I liked the article the format was a little rough though. Although they are strictly better in both green/black the Hag Hedge-Mage can be ok just for the x2 swamps, but being able to retreave a Demigod from the grave for next turn can turn a game around.
Disturbed Burial is a great example of recursion in this format. Tempest Block is a fast format with lots of aggressive evasion creatures, so I generally like to play 18 lands so that I rarely miss land drops. This also encourages running the powerful Buyback spells as a way to soak up extra mana later in the game.
Heya, just offering my advice for future drafts. I don't like to critique other people's picks, and for the most part I like what you drafted. That said there is no way you can not take Puppet Strings in Pack 2 Pick 1. Icy Manipulator is almost a bomb and the Puppet Strings can in some circumstances be even better.
Thanks, for the article. I love reading draft recaps.
Pack 1 Pick 6: Try out Blood Frenzy. It can be used on opposing creatures as creature removal, or as the finishing touch to your opponent's life total.
Pack 2 Pick 6: Spinal Graft is another one I think you undervalue; it will work in a similar way to Blood Frenzy, combining well with Fireslingers and other reusable targetted effects (like Broken Fall). You won't even lose life to the slinger cause the effect fizzles due to the creature going to the bin. Pit Imp is also a decent pick here. And sometimes you just throw it onto your own shadow dude and swing for the fences... you'd be surprised how often this works.
(+): I genuinely enjoyed reading this -- who would have thought that mono black could make a home here?
(-): As someone who proofreads heavily as part of his job, I have to say that three typos in one sentence is pretty brutal. ("This is a great card in the right deck but losing too card's would slow are tempo"
I'm not sure why the sound was a little funky, but I'll be careful with it. Crib Swap seems really awesome until you see all the tribal "stuff" it turns on for the opponent. Cards like Kithkin Greatheart, the various +1/+1 counter lords, dudes that need something to champion, etc. Soemtimes it's great, you kill a good card and win, but a lot of the time it ended up having a relatively minor postitive effect on the game. Also, I've begun to do all of my videos in HD rather than normal quality, so fuzziness should be fixed in all future vids. Sorry about the fuzziness in some of these.
My question is more about the quality of the commentary. The pics are very fuzzy on You tube even maximized so making an effort to show the cards a little more longer (with right/left click to enlarge them) really would be great, particularly for readers like myself who managed to not draft any Lor/Mor at all :). Also you seem to be muttering a little at several points. Not that the volume suddenly dropped but that you didn't care to actually enunciate what you were saying. Other than that enjoyable walkthrough videos.
I am curious why you feel Crib Swap is an inferior pick. It certainly is no Swords to Plowshares but it does potentially remove some very nasty threats. Not that I don't agree with your pick there. Mudbutton is surely a nice card to have 2 of when you are low on removal.
The other question I have is why couldn't you find the deck list? the game saves the drafts you play in a particular folder on your hard drive. (Off hand I don't remember what it is but I know I have located it in the past on mine so it isn't hidden.)
Other than that it is nice to see a rarely talked about draft format. I wish Id had a chance to play in it while it was active (no packs and no money atm for packs), so I lived vicariously through this report.
Thanks for all your comments. There were so many different routes I could have gone down with this idea, and yes, shroud and indestructibility would have been a very good choice (but then you're still vulnerable to Mr Cruel Edict and his cousins).
I somewhat agree with 1&2 but I can see why no Putrefys and Maelstrom Pulses which have dropped slightly but not significantly in price. Same with Mortify (I own none of the above cards.) I can see that becoming a hardship if you must have those cards to compete. I thought K-Scope was supposed to be playable on a slim budget.
I agree with the rest of your comments LE with the additional:
Are = Our. A common problem with us writers: Homonyms. Spellcheckers don't catch it and a casual reading might not either.
I was expecting it to be longer. Perhaps something about the impact of k-scope on the casual player. How does this format encourage people to experiment and try new things? What is most particularly exciting about it.
