My biggest fault in articles is the lack of pictures most of the time. I enjoy writing, but I kind of hate tweaking with too many pictures. Decklists I understand due to functionality, so I do them most of the time, but pictures are an area I need to improve on.
I love when people give list instructions that end in profit!!!
It is like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
brown paper packages tied up with string
those are a few of my favorite things.
In the article editor there is a row of icons that you can press to do various things. One of those icons creates a linked tag (which displays a link + the label you give it) and an img tag (which you give the url of the image you want to display.) So the following is a step by step list of how to do it:
go to gatherer.wizards.com
search for the card you want an image of
right click to view the image
copy the url of that image
click the button in the article editor (rich text) that shows a little planet
Insert the url in the proper place and add in any alt text you desire
We hit bad patches but just need to persevere from the downswing and understand what mistakes we made. Will run good in time to come. I'm always between swimming and drowning, got used to it. xD
I would have like to see how you actually rated it. I think your talking points are fine, but rating on a scale of 1-5 or something for each card would have been helpful to see what you mean by "awesome". I think rating in terms of the limited environment would have been fine too.
Also, Mayor of Avarbuck seems like the nuts in both...
you should have pushed the issue, I HATE cheaters..especially when older players cheat younger ones or new ones..despicable.. but don't be too hard on yourself, at least you son learned that some people are like that and perhaps next time he will question things when he doesn't know or understand(no such thing as a stupid question...etc...etc). I'm sure he still had a pretty good time, if anything going with his dad to a common interest event is always a good thing...my son is only 6 at this point, so magic for him is still a few years away, but I look forward to it.
Great analysis of a very misunderstood common. I have been recently trying to rid myself of my remaining m12 packs, but I keep doing well in Sealed events. Anyway, one of the reasons is because I saw some using the Combust/Deathmark/Plummet trick that you highlight here. I was like, "Oh, he knows he is going to loot those away." I started to do the same thing. I find myself using them more often than I thought I would.
I think one of the problems of pushing the pre-releases down to the individual stores is that it has made the whole thing a bit more chaotic. The old pre-releases could be hard to get to (I had to drive down from Cleveland to Columbus, which is about 2.5 hours, which was a significant deterrent) but at least you could count on fairly solid organization and reasonably qualified judges that were readily available. The store where I was playing was having a simultaneous Yu-gi-oh event, and was absolutely packed, and the only judge was the guy running the store, who was managing both events while running the store. I saw the foil mayor card when I finished my game and went over to watch my son, and asked if that was the pre-release card. The guy denied it. A turn or so later it was in the graveyard, and we were probably past the point where it could have been raised as an issue, but by then I realized that even if he'd opened a foil of the mayor, it would have been different artwork and therefore he was definitely cheating. I could have pushed the issue, and kind of wish I had, but there was only one pack on the line and given what a madhouse the place was it probably wasn't worth pursing. Besides, I'd been giving my son a lot of play advice during the second half of his last game, which probably wasn't completley kosher either. In any case, if I ever take my son to another pre-release (he's 13 now) I think it had better be a basic set, and I should not play myself so I can watch out for him a little better.
I thought it was a good article. I hate the "wall of text" complaint I
see so much of on here. I guess they come from people who don't read many
books.
The mythics I faced just warped the game every time they hit the table.
I know there are answers for them, but good luck having an answer when you
need it.
I ran a low curve and didn't have problems with casting a spell of some kind
every turn (even if it's just Rally the Peasants to avoid a flip).
It worked in my favor when my opponent would intentionally fail to play a spell
in order to get a flip. Putting a transformed werewolf back in his hand or on
top of his library was often backbreaking for them.
The flip cards weren't as bad as some people thought they would be, but
they definitely were clunky. This was especially noticeable if someone
forgot to flip the cards back and resleeve them prior to the next game/match.
I have to take up for Thraben Sentry/Thraben Militia. The one I had was a
house all day. It made for a great combat trick with Stitcher's Apprentice.
Attack with the Sentry as a 2/2, then use the Apprentice's ability and flip the
Sentry after blockers have been assigned. It just wrecked people every time
I did it. (By the way, the Apprentice's ability paired very nicely with my two
Unruly Mobs.)
