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Rakdos Augurmage is Terry Soh I believe. Forgot about him winning. :( And Ranger of Eos! My memory is not the best anymore. Thanks for pointing those up.
Just thought I'd chime in and say that actually, aside from the formatting, the article wasn't unpleasant to read. Has someone gone through and updated it a little? (re: comment concerning no capitalisation, there are definitely capitals in there now!).
I proof read for a living and I can honestly say it can be a mind-numbing task. I have the utmost respect for the time Joshua puts into cleaning the articles. Greatly appreciated!
To be brutally honest and I really mean no disrespect here to those writers whose first language is not English (God knows your English is miles better than my "INSERT 2ND LANGAUGE HERE"), but poor formatting is the least problematic thing about an article and probably the easiest to correct. Getting the grammar wrong or actually getting it right but too right if you know what I mean, e.g. being way to formal or adding extra words that are normally dropped in common conversation, are my biggest bugbears. These are sometimes more annoying that mentally inserting a capital letter at the start of a sentence or a card name. It just trips you up as you read, which can be quite frustrating.
I really liked the deck but I agree with Joshua that a second article would be good. This one doesn't really show the deck off more than to get your appetite wet. I think this feels a little bit like an extended movie trailer and now I'm pretty excited to learn more about the deck and its intricacies.
I have a few questions that come mainly from the comments though.
A) I appreciate that the deck does have a glaringly large weakness to Creeping Corrosion but does anyone actually play that card at the moment? As a rogue strategy the deck seems pretty safe for the time being. If it becomes popular though then I expect that weakness would need addressing? To be honest I'd have thought a worse card to run into would have been Hex Parasite! But still....
B) I appreciate Trinket Mage seems good but I question whether a 3-mana tutor is really worth damaging the manabase for (the ability to play so many utility lands is really sweet!). Also, the mage can only be played for 3 mana meaning it is counterable by mana leak between turns 3 and 6, right when you'll need it to fetch what you want. One advantage of the current approach I see is that all the key elements are cheap (by key I mean those cards that provide the engine of the deck - chalice, key, surge node, and perhaps contagion clasp?)
C) I think you're right with Buried Ruin needing to be in the deck. I think the Glimmerposts seem the weakest of your lands so maybe replace these. How often have you found the extra life to be useful?
D) All Is Dust seems a little overkill? With Karn, Ratchet Bomb, and Lux Cannon do you really need additional removal - especially at 7 mana?!?
E) I simply don't agree that Lodestone Golem is an auto-include. I know the match report above is short but it does seem that the deck relies on Karn quite a bit. Lodestone Golem makes playing Karn that much harder and if the jump from 6 to 7 mana on-time is tough, going 7 to 8 just seems extra risky.
F) I'm struggling to see the benefit of the Culling Dias with so few creatures. Is the plan to sac a critter once and then proliferate it up? It seems extremely slow for anything more than 1-2 cards. Has it been useful to you at all?
G) I have very little to say about cards you can/should replace and I’m probably not the best judge anyway. To be honest, if you stay mono-brown there appears to be very little in the way of different choices to make. Actually, it makes me a little sad that this deck will become unplayable after the next rotation. So short-a-time to shine eh? The only cards I think might be worth considering have been mentioned - Mox Opal and perhaps Mind Slaver. The Mox Opal is the more important as this will make a 3rd turn Karn more likely.. which seems good? :)
Incidentally, you mentioned 3rd turn Karn at the start of your article but I'm struggling to see how to do it - seems to be like one of those Magic puzzles and I'm probably too tired. I'll probably get it eventually but it would be so much easier if you could err, just tell me? :)
Finally, thank you for taking the time to write. It's always nice to get fresh viewpoints. Much appreciated...
Isn't Rakdos Augurmage also somebody's invitational card? Or did i hallucinate that? I have no idea whose face it is, so maybe i just hallucinated it! Wasn't there a Ruel too?
