You can complain as much as you like about how Andrea is wrong about some cards being more (or less broken) they are all still banned and there hasn't actually been any real Modern played to figure out if stuff needs to be unbanned.
Also, did you even read the actual deck list for Zoo or did you just look at the pictures ? Because while watchwolf is in the pictures (as an efficient creature, which it absolutely is even if its not as good as goyfs and bob) its NOT in the deck. Seriously. Read the words, don't just look at the pictures.
I thought it was a pretty interesting read myself. Its cool to see a format appearing before our eyes and its impossible to know what its future holds.
Sorry for the late answer, I had a very hard week at work and didn't see I had a new comment.
Anyway, I never said I blame 100% MODO, after all those were my first 2 M12 experiences anyway (I don't play paper), I'm just observing that with the same land-spell proportion I'm getting a suspicious lot of mana issues and it's not unheard of the fact that after a flood you get screwed next game.
As for the draft #1, I realized I had a high curve myself, which is exactly why I kept the first hand; if I already have in hand the right amount of mana from the start I could cast the most part of my cards. I still would have mulled if it was just for the sheer number of lands, but I also had an adept in hand to delay my opponent.
In fact I have a feeling I could win the game if I started drawing business soon enough.
As for game 2 I don't fully understand your reasoning because you suggested to mull game one's hand because I had too much mana and now you say that my curve is high and should have mulled a hand with less mana... That hand was probably the best hand I had all match (much better than third game anyway) because I had a plan for at least 3 turns even without drawing lands: T1 bears, T2 shock or leak or keep if nothing happened, T3 the one I didn't use T2 or keep if nothing happened.
and IF I started drawing lands I had another couple of turns covered with act of treason first to squeeze in as much damage as I could (which is a good idea in an aggro format) and then Frost Breath (hoping my opponent played a second target for max value) and it could even been enough, especially if I drew fling.
I still totally agree on the curve, in fact I became more and more concerned about it the more I drafted M12 and I got definitely better at it.
The fact that you have cards like Sword of the Meek in yellow (should be red), Dread Return and glimpse in green (Red or maybe yellow) and Jace in red (yellow, probably green if Stoneforge stays banned) shows a complete lack of familiarity with the format.
Sword of the Meek drags out games longer than Top, and can be tutored for at instant speed with Gifts Unigiven, not to mention recurred via Academy Ruins/Thopter + an artifact. It will be banned forever, as getting it online completely destroys any aggro deck.
You analysis of Ancestral Vision is completely off. First of all, you have to pay mana to suspend it, and then wait several turns. While you can sort of get around this via cascade, there has never been a competitive cascade deck running ancestral in either old extended, OE, or any other format where they have been legal.
Also, Watchwolf is not part of any metagame that involves Goyf, Bob and Nacatl.
Looking at the draft-sim I didn't get a few of your picks... I picked same colours as you but came in on Red with the first time into P1P9. I tried going Griffin's and had a couple of riders but only 3 grifs by the end of it. So your picks looked a small bit stronger than mine but I wouldn't have been convinced of a huge difference, until I saw you play them. That UB deck was killer, everytime I thought the oponent had you on the run you just draw a solution, or had the guys on the table who had the versatility to bring that solution closer. RW was good, UB was great! First time I've watched gameplay videos (*cough* slow day at work and I could multitask) and I'm hoping to take some of that with me in my next drafts.
As for shows, if you love classic college humour like Animal House - I almost did a hernia watching Blue Mountain State for the first time last week - mate and I did the whole first season in 1 sitting, hysterical.
I was tempted to stop reading as soon as you put Jace in the same section as Skullclamp and Hypergenesis was not there as well.
Then I got to Glimpse on the green light part and it was too hard for me to take the rest of the article seriously.
You obviously haven't researched enough if you really think this kind of thing about the format. Check the data on Overextended and you can see how wrong you are if you are arguing on power level of some cards. Jace was not banned due to being overpowered (or if it is, WotC also did not do enough research - given the banned list they surely haven't tested the format enough, having just rushed it out of the door to effectively "emergency ban" Extended).
I often briefly test new decks/tweaked decks in the TP room before I run it in a daily to see how the hands play out. This is mostly to test the manabase or get a feel for what I'm trying to do.
There are two problems with these rooms I have noticed. The first is, never play against someone who has "single game" instead of "match".
