When the opponent played exarch on his turn he remanded it. So on his opponents turn, his opponent played exarch then enchanted it with Splinter Twin. Splinter Twin requires you to tap the creature to create tokens so with summoning sickness you can't create infinite tokens. That's why the deck is only viable because the creatures have Flash.
As for the deck, I agree that I think the deck could be improved, funny thing is I remember playing a deck almost exactly like this in Time spiral extended, it was a casual deck nothing serious. It's an awesome deck but I just don't know how good it can be in the future meta.
Also there were bad plays on both sides in the first video, which made me cringe. I haven't watched the rest of the videos so maybe it was just a fluke.
I like this deck, but I'd like for you to write down some conclusions about it (just watched Match 1 and 2 so far). Is it playable in a competitive way? So far it seems to me it's not, since Soul Sisters pretty much owned you and that's hardly a serious deck in the metagame. So, how you can improve it? (I'm guessing it needs some better ways to delay fast decks, I'm thinking probably Spell Snare is a better choice for counterspell and a white splash -- in the form of Hallowed Fountains & Azorius Signets over Islands and Izzet Signets -- for some Ghostly Prisons could be needed. Also, your sideboard needs some serious fixing).
Maybe I missed something, but I didn't understand why the Splinter player didn't combo out immediately when he enchanted his exarch.
Also, please get rid of the Alien Queen who's whispering over your microphone. :P
Thank you very much for doing this! I was terribly missing the Tribal Apocalypse reportages!
I want to point out (although I know it's fairly obvious) that my ooze deck used Buried Alive to dump in the graveyard the three extraneous (and not so useful in hand) non-ooze creatures, Kiki-Jiki, Anger and Devoted Druid. The three of them together allow Necrotic Ooze to insta-win, in a way Splinter.dek could only dream of: you can't stop the combo by killing Necrotic, because it would just untap itself and start again.
I just now see how I forgot to change the article's title and tagline. >_< Luckily the placeholders were still appropriate. *embarrassed*
Yeah, Chris, I wish we could get more people to record their matches in the top 8, but I know it must be distracting. Some people also really are adversely affected by the presence of watchers, so I wouldn't want to force that on anyone.
Hey Winter glad to see you at the apocalypse and my apologies for steamrolling you with Sphinges.dec. After the wurms fiasco I just grabbed the deck I liked the most of the endangered species I had on hand. I also had a plants deck (not drazi though) that I skipped over and a spikes deck that I may run at a future event but which isn't quite ready for primetime yet. Keep coming back! Samurai have a tough time but there there are things you can do to make them more competitive.
1) Bring Wrath of God and its ilk. Not only can you cast it but since your guys are relatively cheap it should not take you long to recover assuming you don't overextend.
2) Bring more removal (stps and ptes both)
3) Replace some of the weaker samurai with Mirror Entity. This changeling basically gives you an overrun when you have enough mana and can make even 1 on 1 trades dangerous for your opponent.
4) Forget Kong Ming as flavorful as he is and just use Honor the Pure and its ilk instead.
5) drop your green elements for just red white stuff or get some Krosan Verges to help you find the colors you need. Mana consistency is crucial.
Look at all those watchers in the finals! Players in future seasons should be encouraged to set up their games in TP with a "Classic League" description rather than playing as a challenge, which ends up in the Cas/Cas. This would add more visibility to the league.
Unless watchers could reduce fairness somehow, which would have to be determined.
One model wotc could adopt is to follow the guys at White Wolf. They used to print chase rares in precons and sell them cheap. It stabilized the price overall and the publishers still saw the money from it. My speculation is that big game distributors would be against this since it cuts their profit.