That is pretty rough. How on earth was the guy not DQ'd! I was able to do some nice trades: Foil Mayor + token for Evil Twin (which is slightly in his favor, but I wanted the Twin quite a bit!), the GB dual + the bloodgift Demon for a Scalding Tarn which had a funny story:
I was opening my packs during sealed construction and a guy said "Ohh I want that dual!" He also seemed excited by another card or two in the pool, so once it was over I asked if he wanted to trade. He said he did and I asked if he was interested in trading any Zendikar fetches.
"Well, I value one at like FOUR of that land, so..." he said kind of laughingly. I dug through the other cards and he saw the demon and said, "Oh that's the one. Yea, I'd do a Tarn for those two cards."
Unfortunately, I don't know how to easily link to Gatherer cards and I'm just not going to manually link every card to WTC. I should have had some pictures I guess, but the sortable spoiler it up already, so I don't feel too terrible about it.
Nice to see some early Innistrad action. Links for the cards would have been nice, as already noted, since we're all still getting used to these cards. I was at a pre-release this weekend (went 3:1 with a black/red deck) and my impression was that the set was fairly complex and that a bad draw against flip cards could result in your very rapid demise. If you can't play a spell in turn two or three, you can get your face smashed very fast. Remembering if someone had cast a spell in the last turn for werewolf flipping was also an extra headache; I look forward to MTGO keeping track of that for me. My son came along and put together a deck for his first pre-release. It took some radical rebuiling by me between rounds to get it into decent shape as a blue/black zombie/frankenstein deck, but it was nice to have him along. I was irritated that in his last round he played a guy who was using the pre-release foil in his deck (I could have DQ'd him on this if I'd been there earlier) and then forced a draw through delaying tactics. Not exactly the best experience for a new player being introduced to the game, unfortunately.
Unfortunately, countering a spell on your opponents turn flips the Mayor back down on your turn, so he'll never get the token. EDIT: He flips if one player played 2 spells, my mistake. You're right.
The Bloodline Keeper shouldn't have been printed, imo. Even without the transform ability he's undercosted. He makes an army for free and then makes it huge.
I hope they print more transform cards in the next 3 sets. For all the controversy, they were really fun on release day and it would be a shame if this card type stopped getting support after only a dozen in existence.
I wonder if mayor/howlpack might be playable in some kind of U/G control deck? I'm basically thinking of dropping the mayor, and then playing nothing much except countermagic. The fact that you will barely ever be playing anything on your own turn should mean it flips fairly consistently, and once it does, it will work a bit like goyf, in that it's a 2-mana guy who should win the game single handedly.
I think it's an idea worth fiddling with anyway (and I will definitely be naming the deck ROAR-go!).
I only had a couple of flippers in my sealed pool, but gastaf shepherd was the nuts for me all day. Villagers of estwald was very meh, there are plenty of high toughness guys in this set, and it spent most of it's time crashing into fortress crabs.
Civilized scholar is nuts in sealed, so I completely disagree with you there. The flipping is randomly useful, but I think you're evaluating a deck trying to flip it, when most times I saw it in play people were avoiding flipping it. The trick is to use it at the end of the opponent's 2nd main, so if you flip it into the silly 5/1, it will immediately flip back during the end step.
I understand if the links are not up on mtgotraders yet, but they are in gatherer. Without linked cards this article is gibberish to those who have not played with the set yet. A giant wall of text, no pics, no links is not helpful when describing cards most have not seen yet.
I understand most of your reasoning, but I only partly agree for multiple reasons:
- The souleater: it's true that I can cast it any time I have 5 mana on the board but without paying the mana cost of the ability is just a normal 3/3; in an all-in infect deck it's true that you don't care much about life totals but going down 2 every attack phase is not something I like to do. Also the souleater is much easier to remove being either non-black and an artifact.
- Black: I disagree, in infect I find that way too often quantity matters more than quality and basically there is a point where one more infecter is one more thing to block. I ended a lot of games being in infect simply by playing one more attacker than he could block.
Also, by having most of my infect on evasive guys could mean that even a T9 stinger could be deadly.
With that plan in mind black was actually more than a splash and that's why I added 4 swamps instead of 3.
