For those of you still reading this, I will say something that might offend you; I don’t care about the values of the secondary market or your “investments” in cards. If you want to “invest” your money, buy a stock or bond, or open a savings account. "
Now I agree that holding onto your collection has not value, but that's for any collection. Not just online, or magic cards. You don't actually have value untill you sell said collection and your net worth is more then your investment.
There quite a lot of people, myself included, that would be shocked at the value of what we invested, and have not sold off to to get a profit from our investment. I think the notion that our collection has "Potential Value" is what makes it seem like an positive investment.
maybe for the endandgered tribes, you make a list of tribes that are legal rather then illegal and say these are the only tribes people can build from.
Also what might be fun if one week you did a double tribe week. Two tribes must be in a deck. Singleton tribe weeks. And all creature decks tribe weeks.
Of course I would defenitly like to see a Commander tribe week whether it's one on one or 4 player.
Mythics increase the interest in drafting, but drafting gets old fast when you're paying $14 to open cards worth about $0.50 total, with a small chance to win a lottery prize. It sucks all the fun out of drafting knowing you have to Mythic-draft + become a spike in order to get anything of value out of the format. I hate having to pay $40 bucks for some Masticores, but it beats doing like 3 drafts and walking away with about 20 bucks worth of cards :((
Plus people turn into jerks when drafting. You get about 500% more "OMG You're a %$^$&%# luck^$&## n&$&#&#*B!!! If I didn't always get mana-screwed, I would win every single draft" when drafting vs. casual play.
I have a Tibor and Lumia dack I play with in paper, but it's a Copy deck. Copys spells, artifacts, creatures, everything. More of a reactive than a proactive deck, but still fun. I may do an article on it. I like your version though.
In my experience so far, Standard card prices didn't used to hurt as much when the cards were still playable in Extended for a good amount of time. But with the new Extended format, old cards get shoved to the side very quickly. I also remember Extended being a lot more popular in the past 5-6 years. Now I feel that when I log into Casual Room, the vast majority of the games are for Standard. It's also about one of the only places you can go if you enjoy playing non-broken, non-netdecks. Funny how IPA and older sets have dropped like they were weighted with a dozen millstones. MTGO sure is changing!
At least with Jace, you have a decent chance of him holding some value with Blue being the king of all colors. I can't imagine even Koth being any good in Classic once he rotates out of Standard and Extended.
I spoke with Sheldon menery , member for the rules committe for EDH, and he said at this time there are no changes for poison in EDH. It will however, be watched to make sure it doesn't warp the format. I personally don't think as of right now there is enough to make a strog dedicated poison deck. I will however say if you see someone playing poison, they should be killed immediatly. It was Sheldon himself who killed me attacking with a 28/28 Kresh the Bloodbraided and casting tainted Strike on it when I was at 40 life.
1. The night hawk would work, but as you pointed out, the imp's dredge ability puts stuff in the GY. Also he is reusable. Once the nighthawk dies, I have less recursion otptions to use on him because of his creature type, where as the imp just recurs himself.
2. I haven't ran into any issues yet with the lich and having artifacts. I can always steal one from an opponents GY as well if need to be. And again, if I have to discard him due to not having an artifact to play, then I can recur him later.
3. Exsanguinate hits all players. Virtually trippling X when you cast it where as Consumes Spirit hits one player. I am however considering putting it in the deck.
4. Helldozer is in there for the annoying lands like Mystifying Maze, Maze of Ith, Oren-Reif Vastwood and so on. I don't use it as dedicated land kill. I actually havn't had it out yet to make a game inpact, but I will see what happens when I land one.
Yeah I agree. I've seen a handful of people trying to do aggro Infect and they've all gotten beaten because other than Skittles their card quality was just downright bad. Control is, I think, the way to go. Unfortunately at least for Commander, I don't think that will be feasible until we get more Proliferate cards. The few that exist now, spread out in a singleton deck, are just not quite good enough.
I did have a harsh mulligan in game one (to 5). The second game was more what I expected from the deck, with the early stuff early and the midgame stuff in the midgame. The lack of removal is what really seemed to be the problem, which is what confused me so much. Having played mono-black and black/green infect to great success, I'd always found that removal was actually far less important than it usually is. The steady crush of more and more infect creatures was always what won games for me. Maybe mono-green just steps a little bit too far into the "zero removal" camp.
As I recall, my opponent had a pretty generic RW metalcraft deck, with nothing particularly nasty.
Helldozer is a double edged sword. You can scare the crap out of a lot of 5 color players, and become enemy number 1. In my experience, playing Helldozer usually means that I'm dead within 2 turns.
But you got Headless Horseman in there, and that's awesome.
