As Joekewl said the new Wellspring is a great mana fixer coming and going. The real problem with both is the lack of sac outlets at common, so you have to rely on skyfisher and the like to get multiuse out of it. Also the thing about the phyrexian mana costs is they allow you to play these cards in any deck so if you need a few fliers in your sideboard in a red deck that has trouble with fliers this makes some sense to include the blue fellow. I am not saying it is good, since as you say it is fragile. (Though I am hard pressed to think of a creature in standard at common that isn't.) I think the real issue is bang for your buck. (2 life + 2mana for a 2/1 flier seems undercosted.)
Thanks for doing this though. I left a message with Alex after reading his Scg article, wondering if he would be doing something like this. Now it seems less needful.
First Thought: Two Chancellors!
Second Thought: Black removal is unusually lacking.
Third Thought: Look at all of that red poison
My first thought was “Wow, two Chancellors.” Then I took a look at black and found it pretty lacking in removal and not strong in poison. Blue, likewise has some strong cards but is missing counterspells for the most part. So, I looked at red and saw four new poison creatures and wanted to build around that. But, it is ironically your best poison color, and by a long shot. Not good. Abandon that plan. Red is out, and so is green.
Then I took a look at the artifacts and immediately saw the Golems. Nice. If blue had spells to protect them, that would be the way to go. That is where Apostles Blessing comes in. And, you can add Arrest and the Master Splicer, too. That isn’t much that I would want to take out of white: 1 creature, 1 removal, and two “counterspells.”
Blue looks like the main color, but black is not far off: Luckily, you have the two mana fixing Wellsprings and the “rainbow” Myr.
0-1-Drop
Accorder's Shield
Fumespitter
2-Drop
Leaden Myr
Alloy Myr
M Wellspring(2)
Apostle’s Blessing(2)
Shrine of Burning Rage
Grasp of Darkness
3-Drop
Neurok Replica
Arrest
4-Drop
Chrome Steed
Master Splicer
Mortis Dogs(2)
Parasitic Implant
This is pretty greedy having in the Blue Chancellor. You might use blue for the replica and the flashing 5-drops. You can side in the blue counters if needed. You could take out the blue chancellor for Ichor Explosion, but I'm not so sure that is going to work in this deck. I have the shield in there over the axe bacause your creatures are too weak until you get to the 5-drops. The Steed looks a little out of place, but you you have two artifacts that nobody will want to mess with in the Wellsprings, and you have hidden artifacts in the Golems. What about Conversion Chamber? I'm not sure. Where is the artifact hate in this deck? I don't think it fits. Of course, you could use it to convert from your own graveyard. You might put that in. You could combine that with Culling Dias, even.
The new Wellspring is nice although I still find Ichor Wellspring a superior choice practically in every deck. The bummer's the trigger is only activated when it goes to the graveyard. It would be awesome if it was the other way around.
The above is incorrect. Wellspring does trigger boths ways.
Nice read ovar all. - Joe
I still haven't tried ZWR, but I suspect you are probably pretty much dead on in your evaluation.
The recording was also pretty reasonable for a first try at "live". Nice job.
Regarding your limited pool:
* Disclaimer, I am terrible at this when I cannot manipulate the cards, or see all the card pictures.
Seems like a pretty awful pool. Not much removal and not much of a direction. I don't think either Black or Blue is strong enough to support the chancellors you opened, but blue is closer. That said, I would have tried the following WR infect list, fleshed out with a top end of fliers and a few efficient creatures. Not enough removal or bombs to really expect to X-0, but it would probably this deck looks like the most fun to play at a pre-re:
This set has a lot of cards the have the potential to break commander (at least even more than it's already broken). I guess that's one of the downsides to Wizards making cards specifically for the format. Commander is going to change once the set drops. Instant speed removal is going to be much more of a necessity.
It goes both ways. BW has a stronger recursion engine, Esper has very good "direct" CA thanks mainly to Sea Gate Oracle. It depends all on how long the game goes on: the longer, the better position Esper gets. BW can however outrace it with a more aggressive approach; I think the key card in this matchup are Kor Sanctifiers and their ability to smash the Lifestaffs anf the Journeys. Oh, and thanks for the feedback! :-)
Please keep up the good work here. I love the addition of upward/downward pricing trends, and the accuracy of the prices. These were things that were missing from the old SOTP
I watched some of the games this week, mostly Fliebana's since we've been tweaking the B/W control deck a bit. Lefty's was quite interesting. I don't recall seeing the Ravagers but otherwise the deck seemed like a R/U burn draw deck. I'm not too surprised to see Esper Control take the win yet again. It seems like an upgrade to the B/W deck.
