That was my second encounter with things like that, the first was much tamer, though it ended with an unrelated house fire XD Everyone and everything was fine BTW.
I saw Paranormal Activity recently, well after the prior events. I couldn't sleep for weeks lol. And yeah, the scariest things we deal with now are drunk college students walking naked in front of our windows!
Article was good. You keep putting out fun articles and decks.
Westane: I have always been on the borderline of skeptical and believing when it came to the super natural. I have to say thats some scary stuff to think about. Although the movie Paranormal Activity was fake, it seemed so real and scared the pants off me. Glad all has subsided for you.
You're right you're deck was tuned in a much different way you asked that i comment without looking at the deck list before commenting and that's more or less what i did (since i had seen the deck at quick glance yesterday just before work and i seen you comment 10 hours later).
Personally I couldn't tell you which version is more susceptible to creature removal and first strike or pro red creatures.
But honestly I look at it this way you're not abusing the nature of the format nearly as much as you're abusing the current existing metagame, though i will admit that the lack of sideboards does make this a stronger strategy then it would/should/could be otherwise.
I'm still of the opinion though that you used your tribe to the fullest of it abilities and did exactly what they were designed to do.
I think the deck really proved how warping it can be even though it lost in the finals vs a fairly tight white humans deck. To combat that deck requires dedicated hate or some amount of luck. I did find that it faltered vs my antelopes but that seemed a bit like a weird draw (mine great yours lousy.) RDW isn't inherently a combo deck but I agree the way you made it surely is. The damage multipliers get insane, particularly if the game goes past turn 3.
I'm just going by my experiences playing it. I take issue with your claim that it's a variant on your deck: Your deck is a perfectly fair tuned elementals build, designed for a quick kill and proven in action, whereas mine is a shoehorned burn deck, specifically built to exploit the nature of the format and kill the opponent through burn damage multiplied by the majority of the creatures played. You were just looking to win in line with the rules, I was looking to break the format and gain unfair advantage from a strategy most decks can't cope with, in order to highlight the need to deal with it.
The combo in this case is in doubling the output of each zero- or one-mana burn spell: It's essentially a combo with massive redundancy for both key cards instead of tuition. I see nothing ridiculous in the comparison given the end result, namely a dead opponent as early as possible regardless of what they do, is much the same. The Kiln Fiends, Chandra's Spitfires and Fire Servants each served to double the output of the 18 noncreature burn spells the deck ran, with the deck rounded out by quasi-burn in the form of one turn creatures.
My bad on not spelling out what Top 64 means. Thanks for pointing that out.
I knew the guy that won the trial, and he didn't play optimally, his opponents played even less so. The idea was that I had very little idea what was going on in the format so I felt I would be pretty disadvantaged against skilled opponents, but from watching the games I concluded most people were also as poorly prepared/tested as I was so getting to Day 2 wouldn't be as daunting a task.
It wasn't supposed to be a shot at any of my opponents or the tournament as a whole. Just what I thought after watching the trial.
Perhaps...mine was just a misguided joke about antelopes because there seems to be a thread going through some topics lately regarding the discrepancies of Planeswalkers vs Plainswalkers. My bad for being secretly silly.
Erm, *cough*... Us albinos have our own dialect, in which "Though" can be used like what the general public is used to, or it can mean considering something in past tense.
I enjoyed the article. Regarding the deck, how have you honestly been liking Fauna Shaman? In anticipation of her going back up I'm picking up a set ($4.50 as of this comment) but I just can't shake the feeling she's not "that" good. She just seems too slow and vulnerable. Don't get me wrong, if you untap with her (a couple times) you've pretty much won, but.. I dunno. I guess that's why I don't play aggro lol.
Regarding the Card Watch. I'm glad Primeval Titan is the new big Mythic. Of course, I say that as a control player who's very happy about Baneslayer Angel hitting the $17 mark!
This is the time to buy your M11 cards with not a single rare over $5!
He could have been poking fun at the author's misspellings/misuse of the word 'though' instead of 'thought,' but my guess is neither of them did so intentionally.
Ooooh. See when I first started reading your article I thought you "actually" had a demon in your house o.O. In an apartment me and my wife lived in a couple years ago we had what potentially was one. We moved after a couple month's "Nah, my mind's just playing tricks on me, too much grass..." things started to escalated. We'd get woken up at 2 am to our kitchen cabinets slamming (Swinging when we actually got a light on), faces in the ceiling (NOT matrixing, this was well after we were adjusted). When we were in our bedroom with the door shut you could see "feet" walking back and forth on the other side of the door. After a while we started fight, worse and worse. Negativity begets negativity, and we didn't even know why we were fighting! Over the next couple months we both couldn't sleep because of horrible "Wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat" nightmares. The last straw was when we went to bed pretty soundly, but woke up at around 2am, standing up, screaming at each other. Okay, we were in bed, lying down when we went to sleep. But, when we woke up, we were in the process of scream bloody murder, facing each other, standing up in the corner of the room, waking up at the same time. Talk about getting the hell out of Dodge...
