this is basically why I was saying that it needs to be talked about, but I don't think I can see a change coming for it unless it really starts showing up more
and the unbeatable part was regarding there are some times where there is just nothing you can do to win against their opening hand, not always, but sometimes :P
Agreed the instant targets can be removed by Appostles Blessing or Vines of Vastwood.
But both of these cost at least 1 mana, and you must keep 1 mana open for them
Meaning that trample wise they must use Rancor then, and they must have 2 freecast spells to reach the +10/+10 (I know you have no creature out, so the trample is irrelevant, but this gives 2 different situations where a different hand is the optimal, the most likely is you have a chump blocker, so I set trample as a requirement for an autokill hand).
So they now need 7/8 cards as described above ... or 8/8 if you want protection against both ... in most cases they do not know what you have if anything, and risk blowing it all on nothing :)
So no not perfect answers, and I agree, most are unplayable, but quite some of the above are playable and definatly metagame choices ... beyond the list there is a bunch of other direct damage/ -x/-x until end of turn. All stuff that risk blowing the opponent out.
So yes Infect is strong, no its not unbeatable, yes I believe the free spell should be banned, no I do not play infect ... because its to random, yes I do believe infect in current meta is a fair deck, slightly to strong though.
Peace. This is not a topic worth getting upset over, from either side. Feelings run high in competition, but perspective is better when out of it. I agree with you on the problem of matches versus games within two headed giant PREs.
(My comment from http://puremtgo.com/node/5070)
I do appreciate your willingness to talk about suicide awareness and prevention, by telling Erik's story. I do hope that people will talk openly about Erik's situation with each other, knowing that Erik's family does not want the silence that is often associated with suicide. I want Brucey to grow up knowing what happened and being able to communicate openly about his dad.
~Tami
Thanks Sebastian, AJ, and Keya!
I do appreciate your willingness to talk about suicide awareness and prevention, by telling Erik's story. I do hope that people will talk openly about Erik's situation with each other, knowing that Erik's family does not want the silence that is often associated with suicide. I want Brucey to grow up knowing what happened and being able to communicate openly about his dad.
~Tami
Counters vs the nuts (+9 pump for 2 mana or less, and trample), they will be tapped out during your turn 1.
I will not list target spells that must be timed before combat, as there are different instant protections for 1 mana) I am listing those that are instant speed though.
So you need something that prevents their alpha strike at 1 mana, or which kills a 1 toughness creature that will get +4/+4 for free (so 5 dmg or more, or -1/-1 counters)
Trample will be in form of Rancor/Predator's Strike. I am sure there are some of these that can be questioned, these cover all colours except for red, then again reds direct damage will draw out 1 boost spell each, so it might not have the answer against the nuts, but overall it do have answers, some are repeatable.
---
Spore Frog
Fume Spitter
Snuff Out
Cursed Flesh (not recommending it)
Shield Sphere (+5 absorb helps buy time)
Scar
Sicken
Virulent Wound
Dead Weight
Awe Strike
Fog
Darkness
Ethereal Haze
Feint
Holy Day
Kami of False Hope
Pay No Heed
Warning
Curfew
Seal of Removal
Unsummon
Silent Departure
Vapor Snag
Word of Undoing
---
I agree, but as was noted only 2 cards on that list matter and I'd find it hard to believe that the people over at Wizards haven't realized that these cards are common and Pauper legal lol
Are the cards which have never been printed online as an actual common, and yet are available to be used in Pauper.
Serrated Arrows
Gorilla Shaman
Legions of Lim-Dûl
Mistfolk
Snow Devil
Casting of Bones
Insidious Bookworms
Kjeldoran Pride
Sea Eagle
Command Tower
None of these cards can be drafted in any set. Every other single common in the pauper format is actually common, in that it showed up in an actual pack along with 10 other of its kind, and had a chance for unlimited drafting when its set was available in the store. These ten are all from special sets, and none of them could ever be drafted online.
I still can't believe they haven't closed this loophole, as it makes no sense. Why do some promo/special set cards count for Pauper, but others (like common Blue Elemental Blast) not count? I have to think it's a mistake and they haven't realized it yet.
