I think we have similar strategies when it comes to making tribal decks. Take a powerful creature with a somewhat unusual creature type (Bloodbraid Elf, Gatekeeper of Malakir, Scute Mob, Kitchen Finks, Burning Tree Shaman, etc) and try to make a deck around it. It makes for an interesting challenge that gets away from the popular iconic tribes.
On another note, I didn't realize that Jund Hackblade and Bloodbraid Elf had the same creature type until I had adding them to my ooze deck for added speed. Between them and shapeshifters, I ended up with a deck that almost qualified as a Berserker deck as well as an ooze deck.
Bant seems ok, Naya is far away from being a good deck. Having 50/50 at best against Jund ( not even that ) and an even worse matchup against UW disqualifies you from being good in the current environment. Talking about Naya at least. My buds say Bant is good but its somehow underplayed. I guess thats because in a long tourney you will get these akwards draws with only manadorks or only fat way too often to win reliable.
So I think Jace and some others ( Colonade, Elspeth, Coup ) will rise and Hierarch and Knight will stay even or drop.
Kiln Fiend is good enough to fit into a competitive deck. It turns every Bolt in your deck into 6 damage.
It’s a natural fit for the Mono Red Burn deck:
T1: Terramorphic Expanse
T2: Kiln Fiend
T3: Lava Spike, Chain Lightning, Lightning Bolt their Lone Missionary, attack for 10. They’re at 8. Without Lone Missionary they’re at 1. Maybe you even hit your turn 1 Spark Elemental.
Or keep R open so you can Brute Force when they Bolt your Kiln Fiend.
With Green you get Vines of Vastwood, Skarrgan Pitskulk, Silhana Ledgewalker.
T3: Vines with kicker, Bolt, attack for 11. They’re at 6.
T3: Bolt a blocker, Giant Growth, Brute Force, attack for 13, they’re at 4.
With Blue you get card draw, evasion, and Wee Dragonauts:
T3: Lava Spike, Bolt, Shadow Rift making your Kiln Fiend unblockable and drawing a card, attack for 10. They’re at 4.
It’s even wackier in extended/legacy:
T1: Mountain, Chrome Mox, Kiln Fiend
T2: Bolt, Bolt, Bolt, Attack for 10. They’re at 1. With a sac land in play.
Yeah. The people who don't block have it half right of course. Blocking jerks means you don't get to one up them. And being competitive, some magic players would rather trade trash talk than block the ignorant. I am of the mind that I'd rather not be bothered. Also it depends on the quality of the rudeness. People who stream nonsensical insults like spam are autoblocks. People who merely say things to provoke a response are sometimes blocked if they turn out to be doing it just to get a rise.
Windgrace is a fellow like that. During the Momir tourney in January, he spent our entire match berated me because I dared comment on the luck factor in the format. I am certain it wasn't his first time doing that to a player but now I don't care since he is blocked. But I have had people say provocative things only to turn around with something interesting to say when I responded like an adult. So not all rudeness equates to jerkiness.
One thing that really rankles is that with the 300 person limit on the blocked list you run out of space eventually. (I just cleared off some old blocked names because of that.) I tend to fill the blocked list mostly with Bots that attempt to scam (take too many tickets, take a card in addition to tickets when selling cards and not in trade mode, offer 5% on the ticket value of cards, etc). There are enough of those that I wish there was a separate way to deal with bots.
Just had to comment on the "hello" bit of your post. I use a similar litmus test in the casual room: starting off with "hi there, best of luck to ya" or something similar. It's really astounding how well the response can peg the other player - silence is often (but not always) a bad sign; a macro response is neutral-positive; someone who takes the time to respond is usually a pretty nice player. What amazes me is the number of hostile responses: I've had 4 people in the last couple of months respond (verbatim) with "Why say something you don't mean?" (even though "good luck" doesn't mean, "please beat me", but rather, "let's have a good matchup with no manascrews and may the best deck win") and then launch into troll statements. I've started thinking lately that talking first in matches may actually provoke the bad behavior - but still, being the leader of a clan, I'd rather strike up conversations in an effort to find and recruit new friendly people, than do the usual silence thing. I don't go extreme on blocking nonresponders - although those who respond with anger, definitely get blocked (as do the many people who type "..." and deliberately slow down the first time I play an MED dual...it's not that scary if I'm just using it to cast {Cerebral Vortex}, folks!!).
One thing I've found in talking with my clan members is, many refuse to block people they hate thinking that "the jerks win" if they actually do block. My view is similar to yours - by blocking them, I win by not wasting more of my time. It narrows the player pool just slightly, so that my next matchup is more likely to have a nice person and long-term opponent in it!
