I'm in the management side of that business so you are sort of correct. But, part of my job is to go to schools and educate children and teachers about insects and their importance. I also personally have a few tarantulas and one scorpion to keep things interesting in the house!
"polymorphing into an emakrul takes no skill at all"
Now I could say yes thats very true but if you face a counter deck then you may be dead before you get to cast Polymorph.
It depends which environment you play in. Casual = win as you face random decks with no side boards. Top level Std and your looking at a different story, there's a lot of control decks around who laugh in the face of Polymorph decks.
This isnt the first case of "playing four of the same card just so you can bring out some big dude" if you look at Legacy you also have a similar situation with Natural Order and Progenitus.
Yeah its hard not to make a mono blue deck douchey but I tried. It is the reason for the inclusion of the sub optimal cards you mentioned including Eternal Dominion. You can make the deck stronger by including the combos I mentioned at the top, but I didn't want to. This wasn't the best game to show how the deck works, but at least the ending was semi- interesting.
As for the pictures, I understand, and I was working on it, but I had some hardware problems, which I am working on getting fixed. Not sure exactly what the problem is yet, but my computer gets all psycho on me about pictures. I did have about 10 pictures to go along with the article, but I just couldn't get things to work, and I thought this article would take longer to go through, so I just submitted it anyways.
Next time, I take a break from the General strategy stuff to discuss RoE Limited, and then I will be talking about Resource Management.
polymorphing into an emakrul takes no skill at all. Sorry for the harshness, but I want to see those decks gone as soon as possible. I thought Magic was about skill and cunning, not playing four of the same card just so you can bring out some big dude. And there hasn't been much of the eldrazi in commander lately because the release of rote has bugged the format and ruined it. I won't be playing commander until they get that game-killer bug fixed.
I kind of assume the same thing. I dont blame anyone I just think they somehow get lost in the system. Either too far down the list to be visible or some sort of miscommunication between me submitting it and someone getting it to where it is lost in cyber space forever. That and I know Josh is busy with life like the rest of us so I cant say too much.
Momir is tons of fun. Looks like it still isn't really worth it to push up to the higher CMCs though, even with all those fat Eldrazi out there. Showing the odds of a relevant creature proves what I suspected before - it's just not really worth going above 8.
Also, I once took a mulligan in Momir. It was a misclick, and yes, I did lose the game. It sucked. Thanks for the article.
@ shard: I think there reaches a point where submitted articles drop down so far in the list that the editors don't see it and they sit on the shelf as submitted for awhile.. I have the next Anything But article which has been sitting for weeks
Back to the article though, I have to say that I thought the contest was a good idea, but after what a disaster I thought the "lord" contest was I'm far from eager to return to it
I am pretty sure that the last is Azami and not Jhoria.
Azami is (1) faster than Jhoria (2) more consistent, simply because there are more decent wizards than good finishers (a wizard that e.g. lets you reorder the top 4 cards (aka that one drop) is fine with Azami. The number of cards you can afford to wait 4 turns for is alot lower. Yes you can go t5 play jhoria, suspend so big bad meanie, t6 jukelhaups (<- wrong spelling and it is not in the deck?!?) which will win you the game. On the other hand you can go t5 Azami (<- you only very rarely have to wait for t5), t6 Mind over Matter, which also wins - or the other way around to protect her).
Azami is monoblue ramp - the deck where Erayo is used currently. If you blow up Azami just as she enters she STILL draws a few cards (t3-t4 usually so 2-3 cards). If they do not blow her up you win, your advantage is simply to extrem. This is as oppeosit to Erayo. If you blow up Erayo with the trigger on the stack you have "lost" your storm count and have to rebuild next turn (and good luck doing that if they blow it up 2 times). If he flips they need 2 cards to remove it (but this is STILL worse than the advantage given by Azami if they could blow her up at once - not tempo advantage though). Futheremore if one is expecting a low curve it weakens Erayo.
Arcum is proberly around as fast as Azami (he have to untap/get haste, Azami does not). Arcums main weakness is that he have to activate a few times (I think) and is quite easy to kill, since the amount of haste is quite low for blue/artifacts. He is also weak vs. both creature and artifact destruction and even remove stuff from library since one usually gets the same things in each game.
Ideas that does not have anything to do with Azami:
Exchange Trade Secrets and Fact or Fiction. Erayo can use more cards than Jhoria.
Jukelhaups is missing from Jhoria.
Iona + loyal retainer for Child. That only requires 5 mana (over the 8 for 'ark and kiki-jiki + Pestermite) using Survial.
High tide for Erayo (or Azami).
Scroll rack for Sharuum - good on its own (effect is alot better than top, but cant protect itself). Combos with Land tax.
Weathered Wayfarer for any deck with white.
