The Matchup is (way) better the 15% imho. And i do think 7 hate postboard is beatable for dredge. The Problem here is more thats its 7 Hate WITH Counterspell backup AND a reasonable Clock.
Well well well, i guess i have to do the Mind's Desire Challenge just for getting my slate clean again. xD
Ya it's fine in any case, the event is free and I even won stuff. I have a strong dislike of certain strategies so that's probably mostly what's coming through. I suppose 20 2-3cc flyers is fine, cawblade ran squads for similar use.
i dunno, playing counter top in a deck of all 2's and 3's? this is tribal, look at aj's deck. counter top gets smoked there. he cant counter any of the guys unless he leaves a batterskull floating.
as for pegasi being inctental? they are cheap, and they fly, so swords connect more often.
I want to give apaulogy the benefit of the doubt and think he didn't just pick Pegasi randomly, but because his idea was to build CounterTop, AND to make a Pegasus deck. As you said, there were probably better options for CounterTop, like a mono-blue Wizard deck, but that's exactly what I like in the fact that they were Pegasi instead. Because that would look so inconsequential.
I know that sometimes these high-concept decks look like the tribe itself doesn't matter and it's an afterthought. But it's not always like that.
And yeah, you definitely need Cranial Plating in that deck. :)
(And now I'm sure I'll meet you after you put them in, and you'll beat me to a pulp with that!)
Ill certainly be looking at my schedule to see when i can be around for future events as i like unique building restrictions and the player base seems great.
I'm glad that it sounds like there isn't an arms race to see who can play the most expensive busted decks within the letter of the rules as I would probably just 0-3 every event at that point. I guess the thing that really bugged me about the pegasus deck is that his pegasus were so incidental. It's like he had the other cards already and just didn't want to bother building around a creature type or buying any singles that cost more than .02 each. So he just threw in 20 random pegasus that had no synergy whatsoever. His deck would have been even better with different creatures but at least then it be more in line with the tribal theme of things.
I can understand if you don't have time to build something well thought out and still want to play though. I was in that boat somewhat myself. As you said i didn't have obvious cards like cranial plating. I was barely able to find all my cards on bots before the event started. (mtgotraders is so busy sometimes)
Err, the article starts with a table where the placements and records of the Top 4 are stated. :) I reckon you just overlooked it?
There's also the link to Blippy's spreadsheet where you can see the complete round-to-round of the tourney. I thought about putting it in the articles but it looked like a repeat.
I recently decided to do the starting table thing, because in the previous articles I kept introducing the decklists by saying "here's the 3rd place deck", or "here's another deck who went 2-1", and I grew tired of find new ways to say that. :)
I'll try to mention more who defeated who in the next articles, especially when it's interesting. Also to collect more comments about that from the players themselves.
Well I mean looking at this I'm assuming AJ won though its not mentioned and I know a couple of the 2-1 decks. I just think it'd be nice to see the records maybe what they lost too idk I'm not thinking like anything in depth at all cuz like you said the decks are the focus
Glad to read you had a good time, hope you will be back!
About the CounterTop (which, like I said in the article, is truly an annoying archetype), I think it deserves to be applauded just for the fact that it was the demonstration that the porting of that archetype into tribal is possible. I like to think that the spirit of things in Tribal Apocalypse is "let's be crazy", and trying such a porting is experimental enough to be appealing to me. It only becomes annoying when you see the same broken decks too often, week in week out. But I believe this was the first CounterTop we had in 53 events. We had other portings of Legacy concepts; for instance, Aluren.dek by Ayanam1, who's a specialist of this type of things. He won an event with that deck, then he never used it ever again. That's the spirit I hope we may be able to embody more and more. I'd rather have CounterTop in the Top 4 once in a while that the same Elfball or Goblin-burn deck ending 1st every single week.
I don't really know how we managed to do it, but in these 53 events (and even before, during the ShardFenix and Flippers Giraffe eras) we had a unique deck/player at the top half of the times. Maybe it's just because the community is quite large, the players are good and creative, and everyone has a different idea about the format. But it never stops to amaze me how, in the end, it was never all about Elves and Goblins, nor about killer combos.
I had a good time at the event, I had heard of it but just found out it was free and going off in a couple hours after I asked in the anything goes room. I have been playing Heirloom events and so I thought I'd try other PRE's if I could. I didn't have much time to build. I just looked for an endangered creature type I was somewhat familiar with and put the deck together without much time. I was happy to go 2-1 with it and had a good time.
