Not seeming scary at first is definitely the key to my success. I overloaded the deck with defensive cards like Dissipation Field, Forcefield and Web of Inertia rather than outright counters and theft. Most other mono blue decks I've seen try to defend by removing threats, I just make attacking other people seem like a much better idea.
If I had to pick the strongest card in the deck, it would be Leyline of Anticipation. It makes almost every other card in the deck way better. Playing almost counter-less blue often involves a lot of bluffing. Being able to keep my mana open to cast things at EoT means every card is potentially a surprise blocker or a counterspell.
Lastly, the reason I change little pieces of the deck so frequently is that I play a lot of commander. Not only is it nice to have variety, but there's quite a few people in the multiplayer room who have experienced this deck many times (since it's almost the only deck I play anymore). Throwing in some unexpected threats and answers every now and then keeps people on their toes. Some people (probably more now that my decklist is here) have started to remember how few counters I have and take advantage of it. The joke's on them when I pull an Ertai's Trickery out of nowhere which will live in the deck for perhaps only a week before being cycled out again!
I haven't read the whole thing yet (I will) but there was a really cool play I saw that I thought you would like to hear about. On turn 7B when you elect to Trigon the Elder on your turn alternately you could have waited til his turn and see if he tried to shoot the cur. If he did you could trigon his elder in response and due to last known info and you giving it -1/-1 it would only deal 1 to the Cur. A clever way to get him to waste mana. Alternately if he chose to just dome you you could do the same thing and I don't know about you bit I would trade 1 life to nearly tap out my opponent. It would also get him to tap his Culling dais on his own turn, if he saw that line.
I agree with you on a few things and would probably default to you on matchups you seem to have more experience with. I like to keep Blasts in against UW however because they are the best answer to an Elspeth.
As far as mono blue goes, you punish their slow draws but their nut draws run over your nut draw. Mono Red is just more consistent which is why I think it is better.
Tumble Magnet is more of a reactive card for me. In the first match you are usually the aggressor where Tumble Magnets aren't as good, you side them in when you take a more controlling role. As far as Battlesphere goes it's good to have something that turns on your Phoenix and Blasts, 2 is a good number for it.
Thanks for the compliments! Looking back, that guy totally would have conceeded to that Jedi Mind Trick, though I'm sure I wouldn't have thought of it at the time. That's one to consider next time I'm playing poison, anyway!
I think to move to the next level on a game like this, I should be doing more analyzing what types of cards are in my opponent's hand. At least coming up with theories about them, or ruling out certain cards or types of cards, trying to plan ahead for specific things he might topdeck, etc. Of course those observations are easier to make use of when you're even or ahead. If you're struggling to hold on after being taking that big hit on turn 3 and facing repeatable burn, sometimes you just have to focus mainly on what's on-board and hope the dragon doesn't pop up, 'cause if it does maybe you're just gonna lose no matter what.
Hopefully I'll have another close, interesting game like this I can post sometime. The biggest hole in my playskills is not winning the games that're really close as consistently as I could, so that's what I'm trying to work on right now.
Didn't read the draft but the game was awesome. BTW. If you didn't got your untamed might, you could just attack with the ironclan myr anyway and pretend to tap mana ... he would concede. That's Master Jedi trick if you ask me ;P.
I enjoyed reading this article. It's always nice to take a good look at a deep strategy article for a limited game to see how it plays out. Was a nice length for me too. It helps that I agree with you on every point you made :p.
"I guess the sad reality is there is no good method other than playing versus people you know."
True for the time being. It's what actually happens at the multiplayer tables. You can tell what's the playfield gonna be like once you see who else is playing at the table.
Or you can tell by the guilds, for example, people from "NO_" tend to play good decks with good cards, but they seem to be not so fond of combo. And people from "Gucci" do their best to play the most broken combo they can pull off to take out the whole table.
On the other hand you've got Yours_Truly and his friends that cry foul at the sight of a Fog being played (unless you cast it in defense, as in, you are the one being attacked).