- Draw luck: I partly agree. Match 2 I totally agree, starting both times with a swamp AND the stinger was just nuts but the rest of the tournament my draws were exactly as I expected. As I already pointed out, I had a fairly balanced curve and that meant being able to cast something whatever mana color I started with most of the time (with the exception of a mono-colored hand, see M1G1, all I could do was play the rot wolf but then just one more mana of whatever color helped me develop my board anyway).
The delayed corrupter was a lucky bonus but I can only imagine getting worse by adding another 3cmc GG dude (the courier).
I am a little confused. In round 4, game 1 you discard Dakmor and want to dredge it back to hand. Why not discard the grave troll and just play dakmor? That way you get more cards into graveyard.
You could try any of the Izzet legends. Each of those guys are different from most commanders with Green in them that you should have fun. In addition you could pick any of the legends from my "25 Unloved Commanders" article. It's in my archives, article 49. There are a lot of unusual legends in there to take a look at. They aren't your typical power guys but they do provide deck building challenges. Good luck!
My biggest fault in articles is the lack of pictures most of the time. I enjoy writing, but I kind of hate tweaking with too many pictures. Decklists I understand due to functionality, so I do them most of the time, but pictures are an area I need to improve on.
I love when people give list instructions that end in profit!!!
It is like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
brown paper packages tied up with string
those are a few of my favorite things.
lololol
Been practicing with Hive Mind and UB control (imagine that!)
We should test. I always say that.
underpants!
In the article editor there is a row of icons that you can press to do various things. One of those icons creates a linked tag (which displays a link + the label you give it) and an img tag (which you give the url of the image you want to display.) So the following is a step by step list of how to do it:
LOL. Such an animal.
We hit bad patches but just need to persevere from the downswing and understand what mistakes we made. Will run good in time to come. I'm always between swimming and drowning, got used to it. xD
I would have like to see how you actually rated it. I think your talking points are fine, but rating on a scale of 1-5 or something for each card would have been helpful to see what you mean by "awesome". I think rating in terms of the limited environment would have been fine too.
Also, Mayor of Avarbuck seems like the nuts in both...
Nice job.
your books don't have lots of pictures and colors in them???? how dare you.....
(all sarcasm, just fyi) :-)
you should have pushed the issue, I HATE cheaters..especially when older players cheat younger ones or new ones..despicable.. but don't be too hard on yourself, at least you son learned that some people are like that and perhaps next time he will question things when he doesn't know or understand(no such thing as a stupid question...etc...etc). I'm sure he still had a pretty good time, if anything going with his dad to a common interest event is always a good thing...my son is only 6 at this point, so magic for him is still a few years away, but I look forward to it.
3, he went for a quickie
Got dropped from an NMS draft over the weekend because of this. Hey I thought I had time.
You just run good.
Glad to see you are swimming and not drowning.
Great analysis of a very misunderstood common. I have been recently trying to rid myself of my remaining m12 packs, but I keep doing well in Sealed events. Anyway, one of the reasons is because I saw some using the Combust/Deathmark/Plummet trick that you highlight here. I was like, "Oh, he knows he is going to loot those away." I started to do the same thing. I find myself using them more often than I thought I would.
Good insight.
I think one of the problems of pushing the pre-releases down to the individual stores is that it has made the whole thing a bit more chaotic. The old pre-releases could be hard to get to (I had to drive down from Cleveland to Columbus, which is about 2.5 hours, which was a significant deterrent) but at least you could count on fairly solid organization and reasonably qualified judges that were readily available. The store where I was playing was having a simultaneous Yu-gi-oh event, and was absolutely packed, and the only judge was the guy running the store, who was managing both events while running the store. I saw the foil mayor card when I finished my game and went over to watch my son, and asked if that was the pre-release card. The guy denied it. A turn or so later it was in the graveyard, and we were probably past the point where it could have been raised as an issue, but by then I realized that even if he'd opened a foil of the mayor, it would have been different artwork and therefore he was definitely cheating. I could have pushed the issue, and kind of wish I had, but there was only one pack on the line and given what a madhouse the place was it probably wasn't worth pursing. Besides, I'd been giving my son a lot of play advice during the second half of his last game, which probably wasn't completley kosher either. In any case, if I ever take my son to another pre-release (he's 13 now) I think it had better be a basic set, and I should not play myself so I can watch out for him a little better.
