Actually the next logical step is a UB Tezzeret (who of course will be another $50,00 worth of mythic planeswalker). Phyrexia is slowly invading Mirrodin but they need a general. They need someone who can lead their machines to victory.
And does anyone has a better candidate than Tezzeret? Besides, we just had the Elspeth vs. Tezzeret thing. A coincidence? I don't think so.
I think both Green and Red have been hosed in the planeswalker department. Garruk is obviously top tier, but the remainder are mediocre at best. I personally hate Nissa, as she forces you to play Elves. And I hate Elves.
The original Chandra was good enough when there were only 5, but now she is just outclassed. And if you have ever tried to build a deck around Ablaze, you know just how tough it is. There aren't many times when you want to toss a red card in hand for 4 damage. Most of the time you want to play the card instead of lose it.
Koth is a step in the right direction at least. But then again, he's only playable in mono red. He obviously makes mono red a beast though.
Is anyone surprised that blue gets the best planeswalker?
Yeah, pretty expensive compared to my normal decks, and that's due to the amount of Standard playables. My decks typically come in around 180 tickets or so. I'm guessing we can chop off at least 100 by making some of the changes I mentioned (and Shard):
Survival -> Fauna Shaman: Save 47 tickets
Strip Mine -> Ghost Quarter: Save 13 tickets
Grave Titan -> Skeletal Vampmire: Save 11 tickets
Sylvan Library -> Crystal Ball: Save 7 tickets
Lotus Cobra -> Birds of Paradise: Save 19 tickets
That's 97 tickets right there. You can also take out Demonic Tutor for Diabolic Intent and save another 7. Primeval Titan and Avenger of Zendikar should definitely be kept though. Primeval costs a ton, I understand, but you will love it every time you draw it. Especially with all the landfall in here.
You can also add money to the deck by including the original duals. That would add another 60 or so tickets to the deck at least.
Glad you guys liked it. Thanks again to Littlest Morte for coming up with the deck.
I'm looking forward to your articles on Scards of Mirrodin, as your articles on ROE were awesome. Play details are entertaining, but not nearly as useful as what happens during the draft, so I would prefer more drafts with fewer details on the matches themselves.
Interesting set of packs for sure, and definitely ++ for the Car Talk reference. I'm pretty sure those guys wouldn't have to actually talk at all for their show to be awesome. They could just raspingly laugh the entire hour and it would be plenty amazing.
Anyway, I think I would either have gone B/R or hard White/x in this draft. In your first pack you are faced with the choice of the more versatile Doom Blade vs. the more powerful Serra Angel. Ultimately you made the defensible choice of shipping all the ridiculous white (and blue) and taking the removal spell. I'm not sure if this is what I would have done, but I think it's a totally defensible choice. One of the major tipping factors here is that you're going to hopefully be creating quite a few blue and white drafters behind you and you can draft accordingly.
Because of that, I would have taken the Chandra's Outrage in pack 2 following the Doom Blade in pack 1. Obviously if I had picked the Angel things would be different. I like B/R a lot in this format and given how much incredible white and blue you're passing there is a chance that the Act of Treason will table (which it ultimately did). It's hard to tell how good the B/R deck would have turned out, but I think it's safe to say that it would have been pretty awesome. You saw a ton of bolts despite shipping the red in pack 1, and it could have only been better if you were cutting red.
The white deck could have also been excellent, but it's a risky path given that you didn't know how much white you were going to be passed. You were likely to get cut from the left in pack 2, but that would be fine if you got passed good white in packs 1 and 3. As it turns out you did get passed a lot of good white, so that gamble would have paid off as well.
I'm glad you stepped up to the plate to both help host the event, and to steer the format in the right direction. I hope you can continue in Shard's tradition of balanced moderation of the banned list, and in doing so solicit input from the players. Your first article looks well on the way to keeping that spirit alive.
On a lighter note, I'm loving the door prizes. I think that's a great way to get new players interested in the format.
Putting the golem into the deck rather than the fire servant didn't make much sense to me. Most players are packing some artifact hate, and this gives them a target for it. You already have several two red mana cost spells, and you might be able to use it with the fireball. But certainly not a major error, and you do get a toughness of 1 better.