Problem is that if MTGO gets bigger, and more people start playing, "playing with people you know" is gonna get harder (you wont be able to keep track of the different groups of people playing).
The player-banned-list would be self regulatory, ban enough stuff and no one will play with you, because they just can't. It would allow people to arrive to a comfort zone through trial and error.
yes they run iron myr. and archetic doesn't have enough anwsers for mono red. mono red can go t1 spikeshot, t2 iron myr t3 red planeswalker and swing for 4. next turn play kuldotha phoenix and swing for 8 so on and so on, or they can slow roll you can play contagion engines with myrs and bring phoenix back to life while pinging you to death with spikeshots. or if they land red planeswalker and you cant do any damage in 2 turns to it, it goes ult and pings you to death with so many mountains. It spits out so many threats that you really have to think about what you want to get rid of right away. you focus on planeswalker and phoenix bites your face while your doing it, you focus on phoenix and walker runs all over you.
Good article. I love SOM block. With taht being said, I have been running Koth Red now for a month and half and have had great results. When I first started playing it maybe 25-35% of the field was red....now red is about 60% of the field....so many mirrors. I agree with a lot of what you say but there are some differences in philosophies. Out of 12 DE;s, I have accrued 12 points with Koth Red (1 4-0 AND 9 3-1'S). And so here are some of my thoughts:
UW: I do not like the boarding out of the battlespheres for tumble magnets. I actually go creature saturation and just play around sunblast angel. Battlespheres allow you to reset the board after an angel. They get you to metalcraft to return pheonixs, They can kill opposing planeswalkers and ping off the last few life points. Most UW decks run very creature light (11)....So after board I have 28 creatures. They cant do a whole lot when they are facing down massive amounts of creatures.
My list is different but here is how i sideboard:
out: 4 Blasts
In: 2 BattleSphere, 1 Wurmcoil, 1 Spikeshot
Infect:
Is a good match up but it certainly is no bye...they can lay down quick beats of their own.....post sideboard the match up really is in reds favor with all arc trails coming in. So yeah, Game 1 is like 50-60% in favor of koth...but games 2 and 3 raise it to like 80% or higher.
The deck I fist pump when Im playing is WW.....Yeah that is a bye.
MonoU is the worst matchup by that its 50% even after sideboard. But it certainly is winnable. I found games they don't drop a turn 3 architect, I win more often. They are unable to power out their bigger threats to match my bigger threats. Games they get out a architect, they are the favorites. Volition reins sucks when I'm red....that hurts a lot.....My game plan is to beat as fast and hard as possible. I try to outrace them. Also equipped spikeshots are game winners here.
Thanks for the article...I did enjoy it!!! Bring some more block
Quick update: speaking of adding bad cards to an upgraded draftdeck, i've been giving goblin gaveleer a shot in the deck to mixed results. (I did change the chimeric mass to accorders shield x4 cutting 2 thopters in the process) It's kind off more of the same, but getting either without the other feels worse. Raid bombardment is another one of those experiments. It's great against decks that want to stabilize and the extra thopters really help here.
Overall, it seems that when you change one or two things in the deck, the whole lists dominoes and cards shift in value and when they should appear. this deck is so draw dependant and i feel that adding adventuring gear has stabilized the list to be a little less draw dependant. If you can stick a turn 1 kuldotha, you're in good shape, but too often you just misfire and get lost in mulligans. In those situations adventuring gear is your plan B.
This will be a great deck to test your luck in a Grand prix, but I wouldn't bring it to a pro tour. If you need results don't play this. If you're willing to play the lottery, this might be the deck for you. I'll say that any one who can play this deck with skill will win some events, but lose some against pretty bad opponents too.
The reason why the sideboard isn't focussed towards control is that you should be able to win those matches. Sticking an adventuring gear and playing around sweepers will win you those matches. against UB i would board in anything. against UW i'd be tempted to board in mark of mutiny.
Against valakut i board +2 Brittle effigy and +3 mark of mutiny, taking out 4 SSE and 1 Chirmeric mass, Spikeshot elder is too slow here and you need your explosiveness. The trick here is to not let them stabilize and keep pressure on.