I agree. Also with so many cyclers and Courier's Capsule and Spreading Seas they got a fair 20 cards of their deck alone. If you're lucky enough to mill away the Open the Vaults then it should be rather easy. I tried to fit in some Thought Hemmorage in the sideboard but Im still unsure.
I would say the weakest cards are the Carabids to take out for the Leviathans. Since you only run 2, they don't clog up your hand if you can't disc them to a rats, which you almost always can.
I especially like the Vaults matchup. I have friends that play it, and with the Angel gaining them life I usually dedicate milling. Spell piercing an OTV is also very awkward for them.
I've played this deck a lot before on paper, and it is definately one of the better budget decks. I often end up milling my opponent rather than actuall swinging for the kill, and I would suggest definately using the Leviathans, as they have saved me in many games.
Jovial Evil - When I see this card I think of Craig "the Professor" Jones, and his Magic writing. If you can grant that this one demon is 'jovial', then you know, why not have him speak Shakespearean? And maybe it's a pun, and he wants to go out and lunch on some real, um, larks. I think it's pretty clever, but maybe that's giving it too much credit. The rest is great, as per usual.
Ah, berserkers. A fun tribe. Back when during Rav block I used Rumbling Slum to help give my guys their bloodthirst boost, plus he's a pretty efficient beater. In addition, I liked to put in 2 or 3 creatures that are not of my tribe so that I didn't get hosed by AJ when he played the Suleiman's Legacy combo or other tribe hosers. Fun stuff.
Thats why I talked about the Terramorphic. A budget deck is budget for as long as you want. If you make an investment to any budget deck you end up with a main stream list. The fetch lands are not essencial to the deck performance since they only fix you for the random mountain to be able to play those sedraxis specter, something I seldom do. And with the new terramorphic coming in Rise of Eldrazi you can make the deck for even less than 40 tix.
I agree pack 2 is late to decide to get into allies, and if you're not going to shoot for getting a good number of 'em, the Grunts are better in a non-ally deck than the Pyromancer, easily. I'd be happier about those Pyromancers if the allies from pack 1 had been not just signaling it might be open, but also had been in the deck. With 3-4 allies the Pyromancer is more tempting than at just once, it's certainly a gamble to take them as things were going. And I don't think the allies were coming around late in pack 2 as much as they did pack 1, so it would have been a bad gamble probably.
I still like 'em, maybe more than I should. The one time I took them they were an early pick in pack one, which let me end up with about 8 allies in the deck - including a second Pyromancer in pack 3. (It was before Worldwake came out.) I don't play the Pyromancers in my constructed ally deck, even - but it was fun in that draft playing them in succession, to burn out two Hedron Crabs and the Merfolk Seastalkers that'd been holding back my attacks. Fun times... Of course I also threw a random Eternity Vessel in there, I wouldn't exactly say it was a really tight draft. It was my first ever Zendikar draft actually. The Eternity Vessel did save me from dying to the Seastalker, but that doesn't mean it's really a playable - it just got lucky!
They had a 'low competition' tournament. They're called Leagues. You got 45 minutes on your clock for the match instead of 30 minutes.
Reducing the time in a match is a total non starter. Players with bad connections, crappy computers, and other sources of irl interruptions will be hurt just as much as the players you want to restrict. There is no 'good' way to discern between the two types.
I love this one because it would give a little positive reinforcement to what’s usually one of the most frustrating situations on MTGO. Your opponent rage quits without conceding? Well, now you’re one step closer to getting your badge!
I’m going to award this one the prize. See me online to collect your playset of The Unspeakable. It’s best to message me on MTGO with a time you’ll be online to collect. I still have the award from the last contest sitting in my collection, waiting to be collected.
1. It's obviously not obv, type like an adult.
2. Of course Noble Hierarch and Knight of the Reliquary are not played in good decks. I mean Mythic Bant and Boss Naya are such shit decks apparently...
You're right about the uncle thing with movies. I remember when I was like 8 we watch Pumpkin Head, and Hellraiser. It scared the living shit out of me than, but now I base my user name off Hellraiser. Anyway, very good article as always.
That seems like sound reasoning to me. Only thing that remains to be seen is how Rise plays into this.
Isn't that sigil a hexagram???
Great stuff...
I think we have similar strategies when it comes to making tribal decks. Take a powerful creature with a somewhat unusual creature type (Bloodbraid Elf, Gatekeeper of Malakir, Scute Mob, Kitchen Finks, Burning Tree Shaman, etc) and try to make a deck around it. It makes for an interesting challenge that gets away from the popular iconic tribes.
On another note, I didn't realize that Jund Hackblade and Bloodbraid Elf had the same creature type until I had adding them to my ooze deck for added speed. Between them and shapeshifters, I ended up with a deck that almost qualified as a Berserker deck as well as an ooze deck.
