My thinking is that whomever ran the event would keep an updated banned list every month and post it on the community forums (on the mothership). So if a card went crazy or turned out to be format wrecking we could keep it in check.
Well the issue the others brought up is that *any* planeswalker's ability can only be activated once per turn per critter - so the most you could legitimately get under the new rules (still not in effect on MTGO) would be 1 activation for Kraj and 1 for Gideon, which could be different abilities.
This actually brings up a good point which I didn't raise for those who don't want to break the rules - bringing out Kraj still fairly allows you to effectively get 2 planeswalker activations a turn (as long as one is positive), so that's not an awful effect (although sure does take a lot of deck space!).
I *think* that if Kraj were to activate Gideon's first ability, it would basically read that creatures attack Kraj (when he copies an ability he does so replacing "cardname" with Kraj) - I have no idea how this would resolve in MTGO but I'm guessing it would be a forced attack effect with an illegal target, and could essentially freeze up the game at the attack phase where you couldn't attack properly. It may also just force them to attack you in general.
I don't imagine Gideon will be very affordable and I'm a thrifty fellow when it comes to new standard cards, but if I draft one I will plug it into the deck and write about the results.
super_lourton: I know that legacy is not a "cheap" format, but that's a little bit hard to find a good reason to buy cards we have in real life 5 times the price we paid for them in real life. Some cards are more rare here, so more expensive.
I love that quote. It just goes to show that no one who complains Bout prices really pays attention to them. Sure force of will may be more expensive but you are getting a HUGE discount on dual lands and many many other cards. Also just play one of many decks without FoW.
I think the extended budget is a great idea. And I dont think that the cards that would be used, since they are already under 2.00 are going to sky rocket anytime soon. Maybe I am wrong.
The Extended Budget format you discuss seems interesting, but I can see some potential problems with it. Given how cards fluctuate in price, what is legal in the format could change on a daily basis. This would make it difficult to test, and would make the metagame fairly random. If a given deck in the format became popular, this could potentially drive up the prices of the cards, which would then make the deck no longer legal in the format...
It's an interesting idea, but the lack of an ability to predict what is in the format could deter people from getting involved in it.
Indeed, in IE it seems to be pushing the deck lists down about 100px, which makes them overlap with the text. Sadly no fix for it but to use a different browser since I can't go in and fix the css now. Good catch. Works in Chrome and FF.
As for the make up of the Surraki(?) the art all looks similar so far and points to a muscular squat body with a huge maw filled with sharp teeth. The poses look bestial and unintelligent but that might just because they are hungry. They do have some similarity to merfolk but they aren't water dwelling, more like swamp dwelling so maybe they are lizardfolk-kin.
I wanted to keep the deck two colors or I might have branched out into white or red. I was also seeing what synergy is available in the new set. Sadly I didn't find a whole lot but I still think this deck might be fun to pilot in casual.
I guess you could get infinite gideon activations just using gideon and Kraj without all of the other bits. Someone with mad-roolz-skillz could perhaps tell me what happens if kraj activates gideon's first ability? Will it make opposing creatures attack the gideon? I know they can't attack kraj, so it probably just does nothing. Anyway, dunno why I posted this, as getting infinite gideon activations is basically just a very ruubish plague wind that only hits tapped creatures...
I've been trying surrakar spellblade with double cleave and/or savage beating. It seemed like a cute idea, but he's just too killable! I like hindering light with him, but he just seems like too much work every time I try to build with him. You end up needing to add ways to keep him alive, ways to get him past blockers and plenty of instants/sorceries to the deck to make him work. Toshiro Umezawa was a guy I think has potential with him.
Still nice to see an attempt to make surrakar tribal! What are surrakar (surrakars? surraki?) meant to be anyway? They just look like obese merfolk to me.
One last thing; Is anyone else getting all sorts of weird formating on this article? The decklists seem to appear on top of the text on my screen, but that might just be my browser making a boo-boo.
There are few other things I thought about after I submitted the article that I wanted to share.
