Nice Article, but I figure you might want a little ZZW limited theory to help you out some, because you made some common mistakes in deckbuilding.
First, splash only high impact cards. You splash three mediocre black creatures in your first deck (I'm being generous, Scorpion is very good or bad, diabolist is usually just bad), and two red creatures in your second, one of which is a 2-drop. While Plated Geopede is insane, he's not an insane splash, in fact, he's a terrible splash, because he isn't good played on turn 4 or 5 when you finally get your red source out. The cards you want to splash are, unsurprisingly, almost always removal, usually journeys, Iona's Judgements, and any single R damage spells.
Black is not a color you frequently splash in ZZW. Smother and Tomb Hex are good, but the real reasons to play black are cards like Hideous End and Vampire Nighthawk. People are maindecking Bog Tatters in this format (If they know what is good for them) so if you are going to play swamps, you want to get a lot of value from them.
Then, there's just being greedy. 6 Forests and Leatherback Baloth? You have a very reasonable grasp on which cards are good in a vacuum, but not the type of deck you want to be building.
Hey all you guys out there in the aether, I need your help please, If any of the particapants or people who know them in client see this, please contact me, whiffy penguin in game and gefelis@yahoo.com is my email. Would like to start brewing and getting to know ya guys. Thanks!
awesome post man brings back a lot of memory's when i first started playing but on the stasis combo i honestly thing that chrono stasis deck was the sickest deck because it could put you in lock very very fast and basically you just sit there playing ur deck out tapped so just wanted to point that out
Oath shows up in two major archetypes. Turboland - Zvi's infinite turn combo version, is on the list. The other option is Maher Oath and its descendants, including the current Classic format Oath decks. For a good video guide to Oath, watch Whiffy's Penguin TV. If he hasn't done Oath, he will. He plays it a lot.
Great article! Thanks to Heath for supporting the MODO community. I was interested to hear Heath's thoughts on puremtgo, and I totally agree that something should be done about the quality of articles. A tiered pay system for writers sounds like a good start! I've only written a couple of times for the site, but putting out quality writing is definitely a labor of love. Encouraging the dedicated writers to keep turning out interesting articles is a great idea. I miss Hamtastic!
--One that I've been getting into lately is crokinole.
And I thought I couldn't like MTGO traders any more. That game is so much fun. A guy who came into the game store I used to work in brought in a board and we would play that forever!!
What I like most about this article is that is shows you can make a living around Magic. Of course, it looks like Heath put in years of hard work to get to this point, but it certainly seems to have paid off. Thanks again for hosting this site!
Hi Pete,
I'll be really glad if you write and show videos of these combo series. I love some of the decks you have pointed and as part of the game's history they deserve a good remenbering.
Bomberman was and is still Legacy legal combo deck, using Lion's Eye Diamond, Auriok Salvashers and the red spellbomb. Is there any oath of druids deck there? I'll love to see some of the old extended one.
It helped to go below zero, but you can make ProsBloom work without doing so.
Warp World also suffers from a change in rules for token ownership.
On MTGO, we have to play with the rules that currently exist. However, the only decks that are totally dead are Mirari's Wake and Mirror Universe. I think.
I am glad to see you pick up your block series! block is my favorite format and it has alot of varity...
I think that U/B control is not as good as you claim as it is pre-NPH, but YMMV. You are probably just a better player than I so I always seem to have Grasp when i need go for the throat, Black sun zentih when i need blue sun zenith or volition reins and 2 blue sources. I think it will however get a BIG boost when NPH hits. Dispise seems like it can help handle all the things you feared. Turn 3 koth, i dont think so. Turn 3 mirran crusader, not so fast!
As can be seen by the recent daily results UB infect has been handing out the beats lately. I believe it has spawned the Red/black decks we are seeing with Scapmelter and skinrender.
On the tezz affinty list you posted i decided to give the mana a test drive and built it using similar cost creatures as stand ins for NPH creatures who are around yet... I did this merely to test the color mana for TEZZ and crusader... there is not a real way to test the phyrexian mana in those spots. I kept running into the issue of not having double white or having black and no blue or vice versa when i needed them... A possible "fix" i thought of was to run a few trinket mages who can fetch the mox opals for you or if you dont need the mox it can tutor a threat (hex parasite, signal pest, memnite). I alos thought about addind more land and making it a more mid game deck by adding tempered steel... probably would add more of a top end threat as well... Who doesnt want to play wurmcoil engine and tempered steel right?
Thanks for the kind comments everyone. If your ever in town I'm always up for a game of magic, board game, disc golf, croquet, surfing or any other random sport/hobby. I love hobbies that are a bit different from the norm. One that I've been getting into lately is crokinole. It's a dexterity game from Canada.
I played against stasis last month at a comicon where I was promoting Pauper with a friend. I used Boros Landfall, pauper version. I brought my opponent down to 3 life, then Stasis ensued. Not funny, but close enough to see him sweat. :-D
Buster's lovely!
As for the decks to cover: I think anyone of your list will do for me. I'm glad I was away from Magic during Masques block. :-)
And after that comment, I went to your myspace and saw your stage picture and it all came back to me! I have such a lousy memory...and my year long hiatus didn't help at all.
Remember when you have tutors in your graveyard and you've cast YawgWin, those tutors can go towards LEDs, instead of Dark Rits, which will put you ahead on mana, not even. With tendrils in your graveyard any tutors = mana/storm count.
edit: Bah I should have watched the last few seconds of the video, cause that's exactly what you ended up doing :p
YOU ARE A GOD
Nice Article, but I figure you might want a little ZZW limited theory to help you out some, because you made some common mistakes in deckbuilding.
