Hehe yeah, the packs are definitely the main thing. But I think there is a season going on right now. There are like 10-12 seasons every year, and they run one after another. I think this season ends in like mid-January where there will be a MED4 Sealed tournament to decide the winner, but I could be wrong.
That being said, I doubt I'll be able to qualify, unless I get really, really 1-out-of-1000 lucky this Thursday or something and pick up like 4 points. That might convince me to grind more.
Hey thanks for reading. Yeah the deck has had an interesting life. Not a lot of pros played it after its initial debut, but it's a part of almost everyone's testing gauntlet. Be prepared to face a LOT of Pyroclasms. People didn't load up on them when Scars first entered the metagame, but now a lot of ppl. pack 4.
Maybe somebody here can explain better, but I was told by some Orcs and others online that there are no such thing as QPs until the next season starts, which isn't for like six months or something. So to my understanding, those QPs you think you have, you don't. But you did at least win some packs :)
Getting into block is fairly cheap, very cheap compared to other formats. The three decks I mentioned are the three decks I would comfortably call Tier 1. Half a tier below that and you have Infect, WBu Control, WW, RW Aggro, BR Midrange, UB Midrange and others. All things considered it's a pretty open format, only to be more so when MBE launches.
PLEASE give us enemy duals so I can start playing RUG and/or The Rock!
nice article i wrote 2 articles on DE 1 on Mono U control and 1 on Mono B Infect like a month ago why it hasn't been posted up i have no clue. but Mono U control is a nice deck with precursor golem main, can bring in some serious pain for the other side of the field. And as for Infect, it's a really good deck can stand toe to toe with all the other decks but struggles with esper control once they get tumble/venser/ or contagion engine/venser going on. the last version of infect i ran has 3 main deck mimic vats with corpse cur and 1-2 darksteel axe which can be a pain the the neck if you have a 1/1 flier uncontested making it a 3/1
hey i had built this deck a few weeks (months?) ago after someone posted a nice result in regionnals. only played it a couple days before having no access to a computer and basicly lost sight of it. Seeing this reminded me of it and ill actually try and get some time to play it out. im reading out your whole series about it and think it's great you guys talk about it in the comments!! lots of great and usefull info in there!
thanks
hey that seems nice looks like someone could get into block and it wouldnt cost too much (not really based on mythics)
is there really only like 3 decks played!? that sounds a bit boring but i guess only 1 set to play out of doesnt give much room. Maybe it would need some nice deckbuilders to get into it? unfortunatly im far from being that someone !!! ill give this format a shot i think. thanks for this article
You know what i would like? find a good clan with great people like the ones i used to hang out with irl and be able to chat about the game itself or just hookup for fun games. With the now no limit of players in a clan my guess would be you could get to hook up with lots of different people online and actually be able to get into lots of different games and or formats with lots of players within the clan. Last clan i was in had 100+ players but no noe i actually knew irl and would be hours with absolutly no chat whatsoever.
Wish list : Have the clan box flash like it used to when someone chats in there (or just have the option to turn it on/off)
also maybe find that right clan to get into... lol
great article i love your stuff. i actually just registered to reply to this thread; thanks
P.S. Speaking of sideboards, can I get a crash course on what to board in vs. Control, Valakut, and Aggro? The deck is a lot more linear now, with heavy Tribal and Landfall themes, so it's harder to decide what to bring in, i.e. extra removal since the main deck doesn't even run 4 Lightning Bolt.
Testing the deck now. Maybe I'll run it on TNMO. In regards to the SB, I would probably prefer 4 blaze 3 arc trail since ppl see it coming a mile away, but since there is not a lot of burn in the list, the extra target might matter alot. I guess we'll see after some matches.
SB
3 Mark of Mutiny
4 Arc Trail
2 Brittle Effigy
3 Searing Blaze
3 Shatter
Highlights:
- 10 0cmc drops for Kuldotha rebirth
- 8 0cmc drops that can carry an adventuring gear on t2 with a spare mana for Goblin guide or setup for SSE
- Tap mountain to float (1), untap the mountain with koth, equip adventuring gear, drop fetchland.