Oracle of Mul Daya is very nice (the effect of not drawing lands is very very good and the abillity to improve your card quality over that is also decent (not that good right now -> find some shuffle effect)).
Joraga Treespeaker should not be overlooked (a one drop that double accelerates you turn 3 and onward is quite good).
I would consider Kiki-jiki as the leader for a posible monored deck (over Adamaro). You got a few combos which nobody else can use (Breath of Fury, that shaman artifact + sac outlet, Lightning crafter + sac outlet (easy with recuiter)).
Deck ideas
Azami the wizard, mana ramp
Kiki-jiki the goblin
Zur cheap enchantments + mass ld + black fetch for mass ld.
Jhoria mass ld + fat
Arcum the artificer
Scion the urdragon, reanimator <- I think a enabler is better than a destroyer (child) but I might be wrong. Futheremore you can also use Kher Ridge to destroy creatures. The abillity to eat hands should not be underestimated.
Hippo untap effects (seedborn muse and stuff. using all your own mana to generate tokens is nice. using all your mana 4 times is better. Fecuncity would rule in this deck)
The only problem is that all the blue decks would want the time walk effects and all the black decks want the tutors. Otherwise I belive that it should be easy to see what should go where.
Funnily enough Sharuum and Arcum does not really overlap, even if they are both artifact based decks (they want distinct artifacts - except for mass destruction (atleast disc should go to Arcum though)).
Lightning gravers can go alot of ways though (Zur, Scion, Arcum).
Belives about strengths:
Azami, very fast, very consistient, no real weaknesses, except for quite low average toughness (so some enchantments can give troubles, but can be solved with bounce).
Kiki-jiki - abit worse in all regards than Azami, I think, but the no overlap part is proberly huge
Zur is as fast as Azami. Have to untap <- huge problem and alot of decks wants the colorless haste :/ I think Zur should get Gravers though (since he can play the white equipment tutors for it). removel on zur in response to armageddon can be a problem.
Jhoria quite slow really (except for any hardcasted mass ld of which there are only 2 decently costed afaik in red). The counter control deck.
Arcum around as fast as Zur/Azami for goldfishing, can be stopped with 2-3 removel spells though.
Scion - not super fast, but proberly extremly consistent (you play scion and you hit someone with a Nicol Bolas).
Hippo - I am quite unsure about this one. It seems broken. Should have the green creature tutors for muse.
The decks are all pretty much combo decks though :/
I know I don't really read that stuff, instead relying on forums and articles on other sites to inform me lol and I'm still waiting to see Sol Ring on that list
In your last article you had echoing truth in your sideboard for storm hate. wouldn't it still be a better card than holy light as it does the same thing for one less mana? Also could the 4 missing cards be used for some counter spells? Or does the deck find itself always tapped out?
Master Transmuter / Skyship Weatherlight makes a reusable Tutor for this deck. Pick only one card out, draw it, then bounce it to your hand and back using MT.
This is the same kind of deck that has blown up my late game many time. Nothing like killing two other players just to have the monoblue guy ruin you the turn after. =P very good, and I do recommend those card switches, as Jace makess you a target or at least he doesn't last long. Willbender just isn't powerful enough to warrant a slot in the deck and there is much better card draw than the Stroke.
Wouldn't it make more sense for them all to be grixis panorama, so that they can all get both of your colours?
I was thinking something like;
*Snakey-snake, snakiest of snakes (G)(G)(G)
Legendary Creature - Snake Shaman
Whenever snakey-snake is put into a graveyard from play, search your library for a basic land card and put it into play tapped for each snakey-snake in your graveyard, then shuffle your library.
Whenever you sacrifice a creature, search your library for a basic land card and put it into play tapped, then shuffle your library.
2/2*
I wanted him to make all of your creatures into STE's, but putting:
*sacrifice a creature; search your library for a basic land card and put it into play tapped, then shuffle your library.*
would've made him pretty strong. This way you need to have some other way of sacrificing the creatures.
I also wanted him to have the kokusho-effect, of it being fun to play a second one out and legend rule themselves. This will give you nuts acceleration, when it occasionally happens, so to balance it a bit, I made him triple-green to cast. This way, you can use him to ramp a lot in mono-g, but can't realistically use it to build crazy multicolour manabases, as you want to run plenty of basics for his ability, and will need triple green promptly.
I look forward to seeing your submissions (You meaning the general you as well as you particularly.)
Oh right forgot the specifics, thanks for dropping those in.
Haha point taken. :D well played sir!
Less busy now though, now that he has his degree + honors. Though I suspect that won't last long.
I'm in the management side of that business so you are sort of correct. But, part of my job is to go to schools and educate children and teachers about insects and their importance. I also personally have a few tarantulas and one scorpion to keep things interesting in the house!
Thanks man. Although the deck will have Beacon of Creation it won't be token themed. It is going to use Molimo.
