You've won against a balanced deck running a full 8-pack of 1-mana white instant exile removal. Bear in mind you also need mass removal for swarm decks, and you only have 16 or so noncreature slots to work with.
People don't like there only being one winning strategy, week in week out, and the *appearance* is what matters to their perceptions. Why innovate if it's always a monored fast damage deck that wins, regardless of what you call it or what it qualifies as? Hell, I've won with all-in red decks myself.
Great article as ever, and one which would be equally at home on a Star Wars tribute site! Really nice idea for a series, and well concluded. I especially like the Blightning deck, I built something similar recently, but included pingers and Basilisk Collar for good times. It seems you can't have too much removal these days. Anyway, good luck with the move.
Ad Nauseam Tendrils or ANT. That is the deck and not TEPS, which is Wish and red rituals with a 4-5 color base. Pretty sure ANT pilot g1 could have Mystical Tutor into Dark Ritual to up the storm count w/o imprinting Mox and increasing mana for Iggy-->Infernal Tutor for Tendrils would have been 10 count. Also do not ever quit on a resolved Ad Naus or Iggy unless you see 4 mana,Tendrils+9 spells played. The sb could use more than 3 Thorns or the like against combo vs players who count to 9, otherwise sb looks good.
The Tresh list looked like it was next Level Tresh, it plays Jace and Crucible. I am going to guess he either boarded out FoW and kept Daze on play or never drew into it g2, considering he went in 17 cards deep w/o playing it. EE is less effective with your range of ccs, Spout looked good there.
You removed the ESG and Choke, both matches they were integral. I would not go down to less than 12 land even with 4 Land Grants, it is not explosive as Belcher or Manaless Ichorid. You could go With Thorns main it would be aysmmetrical. Neetle is good with Heritage Druid when trying to combo out staff of Domination, a Grapeshot/Banefire, or Chord of Calling into Entity/Dragon. Aggro elves would see less benefit with the combo like enablers. Concordant Crossroads, Root maze and Winter Orb are also options as would be a copy of Nissa. Wilt-Leaf Liege, Cradle and Oran-rief could add some more tricks. if you are going to try the dailies, Standstill decks are dedicated to aggro and something like Gilt-Leaf Archdruid could do well out of the sb; it is 5cc making Deed unlikely in a timely fashion, and they mus StP or Counter it only 2 answers.
You should know that over the weekend FOW was hitting as low as $60. =edit= Oh and I just posted an article which might give me some hoof in mouth to chew on since I was a bit harsh on the commander decks situation. I had no idea how indecisive and screwed up the CC team was with this. Totally different thing than happened last year. Gavin if you read this, sorry...didn't mean to be so harsh. Or rather didn't realize it would be based on what actually happened.
Jeff, you suddenly have a lot more respect from me. Like, way more than you already had. Zelda... Oh man, this is not the place to get me started on Zelda. :D (As much as I love OoT by the way, A Link to the Past is the best to me.)
Elves is also one of my favorite tribes so I'm glad to see such respect for them. (And yes, I love Elves due to my Zelda obsession as well. :P)
P.S.: Natural Order must've dropped a lot since you wrote it. It's 64 tix for a playset right now.
Sun Titan just made my day. I love it already. Baneslayer is practically White's only flagship card, so it's nice to see another good looking Mythic White.
Awesome cant wait to see it! I love kithkins just look at my track record with them in BYOS :) Also Kaladine like i said well done with the deck it was nice to see you win even though some would still like to label such a unique deck as burn. it really is a shame they cant see past the 7 burn spells(11 if u count tatics but meh) to see the beauty of that deck.
Aj i was meaning how JustSin called the red deck here listed as Burn and the elemental deck here hardly qualifies as RDW or Burn infact very few of the decks in the past weeks with the exception of mine fall into that catagory. So really the hate being tossed at him and others was for what valid reason? THAT is what i'm talking about and the general blind attitude that I'm resenting.
And also to be perfectly honest the RDW elemental deck that u describe(such as my build) really gets thrashed by first strikers Or a properly balanced competetive deck. Lets be honest the amount of instant speed removal that gets played is disgustingly low in these tournies for a creature based format.
