That's powerful and all, and will improve the deck even. I just don't see it even being able to push Familiar Storm up to Tier 1, let alone to where it needs to have Cloud of Faeries Banned. Familiar Storm really doesn't lose that many games after it combos out anyways. It will still have big problems with Infect and Empty the Warrens being faster than it, Delver can pick it's untapping apart with counters, if a Cloud of Faerie doesn't stick the deck barely works, and LD slows the deck down a huge amount. The Engine will be more powerful for sure, but it doesn't really solve the decks problems.
RE: pauper banning... You are missing the key card. In familiar storm, ghostly flicker + cloud of faeries + mnemnonic wall = infinite mana. Add an oracle or drifter and you have infinite cards too.
I'd assume you mean Ghostly Flicker. It does seem really good in Familiar Storm with cloud, mull, sea gate oracle, etc. I don't see it being that great in Delver Aggro decks, a few might run it, but with the low amount of lands those decks are playing someone is basically asking to be blown out by using it.
You should probably start discussing what the format will look like when cloud of faeries is banned. There is an AVR card that makes life misserable and non-interactive for everyone not playing cloud of faeries.
Hey Tarmo long time no blog! Anyway yeah the point of my classic deck ideas isn't to encourage people to play crappy decks lol. However everyone needs a starting off point.
Those are certainly some great pointers (though cage might be a bit obvious :D) and I hope people building for the event take notice. As far as being demoralized by losing to "crappy" or "weird" decks...well thats the + side of rogue building. Your one slim advantage is your opponent won't see what's coming necessarily based on your first turn play.
I would like to reinforce the not unwinnable comment as I would never say it was considering some of the weird games Ive seen and played vs tried and true decks. On the other hand once a turn 2 combo starts going off all that careful planning can just go right out the window. :D So while not unwinnable some match ups are just bad. It helps as you said to plan for the most likely to be relevant match ups and hope for the best with the rest.
I can't get the back to back with diff decks thingy of there are events in between right? :(
Temp mastery feels slightly overrated. I think one of the biggest benefits to time walk is that you get to yawg will it and auto win on the next turn.
How many would one play in a deck? 4x? Definitely won't be able to play bobs with it.
Gush may not be that big a nonbo with it. U get to lay lands on the extra turn and draw into brainstorms to put back cards on top.
Sensei top is definitely better than preordain/ponder cos u can draw at instant speed and you have much more control over miracles over time. Think abt it.
I would definitely test delver with the faux time walk and see how it goes.. Having to control it before you can make use of it makes it kinda dangerous and effectively laying an extra land may not be that big a deal :x
I liked the little side comment about Baneslayer Angel. TAFKAW does have a nice ring to it. I may start calling her that from now on.
Also very cool and interesting to see a (semi-) competitive deck based around Didgeridoo. Props to the author.
I can add a bit to this. I once played a Project Melira deck with the Persist without counters combo, and I beat a Tinker/Time Vault deck 2-1. I was very excited.
I think Avatar of Might might work if you have cards like Ensnaring Bridge and cards like Teferi's Moat- keep your opponents from attacking, that kind of thing.
If you want to beat classic decks, it is not impossible but your approach is wrong because you're under the mindset that you autolose to the good classic decks and immediately go for "i'm playing my casual deck route".
Like any other format, you need to first identify what the decks to beat are and where their weaknesses lie.
If you ignore the key matchups and play an odd deck, you could as well scoop since the opp would more likely than not be playing the entire game by themselves with your gameplay experience limited to clicking oks, especially since Classic is Classic afterall.
Following the flow of running goblins, here is what i have to say:
Use cards that overlap your win condition with cards that are good against the big decks.
For example, dredge is a beast. If you play sac goblins like mogg fanatic, goblin sledder, you Immediately have an advantage over their bridge from belows.
As long as you can keep the opp's creature count below 3 or run a sharpshooter together with the sac gobs, it is possible to run them over with good play.
You can also run a playset of grafdigger's cage in the sb to make life more difficult and also buy some time vs oath.
If you run vials you can have a strong game vs blue control decks, as you would if you run skullclamp).
