All of the 5k's I attended were with the friend that introduced me to Magic. Often times I borrowed some of his decks. I also went for the experience and fun I had not just playing the game but being with other players that enjoy the game. Sorry about the variations in words, I will try to tighten it up in later articles. It occurs the most in this as it is an introductory article. Thanks for the helpful comments.
I just played 4 games in the casual room with Mangara/Karakas without any complaints. Is it too mean for that room because...you say it is? At least half of your posts indicate to me that you do not have a clue what subjective opinion means.
As for the article, I looked at the decklist and thought the deck looked like a joke. It is in no way viable for any kind of legacy tournament, petty much ever. I get you're trying to write for the casual/budget crowd, but how many more articles do we need on here filled with writers swapping out all the expensive cards from specific TOURNAMENT DECKS, with sub-par, inferior card choices; just to get a few kicks with in the casual room?
Thats just the thing. Trix was a competitve deck 8 years ago, but it is not a compettive deck in any format anymore. I'd love to relive my glory days with the deck (that and prosbloom) but TP is the wrong place to do that.
Plan A in this deck is Soliton/ Arbalest. Come on! 3 Solitons and 2 Heavy Arbalests (I never played the third). Any good control deck can win with 3 Solitons and 2 Heavy Arbalests. Your argument about getting blown out with Shatter holds about as well as saying that you can't count on winning with your Blight Dragon because of Grasp.
Plan B is Mirran Spy / Heavy Arbablest, and any artifact that is half way playable.
This is not an aggro deck. That being said, that doesn't mean that the Copper Carapace was garbage, but it was the first thing I took out for the sideboard.
I think Blisterstick Shaman can go in pretty much every red deck, regardless of how "aggro" it is, because pinging for 1 in this format is invaluable. I do however think that it is pretty much always, and certainly in this case, wrong to play Wall of Tanglecord and Copper Carapace in the same deck. Gust Skimmer and Tanglecord are a pretty miserable duo as well.
Soliton and Arbalest make a nice plan B for any deck with islands, but they aren't good otherwise in this deck, and they can lead to tempo blowouts from shatter or even just tempo, bounce and removal.
The third Arbalest seems a little greedy, and Mirran Spy seems far worse than Neurok Invisimancer, and Neurok Replica is a solid playable in blue deck.
Here is the thing about 'Practice'. Everyone starts somewhere. To ME going to a room like the TP speaks of one thing: intent to improve. If I go into the TP room with a bad deck, aside from your upset at not finding good competition I hope you will say something like: "Oh exiler. That deck isn't really up to snuff for this room. Take out all the x and put in the y here to improve it." Some sort of direction for the player to go in.
I think a lot of people (a vast majority in fact) have no clue how to start a deck or even take a deck like Exiler and make it mean enough to compete. By the way Mangara/Karakas IS too mean for cas cas. I had one deck with ONE of each (a humans tribal wars deck) and got blocked by 3 people for bringing it in my own queue a few years ago. Not that I mind being blocked but it definitely ends any possible interaction.
I wish I knew what mid-tier meant for fringe formats like TWL and Kaleido. I'd be a lot happier if there were some actual guidelines people would actually listen to and be familiar with. Also I am pretty sure Trix is seen as (if it isn't actually) a serious serious deck. It was the top dominator of extended back in the day and people who have been around awhile know it. Even newer people know of it as it has a strong lineage being a necro descendent.
You can actually play legacy with a cheap and competitive deck, you just have to be creative. Yes, I'm absolutely serious. I'm not sure how "budget" this would be on paper, but this is puremtgo, so who cares, and Bayou hardly breaks the bank online. Hilariously, a lot of legacy decks have more trouble dealing with Phyrexian Crusader than standard decks, since Swords is heavily leaned on in the format.
Before you critique the deck, it isn't my list, and it has pretty decent game vs most of the archetypes in legacy, and is quite capable of a turn 2 kill.
So yea his header may say budget, but his intire article smacks of playing competitivly. maybe i should be able to read his mind? cause i walked away from the article confused.
"I looked at many successful Legacy decks and realized that the creature base for Merfolk was relatively cheap online. I have played Merfolk in Extended, and it is capable of some crushing draws.
While they would allow the deck to compete with many of the top decks in the format, the price tags push the deck out of the realm of budget possibility.
This is just a short introduction to the wide world of Legacy. It is full of possibilities to be explored. I hope to explore a new option each week or improve upon a deck. I welcome any constructive criticism."
these are just the 3 most blatant of the " here is a competitive article for budget players"
again mr author, i liked it and its good for a first time, i was just confused.