Nice to see a green deck, though this was a pretty sick example; apparently you weren't the only green drafter, based on your final match. I was a bit curious how you chose to only run 15 lands and fatties. You did have a lot of llanowar elves; how do you make the calculation? Most people recommend running 18 lands in this format, though I will run 16 or 17 in some circumstances. Usually I think people consider two non-land sources equivalent to 1 land, which would have ended up with 16 land here. With the fatties and druids (which are nice, but can result in the loss of a land), I would have though it safer to go with 16 or maybe even 17 land.
I'm also surprised how late the warlord's axe goes. Admittedly it is a slow card, but it is great later in the game, as it turns pretty much any creature into a significant threat, and is less vulnerable to a 2-1 than the shiv's embrace.
I should have called Manic Vandal "A random overpriced bear at the heaviest spot in your mana curve", actually. You're jammed with better 3 drops already!
I don't see the Pyroclasm as a hatedraft, I see it as a sideboard card you bring in against white weenie that just wrecks them.
I think the Chandra's Outrages put you at the bare minimum on red sources - 5 mountains and two sylvan ranger is even a little less likely to hit double red than 7 mountains, although it would seem identical. But 7-mountains.dec can draw any of its 7 red sources, and still have 6 shots at drawing into the next. Your deck can start with a ranger, and then its deckthinned down to 5 shots at drawing into RR rather than 6.
That's barely ok here, though 8 red sources would make me happier. But having only 5 mountains means less pump damage out of Shiv's Embrace too.
That, and having 3 Awakener Druid really makes me want to see more than 15 land here. People can shoot your Llanowar Elves, they can shoot your animated land, or you can face the eternal dilemna of "If I tap my 4/5 this turn to drop Spined Wurm, I miss a 4 point hit on my opponent". I could definitely see making Manic Vandal a sideboard card to get another land in. You have 19 creatures, 18 is still plenty & a random bear won't do much usually.
I could also see swapping out a Yavimaya Wurm for the Duskdale Wurm. For 1 extra mana, you get much more favorable trades if they gang-block. And more times when they can't even do it. 4 defense power is easy, 7 isn't always available.
well his whole last paragraph is a substitution section....though he did leave out that Birds of Paradise while nowhere near as awesome as Lotus Cobra does provide all three colors of mana...
Also Draconias I know he has done at least one budget article. The Kaervek deck he did was originally based around a 5 ticket edh deck that i found online. true since i have been playing it it has become a 130 ticket deck but its whatever.
But LD decks can be forced to interaction. That is the push and pull of the match-up.
If you are facing a land destruction deck, you need to get threats down early and push the LD player so that he needs to skip a turn killing your land to put up a defense.
Or, you need to counter one of his LD cards because the lose of the Stone Rain is more harmful than the loss of the Counterspell.
Or, you need to find a way to get off a discard spell to reduce their hand size.
Or, prepare by building a deck that includes Flagstones of Trokair to make the land destruction spell wasted or Darksteel Citadel to laugh at the land destruction spells.
Or, play an mana elves so that the land destruction is laughable in its impact on you.
Avoid playing non-basic lands to make your opponent's wastelands useless.
My point isn't that you should play against LD decks, but that LD decks bring their own variation of interaction.
The goal of every deck is to shift the interaction of the game into a paradigm that is in the favor of that deck.
If you want to play an LD deck that is designed to keep your opponent from playing the game, why would you want to line up the only matches that your LD deck loses to? Same for an all-counter MUC deck. If your goal is to have a challenging game, to interact with your opponent in meaningful ways, then don’t play LD. The deck is designed to eliminate challenge and to keep interactions from happening.
I am working on my first draft article and I am going down the path of more draft walkthroughs and less detailed game play analysis, so that option works for me. I think the game descriptions need to provide enough detail to show how the deck you drafted flowed and when a draft decision worked out well or poorly note it.
I said I win a third of my blitz games.
Like I said in the article, the best way to address something like facing a dedicated LD deck in the casual room is to tell them "Sorry, I don't play against LD" and concede.
There is only 3 pieces of artifact removal at common. And only shatter is an instant. Red removal looks ok, but the the removal seems light. I think metalcraft will probably be strong. There also seem to be less flyers.