Final thought: I built a few monocolored K-scope decks for the contest (in May) but didn't really have time to think them through and test them. A friend who pointed me to the contest in the first place mentioned the idea so that was the first place I went looking. Any other interesting deck ideas come across your brain while making this? Please elaborate if so.
In your "He Traded Sand For Elephants Midrange Kaleidoscope Deck" I think there would be room for Rhys the Redeemed somewhere.
While Guildmages token making costs more it obviously has a better 2nd ability, although hitting Rhys on a huge board stall and doubling your token total might be worth running 2 of.
Katastrophe: As far as choices go: I envision making the format 6th ed onward (or even 7th); and Mirage onward in terms of sets so that it can mirror exactly between online and its eventual implementation. If 6th ed is chosen, then they should add 6th ed (as the first "modern" core set) to MTGO (e.g. when they reach Masques block). It is true that this leaves Ice age, Legends, and old "core sets" out, but Standard didn't really exist at the time and the sets were really designed rather differently that I believe this is a "necessary" evil. Making the format in a way that it can be mirrored in MTGO and paper is (IMO) really important.
Zimbardo: As far as a possible conflict of interest for WotC's profit - as far as I see, what gets people into standard / block (instead of extended or any of the "eternal" formatS) is mostly the novelty. BYOS does not threaten Standard / Block in any way that Extended, Legacy, Classic or Vintage don't already do. In terms of power level BYOS is probably going to be a bit more powered than "regular" standard, so once again it seems like it would be more or less an alternative to Extended.
Zimbardo: Faeries would probably want some sort of quality instant speed card drawing (or something cheap like Ancestral V.) - inspiration simply sucks, opportunity can be good in the right format but I doubt this one would be it. 7th doesn't seem to offer this, despite the quality permission available to complement Cryptic Command, so perhaps Mirrodin for TfK or Time Spiral (which has other quality choices for Faeries) along with 7th and Lorwyn would be best (I think most of the best Faeries are in Lor and not Shm).
I've never taken this deck into a tourney but its still fun to play when I drop into the Casual room. It does lack removal and I have toyed with playing Memory Plunder to snach up a Terminate or Pure/Simple or Maelstrom Pulse etc. I've also messed around and cut the mana in half to plains/swamps so that I can play Tidehollow Sculler and it plays a bit better but again its not mono-black anymore.
Yes you would be able to pick those cards except you would find out that necro is banned.
You would be able to use any MED cards that are a part of a legal block or base set. Revised would likely not count as a base set as it was only 5th or 6th ed onward for the Invitational.
That price is a place holder for a card that is not in the system yet. As far as I know, the Promo Treetop Village is not out, but we wanted to get it up on the site, so people would be aware that it will eventually come to MTGO.
Why is the promo treetop village worth 1.25, which is less than 2.75, your "official value" for treetop villages from ho-hum 10th edition?
I would like to note that, yes of course you have no promo treetop villages in stock, while you have plenty of the supposedly more valuable tenth edition treetop villages.
For anyone skimming who thinks this comment is out of place, it's in regard to mtgotraders' response to the first comment, about how mtgotraders lowers values of cards when they have none to sell.
I admit there may be some quirky reason why PROMO treetop villages are worth less than the tenth edition ones, and I may be ignorant of it. Please, someone enlighten me.
Starting with something like the Legacy banned list seems like a great idea, especially for some of the cards in Urza's block.
Aside from Urza's and Mirrodin, are there any other blocks with broken decks that we'd need to worry about?
Faeries could get pretty annoying when you combine them with counterspell and Force Spike. I don't know how many of the good faeries are from Shadowmoor - would a Fae player be likely to try Lorwyn + Shadowmoor + 7th? 7th also has Opportunity and Inspiration, so the deck would be able to draw cards and play creatures without ever tapping out until opponent's EOT.
BYOS sounds like an amazing idea. If it were me, I'd probably say go with BYOS and leave BYOB as a possible future idea for the start of things.