Now we're in a not-so-quite college apartment complex but we're VERY happy taking the late night partying over, "other things"
Your article? I loved it, I need to make more "fun" decks!
It would be great...there's just one little problem. You can only have one planeswalker called "Sarkhan" on the field at once. Otherwise they err...planeswalker rule themselves out. The same reason you can't have little and big Jace together.
I love U/W control, just wish I could afford big Jace. My heart will always belong to U/B control though. Anyway, nice article and good luck getting those QPs!
Another sickly solid article. I hold you fully responsible for my recent lack of legacy playing. It is articles like this that keep me from playing legacy and instead spending time on standard.
Aj im already fully aware that you played a variant on my elementals deck and it doesn't "go off" and the opponent is infact given multiple oppertunities to interact with such a deck. Lastly just because the deck can get a god hand and win turn 3 doesnt mean that turn 3 was or is the norm, if the deck played out anything like mine does then turns 4-5 would be well more usual.
Besides there is no single card that could be banned to eliminate such a deck as it's the sum of its parts.(just as the other basic archtype decks I mentioned) Though I will say that both fireblast and kiln fiend tend to be all-stars in the deck.
Also to compare that or similar decks in that they have dedicated proven strategies to a 2 card combo that keeps at worst 52 cards free to do as you want is ridiculous.
That was my second encounter with things like that, the first was much tamer, though it ended with an unrelated house fire XD Everyone and everything was fine BTW.
I saw Paranormal Activity recently, well after the prior events. I couldn't sleep for weeks lol. And yeah, the scariest things we deal with now are drunk college students walking naked in front of our windows!
Article was good. You keep putting out fun articles and decks.
Westane: I have always been on the borderline of skeptical and believing when it came to the super natural. I have to say thats some scary stuff to think about. Although the movie Paranormal Activity was fake, it seemed so real and scared the pants off me. Glad all has subsided for you.
You're right you're deck was tuned in a much different way you asked that i comment without looking at the deck list before commenting and that's more or less what i did (since i had seen the deck at quick glance yesterday just before work and i seen you comment 10 hours later).
Personally I couldn't tell you which version is more susceptible to creature removal and first strike or pro red creatures.
But honestly I look at it this way you're not abusing the nature of the format nearly as much as you're abusing the current existing metagame, though i will admit that the lack of sideboards does make this a stronger strategy then it would/should/could be otherwise.
I'm still of the opinion though that you used your tribe to the fullest of it abilities and did exactly what they were designed to do.
Food for thought:
-3 Chain Lightning
-4 Lava Spike
-4 Fireblast
+4 Burst Lightning
+4 Punishing Flame
+1 Searing Blaze
+2 Soul's Fire or Fling
And the deck you have there is standard legal....
Roil Elemental is a good suggestion. It is nice because you can steal all the Eldrazi with it. Casting your commander 7 times is a ton.
I think the deck really proved how warping it can be even though it lost in the finals vs a fairly tight white humans deck. To combat that deck requires dedicated hate or some amount of luck. I did find that it faltered vs my antelopes but that seemed a bit like a weird draw (mine great yours lousy.) RDW isn't inherently a combo deck but I agree the way you made it surely is. The damage multipliers get insane, particularly if the game goes past turn 3.
I'm just going by my experiences playing it. I take issue with your claim that it's a variant on your deck: Your deck is a perfectly fair tuned elementals build, designed for a quick kill and proven in action, whereas mine is a shoehorned burn deck, specifically built to exploit the nature of the format and kill the opponent through burn damage multiplied by the majority of the creatures played. You were just looking to win in line with the rules, I was looking to break the format and gain unfair advantage from a strategy most decks can't cope with, in order to highlight the need to deal with it.
The combo in this case is in doubling the output of each zero- or one-mana burn spell: It's essentially a combo with massive redundancy for both key cards instead of tuition. I see nothing ridiculous in the comparison given the end result, namely a dead opponent as early as possible regardless of what they do, is much the same. The Kiln Fiends, Chandra's Spitfires and Fire Servants each served to double the output of the 18 noncreature burn spells the deck ran, with the deck rounded out by quasi-burn in the form of one turn creatures.
We just found some great niagara falls packages and heading up for labor day weekend at the end of August and visiting friends in Toronto.
Just wanted to stay that I enjoy your writing. Short and to the point without being entirely arrogant.