First, I love this series (I usually end up trying out your decks and enjoy playing them).
Yeah, I love Commander because I only have to buy one of each card. I usually end up finding substitute cards for the ones I can't afford. However for Commander at least, a lot of the same cards come up over and over, so eventually I'll have enough to try out decks without spending a lot.
Maybe a substitution section for the budget minded?
Good to see that Tribal Apocalypse wont be dead. I took a break from magic due to financial restrictions and had to sell off my cards. But now I am back at a stable job and am building my collection back up. The one format that I loved playing was Tribal. I didnt have much time to join the apocalypse but I will be there for the upcoming events. And yes I believe extinction should remain banned.
I can see your point to a certain degree, even though red has had some access to power walkers in Ajani vengeant, Sarkhan vol, sarkhan the mad and to a much lesser extent nicol bolas. Sure in terms of straight mono colour red had a bigger shaft than green but now koth. Can you agree after koth gets printed that it should be green's turn? If you want to play a green planeswalker today you really have 1 choice, or you go with a splash of red and have 2 choices, nissa will lose monument and there might be a new elf deck around the corner with the new regenerating overrunning elf from scars (I know I will try to make something) but as it stands, in terms of top tier walkers after koth, green and yes black are both a little short.
Also, for those who are probably going to call me on it, I apologize as I had not been tracking the price of all is dust and realize it is hardly a budget card anymore. I got them around 5 a piece so I haven't had the Ned to track their price.
I think if I'd taken the first pick Serra Angel, I'd probably have ended up in white/blue. I'm not sure if that gets you as many playables as white/red, but I'd have gotten some blue before pack 1 picks 10-13 suggest considering red & it would tempt me into taking more blue. I'm thinking maybe Stormfront Pegasus is a better pick than the Assault Griffin if you can get the quick aggressive white deck, if you can't get it then Griffin may be better. Shame there was only one Infantry Veteran to pair with the three Stormfront Pegasus I could have gotten.
Definitely much more challenging to draft a solid deck when the strong playables are so scooped up after the first 8-9 picks. But I'm sure that's how you have to learn to play if you want to have success in the game at the very top levels.
Actually I have a different point of view in terms of planeswalkers. The color that needed the boost was not green but it was red in my opinion. And aparently WotC also thinks like that (say hello to Mr.Koth the Powerhouse).
Green already had the best planeswalker (Garruk) during the first "wave"; I mean the Lorwyn era planeswalkers. Then Nissa came and her elves deck backed up by Eldrazi Monument became quite popular. Yes, she was and still is only good in one single deck but that one single deck was Tier-1 for a very long time. Oh and please also do not forget that Garruk also made an appearance in that deck as well.
Mono red on the other hand only had Chandra v.1 and v.2. I'm sure everyone would agree if I say that Chandra v.2 is by far the worst planeswalker ever printed and v.1 was/is only occasionally good. So red was in urgent need of a good planeswalker and thus Koth came.
LE
PS: As far as I know, Nissa will eventually become a GB planeswalker. I read somewhere that she planeswalked to Kamigawa to learn/study/practice/examine some black magic. Of course I may be horribly wrong as well; I'm not the expert of this kind of things (Magic stories).
I must say, I think I have drafted M11 about 20 times and permormed quite well, that I find it hard to draft decent black. People take these Doomblades, Quag Sickness etc.. I think I would have taken the Serra Angel as first pick and the draft would have looked a whole lot different. Especially with all the flyers around. But fair enough, its much easier to see in hindsight :)
Again, nice work with the article - it was enjoyable :)
man i love the deck but $300? thats tough. lol. I know how it goes though I picked up my Primeval titan for edh earlier this week at 28 tickets. Probably the most i have paid for a single card ever...maybe grave titan next week.
Actually the next logical step is a UB Tezzeret (who of course will be another $50,00 worth of mythic planeswalker). Phyrexia is slowly invading Mirrodin but they need a general. They need someone who can lead their machines to victory.
And does anyone has a better candidate than Tezzeret? Besides, we just had the Elspeth vs. Tezzeret thing. A coincidence? I don't think so.
LE
PS: Why do you say that Nissa is losing Monument?
