In Round 2, Game 1, why do you Arrest the Blighted Agent? It's several (six? seven) turns away from killing you and no impediment to your attackers, which he'll have to block long before you reach a worrying amount of poison.
Wow, thanks a lot for the bulk reply. I really appreciate it.
And, I really don't disagree with a thing you said. I made a ton of iffy picks, and have learned more about the format since then. This draft was mostly a learning experience (do everything wrong and try not to repeat it). :)
Oh, and, I'm not playing techno (or any music) in the background. I'm not sure what that sound is.
The reason it is not "play if able" is because that phrase is used for things that would need targets. Look at Omen Machine. Notice it can cast instants and sorceries. It needs the "if able" clause because if I show an Unsummon and there are no creatures in play, than I cannot play it. You still have to obey standard magic rules of needing to declare targets in order to cast a spell.
You make a good point about black not being able to cheat things. However, that is the whole concept behind color bleed. Just because it has never done it, doesn't mean it can't. Most of the time, when black does not pay mana costs its for instants and sorceries, much like red; think Yawg's Will and its clones. We have seen black abandon its deck entirely in cards like Colfiner's Plans. It is not too far of a stretch to think that it might be able to cheat permanents into play.
It is interesting that you mentioned it being U/B as that was originally where I had cost it in my head. Something like 3UB, however, since I said this was aiming for a core set released (M12), gold cards usually don't appear in core set, so I had to pick one color and go with it. If I wanted to make this entirely blue, that last ability would most likely need to be changed.
For your question about drawing at the beginning of your upkeep, the answer is no. A careful reading of the card notices that it doesn't play with the top card revealed, it triggers a reveal on upkeep. That means it only triggers once. Yes, at the end of your opponent's turn you could pay a bunch of life to draw cards to rig the top of your deck with something like Divining Top, but I already pointed that out in the article. The ability will trigger on upkeep and you can put only ONE thing into play. Even if you respond to the trigger (with Top or drawing), you'll still only put one thing into play.
You raise an interesting point that I wasn't able to address in the article. I should have gone more into color bleed.
1) This card has 3 abilities. Two of which are clearly black (not drawing cards and paying life to draw cards), one which is debatable.
2) That ability is NOT green. Green does look at the top card of its deck and can manipulate the top card of the deck, but there are very few cards (aside from Bloodline Shaman and Leafcrown Elder) that can put a card directly into play. Most often, green just puts creatures into play for free. Killer Instinct can, but it's paired with Red. Why? Because red is the color of Sneak Attack. The same can be said for Impromptu Raid. In a sense you could count Game Preserve, but it requires all players to meet the condition in order to work. As is Lurking Predators.
3) The second ability is clearly blue, as it has many many many cards that do that, which is where the bleed comes from blue.
4) As for the bleed into red, I mentioned Warpworld and Galvanoth. Add to that Sneak Attack, Impromptu Raid, Through the Breach, and Wild Evocation. Also, red is the color of Chaos, which this card adds to the game. The other cards mentioned here also can add large amounts of chaos to the game which is why they ended up in red, especially warpworld and wild evocation. It does things the game is not supposed to do.
All in all, this card SHOULD have been an artifact, but the point was to get it onto an enchantment. I could see how this COULD be green blue. The ability to pay life would have to change, but it could easily be reworked into blue/green with a minor amount of tweaking.
1. You are way overating blind zealot. As you can tell it is really bad against any deck with artifacts, and lots of time your oponent doesnt have anything worth killing. Its basically a worse parsitic implant and commits you to black. third pick is way too early. That being said i think the 2nd pick is the membrane to keep you open.
2. Pick 4 I would not have taken the razor swine. It is obivously good in a niche role. ie infect/verses infect. But you are not infect at this point and in your opening pack you passed a fallen ferromancer and a volt charge. Pack two could be miserable for you, In terms of red. That being said, I would have either taken forced worship, or the pristine talisman to keep yourself open. The choice would to slam the spire monitor and try to cut blue off in pack 2 so you get the return picks in pack three when your opponents to your right move out of it cuz its getting cut. VERY VERY VERY risky line of play. It already seems like blue is getting cut at this point the draft from your right.