I thought it was a good article. I hate the "wall of text" complaint I
see so much of on here. I guess they come from people who don't read many
books.
The mythics I faced just warped the game every time they hit the table.
I know there are answers for them, but good luck having an answer when you
need it.
I ran a low curve and didn't have problems with casting a spell of some kind
every turn (even if it's just Rally the Peasants to avoid a flip).
It worked in my favor when my opponent would intentionally fail to play a spell
in order to get a flip. Putting a transformed werewolf back in his hand or on
top of his library was often backbreaking for them.
The flip cards weren't as bad as some people thought they would be, but
they definitely were clunky. This was especially noticeable if someone
forgot to flip the cards back and resleeve them prior to the next game/match.
I have to take up for Thraben Sentry/Thraben Militia. The one I had was a
house all day. It made for a great combat trick with Stitcher's Apprentice.
Attack with the Sentry as a 2/2, then use the Apprentice's ability and flip the
Sentry after blockers have been assigned. It just wrecked people every time
I did it. (By the way, the Apprentice's ability paired very nicely with my two
Unruly Mobs.)
That is pretty rough. How on earth was the guy not DQ'd! I was able to do some nice trades: Foil Mayor + token for Evil Twin (which is slightly in his favor, but I wanted the Twin quite a bit!), the GB dual + the bloodgift Demon for a Scalding Tarn which had a funny story:
I was opening my packs during sealed construction and a guy said "Ohh I want that dual!" He also seemed excited by another card or two in the pool, so once it was over I asked if he wanted to trade. He said he did and I asked if he was interested in trading any Zendikar fetches.
"Well, I value one at like FOUR of that land, so..." he said kind of laughingly. I dug through the other cards and he saw the demon and said, "Oh that's the one. Yea, I'd do a Tarn for those two cards."
There's no understanding people!
Unfortunately, I don't know how to easily link to Gatherer cards and I'm just not going to manually link every card to WTC. I should have had some pictures I guess, but the sortable spoiler it up already, so I don't feel too terrible about it.
Nice to see some early Innistrad action. Links for the cards would have been nice, as already noted, since we're all still getting used to these cards. I was at a pre-release this weekend (went 3:1 with a black/red deck) and my impression was that the set was fairly complex and that a bad draw against flip cards could result in your very rapid demise. If you can't play a spell in turn two or three, you can get your face smashed very fast. Remembering if someone had cast a spell in the last turn for werewolf flipping was also an extra headache; I look forward to MTGO keeping track of that for me. My son came along and put together a deck for his first pre-release. It took some radical rebuiling by me between rounds to get it into decent shape as a blue/black zombie/frankenstein deck, but it was nice to have him along. I was irritated that in his last round he played a guy who was using the pre-release foil in his deck (I could have DQ'd him on this if I'd been there earlier) and then forced a draw through delaying tactics. Not exactly the best experience for a new player being introduced to the game, unfortunately.
Unfortunately, countering a spell on your opponents turn flips the Mayor back down on your turn, so he'll never get the token. EDIT: He flips if one player played 2 spells, my mistake. You're right.
The Bloodline Keeper shouldn't have been printed, imo. Even without the transform ability he's undercosted. He makes an army for free and then makes it huge.
I hope they print more transform cards in the next 3 sets. For all the controversy, they were really fun on release day and it would be a shame if this card type stopped getting support after only a dozen in existence.
Video of Round 3
23:30 you should discard the Sun Titan keeping land, land, troll,Imp, Wispmare
14:06 you should have Firestorm pitching everything but Wispmare.
I wonder if mayor/howlpack might be playable in some kind of U/G control deck? I'm basically thinking of dropping the mayor, and then playing nothing much except countermagic. The fact that you will barely ever be playing anything on your own turn should mean it flips fairly consistently, and once it does, it will work a bit like goyf, in that it's a 2-mana guy who should win the game single handedly.
I think it's an idea worth fiddling with anyway (and I will definitely be naming the deck ROAR-go!).
I only had a couple of flippers in my sealed pool, but gastaf shepherd was the nuts for me all day. Villagers of estwald was very meh, there are plenty of high toughness guys in this set, and it spent most of it's time crashing into fortress crabs.