1. Sphinx is an artifact, therefore it gets around the Ability of Canonist.
2. Sometimes depending on the situation, it is ok to play dream halls and just play cruel ultimatum. This still wrecks your opps hand, gets you life and most importantly gives you 3 more cards which might reveal that needed conflux.
3. I've added 2x Karakas (So far Wasteland hasn't been a problem) to the Main deck. This gives an out to Iona from Reanimator. I also removed the 2x snare and put in 1 more dispel and 1 rushing river. Also added one rushing river to sb. With Death and taxes running around the rivers can be vital to bounce oblivion rings.
Hope this helps anyone interested in giving it a whirl.
Ohhh.. That explains why I could never figure it out... I have a Mac laptop that I partitioned to have a Windows side so I could play Magic. "Right" click for me = hold two fingers on the trackpad + click the button, so there's no way to do left click and right click at the same time. Thanks though.
Are the people you interviewed just a random bunch who happened to be in the room, or do they have some sort of claim to fame? Why do their opinions matter? This *really* needed to be in the article.
1. Actually the list is card for card exactly the same as the List that won a 268 player event by Jonas Harbili. The only difference is the land base, but both ran 3 tombs and 17 total lands. I only included this list because it was played more recently.
2. Agreed, ANT has proven to be a problem with their disruption. Siding in Mindbreak Trap was almost worthless as they just removed it from your hand before going off. Since I completed my testing I've played in 5 more dredge matchups and won 4 of them. I still feel dredge is highly favored.
3. Agreed again, but my options are limited, propaganda slows them down enough to at least give me a chance. It is such a tough tough matchup imo.
4. Thanks, I'm working on it. Self confidence in my play ability has always been a problem. Remember, I just became competitive in this game about 2 or 3 years ago.
well the water one is showing up for me now, good stuff... I think if I ever used a deck with FoWs this would be it lol I like the combo because it uses cards that look pretty clunky on their own, thought it was good you added in all the info from the matches you played and ticket outcome and all, though I might have added a bit of bold on the matchups just to set it apart so you can catch it quick without searching too hard :P
Ouch, watery grave in ANT. My eyes are bleeding. Yet another reason not to always scoop when you think you've lost.
I think its funny that because a few people have piloted DnT successfully all of the sudden the meta online is lame. That seems almost as flawed as saying because Morgan_Coke wins with rifter the meta is flawed.
There are always certain players who take their pet decks and pound them away over and over with great results.
The online meta isn't going to mirror paper for awhile for a variaty of different reasons. And since when is a little change a bad thing. The difference in the meta sparks interest which is always good for business.
DnT is becoming very popular and I think part of it is accessibility, the deck isn't "budget" cheap, but compared to a lot of the decks it's not terribly expensive, not to mention it does do some crazy things and is a lot of fun to play, being like the branch between casual and competitive
and I gotta say I'm gonna disagree with the "'net decking' phenomena" I think that's an ignorant way of thinking, you see so many people complain about "net decking", but look at most of the decks even played in paper, people are always reading decklists from others and learning, not cheating, not being unimaginative, learning about those decks, sure most people don't make changes when perhaps they should, but to call "net decking" a new thing or an mtgo problem is silly because people do it with paper as well.. yes there are probably 20 t1 decks in legacy, but if you paid attention you'd see that while the winners list is heavily populated with a lot of similarities there are decks that pop up, some of which aren't even t1.. theres been rock, ASTRAL SLIDE has made a big showing, affinity, pox, gifts, sligh decks, landstill has made it's showings, charbelcher had two showings in one week, Elves, PainterStone decks, eva depths, baseruption, survival decks, mono black aggro for god's sake... and thats not even mentioning the over played ones! goblins, threshold, bant decks in many many forms, reanimator, enchantress, DnT, Counter/Thopter Top, merfolk, dredge, zoo... and I know there are more I'm missing off the top of my head, but the fact still remains anyone who thinks there isn't a diverse playing enviornment is a bit mislead, sure you may find yourself in a tourney that is half goblins, but you know what? that's going to happen from time to time in most formats where you don't get 50+ players showing up
don't take this wrong, but I think it would have been better to give some background as to who these people are you interviewed and why they were chosen, I mean I've seen NO play, but I'm not sure I know the other two and I'm sure I'm not the only one, let alone what that has to do with the orcs lol
I make mention of them in an upcoming article, but I for once cant wait for someone to break Surrakar, I wouldn't even mind getting wrecked by it just to see something creative, but you got two marauders I thinkyou missed Shoreline Salvager
But a few points:
1. Why not start the article with the list that actually took down a 200+ player event? Most players chose the deck on accomplishments and winning a big tourney always sounds better like "T8 out of 50 people".
