You make a good point, Westane. Thrinax isn't a spell U/W generally needs to counter. Blightning on T3 generally merits a mana leak, but Jund usually wants to play guys on T3 if they have the option.
The thing about Cascade is even if you need to counter the cascade, it was already a good turn. If I play BBE and cascade into something that needs to be countered, say blightning, even if blightning gets leaked I still burned a counter and got a guy. The bad cascades you probably don't want to counter anyway, so while Mana Leak can sometimes make bad situations better, I don't think it ever really "shines" against cascade spells.
Mana Leak, however is really good against Jund's big spells, such as Seige-gang and Sarkhan. It gives them a game one counter, they probably didn't have before. Game two, they probably boarded into Flash Freeze which is almost always better here.
As a token last remark, Spreading Seas is still nuts, and will probably never be cut as long as loose mana bases and man lands stick around.
Good read. I'm now tempted to rename my next article "Losing With Jund", as has been the case before I finally started playing UW again.
I agree with your thoughts on Obstinate Baloth and Fauna Shaman, but as a blatantly bia blue battler (See wat I did thar?) I'm inclined to dissagree with your outlook on Mana Leak. In UW Permission builds, which I tend to favor despite it's slightly less than stellar match vs Jund, it's not Wall of Omens that will be cut, but rather Spreading Seas. It's not your turn 3 play that scares me, as I'll block your Thrinax and prepare for Blightning, but rather the cascade shenanigans starting on turn four. I also disagree, as I believe it's against Cascade that mana Leak really begins to shine. The cascade enablers aren't so much the problem, as is often what's cascaded into. It's unlikely you'll have the mana for your cascade spell having just spent 4 for BBE, or 5 for BitBlast.
These are just my 2c, and I'm sure it'll be up for debate. I just think Mana Leak will be a little more relevant to the Jund player than is implied.
I spent a lot of time looking over that table this morning. I think you read by rows for individual matchups (thus Stompy having 64% win percentage over MUC/Fae and a 25% against Pestilence) and by columns for the overall deck performance at the bottom.
Even rading it that way, there are winning percentages that give me pause, but most are more intuitively consistent with my expectations.
Are you saying MUC Fae has an advantage over Stompy?
That cannot be right, I smashed MUC Fae over and over, only loss of the day was that extremely close loss in the top 8.
Looking at the stompy column, are you saying that stompy has a 36% win vs MUC Fae, 65% win over goblins? that seems completely reversed from my experience, MUC Fae is an extremely good matchup and goblins is an extremely bad matchup, sparksmith is almost unbeatable since stompy has no removal, i'm really looking forward to bee sting in M11 just so i can get rid of that damn sparksmith lol.
And you have stompy 14% vs UW and 75% vs pestilence?? that is so completely opposite! or am i just looking at the grid incorrectly?
I don't think Paul's quite correct here, Unixaaron. It's actually a good question because there are different situations.
Damage for a spell or ability like this, be it Tracker or Arena or Soul's Fire, is determined when the ability resolves. So you could Giant Growth your guy bigger or Disfigure his smaller. However ...
If the Tracker disappears (because it dies, gets exiled, or gets bounced), the rules will need some number to use for it's power. In this case the game uses "last known power", which would be 3 since that's what tracker was the last time it was around.
If the target disappears, the ability will be countered because it has no legal targets.
HI. This may be dumb, but I thought someone could help me. If my opponent has tracker, with+1/+1 so its a 3/3. And they trigger it targeting my 1/3 creature. Once the ability is on the stack there is no way to change the amount of damage dealt? even with an instant weakness. Or if the tracker gets bounced it always still deals 3 no matter what happens in between the triggering and the resolving? Because I thought that the ability would check once when triggered and then it would check tracker's power again when it actually resolves.
Have you thought about using Leyline of the Void in the deck itself? Obviously as a sideboard option against those heavy aggro decks using Vengevine, and recursive Vamps.
Looking at the MTGO schedule, I knew they were awarding Mirrodin and holding the special draft events this weekend. I didn't know it was Customer Appreciation Week and I believe they came up with the idea at the last minute to try to satisfy those players that didn't post on the Community Cup forum and to fix some other problems. Aren't most other events announced weeks in advance like the 8th anniversary and july 4th drafts whereas CAW was announced the day before it started? Offering Urza's packs in the store is by no means an exciting prospect and I don't understand why they choose to take them out of the store in the first place when the drafts continue to fire but there had been many complaints about the Urza's drafts awarding UZ/UL/UL to the 2nd place in the draft and about the overall difficulty in finding UZ packs. 9 tix Alara drafts is just to squeeze the last few pennies out of the block before it rotates and these frequent MED events just help decrease the price of some staple Legacy cards.