3. Pick 7, you realize you havent seen one good black card, but continue to take the zealot anyway/ which sucks see above. Also at this point you are grosssly misunderestimating mutagenic growth. It is absoultly disgusting with razor swines in play. And with your flying, molten dragon it can protect him from dismember, metlacrafted gal. blast and turn to slag an grasp.
4. pick 8, another wasted pick, you passed so many white cards, and also did not see many white cards. your not gona get white p2, p3. Pestilint souleater is perfctly playable and good with a pinons. Conversion chamber is slow but can win if given enough time. AND PLAYable in any deck you draft.
5. pick 9, your eyes light up like a lil kid who sees his new fav. toy window shopping and wants it. You take a second shriekwrapter which your not gona play. Apostles blessing here is a gift going that late and is playable in any deck you should have took it and left yourself open. Let me say that if you had tooken any of those blindig souleaters and forced worship these picks would have been ok. But you already passed too much white to be in white.
6. Ahh pack 2 pick1. You gfft here. I dont like it your not black, your deck sucks and you need to be aggressive to win. Piston sledge is the best pick for you. sledge-up razor swine yes please.
7. ahhh, end of pack 2, and as I stated above you did not see one playable white card, no leonin skyhunters, relicwarders, burn the impures, or priests of norn.
8. Also all of those wasted mutagenic growths and the apostles bessing would have been pretty sick with what you got right now.
9. AND cough cough piston sledge on flensmite or septic rates!!!!!!!!!!!!! cmon mannnnn
10. pack 3. The pick is 100% stider harness. You are infect with tons of slower drops. +1+1 on an infecter is nothing to sneeze at. Also the format is more aggressive so being able to drop harness and get in for an unforseen amount of damage is invauble for you deck espicially with the lack of reach it has. Might is good but not worthe effing up your mana base and might be able to get one later.
11. pack3 pick 2, im not sure on this one. I would have takent he scrapmelter, just for the sure fact hes a two for one and you dont have any others at this point. cur is 2-1 one but recuring a shitty infect guy is not as good as killing your openents best artifact dude.
12. gold myr pick is horrible, panic spellbomb is the pick all the way, you didnt even mention it mayb you didnt see it idk.
Final thoughts, your deck was pretty bad but could have been solid. Those wasted picks in pack one really hurt you. aLso you were very unlucky to not see a pinons or a plauge stinger.
No problem. My goal is to improve as a writer and to try and provide the best content that I can. In this area I do need some improvement.
The problem is that I only want to write when I have something that I think is relevant and original ideas are hard to come up with. There are already many authors here who provide video articles and draft rundowns so I do not want to tread in that area, but I do reserve the right to change my mind.
Thanks for the context. Makes more sense now shame the article was truncated due to STD developments but that's hard to mitigate. I only speak up as I want puremtgo to be the best it can be and for authors to improve. All the best Hammer
Yes, but he probably wanted to stop my team or trade with my Legionnaire. If he had a hand full of five drops or higher, that would be the plan. Judging from the way he played and the fact that he kept drawing cards after the concession, I think that was the case.
with some of hammer's comments, but now knowing that you went into Legacy "blind" does help put things in perspective some. It is a huge format and taking a known decklist and making a few edits is time consuming enough, let alone if you were to play out the dozens upon dozens of games it takes to understand the format and deck you are playing. Gotta love writing deadlines..lol
I appreciate the criticism and do see your point. I originally wrote the article and submitted it June 10th. This is not that entire article.
I did want to discuss the changes I made to the deck after testing it in the queues, but that was not enough to write an entire article. When I first built the deck I had no "real" clue as to what Legacy was really about. It was after playing the deck for awhile that I learned quite a bit about the format and wanted to share that. Perhaps I failed in that regards as, apparently, it was not very clear in the article. It turns out that conveying your thoughts can be quite challenging at times.