I think both Green and Red have been hosed in the planeswalker department. Garruk is obviously top tier, but the remainder are mediocre at best. I personally hate Nissa, as she forces you to play Elves. And I hate Elves.
The original Chandra was good enough when there were only 5, but now she is just outclassed. And if you have ever tried to build a deck around Ablaze, you know just how tough it is. There aren't many times when you want to toss a red card in hand for 4 damage. Most of the time you want to play the card instead of lose it.
Koth is a step in the right direction at least. But then again, he's only playable in mono red. He obviously makes mono red a beast though.
Is anyone surprised that blue gets the best planeswalker?
Yeah, pretty expensive compared to my normal decks, and that's due to the amount of Standard playables. My decks typically come in around 180 tickets or so. I'm guessing we can chop off at least 100 by making some of the changes I mentioned (and Shard):
Survival -> Fauna Shaman: Save 47 tickets
Strip Mine -> Ghost Quarter: Save 13 tickets
Grave Titan -> Skeletal Vampmire: Save 11 tickets
Sylvan Library -> Crystal Ball: Save 7 tickets
Lotus Cobra -> Birds of Paradise: Save 19 tickets
That's 97 tickets right there. You can also take out Demonic Tutor for Diabolic Intent and save another 7. Primeval Titan and Avenger of Zendikar should definitely be kept though. Primeval costs a ton, I understand, but you will love it every time you draw it. Especially with all the landfall in here.
You can also add money to the deck by including the original duals. That would add another 60 or so tickets to the deck at least.
Glad you guys liked it. Thanks again to Littlest Morte for coming up with the deck.
At 5 tickets All is Dust was hardly budget then. In fact it has never been budget. Now it is a little insane.
Awakener just seems bad all around.
I'm looking forward to your articles on Scards of Mirrodin, as your articles on ROE were awesome. Play details are entertaining, but not nearly as useful as what happens during the draft, so I would prefer more drafts with fewer details on the matches themselves.
Interesting set of packs for sure, and definitely ++ for the Car Talk reference. I'm pretty sure those guys wouldn't have to actually talk at all for their show to be awesome. They could just raspingly laugh the entire hour and it would be plenty amazing.
Anyway, I think I would either have gone B/R or hard White/x in this draft. In your first pack you are faced with the choice of the more versatile Doom Blade vs. the more powerful Serra Angel. Ultimately you made the defensible choice of shipping all the ridiculous white (and blue) and taking the removal spell. I'm not sure if this is what I would have done, but I think it's a totally defensible choice. One of the major tipping factors here is that you're going to hopefully be creating quite a few blue and white drafters behind you and you can draft accordingly.
Because of that, I would have taken the Chandra's Outrage in pack 2 following the Doom Blade in pack 1. Obviously if I had picked the Angel things would be different. I like B/R a lot in this format and given how much incredible white and blue you're passing there is a chance that the Act of Treason will table (which it ultimately did). It's hard to tell how good the B/R deck would have turned out, but I think it's safe to say that it would have been pretty awesome. You saw a ton of bolts despite shipping the red in pack 1, and it could have only been better if you were cutting red.
The white deck could have also been excellent, but it's a risky path given that you didn't know how much white you were going to be passed. You were likely to get cut from the left in pack 2, but that would be fine if you got passed good white in packs 1 and 3. As it turns out you did get passed a lot of good white, so that gamble would have paid off as well.
Either way its a very difficult set of decisions!
I'm glad you stepped up to the plate to both help host the event, and to steer the format in the right direction. I hope you can continue in Shard's tradition of balanced moderation of the banned list, and in doing so solicit input from the players. Your first article looks well on the way to keeping that spirit alive.
On a lighter note, I'm loving the door prizes. I think that's a great way to get new players interested in the format.
Putting the golem into the deck rather than the fire servant didn't make much sense to me. Most players are packing some artifact hate, and this gives them a target for it. You already have several two red mana cost spells, and you might be able to use it with the fireball. But certainly not a major error, and you do get a toughness of 1 better.
Nice to see a green deck, though this was a pretty sick example; apparently you weren't the only green drafter, based on your final match. I was a bit curious how you chose to only run 15 lands and fatties. You did have a lot of llanowar elves; how do you make the calculation? Most people recommend running 18 lands in this format, though I will run 16 or 17 in some circumstances. Usually I think people consider two non-land sources equivalent to 1 land, which would have ended up with 16 land here. With the fatties and druids (which are nice, but can result in the loss of a land), I would have though it safer to go with 16 or maybe even 17 land.