If you look at this as a potential business decision by Hasbro, there might be a bit of tension between the following two forces: a) people will buy more cards if they think they will have additional uses 2 or 7 years from now after they rotate, and b)people might switch from standard/extended to BYOS, which means they can keep playing the same decks forever and never buy new cards. If new blocks continue to be good, players will want to use them as part of their standard, so maybe this isn't a big deal.
Still, this one seems like a slam dunk. I think players would love it once it got rolling, and any constructed format that players really like is probably a good business decision when all is said and done.
Great Article as always. Pox has gotten alot stronger. And dunkle has done a amazing job at staying above the curve with his deck. Just remember I need more pox decks running around. *Grins*
1). Deity of Scars HAS trample - I totally missed that on the card when I looked at it, my attention must have been pulled down to the other ability with the counters.
2). Lord Erman I wanted to keep the deck mono for a number of reasons the first to keep it cheap for casual players and the second as a deck building challange for myself to see if it could be done.
I'm going to take a look at the deck list you provided the Voracious Hatchling looks interesting for sure, I need to get my forth copy of some of the other cards.
The article issues I'm going to have resolved for my next article. I'd not seen the deck list builder before, I'm going to have a play now.
In regards to the huge paragraph it didnt look that bad before but I was on a much bigger screen than I'm looking at it on now and your right it's very bad.
3). AJ I think the game was on the 11/07/09 it's possible it could have been the 12th. We had two games that day it was the second.
The audio is really really low. I have my volume maxed out and I can still barely hear you. I think YouTube lowers the volume by default, so for the next series can you jack up by a lot? Its much easier to make a video quieted than it is to make it louder.
As a player, every article about Kaleidoscope makes me happy as they help this young format to grow and get more attention.
Now a few notes about the deck: If it has to be mono black then I think that there are a couple of ways to go:
1- You can build an Orzhov-ish deck with Edge of the Divinity & Stillmoon Cavalier & Deathbringer Liege. But if you're playing those cards then why not simply add white and play Mortify too for example?
2- Or you can build a Golgari deck with lots of Wither creatures, Sapling of Colfenor and Deity of Scars. But the same question as above: If it is Golgari, then why not green too for Putrefy and Maelstrom Pulse?
3- Or you can mix the best cards. And if you are avoiding Stillmoon Cavalier because of price issues, then I would suggest something like this:
24x Lands
4x Oona's Gatewarden (no persist for that Kitchen Finks)
3x Sygg, River Cutthroat
4x Wasp Lancer
4x Crackwood Liege
4x Murderous Redcap
4x Voracious Hatchling (you have no chance in this format without some form of life gain)
4x Demigod of Revenge
4x Unmake
3x Gaze of the Gorgon (okay it's not Terminate but you said it has to be mono black!)
2x Memory Plunder (hopefully a Terminate this time!)
At least this would be what I would try first.
Now another thing: The layout of the article must improve. And by layout I mean two things actually:
2- Try using paragraphs. The part where you talk about the game you played against that jerk called Lord Erman(!), doesn't look good. It's like a big block of text. Paragraphs make reading easier.
I liked the article the format was a little rough though. Although they are strictly better in both green/black the Hag Hedge-Mage can be ok just for the x2 swamps, but being able to retreave a Demigod from the grave for next turn can turn a game around.
Disturbed Burial is a great example of recursion in this format. Tempest Block is a fast format with lots of aggressive evasion creatures, so I generally like to play 18 lands so that I rarely miss land drops. This also encourages running the powerful Buyback spells as a way to soak up extra mana later in the game.
Heya, just offering my advice for future drafts. I don't like to critique other people's picks, and for the most part I like what you drafted. That said there is no way you can not take Puppet Strings in Pack 2 Pick 1. Icy Manipulator is almost a bomb and the Puppet Strings can in some circumstances be even better.
Thanks, for the article. I love reading draft recaps.
Pack 1 Pick 6: Try out Blood Frenzy. It can be used on opposing creatures as creature removal, or as the finishing touch to your opponent's life total.
