This has been performing pretty well in testing so far. It can handle just about anything. Goblins is rough, but winnable for sure with Blast and Arrows coming in.
I thought it dropped because we just had MVW NixTix and a ton got released. Not sure what Precon you are talking about... I gess it is possible as it's not on the reserved list...
No one has mentioned the banning of Mystical Tutor yet so I guess I will. This seems like a very indirect way for WOTC to get the price of cards like Lion's Eye Diamond and Entomb to drop in price. I realize storm can function without Mystical relatively well, but Reanimator really loves Mystical. Personally, I sold my 4x copies of Entomb last night. I hope I made the right decision, but I am pretty sure prices will drop.
I built this on MTGO last night and played one match with it. I did not have the fetch lands but i did use 4 evolving wilds. I played against a Vampire deck. The first game I got mana screwed and did not threaten. I sideboarded to add devout lightcasters. Second game I had a crazy draw that let me play steppe lynx turn 1, adventuring gear equiped to lynx turn two and an evolving wilds turn three to let me attack for 8 after I staggershocked his only creature. I top decked another evolving wilds on turn 5 and he conceded. Game three was a little closer but my removal spells plus devout lightcaster put me over the top.
Very fun aggro deck that would be crazy with the fetch lands in it. Nice on the budget too.
Kor Firewalker isnt that great of a threat for RDW. I was wrecked by RDW running Unstable Footing which killed the three Firewalkers I was blocking with.
RE: picking a deck. I think the local meta you deal with also has a huge impact on whether the deck you have selected can go the 10 yards. I have seen people build decks that ripped up the top tiered decks because they knew the players they would face, knew how they liked to sideboard, knew every card in their deck and basically they didn't necessarily have a high skill level but they had a wealth of information. I think that is a key point. I do acknowledge that your skill level should dictate what kind of deck you choose but I don't think it is the only factor to consider. When I played semi competitively, I found that aggro control or mid-range suited my temperament better than aggro or control and I never liked playing combo because it felt like one wrong play would end the game. I loved Squirrel Prison, I loved Malka Rock, I hated Prosbloom, I hated Stroking Moma even though I tested and designed my own version. I loved UW rebels but hated Sligh. I played a mono blue counterwall deck at one large event and went 5-2 but hated it more than any other event I played previously. (My losses were to two local pros.) My point is the best deck for you to play must also be one you love playing. If you love it you will learn all the nuances and that will prepare you for whatever your opponents throw at you. Like any art form practice makes perfect.
I am not a huge fan of the method of mechanistic looping you suggest as it requires a sort of constant state of awareness that is beyond me. I am more likely to screw something up by trying to do it right than I am just playing the way I usually do. I do lose focus sometimes but again I think this comes down to how much you want it. Do you really want to win? Do you have the will to play even though you are taking a huge beating so that you can top deck the game winner at 1 life? This is I think far more important than the perhaps dozens of tiny mistakes you can make which might lead to a loss. I've known some amazingly sloppy players who just love to win more than anything else and they do despite their insanely bad plays.
I am not really arguing that people shouldn't do it that way, just saying it isn't a 100% solution to poor play. And for some of us no solution at all. Imho practice with the deck you are playing is much more important to be consistent. Magic is a thinking game. The more you can think in chunks and the less in bits, the better your planning will be. Now sometimes you have to analyze every detail and look for every out on each side before deciding your play but usually that time consuming process is over kill. Most people are not that careful.
Sideboading strategies are either really hard or really easy. Not usually will there be a middle ground. Everyone knows burn hates life gain so if you are facing RDW, tossing in Kor Firewalkers is probablya good idea. But Chill is a situationally good card against some red decks and not so good against others. I am not saying you shouldn't side it in against RDW for example but it isn't as clearly good as Kor Firewalker. It has the same problem that Stone Rain has. It's effectiveness dies to land draw.
"we have recently been privy to some interesting new thoughts on sideboarding. Instead of thinking about what to bring in, you consider what the worst cards are for each match-up. Once you've identified the suboptimal cards in each match-up you then move into finding the overlapping answer cards. The more decks and match-ups a card improves the higher the value you give it, within reason, of course. By doing it this way you essentially approach the sideboard in reverse. Instead of finding answers and plugging them into the deck, you find the the worst cards and plan their removal. "
This should be in sideboarding 101. You always have to consider what part of your deck isn't performing against the opposing deck. What cards are dead or mostly nullified? What also do you EXPECT to be dead when your op correctly sides against your deck. That is all part and parcel of the sideboarding basics. Again I prefer a more holistic intuitive approach to the mechanistic analytical approach but essentially they both boil down to the following: cull the cards you know are not working, cull cards that you expect to be weakened, bring in cards that will do better in those slots.