Taking a look at the draft room, 76 events fired in the last 2.5 hours for M12. Starting time of 10:53 to starting time of 1:25. That equates to ~730 drafts a day, but given its Sunday, it is probably somewhat inflated. However it is also a core set (less overall value) and Innistard is a few weeks away, so an estimate of 700 seems fair enough. 3 months, 91.5 days (on average)is 64050 drafts, or 192150 packs. A the big set has 5 months at 3 of, 3 at 2 of and 2 at 1 of, so 320250, 128100, 42700 for a total of 491050 packs of the big set roughly from release to arrival of the summer set. The remaining 15 months lead to 70*30.5*15=32025 packs. Taking the estimate of 135,000 from sealed we have:
491050+32025+135000=658075, meaning 1.974 million uncommons, or ~330,000 of each, 82,500 playsets
I think, and this is just for the sake of argument, that they don't reprint expensive cards because they want some of the cards to be expensive. This makes the game appeal to collectors and gives players a sense of accomplishment or excitement when they finally get that 4x money card set, or get a good deal on a money card, or crack one in a pack (paper only, don't open your mtgo packs!). I think that is what they are after with the game and something they want to maintain.
Plus it could be argued that if they reprinted Wasteland into oblivion, some other card would become the hard to get hoarded money card.
Plus it could be argued that they already do "print money" by having Tempest or Masters drafts a couple times a year and that if those money cards weren't highly sought after, those drafts wouldn't be successful.
Again, just being devil's advocate from what I've pieced together when I've read their comments on the secondary market.
Like the person above me mentioned, I just don't get why Wizards doesn't reprint some of the top dollar cards to make them at least similar to what they are in paper.
I saw somewhere that Wizards Trademarked Cube for something MTGO related, so my hope is they take a lot of money cards, put them into "Cube packs" and allow the players to draft the packs. It'd be just like your normal cube except it will be WotC's cube. If they did something like this, I would honestly draft that set as much as I could. Again like that person above said, they can print money...
I played R/B Bloodthirst to a 3-3 record at FNM last night...its surprising fast. And complete crap, mean it was a penny bin deck. Though volt charge was pretty amazing with bloodthirst and I think it will be pretty good with all the new red vampires as well.
Uhh, we are complaining about artificial scarcity. A card like Force of Will is actually rare enough to demand the price tag, at least online, due to the fact that all of the ME print runs are as rare (should have been uncommon, thanks Wizards!).
I know it isn't being artificially inflated because when ME events run, FOW aren't instantly being sold for 60 tickets, they retain their value. I am sure bots are changing more on FOW than they buy it for, but it isn't being driven up in price like Wasteland or certain other staples, namely duals.
When wasteland is draftable, because it is just an uncommon, it suddenly, magically, a 35 dollar card. Two weeks after the drafts it is usually at 45 or 50 again. When ME drafts were going on, Underground Sea was trading for just above half of what it is at now.
This might have to do with the SCG writer who bought 10k in duals and is pushing up the price, he was very open about it. I'm hoping Wizards reprints more duals to discourage his market manipulation, but they probably won't, and if he is successful it will only encourage more of this in the future. I wouldn't mind a full blown Silver Thursday (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Thursday) because this type of speculation adds nothing to the MTGO community except raise prices and potentially make a few people money.
"There is always some dude in his mom's basement brewing and building decks 24/7, and I think that he will eventually find some crazy way to exploit him, but that is based purely on feeling."
Everyone complains about the prices of cards, but I absolutely love that some cards are expensive. Even if that means I can't play a deck I'd like because I don't have the cards.
Why?
Because I spend a lot of money on this game and it helps mitigate the obsession by the fact that I have a digital bit of 0s and 1s that's worth over $100. Otherwise, I'm just wasting all my money.
If the system changed and all the prices came down, everyone in this discussion would go nuts about how much money they've lost. To me it adds a huge awesome dimension that cards are valuable.
Awesome league Michael!
Can't wait for season 3!
<3,
Zach
When the opponent played exarch on his turn he remanded it. So on his opponents turn, his opponent played exarch then enchanted it with Splinter Twin. Splinter Twin requires you to tap the creature to create tokens so with summoning sickness you can't create infinite tokens. That's why the deck is only viable because the creatures have Flash.
As for the deck, I agree that I think the deck could be improved, funny thing is I remember playing a deck almost exactly like this in Time spiral extended, it was a casual deck nothing serious. It's an awesome deck but I just don't know how good it can be in the future meta.