The elephant in the room is vampires. Arc trail is the better card here. Although this matchup is a real race and you will need to board in 7 removal, kuldotha rebirth is very important too. The adventuring gear can be cut down but offers a great lategame with SSE. I guess you had the masticores in for this matchup, but the SSe does the same thing. In my opinion the crusades like goblin chieftain and adventuring gear need to go. your creatures don't need to have an edge over theirs as they play the same amount of spam as you do, but their removal is worse.
Against WW argentum i'd board the most since surviving their "combo" requires some serious thought. sometimes i completely forfeit the kuldotha plan boarding out all the 0cmc and the namesake spell for all of the removal the sideboard has to offer. But if i see Kor Firewalkers i tend te keep 6 0cmc creatures in and just cut in the aggro plan. Adventuring Gear really shines here. As you will play damage control instead of aggressive.
All of the ramp decks are just to slow. they have to clasm before your key spells come out and will often slow down their ramping to stop the bleed. You should keep a few haste creatures in hand and play the fetchland game with adventuring gear. (not popping them at all).
Remember 4x 6 is also lethal and if they dont ramp, they dont resolve a big monster on turn 5
1) So as i understand it, you always side in 3-4 Tumble Magnets except for mirror.
As long as Mono Red is less then 50% from all decks it is wise to maindeck at least 3. Is not it? (the obvious choise is to replace 2 x Myr Battlesphere for 2 x Tumble Magnets in main, because you side out Myr Battlesphere in most matches)
2) As for me i think, that Hoard-smelter Dragon has more potential then Myr Battlesphere. Costs 1 less (as you pointed out it can be placed on turn 4), has repeatable shatter effect, wins every (!) battle in the air (kuldotha phoenix, argent sphinx, indomitable archangel, sunblast angle), and the most importand - it falls only to one card: volition reins.
Wow Fel, you outdid yourself reaching to Godot like heights with this one. I have to stop in the middle of it and pick up the rest later. GG! Btw I think I would have pinged the goblin with the trigon and forced the win that way but there is no way to know except being there.
See, I disagree a bit. Back when I started playing during Urza's Destiny, something like Elvish Piper was very fair even though he was obviously used to cheat fatties into play. So was Sneak Attack, which was scoffed at for years. To me, the problem lies in a shift of what pros and competitive players view fatties as. It seems like fatties are the stuff of competitive decks nowadays from Eldrazi to Iona and to a lesser extent, the Titans and Wurmcoil; everywhere you look fatties are no longer the stuff of casual and scrubby decks. I realize that fatties have become more intelligent and/or power crept to make cards like Sneak Attack and Show and Tell tournament playable whereas before they were the stuff of casual decks only and laughed at by competitive players, but that shift is still difficult for me to get used to. I still think it's weird that a card like Emrakul seems to be the card casual players are most disgusted with. For me, when I began playing, Mogg Fanatic, Jackal Pup and Masticore were the stuff of "good" creatures, and anything more than the casting cost of a Morphling was casual and scrubby. Times have changed.
Well in regards to Emrakul being casual back in the day, I think that depends on whether or not you're paying retail for him. The mana was so bad that if you got to 15 fair and square, maybe with a little help from Dark Ritual or something, then I think people would have saw that as casual. It was fun seeing Spirit of the Night, Verdant Force, and Phrexian Colossus in action, especially when you were a kid. And I KNOW ppl. would have tossed BFG in their decks if they thought they could get the 12 or 17 or whatever black mana was in his casting cost. But at the time, that was pretty impossible in a casual deck.
But yeah, if ppl. were abusing Cadaverous Bloom, Tolarian Academy, Sneak Attack, etc. to cheat him out, then people would probably hate it.
I don't think Rosewater follows Standard, but then again, what formats does he follow? R&D spends the bulk of their time testing FFL Standard and Limited, their two main cash cows.