In the article, I had written about the state of Standard and my opinions on where Standard was going. This also included my thoughts on the potential bannings. The article did not get posted before June 20 and the editors asked me if I wanted to change the obsolete Standard portion. I put a lot of time on the article and did not want to just let it go, but perhaps I should have.
I have no real way to write about any new Legacy tech at the moment as the Jace purchases ate away at some of my funds.
With the "fixing" of Standard I do intend on playing more of that, but I am not going to abandon Legacy.
I am known for my honest here so please dont let this put you off writing on the site again, with that said..
I dont like this article. It seems rushed and half baked with random comments thrown in without any evidence of testing or eventing. I am not sure who your target audience is, or what you expect them to gain/take home from this article. I think you need to thing about the direction of this article series. At the moment it is nothing more than some edited tweaked net decks and a few pictures of iconic magic cards.
Good luck with your future foray into legacy and follow-up articles.
Ouch to round one opponent: In game 2 shouldn't they have copied your Melira with their Metamorph? Doesn't Metamorph copy all characteristics of Melira, including legendary creature status?
With my removal I wasn't too concerned about the Arbalest. The Outcast is defenseless to most removal, so it was a gamble either way. But, I payed a high cost for the Outcast and this was the situation for which I drafted him.
I, too, was concerned about the lousy mana, but I had one game to play with, having won the first. If I lost game 2, I probably would have changed up the deck quite a bit more.
I agree with this. I would have thought it should cost something like 2GGBB or perhaps 3GUB? I don't really see where it's bleeding from red.
Should the drawing cards only be allowed to occur during your upkeep? That clause has been stapled on all of the necropotence clones i can remember, and is probably for good reason. As is, this thing plays out like an ad-nauseum which can also just plop out emrakul's for the lulz.
I've only watched up to the side-boarding after game 1 of first match. I understand the rationale of re-tooling deck to fight infect. I'm concerned that Melira's weak against the Arbalest, and the Green/White "splashes" will really test your mana.
Have stuff to do, so will watch remainder tonight. I see by the video count that you make round 3, so all must go well.
Author is rather fresh MTG player (have less then 2 years of experience).
So, huge amount of mistakes is OK.
Bad thing is that he does not notice his mistakes after long time spent on editing videos.
The picture with your daughter is really cool. I just gave my two and a half year old daughter some Magic cards with simple artwork (Ovinize, Grizzly Bears, Ronom Unicorn) to get her started. She really likes looking at the cards, so I'm hoping that will translate into kitchen table games in the future.
Nice job on the decks. They look cool and it was fun to see the work that went into creating them.
love it as usual Zach but i think peeps are a bit to judge mental on your post and i think some peeps need to try and do their own post. glad your back doing post and wtg on the force i never get that lucky lol.
I know I'm no the best player, but I tried to break Blood Moon and resoundingly failed. Maybe I'll revist it with Chaos Warp, but I think Dunkle had the best analysis and was spot on with my experience piloting the deck: it sucks on the draw and Lotus Petals wreck it. Sure sometimes I just "oops I win" because they can't answer the Blood Moon, but more often than not it was just not strong enough. I also think my biggest problem was not establishing a fast enough clock. I'd like to see better Braumeisters come up with something nice. Another thought is a Goblin Wleder/Painter combo based Blood Moon deck.
Consider this for a second. DotP was put out in order to increase exposure to the game with people who game but don't play Magic yet (or quit). It is an entry-level product meant to bring in new people. When a new player makes the switch from DotP to Magic Online, they will expect to be able to play similar cards to what they played on DotP. In paper they have the option of shelling out hundreds of dollars for power - or they may turn to Magic Online, if power is available there... it would seem like a good setup for Wizards to release power online in a draftable set with the advent of V4, just after DotP has whet everyone's appetite, therefore for this reason it will not happen
In Round 2, Game 1, why do you Arrest the Blighted Agent? It's several (six? seven) turns away from killing you and no impediment to your attackers, which he'll have to block long before you reach a worrying amount of poison.
Wow, thanks a lot for the bulk reply. I really appreciate it.
