The Azusa was there to be used in concert with Life From the Loam or Crucible of Worlds and Walk the Aeons due to much urging on the part of my playgroup. They are no longer in there, though the Wasteland and Strip Mine remain. Here is a list of the Riku deck which I keep up to date: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/riku-of-two-reflections-edh-5/
START TIMES: On demand beginning Saturday, February 18, at 10:00 AM PST (18:00 UTC) and ending Sunday, February 19, at 10:00 PM PST (Monday 06:00 UTC).
LOCATION: Release Queues room.
ENTRY OPTION(S): 20 Event Tickets.
PRODUCT: Magic Online will provide 3 Dark Ascension booster packs for this event.
got it wrong in the article. I was not expecting triple DA - Wizards doesn't do that in paper.
At our prerelease, two boosters were given to surviving humans (randomly chosen), and two boosters were given to random members of the biggest tribe. I guess the numbers depended on the number of participants.
so can someone explain this whole "monster" thing.. I've read it hear, and mostly could care less about paper Magic, but what's the point of being one? is it just a title to see who wins more games?
Deck lists-
I got super lucky to beat oath in rd3 and the only reason i was able to do it was by drawing cat weasel out with a memory jar. I know i went 50/50 on the day vs oath but I got super lucky and wont be touching robots again till we have cage. I also like the ol 61 card special, which is apparently kind of popular outside the US.
The classic picks from DKA.
Tragic slip- yawn, darkblast is a much better card, even if it cant kill a Blightsteel.
Thalia - legendary and white make this card just a touch too bad for classic. I could see people playing a 1 of and it making a difference when they play it t1 or t2 but not excited.
Gravecrawler - no. next.
Secrets of the dead- no. next.
Increasing confusion. blue fireball your deck? no. next.
Ghoul tree- You guys glossed over the fact that mr 10 friggen 10 zombie treefolk makes an excelent beatdown sb for dredge. For instance if cage become super popular, you could side in these duders and just play them on turn 2 or 3. Probably wont make much difference.
Sorrin - I like this guy a lot, and i could eaisly see the bwg hate decks trying him out. t1 noble. t2 any guy, t3 sorin. Now depending on what yer up against you could make lil vamps are perm buff your team. seems like he might be a 1 of.
Faithless looting - uhm, seriously , you guys, this combos with past in flames. but more seriously, this card may have some applications, i know careful study is a card, but this is a different color and it has flash back. could possibly see play, more so then a lot of the cards on the list.
Im not a huge fan of this set for eternal magic.
Cage Match -
Stupid schedule. I was playing 4c fish, and rd1 up against cownose. we couldnt meet up so i scooped to him.
yay, ill be here next week guys, dont worry, youll hear my sweet dulcet tones again.
I'd guess Faithless Looting over Tragic slip. Should appear in almost every format, and be a huge piece of Storm in Modern, Burning Vengeance in Block/STD, maybe even Dredge in Legacy.
We must not forget the broken aspect of the Legacy base. In fact, I thanks several Gods that WoTC does NOT support Tribal Wars with official tournaments: that would attract the REAL Spike players (the Spike approach you can see in some of the players here? That's like being pure Timmy compared to what we would see within regularly scheduled Premier Events). And they would come to TribAp too, or their lists would influence what your average TribAp player would play.
And it's true the sideboard helps combo (btw: we're talking about combo in the aftermath of the Invitational, which was a single elimination event played between the most motivate players. I believe the breakdown for normal events doesn't see Combo as the other half ot the sky from Aggro. Not by a long way).
But think about what would really happen if we had a sideboard. Everybody would pack hate against basic combo strategies (graveyard, heavy artifact shenanigans). That would make this type of decks hardly viable anymore. Except for players with true Legacy high-budget collections (and the fact that a budget players in TribAp can win a torunament, or go 2-1, or at least win nearly as much as a 2-1 player with the special prizes, is an important factor to be assessed). So you would either try to port a Legacy deck with Force of Will to enable and defend your turn-3 win, or you would be redirected to the same old, same old of burn Goblins and such.
Bottom line: to me a Tribal Wars with sideboard would be infinitely more boring and frustrating than it is now.
An aside: the reason I don't like Standard very much is that Standard is a format that become solved again and again, every fourth week of the month. At any given time, you can try and brew creative decks, but you know you should play one of those 2-3 tier-1 decks or be crushed by them. The only redeeming quality is that the format shifts, with new sets being added over the course of the year, and the pro lab continuously developing new ways to beat last month's tier-1 decks, if it's possible (and not always it is, look at what happened with Caw-Blade). But all these shifts are often too fast and go above your head if you aren't up-to-date. And they involve a lot of weblisting too.