Pack 2 Pick 6: Spinal Graft is another one I think you undervalue; it will work in a similar way to Blood Frenzy, combining well with Fireslingers and other reusable targetted effects (like Broken Fall). You won't even lose life to the slinger cause the effect fizzles due to the creature going to the bin. Pit Imp is also a decent pick here. And sometimes you just throw it onto your own shadow dude and swing for the fences... you'd be surprised how often this works.
(+): I genuinely enjoyed reading this -- who would have thought that mono black could make a home here?
(-): As someone who proofreads heavily as part of his job, I have to say that three typos in one sentence is pretty brutal. ("This is a great card in the right deck but losing too card's would slow are tempo"
I'm not sure why the sound was a little funky, but I'll be careful with it. Crib Swap seems really awesome until you see all the tribal "stuff" it turns on for the opponent. Cards like Kithkin Greatheart, the various +1/+1 counter lords, dudes that need something to champion, etc. Soemtimes it's great, you kill a good card and win, but a lot of the time it ended up having a relatively minor postitive effect on the game. Also, I've begun to do all of my videos in HD rather than normal quality, so fuzziness should be fixed in all future vids. Sorry about the fuzziness in some of these.
My question is more about the quality of the commentary. The pics are very fuzzy on You tube even maximized so making an effort to show the cards a little more longer (with right/left click to enlarge them) really would be great, particularly for readers like myself who managed to not draft any Lor/Mor at all :). Also you seem to be muttering a little at several points. Not that the volume suddenly dropped but that you didn't care to actually enunciate what you were saying. Other than that enjoyable walkthrough videos.
I am curious why you feel Crib Swap is an inferior pick. It certainly is no Swords to Plowshares but it does potentially remove some very nasty threats. Not that I don't agree with your pick there. Mudbutton is surely a nice card to have 2 of when you are low on removal.
The other question I have is why couldn't you find the deck list? the game saves the drafts you play in a particular folder on your hard drive. (Off hand I don't remember what it is but I know I have located it in the past on mine so it isn't hidden.)
Other than that it is nice to see a rarely talked about draft format. I wish Id had a chance to play in it while it was active (no packs and no money atm for packs), so I lived vicariously through this report.
Thanks for all your comments. There were so many different routes I could have gone down with this idea, and yes, shroud and indestructibility would have been a very good choice (but then you're still vulnerable to Mr Cruel Edict and his cousins).
Thanks for reading, next article coming soon!
I somewhat agree with 1&2 but I can see why no Putrefys and Maelstrom Pulses which have dropped slightly but not significantly in price. Same with Mortify (I own none of the above cards.) I can see that becoming a hardship if you must have those cards to compete. I thought K-Scope was supposed to be playable on a slim budget.
I agree with the rest of your comments LE with the additional:
Are = Our. A common problem with us writers: Homonyms. Spellcheckers don't catch it and a casual reading might not either.
I was expecting it to be longer. Perhaps something about the impact of k-scope on the casual player. How does this format encourage people to experiment and try new things? What is most particularly exciting about it.
Final thought: I built a few monocolored K-scope decks for the contest (in May) but didn't really have time to think them through and test them. A friend who pointed me to the contest in the first place mentioned the idea so that was the first place I went looking. Any other interesting deck ideas come across your brain while making this? Please elaborate if so.
Thanks for sharing and keep writing!
PEL.
AKA Winter.Wolf on MODO
In your "He Traded Sand For Elephants Midrange Kaleidoscope Deck" I think there would be room for Rhys the Redeemed somewhere.
While Guildmages token making costs more it obviously has a better 2nd ability, although hitting Rhys on a huge board stall and doubling your token total might be worth running 2 of.
Loved the decks though.
RagMan17
Awesome article, can't wait to see a larger variety of decks topping the classic top 8's.
Fluctuator/Death looks the most interesting to me - thoughts around how it could be hated out, or whether it might get some wins as a 'surpise' thing?