The first reason is people are almost always playing aggressive aggro in these matchups, and make sketchy, unrealistic keeps and will just mulligan/quit if they don't like their hand or draw their second land. There is also no reason to play a standard single game vs Mono Red/Tempered Steel/Kuldotha Rebirth, since the interesting games are always after sideboard.
The second is decks playing cards that aren't good enough for constructed. Whenever I see Jace's Erasure, Augury Owl and Cudgel Troll hit the stack, I say GG and hit concede. I had someone recently Surgical Extraction my T1 Preordain, and T2 Ponder, game 1, and he was a mono white deck.
I think Rage Quitting vs Goblin Grenade is wrong in the TP room, that's a real card. On the other hand, if they Goblin Grenade you after they scry a few to the bottom with Augury Owl, it is a different story.
To quote the spirit of the game from the official website
"
Commander is designed to promote social games of magic.
It is played in a variety of ways, depending on player preference, but a common vision ties together the global community to help them enjoy a different kind of magic. That vision is predicated on a social contract: a gentleman's agreement which goes beyond these rules to includes a degree of interactivity between players. Players should aim to interact both during the game and before it begins, discussing with other players what they expect/want from the game.
House rules or "fair play" exceptions are always encouraged if they result in more fun for the local community.
"
This is why people get mad at Erayo and Sharuum that combos to oblivion by turn 5. It's not in the spirit of the game.
If you play to win in edh, you are in the wrong game.
I agree if I play Erayo it's fun for me. But it's not fun for the rest of the people. That goes against the social contract imo. EDH is a unique format. It was not invented by wotc. It has been and always will be a community based game. To say competitive edh, it's an oxymoron. It's a format specifically not be competitive. If you want those environment in your playgroup, that's fine. However, in an online environment, that's not what players are expecting. Please respect your fellow players by playing with gentlemen's agreement in mind.
I completely agree. When I was playing pauper, I hated seeing storm decks that just went off in a casual room. But this is pretty rare to see since most storm/crazy combo decks were in tournament room.
I stand by what I said about the format being easy to break. A dedicated combo deck will generally be unbeatable in EDH. If you were suddenly going to make 4 man EDH a sanctioned format with prize support, etc, you would find that combo decks would dominate. There are enough tutors to make combo decks very consistent. On the other hand, tutoring for FoW defeats the entire purpose of playing FoW (i.e. that you can play it for no mana).
EDH is different from duel formats, at least in my opinion, because it is a multiplayer format. Generally, winning a game with four players doesn't necessarily mean you had the best made deck or were the best player. Politics will often play a large role in who wins. Because of this, playing with the sole objective of winning misses the point of EDH (once again, this is a subjective thing). Some of the best games of EDH I've played have been ones where I've ended up losing. Despite the end result, those games were interactive and exciting. I would much rather have a game that goes until turn 15 where I lose than a game that goes until turn 5 where I win.
And that was the point I was trying to make: if you would rather have a game where you win on turn 5, then you shouldn't be playing with people who would rather lose on turn 15. A problem from the former group find it's easier to accomplish their goal if they are playing with people from the latter group.
Finally, I don't always have to belong to the turn 15 group. I have several decks that will win on turn 5 or 6 (I was sad to discover that my Animar deck probably belongs in that pile after 3 games ended on turn 5 or 6. I could argue that it's the other people's fault for not having a wrath, but I don't think it's fair to put my opponents in a position where they have one turn to play a WoG or they lose). I will play these decks if everyone comes in expecting good decks to be played, but it's pointless to bring a fast deck to a game where not everyone is playing a deck that can handle it.
UB draft:
P1P4 I'd take the sphinx... a great man and keeps you mono.
P1P7 Monolith IMO
Other than those, I would have considered sniping a few 1drops that were really good for your opponents over some cards that were ~23rd cards for you, but that's not a big deal.
NPH stars in How I Met Your Mother, and he's friggin hilarious too. :-D
I watched the videos 'til the second draft and I have to say you're doing great. And don't worry about "dead air", it's better not to talk and to concentrate on the task at hand than to lose for a misplay. It just kinda feels more...how can I say...intense? And I mean that in a good way, obv. :-) Can't wait to see the rounds of the second draft, the deck seems really good! No spoilers please! XD
@apaulogy
I am SO HAPPY someone else loved the "Dawson crying" - it made my freaking day when I found it... had to share!
