Great article but, as someone who writes for a living, I have an alternate view on your second point.
Its seems to me that too many articles on too many magic sites already follow this piece of advice. Mounds of amorphous preamble, distracting structure (where it exists at all) and a woolly conclusion often mean these pieces have almost no narrative flow whatsoever. The result? I find myself quickly giving up and skimming the article to see if anything remotely interesting is on the horizon.
By all means write, write, write. Its the only way to get better. But treat this like the gauntlet games you play when learning a new deck; necessary, but something you wouldn't want anyone else to see.
When are ready to expose your work to the wider world, a little investment in time developing a structure will pay great dividends. It needn't be complex. At least fix in your mind how you're going to draw your reader in during your introduction, how you're going to keep that attention while you make your points and what you want them to take out of the article. Sketching this out on paper will definitely pay off too.
This done, get writing. And rewriting... and rewriting...
To add a few more miles to an old clunker of a cliche... Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
As mentioned it was Flip that rallied a lot of people last second. However i see little difference between adding to the banned list and adding sideboards as both can have profound effects on the format and both are changes to it. Also to say that changing a format to bring it to life is naive at best even wizards themselves change formats when they seee a glaring need for it (see extended as an example). Now keep in mind suggesting adding sideboard is nothing even remotely close to what they did but the point remains.
The basis and foundation of the tribal wars format is 1/3 creatures in your deck, adding a side board does not change that premise and also solves a lot of the problems the format faces. Adding 15 cards of answers to a side deck is hardly asking people to build completely new decks.
Besides this debate is exactly why we should hold this is an ALT event to see how it runs.
Very helpful. I wish I'd known about the deck list builder years ago. I disagree on video, I hate the stuff, even when it isn't blocked by the firewall at work it only serves to attract unwelcome notice when you're supposed to be working not browsing ;-)
Best article ever. Congrats. I use to write articles from a long ago to a blog though, never had the concern in formating the text and images. This is a great help to put all the things together. Now I can try to post my first article on puremtgo.com.
Really good stuff. I know that I had to learn a bunch of this stuff through trial and error. My first article was just a huge wall of text, but people pointed out ways to improve, essentially most of the stuff you mention here. Having it in one place just to remind me about a lot of it is geat.
One more thing to keep in mind is that the cardlinks often take a few weeks to work for newly released sets. This means that putting parenthesis around Garruk's Packleader won't get you a link, so you will have to manually insert the link. Copy the link to the card on mtgotraders.com, then type the cardname in your editer. Highlight the card name, then use the "insert link" button. Viola! Instant card links!
Changing the format is not the answer, and can never truly be. Let's not forget why the PRE was founded. Look at this latest week (I suggest we relocate the debate there as this has scrolled off the front page) and note the number of attendees: Shard was able to rally quite a few at the last minute, including the eventual winner. You're essentially asking us to fabricate a new format out of whole cloth, one which no-one has yet built a deck for.
I'm glad you enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun writing it. :)
Fauna Shaman is insane, but only in the right decks. You can't just throw her into a deck and call it good. You need to have some synergy involved otherwise you will not get good results out of her. Which is why I put Vengevine in every deck she's in. (Other synergies, but not recommended ones, include: Unearth Creatures and Bloodghast)
You don't have to build a deck around the card, but just having useful synergies makes her that much more insane if you get to untap with her. Obviously, ditching Vengevine and getting Bloodbraid is the best case scenario, but it happens frequently.
Also, I mentioned that I never wanted her too early in the game because she slows down your game plans. But seeing her turn 4+ is great, which is why I was only testing 2x. I always play something else before her if I can help it.
One problem I do see with Fauna is once Bloodbraid Elf and Ranger of Eos rotate, how good will she be then? That's something I've been wondering since the card being spoiled. But I suppose we will see.
Excellent article! The main differences between our builds is your lack of Sea Gate Oracle. I am torn on this issue as the oracle can provide tremendous card advantage, but I don't like casting him without some sort of counter backup and at that point the 5 mana could be better served casting Jace's Ingenuity.