Elixir of Immortality in 12th edition does the same thing for 3 total mana (1 to cast 2 to activate.)
8 mana is a huge amount of mana even in control vs control because you have to hope you stop everything else they throw at you before then and also have run them out of counters by then too. It isn't a game winner itself so the only time it really helps is vs mill and since Elixir is reusable, there is not much need for redundancy. Then there is the question of what you are taking out for it and what aren't you including in its stead from your sideboard.
It isn't unthinkable but it is a pretty hard trick to pull off.
...I know, everyone wants it to work and its awful.
Yet, we have several new dredge enablers for the beaters and 1/2 spiders trump (or at least trade with) X/1 tokens. Dredgeable green enchantment and artifact removal. Am I totally crazy to think we might be headed in a direction where this deck actually fits in the meta?
Too bad we don't have access to GSZ in *this* block!
1)Buried Alive- fits the theme perfectly. At least a retake on the card (flip,on a body, limit to a creature type). There are to many ways to revisit this card to not have it in the theme of this set.
2)Reanimate- Retake as a flip enchantment would have some flavor.
3)Bloodghast- Has it all...Vampire that lives between the graveyard and battlefield.
4)Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter- why not something for the commander player.
5)Watchwolf- has anyone noticed how good werewolf movies have normal wolves in the film. There to set a mood and add suspense in the hearts of the audience.
Thanks for the compliments guys! There aren't more Raise Dead effects in the deck because I found that oftentimes my graveyard didn't have much in it. Often I was discarding Colossi, Dread, or Eldrazi, meaning that there wasn't much in the yard to return. Reclamation is used specifically because it can grab these guys back after tossing them to Volrath. Oversold Cemetery wouldn't do the trick in this deck.
Tower of the Magistrate was an experiment, but I never drew it. Like, ever. I think I'm going to cram it into future mono-colored decks until I do draw it to see what it does.
I like making decks where the Commander does something for the deck. It gives me focus when deck building. Otherwise I'm just cramming a bunch of random stuff in there. When your Commander is useful, it does lead to the occasional Commander kill. I just liked being able to attack with Volrath and have him suddenly deal 19 damage. Sure, the decks I make aren't optimized killing machines, but they tend to be fun. At least for me, that is!
I could actually see it being a sideboard card for a control mirror, maybe. Probably not, I'm fairly new to magic, so the "shuffle your graveyard into your library" effect may be available at a much cheaper cost, I don't know. However, the standard u/b control deck does have milling its opponent as a main kill condition. Eight mana isn't that problematic in a control mirror, especially if you also sideboarded in counterlash as Nafiz suggests...
Just thought I'd bring it up since I haven't seen that part of the card brought up in any articles. Unfortunately, you don't really care about your life total against a mill deck so the life-gain effect is pointless, which is why I suspect there are cheaper alternatives for shuffling your graveyard into your library.
Now this looks like a fun deck. It is a control deck with giant bombs and an out of left field voltron strategy. It seems to have something for every one. I have been trying to come up with a creature centric black deck, and this certainly has some good ideas to build off of
I am a bit surprised there is not a little bit more raise dead effects considering this deck wants to through huge guys in the yard.
I am glad to see you have come around on Dust Bowl. That card can straight squash many nasty land shenanigans, and fits especially well in a mono colored deck like this. Also how has the Tower of Magistartes played out for you thus far? I have found that it doesn't always matter, but when it does it matters a whole lot.
I also like seeing Phyrexian Reclamation in the deck. It is near the top of my list of commander cards that I personally love, but no one else seems to.
Anyway good to see you back back building decks. Keep up the good work. And for the record, in my head I think of you as Tarasco.
The Azusa was there to be used in concert with Life From the Loam or Crucible of Worlds and Walk the Aeons due to much urging on the part of my playgroup. They are no longer in there, though the Wasteland and Strip Mine remain. Here is a list of the Riku deck which I keep up to date:
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/riku-of-two-reflections-edh-5/
DARK ASCENSION 8-PLAYER SWISS DRAFT QUEUES
START TIMES: On demand beginning Saturday, February 18, at 10:00 AM PST (18:00 UTC) and ending Sunday, February 19, at 10:00 PM PST (Monday 06:00 UTC).
LOCATION: Release Queues room.