My loss came from the player playing counter-top round one. I'm new to the format so I don't know the was things are but it seemed like an exploit of the format outside the spirit of things. I mean he barely played any pegasus against me he just set up stoneforge and countertop and used top and brainstorms and fetchlands to keep from having to play any of his endangered creature type. If it's legal in the format I guess you have to expect legacy/classic ported decks but I don't think it should be applauded.I was just hay that it seemed to be the exception. Running into it round one had me worried about the format.
Do you mean like recounting what exactly happened in their matchups? (As opposed to just tell their win-lose ratio, which is what I'm already doing). I'm afraid I couldn't really chronicle that, since I play in the events myself so I can hardly get a few glimpses of other people's games, if at all. Plus, my idea is to comment on the deckbuilding side, describing how the decks are supposed to work based on their composition. I'm more of a deckbuilder than a player myself.
What would you exactly like to see, anyway? Maybe I can try to do some of that.
Well, when you write "Archon", that's Latin derived from Greek (as pretty much half the Latin words are, especially the intellectual ones). The Greek word would be ἄρχων. :)
Fun fact: in Italy we had Praetores (Pretori) until 10 years ago, they were civil law judges assigned to a specific zone. They had an important role in Mafia-related news and in courtroom-set reality shows. :)
I'd just remind folks that, if you want a last fling with Oath before the Cage arrives, you ahve until Friday to join the aptly named Classic League "Cage Match."
You should go hunt down the mothership preview article for Skullclamp. It was done by one the casual article others (Gottlieb?) and he just went on with "it can combo with this.....and this....and this....and, we'll shoot, it combos with everything. What a dumb card"
good times.
Note: I am not comparing this card to skullclamp in any way, shape, or form.
Excellent week, refreshing to start the new year with so many intriguing decks and tribes. Technically 'Archon' is Greek rather than Latin, but the pluralisations are impressive. :D
And here I was, fearing that Burning Vengeance would become the dominant deck in block constructed...
You know what's funny about this card in block? Say you have two of them in play. Your opponent finally draws that Ancient Grudge... but he can't flash it back to get rid of the second one. So it's gonna be "side in no less than four Grudges against every matchup" for graveyard decks in that format. Ouch.
I really like the Billy Mays take on this card. This card reminds me of when they printed Perish.
Jamie Wakefield wrote an article slamming Wizards for printing a hoser card as strong as Perish.
I'm no Jamie Wakefield fan, but I can see where people who enjoy playing certain kinds of decks
could see this card and have a Jamie Wakefield moment and get bent out of shape.
i like it cuz the same dex always show up in classic and maybe this will help change that, i would def use it in my 2hg dex stopping those big guys. It does not stop good ol fashion practical dex which is good.
Djinn of Wishes lest you cats cards from a library. Also, I wonder what would happen to Garruk's Horde. You could cast the card, but the creature cannot enter the battlefield? I guess it doesn't come straight from the library, so it could enter the battlefield, hence only the second ability stops that. I'm sure there are other cards affected by this ability, but none of them is important. I guess library is mentioned in the second ability just for symmetry.
P2P4 and P3P3 I wasn't really sure which one was the best. Voiceless Spirit would have been better with 2 Pilgrims but at the time I had only 1 as well as 3 3drops and only 1 2drop. The 2nd Pilgrim over Travel I think ended up being good for the deck because I ended up with 2 5drops.
P3P4 I completly agree. Had I taken Travel I would certainly take Orchard.
I didn's know Panglacial Wurm was so strong these days to need this as an answer.
Seriously, I don't understand all the panic about the card... Afected decks should handle it just like they handle other ugly hosers... Tinker? Oath? Bridge? destroy/bounce it at eot, and go for the game next turn... just the same way like Canonist, Leyline or any other hosers are handled.
Pretty interesting card. One thing to remember though is that most gy hate has a permanent effect even if the artifact leaves the battlefield (leyline, spellbomb and such) whereas this does not. It works until it's killed and that's that, while other forms of gy hate permanently exile cards from the other players gy.
The Matchup is (way) better the 15% imho. And i do think 7 hate postboard is beatable for dredge. The Problem here is more thats its 7 Hate WITH Counterspell backup AND a reasonable Clock.