- Ornithopters have evasion, fill the curve needs and often deal damage, (bushwacker and gear)
- I was tempted to cut a chieftain due to curve issues and reliability to get 3 mana.
- Much more pressure on a control player when you land an adventuring gear
P.S. Randomly I've also been liking Myr in B/R Vamps match up. Making 3 guys and shocking a dude is one of my favorite openings. But it might not be worth the slot.
Man that is an interesting deck list. I've always been looking for an excuse to play Adventuring Gear. My gut tells me that 4 Thopter and 4 SS Elder might be a bit much, but who knows? We'll see after some testing.
My main question is, you run 19 lands? I think in a vacuum where the shuffler is being kind to you, 19, even with 3 lands that ETB tapped, is the correct number. But so many games, I have starting hands with 3 spells, 2 land, 2 fetch, drawing into more lands, and I have lots of games with 1 fetchland, 6 spells, and a decent amount of hands with 0 land, as you saw in this tournament. I don't know if it's just a string of bad luck or what.
That being said, cutting down to 1 Koth would reduce the needs for extra lands, but would also highlight the aspect of flood when we don't get there by Turn 4-5. No spellbomb is an interesting choice.
I probably have a lot more thoughts, but I'd rather jump into tournament practice room first :)
Allow players to to create a personal banned list, that they can load when creating a table (it could work just like the wishlist you create with the deck editor to do large trades).
Bam, problem solved.
It could even provide wizads with actual metrics about what's popular and what is not.
It could even be useful for PREs that have convoluted banned lists like Heirloom.
I've been real busy irl with kuldotha red and I would love to feature in one of your articles once more.
As for this week's Input: There's an increase in demand for explosiveness while you want to be able to live through pyroclasm.
The solution? Equipments
Adventuring gear is awesome. With a full set of ornithopters, fetchlands and memnites, there's a guaranteed 5-6 damage swing on turn2 if you don't open with the kuldotha. An opposing clasm here will only trade 1 for 1 and you'll have enough gass to pickup the pass.
A zero mana creature on turn 1 followed by an adventuring gear sets you up for some nice damage on turn 2 with a fetchland.
Did i tell you that Spikeshot Elder is awesome with adventuring gear?. It's 10 damage waiting to happen on turn 3
3 Mark of Mutiny
4 Arc Trail
2 Brittle Effigy
3 Searing Blaze
3 Shatter
As for kor firewalker, an adventuring gear and an artifact creature can take care of him aside from brittle effigy ofcourse ;) I see no reason to play the Myr any longer
Or you can follow Brad Nelson's advice and start with single set block (so start by playing SOM block constructed) and move out from there to block then Standard.
When I began I loved the fatties and so did all my scrubby friends. We loved cards like Ancient Silverback and Phyrexian Colossus. A 15/15 would have been nuts. The difference is nowadays it seems cheating fatties into play has shifted from casual to competitive. No one was using Show and Tell to put out a fattie at that time.
Maybe I'm looking back with rose-tinted glasses.
@brandon, I don't know how much that is premeditated. For example, I don't know how much they make cards like Iona knowing that she'll be a staple in Eternal formats. During the World's coverage, I think it was the first podcast of the day, Hagon asked Rosewater about Standard, and he replied that he doesn't follow Standard. o.O
Not sure if you're aware but Clone can't actually copy a titan that is revealed off of the same Genesis Wave. It's the same reason Vesuva doesn't work in Scapeshift.
I disagree that Emrakul would have have been considered casual by everyone. In fact I think 10 years ago more people would have been offended by him than now as at least we have power creep to blame for him now. (Imho he is one of the few mistakes to come out of WOTC recently and a rather large one. I am just glad that ramp isn't more prevalent.)
As a big fan of multicolored sets I have to echo that. More gold cards with fun interactions. Though maybe this time skip the cascade as it seemed to have given lots of players conniption fits.
I think WOTC sees this as a necessary evil in order for them to sell packs. What I mean by this is that they do their best to skew formats so that only the most recent cards are relevant, i.e. Draft, Sealed, and Standard are the formats that are supported most by them. Of course, all the broken cards in the past will be relevant in the Eternal formats, but that means that that 98% of your collection that you didn't mind spending $500-1,000+ on because of all the endless hours of gameplay you thought you'd get from them is now worthless because there are no formats that support them.