See? That is creative. Perhaps not perfect from WotC's pov but that could be ironed out. They have great thinkers over there, I know. Just all the brain juice gets sucked out by the 9-5 aspect I guess.
a great caw event for me would be a completly free event where my customer would need nothing but an account to play and once you played in 1 event then your account name gets crossed off a list where a customer could only play in 1 event.and for those people who had more than 1 account well they had to be a customer at one point to abtain those extra accounts so they would probably apprieciate an event like that.
i agree with bubba0077, leagues seems to be a good fix in multiplayer, although i wish they would invent a sanctioned multiplayer event for the multiplayers to enjoy, my favorite paper multi event that i hold at my house is an ffa draft where you can bring any 3 packs you want, let me tell you it is fun as heck and if we had it on mtgo people could use spare packs of anything they had laying around. and don't get me started on a b.y.o.p. 2hg "bring your own packs", lol, i can see the all the fun you think you'd be having!
It's not that CAW is in any way making the game worse. It's that they're trying to get us excited over something that is (to me at least) inherently unexciting. Thus my reaction is "So that's the best you've got, huh? I see. Good to know."
It's like promising your family a special surprise for dinner then serving them leftovers.
Paul said it well that that this just feels like a dearth of creativity.
The same thing as I commented on then applies now. Half-assed appreciation seems not much better than none at all. Not saying they should do nothing but it seems rather perfunctory. Or perhaps it is just lacking in creative energy.
As far as nix ME packs go, well that's great for those with tickets to burn, I suppose. 12 tickets for a lottery? sure why not. But the move isn't about customer appreciation. It is purely secondary market fixing. They see a problem that could hurt their long term goals in Legacy and this is how they fix it. Not completely elegant as solutions go but it beats having to do something drastic like banning duals from Legacy which no one wants. Well that's my take on it. (This means if you are into Legacy and need duals go draft and hope you win some!)
As far as nix packs Shards go...I don't really get the appeal. I loved Shards of Alara block drafting but it was not hugely profitable. So many junk rares in the sets that the impact is not going to change much for any one.
An opening paragraph (or even just a conditional on the first header) framing this discussion as multiplayer would've been nice. e.g. "What have we lost *for multiplayer*?" My first thought was "why aren't leagues on this list?". The way it starts out almost makes me suspect the opening paragraph got eaten during editing.
P.S. - Why do they even bother with the first comment submission if they are just going to always flag my post as possible spam and make me fill out the captcha anyway?
Looked it over, neat idea. Unfortunately, school's about ready to start up again and I'm going to find little time to get games in. I'll keep it in mind though, sounds like a great idea.
It's not the only reason I play, but the way that WotC leans towards ignoring a sector of the community completely to take care of another sector of the community that has a format in place (albeit flawed) doesn't speak well for them. I do like Pauper, but really only casually, since I'm not fond of the tournament scene. The tournament scene in paper is one of the main reasons I got out of paper. Now the online community has loaded up with too many type A tournament players, so much so that even now I get a non-tourney deck casual game after about an hour of playing. Any format that gets me away from that kind of thing (such as leagues) is always tops in my books.
I don't quite understand - what was so bad about the Customer Appreciation Week besides the goofy promos? Nix pax ME and Alara drafts make me a little bummed because I don't like seeing my pretty duals decline in price, but it's a healthy thing for the game for them to have as much nix tix/nix pax events as possible - it does a reasonable job of moderating secondary market prices.
Sure they could have done more, but we just had the MTGO anniversary month where they threw out a bunch of discounted events (putting a bullet in the ankle of the secondary prices of just about every classic block). What are we really expecting?
Call me silly but I don't understand the looting then dropping Vendetta. Sure you take some life loss but you stabilize the board (at least until Emrakul shows up.) Yes you are still in danger and yes the 4 point loss hurts but so does not killing Drana.
You make a good point, Westane. Thrinax isn't a spell U/W generally needs to counter. Blightning on T3 generally merits a mana leak, but Jund usually wants to play guys on T3 if they have the option.
