Thanks for the pointers towards the Faeries I new I was going to miss something but couldn't put my finger on it.
Faeries will be banned in the Endangered Tribal week, I'll update the schedule for next weeks article. This is a bonus really as you can see the schedule a long time in advance which gives me time to make little alterations if needed.
I think you can be very nice. I just think you make yourself look bad by coming out of the side of your neck like that. Your points without the venom are quite valid. Putting that extra kick in there kind of makes people blind to what you are saying.
maybe my bullet point thought process on responses is to blame.
No, what's to blame is your basic lack of respect and communication skills. You can take offense to something without slinging douchebaggery in response.
Nice example decks for us to think about Flips. I think Markus is right about the endangered species Fae...They may not show up much but that I think has been dictated a bit by the meta. Without certain other tribes to boss them around Fae may just dominate.
Well thank you very much for the Honor Xaos :D I'm not sure how I can live up to it but I am glad to be of service supporting a new and interesting format. And thank you for the tix they made a dreary day much better :) I hope your wife's C-Section goes well, I look forward to hearing about your newborn soon. Initially my thought about an heirloom site was that someone (preferably you so that you own it) should register a domain (with godaddy.com for instance and get free hosting for it as a result.) And then those of us with some web skills would fill it in. But the more I visit the one Thuh found and set up the more accustomed I am to it.
@OurLordErman...wow We talked at length about that deck archetype for BYOS and I even built a version of it for that. Nice that it fit so well into Heirloom. As always your rogue builds grab a bit from various ideas and bring them together for the win! Congrats and smiles. :D
@Thuh I am glad you like them. I hope to continue to write and bring my own wacky brand of magic philosophy to the internet.
tx, always fun to put the articles together and see them go up, I'm looking forward to the sealed format as well, be something I can play in more than the constructed events hopefully, and I've always loved limited, and ya Paul does some great work on the articles for sure.
@Our-Lord-Erman
In regards to your deck choice it wasn't so much that I didn't expect you to bring a deck like this, quite the contrary but just to see green white take first in a 15 man Heirloom event when the grixis colors have been dominating was nice. Be great having you this weekend of course, in this case I believe Nagarjuna will be running the event for me while I'm in the hospital with my wife having our baby! I'm sure he'll do a great job running things and it will be another great event.
I suppose the "endangered" concept was meant to be "not so frequently seen around". Still, Wizard (granted, a lot of them are human, elf or goblin too), Spirit, and Beast are actually huge tribes.
Thanks for hosting the event, had a lot of fun in it. The example decks for the Halloween Event provide a good starting point for anyone looking to run a specialty deck this weekend. The demon deck is quite similar to the build I was making. Even the inclusion of Smallpox, which is one of my favorite cards. I wanted to go Horror, as the Liege is an absolute beast but unfortunately I don't have the Liege's and they're like 5 bucks a piece. Have to see if I can even play this weekend as my wife has all kinds of plans. I really like the special events you have planned and the door prizes are a good incentive for players to stay in the event. Good job, hope to play in the event on Saturday.
Oh, one thing that is vastly different between "normal" commander decks and "infect" decks is that all/most of the infect decks creatures are essentially dealing commander damage.
Which is likely the bigger issue than the speed and/or power relative to good draws, luck, etc.
Commander damage was already the main "inevitable" kill.
Poison is just twice as fast and gets to run multiple sources of that type of damage.
My experience in commander leaves me to think the infect commander is fine.
It's no different in overall speed and power than any Eldrazi build and those have all been about as close to manageable as anything else.
What can be a bit harsh is that with the right start using the colorless infect creatures and various boosting effects is the possibility to poison someone out on turn two or three, and then a player each turn thereafter until someone manages to resolve removal.
Which can in fact be quite difficult to have and resolve given the format.
My view is that quite simply, I have to take into account that "weenie" is now viable.
And as such run proper removal and/or little bodies to get in the way.
I disagree (amiably of course) about the danger of poison to 40 life games, especially commander. Skittles itself (i can get no consensus on the gender of the Skittles), has killed me in every game I've played against him. He's not quite format warping, but he has been killing me, and it's getting annoying. I don't want to hafta redesign all of my commander decks to deal with one commander.