If you run the goblin with echo that bounces creatures, you can make it difficult for a tinkered bs colossus to do its thing. You also gain some value vs an active oath cos if u have 2 in han and your opp naturally oaths (instead of channel emrakul) without dragon breath, you can stall them very significantly (show n tell and bounce gob is so brutal). Even more so with vial.
If you run some artifact smashing cards in the sb like the replicate card, your odds vs workshops immediately goes up.
Running bad decks means you are a sitting duck vs combo.
It is not impossible for a cheap crappy deck like what i'm describing to win but you must respect the classic decks before you can expect to take games in the format.
Classic is not as unwinnable as people believe it to be. It's just that it is not a format where people want to run crappy decks.
If all the above text is too much, just take home the idea that if you run enough playable hates with a semi decent gameplan, winning is not that much a faraway dream.
(i hope everyone does make an effort to bring proper classic decks. It's quite demoralizing to get beaten by wierd decks and no I'm not encouraging that. )
Oh yeah, and those prices weren't paper prices. ISD foils are insanely expensive.
Foiled Lilly will cost you 50-55 tix. Olivia costs 15+ tix, Army of the Damned costs 11 tix (if you can find it). Foiled Garruk was being sold for $40.
Everyone wants to redeem foiled sets of ISD because they want a graded 10 Snapcaster playset to hold onto for a few years because Snapcaster is the Blue version of Bob, Goyf, and Stoneforge. It will be worth so much damn money in a few years you will make at minimum 5-10x your profit.
But you have to know there is a very distinct interaction between paper and modo. Except the prices on Modo fluctuate on a daily basis more than they do in paper. Like you can still get $25 for a paper Sorin trade, but can only get $20 for Sorin on Modo, and he has taken a massive drop on Modo, I know how it works.
And I quote paper prices because modo prices need to be charted out and tracked in cycles which I do. Paper is a much longer cycle and will still go up even if I am using paper prices.
Snapcaster Mage will go up. There is no Flashback in AVR, M13, or Ravnica as far as we know. So why not ponder during your opponents turn from the graveyard, grab a time walk, and take an extra turn using Hinterland Harbor.
And please. For those who think Modern is strong, you are fooling yourselves. Modern will taper off when STD season hits it's peak, and then with all the drafting going on, STD will remain strong. You can't draft a Goyf.
Modern is too expensive for the average player. Granted Ravnica is returning, but all that means is a price increase in fetch lands.
If you rotate it slowly, like once every year, it will lead to a better and stronger format. More people will be able to use cards they can't use anymore in STD, and people who play Modern can take their rotated cards into legacy or classic. It works for all formats. If you don't see that, then you are dumber than you look.
If people want an eternal format, then they will go to Classic on Modo or Legacy in Paper. Why play Modern? In Classic you can play dual's, FOW, etc.. In Modern you have the people who really like it, and those who just play it for the PTQ. I sold my Goyf's in paper and on Modo. The same with my fetches. (I am holding onto my Shock lands just in case they are reprinted in Ravnica). I am not alone.
Opening a store, we are trading daily. And what are people trading for in paper? They are trading for Dual Lands, FOW, Snapcasters, Geist of Saint Traft, Fetch Lands, Wasteland... see something here? Nobody wants Goyfs. We have Korean playsets of foiled Tarmogoyf's, and normally during PTQ season those sell like crazy. You know what people want instead? Foiled Korean Lingering Souls and the FNM Foiled Black Border Swords to Plowshares.
STD is where all the money is going, and as long as that trend continues, and AVR is as good as I think, more people will, in both paper and modo, move out of modern and into STD or sell off STD if they don't want to play in PTQ's, and into Classic/Legacy. Why hold onto a Goyf when you can get a FOW? FOW is much better and Classic has it's niche.
Guaranteed, there will be less than 5 Modern tournaments firing per week in a month or so, and if they do fire, it will be with less than 25 people.
And you say that there is a strong Modern Community. Well there is a very strong Classic/Legacy community on Modo. They even have a website called classic quarter. Does that mean classic events fire all the time? Does it mean they fire at all? I doubt it.