Perhaps a fairer term would be the 'red deck wins' archetype rather than 'burn'. A deck of ball lightnings, spark elementals, hell's thunders and the like backed up by bolts, fireblasts, chain lightnings and so on is more the gameplan people are taking umbrage at. The damage being done by creatures or spells is irrelevant, getting stuff pointed at their dome to kill them on turn 3 seems to be at the root of their ire. Sure, people could beat it with a quasilegacy build that kills on turn 2, or hate it out with pro red, lifegain and shroud, but if you meta one deck, there's enough diversity in the format that you'll get blindsided by another.
I am actually writing an article about how this deck came to pass from the original elementals deck I put together (burn) to what I played two weeks ago (Shaman sub-theme) to what I played to win this go around (Shaman sub-theme with hate).
I can say that this deck is actually designed to deal with a decent amount of red hate and has faced multiple protection from red creatures and still won.
The deck, in my opinion, had some unique choices, and based on the amount of time it has taken opponents to read certain cards when I cast them, Rage Forger and Stigma Lasher just don't see a lot of play.
Due to scheduling conflicts, I won't be showing up to Tribal Apocalpze until July, but when I come back, I will probably giving my Kithkin deck another try.
I understand it was rhetorical but it does point out my exact train of though here it just comes down to that even if 17 damage is done by the creatures is that people are letting themselves precieve that the loss was to a burn deck because that last 3 was done by a bolt to the face.
It's the prceptions that people need to get over and analyze the real reasons they lost and not blame "burn".
Kalandine is the least spiky player I can think of so I am forced to agree here despite personal prejudice against being burned out of a match. Why is it that with 20 creatures the typical burn deck still plays as if it had none? (Don't answer that as it is rhetorical).
This is great,affordable and it looks fun, I hope you will do more articles on this. The deck combinations are endless and the banned list is good at keeping certain strats from dominating.
I completely understand and agree that this is a more casual settting for a tourney And i'll be honest my imp deck wouldnt stand a chance if it wasn't! My deck was seriously lacking in consistancy and 2/2 fliers without removal back up just doesnt cut it in a creature based format.
However my main beef was that every time someone seen Lightning Bolt in a mono red deck they cry BURN and do it in such a way that it belittles the person and their deck.
Right/wrong or otherwise thats just not the impression that The tournament wants is it? (and thus why i made the comment about friends gettin paid to play together because doing such gives that exact impresssion)
Kalandine came up with something diffrent and won with it after several weeks of red winning the field i applaud him for that!
I see your point Ranth about this deck not being the classic burn deck. But I think we should take into consideration that everybodies idea of what a red BURN deck might be varies.
I do want to mention is that I believe this tournament is casual. You're certainly not going to be making large sums of money playing it and I believe it's encouraged to go outside the box to come up with something creative. I do hold your beliefs though that if someone looses with said creative deck, they shouldn't whine about it.
If a red deck is going to consistantly win each week, then people whould build something that can compete against it.
EE is a fine sub for Deed even at the limit of 2cc. You can still generate a sweeper effect hitting a wide range of permanents. EE is also faster than Deed at getting anything, although not everything like Deed would.
I think 24 lands with Rituals and no Smallpox may be high, but i know the 2nd forest is not needed, aside the Witness/Finks as a single Wish target. Crop Rotation is mainly why any lists would use it allowing Rotation to sac their forest and still have a basic left or casting Finks while playing Smallpoxs. Stalker is probably better served coming as a 1 of off Wish. Grim Discovery and Jitte(Turns Nighthawk,BoB and Hexmage into fast clocks) are great for this deck in a meta full of StP,Wasteland,Edict,Bolts.
RED has been winning alot no question there but i'm not dense enough to automatically compute every red deck must = burn deck. And its that type of attitude that keeps alot of the casual crowd away.
I totally understand and get that you guys dont want to see classic tourney decks ported over every week but that doesnt excuse the regulars actions regarding decks they dont like. The thing about the "Red" decks winning out of the 4-5 weeks of the red decks winning my elementals deck was the only red deck even half worthy of playing in another format.