Nice article as usual. Next green deck...tokens im guessings.
I thought you made a living killing them? Didn't know about the discard bug. That's annoying.
"polymorphing into an emakrul takes no skill at all"
Now I could say yes thats very true but if you face a counter deck then you may be dead before you get to cast Polymorph.
It depends which environment you play in. Casual = win as you face random decks with no side boards. Top level Std and your looking at a different story, there's a lot of control decks around who laugh in the face of Polymorph decks.
This isnt the first case of "playing four of the same card just so you can bring out some big dude" if you look at Legacy you also have a similar situation with Natural Order and Progenitus.
Yeah its hard not to make a mono blue deck douchey but I tried. It is the reason for the inclusion of the sub optimal cards you mentioned including Eternal Dominion. You can make the deck stronger by including the combos I mentioned at the top, but I didn't want to. This wasn't the best game to show how the deck works, but at least the ending was semi- interesting.
Thanks for the comments.
As for the win %, that is the Match win %.
As for the pictures, I understand, and I was working on it, but I had some hardware problems, which I am working on getting fixed. Not sure exactly what the problem is yet, but my computer gets all psycho on me about pictures. I did have about 10 pictures to go along with the article, but I just couldn't get things to work, and I thought this article would take longer to go through, so I just submitted it anyways.
Next time, I take a break from the General strategy stuff to discuss RoE Limited, and then I will be talking about Resource Management.
polymorphing into an emakrul takes no skill at all. Sorry for the harshness, but I want to see those decks gone as soon as possible. I thought Magic was about skill and cunning, not playing four of the same card just so you can bring out some big dude. And there hasn't been much of the eldrazi in commander lately because the release of rote has bugged the format and ruined it. I won't be playing commander until they get that game-killer bug fixed.
I like Bugs! 80)
I kind of assume the same thing. I dont blame anyone I just think they somehow get lost in the system. Either too far down the list to be visible or some sort of miscommunication between me submitting it and someone getting it to where it is lost in cyber space forever. That and I know Josh is busy with life like the rest of us so I cant say too much.
Momir is tons of fun. Looks like it still isn't really worth it to push up to the higher CMCs though, even with all those fat Eldrazi out there. Showing the odds of a relevant creature proves what I suspected before - it's just not really worth going above 8.
Also, I once took a mulligan in Momir. It was a misclick, and yes, I did lose the game. It sucked. Thanks for the article.
@ shard: I think there reaches a point where submitted articles drop down so far in the list that the editors don't see it and they sit on the shelf as submitted for awhile.. I have the next Anything But article which has been sitting for weeks
Back to the article though, I have to say that I thought the contest was a good idea, but after what a disaster I thought the "lord" contest was I'm far from eager to return to it
there was also a problem with a Commander discarded from hand, you couldn't remove it then either
I like the change on the charts with the color and all, made it 100x clearer
I am pretty sure that the last is Azami and not Jhoria.
Azami is (1) faster than Jhoria (2) more consistent, simply because there are more decent wizards than good finishers (a wizard that e.g. lets you reorder the top 4 cards (aka that one drop) is fine with Azami. The number of cards you can afford to wait 4 turns for is alot lower. Yes you can go t5 play jhoria, suspend so big bad meanie, t6 jukelhaups (<- wrong spelling and it is not in the deck?!?) which will win you the game. On the other hand you can go t5 Azami (<- you only very rarely have to wait for t5), t6 Mind over Matter, which also wins - or the other way around to protect her).
Azami is monoblue ramp - the deck where Erayo is used currently. If you blow up Azami just as she enters she STILL draws a few cards (t3-t4 usually so 2-3 cards). If they do not blow her up you win, your advantage is simply to extrem. This is as oppeosit to Erayo. If you blow up Erayo with the trigger on the stack you have "lost" your storm count and have to rebuild next turn (and good luck doing that if they blow it up 2 times). If he flips they need 2 cards to remove it (but this is STILL worse than the advantage given by Azami if they could blow her up at once - not tempo advantage though). Futheremore if one is expecting a low curve it weakens Erayo.
Arcum is proberly around as fast as Azami (he have to untap/get haste, Azami does not). Arcums main weakness is that he have to activate a few times (I think) and is quite easy to kill, since the amount of haste is quite low for blue/artifacts. He is also weak vs. both creature and artifact destruction and even remove stuff from library since one usually gets the same things in each game.
Ideas that does not have anything to do with Azami:
Exchange Trade Secrets and Fact or Fiction. Erayo can use more cards than Jhoria.
Jukelhaups is missing from Jhoria.
Iona + loyal retainer for Child. That only requires 5 mana (over the 8 for 'ark and kiki-jiki + Pestermite) using Survial.
High tide for Erayo (or Azami).