I am going to try the deck without them and see how it goes. I got kind of burned out from playing the mirror so much. I have been playing Naya Shaman quite a bit, but UW is calling me.
I threw a Sun Titan in the Naya deck and he is just as insane in that deck as he is in UW.
I really liked your deck Flips though our battles seemed to be epic. You definitely have a knack for finding good decks for the titans. I agree that AJ's deck needs to be addressed. I already know how most of the regulars feel about it and the archetype as we have had endless discussions and threads concerning RDW and it's unfairness (or fairness as the opinion may go.) I think it is clear that it is format warping in the same way Dredge was. Hopefully we will figure out something to end the stalemate.
I put my deck together 5 minutes before reg was closed. I started the day testing UG Snakes (with counters) and decided it was too weak to stand against the primary threats. Then I moved on to several other decks none of which were satisfying me as to their resillience. Then I audibled clerics since I knew they tend to do stall very well which is something that aggro decks (a lot of which have shown up lately) and burn (even more have shown up recently) hate. Life gain + lots of removal = I win over time. (Though several games were slow enough that I almost lost on the clock.)
I got the idea for the combo from KingRitz who chastened me several times with a similar deck (though he used black clerics too.) I wanted a mono-colored deck though because I am a little tired of mana issues.
Thanks for the challenge and thanks for handing out a door prize to one of the 1-2/0-3s this week. I think it is a great idea and should be considered by the usual TO when he has time to reflect on it.
I love this. Can someone please just put a tack in this and put it at the top of every page? K, thanks. #2 and #5 are both extremely important imho. Someone else to edit your mistakes is essential. The content manager here does usually spell check but it isn't his job to edit each paragraph for grammatical sense and punctuation. Nor should it be, though if I were doing that job I'd probably spend way too much time doing just that.
Write the bulk of your text in notepad or notepad++ and then spell check it before setting it into the site's rich text box for formatting.
RE: graphics/images. There doesn't have to be that much work put into this. Using the (pic=) and (tmb=) codelets is a big step towards breaking up the wall of text with appropriate splashes of color. I tend to be light on graphics myself because I take pride in doing them right and don't want to add mega hours to the articles I already have spent mega hours writing/formatting.
Also you can use (card name) to autolink cards for ease of reference when you are talking about a huge list of cards. (Or even just several obscure ones.)
Interesting points if overly harsh. Sure the kid is new to the format so he doesn't get the deck names right. (Though he must also be new to eternal in general I am guessing since those are eternal archetypes.) But there is no reason to beat him up for that. You said chose correctly as a new player to run Zoo since it is fairly easy and is a competent deck in the format but Bash him for not knowing how dredge works. You are usually fairer than that imho.
Just so you know, your deck is called "Zoo". Not GoyfSligh, just Zoo. That's not a pet name, either. It's as well known by that name as "Burn" is known by its name. Your deck has been known as Zoo ever since the format existed. And the strategy has always been the same: "Taiga into Kird Ape", awesome 1-2 drops, then finish them with burn. Consistency is the secret to the deck. Tarmogoyf and Alara block have been especially kind to Zoo, but it's still Zoo behind all the recent upgrades. (Taiga into Nacatl!)
You thought your opponents looked unprepared and clueless? They probably were. But to be fair to them, Zoo is a tier-1 deck both in terms of popularity of choice and power against other established decks. The fact that you choose Zoo after admitting that you didn't know the format, did well with it anyway, and wrote an article on it - all without ever using the name of the deck itself, says something about you too. Admitting that you're new to Legacy doesn't excuse you from knowing your own deck. (You are excused from knowing the other 50-something viable decks. :P)
You highlighted the fact that you romped Dredge without SB Hate. However, you called one of your opponents "The LED version of Dredge." I'm pretty sure LED is required to run Dredge. If your other two Dredge opponents didn't show you the card then they were idiots playing an underpowered combo deck and should've done what you did. (Which is avoid combo and control if you're new to the format!) Dredge doesn't have many "optional" or tweakable parts and LED is definitely not among them. If you wisely chose not to play Dredge because you didn't know how to play it, then what insightful things can you say about playing against it? That I can beat without a sideboard? Besides those 7 cards you which you consistently sided in?
