Who cares if Zodiac Dragon is expensive in paper? Which DTBs can enjoy the 1$ MTGO "bargain" on The Abyss? Answer to both of these largely rhetorical questions is of course "noone/none". All the more expensive MTGO cards ARE staples, though.
And how dare you say "how good you have it online"? Yes, you and other people that picked FoW and other ridiculously expensive cards up for low prices have a great time obviously, but isn't the point of comparing prices to show how difficult it is to enter a new format? Paying 1200$ for Reanimator or one of the other blue-based DTBs on MTGO is not cheap - no matter how you look at it. And before anyone comes with the age old "but it's cheaper than Standard in the long run!"-argument, you might want to look at the amount of people playing the respective formats and how many tournaments (and what type of tournaments) is being offered to the players of the respective formats.
On top of this a lot of these cards are non-redeemable on MTGO, so you're basically saying that it's great that you save a bit by going online (even if this was true, which it hardly is, after all I don't use 4x Zodiac Dragon in most of my decks), but in reality you're paying 5-600$ for the right to play with FoW (replace the sum and the card name with any other eternal card on MTGO). Seems a bit absurd to me, but then again I'm the stupid one as tempesteye will no doubt inform you.
I've always been a fan of the Dream Halls decks, but the Conflux tech really pushed them into awesome-o territory. If only you didn't have to fork out half a trillion dollars for FoWs it would be my deck of choice.
I played a blue/white leveling deck in the pre and my two 2 mvp's were Mammoth Umbra and Distortion Spike.
The umbra pumped up a creature so it was useful as both an attacker and blocker, and kept those creatures that I'd spent the mana to level up alive.
Distortion Spike won me every game I used it. A leveler with Distortion Spike meant that I was able able to get through for a lot of damage two turns in a row.
Green is just as dependent on uncommons and rares as red is.
RED
Brood Birthing (C) - 3 spawn
Spawning Breath (C), 1 damage, 1 spawn
Emrakul's Hatcher (C) - 3/3, 3 spawn
Rapacious One (U) - 5/4 trample, get a spawn for each damage to player
Raid Bombardment (C) - 1 damage for attacking with spawn
Lavafume Invoker (C) - 2/2, give creatures +3/+0
Soulsurge Elemental (U), x/1 first strike, x = number of creatures
Hellion Eruption (R) - turn tokens into 4/4's
Magmaw (R) - 4/4, sac perm for 1 damage
Might of the Masses (C) - +1/+1 for each creature
Bramblesnap (U) - 1/1, +1/+1 for tapping a creature
Broodwarden (U) - 4/4, spawn get +2/+1
Gigantomancer (R) - 1/1, creature is 7/7 for 1
It's true that you have to hit 8 with Lavafume, but if you have a handful of tokens in play that's often easier than it looks. It's easy to underestimate this card's ability to kill out of nowhere, but I've won 'unwinnable' games vs. levelers and such by hitting Invoker just in time and swinging for 15-20 and sometimes even more on my last turn. Keep in mind that you can sac guys who are getting blocked to pump the rest of your team, so if you've mounted any sort of early offense it's usually an effective alpha strike.
Red has some nice token cards. I don't think Brood Birthing is one of them. It's a very weak card and I don't really like including cards that are both situational and don't directly help you win the game.
On the other hand, Rapacious One, Magmaw, and Hellion Eruption are all really good cards for a token deck but none of them are commons, so having them is going to be kind of rare. Lavfume Invoker is a nice common for a token deck, but you still have to get to 8 mana with a decent sized army to use him. So, yes red/black has some potential, but you have to get lucky with the red uncommons and rares to make it work.
Thanks man. I think that the card draw provided by black really pushes the deck over the edge. The recursion by black helps as well.
Oros' ability is cool, and has come in handy several times. You can definitely build around the effect, but it would be interesting if it hit all creatures.
B/R tokens can be as good as B/G tokens. For one thing red is better at making the tokens than green is with cards like Rapacious One and Brood Birthing. Both colors have great ways to get value from lots of tokens. Magmaw was a great finisher in one of my pre-release matches as was Soulsurge Elemental. I didn't have any Hellion Eruption in my pool, but would have happily played one if I did. Pennon Blade is nuts with either color combo obviously.
Don't overlook that Keening Stone in your pool. Its a great win condition in a stalled out ground game, which is going to be pretty common in token vs token mirrors.