@PiDave
AGREE - GoT is amazing! I never read the books so the condensed story line and twists and turns are awesome for me! I never checked out Fringe, but I will do so. How I met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory both sound like shows I could see myself checking out. Which of those shows has Neil Patrick Harris?
@Thisismich
#1 Thanks for stopping by. I really do appreciate your pointed criticism (it is not at all off base - and I will never get better if I don't know where to focus my energy!), and because of comments like yours it gives me something to work on for the next episode, BESIDES winning!
#2 Drafting M12 was a lesson in humility for me. I had dominated previous core set drafting (UW flyers or simply taking the best Card Advantage or Removal) and this set really threw me for a loop. Keep at it and I will GUARANTEE you will see better results. I am anxiously awaiting your next article!
@Tyler
You are a stud. I cannot believe I forgot to mention The Office.... Strangely enough I love Community and Outsourced (but I wouldn't name those as 'favorite shows' - and the Outsourced theme song is so freaking good hahahahhaa). I never watched 30Rock much but I know it is amazing, everyone raves about it. Tell me how I can possibly get into Parks & Rec, I want to give it a shot but it is so off-putting every time I try...
I have to admit that the first impression this article gave me is the same as Pitlord and arthurmauk, then I reconsidered a bit but still... Especially the phrase you used in one of the comments " EDH is a format that can be easily broken if one has that goal. It's up to the community not to have that goal and to avoid players who attempt to break the format."
Well, as someone else pointed out, the concept of fun is highly subjective and by trying to define it you are obviously using YOUR personal feelings on the matter, thus disagreeing with someone else who find extremely funny running his entire deck in one single, very long turn.
In a few words, by saying that he should stop because "it's not fair" you're limiting his experience of the game to bring it closer to YOUR concept of "fun" and that's utterly wrong.
Look, I used to love playing pauper, then I started running into countless affinity and blue storm decks; they were totally NOT fun to play against FOR ME but I never EVER told someone he should never play a certain deck because it was not fun to play against (ok, maybe in some tilty, tired moments, but I was not exactly thinking straight).
I started putting descriptions, in big, colorful fonts but people just ignored them, so, seeing I had no other choice, I stopped playing pauper in the casual rooms. It's a bit sad but this is the Magic Online player base; we have to deal with it.
Stopping is the only power we have over what we think is wrong (see the recent bannings in standard when the player base started dwindling) but it's a double edged sword, we may realize we are alone in it or just too few for the player base to care about.
What we can do is to create groups on the various forums and clans on MODO to group players with the same, or similar concept of fun and play against them. I also like Lord Erman's idea of different rooms, this should help a bit too but telling other people what they should or should not play is a big no-no.
Fringe is so good. Dr. Who is also really solid, and How I Met Your Mother is funny, but not as funny as Modern Family or Parks and Recreation (Season 2-3 at least, season one wasn't for me), the Office, and 30 rock. I actually don't like Community which is weird because a lot of people do. Big Bang Theory is really fun too. The Wire is amazing...
Wow, Zach, thank you for even considering my comment last time!!! In the weekend, after this hell of a week at work (yeah, had to work in august and yeah2, it was supposed to be a dead week... figures...), I will watch the videos FOR SURE.
Thanks again and congrats!!! As you will be able to see (if interested) in my next articles I'm failing hard at being that succesful, even in Swiss :( I surely hope it's all due to mental tiredness and random shuffler hate but I'm starting to doubt it.
Oh well, still having a good time so I won't complain much.
I have been playing around with a remodeled flash build over last couple days and it has performed admirably. One of the problems with the old Flash decks (post restriction) was if you lost the counter war you typically only had reclaim to bring flash back. This was clunky and inefficient. Now we have noxious revival, which has been a house in my testing. EOT Noxious, back into the hand and wammo flash out again. I have been running 3 main and think this is a good number. In addition to noxious we now have yawg will and regrowth to recur as well.(I havent tried regrowth)With the obscene amount of tutoring availibe in the deck (4x mystical, vampiric, demonic, imperial) vault / key is a natural fit for the deck. Tutoring + recursion has made the deck far more reliable then anything I think we have seen before. Be interesting to see if someone can build something that hits the money.
Pyroclasm versus Firespout. With the amount of fish/ GW h8 running around mass removal is definately viable. I got raped by 2 GW h8 last w/e in CQ Open and decided it was time to answer (Ran Oath). As a result I have been running 3 Firespout in sb. They have been awesome against anything running bears. Particulary GW H8, as Zach said "They have no answer".