Another thought about Sideboarding is the transformational sideboard. This idea is also important because if done well it can catch your opponent off guard. Switching out 15 control cards for 15 aggro creatures/spells could be just the mind game you need to win game 2 and or 3. This is tricky if your opponent knows you can do this but if you catch them unprepared you can just win by fiat. Sometimes nothing helps you more than wrecking your opponent's game plans.
The real problem is that sideboarding is always going to be difficult for average players because what makes us average or slightly above average perhaps is information and applied knowledge. Experience too but really that can be made up for. But if you don't do the homework on the field you are facing you are relying solely on limited information which in war gets people killed and in magic results in match losses.
www.ccgdecks.com has the tool you're looking for under "sealed", i believe.
I used it to determine that i was pretty unlikely to open 3+ of the same ripple card from 5 boosters of coldsnap! My plan is thwarted.
I did discover that 5 boosters of torment almost always leads to a pretty sick looking B/x deck, but I then discovered that Torment boosters are randomly about 7 tickets...
5 Eventide tends to look pretty sick, and mirrodin block could be good, because nobody else is going to have a ton of artifact removal (unless they went mirrodin too). Maybe I'll just go seventh edition for the absolute ton of land destruction....
Seems you didn't win either with your tinker guys :) We were within a few places in two of the three if memory serves...
Kiln fiend went through 4 incarnations. In 3 straight tourneys, my first round was either flood out, or screw out. Starting each one 0-1 was quite depressing, week after week. It tests amazing, but when tourney time came, well, that deck almost, singlehandedly made me a superstitious person. My true style is more U/W Blink/tempo...but I'm still tinkering around with burn...probably going to try a new version tomorrow, as it's winning a lot. No KF this time.
CSS goes inside a style tag or as an inline attribute of a container tag (aka: html element). (Or in a file separately but that isn't doable here.) If you put it inside the style tag you need to either add it as a class attribute to the particular element(s) you want affected or have a rule for the type of element that you want to affect (P, DIV, SPAN, etc).
for a further example:
here is a tag with some words in it called a paragraph element:
<P>Some words</P>
now you decided you want those words italic, bolded and arial font you will do the following to the tag itself:
This is my first chance to be in a league so I'm not sure on the rules. If we have already posted our card pools are we allowed to do some playtesting? Just curious as it wasn't mentioned and i see a few people have their pools up already. Thanks.
kalandine:
Yeah I don't see any problems with that. Your tables always look superb by the way. I gotta learn that sort of stuff.
deluxeicoff:
I can't make it for tommorrow but as you can guess, I'd run Affinity. I doubt that my influence is so great that it will alter the outcome of entire events.
I saw that you were running Burn for a couple weeks in a row. After all the Kiln Fiend praise of it destroying everything, why the switch? Not the results that you expected?
Paul:
I sort of understand, but I'm not entirely sure how to implement it. Do I just plop the css code into the middle of my html graph to get the desired changes? I'll be looking at CSS Tutorials when I have some more free time.
Flippers_Giraffe:
I should've guessed, but I'm such a newb. Thanks for pointing that out. Ideally I'd like to make a cool looking graph, but worst case scenerio I'll convert the excel sheet to html and paste it.
It’s going to be interesting to see how the AMAZING new extended format will change prices of older cards.
July 1st
Unbanned is Illusionary Mask and Grim Monolith
when is tutor getting banned? guess i missed that one
i love the sideboarding and bra unhooking analogy, priceless
Great job Eric, great stuff throughout...
Heres my Rat Teachings list, very similar but I play Brainstorm to help filter my draws:
4 Ravenous Rats
4 Chittering Rats
3 Ninja of the Deep Hours
4 Mulldrifter
4 Brainstorm
2 Disfigure
1 Ghastly Demise
4 Agony Warp
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Doom Blade
1 Eching Decay
4 Counterspell
1 Grim Harvest
3 Mystical Teachings
2 Dimir Aqueduct
4 Terramorphic Expanse
9 Island
8 Swamp
4 Duress
4 Hydroblast
1 Shred Memory
2 Deep Analysis
1 Hindering Touch
3 Serrated Arrows
This has been performing pretty well in testing so far. It can handle just about anything. Goblins is rough, but winnable for sure with Blast and Arrows coming in.
I thought it dropped because we just had MVW NixTix and a ton got released. Not sure what Precon you are talking about... I gess it is possible as it's not on the reserved list...