I feel your pain. I have been unsuccessfully looking for a clan just as a way to circumvent the whole random player casual dilemma, but it seems most clans are inactive. I think Wizards needs to organize and allow people to organize and search clans more effectively. Searching clan names in the client is useless. They should allow people to use key words and key word searches. Chat interface is not the problem imho, it's a) not being allowed to join multiple clans and b) not being able to distinguish/find clans in the sea of names.
If you follow the link, it shows that I have 1 QP, lol. woohoo!! Last week's article was published the week after I wrote it, but I finished this article a couple days before Christmas, and it was posted right after the holiday. But yeah, I doubt I will ever reach 15. And to win, a few byes are probably necessary since Sealed is such a bomb-oriented format.
I don't doubt your guys analysis, but honestly, I'm surprised Big Red is doing well in the metagame. Why doesn't Red like running Masticore? Too vulnerable against removal? As a whole, the deck doesn't seem to have a lot of early plays to punish Control. Spikeshot Elder is nice, but only a few ways to pump him, he seems pretty average. I would want to spend my Turn 3 pinging something, when other decks are powering out massive artifact creatures. Galvanic Blast looks like it's just a Shock most of the time, which is good, but nothing special, since it can't take out Architect.
It's midrange game is nice with Planeswalker and 3/3 Manic Vandal, but I bet the deck would kill to run 8 Iron Myr. Do ppl. run off-color Myr?
So anything you did before Dec 22 counts for jack diddly; given the delay in posting articles I'm not sure when you played these tourneys. At any rate, I was rather irritated when I found out that all my QPs that I thought I earned after SOM came out actually counted for nothing. But getting to 15 QPs by January 12th will be quite a hustle :)
dude,
try contagion clasp and tumble magnet MD. clasp shuts down every other myr in the format. and add counters to magnet and planeswalker is very good.
Not seeming scary at first is definitely the key to my success. I overloaded the deck with defensive cards like Dissipation Field, Forcefield and Web of Inertia rather than outright counters and theft. Most other mono blue decks I've seen try to defend by removing threats, I just make attacking other people seem like a much better idea.
If I had to pick the strongest card in the deck, it would be Leyline of Anticipation. It makes almost every other card in the deck way better. Playing almost counter-less blue often involves a lot of bluffing. Being able to keep my mana open to cast things at EoT means every card is potentially a surprise blocker or a counterspell.
Lastly, the reason I change little pieces of the deck so frequently is that I play a lot of commander. Not only is it nice to have variety, but there's quite a few people in the multiplayer room who have experienced this deck many times (since it's almost the only deck I play anymore). Throwing in some unexpected threats and answers every now and then keeps people on their toes. Some people (probably more now that my decklist is here) have started to remember how few counters I have and take advantage of it. The joke's on them when I pull an Ertai's Trickery out of nowhere which will live in the deck for perhaps only a week before being cycled out again!
I have a feeling infect is going to get better! And UW should get better....just from that mythic whit ecreature spoiled
You are absolutely right...mono U's nut draw does run over reds nut draw.
I haven't read the whole thing yet (I will) but there was a really cool play I saw that I thought you would like to hear about. On turn 7B when you elect to Trigon the Elder on your turn alternately you could have waited til his turn and see if he tried to shoot the cur. If he did you could trigon his elder in response and due to last known info and you giving it -1/-1 it would only deal 1 to the Cur. A clever way to get him to waste mana. Alternately if he chose to just dome you you could do the same thing and I don't know about you bit I would trade 1 life to nearly tap out my opponent. It would also get him to tap his Culling dais on his own turn, if he saw that line.
I agree with you on a few things and would probably default to you on matchups you seem to have more experience with. I like to keep Blasts in against UW however because they are the best answer to an Elspeth.
As far as mono blue goes, you punish their slow draws but their nut draws run over your nut draw. Mono Red is just more consistent which is why I think it is better.
Tumble Magnet is more of a reactive card for me. In the first match you are usually the aggressor where Tumble Magnets aren't as good, you side them in when you take a more controlling role. As far as Battlesphere goes it's good to have something that turns on your Phoenix and Blasts, 2 is a good number for it.
