I agree that Sanity Grinding is a better deck then the "new" possible mill decsk. I've done some testing with a friend that really wanted to build a mill deck using Memory Erosion and Min Funeral and it wasn't good at all. It lost to pretty much everything. Granted this was before M10 but I don't fell that M10 brings that much to the table other then Haunting Echoes. A nice casual deck, but nothing for anyone wanting a competative deck right now. In my opinion that is :)
Soldiers do have alot of potential when Kithkin rotates and people start looking at the soldiers. Nice article!
Thanks for the nice comments, means a lot to get good feedback from other writers.
And no I don't think books are dead. In fact, I don't even think they're poorly. It's a quote from Stephen Fry, and I don't think he meant it either. It's just a mildly arresting thing to say, and it brought me on to my theme nicely.
And whiffy, I've been wracking my brains, but where does that Arnie quote come from?
A friend of mine is thinking about buying Pox for casual, so I'll refer him to here. I doubt he can afford some of the higher-priced cards, but it should be an excellent starting point.
A long time ago when I ran the ultimate draft on starcity I got to mock up some boosters, and if you are going to go to the trouble you did I really think that you should use print runs instead for your commons and uncommons.
During March or April I had other things to do and didnt played any classic events. When I came back I did worse than before and chose to tweak it a bit... btw Manabase is still a bit whacky especially with 4 finks... but there's no way to change this without bayou :/
I somewhat agree with doc and paul, but it seemed to me like you were not talking about tourney decks, more just archetypes that m10 supports. As for the mill deck, traumatize is ok, but haunting echoes is better, echoes with some tome scours mind funerals, memory erosion should be plenty to mill someone with
TBH, I don't really care about the breakdown of each individual booster, even if it shows off your engine fairly well. Give us the sealed pools you created and break them down by color; that's infinitely more useful than giving us pack listings. A good idea, but the execution needs a fair bit of worth.
Thanks for the help, those suggestions are really useful. Testing was something I really wanted to do but using proxies was something I hadn't thought of.
I took it for a spin earlier and it looks pretty cool. You can even download the decks to MWS or Appr32 format and play them out. But that said I think you did a fine job with the Spreadsheets etc. Thanks for putting in the time. I too would have liked to see more analysis of the packs. Maybe next time?
Oh and about verisimilitude, don't worry about whether we think they are genuine. Make it entertaining and that won't matter. Much. Some nitpickers might naysay if you show a pack that is clearly unlikely but even so it might be funny as in Draconias' article last week.
Grats on 6-2. Sounds like it was fun...I know it's tough but perhaps next time more detail? Were replays available? Because if so it would have been fairly easy to do it more in-depth and give us some real excitement.
I am assuming that you havent played this bg version, otherwise you wouldnt be saying these unfounded things, such as 4 dures, seize, blood. Please enlighten me and give me a reason not to follow 21 time top 8er and 3rd in poy race dunkle stile, all of theses lists are his creation with the exception that i opined finks in the latest build.
And of course necro was a strong reason for lack of pox but also consider that not one month passes with out at least 2 pox top 8's since tempest was released. I just followed dunkle_stille and chose to skip the builds that others used to make top 8 such as renato amado and others. This could have been bad breaks for dunkle or he just may not have played in the events.
Also crucible is the most important card in the deck against everything but belcher and elves cutting that is silly, also needle is much more then just necro, it has at least 3 targets for every single deck.
Harsh a little there. But to some extent I agree. Preeminent Captain is a must have for any soldier discussions...particularly the interactions with Ranger of Eos. Also Kithkin has a tighter/faster dynamic to it than these cards do. Most of your exciting things happen on turn 4-5. By then your opponent should be already putting you on the defensive. Standard is not getting slower with the M10 changes. (Unless you are playing control, in which case...good luck.) On the other hand Soldiers might have some cohesiveness against tier 2-3 decks so it isn't a hopeless choice I think. Now I am coming from a non-tourney* play experience in the last decade so I might also be wrong but I think standard is pretty transparent even if you aren't actually playing it yourself.
Doc's suggestion #2 is very important. Testing will not only give you a better/clearer idea of what is going on with these new cards but it will give you fodder to talk about in your analysis. You can document straight from replays (well not this week, since they are temporarily broken but that will be fixed soon, (I hope!)) and so concentrate on rembering other things like your opponents attitude and how you were thinking about your draws...did a particular hand have mulligan written all over it and if so did you read it correctly? etc.
Good luck next time Max.
*constructed events. I seem to play drafts and sealed decks sporadically. :)
I didn't know about ccgdecks.com but I had fun making my spreadsheet none the less. I have probably 25 other spreadsheets for Magic that I've made on my own, some I tracked what I bought cards at, some I track my own rare price trends and others are just lists of sets and randomized charts to simulate packs from that set.
I do regret that it didn't allow me to analyze more drafts since that was the focus of the article. I guess I'm more use to skeptical people on the internet and if I just showed up with X boosters and said "here are some decks I've build", I expected people to cry foul on them being "not properly randomized" when you end up top heavy on one card or what looks like just too good of a deck.