And, I really don't disagree with a thing you said. I made a ton of iffy picks, and have learned more about the format since then. This draft was mostly a learning experience (do everything wrong and try not to repeat it). :)
Oh, and, I'm not playing techno (or any music) in the background. I'm not sure what that sound is.
I don't see any replies.
The reason it is not "play if able" is because that phrase is used for things that would need targets. Look at Omen Machine. Notice it can cast instants and sorceries. It needs the "if able" clause because if I show an Unsummon and there are no creatures in play, than I cannot play it. You still have to obey standard magic rules of needing to declare targets in order to cast a spell.
You make a good point about black not being able to cheat things. However, that is the whole concept behind color bleed. Just because it has never done it, doesn't mean it can't. Most of the time, when black does not pay mana costs its for instants and sorceries, much like red; think Yawg's Will and its clones. We have seen black abandon its deck entirely in cards like Colfiner's Plans. It is not too far of a stretch to think that it might be able to cheat permanents into play.
It is interesting that you mentioned it being U/B as that was originally where I had cost it in my head. Something like 3UB, however, since I said this was aiming for a core set released (M12), gold cards usually don't appear in core set, so I had to pick one color and go with it. If I wanted to make this entirely blue, that last ability would most likely need to be changed.
For your question about drawing at the beginning of your upkeep, the answer is no. A careful reading of the card notices that it doesn't play with the top card revealed, it triggers a reveal on upkeep. That means it only triggers once. Yes, at the end of your opponent's turn you could pay a bunch of life to draw cards to rig the top of your deck with something like Divining Top, but I already pointed that out in the article. The ability will trigger on upkeep and you can put only ONE thing into play. Even if you respond to the trigger (with Top or drawing), you'll still only put one thing into play.
You raise an interesting point that I wasn't able to address in the article. I should have gone more into color bleed.
1) This card has 3 abilities. Two of which are clearly black (not drawing cards and paying life to draw cards), one which is debatable.
2) That ability is NOT green. Green does look at the top card of its deck and can manipulate the top card of the deck, but there are very few cards (aside from Bloodline Shaman and Leafcrown Elder) that can put a card directly into play. Most often, green just puts creatures into play for free. Killer Instinct can, but it's paired with Red. Why? Because red is the color of Sneak Attack. The same can be said for Impromptu Raid. In a sense you could count Game Preserve, but it requires all players to meet the condition in order to work. As is Lurking Predators.
3) The second ability is clearly blue, as it has many many many cards that do that, which is where the bleed comes from blue.
4) As for the bleed into red, I mentioned Warpworld and Galvanoth. Add to that Sneak Attack, Impromptu Raid, Through the Breach, and Wild Evocation. Also, red is the color of Chaos, which this card adds to the game. The other cards mentioned here also can add large amounts of chaos to the game which is why they ended up in red, especially warpworld and wild evocation. It does things the game is not supposed to do.
All in all, this card SHOULD have been an artifact, but the point was to get it onto an enchantment. I could see how this COULD be green blue. The ability to pay life would have to change, but it could easily be reworked into blue/green with a minor amount of tweaking.
is there techno playing in the backround?
1. You are way overating blind zealot. As you can tell it is really bad against any deck with artifacts, and lots of time your oponent doesnt have anything worth killing. Its basically a worse parsitic implant and commits you to black. third pick is way too early. That being said i think the 2nd pick is the membrane to keep you open.
2. Pick 4 I would not have taken the razor swine. It is obivously good in a niche role. ie infect/verses infect. But you are not infect at this point and in your opening pack you passed a fallen ferromancer and a volt charge. Pack two could be miserable for you, In terms of red. That being said, I would have either taken forced worship, or the pristine talisman to keep yourself open. The choice would to slam the spire monitor and try to cut blue off in pack 2 so you get the return picks in pack three when your opponents to your right move out of it cuz its getting cut. VERY VERY VERY risky line of play. It already seems like blue is getting cut at this point the draft from your right.