Either way, I'm taking my Vendallion Clickers to pasteur, my Goyf can sit in exile in some bot, and Bob got me on Modo what I needed to finish my Foiled ISD set to complete the playset.
When people see that a single Goyf can buy them a tier 1 STD deck, and when they see the cards in AVR, do you think... "Hm, I should hold onto this Goyf. Who needs Restoration Angel or Cavern of Souls, which will be $40 in paper and $25-30 on Modo.
What's funny is that Cavern of Souls could make decks that were previously unplayable now playable, but in order to afford it, you need to sell off your modern staples. But selling off the Modern Staples would give you STD for days.
He didn't have the red mana to bring it into play that turn. He tapped his islands and broke lotus petal so he wouldn't take the 2 life from the tomb. At best, he brings in the sneak attack and tries to activate it next turn, by then it would of been to late. You are probably right, I should of just countered the show and tell, but I guess you could say I was toying with him a little lol!
RD1 game 2, despite winning, you should not have allowed the Show and tell to resolve. It gives a window for a Sneaky Sneak Attack that costs 2ur instead of 3rr.
I can't take someone seriously who suggests Modern needs to rotate. It was expressly created not to rotate. They tried similar, rotating sets, and extended was a failure through multiple iterations.
I think you should open the archetypes to subtypes. Example 95% of the results under MUC are what I call Delver Aggro, while the other 5% is PaulDenton playing true MUC. You can also open up Storms to Ritual Storm and UR Storm. While both decks do the same thing, they just do each in a different way.
I could not disagree more strongly with your assessment of modern. It has always struck me as a strong and engaging format with plenty of room for creativity and adjustment in both the tournament scene and with casual play ranging from kitchen table to semi competitive games at your local store.
The prices you keep quoting are for paper. Are you not online at all? Are you completely myopic to the fact that this is a site for and by Online Players? We do talk about paper stuff occasionally but for the most part we don't and usually only when it impacts our Online experience in some way. Paper prices generally do not unless we happen to be redeemers.
Wow that is an excellent article by Jacob. In the past Ive found some of his efforts to be less than impressive but this is quite an insight into that deck and yeah Pox looks pretty cool. I am not a huge fan of the Rack strategy as it seems quite defeat-able with certain cards and just careful play but the rest of the deck is pretty solid looking and if The Rack fits the niche given it then great! :)
That spark is mainly what I am interested in. The rest is a matter of style, costs and planning.
I, like a lot of people, thought modern would be a dead format like others WotC have tried before, but I think it might do really well thanks to the PTQ season, but only on Modo.
Most people I know are selling off all their modern for STD.
But with a return to Ravnica coming up, and either possible reprints of the shock lands, or newly named shock lands that are similar, it might peak the interest for Modo players who can't afford the Ravnica shock lands.
I think the future of Modern needs 3 things.
1) Reprints of cards (online) that people that can't afford normally, like Goyf, Bob, Fetch Lands, etc..
2) They need to make it a non-eternal format and have sets rotate out. That would really make it interesting and lead to more interest in Legacy (in paper) and Classic (on Modo). As the cards rotate out, people might keep the cards and go to another format, which would lead to Legacy events or Classic Events firing more than they currently are, and not just for a "Christmas Spectacular!".
3) What is in M13. I mean the set needs a lot of things. They are keeping the planeswalkers, but they are taking out the Titans which means they need something new and interesting to just get people into the pre-release. Core sets are hard enough to get people to play, but if they don't add some interesting stuff (maybe cycle out DOJ and bring back Wrath of God with Original Art?), bring in creatures that can replace titans, (Everyone prays for Goyf, but that ain't not happenin'), all formats can benefit.
And play all the ISD you can right now. If you open a Mythic foil, it's like gold. I had to buy Olivia for 15, Grimore of the Dead is nearly impossible to find, Garruk is 35-40, Lilly is 45-55, Essense of the Wild is around 10-12ish. I mean it just makes sense to play as much draft and sealed as you can.
That's powerful and all, and will improve the deck even. I just don't see it even being able to push Familiar Storm up to Tier 1, let alone to where it needs to have Cloud of Faeries Banned. Familiar Storm really doesn't lose that many games after it combos out anyways. It will still have big problems with Infect and Empty the Warrens being faster than it, Delver can pick it's untapping apart with counters, if a Cloud of Faerie doesn't stick the deck barely works, and LD slows the deck down a huge amount. The Engine will be more powerful for sure, but it doesn't really solve the decks problems.