The mono-green poison deck you posted looks fine. There are a couple cards that could be better (hotizon spellbomb seems pretty pointless in monogreen), but you work with what you can in a draft. It's hard to tell why you went 0-2 without more information. Was your opponent's deck particularly wicked? Did you have bad draws/multiple mulligans/manascrew?
Greater Gargadon is awesome as it gives armageddon players something to think about and I was able to beat 2 red decks by getting a Sword of Fire and Ice on one as my only needed win condition. It also combos well with Sarkhan Vol's second ability.
Sarkhan works reasonably well with this deck because it plays much more defenisively in the early game. Either Wall of Omens or Wall of Blossoms are usually present when I play Sarkhan, and that's usually all the protection he needs.
Flametongue Kavu is very good in the aggro style Naya or Red deck wins deck as a way to remove blockers and get your weenies to charge to victory. This works when you have a large volume of small creatures to attack with. I'm usually not in that position with this deck and the most aggressive I am is with Stoneforge Mystic. I'm not saying he's a bad choice. It's just that most of the time, this deck ramps past 4 drops to get to 5-6 drops and Flametongue Kavu is easily outclassed by Inferno Titan.
Enlightened Tutor and Primeval Titan bounce in and out of my deck frequently. They are both good cards but they are not always what I want to get. Against heavy control decks(my worst match-up), Enlightened Tutor usually just gives them a 2-1 as they counter whatever I get with the tutor. Otherwise the tutor is usually there only to get Survival or Oblivion Ring. I'm not always sure that is worth a card, as Survival takes a while to get going and isn't an instant victory condition unless you're playing the Necrotic Ooze combo. Primeval Titan is huge but he's also at the top of my curve and I don't have a lot of ways to use the extra mana. In order to use him fully, I need to have more mountains to power Valakut, which means making the deck more red. As it is now, it's mostly a white/green deck with a reasonable amount of red tossed in. That doesn't work too well if your mana base is heavily red-centered.
This is funny because a few days ago I just finished a Tibor and Lumia Commander deck, but mine was way different from yours on a lot of card choices. I included a lot more steal stuff cards, clone effects and copy/redirect spells. You have some of these, but I jammed all the ones I could find. LOL This colour combination is so fun: mischievous and chaotic! =D Unfortunately, I got hated out pretty badly.
Speaking of, on a side note, when playing that deck someone said to me that Teferi was a "jerk card" because he was, quote, "denial". =/ I argued with that logic since he didn't counter anything, and in fact, the Path to Exile he received and the Condemn aimed at my Tibor and Lumina acted more as "denial" than my Teferi. Since when is City of Solitude considered "denial"? =/ I swear, sometimes MODO Commander Timmys make me scratch my head.
I enjoy your podcast, but I've noticed an old problem happening again. You have each person on the podcast only assigned to one L/R channel. Namely, we only hear each person on either the left or the right speaker.
This is most problematic for me, as I listen to podcasts almost exclusively on my iPod, and the jack is messed up and I only get the right-side channel. Additionally, when listening on my laptop (the only reasonable alternative for me), the possible volume suffers since each voice is only played on one speaker.
Several of your older podcasts had this problem, but it has not occurred recently until now. Since I happened to have internet access as I started to listen on my laptop, I'm letting you know.
I think most people who play infect in Commander go the mono-black Skithiryx-as-general avenue. Being able to recast and attack with haste is so strong, especially when he has equipment ready waiting in the wings (no pun intended, but enjoyed). I agree with you that it's not 'unfun' (listening to the whining is more of a fun succubus), but at the same time, I have seen many games where it becomes clusterf%@k the Skittles player or die to him. Usually the MO I have seen is to give him something like double strike coupled with a small pump effect to kill in one swing.
I'd like to see a traditional control deck with Ichor Rats and a focus on Proliferate. =) I may try that.
I think it started 2 weeks ago when I was inspired by flippers angel article to put update my rwu angel deck and went 3-0 and then decided to add a fourth color for the stoic + sunblast combo, I was so sad to see that foily goodness go in the sale and I'm tempted to rebuy the deck to keep the stats up for angels on that chart there lol
First of all thanks for the shout-out Michael. That was really a fun tournament.