Paranormal is a catchall phrase that has been abused by charlatans and fakers for centuries. As a result in my book it fits right in with supernatural and unholy and sacred etc. IE: bs. Now is it possible some of the things called paranormal are real and have real world applications? Sure. (Though my bet is still mostly not.) We know that people give off electrical auras and we don't know a heck of a lot more about what happens to that energy once a person is dead but as Einstein said energy is never destroyed only transformed. How? When? Where? into what? Those are questions we can't answer yet and may never do satisfactorily.
"Demons" in the psychological sense do exist. Within us. We drink to stupifaction, cheat on our partners, lie to our siblings, murder our friends, commit suicide, genocide, hide from ourselves and others, long for what we can't obtain and obsess over myriad objects/persons/places/ideas and the list goes on. (Not attributing any of this to individuals but just showing that humans as a group have "demons".)
That doesn't make them supernatural, over powerful or otherwise in any way inhuman. That is why I tend to call bunk when people talk about stuff like this. People need labels and take comfort in categories. Even if the information they buy into is purely fictional. (Yet another type of demon imho: Superstition.)
On the other hand it is great fun to scare people who are gullible with ghost stories and other eerie but unexplained things. I like the phrase from Dune the best to describe my feelings on this sort of thing: Fear is the mind killer. As the antithesis of thought and reason fear leads us into dark areas of our souls we don't often explore in the light of day. It is an easy button, because fearing the unknown is much harder than fearing the known. The demons of our imaginations.
IMO, as a skeptic as well, Supernatural != Paranormal. Paranormal to me simply means activity outside the realm of what's generally considered "normal", in a very general sense. I see no reason to question that to be honest.
I am committed to questioning everything. I don't think there is such a thing as the supernatural but I do believe what we call the real world is only a part of the whole. We do not understand all there is to understand in the environment we live in. Ghosts, Demons, Sorcerors, Angels, faeries, etc are merely ways of people attempting to pass down the little they do understand. I don't believe in magic in the sense that people mean it but I do think we can experience phenomenon that is beyond our ken and thus label it as such. Some science fiction writers like to quote this (to badly paraphrase): "One Man's Science is another's Magic."
Thou am i being too harsh in saying that as a standard legal deck that's not even tier 1 in standard. That maybe its more the meta that's a problem then the archtype its self?
Should people choose to play more dedicated discard,life gain, or counters you'd see that red deck of this nature would be very bad choices indeed.
As for best for the format I'm still completely of the opinion that we need to make this OUR format not the one that wizards used not even half a thought into a slapped together. Thus at this point i dont think it's decks such as this that are the problem more as its the fact we lack sideboards that is.
With sideboards added and properly used Decks such as this would go from tier 1 to possibly having to struggle to not get blown out after game 1.
I had noticed how much of the deck was Std legal: This is an area Wizards have been pushing lately and to impressive effect. All the creatures are Std legal until the October rotation claims Ball Lightning and Hell's Thunder.
I take your point on my request, but as you said, you'd seen the deck at a quick glance. We differ on our perspectives: I'm concerned that the metagame really doesn't have the flexibility to handle this without becoming deck and antideck. We have a strategy that is stronger than it should be due to the constraints of the format, and it is in this regard that the similarity to the banned combos is clearest.
It's definitely a matter for debate if this is just very strong or too strong. We've made our stances clear, but which is best for the event as a whole?
Thanks Lythand, that's the idea ;) I'm usually similarly skeptical, but there aren't many skeptics at 3am when there's something banging in the kitchen... Makes me shiver to think of it.
Great article but, as someone who writes for a living, I have an alternate view on your second point.
Its seems to me that too many articles on too many magic sites already follow this piece of advice. Mounds of amorphous preamble, distracting structure (where it exists at all) and a woolly conclusion often mean these pieces have almost no narrative flow whatsoever. The result? I find myself quickly giving up and skimming the article to see if anything remotely interesting is on the horizon.
