I'm not angry! I just don't like those type of "smiling attacks" during a game. I would have the exact same feeling I had been just a watcher in that game. Nobody deserves to be attacked, even jokingly, because he chose to make a play, for as bad as that would be (and even starting an argument where the player has to explain his or her reasons for the play isn't the best way to go in my opinion). I thought it was about the money (hence my argument in the article, which still stands), and since it wasn't, I made my point about everything else in my previous comment. And now I move on.
And yeah, 2HG was already worn out to me before this event (which was still something to try, among other possible Tribal variants). It should bring out the best in the players but for a complex series of reasons it brings out the worst instead. That's why I made the second joke about it, I remember how essentially the standard 2HG scene was the terrain to find the most horrible and unfunny ways to break the format.
But if people had fun with this event and want to do another Tribal 2HG in the future, I'll support it to Blippy. I'm going to launch a bit of a poll in the next article, asking if maybe people grew tired of having a monthly Endangered Week and which other variants would be more appreciated within a possible rotation of Very Special Weeks, so that Blippy will be able to take an informed decision.
Ok, what is everyone's problem with (probably misspelled) Moldgraf Monstrocity?
So you missed out on Ghoultree, a mistake btw, but the MM (I ain't spelling that again) is an 8/8 for 7 mana and if you can get him to resolve, he either dies and you get back 2 creatures, or he does a ton of damage. A fantastic late game finisher. Maybe it's just me, but you can get this guy 7th pick.
And man, record your drafts. I don't bother reading the reports. You can't really tell what is going on during a report. Save the essay's for College.
Haha Bro, it should be illegal to open a Lilly and Huntmaster in the same sealed pool. I open 3 nevermores and a foiled stony Silence along with a couple of DKA curse of Echo's.
Nice job, but nothing get's me angrier about doing sealed DII is when you look immediately at gold and see a captain, and then you cant use it. ARGH!
Mentor of the Meek is waaaay better, thanks PHahn! I play loads of test games when I write these articles, and choose to write up the most interesting matches - not necessarily those against the most competitive decks, although often it ends up being that way for obvious reasons.
4 Intangible Virtue is definitely better, I just wanted to improve Enchantress and Elesh really. But the former shouldn't have been there, and the latter doesn't need improving.
Yes I saw your article too, I liked your section on matchups. Nice to see that we're able to pick similar themes but come up with quite different lists (although my first reaction was mild horror when I saw that a similar article had gone up just as I was submitting mine!)
Cool decklists, very unique. I like that with the first one you played against more casual decks while with the second one the opponents seemed more competitive.
If you want a better drawing engine than the enchantress, I would try Mentor of the Meek. Somewhat mana intensive, I suppose, but is a pretty sweet combination with all the tokens, and works well with Honor of the Pure. I had my own BW tokens deck explained in an article I wrote yesterday, you should check it out.
Also, I think 4 intangible virtue would be better. You're playing more tokens than straight white creatures, so the added bonus of vigilance almost always makes Virtue better. Just my opinion.
Spellstutter Sprite is a nuisance, mostly because of rebuy option via deep hours and less common via snap and; the only way to interact with it is counterpells; if you don't play those, don't expect a good mu vs delver.
I look forward to playing vs delver every single round. The popularity of delver decks comes mostly from 2-3 grinders who constantly (in reality they change a card every month or so...) evolve the deck, while other ones (say MBC) see no love. Storm and control is difficult to play. Delver is difficult to play against.
-For people that were not playing pauper early last year, familiar/fissure storm made for some awful daily events. Not only was it the best deck in the format, but it took so long to play out, (especially with newer players wanting to try the best deck.) It was very regular to spend 45 minutes to an hour each daily event behind F6 while waiting for that deck.
-Rite of Flame would slow down Storm a bit but not that much. It would hurt some forms of storm more than others, and make chromatics a little more important to get red mana.
-MUC is obviously the most successful deck in the format. I think it is fine right now, but if things keep going in the direction they are it might be time to weaken the deck in June.
-I don't think UR post or Storm is to the point that a banning would be needed.