2. The combo matchup should be around 50/50 in general. Some decks are favored because they are a turn faster, but these kinds of matchup are often about winning the coinflip. Ant is slightly worse because they play disruption while dredge is slightly better because it's a less consistent deck.
3. I think you overestimate Propaganda against merfolk a bit. It doesnt help you winning and thanks to all the lords, one fish usually bashes for a lot. It may be correct to board it in but its nowhere as good as its again Zoo or Goblins.
4. Show more self confidence :) It's all about psych - you might think you are "average" or "worse" than others but thats not true.
Well darn, my images didn't make it through. They showed up on the preview trial run, weird. Oh well images were a picture of a stream and fans with their hands raised at a rock concert.
My thinking is that whomever ran the event would keep an updated banned list every month and post it on the community forums (on the mothership). So if a card went crazy or turned out to be format wrecking we could keep it in check.
Well the issue the others brought up is that *any* planeswalker's ability can only be activated once per turn per critter - so the most you could legitimately get under the new rules (still not in effect on MTGO) would be 1 activation for Kraj and 1 for Gideon, which could be different abilities.
This actually brings up a good point which I didn't raise for those who don't want to break the rules - bringing out Kraj still fairly allows you to effectively get 2 planeswalker activations a turn (as long as one is positive), so that's not an awful effect (although sure does take a lot of deck space!).
I *think* that if Kraj were to activate Gideon's first ability, it would basically read that creatures attack Kraj (when he copies an ability he does so replacing "cardname" with Kraj) - I have no idea how this would resolve in MTGO but I'm guessing it would be a forced attack effect with an illegal target, and could essentially freeze up the game at the attack phase where you couldn't attack properly. It may also just force them to attack you in general.
I don't imagine Gideon will be very affordable and I'm a thrifty fellow when it comes to new standard cards, but if I draft one I will plug it into the deck and write about the results.
well i already have a legal deck ready to go for budget extended...so I'm game if its convenient
super_lourton: I know that legacy is not a "cheap" format, but that's a little bit hard to find a good reason to buy cards we have in real life 5 times the price we paid for them in real life. Some cards are more rare here, so more expensive.
I love that quote. It just goes to show that no one who complains Bout prices really pays attention to them. Sure force of will may be more expensive but you are getting a HUGE discount on dual lands and many many other cards. Also just play one of many decks without FoW.
I think the extended budget is a great idea. And I dont think that the cards that would be used, since they are already under 2.00 are going to sky rocket anytime soon. Maybe I am wrong.
The Extended Budget format you discuss seems interesting, but I can see some potential problems with it. Given how cards fluctuate in price, what is legal in the format could change on a daily basis. This would make it difficult to test, and would make the metagame fairly random. If a given deck in the format became popular, this could potentially drive up the prices of the cards, which would then make the deck no longer legal in the format...
It's an interesting idea, but the lack of an ability to predict what is in the format could deter people from getting involved in it.
Indeed, in IE it seems to be pushing the deck lists down about 100px, which makes them overlap with the text. Sadly no fix for it but to use a different browser since I can't go in and fix the css now. Good catch. Works in Chrome and FF.