3. Pick 7, you realize you havent seen one good black card, but continue to take the zealot anyway/ which sucks see above. Also at this point you are grosssly misunderestimating mutagenic growth. It is absoultly disgusting with razor swines in play. And with your flying, molten dragon it can protect him from dismember, metlacrafted gal. blast and turn to slag an grasp.
4. pick 8, another wasted pick, you passed so many white cards, and also did not see many white cards. your not gona get white p2, p3. Pestilint souleater is perfctly playable and good with a pinons. Conversion chamber is slow but can win if given enough time. AND PLAYable in any deck you draft.
5. pick 9, your eyes light up like a lil kid who sees his new fav. toy window shopping and wants it. You take a second shriekwrapter which your not gona play. Apostles blessing here is a gift going that late and is playable in any deck you should have took it and left yourself open. Let me say that if you had tooken any of those blindig souleaters and forced worship these picks would have been ok. But you already passed too much white to be in white.
6. Ahh pack 2 pick1. You gfft here. I dont like it your not black, your deck sucks and you need to be aggressive to win. Piston sledge is the best pick for you. sledge-up razor swine yes please.
7. ahhh, end of pack 2, and as I stated above you did not see one playable white card, no leonin skyhunters, relicwarders, burn the impures, or priests of norn.
8. Also all of those wasted mutagenic growths and the apostles bessing would have been pretty sick with what you got right now.
9. AND cough cough piston sledge on flensmite or septic rates!!!!!!!!!!!!! cmon mannnnn
10. pack 3. The pick is 100% stider harness. You are infect with tons of slower drops. +1+1 on an infecter is nothing to sneeze at. Also the format is more aggressive so being able to drop harness and get in for an unforseen amount of damage is invauble for you deck espicially with the lack of reach it has. Might is good but not worthe effing up your mana base and might be able to get one later.
11. pack3 pick 2, im not sure on this one. I would have takent he scrapmelter, just for the sure fact hes a two for one and you dont have any others at this point. cur is 2-1 one but recuring a shitty infect guy is not as good as killing your openents best artifact dude.
12. gold myr pick is horrible, panic spellbomb is the pick all the way, you didnt even mention it mayb you didnt see it idk.
Final thoughts, your deck was pretty bad but could have been solid. Those wasted picks in pack one really hurt you. aLso you were very unlucky to not see a pinons or a plauge stinger.
good day sir hope this helps.
No problem. My goal is to improve as a writer and to try and provide the best content that I can. In this area I do need some improvement.
The problem is that I only want to write when I have something that I think is relevant and original ideas are hard to come up with. There are already many authors here who provide video articles and draft rundowns so I do not want to tread in that area, but I do reserve the right to change my mind.
Again thanks for the comments!
Thanks for the context. Makes more sense now shame the article was truncated due to STD developments but that's hard to mitigate. I only speak up as I want puremtgo to be the best it can be and for authors to improve. All the best Hammer
Yes, but he probably wanted to stop my team or trade with my Legionnaire. If he had a hand full of five drops or higher, that would be the plan. Judging from the way he played and the fact that he kept drawing cards after the concession, I think that was the case.
with some of hammer's comments, but now knowing that you went into Legacy "blind" does help put things in perspective some. It is a huge format and taking a known decklist and making a few edits is time consuming enough, let alone if you were to play out the dozens upon dozens of games it takes to understand the format and deck you are playing. Gotta love writing deadlines..lol
Good luck and keep at it
I appreciate the criticism and do see your point. I originally wrote the article and submitted it June 10th. This is not that entire article.
I did want to discuss the changes I made to the deck after testing it in the queues, but that was not enough to write an entire article. When I first built the deck I had no "real" clue as to what Legacy was really about. It was after playing the deck for awhile that I learned quite a bit about the format and wanted to share that. Perhaps I failed in that regards as, apparently, it was not very clear in the article. It turns out that conveying your thoughts can be quite challenging at times.
In the article, I had written about the state of Standard and my opinions on where Standard was going. This also included my thoughts on the potential bannings. The article did not get posted before June 20 and the editors asked me if I wanted to change the obsolete Standard portion. I put a lot of time on the article and did not want to just let it go, but perhaps I should have.
