hmm, intersting. i played against affinity in DEs at least 3 times and never saw any dispatch. And i did not lose a single game where i played kataki. i tried hurkyl's recall in your previous mono blue cloudpost deck and did not help me at all, maybe it is better in this version but i still prefer kataki
Thinking about your Grand Architect deck. What about:
Mindbreak Trap (I haven't seen RB Grapeshot playing Thoughtseize)
Boomerang (like Remand for lands)
Vedalken Shackles (bad against primeval titans, good against zoos)
Lightning Greaves (Protect Pili-Pala and get his ability going faster)
Play Haakon and some "knights" (changelings) in your dredge list. :D
Also, I doubt they'll ban blazing shoal, but I wouldn't be surprised if they banned pact of negation. Pact is almost entirely used to push through a combo on the turn you win, so banning it is a great way to tone down combo a notch.
Overall though, I think just banning cloudpost might have enough of a snowball effect; it would make control viable, which would make combos worse (especially the "charbelcher-type" combos), which would balance the metagame.
Yeah that was probably my fault as I transcribed Whiffy's responses and probably either misread or didn't think what Yawg's meant not being a classic player myself. And looking at my notes I see that I indeed transcribed the wrong one. Thanks for the belated correction.
Paul, Melira Pod most of the time only plays Acidic Slime but Torpor Orb shuts it down (as seen in game two). I only fear their discard spells, which can sometimes cause serious problems.
I actually believe I showed good decks in the article. You have Ascension Combo here, you have Breachpost, Doran, Melira Pod, Mono Red... the only two decks missing here are Zoo and Splinter Twin. As a matter of fact I played a lot against Zoo but all that action happened between what I called stage one and stage two in the article. All those losses against Zoo (as well as Infect Shoal) led to the second version of the deck.
I'm pretty happy with the deck as of now because the deck has answers to all kinds of decks one would expect to play against. The only thing is to have the right answer in hand at the right time against the right opponent. Having Torpor Orb against Ascension Combo is useless as is having Sudden Shock against Breachpost. But for that I have Jace and Preordain.
One last thing: I don't believe Hurkyl's Recall is a bad card against Affinity. I tried Kataki as well but that's why they have their Dispatch or other removal. They expect Kataki and are prepared. But Hurkyl's Recall is a different story. From my experience I can tell you exactly, that a timely Hurkyl's Recall sets them back AT LEAST two turns. And that's all I need to gain board advantage.
Hey LE some tips for smoother recording.
1. project your voice. 2. test your mic before you record with a program like audacity wearing headphones so you can hear how it sounds. 3. do not move away from the mic while speaking. (this is the main attraction for headsets over standing mics or mics attached to the monitor.) 4. perhaps record the sound separately (using audacity for example) and work on the sound quality afterward in the editor.
I enjoyed the game against Melira pod. I was fairly certain you were done in the 3rd game but he never played anything to get rid of the orb which surprised me greatly.
You could definitely work on being a little more aggressive with your tech edges when the situation allows for it.
In the soul sisters matchup you could have used the Sudden Shocks on the Martyrs to keep the Serra Ascendants as meager 1/1's since they cannot sacrifice in response.
Granted you'll likely only get away with it once as they'd just hold priority for the sacrifice after that but it could still slow them down and increases your chances of winning vs less skilled players.
As for Torpor Orb, I kinda like the idea of using something like Wormfang Manta with it.
If you were running a sacrifice outlet and Mimic Vat you could time walk the rest of the game.
Yeah I felt the same way watching the Doran match. I've only gotten passed the Doran video so far, but as of right now I've only seen him use the tectonic edge once, and it was against mono red when the guy had 4 lands already. The doran match up for instance, he could have easily used it multiple ways.
I like the first decklist a lot but I think eater of days needs to be something else. You sideboard it out all the time and your more consistent win condition seems to be Planeswalkers controlling the board while you swing in with tokens, or the man land. The combo just seems slow, and I'd hate to have that card in my hand and not draw a turpor orb.
Edit: I'm stupid I didn't realize the second list was his adjustments. I saw he removed Eater of Days :P Ignore that.
welcome back. i was really waiting for this article. i have tried all kinds of decks and still did not settle with any so far. i like your idea but deck looks vulnerable. you have a very soft lock win condition and if you do not draw torpor orb you are dead in most games. the match ups you play above are all subpar decks. you need to run a gauntlet against countercat (blue zoo), splinter twin, breachpost, and mono u infect. Also hurkyl's recall is useless against artifacts. they just replay everything back. I suggest engineered explosives or better kataki's war wage
techtonic is also very slow, i prefer ghost quarter
man, I loved these but there were a ton play mistakes.