I'm also surprised how late the warlord's axe goes. Admittedly it is a slow card, but it is great later in the game, as it turns pretty much any creature into a significant threat, and is less vulnerable to a 2-1 than the shiv's embrace.
I should have called Manic Vandal "A random overpriced bear at the heaviest spot in your mana curve", actually. You're jammed with better 3 drops already!
Great draft overall, btw. :)
I don't see the Pyroclasm as a hatedraft, I see it as a sideboard card you bring in against white weenie that just wrecks them.
I think the Chandra's Outrages put you at the bare minimum on red sources - 5 mountains and two sylvan ranger is even a little less likely to hit double red than 7 mountains, although it would seem identical. But 7-mountains.dec can draw any of its 7 red sources, and still have 6 shots at drawing into the next. Your deck can start with a ranger, and then its deckthinned down to 5 shots at drawing into RR rather than 6.
That's barely ok here, though 8 red sources would make me happier. But having only 5 mountains means less pump damage out of Shiv's Embrace too.
That, and having 3 Awakener Druid really makes me want to see more than 15 land here. People can shoot your Llanowar Elves, they can shoot your animated land, or you can face the eternal dilemna of "If I tap my 4/5 this turn to drop Spined Wurm, I miss a 4 point hit on my opponent". I could definitely see making Manic Vandal a sideboard card to get another land in. You have 19 creatures, 18 is still plenty & a random bear won't do much usually.
I could also see swapping out a Yavimaya Wurm for the Duskdale Wurm. For 1 extra mana, you get much more favorable trades if they gang-block. And more times when they can't even do it. 4 defense power is easy, 7 isn't always available.
well his whole last paragraph is a substitution section....though he did leave out that Birds of Paradise while nowhere near as awesome as Lotus Cobra does provide all three colors of mana...
Also Draconias I know he has done at least one budget article. The Kaervek deck he did was originally based around a 5 ticket edh deck that i found online. true since i have been playing it it has become a 130 ticket deck but its whatever.
But LD decks can be forced to interaction. That is the push and pull of the match-up.
If you are facing a land destruction deck, you need to get threats down early and push the LD player so that he needs to skip a turn killing your land to put up a defense.
Or, you need to counter one of his LD cards because the lose of the Stone Rain is more harmful than the loss of the Counterspell.
Or, you need to find a way to get off a discard spell to reduce their hand size.
Or, prepare by building a deck that includes Flagstones of Trokair to make the land destruction spell wasted or Darksteel Citadel to laugh at the land destruction spells.
Or, play an mana elves so that the land destruction is laughable in its impact on you.
Avoid playing non-basic lands to make your opponent's wastelands useless.
My point isn't that you should play against LD decks, but that LD decks bring their own variation of interaction.
The goal of every deck is to shift the interaction of the game into a paradigm that is in the favor of that deck.
If you want to play an LD deck that is designed to keep your opponent from playing the game, why would you want to line up the only matches that your LD deck loses to? Same for an all-counter MUC deck. If your goal is to have a challenging game, to interact with your opponent in meaningful ways, then don’t play LD. The deck is designed to eliminate challenge and to keep interactions from happening.
I am working on my first draft article and I am going down the path of more draft walkthroughs and less detailed game play analysis, so that option works for me. I think the game descriptions need to provide enough detail to show how the deck you drafted flowed and when a draft decision worked out well or poorly note it.
I said I win a third of my blitz games.
Like I said in the article, the best way to address something like facing a dedicated LD deck in the casual room is to tell them "Sorry, I don't play against LD" and concede.
After seeing the full spoiler it seems SOM has very little removal (including artifact removal). Here is the removal at common:
White:
Arrest
Revoke Existence
Blue:
Bonds of Quicksilver (Bad)
Black:
Grasp of Darkness
Instill Infliction (Bad, I think)
Fume Spitter (I guess this is removal, bad)
Red:
Galvanic Blast
Shatter
Turn to Slag
Green:
Wing Puncture (bad)
Artifact:
Perilous Myr (bad)
Sylvok replica
Tumble magnet (?)