Meh. I see, we don't become friends.
Bant seems ok, Naya is far away from being a good deck. Having 50/50 at best against Jund ( not even that ) and an even worse matchup against UW disqualifies you from being good in the current environment. Talking about Naya at least. My buds say Bant is good but its somehow underplayed. I guess thats because in a long tourney you will get these akwards draws with only manadorks or only fat way too often to win reliable.
So I think Jace and some others ( Colonade, Elspeth, Coup ) will rise and Hierarch and Knight will stay even or drop.
there was another version of this deck that did run consume spirit...it did moderately well...
Artifact Creatures
4 Architects Of Will
Creatures
4 Gatekeeper Of Malakir
4 Igneous Pouncer
4 Jhessian Zombies
4 Monstrous Carabid
4 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Viscera Dragger
Instants
4 Disfigure
4 Doom Blade
4 Tendrils Of Corruption
Sorceries
4 Consume Spirit
Basic Lands
12 Swamp
Lands
4 Crypt Of Agadeem
it got 5th in states or the canadian equivalent anyways
Wouldn't Consume Spirit have a place in this deck, especially if your facing an agro deck?
Scryb Sprites RG was the deck to beat at Grand Prix: Kitchen Table. You know, back before Ice Age. Blood Lust, Giant Growth, bam.
Kiln Fiend is good enough to fit into a competitive deck. It turns every Bolt in your deck into 6 damage.
It’s a natural fit for the Mono Red Burn deck:
T1: Terramorphic Expanse
T2: Kiln Fiend
T3: Lava Spike, Chain Lightning, Lightning Bolt their Lone Missionary, attack for 10. They’re at 8. Without Lone Missionary they’re at 1. Maybe you even hit your turn 1 Spark Elemental.
Or keep R open so you can Brute Force when they Bolt your Kiln Fiend.
With Green you get Vines of Vastwood, Skarrgan Pitskulk, Silhana Ledgewalker.
T3: Vines with kicker, Bolt, attack for 11. They’re at 6.
T3: Bolt a blocker, Giant Growth, Brute Force, attack for 13, they’re at 4.
T1: Llanowar Elves
T2: Kiln Fiend, Reckless Charge, attack for 7.
With Blue you get card draw, evasion, and Wee Dragonauts:
T3: Lava Spike, Bolt, Shadow Rift making your Kiln Fiend unblockable and drawing a card, attack for 10. They’re at 4.
It’s even wackier in extended/legacy:
T1: Mountain, Chrome Mox, Kiln Fiend
T2: Bolt, Bolt, Bolt, Attack for 10. They’re at 1. With a sac land in play.
Yeah. The people who don't block have it half right of course. Blocking jerks means you don't get to one up them. And being competitive, some magic players would rather trade trash talk than block the ignorant. I am of the mind that I'd rather not be bothered. Also it depends on the quality of the rudeness. People who stream nonsensical insults like spam are autoblocks. People who merely say things to provoke a response are sometimes blocked if they turn out to be doing it just to get a rise.
Windgrace is a fellow like that. During the Momir tourney in January, he spent our entire match berated me because I dared comment on the luck factor in the format. I am certain it wasn't his first time doing that to a player but now I don't care since he is blocked. But I have had people say provocative things only to turn around with something interesting to say when I responded like an adult. So not all rudeness equates to jerkiness.
One thing that really rankles is that with the 300 person limit on the blocked list you run out of space eventually. (I just cleared off some old blocked names because of that.) I tend to fill the blocked list mostly with Bots that attempt to scam (take too many tickets, take a card in addition to tickets when selling cards and not in trade mode, offer 5% on the ticket value of cards, etc). There are enough of those that I wish there was a separate way to deal with bots.
Just had to comment on the "hello" bit of your post. I use a similar litmus test in the casual room: starting off with "hi there, best of luck to ya" or something similar. It's really astounding how well the response can peg the other player - silence is often (but not always) a bad sign; a macro response is neutral-positive; someone who takes the time to respond is usually a pretty nice player. What amazes me is the number of hostile responses: I've had 4 people in the last couple of months respond (verbatim) with "Why say something you don't mean?" (even though "good luck" doesn't mean, "please beat me", but rather, "let's have a good matchup with no manascrews and may the best deck win") and then launch into troll statements. I've started thinking lately that talking first in matches may actually provoke the bad behavior - but still, being the leader of a clan, I'd rather strike up conversations in an effort to find and recruit new friendly people, than do the usual silence thing. I don't go extreme on blocking nonresponders - although those who respond with anger, definitely get blocked (as do the many people who type "..." and deliberately slow down the first time I play an MED dual...it's not that scary if I'm just using it to cast {Cerebral Vortex}, folks!!).