Thanks for the compliments! Looking back, that guy totally would have conceeded to that Jedi Mind Trick, though I'm sure I wouldn't have thought of it at the time. That's one to consider next time I'm playing poison, anyway!
I think to move to the next level on a game like this, I should be doing more analyzing what types of cards are in my opponent's hand. At least coming up with theories about them, or ruling out certain cards or types of cards, trying to plan ahead for specific things he might topdeck, etc. Of course those observations are easier to make use of when you're even or ahead. If you're struggling to hold on after being taking that big hit on turn 3 and facing repeatable burn, sometimes you just have to focus mainly on what's on-board and hope the dragon doesn't pop up, 'cause if it does maybe you're just gonna lose no matter what.
Hopefully I'll have another close, interesting game like this I can post sometime. The biggest hole in my playskills is not winning the games that're really close as consistently as I could, so that's what I'm trying to work on right now.
Great Article, I love the Block talk. Volition reigns is a huge problem for Red, I hate seeing that card.
Can't wait for Besieged to come out and shake things up a bit.
Didn't read the draft but the game was awesome. BTW. If you didn't got your untamed might, you could just attack with the ironclan myr anyway and pretend to tap mana ... he would concede. That's Master Jedi trick if you ask me ;P.
“play what you want, concede when you want”
Sounds familiar to my casual room game description :p.
(First Post)
I enjoyed reading this article. It's always nice to take a good look at a deep strategy article for a limited game to see how it plays out. Was a nice length for me too. It helps that I agree with you on every point you made :p.
"I guess the sad reality is there is no good method other than playing versus people you know."
True for the time being. It's what actually happens at the multiplayer tables. You can tell what's the playfield gonna be like once you see who else is playing at the table.
Or you can tell by the guilds, for example, people from "NO_" tend to play good decks with good cards, but they seem to be not so fond of combo. And people from "Gucci" do their best to play the most broken combo they can pull off to take out the whole table.
On the other hand you've got Yours_Truly and his friends that cry foul at the sight of a Fog being played (unless you cast it in defense, as in, you are the one being attacked).
Problem is that if MTGO gets bigger, and more people start playing, "playing with people you know" is gonna get harder (you wont be able to keep track of the different groups of people playing).
The player-banned-list would be self regulatory, ban enough stuff and no one will play with you, because they just can't. It would allow people to arrive to a comfort zone through trial and error.
yes they run iron myr. and archetic doesn't have enough anwsers for mono red. mono red can go t1 spikeshot, t2 iron myr t3 red planeswalker and swing for 4. next turn play kuldotha phoenix and swing for 8 so on and so on, or they can slow roll you can play contagion engines with myrs and bring phoenix back to life while pinging you to death with spikeshots. or if they land red planeswalker and you cant do any damage in 2 turns to it, it goes ult and pings you to death with so many mountains. It spits out so many threats that you really have to think about what you want to get rid of right away. you focus on planeswalker and phoenix bites your face while your doing it, you focus on phoenix and walker runs all over you.
Good article. I love SOM block. With taht being said, I have been running Koth Red now for a month and half and have had great results. When I first started playing it maybe 25-35% of the field was red....now red is about 60% of the field....so many mirrors. I agree with a lot of what you say but there are some differences in philosophies. Out of 12 DE;s, I have accrued 12 points with Koth Red (1 4-0 AND 9 3-1'S). And so here are some of my thoughts:
UW: I do not like the boarding out of the battlespheres for tumble magnets. I actually go creature saturation and just play around sunblast angel. Battlespheres allow you to reset the board after an angel. They get you to metalcraft to return pheonixs, They can kill opposing planeswalkers and ping off the last few life points. Most UW decks run very creature light (11)....So after board I have 28 creatures. They cant do a whole lot when they are facing down massive amounts of creatures.