No offense, but your analysis leads me to question your grip of competitive standard; not to mention whether you're actually saying anything that isn't pure speculation...
Post M10, mono-white soldiers does nothing kithkin isn't doing better already; the only way that possibly changes is if you mention shenanigans Pre-eminent Captain which you didn't...
The mill deck is also significantly less effective than Sanity's Grinding, which may actually be a deck again thanks to the huge surge in Cruel Control at Nationals. Also, traumatize is too expensive for its effect.
So in short, my recommendations would be:
1. Try to get a better feel for what is/isn't viable in the cardpool you're examining; speed for instance.
2. Test proposed lists a few times (Whether proxied up in real life, or even just generating some sample hands.)
3. Compare your proposed decks with what the established standard offers. Do they do anything different? Do they do anything better? Can they compete with the old decks? (For instance, try running either of your decks against their pre-M10 counterparts (mono-white kithkin and Sanity's Grinding respectively). I think you'll find that both are hard-put to outmaneuver them; and that's without the upgrades kithkin gets from M10.)
The reason why you saw a lack of pox for months was Necro-spike was clearly better than Pox and basically won everything.
Personally, I'll stick with the mono-black version until Bayou comes online. You can cut Pithing Needles to one in main now that it isn't vital to go first turn Needle-necro. Since I tend to hit too many combo decks, I also cut Crucible to one copy and Pox to two copies. There is no way I'd play with less than 4 Duress/4 Thoughtseize/4 Innocent Blood.
I just wanted to quickly drop a note saying Ive been a fan of Pox since back in the days of Necropox (Ice Age/Alliances etc). I haven't had time to read through the whole thing but grats on winning with it. :D
Just a heads up - there are multiple sites out there that will create random packs of Magic 2010 (and other sets) for you in seconds without you having to toil away for hours in excel. http://www.ccgdecks.com/ is what I use, but there are other sites as well.
Hitting up one of those sites would have allowed you to spend more space analyzing the decks and cards themselves instead of wasting half your article on the creation of your "random" packs, which I would imagine given the detail involved probably took several hours to create :(
I agree that Sanity Grinding is a better deck then the "new" possible mill decsk. I've done some testing with a friend that really wanted to build a mill deck using Memory Erosion and Min Funeral and it wasn't good at all. It lost to pretty much everything. Granted this was before M10 but I don't fell that M10 brings that much to the table other then Haunting Echoes. A nice casual deck, but nothing for anyone wanting a competative deck right now. In my opinion that is :)
Soldiers do have alot of potential when Kithkin rotates and people start looking at the soldiers. Nice article!
Thanks for the nice comments, means a lot to get good feedback from other writers.
And no I don't think books are dead. In fact, I don't even think they're poorly. It's a quote from Stephen Fry, and I don't think he meant it either. It's just a mildly arresting thing to say, and it brought me on to my theme nicely.
And whiffy, I've been wracking my brains, but where does that Arnie quote come from?
too much pox! ah it's like i've been playing against these decks 4/5 times.
it's good and all, but enough pox!
Always love to see articles on Classic.
A friend of mine is thinking about buying Pox for casual, so I'll refer him to here. I doubt he can afford some of the higher-priced cards, but it should be an excellent starting point.
A long time ago when I ran the ultimate draft on starcity I got to mock up some boosters, and if you are going to go to the trouble you did I really think that you should use print runs instead for your commons and uncommons.
During March or April I had other things to do and didnt played any classic events. When I came back I did worse than before and chose to tweak it a bit... btw Manabase is still a bit whacky especially with 4 finks... but there's no way to change this without bayou :/
My apologies; i did come off a little harsher than I meant to there.
From the few times I have played against the deck, crucible is definitely the strongest card and usually the one that defines the match.
I somewhat agree with doc and paul, but it seemed to me like you were not talking about tourney decks, more just archetypes that m10 supports. As for the mill deck, traumatize is ok, but haunting echoes is better, echoes with some tome scours mind funerals, memory erosion should be plenty to mill someone with
TBH, I don't really care about the breakdown of each individual booster, even if it shows off your engine fairly well. Give us the sealed pools you created and break them down by color; that's infinitely more useful than giving us pack listings. A good idea, but the execution needs a fair bit of worth.
Thanks for the help, those suggestions are really useful. Testing was something I really wanted to do but using proxies was something I hadn't thought of.
Replays weren't up, and it was really late. Next time I'll try and do better
I give it a 4 mainly for effort.
I took it for a spin earlier and it looks pretty cool. You can even download the decks to MWS or Appr32 format and play them out. But that said I think you did a fine job with the Spreadsheets etc. Thanks for putting in the time. I too would have liked to see more analysis of the packs. Maybe next time?
Oh and about verisimilitude, don't worry about whether we think they are genuine. Make it entertaining and that won't matter. Much. Some nitpickers might naysay if you show a pack that is clearly unlikely but even so it might be funny as in Draconias' article last week.
