Just couldn't stop myself from commenting after reading this note from Kuma: "I firmly believe Tribal Wars doesn't need to be "fixed" because it's far from "broken"".
Come on Kuma, we all know this is absolutely not true! As a matter of fact, the "core" of the format is as broken as hell, but there are several reasons why you don't see it -or experience it, in other words- in the Tribal Apoc. Main reason, of course, is that it's a PRE and its audience is mostly people with budget restirctions or people who like trying different things.
If you really want to see how broken the format really is, just raise the reward to 100 tix for 1 week, advertise the event whereever possible and then see the results for yourself. I guarantee you; not a single game will reach turn 5 in such an event. NONE!
What I'm saying is, is that the format is actually a more broken version of the actual Legacy format, because of the 20 creatures rule and the "no sideboards" rule. There is absolutely no way one can fight all of those broken 2 card combos in Magic AND also fight dredge AND affinty AND Elves AND whatever other cursed deck there is AND still try to win with just a main deck that has to have 20 creatures in it.
But you don't feel it in Tribal Apoc because it's -as I said- a PRE where people mostly gather to have fun while slinging spells. But is the format fun? Hell yes, it is! Even it's broken beyond hope, it's still lots of fun. And it's still alive ONLY because it has some tireless defenders such as AJ or yourself and some others. If you guys didn't care and if Tribal Apoc didn't exist, this format would have died long, long ago.
Apart from that, it was nice to read a bit more about the man who's responsible for me to start playing Tribal Wars back in the day (and I "fear" I wasen't the only one).
/me vanishes into thin air and goes back to the shadows
The idea of not giving away unnecessary information through the lands you play has an interesting corollary I picked up along the way essentially by chance (since I'm not a very technical player). We could call it, "Confuse your opponent by giving away wrong information".
For instance, in a Constructed monocolored deck, if you're not in a meta where Wasteland and Blood Moon are a concern, you should always include some fetchlands and off-color duals. Say you're piloting monogreen (where this strategy is particularly effective), you start dropping Bayou, then Savannah, the opponent won't know what to expect, and will spend most of the entire match waiting for those splashes to materialize. I played a Cleric deck recently that had some Scrublands only for the off-chance of activating Starlit Sanctum's black-based ability when sacrificing Academy Rector, and my opponents kept thinking I was running black Cleric shenanigans, or were just confused by the exact number of colors in my deck.
There are a few cases (mostly developed through tribal play) in which playing a creature in pre-combat is the correct play, even if that creature doesn't affect combat directly (which most creatures in tribal linear builds do, of course).
It's sort of a psychological trick: if I want to push my opponent into a specific choice (both to let my attacker through OR to block it, for some reason), I might want to tell my opponent, "Look at what you'll be facing on my next turn" or "See? Your blocker won't pass through on your next turn anyway" before they make their combat choices, so that those choices will be influenced. Of course, most of the times it's more useful to influence those choices by NOT revealing the other creature before combat, but the opposite is possible, especially if you noticed a pattern in the opponent's behavior, or already know them.
The thing about Meddling Mage is that he really only works well in a defined metagame with a small number of top tier decks, and casual Magic is anything but. Were I hellbent on playing him though, it would probably be in an Esper shell alongside Tidehollow Sculler, Thoughtseize, Cabal Therapy, and Gitaxian Probe. Remand, while powerful in Modern, is not something I'd want to play in Vintage.
You're probably right about Restoration Angel too, especially since I'm already playing Snapcasters, Trinket Mages and SFMs. I don't own them and don't necessarily want to spend the tix on them since I'm currently saving up for a Mishra's Workshop deck. Also, I wanted an excuse to break out my Lightning Angels that have been collecting digital dust for the better part of a decade now. That said, Lightning does have the advantages of connecting a turn earlier and Vigilance, so I'll probably be sticking with them unless I decide I need Resto for something else.
I'm not sure about in vintage, but in Modern you can certainly make Meddling Mage work.
Gitaxian Probe and Remand work well to help you determine your calls.
You needn't fear over-committing into otherwise un-counterable sweepers they cannot cast.
And you can pair it up with the also hand disrupting zombie buddy two drop if you decide to go three colors.
As far as lightning angel goes, most people are favoring her *Flash*ier kin these days.
But I still have a soft spot for the ol' gal.