WOTC will always be like, "Oh but you can play your Kithkin Weenie deck or your Riptide Shapeshifter deck in Legacy" . . . and get smashed by Survival or whatever deck comes out on top due to bannings. This problem of course can be solved in paper, where you and your play group and friends can just have fun playing your crappy Legacy legal Tribal Slivers vs. someone else's crappy INV Dragons deck. But that is impossible for your casual MTGO player. Something needs to be done, but I strongly doubt WOTC will ever care enough to do so =/
I actually wrote this article the week before Christmas, and the counts were from the weekend of the 18th. Whatever - even if you use the draft room, you will see a couple hundred players. That is not a lot.
I can't keep up anymore with my drafting addiction due to the drop in SOM rares. I used to be able to only take a small loss on them, usually winning 1 or 2 packs. But with no value in the rares to resell, I can't afford it anymore. I am making a resolution to get more into standard. It's a big up-front investment, but can be cheaper in the long run. Then I will draft with whatever packs I can win.
One more thing for the list: more articles from Peter! Good stuff!
Hehe yeah, the packs are definitely the main thing. But I think there is a season going on right now. There are like 10-12 seasons every year, and they run one after another. I think this season ends in like mid-January where there will be a MED4 Sealed tournament to decide the winner, but I could be wrong.
That being said, I doubt I'll be able to qualify, unless I get really, really 1-out-of-1000 lucky this Thursday or something and pick up like 4 points. That might convince me to grind more.
Hey thanks for reading. Yeah the deck has had an interesting life. Not a lot of pros played it after its initial debut, but it's a part of almost everyone's testing gauntlet. Be prepared to face a LOT of Pyroclasms. People didn't load up on them when Scars first entered the metagame, but now a lot of ppl. pack 4.
Maybe somebody here can explain better, but I was told by some Orcs and others online that there are no such thing as QPs until the next season starts, which isn't for like six months or something. So to my understanding, those QPs you think you have, you don't. But you did at least win some packs :)
Getting into block is fairly cheap, very cheap compared to other formats. The three decks I mentioned are the three decks I would comfortably call Tier 1. Half a tier below that and you have Infect, WBu Control, WW, RW Aggro, BR Midrange, UB Midrange and others. All things considered it's a pretty open format, only to be more so when MBE launches.
PLEASE give us enemy duals so I can start playing RUG and/or The Rock!
nice article i wrote 2 articles on DE 1 on Mono U control and 1 on Mono B Infect like a month ago why it hasn't been posted up i have no clue. but Mono U control is a nice deck with precursor golem main, can bring in some serious pain for the other side of the field. And as for Infect, it's a really good deck can stand toe to toe with all the other decks but struggles with esper control once they get tumble/venser/ or contagion engine/venser going on. the last version of infect i ran has 3 main deck mimic vats with corpse cur and 1-2 darksteel axe which can be a pain the the neck if you have a 1/1 flier uncontested making it a 3/1
hey i had built this deck a few weeks (months?) ago after someone posted a nice result in regionnals. only played it a couple days before having no access to a computer and basicly lost sight of it. Seeing this reminded me of it and ill actually try and get some time to play it out. im reading out your whole series about it and think it's great you guys talk about it in the comments!! lots of great and usefull info in there!
thanks
hey that seems nice looks like someone could get into block and it wouldnt cost too much (not really based on mythics)
is there really only like 3 decks played!? that sounds a bit boring but i guess only 1 set to play out of doesnt give much room. Maybe it would need some nice deckbuilders to get into it? unfortunatly im far from being that someone !!! ill give this format a shot i think. thanks for this article
You know what i would like? find a good clan with great people like the ones i used to hang out with irl and be able to chat about the game itself or just hookup for fun games. With the now no limit of players in a clan my guess would be you could get to hook up with lots of different people online and actually be able to get into lots of different games and or formats with lots of players within the clan. Last clan i was in had 100+ players but no noe i actually knew irl and would be hours with absolutly no chat whatsoever.