The reason it is better then pyroclasm is simply to stop Trygons. I think everything else dies to pyroclasm. Spending that 1 extra mana is worth it though as trygon just ruins Oath and Shop. Although I have never tried Firespout against shops, it also kills precursor and Lodestones, which pyroclasm couldn't. Shops won't be setting chalice to 3 to stop them and also won't be expecting them (yes it will be hard to cast Firespout regardless).
Firespout>Pyroclasm
Just on the tv-shows bit, I'll edit later about the draft vids. :D
Game of Thrones is nuts! It's the best show of the 2010/2011 season, stop. As for the other shows I followed with my wife (also a GoT enthusiast): Fringe is the first that comes to mind, excellent storyline and wonderful actors; The Shadow Line ( but this is from BBC ), an incredibly deep hard-boiled story; How I Met Your Mother, best comedy since Friends; Big Bang Theory, because we're geeks. ;-p
Combo is hamstrung in EDH by the Highlander nature of the format. Combo compensates for this with tutors. And the existence of tutors is also the answer to your question... you don't need 10 FoW's or Swords to Plowshares or Oblations or Spin into Myths, you need one and nine tutors.
Additionally, it is usually pretty clear what sort of combo your opponent is attempting to assemble from the get-go. Once you know that, you know the speed of the combo. The fastest player sees the most hate. This in turn benefits slower combos/strategies, so the political/strategic nature of the format can keep fast combo in check.
Dead air is an inevitability when you aren't "actually" talking to anyone. I don't think it is a problem per se, rather a by product of having to think before acting. You are fine. I didn't even mind the land clicking thing, although I can understand the complaints too.
You're good in my opinion and also very entertaining. Your Van Der Beek whining last week was awesome. You use good pics to get things going...Plus, how could you not love a guy who uses Lumberg as his avatar?
are simply some of the best TV available. Big Bang also really good.
+1 x10
You can complain as much as you like about how Andrea is wrong about some cards being more (or less broken) they are all still banned and there hasn't actually been any real Modern played to figure out if stuff needs to be unbanned.
Also, did you even read the actual deck list for Zoo or did you just look at the pictures ? Because while watchwolf is in the pictures (as an efficient creature, which it absolutely is even if its not as good as goyfs and bob) its NOT in the deck. Seriously. Read the words, don't just look at the pictures.
I thought it was a pretty interesting read myself. Its cool to see a format appearing before our eyes and its impossible to know what its future holds.
Sorry for the late answer, I had a very hard week at work and didn't see I had a new comment.
Anyway, I never said I blame 100% MODO, after all those were my first 2 M12 experiences anyway (I don't play paper), I'm just observing that with the same land-spell proportion I'm getting a suspicious lot of mana issues and it's not unheard of the fact that after a flood you get screwed next game.
As for the draft #1, I realized I had a high curve myself, which is exactly why I kept the first hand; if I already have in hand the right amount of mana from the start I could cast the most part of my cards. I still would have mulled if it was just for the sheer number of lands, but I also had an adept in hand to delay my opponent.
In fact I have a feeling I could win the game if I started drawing business soon enough.
As for game 2 I don't fully understand your reasoning because you suggested to mull game one's hand because I had too much mana and now you say that my curve is high and should have mulled a hand with less mana... That hand was probably the best hand I had all match (much better than third game anyway) because I had a plan for at least 3 turns even without drawing lands: T1 bears, T2 shock or leak or keep if nothing happened, T3 the one I didn't use T2 or keep if nothing happened.
and IF I started drawing lands I had another couple of turns covered with act of treason first to squeeze in as much damage as I could (which is a good idea in an aggro format) and then Frost Breath (hoping my opponent played a second target for max value) and it could even been enough, especially if I drew fling.
I still totally agree on the curve, in fact I became more and more concerned about it the more I drafted M12 and I got definitely better at it.
The fact that you have cards like Sword of the Meek in yellow (should be red), Dread Return and glimpse in green (Red or maybe yellow) and Jace in red (yellow, probably green if Stoneforge stays banned) shows a complete lack of familiarity with the format.
Sword of the Meek drags out games longer than Top, and can be tutored for at instant speed with Gifts Unigiven, not to mention recurred via Academy Ruins/Thopter + an artifact. It will be banned forever, as getting it online completely destroys any aggro deck.