There is only 3 pieces of artifact removal at common. And only shatter is an instant. Red removal looks ok, but the the removal seems light. I think metalcraft will probably be strong. There also seem to be less flyers.
Sorry if I missed anything.
First, I love this series (I usually end up trying out your decks and enjoy playing them).
Yeah, I love Commander because I only have to buy one of each card. I usually end up finding substitute cards for the ones I can't afford. However for Commander at least, a lot of the same cards come up over and over, so eventually I'll have enough to try out decks without spending a lot.
Maybe a substitution section for the budget minded?
Good to see that Tribal Apocalypse wont be dead. I took a break from magic due to financial restrictions and had to sell off my cards. But now I am back at a stable job and am building my collection back up. The one format that I loved playing was Tribal. I didnt have much time to join the apocalypse but I will be there for the upcoming events. And yes I believe extinction should remain banned.
I can see your point to a certain degree, even though red has had some access to power walkers in Ajani vengeant, Sarkhan vol, sarkhan the mad and to a much lesser extent nicol bolas. Sure in terms of straight mono colour red had a bigger shaft than green but now koth. Can you agree after koth gets printed that it should be green's turn? If you want to play a green planeswalker today you really have 1 choice, or you go with a splash of red and have 2 choices, nissa will lose monument and there might be a new elf deck around the corner with the new regenerating overrunning elf from scars (I know I will try to make something) but as it stands, in terms of top tier walkers after koth, green and yes black are both a little short.
Also, for those who are probably going to call me on it, I apologize as I had not been tracking the price of all is dust and realize it is hardly a budget card anymore. I got them around 5 a piece so I haven't had the Ned to track their price.
I think if I'd taken the first pick Serra Angel, I'd probably have ended up in white/blue. I'm not sure if that gets you as many playables as white/red, but I'd have gotten some blue before pack 1 picks 10-13 suggest considering red & it would tempt me into taking more blue. I'm thinking maybe Stormfront Pegasus is a better pick than the Assault Griffin if you can get the quick aggressive white deck, if you can't get it then Griffin may be better. Shame there was only one Infantry Veteran to pair with the three Stormfront Pegasus I could have gotten.
Definitely much more challenging to draft a solid deck when the strong playables are so scooped up after the first 8-9 picks. But I'm sure that's how you have to learn to play if you want to have success in the game at the very top levels.
Actually I have a different point of view in terms of planeswalkers. The color that needed the boost was not green but it was red in my opinion. And aparently WotC also thinks like that (say hello to Mr.Koth the Powerhouse).
Green already had the best planeswalker (Garruk) during the first "wave"; I mean the Lorwyn era planeswalkers. Then Nissa came and her elves deck backed up by Eldrazi Monument became quite popular. Yes, she was and still is only good in one single deck but that one single deck was Tier-1 for a very long time. Oh and please also do not forget that Garruk also made an appearance in that deck as well.
Mono red on the other hand only had Chandra v.1 and v.2. I'm sure everyone would agree if I say that Chandra v.2 is by far the worst planeswalker ever printed and v.1 was/is only occasionally good. So red was in urgent need of a good planeswalker and thus Koth came.
LE
PS: As far as I know, Nissa will eventually become a GB planeswalker. I read somewhere that she planeswalked to Kamigawa to learn/study/practice/examine some black magic. Of course I may be horribly wrong as well; I'm not the expert of this kind of things (Magic stories).
Very well written article.
Good layout and reasonable considerations.
I must say, I think I have drafted M11 about 20 times and permormed quite well, that I find it hard to draft decent black. People take these Doomblades, Quag Sickness etc.. I think I would have taken the Serra Angel as first pick and the draft would have looked a whole lot different. Especially with all the flyers around. But fair enough, its much easier to see in hindsight :)
Again, nice work with the article - it was enjoyable :)
man i love the deck but $300? thats tough. lol. I know how it goes though I picked up my Primeval titan for edh earlier this week at 28 tickets. Probably the most i have paid for a single card ever...maybe grave titan next week.
Overall though great deck.
Yes, immediate 5-Fireball from me for the Click and Clack reference. I can't drive and I still love their show XD.