By all means write, write, write. Its the only way to get better. But treat this like the gauntlet games you play when learning a new deck; necessary, but something you wouldn't want anyone else to see.
When are ready to expose your work to the wider world, a little investment in time developing a structure will pay great dividends. It needn't be complex. At least fix in your mind how you're going to draw your reader in during your introduction, how you're going to keep that attention while you make your points and what you want them to take out of the article. Sketching this out on paper will definitely pay off too.
This done, get writing. And rewriting... and rewriting...
To add a few more miles to an old clunker of a cliche... Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
Here's hoping your fruitful seeds take root.
Ted
As mentioned it was Flip that rallied a lot of people last second. However i see little difference between adding to the banned list and adding sideboards as both can have profound effects on the format and both are changes to it. Also to say that changing a format to bring it to life is naive at best even wizards themselves change formats when they seee a glaring need for it (see extended as an example). Now keep in mind suggesting adding sideboard is nothing even remotely close to what they did but the point remains.
The basis and foundation of the tribal wars format is 1/3 creatures in your deck, adding a side board does not change that premise and also solves a lot of the problems the format faces. Adding 15 cards of answers to a side deck is hardly asking people to build completely new decks.
Besides this debate is exactly why we should hold this is an ALT event to see how it runs.
Just to confirm the mono blue challenge is this weekend 14th of August 2010
Your right, I can't bare homonym eras ether.
I know you were getting frustrated at some articles on the site - this is a very constructive way of helping to improve them, so good one.
Very helpful. I wish I'd known about the deck list builder years ago. I disagree on video, I hate the stuff, even when it isn't blocked by the firewall at work it only serves to attract unwelcome notice when you're supposed to be working not browsing ;-)
Best article ever. Congrats. I use to write articles from a long ago to a blog though, never had the concern in formating the text and images. This is a great help to put all the things together. Now I can try to post my first article on puremtgo.com.
Really good stuff Adrian.
Looking forward your next article.
Yup. Sorry for the misattribution.
Flips did the rallying this week.
Really good stuff. I know that I had to learn a bunch of this stuff through trial and error. My first article was just a huge wall of text, but people pointed out ways to improve, essentially most of the stuff you mention here. Having it in one place just to remind me about a lot of it is geat.
One more thing to keep in mind is that the cardlinks often take a few weeks to work for newly released sets. This means that putting parenthesis around Garruk's Packleader won't get you a link, so you will have to manually insert the link. Copy the link to the card on mtgotraders.com, then type the cardname in your editer. Highlight the card name, then use the "insert link" button. Viola! Instant card links!
Changing the format is not the answer, and can never truly be. Let's not forget why the PRE was founded. Look at this latest week (I suggest we relocate the debate there as this has scrolled off the front page) and note the number of attendees: Shard was able to rally quite a few at the last minute, including the eventual winner. You're essentially asking us to fabricate a new format out of whole cloth, one which no-one has yet built a deck for.
I'm glad you enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun writing it. :)
Fauna Shaman is insane, but only in the right decks. You can't just throw her into a deck and call it good. You need to have some synergy involved otherwise you will not get good results out of her. Which is why I put Vengevine in every deck she's in. (Other synergies, but not recommended ones, include: Unearth Creatures and Bloodghast)
You don't have to build a deck around the card, but just having useful synergies makes her that much more insane if you get to untap with her. Obviously, ditching Vengevine and getting Bloodbraid is the best case scenario, but it happens frequently.
Also, I mentioned that I never wanted her too early in the game because she slows down your game plans. But seeing her turn 4+ is great, which is why I was only testing 2x. I always play something else before her if I can help it.
One problem I do see with Fauna is once Bloodbraid Elf and Ranger of Eos rotate, how good will she be then? That's something I've been wondering since the card being spoiled. But I suppose we will see.
Excellent article! The main differences between our builds is your lack of Sea Gate Oracle. I am torn on this issue as the oracle can provide tremendous card advantage, but I don't like casting him without some sort of counter backup and at that point the 5 mana could be better served casting Jace's Ingenuity.