So What we have here is that people would rather not answer obvious flaws in their deck designs and attempt to make others feel bad for playing thoes said decks that exploit said weakness.
No, I definitely do not intend these to be thought of as a pick order. In fact, I think that this is probably the worst draft format in history for pick orders simply because the idea of drafting to a pick order is antithetical to the idea of drafting a deck instead of drafting cards. The more you try to draft an archetype the more flexible you have to be about your picks based on what you have, what you want, and what is available in the draft (not to mention what you think other people are drafting based on the packs you have seen). Even if you try to create a pick order for a specific archetype that order would be essentially useless as you constantly have to adjust cards up and down in the list. At that point why bother having a list at all?
Even if it was useful to have a pick order for an archetype my overall drafting strategy doesn't work well with pick orders for another reason. The idea behind fork cards is that they allow you to move into a number of different archetypes thus keeping your options open. That isn't to say that certain forks don't suggest an archetype -- for example if you open with a Pelakka Wurm you're going to feel more of a pull into a ramp deck than you will to an Aura Gnarlid deck. But if you aren't seeing any ramp cards mid pack and you are getting gnarlids and sweet umbras, you can at least feel OK about that wurm. You'll play it and be happy with it unless you get the absolute nuts gnarlid package.
Also, Editor -- I have a question for you and I'm not sure how to actually contact you directly. How do you feel about linking to and/or citing articles on other Magic strategy websites? I understand why it would be against policy (after all, these are competing sites!), but I think it might enrich the discussion a bit if I could respond directly to some of the other articles being written out there. I'm fine with refraining if the policy is against it, but if it's OK with you I'd like to go for it. Let me know!
You've won against a balanced deck running a full 8-pack of 1-mana white instant exile removal. Bear in mind you also need mass removal for swarm decks, and you only have 16 or so noncreature slots to work with.
People don't like there only being one winning strategy, week in week out, and the *appearance* is what matters to their perceptions. Why innovate if it's always a monored fast damage deck that wins, regardless of what you call it or what it qualifies as? Hell, I've won with all-in red decks myself.
Not sure if I'll find the time to play this, but out of interest, does adding any number of basics include snow basics?
Great article as ever, and one which would be equally at home on a Star Wars tribute site! Really nice idea for a series, and well concluded. I especially like the Blightning deck, I built something similar recently, but included pingers and Basilisk Collar for good times. It seems you can't have too much removal these days. Anyway, good luck with the move.
Ad Nauseam Tendrils or ANT. That is the deck and not TEPS, which is Wish and red rituals with a 4-5 color base. Pretty sure ANT pilot g1 could have Mystical Tutor into Dark Ritual to up the storm count w/o imprinting Mox and increasing mana for Iggy-->Infernal Tutor for Tendrils would have been 10 count. Also do not ever quit on a resolved Ad Naus or Iggy unless you see 4 mana,Tendrils+9 spells played. The sb could use more than 3 Thorns or the like against combo vs players who count to 9, otherwise sb looks good.
The Tresh list looked like it was next Level Tresh, it plays Jace and Crucible. I am going to guess he either boarded out FoW and kept Daze on play or never drew into it g2, considering he went in 17 cards deep w/o playing it. EE is less effective with your range of ccs, Spout looked good there.
You removed the ESG and Choke, both matches they were integral. I would not go down to less than 12 land even with 4 Land Grants, it is not explosive as Belcher or Manaless Ichorid. You could go With Thorns main it would be aysmmetrical. Neetle is good with Heritage Druid when trying to combo out staff of Domination, a Grapeshot/Banefire, or Chord of Calling into Entity/Dragon. Aggro elves would see less benefit with the combo like enablers. Concordant Crossroads, Root maze and Winter Orb are also options as would be a copy of Nissa. Wilt-Leaf Liege, Cradle and Oran-rief could add some more tricks. if you are going to try the dailies, Standstill decks are dedicated to aggro and something like Gilt-Leaf Archdruid could do well out of the sb; it is 5cc making Deed unlikely in a timely fashion, and they mus StP or Counter it only 2 answers.