I managed to crack 3 Primeval Titans within about a week. That was awesome. I've also cracked about 6 Frost Titans, unfortunately I sold the extras before this surge. Only cracked one Jace but bought another at the $35 mark during release. I've since had to take a big gulp and buy at $75. Right now it looks like even that was a steal.
Anything featuring a Zombie Dwarf Legend gets five stars in my book. Nice article, and topical too!
I'm not overly familiar with the rules of Commander, but have a few questions:
1) Wouldn't Vampire Nighthawk be useful in the deck? Perhaps better thank Stinkweed (although Stinky can fill your GY for you, so maybe 'as well as' would be a better comment.
2) Do you have enough artifacts to run Phylactery Lich?
3) You're running Exsanguinate, but not Consume Spirit? I'd run both myself.
I have rarely played with infect in sealed. I only did it 4 times. 2 of them I went 4-0 and 1 I went 3-1, losing in the finals. The other time was in a online ptq but not as a maindeck option. Both the infect and the metalcraft were pretty bad so I just switched each other to try them out and to throw an element of surprise in the 2nd game.
Carrier as in disease carrier, given they tap and sacrifice to pass on -X/-X equal to their power/toughness.
I did a similar breakdown for Kaleidoscope-legal tribes in an article a couple years back. (Speaking of on the verge of extinction things...)
It is my proud boast to have built decks for every single possible tribe, even the one-ofs, with the sole exception of Dreadnought (Due to the only tribe member costing 100 tickets a set.) I'd set a minimum of 3 genuine tribe members per brink of extinction tribe, as any fewer and you're just building changeling.dek with this week's special guest star.
If you're playing strictly to open Jace, you have a better bang for your buck trying in a sealed as opposed to a draft.
Part of the problem with small set Mythics is WotC taking away the small set triple drafts. I hated that. Heck they only give us 4-3-2-2 triple set on release, not even swiss which is what I play.
I wasn't to thrilled with this part.
"PART 4 – Screw the secondary market
For those of you still reading this, I will say something that might offend you; I don’t care about the values of the secondary market or your “investments” in cards. If you want to “invest” your money, buy a stock or bond, or open a savings account. "
Now I agree that holding onto your collection has not value, but that's for any collection. Not just online, or magic cards. You don't actually have value untill you sell said collection and your net worth is more then your investment.
There quite a lot of people, myself included, that would be shocked at the value of what we invested, and have not sold off to to get a profit from our investment. I think the notion that our collection has "Potential Value" is what makes it seem like an positive investment.
maybe for the endandgered tribes, you make a list of tribes that are legal rather then illegal and say these are the only tribes people can build from.
Also what might be fun if one week you did a double tribe week. Two tribes must be in a deck. Singleton tribe weeks. And all creature decks tribe weeks.
Of course I would defenitly like to see a Commander tribe week whether it's one on one or 4 player.
What precisely IS changeling corruption? Playing with only the $$ changelings??
significantly less than 5 leaves room for changeling corruption, maybe 5-10
But then you don't get to reply to the morons who scream that junk "So then perhaps you should build your decks a little more carefully. :p"
Mythics increase the interest in drafting, but drafting gets old fast when you're paying $14 to open cards worth about $0.50 total, with a small chance to win a lottery prize. It sucks all the fun out of drafting knowing you have to Mythic-draft + become a spike in order to get anything of value out of the format. I hate having to pay $40 bucks for some Masticores, but it beats doing like 3 drafts and walking away with about 20 bucks worth of cards :((
Plus people turn into jerks when drafting. You get about 500% more "OMG You're a %$^$&%# luck^$&## n&$&#&#*B!!! If I didn't always get mana-screwed, I would win every single draft" when drafting vs. casual play.
I have a Tibor and Lumia dack I play with in paper, but it's a Copy deck. Copys spells, artifacts, creatures, everything. More of a reactive than a proactive deck, but still fun. I may do an article on it. I like your version though.
In my experience so far, Standard card prices didn't used to hurt as much when the cards were still playable in Extended for a good amount of time. But with the new Extended format, old cards get shoved to the side very quickly. I also remember Extended being a lot more popular in the past 5-6 years. Now I feel that when I log into Casual Room, the vast majority of the games are for Standard. It's also about one of the only places you can go if you enjoy playing non-broken, non-netdecks. Funny how IPA and older sets have dropped like they were weighted with a dozen millstones. MTGO sure is changing!
At least with Jace, you have a decent chance of him holding some value with Blue being the king of all colors. I can't imagine even Koth being any good in Classic once he rotates out of Standard and Extended.