Like g1 vs. breach post, you see mountains, so you know he's breachpost not regular 12post, then you play a second orb. Well whats the worst case scenario? Playing through the breach and you saccing 6 permanents. And you played right into it.
Right after this, he had 4 lands in play and you had tec edge and mana for it up. Instead of destroying one of his cloudposts you sack them to emrakul.
Also against pyro acesion, when you are alpha striking, you give your token +3/+3 and flying instead of your colonade. Any burn spell(bolt, punishing fire) gives him another turn.
Game one against doran; he attacks your elspeth with goyf and dyrad arbor, and you let elspeth just die!!!!!( to goyf). You should have activated colonade and blocked the arbor with it, and chumped blocked the goyf with the token. You can make a token every turn and hell never get through to elspeth w/o additional resources. Whats your token gona do anyway? play pattycake with sculler and goyf?
Yea, I forgot to mention that in the article. It's actually only the first 5 picks or so, in the middle of recording I realized my draft so I changed the borders, by pack 2 the whole pack is visible.
Thanks for the videos. Always appreciated. Just a quick reminder: When you take batterskull to hand and are planning to drop it with Stoneforge, you ALWAYS activate Stoneforge first, keep priority and respond with returning batterskull. It might not be super relevant vs Merfolk, but decks with more removal can respond to batterskull trigger and kill the Stoneforge, and Batterskull remains stuck in your hand.
I saw one misplay that on camera @ SCG Open.. Bummer
Did 2 NMS drafts last night - very proud of both of them... got great cards and value for my collection and put together 2 very competent decks. Both drafts I won first 4 games and failed in the final (mix of not-great-luck and coming against a better player).
I know that Overextended had information, but the DEs tuned the format much more quickly. Plus I like to tweak people if I can :).
I think we can see some unbannings, but the point I was getting at was how can we unban control cards that won't immediately just go into combo decks anyway.
LSV (aka the best in the world and much more relevant than Zvi, who, while a brilliant mind, doesn't play that much at a PT level anymore):
"It was a good trip, and our first exposure to what I think is a very good format."
In fact, most complaints about the format end up like Todd Anderson from his last article:
"Just to give you an example of how hostile the format was, the StarCityGames.com booth at the event sold 40 copies of Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker on the Friday before the tournament."
What? The format is hostile because a 2/2 for five that is part of a combo is in the format?????
Or this gem:
"Don't let Blazing Shoal be a real card in Modern. Please, for the love of the game, just let me cast Stoneforge Mystic and call it a day"
Basically, the ones who got blown out complained about the format a lot while the ones who didn't have a terrible tourney seemed to enjoy Modern.
Ahah yes MODO, the ever niggling demon that keeps coming back to upset noobs and irritate nitpickers! :p
OK I will keep this in mind for future articles. It is really just a habit and for consistency's sake. Probably a bad idea. I am not sure it is such a bad name but I understand that not being official it might confuse newcomers.
Great interview, Paul, keep bringing this level of goodness!
Just one nitpick, or actually a favor I'm asking you with all my heart (not just to you, to every author actually): stop calling it MODO. I know it's what it was called back in the times, so you probably are accustomed to that name. But it has not been officially called like that in years (and it was a bad name to begin with, to be honest, not reflecting the way the paper game is called). And this site is called PureMTGO, not PureMODO. I assure you, seen from the point of view of someone who didn't experience it, it's unintentionally smug-sounding.
Also, it's for clarity purposes. I befriended a couple MTGO noobs recently, directed them to this site, and they both came back after a while asking me what's MODO. One of them even understood MODO is another available client you can use to play the game, and asked me where he could find it! :)
hmm, intersting. i played against affinity in DEs at least 3 times and never saw any dispatch. And i did not lose a single game where i played kataki. i tried hurkyl's recall in your previous mono blue cloudpost deck and did not help me at all, maybe it is better in this version but i still prefer kataki
Thinking about your Grand Architect deck. What about:
Mindbreak Trap (I haven't seen RB Grapeshot playing Thoughtseize)
Boomerang (like Remand for lands)
Vedalken Shackles (bad against primeval titans, good against zoos)
Lightning Greaves (Protect Pili-Pala and get his ability going faster)
Play Haakon and some "knights" (changelings) in your dredge list. :D
Also, I doubt they'll ban blazing shoal, but I wouldn't be surprised if they banned pact of negation. Pact is almost entirely used to push through a combo on the turn you win, so banning it is a great way to tone down combo a notch.