GL.
You should know that over the weekend FOW was hitting as low as $60. =edit= Oh and I just posted an article which might give me some hoof in mouth to chew on since I was a bit harsh on the commander decks situation. I had no idea how indecisive and screwed up the CC team was with this. Totally different thing than happened last year. Gavin if you read this, sorry...didn't mean to be so harsh. Or rather didn't realize it would be based on what actually happened.
Jeff, you suddenly have a lot more respect from me. Like, way more than you already had. Zelda... Oh man, this is not the place to get me started on Zelda. :D (As much as I love OoT by the way, A Link to the Past is the best to me.)
Elves is also one of my favorite tribes so I'm glad to see such respect for them. (And yes, I love Elves due to my Zelda obsession as well. :P)
P.S.: Natural Order must've dropped a lot since you wrote it. It's 64 tix for a playset right now.
Sun Titan just made my day. I love it already. Baneslayer is practically White's only flagship card, so it's nice to see another good looking Mythic White.
I really like the Blightning Aggro deck it looks like a lot of fun, I might have to try and pull the cards together for that one.
It was just an attempt at pre-emptive mediation.
Also this is the Internet. The Internet is serious business. Seriously. Fact Only.
@ Shard: there's no temper here
@ Ranth: oh I'm sorry, didn't realize I'm not allowed an opinion my bad
Awesome cant wait to see it! I love kithkins just look at my track record with them in BYOS :) Also Kaladine like i said well done with the deck it was nice to see you win even though some would still like to label such a unique deck as burn. it really is a shame they cant see past the 7 burn spells(11 if u count tatics but meh) to see the beauty of that deck.
Aj i was meaning how JustSin called the red deck here listed as Burn and the elemental deck here hardly qualifies as RDW or Burn infact very few of the decks in the past weeks with the exception of mine fall into that catagory. So really the hate being tossed at him and others was for what valid reason? THAT is what i'm talking about and the general blind attitude that I'm resenting.
And also to be perfectly honest the RDW elemental deck that u describe(such as my build) really gets thrashed by first strikers Or a properly balanced competetive deck. Lets be honest the amount of instant speed removal that gets played is disgustingly low in these tournies for a creature based format.
Perhaps a fairer term would be the 'red deck wins' archetype rather than 'burn'. A deck of ball lightnings, spark elementals, hell's thunders and the like backed up by bolts, fireblasts, chain lightnings and so on is more the gameplan people are taking umbrage at. The damage being done by creatures or spells is irrelevant, getting stuff pointed at their dome to kill them on turn 3 seems to be at the root of their ire. Sure, people could beat it with a quasilegacy build that kills on turn 2, or hate it out with pro red, lifegain and shroud, but if you meta one deck, there's enough diversity in the format that you'll get blindsided by another.
I am actually writing an article about how this deck came to pass from the original elementals deck I put together (burn) to what I played two weeks ago (Shaman sub-theme) to what I played to win this go around (Shaman sub-theme with hate).
I can say that this deck is actually designed to deal with a decent amount of red hate and has faced multiple protection from red creatures and still won.
The deck, in my opinion, had some unique choices, and based on the amount of time it has taken opponents to read certain cards when I cast them, Rage Forger and Stigma Lasher just don't see a lot of play.
Due to scheduling conflicts, I won't be showing up to Tribal Apocalpze until July, but when I come back, I will probably giving my Kithkin deck another try.
Nice Article.
True, I actually didn't know that Rare Draft had that functionality, but the next walktrough I'll do will feature pick by pick explanation.
I understand it was rhetorical but it does point out my exact train of though here it just comes down to that even if 17 damage is done by the creatures is that people are letting themselves precieve that the loss was to a burn deck because that last 3 was done by a bolt to the face.
It's the prceptions that people need to get over and analyze the real reasons they lost and not blame "burn".
Kalandine is the least spiky player I can think of so I am forced to agree here despite personal prejudice against being burned out of a match. Why is it that with 20 creatures the typical burn deck still plays as if it had none? (Don't answer that as it is rhetorical).
I did. Unfortunately I didn't get drawn against red this week.