Wish list : Have the clan box flash like it used to when someone chats in there (or just have the option to turn it on/off)
also maybe find that right clan to get into... lol
great article i love your stuff. i actually just registered to reply to this thread; thanks
P.S. Speaking of sideboards, can I get a crash course on what to board in vs. Control, Valakut, and Aggro? The deck is a lot more linear now, with heavy Tribal and Landfall themes, so it's harder to decide what to bring in, i.e. extra removal since the main deck doesn't even run 4 Lightning Bolt.
Testing the deck now. Maybe I'll run it on TNMO. In regards to the SB, I would probably prefer 4 blaze 3 arc trail since ppl see it coming a mile away, but since there is not a lot of burn in the list, the extra target might matter alot. I guess we'll see after some matches.
10+4+4+3 = 21 lands
also 4 arc trail and 3 searing blaze is pretty good against vamps, Burn is just a waste of space, when you have a full set of SSE.
let me edit the previous post to make the - more clear
index-------------
(was) # now, namecard, modification
-------------------
4 Memnite
(0) 4 Ornithopter +4
4 Kuldotha Rebirth
4 Goblin Guide
(2) 4 Spikeshot Elder +2
4 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Goblin Chieftain
(1) 0 Mox Opal -1
(4) 2 Chimeric Mass -2
(4) 3 Lightning Bolt -1
(1) 0 Burst Lightning -1
(3) 0 Panic Spellbomb -3
(1) 0 Brittle Effigy -1
(1) 0 Staggershock -1
(0) 4 Adventuring Gear +4
(3) 2 Koth of the Hammer -1
(12) 10 Mountain -2
4 Arid Mesa
4 Scalding Tarn
(0) 3 Teetering Peaks +3
SB
3 Mark of Mutiny
4 Arc Trail
2 Brittle Effigy
3 Searing Blaze
3 Shatter
Highlights:
- 10 0cmc drops for Kuldotha rebirth
- 8 0cmc drops that can carry an adventuring gear on t2 with a spare mana for Goblin guide or setup for SSE
- Tap mountain to float (1), untap the mountain with koth, equip adventuring gear, drop fetchland.
- Ornithopters have evasion, fill the curve needs and often deal damage, (bushwacker and gear)
- I was tempted to cut a chieftain due to curve issues and reliability to get 3 mana.
- Much more pressure on a control player when you land an adventuring gear
P.S. Randomly I've also been liking Myr in B/R Vamps match up. Making 3 guys and shocking a dude is one of my favorite openings. But it might not be worth the slot.
Man that is an interesting deck list. I've always been looking for an excuse to play Adventuring Gear. My gut tells me that 4 Thopter and 4 SS Elder might be a bit much, but who knows? We'll see after some testing.
My main question is, you run 19 lands? I think in a vacuum where the shuffler is being kind to you, 19, even with 3 lands that ETB tapped, is the correct number. But so many games, I have starting hands with 3 spells, 2 land, 2 fetch, drawing into more lands, and I have lots of games with 1 fetchland, 6 spells, and a decent amount of hands with 0 land, as you saw in this tournament. I don't know if it's just a string of bad luck or what.
That being said, cutting down to 1 Koth would reduce the needs for extra lands, but would also highlight the aspect of flood when we don't get there by Turn 4-5. No spellbomb is an interesting choice.
I probably have a lot more thoughts, but I'd rather jump into tournament practice room first :)
LOL
1. Island
2. Smow-Covered Island
3. Underground Sea
4. Tundra
5. Tropical Island
389. Halimar Depths
LOL
I guess the sad reality is there is no good method other than playing versus people you know.
Can you imagine the table loaded with 400+ banned cards listing?
I've got an idea for the casual room:
Allow players to to create a personal banned list, that they can load when creating a table (it could work just like the wishlist you create with the deck editor to do large trades).
Bam, problem solved.
It could even provide wizads with actual metrics about what's popular and what is not.
It could even be useful for PREs that have convoluted banned lists like Heirloom.
I've been real busy irl with kuldotha red and I would love to feature in one of your articles once more.
As for this week's Input: There's an increase in demand for explosiveness while you want to be able to live through pyroclasm.