ENTRY OPTION(S): 20 Event Tickets.
PRODUCT: Magic Online will provide 3 Dark Ascension booster packs for this event.
got it wrong in the article. I was not expecting triple DA - Wizards doesn't do that in paper.
as the title says
are the da pre 3 dka or 1 & 2?
im so confused
At the prerelease I ran, I gave candy to all surviving humans, and to the monster tribe with the most members.
I also posted numbers each round, the members of the various tribes started cheering for their tribes.
At our prerelease, two boosters were given to surviving humans (randomly chosen), and two boosters were given to random members of the biggest tribe. I guess the numbers depended on the number of participants.
so can someone explain this whole "monster" thing.. I've read it hear, and mostly could care less about paper Magic, but what's the point of being one? is it just a title to see who wins more games?
Dark Ascension pre-release swiss drafts are triple DKA.
lol thank you for the correction
piqued past participle, past tense of pique (Verb)
Verb:
1.Stimulate (interest or curiosity).
2.Feel irritated or resentful.
I was piqued by your misspelling.
Great job on the Star Wars decks in the From the Lab article on the daily mtg site! I really enjoyed seening them, very creative.
Deck lists-
I got super lucky to beat oath in rd3 and the only reason i was able to do it was by drawing cat weasel out with a memory jar. I know i went 50/50 on the day vs oath but I got super lucky and wont be touching robots again till we have cage. I also like the ol 61 card special, which is apparently kind of popular outside the US.
The classic picks from DKA.
Tragic slip- yawn, darkblast is a much better card, even if it cant kill a Blightsteel.
Cage - http://puremtgo.com/articles/grafdiggers-cage-classic
Thalia - legendary and white make this card just a touch too bad for classic. I could see people playing a 1 of and it making a difference when they play it t1 or t2 but not excited.
Gravecrawler - no. next.
Secrets of the dead- no. next.
Increasing confusion. blue fireball your deck? no. next.
Ghoul tree- You guys glossed over the fact that mr 10 friggen 10 zombie treefolk makes an excelent beatdown sb for dredge. For instance if cage become super popular, you could side in these duders and just play them on turn 2 or 3. Probably wont make much difference.
Sorrin - I like this guy a lot, and i could eaisly see the bwg hate decks trying him out. t1 noble. t2 any guy, t3 sorin. Now depending on what yer up against you could make lil vamps are perm buff your team. seems like he might be a 1 of.
Faithless looting - uhm, seriously , you guys, this combos with past in flames. but more seriously, this card may have some applications, i know careful study is a card, but this is a different color and it has flash back. could possibly see play, more so then a lot of the cards on the list.
Im not a huge fan of this set for eternal magic.
Cage Match -
Stupid schedule. I was playing 4c fish, and rd1 up against cownose. we couldnt meet up so i scooped to him.
yay, ill be here next week guys, dont worry, youll hear my sweet dulcet tones again.
not that it really makes that zombie playable, but Yixlid Jailer is a zombie
I'd guess Faithless Looting over Tragic slip. Should appear in almost every format, and be a huge piece of Storm in Modern, Burning Vengeance in Block/STD, maybe even Dredge in Legacy.
I've opened three Archangel's Light in 4 Prereleases (12 packs of DA) :(
Thanks everybody for the comments. I'm glad you liked the article. And no, next week's number one is not Tragic Slip :).
By the way, did you have time to read Noel deCordova's article today? :)
Thanks again for the comments.
LE
I agree with most of what you say here.
We must not forget the broken aspect of the Legacy base. In fact, I thanks several Gods that WoTC does NOT support Tribal Wars with official tournaments: that would attract the REAL Spike players (the Spike approach you can see in some of the players here? That's like being pure Timmy compared to what we would see within regularly scheduled Premier Events). And they would come to TribAp too, or their lists would influence what your average TribAp player would play.
And it's true the sideboard helps combo (btw: we're talking about combo in the aftermath of the Invitational, which was a single elimination event played between the most motivate players. I believe the breakdown for normal events doesn't see Combo as the other half ot the sky from Aggro. Not by a long way).
But think about what would really happen if we had a sideboard. Everybody would pack hate against basic combo strategies (graveyard, heavy artifact shenanigans). That would make this type of decks hardly viable anymore. Except for players with true Legacy high-budget collections (and the fact that a budget players in TribAp can win a torunament, or go 2-1, or at least win nearly as much as a 2-1 player with the special prizes, is an important factor to be assessed). So you would either try to port a Legacy deck with Force of Will to enable and defend your turn-3 win, or you would be redirected to the same old, same old of burn Goblins and such.