I too miss the MPR mailings. They sort of reminded me to play?
menace13: This will be a 2 part series to commemorate my final significant attempt at achieving something on MTGO. I will now be dedicating time and effort into working life. =(
GrandAdmiral: The 100c Singleton format died because of 2 main reasons. The first being that they changed the weekend challenges into DEs which seemed impossible to fire anymore because of how many of those were around and how unlikely it was for its player base to consolidate everyone into a timeslot.
The second is the general unhappiness of the player base. At the end of last year, players did come together to provide feedback on the bannings. I personally greatly disliked the fact that Sensei's Divining Top was banned. In any case, nothing changed.
Other factors would include the fact that articles on the format stopped coming from the 2 sites the format showed up in, the growing popularity of commander as a format and considering the timing, the lack of 100c Singleton playables from the most anticipated Masters Edition 4 where they banned many cards including Regrowth which essentially brought nothing significant into the format despite being a set with the most potential of doing just that.
Incidentally, Classic faced a major drop in player participation in the tournaments as well but I suspect it is more likely because the scattered timing of the DEs prevented the player base from getting into a tournament. Likewise, standard singleton, a format which was actually played more than 100c Singleton in the previous year, was completely wiped out at the start of the year. The only reason why anyone would know it now would be that it appears in the DE schedule.
These formats were played in the tournaments because the tournaments had the best expected value in the whole system. Now that this is no longer the case, it is less likely for people to want to dedicate time and effort for a non-GP/PT format when they can play something else instead.
I agree with whoever said it up there that Blue would help this deck a lot. Maybe not vast amounts of blue, but definitely trinket mage, maybe 2 or 3 of them. The core of the deck is cheap artifacts and being able to easily tutor for them I think will help the deck a lot. It'll get you a Surge Node or Everflowing Chalice which is pretty much what makes this deck worth playing and at a minimum I would splash for him. I would also add Tezzeret AoB, maybe in the sideboard. For this deck his first ability reads +1, scry 5, draw a card, and his third can just nuke an opponent on turn 5. Also, vedalken infuser would be good for this deck. Being able to add ANOTHER counter to everflowing chalice each turn is beautiful. It also tops up any of the artifacts that come with a set number of counters on them and of course is another step towards firing lux cannon every turn. If anything else were needed to convince me to splash, Steady Progress further adds to the deck. You need draw cards, you have lots of mana to spend and you have lots of counters. It's win/win/win.
Basically, I think the strategy here is awesome. I'm LOVING Lux Cannon as an anti-everything weapon of mass destruction, and Everflowing Chalice as a mana faucet, but I think that to make the most of it you need to have cards in hand to play.
Of course this is just me, and I always wanna run blue if possible, but I do think it adds a lot here. Maybe not ALL of the cards I suggested, but just one or two to get more counters and thus take even better control of the game.
I can beat a good hand from tempered steel. Actually it's not a bad matchup, ratchet bomb is great here. Goblins and RDW are a bigger problem. But claiming ratchet bomb does nothing against most decks? what decks do believe it does nothing against? Against aggro you blow it early. Against U/W usually at 3, hitting swords, o-rings, and jace but sometimes at 2 to wipe hawks. I even did it at 5 killing a gideon and elspeth. Against U/B it can take out artifacts/tezzeret/etc. Against twin you set it to 3 and wait. Pyromancers you set it to 2 and wait. Where is it bad again?
Clasp is likewise good against aggro decks, killing more than a few goblins and almost everything in tempered steel if they don't have steel up yet. and it kills hawks against U/W. not so good against U/B but having a steady proliferate source is always a good thing. It comes out against splinter twin obviously but one deck is hardly the majority of the field.
I have been seriously considering trinket mages, but that requires adding blue. This isn't horrible in itself but it means cutting some of the utility lands. All is dust is also something I want to fit in, but I am not sure what to cut. Any suggestions?