I wonder if artillerize (sp?) might mean that we stop seeing all of the ridiculously late leonin skyhunters in our besieged packs? Every time I draft BSS, it seems like I pass infinite skyhunters and divine offerings, because while everybody sees that w/r aggro is potentially open, nobody wants to be in it.
Artillerize seems to give that deck a lot of reach, and I don't think NPH has as many big defenders as scars. While it isn't a new archetype as such, I wonder if R/W aggro might be a bit more playable than it currently seems to be. You do lose a pack of arrests though.
I get the feeling that WotC feels like they gave us plenty of advance notice to plan for the drafts. That may be true of the 19 year old college student demographic, but for those of us who are stuck in the middle of wedding season 2 weeks is hardly enough warning :(
ZWR drafts are an odd bird. It's nice to be able to draft more worldwake and ROE (and a little less Zendikar, which I have bucketloads of), and determining the tempo of this new format is a bit of a challenge. However, the archetypes of both previous formats (allies, eldrazi ramp, levelers, etc.) are all seriously disrupted. Thinking it would be just a mess, I avoided it for awhile, but ended up hopping in a qeue that had 7 players already and ended up having a good time. My impression is that the tempo is "normal" - more like a base set. You get fast zendicar, medium worldwake, and slow ROE, and you end up back at medium. Tempo decks seem possible (I faced a really good one and lucked out) but slower control decks will also work. Nice article, though I would agree that the pathrazer is still a longshot that will only work in the right deck.
I just noticed today :( I'm really terribly sad about this and I never met him other than online.
I mainly remember many posts in many threads in the official boards, before PureMTGO. I don't think I ever even played a game with Hammy as the timezone difference was significant.
I can say that I believe that from the community, he was probably the person that most positively contributed to MTGO. And as far as I know, he wasn't even in MTGO from the start, so that should tell you something of the incredibly high density of his contributions. It is not only a personal tragedy, but a hefty loss for MTGO which will no longer benefit from his contributions.
Why only a week on the Mirage/Tempest drafts? I get the economics behind it, but it's kind of frustrating when you only have time to draft on the weekends and you happen to be unavailable that one particular weekend. Hopefully everyone else opens a lot of Wastelands!
"This new addition to the list of rules explaining where abilities work says that if an object has an ability that says counters can't be placed on it, that ability functions while the object is entering the battlefield. "Placed" carries double duty, meaning adding counters while an object is on the battlefield and also having an object entering the battlefield with counters."
Like I said, this card breaks persist and smashes the pieces to pieces. Now maybe the rules on persist are being tweaked so it works the way I thought at first. If not, "Yay, another way to hand commander games over to combo players"
I really couldn't see how it would be different from Doubling Season, which I have already tested and I know it does modify the number of -1/-1 counters for persisting creatures. I'm curious to see whether the beta server behaviour is correct or not. A further search of similar existing cards turned up this from the Tatterkite ("Tatterkite can't have counters placed on it") gatherer page:
If Tatterkite would enter the battlefield with counters on it, it enters the battlefield but doesn't have those counters. For example, if an effect grants it persist and then it's destroyed, it returns to the battlefield without a -1/-1 counter on it.
Which also seems pretty convincing evidence to me that the Melira combo /should/ work as people have described...
Very similar to Juniper Order Ranger (or Sigil Captain if the persist guy is a 2/2 to begin with) except that Melira is slightly better since her ability doesn't use the stack, so removal aimed at the persist guy does nothing. Melira herself still remains vulnerable though, as would the Ranger or Captain. And the persist ability also uses the stack, offering other options to disrupt the combo... Nice idea with the Gargadon, though.
I meant "used on your own creature" as "defensively". :-) For that, it's strictly worse. ;-)
As Joekewl said the new Wellspring is a great mana fixer coming and going. The real problem with both is the lack of sac outlets at common, so you have to rely on skyfisher and the like to get multiuse out of it. Also the thing about the phyrexian mana costs is they allow you to play these cards in any deck so if you need a few fliers in your sideboard in a red deck that has trouble with fliers this makes some sense to include the blue fellow. I am not saying it is good, since as you say it is fragile. (Though I am hard pressed to think of a creature in standard at common that isn't.) I think the real issue is bang for your buck. (2 life + 2mana for a 2/1 flier seems undercosted.)