Sorry for the month long Necro, I only read it now after finding a link to it on the source.
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?17890-CYOS-Introductio...
This is great,affordable and it looks fun, I hope you will do more articles on this. The deck combinations are endless and the banned list is good at keeping certain strats from dominating.
I completely understand and agree that this is a more casual settting for a tourney And i'll be honest my imp deck wouldnt stand a chance if it wasn't! My deck was seriously lacking in consistancy and 2/2 fliers without removal back up just doesnt cut it in a creature based format.
However my main beef was that every time someone seen Lightning Bolt in a mono red deck they cry BURN and do it in such a way that it belittles the person and their deck.
Right/wrong or otherwise thats just not the impression that The tournament wants is it? (and thus why i made the comment about friends gettin paid to play together because doing such gives that exact impresssion)
Kalandine came up with something diffrent and won with it after several weeks of red winning the field i applaud him for that!
I see your point Ranth about this deck not being the classic burn deck. But I think we should take into consideration that everybodies idea of what a red BURN deck might be varies.
I do want to mention is that I believe this tournament is casual. You're certainly not going to be making large sums of money playing it and I believe it's encouraged to go outside the box to come up with something creative. I do hold your beliefs though that if someone looses with said creative deck, they shouldn't whine about it.
If a red deck is going to consistantly win each week, then people whould build something that can compete against it.
EE is a fine sub for Deed even at the limit of 2cc. You can still generate a sweeper effect hitting a wide range of permanents. EE is also faster than Deed at getting anything, although not everything like Deed would.
I think 24 lands with Rituals and no Smallpox may be high, but i know the 2nd forest is not needed, aside the Witness/Finks as a single Wish target. Crop Rotation is mainly why any lists would use it allowing Rotation to sac their forest and still have a basic left or casting Finks while playing Smallpoxs. Stalker is probably better served coming as a 1 of off Wish. Grim Discovery and Jitte(Turns Nighthawk,BoB and Hexmage into fast clocks) are great for this deck in a meta full of StP,Wasteland,Edict,Bolts.
RED has been winning alot no question there but i'm not dense enough to automatically compute every red deck must = burn deck. And its that type of attitude that keeps alot of the casual crowd away.
I totally understand and get that you guys dont want to see classic tourney decks ported over every week but that doesnt excuse the regulars actions regarding decks they dont like. The thing about the "Red" decks winning out of the 4-5 weeks of the red decks winning my elementals deck was the only red deck even half worthy of playing in another format.
So What we have here is that people would rather not answer obvious flaws in their deck designs and attempt to make others feel bad for playing thoes said decks that exploit said weakness.
No, I definitely do not intend these to be thought of as a pick order. In fact, I think that this is probably the worst draft format in history for pick orders simply because the idea of drafting to a pick order is antithetical to the idea of drafting a deck instead of drafting cards. The more you try to draft an archetype the more flexible you have to be about your picks based on what you have, what you want, and what is available in the draft (not to mention what you think other people are drafting based on the packs you have seen). Even if you try to create a pick order for a specific archetype that order would be essentially useless as you constantly have to adjust cards up and down in the list. At that point why bother having a list at all?
Even if it was useful to have a pick order for an archetype my overall drafting strategy doesn't work well with pick orders for another reason. The idea behind fork cards is that they allow you to move into a number of different archetypes thus keeping your options open. That isn't to say that certain forks don't suggest an archetype -- for example if you open with a Pelakka Wurm you're going to feel more of a pull into a ramp deck than you will to an Aura Gnarlid deck. But if you aren't seeing any ramp cards mid pack and you are getting gnarlids and sweet umbras, you can at least feel OK about that wurm. You'll play it and be happy with it unless you get the absolute nuts gnarlid package.
Also, Editor -- I have a question for you and I'm not sure how to actually contact you directly. How do you feel about linking to and/or citing articles on other Magic strategy websites? I understand why it would be against policy (after all, these are competing sites!), but I think it might enrich the discussion a bit if I could respond directly to some of the other articles being written out there. I'm fine with refraining if the policy is against it, but if it's OK with you I'd like to go for it. Let me know!