Even for those who want to play immediately, you can still build a $100ish deck that incorporates cheap staples and allows you to effortlessly slot in the more expensive ones as you acquire them. Stoneblade, for example, is an incredibly cheap shell outside of fetches, duals, and Forces. So is UR Delver, which unlike other Delver decks, does not run Wastelands. Obviously the deck will not be optimal without them, but you can jam shocklands, buddy lands, and less costly counters like Spell Pierce, Flusterstorm, and even good old Counterspell while you save up money.
Leak #3 is fairly situational in my opinion. Sometimes it's correct to play the card you drew after getting Thoughtseized: scryland if you're looking for land/spells, land if you kept a 1 lander, your own Thoughtseize, or a creature that you would normally cast that turn. I would say the leak is when you play what you drew after getting Thoughtseized and it has no impact on the game.
This was a fun read. It actually inspired me to dust off and update my old URW "Meddling Angels" deck I played in Extended circa 10 years ago. It was always one of my favorite decks to play and I wanted something more casual to familiarize myself with the new client. With about half a dozen games under my belt I can say that, one: it's still a blast to play, and two: I don't hate v4 nearly as much as I thought I would. Also, I really want to make Meddling Mage work, but there's too much randomness outside of tournament Magic for him to be super effective.
For anyone who wants to give it a try (I can't say enough how much fun I'm having playing with it again.), here's my current list. It's on the competitive side of casual, and my version is tricked out with Power, Forces, fetches, and duals since I already own them, but you could certainly make it work without them and the rest of the deck is pretty cheap. A rough pass at a budget version got me down to around $70 for the entire thing with the most expensive cards being $10ish singletons.
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Pithing Needle
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Fire/Ice
3 Force of Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Time Walk
4 Preordain
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island
4 Mishra's Factory
Sideboard (Included since all games apparently default to best-2-of-3 now)
4 Disenchant
4 Grafdigger's Cage
3 Grim Lavamancer
1 Batterskull
1 Force of Will
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
First off, the manabase is extremely greedy, like Ebeneezer Scrooge level greedy. Even with all the fetchlands and duals it's still bit me in the butt a few times and I may end up cutting the Factories for the 4th Tundra and Volcanic plus 2 Faerie Conclaves. Also, it is definitely not worth running off color Moxen, Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, or Tolarian Academy. The deck is very color sensitive and I've gotten more utility out of Mishra's Factory than those cards.
The creatures are pretty solid, but Serra Avenger isn't quite as good as I remember. I really need a solid 1 or 2 drop and will probably try Young Pyromancer and Grim Lavamancer at some point. Stoneforge Mystic, Snapcaster Mage, and Trinket Mage are all awesome cards with a lot of utility. Lightning Angel, I think, is vastly underrated. She's an evasive threat that plays defense while not dying to Bolt or Abrupt Decay.
I've been very happy with the removal and cantrip suite. The single Fire/Ice is there as the 20th blue card to support the 3 Force of Wills. I also feel that at least some countermagic is needed both to protect your own threats and stop opponents from doing broken things. I don't want to go overboard on the permission, though I could see possibly trimming 1 each Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt, and Fire/Ice for 2 Izzet Charms and the 4th Force.
Anyway, this ended up being way longer and more in depth than I originally thought it would be, but if you're a fan of aggro-control decks, I strongly recommend at least trying it out.
I totally agree with the whole investment idea. That is a great way to get into Legacy over the course of several months, but this article is for the people who are interested in playing Legacy now.
The new system of floating windows would be amazing with a multiple monitor setup.
Though currently for me it is about equal in utility to the old chat system.
Which means I might upgrade my system just for that.
Having the main lobby and chat in a side window while whatever I'm doing is in the main window seems great.
As does the possibility of tinkering in the deck editor.. *ahem* collection while playing without tab juggling.
Some of the card border/foil treatment variations are pretty terrible.
Though the minimalist foiling of some looks great with the animation.
And the animations in general look better that the disabled options.
I'm mildly hopeful we see some re-skin options like we had for the old client.
I like when friends randomly drop by. In fact that is what sometimes starts off the friendship. Unfortunately when WOTC went about rebuilding the wheel that is MTGO they stripped out all excess functionality even the stuff with proven upside and no downside. I hope they restore those things as work gets done.
Yes the unhinged lands are between 1 and 3 tix per depending on the land which imho is too much for bling. But then again whatever the market will bear.