Civilized scholar is nuts in sealed, so I completely disagree with you there. The flipping is randomly useful, but I think you're evaluating a deck trying to flip it, when most times I saw it in play people were avoiding flipping it. The trick is to use it at the end of the opponent's 2nd main, so if you flip it into the silly 5/1, it will immediately flip back during the end step.
I understand if the links are not up on mtgotraders yet, but they are in gatherer. Without linked cards this article is gibberish to those who have not played with the set yet. A giant wall of text, no pics, no links is not helpful when describing cards most have not seen yet.
I understand most of your reasoning, but I only partly agree for multiple reasons:
- The souleater: it's true that I can cast it any time I have 5 mana on the board but without paying the mana cost of the ability is just a normal 3/3; in an all-in infect deck it's true that you don't care much about life totals but going down 2 every attack phase is not something I like to do. Also the souleater is much easier to remove being either non-black and an artifact.
- Black: I disagree, in infect I find that way too often quantity matters more than quality and basically there is a point where one more infecter is one more thing to block. I ended a lot of games being in infect simply by playing one more attacker than he could block.
Also, by having most of my infect on evasive guys could mean that even a T9 stinger could be deadly.
With that plan in mind black was actually more than a splash and that's why I added 4 swamps instead of 3.
- Draw luck: I partly agree. Match 2 I totally agree, starting both times with a swamp AND the stinger was just nuts but the rest of the tournament my draws were exactly as I expected. As I already pointed out, I had a fairly balanced curve and that meant being able to cast something whatever mana color I started with most of the time (with the exception of a mono-colored hand, see M1G1, all I could do was play the rot wolf but then just one more mana of whatever color helped me develop my board anyway).
The delayed corrupter was a lucky bonus but I can only imagine getting worse by adding another 3cmc GG dude (the courier).
I am a little confused. In round 4, game 1 you discard Dakmor and want to dredge it back to hand. Why not discard the grave troll and just play dakmor? That way you get more cards into graveyard.
This deck is untested yet but looks like it will be fun. I did fish with it and liked the results.
1 Summoning Trap
1 Repopulate
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Yavimaya Granger
1 Masked Admirers
1 Verdant Force
1 Thelonite Hermit
1 Acidic Slime
1 Harmonize
1 Thicket Elemental
1 Triskelion
1 Genesis Wave
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Citanul Flute
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Momentous Fall
1 Mycosynth Wellspring
1 Essence Warden
1 Howl of the Night Pack
1 Wickerbough Elder
1 Indrik Stomphowler
1 Dramatic Entrance
1 Journeyer's Kite
1 Thopter Assembly
1 Nullmage Shepherd
1 Citanul Hierophants
1 Sylvan Tutor
1 Yavimaya Elder
1 Regrowth
1 Praetor's Counsel
1 Loaming Shaman
1 Jade Mage
1 Life from the Loam
1 Primal Command
1 Bosk Banneret
1 Arachnus Web
1 Krosan Tusker
1 Orochi Eggwatcher
1 Vigor
1 Kodama's Reach
1 Duplicant
1 Sporogenesis
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Triskelavus
1 Expedition Map
1 Arachnus Spinner
1 Beast Within
1 Ichor Wellspring
1 Kazandu Tuskcaller
1 Mul Daya Channelers
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Clone Shell
1 Sylvok Replica
1 Keeper of the Beasts
1 Journey of Discovery
1 Gelatinous Genesis
1 Gigantomancer
1 Sylvok Lifestaff
1 Artisan of Kozilek
1 Krosan Grip
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Far Wanderings
1 Strength of the Tajuru
1 Spine of Ish Sah
1 Khalni Garden
1 Naya Panorama
1 Quicksand
1 Mishra's Factory
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
1 Slippery Karst
1 Stalking Stones
1 Buried Ruin
1 Gargoyle Castle
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Temple of the False God
1 Mystifying Maze
1 Phyrexia's Core
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Llanowar Reborn
19 Forest
Sideboard
1 Sachi, Daughter of Seshiro
You could try any of the Izzet legends. Each of those guys are different from most commanders with Green in them that you should have fun. In addition you could pick any of the legends from my "25 Unloved Commanders" article. It's in my archives, article 49. There are a lot of unusual legends in there to take a look at. They aren't your typical power guys but they do provide deck building challenges. Good luck!