Scroll rack for Sharuum - good on its own (effect is alot better than top, but cant protect itself). Combos with Land tax.
Weathered Wayfarer for any deck with white.
Oracle of Mul Daya is very nice (the effect of not drawing lands is very very good and the abillity to improve your card quality over that is also decent (not that good right now -> find some shuffle effect)).
Joraga Treespeaker should not be overlooked (a one drop that double accelerates you turn 3 and onward is quite good).
I would consider Kiki-jiki as the leader for a posible monored deck (over Adamaro). You got a few combos which nobody else can use (Breath of Fury, that shaman artifact + sac outlet, Lightning crafter + sac outlet (easy with recuiter)).
Deck ideas
Azami the wizard, mana ramp
Kiki-jiki the goblin
Zur cheap enchantments + mass ld + black fetch for mass ld.
Jhoria mass ld + fat
Arcum the artificer
Scion the urdragon, reanimator <- I think a enabler is better than a destroyer (child) but I might be wrong. Futheremore you can also use Kher Ridge to destroy creatures. The abillity to eat hands should not be underestimated.
Hippo untap effects (seedborn muse and stuff. using all your own mana to generate tokens is nice. using all your mana 4 times is better. Fecuncity would rule in this deck)
The only problem is that all the blue decks would want the time walk effects and all the black decks want the tutors. Otherwise I belive that it should be easy to see what should go where.
Funnily enough Sharuum and Arcum does not really overlap, even if they are both artifact based decks (they want distinct artifacts - except for mass destruction (atleast disc should go to Arcum though)).
Lightning gravers can go alot of ways though (Zur, Scion, Arcum).
Belives about strengths:
Azami, very fast, very consistient, no real weaknesses, except for quite low average toughness (so some enchantments can give troubles, but can be solved with bounce).
Kiki-jiki - abit worse in all regards than Azami, I think, but the no overlap part is proberly huge
Zur is as fast as Azami. Have to untap <- huge problem and alot of decks wants the colorless haste :/ I think Zur should get Gravers though (since he can play the white equipment tutors for it). removel on zur in response to armageddon can be a problem.
Jhoria quite slow really (except for any hardcasted mass ld of which there are only 2 decently costed afaik in red). The counter control deck.
Arcum around as fast as Zur/Azami for goldfishing, can be stopped with 2-3 removel spells though.
Scion - not super fast, but proberly extremly consistent (you play scion and you hit someone with a Nicol Bolas).
Hippo - I am quite unsure about this one. It seems broken. Should have the green creature tutors for muse.
The decks are all pretty much combo decks though :/
I know I don't really read that stuff, instead relying on forums and articles on other sites to inform me lol and I'm still waiting to see Sol Ring on that list
In your last article you had echoing truth in your sideboard for storm hate. wouldn't it still be a better card than holy light as it does the same thing for one less mana? Also could the 4 missing cards be used for some counter spells? Or does the deck find itself always tapped out?
Master Transmuter / Skyship Weatherlight makes a reusable Tutor for this deck. Pick only one card out, draw it, then bounce it to your hand and back using MT.
This is the same kind of deck that has blown up my late game many time. Nothing like killing two other players just to have the monoblue guy ruin you the turn after. =P very good, and I do recommend those card switches, as Jace makess you a target or at least he doesn't last long. Willbender just isn't powerful enough to warrant a slot in the deck and there is much better card draw than the Stroke.
For reference, an earlier design;
*Snakey-snake, snakiest of snakes
Legendary creature - Snake Shaman
Sacrifice Snakey-snake, search your library for a basic land card and put it into play tapped. Shuffle your library.
Combat damage still uses the stack(!).
"Screw you, dark confidant!"
1/1*
Wouldn't it make more sense for them all to be grixis panorama, so that they can all get both of your colours?
I was thinking something like;
*Snakey-snake, snakiest of snakes (G)(G)(G)
Legendary Creature - Snake Shaman
Whenever snakey-snake is put into a graveyard from play, search your library for a basic land card and put it into play tapped for each snakey-snake in your graveyard, then shuffle your library.
Whenever you sacrifice a creature, search your library for a basic land card and put it into play tapped, then shuffle your library.
2/2*
I wanted him to make all of your creatures into STE's, but putting:
*sacrifice a creature; search your library for a basic land card and put it into play tapped, then shuffle your library.*
would've made him pretty strong. This way you need to have some other way of sacrificing the creatures.
I also wanted him to have the kokusho-effect, of it being fun to play a second one out and legend rule themselves. This will give you nuts acceleration, when it occasionally happens, so to balance it a bit, I made him triple-green to cast. This way, you can use him to ramp a lot in mono-g, but can't realistically use it to build crazy multicolour manabases, as you want to run plenty of basics for his ability, and will need triple green promptly.