The thing about Cascade is even if you need to counter the cascade, it was already a good turn. If I play BBE and cascade into something that needs to be countered, say blightning, even if blightning gets leaked I still burned a counter and got a guy. The bad cascades you probably don't want to counter anyway, so while Mana Leak can sometimes make bad situations better, I don't think it ever really "shines" against cascade spells.
Mana Leak, however is really good against Jund's big spells, such as Seige-gang and Sarkhan. It gives them a game one counter, they probably didn't have before. Game two, they probably boarded into Flash Freeze which is almost always better here.
As a token last remark, Spreading Seas is still nuts, and will probably never be cut as long as loose mana bases and man lands stick around.
Good read. I'm now tempted to rename my next article "Losing With Jund", as has been the case before I finally started playing UW again.
I agree with your thoughts on Obstinate Baloth and Fauna Shaman, but as a blatantly bia blue battler (See wat I did thar?) I'm inclined to dissagree with your outlook on Mana Leak. In UW Permission builds, which I tend to favor despite it's slightly less than stellar match vs Jund, it's not Wall of Omens that will be cut, but rather Spreading Seas. It's not your turn 3 play that scares me, as I'll block your Thrinax and prepare for Blightning, but rather the cascade shenanigans starting on turn four. I also disagree, as I believe it's against Cascade that mana Leak really begins to shine. The cascade enablers aren't so much the problem, as is often what's cascaded into. It's unlikely you'll have the mana for your cascade spell having just spent 4 for BBE, or 5 for BitBlast.
These are just my 2c, and I'm sure it'll be up for debate. I just think Mana Leak will be a little more relevant to the Jund player than is implied.
/longwindedrant
I spent a lot of time looking over that table this morning. I think you read by rows for individual matchups (thus Stompy having 64% win percentage over MUC/Fae and a 25% against Pestilence) and by columns for the overall deck performance at the bottom.
Even rading it that way, there are winning percentages that give me pause, but most are more intuitively consistent with my expectations.
Are you saying MUC Fae has an advantage over Stompy?
That cannot be right, I smashed MUC Fae over and over, only loss of the day was that extremely close loss in the top 8.
Looking at the stompy column, are you saying that stompy has a 36% win vs MUC Fae, 65% win over goblins? that seems completely reversed from my experience, MUC Fae is an extremely good matchup and goblins is an extremely bad matchup, sparksmith is almost unbeatable since stompy has no removal, i'm really looking forward to bee sting in M11 just so i can get rid of that damn sparksmith lol.
And you have stompy 14% vs UW and 75% vs pestilence?? that is so completely opposite! or am i just looking at the grid incorrectly?
Thanks a lot, Doc! Your articles are great asset and just great. Good job, keep it going!
I don't think Paul's quite correct here, Unixaaron. It's actually a good question because there are different situations.
Damage for a spell or ability like this, be it Tracker or Arena or Soul's Fire, is determined when the ability resolves. So you could Giant Growth your guy bigger or Disfigure his smaller. However ...
If the Tracker disappears (because it dies, gets exiled, or gets bounced), the rules will need some number to use for it's power. In this case the game uses "last known power", which would be 3 since that's what tracker was the last time it was around.
If the target disappears, the ability will be countered because it has no legal targets.
Roflmao...oh right...never actually used the card so didn't even realize it had the doomblade cripple clause.
The power is checked at the time of stacking the ability. The game remembers its last known power so even if it is bounced it deals its damage.
Vendetta can't kill Drana, I believe, with her being a black creature
HI. This may be dumb, but I thought someone could help me. If my opponent has tracker, with+1/+1 so its a 3/3. And they trigger it targeting my 1/3 creature. Once the ability is on the stack there is no way to change the amount of damage dealt? even with an instant weakness. Or if the tracker gets bounced it always still deals 3 no matter what happens in between the triggering and the resolving? Because I thought that the ability would check once when triggered and then it would check tracker's power again when it actually resolves.
Have you thought about using Leyline of the Void in the deck itself? Obviously as a sideboard option against those heavy aggro decks using Vengevine, and recursive Vamps.
works only on creatures.
yes, is still works on manland, but sadly, not on all permanenets
Looking at the MTGO schedule, I knew they were awarding Mirrodin and holding the special draft events this weekend. I didn't know it was Customer Appreciation Week and I believe they came up with the idea at the last minute to try to satisfy those players that didn't post on the Community Cup forum and to fix some other problems. Aren't most other events announced weeks in advance like the 8th anniversary and july 4th drafts whereas CAW was announced the day before it started? Offering Urza's packs in the store is by no means an exciting prospect and I don't understand why they choose to take them out of the store in the first place when the drafts continue to fire but there had been many complaints about the Urza's drafts awarding UZ/UL/UL to the 2nd place in the draft and about the overall difficulty in finding UZ packs. 9 tix Alara drafts is just to squeeze the last few pennies out of the block before it rotates and these frequent MED events just help decrease the price of some staple Legacy cards.