Countermagic tends to be a joke as mana leak just doesn't matter and the decks that run it are slow. I have on turn 3 dropped a chalice for 0 in order to surge node it up. or Chalice on turn 1 (after the node resolves) to avoid the counters. Once chalice starts charging paying an extra 3 is no big deal. With mana you can get enough threats that something will get through the 1-2 deprive they run. Also Lux Cannon and such are great for keeping them off blue mana. Land is my number one target with the cannon.
Discard is a bigger issue but usually manageable. Few decks run much more than inquistion. Hitting chalice hurts but isn't the end of the world. The deck can still just play things off it's land like normal. If going first you can drop chalice for zero to avoid the discard(and counter).
Buried ruin should go in, the deck was built before m12 came out online. Not sure which lands to cut for it yet but I'm thinking about it now.
I was not offended. What I really needed to do was go away for a day and then look at it again. This always makes those little things you don't notice show up. My apologies to everyone for not polishing more. I will try to do better in the future.
I have considered all is dust, but where to fit it in? The deck already has a lot of 6+ drops and if you don't get chalice combo and keep it on the table having a hand of 6 and 7 cost cards is a big problem.
I'd be interested in your thoughts as to why the 100CS format died. I was just getting into it when the events stopped firing. I really enjoyed the format. With the rise of Commander, I don't see why 100CS couldn't be as popular as kind of the single player version (less broken than 1v1 Commander?). The deck construction is surprisingly different, but it's still a big deck with a lot of cool cards and variety to the game play. I always thought it was one of the few constructed formats where there was still room to play a few "fun cards".
Thanks for the positive feedback guys! I hope it looks and feels different than your average tourney article. =)
But, unfortunately: CORRECTION! I made a major gaff in the article regarding Blightsteel Colossus and Phyrexian Metamorph. For some reason, I was thinking Blightsteel was legendary. >_< Sorry for the misinformation. In reality, in Cantripping's match, Metamorph copied Blightsteel and they traded blows.
Zach is finally loud enough! Too bad about Andy, but I'm sure you'll find someone else. This one was short and sweet but crammed full of relevant info. See you next week!
For a person who is not even a little invested in classic (I have 4 duals for example.) I found this a great read. Very nice article. I particularly liked the top 8 facts section.
A community, however small, is really enough for me. There are a lot of different formats played (such as heirloom, legacy tribal) in PRE's that have a good 20 or more people playing with every event. That's enough for to be interested, and enough for the sponsors to keep hosting events.
Unfortunately, there is the whole shared pricing between Modern and Overextended that shoots up the price of a manabase as apaulogy had pointed out, but whoever really just wants to play a different format will play it. That's what I think is one of the real attractions of these PRE's, that players won't be turned off thinking their deck can't "compete" because they can't spend $200+ on a deck.
I am the first person to place Stoneforge in Classic-circa April-May,2010- with Vial Bant. 2 Premier events with the deck and split finals with Merfolk player I beat in Swiss. That means me= Jaffe Joffer, King of Zamunda and not LargerBrandon :P(Coming to America)!
I like that tweet of the week :D
Keep up the good work.
#comments: I believe the site uses some kind of javascript based captcha, but it does not seem very strong against bots. It should not be too difficult to switch to something stronger like recaptcha ( http://www.google.com/recaptcha ). It's free, also.
#internal search: you could also switch to custom google search for that. :-)
#share-like-+1: sharethis.com
I believe these are all "external" javascripts, so they should not count towards site bandwidth usage. The only problem with them is they're all "third-party tools"; they have both pros and cons, so their adoption should be well pondered about.
Those are both correct Josh.
Also TGO aka Bob aka Dark Confidant is in too. Best invitational card by miles yo!
Rakdos Augurmage is Terry Soh I believe. Forgot about him winning. :( And Ranger of Eos! My memory is not the best anymore. Thanks for pointing those up.