Once these are banned, we can start talking about banning for power reasons...
the scariest part of Infect is that if its on the play you could be sitting across from the turn 2 win and you have only 1 land in play... what are you to do with 1 mana? that really gets me.. I mean sure there are answers with 1 mana, but you better be playing red lol I still think it won't really change unless we see a surge in infect play because its kind of flying under the radar
The Horror/Elemental pairing has some sick synergies: His Aethersnipes and Sudden disappearances dealing with centaur tokens, my mill giving potential targets for his beacons of unrest, even the potential for Lily's ultimate, whilst his discard from Lily and the mournwhelks helps to feed my sewer nems and guiltfeeders.
Well Kuma you can choose to make a cause celéb about this and be bitter and angry over a trite comment that probably shouldn't have been made or you can rise above it. After all we have had many good conversations in the past and despite your insistence on taking umbrage I know you to be a fair-minded person. I agree that FOW should be allowed to be played. In the moment I think your response to my comment was over the top as much as mine was inappropriate. Which imho is uncharacteristic of you. That you are still angry and full of ire speaks volumes about you more than it does about my social faux pas.
In regards to that I think I would have responded in some fashion no matter what counter he used. It was a meaningless play and was amusing to me. Defenseless? Maybe but then I had nothing to attack with so not exactly a huge deal that. Also I was tired and annoyed with the way the game unraveled and not terribly happy with having to face one broken combo deck after another. There was also the comment that AJ made which seemed just to me in the moment.
Did you really write that blurb in your article as a joke? This has been a bone of contention in the Apocalypse for years now. Fair decks vs unfair decks. Decks that sidestep the agreed upon rules (shoehorned legacy decks for example) to do something broken because technically it is allowed even if it is outside of the spirit of the format. Not saying this shouldn't happen (it is one way to combat Goblins/Elves) but you yourself have been on both sides of this argument.
If it was in jest then why are you now angry? Take the win, acknowledge the irony and move on?
Agreed about cryptic command. Totally great in so many ways in the format. All of its modes are useful.
It makes me sad that you are announcing an end to your involvement with 2 head giant games (or so it seems) though of course that's your decision.
thanks for the response, being a storm player you can probably answer this.. can storm still survive without the rite or would that really cripple it so much that it'd die off?
Ok, first of all, if you don't intend to raise an argument, don't do jackass comments, with both teammates reinforcing each other like proper high school bullies. If it was lighthearted, it didn't sound so. Sorry if I got it the wrong way then.
BUT...
You DID bring up the MONEY COST of Sudden Disappearance (a few cents or so). So, what was that for? Do FoW would have been ok if used against a money card? What's the level of card FoW is ok to be used against? And let me get this straight: had he used a Counterspell on the Disappearance, there would have been no comment?
The irrelevance: so you just laugh in the face of your opponents when they do something you think it's a bad move? How's that fair?
And for your information, you're also wrong about that (in fact, you couldn't know): at that point, I had no second Kokusho in hand, no Recurring, no anything. And Aya didn't have anything either, except counterspells (he draw into a clone next). Your spell was killing all his defenses. What should we have done?
All in all, it seems like you can put FoW in your deck, but you better not use it because it's unfair? So, FoW is unsportsmanlike by definition and shouldn't be played, despite the fact that it's a mediocre card in Tribal? Just because it's the big bad FoW? I'm sure you see the absurdity of this.
But if you want to know the whole story, I asked Aya to put FoW in his deck (then second-guessed myself, because I knew it was the road to card disadvantage) because he used it just once in Tribal Apocalypse before: against me in the Invitational, guessing I was using combo on Round 3. I wanted to see it played against someone else for a change! (And within the very strange flow of this event, I think he ended up having it in hand only that one time against you).
Third, my God, the comment I wrote here announcing the event? That was a joke, like most of the things I write in these cases. I wrote the absolute opposite at the end of the following article: "you will find if people will find a way to cheat against the spirit of the event" (sarcastically barred and "replaced" with "will have a great time with multiplayer Tribal Wars"). Didn't you notice that as well?