My only issue with the new client so far is how much harder it is to randomly spectate the games of friends and clan-mates.
Filtering possible opponents to "my buddies only" brings up only players I've played against before, but have NOT added as a friend yet.
Presumably, I'm on their buddy list, then?
I have to actually ask folks what they are playing and where in order to watch a game.
Which kind of ruins the fun of randomly dropping in.
I suppose it could be considered a good thing for those who consider spectators a distraction.
I understand your goal of keeping the deck under $100 as a starting point, but I really think that exploring more expensive options is worth looking at. I actually kind of cringe any time I hear advice that amounts to "If you want to get into (format X) play (deck Y) because it's cheap." Sure, it's an easy way to get into a format, but unless you actually want to play Goblins, Burn, Belcher, etc. you're wasting money on cards that do not transfer into the deck you actually want to play.
The thing about Legacy and Vintage is that you can take a long term approach to building a collection since many of the staples fit into multiple decks and are unlikely to ever be reprinted or outclassed by new cards. With that in mind, it is my opinion that someone looking to break into these formats should first decide what type of deck they ultimately want to play, then go about getting the core cards and building a budget deck around them. Sure, you're spending more for Forces, fetches, and duals in the short term, but buying a Belcher or Enchantress deck when you really want to play Delver or Miracles is wasting money on cards that you aren't going to use in the long run.
Thanks for the comment. I also face palmed pretty hard when I realized what I had done with Thrun. Recording yourself playing is great as it allows you to go back and identify mistakes and potentially things that you could do differently when put in that same position in future.
Squirrels Ruling the World seem to have some appeal for my Boss - though a
Swarm of everything can be a Force. I use the 'cute' acorn catapult in the mentioned deck
Comparately to your Commander Take :-)
The graveyard is still missing - no solution by Support so far. The say to Look into, whatever
That means..
Just couldn't stop myself from commenting after reading this note from Kuma: "I firmly believe Tribal Wars doesn't need to be "fixed" because it's far from "broken"".
Come on Kuma, we all know this is absolutely not true! As a matter of fact, the "core" of the format is as broken as hell, but there are several reasons why you don't see it -or experience it, in other words- in the Tribal Apoc. Main reason, of course, is that it's a PRE and its audience is mostly people with budget restirctions or people who like trying different things.
If you really want to see how broken the format really is, just raise the reward to 100 tix for 1 week, advertise the event whereever possible and then see the results for yourself. I guarantee you; not a single game will reach turn 5 in such an event. NONE!
What I'm saying is, is that the format is actually a more broken version of the actual Legacy format, because of the 20 creatures rule and the "no sideboards" rule. There is absolutely no way one can fight all of those broken 2 card combos in Magic AND also fight dredge AND affinty AND Elves AND whatever other cursed deck there is AND still try to win with just a main deck that has to have 20 creatures in it.
But you don't feel it in Tribal Apoc because it's -as I said- a PRE where people mostly gather to have fun while slinging spells. But is the format fun? Hell yes, it is! Even it's broken beyond hope, it's still lots of fun. And it's still alive ONLY because it has some tireless defenders such as AJ or yourself and some others. If you guys didn't care and if Tribal Apoc didn't exist, this format would have died long, long ago.
Apart from that, it was nice to read a bit more about the man who's responsible for me to start playing Tribal Wars back in the day (and I "fear" I wasen't the only one).
/me vanishes into thin air and goes back to the shadows
Yes I am Canadian Scion. Thanks!
Thx for the idea! Definitely going to look into this deck for a later article!
The idea of not giving away unnecessary information through the lands you play has an interesting corollary I picked up along the way essentially by chance (since I'm not a very technical player). We could call it, "Confuse your opponent by giving away wrong information".
For instance, in a Constructed monocolored deck, if you're not in a meta where Wasteland and Blood Moon are a concern, you should always include some fetchlands and off-color duals. Say you're piloting monogreen (where this strategy is particularly effective), you start dropping Bayou, then Savannah, the opponent won't know what to expect, and will spend most of the entire match waiting for those splashes to materialize. I played a Cleric deck recently that had some Scrublands only for the off-chance of activating Starlit Sanctum's black-based ability when sacrificing Academy Rector, and my opponents kept thinking I was running black Cleric shenanigans, or were just confused by the exact number of colors in my deck.