While I certainly don't condone the behavior myself, I do understand it. When you are in a room labeled "Tournament Practice" and 4 of every 5 decks that join your game are complete rubbish...it does tend to get frustrating...which is why TP is so useless for actual Tournament Pratice and ppl test with clans instead.
It does not have to be that way, but I think it is because the people in cas/cas are whiny and so terrible about playing against anything that is not terribad and they force the middle of the road players (with decent, but not tournament quality decks) into TP where they don't belong. And then they get flamed there. There is no place for the 'serious casual' player, but there should be.
I don't flame people, but it does upset me after a while. When you bring a non-tournament quality deck to the TOUNAMENT PRACTICE room you are wasting someone else's time. Yes, I know my deck CAN beat your pile'oburn.dec or your 24discardspells.dec, but the reason ppl play in the tournament pratice room is to...like...practice for tournaments. Joining a game with a substandard non-tournament deck is rude and immature. The room is not labeled the "less casual than cas/cas" room.
That is not to say that there is no room in TP for testing new ideas, there certainly is and I am always glad to see a new competitve deck idea there, but when a deck is clearly not a tournament deck then speidng 20+ minutes beating it is a waste of my time. The correct course of action is to open a game in cas/cas and specify that this is a serious deck, rather than bring that deck to TP. I do this all the time with my more casual serious decks (like Trix, Stasis, etc.), I dont want to demolish an elves deck in cas/cas, but I also don't want to waste people's time in TP...so I go to cas/cas and adda comment so ppl bring their good mid-tier decks.
If this is your goal, then you did a good job with the article. My only question is what response do you get bringing Merfolk or Exiler to the cas/cas room? In my experience they tend to freak out about anyting involving a counterspell or a "lame combo" like Mangara/Karakas....
The confusion for me came with the following sentences.
"However, I developed a strong love of the game and I began to attend FNM's and even a few 5k's."
- In my opinion, typically casual players don't attend 5k's
"I have always considered myself a budget/casual player, preferring not to shell out $500 dollars to have a shot at $32 in store credit once a week."
- Ok, so here he talks about being budge/casual
"Note: I do not claim to be a master of the game or a financial genius, but I hope my articles will help people have competitive fun without breaking the bank."
- Competitive fun......not casual, there is a difference in wording here.
I never said the article was bad, just needed a clearer message. I hope he continues to write about Legacy as the more we write, the more passionate we get about the game and the more chances he might one day play Competitive Legacy thus increasing the player base online.
I am actually going to disagree with George and my other clan mates at Magic Eternal. Whilst I normally hate these type of articles it was an interesting gateway article IMHO. I beleive that it is too easy to be black/white on the casual/competitive player phenotype. There are many players out there new and exploring or budget constrained that would love to play in the eternal formats and have a deck that they will not have to change every 6 months. The message in this article is clear and the value of the exiler deck and the highlighting of that is key to the success of this article. It says hey if you want to go play semi-competive magic the with a view to buying cards that will have a longshelf life and provide a solid base once I am ready to step up the quality of my deck and play level then this theme deck is good. It also shows how on a budget you can take the next step to start tweaking the deck and making it your own. It is this type of article that gives puremtgo its heart it serves the casual as well as the hard core. Not everyone that comes to this site or the associate store is going to be buying high-value tournament staples and thats a good thing and something which this article supports and promotes. It is about having fun in mtgo and i suspect that this article hits more of a demographic than one would assume.
- Dont fall into the trap of just listening an underpowered deck, talking about how you make it budget and play 1 or 2 tp games and make it an article - What was important to succeed here was the subplot of the exiler deck.
- Hammer Eternal and Under
I don't remember whether you commented before or not, but I do remember that you beat me twice in Legacy 2mans with your Blood Moon deck (it was you, right? (oh and one of your wins was just unreal (and I'm sorry if it wasen't you!!))).
Anyway, those two losses thought me a good lesson about greedy mana bases and I'm thankful for that (I never lost to Blood Moon after that). But we'll talk about Legacy next week.
Paul, thank you for the reply. Its understandable why there haven't been any responses, no worries there. I will work on some of the ideas you suggested, and maybe we can get this off the ground. I'm not expecting it to become the next sanctioned format on the pro tour, but I have played it on paper, and it is quite a bit of fun. It removes a bit of the luck factor, and adds more skill, which should be appealing to a number of players. Thanks for the help, and if I manage to get it off the ground, I will for sure do another article!