But how is putting FoW in a deck trying to "win at all cost"? I was operating on the assumption everyone was trying to win very badly actually, because my experience of 2HG made me wary of the cutthroat choices people do in this format (it turns out, the standard crowd is more cutthroat than the tribal crowd. Good to know). To me, "winning at all cost" is more something you do by running Goblin+Kithkin (which is cool, btw, I still like the flavor of that coupling). Last time I checked, Shapeshifters weren't the most badass tribe in the game. And maybe if we wanted to "win at all cost" we had our decks properly tested (which, as you know, I'm never so eager to do, to my shame, and Aya often ends up playing the decks "cold" too). There were a few bad calls in there, and we also got the seating order all wrong.
This is how it went: Aya asked me to team up. I told him I just wanted to use the Liliana Spirit deck again. And since Kokusho is amazing in 2HG (and not by playing around its wording, like Serra Ascendant: Kokusho is actually supposed to be stronger in multiplayer), what if we paired him up with his Evil Twin? (Which, you may notice, actually IS evil, as he kills Kokusho after all!) So, Ub Shapeshifters, Aya thought it was cool, and we met a couple times online to discuss the composition of his deck. We mainly feared StP on Kokusho and a truckload of counter magic. Chalice of the Void was the solution to StP, it was meant to be set to 1 all the time (it actually helped against the Elder deck), since both of us didn't run anything at 1. While running an essentially monoblue deck, putting some counters in there to protect against enemy counters sounded just right, so FoW came up, since Shapeshifters need mana and Aya's board needed something to block with (at that point I think there were more early mana-intensive stuff like Shapesharer, which got dropped in the end), and FoW would allow to cast a shifter and still be able to counter. In hindsight, probably Cryptic Command would have been better.
End of the Novel of My Unsatisfying, Overly Bitter (and Very Probably Final) 2HG Adventure.
You're right on both accounts. I and Aya had the Story of Kokusho and His Evil Twin, and I liked the idea of Spirits teaming up with Shapeshifters (also Elementals and Shapeshifters would have felt right to me, flavor-wise), but that's just it. Not something to write home about as far as themes go, probably.
Good read! Muc isn't an issue if you have cheap instant removal and know when to play it. My D.red deck uses lavadarts and sparkspray to both add to storm count, or slaughter fae at instant speed with no problems. Every fifth game or so they can still slip through, but I don't think those need to be banned. Gush even less so. You really want to cripple muc, lose spiregolem. Sounds silly, but watch almost any replay of a muc matchup...these hold the ground till more control/draw can come online.
I agree with the infect angle...invigorate if they 'have it' can just be silly.
Storm: All you'd need to lose is rite of flame, as in modern, it neuters the deck adding about 2.1 turns to it...plenty for any respectable deck to have a shot. I feel temporal storm is pretty 'in check' since the bannings, like any deck...if they 'have it' it's gonna get ya!
Additionally, I think your 'spot on' with the Izpost area. The deck is strong enough without all the late game bounce/lifegain. As their decklist show...all they have to do is stop the first 1-3 creatures via removal and sit back and bore you to death, fortunatly they lose to some other decks like fiss.storm, and mbc, but losing capsize would solve a lot of issues, still alowing the engine lifegain...just not at absurd levels.
"So yes Infect is strong, no its not unbeatable"
this is basically why I was saying that it needs to be talked about, but I don't think I can see a change coming for it unless it really starts showing up more
and the unbeatable part was regarding there are some times where there is just nothing you can do to win against their opening hand, not always, but sometimes :P
Agreed the instant targets can be removed by Appostles Blessing or Vines of Vastwood.
But both of these cost at least 1 mana, and you must keep 1 mana open for them
Meaning that trample wise they must use Rancor then, and they must have 2 freecast spells to reach the +10/+10 (I know you have no creature out, so the trample is irrelevant, but this gives 2 different situations where a different hand is the optimal, the most likely is you have a chump blocker, so I set trample as a requirement for an autokill hand).