-Banning Invigorate would not hurt my feelings at all. On power level alone, this deck does not need a banning. It does not put up the results of other decks, and it is not very consistant. However, it is a crappy feeling to lose to it on turn 2 twice in the same match. I think of this deck as the Belcher deck of Pauper, and if people want that in the format or not is a matter of taste.
I remember when I first got into Pauper it had a pretty diverse field of decks. Like GR beats, GW Cloak, UG Madness, MBC, MuC, Boros, Affinity and even a couple of combo decks iirc. (obviously a little aggro heavy, but it wasn't dominated by anything.)
I really miss those days.
Edit: I know I left out a lot of other decks too. those are just the ones I remember.
well answered, what I've come to the conclusion of is that its not that a deck has become so dominate that we need bannings, but perhaps the format has become stagnent and that would be needed to fix that
Resolving a 4 mana spell against MuC seems like reaching for the stars and both storm and izzetpost simply wouldn't care I imagine. Obviously all three of those decks would probably benefit from having an arrows, but I was more of looking at how new decks might handle them.
It just doesn't seem like a viable option against any of those decks. I feel like I'd side it out every time if I could.
I give the article a 4 just on concept alone. Whenever I have the money to buy magic card I always try to go through to process in my head about how the price of a card might be effected in the future. I admit I'm not an accountant and probably not that good with personal finances but the process is still fun for me to think about. (Maybe I'm a minority)
I do have to agree with some of the other comments though when they say that Wurmcoil Engine probably isn't the best subject matter at this point in time. This article actually would have been perfect around when Mirrodin besieged was released. I remember back then more than a couple of decks were running multiple copies of this instead of just the solitary one-of that seems to be more consistent now. The price was also under 5 tix if I remember correctly, it definitely would have been the time to buy.
Normally I would offer an example of another card that might have fit the current timeline since that's what good constructive criticism should do but I'm probably just as lost as anyone else. I'd be psyched to read more of these articles though, regardless of the actual example. It's always good to see another person's (probably a more qualified person's) thought process when it comes to a price evaluation.
I probably wasn't the closest person to Hamtastic in any shape or form but I still remember some of the conversations I had with the guy either during the time when I worked for Heath or in my own free time way back then. The game obviously meant a lot to him and he was a really cool guy.
I wasn't around when he died as I had stopped playing MTGO for the most part. It sucked that I had to find out about it 3-4 months after the fact and after everyone had seemingly stopped talking about it. I'm glad you wrote this article, Erik is definitely worth remembering.
I had a lot of fun with this! 2HG has always been MTGO's best casual format in my opinion, and I'd love to see this done more often. That bread and butter beat-down decks won overall in a 40 life game was pretty cool to see, especially with all the rough competition packing combos and heavy removal.
And yeah, being new to this event I had no idea Walls were so feared before I spoke to someone who cited NemesisParadigm's build. Luckily, I had already decided on a different strategy (recursion over pure power), but hopefully my next few decks will be a bit fresher. I was looking through the list and it's pretty shocking the coverage, as well as the lack of coverage for certain tribes I thought would be played more often like Birds and Druids.
I decided against bringing my Birds Aluren deck at the last moment (essentially the same thing as the Legacy build except with BoP instead of Hierarch, and Raven Familiar instead of Oracle), but in hindsight it might have been funny to see what would happen in the mirror match.
Are G.shaman and S.Arrows even viable side-board options in the current metagame? I don't see either of them being very good with the dominant decks being MuC, Storm, and IzzetPost (or any post variant).
Maybe if Affinity was still good G.shaman would be worth it. I could definitely see S.Arrows being viable if control was brought down a little bit but as of right now the card only seems to elevate the already dominant decks /shrug.
Either way I see both of the cards as sideboard cards but they don't seem to effect the meta all that much. I'd gladly ignore them to have some of the other cards addressed first. That's just me though.
Gorilla Shaman was in MED2 as an uncommon and Serrated Arrows was timeshifted in Time Spiral. Neither were commons when they were draftable, but you are wrong that they could never be drafted.
IMHO, the format is actually pretty balanced. MUC is the best deck, but besides Delver, nothing really feels unfair. I wouldn't contest a banning, but I don't know that it really merits such drastic measures.