I'm glad to know my efforts are paying off! I love the format, I love everyone that's involved in running these events and I loathe the fact that the one thing I cannot do is to actually play at the events. XD
I may find enough time for a spot appearance once in a while...but it's kinda a longshot.
Congratulations on 4 years! I don't know if I've commented on your articles before, but I have checked them out from time to time. The Bring Your Own Standard tournament was coverage was pretty facinating to me and if I were a better deckbuilder, I would have gotten into it. Maybe if you guys do it again I will join you.
Quote from the abstract: "In my first article, I introduce my budget deck series. This week I take a look at U/W Legacy Merfolk and present Legacy options for a casual/budget player. This is for you budget players!"
You sort of were a victim of poor timing here as this has been a pretty harsh last couple of weeks, so that's probably why no responses. I for one have no real interest in doing it the way you describe but I am a minority of one. You might want to set something up on a site, get the thing working amongst some play testers and then write another article (with some graphics of the set up, etc to make it look professional) and see if you get any interest. Keep in mind, new format ideas are tough to get going unless you have some core interest from a number of players. Maybe you could try this with just your clan and see how it goes or with volunteers from among your friends. Also you might want to recruit in cas cas or on the mothership forums.
I just have to say that I admire your dedication and consistency. Your articles are always well written and presented in such a way that they look just as good as those articles on the mothership. And you hit a wide variety of topics, something that I know I couldn't do. Keeping it up over 4 years is a great accomplishment. And I can't wait for the Commander article!
Thanks for the quick and well thought out reply. I admit I am new to Magic and so I sometimes "Miss" the point. I will keep testing and see If I run into to anything else that makes me have a question.
On A side note I have considered Adding another Red Sun Zenith to the deck. I love to have it in hand and have only had the problem of not being able to cast 1 time...
All of the 5k's I attended were with the friend that introduced me to Magic. Often times I borrowed some of his decks. I also went for the experience and fun I had not just playing the game but being with other players that enjoy the game. Sorry about the variations in words, I will try to tighten it up in later articles. It occurs the most in this as it is an introductory article. Thanks for the helpful comments.
I just played 4 games in the casual room with Mangara/Karakas without any complaints. Is it too mean for that room because...you say it is? At least half of your posts indicate to me that you do not have a clue what subjective opinion means.
As for the article, I looked at the decklist and thought the deck looked like a joke. It is in no way viable for any kind of legacy tournament, petty much ever. I get you're trying to write for the casual/budget crowd, but how many more articles do we need on here filled with writers swapping out all the expensive cards from specific TOURNAMENT DECKS, with sub-par, inferior card choices; just to get a few kicks with in the casual room?
Thats just the thing. Trix was a competitve deck 8 years ago, but it is not a compettive deck in any format anymore. I'd love to relive my glory days with the deck (that and prosbloom) but TP is the wrong place to do that.
Plan A in this deck is Soliton/ Arbalest. Come on! 3 Solitons and 2 Heavy Arbalests (I never played the third). Any good control deck can win with 3 Solitons and 2 Heavy Arbalests. Your argument about getting blown out with Shatter holds about as well as saying that you can't count on winning with your Blight Dragon because of Grasp.
Plan B is Mirran Spy / Heavy Arbablest, and any artifact that is half way playable.
This is not an aggro deck. That being said, that doesn't mean that the Copper Carapace was garbage, but it was the first thing I took out for the sideboard.
I think Blisterstick Shaman can go in pretty much every red deck, regardless of how "aggro" it is, because pinging for 1 in this format is invaluable. I do however think that it is pretty much always, and certainly in this case, wrong to play Wall of Tanglecord and Copper Carapace in the same deck. Gust Skimmer and Tanglecord are a pretty miserable duo as well.
Soliton and Arbalest make a nice plan B for any deck with islands, but they aren't good otherwise in this deck, and they can lead to tempo blowouts from shatter or even just tempo, bounce and removal.
The third Arbalest seems a little greedy, and Mirran Spy seems far worse than Neurok Invisimancer, and Neurok Replica is a solid playable in blue deck.
Here is the thing about 'Practice'. Everyone starts somewhere. To ME going to a room like the TP speaks of one thing: intent to improve. If I go into the TP room with a bad deck, aside from your upset at not finding good competition I hope you will say something like: "Oh exiler. That deck isn't really up to snuff for this room. Take out all the x and put in the y here to improve it." Some sort of direction for the player to go in.
I think a lot of people (a vast majority in fact) have no clue how to start a deck or even take a deck like Exiler and make it mean enough to compete. By the way Mangara/Karakas IS too mean for cas cas. I had one deck with ONE of each (a humans tribal wars deck) and got blocked by 3 people for bringing it in my own queue a few years ago. Not that I mind being blocked but it definitely ends any possible interaction.