I think your heart is in the right place, but not only does this sound like a ton of work for the organizers, but it's also a lot of work for the players. Since MTGO doesn't allow you to create your own filter, a player will need to manually check every single deck he owns each month when you update the list. That's really time consuming. I know this sounds bad, but you really can't expect people to check a list more than once. People are not going to be that productive.
I think you should go with Lythand's suggestion. Build your own precon would be a ton of fun. We would just need to pick 40 card or 60 card precon. OMG I am getting super excited just thinking about it. I'm gonna have to add Lythand to my buddy list and try this. Although for a rarity hierachy system, I would prefer to use the ones found in the VS decks, simply because the have usually 3 to 4 rares. Granted this would be yet another format where there is no way to enforce deckbuilding rules, but I think it would still be a lot of fun.
And would we allow sideboards? Precons don't have sideboards, so I don't think there should be.
I really like this idea of a format, and have hoped for something similar in the past - I was always surprised that there wasn't a match for pauper that was uncommons or lower only, etc. (I know there's the one with 6 uncommons or whatever, but that always seemed...illogical and silly to me).
$1, 2, 3 any of those are good mark points, as things in that value range can usually be acquired for less in trade anyway.
I can't say I would ever be able to participate in anything that happened with the sun out, but things at night... maybe :).
Remora is used in Viintage where creatures are light and spells are high. It can serve to come out of the sb in this Aggro meta for decks like ANT/ANIMATOR, which all look to discard/sculpt and Remora shuts most of that down(Storming thru it might walk you into a Mindbreak).
Niv-mizzet was used in a Vintage deck to not only ping the last few life points, but also get rid of Welders and BoBs if needed(brainstorm/cruel kills 3). There are also a few other kill conditionds that may or may not be better like; False Cure Beacon that is a lot less slots and would allow more room for Permission/Disruption.
The deck looked fun, even if i only saw a few replays.
Fow is a tricky card but the sort of tricky I like. Given 4 Id definitely run them in the right deck. On the other hand they do NOT fit in every deck. Far from it.
Well I took a version of the last list to a DE tonight and had a crappy showing. Started off playing great, won round 1 vs a tough DnT player (Gains). Round 2 I play Sickx7, always a tough matchup, he was playing ANT. Round 3 I'm paired vs a goblin player. In game one I open with two combo pieces, dream halls and show and tell. Both games I just can't seem to string the combo together. When I finally do find the last piece I have now back up and run into pyroblast (had no choice was at 2 life, had to go for it)
BoB, I'm not sold on mystics, cum upkeep sucks and this deck is already mana light. I think meditate is the better option and a lot more expensive lol.
I agree not everyone's play style is so much along the lines of such high end decks, given unlimited budget I would still choose not to run a deck with FoW
Personally, I do tend to tweak my deck often after 2 mans but not to beat the previous deck. Playing with different cards can be quite a good way to learn. Doing so will expose the various weaknesses of the deck (if the feedback is negative) but on the flip side, you might have a better deck to play with. 100c Singleton decks evolve all the time and that allows everyone to play their own decks since it is almost impossible to dominate a format with one particular deck.
I find that RW is a very color demanding archetype which is difficult to support given how the cards in the deck demand for specific mana in the early game. They should continue to make more enemy lands...
Next match I had an even better hand: Island, 2 Petal, Show, Halls, Conflux, Pierce. Yeah, turn 1 kill. Moral of story based on these two hands, Radd, play all 4 Lotus.
Yea like any good combo deck is does provide for some hands that make you smile from ear to ear. Keep me updated on your success, maybe we can compare lists and strengthen it.
I hope you shoot crap outta your butt. I am pretty sure there is a book out there called Everyone Poops.
No seriously, I wasn't targeting my comment directly at you but more less in general. Saying the cost of online cards is keeping people from playing certain decks isn't any different than saying price of paper cards keep people from playing certain decks. It happens in both areas.
Personally, I like the fact that Death and Taxes is viable, gives us variety and allows for a competitive cheaper entry for some people.
And I disagree that 100% of people would rather play natural order/LED and entomb. It is probably more like 97.3%
Who cares if Zodiac Dragon is expensive in paper? Which DTBs can enjoy the 1$ MTGO "bargain" on The Abyss? Answer to both of these largely rhetorical questions is of course "noone/none". All the more expensive MTGO cards ARE staples, though.
And how dare you say "how good you have it online"? Yes, you and other people that picked FoW and other ridiculously expensive cards up for low prices have a great time obviously, but isn't the point of comparing prices to show how difficult it is to enter a new format? Paying 1200$ for Reanimator or one of the other blue-based DTBs on MTGO is not cheap - no matter how you look at it. And before anyone comes with the age old "but it's cheaper than Standard in the long run!"-argument, you might want to look at the amount of people playing the respective formats and how many tournaments (and what type of tournaments) is being offered to the players of the respective formats.