Ideally, wizards would print a few cards with Pauper in mind. Something uncounterable and something that stifles (pun intended) storm would go a long way to making Pauper an even better format.
I'm not sure how you define "not that hard to get", but being the 2nd most expensive pauper card and the 4th most expensive pauper card do not qualify as "not hard to get" in my book. The opposite, in fact.
They are extremely expensive to acquire. Why? Because they're not common in any sense and do not belong in the format, that's why.
Sorry for the nitpicking, I think we agree overall :) Btw missed a few of the enchantments giving -x/-y where y > 1. Red gets "immolation" and "riot spikes" in addition to "scar" as "uncounterable" options to get past round 2.
To me a perfect hand means a hand that can beat anything regardless of what they have ... we have situational perfect hands (most good combo decks have these).
Infect have the option of situational perfect hands. (they have won as game starts regardless of what opponent does with what he drew).
That was my point with listing above cards, to say it is not so. Some of the listed cards (red is quite limited "immolation", "riot spikes" and "scar" are your options) will ensure you get past round 2, and then more options are available.
That said a red deck with burns better option are not running these vs the perfect hand, as their burn will drain some and still give them good odds. Instead their focus is to tilt the favor in your odds for the average game, not vs the perfect hand (as most decks should be). Lava Dart is a good such choice, at least sideboard. :)
Situational perfect hands are available for storm as well, and what they win on, just rarely turn 2 situational perfect. If they get a good chain going, and have more Duress or Dispel available then you have sandbagged answers, then they win :)
I hope the differentiation makes sense between perfect hands (these are very rare) and situational perfect hands.
Peace, absolutely.
I wonder if 2 out of 3 matches are logistically possible in a 2HG tournament. Maybe with an overall time limit?
I'm not angry! I just don't like those type of "smiling attacks" during a game. I would have the exact same feeling I had been just a watcher in that game. Nobody deserves to be attacked, even jokingly, because he chose to make a play, for as bad as that would be (and even starting an argument where the player has to explain his or her reasons for the play isn't the best way to go in my opinion). I thought it was about the money (hence my argument in the article, which still stands), and since it wasn't, I made my point about everything else in my previous comment. And now I move on.
And yeah, 2HG was already worn out to me before this event (which was still something to try, among other possible Tribal variants). It should bring out the best in the players but for a complex series of reasons it brings out the worst instead. That's why I made the second joke about it, I remember how essentially the standard 2HG scene was the terrain to find the most horrible and unfunny ways to break the format.
But if people had fun with this event and want to do another Tribal 2HG in the future, I'll support it to Blippy. I'm going to launch a bit of a poll in the next article, asking if maybe people grew tired of having a monthly Endangered Week and which other variants would be more appreciated within a possible rotation of Very Special Weeks, so that Blippy will be able to take an informed decision.
Ok, what is everyone's problem with (probably misspelled) Moldgraf Monstrocity?
So you missed out on Ghoultree, a mistake btw, but the MM (I ain't spelling that again) is an 8/8 for 7 mana and if you can get him to resolve, he either dies and you get back 2 creatures, or he does a ton of damage. A fantastic late game finisher. Maybe it's just me, but you can get this guy 7th pick.
And man, record your drafts. I don't bother reading the reports. You can't really tell what is going on during a report. Save the essay's for College.
Haha Bro, it should be illegal to open a Lilly and Huntmaster in the same sealed pool. I open 3 nevermores and a foiled stony Silence along with a couple of DKA curse of Echo's.
Nice job, but nothing get's me angrier about doing sealed DII is when you look immediately at gold and see a captain, and then you cant use it. ARGH!
ghoultree is good, real good.
Mentor of the Meek is waaaay better, thanks PHahn! I play loads of test games when I write these articles, and choose to write up the most interesting matches - not necessarily those against the most competitive decks, although often it ends up being that way for obvious reasons.
4 Intangible Virtue is definitely better, I just wanted to improve Enchantress and Elesh really. But the former shouldn't have been there, and the latter doesn't need improving.
Yes I saw your article too, I liked your section on matchups. Nice to see that we're able to pick similar themes but come up with quite different lists (although my first reaction was mild horror when I saw that a similar article had gone up just as I was submitting mine!)