I think this banning will have quite a big effect on other cards as well.
Thanks Stealth I will be using site that for the next league to test pools with.
No one has mentioned the banning of Mystical Tutor yet so I guess I will. This seems like a very indirect way for WOTC to get the price of cards like Lion's Eye Diamond and Entomb to drop in price. I realize storm can function without Mystical relatively well, but Reanimator really loves Mystical. Personally, I sold my 4x copies of Entomb last night. I hope I made the right decision, but I am pretty sure prices will drop.
I built this on MTGO last night and played one match with it. I did not have the fetch lands but i did use 4 evolving wilds. I played against a Vampire deck. The first game I got mana screwed and did not threaten. I sideboarded to add devout lightcasters. Second game I had a crazy draw that let me play steppe lynx turn 1, adventuring gear equiped to lynx turn two and an evolving wilds turn three to let me attack for 8 after I staggershocked his only creature. I top decked another evolving wilds on turn 5 and he conceded. Game three was a little closer but my removal spells plus devout lightcaster put me over the top.
Very fun aggro deck that would be crazy with the fetch lands in it. Nice on the budget too.
Kor Firewalker isnt that great of a threat for RDW. I was wrecked by RDW running Unstable Footing which killed the three Firewalkers I was blocking with.
I've had a look round the net and I cant find anything, do you have any more info?
RE: picking a deck. I think the local meta you deal with also has a huge impact on whether the deck you have selected can go the 10 yards. I have seen people build decks that ripped up the top tiered decks because they knew the players they would face, knew how they liked to sideboard, knew every card in their deck and basically they didn't necessarily have a high skill level but they had a wealth of information. I think that is a key point. I do acknowledge that your skill level should dictate what kind of deck you choose but I don't think it is the only factor to consider. When I played semi competitively, I found that aggro control or mid-range suited my temperament better than aggro or control and I never liked playing combo because it felt like one wrong play would end the game. I loved Squirrel Prison, I loved Malka Rock, I hated Prosbloom, I hated Stroking Moma even though I tested and designed my own version. I loved UW rebels but hated Sligh. I played a mono blue counterwall deck at one large event and went 5-2 but hated it more than any other event I played previously. (My losses were to two local pros.) My point is the best deck for you to play must also be one you love playing. If you love it you will learn all the nuances and that will prepare you for whatever your opponents throw at you. Like any art form practice makes perfect.
I am not a huge fan of the method of mechanistic looping you suggest as it requires a sort of constant state of awareness that is beyond me. I am more likely to screw something up by trying to do it right than I am just playing the way I usually do. I do lose focus sometimes but again I think this comes down to how much you want it. Do you really want to win? Do you have the will to play even though you are taking a huge beating so that you can top deck the game winner at 1 life? This is I think far more important than the perhaps dozens of tiny mistakes you can make which might lead to a loss. I've known some amazingly sloppy players who just love to win more than anything else and they do despite their insanely bad plays.
I am not really arguing that people shouldn't do it that way, just saying it isn't a 100% solution to poor play. And for some of us no solution at all. Imho practice with the deck you are playing is much more important to be consistent. Magic is a thinking game. The more you can think in chunks and the less in bits, the better your planning will be. Now sometimes you have to analyze every detail and look for every out on each side before deciding your play but usually that time consuming process is over kill. Most people are not that careful.
Sideboading strategies are either really hard or really easy. Not usually will there be a middle ground. Everyone knows burn hates life gain so if you are facing RDW, tossing in Kor Firewalkers is probablya good idea. But Chill is a situationally good card against some red decks and not so good against others. I am not saying you shouldn't side it in against RDW for example but it isn't as clearly good as Kor Firewalker. It has the same problem that Stone Rain has. It's effectiveness dies to land draw.
"we have recently been privy to some interesting new thoughts on sideboarding. Instead of thinking about what to bring in, you consider what the worst cards are for each match-up. Once you've identified the suboptimal cards in each match-up you then move into finding the overlapping answer cards. The more decks and match-ups a card improves the higher the value you give it, within reason, of course. By doing it this way you essentially approach the sideboard in reverse. Instead of finding answers and plugging them into the deck, you find the the worst cards and plan their removal. "
This should be in sideboarding 101. You always have to consider what part of your deck isn't performing against the opposing deck. What cards are dead or mostly nullified? What also do you EXPECT to be dead when your op correctly sides against your deck. That is all part and parcel of the sideboarding basics. Again I prefer a more holistic intuitive approach to the mechanistic analytical approach but essentially they both boil down to the following: cull the cards you know are not working, cull cards that you expect to be weakened, bring in cards that will do better in those slots.