One thing I've found in talking with my clan members is, many refuse to block people they hate thinking that "the jerks win" if they actually do block. My view is similar to yours - by blocking them, I win by not wasting more of my time. It narrows the player pool just slightly, so that my next matchup is more likely to have a nice person and long-term opponent in it!
I agree. Also with so many cyclers and Courier's Capsule and Spreading Seas they got a fair 20 cards of their deck alone. If you're lucky enough to mill away the Open the Vaults then it should be rather easy. I tried to fit in some Thought Hemmorage in the sideboard but Im still unsure.
I would say the weakest cards are the Carabids to take out for the Leviathans. Since you only run 2, they don't clog up your hand if you can't disc them to a rats, which you almost always can.
I especially like the Vaults matchup. I have friends that play it, and with the Angel gaining them life I usually dedicate milling. Spell piercing an OTV is also very awkward for them.
I've played this deck a lot before on paper, and it is definately one of the better budget decks. I often end up milling my opponent rather than actuall swinging for the kill, and I would suggest definately using the Leviathans, as they have saved me in many games.
Jovial Evil - When I see this card I think of Craig "the Professor" Jones, and his Magic writing. If you can grant that this one demon is 'jovial', then you know, why not have him speak Shakespearean? And maybe it's a pun, and he wants to go out and lunch on some real, um, larks. I think it's pretty clever, but maybe that's giving it too much credit. The rest is great, as per usual.
Ah, berserkers. A fun tribe. Back when during Rav block I used Rumbling Slum to help give my guys their bloodthirst boost, plus he's a pretty efficient beater. In addition, I liked to put in 2 or 3 creatures that are not of my tribe so that I didn't get hosed by AJ when he played the Suleiman's Legacy combo or other tribe hosers. Fun stuff.
Thats why I talked about the Terramorphic. A budget deck is budget for as long as you want. If you make an investment to any budget deck you end up with a main stream list. The fetch lands are not essencial to the deck performance since they only fix you for the random mountain to be able to play those sedraxis specter, something I seldom do. And with the new terramorphic coming in Rise of Eldrazi you can make the deck for even less than 40 tix.
I agree pack 2 is late to decide to get into allies, and if you're not going to shoot for getting a good number of 'em, the Grunts are better in a non-ally deck than the Pyromancer, easily. I'd be happier about those Pyromancers if the allies from pack 1 had been not just signaling it might be open, but also had been in the deck. With 3-4 allies the Pyromancer is more tempting than at just once, it's certainly a gamble to take them as things were going. And I don't think the allies were coming around late in pack 2 as much as they did pack 1, so it would have been a bad gamble probably.
I still like 'em, maybe more than I should. The one time I took them they were an early pick in pack one, which let me end up with about 8 allies in the deck - including a second Pyromancer in pack 3. (It was before Worldwake came out.) I don't play the Pyromancers in my constructed ally deck, even - but it was fun in that draft playing them in succession, to burn out two Hedron Crabs and the Merfolk Seastalkers that'd been holding back my attacks. Fun times... Of course I also threw a random Eternity Vessel in there, I wouldn't exactly say it was a really tight draft. It was my first ever Zendikar draft actually. The Eternity Vessel did save me from dying to the Seastalker, but that doesn't mean it's really a playable - it just got lucky!
Way to say the two things I was thinking before I scrolled, almost word for word.
In New Jersey you still will get pulled over even with a bluetooth headset on.
Extremely well said, as usual.
They had a 'low competition' tournament. They're called Leagues. You got 45 minutes on your clock for the match instead of 30 minutes.
Reducing the time in a match is a total non starter. Players with bad connections, crappy computers, and other sources of irl interruptions will be hurt just as much as the players you want to restrict. There is no 'good' way to discern between the two types.
I love this one because it would give a little positive reinforcement to what’s usually one of the most frustrating situations on MTGO. Your opponent rage quits without conceding? Well, now you’re one step closer to getting your badge!
I’m going to award this one the prize. See me online to collect your playset of The Unspeakable. It’s best to message me on MTGO with a time you’ll be online to collect. I still have the award from the last contest sitting in my collection, waiting to be collected.
1. It's obviously not obv, type like an adult.
2. Of course Noble Hierarch and Knight of the Reliquary are not played in good decks. I mean Mythic Bant and Boss Naya are such shit decks apparently...
Because Noble and Knight aren't played in good decks obv.
You're right about the uncle thing with movies. I remember when I was like 8 we watch Pumpkin Head, and Hellraiser. It scared the living shit out of me than, but now I base my user name off Hellraiser. Anyway, very good article as always.