Cool decklists, very unique. I like that with the first one you played against more casual decks while with the second one the opponents seemed more competitive.
If you want a better drawing engine than the enchantress, I would try Mentor of the Meek. Somewhat mana intensive, I suppose, but is a pretty sweet combination with all the tokens, and works well with Honor of the Pure. I had my own BW tokens deck explained in an article I wrote yesterday, you should check it out.
Also, I think 4 intangible virtue would be better. You're playing more tokens than straight white creatures, so the added bonus of vigilance almost always makes Virtue better. Just my opinion.
Sweet article!
Spellstutter Sprite is a nuisance, mostly because of rebuy option via deep hours and less common via snap and; the only way to interact with it is counterpells; if you don't play those, don't expect a good mu vs delver.
I look forward to playing vs delver every single round. The popularity of delver decks comes mostly from 2-3 grinders who constantly (in reality they change a card every month or so...) evolve the deck, while other ones (say MBC) see no love. Storm and control is difficult to play. Delver is difficult to play against.
Everything else written here is of no relevance.
Stave Off (in response to protection)
Shield of Duty and Reason (VoV is prevented, Appostle's Blessing can still bypass it)
A few thoughts from the article.
-For people that were not playing pauper early last year, familiar/fissure storm made for some awful daily events. Not only was it the best deck in the format, but it took so long to play out, (especially with newer players wanting to try the best deck.) It was very regular to spend 45 minutes to an hour each daily event behind F6 while waiting for that deck.
-Rite of Flame would slow down Storm a bit but not that much. It would hurt some forms of storm more than others, and make chromatics a little more important to get red mana.
-MUC is obviously the most successful deck in the format. I think it is fine right now, but if things keep going in the direction they are it might be time to weaken the deck in June.
-I don't think UR post or Storm is to the point that a banning would be needed.
-Banning Invigorate would not hurt my feelings at all. On power level alone, this deck does not need a banning. It does not put up the results of other decks, and it is not very consistant. However, it is a crappy feeling to lose to it on turn 2 twice in the same match. I think of this deck as the Belcher deck of Pauper, and if people want that in the format or not is a matter of taste.
I remember when I first got into Pauper it had a pretty diverse field of decks. Like GR beats, GW Cloak, UG Madness, MBC, MuC, Boros, Affinity and even a couple of combo decks iirc. (obviously a little aggro heavy, but it wasn't dominated by anything.)
I really miss those days.
Edit: I know I left out a lot of other decks too. those are just the ones I remember.
arrows is more often PLAYED BY MUC instead of against
well answered, what I've come to the conclusion of is that its not that a deck has become so dominate that we need bannings, but perhaps the format has become stagnent and that would be needed to fix that
thanks Dreager_Ex. I will be and expect to be wrong but agree with you that hearing others opinions is just as important.
Resolving a 4 mana spell against MuC seems like reaching for the stars and both storm and izzetpost simply wouldn't care I imagine. Obviously all three of those decks would probably benefit from having an arrows, but I was more of looking at how new decks might handle them.
It just doesn't seem like a viable option against any of those decks. I feel like I'd side it out every time if I could.
I give the article a 4 just on concept alone. Whenever I have the money to buy magic card I always try to go through to process in my head about how the price of a card might be effected in the future. I admit I'm not an accountant and probably not that good with personal finances but the process is still fun for me to think about. (Maybe I'm a minority)
I do have to agree with some of the other comments though when they say that Wurmcoil Engine probably isn't the best subject matter at this point in time. This article actually would have been perfect around when Mirrodin besieged was released. I remember back then more than a couple of decks were running multiple copies of this instead of just the solitary one-of that seems to be more consistent now. The price was also under 5 tix if I remember correctly, it definitely would have been the time to buy.
Normally I would offer an example of another card that might have fit the current timeline since that's what good constructive criticism should do but I'm probably just as lost as anyone else. I'd be psyched to read more of these articles though, regardless of the actual example. It's always good to see another person's (probably a more qualified person's) thought process when it comes to a price evaluation.