My list is different but here is how i sideboard:
out: 4 Blasts
In: 2 BattleSphere, 1 Wurmcoil, 1 Spikeshot
Infect:
Is a good match up but it certainly is no bye...they can lay down quick beats of their own.....post sideboard the match up really is in reds favor with all arc trails coming in. So yeah, Game 1 is like 50-60% in favor of koth...but games 2 and 3 raise it to like 80% or higher.
The deck I fist pump when Im playing is WW.....Yeah that is a bye.
MonoU is the worst matchup by that its 50% even after sideboard. But it certainly is winnable. I found games they don't drop a turn 3 architect, I win more often. They are unable to power out their bigger threats to match my bigger threats. Games they get out a architect, they are the favorites. Volition reins sucks when I'm red....that hurts a lot.....My game plan is to beat as fast and hard as possible. I try to outrace them. Also equipped spikeshots are game winners here.
Thanks for the article...I did enjoy it!!! Bring some more block
Quick update: speaking of adding bad cards to an upgraded draftdeck, i've been giving goblin gaveleer a shot in the deck to mixed results. (I did change the chimeric mass to accorders shield x4 cutting 2 thopters in the process) It's kind off more of the same, but getting either without the other feels worse. Raid bombardment is another one of those experiments. It's great against decks that want to stabilize and the extra thopters really help here.
Overall, it seems that when you change one or two things in the deck, the whole lists dominoes and cards shift in value and when they should appear. this deck is so draw dependant and i feel that adding adventuring gear has stabilized the list to be a little less draw dependant. If you can stick a turn 1 kuldotha, you're in good shape, but too often you just misfire and get lost in mulligans. In those situations adventuring gear is your plan B.
This will be a great deck to test your luck in a Grand prix, but I wouldn't bring it to a pro tour. If you need results don't play this. If you're willing to play the lottery, this might be the deck for you. I'll say that any one who can play this deck with skill will win some events, but lose some against pretty bad opponents too.
The reason why the sideboard isn't focussed towards control is that you should be able to win those matches. Sticking an adventuring gear and playing around sweepers will win you those matches. against UB i would board in anything. against UW i'd be tempted to board in mark of mutiny.
Against valakut i board +2 Brittle effigy and +3 mark of mutiny, taking out 4 SSE and 1 Chirmeric mass, Spikeshot elder is too slow here and you need your explosiveness. The trick here is to not let them stabilize and keep pressure on.
The elephant in the room is vampires. Arc trail is the better card here. Although this matchup is a real race and you will need to board in 7 removal, kuldotha rebirth is very important too. The adventuring gear can be cut down but offers a great lategame with SSE. I guess you had the masticores in for this matchup, but the SSe does the same thing. In my opinion the crusades like goblin chieftain and adventuring gear need to go. your creatures don't need to have an edge over theirs as they play the same amount of spam as you do, but their removal is worse.
Against WW argentum i'd board the most since surviving their "combo" requires some serious thought. sometimes i completely forfeit the kuldotha plan boarding out all the 0cmc and the namesake spell for all of the removal the sideboard has to offer. But if i see Kor Firewalkers i tend te keep 6 0cmc creatures in and just cut in the aggro plan. Adventuring Gear really shines here. As you will play damage control instead of aggressive.
All of the ramp decks are just to slow. they have to clasm before your key spells come out and will often slow down their ramping to stop the bleed. You should keep a few haste creatures in hand and play the fetchland game with adventuring gear. (not popping them at all).
Remember 4x 6 is also lethal and if they dont ramp, they dont resolve a big monster on turn 5
1) So as i understand it, you always side in 3-4 Tumble Magnets except for mirror.
As long as Mono Red is less then 50% from all decks it is wise to maindeck at least 3. Is not it? (the obvious choise is to replace 2 x Myr Battlesphere for 2 x Tumble Magnets in main, because you side out Myr Battlesphere in most matches)
2) As for me i think, that Hoard-smelter Dragon has more potential then Myr Battlesphere. Costs 1 less (as you pointed out it can be placed on turn 4), has repeatable shatter effect, wins every (!) battle in the air (kuldotha phoenix, argent sphinx, indomitable archangel, sunblast angle), and the most importand - it falls only to one card: volition reins.