Well well well, i guess i have to do the Mind's Desire Challenge just for getting my slate clean again. xD
Ya it's fine in any case, the event is free and I even won stuff. I have a strong dislike of certain strategies so that's probably mostly what's coming through. I suppose 20 2-3cc flyers is fine, cawblade ran squads for similar use.
i dunno, playing counter top in a deck of all 2's and 3's? this is tribal, look at aj's deck. counter top gets smoked there. he cant counter any of the guys unless he leaves a batterskull floating.
as for pegasi being inctental? they are cheap, and they fly, so swords connect more often.
i think u just had some bad luck.
I want to give apaulogy the benefit of the doubt and think he didn't just pick Pegasi randomly, but because his idea was to build CounterTop, AND to make a Pegasus deck. As you said, there were probably better options for CounterTop, like a mono-blue Wizard deck, but that's exactly what I like in the fact that they were Pegasi instead. Because that would look so inconsequential.
I know that sometimes these high-concept decks look like the tribe itself doesn't matter and it's an afterthought. But it's not always like that.
And yeah, you definitely need Cranial Plating in that deck. :)
(And now I'm sure I'll meet you after you put them in, and you'll beat me to a pulp with that!)
Ill certainly be looking at my schedule to see when i can be around for future events as i like unique building restrictions and the player base seems great.
I'm glad that it sounds like there isn't an arms race to see who can play the most expensive busted decks within the letter of the rules as I would probably just 0-3 every event at that point. I guess the thing that really bugged me about the pegasus deck is that his pegasus were so incidental. It's like he had the other cards already and just didn't want to bother building around a creature type or buying any singles that cost more than .02 each. So he just threw in 20 random pegasus that had no synergy whatsoever. His deck would have been even better with different creatures but at least then it be more in line with the tribal theme of things.
I can understand if you don't have time to build something well thought out and still want to play though. I was in that boat somewhat myself. As you said i didn't have obvious cards like cranial plating. I was barely able to find all my cards on bots before the event started. (mtgotraders is so busy sometimes)
Err, the article starts with a table where the placements and records of the Top 4 are stated. :) I reckon you just overlooked it?
There's also the link to Blippy's spreadsheet where you can see the complete round-to-round of the tourney. I thought about putting it in the articles but it looked like a repeat.
I recently decided to do the starting table thing, because in the previous articles I kept introducing the decklists by saying "here's the 3rd place deck", or "here's another deck who went 2-1", and I grew tired of find new ways to say that. :)
I'll try to mention more who defeated who in the next articles, especially when it's interesting. Also to collect more comments about that from the players themselves.
Well I mean looking at this I'm assuming AJ won though its not mentioned and I know a couple of the 2-1 decks. I just think it'd be nice to see the records maybe what they lost too idk I'm not thinking like anything in depth at all cuz like you said the decks are the focus
Glad to read you had a good time, hope you will be back!
About the CounterTop (which, like I said in the article, is truly an annoying archetype), I think it deserves to be applauded just for the fact that it was the demonstration that the porting of that archetype into tribal is possible. I like to think that the spirit of things in Tribal Apocalypse is "let's be crazy", and trying such a porting is experimental enough to be appealing to me. It only becomes annoying when you see the same broken decks too often, week in week out. But I believe this was the first CounterTop we had in 53 events. We had other portings of Legacy concepts; for instance, Aluren.dek by Ayanam1, who's a specialist of this type of things. He won an event with that deck, then he never used it ever again. That's the spirit I hope we may be able to embody more and more. I'd rather have CounterTop in the Top 4 once in a while that the same Elfball or Goblin-burn deck ending 1st every single week.
I don't really know how we managed to do it, but in these 53 events (and even before, during the ShardFenix and Flippers Giraffe eras) we had a unique deck/player at the top half of the times. Maybe it's just because the community is quite large, the players are good and creative, and everyone has a different idea about the format. But it never stops to amaze me how, in the end, it was never all about Elves and Goblins, nor about killer combos.
I had a good time at the event, I had heard of it but just found out it was free and going off in a couple hours after I asked in the anything goes room. I have been playing Heirloom events and so I thought I'd try other PRE's if I could. I didn't have much time to build. I just looked for an endangered creature type I was somewhat familiar with and put the deck together without much time. I was happy to go 2-1 with it and had a good time.