The solution? Equipments
Adventuring gear is awesome. With a full set of ornithopters, fetchlands and memnites, there's a guaranteed 5-6 damage swing on turn2 if you don't open with the kuldotha. An opposing clasm here will only trade 1 for 1 and you'll have enough gass to pickup the pass.
A zero mana creature on turn 1 followed by an adventuring gear sets you up for some nice damage on turn 2 with a fetchland.
Did i tell you that Spikeshot Elder is awesome with adventuring gear?. It's 10 damage waiting to happen on turn 3
Lets start with your decklist:
4 Memnite
+4 Ornithopter
4 Kuldotha Rebirth
4 Goblin Guide
2 Spikeshot Elder +2
4 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Goblin Chieftain
1 Mox Opal -1
4 Chimeric Mass -2
4 Lightning Bolt -1
1 Burst Lightning -1
3 Panic Spellbomb -3
1 Brittle Effigy -1
1 Staggershock -1
+4 Adventuring Gear
2 Koth of the Hammer -1
10 Mountain -2
4 Arid Mesa
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Teetering Peaks +3
3 Mark of Mutiny
4 Arc Trail
2 Brittle Effigy
3 Searing Blaze
3 Shatter
As for kor firewalker, an adventuring gear and an artifact creature can take care of him aside from brittle effigy ofcourse ;) I see no reason to play the Myr any longer
Or you can follow Brad Nelson's advice and start with single set block (so start by playing SOM block constructed) and move out from there to block then Standard.
When I began I loved the fatties and so did all my scrubby friends. We loved cards like Ancient Silverback and Phyrexian Colossus. A 15/15 would have been nuts. The difference is nowadays it seems cheating fatties into play has shifted from casual to competitive. No one was using Show and Tell to put out a fattie at that time.
Maybe I'm looking back with rose-tinted glasses.
@brandon, I don't know how much that is premeditated. For example, I don't know how much they make cards like Iona knowing that she'll be a staple in Eternal formats. During the World's coverage, I think it was the first podcast of the day, Hagon asked Rosewater about Standard, and he replied that he doesn't follow Standard. o.O
Not sure if you're aware but Clone can't actually copy a titan that is revealed off of the same Genesis Wave. It's the same reason Vesuva doesn't work in Scapeshift.
I disagree that Emrakul would have have been considered casual by everyone. In fact I think 10 years ago more people would have been offended by him than now as at least we have power creep to blame for him now. (Imho he is one of the few mistakes to come out of WOTC recently and a rather large one. I am just glad that ramp isn't more prevalent.)
As a big fan of multicolored sets I have to echo that. More gold cards with fun interactions. Though maybe this time skip the cascade as it seemed to have given lots of players conniption fits.
I think WOTC sees this as a necessary evil in order for them to sell packs. What I mean by this is that they do their best to skew formats so that only the most recent cards are relevant, i.e. Draft, Sealed, and Standard are the formats that are supported most by them. Of course, all the broken cards in the past will be relevant in the Eternal formats, but that means that that 98% of your collection that you didn't mind spending $500-1,000+ on because of all the endless hours of gameplay you thought you'd get from them is now worthless because there are no formats that support them.
WOTC will always be like, "Oh but you can play your Kithkin Weenie deck or your Riptide Shapeshifter deck in Legacy" . . . and get smashed by Survival or whatever deck comes out on top due to bannings. This problem of course can be solved in paper, where you and your play group and friends can just have fun playing your crappy Legacy legal Tribal Slivers vs. someone else's crappy INV Dragons deck. But that is impossible for your casual MTGO player. Something needs to be done, but I strongly doubt WOTC will ever care enough to do so =/
I actually wrote this article the week before Christmas, and the counts were from the weekend of the 18th. Whatever - even if you use the draft room, you will see a couple hundred players. That is not a lot.
I can't keep up anymore with my drafting addiction due to the drop in SOM rares. I used to be able to only take a small loss on them, usually winning 1 or 2 packs. But with no value in the rares to resell, I can't afford it anymore. I am making a resolution to get more into standard. It's a big up-front investment, but can be cheaper in the long run. Then I will draft with whatever packs I can win.
One more thing for the list: more articles from Peter! Good stuff!