Secondly, I enjoy being a part of the Heirloom community. Obviously and apparently I'm not always talking and playing and thinking about this format but I do enjoy it when I do (play).
Regarding this comment of yours: "I was pleasantly surprised to see him do it with a deck of the least two popular colors in Heirloom". Lol, I'm sure you were expecting me to play some form of a very "tight" control deck, but I do know very well when to switch. Also just because I mostly play control doesn't mean that I don't know how to pilot aggro. And besides, white and green also do need some love :).
By the way, if everything goes as planned, I will be attending this weekend's tournament. I'm brewing another very powerful deck and I think I'm onto something. That of course we'll see this weekend.
Nice points about infect - without being hysterical. It is good, and will be good in 40 life point formats, for certain. How good, and how it can be beaten are the fun bits. I like the point about inevitability. I think this is what is particularly strong about it, more so than the potential speed or aggro dynamic. I think the best infect decks will be combo or control - however that develops. A control deck that pecks away at infect... hmm smexy.
I like the special event, seems like a fun challenge for sure. Nice to see angels go 4-0 as they aren't exacly a busted tribe, though I suppose they have some individually uber power as opposed to the synergies of other tribes, maybe in such a meta that's superior.
another great article about the heirloom-scene and the 6th PRE. Our-Lord-Erman tweaked a really strong deck that gave me no chance in the finals! The card/creature advantage by flashback and the board-controll by glare of subdual worked perfect together.
I´m really looking forward to test the sealed pool and hope for more guys showing up for tests on mtgo before the league starts!
Paul`s articles are so well done that i even red some of his older ones from 200X!
Thanks for the pointers towards the Faeries I new I was going to miss something but couldn't put my finger on it.
Faeries will be banned in the Endangered Tribal week, I'll update the schedule for next weeks article. This is a bonus really as you can see the schedule a long time in advance which gives me time to make little alterations if needed.
Thanks Shuyin and Winter
I think you can be very nice. I just think you make yourself look bad by coming out of the side of your neck like that. Your points without the venom are quite valid. Putting that extra kick in there kind of makes people blind to what you are saying.
Thanks for the list, I wasnt expecting some tribes in the list like shaman and horror's.
maybe my bullet point thought process on responses is to blame.
No, what's to blame is your basic lack of respect and communication skills. You can take offense to something without slinging douchebaggery in response.
Nice example decks for us to think about Flips. I think Markus is right about the endangered species Fae...They may not show up much but that I think has been dictated a bit by the meta. Without certain other tribes to boss them around Fae may just dominate.
I hope not.
Well thank you very much for the Honor Xaos :D I'm not sure how I can live up to it but I am glad to be of service supporting a new and interesting format. And thank you for the tix they made a dreary day much better :) I hope your wife's C-Section goes well, I look forward to hearing about your newborn soon. Initially my thought about an heirloom site was that someone (preferably you so that you own it) should register a domain (with godaddy.com for instance and get free hosting for it as a result.) And then those of us with some web skills would fill it in. But the more I visit the one Thuh found and set up the more accustomed I am to it.
@OurLordErman...wow We talked at length about that deck archetype for BYOS and I even built a version of it for that. Nice that it fit so well into Heirloom. As always your rogue builds grab a bit from various ideas and bring them together for the win! Congrats and smiles. :D
@Thuh I am glad you like them. I hope to continue to write and bring my own wacky brand of magic philosophy to the internet.
@Naga,
tx, always fun to put the articles together and see them go up, I'm looking forward to the sealed format as well, be something I can play in more than the constructed events hopefully, and I've always loved limited, and ya Paul does some great work on the articles for sure.
@Our-Lord-Erman
In regards to your deck choice it wasn't so much that I didn't expect you to bring a deck like this, quite the contrary but just to see green white take first in a 15 man Heirloom event when the grixis colors have been dominating was nice. Be great having you this weekend of course, in this case I believe Nagarjuna will be running the event for me while I'm in the hospital with my wife having our baby! I'm sure he'll do a great job running things and it will be another great event.
X-
Just for info, the following are the tribes with more than 75 members ordered by number of members (as of SOM, yet based on paper cards).