My loss came from the player playing counter-top round one. I'm new to the format so I don't know the was things are but it seemed like an exploit of the format outside the spirit of things. I mean he barely played any pegasus against me he just set up stoneforge and countertop and used top and brainstorms and fetchlands to keep from having to play any of his endangered creature type. If it's legal in the format I guess you have to expect legacy/classic ported decks but I don't think it should be applauded.I was just hay that it seemed to be the exception. Running into it round one had me worried about the format.
Do you mean like recounting what exactly happened in their matchups? (As opposed to just tell their win-lose ratio, which is what I'm already doing). I'm afraid I couldn't really chronicle that, since I play in the events myself so I can hardly get a few glimpses of other people's games, if at all. Plus, my idea is to comment on the deckbuilding side, describing how the decks are supposed to work based on their composition. I'm more of a deckbuilder than a player myself.
What would you exactly like to see, anyway? Maybe I can try to do some of that.
Its nice seeing the decks and all, but there's no real mention of how they performed
Well, when you write "Archon", that's Latin derived from Greek (as pretty much half the Latin words are, especially the intellectual ones). The Greek word would be ἄρχων. :)
Fun fact: in Italy we had Praetores (Pretori) until 10 years ago, they were civil law judges assigned to a specific zone. They had an important role in Mafia-related news and in courtroom-set reality shows. :)
nice job.
I'd just remind folks that, if you want a last fling with Oath before the Cage arrives, you ahve until Friday to join the aptly named Classic League "Cage Match."
You should go hunt down the mothership preview article for Skullclamp. It was done by one the casual article others (Gottlieb?) and he just went on with "it can combo with this.....and this....and this....and, we'll shoot, it combos with everything. What a dumb card"
good times.
Note: I am not comparing this card to skullclamp in any way, shape, or form.
Excellent week, refreshing to start the new year with so many intriguing decks and tribes. Technically 'Archon' is Greek rather than Latin, but the pluralisations are impressive. :D
And here I was, fearing that Burning Vengeance would become the dominant deck in block constructed...
You know what's funny about this card in block? Say you have two of them in play. Your opponent finally draws that Ancient Grudge... but he can't flash it back to get rid of the second one. So it's gonna be "side in no less than four Grudges against every matchup" for graveyard decks in that format. Ouch.
I really like the Billy Mays take on this card. This card reminds me of when they printed Perish.
Jamie Wakefield wrote an article slamming Wizards for printing a hoser card as strong as Perish.
I'm no Jamie Wakefield fan, but I can see where people who enjoy playing certain kinds of decks
could see this card and have a Jamie Wakefield moment and get bent out of shape.
Nevar - I must blow thingsz up.
Stay away from those fertilizer suppliers hillbilly!
Nice Article - but this card is just stupid. I am not excited about playing with or against it. DUMBDUMBDUMB printing, they WILL regret this.
Zach
i like it cuz the same dex always show up in classic and maybe this will help change that, i would def use it in my 2hg dex stopping those big guys. It does not stop good ol fashion practical dex which is good.
Djinn of Wishes lest you cats cards from a library. Also, I wonder what would happen to Garruk's Horde. You could cast the card, but the creature cannot enter the battlefield? I guess it doesn't come straight from the library, so it could enter the battlefield, hence only the second ability stops that. I'm sure there are other cards affected by this ability, but none of them is important. I guess library is mentioned in the second ability just for symmetry.
Thanks for your comment :)
P2P4 and P3P3 I wasn't really sure which one was the best. Voiceless Spirit would have been better with 2 Pilgrims but at the time I had only 1 as well as 3 3drops and only 1 2drop. The 2nd Pilgrim over Travel I think ended up being good for the deck because I ended up with 2 5drops.
P3P4 I completly agree. Had I taken Travel I would certainly take Orchard.
I didn's know Panglacial Wurm was so strong these days to need this as an answer.
Seriously, I don't understand all the panic about the card... Afected decks should handle it just like they handle other ugly hosers... Tinker? Oath? Bridge? destroy/bounce it at eot, and go for the game next turn... just the same way like Canonist, Leyline or any other hosers are handled.
Pretty interesting card. One thing to remember though is that most gy hate has a permanent effect even if the artifact leaves the battlefield (leyline, spellbomb and such) whereas this does not. It works until it's killed and that's that, while other forms of gy hate permanently exile cards from the other players gy.