RE: pauper banning... You are missing the key card. In familiar storm, ghostly flicker + cloud of faeries + mnemnonic wall = infinite mana. Add an oracle or drifter and you have infinite cards too.
I'd assume you mean Ghostly Flicker. It does seem really good in Familiar Storm with cloud, mull, sea gate oracle, etc. I don't see it being that great in Delver Aggro decks, a few might run it, but with the low amount of lands those decks are playing someone is basically asking to be blown out by using it.
I thought you were giving 3/1 odds that Goyf would be reprinted in m13.
AVR card = Pauper COF ban? It is obvious.
Which card is that?
I just tried to sell Tarmo and buy a Tier 1 standard deck with it. All I ended up with was one sword and one ghost of a saint.
You should probably start discussing what the format will look like when cloud of faeries is banned. There is an AVR card that makes life misserable and non-interactive for everyone not playing cloud of faeries.
Mm! I like the Teferi's Moat idea. Of course, your own Avatar wouldn't be able to attack with a Bridge out :)
Hey Tarmo long time no blog! Anyway yeah the point of my classic deck ideas isn't to encourage people to play crappy decks lol. However everyone needs a starting off point.
Those are certainly some great pointers (though cage might be a bit obvious :D) and I hope people building for the event take notice. As far as being demoralized by losing to "crappy" or "weird" decks...well thats the + side of rogue building. Your one slim advantage is your opponent won't see what's coming necessarily based on your first turn play.
I would like to reinforce the not unwinnable comment as I would never say it was considering some of the weird games Ive seen and played vs tried and true decks. On the other hand once a turn 2 combo starts going off all that careful planning can just go right out the window. :D So while not unwinnable some match ups are just bad. It helps as you said to plan for the most likely to be relevant match ups and hope for the best with the rest.
Thanks for commenting.
I can't get the back to back with diff decks thingy of there are events in between right? :(
Temp mastery feels slightly overrated. I think one of the biggest benefits to time walk is that you get to yawg will it and auto win on the next turn.
How many would one play in a deck? 4x? Definitely won't be able to play bobs with it.
Gush may not be that big a nonbo with it. U get to lay lands on the extra turn and draw into brainstorms to put back cards on top.
Sensei top is definitely better than preordain/ponder cos u can draw at instant speed and you have much more control over miracles over time. Think abt it.
I would definitely test delver with the faux time walk and see how it goes.. Having to control it before you can make use of it makes it kinda dangerous and effectively laying an extra land may not be that big a deal :x
I liked the little side comment about Baneslayer Angel. TAFKAW does have a nice ring to it. I may start calling her that from now on.
Also very cool and interesting to see a (semi-) competitive deck based around Didgeridoo. Props to the author.
I can add a bit to this. I once played a Project Melira deck with the Persist without counters combo, and I beat a Tinker/Time Vault deck 2-1. I was very excited.
I think Avatar of Might might work if you have cards like Ensnaring Bridge and cards like Teferi's Moat- keep your opponents from attacking, that kind of thing.
2x post :(
Nothing of value to add
If you want to beat classic decks, it is not impossible but your approach is wrong because you're under the mindset that you autolose to the good classic decks and immediately go for "i'm playing my casual deck route".
Like any other format, you need to first identify what the decks to beat are and where their weaknesses lie.
If you ignore the key matchups and play an odd deck, you could as well scoop since the opp would more likely than not be playing the entire game by themselves with your gameplay experience limited to clicking oks, especially since Classic is Classic afterall.
Following the flow of running goblins, here is what i have to say:
Use cards that overlap your win condition with cards that are good against the big decks.
For example, dredge is a beast. If you play sac goblins like mogg fanatic, goblin sledder, you Immediately have an advantage over their bridge from belows.
As long as you can keep the opp's creature count below 3 or run a sharpshooter together with the sac gobs, it is possible to run them over with good play.