First, splash only high impact cards. You splash three mediocre black creatures in your first deck (I'm being generous, Scorpion is very good or bad, diabolist is usually just bad), and two red creatures in your second, one of which is a 2-drop. While Plated Geopede is insane, he's not an insane splash, in fact, he's a terrible splash, because he isn't good played on turn 4 or 5 when you finally get your red source out. The cards you want to splash are, unsurprisingly, almost always removal, usually journeys, Iona's Judgements, and any single R damage spells.
Black is not a color you frequently splash in ZZW. Smother and Tomb Hex are good, but the real reasons to play black are cards like Hideous End and Vampire Nighthawk. People are maindecking Bog Tatters in this format (If they know what is good for them) so if you are going to play swamps, you want to get a lot of value from them.
Then, there's just being greedy. 6 Forests and Leatherback Baloth? You have a very reasonable grasp on which cards are good in a vacuum, but not the type of deck you want to be building.
Anyway, nice writeup!
Hey all you guys out there in the aether, I need your help please, If any of the particapants or people who know them in client see this, please contact me, whiffy penguin in game and gefelis@yahoo.com is my email. Would like to start brewing and getting to know ya guys. Thanks!
awesome post man brings back a lot of memory's when i first started playing but on the stasis combo i honestly thing that chrono stasis deck was the sickest deck because it could put you in lock very very fast and basically you just sit there playing ur deck out tapped so just wanted to point that out
it was suggested to me that i should change it. but it was an awesome pic
Id like to "vote" for Sabre Bargain to show up in this series soon - this was a cool deck back in the day :-)
booooooooooo
bring back the bird with the helmut
Oath shows up in two major archetypes. Turboland - Zvi's infinite turn combo version, is on the list. The other option is Maher Oath and its descendants, including the current Classic format Oath decks. For a good video guide to Oath, watch Whiffy's Penguin TV. If he hasn't done Oath, he will. He plays it a lot.
Great article! Thanks to Heath for supporting the MODO community. I was interested to hear Heath's thoughts on puremtgo, and I totally agree that something should be done about the quality of articles. A tiered pay system for writers sounds like a good start! I've only written a couple of times for the site, but putting out quality writing is definitely a labor of love. Encouraging the dedicated writers to keep turning out interesting articles is a great idea. I miss Hamtastic!
--One that I've been getting into lately is crokinole.
And I thought I couldn't like MTGO traders any more. That game is so much fun. A guy who came into the game store I used to work in brought in a board and we would play that forever!!
I happen to be in the middle of an article about delving into Legacy as well. I enjoyed the read and look forward to more!
gl whiffy! be sure you guys roll some fools.
What I like most about this article is that is shows you can make a living around Magic. Of course, it looks like Heath put in years of hard work to get to this point, but it certainly seems to have paid off. Thanks again for hosting this site!
Hi Pete,
I'll be really glad if you write and show videos of these combo series. I love some of the decks you have pointed and as part of the game's history they deserve a good remenbering.
Bomberman was and is still Legacy legal combo deck, using Lion's Eye Diamond, Auriok Salvashers and the red spellbomb. Is there any oath of druids deck there? I'll love to see some of the old extended one.
Greetings and thanks for all the writings.
How do you know I was gonna give you a 5 in the first place... ;) (Mistake on my part actually)
It helped to go below zero, but you can make ProsBloom work without doing so.
Warp World also suffers from a change in rules for token ownership.
On MTGO, we have to play with the rules that currently exist. However, the only decks that are totally dead are Mirari's Wake and Mirror Universe. I think.
I am glad to see you pick up your block series! block is my favorite format and it has alot of varity...
I think that U/B control is not as good as you claim as it is pre-NPH, but YMMV. You are probably just a better player than I so I always seem to have Grasp when i need go for the throat, Black sun zentih when i need blue sun zenith or volition reins and 2 blue sources. I think it will however get a BIG boost when NPH hits. Dispise seems like it can help handle all the things you feared. Turn 3 koth, i dont think so. Turn 3 mirran crusader, not so fast!
As can be seen by the recent daily results UB infect has been handing out the beats lately. I believe it has spawned the Red/black decks we are seeing with Scapmelter and skinrender.
On the tezz affinty list you posted i decided to give the mana a test drive and built it using similar cost creatures as stand ins for NPH creatures who are around yet... I did this merely to test the color mana for TEZZ and crusader... there is not a real way to test the phyrexian mana in those spots. I kept running into the issue of not having double white or having black and no blue or vice versa when i needed them... A possible "fix" i thought of was to run a few trinket mages who can fetch the mox opals for you or if you dont need the mox it can tutor a threat (hex parasite, signal pest, memnite). I alos thought about addind more land and making it a more mid game deck by adding tempered steel... probably would add more of a top end threat as well... Who doesnt want to play wurmcoil engine and tempered steel right?
An excellent insight into the man behind the curtain here. Thanks for doing this interview!
Someone played Warp World competitively? I want to see that.
How will the rules changes over time affect your project? Didn't ProsBloom require going to less than zero life?
I played against stasis last month at a comicon where I was promoting Pauper with a friend. I used Boros Landfall, pauper version. I brought my opponent down to 3 life, then Stasis ensued. Not funny, but close enough to see him sweat. :-D
Buster's lovely!
As for the decks to cover: I think anyone of your list will do for me. I'm glad I was away from Magic during Masques block. :-)
And after that comment, I went to your myspace and saw your stage picture and it all came back to me! I have such a lousy memory...and my year long hiatus didn't help at all.
Remember when you have tutors in your graveyard and you've cast YawgWin, those tutors can go towards LEDs, instead of Dark Rits, which will put you ahead on mana, not even. With tendrils in your graveyard any tutors = mana/storm count.
edit: Bah I should have watched the last few seconds of the video, cause that's exactly what you ended up doing :p
Thanks for sponsoring this website!
wow down-rated for a typo? nice...