I am going to try the deck without them and see how it goes. I got kind of burned out from playing the mirror so much. I have been playing Naya Shaman quite a bit, but UW is calling me.
I threw a Sun Titan in the Naya deck and he is just as insane in that deck as he is in UW.
Good luck in the MOCS!
I really liked your deck Flips though our battles seemed to be epic. You definitely have a knack for finding good decks for the titans. I agree that AJ's deck needs to be addressed. I already know how most of the regulars feel about it and the archetype as we have had endless discussions and threads concerning RDW and it's unfairness (or fairness as the opinion may go.) I think it is clear that it is format warping in the same way Dredge was. Hopefully we will figure out something to end the stalemate.
I put my deck together 5 minutes before reg was closed. I started the day testing UG Snakes (with counters) and decided it was too weak to stand against the primary threats. Then I moved on to several other decks none of which were satisfying me as to their resillience. Then I audibled clerics since I knew they tend to do stall very well which is something that aggro decks (a lot of which have shown up lately) and burn (even more have shown up recently) hate. Life gain + lots of removal = I win over time. (Though several games were slow enough that I almost lost on the clock.)
I got the idea for the combo from KingRitz who chastened me several times with a similar deck (though he used black clerics too.) I wanted a mono-colored deck though because I am a little tired of mana issues.
Thanks for the challenge and thanks for handing out a door prize to one of the 1-2/0-3s this week. I think it is a great idea and should be considered by the usual TO when he has time to reflect on it.
I love this. Can someone please just put a tack in this and put it at the top of every page? K, thanks. #2 and #5 are both extremely important imho. Someone else to edit your mistakes is essential. The content manager here does usually spell check but it isn't his job to edit each paragraph for grammatical sense and punctuation. Nor should it be, though if I were doing that job I'd probably spend way too much time doing just that.
Write the bulk of your text in notepad or notepad++ and then spell check it before setting it into the site's rich text box for formatting.
RE: graphics/images. There doesn't have to be that much work put into this. Using the (pic=) and (tmb=) codelets is a big step towards breaking up the wall of text with appropriate splashes of color. I tend to be light on graphics myself because I take pride in doing them right and don't want to add mega hours to the articles I already have spent mega hours writing/formatting.
Also you can use (card name) to autolink cards for ease of reference when you are talking about a huge list of cards. (Or even just several obscure ones.)
Adrian Best article yet. Thanks for the service.
Interesting points if overly harsh. Sure the kid is new to the format so he doesn't get the deck names right. (Though he must also be new to eternal in general I am guessing since those are eternal archetypes.) But there is no reason to beat him up for that. You said chose correctly as a new player to run Zoo since it is fairly easy and is a competent deck in the format but Bash him for not knowing how dredge works. You are usually fairer than that imho.
Just so you know, your deck is called "Zoo". Not GoyfSligh, just Zoo. That's not a pet name, either. It's as well known by that name as "Burn" is known by its name. Your deck has been known as Zoo ever since the format existed. And the strategy has always been the same: "Taiga into Kird Ape", awesome 1-2 drops, then finish them with burn. Consistency is the secret to the deck. Tarmogoyf and Alara block have been especially kind to Zoo, but it's still Zoo behind all the recent upgrades. (Taiga into Nacatl!)
You thought your opponents looked unprepared and clueless? They probably were. But to be fair to them, Zoo is a tier-1 deck both in terms of popularity of choice and power against other established decks. The fact that you choose Zoo after admitting that you didn't know the format, did well with it anyway, and wrote an article on it - all without ever using the name of the deck itself, says something about you too. Admitting that you're new to Legacy doesn't excuse you from knowing your own deck. (You are excused from knowing the other 50-something viable decks. :P)
You highlighted the fact that you romped Dredge without SB Hate. However, you called one of your opponents "The LED version of Dredge." I'm pretty sure LED is required to run Dredge. If your other two Dredge opponents didn't show you the card then they were idiots playing an underpowered combo deck and should've done what you did. (Which is avoid combo and control if you're new to the format!) Dredge doesn't have many "optional" or tweakable parts and LED is definitely not among them. If you wisely chose not to play Dredge because you didn't know how to play it, then what insightful things can you say about playing against it? That I can beat without a sideboard? Besides those 7 cards you which you consistently sided in?