Blinking is actually the old school term from Blinking Spirit, I'm pretty sure... or was there some effect that predated Blinky?
See? That is creative. Perhaps not perfect from WotC's pov but that could be ironed out. They have great thinkers over there, I know. Just all the brain juice gets sucked out by the 9-5 aspect I guess.
a great caw event for me would be a completly free event where my customer would need nothing but an account to play and once you played in 1 event then your account name gets crossed off a list where a customer could only play in 1 event.and for those people who had more than 1 account well they had to be a customer at one point to abtain those extra accounts so they would probably apprieciate an event like that.
i agree with bubba0077, leagues seems to be a good fix in multiplayer, although i wish they would invent a sanctioned multiplayer event for the multiplayers to enjoy, my favorite paper multi event that i hold at my house is an ffa draft where you can bring any 3 packs you want, let me tell you it is fun as heck and if we had it on mtgo people could use spare packs of anything they had laying around. and don't get me started on a b.y.o.p. 2hg "bring your own packs", lol, i can see the all the fun you think you'd be having!
It's not that CAW is in any way making the game worse. It's that they're trying to get us excited over something that is (to me at least) inherently unexciting. Thus my reaction is "So that's the best you've got, huh? I see. Good to know."
It's like promising your family a special surprise for dinner then serving them leftovers.
Paul said it well that that this just feels like a dearth of creativity.
The same thing as I commented on then applies now. Half-assed appreciation seems not much better than none at all. Not saying they should do nothing but it seems rather perfunctory. Or perhaps it is just lacking in creative energy.
As far as nix ME packs go, well that's great for those with tickets to burn, I suppose. 12 tickets for a lottery? sure why not. But the move isn't about customer appreciation. It is purely secondary market fixing. They see a problem that could hurt their long term goals in Legacy and this is how they fix it. Not completely elegant as solutions go but it beats having to do something drastic like banning duals from Legacy which no one wants. Well that's my take on it. (This means if you are into Legacy and need duals go draft and hope you win some!)
As far as nix packs Shards go...I don't really get the appeal. I loved Shards of Alara block drafting but it was not hugely profitable. So many junk rares in the sets that the impact is not going to change much for any one.
An opening paragraph (or even just a conditional on the first header) framing this discussion as multiplayer would've been nice. e.g. "What have we lost *for multiplayer*?" My first thought was "why aren't leagues on this list?". The way it starts out almost makes me suspect the opening paragraph got eaten during editing.
P.S. - Why do they even bother with the first comment submission if they are just going to always flag my post as possible spam and make me fill out the captcha anyway?
Looked it over, neat idea. Unfortunately, school's about ready to start up again and I'm going to find little time to get games in. I'll keep it in mind though, sounds like a great idea.
It's not the only reason I play, but the way that WotC leans towards ignoring a sector of the community completely to take care of another sector of the community that has a format in place (albeit flawed) doesn't speak well for them. I do like Pauper, but really only casually, since I'm not fond of the tournament scene. The tournament scene in paper is one of the main reasons I got out of paper. Now the online community has loaded up with too many type A tournament players, so much so that even now I get a non-tourney deck casual game after about an hour of playing. Any format that gets me away from that kind of thing (such as leagues) is always tops in my books.
Nix Pax Masters Edition drafts are welcome any time in my book. Don't worry, any price decline is only temporary.
I don't quite understand - what was so bad about the Customer Appreciation Week besides the goofy promos? Nix pax ME and Alara drafts make me a little bummed because I don't like seeing my pretty duals decline in price, but it's a healthy thing for the game for them to have as much nix tix/nix pax events as possible - it does a reasonable job of moderating secondary market prices.
Sure they could have done more, but we just had the MTGO anniversary month where they threw out a bunch of discounted events (putting a bullet in the ankle of the secondary prices of just about every classic block). What are we really expecting?
Call me silly but I don't understand the looting then dropping Vendetta. Sure you take some life loss but you stabilize the board (at least until Emrakul shows up.) Yes you are still in danger and yes the 4 point loss hurts but so does not killing Drana.
This doesn't happen that often but I totally agree.