I wish I knew what mid-tier meant for fringe formats like TWL and Kaleido. I'd be a lot happier if there were some actual guidelines people would actually listen to and be familiar with. Also I am pretty sure Trix is seen as (if it isn't actually) a serious serious deck. It was the top dominator of extended back in the day and people who have been around awhile know it. Even newer people know of it as it has a strong lineage being a necro descendent.
You can actually play legacy with a cheap and competitive deck, you just have to be creative. Yes, I'm absolutely serious. I'm not sure how "budget" this would be on paper, but this is puremtgo, so who cares, and Bayou hardly breaks the bank online. Hilariously, a lot of legacy decks have more trouble dealing with Phyrexian Crusader than standard decks, since Swords is heavily leaned on in the format.
Before you critique the deck, it isn't my list, and it has pretty decent game vs most of the archetypes in legacy, and is quite capable of a turn 2 kill.
60 cards
4 Bayou
1 Forest
4 Inkmoth Nexus
4 Marsh Flats
5 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
22 lands
4 Dark Confidant
4 Necropede
4 Phyrexian Crusader
4 Plague Stinger
16 creatures 4 Berserk
4 Dark Ritual
4 Invigorate
4 Rancor
2 Snuff Out
4 Virulent Swipe
22 other spells
Sideboard
3 Engineered Plague
3 Extirpate
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Nature's Claim
1 Tormod's Crypt
15 sideboard cards
So yea his header may say budget, but his intire article smacks of playing competitivly. maybe i should be able to read his mind? cause i walked away from the article confused.
"I looked at many successful Legacy decks and realized that the creature base for Merfolk was relatively cheap online. I have played Merfolk in Extended, and it is capable of some crushing draws.
While they would allow the deck to compete with many of the top decks in the format, the price tags push the deck out of the realm of budget possibility.
This is just a short introduction to the wide world of Legacy. It is full of possibilities to be explored. I hope to explore a new option each week or improve upon a deck. I welcome any constructive criticism."
these are just the 3 most blatant of the " here is a competitive article for budget players"
again mr author, i liked it and its good for a first time, i was just confused.
While I certainly don't condone the behavior myself, I do understand it. When you are in a room labeled "Tournament Practice" and 4 of every 5 decks that join your game are complete rubbish...it does tend to get frustrating...which is why TP is so useless for actual Tournament Pratice and ppl test with clans instead.
It does not have to be that way, but I think it is because the people in cas/cas are whiny and so terrible about playing against anything that is not terribad and they force the middle of the road players (with decent, but not tournament quality decks) into TP where they don't belong. And then they get flamed there. There is no place for the 'serious casual' player, but there should be.
I don't flame people, but it does upset me after a while. When you bring a non-tournament quality deck to the TOUNAMENT PRACTICE room you are wasting someone else's time. Yes, I know my deck CAN beat your pile'oburn.dec or your 24discardspells.dec, but the reason ppl play in the tournament pratice room is to...like...practice for tournaments. Joining a game with a substandard non-tournament deck is rude and immature. The room is not labeled the "less casual than cas/cas" room.
That is not to say that there is no room in TP for testing new ideas, there certainly is and I am always glad to see a new competitve deck idea there, but when a deck is clearly not a tournament deck then speidng 20+ minutes beating it is a waste of my time. The correct course of action is to open a game in cas/cas and specify that this is a serious deck, rather than bring that deck to TP. I do this all the time with my more casual serious decks (like Trix, Stasis, etc.), I dont want to demolish an elves deck in cas/cas, but I also don't want to waste people's time in TP...so I go to cas/cas and adda comment so ppl bring their good mid-tier decks.
If this is your goal, then you did a good job with the article. My only question is what response do you get bringing Merfolk or Exiler to the cas/cas room? In my experience they tend to freak out about anyting involving a counterspell or a "lame combo" like Mangara/Karakas....
...or discard
...or LD
...or Dual Lands
...or... ah, forget about it
The confusion for me came with the following sentences.
"However, I developed a strong love of the game and I began to attend FNM's and even a few 5k's."
- In my opinion, typically casual players don't attend 5k's
"I have always considered myself a budget/casual player, preferring not to shell out $500 dollars to have a shot at $32 in store credit once a week."
- Ok, so here he talks about being budge/casual
"Note: I do not claim to be a master of the game or a financial genius, but I hope my articles will help people have competitive fun without breaking the bank."