Peace
WiP
Katastrophe: As far as choices go: I envision making the format 6th ed onward (or even 7th); and Mirage onward in terms of sets so that it can mirror exactly between online and its eventual implementation. If 6th ed is chosen, then they should add 6th ed (as the first "modern" core set) to MTGO (e.g. when they reach Masques block). It is true that this leaves Ice age, Legends, and old "core sets" out, but Standard didn't really exist at the time and the sets were really designed rather differently that I believe this is a "necessary" evil. Making the format in a way that it can be mirrored in MTGO and paper is (IMO) really important.
Zimbardo: As far as a possible conflict of interest for WotC's profit - as far as I see, what gets people into standard / block (instead of extended or any of the "eternal" formatS) is mostly the novelty. BYOS does not threaten Standard / Block in any way that Extended, Legacy, Classic or Vintage don't already do. In terms of power level BYOS is probably going to be a bit more powered than "regular" standard, so once again it seems like it would be more or less an alternative to Extended.
Zimbardo: Faeries would probably want some sort of quality instant speed card drawing (or something cheap like Ancestral V.) - inspiration simply sucks, opportunity can be good in the right format but I doubt this one would be it. 7th doesn't seem to offer this, despite the quality permission available to complement Cryptic Command, so perhaps Mirrodin for TfK or Time Spiral (which has other quality choices for Faeries) along with 7th and Lorwyn would be best (I think most of the best Faeries are in Lor and not Shm).
Nice article, I always love deck tech posts especially outside of the norm STD/EXT/Classic.
I do think though that you might have missed a few good cards like Nip Gwyllion, Nightsky Mimic, Mourning Thrull, and Debtors' Knell.
I run a mono black K scope deck that is actually all black/white and yet I run no plains.
Creatures (28)
4x - Nip Gwyllion
4x - Nightsky Mimic
4x - Mourning Thrull
4x - Deathbringer Liege
4x - Stillmoon Cavalier
4x - Restless Apparition
4x - Divinity of Pride
Removal (4)
4x - Unmake
Enchantments (6)
4x - Edge of Divinity
2x - Debtors' Knell
22 Swamps
I've never taken this deck into a tourney but its still fun to play when I drop into the Casual room. It does lack removal and I have toyed with playing Memory Plunder to snach up a Terminate or Pure/Simple or Maelstrom Pulse etc. I've also messed around and cut the mana in half to plains/swamps so that I can play Tidehollow Sculler and it plays a bit better but again its not mono-black anymore.
Thanks again for the article,
RagMan17
Yes you would be able to pick those cards except you would find out that necro is banned.
You would be able to use any MED cards that are a part of a legal block or base set. Revised would likely not count as a base set as it was only 5th or 6th ed onward for the Invitational.
That price is a place holder for a card that is not in the system yet. As far as I know, the Promo Treetop Village is not out, but we wanted to get it up on the site, so people would be aware that it will eventually come to MTGO.
Does that make sense?
Why is the promo treetop village worth 1.25, which is less than 2.75, your "official value" for treetop villages from ho-hum 10th edition?
I would like to note that, yes of course you have no promo treetop villages in stock, while you have plenty of the supposedly more valuable tenth edition treetop villages.
For anyone skimming who thinks this comment is out of place, it's in regard to mtgotraders' response to the first comment, about how mtgotraders lowers values of cards when they have none to sell.
I admit there may be some quirky reason why PROMO treetop villages are worth less than the tenth edition ones, and I may be ignorant of it. Please, someone enlighten me.
Starting with something like the Legacy banned list seems like a great idea, especially for some of the cards in Urza's block.
Aside from Urza's and Mirrodin, are there any other blocks with broken decks that we'd need to worry about?
Faeries could get pretty annoying when you combine them with counterspell and Force Spike. I don't know how many of the good faeries are from Shadowmoor - would a Fae player be likely to try Lorwyn + Shadowmoor + 7th? 7th also has Opportunity and Inspiration, so the deck would be able to draw cards and play creatures without ever tapping out until opponent's EOT.