Also there were bad plays on both sides in the first video, which made me cringe. I haven't watched the rest of the videos so maybe it was just a fluke.
i dont think master warcraft is nearly as good in commander as people think its basically just an overpriced fog
I'm surprised you didn't include master warcraft .
I like this deck, but I'd like for you to write down some conclusions about it (just watched Match 1 and 2 so far). Is it playable in a competitive way? So far it seems to me it's not, since Soul Sisters pretty much owned you and that's hardly a serious deck in the metagame. So, how you can improve it? (I'm guessing it needs some better ways to delay fast decks, I'm thinking probably Spell Snare is a better choice for counterspell and a white splash -- in the form of Hallowed Fountains & Azorius Signets over Islands and Izzet Signets -- for some Ghostly Prisons could be needed. Also, your sideboard needs some serious fixing).
Maybe I missed something, but I didn't understand why the Splinter player didn't combo out immediately when he enchanted his exarch.
Also, please get rid of the Alien Queen who's whispering over your microphone. :P
I think next time I will try scouts!
Thank you very much for doing this! I was terribly missing the Tribal Apocalypse reportages!
I want to point out (although I know it's fairly obvious) that my ooze deck used Buried Alive to dump in the graveyard the three extraneous (and not so useful in hand) non-ooze creatures, Kiki-Jiki, Anger and Devoted Druid. The three of them together allow Necrotic Ooze to insta-win, in a way Splinter.dek could only dream of: you can't stop the combo by killing Necrotic, because it would just untap itself and start again.
I just now see how I forgot to change the article's title and tagline. >_< Luckily the placeholders were still appropriate. *embarrassed*
Yeah, Chris, I wish we could get more people to record their matches in the top 8, but I know it must be distracting. Some people also really are adversely affected by the presence of watchers, so I wouldn't want to force that on anyone.
Hey Winter glad to see you at the apocalypse and my apologies for steamrolling you with Sphinges.dec. After the wurms fiasco I just grabbed the deck I liked the most of the endangered species I had on hand. I also had a plants deck (not drazi though) that I skipped over and a spikes deck that I may run at a future event but which isn't quite ready for primetime yet. Keep coming back! Samurai have a tough time but there there are things you can do to make them more competitive.
1) Bring Wrath of God and its ilk. Not only can you cast it but since your guys are relatively cheap it should not take you long to recover assuming you don't overextend.
2) Bring more removal (stps and ptes both)
3) Replace some of the weaker samurai with Mirror Entity. This changeling basically gives you an overrun when you have enough mana and can make even 1 on 1 trades dangerous for your opponent.
4) Forget Kong Ming as flavorful as he is and just use Honor the Pure and its ilk instead.
5) drop your green elements for just red white stuff or get some Krosan Verges to help you find the colors you need. Mana consistency is crucial.
Look at all those watchers in the finals! Players in future seasons should be encouraged to set up their games in TP with a "Classic League" description rather than playing as a challenge, which ends up in the Cas/Cas. This would add more visibility to the league.
Unless watchers could reduce fairness somehow, which would have to be determined.
Thanks for running the league!
One model wotc could adopt is to follow the guys at White Wolf. They used to print chase rares in precons and sell them cheap. It stabilized the price overall and the publishers still saw the money from it. My speculation is that big game distributors would be against this since it cuts their profit.
Taking a look at the draft room, 76 events fired in the last 2.5 hours for M12. Starting time of 10:53 to starting time of 1:25. That equates to ~730 drafts a day, but given its Sunday, it is probably somewhat inflated. However it is also a core set (less overall value) and Innistard is a few weeks away, so an estimate of 700 seems fair enough. 3 months, 91.5 days (on average)is 64050 drafts, or 192150 packs. A the big set has 5 months at 3 of, 3 at 2 of and 2 at 1 of, so 320250, 128100, 42700 for a total of 491050 packs of the big set roughly from release to arrival of the summer set. The remaining 15 months lead to 70*30.5*15=32025 packs. Taking the estimate of 135,000 from sealed we have:
491050+32025+135000=658075, meaning 1.974 million uncommons, or ~330,000 of each, 82,500 playsets
Good show, guys. I listen every week.