Thanks for doing this though. I left a message with Alex after reading his Scg article, wondering if he would be doing something like this. Now it seems less needful.
First Thought: Two Chancellors!
Second Thought: Black removal is unusually lacking.
Third Thought: Look at all of that red poison
My first thought was “Wow, two Chancellors.” Then I took a look at black and found it pretty lacking in removal and not strong in poison. Blue, likewise has some strong cards but is missing counterspells for the most part. So, I looked at red and saw four new poison creatures and wanted to build around that. But, it is ironically your best poison color, and by a long shot. Not good. Abandon that plan. Red is out, and so is green.
Then I took a look at the artifacts and immediately saw the Golems. Nice. If blue had spells to protect them, that would be the way to go. That is where Apostles Blessing comes in. And, you can add Arrest and the Master Splicer, too. That isn’t much that I would want to take out of white: 1 creature, 1 removal, and two “counterspells.”
Blue looks like the main color, but black is not far off: Luckily, you have the two mana fixing Wellsprings and the “rainbow” Myr.
0-1-Drop
Accorder's Shield
Fumespitter
2-Drop
Leaden Myr
Alloy Myr
M Wellspring(2)
Apostle’s Blessing(2)
Shrine of Burning Rage
Grasp of Darkness
3-Drop
Neurok Replica
Arrest
4-Drop
Chrome Steed
Master Splicer
Mortis Dogs(2)
Parasitic Implant
5-Drop
Golem Artisan
Precursor Golem
Spire Monitor(2)
7 Drop
Chancellors (2)
Lands:
3 Plains
8 Swamps
6 Islands
This is pretty greedy having in the Blue Chancellor. You might use blue for the replica and the flashing 5-drops. You can side in the blue counters if needed. You could take out the blue chancellor for Ichor Explosion, but I'm not so sure that is going to work in this deck. I have the shield in there over the axe bacause your creatures are too weak until you get to the 5-drops. The Steed looks a little out of place, but you you have two artifacts that nobody will want to mess with in the Wellsprings, and you have hidden artifacts in the Golems. What about Conversion Chamber? I'm not sure. Where is the artifact hate in this deck? I don't think it fits. Of course, you could use it to convert from your own graveyard. You might put that in. You could combine that with Culling Dias, even.
The new Wellspring is nice although I still find Ichor Wellspring a superior choice practically in every deck. The bummer's the trigger is only activated when it goes to the graveyard. It would be awesome if it was the other way around.
The above is incorrect. Wellspring does trigger boths ways.
Nice read ovar all. - Joe
I still haven't tried ZWR, but I suspect you are probably pretty much dead on in your evaluation.
The recording was also pretty reasonable for a first try at "live". Nice job.
Regarding your limited pool:
* Disclaimer, I am terrible at this when I cannot manipulate the cards, or see all the card pictures.
Seems like a pretty awful pool. Not much removal and not much of a direction. I don't think either Black or Blue is strong enough to support the chancellors you opened, but blue is closer. That said, I would have tried the following WR infect list, fleshed out with a top end of fliers and a few efficient creatures. Not enough removal or bombs to really expect to X-0, but it would probably this deck looks like the most fun to play at a pre-re:
Apostle's Blessing
2x Razor swine
2x Ogre Menial
2x Lost leonine
darksteel axe
arrest
splicer
panic spellbomb
precursor golem
scrapmelter
panther
dragon
exoskeleton
shrine of burning rage
2x spire monitor
2x wellspring
1 Island
9 Mountain
7 Plains
Could you explain how exactly is Vapor Snag worse in defense? It does the same and even more. Taking off 1 life won't hurt our defense plan.
Talk to me in client.
Where can I find a nice BW list? I remember someone writing about one. Or I thought I saw that....
I just wish they were on different weeks. Would love to draft some MVW but tough to with wasteland and lotus petal so high.
This set has a lot of cards the have the potential to break commander (at least even more than it's already broken). I guess that's one of the downsides to Wizards making cards specifically for the format. Commander is going to change once the set drops. Instant speed removal is going to be much more of a necessity.