Just thought I'd chime in and say that actually, aside from the formatting, the article wasn't unpleasant to read. Has someone gone through and updated it a little? (re: comment concerning no capitalisation, there are definitely capitals in there now!).
I proof read for a living and I can honestly say it can be a mind-numbing task. I have the utmost respect for the time Joshua puts into cleaning the articles. Greatly appreciated!
To be brutally honest and I really mean no disrespect here to those writers whose first language is not English (God knows your English is miles better than my "INSERT 2ND LANGAUGE HERE"), but poor formatting is the least problematic thing about an article and probably the easiest to correct. Getting the grammar wrong or actually getting it right but too right if you know what I mean, e.g. being way to formal or adding extra words that are normally dropped in common conversation, are my biggest bugbears. These are sometimes more annoying that mentally inserting a capital letter at the start of a sentence or a card name. It just trips you up as you read, which can be quite frustrating.
I really liked the deck but I agree with Joshua that a second article would be good. This one doesn't really show the deck off more than to get your appetite wet. I think this feels a little bit like an extended movie trailer and now I'm pretty excited to learn more about the deck and its intricacies.
I have a few questions that come mainly from the comments though.
A) I appreciate that the deck does have a glaringly large weakness to Creeping Corrosion but does anyone actually play that card at the moment? As a rogue strategy the deck seems pretty safe for the time being. If it becomes popular though then I expect that weakness would need addressing? To be honest I'd have thought a worse card to run into would have been Hex Parasite! But still....
B) I appreciate Trinket Mage seems good but I question whether a 3-mana tutor is really worth damaging the manabase for (the ability to play so many utility lands is really sweet!). Also, the mage can only be played for 3 mana meaning it is counterable by mana leak between turns 3 and 6, right when you'll need it to fetch what you want. One advantage of the current approach I see is that all the key elements are cheap (by key I mean those cards that provide the engine of the deck - chalice, key, surge node, and perhaps contagion clasp?)
C) I think you're right with Buried Ruin needing to be in the deck. I think the Glimmerposts seem the weakest of your lands so maybe replace these. How often have you found the extra life to be useful?
D) All Is Dust seems a little overkill? With Karn, Ratchet Bomb, and Lux Cannon do you really need additional removal - especially at 7 mana?!?
E) I simply don't agree that Lodestone Golem is an auto-include. I know the match report above is short but it does seem that the deck relies on Karn quite a bit. Lodestone Golem makes playing Karn that much harder and if the jump from 6 to 7 mana on-time is tough, going 7 to 8 just seems extra risky.
F) I'm struggling to see the benefit of the Culling Dias with so few creatures. Is the plan to sac a critter once and then proliferate it up? It seems extremely slow for anything more than 1-2 cards. Has it been useful to you at all?
G) I have very little to say about cards you can/should replace and I’m probably not the best judge anyway. To be honest, if you stay mono-brown there appears to be very little in the way of different choices to make. Actually, it makes me a little sad that this deck will become unplayable after the next rotation. So short-a-time to shine eh? The only cards I think might be worth considering have been mentioned - Mox Opal and perhaps Mind Slaver. The Mox Opal is the more important as this will make a 3rd turn Karn more likely.. which seems good? :)
Incidentally, you mentioned 3rd turn Karn at the start of your article but I'm struggling to see how to do it - seems to be like one of those Magic puzzles and I'm probably too tired. I'll probably get it eventually but it would be so much easier if you could err, just tell me? :)
Finally, thank you for taking the time to write. It's always nice to get fresh viewpoints. Much appreciated...
Isn't Rakdos Augurmage also somebody's invitational card? Or did i hallucinate that? I have no idea whose face it is, so maybe i just hallucinated it! Wasn't there a Ruel too?