Bottom line: to me a Tribal Wars with sideboard would be infinitely more boring and frustrating than it is now.
An aside: the reason I don't like Standard very much is that Standard is a format that become solved again and again, every fourth week of the month. At any given time, you can try and brew creative decks, but you know you should play one of those 2-3 tier-1 decks or be crushed by them. The only redeeming quality is that the format shifts, with new sets being added over the course of the year, and the pro lab continuously developing new ways to beat last month's tier-1 decks, if it's possible (and not always it is, look at what happened with Caw-Blade). But all these shifts are often too fast and go above your head if you aren't up-to-date. And they involve a lot of weblisting too.
i bet its tragic slip
Elixir of Immortality in 12th edition does the same thing for 3 total mana (1 to cast 2 to activate.)
8 mana is a huge amount of mana even in control vs control because you have to hope you stop everything else they throw at you before then and also have run them out of counters by then too. It isn't a game winner itself so the only time it really helps is vs mill and since Elixir is reusable, there is not much need for redundancy. Then there is the question of what you are taking out for it and what aren't you including in its stead from your sideboard.
It isn't unthinkable but it is a pretty hard trick to pull off.
...I know, everyone wants it to work and its awful.
Yet, we have several new dredge enablers for the beaters and 1/2 spiders trump (or at least trade with) X/1 tokens. Dredgeable green enchantment and artifact removal. Am I totally crazy to think we might be headed in a direction where this deck actually fits in the meta?
Too bad we don't have access to GSZ in *this* block!
1)Buried Alive- fits the theme perfectly. At least a retake on the card (flip,on a body, limit to a creature type). There are to many ways to revisit this card to not have it in the theme of this set.
2)Reanimate- Retake as a flip enchantment would have some flavor.
3)Bloodghast- Has it all...Vampire that lives between the graveyard and battlefield.
4)Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter- why not something for the commander player.
5)Watchwolf- has anyone noticed how good werewolf movies have normal wolves in the film. There to set a mood and add suspense in the hearts of the audience.
Thanks for the compliments guys! There aren't more Raise Dead effects in the deck because I found that oftentimes my graveyard didn't have much in it. Often I was discarding Colossi, Dread, or Eldrazi, meaning that there wasn't much in the yard to return. Reclamation is used specifically because it can grab these guys back after tossing them to Volrath. Oversold Cemetery wouldn't do the trick in this deck.
Tower of the Magistrate was an experiment, but I never drew it. Like, ever. I think I'm going to cram it into future mono-colored decks until I do draw it to see what it does.
I like making decks where the Commander does something for the deck. It gives me focus when deck building. Otherwise I'm just cramming a bunch of random stuff in there. When your Commander is useful, it does lead to the occasional Commander kill. I just liked being able to attack with Volrath and have him suddenly deal 19 damage. Sure, the decks I make aren't optimized killing machines, but they tend to be fun. At least for me, that is!
Wonderfully said.
I could actually see it being a sideboard card for a control mirror, maybe. Probably not, I'm fairly new to magic, so the "shuffle your graveyard into your library" effect may be available at a much cheaper cost, I don't know. However, the standard u/b control deck does have milling its opponent as a main kill condition. Eight mana isn't that problematic in a control mirror, especially if you also sideboarded in counterlash as Nafiz suggests...
Just thought I'd bring it up since I haven't seen that part of the card brought up in any articles. Unfortunately, you don't really care about your life total against a mill deck so the life-gain effect is pointless, which is why I suspect there are cheaper alternatives for shuffling your graveyard into your library.
Now this looks like a fun deck. It is a control deck with giant bombs and an out of left field voltron strategy. It seems to have something for every one. I have been trying to come up with a creature centric black deck, and this certainly has some good ideas to build off of
I am a bit surprised there is not a little bit more raise dead effects considering this deck wants to through huge guys in the yard.
I am glad to see you have come around on Dust Bowl. That card can straight squash many nasty land shenanigans, and fits especially well in a mono colored deck like this. Also how has the Tower of Magistartes played out for you thus far? I have found that it doesn't always matter, but when it does it matters a whole lot.
I also like seeing Phyrexian Reclamation in the deck. It is near the top of my list of commander cards that I personally love, but no one else seems to.
Anyway good to see you back back building decks. Keep up the good work. And for the record, in my head I think of you as Tarasco.