You can also run a playset of grafdigger's cage in the sb to make life more difficult and also buy some time vs oath.
If you run vials you can have a strong game vs blue control decks, as you would if you run skullclamp).
If you run the goblin with echo that bounces creatures, you can make it difficult for a tinkered bs colossus to do its thing. You also gain some value vs an active oath cos if u have 2 in han and your opp naturally oaths (instead of channel emrakul) without dragon breath, you can stall them very significantly (show n tell and bounce gob is so brutal). Even more so with vial.
If you run some artifact smashing cards in the sb like the replicate card, your odds vs workshops immediately goes up.
Running bad decks means you are a sitting duck vs combo.
It is not impossible for a cheap crappy deck like what i'm describing to win but you must respect the classic decks before you can expect to take games in the format.
Classic is not as unwinnable as people believe it to be. It's just that it is not a format where people want to run crappy decks.
If all the above text is too much, just take home the idea that if you run enough playable hates with a semi decent gameplan, winning is not that much a faraway dream.
(i hope everyone does make an effort to bring proper classic decks. It's quite demoralizing to get beaten by wierd decks and no I'm not encouraging that. )
Oh yeah, and those prices weren't paper prices. ISD foils are insanely expensive.
Foiled Lilly will cost you 50-55 tix. Olivia costs 15+ tix, Army of the Damned costs 11 tix (if you can find it). Foiled Garruk was being sold for $40.
Everyone wants to redeem foiled sets of ISD because they want a graded 10 Snapcaster playset to hold onto for a few years because Snapcaster is the Blue version of Bob, Goyf, and Stoneforge. It will be worth so much damn money in a few years you will make at minimum 5-10x your profit.
Ok, I am not saying you are wrong.
But you have to know there is a very distinct interaction between paper and modo. Except the prices on Modo fluctuate on a daily basis more than they do in paper. Like you can still get $25 for a paper Sorin trade, but can only get $20 for Sorin on Modo, and he has taken a massive drop on Modo, I know how it works.
And I quote paper prices because modo prices need to be charted out and tracked in cycles which I do. Paper is a much longer cycle and will still go up even if I am using paper prices.
Snapcaster Mage will go up. There is no Flashback in AVR, M13, or Ravnica as far as we know. So why not ponder during your opponents turn from the graveyard, grab a time walk, and take an extra turn using Hinterland Harbor.
And please. For those who think Modern is strong, you are fooling yourselves. Modern will taper off when STD season hits it's peak, and then with all the drafting going on, STD will remain strong. You can't draft a Goyf.
Modern is too expensive for the average player. Granted Ravnica is returning, but all that means is a price increase in fetch lands.
If you rotate it slowly, like once every year, it will lead to a better and stronger format. More people will be able to use cards they can't use anymore in STD, and people who play Modern can take their rotated cards into legacy or classic. It works for all formats. If you don't see that, then you are dumber than you look.
If people want an eternal format, then they will go to Classic on Modo or Legacy in Paper. Why play Modern? In Classic you can play dual's, FOW, etc.. In Modern you have the people who really like it, and those who just play it for the PTQ. I sold my Goyf's in paper and on Modo. The same with my fetches. (I am holding onto my Shock lands just in case they are reprinted in Ravnica). I am not alone.
Opening a store, we are trading daily. And what are people trading for in paper? They are trading for Dual Lands, FOW, Snapcasters, Geist of Saint Traft, Fetch Lands, Wasteland... see something here? Nobody wants Goyfs. We have Korean playsets of foiled Tarmogoyf's, and normally during PTQ season those sell like crazy. You know what people want instead? Foiled Korean Lingering Souls and the FNM Foiled Black Border Swords to Plowshares.
STD is where all the money is going, and as long as that trend continues, and AVR is as good as I think, more people will, in both paper and modo, move out of modern and into STD or sell off STD if they don't want to play in PTQ's, and into Classic/Legacy. Why hold onto a Goyf when you can get a FOW? FOW is much better and Classic has it's niche.
Guaranteed, there will be less than 5 Modern tournaments firing per week in a month or so, and if they do fire, it will be with less than 25 people.