So now they must have.
1/8 protection spells
1/4 elves
1/4 freecast +4/+4
1/7 freecast +2/+2 or better
1/4 rancor
2/x forests
So they now need 7/8 cards as described above ... or 8/8 if you want protection against both ... in most cases they do not know what you have if anything, and risk blowing it all on nothing :)
So no not perfect answers, and I agree, most are unplayable, but quite some of the above are playable and definatly metagame choices ... beyond the list there is a bunch of other direct damage/ -x/-x until end of turn. All stuff that risk blowing the opponent out.
So yes Infect is strong, no its not unbeatable, yes I believe the free spell should be banned, no I do not play infect ... because its to random, yes I do believe infect in current meta is a fair deck, slightly to strong though.
Peace. This is not a topic worth getting upset over, from either side. Feelings run high in competition, but perspective is better when out of it. I agree with you on the problem of matches versus games within two headed giant PREs.
Quite a few unplayable, but more answers then I'd expect and even then some are reduced thanks to VoV, thanks for the list!
Thanks Sebastian,
(My comment from http://puremtgo.com/node/5070)
I do appreciate your willingness to talk about suicide awareness and prevention, by telling Erik's story. I do hope that people will talk openly about Erik's situation with each other, knowing that Erik's family does not want the silence that is often associated with suicide. I want Brucey to grow up knowing what happened and being able to communicate openly about his dad.
~Tami
Thanks Sebastian, AJ, and Keya!
I do appreciate your willingness to talk about suicide awareness and prevention, by telling Erik's story. I do hope that people will talk openly about Erik's situation with each other, knowing that Erik's family does not want the silence that is often associated with suicide. I want Brucey to grow up knowing what happened and being able to communicate openly about his dad.
~Tami
Counters vs the nuts (+9 pump for 2 mana or less, and trample), they will be tapped out during your turn 1.
I will not list target spells that must be timed before combat, as there are different instant protections for 1 mana) I am listing those that are instant speed though.
So you need something that prevents their alpha strike at 1 mana, or which kills a 1 toughness creature that will get +4/+4 for free (so 5 dmg or more, or -1/-1 counters)
Trample will be in form of Rancor/Predator's Strike. I am sure there are some of these that can be questioned, these cover all colours except for red, then again reds direct damage will draw out 1 boost spell each, so it might not have the answer against the nuts, but overall it do have answers, some are repeatable.
---
Spore Frog
Fume Spitter
Snuff Out
Cursed Flesh (not recommending it)
Shield Sphere (+5 absorb helps buy time)
Scar
Sicken
Virulent Wound
Dead Weight
Awe Strike
Fog
Darkness
Ethereal Haze
Feint
Holy Day
Kami of False Hope
Pay No Heed
Warning
Curfew
Seal of Removal
Unsummon
Silent Departure
Vapor Snag
Word of Undoing
---
I agree, but as was noted only 2 cards on that list matter and I'd find it hard to believe that the people over at Wizards haven't realized that these cards are common and Pauper legal lol
lol I don't think there is any way the format could keep up with that
typed too fast, meant 'not greatly' lol
The only one on the list above that matter are S.arrows and G.shaman, both great at what they do and not that hard to get.
Storm would be greatly bruised by rite's absence, but not greatly so, just slowing it down like I noted above.
Are the cards which have never been printed online as an actual common, and yet are available to be used in Pauper.
Serrated Arrows
Gorilla Shaman
Legions of Lim-Dûl
Mistfolk
Snow Devil
Casting of Bones
Insidious Bookworms
Kjeldoran Pride
Sea Eagle
Command Tower
None of these cards can be drafted in any set. Every other single common in the pauper format is actually common, in that it showed up in an actual pack along with 10 other of its kind, and had a chance for unlimited drafting when its set was available in the store. These ten are all from special sets, and none of them could ever be drafted online.
I still can't believe they haven't closed this loophole, as it makes no sense. Why do some promo/special set cards count for Pauper, but others (like common Blue Elemental Blast) not count? I have to think it's a mistake and they haven't realized it yet.