You analysis of Ancestral Vision is completely off. First of all, you have to pay mana to suspend it, and then wait several turns. While you can sort of get around this via cascade, there has never been a competitive cascade deck running ancestral in either old extended, OE, or any other format where they have been legal.
Also, Watchwolf is not part of any metagame that involves Goyf, Bob and Nacatl.
Looking at the draft-sim I didn't get a few of your picks... I picked same colours as you but came in on Red with the first time into P1P9. I tried going Griffin's and had a couple of riders but only 3 grifs by the end of it. So your picks looked a small bit stronger than mine but I wouldn't have been convinced of a huge difference, until I saw you play them. That UB deck was killer, everytime I thought the oponent had you on the run you just draw a solution, or had the guys on the table who had the versatility to bring that solution closer. RW was good, UB was great! First time I've watched gameplay videos (*cough* slow day at work and I could multitask) and I'm hoping to take some of that with me in my next drafts.
As for shows, if you love classic college humour like Animal House - I almost did a hernia watching Blue Mountain State for the first time last week - mate and I did the whole first season in 1 sitting, hysterical.
I was tempted to stop reading as soon as you put Jace in the same section as Skullclamp and Hypergenesis was not there as well.
Then I got to Glimpse on the green light part and it was too hard for me to take the rest of the article seriously.
You obviously haven't researched enough if you really think this kind of thing about the format. Check the data on Overextended and you can see how wrong you are if you are arguing on power level of some cards. Jace was not banned due to being overpowered (or if it is, WotC also did not do enough research - given the banned list they surely haven't tested the format enough, having just rushed it out of the door to effectively "emergency ban" Extended).
I often briefly test new decks/tweaked decks in the TP room before I run it in a daily to see how the hands play out. This is mostly to test the manabase or get a feel for what I'm trying to do.
There are two problems with these rooms I have noticed. The first is, never play against someone who has "single game" instead of "match".
The first reason is people are almost always playing aggressive aggro in these matchups, and make sketchy, unrealistic keeps and will just mulligan/quit if they don't like their hand or draw their second land. There is also no reason to play a standard single game vs Mono Red/Tempered Steel/Kuldotha Rebirth, since the interesting games are always after sideboard.
The second is decks playing cards that aren't good enough for constructed. Whenever I see Jace's Erasure, Augury Owl and Cudgel Troll hit the stack, I say GG and hit concede. I had someone recently Surgical Extraction my T1 Preordain, and T2 Ponder, game 1, and he was a mono white deck.
I think Rage Quitting vs Goblin Grenade is wrong in the TP room, that's a real card. On the other hand, if they Goblin Grenade you after they scry a few to the bottom with Augury Owl, it is a different story.
To quote the spirit of the game from the official website
"
Commander is designed to promote social games of magic.
It is played in a variety of ways, depending on player preference, but a common vision ties together the global community to help them enjoy a different kind of magic. That vision is predicated on a social contract: a gentleman's agreement which goes beyond these rules to includes a degree of interactivity between players. Players should aim to interact both during the game and before it begins, discussing with other players what they expect/want from the game.
House rules or "fair play" exceptions are always encouraged if they result in more fun for the local community.
"
This is why people get mad at Erayo and Sharuum that combos to oblivion by turn 5. It's not in the spirit of the game.
If you play to win in edh, you are in the wrong game.
I agree if I play Erayo it's fun for me. But it's not fun for the rest of the people. That goes against the social contract imo. EDH is a unique format. It was not invented by wotc. It has been and always will be a community based game. To say competitive edh, it's an oxymoron. It's a format specifically not be competitive. If you want those environment in your playgroup, that's fine. However, in an online environment, that's not what players are expecting. Please respect your fellow players by playing with gentlemen's agreement in mind.
I completely agree. When I was playing pauper, I hated seeing storm decks that just went off in a casual room. But this is pretty rare to see since most storm/crazy combo decks were in tournament room.
I stand by what I said about the format being easy to break. A dedicated combo deck will generally be unbeatable in EDH. If you were suddenly going to make 4 man EDH a sanctioned format with prize support, etc, you would find that combo decks would dominate. There are enough tutors to make combo decks very consistent. On the other hand, tutoring for FoW defeats the entire purpose of playing FoW (i.e. that you can play it for no mana).