Another thought about Sideboarding is the transformational sideboard. This idea is also important because if done well it can catch your opponent off guard. Switching out 15 control cards for 15 aggro creatures/spells could be just the mind game you need to win game 2 and or 3. This is tricky if your opponent knows you can do this but if you catch them unprepared you can just win by fiat. Sometimes nothing helps you more than wrecking your opponent's game plans.
The real problem is that sideboarding is always going to be difficult for average players because what makes us average or slightly above average perhaps is information and applied knowledge. Experience too but really that can be made up for. But if you don't do the homework on the field you are facing you are relying solely on limited information which in war gets people killed and in magic results in match losses.
Hmmm which precon is that? I don't recall hearing about that.
www.ccgdecks.com has the tool you're looking for under "sealed", i believe.
I used it to determine that i was pretty unlikely to open 3+ of the same ripple card from 5 boosters of coldsnap! My plan is thwarted.
I did discover that 5 boosters of torment almost always leads to a pretty sick looking B/x deck, but I then discovered that Torment boosters are randomly about 7 tickets...
5 Eventide tends to look pretty sick, and mirrodin block could be good, because nobody else is going to have a ton of artifact removal (unless they went mirrodin too). Maybe I'll just go seventh edition for the absolute ton of land destruction....
reason Natural Order plummeted so badly is because it comes in a Precon deck for 12.99. Still at 16 tix it's over priced
Yes play testing is fine
Nice dig.
Seems you didn't win either with your tinker guys :) We were within a few places in two of the three if memory serves...
Kiln fiend went through 4 incarnations. In 3 straight tourneys, my first round was either flood out, or screw out. Starting each one 0-1 was quite depressing, week after week. It tests amazing, but when tourney time came, well, that deck almost, singlehandedly made me a superstitious person. My true style is more U/W Blink/tempo...but I'm still tinkering around with burn...probably going to try a new version tomorrow, as it's winning a lot. No KF this time.
CSS goes inside a style tag or as an inline attribute of a container tag (aka: html element). (Or in a file separately but that isn't doable here.) If you put it inside the style tag you need to either add it as a class attribute to the particular element(s) you want affected or have a rule for the type of element that you want to affect (P, DIV, SPAN, etc).
for a further example:
here is a tag with some words in it called a paragraph element:
<P>Some words</P>
now you decided you want those words italic, bolded and arial font you will do the following to the tag itself:
<P style="font-family:arial; font-weight:bold; font-style:italic;">Some words</P>
that is an inline css style.
or perhaps you decided you want multiple paragraphs with the same italic, bolded, arial font you might specify the following:
<style type='text/css' rel='stylesheet'>
.pClass {font-family:arial; font-weight:bold; font-style:italic;}
</style>
<P class="pClass">Some words</P>
<P class="pClass">Some more words</P>
<P class="pClass">Even more words</P>
and all these above paragraph elements will share the same style.
and perhaps you might do this inside the style tag to ensure all the words on the page are the same 12px that you want:
<style type='text/css' rel='stylesheet'>
BODY {font-size: 12px;}
.pClass {font-family:arial; font-weight:bold; font-style:italic;}
</style>
So now the body of the whole document is set to size 12 characters.
If you still don't get it you might want to actually sit down with a live tutor and watch them work on html.
You mean like Umizawa's Jitte?
This is my first chance to be in a league so I'm not sure on the rules. If we have already posted our card pools are we allowed to do some playtesting? Just curious as it wasn't mentioned and i see a few people have their pools up already. Thanks.
Just like the last leagues I was in, I have cracked a cruddy tspx3 plcx2 league pool!
kalandine:
Yeah I don't see any problems with that. Your tables always look superb by the way. I gotta learn that sort of stuff.
deluxeicoff:
I can't make it for tommorrow but as you can guess, I'd run Affinity. I doubt that my influence is so great that it will alter the outcome of entire events.
I saw that you were running Burn for a couple weeks in a row. After all the Kiln Fiend praise of it destroying everything, why the switch? Not the results that you expected?
Paul:
I sort of understand, but I'm not entirely sure how to implement it. Do I just plop the css code into the middle of my html graph to get the desired changes? I'll be looking at CSS Tutorials when I have some more free time.
Flippers_Giraffe:
I should've guessed, but I'm such a newb. Thanks for pointing that out. Ideally I'd like to make a cool looking graph, but worst case scenerio I'll convert the excel sheet to html and paste it.
<3...lol