As for the make up of the Surraki(?) the art all looks similar so far and points to a muscular squat body with a huge maw filled with sharp teeth. The poses look bestial and unintelligent but that might just because they are hungry. They do have some similarity to merfolk but they aren't water dwelling, more like swamp dwelling so maybe they are lizardfolk-kin.
I wanted to keep the deck two colors or I might have branched out into white or red. I was also seeing what synergy is available in the new set. Sadly I didn't find a whole lot but I still think this deck might be fun to pilot in casual.
I guess you could get infinite gideon activations just using gideon and Kraj without all of the other bits. Someone with mad-roolz-skillz could perhaps tell me what happens if kraj activates gideon's first ability? Will it make opposing creatures attack the gideon? I know they can't attack kraj, so it probably just does nothing. Anyway, dunno why I posted this, as getting infinite gideon activations is basically just a very ruubish plague wind that only hits tapped creatures...
I've been trying surrakar spellblade with double cleave and/or savage beating. It seemed like a cute idea, but he's just too killable! I like hindering light with him, but he just seems like too much work every time I try to build with him. You end up needing to add ways to keep him alive, ways to get him past blockers and plenty of instants/sorceries to the deck to make him work. Toshiro Umezawa was a guy I think has potential with him.
Still nice to see an attempt to make surrakar tribal! What are surrakar (surrakars? surraki?) meant to be anyway? They just look like obese merfolk to me.
One last thing; Is anyone else getting all sorts of weird formating on this article? The decklists seem to appear on top of the text on my screen, but that might just be my browser making a boo-boo.
There are few other things I thought about after I submitted the article that I wanted to share.
1. Sphinx is an artifact, therefore it gets around the Ability of Canonist.
2. Sometimes depending on the situation, it is ok to play dream halls and just play cruel ultimatum. This still wrecks your opps hand, gets you life and most importantly gives you 3 more cards which might reveal that needed conflux.
3. I've added 2x Karakas (So far Wasteland hasn't been a problem) to the Main deck. This gives an out to Iona from Reanimator. I also removed the 2x snare and put in 1 more dispel and 1 rushing river. Also added one rushing river to sb. With Death and taxes running around the rivers can be vital to bounce oblivion rings.
Hope this helps anyone interested in giving it a whirl.
...does anyone know the reason for Goblin Bomb's price increase? Does the new set have a combo for it or something?
You can also use the mouse wheel click, but I'm not sure if that works on Mac with a partition... should.
Get yourself a real mouse. My #1 complaint about Macs is the unibutton. Quit being stubborn Jobs, just add it.
this hasn't worked for me for the past 2 months (it always used to)... I've been trying to figure out what happened for quite some time...
I have almost gotten used to hitting ctrl-Shift which is the other way of card zooming :)
My friend, if you use parallels the shortcut for zooming in is to hold control and shift, and then press the function key :)
Ohhh.. That explains why I could never figure it out... I have a Mac laptop that I partitioned to have a Windows side so I could play Magic. "Right" click for me = hold two fingers on the trackpad + click the button, so there's no way to do left click and right click at the same time. Thanks though.
Yea I was curious about that as well. I do know of menace, he has been around awhile.
Are the people you interviewed just a random bunch who happened to be in the room, or do they have some sort of claim to fame? Why do their opinions matter? This *really* needed to be in the article.
Woops? :(
3 Drake Umbra
4 Consuming Vapors
4 Surrakar Marauder
4 Distortion Strike
4 Cairn Wanderer
4 Shoreline Salvager <--- notice the salvagers.
2 Virulent Swipe
4 Surrakar Spellblade
3 Aura Finesse
4 Surrakar Banisher
here is the list above....
1. Actually the list is card for card exactly the same as the List that won a 268 player event by Jonas Harbili. The only difference is the land base, but both ran 3 tombs and 17 total lands. I only included this list because it was played more recently.
2. Agreed, ANT has proven to be a problem with their disruption. Siding in Mindbreak Trap was almost worthless as they just removed it from your hand before going off. Since I completed my testing I've played in 5 more dredge matchups and won 4 of them. I still feel dredge is highly favored.