It goes both ways. BW has a stronger recursion engine, Esper has very good "direct" CA thanks mainly to Sea Gate Oracle. It depends all on how long the game goes on: the longer, the better position Esper gets. BW can however outrace it with a more aggressive approach; I think the key card in this matchup are Kor Sanctifiers and their ability to smash the Lifestaffs anf the Journeys. Oh, and thanks for the feedback! :-)
Please keep up the good work here. I love the addition of upward/downward pricing trends, and the accuracy of the prices. These were things that were missing from the old SOTP
I watched some of the games this week, mostly Fliebana's since we've been tweaking the B/W control deck a bit. Lefty's was quite interesting. I don't recall seeing the Ravagers but otherwise the deck seemed like a R/U burn draw deck. I'm not too surprised to see Esper Control take the win yet again. It seems like an upgrade to the B/W deck.
I wonder if artillerize (sp?) might mean that we stop seeing all of the ridiculously late leonin skyhunters in our besieged packs? Every time I draft BSS, it seems like I pass infinite skyhunters and divine offerings, because while everybody sees that w/r aggro is potentially open, nobody wants to be in it.
Artillerize seems to give that deck a lot of reach, and I don't think NPH has as many big defenders as scars. While it isn't a new archetype as such, I wonder if R/W aggro might be a bit more playable than it currently seems to be. You do lose a pack of arrests though.
I get the feeling that WotC feels like they gave us plenty of advance notice to plan for the drafts. That may be true of the 19 year old college student demographic, but for those of us who are stuck in the middle of wedding season 2 weeks is hardly enough warning :(
ZWR drafts are an odd bird. It's nice to be able to draft more worldwake and ROE (and a little less Zendikar, which I have bucketloads of), and determining the tempo of this new format is a bit of a challenge. However, the archetypes of both previous formats (allies, eldrazi ramp, levelers, etc.) are all seriously disrupted. Thinking it would be just a mess, I avoided it for awhile, but ended up hopping in a qeue that had 7 players already and ended up having a good time. My impression is that the tempo is "normal" - more like a base set. You get fast zendicar, medium worldwake, and slow ROE, and you end up back at medium. Tempo decks seem possible (I faced a really good one and lucked out) but slower control decks will also work. Nice article, though I would agree that the pathrazer is still a longshot that will only work in the right deck.
I just noticed today :( I'm really terribly sad about this and I never met him other than online.
I mainly remember many posts in many threads in the official boards, before PureMTGO. I don't think I ever even played a game with Hammy as the timezone difference was significant.
I can say that I believe that from the community, he was probably the person that most positively contributed to MTGO. And as far as I know, he wasn't even in MTGO from the start, so that should tell you something of the incredibly high density of his contributions. It is not only a personal tragedy, but a hefty loss for MTGO which will no longer benefit from his contributions.
Ivo.
Just a clerical point, Assualt Strobe is a Sorcery, so if your opponent decides to not block the Souleater, you can't then cast the Strobe.
Why only a week on the Mirage/Tempest drafts? I get the economics behind it, but it's kind of frustrating when you only have time to draft on the weekends and you happen to be unavailable that one particular weekend. Hopefully everyone else opens a lot of Wastelands!
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/1...
"This new addition to the list of rules explaining where abilities work says that if an object has an ability that says counters can't be placed on it, that ability functions while the object is entering the battlefield. "Placed" carries double duty, meaning adding counters while an object is on the battlefield and also having an object entering the battlefield with counters."
Like I said, this card breaks persist and smashes the pieces to pieces. Now maybe the rules on persist are being tweaked so it works the way I thought at first. If not, "Yay, another way to hand commander games over to combo players"
I really couldn't see how it would be different from Doubling Season, which I have already tested and I know it does modify the number of -1/-1 counters for persisting creatures. I'm curious to see whether the beta server behaviour is correct or not. A further search of similar existing cards turned up this from the Tatterkite ("Tatterkite can't have counters placed on it") gatherer page:
If Tatterkite would enter the battlefield with counters on it, it enters the battlefield but doesn't have those counters. For example, if an effect grants it persist and then it's destroyed, it returns to the battlefield without a -1/-1 counter on it.
Which also seems pretty convincing evidence to me that the Melira combo /should/ work as people have described...
hmmm that is odd...i know some of the writers on SCG were putting forth that same combo. I wonder now...
Thank Urza. ;)
Very similar to Juniper Order Ranger (or Sigil Captain if the persist guy is a 2/2 to begin with) except that Melira is slightly better since her ability doesn't use the stack, so removal aimed at the persist guy does nothing. Melira herself still remains vulnerable though, as would the Ranger or Captain. And the persist ability also uses the stack, offering other options to disrupt the combo... Nice idea with the Gargadon, though.
After all these comments, I just put together a deck on the beta server and tested Melira + those persist guys. And the combo did... NOT work.
:(
LE