Paranormal is a catchall phrase that has been abused by charlatans and fakers for centuries. As a result in my book it fits right in with supernatural and unholy and sacred etc. IE: bs. Now is it possible some of the things called paranormal are real and have real world applications? Sure. (Though my bet is still mostly not.) We know that people give off electrical auras and we don't know a heck of a lot more about what happens to that energy once a person is dead but as Einstein said energy is never destroyed only transformed. How? When? Where? into what? Those are questions we can't answer yet and may never do satisfactorily.
"Demons" in the psychological sense do exist. Within us. We drink to stupifaction, cheat on our partners, lie to our siblings, murder our friends, commit suicide, genocide, hide from ourselves and others, long for what we can't obtain and obsess over myriad objects/persons/places/ideas and the list goes on. (Not attributing any of this to individuals but just showing that humans as a group have "demons".)
That doesn't make them supernatural, over powerful or otherwise in any way inhuman. That is why I tend to call bunk when people talk about stuff like this. People need labels and take comfort in categories. Even if the information they buy into is purely fictional. (Yet another type of demon imho: Superstition.)
On the other hand it is great fun to scare people who are gullible with ghost stories and other eerie but unexplained things. I like the phrase from Dune the best to describe my feelings on this sort of thing: Fear is the mind killer. As the antithesis of thought and reason fear leads us into dark areas of our souls we don't often explore in the light of day. It is an easy button, because fearing the unknown is much harder than fearing the known. The demons of our imaginations.
IMO, as a skeptic as well, Supernatural != Paranormal. Paranormal to me simply means activity outside the realm of what's generally considered "normal", in a very general sense. I see no reason to question that to be honest.
Haha we talked about both Soul's Fire and Fling and I guess they never were added because the deck was so strong to begin with.
I am committed to questioning everything. I don't think there is such a thing as the supernatural but I do believe what we call the real world is only a part of the whole. We do not understand all there is to understand in the environment we live in. Ghosts, Demons, Sorcerors, Angels, faeries, etc are merely ways of people attempting to pass down the little they do understand. I don't believe in magic in the sense that people mean it but I do think we can experience phenomenon that is beyond our ken and thus label it as such. Some science fiction writers like to quote this (to badly paraphrase): "One Man's Science is another's Magic."
Thou am i being too harsh in saying that as a standard legal deck that's not even tier 1 in standard. That maybe its more the meta that's a problem then the archtype its self?
Should people choose to play more dedicated discard,life gain, or counters you'd see that red deck of this nature would be very bad choices indeed.
As for best for the format I'm still completely of the opinion that we need to make this OUR format not the one that wizards used not even half a thought into a slapped together. Thus at this point i dont think it's decks such as this that are the problem more as its the fact we lack sideboards that is.
With sideboards added and properly used Decks such as this would go from tier 1 to possibly having to struggle to not get blown out after game 1.
I had noticed how much of the deck was Std legal: This is an area Wizards have been pushing lately and to impressive effect. All the creatures are Std legal until the October rotation claims Ball Lightning and Hell's Thunder.
I take your point on my request, but as you said, you'd seen the deck at a quick glance. We differ on our perspectives: I'm concerned that the metagame really doesn't have the flexibility to handle this without becoming deck and antideck. We have a strategy that is stronger than it should be due to the constraints of the format, and it is in this regard that the similarity to the banned combos is clearest.
It's definitely a matter for debate if this is just very strong or too strong. We've made our stances clear, but which is best for the event as a whole?
Thanks Lythand, that's the idea ;) I'm usually similarly skeptical, but there aren't many skeptics at 3am when there's something banging in the kitchen... Makes me shiver to think of it.
Welcome to control lol
deck looks good, but those matches are some of the most boring i have ever watched.