3. Agreed again, but my options are limited, propaganda slows them down enough to at least give me a chance. It is such a tough tough matchup imo.
4. Thanks, I'm working on it. Self confidence in my play ability has always been a problem. Remember, I just became competitive in this game about 2 or 3 years ago.
well the water one is showing up for me now, good stuff... I think if I ever used a deck with FoWs this would be it lol I like the combo because it uses cards that look pretty clunky on their own, thought it was good you added in all the info from the matches you played and ticket outcome and all, though I might have added a bit of bold on the matchups just to set it apart so you can catch it quick without searching too hard :P
Ouch, watery grave in ANT. My eyes are bleeding. Yet another reason not to always scoop when you think you've lost.
I think its funny that because a few people have piloted DnT successfully all of the sudden the meta online is lame. That seems almost as flawed as saying because Morgan_Coke wins with rifter the meta is flawed.
There are always certain players who take their pet decks and pound them away over and over with great results.
The online meta isn't going to mirror paper for awhile for a variaty of different reasons. And since when is a little change a bad thing. The difference in the meta sparks interest which is always good for business.
Nice article as usual.
DnT is becoming very popular and I think part of it is accessibility, the deck isn't "budget" cheap, but compared to a lot of the decks it's not terribly expensive, not to mention it does do some crazy things and is a lot of fun to play, being like the branch between casual and competitive
and I gotta say I'm gonna disagree with the "'net decking' phenomena" I think that's an ignorant way of thinking, you see so many people complain about "net decking", but look at most of the decks even played in paper, people are always reading decklists from others and learning, not cheating, not being unimaginative, learning about those decks, sure most people don't make changes when perhaps they should, but to call "net decking" a new thing or an mtgo problem is silly because people do it with paper as well.. yes there are probably 20 t1 decks in legacy, but if you paid attention you'd see that while the winners list is heavily populated with a lot of similarities there are decks that pop up, some of which aren't even t1.. theres been rock, ASTRAL SLIDE has made a big showing, affinity, pox, gifts, sligh decks, landstill has made it's showings, charbelcher had two showings in one week, Elves, PainterStone decks, eva depths, baseruption, survival decks, mono black aggro for god's sake... and thats not even mentioning the over played ones! goblins, threshold, bant decks in many many forms, reanimator, enchantress, DnT, Counter/Thopter Top, merfolk, dredge, zoo... and I know there are more I'm missing off the top of my head, but the fact still remains anyone who thinks there isn't a diverse playing enviornment is a bit mislead, sure you may find yourself in a tourney that is half goblins, but you know what? that's going to happen from time to time in most formats where you don't get 50+ players showing up
don't take this wrong, but I think it would have been better to give some background as to who these people are you interviewed and why they were chosen, I mean I've seen NO play, but I'm not sure I know the other two and I'm sure I'm not the only one, let alone what that has to do with the orcs lol
I make mention of them in an upcoming article, but I for once cant wait for someone to break Surrakar, I wouldn't even mind getting wrecked by it just to see something creative, but you got two marauders I thinkyou missed Shoreline Salvager
Cool insides :)
But a few points:
1. Why not start the article with the list that actually took down a 200+ player event? Most players chose the deck on accomplishments and winning a big tourney always sounds better like "T8 out of 50 people".
2. The combo matchup should be around 50/50 in general. Some decks are favored because they are a turn faster, but these kinds of matchup are often about winning the coinflip. Ant is slightly worse because they play disruption while dredge is slightly better because it's a less consistent deck.
3. I think you overestimate Propaganda against merfolk a bit. It doesnt help you winning and thanks to all the lords, one fish usually bashes for a lot. It may be correct to board it in but its nowhere as good as its again Zoo or Goblins.
4. Show more self confidence :) It's all about psych - you might think you are "average" or "worse" than others but thats not true.
Well darn, my images didn't make it through. They showed up on the preview trial run, weird. Oh well images were a picture of a stream and fans with their hands raised at a rock concert.