Shaman is strictly a sideboard option, but against any non-affinity deck, Ancient Grudge is just better.
Serrated Arrows on the other hand is really really good. It's not a 4-of but it has game against most of the competitive decks.
I probably wasn't the closest person to Hamtastic in any shape or form but I still remember some of the conversations I had with the guy either during the time when I worked for Heath or in my own free time way back then. The game obviously meant a lot to him and he was a really cool guy.
I wasn't around when he died as I had stopped playing MTGO for the most part. It sucked that I had to find out about it 3-4 months after the fact and after everyone had seemingly stopped talking about it. I'm glad you wrote this article, Erik is definitely worth remembering.
I had a lot of fun with this! 2HG has always been MTGO's best casual format in my opinion, and I'd love to see this done more often. That bread and butter beat-down decks won overall in a 40 life game was pretty cool to see, especially with all the rough competition packing combos and heavy removal.
And yeah, being new to this event I had no idea Walls were so feared before I spoke to someone who cited NemesisParadigm's build. Luckily, I had already decided on a different strategy (recursion over pure power), but hopefully my next few decks will be a bit fresher. I was looking through the list and it's pretty shocking the coverage, as well as the lack of coverage for certain tribes I thought would be played more often like Birds and Druids.
I decided against bringing my Birds Aluren deck at the last moment (essentially the same thing as the Legacy build except with BoP instead of Hierarch, and Raven Familiar instead of Oracle), but in hindsight it might have been funny to see what would happen in the mirror match.
Are G.shaman and S.Arrows even viable side-board options in the current metagame? I don't see either of them being very good with the dominant decks being MuC, Storm, and IzzetPost (or any post variant).
Maybe if Affinity was still good G.shaman would be worth it. I could definitely see S.Arrows being viable if control was brought down a little bit but as of right now the card only seems to elevate the already dominant decks /shrug.
Either way I see both of the cards as sideboard cards but they don't seem to effect the meta all that much. I'd gladly ignore them to have some of the other cards addressed first. That's just me though.
Gorilla Shaman was in MED2 as an uncommon and Serrated Arrows was timeshifted in Time Spiral. Neither were commons when they were draftable, but you are wrong that they could never be drafted.
IMHO, the format is actually pretty balanced. MUC is the best deck, but besides Delver, nothing really feels unfair. I wouldn't contest a banning, but I don't know that it really merits such drastic measures.
Ideally, wizards would print a few cards with Pauper in mind. Something uncounterable and something that stifles (pun intended) storm would go a long way to making Pauper an even better format.
Good point, Mishra's Workshop is classic not legacy so was it classic stax that ran Wurmcoil?
I'm not sure how you define "not that hard to get", but being the 2nd most expensive pauper card and the 4th most expensive pauper card do not qualify as "not hard to get" in my book. The opposite, in fact.
They are extremely expensive to acquire. Why? Because they're not common in any sense and do not belong in the format, that's why.
Sorry for the nitpicking, I think we agree overall :) Btw missed a few of the enchantments giving -x/-y where y > 1. Red gets "immolation" and "riot spikes" in addition to "scar" as "uncounterable" options to get past round 2.
To me a perfect hand means a hand that can beat anything regardless of what they have ... we have situational perfect hands (most good combo decks have these).
Infect have the option of situational perfect hands. (they have won as game starts regardless of what opponent does with what he drew).
That was my point with listing above cards, to say it is not so. Some of the listed cards (red is quite limited "immolation", "riot spikes" and "scar" are your options) will ensure you get past round 2, and then more options are available.
That said a red deck with burns better option are not running these vs the perfect hand, as their burn will drain some and still give them good odds. Instead their focus is to tilt the favor in your odds for the average game, not vs the perfect hand (as most decks should be). Lava Dart is a good such choice, at least sideboard. :)
Situational perfect hands are available for storm as well, and what they win on, just rarely turn 2 situational perfect. If they get a good chain going, and have more Duress or Dispel available then you have sandbagged answers, then they win :)
I hope the differentiation makes sense between perfect hands (these are very rare) and situational perfect hands.
I've tried to get into Pauper at various points, but the strong control decks are very off-putting for me.