Wow Fel, you outdid yourself reaching to Godot like heights with this one. I have to stop in the middle of it and pick up the rest later. GG! Btw I think I would have pinged the goblin with the trigon and forced the win that way but there is no way to know except being there.
See, I disagree a bit. Back when I started playing during Urza's Destiny, something like Elvish Piper was very fair even though he was obviously used to cheat fatties into play. So was Sneak Attack, which was scoffed at for years. To me, the problem lies in a shift of what pros and competitive players view fatties as. It seems like fatties are the stuff of competitive decks nowadays from Eldrazi to Iona and to a lesser extent, the Titans and Wurmcoil; everywhere you look fatties are no longer the stuff of casual and scrubby decks. I realize that fatties have become more intelligent and/or power crept to make cards like Sneak Attack and Show and Tell tournament playable whereas before they were the stuff of casual decks only and laughed at by competitive players, but that shift is still difficult for me to get used to. I still think it's weird that a card like Emrakul seems to be the card casual players are most disgusted with. For me, when I began playing, Mogg Fanatic, Jackal Pup and Masticore were the stuff of "good" creatures, and anything more than the casting cost of a Morphling was casual and scrubby. Times have changed.
Well in regards to Emrakul being casual back in the day, I think that depends on whether or not you're paying retail for him. The mana was so bad that if you got to 15 fair and square, maybe with a little help from Dark Ritual or something, then I think people would have saw that as casual. It was fun seeing Spirit of the Night, Verdant Force, and Phrexian Colossus in action, especially when you were a kid. And I KNOW ppl. would have tossed BFG in their decks if they thought they could get the 12 or 17 or whatever black mana was in his casting cost. But at the time, that was pretty impossible in a casual deck.
But yeah, if ppl. were abusing Cadaverous Bloom, Tolarian Academy, Sneak Attack, etc. to cheat him out, then people would probably hate it.
I don't think Rosewater follows Standard, but then again, what formats does he follow? R&D spends the bulk of their time testing FFL Standard and Limited, their two main cash cows.
I feel your pain. I have been unsuccessfully looking for a clan just as a way to circumvent the whole random player casual dilemma, but it seems most clans are inactive. I think Wizards needs to organize and allow people to organize and search clans more effectively. Searching clan names in the client is useless. They should allow people to use key words and key word searches. Chat interface is not the problem imho, it's a) not being allowed to join multiple clans and b) not being able to distinguish/find clans in the sea of names.
If you follow the link, it shows that I have 1 QP, lol. woohoo!! Last week's article was published the week after I wrote it, but I finished this article a couple days before Christmas, and it was posted right after the holiday. But yeah, I doubt I will ever reach 15. And to win, a few byes are probably necessary since Sealed is such a bomb-oriented format.
I don't doubt your guys analysis, but honestly, I'm surprised Big Red is doing well in the metagame. Why doesn't Red like running Masticore? Too vulnerable against removal? As a whole, the deck doesn't seem to have a lot of early plays to punish Control. Spikeshot Elder is nice, but only a few ways to pump him, he seems pretty average. I would want to spend my Turn 3 pinging something, when other decks are powering out massive artifact creatures. Galvanic Blast looks like it's just a Shock most of the time, which is good, but nothing special, since it can't take out Architect.
It's midrange game is nice with Planeswalker and 3/3 Manic Vandal, but I bet the deck would kill to run 8 Iron Myr. Do ppl. run off-color Myr?
I decided to try and look it up, and It's not 100% clear, but it looks like 2011 Season 1 just started on Dec 22. See here:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mol/mocs
So anything you did before Dec 22 counts for jack diddly; given the delay in posting articles I'm not sure when you played these tourneys. At any rate, I was rather irritated when I found out that all my QPs that I thought I earned after SOM came out actually counted for nothing. But getting to 15 QPs by January 12th will be quite a hustle :)