I have no real way to write about any new Legacy tech at the moment as the Jace purchases ate away at some of my funds.
With the "fixing" of Standard I do intend on playing more of that, but I am not going to abandon Legacy.
I am known for my honest here so please dont let this put you off writing on the site again, with that said..
I dont like this article. It seems rushed and half baked with random comments thrown in without any evidence of testing or eventing. I am not sure who your target audience is, or what you expect them to gain/take home from this article. I think you need to thing about the direction of this article series. At the moment it is nothing more than some edited tweaked net decks and a few pictures of iconic magic cards.
Good luck with your future foray into legacy and follow-up articles.
Regards, Hammer.
Ouch to round one opponent: In game 2 shouldn't they have copied your Melira with their Metamorph? Doesn't Metamorph copy all characteristics of Melira, including legendary creature status?
With my removal I wasn't too concerned about the Arbalest. The Outcast is defenseless to most removal, so it was a gamble either way. But, I payed a high cost for the Outcast and this was the situation for which I drafted him.
I, too, was concerned about the lousy mana, but I had one game to play with, having won the first. If I lost game 2, I probably would have changed up the deck quite a bit more.
Here is the entire cardpool, as well as an inaccurate B&R List (but I think it is still being updated occasionally):
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75846/25288009/Planeswalker_...
The official and very, very outdated B&R List can be found at the Mothership:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/mtgonline/plane...
Offer still stands. foil time vault is just collecting dust.
I agree with this. I would have thought it should cost something like 2GGBB or perhaps 3GUB? I don't really see where it's bleeding from red.
Should the drawing cards only be allowed to occur during your upkeep? That clause has been stapled on all of the necropotence clones i can remember, and is probably for good reason. As is, this thing plays out like an ad-nauseum which can also just plop out emrakul's for the lulz.
I've only watched up to the side-boarding after game 1 of first match. I understand the rationale of re-tooling deck to fight infect. I'm concerned that Melira's weak against the Arbalest, and the Green/White "splashes" will really test your mana.
Have stuff to do, so will watch remainder tonight. I see by the video count that you make round 3, so all must go well.
Thanks for posting.
This is the 2nd primer in the past week and I still don't know what cards are in this format.
What cards are available in the format?
Is there a list somewhere?
and link at the start of the article would be a nice addition to this article.
Author is rather fresh MTG player (have less then 2 years of experience).
So, huge amount of mistakes is OK.
Bad thing is that he does not notice his mistakes after long time spent on editing videos.
The picture with your daughter is really cool. I just gave my two and a half year old daughter some Magic cards with simple artwork (Ovinize, Grizzly Bears, Ronom Unicorn) to get her started. She really likes looking at the cards, so I'm hoping that will translate into kitchen table games in the future.
Nice job on the decks. They look cool and it was fun to see the work that went into creating them.
love it as usual Zach but i think peeps are a bit to judge mental on your post and i think some peeps need to try and do their own post. glad your back doing post and wtg on the force i never get that lucky lol.
I know I'm no the best player, but I tried to break Blood Moon and resoundingly failed. Maybe I'll revist it with Chaos Warp, but I think Dunkle had the best analysis and was spot on with my experience piloting the deck: it sucks on the draw and Lotus Petals wreck it. Sure sometimes I just "oops I win" because they can't answer the Blood Moon, but more often than not it was just not strong enough. I also think my biggest problem was not establishing a fast enough clock. I'd like to see better Braumeisters come up with something nice. Another thought is a Goblin Wleder/Painter combo based Blood Moon deck.
Consider this for a second. DotP was put out in order to increase exposure to the game with people who game but don't play Magic yet (or quit). It is an entry-level product meant to bring in new people. When a new player makes the switch from DotP to Magic Online, they will expect to be able to play similar cards to what they played on DotP. In paper they have the option of shelling out hundreds of dollars for power - or they may turn to Magic Online, if power is available there... it would seem like a good setup for Wizards to release power online in a draftable set with the advent of V4, just after DotP has whet everyone's appetite, therefore for this reason it will not happen