EDH is different from duel formats, at least in my opinion, because it is a multiplayer format. Generally, winning a game with four players doesn't necessarily mean you had the best made deck or were the best player. Politics will often play a large role in who wins. Because of this, playing with the sole objective of winning misses the point of EDH (once again, this is a subjective thing). Some of the best games of EDH I've played have been ones where I've ended up losing. Despite the end result, those games were interactive and exciting. I would much rather have a game that goes until turn 15 where I lose than a game that goes until turn 5 where I win.
And that was the point I was trying to make: if you would rather have a game where you win on turn 5, then you shouldn't be playing with people who would rather lose on turn 15. A problem from the former group find it's easier to accomplish their goal if they are playing with people from the latter group.
Finally, I don't always have to belong to the turn 15 group. I have several decks that will win on turn 5 or 6 (I was sad to discover that my Animar deck probably belongs in that pile after 3 games ended on turn 5 or 6. I could argue that it's the other people's fault for not having a wrath, but I don't think it's fair to put my opponents in a position where they have one turn to play a WoG or they lose). I will play these decks if everyone comes in expecting good decks to be played, but it's pointless to bring a fast deck to a game where not everyone is playing a deck that can handle it.
UB draft:
P1P4 I'd take the sphinx... a great man and keeps you mono.
P1P7 Monolith IMO
Other than those, I would have considered sniping a few 1drops that were really good for your opponents over some cards that were ~23rd cards for you, but that's not a big deal.
Nice draft and huge improvement with the annoying ticks.
NPH stars in How I Met Your Mother, and he's friggin hilarious too. :-D
I watched the videos 'til the second draft and I have to say you're doing great. And don't worry about "dead air", it's better not to talk and to concentrate on the task at hand than to lose for a misplay. It just kinda feels more...how can I say...intense? And I mean that in a good way, obv. :-) Can't wait to see the rounds of the second draft, the deck seems really good! No spoilers please! XD
I was wondering why you mentioned Lumbergh the day I changed it :P
Aziz Ansari and Nick Offerman. Those two are enough to make me watch the show. Especially Nick Offerman (the hypermasculine boss). The guy is classic.
You changed your avatar....
@apaulogy
I am SO HAPPY someone else loved the "Dawson crying" - it made my freaking day when I found it... had to share!
@PiDave
AGREE - GoT is amazing! I never read the books so the condensed story line and twists and turns are awesome for me! I never checked out Fringe, but I will do so. How I met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory both sound like shows I could see myself checking out. Which of those shows has Neil Patrick Harris?
@Thisismich
#1 Thanks for stopping by. I really do appreciate your pointed criticism (it is not at all off base - and I will never get better if I don't know where to focus my energy!), and because of comments like yours it gives me something to work on for the next episode, BESIDES winning!
#2 Drafting M12 was a lesson in humility for me. I had dominated previous core set drafting (UW flyers or simply taking the best Card Advantage or Removal) and this set really threw me for a loop. Keep at it and I will GUARANTEE you will see better results. I am anxiously awaiting your next article!
@Tyler
You are a stud. I cannot believe I forgot to mention The Office.... Strangely enough I love Community and Outsourced (but I wouldn't name those as 'favorite shows' - and the Outsourced theme song is so freaking good hahahahhaa). I never watched 30Rock much but I know it is amazing, everyone raves about it. Tell me how I can possibly get into Parks & Rec, I want to give it a shot but it is so off-putting every time I try...
I have to admit that the first impression this article gave me is the same as Pitlord and arthurmauk, then I reconsidered a bit but still... Especially the phrase you used in one of the comments " EDH is a format that can be easily broken if one has that goal. It's up to the community not to have that goal and to avoid players who attempt to break the format."
Well, as someone else pointed out, the concept of fun is highly subjective and by trying to define it you are obviously using YOUR personal feelings on the matter, thus disagreeing with someone else who find extremely funny running his entire deck in one single, very long turn.
In a few words, by saying that he should stop because "it's not fair" you're limiting his experience of the game to bring it closer to YOUR concept of "fun" and that's utterly wrong.
Look, I used to love playing pauper, then I started running into countless affinity and blue storm decks; they were totally NOT fun to play against FOR ME but I never EVER told someone he should never play a certain deck because it was not fun to play against (ok, maybe in some tilty, tired moments, but I was not exactly thinking straight).
I started putting descriptions, in big, colorful fonts but people just ignored them, so, seeing I had no other choice, I stopped playing pauper in the casual rooms. It's a bit sad but this is the Magic Online player base; we have to deal with it.