I think, and this is just for the sake of argument, that they don't reprint expensive cards because they want some of the cards to be expensive. This makes the game appeal to collectors and gives players a sense of accomplishment or excitement when they finally get that 4x money card set, or get a good deal on a money card, or crack one in a pack (paper only, don't open your mtgo packs!). I think that is what they are after with the game and something they want to maintain.
Plus it could be argued that if they reprinted Wasteland into oblivion, some other card would become the hard to get hoarded money card.
Plus it could be argued that they already do "print money" by having Tempest or Masters drafts a couple times a year and that if those money cards weren't highly sought after, those drafts wouldn't be successful.
Again, just being devil's advocate from what I've pieced together when I've read their comments on the secondary market.
Like the person above me mentioned, I just don't get why Wizards doesn't reprint some of the top dollar cards to make them at least similar to what they are in paper.
I saw somewhere that Wizards Trademarked Cube for something MTGO related, so my hope is they take a lot of money cards, put them into "Cube packs" and allow the players to draft the packs. It'd be just like your normal cube except it will be WotC's cube. If they did something like this, I would honestly draft that set as much as I could. Again like that person above said, they can print money...
I could easily see that card getting reprinted in Innistrad.
Vein Drinker has fight, she is black
I played R/B Bloodthirst to a 3-3 record at FNM last night...its surprising fast. And complete crap, mean it was a penny bin deck. Though volt charge was pretty amazing with bloodthirst and I think it will be pretty good with all the new red vampires as well.
Yeah, you're right. Which makes a lot more sense since there are obviously more than a few thousands playsets of Scars Uncommons out there.
Uhh, we are complaining about artificial scarcity. A card like Force of Will is actually rare enough to demand the price tag, at least online, due to the fact that all of the ME print runs are as rare (should have been uncommon, thanks Wizards!).
I know it isn't being artificially inflated because when ME events run, FOW aren't instantly being sold for 60 tickets, they retain their value. I am sure bots are changing more on FOW than they buy it for, but it isn't being driven up in price like Wasteland or certain other staples, namely duals.
When wasteland is draftable, because it is just an uncommon, it suddenly, magically, a 35 dollar card. Two weeks after the drafts it is usually at 45 or 50 again. When ME drafts were going on, Underground Sea was trading for just above half of what it is at now.
This might have to do with the SCG writer who bought 10k in duals and is pushing up the price, he was very open about it. I'm hoping Wizards reprints more duals to discourage his market manipulation, but they probably won't, and if he is successful it will only encourage more of this in the future. I wouldn't mind a full blown Silver Thursday (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Thursday) because this type of speculation adds nothing to the MTGO community except raise prices and potentially make a few people money.
I thought it was weird that there were no shops on Manhattan when I visited last time. I never got to Brooklyn, but I did hear of one there...
BTW Paul, sorry about the chat yesterday. The "old friend" conversation ended up going on for hours...
"There is always some dude in his mom's basement brewing and building decks 24/7, and I think that he will eventually find some crazy way to exploit him, but that is based purely on feeling."
ZOMG! NERD RAGE!!!...
J/K..that is one hilarious comment
I'm sorry, can you tell me the score of the game? I forgot who won 8-0 with a pitcher making his 2nd ever major league start.
Actually Alex Shvartsman's store (Kings Games) in Brooklyn is doing well. I keep meaning to visit but I am a procrastinator.
Everyone complains about the prices of cards, but I absolutely love that some cards are expensive. Even if that means I can't play a deck I'd like because I don't have the cards.
Why?
Because I spend a lot of money on this game and it helps mitigate the obsession by the fact that I have a digital bit of 0s and 1s that's worth over $100. Otherwise, I'm just wasting all my money.
If the system changed and all the prices came down, everyone in this discussion would go nuts about how much money they've lost. To me it adds a huge awesome dimension that cards are valuable.