Human: 1231
Wizard: 435
Soldier: 398
Spirit: 332
Warrior: 320
Elemental: 277
Beast: 269
Goblin: 260
Elf: 249
Zombie: 234
Shaman: 231
Cleric: 223
Knight: 154
Bird: 149
Rogue: 138
Merfolk: 133
Druid: 117
Horror: 113
Insect: 104
Wall: 104
Giant: 102
Cat: 100
Dragon: 92
Golem: 80
Sliver: 76
Angel: 75
I suppose the "endangered" concept was meant to be "not so frequently seen around". Still, Wizard (granted, a lot of them are human, elf or goblin too), Spirit, and Beast are actually huge tribes.
Thanks for hosting the event, had a lot of fun in it. The example decks for the Halloween Event provide a good starting point for anyone looking to run a specialty deck this weekend. The demon deck is quite similar to the build I was making. Even the inclusion of Smallpox, which is one of my favorite cards. I wanted to go Horror, as the Liege is an absolute beast but unfortunately I don't have the Liege's and they're like 5 bucks a piece. Have to see if I can even play this weekend as my wife has all kinds of plans. I really like the special events you have planned and the door prizes are a good incentive for players to stay in the event. Good job, hope to play in the event on Saturday.
So, Faeries are okay for Endangered Tribes week?
Oh, one thing that is vastly different between "normal" commander decks and "infect" decks is that all/most of the infect decks creatures are essentially dealing commander damage.
Which is likely the bigger issue than the speed and/or power relative to good draws, luck, etc.
Commander damage was already the main "inevitable" kill.
Poison is just twice as fast and gets to run multiple sources of that type of damage.
My experience in commander leaves me to think the infect commander is fine.
It's no different in overall speed and power than any Eldrazi build and those have all been about as close to manageable as anything else.
What can be a bit harsh is that with the right start using the colorless infect creatures and various boosting effects is the possibility to poison someone out on turn two or three, and then a player each turn thereafter until someone manages to resolve removal.
Which can in fact be quite difficult to have and resolve given the format.
My view is that quite simply, I have to take into account that "weenie" is now viable.
And as such run proper removal and/or little bodies to get in the way.
I disagree (amiably of course) about the danger of poison to 40 life games, especially commander. Skittles itself (i can get no consensus on the gender of the Skittles), has killed me in every game I've played against him. He's not quite format warping, but he has been killing me, and it's getting annoying. I don't want to hafta redesign all of my commander decks to deal with one commander.
The mono-green poison deck you posted looks fine. There are a couple cards that could be better (hotizon spellbomb seems pretty pointless in monogreen), but you work with what you can in a draft. It's hard to tell why you went 0-2 without more information. Was your opponent's deck particularly wicked? Did you have bad draws/multiple mulligans/manascrew?
Greater Gargadon is awesome as it gives armageddon players something to think about and I was able to beat 2 red decks by getting a Sword of Fire and Ice on one as my only needed win condition. It also combos well with Sarkhan Vol's second ability.
Sarkhan works reasonably well with this deck because it plays much more defenisively in the early game. Either Wall of Omens or Wall of Blossoms are usually present when I play Sarkhan, and that's usually all the protection he needs.
Flametongue Kavu is very good in the aggro style Naya or Red deck wins deck as a way to remove blockers and get your weenies to charge to victory. This works when you have a large volume of small creatures to attack with. I'm usually not in that position with this deck and the most aggressive I am is with Stoneforge Mystic. I'm not saying he's a bad choice. It's just that most of the time, this deck ramps past 4 drops to get to 5-6 drops and Flametongue Kavu is easily outclassed by Inferno Titan.
Enlightened Tutor and Primeval Titan bounce in and out of my deck frequently. They are both good cards but they are not always what I want to get. Against heavy control decks(my worst match-up), Enlightened Tutor usually just gives them a 2-1 as they counter whatever I get with the tutor. Otherwise the tutor is usually there only to get Survival or Oblivion Ring. I'm not always sure that is worth a card, as Survival takes a while to get going and isn't an instant victory condition unless you're playing the Necrotic Ooze combo. Primeval Titan is huge but he's also at the top of my curve and I don't have a lot of ways to use the extra mana. In order to use him fully, I need to have more mountains to power Valakut, which means making the deck more red. As it is now, it's mostly a white/green deck with a reasonable amount of red tossed in. That doesn't work too well if your mana base is heavily red-centered.