I spoke with Sheldon menery , member for the rules committe for EDH, and he said at this time there are no changes for poison in EDH. It will however, be watched to make sure it doesn't warp the format. I personally don't think as of right now there is enough to make a strog dedicated poison deck. I will however say if you see someone playing poison, they should be killed immediatly. It was Sheldon himself who killed me attacking with a 28/28 Kresh the Bloodbraided and casting tainted Strike on it when I was at 40 life.
I really want to play jace...but I cant get myself to shell out 320$ for a playset. That is ridiculous
1. The night hawk would work, but as you pointed out, the imp's dredge ability puts stuff in the GY. Also he is reusable. Once the nighthawk dies, I have less recursion otptions to use on him because of his creature type, where as the imp just recurs himself.
2. I haven't ran into any issues yet with the lich and having artifacts. I can always steal one from an opponents GY as well if need to be. And again, if I have to discard him due to not having an artifact to play, then I can recur him later.
3. Exsanguinate hits all players. Virtually trippling X when you cast it where as Consumes Spirit hits one player. I am however considering putting it in the deck.
4. Helldozer is in there for the annoying lands like Mystifying Maze, Maze of Ith, Oren-Reif Vastwood and so on. I don't use it as dedicated land kill. I actually havn't had it out yet to make a game inpact, but I will see what happens when I land one.
Yeah I agree. I've seen a handful of people trying to do aggro Infect and they've all gotten beaten because other than Skittles their card quality was just downright bad. Control is, I think, the way to go. Unfortunately at least for Commander, I don't think that will be feasible until we get more Proliferate cards. The few that exist now, spread out in a singleton deck, are just not quite good enough.
Good idea!
I did have a harsh mulligan in game one (to 5). The second game was more what I expected from the deck, with the early stuff early and the midgame stuff in the midgame. The lack of removal is what really seemed to be the problem, which is what confused me so much. Having played mono-black and black/green infect to great success, I'd always found that removal was actually far less important than it usually is. The steady crush of more and more infect creatures was always what won games for me. Maybe mono-green just steps a little bit too far into the "zero removal" camp.
As I recall, my opponent had a pretty generic RW metalcraft deck, with nothing particularly nasty.
Well, the thing to do would be to check the math. See which tribes are available at each numerical point, and decide based on that.
Personally I'd set it at 15, so that smallish tribes like Atogs and Moonfolk would still be allowed but not the bigger ones.
what would you say the top end requirement would be for a brink of extinction tribe event, no tribes with five or members?
Good stuff. Deck looks fun.
Helldozer is a double edged sword. You can scare the crap out of a lot of 5 color players, and become enemy number 1. In my experience, playing Helldozer usually means that I'm dead within 2 turns.
But you got Headless Horseman in there, and that's awesome.
I managed to crack 3 Primeval Titans within about a week. That was awesome. I've also cracked about 6 Frost Titans, unfortunately I sold the extras before this surge. Only cracked one Jace but bought another at the $35 mark during release. I've since had to take a big gulp and buy at $75. Right now it looks like even that was a steal.
You opened Koth! That means you win whether or not you actually win.
Anything featuring a Zombie Dwarf Legend gets five stars in my book. Nice article, and topical too!
I'm not overly familiar with the rules of Commander, but have a few questions:
1) Wouldn't Vampire Nighthawk be useful in the deck? Perhaps better thank Stinkweed (although Stinky can fill your GY for you, so maybe 'as well as' would be a better comment.
2) Do you have enough artifacts to run Phylactery Lich?
3) You're running Exsanguinate, but not Consume Spirit? I'd run both myself.
4) I love Helldozer. +5 stars more.
I have rarely played with infect in sealed. I only did it 4 times. 2 of them I went 4-0 and 1 I went 3-1, losing in the finals. The other time was in a online ptq but not as a maindeck option. Both the infect and the metalcraft were pretty bad so I just switched each other to try them out and to throw an element of surprise in the 2nd game.
I've had pretty good success cracking packs for jace, ripped 2 in the last 3 days 80) Yea, I know you all hate me, it's ok, I'm used to it!
Carrier as in disease carrier, given they tap and sacrifice to pass on -X/-X equal to their power/toughness.
I did a similar breakdown for Kaleidoscope-legal tribes in an article a couple years back. (Speaking of on the verge of extinction things...)
It is my proud boast to have built decks for every single possible tribe, even the one-ofs, with the sole exception of Dreadnought (Due to the only tribe member costing 100 tickets a set.) I'd set a minimum of 3 genuine tribe members per brink of extinction tribe, as any fewer and you're just building changeling.dek with this week's special guest star.
If you're playing strictly to open Jace, you have a better bang for your buck trying in a sealed as opposed to a draft.
Part of the problem with small set Mythics is WotC taking away the small set triple drafts. I hated that. Heck they only give us 4-3-2-2 triple set on release, not even swiss which is what I play.