There are a few cases (mostly developed through tribal play) in which playing a creature in pre-combat is the correct play, even if that creature doesn't affect combat directly (which most creatures in tribal linear builds do, of course).
It's sort of a psychological trick: if I want to push my opponent into a specific choice (both to let my attacker through OR to block it, for some reason), I might want to tell my opponent, "Look at what you'll be facing on my next turn" or "See? Your blocker won't pass through on your next turn anyway" before they make their combat choices, so that those choices will be influenced. Of course, most of the times it's more useful to influence those choices by NOT revealing the other creature before combat, but the opposite is possible, especially if you noticed a pattern in the opponent's behavior, or already know them.
The thing about Meddling Mage is that he really only works well in a defined metagame with a small number of top tier decks, and casual Magic is anything but. Were I hellbent on playing him though, it would probably be in an Esper shell alongside Tidehollow Sculler, Thoughtseize, Cabal Therapy, and Gitaxian Probe. Remand, while powerful in Modern, is not something I'd want to play in Vintage.
You're probably right about Restoration Angel too, especially since I'm already playing Snapcasters, Trinket Mages and SFMs. I don't own them and don't necessarily want to spend the tix on them since I'm currently saving up for a Mishra's Workshop deck. Also, I wanted an excuse to break out my Lightning Angels that have been collecting digital dust for the better part of a decade now. That said, Lightning does have the advantages of connecting a turn earlier and Vigilance, so I'll probably be sticking with them unless I decide I need Resto for something else.
I'm not sure about in vintage, but in Modern you can certainly make Meddling Mage work.
Gitaxian Probe and Remand work well to help you determine your calls.
You needn't fear over-committing into otherwise un-counterable sweepers they cannot cast.
And you can pair it up with the also hand disrupting zombie buddy two drop if you decide to go three colors.
As far as lightning angel goes, most people are favoring her *Flash*ier kin these days.
But I still have a soft spot for the ol' gal.
Even for those who want to play immediately, you can still build a $100ish deck that incorporates cheap staples and allows you to effortlessly slot in the more expensive ones as you acquire them. Stoneblade, for example, is an incredibly cheap shell outside of fetches, duals, and Forces. So is UR Delver, which unlike other Delver decks, does not run Wastelands. Obviously the deck will not be optimal without them, but you can jam shocklands, buddy lands, and less costly counters like Spell Pierce, Flusterstorm, and even good old Counterspell while you save up money.
I do believe that was Pete's thrust.
Leak #3 is fairly situational in my opinion. Sometimes it's correct to play the card you drew after getting Thoughtseized: scryland if you're looking for land/spells, land if you kept a 1 lander, your own Thoughtseize, or a creature that you would normally cast that turn. I would say the leak is when you play what you drew after getting Thoughtseized and it has no impact on the game.
This was a fun read. It actually inspired me to dust off and update my old URW "Meddling Angels" deck I played in Extended circa 10 years ago. It was always one of my favorite decks to play and I wanted something more casual to familiarize myself with the new client. With about half a dozen games under my belt I can say that, one: it's still a blast to play, and two: I don't hate v4 nearly as much as I thought I would. Also, I really want to make Meddling Mage work, but there's too much randomness outside of tournament Magic for him to be super effective.
For anyone who wants to give it a try (I can't say enough how much fun I'm having playing with it again.), here's my current list. It's on the competitive side of casual, and my version is tricked out with Power, Forces, fetches, and duals since I already own them, but you could certainly make it work without them and the rest of the deck is pretty cheap. A rough pass at a budget version got me down to around $70 for the entire thing with the most expensive cards being $10ish singletons.
3 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Trinket Mage
2 Snapcaster Mage
3 Serra Avenger
3 Lightning Angel
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Pithing Needle
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Fire/Ice
3 Force of Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Time Walk
4 Preordain
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island
4 Mishra's Factory
Sideboard (Included since all games apparently default to best-2-of-3 now)
4 Disenchant
4 Grafdigger's Cage
3 Grim Lavamancer
1 Batterskull
1 Force of Will
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
First off, the manabase is extremely greedy, like Ebeneezer Scrooge level greedy. Even with all the fetchlands and duals it's still bit me in the butt a few times and I may end up cutting the Factories for the 4th Tundra and Volcanic plus 2 Faerie Conclaves. Also, it is definitely not worth running off color Moxen, Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, or Tolarian Academy. The deck is very color sensitive and I've gotten more utility out of Mishra's Factory than those cards.