- Competitive fun......not casual, there is a difference in wording here.
I never said the article was bad, just needed a clearer message. I hope he continues to write about Legacy as the more we write, the more passionate we get about the game and the more chances he might one day play Competitive Legacy thus increasing the player base online.
" I Vial in a Stoneforge Mystic and fetch Aether Vial"
I wish I could do this :(
I am actually going to disagree with George and my other clan mates at Magic Eternal. Whilst I normally hate these type of articles it was an interesting gateway article IMHO. I beleive that it is too easy to be black/white on the casual/competitive player phenotype. There are many players out there new and exploring or budget constrained that would love to play in the eternal formats and have a deck that they will not have to change every 6 months. The message in this article is clear and the value of the exiler deck and the highlighting of that is key to the success of this article. It says hey if you want to go play semi-competive magic the with a view to buying cards that will have a longshelf life and provide a solid base once I am ready to step up the quality of my deck and play level then this theme deck is good. It also shows how on a budget you can take the next step to start tweaking the deck and making it your own. It is this type of article that gives puremtgo its heart it serves the casual as well as the hard core. Not everyone that comes to this site or the associate store is going to be buying high-value tournament staples and thats a good thing and something which this article supports and promotes. It is about having fun in mtgo and i suspect that this article hits more of a demographic than one would assume.
- Dont fall into the trap of just listening an underpowered deck, talking about how you make it budget and play 1 or 2 tp games and make it an article - What was important to succeed here was the subplot of the exiler deck.
- Hammer Eternal and Under
I don't remember whether you commented before or not, but I do remember that you beat me twice in Legacy 2mans with your Blood Moon deck (it was you, right? (oh and one of your wins was just unreal (and I'm sorry if it wasen't you!!))).
Anyway, those two losses thought me a good lesson about greedy mana bases and I'm thankful for that (I never lost to Blood Moon after that). But we'll talk about Legacy next week.
LE
PS: It was you, right??!
Paul, thank you for the reply. Its understandable why there haven't been any responses, no worries there. I will work on some of the ideas you suggested, and maybe we can get this off the ground. I'm not expecting it to become the next sanctioned format on the pro tour, but I have played it on paper, and it is quite a bit of fun. It removes a bit of the luck factor, and adds more skill, which should be appealing to a number of players. Thanks for the help, and if I manage to get it off the ground, I will for sure do another article!
Thanks for the feedback! :D
I'm glad to know my efforts are paying off! I love the format, I love everyone that's involved in running these events and I loathe the fact that the one thing I cannot do is to actually play at the events. XD
I may find enough time for a spot appearance once in a while...but it's kinda a longshot.
Anyway, Pauper Standard FTW! :)
Congratulations on 4 years! I don't know if I've commented on your articles before, but I have checked them out from time to time. The Bring Your Own Standard tournament was coverage was pretty facinating to me and if I were a better deckbuilder, I would have gotten into it. Maybe if you guys do it again I will join you.
mtgo: gainsbanding
Hello and welcome to the board! Thanks from brimnging this up and I would like to read more about your casual decks!!!
Hmmm....
Quote from the abstract: "In my first article, I introduce my budget deck series. This week I take a look at U/W Legacy Merfolk and present Legacy options for a casual/budget player. This is for you budget players!"
You sort of were a victim of poor timing here as this has been a pretty harsh last couple of weeks, so that's probably why no responses. I for one have no real interest in doing it the way you describe but I am a minority of one. You might want to set something up on a site, get the thing working amongst some play testers and then write another article (with some graphics of the set up, etc to make it look professional) and see if you get any interest. Keep in mind, new format ideas are tough to get going unless you have some core interest from a number of players. Maybe you could try this with just your clan and see how it goes or with volunteers from among your friends. Also you might want to recruit in cas cas or on the mothership forums.
Just a bump, wanted to see if anyone is interested in doing some casual auctions.
I just have to say that I admire your dedication and consistency. Your articles are always well written and presented in such a way that they look just as good as those articles on the mothership. And you hit a wide variety of topics, something that I know I couldn't do. Keeping it up over 4 years is a great accomplishment. And I can't wait for the Commander article!
Thanks for the quick and well thought out reply. I admit I am new to Magic and so I sometimes "Miss" the point. I will keep testing and see If I run into to anything else that makes me have a question.
On A side note I have considered Adding another Red Sun Zenith to the deck. I love to have it in hand and have only had the problem of not being able to cast 1 time...
Hi. Congratulations and keep up the good work!
mtgo: Bad_Karma