BYOS sounds like an amazing idea. If it were me, I'd probably say go with BYOS and leave BYOB as a possible future idea for the start of things.
If you look at this as a potential business decision by Hasbro, there might be a bit of tension between the following two forces: a) people will buy more cards if they think they will have additional uses 2 or 7 years from now after they rotate, and b)people might switch from standard/extended to BYOS, which means they can keep playing the same decks forever and never buy new cards. If new blocks continue to be good, players will want to use them as part of their standard, so maybe this isn't a big deal.
Still, this one seems like a slam dunk. I think players would love it once it got rolling, and any constructed format that players really like is probably a good business decision when all is said and done.
Great Article as always. Pox has gotten alot stronger. And dunkle has done a amazing job at staying above the curve with his deck. Just remember I need more pox decks running around. *Grins*
Thanks for the replys
1). Deity of Scars HAS trample - I totally missed that on the card when I looked at it, my attention must have been pulled down to the other ability with the counters.
2). Lord Erman I wanted to keep the deck mono for a number of reasons the first to keep it cheap for casual players and the second as a deck building challange for myself to see if it could be done.
I'm going to take a look at the deck list you provided the Voracious Hatchling looks interesting for sure, I need to get my forth copy of some of the other cards.
The article issues I'm going to have resolved for my next article. I'd not seen the deck list builder before, I'm going to have a play now.
In regards to the huge paragraph it didnt look that bad before but I was on a much bigger screen than I'm looking at it on now and your right it's very bad.
3). AJ I think the game was on the 11/07/09 it's possible it could have been the 12th. We had two games that day it was the second.
What date was our game? I'll see if I can dig up the replay.
Cool walkthru.
The audio is really really low. I have my volume maxed out and I can still barely hear you. I think YouTube lowers the volume by default, so for the next series can you jack up by a lot? Its much easier to make a video quieted than it is to make it louder.
I really want to come out and play in this event when it stops in Philadelphia. You have it so lucky on the East Coast.
Anyone want to go in for a hotel room for this event and play our not-quite-so-Classic decks in the paper equivalent? :)
Nice start!
As a player, every article about Kaleidoscope makes me happy as they help this young format to grow and get more attention.
Now a few notes about the deck: If it has to be mono black then I think that there are a couple of ways to go:
1- You can build an Orzhov-ish deck with Edge of the Divinity & Stillmoon Cavalier & Deathbringer Liege. But if you're playing those cards then why not simply add white and play Mortify too for example?
2- Or you can build a Golgari deck with lots of Wither creatures, Sapling of Colfenor and Deity of Scars. But the same question as above: If it is Golgari, then why not green too for Putrefy and Maelstrom Pulse?
3- Or you can mix the best cards. And if you are avoiding Stillmoon Cavalier because of price issues, then I would suggest something like this:
24x Lands
4x Oona's Gatewarden (no persist for that Kitchen Finks)
3x Sygg, River Cutthroat
4x Wasp Lancer
4x Crackwood Liege
4x Murderous Redcap
4x Voracious Hatchling (you have no chance in this format without some form of life gain)
4x Demigod of Revenge
4x Unmake
3x Gaze of the Gorgon (okay it's not Terminate but you said it has to be mono black!)
2x Memory Plunder (hopefully a Terminate this time!)
At least this would be what I would try first.
Now another thing: The layout of the article must improve. And by layout I mean two things actually:
1- Use this link for your decklists: http://jamuraa.com/pure/deck_new.php
2- Try using paragraphs. The part where you talk about the game you played against that jerk called Lord Erman(!), doesn't look good. It's like a big block of text. Paragraphs make reading easier.
Other than those, nice start and welcome aboard!
LE
Could Honor the Pure be possible in a WW deck? Could it spawn a WW deck, or would it not have the legs to stand on?
Could Great Sable Stag be good in a metagame choked in Blue?