On top of this a lot of these cards are non-redeemable on MTGO, so you're basically saying that it's great that you save a bit by going online (even if this was true, which it hardly is, after all I don't use 4x Zodiac Dragon in most of my decks), but in reality you're paying 5-600$ for the right to play with FoW (replace the sum and the card name with any other eternal card on MTGO). Seems a bit absurd to me, but then again I'm the stupid one as tempesteye will no doubt inform you.
I've always been a fan of the Dream Halls decks, but the Conflux tech really pushed them into awesome-o territory. If only you didn't have to fork out half a trillion dollars for FoWs it would be my deck of choice.
I played a blue/white leveling deck in the pre and my two 2 mvp's were Mammoth Umbra and Distortion Spike.
The umbra pumped up a creature so it was useful as both an attacker and blocker, and kept those creatures that I'd spent the mana to level up alive.
Distortion Spike won me every game I used it. A leveler with Distortion Spike meant that I was able able to get through for a lot of damage two turns in a row.
They do look like good choices and maybe Tempest as well as Wasteland the top card is Uncommon with Ancient Tomb another Uncommon at $4.
RoE prices are all over the place at the moment, I'll look at doing a new list next week as they should be stable by then.
Green is just as dependent on uncommons and rares as red is.
RED
Brood Birthing (C) - 3 spawn
Spawning Breath (C), 1 damage, 1 spawn
Emrakul's Hatcher (C) - 3/3, 3 spawn
Rapacious One (U) - 5/4 trample, get a spawn for each damage to player
Raid Bombardment (C) - 1 damage for attacking with spawn
Lavafume Invoker (C) - 2/2, give creatures +3/+0
Soulsurge Elemental (U), x/1 first strike, x = number of creatures
Hellion Eruption (R) - turn tokens into 4/4's
Magmaw (R) - 4/4, sac perm for 1 damage
GREEN
Growth Spasm (C) - rampant growth plus 1 spawn
Kozilek's Predator (C) - 3/3, 2 spawn
Nest Invader (C) - 2/2, 1 spawn
Awakening Zone (R) - 1 spawn each upkeep
Gelatinous Genesis (R) - X X/X ooze tokens
Kazandu Tuskcaller (R) - 1/1, 3/3 elephant tokens
Might of the Masses (C) - +1/+1 for each creature
Bramblesnap (U) - 1/1, +1/+1 for tapping a creature
Broodwarden (U) - 4/4, spawn get +2/+1
Gigantomancer (R) - 1/1, creature is 7/7 for 1
It's true that you have to hit 8 with Lavafume, but if you have a handful of tokens in play that's often easier than it looks. It's easy to underestimate this card's ability to kill out of nowhere, but I've won 'unwinnable' games vs. levelers and such by hitting Invoker just in time and swinging for 15-20 and sometimes even more on my last turn. Keep in mind that you can sac guys who are getting blocked to pump the rest of your team, so if you've mounted any sort of early offense it's usually an effective alpha strike.
Red has some nice token cards. I don't think Brood Birthing is one of them. It's a very weak card and I don't really like including cards that are both situational and don't directly help you win the game.
On the other hand, Rapacious One, Magmaw, and Hellion Eruption are all really good cards for a token deck but none of them are commons, so having them is going to be kind of rare. Lavfume Invoker is a nice common for a token deck, but you still have to get to 8 mana with a decent sized army to use him. So, yes red/black has some potential, but you have to get lucky with the red uncommons and rares to make it work.
Thanks man. I think that the card draw provided by black really pushes the deck over the edge. The recursion by black helps as well.
Oros' ability is cool, and has come in handy several times. You can definitely build around the effect, but it would be interesting if it hit all creatures.
B/R tokens can be as good as B/G tokens. For one thing red is better at making the tokens than green is with cards like Rapacious One and Brood Birthing. Both colors have great ways to get value from lots of tokens. Magmaw was a great finisher in one of my pre-release matches as was Soulsurge Elemental. I didn't have any Hellion Eruption in my pool, but would have happily played one if I did. Pennon Blade is nuts with either color combo obviously.
Don't overlook that Keening Stone in your pool. Its a great win condition in a stalled out ground game, which is going to be pretty common in token vs token mirrors.