Once these are banned, we can start talking about banning for power reasons...
I'd personally love to see Cranial Plating come off the list.
very true, those synergies didn't jump out right away, but it is nice to see some
2hg just has so many great opportunities to interact not only with an opponent, but with a partner that I feel could be addressed more
the scariest part of Infect is that if its on the play you could be sitting across from the turn 2 win and you have only 1 land in play... what are you to do with 1 mana? that really gets me.. I mean sure there are answers with 1 mana, but you better be playing red lol I still think it won't really change unless we see a surge in infect play because its kind of flying under the radar
I can top that one:
Pay 0: Target creature gets +8/+8, and opponent cannot gain life for the remainder of the game.
The Horror/Elemental pairing has some sick synergies: His Aethersnipes and Sudden disappearances dealing with centaur tokens, my mill giving potential targets for his beacons of unrest, even the potential for Lily's ultimate, whilst his discard from Lily and the mournwhelks helps to feed my sewer nems and guiltfeeders.
Well Kuma you can choose to make a cause celéb about this and be bitter and angry over a trite comment that probably shouldn't have been made or you can rise above it. After all we have had many good conversations in the past and despite your insistence on taking umbrage I know you to be a fair-minded person. I agree that FOW should be allowed to be played. In the moment I think your response to my comment was over the top as much as mine was inappropriate. Which imho is uncharacteristic of you. That you are still angry and full of ire speaks volumes about you more than it does about my social faux pas.
In regards to that I think I would have responded in some fashion no matter what counter he used. It was a meaningless play and was amusing to me. Defenseless? Maybe but then I had nothing to attack with so not exactly a huge deal that. Also I was tired and annoyed with the way the game unraveled and not terribly happy with having to face one broken combo deck after another. There was also the comment that AJ made which seemed just to me in the moment.
Did you really write that blurb in your article as a joke? This has been a bone of contention in the Apocalypse for years now. Fair decks vs unfair decks. Decks that sidestep the agreed upon rules (shoehorned legacy decks for example) to do something broken because technically it is allowed even if it is outside of the spirit of the format. Not saying this shouldn't happen (it is one way to combat Goblins/Elves) but you yourself have been on both sides of this argument.
If it was in jest then why are you now angry? Take the win, acknowledge the irony and move on?
Agreed about cryptic command. Totally great in so many ways in the format. All of its modes are useful.
It makes me sad that you are announcing an end to your involvement with 2 head giant games (or so it seems) though of course that's your decision.
Good logic behind your price argument in the article.
Reya used to be 50 tix.
My Fact or Fictions and Llanowar Wastes cost me way more than my FoWs (13 tix) ....
Wastelands were 2 tix for a while.
Price can never ever be a factor.
i dont play pauper because of muc...
thanks for the response, being a storm player you can probably answer this.. can storm still survive without the rite or would that really cripple it so much that it'd die off?
Ok, first of all, if you don't intend to raise an argument, don't do jackass comments, with both teammates reinforcing each other like proper high school bullies. If it was lighthearted, it didn't sound so. Sorry if I got it the wrong way then.
BUT...
You DID bring up the MONEY COST of Sudden Disappearance (a few cents or so). So, what was that for? Do FoW would have been ok if used against a money card? What's the level of card FoW is ok to be used against? And let me get this straight: had he used a Counterspell on the Disappearance, there would have been no comment?
The irrelevance: so you just laugh in the face of your opponents when they do something you think it's a bad move? How's that fair?
And for your information, you're also wrong about that (in fact, you couldn't know): at that point, I had no second Kokusho in hand, no Recurring, no anything. And Aya didn't have anything either, except counterspells (he draw into a clone next). Your spell was killing all his defenses. What should we have done?
All in all, it seems like you can put FoW in your deck, but you better not use it because it's unfair? So, FoW is unsportsmanlike by definition and shouldn't be played, despite the fact that it's a mediocre card in Tribal? Just because it's the big bad FoW? I'm sure you see the absurdity of this.