Stopping is the only power we have over what we think is wrong (see the recent bannings in standard when the player base started dwindling) but it's a double edged sword, we may realize we are alone in it or just too few for the player base to care about.
What we can do is to create groups on the various forums and clans on MODO to group players with the same, or similar concept of fun and play against them. I also like Lord Erman's idea of different rooms, this should help a bit too but telling other people what they should or should not play is a big no-no.
Fringe is so good. Dr. Who is also really solid, and How I Met Your Mother is funny, but not as funny as Modern Family or Parks and Recreation (Season 2-3 at least, season one wasn't for me), the Office, and 30 rock. I actually don't like Community which is weird because a lot of people do. Big Bang Theory is really fun too. The Wire is amazing...
Wow, Zach, thank you for even considering my comment last time!!! In the weekend, after this hell of a week at work (yeah, had to work in august and yeah2, it was supposed to be a dead week... figures...), I will watch the videos FOR SURE.
Thanks again and congrats!!! As you will be able to see (if interested) in my next articles I'm failing hard at being that succesful, even in Swiss :( I surely hope it's all due to mental tiredness and random shuffler hate but I'm starting to doubt it.
Oh well, still having a good time so I won't complain much.
I have been playing around with a remodeled flash build over last couple days and it has performed admirably. One of the problems with the old Flash decks (post restriction) was if you lost the counter war you typically only had reclaim to bring flash back. This was clunky and inefficient. Now we have noxious revival, which has been a house in my testing. EOT Noxious, back into the hand and wammo flash out again. I have been running 3 main and think this is a good number. In addition to noxious we now have yawg will and regrowth to recur as well.(I havent tried regrowth)With the obscene amount of tutoring availibe in the deck (4x mystical, vampiric, demonic, imperial) vault / key is a natural fit for the deck. Tutoring + recursion has made the deck far more reliable then anything I think we have seen before. Be interesting to see if someone can build something that hits the money.
Pyroclasm versus Firespout. With the amount of fish/ GW h8 running around mass removal is definately viable. I got raped by 2 GW h8 last w/e in CQ Open and decided it was time to answer (Ran Oath). As a result I have been running 3 Firespout in sb. They have been awesome against anything running bears. Particulary GW H8, as Zach said "They have no answer".
The reason it is better then pyroclasm is simply to stop Trygons. I think everything else dies to pyroclasm. Spending that 1 extra mana is worth it though as trygon just ruins Oath and Shop. Although I have never tried Firespout against shops, it also kills precursor and Lodestones, which pyroclasm couldn't. Shops won't be setting chalice to 3 to stop them and also won't be expecting them (yes it will be hard to cast Firespout regardless).
Firespout>Pyroclasm
Enjoyed the podcast guys. Whiffy where's our PTV?
Just on the tv-shows bit, I'll edit later about the draft vids. :D
Game of Thrones is nuts! It's the best show of the 2010/2011 season, stop. As for the other shows I followed with my wife (also a GoT enthusiast): Fringe is the first that comes to mind, excellent storyline and wonderful actors; The Shadow Line ( but this is from BBC ), an incredibly deep hard-boiled story; How I Met Your Mother, best comedy since Friends; Big Bang Theory, because we're geeks. ;-p
Combo is hamstrung in EDH by the Highlander nature of the format. Combo compensates for this with tutors. And the existence of tutors is also the answer to your question... you don't need 10 FoW's or Swords to Plowshares or Oblations or Spin into Myths, you need one and nine tutors.
Additionally, it is usually pretty clear what sort of combo your opponent is attempting to assemble from the get-go. Once you know that, you know the speed of the combo. The fastest player sees the most hate. This in turn benefits slower combos/strategies, so the political/strategic nature of the format can keep fast combo in check.
I was just pointing out how I tackle it.
Dead air is an inevitability when you aren't "actually" talking to anyone. I don't think it is a problem per se, rather a by product of having to think before acting. You are fine. I didn't even mind the land clicking thing, although I can understand the complaints too.
You're good in my opinion and also very entertaining. Your Van Der Beek whining last week was awesome. You use good pics to get things going...Plus, how could you not love a guy who uses Lumberg as his avatar?
Very tempting as I need a platform to vent about classic and establishment now that I've been censored on classicquarter.com
Good cast guys I'll catch up via Skype