Grats on 6-2. Sounds like it was fun...I know it's tough but perhaps next time more detail? Were replays available? Because if so it would have been fairly easy to do it more in-depth and give us some real excitement.
I am assuming that you havent played this bg version, otherwise you wouldnt be saying these unfounded things, such as 4 dures, seize, blood. Please enlighten me and give me a reason not to follow 21 time top 8er and 3rd in poy race dunkle stile, all of theses lists are his creation with the exception that i opined finks in the latest build.
And of course necro was a strong reason for lack of pox but also consider that not one month passes with out at least 2 pox top 8's since tempest was released. I just followed dunkle_stille and chose to skip the builds that others used to make top 8 such as renato amado and others. This could have been bad breaks for dunkle or he just may not have played in the events.
Also crucible is the most important card in the deck against everything but belcher and elves cutting that is silly, also needle is much more then just necro, it has at least 3 targets for every single deck.
Thx for the response.
Harsh a little there. But to some extent I agree. Preeminent Captain is a must have for any soldier discussions...particularly the interactions with Ranger of Eos. Also Kithkin has a tighter/faster dynamic to it than these cards do. Most of your exciting things happen on turn 4-5. By then your opponent should be already putting you on the defensive. Standard is not getting slower with the M10 changes. (Unless you are playing control, in which case...good luck.) On the other hand Soldiers might have some cohesiveness against tier 2-3 decks so it isn't a hopeless choice I think. Now I am coming from a non-tourney* play experience in the last decade so I might also be wrong but I think standard is pretty transparent even if you aren't actually playing it yourself.
Doc's suggestion #2 is very important. Testing will not only give you a better/clearer idea of what is going on with these new cards but it will give you fodder to talk about in your analysis. You can document straight from replays (well not this week, since they are temporarily broken but that will be fixed soon, (I hope!)) and so concentrate on rembering other things like your opponents attitude and how you were thinking about your draws...did a particular hand have mulligan written all over it and if so did you read it correctly? etc.
Good luck next time Max.
*constructed events. I seem to play drafts and sealed decks sporadically. :)
I didn't know about ccgdecks.com but I had fun making my spreadsheet none the less. I have probably 25 other spreadsheets for Magic that I've made on my own, some I tracked what I bought cards at, some I track my own rare price trends and others are just lists of sets and randomized charts to simulate packs from that set.
I do regret that it didn't allow me to analyze more drafts since that was the focus of the article. I guess I'm more use to skeptical people on the internet and if I just showed up with X boosters and said "here are some decks I've build", I expected people to cry foul on them being "not properly randomized" when you end up top heavy on one card or what looks like just too good of a deck.
RagMan
No offense, but your analysis leads me to question your grip of competitive standard; not to mention whether you're actually saying anything that isn't pure speculation...
Post M10, mono-white soldiers does nothing kithkin isn't doing better already; the only way that possibly changes is if you mention shenanigans Pre-eminent Captain which you didn't...
The mill deck is also significantly less effective than Sanity's Grinding, which may actually be a deck again thanks to the huge surge in Cruel Control at Nationals. Also, traumatize is too expensive for its effect.
So in short, my recommendations would be:
1. Try to get a better feel for what is/isn't viable in the cardpool you're examining; speed for instance.
2. Test proposed lists a few times (Whether proxied up in real life, or even just generating some sample hands.)
3. Compare your proposed decks with what the established standard offers. Do they do anything different? Do they do anything better? Can they compete with the old decks? (For instance, try running either of your decks against their pre-M10 counterparts (mono-white kithkin and Sanity's Grinding respectively). I think you'll find that both are hard-put to outmaneuver them; and that's without the upgrades kithkin gets from M10.)
Hope that helps with your next analysis.
The reason why you saw a lack of pox for months was Necro-spike was clearly better than Pox and basically won everything.
Personally, I'll stick with the mono-black version until Bayou comes online. You can cut Pithing Needles to one in main now that it isn't vital to go first turn Needle-necro. Since I tend to hit too many combo decks, I also cut Crucible to one copy and Pox to two copies. There is no way I'd play with less than 4 Duress/4 Thoughtseize/4 Innocent Blood.
Very well done max :). Something to be proud of :). It dont make any sense to me but still congrats :P. x
Mythic rares are 1/8 not 1/7 so your numbers for mythics and rares will be slightly out.
I just wanted to quickly drop a note saying Ive been a fan of Pox since back in the days of Necropox (Ice Age/Alliances etc). I haven't had time to read through the whole thing but grats on winning with it. :D
It looks like M10 will bring the exact same decks as before M10.
Just a heads up - there are multiple sites out there that will create random packs of Magic 2010 (and other sets) for you in seconds without you having to toil away for hours in excel. http://www.ccgdecks.com/ is what I use, but there are other sites as well.
Hitting up one of those sites would have allowed you to spend more space analyzing the decks and cards themselves instead of wasting half your article on the creation of your "random" packs, which I would imagine given the detail involved probably took several hours to create :(