But if you want to know the whole story, I asked Aya to put FoW in his deck (then second-guessed myself, because I knew it was the road to card disadvantage) because he used it just once in Tribal Apocalypse before: against me in the Invitational, guessing I was using combo on Round 3. I wanted to see it played against someone else for a change! (And within the very strange flow of this event, I think he ended up having it in hand only that one time against you).
Third, my God, the comment I wrote here announcing the event? That was a joke, like most of the things I write in these cases. I wrote the absolute opposite at the end of the following article: "you will find if people will find a way to cheat against the spirit of the event" (sarcastically barred and "replaced" with "will have a great time with multiplayer Tribal Wars"). Didn't you notice that as well?
But how is putting FoW in a deck trying to "win at all cost"? I was operating on the assumption everyone was trying to win very badly actually, because my experience of 2HG made me wary of the cutthroat choices people do in this format (it turns out, the standard crowd is more cutthroat than the tribal crowd. Good to know). To me, "winning at all cost" is more something you do by running Goblin+Kithkin (which is cool, btw, I still like the flavor of that coupling). Last time I checked, Shapeshifters weren't the most badass tribe in the game. And maybe if we wanted to "win at all cost" we had our decks properly tested (which, as you know, I'm never so eager to do, to my shame, and Aya often ends up playing the decks "cold" too). There were a few bad calls in there, and we also got the seating order all wrong.
This is how it went: Aya asked me to team up. I told him I just wanted to use the Liliana Spirit deck again. And since Kokusho is amazing in 2HG (and not by playing around its wording, like Serra Ascendant: Kokusho is actually supposed to be stronger in multiplayer), what if we paired him up with his Evil Twin? (Which, you may notice, actually IS evil, as he kills Kokusho after all!) So, Ub Shapeshifters, Aya thought it was cool, and we met a couple times online to discuss the composition of his deck. We mainly feared StP on Kokusho and a truckload of counter magic. Chalice of the Void was the solution to StP, it was meant to be set to 1 all the time (it actually helped against the Elder deck), since both of us didn't run anything at 1. While running an essentially monoblue deck, putting some counters in there to protect against enemy counters sounded just right, so FoW came up, since Shapeshifters need mana and Aya's board needed something to block with (at that point I think there were more early mana-intensive stuff like Shapesharer, which got dropped in the end), and FoW would allow to cast a shifter and still be able to counter. In hindsight, probably Cryptic Command would have been better.
End of the Novel of My Unsatisfying, Overly Bitter (and Very Probably Final) 2HG Adventure.
You're right on both accounts. I and Aya had the Story of Kokusho and His Evil Twin, and I liked the idea of Spirits teaming up with Shapeshifters (also Elementals and Shapeshifters would have felt right to me, flavor-wise), but that's just it. Not something to write home about as far as themes go, probably.
Good read! Muc isn't an issue if you have cheap instant removal and know when to play it. My D.red deck uses lavadarts and sparkspray to both add to storm count, or slaughter fae at instant speed with no problems. Every fifth game or so they can still slip through, but I don't think those need to be banned. Gush even less so. You really want to cripple muc, lose spiregolem. Sounds silly, but watch almost any replay of a muc matchup...these hold the ground till more control/draw can come online.
I agree with the infect angle...invigorate if they 'have it' can just be silly.
Storm: All you'd need to lose is rite of flame, as in modern, it neuters the deck adding about 2.1 turns to it...plenty for any respectable deck to have a shot. I feel temporal storm is pretty 'in check' since the bannings, like any deck...if they 'have it' it's gonna get ya!
Additionally, I think your 'spot on' with the Izpost area. The deck is strong enough without all the late game bounce/lifegain. As their decklist show...all they have to do is stop the first 1-3 creatures via removal and sit back and bore you to death, fortunatly they lose to some other decks like fiss.storm, and mbc, but losing capsize would solve a lot of issues, still alowing the engine lifegain...just not at absurd levels.
it really is kind of scary how fast they can win between that and Mutagenic Growth isn't it?