I too miss the MPR mailings. They sort of reminded me to play?
menace13: This will be a 2 part series to commemorate my final significant attempt at achieving something on MTGO. I will now be dedicating time and effort into working life. =(
GrandAdmiral: The 100c Singleton format died because of 2 main reasons. The first being that they changed the weekend challenges into DEs which seemed impossible to fire anymore because of how many of those were around and how unlikely it was for its player base to consolidate everyone into a timeslot.
The second is the general unhappiness of the player base. At the end of last year, players did come together to provide feedback on the bannings. I personally greatly disliked the fact that Sensei's Divining Top was banned. In any case, nothing changed.
Other factors would include the fact that articles on the format stopped coming from the 2 sites the format showed up in, the growing popularity of commander as a format and considering the timing, the lack of 100c Singleton playables from the most anticipated Masters Edition 4 where they banned many cards including Regrowth which essentially brought nothing significant into the format despite being a set with the most potential of doing just that.
Incidentally, Classic faced a major drop in player participation in the tournaments as well but I suspect it is more likely because the scattered timing of the DEs prevented the player base from getting into a tournament. Likewise, standard singleton, a format which was actually played more than 100c Singleton in the previous year, was completely wiped out at the start of the year. The only reason why anyone would know it now would be that it appears in the DE schedule.
These formats were played in the tournaments because the tournaments had the best expected value in the whole system. Now that this is no longer the case, it is less likely for people to want to dedicate time and effort for a non-GP/PT format when they can play something else instead.
I agree with whoever said it up there that Blue would help this deck a lot. Maybe not vast amounts of blue, but definitely trinket mage, maybe 2 or 3 of them. The core of the deck is cheap artifacts and being able to easily tutor for them I think will help the deck a lot. It'll get you a Surge Node or Everflowing Chalice which is pretty much what makes this deck worth playing and at a minimum I would splash for him. I would also add Tezzeret AoB, maybe in the sideboard. For this deck his first ability reads +1, scry 5, draw a card, and his third can just nuke an opponent on turn 5. Also, vedalken infuser would be good for this deck. Being able to add ANOTHER counter to everflowing chalice each turn is beautiful. It also tops up any of the artifacts that come with a set number of counters on them and of course is another step towards firing lux cannon every turn. If anything else were needed to convince me to splash, Steady Progress further adds to the deck. You need draw cards, you have lots of mana to spend and you have lots of counters. It's win/win/win.
Basically, I think the strategy here is awesome. I'm LOVING Lux Cannon as an anti-everything weapon of mass destruction, and Everflowing Chalice as a mana faucet, but I think that to make the most of it you need to have cards in hand to play.
Of course this is just me, and I always wanna run blue if possible, but I do think it adds a lot here. Maybe not ALL of the cards I suggested, but just one or two to get more counters and thus take even better control of the game.
Great article Michael,
The profiling of the players was pretty cool.
I enjoyed playing in season 1, and am looking forward to season 2.
Now to figure out what I am going to play.
Thanks again, for orchestrating this.
I received no message from you? But I would be happy to write a follow up.
I can beat a good hand from tempered steel. Actually it's not a bad matchup, ratchet bomb is great here. Goblins and RDW are a bigger problem. But claiming ratchet bomb does nothing against most decks? what decks do believe it does nothing against? Against aggro you blow it early. Against U/W usually at 3, hitting swords, o-rings, and jace but sometimes at 2 to wipe hawks. I even did it at 5 killing a gideon and elspeth. Against U/B it can take out artifacts/tezzeret/etc. Against twin you set it to 3 and wait. Pyromancers you set it to 2 and wait. Where is it bad again?
Clasp is likewise good against aggro decks, killing more than a few goblins and almost everything in tempered steel if they don't have steel up yet. and it kills hawks against U/W. not so good against U/B but having a steady proliferate source is always a good thing. It comes out against splinter twin obviously but one deck is hardly the majority of the field.
I have been seriously considering trinket mages, but that requires adding blue. This isn't horrible in itself but it means cutting some of the utility lands. All is dust is also something I want to fit in, but I am not sure what to cut. Any suggestions?
