! (ummm, that'd be me. doh.)
The first Goblins in that sentence should be Tokens.
Windbrisk Heights is the card that I meant. Just misremembered the name. Usually I catch these screw ups when the link doesn't work, but in this case I picked a name that's associated with an actual card.
As for Ranger's Path, you are right, Hunting Wilds and Skyshroud Claim are better. However I chose to use Explosive Vegetation as my comparison card simply because I see it played much more often. Probably because it came in last year's Commander decks.
I do recall once someone not seeing that these were Commander based reviews and being really confused. Was pretty funny actually. As for making comments about Standard playability, I really have no basis for making those statements. I haven't played a game of Standard in over a year. I mean, I never thought Emrakul would have seen Standard play but it did. So I have no idea if Boundless Realms is a horrible Standard card or not. I'd rather not make those assumptions.
This series as I understand it IS in standard and is about budget casual not competitive tourney level decks. That's a big leap.
GL building a $5 standard deck :P.
Your best option would probably be WB tokens, although your mana base will be awful without isolated chapels (it's bad enough with them). Try a version with no one drops (doomed traveller is highly overrated), the usual token package (gather, lingering, midnight, intangible, honor) along with blood artist (perfect tech against DoJ and good in creature matchups generally) and a bit of removal (o-ring, tragic slip, go for the throat/doom blade). you'll want some sort of finisher, the non-budget one is hero of the bladehold, budget options would include angel of jubilation, the somewhat slow and generally underwhelming thraban doomslayer or (moving to the messy 5-CMC range) geist-honoured monk. You could also consider shrine of the loyal legions, but I generally find it too slow. Idk if you'd be able to afford vault of the archangel, but 1-2 are great.
For other super budget standard options you could also look to infect, although you'd really want M13 to be legal so you can include rancor, or possibly a budget (and probably bad) UR pike delver. Gl with it either way, it's REALLY tough to build an even halfway competitive ultra-budget standard deck.
Well done. Nice that somebody went through the effort to "transcribe" this and get it out to everybody. It is so much easier to refer to than a video. Furthermore, although some people have tried to do something similar, yours seems like the best to me, since it is simple, yet comprehensive. Great job.
Nice to see things presented like this! That said, there was a point of confusion from the panel that has since been clarified: Rosewater confirmed that the sphinx guildmaster of the Azorius guild *is* Isperia in RTR, but that fact apparently wasn't properly communicated. So, half of the guild leaders in Return had cards in the original Ravnica, even if they weren't necessarily the leaders at that time.
pack1/pick 1. i agree that it basically only the angel and peel, i prefer peel as blue is by far the best color in avr.
pick 2. banishing stroke or crippling, are both on par with angel.
pick 3. the 3 cards you mentioned none are worth picking at this point. crippling chill and mad prophet are both better cards. the equip is too slow, the artifact and the zealous you can get back later.
pick 4 ok blue is really open, take the chill now. reflection is ok, but really only good in very slow decks.
pick 7 that rare never gets used as it is extremely slow here mad prophet is best
pick 9 truimph is never useful it just never works at all i have tried it 27 times and drawn 0 cards off it. moving into green is a very bad idea where blue was infinitly open to you, i understand why you did it but i still think it was a mistake.
pack 2/pick 1. well you got lucky as you opened 1 of the only reasons to ever be green, take it and try to get better green cards as you have none playable minus the one you just got
pick 2. defang is never useable, take the shieldmate and hop to figure out a way to coexcist 3 colors
pick 3. well done, vanisment was considered but you made correct pick, archangel never w
pick 5. gateguards is fine here.
pick 7 black was open but its too late
pick 8 neither card matters as neither is playable
pack 3 pick 1 sage is ok, its useable atleast
pick 2 get passed the nuts and be happy
pick 5 i think, guide was better.
pick 7 do not take vorseclaw you should not be playing the first one even. you took correctly
the restoration angel saved you from having a terrible deck, i wonder why you never jumped into the blue train? it would have given you better options then green for sure.
how would i go about setting up to use that streaming device or another free device? i want to start streaming my drafts as no offense to you but allot of people are getting a one-sided view on avr. In my eyes it is the Best draft format besides cube. the most fun and most deep. i find the set to be just overall a great set and a nice come back from the failure known as new phyrexia. facebook me at mike lints (look for Jeff hardy) also look for Vincent vitrosoo mtg (picture of lone revenant) that way i can set up my stream and start to give a actual player veiw of drafts.
Glad you enjoyed the article!
It is certainly an interesting dynamic to have the Guilds represented in different sets, meaning the power level of certain colours may well fluctuate.
They will definitely have to have some good colour-fixing. Signets and bounce lands would work nicely in that role, as they did in the original Ravnica, but they might be looking to do something new this time out. We'll have to see.
Haha, yeah. Can definitely see Fatso in the back.
The ghost council looks a lot like Casper's brothers.
Nice article!
It is nice to have fresh news from the coming set (at least for someone like me who doesn't spend time tracking rumors)
I really like having sets "unbalanced", meaning some colors are/will be strong for couple of months before other colors rise.
In my memory Ravnica was really nice for sealed deck, as every combination of 3, 4 and even 5 colors was possible.
I really hope that sort of dual lands and signets will be (re)printed, this allows easily any colors combination for constructed format, fun or competitive...
He didn't "impulse buy", in fact he didn't buy anything. This is just a research project, as far as I know he's just tracking the values, and his "buys" are like Grade 10 Economics projects where you "Buy" stocks from the newspaper.
The purpose was to show other authors and commentors that making money by buying and selling is extremely hard. If you go back in the columns, you'll find lots of people telling us how "easy" it is to make money buying cheap cards and showing when they go up.
All of the purchases were made at the advice of these so-called experts, to test how smart they were.
"Lingering Souls, Sorin, Gloom Surgeon, Drogskol Captain, " ... "Baby Garruk"
We'll see how well those turn out. They look like as good of predictions as any.
Couldn't agree more. I think Modern is one of the most fun formats going right now. Really enjoying it and glad you are too.
I too am becoming a modern man. Classic is broken, standard is redundant, modern seems so much more fun. Then again I play mostly multiplayer.
*Snap!* Right!
It took me a minute, but I think windswept Heath was supposed to be windbrisk heights.
Great job, thank you for doing this each time. I like that your point of view is so Commander-based that probably your average Standard player would read these evaluations and wonder if you're insane. :) I still think you sometimes should say stuff like, "This is going to be DA BOMB in Standard, but here's why it's just meh in Commander" (or vice versa, "This will see zero play in Standard, but it'll be awesome for us").
Nitpicks:
"Goblins aren't typically a route that you go with goblin deck"
I assume something went wrong with this sentence. :)
"Odric, Master Tactician. (...) And don't forget Windswept Heath!"
You lost me here. What's the link between Windswept Heath and the Tactician? Or was that supposed to be another card name?
"Ranger's Path"
You say a superior version of Explosive Vegetation, I say an inferior version of Hunting Wilds (or even Skyshroud Claim, for that matter).
If by mere chance you mean I stumbled on it by chance (had I not gotten enough QPs I wouldn't have known about this), I agree. But I didn't leave things to chance. I sold mine for a price and bought for a lower price. Even if the bot doesn't buy anymore I can very likely sell to another bot for a bit cheaper and it shouldn't be hard to at least break even, if all else fails.
I don't usually buy stuff in hopes it will increase because I mostly spend my time actually playing but this proved a very good opportunity.
And that's exactly how you do it (see also my post right above): by mere chance, but being smart enough, and a quick-thinker enough, and knowledgeable enough, to exploit the one chance you stumble upon. There's not a "system" to it.