Nice LLM draft write-up on Rustymachete, too.
I've lessened my learning for sure.
I hope you've learned your lesson.
i think 64th out of 1300 put him in like the top 5% of the entire event. So yeah the remaining 95% were pretty terrible that day...
My bad on not spelling out what Top 64 means. Thanks for pointing that out.
I knew the guy that won the trial, and he didn't play optimally, his opponents played even less so. The idea was that I had very little idea what was going on in the format so I felt I would be pretty disadvantaged against skilled opponents, but from watching the games I concluded most people were also as poorly prepared/tested as I was so getting to Day 2 wouldn't be as daunting a task.
It wasn't supposed to be a shot at any of my opponents or the tournament as a whole. Just what I thought after watching the trial.
Perhaps...mine was just a misguided joke about antelopes because there seems to be a thread going through some topics lately regarding the discrepancies of Planeswalkers vs Plainswalkers. My bad for being secretly silly.
Erm, *cough*... Us albinos have our own dialect, in which "Though" can be used like what the general public is used to, or it can mean considering something in past tense.
True Story
I enjoyed the article. Regarding the deck, how have you honestly been liking Fauna Shaman? In anticipation of her going back up I'm picking up a set ($4.50 as of this comment) but I just can't shake the feeling she's not "that" good. She just seems too slow and vulnerable. Don't get me wrong, if you untap with her (a couple times) you've pretty much won, but.. I dunno. I guess that's why I don't play aggro lol.
Regarding the Card Watch. I'm glad Primeval Titan is the new big Mythic. Of course, I say that as a control player who's very happy about Baneslayer Angel hitting the $17 mark!
This is the time to buy your M11 cards with not a single rare over $5!
He could have been poking fun at the author's misspellings/misuse of the word 'though' instead of 'thought,' but my guess is neither of them did so intentionally.
Good luck in your next event Jeff.
Your demon beats my demon. Mine just cooks bacon. But anyway, that's a scary story - glad you've moved!
Yes, but I think he meant you kill off Vol, then drop the mad one and activate his -4.
Ooooh. See when I first started reading your article I thought you "actually" had a demon in your house o.O. In an apartment me and my wife lived in a couple years ago we had what potentially was one. We moved after a couple month's "Nah, my mind's just playing tricks on me, too much grass..." things started to escalated. We'd get woken up at 2 am to our kitchen cabinets slamming (Swinging when we actually got a light on), faces in the ceiling (NOT matrixing, this was well after we were adjusted). When we were in our bedroom with the door shut you could see "feet" walking back and forth on the other side of the door. After a while we started fight, worse and worse. Negativity begets negativity, and we didn't even know why we were fighting! Over the next couple months we both couldn't sleep because of horrible "Wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat" nightmares. The last straw was when we went to bed pretty soundly, but woke up at around 2am, standing up, screaming at each other. Okay, we were in bed, lying down when we went to sleep. But, when we woke up, we were in the process of scream bloody murder, facing each other, standing up in the corner of the room, waking up at the same time. Talk about getting the hell out of Dodge...
Now we're in a not-so-quite college apartment complex but we're VERY happy taking the late night partying over, "other things"
Your article? I loved it, I need to make more "fun" decks!
It would be great...there's just one little problem. You can only have one planeswalker called "Sarkhan" on the field at once. Otherwise they err...planeswalker rule themselves out. The same reason you can't have little and big Jace together.
Mine too, just patiently waiting for Psychatog to get reprinted and I'm back in business XD
I love U/W control, just wish I could afford big Jace. My heart will always belong to U/B control though. Anyway, nice article and good luck getting those QPs!
"concluding that even on zero byes I could day 2 since everyone was terrible."
reading statements like these leaves a bad taste in my mouth...
I understand you need to psyche yourself up for a tournament, but publishing these thoughts in an article almost seems like bad sportsmanship.
Another sickly solid article. I hold you fully responsible for my recent lack of legacy playing. It is articles like this that keep me from playing legacy and instead spending time on standard.
Aj im already fully aware that you played a variant on my elementals deck and it doesn't "go off" and the opponent is infact given multiple oppertunities to interact with such a deck. Lastly just because the deck can get a god hand and win turn 3 doesnt mean that turn 3 was or is the norm, if the deck played out anything like mine does then turns 4-5 would be well more usual.
Besides there is no single card that could be banned to eliminate such a deck as it's the sum of its parts.(just as the other basic archtype decks I mentioned) Though I will say that both fireblast and kiln fiend tend to be all-stars in the deck.
Also to compare that or similar decks in that they have dedicated proven strategies to a 2 card combo that keeps at worst 52 cards free to do as you want is ridiculous.