Countermagic tends to be a joke as mana leak just doesn't matter and the decks that run it are slow. I have on turn 3 dropped a chalice for 0 in order to surge node it up. or Chalice on turn 1 (after the node resolves) to avoid the counters. Once chalice starts charging paying an extra 3 is no big deal. With mana you can get enough threats that something will get through the 1-2 deprive they run. Also Lux Cannon and such are great for keeping them off blue mana. Land is my number one target with the cannon.
Discard is a bigger issue but usually manageable. Few decks run much more than inquistion. Hitting chalice hurts but isn't the end of the world. The deck can still just play things off it's land like normal. If going first you can drop chalice for zero to avoid the discard(and counter).
Buried ruin should go in, the deck was built before m12 came out online. Not sure which lands to cut for it yet but I'm thinking about it now.
I was not offended. What I really needed to do was go away for a day and then look at it again. This always makes those little things you don't notice show up. My apologies to everyone for not polishing more. I will try to do better in the future.
I have considered all is dust, but where to fit it in? The deck already has a lot of 6+ drops and if you don't get chalice combo and keep it on the table having a hand of 6 and 7 cost cards is a big problem.
I'd be interested in your thoughts as to why the 100CS format died. I was just getting into it when the events stopped firing. I really enjoyed the format. With the rise of Commander, I don't see why 100CS couldn't be as popular as kind of the single player version (less broken than 1v1 Commander?). The deck construction is surprisingly different, but it's still a big deck with a lot of cool cards and variety to the game play. I always thought it was one of the few constructed formats where there was still room to play a few "fun cards".
Thanks for the positive feedback guys! I hope it looks and feels different than your average tourney article. =)
But, unfortunately: CORRECTION! I made a major gaff in the article regarding Blightsteel Colossus and Phyrexian Metamorph. For some reason, I was thinking Blightsteel was legendary. >_< Sorry for the misinformation. In reality, in Cantripping's match, Metamorph copied Blightsteel and they traded blows.
Zach is finally loud enough! Too bad about Andy, but I'm sure you'll find someone else. This one was short and sweet but crammed full of relevant info. See you next week!
For a person who is not even a little invested in classic (I have 4 duals for example.) I found this a great read. Very nice article. I particularly liked the top 8 facts section.
and that may be enough to carry it.
Very cool seeing the profiles. The event sounded awesome. Congrats to everyone.
A community, however small, is really enough for me. There are a lot of different formats played (such as heirloom, legacy tribal) in PRE's that have a good 20 or more people playing with every event. That's enough for to be interested, and enough for the sponsors to keep hosting events.
Unfortunately, there is the whole shared pricing between Modern and Overextended that shoots up the price of a manabase as apaulogy had pointed out, but whoever really just wants to play a different format will play it. That's what I think is one of the real attractions of these PRE's, that players won't be turned off thinking their deck can't "compete" because they can't spend $200+ on a deck.
Inquisition taking Nodes or Chalice would ensure that wouldn't happen. Ratchet Bomb for 0 or 1 seems good too...
tbc Round1 vs me was a default Win. But a real good shot at the Metagame never the less!
thx to MMogg for making this happen, was a blast to play!
I felt like the deck needed basics against Merfolk- mostly swamp- and 4 Deeds. Same things we spoke about on client.
Nice article, I always enjoyed your writing- even on 100c and i never play the format-. Hope to see you writing more. GL!
I am the first person to place Stoneforge in Classic-circa April-May,2010- with Vial Bant. 2 Premier events with the deck and split finals with Merfolk player I beat in Swiss. That means me= Jaffe Joffer, King of Zamunda and not LargerBrandon :P(Coming to America)!
If i could post pics here you would see my Lion drapped around me. http://www.operatorchan.org/t/arch/src/t164240_King%20Jaffe%20Joffer.jpg
Whiffy- your volume is too low or Zach has his too high. Idk which.