Overall though, I think just banning cloudpost might have enough of a snowball effect; it would make control viable, which would make combos worse (especially the "charbelcher-type" combos), which would balance the metagame.
Yeah that was probably my fault as I transcribed Whiffy's responses and probably either misread or didn't think what Yawg's meant not being a classic player myself. And looking at my notes I see that I indeed transcribed the wrong one. Thanks for the belated correction.
I was expecting quasali pridemages from the sb.
Thanks everybody for the comments.
Paul, Melira Pod most of the time only plays Acidic Slime but Torpor Orb shuts it down (as seen in game two). I only fear their discard spells, which can sometimes cause serious problems.
I actually believe I showed good decks in the article. You have Ascension Combo here, you have Breachpost, Doran, Melira Pod, Mono Red... the only two decks missing here are Zoo and Splinter Twin. As a matter of fact I played a lot against Zoo but all that action happened between what I called stage one and stage two in the article. All those losses against Zoo (as well as Infect Shoal) led to the second version of the deck.
I'm pretty happy with the deck as of now because the deck has answers to all kinds of decks one would expect to play against. The only thing is to have the right answer in hand at the right time against the right opponent. Having Torpor Orb against Ascension Combo is useless as is having Sudden Shock against Breachpost. But for that I have Jace and Preordain.
One last thing: I don't believe Hurkyl's Recall is a bad card against Affinity. I tried Kataki as well but that's why they have their Dispatch or other removal. They expect Kataki and are prepared. But Hurkyl's Recall is a different story. From my experience I can tell you exactly, that a timely Hurkyl's Recall sets them back AT LEAST two turns. And that's all I need to gain board advantage.
Thanks again for all the comments.
LE
Just to note, Yawg Will is still Restricted in Classic. I'm sure you wanted to enter Yawg Bargain instead.
Hey LE some tips for smoother recording.
1. project your voice. 2. test your mic before you record with a program like audacity wearing headphones so you can hear how it sounds. 3. do not move away from the mic while speaking. (this is the main attraction for headsets over standing mics or mics attached to the monitor.) 4. perhaps record the sound separately (using audacity for example) and work on the sound quality afterward in the editor.
I enjoyed the game against Melira pod. I was fairly certain you were done in the 3rd game but he never played anything to get rid of the orb which surprised me greatly.
You could definitely work on being a little more aggressive with your tech edges when the situation allows for it.
In the soul sisters matchup you could have used the Sudden Shocks on the Martyrs to keep the Serra Ascendants as meager 1/1's since they cannot sacrifice in response.
Granted you'll likely only get away with it once as they'd just hold priority for the sacrifice after that but it could still slow them down and increases your chances of winning vs less skilled players.
As for Torpor Orb, I kinda like the idea of using something like Wormfang Manta with it.
If you were running a sacrifice outlet and Mimic Vat you could time walk the rest of the game.
"I also loved the antoni de rosa's deck. i would prolly play it in modern if i had the cards."
Please do! :)
Yeah I felt the same way watching the Doran match. I've only gotten passed the Doran video so far, but as of right now I've only seen him use the tectonic edge once, and it was against mono red when the guy had 4 lands already. The doran match up for instance, he could have easily used it multiple ways.
I like the first decklist a lot but I think eater of days needs to be something else. You sideboard it out all the time and your more consistent win condition seems to be Planeswalkers controlling the board while you swing in with tokens, or the man land. The combo just seems slow, and I'd hate to have that card in my hand and not draw a turpor orb.
Edit: I'm stupid I didn't realize the second list was his adjustments. I saw he removed Eater of Days :P Ignore that.
welcome back. i was really waiting for this article. i have tried all kinds of decks and still did not settle with any so far. i like your idea but deck looks vulnerable. you have a very soft lock win condition and if you do not draw torpor orb you are dead in most games. the match ups you play above are all subpar decks. you need to run a gauntlet against countercat (blue zoo), splinter twin, breachpost, and mono u infect. Also hurkyl's recall is useless against artifacts. they just replay everything back. I suggest engineered explosives or better kataki's war wage
techtonic is also very slow, i prefer ghost quarter
man, I loved these but there were a ton play mistakes.