The creatures are pretty solid, but Serra Avenger isn't quite as good as I remember. I really need a solid 1 or 2 drop and will probably try Young Pyromancer and Grim Lavamancer at some point. Stoneforge Mystic, Snapcaster Mage, and Trinket Mage are all awesome cards with a lot of utility. Lightning Angel, I think, is vastly underrated. She's an evasive threat that plays defense while not dying to Bolt or Abrupt Decay.
I've been very happy with the removal and cantrip suite. The single Fire/Ice is there as the 20th blue card to support the 3 Force of Wills. I also feel that at least some countermagic is needed both to protect your own threats and stop opponents from doing broken things. I don't want to go overboard on the permission, though I could see possibly trimming 1 each Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt, and Fire/Ice for 2 Izzet Charms and the 4th Force.
Anyway, this ended up being way longer and more in depth than I originally thought it would be, but if you're a fan of aggro-control decks, I strongly recommend at least trying it out.
Are you Canadian? Nice deck!
I totally agree with the whole investment idea. That is a great way to get into Legacy over the course of several months, but this article is for the people who are interested in playing Legacy now.
Now I have the lands In my blue tron deck fixed. Bit I have a foil promo wurmcoil and a non foil promo wurmcoil, so that's a new quest.
The new system of floating windows would be amazing with a multiple monitor setup.
Though currently for me it is about equal in utility to the old chat system.
Which means I might upgrade my system just for that.
Having the main lobby and chat in a side window while whatever I'm doing is in the main window seems great.
As does the possibility of tinkering in the deck editor.. *ahem* collection while playing without tab juggling.
Some of the card border/foil treatment variations are pretty terrible.
Though the minimalist foiling of some looks great with the animation.
And the animations in general look better that the disabled options.
I'm mildly hopeful we see some re-skin options like we had for the old client.
I like when friends randomly drop by. In fact that is what sometimes starts off the friendship. Unfortunately when WOTC went about rebuilding the wheel that is MTGO they stripped out all excess functionality even the stuff with proven upside and no downside. I hope they restore those things as work gets done.
Yes the unhinged lands are between 1 and 3 tix per depending on the land which imho is too much for bling. But then again whatever the market will bear.
My only issue with the new client so far is how much harder it is to randomly spectate the games of friends and clan-mates.
Filtering possible opponents to "my buddies only" brings up only players I've played against before, but have NOT added as a friend yet.
Presumably, I'm on their buddy list, then?
I have to actually ask folks what they are playing and where in order to watch a game.
Which kind of ruins the fun of randomly dropping in.
I suppose it could be considered a good thing for those who consider spectators a distraction.
I keep forgetting about it until i'm playing a game with it. thanks though.
what about unhinged plains? kind of expensive though.
:-)
I understand your goal of keeping the deck under $100 as a starting point, but I really think that exploring more expensive options is worth looking at. I actually kind of cringe any time I hear advice that amounts to "If you want to get into (format X) play (deck Y) because it's cheap." Sure, it's an easy way to get into a format, but unless you actually want to play Goblins, Burn, Belcher, etc. you're wasting money on cards that do not transfer into the deck you actually want to play.
The thing about Legacy and Vintage is that you can take a long term approach to building a collection since many of the staples fit into multiple decks and are unlikely to ever be reprinted or outclassed by new cards. With that in mind, it is my opinion that someone looking to break into these formats should first decide what type of deck they ultimately want to play, then go about getting the core cards and building a budget deck around them. Sure, you're spending more for Forces, fetches, and duals in the short term, but buying a Belcher or Enchantress deck when you really want to play Delver or Miracles is wasting money on cards that you aren't going to use in the long run.
You may note that Squirrel Girl beat Galactus. (Marvel Universe) so there is that.
Thanks for the comment. I also face palmed pretty hard when I realized what I had done with Thrun. Recording yourself playing is great as it allows you to go back and identify mistakes and potentially things that you could do differently when put in that same position in future.
Squirrels Ruling the World seem to have some appeal for my Boss - though a
Swarm of everything can be a Force. I use the 'cute' acorn catapult in the mentioned deck
Comparately to your Commander Take :-)
The graveyard is still missing - no solution by Support so far. The say to Look into, whatever
That means..
MTGOTraders has most of the Zen land art. Strangely I haven't found a plains full art I like.