And you say that there is a strong Modern Community. Well there is a very strong Classic/Legacy community on Modo. They even have a website called classic quarter. Does that mean classic events fire all the time? Does it mean they fire at all? I doubt it.
Either way, I'm taking my Vendallion Clickers to pasteur, my Goyf can sit in exile in some bot, and Bob got me on Modo what I needed to finish my Foiled ISD set to complete the playset.
When people see that a single Goyf can buy them a tier 1 STD deck, and when they see the cards in AVR, do you think... "Hm, I should hold onto this Goyf. Who needs Restoration Angel or Cavern of Souls, which will be $40 in paper and $25-30 on Modo.
What's funny is that Cavern of Souls could make decks that were previously unplayable now playable, but in order to afford it, you need to sell off your modern staples. But selling off the Modern Staples would give you STD for days.
He didn't have the red mana to bring it into play that turn. He tapped his islands and broke lotus petal so he wouldn't take the 2 life from the tomb. At best, he brings in the sneak attack and tries to activate it next turn, by then it would of been to late. You are probably right, I should of just countered the show and tell, but I guess you could say I was toying with him a little lol!
RD1 game 2, despite winning, you should not have allowed the Show and tell to resolve. It gives a window for a Sneaky Sneak Attack that costs 2ur instead of 3rr.
I can't take someone seriously who suggests Modern needs to rotate. It was expressly created not to rotate. They tried similar, rotating sets, and extended was a failure through multiple iterations.
I think you should open the archetypes to subtypes. Example 95% of the results under MUC are what I call Delver Aggro, while the other 5% is PaulDenton playing true MUC. You can also open up Storms to Ritual Storm and UR Storm. While both decks do the same thing, they just do each in a different way.
I could not disagree more strongly with your assessment of modern. It has always struck me as a strong and engaging format with plenty of room for creativity and adjustment in both the tournament scene and with casual play ranging from kitchen table to semi competitive games at your local store.
The prices you keep quoting are for paper. Are you not online at all? Are you completely myopic to the fact that this is a site for and by Online Players? We do talk about paper stuff occasionally but for the most part we don't and usually only when it impacts our Online experience in some way. Paper prices generally do not unless we happen to be redeemers.
Wow that is an excellent article by Jacob. In the past Ive found some of his efforts to be less than impressive but this is quite an insight into that deck and yeah Pox looks pretty cool. I am not a huge fan of the Rack strategy as it seems quite defeat-able with certain cards and just careful play but the rest of the deck is pretty solid looking and if The Rack fits the niche given it then great! :)
That spark is mainly what I am interested in. The rest is a matter of style, costs and planning.
Thanks for the comments. :D
I, like a lot of people, thought modern would be a dead format like others WotC have tried before, but I think it might do really well thanks to the PTQ season, but only on Modo.
Most people I know are selling off all their modern for STD.
But with a return to Ravnica coming up, and either possible reprints of the shock lands, or newly named shock lands that are similar, it might peak the interest for Modo players who can't afford the Ravnica shock lands.
I think the future of Modern needs 3 things.
1) Reprints of cards (online) that people that can't afford normally, like Goyf, Bob, Fetch Lands, etc..
2) They need to make it a non-eternal format and have sets rotate out. That would really make it interesting and lead to more interest in Legacy (in paper) and Classic (on Modo). As the cards rotate out, people might keep the cards and go to another format, which would lead to Legacy events or Classic Events firing more than they currently are, and not just for a "Christmas Spectacular!".
3) What is in M13. I mean the set needs a lot of things. They are keeping the planeswalkers, but they are taking out the Titans which means they need something new and interesting to just get people into the pre-release. Core sets are hard enough to get people to play, but if they don't add some interesting stuff (maybe cycle out DOJ and bring back Wrath of God with Original Art?), bring in creatures that can replace titans, (Everyone prays for Goyf, but that ain't not happenin'), all formats can benefit.
And play all the ISD you can right now. If you open a Mythic foil, it's like gold. I had to buy Olivia for 15, Grimore of the Dead is nearly impossible to find, Garruk is 35-40, Lilly is 45-55, Essense of the Wild is around 10-12ish. I mean it just makes sense to play as much draft and sealed as you can.