Thanks for this article. I like the format of it and hope to see you do this sort of thing for upcoming sets as well.
I think your heart is in the right place, but not only does this sound like a ton of work for the organizers, but it's also a lot of work for the players. Since MTGO doesn't allow you to create your own filter, a player will need to manually check every single deck he owns each month when you update the list. That's really time consuming. I know this sounds bad, but you really can't expect people to check a list more than once. People are not going to be that productive.
I think you should go with Lythand's suggestion. Build your own precon would be a ton of fun. We would just need to pick 40 card or 60 card precon. OMG I am getting super excited just thinking about it. I'm gonna have to add Lythand to my buddy list and try this. Although for a rarity hierachy system, I would prefer to use the ones found in the VS decks, simply because the have usually 3 to 4 rares. Granted this would be yet another format where there is no way to enforce deckbuilding rules, but I think it would still be a lot of fun.
And would we allow sideboards? Precons don't have sideboards, so I don't think there should be.
if im not mistaken i think peasant was around long before pauper...it was like the father of pauper.
I never understood the arbitrary uncommon limit - it seems so close to pauper, anyone familiar with the original reasoning?
I really like this idea of a format, and have hoped for something similar in the past - I was always surprised that there wasn't a match for pauper that was uncommons or lower only, etc. (I know there's the one with 6 uncommons or whatever, but that always seemed...illogical and silly to me).
$1, 2, 3 any of those are good mark points, as things in that value range can usually be acquired for less in trade anyway.
I can't say I would ever be able to participate in anything that happened with the sun out, but things at night... maybe :).
Remora is used in Viintage where creatures are light and spells are high. It can serve to come out of the sb in this Aggro meta for decks like ANT/ANIMATOR, which all look to discard/sculpt and Remora shuts most of that down(Storming thru it might walk you into a Mindbreak).
Niv-mizzet was used in a Vintage deck to not only ping the last few life points, but also get rid of Welders and BoBs if needed(brainstorm/cruel kills 3). There are also a few other kill conditionds that may or may not be better like; False Cure Beacon that is a lot less slots and would allow more room for Permission/Disruption.
The deck looked fun, even if i only saw a few replays.
Fow is a tricky card but the sort of tricky I like. Given 4 Id definitely run them in the right deck. On the other hand they do NOT fit in every deck. Far from it.
lol tell me about it
hahaha it would be you! Of all the players playing Dredge, they run into you with turn 1 Pros.
Well I took a version of the last list to a DE tonight and had a crappy showing. Started off playing great, won round 1 vs a tough DnT player (Gains). Round 2 I play Sickx7, always a tough matchup, he was playing ANT. Round 3 I'm paired vs a goblin player. In game one I open with two combo pieces, dream halls and show and tell. Both games I just can't seem to string the combo together. When I finally do find the last piece I have now back up and run into pyroblast (had no choice was at 2 life, had to go for it)
BoB, I'm not sold on mystics, cum upkeep sucks and this deck is already mana light. I think meditate is the better option and a lot more expensive lol.
I agree not everyone's play style is so much along the lines of such high end decks, given unlimited budget I would still choose not to run a deck with FoW
Great article. =)
Personally, I do tend to tweak my deck often after 2 mans but not to beat the previous deck. Playing with different cards can be quite a good way to learn. Doing so will expose the various weaknesses of the deck (if the feedback is negative) but on the flip side, you might have a better deck to play with. 100c Singleton decks evolve all the time and that allows everyone to play their own decks since it is almost impossible to dominate a format with one particular deck.
I find that RW is a very color demanding archetype which is difficult to support given how the cards in the deck demand for specific mana in the early game. They should continue to make more enemy lands...
horrible match:( i got owned horribly
Next match I had an even better hand: Island, 2 Petal, Show, Halls, Conflux, Pierce. Yeah, turn 1 kill. Moral of story based on these two hands, Radd, play all 4 Lotus.
Yea like any good combo deck is does provide for some hands that make you smile from ear to ear. Keep me updated on your success, maybe we can compare lists and strengthen it.
I hope you shoot crap outta your butt. I am pretty sure there is a book out there called Everyone Poops.
No seriously, I wasn't targeting my comment directly at you but more less in general. Saying the cost of online cards is keeping people from playing certain decks isn't any different than saying price of paper cards keep people from playing certain decks. It happens in both areas.
Personally, I like the fact that Death and Taxes is viable, gives us variety and allows for a competitive cheaper entry for some people.
And I disagree that 100% of people would rather play natural order/LED and entomb. It is probably more like 97.3%