This is funny because a few days ago I just finished a Tibor and Lumia Commander deck, but mine was way different from yours on a lot of card choices. I included a lot more steal stuff cards, clone effects and copy/redirect spells. You have some of these, but I jammed all the ones I could find. LOL This colour combination is so fun: mischievous and chaotic! =D Unfortunately, I got hated out pretty badly.
Speaking of, on a side note, when playing that deck someone said to me that Teferi was a "jerk card" because he was, quote, "denial". =/ I argued with that logic since he didn't counter anything, and in fact, the Path to Exile he received and the Condemn aimed at my Tibor and Lumina acted more as "denial" than my Teferi. Since when is City of Solitude considered "denial"? =/ I swear, sometimes MODO Commander Timmys make me scratch my head.
I enjoy your podcast, but I've noticed an old problem happening again. You have each person on the podcast only assigned to one L/R channel. Namely, we only hear each person on either the left or the right speaker.
This is most problematic for me, as I listen to podcasts almost exclusively on my iPod, and the jack is messed up and I only get the right-side channel. Additionally, when listening on my laptop (the only reasonable alternative for me), the possible volume suffers since each voice is only played on one speaker.
Several of your older podcasts had this problem, but it has not occurred recently until now. Since I happened to have internet access as I started to listen on my laptop, I'm letting you know.
Keep up the good work!
I think most people who play infect in Commander go the mono-black Skithiryx-as-general avenue. Being able to recast and attack with haste is so strong, especially when he has equipment ready waiting in the wings (no pun intended, but enjoyed). I agree with you that it's not 'unfun' (listening to the whining is more of a fun succubus), but at the same time, I have seen many games where it becomes clusterf%@k the Skittles player or die to him. Usually the MO I have seen is to give him something like double strike coupled with a small pump effect to kill in one swing.
I'd like to see a traditional control deck with Ichor Rats and a focus on Proliferate. =) I may try that.
I think it started 2 weeks ago when I was inspired by flippers angel article to put update my rwu angel deck and went 3-0 and then decided to add a fourth color for the stoic + sunblast combo, I was so sad to see that foily goodness go in the sale and I'm tempted to rebuy the deck to keep the stats up for angels on that chart there lol
First of all thanks for the shout-out Michael. That was really a fun tournament.
Secondly, I enjoy being a part of the Heirloom community. Obviously and apparently I'm not always talking and playing and thinking about this format but I do enjoy it when I do (play).
Regarding this comment of yours: "I was pleasantly surprised to see him do it with a deck of the least two popular colors in Heirloom". Lol, I'm sure you were expecting me to play some form of a very "tight" control deck, but I do know very well when to switch. Also just because I mostly play control doesn't mean that I don't know how to pilot aggro. And besides, white and green also do need some love :).
By the way, if everything goes as planned, I will be attending this weekend's tournament. I'm brewing another very powerful deck and I think I'm onto something. That of course we'll see this weekend.
LE
Hey flip!
Was a lot of fun to be part of your event! Even so my Heirloom deck wasn`t competetive - as expected :-)
Because of the coalition with the Heirloom events that take place on saturday i can only show up from time to time...
CU soon
Nagarjuna
Nice points about infect - without being hysterical. It is good, and will be good in 40 life point formats, for certain. How good, and how it can be beaten are the fun bits. I like the point about inevitability. I think this is what is particularly strong about it, more so than the potential speed or aggro dynamic. I think the best infect decks will be combo or control - however that develops. A control deck that pecks away at infect... hmm smexy.
So much to look at here lol,
I like the special event, seems like a fun challenge for sure. Nice to see angels go 4-0 as they aren't exacly a busted tribe, though I suppose they have some individually uber power as opposed to the synergies of other tribes, maybe in such a meta that's superior.
X-
Hi Xaos,
another great article about the heirloom-scene and the 6th PRE. Our-Lord-Erman tweaked a really strong deck that gave me no chance in the finals! The card/creature advantage by flashback and the board-controll by glare of subdual worked perfect together.
I´m really looking forward to test the sealed pool and hope for more guys showing up for tests on mtgo before the league starts!
Paul`s articles are so well done that i even red some of his older ones from 200X!
CU
Naga