Like g1 vs. breach post, you see mountains, so you know he's breachpost not regular 12post, then you play a second orb. Well whats the worst case scenario? Playing through the breach and you saccing 6 permanents. And you played right into it.
Right after this, he had 4 lands in play and you had tec edge and mana for it up. Instead of destroying one of his cloudposts you sack them to emrakul.
Also against pyro acesion, when you are alpha striking, you give your token +3/+3 and flying instead of your colonade. Any burn spell(bolt, punishing fire) gives him another turn.
Game one against doran; he attacks your elspeth with goyf and dyrad arbor, and you let elspeth just die!!!!!( to goyf). You should have activated colonade and blocked the arbor with it, and chumped blocked the goyf with the token. You can make a token every turn and hell never get through to elspeth w/o additional resources. Whats your token gona do anyway? play pattycake with sculler and goyf?
cheers
Yea, I forgot to mention that in the article. It's actually only the first 5 picks or so, in the middle of recording I realized my draft so I changed the borders, by pack 2 the whole pack is visible.
"Seems alright"
That's clearly what will be on your epitaph one day. But hopefully not for a long time because I enjoy these daily event vids. Thanks a lot.
I was immediately impressed with this deck. Torpor Orb and Eater of Days. I PM'd you after I watched and complimented you for this. Great work!!!
Have you tried the "hunted" creatures at all?
Hey Whiffy
Thanks for the videos. Always appreciated. Just a quick reminder: When you take batterskull to hand and are planning to drop it with Stoneforge, you ALWAYS activate Stoneforge first, keep priority and respond with returning batterskull. It might not be super relevant vs Merfolk, but decks with more removal can respond to batterskull trigger and kill the Stoneforge, and Batterskull remains stuck in your hand.
I saw one misplay that on camera @ SCG Open.. Bummer
I would like to chat via email or something so we can let these threads die.
apaulogy@gmail.com
you game?
Did 2 NMS drafts last night - very proud of both of them... got great cards and value for my collection and put together 2 very competent decks. Both drafts I won first 4 games and failed in the final (mix of not-great-luck and coming against a better player).
Love to hear your thoughts:
#1 - http://www.raredraft.com/watch?d=2wat4
#2 - http://www.raredraft.com/watch?d=2w99q
Really loving the NMS draft now, and feel like I'm really getting the hang of it. Both drafts did seem to have quite a few new players.
Thanks for the info on Sam's strategy. Thanks for the props too.
I know that Overextended had information, but the DEs tuned the format much more quickly. Plus I like to tweak people if I can :).
I think we can see some unbannings, but the point I was getting at was how can we unban control cards that won't immediately just go into combo decks anyway.
LSV (aka the best in the world and much more relevant than Zvi, who, while a brilliant mind, doesn't play that much at a PT level anymore):
"It was a good trip, and our first exposure to what I think is a very good format."
In fact, most complaints about the format end up like Todd Anderson from his last article:
"Just to give you an example of how hostile the format was, the StarCityGames.com booth at the event sold 40 copies of Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker on the Friday before the tournament."
What? The format is hostile because a 2/2 for five that is part of a combo is in the format?????
Or this gem:
"Don't let Blazing Shoal be a real card in Modern. Please, for the love of the game, just let me cast Stoneforge Mystic and call it a day"
Basically, the ones who got blown out complained about the format a lot while the ones who didn't have a terrible tourney seemed to enjoy Modern.
I still play Legacy! 80)
Ahah yes MODO, the ever niggling demon that keeps coming back to upset noobs and irritate nitpickers! :p
OK I will keep this in mind for future articles. It is really just a habit and for consistency's sake. Probably a bad idea. I am not sure it is such a bad name but I understand that not being official it might confuse newcomers.
Thanks for the compliment.
Great interview, Paul, keep bringing this level of goodness!
Just one nitpick, or actually a favor I'm asking you with all my heart (not just to you, to every author actually): stop calling it MODO. I know it's what it was called back in the times, so you probably are accustomed to that name. But it has not been officially called like that in years (and it was a bad name to begin with, to be honest, not reflecting the way the paper game is called). And this site is called PureMTGO, not PureMODO. I assure you, seen from the point of view of someone who didn't experience it, it's unintentionally smug-sounding.
Also, it's for clarity purposes. I befriended a couple MTGO noobs recently, directed them to this site, and they both came back after a while asking me what's MODO. One of them even understood MODO is another available client you can use to play the game, and asked me where he could find it! :)
Np. Have fun! (^^)